What constitutes a crisis?

Ted and David Gup

Ted Gup writes movingly about the opioid epidemic in the June 23 issue of the Washington Post. He writes that there were approximately 4,000 deaths from drug overdoses in his home state of Ohio. But what makes this all the more painful for Gup is that one of the deaths was his son David. He writes about proposed cuts in federal programs that would reduced the money for dealing with this problem.

Then he says,

As a nation, we seem fixated on the foreign and the sudden, incapable of focusing on what is near and constant. If the drug fatalities were all suffered in a single 9/11-like attack, we would be consumed; the steady seepage of lives scarcely moves us. The failure to address the drug epidemic is not an anomaly but a case study in the shortcomings of human attention and political accounting. From global warming to deteriorating infrastructure, from declining schools to the hollowing out of the middle class, the incremental gets short shrift. It seems beyond our political grasp and communal will.

 Read the entire article here.

Why Study History? Part 2

David McCullough offers some enthusiastic answers to this question. Still he doesn't mention the excellent reason from Adam Gopnik that history warns us of all the possible terrible unintended consequences of sincere action.

Who Were These People?

A few weeks ago I was reading history about the early first ladies of the United States. Now I'm reading the "history of humankind." It's slow reading.  I just finished reading about foragers or humans from the hunter-gather time period. I'll share a little information about these long ago people. Most anthropologists and historians think they had bigger brains than we do. Harari says," the average forager had wider, deeper and more varied knowledge of her immediate surroundings than most of her modern descendants." We don't need to find all of our own food, make all of our own tools, and have a detailed understanding of nature and our surroundings.... (48-49)

However, these foragers were hard on their environment. This "first wave of Sapiens colonisation was one of the biggest and swiftest ecological disaster to befall the animal kingdom....Homo Sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing, or iron tools."   One of the reasons the Galapagos Islands retained their unusual animals is because humans did not arrive there until the 19th century. (72-74)

Above is a picture of the Cave of Hands found in Argentina and painted about 9,000 years ago. Harari says, "It looks as if these long-dead hands are reaching towards us from within the rock. This is one of the most moving relics of the ancient forager world--but nobody knows what it means" (57). I found more pictures of the cave here.

Now on to Part Two: The Agricultural Revolution." 

Different Strokes

 

Philando Castile

In his most recent column, Leonard Pitts writes chillingly about the visceral impact of actually watching the video of Philando Castile's execution instead of just talking about it. He also points out a couple of interesting issues that I hadn't considered:

I thought of the NRA, which supposedly exists to protect law-abiding gun owners from government overreach. Obviously, that extends only to law-abiding white gun owners, because it’s been nearly a year since Castile’s death and, at this writing, the group has uttered barely a peep about a black man who was martyred for that cause.

I thought of all those people who assure me, with a smugness found only in the profoundly ignorant, that if black people would just treat police with respect and obey their commands, they wouldn’t get hurt. I would ask them to tell me which of those things Castile failed to do.

I thought of that time Sean Hannity explained how, when he is stopped, he informs the

officer that he has a legal firearm and it all goes smoothly after that: “ ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ writes me a ticket, ‘Thank you, sir,’ and that’s it.” I thought of the frequent inability of white men to recognize privilege even when it’s shooting a black man in the chest.

                                                                                                     

Rich People and Taxes

I love what John Scalzi has to say about his taxes. He's rich and he doesn't need a tax cut. You should just read his whole article. However, I can't resist copying some of it here. 

... So these days, whenever I see how much I pay in taxes annually, my first thought is always something like HOLY CRAP that’s a lot of money. I could totally use that! As someone who grew up poor and has worked his way steadily up the income ladder, it’s a freakin’ huge amount in terms of the raw dollars.

And then I pay my taxes and I discover that anything I would have used that ridiculous wad of tax money for, I still have enough in my net income for. I literally cannot think of a thing I want — or need — that my post-tax income can’t handle. Because as it happens, even with federal, state and local taxes, my tax burden is reasonable. I don’t pay taxes in 1980, when the highest marginal federal income tax rate was 70%; I pay taxes in 2017, where top federal tax bracket maxes out at just under 40%....

So even with literally the full (pre-deduction) tax burden someone in Ohio can pay — we max out all the marginal rates — there is more than enough left over for pretty much anything that we want to do, individually, as a couple or as a family. We save a lot, invest a bunch, and thus take that money out of the short-term income pool we use for bills, household spending and, uh, “consumer activity,” and we’re still just fine, thanks. I suppose it’s possible that we could spend so much of our post-tax income that we’re left with little or nothing and thus would wish we had some of the money that we paid in taxes back into our hands, but speaking from experience, this takes effort, and some willful stupidity about your money....But if you’re not the sort of person who spends $30,000 a month on wine, you’re probably going to be fine.

