Beating a Dead or Dying Horse

Tags

classmates, Humor, life in the foothills, lifestyle

I hear from people now and again that the time of individual blogging has peaked. I don’t know if that’s true, and have no particular desire to investigate it either. I know that people who have  blogged have come and gone but I don’t think that is meaningful. That’s a lot like saying that when the inline skating craze erupted, millions of people joined in only later to discard it when they didn’t find it so fun six months later.

People who might have something to say but don’t care much about being a writer will naturally not stick with blogging.

There may be other reasons. People are, I suspect, rather sure that what they have to say is meaningful to others. Bloggers find out just how fickle this is. I’ve been doing this since 2007 or so, and while I’m okay with those who seem to read me, I never “took off” and certainly only a few find anything to comment upon except in a rare instance. I don’t do it for the public applause surely since there often isn’t any.

People who are not really interested in writing per se find Facebook useful enough to get their point across. I use it quite a lot myself, but it cannot take the place of a substantial piece.

I keep changing the focus of my blog, and no doubt that is not helpful, but little do I care. While politics consumes me, I’m far from the best spokesman around. There are, honestly, hugely better sources than moi.

If I pride myself on anything when it comes to the pen it is my ability to blend in a certain snarkiness that some find amusing. I love to twist and turn a phrase and catch people off guard. I’m not nearly as good as say Driftglass or Uncle Charlie Pierce I must say, but I try. If you have no idea of whom I speak, well, so much the poorer are you.

It seems we are headed for another damn war, one that I seriously don’t support. There is entirely too much drumming going on on the far right and that suggests to me that more is being made of this ISIL danger than is real. Most people figure our men and women will be risking their lives once again, and apparently nearly half seem okay with that.

I find that odd given that our government (whether one includes down to local city councils or not) is chock full of seriously stupid and demented people. I’m not sure what it says that so many are so willing to put their lives in the hands of lunatics who believe the earth was created 6,562 years ago, that Jesus rode dinosaurs, that climate change is just a hoax as reported to them by big oil and gas, that giving more money to the rich will someone make middle class people rich, and that God created a whole segment of people gay just to make them live a life of celibacy as some kind of statement to the Catholic Church that they too can learn to keep it in their pants.

I mean if you are that crazy, well, swamp lands abound that are yours for a few grand. i have the deeds.

What this all suggests to me, wasn’t clear to me until a while back, when again, I wondered why I continue to find a whole lotta people continuously reliving their “high school” days as the “best” times of their lives.

I mean seriously? Those were the best years?

Most people find the teen years tolerable at best, painful at worst. We were unsure of ourselves, unsure of the future, and subject to the incessant drum of peer pressure. I figure perhaps the truth of the matter is, is that those were the kings and queens, the quarterbacks and class presidents, are pretty much the Bricks of the day, relegated to drunken evenings reliving the glory days because life just has turned out as full of mendacity as Big Daddy suggested.

There is both irony in that and poetic justice, for to not live in that world of favored click drove us who lived on the outside to fear that our lives would never amount to anything, and that these pretty faces with their athletic prowess and perky breasts were destined to continue being “better” all our lives.

Perhaps that is why we rejects of the acceptable struck out to far-flung campuses and escaped the confines of the “scene of the crime” of our youth.

And when we returned figuratively or otherwise to “home” we were amazed at how small and provincial it all was, and how small and silly most of those lives lived then were.

While we found some of our old friends had weathered the years well, and were thinking and compassionate, all too many were shriveled and cold-hearted, predictably shallow in their thinking and unable to care about anyone but their own clan. Karma is a bitch as they say.

While all that “talking about the old days” was fun for the moment, soon we find ourselves with little else to say, and we stand around much as we did at those awful sock hops, starring at the floor, wishing we could disappear. When we turn and walk away, and survey the world we now inhabit, we take a deep breath, smile, and chuckle at our good fortune at having escaped. Forever after we watch from the sidelines, bemused as we watch the chitchat continue of “remember when. . . .”

Who says the zoo has to have visible bars? We know who is free and who is not don’t we? The exhibits of “how it could have turned out” are both object lessons and light amusement.

Yes, karma indeed is a bitch.

I ponder when I hit my peak. Mostly I conclude that I haven’t yet, and probably will still be reaching it when I breathe my last. But damn, it does seem to get better and better, and that’s a hell of a lot to be grateful for.

