I Dreamed a Dream

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."  Eleanor Roosevelt 

I began this year with great hopes of social progress, economic recovery and the restoration of America's image internationally.  We were going to have a new president, one whom I admired both for his oratory as well as his ideas.  One who stood in stark contrast to the bleakness, despair, secrecy and questionable moral and ethical values of the out-going administration.

After the election, I said that Mr. Obama had won mainly on one issue:  hope.  He talked about a hope tempered by the reality that nothing would be easy, but that he firmly believed the greatest country in the history of the world could solve its financial problems, expand social justice, restore our country's position in the world and be moral, ethical and open without compromising security.

He promoted an ambitious agenda, and one that I supported whole-heartedly.  After 8 years of psychic darkness, I kept remembering the little girl's mother in "Poltergeist":  "Run to the light, baby. Mommy is in the light."  Like many others, I ran to the light.

The President definitively achieved one of those goals early on:  restoring America's stature internationally.  Europeans celebrated his election, as did others all over the world.  And once in office, he immediately replaced unilateral bullying with multilateral diplomacy.

On other fronts, progress varies.  He used extraordinary means to avert a financial crisis that would have been worse than the Great Depression.  Had the government not intervened, even the largest banks would have probably failed, GM and Chrysler would have sank and taken Ford with them and ordinary citizens would have seen their retirement investments become worthless.

However, his policies and actions have received a mixed reaction.  Some say it's not the government's place to prop up the private sector.  Others say it's not enough.  That more needs to be done.  Both sides are right, but there’s only one practical solution:  limited and targeted federal money to keep the entire economy from collapsing.

As far as torture goes, his prohibition of it also garnered mixed reviews.  The far right spins it as losing a tool to combat terrorism, when, in reality, the use of torture produces almost no benefit and creates many problems.

First, torture provides very little useful information. Second, it reduces our country to the level of the enemy.  It makes us as bad as them.  Third, it's illegal under the Geneva Convention.  Fourth, it lowers our country's stature internationally.  Most importantly, it's just plain wrong.

On the social justice agenda, health care reform leads the bill.  It remains as contentious as it has been for the last 50 or 60 years.  And while some might not see it as a social justice issue, it is and always has been.  It raises the question of whether life and death should be determined by the size of ones pocketbook.

As far as the year goes, it's been a mixed bag.  Some things are better; some are worse.

The economy didn't implode, but unemployment and foreclosures remain unacceptably high.  Health care reform will pass, but it might end up looking like Frankenstein's monster.  The right and the left will remain as far apart as they ever have been.

Still, I have hope.  I hang on always.  Sometimes only by my fingernails.  But I hang on.

On many fronts, it's been a very bleak year.  On others, not so bad.  Bold and unprecedented moves by the government stabilized the economy.  We are no longer teetering on the precipice of an unprecedented depression.

Health care reform will happen, but the shape it takes remains dubious, at best.  The economy hangs by a thread:  any upset in the markets could precipitate another sell-off that puts us three steps back.  Problems in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and/or Pakistan could explode.

Still, I hold onto hope.  In the absence of guarantees, it’s what I have.

Mr. Roosevelt understood one principle that Mr. Obama understands:  monetary policy can only go so far to heal a nation.  Healing comes through hope and faith.  Roosevelt held the country’s hand through a depression and a world war.  Obama is doing much the same.

Some say that our president is over-exposed in the media, but I would argue that, in times of crisis, people want to know what’s going on.  That means keeping them informed, and not through leaks to selected press outlets.

In the end, I cling to hope.  We’re all living in scary times, and we’re all in the same boat that might sink any minute now.

And yet I believe that things will be better tomorrow than they were today.  Naive, perhaps.  But I refuse to believe otherwise until I see otherwise.

In the midst of it all, a 47 old British woman walked out on stage and stunned the world.  For a few minutes, I forgot that the stock market had crashed, that we were fighting two intractable wars in the middle east,  that the only thing that remained certain was uncertainty. And when she finished, I found my faith in hope reaffirmed.

Hope can move mountains.  It can elect a black president (something I never thought I would see in my lifetime).  It can turn the stock market around.  It can make a frumpy middle-aged woman a star.

Most importantly, it helps me sleep at night.

Christmas Card 2009

 

Let Them Eat Pie

I've been eating this pie for as long as I can remember. Mama's been making it all my life. That's one of the things mamas are good for: good pie.

Ingredients:

· 1 cup sugar (I prefer raw or turbinado)
· 2 tbsp. cocoa powder (I like organic)
· 3 tbsp. flour (white, unbleached)
· 1 tsp. vanilla extract (not imitation – don’t go there)
· 2 egg yolks (yard eggs, if you can find them)
· 1 cup milk (the real stuff - none of that milk-lite)
· ½ stick of butter (don’t even think of using margarine)
· 1 graham cracker pie crust (for this, you’re on your own)

Preparation:

Mix the dry ingredients in a medium size bowl (preferably a round-bottomed one – you’ll need to mix the wet ingredients and mix them well). Add the vanilla, egg yolks and milk. Stir until the ingredients are well integrated.

Melt the butter over medium to low heat in a cast iron skillet. (Any heavy-bottomed pan will do, but I’m convinced that, for some things, nothing beats a good cast iron skillet. They distribute heat more evenly than just about anything else. They are God’s perfect pan.)

When the butter is sizzling nicely, pour the mixture in. Stir continuously until it has the consistency of a thick pudding. (You’ll probably have to cook it longer than you thing you should. This part may take a couple of tries to get right.)

