Category Archives: Quandaries and Rants

Fearing Fear Itself

Posted on February 11, 2024 | Leave a comment

It sometimes seems to me that the media environment surrounding me is getting increasingly fear inducing. Should our American predilection for gun violence have me quaking in my shoes? Is another deadly pandemic inevitable? Should I be afraid of the overwhelming consequences of irreversible climate change? Is our political system broken beyond repair? To help provide context and retain some sense of balance, I look for historical parallels and trends rather than just following the headlines or lead story:  

—Colonial America had more endemic violence than we see now. Dueling with pistols was then considered a socially acceptable means of “settling” disputes. Unfortunately, firearm deaths remain among major causes of death in the U.S., with the majority of those deaths being suicides. Rates vary considerably by locality and over time. After a U.S. low of under 29,000 fatalities in 1999 and 2000, the death toll again began to climb. Starting in 2015, it increased significantly, by 2021 exceeding 48,000. However, because of population growth, the gun death rate of 14.6 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2021 was still below the prior peak of 16.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 1974. 

—During the 2020-2023 covid pandemic, losses were immense, but the global death toll, estimated at 5 to 6 million, was just over 10% of the estimated toll of the prior 1918-1920 influenza pandemic. Both pandemics fell far short of the catastrophic losses from bubonic plague outbreaks that wiped out about a third of Europe’s human population during the 14th century. 

—Erratic weather events seem to have become more frequent, yet warning systems, preparation, and remediation resources have also improved. In 1900, a hurricane all but obliterated Galveston, Texas. The storm killed an estimated 10,000 people, primarily because there were inadequate weather warnings.

—We certainly have a current crop of crooked politicians and political shenanigans, but the respective eras of “Boss Tweed” of NYC’s Tammany Hall and later “Kingfish” Huey Long of Louisiana could run contemporary political machinations a close second. 

In our current round of political theater, have we allowed ourselves too often, though, to be frightened by our supposed differences, be they political party, ethnicity, gender, or any other category? It may now sadly be a somewhat realistic fear to fear those who for political gain try to incite us to fear each other.   

Our most famous U.S. political quote about the toxicity of fear comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural address in March, 1933. Then, the nation’s economy was reeling after a 1929 stock market crash and several years of deepening economic dysfunction. FDR was a seasoned politician and also someone who had made an arduous recovery from the paralyzing polio he’d contracted in 1921. Without downplaying the dire state of the economy, he spoke to rally our citizenry by beginning with the need to reduce fear: 

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”  

He then went on to outline actions for restoring trust (there’s a reason many banks have “trust” as part of their names) and for minimizing further panic (there’s also a reason that financial panics are called “panics.”)

A recent explanation of the importance of not succumbing to fear comes from a 2018 book that helped get me through covid isolation: Factfulness. Authored by former Sweden-based global health researcher, professor and statistician Hans Rosling, the book evaluates a whole set of instinctual responses that can distort our human reactions to situations and events. Fear is one of the most insidious. 

Anecdotally, Rosling describes his initial reaction while coping as a young emergency room physician with his first trauma event, a downed, incoherent pilot. Temporarily short of more seasoned backup, Rosling’s initial reaction was fear-driven: 

“…(M)y head quickly generated a worst-case scenario. … I saw what I was afraid of seeing [a Russian intruder signaling the start of World War III]. Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.”  

Fortunately for Rosling and for his patient, an experienced nurse soon returned from her lunch break and identified the real problem [a Swedish pilot whose training mission had ended with a ditched plane and resulted in hypothermia]. She reclaimed the situation before the young doctor’s fear response resulted in serious errors. 

Rosling also provides statistical evidence contrasting what we find frightening and what our actual risks may be: “This chapter has touched on terrifying events: natural disasters (0.1 percent of all deaths), plane crashes (0.001 percent), murders (0.7 percent), nuclear leaks (0 percent) and terrorism (0.05 percent). None of them kills more than 1 percent of the people who die each year, and still they get enormous media attention.”

Per Rosling, we all need to become better at distinguishing between what we find frightening and what is truly dangerous. He elaborates: “The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected—by your own attention filter or by the media—precisely because it is scary.” We need to evaluate situations based both on the actual danger and on our level of exposure to that danger. 

In conclusion, he offers this suggestion: “Get calm(er) before you carry on.”  Good advice for troubling times. 

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Toward a Healthier Discontent

Posted on November 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

This Tuesday is the first Tuesday of November, Election Day. Though 2023’s choices are for local and/or state contests, a fair number of eligible voters will show up. They will vote for some candidates or measures, against others, expressing both preferences and discontent. Some voters will show their discontent by refusing to participate, by staying home. 

Next year on the first Tuesday of November, we’ll have national elections, choosing a legislature and a president and vice president, among other contests. Much ink has been spilled about the character and prospects of the man who became our nation’s chief executive from 2017 through the early part of 2021. He is now campaigning to resume that office in early 2025. 

