Reasons and Seasons

See Sue - from "Wall Photos" on Facebook

2012-02-15T17:03:00.002-07:00

My Funny Valentine

2012-02-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

No blog today. Checking out links on political issues, cultural contexts,prime time news didn't lead me towards anything particularly positive today. Figured it wasn't a good day for whining about my white hair, my back,or the hundred other things that seem to irritate me at the moment. Stay away for a day, I think.
For the past 18 years, on Valentine's Day, I have been awakened by the sound of My Funny Valentine playing on a little boom box that's been placed next to the bed.
So, instead of the usual bloggage, here's a shoutout to love everywhere for everyone...We're all funny valentines, aren't we?

Paradise Still Exists

2012-02-13T08:33:00.000-07:00

Sooo nice to get away, and a bit of a shock on the return. I have more e-mails that go into the 'automatically delete' category than anything else. I keep saying I'll take the time, one of these days, to get off some of those lists. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to get off the Sweaty Betty messages that come in regularly from the cute little yoga store in Hampstead, England. Don't think I'll be stopping in any day soon. Too many like that to count.
Still there are others - upcoming meetings, discussion and commentary on writing, new friends, old friends and all the not yet sent messages that now are really behind schedule.
I lost almost two days just trying to get out of Denver to Costa Rica because of the storm and other problems (the pilot who never showed up, etc.) so it was a relief to get there.
Our group, under the tutelage of Ken McRae, had 29 people and quite a variety it was. I had met six of the attendees at a yoga retreat three years ago, knew Ken and Bahvani, and, of course, my good friend Linda. But everyone else was new. Lots of Tex-Arkana accents, upper Michigan, Maine, New York, California. Two couples, one single male, and ages from 25 to 75. Staying also at Pura Vida were a Bikram yoga small group, a small interpersonal psychologists group, and some people on their own.
Mix all that with the shamans, body talk experts, intuits, astrologists, watsu experts, and your run of the mill massage therapists and imagine what you get. Just imagine.
I avoided the shamans this time, as the last shaman I spent some time with was hungover, always on his cell phone, and as it turned out, groping the breasts of all the younger women in the group. Taking a brief sabbatical from shamans right now.
But as soon as I catch up with my self, I'll share a few stories.
Only news we even talked about during the retreat was the Super Bowl (lots of fans, and yea for the Giants) gay rights, women's right to choose and the chance that those rights would be trampled upon by the right. Contraception and Abortion. How often do those issues have to be foregrounded in political races? I still love the old bumper sticker: If you are against abortion, don't have one. How simple is that?
And, miracle of all miracles, I read some incredible books. Finally finished The Paris Wife and In the Garden of Beasts, and also knocked off How It All Began, The Sense of an Ending, Raw Edges: A Memoir. How's that for paradise?
Oh yes, then the food. All fresh from the local farms, all organic, fish and chicken, no junk food to be found on location.
Now to catch up with myself and find out where I need to be and when. Good to be back and chatting with you all.

Change of Plans

2012-02-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

Long story short...I had in mind that I was going to Costa Rica Friday night. Had it in mind right up until an e-mail from my friend Linda, in CR already, saying "See you tomorrow."
So it's 7:44 and I am frantically packing. You are thinking: Why didn't you start packing at 2:00. I started, but also thought I better call the doctor because of a few things bothering me (you don't want to know), coupled with some pain in my back.
Given my history, the oncology nurse thought I should go to the emergency room.
So...that's where my afternoon went. Good news is that nothing serious is wrong. Nothing at all. BUT the doc and nurse wanted me to stay around. I finally persuaded them that I would take the horrendous medicine they prescribed the minute I got to my room in Costa Rica tomorrow and not make any plans for the day. I agreed.
The fabulous low-scale, friendly place, Pure Vida, where we stay has no radios, no televisions, one pay phone, one computer for use, and a couple of spaces that are wired. Thinking I won't be on the net much, so won't be sending any posts.
Actually, it's the wireless, non-media ways of this place that I love so much.
See you in ten days.

Legislative Privilege?

2012-02-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

The police apologized. The legislator, Laura Bradford, didn't ask for immunity when she was stopped making a wrong turn, alcohol on her breath, and had her licensed hand gun in her car. That's cleared up. Turns out the officers had asked her if she was coming or going from a legislative session. She said yes. Happy Hour at a local bar attended by lobbyists, lawmakers and Capital staff. Turns out there is a legislative privilege that says
"The members of the general assembly shall, in all cases except treason or felony, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at sessions...
and in going to and returning from the same..."

Who knew? Maybe more people will run for office knowing this info. I don't know Laura Bradford, don't even know her political affiliation, but she's hit the news big time.Sorry, but I've never understood why anyone, anywhere in this country needs to carry a concealed weapon. Just doesn't work for me, and a concealed weapon in the car after happy hour? Really. Most of all,the legislative 'privilege from arrest coming and going' makes NO sense at all.
Many tasks to do, which is why this post is early today. Urging Susan Komen Foundation to change its mind and continue supporting Planned Parenthood and petitioning to overturn legislative privilege have to be squeezed in.

Unfortunate news

2012-01-31T17:42:00.000-07:00

I had planned to post my thoughts about the plight of Barnes and Noble, pretty much the last standing bookstore chain in the country. If you are from CO, you pretty much know the hard times the ever-determined unique Tattered Bookstore is experiencing.
But that's either tomorrow or something you can read or re-read on-line from Sunday's New York Times. That would save you from having to read my opinion on it all.
BUT...before going to this blog, I stopped by my e-mail account and opened an e-mail from my U.S. rep, Diana DeGette. Stop Komen was the title.
One thing led to another and another, and here's some really bad news - in my opinion, at least.
The Komen Foundation has succumbed to political lobbying. Doesn't it have better things to do - like raising money for research that might lead to the end of some cancers? But here's the article from this afternoon's Washington Post on-line:

The Associated Press reports that Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, will cut off its funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates, where the foundation has traditionally paid for preventive screening services.

According to the AP, the move will mean “a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams.”Planned Parenthood confirms that Komen is the first, and only, organization to cut off funding since the Congress began debating the issue in earnest last winter.

Komen said it could not continue to fund Planned Parenthood because it has adopted new guidelines that bar it from funding organizations under congressional investigation. The House oversight and investigations subcommittee announced in the fall an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s funding.

Planned Parenthood has been at the center of a lot of heated political battles lately. Most center on whether the group, as an abortion provider, should receive government funds for other services it provides, such as offering contraceptives and preventive screenings.

So far, plans to curtail Planned Parenthood’s funds within government have been stymied. Both the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama, for instance, stood in the way of House Republicans’ attempts to end Planned Parenthood’s federal funding. Similarly, when a handful of states passed laws that would have barred abortion providers (such as Planned Parenthood) from receiving federal dollars through Medicaid, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services stepped in. The agency has warned states that they could lose all of their Medicaid funding if they implemented such a policy. Those defensive moves have allowed Planned Parenthood to weather various political attacks.

In some ways, the Komen decision isn’t particularly surprising. The group has been under pressure from anti-abortion rights groups not to fund Planned Parenthood. It also hired a vice president last year who had previously advocated for the group’s defunding in her run for Georgia governor. With a congressional investigation underway, Komen pulled its support. And when private institutions move to cut off Planned Parenthood’s funding there’s not much Democrats can do.The only possible backstop here might be pressure from Planned Parenthood supporters pushing back in the opposite direction.

Let's see: I don't like abortions; therefore, women who are getting life-saving breast exams from an organization that supports abortions should be cut off from funding. Hmmm...I took Logic long ago, and even today this little piece still remains a flawed 'IF A, Then B.' Time to get those PROTEST fingers and feet walking and talking - keyboard, phone call, any which way.

Who Has My Numbers?

2012-01-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

For the third time in three months, someone has hacked into my financial accounts: November, one credit card got used across the company for expensive Skyping (still don't know what one can do on Skype for $600 a clip; in December, someone managed to cash a large check from me twice; this past Saturday, someone used my only other credit card, and walked away with an Apple computer from CA. In both incidents, I had my credit card in hand while talking to someone from the 800 number. I did get a new credit card this morning, and just in time for the beginning of the month, I have to figure out which bills are automatically paid by the now dead credit card and change to the new one. What other numbers of mine does someone have? Unsettling, for sure.

This leaves time for posting pretty limited, so I'm going to post a one-page paper I just wrote for a workshop. The assignment was to write a page about an external experience that caused internal change. I love writing workshops and can't imagine when I won't be part of one.

But before that, just want to make sure you know some of the facts from this day in history:

1649: King Charles of England was beheaded. They loved those rolling heads in England.
1798 - A brawl broke out in the U.S. House of Representatives and Matthew Lyon of Vermont spat in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut. Spat...Now there's a YouTube opportunity missed. Those East Coast men.
1948: Mahatma Ghandi was shot and killed in New Delhi.
1972: Bloody Sunday. Thirteen Irish civil rights marchers were shot by the Brits in northern Ireland.
In that context, the spitting seems pretty minor, doesn't it?

External to Internal. Here it is:
Leaving behind the safe, upscale suburbs of Glastonbury – home of Pratt and Whitney engineers and their families – I maneuvered the car into the scum and slums of Hartford. I parked the racy red Porsche blocks away from my destination to make sure it would be secure. I was on a ‘do good’ mission to save my brother.
As I briskly walked the blocks, head down and pocketbook hidden under my coat, the odor of urine became stronger than the smell of tobacco. Wiping uncontrollable fat tears, blowing my nose, and peering up at street signs, I followed the stench to Seyms Street. I heard raucous adult laughter and the shrieks of joy from children as I turned right onto the block. The lilting voices and Island accents seemed to be calling me to a festival or celebration in a city park. But this wasn’t the path to a party, it was the way to Seyms Street jail, the huge red brick building with two-hundred locks, a holding place for minor criminals who had walked one too many crooked paths.
The line into the jail was rambling and unstructured; people wove in and out, cracking jokes or catching up on gossip. Those with proper identification, a few at a time, were allowed into the visiting room. The happier people appeared to be, the more I cried. Who were these people and why were they having fun on Saturday morning, waiting to see a family member in jail? What was the big joke? Cigarette butts and coffee cups littered the ground. As they got closer to the entrance, the women borrowed one another’s lipstick and ran their fingers through their sassy hairstyles. I had prepared myself for weeks to make this visit, choosing a conservative suit and white blouse to wear, and practiced what I’d say to my brother. I scoured libraries and bookstores to come up with creative, but realistic, ideas on how he could turn his life around. I was armed with Dale Carnegie clichés and robust intentions.
The guard looked at my tear-stained face when it was my turn to enter. My brother, standing behind the locked door, said to the guard, “Don’t mind her, she’s overly emotional and weird.” It was not a good visit; I saved no-one. My lofty ideals and grandiose ideas led to a nasty argument between my brother and me. I didn’t belong with these people. I detested my arrogant, nasty brother.
It took weeks, maybe months, for me to figure out that the other visitors were far more insightful than I. They had left their judgments and lectures behind, carrying instead tales of everyday life that brought a slice of normalcy to the men they were visiting. They offered reprieves, and the gifts of humanity to an inhumane situation. I had brought my sanctimonious, self-satisfied self to a manchild in captivity.

Shout Outs

2012-01-27T11:39:00.001-07:00

This past week included the 39th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and one hundred years of Girl Scout. Both the organization and the Supreme Court decision have had a huge impact on my life - and the lives of almost everyone I know. Here's a shout out to both.
I didn't last all that long in the Girl Scouts, but it is the first place where I ever engaged in community service. Somehow I managed to sign up to read at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, CT - or maybe it was just to be there and talk with kids my age - I'm not sure. But I am sure I walked from our two-family home on Monroe Street in Hartford to Hillside Avenue. Hopped on a bus and rode to the downtown Hartford bus station; from there I transferred and took the bus to No. Main Street in West Hartford and did my service, such as it was. I must have been in fifth or sixth grade. I remember being proud of that badge and several others. I remember being somewhat horrified for actually taking the 'sewing' badge. I think my mother or aunts must have helped me complete that one.
This is Girl Scout cookie sale time. I've ordered from my granddaughter in West Hartford. I feel quite ancient when I think of walking door-to-door, taking orders, making change, trying to get around the block before my girlfriends did. Still have a little scar where my sharp lead pencil fell through the little hole in my winter coat and stabbed my thigh as I knelt down to get some cookies for someone.
That's so long ago, so mid-twentieth century like.
Here in the States, young kids rarely have the freedom (or necessity) to hop on a bus, transfer and go anywhere. But my parents never had to worry I'd be kidnapped. I'm not sure why, but that wasn't a worry. And if I got lost, I sure didn't have a cellphone. Oh, there were neighborhoods and areas off limits, but that was it.
My mother, father, grandmothers never sold a Girl Scout cookie. I sold them door-to-door. It's pretty amazing to be in a position to write a 'remember when,' 'good old days' tale. Actually, they weren't such good old days, they were just different days.
These days I keep learning from women involved in developing Leadership schools for girls, that the Girl Scouts Organization has moved into a great model of developing leadership in girls. Glad to hear that. AND a special shout out to Girl Scouts of CO, who recognized a transgender girl as a girl and welcomed her in. Been some people boycotting Girl Scout cookies this year because of that, but to me it's all the more reason to cheer and buy those mint cookies.

As for Roe vs. Wade - that changed all of our lives. The Women's Movement surely took a hold of us, and the pure freedom of knowing one would not ever have to think of the horror of getting pregnant, being sent away, or having an illegal, scary abortion changed our lives. Remnants of Catholicism kept me and lots of others on a fairly even path during high school, and those stories of women having abortions with clothes hangers weren't too appealing. So much fear.
But Roe vs. Wade brought options, and who is there that doesn't want an option?
To me, these are times to stand tall for women's right to choice and to defend thinking women.
St. Patrick - St. Anthony's, a Catholic Church in Hartford CT, recently held a mass for anyone who has suffered because of abortion. Wish I could find the posting, because it was a mass of forgiveness - not a mass of choosing to or not to, not a mass to forgive those who made allegedly wrong decisions, just a mass for healing.
I doubt there was papal approval for that, so here's a shout-out to you also.
Hope for the future.

Fairness and Class

2012-01-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Didn't someone tell us we were supposed to learn in kindergarten that life is unfair? I certainly agree with Obama's call for economic 'fairness,' but not sure that we all define fairness the same way. I've never thought that life was particularly fair or unfair, but then I don't think that people 'deserve' what they get -- good or bad. Actually I don't even like the word; don't like it any more than I care for the term 'level the playing field.' I suppose it would be nice to level things if everyone were allowed to play, but what about those who don't get to play?

Reading various news articles, journals and blogs I find the talk about class warfare a bit absurd. We must be the only country that believes it is classless (I thought that was part of our foundation), while simultaneously seemingly always involved in class warfare.

Decades ago, my good friend from Massachusetts was encouraged by her mother to only have friends and date boys whose last names were one syllable. "That's how we can tell they are one of us, darling." Not our people. In public, it was all unspoken but well understood. Detente.

But times have changed, haven't they? Class is complex. In the 50's, Joe Kennedy had bags of money, but couldn't purchase class. Impossible. Fifty years later, it seems to me that buying class has become a bit easier, not based on family background with a sterling resume of good deeds, but purchasable on credit.
Money can buy middle class and upper-middle class in this country that has no class structure, but there's still a difference between being wealthy and being upper class.

In the meantime, who is really fighting in this class war? I hear politicians talking about 'blue collar workers'? Do they exist anymore; and, if so, what are they doing in their blue collars? I don't think the poor are fighting the wealthy or the lower class fighting the upper class. Speaking of class, do you remember when the term underclass hit the sociological structure? I think the term came into being in the 60's to describe those people who were truly, truly poor. Beneath the structure, swamp rats swimming in the sewers. Haven't seen the word around much, so perhaps it's been eliminated from the classifications.

I ramble. Rambling is a side effect of watching too much news, worrying about who's in charge and who is going to be in charge. Counting on calming down tonight when I see The Whale at DCPA, a play about a five-hundred pound man. That's a diversion.

What's Happening Here?

2012-01-24T18:09:00.001-07:00

Solar storm has come and mostly gone, probably leaving some invisible and undetectable effects on us. I'm choosing to think something positive has come from this storm.
Back to reality and waiting for a miracle from tonight's State of the Union address. Personally, I'd like to see and hear Obama's 'I'm still in love with you' again. Looking for some soul in this election year.

On a totally different note, and a puzzling one for me. I've been having an e-mail conversation with my sister-in-law. Here's her description of a class she was in last night. I'll follow it with my response, but want to know what you think:

"So I was in class last night and the teacher was going thru the power point and actually made it somewhat interesting. We were going over good qualities for medical office managers/specialist and one of the points was leadership. She said she could tell who the leaders in the room were and then proceeded to point to the front row-there were 4 women sitting there. hmmm. When two of those women first walked in they headed for one of the middle rows but then figured out they couldn't see the board very well so they moved up front. hmmm. and then proceeded to interject answers and cuteness EVERY time the teacher asked a question or made a statement. The woman sitting next to me in one of the apparently loser middle/back rows (where we could both hear and see better) asked me if I noticed she never looks at the rest of the class and then of course us losers in the middle/back rows had a few snarky remarks among ourselves. After the shout out to the leadership icons in the front- the very back row were not at all shy about yawning out loud and answering their texts. They were pretty good til then. hmmm. Just so you know -the following power point subject was about self-esteem. Really."

So, in between a powerpoint about leadership and another one about self-esteem, the teacher, second day of class, identifies the leaders (the 'you know one when you see one' school of leadership, I guess)? No. Couldn't happen.
I'm convinced this is the teacher's clever experiment - a variation on the Blue Eye experiment. 'Good move,' I thought. One of those experiments to help students understand how certain behaviors can have such a powerful impact. So many experiments, so much to learn.
My sister-in-law is convinced that this particular teacher meant what she said, believes that the teacher really believes those four women in the front row are real leaders. I still think it must be an experiment. No-one (or no-one I know) teaching a course on leadership, or anything else for that matter, would say such a thing.
I'm not sure we'll get the answer, but I hope we do. If I'm wrong I'll be taking my already cynical attitude to a higher level. What do you think?

(Here's a quick synopsis of Jane Elliott's Blue Eye-Brown Eye experiment in case you have forgotten it)

On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott's third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class confused and upset. They recently had made King their "Hero of the Month," and they couldn't understand why someone would kill him. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to people.
Elliott divided her class by eye color -- those with blue eyes and those with brown. On the first day, the blue-eyed children were told they were smarter, nicer, neater, and better than those with brown eyes. Throughout the day, Elliott praised them and allowed them privileges such as a taking a longer recess and being first in the lunch line. In contrast, the brown-eyed children had to wear collars around their necks and their behavior and performance were criticized and ridiculed by Elliott. On the second day, the roles were reversed and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior while the brown eyes were designated the dominant group.
What happened over the course of the unique two-day exercise astonished both students and teacher. On both days, children who were designated as inferior took on the look and behavior of genuinely inferior students, performing poorly on tests and other work. In contrast, the "superior" students -- students who had been sweet and tolerant before the exercise -- became mean-spirited and seemed to like discriminating against the "inferior" group.
"I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third-graders in a space of fifteen minutes," says Elliott. She says she realized then that she had "created a microcosm of society in a third-grade classroom."

"A Class Divided" is one of the most requested programs in FRONTLINE's history. First broadcast in 1985, it is being rebroadcast in 2003 as part of FRONTLINE's 20th Anniversary Season.

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/synopsis.html#ixzz1kQXJcbAK
Final note: How can you not like a president who can do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6uHR90Sq6k

Bouncing and Blasting

2012-01-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

So glad I posted my political rant on Friday before the Gingrich Victory in South Carolina. Big victory. I ask again, 'What are those people thinking?' Let's not think about Newt for a while, not even think much about those weekend football games. I'm pretty psyched it will be a New England/New York game, even though it leaves some of us compromised or conflicted about picking a winner. Let's talk about storms....Big storms.

I'm talking about the biggest solar storm since 2005, a storm far greater than a nor'easter, a midwest ice storm, or a west coast blizzard. This gigantic storm will have a world-wide impact, peaking tomorrow morning.

Rather than posting long articles here, let me just post five sentences from one
Washington Post article by Brian Vastag today:

1. "...the sun released an even more energetic blast of radiation and charged plasma overnight that could disrupt GPS signals and the electrical grid Tuesday, especially at high latitudes, space weather experts warned Monday morning."

2. "Already, the storm could be disrupting satellite communications as streams of radiation from the sun bounce across the Earth's magnetic field, which extends above the surface into space.

3. "It's not going to be a catastrophe, but there could be noticeable geomagnetic current induced on the electrical grid," says Michael Hesse of NASA's Space Weather Laboratory.

4. We expect moderate to potentially strong geomagnetic storming that can cause pipeline corrosion effects and power grid fluctuations, says Doug Biesecker.

5. What's special about this event is the coronal mass ejection that erupted is by far the fasted Earth-directed event of this solar cycle," according to Bisecker at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder.

Let me be the first to admit that I don't really know what is going on here or in other articles about this super storm. I don't know what a 'coronal mass ejection' is, don't really know what a plasma cloud is, and don't know what a radiation storm looks like. But I love the images and can imagine the movie that could/should come from this concept. (guess it's more than a concept, as the storm is apparently happening right now).
How can one not love the image of "streams of radiation from the sun bouncing across the Earth's magnetic fields"?
The closest I can come to all of this is the experience of being in the ocean during high tide. Standing there, waist high, using all my energy to keep standing as the water pulls the sand and itself from under my feet I know the tides exert enormous influence over the earth. When the waters rip from under my feet and the sand pull away, I feel physically more connected to the Universe. And then my mind merges with the bodily reaction, and I become, simultaneously, more 'one' and more connected with it all. Imagining the effect of the tides on my brainpower, my thinking, my feelings makes me more alive. How can I not be affected by such power? Of course I am, but I just don't know exactly what the effect is. Will I be more irritable or more creative, more fearful or courageous?
Today calls for us to imagine streams of radiation from the sun bouncing across the Earth's magnetic fields. Surely those bounces are having some impact on me (and you)...how could they not? Vastag informs us that 'tomorrow a speeding cloud of plasma and charged particles will blast path Earth.' Where will we all be when the blast rips by?
It's a rather comforting thing, this thinking about the vastness of it all, how much we don't know, and what we do know. Pretty powerful images, all this bouncing and blasting in the cosmos. Solar storming coming our way

Political Debate Depression

2012-01-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

I sure wouldn't want to occupy one. Why didn't I watch Colbert-Cain instead of watching the Republican Reality Roust?
I justified watching that R debate because I had just gone to the kick-off of Diana DeGette's campaign. and was filled with relief and confidence that the amazing Diana would be re-elected to represent us in CO again in 2012. That wasn't enough. I would have needed a Valium the size of a hockey puck, as Woody Allen once said, to maintain any sort of calm or levity for the two-hour debate. Truth is, I didn't last two hours. Listened to most of the last half upstairs, where I could hear the sound, but not watch the body language of those guys. Maybe I should have silenced the audio and just watched the facial and body gyrations. But then, without the audio, I could not have heard the audience reactions, and would have missed the real show.
I know I'm from another planet and thankfully I am from another state. Are there Democrats in South Carolina? Are there what we used to call 'moderate' Republicans?
I'll take my chai in CO amd leave the Tea Parties to someone else.
I detest the hysterics in both/all parties right now. Most of my life I've known Republicans who have opinions that are different from mine, and most of my life we've just agreed to disagree and let it go (sounds like one of those 'Some of my best friends are _____.' But what I heard last night left nothing about which to agree to disagree.
No, I don't think life begins at the moment two people even think about having sex/making love/fornicating.
No, I don't think gay/bi/transgender people should be denied basic human rights.
And, oh, those immigrants ... illegal aliens, as they were called last night....
No I don't think the deportation buses should start up this morning, or that everyone without papers should be given a new pair of hiking boots and sent off on a Mexican, Guatemalan, or other one-way camino.
I, too, can be hyperbolic.
A long time ago, I declared my blog would be rant-free. I lied. Sometimes it just feels so good to rant.
Don't get me started on Citizens United. I'm going to let it all go for the weekend. Hope you do also.

