A WEEKEND OF CELEBRATIONS...

Surrounded by family and friends,  Brystal was baptized at St. Peter’s Chaldean Cathedral in El Cajon. Her baptismal day ended with a Chaldean feast and dancing. Life is good!

The October, 2013, Gala Celebration in support of Parkinson's research...

Learn about Parkinson's Association

www.ParkinsonsAssociation.org

I saw a crow today

      startled

    by air.

and a dragonfly...

   all red.

All's Right with the World...  NOT!

Talking with a friend this morning, I was reminded that nowhere is there a country that gets it right all the time.  In fact, there isn't a country where everybody agrees on what "it" is.  Considering all the possible systems of government,  I'm going to continue celebrating my citizenship in the United States of America.  If the "other side" had won the tug of war in Washington yesterday, I like to think I'd still be celebrating... with hope tinged with sadness, of course.  If the  "other side" had pulled "my side" across the line, I would be none-the-less grateful for the constitution and the framework for governing that makes it possible for our country to go on working for a "more perfect union" without resorting again to civil war. Bringing down the government by disabling it is not an acceptable alternative to the kind of civil war our country endured a century and a half ago.  

It’s not our government that is flawed; it is disfunction in institutions of government, individually and collectively, that occasionally brings our nation to the brink of disaster.  Our government is a good one primarily because it is ours.  It belongs equally to all of us. I continue to believe, for purposes of defining and ensuring civil justice for all people, that everybody is equal to everybody else. But, of course, it's not as simple as that.  Any kid on any playground learns early that not everybody is equal in every way to everybody else.  Some people are bigger... some are healthier... some are more intelligent.  Power wins... and power is not just a matter of one kid or one group of kids being bigger or fitter or brighter.  Power resides where the most ideal combination of characteristics come together, and it's not just a matter of greater size, ideal fitness, and exceptional braininess. An overlay of experience, a combination of the experiences of all the kids, can be more important in producing power in an individual or a group than any other single characteristic however exaggerated... and there is the matter of moral and ethical orientation.  Some people are equipped early with a moral compass, an ethical sense, that other people seem to lack. On a playground there is also the matter of supervision, which is a form of government.  A playground lacking supervision and with lots of kids is like a country without government. 

The friend with whom I meet often for coffee was born in a country which was a republic in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was created by revolution in a time when laborers and other ordinary citizens of a vast region of Eastern Europe were coaxed into a civil war in hopes of doing away with class structures and forming an ideal paradise on earth where everything is owned by everybody. Theoretically everybody would have an equal measure of whatever it takes to be happy, or at least secure and content.  It didn’t work out as the revolutionary leaders planned.  Communism was a massive failure.  Soviet Union General Secretary Joseph Stalin during a brutal 30-year rule as absolute ruler was directly responsible for at least 20 million deaths and terrible suffering for many millions more.  Perestroika (restructuring) in 1991 ended the Communist experiment for the Soviet Union. The beginning of the end occurred with the glasnost (openness) of the 1980s. Russia and the now independent republics that once made up the Soviet Union are struggling to develop systems of government that serve all their citizens.
  

Please forgive my lapsing back into my old teaching habit of ending a discussion with a 

recommended reading... It’s Charles Murray’s book American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History .  In the past few months the phrase “American exceptionalism” has been used by political apologists, policy wonks, and history pundits to preface remarks about American’s failure to get “it” right. The phrase was originally used in the hundred years after the Constitution went into effect to suggest that it was a framework for government unlike any other that the world had ever known. The phrase was used in American and European discussions about government to set the new nation apart especially from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.  The motto on the Great Seal of the United States is novus ordo seciorum, ‘a new order of the ages.’  I should like to believe the United States of American can still be a replicable model of great value for nations struggling to get “it” right.  We can’t be that useful model if our Congress doesn’t get its act together.

All I’m sayin’ is...

Actually, it’s not saying... It’s a question.  Where do these citizens of my country come from who hold a Bible in one hand and an automatic rifle in the other while attempting with a straight (no pun intended) face to explain why it’s a good thing to abandon the very poorest Americans in their helplessness?  How can they reconcile their allegiance to religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus with their avowed determination to eliminate programs which provide basic social services to the poorest Americans?   

