Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! For your perusal, I present two poems

Joseph

Old thrones wear out under the weight of God.
As I pick out rosewood and ebony
From which to craft the new – I’ll inlay it
With precious gold and pearl – I cast my eyes
Down in the Lord’s presence and peer toward Earth
Through shrouds of nimbus clouds like shorn sheep’s wool
And see the tableaux that display the Birth.
Nubian angels trip on nightgown lace
And lose their feathered wings from off their backs.
Young bath-robed Magi bring the Christ Child gifts.
Blond kindergarten cherubs’ halos slip.
The cardboard oxen low, the Baby hears.

The programs name the Babe the Son of God.
They’re wrong. He was my son. My bones said so.
I didn’t heed what angel messengers
Told Mary in her dreams. When He was born
I felt a plumb, square pride, a smooth-planed love.
The shepherds tried to touch the raveled hem
Of His comfort. And I too felt His strength
Each time I rocked or corned Him fast asleep.
I shooed away the asses, goats and lambs.
I chose not to see the Wise Men bring gifts
Of gold and frankincense and myrrh. Instead
I heard their warnings and we fled Herod.

In Nazareth I raised him as my own.
I showed him how to wield an axe to fell
A tree – eventually to become a cross?
We played catch in the yard when I had time
And fished for trout on Galilee’s green banks.
I spanked him hard the time he stayed behind
To argue dogma in Jerusalem.

But thrones wear out. God calls. I’ve got my task.
No time to bore you with my memories.
He was my son. I knew it in my bones.


Mary

I was an ordinary Jewish girl
Who tried to run away to hide the shame
I felt. How could I blame God as my feet
Swelled up and body bulged? Could I point
My finger and accuse Him? Despite the
Angelic hosts and voices in my dreams,
Despite the myriad Be-not-afraid’s,
I had a time explaining it to Mom,
Let alone Joseph. Then Jesus was born.

God! I was weak. Gods are not easy births.
Resentment faded fast. I just felt proud.
Joseph stood beside me at the inn.
The chaos in that stable frightened me.
All those strangers crowing in to see
The Baby in the manger where He lay.
The middle Magus – Caspar? I forget –
Kept sneezing from the hay, an allergy
I think. I didn’t know what to say to them.
“Have a drink of water?”
“Look out, shepherd,
Your goat almost stepped on His face. Get back”?

The magi brought us four gifts, not just three
Of gold and frankincense and myrrh. They gave
Us warning of King Herod’s wrath, and told
Us, “Go away to Egypt! Save your Son!”
That irony is not now lost on me.
We left the stable, shepherds, oxen, all
The warmth that I had grown accustomed to
And off we flew to Egypt.

My story
Of his birth contains no heavenly choirs.
I was an ordinary Jewish girl
Whose Son’s divinity was thrust on me.


© WDMoser. Printed with permission. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without written permission from the author.

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Christmas Letter

I am fascinated by Christmas letters – in the same manner that a snake fascinates a hare. I love to read them and at the same time I am a little repulsed by them. Too often they are brag letters or organ recitals. I want to know that people are healthy or ill, but I don’t want to hear about every incision or stitch, every frozen slide made from shaved tissue. I don’t want to know about all the relatives and friends I never heard of.

But I have no qualms about putting any of these topics in my own Christmas letter. I often wrote one in the past and included it in the myriad Christmas cards we’re still writing. This year, I included cards with this weblog address. Here goes:

January: We escaped the cold of Chicago and went to London for a week. There it was early spring, with daffodils blooming and cyclamen and geraniums blooming in window boxes. We were able to visit with our friend Tim, and we visited Ann’s distant cousin Jean in Nottingham, who became in the wink of an eye Ann’s English Mum. On the morning it snowed, the headlines read: London Paralyzed by Inch of Snow. Ha!

February and March: At the end of February we joined our travel buddies Ted and Carol in Buenos Aires for a couple of days before we got on a cruise ship for a trip around the horn and up the coast to Valparaiso, Chile. The highlight of Buenos Aires, in addition to Evita’s tomb, was a Tango Diner at the Taconeando, a local joint where we were the only English speakers. Way double plus cool.

We visited the Falkland Islands, Las Malvinas to Argentines, saw a penguin rookery – in a desert not an ice floe – went to the southernmost city in the southern hemisphere, visited a Bavarian expatriate community in Chile, and had a great time with Ted and Carol.

April: I had minor surgery and everything is fine.

May. Grandson David graduated from high school. Son Derek graduated from Veterinary College at the University of Illinois and moved to an internship in Denver.

June: Ann went on a skipper (a type of butterfly) and butterfly census sponsored by the University of Illinois, in western Illinois with friend Julie for a few days. When she came back, I went to Vermont to the Clockhouse Writers’ Conference at Goddard College and came back refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready to write.

July: I went to Port Townsend, Washington, to a writers’ conference, made new friends, and fell in love with the Northwest, and came back refreshed, reinvigorated and ready to write.

August: We went to Oregon to visit travel buddies Ted and Carol. We have made five major overseas trips together but had never visited each other’s houses. We had a great time.

September: David started college in Wisconsin and Jonathan became a sophomore at the local high school, where he produces his own radio show on the school’s FM station. The geriatric symphony season also started. We are some of the youngest people at the Friday afternoon concerts, and some of the few who don’t take very expensive naps. The opera season also started and we met for dinner with the people who sit behind me. (Ann doesn’t like the spectacle of opera, just the music, so she saves about a thousand bucks and stays home.)

October: A couple more operas, a symphony and Halloween. We stayed home and painted the guest room. Bill worked on a newsletter for his cousin Rochelle who owns a local restaurant, Flavor.

November: Ted and Carol returned our visit and came for ten days with a jaunt to Michigan to see their daughter, a professor in Ann Arbor. We had another great time and did all the tourist things we should have done in the last forty years but haven’t gotten around to.

December: Insurance finally paid the outpatiend surgery bill (not to be bitter, but for this we pay almost $15k per year?). Bill started a new blog based on the Episcopal Lectionary. It's at Bill's new blog.

Merry Christmas to all!

Our best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year for all of our friends, and those who wander through cyberspace and read this blog. May the next year bring peace in the world, a viable presidential candidate who is more interested in our nation than in lining his own pockets or consolidating his own power, and harmony within your family and yourself.

Please feel free to comment by clicking below.

Christmas Gifts

We don’t have many people we get Christmas gifts for, and most of the people, like us, don’t need much.

My niece in the Washington Beltway inherited a houseful of furniture from my parents, probably including silverware. That makes her hard to find things for, especially since we seldom see her. I did send her a present earlier this week. I took it to one of the we-pack-it stores and they packed it, shipped it, and gave me the tracking number, which I sent to her to make sure she knows it’s coming and arranges for it to be received.

My wife and I don’t need much that we don’t get for ourselves. My wallet went through the washing machine a couple of weeks ago, but I found a similar one at TJ Maxx for pretty cheap, although it cannot replace the one I bought in Venice about four years ago. The biggest damage was to photos, which are on the computer, and to a ten-ride ticket on the Metra, which takes us to the Loop. The conductors were accommodating and punched the remaining four rides when we went down on Tuesday so that wasn’t a problem. For the most part I like things I don’t have to dust or display. That isn’t the kind of thing I usually give however.

Because my wife and I both are painting watercolors lately, we’ve decided to get a couple things we could both use. That’s our “big” present, and it isn’t very big. The package is being shipped, according to a recent email, from dickblick.com as I write this, and should get here next week. I’ll wrap it and put it under the tree. And because we’re painting, we’re giving paintings for Christmas. A wise woman I know said that she doesn’t give her paintings, she lets recipients pick them out, and that’s what I think we’ll do this Christmas.

We decided to put up a tree this year, by the way, and invited our neighbors across the street for pumpkin soup and trimming. Sue did a great job. The tree is beautiful, twinkling away in our bay window. Packages lie under it. The only thing missing is someone to sleep there, and we may be able to arrange for a teenager to come in for that, too.

Speaking of, Grandson David called with his Christmas list from college last week. Among other things, he’d like a hoodie. We got him one when we were in Prague a couple of years ago, and he still wears it. We got him one for his birthday when we were in London this year, but he can always use another one, I suppose. We already decided on his present, and we’re getting the same thing for his brother Jonathan. We hope they like them. They aren’t watercolor paintings

We have a couple of other people we give, but the gifts are remembrances rather than important Gifts.

The gift I like most is Time. Time with other people for conversation. Time for building gingerbread houses with the grandsons (although they’re a little big for this now. Ha. No, a lot big), something I enjoy. Time spent on an “adventure” with our friend Theresa. One of her gifts of time was a tour of ethnic Catholic Churches in Chicago on Holy Saturday. That was fascinating, interesting, and fun. Time spent walking the dogs with friends, especially at the dog park, where I have a lot of my social life lately. Time running the dogs with me at the Dunes, especially during the winter when no other people or dogs are there. I love Lake Michigan at every stage, calm, thunderous, frozen. It’s always beautiful, and I always dress warmly enough in the winter.

One of the gifts I treasure most is Time at most-weekly Saturday breakfast with the grandson’s dad. We’ve become regulars and have our own waitress. We talk about the important issues of the day, at least the issues important to us, and friends and acquaintances stop by the table before Tim has to go to work and I go home to write blog entries.

Christmas Trees

We usually have a Christmas Tree Trimming Party. We use the time to get together with friends and neighbors, to try to catch up with them – and get someone else to decorate our Christmas tree.

