Author: Jane

ART HEALS

These are challenging times and we need to find and nurture all the things that can calm us, inspire us, and raise the vibration that will awaken us to fight for the future, to heal the planet and each other. This is what art does. The non-linear, non-cerebral forms that are art speak on a different frequency above the chaos and dysfunction and awaken us to consciousness. Art reminds us that the world as it is, is not all there is, that there are other possibilities to strive for. Art can jolt us open, penetrate our defenses so that we can see and hear what we have been afraid of seeing and hearing. That’s why, last night, I took my friend, actor Saffron Burrows, to see a new performance commissioned by the incredible L.A. Dance Project. I’ve seen other performances of the L.A. Dance Project, so I knew something special was in store and I wasn’t disappointed. The performance, Solo at Dusk, choreographed by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, took place in the parking lot of the Dance Project’s studio because of covid, the dancers wore beautiful, mysterious masks made of flowers and berries. We stayed in our cars, honked for applause and were served a scrumptious dinner like at a drive-in but this was 4-star gourmet. Wow! It took my breathe away. Think of a collage of Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham and classical ballet but the combo of movements added up to something totally different and more surprising than all of them together. You know, in times of crisis, we need humanity, expression and community. That’s what art creates. The values we support today will determine the world we live in tomorrow. Please Join me in supporting L.A.s very own L.A. Dance Project. We’ve never needed the arts more: ladanceproject.org/donate #artishope

PINS AND NEEDLES

I went to the post office with Tulea several days ago to mail my ballot. And yesterday, having tracked it, I was told it had arrived and been counted! And speaking of voting, let me tell you this good news I just read: More than 22 million Americans have already cast ballots in the 2020 election a record-shattering avalanche of early votes driven both by Democratic enthusiasm and a pandemic that has transformed the way the nation votes. The 22.2 million ballots submitted as of Friday night represents 16% of all the votes cast in the 2016 presidential election, even as eight states are not yet reporting their totals and voters still have more than two weeks to cast ballots. Americans’ rush to vote is leading election experts to predict that a record 150 million votes may be cast and turnout rates could be higher than in any presidential election since 1908. But I know I’m not the only one feeling on pins and needles. I know that for many, this is a difficult time. There’s so much up in the air both with the pandemic and with the election. And Stacey from Green Bay, Wisconsin, who follows my blog, just wrote, “We have had 45 shootings since January. That is a lot for Green Bay. We had 8 shootings in 5 days. The police told us to stay inside! People are randomly shooting at cars and apt buildings. My anxiety is through the roof!” And she also says few people there are wearing masks. I hear you, Stacey. We have to make sure that Biden/Harris are elected and that, given some time and respite from the hate mongering and divisiveness the welcome mat will be pulled back from the militias and the selfishness and irresponsibility of the anti-maskers will be better understood. My belief is that if Biden wins and is brave and bold (we have to make sure he will be), he can bring enough good jobs and pay proper attention to working people in the middle of the country who have been ignored and left behind by previous elected officials (of both parties). That may be a step forward in quieting the anger that’s been erupting in places where militias exist, ease the despair that fuels the opioid pandemic and begin to address the underlying causes of police violence. Again, history is useful: in the 1930s, there was a lot of hate and vitriol against FDR but he spent large sums of money to help those who hated him..rural folks, farmers, desperate workers, and things calmed down. The oligarchs kept up their attacks but the important majority were won over. Between now and then, let’s vote, let’s volunteer for organizations like Greenpeace and Fire Drill Fridays and MoveOn and Indivisible to help get out the vote and then, if we prevail, demand that the new president does what’s needed. But let’s also take deep breaths, listen to calming music, watch TV shows that don’t increase our anxiety, talk to friends who feel the same, try meditating. There are apps to help with that. Seriously, being intentional in doing things that calm you is important for your health. Anxiety and anger produces cortisol, a primary stress hormone, that is bad for blood pressure, your heart and your brain. A walk in nature is always calming. Actually, walking in and if itself is good for quieting things down. It calms me down to pay attention to my squirrels. There are 2 of them now and one actually took a peanut out of my outstretched hand yesterday. Birds are coming around now for the food and the bird bath. Sparrows and finches mostly. I’m in the middle of a city and I have no garden but I’ve created a little nature preserve in front of my home that’s the size of a postage stamp but it’s enough.