What are the Chances?

2012-01-19T16:17:00.001-07:00

Hadn't heard from Winter Pilgrim, Ann Sieben, in a week, so checked out her blog before going to yoga this morning. Here's her post.. sent from somewhere.in Egypt, walking her way to Cairo:

Day 112: Bedouin Bedfellows
"Wandering around in a strangely lawless post-revolutionary society has its challenges of course, but I'll find the silver lining in any situation - I've had many glimpses at ancient monuments, pre-Roman even, and all to myself. The police are gone and the military guard the shoreline... there's general immorality in the towns and when I get frustrated at the young boys throwing rocks at me, the mothers only say boys will be boys and if there are no police to stop them, then that's what they'll do. Every other society I've visited has had the parents stepping up a bit more actively in cultivating their son's behavior. Odd. But the Bedouin families have been taking me in with open hospitality and smiling friendliness under their black face-covering veils. The desert is nice when I can find it and the shoreline duney and tranquil, though absent gulls, seashells, or fishermen. Unexpected. I've passed through Alexandria and am heading toward Cairo visiting the oldest Christian sites I've seen. Otherwise, lots of date palm farms and fig orchards and noisy tuk-tuks careening along sand roads. Computers are hard to find... I'll look again in Cairo in a short week or so. Safe and sound and occasionally up to my ankles in da Nile =) "

Still meeting up with the kindness of strangers, but getting a few hard knocks from the kids. Oh, I'm sure there are tales embedded in that short posting. Under those veils are caring people. Reading this makes me late for yoga, so I stumble in to Dancing the Soul, complaining about my sore knee to no-one in particular: "My friend's walking through Egypt right now and I'm complaining about a bum knee caused by a short date on a treadmill."
You have a friend walking through Egypt? I'm leaving for Egypt this weekend, on a work assignment for seven weeks," drawls good-looking tall Tony from Texas, just back from a month visit to his kids and grandkids in Texas.
"Oh, I thought you were retired because you and your wife seem to show up here when you are in town."
Texan smile and drawl: Oh no, I'll be meeting over one hundred archeologists when I get there. It's not a well-known site, not a tourist attraction, but it's an important place.
You are an archeologist?
No, I'm an architect. I help figure out how a site is set up, how it might have been constructed. Then the archeologists begin their work. There's another site, a Ramses space, that we'll be working on next. It's wonderful work.
It's just 9:00 a.m., time to roll out the mats and stretch those limbs. I've had two Egyptian Encounters and only one cup of coffee. And a reminder that I never know with whom I might be bending my torso or trying to maintain a downward dog. What are the chances?
Tony slips out of class early, two stretches away from completion. I have two days in which to track him down to get his e-mail to send on to Ann. What are the chances?

How Much Money Does It Take?

2012-01-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

To play basketball, baseball or football? How much money does it take to heal an abused child, heal an abused mind, or heal a broken heart?
I don't know the answers to most of the above, and won't bother looking them up, because Wikipedia has gone blank on us today (hope you are protesting SOPA and Pipa). SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act) was proposed, allegedly, to eliminate internet piracy, but seems to blur some distinctions between piracy and censorship.
But I digress...this post is meant to be about money - specifically about salaries for football players; more specifically, about salaries for football players on the Denver Broncos. Those are the only salaries listed in Monday's Denver Post, so they are the only ones I can talk about with any degree of certainty. It's all Greek to me, and looks like the type of budget I'd think might exist in Greece today. For some reason, some poor buckled up and padded guy only makes $8000 a year. Hope he's not getting pummeled very often and that he has a weekly job to supplement his income.
On the other hand, there's someone making over $15,000,000 a year and another guy making over $10 millions. And others making millions and half millions. That doesn't count endorsements or whatever else these players do on the sixteen days they aren't playing football on television.
"Well, their careers are so short and their bodies so ravaged by their 'work' that they need to make that much to support them after their short careers are over. Champ Bailey, at 34, is old for the game."
Champ Bailey's salary is $10,500,000, according to the Denver Post. So, let's give him $20,500,00 for total two-year career (and his has been a lot longer than that) plus endorsements, etc.
Do you know how many times I'd have to be reincarnated to have made over $20,500,000? All with good karma. What about you? How long would you have to work to earn a salary of $10-15 million? I know, I know, these are exceptions, but then aren't all the 1% exceptions?
I'm a sports fan, and a fan of entertainment. I'm a Denver Broncos fan. It's not about them - it's about us. How and why have we allowed such disparity to emerge? I know that an Occupy Sports and Entertainment Protest wouldn't draw many people, and, truthfully, I'm not sure I'd show up, but I still don't get it. Do you?

Float like a Butterfly

2012-01-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

Sting like a bee. Happy Birthday, Muhammed Ali. Seventy years old, and an icon most of his life. He's one of my all time favorites - was a favorite when he was Cassius Clay.
Won a million hearts, not with a punch, a knockout, a funny poem, but by refusing to be drafted for the Vietnam War. "Ain't no Viet Cong ever called me nigger," that was the line that won him hearts and souls (oh yea, lost him a few also). No way his war was far away; it was right here, day and night. He did his piece, fighting valiantly, fighting in the ring, but fighting for a bigger prize.
Several years ago, strolling around DIA, waiting for a delayed flight, I saw a man sitting alone, huddled over some papers and writing. There he was, surrounded by no-one, in the vast new airport. Autographing his name on some 'Five Pillars of Islam' brochures. Walking softly, I tapped his shoulder, bent over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Utter spontaneity. Doubt I could have thought about it and followed through. He handed me four of the autographed brochures. Still have mine, and so do my sons.
I watched Ali on television today, not speaking, looking sadder, older, more bewildered.
Yesterday, we thought of a conversation between MLK and Obama. As good friend Patrick reminded me, what a nightmare for King had he been around for the debate in South Carolina on the day named in his honor. Don't think Muhammed Ali would have considered it much of a birthday celebration either.
I've tried to download "When We Were Kings," a great, great film, apropos of Muhammed Ali's birthday. If it doesn't show up here, try to rent it somewhere.

http://youtu.be/1kKBJsWXFoc

What Does Equal Mean?

2012-01-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

I recently learned from my son Rob that he and his brother thought their dad meant equal in numbers when he said 'All People are Created Equal. Equal as in 4 + 4 = 8.
As the story goes, the kids remember they heard the comment when one of them said something about a Black person on a street in Hartford.
Ian, Rob's best friend, and his sister Jessie thought the same thing. Among the four of them they were tiny babies or yet to be conceived when Martin Luther King was assassinated.
For years, according to Rob, he and Ian would wonder where all the Black people were. Were they in New York or California? Why weren't they in equal numbers where we lived? What did 'equal' mean?
Soon enough they learned what 'all people are created equal' meant and soon enough realized that if all people were created equal something strange happened along the way to make some less equal than others. As young children they marched along in the Freedom parades with little context. They kept protesting once they got the context. Still do.
I love this anecdote for so many reasons. Most of all, it's just a wonderful example of how we, as adults, try to be so clear in our messages to children and how often we all interpret words differently. They were just little kids learning what the equal sign meant in arithmetic and, ever so brightly, transferred what they knew to the present situation. They were sure prepared for 'some pigs are more equal than other pigs' when they got to Animal Farm in high school. Context was crystal clear.
I love the anecdote because it shows how we all learn: we hear something, we question, we talk, and, with luck, reflect, and then maybe move to action, if action is necessary. I love it because it reveals that we never stop learning from children.
All these years later we, as a people, are still trying to teach and to learn what 'equal' means. It's so simple in arithmetic, so complex when it comes to living.
Thomas Jefferson, maybe borrowing some of the phrase from a friend, gets the nod for first speaking the phrase 'All men are created equal' and Ben Franklin tweaked the text just a tad and Martin Luther King issued the wake-up call, the call to remember and live up to the words of our Constitution.
It's been a long march, from and through civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, disability rights (both physical and mental), athletic rights, transgender rights, animal rights, planet rights, and more to come.
Martin Luther King once said the work will never be done. It won't, so that's why we have to keep on working.
I don't know what Martin Luther King would think if he showed up these 44 years later. If he got here after the statue of him was revealed in Washington DC, but before some misquotes were rectified (within the next 30 days), he would surely be happy to know the statue is there and the words will be edited within the next thirty days. What would he and Barack Obama talk about? What would he think of our current political situation? We can't know of course, but we can do something today and every day to keep the dream alive, to keep on the path to Equality.

Who Is the Character?

2012-01-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, I took my first acting class. No, I don't think Steve Spielberg or the Coen Brothers are looking for an old, short, white woman with white hair to playing a leading role - an ingenue, if you will.
But life requires us to play many parts, doesn't it? I want to make sure I play all mine as well as I can.
Actually, I thought it would be a class about reading (silently) plays at home and talking about them in class.
Turns out we will read some plays and take some roles and read segments out loud. Acting. I'm flexible. I can read and I can talk.
Having never read one Agatha Christie play, I, of course, am assigned the role of Molly in The Mousetrap. Not only have I never read a Christie play, but I absolutely refused to see the long playing, beloved Mousetrap while we lived in London.
So that you can join me, here's a summary of our first handout on acting, taken from Uta Hagen's A Challenge for the Actor. The Six Steps
      1. Who Am I?
      2. What are the circumstances?
      3. What are my relationships?
      4. What are my goals?
5. What is my obstacle?
      6. What do I do to get what I want?
Is it possible that I will be able to answer those questions for Molly when I can't answer them for myself? Who am I?..It's a daily question. I don't know Molly; haven't ever heard her speak. Couldn't I be Molly Bloom, with one of the most famous soliloquies in the western world? I would practice those seven words, 'yes I said yes I will yes' all weekend long and not have to wonder who Molly Bloom is. But here I am with Mousetrap Molly and me, trying to figure out who we both are.
What roles will you play for the weekend?

Those Lying Eyes

2012-01-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

"You can't hide those lying eyes and your smile is a thin disguise." I can hear The Eagles singing right now.
The song has been stalking my brain ever since last Thursday. Within ten minutes of meeting two friends for coffee, after a couple of sips of double shot lattes and non-fat chai, we couldn't interrupt one another fast enough with our varied stories about lies. Actually, it was like a Three Bears scenario - one had stories about children lying (otherwise known as not quite separating reality and fantasy), another about adolescent lies (bountiful, defended by a sense of self-justification) and huge adult lies (felonies, embezzlement, business fraud). BIG LIES, not those piddling 'oh, you look great' or 'I handed in my homework or 'the check is in the mail.'
I know, some people would say a lie is a lie, but once I learned about venial and mortal sins as a little girl, once I realized I wouldn't go to hell no matter what, I found it justifiable to rank order types of lies and other misdemeanors.
What is it about lying and why do people, even little kids, tell tall stories, make things up, i.e. lie? What makes some people continue with the big lies and cheating all of their lives and other grow out of that temporary inability to separate the real from make-believe, the fact from fiction?
True confession: I think I lied a lot when I was a teenager. Not mean lies, just "Oh, Can I please sleep at Judy's house tonight?" which meant "Judy is telling her mother she is sleeping here, and we are all going to the beach overnight." Most of the time I got caught, because my mother was no fool. But it never dawned on me, not for a nano-second, that I hurt her feelings when I lied to her. Never. Her feelings never came into it. Getting to the beach was all that mattered. Don't know as I even considered those exchanges as lies, just a sort of bargaining to get what I wanted.
But, the big adult lies? I just don't get them. I sort of get the lying political schmucks, and I get the 'if you are stupid enough to believe that this pill will knock twenty pounds off you' or 'this $50 cream will wipe those wrinkles right off your face' liars. But I've just bumped into and been jostled by a big-time fraud. Spent time in prison for big lies. Still lying. Just seemed like a nice friendly guy to me. Learned otherwise, and learned the hard way. But that's another tale, that sooner or later I'm going to tell. In the meantime, I still don't understand how and why someone becomes a first-rate, big-time liar. Those lying eyes. But that discussion about cross-generation liars somewhat opened my eyes.

Catching Up

2012-01-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's guest post set in Miami on a sunny day seems like a mirage on this snowy day in Denver.
Before figuring out that it was snowing this morning, I figured out pretty quickly that I was a recipient of that 24-hour 'thing' going around. At least I'm hoping it's twenty-four hours or less.
So, with time on my hands and brain operating on slow to lazy, I scanned through a couple of articles that had moved from my printer to the floor in the last couple of weeks. Dave Barry's Year in Review: The 2011 Festival of Sleaze was a quick reminder of what a bizarre year it had been (go to The Washington Post if you haven't read the whole thing).
From what I can figure, the Occupy Movement was the best thing that happened all year. I'd count the Arab Spring in there also, but there's a great deal of good that has to follow in the Winter and Spring of 2012. Oh, and the fact that the world didn't come to an end, as prophesied by Harold Camping.
Oh yea, there was a royal wedding to remind us all of romance before Anthony Weiner reminded us of what romance isn't. And so it went.
The reality of corporations as people reared its ugly head and presented us with Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. And Herman Cain. Pepper-spraying went viral and the euro almost collapsed, along with a couple of countries.
Caught up on the past and looking to 2012. Leave it to The Washington Post to help us past the review and into the preview. Have to love The 2012 In/Out List.
Apps are out and Naps are in. Must have surveyed the over 70 crowd for that factoid. And then gone to the disappearing middle class to find out that Lululemon gear is out and hand-me-down sweat pants are in.
Pippa's bum is out and Kate's uterus is in. How quickly romance turns to practicality. And I'm not telling how many of these Ins and Outs I don't know. Skipped right by me while I was growing a year older.
I'm for Stephen Beatty being in and like even more that the Supreme Court is in. Long may that last. I already have a crush on Elizabeth Warren so am ahead of the game and so hoping lobbyists are out, as well as supercommittees. And to those in the know, that corporations as people will be replaced by immigrants as people. Someone has taken his/her optimism pills.
You get the drift. I'm catching up in one day to get ready for the coming months. Maybe I'll replace the back patio with a tilapia farm.
Note to writers of the list: Tebowing is still in here in Denver - and I suspect lots of other places.
On to Maureen Dowd's 'Oedipus Rex Complex' in the NYT this past Sunday and I'm caught up with my trivia on this snowy, sluggish brain Tuesday.

Miami and Mocking White Ibis

2012-01-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

Guest post in the new year.

Miami and the mocking white Ibis

It was a classic Miami experience, full of paradox. Angst and nerves, followed by a slow but steady march towards contentedness. The night started with a rapid ride south from Fort Lauderdale, early Friday evening, right into Miami, 28 miles in 25 minutes. Then the hard part, traveling west into the urban core with seemingly half of Florida on every side of me. Though on a "highway" three lanes wide, the next 10 miles were an agonizing crawl of almost an hour's length. In times like this you start to wonder, what the hell am I doing? Is this worth it all? A raspberry and cantaloupe sunset began melting over the horizon. A white Ibis glided through a goalpost of silhouetted palm trees to the left. On one hand I felt mocked by this bird, my boredom interrupted only by near slow-speed crashes with other cars jockeying for position, as he swooped overhead. On the other hand was a sense that maybe there was something good waiting at the end of this road after all.

Elena's uncle, Tio Gilberto, was to be surprised with a celebration of his 90th trip around the sun. A Cuban by birth and a proud American by choice and circumstance, you could easily picture this supposedly 90 year old man climbing up a coconut palm if need be, the years having hardly taken a toll at all. Once, on another occasion, Gilberto walked over to the side of the house and took a cell phone call, then announced he had to be going. Elena asked if he was taking his girlfriend out, and without hesitation his brother interjected, "which one?"

The main event was a live performance of a band playing punto guajiro, a mash of rural Cuban folk music with a "knock 'em out the box" lyrical competition. Given a sheet of paper with some handwritten notes about guests at the party, and taking a quick read of the participants, the band members broke into a lively, acoustic, Latin song. One singer took the microphone and began an improvised verse about someone in the crowd, telling a seemingly personal story based on nothing but a few notes and observations. When finished, the next singer stepped forward and tried to outdo the former, with a combination of humor, charm and sarcasm. As in a poetry slam or a hip hop street battle, winners are not announced, but recognized by the loudest cheers. This went on for an hour or more uninterrupted with different members of the crowd being featured in the improvised verse. Far from a hackish party band playing a well-worn set of favorites, this group did what only great artists can do, convince the audience they were part of something special. Unique.

At the end, Gilberto got up and began to speak, "Yo tengo muchos recuerdos de la familia en Cuba . . . " and you could see in his eyes an equal amount of happiness and sadness as he looked back. By then the January moon was well overhead and almost full, the air crisp and cool. The signs of the end of la fiesta were near. Cigars were mashed out into ashtrays. The ice from the now-empty drink cooler was tossed onto the lawn. People lined up to buy the band's CD. Everyone but the kids, who ran happy circles around the yard throughout the entire night, was beaming about the performance. Goodbyes and tentative plans for future gatherings were in the air. We drove off onto Calle Ocho, and stopped at CVS around midnight, and as usual in Miami, it was packed with people all with their own reasons for going to a drug store at midnight on a Friday. Back at the place, a satisfied exhaustion took hold. The mocking white Ibis was a distant memory. But we had to get some rest, because we had plans the next day. Gotta beat the weekend traffic.

Written by Robert C. Wright, DelRay Beach, FL

Tebow's Moon Rising

2012-01-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

No Clearance Creedwater bad moon rising, but a big fat Tebow moon showed up over Sports Authority Mile High Stadium in Denver, setting the stage for an eleven second overtime. Tim Tebow's moon was rising and he responded. Tebow threw to the moon, Demaryius Thomas reached for that moon and ran with the speed of light towards victory. Eleven seconds under the full moon in overtime and the game was over.
I'm not one of those crazy sports fans who depends on a good game somewhere in the universe to make me happy. But I was at the Broncos Stadium last night and participated in a victory and fan celebration the likes of which I've never seen. The stadium rocked, the box rocked, individuals rocked and the tide turned.
Sweet, sweaty joy and pandemonium. The world was good. Yes, it was football and the redemption or resurrection of a hero, if only for a game or season; nothing changed and everything changed. Sports does that to us and for us. "It'll break your heart," Bart Giametti said once of baseball, and it's true of all sports. Sports breaks our hearts, but also lifts us up, bringing us to the angels on occasion.
All that joy and all that juice rejuvenated us all, helping us to remember the joy the Arab Spring had brought us, helping us to forget, if only momentarily, that there were dark suits blathering in New Hampshire, the Arab Spring had come to its winter, and too many people in the world were starving. A game, a victory, a reprieve from the world.
Who'd have thought a football victory could feel so good?

Joan Didion

2012-01-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

This morning I saw a woman who looked just the way Joan Didion looked in her thirties. I know what you will look like when you are 65, I thought.
Joan Didion's been back on my mind (and in my dreams last night) since I read an article about her in The Atlantic before going to bed. Joan always comes and goes, depending on what she's writing, but never leaves those of us who fell in love with her in the '60's and '70's, after reading her collection of essays in Slouching Toward Bethlehem, especially "On Going Home." The late 60's and the '70's were the years of falling in love with Joan, her prose, her ability to understand who we were and what we were feeling.We fell in love with Joan Didion the way she fell in love with New York City, "I was in love with New York. I do not mean "love" in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again." We all loved her that way.
Caitlin Flanagan, author of the article in The Atlantic says, "Didion is the writer who expressed most eloquently the eternal-girl impulse, the one that follows into adulthood: the desire to retreat to our room, to close the door, to spend some time with our thoughts and feelings." And Flanagan remembers Joan Didion's words on Joan Baez, another Joan who captured us and held on to us during those times. "Above all, she is the girl who 'feels' things, who has hung on to the freshness and pain of adolescence, the girl ever wounded, ever young." Joan D on Joan B; Caitlin on Joan D. Joan Baez, Forever Young.
But Caitlin, in reviewing Joan Didion's latest book Blue Nights and talking with contemporary critics says, and I so painfully quote:
"Ultimately Joan Didion's crime - artistic and personal - is the one of which all of us will eventually be convicted: she got old. Her writing got old, her bag of tricks didn't work anymore." My oh my. Caitlin Flanagan has a bit of the Joan Didion in her ability to penetrate the heart directly. Penetrate. Pierce. Convict.
I can still see the moment, can capture the picture of me, leaning against the table in the University classroom, hair long, jeans fairly tight, teaching "On Going Home." Joan is writing about returning to her parents' home with her baby daughter; her husband a bit bewildered by and estranged from this family, the 'old' home that is Joan's. Joan writes, "I fall into their ways, which are difficult, oblique, deliberately inarticulate. Not my husband's way. We talk in code about people in mental hospitals and being arrested for drunk driving..."
You will understand these sentences soon enough, I thought, but didn't say to the students. You, too, will deliberate where 'home' is, will fall into old behaviors when you open those trap doors soon enough.
I hear myself, wrapped in enthusiasm, hands waving, words tumbling out, refer to Joan's prose, saying 'no vue'' instead of 'new vo' for neau voux.' An older male student does an immediate 'gotcha' on that, but I keep going. I spare two syllables for 'sorry' and fall back into the essay immediately.
The essay is still used as an example of great prose in writing classes, but it's seen as a period piece, a piece about the anti-war movement, changes in culture, etc. It's all that too, but to many of us, especially women, it was about the contradictions, the pain, the nuances of family and home.
My old, old copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, blue cover, is long gone to some library's used book sale. Maybe I'll buy an old copy on Amazon's used books. Maybe I should read something more by Caitlin Flanagan, whose essay on Didion smacked me on the side of the face with its prose.
My Favorite Joan Didion quote from Slouching:
"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4:00 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends." Amen.

Procrastination

2012-01-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

I always play this little game at the first of the year; I don't count the new year as beginning until the week of New Year's Eve and Day is gone. So, this year, January 8th is the day for me to honor a resolution or two.
I keep reading and having conversations about the differences in 'quality' of resolutions, of firmness, of ability to stay resolved. I do like the difference between the results resolution and the action resolution (I know, all that business jargon ends up everywhere).
So a Results Resolve would be: I will drink more water, otherwise known as hydrating in fancy circles.
The Action Resolve would be: I will drink a glass of water in the morning when I wake up and one before I go to bed....and anytime in-between, of course.
Results Goal: I will be more patient in the new year.
Action Goal: I will breathe slowly three times before saying, 'drive faster,' 'east slower' 'get out of my way,' etc. I don't think that one is going to fly.
There's always the food thing. Give up, cut back, slow down, eliminate, cut, add, subtract, chew, swallow more or less, refrain from, stop thinking about.... Refrain from eating gummy bears or olives? Too many choices.
But I need some big goal, I think. Guess it's Ann's walking into Libya on this pilgrimage that has me re-assessing my goals. Really, what have I done of significance in the last 98 days? Name four things, I dare you.
I still have a few days before nailing down the big resolution. What if I decided to write a page of fiction every day? or chronicle some family history, or? Stay tuned, and, in the meantime, I'd love to know what you resolve to do or not do.