Those of us not enamored of Mr. Trump wonder what combination of factors may motivate those who support him. I’m not a huge fan, but I’m persuaded that the ways I and some others express our discontent could be healthier. I doubt that all “MAGA voters” are without merit. Some may even share some of my own concerns. So I went looking for guidance, for precedents, for wisdom from authors wiser than I am. 

Last week, I revisited an extended quote by a woman of Polish descent who for many years represented my birth state of Maryland in politics. Before Ms. Mikulski ran for political office, she was a social worker and a lay leader at her church. At a 1970 religious conference on activism, she took up the cause of members of her community: 

“America is not a melting pot. It is a sizzling cauldron for the ethnic American who feels that he has been politically courted and legally extorted by both government and private enterprise.
The ethnic American is sick of being stereotyped as a racist and dullard by phony white liberals, pseudo black militants and patronizing bureaucrats… He pays the bill for every major government program and gets nothing or little in the way of return. He himself is the victim of class prejudice…
He has worked hard all his life to become a “good American”; he and his sons have fought on every battlefield—then he is made fun of because he likes the flag.
The ethnic American is overtaxed and underserved at every level of government.
…There is a general decline of community services for his neighborhood, e.g. zoning, libraries, recreation programs, sanitation, etc.
His income … makes him “near poor.” He is the victim of both inflation and anti‐inflationary measures. He is the guy that is hurt by layoffs, (by) tight money that chokes him with high interest rates for installment buying and home improvements.
Manufacturers … are gouging him to death. When he complains about costs, he is told that it is the “high cost of labor” that is to blame. Yet he knows he is the “labor” and that in terms of real dollars he is going backwards.
The ethnic American also feels unappreciated for the contribution he makes to society. He resents the way the working class is looked down upon. … He is tired of being treated like an object of production. The public and private institutions have made him frustrated by their lack of response to his needs. At present he feels powerless in his daily dealings with and efforts to change them.”


Parallels between Mikulski’s “ethnic American” speech in 1970 and various 2015-plus utterances of campaigner Donald Trump abound. Mr. Trump, despite his unparalleled wealth and media access, identifies with ethnic America’s grievances. By the time he was born in 1946, Trump’s family was wealthy and well-connected. Nevertheless, he portrays himself as a victim, when he has more often been a perpetrator and/or benefactor of unjust policies. It’s easy to agree with Mr. Trump that “the system is rigged.” The follow-up questions we too seldom analyze are “for whom and by whom?” 

A more recent analysis of our discontent, our tendency to fall prey to demagoguery, regardless of its source, came from a book I found at our local library: Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times (2022). Author Azar Nafisi grew up in Tehran, the capital city of Iran. She came to the U.S. temporarily for study during the 1970’s, then returned to Tehran as a young adult. She lived and worked there through the tumultuous Iranian revolution of 1979. Later stripped of her university teaching post for refusing to wear a head covering, Nafisi worked at multiple jobs in Iran and abroad, eventually settling in the U.S. in the late 1990’s. She writes:
“The most seductive aspect of a totalitarian state is the security it offers. The truth is uncomfortable, and a dictator promises an abdication of responsibility from it. In America, I think it’s safe to say that most of Trump’s supporters are with him not because they respect Trump, or think that he is an honorable man, or are impressed with his vast knowledge of foreign policy. Instead, they feel secure in his promise to run the country like a business (financial comfort) and are consoled by the idea that he will “Make America Great Again” (spiritual comfort).” 

A final touchstone for understanding our discontent and Mr. Trump’s appeal comes from rural America. Long-time small scale farmer, writer, activist, and promoter of “agrarianism,” Wendell Barry writes in The Art of Loading Brush(2017):
“For me, the ascent of Mr. Trump, a man who indulges his worst impulses and encourages the worst impulses of others, was … less a surprise than a clarification. His election … expose(s) beyond doubt the nearly absolute ownership of our public life by the excessively wealthy, who are dedicated to freeing themselves and their corporate and of-course-Christian peers from any obligation to the natural and human commonwealth. …
(A)grarianism … is the way of what I am obliged to call economic realism, indissolubly mated to ecology, to local ecosystems, and to the traditions of good husbandry and good neighborhood, starting at home and from the ground up. …
The order of loving care is of human making. It varies as it must from place to place, time to time, worker to worker, never definitive or final. It is measurable by the health, the happiness too, of the association of land and people. It is partly an ideal, … partly a quest, always and inescapably a practice.”  

The quandaries we face as we try to make wise choices, both in our personal lives and in our elected leadership, cannot be solved by “going back.” Whether during the peak of U.S. manufacturing in the 1950’s that Trump romanticizes, or the peak of “family farming” Berry alludes to before the advent of mechanized agribusiness, our country has moved on. Meanwhile, as localities and as a nation, we have sometimes succumbed to the sorts of rigid religiosity Nafisi has described in post-revolutionary Iran. We in the U.S. have thrashed around as we confront issues of responsible stewardship, of equity, of rights and concomitant responsibilities. Some of the wisdom of a Mikulski, a Nafisi, or a Berry can be helpful in framing our ongoing national (and local) conversations. 

