A Moment of Serenity
For most of my life, I have been wishing my life away - waiting for that moment to bask in the sun, to relax, to glory in a life well lived, crowned with achievement. I counted off days and moments until the time I could open up doors to adventures in foreign lands, alternating with peaceful days at sea. A time when cares would be behind me, and responsibilities few and far between.
I am 57 now, and am beginning to suspect I may not find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow after all, despite years of practice through high-level work, gaining the right skills, being the mistress of deferred gratification. Life is a far cry from butterflies and fairy tales. If anything, it is the hardest it has ever been, and Jim and I have been through hard times. My job, as champion of the most unpopular cause in town (the allevation and prevention of homelessness), is often stress at its purest form. And while I adore every member of my family and find joy with each of them in turn,there are demands I was unprepared to meet at this point in my life, and those demands are fierce. Do I have fierce in me any more? It's an unresolved question.
What I do have, now, is the sense to live more in the present. Not to wish my life away, or try to transform it into something more acceptable, easier to live with. I have perfected the ability to step out of time when the need arises, to drink in the peace of a vase of roses on my kitchen counter. Each week I choose a different color, or variety of colors. I bring them home, cut the stems, toss them in a simple, elegant vase, and use them to restore myself each time I pass near. I find the roses with the loveliest aroma, ones that can imbue a room with delicate fragrance. I will be reading the federal register, and look up at the stunning, fragile beauty of each rose, and I am transformed, swept away in an infinite second of sheer joy.
At night, I sit outside on the porch, and watch the oak leaves do their nightly tango with the wind. Our oak tree must be one of the loveliest on the planet, and is the sole reason we bought the house. Certainly we weren't looking at the small, awkward ,one-butt kitchen (as a friend labeled it), or the floor plan, or the plumbing. But as it turned out, that oak is really all we needed from the house. It's an anchor of calm, even as it bows and bends to the tune of the tropical storm.
Running errands on a tight schedule, I can be stopped by the beauty of a young woman I haven't seen for months. She came to me, homeless, hopeless, fleeing from unspeakable abuse, leaving only with the clothes on her back, her purse, and her three kids. She drove until she ran out of money to pay for gas, and rolled to a stop pretty much on my doorstep. At that moment, she was a client, a need, a demand, a stress. But in the store, she was phenomenal. Her face glowed with health and hope. I admired her work uniform, of which she was very proud. She has a good job, and her kids are adjusting to their new town, and shedding some of their fear. We talked, but mostly I just appreciated the beauty of a life started over, one with courage, and intelligence, and determination.
Most moments of peace just quiety happen. Some run, tumbling in your arms, embracing you with every atom of their being, "MamaLen, MamaLen! I knew you would come! I've been waiting and waiting, because you were coming, and now you are here!" Time stops then, and not just for a moment - it stops for the weekend, the week, the summer, whatever moment I can make last - because in the end, your grandchildren are your windows to heaven.
Every day brings me stress, despair, demands, problems I cannot solve both personal and professional. My friends are not the only ones who wonder how I cope with it all. I often feel like I got more than I signed up for, and wonder if it isn't too late to run off to the circus.
But every day also brings me a soft pink rose petal caressing my face; a warm, unsolicited gift from a friend; a kind word from a former client; a brilliant sunset; a tree offering its branches to the sky; a small child who thinks I represent everything good and true in the world. And these are the moments I choose, the times when I stop my life, go out of myself, and truly cherish the gift of peace.
These are the moments that bring me to the best of myself, so easily lost in the hassle and grind of my life. These are the gifts of being 57, of finding immortality amidst the rush of each day - the bit of color, the song of a bird, the love of a child. The actual moments of touching or hearing these things may be fleeting, but they are the only real permanent things in the world
There is a phrase, "into each life, some rain must fall." We see the rain. The gift is seeing the first timid sunbeam as it breaks through.
Happy Spring.
One Blue Note More
I realize looking over my posts that I have written more often than I intended about coping with conservatism. The "Blue Notes" were intended to be happily assertive thoughts concerning progressive policies, but the "blue" clearly has overtones of depression about the political environment as well as the Democratic platform.
