Blue Genes

I happened to catch an interview (audio available here) with Christopher Lukas yesterday on The Diane Rehm show. Lukas talked about his new book, Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival.

For those of us who have struggled with family relationships in general and with severe depression in particular, Lukas offers some insights and compassion. What struck me in particular in interview was when he said that as much as he loved his brother, he could not forgive him for having committed suicide. One has to understood what he said and what he meant in context, but for those who might not have grasped it, he discusses it at some length late into the show in response to a question from a caller. The upshot was that this event was, for Kit (Christopher), one in a series of abandonments (including his mother's suicide when he was a child).

It is difficult for me to put into words, but there was something about this story that went well beyond the history of an unhappy family (or, rather,a family of unhappy persons, some suffering from debilitating mental illness and some ending their lives in suicide). Despite its long, dark shadows, the story speaks of real love, despair, connections, disconnections, of both human limits and the yearning to transcend them. For me, it hit home, deeply.

There are no truths, only stories

I've been thinking a lot the last few days about the current financial crisis and some of the moralizing that has been expressed by persons all across the political spectrum. Someone or someones are lacking in "moral leadership" and have succumbed to greed - not us, but the politicians, the stockbrokers, the S.E.C. Really? I wonder. As we still drive our cars, buy where we can as we can (whether it be the local Walmart or supermarket chain), buy what we can (produce, meat, all kinds of products transported by oil from across the world), when the little we may earn from our bank accounts or retirement funds (if we have any) depends on market games, and when we work for companies who must play their own part in the overall game, are we, even those near the middle and bottom of the economic ladder in the U.S., just innocent lambs, really innocent prey to the wolves on Wall Street, or are we all creatures, big and small, who share in the fault?

Not having the answers to these questions, I tend to fall back on trying to listen to the experts, those who have studied and critiqued the structural problems in the markets and have practical solutions based on a clear, possibly objective view of the realities of the world we live in. And as for morality, I suspect there's just as much wrong with "us" as "them." So maybe what is needed is figuring out how to set up the best controls for self-interested behaviors, since we are not about to end or curtail those any time soon.

Yet, in the midst of technical talk about market structures, regulation, profit and loss, I still try to remember that there are real people affected much worse than me, not just here in the U.S. but throughout the world. Who or what really is at risk when the markets play their games? Chomsky gives the following view from the (once) radical Left:

Markets have inherent and well-known inefficiencies. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These "externalities" can be huge. That is particularly true for financial institutions.

Their task is to take risks, calculating potential costs for themselves. But they do not take into account the consequences of their losses for the economy as a whole. . . .

The unprecedented intervention of the Fed may be justified or not in narrow terms, but it reveals, once again, the profoundly undemocratic character of state capitalist institutions, designed in large measure to socialise cost and risk and privatize profit, without a public voice. . . .

Noam Chomsky at BBC News.

There may be some important truth in that, but is the realistic solution an enlightened vision or perspective that puts the good of the whole first? -- the resort to the tired out -isms of socialism or communism as the counters to capitalism? Is it indeed always a matter of the rich vs. the poor, the bad and powerful vs. the poor and helpless? Is it x vs. y, class against class, one political or economic theory over another, or rather an enormous failure to see the human face of our many societal problems? Will we ever do anything but move around the players and the playing pieces, just mixing up the game, rather than ever really giving up the desire to move up and ahead of others, seeing and serving the least among us?

I stumbled across this passage from an article written by one of my favorite authors, Jim Harrison. It doesn't speak to the current financial crisis but rather another back-burner political issue in the current election cycle - immigration. It reveals the angst many feel over the lack of clear, simple solutions to seemingly intractable problems yet insists that people do not divert their gaze away from those who suffer so terribly when caught in the midst of ideological and economic warfare. Unlike the "stories" sometimes told in campaign soundbites, this speaks to the kind of story that reveals perhaps the only truth we can ever really know:

Frankly, I have no mind for rational solutions to these immense problems. Nothing I ever hear from Washington, D.C., has any relationship with the reality I know down here. I’m seeing delirium, hunger, acute suffering, which are not solved, assuaged or aired by the stentorian fart breath of the House and Senate.

