The Power of it All

Joe Biden chose a beautiful fall day to visit here in Durham, North Carolina.  A blue sky and the sun just right, it kept us warm but not too hot.  We were a laid-back crowd, typical of this small southern city, all of us waiting to see our presidential hopeful.  Not invited to the main event--a car rally in a blocked-off parking lot--we stood along the school's drive, all of us apart from each other, trying to figure out which route Joe would take to head back to the airport.

The unmarked police cars, the motorcycles, and a side road sealed to traffic gave it away.  We figured if we waited long enough, we would see Joe's motorcade, and sure enough we did.

What struck me most of all was the power, the sheer power, of that motorcade.  The roaring motorcycles, the flashing lights, the lead cars followed by four SUVs, and multiple cars behind.  It's a heady experience seeing that kind of power, a realization that those who run our country are mighty in ways that go far beyond the ordinary.

And what a tragic mistake to have vested that extraordinary power in such a weak human being as Donald Trump.

We cannot make that mistake again.  Despite everything Trump has done to undermine our country and our standing in the world, the President of the United States is still the most powerful person on earth.  We owe it to ourselves and to each other, and to people everywhere, to do what we can to elect someone deserving of that power.  Someone who won't use that power for his own good, who won't corrupt that power into something vile, who won't treat that power like it's his personal tool.

For in the end, that power belongs rightfully to the people, we the people.  It's shared power, not authoritative power.  

Joe Biden understands this.  Donald Trump does not.

Hatred

The voice that left the message was course and vile. "Ain't none of your business how I'm registered . . . I'd never vote for a Democrat, they're all crooked and stupid . . . Don't ever send anything to me again."  

Really?  This in response to a friendly, straightforward Get-out-the-Vote letter that my daughter and I sent to fellow Durham Democrats in our neighborhood.

So it's okay that people make calls like this? to a neighbor no less?  Especially when you're a registered Democrat who would logically receive such a letter?  I don't know why she's chosen to register as she has, perhaps to vote more effectively in local primary elections, but she shouldn't be surprised to get mailings from the Democratic Party.  What bothered me the most, though, was the hate in her voice.  Why not a simple, polite call that asks me to remove her from my mailing list?

I was watching the funeral service for Congressman John Lewis when the call came in and fortunately didn't answer.  The anger I felt simply listening to the message was hard enough to contain.  I felt like calling her back with an equally hateful response or sending her a demeaning letter.  But I thought instead about John Lewis:  his humiliations, his arrests, and his beatings.  The hatred he endured over a lifetime of 80 years dwarfed my bad encounter with a neighbor.  Like him, I wouldn't let this experience poison me.

Still, it's hard to know what to do with hate.  Martin Luther King, Jr., would counsel love.  Others, forgiveness.  For me, it's enough to say that I might understand my neighbor if I had lived her life.  And while I won't exactly turn the other cheek, I'll refrain from meeting hate with hate.  It's the best I can do right now.

Education 101

Saturday's editorial in The New York Times, "Reopening Schools Will Be a Huge Undertaking. It Must Be Done," elicited almost 2,000 largely oppositional comments.  In it, the editorial staff argued that public schools should open this fall with unprecedented federal funding and with imaginative use of outdoor space.  As one reader noted, the word "teachers" appeared only once, in the second-to-last paragraph.

This says it all to me and, at the same time, doesn't surprise me.  "What do our teachers think about re-opening?" seems like an obvious question.  Yet for too long our society has discounted the role and expertise of its teachers.  We don't pay them enough, we don't support them enough, and we don't consult them enough. . . but we ask them to solve society's problems that society fails to solve.

Consider for starters poverty, hunger, racial disparities, and economic inequality.  We expect our teachers to overcome these challenges and ensure that all of their students achieve at a defined level-- despite low salaries, marginal benefits, and often poor working conditions.   At a most basic level, the schools that my kids attended lacked soap in the bathroom dispensers, doors on stalls, sufficient cleaning supplies, working windows, and mold- and asbestos-free classrooms.  Even when there's no coronavirus circulating, many Durham schools are neither safe nor clean.