Despite any and all natural proclivity to be hopeful and optimistic, living in a world of hate speech is debilitating. You can get really tired of facing the public day in and day out, especially when you are continually overwhelmed by the desperate need of single parents and their children; older adults too young for Medicare but not too old for cancer or other major disease; young people who have fled horrific family situations before gaining the skills to be self-sufficient. And all the while, as you try to find sources of support, you keep hearing: "they just need to get a job."
Although many politicians and lawyers (often the same thing) view words as game pieces, it isn't so. Words have consequences. People internalize the horrible things they hear, and they believe every word issued by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. They build their life view accordingly, and they hate accordingly.
Which is why Senator Joe Lieberman must not be allowed the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee. We have had enough of "leadership" that tosses loaded phrases out like Mardi Gras candy, without regard as to who is getting trampled as people fight for the loot.
Sen. Bayh says we can't afford an embittered Lieberman, because he might then vote contrary to all his professed, heart-felt beliefs in a Democratic domestic policy. This, in my opinion, is one more reason to take that gavel away. If he can toss aside everything he believes in because Senators held him accountable for fanning the flames of intolerance for Democratic candidates for President and Senate, then he is not the man we need in a position requiring judgment and intellect.
To her credit, Hillary did not let her clearly deep-felt grief at losing the primary campaign stop her from assisting the campaign that most obviously represented her value system. If Joe can't do that, and it appears he cannot, then Joe should go.
Hate Speech
Bill O'Reilly was interviewed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show earlier this week in one of the funnier bits since the election. Jon's premise was that Bill has been talking a lot about his fears concerning an Obama presidency, and Jon was hoping to create a safe place so that Bill wouldn't have to worry so much. He gave Bill a small teddy bear, and brought out hot chocolate with marshmallows.
Apparently, there are a lot of people who need help finding a safe space right now, because despite the general national euphoria over the Obama win (70% of the population feels very positive about his coming administration), there are pockets of people who have been genuinely terrified of all the "palling around with terrorists" talk.
Unfortunately, they don't say, "I'm very frightened." No, many of them prefer to project outward.
Not far from my house, there is a small business selling t-shirts, bumper stickers and signs to "real Americans," the conservative "patriots" who are the only persons apparently entitled to live in the United States. Judging from the cars I see on the road, this store is doing landslide business. Anytime I'm out in my car, I see all kinds of bumper stickers with sayings like: "Beware of liberals posing as Americans."
The "love it or leave it" crowd has never been very attractive, with their platform that anyone who doesn't adhere to an extreme right wing platform is by definition a traitor who should be deported from the country (the most singularly unAmerican belief I can imagine). But now that they see the entire government slipping into the hands of the great "other," their fear has unleashed rage of epic proportions. The Secret Service is reporting direct threats against Obama and his family far in excess of those seen against any other president.
This rage is not new, of course. The hatred unleashed against the Clintons was beyond all reason, literally. Bill Clinton's personal life was not ideal, but there are plenty of Republicans, including those who led the charge against him, who have as much or more to answer for. All of us err, and those in power tend to sin more than most. However, Clinton's personal life could hardly account for the rage he inspired, and this during a time when the country was prosperous, 22 million jobs were created, the government started generating budget surpluses, and we were primarily at peace.
Now a Republican administration has led us into economic catastrophe, two wars, and a government so corrupt that it seems almost impossible to begin cataloguing all the ills. Most of us feel vulnerable, and those losing power feel the most vulnerable of all. So they lash out.
All the same, it isn't healthy, and it isn't patriotic. Above all, it isn't witty or funny. Slamming people as traitors because they look different and/or have different political views is hateful and small.
Dissent is vital to a functioning democracy, whether it comes from the right, the left, or the middle. But it doesn't have to be hate speech to be heard. We can do better than that.
Shaping History
My father died August 13, 2008.
