West Highland Way

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.  (Pico Iyer, “Why We Travel") 

I have posted the above passage before.  It has touched me deeply.  But now, as I prepare for hiking the 95-mile West Highland Way slightly northwest of Glasgow, I can only have faith that this is true.  I have been upping my walking miles for months and getting things sorted out for weeks, and I have felt a lot of stress.  In a few days, I expect my heart to open, etc., etc.

Daisy, Daisy...

Two years ago--before I knew there would be a new movie version of the story--I reread The Great Gatsby.  I hadn’t remembered what a grim story it is.  I continue to read reviews of the film but can’t bring myself to see it.  Today I came across this interesting critique of Daisy Buchanan: 

Daisy isn't awful, [as many reviews proclaim] she is trapped and scared -- and that is how Mulligan plays her, timidly. Raised a debutante in Louisville, she is expected to marry as a teenager, and she does, to the alcoholic, racist, chronically unfaithful Tom Buchanan. Daisy hasn't had the chance to go to college, or travel the world in the army, as the male characters have. She has a baby before she becomes an adult, and thus is hardly prepared to be an attentive mother. If there are opportunities out there for Daisy to live a more exciting, fulfilling life, she is only dimly aware of them. Is it any wonder she idealizes her first, adolescent romance, with a sweet young officer? Her brief affair with Gatsy is probably one of the only things Daisy has ever done fully by choice. Look at her wrists, bound by diamond cuffs. She is shackled by her own privilege. 

(From the blog of Dana Goldstein)

Haiku by Wendell Berry

And I Beg Your Pardon

The first mosquito:

Come here and I will kill thee

Holy though thou art.

Song for Sunday

It's interesting to see what some of the "professional"
bloggers  post on their sites.  This song was posted on http://www.3quarksdaily.com/  The clothes are fascinating.

Facing the Past, continued

When will we achieve the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Joshua DuBois offers a different perspective from the last post.  

My first instinct has always been to answer that open-ended inquiry with an equally squishy response, one that we will hear again and again from politicians, preachers, and activists during the next week: “We’ve come so far, but we have so much further to go.” I’ve said this line myself, as recently as this past Wednesday, in the pulpit of a Black Baptist church. 

It’s a phrase that sounds practical, realistic, and even useful. But the problem is: I think it’s wrong. And more than just wrong, it is perhaps the primary barrier to real racial progress in this nation…. 

A Night in the Sky

A week from today, I'll be flying to Scotland.  As I get ready for the trip, I'be been thinking of Sylvia Boorstein's description of spending the night on a plane.  It's comforting.

Facing the Past

“Can America face up to the terrible reality of slavery in the way that Germany has faced up to the Holocaust?” ask Susan Neiman in “History and Guilt,” an article in the online magazine Aeon.  Neiman, born in Atlanta and living in Berlin, questions whether the United States has faced its history of slavery.  I think not.

Neiman, living in Germany, is impressed with how Germany has dealt with the guilt of Hitler’s reign.  According to Neiman, the Germans even have a word “for coming to terms with past atrocities”:  Vergangenheitsbewältigung.  There is also a slogan: “Collective guilt, no! Collective responsibility, yes!” 

The Way of the Cross

Alice Walker is shown here wearing a silver necklace.  When an old friend saw this photograph, she was upset that Walker was wearing a cross.  Walker responded, "This necklace...was made by a Native American artist; it represents the four directions.  There have always been four directions, you know, long before there was a cross."

She goes on to tell about an African American artist who gave her a "cross," and explained, "I think for most folks the cross is something people die on, but to me, when I was making the necklace and pondering its four directions, it seemed to represent choices."

Here is Walker's favorite definition
of the cross:  "the cross represents the place where spirit crosses matter."  Maybe her favorite definition is more lovely than mine though their meanings are similar.   To me  the cross represents the intersection of the vertical and horizontal or depth and breadth.  These definitions can mesh with the traditional Christian meaning of the cross, but they add a more universal meaning.  Here are two of my favorite crosses

.
The quotations from Alice Walker come from her book The Cushion in the Road.

What is race?

I believe I first saw this video on Facebook.  In a speech to the Florida Press Association and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, Leonard Pitts talks about the experiment in the video and more.

[Y]ou may remember that I made reference to a social experiment I once saw on television. What Would You Do? is one of those hidden camera shows in which they set up a situation and watch to see how average people respond. In the segment I wrote about, a young white actor sets to work trying to steal a chained up bicycle in a park. He uses a hacksaw, a bolt cutter and even an electric saw. The cameras watch for an hour. A hundred people pass by. A few mildly question what he’s doing, but most don’t even bother. Out of that 100 people, only one couple calls authorities. ABC also tried the setup with an attractive blonde woman. Five white guys stopped – and helped her steal the bike.
It was when they did the experiment with a black kid that things got interesting. And you know where this is going. Within the first minutes, there’s a crowd of people around him. They challenge him.

They lecture him. They whip out cell phone cameras and take video of him for use in court. They call the police. And afterward, when they are asked if the color of the young man stealing the bike had any bearing on their actions, they all swear it did not.

As one man put it, “Not at all. He could’ve been any color, it wouldn’t have mattered to me.”

