Running dog, trotting

I had a long ways to go, no need to get there fast, and wanted to save a few bucks. Will admit to some curiosity, too; maybe I just wanted to go looking for America.

So I booked on Greyhound to cross the country. Boarded in Flagstaff, Arizona at 8:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, to arrive in Washington D.C. at 3:50 a.m. on a Friday. Packed a bunch of books and a Nook reader, and brought along a lot of food (though none of Mrs. Wagner's pies), some bottles of tea and a gallon of water.

Downsides

     For reasons which escape me, but probably reflect the short-sighted perspectives of the company's bean-counters, Greyhound seems committed to emulating the airlines' seating innovations. As in, ya gotta love your knees. And your neighbor's breadth. I rode on two different designs of buses. The older had a lot more leg room than the newer; the difference was between reasonable comfort and acute pain. At 6'1" I'm taller than most, but shorter than many; I cannot imagine how somebody half a foot taller than me can cope (but, of course, that's true on airliners too, although the agony there is admittedly of far shorter duration). The seat backs on the older model also reclined more, and it seemed to have slightly wider seats. (One little mystery: both types had useless little footrests whose only function seemed to be preventing one from sticking cramped feet into the space beneath the seat ahead.)

     The company needs to focus on their customers' needs a lot more attentively. Airports and train stations routinely have informative displays giving arrival and departure times, gates and on-time status. Not so at Greyhound terminals. Nor do they have circulating staff enlightening confused travelers. Result? Crowds of confused passengers milling about, hearing rumors, wondering what's going on, alternating between anger and resignation. Aggravating the problem, many drivers ignore the PA microphone at their elbows, preferring to make important announcements in conversational voices totally unintelligible to passengers rearward of the front few rows.

     For a little extra credit, Greyhound could even arrange to have spare drivers and buses available to quickly respond to breakdowns occurring out on the road. I did not particularly appreciate standing on the side of Interstate 376 just outside of Pittsburgh for an hour and a half while our bus leaked coolant into a ditch along the shoulder as semi-trailers roared by scant inches to our left.

     My bus arrived too late to make connections in both St. Louis and Pittsburgh. Well, that's a bit of a mis-statement; we arrived in St. Louis three minutes before my connection was due to depart ... but there were 120 ticket-holding passengers trying to board a bus seating just 46. Meaning I couldn't board that bus - first-come, first-served, after all - or the next, so I didn't board a bus bound for my next connection until four hours later. In this day of computerized ticketing, it is impossible to comprehend how that happened. I understand the concept of over-booking, but by a factor of three? Not too surprising, therefore, but after that I missed my connection in Pittsburgh, too ... and then came the joy of the roadside breakdown. Needless to say, I arrived in Washington long after I should have.

Upsides

     It's cheap. Far less than airlines, much less than Amtrak. Less than one's own car, too, if one is realistic with assumptions about cost. There's simply no other way to travel long distances for as little. My complaining aside, Greyhound does the job pretty well; at their worst, the buses were reasonably tolerable; the air conditioning always worked; we did arrive where we were heading, and we arrived there safely.

     Most important, Greyhound serves a very real need. The proof was in the occupancy: all of the buses I saw were full, or nearly so.

     It does that in part by serving a lot of little towns - especially in the west and on the Prairie - that aren't served by any other form of long-distance public conveyance. (I found the same thing to be true of Amtrak even in California, where the train serves as a valuable conduit between the small towns of that state's central coast.)

     More than that, the bus offers affordable interstate travel to people who could not afford it otherwise. I've traveled a fair amount by air and train, and the folks on these buses come from a distinctly different public. It's a pretty varied population, but I got the sense that most were employed somewhere but worked near the bottom of the ladder ... or, if not, were riding their hopes to someplace where they might find work. Among my fellow travelers, I met a very personable, generous young truck-driver heading home to Pittsburgh from Phoenix for his first vacation since starting his career. There was a middle-aged couple who obviously fit together like an old pair of gloves, with lots of unspoken tenderness for each other but probably not much money, traveling from Arizona to New York. There were a bunch of early-twenties, bound for distances short and long. No gabardine suits. Or spies, that I could tell. In the west, the ethnic mix was pretty varied, but further east the west's Hispanics seemed to be replaced by African Americans. A substantial proportion of whites the whole way. Always, though, it was quite a mix ethnically. But apparently not economically; these seemed to be people with the same need or urge to travel as their more affluent fellows, but without the means to use the same (more convenient) modalities, so the bus is the only way I suspect they can meet those needs and wishes. To me, that seems pretty important.

