My first instinct when my grandma died was to purchase and draw flowers for her. A traditional gesture of sympathy, the flowers seemed fitting—but the circumstances were unprecedented.

It was April 2020. My grandma was exposed to COVID in the memory unit of her nursing home and died within the week. Like so many families, we would not be able to gather to mourn her or to say goodbye in person.

I continued to buy flowers in the weeks that followed to enliven that cavernous spring. Time, or what I had understood of it, lifted away. The days blended together as I grieved my grandmother and the world that the pandemic had, at least temporarily, taken from us.

Gradually, the flowers and the act of drawing them proposed an alternative to this sensation of suspended or absent time: The time of cut flowers.

Two deaths punctuate this time. The first is swift and takes place when the flowers are clipped from the earth. The second death unfolds in the vase over the course of a week or so as the flowers shrivel, rot, and dry to a crisp.

The word “death” doesn’t fully capture this trajectory. What I’m describing, more precisely, is the process of losing life. At the same time, the opposite is true: Flowers are a sign of springtime, of renewal and rebirth.

In between these two deaths is a period of intense intimacy. Trapped together in the vase, the flowers’ stems, petals, and leaves intertwine so that observers can’t always distinguish one from another. Of course, in this case, intimacy with one or several implies isolation and exclusion from others.

The flowers’ predicament seemed to echo our own in a moment so marked by literal and figurative deaths, suspended time, and enforced intimacy or isolation. My flowers coped with what was happening to them in different ways.

Two ranunculus I picked up at the farmers market ended up locked in a passionate—but doomed—affair. Their knotted stems and tightly bound petals encircled each other in a tragic embrace.

The peonies came next. Their petals unfurled with exuberance, without caution. They got too close to their neighbors, spilled their drinks, and fell out of their chairs.

I painted the tulips too late. They were already wilting, tips turning yellow. Unable to hold their weight, the heads of the languishing flowers fell to the table.

Was it really the very end? One particularly dreary week, a dear friend read me a poem called “The Joy” (“La Dicha”) by Jorge Luis Borges. “Everything happens for the first time,” Borges explains.

I fetched roses that Saturday.

If mourning is a time-bound process whereby the mourner assimilates their loss and eventually returns, perhaps somewhat transformed, to a state of “normalcy,” what happens when one wreckage piles on another?

The collective moment the pandemic summed has passed. The ritual of drawing cut flowers was part of that moment, when a quiet violence seized loved ones in the stifling privacy—rather, enforced isolation—of the home or hospital. The drawings aspired to mold a slow, shapeless, or even absent time into a coherent form.

Today, a global polycrisis consumes our attention. Time accelerates and seems to run out as each day brings more death and the failure to end indiscriminate killing.

In a moment of war and mass violence, watched from afar or experienced first-hand, we might imagine that the time of cut flowers plays over and over. This time, its repetition of loss and renewal happens loudly, in public, and with such speed that the boundary between the two seem to dissolve. Renewal, when it occurs, is experienced at the same time as mounting losses.

From this perspective, mourning loses its coherence: It does not take place after but during and always.

The time of cut flowers reminds us that the world, cherished or despised, never ends just once.

The post Drawing in the Time of Cut Flowers appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

South Africans got it right when they made “kuning,” the isiZulu word that roughly translates to “it’s a lot,” one of the defining words of 2023.

It was a lot this year.

2023 seemed an epoch of crises: the highest number of global conflicts in three decades, myriad climate disasters that claimed more than 12,000 lives, and the erosion of democracies worldwide.

Amid all of it, Zócalo was here—sifting through the pressing stories and providing context, perspective, and humanity.

Our favorite 15 essays of the year, selected by the Zócalo staff and you, our readers, remind us that even in overwhelming times, people forge ahead. They think deeply. They ask questions. They create. They build community. And they even have some fun.

May you enjoy revisiting these writings as much as we did, as we ready to ring in a new year.

Boxers Know the Power of an Entrance

By Rudy Mondragón

Can anyone make an entrance like a boxer? Before moderating the Zócalo panel “What Does Boxing Owe Its Champions?,” scholar Rudy Mondragón made the case that the boxing ring entrance is the most important ritual in sport. More than a mere act of bravado, he writes, a ring entrance communicates everything from pride to dignity to political protest—in just a few ephemeral, glittering, bombastic moments.

A boxer’s entrance is more than just flash. It’s how they make their mark in the sport and the world, scholar Rudy Mondragón writes. Above, William “El Gallo Negro” King wears a Mexican sarape with a rooster and a sombrero de charro, embracing his Afro-Mexican roots. Photo by Rudy Mondragón.

