The Civic Soapbox

The Civic Soapbox essays have moved . . .

2010-05-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

They will now proudly be posted every Friday on the WMRA blog, which seems to get much more traffic. It's, hopefully, a way to get these fine listener essays more readers!

Turning into our Mothers by Diane Farineau

2010-05-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

“I’m turning into my mother!” my friend exclaimed, a few weeks ago on one of our long Sunday runs. She had just been talking about something she’d said to her son. We laughed and rolled our eyes in unison. Our mothers come up a lot during these run. It seems we are both actively turning into them.

A few mornings later, I was out early watering plants before I left for the day. As I dragged the hose around the garden I was conscious of the silence, the calm, the sense of peace. My children were asleep, and there’s nothing wrong yet. Everything was as it should be. I was at one with my yard, my planet. But then I realized we were not alone, Mother Nature and I. There was another mother present, my own. I remembered her doing this when I was a child, being up, out in the garden and back in again before my brothers, sister and I ever woke.

As I stood in the soft loam and dewy grass, I realized that I have indeed become my mother. It wasn’t just this gardening piece, it was other things….big things like my need for order, my desire to make things right. It was little things, like planning and making lists and even the running, which she too, took up later in life.
What is it about becoming our mothers that makes us roll our eyes? Even though I’ve long since shed my awkward teenage years, when for example, my mother had routinely been right in pointing out that the outfit I’d selected was going to turn out to be inappropriate, she still, to this day, has the power to reduce me to uncertainty with just a look. And she still OFTEN knows what is best for me.

Standing there in my yard, it hit me hard that becoming my mother was actually a blessing. I have been fortunate to have her by my side, even when at a distance, for 45 years. I have incorporated her wisdom, her habits, her quirks, her loves – even her dislikes—into the fabric of my own being. I could suddenly see from this vantage point that my mother’s life has been a trail of trinkets, dropped along the path for me to gather, and if I could, keep.

Someday my mother will be gone, which scares me because I think I will not, possibly, be able to function without her physical presence in my life. And yet, I realized that she cannot ever leave me completely because she is now a part of me. I am becoming my mother and I will never again roll my eyes when that thought comes to me. Because I know now that this what will keep me from coming apart at the seams when she is no longer able to walk through the garden with me.

--Diane Farineau is a writer living in Charlottesville

Springfest vs. Volunteerism by Mike Grundmann

2010-05-06T16:07:00.000-07:00

When the Springfest riot broke out in Harrisonburg on April 10, the opposite kind of activity was going on across town, and JMU students were at the center of both. Dozens of students were helping with the annual Blacks Run cleanup, where almost 3 tons of trash were collected.

The nest day 35 members of the JMU swim club helped the city clean up the Springfest garbage the next day.

There have been plenty of shame-on-yous leveled by JMU community members after Springfest: President Rose and a professor both wrote a scalding letters to the student newspaper, The Breeze, and at least two students wrote confessional pieces. Dozens of readers added their comments. The Breeze also probed the riot’s causes in a piece on mob psychology.

The following week, a group of students spontaneously formed to start patching up relations with the city and offer volunteer work. The group members are talking with city leaders so its volunteer efforts can be meaningful.

I’m the Breeze faculty adviser, so pardon me if I cite a few stories just from this semester, which prove the altruism permeating the student body. After the Haitian earthquake, a group struggled desperately to reach its $30,000 fundraising goal. A 25-hour basketball game raised money for orphans in Mozambique as well as the local Boys and Girls Clubs (one organizer played for 18 hours). An airplane-pulling contest raised money for a city mediation center. The women’s lacrosse team served a Sunday meal at the Salvation Army. The annual Relay for Life, a cancer-benefit walk that’s an overnighter, drew about 2,000 people and raised more than $150,000.

Just using examples from my own journalism classes this semester, one student spent spring break helping the homeless in Nashville, and another helped build a shelter for homeless teen girls in Belize.

It’s not just volunteer hours that JMU students contribute. The university is also a lab for the kinds of technology that will save the world. One student in 2008 invented a new type of concrete mixer that will raise the standard of living in a Ugandan village. An electric motorcycle that students built has set a speed record. Students are also designing bicycles that disabled people can ride. Others are experimenting with nanotechnology, which will produce eventual wonders in medicine, manufacturing and space travel. There’s a lab with printers, quote-unquote, that make 3-D objects; the prediction is that we’ll all have such printers at home in 10 years. And, from the president on down, there’s a major push to minimize waste in energy and materials. JMU just won a governor’s award for that

I’m continually impressed by how many of my students list activity or office-holding positions on campus, the vast majority of them service-oriented.

Did some of these same students also attend Springfest? Yes. Did they throw bottles? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

I’m not saying all this because I’m the booster type. I’m a journalist by training, and you know how skeptical we can be. I’m doing this because the Springfest riot really surprised me, and I wanted you to know why I was surprised.

-- Mike Grundmann teaches journalism at J.M.U. and advises the Breeze, the student newspaper.

Caring for Aging Parents by Karen O'Neil

2010-04-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

On the evening my mother died alone in a retirement home in Chicago, I was 1500 miles away in Austin, Texas standing in line with our eight year old grandson waiting for Rick Riordan to autograph the very latest in his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.

It was one of those perfect May days. I’d stopped to have coffee at an outdoor café and treated myself to the Times crossword. Dawdling in the morning was the first course of what felt like the feast of life in Austin, beautiful weather, beautiful grandchildren, enough work to be interesting, but not enough to be stressful. In what still felt like real life, the one from which I had just retired as English teacher and college counselor in Charlottesville, by this hour I would already have taught a class, answered emails, and tried to soothe a handful of worried parents. Here in Austin I was sitting on a sunny patio, gazing at a skate boarder with puffy dreadlocks sailing cheerfully past. No one seemed in a hurry, least of all me.

I’d made a point of calling Mother as I sat there, a daily ritual, one usually performed in the evening, but that I’d somehow neglected the night before. If Mother was disappointed , she didn’t say so. She rarely complained, although everything that had kept her going was now gone– her husband of almost 75 years, the family that now sprawled across the country, her capacity to read and write. At 99 she had become almost totally dependent on others.

Struggling to hear her murmured words, it was easy to forget she’d taught until she was 90, consulted until 95, authored two books, nurtured three generations , and thrived as partner in an exemplary marriage. Often I would find myself almost literally shouting over the phone, trying to make myself heard across a rapidly thickening wall of separation. And often, honestly, I was relieved to hang up.

I hadn’t known that morning that Mother’s and my brief conversation would be our last, that she’d sleep through most of the day, and grow increasingly unresponsive. If I’d called the night before I might have captured her for just a moment by reading from the volume of poetry that I kept by the phone for that purpose, knowing that shared words could almost always draw her back into life. But I hadn’t called, and not for any complicated reason. I was just plain tired. Weary. Weary of monitoring high blood pressure and low, weary of falls and infections, weary of fearing the sound of the phone and keeping a packed suitcase beside the bed. Weary especially of the endless question of whether I was doing it well enough -- fulfilling this unexpected assignment of helping my parents through the ends of their lives.

Oh, I knew then, know now that none of us had cause for complaint. My parents had had long life, good health until the end, ample resources. I wasn’t wrong to revel in a perfect May day, to choose the company of an appreciative eight-year-old, to postpone my next visit just a little longer. Surely the choices I made that sunny Austin day were exactly the ones I hope our own children will make some day. Or so it seems now.

-- Karen O'Neil lives in Charlottesville

About Virginia's New Slogan . . .

2010-04-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

As a social worker, I serve Central Virginia residents who have children with Intellectual disabilities (formerly called Mental Retardation). In this capacity, I sometimes get calls from families who are thinking about moving to Virginia. They want to know what State funded services and support, such as daytime activities, group homes, or respite, might be available for their disabled children. In the past, while I could rarely promise immediate access to such services, I could at least tell them about getting on waiting lists for them and what their wait times might be. This year, I can’t offer even this because in the proposed budget of the General Assembly, the 40 Community Service Boards in Virginia will not be getting any money for people on the waiting list.

As if that weren’t bad enough, we were also informed that the reimbursement rate for services – what Medicaid pays for them– will probably be cut by 5%.This is a huge cut for the agencies providing group home and day support services, and may force some of these centers to close. The bottom line? In Virginia, it may mean an increase in the populations of the training centers (also called institutions) because there will be nowhere else for people to go. I have been in this field for 20 years. I have seen the positive changes that adequate funding can provide: safe places to live, jobs that are meaningful, recreation and leisure supports, transportation, and other opportunities that those of us without disabilities take for granted. I have also seen the devastation to families and individuals when there are no resources because there was no money allocated in the state budget to extend services to more people.

I understand that this year the Virginia Legislature faced a huge budget deficit and cuts had to be made. I am not upset because I haven’t had a raise in 5 years or because I’m expected to do more work. I am upset because there are so many families who desperately need services for their adult children with Intellectual Disability and won’t get them. I am also embarrassed by Virginia’s rating in an annual report that ranks states on the funding provided to people with developmental disabilities – number 41 out of the 50 states. These cuts will, in all likelihood, move Virginia even further down on this scale, to 45 or 46.

How do I tell THE 200 PLUS families in this area alone who are already patiently waiting for state services that the reality is that their child may have to go live in an institution because there is no money to pay for a group home? How do I tell the single mother of a son with Down syndrome that when he graduates from special education, that he will not be going to a daytime activity center, which means she must quit her job because he can’t be left unsupervised during her work hours?

I recently heard that Virginia was changing its slogan from “Virginia is for Lovers” to “Virginia is for Families.” This statement needs to be amended to make it clear that for those with disabled children, Virginia is not for your family.

-- Ruth Ewers is a social worker and writer living in Nelson County.

an unruly comment . . .

2010-04-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

Martha, here: I posted a really nice response to Val's essay from the Stuarts Draft postmaster, Kevin Blackford, on the WMRA blog.

I couldn't get it to post as a comment, so the WMRA blog was plan B.

A Postal Lament by Val Matthews

2010-04-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” That the United States Postal Service would have such a motto, just added to the romance and excitement of emigrating to America.

I grew up in South Africa, and emigrated to the United States when I was a married woman of about thirty-five. All those years in South Africa and I have absolutely no recollection of how our mail was delivered, no recollection of any particular mailmen or postmen as we would have called them, no picture in my mind even of what a South African mailbox looked like.

So in our house north of NY city we were very excited by our mailbox and the fact that we could put letters into the box and raise the little flag and the mailman would pick up our letters and deposit our new mail. We came to know and love our mailman -- he was with us for the eleven years we lived in that house. I remember him coming to the front door once with a letter one of my children had written, and telling me that the post office wouldn’t mail it. The stamp had been licked so thoroughly that the glue had all gone, and cellotape fixed the stamp to the envelope. He waited while I put on a fresh stamp.

After some years back in South Africa we moved to downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. Once again a friendly and obliging mailman was our friend for six years and when we moved out into the county, he passed the word to the mailman he knew would be serving us at our new address.

We were now living on a large bit of land and knew none of our neighbours – in fact they did not know that the farm had changed hands. So guess who passed the word? Our new mailman. Without him I wonder how long it would have taken for us to meet our neighbours. I called him a community builder – he admitted that perhaps he became too involved in matters of the community, but his heart was in the right place.
Now, sadly, the postal service is struggling and has to cut back. So much mail and parcel delivery is now being done through Fedex or UPS, so many bills are paid on line. I still receive bills in my mailbox and make payment in the old way, but most of my mail is junk and goes straight into recycling. Fewer and fewer people send actual letters or Christmas cards –email is easier.

Saddest of all, many of the older career mail delivery people have been ‘encouraged’ to take early retirement, so our mailman has gone. I no longer know who puts the mail in my mailbox and certainly they never bring a parcel to the door, perhaps just as an excuse to have a quick chat. Or bring some note or present that has been dropped in my box just to check and see that it’s not something weird. Or to suggest that leaving mail overnight in my box is not a wise idea.

It does seem rather sad that as society advances, and becomes more efficient and cost saving, so the little personal civil contacts and services that make life pleasanter, tend to disappear.

--Val Matthews lives in Albemarle County

Truth and Politics in the Shenandoah Valley by Andy Schmookler

2010-04-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

For eighteen years, I’ve conducted conversations –on the biggest AM radio station in the Shenandoah Valley—about issues that divide Americans. With regret, in recent years I’ve had to change my posture in these conversations.

For the first decade, I saw these public discussions as a means to help heal the increasing polarization of our nation. Both sides had a piece of the truth so I felt we Americans should seek together a higher wisdom that integrates the partial truths of both conservative and liberal viewpoints.

“We should talk with each other in a spirit of mutual respect,” I’d say in my shows. “As if we might actually learn from each other.”

But since then, something’s happened on the “conservative” side of the divide to prevent that kind of conversation.

I still see my interlocutors as fine people, operating in good faith on the basis of their understanding. But that understanding has been twisted by propagandists who are not operating in good faith.

Political forces that have taken over the right have created a system of misinformation in which anything can be said to gain political advantage –no matter how false, or how much fear or hatred it provokes.

Politics is always less than fully honest, but never before in American history has the effort to deceive been so pervasive at our political center stage. These lies poison the “marketplace of ideas” on which our democracy depends.

At the local level, this Culture of the Lie has made me reconsider how to do constructive work in my modest role conversing across the widening split in our body politic.

I can’t talk “as if we might learn from each other” when the other side of the conversation starts with “facts” like that our president was born in Africa and so cannot legitimately hold that office. Or the Democratic Party’s proposal for health care reform contains “death panels.” Or Obama’s coming after our guns, or the Stimulus did nothing for jobs.

The list of such falsehoods grows virtually daily, each one a barrier to meaningful discussion of the real issues that confront us.

I still believe in the need in America for a better integration of the genuine insights of right and left. But so long as good people on the right have their minds poisoned by fear-mongering lies from the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and today’s unprincipled Republican Party, those collaborative explorations must wait.

So in my radio conversations, because I believe in the basic goodness of the Valley’s conservatives, my goal is less that they understand that no one wants to “pull the plug on Granny” than that they realize that those who tell them these kinds of lies should not be trusted. PERIOD.

That realization might break open the right’s closed system to those more honest sources of information their followers have been taught to suspect and reject—sources such as genuine journalism, scholarship, science, and what our Founders called “the decent opinion of mankind.”

Once the reign of the lie is broken —once we achieve the normal degree of shared reality on which good public discourse depends—I will be so glad to resume that sweeter and more congenial kind of conversation I used to seek with the Valley’s conservatives.

--Andrew Bard Schmookler blogs at www.NoneSoBlind.org

Where's the Food Co-op?

2010-03-26T05:06:00.000-07:00

My husband and I moved to Chapel Hill from the Northeast for two reasons. One, to get away from the expenses of living in Skillman, NJ and the other, to establish residency so that my husband could pay in-state grad school tuition.

Chapel Hill was vastly different from where we’d been living and we were a little culture shocked. The pace was slower and the people were friendlier. I was called Ma’am for the first time ever! Chapel Hill, as a university town, has three calm and quiet summer months. Then, almost overnight, the city grows exponentially.

What my husband and I really enjoyed about Chapel Hill, however, and what we really missed when we moved to Harrisonburg 3 years ago, was Chapel Hill’s food co-op. Going there was a regular occurrence for us. We by no means did all our weekly shopping at the coop, but it was great for getting locally grown foods and organic foods that we couldn’t find at the regular supermarket. Food at the coop was always fresh, made that day or, if you were getting a sandwich, even while you waited. Cheeses, fruits, vegetables, milk eggs all from the farm went to our table. We still miss them.

When we moved here it was in the summer and we quickly discovered the Harrisonburg farmers’ market. Oh yes, we were happy. We knew that Virginia was famous for its farms and we figured that we would soon find a store or co-op just like what we had in Chapel Hill.

We were shocked then, and are still saddened now, that no food co-op store exists in Harrisonburg. I mean there’s the farmers market—which is great and there are CSA’s, also great, but no store? No place to go the other 5 days a week that the Farmer’s market is not going on or the other 9 months of the year that you are not a part of a CSA? No store that has fresh from the farm fruits, vegetables, cheeses and eggs? No store where you can go and get something for dinner that you know was picked that morning? No co-op?

