Dear Neighbor,
It’s September, and summer is waning. Back to school, back to work, back to regular hours and rhythms. Back to reality. I hope your summer was relaxing, rejuvenating and held adventures at home or elsewhere.
Here’s mine, my favorite one for the summer, an adventure that clarified for me who I am and what I care about, as all true adventures do.
In June I went to a Minnesota Lynx game with my daughter, Daisy. The Lynx played against the Phoenix Mercury, whose most famous roster member is Brittney Griner, the player — one of my heroes — who was detained in a Moscow airport on February 17, 2022, for possession of vape cartridges containing medically prescribed cannabis.
Her trial began on July 1 that year: She was found guilty and sentenced on August 4 to nine years in a Russian prison and work camp. After complex negotiations, Brittney was released on December 8, 2022.
Why is Brittney Griner my hero?
Anyone who endures extreme hardship and emerges grateful for surviving, as Brittney did, and vows not to wallow in endless grudges and revenge, but, rather, to learn and teach others through understanding and empathy, as Brittney does, is my hero. She is honorable. We all suffer and struggle, some certainly more than others, but each assault on our souls is an opportunity to choose to move forward, wiser and with compassion, and to live a good life, refusing to be defeated.
I visited Russia 15 years ago. I’d wanted to go to Russia since the 1990s when I went on something of a Leo Tolstoy bender, another one of my heroes for his greatness of soul. I read everything he wrote until his latest works when he was old and preachy, a narrowing of that greatness, but my love of his work endured.
Target Center was nearly full and I absurdly assumed it was because of Brittney. Boy, was I wrong. It quickly became apparent that I was close to alone shouting, “Go, Brittney” and “Go, Mercury.” I was all fangirl, marveling that I was in the presence of one of my heroes. I’d read “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (a Dorothy summer read) who spent eight years (1945-1953) in Russian prison camps for writing a private letter to a friend criticizing Josef Stalin, and this phenomenal book is a compendium of the horrors. His book has never left me.
While Brittney’s time in Russia was probably less dire than conditions under Stalin’s rule, when upwards of twenty million (some estimates are closer to sixty million) were tortured and killed — probably because with news reporting as it is, Putin couldn’t get away with it. Still, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a prison camp is a prison camp is a prison camp.
Ahead of us were two couples, all rabid Lynx fans, screaming and standing and shouting at the refs and waving madly throughout the game. Fine, I thought, you do you. At one point, Brittney scored, and I yelled with glee. One of the women turned around, glared at me and spat, “Shut up!”
Amazingly enough — you know those times when someone says something outrageous, but only later do you think of what you wish you’d said? — this time I didn’t. I looked at her and said “You’re cheering; I’m cheering: Let it go.” She did. And we continued to maintain our fandom, however different, respectfully. So much of diplomacy can be reduced to “You do you; and let me do me.”
The Mercury lost.
As we left the arena, Daisy said I was disloyal to our Lynx. I said I was loyal to my hero. We both left happy. And that was that.
And here’s my antihero: Vladimir Putin. His lust for power and land grab makes me wonder, to what end?
One of Tolstoy’s most famous short stories is titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” In it, the protagonist, Pahom, sells his soul to the devil in exchange for riches and land. (Putin?) At the end, now wealthy but deserted by his friends and family, Pahom, racing to buy and acquire more land, has a heart attack and dies. The final line of the story answers the title’s question: “Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”
Ask yourself: What, whom, and how much do I need? I believe we all need heroes. Who are yours?
— Dorothy