On August 16, I gave the funeral address. As I walked to the front of the church, I realized that everything I knew, remembered and loved about my father was connected to his love for his family, his country, and the Democratic Party. For him, politics wasn't something you read about in the newspaper, but something you lived. Being a responsible citizen, working to make your nation better, nobler and stronger, was the guiding tenet of his life.
Daddy came by his belief honestly. His father served on a commission to update the Georgia State Constitution, and his mother was the first woman to serve as president of the Georgia Press Association. Her proudest moment came when she was elected to the Electoral College as a delegate for Franklin Roosevelt.
But although my father's political journey began with his parents, it grew with the times and adapted to his personal ideals. Born in the deep South, he never thought to challenge racial divisions. After his Army service during the last year of World War II, however, he realized the nation had to put aside its racial fears and prejudice, and that this effort had to start in the South.
When my parents moved to Atlanta, my father took up his cause in earnest. As a leading member of the Democratic Party structure, he was an important element in giving Maynard Jackson, the great mayor of Atlanta, his political start. He assisted in the elections of Julian Bond, Andrew Young, and other lesser known but integral elected officials. He led the campaign of the first Jewish woman to be elected to the Georgia State Senate. He believed in the Great Society, one that was full of opportunity for all.
In his own way, he was one of the small pebbles that eventually led to a mountain of change. He was proud of Barack Obama, and proud of the Democratic Party that recognized his genius and opened the door to his victory.
I cried when Barack Obama moved onto the stage in Grant Park, Chicago as our President-Elect. I cried because Obama's vision and oratory spoke to the deepest hopes I cherish, and I cried because my father wasn't here to witness it. I cried for all the men and women who, before they passed from earth, gave their hearts and souls to a dream of an America united across racial, economic and political lines. I cried for Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Rosa Parks, and the foot soldiers for a better America. Most of all, I cried tears of joy for my grandson, and all our children and grandchildren, who will grow up in a country in which equality is no longer just a dream.
Obama made history tonight. We can start shaping it tomorrow.
What It Means to Me
Last week I had the privilege of voting for Obama.
It’s common for people to speak disdainfully of politicians, as though seeking to serve our country is by definition dishonorable. Fellow citizens speak of voting for the "lesser of two evils,” and never admit to voting for someone they admire. I don't think looking down on our elected officials is constructive for our society.
I have voted for many people I greatly respected and admired, most of whom, admittedly, lost. Never have I voted for anyone I admired more than Obama. He represents so much that is good in our world. He is brilliant, informed, compassionate, and calm. He would have been my choice had he been white, black, Hispanic, Asian or Middle Eastern. But it made it all the sweeter that he was black.
When I was 16, I spent a summer working for Head Start. It was Head Start's first year of operation, and it was exciting to be in on the ground floor of a tremendous social movement, one that continues to make a profound positive difference in the lives of many. It also changed my world.
That first summer, Head Start was located at an elementary school near my house, and the children were drawn from a neighborhood less than a mile from my own. The community had been formed to supply the maids, cooks, laborers and gardeners for the nearby white communities. Most of the houses were owned by the residents, although many of the deeds and records were lost and based on oral tradition rather than court house documents. There was a great deal of pride in home ownership, but even more despair brought on by poverty. The white neighbors could no longer afford household staff, and no one else was hiring. Thus, the people who lived in Linwood, so vital to the creation of that section of Atlanta, were abandoned and forgotten.
The children coming out of that neighborhood were amazing. I fell in love with all of them. It was the first time I experienced the wonder of a preschool child, and I was lucky enough to be able to introduce them to so much - to the zoo, to big, wide open parks, to books and art supplies and toys. And I was ashamed that I had been so oblivious to what was in my own backyard. Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, so reviled now, was in fact a huge success, and not just for the children of the poor.
There is so much left to be done to repair the damage done to our poor, and especially our poor of African-American heritage. But being able to vote for a black man, one of incredible talent and intelligence, felt very good to me. The fact that he is almost certain to win says something very powerful to me.
I hope you find time to vote - it's an important election.
Carefree Conservatives, Stressed Liberals?
A recent study has reiterated the findings of previous ones: conservatives are happier than liberals.
