WordPress just ate 700 words of a lengthy post I was writing.  I feel like I want to hit something.

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Pat Greene | Leave a comment

Fifty years on.

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Pat Greene

I was two years old when Kennedy was shot.  I don’t have memories of where I was and what I was doing,  the way I do of Challenger exploding or the planes hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11.  I do not have an emotional tie to the Kennedy assassination.  It is an important event in American history, that is all.

I wonder, sometimes, at the extent to which Kennedy has been beatified in the American — especially the liberal American — ethos.  The man did a lot for civil rights, but he also deepened our involvement in Vietnam.  I am sure that, had he lived, his record might not have been as rosy. (Certainly, his personal life was nothing to be proud of.  He would never even had made it to the Oval Office if he had to run today.) Kennedy was very charismatic, but charisma alone cannot make a good presidency.

Instead of a president, I think what we lost was a dream.  I think any time you have a president assassinated, especially a young president less than three years into his first term, it is a reminder of how vulnerable we are, both as a nation and as people.

I think the continuing existence of conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination is testament to the extent to which the we try to avoid the fact that a lone crazy with a rifle can wreak so much havoc.  (Although it is interesting that the only theory that has been proven has to do with the Soviets.  The Soviets were not involved in the assassination, but recently released KGB records indicate that the Soviets indulged in a misinformation campaign to make Americans believe that they were — including forging letters to and from Lee Harvey Oswald.) We do not want to admit that the world is as chaotic as it is, that danger and death, even for the most well-secured of us, can lurk anywhere.

Dreams die hard.  The dream that we are somehow better, that there is “Camelot” is just around the corner, has died very hard, in the same way that the illusion of safety that we lived under for most of the post W.W. II twentieth century, died 0n 9/11/01.

Of course, we tend to forget that Camelot is pretty much a mythical place, anyway.

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Posted on November 19, 2013 by Pat Greene

Not to whine (or at least, not to whine overmuch), but I have had a rough couple of years.  Things are better, but you can see the marks of time in the wrinkles around my eyes that seem to have cropped up overnight.  You can tell see by the increasing gray of my hair.  The wrinkles are pretty much hopeless, but I am trying to figure out whether I want to color my hair or not.

I come from a mixed heritage where gray hair is concerned.  My father had some gray in his hair as long as I could remember, and that would be from when he was in his mid-forties.  My mother, on the other hand, was well into her sixties before her hair started being noticeably gray. I seem to be splitting the difference.

The gray in and of itself should not be anything to be ashamed of. My once and future boss has gray in his hair, and he’s just shy of thirty.  Since he has black hair, the silver looks great.  My hair, on the other hand, is a dark blonde faded to mousy brown.  The gray is just that: dirty gray, not silver. I keep thinking that I want to color it to the warm caramel color it was when I was twenty.

I have colored my hair before:  usually to some shade of red.  It was a way to try to make myself into someone else. Someone with red hair who was confident and unafraid.  I often thought of taking the Red-Headed Menace into a salon and point to his head and say, “This.  This is the color I want.”  I figured I could make a decent case that that was the color I had had when I was younger even though RHM gets his coloring ffrom his father.

I never did, though. Lately, I want to reclaim me, rather than turn into someone else.  And I wonder why it seems so important.

I thought for a while that maybe it was regret.  How did I get to the place where I am now? Can’t I have a do-over?  Maybe it was fear: as I get older, and mortality seems nearer, and the death of those I love, and myself, seems to be just over the next rise, I feel the urge to erase the evidence.  The years pass so swiftly now; the days are but blinks of an eye.

Or maybe I am just buying into societal norms about aging.  I am in that gray area, old enough that I am past being interesting or cool, and young enough that my age is as of yet unremarkable.  Maybe that’s what middle-age is.  I still feel forty, though, and I look at my children with something akin to shock – how did we get here? Not that they are not wonderful human beings – I am really quite proud of them – but I wish they were younger.

I wish they were younger because I wish the wonderful years of their childhood would last longer.  Watching people experience the world around them with eyes that are as yet unjaded and lacking in cynicism is wonderful.  (My kids, being my kids, have always tended to be cynical.  The apple does not fall that far from the tree.) Of course, it would also mean that they would have to experience middle school again, which would be a terrible thing to subject anyone to; it was miserable enough the first time around.

Time is not sands through the hourglass, it is water through a sieve. You reach out to touch it, and its gone.

