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From the Huffington Post, October 31, 2013 Okay, I'm officially a Glasshole. I trotted the thing out in public for the second time, wearing it to the unveiling of a Banksy in NoHo, as if Glass alone or Banksy alone wasn't trendy enough. So maybe I got what I deserved. By Eve Becker  Word on the street was that the piece was in a lot on Houston and Elizabeth, under a tarp that would be removed at 6:00 p.m. Conveniently, Tom and Jerry's bar, on the same corner, serves a nice Ginger Dragon. My boyfriend and I snagged a comfortable table, and watched the gathering scene -- people with hoodies and walkie-talkies looking mildly important, and scenesters with cool jackets and all manner of digital toys. I cultivated a slow, Friday afternoon buzz, as I messed around with Glass, to prepare for a workshop on Glass for Educators, that I was teaching the next day. A few people cast glances at me -- or rather at Glass, but I lowered my head and tried not to feel like too much of a, well, Glasshole. At ten to six, we went out and got spots front and center, at the tarped fence. The crowd swelled, and with nothing to do but hang around and wait, Glass was as close as it came to entertainment. "Hey, are those those glasses?" and "Why do you have a regular camera when you've got that thing?" Good question. "That thing" has neither an adjustable depth of field, nor a flash. But damn, it gets people to look at you. A guy with a crown of silver duck fuzz pointed a tiny, fancy camera at me.  "I really don't want to see my picture online," I implored him. I'd been watching him snap pix with brisk efficiency, and figured he was on the job. "I've only worn this thing out in public once before. I'm uncomfortable, and I don't want my middle-aged face splashed in public," I added. Five minutes later, someone told me I was on the cover of The Gothamist. My boyfriend pulled the picture up on his phone. I saw him start to laugh, then think better. "It's terrible," I surmised. There was a beat before he answered. "It's not so bad." Beat, beat. "It's good of me." "Oh, no. Lemme see. Come on." He showed me his phone. "Oh, shit. Jesus Christ. You think it's funny, don't you?" "I can't help it if you look like you've been eating a lemon." And later: "People are going to ask me why I was there with my mom." The moment arrived just in time to distract me. The tarp was removed, and we were treated to the Grim Reaper, riding around on a bumper car to Blue Oyster Cult under a shower of disco lights. It was fun, but not my favorite piece in the month-long show. My regular camera finked out on me, and I shot some stills and a video #throughglass.  With a tap on the earpiece, I posted one of the pix on Facebook, while pressing up against the fence in the crowd. Your phone can do this. But since I never had a smartphone until a couple of months ago, this gave me a tiny, stoopid kick. Back home, I looked at the offending photo of myself on my computer. Middle-aged vanity is a bitch.  Googling to see if the pic had made its way around, I discovered this: Sam BOOdle@sambiddle 25 Oct this is the worst image of 2013: woman in google glass waiting outside in the cold for a banksy unveiling. Sam Biddle is a professional snarker for gawker and valleywag. His would-be snarker minions were enjoying themselves: Cesar Flebótomo @stuffthings: and not even smoking; Bossman Jr @bossmanjr: Was she eating a Cronut?; Cid Sees Her @cid_sees: that was a woman?; Axel Cureno 2.5 @axelcureno: fucking rich people... i hate them...; and my fave, Tom Hayden @haydenth: what if that is banksy.
Allow me to indulge myself. Cesar -- quit 35 years ago. Cid -- come take one of my writing workshops; I know you can do better than that. 2.5 -- we teachers do it for the big bucks. Tom Hayden -- yes. And how's that Port Huron Statement coming? I contacted both the snarker and the photographer, and asked them to link to this blog. I'll suffer the bad photo if it drives a little traffic to my work. They both said okay. Neither of them did it. (Come on, dudes. I'm tryin' to get my subscriber base to 19. Help a gal out.) I didn't like the unflattering photo, but the fifteen minutes of infamy was kind of fun. Glass is occasionally good for something. [This was one of the posts on my blog, Google Glass and the Digital Immigrant: My Adventures as a Google Glass Explorer of a Certain Age.]
