Monday, December 31, 2012

Janus

After the shootings in Connecticut this month, I suggested to my daughter that she consider moving abroad if our government fails to take subsequent action on gun violence.  I changed my mind about this recommendation once the NRA's Wayne LaPierre made clear the views of his organization.  As he advocated placing armed guards in schools across America, he spoke with a voice that I simply don't want representing my country anymore.  Rather than give up on America, I'd like to stand with those who wish to free us from the madness.

On this particular New Year's Eve, I'm thinking of the Roman God Janus, the god of beginnings and endings who's often pictured with two profiles facing in opposite directions.  LaPierre is the image facing backwards, gazing at a past that never should have been.

Whose face is gazing forward?  Michael Bloomberg's, Barack Obama's, yours, mine?  As the god of transition between primitive life and civilization, Janus calls on us to stand up to the NRA and become the civilized society that our Founders envisioned.  For surely they never dreamed that a "well regulated militia" entitled citizens to bear arms against school children.

The second amendment has been distorted by too many for too long.  This January I hope we can change the face of America so that Wayne LaPierre's image no longer dominates.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Failure to Perform

On the eve of the fiscal cliff dive, perhaps we should consider withholding pay from our legislators when they fail to do their job.  The House of Representatives is especially non-functioning.  What kind of evaluation would most of us receive if we didn't provide services to our customers--the very services we're paid to do?  We're stuck with a sorry lot on Capitol Hill.  The children's song "Did You Ever See a Lassie?" comes to mind:

Did you ever see a Congress
reneging like this one?
Did you ever see a Congress
reneging like this?

Right wingers, they dither,
They dawdle and postpone.
Did you ever see a Congress
reneging like this?

Thursday, December 27, 2012

A Dog's Life: Sundance


From Emily Dickinson: "You ask of my companions.  Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog as large as myself that my father bought me.  They are better than human beings, because they know but do not tell."

Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas Eve

The stockings were draped on the usual chair,


In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Over the F'Cliff

For some reason the fiscal cliff provides endless opportunities for spoofing.  Perhaps it's the unfortunate name we've given it.  At any rate, sing to the tune of "Over the River and Through the Woods":

Over the F'Cliff and down the tubes
To John Boehner's House we go.
His troops are extreme, they make up a team
That only ever says NO!

Over the F'Cliff and down the tubes
Oh how right wingers whine.
It's taxes they hate no matter the rate
Dumb pledges they did sign.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Disarmament

For those of us who've been holding vigil all these years--writing letters to the editor and sending checks to the Brady Campaign--this week's broken silence is hard to believe.  Judging from the groundswell of support around the country, our numbers are larger than we thought.  It's as if a dam finally broke, and the rush of anger, frustration, and sadness is taking over the country.

What will the NRA have to say on Friday?  If it's not an effort towards banning assault weapons and controlling ammunition purchases, I say good riddance.  The NRA has done more harm to this country than just about any other "law-abiding" group.

The president has finally spoken.  Some legislators seem to get it.  Our mayors have gotten it all along.  The time has come to shut down our dangerous, armed society.  For the first time in years, I'm hopeful.

But oh how sad that we had to lose such little children to get to this place.

Monday, December 17, 2012

More on Newtown

President Obama's visit to Newtown, Connecticut, last night must have been one of the saddest occasions of his life, made all the sadder because the American government failed to protect its most vulnerable citizens.  We know there are ways to protect ourselves from gun violence--we used to have an Assault Weapons Ban--but our leaders are chicken.

I sent an email to NC Senator Hagan last night urging her to take action on gun violence.  The drop-down menu on her website listed both "Second Amendment" and "Drug/Crime" as subjects I could select, but I clicked on "Terrorism" instead, for this most accurately describes these shootings.

Whenever they happen, we immediately hear news stories about how rare such incidents are.  But so was September 11, and our government sprang into action with new agencies, new commissions, new airport policies, and new warning systems.  Nothing comparable happens with gun shootings, even though the number of victims each month roughly equals the total number of those killed on September 11.  And not only does nothing happen, nobody even says anything, other than to offer big hugs to the survivors.

These hugs are becoming meaningless, I'm sorry to say, when we fail to DO ANYTHING to try to stop gun violence in the first place.  Solutions aren't easy, and some ideas will fail.  But worse than failure is silence--which has been deafening for too long.

President Obama spoke out last night, finally, and seems ready to take action.  To do so on his part is not to play politics with a tragedy, as some will charge.  Rather, it's what a responsible, civilized society does--take something that went terribly wrong and try to prevent it from ever happening again.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

No Humor Today

The children and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut should not have had to endure the terror that befell them yesterday nor should the children's parents have to live with such unspeakable grief.

We must resist Jay Carney's statement when he said that Friday was not the day "for the usual Washington policy debates."  Quite the contrary.  "The usual Washington policy debates" have been swept under the carpet too many times.  The discussion--and the need for action--began as soon as the gunman opened fire.

Is there no crime too heinous for us to act?

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Heavenly Health Insurance

The absurdity of American health insurance arrived in my mail not long ago.  My friend Hildegard, who died recently and who would have howled with laughter at this nonsense, received a HIPAA certificate from her former insurance company.  No doubt she'd be glad to hear that she'll need this evidence of coverage--when she arrives in heaven--"to reduce a preexisting condition exclusion period under another plan, to help [her] get special enrollment in another plan, or to get certain types of individual health coverage even if [she has] health problems."

Health problems?  Does this include death?  I wouldn't be surprised to hear that St. Peter himself collects co-pays from every American who arrives at the pearly gates.