We aren’t as manipulative as we sound. For several years after our son died we didn’t have a tree, we couldn’t even consider the thought of having a tree. Several years after Daniel's death, Friend Tim, whose parents died when he was in high school, told us we could be grandparents to his two boys, David and Jonathan. They were nine and six at the time, and they gave us a whole new attitude toward life – and toward Christmas. The year we became Grandparents was the first year we had a tree again.

We have accumulated Christmas ornaments over the last forty years, and most of them have some kind of memory we associate with them. We bought gilded seashells the year we spent Christmas in Hawaii when our son was little and his grandparents wanted him around. We just went along for the ride. Among the hundreds of ornaments we also have little felt dolls of the six wives of Henry VIII that we started collecting the year we took our son to England when he was about eight. We have construction paper stars with glitter glued on that Daniel made in kindergarten and glass balls from the Great Depression that were my wife’s aunt’s. I can't possibly list our ornaments.

Each ornament has a sentimental value and triggers a happy time from the past. But every happy memory carries a sadness that screams what might have been. I can put the tree up. I can put the lights on, although that also triggers memories of dealing with the lights when I lived at home: Christmas tree lights were not cheaply made in China then as they are today. The bulbs were bigger, and the oldest set we owned had gigantic bulbs with big bases strung on ancient silk-wrapped wires. They may well be in the Smithsonian today. If they aren’t, I wouldn’t be surprised that some very similar ones are.

My mother always bought the cheapest tree she could find, usually for less than a dollar, when the going rate was a lot more than that. Usually it looked fine leaning against a wall at the corner tree lot, but when we got it home, sawed off the base and put it in a water-filled tree stand, it usually had the same posture as a corkscrew. No matter which way we turned it, it wasn’t vertical. My father would have spent more for a nice tree, I am sure, but he couldn’t override my mother’s veto. And when it came to Christmas trees, somehow he didn’t have one.

Already frustrated, my engineer father would finally get the tree balanced enough to stand semi-upright and we would begin to play with the lights. I’d untangle them and stretch them out on the floor, and he would scream that I was going to step on them and break them. We wrote that script early in my high school life and as long as I helped with the tree and lights, the next eight or ten years, we never departed from it. Except I learned to swear as I grew older, something my dad never did.

Anyway, these days I can put the tree up and the lights on without flinching, but when it comes to putting on the ornaments, I dissolve. Thus, we ask friends to come to a party and decorate for us.

Last year’s party was especially fun because our Jewish friend Sue had never decorated a Christmas tree before. She went at the ornaments with such enthusiasm that she was a joy to watch. And I didn’t have to touch and remember the association with each one.

We haven’t thought yet about putting up a tree this year, and truthfully it’s early days. And we have been busy so we haven’t thought about having a party – a requirement in my mind for putting up a tree. It's probably too late to plan one.

This year, David is away at college, and Jonathan is a normal busy high school student with his own friends and interests. That is as it should be. But we seldom see David, and never see Jonathan often enough. We, of course, are proud grandparents and twice a day wouldn’t be often enough.

Will it be Christmas without a tree? We may find out.

Birthdays

My birthday is coming up and people have started to ask me what I kind of a present I want.

At this point there is no particular thing I can think of that I truly want. I have more than I need, too much that owns me these days, and I’d like the Salvation Army to come clean a lot of it out. My wife would object to that, of course, and she’s right.

The kinds of things I want these days are intangible. I want close friends to share long conversation with. And please don’t wait until I’m in Tuesdays-With-Morrie shape for that to start.

Snow for Christmas would be nice, but probably a selfish request that would mess up people’s holiday travel plans. A couple of years ago we went to Prague in December and waited on the tarmac at O’Hare for seven hours before the expired wing de-icing could be reinstituted. We had bought each other business class for Christmas, which was a good thing because I would have been arrested if I had gone crazy in steerage waiting to take off. I don’t know how those people handled it, but they did. Perhaps I should ask for patience instead of snow.

I want an agent for my unsold books. I know for sure that they both need at least one more good revision before anyone will look at them. That’s not something anyone can give me, and it will take a lot of time with my ass in the chair focusing on the books before that will happen. If it ever does.

I’ve made more money this year with my watercolors, which is not to say much, than with my writing. It’s nice to have people ask to buy a painting occasionally. Having people ask more frequently would certainly stroke my ego, not that it needs stroking, just ask my friends.

I’d like a non-judgmental partner to go to the health club with me four times a week. That, of course takes the opposite of revising my books. I have to get my ass out of the chair to do that. I might even lose the hundred pounds I need to see go. [N.B. I can talk about being fat, but you are not permitted to talk about my being even a touch portly.]

A surprise party with a good band and a nice dance floor would be terrific. As far as that goes, I’d like to go dancing at least once a week. For that I’ll need a comfortable pair of shoes with leather soles, but fit is problematic and I can’t ask anyone to take me to Nordstroms, particularly during the Gigantic Holiday Buying Season that passes for Christmas. I’ll get up there with my credit card within the next couple of weeks, fight off the hordes of shoppers, and find something that fits.

I’d like ten acres full of rabbits within close driving distance so I could take the dogs and let them loose to hunt. Last night shortly before midnight when I let them out for one final potty before bed, they cornered a rabbit in the back yard and chased it for about five minutes. It finally escaped under the fence. I don’t think they had any intention of catching it, and neither they nor I would have known what to do with it if they had. Ugh. I know this might offend some of my animal-loving friends, but Stella and Brando are animals too. Hmmmm. As one of my favorite columnists says, “When political correctness collides with political correctness.” I wouldn’t mind 500 feet of Lake Michigan shoreline within close driving distance, either, for the dogs to run on. The point is moot (perhaps even mute), of course, because there’s no way I can find and afford ten close acres; and no Lake Michigan property of that size is available for even a one hundredth of what I could afford.

I’d like to establish a substantial scholarship fund at Goddard College, a place that truly changed my life. Maybe that will be part of my will, or perhaps my friends will create a scholarship after I die. I certainly won’t be able to enjoy flowers then. That would be a good place to scatter my ashes (eventually! Let’s not jump the gun), but I won’t know the difference, and it won’t mean the same things to the people who do the scattering.

None of these is a helpful gift suggestion for anyone. And Christmas is coming, which is even worse. But at some point in most people’s lives, there’s very little they need. I think I’ve reached that point in mine.

Happy birthday to Beth T, with whom I share the date!

Please feel free, as always, to comment below.

Priorties

If you read the Chicago Sun-Times on a regular basis, or occasionally the Chicago Tribune, if you watched television news in the Chicago area, you would come to the conclusion that the most important event in the past month in the entire country, on the whole planet, is the disappearance of Stacy Peterson.

She vanished from her home about a month ago leaving two young children - and a husband about thirty years older than she. She was his fourth wife, and the third died under what the media are making out to be suspicious circumstances.

Not since Lacy Peterson’s disappearance or the O.J. Simpson trial have domestic difficulties made so much splash.

Search teams from Texas arrived and conducted mass searches. The Illinois State Police declared her disappearance the most important investigation in the state, perhaps the country. People Magazine has put her putative husband, Drew Peterson, a now-retired local cop, on its cover, and he seems to relish the oats he munches at the media trough.

In the spring, another woman, Lisa Stebic, disappeared from her suburban Chicago home, and she too has yet to appear dead or alive. In fact, Drew Peterson and Craig Stebic, the ostensibly bereaved husbands, have, according to ubiquitous media reports, become fast friends. On the other hand, it may be that no one else understands their plight and they joined together in a common bond. Lisa Stebic’s disappearance drew almost as much publicity as Stacy Peterson’s.

Don’t get me wrong. The idea that a woman, or in this case, women, vanish, leaving their families, is tragic. That they may have been murdered, abducted, violated, all are terrifying, and cause me to double check the locks on the doors each night. But I don’t believe their disappearances deserve so much media coverage. If their husbands did away with them, and that’s a big if, and if they are arrested, another big if, there is no place in the entire Midwest either one will be able to get a fair trial. I suspect Drew Peterson knows that and has become the media’s darling as some kind of a ploy.

But none of that matters in light of the fact that we have our priorities wrong.

This has been the year of biggest casualties in Iraq, buried somewhere in the newspaper. President Bush has the opportunity to take a stand on a Palestinian State with the conflicting parties meeting this week at a summit, but that too is buried. We are in the midst of an overly long presidential campaign, and it’s important that we scrutinize each candidate to choose the best one so we don’t end up in four or eight years in the same mess we’re in now. In Chicago a couple of weeks ago, a fourteen year African American old girl disappeared on the way home from visiting her mother in the hospital. She turned up almost two weeks later, but the media pretty much ignored her. We seem to be headed for a recession, despite the Black Friday and Cyber Monday bunkum we see on the news. Scandals proliferate at the Cook County level (so what else is new?) and in the City of Chicago (although Mayor Daley seems to be surviving them).

Unfortunately, television news, and to a large extent struggling print media, have become mere entertainment for the masses. All these important events swirl around us and instead of being thoughtful citizens, we have become total air heads. The media say they give us what we apparently want, but I don’t believe that’s their responsibility. TomKat’s baby and Brittney Spears latest automobile hit-and-run are not as important as the war in Iraq, the possible invasion of Iran, or the current summit. Given the opportunity, I believe the American public will rise to a more serious, thoughtful level.