Hurrah! Libya

2012-01-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

OK...So an almost resolution for this year's blog was to not be so derivative - to not post so many other people's postings. But here we are, two posts into the new year and I'm doing a copy and paste. But it's such a good one. Ann (winterpilgrim.blogspot.com) made it to Libya, the shores of Tripoli, and was granted a visa.
You just have to read her entry - so uplifting, so heartfelt, so hopeful for the Libyan people. I've been smiling most of the day, just thinking about the triumph of the visa. Well, the rest of the day I've been thinking about the scam artist who is causing me troubles. I needed this reminder that most of the world is populated with good people. Hope this entry makes you smile also, and feel a bit more hopeful about peace among people.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Day 96 To the Shores of Tripoli!

And I'm in =)
Lots of negotiations at the border, hours and hours of champion-building, finally, an unrestricted stamp in my passport free to travel through Libya for up to 3 months. I'm one happy pilgrim. The people have been terrific - scores stopping to take their photo with me, happier to find out I'm an American. All the men telling me 'I'm your brother' in a warmly protective manner. It's been terrific. The only trouble has been getting internet service as the country transitions from free service for all to privatized capitalism. So, I apologize for the delayed update. I've been walking for three days, mostly along the quiet beach, popping out to the road from time to time, but to do so is to be politely and tactfully approached for a photo op. People calling out to me 'welcome to Libya!' 'thank you for coming!' 'tell the world we're free!'. Really, though I've only got a minute here on an i-phone, it's been a grand three days... yes yes yes, I'll be prudent in the unpopulated stretches, but be assured civil order exists, no violence, calm commerce, everyone's getting on with life. I'll try to update at least once a week, but the reliability of the internet service isn't a sign of bad tidings, just positive transition. Happy New Year!

Healthy, Happy, Hopeful

2012-01-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

The 3 H's of 2012, thanks to Cheryl Curtis. I'm feeling all three right now and hope you are also.
As many of you know, a year ago today I was incredibly unhealthy, woefully unhappy and not hopeful of making it to my April birthday. Surprised myself and lots of other people, and am here a year later, feeling great.
It's been a strange segue into the new year. Spent Christmas week in Florida again this year, with family, and more than made up for last year. As they say, 'A good time was had by all.' Fabulous family, family friends, food and festivities. And some pretty great gifts. Watched Emma and Colin ride the waves on boogie boards and graduate to stand-up surfing for a couple of minutes. Engaged in a family card game that would have been a first-rate sit com had someone been there with a camera. Didn't matter that the stakes were wooden skewers, chocolate Santas, fake candles and bells - something about the mere notion of winners and losers stirs our individual juices into a frenzy. Family feud over chocolate Santas? You bet. And to make it even more ridiculous, some of us had eaten our chocolate Santas, and craftily re-shaped the Santa tin foil into appearing to still have that chocolate man tucked inside.

Back to CO for new year's eve and new year resolutions. No resolutions yet. I want something specific, but keep coming up with generalities. Should I stop eating so much bread or give up fake food? I think those are leftover Lenten ideas from long ago. I actually have two resounding New Year Resolution victories: many, many years ago I gave up smoking for NYE and never smoked a cigarette again. Many years ago I gave up cheese for the year. Cheeseless and cheesy for a year. But that's it.
Just one thing on the table for this year: pay closer attention to my checkbook and bank accounts. In November, you may remember, someone somehow made a copy of my credit card (which was never out of my hands) and scammed over $2000 around the country all to something called PILOT.
In December, I was so busy looking for PILOT on my statement that I missed the fact that someone cashed a significant check of mine twice - once in November and the same check (I swear..I have the photocopies sitting here from my bank statement) in December. Don't know how the bank let that one slip by. Ironically, I didn't notice the big hit to my checking account because (again, I swear) on the same day as the check hit my account for a second time, I transferred $$$'s from my savings account into my checking account to make sure I could manage the holidays. And it was one of those transfers that I really didn't want to register in my brain, as it was not terribly responsible, so I didn't. But this morning it all came back to me.
Stay tuned for more on this auspicious beginning of 2012. Speaking of staying tuned, should we tune in to the Iowa primary tonight? More on that also.
Hope you've left behind anything that didn't bring joy to you last year, and have your eyes on joy for this year.

Just a year ago

2011-12-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

Just a year ago, I came back from India to get ready for Christmas in Florida. I returned four days earlier than Roscoe, in order to do some last-minute shopping, get my hair colored after four weeks away, and generally rest up to be ready for a good time with my energetic family all coming to Del Ray.
India had been glorious, especially Dharmasala and all our Tibetan, Kashmiri and Indian friends.
On the flight back, many hours and several time zones later, I developed a small stomach ache. 'Delhi-belly,' I thought. Better to have it now than in India. Got home and twenty four hours later, I still had that stomach ache - no relief, nothing - so I stayed with it. Had two neighbors for dinner, an arrangement made prior to the trip) and couldn't eat a thing, could barely look at the food. Food was from Whole Foods, something I had picked up on my way for that all-important hair color. The hair stylist and I had agreed that I was sick. But who has time to be sick the week before Christmas? I slept in my winter jacket that night, with blankets wrapped around me. Next morning, still no relief from the stomach ache. Oh, if I sat quietly or even crawled from one room to another, I felt fine. It was a tad odd to crawl from one room to another wrapping presents and putting them in suitcases, but I managed and thought I felt better. 'I'm beating this thing at last,' I thought. Roscoe returned from India, dropped off one suitcase and picked up his packed suitcase for FL. No down time. Turn around and go.
Flash to Florida. Fabulous rental house, fabulous food, fabulous family. Feast and frolic on Christmas Eve, and up early on Christmas morn to see if Santa Claus had found Emma and Colin in Florida. Wise man that he is, he had. More fun, more stories, a meal fit for kings and queens. I took a couple of naps on Christmas Day, complaining about that Delhi belly. Out of nowhere, at least to me, my family members came, one by one, into the bedroom giving reasons why I should go to the emergency room and see a doctor. Basically, to quiet the intense, persistent, indomitable members of my family I agreed.
Most of you know the story: No Delhi Belly at all. Stage IIIc Ovarian Cancer, collapsed colon and more. As good, no, miraculous, luck would have it, a well-known gynecological oncologist was there to do my surgery.
My family rarely left the hospital while they were there. Not until mid-late January was I to walk out the Del Ray Hospital door. When I left Del Ray for good, it was back to CO for chemo and all the rest.
That's more than enough for details. But I'm here to say I'm feeling fabulous, no evidence of disease at the moment, my hair has grown in a funky white grey, pixie style. Friends and family have been rock solid the whole time. Feeling as good as I've ever felt.
So, on this anniversary of what I call my year-long journey, I'm taking a sabbatical until January 2012 from this blog. Going to Del Ray Florida once again with my family -- we're all going to try to do it better this time.
There's enough gratitude in my cells today to keep the world going for a while. Gratitude, Peace, Grace, Love. I wish it all for you. See you in the new year.

Intellect and Politics?

2011-12-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

Seriously. Been trying to think about how to focus the posting today. After all, Havel (one of my all time heroes) died yesterday. Today we read the Kim Jong Ili in North Korea has died and his son Kim Jung Eun will replace him. The Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq are mad-dancing around power, and the nephew of the King of Saudi Arabia just invested 3 million in Twitter (no problem with women tweeting as they drive, because they can't drive in S.A.), mad-dancing in Egypt. But the biggest mad-dance around power between seems to be between the Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. of A. An Intellectual in Politics? Only Vaclav Havel comes to my mind. To me, the article is brilliant. Havel understands the potential good and potential harm that can be done by an individual, especially in politics. If I didn't know he was dead, I would swear this article was written this morning instead of thirteen years ago. RIP Poet, Playwright, Politician.

The Intellectual and Politics

By Vaclav Havel
Václav Havel, who died on December 18, was that rare intellectual who, rather than forcing his way into politics, had politics forced upon him. In 1998, while serving as President of the Czech Republic, he offered the following reflection on the benefits and dangers of his career path.
Does an intellectual – by virtue of his efforts to get beneath the surface of things, to grasp relations, causes, and effects, to recognize individual items as part of larger entities, and thus to derive a deeper awareness of and responsibility for the world – belong in politics?
Put that way, an impression is created that I consider it every intellectual’s duty to engage in politics. But that is nonsense. Politics also involves a number of special requirements that are relevant only to it. Some people meet these requirements; others don’t, regardless of whether they are intellectuals.
It is my profound conviction that the world requires – today more than ever – enlightened, thoughtful politicians who are bold and broad-minded enough to consider things that lie beyond the scope of their immediate influence in both space and time. We need politicians willing and able to rise above their own power interests, or the particular interests of their parties or states, and act in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity today – that is, to behave the way everyone should behave, even though most may fail to do so.
Never before has politics been so dependent on the moment, on the fleeting moods of the public or the media. Never before have politicians been so impelled to pursue the short-lived and short-sighted. It often seems to me that the life of many politicians proceeds from the evening news on television one night, to the public-opinion poll the next morning, to their image on television the following evening. I am not sure whether the current era of mass media encourages the emergence and growth of politicians of the stature of, say, a Winston Churchill; I rather doubt it, though there can always be exceptions.

To sum up: the less our time favors politicians who engage in long-term thinking, the more such politicians are needed, and thus the more intellectuals – at least those meeting my definition – should be welcomed in politics. Such support could come from, among others, those who – for whatever reason – never enter politics themselves, but who agree with such politicians, or at least share the ethos underlying their actions.
I hear objections: politicians must be elected; people vote for those who think the way they do. If someone wants to make progress in politics, he must pay attention to the general condition of the human mind; he must respect the so-called “ordinary” voter’s point of view. A politician must, like it or not, be a mirror. He dare not be a herald of unpopular truths, acknowledgement of which, though perhaps in humanity’s interest, is not regarded by most of the electorate as being in its immediate interest, or may even be regarded as antagonistic to those interests.
I am convinced that the purpose of politics does not consist in fulfilling short-term wishes. A politician should also seek to win people over to his own ideas, even when unpopular. Politics must entail convincing voters that the politician recognizes or comprehends some things better than they do, and that it is for this reason that they should vote for him. People can thus delegate to a politician certain issues that – for a variety of reasons – they do not sense themselves, or do not want to worry about, but which someone has to address on their behalf.
Of course, all seducers of the masses, potential tyrants, or fanatics, have used this argument to make their case; the communists did the same when they declared themselves the most enlightened segment of the population, and, by virtue of this alleged enlightenment, arrogated to themselves the right to rule arbitrarily.
The true art of politics is the art of winning people’s support for a good cause, even when the pursuit of that cause may interfere with their particular momentary interests. This should happen without impeding any of the many ways in which we can check that the objective is a good cause, thereby ensuring that trusting citizens are not led to serve a lie and suffer disaster as a consequence, in an illusory search for future prosperity.
It must be said that there are intellectuals who possess a very special ability for committing this evil. They elevate their intellect above everyone else’s, and themselves above all human beings. They tell their fellow citizens that if they do not understand the brilliance of the intellectual project offered to them, it is because they are of dull mind, and have not yet risen to the heights inhabited by the project’s proponents. After all that we have gone through in the twentieth century, it is not very difficult to recognize how dangerous this intellectual – or, rather, quasi-intellectual – attitude can be. Let us remember how many intellectuals helped to create the various modern dictatorships!
A good politician should be able to explain without seeking to seduce; he should humbly look for the truth of this world without claiming to be its professional owner; and he should alert people to the good qualities in themselves, including a sense of the values and interests that transcend the personal, without taking on an air of superiority and imposing anything on his fellow humans. He should not yield to the dictate of public moods or of the mass media, while never hindering constant scrutiny of his actions.
In the realm of such politics, intellectuals should make their presence felt in one of two possible ways. They could – without finding it shameful or demeaning – accept a political office and use that position to do what they deem right, not just to hold on to power. Or they could be the ones who hold up a mirror to those in authority, making sure that the latter serve a good cause, and that they do not begin to use fine words as a cloak for evil deeds, as happened to so many intellectuals in politics in past centuries.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/intellectual-and-politics-1324306991. All rights are reserved.

Václav Havel, who died on December 18, was that rare intellectual who, rather than forcing his way into politics, had politics forced upon him. In 1998, while serving as President of the Czech Republic, he offered the following reflection on the benefits and dangers of his career path.
Does an intellectual – by virtue of his efforts to get beneath the surface of things, to grasp relations, causes, and effects, to recognize individual items as part of larger entities, and thus to derive a deeper awareness of and responsibility for the world – belong in politics?
Put that way, an impression is created that I consider it every intellectual’s duty to engage in politics. But that is nonsense. Politics also involves a number of special requirements that are relevant only to it. Some people meet these requirements; others don’t, regardless of whether they are intellectuals.
It is my profound conviction that the world requires – today more than ever – enlightened, thoughtful politicians who are bold and broad-minded enough to consider things that lie beyond the scope of their immediate influence in both space and time. We need politicians willing and able to rise above their own power interests, or the particular interests of their parties or states, and act in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity today – that is, to behave the way everyone should behave, even though most may fail to do so.
Never before has politics been so dependent on the moment, on the fleeting moods of the public or the media. Never before have politicians been so impelled to pursue the short-lived and short-sighted. It often seems to me that the life of many politicians proceeds from the evening news on television one night, to the public-opinion poll the next morning, to their image on television the following evening. I am not sure whether the current era of mass media encourages the emergence and growth of politicians of the stature of, say, a Winston Churchill; I rather doubt it, though there can always be exceptions.

Join NationofChange today by making a generous tax-deductible contribution and take a stand against the status quo

"Follow Project Syndicate on Facebook or Twitter. For more from Vaclav Havel, click here."

To sum up: the less our time favors politicians who engage in long-term thinking, the more such politicians are needed, and thus the more intellectuals – at least those meeting my definition – should be welcomed in politics. Such support could come from, among others, those who – for whatever reason – never enter politics themselves, but who agree with such politicians, or at least share the ethos underlying their actions. I hear objections: politicians must be elected; people vote for those who think the way they do. If someone wants to make progress in politics, he must pay attention to the general condition of the human mind; he must respect the so-called “ordinary” voter’s point of view. A politician must, like it or not, be a mirror. He dare not be a herald of unpopular truths, acknowledgement of which, though perhaps in humanity’s interest, is not regarded by most of the electorate as being in its immediate interest, or may even be regarded as antagonistic to those interests.
I am convinced that the purpose of politics does not consist in fulfilling short-term wishes. A politician should also seek to win people over to his own ideas, even when unpopular. Politics must entail convincing voters that the politician recognizes or comprehends some things better than they do, and that it is for this reason that they should vote for him. People can thus delegate to a politician certain issues that – for a variety of reasons – they do not sense themselves, or do not want to worry about, but which someone has to address on their behalf.
Of course, all seducers of the masses, potential tyrants, or fanatics, have used this argument to make their case; the communists did the same when they declared themselves the most enlightened segment of the population, and, by virtue of this alleged enlightenment, arrogated to themselves the right to rule arbitrarily.
The true art of politics is the art of winning people’s support for a good cause, even when the pursuit of that cause may interfere with their particular momentary interests. This should happen without impeding any of the many ways in which we can check that the objective is a good cause, thereby ensuring that trusting citizens are not led to serve a lie and suffer disaster as a consequence, in an illusory search for future prosperity.
It must be said that there are intellectuals who possess a very special ability for committing this evil. They elevate their intellect above everyone else’s, and themselves above all human beings. They tell their fellow citizens that if they do not understand the brilliance of the intellectual project offered to them, it is because they are of dull mind, and have not yet risen to the heights inhabited by the project’s proponents. After all that we have gone through in the twentieth century, it is not very difficult to recognize how dangerous this intellectual – or, rather, quasi-intellectual – attitude can be. Let us remember how many intellectuals helped to create the various modern dictatorships!
A good politician should be able to explain without seeking to seduce; he should humbly look for the truth of this world without claiming to be its professional owner; and he should alert people to the good qualities in themselves, including a sense of the values and interests that transcend the personal, without taking on an air of superiority and imposing anything on his fellow humans. He should not yield to the dictate of public moods or of the mass media, while never hindering constant scrutiny of his actions.
In the realm of such politics, intellectuals should make their presence felt in one of two possible ways. They could – without finding it shameful or demeaning – accept a political office and use that position to do what they deem right, not just to hold on to power. Or they could be the ones who hold up a mirror to those in authority, making sure that the latter serve a good cause, and that they do not begin to use fine words as a cloak for evil deeds, as happened to so many intellectuals in politics in past centuries.

Real Meaning of these Holidays?

2011-12-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

Without the Bill of Rights we probably wouldn't have this ability to blast our opinions around the world - or even to post someone else's opinions around the heavy globe. So, once again, I am grateful.
I've just started to do some serious wrapping of serious and not-so-serious presents so they can make their ways to various destinations before Christmas Day, December 25th. And there's a Chanukkah draydel to send , gifts for my favorite day, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day...and that's all after Bodhi Day and Diwali. In the rush of it all, keeping track, trying to get it just right, the meanings get so lost. I'm out of scotch tape, can't tie bows to save my soul, and hope my brothers really meant it when we agreed to exchange used books only this year. So feeling overwhelmed I took a time out for my e-mail and to post on this blog. Checked the e-mail first, and found myself the recipient of the perfect article about Christmas and the Holiday Wars. With the Iraq War wound down, I guess Fox has been pounding the news about the war on Christmas. Haven't kept properly apprised of this annual war, but got the drift from the following article. Glad I don't listen to Fox News - I'm against war and pretty sick of hearing about it. I don't care what images are in front, side, or back of a building, just getting weary of seeing those gigantic, blow-up decorations that look ready for Macy's Parade sitting next to McMansions. That's my gripe. But here's the article sent to me today.
Let's put it all aside, and celebrate the light that is shining down on us, from wherever it comes.

The Real War on Christmas...By Fox News

By Jim Wallis, Reader Supported News

15 December 11

ach Advent in recent years, around the time when those prefab, do-it-yourself gingerbread house kits appear on supermarket shelves, Fox News launches its (allegedly) defensive campaign commonly known as the "War on Christmas."

Fox News' "war" is designed to criticize the "secularization" of our culture wrought by atheists, agnostics, liberals, leftists, progressives, and separation of church and state zealots- i.e. Democrats. This irreligious coalition force is allegedly waging a strategic offensive on Christmas, trying to banish the sacred symbols of the season, denying our religious heritage, and even undermining the spiritual rubrics upon which our great nation is built.

Fox News positions itself as the defender of the faith and all things sacred. And Bill O'Reilly fancies himself the "watchdog" of Christmas.

Fox News' usual targets include shopping malls and stores that replace their "Merry Christmas" greetings with "Happy Holidays," and state governments that no longer call their official "Christmas" trees by their rightful name, or municipalities that ban any depictions of, or references to, the Christmas season in public places. Those who are attacked defend themselves, often claim that they are really religious too, and the perennial war is on.

But what we actually have here is a theological problem, where cultural and commercial symbols are confused with truly Christian ones, and the meaning of the holy season is missed all together.

The war on Christmas is really about what brand of "civil religion" America should have. The particular (read: biblical) meaning of Christmas, for Christians, has almost nothing to do with the media war.

What a surprise.

What is Christmas? It is the celebration of the Incarnation, God's becoming flesh - human - and entering into history in the form of a vulnerable baby born to a poor, teenage mother in a dirty animal stall. Simply amazing. That Mary was homeless at the time,a member of a people oppressed by the imperial power of an occupied country whose local political leader, Herod, was so threatened by the baby's birth that he killed countless children in a vain attempt to destroy the Christ child, all adds compelling historical and political context to the Advent season.

The theological claim that sets Christianity apart from any other faith tradition is the Incarnation. God has come into the world to save us. God became like us to bring us back to God and show us what it means to be truly human.

That is the meaning of the Incarnation. That is the reason for the season.

In Jesus Christ, God hits the streets.

It is theologically and spiritually significant that the Incarnation came to our poorest streets. That Jesus was born poor, later announces his mission at Nazareth as "bringing good news to the poor," and finally tells us that how we treat "the least of these" is his measure of how we treat him and how he will judge us as the Son of God, radically defines the social context and meaning of the Incarnation of God in Christ. And it clearly reveals the real meaning of Christmas.

The other explicit message of the Incarnation is that Jesus the Christ's arrival will mean "peace on earth, good will toward men." He is "the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace." Jesus later calls on his disciples to turn the other cheek, practice humility, walk the extra mile, put away their swords, love their neighbors - and even their enemies - and says that in his kingdom, it is the peacemakers who will be called the children of God. Christ will end our warring ways, bringing reconciliation to God and to one another.

None of that has anything to do with the Fox News Christmas. In fact, quite the opposite.

Making sure that shopping malls and stores greet their customers with "Merry Christmas" is entirely irrelevant to the meaning of the Incarnation. In reality it is the consumer frenzy of Christmas shopping that is the real affront and threat to the season.

Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let's just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.

Imagine Jesus walking into the mall, seeing the Merry Christmas signs, and expressing his humble thanks for how the pre- and post-Christmas sales are honoring to him. How about credit cards for Christ?

While we're at it, here's another point of clarification: The arrival of the Christ child has nothing to do with trees or what we call them.

Evergreens and wreaths, holly and ivy, and even mistletoe turn out to be customs borrowed from ancient Roman and Germanic winter solstice celebrations, assimilated and co-opted by the church after Constantine made peace between his empire and the Christians.

Now, my family loves our Christmas tree, but its bright lights and wonderful ornaments don't teach my children much about why Jesus came into the world. We do that in other ways, such as giving needed gifts - goats, sheep, and chickens and the like - to the poorest children and families of the world though the World Vision web site on Christmas Day. The goal is to make our sons more excited about the gifts they give than the ones they get, and it usually works. Last year, my boys sponsored a child in Ghana.

I have no problem with the public viewing of symbols from all of the world's religions at appropriate times in their religious calendars (which can actually be educational for all of our children) and believe that doing so is consistent with our democratic and cultural pluralism.

But I don't believe that respectfuly and publicly honoring those many religious symbols has changed many lives, for better or for worse. Much more important than symbols and symbolism is how we live the faith that we espouse. And here is where Fox News's war on Christmas is most patently unjust.

The real Christmas announces the birth of Jesus to a world of poverty, pain, and sin, and offers the hope of salvation and justice.

The Fox News Christmas heralds the steady promotion of consumerism, the defense of wealth and power, the adulation of money and markets, and the regular belittling or attacking of efforts to overcome poverty.

The real Christmas offers the joyful promise of peace and the hope of reconciliation with God and between humankind.

The Fox News Christmas proffers the constant drumbeat of war, the reliance on military solutions to every conflict, the demonizing of our enemies, and the gospel of American dominance.

The real Christmas lifts up the Virgin Mary's song of praise for her baby boy: "He has brought the mighty down from their thrones, and lifted the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away."

The Fox News Christmas would label Mary's Magnificat as "class warfare."

So if there is a war on Christmas it's the one being waged by Fox News.