Then after maybe a year here we discovered that Harrisonburg was planning on a food co-op store. There weren’t enough members yet to open it, but plans were seriously under way. We joined immediately. Two years later, we’re still waiting for that co-op store to open.
Buying fresh, buying local is healthy for the local economy, healthy for you. Buying fresh, buying local is easy. Buying fresh, buying local is not expensive. In Harrisonburg, I know the Buy Fresh/By local movement can be as vigorous as it was in Chapel Hill. We have it all here —the farms, the co-op starting up, the CSA’s. We just need now to put it all together. We need to spread the word and get that co-op open so we can have fresh food year round!

--Lara Sokoloff lives in Harrisonburg

The Dream of the Dream Act

2010-03-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

I love teaching students to write. To be more exact, I’m passionate about helping students from all backgrounds develop writing skills so they can experience the power of words and learn the joy of finding their voice.

While I hope my students learn from me, they teach me as well. Through their writing I have discovered what they love: family, food, friends, music, looking at stars from a rooftop. And what they dream about: going to college, teaching children, buying a first car, owning their own home—to name a few.

I have also learned what some of my students, those who are in this country without valid immigration status, fear—being taken from their family, from the community they have called home since childhood. Some students write of desperate situations in their country of origin and of equally desperate efforts to reunite their family in the states after a parent came here to find work and send support back home.

These students without valid immigration status, like their native born and documented immigrant peers, work hard in school, all the while adjusting to a new language and culture. They participate in sports and clubs and volunteer in our community. Teachers recognize their potential and talk to them about college. They begin to dream of opportunities they never thought possible—opportunities their parents never had, but sacrificed to give them. Then the reality of their situation—a student without documents—beings to settle in. The spark flickers. The dream begins to die.

I know what can happen when young people lose hope. That is one of the many reasons I support the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, better known as the DREAM Act. As an educator whose goal for thirty years has simply been to love both my students and the subjects I taught, I am an unlikely and uncomfortable activist. However, this pending federal legislation, which has attracted bi-partisan support, offers my students a chance to hope again.

As the DREAM Act is currently drafted, students must meet each of the following requirements to qualify:

• They must have entered the U. S. before the age of 16,
• They must have earned a U. S. high school diploma or GED,
• They must have lived in the U. S. for at least 5 years before the date the legislation is enacted, and
• They must display good moral character.

Students who meet these requirements would be issued temporary residency for a period of six years in which they must either earn a two-year degree or serve for two years in the U.S. Military in order to earn permanent residency.

I support the DREAM Act, and I am sharing information with my neighbors to encourage them to support this legislation. I personally know young people in our community who would benefit from the DREAM Act. They are my students. I know their character. I know their dreams. Their families are my neighbors. They are my friends. Without the passage of the DREAM Act, we will lose the contribution these students can make to our wonderful community of Harrisonburg, Virginia, a community, which has already invested so much in them and the place these students call home. My students have helped me understand that there are times I must leave the comfort of my classroom and work for justice to meet compassion.

-- Sandy Mercer lives in Harrisonburg

An argument that the humanities are not a luxury . . .

2010-03-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

My father couldn’t sing. A cruel fate, because he loved songs. He grew up when the walls of the city shook with the new rhythms of rock ‘n’ roll. Still, what his ear and brain could capture with fidelity, his voice simply couldn’t reproduce.

That’s OK. He has plenty of other talents, avid gardener, armchair Civil War historian. No area of study really seemed to elude him. Renaissance man? More like Renaissance Fair man—living at a boundary with the past and present few curiosities could maintain.

As my father began to battle brain lymphoma at age 67, it was hard to watch this everyday brilliance of his falter. The neurons couldn’t carry messages they once did. Short-term memory was non-existent. Sometimes, even simple categories stumped him. A man who for most of his life could have given the regiments and troop movements of Gettysburg, couldn’t name three presidents.

I work at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. A constant challenge of the public humanities is showing how studies in history, literature, music, and philosophy improve our understanding of the present.
My father’s son, this kind of work seems almost hereditary. But in the light of his newer and harsher neurological realities, were the humanities really a necessity or a luxury?

Well, in the humanities, I had heard for patients with short-term memory problems, music could be a way back into their misplaced narratives, to the deeper or wider channels of the brain.

On Christmas Eve, I was around his hospital bed watching White Christmas, the Bing Crosby classic, repeated all day.

“When I'm worried and I can't sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep
And I fall asleep counting my blessings.”

There, amid the glow of his TV-lit room, brain addled by cancer, my father began to sing along with Der Bingel. In tune we knew would have been too much to ask, but he sang in time.

I told him I’d never heard him sing it before. It was quite popular, he said, a radio hit in its day.

I began to reflect on the work I do with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, where anthropology, folklife, music, and history are like strains of a song that need each other to sound right. Song itself is a way to reflect on, enhance, and expand the time we have.

My father couldn’t sing, but he has a song. It bespeaks connections to history, literature, religion, ethics, the arts, and philosophy. In short, the humanities.

Would my father want to see the news that humanities funding is on the state chopping block, once again? No. But if I go to work every day on behalf of these seeming abstractions, it’s because I know that they are the things that shape who we really are, even when so much else is stripped away. They make our private and communal lives richer. They are what we’ll consider when we grapple with what it has meant to be alive.

“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul” Plato said; I was grateful to find secret places my dad and I have yet to talk about. Don’t believe it’s a luxury. We all need the passage into each others’ lives that a song, a story, a study—the humanities—can provide.

---Poet Kevin McFadden is Chief Operating Officer for the Virginia Foundation for Humanities in Charlottesville

History's Lessons by Matthew Poteat

2010-03-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

Our current political and economic situation compels us to look at history’s example for useful lessons. Some people look to the Sons of Liberty in the 1770s; others, to the reforms of Franklin Roosevelt during the 1930s. Personally, I like to look back to ancient Rome—to the collapse of the republic in 44 BC—as a marker of things to come.

Like Americans, the Romans rid themselves of a monarchy and created a republican government. In 509 BC, the Roman people threw off the yoke of tyrannical King Tarquin and created a balanced constitution with power vested in the people. The Roman Senate and two executive consuls governed Rome with the cooperation of popular assemblies. These citizen assemblies appointed magistrates and administered justice. Individual qualities of civic virtue, honor, duty, and dignitas or prestige were celebrated. Our own Federal Constitution and the idealized qualities of our founders are modeled on the Roman example.

Then, from 264 to 146 BC, Rome battled its arch-rival Carthage for national supremacy during the Punic Wars. Rome defeated the fierce Carthaginians and found itself with new territories and peoples to govern. Wealth poured into Rome. New money and “new men” or novus homo soon corrupted the republic’s earthy virtues of simplicity and civic duty. The middle class declined economically and politically. Unemployment rose. Corruption was rampant. Elections were openly bought and sold. Politicians were beholden to wealthy interest groups. The Senate was unable to solve the most trivial of problems. Good government ground to a halt. They even had a terrorist problem with Mediterranean pirates.

Two factions rose up to address these issues: the Populares and the Opitmates. The Optimates were the traditional conservatives who wanted to limit the power of the assemblies and extend the power of the Senate. The democratic Populares wanted more power vested in the assemblies. The Populares addressed the problems of the poor and wanted to extend benefits to the peoples of the newly acquired territories. The conservative Optimates sought to restore the old ways of their forefathers. The more progressive Populares looked to the novus homo to take Rome into a new age of economic prosperity and order.

The inability of these two factions to find a political solution to Rome’s problems eventually led to a destructive civil war and the institution of a dictatorship in 27 BC under Octavian Augustus. Augustus scrapped the republic in favor of rule by an all-powerful imperator or emperor who governed at the head of an emasculated Senate and popular assembly.

Yes, history does indeed give us plenty to think about, and the lessons we take from it can have profound implications in our own day. The Roman example teaches us that extreme partisanship and extreme social inequalities are detrimental to a republic. Indeed, consequences await a people who govern by rigid principles and not principled compromise. It’s unlikely that Americans will plunge themselves into another civil war as the Romans did, but should we continue to ignore the lessons of history and fail to adequately address the problems we face today, who knows what the future might bring.

--Author Matthew Poteat teaches European and American history in the Virginia Community
College System

The Tea Party -- and I by Denise Zito

2010-02-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

Let’s talk about those Tea Partiers. When I see their boisterous antics, I’m reminded of my younger days when some of my friends were causing the older generation heartburn by their rowdy and disruptive protesting. During the Vietnam War, these protesters used a variety of outrageous stunts to get peoples’ attention and focus it on what the protesters saw as issues vital to the country. The Tea Party is doing the same in shouting at our representatives during the Health Debate Town Hall meetings and mounting other lively protests against the bank bailouts.

Today the Tea Party views itself the way the Sixties Protesters did way back when---they’re angry and they want us and our representatives to know it. They are generating a lot of press and making plenty of people nervous.

I’d say this is democracy in action.

The question will be whether the Tea Party can sustain their protests over healthcare, taxes and bailouts and gather enough members to force a change in the political climate. The Vietnam protesters had a clear goal—stop the war. For now, it’s not clear exactly what the Tea Party wants in terms of healthcare reform, or at least they haven’t yet articulated what they are in favor of when it comes to fixing our system.

The Sixties Protestors wanted the War stopped and the troops brought home. They found the argument that we were saving ourselves and the rest of the planet from a communist takeover via a bunch of falling dominoes to be, well, just not true. Ultimately, the country agreed and turned against the war. And in retrospect, nearly every thoughtful observer from both political parties, has said that the protesters were correct.

But right now, every major economist, liberal and conservative, says that as distasteful as the bank bailout was, the alternative would most likely have been 25% unemployment and a general economic collapse rather than the 10% unemployment and slow recovery we have now.

I remember my fifth grade lessons on the Depression—you can’t let the banks fail. I’d like to hear from the Tea Party how they think that alternative—bank failure-- would be useful. Maybe it would have taught those disgraceful bankers a lesson, but it would have brought the rest of the economy down with them. I believe that it was the repeal of banking regulation that led to this fiasco and that the better course is to put those banking regulations back in force, so that this doesn’t happen again.

But back to the Tea Party. I doubt that shear anger, without proposing viable alternatives will turn their movement into a substantial political force, but I’m always glad to see people who have never participated in government, get out there and do so.

--Denise Zito lives in Free Union.

Locked Up on Liberty Street by Harvey Yoder

2010-02-19T05:10:00.001-08:00

In our land of the free an astonishing 2.3 million of our citizens are behind bars, more than in any other country in the world, including China.

Our local Harrisonbug jail houses a crowded 300 men and women inmates, and is efficiently managed by a dedicated and overworked staff. But should we be asking why, and whether, we should have four times as many Virginians in prison today than just 25 years ago?

As a teacher of parenting classes I stress the importance of time outs as a good consequence for misbehaving children. Incarceration could be thought of as a humane kind of “time out” for misbehaving adults, certainly preferable to public stocks, floggings and other past forms of torture and humiliation.

But as with any good consequences, a first word to keep in mind is Reasonable. The most effective punishment is not necessarily the longest or harshest. For example, if a three month sentence is good for a given offender, a year in the same steel cage is not likely to be four times better. The law of diminishing returns sets in at a point where the resentment an offender feels outweighs the learning value of the consequence.

I am not in favor of pampering prisoners, but one might also question the reasonableness of charging local inmates $1 an ounce for coffee, 75¢ for a styrofoam coffee cup, and 10¢ for a plastic stirring spoon. Maybe offenders should be glad for any coffee, period, no matter how expensive. But it’s usually innocent family members who have to pick up the tab. Our jail is among the few in the state that charges $1 a day for room and board fee as permitted by Virginia law. Until that is paid, inmates can’t purchase a single canteen item, not even a pricey 11¢ packet of ketchup for a hamburger. The result is families either having to pay a $365 annual levy, plus cash for the steeply priced canteen items, or having their inmates doing without things as basic as deodorant. Is that reasonable?

A second word associated with good consequences is Respectful. To humiliate either a disobedient child or a lawbreaking adult is not a good way to get positive results. At our local jail, simple respect might mean inmates not having to be in handcuffs and wearing blaze orange prison suits when brought into the visitor booth--one with no escape exit and where inmates and guests are separated by a wall of solid concrete, steel and glass. Even state penitentiaries don’t impose this kind of indignity.

A third R of good consequences is Restorative. A Department of Corrections should seek to rehabilitate and correct rather than simply punish, and should see to it that offenders make full restitution for their wrongs. This means more nonviolent prisoners being under house arrest, in jail work-release programs, or on well supervised parole or probation, and regularly undergoing drug testing while being required to work to support themselves and their families and otherwise pay off their debt to society.

At noon this Monday, February 22, a panel consisting of a retired judge, the local sheriff, our commonwealth’s attorney, a defense attorney and an authority on restorative justice will discuss the topic, “Better Strategies Against Crime” at Clementine Cafe in Harrisonburg. We invite you to come and contribute your ideas on how to make our system of correction more reasonable, respectful and restorative, plus saving us taxpayers a bundle in the process.

- Harvey Yoder is a licensed counselor and member of the Harrisonburg chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Covered in snow . . .

2010-02-12T05:04:00.000-08:00

So sorry, no new Civic Soapbox this week. Too much snow between essayist and editor. MW

Mardi Gras by Brad Lovelace

2010-02-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

When I returned from Mardi Gras I proudly showed off my 20+ lbs of multi-colored beads, my Zulu coconut and my Orpheus doubloon heroically snatched from mid-air, as if they were treasures from the Orient; Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. I was met with blank stares, or I could see people thought I was a mad man. And yet that box of cheap beads means a lot to me.

I never made it to Mardi Gras as a youth and as a supposedly responsible parent it had no appeal. So it was with some trepidation that my wife and I informed some friends and coworkers that we were taking our children to Mardi Gras on the spur of the moment. We left Saturday and drove all night. I waited on the street for the Sunday night parade as my family rested in our hotel room.

The first float came into view. The actor Val Kilmer as King Bacchus was waving to the adoring crowd. Behind that float was another band, then another float. This was the Bacchus Parade: 31 floats, over 1200 Krewe members and 31 bands. I stood on Canal Street, where the parade route makes a turn, and looked down St. Charles Ave. A float with a huge head of Bacchus on its front came down the streets. Illuminated by the streetlights, a constant stream of beads flew from its sides into the upraised arms of the screaming crowd. The Bacchus head made the turn onto Canal Street. Along its side dozens of Krewe members threw beads.

The enthusiasm was infectious. I raised my arms. I shouted for beads.

Thus began days of riotous fun and the pure pleasure of participating in a gifting ritual with ancient roots going far back into the primordial consciousness.

They say the origins of Carnival are with the Roman festival of Lupercalis. Lupercalis was so ancient though, that not even the Romans were sure of its origin. Beads also have an ancient significance. We find them in religions, from the Catholic Rosary to the Hindu Mala. They have been found in archeological sites dating back over 30,000 years. Even the Neanderthals made and wore beads. So the delighting in and wearing of beads is perhaps one of the oldest human luxuries.

I called my son at the hotel. He was ready to go. I went back to get him. We shouted and caught beads and throws for hours. I think the parade lasted three. This went on for days. The Krewes of Proteus, Orpheus, Comus, Zulu and Rex. All unique parades with different themes.

It all culminates in the truck parade, a seemingly endless line of tractor trailers loaded with informals Krewes and recycled throws from previous years. This parade was an absolute deluge of stuffed animals and beads. We stood there for 100 trucks, arms up, shouting and catching with thousands of other people shouting and catching as the horns blared.

As I tell my story to people, they become more interested in my treasures. I have become a kind of Mardi Gras Missionary. There’s something healing in shouting for beads and wearing beads. The ancients were wiser than we know. The Neanderthals were wiser than we know. The people of New Orleans are wiser than we know.

Make one’s life revolve around festivals, not festivals around one’s life. One has to experience it to really understand it. Plan on going. You won’t regret the experience.

The Supreme Court's Unprecedented Precedent Buster by Larry Stopper

2010-01-29T04:44:00.000-08:00

The decision by the Supreme Court to allow corporations and unions to directly advertise for or against specific candidates in political races anywhere and at any time is the most dangerous blow to American democracy since Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War. It not only overturns more than one hundred years of Supreme Court precedent, but makes a mockery of the concept that each of us has a voice in our government.