I’m also wondering if it behooves a writer to try to be right. Yeats warned about cutting off a horse's legs to get it into a box. Simon Ortiz, the grand Acomo Pueblo poet, said that there are no truths, only stories…

A historian might very well consider the validity of the Gadsen Purchase, wherein we bought my locale for fifty-two cents an acre from a group of Mexicans that had no right to sell it. The United Nations would question our right to take all of the Colorado River’s water, leaving the estuarine area in Mexico as dry as the bones their people leave up here in the desert. A true disciple of Jesus would say that we have to do something about these desperate people, though this is the smallest voice of all. Most politicians have the same moral imperative as a cancer cell: continue what you’re up to at all costs. Meanwhile the xenophobes, better known as the xenoids, merely jump up an down on the border screeching, surely a full testament to our primate roots. Everyone not already here must be kept out, and anyone here illegally, if not immediately expunged, should be made as uncomfortable as possible.

So Ana Claudia crossed with her brother and child into Indian country, walking up a dry wash for forty miles, but when she reached the highway she simply dropped dead near the place where recently a nineteen year old girl also died from thirst with a baby at her breast. The baby was covered with sun blisters, but lived. So did Ana Claudia’s. The particular cruelty of a dry wash is that everywhere there is evidence of water that once passed this way, with the banks verdant with flora. We don’t know how long it took Ana Claudia to walk her only forty miles in America, but we know what her last hours were like. Her body progressed from losing one quart of water to seven quarts: lethargy, increasing pulse, nausea, dizziness, blue shading of vision, delirium, swelling of the tongue, deafness, dimness of vision, shriveling of the skin, and then death, the fallen body wrenched into a question mark. How could we not wish that politicians on both sides of the border who let her die this way would die in the same manner? But then such people have never missed a single lunch. Ana Claudia Villa Herrera. What a lovely name.

- Jim Harrison, "Life on the Border" (Men’s Journal, July 2001)

Quoted in Commonplace at www.identitythoery.com

I do not have the answers to any of these problems, either. But I keep listening, to both the experts on the machinery and the artists who see the souls caught in between.

The Economy Hits Home - Empire Falls

Good Morning America apparently is doing a "Whistle Stop" series across the U.S. They recently visited Rome, New York. City officials are NOT happy, according to today's newspaper story in the O-D (that's Observer-Dispatch, BTW). They are responding to this briefest of video clips from GMA. (Haven't heard such outrage at a media portrayal since -- yesterday, when Cindy McCain dissed The View - see CNN).

Seriously, I think the initial comments section of the O-D sums it all up well. One points out:

Sad part of all of this is, it's not just Rome it is the whole area. Open your eyes and drive around the area it is depressed runned down and basically every third house is for sale. Utica has literally become a dumping ground for refugees since 1990's. Herkimer County lost all their manufacturing as well as Oneida County, over regulative state government with all the overburdening laws and taxes has chased many away. There isn't too much that is positive. You can't blame Good Morning America for the troubles we face. If it is any consolation we can slightly point our finger of blame at NAFTA and Government regulations, and high taxes.

What is amazing now is the whole country is starting to feel just like we all have been through for the past 25 years.

The situation regarding taxes and regulations may be more complex than that, the bottomline is that this is everyday reality for us.

Not long after I first moved here in 2001 I went to Rome (church event, cross country race?). I got lost downtown where several roads meet together in the center near the Fort Stanwix monument (recalling its role in the infamous Battle of Oriskany). No place around here is a model for a booming economy, but Rome struck me as one of the most depressing places I've ever visited -- areas with vacant homes boarded up, debris in places, no constraints on commercial signs or development that I could see. While there are certainly similar looking areas in Utica, Rome is different in that some properties were vacated after the air force base left rather than part of a long-term decline of inner-city neighborhoods.

