Quiz in Three Parts--Part Three

Here it is--the last question:

Question # 3: Is it OK to breathe yet?
Again, you may talk amongst yourselves before replying.

For the past 8 years, I held my breath. With George Bush as president, I was so afraid of many things. What social programs would be gutted? Could we possibly hold on to Head Start? How many countries around the world would lose their respect for our government, our country? How many wars would we start, and then be unable to finish? Who among us would be the next group to be despised and blamed for everything from the flu to the downturn in the economy--gays, women, the poor, brown people, beige people....? Would women still have control over their own bodies? Would my country still be my own after Bush and Cheney were through with it, or would I be forced to leave?

Then Barack Obama was elected, and I had such high hopes for America. Sure, he had a lot to take care of, but he was surrounding himself with smart, capable people. It also seemed like my fellow citizens had looked beyond race to choose the man who had the best leadership skills, and we would all unite behind this young and talented president. I believed this country was ready to be the best it could be--for ALL Americans; we would be united for working for the common good. AND, we would all know how to define that common good. Sigh.....yes, I am the eternal optimist.
Eight months later, I feel like I am inhabiting a two-sided body. Personally, I am very happy--my mom is doing OK (OK is good for this month), I'm in a wonderful relationship, and my kids are happy. I have what I need. My life is peaceful, and well, just damned good.
But the outside world is in turmoil, and I've started to hold my breath again. I don't think any of this can be blamed on the actions of President Obama; I lay all the blame firmly on my fellow Americans. The start of the Obama presidency was quiet and yet busy. Then came July and August, and the ugly craziness began. Incivility at Town Hall meetings; I watched fellow citizens in a frenzy, hatred on their faces as they disrupted meetings between citizens and their elected officials. Where had these people come from? What were they so afraid of? WHO was stirring them up--clearly they were hearing something to make them so angry? And they wouldn't listen to anything anyone else had to say; it was like they were being whipped into a frenzy and sent out in attack mode. I had held my breath for 8 long years, and now this rage, this hatred for other Americans, was taking my breath again. And it seemed to come from nowhere. Clearly I was listening to the wrong news channels, reading the wrong newspapers, talking to the wrong people, because I had seen nothing about the proposed reform of health care that caused me to be so afraid. Or anything else that the new administration had done had provoked such a violent reaction in me or my friends. I was a child of the 60's--I've seen anti-war protests, been in marches for reproductive rights, and watched a whole lot of television in the past 50 years. But I have never, ever felt as unsafe as a citizen of this country as I do now. I truly fear for the lives of our leaders; the faces in the crowds are so angry, and it has spilled over into the halls of Congress, where one of them felt so threatened he was compelled to verbally attack the president, saying not, "That's a lie," but "YOU lie!". Where will this end? In violence. That's what happens when a human believes he has no recourse, no "out", and feels his very life is threatened.
And what is it that he is so afraid of? Change.
If you can stomach it, look at the footage from those Town Hall meetings. Probably 90% of those reddened, angry faces belong to middle to older white men. They have never faced change like this before. They are suddenly looking at a president, Speaker of the House, Secretary of State who are not like them. That's unsettling at the least, for they have never seen so much change happen so quickly. As the brilliant Kate Clinton explains, "Republicans treat President Obama as if he were a substitute and they are just waiting for the real deal to come back in the room. That would be a white Republican male. Their desperate efforts to delegitimate an elected president (not to be confused with their efforts to legitimate a selected president) remind me of their panicked response to the terror attacks on September eleventh, eight years ago. For many of them, it was their first experience being attacked. Unlike women, poor people, and people of color who know being attacked as a pre-existing condition, the white guys freaked. Their world order was rocked. They panicked, put the country in lockdown and retaliated against the wrong country. Once again their worldview is being rocked - demographically, racially, economically, politically."
Yes, "Their" country is gone forever. No matter how they wish it to be back the way it was, it never, ever will be. And I say, "Good riddance." This change is good. Deal with it. Leave your guns at home, take deep breaths, and close your mouths and open your ears. If you truly love this country, you'll do this. For all of us.
And we'll ALL be able to breathe again.

Quiz in Three Parts--Part Two

Last night, I dreamed I was walking home on a Sunday morning, and saw some protesters outside of a mainstream Protestant church--the denomination was not ever identified in my dream, but I can only guess it was a Lutheran, Methodist or Presbyterian church. The building was not big, nor were the people going into the building anything but ordinary. Let's just call it "Everychurch".
The protesters were loud, and were waving signs--I couldn't ever clearly read the signs, but they were all homemade and the words were in black and red. The faces of the protesters were vicious, full of hatred, and frightening.
I walked up to one of the protesters, and asked why they were there. She said, "Because they don't worship God in the right way!!!! They don't honor Jesus properly!! They are evil!!!" I asked, "But aren't you Protestant too?" She replied, "That's beside the point!!!! They aren't being religious enough!!" I watched the people filing into the church. They looked scared, and wouldn't even look at the protesters, let alone engage them in conversation. I couldn't believe how ridiculous this was--both groups of people called themselves Protestant, yet this group outside looked ready to kill those inside. I tried to reason with the protesters, yelling to be heard above their shouts and threats--"This is crazy! Both of your denominations believe in the same basic things; you even say you worship the same God!" But the protesters wouldn't listen to reason; all they could say, over and over again, was that THOSE people didn't worship "right". Finally, exasperated, I asked what "religion" the protesters were. "We're Baptists!" was the reply, as if that explained everything.
I felt really sorry for the denomination under siege, but felt powerless to help them. The next Sunday, when I saw the protesters again, I had an idea...