I hope this is not true, because the reasons given for conservative joy are not flattering. Basically, the studies say conservatives adopt the "What, Me Worry?" Albert E. Neuman approach to life.
In short, the idea is that conservatives are less able to see points of view other than their own; are better able to rationalize social and economic injustice as matters of little concern; and have little empathy for those on the margins of society. Their logic is simplistic, devoid of nuance, and they deny the existence of problems beyond the scope of conservative solutions.
By contrast, liberals are tortured by the ability to see 15 sides to every argument, view every issue as complex, and can find no justification for the radical social and economic inequality rampant in society. In addition, they not only don't see simple answers, they can barely see any answers at all to the massive problems of oil depletion, climate change, and escalating demands for food and energy by emerging giants such as China and India.
Although reading conservative authors such as the highly self-satisfied Bill Kristol and liberal writers such as the tormented Nicholas Kristof (both regular columnists for the New York Times) would support these easy stereotypes, I have to reject them, at least in part. After all, I am a liberal.
More than that, I am a liberal in a part of the country where approval for George W. Bush is still pushing 80%, which despite my supposed ability to see all sides of an issue, is baffling to me. I have lots of opportunities to see the most radical of conservatives up close, and on a daily basis.
The conservatives I know are not callous. They may not seek systemic answers to issues of poverty and oppression, but they are deeply involved in answers on an individual level. They are the volunteers at the feeding programs, the cold night shelters, and the transitional housing programs. They won't donate money, but they will gladly share food, clothes, toothpaste, blankets, and books - and on a fairly grand scale.
They don't accept the hawkish reasoning for the Iraq war either, and are divided as to whether or not the US should have gone in five years ago, and/or should get out now. Most think that oil, not Islam or terrorism, was the primary reason for the attack against Iraq, and that oil, not national security, is why we remain.
Quite a few have real concerns about the erosion of civil liberties witnessed over the last six years, although they do tilt to the "necessary evil" justification. As for me, I'm all the way in the "abominable attack on the Constitution" camp. Perhaps this is an example where my thought is simplistic, and conservative opinion is complex.
Finally, for all of us, liberals and conservatives alike, our world views have far less to do with our degree of happiness than our personal circumstances. A conservative whose job is endangered and whose wife has cancer is just as stressed as a liberal would be in the same circumstances. A liberal whose child is graduating from medical school with top honors and no debt is every bit as jubilant as the conservative in the next seat.
It is the culmination of all these things: how the events and people in our lives shape us, how our faith molds us, that gives us more points in common that political labels give us differences. Most politicians know that, but they exploit our differences anyway as a cheap and easy way to inflame citizens into the voting booth.
This year we have three candidates for President, two of whom are hard at work playing the game by the usual rules. Clinton is condescending: I know you have problems - let me fix them for you. McCain is insensitive: all I need to do is repeat "tax cuts" an infinite number of times, and no one will notice they only go to my donor base. Obama is different. He talks to us as adults, and not stereotypes. He is willing to call a gas tax holiday a gimmick, and explain in detail why gas prices need to be addressed with both short and long-term solutions.
Hopefully, it will be the kind of nuance even a conservative can love.
Tax Cuts
Melanie is a statistic, a single mom hit hard by the economic downturn. In her previous life, she was a real estate appraiser for a bank, married, and confident of being able to provide a secure future for her children.
In her current life, Melanie is a casualty of the housing bust, laid off by the bank when there weren't enough sales to keep a full-time appraiser busy. She and her husband did not weather the economic downturn well, and they divorced. Melanie knows she cannot get a job in the housing market, and is looking to do anything: clean hotel rooms, cashier at a grocery store, cook at a diner. She gets offers, but only for weekend and night shifts. She can't take them. There is no weekend and night care for young children (she has a 3-year-old and a seven-year-old).
Melanie looks for work every day, but her life is increasingly bleak. Unable to make $350 in child support stretch to pay rent, groceries, and utilities, she falls further and further behind. Yesterday she and her children were evicted onto the streets. She lost her car months ago, a huge loss in sprawling Florida where urban planners never heard of public transit. I'm sure it is a great comfort to Melanie to know that people who own vacation homes will be saving a couple of hundred dollars a year on property tax.
