Memorials

There is an old retort, used between intimates when they are annoyed with one another: You remind me of an old song, "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?"

Many a truth is said in jest. I am reminded of this on Memorial Day. This holiday was intended to honor military dead. However, in my working class youth, it was the time to go to cemeteries with flowers and plants for graves of dead relatives. Grave sites were tidied. Dead plants removed. New plants planted. Prayers said and teary eyes dabbed with handkerchiefs.

The most baffling of these pilgrimages was the trip to my maternal grandfather's grave with his widow and my parents. The man had been ejected from the family for violent, abusive behavior. He had died a homeless derelict, totally incapacitated by his alcoholism. Yet we tended his grave annually. His widow, my grandmother, wept profusely. The rest of us wandered about until she was done. I struggled to reconcile the vitriol heaped on his memory all year long with these uncomfortable moments of bereft grief at his grave. Did not compute.

As I have grown older, I have realized that memorials are for the living, not the dead. The dead have no consciousness of memorials. This is fortunate for them. Who would want to be conscious of being buried under tons of marble?

If human beings could harness the energy of grieving over the past and apply it to doing good in the present, the world would be a much better place. If we could stop to realize that we will all be separated by death inevitability, perhaps we would deal with being together more mindfully and compassionately. If all the money and resources devoted to memorials for the dead were reallocated for helping to improve the lives of the living, the greater good would be served.

Flexibility

The key to any sustainability is flexibility. The word, "sustainable", has become popular in the energy sector of the capitalist economy. It implies the production of energy with low environmental cost or impact. Basically, to sustain something implies keeping it going. Each of us has a single, precious life to sustain to the best of our ability with the help of society.

Linear thinking was the methodology of the male-dominated society of my youth. It was expected that a person would be classified in the educational system and steered into a career path to eventually be enabled to earn a living at a job which suited that person's abilities. One block built on another. One grade on another. One degree on another. One job title on another.

This linear thinking does not promote flexibility. In fact, it stifles it. And, today, we see those who are still working under this system of education in less affluent parts of society struggling to keep up with the non-linear evolution of technologies and economic structures. They feel left in the wake of a plow of socioeconomic change, which has ripped up the neat paths laid out for them earlier in life.

When I came to the awareness that I am different and part of a social minority which would not benefit from the traditional linear paths to acceptance and promotion, I realized that the linear model would simply not work for me , unless I consciously killed very basic parts of who I am. I did not see that as an option. I had struggled from childhood to function with psychological and physical impairments which challenged my acceptance by my own family, teachers and peers. I refused to stifle myself as entered adulthood to satisfy anyone's opinion of me.

So, I discovered that flexibility eased my anxiety and often opened paths otherwise obscured by the obvious road signs of linear thinking. A turning point for me came when I was 21. My first partner and I rented a house by the sea. We were both silly romantics. The rent was irresistibly cheap and the commute to work every day was horribly arduous.

The lovely Gothic cottage, with breathtaking views of an iconic Massachusetts town across a mast-studded harbor, leaked like a sieve, had a poltergeist and was equipped with a dying oil furnace which belched soot everywhere. We loved it. That is, we loved it until the landlord tried raising our rent after 6 months of a harsh winter there.

My linear mind was determined to stay there somehow. My partner, who was much less linear than I, just shrugged and went on with his life. He left it for me to figure out. I went to see my landlord. His brownstone in Boston's Back Bay, a family treasure, was decorated with gilted fresco ceilings, painted with cherubs. I was led by a housekeeper to the leather-upholstered parlor, where I sat in front of an ornate fireplace and speculated about the warm comfort the landlord had experienced the preceding winter, while my lover and I had huddled under quilts and blankets to keep warm. By the time my landlord and wife entered imperiously, I was quite ready.

I told him I would not be paying the rent increase. He replied that I must. He also said it was too late in the year to replace me with a summer tenant. His opinion, his linear opinion, was that I simply must stay and pay the increase. It was, he implied, the honorable thing for me to do. I don't recall all of what I said in response. I do remember it was along the lines of "you cheap Yankee bastard". Then I left without being shown out by the housekeeper.

For a week thereafter, I was tortured by the ethics of the situation. My linear thinking had me locked into powerlessness. I thought I'd never be able to get another place to live without a reference from my first landlord. He had threatened to pursue me legally if I left. I couldn't see step B from my step A to my step C. My partner, a truly wonderful but very liberated human being, was no help. He guiltlessly ignored the whole sitation and went about living life as usual.