So when you ask yourself what I mean by “race,” I mean that. That is race.

I recommend the whole speech.

See You?

“It’s good to see you,” I said to my ninety-one-year old Uncle Bob.
  
“You won’t be seeing me many more times,” he answered.

I have visited many relatives and old friends in the past three weeks.  This is the most memorable exchange, but visiting people I haven’t seen for 20 or 30 years and not visiting so many who are gone, Uncle Bob accurately sums up the long view.

Running Out of Songs

Songs about summer

The Daily Beast says, 

‘Blurred Lines’ may be the song of summer 2013, but plenty of older songs are more seasonally appropriate. From ‘The Heat Is On’ to ‘Under the Boardwalk’ and (of course) ‘Hot in Here.’ Listen to ‘hot’ songs of decades past. 

These “hot” songs were songs from the past that I was somewhat familiar with.  I was not familiar with “Blurred Lines,” so I looked up the video.  The main refrain was,

“I know you want it…” and video was a collection of cute, attractive women almost naked and cute, attractive men fully clothed.  I found it both catchy and offensive.  Maybe I'm running out of songs for Sundays.

Fear It

Today, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about becoming bilingual and the vision necessary for such a journey.  He includes in his post a French video where Jacques Brei stresses the importance of fear.  Brei seems extreme in his belief the fear is crucial to success, but Brei's perspective is a useful balance to our usual avoidance of fear.  He says this: 

…a man who has no fear is not a man.  It is important to accept your fear…if someone says he has no fear, he is insane...Living without fear is not living.  You’d better be dead.

Sunday Song: "Class Reunion"

I just finished the 5-6 hour drive from Washington, Indiana to South Bend.  My class reunion was yesterday.  It’s not your typical reunion, not like the one in the song though the song still hits the spot.  My school was so small that every year there is just an all-school reunion for Epsom High School.  The reunion was a surreal over-view of life after high school.  Glad I went; glad to be home.

"Words" for the Day

Ta-Nehisi Coates is living in France right now, and today he writes this:

There's something illuminating about living in a place with other foundational myths and other foundational evils.

Back Home Again...

Yesterday my friend Jean and I walked about five miles on some of the country roads in Daviess County, Indiana.  We both grew up here, both have moved away.  It was like traveling back in time.  Back, because it was back to where we were kids, and back because many of the houses on the main road of our walk were Amish houses without some of the conveniences of 21^st century living.  No electricity or cars.  Big gardens where much of the family’s food was raised.  Laundry hanging on the line.  We love this walk, love ending up at the Gasthof Restaurant in Montgomery for lunch, love talking and walking as we have done since we were teens. Love driving home in our modern cars,

Talking in France about Race in the United States

I'm in the process of writing a post about why Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of my favorite writers and definitely my favorite blogger.  In the meantime, here is an interesting video from his blog: he talks about the role of white supremacy in our country’s history and the Trayvon Martin case as one piece of that history.  To me, it seems like a nice balanced view but some of it is harsh.  It’s not a short video—23 minutes of focused talk and another 10-15 minutes of Q and A on a number of topics.

"What does aversion feel like?"

Last week I posted four behaviors that may kill a relationship:  criticism, contempt, denial, and stonewalling.  Since then, I’ve been reading Practicing Peace by Pema Chödrön.  She discusses dealing with aversion which seems to me the emotion behind the four behaviors listed above.  She asks, “What does aversion feel like?”  Then she offers this practice to help explore the feeling.

For the purpose of doing this practice, try to connect with a feeling of aversion to something. Whether this is a smell, a sound, or a memory of a person, an event, dark places, snakes-whatever it is, use your discursive mind to help you contact the feeling of aversion. And then, as much as possible, apply the technique of letting the thoughts go so that you can abide in the experience of aversion as a felt quality....

“Who am I to judge them?” Pope Francis said.in a conversation about homosexuality.  Beautiful.  Yesterday, I was walking and thinking, and I had a very uncharitable thought about a long forgotten acquaintance.  Then I thought, who am I to judge?  Beautiful.  Since then, I’ve had this thought a couple more times in response to some small critical thoughts.  It feels like a good practice.  I hope I don’t forget about it as I have, in the past, forgotten about other good practices.  

How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

This is from the Slate website by Chris Kirk and Dan Kois: 

Using the most recent CDC estimates for yearly deaths by guns in the United States, it is likely that as of today, 7/30/2013, roughly 19,684 people have died from guns in the United States since the Newtown shootings. Compare that number to the number of deaths reported in the news [6,666, see site] and you can see how undertold the story of gun violence in America actually is.

The Color of His Skin

Here’s an interesting opinion about the character assignation of Trayvon Martin.

Four Bads

Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—these are the four things that “kill a relationship stone dead” says the author of PsyBlog.  We all know how much we dislike these qualities in others, but if you’re like me, it’s good to have a reminder that they are hurtful, not helpful strategies. I can be sneaky too, with “innocent” questions that contain a grain of criticism.  Ouch.

A Song for Sunday

This song is in celebration of the family reunion I’m enjoying right now.  We tried singing this song on our road trip yesterday, but we couldn't do it.  The tune was in our heads, but it wouldn’t come out our mouths.  Sisters in this song of course includes brothers.