In any event, this is the reality both our politicians and our church leaders need to confront. Grabbing earmark government money here and there for local pet projects is not going to fix things. Nor is pretending that local parishes are not struggling, being very short on people, money, and sound buildings, for reasons that have nothing to do with church politics, theology, or anything but local conditions.

Bottomline, whether you live in Wasilla, AK or Rome, NY or Washington D.C., we all need the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Rep. Les Gara - McCain brings D.C. style politics to Alaska

Rep. Les Gara, Democratic Congressman from Alaska and former Attorney General, is speaking up about the way McCain political operatives are turning Alaska upside down. Whatever one thinks of Palin and the unfortunate family circumstances behind the whole Troopergate affair, the way the McCain campaign has handled the matter speaks volumes about their so-called commitment to good government, ethics, and reform. Rather than have Gov. Palin and her staff speak the truth about what happened, as she first promised to do, and let her Republican legislature decide what response, if any, is required, the McCain people are not willing to trust the people of Alaska or the rest of the U.S. with the facts.

Rep. Gara writes about this events in two recent columns in The Huffington Post. The latest begins:

Since Monday the McCain camp has stepped up its personal attacks against Alaskans. They've continued their D.C.-style tactics against neighbors in this small state....

Round 2 of Troopergate Stall: Part Karl Rove, Part Laurel & Hardy, following up on his earlier report:

As an Alaskan I'm not really angry at our Governor for this mess. I do blame John McCain for the ugliness he's brought to our state this week. His folks have come to my small state to attack my friends, and people I respect, for political gain. In my book, that's not OK. We all mess up time to time. But this crosses the line.

In small states, like small towns, people who act like the McCain folks apologize. Until that happens, I'll keep defending three public servants who deserve better.

Karl Rove in Alaskas - McCain's Spin and Intereference with Bipartisan Troopergate Investigation.

These are must reads.

UPDATE - More on Monegan at Alaska Real.

Fear of frailty

Wendy Lustbader has written some extraordinary things about aging, especially about fear of frailty and the dependence it engenders. I hope to soon read her book, Counting on Kindness. An excellent discussion of the book can be found in "Counting on Kindness - The Dilemmas of Dependency," an article by P. Jones in Aging, Spring 1996. Excerpts include:

"Engaging life requires an active decision; letting ourselves languish requires little effort," Lustbader remarks, but she also cautions that "we must stop clinging to independence as if it were the only meaning of strength."

.... Lustbader quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson's observation that "we do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten."

.... While some of the book emphasizes ways to detoxify emotions and solve problems relating to power and dependency, many chapters also discuss the possibilities for emotional or spiritual revival that illness and frailty hold. Lustbader comments that for most of our hurried pressured lives, "obliviousness comes down around us like a curtain" and there "are very rare moments when the curtain is pulled aside and we are graced with a vivid sense of aliveness." She notes that Virginia Woolf called these interludes "moments of being," which Lustbader believes many people may experience for the first time, or more frequently, in their 70's and 80's. There is time to notice the intricate patterns of tree branches on winter afternoons, to linger over a fine sentence or passage in a novel, to be touched by someone you have only recently met. "Moments of being," of aliveness, are what make life worth living, and they can become more possible as life slows down after retirement.

Westbader summarizes the dilemma of dependency in a short article, variously titled "At the Mercy of Strangers" [Yes Magazine, 2005[ and "Thoughts on the Meaning of Fraility" (Almost Home). She writes, in part:

We have come to fear frailty more than death. We imagine being “put” in a nursing home, like a jar on a lonely shelf. Will a parade of paid strangers take care of me someday? Frailty coupled with abandonment has become our most dire existential dread.
. . . .