The news media must stop treating us as slack-jawed yokels, stop lowering expectations to the lowest common denominator. Give us, instead, something to ruminate on, something of importance.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is the obvious day to be grateful for all our blessings. I particularly am grateful for our freedoms, my health, my relative prosperity, but most of all for my family and friends. Without them the other stuff would be dreck.

First I am thankful for all those who, unfortunately, won’t be present at the Thanksgiving table today, particularly Daniel, our late son, who made the world a better place by his presence.

I am also thankful for these people, and I send Thanksgiving blessings out to them. I have listed them in alphabetical order, and I haven’t included duplicate names – one may stand for several people.

Ann, Albert, Anne, Shannon, Barbara, Beth, Bill, Brian, Carmie, Carol, Caroline, Carter, Cathy, Christian, Cindie, Cindy, Clif, Connie, Cosette, Cynthia, David, Dawn, Derek, Debbi, Dianne, Dick, Donna, Elena, Eric, Erin, Fran, Frankie, Gail,

Harold, Harriet, Howard, Jack, James, Jeanne, Jeff, Jennifer, Jerry, Jill, Jim, Jimmy, Jonathan, Joseph, Judy, Ken, Kim, Kristin, Laura, Laurie, Lenny, Leslie, Lucy, Lois, Maggie, Marian, Marguarite, Mark, Martini, Mary, Marylyn, Mike, Nancy, Nell, Neil, Paul Peggy, Peter, Polly, Priscilla, Randy, Robin,

Rochelle, Ron, Sandy, Sandie, Sandra, Sharon, Sherry, Steven, Susan Sue,, Tom, Rebecca, Stewart, Tamara, Ted, Theresa, Tim, Tracy, Virginia, Yvonne.

I am sure there names I have forgotten, but rest assured, I am thankful for you too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I look forward to reading your comments.

neo-Tourist

There’s nothing like being a tourist.

For the past week and a half our travel buddies Ted and Carol (we met five years ago in Venice) have been visiting us and we’ve been showing them Chicago, all four of us tourists. In that time we’ve been places we had not visited, at least not lately.

The day after they arrived we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. I hadn’t been there since the early nineties when we went to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian House exhibit. This time we took the submarine tour and went down in the coal mine, neither of which I had ever done before. My wife had been in the coal mine when she was a child, and it has been revamped completely.

We took Stella and Brando to the Indiana Dunes National Park and let them race along the shore for an hour or so. We were the only people there, and the only dogs. The dunes is (are?) one of my favorite places to go, and I try to take the critters for a good run at least every other week when it’s mostly deserted.

We drove into Chicago at rush hour (a nightmare!)to go to Tony and Tina’s Wedding, and had a great time. Alas, I didn’t get to dance with the bride, but we sure dished the dirt with the bridesmaids.

We visited the Jasper Johns Gray exhibit at the Art Institute and toured Millennium Park, with emphasis on Cloud Gate. Ice skating has begun for the winter, and I had a hard time not rushing down, finding a pair of fat boy skates and soaring out on the ice. Or at least trying.

We spent a day in Oak Park, where we toured the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, and took the walking tour to see the Wright houses in the vicinity. We had never taken this opportunity and it’s fabulous.

Today we took the memory lane tour, which truly opened my eyes. In a circuitous route, I drove us back to Joliet, a place we hadn’t been for years, to see the house we lived in over twenty years ago. The neighborhood is completely different, thanks to a tornado a few years ago, and completely the same. Some houses are gone, some houses are painted, but I felt as if I could park the car, get out and be home. It was tempting to stop and ask for a tour. I didn’t.

On the way to Joliet, we drove through the school district where I taught for 33 years until I retired almost seven years ago. The school looks the same on the outside, but I know all of the students I taught are gone, and many of the faculty have retired, replaced in part by some of these former students. (A huge new school will be ready to open next fall, and another one the fall after that.) What is more amazing than one school building where I used to teach, however, is the area. When I started teaching, Lincoln-Way High School had around 1,200 students in the district, which covered abut 100 square miles. When I retired, there were about 1,700 students in the graduating class. This year, there will be far more graduating seniors than that. Those students all have families, and they all live and shop in the area. The fields are gone for the most part – at least along the main drag. Those fields are filled with commerce and upscale homes, townhouses, and condo buildings.

Every square foot of land seems claimed.

I guess that’s progress, and it may pretty far off the point I intended to make. Or not.

I think what I’m trying to say is that every so often we need to step back. By looking at Chicago through Ted and Carol’s eyes, I gained a new perspective on the city. It truly is magnificent. Except at rush hour when we were trying to get from the south burbs to Piper’s Alley on the near north side. The school district I taught in is overwhelming. Thomas Wolfe said we can’t go home again, and it’s true. I never feel quite comfortable when I go to the annual Christmas party the school district puts on for old timers. But I was able to look at my surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. And that’s an astounding experience. Thanks, Ted and Carol.

Distant Memory

The year is 1948. I am two and a half. We have lived in Minneapolis for the last two years in the house on Ewing Avenue South. We will move again in two years to Virginia where my father will be an army captain at Fort Belvoire and my sister will be born when I am six.

My mother has never lived away from her family, and although she has made many friends here this first time she moves away from her hometown, she will not be so resilient the next eight times she moves and will sink into chronic mildly functional depression. Perhaps to avert that inevitability, perhaps a prescient dream has told her, perhaps because she is lonely for the friends she has had for more than thirty years, perhaps because my father travels the state to sell chemicals for Pittsburgh Plate Glass and leaves her alone with me from Monday to Friday, girlfriends from her hometown in Ohio visit this summer.

Our house is small. White clapboards shelter two bedrooms, a living room that opens to a dining room, the kitchen, single bath and stairs to the attic where the floor, painted cream and spattered with primary red, green, blue, and yellow, delights me. This decorating statement may be from a previous owner too timid to display energy in the public areas of the house. Indeed, the living room is papered with two-inch cream and off-white stripes.

“Aunt” Margaret, a spinster with whom my mother taught grade school, and whose brother she once dated but didn’t marry because he was Catholic, and Aunt Georgia, whose husbands proliferate throughout my young life, each one wealthier than the last, arrive in her '48 Cadillac to visit for a week. I can’t remember any of her last names.

Nor can I remember where they sleep, but I do remember the paisley comforter they sleep under, feathers of orange and blue intertwined on a sea of pale yellow. When we moved from Minneapolis to Virginia and then to Albuquerque, it remained boxed, probably at my grandmother’s house in Ohio. Not until we move back to Minneapolis for a couple of years until my dad was transferred yet again, this time to Illinois, do I see it.

Aunt Margaret always brings me books and reads to me. She carries herself with dignity and never misses mass. When we live in Albuquerque, she lights candles in the ancient church in Old Town, candles for her parents and the brother my mom had dated, now, sadly, dead.

Aunt Georgia wears her hair tied up in a scarf, with shorts and halter to match. She delights me in ways only a boy can appreciate. Her best trick is to sit on the toilet and boom out farts that echo in the bowl against water, against porcelain. Each time she uses the bathroom, I follow her in, a giggling shadow at her side. Each poot reverberates in the tiny space. Each time I laugh until my side aches.

No doubt we trek to Daytons in downtown Minneapolis – long before malls are built. No doubt we walk to Lake Harriet to watch the ducks and geese. No doubt we lounge on the beach at Lake Calhoun. Perhaps I even wade chest high under watchful eyes. No doubt.

Somewhere in heavenly life Aunt Margaret lights candles and prays. And somewhere Aunt Georgia delights celestial boys by sitting on the pot, reverberating farts.

Please comment below on your childhood memories.

Veterans Day

At the Eleventh hour on the Eleventh day of the Eleventh month in 1918, hostilities ended in the Great War, the War to end all Wars, the one we know today as World War I.

President Woodrow Wilson declared Armistice Day the following year to commemorate the end of the war. We celebrated Armistice Day until 1954 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower changed the commemoration to Veterans Day.

Today we honor those men and women who have fought for freedom in the armed services of the United States.

Let light perpetual shine upon those who died in the service of our country as well as those who have died since.

And we honor those who continue to live: Veterans of World War II, the Korean Conflict, Viet Nam (including my best man Mike Baldwin!), Somalia, Kosovo, the first Gulf War, and the mess we continue to fight currently, as well as all other conflicts we have been involved in. We also honor those Veterans who were lucky enough to serve in times of peace, especially Derek, who chose me his dad several years ago.

(Unfortunately we have devalued this day by declaring it a time to have special sales. Somehow the American way is about buying mattresses rather than honoring the lives of people who have served our country to keep our freedom.)

Thank you, Veterans, for your sacrifices. We honor you and appreciate your courage.

Click comments below to name those veterans you honor.

Eurabia and Fear Mongering

I am tired of people trying to scare me to death. We live constantly in fear from
*terrorists (or at least those in government who tell us terrorists will hit malls this Christmas shopping season even though they could wreak more havoc at a Bears’ game),
*toy makers trying to poison our children,
*the heart association (and the cancer society and a myriad of doctors who tell us about the toxins in our systems, the food we eat, the danger of red meat, coffee, chocolate, food in general),
*researchers who point out that test scores among school children are falling and America will soon be filled with illiterates,
*bankers and economists,
*you name it.

The most recent fear monger is an expat American living in Norway. I have been reading his disturbing book called While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within by Bruce Bawer (Doubleday, 2006).

Bawer says that Europe has a huge number of Muslim immigrants who do the same kind of work that many of our illegals supposedly do. Bawer draws a clear distinction between moderate Muslims and Islamists, whom he describes as fundamentalist fanatics.