"Words" for Today

Astronaut Suni Williams talks about spending months in space:  "When you're flying in space some of the things down on Earth seem trivial....I didn't feel like I was a person from the United States, I felt like I was lucky enough to be a person from Earth….If you are having a bad day, you can go to the cupola window and see a part of the Earth. It makes you smile."

 " 

Lucky Me

On Thursday night I went out to eat with my three sisters and one brother.  I really can’t remember if the five of us, without other relatives, have ever done such a thing.  It was low-key, comfortable, and fun.  Today, eleven family members are riding a rented van to Chicago to pick up my brother’s daughter and tour the places where she has worked this summer.  This week is hectic but nice.  And I believe that all the genealogy research I’ve done this past year makes my family even more special to me.

"Words" for Today

The Republican attempt to nullify the last election and engage in unprecedented sabotage of a law for universal healthcare intensified today. It seems we effectively have no politics in this country right now – just political warfare, in which one party refuses to accept the legitimacy of election results. (Andrew Sullivan)

Head, I Win; Tails You Lose

I’ve written before about a certain proclivity to under assign the role of luck in human successes.  Here’s an interesting article with more on that topic: 

Jordi Brandts and colleagues got a group of students to predict a sequence of five coin tosses, and then selected the best and the worst predictor. They then asked other subjects to bet on whether the best and worst predictor could predict another five coin tosses. The subjects were told that they would bet on the worst predictor from the first round, unless they paid to switch to the best predictor.  82% of subjects paid to make the switch.  But of course, there is no such thing as an ability to predict the toss of a coin. Most subjects, then, saw skill where there was only luck. And, what's more, they were willing to spend good money to back this daft opinion.

 (Thanks to The Dish)

"Words"

"...much in modern America depends on where you draw boundaries, and who's inside and who's outside. Who is included in the social contract? If "Detroit" is defined as the larger metropolitan area that includes its suburbs, "Detroit" has enough money to provide all its residents with adequate if not good public services, without falling into bankruptcy. Politically, it would come down to a question of whether the more affluent areas of this "Detroit" were willing to subsidize the poor inner-city through their tax dollars, and help it rebound. That's an awkward question that the more affluent areas would probably rather not have to face." (Robert Reich)

A Few Weeks of Beauty

About ten days ago I visited the butterfly house at the Sarett Nature Center, a bit outside Benton Harbor Michigan.  When I first looked at my pictures, I was disappointed as they of course aren't as good as the real thing.  But now, with the visit in the past, I'm rather moved by the pictures.  They capture only a moment, but each moment seems so beautiful.


Their lifespan is odd:  The butterfly lives first in an egg, then as a caterpillar, then a pupa, and finally, as a butterfly.  The butterfly's main job is to mate and reproduce.  It's lifespan is only a few

weeks.  Somehow these facts don't mesh with the butterfly's beauty.  It looks so perfect.  The caterpillar and pupa, not so much.

Song for Sunday, Bonus

I’ve posted this song before, but I need to listen to it from time to time:  “This is my Song.”

"Small Town," Sunday Song: Seymour

I grew up about 75 miles southwest of Seymour, Indiana, and this video makes me miss my small town and love where I live now.

"Words"

That’s one of the reasons I decided to be happy—out of compassion for all the people who have to put up with me.  (Ajahn Brahm)

How do you evaluate a charity?

According to Dan Pallotta, we're doing it all wrong.  He says, “Business will move the great masses of humanity forward with advancements in pharmaceuticals, materials, process, and technology — but it will almost always leave 10% behind. It will almost always leave unaddressed humanity's most disadvantaged and unlucky.”  I talked before about the role of luck in achievement, so I’m happy to hear Pallotta acknowledge this too.  Yes, the market works well for the lucky. However, “Philanthropy is the market for love,” he says. 

Pallotta is frustrated because society forces charities to operate using different and less effective rules than capitalism.  I’ve done it myself, looked at the evaluations for charities, looked to see which charities use the largest percentage of their money for “good work,” and the smallest amount for overhead.  However, here is Pallotta’s take on the subject: 

More on Trayvon

This is from Devlin Barrett this morning on The Diane RehmShow:  

This situation [shooting of Trayvon Martin], to me, looks like a life or death jump ball where whoever wins that struggle and kills the other person is the winner legally as well…as long as there are no witnesses to counter what the survivor says. 

However, I wonder, if Trayvon has been the winner of the struggle, would he have been found innocent?  As usual, for me, Ta-Nehisi Coates says it all.  Here is the introduction to his column today. 

Not Guilty

I was disappointed this morning when I read the results of George Zimmerman’s trail.  I’ve collected below a few interesting opinions—I’m sure there will be a mass of them today.  I’m impressed that these people can write so much and so coherently in such a short time.  And maybe my opinion is merely this:  Zimmerman’s decision to get out of his car that night was too heartbreaking.  Nothing will change that.  We have only our grief for comfort.

The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found innocent: it’s the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty.  

We can take from this verdict the understanding that it means validation for the idea that the actions George Zimmerman took that night are those of a reasonable man, that the conclusions he drew are sound, and that a black teenager can be considered armed any time he is walking down a paved street.  

