Mary Mallon, born in 1869, is best known as “Typhoid Mary.” She is iconic for allegedly spreading typhoid to 51 people, three of whom died. Since there was no known cure, Mary was isolated for nearly three decades of her life. Today, we apply the term to people who infect (wittingly or unwittingly) us with information we otherwise might avoid hearing. That, at any rate, is the way in which I use the term here.
When I was living in the Balkans, then in The Hague reporting on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, I wrote regular letters to a group of friends and colleagues about my experiences. They were mostly disturbing, focusing as they did on war crimes, genocide, torture, and crimes against humanity. I was grateful to those recipients of my missives who actually read them, though they could hardly have brightened their days. One brave friend, who may have read them all when he could have been watching basketball or hanging out at the local pub, endearingly described me as “The Typhoid Mary of the Internet.” It pretty much fit and we are still friends. So, when I decided to write a blog, an amended version of the title seemed apropos. Henceforth, this blog will be known as belonging to “The Typhoid Mary of the Blogosphere.” Those with courage enter here.
My intent is to blog about the subjects that stir my conscience, yet leave me feeling helpless. Writing is how I know to influence people -- revealing what is hidden, witnessing what is distressing, offering suggestions for change, passing along the wisdom of others, and most of all, telling stories. Writing moves me from despair. In the best of circumstances, it means I am not alone with sadness and anger that heavies my soul. Julian Beck in The Life of the Theater wrote an exhortation that has guided me since I first read it over four decades ago:
“I see all the danger, the dissolution, I am not content, I recognize the emergency in every house and place….
It is not what we do not know but what we do not feel.
The Theatre of Emergency is the theatre of feeling.
For a feelingless society, feeling.
For a fractured people, unification.
Realization. The people as one, one.
A theatre not for people, but at one with people.
Mending the gap between human nature and the human mind. Stein. We know what class hatred and race hatred are, but we can’t get ourselves to really do anything beyond petty liberal gestures because we don’t really feel what we believe. To change the world.
The theatre of change. Of emergency. Of feeling.
When we feel, we will feel the emergency: when we feel the emergency, we will act: when we act, we will change the world.”
Yet I do want to be a comedienne. I’d love to make people laugh. I want to laugh more myself. Another adage I try to live by is attributed to Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.”
I hope some of you will take this journey with me. It is not just a telling, but a hearing. I am still teachable (I think). I know that something new comes from respectful discussion among many. So, let’s see what we can create.