One night, I had a dream. I woke up with a clear sense of what needed to be done. I bought a paper. I found an apartment listing that suited our meager budget. The new landlord, a man who lived on his property, took in my story, looked me over and extended his hand to seal the deal. The following weekend, we moved everything out of the Gothic cottage. We sighed and took in one last view of the harbor. I pushed the keys under the front door with a simple note telling the landlord what he could do with them.

We never heard from our Back Bay landlord, for whom linear thinking was a questionable privilege afforded him by linear-thinking ancestors with cannons and guns. I learned a valuable lesson. Flexibility in thought and action can mean the difference between stagnation and healthy movement. Following the playbook, dictated often by those with a vested interest in the stagnation of others, isn't always the way to proceed if you want to sustain yourself. Perhaps, it is not good for a society either.

This doesn't imply that I believe that any action in the name of flexibility or sustainability is right or good. I believe deeply in the rule of just law. However, the linear logic of law is not always just. It is often encrusted with class privilege and the weighed down by the influence of money, as we can see in our current political process. Maintaining a sense of personal flexibility by empowering oneself with information and developing a practical, daily ethical standard can greatly sustain personal development and freedom when confronted with injustice or unfair standards.

Gulf

I have no doubt that President Obama is working hard. I listened to his news conference yesterday on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His logic is impeccable. His ability to avoid hyperbole is admirable. In fact, he often reminds me of a Zen monk. I actually like that about him.

However, he hasn't been elected to be a Zen monk. He is a politician and administrator whose job is to fix things and to report back to his employers, the American people, very few of whom are Zen practitioners.

As one of his sympathetic constituents, I have one simple request of Mr. Obama: Could you please unbottle some of your real personality, sir?

This Harvard-Law-debate persona is inappropriate in some circumstances. It reads as duplicitous, not measured. It reads as haughty, elitist detachment, not as dispassionate professionalism. This gulf, between the person in the role and the role as he perceives it, could undermine the value of an exemplary presidency. If it does, we may all suffer for it.

Libertarians

where are the loud libertarians?

are they wearing scuba gear?

perhaps they are carrying mud

for the oil men to the leaking well?

do libertarians eat oily shrimp?

perhaps they like to boat on slicks?

do they sell oil-repellant to seals?

where are the loud libertarians?

are libertarians still against laws?

do they resent taxes for clean-ups?

are they devoted to oil masters?

kissing their boots for vote money?

liberty-less libertarians, slaves,

money rules them above all else.

a shallow materialist freedom

grinding civilization to anarchy.

Television

I stopped watching commercial television (television with commercial interruptions) decades ago. When I made the decision, I had just attended a short presentation by a renowned psychiatrist at McLean Hospital. The presenter had made a compelling argument that television, especially violent television with commercials, is psychologically toxic. I happen to think he was on to something.

Recently, there has been media promotion of the endings of two commercial television programs, Lost and 24. I know little about either show. As an objective observer of the hype, I have to speculate that these shows have touched an unsettling emotional current in American culture. Lost is a show about existential angst, wrapped in surreal mysticism. 24 is a show about spies, government corruption and terror.

Those who dream their way through life by attaching themselves to public, fictional narratives, designed to sell cars or iPhones, are bound to be insecure and ill-equipped to deal with reality. The reality of their own lives has no relevance to the television or media dream. The attempt to conform or relate ones life to these two-dimensional realities is simply unhealthy.

I find it particularly troubling when these entertainment vehicles become the grist of human relationships. Lost and 24 fan groups abounded with tearful last episode parties. Similarly, some people built their lives around Survivor. Couch potatoes, working their way to obesity with fake-buttered, microwave popcorn, while fixated on buffed strangers on tropical islands; the worst of voyeurism, combined with extremely soft pornography.

Stepping away from the television and out of your home into your real community is healthy. It is good for you and your community. Walk your neighborhood and say hello to people. Patronize a local, non-chain cafe. Be a regular at a local library or book store. Volunteer at a local nursing home or hospital. You'll soon find that you will have no time to watch the latest TV craze. Your own life will be its own, fascinating narrative with a cast of real-life characters.

Housing

The environmental quality of housing is a clear measure of Social Darwinism in society. Anyone who doubts the rigidity of income-based class in America need only drive around a metropolitan area with open eyes. This is a given of the free-market capitalism of the post-Reagan era in the U.S..