Unless I can let my caregivers know who I am, the eyes looking at me will merely reiterate my physical deterioration. They will perceive only my gnarled fingers and the stark metallic fact of my wheelchair. Just another old lady. Much is presumed on the basis of such surfaces. I know I will recoil from my helper's singsong voice, that well-meaning tilt of her head, her every gesture that exudes kindliness. All of this will consign me to a category, “the frail,” the boundaries of which will be difficult to breach. Are there ways to maintain the self in such situations? Perhaps we have the most to learn in the places we least want to reside. The “difficult people” in nursing homes are those who refuse to be diminished. I have watched them demand, threaten, and rage until their requests are heeded. Their dignity causes trouble in systems of care meant for efficiency. They insist on the prickly assertion of self in places where idiosyncracy is inconvenient . . . . .

Her writings express so well what I have observed and struggled with over this past summer and fall with my mother, who, at various times has refused to eat any food that is not a favorite or not cooked the way she wants, raged at caregivers and physical therapists (even the best and most compassionate of them), and lain awake at night loadly moaning or crying, even when she knows that no one will respond (supposedly because there is nothing that can be done for her pain beyond what they have done) and when she knows it will disturb others' sleep -- not to mention the way she uses my brother and I, trying to force us into a game of "good cop - bad cop" or turn us against each other, one being appealed to for sympathy and support and the other cast as an onerous taskmaster -- roles or allegiances switching depending on her mood of the moment.

Part of the solution to these kinds of problems is supposed to be better communications and understanding among the frail, the caregivers, and the family. Easier said than done, especially when the dependent person is so wrapped up in rage and denial that she does not want to deal with anything or anyone realistically or when the family or caregivers are at the end of their rope. But, of course, it works both ways, and it can be really difficult to fully comprehend the nature and extent of the dependent person's frustration and need to assert herself in anyway she can, even when it ends up hurting more than helping her obtain any practical results or improvement in the situation.

In addition to trying to teach persons on all sides more empathy and understanding, Lustbader talks about the need for spirtual life and how and why dependency or fraility does not have to be a death sentence. Although supposedly out of date, a lot of Aging experts (and laypersons who think they know best) focus on getting "seniors" active and engaged. While not bad in itself, when activity and independence become the sole goal of "successful" aging, it ignores differences in individuals, the fact that some will eventually be forced to become less active and more dependent, and the degree of personal autonomy available may be severely limited by economic and geographic factors. As one author has written,

A second major theory of aging, referred to as "activity theory", proposed that people age most successfully when they participate in a full round of daily activities, that is, keep busy (Lemon, Bengtson & Peterson (1972). This theory seemed to explain the surge of volunteerism and senior activism in the 1960s and 1970s and may have been partly responsible for public policies which underwrote the development of senior centers and other recreational facilities in that period. Today, the theory has been discarded by gerontologists who view it as too narrow in its implied advocacy of one particular lifestyle. Empirical research has demonstrated the heterogeneity of older people, including many people who prefer less structured lives or do not have the health or means to pursue a full schedule of activities. Nevertheless, activity is widely touted by older adults themselves as the key to successful aging, so much so that gerontologists have dubbed this philosophy "the busy ethic" (Ekerdt, 1986).

. . . .

Diverging from works of the 1980s that emphasize "maximizing independence" or "enhancing autonomy" in the frail elderly, Lustbader (1991) described the possibilities for finding satisfaction and meaning even in a state of dependency, including moments of vivid aliveness, true intimacy between family members, and spiritual revival. . . .

From Successful Aging: What does the "good life" look like?
Vol. 1, No. 3, Summer 1996, Concepts in Gerontology, by Lucille B. Bearon, Ph.D.. reprinted at NC State University, Forum for Family and Consumer Issues.

It truly is not for me or my brother to decide what is best for our mother, but it seems that when dealing with someone in a situation where dependency is inevitable (for someone often not strong enough to get in and out of bed or go to the bathroom by herself, even as she used to with a walker), there must be more than just pushing to try to make her as self-sufficient as possible. It must be very difficult for her or anyone, especially in our self-reliant American culture, to turn to others for help and accept the frustration and sometimes humiliation that comes with total dependency, but, how is happiness or joy of any kind possible if one cannot trust some caregivers, accept help without shame or anger, and, finally, have some trust or faith in God to see one through?