Celebrate Bill of Rights

2011-12-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

In my rush to celebrate The Protestor as Person of the Year, I forgot to celebrate the end of the war in Iraq.It's just a tad difficult to celebrate the end of something so disastrous, so misguided, so so... and to know that it's not over for those living with PTSD or those who are no longer living. Don't know much about the Korean War, but do know the two wars of my years, Vietnam and Iraq, weren't wars that ended in victory. Ended, as Eliot would say, not with a bang, but a whimper.
BUT...today is a day for outright, vigorous celebration and gratitude. It's the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. 1791. Those folks (I know, those men) who came from England knew their history and knew what worked and didn't work in England, and from that knowledge and understanding labored over the Bill and created a document of beauty and brilliance. As Ken Paulson of the McClatchy-Tribune said in yesterday's Denver Post, "What does it say about American that we zealously celebrate our government's Declaration of Independence from another government and totally overlook the American people's Declaration of Independence from its government?"
It's a long story why we don't have a Bill of Rights National Holiday, but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate it. Short and sweet it was, ten amendments only. Oh, Almost tweetable (maybe an amendment at a time). Surely, in these times, we continue to test those amendments and come up safe and secure that we have those rights. Thanks to Occupy Wall Street and each and every person who honors the Bill of Rights daily. There are 27 amendments today, but those first ten are the finest, in my humble opinion.

Celebrate and celebrate often, Freedom of speech, press, religion, petition and assembly - and that's only the First Amendment. Here the ten are, just in case you forgot. Short and Sweet.

Original Ten Amendments: The Bill of Rights

Passed by Congress September 25, 1789.
Ratified December 15, 1791.

Amendment I

Freedoms, Petitions, Assembly

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

Right to bear arms

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

Quartering of soldiers

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

Search and arrest

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

Rights in criminal cases

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb, nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

Right to a fair trial

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

Rights in civil cases

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Bail, fines, punishment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

Rights retained by the People

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

States' rights

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Is Time on our side?

2011-12-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Yea for us, for the world, for everyone who felt 'Enough is Enough' this year. While my state of being hardly depends on Time Magazine's Person of the Year, this year's choice, The Protester, warms my heart.
It warms my heart that the desperate Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself on fire in the city square (alas) began the protest heard around the world. Such a stark, painful end to a life; such a call to action. Call it timing, context, the butterfly effect, a ripple - call it whatever you wish - but so it began. Tibetan monks have set themselves on fire (alas) over the past years to protest
China's treatment/occupation of Tibet, but the effect remained, for the most part, within the Tibetan and Free Tibet community.
From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street and Russian rebellion, protesters have been saying "Sorry: This doesn't work for us." For those of us who have protested in the past, this is such a welcome moment in history, a moment yearned for as the great divide between the 'have' and 'havenots' has grown wider, deeper, more apocalyptic by the nano-second.
This Year of the Protester decision doesn't mitigate Time's decision for its December 5th issue: the decision that the US get a cover page proclaiming the benefits of anxiety while the rest of the world has Revolution Redux on its Time cover. Did someone think a revolution wasn't going on in the U.S.? Or maybe someone thought we needed a shot of vintage Woody Allen angst for the holiday season. Or maybe the thought was that most Americans wouldn't know the meaning of Redux. Just saying it was a strange choice.
But from redux to redemption with The Protester as collective person of the year.

Witchcraft and Sorcery

2011-12-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

A Saudi-Arabian woman was beheaded just the other day for practicing witchcraft and sorcery. 'Twas the 79th execution in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The details in the reports are skimpy, so I don't know what this woman did to get her head lobbed off. And I never understand why the U.S. is so reluctant to call out the Saudi leaders for their violations of human rights? Is it the belief in a death penalty that binds the U.S. and S.A.? Probably not...probably has to do with oil. Oil makes strange bedfellows, doesn't it?
Over the years, I've tried to understand the Saudi attitude towards women and Saudi women's attitudes towards human - or women's - rights. They say that it's Saudi culture, not Islam, that has created a world in which women don't vote and women don't drive.
True, there's lots of excitement about the fact that Saudi women will be able to vote in 2015. Not sure why it will take four years to get the process in place, but it's a step forward.
As for driving, here's what the BBC reported on Dec. 2nd:

'A report in Saudi Arabia has warned that if Saudi women were given the right to drive, it would spell the end of virginity in the country.

The report was prepared for Saudi Arabia's legislative assembly, the Shura Council, by a well-known conservative academic.
Though there is no formal ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, if they get behind the wheel, they can be arrested.'

Saudi Arabia remains one of the few countries in the world to prevent women from driving. But the fact that women have to be accompanied by a male when they go out, makes it easy - families just hire male drivers for the women in the family. But driving and the loss of virginity? Who knew there was such a slippery slope? Before 1979, women were allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. I wonder if there are records or documents from prior to '79 that indicate driving led directly to sex, lots of sex. I also wonder what it was like to be 30 years old, driving around cities and towns for a couple of decades, and then, suddenly, having to give up that right. Having never been in the situation of having rights taken away, I can't imagine such a life. And probably just when it's time that the Saudi women can drive themselves to the voting booth, voting will occur on line. Such a life.

Watch out for all that sorcery and witchcraft being practiced out there.

REALITY?

2011-12-12T14:04:00.002-07:00

Did you ever wonder if imagination has anything to do with reality and if reality has anything to do with reality shows? I wonder more than I should.
Just read, from two different sources, that several big organizations have pulled their ads from a reality show called All-American Muslims. Some evangelical Christian group in FL started the protest, calling Americans not to be 'tricked' by the show that reveals Muslims to be just people - people like us. Oh no, it's a trick. They are all really Jihadists, planning to tear America down and rip away all our good American values. Well, Bank of America pulled its ads (upstanding, honest, moral and ethical institution that it is). So did Lowe's, the big get everything you need to build or fix store. Dell and Estee Lauder, along with McDonald's and WalMart are allegedly part of the 'pull our ads' now campaign, but haven't been able to verify those.
What do Bank of American and Lowe's think will happen to them if they place ads during a show about American-Muslims? Given Bank of America's values, bank fraud, and gross mortgage mishandling, I think The American Muslim is well rid of them. Between this bit of news and the fact that I live in a city that believes God and its quarterback are working hand in hand, I have no idea what reality is here in the USA.
BUT, I did take a post from Ann's (our Winter Pilgrim) blog from two days ago. Can't remember if I've updated you, but feel free to go to winterpilgrim.blogspot.com and read about her attempts to get into Algeria.
Ended up taking a ship back to Italy and then on to Tunisia. Don't know what will happen in Libya, but here's her description of being a solo pilgrim in Tunisia. I'll take my sense of reality of how people live and act from her. Beautiful.

Day 72: Pilgrim Wonderland

Just a quickie again (and on a French keyboard)

Back on the trail and loving it. It didn't take too long to exit the city noise and confusion for the farm fields and country lanes. As the sun was beginning to sink, I entered a village, sat down for a rest on a molded plastic chair in front of a small shop to give some thought to how to best find a place to sleep for the night. The solution presented itself. Stress-free. The small crowd that gathered in amazement took care of my needs. Nasrine, a very elegant and mature 11-year-old served as translator and hostess. It seems that outside the city, the generation people my age who grew up just after their independence, don't speak French. The current youth of Tunisia learn Arabic and French equally in school and English as the third language, and by the time they graduate high school at 18 learn Spanish and Italian additionally. Remarkable. I think Nasrine is at the head of her class.

Welcomed into the family home, in a short while a trip was made to the local police station to register the foreigner staying under their roof. Quite proud was the family to state and record their hospitality. Nice. They all took good care of me, sharing the family meal of macaroni and spicy tomato-chili sauce, olive oil, and bread, and pulling out another mattrass. Simplicity.

In the morning, side pockets full of snacks for the day, I came to Ouhdna, an archeological site of an evidently grand ville of Roman antiquity. I saw the columns on a hill in the distance and hiked across a fallow field to get there. An arena, work shops, apartments full of mosaics, a temple... tons of history at my feet. Workers chiseling away at their restoration projects shared their tea and bread with me during the short morning break. I left as a busload of Japanese tourists arrived.

The peacefulness of the quiet country lanes reintroduced me to pilgrim life. Village people call me to sit in the shade and have cold water or hot coffee... idyllic now as in the Roman times. Ah.

Posted by Winter Pilgrim at 18:44

Eighth Grade Memories

2011-12-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

As life would have it, just as I was reading and reflecting on the decision regarding the morning-after pill for girls/women, I received an e-mail from one of my best friends in the eighth grade and high school. Judy Haran from Rosedale Road. We had kept in touch during college and for a few years after and then drifted apart. I think we both might have attended two high school reunions - the early ones where one is focused on impressing everyone with heady accomplishments and perfect lives. Never did make it to the later reunions when people are honest to the bones, hoping for good health, and wishing the best for others.
I knew Judy had had some tragedy in her life, gone through some hards times, but moved on. That's all.
Anyway, the timing of her e-mail was exquisite. I remember walking up the hill from John Smith Drive, on to Ridgewood Road where Mary was waiting at the end of her driveway, strolling on down to Mimi's house and on to Rosedale Road to meet Judy. We might walk to the Center back to my house or on to Elizabeth Park in the summer. We did a lot of walking in the eighth grade, a lot of yakking about the future, potential boyfriends and our families. And what families we all had.
We'd walk, push our shoulders out, hoping some form of breasts would show themselves, and chant "We must, we must, we must develop our busts." So many weekends of exertion... then the occasional events in someone's bedroom where we'd measure our breasts with measuring tapes, hoping for growth. None of us wanted really huge breasts as we had already heard that Angela with the big breasts had gotten felt up at a Buena Vista skating party and Sandy of the even larger breasts wore huge thick sweaters to cover hers up. No, we just wanted 'B' size. And we wanted the bras that pushed those suckers up and out.
We went to a few make-out parties, but that was just about close-dancing to the jazz records one friend's very cool father had. We talked about the bases endlessly, and when or whether and with whom we'd go to first base, but we were just on the precipice then - hadn't quite fallen into or succumbed to surging hormones. We cared more about our circle pins and shetland sweaters than we did about sex.
I try to imagine us sitting in Judy's basement on Friday nights, eating popcorn, listening to her crazy dog bark, and us talking about birth control pills, the morning-after pill, or abortion. We were so not prime time.
High school changed all that, but most of us were far from the pill. That changed too, of course. Hard to imagine any of us, in our little group, facing our mostly Catholic mothers, asking to get a morning-after pill.
We would have had to get some surrogate mothers for that event. . . somebody's innocent aunt or not-so-innocent older sister. Glad to have missed that.
But that was half a century ago. Imagine that.

No Easy Answers

2011-12-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

Been reflecting on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' decision to not make the
morning-after pill available to girls/women under the age of 17. She overruled the FDA, which said the contraceptive should be available to people of all ages, without a prescription. Obama has backed her decision.
So the 16 and under crowd has to have a doctor's prescription before getting the morning-after pill.
I also read a blog post from 2009 about a mother bringing her daughter in for birth control pills at the age of 12, as the girl was sexually active. (I'll add that dialogue/post to the end of this).
I don't know what I think is right. Obviously, as girls mature (i.e. menstruate) earlier in this country than in the past, the potential for sexual activity and pregnancy at a younger age has increased.
What's a girls to do? What's the role of a caretaker, an aunt, a teacher, any family member or friend? Is one pill after intercourse safer, over time, than added years of taking the birth control pill daily? I don't know.
Apparently, about 50% of girls/women between the ages of 12 and 19 have had sexual intercourse. It's a puzzling statistic. And it seems to me that the difference between 12 and 19 is far more than sever years - it's seven years of explosive hormonal, physical and cognitive growth. How does all this play out? I know, there is the A word...teach Abstinence. Great ideal, but really? Nope.

So here's the excerpt from the doc's blog (Skeptical OB)
“We’re here for the Pill,” she (the mother) announced cheerfully.
“The Pill,” I (the doc)was shocked and it must have showed. “Who’s here for the Pill?”
The mother plowed ahead. “I brought my daughter to get the Pill. She’s sexually active.”
I turned to the daughter. She nodded her head slightly in affirmation.
“I’ve explained,” the mother continued, “that when you are sexually active, you always have to use protection, and the Pill is the best protection there is. That’s why I brought her myself.”
“Well,” I started tentatively, “the Pill is the best protection against pregnancy, but it doesn’t offer any protection against sexually transmitted diseases. Before we get to that, though, I’d like to talk a little more about sexual activity. I turned to the daughter again. “What grade are you in?”
“Seventh.”
“How old is your boyfriend and what grade is he in?”
“He’s 17 and he’s a senior in high school.”
“Yes,” the mother confirmed proudly, “she’s dating a senior.”
“Have you considered,” I ventured, “that might not be such a good thing?”
“What do you mean?” The mother was clearly annoyed.
“I mean,” I said, “that 5 years is a big age gap. There’s a big difference between a seventh grader and a high school senior.”
“So?”
“So, the needs and desires of a 17 year old boy are very different from the needs and desires of a seventh grader. A sexual relationship might seem like a good idea for a 17 year old, but it’s inevitably a bad idea for a 12 year old.”
“But she wants to date him,” the mother responded.
“Yes, she may want to date him, but that doesn’t mean that there might not be an element of coercion involved. Let’s think about this for a minute; what kind of 17 year old boy dates a 12 year old? It’s usually someone who has no success with girls his own age, and has to reach down to much younger children to have a sexual relationship.”
The mother was clearly growing angry. “But I thought you’d be impressed that I brought my daughter in for birth control,” she said, “My mother wouldn’t have done anything like this. She didn’t even tell me the facts about sex.”
“Sorry, I’m not impressed that you brought your sexually active 12 year old in for the Pill. I’m worried that someone is taking advantage of her.”
I kept looking in the direction of the daughter, but she made no response.
“We didn’t come here for your dating advice,” the mother replied heatedly. “Are you telling me that you won’t give her a prescription for the Pill?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. If her exam is normal, and she has no risk factors, I’m certainly going to give her a prescription. She’s sexually active and she needs to be protected from pregnancy. And I’m going to talk about condoms, too, since the Pill does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases.”
The mother was not mollified. She sat stonily through the rest of the interview and exam. When I finally wrote the prescription for birth control pills, she snatched it from my hand.
“Thank you,” she said coldly. “That’s what we came for. And by the way, the next time we want your opinion, we’ll ask for it.”

What's a generation to do?

Pearl Harbor Day

2011-12-07T16:23:00.000-07:00

December 7, 1985
"Well, this is my Pearl Harbor Day" my mother wrote in her first entry of a new journal. Turned out she had been to the doctor's office, referred immediately to a specialist, and was diagnosed with metastasized cancer. She was given four months, maximum, to live. Caught unaware, surprised, bombed out. Day of infamy.
According to her journal, she declared war on her enemy , all those bad cells in her system, but didn't have the strength to wage a winning war.
I didn't see her short journal until after she died, March 29, 1986. Those docs were right on target -four months maximum and the war was over.
My brothers and I didn't learn of her prognosis until Christmas night, after the holiday festivities were over.
Every Pearl Harbor Day I wonder what she was doing on THE Pearl Harbor Day. I try to imagine her, with me at seven-months old, perched on her lap, waiting for my father to come home from work. How did people respond to hearing the news on the radio, but having no visuals? I never asked.
Metaphors and images have such power over our lives (at least mine). Now, when I see the images from Pearl Harbor Day I don't think of the war first, but think of my mother. Then, I think of the war. Such a stark, yet profound use of language to confront reality: This is my Pearl Harbor Day.
In some way that I don't understand, the metaphor comforts me.

Timing is Everything

2011-12-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Tired but true cliche. . . timing does matter, and matters profoundly. It's a rare thing to get outside our own cultural context, to see what others around us can't or won't see.
For example, in 1952, homosexuality was classified as a form of insanity. The American Psychiatric Association declared it so. In 1953, President Eisenhower issued an executive order mandating the firing of anyone engaged in sexual perversion. Twenty years later, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association momentarily bowed its collective head and said, 'oh so sorry, we were wrong.' Just when things were looking up, along came HIV/AIDS and its association with homosexual behavior. Turned out that it wasn't a homosexual disease after all, not a blight sent by God to punish gays. What a half-century of wisdom was compiled.
Same gang of authorities declared alcoholism as a moral weakness in the '50's. Later declared it as a sociopathic personality disturbance. Even later, somewhere in the '80's, the collective wisdom declared 'alcoholism' out and declared there were two forms of alcohol-related diagnoses: alcohol dependence and alcohol disorder. Oh, one can image the committees set up to compare and contrast dependence and disorder.
Imagine being a twenty-year gay (whoops, homosexual) alcoholic in the mid-fifties. By all the authority vested in the approved and distinguished medical, political, religious and social organizations, you are declared insane, with deep moral weakness attached. How's that for timing? Your family is intelligent, well-read, and trying to help you. But they, too, believe you are insane (but can be fixed) and morally weak. Who are they to buck authority, to go against what is known to be true?
Oh, and for good measure, maybe you are 'Negro', as they said. For openers, you can't eat, sleep or urinate near anyone 'white.' And you sure are dumb.
Add that to your descriptors.
In the late fifties, my now deceased, but then troubled, brother was finally and officially declared a sociopath. Oh, and an alcoholic. Mid teens. For years, I scoured every sociology and psychology book I could find in the library to understand what that meant.'Charming,' yes. 'Egocentric,' yes (I had just become acquainted with Freud). But the concepts 'no conscience' and 'no sense of guilt' didn't work for me. Having been brought up Catholic and learning the difference between conscience (the science/reasoning thing) and conscious, I didn't get it. Did that mean he was born without a soul? How could someone not feel guilt? I couldn't believe that was true. I only got as far as believing that someone could not show guilt, but still feel it.
At any rate, that definition of sociopath has morphed into the anti-social behavioral disorder category. The past ten or so years have given us man, many disorders. Go forth and multiply, you Disorders.
With all that ticking in my head, I try to imagine what the unenlightened aspects of our cultural contexts are today. What do we NOT get, not understand, but believe we absolutely understand? What alleged disorders are not dis-ordered? How to get out of this timing, this cultural context and see the light?
That could lead us to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, but here's some good news. It doesn't - at least for today. Timing is Everything.

Giving Up or Letting Go?

2011-12-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

When is it time to let go? Is letting go or surrendering the same as giving up?
I was at a meeting this morning that included three women who had just made significant decisions about their lives. One had just decided to end her medical treatments and all drugs associated with the treatments and to go forward with naturopathy and prayers only. She was in survival mode, just choosing a new form of survival, a form that will allow her to follow her intuition and instincts, no longer having to adhere to what the 'professionals' declared or prescribed. Taking charger of her life.
The other two women had, independently, decided they were at peace with themselves and their worlds and were ready to go gently into that good night.
One woman commented that she had decided to go with quality rather than quantity. "Living in pain, propped up by cancer meds and pain patches is not a life of quality," said this one-time practicing physician. "I think I have been a good person and lived a good life. My eighteen year-old son has psychiatric problems and still needs a mom around, but I can't be of much help anymore."
"I am not giving up, but am letting go. There's a big difference." And I am going to Cabo San Lucas with my whole family for Christmas!" Taking Charge of her Life.
From another woman: "I find it so difficult to talk to people who keep telling me not to give up. I haven't given up. It's not a battle I am fighting, it's not a matter of trying harder. It's about coming to peace with the way things are. I am at peace." Taking Charge of Her Life.
Each woman in the group has her own story, stories filled with joy, rage, sadness, isolation, grace, and gratitude. Lots of frustration and fear, mingled with fear and hope. The women in Nicki's Circle, all having had ovarian cancer once or twice or more, or who are in treatment for the cancer right now understand deeply the difference between giving up and letting go. All taking charge of their lives. It's an honor to be in such a space.

World AIDS Day

2011-12-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

Occupied Relaxation with skill and ease last night. With that new found state of consciousness I made my way to a meeting this morning to discuss possible speakers for a Leadership Conference this coming fall.
My noon-time suggestion is this: find some way, some body, any body, real or virtual, even your alter-ego, and have a discussion of leadership, leaders, leadership practice or leadership theory. For a focused period of time, all energy is on going through one's memory bank thinking of positive people, people who have made differences (big and small), people who care. Stimulating and revealing. Oh, it might take a little digging, but you'll find a list that goes from the personal to the professional, from the unknown or quiet leaders to the most rambunctious.
My head is filled with names of people, some of whom I don't know, who have shown leadership in the world.

How perfectly timed, I thought, as this is World AIDS Day. Lots of Leadership has gone into promoting awareness, finding cures and finding acceptance and passion for people living with or affected by AIDS. You can go to 2015quilt.com and ad a piece to the AIDS quilt...or read Obama's speech this morning.Here's Obama's speech on World AIDS Day, as reported by ABC News.
Marking the 23rd anniversary of World AIDS Day, President Obama today announced a deepened U.S. commitment to fighting the pandemic, declaring “make no mistake, we are going to win this fight.”
“Today is a remarkable day. Today, we come together, as a global community, across continents, faiths and cultures, to renew our commitment to ending the AIDS pandemic – once and for all,” Obama said at a World AIDS Day event at George Washington University.
The president announced a realignment of existing funds to provide an additional $50 million to combat HIV and AIDS and set a new goal to help six million people get on treatment by the end of 2013, two million more than the original target.
Obama also urged countries that have committed to give money to the Global Fund to live up to their promises. “That includes China and other major economies that are now able to step up as major donors,” he said.
Over the last three decades, the global pandemic has claimed 30 million lives. While the rate of new infections is going down elsewhere, the president noted it’s not declining in America.
“The infection rate here has been holding steady for over a decade. There are communities in this country being devastated still by this disease. When new infections among young, black, gay men increase by nearly fifty percent in three years, we need to do more to show them that their lives matter. When Latinos are dying sooner than other groups; when black women feel forgotten even though they account for most of the new cases among women, we need to do more,” he said.
“This fight isn’t over. Not for the 1.2 million Americans who are living with HIV right now. Not for the Americans who are infected every day. This fight isn’t over for them. It isn’t over for their families. It isn’t over for anyone in this room. And it certainly isn’t over for your President,” Obama declared.
Today’s event, entitled “The Beginning of the End of AIDS,” was sponsored by the ONE and (Red) campaigns and featured remarks from Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, via satellite, and was attended by well-known activists, including U2 lead singer Bono and singer Alicia Keys.