As I and many other commentators see it, no longer will corporations have to hire lobbyists and press for earmarks in behind the scenes negotiations. Now they can just buy senators or representatives. Can anyone imagine a member of Congress from West Virginia opposing mountain top removal mining techniques? Will we now have senator Cargill from Iowa or senator Boeing from Washington State? Corporations are now free to spend as much as they choose on political campaigns and spend they will. It’s just an outrage.

It’s also completely disingenuous to compare labor unions with giant multi-national corporations in terms of resources. Does anyone believe that the airline mechanics union has the same resources as the airline industry? With this decision I’m willing to wager heavily, there simply will never be another law passed granting workers greater rights or protections.

There are many other areas of law today that stand a good chance of being gutted by this decision. Will we see increases to the minimum wage if the senators purchased by the fast food industry and the big box stores say no? Will environmental laws protecting against dangerous chemical contaminants be even possible if the senators from the energy, mining and chemical companies stand against them?

How is it that corporations have come to be viewed as human? I’m currently a partner in two different corporations. These are business entities. They don’t breath, speak, vote or participate in public life. Congress, the peoples representatives, has spent the better part of the last century regulating corporate financial participation in election campaigns. Now five justices of the Supreme Court have blown off a century of their own legal presidents and Federal law and declared corporations free to operate with almost no restrictions?

And where are the fake populists we’ve become so used to seeing on our TV screens. The ones who’ve spent the last year fighting to keep government off the backs of the people in the health care debate. How come there’s no outcry from them? This is not a liberal or conservative issue – this a democracy issue. Most of the corporations I fear are multi-national. I have no reason to assume they feel any loyalty to the United States.

Some of the world’s largest and wealthiest banks were at the center of the recent global financial crisis. These banks will now be free to spend billions, yes billions if they choose ,to help elect congressional representatives willing to prevent any strong regulation. Which means we are in danger of leaving these banks to go right back to conducting business as was usual before we plunged into the great recession.

In my opinion, this decision by the Supreme Court is the worst since the Dred Scott decision, and it poses a grave danger to what we have come to understand as democracy in the US.

Larry Stopper is a partner in two corporations in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Thinking of Haiti by Chris Edwards

2010-01-21T14:29:00.000-08:00

I don’t know what to do as we sit numbly in front of MSNBC, watching bloodied people. Fields of corpses.

I’ve only seen Haiti once, last winter from a cruise ship near sunset, when the island appeared on the horizon like a big, misty, odd-shaped blue and white cloud mass.

Field-hospital doctors ask a mother’s permission to save her young daughter’s life by amputating her gangrenous leg. The woman wails. She does not think her child, as an amputee in poverty, could have much of a life.

It’s never clear why, once the planes land, it takes so long for the food, water and supplies to reach people.
Aid workers say they are used to the so-called “hurry up and wait mechanism,” but a woman posts on Facebook that she doesn’t trust any organization enough to donate.

I feel bad whenever we waste water.

Of course there’s looting, and controversy about coverage of looting. If homeowners in the nicest, gated community one day found themselves without access to food or water, do we think they’d be too civilized to break into a store?

Would they share? I hear on NPR about a ragged quake survivor who had just lost everything; getting on a rickety bus; how other passengers, who didn’t have much more, quickly gave him a fresh shirt, a little money, and food.

Communication system failures don’t prevent Haitians hearing a certain preacher in Virginia say they made a pact with the Devil. A priest reassures newly homeless people, “God didn’t cause this.”

None of the mainstream media says much about Haiti’s history except when Keith Olbermann, reacting to the devil-channeling preacher, tells how the Haitians, after freeing themselves from slavery, had to spend nearly 150 years compensating the French for that so-called “lost property”—themselves. On Wikipedia, I skim through the stories of the gruesome tortures and massacres of slaves; long successions of dictators, coups and schemes; and controversial roles of American government and business in Haiti’s history.

In Newsweek, former commerce undersecretary David Rothkopf lists disasters that have hit poor people in coastal areas hardest. He says they could be forecast and alleviated by seawalls, building codes, response plans, etc. – at less cost than our wars or bank bailouts.

This could happen.

The real question is, do we have the will for it?

We have one friend who’s Haitian. In Vermont, she and her husband learned after days on the phone that her relatives are ok but some friends are lost.

He emails us a photo of her cousin’s demolished store.

“Be glad you are alive. . .” he writes.

-- Chris Edwards is a writer living in Harrisonburg

Growing Up Female by Laura Sobik-Kavanagh

2010-01-15T10:18:00.000-08:00

I was on internship finishing my doctoral degree in clinical psychology. During one of my many breaks from writing, I wandered into the bathroom to obsess about my hair and to ask myself a couple of what seemed at the moment to be really important “big” questions - do I need highlights? Should I go red again? How about a cute little haircut? I looked closely. I turned away and looked again. My stomach actually turned as I realized...I had found a gray hair. And it was not even totally gray - only the inch closest to my scalp was gray, as if my body had just decided to start the aging process.

I went through a bevy of reactions all at once. I felt betrayed - as if somehow I’d thought I would get to skip the aging process? I felt excited – was I finally a woman, for real this time? The truth is, I was not sure that I really “graduated” to womanhood when I thought I should – when I graduated from college, or I when lived alone in my own apartment or when I paid off my car, or when I finished my Ph.D. or even when I got married - no, no this was really it. As I stood there, I experienced a crazy sense of acceptance within the context of a childish foot-stomping tantrum.

As a feminist, I fight like crazy against our ageist, sexist society that tells us that pretty young girls have all of the fun and power. I am a woman who doesn't believe in god but apparently has an existential crisis every time I am faced with a physical sign of my own mortality. I am a young professional who’s still looking for a mentor, yet I am already in the position of mentoring others.

As a therapist, my job is to be part of peoples’ journeys – I see every facet of life reflected in what my clients tell me. On a daily basis, I work with people to explore, heal, and accept insecurities, fears, losses – sometimes immense, unthinkable losses. I watch growth, healing, and the endurance of pain that gives me immeasurable hope about humanity and meaning. So shouldn’t I be able to handle having a gray hair a bit more gracefully?

Standing there, looking at my beginning-to-age self in that bathroom mirror, I realize that I’m facing yet another transition, yet another personal change. I both question the person I am growing into and feel empowered by becoming her. Maybe womanhood isn’t about finishing with change; it’s about embracing it.

So, I am now a woman who has gray hair – or at least a gray hair. I have officially started to look the part of a person who knows something about the world. About life. About confidence. About womanhood. And you know, once I stop, take a deep breath, and think for a moment, maybe the truth is, I’m starting to be one as well.

--Laura Sobik-Kavanagh is a clinical psychologist at James Madison University

Cowboys by Ellen R. Ivy

2010-01-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

One evening, watching my mother at her vanity, I confided my thoughts about cowboys. “I like the Lone Ranger, but the rest of the cowboys are kind of sissy. Dale Evans is okay, but she smiles too much. I don’t think cowgirls should smile. And when are the shows s’posed to take place?”

My mother pursed her lips and smiled at herself in the three-paneled mirror. “I am sure I don’t care. And this cowboy thing of yours is getting out of hand, Little Bit. You’re old enough to know the difference between television and the real thing.” She picked up a hand mirror and aimed it behind her head. Four reflections looked back at her. The real thing sat amidst the reflections, deflecting my questions.

“I know they’re stories. But when are the stories happening?” I persisted. “The Lone Ranger rides on Silver. That’s it. Roy and Dale ride to get supplies in a jeep, but then chase the bad guys on horses. Next thing you know they’re all smiling nice and clean and singing. And, back to the Lone Ranger, why does he wear a mask all the time? I really like the Lone Ranger, but I don’t understand.”

My mother laid down her mirror, and looked straight down at me. “Isn’t that just like you, all excited over nothing. Asking questions about things that don’t matter. Look at you. You wear dungarees all the time. Why don’t you let me fix your hair for you? In a few years you’ll be wearing makeup yourself—and high heels.” Her voice had taken on a kind of cooing. I felt like a baby bird in a nest looking up at its mother getting ready to stick something down its gullet.

“Gee whiz, Mother,” I stuck my arms down straight by my sides, splinting my skinny self up against the thought of bobby-pinned hair and a painted face. “ I’m trying to understand what I care about now. How am I going to, if you won’t answer me?”

“I am answering. You are not listening.” I could almost see her words marching out from between her Coty-red lips. “You need to learn about what will be your real life—like standing up straight, combing your hair, wearing dresses.”
I began to wish I’d never gotten into this. Gadzooks. Who wants to wear shoes you can’t run in, or worry about eyelashes and face powder? Who wants to look like somebody else?

I said, “Never mind, Mother. I just wondered, that’s all.”

Her eyes flashed. “Well wonder this! Why it is you like men who wear masks and not the wholesome, married, real ones?” She picked up the hand mirror once again, checking her drawn-on eyebrows. “Really, Little Bit. Men with masks?“

I wandered out of mother’s room, thinking about the Lone Ranger. His mask really did bother me. A lot. You couldn’t really tell who he was with it on.

As I bolted outdoors for my favorite mimosa tree, it occurred to me that in a few years I really could be wearing makeup. Gee whiz. Seemed to me that then no one would know who I really was anymore, either. Just like the Lone Ranger—and my mother.

My Family and Potatoes by Theresa Curry

2009-12-31T06:58:00.000-08:00

Scrubbing potatoes for a holiday meal, I felt the frigid water on my hands and thought of my childhood home.
Long before I ever heard the words “fingerling” or “Yukon gold,” I helped my mother mash potatoes for holidays and Sundays. She believed pan drippings deserved a creamy mound from which to scoop a gravy lake. Part of the fun was eating around the mound without breaching the dam, so all the gravy was saved for the last salty, juicy bite.

But for everyday meals, we usually baked potatoes. Every night we scrubbed eight potatoes from a 50-pound bag, stabbed them a few times and rolled them right onto a hot oven rack. Often, we had guests for dinner, not formal guests, expected and planned for, just whoever was playing in the basement with my brother or doing homework with my sisters.

Somehow, I can’t remember how we expanded the meat and vegetables – perhaps we just ate smaller portions – but I do know that everyone was welcome, and everyone got their own potato. We counted who was in the house an hour or so before dinner, and scrubbed one for each.

Dinner was expected promptly at 6:30. Counting backwards, this meant 5:30 was the very latest we could start baking the potatoes even if we turned the oven to 450 degrees. Sometimes, in those pre-microwave days, we had to speed up the cooking process to meet our deadline.

Our house had been a boarding house during World War II, and there were buzzers from the kitchen to all the floors. If my mother pressed the buzzers repeatedly near dinner time, we knew she needed all four of her daughters in the kitchen right away. As soon as we ran into the kitchen, we turned the burners to high, and the electric stove glowed red before we even figured out what to put in the pots.

I’d start the water boiling in our largest pot, peel the potatoes, and cut them in tiny pieces to simmer quickly. We had other tricks, too: my sister shaved the ground beef with a sharp knife so the tiny pieces would thaw faster. It was kind of a game for us, getting the meal on the table by 6:30. Behind the swinging doors to the dining room, my father and grandfather rattled their newspapers and pointedly checked their watches. Our friends and boyfriends became accustomed to our mad dash to the kitchen at dinner time.

Holiday meals often meant 20 or more people, and when mashed potatoes were on the menu, we put one for each guest into two giant pots. My mother’s mashed potatoes were simple and perfect, just potatoes, butter, salt and pepper.

In the years since, I’ve added roast garlic and olive oil. I’ve left the skins on, folded in goat cheese, turnips and cauliflower. I’ve tested recipes that pile on trendy ingredients until the potato is scarcely recognizable. Still, the beginning is the same: pick a potato, scrub it clean, cut out any dents or dirty spots. As I breathe in the earthy smell from the growing pile of peels, I give thanks, not only for the dazzling feasts of the winter holidays, but also for the everyday generosity of sharing a simple family meal, and my nights in the kitchen with my mother and sisters.

Theresa Curry is the Food Editor of Flavor Magazine. She lives and writes in Waynesboro.

How Lucky We Are! by Pranav Chavan

2009-12-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

As news coverage gets better, the world gets smaller. We have always been, but now must act as, one large family – no matter how big, no matter how rich, no matter how uneducated, no matter how poor.

Visiting India last summer, I saw what it was like to live in the slums. Children live in houses made out of leaves and mud. They bathe and wash clothes in rivers, cook by roadsides on small fires made from twigs and leaves, study for school under streetlights because they have no electricity at home—if, that is, they are lucky enough to go to school.

I began to think of these people as family. Have you ever thought of how the child in ripped rags felt, longingly watching children in school uniforms returning from school, while he is picking up trash? He has no clue how to read or write and sees his future as no better than the trash he is picking up. He doesn't have the opportunity to go to school because he must spend his day picking up trash to sell so his family will have food to eat: simple food - rice with yellow soup.

How can we live a life full of luxury when children just like us cannot even have a decent meal? We ask our parents to buy us cellphones, video games, the latest toys. The list goes on and on. We want and want. Do we ever consider what we really need, instead of what we want? When will we stop this cycle of greed?

We seem to be very self-centered and selfish, unable to think beyond ourselves. We don’t know how to truly share or give. This is very harsh, but I would say we all are worse off than beggars. Beggars want basic necessities, but our wants know no limits - we keep on wanting. When we focus on materialistic items, we get lost in acquiring them, forgetting our bigger family and our life as God would have us lead it.

At school, we are supposed to be getting a good education. Why? So we can acquire things? An education should teach us to think beyond ourselves: help us to see things through the eyes of another person. An education should not promote just buying more stuff. It should help make us family. Stuff cannot make you happy for long.

Have we become too lazy to make an effort to learn and to help the less fortunate? Have we become so self-absorbed that we are blind the needs of those who don't have anything?

I hope we can all became people who serve others. This world is a big family; it is an extension of you and me. So what if others look different? They are just people like you and me with the same basic needs. We have just been much more fortunate. Isn’t it only fair that we share with those less fortunate? Sharing and caring makes us good human beings. Let us all try to be one!

This holiday season, as you enjoy your own gifts, keep your world family in mind, and spread the holiday cheer.

God bless you!

--Pranav Chavan is a 6th grader at St. Anne's Belfield School in Charlottesville.

A Guest at the National Book Awards by Marc Conner

2009-12-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

Life in Lexington, Virginia can give one a narrow understanding of what it means to be American. While I think our region is more diverse and complex than it might appear, nevertheless it’s a big world out there, and it can be a good thing to journey out and encounter the broader cultures that, perhaps, we cannot so easily see from our valley enclave. When I journeyed to New York City a few weeks ago to attend the National Book Awards Ceremony, I was reminded of the ways in which the America of the 21st century is a complex world of stark contrasts.

The journey from the Shenandoah Valley to New York is always a bit of a surprise. I flew out of Richmond, which means an easy drive to the airport, a short flight, and before you know it you’re in a taxi screaming across the Triboro bridge into the Bronx and then Manhattan. My hotel was in the heart of the theater district, and Times Square has more lights these days than Dominion Power could count. But the culture shock was pleasant, the moreso because I knew I was in this strange land for just a short visit.

The ceremony was a black tie event, and I hadn’t worn a tuxedo since my wedding 19 years ago. Thoreau’s words were whispering into my ear: “beware of any enterprise that requires new clothes.” But, I thought, it’s for a literary cause, so maybe Thoreau would be OK with that.

The award ceremony was most exciting when the winner for the year’s best American novel was announced. The list of past winners is a who’s who of American literature—Hemingway, Faulkner, Warren, Oates, and—my own personal favorite—Ralph Ellison, for Invisible Man in 1952. That novel sounds the very definition of “American-ness” when it declares at its end: “whence all this passion for conformity anyway?--diversity is the word.” The winner this year was Colum McCann, for his novel Let the Great World Spin. McCann was obviously the people’s choice, as shouts and applause greeted the announcement. And his novel is fabulous—rich, inventive, moving, going into many characters’ minds, a terrific New York city novel—as is Invisible Man. And what’s really interesting is that McCann is an Irishman, born in Dublin, and living in New York for the last decade. His novel was published in America, which makes it eligible for the award, but he himself straddles different cultures and nations.

And it strikes me that this is a very appropriate recipient of our National Book Award. In the age of Obama, when national, ethnic, and racial identities are re-inventing themselves and all our boundaries have become more fluid, it is right and fitting that we celebrate a great American novel by a writer whose very American-ness is a new invention. Indeed, McCann is most American in not being American. He joins the ranks of other great writers—one certainly thinks of Ellison—who also wrote Great American Novels about the very challenge of being American. On this night, an Irishman showed the world that being American has become a very intriguing identity, after all—one that encompasses equally the great city of his novel, and the small valley town that I call home.