We do just fine. The other people I know who have similar or better incomes than we have also do just fine. The ones I know with substantially better incomes than we have are also doing just fine. No one at my income level or better actively misses the money they spend on taxes, because they’re still rich after they pay taxes.
Would I like to pay less in taxes? When I look at the raw number of dollars I send to the IRS, sure. When I think about the actual impact on my day-to-day life having that money would make, versus the actual and positive impact on the day-to-day life of millions of other people, when people like me pay our taxes? Nope. I have certain (in more than one sense of that word) opinions about how those taxes I pay in should be used, and whether they are being used effectively, and whether I’m getting value for what I pay, to be sure. Those are different issues, however...

Rich people don’t need any more tax cuts. They’re doing just fine. They will continue to do just fine. And no, their tax burden isn’t onerous. Trust me, I know. I live that tax burden daily. It doesn’t hurt. What does hurt is knowing that people I know and care for will likely die sooner and sicker than they should just so someone like me gets back a few more dollars they won’t notice. Don’t come at me with “but the rich earned those dollars.” Dude, I earned my dollars, too. I earned them in a country that helped me get where I am in part through taxes. I earned them understanding that getting rich came with an obligation to the society I live in and benefit from, an obligation discharged, in part, by paying a perfectly reasonable amount of taxes.

How often do you get pulled over by police?

Trevor Noah, who has lived in the United States only six years, says he has been pulled over by police officers eight times. He offers an interesting theory about institutional versus individual racism here. And here, he talks about the shooting of Philando Castile.

Sometimes I think I didn't really start studying history until I had been out of college for twenty years or so. In high school and college, history felt like lists of events and dates with an occasional heroic or tragic story thrown in. I didn't realize it was my history too.

A few weeks ago I finished reading Ties That Bound by Marie Jenkins Schwartz. It was an unsettling book and I didn't write about it right away. It is about three of the four first, first ladies,¹ Martha Washington, Martha Jefferson, and Dolley Madison, and how they related to their “slaves.” ²

I always thought that along with being cruel to the enslaved human beings, slavery must be crazy-making to the so-called owners. As a child a woman may be your wet nurse and caregiver; then, you grow up, and she becomes your property.

Even more insane is how male slave owners often impregnated their female slaves and then ended up being fathers of their slaves. This story from Martha Washington's family is a good example of the madness of it all, and I don't think it was unusual.

Martha's father, John Dandridge, had a relationship with a woman of “mixed ancestry.” This resulted in the birth of Ann Dandridge who lived her life enslaved. Martha took her to Mt. Vernon after her marriage to George Washington. Later, Ann had a son, believed to have been fathered by Martha's son Jacky. This went beyond even the norms of the time where white men fathered enslaved children. This union produced an unseemly problem. The son looked white. People were not comfortable with white slaves. Martha was not comfortable with legal manumission. Therefore, she just omitted his name from the property list and he was free by default.

Why study history?

Some answers according to Adam Gopnik:

What history generally “teaches” is how hard it is for anyone to control it, including the people who think they’re making it.

The historical question to which ISIS is the answer is: What could possibly be worse than Saddam Hussein?

Studying history doesn’t argue for nothing-ism, but it makes a very good case for minimalism: for doing the least violent thing possible that might help prevent more violence from happening.

What history actually shows is that nothing works out as planned, and that everything has unintentional consequences.

History, well read, is simply humility well told, in many manners. And a few sessions of humility can often prevent a series of humiliations.

When Being Number One Is Not Good

Last night I watched 13^th, a Netflix documentary about the prison population of the United States. Other than saying it paints a depressing picture of the United States penal system I have nothing coherent to say. Instead, for now, I'll just include below a partial list of facts from the film.

The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prison population. (This sounded so outrageous that I had to fact check it. The New York Times gives the same statistics.) The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

It appears that the prison population started growing in the 70s. Here's the progression.

1970—357,290

1980—513,900

1985—759,100

1990—1,179,200

2000—2,015,300

2014—2,306,200

Black men make up 6.5% of the total United States population and 40.2% of the prison population.

One of three black males is expected to go to prison.

30% of black males in Alabama have lost the right to vote as the result of criminal convictions.

You can watch this documentary on Netflix on full screen. If you don't have Netflix, you can watch it online here in a partial screen.

Other Hearts...Other Skies

I don't know how many times I have posted this song. I wish we could always remember these words.

