I was out walking through town the other day, past some expensive new homes on the other side of a hill. They weren’t exactly mansions; a two-earner professional couple could possibly swing such a place with today’s low mortgage rates. I gather that families that buy such houses become quite attached to them. I myself have never owned real estate, but from what I’ve been told, ownership gives people a strong sense of connection to their homestead. And I guess that’s good in a lot of ways. But as for me, I like the idea of home being a movable concept, something not tied to any one structure or plot of land. That notion jibes well with the fact that we aren’t permanent residents of this planet. If we’re lucky, we get 70 or 80 years here, but they go by pretty quickly. I’m still holding out hope that we are citizens of a larger reality, something that transcends the space-time universe that we know of. I’m still thinking that our bittersweet years here are mainly a preparation course for something bigger and better.

I once read an article about some groovy Jesuit priest who had his own apartment somewhere and slept every night on a couch; he didn’t have a regular bed. That was his style. And actually, that sounds like my kind of style (although I have a regular bed but not a couch!). That priest seems to be the kind of guy who doesn’t put too much effort into making a nest for himself here in this realm, as he believes that his true home is somewhere else. You would have hoped that all priests and all spiritual seekers would have been like that. But in reality, there ain’t all that many like that. Oh well, too bad. Wrong planet I’m on, I guess. But it ain’t gonna be forever, for better and for worse.

Two more observations about why people are happy or not in this world. First thought: unfortunately, a lot actually does depend upon your body and how it looks. Certain jobs and certain situations in life — actually, quite a few — do indeed require a certain look. Let’s face it, there are certain cultural notions defining beauty or handsomeness, and there are certain jobs that require it. Certain combinations of body height, girth, shoulder width, muscle angularity or skin curves, facial shape, angles of the chin, tone of voice, behavior of the eyes, etc. make a lot of difference in how people judge you. It ain’t really fair when you think about it, but that’s how it is.

Cultural norms are powerful thing, right or wrong. Certain women just aren’t going to get jobs as entertainers or clothing models or airline stewards, even if they are intelligent, well mannered and poised. Certain guys just aren’t going to be CEOs or submarine commanders or the President of the United States. For example, compare George W. Bush with VP Cheney. Bush has the leadership look and Cheney doesn’t (even though I personally don’t have much confidence in either of them as leaders). Rumsfeld has the look, but Wolfowitz generally doesn’t. And yes, Bill Clinton had the look, but as to Al Gore …. just a bit too stocky. Perhaps Gore felt deeply called to leadership, but the importance of looks ultimately betrayed him (he was beat by a guy with a stonger chin line and a trimmer build). So, Al Gore isn’t going to be quite as happy with his life as he might have been had he a more dynamic looking body (“dynamic” according to our cultural notions). And if you don’t have the look, you may have to struggle harder for happiness in 21st Century America.

Second observation: Money. The great disequalizer. For better and for worse, our society and our economy decides what talents and abilities are less important and more important to it, and rewards everyone approximately. So, those people who are called to be file clerks, i.e. good organizers, are generally not going to get the same money and recognition as those who are called to be CEOs or trial attorneys. (And people who feel called to help the poor by becoming social workers are asking to become poor themselves, given the salary levels in the social work field). Then throw in the “look” factor, as discussed above, and things get really uneven. A dumpy looking guy who is good at organizing papers and information is, if lucky, going to get a steady $40,000 a year in some dumpy government bureaucracy, while an extroverted guy with a jaunty build and strong cheekbones and a Clinton-esque hairline who is pretty good at public speaking is going to become a trial lawyer making $250,000 a year. It just happens.

Why should one guy be worth $40,000 and little public recognition, and the other guy gets $250,000 and probably gets quoted in the papers and even makes the TV news? Who is happier? Hate to say it, but the lawyer dude is probably having a better time. He may well have too many toys (fancy car, big house, trophy wife, all sorts of high-tech gadgets) that ultimately don’t make him happy, but the challenge of his job and the recognition that he gets keeps him pumped. He probably “gives something back” by taking on volunteer cases for poor people or counseling seniors with legal questions, and that helps make him feel good. Life probably has given him the better hand of cards.