There’s fear that the verdict will embolden vigilantes but that need not be the concern: History has already done that. (Jelani Cobb)

Sunday Song: Scalia v. Ginsburg

Derrick Wang, so inspired by the words of two justices, sets them to music and an opera is born.  Many NPR fans heard this on Wednesday.  

Call the Vet

This is one of the pictures that Andrew Sullivan uses (The Dish) when he writes about a self-destructive behavior of the Republican Party.  Here's his latest complaint:

This is what so many on the right just don’t understand. Their very arguments against universal healthcare and gay marriage and immigration reform are all made as if the working poor, gays, and illegal Latino immigrants were not in the room. You think we don’t hear that in the tone and content of what they are saying? It’s the way in which people who desperately need healthcare are dismissed as abstractions, or in which gays are never offered any actual policy but avoidance and disdain, or in which hard-working immigrants – living in a kind of radical insecurity no white native-born Republican has ever fully experienced or imagined – are simply told to hang around for a few more years, or “self-deport”. That bespeaks a disconnect that obscures any capacity to govern this country as it actually is – rather than as they would like it to be.

Using empathy as one of the tools for making policy is a complicated balance.  It’s interesting that two prominent Republicans who support gay marriage have gay children.  Using empathy is complicated; not using empathy at all is often inhumane.

"Words"

“The big issue here…are we going to have to redefine the very concept of privacy?  Is privacy any longer technically possible in the kind of world we’re in?”  (Martin Walker)

"Words" for Today

“Should “not guilty” as charged (if that were to be the verdict) be read the same as “without guilt” in general? Is there some moral space in which [Trayvon] Martin can, as the defense contends, be solely responsible for his own death?”  (Charles M. Blow)

Yeah, Stand Your Ground

Here, Jelani Cobb raises the issue that isn't talked about enough.  Wasn’t Trayvon Martin "standing his ground”? 

What remains frustratingly marginal in this discussion is the point Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel raised in her testimony—that Martin himself was afraid, that a black person might assess a man following him in a car and on foot as a threat, never mind that he might have seen Zimmerman’s weapon and suspected his life was in danger. The defense paid a great deal of attention to the implications of Martin referring to Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker,” but, to the extent that we think about the epithet, we’re concerned with the wrong C-word. Imagine George Zimmerman being followed at night, in the rain, by an armed, unknown black man and you have an encounter that far exceeds the minimal definition of “creepy.” Indeed, you have a circumstance in which anyone would reasonably fear for his life. Add a twist in which that black man fires a shot that ends a person’s life, and it’s hard to imagine him going home after a brief police interview, as Zimmerman did.

"Words" for Today

"...democratization is more of a process than an end game."  (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

A 1000 Mile Walk on the Beach by Loreen Niewenhuis

I’ve often wondered about the entire lakeshore of Lake Michigan.  How much of it is walkable?  If I started walking from my favorite beach, how far could I go before I was stopped by a barrier of human or natural construction?

Loreen Niewenhuis wondered this too.  Also, she had just turned 45.  She says, "I felt something pull at me, goading me to take on something bigger than myself.”  She decided she would “take on the lake.”  She began with the question, “Why not walk its shoreline day after day until I had walked all of it, captured it in my muscles, recorded it in my body?”

She begins her walk at Navy Pier in Chicago and heads toward Indiana.  She describes the beauty of the lake and its beaches and the ways that factories and power plants have marred that beauty and dumped toxic waste into its water.

Sum, sum, summertime..

The video is a bit fuzzy, but it includes some nice, nostalgic memories of American Bandstand.

The Fruits of Zen

Last week I announced that I was getting ready to attend a four-day silent meditation retreat.  I’ve tried to write a few thoughts about those days, and they just came out boring and inadequate.  So, as follow-up, I post this video, which does describe the fruits tasted in that experience.

The speaker, Ruben Habito is one of the teachers in the linage I am following now.  His wife, Maria Habito was the teacher at last week’s retreat.

IF YOU KNEW

What if you knew you’d be the last 

to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

(For the rest of this poem by Ellen Bass, read here.)

Hi!

This morning Andrew Sullivan quoted Henry Fairlie's reflections on coming to the United States from Britain. It is a perfect reading for the Fourth of July.

Other memories come to mind. One spring day, shortly after my arrival, I was walking down the long, broad street of a suburb, with its sweeping front lawns (all that space), its tall trees (all that sky), and its clumps of azaleas (all that color). The only other person on the street was a small boy on a tricycle. As I passed him, he said "Hi!"—just like that. No four-year-old boy had ever addressed me without an introduction before. Yet here was this one, with his cheerful "Hi!" Recovering from the culture shock, I tried to look down stonily at his flaxen head, but instead, involuntarily, I found myself saying in return: "Well—hi!" He pedaled off, apparently satisfied. He had begun my Americanization.

Oh Yes!

[S]cience shares much with religion. Gods and monsters are wondrous things, recruited to explain life’s unknowns. Also, like science, religion has a striking capacity to make us feel simultaneously insignificant and elevated. (Jesse Prinz at aeon)

Anniversary of 8,000 Deaths

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1-3, 1863—150 years ago.  On the 100^th anniversary of the Gettysburg battle Vice-President Lyndon Johnson spoke these words:

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. The Negro today asks justice. 