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME

Since my last squirrel posting, I got a “picnic table” for the squirrel and attached it to a tree in front of my house. It’s 12:30pm and I’ve already filled the little pot 3 times. Maybe there are a lot of squirrels and I just choose to think it’s one squirrel…my squirrel. A girl squirrel. But if that’s the case she’s on track to become a very plump squirrel. My social media followers tell me squirrels hide and/or bury the nuts. She must do it very fast. I went to the gym to workout, filling the pot right before that. When I came back an hour later the pot was empty. My neighbor, the artist Joan Scheibel, took this picture while I was working out. Just out of sight I recently hung a hummingbird feeder. I think there’s only one humming bird drinking from it but maybe that’s because it’s no longer hummingbird season. I know i’ll get a lot of opinions about this very soon. I’ve also ordered a bird bath. All this shopping (online) happened last week when it was 112 degrees in Los Angeles and I saw a bird sitting on the ground panting. I could see her little tongue so I’ve also ordered a bird bath. This is what I said yesterday at Fire Drill Friday about birds: Birds are needing our help. Last week I read an article in the Guardian entitled, “Birds Falling Out of the Sky in mass die-off in south-western U.S.” Swallows, flycatchers, warblers…maybe 100s of 1000s dead already. Turns out, because of climate change they were migrating early from Alaska and Canada to Central and South America before they had a chance to build up their normal pre-migration fat reserves. Normally their migration route takes them over the resource-rich coastal areas but the fires there forced them inland over the Chihuahuan desert where drought has killed off insects and dried up the water. Biologists say the bird carcasses they examined show no body fat. The birds may have starved to death or smoke from the fires may have damaged their lungs. Climate change, you see, has damaged the Alaskan tundra where they breed and destruction of the rainforests in central and south America is damaging their winter habitat. As I have mentioned previously on this show, there are already close to 3 billion fewer birds in North America than there were in 1970. Because their lungs are so fragile, birds are early warning signals for the rest of us. ‘Canaries in the coal mine.” So are the great white sharks that are suddenly appearing in the Bay area, far north of their normal range, because of warming ocean. How birds and fish are behaving as their environment changes is telling us something about the future: Global warming isn’t a faraway phenomenon in the global south or a somewhere- in-the-future crisis that will be a problem for our great grandchildren. It’s right here. Right now. My friend, Iain Armitage, star of “Young Shelton,” has hamsters and saw my posts about my neighboring squirrel and sent me this little “movie” which I find fun and interesting. So I’m sharing.

A SNAPSHOT OF THE NOT-SO-OLD OLD DAYS

This video clip has been circulating widely these last days and someone sent it to me. I was happy and relieved to see that even back in the 80s I was saying what I’m saying now: “There’s strength in numbers.” We must leave our silos and join together to defeat the forces of hate and greed. Together we can win. In the clip I mention the Campaign for Economic Democracy. That’s the statewide organization which my then husband, Tom Hayden, and I started. It’s the organization that the Jane Fonda Workout was funding. I’m very proud of that. And I’m proud that I understood way back then that homophobia, misogyny, racism, climate change, and economic inequality are interrelated evils and so our movements must also be interrelated. Check it out.

MY SQUIRREL

My squirrel keeps eating the walnuts I leave but she doesn’t seem to be getting fatter or showing me more love. Are any of you knowledgeable enough to know if it’s a girl or boy? I think girl. All I know is that feeding her my nuts everyday makes me feel good. About 7 years ago, I was in a swimming pool in Baha, California, when I heard the news that the Fukushima Japanese nuclear power plant had had a serious accident. I know something about these things. I made “China Syndrome” and I’ve studied the subject of nuclear energy so I was overcome with emotion. Right then, I saw that a bee had fallen into the swimming pool and was struggling. I wanted above all else to save that bee and I did, scooping it out of the pool with a leaf. In fact, I think I blogged about doing that and how it made me feel better. Just doing that little act of kindness helped. It’s like that with my squirrel.

OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD

I was surprised by the response to my last blog post. I guess people like to know how someone like myself spends their time during a pandemic. I feel somewhat uncomfortable talking about my daily routines at a time like this when so much that is deeply important and historic is going on and so many are suffering life and death issues. The $600 supplemental income bill runs out in 2 days and the f&%#@* senate Republicans can’t find their way to help. But a number of you said that this blog calmed them so here’s another one of those daily drudge reports. My 8 1/2 pound 15 1/2 year-old dog, Tulea, wakes me up every morning around 6am by standing on my stomach. She is 100% deaf and so spends lot of time staring at me for signals as to how I feel and what I want from her. She also has heart issues but when we come back into the house after I take her out in the morning she leaps and runs like a puppy, wanting me to chase her. I do…for awhile but running isn’t my strong suit these days. I often wonder how long I will live. I’m perfectly resigned to death, truly I am, but Gloria Steinem once told me she wants to live at least to 100. When I asked her why, she answered, “I want to see how things turn out.” That was about 15 years ago and I didn’t share her desire then but now I do. I want to see how things turn out or at least if they’re headed in the right direction. Has the country made real progress in ridding ourselves of white supremacy and fossil fuels? Have we done what’s needed to address the climate crisis? I have to assume Joe Biden will get elected because otherwise I don’t need to wait to know how things will turn out. Another 4 years of that guy will put us on an irreversible spiral downward that, because of the climate crisis, we will not recover from. Please, all of you who can vote in the U.S., please register and make sure you and everyone you know votes. Well, that paragraph wasn’t exactly calming. But, hey, that’s how I think. Speaking of, even though I come from a long line of depressives, I’m not one anymore. I used to be but hard work on myself has changed the wiring in my brain, I think. You can do that, you know. Brains are plastic (as in malleable) and if we repeatedly have a more positive response to things that used to sadden us or disturb us, we can cause the neural pathways to change. Reading books about this and therapy and meditation help. As I write this, I can’t help but feel my privilege at having had access to these healing things. But then again, lots of people do but don’t improve. You have to want to change and be able to internalize, metabolize, what you learn and experience. I’ve also learned that bad things, sad things, can also teach you a lot if you work at making that so. I wrote a book called Prime Time published by Random House that dedicates several chapters to all of this. Age has a lot to do with feeling more positive. Longitudinal studies of 100s of 1000s of people have been done that show that life gets easier, less anxious, less hostile, and holds more sense of well-being after 50 years and that is true for men, women, straight, gay, married, single. Of course, one’s health can change this. If one is dealing with a severe illness or trauma this “positivity” as scientists call it, may not be true. Psychologists are not certain why this “positivity” is true but some of the reasons they suggest are that older people have so much life behind them. They’ve experienced hardships –death of loved ones, financial setbacks, etc—and they survived. So the “been-there-done-that- and-it-didn’t-kill-me” factor is at work. Older people tend to not make mountains out of mole hills but instead, make lemonade out of lemons. They tend to know what’s important to them and what they can let go. So life become lighter. My eyesight is going but my insight is more acute. It may also have something to do with changes in the brain itself. In my late 60s and early 70s I was aware that things just didn’t roil me as they used to and I thought this very nice turn of events was something unique to me. Then, while researching Prime Time at Stanford’s Center for Longevity, I learned about the “positivity factor” and realized I was simply part of the aging majority that experience this. So there’s something to look forward to for all my younger followers. You know, when something frightens me, I try to learn everything I can about it, make it my friend. That’s why I wrote Prime Time. I was scared of aging. Not anymore. Hah! This blog didn’t turn out anything like I thought it would when I began. I’ll end here while I’m ahead.

