PATRICK'S RUNNING SHOES... appropriate for this bridge.
THE TWENTY-SEVEN-MILLION-DOLLAR BRIDGE TO...

“Healthy businesses need healthy communities... Jobs, education, and healthcare are essential... ...”Because the truth is, our business depends on thriving communities.”

from the Chevron advertisement (Human Energy) On the inside cover of the April Atlantic magazine.

In legislative chambers of Washington and in fifty state capitol buildings around America business is often pitted against government as legislators debate issues around the subjects related to questions about what government should do for businesses and for individuals and what businesses should do for people. Republicans in Wisconsin are leading a charge to destroy unions first in that state and then in all of America. The idea is to aid businesses by taking away bargaining rights of workers. In a recent ruling the Supreme Court strengthened the political hand of corporations, and corporations have funded campaigns of legislators who vote against increasing taxes on obscenely high annual salaries and benefits of leaders of corporations. To balance budgets in almost all fifty states and in federal jurisdictions drastic cuts are being proposed by governors and legislators, and those cuts take away jobs and eliminate programs in America that do exactly what Chevron says it wants to provide in countries where it does business: provide jobs, education and healthcare. Chevron says “healthy businesses need healthy communities.”

Isn’t it about time Americans, including those Americans who manage and work in the business world, recognize their responsibility for maintaining jobs, education and healthcare for workers in America... for the families of workers in America while they are working and for retirees when it is appropriate for them to retire? Isn’t it about time for American businesses to take the hard but responsible role of keeping jobs in America for American workers rather than shipping their work to cheaper labor markets in other countries? Isn’t it time for Americans who work in private corporations to recognize that people who work in government jobs do the work of the nation and of states, and that their jobs are vital to the health of American communities? Isn’t it time for Americans to stop fighting each other recognize that government is important and that workers in government jobs are critical to the success of our nation? Isn’t it time for all of us to do whatever is necessary to rebuilt American communities that are no longer thriving? Rebuilding physical, educational, and health-care infrastructure creates jobs and helps communities thrive.

I was wondering about red.
What would the world look like without it?
It was too painful to think about
Until I remembered my friend
Who is colorblind...

So I began
to wonder how I might tell him
about it...

I'm still working on it.

Margaret and I went to a special event at the Japanese Tea Garden in Balboa Park today. I haven't written on the BLOG about the disaster mainly because I don't know what to say beyond what is already being said by media people and neighbors and special friends who have a direct connection and association with Japan. On this side of the Pacific Ocean we watch and wait and try to find ways to help. Having been to Japan many times, the first trip in the summer of 1969, I have the deepest respect and affection for Japanese people. I continue to be awed by the sheer beauty of the place and by the people. Today's visit to the tea garden renewed my admiration and respect.

Tom Fagan is a serious artist. One of the many reasons I like him and his work is that he takes seriously the responsibility of artists to make art that speaks to children. One of my favorite murals in San Diego was done by Tom in 1998. When Linda Vista got a classy new, modern library building designed by Rob Quigley, Tom turned a blank wall across from the entrance into a mural that matches exactly its mission and spirit. Take a look at Tom's murals at Rady Children's Hospital for a reminder that art has healing power.

I LOOKED ALL OVER FOR SAN DIEGO SHAMROCKS... I spied these as I was huffing and puffing my way up Ulric Street. I doubt that the Irish would call them shamrocks, but it's the best I could do. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Ok... O.K! I know I'm stuck in a rut with Iceland poppies, which I've learned are not native to Iceland but to Northern North America and Asia. This is Wednesday, and on Wednesdays I meet a couple of friends for coffee early in the morning in Mission Valley, and my bike ride to the coffee shop takes me past beds of these poppies; and I can't resist them. There is a melaluka tree beside one of the beds, and I can't resist that either.

Today's BLOG writing has nothing to do with poppies.
POOR OLD MISUNDERSTOOD THOREAU

It is certainly true that Thoreau wrote, and undoubtedly said, that the government is best that governs least. What is also true is that Thoreau respected government in much the same way that he respected individuals. What he expected of both individuals and government was that they should be guided by conscience. He objected to any government or to any individual or groups of individuals who act as agents of injustice. The essay from which ultra-conservative Americans take their favorite sentence was written by Thoreau at a time when he was appalled by American government’s tacit approval of the institution of slavery by actually enacting laws that laid out the responsibilities of owners and slaves and by enforcing those laws. He was also dismayed by the Mexican-American War and believed that responsible American citizens should insist that their government put a stop to both the war and to slavery.