Occupy Relaxation

2011-11-30T14:25:00.000-07:00

I try not to use this blog as a place to post my political views, irritations with the world, and bad attitude. But some days just seem to call out 'time for a rant.' So here it is.
Walking on the treadmill this morning, listening to Sugar Magnolia, Box of Rain, Start Me Up and other ancient tunes, I also had an eye on the television. The usual these days - Penn State, Syracuse, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney's hair, and yea or boo the banks (today the stock market seemed to be responding with an 'international yea day for banks.' Just watching all that made me happy to be listening to my IPod tunes instead of actually hearing the endless chatter from CNN. But then...just when I was going to concentrate solely on the music, I saw the streamer about the L.A. Police closing down Occupy L. A. Peaceful protesters and police, for the most part, but Occupy L.A. was dis-assembled, as they say. Thousand of police and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Was it really necessary? All those police officers getting overtime pay to round-up people sitting in the park, occupying and littering public spaces. For some reason, that news got me to pick up the pace on the treadmill, made me want to raise the incline, raise my heartbeat and sense of indignation. Maybe it was the fact that before leaving the house this morning I read about a Denver sheriff and US Sheriff of the Year being arrested for selling meth for sex. Why not send the police after people occupying and abusing positions of authority? How many US Sheriffs of the Year selling meth for sex equal how many Occupy villains? I could rant all day about the craziness of this all, but you don't deserve it and I have to find, once again, my glasses.
Luckily, I am ending this day with a yoga nidra at Karen Quinn's house. Yoga nidra doesn't put one to sleep, but does alter the consciousness enough that deep, deep relaxation takes place. So I am off to occupy relaxation.
Luckily

Limits

2011-11-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

Driving down a major road in Denver late this afternoon, trying to figure out if NPR had anything really interesting for my brain to ponder, I noticed a police car pull out of Walgreen's behind me. For a couple of seconds I waited for the red lights to start blinking, but nothing happened. Just paranoia. I had been driving slowly because I had just turned the corner on the light. I was good. Took a deep breath and turned the radio off.
Have you ever had a police car behind you for ten or so miles? Do you know how hard it is to stay under the speed limit for ten miles? Even harder than staying under the speed limit, is staying under it without putting the brakes on every ten seconds. I couldn't concentrate on that easy 'breathe in slowly and breathe out even more slowly' because I had to pay full attention to staying under 35 miles an hour for a long, long time AND keep my foot off the brakes.
. I understand the need for limits, but some limits are sillier than others. This particular limit, the slow slow down, allowed for endless time to look at the hundreds, maybe thousands, of monuments to dead people at Fairview Cemetery. This must be what eternity is like. So slow. Endless.
Finally the police car took a right turn, put his flashing lights on, and quickly exceed the speed limits in pursuit of an unsuspecting driver.
Speaking of limits, do you remember back in the day when 'the personal is political' - a rallying cry (both understood and, alas, misunderstood for the early Women's Movement? I think Herman Cain missed lots of the women's movement and especially that slogan. Is the personal political? Are there limits to what one can do and call personal and non-political? That's for you to answer. As for me, I think Herman Cain has probably never met a limit that applied to him.

Missed the Sales

2011-11-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

Ah, feels so good to have bypassed Black Friday, fill-in-the-blank Saturday and Sunday and, so far, not to have succumbed to cyber-Monday and Amazon. My boycotting has nothing to do with higher moral ground - in fact, it's probably the opposite. I don't like to shop, but I tend to buy things if I do go shopping.
I remember being with my grandmother and aunts, all dressed up with their hat and gloves, on the bus to Hartford and then to G. Fox and Company to browse. Floor after floor, just looking, admiring, commenting, but with no thoughts at all of buying. Pleasure was in the browsing. After morning browsing, it was off to Brown Thompson's basement diner for lunch, and then the bus back home. Maybe twice a year we would browse at Lord and Taylor's, and then have fancy cucumber sandwiches (the kind we assumed all wealthy people ate) for lunch. Adolescence ended my browsing the aisles.
Not sure I ever went through the 'shop til you drop' phase, but post-adolescence, it's always been shopping for some thing. So, not going to Black Days is just my way of not spending money. I am one of those suckers who looks at those items near the checkout line and identified said items as immediate gratifiers and then immediately gratify myself by grabbing whatever it is and purchasing it. Pitiful. So avoidance is merely protecting myself from myself.
But today I ended up walking by the mall on the way to the bank. In no less than ten minutes, one burly twenty-something male asked me for Fifty Cent or a Dollar. Thought he was asking me something about music. Not. Then one cheery Salvation Army woman greeted me, wished me all the best of everything and withdrew her smile and the bell when I didn't open my backpack. A young woman, looking ever so teen-like, asked me for some change, and, believe it or not, right around the corner another Salvation Army woman and I went through the same exchange I had just gone through. Why didn't I give anyone anything? I'm all about the places I want to give to, all about waiting for December 6th, Colorado givesday, and making contributions to the organizations on my little list. But it's the spontaneous giving that always throws me for a loop. I have to make a plan, carry food, gift coupons, or a certain amount of cash so I don't stumble and mumble through each of these encounters. Would giving money to strangers be any more foolish than giving money for products that promised to reduce wrinkles? If I ever decided to match foolish purchases with give away money, I'd be giving for a long, long time.

Gratitude

2011-11-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

Starting to feel gratitude, give thanks a day before we officially stop and give thanks. Here in Denver the sun is shining and the air is warm. Tricks one into thinking that maybe those early storms mean winter is past and we are moving right into spring. I know, I know. But one can hope.
Also feeling some gratitude for the fact that I have a dentist appointment at 3:30 this afternoon. Just a nudge of the beginnings of a toothache, but who wants that lingering in one's mouth when the day of warm, gooey pies is fast approaching?
Feeling loads of gratitude for all those generations, all those people who survived and those who didn't, who somehow sent me on the trajectory that is my life. I sure got here on the backs of a lot of people - poor people, oppressed people, angry, happy, sad, beaten down by devils and raised up by the angels of religion, myth, and ritual. Lots of gratitude going way, way back. And gratitude for the present. Beautiful family and friends. I am surrounded by big, booming, beautiful hearts. So many of them. Gratitude.
Taking the day off tomorrow to be in the world, to reach out a hand and heart. Taking the day off from technology. Getting myself ready to protest, to stay away from, and not be seduced by all the 'bargains' allegedly coming my way on Black Friday. Boycotting Black Friday and just going to hang around in the world. So, of course, I need a poem to explain why I am grateful, what my role is in this abundant world.
Being Thankful for Everything.
Messenger My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever. Mary Oliver

Food Products

2011-11-22T19:15:00.000-07:00

This is just an excerpt from a longer piece, but worth the read. It's crazy out there, at times, and someone has to see some of the irony in what's going on. Who would have thought that UCal - Davis would be the scene of such outrageous University police behavior? And why are the pepper spray perpetrators on administrative leave instead of being relieved of their jobs (and salaries)? Yes, the president/chancellor should be taking heat, and, depending on the circumstances, who knows if she shouldn't be taking the high or low road out of town?

Megyn Kelly and the benevolence of ‘food product’ pepper spray

By Alexandra Petri

In this image made from video, a police officer uses pepper spray as he walks down a line of Occupy demonstrators at the University of California, Davis, on Nov. 18. (Thomas K. Fowler - AP) There’s a reason this man is showing up in all the great artworks of history, pepper-spray can in hand, expression of utter, unmoved nonchalance firmly in place under the bulky helmet as he sprays protesters in the face.
He’s really a good Samaritan.
Some see in him a cop just doing his job. But I think that understates the positives. As Megyn Kelly sagely observed to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News last night, pepper spray is “a food product, essentially,” and it was thoughtful of him to share it with so many protesters. It’s like the miracle of the loaves and fishes again — so many nourished, from such a tiny can.
Given that pizza is a vegetable, I am sure that was at least a full day’s serving of something, which probably explains why the protesters winced and squinted and tried to get him to stop. “You are too kind,” they seemed to say, “but that’s already a full day of calories! Don’t turn me into the 1 percent who gets more than my fair share of the pepper products!” . . .

What times these are. Arab Spring is turning to Arab Winter, and watching Egypt and the protests are such a reminder of how fragile and unpredictable the journey to democracy is. So many people around the world are putting their lives, their incomes, their beliefs on the line in order to make the world a better place. With Thanksgiving around the corner, I'm just feeling gratitude for all the people who just keep on keeping on.

Autumn in New England

2011-11-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

Just two weeks ago, friends and family in CT were without any power at all. Trees had crashed down on wires, streets were actually closed for ten days, and Halloween was cancelled.
So I packed thick heavy sweaters, mittens and hats for the three-day weekend travel to West Hartford. Well, it was the perfect fall weekend. The only thing missing were leaves on the trees, but that allowed for blocks of shuffling through and crunching those big oak leaves, the maples and the elm. FEMA trucks were still around, and all weekend workers were downing split branches, uprooted trees and putting things back together. People seemed grateful - grateful for having survived endless days of cold, kids hanging around the house, and lack of showers. Looked to me as if everyone out raking and filling those huge bags with leaves had a smile on. . .
went to a soccer game at the Irish-American club and listened to those lilting voices and men chatting up the referee with their Irish brogues. People frustrated by the state's pitiful response to the national disaster winter storm pre-Halloween found some comfort in the fact that various executives of the utilities companies 'resigned.' Finished. A good finish, some modicum of justice, let people breathe a bit more freely.
It was the weekend of the West Hartford Conard-Hall football rivalry and the weekend of the annual Yale-Harvard football game. Boola Boola and all that, with the airport filled with fathers, grandfathers, and alum sporting Yale and Harvard sweatshirts and hats. Cider mills were open, people were crunching on apples, biking and hiking trails were filled. Walkers strolled in Yankees or Red Sox caps, and pumpkins decorated almost every doorstep in town. (I'm hoping these passive sentence constructions sort of pull the reader back in time, back to an imagined time that we have hopelessly romanticized).
All those saltbox, Cape, and colonial homes dominate the landscape; one as easily finds an insurance company or law firm in a colonial home along the main road as one finds a 'built in 1805' sign on another home. Played Pilgrim and Native Americans with Emma and Colin, watched my 20-year old niece burst into tears, saying something sweet about her father (my brother) at his surprise birthday party. So much love floating around at that party filled with old friends, newer friends, and families. Five generations and counting, and everyone with a story or two to reveal as the night went on. A sober house, a sober family, a sober party - with the exception of one woman. That's another story.
If I didn't know better, I would have thought Norman Rockwell had come to town, painted a late fall in New England scene, and left it for us to visit. Surprised Robert Frost didn't show up with a new ode to New England in the fall.

I and Thou

2011-11-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

Well, the 'I and Thou' is a bit of a bait and switch, as I've been thinking about Martin Buber today, but don't feel quite up to the task of discussing 'I and Thou' or other profound thoughts expressed by Buber. The world seems so much more 'I and It' as opposed to 'I and Thou' these days. It was in mulling over power and the fact that power seems to corrupt just about everyone who has a hand on the power button that my thoughts found their way to Buber. It appears that we objectify people, places and things more than ever, see a person as his or her ideology, not as a sacred other, a thou. That's the flow of thoughts that led to Buber.
So here we are with some words and thoughts from the famous Jewish philosopher.

Every morning I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.
We cannot avoid using power,

Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world,
So let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully.

Martin Buber "Power and Love" (1926)

Perhaps it is in loving powerfully that we can grab hold of power and use it wisely, but maybe not. Maybe Loving powerfully is ultimately corrupting to the lover or the beloved, but I'd like to think not. I love the lines, 'We cannot avoid using power,

Cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world . . '

Is it a human compulsion to use power to afflict the world? I hope not. But the line seems more true than untrue these days. Powerful poetry.

Now to another of Buber's famous lines, and one that I've been thinking about also, as I think about the pilgrims, the travelers, the sojourners I know. And as I think of myself, yearning to hit the road or air. Where to go and why? I love the following line, and I believe it to be profoundly and utterly true, whether we are going around the block, to the movies, a cowfield, or endless destinations around this world and others. I always come across or arrive at some place in my mind or body that wasn't on the itinerary or in my head. Always the secret is revealed when I am not looking or thinking.

Tomorrow I will be on planes to destination spot, West Hartford CT for a family visit. I'll see my beautiful grandchildren and many family members and friends at a surprise birthday party for one of my brothers. But I don't yet know the secret destination.

Happy travels, happy weekend.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Amen.

On the way to the forum

2011-11-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

Feeling pretty derivative today, taking Robert Reich's post from his blog and putting it here. But he writes so well and makes the point so clearly. In one of the world's on-going acts of irony, Reich gave his First Amendment speech - the Annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture - last night at Berkeley, standing on the spot honoring Mario Savio (surely you remember him from the Free Speech protests at Berkeley?). He has steps honoring him, the Mario Savio steps, in Sproul Plaza. Gave his famous speech calling for a sit-in that became famous around the world. Became a hero to the university in spite of the university. Funny how a little distance gives a new perspective to some folks.
At any rate, Reich's speech was to be inside, but it was decided to hold it outside so the Occupy Wall Street folks and others could hear it. Yes, funny things do happen on the way to the forum. All these years later, another call to Free Speech. Always been glad to have Reich on our side. Not surprising that he left politics for the academic world - where, so far, free speech is still valued.

Robert Reich (from Huffington Post blog)

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they're treated as public nuisances and evicted.

First things first. The Supreme Court's rulings that money is speech and corporations are people have now opened the floodgates to unlimited (and often secret) political contributions from millionaires and billionaires. Consider the Koch brothers (worth $25 billion each), who are bankrolling the Tea Party and already running millions of dollars worth of ads against Democrats.

Such millionaires and billionaires aren't contributing their money out of sheer love of country. They have a more self-interested motive. Their political spending is analogous to their other investments. Mostly they want low tax rates and friendly regulations.

Wall Street is punishing Democrats for enacting the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (weak as it is) by shifting its money to Republicans. The Koch brothers' petrochemical empire has financed, among many other things, candidates who will vote against environmental protection.

This tsunami of big money into politics is the real public nuisance. It's making it almost impossible for the voices of average Americans to be heard because most of us don't have the dough to break through. By granting First Amendment rights to money and corporations, the First Amendment rights of the rest of us are being trampled on.

This is where the Occupiers come in. If there's a core message to the Occupier movement it's that the increasing concentration of income and wealth poses a grave danger to our democracy.

Yet when Occupiers seek to make their voices heard -- in one of the few ways average people can still be heard -- they're told their First Amendment rights are limited.

The New York State Court of Appeals along with many mayors and other officials say Occupiers can picket -- but they can't encamp. Yet it's the encampments themselves that have drawn media attention (along with the police efforts to remove them).

A bunch of people carrying pickets isn't news. When it comes to making views known, picketing is no competition for big money .

Yet if Occupiers now shift tactics from passive resistance to violence, it would spell the end of the movement. The vast American middle class that now empathizes with the Occupiers would promptly desert them.

But there's another alternative. If Occupiers are expelled from specific geographic locations the Occupier movement can shift to broad-based organizing around the simple idea at the core of the movement: It's time to occupy our democracy.

Who could say it better? Certainly not I.

Moving Along

2011-11-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

"Most families, it seems, live multigenerationally in the same big house... ten children, more... everyone sleeps on foam mattresses under thick fleece blankets. I've stayed in many such homes by now, one more person always seems to fit in comfortably. I'm a pilgrim, a hajaa christiana... welcome."
The above quote is from friend Ann's post on her blog winterpilgrim.blogspot.com. If you aren't following her, I suggest you hop on her site once or twice a week. She's walked through Spain and Portugal and is now walking the Barbary Coast of North Africa. An extraordinary woman, she's making her way to Jerusalem, meeting new people and adventures along the way. She walks alone, belongings on her back, and relies on the kindness of strangers for food and bedding each night. She has walked through from Canterbury to Rome, from France to Spain, walked the Camino several times, made her way through Belgium, Germany, and trekked from Kyiv, Ukraine through Romania and on down to Petras, Greece during the winter. Before this trip, she walked from Denver to Mexico. Always relying on the kindness of strangers, and always finding the kindness. Never spent a night without food or a bed and often given the best bed, floor space or mattress by villagers. Never been in danger - well, if one doesn't count the occasional pack of dogs. All those miles and all those caring people.
What an antidote her tales are to what we read and hear about people, what an antidote to the fear that washes over us daily when we learn about sex scandals, human trafficking, religious and political wars, the greed that exists. Maybe we should all find a way to be pilgrims, to walk the spaces we inhabit with awe.
Maybe we all need to make the opportunities to find out the people who appear to be least like us, to have values not in adherence to ours, so we can learn how similar we all are.
For example, hardly did I realize it at the time, but years of teaching English as a Second Language to students at the University of Hartford was probably more life altering for me than it was for the students. This is a good twenty-five or so years ago, so it's what they call a lifetime learning experience.
Ali and Amar, from Iraq, loved and admired Saddam Hussein and his five year plan. They were full of praise for him as a leader. These were intelligent young men, an artist and a math major. Of course things change over time, but whenever Iraq and its politics come up, I remember these two wonderful men who sent me postcards when they traveled. I remember Nori and Hassan, from Libya, who were strong supporters of Ghaddafi. Beautiful, gentle men. Bibi, Waleed and Salem from Kuwait; Ali, Massood, and Reza, three brothers from Iran....and so it goes. Individual people. Beautiful people. Did we have some stark differences of opinion about the world, politics and religion? Of course. But that wasn't as important as what we shared - love of food, friends, laughter, adventure. Love of learning. We all made mistakes at times, made one another uncomfortable, but we got over it. For example, excited about taking the students to a typical New England county fair, I didn't take into account how truly disgusted they would be at the mere site of pigs in a pen. And we struggled over Ramadan, trying to find a way to revise the teaching schedule to accommodate the rituals, fasting, prayer, cooking and late meal during that hot, humid summer in Connecticut.
So I was blessed in the years to come, right up to the present moment, to be able to put a face - a person - in place when someone vented about the Muslim terrorists, the nations intent upon destroying the western world.
That's a long way of preaching that somehow we must all have the opportunity to see and know the kindness of strangers rather than the ideology of what appears to be the masses.
Ann reminds me of the goodness of people. And I'm not pretending to be Pollyanna... Not everyone is always in condition to be kind and gentle all of the time. But enough of the time, enough of the people are good. Just plain good. And we need ways to know and feel that fact. So thanks to you today, Ann.

Chimpanzees

2011-11-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

I copied this article from today's New York Times on line. Hope that is enough said so everyone will know I didn't write this. I haven't thought much about the ethics of doing lab research on chimpanzees. The article isn't as much about animals in captivity, (which is a whole other story), but about doing research on animals, especially chimpanzees. Is it right - and just - to use the animals close to us genetically for research to better human lives? Is it a question of 'what can we learn versus 'what should we do?' No easy or quick answers here.
So, to spare you the agony of my uninformed blather, I thought it better to read and just cut/copy/paste for you.
What do you think?

NEW IBERIA, La. — In a dome-shaped outdoor cage, a dozen chimpanzees are hooting. The hair on their shoulders sticks straight up. “That’s piloerection,” a sign of emotional arousal, says Dr. Dana Hasselschwert, head of veterinary sciences at the New Iberia Research Center. She tells a visitor to keep his distance. The chimps tend to throw pebbles — or worse — when they get excited.

Chimps’ similarity to humans makes them valuable for research, and at the same time inspires intense sympathy. To research scientists, they may look like the best chance to cure terrible diseases. But to many other people, they look like relatives behind bars.

Biomedical research on chimps helped produce a vaccine for hepatitis B, and is aimed at one for hepatitis C, which infects 170 million people worldwide, but there has long been an outcry against the research as cruel and unnecessary. Now, because of a major push by advocacy organizations, a decision to stop such research in the United States could come within a year. As it is, the United States is one of only two countries that conduct invasive research on chimpanzees. The other is the central African nation of Gabon.

“This is a very different moment than ever before,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States. “Now is the time to get these chimps out of invasive research and out of the labs.”

John VandeBerg, director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, one of six labs that house chimpanzees, agreed that this is “a crucial moment.” Any of several efforts by opponents “could be the cause of a halt in all medical research with chimpanzees,” he said.

The Humane Society of the United States and other groups pushed the National Institutes of Health to commission a report on the usefulness of chimps in research, due this year. The society also joined with the Jane Goodall Institute, the Wildlife Conservation Society and others to petition the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to declare captive chimps endangered, as wild chimps already are, giving them new protections. A decision is due by next September.

In addition, the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, now in Congress, would ban invasive research on all great apes (including bonobos, gorillas and orangutans). Representative Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican who is one of the bill’s sponsors, says it would save taxpayers $30 million a year spent on chimpanzees owned by the government.

Mr. Pacelle says that invasive research on chimpanzees is expensive, that there are alternatives and that chimps in research studies suffer painful procedures and isolation. “This is an endangered species that is closer than any other species genetically,” he said. “And we shouldn’t abuse our power.”

Dr. VandeBerg, on the other hand, says that stopping research with chimps would be a threat to human lives. “Any reduction in the rate of development of drugs for these diseases will mean hundreds of thousands of people, really millions of people, dying because it would be years of delay,” he said.

If human lives can be saved, Dr. VandeBerg said, “it would be grossly unethical not to do research” on chimpanzees.

There are 1,000 chimps housed in research facilities in the United States, including at the New Iberia Research Center. The center, part of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, occupies 100 acres in the heart of Cajun country about 130 miles west of New Orleans. It houses 360 chimpanzees, 240 of which belong to the university and 120 to the N.I.H., and more than 6,000 other primates, mostly rhesus macaque monkeys. It has faced accusations of chimp mistreatment in the past, and some violations of animal care standards were found, and corrected, according to Department of Agriculture inspections. The latest, in July, found some outdated drugs for the animals.

On a recent visit, some of the chimpanzees were in 34-foot-diameter geodesic domes, some in smaller outdoor cages, and some, less than 10 at that time, said Dr. Thomas J. Rowell, the director of the center, were in active studies and held in indoor cages about 6 feet by 5 feet and 7 feet high, one chimp per cage. The physical procedures involved in the studies, he said, involved injections, blood samples and liver biopsies, the latter done under sedation. . . .

Using captive chimpanzees for research in this country dates to the 1920s, when Robert Yerkes, a Yale psychology professor, began to bring them into the country. During the 1950s, the Air Force began to breed chimps for the space program, starting with 65 caught in the wild. Chimps were also bred for AIDS research in the 1980s, which met a dead end. By the mid-1970s, support for preservation of threatened species had grown, and the importing of wild-caught chimps was prohibited. In 2000, a federal law was passed requiring the government to provide for retirement of chimps it owned after their use in experiments was over, and Chimp Haven opened near Shreveport, La., to care for these chimps and others.

It was an attempt to bring some semiretired chimps at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico back into the research pipeline that prompted part of the recent surge of opposition. The N.I.H. wanted to move about 200 chimps it owned from Alamogordo to the San Antonio center, which is part of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute. The Humane Society lobbied to prevent the move, and the N.I.H. relented, asking the Institute of Medicine, an advisory board, for the report on chimps in experimentation this year.

Chimp Haven, one potential retirement destination, now has 132 chimps on 200 acres of pine woods. Chimps live in a variety of cages and enclosures, including concrete-walled play yards of about a quarter of an acre, open to the sky, and two forested habitats, one four acres and the other five, bounded by a moat and fences. But chimps at research centers might not move at all, even if research is stopped. They might simply stay where they are, exempt from invasive studies.

Whatever the decision, both researchers and advocates know that chimps are only one tiny piece of animal research, one part of a bigger debate.

Kathleen Conlee, senior director for animal research issues at the Humane Society, says that the current discussion about chimps points the way to the future. “This,” she said, “is the kind of rigorous analysis we should be applying to all animal research.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 14, 2011

A previous version of this article gave an incomplete name for a bill now in Congress. The bill is called the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act of 2011.