Recommendations to Greyhound:

     Treat travelers as customers, not cattle. Emulate Amtrak's practice of providing comfortable amounts of space to compensate for the lengthy time the passenger must spend there. It wouldn't take much - maybe remove one row of seats and boost prices by a compensating 8% if need be - traveling with the running dog would be a lot more comfortable yet still a bargain.

     Provide riders with the same sorts of information airlines and railroads routinely offer. The desk clerks have schedule and boarding information at their finger-tips, so it wouldn't be difficult to devise a system of monitors dispersed around the terminal to display it to the traveling public.

     The company (and Amtrak, for that matter) could take another page out of the airlines' book (excepting Southwest) by giving folks an opportunity to select seats when they purchase tickets. That shouldn't be difficult; obviously the necessary software has been around for a while.

     Greyhound could also teach drivers to use their PA system effectively. Some do, but others don't, and that suggests the problem is one of training. Easy to correct.

Occupations of the bored

     No matter how good or how bad the service and accommodations, bus travel means sitting in one place for a long time. Anticipating that obvious condition, I brought a small library of books, both hardcopy and electronic. I was surprised to see that I was pretty much the only reader ... and after the lights went down at night, the only reader. A lot of passengers had smart phones and small electronic game players. A few had laptops. Some were quietly listening to their MP3 players. But nobody seemed to be reading. Maybe that has something to do with class, or its handmaiden, education; I don't know, nor do I much care. The key was that just about everybody brought along something to while away the hours.

Additional lessons:

     1. The drivers don't seem to care what size bag of groceries one brings, so I could have - should have - brought a bigger, stronger bag for provisions. And chosen a better, more interesting supply of food.

     2. Wish I brought a pillow. A must: the seat backs just aren't formed quite right, and the window glass vibrates too much. Need that pillow.

     3. Load more books on the Nook. Easier to carry than a paper library, and the only way to read at night. And trust me: the nights can get long.

The future?

     Yes, I would travel by Greyhound again. It is cheap, and it does provide a different view of America than air and rail travelers see. But don't plan on getting there quickly or all that comfortably.

     Beyond that, I would like to try the new bus lines serving some of the denser corridors, like MegaBus.

Washington joins the list; why doesn't everybody?

Yesterday the state senate in Washington passed a bill which would permit same-sex couples to marry. Passage is apparently expected in the Assembly, and the governor has indicated that she will sign the bill. Washington will then join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia is permitting such marriages.

However, opponents in Washington are already threatening a referendum to overturn the law, although a similar effort in 2009 failed to overturn a civil union law. Prominent among these opponents is the Catholic Church.

This reminds me of a discussion a friend and I had last week. An acquaintance of hers had fulminated against gay marriage, and she was dismayed that her defense hadn’t been a coherent as she would have wished.

In light of these two events, I thought I would commit my thoughts to paper, or at least electrons flitting about the web.

Let me start by noting that I have a number of close friends and relatives who collectively personify all four letters of LGBT, and I've thought about related issues quite a lot.

It seems to me that there's a good chance my friend’s acquaintance was blurring the distinctions between marriage as a legal institution and marriage as a religious institution. That's easy to do, since for most couples the two occur simultaneously; most American couples are married in religious ceremonies officiated by clerics empowered by both the church and the state to perform both functions, and from then on, everybody views the couple as being simply "married."