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 Image: the stealth art piece at my bus shelter, Columbus btwn 93rd and 94th ("Pluralsism is the opposite of an Ethnostate" added by me) This post is for any compassionate Zionist friends in NYC (yes, JVP comrades, yes radical left comrades—they do exist), who although they have sometimes bristled at my anti-zionist posts, didn’t rank criminal Cuomo, despise Bibi and the Israeli hate machine as much as they despise dRump and know that Israel is starving an entire people to death, babies and all, permanently displacing any survivors, and destroying a whole culture—just as it was done to us 80 years ago... and who nevertheless think we need an ethnostate to be safe.
We love New York at this very moment in time, right? Whether we voted Mamdani or Lander first, we scrappy New Yorkers fought the big money, self-interested political machine. We kicked to the curb the guy who goosed women. We cheered as the handsome, young, newbie Muslim candidate embraced the earnest, experienced middle-aged Jewish candidate. Personally, I played their co-endorsement announcement over and over, and felt so freakin’ proud of being a lifelong New Yorker. We love the diversity in our city when it creates good will. It’s a lot of why we live here, right? Compassionate Zionists, I propose that a pluralistic community is the opposite of an ethnostate. That an Israel-Palestine with equal rights for all is fundamentally similar to our vision for the best possible New York, where we diaspora Jews go out in the streets because ICE is kidnapping our neighbors, because Black Lives Matter, because we are all immigrants, too, and our beautiful city provided services for our mishpucha when they arrived on the run, and gave them a pathway to citizenship. It folded them into its midst and here we are. Mamdani was the only candidate who gave the right answer to the inappropriate question of the candidates’ first trip. Only Mamdani would stay right here in our Big Apple, and do his job as the mayor. Of our Big Apple. Our pluralistic Big Apple. Protect everyone, including us Jews. I mean, Adrienne Adams… the Holy Land?? What a corporate suck-up. (I did rank her fourth, for her experience and for where she’s gotten herself as a Black woman politician, but not because I like her. I mean, I ranked Paperboy Prince fifth because they ran on a platform of love and creativity and they educated young ppl about the political process while entertaining the hell out of anyone who followed them. And bc they ran for office in clown make-up and yeah, the process is a clown show.) Compassionate Zionist friends in NYC (and LA and Chicago and etc.), please consider that a pluralistic community of the kind you have chosen to live in is the opposite of a religious state. Please consider that epigenetic trauma informs how you hold on to the notion that Israel keeps us safe. Do you really think that a fundamentalist religious state abroad is keeping Jews safe? You do know that many people hate us even more now because Israel is murdering Gazan civilians, wiping out their culture, creating the kind of epigenetic and intergenerational trauma we suffer from (and Cambodians suffer from and etc. etc. fill in your genocide here). And because the dRump thugs are perpetuating the lie that Jewish identity of all different kinds is synonymous with Israel. We are not safer for having a religious state abroad. Anti-semitism is real. Not in the way dRump and company define it and exploit it for their evil agenda. But let’s focus on making us safe at home—in our diaspora homes. Give up the idea of a religious state. It’s good nowhere—not in Gaza, either. Okay, maybe at the Vatican, that tiny little island in the pluralistic waters of Rome. But I’m getting off track. Mamdani understands that all New Yorkers need to be safe right here in our five boroughs. So does Lander, btw—and I would describe him as a compassionate Zionist. I dunno. The Z-word seems to be used so differently by so many people. There’s so much energy lost on defining it. There’s a genocide happening. Call it by any other name and it would smell as foul. Staunch the blood flow. Defund the warmongers immediately. Then go to work on what to do in that wretched part of the world. And meanwhile, look to NYC for a little dose of hope for what we could be as a nation. With affordability and liberty and equality for all. I know I’m a hopeless idealist.  art: Adrian Piper For the last few years of my twelve-year relationship with Joe, one of his Word Paintings hung in my living room. It was a large, three-panel affair in vibrant yellow, green and blue that announced, “I wanted to reveal my secrets.”