You might be tempted to say that “smartness” and intelligence justifies the way that things are. People with higher IQs generally do better then “dummies”. True enough, but the closer you look at what “intelligence” is, the fuzzier it becomes. I really think there are different kinds of intelligence, e.g. abstract intelligence, social intelligence, practical intelligence(Al Gore has much abstract intelligence, GWB has more social and practial), body intelligence (needed by sports stars and performers), etc. I still think, quite idealistically, that just about everyone is smart in some way, but that society rewards certain ways of being smart much differently than others. So it’s still not fair.

What’s the bottom line here? How can even the losers get lucky sometime and enjoy life? How can people who land in prison or are outcasts or drunks or drug addicts turn it around? Well, I haven’t figured that one out. But one thing I can say: when you realize just how arbitrary life and culture can be in deciding who is valuable and who isn’t, you realize that even if get the short end of the stick, it doesn’t really mean that you’re not worthy. If you can keep on believing in yourself even when the world around you doesn’t, you still have something going, an inner flame burning deep inside. With some people, the world stokes their inner fires; with others, it pours water on it. But even if so, don’t let the world blow it out.

Just a random thought or two for a mid-summers night. The other afternoon I was at my mother’s house, doing my laundry, and I found some old “all about” books that I had as a kid. I picked up the one about police and firemen and saw the following quote: “Police and fire fighters are BIG STRONG MEN”. Ah yes, the pre-feminist era.

Here’s another recollection from those days. For some odd reason I was reading a reprint of a magazine story written in the 1940s not long ago, and I noticed that the “voice of the story” directly addresses the reader every few paragraphs using the term “mister”. E.g., “You better believe that joint was hopping, mister”. I guess that the writer didn’t anticipate much of a female audience.

Well, I suppose that it’s best those days are behind us. However, you gotta admit, the “mister” device in the article is rather bracing and insistent. It reminds me of Thunderbirds and Old Spice after-shave and Lucky Strikes and metal Zippo lighters. (Oh yea, speaking of Luckys, I remember a line from one of their old ads: “Lucky seperates the men from the boys, but not from the girls”. Definitely pre-feminist).

Finally, I’ve discovered StarLogo, a non-sexist computer simulation program made available as freeware by MIT. More on that soon!

SOME TOUGH CHICKS: I was thinking the other day about the women in my place of work. Not for purposes of dating or falling in love, though. I’m pretty much a “highly sensitive person”, and given that my employer represents the people within the criminal justice system (as in the second half hour of Law and Order), the environment is anything but highly sensitive. The clerical types are mostly old hens who have been there forever. The female assistant prosecutors are often rudely good-looking babes, but you know they would cut your tounge out in a second for any good reason (just like any good trial attorney). And the investigators are generally atheletic, hip young chicks with gun holsters hanging over their backsides. Yes, quite an interesting fashion statement.

I occasionally deal with some of the female prosecutors, and they are generally brusque, no-nonsense, get-to-the-point women. There are some new ones who still have an aura of “sweetness”, but you know that they won’t last (or the sweetness will turn sour). A woman needs a tough edge to keep the steady flow of assault and homicide suspects moving before cynical and uncooperative old judges. So hey, I sure ain’t looking for an understanding and sensitive soul mate amidst that crowd.

But then again, I do take my hat off to those tough birds who make a career out of prosecution. For men, winning a case is usually an ego thing. But from what I’ve heard, women prosecutors get a lot of their inspiration by identifying with the victim. They really want to prove to the family who lost someone in a gang shooting or whose apartment was ransacked in a burglary or whose daughter was raped on the way home from the bus stop that the government still cares. The police will hopefully get the guy (most criminals are guys), medical people can stop the bleeding (if it’s not a homicide), the social workers can help with the trauma, but only the prosecutor can keep the perpetrator off the street and make law-abiding people feel a bit safer. So yea, even though I wouldn’t want to take any of them home with me, I offer the professional female prosecutors in my office a tribute. I’ve seen you in action, and I’m glad you’re out there.