However, the two aspects of marriage are quite different. The preeminent earthly aspect is, of course, the secular one, as marriage is a unique contractual agreement that conveys specific legal rights and privileges (e.g., preferential tax and inheritance rights). Granted, a civil union law can conceptually be tweaked to fully mimic the legal rights of marriage, but what's the purpose? If the goal is to have exactly parallel legal ramifications, why maintain the separate status? That makes no sense. And at a gut level, my friend’s interlocutor probably realizes this ... and since he perceives a difference, he wants the legal definition to reflect something of the antipathy he feels for "gay marriage."

But of course, civil union laws do not fully mimic marriage laws. The federal "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and other federal statutes prevent individuals in civil unions (or even same-sex marriages legally sanctioned by states) from enjoying the same rights and privileges of marriage (again, for example, federal tax treatment, and for federal employees, insurance benefits). As was the case with public schools in the era of legal segregation, "separate" is in fact unequal.

There is another, more abstract issue here, as well. Formal marriage carries an imprimatur that is socially valuable. Let's face it: marriage means that we accept without reservation the right of two individuals to engage in behavior which would in any other context be subject to some opprobrium. Further, spouses enjoy a higher social status than “partners.” Granted, standards are more lax now than they once were, but members of a couple desiring to be wed wants the world to recognize their partner as their spouse, and any form of civil union less than marriage fails on that measure.

What then is the basis of the opposition to legally recognizing same-sex marriages? Some argue that the purpose of marriage is procreation, but of course that is a specious argument since our laws and our culture happily embrace the marriages of heterosexual couples unable or unwilling to have children. (For example, who would criticize my 90 year old father if he were to wed his 81 year old "girlfriend"? Or the marital plans of a much younger friend who is sterile because of her endometriosis?)

The other major argument is that homosexual marriage is "wrong." That might be a convincing argument if there was societal unanimity on the subject (as there is, say, with murder or pedophilia), but clearly there isn't. The views of large numbers of citizens who view such marriage as acceptable are just as valid as those who oppose it, with the difference that the former group would not prevent the latter from exercising the right, while the latter group would prevent gays in the former group from doing so.

The core of the argument that it is wrong has religious roots, yet even there we have a good deal of diversity of opinion. A number of faith communities feel very strongly that same-sex marriage is wrong. I have no problem with that. But if we acknowledge the relevance of that perspective, we must also acknowledge the relevance of the opposing perspective, since a goodly number of faith communities and non-faith based value systems embrace the concept, and many of them celebrate such marriages. Examples include the United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalists (Unitarians), most meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and Reform Judaism.

That being the case, it is inappropriate to cloak within the law the perspective of one or more faith communities to the exclusion or denial of the beliefs of other faith communities and non-faith based value systems. It is inconsistent with our standard of the separation of church and state, for example, for the Catholic Church to use the power of the state to enforce its concept of marriage and prevent the Unitarian Universalists from celebrating theirs.

In other words, the state has no valid reason to limit this class of contractual relationship to heterosexuals, and any attempt to do so should be seen as violating the first amendment's establishment clause, as well as the fourteenth amendment's standard of equality before the law.

This is not to say that homosexual marriage is "right" any more than it is "wrong," since both are value judgments held by members of our society. It is merely to say that in this pluralistic society, such value judgments should be reserved for private entities and not be given the force of law by the state. Nor should one faith seek to use the law to codify its perspective to the negation of the perspectives of other faiths.

However, were same-sex marriage be universally permitted, non-state institutions would still be free to continue to hold such values as they choose, and if they wished to prohibit extending the religious aspects of marriage to homosexual members of their own communities, they could continue to refuse to perform such marriages. If the Catholic Church, for example, refused to marry same-sex couples, that would be fine. Marriage-minded gay or lesbian couples within religious communities prohibiting same-sex marriages would then be able to change religions if religious marriage were still a goal, and they would be free to obtain a state-sanctioned marriage (e.g., before a judge) if they so wished.

Of course, there is yet another argument raised in opposition to same-sex marriage, that somehow such marriages would weaken the traditional institution of marriage between men and women. But that argument is specious; in no way would the ability of two men to marry or two women to marry in any way impinge upon the right or ability of a man and woman to marry. And if one needs proof of this assertion, one merely has to look at those states already permitting same-sex marriage. In all of them, straights still marry straights, and nobody objects.