I also wonder if I should color my hair blue, or some other shade not found in nature.  Perhaps reject this entire “natural” hair-color business.  I have friends and coworkers who have purple, or peacock blue, or pink, hair. To step outside the timeline. Rebel.

But what have I to rebel against? To what end? So my life has not turned out the way that I planned it.  That’s true for so many people.  I have lived an unremarkable life. Maybe I could rebel against the ordinariness of my existence, but that seems… ungrateful, somehow.

I have a home.  I have food to eat.  I have medical care.  I have the wherewithal to sit inside this Starbucks until 1:00 a.m., because I choose to and not because I am homeless and have nowhere else to go to. I have a job, for what it is worth.  I have coworkers I pretty much all like.  I have friends, even if I do see them far too infrequently. I have a family. I am not alone, if too often I feel otherwise.

I would wish for magic.  Yet, when I am honest, magic often comes at a price that I am not sure I am willing to pay. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt.  I am not the sort of person to be able to separate the wonderful from the painful easily. That t-shirt has tear stains on it along with that intricate colorful design.

I am in the process of turning from the mother to the crone.  The figure of the wise old woman is one of the few aspects of paganism that appeals to me.  Yet, she has wisdom.  I do not think I am wise, necessarily; kind, perhaps, intelligent definitely.  Neither of those is wisdom.

So I look at the gray in the mirror.  Maybe the best course of action is to do nothing, change nothing but my attitude.

That’s not going to be easy.  Not at all.

Posted in My life and times, Who I am | Tagged | Leave a comment

The 50K challenge (a.k.a., NaNoWriMo for attentionally challenged bloggers)

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Pat Greene

If you are paralyzed by a voice in your head
It’s the standing still that should be scaring you instead
Go on, and do it anyway
“Do It Anyway,” The Ben Folds Five

So, I have been trying to do this “writing 50K words this November.”  I am pretty sure that is not going to happen – I am just over 12K shy of where I should be by this time.  I have written just over 1K this evening, and it has taken me an full hour and a half.  And tonight, the words are just flowing. Most evenings they flow as well as honey in the snow.

Not that they are coherent and thoughtful words.  Much more stream of consciousness.  That is what trying to write so many words in a month will do to you:  you cannot let yourself have the luxury of indecision, of perfectionism. I suspect that if I do write close to my goal, it will require me to just write.

It’s akin to Elizabeth Bear’s maxim that the first rule of professional writing is “butt in chair.”  If you want to write, write.  If you don’t want to write, write anyway.  If it is a terrible day outside, and you would rather nap?  Write.  If it is a beautiful day outside, and you would rather drive to the beach? Write. Can’t write at home? Find someplace that you can. Think you don’t have anything to say?  Find your voice.

And don’t be too worried about what the hell other people think.  Someone once told me of Seth Godin’s motto, “Just ship it.” Let go of the rope.  (This is not quite the same as Alan Ginsburg’s maxim to writers to “murder your darlings.”) Move on.

Earlier this year I went to a concert by the Ben Folds Five and the Barenaked Ladies.  Because I almost never hear music when it first comes out, I had never actually heard any music by the Ben Folds Five.  I came away with two songs I love: “Song for the Dumped,” and “Do It Anyway.”

One of my absolutely coolest friends said that “Do It Anyway” was sort of a theme song for her.  I wish it could be for me. I think that’s what I need to do: let go of outcomes.  Leap into the abyss, without figuring out where the net is.

Count surrender like you know that’s a joke
And the punchline is that you were never in control
Surrender anyway

That’s so hard: perfectionism is a way of exerting control, and pretending that what you is not good enough to share with anyone is a way to keep yourself safe from criticism.  Except you’re never really safe, are you? You have to find your safety in yourself.

I wonder how to do that.

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Writing. And the college admissions process (actually unrelated)

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Pat Greene

I am doing a lot of my writing offline.  There is a problem in using Starbucks Wi-Fi, and not just with security: depending upon the Starbucks and the time of day, the network can be horribly slow.  I was in a late-night Starbucks (for locals, the Starbucks at Lawrence and El Camino is open until 1:30 a.m.) and I gave up on using the wi-fi because I just could not get reliable connectivity.  What this means is that you may well be socked with tons of posts starting in December, when the 50K challenge I set for myself is over.  At this point I really do not think I am going to make it, but I would like to get as close as possible.  I have the week before Thanksgiving off work, so I am hoping to write a lot while I am cooking (which is what I pretty much spend the two days before the holiday doing – we believe in a traditional Thanksgiving, and those take effort).