How Is a Poem Like a Political Campaign?

By Derek Mong

Most of us haven’t given much thought to how poetry and political campaigning might be alike. But Zócalo contributing editor Derek Mong, who won a National Arts and Entertainment Journalism award for this essay, has given it serious thought. Aside from the obvious—that “both benefit from a clipboard”—he unearths deeper threads tying the pursuits together.

My Work as an In-Home Caregiver Shouldn’t Be This Hard

By Alva Rodriguez

Alva Rodriguez is one of more than 550,000 caregivers in California’s In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program—workers who help an estimated 650,000 disabled, blind, or elderly Californians continue living in their own homes. Writing from Fresno for our The James Irvine Foundation-funded series “What Is a Good Job Now?,” Rodriguez describes the deep precarity of the job—“one of the toughest and worst-paying you will find”— and reflects on ways to improve this essential line of work.

What Mourning Looks Like in Monterey Park

By Wendy Cheng

On January 21, 2023, a gunman opened fire and killed 11 people at Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, resulting in the deadliest mass shooting in Los Angeles County history. Wendy Cheng writes about the outpouring of community support and solidarity in the wake of the attack, and the ways a public memorial for the victims reflected the city’s unique multiethnic and multiracial history as a home for “immigrants and lost ones.”

Whose Sedona Is It, Anyway?

By Tom Zoellner

During the pandemic, Sedona, Arizona, temporarily stopped advertising in high-end travel magazines. In the place of well-heeled visitors have come day travelers and overnighters from nearby cities that some residents say are destroying “Slo-dona”—and the town finds itself stuck in a fierce debate about whether it should “yank back the welcome mat to the middle class,” writes Tom Zoellner. Published in the fall, the piece generated enough chatter that just recently the city and the chamber of commerce put out a joint statement in response.

Intellectual Snobbery is for the Birds

By Tim Birkhead

Ornithologist Tim Birkhead shares how an encounter with a hobbyist birdkeeper who breeds bullfinches (who are, if you aren’t aware, “humbly endowed”) led him down a new line of research into the phenomenon known as sperm competition, and a better understanding of reproduction in birds. While the subject of Birkhead’s essay might make a middle schooler giggle, the story itself makes a powerful point: Researchers need to listen to people outside academia’s ivory tower.

Tim Birkhead, one of the world’s leading bird biologists, shares why being open to learning from people outside of academia’s ivory tower—in this case hobbyist birdkeepers—can lead to “unexpected and exciting results.” Photo by T.R. Birkhead.

Dianne Feinstein’s Most Important Job Was an Unofficial One

By Joe Mathews

Zócalo columnist and democracy editor Joe Mathews has made some big proclamations this year. That San Diego is California’s “finest college town.” That we should call it the California, not the Colorado, River. That the Santa Cruz otter absolutely should have bitten back. But one of his most memorable takes came in the wake of Dianne Feinstein’s death. Reflecting on her long tenure in U.S. political life, Mathews makes a case that her greatest role in office was as California’s “last ambassador to the American government.”

Reckoning With Racist ‘Lynch Law’ and Rape Charges, a Century Later

By Margaret Burnham

For two years, Zócalo has worked on a project supported by the Mellon Foundation that asks: “How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?” This essay by Margaret Burnham, director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University, shows how such reckonings can lead to action and change through the story of John Henry James. In 1898, James, a Black man in Virginia, was accused of raping a white woman, murdered by a lynch mob, and posthumously indicted for assault. Burnham details how, 125 years later, a judge dismissed the indictment thanks to a campaign by historians, lawyers, and community members. The decision opens a “path forward for a crucial American reckoning with a thousand-plus state executions of Black males accused of assaulting white females,” Burnham writes.

The Struggle for a Latino Place in Chicago

By Mike Amezcua

Historian Mike Amezcua explores the parallel struggles of mid-20th century Black and Latino Chicagoans overcoming segregation and making space for their communities. “This history of Latino placemaking is far less known than the civil rights struggle led by King,” Amezcua writes. “But it remains an important context for later developments in Chicago’s urban and political history.” Readers were passionate about Amezcua’s piece, writing it in as a favorite in our audience survey.

