Kathy, I’m Lost: Some Thoughts About Bus Trips

I like taking long bus trips and just looking out the window and reminiscing. This week I took a two-hour bus trip from Monterey to San Jose, which got me remembering other bus trips I’ve taken. I gave a sermon once about bus trips, comparing them to church; it’s a journey, the drivers change, you find companions on the way. Here’s part of it. The Disneyland story is my favorite memory.

When our kids were little we took them to the school bus early, 7:10 each morning, mouth of the canyon, some times cold, dark, for the ride into Carmel. We moved here in the summer and they hadn't met many other kids yet. New schools can be hard, cliques, who to eat lunch with. The first day we met other families at the bus stop, Owen and Norah met kids they had a lot in common with. Within just a few days they each had friends who have become life long friends, people they shared a lot with. Very quickly they had someone who would invite them to sit with them at lunch, and who would save them a seat on the ride home.

When we met the bus sometimes the kids were tired or sad, a bad day, or feeling sick. Norah told me once she just hated the other kids, hated her classes, hated her teachers, but at least she knew that on the bus on the way home she could sit with her friend Ariel, who liked her and would listen to her and usually had some good food to share.

I usually sit in the same seat on this bus, this church, creature of habit, and I like the comfort of knowing the folks around me. And there've been many times when I've had a bad week, and could list, like Norah, all my woes. You folks on the bus have held my hand, brought me food, called and prayed, sat up late with me as it felt like I was hurtling alone into the darkness. Thanks for being my mates on the bus, and saving me a seat.

Kathy I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping. A great American bus song, Simon and Garfunkel, “Looking for America.” Sometimes on a bus you want to be left alone, just look out the window. Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike, the song goes. Here in this church we can count those roses in the garden out the window. There's great comfort in that. I know a church is not a building, a church is the people and the journey. But a building helps. This building is beautiful and simple. I thank all the people who made and who make it that way.

Our family went to Disneyland when the kids were little and we stayed at a cheap motel which advertised a free shuttle bus to Disneyland. It turned out to be a very crummy dirty old bus, but it got us there and back. Until the last night, when we stayed until the park closed at midnight, and got the last shuttle, filled with other tired, cranky families. On a scary dark busy stretch of LA highway the bus broke down. The driver called his company for help and got no answer. This was long before cell phones. No one dared get off into the busy traffic.

After 15 minutes or so of worry and crying children and wonder what would happen next, another bus pulled up in front of us. A large, clean, modern, fancy bus. The driver got out, came over to ours and asked if we needed help. He had seen us on the road, and although his company said he should not stop, but go right back to headquarters, he could see we needed help. We were saved. We all carried sleeping children and all the stuff we had acquired and transferred to the new fancy, functioning bus. In minutes we were back at our motel, and the driver, an angeI I think, disappeared back into the dark night.

Sometimes on the road of life we get in trouble. And sometimes on the road of life we see trouble, and can stop and do something about it. It might require turning around, taking time and even breaking a rule or two. On our church bus here we are able to help lots of other people whom I could never help all by myself. Our bus must look like a big gleaming modern one to some of these people. But we stop and help people on the road.

Rosa ParksRosa ParksWe were reminded this week of a miraculous bus story in our nation's history. Rosa Parks died, the brave woman who refused to give up her seat in the front of the bus to a white person and sit where she was supposed to in the back. We don't have a back of the bus in this church. I hope. Rosa Parks will lie in state in our nation's capitol this week, an honor which she is the first woman ever in our history to receive. Women are hard workers in our church and in most. In much of church history they have been second-class citizens. Likewise most churches are sadly among the most segregated of our institutions. Our churches need to give everyone a seat, and work harder to make real God's love of all people.

Recently I was in Boston, on the T, their subway, on the way to my niece’s house for a visit. It was rush hour, and there was a night game at Fenway, and it was jammed. A guy with a Red Sox hat asked me if I knew which was the stop for a certain hospital. People often ask me for directions when I travel. I don't know why. Maybe since I have been a minister for 25 years, I look like I have some driving experience. I do usually have a good map with me.

I had one that night - I told him I wasn't from there, but I let's look at my map. We found the hospital on it. Are you going to the game I asked, pointing to his hat. No, I wish, he said, but my friend is sick, I'm going to see him in the hospital. Oh, I'm sorry. Where are you from, what brings you here, he asked. Here are some ideas for things to do in Boston. Boston people don't have a rep for being very friendly, but this guy was. Perhaps because he had a need, and was going to see a sick friend, and knew what it was like to be a little lost. The need and the map brought us together.