In my previous life, government was designed to help people recover from hard knocks. When I was in junior high and high school, Lyndon Johnson was pushing through a series of government initiatives called the "Great Society." He was not trying to immunize the nation against job loss and economic catastrophe, but he was trying to give people some breathing room and the tools to recraft their lives.
In my current life, Republicans have been unraveling the social safety net for the poor and middle class as rapidly as humanly possible. There is no pity or concern for young families like Melanie's contained in "compassionate conservatism." Our president greeted news that a single mom worked three jobs to maintain a bare living for her children with pleasure. "That's great," he beamed. "Only in America."
Yes, indeed. In all the developed nations, only in America is it required that parents work two to three jobs each to pay for basic necessities. Given the fall in regular incomes, even married couples often work three to four jobs between the two of them to keep from falling into abject poverty.
So what, my Republican friends ask, are we supposed to do for the Melanies of the world, and their children?
For starters, we could help with child care expenses. Our area has a subsidized child care program, but it is starved for cash, having been flat-funded for at least a decade, while costs have escalated, state mandates for services have increased, and the number of eligible children has shot up. The waiting list now numbers over a thousand children. There are no slots funded for night and weekend care, so families looking for help there aren't even on the waiting list. Now that the state has been in Republican hands for nine years, and the tax base has been shredded so that millionaires can buy multiple tax-exempt yachts, the situation is a great deal more bleak.
Not content with decimating the state tax base, the legislature successfully promoted the passage of Amendment 1 extending tax breaks to persons owning vacation homes and condos for rent, thus shoving municipal and county governments into serious revenue shortfalls. Some local governments, which have provided most of the match funding required to access state child care dollars, have said this year that no funds will be available. Other governmental units are warning of severe cuts. Without match dollars, the local child care service agency cannot access even the reduced state and federal child care dollars.
This may not seem like a tragedy to those without children or who pay full fees for child care, but this will affect them also. Parents like Melanie cannot make enough money to pay $150 per week per infant, or $100 per week per toddler, the going private fee rates. Without child care, she cannot work, pay taxes, or feed her children. The cost to society is eventually far greater than it would have been to offer a break on child care.
There are multiple other forms of assistance Melanie needs in order to re-enter society as a productive, self-sufficient woman able to care for her children on her own. She has no access to health or dental care for herself (and she really needs dental care if she is to land a job that pays a living wage), her application for housing vouchers will take months to approve in a best-case scenario, and, in an ironic catch-22, she can only qualify for job re-training once she has a full-time job.
There are basic services which support our entire population: education; fire-fighters; law enforcement; pollution abatement and prevention; road and highway maintenance; regulation of drivers' licenses. If we want our cashiers able to count out the correct change, or our air to be clean enough to breathe without causing asthma, we need to fund these things.
But we have chosen either to eliminate or sharply reduce our funding for even the most critical government functions, all as part of our worship on the holy altar of tax cuts. Never mind that virtually all tax cuts only affect the top one percent of the population. We don't think about that. We just hear the words "tax cut" and our brains freeze. And when we don't get any tax relief from the tax cuts aimed at others who are nothing like ourselves, we don't clamor for tax redistribution. We just clamor for more tax cuts in general, without seeming to care who they help or don't help.
When I discussed this issue with a local legislator, his response was a shrug. He honestly believes that if government was eliminated entirely, and we paid no taxes at all, then the "magic arm of the free market" would rush in to fill all gaps. The child care agency would not need to seek government funds, since our generous population would rush to fill its coffers. My homeless agency, which gets $15,000 a year to perform a two-page list of government mandated functions, would find a huge increase in private gifts, ample to meet the needs of all "deserving" homeless individuals and families, once people had more discretionary income. Private firms would build and maintain all the roads, supporting themselves with charging fees for people to drive on them. It is obvious that it isn't just the White House that has become detached from the reality-based community.