My Mom is Out of Prison, But I’m Still Not Free

By Angel Gilbert

Most young people look forward to college as a time of independence, but when Columbia University student Angel Gilbert started school, she had already been on her own “for far too long.” In her Zócalo essay, Gilbert, one of millions of young people who have had an incarcerated parent, shares what it was like to grow up with a mother behind bars. “My emotional pain will never truly heal,” she writes. However, she adds that once she reaches her goal of becoming a lawyer, all of her experiences ensure that she will fight harder for her future marginalized clients.

Destined to Be Trans, Muslim, and Indonesian

By Amar Alfikar

Growing up in a traditional Muslim neighborhood in Java, Indonesia in the 1990s, Amar Alfikar, a trans man and activist, shares how he leaned into family and faith to understand—and embrace—his true identity. “If it was not for my family’s acceptance, I would have left my religion,” he writes. “Instead, I am pursuing an academic career in theology and religious studies and have become firm in my faith and thinking about gender diversity in Islam.”

Can Two Friends Agree to Disagree on Abortion in Post-Roe America?

By Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox

Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox found sisterhood raging about injustice—but they disagree about abortion. Read how they’ve worked to maintain their bond in post-Roe America. “Being truly pro-life or pro-choice requires us to knock down rhetorical barriers and focus on the areas where we wholeheartedly agree,” they write, “that every child has a right to be placed on a path to success and that no mother should have to sacrifice her own success to make that happen.”

Where I Go: The Candy Wrapper Museum

By Darlene Lacey

Darlene Lacey was 15 when she started collecting old candy wrappers. Eventually, she turned her hobby into an online museum. For our series “Where I Go,” she gives truth to the adage that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure, and shows the power of appointing ourselves as the curators of the things that matter to us the most.

Candy Wrapper Museum curator Darlene Lacey was 15 when she started collecting for her “roadside attraction.” Building the online museum has led to all kinds of surprises—including being sent a Necco scrapbook saved from a dumpster (pictured above). Courtesy of author.

Zócalo’s Diaspora Jukebox

As part of Zócalo Public Square’s 20th birthday celebration, we’ve been sharing the sounds of the Southland with “Diaspora Jukebox,” a series of playlists that celebrate the unique communities and musical traditions that represent greater Los Angeles. Our first “drop”—which had us moving to the rhythm of the city, dancing like it was 1982, and partying like a Zacatecano—culminated in an IRL dance party we threw at the Port of L.A. 

The Human Costs of Building a World-Class City

By Ankush Pal and Anubhav Kashyap

And, drumroll please: Our first-ever audience choice award goes to authors Ankush Pal and Anubhav Kashyap! They take a clear-eyed look at New Delhi’s effort to “polish” the city ahead of this year’s G20 summit, at the expense of poor and working-class people. “Rather than improving life in the city for everyone,” they write, “the beautification projects funnel public resources into creating a cosmopolitan bubble for a few.”

The post Our Favorite Essays of 2023 appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

And yet: many are largely disconnected from the pain, unwilling or unable to recognize or process the loss.

Where is the collective mourning? I am an empathy scientist, and I can report that we are not a nation of psychopaths. People have a limited capacity to process mass suffering, rather than a callous lack of care. Cognitive biases—common errors in thinking—make it difficult to process tragedy of this scale over time, creating a sense of psychological distance between us and the number of COVID-19 deaths. By understanding how various cognitive biases work, however, people can train themselves to feel the weight of our country’s losses again.

Several types of cognitive bias are warping Americans’ ability to process COVID today. First is the numeracy bias, the brain’s inability to wrap itself around large numbers. I logged onto Facebook recently and was saddened by a message from one of my friends announcing the death of his cousin from COVID-19. My friend wrote that behind every statistic, there is a person and a family—and that this time, it was him. He was echoing a popular quote: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic,” which has been attributed to Stalin. The quote demonstrates something that scientists have long known. We can easily feel empathy for specific individuals, especially those who are close to us. But as these individuals turn into groups, our empathy is diminished. Their suffering becomes more emotionally distant and abstract, and turns into a statistic. And people are not good at reasoning about statistics.

We don’t like to think of ourselves in this cold way. In studies, participants predict that they would feel worse if thousands of people were victims of a tragedy, compared to only a few. That reaction, they feel, is the morally right response. But in reality, most of us experience an “emotional flatline,” with no greater feelings of sadness as the death toll from a tragedy grows—as long as we are not personally affected.