Enjoy the ride – you’re not alone!

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter

Taste of Her Own Medicine

It was a headline writer’s dream story. 

“A Taste of Her Own Medicine”

“The Spies That Don’t Love Her”

“Biting the Hand that Feeds Her”

All written about California Senator Dianne Feinstein, longtime Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Staunch supporter of the CIA, NSA, wiretaps and snooping.   Pooh-pooher of “the privacy people.”   Defender of electronic surveillance of any and all, convinced it is justified in the fight against terrorism. 

Dianne Feinstein (Uncredited/AP)But this week, unannounced, she stood before her Senate colleagues and blasted the intelligence establishment, especially the CIA, in a 40 minute tirade.  After years of defending the agency’s secrecy and guaranteeing their higher motives, she charged them with spying on her own committee, withholding key documents and hacking into her computer to take back documents they had given her.  Then she denounced the CIA for accusing her own staff of criminally stealing those documents.

She called it a constitutional crisis, said the CIA may have broken federal laws, and said she wondered “whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee.”

Or as the headlines read:

 “Who Will Guard the Guards Themselves?”  (That’s a quote from the ancient Roman writer Juvenal’s “Satires” – plus ca change….)

“Their Stuff is Shit, but My Shit is Stuff!”

That latest was part of Jon Stewart’s pretty predictable, but still right-on, rant about how ironic it is for the Senate’s biggest defender of warrant-less wiretaps to get all incensed about being snooped on herself.  When it was other people getting snooped, that was just their shit being exposed.  But when it was she and the great Senate Intelligence Committee, that’s not shit, that’s stuff.  He’s quoting a famous routine by the late great comedian and social critic George Carlin about our “stuff” (possessions).  How we define ourselves by our stuff and let it rule our lives.  And how we think our stuff is far superior to other people’s stuff.   Like when we visit other people, it’s their stuff that takes up all the room, and our stuff is treated like shit.  “But it’s not shit, it’s my stuff!”….well, just watch Carlin on this Youtube video; it’s classic.

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Why does this sound familiar, the politician change of heart when it hits home?  Oh yeah, it reminds me of people who so vehemently oppose gay rights and pass all kinds of laws against gays and lesbians.  And then one day their kid comes out, and overnight the parents support gay marriage.  That would be what former Vice President Dick Cheney and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, good conservative Republicans, did.  They both worked for years to limit gay rights and oppose gay marriage, denouncing gay people left and right.  Until the day their own children came out as gay, and overnight their positions changed and they were big gay marriage supporters. 

My precious kids are stuff, but other people’s kids are shit.

I think it’s called hypocrisy, or double standard. 

More headlines:

“Di-Fi: My privacy, yes; ordinary citizen, no.” (That’s her tabloid nickname, Di-Fi.)

“Snooping Got Too Close to Home”

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Actually I’ve always liked and admired Dianne Feinstein.  She was a good mayor of San Francisco, and she’s been one of our senators for four terms, for over 20 years; last election she got 62% of the vote.  She got good strong gun control legislation passed in 1994, outlawing assault style automatic weapons, after a horrible massacre in the financial district in SF.  (It expired and was not renewed in 2004.)  She’s a moderate Democrat, more conservative than many in her hometown, a bit of a hawk, but hardworking, finally came around to supporting gay rights after a slow start in the 80’s. 

With a lot of seniority she has a lot of power in the Senate.  With Nancy Pelosi, also from San Francisco, she is one of the most powerful women in government.

So as a staunch defender of the CIA and its surveillance practices, for her to stand up and criticize the agency is like George Bush saying, “Wait, I was wrong, let’s not invade Iraq.”  Politicians don’t like to admit mistakes, or acknowledge their own hypocrisy. 

It’s easy (and humorous) to point out the irony of her conversion to the ranks of privacy advocates.  But let’s hope she takes her hawkish fighting spirit into the secret halls of the CIA and brings in some sunshine.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter

Do Americans love or hate science?

Americans are so stupid about science and Americans are so brilliant about science.  It’s hard to generalize about a country of 300 million people, but we really seem to have a split personality when it comes to using our brains.  American brains: love ‘em or leave ‘em!  You choose.