I Think Therefore I Suffer

Tags

crap I didn't learn, crap I learned, life in the foothills, lifestyle, musings

I find the human condition dizzyingly complex. I’m not sure we’ll ever get it sorted out. I’m reasonable sure that you have to be slightly off (if you get my drift) to study the human mind, and I’m very sure that prolonged study causes intense breaks with reality meaning that research results become suspect the minute they are conceived.

I mean, I am one of your more ordinary types of “scheduled” persons. I do a whole host of things as part of a routine that can become quite rigid. I walk the dog at 6 a.m. If the weather does not cooperate, but it’s sunny and lovely at 9 a.m., well too bad dog, that window has closed until tomorrow.

If you have ever read a story whose main character is one of those routinized humans who eats the same lunch for twenty-five years while sitting on the same park bench across the street from their work location which is a tiny cubicle in a corner from which said subject does some routine mundane same-old-same-old day in and day out for forty-three glorious years returning home at precisely 5:47 p.m. to one of five carefully arranged TV dinners and then two hours of knitting before climbing into bed at the stroke of 10 p.m. to awaken precisely at 6 a.m. to do it all over again, and equate me as one of those persons, well, you would be mistaken.

You would be deeply mistaken.

I revel in setting up systems of order, but true order is nothing but neurotic obsession. I like knowing that there is a time for every purpose under heaven, but find it serves me best by allowing me to ignore the chores I wish to ignore if fate delivers me some altered time line. You see, I use order for the gifts of avoidance as much a for the gift of organization.

I never met a routine that couldn’t be tweeked.

I never met one that didn’t need major revisions at least twice a year.

Because my desire for orderly organization runs smack into my desire for something new.

It is why I struggle to have “a” hobby, rather than eight or so.

It is why I struggle to add yet another great recipe rather the fine grouping that I already have of tested and true.

It is why I sit puzzling for sometimes day as to “what to read next” because there is so much to choose from.

It is why new thoughts intrigue me rather than bore or frustrate me. Dazzle me with your ideas for my brain loves the challenge.

Why am I not satisfied with a job well done, repetitively? Why am I on this unrelenting quest to master yet another THING?

Who knows.

It may be part of what makes us human, or at least most of us? More than some of us at least, for I live by the theory that I am only original in my sum rather than my parts.

We are driven to conquer new things, we humans. It is what has taken us to the moon, Mars and beyond, which powers us to the Mariana Trench and to the North Pole. From this thing inside, we decided we should be able to fly like birds, and go faster than horses at a full gallop. It propels us ever onward, never satisfied with what is but rather focused on what might be.

I am not Einstein, nor Picasso; no Sophocles am I, no Hypatia, Gertrude Stein, or Curie. The drive to do something new is not limited to only the brightest and most noteworthy inventor or sophist  but resides somewhere beside that reptilian remnant in each braincase.

There is percolates a constant insistent demand or remains dormant throughout most of its life, or somewhere in between. What awakens it, or dampens it, whatever the case may be, is unknown to me for sure. It just surely is in me a sometimes annoying nagging that never ceases.

So I go along in my routines sometimes happily for weeks, until it’s just not enough, and I scrounge around seeking some new challenge. To read the book I’ve long avoided because it was too hard, to attempt a new hobby or take an old one up a notch. To master something new, to add to my resumé offered with the last breath to the only possibly interested entity who common sense (let alone great theologically pondering) tells me has no such interest.

Yet I am so compelled as are countless others, to do SOMETHING, to create, categorize, expand the realm of knowledge, point out the failings of planetary systems be they political or religious. We are all compelled to DO, for no very good reason at all. After all, I am by thinking said Réne. What more needs be said or done?

This is not something morose and melancholy. Whatever you believe about God and death, it accommodates all. What is is, what will be will be, and not much I do changes any of that. But still I do.  Do that is. And with a happy and challenged heart for the doing excites and exhilarates, giving satisfaction beyond the completion of the thing itself.

I should much like to ask a chimpanzee if they experience this sort of thing at all. Is it better not to? I sense not, but I know not either. Perhaps there is a peacefulness that comes from life being sorted out ahead of you and only to be followed with death’s appearance earlier if you slip off the path into the gaping jaws of someone higher up the food chain.