Paul Slovic, a leading researcher on numeracy bias, writes, “Just as we don’t notice the difference between 30 lit candles and 31 lit candles, our feelings do not register the difference between 30 deaths and 31 deaths.” In typical numeracy bias studies, some participants read a passage about an individual victim (“Rokia, a 7-year-old girl facing starvation,” for instance), while other participants read about an unnamed group of children, experiencing the same tragedy. When asked to donate money to help, study participants who read about the single victim are more likely to give than those who read about the group. In one study, Slovic found that even moving from one to two victims reduced emotional responses and donations.

Another cognitive bias at work during the COVID crisis is the ostrich effect: people’s tendency to avoid negative information, including everything from bad financial returns to another person’s misery. Daryl Cameron is a scientist at Pennsylvania State University who studies compassion avoidance. In his studies, he shows participants pictures of distressed people, such as refugees. Immediately afterward, participants can then choose to “try to feel what the person feels” and “empathically share in the internal emotional experience of the person,” or they can choose to simply describe external details about the picture, such as the person’s age and gender. Participants choose empathy only 36 percent of the time. Cameron’s research shows that people actively try to suppress their emotions to avoid feeling overwhelmed in the face of mass tragedy. Sometimes it’s easier to avert our eyes in the face of others’ pain.

This may be because of a sense of helplessness, common in the face of mass tragedy. Even if we want to help, our actions never seem to be enough. In “The Eleventh,” the classic short story by Henri Barbusse, a servant invites 10 people into his master’s palace-hospital each month, but has to turn away the 11th. At first, he enjoys being able to help the 10, but soon closing the door on the 11th person becomes torturous. This story highlights the dangers of becoming overwhelmed by those we cannot help, rather than focusing on those we can.

Time messes with our concrete sensory brains, too. The recency effect creates a crippling nearsightedness, where events that are closer to the present are more vivid in our imaginations. A process called hedonic adaptation numbs us to the pandemic’s rise over time, as one death per day becomes 10 deaths per day, then 50, then 500, then 1,000, then 2,000. While COVID seemed to have taken over our lives very quickly, the number of deaths accelerated and then crept up or down subtly over weeks and months, giving people time to get used to the new normal, and dulling their emotional response.

Vivid experiences can skew perception by activating a type of cognitive bias known as the availability heuristic, the tendency to overestimate the prevalence of events that more easily come to mind. This type of bias is the reason people worry about airplane crashes and terrorist attacks, which generate countless dramatic news clips that make them easy to picture, despite the fact that they are rare and are not among the top causes of death in the US. According to a survey from late August, 27 percent of Americans said that a close friend or family member had tested positive for COVID-19, and 15 percent said that a close friend or family member had died from it. Despite our lives having drastically changed as the summer drew to a close, the vast majority of Americans still had no personal experience with the virus. Yet COVID-19 is now third leading cause of death in the US—after heart disease and cancer. Although statistics clearly demonstrate that the illness is dangerous and deadly, the availability heuristic makes us underestimate the likelihood of events that are not easily available in memory. Since those of us without vivid personal experiences with COVID mainly experience it through statistics in the news, we downplay its seriousness.

So what can we do to counter these deeply ingrained patterns of thinking, and become more sensitive to mass suffering?

To combat numeracy bias, some might suggest thinking more logically would be the solution. Yet, research finds that logical thinking can actually backfire: When it comes to charitable donations, for instance, people driven by logic often realize that giving to individual victims is an emotional response that doesn’t really make sense. A better approach involves expanding one’s sense of compassion so that we can apply it to more than one individual at a time. Some people are better at this than others. For example, those who feel secure in their relationships with others show less numeracy bias. They do not need to know someone’s name or see a picture to understand that a tragedy is a tragedy—even when it affects a group. For more insecure people, thinking of someone (whether a person, an animal, or a deity) who loves them unconditionally can help them extend more compassion to the world, even when events are remote and actors are anonymous.

A procession of vehicles drive past photos of Detroit victims of COVID-19, Monday, Aug. 31, 2020 on Belle Isle in Detroit. Courtesy of Carlos Osorio/Associated Press.

Some studies have found that people who have experienced adversity are less likely to show the numeracy bias, and actually feel more compassion for groups, compared to individuals. Shifting into a more interdependent frame of mind can also help people resist the numeracy bias. Focusing on “we-ness”— the simple act of thinking about what you have in common with others—can increase this mindset. Another realistic response is to simply accept that numeracy bias is a part of how our brains work, and focus on individual victims instead of large groups. Public memorials can be helpful for this. At the end of May, when the country reached 100,000 deaths, the entire front page of the New York Times was a list of names, ages, locations, and short descriptions of individuals who had died. It was hard not to be moved; I still think of Rodrick “Rod” Samuels, 49, who “never let anyone mess with his younger brother.” Matching names to faces is also important. One study found that people no longer showed numeracy bias—that is, their feelings of empathic sadness increased along with the number of victims—when they could see pictures of the people affected. The city of Detroit, which lost more than 1,500 people to COVID-19, created a public drive-by memorial in Belle Isle Park with hundreds of portraits and names of victims.