The National Science Foundation recently polled the basic science knowledge of Americans in a (pretty easy) 10-question quiz. Our ignorance was astounding.

25% of those polled answered that the sun revolves around the earth. 60% got the Big Bang question wrong.  Probably those same 60% said humans did not develop from earlier species.

Are they (we) just stupid, or is our science education that bad, or are that many people deliberately rejecting science for so-called religious reasons?  Who knows?  I almost don’t care, it’s so pathetic.

Because we also have the best scientists in the world.  Not really, but I need some good news here.  Americans are by far the most Nobel Prize winners, over 300, compared to around 100 for UK, Germany, France.  Of course we are a much bigger country, richer etc….But surely we have something to contribute to science?

Well, I think we can brag about a few of our science advocates and populizers, folks like Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Public teachers of public science.  They’ve all been in the news a lot recently.

Bill Nye is known affectionately as “The Science Guy” after a creative and popular TV show by that name he had in the 90’s.  Last month he debated Ken Ham, founder of Tennessee’s Creation Museum on “Creationism vs Evolution.”  Many in the science community criticized Nye for even talking with this nutcase, but Nye saw the publicity and education value of a well publicized event.  Consensus is he “won” the debate, and not long after he was at the White House and took this cool selfie with President Obama and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

From fb.me/beingliberal.org

One of Ham’s many weird ideas is that religion explains the past, and science is only allowed to discuss the future.  The past is over and unobservable.  Nye had a great comeback: “You can’t observe the past?  That’s all we do in astronomy, that’s what it is – looking at the past.  By the way, you’re looking at the past right now.  The speed of light bounces off of me and gets to your eyes.  And I’m delighted to see that the people in the back of the room appear [makes a minute gesture] just that much younger than the people in the front.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the host of a new TV show on the Public Broadcasting System starting this week, “Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey.”  The 13 week series, which will be introduced by President Obama (can you picture Bush doing that?) is an homage and sequel of sorts to the historic PBS series “Cosmos: A Personal Journey” that Carl Sagan did in the 80’s.  A groundbreaking effort in science-themed TV, the original Cosmos was eventually edited and marketed around the world, rebroadcast with updates in the 90’s by Ted Turner and eventually seen in 60 countries by over 400 million people.

Tyson is the very smart and very personable Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History in NYC, a great communicator, an irreverent and funny guy.  He has a lot to say about stars and space, but also about what scientists do, and don’t do.  Like:

“You can’t be a scientists if you’re uncomfortable with ignorance, because scientists live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos.  This is very different from the way journalists portray us.  So many articles begin, ‘Scientists now have to go back to the drawing board.’  It’s as though we’re sitting in our offices, feet up on our desk – masters of the universe – and suddenly say, “Oops, somebody discovered something!  No.  We’re always at the drawing board.  If you’re not at the drawing board, you’re not making discoveries.  You’re not a scientist; you’re something else.  The public, on the other hand seems to demand conclusive explanations as they leap without hesitation from statements of abject ignorance to statements of absolute certainty.”  (Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier)

Carl Sagan died too young, age 62, in 1996, but his wife Ann Druyan, also a scientist, who was a co-writer and producer on the original Cosmos series, got this new one going by talking with Tyson and enlisting the support of Seth MacFarlane, of all people.  He’s the creator of crude Fox comedies like Family Guy and the movie Ted, highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time.  And he’s a science and science fiction geek who saw the original Cosmos series as a kid and was turned on to science.  And has lots of money.  And good connections with Fox.  According to him they shopped their series idea around to all the networks and none would give them much support or artistic freedom or money.  Until they went to Fox.  Who gave them complete freedom and lots of money.

That’s Fox, whose rabid conservative “news” division feeds the anti-science know-nothings trying to take over America.  The same Fox, who will now help inspire a new generation of great American scientists, we hope.  That’s America, so ambivalent about science.

Druyan has said their hope, in both the original series, and this one, is to teach both the scientific method, to be skeptical, and to inspire wonder.  That was Sagan’s genius, to call his series his “personal journey,” into new possibility, the future, space, the cosmos.

I’m with Jane Austen; that’s the best kind of conversation.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter

Be Well, Do Good Work, and Keep in Touch

On this day in 1793, George Washington established the United States Post Office Department, in 1872, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened to the public in Manhattan, and in 1877 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet ‘Swan Lake’ premiered.  It’s also the birthday of photographer Ansel Adams.  And here’s a poem “Luke,” by Mary Oliver…..”

