Carol Bergman

 

 

Isn't this book—isn't anything a painter paints or a writer writes (if the writer or the painter is any good)—a naked self-portrait?

 

-Peter Selgin, Painting Stories; A Life in Pictures and Words

 

 

For the first time in a long time, I am working on a book, two books in fact, and just as I was thinking about the hiatus between books that is completely "normal" and "to be expected," I tell myself, I received a notice from amazon about Peter Selgin's new book, Painting Stories; A Life in Pictures and Words . That was a long sentence, one I enjoyed writing.  Like Peter, I cannot resist writing, I write constantly. It's a quest for understanding "an act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect," as Natalie Goldberg says.  And now Peter Selgin has published a new book. It is an inspiration. Thank you, Peter. I will get back to one of my projects this week.

 

I've known Peter since we both worked at Gotham Writers Workshop and belonged to a writers' group of Gotham faculty. We occasionally also met over coffee and discussed our work, we socialized with our respective partners, we even swam together on one occasion, I recall, at a pool somewhere in Riverdale. Oliver Sacks and Peter swam at the Columbia University pool and Oliver may have been there with us that day in Riverdale, but memory is slippery as it sifts through our imagination, Peter has often reminded me. He experiments with new memoir forms, so perhaps I am conflating a meeting with Oliver Sacks at Peter's apartment with the memory of swimming with Peter in Riverdale.

 

Time passed, and we both moved out of the city. Peter took a tenure-track position at a college in Georgia where he has a house on a lake and swims in all seasons. And, as my readers all know by now, I live in the Hudson River Valley. We've stayed in touch via email, an occasional phone call and, of course, social media. Peter had posted many of the images in Painting Stories on Facebook until friends persuaded him that he was creating a book, so why not make a book? This was a relief to me. I am not in favor of artists, photographers and writers giving away stories and images on social media beyond small tidbits for the purpose of promotion. But that's a subject for another blog post.

 

When we were writers in proximity, and working at Gotham, I never knew that Peter was also a gifted visual artist, illustrator and painter, that he has two exceptional gifts which, in the past, he's kept separate. And then one day I saw a painting of the Titanic on the wall of his apartment, a charming painting, rich in color, the boat nearly filling the page, not tipping to one side but poised for danger, danger imminent. Later I learned that Peter was obsessed with the Titanic though I am not sure why. Or perhaps every writer and artist has his/her/their subject which is, in essence, an obsession.

 

You will read about Peter's interesting Italian-American childhood in the mini- essays that accompany each painting in his new charming book. His father was an electronics inventor, he has a twin brother who became a well-known economist, he had a mother who looked like Sophia Loren, he has a beautiful, artistic daughter. And he has, finally, merged his two gifts into one volume. 

 

 https://www.theservinghouse.com/shop/p/painting-stories

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

 

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America

 

         

 

I met Carla and Martin at a local café, a neutral space, not to interview them but to get to know them and then decide if I wanted to interview them formally for an article. Carla was concerned about her anonymity so there is therefore no possibility I'd write anything about her or Martin for the local paper, I told her, which is why I am writing this blog post instead. The request to remain anonymous came at the end of our visit together, and though I was disappointed, I understood. I don't post anonymous comments on my blog, and I don't quote anonymous sources because they cannot be verified, but for my blog, which is private, I hope that my readers trust that the encounter reported here happened. Be advised that names have been changed to protect Carla and Martin's identity.

 

I've met most of the clergy in New Paltz over the years; they have public personas. And they are active and outspoken. The Jehovah's Witnesses do not have clergy—they are more like the Quakers in their practice—but they have a "congregation" in New Paltz, and I sometimes see them on the street selling Bibles and pamphlets. And even though a Witness or two has sometimes knocked on our door, I was surprised when a handwritten letter from Carla addressed to my husband & "Current Resident" arrived in our mailbox. The writing was meticulous, as carefully rendered as that of a 6th grader practicing her penmanship. The letter is signed: "Sincerely, Carla," with a phone number, and there was also a return address—Carla and Martin, with their last name—on  the envelope.

 

When Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses arrive at our door, they are usually in a small group, for their safety is my thinking. But we have never received a letter with an address and phone number. My parental instinct kicked in and I called Carla. At first she was puzzled when I thanked her for the letter—where did she get that gorgeous dragonfly stationary I asked her—and then thanked her for the Bible verses—and then told her I was calling because I was concerned for her safety. There was a long pause before she said, "It's very kind of you to call."  Her voice was light, a young person's voice. I told her I am a journalist and would she and her husband like to meet for a coffee? To my surprise, or perhaps not, as they were probably still hoping to proselytize, they agreed. So I made it clear that I am secular, that I read the Bible as literature and history, but not to sustain a religious practice.