One can talk, as Thoreau did, about the rights and duties of the individual in relation to Government without hating the idea of government... which Beck, Limbaugh, Bachman, Palin, and a very vocal but relatively small group of political pundits clearly do. Thoreau was a proponent of responsible government that is driven by social conscience. Obviously, when citizens, the governed, are people of good conscience, specific guidelines and directions from government are redundant and unnecessary. But alas, not all citizens are people of good conscience, and at times even the majority can be wrong; and it has been at those times that the masterfully composed Constitution of the United States saves us from catastrophe. Thoreau died a year after the Civil War started. He longed for a time when slavery would end and government’s laws dictating the terms by which an individual citizen can own other individuals as slaves would be unnecessary. When Michelle Bachman implies that Thoreau thought government was unnecessary and the cost of government was an unnecessary burden and cost to citizens, she is showing not only her ignorance but her apparent inability to to do critical thinking. Thoreau did no such thing. Representative Bachman should actually read Thoreau’s essay; and if she can’t manage to understand it, she should give the President of the United States a call. He does understand Thoreau’s essay, and he is an expert on the Constitution of the United States.

World history contains a long list of examples of chaos and ultimate disaster resulting from anarchy. Our nation is on the verge of one of those times when the inmates are getting dangerously close to running the asylum. We are close to economic melt down; and the Tea Party folks, apparently unable to see that their plan for shrinking government would actually shrink further the American middle class, the group of people in American whose work pays for the good life that we have celebrated since the beginning of the Republican Eisenhower Administration. Having graduated from high school during the Eisenhower years, I have tracked in my adult lifetime the periods of prosperity and the periods of retarded development in my country. Through the administrations of eleven presidents of the United States, I have witnessed the surges forward by the middle class and its periodic slides backward. The Tea Party folks are trying to rewrite history by claiming that words and ideas which they hold dear were actually said by revolutionaries like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin... and by subsequent writers and politicians like Thoreau and Lincoln. Checking facts is strangely more difficult in this digital age, because politicians who want to confirm what they desperately want to believe to be true go to Google and Google sends them to each other’s speeches and writings. They have developed a strategy that doesn’t find facts and truth but skillfully compounds and perpetuates ignorance by obscuring context... and context for a statement like "government is best that governs least" is essential if the author's meaning is to be clearly understood.

Thoreau would be appalled by some of the political ideas attributed to him in Washington and around the country by people on the stump. I have no doubt that he would approve of an American health care program that addresses the plight of the poor whose health needs are often not met. Thoreau died of tuberculosis, a disease which often goes undetected in poor populations in America.

As the kids say, "I'm feeling it." A great cause for celebration came from Atlanta. Sage and Kellan were born yesterday to John and Kira. Hooray! I found exactly the right spirit on a mural outside the Kensington Library. I doubt that they're reading yet, but when they're ready, these parents know what to do.

CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO SEE THEM LARGERTALKING: BETWEEN ME HERE AND THE ME IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE


Shall we begin by saying how you got here, where you came from?
How you came last week into my life tentatively at first
Then boldly offering to be my friend, my confidant?
Is this natural, this arrangement we have? Is it legal?
There are people locked up in lonely rooms, you know,
Because they cannot prove someone they talk to actually is there.

So you create yourself from day to day
Around the image you hope people have of you?
Are you afraid of what they think or say
When they know that we depend on each other,
I for my existence, you for what?
Do you think there’s basis here for friendship?

-------------------------------

I thought we agreed this would be a March friendship,
That on the thirty-first day of this month of wind
You would fly back to where you came from?
Are you having second thoughts?
A few days out of the closet and you like it.
Well, don’t forget there are disadvantages out here.

The whole thing was your idea, not mine.
You invited me. You opened up and beckoned.
I was sleeping soundly with no thought of change
When you, in fact, dragged me awake to talk.
On the first day of April I may be gone, or I may not.
I’ve taken a liking to our arrangement and may stay.

--------------------------------

Then I suppose we need some rules,
Some way of keeping mine apart from yours.
A system that determines when and where we talk.
Shall we establish limits on what we do and say?
There are parts of me I’d rather not expose.
I could ask another friend to get advice.

I thought the idea was that you and I would be the closest friends,
That anything you could ever say to anybody, you could say to me.
And as for system, I think that should have no part in what we do.
Friendship promises freedom and variety and choice. It liberates.
A system by its very nature is opposed to all of that.
Let’s be friends not made to speak by sets of rules.