Each of these authors emphasizes that we are participants—we cannot sit on the sidelines. We can engage in deep disagreements and still cohere. However, we must do our best to honor the heritage we’ve been gifted with, including the not-so-good parts. From time to time, we will make bad choices. The worst choice of all, though, is to abdicate responsibility for choosing, as Ms. Nafisi so aptly points out. So let’s disagree but continue to function, let’s vote with our ballots and our voices, not with our apathy, disjointed anger, or absence. Let’s use our discontent, rather than letting it use us.  

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Hibakusha

Posted on August 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

Today, August 6, marks another anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. This August 6, the war between Russia and Ukraine drags on, with periodic threats of deliberate use of nuclear weapons by the Russian military or of possible nuclear disaster at the vulnerable civilian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. In the U.S., summer release of the film “Oppenheimer,” about one of the physicists who helped develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II, has also reinforced our uneasiness about the possibility of nuclear catastrophe. 

A number of years ago, I had a chance to meet and to listen to a “hibakusha,” a Japanese term for survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The older woman I heard at a backyard barbecue in New Jersey was petite, exceptionally well-groomed, but nonetheless visibly scarred. She was passionate about the necessity of reducing the likelihood of further nuclear warfare. 

She had been a young teenager in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. She and her schoolmates had been conscripted to work part-time folding parachutes at a war materials factory. As allied troops closed in on Japan in 1945, even young girls were recruited for the Japanese war effort. Whether this woman had been an “innocent victim” of the carnage may therefore be somewhat open to question. However, whether nuclear weapons should ever be used again should not be open for debate. 

The woman I heard has probably died by now. The number of living hibakusha is dwindling. According to the most recent count in Hiroshima, taken in 2021, the average age of survivors was 84. During a spring 2023 summit of G7 industrial nations held in Japan, some of these survivors made the effort to present their stories.

For 84-year-old Toshiko Tanaka (six at the time of the blast), one of her most vivid memories from that time was the smell of burning corpses in the days after the explosion. The authorities had started cremating the bodies of those who died.  “I was traumatized,” she says. “All my friends from school died and for a very long time I couldn’t speak about what happened.” 

It can be too easy for those of us not directly exposed to the horrors of nuclear warfare to become complacent about the likelihood of a recurrence. It can be hard to figure out how best to articulate opposition to nuclear proliferation, to nuclear arms races, to the sheer inhumanity and indiscriminate slaughter wrought by this sort of weaponry. 

May we continue to listen to the hibakusha; may we continue to develop more effective ways to reduce the chances of creating any more. 

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Benjamin Banneker, Us, and Juneteenth

Posted on June 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

A little earlier this year, I read a book recommended by a friend: author Rachel Webster’s Benjamin Banneker and Us.  Part biography, part genealogy, part memoir, Webster has crafted a heavily researched, deeply felt account of one extended American family’s efforts to come to terms with nearly a dozen generations of racism, sexism, and classism. My friend is a collateral descendant of Benjamin Banneker, an early American mathematician, intellectual, and author. Benjamin Banneker, born in 1731, was widely revered in his time. In the classifications of the day, he was considered a free colored man. During the 1790’s, Banneker helped survey the land that became Washington, D.C. He also published several widely read almanacs. He died in 1806, leaving no children, but multiple sisters, nieces, and nephews. Banneker owned a farm in the vicinity of Ellicott City, Maryland that has since become a park and memorial. Because Banneker was free and so widely known, researchers of his lineage can delve much further back than is possible for most African-Americans. 

One set of Banneker’s grandparents met around 1680 in what later became the state of Maryland. Molly was a British woman serving a term as an indentured servant; Bana’ka was an African man of Wolof heritage who had been brought across the Atlantic to be sold into slavery. It’s not entirely clear how their relationship developed, but Molly and Bana’ka both obtained their freedom and had four daughters together in a tumultuous era when chattel slavery had not yet become fully fixed by law and marriage rules were confused. Their eldest daughter, Mary, fairly late in life became the free mother of Benjamin. 

Rachel Webster had always been told she was “white,” until a chance conversation at a family wedding in 2016 opened up a Banneker connection. Webster and her cousins have done lots of genealogical research. They’ve used increasingly available DNA testing, public records, and oral traditions passed down mainly through the black-identifying cousins of the family to identify over 20,000 Banneker-Lett descendants, all but one of whom have at least some traceable European or “white” ancestry.  

