JFK and Obama

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January 27, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor

A President Like My Father

By CAROLINE KENNEDY

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.

Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates’ goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.

I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents’ grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.

Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.

I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

Caroline Kennedy is the author of “A Patriot’s Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love.”

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January 26, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Questions for the Clintons

By BOB HERBERT

Charleston, S.C.

Joseph P. Riley Jr. has been mayor of this historic and often tense city since the mid-1970s. He’s a Democrat, highly respected and has worked diligently to heal racial wounds that have festered in some cases for hundreds of years.

He has endorsed Barack Obama in today’s Democratic primary. But what struck me during an interview in his quiet office in an exquisitely restored City Hall was not the fact of the endorsement, but the manner in which the mayor expressed it.

He went out of his way to praise the Democratic field, including some of the candidates who have dropped out, like Senators Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd. He talked about his fondness for Bill and Hillary Clinton and said: “It’s tough when you have to choose between friends.”

The mayor’s thoughtful, respectful, generous assessment of the field echoed the tone that had prevailed until recently in the Democratic primary campaign. That welcome tone has been lost, undermined by a deliberate injection of ugliness, and it would be very difficult to make the case that the Clintons have not been primarily to blame.

Bill Clinton, in his over-the-top advocacy of his wife’s candidacy, has at times sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication. And some of the Clinton surrogates have been flat-out reprehensible.

Andrew Young, for instance.

This week, while making the remarkable accusation that the Obama camp was responsible for raising the race issue, Mr. Clinton mentioned Andrew Young as someone who would bear that out. It was an extremely unfortunate reference.

Here’s what Mr. Young, who is black and a former ambassador to the United Nations, had to say last month in an interview posted online: “Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.”

He then went on to make disgusting comments about the way that Bill and Hillary Clinton defended themselves years ago against the fallout from the former president’s womanizing. That’s coming from the Clinton camp!

And then there was Bob Kerrey, the former senator and another Clinton supporter, who slimed up the campaign with the following comments:

“It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

Pressing the point, Mr. Kerrey told CNN’s John King: “I’ve watched the blogs try to say that you can’t trust him because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa. I feel quite the opposite.”

Get it?

Let’s start with the fact that Mr. Obama never attended a madrassa, and that there is no such thing as a secular madrassa. A madrassa is a religious school. Beyond that, the idea is to not-so-slyly feed the current frenzy, on the Internet and elsewhere, that Senator Obama is a Muslim, and thus potentially (in the eyes of many voters) an enemy of the United States.

Mr. Obama is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. And if he were a Muslim, it would not be a legitimate reason for attacking his candidacy.

The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. Bob Kerrey apologized and Andrew Young said at the time of his comment that he was just fooling around. But the damage to Senator Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of these and other lowlife tactics.

Consider, for example, the following Web posting (misspellings and all) from a mainstream news blog on Jan. 13:

“omg people get a grip. Can you imagine calling our president barak hussien obama ... I cant, I pray no one would be disrespectful enough to put this man in our whitehouse.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign was always going to be difficult, and the climb is even steeper now. There is no reason to feel sorry for him. He’s a politician out of Chicago who must have known that campaigns often degenerate into demolition derbies.

Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.

It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another.

What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying?

These are questions that need to be answered. Stay tuned.

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January 26, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor

Two Presidents Are Worse Than One

By GARRY WILLS

Evanston, Ill.

SENATOR Hillary Clinton has based her campaign on experience — 35 years of it by her count. That must include her eight years in the White House.

Some may debate whether those years count as executive experience. But there can be no doubt that her husband had the presidential experience, fully. He has shown during his wife’s campaign that he is a person of initiative and energy. Does anyone expect him not to use his experience in an energetic way if he re-enters the White House as the first spouse?

Mrs. Clinton claims that her time in that role was an active one. He can hardly be expected to show less involvement when he returns to the scene of his time in power as the resident expert. He is not the kind to be a potted plant in the White House.

Which raises an important matter. Do we really want a plural presidency?

This is not a new question. It was intensely debated in the convention that formulated our Constitution. The Virginia Plan for the new document submitted by Edmund Randolph and the New Jersey Plan submitted by William Paterson left open the number of officers to hold the executive power.