As our country skidded to a stop barely in time to keep from plunging over a fiscal cliff today, my least favorite senator, Ted Cruz, was quick to apologize to extreme right Tea Party supporters for his “failure” to block the Senate’s vote for a bill to avoid national and international economic catastrophe. The guy wanted the catastrophe to happen. He’s apparently from the same camp as those folks who long for armageddon, for the end times, for the rapture. The Affordable Care Act has been his primary target, but his determination to dismantle all social service entitlements is an often expressed larger goal of the Tea Party caucus of the Republican Party.  Surely he knows that the financial cost to the United States of the prolonged crisis which he and his Tea Party colleagues manufactured is just about the same as the cost to the country of “cleaning up” after a major hurricane.  

Everybody knows Ted Cruz is very smart.  A graduate of Houston’s Second Baptist High School, Princeton University, and Harvard Law School, Senator Cruz could be a powerful force for good. He has impressive university education built on what presumably is a base of Christian ethics learned in a Southern Baptist secondary school.  It isn’t possible that he doesn’t know about excellent models for national health care programs out there in the world that provide good coverage for everybody at a less per-citizen cost than we have been paying in the United States for a system that hasn’t worked.  Take a look, for example, at Germany’s health system... or Canada’s or The Netherlands’.  Instead of committing himself to the task he and his colleagues were elected to do, to create a program that actually aims to provide health care for all Americans, he and his party have waged war against the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted by a previous Congress as an honest effort to meet health care needs of all Americans.    Of course, there will be unscrupulous practitioners who will try to game the system for profit. The program will require some revision. Most programs require changes as they are evaluated in their first months and even after some years.

Frankly, I don’t particularly like it that Ted Cruz talks about my financial situation and distorts the facts. I overheard him complaining to someone the other day, I don’t remember which T.V. news anchor it was... I just know it wasn’t Matt Lauer because I don’t watch Matt Lauer anymore since he and a couple of Barbie Dolls are selling entertainment first and maybe a little news, if the news doesn’t take too much time away from an important performance by Miley Cyrus or Justin Beeber... and I know it wasn’t any of those dumb heads on Fox News because... well, I just wouldn’t... Oh, what I was about to say was that Ted Cruz was complaining to a national “news” reporter that every American, every man woman and child, is indebted to the tune of $51, 521 because we all share the national debt.

At first I thought that was a terrible thing, then I started to think about what every individual owes on a ledger that also shows the net worth of every individual if we figured up all the assets of the United States of America and if we calculated the value of those assets and figured how much of that value belongs to each and every American citizen, the net worth (calculated in terms of the piece of the big pie every citizen owns) of each of us would be pretty impressive.  

Then I got to thinking about what it actually means.  I OWN A PIECE OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY.  I own a piece of Mount Rushmore.  I own a piece of the road that runs up to my house. I own a part of the Coronado Bridge. I own that light house out at the end of Point Loma.  I own the White House and the Capitol and a piece of all the Monets and Rembrandts and Vermeers in all the museums that belong to the people of the United States of America.  I own a piece of every battleship and every aircraft carrier and every... Well, you get the idea.

So, Ted Cruz... I know you and Sarah Palin are buddies because I saw you and Sarah cozying up to some veterans at a monument that belongs partly to me... so tell her and everybody else you talk with about how much I owe that I’m in pretty good shape considering everything we all together own.  Talk a bit about my assets.  Then get off my ASSets and get back to work doing what I’m paying you to do.  The last time I checked, your base salary is $174,000... plus benefits... and the benefits are pretty impressive. I can’t really figure out what you’re complaining about.  Why does it annoy you that I’m not moaning about some of what I pay in taxes going to fund programs like Head Start and the Food Stamp Program and that I’m eager with my tax dollars to help pay for a national health program so all Americans can get the medical care they need. 

Get Real!

Thoughts, like images, don't have to be linked together 

to make sense.

The way the light slants in on the back porch

tells me that summer is over and autumn is here.

Measuring time out in seasons is far better

than keeping track of how much of it has gone

by counting numbers of deaths and disasters.

People who play deliberately with possibility

of catastrophe to get what they want from others

are at the very least bad, maybe even evil...

Proud pouting ignorance is the worst kind,

having in it little possibility for reconciliation.