We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we reply to the Negro by asking, ‘Patience.’ 

It is empty to plead that the solution to the dilemmas of the present rests on the hands of the clock. The solution is in our hands. Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny of greatness among the civilizations of history, Americans—white and Negro together—must be about the business of resolving the challenge which confronts us now. 

Our nation found its soul in honor on these fields of Gettysburg 100 years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate.  

Will there be speeches this week?  What will it take to complete the journey?

(The painting above is Father William Corby C.S.C. offering general absolution to an Irish brigade before the battle at Gettysburg.)

An Eviction

Can writing be beautiful when it describes a scene that breaks your heart?

Today, TA-NEHISICOATES describes accompanying a Chicago sheriff as the sheriff evicts a family from their home.  Here’s one paragraph: 

The adult male in the family, who was at home…agued with the officers and bucked in a way that was very familiar to me. He was in the living room with his spouse and their two kids. He was being emasculated in front of all of them. He had no power. His family was about to be sat out and there was nothing he could do. The officers escorted him outside. They told him to leave the immediate premises or be arrested. Outside there were men hired to haul the family's stuff into the streets. 

Read the rest, maybe--nothing else to say.

Sunday Song from Santiago, Spain by the Notre Dame Glee Club

The Notre Dame Glee Club did  some travelling in Spain.  Here they are singing an "impromptu concert in front of the Cathedral in Santiago, Spain (June 2013)." I'm not familiar with the song, supposedly a "traditional Galician folk song," but I am happy to see them standing in one of my favorite spots in Spain.  The glee club walked part of the camino de Santiago, from O Cerbreiro to Santiago.  Read more about it here.

Working with the Mind

I'll be leaving soon for a four-day-long meditation retreat.  No reading, talking, blogging, or emailing.  I'm both excited and nervous.  It's hard to explain why I'm doing such a thing.   Here Pema Chodron offers one explanation.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Plainsong—the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest time, a simple or unadorned melody or air.

The definition above is an introductory page to the novel Plainsong.   The words “simple or unadorned” describe the style of this novel as it jumps back and forth between a fairly large number of characters.  Events and complications are described, sometimes returned to, sometimes not.  The story starts off slowly and after finishing, it’s hard to summarize.  But I recommend it, mainly because I appreciated the hard work, likability, and goodwill of so many of the characters.  Tom Guthrie copes with his wife’s withdrawal.  Bobby and Ike, ages nine and ten, observe their mother’s withdrawal and their stern father’s preoccupation with work and relationships.  Victoria Roubideaux faces an unplanned pregnancy.  Maggie Jones cares for an ailing and confused father, and the two McPheron brothers open their doors and welcome an unexpected expansion of their small family.  Finishing the novel, I was inspired by the low-key goodness of so many of the characters.  And though I recommend the book, I felt for awhile that something was missing.  Writing about the story helped me appreciate it more and feel the conclusion was complete or complete enough.  The rest of these reflections contain spoilers and are for those who have read the book.

"All You Fascists Bound to Lose" or History Through Music

This Woody Guthrie song cracks me up and makes me sad at the same time.  This song by Leadbelly is of a similar nature:  "We're Gonna Tear Hitler Down."  And just because I'm reminded of Leadbelly, here's one of his most famous, "Goodnight Irene."

Change Happens

Exodus International, a Christian group that offered therapy to "cure" homosexuality reported this week they were ending this work.   Exodus President Alan Chambers offered this explanation and apology. 

Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism.  For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical. From a Judeo-Christian perspective, gay, straight or otherwise, we’re all prodigal sons and daughters. Exodus International is the prodigal’s older brother, trying to impose its will on God’s promises, and make judgments on who’s worthy of His Kingdom. God is calling us to be the Father – to welcome everyone, to love unhindered. 

There were a lot of stories about this yesterday, but I read it first at The Dish by Andrew Sullivan who himself is openly gay.  I was moved by the words of both Chambers and Sullivan.  Later in the day, I was moved again when Facebook Joel Barrett friend posted this:

Equanimity

Sylvia Boorstein’s book Happiness Is an Inside Job uses Buddhist principles as a way to avoid suffering and achieve happiness.  She recommends equanimity as an emotional state that allows us to respond appropriately to life's ups, downs, and neutrals.  Equanimity she says, “is the capacity of the mind to hold a clear view of whatever is happening, both externally and internally, as well as the ability of the mind to accommodate passion without losing its balance.  It’s the mind that sees clearly, that meets experience with cordial interest.”  Below is her example of meeting an everyday experience with goodwill. 

The overnight flight from San Francisco to Paris takes more than ten hours, and in the time between midnight and morning, the hours seem longer and the space between the seats in the coach section seems shorter.  When I get up to stretch, and perhaps walk down an aisle, I see men and women, old and young, large and small, all unknown to me, some traveling with young children, all trying to figure out how to be comfortable.  I see them wrapped up in airplane blankets, scrunched up into whatever position of repose they can organize for themselves, leaning on each other if they are traveling together or tying not to lean on each other if they aren’t.  Often a man or a woman is patrolling the aisle across from me, holding an infant against his or her chest and moving in the rocking gait that often soothes a baby’s distress.  I feel a pleasant intimacy with them.  I am also trying to stay comfortable.   I’m not frightened for them, or for me, because I’m relaxed about flying ad I assume we will land successfully, but I wish them well.  I enjoy the feeling of my own good-heartedness.  In fact, in that moment of mental hand-holding, all those people look a bit more familiar than ordinary strangers.  That moment of easy, impartial, benevolent connection—meta—buoys up my mind.  I feel better as I sit back down in my seat.