Every morning in the dark, even before I get out of bed, I read on my computer that day’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” by Garrison Keillor.  It’s also a radio program, and sometimes I listen to it at 9:01AM on my local National Public Radio station KAZU.  (Get it? Kazoo – it’s out of Santa Cruz.  Our other NPR station is KUSP.  We are so hip here on California’s Central Coast.) 

It’s fun to hear Keillor’s distinctive Minnesota voice, calm and slow, familiar from his other show,  “A Prairie Home Companion,” the old style variety show he’s been doing before a live audience on the radio Saturday nights for over 40 years.  While over 500 US radio stations (and many overseas) carry the two-hour “Prairie Home Companion,” just 100 run the 5-minute “The Writer’s Almanac.” 

Actually on the radio and in print he reads the poem first, and then gives little snippets about famous people born that day or interesting events of the day. (The above paragraph is The Writer’s Almanac’s Facebook page summary of last Thursday’s posting.)  Here’s what he went on to say about Ansel Adams:

Ansel AdamsIt's the birthday of Ansel Adams, born in San Francisco 11902). When he was 14, his parents gave him two gifts that changed his life. The first was a Kodak #1 Box Brownie camera. The second was a family trip to Yosemite National Park. He was so enchanted by the mountains and forest that he would return to the park every summer for the rest of his life. His photographs of Yosemite and other wilderness areas would become familiar to millions of people.

He said: "I hesitate to define just what qualities of a true wilderness experience are. Like music and art, wilderness can be defined only on its own terms. The less talk, the better."

Keillor signs off each day with his trademarked phrase, “Be Well, Do Good Work, and Keep in Touch.”

A lot of the funding for the show comes from the Poetry Foundation, a small Chicago based non profit that puts out a quarterly poetry magazine and awards poetry prizes every year.  The foundation and magazine were struggling mightily, as poets always do, until 2002, when philanthropist Ruth Lilly, the sole heir of the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, gave it $100 million in stock.  That pays for a lot of poems, prizes and radio shows.  Next month, April, is National Poetry Month, and thanks to Ruth, we hear a lot more poetry and a lot more about National Poetry Month these days.  (She was of the same era (died 2009) as the equally generous and surprising Joan Kroc, whom I wrote about almost a year ago, another independent-minded very generous woman.)

Ruth LillySometimes the fun of the show is the juxtaposition of different events on the same day: Garrison told us that March 1 is the birthday of poets Robert Lowell and Richard Wilbur and novelist Ralph Ellison.  Plus Yellowstone was named a national park that day.  Lying there in bed in the dark I learned a little bit about each writer and about how President Ulysses S. Grant set aside 2 million acres on March 1, 1872 as the world’s first national park. 

That got me thinking about my visit to Yellowstone in 1961 when I was 10 years old and on a trip “out west” with my parents.  My first airplane flight.  My first bear.  My first geyser, “Old Faithful.” 

After breakfast I looked for my old college lit copy of  “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison which I read 10 years after my Yellowstone trip.  A different America.  Here’s what Keillor says about Ellison:

And today is the birthday of novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison (books by this author), born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1914. He was the grandson of slaves, and he originally wanted to be a classical composer, but when he met the great African-American writers Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, the encouraged him to become a writer instead.

Ralph EllisonOne day, while recovering from a bad kidney infection on his friend's Vermont farm, Ellison was sitting in the bard with a typewriter. He stared at it for a while, and then suddenly typed the sentence "I am an invisible man." He didn't know where it came from, but he wanted to pursue the idea, to find out what kind of a person would think of himself as invisible. It took him seven years to write the book, and it was the only novel published in his lifetime. It was Invisible Man, published in 1952. After he finished his first novel, he worked for the rest of his life on his second, but never finished it. That book, published posthumously, was Juneteenth (1999). He also published two essay collections: Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986). 

It’s nice to begin the day with the gift of a poem.  In the Mary Oliver poem he read last week she describes in her simple rich style her happy curious dog Luke, and ends with the haunting lines: “we long to be – that  happy – in the heaven of earth – that wild, that loving.”