Question # 2: Did I:

1) Walk away, convinced I was seeing the demise of Christian religion as I knew it,
or
2) Decide to bring back some of my Unitarian Universalist friends, thinking that they could successfully help protect one side against the other, because the UUs could be neutral parties.

I decided to do #2, because I really thought those "Everychurch" people needed protection from the more fundamentalist of their Christian religion. And UUs could be neutral--could judge both sides on the merits (or lack thereof) of their arguments, and find a peaceful solution--after all, UUs have been fighting for social justice for years.
No offense to the Baptists; they may be perfectly nice, but I was not ready for a religious war in my own country, especially over something so petty. I think my dream was an illustration of my deeper fear for this country--that we are becoming so ideologically polarized that we can no longer meet in the middle.
And that is what leads me to question # 3.

Quiz in Three Parts--Part One

It's back to school time (Erika starts grad school tomorrow--I'm so proud of her!). But for American students, class has been in session for weeks now, and many of those students have already had their first quizzes. In this spirit, I offer my "quiz" to all of you; it's a three part, essay quiz, but rest assured, you will not be graded. I just would like to hear your opinions.
Question # 1: Earlier this week, a female college student came in to my place of business. She was obviously an undergrad (I do know how to spot the younger ones), and she was wearing a t-shirt that said, "Future Trophy Wife". In my vast experience as a woman, I could tell she was NOT "trophy wife" material. Should I:
a) Assume she bought it for herself, and laughed out loud at the joke on her shirt? In other words, realized that both of us knew she was too good to set her life ambition to be a "trophy wife"?
b) Ask her to explain it to me? I was just puzzled by it, and couldn't understand why anyone, even if they had no clean laundry left, would wear an article of clothing like this.
c) Assume someone else bought it for her, thinking this was a worthy thing to strive for in life? If so, should I have laughed and said, "Oh, how ironic!"
d) Realized it was just a t-shirt, and not a very thoughtful one at that.

Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

I just really didn't understand the meaning of the shirt. I really, really wanted to ask her if this really, really was her goal in life, and if so, why she was advertising it ahead of time? If it wasn't her goal in life, why would she want to wear such a stupid shirt?

Don't worry--the questions just get harder....

The Muppet Show - Rowlf - The Cat Came Back

One of my all-time favorite Muppet skits!

Best Come-back of the Day

"I think your mom probably did."

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) after Mr. Kyl proclaimed, "I don't need maternity care. So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive."

Senator Kyl--shame on you! Kudos to Senator Stabenow.

Proclamation # 4

Proclamation # 4: I hereby proclamation that, until such time as a real leader steps forward in the Republican party, I must assume the lunatic fringe (not to be confused with the Monster Raving Loonies in Britain in the 1980s) is firmly in control of the party, and as such, the Republican Party will be ignored. I just don't have the patience nor the time.
I do hope a real leader steps forward soon; I appreciate a two-party system. There is great value in true debate of issues, and in the exchange of ideas. There is nothing to be gained in name-calling; we learned that in grade school. There is much good that can be done when you make an honest attempt at finding common ground; there is little value in saying "No" without a thoughtful reason for it (I learned that early on with kids--you gotta be able to answer the "Why not?") There is a lot to be said for being passionate about your country; there is nothing good about riling a desperate person who has a proclivity for violence.
Change can be good, especially when it encourages us to be more compassionate, more just, and to treat each other as we would want to be treated.
Life is just too short to give any sort of attention to people who want to separate, to divide into "us" vs. "them", or who want to "go back to the way this country used to be" [read here: segregated, homophobic, and where white men made the decisions for everyone else no matter what].

President Obama's Health Care speech

Some initial thoughts about President Obama's speech tonight. First of all, I will admit that I was not going to watch. I prefer to read the text, forgoing the seemingly endless interruptions for applause. However, Karen had started to watch it on C-Span, so I looked over her shoulder. What I heard made me angry, and made me sit down to watch the rest. There was heckling!!! Yes, heckling--during a speech given by the President of the United States.
Have we, as a nation, really sunk this low in our public discourse??? I cannot ever remember this happening during a speech given by a president in my lifetime. I cannot speak to history, but in my lifetime, there has always been the greatest respect given, from both sides of the political aisle, to the person holding the office. I'm very sure there have been times that heckling might have been deserved, but (and with all due respect to my British friends), our members of Congress have NOT behaved like members of the House of Commons during Prime Minister's Question Hour. Until tonight. There was heckling, and a holding up of unknown papers by Republican members of Congress. Shame on them.
I can only think they felt free to heckle the president because Dick Cheney was not there to glower at them from the podium.
The speech was typical Obama--simple and inspiring. He addressed concerns, called out the fearmongers, and then reminded us that we're better than this. We have a history of taking care of those who need help--mentioned Social Security and Medicare, SCHIP. He talked about how we will pay for this--hopefully some of my more skeptical friends were listening during that part.
My favorite part came toward the end, when President Obama said, "But that's not what the moment calls for. That's not what we came here to do. We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it." Amen, brother. We will all hold hands and help along those who are scared--in the end, we will have a health care system that works for all of us. ALL Americans.
Oh yeah, and only about 5% of Americans will choose the public option. So, no scary big government. That was last administration.

A library without the books - The Boston Globe

A library without the books - The Boston Globe

Posted using ShareThis

Speaking as one who sees value in browsing REAL books, this is the worst possible decision.