The poor still live in communities with inferior infrastructure, bad code enforcement and lack of safe green space. Middle income communities are increasingly transitioning from spacious single-family homes with yards and gardens to converted multi-family apartment houses with asphalt parking right up to the foundations. Sprinkled here and there are the luxury apartment houses and condo complexes of displaced urbanites, drawn by access to commuter transportation.

Coastal inner cities are becoming gated communities, as part of a movement to revitalize them by attracting wealthy young professionals with children. The concept of mixed-income housing has become a developer's joke. Get public support and money. Build a complex for the wealthy buyers or renters. Then offer a handful of low or middle income units through a lottery, which is held covertly to avoid too many applicants. The units end up rented or bought by the connected few. Gradually they are eliminated through legal manipulations.

The net result widens the cultural divide apparent in our politics. Wealthy, liberal metropolitan areas in conflict with struggling, angry areas, outside the metropolis. As the oil economy collapses. this trend will worsen, unless there is a concerted, progressive housing policy in the U.S.. There is none in sight.

Free-marketeers glibly point to the current collapse of real estate values as a "correction" of some of these issues. Glib free-marketeers are at the top of the economic food chain. They are like meat-eaters that convince themselves that cows and pigs are contented sacrificial victims on the altar of human superiority.

The Soviet and Chinese experiments with collective housing under Communism were failures. This was due in part to Political Darwinism, inherent in the Soviet and Chinese models. Politicians and military leaders got the best of everything. Factory workers got the worst. It seems human nature always trumps idealism.

As the walls against human equality and universal rights are slowly chipped and chiseled away, perhaps a solution to the housing piece of quality of life will evolve. Perhaps not. The pressing environmental collapse of the planet's resources due to the dysfunctional oil economy and its accompanying unsustainable human populations may well pressurize the competitive, antisocial elements of the human psyche. So far, things seem to be going in that direction in the U.S..

Elitism

If we spend more time looking up to loftier goals and less time looking down in criticism of others, our species will be doing a much better job as citizens of the planet.

I observe an innate tendency in myself to classify. I know this has been explored by neuroscience and found to be a way of the brain helps me to survive. But, my better self is getting quite tired of struggling with it.

I have been criticized throughout my life for being "a loner", as opposed to "a joiner". It started most horribly when my height superseded normal limits for a prepubescent boy. I was immediately labeled as a "basketballer" by everyone, including my father, who had played minor-league professional basketball in the 1930s and 1940s.

I was useless with air-inflated spheres and mini-blimps of all kinds. Really useless and potentially dangerous. I seemed to unintentionally injure as many of my own teammates as members of the opposing team. While experiencing subjective panic, I exhibited the external behaviors of a rogue elephant on crack. Bodies littered the courts and fields upon which I played. I was usually left standing, unbruised, quizzically observing the damage, while a red-faced coach pulled madly at his hair and screamed invectives at me.

This led me to the personal discovery that earlier observations about me were quite right: Loner, not joiner. Perhaps this discovery, as I trudged grimly into adolescence, saved me psychologically, since I discovered rather quickly that I am homosexual. 'Ah,' I thought in a deep, inexplicable way, 'so this is what it's all about. I am different. And, I'm the kind of different they don't want around. Well, why bother to join anyway?'

Voila! A natural dissident and dissenter emerged from the hive of working-class America.

So, as a solo dancer, I have been able to observe, and often struggle with, the dynamics of group behavior personally and professionally for nearly five decades. It all boils down to some basics: There are leaders and followers; there are in-groupers and out-groupers; there are perpetrators and victims; there are better-thans and worse-thans; there are better-offs and worse-offs; there are smarter-thans and dumber-thans; there are parental favorites and black sheep...and so on.

As a nurse and a social activist, I have often had to insert myself between these various subgroups of humanity in various situations. I have chosen to protect the abused from the abusers. I have chosen to defend the effeminate from the tyranny of the butch. I have chosen to protect the dying from the callously living.

The propensity for people in groups to form in-groups is a cancer that defeats the ethical energy of many good causes. The urge for control and domination lives in every human being, I believe. It is animal, instinctual, a left-over from life in caves. The sad fact is that those with the strongest and least self-examined aggression in groups usually lead them. This propagates both the genetic and cultural transmission of aggressive behavior in groups. Unfortunately, the same genes which are probably linkable to aggression in groups are also apparently linked to appealing looks, the ability to hoard capital and reproductive potency.