Anyway, I’m busily re-organizing and it’s all so exciting and thrilling to have new challenges. For me it’s biking instead of walking and cooking in a new way driven by a body who has said “enough of that” now nourish me properly. It fills the days with a new expectation, new roads to travel, new discoveries.

The Contrarian views this all from his perch. His “drive” is significantly subdued. He chuckles a lot at my fever pitch, supportive but in his own comical way. He loves this new biking craze I’m starting. “Oh, my, but ANOTHER thing you will grow to hate to do every day!” But as he says, you may hate it but you can be damned determined to do it anyhow.

I am a closet full of discarded crafts away from being the most productive person I know.

So how weird am I?

Really, you can tell me.

Journeying Through the Health Care Maze

Tags

ACA, Health care, Obamacare

We’ve been into the ACA now for some months and reports are coming in from any number of sectors. After all the dire warnings that economic disaster would ensue, millions of people would lose jobs and coverage, the facts tend to tell a quite different story.

The Congressional Budget Office CBO continues on a regularly basis to project that the costs associated with the law are dropping with each assessment. Further, uninsured rates are dropping significantly in those states that adopted the ACA and Medicaid expansion. Insurance carriers are expanding their services, and entering new markets.

Evidence is still scant, but there are reports that states are seeing more competition and some evidence at least that premium costs to consumers will reduce or at least not rise at nearly the rates they did before the law went into effect. Trips to emergency rooms has dropped significantly for participating states versus those who stubbornly refuse to help their most disadvantaged.

Those are the general facts. I’d be the first to tell you that anecdotal stories have little value in terms of proving a point, since truth is seldom an all or nothing proposition. It’s usually an “on balance” sort of thing for such things  that involve millions of people. Some people undoubtedly have suffered under the Act, but we have always asked more of our more wealthy citizens, and there are almost no verifiable stories of people grossly hurt by the law, although there are no end to horror stories that upon investigation turn out to be bogus.

My story is offered as one that, as far as I have learned from a dozen or so others, is not atypical of the average person.

Years ago, back in the mid-90’s, I was associated with the Sister’s of St. Joseph who ran St. Joseph’s Hospital in Flint, Michigan. As a potential novice, I began volunteering there. As part of that activity I had a general checkup. It was noted that my blood pressure was elevated and I was given a cuff and told to monitor my blood pressure several times a day for a week. The results suggested all was okay.

Fast forward several years, to 2000. I am newly married and my husband insists that I get some coverage. At 50, health is going to be more of a concern. I apply. I routinely inform them that I was last checked at the aforementioned hospital with the only concern being my blood pressure. The carrier was unable to obtain any records. I was denied coverage. That became my “pre-existing condition.”

So I was one of those unable to secure insurance.

Along comes the ACA.

I, like thousands of others, entered the Marketplace soon after the site opened. I too ran into trouble. I was not “verified” as to who I was. I was given a coded number and told to call Experion who would complete that process. When first called, Experion told me I had called too soon, and to wait a few days. Days turned into weeks, and I decided to wait a couple of months to let things get sorted out.

When I returned in December, things had not improved. Experion did not have my coded number. I called the exchanges to speak to a live person. They started my application over again. In about 30 minutes we were done. I was informed that I “might” qualify for Medicaid, so I could proceed no further until that was resolved. I was told this would be submitted automatically but that I could call them and speed up the process by giving them the information over the phone.

I called New Mexico Medicaid. In an automated message, I was given a laundry list of required information. It included prices for any cars, what was still owed, mortgage if any, stocks, savings accounts, utilities,  as well as the normal “income” requirements. We were most sure I could not qualify and hated getting all this crap together for nothing.

I had kept a newspaper which gave the names and numbers for some “facilitators” operating in our area. I called and made an appointment. My goal was to cut the tape, avoid the Medicaid issue and return to the Marketplace. Instead, my facilitator seemed to have little information regarding the ACA, but told me that the NM Medicaid had no business asking me for any of the information beyond what my income was.

She filed an application securing only our SS income and sent the application in. A couple of weeks before the closing of the open enrollment, I got a letter from NM Medicaid, along with two cards. The letter made little sense being full of acronyms which were not defined, but suggested that BOTH my husband and I had been approved for something, and denied something, none of which we could figure out.