A friend of my mother's was shaking her head in bewilderment at the overwhelming passage of Amendment 1. "I wonder," she said, "if they will be so thrilled at saving $150 dollars a year when their houses burn down and there is no one to put out the flames."
We are in a recession. The house is burning down, and the water is turned off. May God bless us all.
Victimless Crime
Until the last few days, Eliot Spitzer was a somewhat vague figure to those of us living outside the New York/ Washington axis. Obviously, he was elected governor on his record of tackling the sacred cows of Wall Street. Crusading against white collar crime is laudable, but not terribly riveting. Attention was not fixed.
Now, of course, soon-to-be former Governor Spitzer is revealed as being as complicated and complex as most of us, and there is a surfeit of information presented 24/7 that with luck will die down as quickly as it flared up.
What is not likely to recede any time soon is the subtext that has accompanied the reports of Mr. Spitzer's rapid fall from the heights. Contained in every on-line news source I rely on is a side-bar on why prostitution should be legal. Yes, the governor knowingly committed a crime, and yes, it is hard to continue to govern once that fact is known, but, after all, prostitution claims no victims, and let's repeal these oppressive laws.
There may be many reasons to make prostitution legal, but claiming that the sex trade does not create victims is not one of them. Prostitution, pornography, strip bars and other industries that offer sex for sale destroy thousands of women's lives every year.
The fashionable idea that the sex trade empowers women, rather than dehumanizes them, cannot be supported. Head down to any police station in the country, and tell the officer that a prostitute has been raped. You are unlikely to note much concern. Pick up a newspaper after a stripper has complained that she was raped by the fraternity/ businessmen/ bachelor party that hired her. I doubt the description of the stripper will be flattering. Even the murder of prostitutes is a non-event, the women barely noticed except in the case of a serial killer, and then only as accessories in a drama focused on the murderer.
Women who have options do not opt for sex trade jobs. Take for example Kristen, the object of Governor Spitzer's lust. At $2000-$3000 a hour, Kristen epitomizes the high-end sex trade. If there is an argument that prostitution is a valid and rewarding career choice, it is based on arrangements like that of the Emperor's Club.
That argument fails, however, the second one moves past the superficial. Kristen's path to prostitution adhered to the usual script. An abused child, she left home at the age of 17. Without a high school degree, without friend or family to support her, she wound up homeless and a drug addict. Her dreams of success as a musician shattered, she turned to survival sex, trading on the one way she knew to be pleasing. She was good at being sexually pleasing, and rose to the top of her profession.
And what did that get her? Luxury apartments, couture clothes, jewels, freedom? No, it provided her employers with a great deal of money, but she was still struggling to maintain a modest standard of living. Although she has remained silent, her colleagues have complained of demands for constant performance, being forced to partake in unsafe sexual practices, and netting only a small fraction of the take. Kristen herself has the pleasure of seeing herself described as the "governor's whore" on TV, news headlines, and posters. It probably doesn't enhance her self-esteem.
What about the women who never make it to the top? The ones who age 5 years for every one they spend as a stripper, the prostitutes who are used up and mocked for being haggard at age 25? Where are their choices? Where is their power?
One of my colleagues was near a church, and noticed a woman who was attempting to hide from men who were cruising by in an expensive pick-up truck. One of them had used her for sex, given her $20, and had come back with his friends for a round of gang-rape. They saw her, pulled over, and started toward her, laughing and making crude remarks. My friend also saw her, and headed in that direction. After a few brief words, the men drove off, and my friend turned to the cowering woman.
The woman thanked my colleague, and started to move away. My friend stopped her, and asked if the woman needed help. No, the woman replied, even as her voice trembled and tears spilled from her eyes. No, I'm fine.
Clearly you are not fine, my friend answered. I'll be glad to get you a meal, or some warm clothes. The woman refused all help, so my friend said, well, at least give me your hand. If nothing else, I can offer you prayer.
The woman burst into tears, and said, "Please don't touch me. I am not clean, and I don't want to get any dirt on your hand. I am not worthy of God's grace. Please, just go away."
We may tell ourselves that prostitution should be legal. But even as we do, we should remember the women and children who are lost in its grip.