Speaking of writing, the process of finding what to say is rather daunting.  I am used to blogging when I have something bothering me (which accounts for the general tone of a lot of the posts) and just blogging to write is a sort of stressful.  (It is also why I end up writing about work, since my job can be very stressful.) I suppose I could always turn to the writing prompts in WordPress or Live Journal, but I have always resisted writing according to someone else’s idea.

Being able to write a lot of words easily is one big advantage of doing a novel, especially if it is a short novel that you have no intention of publishing.  I remember when I did NaNoWri mo years ago, when I got stuck I would go back and make scenes more intricate. That actually was not a bad idea: as one professor told me, I tend to write elliptically, assuming that people could see the links in the chain I was creating without spelling them out.  I really do not want to do the same thing here – going back and revising blog posts to have more words in them seems counterproductive to what I have been working on in blogging for a lot of this year; namely, to make my writing cleaner and more concise. (I am not sure I have been succeeding particularly well, but I have been trying.  Except for this  month, when I have been not quite so concerned about using fewer words to explain the same concepts.)

Writing elliptically is a form of mind-reading (essentially assuming that everyone thinks like me, which is a bit of a stretch) which the Red-Headed Menace seems to have inherited, since he gets the same criticism of his papers.  “Well written, good ideas, but you need to explain them more completely.”  I have been trying to break myself of the habit since law school (if there is anything that will force you to be explicit about all the steps in your logical argument, it is taking a legal writing class).  I am hoping that with help from his teachers that he gets the hang of this before he trots off to college.

Speaking of college, going through the admissions process to elite schools is once again here, and I really, really hate it. There was a recent article in the Stanford magazine, which talked about Stanford’s admissions program, which started out saying they were writing about admissions because quantum physics was simply too easy. I laughed, but then I read the article.  Oy.

I will be so glad when this is over.  The hard work will end with the year – then comes the waiting until April. I do not have to do the actual writing and filling applications (although I must say, I wish the Common App had been around when I applied to colleges), but have you ever tried to simultaneously nag someone and keep them from having a complete nervous breakdown?  Thank goodness we are almost through the SAT process.  RHM only has to retake the math SAT the first of December (and hopefully get a score above his current 710, which he got having done no studying, simply deciding at the last minute to take it the same morning he took his Bio SAT).

Not surprisingly, given that this is RHM we are talking about, even the SAT process had its fair share of drama.  Because of his nosebleed, they had to photocopy his test score and submit it that way, and record that he was sick during the test.  We got a letter from the College Board stating that his test was incomplete, and that since the scores were possibly lower than he should get, they were cancelling the test scores unless we told them otherwise.  It was a tense week of figuring out alternative plans (taking the regular SAT in December, taking the Math in January) before we were found out this was a form letter that they sent to everyone who gets sick during a test, and that we should probably just tell them not to cancel the scores.  I actually think it is kind on their part to notify students (even though they do not refund your money or allow you to retake it free), since most of the time when people go into the SAT sick they do a bad job.

I just have to hold on until January. So does he.

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New shoes.

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Pat Greene

I have never thought much about shoes.  I am of the “sensible flats” school of women’s footwear, and not solely because it reflects my personality. (Okay, you can stop with the eye-rolling, now.  You know who you are.) When I was twenty, I fell over jumping down a flight of three very small steps at Senior House at MIT (I was falling down drunk (literally!) at the time), breaking my left ankle and tearing the ligaments on the outside of my lower left leg.  Ever since then, any shoe which concentrates my weight on a small part of my foot hurts to wear.*  (This would include the black-velvet stilettos — the nicest shoes I have ever owned — I had bought a few months before the accident.  I held on to those shoes for maybe ten years before I emerged from denial long enough to give them to Goodwill.)

These shoes, however, I would buy just to look at them.  These, ladies and gentlemen, are not shoes, but works of art.

Of course, in the end, they would just be something else to accumulate dust. Not to mention that I probably have better uses for the $1,095 list price.

*I also can’t ice skate for very long for the same reason.  See, there’s almost always a silver lining.