We've got an antiquated system of health insurance.  The HIPAA Portability Rights that Hildegard's certificate guaranteed were an important step in 1996, but this was 16 years ago.  We've got to join the 21st century.

Obamacare moves us in the right direction.  I'm interested to see what happens when the state and federal governments establish the newly-required exchanges.

In the meantime, don't worry if you're covered by insurance at work: if you die, your next insurer can't hold your death against you.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Bah, Humbug

It's too hot for Christmas.  Something's wrong when you hear "Sleigh Ride" and "Silver Bells" playing in the mall, only to step outside to a 70-degree day.  The inflatable penguins with scarves wrapped around their necks look sillier than usual, and the snow men should simply remain in the attic.

I thought I might find the Christmas spirit yesterday afternoon at Duke Chapel where the Choral Society of Durham performed its annual concert.  The music was beautiful indeed, but I couldn't help notice the aging white crowd, and I wondered about the fate of Christmas itself.  Not so much the secular Christmas, which long ago deteriorated into consumerism, but the Christian Christmas, with its fantastic story of angels, wise men, and a virgin birth.  It seemed quaint and out of touch.

Messiahs are hard to come by, I've decided, at least for now.  I'll set my sights a bit lower and hope that we mere mortals can chart a saner course.  After all, our wish for a messiah is part of our problem; thinking that someone will magically appear lets us off the hook.

Meanwhile the planet heats up, the rich are too rich, and the sick are still sick.  We've got work to do, messiah or no messiah. 

It's what Jesus taught, after all.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Just Two Guys

Thursday's news that President Obama and House Speaker Boehner will conduct fiscal negotiations alone (without Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid present) reminds me of an old song by Grover Washington, Jr., and Bill Withers, "Just the Two of Us."  The breezy romanticism of the original song provides a nice contrast with the brinkmanship currently taking place.

I see ahead a fiscal cliff
That I want so hard to miss but I don't know if we will
To make a deal is hard to do when there's no one else to blame
And I must report back to the Hill.

Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us

Just the two of us
Building bridges in D.C.
Just the two of us
You and me.

We look for cuts, no time for tears
Deficits are all that is and they don't make no jobs to grow
Good things might come to those who wait, not for those who wait too late
We've got to generate more dough.

Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us

Just the two of us
Cutting deals across the aisle
Just the two of us
No more bile.

I hear the tax pledge signers sigh I am simply not their guy
It's Grover Norquist they prefer
And, Barry, when that date arrives and I see the cliff in sight
I want to be with you, dear sir.

Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us

Just the two of us
Trying hard to compromise
Just the two of us
Just two guys.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Monday, December 3, 2012

Within Eyeshot

At the Newseum last weekend I especially enjoyed watching videos of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers describe the sequence of events that led to the shooting of their photos.  The first one we selected was the Kent State picture where Mary Vecchio, the young teenager, cries over the body of the gunned-down student Jeffrey Miller in 1970 (click here).  John Filo, the photographer, explains how he thought at first that he had the perfect picture when he captured a student waving a black flag in front of the National Guard.  It was only moments later when he understood that real bullets were being fired and turned unexpectedly to capture the iconic photograph of the student protest movement.

We also watched Sal Veder describe his photograph of returning American POW Robert Stirm whose family, in 1973, rushed to greet him on the tarmac at Travis Air Force Base (click here).  Veder, too, came upon the picture without much thought.  Initially he was taking pictures of the crowd when he saw "a little movement out of the corner of [his] eye," and turned quickly to photograph Stirm's family--an image of joy frozen in time.

Even Joe Rosenthal, who shot the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, was going for a more posed picture that day in 1945 (click here).  When he came upon a group of Marines planning to replace a small American flag with a larger one that could be seen all over the island, he began calculating his angle and position to get the picture.  He spoke briefly to another photographer when, all of the sudden, the Marines began hoisting the pole.  He clicked and captured what may be the most famous picture of all.

These photographers all thought they were doing one thing when, in fact, they ended up doing something else--something far more significant than they understood at the time.  I wonder if life works like this more often than we realize.  When we spend so much energy focused on our children, or a job, or an illness, or despair, is it possible that something else--something hidden and not fully understood--is happening at the same time?

Maybe we don't need to be as scripted as we think.  We need to show up, of course, and to pay attention, but maybe the high points of our lives aren't the ones we plan.  Maybe they're the ones that form in the corners of our eyes. 

Click.  That photo you took on the fly may turn out better than you expect.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Over the Cliff

Here's one for our feckless Congress.  Sing to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain":

We'll be jumpin' off the fiscal cliff, we will,
We'll be jumpin' off the fiscal cliff, we will,
We can't ask the rich to pay more
'Cause they'll end up being too poor
So we're jumpin' off the fiscal cliff, we are.

Prez is drivin' a hard bargain, yes he is,
Prez is drivin' a hard bargain, yes he is,
Boehner still wants all those tax cuts
Keep in line all his right-wing nuts
Prez is drivin' a hard bargain, yes he is.

And we'll go into recession when we jump,
Yes we'll go into recession when we jump,
'Cause our Congress made a bad deal
One we wish that they could repeal
So we'll go into recession when we jump.

Some will kill negotiations when they can,
Some will kill negotiations when they can,
That's the problem with our Congress
How it functions no one can guess
Some will kill negotiations when they can.

We'll be shoutin' Hallelujah when we jump,
We'll be shoutin' Hallelujah when we jump,
For we know no one can save us
So let's not create a big fuss
We'll be shoutin' Hallelujah when we jump.