Counting your Blessings

It's nearly the end of 2008, and for those facing the threat of foreclosure or just worrying about their retirement plans or the prospect of losing a job, this may seem like a year that cannot end too soon.

For me 2008 has been a year of transition: I saw my first child go off to college; I packed up my house and moved back to California; I started looking for a full-time job for the first time in three years just as the economy started to fall apart and unemployment began to rise. My timing could not have been worse.

But as I look back over the year and count my blessings, I see that I have more of them than I may have realized. I have food, shelter, a family I love, friends to care for, and the health to enjoy all of these. But I am also “blessed” in the sense of having experienced moments that brought happiness, pleasure, or simple contentment.

Of course, the difficulty of daily living is holding on to those moments of joy or even contentment. I return from an hour's walk, feeling uplifted, only to find that the kids are quarreling, the sink is full of dirty dishes, and there are too many bills to pay. I calculate how far we can stretch our savings, what kinds of consulting I can do, how much we can invest in our new business. I start to feel burdened, as if my blessings are outweighed by too many cares.

Those are the times when I ought to find my poodle, Diana, pick up her leash, and take pleasure in her excitement at the prospect of yet another walk.

But often I'm foolish or stubborn enough to persist at doing the things that make me feel weighed down by care or anxiety. After all, the kids can be sent to their rooms, the dishes can wait (or I can dragoon someone else into doing them), and the bills, well, if they're not due tomorrow, they can wait too.

Every day I try to find one moment where I simply enjoy being alive. Like my father, I'm an early riser, and I love being alone in the quiet of the house before any others are awake. In the evening, if I'm feeling worn out, fifteen minutes with a good book will usually have me fast asleep.

And If I'm out walking, all I need to do is stop and feel the sun on my face to know that I am indeed blessed.

Remembering Tita

From Christmas Photos 2008

This past August we lost one of our last living links to a previous generation. Raquel Prieto Humeres, affectionately known by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as “Tita” died at home in Santiago, Chile on the 25th of September 2008.

I first met Tita, or as she was styled “Señora Tita,” when I visited my husband's family in Eugene, Oregon for Christmas. Raul Antonio and I were engaged to be married that spring, and Tita had brought back a diamond ring for me in a setting that was typically Chilean, not a single stone, but five small diamonds placed next to one another in square settings.

Since we had very little money at that state in our lives, I had not intended to get an engagement ring, but my fiance surprised me by having Tita make a gift of the ring to me. I was so touched I could scarcely hold back tears, and I remember well her warm smile and her saying, “mi hija,” already drawing me into the family circle as a daughter.

When I think of Tita, the first word that comes to mind is “gracious.” More than anything Tita had the quiet aura and dignity of a woman from an earlier and more formal time. Her hair was always beautifully coiffed, her dress elegant, and her manners equally so.

Raul Antonio told me funny stories of how when she was traveling with his family in Europe one summer, she always had her small bottle of vermouth in her purse, and she would have an aperitif in the afternoon.

His mother would say that with two young, active boys and her youngest daughter in a stroller, all they needed was the parrot to complete the picture of a gypsy family on the Grand Tour, but Sra. Tita remained a little apart from the domestic bustle, and everyone did their part to insulate her as well from the stresses of travel.

This is not to say that Tita did not have her troubles, among them the heartache of losing two of her seven children. Since divorce was not legal in Chile, she lived apart from her husband, Raul Antonio Díaz Döll, during all the years I knew her. I saw them together on only one occasion when we brought my oldest son and their first great-grandchild to Chile at fifteen months to introduce him to his great-grandparents.

It is a source of great joy to me that my son, Alejandro, was able to grow up with both of them a part of his life until he became a young adult and that he was able to spend time talking with them and making that very rare bridge across three generations.

The last time I saw Tita was in a beautiful part of Chile on Lake Villarrica in February. She was very frail, and for the first time since I had known her, she had let her hair go completely white. I knew then that the time I had left with Señora Tita would likely be measured in months rather than years.

But though my heart was touched with sadness, I still took pleasure in talking to her, seeing her give me the same warm smile she had welcomed me with all those years ago when I was a young bride-to-be.

Good night, Tita. “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” (Hamlet, V.ii., 359-60)

Born: 8 August 1919
Died: 25 September 2008

The Party is on at Treasury

Office Holiday Party canceled this year? Never mind. There's a party going on at the Treasury Department this year, and you've got an open invitation.

That is, if you're a bank, and your balance sheet is still in the black.

As Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law Professor and Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel reviewing Treasury's performance in managing the bailout package told Terry Gross in a recent interview, “I don't know of a federal program where that's the only criteria for eligibility: Prove that you're a bank and prove that you're not broke. And if you can prove those two things, you just automatically get a percentage of taxpayer dollars,” (What Does $700 Billion Buy Taxpayers?” Fresh Air, December 11, 2008).

Professor Warren noted that in early December the GAO (the General Accounting Office) produced a report that shows that the government has been handing out funds to banks with little or no oversight mechanisms in place. According to The Wall Street Journal, the report states in part: “Without a strong oversight and monitoring function, Treasury's ability to help ensure an appropriate level of accountability and transparency will be limited,” (“Auditors Fault Treasury Oversight of Bailout Funds,” December 2, 2008).

Professor Warren's assessment is more blunt. “Their report, in my view,” Warren states, “is just a scathing indictment of the Treasury Department.”

In fact, Treasury's actions have produced no discernible effect on helping homeowners facing foreclosure, or students who can't get loans for college or graduate school or consumers who need auto loans. Even small business owners with good payment histories have found that their banks are cutting them off from vital lines of credit they need to survive.

The credit markets remain frozen, banks continue to sit on the taxpayers' money, and Treasury has no way of knowing if that money will go to shareholder dividends, or executive bonuses, or to those who need loans because it has not put any requirements in place to ensure that banks actually start lending again.

To add insult to injury, this morning, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had the audacity to make a public demand for Congress to release the remaining $350 billion in the bailout package because the Bush Administration has reluctantly decided to loan $17.4 billion to the three American automakers, effectively using up all the remaining funds that have been authorized so far.

The only defense of its performance that Treasury has been able to offer so far is that its actions, which have shifted from Plan A to Plan B to Plan C with no coherent strategy, have prevented the collapse of the U.S. financial system.

That may be the case, but it's no excuse for handing out taxpayer dollars willy-nilly without oversight or standards of accountability or conflict of interest rules.

Concerns about how Treasury has spent billions of dollars, for which taxpayers will ultimately be accountable, is not an academic exercise. This country has already seen billions in dollars wasted in Iraq as the result of non-competitive bids for contractors and a complete lack of planning for the aftermath of the U.S. invasion.

If we don't want to witness the inevitable Congressional post-mortem about why much of the bailout package failed to help the average taxpayer, we need to act now and let our representatives know that not one single additional penny should be given to Treasury until reasonable mechanisms are putin place to protect the taxpayers' interests and not simply those of the banks who have been receiving the money with virtually no strings attached.

The party is over, Mr. Paulson, and it's time to stop celebrating at taxpayer expense.

Mom's Keys

Today I found two sets of car keys that had been missing for about a week or so. The significance of this event is not that I found said keys, but that the losing and finding of car keys is a recurring event in my life.

And losing keys is a recurring event not only in my life, but in the lives of many of my women friends, especially those who have spouses and children. In fact, I would safely assert that there is an algorithm waiting to be developed that would directly relate the frequency with which women lose keys to a) their marital status and b) the number of children they have.

In fact, I'm certain that the probability that a woman will frequently lose her house and car keys (and her cell phone) and other personal possessions is directly proportional to her ability to keep track of everything else.

She will be able to: a) manage any budget; b) fill out and submit any number of forms; c) find any article of clothing belonging to a family member; d) remember the names of all her children's teachers and their birthdays; and e) set up online billing so that every creditor is duly paid on time and at least two days in advance.

But she will not be able to find those essential personal items that allow her to: a) lock the door behind her; b) drive the car; or c) be contacted by other members of the family concerning items that they cannot find or have lost track of.

Last Friday my husband returned from a two-week business trip. During that time period I managed to lose track of (I will not say “lost”) two sets of my own car keys and therefore was forced to “borrow” his. That brought us to the crux of our current dilemma.

We could have easily solved this crisis by sending my husband on yet another business trip which would have deferred the necessity of find said keys. But since that was not feasible, I had to consider where those keys might be.

Now I knew that they were never “lost” in the sense that they were irretrievable or that they resided anywhere outside my home. Of that, I was quite certain. I had only to consider therefore whether they were: a) at the bottom of my purse; b) in a coat pocket; c) in the baskets of my bicycle; d) under my nightstand; or e) somewhere in the bag of shopping bags that I use when I go to the grocery store.