The book shifts back and forth between the historical facts and ambiguities of the Banneker-Lett lineage and the extended efforts Rachel makes to learn how and where she fits into this newly expanded version of her family. Some of her ancestors must have at some point decided to “pass” as white. Webster and many of her cousins on all sides of an increasingly blurry “color line” have mixed emotions about the complexities of the family’s story. Who constitutes “us” is rarely as simple as we think.    

Those of us who’ve been told we are “white” still struggle with our heritage. Our cousinships are typically murkier and less well documented than Rachel Webster’s. We wonder how to go about celebrating Juneteenth, a recently established Federal holiday commemorating June 19, 1865, when U.S. Major General Gordon Granger, recently arrived with his troops in the area of Galveston, Texas, issued “General Order Number 3.” The order reads, in part: 

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves…”   

Somewhat less cause for celebration, the order goes on to say: 

 …and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”  

It can take a very long time for the knowledge that none of us are free unless we all are free to enter our intellectual understanding. It can take even longer for this knowledge to move from head to heart. Some of our current debates surrounding race, sex, and class are not so different from those of Banneker’s day or from the mixed messages in General Order Number 3. 

Still, as one of my brothers sometimes reminds me, “We are all human.” Please let’s expand our understanding, delving beyond labels, working for adequate wages, sharing in loving homes, enjoying full equality of personal rights while respecting those rights in others. Whatever our supposed racial identity, that will truly be cause for celebration!    

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Further Stories from the Gun Wars

Posted on June 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

Nearly ten years ago, I sat down and poured out some of my despair and frustration at America’s difficulties in coping with gun violence in an essay to a few friends. Then, the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut that killed 20 first graders and 6 faculty members was coming up on its first anniversary. Activists all along the spectrum of opinions about appropriate and inappropriate gun uses and gun restrictions were ramping up pressure for change.

My heart is again breaking after a shooting at a Richmond, Virginia high school graduation site in a city where I’d spent much of my adult life. The episode killed a father and his newly graduated son and wounded multiple others.

A decade on, not enough about our approach to gun violence has changed. Some rules about gun purchases have been tightened, but gun deaths from homicides, suicides, and accidents, after multiple years of relative decline, are again on the rise. So are mass shootings. 

Some progress has been made in providing preventive counseling and mental health services to those most at risk. An increasing number of jurisdictions are crafting “red flag” laws, allowing relatives or authorities to petition courts to temporarily remove or restrict firearms use by persons deemed a danger to themselves or others.

Too much of our gun violence debate consists of folks with well-entrenched views talking past each other. At events and informal meetings, I’ve had chances to listen to folks whose views are diametrically opposed to mine. Whatever we disagree on, we seem to share some basic assumptions:  

1) the death or maiming of anyone through misuse of a firearm is tragic and has long-term consequences for survivors; 

2) everyone wants to be able to keep him/herself and family and loved ones safe; 

3) we cannot through legislation alone prevent instances of inappropriate use of guns.  

There are no ready-made or easy solutions to the problem of gun violence in America. According to The Trace, a non-profit journalism site dedicated to reporting on gun violence in America, a gun industry trade group estimated in 2020 that there were about 434 million civilian owned guns in the United States (https://www.thetrace.org/2023/03/guns-america-data-atf-total/#:~:). 

Properly maintained, a gun can function for as long as a century. Properly stored, ammunition has almost as much shelf life. Estimates of number of guns stolen vary substantially, with a 2015 Harvard study indicating about 380,000 guns stolen that year, risk factors being “owning 6 or more guns, owning guns for protection, carrying a gun in the past month, storing guns unsafely, and living in the South region of the United States.” (https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/32630640). Given the vast number of firearms and the difficulty of tracing some of them, even if we further tighten loopholes in background checks, restrict sales of certain kinds of guns and ammunition, and limit locations where guns can legally be taken, we will still have a substantial reservoir of guns that in the wrong hands or under the wrong circumstances can do deadly harm. 

Our inability to completely solve the problem makes it doubly foolish, I believe, to act as if there is nothing further we can do. Though the same gun statistics can suggest different outcomes to people with different backgrounds and biases, we rarely have authoritative data about guns and their uses. For starters, we need to obtain and to publicize more reliable, complete statistics about the extent of gun production, gun sales, gun ownership, thefts, and gun uses in the U.S. as a baseline. (A partial repository of U.S. gun violence data has been kept since 2013 by the non-profit, non-partisan Gun Violence Archive: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/about).   

Another way to work toward resolving our gun violence problem is through personal stories. We need to continue to share our gun-related stories, quietly but firmly, without demonizing the opposition or suggesting that we have the only answers.  Here are two of the gun violence stories most compelling for me:

“Teedy”(Thornton Glen Berryman) was the adult son of close neighbors and friends in the working class inner city Richmond, Virginia neighborhood where I lived during the 1980’s and 90’s. His gun murder was my first exposure to that sort of death for someone I actually knew. Teedy was killed in a gangland style shooting in December, 1992. His murder may have been related to the crack cocaine epidemic that exploded in the U.S. around that time, hitting urban neighborhoods especially hard. He had been missing for two days when his bullet-pierced body was found by a stranger walking his dog. Teedy’s funeral was packed, but few people except those who knew the family paid the loss much attention. The media were mostly silent. Black-on-black violence (this was assumed) was considered a sad but unimportant footnote to wider American culture. His family has never stopped mourning the loss.