Just as the pandemic has exposed the failure of public health and elder care in the United States, so it exposes public education.  How did we get to the point where teachers buy their own paper?  Need subsidized housing?  Work second jobs?  Crowdfund surgeries and new equipment?  Why do we tolerate dilapidated buildings and aging school buses?  Why do we short-change our children and their teachers?

It's past time to ask these questions.  Covid-19 will eventually resolve, but the ills that plague our schools will not unless we demand something different.  As fellow citizens protest policing and racism, let's add public education to the conversation.  It's related, after all, and it serves our future and our national treasure: our children.

Baby Steps

So now that the mass protests have largely ended, where are we in our evolution of civil rights?  Here are some good signs:

Confederate statues and other offensive public works are coming down.

Black Lives Matter signs are popping up; I've seen several in my neighborhood, where few people broadcast their political views.

The U S. House of Representatives passed the D. C. statehood bill for the first time ever.

Mississippi's House voted to remove the Confederate flag from the state flag.  Republican Governor Tate Reeves said that he would sign such a bill if it comes his way.

Players in the National Women's Soccer League knelt during the national anthem on Saturday.  In a joint statement, they said they were protesting "racial injustice, police brutality and systemic racism against Black people and people of color" in the United States.

Baby steps, perhaps--and way too long in coming.  Much harder work awaits.  Yet baby steps need not be dismissed.

They're often the first signs of a movement on the rise.

Enthusiasm Gap? I Don't Think So

Any campaign that signed up volunteers to work in a storage unit on election day did something right.  Here we are inside Unit 10 of Ample Storage on Tuesday:

Yes, this was a temporary field office in Durham, staffed by hearty Obama enthusiasts.  The working conditions were terrible: it was cold, loud, and dreary.  But there we were, making phone calls and driving voters to the polls.

I guess we've learned something.  This kind of energy really can beat millions of dollars.

Water Wonders

The water lilies at Duke Gardens look like flying saucers

Some resemble fancy plates with red rims

This one reminds me of a heart

Rose-colored fans swirl nearby

 And hot pink blossoms keep the memory of summer alive.

Puppet Panoply

 Paperhand Puppet Intervention presides over the Eno Festival parade every year.

The puppets evoke ancient gods and goddesses.

The Sun God is my favorite, but he's hard to capture because his handlers move him every which way.

Some of the birds are scary.

But the owl is like an old friend.

Abundance

Growing up in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, I hardly knew anyone different from me.  We were almost exclusively white, middle-class Christians from so-called "traditional" families.  My kids' experiences growing up in Durham, North Carolina, couldn't be more different.  At times this has troubled me.  I've been sorry that they weren't surrounded by kids more similar to them, and I've wondered if they missed out on something.  When I see a picture like this, I realize I couldn't be more wrong.  After all, what does it really mean to be "different"?

Oddities

We live in strange times. Often I read the news and wonder how we got where we are--sometimes we seem far off track, and other times we seem surprisingly progressive. Here's what jarred me this week:

That a billionaire who owns the New Jersey Nets will run against Vladimir Putin for president of Russia.

That the Durham Public Schools website posted crucial parent information initially only in Spanish.

That somehow it's OK that the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sibelius (acting on behalf of Barack Obama), can overrule F.D.A. scientists and researchers.

That American military base schools are not subject to "No Child Left Behind" (George Bush) or "Race to the Top" (Barack Obama)--and that their students perform better than peers at regular public schools.

That it's still not OK to eat raw chocolate chip cookie dough, even when you make it yourself.

That our love for dangerous and violent sports--especially football and ice hockey--isn't all that different from that which drove Roman Colosseum fans centuries ago.

