Once I accepted the commission from the Harvard Law School in 2005 to make a dance in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, I went to work researching. One of the first things I did was Google (it was relatively new then) poets and Nuremberg. What came up was something called the Norns.
It turns out that in Norse mythology, there were three old crones living under Mt. Nuremberg called the Norns. They had three jobs:
- to keep the water clean,
- decide who lived and died each day,
- and to give legal advice to the Gods.
What a concept. Let’s send in the crones. We could have a seat next to each of our so-called elected officials and help them make ethical, legal, and humane decisions instead of the cruelty and submission we see right now.
You don’t have to be 77 years old, as I am, to watch in horror the deceit, power grab, and disintegration of our ideals. But perhaps we need all the old people in the U.S. to organize and get on the streets. We don’t have that much to lose.