  When a deranged student at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia opened fire on fellow students and staff on April 16, 2007, killing 32 and wounding 17 others in two separate shooting sprees before committing suicide, I was half a world away, teaching English in a remote area of northwest China. News of the shooting reached us slowly. One of our children had earlier attended Virginia Tech, so I was relieved when I learned that no students or faculty members he knew were among the victims. Still, no one with any association with Tech can totally forget that awful spring morning or avoid feeling for the families of those impacted. 

The Chinese government took maximum propaganda advantage of the Tech tragedy. America’s obsession with guns can be hard to explain to those in cultures where gun ownership is severely restricted. Why, my students wanted to know, if America was the home of the free and the brave, were so many misusing that freedom in cowardly episodes of killing each other and themselves? (China has a population nearly 5 times that of the U.S., and an overall homicide rate about a tenth as high. Civilian gun ownership or possession is strictly prohibited there.) 

Trying to “resolve” a dispute or a despondency through gun violence only adds to the resentments, distrust, and family and community dysfunction that are likely sooner or later to result in further violence. To reduce gun violence, we need to share both reliable information and personal stories, doing our best to avoid skewing or further inflaming the debate. We can educate ourselves and our loved ones about the appropriate uses of guns. We can minimize the chances that any gun we own will be stolen or misused. 

Despite our best efforts, there will continue to be isolated incidents of gun violence that we cannot totally prevent. There are assuredly more that, with  a better social fabric and better public policy, we can avoid. May Teedy and Tech provide cautionary tales, incorporated into more reliable, more transparent overall information. May we continue efforts on all sides to put our own experiences into a broader, more realistic perspective.    

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Seven Harmful/Helpful Political Habits: 2022 Version

Posted on October 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

In 2014, I began writing a mid-term election “habits” post, trying to point out where I’d fallen short of good citizenship and what I might do to improve. Mid-term cycles since have produced different crises and different configurations of bad habits. Here’s this year’s version—

Citizens in a democracy are members of multiple levels of government, however we choose to view ourselves. Because voting is one cornerstone of democratic government, protecting the right to vote and participating in honest and fair elections are responsibilities we all share. As the political culture of the United States becomes more contentious, overheated rhetoric from multiple parts of the political spectrum threatens to overwhelm our common heritage and our common sense. I’m doing my best to stay engaged and informed, to reform my bad habits. Recognize some?  

1) Local politics does not matter. 

I can too easily focus on the “big” political races, glossing over the reality that the government level that impacts me most directly is local: voting rules and the placement of voting sites; budgets; tax rules and rates; school funding; zoning; the placement and maintenance of roads, parks, and greenways; economic development plans and procedures; environmental safeguards and incentives. In addition to “big” races, I also need to pay attention locally.  

2)  Politics is dirty. Most politicians are crooks. I don’t trust the system.  

Our national, state and local political scandals can seem endless. Journalists make reputations by ferreting out officials’ misdeeds. “Dark money” (large, difficult to trace contributions) can distort our elections. I often hear unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. It can be tempting to walk away from politics entirely, or to act out my frustrations with the system violently. 

Active citizenship demands both enthusiasm and restraint. I can play a useful part through small monetary donations, thoughtful social media posts, in-kind donations, and/or labor in support of candidates and causes of my choice. I can vary the sources of my “partial” news (almost never impartial or complete) to try to understand multiple perspectives. Most important of all, even when possibilities seem less than ideal, I CAN VOTE. The right to vote can be eroded through outright coercion, but also through disuse.  

3) Government can solve all our problems.

  I can let my expectations of government get overblown. Sometimes I fantasize that my elected officials can just snap their fingers and quickly reduce negative impacts of pandemics, globalization, or automation; can minimize unemployment while controlling inflation; can eliminate child poverty; can mitigate climate change; can usher in world peace. In more realistic moments, I acknowledge that expecting governments to do too much or too quickly can be self-defeating. I can nudge my elected officials in what I consider to be worthwhile directions. I can get and stay informed. I can make a small difference; many small differences DO add up.  

4) Government is the problem.

Sometimes I’ve lost my temper in conversations with “faceless bureaucrats” over regulations I thought were obsolete, needlessly harsh, or downright stupid. I can find parts of government maddeningly unresponsive, from the local to the federal level. 

It’s far easier for me to remember government actions that inconvenience me or limit my perceived choices than to remember valuable government services, from filling potholes on damaged roads to providing police, fire and military protection, to dispensing veterans’  benefits, to underwriting healthcare subsidies for the elderly and the poor. Governing is complex. Getting it “right” takes both hard effort and principled compromise. 