 

I arrived at the café early and took my favorite round table. Carla had texted a photo so I recognized them immediately. Martin is Black, Carla white which interested me right away. Where had they met? Had they been born into the faith? Carla had, Martin hadn't. Carla's mother is Jewish and was baptized. I asked them lots of questions and wondered if they vote—they do not—or if they follow the news—we are at war, after all, and Martin mumbled the word "Iran," but nothing else. I had read that about 9,000 Jehovah's Witnesses had been killed in the Holocaust because they refused to fight for the Wehrmacht; they were conscientious objectors. Were they aware, did they understand that the Nazis were about to decimate their people? Obviously not, or perhaps I shouldn't say that as the Jews were in denial, or ignorant of the Nazi genocidal intent also, or hadn't read Mein Kampf.

 

So there lay my curiosity. These deeply observant, calm and sweet natured young people were also descendants of a persecuted tribe. Is there any religion that has not been persecuted at one time or another in the long troubled history of mankind? Of course, persecution is not exactly genocide, not yet anyway.

 

Martin perked up when I asked about his background and his enthusiasm for Biblical verses. He hasn't had much education, whereas Carla is well educated. Still, she spends her days working in a Bible factory and her spare time writing letters and otherwise proselytizing. Before he got married to Carla, Martin had been to Italy on a mission, and fell in love with the country and its people and the food. Yes, he enjoys Bible study every day, several hours a day. "What Bible or Bibles do you read?" I asked  "All of them," he replied, "and I especially like the Greek Bible."

 

"Oh, so you are a scholar," I said, ever the educator encouraging young people to get as much education as possible. I think Martin understood. I hope he and and Carla find their way out of the sect—some would call it a cult—that has captivated  and captured them, a sect that my research tells me does not welcome gay "sinners." What if I had told them that I was gay? But of course, I couldn't, because it would have been a lie, and that is a sin. My wish that they continue to educate themselves, and to vote, and to pay attention to the news can be construed as a judgment and, if so, I apologize. Carla and Martin's peaceful existence in this small town in the Hudson River Valley, the freedom to believe, the freedom to proselytize, is testament to the importance and rigor of the First Amendment.

 

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

 

-Aldous Huxley

     

 

I'm trying to hang on to the "moon joy" I felt as the astronauts on the Artemis II sent back photographs and words of contemplation and exaltation as they witnessed Planet Earth from outer space. Can the glow from this 10-day journey be sustained, Lynn Sherr asks in an article for The Atlantic. It's an act of hope and desperation to pose  this question. Are the wars raging in Myanmar, Sudan, Gaza (and again and again), Ukraine, Iran—and have I missed any?—visible from space?  Were they edited out by NASA to present an at peace no climate change planet? As I write, the Hudson Valley is cooking at 85 degrees with violent lightning and thunderstorms at night shaking our windows and disturbing our rest. And it is just April, everyone laments. And it is just April.

 

In his 1936 between two world wars novel, Eyeless in Gaza, Huxley challenges the use of violent, unjust means to achieve peace. How are we—21st century humans—meant to challenge the powerful, heavily armed, fanatical, corrupt nation-states expanding their borders in search of minerals and spheres of influence, eviscerating the landscape and its innocent inhabitants?

 

We will march, we will vote, and the disruptions--domestic and international—will continue apace.  Even the moon is endangered by greed and colonization despite the best of humane intentions expressed as far back as A. D. July, 1969 when Americans first set foot on the moon and left the text: "We came in peace for all mankind."  LBJ signed the "Outer Space Treaty" in 1967 agreeing that no nation could claim sovereignty in space. Who else signed this treaty and where does it reside?

 

Over the years, I have sung the mantra of sustained political engagement: "Think Global, Act Local." Does this still work? Is anyone reading my modest deeply concerned screed? Does anyone agree with me, or is everyone in dissent, or planting tulip bulbs? Is it the right time of year for tulip bulb planting?

 

And now for some good news :

 

1. I am teaching another "Witness to History" workshop for Consequence Forum: https://consequenceforum.org/writing-classes/   

 

Soldiers past and present, humanitarian workers, 9/11 survivors, children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, social workers, journalists, ordinary citizens who have experienced war from all over our beleaguered world attend these workshops where they discuss and write about the personal consequences of war. The Forum also has a literary magazine.  Email me if you are interested in joining the workshop as registration is limited.

 

2.  My American History reading  project is  proceeding  well:

 

First up was Stacy Schiff's , A Great Improvisation; Franklin, France and the Birth of America. My review: Well written, fascinating, evocative. Much I did not know including the European disdain for the revolutionaries—France, the revolutionary's ally—was  a monarchy, after all, one of many paradoxes.