My husband called, and sure enough, the cards were our new Medicaid cards and we both were covered. My husband politely declined, being entirely happy with his VA coverage locally and at Fort Bliss VA facility. I, after my usual “avoidance” as I awful-ized all the dire medical diagnoses I could imagine, made an appointment with my new doctor and proceeded to begin a series of referrals and tests to “bring my health records from non-existence to a reasonable state”.

That process began in late June and was in mid process in mid-August when I got a letter from NM Medicaid. Again, a letter that made little sense but suggested something was up. I called. I had been cancelled. They had “just learned” that my husband had started to receive SS. WRONG. My husband in one fashion or another (disability for PTSD to regular SS) had been receiving benefits since the late 90’s. Oh, so then I must have just started receiving SS. WRONG. I’d been receiving SS for two years. Both yearly totals had been included on my regular application.

The bottom line: I did not qualify for NM Medicaid, a thing we had both felt fairly certain of before we applied.

NM Medicaid indicated that my coverage would CONTINUE until Aug 31. Why that was so, is inexplicable. I was also informed that I had been graciously granted “family planning services” so my future pregnancies or contraceptive care was meant to offset my loss of general coverage. At 64 I was really happy to hear that.

Since I was taking several medications and scheduled for several more tests, I was in a bit of a pickle. Sure I could pay the bills myself, but they would be rather significant (the routine blood analysis and urinalysis alone was $1100).

I called the Marketplace in a serious funk, sure that they would tell me I had to wait until the open enrollment resumed in November, leaving my uninsured once again for the intervening months.

The Marketplace people were simply appalled at NM Medicaid’s error. All the information was indeed there on my still-filed application. They assured me that my circumstances allowed them to “reopen” my file as a “failed” Medicaid deferment, and I re-entered the Marketplace. They completed everything over the phone, gave me time to look at several plans with the promise that I could go to many others if I was not satisfied with those.

I chose my plan, and they scheduled it to start on September 1, so I would have no loss in coverage. I was given the phone number of my new insurance company. They apologized again and again for the error that was not theirs.

I called my new insurance carrier. They found me in their system immediately, and pointed me to their web site. I was able to pay my premium online well before the bill came in the mail.

I got all their material and my new health cards seamlessly.

I had to go to my doctor to get help with prescriptions that Walgreens was screwing up. I told them about my new insurance and that I was not sure that I could continue with her under my new plan. The women there took the information and got in touch with my carrier, worked it all out, and I was able to keep my doctor. Again it was all seamless. My previous carrier paid for everything up to August 31, and my new one took over on September 1.

While the ACA was a mess in terms of sign up at the beginning, they did everything else wonderfully as far as I am concerned. I am pleased with both my insurance coverage and my doctor and her care. My meds are amazingly affordable as are my copays.

I have the peace of mind that can only come from being checked and found in pretty good shape. My blood pressure is a bit high, and I have meds for that. I am at the entry level for type II diabetes, take a med for that, don’t monitor my blood sugar, but avoid “obvious” sugar. My eyes are fine, so was my mammography, gynecological exam, and bone density scans. I feel great, I’ve lost a few pounds, and I’m seeking to eat a better diet.

If it were not for the ACA, I’d still be rolling the dice. I am most grateful. Bureaucracy will always cost us time and trouble. That is not a good reason to grouse about a law that provides decent health care to millions who did not have it. My experience was annoying and frustrating to be sure, but very little of that had to do with the law. Most of the fault lies with the people who work at NM Medicaid in my case.

I am happy with my health care. I thank my President. My heart goes out to all those millions who still go without care because their Republican-controlled states refused to help them just to prove that hatred in their case is more powerful than doing their duty by their citizens.

Bookshelf Tag

Tags

Books, lifestyle

Well, I like doing stuff like this regarding books especially. There are so many. Too many. Never enough time to read all that I want, or even know all that I would like. And again, we are all so different. We all have such different and interesting lists. Following are my answers.

 

1- Is there a book that you really want to read but haven’t because you know that it’ll make you cry?

No, can’t say as I can think of a single one.

2- Pick one book that helped introduce you to a new genre.

Isaac Asimov’s I Robot. It hooked me on science fiction for a few years. I read simply tons of it, along with a few Sci-Fi magazines. Sold or gave away almost all of them, literally more than a hundred books. As I youngster I was fascinated by Rome, I devoured any book I could find that was set in that era, and eventually it became my favorite period of history, roughly the time between Julius and say Nero.

3- Find a book that you want to reread.