As it turns out, the keys were in b) and e) and it only took me about half a day to find them. Since that is far less time than it would take my husband or children to find any of the items they consistently lose track of, and since I expended all of the energy to find them, I consider that the rest of my family has far the better the end of the bargain than I do.

After all the only reason that intelligent, well-organized women lose their keys in the first place is that they are driven to distraction trying to keep track of everything belonging to everyone else. QED.

And if anyone has seen my cell phone, please let me know!

Reason's Greetings

A few weeks ago I heard a story about a coalition of atheist groups purchasing space on billboards in Denver and Colorado Springs to post slogans like “Don't believe in God?– you're not alone.” These public declarations of unbelief join the efforts of the American Humanist Association which purchased ads on buses and in newspapers in New York City and Washington, D.C., asking their fellows: "Why believe in god? Just be good for goodness sakes!"

And now The Wall Street Journal reports that “nonbelievers of every description -- will gather in dozens of cities at the end of December to mark the holiday they call HumanLight.”

Ironically these secularists will celebrate by emulating common religious rituals as they sing from a Humanist hymnal, decorate a winter wreath, or light “candles dedicated to personal heroes.”

This recent surge onto the public scene of humanists, secularists, skeptics, agnostics, atheists, and self-proclaimed heretics both surprised, and I must admit, bemused me.

On the one hand, it takes a real act of courage to proclaim your lack of belief in a divine creator in a society where a 2007 Gallup poll showed that most Americans would rather vote for an openly gay person to become president than an atheist.

Yet launching these campaigns at the beginning of a major religious season does seem to be throwing down the gauntlet. Certainly displays like the placard the Freedom from Religion Foundation placed near a Nativity display at the Washington State Capitol have an “in your face” quality. The placard begins innocuously enough with the words: "At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail” but concludes with the far more combative: "Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

That is hardly the way to win friends and influence public opinion, particularly for a much maligned minority that makes up no more than five to ten percent of the population.

Of course, it's typical of our fast moving, jump cut, sound bite media culture that complex ideological and philosophical questions about freedom of expression and the existence of God are being waged through billboards, placards, and bumper stickers.

But it's also ironic that the very development of atheism as a modern philosophical and ethical position was fostered in large part by the same historical processes that generated so many of the Christian religious sects that now flourish in the United States.

If Gutenberg had not used his new printing press to publish the Bible and make it far more accessible, and if men like Tyndale, Luther, and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples had not translated new versions of the Bible into English, German, and French so that most people could actually read it, we would not have had the revolution in the relation between individual and God that Protestantism created.

The most influential historical legacy of Protestantism derives less from its protest against the corruption of state religion than from its encouragement of each individual believer to pursue a personal relationship with God, mediated through the reading of the Bible.

As more and more believers interpreted the Bible on their own, the Protestant movement rapidly fractured into more and more individual religious sects--ranging from Lutherans and Calvinists to Huguenots, Methodists, Anabaptists, Quakers, and Deists--and the slippery slope of individual interpretation produced Christians who believed that the Bible was literally true we well as those who denied the divinity of Christ and eventually nonbelievers who came to reject the Bible as the revelation of God.

Not surprisingly nonbelievers demonstrate a similar heterogeneity of ideas about the existence of God. A quick perusal of Wikipedia's entries on atheism finds practical and theoretical varieties as well as links to “agnostic atheism” and “theological noncognitivism.” There appears to be just about as many different ways of talking about unbelief as there are talking about belief in God.

Of course, the hostility towards atheism in our culture has always had a lot less to do with religious differences than with a widespread fear that atheists are inherently immoral.

Philosophically I myself occupy a kind of boundary between believers and nonbelievers in that I was raised as a Missouri Lutheran and still hold myself to the Christian principle of “loving one's neighbor as one's self” even as I have come to doubt the existence of God.

So while I do not feel the hostility of a Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens towards those who hold religious beliefs, I do share a sense of impatience and even anger when I come across the canard that secularism/humanism/atheism is destroying the moral fabric of our nation and that the tiny fraction of Americans who do not believe in God are somehow responsible for all the social ills of our culture.

So I was encouraged when I read that among the responses to the atheist/religious billboard wars was an effort to build bridges between believers and nonbelievers.

A former president of the Atheist Alliance International, Margaret Downey and her colleagues, had underwritten a billboard reaching out to other atheists in Philadelphia. When a local church responded with a “pro-God” billboard, Downey and her group did not respond with escalation in rhetoric, but rather with an invitation to join forces to help a local charity.

The congregation of the Light Houses of Oxford Valley accepted Downey's olive branch, and the Christians teamed up with the atheists "to spend a half-day sorting and packaging food for the needy." Downey calls her approach "positive atheism" -- an effort to convince the public at large that most atheists share the same moral values as most other Americans.

I endorse Downey's efforts and in the spirit of such outreach, I will venture to offer my readers “Reason's Greetings” as well as my hope that all of us, believers, nonbelievers, the unaffiliated, and the church-goers will put aside our feelings about the existence of God and instead share our mutual commitment to loving our neighbors as ourselves and to helping those in need.

It's time to tear down the dichotomy between belief and unbelief that artificially divides us when the unmet needs of poverty, ignorance, injustice, and so many other forms of suffering are crying out for people of faith and people without faith to put their energies into solving our social ills and not in debating who holds the moral high ground.

Ladies Who Lunch

It's a very strange feeling to be in the middle of the worst credit crisis and a serious recession and suddenly find that you have more leisure time (and that you're actually enjoying yourself) than you've had in a long time.

Since I moved back to California and started looking for a job, several unexpected things have happened:

the university where I'm spending most of my energy searching has instituted a hiring freeze;
I can't get an emergency credential for substitute teaching until January when I get to take a basic competency exam and undergo a background check;
and a couple of writing gigs are taking longer to put together than I'd anticipated.

So while my deeply ingrained Protestant work ethic tells me I'm not trying hard enough to become gainfully employed, the more pragmatic side is telling me it's time to relax a little and enjoy the holidays without all the frenetic multitasking that usually involves.

Having this unanticipated gift of time on my hands, I've also been able to reconnect with a whole social network of moms like me, who are not working outside the home, and whose children are old enough that their mothers can find time for coffee, a game of Mahjong, a long walk, or the occasional leisurely lunch that doesn't have one glancing at the clock because you have to get back to the office.

It's such fun to be able to talk to other women without kids interrupting, or having to rush to get to work or having to rush to pick them up from daycare or lessons or practice.

I've discovered the guilty pleasure of having a whole space of hours in the day when I can finally spend at least some of time just the way I want to, and boy do I feel guilty about it. I feel so bourgeois, so decadent, so far from the woman who taught Feminist Theory and who still writes letters supporting the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

“What's happening to me?” I wonder. “Am I turning into my mother? Will I start 'getting my hair done' every week and going to Tuesday Musicale?” It's a scary thought.

My whole life I've been going to school and working and juggling family and work to establish a professional identity, and now when that identity is temporarily in abeyance, I feel an odd disjunction between how people look at me and who I really feel I am.

No longer just “X, Y or Z's mom” or “Dr. Wahl,” I have the sense that I can just be “Beth,” someone's friend or confidante, the lady who walks her dog to the park every day, the woman who chats with the cashiers at the coffee shop, and who actually finds time to read the newspaper or listen to nearly as much NPR as she wants.

So let my Puritan conscience take a nap for a while; I have faith that soon enough, the job will be found, the hours will fill up again, and once again, I'll be facing a balancing act again and resisting the pressure to rush, rush, rush through life. For now I am one of the ladies who lunch, who can take life at a slower pace and savor all its simple, daily pleasures. For now I am happy having the time to just be me.

The Scents of Christmas

For me getting ready for Christmas is not so much about decorating the house or planning what gifts to buy or even caroling or attending an Advent service. Instead, what evokes Christmas for me n a visceral way are the smells of Christmas: the sharp scent of pine needles and the spicy mixture of ginger, cinnamon, cloves I associate with Christmas baking.

As a child the Christmas season always began when my mother got out the huge crocks she used to make enormous batches of German cookies: lebkuchen, springerle, and pfeffernusse. The day she bought her heavy duty Kitchen-Aid mixer was a cause for celebration: no more taking turns turning the heavy, sticky batter for what seemed like hours with a wooden spoon.

I still have that mixer more than thirty years later, and every time I turn it on, I think about my mom, and I have to smile, remembering that she was always a little careless around machinery. I used to curse under my breath cleaning up after she dumped too much flour in the batter and turned the powerful machine on too high a setting-- sending flour and batter in a spray that coated the counters, the floor and even the walls. I remember finding the overlooked stray drop still stuck somewhere as late as January.

