Debra Galant's Blog

W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, Va.

I was 16 when George McGovern ran for president. I grew up outside of Washington, DC, and my father and I had gone to all the big anti-war protests on the mall.  So naturally, I was gung-ho McGovern, and I signed up to canvass for him, and set up a Students for McGovern chapter in my high school.

I was the kind of kid who never went home right after school. I hung out with the debate team and the model UN kids and sometimes the drama club and the band kids — in other words, the dorks. One afternoon, shortly after I’d put up Students for McGovern posters all over the school, I was hanging out when I saw the president of the student body walking down the hallway with all my posters under his arm.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Against school policy to have posters endorsing a candidate.” He seemed quite pleased with himself.

“What happened to the First Amendment?” I countered.

He deflected blame to Mr. Ladson, the principal. Apparently the First Amendment took a back seat to the dictums of Mr. Ladson. This was, after all, high school.

I went home, called my dad at work and asked him what I should do. He suggested I called Audrey Moore, a “good Democrat” who happened to serve on the Board of Supervisors, and to live up the street from us as well. So I looked up Audrey Moore’s number in my neighborhood directory and  told her my story.

The next day, I’m sitting in class when a pink slip arrived, summoning me to the principal’s office.

I had already acquired a world view in which high school administrators — and Mr. Ladson in particular — were obstructions to be surmounted. This was, after all, just after the 1960′s. I was a peace protestor. I’d started the ecology club and an underground newspaper, and Mr. Ladson was the kind of guy who quoted Vince Lombardi daily on the loudspeaker. And of course, it was on his orders that the president of the student body had taken down all my posters.

I’m sure I was braced for a fight. What I wasn’t ready for was an utterly contrite Mr. Ladson, who told me he’d gotten a call from the superintendent of schools, who’d gotten a call from Audrey Moore.

“You know, Debbie,” he said. “If you have a problem, you don’t have to go all the way to the Board of Supervisors. You really should feel free to come in my office and talk to me directly.”

At that point, the school’s fire alarm sounded.

I looked at Mr. Ladson, wondering if that was the point at which our little tete-a-tete was going to end. I may have been a high school radical, but that hadn’t made me immune from reflexive conditioning. This was, after all, my 12th year in the public schools. A fire alarm sounds, you stand up, get into a line, exit the building slowly.

But Mr. Ladson didn’t move. He was still busy apologizing, and trying to make sure I didn’t get him into hot water again. The alarm continued to sound, and outside his window, in front of the school, I saw all the  students lined up in the bright fall morning. I’d never seen a fire drill from inside the building.  Didn’t even know this was possible. And certainly could not have imagined a scenario in which I was inside, missing the fire drill, in the principal’s office, and where he was the one who had gotten in trouble.

Never mind that McGovern went on to lose the election in a historic defeat, or that all I’d really done was call a neighbor at the suggestion of my father. Never mind any of that. It was my first taste of power, and it was delicious.

RIP, George McGovern, 1922-2012.

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Forget Batman. Want to see a movie about a real hero? Watch “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” – which to me is the most exciting movie of the summer.

Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist who designed the famous Bird’s Nest for the Beijing Olympics and created an interactive installation at London’s Tate Museum with 100 million sunflower seeds, might have spent his career merely as a star of the international art scene had he not been living in New York City in 1987, the year of the Iran Contra hearings. The idea of a society so free that it could put its own government on trial for abuse of power changed his life. So when he returned to a post-Tiananmen Square China, he became his country’s most famous dissident, bringing creativity, impishness and tools of social media to the job.

“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” is a beautifully-assembled documentary that celebrates lots of things: bravery, conceptual art, cats that can open doors — and the power of Twitter as a tool of revolution. It’s worth remembering that the same technology that can point us to Star Trek Sugar Cookies can also point the way to freedom.

Ai Weiwei photo: Wikipeia. Twitter image from the movie trailer.

The park will be part of the long-stalled American Dream development. News Desk DreamWorks Animation, the Hollywood studio behind Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, has signed a deal to license its characters for an indoor theme park in New Jersey. The San Francisco Gate says the park is planned for American…

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According to Klout, I am influential about three topics: Writing, Film Festivals and the Pope. I don’t know how the Pope got in there, but I do have a passing acquaintance with the art and business of writing and as of this month I have become somewhat of an expert in at the least one film festival: The Montclair Film Festival.