Some (like Hugh Williamson of North Carolina) argued for a three-person executive, each member coming from a different region of the country. More people argued (like George Mason of Virginia) for a multiple-member executive council.

The objection to giving executive power to a single person came from the framers’ experience with the British monarchy and the royal governors of the colonies. They did not want another monarch.

But as the debate went forward a consensus formed that republican rule would check the single initiative of a president. In fact, accountability to the legislature demanded that responsibility be lodged where it could be called to account. A plural presidency would leave it uncertain whom to check. How, for instance, would Congress decide which part of the executive should be impeached in case of high crimes and misdemeanors? One member of the plural executive could hide behind the other members.

James Wilson of Pennsylvania made the argument for a single officeholder with typical depth and precision: “To control the executive, you must unite it. One man will be more responsible than three. Three will contend among themselves till one becomes the master of his colleagues. In the triumvirates of Rome, first Caesar, then Augustus, are witnesses of this truth. The kings of Sparta and the consuls of Rome prove also the factious consequences of dividing the executive magistracy.”

Wilson and his allies carried the day; and their argument is as good now as when they embedded it in the Constitution.

One problem with the George W. Bush administration is that it has brought a kind of plural presidency in through the back door. Vice President Dick Cheney has run his own executive department, with its own intelligence and military operations, not open to scrutiny, as he hides behind the putative president.

No other vice president in our history has taken on so many presidential prerogatives, with so few checks. He is an example of the very thing James Wilson was trying to prevent by having one locus of authority in the executive. The attempt to escape single responsibility was perfectly exemplified when his counsel argued that Mr. Cheney was not subject to executive rules because he was also part of the legislature.

We have seen in this campaign how former President Clinton rushes to the defense of presidential candidate Clinton. Will that pattern of protection be continued into the new presidency, with not only his defending her but also her defending whatever he might do in his energetic way while she’s in office? It seems likely. And at a time when we should be trying to return to the single-executive system the Constitution prescribes, it does not seem to be a good idea to put another co-president in the White House.

Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern, is the author, most recently, of “Head and Heart: American Christianities.”

Reason # 3 to Not Vote for Hillary

Hillary stood by her man
while her man stood by
and did nothing
to stop the genocidal slaughter
of one million men, women, and children in Rwanda

Political Word for the Day

The only difference
today
between Liberals and Conservatives
is that the Liberals go to mass at five o'clock
and the Conservatives at eight.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Let's Bring Humor Back to the White House!

~ Pic of the Day ~

(allfunnypictures.com)

The object of a New Year is not
that we should
have a new year

It is that we should have
a new soul
and a new nose
new feet
a new backbone
new ears
and new eyes

~G.K. Chesterton

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Bravo for Writers!

Hollywood's writers go on strike

Hollywood screenwriters have gone on strike after talks with studio representatives failed to resolve a dispute over royalties.

The Writers Guild of America has asked its 12,000 members
to stop working and set up picket lines.

Late-night television chat shows are likely to be the first productions
to suffer with drama to follow if the strike drags on.

The last strike by screenwriters, in 1988, lasted a crippling 22 weeks.

The BBC's Peter Bowes in Los Angeles says the strike
is expected to have a ripple effect throughout Los Angeles
with businesses that rely on the entertainment industry being hit hard.

He says one estimate puts the potential cost to the city at $1bn.

Yesterday...

Yesterday was a good day -

A day that began with a trip to the costume store
where my 4 year old daughter, Audra,
tried on an assortment of princess gowns
until she had perfected the right ensemble for Halloween.
As we were leaving the store, she said -

"I wish I was a grown-up!"
"Why," I, chuckled.
"So I could be a costume seller."

A day that continued with a prolonged session of
walking, running, and jumping in the park on a windy autumn afternoon -
chasing ducks, and riding the outdoor carousel one last time,
which actually, turned out to be 4 last times.

"Bye horsey," Audra said, with a touch of joyful melancholy -
"See you in the spring."