With the baking came the stories of how German relatives, especially my father's mother, had made dozens of cookies in crocks the size of garbage cans and then buried them to keep out larcenous little fingers from making off with them ahead of time.

Traditional German cookies are truly a labor of love because the recipes are complicated and date back centuries to days before refrigeration. Almost none of them use butter, and the eggs and sugar are not simply creamed but rather whipped up to a pale froth – 15 minutes on a high speed mixer or an hour by hand. Then the dough needs to be chilled, rolled out, and the cookies themselves shaped from wooden molds or carved wood rolling pins, to be laid out on baking sheets, dried overnight, baked at relatively low heat for almost twenty minutes, and then aged for a couple of weeks in air-tight containers to let the flavors emerge.

For my paternal grandmother, with her five boys and one girl, it was a definite challenge to make sure the goodies lasted until Christmas. My mother had only four kids to keep track of, but it was my father who was mostly likely to sneak a cookie ahead of schedule.

I remember how good the kitchen smelled with the windows all steamed up and the cold Michigan winter kept at bay outside while my siblings and I helped or simply watched and then argued over who got to lick the bowl. Strangely enough I didn't even like eating some of the cookies until I was in my teens and had developed a taste for the unusual flavors like anise and the hard texture which make them perfect “dunking” cookies in a steaming cup of coffee. The pleasure was in the preparation and the shared company.

Even now I warn friends who haven't tried them that these cookies can be an “acquired” taste. Unfortunately, it's a taste my husband and three boys acquired early on, and they wait anxiously during the first few days of December until I assure them that yes I am baking again this year despite my occasional threats to stop because it's just so much work.

As the years have gone by, I've done a little research into the origins of these cookies and discovered to my surprise that their flavorings – the anise, the almonds, the cloves, the white pepper, and even the cardamom – were ingredients that were added not so much for taste – but rather to show off the wealth of the families who could afford to bake with such exotic ingredients. Some of the cookies made from elaborate molds were painted and put on display; they were not even meant to be eaten!

For me making and baking these cookies is also a kind of display, but it's a display of sociability, of my cultural heritage, and a source of pride that even I, who have few, if any, manual talents, can still produce a damn good cookie.

It's also a ritual that connects me to my siblings as I call up to ask about a variation in recipe or commiserate if the springerle didn't rise so well as last year. If I had just one Christmas wish, it would be the hope that some day all of us could gather again one December afternoon and bake our springerle, our lebkuchen and our pffernusse together. For nothing evokes the happiest memories of my childhood Christmases like the warm spicy scent of cookies baking in the oven.

Don't Blame the Religious Right, It's Republicans Who Lost the 2008 Election

There's a lot of bickering, finger-pointing, and maybe even a little soul-searching going on in the Republican party about why the John McCain/Sarah Palin ticket went down to defeat. Many political observers have pointed out that by holding on to their socially conservative religious base, the party lost the support of moderate, independent voters who were more concerned about their economic well-being than abortion or gay marriage.

Members of the religious right argue defensively that they turned out in record numbers, just not enough, to overcome the record turnout of voters who were energized to vote for Barack Obama and not against him.

I am not a political pundit or a poll-taker, and I have little sympathy with ideological stances of the religious right, but in this case, I have a strong sense that they are not to blame for their party's defeat.

Rather, I feel that the Republican party has generally treated its base like the “safe” girl or boyfriend you can depend on to take you to prom, even as you secretly hope and hint for someone more glamorous, albeit more fickle, to ask you. But in 2008, Republicans nominated John McCain as their candidate, someone not beloved by the religious and socially conservative wing of the party, and you could almost sense the underlying anxiety of campaign advisers that their “safe” date to the prom might choose to stay home on election day rather than go with John McCain as escort.

This led to the brash and ill-conceived gambit of persuading McCain to choose Sarah Palin as the pretty new face of social and religious conservatism, with her star appeal intended to complement the wisdom and experience of the not-so-lovely, not-at-all-youthful man at the top of the ticket.

The problem for Republicans turned out to be the rest of the American electorate, who were not taken in by appearances but actually wanted some substance beneath the “hockey mom/former beauty queen/Jane Six-Pack” exterior. When Sarah Palin turned out to have little understanding of foreign policy, domestic issues, or the constitutional role of the vice-president, the public found her wanting as a candidate, not to mention a poor reflection on her running mate's judgment.

But worse, the choice of Sarah Palin as the best the Republicans could do for a vice-presidential candidate confirmed the impression that many across the political spectrum have gained of the party's deeply cynical attitude towards voters in general and its inherent contempt for the intelligence of the American public.
Perhaps having succeeded in passing off George W. Bush as the answer to American fears about terrorism, Republican strategists believed that they could sell any candidate to voters, so long as that person was attractive, personable, and able to read a teleprompter with ease.

The election of 2008 proved those strategists wrong, but it make take yet another election cycle for those in charge of the party to stop pointing the finger at their socially and religiously conservative base of supporters, and take a more probing, honest account of their own failures to put forward candidates who have less style and more substance.

Carpool Censorhip, Or Letting Kids Talk about the Election

Today I read about the ugly aftermath of the recent election that will bring the first African-American president to power in the United States. The Associated Press reports that the number of death threats against President-Elect Obama far exceeds the usual number that follow an election. In Snellville, Georgia, Denene Millner reported that a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

I've been thinking about these incidents because I've been increasingly upset about a directive I received from other parents the day after the election. I had driven nearly three hours to pick up my son and other 4th graders from a camp where they had been staying in Coloma, California, the town the originated the 1848 Gold Rush.

"There's to be no election talk. It's absolutely verboten," one mother told me in the bathroom as I prepared to pack up the car for the return three-hour trip. "They're absolutely obsessed with the election," she added, but then informed me that we weren't to tell them who won. "They can't handle it."

"Says who?" I thought to myself, furious that I was receiving this information from another parent rather than from my son's teacher directly. When I signed up to drive for this field trip, I certainly didn't sign away my first amendment rights at the car door, and I felt both foolish and resentful as I rushed to cover the morning papers I had placed on the front passenger seat.

Of course, the kids saw the headline that proclaimed Obama's electoral victory. And why shouldn't they see it? Why should I have to feel guilty that I had the morning's newspaper on the front seat of my car?

No one had informed me in advance that election talk was to be absolutely "verboten" in a private car, or asked me if I agreed to that policy before I agreed to spend six hours in my car, chauffeuring kids on the day after the election.

And of course, the kids were obsessed with the election. So was every American citizen and just about everyone else on the planet. Why shouldn't they be excited about one of the most historic elections the world had ever witnessed? And why should they be denied the right to know the outcome of that election? Or to discuss the election freely with one another?

I disagree absolutely that nine and ten year olds are not prepared to handled the discussion of an American election, especially one that changed history. Properly mediated by a responsible adult, there is no better occasion for children to exchange views, respectfully, civilly, but also openly and truthfully, with one another.

Yes, somebody's feelings may be hurt. But this is not about emotion but about teaching children how to back up emotion with fact and reason. All three recent presidential elections have been hotly contested and left hard feelings for those who lost, whether those feelings were warranted or not. The salient point is that the United States has successfully passed the reigns of power peacefully for over two hundred years, and where there have been questions of electoral misconduct, those questions have been referred to the courts, and the majority of Americans have accepted those court rulings, even if they disagreed with them.

I feel very strongly that we do a disservice to ourselves and to our children if we censor their discussion of a hotly contested election. If there was ever a "teachable" moment in history, this election was one, and not to address it openly and frankly, in my opinion, is an act of cowardice.

Yes, people are angry that Barack Obama won, but those children who chanted, "Assasinate Obama," will not become more reasonable or rational, if they are simply censored rather than engaged. This is the moment to ask those kids, "Why are you saying this? Why do think it's okay to encourage someone's death because you disagree with his policies or don't like the color of his skin?'

Racism will never go away if we simply force people to suppress rather than encourage them to express feelings and then engage them on a rational level.

I remember my own fourth-grade teacher, who is a man I still respect above all others. He spoke to my class after the resignation of Richard Nixon. We were a class of nearly all Republicans with one lone Democrat in our midst. "Don't believe everything your parents tell you," he said to us. "Learn how to think for yourselves."

I know that as a fourth-grader I was ready for this message of encouragement to think for myself. I am furious with myself for letting other parents intimidate me into stopping my own fourth-grader and the others in my care during that long car ride home from finding out just how much history had changed and expressing their views about it.

If you truly believe in free speech, you know that there's no such thing as too much speech. Keep talking and eventually you will find that the answer to hate is simply more speech and more speech and more speech.

The Twilight Saga, or Why We Keep Trying to Censor what Teens Read

In carpool a couple of weeks ago, a fourth-grade girl I've come to think of as a surrogate daughter, mentioned that her mom didn't want her to read Twilight, the teen vampire love story that's been such a huge publishing success and will soon hit the big screen.