I am not much of a re-reader simply because there is so much out there not yet read. I did however re-read War and Peace and enjoyed it every bit as much the second time around. I can see myself re-reading Dostoyevsky. I love his stuff.

4- Is there a book series you’ve read but wish that you hadn’t?

I read North and South  by John Jakes and basically thought it fairly trite. I read fiction quite fast, always have, so series are always a boon for me.

5- If your house was burning down and all of your family and pets were safe, which book would you go back inside to save?

Well none actually since most everything is replaceable at this point, but certainly Shakespeare and Walter Breuggeman’s, Genesis are among books I treasure for the wealth of wisdom within. The bible of course. Perhaps Christology at the Crossroads by Jon Sobrino, or something by Gustavo Gutierrez such as  Liberation Theology

6- Is there one book on your bookshelf that brings back fond memories?

Probably The Five Books of Moses, a Matthew Fox translation of the first five books of the bible. I studied it when at Marygrove College, sure that I would one day be working on a doctorate in Biblical studies and a Dominican nun. Those were precious days studying under some of the best teachers I have ever had. If I am a grown-up Christian it is due to Father Tony and some of the Sisters who taught me to really understand the bible, and thus see God in a more realistic and beautiful way. The generated a life-long interest that has never waned.

 

7- Find a book that has inspired you the most.

Two actually, for similar reasons. Leon Uris’s  Mila 18 that probably helped me understand as no other book what it was like to live in Europe as a Jew in Hitler’s time. The other was Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, which made it clear to me that there was no glory in war. It was simply ugly, painful, and terrorizing every day, all day.

8- Do you have any autographed books? 

Yes, two that I can remember, possible more, but one is by a wonderful internet and blogging friend, Shannon O’Donnell’s Save the Bones, about her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s, and the other from Bart Ehrman, Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill,  Misquoting Jesus.

9- Find the book that you have owned the longest.

I have sold off hundreds of books and undoubtedly my oldest. But my Complete Works of Shakespeare is so old the cover is nearly half torn off. The oldest book I can remember actually reading was My Friend Flicka which had been my dad’s I think. It’s long gone.

10- Is there a book by an author that you never imagined you would read or enjoy?

Several. I didn’t expect to enjoy Don Quixote by Cervantes certainly. Nor Balzac, Voltaire, Virgil and Homer. All were surprises. The Greek playwrights were shockingly fun to read and I thought they would be mostly unintelligible today. I find generally many ancient classics are simply delightful even today.

Don’t Get Me Wrong

Tags

life in the foothills, lifestyle

I’m a bit of a student of humans. Being one, I find it helps me find my place in the herd.

I’m astoundingly and endlessly fascinated on why and how we grow up together, face the same national and international crises, yet see it all quite differently. Any parent will tell you that even identical twins are quite different in personality.

While I am perfectly unique, as you are, we share some attributes, therefore, given that there are over seven BILLION of us, nobody probably has any attribute or notion that is singular to only them.  Meaning we can all relate to somebody else about something.

Facebook is an perfect vehicle for looking at this phenomenon. Some people use it only to keep in touch with family and close friends. Some use it for business. Some use it as a voice for their beliefs. Some share everything including the kitchen sink with everyone, some with only some, some share very little that is personal. All have the absolute right to do as it suits them, and nobody has any business being critical of their choices.

Keep that last point firmly in mind. I am NOT criticizing anyone. I am not judging anyone. If anything I point to my own perceived flawed personality which makes me react differently that others do under similar circumstances. I do that because if I feel that way, undoubtedly others do too, and I wish to let them know that it is not wrong, just different. For there are no wrongs or rights here, just idiosyncrasies which we all have and in some cases share with others.

I refer to the issue of sharing life’s downsides with others, people perhaps that you have never had a face-to-face conversation. Now first I don’t want to make much of the face-to-face thing, since there are relationships that have been forged which are deep and abiding although the respective parties had not met. I use the phrase to mean more specifically, people whom you know on Facebook, but don’t really know, if you get my drift. You share something in common but that’s about it. You talk about THAT thing, but not about much else.

As far as I know, no one in my family is ill with any “serious” disease. Serious these days is relative since people are learning to live quite long and productive lives with a lot of things we thought of as fatal thirty years ago. But on Facebook, I know quite a number of folks who are battling serious debilitating illness and they talk openly and frankly about their struggles.