Later, in a moment of quiet as we both leaned over a wall
to watch the ducks disappear and reappear from under the bridge -

"Look at that big leaf, daddy!
That's a pancake for the ducks because they are hungry."

A day that continued with bedtime on the couch
as we prepared for game 4 of the World Series -
Audra wearing her red Red Sox shirt,
me wearing mine...

"Look daddy, I'm the Red Sox,"
she said pointing to the logo of the red socks on the front of her shirt.
"And you are the 'B's! We're two baseball teams..."

Soon Audra was asleep,
absorbing the sounds and textures of late-night baseball
into her dreams ...

...so good...

HELLO WORLD SERIES!!!!!!!

Game 7 Tonight!

This is why we love sport.

Call it the You-Never-Know factor.
When those 37,163 entered the ballpark last evening,
not one of them thought they would see
J.D. Drew get the biggest hit of the game.
Not one of them thought they would be demanding,
and getting, a first-inning curtain call from J.D. Drew.

But they did.
That's the fascination of sport,
let alone the fascination of J.D. Drew.

Bob Ryan/Boston Globe

It was a cool October evening at sunset
when my daughter, Audra, and I waded into the Pacific
to, as Audra put it - "Dance on the waves"

Some while later, with Audra drenched and shivering
from taking "one more wave" on the chin,
I suggested that we might
return to the hotel to get warmed up -

"No daddy, not yet!
I want to stay one more minute,
no, five more minutes,
no, a week,
no, I want to stay one whole year!"

RED SOX WIN AL EAST!

Repose ~

(photo by zjm)

First Autumn Night

I camped outside in the back yard last night with my 4 year old daughter, Audra. It was her first time to sleep under the stars. After we read 'Green Eggs and Ham' by flashlight, we listened to the sound of crickets, and watched the shadows of trees lit by the glow of the rising moon.

"What's it like being outside in the tent?"

"Rainbowy," dad. "Rainbowy."

Ice withdrawal 'shatters record'

According to the BBC,

Arctic sea ice shrank
to the smallest area on record this year

Noble Warrior to the End

Reading, writing, and rebellion

By Tracy Jan, Boston Globe Staff | September 21, 2007

CAMBRIDGE - Jonathan Kozol appeared shrunken in his chair at Harvard's Memorial Church, his blazer tossed aside, the sleeves of his pinstriped shirt rolled up to the elbows to expose bony arms. His thin ankles, swathed in black socks, disappeared into his signature navy blue Keds.

Over the past 24 hours, he had consumed only half a bowl of frosted cornflakes, half a cheese sandwich, several glasses of grapefruit juice, and a French vanilla latte, a treat he granted himself before beginning his lecture this week to hundreds of teachers and education activists packed into the church pews.

Since early July, the 71-year-old education warrior of the 1960s has shed 29 pounds from his slender 5-foot-9-inch frame, subsisting on a mostly liquid diet. His point: to protest the federal No Child Left Behind Act now up for reauthorization. He said he will continue his partial fast until US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who sponsored the original bill, agrees to drastically overhaul what Kozol called a punitive law that relegates urban schoolchildren to an inferior, stripped-down education and demoralizes teachers, who he believes are forced to teach to the test.

Despite his emaciated 132-pound figure, Kozol is anything but battle weary.

"I'm too old to bite my tongue," he said. "I don't care what happens to me now. I intend to keep on fighting this issue to my dying day."

Surrounded at this week's lecture by grizzled, longtime allies and idealistic college students who regard him as the high priest of public education, Kozol hoped to energize a new generation of teachers in his four-decade-long fight for equity. These are his people, the only family of sorts for a man who never had children and who lives alone in a Byfield cottage filled with books and fan mail.

"My goal is to connect the young teachers to the old, to reignite their sense of struggle," he said, urging audience members to sign up with his new Cambridge-based nonprofit, Education Action!

Kozol, a Newton native who rose to fame as one of the most prolific authors on urban education and social justice in America, spent the first part of the week in Washington, D.C. He met with reporters and members of Congress, and attended an evening rally for teachers to promote his new book, "Letters to a Young Teacher," inspired by his correspondence with a Boston first-grade teacher, in which he rails against standardized testing.