5) If we just elect the right candidates, all will go well. 

Voting for a successful candidate is no guarantee that the policies he/she advocates will get implemented. Our political system was designed to have checks and balances. Since the U.S. first became a nation, our national population has increased nearly a hundred fold. Officials at many levels represent increasingly diverse populations—in their districts, their state, or our nation as a whole. However much they want to serve their constituents and our nation well, the job is extremely difficult. (Personal attacks only make a hard job harder.) 

If I want the elected officials who represent me to reflect my views, voting is an important first step, but not the only one. I also need to remind successful candidates of my views on issues—coherently, respectfully, and repeatedly.

6) “Watershed” elections are crucial; some losses are irreversible. 

Of course it can matter which political party controls government appointments and legislative committee assignments. Of course congressional and presidential elections matter. However, as I’ve lived through more and more election cycles, I’ve come to believe that hyperbole about potential shifts in policy as a result of a single election can be counterproductive. Many substantive changes take decades or even generations. Conversations and disagreements in our society about the rights, responsibilities, and roles of minorities and women have existed since our beginnings as a nation. They continue to this day. 

I’m skeptical of overblown claims, both of potential disaster from a single election, and of single-election long-term gains. However, it is important to vote in EVERY election, not just the high profile ones. It is important to stay engaged, informed, and involved, regardless of who holds the presumed power at any given time. 

7) Politics is serious business, so we all need to engage in it with utmost seriousness.  

One casualty of recent enhanced nastiness in politics is the decline of the “smiling candidate.” Too often, our media feeds and social networks send us scowling images of “those others,” whoever various media algorithms have decided they might be. We need to remember that successful politicians of many different persuasions, from Ronald Reagan to Nelson Mandela, learned to take themselves lightly while taking their causes seriously. Even in these polarized times, it IS possible to be well-reasoned, polite, even humorous. A wise mentor once told me, “A smile is the shortest distance between two points of view.”  

As this midterm election cycle looms, please continue to do the vital work of reforming whatever your bad political habits happen to be. Above all, PLEASE make it a habit to keep your voter registration current, and PLEASE vote—in every election!      

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The Dobbs Case: What Would Solomon Decide?

Posted on August 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

I wish the Dobbs decision had never happened. For months leading up to it, I dreaded its potential impact on our fractured body politic. Now that it has happened, I am doing my best to find a forward-looking response. I doubt that any legal decision regarding abortion can satisfy anyone completely. I doubt that abortions will ever stop being performed, whether legally or illegally. I doubt we can ever reach an American (or global) polity in which every child is deeply wanted and loved, in which no mother dies from complications of pregnancy or delivery, and each new human is born into a fully functional family and society.

In the wake of Dobbs, activists on all sides of the U.S. abortion debate have increased their fundraising, outreach, and advocacy. Personally, I believe abortion prior to fetal viability should be primarily the decision of the mother-to-be, that her rights supersede any supposed state interests. However, I also believe that some common sense restrictions on abortions can be consistent with goals of family integrity and human rights. How can I best express my views? How do I act on my beliefs? When does life begin? How can we possibly know?  

Headlines tend to emphasize exceptional cases—the 10-year-old girl in Ohio who in May, 2022 was raped. After seeking care in Ohio, she had to travel to Indiana for an abortion because she’d exceeded the six week gestational limit mandated by a 2019 Ohio law triggered by the Dobbs decision. Overall statistics make less absorbing headline fodder, but are still abysmal. Over the preceding five years, Ohio had an average of over one abortion per week for a child aged 15 or younger. 

In ideal cases, a developing fetus is the result of consensual sexual activity between prospective adult parents. Ideally, once a woman’s egg is fertilized, the resulting zygote begins to divide, then implants and thrives in utero throughout the pregnancy, which ends when a healthy mother delivers a healthy infant. Many hazards exist between conception and birth, though—miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, maternal health complications, lethal fetal abnormalities. The rate of spontaneous miscarriage is estimated at between 11 and 22 percent of confirmed pregnancies. Possibly over half of all pregnancies end even before pregnancy is confirmed. About 2% of pregnancies are “ectopic”—the embryo attaches outside the uterine cavity, potentially threatening the life of the mother. In 2020, the US had the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations: 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. About 3% of babies born in the U.S. have birth defects of varying degrees of severity, with the most severe defects causing about 20% of deaths in infants below the age of one.

Ideally, prospective parents are financially and emotionally ready to raise to adulthood any child they conceive. However, a study from the New England Journal of Medicine in 2011 found then that nearly half of pregnancies were either “unplanned” (27%, maybe later?) or “unwanted” (18%, not now, not ever!). Per their research, unintended pregnancy rates are highest among low-income women, women younger than 24, unmarried women cohabiting with a male partner, and women of color. Economic studies repeatedly link limiting access to contraception and/or abortion to increases in child poverty and crime. 