“Oh, my son Tomas read that,” I told her, and “I read it too while I was recovering from a bad fall.” (And I didn't feel capable of reading anything too complicated, I thought to myself, but I didn't say that out loud.) “There's nothing bad in it,” I said to her, "and if you want me to tell your mom that I've read it and that I think it's okay for you to read, I can do that,” I promised her.

“Oh, could you?” she asked hopefully. “I told her I'd rather read Twilight than get my own cell phone and that tells you how much it means to me.”

“It sure does,” I laughed, and then I started thinking to myself about the perennial question of why we as parents get so worried about what our kids read that we want to censor certain books.

So I started asking people – okay, other moms--what they thought about Twilight. [If I'd asked any dads, they would mostly likely have give me blank stares, but that's another blog topic.)

My sister told me that the book was a source of controversy at her daughter's Christian school. I found out that the mom of my would-be-Twilight-reader wasn't nearly as worried about the book as her college-aged daughter was because her oldest daughter thought that the heroine wasn't a “good role model.” “What I think really upsets her,” my friend told me, “is that wanting to read this book shows that her little sister is growing up too fast.”

After all Twilight does touch on all those adolescent issues that raise parental (and big sister) hackles: falling in love, wondering about sex, having relationships (platonic or otherwise) behind a parent's back, having your daughter getting involved with wrong kid of guy (where “vampire” stands in for any race/class/religion/or other difference that makes you uncomfortable).

For my friend's older daughter, Twilight also seemed to send the wrong kind of message to her little sister: in it the heroine spends a lot time wondering if she's good enough for the guy; he tends to be controlling, even bullying on occasion, and his outrageous good looks, material wealth, and “I know more than you do, little girl” attitude isn't quite enough to offset his equally out-sized angst about how he might endanger her or even worse give in to the temptation to turn her into a vampire like himself.

But the real question that lingers for me about the Twilight phenomenon isn't so much about whether it's a “good” book or a “bad” book, but why we worry so much about what adolescents, and especially adolescent girls, read.

I'd be the first to admit that I share my friend's oldest daughter's concern about her little sister reading books that start to erode the boundaries of childhood. There are good reasons for having “children's sections” in public libraries in order to provide a rich, age-appropriate environment in which young people can begin to explore their world, including its darker sides.

Yet children's books like Holes, Are you there God? It's me, Margaret?, and Bud, Not Buddy treat topics that a generation earlier we might not have considered “safe” for children: including abuse, abandonment, puberty, and the juvenile justice system. However, the authors of these same books write about these experiences in a way that children and adults can understand without being psychically threatened by them.

One of the hardest transitions we experience as parents is watching our children move from the relative innocence and wonder of childhood to the increased worldliness and skepticism that they begin to feel as young adults. If there's anyone I identified with in Twilight it was the well-meaning but easily fooled father who has no idea what's going on in his daughter's head or taking place in her bedroom where a vampire spends most evenings watching her sleep and trying to protect her from other vampires.

Perhaps what bothers parents most about what their teens are reading is this realization that we can no longer fully protect our children from the world and all its dangers.

In a strange way, it may seem more feasible to us keep our children safe from the fictional dangers contained in the pages of a book than to have to face our own limitations in keeping them safe from the world at large. Censorship can seem to offer a certain comfort to a parent, even if we're just like the father in Twilight, futilely trying to ward off threats we can't even see.

As the mother of three sons, two of whom are over the age of fifteen, I confess I've largely ceded the battle of trying to protect my adolescent children from any and all “negative” influences of media, video, books, music, pop culture, and their peers. I also have to confess that I might be a little less laissez-faire if I had a daughter. I just don't know what difference gender might make.

But what I have realized is that all I can really do at this stage of children's lives is to give them the skills to ask questions about what they hear, what they watch, and what they read.

They're going to read what they want, not necessarily what I want them to read. But I also know that if I'm willing to take the time to read some of the same books, we can at least start a conversation, even an argument, about what those books mean and why we value them differently. And that's one good way to recognize their passage to young adulthood.

For more good discussions of Twilight, see The Christian Science Monitor's "Chapter & Verse Blog," "I Don't Want my Kid Reading that Book"

http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2008/11/15/i-dont-want-my-kid-reading-that-book/

Finding Your Real Friends

It's a truism that that you only find out who you're real friends are when you're in a crisis. Now that many Americans are losing homes, losing jobs, even losing their faith in themselves, many people are testing that truism in real time.

I returned home to California in August and discovered how much friendship meant. When my husband and I needed a place to park two large moving vans until our tenants could move out of our house, we had friends who let us leave the trucks outside their homes, despite neighbors' complaints. We also had friends on vacation who said, “Stay in our house as long as you need,” so we didn't have to camp out with sleeping bags among boxes and disassembled furniture. Friends offered us meals, welcomed us back, said those sweetest of words to a returning family, “We really missed you.”

Since those late days of summer when we were heady with the excitement and joy of returning to a place we love, my family has also experienced the downside of a rapidly deteriorating economy. I'm not finding a job as quickly as I had hoped. My husband just lost his, and we have to plan carefully how we will use his severance and our savings to start a new company in a business climate where starting a new venture seems crazy to most people.

But we aren't crazy, and we aren't cock-eyed optimists. We have creativity, energy, and vision, and most of all we still have real friends – people who are there to share ideas and advice, to give a referral when we need it, and to listen when we have a down day.

Of course, there are always people who offer to help you network, or to meet you for coffee, and then never follow through, or who listen politely but with barely concealed skepticism to your dreams, or who promise to help in some way but make it clear that you are way down their list of priorities. Those are the people you cull from your mental list of “friends,” often with some pain, but also with the realization that you've tested a relationship and found it wanting.

Sadly, some of the friends you may test and find wanting may be members of your own family, but even so, you can take courage and hope from the unexpected expressions of friendship that come from people you never thought would be willing to come through for you. And even more valuable are the people who hoped you could depend on and who proved that your faith was warranted: those are the friends worth keeping – in good times and in bad.

P.S. Since posting this blog, something kept nagging at me, and I realized that I don't actually "cull" friends as ruthlessly as I seem to imply. If did, I would have written off my best friend and the man I married over twenty years ago. He was one of the major testers of my definitions of friendship. I wrote him a letter the summer he took a bus from New Haven, Connecticut to Portland, Oregon after having been hospitalized for severe asthma. I just wanted to be sure he got home okay, but my well-intentioned letter received no response, and I returned to school the next fall determined not to have anything more to do with him. Fortunately, he made a determined effort to win my good will back, and he's not the only one on the list of people who don't answer emails for six months or return phone calls for years etc. that I've welcomed back into the fold of those I call friends. After all, you're not really a good friend unless you can forgive a breach of friendship.

Grace Under Fire

On Tuesday evening, Senator John McCain gave the best speech of his campaign: he conceded victory to President-Elect Obama, and more importantly, he acknowledged the historic nature of that win.

Up until this past year, I had admired Senator McCain, and not just for the obvious reasons: the heroism he had shown in war or the principled stances he adopted on campaign finance reform and immigration. I also deeply respected his decision not to engage in the ugly racial smear tactics that were used against him by Karl Rove in North Carolina in 2000 when phone calls suggested that he had a black illegitimate daughter.

McCain made many mistakes in this campaign and in recent weeks stooped to tactics that were not worthy of him. But he never played the race card. There was no Willie Horton in this campaign, and for that I continue to respect him.

But I was also moved and saddened by the emergence of his former self in his concession speech. In the past few months McCain has seemed uncomfortable in his own skin, perhaps regretting his moves to the right to court the Republican base, perhaps unnerved and disheartened by the bigotry displayed at his own campaign rallies from people who called Obama a “Muslim” and a “socialist” as if those were two of the seven dirty words you can't say on the air.

On Tuesday night, McCain hushed the boos from the audience; he took full responsibility for his loss. “The failure is mine,” he said, but not before he had alluded to the seismic change this election represents in American history.

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

This is the John McCain who believes in the power of American democracy and not just winning elections, the man who can recognize that the expansion of the electorate and the record numbers of Americans who cast their votes, many of them for the first time, was something to celebrate and not something to try to suppress, the man who can acknowledge the “special pride” of black Americans who know that the United States truly is a land of opportunity when a man who might not have been able to vote freely a half century earlier in the American south can now lead this country as its President.

I appreciate Senator McCain's long service to this country and I hope to see the real John McCain, who exhibits grace under fire, continue to serve in the United States Senate for many years to come.

A Day to Celebrate for All Americans

A Day to Celebrate for All Americans

I have just witnessed history. Tonight America elected its first African-American president.

I supported the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama because I felt that he was the best candidate. But I am also proud to have cast a vote for him as a white woman because I feel that his election is an important symbolic and material step towards the healing of America's racial wounds and the ugly legacy of slavery.

Today is a first for me on many levels:

It is the first time my oldest son cast his vote in an American election.

It is the first time in my lifetime that I can face my children and say candidly, “Anyone can grow up to be the President of the United States.”

It is the first time that millions of voters cast their vote for the first time and joined me in the privilege of exercising the right to vote in one of the world's great democracies.

I know that tonight is a moment of disappointment for many Americans, not least of which are many of my family members, who have been Republicans for generations. But I hope that they will join me in my hope that the election of Barack Obama is a moment of healing for America's racial divisions and a step towards the recovery of America's reputation as a leader on the world stage.

Barack Obama's campaign brought millions of new voters to the electoral process, especially young voters, Hispanics, and African-Americans, and whatever your party affiliation, we all can only benefit when the number of register voters expands and the number of registered voters reaches historic highs.

Whatever anyone feels about the outcome of the election, this voting experience is historic on so many levels, and we should all celebrate an election in which so many of us participated and so many could see tangible evidence that another barrier to the Presidency crumbled to the ground.

Mea Culpa – Paying for Advertising I Don't Watch

Mea Culpa – Paying for Advertising I Don't Watch

With only thirteen days left to Election Day, you may be sure that most candidates aren't out there telling you how much they admire their opponents.

Far from it. This is the time of year when the media, the pundits, and especially the voters who haven't put their TV in a closet, complain that the airwaves are saturated with negative advertising.

So I'm sitting here feeling just a little guilty that I've contributed to that saturation. To come completely clean, I admit that over the past year I've made modest monthly donations to political campaigns and political organizations that put up ads on your TV set.

And yet I haven't seen a single political ad myself either for or against any political candidate.

The truth is that I don't watch TV, not out of moral indignation, or fear that it will rot my brain, or any other ideological reason. It's just that when a commercial comes on, and the volume goes up, it's like nails on a blackboard for me, and if somebody doesn't hit the mute button, watch out!

In fact, as I ask myself why I fund a form of communication that I consider as much a form of torture as listening to Celine Dion, I have to confess that I don't have a very good answer.

Who am I trying to convince, after all?

If it's the small sector of undecided voters who still remain undecided after a seemingly never ending presidential campaign, then I have to admit that I pretty much agree with Ezra Klein who wrote that “from a civic standpoint, few creatures are as contemptible” as The Undecided Voter, (“Undecided voters? Studies show that most actually have chosen a candidate,” The Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2008, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-klein12-2008oct12,0,6236237.story).

After all we've had two years of news articles, TV debates, blogs, internet sites with reams of data, for the undecided to digest, and few could argue that John McCain and Barack Obama present anything other than a definitive choice for two very different ideological approaches to politics.

So why am I spending my hard earned money trying to sway people whose state of indecision I find almost incredible, given the amount of information available about the candidates who are running for office?

And yet as Klein also points out, “Undecided voters are believed to be the decisive slice of the American electorate, so they get the debates and the ads and the focus groups (assuming, that is, that they live in a battleground state).”

I also agree with Klein's contention, based on recent research by political scientists that many of the Undecideds are not really as “undecided” as they claim but are already leaning in one direction or the other, and may in fact not want to state publicly the name of the person they will probably vote for. And sure there are probably a few who just enjoy reveling in all the media attention they get every four years.

The fact is that I consider this particular election to be so important that I will spend my money trying to push a few people over the line towards the candidate they may be leaning towards. I'll press the Republicans who feel embarrassed at John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin to ask them to question his overall judgment. I'll press the former Hillary voters who aren't comfortable with a black man as President to look again at Colin Powell's endorsement. And I'll keep those ads coming.

So apologies to those of you who've already made up your minds. Just keep your finger poised over the mute button. And to all of you, Decided and Undecided alike – Get Out, and VOTE!

Guilt by Association: Obama and the “Secret Muslim” Charge

Guilt by Association: Obama and the “Secret Muslim” Charge

The most striking part of Colin Powell's interview with Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press Sunday was not his endorsement of Barack Obama but rather his disapprobation of the political tactics of the Republican party in trying to associate Obama with the specter of the 9/11 terrorists.

I have long admired Colin Powell, but I have never admired him more than on this past Sunday when he stated that he was troubled by the “approaches” of the McCain campaign and the efforts of the Republican party to taint Senator Obama with the insinuation that he is a secret Muslim and therefore potentially a terrorist sympathizer.

In Powell's words, the party has created an atmosphere in which:

It is permitted to be said such things as, 'Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim; he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America.

Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?

Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Yet it is not just the more recent threat of Islamic terrorism that Republicans are seeking to evoke in this smear campaign, but also the older, deep-seated association of “radical” black movements and figures from the 60's like Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and The Nation of Islam.

If Republicans can create enough links between “black,” “Muslim,” “radical,” “socialist,” and “terrorist,” in the minds of voters, already nervous about Barack Hussein Obama's uncommon name and mixed race origins, they believe they can frighten them into voting for John McCain or at least into staying away from the polls.

What Colin Powell states powerfully is the fundamental American belief, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that Americans should have the right of free association, and that no one should be tainted or smeared because of their association with an individual or group that happens to be unpopular.

Sadly, in contemporary America, where the drumbeat against the threat of terrorism has generated suspicion of anyone who appears to be of Middle Eastern origin, as a Presidential candidate, Barack Obama has not dared to enter a mosque and has met leading Islamic figures privately rather than openly.

This has left many Arab-Americans feeling rejected by both parties, even as many also feel the need to forge a common voice in the American democratic polity.

“'What's upsetting to me is you're completely discounted by both parties,' said Ahmad Ezzeddine, an associate vice president at Wayne State University” according to a recent Boston Globe article. “Ezzeddine, who immigrated to the US from Lebanon 20 years ago, said he voted twice for President Bush, but now feels politically orphaned, adding, 'There's no attempt to reach out. Obama wants us, but is so afraid because he doesn't want to be labeled, and the Republicans . . .'” (Michael Paulson, “Arab Americans Yearning,” Boston Globe, October 21, 2008, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/10/21/arab_americans_yearning/?page=1).

Since the Powell endorsement, Republican campaigners have simplified the guilty by association tactics even further by talking about the “pro-America” parts of the country and in the case of Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, a call not only to investigate the “anti-American” aspects of Barack Obama but of the entire Congress.

Now by extension we can accuse Obama of being a secret Muslim, radical, socialist, terrorist, anti-American. The perfect bogey-man, made-up and marketed on every TV channel just in time for Halloween.

But it's not just the guilt by association tactics that should concern every American but the associations that are being tainted with guilt. It is no crime to be of Arab descent in this country, and no Arab American should be suspected of any criminal activity simply because that individual is of Arabic descent. Arab Americans are a diverse group in themselves, comprising both Christians and Muslims, and representing a wide geographic distribution from the horn of Africa to the Arabian peninsula.

After November 4th, these ugly campaign tactics will likely cease, but the rhetoric that sees every person who looks Middle Eastern as a Muslim and that suspects every Muslim of terrorist sympathies will continue to infect our public discourse until more of leaders find the courage of a Colin Powell to say: “Let every Muslim American child and every Arab American child dream that he or she can be be President of the United States, and let us make certain that those dreams can become a reality by overcoming our fear.”

Cut Sarah Palin No Slack Nor the Man Who Chose Her

Cut Sarah Palin No Slack Nor the Man Who Chose Her

Today on NPR's Morning Edition, Senator McCain proved his knight-errantry by rushing to the defense of his damsel-in-distress, Governor Sarah Palin, whose performance in a couple of TV interviews with Katie Couric has demonstrated that like “there's no 'there' there.”

At least not when it comes to foreign policy, whether or not the financial crisis will lead to a another Great Depression, or any specific examples of Senator McCain supporting regulatory legislation during his twenty plus years in office.

Her floundering responses made many viewers, and a growing number of conservatives, think out loud that this choice of a running mate was not the brilliant strategic stroke it seemed at the Republican Convention, especially since Governor Palin is clearly not ready for prime time, much less the White House.

But this morning Senator McCain, who seems to think it a virtue to stick with a decision once made, however impulsive and wrong-headed, still insisted that Palin was a good choice, and a better one than Senator Obama or Biden, a comparison you'd think he would have avoided rather than sought.

Asked “what specifically do you believe that Alaska's proximity to Russia adds to Palin's foreign policy qualifications,” McCain responded with a vague reference to “the fact that they have had certain relationships,” and then immediately turned the question to Palin's energy experience, knowing full well that he was not going to be asked what those “certain relationships” might be, much less how they might relate to foreign policy.