Veteran Danny Boy

2011-11-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

I don't personally know many veterans. I know lots of people who avoided wars, protested wars, had kids so they wouldn't have to go to war, but not many real people who went to war.
But I knew my uncle Dan when he came home from war --- well, not just home from war, but home from being a prisoner of war for four years.
Uncle Danny was my father's brother; he went off to war when I was one-year old. When he returned home, it was to a two-family house in Hartford CT. My father, mother, three brothers and I lived downstairs, and my Grandmother and two aunts lived upstairs. I had watched my grandmother saying the rosary every day all the time we lived in that house, all the time Uncle Danny was a prisoner of war. She went from window to window in the living room, and then repeated the cycle until the rosary was completed. The windows were close together, but she always knelt in front of a window, prayed, and then walked to the next window, knelt and prayed. The room was small, so she must have gone round several times for each rosary. My aunts had an old record player and Grammy played 'Oh Danny Boy' all the time, over and over.
Such joy and weeping when we learned Uncle Danny was alive and coming home. I was only 4 or 5, didn't understand all of it, and tried to imitate the feelings and emotions coming from my grandmother, father and all the others. Uncle Danny was coming home. I had only known him in pictures, now I would see him for real.
The morning of Uncle Danny's arrival we were all elated; by evening elation had given way to confusion. We were told that Uncle Dan did not want to talk to the kids and didn't want to answer questions or talk with anyone about the war.
I didn't get it. I had questions. For example, we were told that the only reason Uncle Danny survived the Bataan Death March and prison camp was because he had always eaten his oatmeal. That made him strong and able to endure all those days without food. We were told that he and the other prisoners would have to fight over the garbage left by the Japanese. Oh, we were full of stories and questions.
I hated oatmeal and wanted to know exactly how much he had to eat as a kid in order to survive. I wanted to know if he had killed anyone or if he had seen lots of dead people. I wanted to know everything....I learned nothing in his first years back home. Truly, I learned nothing much at all, ever. He never spoke about the war when he began talking with us. And I knew if I asked him anything I would go to hell. No confession, no prayers or rosaries, no forgiveness at all if I asked him about the war. I never did.
He began playing the record with 'Oh, Danny Boy' and other Irish songs, and we were told that was a sign he was getting better. Uncle Danny ended up marrying a nurse from the Veterans' Hospital and made a career of being a prison guard in the maximum security prison in CT. There's more, but that's enough. We're thinking of you on this Veterans Day, this 11-11-11, and going to pull up a youtube rendition of Oh Danny Boy.
Hope you are resting in peace, Uncle Danny.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

2011-11-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

For now, the net stays neutral! No special deals, no corporations gobbling up the bandwidth. Today, the Senate voted against the GOP initiative. A vote we can finally like. In a bipartisan vote (who would have thought), the initiative to help veterans get jobs was passed. Seriously, who was going to raise his or her hand and say "Nope. No jobs for vets"? A no-brainer. Maybe all the politicians are too busy watching the Penn State fiasco and busy being grateful that this isn't their scandal.
But what a scandal it is. Everybody is wrong and nobody is right, people care far more about a football coach who has made loads of money for Penn State being fired than they care about the firing of the University president, under whose leadership the academic reputation of the institution improved immensely.
I'm for them all getting fired. Take a good look at any children, ages 7 - 12, you know or see walking to school every day. Imagine them being forced to have anal sex with an adult in power, male or female. If you are like me, you can't stand to imagine such a scene for more than three seconds. Imagine one of those kids up against the shower wall with some older man. Imagine what you would like to do to the man you visualize.
Also imagine a janitor or grad ass't. coming upon those scenes and deciding what to do. If you've ever been in a position of powerlessness, you'll understand why they didn't go to the police after none of the higher administration did so. Imagine knowing you would immediately be fired and blackballed anywhere you went later on. I don't get people not understanding why the grad assistant went to his father, and not the police. I think it was a thoughtful decision, just as going to Paterno with the information after the father-son talk. What happened after that, I don't know. And I think I don't want to know.
Was anyone visualizing those young boys? See: Catholic Church response to pedophiles. This isn't about what's legal or illegal; it's about trying to salvage children.
Talking to some people at DU last night, we all felt pretty humble and grateful. I'd bet my house, retirement, and anything else I own on DU's athletic director, Peg Bradley Doppes, making the right moral decision in such a situation. And both Chancellor emeritus Dan Ritchie and Chancellor Coombe would be right there backing up Peg.
What is going on? In politics we have Herman Cain; in academia we have Penn State. Everyone is wondering where the economic leadership is. Now we're also wondering where the moral leadership is.

From the Sublime to the Inane

2011-11-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

The sublime: Sister Antonia's funeral today at Saint Dominic's Church. The church was a study in true diversity: people of all ages, ethnicity, socio-economic means, physical conditions, languages, gender, and religion or non-religion peppered each row.
We viewed photos of Sister Antonia marching with MLK in Selma, in Washington, at Rocky flats and countless other places where the call to social justice needed to be heard. We saw her working with indigenous people in Mexico and the United States. Everything she did was within the context of learning about and from other cultures to help people to become self-sufficient, not to 'Americanize, Catholicize, or transform them from their culture to ours. A wise soul.
After the celebration of her life, I met a Mexican man and his five children who wanted to know where Sister Antonia's ashes were, so they could all go visit. Apparently, the wife of this man and mother of the five children is incarcerated in Pueblo and Sister Antonio had been assisting the whole family in a variety of ways.
In the church basement, three large tables, filled with tortillas, beans, rice, chips and chicken dominated the scene. Another large table of rich multi-layered white and chocolate cakes were off to the side. Nothing needed to be said, but it was clear that any leftover food would not go down the garbage disposal, but would be put to good use. Rest in Peace, Sister Antonia. Sublime.
Inane or Ridiculous: On the way home, still pondering the beauty of the celebration, I stop in an upscale, tony sort of place, order a chai, and use the bathroom. As I walk into the stall, another woman enters and goes into the bathroom next to me. I close my door and sit. Suddenly I see a stream of fluid coming from her area.
She sighs and I hear her unlock the door. She comes back with wet paper towels and begins cleaning the floor. I sit in my little enclosure, waiting for her to leave. Somehow, I think she would prefer not to see me. But she cleans, and she scrubs, and probably uses most of the paper towels by the sink. I need to get on my way, so I finally unlock my little space and opens the door. She looks directly in my eyes, paper towels in both hands, and smiles at me. By the time I get back to my hot chai it is cold. Both the tale and my telling of it strike me as inane and ridiculous. I need to get back to the sublime.

Net Neutrality

2011-11-08T17:01:00.003-07:00

This week, Senate Republicans will try to overturn the FCC's rules preserving Net Neutrality which guarantees a level playing field for all websites and Internet users. Net Neutrality ensures everyone has a voice on the Internet and no one can be silenced simply because they can't afford to pay. (In Denver, E-mail markudall.com to sign the petition for net neutrality.) Everyone else, try to find a place or appropriate person to contact and petition for net neutrality.
Twenty-four hours ago I posted a tribute to a woman who spent her life working for fairness, equality, and social justice. Sister Antonio lived her life to help others. Today I'm focused on a world where people want to increase the distance between the have and have-nots; to make sure that the wealthier have access to a better communication system than the less wealthy. Oh, the less wealthy can have access, but not as much speed. Have to slow those suckers down or they will think they're as worthy as the wealthy.
And what a shame that would be. You can occupy our cities, but not our bandwidth.
Oh, and while you're at it, trying contacting your local representatives and politicians about dealing with the drug crises. No, not the vicodin and percocet drug addictions. I'm talking about the drug shortage crises. Yesterday, I talked with a woman who can't get the chemo treatment best for her ovarian cancer because the physician can't get the drug; in this morning's paper there was an article about a woman's treatment that was stopped midway because the drug isn't available. Diana deGette, here in Denver,is supporting a bill that says physicians, hospitals, etc. must receive a six-month notice of a drug that is about to become unavailable. Will contacting local representatives, using the political path, lead to any changes in the net proposal and the drug crises? I don't know. What would Sister Antonia do?

Criminal Extremist

2011-11-07T14:25:00.001-07:00

Sister Antonio Anthony was named a criminal extremist by The Denver Police in 2002. She was 73 years old, a Franciscan nun. Oh so dangerous
In 1996 she co-founded the Chiapas Coalition to help indigenous people in Mexico's southernmost area.
Her police file indicated that she thought and said the uprisings in Chiapas were, in part, die to global financial policies. nasty nun...no wonder the police kept a file on her.
Flash to 2011: Sister Antonia and Nora Jacquez co-organize the Living Economy Group. knowing Nora, but not Sister Antonia, I join the group. Am crazy about Sister Antonia right from the start. Immediately I sense that she 's one of those religious people who knows the secret. There aren't many people who seem to know what the secret is. You can tell by the twinkling eyes, the smile, and the seductive chuckle. The Dalai Lama knows the secret, so does thich Nat Hanh. So did Sister Pauline, a medical missionary, and my aunt. You probably know a few yourself. The ephemeral smile and unpredictable Chuckle, wrapped in and motivated by a profound, understated aura of holiness give them away.
Every monthly meeting of the group, she smiled, chuckled, provoked us to see the grave social injustices of the present economy; every meeting she'd have new readings, new websites. Every meeting this fall she'd press us toward action. She was the first one from the group to go to Occupy Denver, the first one with a bag of apples, a heart of prayer, and a list of questions to learn what the occupiers wanted and needed. That criminal extremist is really smiling now, but those of us who know her are not
She died this past weekend at the age of 82. She was driving home from mass, and her car was hit by another. She died, another sister is in critical condition.
During the night she asked that all the tubes, etc. Be unplugged. AppArently, she had made it clear to family and friends she wanted to go this way. Didn't want medical dollars to be spent on her when so many others were in need. What an extremist.

Remote

2011-11-04T16:20:00.000-06:00

No, not far away, secluded or aloof. The Remote Control. Where was Steve Jobs when the remote control for television was being put together?
Comparing my ipod to the remote control last night, here's how it went:
Ipod: Press and open. Do a soft, circular fluid motion with finger to get to music albums. Click on selected album. Play. It shuts off when finished.
Remote for tv (the newly enhanced 1,000,000 channel package with HDTV channels:
To turn TV on: Push TV button. Push Power Button. Push cable. Then select a channel, yadda, yadda
To access HDTV channels: either look up or memorize 3-digit numbers (the same show as on regular channel, but picture is bigger and you can see newscaster's zits).Now many stations have two channels: the non-zit and the zit. How many of these do you want to memorize? Oh, here's the other solution offered:
Enter channel (4, 7, 9, 38, 65 or whatever). Four (exactly) seconds later push the OK button. If your push is timely and strong you will succeed.
Oh, then use the manual audio button to get decent sound. Lower sound for every commercial.
To turn TV off: Push 'TV'
Then push 'Power'.
There's more, but you get the gist. I bet Steve Jobs could have made all of this happen with a maximum of three touches.
I've just finished reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs and it is a stunning read. A visionary, genius, pro acid tripper, vegan, tyrant, egomaniacal, vindictive, brilliant perfectionist. A man, like an angel, standing on the pinpoint of science and the humanities. Control freak (up close and personal, not remote) and hippie; saint and sinner. I love the book for many reasons, but especially like the fact that so many people who had rather unsavory things to say about Steve, got to say them. A biography with blemishes...psychic zits that would explode on HDTV. So raw and human. Great, great read. Great, great man if you love the complexity and craziness. I do. Still wish he had put his mind to those remote controls.

2011-11-03T14:12:00.000-06:00

Last night I googled Collapse, a play that is opening at Curious Theatre this Saturday, and the first article that popped up was Colony Collapse Disorder. So I read the article and put it on my Facebook page. I assume this disorder is along the lines of oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, reactive attachment disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, and big pain in the butt disorder. Have they just succumbed to a snowstorm defiant power outage rage disorder in CT?

Now, I know bees are important, as are all sentient beings, but to set up psychological disorders for all beings inhabiting this planet is going to take a lot of work. People need jobs, and the government needs to create some, so a Disorder Development program might be just what the country needs. In the meantime, I hate to see the good bees disappear, but I'm even more saddened by the fact they might have to take prozac or ambien to get out of the mess they're in. Feel free to start an Occupy Beehives protest. I'm sticking with the Greed/Wall Street protest for now. And will Michael Moore really be downtown Denver talking to the protesters this afternoon?

Local Beekeepers May Play Role in Saving Food Supply

Small beekeepers could be the solution to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). By Claudia Lenart

"Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?" examines the global bee crisis through the eyes of biodynamic beekeepers, scientists, farmers and philosophers. Queen of the Sun

Part of a series on local food and suburban farming.
We can thank the honeybee for four of every 10 bites of food we eat, so for area beekeepers, their efforts aren’t just about the honey. Many beekeepers feel they are doing their part in helping the survival of what is likely our most important domestic species.
The Lou Marchi Total Recycling Institute at McHenry County College (MCC) hosted a screening of the documentary Queen of the Sun: What are the bees telling us? Oct. 25, followed by a panel discussion with beekeepers from the Northern Illinois Beekeepers Association.
The critically-acclaimed film by Taggart Seigel tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of bees through stunning photography, humorous animations, and some very entertaining and colorful beekeepers.
The film looks at the 10,000-year history of honeybees as a domesticated species, from ancient times when honeybees were considered sacred to today’s corporate agriculture practice of shipping honeybees thousands of miles in flatbed trucks to pollinate almond groves in California and blueberries in Maine.
In recent years, honeybees have been disappearing mysteriously; America has lost millions of colonies. The sudden death of honeybee colonies is called Colony Collapse Disorder. Beekeepers and scientists in the film point to chemical pesticides, single-crop farming or monoculture, and the industrialization of beekeeping as reasons for CCD.
“Their crisis is our crisis. It’s colony collapse disorder of the human being too,” said Gunther Hauk, a biodynamic beekeeper who operates Spikenard Farm, a honeybee sanctuary in Virginia.
Experts in the film see bees as a barometer of the health of the world. Queen of The Sun refers to Austrian scientist Rudolf Steiner who predicted the collapse of honeybees in 1923. “The mechanization of beekeeping and industrialization will eventually destroy beekeeping,” Steiner predicted.
“We have to wake up early enough to make a change,” said biochemist and beekeeper David Heaf, in the documentary.

Snow Days

2011-11-02T14:26:00.000-06:00

Finally having a snow day of my own, I've been thinking about all the family, friends, and others in the northeast still without power four days after the October snowstorm. Don't know how many snow days - or even more irritating - no power days I could take without becoming a bit batty.
Morning appointments canceled, leaving me free to peruse old news and new news: NYT Sunday Magazine story: how to figure out if you are a vampire or a zombie. FYI, this is not an easy puzzle. Bill Clinton got it wrong, thinking he was a vampire, but truly was a zombie. A little zombie, touch of vampire perhaps? Never asked this question before. Never saw this question before.
Voting news: just about everything defeated. We're in a season of defeat, an extended season of defeat. The dean and a cantor of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London stepped down because they couldn't, in good conscience, engage themselves in possibly violent acts to remove the Occupy group. Unintended consequence. With the Anglican Church in despair/defeat, the U.S. House declared bipartisan victory, confirming or reaffirming In God We Trust as the official U.S. motto. Raise that flag, raise it high. . .
Pardon me for asking, but what in the world does that mean? I've gone through a long list of nouns that might be substituted for God. In Government, Banks, Politicians, Education, Religion, Stock Market, Globalization, Money, Corn oil, pescetarians, octogenarians, vampires, zombies? Do we (whomever the 'we' may be) really trust God? Do we trust Allah? What an odd thing is a buffalo nickel with 'in God we trust' or a dollar bill with 'In God we trust' going up against the pound. Oh, the news is bewildering, whatever form it takes.
I trust, at least a little, maybe a lot, poetry. But we were supposed to learn from Auden that 'poetry makes nothing happen.' Before signing off this flaky, snow day blog, here's a poem for family and friends on a January-type day in early November, a poem from Hartford CT poet, Wallace Stevens:

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

All Hallows Eve

2011-11-01T13:03:00.000-06:00

For the first time I can remember, Halloween was canceled or postponed because of snow. Many thousands of people without power in parts of New England, dangerous wires dangling, and hundreds of trees brought to the ground by their snow-laden leaves. School in West Hartford CT closed for the week, and my old high school being used as a town shelter. Who would have thought, during this time of global warming? Halloween postponed until Saturday. Maybe even later for people in other places.
However, Halloween in my Denver neighborhood is all jolly. The later the trick or treater, the more likely his or her grandmother would have a trick or treat bag for herself. And why not? How was she corralled into patrolling the streets at 9:00 anyway? A bag of M & M's, a Snickers or Reese's peanut butter cup is such a minimal reward. Lots of sugar highs and lows today.
Up the street and around the bend, the McMansions had equally big McMansion Halloween decorations. Graveyards in the front of the house, huge, scary plastic pumpkins and cats on the side. Cobwebs everywhere.
In Washington DC, six people shot on Halloween.
And how and where did this all begin? Here's a brief synopsis from history.com

Ancient Origins of Halloween

Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter. ---------
And, as you know, Samhain became Halloween, and hardly a young soul knows there's a connection between Halloween and All Souls Day - or even much about Saints and Souls. There wasn't much Halloween celebrating in the US of A when those pilgrims arrived; they left those pagan sorts of things back on British soil. But once the Famine sent boatloads of Irish across the sea to the new land in the mid 1800's, and the Scots came along, Halloween found its way back into the psyche of the folks. So here we are today; new food plate replacing the food pyramid, holding on to our trick or treat adventures and keeping our sweet tooth happy.

Where They Speak English

2011-10-31T16:02:00.000-06:00

So many languages to be heard on the streets of London. One might not hear the sounds of every language in the world in London, but surely the cacophony on the sidewalks includes many voices speaking many languages. Hard, hard consonants contrast with haltingly soft vowels, staccato sentences contrast with the mellifluous. The American 'Hi,' the British 'Hello' and what follows those greetings clearly distinguishes English from American speech. Regardless of language or place of origin, the women wear knee-high and above boots and scarves with flair.
There seems to be a fresh newsrag for every tube trip, a Starbucks on every corner, and a cellphone in every right ear.
Where else in the world would I sit next to a man from Kuwait who knows a student I taught over 30 years ago? Where else are there at least three plays that are 'must see' for every night one is in town? Where else would there be a triangulation among protesters (Wall Street), a church (St. Paul's, letting the tents stay) and the government (Boris Johnson, let's just hose those protesters out of there)? Where else do history and contemporary life complement one another so well? And about those museums. . . .

Samuel Johnson on London: (in the mid 1700's)
"Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists."
Boswell: Life

In 2011, Samuel Johnson would probably say the same thing: it's the little lanes and courts, the multiplicity of human habitations, the wonderful immensity of London that intrigues us. If he wouldn't say it, I would. I am.

Same old, same old

2011-10-20T16:40:00.000-06:00

Leaving for London early this weekend, so this will be the last post for about ten days. Wrapping things up, I'm here to tell you that Samuel Taylor's Bar-b-que place on Cherry Street finally took down the 'Ugly People Eat Free' sign today. Don't know if it's because they had too many customers or no customers at all.
In preparation for the trip to London, I looked up the blog post from October 20, 2009, when Roscoe and I were spending fall quarter in London. Wouldn't you know? The entry is me complaining about rain and the four and a half hour bus ride from the Lake Country to London...and me whining about not being patient and having enough gratitude. Why is it, two years later, that same impatient and ungracious person is still here? Is there any progress or is it all an illusion?
10/20/09
-----All that beauty on Saturday, all the loveliness we thought would never end. Ah, that's what the pastoral is all about, isn't it?
Well, this will be as short as the day was long.
Sunday:
Breakfast
Sweet, light rain, good for an hour's walk.
"Season of mist, and mellow fruitfullness," as Keats said so succinctly in 'To Autumn.'
The trip home:
Boat Ride Across Lake
Walk 35 minutes in rain to train station
Train for 35 minutes.
Off train, into rain for 20 minutes.
New train. Get on, argue with not-so-sweet adolescent males who won't relinquish seats that don't belong to them.
Crowded train ride. "Hey, we're being mugged by Americans" say the three young men who finally give up the seats they had not reserved.
Off train. Wait for bus on wrong side of station. (Bus needed because our booking agent received from railroad people the wrong date on the tickets, then could not re-issue because by then the train was fully booked.)
To other side of station.
Get on bus. 4.5 hour bus ride, with a driver switch in middle.
"HEY, WE COULD BE IN DENVER OR NEW YORK BY NOW." Sad, but true.
Oh my, where did all that peace go? Oh, send some patience, please.
No patience? How about just a reprieve from full-frontal melt-down in front of students?
Off bus.
Tube ride one.
Tube ride two.
Walk down street.
Praise self for not having had a public display of anti-social behavior, inability to go with the flow, oh so lacking in delayed gratification response. Don't think there's the right photo for this. I make a promise to myself to check this day in the 'memories not worthy of my time and energy, unless I learned some patience and acceptance.
A day later I am already perplexed that I let this interfere for one second in my luscious memory of the hike in the Lake Country. -----
Patience and Acceptance - so elusive...and when they visit, it's just for a short time. Enjoy the rest of October.

One Space or Two?

2011-10-19T16:12:00.000-06:00

No, this isn't about that grand universe out there. This is about the end-of-the-sentence period and wheter it is followed by one space or two. A bigger deal than you might think.
You are either older, not much of a techie, or a creature of habit if you are still putting two spaces after a period and the beginning of a new sentence. As I am older, not a techie, and a creature of some habits, it has taken me quite a while to eliminate that second space.
I didn't mean to be in a conversation about The Elements of Style (Strunk and White, if you don't remember) with a group of people over fifty, but sometimes those things just happen.
"What does The Elements say about one or two spaces after the period," I asked.
"What are you talking about?"
I explained, and was met with utter hostility, with the exception of one woman who is in public relations.
"Oh, it's been at least a decade now that we moved to just one space," she said.
"Who changed the rules?" asked the Greek chorus.
Having just read a long article about the history and reasons for the shift from the original one space to two spaces and then back again to one space, I was about to launch into an utterly boring explanation. But I held off, and decided to let people choose between spaces.

If You're Ugly

2011-10-18T17:15:00.000-06:00

"Ugly People Eat Free" said the big sign in front of the restaurant on the side street. Not knowing whether to be offended or to laugh, I did both. Should I go in? "What if I'm not rejected?" I muttered to myself. Dressed in sloppy, non-lulumon yoga clothes and wearing old sneakers, I must just have been welcomed with open arms.
But seriously. Was this supposed to lure new customers into the restaurant for a bowl of chili or a turkey sandwich? Wondering who the marketing genius was, I sat in the parking lot for a short while to see if that billboard drew cars to the parking lot. Apparently, from my small and short-lived survey, ugly people do not eat lunch. I didn't go back at dinner time, though I was tempted. I thought better of it, thought better of spending even a nickel on a place where the 'Ugly Eat Free.'
I know there are studies that show ugly people are at a disadvantage in the hiring game, a disadvantage at the getting a raise game, just plain at a disadvantage. There's even been a small movement to declare 'ugly' as a disability. But, other than some notion of the asymmetrical face being less attractive than the symmetrical, I'm not sure how one judges the ugly and I doubt there is consensus on who is truly ugly as opposed to who is unattractive.
I also wonder what results would have come if the sign said 'People who are ugly on the inside eat free'?
I'm not naming names, but if the sign stays up in front of the restaurant, I will. I'll give them a day - two at most - for their ugly idea, but then it's time for naming.