No Child Left Behind, Kozol believes, has plunged urban education back to the dark ages before desegregation. Under the law, schools whose test scores don't improve each year could eventually be shut down, a specter hanging over a disproportionate number of city schools that educate mostly poor, minority children.

"We have apartheid schools, and MCAS has unwittingly introduced an apartheid curriculum," said Kozol during an interview, likening inner-city classrooms to test prep factories. "I'm determined to mobilize teachers and parents to fight this bill aggressively and bombard Senator Kennedy with a very clear message: If he fails to introduce dramatic revisions to No Child Left Behind, it will be devastating to the enormous faith we've had in him all these years."

Kennedy, chairman of the Education Committee, said in a statement yesterday that he hopes to introduce the reauthorization bill to his panel later this month or in early October after he reviews the ideas and recommendations of parents, students, and educators, including Kozol.

"No Child Left Behind advanced the commitment first made during the Great Society, the promise that every child counts, regardless of race, background, or disability," Kennedy said. "We must renew our commitment to its noble purposes, but also make the common-sense changes needed to ensure that it works better for our students and our schools."

Kozol said he has considered Kennedy a friend for more than 40 years. As a young senator, Kennedy defended Kozol after he was fired from the Boston Public Schools in 1965 for "curriculum deviation" for teaching a Langston Hughes poem to his fourth-grade class. Kozol chronicled his harrowing year teaching under deplorable conditions in a mostly black Dorchester elementary school in his first book, "Death At An Early Age."

But, according to Kozol, the senator has thrown up a "cold, stone wall" to his repeated attempts to meet with him this summer about No Child Left Behind. Before the Senate recessed in July, Kozol said, Kennedy's staff offered to squeeze him in for a few minutes.

"At that point, I just threw up my hands, because there's no way of presenting a thoughtful argument in five to seven minutes," Kozol said.

During his lecture at Harvard this week, Kozol likened No Child Left Behind to a "shaming ritual" in which the federal government holds up "impossible demands without money to pay for it." Against this backdrop, it's no wonder that half of urban teachers quit within their first three years, he said.

"Wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state," he said, peering at the crowd through gold wire-rimmed glasses. "I don't want them to quit. I want them to stay. But I want them to stay and not lose their souls."

From their front-row seats, three elderly, African-American women nodded gravely.

They were Kozol's old friends, former Boston public school parents who staged a sit-in protesting his firing from a school where children were routinely lashed with a rattan whip in a basement that smelled of urine.

They worked with Kozol to start alternative schools in the South End and Roxbury for black parents shunning the inferior public education their children were subjected to.

"All we wanted was an education for our children," said Julia Walker, 74, as she waited in line to greet Kozol.

"You know what? Sometimes it sounds like we're right back at the beginning," said Joyce Johnson, 75.

"Exactly," Walker said.

"And sometimes it sounds like there's still hope," Johnson said. "My children have picked up the torch."

Read this almost one year old story
while eating my breakfast this morning -

One village's African boat trauma

Every day hundreds of African migrants cross the Atlantic Ocean to the Canary Islands in search of a better life. Debbie Woodmansey, who has lived in Gran Canaria for two-and-a-half years, describes the impact this has on her village.

Let me first tell you about our village. It is a small, friendly, ancient Canarian fishing village which is developing to incorporate the growing population.

Life here is hard, hot, but relaxed.

I became aware of the boats from Africa not long after I arrived. At first I would just see piles of battered boats in the corner of the harbour. People told me they had arrived carrying up to 100 people but I didn't believe them. It was beyond comprehension.

One day in the summer of 2005, I came home from work to find my daughter really distressed. She told me she had seen hundreds of African people sitting on the ground in the square looking sad and hungry.

Desperation

What was a shock then has now sadly become a regular sight. The sirens, the police, the desperation of the boat people. These are all commonplace, as is the feeling of helplessness experienced by the villagers who truly want to do something to help.

Boats now arrive most days, sometimes several in a day.

They hold around 100 men, women and children. They are now about 12 metres long but this doesn't mean they are safer.