RACIAL MATTERS / RACE MATTERS: I was watching the Rev. Al Sharpton on TV the other day, and he said that America needs to have new discussions on race. On the face of it, I agree with that statement. Discussions, when carried out respectfully and open-mindedly, are always good things. Rev. Sharpton is not quite the firebrand that he used to be, but he is still a politician, and politicians of every race have a way of twisting words around. If this new discussion on race is going to be led by those who irresponsibly stir up passions to their advantage, then I think we should forget about it. However, if this discussion were to be led by teachers and ministers and honest leaders (and Rev. Sharpton does qualify on those grounds), and were to allow sincere and thoughtful exchange of facts and ideas, with plenty of listening as well as talking, then I would enthusiastically join in.

Why do we still need a discussion on race? Well, the debts of slavery and Jim Crow are not completely settled yet. The sins of past generations still haunt us, through the continuing lack of opportunity and achievement experienced by many people of color. And unfortunately, there are still various strains of classic white-against-black racism in our daily life, although you have to look harder for it (unless you’re a black man being pulled over by the police on a country road late at night). I’ve lived in a small, privately owned apartment building for the past 15 years in a town with a significant African-American population, and yet my landlord has successfully kept the building mostly white (although an Asian-African woman lived here for a while). There are subtle but effective ways of doing that, I gather.

But, assuming that this discussion starts by casting whites as an affluent race owing an historic debt to underpriviledged blacks (a social reality that isn’t quite as absolute as it used to be, given the increasing number of affluent blacks and poor whites, and given the fast-growing Hispanic populations), and assuming that it is indeed an open discussion, then the representatives of the black cultures will also need to listen to the concerns held by many whites.

One such concern may be this: since the 1960s, the government and other non-profit agencies have redistributed a lot of resources to poor urban and rural communities where many blacks live, in order to create jobs, housing and education. And there have been a lot of positive results from that. But there are still many living in those areas who don’t seem to be responding, who seem to maintain their bad habits (crime, drug abuse, irresponsible parenting) in the face of offered opportunity. Is the overall black community doing all it can to encourage and support its most needy element in using what is available to them, and helping them pull on their own bootstraps a little harder? Or are the tax monies for poverty aid along with the lost opportunities related to affirmative action being increasingly wasted (thus explaining why they are increasingly being cut back)?

To be honest, I’m uncomfortable with the opposing points of this hypothetical discussion. But they could be entry portals for an honest discussion, so long as they aren’t clinged to. If passions are driven and exploited, a discussion on race can get very ugly. If calmness, reason and open-mindedness prevail, there could be real progress away from stereotypes and toward mutual understanding. So yes, let’s have the discussion suggested by Rev. Sharpton, but let’s keep it respectful and open-minded with a willingness on both sides to step away from entrenched positions and move towards the middle-ground of reason and enlightenment.

HOSTILE TERRITORY: I pulled into the local Home Depot this afternoon and was weaving my way through the parking lot looking for a space. Someone was loading a van with lumber and had an aisle half blocked, leaving just enough room for one car to pass. I was coming up the aisle and a guy in a big SUV was coming the other way. I was closer to the blockade, so the SUV-man held back in a gentlemanly fashion. Or so I thought.

Just after passing the lumber loaders, I saw a space to my left, so I jammed the wheel and turned in. There was another space just past me, and the big SUV started clumsily maneuvering into it. As I got out of my car, I heard some shouting from that SUV, something about “taking my space” followed with some good old-fashioned eschatological invective. Given the tone of the gentleman’s voice, I decided it was best not to look back.

I got into the Depot and sought out the safety of the plumbing aisle. It was kind of crowded, so my new friend couldn’t pick me out too easily. However, I sensed that the longer I stayed, the more vulnerable I was to a rather unpleasant encounter with a frustrated, high-testosterone man on a hot summer afternoon. I was looking for a washer for the neck connection on my sink, which is pretty leaky these days. But there were too many; who knew which one would work. You shouldn’t go into Home Depot unless you know what you’re doing. And if I decided to buy some washers and stand in one of those slow lines behind guys and burly women with boxes of tile and rolls of insulation and sheets of drywall, I’d be a sitting duck for a meeting with my SUV-owning friend. So I decided after 5 minutes to sneak out the entrance way. I wondered what sort of revenge he had planned for me for making him walk an extra 10 feet.