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I do so love “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Pat Greene

“Once the Red Sox were perennial losers with pretentious fans who would invoke them as a metaphor for the futility of all human endeavors.  Now they’re the Yankees with beards.”

Peter Segal, from the November 2 show.

Posted in Sports | Tagged , | 3 Comments

QOTD

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Pat Greene

“I feel like Google is turning into a Bond villain.”  Bobcat Goldthwaite, during a bit on the Google barges, on the November 9th broadcast of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!”

Posted in The Internet and its perils | Tagged | Leave a comment

Nola.

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Pat Greene

Long time readers of this blog may know that, although I consider myself a Floridian, I was born in New Orleans. I love Creole and Cajun food (no, they’re not the same thing), and can get a bit dogmatic about certain things, such as…

I don’t care how “untraditional” you proclaim yourself to be, real jambalaya, truly honest-to-God, born on the banks of the Big Muddy jambalaya, proper jambalaya, does NOT have salmon in it. Period.  Full stop. If your dish has salmon, it might be tasty (I don’t think so, but then I don’t like salmon), but it is NOT jambalaya.*

[Edited to add: before anyone goes all Green Eggs and Ham on me, I feel compelled to state that on a previous visit to the restaurant I had tried the dish in question.  Not a fan, and not simply because it was called “jambalaya.” There are many spicy vegetarian stews that I have tried and liked, although I would never have graced them with the title “chili.”]

I’m not completely inflexible: while I’ve never heard of anyone using mascarpone cheese in their shrimp and grits before, it was quite tasty.  The sliders were terrific (I’m still a little fuzzy as to what “bacon jam” is, other than delicious).

The hurricane was way too weak. A properly made hurricane (and I have had a number of them over my adult lifetime — they’re one of my favorite mixed cocktails, along with mai-tais) should leave me kind of wobbly.  (What can I say? I am a really cheap drunk.) I barely even noticed this one; whatever rum was in there was barely detectable.  The Ginger Mule that the Rocket Scientist had, on the other hand, tasted great.

So, all in all, a mixed review.  Three and a half stars.

*”Jambalaya does not have salmon in it” is only second to my other great Louisiana food dogma:  there is no universe in which real, proper, red beans and rice is a vegetarian dish.  Red beans and rice has at least two types of meat, preferably three.

Posted in Food | Tagged | 3 Comments

Closet Christmas.

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Pat Greene

It’s after Halloween.  Openly, I nod seriously when people complain about all the Christmas things being set out in stores, stores that, because it is November, decide that it is not too early to start playing Christmas songs. (And God  knows, I abhor the new trend of stores opening on Thanksgiving. I was always appalled by Black Friday, but opening and forcing your retail employees (usually the lowest on the totem pole, too) to work, is simply unconscionable. I try to make every effort not to go to either the 24/7/365 Walgreen’s or the grocery store, but I am not always successful in those.  But I would never do Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving.  And since Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday per se, I have no problem with being dogmatic about this.  I actually would be less offended by stores being open on Christmas, mainly because it is a religious holiday, and therefore only really deserves to be held sacrosanct by Christians.  Of course, I strongly suspect that there are few people who agree with me on this, given how the secular form of Christmas has seeped into our culture.  That is not a complaint, mind you, or a shout to “keep Christ in Christmas!,” merely an observation.)

Secretly, I smile.  I love Christmas songs.  Whatever the state of my relationship with my Creator, Christianity in general, or whatever branch of organized religion I am currently attached to (there have been three different ones in  my lifetime), Christmas music makes me feel joyous.

Note: I did not say happy. Joyous is a different quality, which may or may not contain happiness within it.  It always contains elements of awe, and usually solemnity, however.  It soothes me.  Sometimes, secretly, I play Christmas music in July, if I need to.

It is music of miracles, of wonder, of infinite possibilities. There are notable exceptions: “The Coventry Carol” and some of the verses  of “What Child Is This?” come immediately to mind. I love them anyway, as sad as they are, because pain and darkness is part of Christmas, too, even if it is usually ignored. To celebrate Christmas without recognizing the pain of a young woman who maintains her faith in spite of being in a socially precarious position, or the grief-stricken cries of the mothers lamenting the slaughter of the innocents by Herod, is to miss some of the depth and awful and awe-filled nature of the holiday. Not to mention that the baby whose birth is celebrated with such joy will himself grow up to be tortured and killed, rejected and left to die by his own people.  Christmas is nothing if not a contradictory holiday. That darkness adds solemnity, and throws the light of the angels over the manger into greater relief.