I wouldn't take my daughter to the next village in one. These people cross an ocean in them, and a dangerous one at that.

We always know when a boat is about to arrive as the harbour fills up with tents, hospital beds and wheelchairs. When we see the helicopter arrive, we know that someone needs to get to hospital at great speed.

The sadness of this sight never fades.

The arrival of the boat people is normal conversation for us, here. We discuss how many arrived last week, what time the boat came in last night, how many didn't make it.

We are all affected emotionally by what we see and hear. We witness the plight of the African people every day.

Drain on resources

However, we can't help but notice the effect on our community.

We live on a very small island and this is a major drain on the resources here.

The navy boats, the coast guards, the civil guard and the Red Cross used to work together fighting the battle against drugs. Now it seems all their time and resources are spent working with the boat people.

What is happening now in the battle against drugs? This is something the islanders worry about.

The villagers are not angry with the people, they are angry about the drain on resources. It cannot be sustained.

The boat people cannot leave the island until they are fit. Because they arrive in such an appalling condition - they are too weak to walk or stand - this takes quite a while. Who foots the bill for their medical care?

Sahara dust

Early in September, we had the dust blowing over from the Sahara. There were many boats crossing at that time. The people were exposed to the punishing sun's intensified rays with little more than a glass of water a day and a bowl of rice.

Seeing them, it was hard to believe they had even had that much to eat and drink, and they were the lucky ones. Countless boats and bodies never make it.

While the dust was here and when the storms came, we silently hoped for the safety of the little boats we knew were making the crossing.

Bodies are sometimes brought in by the fishermen, as they sometimes catch them in their nets. I once heard of a fisherman finding a pregnant woman floating in the sea.

A few days ago, 220 people arrived in one day. When the authorities were cleaning one of the boats before it was destroyed, they found three dead bodies.

A woman had arrived with a one-week-old baby, and the baby had died. Her loving husband had sent them instead of himself.

The villagers have such sympathy for these desperate people. We sit silently as the convoy heads out of our village and up to the capital, Las Palmas, listening to the sirens and holding back our tears.

I had family visiting on one occasion, we were down by the beach. As our children swam happily in the sea, the boats arrived. The contrast was so sharp.

Story from BBC NEWS

"No, the great business of our time is this:
for one man to find himself in another one
who is on the other side of the world.
Only by such contacts can there be peace,
can the sacredness of life be preserved and developed
and the image of God manifest itself in the world."

Thomas Merton
(From a letter to Boris Pasternak, 10/23/1958)

“If mothers ruled the world, there would be no god-damned wars in the first place.”

So said Sally Field during her Emmy acceptance speech last night in Hollywood.

Let's see ... it is men who are violent, the wagers of war?

But what are we say to the countless children that suffer child abuse at the hands of women each year? Say of those mothers who rule the world of their young with violence?

What do we say of the leading democratic candidate for President, Hillary Clinton? A woman and a mother who voted to send young men and women to Iraq to die? A woman and mother who voted to kill the children of Iraqi mothers? A woman and mother who continues, to this very day, to defend that decision. A woman who has a stronger pro war stance than most of the other male democratic candidates?

Let's not forget our recent history, and the war waging woman and mother, Margaret Thatcher.

And what do we say to the countless loving men and fathers who, who along with countless good women and mothers, work each and everyday to create peace, and end war?

Enough of the false and empty cliches!

People who crave power, abuse power - and are regularly willing to sacrifice, with violence, anything and anybody, to achieve their ends.

Be they male or female, or any color under the sun!

Demonstrators placed a mock flag-draped coffin and combat boots in remembrance
of Marine Lance Corporal Alexander S. Arredondo of Randolph, Mass.,
in Lafayette Park in Washington.
(PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

In the first major antiwar demonstration in the nation's capital since January, several thousand protesters marched from the White House to the Capitol yesterday, carrying signs and chanting slogans demanding an end to the war and the impeachment of President Bush.
Tina Marie Macias, Los Angeles Times | September 16, 2007

Saturday Thought

I merely took the energy it takes to pout
and wrote some blues -

Duke Ellington

Moral Intelligence

(photo from Boston Globe)

Upon the undisputed revelation that the New England Patriots violated league rules and cheated by videotaping the defensive signs of the New York Jets during last Sunday's game, Boston Globe writer Jackie MacMullan wrote a column entitled: "You're too smart for this stuff, Bill."