Izzy and Lenore

This is a plug for a new book by Jon Katz, Izzy & Lenore. From the description at that author's website:

Izzy was an abandoned three-year-old border collie whose sketchy past and nervous disposition reminded Katz of the dogs he has been closest to over his life. As Katz taught this newest denizen of his animal menagerie to calm down and embrace the rhythm of life on Bedlam Farm, Izzy exhibited an uncanny sensitivity to, and tenderness toward, humans who were troubled, ailing, or ill. It was Izzy’s special receptiveness that led Katz to a pursuit he’d often pondered but never seriously considered: volunteer hospice work....

Lenore was a glossy jet-black Labrador Retriever puppy known as the “Hound of Love”....

For more about Izzy, including some marvelous photos, see http://www.bedlamfarm.com in general, and in particular, the photos and text at Jon's hospice journal at http://hospice.bedlamfarm.com. See also "A Patient's Best Friend" at Slate.

[Hat tip to Ray Bepko, head of our local Mohawk Valley for Obama campaign, who, needless to say, has no time for blogging now.]

Rev. Howard Bess - Brick of the Day!

From an article in Salon:

That is what scares the Rev. Howard Bess. A retired American Baptist minister who pastors a small congregation in nearby Palmer, Wasilla's twin town in Alaska's Matanuska Valley, Bess has been tangling with Palin and her fellow evangelical activists ever since she was a Wasilla City Council member in the 1990s. Recently, Bess again found himself in the spotlight with Palin, when it was reported that his 1995 book, "Pastor, I Am Gay," was among those Palin tried to have removed from the Wasilla Public Library when she was mayor.

"She scares me," said Bess. "She's Jerry Falwell with a pretty face.

"At this point, people in this country don't grasp what this person is all about. The key to understanding Sarah Palin is understanding her radical theology."

Read more at Salon.com., story by David Talbot.

Hat tip to The Immoral Minority.

Thanks to Padre Mickey and the Immoral Minority.

Sometimes both passion and reason prevail.

Action over deliberation

"Action over deliberation, decision over debate" -- Rep. Marsha Blackburn.

This is one of the election promises that was made at the Republican Convention tonight. Makes sense for those who eschew thought, study, reflection, and discussion, who would frankly rather fight than carefully consider the consequences of throwing a punch or pulling a trigger. But is this any way to govern or lead a nation?

A more complex view of the role of reason and passion in civic life is presented in a new book Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation by Sharon Krause. I have not had the opportunity to read it yet, but I am intrigued by the Introduction. It's a bit heavy with academic prose, but it does speak to some of what strikes me as wrong with the current political climate. Consider the following excerpt:

Deliberation is demanding, and for many people this fact may recommend against it. The truth is that citizenship imposes certain burdens on us. Liberal democracy makes these burdens light when compared with some other forms of government but it cannot do away with them entirely. The notion that liberty and equality—the great promises of liberal-democratic government—could be had for free is a dream. The realization of liberty and equality demands many things of us as citizens, but one of them surely is impartial deliberation. Unless public deliberation achieves impartiality, our decision making will be hostage to prejudice and the vagaries of power, with the result that those who have less (less status, less power, fewer resources) will get less (less freedom, less equality). Impartial deliberation is a key to making the promises of liberal democracy real for all of us. Yet liberal democracy also is necessary to the development of impartiality, or so I shall argue in the chapters to come.

There is a circle here, or at least a relationship of mutual dependence. If human beings were not fallible by nature, if we were not naturally limited in the extent of our sympathies and concerns, we would not need liberal-democratic institutions and practices to foster the extensive moral sentiment that impartial judgment requires. If the liberal-democratic principles of liberty and equality were self-justifying and self-actuating, and if the institutions of liberal democracy were self-guiding, we would not need impartial deliberation. As it is, we need both and they depend on each other.