That advocates for the Keystone XL oil pipeline include TransCanada employees Paul Elliott and Gordon Griffin, both friends of Hillary Clinton--who, in her role as secretary of state evaluates the proposal and recommends for or against it.

That Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus has a Ph.D.

That nasty Newt Gingrich has a shot at Iowa.

That we're still dealing with voter suppression efforts after all these years, and that--fortunately--Attorney General Holder understands the danger.

Medical Wasteland

I've been wandering in the wilderness--the medical records wilderness, that is--for 40 days as I've waited for my records to travel from Duke Eye Center in Durham to Academy Eye Associates in Chapel Hill, 10 miles down the road. I should have hired the Pony Express.

You'd think that living in "The City of Medicine," with all its high-tech institutions and technologies, would result in equally high-tech efficiency. Not so. It took 3 faxes and 10 phone calls to complete my relatively simple request.

In the midst of this frustration, I was reminded of T. R. Reid's excellent book on health care, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. In it, Reid takes his sore shoulder around the world, consulting with doctors in France, England, Canada, and other countries in search of ways not only to treat his shoulder, but more importantly, for ways to improve American health care. For as he notes in his introduction, in addition to our inability to provide services for all of our citizens, "the United States also performs below other wealthy countries in matters of cost, quality, and choice."

When it comes to medical records, France has us beat by a long shot. Everyone over the age of 15 carries a carte vitale, or the "card of life," a green, plastic credit card that contains complete health information since 1998. Patients can take this card to any doctor or hospital in France and their medical history is instantly available. The card also contains insurance and billing records, so that payments and reimbursements are handled automatically. The layers of administrative processing that we encounter daily are simply not needed in France.

We've all been fasting in the medical desert of American health care for too long. For even if we're lucky enough to enjoy the finest medical services, we're still paying for bloat and inefficiency.

It's past time to emerge from this wasteland.

Scenes from the Eno Festival

Bookish sand carvings, ancient creatures in the annual parade, a hot and tired soul waiting for a cool drink. Best of all, though, were the Star Catchers, a troupe of special needs adults who performed patriotic songs and imitated Elvis. They put the timid among us on notice. As one of them said, "All you need to do is put your mind to it, and you can do whatever you want."

The Crown Jewel

This recently-watered caladium at the Durham Garden Center reminded me that the most precious gem of all is not a stone.

Water. We wouldn't be without it.

Resurrection

Yesterday afternoon when I found in our woods five baby opossums clinging to life on their dead mother's body, I didn't know where I'd find help on Easter Sunday. Who would be open on a holiday? The Triangle Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, thank goodness.

As a part of its mission, the clinic "provides care for sick, injured, and orphaned native North American wildlife" and is open every day. Running on the usual non-profit shoestring, the staff and volunteers tend to squirrels, turtles, rabbits, native birds, snakes, and just about every little creature you can think of.

A far different enterprise from the pageantry at Duke Chapel, where I had attended Easter services earlier in the day. An inspiring and humbling sermon I heard for sure, but not quite as humbling as the modest animal clinic that took in five two-month-old opossums destined otherwise for death.

The natural world, it turns out, assures us that the Easter story will be told over and over again in infinite variety. How fortunate that we get to play a part.

History Lessons

Should anyone really be surprised anymore when oppressed people finally rise up and overthrow their governments? We need only look to examples from history--our own and that of other nations--to recognize the events playing out in Egypt. And we need only look to our own history to remember what can happen when we side with dictators.

History is everywhere in the news these days. Michele Bachmann told us recently that our founding fathers worked hard to end slavery, and the Republicans cite the Constitution whenever they can (except when they confuse it with the Declaration of Independence). And when anyone bothers to take note of the endless war in Afghanistan, inevitable comparisons arise to both the Vietnam War and to the Soviet defeat.