I believe this is how elites are formed and become entrenched in social structures across the planet. Once established, it takes a French Revolution of effort and horrors to expunge them.

My choice has been to dance alone within groups. This is must be done gingerly. The seduction of elitism is very enticing indeed. Just look at the American celebrity obsession for evidence. American Idol...need I say more? Keeping one's own rhythm in the symphony of conformity to the us-them dichotomy, the core of elitism, is tricky business. It doesn't earn a person testimonials, awards or sinecures.

Ah, but it is so rewarding in itself! I have learned something by being a death-watcher. I have seen over a thousand individual deaths as a hospice nurse during an epidemic. I have seen the deaths of the elite. I have seen the deaths of the confused conformists. I have seen the deaths of the solo dancers, like myself. I will simply say that I feel the way a person dies of aging or prolonged illness can indicate the true core of how they have lived. Dying slowly is the greatest solo dance of them all. Those who have practiced the dance in life are the most adept at doing it with peace to its inevitable end.

Practice

"By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart." ....Confucius.

Military

The intrepid Frontline team has done it again. Its documentary, Wounded Platoon, addresses the tragic by-products of militarism on a human scale. It is a sensitive insight into the difficult and tragic lives of some of our American soldiers who participated in the Iraq War.

The simple reality that armies are groups of trained killers comes to light. In the days of volunteer armies, it is more and more likely that military personnel will be recruited from populations which are dysfunctional in civilian society. This dysfunction includes criminal histories and histories of untreated mental illness.

A volunteer army in a country which promotes nationalism and aggressive actions outside its borders is inherently unjust. The poor bear the weight, while the wealthy call the shots. This is a sad anachronism in a modern time, when universal human and economic justice seem possible. While, as a proponent of non-violence, I would personally resist joining a compulsory, all-inclusive draft, I think it is the only fair system in a country which decides to rely on military power to foster its interests. All citizens, with exemptions or service alternatives for pacifists of conscience, should be required to participate in the military.

There is much more to responsible citizenship than placing a "Support Our Troops" sticker on the back of a car. Paying taxes without cheating through loopholes, working for equality for all citizens and tending to those within the nation who need help are all elements of being good Americans. While I personally feel that the military should be deployed defensively, primarily within our own borders, I feel that a citizenry which supports military solutions in international conflicts should support a universal draft for all able men and women.

Aggression

chalking the prophet for fun
children pushing in the yard
just chiding childish insanity
in those eaten by violent rage
at being poor and so ignored
in dry desert lands of hunger
crushed under diamond heels.

will we be spared for laughing
so broadly while standing by
the aggression of bad humor
in our ailing brothers' faces?

Depression

As I sit here on a cold, gray New England morning in the supposedly "merry" month of May, I think about several recent encounters I have had with depression. My own fleeting depression was recent. It was reactive, easy to pin down the source. Selling a house, floods in March, other complications. The upside was that I lost that nagging three pounds I am always wanting to shed at the belt line. Well, the causes of the depression have resolved. Things are moving along. My mood has bounced up and so have the three pounds on my belt line. I am a veteran of dealing with depression. I know its cycles all too well.

Others are less fortunate. Their depression is entrenched. Genetic biochemistry, deprived childhood, trauma...all of these can contribute to a primary, inner-sourced, depression, with which many people must struggle on a daily basis. The advent of anti-depressant drugs and their mass marketing by pharmaceutical corporations for huge profit has masked much of this depression in society. Frankly, these drugs are so over-prescribed now, that it is hard to know who is depressed and who isn't. The percentage of people with primary depression is rather low, but anti-depressants are handed out like candy by irresponsible doctors, spurred on by drug salesmen.

The great tragedy in this is that anti-depressant drugs all have serious side effects and limited efficacy. They were originally designed to work in concert with professional psychotherapy. The insurance companies took care of that. They basically gutted the payment mechanisms for cognitive and behavioral psychotherapy in favor of paying for the quick-fix drugs. So, in response, the medical profession transitioned away from therapy and into psychopharmacology, almost exclusively. After all, doctors in the U.S. seldom pass up a method for becoming richer. The slack has been absorbed by psychologists and social workers, whose work is poorly covered by most health insurance.