While the demands of impartial deliberation are high, they are demands that we can satisfy, at least so long as we acknowledge the affective dimensions of deliberation. Again, to acknowledge these dimensions is not to bring more passions into politics. There are plenty of passions in politics already. Moral sentiment does involve the public communication of sentiments and a refined faculty of sympathy, and justice will require that some previously silenced sentiments find a new voice on the public stage. But the communication of sentiments is already happening all around us; deliberation is steeped in passions as it is. The challenge is to civilize the passions that we cannot avoid and that practical reason cannot fully transcend....

Read the rest at Introduction.

The Politics of Hate

There is a great deal to read and digest over at Father Terry's new place. One is a link to an article fs apparently has cited before, "The Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism" by Walter A. Davis. There is much that crosses the boundaries of both religion and politics. Here is one passage.

... the emotion in which the literalist passion is grounded. Hatred--of all complexities; of anything that can't be reduced to the simplicity of absolute dogmas and the need to impose that hatred upon the world in a totalizing way. It is sometimes alleged that fundamentalists are just like the rest of us, confused by the world and seeking something to hang onto as a portal in the storm. This view is invalidated by the nature of the answers that the fundamentalist finds: answers that annihilate the problem, turn the desire for knowledge into a farce, and make of confusion the motive for self-infantalization.

[reprinted at Counterpunch].

What seems so bizarre about the political news of the last several days is how swiftly and deftly the Republican spinmasters and their allies have twisted and turned just about everything upside down. O'Reilly, among others, has gone after all those mean and nasty Librul folks on the internet who "shock" and amaze him with the depth of their "hatred" for all things good and great and wonderful. Meanwhile, the anti-war protestors trying to be heard outside the Republican Convention are branded as "anarchists" and tossed into jail. And finally, she-who-will-not-be-named, who is being painted as the teenage victim of, not the political campaign strategists and the right wing religionists, but of those who would dare find fault with not her, but her mother.

This is not new, this Rovian world of doublespeak. But when oh when will people ever be able to talk about issues, disagree, without the incessant need of some to paint their opponents as evil, hate-filled, enemies to be vanquished at all costs?

The desire for knowledge and reason is being twisted into farce, day by day. How many people are watching as many speeches as possible at the conventions, reading, and thinking about the complex issues of war, the economy, the environment, and our relations with people throughout the world? Where is the give-and-take? Why is to disagree or even question forged into an accusation of hate or grounds for seething resentment?

Meanwhile, what about the hurricanes, Dolly and Gustav already, the others possibly yet to come? We did not get the uncut movie version of disaster that we saw during in the early days after Katrina. But the potential for an even greater disaster was there before our eyes and ears if we paid close attention to the complex engineering and weather information that trickled through the media.

The problem is not simply how to survive these disasters but how to deal with the damage they bring. Three years after Katrina and the court decisions are still grinding out at a slow pace, for the most part, the courts just doing their part to make sense of a nonsensical system in which flood damage is insured (generally underinsured) by the government and wind is covered by private insurance -- if and only if one can find the insurance and pay the premiums for both flood and private property insurance -- and no one yet quite knows who pays for what, if anything, if a combination of wind and water cause damage. There are sound underwriting reasons for this, but the government and the businessworld have had several years now to consider a more rational system of insurance or other kind of economic support for repairs and rebuilding, with little to show for it in terms of actual plans or programs. Add to the insurance question the complex ones about where and how to rebuild, even if money is available to to do so. How and when should government assist in building, require more expensive but stronger construction, rebuild infrastructure, and provide assistance and emergency services when disasters do occur?

These are just a few of the many, many issues our politicians should be talking about, among themselves, with experts, and, most of all, to and with us. But these are considered too dull, too complex, and not good for sound bites and media manipulation. The politics of hate and fear sell much more easily. So, instead of breathing a sigh of relief and giving prayers of thanks that the New Orleans levees held fast this time -- and working harder to rebuild and strengthen those that need work and barely made it -- instead of sober and hard talk, sharp disagreements and rethinking of where we go next, the circus goes on and on.

I don't know about you, but I am so, so tired of this. Chicago, 1968. I thought we'd do better by now. It just never ends. I am very weary of it all.