All in all, I went to at least 12 events during the festival’s six-day run between May 1 and 6. On Saturday May 5 alone, I saw four films: First Position, Perfect Family, Robot and Frank and Hysteria. Robot and Frank, starring Frank Langella as an elderly cat burglar who cons his robot/caregiver into helping him on heists, was my favorite. But doing a festival, as it turns out, is about more than just your favorite movie. It’s an adrenalin-fueled whirlwind of cinematic gluttony, which involves running into friends and rubbing shoulders with celebrities past, present and future. And, if you’re a journalist, filing.

In the three hours between Perfect Family and Robot and Frank that penultimate day of the festival, my husband talked me into taking a nap. I’d been running at a fairly frantic pace in the week leading up to the festival, and the pace didn’t slow down afterwards, there being a municipal election two days later. Finally, this past Saturday, after two weeks of going out every night straight, I took a night off to screen a movie at home — with guests. I actually fell asleep in front of everybody. I thought I’d finally caught up over Mother’s Day weekend, but as it turns out putting in a new perennial garden and cooking for your mother-in-law, even in splendid weather, is still not rest.

Tonight, after the gym, my body’s needs finally asserted themselves. I had planned to go cover the debate between two congressman playing musical chairs for New Jersey’s ninth congressional district. But I had zero energy. And when I realized that none of the towns we write about were even in the ninth, I decided to bag it. I took a shower and crawled into bed, muttering occasional instructions to my 23-year-old, such as “turn off the oven” and “turn on the porch light.” The word sleep doesn’t begin to cover what happened next. I pretty much upholstered the bed with my body. I’m sure I’d have slept straight through until morning — the spaghetti squash in the oven be damned — if my son hadn’t arrived home from college. So I came down, hugged my son, and made the spaghetti squash after all.

So this much I can tell you about film festivals. They are fun and they wipe you out. Let me amplify: they are really, really fun and they really, really wipe you out. I can also tell you a little something about spaghetti squash. It’s simply okay if you take it out of the oven after one hours, per your recipe’s instructions. But if you leave it in the oven during a post-film-festival crash, it caramelizes and is actually sublime.

Home Depot reinvented the corner hardware store and Walmart wants to be Main Street, so why wouldn't tech giants Google and AOL want a big bite of local?

Jeff Jarvis interviewed AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Google VP Marissa Mayer at the opening of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY last night. Everybody who was anybody in new media was there.

Let's see what wins, the yin side of me, my new blog exploring the world of worry, The Angst Report over on WordPress. Or the yang side of me, my even newer photo blog, Smile for the iPhone, exploring the wonder of whatever finds its way into my iPhone lens, over on Tumblr.

Both "About" pictures, by the way, come from Amsterdam. Serious me at the Van Gogh Museum. Happy me on a canal boat ride.

Or the way ahead Baristanet.com?

Just finished Kate Morton's "The Distant Hours," and loved reading this in the afterward:

The Distant Hours started as a single idea about a set of sisters in a castle on a hill.

I love that. That a novel comes from a single idea — even though I know it as well as anyone. "Rattled" started as a column I wrote for The New York Times. "Cars from a Marriage" sprung from a remark in couples' therapy. My next idea, and I am working on it, could be something equally simple. Maybe I have even stumbled on it already.

My two New Year's Resolutions — write more and do more yoga — were in conflict today. There was a 10 am yoga class that I love, but I also expected the day to get away from me and so I decided to go downstairs, light a fire and pull out the laptop. I am not in the middle of writing anything, but just trying to flex my writerly muscles again, which meant doing a writing prompt, and I think that's what reminded me of At the Beach 1966, a fragrance by CB I Hate Perfume.

The next thing, I had a bee in my bonnet to go to Williamsburg and see the I Hate Perfume gallery, something I've wanted to do ever since Pam Satran gave me a small vial of In the Library for my birthday a few years back. I talked Warren into going with me, even though Julia Cameron says that artist dates should be solitary, and we had a wonderful day in the city, first going to Sebastian Junger's The Half King, where I had a Sloppy Joe and then to CB I Hate Perfume, where I smelled every "perfume" and settled on Memory of Kindness, and then just as it was starting to flurry, took an impulsive detour to Rice to Riches in Soho, where we both had rice pudding. It was a perfect outing. I had my Hipstamatic iPhone app for photographing hipsta Williamsburg (though I couldn't whip it out fast enough to get the sign, on a restaurant, which said, "Brunch is for assholes.")