Frankly, Americans are over-medicated and under-treated. All the social networking sites in the world will not cure depression. In fact, I will speculate that their virtual nature and ease of access only increase real-time social isolation. The drugs eventually lose their effects and require changes and dose adjustments, all accompanied by physical, toxic side effects. The side effects then cause a whole new barrage of anxiety and depression. Yes, this is a serious, wide-spread American problem.

The health insurance companies are crying poverty. How is this possible? The hospitals are crying poverty. How is this possible? The pharmaceutical companies are bemoaning losses on drug research. How is this possible? It isn't. It is all bullshit. And, I think we are beginning to see the turn-around.

The good news is that some depressed people are turning their own depression around by getting in touch with their anger. The bed news is that this anger can be extremely volatile and unpredictable. I offer the recent riots in Thailand as an example of this volatility. In the U.S., our history of race riots has been suppressed, but I assure you they were quite real and not really that long ago.

Yes, I am suggesting that corporate America has profited from under-treating depression in the population in the hopes, perhaps, that it would ensure their political power and profits. Keeping people medicated and isolated from therapy groups or therapists is an effective way to temporarily squash dissent. After all, the group therapy movement, along with various self-actualization movements, in the 1960s could be credited with waking Americans from the materialist malaise of the 1950s. This fueled, at least in part, the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

The poor, who have not had access to anti-depressant drugs or therapy, have fallen behind even further in this aggressively materialistic period of the 1990s and early 2000s. Obesity rates have soared as they have eaten their way to some level of comfort. Corporate America has gladly sold them cheap foods filled with corn, soy and chemical additives. Obesity is a good way to keep people immobilized, mentally dulled and powerless.

If this exploitation of the American people for profits is not intentional, then why does corporate food manufacturing spend millions of dollars every year in Congress to prevent regulations which will end this decimation of American health? Why does the pharmaceutical industry do likewise? And, why would a health insurance industry, crying poverty, want to stay in business when the government proposed single-payer health care, which would end their misery?

Preliminary election results in recent primaries across the nation herald a change. Unfortunately, as I have said, the anger that arises out of depression without proper cognitive treatment is volatile and unpredictable. It often manifests itself in ways that are counterproductive for everyone. Ultimately all the people pay the price for the greed and corruption of the few who hold wealth and power.

One of the first interventions made in cognitive therapy for people with depression is the assertion that the depression will not last forever. As Americans awake from the depression of the last decade, in which they have been lulled to sleep by hollow materialism and propagandized nationalism, they will inevitably experience anger and frustration with their government and themselves. Hopefully, they will look to leaders who, like responsible healers, will advocate truly democratic change which is in the interest of the whole American family.

Materialism

The corruption of the Christian ethos by Catholicism becomes ever more apparent as lay Catholics in wealthy communities in Massachusetts whine over the loss of real estate. The parishioners at St. Francis Cabrini, for instance, have been occupying the Catholic Church in the coastal town in hopes of taking it over from the archdiocese of Boston after the Vatican's final decision to close the church down. The wealthy parishioners are willing and able to buy the church.

Why not? Perhaps Rome is missing out on a great opportunity here. The independently-owned franchise is an American tradition. Why not sell off the churches as Mac-temples to the more prosperous and materialistic congregations? For the Catholic devout, the church is obviously comparable to a country club or other community organization, with the added mystical provenance. Then there's the possibility of adding a Dunkin Donuts drive-thru.

Somehow all that good Catholic teaching has failed to convey the Christian message to these die-hard congregants. Simply put: "It's NOT about the church, stupid!" The rites, bricks and mortar of the Roman Catholic Church have been its focus for centuries. This is at the root of its decline and, hopefully, its fall.

Perhaps these dispossessed congregants can find some community in their displacement. Perhaps they will form the kinds of relationships which will supplant the significance of vestments and hollow absolution in their lives. Perhaps they will learn to love on another and care for each other, instead of running bingo games to buy gold candlesticks for pedophiles. I hope so, for their sakes.

Exploitation

It occurred to me recently that the great harm of the Catholic Church, exposed in the recent cases of sexual abuse, is its prolonged history of exploitation of the poor and rich alike. Religion, as we know it, is basically a form of exploitation. There is no measurable, concrete product offered by religion that is not available in many other places in society. In fact, the products and services offered by religions are generally inferior to those offered professionally in other segments of society. However, the political Right resents subsidizing quality services for those who cannot afford them.