---------------------------

I hadn’t expected you to be dogmatic.
It was a kind of straight man I was wanting.
So it’s going to be as much your terms as mine?
If you can decide when and where... I may lose control;
And I’m not prepared to have you with me everywhere I go.
Remember, I may want to stop mid-month and send you on your way.

There you go talking about terms and control
And what you are and aren’t prepared to do.
Why not just let it happen? Lean back and turn it loose.
If we are in the same place at the same time, we are together.
That’s enough for now. If I’m not there, I’m not there,
That’s all it means. Nothing more.

Defender

On a Sunday afternoon in March
In whatever universe
We find ourselves
Everything
Depends
Ultimately
On fidelity.

One of my very best and longest-time friends and I enjoyed a good walk on the beach this week, and we mostly talked about old times and the health problems of the aging (us) and what and how our children are doing and what a nice day it is almost any day in San Diego. He lives on the Atlantic side of the continent, so he knows a thing or two about checking the weather forecast and making contingency plans before scheduling an outdoor wedding. Because I live with eternally wonderful San Diego weather, it never occurs to me to worry that rain might interrupt any parade, barbeque, or bike ride I write into my schedule. My friend and I finally got around to talking politics. He has always been a “real” Republican, and I have always been a left-wing, bleeding heart, liberal Democrat. We are a bit like the guys in Frost’s “Mending Wall” who meet each year to walk the fence line between their properties to make repairs. We came quickly to the issue that we have discussed ad nauseam for at least fifty years. As always, argumentum ad nauseam still gets us nowhere. I can’t understand how he, one of the best human beings I know on this earth, can insist that while the “pursuit of happiness” is guaranteed in this country, every citizen has “got to catch it for himself.” Those are not the words of my friend and he didn’t use them in our conversation, but they are words I heard Christine O’Donnell, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck use and credit to none other than Benjamin Franklin. Actually, a little fact checking will turn up plenty of evidence that old Ben said no such thing or at least there is no record of his having done so; although stories about a mythical Franklin, like some of the stories about a mythical George Washington who was quite unlike our first president, crop up at political rallies regularly. My friend can’t understand why I persist in letting my bleeding heart get in the way of allowing poor, broken-down, sick citizens to pull themselves up by their boot straps, thereby becoming stronger rather than weaker, the inevitable consequence of relying on the welfare state to give a helping hand. One of my favorite examples of putting words into Ben Franklin’s mouth sounds as if it’s going to be a typical bar joke. There is this drunk coming out of a bar who runs into Mr. Franklin going in... The drunk says, “Where is the happiness the Declaration of Independence says I have coming to me”? Mr. Franklin says back to him, “It doesn’t come to you, you have to catch it yourself.” There is absolutely no historical record crediting that story or that saying to Benjamin Franklin. Like many others needed for political expediency in political stump speeches, it got made up out of whole cloth.

But that’s not my point. My point is that we have come to a time when Tea Party enthusiasts are rewriting the history of the United States, and it’s getting harder and harder for the ordinary, not-a-scholar citizen to know what is the real historical record and what is a story made up to embellish a real event in order to make that event seem relevant to some contemporary issue. Sometimes political hopefuls don't go far back to rewrite history. Mr. Huckabee's made-up story last week that President Obama's grew up in Kenya is a good example of rewriting even recent history the way one wishes it had been. So in my thinking about these issues, if I have the presence of mind to remember, I fall back on sources that predate Colonial America. Sacred texts of the world’s major religions, especially those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are clear about the importance of charity, of putting one’s self in the place of the suffering other. There is much more in the New Testament for Christians to rely on as instruction for living with our neighbors and even our enemies than there is about hell or heaven as punishment or reward; yet the emphasis on what stretches out eternally beyond those pearly gates and reminders of a hell with everlasting burning and suffering seem to Fundamentalist Christians to be more important than the clear message of Jesus about right living in relation to others. There isn’t much in the “Old Testament” to justify Israeli abuse of Palestinian neighbors; and it’s a real stretch to use any of the stories from the Koran to justify wholesale murder of innocents in jihad.

So we persist in rewriting history and reinterpreting ancient religious texts to justify whatever we have as agenda for our own times. Perhaps our best hope for security and for peace is to do what my friend and I did this week. Walk and talk and recommit to the friendship and love that binds us to each other.

Relatively little
of what happens on my planet
is the direct result of careful planning.