It may because I was raised to associate this music with a certain state of mind, I still find it spiritually enriching.  Why restrict it to one part of the year? My favorite Christmas song, “What Child Is This?” will, if I suspend disbelief, enter into my heart and fill it with awe. (And what is Christmas, and Easter, and Christianity in general, but a suspension of human disbelief? I am not convinced that the belief in a deity is inevitably part of the human psyche.  I want to believe, the centurion said to Jesus, help my unbelief.)  There are very few versions of this carol I dislike.  Then there is the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah Maclachlan version of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” with it soaring segue into “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” which makes me feel like I can fly. (I love this song also because when I was young and would sing of carols, I would always sing these two back to back in this manner.  They just fit together.) This is the definitive version of these two songs, as far as I am concerned. There is the Bing Crosby/David Bowie “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth,” which, if you overlook the awkward spoken set up, is really beautiful, a blending of generations in a timeless call for peace on earth.  Isn’t that what we all want, after all?

Of course, the power of Christmas music may be part of why it is precious.  It is something to wait for, something to cheer the long nights until the turning of the seasons.  Except that I, unlike most people I know, embrace the darkness, and long for the winter days that end with the purple and pink of sunset streaking across the sky at 4:30.  (I am almost the only person I know who cheers the ending of daylight savings time, because from there on the days will be shorter.)

Of course, this is the religious Christmas music.  Secular holiday music is, for the most part, another story.  I make an effort not to listen to the more obnoxious Christmas music, with a few exceptions.  “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Twisted Sister makes me grin (do you know that there are a number of heavy metal Christmas albums?  I didn’t, until a few years ago, when I gave two of them as presents), and the Barenaked Ladies “Elf’s Lament,” makes me laugh.  (For those of you not familiar with this gem, just think of it as the theme song for “Occupy North Pole.”) Then there is “Deck the Stills,” which is just… strange. The Bobs’ “Fifty Kilowatt Tree” brings back fond memories of going to tour the more extravagant light displays in town, put up by people willing to foot huge electricity bills, another sign of the season I look forward to with excitement. (Willow Glen always has those Godzilla reindeer.  I can hardly wait.)

I am even starting to like Hanukkah music, which is certainly not part of the tradition in which I was raised. There’s not a whole lot of it that I have run into, though.

I hide my attachment to Christmas music.  I listen with headphones so that I avoid the disapproving sighs and rolled eyes of my offspring, and the requests that I stop from my spouse. I understand their wanting to not hear Christmas music too early: to everything its season, says Ecclesiastes, and the season for Christmas music is about three weeks from now. There is not much Thanksgiving music that I know of, so it is a matter of struggling through the days with no seasonal music.

Except secretly. Shhhh….. Don’t say I told you.

Posted in God faith and theology, Music, Who I am | Tagged | Leave a comment

A Case of You.

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Pat Greene

You’re in my blood like holy wine
You’re so bitter and so sweet
I could drink a case of you, darling
And would still be on my feet
I would still be on my feet
“A Case of You,” Joni Mitchell

I have a new addition to my “songs I cannot live without” list. “A Case of You” is manages to be heart-rending, honest, and unsentimental all at the same time.  The first time I heard it, I knew that it would be a song that means a great deal to me.

This was another song I heard first through The Voice, and James Wolpert’s spare, acoustic version is my favorite, even after I hunted down a bunch of other versions on iTunes. (I ended up buying k.d. lang’s cover, instead of the original, because I have always found Joni Mitchell’s singing voice to be vaguely annoying, even though I recognize that she may well be the greatest female songwriter of my lifetime.  I consider it to be Bob Dylan syndrome.)

Just before our love got lost
You said “I’m as constant as the northern star”
And I said “Constantly in the dark, where’s that at?
If you want me I’ll be in the bar.”

There is it: searing unsentimentality, which responds to a cliched poetic declaration of love with scorn, a pin popping a balloon of  melodrama. The quotidian “If you want me, I’ll be in the bar,” underscores the seriousness of the pain of “just before our love got lost.”  But Mitchell then goes on to use beautiful and poetic  language of her own, fresh and startling.

