Special Interests vs No Interest

I lived in a town in Florida where the elected School Board members know that since the poor people don’t vote, they don’t have to care about the poor when making policies, like suspending and expelling the children of the poor and condemning them to "discipline schools."

I live in a country where the elected Representatives in the House and Senate know that since the poor people don’t vote, they don’t have to care about the poor when making policies, like universal health care, so they go on holiday while poor people can’t afford to go to the doctor.

A Vote for Change - changing hearts and minds

When you have power – as a parent, boss, teacher or yes, President, it is easy to stand on your soapbox of righteous indignation and heap shame upon your children, employees, students or citizens. And from your bully pulpit you feel a bit smug – for you have enlightened the misguided.

When you have power, this is easy, it is also ineffective and often counter productive.

The people you chastise and those who overhear you, will be ashamed and maybe they won’t repeat this particular behavior, but they also might decide they hate you for making them feel small and there is a risk you will strengthen their belief that while you may have the power, you are wrong.

You have failed the eureka test. You have not troubled the waters of their conscience, you have not enlightened them or helped them see why they were wrong.

I hope when Obama shares a beer with Gates and Crowley this Thursday, he will help these men see how it feels to stand in the shoes of the other and maybe, if he can get past the name calling ("stupid"?!), Sgt Crowely will leave with a mental discomfort – born not of public humiliation by our President, but from a genuine understanding of the disgraceful and ugly legacy of Police officers mistreating blacks in America.

Hail to the .... Squid?

In the dream Jock was feeding fish to a giant squid
I was really grossed out and asked him why he was going this and whether he hoped to tame the squid.
Jock didn’t answer,
but the squid said “Go Blue.”
Then the alarm rang.

Invisible Capes

I met with the coworker for three hours to plan a series of training sessions.
In between talking course curricula, office geography and training calendars, we discussed families.

She told me about raising 4 sons and her work/life balance - one week on the road, one week working from home.
She told me her work used to take her to Europe and she talked about pumping breast milk in airport bathrooms.
Her boys are older now - the oldest starts middle school this fall so her many hours of classroom volunteering will be in two school buildings.


About a year ago a friend of her grandmother phoned and explained she was unable to continue to care for one of her many foster children - a little girl, almost 2 but barely speaking, too weak to walk, with her scalp and skin covered with rashes.

The photo in her wallet now shows four grinning boys and a little girl, smiling ear to ear. After a year of therapies: physical, occupational, speech plus nutrition and love, the little girl is healthy and running and talking non-stop.
The adoption was final last week.

We kept working on the training sessions.
In between she told me about raising four sons and a daughter.

The Onus of the Oral Tradition

Sometimes 40 years doesn’t seem so long ago

July 1969
I am in Concord, Massachusetts.
My cousins, Wendy and Jennifer are visiting from Kansas.
At dinner Wendy is surprised to learn that in our house it is okay to ask for second helpings. Her house has different rules. After dinner we are in pajamas sitting in front of the black and white tv watching men walk on the moon. A few days later, on my birthday, I ask for a telescope.


Sometimes 40 years seems like a really long time ago.

Growing up, parents and grandparents who mentioned “the war” were always talking about World War II. But forty years before I was born actually marked the start of WWI.

It is odd to think that for Beatrix, opening her eyes as 2009 draws to a close, the moon landing will be as remote to her as WWI was to me.

We Were All So Much Younger Then

I run east along Fenner Road and take a right on Moraine.
I run past miniature donkeys and fields of corn and golden rod on streets littered with squashed frogs and tadpoles, a dead raccoon and other former mammals no longer identifiable in their current incarnation as chunks of bloody fur. Two deer pounce in front of me, criss-crossing Fenner.
I am running east, I am running into the past.
For years this was my daily run.
Now the once familiarly mundane landmarks prod memories.
They tumble with such vigor I barely register the songs on my ipod.
There is a risk of melancholy here as the faces of people and times past or gone remind me I can never again have what was.
But a sadness born of remembering former happiness is unworthy of tears.
Focus on the happiness and keep running.

....the Whole World Smiles with You

It didn’t rain on my run today.
This summer in Portland, a lack of precipitation is worthy of comment.
I received a record number of smiles and waves today.
No doubt my early morning regulars were as happy as I was to see the moon unobscured by rain
Without the distraction of puddle hopping and raindrop wiping, my mind was free to ponder.
I thought about the joy I get from those pre-dawn smiles.
I thought about an email I got that said “Life’s too short to be unhappy.”
And I thought maybe, at the end of the day, as we gaze at our navels,
we’d be happier if we counted the smiles we generate rather than the wrongs and slights others inflict upon us.

While Standing Outside the Public Storage Facility

I spoke with a white woman, about aged 60, from Oklahoma.
She was an army brat and spent some of her childhood in Ocala.
She said back then the town was divided, white and black.
Blacks lived on the other side of the railroad tracks and they were not allowed in the white section of town.
There was a billboard by the tracks that said “N------ keep out, go home.”
She said her uncle owned a hardware store and once a black man came in to buy something and the whole time he was talking to her uncle he looked at this feet and called him “sir.” And when he entered the store a second time a woman was in the store and the black man walked clear around all the shelves to avoid going near her.

I spoke to a black man, about aged 25, from Ocala.
He has never been out of Florida, only once to go to Atlanta.
He was married a year ago but they couldn’t go on a honeymoon because he was under house arrest. But he is off that now so they and their 9 daughters will go to Sea World.
He said 6 of the girls are his biologically and the others are his step daughters.
The youngest three are 3; the oldest is 11.
He said his father is 55 but looks 45.
I said maybe he should learn his father’s secret.
He said he knows his father’s secret and doesn’t want anything to do with it.
His father spent many years in jail.
He said he has never used a computer – doesn’t know how.
He asked me for advice so his marriage can last as long as mine.