 

I'm not quite finished with Northwestern professor Daniel Immerwahr's, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. It's a page turner, filled with incident and detail, and very well written.  A quote from the book to think about: Since 1945, U.S. armed forces have been deployed abroad for conflicts or potential conflicts 211 times in 67 countries. Call it peacekeeping if you want, or call it imperialism. But clearly this is not a country that has kept its hands to itself.

 

On the TBR stack, Schiff's bio of Samuel Adams and Chernow's bio of Mark Twain, a 1,000 page tome.  Wish me the muscle power to lift the book as I bought a hard copy.

 

    

 

 

Personally, I am primarily intrigued by the possibility of learning something, from the study of language, that will bring to light inherent properties of the human mind.

 

― Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind

 

 

A friend sent me a link to Melania's press statement. It was, undoubtedly, scripted by the handlers surrounding the First Lady without taking into account her struggle with English pronunciation. She tripped over "trivial," and what was the other one? It began with a "k" sound. I had no intention of watching her humiliation again to figure out the second word she couldn't decipher, much less pronounce, and then I remembered: She said calculating instead of circulating. It was a pathetic display, pathos as per the ancient Greek definition : a quality that invokes sadness or pity. The hypothesis I offered in my blog post of March 18 still holds: Melania is struggling to find her voice, and is resisting management by the propaganda machine, or may not understand it.

 

I had been working on a blog post about the degradation of American English and put it aside to write the paragraph above.  The two are connected. When we cannot speak, when we do not have command of  language, we cannot think clearly. Melania cannot think clearly in the English language because she does not have command of the language. She is not American born, and she is not well educated. 

 

I'll carry on with my attempt to counter the continuing verbal short-cuts in text messages, email messages and conversation. I find it as alarming as Melania's performative announcement at the White House podium. We need to protect our brain power, more so in our current political moment. Social media dilutes, degrades and distorts. Propaganda dilutes, degrades and distorts. AI challenges our thinking process, or replaces it. 

 

Consider the following Americam English expressions:

 

1.    It is what it is.  No it isn't, no it shouldn't be. Why are we so accepting of what shouldn't be?  Why are we not challenging all that should not be?  Please explain in full sentences and paragraphs, if necessary, why you have become so resigned to what is that should not be, or that you wish would not be. And so on and so forth.   It sounds better in French: C'est comme ça. 

 

2.    I killed two birds with one stone. I found myself using this expression the other day. I was in a hurry and I was multi-tasking, saving time. I stopped myself.  Birds have not been killed with stones since the 17th century so why do we use this expression? And why would we want to kill birds in 2026?  It sounds just as strange in German: Ich schlug zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe.

 

3.    My bad. Oh, really? If something or other is your fault, please explain in full sentences. Don't cut your apology short with just two words.  Compare and contrast to these Spanish equivalents: 

 

Lo siento – I'm sorry.

Mi culpa – My fault.

Perdón– Sorry.

Disculpa – Excuse me.

Fue un error – It was a mistake.

No fue mi intención – It wasn't my intention.

 

 

4.    Off the hook.  What kind of hook? A huge brass hook by the cabin door out west somewhere around the time of the Civil War when runaway slaves were hiding in your basement and the sheriff came by and said, "We'll let you off the hook if you tell us where they are," or something like that. Italian translation: Liberato.   What a beautiful word.

 

5.    Good luck with that, meaning: You think you can do that? Forget it. British-English equivalent: Good luck with that. You will need it. (Starmer to Trump, for example.)

 

Dedicated to my EU friends who are trying to understand the vagaries and embedded clues of American English threats, political theater, explanations, and pronouncements. All queries will be answered with alacrity. Please also include strange idiomatic expressions  currently in use, or overuse, within your borders.

 

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5

 

You keep dancing with the devil and one day he gonna follow you home.

-Jedidiah in Sinners

 

 

 

A friend wrote a text to wish me a Happy Passover. I said thank you—wishes for happiness are welcome, as are blessings. How can anyone refuse? Then I tried to explain that I am konfessionlos, as the Germans and Austrians say, which is to say "without religion," or "irreligious," and always have been. I am profiled often because of my North African features and my last name, which is my husband's name, and often mistaken for an Israeli, a nation-state I have never visited. I am a child of refugees, true, whose family-my family- was murdered in a genocide before I was born, but I am an American, an earthling, like everyone else on our beleaguered planet. I do not dance with the devil, he has not followed me home. All of which made me think of Sinners, the movie, if that is not too far a creative leap. I have not seen many vampire movies and was not expecting Sinners to be a vampire movie. The music and script are so engrossing and I was taken by surprise. My husband did not warn me, alas, and so my reaction surprised him and surprised me. As soon as the rapacious vampires began eating their prey I started to laugh, and then I stopped laughing. It didn't take long for me to understand the metaphor: we are eating each other alive. And what was Jim Crow if not rapacity for free labor? And what was the invasion of Venezuela if not rapacity for oil.