I’m a lonely painter
I live in box of paints
I’m frightened by the devil
And I’m drawn to those who ain’t afraid

I drew in my breath.  This is who I am, except substitute “the world” for “the devil.”  The people I am drawn to are unafraid; they shine like brilliant gems.  I have joked that I have a “brain fetish,” but brains are not enough: I am drawn to curiosity, a nature which seeks out challenges, or to unflinching courage in the face of life’s myriad twists and turns.  I don’t have that: I am too afraid of failure, of pain. Often, I feel left behind as I watch the eagles spread their wings to fly.

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
“Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed”

I vacillate as to whether this applies to the people I have loved in my life or myself.  A bit of both, I think.  Loving people means being prepared to love them whatever happens.  All too often that means blood, usually metaphorically.  It is the nature of loving people, I think.

I remember that time you told me you said
“Love is touching souls”
Surely you touched mine
‘Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Everyone we meet, everyone whom we love in all its forms, the people that matter to us: they touch our souls.  Who we are in the worlds, we will never be but for the people we meet.  Anyone worth knowing, anyone worth caring about, touches my soul.  They change me.

Yes, this song means  lot to me.  It calls out to who I am, with my flaws, my glaring imperfections, yet not in a way that is painful or embarrassing.

It makes me think about myself and the people in my life in a slightly different way; that is always a good thing.

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November, thus far.

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Pat Greene

It’s definitely fall.

The trees are turning late this year.  Usually, they turn in October; but the trees on my street only started changing color last week.  They’re not quite as bright as usual, either.  It is still lovely to see them.

The nights are chilly (for the Northern California value thereof), the days mild.  The darkness falls earlier, at 4:59 today, now that Daylight Savings Time has ended. It gets colder quickly: when I walked outside to get my bag from the car just now, I could see my breath.

November started with pain, and looks to be continuing so.  The fall that injured my knee also trashed my ribs, and they hurt.  Unlike the knee, the pain is intermittent, but when it happens it is severe.  It takes my breath away and causes me to whimper.  (And that’s as they are getting better: a week ago they were making me scream.) I am on muscle-relaxants, which help, but that means I can’t drive.  I went to work for three hours Monday night, but the exertion of pulling myself out of my work chair caused my ribs to start hurting and I could not concentrate.

Tonight was better.  I got in late, but was able to work a more or less full shift.  Very few people hung up on me, and very few people were overtly nasty.  So things are improving.  The mess with the national website isn’t helping, nor is what is going on in Washington in general.  And, really, the criticism is valid:  it appears that the Administration was totally caught by surprise by the demand and failed to require enough capacity.  Which is absolutely ridiculous: they had the statistics about the number of uninsured — did they really not expect people not to jump at the chance to buy insurance?  In the two and a half months I have been doing this I have talked to one (one!) person who was uninsured who stated that she had no intention of buying insurance and would rather pay the penalty.

Also, a Canadian company? Without putting it out for bids?  You don’t think that there would be Silicon Valley firms that would love to be able to brag that they put together the biggest, baddest website possible?  They had three years, surely they could have put this out to bid.  So, they could have had an abbreviated bid schedule, if necessary.  They could have… they should have.

It looks like I will not be able to finish my 50K of words by then end of November after all.  My lack of writing over the past few days now means that I have to write 2,350 words a night to get there, and only once since the beginning of the month have I been able to do that.  Painkillers do have that sort of affect on the intellect (and the motivation) sometimes.

Well, although the nights are getting longer, midnight is still midnight.  And past bedtime.

‘Night, all.

Posted in My life and times, Work! | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Pat Greene

I have so much to write about.  At this point I have 16 browser tabs open, not including this one, and a mess (that’s a term of art) of links stored in my Safari reading list.  Topics range from Jenny McArthy and pertussis, to polywater and “pathological science,” to “35 Secret Starbucks Drinks You Don’t Know About.”

Am I writing about them? Clearly not.  Sometimes the problem is not that there is nothing to write about, but there is too much to write about.  It is the problem of the Internet; it is a thief of time and attention.

But that’s the world itself, isn’t it?  There are too many wonderful, horrible, exciting, interesting things to take in.  It’s impossible to know where you are in relation to the universe; it’s too vast and moves with so much speed.

All of which makes me long for reincarnation: there is too much to know before I die. Of course, personal knowledge does not carry past the deathbed, so even if I return, I’ll have to start all over again.

That’s a pity.

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Happy Veteran’s Day.