As I went though my day I kept thinking of Old Faithful at Yellowstone. I tried to notice everyone I encountered, not treat anyone as invisible. And I longed to be wild and loving.

Thanks Garrison.  I’ll keep in touch.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter

What the President Can and Can’t Do: Phones and Pens and Kings

“We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help that they need.  I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone.  And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administration actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to makes sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.

“And I’ve got a phone that allows me to convene Americans from every walk of life…to try to bring American’s together around what I think is a unifying theme: making sure this is a country where, if you work hard, you can make it.”

“I’m against having a king…someone who wants to bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress – that’s someone who wants to act like a king or a monarch.”

Paul RandSo which quotation is from President Obama and which from Tea Party Senator Rand Paul?

Pretty obvious.  Just another day in the vitriolic gridlock of Washington. Acrimony and accusations between the Democrats and Republicans are nothing new, but the gulf between the executive and legislative branches of government has never seemed wider.  The Republican controlled House has publicly said its mission is to deny Obama any success (as opposed to serving their constituents or obeying their oath of office.)  Obama has grown increasingly disillusioned about any possibility of bipartisanship and has decided the only way to get anything done is to go it alone for the rest of his last term.   

And now the third branch, the judicial Supreme Court, will weigh in this summer on how much power the President can exercise outside of Congress.  Oral arguments were heard last week on the President’s power to make recess appointments when Congress is not in session.

Supreme Court JusticesI’m no Constitutional scholar and the topic of the balance of powers needs more than 900 words (and I only have 530 left!)  So I just did a little reading around in the history of these power struggles, and in particular the two current controversies; recess appointments and executive orders.   Here’s some background, with a few cynical comments and questions thrown in.

Recess appointments: the Constitution allows the President this exception to the required “advice and consent” by Congress on appointments to Cabinet and other government posts, probably because in the1780’s travel and communication were slow.  But it was rarely used until the past few decades, as Congress increasingly refused to confirm Presidential nominations, along party lines.  Key offices like judgeships and major departments have remained vacant for months and years.  So presidents have gotten people in place while the legislators are out of town.  Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court that way.

In the current case Congress wouldn’t vote on some pro-union nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, so Obama appointed them while Congress was on vacation, as Presidents have done for decades.  When the board started voting in favor of workers, Republicans took the administration to court, saying Obama overstepped his power. 

From the questions the conservative-dominated Supreme Court asked in the hearings, the Court might agree to limit Presidential power.  Why did this case not come to the Court during the Reagan administration, when Ronnie made over 10 times the recess appointments Obama has?

Executive Orders: In his State of the Union address last month Obama said he would act “with or without Congress.”  “Wherever and whenever I can act without legislation to expand more opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do.”   He announced that night a rise in the minimum wage for federal contractors; he can’t get Congress to even look at a minimum wage raise, but under the Constitution he can order changes in policy for the executive branch, like federal workers.

Even though the term “Executive Order” does not appear in the Constitution, Presidents since George Washington have said the Presidential job description gives them the  authority to order some policy changes unilaterally.  Only a few such orders have ever been overturned, most notably Harry Truman’s order that all the steel mills be nationalized in 1952 to avert a threatened strike.  The Court said Truman was making new laws, not executing current laws, and rescinded his order.  But Presidential orders have been the only way that some crucial national changes have been effected; in Truman’s most successful executive order he outlawed segregation in all branches of the military. Eisenhower similarly ordered that public schools be desegregated immediately following court decisions.  Earlier FDR, who issued far more executive orders than any other President, over 5000, issued an executive order that Japanese Americans be forced into internment camps.

President ObamaObama’s executive orders have not been so dramatic or controversial in content; he has ordered changes in environmental regulations, raised the minimum wage for federal contractors, streamlined trade agreements.  Well, he did order the Justice Department to stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act in 2010; that helped start the dramatic change in gay marriage nationwide.  But compared to other Presidents he has been restrained; Reagan issued twice as many executive orders as Obama.  As with the critique of Obama’s recess appointments, the current criticisms of the Office of the President seem unusually vicious and polarizing; calling Obama a king or imperial.

Stay tuned. Some days it feels like a chess game, strategic moves by both sides.  Other days it just seems like a farce.  Soon enough the President will become lame duck and all attention will be on who might run to succeed him.  Well, there’s already constant speculation and posturing.  But there’s still a lot of work for Obama to do.  And the Congress to try to stop.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter