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.