The big push by capitalist exploiters on The Right in the last decade for faith-based initiatives seems a profitable way to direct the poor to these inferior services to free up public funds from providing higher quality social security services. Why pay a highly qualified, licensed child psychologist to counsel poor urban youths when an under-qualified urban reverend will gladly take a small Federal grant in exchange for setting up an ineffectual grass-roots after-school basketball team? Why provide tax-funded shelters with qualified social workers and medical personnel when a church will provide a soup kitchen and blankets?

Religion presents itself as philanthropic, as well as paternalistic. The leaders set themselves up as qualified to dispense wisdom, ethical advice and counseling. Their provenance comes from "The Lord", whichever deity they represent for their purposes. The wisdom they dispense fits the script of their own purposes. Frequently, those purposes are their own celebrity, income and bourgeoise lifestyle. Challengers to their authority are painted as disturbed and uninformed. Conformity within their followers is used as a weapon to isolate and victimize dissenters.

As we see in the Roman Catholic Church, these methods have worked very well for centuries. The recent wave of fundamentalist entrepreneurs in the U.S. have followed that well-worm model. It is perhaps the oldest form of pyramid scheme in the world.

The problem for these demagogues is simple. There is something inherent in the human intelligence that eventually resists domination and exploitation. Once educated or freed from unhealthy dependence, the human psyche rebels and reveals injustice. The truth will out.

The rage of the exploited is intense and infectious, as we have seen in the Roman Church. I would speculate that some of the rage tapped by the Tea Party movement is the rage of disenchanted born-agains. Once manipulated by The Right under the misconception that the "successful" were benignly pointing them in the correct or moral path through their religious leaders, former Moral Majority members now rally to Tea Party banner, also funded by the same Right Wing manipulatiors. Now, as we see, they are much more difficult to herd, because they are wary of being duped again. Their rage at government is pehaps displaced rage at their pastors, who taxed them and delvered nothing of value in return.

My advice to anyone who wishes to found a morality-based movement or religion is simple. Focus on the giving, not the taking. That is perhaps the only way to stay on course for the greater good. Encourage your followers to pay taxes and get involved with government. And, when presented with problems and issues outside the realm of the well-meaning do-gooder, refer your members to professional services.

Sky

clouded by murky worries

a horizon invisible beyond

steps stammer with caution

thunderclap breaks silence

rivers flow down suddenly

darker, darker with flashes

a robin's song announces

cracks of spreading blue

sweet smell of drying rain

now brightly clear vision

a lightened dreary world

covered by new open sky

Apathy

There is an active volcano of polluting oil spreading over a huge area of the Gulf of Mexico. No, it hasn't been fix yet, despite the cooling media interest. Political mayhem is also spreading in the states on the Gulf Coast. Politicians with considerable lumps of oil cash in their bulging pockets are looking at their shoes and mouthing the scripted litanies of "Don't panic." These are written for them by their masters, quite obviously. Less bribed politicians are calling the alert in hopes of mobilizing voter lethargy on the issue. The lethargic voters are more concerned about gas prices for their SUVs than drowning in polluted, globally warmed oceans.

Afghanistan, Iraq, oil spill, Icelandic volcano, Haitian earthquake. It is all becoming a series of paper cut-outs or digitized screen images to the overwhelmed, overinformed and undermotivated American public, who are treading their personal financial waters in a recession, which everyone in Government says is over. Other than the various fringe groups, there is no united, visible protest against the status quo.

Is it the corn syrup in the Dunkin Donuts coffee and practically everything else? Is it the overprescribed tons of anti-depressants, thrown at anyone with a blue day? Is it that life is still too easy for the middle class, despite all these problems? Is real protest being igored or actively hidden by media? Whatever it is, I can't shake the feeling that something truly wicked this way comes.

Hype-ocracy

"Economic growth is not an end in itself, but policy makers pursue it because richer countries are better able to provide health, jobs and a clean environment for their people," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Saturday in a commencement address to the graduating class at the University of South Carolina.

What Mr. Benanke left out was the modifier that those countries with strong socialist democracies, working in concert with nationally supported, taxed and regulated industries, such as Finland and Norway, far surpass other rich countries in providing for quality-of-life needs of their citizens. Of course, he was a Northern intellectual in South Carolina. He may have been afraid of being tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail.