Marc C. Conner is Professor of English and Director of the Program in African-American Studies at Washington and Lee University.

Fixing the Economy by Tip Parker

2009-12-10T14:50:00.000-08:00

It’s easy to complain that the government is spending too much to bail out the economy, piling up too much debt for our children, and getting too involved in our lives. But we need to understand two reasons why this recession is different from anything that most of us have experienced.

The first reason is the record amount of debt that households, businesses, financial institutions, and state and local governments, have piled up. At the end of last year, they owed 46 trillion dollars in round numbers. The federal debt of 6 and a half trillion dollars was big, but it was just an eighth of the country’s combined total. Households owed twice as much as the federal government, mostly with mortgages, credit cards, and automobile loans.

The federal debt can be passed on indefinitely, but much of the rest must be repaid. So instead of buying more things, many people are hunkering down and trying to pay for the things they have already bought. When people pay off their debts instead of buying, other people who would have made and sold the things that people aren’t buying, lose their jobs. This becomes a loop when those who lose their jobs can’t repay their own debts, and the loop has grown too big for people and businesses to break on their own.

In most recessions, the government breaks the loop by spending and by making it easier to borrow. But that is not working very well this time because households, businesses, and financial institutions already owe too much.

Job loss is the second reason why this recession is different. For years, we followed the idea that globalization is good for everybody, and that we could somehow replace the middle class jobs, particularly in manufacturing, that have gone overseas. But it didn’t work that way. The country exported large chunks of the production side of the economy and many exported jobs were never replaced.

The recession is also eliminating many jobs that won’t come back, like making and selling big houses, SUVs, and luxury goods that people can no longer borrow to buy. Businesses won’t invest to create jobs unless they see a path to profits. Today, that path is hard to see. And sadly, my analyses show there is a high risk that many baby boomers will need jobs because their retirement plans won’t provide enough income.

So America must create millions of new jobs for unemployed workers, boomers who can’t retire, and young people starting out. The jobs will have to be in this country and hard to export. That will require major new industries like alternative energy, water and energy conservation, upgraded transportation, sustainable buildings and communities, and yes, a more effective health care system.

People in many other countries have similar problems, but they are ahead of us in solving them because they are working with instead of against their governments. For example, El Salvador and Iceland get a quarter of their electricity from geothermal plants, Germany has the most photovoltaic power plants, and China is the leading producer photovoltaic equipment. If we don’t pull together as a team, and use our government to create a sustainable future for our children and grandchildren as our forbearers did, the American middle class will continue to decline.

Tip Parker lives near Harrisonburg.

A "Woman's Right To Choose and the Stupak Amendment" by Eva Robertson

2009-12-03T13:54:00.001-08:00

It is interesting that while the overwhelming majority of Americans support health care reform and a "public option," now less than half of this country supports abortion rights. And many people, even pro-choice advocates, believe that the 11th hour Stupak Amendment contained in the most recent house bill on health care -- restricting the right of any person or insurer to use federal subsidies to purchase or offer a health care plan that includes abortion coverage -- is an acceptable compromise in getting health care reform passed.

In a way, I can see the reasoning behind accepting this provision. The bill contains sweeping reforms -- a public option, drastic changes in regulation governing the insurance industry, and increased access to coverage. If lawmakers believed the Stupak Amendment might be enough to satisfy the right wingers and buy their co-operation on the goal of sweeping reform, well -- it's a bitter pill to swallow -- but mightn't it be worth it?

This amendment goes much further than the previous federal legislation banning use of federal money to cover abortions. Under the 1976 Hyde Amendment, private and state insurers could offer health care plans with abortion coverage as long as no federal funding was used to pay for the service. Under the Stupak amendment, however, no insurer – private or government -- may offer a plan that includes abortion coverage if any federal money is used to fund the plan or if any participating member of the plan receives a federal subsidy, and under the bill, approximately 86 % of women would be eligible for a subsidy. In effect, the new legislation would eradicate existing abortion coverage and require women to purchase a "supplemental policy" on the private market, something that is not currently available, and which it is unlikely insurers would see any financial benefit in offering.

I take control over my body for granted. But I am constantly reminded that I live in a society that, by and large, views my right of self-determination as limited. On a purely theoretical level and provided rape is not involved, I can envision having respect for a society and a legal system that, while allowing women the choice of how to deal with a pregnancy, yet also, as a matter of policy, imposed sole responsibility on her for the costs of an elective abortion. As women’s rights proponents, can we legitimately complain that men dominate our bodies in the social, political and private spheres, and then also ask them to support and subsidize elective abortions? Maybe we can, but to the extent a woman’s decision to abort is uniquely personal to her, a requirement that society foot the bill for her choice would seem to undercut her moral independence.

In practical terms, however, there are tens of thousands of unwanted children born every year to impoverished young women who are neither prepared nor willing to care for those children. This is ultimately society's problem and responsibility. The social and economic costs of ignoring this reality are getting ever uglier. The Stupak amendment may not affect abortion access for women of means, but it promises to deepen the class chasm that is at the root of the women’s health care crisis.

Eva Robertson lives in Harrisonburg. She writes the blog Dogwood Diarist.blogspot.com.

The Prudent Use of Medical Screening Tests by Denise Zito

2009-11-27T07:28:00.000-08:00

Everyone has probably heard the story of the 1950’s x-ray machines used by stores to measure your shoe size. I wasn’t there but I heard you could stand on these and see your foot bones as well as learn your shoe size. They were especially used to measure children’s feet and were considered technology at its best. Eventually, someone pointed out that maybe it wasn’t healthy to use an x-ray machine to measure your foot-- there were safer ways to figure out what size Striderite your toddler needed.

The latest outcry over healthcare reform involves the revised guidelines for mammography. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, made up of independent experts in primary care and prevention, systematically reviews the evidence of effectiveness and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services. This group is a branch of the Agency for Healthcare Quality, a highly respected advisory group. If you look at their website, you’ll see a long list of recommendations in favor of some screening procedures and recommending against others. For example, the agency recommends against routine chest x-rays to detect lung cancer because there is no evidence that we would save more lives by doing this. However, they do recommend screening for prostate cancer in elderly men.
This Task force has reviewed breast cancer data and is now recommending that women in their 40s not undergo routine mammograms, and instead individually discuss with their doctors whether to have the exams. It recommends that routine mammograms begin at age 50.
Critics are saying that the revision of the guidelines is a form of rationing.
In fact the reason for the change is well-founded in fact and science. Though the task force is emphasizing the number of false positive mammograms, what many people seem to forget is that a mammogram is an x-ray and an x-ray carries its own set of risks and should be used prudently. Every x-ray or mammogram received carries a small risk of inducing cancer. And no one knows which woman is sensitive to the radiation and can actually be damaged by the x-ray, instead of benefiting from it by detecting an early cancer.

The U.S. has for years been encouraging women to begin yearly mammogram screening at age 40, while Europe begins at age 50 and screens every other year. The Task Force has looked at the data and determined that it’s not worth the associated risk and unproductive follow-up procedures, and the unnecessary exposure to radiation for the benefit of a few more early breast cancer detections. And, we’re not certain that early detection of all cancers leads to a better outcome.

If you’re a woman whose cancer was detected by early mammogram, you’ve got a right to be upset by this recommendation. But the rest of us should stop and ask ourselves—‘what if I’m a woman who is sensitive to radiation and might actually be increasing my risk of cancer by having a yearly extra x-ray.’ We worry a lot about the former and forget about the latter situation.

Now I’m not suggesting that a mammogram is as dangerous as the shoe-fitting x-ray machine, I’m only saying that prudence and hard science should dictate health policy and that revising guidelines to give women less radiation exposure over their lifetime, is probably a very good thing.

Maggie and the Blue Butterfly by Kathryn Pigg

2009-11-19T13:31:00.000-08:00

It was a major hurricane. As it swept inland it broke trees, eroded the land under homes, caused long power outages, and major episodes of cabin fever. I checked in with my friend Maggie to see if she wanted to go for a meal at a restaurant some 30 miles inland, one with power restored. She was eager to go. We had a good visit, catching up on her latest artist projects and on mine.

It wasn’t until her fifties that Maggie had followed her dreams and gifts. Her children grown and out on their own, she’d gotten her art degree and begun finding her way in that competitive world. Her work had sold well. She’d been able to find jobs that were part time and so still allowed her time to paint. These were not jobs with benefits.

Over lunch, that day after the storm we laughed at life and the wind and valued our survival, and we returned to her house with renewed energy. As we drove up behind her car in the driveway, we both abruptly stopped talking. On the back bumper of her aging car, on the bare metal, was a beautiful blue butterfly, very still, although it did not appear to be injured. We wondered out loud why and how it held on to the metal. Then we understood that somehow it had been stunned by the storm like so many of us. Carefully we got out of the car, and one of us gently moved the butterfly to one of Maggie's thriving plants. Slowly rhythmically that blue butterfly began to move its wings and drink from the moisture on the plant. In five minutes or so it flew away.

Maggie flew away too. Looking back now over the years that have passed, I realize that when she was in her early 60s, I began to worry each time I saw her that she seemed to have less energy. I did not say, "have you seen a doctor." I knew she had no access to a doctor. She did not qualify for Medicaid.

What neither of us knew was that Maggie had developed heart disease. Her daughters became concerned and they were able to find some help they could afford. There was eventually a diagnosis, but what good is a diagnosis if there is no access to adequate medication or hospital intervention One of her daughters still regrets that she did not try harder to find help. Yet, how many of us have the needed resources to care for a desperately ill loved one who is living without medical insurance.

Maggie died at home shortly after seeing a doctor, early one morning, her beloved cat curled up beside her. A cousin who had come for a visit and to check on how she was feeling, discovered her already gone. The autopsy confirmed the doctor's diagnosis.

Some are not blessed by the care Maggie and I gave that day to a blue butterfly stunned by a storm. The destructive storm of our health insurance system took Maggie's life. Too quickly. We miss her.

--Kathryn Pigg is a retired Methodist minister. She lives in Bridgewater.

Thoughts on America's Moral Underpinnings and Health Care Reform by Owen Norment

2009-11-12T14:10:00.000-08:00

I’m a member and currently co-chair, along with a retired pediatrician, of a Charlottesville-area group called Clergy and Laity United for Justice and Peace. We try to do some things—sponsor occasional events, write some letters, make some public statements in support of public policy initiatives that we take to be vital to the common good. Recently we’ve been much engaged with the issue of health care reform.

Good health is a basic necessity that ought to be sustained by enlightened public policy. Yet availability of adequate health care is badly in disarray in the United States, with millions of our citizens having only minimal access to needed medical treatment. Complex though the details of reform may be—and they are complex, and acknowledging that there are many practical and political hurdles to overcome, it is essential that we consider such reform in the broader context of the foundational values of our society

Just and equal access to health care is an essential human right. We have therefore a moral obligation to correct injustices in our current system. The core values of our society, values that define who we are, underwrite this obligation. Values inherent in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures stand at the headwaters of the American moral tradition. These ancient texts envision values rooted in a good order of creation and in the social bonding of an inclusive community, wherein love for neighbor is a corollary of love for God, and wherein therefore we are mutually obligated to extend human care to the dispossessed and marginalized neighbors among us. Such humane values are broadly shared among other spiritual and moral traditions as well.

Biblical faith is not merely individualistic and otherworldly, but has implications for real-world social justice, here and now, as well. The Hebrew prophets cry out urgently and repeatedly for this. Likewise Jesus speaks often of God’s reigning compassion not just beyond us but already among us.

This basic moral mandate of love for neighbor must be made effective through practical structures of justice. We must not be distracted from the urgency of this deep-rooted mandate by misunderstandings of what is really at stake or by the hard work of ironing out legislative complexity. Therefore I and others in the group I represent endorse the efforts of President Obama and the Congress to enact comprehensive health care reform legislation, including a viable public option.

--Owen Norment is a retired Presbyterian minister and Professor Emeritus of Religion at Hampden-Sydney College. He now lives in Charlottesville.

Pirates, Music Sales and the Recording Industry of America by Ted Ghaffarian

2009-11-06T04:18:00.000-08:00

Pirates. That term has been used pejoratively by the Recording Industry of America—the RIAA—for some time. Now if I called someone a pirate, I’d mean they were merciless, scruffy anarchists who plunder and disrupt all notions of decency and peace (either that or Captain Jack Sparrow drinking rum and hitting on my girlfriend).

Many file sharers have a strong distaste for this term. But I actually do think it fits when we extend this metaphor even further to the World Wide Web. If file sharers are pirates, then the internet is a vast sea, teeming with mediocre and irrelevant information. Law abiding consumers are tiny boats, with limited resources to find islands of products. In a digital sea, our consumer senses are limited to viewing images of far off products that are potentially islands away. I can’t go to an online clothing outlet and put on a pair of pants to make sure they fit, or feel the material. There is very little tangibility to consuming online products, which may be why many turn to piracy before purchasing online media.

Since the advent of digital media, the RIAA has assumed that their yearly losses stem primarily from file sharing and duplication. The Guardian, an English newspaper, published a story, based on research done by the BI Norwegian School of Management, which found that consumers of legal and illegal digital media between the ages of 15 to 20 are ten times more likely to purchase music. That means pirates the RIAA callously names them —at least for that important demographic of consumers —are a vital source of digital sales for the music industry.
Artists have begun to capitalize on this information already. In 2007, Radiohead, an internationally popular rock band, released their seventh studio album without record label backing and distribution. Instead, they released the album on their own website, claiming that it was up to the consumer to pay whatever he deemed fit in return for downloading the album. That means one could even download the album without paying anything.

As a financially dependent college kid, that was my first choice. However, I listened to the album in its entirely, and donated as much as I could afford to the band's cause, because I thought the album was incredible. Contrary to what many in the recording industry would think, most downloaded the album and then made a possitive financial contribution to the artist. Not only was this a wildly successful experiement, but it made Radiohead a fortune because they didn't have a record label netting all or most of the profit.

If the RIAA cannot see the enormous opportunities that file sharing--the loosing of all those pirates--offers the music business, then it will ultimately end up sinking its own ship.

Career Switcher by Robert Boucheron

2009-10-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

When it comes to recessions, architects are the canary in the coal mine. We know, before anyone else, when oxygen is being sucked out of the economy. Construction projects are put on hold or canceled, billing decreases, and the layoffs begin.

I specialize in residential projects, so as early as 2006, with the decline in real estate sales, my practice started to dwindle. My employees left one by one, and I saw that I too would have to leave. I found a job as clerk of the works on the construction site of a new elementary school.

Then I heard about a program called Career Switcher, one of the state-approved programs that provides a fast track to become a public school teacher. I applied and was accepted. Phase One would last sixteen weeks, the fall semester, followed by one year of supervised teaching. If all went well, I could then apply for a regular Virginia state teacher's license. It sounded too good to be true. And in my case it was.

Tuition was 3000-plus dollars. The program was mostly conducted online, through the Virginia community college system. Six Saturdays were scheduled for a long video conference, connecting all students and instructors, at nine sites throughout the state. My site was Blue Ridge Community College.

The first video session, in August. Was rife with technical difficulties. None of the instructors knew how to operate the equipment. The program director dominated what discussion took place. The printed agenda was ignored. In our information packet, the pages were misnumbered, which turned the search for information into a scavenger hunt. The instructors, many of them former middle-school teachers, introduced themselves as "flunkies."

The assigned reading appeared to be a mixture of educational theories, platitudes, pseudo-scientific jargon, federal laws such as No Child Left Behind, and the Virginia Standards of Learning. The essay questions were riddled with poor grammar, and were vague. An example: "What must you know and be able to do to be an effective teacher?"

A favorite text was "Tools for Teaching," self-published by a man named Fred Jones, and illustrated with cartoons. Jones claimed to have devised an infallible technique for classroom management, compete with slogans we had to repeat. No dissent was tolerated. Students disappeared from the roster without comment...

After eight weeks, the halfway point, I received an email saying that my Career Switcher grades were less than 80% which was defined as failure. "How can that be?" I wondered. My bachelor degree is in English, from Harvard, and I have published many articles, short stories, and book reviews. I was told I had made negative comments.