I was relieved when I arrived at my car to find all the windows intact and none of the tires slashed. There weren’t any huge scratches to the car body either. No, all that my friend did to express his angst was to put a lumber cart behind my rear bumper. Phew. I put the cart off to the side, started my machine up, and got the heck out of there.

Honestly, I didn’t want to spite the guy. I didn’t know he wanted that particular space. He didn’t have any blinkers on. When the same thing happens to me, I let it go. I figure that when you see a parking spot that you’d like but someone else gets there first, them’s the breaks. But I guess that when you’re a big guy in a big SUV at Home Depot and you see a skinny guy in a Corolla get to your spot first, well, things just seem dreadfully wrong with the universe.

There was one cool aspect to the incident, however. During my short time in the store, I heard Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” playing on the PA system. Yea, it’s funny how sometimes you hear just the right song at the right time in the right place. Almost as if life were a movie or something.

P.S. I did finally resolve the leaky faucet neck problem; went back to the Depot (a different one!) and got some teflon packing rope. Voila! Now, if I could just find a fix for the “aggressive, frustrated suburban male in big SUV” syndrome.

It doesn’t seem like a good time to be a Democratic presidential hopeful. Mr. Bush is on a roll, leading every possible Democrat in the field. The war in Iraq was a hit with the American public, and Mr. Bush’s aircraft carrier landing was the icing on the cake. Victory is sweet, and should be even sweeter come November, 2004.

Well, I’m not a big fan of the Democrats these days, but they’ve still got one thing going with me: as with life in general, the alternative is so much worse. I really wish the Dems could rally back and save this country from another four years of Bush-ism, but it don’t seem likely right now. Nevertheless, in the spirit of hopeless idealism, and knowing there’s not a chance in hell that what I’m gonna say here will make any difference, I’m going to offer the Democrats a plan to recapture the imagination of America.

Let me start by saying what the Democrats should NOT try to do. Unless they can clone another Bill Clinton, i.e. someone with charisma levels rivaled only by Ronald Reagan, they should NOT try to offer the public another slightly-more-folksy Republican spin-off. And they should not offer up a US Senator (or, by the same principal, a member of the House). History tell us that most Americans who vote like their presidents to come equipped with hands-on experience in running a section of the nation, i.e. as a state governor.

So who are the top Democratic contenders to challenge Mr. Bush in 2004? Answer: Senators who seek to imitate Clinton’s slightly-more-folksy Eisenhower Republicanism, but who ain’t got anywhere near Clinton’s charisma level. It looks as though the Democratic big wigs have decided to shut this one down early and save their energy for ’08.

But do they really have to? Mr. Bush and his Republican friends in the House and Senate seem to be doing all kinds of things that fail to benefit the “great silent majority”, as Richard Nixon used to say, i.e. the scads and scads of voters who need to work for a living. Bush has implemented a tax cut rigged to favor the rich and give the tab for it back to the middle class in 8 years or so (once he’s gone and forgotten). He’s prosecuted a war on terrorism that produces big headlines but avoids doing a lot of the basic things that would make our nation more secure from foreign threats, e.g. building up redundancies within critical security, communication and transportation systems, and helping local police get in tune with what’s happening in the neighborhoods. Mr. Bush executed a war in Iraq on extremely false pretenses, and turned off a lot of people who we still need as friends (i.e., western Europeans). He prosecuted a war in Afghanistan for one good reason (routing al Qaeda), but soon forgot the other reason behind it (bringing Afghanistan into the modern world so as to keep it from falling into the hands of some future anti-western fanatics). He talks a lot about bolstering American education and maintaining a safety net for the truly needy, and yet he’s quietly robbing both factions. He realizes the need for job growth in a stagnant economy, but is choking off money for the basic research and sorely needed infrastructural improvements that would support it. In sum, he’s doing a really great job in making everyone feel good, but in reality is working hard to shut out nearly everyone except the rich, the military, and the ultra-religious.

I still think that a focused Democrat could do the same to this guy as Clinton did with his father. They’d need someone who could rekindle and recapture the good old “common sense” spirit of the nation, a Harry Truman sort of guy. But so far, none of the Democrats seem to have the guts to grab the common sense issues and hold on to them long enough to inflict any damage. Thus far, Mr. Bush and company seem able to scare off any and all Democrats who dare question his policies, like those cheezy science fiction movies where the pathetic Earthlings get masacared by death rays in their first attempts to counter-attack the alien invaders.

