Give Me Love
twenty-twenty-four
stunned numb frightened undone done
what a year it’s been
“Give me hope, help me cope / with this heavy load,” George Harrison sang and strummed with three of his British friends in 1973. Wrong weighs like a wet blanket on our souls. Performing his song years later, Harrison’s prayer remains ours: “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth).” Hearts seek light—hands want holding.
Unwrap this trio of gifts at year’s end. A centenarian’s tale. A journalist’s resignation. An athlete’s retirement.
Thanksgiving table talk with Betz has been my treat for a decade. “She was ahead of her time when she was born in 1924,” smiles her daughter Laurie. Learning as a little girl from her mother’s example, Betz remains a lifelong progressive fighting against racial injustice. Elected to Charlottesville’s City Council in 1980, she was the first woman both to win two terms and to serve as vice-mayor.
This week we chatted in her sunlit home. “The best part of childhood was going through it. We lived downtown in a still-standing home with a front porch the width of the house.” During the Depression, the attentive child made sandwiches for her mother to give men waiting at the back door. She invited President Roosevelt to her 10th birthday party with a p.s. to bring Mrs. Roosevelt. Betz heard Roosevelt speak two years later after he dedicated Shenandoah National Park, mailing her stamp collection to the White House upon learning that he was a philatelist. As a high school senior on June 10th 1940, the day that Italy declared war on England and France, she sat in the audience when her pal FDR spoke at The University of Virginia law school. Her first year at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College…Pearl Harbor. Senior year…end of the war. “We couldn’t have mixers since the boys had gone to war, so for four years we watched a lot of movies (many racy ones, I’ll give you an example).” Setting aside her degree in social work, she set her heart on a boy she met when they were 12. “Charlie was a doctor and we were married for 71 years…. Yesterday I finished Dr. Fauci’s book On Call. Loved it.” Though distressed about the election, the former vice-mayor realizes that she has a lot to learn about the service industries. She misses her contemporaries and wishes everyone said “please and thank you.” Still, Betz feels confident that “we will work all this out” because she’s had one thought about this country all of her life. “Aren’t we lucky?”
“Why I Just Resigned from the Los Angeles Times” may be Harry Litman’s finest editorial as the paper’s Senior Legal Columnist. “It’s a grave insult to the independence and integrity of our editorial department for its owner to force it to withdraw a considered and drafted opinion…. The endorsement of a presidential candidate is an editorial department’s most important decision, so the slight was deep.” Litman insists that the owner’s squelching of the endorsement of Vice-President Kamala Harris also insulted its readers. “I don’t want to continue working for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons.”
In a Buenos Aires stadium packed with 15,000 fans, contemporaries Juan Martin Del Potro and Novak Djokovic played an exhibition tennis match on December 1. Argentinian Del Potro, winner of one Grand Slam at the US Open in 2009 vs winner of 22 Grand Slams Serbian Novak Djokovic. Playing healthy for the last time in 2019, Del Potro will live with chronic pain from assorted injuries for the rest of his life. He officially retires as a player universally loved by his competitors and fans around the world. Gimpy and grinning, the local hero “won” the match with the backing of a roaring, tearful crowd. In his post-match remarks, Djokovic celebrated Del Potro’s true triumph: “Juan Martin is an example for all of us, and his greatest victory in life is being a wonderful person.” Here’s our ticket to beauty. We’re right there cheering…on match point…the players’ embrace…their love of the game and love for each other. Kissing his headband a grateful farewell, Del Potro leaves it hanging on the net.
Ada Limón shares “What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use.” We walk with her and a companion. Asked by J if she believes in God, the poet answers: “No. I believe in this connection we all have / to nature, to each other, to the universe.” J agrees: “Yeah, God.” Gazing up at the clouds with them, all the changing animal shapes delight us—that dog (mine) napping with another pup snoozing on his shoulder. The wondrous wild sky belongs to you and me.
Feeling lost and broken? Lacking light and hope? Like George Harrison, do you miss holding hands? Piano-pounding, rhythmically-bounding Jacob Collier sings “I’m holding out my hand to you.” We grab hold the moment that vocalist Tori Kelly hits her first note in “Witness Me.” Nestle into this room filled with tasseled lampshades and swaying singers. Tempo picks up and off we go. “You’re the light I need / In the dark I see.”
Only humans grumble, poet Robert Bly observes, they’re always greedily “Wanting Sumptuous Heavens.” Unlike oysters and lobsters, humans constantly strive for more. “But the heron standing on one leg in the bog / Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.” Hey, heron—it’s us. On two legs—we’ve got plenty.
Samara Joy happily confesses “I’m Old-Fashioned” and assures “but I don’t mind it.” Pianist Emmet Cohen joins her in their mutual love of moonlight. Another piano player bouncing on his bench, his hands tenderizing sharps and flats. Check out Joy’s socks, the bass player’s hat, and the drummer’s barely-seated dance. The drummer! Upping “the sound of rain / upon a windowpane” to hurricane force, the foursome brightly lights this one-lamped room.