The problem, he says, is that while most Europeans deny any bigotry based on color/race, or origin, or religion, they completely segregate (isolate, separate, alienate, and all those other ates) immigrants, keep them on the dole, and condescendingly call them “our colorful immigrants.” Europeans don’t want them – or any foreigners/outsiders - to integrate into society and allow them to remain outsiders, even calling children and grandchildren second and third generation immigrants rather than giving them full citizenship. This turns even the most moderate Muslim into an Islamist.

Many of these immigrants never learn the language of the country they live in, and their children go to religious rather than public schools. And the Europeans support the schools, the imams, and the mosques with huge monetary grants. The immigrants never assimilate into European society and never follow the laws of the country to which they have moved. Rather, they live in ghettos, follow fundamentalist Muslim law above national law, and have become a huge force that works against the country in which they live.

The murder/assassination of Theo VanGogh a couple years ago in the Netherlands is a prime example of fanatics following religious law above national law, Bawer says. Immigrants feel compelled by their religion to kill infidels. And while this drew great public attention, the rape of European women because they dress, according to Islamist belief, like whores becomes acceptable and the women no longer are victims because they violate the fanatics’ core beliefs. In France, he points out, many young French women cover their heads to avoid the rapes and beatings from Muslim youths who beat and rape them for their immodesty.

These fanatics, Bawer also says, have such strong Islamist values that they practice widespread female genital mutilation, beating of women, and “honor” killings of women who violate the Islamist’s beliefs by having the misfortune to be raped, thereby bringing dishonor on their families. The rapists go free under sharia, Islamist law. European courts, rather than allowing themselves to be seen as biased, excuse the crimes as cultural. That, of course is terrible.

Bawer, I believe, is sincere. And making money from his book, which is ranked 1,733 in sales on Amazon, 7,193 on www.barnesandnoble.com. (I was glad to get into the low 100,000s when my novel Family Plot was in print.) But living in the middle of the European culture wars, and comparing them with America’s relatively open society, which does not provide financial support for Muslims to remain separate, keeps him from having a broader perspective.

The Economist (November 3, 2007, “The power of private prayer: A heretical thought about religion in Europe,” p. 9) debunks Bawer’s hysteria: “[T]he imminent arrival of Eurabia can be dismissed as poor mathematics. Muslim minorities in Europe are indeed growing fast and causing political friction, but they account for less than 5% of the total population by American standards of immigration. Even if that proportion trebles in the next 20 years, Eruabia will still be a long way off.”

Of course, as long as Europe remains segregated, cultural problems will magnify. I have no pretensions of telling Europeans what to do about the “problem” of Muslims. In fact, the “Muslim problem” of today sounds scarily like the “Jewish problem” that got the Nazis going.

But I do have a word for American experts who work for their own ends by spouting fear in the various media every day (which raises my blood pressure and will cause my early death!). I want to hear from reasoned, intelligent people who truly have my best interests (not their own paychecks) at heart.

Otherwise, fear mongers should shut the hell up.

Please click comments below and let me know what you think.

Central Standard / Daylight Savings Time

I hate changing to and from Daylight Savings Time.

It heralds the beginning of flu season, caused by the stress of not sleeping correctly. It messes up children’s body clocks and hinders them from learning, even when they have the extra hour to sleep in the fall. I know it puts my body clock out of synch, and I am convinced that I am not the only adult to whom this happens.

It was probably a good idea at the time, during the last “good” war when a paternalistic government gave workers more daylight in which to play after their shifts at war industries making the products that helped us win WW II. It allowed children more time to play in the daylight after school in the good old days when they didn’t have two hours of homework every night beginning in third grade, and when they weren’t thralls to video games and the television.

Farmers never liked the time change. My late Uncle Acen (who died in 1967) never changed the clocks on his farm in Central Illinois near Arcola. Rather, he kept them on “God’s time.” He always said the cows didn’t know if it were daylight savings time or not, they just kept on their own schedule and needed to be milked when they needed to be milked. Ironically, he grew broom corn, which migrant workers from Oklahoma harvested each fall. He and my Aunt Edith, my father’s eldest sister, didn’t have livestock except for the occasional beef steer, some gigantic hogs, a few geese for Christmas, a smattering of chickens for eggs, and a German Shepherd named Bernice.

Nor did they have running water in the house. There was a hand pump at the kitchen sink and a reservoir on the wood stove in the kitchen they kept filled for hot water. When they needed to wash themselves, they would undress except for a robe, go outside and open bulkhead to cellar, go down the steps, and then stand under the reservoir in the kitchen, pull a chain and shower. Briefly.

(Uncle Acen was a curmudgeon, and so am I. He was not my role model, however. I somehow just grew into the job.)

Sometimes after a time change it takes me a couple months to change all the clocks in the house. The digital ones are harder than the ones with hands, except for our antique clocks which cannot be turned backward without breaking the works or forward too fast because the chimes go fonky. The ones in the cars are easier than they used to be, but I still need to get out the manual to figure it out. I don’t wear a watch, but the digital ones used to drive me insane because I’d lose the directions and only certain males under the age of sixteen could figure out how to adjust the time on them.

On the first day after a time change I wake up on my previous time no matter when I went to bed the night before. By the third day I am a wreck. This morning I poured cream all over the counter instead of into my coffee. I slopped coffee on my hand and robe because I couldn’t manage the cup correctly. If I follow true to form, I’ll be fine by the end of the week, but revert the second week. After that I find a routine. When I was teaching, my students were worse the second week, too. I can’t imagine what happens to automobile mechanics or Air Traffic Controllers if they have the same reactions I do (there’s a horror show in the making!).

I do have an idea. While we could do away with changing time altogether, I don’t think that would solve the problem.

What I believe we ought to do is split the difference.

WHAT? Turn the clocks ahead half an hour once in the spring and never touch them again? Am I crazy!

The idea is not without precedent. India is on a single time zone, with the time based on the center (east to west) of the country. That puts it ten hours and thirty minutes later than Central Standard Time. Thus when it’s noon here, it’s 10:30 in the evening there. Is this a problem? For some people, no doubt it is. But most manage to adjust. On the bright side, if we switched our time by 30 minutes, all those out-sourced workers who answer our computer questions might have it easier figuring out when to call us back after we’ve been put into the telephone queue.

If we changed the time in the United States by 30 minutes past Standard Time, we would still have time zones, but we would never have to adjust our bodies, or our clocks and watches, again. Schools might change the time they start and stop. They do it all the time. Businesses could also adjust, and save money because they would adjust the time only once.

And if we never fiddled with the settings on clocks, despite not being on “God’s time,” even Uncle Acen might approve.

Please comment by clicking on comments immediately after the graphic of the pencil.
And thanks for stopping by!

The world is too much with us

Please click comments at the bottom of this piece and tell me your thoughts. You don’t even have to sign your name.

William Wordsworth wrote “The world is too much with us, late and soon . . .” When I read the newspaper I am sometimes inclined to agree, but most times the world is with us and we are with the world. And it’s usually good.

On a national level, for instance, Ann Coulter has decreed from her infinite and mean-spirited wisdom that the United States is a Christian Country. She says that Jews, for instance, need to be “perfected,” whatever that means. Her solution to the Muslim “problem” is "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." She leaves no room for the myriad religions practiced – or not – in our country today. The founding fathers in the Constitution of the United States declared in the First Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights for those paying attention (obviously not A. C. who has confused herself somehow with J. C.) that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” That doesn’t say to me that Ms. Coulter should become our own national Ayatollah who decides how people should believe or think. Somehow people who know they are right just know they are right.

But being part of the world isn’t all bad. More locally a close acquaintance died a couple of weeks ago. The opposite of mean-spirited Ann Coulter, Wilma was kind and generous and hard working. After she retired from teaching she started her own travel agency, which she was part of until just a couple of years ago. When she died, Wilma was 91, and we took a couple of river cruises with her within the last five years: one from Venice up the Po to several cities like Padua; and one from Bucharest, Romania, by coach to Constanta on the Black Sea, up the Danube to Budapest. She kept up with (or surpassed!) all of us in our group, saw all the sights, enjoyed a drink or two before dinner, discussed politics and current affairs knowledgeably, was a fascinating woman who never lost her mental alertness, played a mean game of bridge, loved the Cubs, and remained interested and interesting until the end of her life. She joined us occasionally at dinner with mutual friends, and also participated in their annual Passover Seder with enthusiasm. We shall miss her. More, however, we’ll cherish the time we spent together.

And the world isn’t always sad, either. Our grandson David is on Fall Break from Beloit College in Wisconsin. (We see his brother Jonathan at least once a week. He’s fifteen, and that’s sometimes enough said. He is a delight, though.) We haven’t seen David since August, and we’ll have an opportunity to spend time with him, bake him some cookies with black and orange Halloween M&M’s, and have a meal at our favorite restaurant, Flavor.

Sepaking of. Chicago Public Television’s program Check Please, which has three ordinary people review their favorite restaurants each week, reviewed my cousin Rochelle’s restaurant, Flavor in Flossmoor this weekend. Rochelle was pretty nervous, even after the show aired. But Flavor got good reviews for having great food, a friendly atmosphere, and as one reviewer said, the friendliness is “a digestive.” I never thought about using the word that way, but it’s true. I always meet new and interesting people when we eat at Flavor. Sometimes when it’s crowded we tell the host that we’ll be glad to share a table, and we always find interesting conversation when we do that.