Meanwhile, cutbacks in public school budgets meant that teaching jobs were becoming scarce. The placement rate for the Career Switcher program this year shrank below 50%, and will probably fall next year. Given the quality of the instruction, the message to me was clear: The game is not worth the candle.

My architectural practice may yet revive, or I may find another job. But the larger issue that worries me is that I wanted to be a teacher, and yet the patch my becoming one seemed more like a con than a good teacher-training program.

Robert Boucheron is an architect living in Charlottesville

Here, Now by Alex Sharp

2009-10-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

WELCOME TO THE DIGITAL AGE,
a diggable era of digits and sound waves; wavelengths, think-tanks and online banks.
An era of innovation, information and instant gratification,
where the artificial and imaginary become Real.

The reality is that nothing is Real.
There is nothing more human than artificiality:
cyberspace, satellites and cell service, DVDs, MP3s and HDTVs;
we are cloaked in Technology.
It is everywhere.
It sits on our nightstands and dressers and desks and wrists and ears,
and in our pockets and in our cars, and in our houses and kitchens and bathrooms.

We are running out of room to roam free.
The only roaming I know is far from free.
We are turned on and tuned in at all times.
Constantly connected. In continuous contact. Calibrated but comfortable.
Confined but content, we cruise the Web for hours on end.
We are Facebookers and Googlers and Youtube-aholics.
We crave wall-posts and friend requests and celebrity breasts.

Give me a plastic guitar with 5 buttons and I’m satisfied.
Give me an iPOD and two earpieces and I’m at Peace.
Give me a cell phone with unlimited texting and watch my fingers fly.

What’s our attraction to distraction?
MTV, VH1, XBOX, Comedy Central, HBO, TiVo, Playstation III, Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto,
Halo, Flavor of Love, Tila Tequila, iTunes, MySpace, Instant Messenger.

It’s all around us. It’s inescapable – and I need to escape it all.

Gonna MapQuest Peace and Quiet, hope it’s not too far away.
Gonna get in my car and drive there, even if it takes all day.
Gonna leave an Away Message on my way out the door:

“Gone off to the Mountains. Not sure when I’m coming back. If you need me, send smoke signals.”

An Appalling Mandate by Margee Greenfield

2009-10-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

So I ask you, what career were you considering when you were 12 years old?

I ask because the commonwealth of Virginia has decided to require all seventh graders, to create an academic and career plan—including career goals based on academic and possible employment interests. Students, parents and school officials must sign off on the plan.

Right.

Having spent 25 years as an academic and career advisor and as a current middle school teacher, who teaches a career exploration class, I am appalled. Seventh graders are 12 years old! Their career choices are typically based upon the careers of their parents, relatives, or real or fictional heroes – with almost no consideration given to their as-yet-undeveloped skills, interests and values. There are a gazillion careers of which these students have never heard. There are a gazillion more that don’t exist right now but will exist by the time they graduate.

Here’s my own mind at work on this, at 12-years old. I grew up in a city with a famous Shriner’s hospital for children with physical disabilities. Every year, the city held a 24-hour fund-raiser telethon for this hospital. Local celebrities performed, and many of the children that had been helped by the hospital, were brought to the stage by physical therapists, to be interviewed, as the monies poured in. At age 12, I volunteered backstage, helping with the children. I met a physical therapist who was young, perky, and funny and all of the kids from the hospital loved her. I decided, at that moment, that I wanted to be a physical therapist: you get to play with really cute little kids AND you get to be on television.

From then on, when anyone asked about my future, I proudly said that I would be a physical therapist. Then, my freshman year in college, I had a head-on collision with a course called Medical Anatomy and Physiology. And I didn’t want to be a physical therapist any more.

But I’d never considered anything else.

So, please, let’s not ask our 12-year olds to commit, even tentatively, to a career. Instead, let’s include a career EXPLORATION component in courses at a variety of grade levels. Employers today are pretty specific about skills they want to see in hirees: Oral communication, written communication, technology, and team skills. Let’s make sure our students understand and acquire these skills. Let’s make sure they leave high school launched on a career training program or working toward a college major that they will love. Let’s NOT have them make and potentially lock themselves into an immature decision.

When students feel that they finally have an answer to that eternal question, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” the blinders go on. There is no more motivation to continue to explore options. Let’s, instead, teach them to be open to serendipity – to be available to that exciting, unexpected opportunity that might be waiting just around the next corner.

Celebrating Fringes by Devan Malore

2009-10-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

Here in Lexington the city ends and the county starts somewhere on Rt. 11 at a bridge crossing the Maury River. As someone who lives by that river, I don’t live in Lexington, as much as I live on the fringes of Lexington

I have a blue metal medallion on my travel bag that says in rough letters, “Fringe.” I got it years ago at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in Philadelphia—a celebration of the fringes in art performance that goes on annually around this time. For two weeks, everyone from naked tuba players to young fit dancers in hammocks swinging from ceilings of old industrial buildings come together in unusual performance venues scattered around the city.

Whole tribes of us fringe folks are marginalized by choice, or by some act of nature. We live on society’s edges, often can’t get a mortgage, so deal with the underground economy of borrow, barter and creative salvage—which is itself trendy now. Sometimes the fringe life seems to come from being born in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong family.

There’s a story in Hindu mythology that says we know times are changing quickly when more people get born into families they don’t feel they fit in. More freaks emerge to challenge those who can’t see what odd challenging times they live in. Darwin might say fringe dwellers are simply adapting well to change and challenge.

I have affection and curiosity for city fringes and fringe folks. Really interesting rusting machinery gets abandoned on city fringes. Even cars, parked as if they were sacrifices to the earth. Fringe flea markets and yard sales give out treasures cheaply. And, fringe folks often live in interesting living spaces.

Fringes are, for some, places to visit, but not to live in. Like middle class white guys wandering into jazz clubs during the Harlem Renaissance. You’re fine going there, having fun, seeing how the other half lives, breaking a taboo. But at daylight, you’re glad to go home and dress for work in an office.

Living on the fringe is risky, but nothing new. There’ve always been struggling artists, eccentrics, religious nuts, manic depressives, intellectuals ahead of their time, computer nerds before there were computers. Thoreau in his tiny cabin, Zen Haiku poet monk in his hut, Bill Gates or Nirvana out in the garage. Most sages, artists, eccentrics, I imagine, don’t get acknowledged. No one knows the name of the guy who invented toilet paper either, something we now can’t imagine living without.

It was great finding the Fringe Festival and exploring it. My faith in the creative potential of human nature was reinvigorated God bless the fringes and the freaks. May more of us explore the fringes and may freaks become friends. And please, give us odd artists and dreamers some money for our work!

Some day current fringes may be mainstream. Then, you’d able to say to your kids, “I was part of making change when things got a little rigid, boring, too serious.”

"Clean Coal" Technology by Sue Gier

2009-10-01T13:01:00.001-07:00

Currently, power plants that use coal to generate electricity account for more than 30% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The phrase “clean coal technology” fosters hope that scientists will find a way to take harmful elements, especially carbon, out of coal. We would like to believe that with clean coal technology we could provide the nation with much of the energy needed to power our nation into the future—and be environmentally responsible, as well.

The question is: Can coal be clean? Coal is a fossil fuel. All fossil fuels contain carbon which is released as CO2 into the air and adds to the warming of the earth thereby contributing to climate change. Scientists have worked for decades to make coal clean. Scrubbers have been put on electrical power plants, successfully preventing the release of much sulfur. They have also found ways to capture CO2, but not to store or sequester it safely on a large scale. Some coal plants are experimenting with saline aquifers deep in the ocean, and other companies are considering returning it to the mines from which coal has been removed. But, there are unanswered questions about safety including water contamination, harm to aquatic life and long-term stability.

And then there’s the problem of coal ash. Right now, this non-combustible by-product of coal processing is contained in surface ponds. Federally-mandated coal scrubbers have made our air cleaner but they have also led to higher concentrations of pollutants in coal ash, including arsenic, lead, mercury, thorium, and uranium, all of which are currently storied in these “wet dumps.” Last December’s coal ash sludge spill in Kingston, TN—when over 1 billion gallons of sludge surged over 400 acres of watershed—illustrates of the danger these surface ponds.

So how long will this research take? The best estimates of time are ten to twenty years. The coal industry wants to build more plants now, betting that all problems will be solved by the time the plants are constructed. But what if they’re not solved? Dominion Power is currently building a coal-fired power plant in Wise County that, according to an article in Time Magazine, “will emit 5.3 million tons of CO2 a year, roughly the equivalent of putting a million more cars on the road.” (Time/11-17-08).

Those of us representing the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley, a group of concerned citizens in the Shenandoah Valley, know that coal is not clean. The technology exists to harness wind and solar power but not produce enough alternative energy to meet our society’s needs. We in the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley believe money and resources would be better spent on this type of research, rather than on clean coal research. We are urging Congress to act swiftly to promote renewable energies that are truly clean. Jobs in the coal industry could be replaced by jobs in clean energy. Because we must sustain our planet, we must choose clean energy—and that’s not coal!

Truthful Trillions by Ned Studholme

2009-09-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

We all need to be vigilant, recognize intentional deception, and counter unsupported political assertions with reason and logic when the opportunity arises. I would like to confront the wide spread assertion that President Obama’s proposed programs, including health care, will heap debt on our children and grandchildren from which we will never recover.

Without even discussing these programs and the methods by which we might pay for them, critics use the cost side by itself to obfuscate the true nature of debt, and frankly, to scare people. For this they employ the “T-word”, a trillion dollars. One republican senator recently compared a trillion dollars to the number of seconds in 317,000 years. Forget the fact that 317,000 years contain TEN trillion seconds; I will give him the fact that even 31,700 years is a long time.

Yet what, I ask you, do seconds have to do with dollars? What’s really important to understand in any cost-side debate on health care, is how a trillion dollars of debt affects the American worker and future generations? That is the real question we need to answer.

The truth is that one trillion dollars in debt is easily retired by payments of $39 a month by each member of our existing work force over the standard 30-year mortgage term at 5.2 percent interest. To calculate this yourself, simply divide $1 trillion by 146 million workers and then divide by 182, the value that converts present debt into monthly 30 year mortgage payments.

As stunning as this calculation may be, it is even more surprising that it has not been used by advocates, pundits or the media to explain the meaning of large budgetary figures to the people that pay the taxes. It’s almost as if we are all adhering to some unwritten rules about adversarial discourse by avoiding analyses that use little more than logic and 8th grade math. We worry about “the devil in the details”, forgetting that more often than not the devil does even better in the big picture.

Still, we probably can’t blame the lack of detailed discourse and disclosure just on adversaries with a hidden agenda. The truth is that most people listen to and are engaged by information that is meaningful to them. The challenge of making details meaningful I feel rests with the press. When one side of an argument can get away with obfuscation or intimidation by playing on our aversion to facts and detailed analysis, you can bet that there is a little “constrained” journalism involved in the perpetuation of deception. The press and the populace, it would seem, are equally uncomfortable with the notion that economics, finance and the budgetary process can be dissected and made meaningful with simple math and a little courage.

Challenge the pundit or politician that dwells only in the land of “basic” principles and values while shunning the need to clutter our minds up with analytical details. Reject journalism that fails to dissect vague generalities to confront the truth. Risk making someone in authority angry. The one complaining the loudest is likely to be the devil.

note: if you'd like to check the math in this essay here's a link to a mortgage calculator

My Death Panel Interview by Timothy Hulbert

2009-09-17T14:04:00.001-07:00

I recently had my “death panel” interview. Never having any prior first hand experience with such an interview, my reaction was that it went well.

I’m a 57-year-old Irish Catholic from Upstate New York, married, four kids. I live in Charlottesville, Virginia. Six years ago I was diagnosed with a rare form of Lymphoma and have had a host of treatments. Each treatment – chemotherapy, radiation, stem-cell transplant, immunotherapy, has worked at gaining some remission for some time – three and a half years the longest stretch.

Now, the beast is back. A sizeable tumor in my colon requires aggressive treatments that “manage,” rather than eradicate the disease. While I expect to be in the 50% group that gets a response, and I’m hopeful of treatments beyond that, it’s time to look at the end-game.

So in between my infusion schedule, I took time to see my general practitioner – about what I thought would be my high cholesterol and high blood pressure. But Doctor Joseph Orlick had a different thought. He has been kept current by Doctor Michael Williams and the oncology team at the University of Virginia, so he knows my condition. Dr. Orlick wanted me to look a little further down the road. We spent an hour together, first chatting then to the hard-to-talk-about stuff.

“Have you done any planning Tim?” he asked. Things you might want to do, finances, your wife Bonnie, your children, your work? I told him I was confident in my will and life insurance, some health care coverage issues, how I’m going to mow the lawn if the side-effects get me, for how long I could do my job, what a funeral would look like, etc.

“I’m staying positive Doc and fighting as long as Dr. Williams has bullets left, but when we’re out of bullets, we’re out of bullets,” I said. “When that time comes, I’m for letting nature take its course.” How might we treat you he asked? Treat pneumonia? Mechanical feeding? Like most people, I’ve only paid abstract, distant attention to such topics.

“No,” I said. “To what end? Sometimes it’s time to pass away; keep me comfortable.” (I’m a 60s kid, I appreciate drugs.) As a Catholic, I believe in natural death – no acceleration mind you, but no extraordinary means to delay my meeting my maker.

This was one the most enriching meetings, which I’ve had on this long strange trip. Like many cancer patients I have found that cancer gives as much as it takes away – love, appreciation of life, a savoring of time, serenity, determination, a different sense of humor.

Leaving the office I said to Dr. Orlick, “so this is my death panel interview? We agreed could not understand why anyone – in Washington or in some zooie town hall meeting – would want to stand in the way of such a comforting session.

Whether these new treatments and drugs work, and I expect them to work their magic, my death panel interview was well worth the price of admission. Amen!

© Timothy Hulbert, September, 2009

Leaving Town for College: A Reminiscence by Grace Ivory Zisk

2009-09-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

In 1948, I went from Brooklyn, NY, to an “out-of-town” college, Syracuse University.

I had chosen Syracuse because of its journalism school, and had never actually visited the campus. Nor did my parents drive me up when the school year started; they had no car. I said goodbye to Mom and Dad at home and was on my own with the moving-in process.

Luckily, as it turned out, I was not completely alone—my roommate was to be one of my best friends, Bernice. She and I made the 7-hour trip up to school on the New York Central, each of us with a trunkful of clothes in the baggage car, and more clothes in carry-on suitcases. We took a taxi from the railroad station.

Having grown up in a rather small, railroad-flat type of city apartment, I was really looking forward to my freshman dorm, University I, which the college literature called a “cottage.” The very word “cottage” brought to my mind the mandatory adjective “cozy,” along with an image of red brick, bright shutters, geranium-filled window boxes, and sparkling white ruffled curtains. Sightseeing out the taxicab window, I remember thinking: “This must be the slum part of town,” when the driver stopped and said, “This is it for University I!” This was it?! This was our “cottage?!” The reality was a grimy, mustard-colored three-story clapboard residence that was long past its prime.

Greeting us at the door to help us with our luggage was a smiling Junior Guide. We briefly glimpsed the dark, boxy living room with its threadbare carpet and seedy, mismatched furniture, and then she led us up (and up!) the stairs to our third-floor attic room, all the while “orienting” us to the university. We were so stunned by the shabbiness of the dorm that not a word registered, and our room was a further shock. The one closet for both of us was about two feet wide and four feet deep, with just a curtain for a door. About three feet out from the right-hand wall was a four-inch floor-to-ceiling pipe that connected to the bathroom, which was downstairs on the second floor. On the twin beds were rolled-up mattresses that definitely had seen better days. The windows, of course, were bare.

As our guide chatted on, Bernice and I nodded without hearing or saying a word. My disappointment was so intense, I felt like crying, and I would have if I had been alone. Instead, when our guide finally left the room, Bernice and I burst out laughing. We unrolled the mattresses, fell onto the beds, and laughed until I thought we would burst.

Our laughter proved to be prophetic: we had many good times in that dorm, which housed about 20 freshman girls and turned out to be pretty cozy after all.