Word Wars and Worse

I'm a liberal Democrat, and I find Donald Trump mainly disappointing. But, outside of my liberal bubble, I don't talk about this much because it does not seem to advance my beliefs to go around bad-mouthing the beliefs of others. I try not to post things that are snarky and disrespectful. However, when my friends do this, I often read their snarky sarcastic posts.. Sometimes I even laugh out loud. Even if this enjoyment is private, there is an element of disrespect here. These are difficult times. Sometimes it feels like Civil War II (fortunately, without cannons). How do we communicate in these times?

Apparently, Ben Carson recently said that “poverty, to a large extent, is a state of mind.” In his blog yesterday, John Scalzi responded with a discussion of what led to his success as a writer:

Yes, you might say, but you, John Scalzi, have an industrious state of mind! Well, that’s debatable (more on that later), but even if it is true, is it more industrious than the person who works two shitty jobs because they have no other choice? Am I more industrious than, say, my mother, who cleaned people’s houses and worked on a telephone exchange while I was growing up, so that I could eat and have a roof over my head? My mother, who barely cracked a five-figure salary while I grew up, worked as hard as hell. Tell me her “state of mind” was less industrious than mine is now, and I’ll laugh my ass off at you. Tell me any number of people in the small, blue-collar town I live in, who make significantly less than I do, and who are one slip on the ice away from tumbling down the poverty hole, have a “state of mind” substantially less industrious than my own, and I’ll likely tell you to go fuck yourself.

I think Scalzi has a very coherent argument about the things that led to his success as a writer. He lists the role of access to opportunity, network of people, luck, his creativity, breaks from the culture, his wife, and number seven, his “state of mind.” He writes a lovely argument, but his political opinions are pretty consistently liberal. That restricts his audience. (Though, as a science fiction writer, he may get readers from outside the liberal bubble). And threatening to tell people “to go fuck yourself,”--is that persuasive language?

Another “argument” I read yesterday was a Ted Talk by Pope Francis which is just full of touching ideas that made me feel inadequate and greedy. Here's a sample:

Quite a few years of life have strengthened my conviction that each and everyone's existence is deeply tied to that of others: life is not time merely passing by, life is about interactions. As I meet, or lend an ear to those who are sick, to the migrants who face terrible hardships in search of a brighter future, to prison inmates who carry a hell of pain inside their hearts, and to those, many of them young, who cannot find a job, I often find myself wondering: "Why them and not me?" I, myself, was born in a family of migrants; my father, my grandparents, like many other Italians, left for Argentina and met the fate of those who are left with nothing. I could have very well ended up among today's "discarded" people. And that's why I always ask myself, deep in my heart: "Why them and not me?"

Now what does this all mean to me? What does it say about effective communication? Much that I hear and read seems designed to offend the “other side.” What is my role during this crazy time?

You. Us.

I just finished listening to a Ted Talk by Pope Francis (okay listened to his Italian an read the English subtitles). It was moving and a good follow up to all the political insults I hear and read. He says, "The future is in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a 'you' and themselves as part of an 'us'." He does not present an easy challenge.

"...a truly long, long goodbye"

When I finished Louise Penny's A Great Reckoning, I glanced at the acknowledgments, and after the second sentence—“Michael has dementia”—I went on to read the entire two-plus pages. Almost everything on those pages referred to her husband Michael's care.

This information rattled around in my brain for a week or so, and today I decided to find out more. By the time I had typed “Louise Penn” into the Google search box, Google offered “Louise Penny husband” as a choice. An

AARP essay Penny written shortly before Michael Whitehead's death (September 2016) was the most complete source. She seemed to use writing to make sense of the situation. Below is a small excerpt of her reflections.

And I learned that, far from having my day, my happiness, decided by how Michael was doing, I needed to make it about how I was doing.... I'd been desperately trying to keep our lives normal. But there was a new normal, and it changed every day. If I didn't change with it, that was my fault. Not Michael's'

I, and I imagine many others, find dementia the most dreaded way to end our lives. Last Saturday I attended a memorial service for a woman in my community who also died after a period of dementia. It felt like she had disappeared into a “memory care unit.” The service was a surprising comfort and celebration. It made the idea of dementia a little less scary, I loved learning that one of her former music students visited her regularly and sang to her. Like Louise Penny her care givers seemed loving and patient. The patient often seemed content.

If Mr. USA went to a Therapist

I've just started Mary Pipher's Writing to Change the World (2006). It has, so far, inspired me to write a letter to my senator. Pipher herself is a psychologist, therapist, and writer. In 2004, she wrote what she called an “Assessment Report on Mr. USA.” Below are some excerpts:

Client Name: Mr. United States of America Address: Western Hemisphere, North of the Equator, Planet Earth

Description of client: Mr. USA was born July 4, 1776, and was 228 years old at the time of this assessment. He appeared as a well-dressed, rather heavy, middle-aged man with a somewhat arrogant manner. Still, he had moments when he was charming, humorous, and appealingly open....