To have been on the mountaintop

In the hope we never forget why we have a holiday tomorrow, nor why it matters today, tomorrow, and forever ....

In memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and more important, his work, I offer these links to his final speech, the one popularly known as his "Mountaintop Speech." He gave it the night before his assassination, speaking in support of striking sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee. It is memorable for it captures well his views on non-violence; on the importance of economic freedom, economic injustice and economic rights; and on history and his role in it. The speech is also known for his prophetic view of his own mortality, so cruelly realized the next day.

The text of the speech, from (quite fittingly) the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, AFSCME: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A video of the speech, from the series Great Speeches, volume 6th, published by the Educational Video Group, and to be viewed for educational purposes only: Martin Luther King, Jr: "Mountaintop" speech full length.

America first

Like many others, my daughter's university offers "study abroad" courses and even semesters of study to its students, affording them the opportunity to experience living in a different cultural milieu and interacting with people whose life experiences are quite different from their own. The selection available to the students is quite broad, with over a dozen programs on five different continents.

This is a good thing, for although the America most of us know has an amazingly diverse cultural heritage, Americans are justly ridiculed world-wide for their cultural insularity and ignorance. On one of my parents' post-retirement trips overseas, a guide told a very telling joke that played on this:

Question: What do you call somebody who speaks three languages?
Answer: Trilingual.
Question: What do you call somebody who speaks two languages?
Answer: Bilingual.
Question: What do you call somebody who speaks one language?
Answer: American.

Emblematic of our cultural naivete, we've quite recently had a President who had been born into privilege but was apparently proud of having never left the United States, save for short excursions into Mexico.

Nevertheless, many Americans avidly seek out intercultural knowledge, and programs such as college "study abroad" semesters are popular. A number of companies serve similar interests by non-collegians, and also enjoy real popularity. Rosetta Stone, for instance, offers home-study courses in over forty languages, representing Africa, Europe; the Middle East; East, Southeast and South Asia; and Latin America.

Living on the east coast, I've met many people who have traveled overseas extensively, mostly in Europe, even if they haven't seen much of their own continent. When I ask them why, they usually talk about the importance of seeing other cultures, or lands quite different from their own, or to visit places where the language and the way of life are fundamentally different from our own.

And these efforts to broaden cultural horizons are all laudable.

Yet they're all missing something vital, and very, very American. There is within our own boundaries a cultural diversity unimagined in Europe, of which most of us are utterly ignorant. What we miss is extremely important: it's uniquely indigenous to our own continent, and we must know of it if we are to truly know ourselves. Our land is home to amazing cultures and people who are almost invisible to most of us, but whose history here seems ancient compared to most of the rest of us: these are the peoples who are actually indigenous to our own continent, and still live in a cultural milieu uniquely there own and have languages uniquely their own. Theirs is a cultural and linguist world which differs from the standard "American" more than any one might find in Europe.

I'm thinking most of the Navajo and Hopi peoples of the "Four Corners" region of the American southwest, but only because I am more familiar with their story. Yet theirs are only two of a substantial number of cultures indigenous to our soil which present fantastic differences from the experience of most of us. In both cases, the languages are very much alive - well over half of the Navajo nation, for instance, speaks Diné bizaad, and an even larger proportion of the Hopi people speak Hopi. In both cases, the languages differ from English by a far greater degree than any Indo-European language. Both people have a spiritual heritage which differs in very profound ways from any Judeo-Christian religion (yet also differs significantly from each others). In both nations, many people follow a pattern of life which differs more from what an urbanized American knows than anything a visitor to Europe might experience. And both, as is the case with all other native American cultures, look back to a rich history of which the rest of us are totally ignorant or, worse, suffer from gross misconceptions. Most important, though, is that the rest of us could learn and benefit greatly from knowing.