This is a typical Boorstein story showing how the ordinary is beautiful.

Parenting Problems--Another Video

It's the fairy wings that made me laugh so much at this scene.

One can only be as intimate with another as one is with oneself.
- Robert Chodo Campbell + Koshin Paley Ellison 

 Tricycle: the Buddhist Review posted the quotation above on their Facebook page.  I can’t decide what I think of it.  I don’t even know for sure how intimate I am with myself.  Or others.

Honoring Our Country with Song

The "Stars Spangled Banner has been in the news lately after eleven-year-old Sebastien De La Cruz sang the   song at one of the NBA final games in San Antonio last week.

I'm not a big fan of the National Anthem, but De La Cruz's age and charm make up for the fact that it's hard to sing and has a limited perspective.

Would "This Land Is Your Land" make a better anthem?  Hard to imagine it at ball games.

My fantasy is for "This Is My Song"  to be the anthem for every country--a world anthem I guess.  (Here's another version with stained class windows in the background.)

Separated from Nothing?

A little over a year ago, I traveled to Ireland with my brother, two of my sisters, and one of my nieces.  My ancestors appear to be 100% Irish (as far as the Irish are 100% Irish), and I liked knowing that, but it wasn’t a big deal, and I wasn’t dying to go back to the old country.  But something surprising happened during that trip.  On a visceral level, I began to feel my connection to Ireland and its history.  

I practice meditation at home and with a group.  A few mornings ago, before the group began to meditate, our teacher said, “Our great delusion is that we see ourselves as separate from other people, from plants, from the universe where we live.”  On one level, I don’t know what that means, and I can’t imagine what it’s like to feel connected to the entire universe.  But things happen and all of a sudden, I know I’m part of something more than myself.  I wrote in an earlier post about watching cardinals at my bird feeder and feeling connected to their mysterious lives.  In Ireland, I was surprised by a feeling of unity with my ancestors and to all the Irish who suffered economically and politically.

Some Are Born Lucky

Sam Harris explains why no one is completely self-made. 

And lurking at the bottom of this morass [that taxes are a form of theft and the right kind of market will solve all our problems] one finds flagrantly irrational ideas about the human condition. Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse.

How would you react?

A friend posted a link on Facebook to a video on racial profiling.  I couldn't figure out how to post it here, but there's the link.  I was shocked at the reactions of others and shocked at my own.  There's a part of me that thinks this video can't be true, but I can't think of a real argument to say it isn't.  If you have time (4:41 minutes), give it a look.  I'd like your opinion.

Guns: Location, Location, Location

In the June 5 edition of Newsweek, Christopher Dicky explains one of the complications that makes talking about gun regulation so difficult.  Rural dwellers and urban dwellers see the issue differently and may actually have different needs.  In rural areas with low numbers of police officers, guns may provide additional safety.  In urban areas, it's different. 

The embattled streets of the city and the gunland of the heartland are wildly different places, and the failure to understand that difference, and overcome it, is the great American tragedy of our time. 

Mostly, the discussions about firearms are framed as a question of constitutional rights for gun owners. But what about the gun owners in Tyquran’s world [high crime urban areas]? Are the rights of the 223 people shot to death in New York City last year, or the 435 in Chicago, or the 414 in Los Angeles being protected by the right to bear arms? In big cities across the country, gun control doesn’t hurt gun owners, other gun owners do, especially if they are people of color. Recent Pew surveys show that 82 percent of the nation’s gun owners are white, and most are outside metropolitan areas, but 72 percent of gun-homicide victims are black or Hispanic, and live—and die—in the cities. 

This article is packed with interesting information and presents a slightly different perspective to the gun issue.  The conclusion of the article talks a lot about New York city crime reduction.

Where it's @

John Brownlee writes (more than I want to know) about the @ symbol.  Interestingly, he does not give it a name.  He talks about @ or the @ symbol.  However, some cultures have colorful names for the ubiquitous @. 

In Danish, the symbol is known as an “elephant’s trunk a”; the French call it an escargot. It’s a streudel in German, a monkey’s tail in Dutch, and a rose in Istanbul. In Italian, it’s named after a huge amphora of wine, a liquid some Italian bookkeepers have been known to show a fondness for.

Música para el domingo

It's a cute song and maybe a spanish lesson:  Viene de Mi.

Knowing You Already Have Your Ticket

Many of my friends have heard me mention “my favorite blogger” Ta-Nehisi Coates. I've mentioned him here as well. Yesterday he posted an article that illustrates why I appreciate him so much.  He has recently criticized President Obama for lecturing and shaming predominantly black audiences when he speaks to them.  One of his readers asked Coates what kinds of things he would say if he were to address a group of high school students.  Here are some excerpts from Coates’ answer. 

