Of Mule And Man

Saturday, May 10, 2008

CITY OF ORIGIN: LOS ANGELES, CA	CITY OF DESTINATION: TEMPE, AZ
MILES TRAVELED: 382	VENUE: CHANGING HANDS BOOKSTORE

EVENT COSPONSORS

Veterans for Peace, Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty

This marathon tour, this 8,000-mile drive across the country and back to promote the paperback release of Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist, was supposed to be a great adventure that my wife, actress Shelley Fabares, and I would share, a month-long odyssey of laughing and looking, seeing new places and old ones, meeting new people and old friends and just loving being together.

The timing had been perfect: we’d take off just a week after my son Michael married his sweetheart, Peggy, in our backyard. It would be tight, yes, working out all the craziness of a large wedding and the logistics of this trip (not to mention Shelley’s inevitable all-night pre-trip packing frenzy), but nothing could stop us.

A few days before the wedding, while outside hosing off the side of the house to make it more presentable for the soon-to-be-gathering multitude, Shelley was startled by an unexpected squirt of water in the face, lost her balance and fell.

Paramedics, the ER, the X-ray, the news of a badly broken hip, admission to the hospital and hip-replacement surgery soon had my head spinning, reconsidering everything. The wedding must go forward, of course, but could Shelley be there? Unfortunately, as it turned out, she could not. (Though a sweetly generous gesture by Peggy, who swept into the hospital room in her wedding gown, and a cell phone placed in front of a speaker during the ceremony, made Shelley very much a part of it.)

And what of this long, well-organized, meticulously planned book tour, with dozens of appearances scheduled, commitments to stores carefully arranged, and a raft of cosponsoring political and social justice organizations signed on? Could it be canceled, delayed, adjusted?

Yes, of course, said the good people at Akashic Books with a gulp; they’d figure something out. Not a chance! said Shelley. She’d be fine. She’d be up and doing her physical therapy, she’d be supported by our family and our friends, and I had to get the hell out of town.

Well, it was certainly more complicated than that, but this is the gist of it. And here I am.

After picking up a rented Prius at LAX airport—the insane price of gas demanding a hybrid—and quickly throwing everything I could think of into a couple of bags, I took off this morning for the first stop: Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix.

Driving east on Interstate 10 quickly takes you into the incredibly frightening air of the San Gabriel Valley. I keep thinking the smog in the San Fernando Valley is scary, but at least it gets blown away periodically. This stuff you can cut with a knife.

Past orchards of windmills and into the desert, the haze thins out and the landscape grabs you. I’ve never been one to appreciate the particular beauty of the desert, but today it impresses. It is so clearly harsh, so openly hostile to all but the most hardy adventurer, that it proclaims itself with an impressive hauteur that has, I must admit, a kind of arrogant beauty. Don’t fuck with me, pal, it seems to be saying.

As I careen along, trying to figure out what means what on the odd dashboard in this strange car—this is my first experience with a hybrid— I keep watching the gas gauge, remembering that the last time I came this way I had to stop and fill up in Desert Center, a particularly hot and unforgiving place that one in need of fuel is strangely happy to discover (but doesn’t want to use the facilities). Yet the gauge doesn’t seem to have moved, making me wonder if I’m looking at the right thing. That does appear to be a little gas pump on it, I reassure myself, so what else could it be?

What else could it be, indeed? It could be any damned thing, I tell myself, recalling that when I first got in the car I couldn’t figure out how to start it, much less make it go. Embarrassed, I had to go find an attendant to show me how to make the bloody thing work.

This Prius doesn’t even have a key! Who knew you had to stick the square thing in the hole and push? And there’s no gearshift! There’s just a little kind of funky plastic knob on a stick—a short stick, at that— which kind of wiggles up and down. And a button you push for Park. I assume that means the gear, Park, which means you stand still, but I was already standing still. I wanted to go!

So, like I’m an idiot, the attendant shows me that you push in the square thing, then you have to push the button that says Power. (Now, of course, being able to read, I had already tried that, but nothing seemed to happen.) Ah, but you have to step on the brake when you do it! Uhhuh. Then, as he points out, the dashboard lights go on and with them a little red thing that says Ready!

Uh-huh. But when I step on the accelerator, nothing happens. That’s because it’s not in gear. Uhhuh. How do I get it in gear? You jiggle the funky plastic knob on the short stick. Up to go backward, down to go forward. Uh-huh. But nothing is happening. That’s because you’re not stepping on the brake. Huh? I have to step on the brake to shift? Right. Uh-huh.

So, despite the fact that I can’t hear an engine running, I step on the brake, pull the funky little plastic knob on a short stick down, step on that gas and …

Bing! One of the little squares on what looks like it must be a gas gauge goes away, telling me that some gas is being used. This I can understand because it’s like the one on my motorcycle. But, like the one on my motorcycle, I’m not sure how much gas each little square represents. Oh well, on I go.

And you know what? Less than six hours after leaving home I’m through Phoenix, turning into the motel in Tempe, and there are still two little squares on that line. All the way from Los Angeles to Phoenix on one tank of gas! I’m impressed.

The event at Changing Hands is astonishing. Over a hundred people are there to say hello and hear me, including people from Code Pink, the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty (CAADP), and Veterans for Peace. As part of the introduction, I’m presented an award by Veterans for Peace: a beautiful statuette of a hand giving the peace sign. Though I’d been warned to expect something, this is a huge and very moving surprise.

The discussion, mostly Q&A, goes on for quite awhile and covers a broad range of subjects, from the war to the death penalty, prisons, M*A*S*H, Hollywood, politics, kids, values, my personal life and how we take back our country. The first question, though, was about Shelley, which gave me an opportunity to tell them why she wasn’t here, as planned.

COALITION OF ARIZONANS
TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY

The Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty is a group of organizations and individuals committed to ending the death penalty in Arizona. We are the oldest anti–death penalty group in Arizona and an affiliate of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Our activism has helped abolish the death penalty for the developmentally disabled—even before the U.S. Supreme Court prohibition—and for juveniles.

In 2008, Mike Farrell gave a keynote speech at “Writing Down Death,” an event that featured authors opposed to the death penalty. Joining Mike were MacArthur Fellowship recipient Leslie Marmon Silko along with John M. Johnson and Rudolph J. Gerber, coauthors of The Top Ten DeathPenalty Myths.

We welcome volunteers, members, and even just individuals who want to learn about Arizona’s death penalty. Among us are those who oppose the death penalty for spiritual, ethical, and practical reasons, and those who may choose variously to work for its abolition through prayer, self- and public education, dialogues, constitutional recourse, and public action.

We affirm the dignity and rights of victims and the right of communities to live in safety and harmony. We believe that the death penalty, by implicitly condoning killing, subverts these rights and contributes to a pervasive climate of violence.

The taking of human life is abhorrent and unacceptable to us; it assails each of us individually and diminishes us as a people. When the state takes a life, we are profoundly affected. We become participants in what we abhor. Moreover, we know that, being human, we are not above error. We would not commit irrevocable error. Our sense of shared humanity, our commitment to the creative and transforming spirit that links us, and our knowledge of our own fallibility call out for us to discover and use alternatives to capital punishment.

In pursuit of our common goal, we commit ourselves to nonviolence, civility of discourse, respect for those who hold opposite opinions, and faithful and persistent witness.