 

And now these wars: against the Iranians, against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Vampire settlers rapacious for the land. Have they not killed enough? Apparently not.

 

The success of Artemis II has been diverting this week providing a necessary perspective. Though the astronaut's interviews are well scripted, the photos they are sending back to us earthlings are magnificent and consoling. Of course this space flight, and others to follow, are not just trippy trips; they are competitive efforts among nations to colonize far away mineral-rich celestial bodies. That said, we may all need to evacuate Planet Earth if these wars don't stop soon. Better get on the waiting list for a free flight because the oligarchs will have priority.

 

Why not disarm our children
who did not choose this
and bury the lies we told them
in the rubble we made?

 

Why not ask them
to imagine what peace would look like,
take their shaky crayon drawings
and plaster them on the walls of the future?

 

from They Asked Us to Imagine Peace by Hila Ratzabi

 

 

In a world increasingly weighed down by militarism and violence, the attractions of order and peace might prove infectious.

 -Michael Kimmage, NY Times, 3/27/2026

 

People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently to others, to place common interests above their own, to respect elementary rules of human existence. 

-Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia, 1989-1992

          

 

 

 

As the year turned to 2026, Ukrainian-American journalist Peter Zalmayev had made his way from the Global South back into Europe. He'd been away 15 months talking to the press, the politicians, ordinary citizens, and the Ukrainian diaspora in 43 countries. "When I started out I wanted to find out if the echo of the Ukrainian war had reached across the globe, even to small countries, and it has," he says.

 

A tall, bearded Ukrainian in town caught everyone's interest. Peter was interviewed for newspapers and on local television programs, was invited into Ukrainian ambassadors' residences, and had meals prepared lovingly by the Ukrainian diaspora. He played soccer with children on drought-baked red dirt fields. He collected a closetful of interesting shirts and a plethora of friendship bracelets. And he's maintained his cool, his curiosity and his hope throughout his travels, surviving a bout of Malaria, a 7.0 earthquake, and an arrest in Johannesburg, South Africa when he impulsively graffitied a wall mural of Putin with the words, "war criminal,"  then got into an argument with a passerby who objected and called the police. Peter was briefly detained. He was offended, he explained, that the portrait of Putin was next to one of Nelson Mandela. Peter's anonymous travel companion videoed the encounter which then went up on his Facebook page. Friends commented. They understood the intensity of Peter's reaction, but also worried he could get into trouble and not get out of trouble. I hypothesized that after living and working as a journalist in a war zone for such a long time, pent up rage, exasperation, and worry requires an occasional outlet. As a man, as a father, Peter allows his feelings to show. As a broadcaster his words are strong, but measured and well chosen. He's an expert, his opinion is solicited. He has regular gigs with the BBC, France 4, Al Jazeera and his program in Ukraine, "The Week."

 

I caught up with Peter on What's App this week as the war in the Middle East intensified. There will be implications for Ukraine: reduction in armaments, faltering negotiations, and Russia's intensified belligerence as the United States is preoccupied elsewhere.

 

Either we have a live Zoom, or I prepare questions which Peter answers on What's App audio. This has been our routine since Russia's invasion of Kyiv in 2022 when I reconnected with Peter. We had met each other when we lived in the same apartment building in Washington Heights in the city. He had turned up at a tenants' meeting carrying his first-born, and was finishing up his Masters at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He returned to Ukraine soon after and quickly became a well-known broadcaster, fluent in Russian, Ukrainian and English. He grew up in Donetsk when it was still part of the USSR, and the enclosure of that childhood felt like an incarceration. "As a boy I imagined traveling to unreachable islands," he says. Friends warned him that traveling to New Guinea, for example, would not be safe. But he never felt endangered anywhere. He's a transnational internationalist, which seems redundant, but is not. At ease anywhere, he is an attentive listener, and also has a gift for language. On Basque television the other day, he answered questions in Spanish.

 

Peter has often reminded me that it is the 14th anniversary of Ukraine fighting for its survival, not the 4th anniversary. Have we forgotten that Russia invaded  Crimea in 2012? He has not. Neither have any Ukrainians. And neither should we. The war in Ukraine has become a lynchpin in the struggle to maintain world peace, more so as the US war in Iran has exploded and is seemingly out of control, a gift to Putin.

 

His family still safely out of the country, it's not clear if or when Peter will return to Ukraine, or if he'll return only briefly. I am sure it will be both a shock and a challenge: more destruction in Kyiv after the winter missile attacks, friends lost, and a war weary albeit still determined population to maintain their sovereignty.