Yet the vast majority of us not born into a native American nation are utterly ignorant of the lives and culture and history - and wisdom - of these, our neighbors.

In short, an American unfamiliar with the worlds of our country's first peoples would do well to explore the amazing diversity found within our own land. Yes, Europe (and Asia, and Africa) hold a fascination for me, but I would much rather learn more of the people who share this land I call my own.

White bread GOP debt panelists

Okay, I realize that the Republican Party isn't very inclusive, and especially not at its top levels, but the best that Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell could come up with for the joint debt committee were a bunch of white guys in ties?

Nobody expects that members of Congress will be poor or homeless or unemployed, but let's face it: the people who will be most adversely affected by the cuts to be imposed by the panel will be poor or homeless or unemployed, just as they're the ones who have suffered the most from the long-running financial crisis left to America as a key component of George W. Bush's legacy.

But Boehner appointed Jeb Hensarling, Dave Camp and Fred Upton, while McConnell appointed Patrick Toomey, Jon Kyl and Rob Portman. Hensarling is a middle-aged wealthy white business executive from Texas; Camp is a middle-aged white lawyer from Michigan; Upton is a middle-aged white political drone from Michigan; Kyl is a middle-aged white lobbyist from Arizona; Toomey is a white financial wheeler-dealer and business executive from Pennsylvania; and Portman is a white political staffer from Ohio. Not exactly representative of the people suffering from our economic problems.

The Democrats on the panel are obviously not poor, homeless or unemployed either, but two are women, one is Hispanic, one is African American, one was a community organizer, one is a decorated combat veteran, one is the son of working class immigrants, and one is a former high-school teacher. Something tells me that they will bring to the debt discussions a greater intuitive understanding of the plight of ordinary Americans, and a greater awareness of how this unending recession is hurting them far more than it is hurting the moneyed classes so ably represented by the Republican members of the committee.

The Washington Post seems to have noticed the same imbalance: "Debt Supercommittee’s Membership Dominated by White Men."

Go Skins?

Why do Washingtonians support a football team with a racist name?

Washington D.C. has a long and proud history of confronting racism and celebrating diversity. The city has seen so many demonstrations, rallies, marches, legislative actions and presidential initiatives denouncing racism or celebrating racial and ethnic diversity that one can justly consider it to be the epicenter of American equality.

Washington, D.C. is also at the heart of a large and proudly diverse populaiton. The city itself has a majority black population. The larger metropolitan region is extremely diverse and is on the threshold of having a majority minority population (i.e., no one ethnic group will comprise a majority of the population). Washington's elected mayors have all been African American or had significant African American ancestry.


Why then are its football fans so loyally committed to a team with a racist name? Why do they permit that team's owners to perpetuate their brand of racism? The term is offensive to large numbers, probably most, of the Native American community.

Some defend the term on various and mostly specious grounds, but consider putting "the shoe was on another foot" for a moment. Let's imagine using racial slang for another ethnic group as the team's name. Would Washingtonians support it if the team were named, say, the " Washington Darkies"? Or "Chinamen" or "Wops" or "Honkies" or "Dagos" or "Coolies" or "Crackers" or "Ragheads," or any other name used disparagingly to describe an ethnic group and offensive to a significant population of that group? I seriously doubt it. It the team's owners tried to change the name in such an odious way, fans and the general public would be outraged.

Why then do we accept the name "Redskins"? The name must be changed, and area fans should refuse to support the team - and especially its owners - until it is.

Virginia Treason Month

The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, my own state, has named April to be "Confederate History Month." One wonders why. What does he think we should celebrate? Treason? Bloody, needless war? The attempted destruction of the United States? Slavery?

Oh, I know, apologists for the secessionists will reject the treason charge. But what is the truth? Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, George Pickett, Jeb Stuart, Jubal Early, and just about all of the other Confederate "heroes" swore to "bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and [to] serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever." No exceptions, no limitations, no avenues for evasion, no escape clause. And certainly no allowance for rebellion. Oath-breakers, all. Enemies and opposers of the United States. Treason. Is this what Governor McDonell wants to honor?