I’m always taken aback when I first read these accounts of “I just got diagnosed,” or “I got bad news with my test results,” because I would NEVER disclose such to hardly anyone. Seriously I wouldn’t likely have told my parents when they were still alive. Other than my husband, I doubt I would tell anyone at all.

Here’s why.

First of all I don’t believe in a God that “answers prayers” in the sense of changing an otherwise outcome. If God operates that way then God is cruel to some very deserving people I have known. I believe that prayer is my way of communicating with God, but I don’t believe God changes outcomes because a prayer ‘touches” Him where another doesn’t. I believe that knowing that people care enough to do that for you is helpful because good emotional response to disease is helpful to treatment, but that’s the line  I draw in the matter.

So proffers of prayers just comes to me as “gosh I’m sorry” and “boy I’m counting my blessings again”. In other words, I hear pity, because I  am  now separated from the herd of okay people and plunked in the “sick” group. Clearly I’m wrong in this, but it’s how I react.

Second, unlike a lot of really good people I know, I have people who detest me. I often say things knowing that I will anger, offend and piss people off. I do it because it seems right to point out bigotry, ignorance and willful lack of concern to people who need to know that they are not escaping notice. I admire people who are beloved by everyone, they are essential to the world, but I am not one of them. I have “enemies”, and nothing would please them more than to  tsk-tsk my misfortune as “finally getting what I deserved”. I am reminded often by fundamentalists that the price of my stubborn resistance to their “right way to live” will be eternal damnation, a prospect they enjoy thinking about, since they always smile when they say it.

I will not announce my illness simple because I will not give them the satisfaction.

I will share with you that I suffer from the “what might happen” syndrome to a far greater degree than is healthy or normal in my opinion. I am well aware that it’s silly and stupid and a waste of time, yet I struggle none the less, and I am blessed with a husband who helps prod me off dead center to get moving to address my fears and get the verdict. So far, it’s always been thumbs up, which makes me feel like a horse’s ass in the end, but doesn’t do much to cause me let it go the next time. I can dream up more bad outcomes than Carter had liver pills as they say.

Which all means exactly nothing much I guess. I am not ill. In fact, (a post I’ll be doing in the next week or so) my travels through the health system has turned out quite well indeed, if annoying at times.

Which might lead you to conclude that you can’t trust my professed happiness much of the time. Actually you can. When I’m not happy I tend to just not mention happiness. And it’s doesn’t mean I’ll never tell you about it. But it will be after the fact, when I have a perspective from which to offer hopefully something that might help somebody in similar circumstances. I wish I could be like you, and accept the tender embraces of friends near and far, but I cannot, and in I guess I’m pretty okay with that. Whether I am or not, it is what it is.

Which means that when you talk about your illness or loss, I do commiserate and I do empathize and most of all I appreciate your strength of character. You become my role model I guess. I have been in awe of the grace that so many of you show in battling these detours in life.

Aren’t we all just amazingly weird when you get right down to it?

Boom We Boomers Went

Tags

boomers, editorial, sociology

It’s been a question I’ve pondered for some time, and noted here once or twice (way too lazy too look that up for ya). The question you ask?

Why did my peers from grade school to high school turn out so very differently on how we view the world? I’ve thought a lot about it, and read one book that shed some light on the subject. Not a light that made me very happy I might add.

I posited that to some degree, it had to do with those who ventured from the home base (Genesee County) and those who did not. But that is superficial at best. I know a strong liberal from Ann Arbor and a reactionary teabaggin’ fundamentalist from Traverse City, and a reactionary from the Phoenix area. So go figure.

No attempt to define the divide is perfect for quite obvious reasons, people are individualized too much for such neat and precise division. There will always be not just a significant outlier, but lots and lots of softer outliers. One is always operating on a bell curve and before you start providing me with examples to disprove the theory, it’s best you get that first. Those with some education in statistics assume it but for others, it is not so obvious.

I’m reading a book called Generations, written in the early 90’s by William Strauss and Neil Howe, who posit that it is helpful to examine American history based on generational attributes (strengths and weaknesses) and their reactions to big turning points, like revolution, depression, war, spiritual awakenings and so forth. For Boomers (born 1942-1960), the GI generation (most of our parents) is a prime example.