On the final day of our relationship, I stretched out in my lounge chair as the lights in the buildings around mine went on--the big city version of stars coming out. You can feel yourself settle in to the slower evening rhythms, aware of the universe from a quiet distance, but snug in your own world. The painting hung in my line of vision, but I gave it no thought. With Joe flying off to see family earlier in the day, I was enjoying the breath of solo time. A partnership can do that. Make that time alone a respite. Because every partnership needs it. And because you know that it’s temporary, a breeze that isn’t going to turn into a desolate gale. I opened my laptop. And Joe’s email was up on my screen. “Just close that window,” I thought. But I also thought about a recent hurtful lie, from this man I’d trusted to my bones. So, I went looking. Reveal his secrets those emails did. The recent ones at the top of his cue. The ones I had to scroll to, my index finger taking me years back. The gut punch when I put [redacted] in the search bar and up came the motherlode, scores of messages, my search term screaming at me over and over in yellow highlighter. As far back as the beginning of our relationship and before. His response to my discovery? “It’s nothing. Just a little titillation.” Then he ran. Out of sight, didn’t happen. For the next month, he made me invisible. My calls ricocheted straight to voicemail without a single ring. I heard the gentle amusement in his outgoing message, his familiar cadences. The voice of a man I’d chosen for his reliability, his honesty, his solidity. That man was gone. My normally blue texts showed green. Blocked. My phone was a locked door. “Dude,” I emailed him, though I don’t know if he was seeing my email, “[Redacted] is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. And having [redacted] in 2024 is pretty common. You could have talked to me about it. You could have talked to me about anything. But erasing me is unacceptable.” I didn’t hear from him. The ghost of my father appeared at the foot of my bed. My father, whom I adored and who had fits of rage. Me, drawing myself into a ball in the corner of my childhood bedroom, cheek to the nubby, blue rug, while my father, disappointed in the world and me, hit and kicked. The next day, it hadn’t happened. He sang funny songs as he marched around the apartment, made me tomato soup and crispy, golden, grilled cheese, watched Star Trek with me, put on a tux, picked up his viola, and went out to make beautiful music with a world-class orchestra. I let it go. I loved him, I was a daddy’s girl. Joe’s meltdowns weren’t violent. But like my father’s they weren’t acknowledged either. We didn’t fight much, but when we did, he shut down and shut me out until he’d swept the problem under the rug. And now I’d seen into a place so secret, that the shut down seemed permanent. My demons sent out party invitations. Separation anxiety made my heart race; I couldn’t catch my breath. My enduring feelings of not being heard pulsed in my ears. The invisibility that stalks women as we grow old enraged me. My lifelong insomnia took over. I slept for only a few hours a night, on a cocktail of drugs. I woke up in darkness, my chest cavity aching, my stomach hollow. Life can be a bitch, even for those of us who know how incredibly fortunate we are. Several decades ago, when a dear friend across the pond was hurting badly, I bought myself a plane ticket and said to her, “Vamos a pintarnos los labios de rojo.” We’re going to paint our lips red and go out and drink wine and leave lipstick traces on the glass.” Now she reminded me of this, got on a plane, and came to visit. We went out and saw art every day. We took extended walks through Central Park, winter sun winking on the reservoir. We cooked together. I’m not going to say my heartbreak went away, but friends are it. Friends are everything. My gratitude runs deep. One day we set out for the Museum of Modern Art, with a quick stop at the clothing giant, Uniqlo. I’d bought some long johns for Joe and hadn’t gotten around to giving them to him. I didn’t have the receipt, and was anticipating arguing for a refund. The young woman behind the sales counter had kind eyes and a round face. “I bought these,” I told her, “for my beloved, who died.” And as I said it, I realized it was true. My beloved was gone. In Jewish tradition, the family sits shiva when a loved one has died, spending seven days receiving guests. At the end of each shiva day, we say Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. At least the observant families do. We had sat shiva for my father and it was more like an Irish wake, but without the booze and without the merriment. In our secular circles, people didn’t know to come briefly, and not leave us their dirty dishes. They stayed for hours, stuffed their faces, made more noise than I could take. This lasted an unbearable week. One distant acquaintance asked for a doggy bag for some of the leftovers. And I didn’t know more