Rocky Mountain High

2011-10-17T16:27:00.000-06:00

Such a cliche - but so true....One just gets a Rocky Mountain high traipsing along the Rocky Mountain trails.
Most of the aspen leaves were on the ground this past weekend, but they glittered in the full sun anyway, as if to say 'it's not over yet.' And Saturday it felt as if summer would last forever, the skies would be clear, the trails open and firm. So few people were on the trail to Adams Falls and above that one could walk for a couple of hours and not see more than ten people. The barren trees were the only clue that summer would not last forever, that soon enough snowshoes and cross-country skis would be crafting trails of their own.
In the category of True Visionaries, for me, go the folks who gave us the national parks and national seashores.
What insight and foresight.
But... and why is there always a but? I read some interesting, but frightening, facts in the Rocky Mountain Nature Association Quarterly over the weekend. A Visitor Study of the RMNP was done in July of 2010 - the survey was approved by the government, park, office of management and budget and the University of Idaho Park Studies unit, who conducted the survey. Granted, the numbers were small. Of the 1099 surveys distributed, 755 were completed and returned. (If you've ever done a survey, you know the 69% response rate is high).
Here's the good and bad news: 96% of the visitors were from the U.S.; 95% identified as white; 97% preferred English for reading.
So, with the browning of America, what will happen to those national parks and seashores? What will attract more diverse groups of people to visit these glorious places?
Friday night, I saw a play at DCPA about an immigrant studying for the citizenship test. Funny, funny trying to memorize the 13 original states (I didn't get them all, and I even come from one). Maybe the citizenship test should include knowledge of our national parks and seashores and not whether or not Georgia was in the original 13 states. Maybe those endless days of nasty testing done in so many schools should be canceled with a sign on the school: Rocky Mountain National Park has replaced the CSAP.
What do you think?

Lesser of Evils?

2011-10-14T16:37:00.000-06:00

Which way to vote? Well, my official ballot and its secrecy sleeve arrived today. One easy question (school board election), another benign question, as 'I don't really know if I care if the city auditor can appoint a deputy.' No, I don't care. Third decision: increase state taxes for public education. Little more thought on that one.
But the tricky Ordinance asks whether we want to provide sick leave for employees. It all seems rather obvious. Of course, all workers should be allowed to build up sick or safe time. It's a fair and just proposal. Why should employees have to go to work sick or send their sick children to school because they can't stay home with them? Why shouldn't anyone, full or part-time, be able to earn some sick and safe time in Denver, CO? So, I was all with it, until I started seeing the signs in windows of small businesses and reading the point-of-view of small business owners. They can't afford to give people time off; they are barely making ends meet with the lean staffs they have. Many would simply have to hire fewer people to afford to provide the benefits. I see a sign in The Tattered Cover, one of the last of the independent book stores in America, asking for voters to vote against this ordinance. I trust everything about the Tattered Cover, everything. I also believe that, if she could, the owner would gladly give sick time to employees and provide other benefits. But these are hard times for small business owners, very hard times. I don't know what to do with this proverbial rock and a hard place situation. Can't leave it blank...it's too important. It's not that either choice is an 'evil,' just difficult.
Getting into politics is not something I like or want to do on this blog... but how about those Occupy Wall Street mini-victories in NYC and Denver? Yea! Funny thing about politics: a group of homeless setting up tents in a city park would probably be hauled off to jail. Who are these people and what makes them think they have rights? My, my. Wouldn't it be great if the homeless were organized and protesting? That's for another time. We should enjoy the small victories right now and enjoy last night's mini-victories.
Hard to believe we have one whole year to live through the politics of the next election. Here's a promise that this blog won't be a political rant - well, maybe once or twice.

Identity Theft

2011-10-13T12:26:00.000-06:00

Walking this morning about 7:00, I felt pulled by the sun about to rise and shine through. I walked east, identifying more and more with the sun as I turned the corner. However, as I turned around and headed west, I saw the moon, one day past full, looking at me. Suddenly, I was a different person, identifying with the moon, trying to imagine it pulling on me as it does the tides. At one point during this short walk, I felt as if I were exactly half way between the sun and the moon. .. stuck in the middle, imagining I was far from home on a long journey, and deciding which one to follow, which connected to my identity. Reality snuck back in, so I continued west, towards the moon, but then on to coffee, the ultimate rise and shine. Identity Indecision.
Not two hours later, I talked with a friend whose identity had been stolen yesterday by a fishing call. Yes, she foolishly gave out the last four numbers of her social security number to a person who was calling on behalf of her bank. You can guess the rest...With just that little bit of information, the thief was able to withdraw money from her savings account at an ATM. After calling her bank, the bank she has been with for thirty years, they couldn't give her any information because the birthdate they have for her doesn't match the one on her records. She felt as if her identity was robbed twice. So she was off to the bank with her birth certificate to identify herself.
Not an hour later I was at my bank to make a quick deposit and withdrawal from the ATM. The ATM was out of service, so I had to go into the bank, fill out a deposit slip and a withdrawal slip (neither of which is needed at the ATM in the bank lobby) AND show my license for identity before I could make the withdrawal. It was quite an affair, me without my glasses because there's no need at the ATM, filling out forms and finding my ID. I finally collected the money and left, but not before making sure I had my official identity, my license, back. And with a sense of irony of how much more time it took inside the bank, but how much more secure the transactions seemed. I will probably continue to use the ATM because of its ease, but if anyone gets access to my card and identity, I hope he/she goes into the bank itself instead of the machine.
A lot of identity questions so early in the day. What do you think about all this identity theft?

Dental Care

2011-10-12T16:25:00.001-06:00

Went to the dentist this morning for some x-rays and cleaning. Sounds simple enough, but I live in fear that some tooth or teeth will be in a state of disrepair, forcing me to plunk down my credit card for a crown, a root canal, or some gum disease newly discovered in the way new planets are discovered. So I sit and take deep breaths.
Same office, same people, same waiting room. But then I noticed that some new services are being offered. Yes, there is TMJ work, teeth whitening that can last up to a year or more, and a few signs saying "Do you like your smile?".
Back in the day, people went to the dentist to try and save their teeth or to get false teeth. But 'save the tooth at all cost' is so 20th century.... now we want our teeth to be functional and beautiful, whether or not they are real.Maybe it's called progress.
But something else is happening now. The two new services are now being offered are restylane and juvaderm. Well, the good news is that we all know that dentists know how to give shots and injections. I have the Novocaine experiences to testify to several dentists' abilities. So they can do the shots. And why not? If one is going to have some teeth fixed, why not get a facial filler also? Why not go to the dentist to get that frozen forehead look and to add volume and smoothness to those cheeks, and erase the puppet lines?
It's a pretty savvy idea - one stop shopping for the face and mouth. But I don't really get it.
Still. . . I wonder what the rationale is. Of course, there is money to be made, but it has to be more than that.
Is this about beauty, self-improvement, or reducing the sign of aging or professionals edging into one another's field? I think it's all, and more.
But once the digital show of my x-rays begin, I forget to ask all the questions I had about the new services. Next time. For now, I'm just going to pay more attention to what services various professional offices are adding to their services during these tumultuous economic times. I'd like a lawyer who does hair, a doc who sells shoes. . . endless possibilities.

Pilgrim's Progress

2011-10-11T10:55:00.000-06:00

Winter Pilgrim, Ann Sieben, is in Portugal now. Thought I'd paste her latest blog entry here, as it's beautifully written and a glimpse into her days. Enjoy. winterpilgrim.blogspot.com.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Day 11: This little figgy went to market...

I loved my little walk through very picturesque Portugal. If I searched to find something negative, it would only be trying to escape well-intended country women with less than 2 kilos of fruit and nuts from their orchard trees. Although I anticipate a good frost one of these evenings to put an end to the swarms of gnats, the benefits of the autumn harvest are delightfully manifest. Apples, pears, quince, chestnuts, walnuts, almonds, grapes, more grapes, grapes red and white, and my favorite of all, fat tender figs. And, bonus, the region is plump with big rounds of sheep cheese - yum.

On my first night off the pilgrim super-highway, as I've come to think of the camino, I made my way over pastoral hill and dale unfettered by road or even a path to a small town just as Mass was ending... it's uncanny how a pilgrim can so often beat the odds of stumbling upon a Mass when there is only one per 12 days. A short conversation with the grateful priest, who thankfully was fluent in Castillian, got me not only an invitation to his mother's house for the night - an a great cook indeed - but also guidance for the remainder of my walk through Portugal... names, towns, off-road paths, two monasteries, and a google-map. What a gift!

The days are warm, overly sunny with vast areas of little shade, and full of necessary kilometers. I'm still averaging that marathon distance of a bit more than 40 mountainous kilometers every day. Although I've got absolutely nothing to complain about - nothing, nothing, nothing. After the fourth day, one which involved quite a lot of asphalt and long hilly distances without shade or water, I was internally beginning to whine a bit, quite truthfully. My attitude was put to rights when a kind family driving home stopped me at the entrance to the town to offer help. I'm so happy they did as the priest was away and it was a weekend, so the mayor's office was closed. With a number of phone calls, the father of the family, who considered the honor of the village at stake, got things arranged for me to spend the night at the facility run by the Sisters of Mercy.

A geriatric facility, sure, but what a great experience. Invited to the dining hall for a dinner of Portugese specialties, I saw dozens of residents shuffling with the aid of walkers and canes, progressing three inches for as many steps... my aching feet still throbbed from the pounding of the day's 45 kilometers, but I was reminded by the experience of how fortunate I am to be able to earn my pain with a great deal of gain. I recalled an Islamic proverb I recently came upon: 'I cursed at God because I had no shoes and then saw a man who had no feet.' Doh! how true. And how interesting we stumble upon such experiences just when we need them. St Jerome's handiwork?

The next day, refreshed and facing only 35 kilometers of gorgeous and deeply gorged landscape, I entered a village celebrating in large form the feast of St Barbara. I was invited to join in the procession through the winding village cobbled streets behind the shoulder-mounted tableau of the venerated Saint and in front of the marching band. (I switched from boots to sandals, of course.) What a treat for the heart and soul/sole, and stomach enjoying more of the local specialities. {Note that every culture I've visited on all my pilgrimages seem to relish tripe soup. Don't chew, just swallow.}

Why the Fascination?

2011-10-10T18:28:00.000-06:00

I say that gossip, detail mongering, and looking for juicy tidbits is silly at best, demeaning at worst. So why am I so interested in Steve Jobs' biological mother and father, his adoptive parents, his half sister, his family in general.
I purchased a Wall Street Journal this afternoon because it had a photo of Steve and one of his biological father. I felt as if I needed a brown paper bag so noone would see me with the paper. Having read the two articles about Steve Jobs, I put the paper aside. Now I know Mona Simpson is a brilliant writer, but I didn't know is the biological sister of Steve Jobs. Nor did I know, or care, until recently that Steve Jobs has three children with his wife and also has another daughter from an earlier relationship. Now, in the scheme of things, who cares?
I thought those sorts of details could only be found in the magazines at beauty salons, doctors' offices and hospitals, but not this time. Guess there are others besides me interested in personal details of people who have had an impact on our lives. Genius attracts all of us; a person with motivation, persistence and genius is rare. So we want to know why and how he became who he became. We, or at least I, become investigative reporters, psychoanalysts, and biographers. . . always looking for the If this....Then that... or If Only...This happened because... Snoopy lot, aren't we?
Before I began this blog, I googled Steve Jobs, and was overwhelmed by the number of articles about him. Promised myself not to read one, and I didn't. I know enough for now. And I am extremely grateful that no-one is interested in the details of my life.

Judging the Judge

2011-10-07T17:18:00.000-06:00

Still thinking about Steve Jobs today, but also contemplating the roles of judges, lawyers and the law.
It's easy enough to explain the focus: my son Rob, who is an attorney in FL, is here in CO visiting. Tonight we are going to see To Kill a Mockingbird at the theater and will be thinking about judges, justice, lawyers and everyday people. We'll be thinking about choosing between what is right and what is good, what is moral and what is just.

With my mind, focused on the law, it's no surprise I found this article in a NY newspaper. Reading the summary of the case and the judge's dilemma, it seems to me that the judge found a fair, just way to deal with the Marlo Kidd case. And, from my point of view, he did all right by Madoff also. What do you think?

A Judge’s Education, a Sentence at a Time

By BENJAMIN WEISER

ON Feb. 2, 2004, Marlo Kidd awaited sentencing before Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in Manhattan. She had pleaded guilty to acting as a lookout for two masked gunmen who had robbed a bank in Yonkers, and under federal sentencing guidelines, she faced a prison term of up to six years.
Her lawyer, though, was asking the judge to sentence her only to home confinement, because she was raising five children who ranged in age from 5 to 13, and also caring for her 14-year-old sister, as their own mother had been a crack-cocaine addict. He had said that sending Ms. Kidd to prison would almost certainly result in her children being placed in foster care, destroying what was left of the family.
His arguments gave Judge Chin pause. Ms. Kidd had provided him with copies of the children’s report cards, which showed them receiving B’s and B-pluses, even a smattering of A’s, and very few absences from school.
“The report cards had an impact on me,” Judge Chin recalled in a recent interview. “She was getting them out to school every day, and they were holding their own. I was impressed by this.” Ms. Kidd, who had also apologized for her crime in a letter to the judge, was “a decent mother,” he concluded. Moreover, one of his law clerks had shown him a news report on the terrible conditions in foster homes and facilities for children in New Jersey, where the children would most likely be sent.
But the robbery had been violent, with one robber killed in a police shootout. And the judge was seldom persuaded to grant leniency because of family circumstances — it was, after all, the defendants’ crimes, not the sentence, that caused hardships for families.
In the end, he decided that Ms. Kidd had to go to prison, but he imposed only a 30-month sentence. “I cared very much about the future of the children,” Judge Chin recalled, “but I was willing to take the risk that they would be sent to foster care, even with a shorter sentence.” His decision involved weighing conflicting concerns and interests, he said, “something we have to do all the time.”
Judge Chin, 57, who last year was elevated by President Obama to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, after nearly 16 years on the trial bench, is best known for the 150-year sentence he gave Bernard L. Madoff, arguably the most prominent white-collar sentence in the history of American law.

A Judge’s Education, a Sentence at a Time

By BENJAMIN WEISER

IPad to ISad

2011-10-06T17:44:00.000-06:00

And a sad moment it was, last night, to learn of the death of Steve Jobs. Sad, and surprised, actually, by how sad I felt. He was such an iconoclast, such a unique leader, and a very private person. How could one not love the jeans and black turtleneck trademark and the trademark of always coming up with something new?
He married art and science better than anyone, anywhere. Art, especially calligraphy, and technology merged in the very first Apple computer and the creative, synthetic juices never stopped flowing.
I admired his leadership style; admired the fact that he didn't suffer fools gladly, was not afraid to say an idea was dumb when it was, was not afraid of much. He doesn't fit the textbook model of leadership, or at least he doesn't right now and I hope it stays that way. One has to hope he isn't transformed into a collaborative, consensus building, all ideas are good ideas model post-mortem. I liked his edginess, his style, his drive.
And love the idea that he persuaded us that we wanted things we didn't know we wanted. He didn't wait to find out what the best sellers or favorites were before he began a project: he, and his team, developed the product we learned to want. A marketing genius, in addition to all the other attributes.
There's not much I can say that hasn't been said in the media. And by now, most of you have read his famous Stanford Commencement speech, delivered in 2005. But I'm going to post the last part of that speech, because it's drop dead beautiful. I've read and heard hundreds of college commencement speeches, and this is among the very best. Following is the last part of the speech (definitely worth reading the whole thing, if you haven't done so).
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much."
Let us all stay hungry....and very foolish.

Across Generations

2011-10-05T17:30:00.000-06:00

After teaching for a loong time, one figures out pretty quickly who has done the reading and who hasn't. The confidence of the con man or woman has always amused me. Semester after semester, year after year, the ones who haven't read often have no reticence about sharing their thoughts. Usually they know something about the topic, can come up with an anecdote that remotely connects to the topic, and can end with a question that might sound profound to their peers. Some of these students are pretty good at writing about what they haven't read. It's one of those 'I know you know I know' things that happens often enough. And one comes to realized, after sufficient time, that many of those who don't speak have done the reading, but they are afraid of giving the wrong answer, so stay quiet.
This year I've come to learn that this isn't a vice or habit of just young people - it's a way of being that crosses generations. This fall I've been engaged in several groups, short courses and long classes. I'm convinced that nobody talks more about what they haven't read than older people - especially people who had long careers and lives of having people listen to them (that would be mostly men).
The Wife of Bath, talking about marriage, said, "experience, though noon authoritee were in this world, were right enough for me." Well, she'd meet her match these days with all the people roaming around thinking their experience is authority. And that experience has to do with economics, the environment, justice, and the law.
I at least skim the readings so I can reference them when I am sharing my thoughts. Still have that Catholic school-girl guilt that keeps me semi, so semi-, honest.
Speaking of Catholics, one of these groups I am in makes me think I should have been a Sister. Oh, I'm a Sistah, and have lots of Sistahs, but I'm talking about those women who are nuns. They not only talk the talk, they walk the talk. Wall Street, avarice, Greed with the capital G, fierce competition are not qualities and concepts they live with. The sisters I keep meeting in various workshops or reading groups don't expect much or have much. And that's fine with them. True, they all have the sisterhood/ living arrangements that assure they will be cared for as they age, but they don't require their places of retirement to have entertainment, golf courses, swimming pools, tai chi, bridge lessons and gourmet cooking.
They are too busy trying to help the poor to worry about going to zumba. And they have such great senses of humor. I know I am generalizing, but I swear Sister Antonia has the same smile, the same laughter as the Dalai Lama. It's not as if they live in a silent convent, praying all day. They're as savvy about internet as most people I know who are over fifty. And that sense of humor. I once thought seriously about becoming a sister, but then I went to high school.
By the way, it's not the Sisters who pontificate on books they haven't skimmed or read. But I do wonder about the others, and wonder if they are the same ones who mastered the Art of BS long ago, or if this is a new privilege come their way, privilege of age.

Public Radio

2011-10-04T17:01:00.000-06:00

Who listens to public radio? I think of National Public Radio and CO Public Radio as having a particular audience: highly educated, on the liberal side of the political road, inquisitive, with diverse interests. I see the type of person who contributes to non-profits, signs petitions supporting public radio, cares about the local library and recycles. Just my picture.
As most of you know, I take a short walk in the early morning, and see mostly ducks, geese, a few people with dogs, and the workers in the park who begin their work before 7:00 a.m. Most, if not all, of the workers appear to be Hispanic, as the conversation is always in Spanish.
But, for the second time in several weeks, I have heard the radio of one of the worker's trucks outside the two toilets near the children's playground. Both times, the car radio has been on CO Public Radio. It's just loud enough for me to hear from the sidewalk by the toilets and for the worker to hear in the bathroom. Well, there goes my stereotypical image. NO - there goes my stereotype of what that Public Radio person looks like.
The person listening, clearing the trash, and cleaning the toilets appears to be Latino. That wasn't part of my visual, at all. There's probably a story here, but I don't know it. So for now, this post reveals more about me than it does the person listening to early morning radio. Hope there is more in the future on this one.

Reasons and Seasons: Always Learning

2011-10-03T20:43:00.000-06:00

Reasons and Seasons: Always Learning

Always Learning

2011-10-03T20:39:00.000-06:00

Did you know that approximately one-quarter of girls in developing countries are not in school?
That's just one of the facts I learned from The Girl Effect information (girleffect.org).
Do you wonder what they are doing? I've seen some of them, especially in rural areas of different countries. Some sit on a pile of dirt next to their parents who are both digging or moving rocks. Some run through the city streets, an eight year old caring for her younger siblings while others beg relentlessly. We know about child and sex trafficking, so add a few into that group? What does the future hold for that one-third?
We also know, from the United Nations, that when a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. What a difference, a day, month, year and years in school makes. Transformative education. Send girls to school and change the lives of everyone. It's true I've spent more than half a century in schools - half as a student and half as a professor, but always as a learner. So I have my biases about education. But these numbers are staggering. And the positive effects are staggering for everyone - male, female, young and old. Education.

I'm a big fan of The Girl Effect organization, and hope you will become a fan also. Tomorrow Tara Mohr's Wise Living blog world should be filled with Girl Effect blog postings. Hope to see you there.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

2011-10-03T17:01:00.000-06:00

Do you lie? Big or little, black or white, on purpose or accidentally?
After seeing the charming, somewhat silly French farce, The Liar, at the Denver Center, I read the handout that went along with the playbill.
"Lying has long been a part of everyday life. We couldn't get through the day without being deceptive,"
says Leonard Saxe, Psychology Prof. from Brandeis.
Strange, I sometimes wish I were MORE deceptive than I am. I don't think I have any skills at the poker face phenomenon, but maybe I'm wrong. I was at a meeting just recently where two people were driving me crazy. "Why doesn't someone stuff those two big mouths with Smart Wool socks?" I thought. "And the one who always has the right answer. . . ?" Can they read my body language or am I deceiving them? During this particular meeting, I looked down and realized that I had my arms crossed in front of me, each hand hanging on to its opposite muffin top. Not very deceptive. But I do try.

The short article is filled with intriguing information. Having done a study of 147 people, Dr. Bella De Paulo says "Both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting ten or more minutes; over the course of a week they deceive about 30% of those with whom they interact one-on-one."
I don't know if any of those 147 people are similar to any of the people with whom I interact, but I wonder. How do I figure out which 30% of my conversation with someone is a lie? How many conversations are really one person deceiving another, and the other responding back with an equally deceiving comment? No wonder we're all screwed up. And now, with the ability to communicate via phone, e-mail, Facebook, twitter, google+, we have so many opportunities for our bodies to not give us away.

How deceptive am I when I say I've just been to yoga, when I've been to yoga stretch or when I say I read a book when I've really only read the reviews (but in depth!)? I don't know about you, but I think I deceive myself more easily than I deceive others. But I'm going to try to pay attention this week, and see if I recognize an exaggeration or two when they come out of my mouth.

Who is Counting?

2011-09-30T17:57:00.000-06:00

The Denver Post: More Latinos listed as white in census
. . . new 2010 census figures show an unexpected reason behind a renewed growth in the U.S. white population; more Latinos listing themselves as white in the once-in-a-decade government count.

The Washington Post: Census count finds decreasing white population in 15 states
Non-Hispanic whites are a dwindling share of the U.S. population, with their numbers dropping in the Northeast and Midwest.

Both these articles are sort of about the same thing: the growing number of Hispanics who filled in the box 'White' in the census. But the difference in the titles is intriguing. Do you want to find out which 15 states have fewer white people than in 2000, or do you want to know why Latinos are considered white?
One article gives a possible reason why the number is growing: The US government first decided in 1980 that Hispanic is not a race, so many people who considered themselves Hispanic filled in the 'some other race' box. The other article suggested that most Hispanics identified themselves as white, but still distinguished between Hispanics and white. Why this craziness?
In 2010, census forms instructed Latinos to select a recognized category such as white or black. Now I ask you, given the trickiness of the American government and the mis- and dis- trust of the census itself, what would you choose? Black or white? I'd stay on the safe side, and choose white. I just don't trust what anyone is going to do with ethnic or racial identity. And, for now, I'd prefer to be in the power box, thank you.
I understand that Hispanic is not a race, and remember the huge arguments within my cohort of census-taking volunteers over the term 'race' as identity. I guess I thought we had all figured out quite a while ago that race is a social construct, not a biological identity.
From what I can deduce, if the census questions and categories stay as they are, the 'white' population in the U.S. will continue to grow as the majority. In the meantime, all sorts of experts are predicting that whites will become a minority in the US within fifty years. I guess it depends on what one means by 'white.' And what it means to be Latino. And who's doing the counting.