This Thursday Margaret Murphy will appear with her trio on Flavor’s weekly jazz bill. She is a wonderful musician and vocalist, and has the audience eating out of the palm of her hand, if you’ll pardon the pun. We plan on being there and you can probably watch me steppin’ with my wife, who is a wonderful dancer, and my cousin Rochelle.

Despite Ann Coulter and her negative view of the world, people like Wilma, restaurants like Flavor, singers like Margaret Murphy, and grandchildren, what can be bad?

Check this out

My grandson sent me this video of Raul Midon that I think you'll enjoy. Double click on it to play the video of this marvelous musician.

Sports Genes

I don’t have a sports gene.

Usually that doesn’t cause problems. But despite the continuing warm weather here in Chicago’s South burbs, the holidays are peeping over the horizon and we are starting to think about who’s hosting what, who’s spending the holidays with whom.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter particularly are family and friend holidays, I believe. When we host these celebrations, we invite our chosen family, their families, and various friends. Usually around fifteen or so people come. We see some of them, for whatever reason, no more than a couple times a year.

When we host Thanksgiving, we have a traditional menu: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry orange relish, jellied cranberry sauce, my Grandma’s dry dressing (mmmmmm), green beans with sliced almonds or fresh artichokes, salad, stuffed celery, giant green and black olives, Bobby Christopher’s chocolate maple pecan pie, pumpkin pie with cream I whip at the table, parker house rolls, wine and drinks. We open a can of cranberry sauce, but otherwise we make everything from scratch. We bake the day before, get up early on Thanksgiving morning and put the turkey in, and then get started peeling potatoes, making some kind of sweet potato soufflé, and so on. It’s hard work, but we love to do it for people we love.

We always suggest to our guests that if there’s something not on our menu that screams family dinner for them, they should bring it. Someone always shows up with their family’s special event dish, usually made with cream of mushroom soup and some sort of vegetables, and cheese, or cream of mushroom soup, green beans and canned fried onions. I’m not big on Campbell casseroles, but it’s comfort food for a lot of people, bless their hearts. Usually someone picks up a frozen apple pie that we don’t have oven room for. We set it aside and eat it eventually.

After we eat, I like to take a walk to settle my food so I can have another piece of pecan pie later. I prefer to play board games or chat with people I haven’t seen in a long time before we serve the gang turkey sandwiches for supper. After all the work, which Ann and I share, we need to do something sedentary, especially as we age and begin to realize we can’t do the kind of things we used to. Conversation is the perfect solution.

We have had some interesting Thanksgivings over the years. There was the time Ann had surgery the Monday before the holiday, came home from the hospital on Wednesday, and lay on the couch, totally incapable of cooking. Both sets of our parents were alive at that time and they all came, along with my sister, her husband and my niece. My father-in-law got up around five and clomped around the house in the belief that if he were up, everyone else should be. I cooked the dinner and got everything out at the same time with minimal help. But when we sat down to eat, my mother-in-law had disappeared. Our relationship was tenuous at best. I had worked hard to get everything together and I was irritated, but mild irritation turned to fury when we found her, eventually, shoveling snow off the street in front of our house. I may well have said a couple bad words in an uncharitable moment.

On Thanksgiving the year after my son died, his friends Bill and John showed up. They had spent Thanksgiving evening with us for several years before Daniel died. Bill told us, “My dad said, ‘Isn’t it time you go to Mosers?’ He just wanted us out of the house.” I am not sure Bill’s dad even knew about Daniel. We spent hours catching up and reminiscing about Daniel, and they didn’t leave until after eleven that night. God bless Bill’s father.

Another time we spent Thanksgiving with friends who had a huge house and invited about forty people all together. They asked me to be in charge of the kitchen because in a former life I was a professional cook. We had an interim priest while we were looking for a permanent one, and after everyone else was served, I finally collapsed with my food at the table next to him and his grown son. “You’re not as dumb as I thought you were,” Fr. Hess said, shoveling food into his mouth. I stared at him blankly. “I mean, you’re smarter than I thought.” My mouth dropped open. “You’re smarter than you look.” Finally his son said, “Dad, shut up.” I think he was trying to tell me that I had pulled the dinner together, everyone was served at the same time, and the food tasted good. He just couldn’t get it out.

I haven’t forgotten that I started out this essay about my lack of sports gene, and I am wending my way back, as is my habit, to my point:

Lately after Thanksgiving dinner, everyone rushes from the table into the family room to watch a really important football game. All conversation comes to a halt. If I try to talk with people I haven’t seen for months, I am met with the same kind of stares I gave Fr. Hess or asked to go into a different room because “we are watching the game.” It makes me feel as if they regard me as merely the person who cooks and cleans – for their benefit. None of us do very much for nothing, and I expect my pay off to be conversation. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

We haven’t decided what we’re going to do about Thanksgiving this year. Maybe we’ll just let ourselves be invited out. If we decide to host the dinner, the invitation could note that if the football game is paramount, people should stay home and watch TV.

Or maybe I should look for a sports gene splice instead.

Please share your interesting, unusual, bitter or funny holiday dinner experiences by clicking on comments below.

The Death of Funeral Processions

I enjoy reading your comments both good and ill at the bottom of this blog.

Former U. S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill used to say that all politics are local. And of course, he was right. In Illinois, while the legislature is – still! – playing ‘mine is bigger,’ while our Governor and Speaker bicker, not much happens. No one is solving the problems of the state, major or minor. (On the other hand, that may be a good thing considering the state of the state and the fact that every solution creates ten more problems.)

Consider the multiple layers of unnecessary government in the state. Citizens of Illinois do not need township government in addition to town, city or village, county, region, and state governments – as well as sewer districts, water districts, school districts, fire districts, library districts, junior college districts. All of them need money to function, our tax dollars. Many of them are worthy, but we could eliminate or consolidate them and save ourselves considerable opportunities for graft – as well as some of our hard earned shekels.

In the meantime, schools remain unfunded for the coming year because we lack a state budget. This lack will cost us more in the long run as school districts borrow money to continue operations and then pay interest on it.

Locally, Cook County President Todd Stroger calls for a TWO percent rise in the sales tax in Cook County to pay for his nepotism, incompetence, and inability to follow through on his campaign promises. Perhaps now that he has our attention, he’ll settle for a half a percent, almost balance his budget, and we’ll all live happily ever after.

And problems remain. And most of the problems are increasingly local. One of the problems I encountered (here I go, my Andy Rooney mode) this week was an old rural custom that needs to be adapted to Twenty-First Century urban life, the funeral procession.

Funeral processions have long been part of grieving, part of showing respect for the dead and the survivors. In the Nineteenth Century ministers conducted funeral services in people’s homes. Often houses had large, removable front windows the coffin could be carried through if the door were not wide enough. The hearse, drawn by magnificent black geldings with black plumes, moved in stately procession from the house to the cemetery, with mourners in black walking behind. After a committal [to the earth] service, pall bearers lowered the coffin into the grave and the mourners dropped clods of soil on it. This signified the passage from life into death, and gave concrete symbolism to the mourners that it was time to move on. Some people moved on better than others, of course. Abraham Lincoln had his son disinterred so he could see him and hold him again.

In the Twentieth Century we sanitized death, a tradition carried into the Twenty-First. This may make it easier to erase the lives of the deceased for those who were mere acquaintances, but probably makes it harder for the truly near and dear. We use make up to make the bodies look “natural” as they “sleep” in their coffins, complete with innerspring mattresses. Special hair dressers design new coiffures for them. They wear their glasses in the coffin, even though most people take off their glasses to sleep. We hold funerals at special funeral homes where floral scents blight the air and melancholy mood music plays softly in the background. At the cemetery the coffin rests above the grave – we never see it lowered.

Yet we persist in allowing the tradition of the funeral procession no matter what common sense tells us.

As I was running errands this week, a funeral procession far longer than most freight trains, turned on to the four lane, somewhat restricted access highway where I was driving. Like the Energizer Bunny, it kept coming and coming, stopping traffic as it ran many cycles of stop lights, confusing drivers who were about to turn or ready to cross the intersection when the light turned green.

As the procession continued, access to the highway increased in front of several strip malls. In the procession, several cars lagged, often up to a block and a half. The procession stayed in the passing lane through several intersections, violating red lights while other drivers slammed on their brakes and those several cars back honked, obviously wondering why no one moved when the light turned green.

Eventually, eight or ten cars at the end of the funeral procession formed their own sub-procession a couple of blocks behind the rest, leaving a huge gap. A light at a cross street turned green and a car pulled out. The driver of car at the front of the final group sped along, entitled to right of way and apparently oblivious to the car in the intersection. The procession driver finally slammed on his brakes and plowed towards the crossing vehicle, fishtailing over three lanes. The procession car missed the crossing one by no more than an inch. The crossing driver, no doubt shaken, got the hell out of there. She was in the wrong legally because the law that dates back many decades requires all drivers to give right of way to funeral processions.

This law allowing funeral processions, even ones with fluorescent stickers on windshields, needs revision. They are just not safe. Funeral processions are no longer appropriate in urban areas.

But nothing will happen until there is a terrible accident because our lawmakers are reactive rather than pro-active. And right now they’re having little (little is the operative word here) “sword” fights while they play ‘mine is bigger.’ The major problems in the state fall by the wayside.

And there’s no reason to suspect the minor ones will get any attention at all.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to my wonderful wife Ann! This photo shows her "on safari" last year in Southern Illinois on an amphibian census. No one else would have put up with me for the last 40 years.

Rain, Rain Go Away

Please make your own comment at the end of this piece.