An earthquake under the sea shook Japan...
A Tsunami washed away an entire village...
Tetsumasu caught a cold...
Judy’s baby was born with three fingers missing
Jim has a whole in his heart...
Irwin has hemorrhoids...
Mary Grace missed the turn-off...
My left eye itches...

No reason for apologies.

IF EVERY FINGERPRINT...

If every fingerprint is different from all others,
Not even like the ones on one’s own fingers,
It’s no surprise that in more basic matters
Like with whom... for what... and why
One longs with passion for another someone
Goes beyond what most of us imagine.

The fingerprint is not the best or most exact example.
The tiny grooves and whorls on fingers and on thumbs
Are not connected to the mind or heart... and not the soul,
Being territory mostly unexplored and known.
I think it’s in the mind and heart we leave our mark.
Love is the fingerprint that’s written on the heart.

. . . . . .

Who can tell when different means danger
Or great good fortune and best of luck?
Do the good and the bad come often
Bundled together in a package of oddities
With outright freaks of nature, aberrations...
With reasons to hide... at least to be on guard?

What about those people we have loved and trusted?
Is it possible the things we don’t know about them
Would frighten or at least make uneasy...maybe repulse
The neighbors... even a mother or a best friend?
Closer to home, what about me? What about You?
What makes us not the same as all the others?

. . . . . .

Differences don’t always have their happy side.
We pass unnoticed if we’re the same as others.
Sometimes it’s good to sit alone in silence.
The woman brought to court on charge of murder
Was said to weep and wail because the papers
Said she’d never go again to feed the birds.

Every saint who ever lived in any place
Was strange enough to be considered wild
At least enough to make the world uneasy...
Attracting folks with guns or hangman’s noose
Or stones and hate enough to fuel fires
and stoke the pyres of truth and righteousness.

. . . . . .

The dancer strutting boldly on the stage
Who runs and turns and leaps in almost nothing
But the tights I’d hesitate to wear at home.
By doing what he can and wants to do
And giving up all chance of normal life,
Baryshnikov is not the same as others.

We walk along the beach beside a rolling sea
And everyone around us strolls and looks
At diving birds and children daring waves
While mothers watch and wait and hope
A child can be at home out in the world
But be as different as his fingerprints.

I’VE BEEN WONDERING...

Explain to us again the theory, Mr. Issa, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Boerner, Mr. McConnell, Mrs. Palin, and Mr. Limbaugh and your confederates in Federal Government... Why it is you prefer to keep millions of our fellow Americans from ready access to adequate health care and why it is that you prefer poverty for millions of our citizens rather than to require the wealthiest Americans to pay more than they are now paying to balance our national and state budgets? Some of our wealthiest citizens are already demonstrating that giving away great amounts of personal fortunate still leaves them with much more money they can spend on themselves in their lifetime. You’re upset with organizations like National Public Radio and Planned Parenthood. O.K., O.K., I know why you’re upset with National Public Radio. But Planned Parenthood? Let us hear what it is you think Planned Parenthood does which makes that organization anathema to your party. What creed, what gospel guides you? Tell us the reasons... and please don’t start with that trickle down theory of economics that obviously isn’t working.

I stopped recently in the middle of a bike ride along the river path to ask if I could help an elderly woman who was sitting under a bridge wailing. When I asked what was wrong, she said she had lost her way to Seattle where she hoped to find her little girl. She asked if I knew her little girl. What should I have done? Is this a police matter, or is there a health department that might respond to my call? What do you propose as solution for the proliferation of mentally ill people living on our streets, in our parks, in the canyons spaces, and along the river bottom?

And I have urgent concern for the poorest children in San Diego, the ones who may grow up to be the hoodlums and gang members that you will recognize to be a costly burden on society. I’ve decided not to be actively concerned about children from affluent families because our present income and inheritance tax laws favor the wealthiest citizens. They can adequately take care of themselves and their children. I reserve my active concern for families with little or no discretionary income to meed special educational needs of their children. I can assume the parents of an autistic child born into affluence will get appropriate assistance. Families living in poverty often can’t meet basic needs for food and shelter.

I suppose we have folks in Sacramento and in Washington who go to bed at night feeling we have met our collective responsibility for disabled citizens when we provide spaces for them to park... if they can manage to work their way up the economic ladder to a level that makes it possible for them to afford automobiles?

www.jerralmiles.blogspot.com

I went to the zoo in the middle of the day, and then I spent the afternoon at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts. I identify completely with a statement high up on the wall in one of the galleries.

"I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them." - Diane Arbus