[W]eirdly enough, I often do get asked to speak to predominantly black schools. …What I generally try to do is avoid messages about "hard work" and "homework," not because I think those things are unimportant, but because I think they put the cart before the horse. The two words I try to use with them are "excitement" and "entrepreneurial." I try to get them to think of education not as something that pleases their teachers, but as a ticket out into a world so grand and stunning that it defies their imagination. 

I'se been a-climbin' on...

After reading The Warmth of Other Suns, which, from time to time, quotes the poetry of Langston Hughes, I wanted to review his well-known works and see what else he wrote.  The introduction to The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes says he was controversial, loved by many and accused of doggerel by others.  Below is what I consider one of his touching and familiar poems.  Below it is a poem less touching, less familiar, and less lasting.

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Don't let this stop you from reading my blog!

Jared Keller sorts through information about what seems to be an ever-growing need to be connected to electronic media.  

As Stafford explains, our love for the Internet is rooted in the fact that human beings, in Ghose’s words, “compulsively seek unpredictable payoffs.” The cognitive-reward structure offered by services like email and social media are similar to those of a casino slot machine: “Most of it is junk, but every so often, you hit the jackpot.” This is a symptom of low-risk/high-reward activities like lotteries in general. As researchers found in a 2001 article in International Gambling Studies, systems that offer a low-cost chance of winning a very large prize are more likely to attract repetitive participation and, in turn, stimulate excessive (and potentially problematic) play. Although the stimuli are different (the payoff on the Internet being juicy morsels of information and entertainment rather than money), Stafford says that the immediacy and ubiquity of Internet “play”—i.e. being able to check your tweets or emails on your phone with no major transaction cost—only increases the likelihood that someone will get sucked into a continuous cycle.

"Leaving Forever"

 There is no mistaking what is going on; it is a regular exodus.  It is without head, tail, or leadership.  Its greatest factor is momentum, and this is increasing, despite amazing efforts on the part of white Southerners to stop it.  People are leaving their homes and everything about them, under cover of night, as though they were going on a day’s journey—leaving forever.  (The Cleveland Advocate, April 28, 1917) 

The Warmth of other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is a story of the Great Migration, a period in the United States between 1915 through 1970 when six million African American people fled the oppression and lack of opportunity in the south for the suns of the northern and western states.

A Little Sunday Music

While it's still spring:  "Spring."

Mom Gets Old

Adam Gopnik explores his feeling about parental love as his son prepares to leave for college:

What I wonder about is why we love our children so asymmetrically, so entirely, knowing that the very best we can hope for is that they will feel about us as we feel about our own parents: that slightly aggrieved mixture of affection, pity, tolerance and forgiveness, with a final soupcon - if we live long enough - of sorrow for our falling away, stumbling and shattered, from the vigor that once was ours.

How to Be Compassionate AND Practical

Paul Krugman explains why the proposal to cut food stamps is so wrong. 

First, as millions of workers lost their jobs through no fault of their own, many families turned to food stamps to help them get by — and while food aid is no substitute for a good job, it did significantly mitigate their misery. Food stamps were especially helpful to children who would otherwise be living in extreme poverty, defined as an income less than half the official poverty line. 

But there’s more. Why is our economy depressed? Because many players in the economy slashed spending at the same time, while relatively few players were willing to spend more. And because the economy is not like an individual household — your spending is my income, my spending is your income — the result was a general fall in incomes and plunge in employment. We desperately needed (and still need) public policies to promote higher spending on a temporary basis — and the expansion of food stamps, which helps families living on the edge and let them spend more on other necessities, is just such a policy.

Bonus:  The Krugman Blues.

Hope: a Reasonable Response

I just discovered the website TomDispatch.com, and I’m in the process of deciding if the entire site is as useful as the first essay I've read from the site.  It’s called “Too Soon to Tell: the Case for Hope” by Rebecca Solnit.  I suppose writing this blog is a tiny act of hope.  Solnit’s essay teaches that hope is a step that leads to or allows action.  The excerpts below, however, mostly focus on rational reasons for hope.

If you take the long view, you’ll see how startlingly, how unexpectedly but regularly things change. Not by magic, but by the incremental effect of countless acts of courage, love, and commitment, the small drops that wear away stones and carve new landscapes, and sometimes by torrents of popular will that change the world suddenly. To say that is not to say that it will all come out fine in the end regardless. I’m just telling you that everything is in motion, and sometimes we are ourselves that movement…. 

 For a few years, I spoke about hope around this country and in Europe. I repeatedly ran into comfortably situated people who were hostile to the idea of hope: they thought that hope somehow betrayed the desperate and downtrodden, as if the desperate wanted the solidarity of misery from the privileged, rather than action. Hopelessness for people in extreme situations means resignation to one’s own deprivation or destruction. Hope can be a survival strategy. For comfortably situated people, hopelessness means cynicism and letting oneself off the hook. If everything is doomed, then nothing is required (and vice versa). 

 Despair is often premature: it’s a form of impatience as well as certainty. My favorite comment about political change comes from Zhou En-Lai, the premier of the People’s Republic of China under Chairman Mao. Asked in the early 1970s about his opinion of the French Revolution, he reportedly answered, “Too soon to tell.”... 

What You Said

If I could incorporate into my life Marshall Rosenberg’s ideas, expressed below, I would spend less time worrying and more time being happy.  As it is, I like what he says, but I'm not sure I believe it. 