As for the ostrich effect, feelings of helplessness at the scope of suffering can prevent us from acting, but they don’t have to. There are some people who deliberately seek out others in need. These highly empathic people aren’t superheroes or saints, but instead, expect that helping others will feel good. And plenty of research supports this idea, finding that those who feel a sense of efficacy—that they can do small things to help—don’t get as overwhelmed. Such efforts don’t have to be heroic or costly. In the case of the pandemic, we can save lives by hand washing, mask wearing, and social distancing. Focusing on these concrete ways that we can make a difference can help people feel less overwhelmed.

To regain initial sensitivity to the pandemic and combat hedonic adaptation, we can try to mindfully accept negative information. Instead of focusing on the number of deaths yesterday, we can compare today’s total number of deaths—more than 277,000—to the end of February’s—one death—or the first day of Fall—201,000. The contrast may feel more appropriately shocking when tracked this way. And to counter the availability heuristic and make the pandemic’s effects seem more real, we can peruse our social media with renewed focus. Sharing personal experiences with COVID online may be one of the best means available, at the moment, for painting a vivid portrait of the disease—and encouraging people to take CDC-recommended precautions.

Cognitive biases may psychologically minimize the scope of the pandemic, but there are small steps that we can each take to actually minimize the scope of it. Mother Teresa had some sage advice on this front: “Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.” By wearing a mask, washing your hands, staying home whenever possible, and otherwise socially distancing, you are doing just that.

The post Why Is It so Hard to Mourn the Vast Number of COVID Dead? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Such a scene is familiar to Egyptians. And so was the bad news. This was the third instance of aviation disaster for Egypt in the past year, after the October 2015 explosion that brought down the Russian Metrojet leaving the Sinai and the hijacking of an EgyptAir flight in March.

In the café, we turned to the now familiar task of cataloguing this event: Terrorism? Conspiracy? Accident? Egyptians are known for being quite sociable, and the café soon turned into a forum of different people trying to analyze the situation. A 26-year-old waiter bellowed that the “Muslim Brotherhood” was probably behind this, a sentiment that would be loudly expressed by many anti-MB Egyptians in the days after. Another voice replied that the government probably planned this, and soon the two men were arguing.

Quickly, the headlines turned.

“Egyptian Flight MS804 Crashes and Burns.” This was no downturn to Cyprus, as was the fate of the hijacked flight. We started browsing Facebook pages, trying to figure out if anyone we know had been affected. I spent the rest of the day looking down at my news feed.

On the alumni Facebook group for my school, the American University of Cairo, I learned that two alums were on board the flight: Ahmed Helal and Ghassan Abu Laban. My heart wrenched at two particular stories, one of them Laban’s. He was on board the doomed flight with both his parents and his wife Reem; the couple left behind two daughters. Since France is a popular cancer treatment destination for many Egyptians, there was a 30-year-old mother along with her husband on the doomed flight. They had sold most of their belongings, as mentioned by popular local Egyptian publication Youm7, to carry out an operation for the wife. In the end, they left behind three children.

These were only a few of the human stories that were bellowing on Egyptian social media, and many more have since been unveiled.

Consequently, apart from attending the public memorial services for the victims, there were many efforts by the locals to try and help their families, which included starting a fund for the children whose parents were deceased on the doomed flight.

However later on, EgyptAir posted its own message asking people to leave the families in peace: “The families of the victims of flight MS804 appreciate the efforts of the people trying to help them, but they would like to keep the matter private and they are not looking for financial assistance and would like to mourn their loved ones in peace.”

The next day, I was on the phone with one of my close friends from university, whose voice sounded hoarse. She told me the story of her childhood friend who was one of the flight attendants on board. A little while later, I received an unrelated group message exclaiming, “Don’t call her! Or do anything yet.” Scrolling up, I saw that a family member of an old friend was the co-pilot aboard the flight.

At the university, the conversation was both about causes and reactions. Western news agencies kept invoking “terrorism” even though no one yet knew what had brought the plane down. This soon became a topic. So did fears about other flights.