than the first few foreign words of Kaddish, anyway. But we do need rituals when a beloved dies. “I’m so sorry,” said the salesclerk. Store credit in hand, off we went to MoMA. John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem is a re-creation of his 1970 exhibit. Six old, black rotary phones sit on six wooden desks with six chairs, arranged in a circle. You sit down, dial a random number, and hear a poet reading their work. In the circle, you’re united with strangers doing the same, all of you listening to different poems. I took a seat, dialed 23 for the day of my birth. Through the receiver, Giorno announced, “Allen Ginsberg.” And then came Ginsberg’s reedy voice reading a snippet of his famous poem “Kaddish,” written after his mother died. I listened to him chant a handful of syllables from the prayer for the dead, and for the first time in a month, I cried. Sometimes the universe tells you what you need. I would create my own mourning rituals for Joe. That’s a neat little ending. Except. Even as I was crying in the middle of MoMA, I was vaguely aware that the chanting didn’t exactly sound like ancient Hebrew. After my declaration in Uniqlo of Joe’s death, I wanted Ginsberg to be saying the mourner’s Kaddish. But it could have been… a Hindu wail? A Buddhist invocation? I spent a few days considering what form my grief rites might take. Made three folders on my computer desktop: Joe’s Betrayal--screenshots; Unsent Emails--I am currently up to unsent email #35, and Love From my Friends--stuffed with texts and emails, voicemails, photos and other demonstrations of the support I’ve had through these painful weeks. I started telling people the story about Uniqlo and “Kaddish” and it made me feel better. I was going forward. I was going to bury the guy who’d buried me. I dug up Ginsberg on YouTube reading his poem, a fever dream telling of his mother’s life and death and Ginsberg’s grieving. It’s loong and rich, a good, hard listen. But it’s entirely in English, except for a few borrowed syllables of the actual Kaddish that sounded nothing like what I’d heard him reciting on that rotary phone. What was it I’d listened to, that day? I made a cup of ginger tea with honey and dove down an electronic rabbit hole. Seek and ye shall find. Clip after clip of Ginsberg chanting Buddhist mantras over many years. Here he is in grainy black and white footage with a group of fifty or so young people on the shores of a windy Lake Michigan, before the 1968 Democratic National Convention. And… yes! This was it! The chant from the museum! Hari om namah shivaya, Hari om namah shivaya. Na is Sanskrit for earth. Ma, water, Shi, fire, va, air, ya, ether. The chant means bow down to Shiva master of the elements. But what, I wondered, with deep respect for a god of Hinduism, was the use of this chant to an old Jewish pinko poet like Ginsberg? Or to old Jewish pinko me? Shiva is the destroyer. And avenger. The angry God. Okay, I was totally feeling that. But he also represents the inner self that remains intact after everything ends. Hmmm. Maybe there was something to this. “Hari om, namah shivaya,” I sang to my quiet apartment. And in plains laid to waste there is regeneration, there’s new life. Bow down to your own true self. Maybe my work wasn’t to bury anyone. Joe and I had twelve years of our own earth, water, fire, air, ether. I added a folder to my computer desktop with no title. Inside I started to put the memories—the stories, the photos, the songs, the private jokes. Mine. To have and to hold. At a what would one day be a comfortable remove. At 66, my world was fresh and new. Bow down to your true self, Eve Becker.  Dear members of NCTE's Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English,
After receiving the email from the NCTE Executive Committee distancing themselves from your statement, I of course went looking for the statement. And once I read it, I saw that though it took a partisan stance that NCTE Official couldn't sanction, it was a call to talk. Not to remain silent. So on my private blog, no official NCTE connection, I'm accepting the invitation. I agree 100% with the committee that ignoring the current situation is a deadly duck and cover. As English teachers, we encourage our students to step into each other’s shoes; we build bridges through reading and writing and talking. If we can’t discuss this with civility and compassion, who can? I’ve posted the committee’s statement in its original form, and then, by way of starting a respectful dialogue, edited it to remove triggers, acknowledge pluralism, honor multiple identities and keep people in the conversation, instead of shutting it down. The CaRBTE Statement: Statement on Palestinian Genocide from NCTE’s Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English The Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English believes ignoring current global realities hampers students’ ability to learn, process, and comprehend the world in critical ways. Silence does not protect them; it