Here’s my plan: first we need a former governor. If he has a truck load of charisma and an extremely crafty mind, then fine, let him run as an Eisenhower Republican clone, let him move to the right-of-center, and keep him from challenging or offending anyone when he moves his lips. But governors like that only come once in a blue moon, and the moon ain’t blue these days. So it looks like we’ll have to settle for a non-charismatic governor who is willing to come out swinging for the good old Democratic values regarding the lot of the common man (and woman, of course). Someone who isn’t going to say “me too” to Mr. Bush’s highly polished image as a muscular defender against the world’s bad guys, but instead is going to say “thanks Mr. Bush for what you did in the fall of 01, but Americans by now have become tired of living in fear; they’re ready to get out and rebuild our nation’s strength with education, investment and renewed private-public cooperation. Thanks for the tax cut, but most people would rather you keep the $500 or so in return for your being there when they need Social Security or Medicare or good schools for their kids or affordable health care or protection against unsafe workplaces or polluted drinking water or deadly over-crowded Interstate highways or crime and youth gangs in their neighborhoods.” Someone who can turn around the fear-mongering that Mr. Bush used to justify the war in Iraq.

Yea, the Dems seem to be searching right now for a Senatorial Bill Clinton, but what they need is a Governor Harry Truman. They need a fiesty underdog who’s not afraid to take some risks so long as he strays not far from the bedrock of common sense. Someone who is confident that the American public can yet be swayed from the hypnotic transe that Mr. Bush and company have put them in (with much help from Al Gore and al Qaeda).

The equation comes down to Howard Dean. He’s far from perfect, but with a solid conceptual platform behind him (something with a snappy name, akin to the GOP’s “Contract With America” of the mid-90s) and a scrappy attitude and a good running-mate, well you never know. Sure, if al Qaeda or any of their immitators hits us again before the election, Bush has it all sown up. That goes no matter who runs on the Democratic line. But even if that doesn’t happen, I don’t see a Kerry or an Edwards or a Lieberman (least of all) getting very far trying to play Mr. Bush’s game better than him. The Dem’s have nothing to lose with my approach, and at least a slight chance of pulling off a miracle. Give ’em hell, Howie!

Here’s the site: www.deanforamerica.com Yea, guess he watches The West Wing too.

For the past couple of months, we’ve had a sparrow who seems to enjoy sitting on a telephone wire observing the comings and going of humans to and from my apartment house. He perches himself at about the same spot every day, where he gets a bird’s eye view of people coming out of the door and down the porch steps. He doesn’t seem terribly fazed by human activity, like most birds. It almost seems that he enjoys watching us as he contentedly chirps away the hours of the day. I gather that he’s an older sparrow (they supposedly live about 10 years) who knows where the food is and doesn’t have to work too hard to get it. Perhaps his mate died not long ago, so he isn’t bothered this season with searching out bugs and worms for a brood of hungry hatchlings.

Well, I know that he’s just another house sparrow, and that house sparrows are considered to be pests, right up there with pigeons and starlings. Bird purists consider them the avian equivalent of cockroaches. They’re actually not even native American sparrows; they’re really weaver finches, that came over from England about 250 years ago. They’re an intelligent and aggressive species who know how to drive away any avian competitors in their size range. So, although they can’t mess with the many starlings and blue jays and mockingbirds and robins that we have around here, they unfortunately prevent us from seeing any nuthatches or purple finches or titmouses or bluebirds or any of the other interesting northeastern species (save for junco “snowbirds” during the winter).

But hey, I’m not going to throw the first stone at this little guy (see picture). If he didn’t have such a bird-brain, he might tell me that I’m a part of a human invasion from Europe that drove out a native culture, starting right around the time when his ancestors first saw these shores. Yea, true enough. So I’m not going to begrudge him his little window on the busy world of humankind. Let him enjoy his golden years observing us big critters as we come and go from our nest, with our various plumages, making our various noises (sometimes while holding little boxes up near our beaks), carrying many sorts of things with our claws. Interesting species, even if they are a bit too common. Yes, I guess that thought could work both for me and for my sparrow / weaver-finch friend.