Pour the mixture into the piecrust and leave it alone. If the texture is too thin as it cools, pop it into the fridge for a while. Let it sit on the counter or in the fridge until it has a firm consistency.

It's the perfect chocolate pie, and now you know how to make it for yourself.

Live long. Be happy.

Eat more pie.

Un-Civil Rights

Watching an episode of Ken Burns' "The Civil War" reminds me about how important the fight for a cause can be. The South insisted on states' rights superceding the federal governments'. The North didn’t have a consensus in the state vs. federal power issue (and still don't), but they wanted to keep the Union intact.

Slaves were freed along the way, but that had little to do with the war.

A conflict of ideas fueled the bloodiest war ever fought in the western hemisphere. Also, the most deadly in American history.

Our worst war was spent fighting among ourselves.

It also reminds me that nothing's much changed. We don't use guns as often; we are divided still, but along other lines. "North and South" has become "Republican and Democrat". And there are no easy geographic boundaries to separate the two.

The Mason-Dickson is no longer relevant.

We are as divided as we have ever been, but now on social issues, not political ones. Social issues masquerade as political ones, but they're not. They often boil down to nothing more than rabble-rousing.

The Stonewall riots of 1969 illustrate this well. The NYPD decided to raid a gay bar on Christopher St. in Greenwich Village. What they didn't take into account was that Judy Garland had died that day. They were met with a bunch of angry queens whose icon was dead and were sick and tired of being harassed.

They fought back. It was the birth of the gay rights movement. One that continues today. You can only push someone so much before they get pissed off.

The movement has become the focus of political groups on both the right and the left. It’s either demonized or lauded. They don’t seem to realize that real people are involved.

They argue about ideas while real people are affected by their actions. And none of them seem to realize that.

Civil rights are not a political issue and never have been. They're a matter of social justice.

But civil rights are still a political issue, practically speaking, years after Stonewall and over a century after Mr. Lincoln unilaterally proclaimed social justice to be the law of the land.

I sometimes wonder if we'll ever learn anything as a nation from the past. I'm not sure that we'll ever, as a body, separate political concerns from social justice. We've had any number of chances, but have done little to nothing to address the issue, except listen to politicians using the issue as a political hot-button.

We've come far, but not far enough. Not yet.

And I’m not giving up.

On the Wings of Angels

We were at the Temple, TX, VA hospital the day of the Ft. Hood shootings. I had been outside to have a cigarette and check in at work. They don't like to call me when I'm off, so I check in with them, instead. Plus, I needed an excuse for a smoke, and I hate talking on a cell phone in a crowded public place like a hospital waiting room.

Things were fine at the office, but when I got back upstairs to waiting room, all eyes were on the TV. They were covering a breaking story, and it was breaking not too far away. There was a mass shooting one town away at Ft. Hood, which abuts Killeen.

Everyone in the room had some connection to the military. Many were veterans; others were there with spouses or parents who were veterans.

It was kind of a surreal moment. As I struggled to wrap my mind around it, I realized I didn't know what to wrap my around yet. The information changed every few minutes or even seconds. All I could comprehend was that something very bad had happened, and not very far away.

I went back outside to make a couple of other calls. One to a friend who retired from the Army a few years ago and still lived in Killeen. I needed to know that none of his family had business on base that day. Early reports included civilian fatalities.

Another to my mother to tell her that she was going to hear about something very soon, but that we were not near it. Or at least not close enough to be in danger. She knew we were going to be at the VA that day, and she would have heard "military", "central Texas" and "Ft. Hood", then gotten worried. I told her that there was a noticable increase in police outside the hospital.

At the time, reports stated that there were multiple shooters and that some were still on the loose. While those reports eventually turned out to be inaccurate, I didn't want her worrying too much.

While I was out, I noticed a helicopter that seemed to be circling the city. I thought it might be looking for the people that might still be on the loose. The local schools were on lock-down, so I thought maybe someone might have been spotted in the area

I went back out a little later for a cigarette. My nerves were raw, I needed to pace. That outweighed the possibility of meeting a shooter in the lobby.

That helicopter was still circling.

Then I saw it stop and hover near Scott & White. It's a major hospital that sits on a hill above the VA hospital. It stayed there for a good 10 minutes before I went back in.

I could see it from the window of the waiting room. I got distracted, looked away for a minute and it wasn't there, any more. But then it was back a few minutes later. I could hear it before I could see it.

The doctor we were there to see was held up in a surgery that ran long, so I went back out again to pace and smoke and watch the helicopter circling. When I’m upset, I can’t sit still.

The doctor we were there for cut the appointment short once she finally got done in surgery because she'd been told to prep for overflow. And that she and other medical staff could not leave for the time being.

Turns out, it wasn't a helicopter circling. It was one after another coming in to land at Scott & White. It's where most of the shooting victims went. It has a very good trauma unit that can handle mass casualties.

The helicopter kept coming in for as long as we were there. And I'm guessing the one that was hovering was waiting for a place to land.

When we leaving, I looked up and saw several helicopters in the air, not one just circling. They were coming in one after another in a strict arc formation that allowed one to land and take off before the next one got there. The first ones had come in farther apart.

From the VA hospital, Scott & White looks like the proverbial "shining city on a hill". It doesn't shine physically. It's built of mostly brown masonry. But knowing what it is and what it does, then seeing its massiveness on high from afar, it shines spiritually. It's a city of hope. A city of last and best hope for some.

As it was that day. One helicopter at a time.