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Pat Greene

My father was a Marine.  My grandfather was a Navy aviator and test pilot. I have ancestors who fought in both World Wars, the Civil War (on the wrong side), and the Revolutionary War. (If I so chose, I could apply for membership in both the DAR and the Daughters of the Confederacy, not that I am likely to do so.)  I have a great deal of respect for men and women who served in our armed forces.

We ask so much from our troops.  We give back so little.  We ask them to go to far away places, leaving behind family and friends, and often to put their lives on the line.  We talk a good game as a country about how important our troops are, but we fail to support them when they get back.

We need to provide adequate resources for them and their families while they deployed.  We need to promptly provide good care for them when they get back from whatever quagmire of a war they were deployed to, and whatever help they need to quickly reintegrate into society.

Most importantly, we need to not send them into quagmires in the first place.

Iraq? Quagmire.  We were lied to by our leaders. Afghanistan? After all these years, I go back and forth about the extent to which our invasion of Afghanistan was justified and responsible.  Syria?  Unless it were as part of a United Nations force (which is not going to happen because of Russia’s relationship with the Assad regime), having U.S. troops involved would be a disaster in the making.  True, the administration was only talking air strikes, but once involved there is always the danger of escalation.

Even all those drones we are using to take out alleged terrorists (and civilians) have a higher human cost than we usually think about.  Cracked.com recently ran a piece, “6 Myths About Drone Warfare You Probably Believe,” which was eye opening, to me at least.  They may not be putting their bodies in harm’s way, but drone pilots certainly place their psyches on the line, with less opportunity for advancement than for traditional combat power.

There is this bizarre belief that manifests itself sometimes that to support the troops automatically means to support the war.  That to criticize the decisions of the people at the is to not care about those further down the food chain.  This is complete garbage.

We have a responsibility to our troops to hold our leaders accountable for what actions they take.  It is up to us to make sure that we only place our troops in danger when there are no other options.

 

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A few thoughts on the death penalty.

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Pat Greene

I have written before about my opinions about capital punishment, namely that it is morally indefensible. It turns out that more and more people are agreeing with me, such as the state legislature of Maryland.

Earlier this year, in a move that got little attention, the Maryland legislature passed a bill abolishing the state’s death penalty.  It joins Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York as states which have dropped the death penalty in the past ten years.  At this point, eighteen states do not sentence people to death.

It’s not enough, but it is a start. Californians last year soundly defeated a proposition which would have abolished the state’s death penalty, but at least it made it to the ballot.

The fact that only some states offer the death penalty is one of my biggest objections to it. While I think there are very strong theological grounds for rejecting capital punishment in theory, it is how it is administered — or not — that creates the strongest case against putting people to death.

The fact of the matter is, you could commit the exact same crime, and whether you murdered in Chicago or Dallas would determine whether you were sentenced to death. One of the most horrific serial killers of the last twenty-five years, Jeffrey Dahmer, did not get the death penalty because he was in Wisconsin.

Interestingly enough, the religious makeup of Maryland may have had some impact on the legislatures action.  Maryland is majority Roman Catholic, and the church opposes capital punishment.  It’s a stand that often gets overlooked in all the (appropriate) screaming over their opposition to women’s reproductive freedom and LGBT rights.  I have strong objections to religions being involved in political decision-making, but in this case, I’ll take it.

When I hear of conservatives converting to Catholicism, such as Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush, I think of this issue.  Pope John Paul II once famously chastised American Catholics as wanting a “cafeteria religion,” where they pick and choose what social positions were morally acceptable.  He was talking about abortion, contraception, and homosexuality, but it could be as easily said about capital punishment and the church’s call for economic justice and taking care of the poor.  Somehow, I don’t think people like Gingrich signed up for that.  It’s cafeteria religion, all right, just around a different set of issues.

In other capital punishment news, John Kruzel at Slate argues for bringing back the guillotine.  I actually am for this — the guillotine is a pretty humane way to kill people.  It also does not need to involve  doctors, and therefore doctors will not need to violate the Hippocratic Oath.   Of course, the reason the guillotine will never be instated as a method of execution is that it is too tough on spectators.  Chopping someone’s head off is a pretty gruesome business, after all.  It does not look like someone going to sleep.  It is a clear-cut and violent death.

This is exactly the reason it should be used.  If we as a nation are going to hold that it is okay to execute people, we should not be let off the hook from having to face what this barbaric practice entails.

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