But after the first few days, the concerns about safety turned to worries about the effect the crash would have on Egypt’s already struggling economy and tourism industry. Hashtags such as #supportEgyptAir, ‪#IsupportEgyptAir,‬‬‬‬ and #PrayforMS804 were soon spreading online to counteract the castigation of our national airline. The international criticism felt unfair—I have traveled many times on EgyptAir and received excellent service.‬

More recently, I was back in the café and people were still worried about reasons for the tragedy. But around Cairo, you see more signs of people mourning those who perished on the flight. Given that mourning in Egypt is a public affair, Muslims and Christians alike were carrying out memorial services for the victims all over Egypt.

People are saying the “Salat Gha’eb” or “prayer of the absentee.” According to my Islamic faith, these people died as martyrs, since they were considered to have been killed protecting themselves and their families. They get the highest reward in the afterlife and all their sins are erased. Today, efforts to remember those who died aboard the flight continue. Several families have started charities to commemorate their lost loved ones.

What has brought comfort for some is an Egyptian expression that says, “The way you die reflects a lot about the way you lived.” The martyrs of Flight MS804 died on a Thursday. The very next day was Friday, when they were prayed for in the mosques—the close timing suggests just how very dearly God loved them and how they will never be forgotten.

The post In Egypt, the “Prayer for the Absentees” of Flight MS804 Still Resonates appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The journey to her son’s grave had been arduous. By the time the Armistice was signed in 1918, thousands of young American men had died in Europe. Shortly after U.S. entry into the Great War the Army announced that the dead would remain temporarily buried in Europe, until after hostilities ended, when bodies would then be repatriated. As the nation searched for a modern way to mourn the sacrifices from this unpopular foreign war, the ongoing plight of the mothers of the dead became a major political saga that dragged out for another decade.

The full story of the pilgrimage of these “Gold Star Mothers” to Europe in 1930 has its quirky, amusing elements, but it reveals an unsettled side to American’s celebration of Memorial Day—born out of long-standing ambivalence about involvement in foreign wars, confusion about how to honor the dead, and a vexed desire to turn grief into glory.

Almost from the Armistice, organized groups of mothers pleaded for subsidized cemetery visits to Europe. By 1928 they had become pros at political maneuvering and social reform, agitation and publicity, initiating bipartisan appeals to legislators through massive letter-writing campaigns, and the manipulation of public opinion. Central to the lobbying effort was a group called the Gold Star Mothers, women named for the gold stars they wore on armbands and service flags in their homes. They were accorded greater recognition from society for having lost loved ones in war.

At last, in 1928, after numerous failed attempts, the legislation to pay for the Gold Star pilgrimages was put before Congress. While several Gold Star Mothers testified, the most aggressive rhetoric came from Mathilda Burling, who was generally known as pushy and presumptuous. While some women despised Burling’s methods, others were quick to praise her as the woman who had worked day and night for this bill. A self-promoter of the highest order, Burling claimed to have conceived the idea of the pilgrimage while simultaneously taking credit for organizing the original Gold Star Association—both untrue.

During the congressional hearing Burling did not hesitate to make jarring assertions like, “Our boys were murdered, they were not given a fair chance to fight in a patriotic way.” Generally, her commentary simply exploited patriotic motherhood ideals with unblushing forthrightness. “As a mother whose only child lies over there, and who is authorized to represent the Gold Star Mothers of America,” she began, “I can not believe that the Senate of my country will deny us the privilege of paying a visit to those holy graves of our heroic sons abroad.”

Burling’s impassioned claims were overzealous at best, but she spoke to something real—the country’s unfinished grief over the war dead. “Eleven long years have passed since my boy, who was only a child in years, gave his life for the defense of this country,” she said. “Each year I have lived in the hope that I would kneel before his grave.” Then, using maternalism to its fullest advantage, she wept while insisting that mothers had sacrificed more than widows. “It was our flesh and blood that enriched the foreign soil. After all, it was the mothers who had won the war.” On March 2, 1929, the notoriously frugal President Calvin Coolidge finally signed the pilgrimage legislation.

It was the job of the Army’s Quartermaster Corps, under the auspices of the War Department, to make all arrangements for nearly 7,000 women to travel to Europe in relatively luxurious accommodations between 1930 and 1933. At the height of the Depression, a team of professional officers managed the visits, ensuring the highest quality experience for all. Some mothers had never experienced hot and cold running water before reaching their hotel rooms. However, in keeping with Jim Crow era mores, black mothers traveled on separate ships and experienced less than equal accommodation.