Scare Tactics and Health Care Reform by Denise Zito

2009-08-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

Perhaps one of the saddest facets of the healthcare debate has been its distortion of the provision regarding end of life issues. This compassionate piece of the proposed legislation was employed so successfully as a scare tactic, that it has been removed from the pending legislation.

Let’s look at what was actually proposed and why. Hospitals are financially stressed and under-funded. They can rarely afford the luxury of doing anything for a patient, unless they can charge for it and be reimbursed. This is why the President proposed reimbursing hospitals who offered counseling to patients about end of life issues—the range of options available to them in Intensive Care, Supportive Care, Pain treatment, hospital, home care, nursing home care, and Hospice Care.

Anyone who has been admitted to any hospital in the US in the past five years has been asked if they’d be interested in completing an Advanced Directive. This form lays out a patient’s options for handling their last days and hours. As of now, however, there is no financial support for counseling patients and their families about those options. There is no money in the system to help dying people through the process of deciding exactly how they want to die.

My family was lucky. My sister and I had both worked in hospitals for over twenty years. We knew how to negotiate the system; we knew what was available.
My father had been very clear that he did not want to be kept alive artificially for an extended length of time if there was no hope of recovery. He had completed an Advanced Directive before he was admitted to the hospital for shortness of breath. When he ended up on a respirator in Intensive Care, we were able to show the hospital that this was not what my father wanted. The staff at Martha Jefferson honored my father’s wishes. After his breathing tube was removed, he woke up for an hour and was able to talk with us. Then he died quietly with his family around him.

Shortly after my father died, my mother became ill with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Within three months she could not speak, eat or drink, but she neither wanted to die in the hospital, nor be put on artificial life support. She chose Hospice Care, which turned out to be one of the most beautiful and moving experiences any of us had ever had. Mom played cards (and won!) the day before she began losing the ability to swallow and breath. Hospice care eased her pain and panic, and she died quietly, at home, with her children around her.

Supporting hospitals in their efforts to explain end-of-life choices to patients who are not well-informed about their available options is one of the most humane things we can do for each other. Those who so vocally criticized that part of the president’s proposal for health-care reform were either misinformed or were deliberately trying to confuse the debate with unfounded fear.

Let’s have real debate on all healthcare reform options. Let’s not employ any more scare tactics.

Health Care Reform and Pre-existing Conditions by Lara Sokoloff

2009-08-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

I was listening to one of President Barack Obama's town hall meetings about health care reform on the radio the other day.

This topic is near and dear to my heart. My son is almost three and has multiple developmental delays. He doesn't crawl, walk, talk or chew very well. My son, with his special needs, has to see a lot of specialists We currently have a specially designed stroller that luckily our insurance paid for. Eventually, we will probably need to get him a wheelchair.

My family and I are fortunate because we currently have good coverage, but we live in constant fear of either being dropped because of our son’s pre-existing condition, or losing our insurance entirely (because of job loss), and then being unable to obtain other coverage because of his pre-existing condition.

At this point I, personally, do not really need to worry about health care. For all our financial misfortunes over the years, as a family we have been fortunate enough to have good coverage. Not a so-called "Cadillac" plan, but good enough--maybe more of a "Dodge" plan. We have had a majority of our health care bills taken care of and we have been able to stay out of debt. God willing we will be able to keep this up. However, should my husband lose his job or one of us (god forbid) have a lengthy stay in the hospital then we are done--bankrupt and severely in debt. I suspect that is the truth for many Americans.

. I cannot see into the future. The President’s plan “would require insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions so all Americans, regardless of their health status or history, can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums." I am all for any reform that allows for health care to cover these pre-existing conditions, for without this kind of
Government-mandated coverage for pre-existing conditions, I worry that if my husband or I were to get another job someday with different health insurance benefits, they would look at our son with his underlying health problems and deny him coverage. What would we do then?

I am very concerned that whatever health care "reform" bill makes it through Congress will not include mandated coverage for him. Right now there are several thousand lobbyists working hard to get their own interests and ideas into the various bills under consideration. Come fall, or whenever the congressional staff goes back to work, the bill that may or may not be passed will be so watered down that maybe if we are lucky, some families will have some benefit from it—and who knows whether one of those families will be mine. I worry most of all that, no matter how hard my husband and I work, we will not be able to afford to give our son the health care he needs.

I know that no country has perfect health care, including this one. We may think we do but we don't. How can we when there are literally millions of families and children without any health coverage? How can we when hardworking families can go into debt just by getting sick? In a perfect health care system, this wouldn't happen. Based on my own experience, I believe we need true reform. Call the President’s plan socialism if you want to, but I would just label it as fair.

Word Games by Janet Miller

2009-08-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

I wasn't addicted to playing Scrabble on the computer. Thinking it over, the song by Fiona Apple, comes to mind. “It’s not a habit, it’s cool.”

Here are the facts: I played more than 800 games of Scrabble on my computer and won most of them. I didn't play to win, but to put words together, all 86 delicious tiles worth of them. Then I hit the “Play Again” button and started over.

While thinking about Scrabble, I remembered I had another word game icon on my computer. I check my past scores for Bookworm and realize that my non-addiction to Scrabble was preceded by a non-addiction to Bookworm. In this game, the more points I earned and the more books appear on a bookshelf. There were also burning red tiles that popped up at random. If the evil red tiles were not put into words, they caused the entire game board to burn. While I caused a lot of conflagration, I also racked up some pretty high scores.

Yet surely my intense involvement with those word games was nothing to worry about. It wasn't as though I spent all my time or money consuming cigarettes or alcohol, or buying things on eBay.

Then I remember some of the things going on in my life at the time I began seriously playing word games. A relationship that had lasted more than a decade had recently ended. My mother’s breast cancer had returned. I'd discovered that my mother was drinking again and that I had to assume responsibility for keeping her finances and her life in order. I had felt my own world was disintegrating around me. I would manage to do the things that had to be done, but then I'd escaped to my computer and put letter tiles together. Did that mean I was addicted?

I had no real concept of addiction or substance abuse before I became involved with word games. I think I still believed what my father had believed: If you wanted to stop smoking, you just had to make up your mind. He never understood why my mother continued to smoke, and he certainly had no understanding or tolerance for her alcoholism. Neither did I. Yet as the hours spent playing Scrabble and Bookworm mounted, I what it meant to be truly addicted.

So, I find myself with a life lesson. The truth is I spent a lot of time playing games instead of sleeping, and instead of eating real meals. The truth is I used those games to cope with the overwhelming stress I was experiencing at the time. But I am a lucky one. I have close friends who refused to leave me to my own devices. I met someone who helped me realize how fortunate I was to escape an unhealthy long-year relationship that held nothing for me.

So word games did not take over my life forever--just for quite a long-time. Long enough to give an idea of what it means to be completely dependent on something in order to get through the day.

Hello, my name is Janet and I’m not an addict – but I came really close.

Thoughts on Health Care Reform by Larry Stopper

2009-08-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

Every day on NPR we hear stories on the questions surrounding health care. Politicians debate it and health policy experts try to decipher for us what the politicians are doing in their committees. I must admit to being painfully frustrated by much of what I hear on the radio and see in ads on TV. It’s time for citizens to raise their voices in the health care debate.

How many times have you heard in the last few weeks about the problem of putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor? I get so angry at this supposed problem that my wife has to ask me to stop shouting. Right now every one of us who pays for our own insurance knows full well that we have an insurance bureaucrat between us and our doctor, and their sole purpose is to help make a profit for their company, not keep us healthy.

When my wife left her state job we were forced to purchase our own health insurance. We shopped around and chose a policy with a high deductible, and a reasonably modest monthly premium. One year later, with no claims against our insurance that reached beyond the deductible, our monthly premium was raised by 37%. With no explanation from our insurance company as to why our premium was being raised, we were left to surmise that our sin, in their eyes, was that we were growing older.

Would I be willing to pay the money I send my insurance company to the government as increased taxes to get a health care system where my well being was the primary concern – no question, yes. I would happily join a government run program where the bottom line was health and not the size of the CEO’s bonus. I don’t really care about his boat payment.

How about the other big threat out there – health care rationing. What baloney. We have that right now and everyone who pays for their own insurance knows it. When my insurance company denied my doctors request for an MRI on my injured shoulder what recourse did I have? I could have appealed or even sued – but who has the time or money for that? And if I won and forced the insurance company to pay, we all know that at the next renewal, they would have dropped me like a hot potato. I would have been off searching for another insurance company to take me, and they would not have covered my shoulder because it was a pre-existing condition.

I try to watch the senators on the Sunday morning programs debate health care, but it’s beyond frustrating. Every one of them has a gold plated insurance plan and has nothing to worry about. The drug and insurance companies make huge campaign contributions to make sure that senators like our own Webb and Warner defend the current for profit system and maintain the status quo.

Government run health care is not a panacea, but it works. Look at Medicaid. It’s a huge, government run health system and it does a fine job. Is it perfect – no. Could it be better – of course. But is it a better system for so many of us who don’t have employer based health care – you bet. What we need is a health system that puts health and prevention before profits, and cares about people and not the insurance company’s bottom line.

Unconstitutional Religious Tests for Political Office by Brian Kaylor

2009-07-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

One of the few references about religion in the U.S. Constitution is the declaration that that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Yet, not far from where the primary author of the Constitution lived, such a simple statement is now being ignored.

Augusta County Supervisor Tracy Pyles has attacked the religiosity of fellow Democrat Erik Curren, who is running for the 20th district delegate seat. According to Pyles, Curren is not an acceptable candidate because he follows some Buddhist practices in addition to worshipping in a Christian church. Yet, such issues should be irrelevant when deciding between candidates. What voters should instead consider is who has the better policy proposals and vision to bring about what citizens of the Valley and other parts of Virginia need.

Applying such religious tests for office creates a new class of civic lepers that—as in biblical times—must be avoided at all costs. This exclusionary rhetoric therefore undermines basic American democratic values of equality and freedom. To politically excommunicate a candidate just because we disagree with their religious beliefs is to ignore the wisdom of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

Sadly, this current controversy is not the first attempt to find political salvation by urging voters to treat elections as catechism tests. A few years ago, Virginia U.S. Representative Virgil Goode attacked a Minnesota congressman because the man is a practicing Muslim, and Barack Obama faced questions and attacks about his religion throughout the 2008 presidential election. Hopefully, voters in Virginia’s 20th district will stand up against the misuse of religion as a political weapon. After all, such politicization of religion not only undermines democratic principles but also cheapens faith. As a committed Christian and former pastor, I am appalled that someone would treat what I find holy as if it was just another dirty political trick.

Half a century ago, John F. Kennedy faced religious bigotry on the campaign trail. He argued that the questions about his religion took attention away from more important issues. He said he really wanted to focus on “the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctors bills, the families forced to give up their farms—an America with too many slums, with too few schools.” Virginia voters should focus on similar critical concerns facing us today, rather than the religious practices of candidates. My prayer is that voters would adopt the wisdom of the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, who suggested he would even support a Muslim leader when he said, “I would rather be governed by a competent Turk than by an incompetent Christian.”

One Summer's Soul-mate by Martha Woodroof

2009-07-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

I spent a summer cooking supper at an artist colony in the Virginia countryside. Robert Johnson was assigned to “train me.” Five minutes after we met, Robert sent me into the pantry after a pot. As I crossed the floor, I heard his voice sing out behind me, “Whoo-wee! She’s got that Chicago walk!”

Robert was the colony factotum. He did anything as long as there was money in it. He cooked, cleaned, transported, mowed grass, posed for visual artists, barbecued. He fleeced the fellows at poker. Then he’d gamble away both his winnings and his earnings down at the local convenience store. “Ooo, do I feel lucky to-night!” he’d say as he left to put in his numbers and lose more money. The colony’s fellows were in awe of him. Robert was the real deal – a wild man, a free spirit, an outlaw – something most of the artists aspired to be, someday, when they could afford it.

A lot of the fellows came from big cities. To Robert, these artists were alien beings, creatures who dressed funny and were disturbed by normal, everyday things like cows and black snakes and tall grass and silence. He found them skittish; euphoric one moment, gloomy the next. “When these peoples gets in a bad mood, I just leave ‘em alone,” he said to me, “or pretty soon we’d have two peoples in a bad mood.”

Since he was a fellow cook, I asked Robert once what he liked to eat. “Tuna fish,” he said. “And corn flakes.”

“What about your vitamins?”

“What’s vitamins?”

For years, I’ve been getting up every morning and writing for a couple of hours – working away on novels no one wants to publish . . . yet. The combination of intense creativity and unforgiving intellectual discipline involved in getting an imagined world exactly right satisfies me as much or more as anything in the real one.

Once that summer, I printed out a draft of a novel and laid the formidable stack of pages on a table in the dining room. Robert stood looking down at them.

“You type all these pages?”

“Yes.”

“What you do with them now?”

“I’ll send them to my agent in New York.”

“And that agent, he send you money, right?”

“No. He’ll try to sell the book to someone else.”

Robert shook his head. “Whoo-wee! If I typed all those pages, and I sent them to some man in New York and he kept them but didn’t send me no money, I believe I’d be on the bus!”

This, from a man who regularly lost serious amounts of money on the numbers.

An un-air-conditioned kitchen during the southern summer is a pretty live-and-let-live place. I wrote; Robert gambled. I took my rejections; he took his losses. We both managed to pay the rent and have a pretty good time.

God bless the children that’ve got their own . . .

Reflections on Omaha Beach…a Pilgrimage by Sam Heatwole

2009-07-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

Date of trip to Omaha Beach 6/13/09...65 years and one week after the Allied forces landed there, 6/6/44

When I was a kid, Mom and Dad used to talk about my twin uncles Cloyd and Lloyd. They admired them and said they’d been in WWII. They’d landed at Omaha Beach. As a kid all that meant very little to me except for the fact that they had been REAL soldiers. Kids, boy kids anyway, like to play war, at least they did when I was a kid. I was inquisitive about what it was like to really be a soldier, and who better to ask what it was like than my uncles. So I would ask them about it from time to time, but as I recall it, they said little if anything about it. They would change the subject or give a short answer like… “It was a bad time” or “It was rough…” or something like that.

I remember coming back from a fishing trip with Uncle Cloyd, Cloyd Jr. and Dad, all of us packed in the front of one of the old aqua-colored Harrisonburg Refrigeration Service trucks. I guess I must have been 8 or 9. Dad was driving, I sat next to him, then Cloyd Jr. and Uncle Cloyd at the other window. I said, “Uncle Cloyd, how many Germans did you kill in the war?” My dad put an elbow right through my rib cage!!! I thought I’d never get my breath back. You see, killing and dying in a war for me was sneaking around in my front yard, pretending to see an enemy, shouting “Pow, Pow, kapow, kapow!!!” then jumping up, pretending to get hit, rolling dramatically down the big hill our house sat on and holding my breath, pretending to be dead. I had no idea then…and I still don’t, of the horror, the awful reality of war. Uncle Cloyd didn’t respond to my question. He just looked out of the window and pretended that he didn’t hear me. I never asked him or Uncle Lloyd any thing about the war again…and I think that something of the horror of war was passed along to me that day. I understood that the war experiences of my uncles was a heavy burden…a burden they carried inside…not something to be shared lightly or irreverently. It was not for all to hear. It was theirs to know and to carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Since my childhood, I have only gained more respect for my uncles and the entire generation they represent. There was a moral fiber and grit in them that makes one want to put them under a microscope and analyze how they came to be the kind of people they were, and how they functioned so bravely through a debilitating economic depression and a mechanized war of fearful proportions.

When I found out a few months ago that my wife Deborah and I would be traveling to France again, I knew where I had to go...Omaha Beach. This would be a pilgrimage for me. I prepared for it: I read, I researched, and I bought a new camera. The purpose of a pilgrimage is to pay reverent respect, and that is what I tried to do.

Profession and Identity by Marta Szuba

2009-06-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

Who you are and what you do are not mutually exclusive. As a kid my parents told me to choose what you do carefully, it will be your calling card.

It’s taken me a little longer than most to finally figure out what I wanted to do with my life. There have been two marriages, four children, two grandchildren, numerous cats and two dogs. But if you were to ask me to define myself, I don’t believe I’d start with any of those things. I see them as givens, what most people do. They are not what makes me who I am.