WHAT MY WEEKS ARE LIKE OF LATE

The issue of fossil fuels takes up most of what’s remaining of my brain space but I’m going to quickly write this short blog about mundane stuff. All of my favorite TV series I was watching pre-covid- -“Homeland,” “Dead To Me,” “Ramy,” “Better Things,” –are done either forever or for the season, so, like you, I’ve been discovering things I probably would not have seen. The most recent is the very special, “I May Destroy You.” It’s totally unique, to me at least, and very eye-opening. Kudos to the remarkable writer and striking star, Michaela Coel. It’s 96% Rotten Tomatoes. “Defending Jacob” is a mini-series but really surprising. I’ve liked “Little Fires Everywhere” and “The Morning Show–once I got into it. Kudos to Reese Witherspoon who.’s responsible for both Also, I’ve started watching “Black Monday.” I know, I’m late getting there but I’m really liking the fantastic cast. Someone just recommended the Amy Schumer cooking show with her husband so I’ll add that to my list. By the way, do check out “Ramy.” It funny, moving, nuanced and, in my opinion, important. I’m maintaining my filming schedule tendency to get in bed early–6:30 or 7pm. (When we film, I have to often get up at 5am). I always watch Rachel Maddow taped, and then I go to these other shows. I’m normally asleep by somewhere between 9 and 10pm and my little Tulea mostly wakes me up at 5:30-6am. On weekends, I feed her and we go for a walk. During the week I have breakfast and then workout for an hour. I spend the weekends alone with Tulea and I write the opening to the next Fire Drill Fridays and read. Right now I’m reading Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money,” having finished all my books about trees. I cannot recommend “Overstory” by Richard Powers strongly enough. Brilliant!! I’m a big reader and books have always been crucial to the various transitions in my life. I have a big stack of them next to my desk that have been accumulating for almost a year that I’m slowly making my way through. In a recent blog, I gave you the names of a few of the books about race that have had a big influence on me. During the week, besides seeing a few doctors, I do a lot of Zoom meetings, mostly involving the climate crisis and things involving help for our essential workers. Also many virtual fundraisers. I actually like the virtual phone meetings. You see, I am NOT a phone person. I always try to get off phone calls as quickly as possible. But it’s not so bad when I can see faces and can check out people’s homes and offices and try to read the titles on their book shelves. I also workout several more times. I’ve been true to my word and not purchased one new article of clothing since I bought my iconic red coat last October. And I’ve gathered about half my wardrobe and either sold or donated the outfits. Lightening up in my dotage! My assistant is with me 5 days a week so I feel lucky. I am super aware of just how lucky. My home is paid for, I’m healthy, I have terrific, smart friends and I have never minded being alone. Still, I’ve made new friends since the pandemic. One is Darrell Hammond, the amazing talent from Saturday Night Live who played Clinton, Gore, Trump, Daffy Duck, and just about anybody. It’s uncanny. A friend of mine was a producer on a documentary about Darrell called “Cracked Up.” I watched it last year and recommended it to Netflix where you can watch it. It’s an important doc for those interested in generational trauma, which I am. Darrell and I ended up doing a podcast together about the subject and I wanted to get to know him so he came over for dinner. We wore masks except when eating and sat at opposite ends of the table. Now he’s back in New York. Next week, Maurice Mitchell, Director of The Working Families Party is coming for dinner. He was a guest on a recent Fire Drill Friday, and we wanted to get to know each other so I’m taking advantage of his proximity–he lives for the moment in San Diego. What else? I walk whenever I can. I do facetime and I’ve twice visited with my one-year-old grandson which is heavenly but I can’t hug him…or my son and daughter-in-law. That’s what I miss doing most during this pandemic. Time to make myself lunch. I eat a big breakfast and a healthy lunch around 3pm and nothing more after that. That’s my routine. Stay safe. Were a mask! HB What I fixed for lunch: yellow beet salad, sprouts, avocado, tuna fish salad, melon and lemon mousse

#Fight4TheLiving

Today dozens of labor leaders, activists, and organizers came together to pay tribute to the frontline workers we’ve lost as a result of COVID-19. Here is the entire tribute which featured the debut of our video “In Memoriam”. Please watch, share, and take action to help ensure that all frontline workers are given the protections they need. “In Memoriam” Take Action ! 50 million workers are on the frontlines daily delivering necessities, sanitizing public spaces, and staffing businesses. And they’re doing it without proper safety standards. Congress must support an Essential Workers Bill of Rights. tinyurl.com/EssentialWorkerReliefAction