Before setting sail, escorting officers were reminded that they had been selected for their superior judgment, common sense, and tact, but most of all, for their sobriety. Among the chosen was Lieutenant Colonel Stephen W. Winfree, an old-school cavalry officer with a preference for civilian attire, an eye for young women, and a thirst for highballs. Despite all their precautions, neither he nor the War Department was sufficiently prepared for mechanical failures and the late enrollment of one Mathilda Burling.

Burling’s son George had died of disease in 1918, while serving with the 53rd Coast Artillery Corps, but she decided to join the mothers and veterans’ reunion tour of the more illustrious 27th Division departing on May 13. Though she was originally scheduled to travel with her own group, this unorthodox change—at the very last minute— would put her in France for the Memorial Day ceremonies. The 27th Division was one of only two American military units to serve with the British during the Great War. Burling could not help but be lured by the full itinerary, which included London, Brussels, and Paris and of course more excitement and media attention.

But just as the reunion voyage prepared to sail out of New York Harbor, an accident aboard another vessel required more Gold Star pilgrims to relocate onto the SS Republic with the women and veterans of the 27th Division. All were asked to share cabin space. It was not long before bickering began aboard the crowded ship with many questioning the presence of the overbearing Burling. The group would be known hereafter by the military organizers as “Party B.”

Colonel Winfree freely admitted that he was in the habit of handling horses and men, not women, but he must have had more serious concerns after being warned that the trip could be troublesome and that Mrs. Burling was a “woman politician” who could be a “nuisance.” There was friction as Party B traveled from France to England and Belgium. Still, he could not have gauged the extent of trouble awaiting him when Burling and a fellow passenger found Winfree enjoying himself with a young lady friend at the hotel bar one night just before the ship’s return to the U.S.

When Burling asked the colonel why he was not wearing his uniform, he replied sarcastically, “What do you want me to do, wear the uniform and look like a porter and carry the mothers’ pocketbooks and handbags?” An argument followed and Winfree, who had clearly had more than a few drinks, insisted that the older women be a “sport” and join the party, according to transcripts of Burling’s later testimony. Then, Winfree yelled: “I’d give anything to take you out one night and get you tight, too; come on, have a highball. You are a little virgin, a little white lily; I’d like to get you tight just to see what you would do.” As an afterthought, he added, “And, further, I don’t even know whether you have a boy over here or not!”

Within weeks of the group’s return to the United States, Winfree was forced to defend himself in a military investigation. Burling’s testimony was devastating for the colonel, who was relieved of duty that summer. But in his defense, the outspoken cavalry officer had voiced what some in the military had previously only dared to allude to in their private memoranda. Theirs was an organization in crisis, an army in limbo, subjected to relentless fiscal cuts, which meant understaffing and slow promotions. It was said that military units had to beg outside local sources for office supplies and even the daily ration of toilet paper was limited to three sheets for each soldier. Yet, while the military struggled, the indulgences and approbation shown the Gold Star Mothers were flaunted before the nation.

Winfree denied all charges against him but in doing so, ultimately exposed Burling’s greatest weakness—her “motherhood.” He told investigators that when at last she reached St. Mihiel American Cemetery, the aim of her life’s work, Burling stood less than five minutes before the grave of her son because she was eager to attend a reception at another cemetery. She became indignant at Winfree’s refusal to allow her to leave for what promised to be a more high-profile event. With hostility and impatience, Burling informed Winfree that this grave was, after all, only that of her stepson.

Mathilda Burling, whose political abilities had previously helped bring the pilgrimage legislation to fruition, was, by unanimous vote, dropped from Gold Star Mothers membership for “disloyalty” in 1931, still owing two years’ back membership dues.

The post The Epic Bar Fight That Sums Up the Problem with Memorial Day appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Traditionally Americans haven’t mourned in public. Funerals here tend to be private affairs—an interior scene at a funeral home, a few family and friends, some flowers. Big politicians may have public funerals, but most funerals—even for celebrities—are closed. Traditionally, too, we let the dead be dead: We may speak in whispers at the wake, but we don’t speak of the dead as still living. Instead, we call that “being in denial.”

Mourning online is changing our rituals. Not only do we mourn people we do not know personally, but the Facebook pages of deceased friends have the potential to live on, turning into spaces where friends and family write public messages, expressing intimate details for all to read as though the person were still alive, or just off vacationing in Thailand. Take this recent post on a deceased Facebook friend’s page: “It’s been about a year since you’ve passed and I never got to thank you for being the mentor that you were for the better part of the last decade. I had moved just a couple of weeks prior to your passing and I regret not having paid you a last visit before I’d left.”