That it's important to understand history should go without saying. Yet our public schools in Durham are ignoring this fact. With pressures building from the "No Child Left Behind" Act and now "Race to the Top" funds, our teachers must focus almost exclusively on math and reading. Science still gets its own time slot, but social studies is an afterthought. It's no longer an essential academic subject.

As it is, Americans haven't done a great job in learning the lessons of history. Now it seems like there's no longer history to learn.

Early Winter in Carolina

The Cost of the Copperhead

One of the biggest complaints about the new health insurance legislation—indeed, a main source of lawsuits against it—is the requirement that everyone obtain coverage or face penalties. I support the requirement and here’s why.

Earlier this year I was bitten by a copperhead in our backyard, a not-uncommon occurrence in North Carolina as we lead the nation in copperhead bites. It was a nasty, painful experience, but most of all it was expensive. I spent 23 hours in the Duke Emergency Room and came out with a bill of $65,000, before insurance kicked in. Yes, you read that right.

The main part of the bill was the charge for anti-venin: each dose cost $30,000, and I received two.

When I asked a pharmacist familiar with Duke’s operations why the cost was so high, she became defensive. She said that Duke probably paid about $10,000 for each of the doses, but had to pass along other costs to me and to my insurance company. One of the biggest of these, of course, is to cover those people who also show up at Duke this year with a copperhead bite but who, unfortunately, have no health insurance. In these cases Duke will absorb the costs because, frankly, who among us can pay $65,000 for an unexpected medical bill?

I realize that American health care is expensive for lots of reasons, and the new legislation doesn’t address all of the problems. We have a ways to go. But as long as fellow citizens remain uninsured—often because they can’t afford the outrageous premiums charged for individual plans—the rest of us will pay their bills.

I don’t mind paying taxes for the common good. But I do mind paying a disproportionate amount for other people’s health care. It’s time to make everybody sign up, to create affordable plans, and to put us all on a more equal footing.

Bring on the new legislation and follow up with more.

It takes a village. . .

. . . to rescue a dog. Especially Typhoon, an older Shih Tzu with behavior problems. Thanks to the villagers:

To Motch in Chapel Hill, who arrived as a modern-day Merlin (just when the search was flagging) and offered wisdom from her years breeding dogs.

To Dr. Hughes of Durham, who identified the profile of the rescuer I needed to find.

To Amanda of Durham, who would have opened her home to Typhoon anyway--knowing that he wasn't the companion she wanted for Mona.

To Stephanie and her friends in Rolesville, who were wholly unsuited to adopt Typhoon but taught me I needed to probe deeper.

To the animal rescue groups in our community, who offer a safety net for lots of creatures like Typhoon.

And finally to Ellen of Durham, who was determined that Typhoon be given another chance to live.

Scenes from the Eno Festival

Rabbits took center stage at the Eno Festival this year, as t-shirts, sand carvings, and children's creations of bunny ears sprang up everywhere. The festival's a great way to celebrate the 4th of July without the fireworks. Enjoy the music and the crafts and the food and especially the people. Best of all, the weather this year: unseasonably not too hot.

The Geese Go Marching

On their way through the parking lot of the North Durham Regional Library, these geese made me laugh.

Choose a book, any book.

End of Grade Tyranny

Today marks the beginning of End of Grade (EOG) tests in Durham County and in other districts across North Carolina. In honor of these colossal wastes of time, and, I would argue, hindrances to the education of our children, I have composed an acrostic poem similar to the ones my children compose in school when they're not forced to prepare for yet another test.

Endless cycle of pointless tests.
No time for real learning.
Death to creative instruction.

Original student work? What's that?
False sense of achievement.

Great minds stifled day after day.
Relentless onslaught of practice worksheets.
All math and reading all the time.
De Soto, Degas, de Gaulle. Social studies? Forget it.
Every child let down.

Teaching to the test is all that counts.
Education under siege by misguided bureaucrats.
Science suffers: it's not on the test, why bother?
Too much time spent on all the wrong stuff.
So many children left behind.