I upset some people with last week’s blog. According to statistics only ten per cent of people who get offended voice their opinions or write a comment. I got two comments taking me to task, so I project that twenty people were offended.

That’s kind of too bad. Unless people are so offended they terminate reading what I have to say. Offended is not terminal, as a colleague used to remark. I acknowledge problems in our country, and if you are a regular reader you know that I frequently point them out:
•Our president is a lame duck (lame, unfortunately, in a lot of ways) and is biding his remaining time rather than trying to solve problems both domestic and international.
•Our presidential candidates are campaigning rather than doing the jobs we pay them for (listen up, Hillary and Barack!).
•The housing market, despite the intervention of the Fed yesterday, is in the toilet and people are losing their homes left and right.
•Global warming continues to take its toll.
•We are spending ourselves into oblivion and our national debt comes to about $2,000 for every citizen, and probably about the same for those living here who aren’t citizens for whatever reason.
•The United States uses the great majority of the world’s resources despite having a minority of the world’s population.
•Bigotry exists everywhere, including within my own heart, and yours too, if you’re honest.
•We have lost too many freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
•We are inundated with trivia: frivolous lawsuits, fake celebrities, vapid awards shows, fear mongering of all sorts, you name it. And it all seems designed to keep our minds off the real issues like New Orleans’ reconstruction, the war in Iraq, decent health insurance and health care in America, economic problems, add your own list here.
•People are not allowed to be who they are, black white, yellow, purple, straight, gay, old, young, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, and whatever other categories available.

Be that as it may, we can regard the metaphoric glass as half empty or half full. There was a time in my life, particularly after my son Daniel was killed in a dreadful accident, that I thought the glass was empty, bone dry, and that it always would be. After years of therapy, after experiencing the love of more people than I ever deserved, I have come to see that my life is rich and full. It’s not perfect and I didn’t mean to imply that that last week.

In my own feeble way I celebrated the distance we have come in the United States, the stable inter-racial neighborhood where I now live, that at least some of the bigotry I grew up with no longer exists. What I got in response, however, were comments that I didn't set my sights high enough. Anonymous (!) said, “50% black and 50% white is just not that diverse - any hispanics, asians, gay couples, middle-easterners, singles? Yes, 50/50 is an American dream, for sure, but we should aim higher. We should aim for economic diversity in our neighborhoods. That's where the real discrimination lives: neighborhoods where everyone has a similar income. As long as the poor are concentrated in one area our children will never enjoy equal opportunities.”

I couldn’t agree more. But I can do only so much, and living in my middle class, racially mixed neighborhood is the best I can do at this point in my life. I’m not yet circling the metaphoric drain, but that point comes closer and closer. Again I point out that I am where I am in this life because of an accident of birth. I am fortunate to have been born into a college-educated, middle class family in the first half of the last century. I could just as easily have been born in Siberia and frozen to death under Stalin, been a victim of genocide in Rwanda or Kosovo, been born brain damaged or physically disabled – as could we all!

But I wasn’t. I work (in ways probably too subtle to have much effect) to make other’s lives better, and I celebrate the life I have.

Let me continue to be grateful. Don’t rain on my parade.

American Dream

Please click comments at the bottom of this blog and respond to my ideas.

I live in a dream world, the American Dream, like many middle class Americans.

If I’m too hot, I turn on the air conditioning. If I’m too cold, I turn on the heat.

If I get sick, I go to the doctor and my insurance company eventually pays the bill, occasionally after letters to them, the doctor, and my state and national congressmen. And Michael Moore. The point is not that I have to fight about so many bills, but that eventually insurance pays them (Thank you Representative George Scully for intervening twice now!).

I walk my dogs on a daily basis and take them to the Indiana Dunes State park once a week or so if I want to. Usually we go to the local dog park where most pets and their owners behave reasonably well. They run and play and bark, the dogs that is, and I walk around and around the track, picking up after them with blue plastic (scented!) poop bags that were a gift when we got the dogs. It’s not really “green” to use the bags, but certainly more appropriate than leaving piles all over the dog park. I do have a vision of archeologists several hundred years from now digging into a land fill and finding perfectly preserved plastic bags filled with doggie caca. At least they’ll know what our society values.

We have enough to eat, perhaps too much. When we are hungry we go to the grocery store or out to eat. Our garden is productive enough that I can give away tomatoes and eggplants to the local food pantry.

Last night, as part of the American Dream that we live, we went to Flavor, the restaurant in Flossmoor owned by my putative cousin, Rochelle, and her husband James. Yesterday was Jazz night, with Detour Da Funk providing wonderful, live music. Friends joined us after they got off work late, and we enjoyed being with them. Flavor feels like a wonderful family. People know each other, chat from table to table, joke, laugh, and return again and again. We certainly do. Despite the fact that we are white and the other clientele is often predominantly black.

We believe in chosen family, and years ago Rochelle introduced us as her third cousins on the mother’s side to a group of tentative white folks. I don’t know whether they felt more comfortable or not. I certainly did.

When I think about growing up in Minneapolis, where I never saw a black person, let alone had a chance to talk with one; when I think about going to high school in Decatur, IL, which was paradoxically integrated and segregated; when I think about those times, I realize how far we have come. Last night the music overtook me (as it often does), and Rochelle and I danced, the only two people on the floor, while the rest of the patrons watched. I “fired” her after a while and danced with my wife. All the while, Brandon, one of the servers watched us with the biggest, most amazing and amazed grin I have ever seen. When I mentioned his giant smile, he said, “I just didn’t know. I didn’t know you could step.”

That’s what we do when we go to Flavor, we go steppin’. My wife and I both love to dance, and we even have a small dance floor installed in our sun room. We don’t use it very often, but it’s there when we want it.

We live in an amazing suburb of Chicago, sometimes called the most segregated city in America. I don’t believe that slur. Our suburban street is two blocks long and is exceptionally stable, as far as race is concerned. Maples, elms, and oaks form a canopy over the street. We have a sorehead or two, but that’s normal and has nothing to do with race. African Americans own about half the houses. Those of us of the European persuasion own the other half. We bought our house from a black woman. Whites buy from blacks, blacks buy from whites, and no one seems to mind because residents care for their own property and keep an eye out for each other. When tree roots send the sidewalks askew, the village replaces them. If we’re out of town and a paper is delivered in error, someone puts it discretely on the front stoop. We get each others’ mail, and take each others’ garbage cans in if it’s windy. We had a block party last summer, and a collective garage sale. Everyone contributed their five bucks and participated.

We live the American Dream in large part because of a lucky accident of birth. We were born to the right parents, in the right place on this planet, at the right time in history, with the right talents, and opportunities for the snatching. Thank God.

Amen. Amen.

End of Summer

Summer is ending and I can’t say I’m sad to see it go. This year has been beastly hot, muggy, and downright uncomfort-able.


I managed to get away several times to cooler climes, and maybe that’s my problem with the heat, that and air conditioning. In June Vermont was warm, but not like August in Chicago. In Port Townsend, Washington, in July, it rained most days and was kind of clammy, but not unbearable. Last month in Klamath Falls, Oregon, we found the weather wonderful: warm during the day, cool in the evening, dry all the time, even, somehow, the day it rained.

When I was a kid we didn’t have air conditioning and we never knew the difference. If we shopped, department stores had the kind of frigid air that we don’t find much any more except that escaping from the occasional store in the Loop. We could go to the movies and find cool air, a respite from the heat. In Albuquerque, where I lived when I was a kid in the Fifties, we opened windows at night and slept comfortably, a mile high.

When I was in high school in Decatur, IL, my dad eventually installed a window unit in the living-dining room. I don’t know why he didn’t put it in the bedroom. Maybe it’s because before he bought it, he slept on the floor in front of the open front door, and he continued to sleep there because my mother was always cold.

Each fall he removed the unit from the window. The house was built into the side of a hill so that the front perched above the garage. He’d ask my mother to hold the unit from the inside while he fiddled around on an extension ladder on the outside. Invariably she’d let go to scratch her nose or light a cigarette, and the air conditioner tumbled out the window while he flailed to catch it. It would bounce, and thankfully he always held on to the ladder. It was only an air conditioner, but he’d get really angry. She’d get the giggles.

He had a similar reaction when my sister and I were small and one of us, probably her, shoved a toothbrush into the drain in the bathroom sink. Taking the trap off is not a huge chore. Fishing the clog out isn’t either, generally. My mother, who was not a stupid woman, managed to enliven things when my dad shone a flashlight up the drain pipe into the sink to see if it were clear. She took the easy way out and just turned on the faucets. I don’t know whether the water in his nose, eyes and mouth infuriated him more than banging his head on the pipes under the sink did, but in any event he was angry. Very angry.

Perhaps the fact that he never swore exacerbated the situation. He had no outlet to express his fury. Certainly the fact that she got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing didn’t help.

They remained married until he died several years ago. I think they accumulated 57 years together. He had a lot more patience than most people I know.

But back to summer. Officially it ends in a couple of weeks. Most people consider Labor Day its close. They have jobs or go to school. I am still wearing shorts, sandals and tee shirts (no one my age or size should dress himself this way), and I probably will until it snows. I think I don’t really enjoy the encumbrance of clothes. My former daughter in law never popped in unannounced for fear of the state in which she would find me.

I’m looking forward to fall. I like the colors in the trees, the cooler weather. I enjoy winter, too. Somehow I’d much rather take the dogs to the dog park at two below than at ninety plus with a lot of humidity.