McCain then made the tired political rhetorical gesture of suggesting that all the fuss over Palin's lack of qualifications was nothing more than “Georgetown cocktail party” gossip (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95240063).
In fact, listening to Steve Inskeep interview Senator McCain, I could not help thinking that the Senator hopes that voters will be lulled into what Jonathan Swift once defined as “the sublime and refined point of felicity, called the possession of being well deceived; the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves,” (“A Digression upon Madness” from A Tale of A Tub).

When Senator McCain defends his choice of Sarah Palin and the paucity of her qualifications, he is either a knave or a fool. When he claims that her critics are a group of cocktail party lightweights, he ignores a growing chorus of criticism from conservatives ranging from Senator Chuck Hagel to David Frum to George Will and Kathleen Park.

In some ways, Palin has been given a more sympathetic response from many on the left, who seem to feel almost a need to apologize for the position McCain's handlers have put her in before they can bring themselves to criticize her. For example, NPR's Nina Totenberg started her assessment of Palin by stating, “There's no way to sugarcoat this. After a brilliant debut at the Republican National Convention and a speech that electrified the delegates and the country, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is struggling in her second act,” (Morning Edition, 9/30/08, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95196691).

A bracing dash of cold water on this “pity party” comes from Salon's Rebecca Traister, who writes that: “Yes, as a feminist, it sucks -- hard -- to watch a woman, no matter how much I hate her politics, unable to answer questions about her running mate during a television interview. And perhaps it's because this experience pains me so much that I feel not sympathy but biting anger. At her, at John McCain, at the misogynistic political mash that has been made of what was otherwise a groundbreaking year for women in presidential politics,” (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/30/palin_pity/).

Traister is absolutely right that the 2008 campaign has proven to be one more betrayal for those, men and women like, who hoped that this election season, women would be judged on their merits, not their looks, and that any woman who had a reasonable hope of making it to the White House would not be going there as an “arm piece” or just because she's a woman.

McCain's choice of Sarah Palin was a slap in the face, not only to all the Hilary Clinton supporters who were so devoted to her because of her hard work, her intellect, and her grasp of complicated policy issues, but also to the many highly experienced and articulate Republican women he could have chosen – like Elizabeth Dole, Olympia Snow, or even Condi Rice. (And wouldn't she have enjoyed playing the role of Dick Cheney for a change?)

The fact that Sarah Palin has already performed so poorly in the few interviews she has given should not set the bar lower for this Thursday's upcoming debate. Instead, this debate should be viewed as her last chance to stop mouthing platitudes and giving her convention speech over and over, and prove to the public that she really does know something about the major domestic and foreign policy issues she will need to face if she makes it to the White House.

After all, this is the woman that John McCain cynically handed to the voters as a possible Hilary Clinton replacement. Let her prove that the comparison is anything but laughable.

Yet Palin also has another reason to prove herself at Thursday night's debate. Voters cannot help but consider that if John McCain is elected, his age does raise the prospect that Palin might have to take on the responsibilities of president alone.

That possibility offers a very serious reason to treat Palin's performance as more than just a debate but rather as a dress rehearsal for the White House. And finally, however well or badly she does on Thursday night, her performance must also be taken as a reflection on John McCain, and the judgment he showed in selecting her as his running mate and his possible replacement in the Oval Office.

McCain Sounds A Bit Like My Mother

McCain Sounds A Bit Like My Mother

Don't get me wrong. I agree with the initial pundit response on the first McCain Obama debate: 1) namely that it was an actual debate and not just an exchange of sound bites; and 2) that both candidates performed well, playing to their strengths and minimizing most of their weaknesses,

But there was one area in which I found Senator McCain just a little bit irritating, and that was because his constant references to his age and experience, and his repeated mantra of “Senator Obama doesn't understand x, y, or z” started to sound a lot like my mother.

I well remember my mom saying to me as I reached my high school years,
I'm 62 years-old, and I don't need some smart-ass teenager telling me what I know about x, y, or z.”

Substitute McCain saying, “I'm 72 years-old, and I don't need some smart-ass 40-something junior senator telling me what I know about x, y, or z” and you have the same effect.

Senator McCain was born in 1936, a spring chicken compare to my mother who was born in 1918 and died in 1989, but the rhetorical effect is still the same: “I'm older than you, there I know more” had the same resonance in 1980 as it does in 2008. I still thought, “Hey, mom, you voted for Ronald Reagan, even though he's planning to cut the very social security benefits that are intended to help me fund my college education, and I personally think you're nuts for doing this.”

Similarly, Senator Barack Obama countered Senator McCain's condescension with a consistent reference towards his ill-judged decision to support the Iraq War in the first place when it has provided such a distraction from and diversion of resources from Afghanistan, which is the real center of Al-Queda insurgency.

Senator McCain's repeated, almost hypnotic use of the refrain, “What Senator Obama doesn't understand,” combined with his rude refusal even to make eye contact with his opponent, underscores the generational divide between them.

Many voters, from the 40-somethings on down, and I count myself among them, do not want want condescension from our presidential candidates. We want accountability for the terrible decision to go to war with Iraq and to continue to spend $10 billion per month on a conflict we never needed to engage in. Senator Obama has been much more clear-eyed and cogent about the real national security threat facing our nation, and this threat has never been Iraq.

If there is anything either Senator and the American public “needs to understand,” it is that as little money as possible must be expended in a war with Iraq than we can ill afford, and that resources need to reallocated to actual, contemporary threats, both military and domestic. That will be the true test of leadership for our next president, particularly if the next terrorist threat comes from Afghanistan or Pakistan, which are underfunded and underestimated by the current administration, and the current Republican nominee.

Who Will Bail out the Taxpayer?

Who Will Bail Out the Taxpayer?

The American financial system has lurched from crisis to crisis all summer, resulting in government interventions whose shock value has increased from a stinging slap in the face to a full body blow in the latest proposal to bail out $700 billion in “toxic” assets held by a wide range of domestic and foreign financial institutions.

First the Bush Administration found it necessary to save Bear Stearns from bankruptcy. Then Secretary Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke engineered a national take-over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That was still not enough.

A short time later the Federal Reserve announced that it would take a nearly 80 percent interest in the insurer American International Group in exchange for a two-year, $85 billion loan.

Why did the U.S. government have to bail out an insurance company? Well, it turned out that AIG had engaged in a new unregulated financial instrument, selling so-called “credit default swaps” which are essentially insurance on debt.

And when firms borrowed money to finance debt that included subprime mortgages and other “toxic” assets, the unregulated free-for-all that has been the U.S. financial markets for the past four years finally threatened to implode, .

Only in the case of Lehman Brothers did market capitalism actually play out in full leading to the bankruptcy of that institution.

The rules of capitalism are supposed to be simple. As Don Boudreaux, a professor at George Mason University puts it: “[Y]ou are free to take whatever risks you want as long as you are willing to bear the costs for those risks. And you get the upside of it too. If you have huge gains, great, you get the gains. But no one helps bail you out or subsidize you,” (“Do Federal Moves Take up Back to the New Deal?" All Things Considered, September 18, 2008). http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9477132

That's no longer true in this new world-turned-upside-down view of American capitalism where government intervention is now the name of the game and where it seems that if you win, you win, but if you're about to lose, you ask someone else to pay your bill.

So this week Secretary Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke are back on Capitol Hill, hats in hand, begging for a sum that makes these other billion-dollar interventions bail in comparison, and with even less oversight and less accountability to the real people who will be paying the bill – you and me, the American taxpayers.

Fortunately, despite the real crisis at hand, legislators of both parties have finally found the backbone to stand up to the Bush Administration and say, “Hey, wait a minute!”

In blunt and often angry utterances, these representatives are insisting that the details of this proposed gargantuan bail-out get fleshed out, that there is oversight of how the Fed and Treasury will implement the plan, and that the taxpayers get something back if this bad debt proves to have any ultimate value.

Congress is finally reflecting the outrage of an American electorate that has been sold an expensive and unnecessary war in Iraq and now is being asked to fund a similarly expensive financial rescue plan with just about as much planning and oversight as the Bush Administration put into its invasion of Baghdad, i.e. Let's just start a war and worry about the details later.

It's not just that Paulson and Bernanke have cried “wolf” once too often this summer and never actually saved a single lamb from slaughter, but they also have to take responsibility for the disastrous policies and regulatory performance of an administration that will go down in history as one of the most spendthrift, deceptive, and incompetent in American history.

To add insult to injury, the proposed Paulson-Bernanke plan contains no financial relief for the individual taxpayers who are being asked to bail out Wall Street while receiving no assistance with the housing crisis, or with shrinking incomes, or a growing unemployment rate.

