Monthly Archives: November 2018

Feelings Not Facts

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After a welcome break from tutoring, I was back at for the first time in two weeks. I’m not sure why—maybe it was just that I’d gotten used to having my evenings back and under my own control—but I was exhausted when I rolled up on the cove around 9:45 Wednesday night.

When I get home after 2 ½ hours of trying to get 25 high school-age students to put down their cell phones and do some homework, I’ll often sit-up for an hour or so with a beer (sometimes a snack) and more often than not, I’ll watch The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. Because I tune-in just prior to the 10:00 p.m. segue between hosts and shows, I’ve come to enjoy being there for the “hand-off” that takes place between the brilliant Rachel Maddow and O’Donnell, a savvy political veteran of DC’s internecine combat.

Wednesday night, though, for some odd reason, I switched on CNN. When I am home at night, I rarely miss Ms. Maddow’s special blend of research, commentary, and the way she weaves each evening’s storyline, coaxing viewers along for something other than the usual soundbite journalism that’s all-too-common in this post-factual era.

It’s unfortunate that the only two left-of-center news networks force us to choose: pitting Maddow against Chris Cuomo (over on CNN), and then, O’Donnell goes head-to-head against worthy rival, Don Lemon. What I often end up doing is channel-surfing between networks during commercials, which works at times.

Cuomo, in addition to being a journalist is also a licensed attorney. He draws on that  legal background to “make his case” in whatever story he’s covering on a given night. Wednesday night, it was President Trump, and how the Orange Menace opts for feelings over facts, time-and-time-again. This is nothing new to anyone who doesn’t source their information solely from TrumpTV (better know as, Fox News). But for the Kool-Aid crowd of Trump toadies, this is an interesting flip-flop. Continue reading →

Writing Newsletters

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Thanksgiving’s gift of an extended respite was a welcome one. No tutoring, insurance, and only one chance to sub at a nearby high school.

I read, tag-teamed in the kitchen with my better half on some amazing plant-based meals rooted in simplicity: I had my evenings free, which has been rare since September. Thursday, we drove into Maine’s snowy western mountain region for time with Mary’s family.

Western Mountain splendor.

Grief is “a process.” The idea of grief proceeding neatly through “five stages” has been imposed upon those grieving, thanks to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Fifty years ago, she described a progression of emotional states experienced by terminally ill patients after receiving their diagnosis. Because of her “theory,” those who mourn are often inflicted by well-meaning people with the belief that we should be “getting over” our sadness and loss. If it were only as simplistic as passing through five stages.

I’m not going to debate the veracity of Kubler-Ross’s framework. Others have already done that. But Mary and I know better than most that grief doesn’t proceed in an orderly fashion, even if some wish it would. Grieving people will always mourn the loss of someone special and loved, like we loved Mark. Continue reading →

Save the Turkeys

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It’s a given that every year, a week or two prior to Thanksgiving, there will be a host of stories related to food safety and the traditional turkey dinner. Inevitably, salmonella will be the villain. These stories are always framed in terms of “proper handling” and cooking your bird for a set amount of time at a certain temperature (to kill what’s most likely to affect humans consuming contaminated holiday-associated foods).

Proper handling of your Thanksgiving turkey. (NY Times Cooking)

Of course, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that industrial meat (and poultry) manufacturing in America is one hot mess. Not even addressing the compassion angle about cruelty to animals, large, factory-farming operations are breeding grounds for disease and contamination. But why face reality when it comes to meat and poultry consumption? Let’s simply wing it when it comes to cooking ole’ Tom Turkey and hope for the best.

Just a year ago, there was an outbreak of the common bacterial disease that affects the intestinal tract. Salmonella bacteria typically live in animal and human intestines and are shed through feces. Humans become infected most frequently through contaminated water or food. The outbreak linked to raw turkey products, which began in California in 2017, has now spread across 35 states and sickened 164 people.

When I was still eating animal products, I believed somehow that chicken and turkey (white meat) was healthier. The reason I believed that was due to the clever marketing done by the poultry industry and their lobbyists. It was supposedly leaner and better for me as a carnivore. That was a lie, but like most Americans, being a duped consumer was part of my red, white, and blue DNA. Continue reading →

Who is Wise?