My question is: Mr. Bernanke, when you were sitting by and watching your Wall Street friends ruining the American and world economies, did you caution them about the higher values and ethics of providing for the people with more regulation and higher taxes? Or were you hedging your own political bets?

Courtesy

Courtesy, defined as a courteous (polite;considerate) behavior or act in the OED, is a powerful force. While the pen is mightier than the sword, courtesy is mightier than rudeness or aggression. As American culture emerges from the cloud of rapper thuggery, perhaps common courtesy could heal some of our cultural and philosophical rifts.

The power of common courtesy always amazes me, as a practitioner and recipient of it. Just yesterday, at my gym, which is still deeply immersed in rapper thuggery at times, the manager, usually grumpy and gruff, turned a corner as I did and said, "Hello, sir, how are you today?"as he passed me. Usually he ignores my customary nod and grin. In fact, he has snorted in response to it on occasion.

The effect of his courtesy was immediate. I felt more relaxed. The gym, which usually feels like a challenging mine field, seemed much more welcoming and benign for a while. A gang of rough young men soon obliterated the momentary glow, but a small incremental softening of the environment by the manager endured for me.

Subways, retail stores and elevators in the urban environment are fertile fields for common courtesy. Sowing the seed of polite, direct interactions with complete strangers in potentially hostile environments is very empowering. Eye contact and a smile, followed by a polite word or gesture, does the trick. Try it. You will see for yourself and reap the benefits.

Choice

Once again HBO has shown other media how to address real life issues with quality. You Don't Know Jack is a new HBO biopic about Dr. Jack Kevorkian, glibly dubbed Dr. Death by the media, who shamelessly exploited his selfless crusade for the death rights of his fellow human beings. Al Pacino delivers a compelling portrayal of Kevorkian. I recommend the film as a primer on the issue of clinically assisted suicide.

The appearance of this film coincides with the consideration of death-with-dignity rights in the Massachusetts legislature. It also follows upon the exploitation of ignorance about death and dying by the Tea Party in the recent health reform debates. The intentionally contrived lies that euthanasia panels were being considered by Congress mobilized uninformed seniors to fight against health care reform which would actually benefit them.

I recently submitted an article on life choices of humanists, who are free of religious prescriptions when dealing with health crises, to a humanist journal. The article included a consideration of clinically assisted suicide as a choice for terminally ill humanists. I cited the recent PBS Frontline program, Suicide Tourist. The article was rejected on the grounds that it is "too controversial". So, even among humanists, atheists and agnostics, dealing openly with death and dying is too scary or politically incorrect in the 21st Century.

I believe that dealing honestly and compassionately with our shared mortality may be a key element of eliminating violence and hatred in society. If we could educate ourselves as a species to acknowledge and always consider how fleeting all life is, perhaps we could develop more general compassion and understanding of each other and our precious planet.

Flowers

cut flowers, dead things,

once glorious sex pots,

then reeling in fat bees,

in vases, drooping limp,

in fungus-funky water,

sweet. rotting, fragrant

spores poisoning the air

of new lovers, courted,

soon abandoned, wilted.

Practice

I try every day to practice mindful, intentional, purposeful behaviors and thoughts, governed by an informed ethical standard. This is what I refer to as my humanist practice.

Segway

Weaning human beings off their addiction to the wheel may be impossible. One case in point is the current Segway controversy in Boston's North End. The controversy entails public safety vs. exploitative tourism on one level. On a basic level, it is a battle for pedestrian rights over vehicular rights in the public space.

Old Boston is a city of ancient pedestrian lanes, turned into narrow streets with narrower sidewalks. As the 17th-century English settlers populated the landscape, their lives were centered on the shore line, their connection to their motherland. They jammed their houses as close to the waterfront as they could without much care for traffic patterns. It was a pedestrian settlement with little livestock and fewer wheeled vehicles.

Nearly four centuries later, people are still living and touring on the same streets. A local entrepreneur has decided that the best way for out-of-shape, car-addicted tourists to see Boston is on a Segway for a price. And, the out-of-shape and/or wheel-addicted tourists are eating it up. After all, it's much closer to reality than buzzing by on one of the scores of annoying, diesel-belching Duck Boats that plague the city. They can't navigate the North End's smaller lanes anyway.