Fighting the big one was a seminal turning point. The GI generation became the can do generation, taking upon itself to build and build, institutions, infrastructure, and one of the biggest booming economies the world had every seen. They saw failure as not an option. They were also the generation that from start to finish saw the greatest growth in government all designed around them. From child labor laws in their youth to Medicare in their old age, government was their provider against the big bad realities of the world.

Boomers were a nurtured, and largely indulged generation, raised on Dr. Spock, offered everything, the apple of everyone’s eye. We were encouraged to seek the moon, and we became the most self-confident in our own righteousness of any generation in a long time. Fifty-eight percent of us went on to college, the largest percentage before or since by a long shot.

That I think is the key. Education.

Because we are perhaps one of the most fractured of all the generations as well. We may well be the beginning of the great divide between “red” and “blue” in this nation. We gave the biggest votes to Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson in their respective runs for President. If that isn’t a divide I don’t know what it.

While something like only 10-15% of us were “hippies” or like travelers–civil rights workers, feminists, environmentalists, anti-war activists, campus radicals,  we controlled how this generation was perceived and responded to. We adored our mothers, and argued with our dads. We, were not interested in emulating our father’s drive to build things, but we examined the ethical underpinnings of the world and found them largely missing.

The Silent generation which sandwiched between the GI and the Boomer (1925-42), flipped between trying desperately to match the GI productivity with “something big” themselves, and trying to be “young” during the 60’s in their late 30’s and 40’s.

Boomers gave George Wallace more votes than any other generation. Those from Michigan can surely relate where Wallace gained  his third highest greatest electoral count, behind Maryland and Texas outside the South. Surely boomer activists were not voting for Wallace!

Contrary to what right wingers suggest (that all colleges and universities brainwash youngsters into liberal malarkey), education, by exposing youth to the underbelly of a largely white-washed and prim history presented in high school, opens eyes not to some liberal Marxist ideology, but teaches a basic distrust of “traditional” answers to traditional questions.

I learned, (and I have no reason to think I am different than most)  that everything should be questioned, and that books and experts provided the window to an expanded perch from which to reach a conclusion about what was true and what not, or at least what was not quite so true as offered.

This was coupled by the very real truth that people who are college educated simply make more money, live an easier life-style and have less quarrel as a result, with helping others through taxes.

Those from my generation who sought to follow their fathers plan, i.e, get a job, work hard, marry, have children, buy a house, and live contentedly until retirement with a nice pension and social security, ended up in a very different place. For my classmates who took that route, GM, long the “job for a lifetime” turned into plant closings, layoffs, and ultimate blame placed not at the corporate doorstep (where it so perfectly belonged) but rather at the feet of the unions. Unions became some bizarre “bad parent” who fed the unable to think for themselves babies too much cake until they got sick, and corporations threw up their hands in disgust and moved to Bangladesh or similar cheap labor environs.

These folks did work hard, harder certainly than the rest of us and what they got was “barely making it” and instead of what I got (doing better than my parents but by a slimmer margin).  They regressed.

Somebody has to be to blame for that, and of course their were just tons of slimy politicians all pointing the finger at minorities, immigrants, and other lazy-shiftless individuals all the while receiving yet another check from corporate coffers to deflect the blame away from them.

All those classmates who paid next to no attention to politics for 30 years, suddenly woke up in a world that definitely was not what they expected, and listened of course to those who gave them somebody tangible to blame. Business can’t be the problem because “business” built America for God’s sake. But people who don’t have a job? Well, why don’t they? Is it because they are LAZY? Easy answers for people accustomed to being given answers by their betters.

The educated half of us is more liberal because we don’t accept standard answers, we distrust simple, and know that truth is often buried deep in self-serving rhetoric and grey fringes. We are not without blame in all this either. We are the part of a generation that thumbed our noses in our 30’s at our brothers and sisters who were working in factories and raising children as the “not with it” folks. They were the one’s inhibited the transformation we saw as imminent in the Age of Aquarius. We berated the stay-at-home-moms for being part of the problem, by living out all we stood against–being “somebodies wife or mother”.

If Lennon’s Imagine was our utopia, we surely went about it the wrong way. We alienated our own. If there was a resurgence of “spirituality” for our generation, at least half of it went not to “new Age” but rather to fundamentalism. If we brought before the eyes of American the horrors of war in our marching, the largest segment of people supporting the war were from our own as well. Similarly the war over abortion is largely led by the divided boomers, divided not so much by education here, but by birth placement. The early boomers are pro-choice the late boomers like the next generation (13’ers) are decidedly less willing to compromise on the issue.