CB I Hate Perfume's gallery is a surprisingly spare and modern store where Christopher Brosius displays vials of his perfume blends and accords with names like At the Beach 1966, Burning Leaves and In the Summer Kitchen, all of which seem to have been conjured almost as much as writer's aids as actual fragrances. It was Warren who pointed out that Brosius is selling words as much as he is selling fragrance. Each "perfume" comes with a story, and the one I picked, Memory of Kindness, I picked as much for its name and its story as for the strong undertones of tomato vines.

What does a child remember?

I recall a moment long ago crawling alone in a vast jungle of vines. I felt the warm sun on my skin and the damp earth under my knees and I remember the fuzzy touch of brilliant green leaves on my face. These made my skin prickle as I ventured deeper into this wild and mysterious place.

Long years later, I clearly recall the smell of those leaves – it shimmered all around me, beating like a cloud of butterflies. And I remember the moment when I discovered that by touching them, their odor became stronger and I was enraptured by it. Time passed but I was unaware. Deep in that shining green jungle, I first discovered the pleasure of Scent.

My aunt called out to me from the edge of the vegetable garden where she stood peering among the tomato vines to see where I'd gotten myself to. Reluctantly I disentangled myself from that brilliant scent and slowly crawled out from my hiding place under the vines to meet her.

I know now that very small children absorb the world around them in the purest way. Their senses are unfiltered by judgment, preference or manner – these we learn later. As ink soaks into paper, the smallest incident will color a child indelibly and can be remembered forever as I remember the smell of those vines and all that went with it…

I remember then I got to my feet and, reaching high, took my aunts hand. I looked up into her face still clouded by concern. I realize only now, I must have frightened her with my disappearance into the wilds. Just for a second I was afraid she was mad at me and I braced myself for a scolding. But there was no anger in the look she gave me, no irritation as there so easily might have been with another grownup. Instead with a slow smile, as warm as the sun had been on my back that distant summer day, she said to me, Come. Lets go have a cookie. I smiled back at her and, hand in hand, we walked back to the house.

What does a child truly remember? A child remembers kindness.

I almost forgot another small detour which we took the Pace Gallery on W. 25th Street, where there was a show called "52 Variables" by the British artist Keith Tyson. The 52 variables to which Tyson refers are each member of a standard set of playing cards. His 52 paintings, however, were of 52 playing card backs, some as familiar as the blue Bicycle deck (or some variation thereof) and exotic and unlikely variations: an early iteration of the Twitter logo, NASA playing cards, and one featuring a woman with sexual ball gag. These recreations were really quite stunning and reminded me a bit of Tarot cards, and as if the theme of the day was writing prompts, the gallery sold a $15 deck of cards featuring each image from the show and some quotation on the back. On the back of a "Player's Navy Cut" card (featuring a drawing of a sailor) is this quote from Marshall McLuhan: "Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century."

Of course we were mindful of the tragedy in Tucson that was unfolding, checking our mobile devices between adventures. And as it turns out, Warren has to fly there early tomorrow to cover it. But the strong scent of Memory of Kindness still clings to me, and colors my day.

It is a day of new beginnings, of resolutions and honest sweat. I made it to 10 am yoga and the class was full. Passed dozens of joggers on Ridgewood Ave. Figured I'd do an online tarot reading and see what the new year had in store. Not the best cards: four of pentacles (cheap), three of swords (heartbreak), five of cups (regret). Only the High Priestess in the advice position (spiritual practice) augured something pleasant. But the Devil card, drawn in the Daily Lesson position, intrigued me:

The Devil card in this position requires that you give up all attachment to what others think of you. You know that as you succeed in the mission that makes you burn with desire and forces you to break precedent, you will encounter naysayers and come up against what looks like enemies.

Don't be dismayed. It means you are making progress enough to discomfit those who are attached to the past. That's a sure sign of your success. Moreover, you are no longer inhibited by your conditioning and the taboos of the past. Be confident that you are being effective, that you are in the process of making a difference. This is not a popularity contest, but transformation for the sake of the greater good.

I like this. The idea that I might be moving on to a self that doesn't give a shit what people think. That I could find my stride, walk with true conviction, not looking left, right or in the mirror. Today in yoga, especially at the beginning, I spent less time looking at the others to make sure I was doing my positions correctly. When it was time to hang, I really dropped my head. And when I stumbled, when I lost my balance or couldn't hold a pose, I didn't feel an ounce of embarrassment.

What could the Devil be telling me about my writing life?