DOCTOR HEAL THYSELF: I’m not a big fan of doctors. Most of them have quite an unpleasant attitude. I accept the fact that when you’re sick, ya just gotta put up with it. They’re probably right in looking down on you from on high when you come to them hurting or bleeding or ready to keel over from fever or weakness. You need an Army colonel at that point.

But as to prevention, as to avoiding disease and chronic illness, I find doctors to be almost worthless. They don’t seem ready or able to stand down their attitude and get to know you. Oh sure, they’ve got plenty of tests and are ready at any time to tell you how they’ve found something and you’d better be ready to spend the rest of your life submitting to their egos and their pills and whatever other tortures they’ve come up with or else you’re gonna die a grisly, painful death (even if you’re feeling just fine right now, or at least you did until you stepped into the examining room). As to getting to know you personally and considering whether changes in lifestyle and diet and attitude might first be tried, well … that they just don’t do. Other than Patch Adams, they don’t realize the healing power of humor, and definately don’t have much of a sense of it.

I’ve heard that there actually are some humane doctors out there who do stuff like that, and I hope someday to meet one. But I have a case-in-point story to tell right here that doesn’t give me much hope. At the moment, we have two young interns living in the apartment upstairs from me. One of them seems like a more-or-less average guy; the medical profession may actually require a few years to turn him into an SOB. But as the other guy … well, he drives a BMW with a Princeton undergrad sticker on his windshield. So he sounds quite impressive. But when I’m going to work in the morning and see his car in the lot, I can see what a mess the inside of it is. Textbooks, papers, coffee cups, shirts, tossed about all over the seats and floor. Sure, I know that interns live extraordinarily busy lives, but I know other extraordinarily busy people who don’t use that as an excuse to turn their cars into pig stys.

But the killer here … literally … regards this intelligent and priviledged young intern’s smoking habit. You see packs of Camels and Marlboros strewn all about his car. And lately, since the weather got warm and the windows stay open, I get to hear his hacking cough as he walks past my window going to and from the parking lot. I mean, HELLO, this guy just completed four years of graduate level classes regarding disease and the human body, and he can’t figure out what those butts are doing to him? Would I want to put my life and my health into this man’s hands? But before long, the medical establishment is going to confer him with credentials saying that I can. And that doesn’t give me a lot of comfort about the medical establishment.

Modern medicine … plenty of knowledge, more and more all the time. But a few quarts low as to human wisdom. You really have to wonder how many people they lose because of their coldness and disconnection from everyday life, despite the (admittedly) many people that they do actually help.

The US Government has had the Homeland Security Advisory System in place for the past year or so. This is the color-coded alert system that’s supposed to tell us how much danger we’re in of experiencing a big terrorist strike. The Advisory System has five levels, and so far the indicator has bounced around between the second and third highest levels (i.e., orange, aka “high”, and yellow, aka “elevated”). The Department of Homeland (In)Security has not yet dropped the alert status level down to blue (“guarded”), the second lowest level, not even for a few days. It looks as if we’re stuck with yellow (“elevated”) and orange (“high”) for the foreseeable future.

This all makes me wonder, what would it take in order for DHS to drop the terror alert status down to green, “low”? We’d really need a humongous “summer of love” for that one, wouldn’t we. We’d have to bring back the late 60’s and take them world-wide. Perhaps we’d have to fulfill the idealistic lyrics of John Lennon’s 1971 song “Imagine”. No heaven, no hell, no countries, no religion, no possessions, everything being shared. Hmm, well, don’t hold your breath on that one.

I myself would settle for a code-blue world where there was still a heaven, still a hell, still countries, still religion, still possessions, and not quite everything being shared, but at least enough to make the poorest nations and the most desperate people believe that it’s better to educate their children and cooperate with Uncle Sam’s capitalist posse rather than to train for suicide bombings. Yea, that in itself would be a huge stretch of the imagination. But hey, ya gotta keep dreaming, ya gotta keep hope alive. Hopefully, somebody reading this (maybe you college students) will live to see “code blue” someday. “And the world will live as one”. Almost, anyway.