Our legacy in the end is one fraught by victories on a social scale and disastrous set backs on that same scale. We set out to change the world. And we did, but good God, we never meant for it to go this way.

That’s the way I see it today.

It’s a Crying Shame I Tell Ya

Tags

ethics, GOP, greed, McDonnell, Politics

While I never have enjoyed pulling wings off of flies, I must admit that I chortled with delight at the news that Bob McDonnell and his wifey were convicted on a bazillion counts of bribery the other day.

Yes, my halo must sadly await placement upon my sacred head for a while longer, for I did indeed revel in the anguish of my fellow man and woman. I am but a flawed human still, though I continue to trudge through the sludge of humanity ever confident that I too shall emerge at the end of this life with a robe of white.

Bob said something similar as he stumbled from the courtroom, no doubt shocked that anyone would think him guilty of wrongdoing, spouting that his “faith remained in the Lord” or words to that effect.

Everyone talks about how “sad they feel” for the kids and grandkids who must suffer the public humiliation of their parents and such, but heck, all of us sooner or later discover that our parents are in fact mere mortals with feet of clay don’t we? People who choose public life necessarily put their good character out front to be sullied and blasted rightly or wrongly by a notoriously hungry and uncaring press and public who hunger most of all for juicy tidbits of naughtiness to make themselves feel superior in all their stellar tract homes of existence.

Take no prisoners is my call.

Good old Bob decided in some desperation to play the “Adam card”. I say in desperation since it appears that given Virginia’s rather lax laws regarding ethics in public office, Bob and Maureen thought that they could trade influence for pretty shiny things with impunity. When indicted, there was precious little “defense” available to them.

Thus, Bob and his ever trusty sidekick Maureen decided, either jointly or severally, that Maureen would serve herself up as the Eve of all Eves–evil temptress seducing the unsuspecting and beloved by God, Adam to bite and then bite again (and again too numerous to count) of the apple of bribery. Adam  (Bob) would claim “the woman made me eat!” So awful was the spector of Bob talking to Maureen, that there could never be a collusion of purpose. The two plainly lived in one house but in separate wings however quickly put together. In fact, to bring himself closer to the Lord, Bob took up living with a Roman Catholic priest, and was (it is reported) once seen touching with real humility the brown robe of a monk for that picture perfect  photo op. (Okay, so I sorta embellished there.)

Alas for Bob and Maureen, the jury was not exactly impressed.

Perhaps it was because, for all this, the McDonnells had been so darn good at putting on the face of marital bliss as recently as 2012 when they were both courting the Mittens team in an attempt to soothe the savage beast of greed for that Christmas present of all time–POWER.

This sort of suggests that the McDonnells are well versed in the art of sleight of hand and/or pulling the wool over the eyes of their subjects or betters as the case may be. It may well be that the average jury has the collected IQ of something less than the actual IQ of any single member, but that stupid they are not.

Which all leads to the conclusion that one cannot pretend to have a normal marriage and then “admit the awful truth” just coincidentally when it appears necessary to save your sorry skin. Fakery screams loudly in the night, and in the daylight as well it seems.

I suppose that as scandals go, this one is somewhat tame. Nobody was secretly dressing up in tutus and screwing obese diaper-clad bearded old men, but it was still fun to behold. While the “better class” talks about how sad it was to watch this downfall of such a promising politician, I remind them that, like the usual “low class” gawker, they too were not able to avert their eyes at the bloody accident, but indeed did GAWK. And in reality these “better” people will, with appropriate shaking heads and tsk-tsk, discuss the scene of execution for weeks to come at all their soirees of note.

In a world in which Russian has invaded a neighboring state in the hopes of resurrecting Tsarist Russia’s might, where young men with great firepower dream of world conquest by laying waste all those who oppose them (ISIS or Duck Dynasty [convert ’em or kill ’em] Phil Robinson, your choice), where a virus threatens to decimate portions of Africa and spread worldwide, where droughts threaten to become decades long in the Southwest of the USA, and on and on, it’s a small thing to find a bit of relief watching the crash and burn of two very stupid people.

I for one am not sympathetic to their situation nor apologetic for my enjoyment of their self-absorbed/induced misery.