As many housing advocates and economists will tell you, the financial industry has done a dismal job so far helping homeowners facing foreclosure restructure their debt. At the very least, any bailout of the financial industry must include some provision for individual taxpayers to restructure their debts, particularly for those who are in danger of losing their homes.

If Congress does agree to some form of the Paulson-Bernanke plan, it should be with some very serious strings attached. Any institution agreeing to participate should be required to disclose all of its debts, to fire its top management without any gold parachutes attached, and to agree to profit-sharing with the Treasury should its “toxic” assets ultimately turn out to have some value.

Then Congress needs to repeal its ill-judged revisions of the personal bankruptcy laws to make it easier for homeowners facing foreclosure to refinance their debts and not worsen a deteriorating housing market.

And finally, it's time for the American public and its leaders to decide whether we really are a capitalist society or not. If we offer corporations a safety net, we need to make sure that we not only have the appropriate regulations on the books, but regulators who enforce those laws thoroughly and seriously so that Wall Street doesn't once again have the opportunity to go to Vegas on the taxpayers' dime.

It seems almost certain that in resolving the current financial crisis, the American taxpayer will get stuck paying the check, but as voters we can also press our representatives hard to reduce the size of the final bill.

P.S. For an excellent overview of the financial crisis, see Gretchen Morgenson's September 21st New York Times column, entitled "Your Money at Work, Fixing Others' Mistakes."

Why are Americans so crazy about oil?

Why are Americans so Crazy about Oil?

I watched the American rage over rising gas prices this spring with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation – sympathy for working people who can barely afford another cost of living increase and who have to drive to get to work – exasperation with all those other Americans who bought gas-guzzling Hummers, Expeditions, Siennas etc. and are now complaining about how much they cost to fill up.

Then I watched the spectacle of Rudy Guiliani cheerleading Republican conventioners in a chant of “Drill, baby, drill” and felt a mixture of stunned amazement and outright disgust.

“What is it about oil that makes Americans so crazy?” I wondered. A gallon of milk goes over the four dollar mark, and people grumble but they don't get on CNN and threaten their lawmakers with public mayhem. Gas prices hit that point, and people are ready to riot.

It may be the gas prices are one of those “in your face” costs of daily living that we can't help but notice. Stores may bury the equivalent cost of various brands of peanut butter on those little tags you can barely read, or keep prices the same but artfully reshape your box of cereal or your ice-cream container to be a little smaller. You barely notice, and for the most part, you keep buying.

Gas prices, by contrast, are posted in eye-popping dimensions on huge signs for all to view and to seize on as a source of outrage. I doubt that many people can tell you how much the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are costing per week ($2 billion) or how big the current deficit is ($370 billion so far in 2008), but just about any American can tell you how much he or she paid per gallon at the pump at the last fill-up.

But it's not just that so many Americans are irrationally fixed on the price of gas; a majority are also displaying an equal degree of illogic when it comes to reducing energy costs because they focus primarily on the supply side, and then pick the longest range solution – more domestic oil drilling.

This is ironic since the most recent fall in oil prices and accompanying declines in gasoline prices have resulted from a three-year decline in the number of miles Americans drive. In other words, simple conservation (and perhaps declining economic activity worldwide) have already had a far more dramatic impact on prices than any other action either politicians or oil companies could take. On September 9th, OPEC member voted to cut overall output by more than 500,000 barrels a day as a reaction to falling demand. Yet no leader in Washington is out there cheering the American consumer for doing the right thing.

It's enough to make economists wring their hands in despair. Reduce what you consume and producers have to cut their prices. “It's supply and demand, stupid,” one might image their slogan saying.

But what is worse that the lack of understanding and appreciation given to energy conservation is the reckless rhetoric of Republican leaders like Rudy Guiliani, and sadly, John McCain, who seeme determined to seduce Americans into thinking that they can have their SUVs and cheap gas, and that “drilling at home” will not only lower gas prices but create an energy independent America. Oh, and they'll throw in a bridge for good measure.

Senator McCain, who has missed eight votes to extend alternative energy tax cuts, including one that took place while he was in Washington, is not only missing the boat on a new energy industry, but even doing it at the expense of potential jobs in his home state. As Pulitzer Prize winning author, Thomas Friedman, pointed out in a recent interview with Terry Gross, the biggest solar project is ready to launch outside of Phoenix, Arizona, but Senator McCain hasn't bother to show up to vote on an extension that could bring clean energy and good manufacturing jobs to his constituents, (Fresh Air, 9/8/08).

Just as Americans wisely rejected Senator McCain's proposed summer gas tax “holiday” as a cheap gimmick, they should cast a gimlet eye at his proposal that we can drill our way out of our oil addiction. In an election year, politicians will claim you can have your cake and eat it too, but unless you want a severe case of buyer's remorse, voters should pay more attention to who is funding those politicians than to any promises they make.

As The Washington Post reported, “campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Senator John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling,” (7/27/08, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/26/AR2008072601891.html).

Contributions rose to $1.1 million in one month from $208,000 in May, $283,000 in April, and $116,000 in March.

The solution to America's energy needs doesn't have an easy answer. It will require creative thinking, multiple explorations of new cleaner energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, hydrogen, natural gas, biofuels, and carbon capture. It will also require “sacrifice,” on the part of the American consumer, if you can call the conservation efforts so many are already taking part in a “sacrifice.”

But if conservation isn't sexy – it still is the cheapest and most effective solution we have at hand. The least we can ask of our leaders and of our presidential candidates is that they encourage conservation rather than undermine or mock these efforts. They also need to promise voters that their decisions on energy policy will be determined by the advice of the best and brightest among our scientists, economists, and engineers, not the slickest sales pitches of lobbyists representing the old energy industries (oil, gas, coal, and nuclear).

Americans may find the price of gas infuriating, but they shouldn't let that rage make them crazy. At least not crazy enough to fall for the political huckstering we saw at the Republican convention and in the false promises too many politicians are making about the effects of oil drilling.

Because this election is about more that the high price of oil and gas. It's an opportunity for Americans to lead an energy revolution and reinvigorate our economy or find ourselves still trapped in our old addiction while Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, and the like laugh all the way to the bank and keep on writing campaign checks to John McCain and the Grand Old Party.

The Day the Unthinkable became a Reality – A 9/11 Remembrance

The Day the Unthinkable became a Reality – A 9/11 Remembrance

So many of us will never forget where we were when the news came. My husband and I awoke to a phone call from his brother around 6:00 a.m. and I immediately thought, “Someone must have died.” I was right, of course, but not in any way I could have expected or even imagined.

I remember turning on the TV to see the first plane explode and the first building collapse, and I felt as if someone had knocked the wind out of me. “I don't want the kids to see this,” I said turning to my husband, already knowing that this was not only a tragedy but a potential media spectacle.
Recalling how I felt that morning I can't help thinking of Auden's lines:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along.

I was sleeping peacefully when people leaped out of windows or called loved ones to say farewell or raced up stairwells to try to save people, and that realization makes me feel strangely guilty and yet lucky at the same time as I think, “There but for an act of fate, go I.”

That morning except for the eerily silent skies—no planes were passing overhead-- we determined to go on as normally as we could. I drove the kids to school, I met a friend for lunch as we had planned, my husband went to work. It was only later after we put the kids to bed that we turned on the television and watched and wept.

America lost more than thousands of lives on 9-11. We lost our innocence and our sense of invulnerability from foreign attack in a way more palpable than any experience since Pearl Harbor.

Many people resolved that such an attack would never happen again on U.S. soil, but I don't believe we can prevent every act of terrorism from occurring, whether it results from the actions of another domestic terrorist like Timothy McVeigh or a foreigner like Mohamed Atta.

Yet I do believe that we can do a great deal more to honor those who have lost their lives, and not just by building another memorial, or reciting a list of names, or standing together in a moment of silence.

Those are all honorable acts, but we are capable of a more profound form of remembrance if we take every opportunity to teach our children not only what happened on September 11th but how strongly we must strive to prevent religious extremism or racial, tribal, or ethnic prejudice from allowing us to forget our common humanity.

The terrible acts of September 11th, 2001 were not simply a strike against Americans but against every citizen of the world. They made the unthinkable a reality, and they diminished our sense of our own decency and regard for the sanctity of every living person. If we take this anniversary as an opportunity to affirm those values as a global community, we can make no better tribute to the lives of those we lost on this day seven years ago.

Sarah in Wonderland

Sarah in Wonderland

It seems incredible that the single nomination of a relatively unknown woman, governor of an enormous yet little populated state, who was mayor of a small town just a short while ago, could have had such a sweeping influence not only on her party but also on media perceptions of the presidential race. But John McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate seems to have had generated a storm of popular interest, to the point where admirers and detractors alike call her “Hurricane Sarah.”