Another benefit of the end of summer is that the beaches at the Indiana Dunes state and national parks relax their prohibition on pets. I love Lake Michigan. I love to sit on the beach and listen to the waves lap on the shore, to watch the dogs race around, then scoot to the edge of the water and try to bite the little whitecaps as they roll in. I like to watch the gulls wheel in the air and then skitter down the beach as they dig for whatever it is they dig for. When the lake is calm, I skip stones across the water. And in early fall the water is warm enough to still swim in – without crowds of people.

We took the dogs to the dunes this week, and we plan to go back next week. That's Stella and Brando in the photo at the top of this essay. We took them in March, the day we got back from South America. We boarded them for eighteen days and they needed a run, as you can see.

Have a nice end of summer. Enjoy the fall. And be sure to comment below.

DAQ: Dumb Ass Quotient

The other day, while we were having lunch at Gabe’s Place in Glenwood, IL (great burgers if you’re looking for one), daughter Shannon commented that “There are plenty of dumb asses in the world. If you can prevent yourself from acting like one, you have the obligation to do so.”

She was talking about being in the dating scene and some of the guys who want to go out with her, but her comments apply in a much larger context. I am the first to admit (well, maybe not the first, there are a lot of people pointing fingers at me) that I am a dumb ass a lot of the time. I try not to be, but it just happens. I suspect that most of us are. My Dumb Ass Quotient is about average, I hope: 100.

But it’s the times when we have more control that Shannon spoke of. The political headlines in the past couple of weeks speak directly to dumb ass-ness, and Dumb Ass Quotients:

Idaho Senator Larry Craig’s behavior screams that his DAQ is very high. Why else would he bash gays, support a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, and then try to consummate a non-heterosexual assignation in a restroom in the Minneapolis airport, with an undercover cop no less? DAQ in the genius level for that one.

Ted Nugent waves machine guns around at a concert and suggests that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama should “suck on this” and that another Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, should “ride one of these into the sunset.” I think that everyone in America is entitled to his own political views, but this seems to me to be a threat, and perhaps the Secret Service should step in. Nugent appears to be inciting assassination, not one of the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. He’s another genius level DAQ.

Republicans do not have a monopoly on high DAQ’s. Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has vetoed funds to schools because he sees funding as “pork.” On the other hand, he continues to live in Chicago and spend about $5000 every time he goes to the capital in Springfield, at least once a week. No irony there. I’d drive him for half that and not bill for mileage. Blagojevich is also suing Democratic Leader of the Illinois House Mike Madigan for not calling a special session of the Legislature when Blagojevich called for one. Each is playing Mine Is Bigger (and we all know that guys who play that are really smaller) in lieu of looking after the best interests of the citizens of the state of Illinois. I grant both of them genius level DAQ’s.

Locally, one of the councilmen in the village I live in has suggested that because end of summer teen crime activity has increased, both the Police Department and the Fire Department need better oversight. He’s just the man to do it. The fact that he is a police detective in a neighboring suburb gives him, apparently, the expertise. To say nothing of the power he could wield. He doesn’t have a DAQ as high as genius, but I bet it’s at least 135. The village president reminded the councilman that oversight already lies in the village manager’s duties. Village President: low DAQ, high CSQ, common sense quotient.

I suggest a modest list of ordinary people with high DAQ’s:

People whose reflexes, vision and hearing are shot because of substance abuse, alcohol, illness, fatigue, or old age, but who continue to drive. Causing accidents, even if the drivers aren’t involved in them, is unconscionable.

People who stand in check-out lines and then act surprised when they don’t have enough cash, or who paw through their wallets looking for a credit card when they could/should have had it ready. High DAQ’s.

Service people who overbook, and that includes but is not limited to medical personnel, hair cutters, cable repairpersons, nail techs, and airlines. My time, and that of patients and customers, is just as valuable as theirs.

I’m sure you can add to the list, and I invite you to click comments and do just that. My thanks to Shannon for sparking this piece. And I ask that readers grant me the grace to keep me believing my DAQ is an average 100 - or below.

Amazement Everywhere

We are participating in that most American of ventures this afternoon and tomorrow: the garage sale. No doubt it has roots in the European flea market and the British boot sale, but it is always an eye opener.

I am amazed at the absolute dreck people will buy, stuff I can conceive of no earthly use for. I am also amazed at the audacity of people who pilfer one of a set of hand embroidered pillow cases or a used sweat/headband. Or the ones who try to keep me distracted while their kids take what they want. If anyone is that desperate all they have to do is ask. We don't sell clothes or used shoes at our garage sale, although we did when we had kids' clothes. These days we don't have kids around, except our grandsons who are in high school and college -- and these days kids in name only.

I am also amazed at the people who will bicker over ten cents. Especially since we deal in increments of a quarter only. It's too much change to bother with if things are pennies, nickels and dimes.

But there are a lot of things that amaze me, like the guy who was at the dog park this morning with his bitch Betty, which happens to be my late mother's name, too. I was not offended, except once he started talking, I didn't have a chance to tell him I was amused, and she didn't look like my mother at all. And she was a sweet dog. We have had dogs named after people, like Louise who was the smartest dog I ever knew, and now Stella, who with her pal Brando inhabit our lives.

And the names people give their kids amaze me, names so androgynous, so arcane we can't tell whether new babies are male or female. And so many names they give their children that used to be last names, and then dogs' names, like Madison, Washington, Adams, the early presidents, although not Fido (or Feideaux) although I knew a kid named Rex, whose mother is a famous financial writer. Leonard,the son of the people across the street who has a good, strong masculine name, and his girlfriend had a baby a couple of months ago, a child so beautiful it makes my heart ache, whom they named Ann. Ann, not Anne, a name so simple, so feminine, so sweet, that it too makes my heart ache. And when I teased them that they named her after my wife Ann (also not Anne), they took it with great grace. Of course they named their baby after my wife, long after my wife was named, an old joke. ButI was amazed that they chose a traditional name in this era of non-traditional naming. Perhaps that means that traditional names are coming back.

Wouldn't that be amazing?

Port Townsend, Washington

This week I'm at the Centrum Writers' Conference in Port Townsend, Washington. Port Townsend is noth of Seattle on the tip of the peninsula overlooking Puget Sound. It's really beautiful here, the weather is cooler, and currently the rain is doing a slow dance with us. Check back next week when I'll be filled with energy, ideas, and lots to kvetch about. Click comments below!

Valuing Children

Please click comment at the bottom of this essay and express your opinion.

This morning I took Stella and Brando, my Humane Society Specials, to the dog park for their hour of running, chasing tennis balls, and playing. A family without dogs wandered in. A man and his wife (evidently) and three little boys who were probably two, three and maybe seven. My dogs have never been around children. Their only reaction when I’m walking them on a leash has been to bark wildly and go into their bucking bronco routine when they see little kids. My own fault, no doubt. I’m not alpha male enough. When one of the little boys ran towards my dogs, I told the man I didn't know how they would act around little kids. He was pretty blasé. When I said I certainly didn’t want the kids to be bitten, he looked surprised. He obviously hadn’t thought of that.

At least ten other dogs roamed the park, and he apparently didn’t know any of the dogs, their reactions, or their owners. Despite big-time liability insurance, I would never get over the guilt if Stella or Brando bit a child. Stella is Australian Shepherd-ish, and aggressively herds if I let her. I didn’t want her or Brando snapping or nipping to get the little boys to form a circle, so I put their gentle leads on them and we left. The parents seemed sanguine about the possibility of their kids being bitten. Does this mean they don’t value their kids? Probably not. But the parents didn’t show that they cherish their boys, either.

I sometimes think we don’t really value children in the United States. For some they are fashion accessories: "Look at my cute child; look at my new Prada purse." We say we want only the best for our children, certainly. But that applies as long as it isn’t too much work. We don’t want to be bothered by them or the people who care for them (in whatever capacity).

When I was a child (here we go, old fart stories), if I misbehaved away from home (I was a perfect child so that seldom happened), I knew my parents would punish me. (One time my dad used a board to spank both me and my sister, although as I think about it she was in another room and she may have gotten off lightly.) Today, if a child misbehaves, it is someone else’s fault. "The teacher needs to give each of the thirty children in class more individual attention. The rules are wrong. This perfect child would never do that. The system is has it in for a particular child for whatever reason." It all adds up to the fact that we frequently don’t love our children enough to make them live up to pretty minimal standards. We give in for fear that children won’t like us any more.

And no doubt that is a rational fear. There were times I didn’t like my parents (particularly when my dad spanked me with a board), but I always respected them for doing the best they could with the resources they had available to them. Despite all their flaws, and my own, they raised me to be a reasonably responsible, generally functional adult.

Children are not necessarily supposed to like their parents. Parents are certainly not supposed to be their kids’ buddies. The parents’ job is to turn children into responsible, mature human beings and then help them move away from home.

In a larger context, we see Americans’ disdain for children in our educational systems. In Illinois, as in most other states I suspect, each school district raises money to educate children by assessing local taxes with the state chipping a few bucks into the pot. Each local district then raises taxes based on the wealth of that district. In the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, real estate values are astronomical and the amount spent per pupil in individual districts can be as much as five times what districts in poor, downstate Illinois districts spend. A teacher who makes well over $100k is not unusual on the North Shore. (I hasten to add that well-paid teachers earn their compensation.) Teacher salaries, on the other hand, top out at far less than half that in poverty-stricken areas of the state. The disparity means that rich kids get better educations than poor kids. No good teacher is in it for the money (or the vacations!). But no teacher can afford to work at such a salary and still pay off college loans, provide a decent house for a family, and still put food on the table.