To help ground me since the Dobbs ruling, I’ve returned to my Christian roots, revisiting Biblical stories of King Solomon to try to find wisdom to help me through this most recent set of conflicts over reproductive choice. A seminal account involves Solomon deciding a difficult case shortly after he has asked God in a dream for wisdom in guiding his people. As recorded in I Kings 3:16-28, the case involves the death of a newborn and two frantic mothers’ competing claims on the one surviving child. To help determine the rightful claimant, Solomon threatens to cut the surviving child in two. The real mother cries out to let the other mother keep the child, willing to relinquish her child rather than have it killed. Through his decision, Solomon does his best to honor the mothers, the child, and the child’s future.

The Dobbs decision was injected into a United States with many festering debates. Abortion has been, and continues to be, even thornier than the dilemma posed to Solomon, with no clear one-size-fits-all answers. What seems clear so far is that many women, their families, and their doctors are fearful and upset at Dobbs’ sweeping change in national policy. The change overturned fifty years of judicial precedent, including many cases attempting to strike some sort of balance among competing rights—the mother’s, the developing fetus’s, and that of the governmental apparatus charged with supporting families and children. 

I like to think that Solomon in his wisdom would have come up with ways to help us broaden our focus, leaving us less obsessed with the period between conception and birth. It is a rare pregnancy that lasts more than nine months, a rare (though tragic) instance when a life after birth lasts less than that, a strange anomaly for a girl/woman to conceive before typical puberty, which happens between ages 8 and 13. 

Perhaps we can see beyond our differences to lessen the damage we are causing to the already born and to women not ready to become mothers. Our faith, our gender, our life circumstances can help impart the wisdom we need to navigate post-Dobbs America. If Solomon could consider the mothers, the child, and the future, might we be inspired to behave similarly?  Are we each doing our best for the human family of which we are a part? Are we helping to preserve a livable planet for future generations?  What would Solomon decide?    

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Fear Sells, Until…

Posted on May 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

Half a dozen years ago, on a spring weekend, I went to Washington, D.C. with a small group of peaceful protesters to try to encourage more transparency in campaign financing, along with less influence from huge, often difficult-to-trace donors. I also wanted to network with younger activists and to support wider participation in our democracy. I attended workshops, met with old friends, made new ones, at one point joined a group in a march around the Supreme Court building. 

Later that same year, I attended a ” Decision 2016” rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, headlined by Franklin Graham, son and putative heir to crusading evangelist Billy Graham. 

The constituencies at the two events had little overlap, but themes of fear and “othering” invaded both—at the first, fear of big corporations and wealthy individuals coopting our democracy, at the second, fear of losing our religious underpinnings as a society. Sometime during that year, I bought a small lapel button: “Fear sells, until you stop buying it.”

These days, all sorts of groups all across the political spectrum are trying to sell me fear. Rarely a day goes by when I’m not assaulted by some internet or other media outlet explaining why “others” are destroying the world as we know it, why everything will be lost unless I (choose one or more): 

donate, 

demonstrate, 

denigrate, 

desecrate, maybe even 

detonate. 

I’m willing to participate in the first two, but strongly oppose the final three. 

It’s gotten so intense that I’m inclined to stand on its head the advice of 1960’s countercultural icon Timothy Leary—rather than “turn on, tune in, drop out,” I need to “turn off, tune out, drop in.” This retooled advice fits with my somewhat uptight nature, but I believe is also an appropriate response to our current societal turmoil. The combination of media frenzy and a lingering pandemic caused by a pathogenic virus have left too many of us feeling isolated and in dread of what’s “out there.”

When the cacophony of disparate media voices gets too loud, I find ways to distance myself, even from those opinions I mainly agree with. I “turn off and tune out”: silence the television; ignore the internet; switch off my cell phone. Often, I go outdoors. In addition to lessening the likely danger from viruses, spending time out in nature helps me to experience once more my minor role but valued place in the grand scheme of things. Once away from traffic and mechanical noise, I can think, perhaps reconsider, remember to honor the humanity of those with whom I disagree.  

I can ponder what my own fears are and how I can buy into them less often. At root, I’m afraid sometimes that the surface fractiousness of our human societies is all there is. I need to take intervals to drop into the deeper reaches of my nature, to reconnect with the underlying wholeness of the cosmos. 

The relative isolation of pandemic life has given me multiple chances to experience this deeper connection. I’ve had a hiatus in which to face some of my fears and to strengthen my resistance. As I gradually free myself from fear and isolation, I can participate more fully and more effectively in joint actions to make long-needed changes to the ways humanity has organized itself. 

Fear may occasionally still sell to me, but its market share is dwindling. 