The same apologists will blithely skip over the terrible blood price of their war, or wrap it in a filmy gauze. But face it; the War of Southern Treason was the bloodiest war in our history, even when counted in absolute numbers; deadlier than both World Wars combined. As a proportion of our population, their war was even worse, killing nearly one out of every 50 Americans, and maiming far more. Those weren't numbers; they were sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, dying in agony, millions of man-years of potential life, snuffed out. Hundreds of thousands of families shattered, widows and children thrust into destitution, wives and mothers keening for their dead. Is that what Governor McDonell wants to celebrate?

The proclamation refers to the South's treasonous war as "a war between the states for independence." Independence? No, destruction of the United States. Destruction just as sure as envisioned by any of our foreign enemies. Funny how many apologists for the Confederacy today proclaim loudly an espoused patriotism for the country their heros tried to destroy. Had the South succeeded in seceding, what would have become of what was left? Every regional squabble would have carried the threat of further dissolution, until North America was utterly Balkanized, with its various fragments lurching form one European alliance to another, dragging us into innumerable wars. Where, then, would have been the bastion of hope, the arsenal of democracy, when the Nazis marched over Europe, when Stalin looked for conquest?

The governor speaks of the "sacrifices" of Confederate leaders and soldiers. What of the sacrifices of the millions of heros who paid with their blood and sweat to save the United States from the terror the Southerners brought to the land? They are the ones I would honor.

And then there was that little matter unmentioned by the governor, that curious institution which bound men and women as property of other men and women. What was slavery? Do they reflect on that as they celebrate "Confederate History Month"? What do those who wax nostalgic for the Old South think of slavery? As little more than a form of employment for those enslaved, exchanging their labor for room and board, and not of much significance beyond that? Slavery was oppression, at its most vile. A human being who had no future but toil. A human being utterly subjected to the whims and caprices of his and her oppressor. Men and women denied the ability to strive for better lives, build families, raise children, know their parents and their brothers and sisters. Women raped to serve the carnal lusts of their oppressors. Men beaten and humiliated to profit and amuse the heartless who commanded them, the psychopaths who abused them. What would the governor have us celebrate about the effect of the Confederacy upon their lives?

Oh, I know, the apologists will argue that the South's treason was about states rights, and a way of life, and an economic order. But slavery was the essential link to all of those things. Without slavery, the supposed cause of states' rights would have been meaningless, except perhaps to debating societies. Without slavery, the Southern way of life wouldn't have existed. Without slavery, the Southern economic order would not have been opposed to the rest of the country. The Civil War was about slavery; the Confederacy was about the debasement of millions of Americans. Is that what Governor McDonell wants to honor?

I hope not. For if it is, neither he nor his supporters understand anything about what America is. The Confederacy belongs in the dustbin of history. If this sorry chapter in Virginia's history is to be remembered, it should be understood for what it was, so that this country can finally overcome the errors that led to this greatest violation of Americans' rights, and our bloodiest war.

Unreported elephant in the room

Today a few thousand demonstrators came to Washington to demonstrate against something. It's not clear from listening to them what that "something" is, but nominally, the unifying complaint dealt with high taxes and/or high deficits.

Practically, it can't be either of those. Taxes are no higher now than they have been for several years and there aren't any indications that Congress is moving to increase them. And these people sure didn't show up when George W. Bush was busy turning Bill Clinton's surpluses into huge deficits. I didn't notice any of them joining the multitudes protesting Bush's wars, complaining about the hundreds of billions he was adding to the deficit.

But maybe that's not why they came. Maybe they came to protest the socialistic -- or is it communistic? -- tide sweeping across America in the form of, uh, what? Public funding of fire-fighting? Our nationalized military? Tax-supported schools? Federalized air traffic control? State-owned streets and highways? Social Security and Medicare? (Maybe these people are a little slow?) Uh, no, maybe it's a health care reform proposal which is built around, uh, privately owned insurance companies?

Nope. They may be making the noise, but socialism's surge isn't exactly lapping against these shores yet.