…As we’ve seen, all criticism, attack, insults, and judgments vanish when we focus attention on hearing the feeling and needs behind a message.  The more we practice in this way, the more we realize a simple truth: behind all those messages we’ve allowed ourselves to be intimidated by are just individuals with unmet needs appealing to us to contribute to their well-being.  When we receive messages with this awareness, we never feel dehumanized by what others have to say to us.  We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves.  As author and mythologist Joseph Campbell suggests, “What will they think of me?” must be put aside for bliss.”  We begin to feel this bliss when messages previously experienced as critical or blaming begin to be seen for the gifts they are: opportunities to give to people who are in pain. 

From Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg.

Twelve Articles About Guns

1.  How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

Here, “Slate partners with @GunDeaths for an interactive, crowdsourced tally of the toll firearms have taken since Dec. 14.”  For example, the number for today, May 27, is 4,387.  It’s as simple as that and serves as a reminder of why something needs to change.

2. “The Cultural Fight for Guns” by Adam Gopnik.

Here Gopnik explains the tenets of our gun culture.  It’s an articulate argument written by an observer but not a member of the so-called gun culture.

3. “Armed Correlations” by Adam Gopnik.

Gopnik argues that there is a strong correlation between strong gun laws and less gun violence, and in this case, correlation is related to causation. 

4. “The Gun Report” by Joe Nocera.

Nocera provides a daily report of news about guns.

5. “Battleground America:One Nation, under the Gun” by Jill Lepore.   

This is one of those long New Yorker articles.  It was published in April of 2012 before Sandy Hook but after Trayvon Martin.  Lepore provides an interesting history of gun regulation, gun attitudes, and gun tragedies.

6. “Regulate Guns Like Cars” by Carl Gibson.

The title gives you the gist of the argument.  Gibson, unlike some of the other writers, owns and enjoys guns (and cars).

7. “The Simple Truth about Gun Control” by Adam Gopnik.

Gopnik talks about the element of opportunity present in criminal behavior.  More control of guns, he says, will lessen the opportunities for gun crimes.  

8. “The NRA Is Wrong: The Myth of Illegal Guns” by Matthew Parker.

Here Parker also makes the argument that serious background checks would create hurdles that could reduce some gun misuse.  Parker writes from the perspective of a convicted felon. 

9.  “Guns Need Food,Starve Them” by Marc Ambinder.

Ambinder suggests regulating ammunition.  Ammunition, unlike guns, deteriorates and must be replaced.

10. “So You Think You Know the Second Amendment” by Jeffrey Toobin.

Toobin explains how, in the 1970s, a new interpretation of the Second Amendment evolved.

11.  “Who Is the NRA Leadership.”

This site “shines a light on the background of members of NRA leadership, in large part by allowing them to comment on the issues of the day in their own words. It is intended as a resource for those who cherish moderation, civility and principled advocacy in American politics.” 

12. “How The Gun Industry Funnels Tens Of Millions Of Dollars ToThe NRA” by Walter Hickey.
Once again, the title explains the main point.

Another Song about Sunshine

"Your Are the Sunshine of My Life":  Stevie Wonder sings at an interesting venue.

Song for Sunday

To evry thing there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and the season is SPRING!

The Changing NRA

Five days after Oswald assassinated President Kennedy, Thomas Dodd, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, introduced legislation restricting mail-order sales of shotguns and rifles. The N.R.A.’s executive vice-president, Franklin L. Orth, testified before Congress, “We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.” 

The above is from "Battleground America" by Jill Lapore, New Yorker, April 2012

How many people have been killed by guns since Newtown?

4,156.

From Slate.

The Little Hater

Jay Smooth describes the little hater in his head that tells him his work isn't good enough.  Can you relate?

How did they get to Sesame Street?

I love this account of how Sesame Street became Sesame Street: 

The name Sesame Street is credited to Virginia Schone, a writer for the show. Almost everyone on the staff disliked the name. There was concern that young children would have trouble pronouncing it. But time was running out and the show needed a name. Finally, Executive Producer Dave Connell put out a memo to the staff saying “if nobody came up with a better idea, as of Monday we were going to call it Sesame Street.” As Joan put it, “We went with it because it was the least bad title.” 

Creativity is a funny thing.  It’s hard now to imagine the show named anything else.  Now, of course, we associate the name with all manner of cuteness.  But still, The Video Classroom and 1-2-3 Avenue B., names that were also considered, just couldn't have been as catchy.

How Great Is Gatsby?

About a year and a half ago, I reread The Great Gatsby.  I had forgotten what a grim story it is.  A few days ago, I watched online a preview for the new Gatsby movie.  I’m sure the movie will manage some of the darkness of the story, but the trailer, in comparison to the novel, was outrageous, over-the-top, ludicrously extravagant.  It made my decision not to see the movie.  So I was pleased to read this in Ta-Nehisa Coats’ wonderful blog: 

Maybe because of its title, and Fitzgerald's outsized persona, people think that The Great Gatsby has to be a big budget extravaganza. But the book actually reads like a French film or an American indie. It's not so much that Gatsby can't be filmed. It's that it can't be filmed by this Hollywood.