Segways have now spilled out of the realm of quirky tourism and into the streets. Helmeted, yuppy couples are seen haughtily buzzing along the Esplanade on warm Sundays with little care for the crowded pedestrians, already harassed by skateboarders, bicyclists and roller bladders. Segways occasionally buzz along city sidewalks in the West End, where I have been squeezed to the curb by one on its urgent path to ever-green, techie Cambridge.

Ah, what a lovely thought: Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of battery-powered Segways turning the sidewalks of Boston into mini-expressways. So much for tackling the problem of obesity in the population. Perhaps the fantasy future, portrayed in the film Wall-E, is closer than we think.

What happened to the pride in Boston as America's most walkable city? The answer is simple: Greed, coupled with disregard for the public good, happened. The culture of "the newest thing" has replaced the culture of refining what is best in what you have. As Boston's native population has been squeezed out by high real estate prices, the traditional pride in its neighborhoods and its pedestrian accessibility by its citizens has also been exploited by tourist businesses. It is becoming a Disney confabulation of its former self, like Manhattan and other American places.

Segway may well be a segue to an impersonal theme park where a charming, walkable city once stood against the onslaught of crass commercial gimickry.

Panic

I have had a challenging Spring.

Two weeks after placing my house on the market, the rains came. Then the flooding came. My city was under water in some places, but I just had a skim coat of water in one part of my basement. Nothing serious really. But, the generalized panic, an all-too-common response in the media these days, crashed the local housing market and caused me to take my house off the market long enough to dry out and get the floor of my basement repainted. Now it's back to being dry as a bone.

The week after I placed my house back on the market, the state of Massachusetts began work on the bridge nearby, which connects my neighborhood with Boston. Suddenly, the pleasant, tree-lined boulevard where I live became a clogged commuter expressway, due to closed lanes and workmen in the road. Again, the media and the state whipped the whole thing into The End of Days. Now, after some trial and error by traffic planners, the traffic is moving along at a slightly slower pace, but the initial panic seems unwarranted.

Last weekend, the water system broke for 30 cities and towns around Boston. Other than boiling my water and adding some lemon juice, there was relatively little inconvenience. But the media again were talking to us like Ebola virus would be crawling out of our pipes and infecting us in our sleep. The supermarkets made a fortune on bottled water. The government did not supply imported water in tanker trucks as they could have. Nobody, so far, has died from the water. Now the taps are back to normal.

On a global scale, Icelandic volcano, Haitian earthquake, Chilean earthquake, Chinese earthquake are focused upon by media with enthusiastic shock and awe on a daily basis. Our eyes and ears are supplied with unrelenting fearsome stimuli, thanks to the insatiable appetite for news and its use as a forum for selling diapers, dog food and shampoo.

I am still sitting here in my house with its For Sale sign out front. The buyers are flowing through. Someone will come in and say, "I like this place. I could live here." I did. And, all around us, the world's normal events will continue and Wall Street will be trying to profit from them, whether we are paying attention or not.

I seem jaded to some, but the truth is that I have had to deal with my share of personal panic. It comes from living an eventful life. I have learned that taking deep breaths and just doing what makes sense, slowly and methodically, eventually gets me through. Like a Zen monk, raking gravel, I make my daily lists and check them off.

I recommend this approach to editors of media newsrooms. To those who sell shampoo and dog food by funding exploitative media, I have nothing to recommend at all.

Water

The urban water supply of Metropolitan Boston has failed, as of May 1st. Contractors associated with the infamous Big Dig tunnel project, a standard of corruption and lethally substandard construction, are rumored to be responsible for the supply pipe which failed after just 7 years, thus cutting off drinkable water for 2 million people. The system has, as yet, no back-up supply line. Brilliant, eh? Yes, we are boiling water in Boston, and it isn't for lobsters or clams. It's for giadia and cryptosporidia.

How did we get here from the proud days of the far-sighted Quabbin Reservoir project and elegantly designed granite pumping stations (as illustrated) on pristine back-up reservoirs, scattered around the city? How is it that we have some of the most plentiful watersheds in the world, yet pay nearly twice as much for water as people in Phoenix, AZ!

I am hoping time will tell all. However, the short attention span of the media and the voting public leaves me doubtful that anything will come of it. In the meantime, I suggest you take a leaf from the book of my independent 90-year-old mother, whom I called to make sure she was aware of the need to boil water for drinking. She said, "Doesn't really effect me at all. I've been boiling my water for decades." And, her practice is not naive. She was once the administrative assistant for her hometown's civil engineer, who, of course, was involved with the urban water supply.