So let’s count the passing of time by roses coming

and daffodils and the appearance of golden leaves

that show once again on trees spread across hills.

You'll be moved by the speech delivered to the Hungarian Parliament recently by Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY-6EbcH_9o     <<<<  Click

What better time than a beautiful Sunday in Autumn to pay tribute to a person whom I have admired for a very long time... mainly because she demonstrates the golden rule practice of putting the needs of other people before her own. I’m a member of book/discussion group that includes Dorothy Appleby.  As she often does, today Dorothy brought fruit and vegetables from her garden to share with all of us.  These things are only small tokens of the great kindnesses she consistently shows to many others.

Oh... another remembrance on this good day:  Monday is the birthday of my good friend Anton Gulentsov, in Smolensk, Russia.  When I am home in San Diego, I write the daily BLOG posts sitting at my computer which is surrounded by book shelves.  One of the things I see every time I work at the computer is a dried garlic bulb on the shelf closest my writing desk.  It’s little more than a hollow shell now; so when I dust the shelf, I pick it up gently, careful not to crush the sides.  It was once fresh from a garden in Smolensk,  firm and hard. I’ve kept it since it was given to me by Anton at the departure gate in Moscow just before I left for my flight home several years ago.  A Russian folk tradition: When a member of the family or a good friend goes on a long trip, give him a garlic bulb for safe journey.  I value that garlic bulb. I’ll keep it as long as it holds together.  It’s a symbol of a fine friendship, a friendship that will continue firm and strong long after the garlic has turned to dust. 

POTPOURRI
...playing with the new iPhone...

 Self Portrait

...from the Middle of the Bridge over San Diego River

The Beach at Ocean City

Ocean Beach Pier

Pier

Great Blue Heron in the San Diego River

Octoberfest at Ocean Beach... What's the young guy with the hot dog thinking?

Sir Thomas

An Invitation to do something about bullying in schools: 

If you don’t know about the national education organization GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network), let me tell you about it.  The organization is focused on ensuring safe schools for all students.  In spite of the progress our culture has made in guaranteeing social justice for all citizens, it is estimated that 8 out of 10 LGBT students are harassed at school each year because of who they are.  GLSEN is dedicated to the idea that every student, in every school, should be valued and treated with respect, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.  All students deserve a safe and affirming school environment where they can learn and grow.  San Diego’s GLSEN programs in schools receive no financial support from school district budgets.  They don't ask for it.  More about GLSEN at http://www.glsen.org

You can help... On Thursday, October 17th enjoy a very good supper at one of the most interesting and very best restaurants in San Diego. Between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. for twenty dollars you can enjoy Judy the Beauty’s special lasagna, salad, garlic bread, brownie with tea or lemonade at The Big Kitchen located at 3003 Grape Street in South Park, San Diego. Get tickets by going to the following WEB site: https://donate-sandiego.glsen.org/page/contribute/glsen-san-diego-annual-lasagna-dinner

REVIEWING THE BIDDING

Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner and other Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate have spent several days scrambling to find the right combination of words to blame the government shut-down on President Obama... and Democrats generally.  They agreed on a strategy: say the problem has been that the President is unwilling to meet with them... unwilling to have a discussion about their concerns.  

So the President sent an invitation to the entire House of Representatives to come to the White House for a discussion.  The Speaker’s office said yesterday that Boehner wouldn’t allow all 232 members of the House to go to the White House, but that he and a small group of 18 select Republican committee chairpeople would attend, including the cheerful  Congresswoman from Kansas on the right.

Here's what happened today: President Obama met with the 18.  They came out of the meeting saying they are willing to present a bill that would extend the debt limit for six weeks in order at least temporarily to avoid default by allowing government to pay it’s bills; but they reached no agreement on restarting the government. I got my pictures for today by pointing my cell phone at a TV screen.

The government is in it’s ninth day of shutdown.  Tomorrow is day ten. It’s anyone’s guess how long the shutdown will last.  Tea Party extremists show no signs of allowing the government to restart unless the Affordable Care Act, which was approved and voted into law by a majority of Representatives in a previous congress, is undone.

Coming home on my bike from the Museum of Photographic Arts this afternoon, I stopped to watch Rick practice his rope walking. I was reminded of the President's tough day. Polls are showing that a majority of Americans approve of the way  President Obama is handling the situation.