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My Body, My Choice

Posted on May 14, 2022 | 1 comment

On this final day of my weeklong “strike for choice,” my husband suggested, without prompting, that the two of us go to a pro-choice rally being held mid-morning in downtown San Diego. I had just walked home after enjoying some early morning coolness while at our neighborhood’s community garden. I was not averse to attending the rally. It seemed appropriate. 

We hurriedly gathered sunscreen, hats, water, and granola bars, then headed for the rally site at the “Hall of Justice.” By the time we got within several blocks, we could see large clusters of demonstrators. Parking was at a premium, but we found a paid lot not too far away. When I had trouble operating the fare machine, a very nice younger woman used her credit card, then declined my offer to reimburse her. 

“After all,” she informed me, “we’re all headed for the same place.”  

From where I stood at the edge of the crowd, the demonstrators seemed to be predominately white, but with a noticeable component of other races and ethnicities. There were more women than men, but not overwhelmingly so. Hubby and I had not had time to craft a handmade sign. We opted not to carry any of the mass-produced versions offered. The homemade signs of others were more varied and more interesting.  

A lot of women in my age cohort expressed outrage at having to fight the “coat hanger wars” all over again. Many younger women opted for variations on a “don’t tread on me” theme, with a rattler coiled inside a stylized uterus. One sign proclaimed: “Women are not incubators.” There were a good many signs comparing women’s reproductive rights with gun rights: “Maybe if I learn to shoot bullets out of my uterus, those a******* in D.C. will stop trying to regulate it” or “America, where my body has fewer rights than an AR-15.” Some signs advised, “Listen to black women.”  

One sign that moved me, especially after I’d inquired about the story behind it, was a simple one. On a piece of cardboard, it recorded a woman’s name with her birth and death dates: 1907-1930. The great-niece who was marching in this woman’s memory explained that her grandmother’s married sister had become pregnant with her fifth child at the beginning of the Great Depression. Lacking resources to stretch beyond the children she’d already borne, the woman tried a self-induced abortion. She died in the attempt. Per population researcher Christopher Tietze, there were 2,677 recorded abortion deaths in the U.S. in 1933. Starting in the 1940’s, abortion deaths declined with the introduction of penicillin and the increasing skill of those performing most abortions. 

By the time today’s speechifying was done and the march officially began, the crowd had thinned a good bit. A group attired in “Handmaid’s Tale” red robes stood on a street corner and provided drum and tambourine accompaniment. Because my husband’s septuagenarian back and my septuagenarian feet were beginning to protest, we opted to stay on the sidelines and just watch the marchers go by. Near the end of the throng was an older woman whose sign helped me place the machinations of some existing Supreme Court justices and draconian legislators into a longer perspective. She listed several herbs that had traditionally been used as abortifacients. 

Public officials may come and go, rulings and legislation may try to control women’s bodies, but women do and will endure. 

Rulings and legislation can only go so far…

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Phantom Cramps

Posted on May 12, 2022 | Leave a comment

I started my first period the day of my maternal grandfather’s funeral. I was alone in our house. My parents had left to attend the late morning service, after deciding that I was too sick to come along, but not sick enough to require a doctor’s care just yet. No one, not even I, was quite sure what my problem was.

I sipped weak tea, tried nibbling saltines. Amid bouts of queasiness and pain, I curled up in a miserable lump on the sofa, under a hand-knitted afghan. Then, on one of my bathroom trips, I noticed a telltale stain on my panties.

Throughout the previous year, the communal shower for our girls’ phys. ed. class had confirmed me as a menstrual late bloomer. (Among the earlier bloomers, a couple of girls in the class ahead of me had already skipped periods due to pregnancy.) 

My mom sometimes called menstruation “the curse.” For most of my teens and into my early twenties, this was an apt description. I was irregular, so I could rarely predict when the bleeding, bloating, and nausea would start. The worst cycles were the ones when I was awakened from sleep by a searing abdomen, one that would only release me once I’d vomited up the prior day’s meals and thrashed and heaved for what seemed like hours. I’d retreat into the basement, as far from the upstairs family bedrooms as possible, muffle my moans and retching, then find a blanket as I eventually subsided into a fetal heap. 

As my twenties progressed, I managed, partly through good luck and partly through newly available birth control pills, to defer children until I was decorously married and ready for parenthood. The joys of raising a family brought welcome release. I’d still cramp up on occasion, but most of the time I was too busy and too happy to pay much attention. Once the children grew up and menopause loomed, some cycles would produce a few cramps, with heavy flows and clots. Others were barely noticeable. 

I’ve aged into a crone, though perhaps not an especially wise or effective one. The political landscape around me gets increasingly fraught. Many media platforms, whatever their slant, seem intent on increasing polarization to bolster their ratings and income. Attempts at quiet wisdom can get drowned out. 

It’s been over a generation since I last bled. Now, my writhing and thrashing are mostly due to the distrust and oppression of a society turning increasingly brittle, fractured, and patriarchal. There’s no physical reason for my malaise. This time, the cramps are in my soul. 

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