If you asked me to define myself, I think I would start with my twenty years as a volunteer and employee in the nonprofit sector. I think of myself as a community educator, someone who seeks to give other people information they can use to make our community a better place to live. Working for non-profits is an iffy sector at best. I expect my salary to be small, but I get great satisfaction from the work. Positions come and go, dependent on the good will of the community and government grants. My jobs have never lasted more than two or three years. There have been lay-offs and pregnancies. My last position ended over a year ago when the funding for my position at the Community Alliance for Drug Resistance Education came to an end. I have not been employed full time in my chosen vocation since then.

It has been difficult loosing that job. Of course there are money issues and thankfully they have not been devastating. Much more complicated and deeply felt has been a sense of personal worthlessness that is difficult to explain. It’s as though my identity as a community educator, an activist--someone who works to improve the place they live— has been somehow damaged by the loss of that position. I don’t easily find words to explain my feelings of loss, self doubt, and hopelessness. But they are pervasive—they creep into my day to day activities. At times, I believe I will never again have a job that allows me to believe I make a difference. It is as though I am a victim of identity theft, but there is no one to whom I can report, and or from whom I can get back what I have lost.

This is not to say that I don’t still carry on working in my community. I continue to volunteer. I have two part time jobs that are somewhat related to what I’ve always done, but there is still something missing to my identity. In the past, I have been in charge shaping the focus of what and where an organization is going. Now that’s over, and I feel adrift, waiting for the wind to blow me in the next direction.

The truth as I have come to see it is that I essentially define myself by what I do and who I associate with. It is a concept that my parents taught me well—maybe too well. I crave that moment when I can once again say what I do. Until then I wait for opportunities and hope that who I am will not slip away. Identity is a precious thing.

Raising City Chickens by Brian Martin Burkholder

2009-06-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

We chose to live in the city of Harrisonburg to be close to work, for the ethnic diversity and the quality of the schools. But our hearts were in the country. We dreamed of a small place with a few goats, some chickens, a dog or two— maybe, someday, a horse. We also wanted to grow as much of our own food as possible.

On our city lot, we have a small vegetable garden, a few fruit trees and enough yard space for an active dog, but the dream of having egg laying hens would not go away. It suited our desire to live a more sustainable lifestyle. The portable chicken tractor was the key to keeping a few hens in our backyard without causing concern for our neighbors. Soon it was occupied by our new pet hens – Buzz, Woody and Rosie.

Before long, we heard that others who had chickens in the city were receiving letters telling them that they must remove their birds within 30 days or be fined. It surprised all of us. We had searched the city ordinances on-line and had not seen any clear code directly addressing chickens. City officials said it was against zoning regulations to start agricultural practices within city limits. Does this mean we also need to get rid of our garden and fruit trees?

So many people received chicken eviction letters that a group, the Harrisonburg Backyard Chicken Project, formed to convince the city to change the code to allow us to keep small flocks of egg laying hens in portable coops or chicken tractors that can be easily moved about in our yards. We’ve heard concerns about smell, noise, public health related to bird flu, and the fear of property values falling if chickens are in the neighborhood. Most of these concerns are blown out of proportion. Maybe some education based on practice will help?

Those of us who have raised chickens in portable chicken tractors have found that smell is not a problem mainly because we move the coop every day. The droppings dry quickly and help to fertilize the lawn or the garden. Likewise, noise is not of great concern with hens. They don’t not crow like roosters, and they only cackle when joyfully announcing “Look what I did!” after laying their daily egg.

As for public health concerns. Proponents of a pro-chicken ordinance, like me, are concerned about controlling their personal food sources and opponents are concerned about the possibility of a rampant outbreak of bird flu. But because of the way bird flu is transmitted, hens in backyard flocks would have to invite other hens over for birthday parties and sleepovers in order to pass on any virus. They simply are not in close contact with other birds if a chicken tractor is their home.

It’s reasonable to be concerned about property values but I don’t think chickens are more offensive than a loud barking dog next door. During the months we had backyard chickens, three of the houses with lots joining our backyard sold at or higher than market value.

I say, let’s give the chickens a chance. They just might make great neighbors!

The Pros and Cons of Air-Conditioning by Theresa Curry

2009-06-12T03:58:00.000-07:00

Every year I ponder this question: should I turn on the air conditioning?
It’s easy to do without it at first, when the smell of lilacs and the sound of mockingbirds drift in through open windows. It’s harder later, when writing paper sticks to sweaty hands and mold blossoms in the seams of the shower curtains.
In the city where I grew up, the burning pavement kept the long nights hot. After dinner, my mother headed the five of us towards cold water: the neighborhood pool, a sprinkler, or the lopsided pool in the backyard. On the worst nights, we went to bed still wet, with towels beneath us and noisy fans aimed right at us. My mother spent her early summers in Vermont and she thought heat was more dangerous than a summer cold.
In our large family, with cousins and grandparents often in residence, my 80-year-old grandfather had a rickety window unit because of his age. His closed room seemed clammy to me, smelling of Vicks cough drops and bourbon.
Before my youngest sister left home, my parents installed central air. On visits, I missed the slamming screen door, the nights watching fireflies, the sweaty badminton games. Once there’s cool dry air inside, it seems nobody goes outside.
As a young wife in Southside Virginia, I watched daytime temperatures hit highs that would have alarmed my mother. But at night, the country air always cooled, and I put my own babies to bed much as she had – an evening dip in a wading pool or a tepid bath, and fresh, cool sheets for the cribs. During the day, I adjusted a system of fans and open windows as the sun moved in the sky.
It wasn’t all good, of course. Flies buzzed in through the screens and settled in milk dripped from the children’s cereal. Dogs dragged smelly bits of long-dead animals under the house, desperate for cool dirt. When I hugged my toddlers, I breathed in a smell like vinegar from their sweaty hair.
By the time my children were in school, we moved to a bluff in Virginia’s piedmont, where summer nights cooled off quickly . But there were always a nights when we’d sit in the shallow pool at Rock Mills and let the icy water run over us.
Do the nightingales and the nights in the river balance the flies and the moldy shower curtains? I can’t answer that question. The best answer is: sometimes, sometimes not.
I’m older now, fitful and restless and unduly affected by days that are too cold or too hot. I don’t believe discomfort always has a point, but I do remember the nights when my children were teenagers, and I didn’t sleep well, and what I learned from that.

As I waited for them to come home, dodging deer on twisting mountain roads, I felt smothered by the muggy Virginia night. I was sweaty and anxious, but there was always an end, at least to the heat: midnight, 2 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM, even 5. Because I woke often, I learned to recognize the wonderful moment every night when the air completely changes, and the breeze blowing across your wet skin is fresh and cool, and as hopeful as the sunrise that follows.

"Neither Interrogation, Nor Enhanced: A Media Failure" by Larry Yates

2009-06-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

NPR – and all other media – have a responsibility to stop using the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques” to describe waterboarding, slamming prisoners into walls, and the like.

Did we accept the term “patriotic defense against spies” for Stalin’s show trials? Should we have adopted “defending states’ rights” as the standard term to describe resistance to integration of schools and public facilities? By allowing one side to define the terms of these historic controversies to their benefit, we would have ceded the debate before the debate began.

Waterboarding is not the enhanced version of interrogation, the “bad cop” end of the spectrum of interrogation. It’s not an interrogation technique at all. It has been rejected as such not only in international law, but by the United States Armed Forces. The U.S. military’s rejection of waterboarding was not due to tender feelings. This is a body that’s prepared to use nuclear weapons, after all. The U.S. military simply determined waterboarding did not accomplish the purpose of military interrogation - gaining information that can be reliably used to guide military actions.

Torture’s historic practitioners, mostly the kings and priests of despotic regimes, used it to demonstrate their power over their subjects. They were seeking submission –not just from those they actually tortured, but from the many more that knew they could be tortured. free societies reject such a goal

Of course, some uninformed people may actually believe they will gain valuable information from torture. This may well have been the case with some officials under the previous administration, who had neither military nor law enforcement experience. That administration was, after 9/11, in a national security situation far beyond its competence, as indicated by their apparent belief that starting an unrelated war was a good move. Turning to a military survival school and using worst-case enemy practices as a model does seem to be a sign that decision-makers were both desperate and clueless.

The sincerity of the torturers, however, is not the issue. Many of those who conducted the Stalinist show trials were sincere Soviet patriots. Many white southerners genuinely believed that Western Civilization was at risk if the local McDonalds was integrated. In neither case were journalists, or the rest of us, required to accept their versions of the facts, or to adopt their self-justifying language.

What could replace the easy phrase, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” for journalists? The most honest approach would be simply to name the methods, such as waterboarding and beating prisoners. When the precise activities are not known, they could simply be described as “previously forbidden practices.” Or we could simply bite the bullet and call torture, torture. That’s what the United States did when it hanged Japanese soldiers who practiced waterboarding on U.S. prisoners of war.

Our press is doing us no good, nor is it practicing fairness, by persisting in using the factually incorrect phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Instead, reporters and editors are adopting the rhetoric of one of the parties in a vital national debate. If, in the future, torture becomes the new global standard, increasingly used against U.S. troops and U.S. citizens, as well as more overtly and commonly by our own forces, it will be in part because our media helped to cheat us of the honest and fact-based debate we badly need to have today.

True Stories of Life in a Foster Family by Ralph Berry

2009-05-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

This story aired on WMRA's Civic Soapbox.

"There was once a little girl who was sexually abused by someone in her family. Child Protective Services removed the little girl from her home and placed her with a foster family. The wise foster mom knew she had to help the little girl feel safe so that she could win her trust and help her to heal. The little girl was afraid of taking a bath in the bathtub (this is where the sexual abuse had taken place) so the foster mom said she could take a sponge bath in her bedroom instead. Every night for months the foster mom would spread a towel on the little girl’s bedroom floor and help her take a bath.

One day the foster mom asked the little girl what would make her feel safe taking a bath in the bathtub. The little girl replied that she didn’t want any lights on in the bathroom and that she wanted her foster mom to stay with her and to lock the door once they were inside. The foster mom asked if she could at least put a candle in the corner of the bathtub so that they wouldn’t fall over something and the little girl agreed. Every night for months the foster mom would go into the bathroom with the little girl and lock the door behind them, while the little girl took her bath.

One day, while the little girl was taking a bath, she said she had something to tell her foster mom but she wanted her to turn around and look the other way first. So the foster mom sat down facing away from the little girl and the little girl told about the abuse she had suffered. She asked her foster mom not to tell anyone. The foster mom explained that she had to tell the little girl’s Children’s Services worker but would not tell anyone else. Every night at bath time the little girl told her foster mom the same story about the abuse, for this is one way children heal from their hurts. The little girl’s therapist and Children’s Services worker realized that the little girl might never tell anyone else about the abuse so they trained the foster mom what to do to help the little girl heal. Whenever the little girl would tell about the abuse her foster mom would put her story into words and feelings. “That would have scared me,” “That would have made me angry, how did that make you feel?” the foster mom would ask the little girl.

One evening, a year later, as they were preparing for the little girl’s bath the little girl told her foster mom that she didn’t have to come into the bathroom with her when she took her bath anymore. The little girl turned the light on in the bathroom, went in alone and closed the door.

The little girl’s parental rights were eventually terminated and the foster family was able to adopt her. The “little girl” has since grown up and graduated from high school last spring. She was accepted by four different universities!!!!"

This story is a bonus one for the WMRA website from Mr. Berry.

"As we concluded our training to be foster parents the Children’s Services worker started indicating to us that they thought they had a child who would fit well in our home. This little boy was eight years old and had been back and forth between birth parents and foster families--but they were really hoping for a "forever" home for him. We got very excited and were hoping this would be the right match. How do you ever really know about these things except to trust and pray? Well, after a difficult several weeks waiting for my finger prints to clear we finally got the "thumbs up" to take this little boy. Now, as is true for many foster kids, his stuff came to us in garbage bags. We had a few hours to get his stuff unpacked before he arrived with the Children’s Services worker. As we were unpacking his stuff we found a number of stuffed dinosaurs. As we set these around his room I came upon one that stood out. It was a teal colored stegosaurus made of chintz fabric. As I tossed it onto the bed I commented to my husband that it looked like one our birth daughter had had many years ago. Once the room was put together I sat down on the bed to think about the changes that were about to happen in our life. After being empty nesters for almost 8 years we were opening our home to a hyperactive 8 year old boy. Once again, I wondered, how do you know if it's the right match? I picked up the teal dinosaur and held it as I thought more about this. At that moment I noticed the tag on the teal dinosaur--written in sharpie were the initials A and B. Well, I had my answer--this WAS the dinosaur that had belonged to our daughter years ago--those were her initials. It had migrated to a thrift shop when she cleaned out her room to set up her first apartment and now it had found its way back to us in the few things owned by this little boy. Over the years we faced some hurdles, but the joy he has brought us has far outweighed these challenges. We are glad to say he found his 'forever home.'"

Medical Perfection by Dr. Ben Brown

2009-05-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

At the end of last year, then president-elect Barack Obama’s health care transition team asked citizens to organize Health Care Community Discussions. Their purpose? To gather ideas from Americans across all walks of life about how our health care system could be reformed. Having been a rural family doctor for over 25 years I think such discussion is urgently needed. Each day I see my patients struggle to pay medical bills. I also see the losses they suffer when they cannot.

Eighteen people with a variety of experiences and interests came together in our community health care center in Nelson County, VA. to work through the Obama transition team’s agenda.

We first focused on the need for elimination of the greed motive in medicine. It seemed fair to us, that the profit motive should be limited when applied to the relief of human suffering. We recognized universal health care coverage as a right, much as education is considered a right. We also saw a public health campaign to improve diet, physical activity and living attitudes as key to reducing health care costs. I was surprised and pleased to hear broad support for a single payer system.

As I left the meeting, I felt there was still a difficult issue which we had not touched: the question of overuse in health care. There is an unrecognized trend in modern medicine which occurs at the nexus of media, doctors, courts and patients and leads to a significant and growing waste of health care dollars.
Of course, doctors want to give the best possible care, and also worry about being sued for neglecting to run more tests and procedures, many of which are expensive and make little difference. Patients want to believe they are getting the latest in health care, and are heavily influenced by the popular media. The media feels it is doing a public service by reporting about medical advancements and the newest drugs.

We, as patients, now expect a lab or radiology study in order to make medical decisions once made on the basis of clinical judgment. Whereas once we relied on a primary care doctor to reassure us, we now want a specialist to answer the questions raised by friends or from what we read online. And finally, malpractice juries understand one person's loss more easily than the statistics of evidenced-based medicine.

This all leads to patients receiving excessive, inappropriate and overly expensive medical care.

When do we reach the point of diminishing returns? What about treatment plans that lead to very little improvement in health care despite their excessive cost? Could those extra health care dollars, save and improve more lives if used differently?
In the real world, dollars spent on one person's quest for medical perfection cannot be spent on another's basic needs, and dollars spent in extending the last few days of life cannot be spent on helping others have healthier and more productive lives. These trade-offs matter.

Yes, let’s take care of the greed motive, simplify our system and give everyone a basic health care plan. But there is a component that the media, the malpractice system, the doctors and the people as patients have to face up to as well: When we demand too much for our single self, it means less for others.

"Serial Churchgoer" by Carolyn O'Neal

2009-05-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

I am a serial churchgoer. A pious, non-threatening version of the serial killer. Like my dastardly counterpart, I have a specific pattern: I stalk my victims, plan my attack, collect mementoes and then move on to my next target, leaving confusion in my wake.

I began my life of serial churchgoing when I moved from the San Francisco Bay area. Church in California is different from church in Charlottesville. In California, I considered myself an oppressed minority. I didn’t go to one of the hundreds of Catholic Churches in the Bay area. Nor did I belong to any of the innumerable cults, sects or whatevers. In California, I was a Protestant. The Episcopal Church I belonged to campaigned for gay rights because we knew what it felt like to be outsiders.

Then I moved to Virginia and began attending a local Episcopal Church. It was packed. I was greeted with smiles and welcomes and please come backs. The church was beautiful. Actually, everyone was beautiful. Lovely and trim with perfect hair and teeth. Except me. In the pew was a little card for visitors. I dutifully filled it out and about a week later received a post card from the church. It was beautiful.

I next tried one of the big Baptist Churches downtown. It was packed. Again, smiles, welcomes and please come backs. I dutifully filled out the visitors’ card. A few hours later, I received a phone call, then a personal visit in my home from two nice smelling gentlemen with full heads of hair. They gave me literature and asked if I had questions. I told them I thought Jesus was wrong when he condemned both divorce and washing your hands before you eat and that I believed in legalizing gay marriage. They never came back.