These new forms of grieving erode traditional American boundaries between public and private, and the living and the dead. But in fact, this manner of mourning is really old. Public mourning and maintaining connection with the dead were big in ancient Greece (as they are in other countries today). Funerals were spectacles during the archaic period, the 8th to 6th centuries BCE. Mourning was part theater, part opportunity to show off, and part power play. Aristocratic factions made sumptuous displays of their wealth. Groups of women sang dirges over the body of the deceased in elaborate choral performances. Rival families competed to outdo each other with offering baskets to the family of the deceased.

Greek mourners also spoke directly to the dead. In the laments that survive, women directly address their deceased male kin because those relationships gave women their identity in the first place. In Homer’s Iliad, after Patroclus, Achilles’ closest and dearest companion, is killed, a crowd of women sing lamentations. Briseis (Achilles’ war captive) begins. She has watched her entire family die; she has been given over to Achilles to live as a slave. But Patroclus was always kind to her. She will miss his gentle nature, the way in which he provided comfort in a war-torn world. Her lament is a way of readjusting to a world in which he will no longer offer this solace. She mourns the death of a part of herself.

When I read my friends’ Facebook posts about Prince and David Bowie, I hear similar sounds of Greek lament. We tell the world that in our morose teenage years, we were consoled by listening to “Ziggy Stardust.” We remember dancing to “Raspberry Beret” as a bright spot in a tough summer. We mourn the loss of those who shaped us, who provided kindness in a complicated world. We mourn the death of a part of ourselves.

Prince and Bowie were cultural icons who, among their many contributions, questioned typical gender roles. When we listened to their music, we could step outside of ourselves for a little while. Our public manner of mourning these particular figures recognizes (and reveals a kind of nostalgia for) their revolutionary approach to gender 30 years ago. It honors the new ways of resisting constraints on being male or being female that these performers embodied. As we mourn them, we celebrate their subversive messages.

Ancient Greek funerals also carried subversive undertones. Funerals allowed women an opportunity to step outside of their traditional roles. Women had few political rights or even independent identities and funerals were pretty much their only opportunity for public self-expression, so they made the most of them. Ancient tragedies (the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) feature mourning women using their laments as a means of resistance to those in authority. In Euripides’ Helen, Helen (of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships) stages a massive funeral in order to escape the clutches of the evil king Theoclymenus; she pretends to be mourning her husband, Menelaus, who is actually alive, and manages to flee in the boat provided for her feigned funeral practices.

When we post in mourning on Facebook for a celebrity, to some extent we are permitted to step outside of our regular role and display a connection with someone we don’t know. Mourning on Facebook offers us a chance to do something we couldn’t otherwise do. Prince’s family isn’t going to let me go to his funeral. Nor is David Bowie’s.

Like the Greeks, we also sometimes struggle for control over the memory of our heroes. For the ancient Greeks, a hero was an intermediary figure between mortal and immortal, one who had the power to help friends and harm enemies from beyond the grave. The thing is, you usually needed the dead body of the hero buried in your territory in order to make use of its powers. If a deceased individual was deemed a hero, a struggle over the corpse could ensue.

A classic hero in this sense of the term was Oedipus as portrayed in Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. Because an oracle said his dead body would bring victory in war, his hometown of Thebes tried to get control over his corpse even before he died. To spite them, Oedipus died in Colonus, after announcing that his cold corpse would drink the Thebans’ warm blood. Greek stories include other conflicts over corpses, as when the Spartans stole the body of Orestes to take advantage of his military powers.

Recently, my friends have stopped sharing links about Prince and the Muppets and shifted to posting articles on opiate addiction. Are we digging up Prince’s body and moving it to Sparta when we emphasize his possible struggles with pain and pills?

Of course, times have changed since Ancient Greece. Back then, the state was not a fan of funerals, which sometimes launched disruptive blood vendettas. Grief had the potential to morph into revenge. Think of Procne who, after taking revenge on her husband (he had raped her sister, Philomela, and then cut out Philomela’s tongue), kills her own son, Itys, feeds him to her husband, and is subsequently turned into a nightingale, forever lamenting the death of her son (she sings “Itys, Itys, Itys”). The potential for a funeral to kick off chaos led the Greek state to curtail women’s mourning rights.

In 2016, though, city governments have an entirely different way of dealing with mourning. They use purple lights to show that they’re friendly, that they care, that they’d like to join the cry party. That’s not very Greek at all!

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