Children from wealthy families, in general, already have greater opportunities. They have books and magazines in their homes, they travel, they get tutoring if the children even appear to need it, they have better nutrition, better health care, better lives over all. They have parents who both push them and value education. Many poor children don’t have any of these. If society cared about children (as opposed to “my child”), this would change.

In Illinois, the governor recently proposed universal children's health care, despite their parents’ income level. In a recent issue of the local bi-weekly rag, a columnist suggested that we can't afford to provide decent health care for children. Why, the next thing we would have to give them is adequate nutrition in the form of breakfasts. And what would it cost us? I was flabbergasted. Gob-smacked. If we don’t provide adequate health care and nutrition for children, what will it cost us? Their brains cannot develop properly, and we create an underclass. How much more than breakfast or healthcare or education does it cost to keep a prisoner? How much does it cost if we don’t develop every person to live at his or her potential?

Perhaps the columnist was exhibiting not-so-subtle racism. Perhaps this is an idea she didn’t think through. But she was so facile when she wrote it that she obviously believes children (other than her own), do not deserve a chance. She decried the cost of providing nutrition and health care for the children of Illinois whose parents cannot already provide it. I think we could divert cash from Halliburton and the War (Conflict? Unrest? Invasion? Crusade? Politicians’ Pocket Lining? What do we call it these days?) in Iraq to more than take care of poor children in Illinois. Indeed, in every state.

It is time that we become the global village that it takes to raise a child. That doesn’t necessarily mean we throw money at them although judicious applications of cash work well. It does mean that we talk with children (and young adults), protect them, set limits for them, give them opportunities, read to and with them, help them learn, advocate for them and cherish our children, all our children. They are the future. That’s trite, but also true. Children are the future. Children are our future.

Happy Independence Day

Please share your thoughts by clicking comment at the bottom of this post.

Happy Fourth of July!
Our citizens have fought for freedom for well over two hundred years. I pray we soon have our Constitution returned to us and that these freedoms are not gone forever:

Equal justice under the law without partisan politics making some pigs more equal than others;

Three branches of government instead of a fourth vice presidential office which is neither executive nor legislative, but which operates in an opaque hidey-hole;

A president who transparently vetoes laws he thinks (Hell, I’d be satisfied at this point with one who could think!) are against the best interests of the nation instead of attaching statements that declare he’d do what he damn well pleases;

Presidents who are elected fairly instead of appointed by the Supreme Court or win through Chicago style politics – vote early and often, let the dead vote, pay for votes;

Freedom of thought, especially in our mail, conversation – including electronic conversations – without reprisal;

Freedom of speech and dissent - without being branded a traitor;

Freedom from intrusion into our bedrooms and doctors’ offices;

Freedom to have the truth told to us rather than outright lies from our highest elected officials on down.

Freedom from fluff in the news media when important events occur (Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan are NOT more important than national security).

I applaud and honor the Service Men and Women who make enormous sacrifices to keep our nation safe and free now and in the past (including my father and my father-in-law! Let light perpetual shine upon them). God bless them, us and this whole United States.

Next week: Why don't we value children in America?

Split in Two

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It happens every summer. I get caught, for a time at least, between Plainfield, Vermont, and my home in suburban Chicago, a foot in each world as if I were stepping into a canoe as it drifts out into the lake while I am being split in two with one foot on land and one in the boat.

After a week at the Clockhouse Writers Conference (CWC) held in the idyllic confines of Goddard College just outside the quaint and sophisticated state capital of Vermont, I sit, usually in the bar at Burlington International Airport with a beverage, as I try to puzzle out where I belong.

I muse about the dorm room – with a shared unisex bathroom down the hall and the cafeteria about four city blocks away. I remember my first trip to Goddard. I was terrified that I would end up in a hotbed of militant feminists intent on emasculating me. I had an arrangement with my therapist that if I got desperate, she’d fly out and get me. I didn’t call. I fell in love with the experience instead. I became the token male member of a lesbian group. Talk about irony. For the first time in almost ten years, I found a place I truly fit, a place where I was loved and accepted for who I was, warts and all. Goddard has become the place I feel most myself. Each semester I returned – as much for the fitting in as for the education – until I graduated with my MFA in Creative Writing. Now I go back to the CWC every summer.

A week at Goddard both exhausts and energizes me, and I sometimes believe that if I stayed longer, I’d explode. That doesn’t mean, however, that I want to leave.

So I sit at the bar drinking Ketel One with too many olives in a Goddard-induced dream dreading the return of reality when my flight departs. The bar has wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Green Mountains in the distance. The haze on the mountains turns them from green to blue, to gray, and sometimes the mountains vanish completely, melting into the clouds. In the foreground are the runways and hangar of the Green Mountain Boys Air National Guard. The Green Mountain fighter jets take off and land occasionally, but more often play joyful tag, almost touching down one after another. Then, barely above the tarmac, they accelerate abruptly into the ether and shatter the air with sound.

I sip my drink, munch on olives, and grieve the end, for another year at least, of intense connection. But as I sip, I know that people whom I love just as deeply wait for my return to the Chicago suburbs where I live in a Father Knows Best suburb. The houses are well kept, tree branches intertwine over the street, and the sun shines golden on us all year long. Everyone waves when they drive by or stops to chat if we’re walking. We all pick up after our dogs and mow our yards regularly, and we have block parties in the summer with grilled steaks and ice cream.

Too soon I become entangled in pre-flight security screenings and the wait for my plane to board. The woman who has checked tickets for the last few years is so cynical she makes me laugh. She says she won’t answer the phone on her day off or after six at night because her boss might be calling her to come in for extra work . I always check in on line and get an aisle seat. She refuses to have the internet in her home – and she certainly won’t fly. The TSA screeners in Burlington are . . . vigilant. This year they scold me for packing my carry-on too densely as they unpack it with their blue gloves. The battery charger for my camera draws their attention because I stuck it into a shoe.

Years ago, when I first flew out, even before Nine- Eleven, the security screeners treated all the returning Goddard students as if we were terrorists, ready to blow up plane after plane. Now they are more polite. They insult us with their condescension as they explain as if to three year olds why they must look more closely at our luggage. They are always my first step back to a reality where people don’t trust and hold each other up.

Then I sit at the gate. This year the plane was delayed for an hour. Weather messed everything up across the country. I sat and read until we boarded the plane , and then sat in my aisle seat next to a young couple who live in Joliet.

I survive the trip. I’m happy to be home. Yet part of me always longs for Vermont.

Unintended Consequences

Please click comment at the bottom of the blog and respond. Let me and other readers know what you think.

When I lay awake this morning around five, trying to go back to sleep, thinking about what I was going to write this week, I had a great idea about how we humans create our own problems, mostly because we choose what’s worst for us instead of what’s best.

I fell back asleep again, woke around seven, and lost the polished essay I was going to write here today. Coleridge, likewise in a dream created Kubla Khan, the poem that begins:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

I don’t have his opium problem, thank goodness, and this is close to what I meant to write:

We too often forget the best in ourselves and make decisions based on the moment and what feels immediately good instead of what will be best for us in the long run.

I do this every day when I vow to go to the gym tomorrow. Tomorrow of course, seldom comes.

I was struck by an article in this week’s Economist ("Lexington," June 16, 2007, p. 42) that says politicians are the worst at making bad decisions because the electorate is ill informed and will turn on them any moment. The article says, for example, that productivity is better for the economy than jobs, but the electorate doesn't believe it. Politicians don't want to be defeated so they go along. The article gives the example of the Chinese building a dam under Mao. Hundreds of workers dig with shovels. An economist asks, “‘Why don’t they use a mechanical digger?’ ‘That would put people out of work,’ replies the foreman. ‘Oh,” says the economist, ‘I thought you were making a dam. If it’s jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons.’” Our politicians do the same thing, bowing to popular support and ill-informed citizens who dine on a diet of Paris Hilton and her ilk, rather than thinking deeply about the world they live in. I hasten to add that the media all too often feeds the public a mindless diet rather than challenge them to think.

When electronic technology didn’t exist and people got their news from print media, however, they were probably no more thoughtful.

The upper reaches of the earth’s atmosphere is littered with detritus left for the last half century by various nations’ space programs. Will this eventually cause problems? Most likely.

Hundreds of people each day divorce because they married the person who was closest, the most willing, the easiest, the most convenient at the time. The grief for the partners, let alone their children, is tragic.

Thousands of people are killed each year in automobile accidents. Many of those who cause the deaths have been drinking. Others are too old to be competent behind the wheel, but no one is willing to remove their car keys from them. It's not expedient.

Our nation too often feeds children fast food (high in corn syrup and salt and grease and sugar) rather than take the few minutes more to wash fresh fruit or vegetables. Or be a “bad guy.” School lunch programs count ketchup as a vegetable per federal guidelines. An in-law’s niece has refused all her life to eat anything but hot dogs or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and she's now ten. No juice, no fruit, and certainly nothing green. The parents, rather than being in charge, take have created a monster. They also home-school, so at least the little girl is seldom inflicted on society at large. The path of least resistance, once again.


I don’t have a solution for our nation or our planet. But I do have a solution for me, which is to live mindfully, of course, and try to be constantly aware of the law of unintended consequences.

And if I can accomplish this just ten percent of the time, I’ll be doing better than I have in the past.

By the way, I'll be out of town next week, so check out my blog in two weeks.