Trying to figure out just who Sarah Palin is, and what she stands for, much less how she might govern, is a bit like looking at someone in a fun house mirror. Every time you think you've focused on one aspect of the image, you realize that you're just seeing another distortion. To conservative women, especially white conservative women, Sarah Palin is the new Hilary Clinton, a “feminist” they can love because she's so “like them.” For conservative men, Palin seems to be the equivalent of the “trophy wife,” the vice-presidential arm-piece who makes an old and not very inspiring John McCain suddenly seem the man to be envied. And for women on the left who are used to having the “feminist” label to themselves, albeit at the price of being mocked as “feminazis,” Palin is a conundrum: a woman with ambition, drive, and charisma, but who also espouses policies and beliefs that most self-described feminists wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

And then there are the women—of the left, right, and middle-- who don't necessarily want to judge Palin for her individual choices regarding work and family—but who find some of those choices disturbing, not just because Palin has a larger family than the norm but because she has a family with special needs running the gamut from the baby with Down's syndrome to the pregnant teen.

However, Sarah Palin does have a political record, if a brief one, and it tells a story of some interesting reversals and contradictions, especially if you hold it up against the image of Palin we see through the prism of her political handlers or left-wing bloggers or even her own convention speech.

I found it interesting that Anchorage Daily News columnist Michael Carey,who has followed Palin since she ran for governor, described her convention speech “very uncharacteristic” in it partisan attacks. In his judgment, these attacks on Democrats and particularly her attacks on Barack Obama were "probably inserted by some guys who think they're very smart and are from Washington.”

Noting that Palin's political battles in Alaska have been waged more within her own party than across part lines, he added: “People find... it hard to understand that her biggest problem in Alaska has been with the most conservative elite Republicans and with the oil industry. It hasn't been with the Democrats. She's worked well with the Democrats in the legislature. Legislation has passed that she wanted with their assistance, and it's crucial to her to have the Democrats up there,” (“Finding the Real Sarah Palin in her Convention Speech,” Weekend Edition Sunday, 9/7/08, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94365311).

Palin may compare herself to a “pitbull with lipstick,” but in fact her governing record on spending tax dollars has been less ideological than pragmatic. When it suited her interests to lobby for millions of dollars in earmarks, she did so, even as she now criticizes Obama for also engaging in earmark spending, something you'd be hard pressed to find any Congressperson not guilty of. The infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” to which Palin claims she said, “thanks but no thanks,” was in fact a bridge that she supported during her 2006 campaign for governor. She only formally rejected the project after Congress deleted wording specifying funds for the bridge and when it was a political dead horse (see Politifact.com http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/680/).

What voters may want to consider in thinking about Palin is not just the relative brevity of her tenure as governor (18 months), but the fact that she has been governing a state with a substantial surplus and no major crises. Apart from her success in negotiating with oil companies and getting a new gas pipeline, Governor Palin has undertaken no other policy initiatives. Ironically, one of her biggest detractors is Republican State Senate Leader Lyda Green, who said she thought it was a joke when someone called her to tell her that Palin had been selected as McCain's running mate. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" Green told The Anchorage Daily News (8/28/08 http://www.adn.com/politics/story/510249.htm). Green is also from Palin's hometown of Wasilla.

Finally, although Palin has been upfront about her pro-life ideology and open about her religious beliefs, she has yet to provide full disclosure of her views on the separation of church and state and to what extent her religious views will inform her public policy.

Many conservatives have condoned and even celebrated Palin's teenage daughter's choice to have her baby as palpable evidence of her pro-life credentials, even though the pregnancy also violates the conservative belief in abstinence before marriage.

But what does Palin think about teen pregnancy and public policy? Does she remain committed to abstinence only sex education in the face of this personal instance of its failure?

And what about her views of the Iraq war as a reflection of a divine plan? "Pray [for] our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country — that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," Palin told the Wasilla Assembly of God this past June.

Some might wonder about how this view of U.S. military policy would play in international circles, particularly in Muslim countries where an explicitly Christian rhetoric evokes fears of age old Western assaults on Islam as President George W. Bush found out when he used the term “crusade” to describe the war.

Before voters assume they know who Sarah Palin is, they should be asking some hard questions about Palin's past and contrasting her record in Alaska with the new political makeover of Sarah Palin as Vice-Presidential messiah to the Republican party.

California Dreaming

California Dreaming

Every day I seem to hear yet another news story about the demise of the “California Dream.” From Sacramento to Fresno to Los Angeles to San Diego, people seem to be losing their homes, losing their nerve, and seeking their dream of a better life outside the Golden State. I hear their complaints: plummeting housing prices, a high cost of living, traffic, too many people fighting for too few resources, and my rational side says, “Of course, they're right; California is overcrowded, overpriced, and overrun.”

But my California dream is located in a beautiful corner the Bay Area peninsula, where the housing crisis hasn't reached the same monumental proportions that people have seen in other parts of the state, and where my memories of fog rolling over the Santa Cruz Mountains, or the sun rising over the South Bay still tug at my heart strings.

So my family is bucking the trend of the California exodus. We just moved back to Palo Alto, California from Albuquerque, New Mexico this summer, primarily because of me, a 45-year-old not-quite-stay-at-home mom. I want to reclaim my California dream, which means getting off the freeway, out of the car, and back into a suburb with a small-town feel, where I can bike to get groceries, and my kids can go to good public schools.

Huh? Yes, New Mexico did live up to its reputation as a slow and easy land of mañana, but I also discovered that getting around Albuquerque meant spending a good part of every day in my car, and ultimately I was willing to trade the beautiful wide open spaces I could see from almost every part of the city for a more densely populated suburb where just about everything is accessible on foot, bike, bus or train.

Now it takes me about two weeks to empty my gas tank, and I love that feeling that every trip I make on my own power is one less contribution to the smog that is the downside of daily life in the Bay Area.

In fact, it nearly deflated my euphoria at the prospect of coming home to see the brown haze spread all over Silicon Valley when we first crossed over from I-5 in the middle of August. I hadn't remembered the air quality being quite that bad, and after the clear, intensely blue skies of the Southwest, I did stop to think, “What in the world am I doing to my lungs moving back to this?”

It still gives me a twinge every time I climb the hills behind Stanford University where I have an unrestricted view of the valley from San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose and see the smog that hangs over the whole expanse, especially in the hot still days of late summer when there's no breeze to blow it all over to the Central Valley (another source of guilt for Bay Area residents).

But if home is smoggier and more crowded than I remember, it's also full of friends who have welcomed us all back so warmly that I can't believe my good fortune. It seems that every day I run into someone else who says, “You're back! We're so glad you're back with us!” and I think that wherever you live, the real sense of being at home comes from the community you find and build there.

Seize the Day

Seize the Day

New Mexicans joke that this state is the land of “mañana,” and before I leave I am going to purchase my favorite T-shirt which has the slogan: “Carpe mañana.” However, now that my sojourn here is winding down to its last thirty days, I'm thinking more along the lines of the original Latin - “Carpe diem” and trying to take advantage of all the unique experiences Albuquerque has to offer.

First and foremost that means early morning bike rides along the “bosque,” the forested area of cottonwoods and native trees that runs along the Rio Grande about a quarter mile from my house. In this area of New Mexico the Rio Grande is not very impressive - “el rio no muy grande” (the river that is not very “grande”) is a family joke, but the ribbon of green that borders the river on either side is very impressive, a striking vision of green in a landscape that otherwise paints itself in muted tones of browns, yellows, and the darker blues and greys of the mountains.

At 7:00 a.m. with a cool breeze blowing across my face, it's just about the most wonderful thing I can imagine to bike along side the river and have the city disappear from view as the green space on either side and the gentle slope of the hills create the illusion that there are no housing developments over the horizon. A gentle curve brings me face to face with the Sandia Mountains, bathed in the soft light of the morning sunrise or cloud-covered as they are so often now in monsoon season.

A family of geese will waddle across the bike path; a rabbit will dart in front of me; or a road-runner disappear into the brush with a lizard in its mouth. Only once or twice have I seen a coyote, but I know they are there as well, waiting in the shadows.

For a brief hour I can imagine there really still is a “wilderness” in this metropolis of 600,000, and even when another biker or walker or roller-blader crosses my path, there is the pleasant exchange of “Good morning” or “Passing on your left,” followed by “Thanks” and a wave.

I kick myself for not having discovered this pleasure when I first arrive, for letting the goat thorns that deflated my tires, or the homesickness that made any sight of the desert unwelcome, keep me from the pleasures of speeding or strolling along a path that brings me in view of all the beauties Albuquerque has to offer while conveniently obscuring its urban sprawl.