When you live in New England, and you are introduced to someone for the first time, you will either hear about what schools they attended, or hear about how smart they are. This is true whether the person is standing in the room or not. Nothing is revered in New England like intelligence. Everything is connected to intelligence. Smart, and you are likely to be viewed as upstanding, moral, and a valuable asset to society. Stupid, or of below average intelligence, and you are likely to be viewed as suspect, less than moral, and a liability to society. Too strong? Perhaps.

But isn't it interesting that when Bill Belichick is caught flagrantly disregarding the rules to gain unfair advantage (a value and practice by the way, that is the cornerstone of modern American business) the first thing people think about, are confused by, is why someone so smart would do such a thing?

News to all New Englanders who believe intelligence makes you a more moral person! No Way! No connection between IQ and morality. Proof right here. No need to look any further.

I coached little league for 5 years. If I'd done what Belichick did, I'd have been kicked out of the league, the previous win would have been forfeited, and my team would have been banned from post season play. But my league had ethics, and more importantly, my league cared about the moral future of children. Not so with the NFL.

I've been following and rooting for the Pats since I was a child in the 60's. I've been thinking about the penalties handed down by the new commissioner - $750,000 dollars of fines, which would be like fining me one dollar. A first round draft pick to a team that already has the deepest talent in the league.

Boy, those are tough consequences - makes little league seem awfully unfair!

Changing One's View

Joe Deverell is taking a trip on the Erie Canal to promote the historic upstate New York canal system, to tackle a new challenge and to slow down his life to appreciate Mother Nature's offerings.

While many others have taken similar journeys on the canal over the years, Deverell's trek is a bit different. He will pole along the canal in a 36-foot gondola.

''It's about taking the time to look at the world in a different way. ...It would be easier to stay at home, watch TV and have a couple beers, but there will be plenty of time to do that,'' said Deverell, 41, a self-employed industrial engineer from Cato, N.Y., who departed on his trip Tuesday.

At 6-foot-2 and a muscular 220 pounds, Deverell appears ready for the physical demands of rowing a 900-pound boat an average of 12 miles a day for the next 20 days.

Deverell trained for about two months to get in shape and to pad his hands with thick, protective calluses for the rigors of the trip. He hopes to reach Albany by Sept. 30 to meet three other gondoliers who are rowing from Albany to New York City to salute the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They're departing Oct. 1.

''What he's doing is ambitious in that he's the only one doing it. If he does it solo, I will be very impressed,'' said Greg Mohr, president of the Gondolier Society of America, one of the three gondoliers participating in the Albany to New York City tribute row.

Deverell won't be alone on his trip. Two independent New York City filmakers are accompanying him for part of his journey.

He'll row during the day. At night, he plans to dock the boat, dine at restaurants and sleep outside in a tent.

His biggest concern is running into high winds, which he said would make it more difficult to land the gondola in stormy weather.

Deverell paid $15,000 for his gondola in 2002. It was once used to ferry passengers and cargo through the busy canals of Venice, Italy.

Deverell, who has also sailed boats for many years, was inspired to buy his gondola after his girlfriend of two years died in a car accident in late 1999. She was a science teacher in the Clyde-Savannah school district and loved the outdoors.

Her death, he said, taught him to start living more for today rather than waiting for tomorrow. He had vacationed in Venice in the mid-1990s and fallen in love with the Italian boats because of their simple, efficient design and the romantic view of the world that they offer.

''It's about doing these things while you still can ... I think she would be proud of me,'' he said.

———

By Associated Press
Updated: 9/11/2007

SYRACUSE, N.Y.

Information from: The Syracuse Post-Standard

A Photo of Celebration for Thom...

(photo by zachary jack marcus)

When I was growing up in the Philippines as the black-sheep-son of a baptist missionary there was much talk and debate about the 'divinely inspired Word of God' - belief in the irrefutable authority of the Bible as the foundation of our entire belief system. While I still do not buy into this sovereignty, I do hold to the existence of the miraculous that once in a while comes our way, offering healing and grace.