only leads to erasure, pain, and ignorance. As ELA teachers, we have power to elevate and humanize Palestinian narratives for students. This is good for all students in our ELA classrooms. Hopefully, their growth in understanding impacts future policy, as well. Disrupting prevalent knowledge and bias presents an opportunity to engage in critical media literacy. Through investigative methods, problematizing narratives, and asking questions about what we’re hearing in the media, ELA educators can offer students a powerful and critical skill set to combat dehumanization. We, the Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English, stand for Palestinian’s right to self-determination and justice. We stand against genocide. We recognize that until Palestine is free, no one is free. My edits: Statement on the Israel Hamas war from NCTE’s Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English The Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English believes ignoring current global realities hampers students’ ability to learn, process, and comprehend the world in critical ways. Silence does not protect them; it only leads to erasure, pain, and ignorance. As ELA teachers, we have power to elevate and humanize Palestinian and Israeli, Muslim and Jewish narratives for students. This is good for all students in our ELA classrooms and beyond. Disrupting prevalent knowledge and bias presents an opportunity to engage in critical media literacy. Through investigative methods, problematizing narratives, and asking questions about what we’re hearing in the media, ELA educators can offer students a powerful and critical skill set to combat dehumanization. We steadfastly resist Islamophobia and antisemitism. We challenge the conflation of Palestinians with Hamas, and Israelis and non-Israeli diaspora Jews with the Netanyahu government. These misconceptions breed bias and hate. We abhor the ongoing terror, the loss of life, home and family. No nation’s child is less important than another’s. We, the Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English, stand for the right of all human beings to have self-governance, safety and basic necessities. We call for an immediate cessation of the violence, for humanitarian aid, and international support for negotiating a sustainable, humane peace. We recognize that, in the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, nobody’s free until everybody’s free. Resources for teaching: [TK] Reading list for teachers: [ditto]  Photo: Woman walking in front of Picasso's Guernica. From Euronews by Francisco Seco. October 21, 2023 [Confused, heartbroken, lonely. Raw first draft banged out upon awakening. I will never get this one right, nor will I get to listen to and learn from the people I’m connected to, if it sits on my computer.] I had a dream. Literally. Last night. A weird little nightmare of sorts. Or a maybe a gift, because it crystallized some of my thinking, my obsessive thinking, over the past two weeks. I’m protesting in front of the Capital building for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Around me are my fellow humanitarian Jews, and Muslims, allies, people who look like the beautiful mosaic we occasionally are, in this country. The police begin arresting us. Nearby, I see--packed in the crowd with me—an old student, an Arab-American Muslim woman I taught as an 8th grader at least twenty years ago, and who was one of my favorites. I manage to make my way to her and we embrace. We hold each other in warm reunion, and hang on, offering unspoken comfort as horror rips a faraway part of the world, with ripples for both of us.
While we’re hugging, two cops come close and fasten handcuffs and a leg cuff on us—grass green plastic affairs, and there’s only one set of cuffs for the two of us, so we’re united in our arrest. Don’t ask me how this works. It’s dream-magic, where one set of cuffs is enough. Sinophobia and antisemitism entwined in RFK's ridiculous, dangerous rant. Why am I not surprised?7/18/2023  image: Leah Ai Tian, heroine of Fair Square Comics' "The Last Jewish Daughter of Kaifeng" by Fabrice Sapolsky, with Fei Chen, Ho Seng Hui, Will Torres, Exequiel Roel and Walter Pereyra Let’s agree that RFK Jr. is not a well man and perhaps have a bit of compassion for the rich asshole with the tin foil hat and the big soapbox.
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Eve's BlogI've been blogging since 2010. When I've got writer's block in every other way (frequent), this low stakes riffing to think has been a constant. Over the digital years, I've had a half dozen or so blogs including a travel blog and a reading blog, both on Blogger, and an all-purpose blog on tumblr where I wrote about education, social equity and anything else that sparked me. I also posted some of my published print work on my website. My shit is all over the internet. I'll be using this space for the occasional blog post, now. Archives
March 2024
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