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Being wise was once considered a good thing. Wisdom is much more than simply “knowing a lot.” Some think that having “the ability to make sound judgments and choices based on experience” is another way of delineating who is wise and who is not.

Intelligence is more than a mere accumulation of facts. Gathering information is a good starting point. But what to do with that mountain of data? In most faith traditions, wisdom is lauded. Proverbs, a book in the Christian Bible, considers wisdom something that originates with God.

Socrates was wise.

I have been interested in the life of the mind for a long time. My quest to learn, often as an autodidact, dates back to a time in my early 30s when I realized I wasn’t that “sharp.” I began one summer to read. I’ve read voraciously ever since then.

During a key period in my life beginning in 2006, I had the good fortune to go to work for a brilliant man. Bryant Hoffman was also a good man: kind and thoughtful, too. He became an important figure in my life. He had his Ph.D. in English and had been a former college dean. He always deflected when I’d talk about this. He’d say, in he self-deprecating way that having an advanced degree didn’t make one deep, or particularly smart. In his case, I’d disagree. I had to work to keep up with things he’d toss off, facts about literary figures and Irish poets. He’d do this as naturally as most of us breathe. Continue reading →

Doomed to Repitition

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I’m a bit early on my post that touches on Veterans Day. For most, I think it’s become just another holiday on the calendar that some don’t have to go to work for.

Time as a unit of measure marches on. This passage—known to those who study it as “history”—is too often ignored. Worse, men (and women) who ought to know better, dismiss it as mere dates, names, and numbers.

We know the quote, attributed to George Santayana, about ignoring our past. People love to quote it, and yet, those very same people—often learned and well-educated in a formal sense—rarely take the time to read and ruminate on the foundation that our nation, our ideals, and our form of government rests upon.

Books like this one expand our understanding of the past.

I spent a portion of October reading a splendid book about the 1960s. Southern historian Frye Galliard’s, A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost, offers an expansive unfolding of the time and key figures and events that framed one of our country’s most significant, and equally tumultuous decades. It took Galliard, a gifted historian nearly 700 pages to create this historical snapshot. He easily could have gone on I’m sure, but even at that length, the book is longer than most people are willing to sit with, even something so significant. It’s really too bad because I thought it was readable in a way that longer, historical tomes are often, not.

Tomorrow will be Veteran’s Day. This weekend, our ahistorical president, oblivious and ignorant to the symbolism and significance of the ending of World War I, performed like a petulant adult-child. This Orange Menace, who occupies our presidency, exhibited a truculence that was disrespectful to the country of France, his hosts, and he also was a sorry surrogate for Americans who remember the events of that horrible war, even if it was experienced during a long-ago history class in school. The president also demonstrated total disdain for the solemnity of Armistice Day, nor the memories of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in a war where more than 16 million soldiers and civilians perished. It’s quite likely he didn’t even know what Armistice Day is. Continue reading →

Moving Past the Midterm

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I am a progressive, politically. I’m fine with the label, “radical,” also. There’s a tie-in to the late historian, Howard Zinn on the latter point. Zinn was a man who I admired and I’m glad Mark and got to hear him speak at Bates College one year during his Wheaton years, when he was home for Thanksgiving.

Tuesday’s election results are being interpreted in a myriad manner of ways. Much of the parsing of the final tallies of voter’s choices land along a narrow ideological divide. While certainly someone who can be called a “partisan,” Ari Melber’s trenchant analysis on MSNBC nailed it, IMHO. Spin it however you want: it was a historic night!

Tuesday was a historic night for Democrats.

For those deniers of “blue waves” or believers who thought Beto might win in Texas, a state redder than a ripe tomato, Wednesday morning delivered disappointment. If you were hoping for something less—simply restoring some check on the Orange-Menace-in-Chief—then you might be okay with the outcome. Of course, being the narcissist that he is, The Trumpinator made his push for Republicans what some were calling “a referendum.” As he told one reporter, “In a sense, I am on the ticket,” said The Donald following one of his rallies.

Sharice Davids, left, celebrates with mother, Tuesday night. (Jim Lo Scalzo photo)

Continue reading →