Such is Terence Blanchard's A Tale of God's Will (a requiem for katrina). My friend, Thom, who lives part time in New Orleans, has written a most moving review of this new album. These days I am home during the day, caring for my 4 year and 4 month old daughters, Audra, and Aliza. Mid-morning or so, when a bit of boredom sets in, I play this album, and the mood and center of our home is transformed. It has become an indispensable part of our day, a time of prayer you might say - BUY IT NOW!

"moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines -
these are of trifling import.
all that matters is that
the miraculous become the norm"

Henry Miller

A Quiet Rain...

(photo by zachary jack marcus)

...falls this morning and I find myself thinking of the change of seasons.

As my birthday falls on the last day of July, the week prior to the 31st is a season of reflection for me. I notice things more - the passing of time, that which is vital to my life, and the sounds and rhythms of nature.

During that final week of July, things change. The light just before sunset. The sweet smell of harvest arrives. Cooler evenings. And the first few autumn leaves show up in red, orange, and yellow dress. Even though the ancient calendars tell us that the season of autumn begins around the 4th or 5th of August, our calendar insists we wait another 6 weeks to herald her arrival, despite the visible changes all around us.

Viewing changes in nature through the prism of our calendar causes a number of strange things to happen - we start bemoaning our imagined premature demise of summer, the ending of our warm days, and for some of us fortunate ones, the end of vacation and playtime. But more essentially, placing trust in this artificial authority erodes our ability to believe our own inner sense of things - that which we observe around us, that which we once knew.

Common sense is an endangered species now-a-days. We rely, not just on our calendars to tell us what our seasons are, the Weather Channel to tell us of coming climate changes, but we also place our confidence in what THEY say, from parenting, to romance, to spirituality, to most everything under the sun. Nearly dead, is our own inner knowledge of the basic cadences of life.

Perhaps if we spent less time paying homage to THEY, and more time waiting, listening, and acting out of that knowing place still gasping for air within us, we would discover the knowledge, wisdom, and peace of mind that so often eludes us.

Baseball and Magic

Bob Ryan, sports writer for the Boston Globe, has written an outstanding piece on the comeback kid, Rick Ankiel, and the new allegations of human growth hormone and steroid use. Please see his quote below, and take time to link to his article -

"The problem with baseball now
is that everyone is suspect.
Everyone who throws 95 m.p.h. is suspect.
Everyone who hits a bunch of homers is suspect.
Every aging player
who puts up great numbers
is suspect.
That's what this steroid and HGH business
has done to baseball."

Bob Ryan/Boston Globe 9/9/07

"Disbelief in magic
can force a poor soul
into believing
in government and business."

Tom Robbins

In Seattle

Seattle, Washington, where I lived for 17 years during the eighties and nineties, is a nice and pleasant city, with weather generally confined to a placid range of 40 to 70 degrees year round. Seattle is a locale of temperate emotions, where folks pride themselves on never straying too far toward the extreme passions of human behavior. If and when you visit during the summer and find yourself in need of directions, you are likely to find a queue of friendly residents waiting to help get you on your way - tempting you to believe that Seattle must be the grandest place on earth.

But the price of living in such an affable but passionless place can be high - you are likely to find yourself living on the same Seattle street for a decade, without talking with or meeting your neighbors.

A strange place, Seattle, Washington - an aloof Pleasantville, with low-hanging clouds 300ish days a year.

In keeping with the Seattle oddities I came to know, I had to laugh at this recent piece from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Honking your horn could diminish something a bit more physical than the pompous ego of that guy who cut you off.

Turns out that blasting your horn at that idiot talking on his cell phone could end up costing you money -- a fact that comes as a surprise to many drivers and even some police officers.

According to state law, car horns are for emergencies only, and leaning on it because you're feeling peeved is punishable by a $124 ticket.

Earlier this summer, a Seattle police officer decided that Mark Cruz of Renton was honking out of turn. Cruz was waiting to turn onto First Avenue from Columbia Street in downtown Seattle when he realized that the driver in front of him was oblivious to a newly green light.