Nor was it about patriotism -- not with all those Confederate flags floating around.

Ah yes, they're upset about President Obama trashing the Constitution. I'm not quite sure how he's supposed to be doing that, but isn't it odd how they weren't here to protest George W. Bush's many transgressions in that regard? Y'know, I doubt many of them could tell you anything about the 14th Amendment; or Article 1, section 8, clause 11; or that pesky little clause in the middle of the Second. Nope, it's not about the Constitution.

Or maybe there's another reason. A reason not mentioned in any of the news coverage I've heard or read about these demonstrations, but apparent when one looks -- really looks -- at the photos of the the demonstrators. All white. I looked through every photo of the demo I could find on the web, and not one -- NOT ONE -- non-white face.

Maybe, just maybe, they're upset that Barack Obama, native of Hawai'i, resident of Illinois, did intentionally move into the White House knowing full well that he is of African ancestry.

Let's face it. Race is the unreported unifying factor among the demonstrators. Race -- or diversity -- is the one theme unifying their anger. These people aren't angry about socialism or deficits or health care or the Constitution. They're angry about the reality that America is a very diverse place, with citizens of differing skin colors, differing religions, differing sexual orientations, differing understandings of what America is. They're angry because President Obama's very existence threatens their fantasy about what America is.

Personally, I'm angry that the media don't delve beyond counting the numbers or parroting the slogans, and examine the real reasons why these people came to Washington. Racism is the elephant in the room, but none of the major media are willing to see it.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 12 September 2009

'Nuff said

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"


(click here to watch video of entire "I have a dream" speech)

Note: this originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 19 January 2009

November 4 changed everything

I realized as I was walking to work today that there was a lightness to my step, that I was feeling prouder of my country than I think I ever have been before. And I sensed from the many smiles I saw this morning and the many conversations I heard and overheard today that I am not alone in feeling this new pride.

I thought -- no, I hoped -- that Barack Obama would win, but I also thought that it would be pretty close and that there would be serious efforts made to undermine or directly sabotage the election. Instead, he won pretty much around the country -- the Northeast, major portions of the South, the upper Midwest, the Rocky Mountain States, the Far West, including both traditionally Democrat and traditionally Republican states. He won with a convincing majority -- bigger than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. He won with solid numbers across nearly every demographic group, and even economic group. Did you know that he won in that portion of the electorate that reports a family income above $200,000 as well as that portion below $100,000? I thought that racism would rear its ugly head and be decisive, or nearly so -- and that was clearly the hope of many of the Republicans -- but even more clearly, Americans by in large were much bigger than that.

It's as if we emerged from a long national nightmare that climaxed during the past eight years but stretched back 38 years to Ronald Reagan, and realized that instead of waking up fearful and confused, we awakened to a remembrance of Martin Luther King's dream, and smiled.

I am certain that future historians will recognize this election as one of the defining moments of America. We have always been a diverse country, but the mythologies we've created have denied that diversity for nearly all of our existence. Last night, we embraced it, and in embracing it, we moved into our common future, a future that can be far more hopeful, far less fearful, and far more progressive than any part of our history we have ever seen. This will indelibly alter -- and alter in the best of ways -- the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our nation. Pundits like to say that September 11 "changed everything." I think that is mistaken. But I think that November 4 changed everything.

Note: this originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 5 November 2008

Racism and the race

I was listening to a major broadcast network news analyst and another political analyst discussing the tightness in recent presidential polls and they were coming up with all sorts of reasons why Obama might be doing worse than expected or McCain doing better than expected. They discussed matters ranging from recent drops in the price of gas to continued fall-out over the lapel pin fracas to the pace of war in Iraq. What they didn't mention at all -- not at all -- was race. Guess they didn't want to play the "race card" ... or, more to the point, they were probably afraid to bring up the subject. But for good or ill, the voters know that race is the issue lurking out there, possibly unacknowledged publicly but nevertheless present in everybody's awareness.