Seeking anonymity, I decided next time I would not fill out the visitor’s card. I stalked another large downtown church. Its parking lot was full of BMW’s and giant range rovers. Oh my. I’d have to buy a new wardrobe. I’d have to park blocks away from the church. This was a real problem. How could I park blocks away and still wear high heels?

I had to find either a laid back popular church in which I could wear my Nike’s or an unpopular church where I could park close to the front door and wear high heels. I drove around searching for my next victim. Oops, I mean my next visit.

I finally found one--a quiet church with few cars parked in the lot on Sunday morning. It wasn’t packed. I was greeted with smiles and welcomes and please come backs by elderly ladies with blue hair. I looked around. Everyone was twenty years or more older than me, and since I’m over fifty, that’s saying a lot.

My search continues.

What have I learned from this experience? Protestant Christianity in the south is too easy. There are too many churches and if you don’t like one because of the preacher or the parking or the people, you can drift away and find another a block down the road. Maybe if there were only one or two Protestant Churches in all of Albemarle County, I could settle down. Maybe then I’d be happy because I’d be oppressed minority again.

Maybe I should become Catholic.

Young Women and Body Image by Colleen Whitney

2009-05-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

We all know her: The thin friend who always thinks she looks bloated; the obsessed friend who freaks if she misses her routine workout; the “healthy” friend who prides herself on not having eaten junk food in two years. Yes, she’s the friend who on the outside looks as though she’s happy as can be, in her size two dress dipping her carrot sticks in fat free, watered down ranch dressing. 75% percent of the female population (in America? ) struggles with eating disorders and/or distorted body images.

I was once that friend. Go ahead! Shudder. Roll your eyes. Smile contemptuously. I would if I were still that girl.

So let me give you some insight into how I got to be that girl.

It will come as no shocking surprise that the media has got a lot to do with it. A short while ago, I would have never admitted that something so “out there” as the media could affect me. But really, if you stop and think about it: how could it not?

As a rising college senior, it has taken me years to realize that the glossy pages of my favorite magazines contribute to the constant nagging, ugly, self-doubt that has plagued me for so many years. How are we, the normal people, supposed to compete for physical perfection with the celebrities that cover these pages--people with an entourage of personal trainers, personal makeup artists and personal stylists?

Also, the majority of these magazines, at some point, have featured articles that showcase “real women” with “real beauty.” I admit it, I want to see what this said “real women” look like – see if I can measure up. And, although, these articles show pictures of women who are not exactly in dire need of a meal, but it’s uncanny that they all still look fabulous in their white underwear. If I were a gambler, I’d bet that no “real woman” ever looks that good in her unflattering skivvies.

I feel strongly these publications rob young females of self-assurance and of the ability to feel beautiful in their own skin. These publications should communicate that a size two is not synonymous with beauty, sex does not equal love and that it’s okay if you don’t score well on the “Are You a Social Butterfly?” quiz.

My generation should not be the self- starving generation, but the self-confident generation. I know far too many successful young women who are their own worst critics—a critic whom they will never satisfy. I have beautiful friends who can’t enjoy the taste of a delicious dessert, and I know smart girls who have stupid obsessions with the scale. I urge other young women to embrace their blessings, stop trying to fight genetics and be proud of the life they lead. We, as young women, need to stop coveting a model’s body—stop feeling so physically inadequate. As Judy Garland said, “It’s always better to be a first rate version of yourself, than a second rate version of someone else.” Think about it.

"Being Neighborly" by Jeff Holt

2009-05-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

I don’t really consider myself a community activist, but I had an idea I thought I’d share with you because it seems particularly timely. Today is Cinco de Mayo, a day of celebration in Mexico and for many Mexican-Americans here in the US. As President Obama pointed out from the White House yesterday, historically, it marks the day, in 1862, that a rag-tag Mexican Army defeated Napoleon III’s Army at the Battle of Puebla. The victory was a turning point that led to the eventual defeat of the French and ensured economic independence for Mexico.

Today, we are all aware that Mexico is facing another historic battle: The enemy this time is the Swine flu! Our neighbors to the south have suffered both human and economic loss due to the recent outbreak. Businesses, restaurants, travel, tourism, economic activities of all forms, have been significantly curtailed since the outbreak began. Swine Flu is taking a tremendous economic toll in a country already faced with the world-wide economic challenges of the Great Recession.

We share our North American continent with only a few other countries and as such we are all Americans. It occurred to me that since our southern neighbors have fallen upon hard times, wouldn’t it be the neighborly thing to do for us to figure out some way to help our fellow Americans south of the boarder. Shouldn’t we send them our neighborly best in this, their time of extraordinary need?

But how can we do this? Travel to Mexico has been restricted because of the current threat, yet I couldn’t help but wonder if there still wasn’t some way to lend a hand? Something simple, yet meaningful, that we Americans can do. Then it occurred to me: Why not help celebrate Cinco de Mayo—Mexico’s big national holiday— by buying Mexican? So I’m proposing that we look beyond our own economic woes for a moment, suspend the current buy American campaign for just one day, and instead, for Cinco de Mayo, we all buy Mexican! Eat at a Mexican owned restaurant, buy some Mexican products at a Mexican Market, support a Mexican charity, and so forth. Just do something to lend a hand to our southern neighbors! Anything. Even by supporting businesses owned by Mexican-Americans it is highly likely that some of that money and goodwill will be exported to Mexico, as many Mexican-Americans send money to relatives back home. By doing this, in some small way can support our southern continental neighbors as they battle this new deadly enemy.

So what I’m proposing is that today we celebrate Cinco de Mayo by buying Mexican. Have a margarita, drink a Corona and let’s toast to our neighbors to the south.

If you don’t get a chance to buy Mexican today, do it tomorrow. I’m sure Mexico would be happy if we celebrated Cinco de Mayo on the Seis de Mayo too! So, Mis Amigos, Vaya con Dios!

My Name is Jeff Holt. I am an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the University Of Virginia School Of Medicine.

"Horatio Alger, Redux" by Ed Dooley

2009-04-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

The spirit of Horatio Alger is alive and well and living in Scotland. Its persona, this time, is female, and it has a name: Susan Boyle.

There may be some people who have not heard of Boyle, but that is becoming increasingly hard to imagine. She is the 47 year old rather frumpy, obscure woman from a Scottish village who on Saturday the 11th of April astonished the judges and audience of the television program Britain’s Got Talent with her singing. Her performance on Internet site YouTube has been watched more than 100 million times, nearing an all-time record.

Is this phenomenon, as so many have suggested, merely an emotional response to the hard times the world is going through? Is she a symbol of the good and the true triumphing over insurmountable odds? Do we like her because she makes us “feel good” about ourselves? Based on the thousands of warm responses to her performance, the answer to these questions is “yes.”

But I think much more is going on here, something that touches on a theme deep in our culture. The hugely popular early nineteenth century American author Horatio Alger filled his books with stories of humble people who, by hard work, virtue, and strength of character rose to prominence and success. Like Alger, Victorian writers in Britain praised good work, honestly done, and strength of character. Although these authors are not much read these days, the dream of “rags to riches” continues to ring true to us and is reflected in Susan Boyle’s own story: wholesomeness, morality, strength in the face of adversity, determination, perseverance, and an unflagging pursuit of a dream. It surely can be no accident that Boyle chose to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical “Les Miserables” at her appearance on Britain’s Got Talent.

On another level, Susan Boyle’s story is a modern fairy tale, a version of an age-old tradition in poetry, literature, and ballad: an unprepossessing individual who blossoms into someone very special. Homer, we are told, was ugly and blind but became the great epic poet of Greece. Cinderella was translated from kitchen maid to beautiful princess. “The Ugly Duckling,” a character made part of our literature in 1843 by the Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen, was shunned by other animals because of his ungainly form but matured into a beautiful swan. Boyle’s story is that of “the ugly duckling.” Her plain appearance led judges and the audience to expect nothing much from her. On stage, her hairdo was forlorn and her dress unbecoming. She modestly said that she “had never been kissed.” But as soon as she began her song, the “ugly duckling” became a beautiful singing bird.

Susan Boyle comes along at just the right time when, in the Western world especially, there is a graying of the population. At a relatively late age, she is living out her dream and achieving widespread popularity. She has become an inspiration to legions of older individuals who feared that “it might be too late in life” for them.

The Susan Boyle phenomenon has taken us by storm. Her fame may be temporary, but it touches on themes found deep in our psyche and has been there for hundreds of years, in good times and bad.

An Emotional Little Essay on Words that Begin with the Letter “E” by Val Matthews

2009-04-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

I have recently been reading a few books on Evolution and this has lead me to consider human Existence on our tiny planet Earth with it¹s fragile Environment.. I am worried about our Expanding population and the increasing need for sources of Energy. It seems Elementary to me that we should try and use Energy more Efficiently because Expansionist policies of controlling Energy sources so often lead to conflict.

One of the Earliest words I taught my children was Escalation, as in “He hit me first, so then I hit him back, so he hit me harder.” And so on and so on. Hopefully that word still lurks in the back of their minds. In the adult world of nations that does not seem to be a familiar word -- attack follows attack, wars lead on to other wars, and so on and so on, without apparent End.

Then there is the murky question of Ethics. Even in war time it does not seem Ethical to me to drop a huge bomb on a city and kill thousands of innocent people. It is certainly not Ethical in peacetime to attack a building and kill thousands of innocent people. I struggle with the Ethics of the very personal act of killing by a suicide bomber and the seemingly impersonal act of killing by an unmanned drone operated from a faraway country..

There is an Elite club of countries who are apparently responsible enough to possess nuclear weapons. There are Enough of those weapons around to Exterminate our species many times over., not to mention Every other species as well. I wonder whether humans will Ever become Enlightened Enough, Ever be able to Educate themselves Enough to Eliminate war and its causes or are we heading inexorably to our End.?

What is good, what is Evil? Do I dare to Envision a time when that question will be set aside, because world leaders are Energized in an international Effort to plan for coexistence instead of Extinction?

I'm Val Matthews and I am an Elderly resident of Albemarle County.

"Rehab for Humanity" by Harvey Yoder

2009-04-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

Here’s an idea for challenging economic times I’ve been mulling around for some time. In a time when the building industry is in a slump and construction workers are hungry for work, why not launch a community wide effort we might call “Rehab for Humanity - A Community Energy-Saving Initiative”?

The goal of this movement would be to promote the renovation of as many area homes and other buildings as possible to make them more energy efficient, and to help people accomplish this as cost effectively as possible.

A part of a strategy to accomplish this might involve urging local banks to provide special rehab loans at affordable rates for approved individuals, with repayment plans based in part on resulting energy savings.

It would also involve forming an advisory and oversight group to determine eligibility criteria for low-cost loans and grants, including the availability of some of the billion dollars that will supposedly be available as a part of the new stimulus package. This group would also enlist home inspectors trained to do energy audits and cost estimates for interested home owners, help homeowners connect with reputable local bankers and builders for competitive bids, and advise individual persons on tax and other available benefits in doing their home improvement projects.

The benefits, from my perspective, are obvious. We would be promoting improvements that can eventually pay for themselves, help provide a grassroots-based stimulus to our local economy and the larger US economy, and contribute to good outcomes like a cleaner environment and a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and to our becoming a more energy sustainable, energy conserving, and energy conscious community.

In addition, industries that manufacture replacement windows and storm door, insulation and related materials would benefit, and a spin-off might be increased investments in more energy efficient lighting, appliances and heating and cooling equipment.

Most folks I’ve talked to seem to agree that it’s a good idea, if we can just get enough good leadership and a community-wide effort to get it going.

If we’re really interested in a green and clean future, and are serious about wanting to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, it would be shame to have even one construction worker idle or underemployed while there is even one building in the area that is wasting energy into thin air.

"A Challenge" from Mary Anna Dunn

2009-04-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

I am sorry. I really don’t understand. I always thought this was what we were supposed to be doing.

Pay as we go. Put something away for retirement. Don’t buy what we don’t need and when we do buy: reduce, reuse, recycle. Now they tell me our family’s irresponsible habits are destroying the economy.

A recent article in The Washington Post lamented—lamented!—the reduction of waste entering a northern landfill. This was taken as a sign of our failing economy— evidence that consumers no longer replace things that still work. Apparently our anguished economy simply cannot support this kind of unbridled self-restraint.
We’ve got to borrow more money so we can spend more money. We need to buy wider, flatter televisions; cell phones that file our taxes for us, fold our laundry, and put our children to bed at night; houses big enough to host shipbuilders’ conventions.

If we don’t borrow more, if we don’t spend more, people will lose their jobs. I don’t want people to lose their jobs. I cringe at the factory layoffs in Detroit and around the world. Hey, we put 180,000 miles on our last car. What have I done to our economy?

Won’t someone please tell me that it’s good news when American’s put 5% of their earnings in savings, keep useable electronic equipment out of landfills, and most days pack a lunch before leaving for work in the morning.

Is unrestrained consumerism the only model for a strong economy? Can’t we somehow develop and maintain economic habits of self-restraint and personal responsibility and still gainfully employ enough people to support and nurture a world population approaching 7 billion people. Can we, in the end, support and nurture 7 billion people if we don’t evolve a post-consumerist economy?

We have to find some other way. A way that navigates between parsimony and opulence, employs without destroying, saves without hording. Can you tell me what this is? I need your help, because I really don’t know. But I do know that this economic down turn can offer us a time for reflection and redirection, or it can just represent one more iteration of the last century’s cycles of consumerism and recession.

I want to believe we can re-emerge from this recession with a cleaner and more mature mechanism for economic growth. Help me with this, please. Today I am issuing a challenge essay. Tell us what you think. Start the dialogue. Write to Civic Soap box with your ideas for a new, sustainable and responsible economy.

Friday, April 4th, 2009

2009-04-01T14:28:00.001-07:00

All in a Day's Work by Ellen Adams

Farming has its rewards. A predictable day is not one of them. Summer chores are in full swing--a hundred bales of hay need to be moved just as the next farm’s promiscuous bull and his harem come to call. The fence between our two properties can’t keep two black angus bulls apart once they decide to butt heads and vie for male dominance. My husband, Buddy, strides out the door, clearly annoyed. Our neighbor never hurries to retrieve his happy wanderers.

On this hot summer day, our own cattle would have contentedly hung out in the shaded backwoods, well away from Buddy’s hay moving operation. Now that company has arrived, however, they’re eager to socialize. All those cows milling around will mean countless opening and shutting of gates for Buddy.

The phone rings. My mother-in-law is offering to share a pail of freshly picked cherries. Up at the old farmhouse, I find her giving Granddaddy an earful, while he leans on his cane. It seems he has a plan to keep the home team separate from the trespassers. All he needs to do is move our cattle into the orchard and close the gate. “See?” he says, “They’re standing right there.”

Granddaddy heads off toward the orchard on his 94-year-old legs. Grandma says he won’t be satisfied until he takes a fall and hurts himself. Then what will they do?

Hours later, a rusty pick-up truck parks in the shade of a walnut tree. Our neighbor and his helpers have finally come over to begin the roundup. Men and cattle commence running every which way. From a nearby field, Buddy leans against the tractor’s open door, taking in the show. He knows those wily animals have no intention of walking back the way they came.

Remembering Granddaddy’s plan, I glance out the window. Sure enough, the orchard gate is now closed. But do I see large red ear tags mingling with small orange ones? I believe so. Apparently the cattle Granddaddy corralled in there weren’t all ours.

In the end, Buddy and our neighbor give up on separating the two herds in the open. Sorting must be done in the barnyard - one by one. This is going to be a long evening.

My husband and I can expect other days such as this one, where things won’t go as planned, where hay won’t be hauled, dinner will be late, and catching a little of the US Open Golf Tournament on that fancy flat screen TV will have to wait. Over the years, Buddy and I have been tempted to pack our bags, to move away, to take life a little easier. But like the generations of family before us who have called this place home for more than two centuries, we’ve discovered our roots sink deep into the soil beneath our feet. We want to preserve and protect our piece of family history. We know that nothing lasts forever. We can feel the winds of change. Buddy and I may very well be the last generation to live here on the farm. But, at least in our lifetime, we will say with satisfaction, "We choose to stay.”