"He was yakking on his phone, if I recall correctly," Cruz said.

So he honked. The car in front of him lurched into motion. Cruz completed his turn and started to turn into a parking garage.

Then he saw the motorcycle officer pulling up behind him.

"He actually came around next to my window and he said to me, 'You were honking at the car that was in front of you,' " Cruz said. "I kept waiting for him to get to the real reason he pulled me over."

The officer let him off with a warning, but "I was dumbfounded," Cruz said.

"Your horn is for warning, not for talking," said Kris Jensen, a Seattle-based lawyer familiar with fighting traffic infractions. "It's OK to use your horn at the point you're getting cut off. But if you go up behind them and start honking, well, that's not OK."

SMC 11.84.320: The Seattle Municipal Code extends the state law to city streets and alleys

Happy 24th Birthday

Cameron Benedict!

I love you,

Dad

Remembering Labor Day History, 1937

Waitresses at Woolworth's staged an eight-day
sitdown strike in 1937,singing, dancing,
exercising, doing each others hair and nails
until finally management recognized their union
and gave them a five-cent per hour pay hike.

Words for Today

Woody Guthrie

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

To Begin September...

Our fear of death
is like our fear that summer will be short,
but when we have had our swing of pleasure,
our fill of fruit,
and our swelter of heat,
we say we have had our day.

- John Donne, 1620

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

- Carl Sandburg, Under the Harvest Moon

Don't Call Me Mr. Mom

Yesterday morning during a long phone conversation with my mother, I described my week at hand - a week where my wife, Laura, returned to work, and I stayed at home to care for our two children, Audra, age 4, and Aliza, age 4 months. A week of laundry, house cleaning, feedings, baths, diaper changes, and more baths, reading books, playing games, rocking to sleep at nap time, shopping at the grocery store, cooking a meal for dinner guests ... you get the drift. At one point during our phone call my mother remarked "You are such a great Mr. Mom!" I replied "No thanks, not Mr. Mom - just dad."

I hear this sort of comment often, usually from women, but also from men who have come to believe that being a good father is becoming a good mother. It is an archaic and slow-dying assumption in our culture, one that implies that IF a man does good primary care of young children, he is simply performing as a Super Mom, having traded in his testicles for his new feminine side.

Twenty some years ago, poet, James Kavanaugh included this verse in his poem, 'Recently'

'Wondering all the while
what it would be like for a boy
to grow up without a role model
who is often gruff,
raucous, bigoted, unshowered
and unshaven
and as tender
as any woman in the world ...'

When I love my two young daughters, I love them as a man, not as a woman who is somehow more tender and loving and nurturing. I love them in, with, and through all of my maleness. You see, I am the other side of the coin from the mother of my daughters, who, by the way, is a mother of unparalleled enchantment. But I do not bring her gifts. I bring mine. Hopefully, in the end, my little girls receive, from both of us, a powerful offering of the rich possibilities of life.

Later in the day, while still musing about my morning phone conversation, the girls and I went to the grocery store for a few last things needed for our dinner party. As we walked through the parking lot toward the front door of the store, I held Aliza in her car seat with one hand, and held Audra's with the other. Good thing I had firm hold of Audra, for a new white SUV came speeding through the lot, doing a good 30 to 40 mph, almost clipping my girls and me, not stopping to apologize or see if we were okay. Behind the wheel of the SUV was a woman, along with her 4 passenger children.

Thought for the day -

Not all violence is the property of men,
nor is all tenderness the property of the women

Two Portraits, Two Stories ...

I read these two stories (BBC), back to back, over coffee this morning -

1. New York hotelier and real estate billionaire Leona Helmsley has left $12m to her pet dog, Trouble. The pampered pooch received the largest bequest from Mrs Helmsley's will. The will also says that when Trouble dies, she is to be buried alongside Mrs Helmsley, who died last week, and her late husband in their mausoleum.

2. Peruvian officials say they have run out of tents and urgently need at least 40,000 more to house victims of the devastating earthquake two weeks ago