Presenting Problem: Mr. USA made this appointment two years after an assault on September 11, 2001, that caused him great physical harm and mental anguish. This tragedy...has forced him to confront his mental health issues. As this client's life has spiraled out of control, his colleagues at the United Nations have encouraged him to seek therapy....

A Good Mystery

From time to time I need to read a mystery. Last week I read A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny. I have a love/hate response to her stories. I like the location, a French speaking Canadian village called Three Pines. I like the main character, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. And the plots make me eager to find out what will happen next even when they seem unbelievable and/or over-the-top.

Penny quotes classic writers. I like that. And in Reckoning she quotes Buddhist nun Pima Chödrön who says, “Don't believe everything you think.” In Chödrön's original context, she's trying to help us understand how we lead ourselves away from acceptance and peace of mind with our inaccurate thoughts. The sentence has quite a different feel to it when it is used in the context of a murder investigation.

So I finished Reckoning and started listening to the audio version of The Nature of the Beast. The plan was to listen mainly when I was driving, but this afternoon I started listening as I did housework. It slowed my work, and then I didn't want to stop listening. My behavior doesn't entirely make sense.

I don't intend to stop reading mysteries, but I'm curious as to what need they meet. Is it mainly entertainment? The satisfaction of a problem solved? Escape? Any thoughts?

Where No One Had Been Before

Last February during my trip to Arizona, I visited Kartchner Caverns located in the Whetstone Mountains in Southern Arizona (near Benson). I did not expect to be so fascinated by these vast caverns. These caves are located in the mountain above, so the;y are warmer than most caves—about 68 degrees F. The caverns were first formed around 200,000 BCE but were not discovered until 1974. They are considered a living cave, that is, a wet cave still growing formations.

I bought the book below in the gift shop and it is hard to write about. It is too full of fascinating information. I can't choose what to include. Basically it is the story of how Gary Tenen and Randy Tuffs discovered the cave. They only shared the information with a few trusted friends who were sworn to secrecy. They were afraid it would be vandalized if others discovered it. They continued to explore the caverns. Finally, after three years, they told the Kartchner family who owned the property. It took years to complete a plan that would protect the caves and allow the public to visit them. Kartchner Caverns finally opened to the public in 1999, A brief history is at the Kartchner Caverns site.

Where Are We Now?

On April 14, Leonard-Pitts-Jr. wrote

I don’t feel particularly hopeful [about our country] and I am angry. Everything that has happened since January 20th has only reinforced my pessimism. I worry for the future of this country in a way I never have before. With the possible exception of the 1850s — the decade preceding the Civil War — we have simply never been this divided. Frankly, I don’t know if reconciliation is possible. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s even desirable.

There are a lot of reasons why I have been staying away from this blog. This discouragement is a small piece of it. And I don't know if it is bad as Pitts says it is, but there seems to be no cooperation between are two major parties, and that does feel bad.

So Grand

Two weeks ago I visited this remarkable place. It is awesome in the old-fashioned sense of the word; I am filled with awe, and I feel I will somehow always be nourished by that awe. Yesterday I quoted David Whyte who suggested we need beautiful questions. The Grand Canyon is that—a beautiful, beautiful question.

Whyte's Wise Words

I just listened for the second time to Krista Tippet's interview with David Whyte. Below are some quotations from Whyte's interview that I loved even when I'm wasn't always sure what he meant.

I went back into poetry because I felt like scientific language wasn’t precise enough to describe the experiences that I had in Galapagos.

...we have so many allies in this world, including just the color blue in the sky, which we’re not paying attention to, or the breeze, or the ground beneath our feet. And so this is an invitation to come out of abstraction and back into the world again.

This is another delusion we have that we can get — take a sincere path in life without having our heart broken. And you think about the path of parenting, there’s never been a mother or father since the beginning of time who hasn’t had their heart broken by their children. And nothing traumatic has to happen. All they have to do is grow up.

Relationship Tip

From Alain de Botton:
...one of the kindest things that we can do with our lover is to see them as children. And not to infantilize them, but when we’re dealing with children as parents, as adults, we’re incredibly generous in the way we interpret their behavior. And if a child says — if you walk home, and a child says, “I hate you,” you immediately go, OK, that’s not quite true. Probably they’re tired, they’re hungry, something’s gone wrong, their tooth hurts, something. We’re looking around for a benevolent interpretation that can just shave off some of the more depressing, dispiriting aspects of their behavior. And we do this naturally with children, and yet we do it so seldom with adults...