Morning Walk

2011-09-29T16:52:00.000-06:00

Finding I was a bit early for a meeting this luscious fall morning, I decided to stop the car and take a short walk in Washington Park.
This season the park is peopled by stroller moms and their kids, all sorts of people with all sorts of dogs,older people walking briskly, serious runners, and a good number of bike riders. I guess you'd consider me 'older person not walking briskly.' Almost everyone appears to be Caucasian.
Diagonally across the street is a high school - males and females of all sizes and dress walk toward the school from four different directions. The population appears extremely diverse, except for the near absence of Caucasians. Can't imagine how many countries are represented by these little groups of teenagers. Two different worlds. I head to the park and notice several Canadian geese standing in a puddle, splashing and gulping some of the water in the puddle. Just across the park's narrow street is a big, full lake. No geese near the lake. I see another puddle, remains from the watering system, and more Canadian geese in the puddle.
Don't they see the lake? Are we all in our own puddles, oblivious to the lake awaiting us?
My attention is diverted by two large vans that come into the few parking spaces. Down come the ramps and out come the wheelchairs. The drivers and caretakers help everyone out, and soon there's another diverse group in the park. Some are in wheelchairs, some shuffle, and others need help to be seated at the nearby picnic table. The group is not only challenged in a variety of ways, but also ranges in age from pre-adolescent to older. Men and women. Almost everyone smiles, some are talking, others off alone, silent. I am reminded of the wisdom and forethought of the people who created public spaces and parks. Seems like a basic human right and need to be out in the world.
I continue walking and watch one of the teenagers in a wheelchair roll by me. Ten minutes later he is on his way back, but this time he is rolling the wheelchair backwards. He's moving his arm muscles in a different way, pushing backwards instead of forward. I rarely cry. But the sight of him pushing those wheels backwards is so poignant, so beautiful, my eyes well up.
I feel as if I have been in a movie for the past thirty-five minutes, but I don't quite grasp its meaning.

You Built a Factory?

2011-09-28T16:40:00.000-06:00

Gotta love her. Elizabeth Warren, running for Senate in Massachusetts, doesn't believe anyone becomes wealthy on her or his own. She says:

"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "
But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."
She continues: "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
I've posted this everywhere, because it says so clearly what needs to be said here, there, everywhere. Pay it forward.
On another note, pretty innocuous, I read on the internet that Andy Rooney, the 92 year-old guy on 60 Minutes who seems to be drooling while he is pontificating, is retiring. I've never figured out how and why he has been allowed to hold court every Sunday for as long as I can remember. I try to imagine the 92 year-old woman who would be allowed to age in every way possible on screen. Helen Thomas got a bit too rambunctious, didn't she? I hope Elizabeth Warren is still speaking out at 92.

Winter Pilgrim On the Road

2011-09-27T17:16:00.000-06:00

Well, Ann, our winter pilgrim, isn't on the road right now, but she will be after two planes and a train to Compostela de Santiago. Then the winter pilgrim puts on her backpack (so light I could carry it) and heads off for eight months by herself. Again, relying on the kindness of strangers, monasteries, and the desert, and some skills in many languages, she'll do what she always does: walk by day, immersed in nature, and envelope herself in the culture and ways of the people she meets during the evening. A pilgrim for good in the world.
From Santiago, she's off to Toledo, Avila, Cordova and into Morocco. From Tetouan to Algiers; from Algiers to Annaba (Hippo), from Hippo to Tunisia and on then on to Tripoli. She'll cross from Libya to Egypt, one way or the other (foot if freedom allows, boat otherwise). Then the long trek through Egypt, to Alexandria, and finally to Jerusalem. She's been told to buy a donkey and cart for the haul through the Egyptian desert and to leave the donkey and cart at a monastery before getting to the border and walking towards Jerusalem.
Is it possible for one woman, on her own, not relying on hotels, motels, guest houses and economic barter to do this? If anyone can, it's Ann. Final good-byes today. I've spent the summer months meeting up with her at coffee houses on Friday mornings, pondering many an idea. Now we've said farewell for a while, to meet up on her blog for the months ahead. Don't know how often and when she'll be posting, but I'll let you know how the pilgrimage is going - and you can always check in at winterpilgrim.blogspot.com.
Buen Camino, Ann.

Funeral Homes

2011-09-26T16:39:00.000-06:00

Strange topic, I know. But last week I received mail from several funeral homes and crematories. Must be the season. I didn't open any of them, so don't know what the specials are if one dies in September or October.
Then Sunday morning, skimming through the Denver paper, I noticed the following large print in a funeral home ad featuring Veteran services.
                                          Because we don't put our veterans in Chinese-made caskets.
Complete services - from visitation to hearse to death certificates and an American casket. Sounded a little pricey to me, but what do I know about such things?
Really.
   Are we at war with the Chinese? I missed that part. Oh, I know we might be in an economic war with them, and we seem to be losing, so let's boycott their caskets? Are we making a stand for Made in America caskets for veterans only? I never thought about where military uniforms were made, but this makes me think that they are all US products. Not sure about the buttons, or brass and other things, but maybe it's all American, all the time. I tried to imagine the marketing team that came up with this particular branding device, but let it go and went on to the New York Times, imagining Maureen Dodd or Tom Friedman reading about Chinese-made caskets being banned.
   Then this morning, crossing Colorado Blvd., I noticed an extremely well-dressed man, black creased pants, crisp blue shirt, blue/black/yellow tie, and well-polished black shoes standing in front of a well-known funeral home with a sign in his hands. "He must be signaling some bereaved folks from out-of-town to make the right hand signal" or "Pray for my beloved deceased," I thought. No. That wasn't it. Taking a quick trip around the block so I could read the sign, I saw the familiar 'Out of work. Anything will help.' What made him get all dressed up, as if going to a funeral, and stand with his cardboard sign?
And my final question for the day, is why do we call them funeral homes?

To Autumn

2011-09-23T15:52:00.000-06:00

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness - no better description of fall than Keats' Ode to Autumn. So that's what you get from me today. The sun crosses the celestial equator moving southward bringing autumn to the northern hemisphere. Today, on the autumnal equinox, day and night are nearly the same. Just about twelve hours of each. Here's to mist, mellow fruitfulness, harvest, and abundance.

TO AUTUMN.
1.
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
John Keats (1795-1821)

Money

2011-09-22T15:28:00.000-06:00

You probably think this is going to be about the stock market and the international markets plunging, but it's just a little confession. I was fortunate enough to have a tenured position and a retirement fund where I gave some of my earnings to TIAA_CREF and some mysterious person did something with my funds so I wouldn't spend them. The money was safe because I couldn't withdraw from the funds, and I didn't have to choose where to invest those dollars.
My responsibility was handing over the money; someone else took care of the details. I've never known what the stock market numbers meant to me personally. Not intentional, not out of stupidity (well, maybe a bit of both), but just out of a 'I don't think this has much to do with me.' Even today, with news alerts from every major paper bemoaning the huge loss on Wall Street, I still am not sure what those 300 points mean to me. Should I despair, and then when the market goes up should I jump for joy? Should something so abstract and ever-changing affect my mood, the way I see the world? Should I be filled with fear or hope? Better yet, should I just not go on-line and read the news? All questions for a rainy, dreary day, but this day is the quintessential fall day, so I am not going to hang out for a couple of hours in the sunshine and save the U.S. Blues for another day.
But. . . speaking of money, I was walking earlier today, stopped at a coffee shop, and then turned a corner. In front of me was a delightful white Cape (Denver adaptation) house with sea-blue trim around the front porch. A law firm resided in the house, a firm specializing in divorce and child custody. "Walk-ins Welcome" was at the bottom of the sign. Does someone just walk down the street, decide he/she wants a divorce, open a door and start the proceedings? Isn't life easy? Aha, even easier than I imagined. Sitting on the quaint little porch, diagonally across from the comfortable bench, stood a big, bold ATM machine. Really. You've got the money, we've got the time. 5% discount for cash? I have no idea. All I know is that one doesn't have to ring a doorbell, just the ATM machine. Should have taken a photo.

Internation Day of Peace

2011-09-21T10:48:00.000-06:00

It's International Peace Day, so I'm going out to do something peaceful, and more importantly (and far more difficult) to be peaceful. That's my challenge for the day. Blog early, then do something for peace.
Barack Obama will be addressing the UN today, as President and Noble Peace Prize winner.
It's a big week for peace initiatives, especially as Palestine is seeking statehood status. I trust it isn't serendipity, but good timing that led The Huffington Post to have an article on Swapping Stories for Peace, an article about the storytelling initiative between Israelis and Palestinians. Reza Aslan is the author. It's a long piece, but if you believe, as I do, that stories can change the world and that storytelling is the most powerful ways of communicating, I think you'll find the organization and concept powerful. As Muriel Rukeyser, the poet reminds us, "The world is made of stories, not atoms."
From Reza Aslan, The Huffington Post, Wednesday September 21st.
"Israelis and Palestinians may be as far apart from each other as they have ever been, certainly when it comes to the never-ending saga that is the Two-State Solution. Yet as the Palestinian Authority heads to New York this week to confront the Israeli government at the United Nations with a declaration of statehood, back in Israel a group of Jewish and Arab kids are laying the foundations for a more hopeful future through the art of storytelling. They are taking part in a groundbreaking program called Story Swap International (SSI).
Story Swap is an innovative educational project that uses storytelling to foster understanding among diverse populations, whether in conflicted territories or in an English classroom. Established in 2007 by the Aspen Writers' Foundation (AWF) Story Swap has since taken place all over the world: within neighborhoods, across economic divides, over state lines and in numerous countries.
The Story Swap in Israel is just the most recent incarnation of the program, which the AWF has expanded to an international level in partnership with Global Nomads Group (GNG). "Nowhere else does a program like Story Swap hold the potential, not to end the conflict, but rather to build a dynamic that might allow a resolution to survive," said Mickey Bergman, SSI advisor and director of Middle East Programs at the Aspen Institute. According to program's leaders, there is no more important place to test the hypothesis that knowing the story of another allows us to better understand each other.
This is how Story Swap works. Two groups of individuals from different backgrounds come together to form partners. They are seated face-to-face, sometimes through the lens of interactive video conferencing, and asked to share an important story from their life that, in some way, represents who they are. They then take turns writing each other's story as though it were their own. It's a simple yet profound process. By receiving the story of another, making it their own and, then, exchanging the recreated stories, participants experience the transformative process of walking in each other's shoes and sharing the view they see from another's eyes.
"The program's model taps into the creativity of youth and engages them not through the lens of their conflict, but rather through their storytelling and listening. The methodology allows participants to genuinely take in perspectives without the 'threatening' proposition of agreeing with one another," said Bergman.
Past swaps have demonstrated that the transformative effect of the program lies in imagining the potential in their partner, which allows swappers to imagine the potential in themselves and, in turn, the world.
"Story Swap is powerful precisely because it harnesses storytelling -- the most accessible and universal of all human activities -- to open the doors of communication that might otherwise be closed," said Lisa Consiglio, executive director of the AWF. "It works because when listening to stories, we suspend argument, engage our imagination, and, walking in the shoes of another, experience compassion."
Bridging divides is not exactly part of the Israeli-Palestinian narrative right now. Fear, anger, pessimism -- these are the dominant emotions among Israelis and Palestinians. Maybe it is too much to think that decades of mistrust and misunderstanding can be washed away simply by telling each other stories. But since nothing else has had much effect in bringing these two people closer together, perhaps just sitting down and simply listening to each other is not such a bad place to start."
Peace out.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

2011-09-20T16:51:00.000-06:00

One minute past midnight today, gay men and women could actually be themselves and not get thrown out of the military. I remember the disappointment of many of us, when Don't Ask, Don't Tell came into being, but justified it as a step along the journey. It's been a long journey and a long time coming.
We all know from history that changing the law or public policy doesn't change all minds right away, but slowly.
I was born into a world where Negroes (and that was the nice way of talking) couldn't eat, sleep, drink or be educated the same place Whites were, a world where sailors and other tough guys beat up on fags and fairies, a world where people who learned differently were considered dumb and dropped out of school at 16; a world where women were only housewives, support staff, or elementary school teachers; a world where males played sports; a world that has evolved in so many good ways. The Civil Rights Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Title Nine, Women's Rights, and Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Transgender Rights have become critical to our culture.
So let's celebrate that.
Now - with all that said - someone explain to me why two of the new prime time shows on television this season are about the Playboy Club and Airline stewardesses in the days where youth and beauty were the only qualifications for the job. To check it out, I watched the Playboy Club or whatever it is called last night, and sure enough there were the girls/women in their skimpy bunny outfits dancing and mini-slutting for tips.
At first I thought it might be a satire; a take off on the bad old days. But it isn't. It's like Mad Men, only worse and less well done. What is the interest or fascination with the retro shows? Are those supposed to be the 'good old days?' Are people yearning for the days when men were men, women knew their place, gay people didn't exist, and there was no handicap access? The days when men married women, and unmarried women were old maids? Days when Afro-Americans knew their place? I don't get it.
But enough ranting. I'm joining the celebration of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and reminding myself there is still work to do in the trenches where social justice gets acted out - or not.

Risk A or B?

2011-09-19T18:18:00.000-06:00

The last couple of blogs have been about moving from black and white into the gray areas of life. Philosophically, intellectually, or emotionally, it's pretty easy to see the complexities that make it difficult for us to take an either/or side.
But yesterday, in Nicholas Kristof's article 'Glimpses of the next Great Famine' in the NYT, commenting on the plight of starving Somalians,
                          Kristof says: The . . . choice comes down to for many Somalis:
                          Do they risk starvation at home or torture and rape while fleeing?"

That's an either/or question that demands a response. No time to sit around the seminar table for the semester reflecting on the choices.
That horrible choice got me thinking of all the people who have had to make the 'Do I Stay or Do I GoNow?' decisions that come with famine, war or natural disasters.   What to do with the crying baby in the Underground railway, whether to send a child off to the unknown during the wars, the Cuban crises, to go back for the elderly in Katrina, to act or not to act? I've been spared the big Either/Or situation, never had to choose between a Capital A or Capital B risk, so probably shouldn't feel quite so smug while pondering the complexity of life.

Classist or Classless?

2011-09-16T17:14:00.000-06:00

Another one of those either/or situations. Is the USA classist or classless? I know we, as a nation, consider ourselves classless. But really.
Talking with Ann today at Peet's, we wandered into the topic of money and categories.She was talking about a friend in England who is quite comfortable with the lower/working/middle/upper/upper middle class way of categorizing people and their money. Most of us know those terms and can place ourselves under a heading.
But what about upper class? Does the concept of upper class no longer fit in America? Politicians, pundits and just plain people like the rest of us have shifted from using the term 'upper class' to using 'wealthy' as a definer.
Coming from the east coast, it's easy to remember the time when upper class meant wealthy with old money, educated, pedigreed (some relative came on the Mayflower or something similar). Absolutely not ostentatious. But everyone knew.
People with 'new' money could never be considered upper class. Old Joe Kennedy, with his millions, could buy his kids ways into prep schools, colleges, political seats, even the presidency, but not into upper class. Over time, the WASPy, upper class old money phenomenon has been replaced by the entrepreneur, cable cowboy, college dropout, athlete, rock star, famous for being famous folks of new money. The Wealthy.
What intrigues me is that I didn't notice when the language changed from upper class to wealthy. Certainly, the working class exists in the minds of every politician trying to gather votes. We can visualize those members of the working class, and if we can't, all we have to do is turn on the television.
So are we classist or classless? Even better, perhaps, the question should be 'Are we classist and classless?'

Either/ Or

2011-09-15T15:48:00.000-06:00

Standing on the walkaround at 6th and Uinta about 6:45 this morning, I felt as if I were right at the dividing line. To my west, skies were dark and foreboding. To my east, the sun was rising from behind the light clouds. Who would win? I don't know why I jumped right into an either/or mode of thinking, "Oh, it's either going to be warm and inviting all day or those dark clouds would overcome the light clouds, hide the sun, and offer up some rain." I was betting on the dark clouds reigning from about noon on.
Finishing up my circular walk, I headed home for some coffee and the newspaper. Australia tenders 3 gender choices on passports was a small filler headline on an inside page. The two sentence article said Australian passports will now have three gender options: male, female and indeterminate. Yea for Australia.
Now, what's the connection between the 6:45 sky and the Australian passport, you must be thinking?
It's that conniving, manipulative, pouncing Either/Or thinking that connects the two. What made me first leap to 'it'll be dark and gloomy' or 'sweet sunshine'? Rarely does black and white or either/or thinking serve anyone well. Of course, the day was a perfect blend, a gentle combination of clouds, a little sun, a little rain, uneven, transitional, and not to be captured by 'this or that' thinking.
I am impressed by Australia, as a country, and its ability to move beyond the male or female dichotomy and include indeterminate in its gender categories on passports. It was comforting and easy to be able to say boy or girl, man or woman.... comforting, but not always true. The truth all too often, or so it seems to me, goes beyond either/or. It's true that 'you can't have your cake and eat it too,' but there are many thoughts and ideas that call on us to think in more complex ways. Yes? No? Maybe?

Phantom Money

2011-09-14T18:46:00.000-06:00

What is phantom money? I thought I knew, but I don't. Last night I was part of a discussion group on the topic. As a group, we didn't even come to a consensus about real wealth. Here's what David Korten, author of
Agenda for a New Economy says about phantom wealth:

Phantom Wealth refers to financial assets that appear or disappear as if by magic as a result of accounting entries and the inflation of asset bubbles unrelated to the creation of anything of real value or utility. The high-tech-stock and housing bubbles are examples. Phantom wealth also includes financial assets created by debt pyramids by which financial institutions engage in complex trading and lending schemes using fictitious or overvalued assets as collateral for loans in order to feed and inflate asset bubbles to create more phantom collateral to support more borrowing to further feed the bubble to justify outsized management fees. Those engaged in creating phantom wealth collect handsome “performance” fees for their services at each step and walk away with their gains. When the bubble bursts, borrowers default on debts they cannot pay and the debt pyramid collapses, along with the bubble, in a cascade of bankruptcies.

Those who had no part in creating or profiting from the scam are then left to absorb the losses and to sort out the phantom-wealth claims still held by the perpetrators against the marketable real wealth of the larger society. It is all legal, which makes it a perfect crime.
From Agenda for a New Economy, p. 21

I sort of get it, especially the first paragraph. It's all magic to me - stocks go up, stocks come down. People get rich and others go bust. I remember my Aunt Mary, who had little envelopes with different names on each tab: Savings, Christmas, electricity, rent, birthdays, food. That was how she organized her money. Sometimes I'd be visiting when she'd be dividing the money up and putting the $10 bill for savings into its envelope. I understood that kind of accounting. Nothing phantom about it at all. But times change and so do the ways in which we handle our money or let someone else handle our money. My little retirement package, through TIAA-CREF, is in all sorts of stocks and bonds. I don't know what they are, and up until recently, never cared or never thought to look. I thought it would just all go up incrementally each year. Modest, conservative and part of a large system.
Well, my bubble burst in 2008, along with hundreds of thousands of others. And mine was just a baby burst compared to what other people suffered or are suffering right now. I know greed is the driving force behind a lot of what has gone wrong, what is part of phantom money. Maybe some day I'll really understand the concept.
Now, on to real wealth. Our group could not agree whether financial security is part of real wealth. I happen to think it is -- sort of on a Maslow's Hierarchy sort of framework. Real wealth includes food and healthcare.
Right now those things cost real money. Without the financial security to provide, it seems to me there isn't real wealth. I know, I know, friends, family and community are part of real wealth. I strongly believe that. But I do fall into the pool of people who feel that security (which includes financial) is part of real wealth until there is healthcare and food for everyone. What do you think?

Skein of Yarn

2011-09-13T16:41:00.004-06:00

I don't usually advertise or market things, branding isn't my game. But...if you live in the Denver area, I strongly suggest you take yourself to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the new exhibition by Fred Sandback. The entire building is dedicated to his work, and it is stunning. Hard to explain how a man can take skeins of yarn, string a few pieces here and there and create sculptures that change the space and all the visual aspects of a room. And seeing that he died in 2003, it's pretty hard, at first, to understand how it all happened.
Turns out Fred Sandback left plans, designs, strong suggestions on how museums or other curators could replicate his work in the future, plans that include how to use hypothetical space, how to create shapes and bifurcate rooms. This particular exhibit was curated by the late Sandback's wife and Adam Lerner, Chief Animator and Director of MCA.
And, as one of the guides told us, the Sandback exhibit requires a modest amount of work - some nailing, placing the acrylic yarn around wires, etc.- and little expense. The skeins of yarn can be purchased at Walmart or any other big store and can be re-used. No expensive insurance to ship these pieces of art across the country - any carry-on paper bag will do.
Several rooms, using maybe eight to ten strings of yarn very strategically, really were dis-orienting at first, somewhat vertigo inducing in one room in particular. Just imagine yourself shaping and re-designing a room, or your whole house, with a couple of skeins of yarn.
You won't be disappointed in this exhibit. I'll send you a string of yarn if you are.

Public Confessions

2011-09-12T16:15:00.000-06:00

A Day in the South Florida Life - Rob Wright

"So I'm sitting outside the Starbucks on a sweltering (that means hot) Saturday afternoon. The lady next to me it turns out is a counselor or psychologist of some sort, seeing her "patients" in her "office" outside at a table under an umbrella. One "client" came and told his sad tale, then walked off as sullen as he came. The next client who had been sitting patiently at another table, reading a magazine, took his place. I was trying to not hear what was being said, as I was reading a book about cattle herding in Florida in the early 20th century. It was hard to ignore however, something about a woman who turned down a marraige propoasal, then began dating his friend or whatever.

Meanwhile, some silly old lady shuffles over to the table on the other side of me . . . with two huge, bright blue parrots who she plops right down on the table. The beak on these things could tear your eyes out in a second and would. I am just getting to the fascinating part of my book where Flagler's railroad was messing up "open ranch" cattle herding, what with those fancy train cars, when the aforementioned jilted fellow begins wailing hysterically, embarrassing and loud sobs and squeals of utter grief. The shrink is admonishing him to get over it, she was no good for him etc., but that just angers the parrots, who begin screeching wildly.

I'm like, wtf is wrong with people? Is there no shame left in our society? Didn't we used to tell our sad tales in private, air-conditioned offices after telling friends or family we had a dentist appointment or something? Weren't these sessions done on late Tuesday or Thursday afternoons, not Saturdays? And the lady with the crazy birds didn't stir a bit. Like a mother allowing a child to squeal violently on an airplane, she just let it go on. I'd had enough, so I slammed my book down hard, startling the parrots into silence for a second, but having no effect on the crying man. The birds went back to their rants and so I went inside. . . ."

Now I'm imagining matching therapists with the right coffee/tea shop. Cognitive-behavioral at Starbucks; Family Systems at Daz Bog's; Anger Management at Stella's; experiential at St. Mark's? Pick your shop, pick your mode of therapy.
As some of you know, I like to listen to people's conversations at coffee shops, restaurants, anywhere. I've heard lots of business deals get done, gossip get regurgitated, but never a therapist-client conversation. But rent being what it is, why not take the counseling session to Starbucks? As for the parrots, they could have had my iced chai. Not big on things that claw or bite.
Life is abundant with irony. Who ever thought I'd be lifting writing from my son Rob's facebook page? We've come a long way from me trying to sneak in my own sentences on his various school applications.
Anyway it's a great tale, and perfect follow-up to my adventure with the marshmallow and my head scarf. You never know what you'll find on a walk or hear at a coffee shop. Drama is just a footstep away.