We won't ever be able to move past racism unless we acknowledge it and face issues relating to race head-on. That's not so much the responsibility of the candidates as it is of our news media and, especially, ourselves. (Never mind his brilliant speech in Philadelphia; Senator Obama has, after all, done more to do that than anybody ever has, just by running so successfully.) Towards that end, I commend the following column from the New York Times of August 9: "Racism and the Race," by Charles M. Blow.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 10 August 2008

When does life begin?

In a recent forum on faith in Pennsylvania, both Democratic candidates were asked whether they thought life begins at conception, and both accepted an erroneous assumption that has skewed and inflamed the national debate over abortion ever since the issue became prominent. Life is a continuum; it does not begin at conception but began at the beginning. If we all understood that, we might be able to begin finding a way to successfully address the divisiveness of abortion and abortion rights issues in our culture.

Okay, what do I mean? Biology 101. All organisms which reproduce sexually alternate between haploid and diploid generations. A haploid cell or organism has but one set of chromosomes; a diploid has two. With humans, the people we see walking around are the diploid generation; the vast majority of our cells are diploid while our sperm and eggs are our haploid generation. In sexual reproduction, two haploid individuals join to form one diploid individual ... which, upon maturity, spends much of its time trying to find another diploid individual with which to share the haploid individuals it is producing and thereby form diploid zygotes which grow up to be mature diploid individuals, and so on. In some species, such as all mammals, the diploid generation is the one we notice the most. In others, the haploid is the more obvious.

But in one important sense, it doesn't matter which generation attracts our notice, for they're both part of an unending continuum which stretches back to the origins of life and this is true whether you are a firm believer in the validity of creationist doctrine or of evolutionary theory. Individual lives may end, but in every case their beginnings stretch in an unbroken chain back across countless generations to the origin of life, and forward through their progeny to the end of time (at least, as earthly life experiences it).

Conception thus represents nothing more (nor less) than a recombination of genetic material occurring when two haploid individuals join to form a single diploid individual. It is no more a beginning of life than when a diploid individual creates haploid individuals (a process which happens without our conscious knowledge), but is just an alternation of forms occurring repeatedly in an unending continuum.

Life does not begin at conception.

And that has profound implications for the social and political debate over abortion and abortion rights, as the question shifts away from when life "begins" to a determination of when we should recognize a new diploid generation of our species as an individual with "inalienable rights." And that question is one of interpretation, over which people of good will and sincere beliefs may honestly disagree.

But more on that in another posting.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 17 April 2008

Obama's speech on race

We've known for a long, long time that race is the central test of who we Americans are as a people, as a nation.

We've come a long ways since I was a child, but we've much farther to go. Perhaps we'll never reach the point I'd like to see, but how we face the question is at least as important as how far we go; indeed, the means are the more important, for they - as always - determine the ends.

In America's long history of being tested, there are signal events which stand out, illuminating our lives and beckoning us onward. One such event occurred today. Barack Obama "had to do something," we were told, to deal with the racial issues swirling around his campaign. What he did was to rise well beyond the mere political, and move our collective discussion measurably forward.

I'll say no more, save to provide here a link to the transcript of his speech, as well as a link to an editorial review of it from a prominent newspaper supporting his rival. I commend both to your attention, in the hope and belief that our nation is better for the discussion he opened today.

Update: Here are some more editorial and op-ed reactions, from the Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Tim Rutten writing in the L.A. Times, Eugene Robinson writing in the Washington Post, and Mary Schmich writing in the Chicago Tribune. And here's a YouTube link.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 19 March 2008. The original post also linked to an editorial and columns by Annette Joh-Hall and Monica Yant Kinney which appeared in the 19 March 2008 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, but the newspaper removed those pages.

Oh goody, another three day weekend

I'm wondering if anybody else is noticing that the Martin Luther King, Jr. observance nationally is largely ignoring the import of King's message, and especially his economic, peace and antiwar witness? Again?


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For the record: three notable examples of King's message:

Southern Christian Leadership Conference presidential address, August 16, 1967.

Acceptance speech for Nobel Peace prize, Oslo, December 10, 1964.

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 20 January 2008