Christmastide

Someone reminded me the other day that it is still Christmastide. My dad explained Christmastide to me when I asked him why we had a vacation from school in the middle of winter. Our school still called it Christmas Vacation then. He mentioned the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and told me that Christmastide lasts until January 5^th. I didn’t participate in Christmastide activities at church growing up, but I usually enjoyed it.

My sister and I usually spent our Christmas vacations staying with grandparents, cousins, or our mom. When I got old enough to take the bus on my own my cousin and I would knock around downtown St. Paul. I later explored the Twin Cities by bus on my own during Christmastide. I thought this was great fun. I saw places I didn’t get to see very often and had conversations with people I normally would not have: bus drivers, fellow passengers, waitresses, store clerks, panhandlers and librarians.

I think I spent most of the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day exploring the radio dial one year. I am grateful that I got to attend many different kinds of New Year’s Eve parties. My aunt and uncle usually had a big dinner on New Year’s Day. After I grew up and moved out of town I spent part of Christmastide traveling between Columbus and Minneapolis. I flew out to Phoenix and back for Christmas of 2001 – just a few months after 9/11.

These days I don’t get to knock around during Christmastide the way I used to. I have a job and a mortgage and a kid. This makes me grateful for social media and the Internet in general. I hope that I can give my son the same sense of wonder and adventure that the Christmastide helped me develop as I was growing up.

Merry Christmas, Suckers

We frequently hear or read that 1% of the population of the United States holds 95% of the wealth of the United States. I often hear the question, “How much do you need?” in discussions about the 1%. We may like to think of the 1% as greedy bloodsuckers, but we don’t make it very difficult for them to take our money. Christmas provides a good example.

The term “Black Friday” comes from accounting jargon. Before they had electronic spreadsheets, accountants recorded debts and losses in red ink and recorded gains and profits in black ink on paper ledgers. Historically, many retailers operated at a loss until the day after Thanksgiving, when we all started our Christmas shopping. So, the day after Thanksgiving became known as “Black Friday” because that is when the retailers finally started showing a profit – or started operating “in the black” - for the year. Imagine that. A store stays open all year long just so that we can spend money during the last month of the year.

We can count the family that owns Walmart among the 1%. Walmart has helped us to start a new Holiday tradition: recording our neighbors brawling with each other over merchandise on Thanksgiving Day and posting those videos on social media. We do not brawl with each other over bread because of hunger, we brawl with each other over a bunch of junk that we don’t need. We camp out in front of BestBuy in order to get a place in line so that we can buy electronic devices that we can’t figure out how to use. We trample each other to get shoes that bear the name of a retired professional basketball player. We pay huge premiums for clothing with huge logos of professional sports franchises so we can have the privilege of becoming mobile signs for private businesses.

We give our money to the 1% all year long at the gas pump. We drive around in outrageously large vehicles and drive them much faster than necessary. We think public transportation is for bums and bicyclists just slow us down. We urge each other to “support our troops,” never thinking that if we didn't demand so much gasoline the oil companies wouldn't have the power to put our boys and girls in harm’s way.

I could go on about other rackets such as makeup, TV and food. We pay more for branding and attractive packaging than we do for the actual food. We helped banks become too big to fail by accepting loans from them for more house than we need.

I have heard complaints about the commercialization of Christmas my whole life. My question to you this Christmas, Mr. and Mrs. 99%: How much do you need?

My Murphy Brown Moment

My son said something the other date that reminded me of “Murphy Brown,” a TV show that was popular in the 1980s and 90s. Candice Bergen played the title role. Murphy Brown was the hard-driven, forty-something anchor of a TV news program. The show had a running gag about how much Murphy hated Barry Manilow’s music.

After a few seasons the show became controversial because Murphy Brown decided she wanted to give birth to a child but did not want to bother with getting married. It was a big deal back then. Former Vice President Dan Quayle was widely mocked for criticizing Murphy Brown’s decision and not seeming to realize that he was talking about a fictional character. He tried to apologize by buying a blanket for the fictional baby.

The episode of Murphy Brown that comes to mind was one that took place when the baby was a few weeks old. It was three o’clock in the morning and Murphy could not get the baby to stop crying. She tried cooing to him, rocking him, singing to him. She tried to feed him and checked his diaper. Nothing worked. She turned on the radio to find some music the baby might like. As she was turning the dial, the baby stopped crying for a second but then continued crying as she kept going. She noticed that the baby had stopped crying and searched for the station that had caused the baby to stop crying. It turned out to be Barry Manilow singing “Copacabana.”  Murphy toughed it out. She let the song play, and even sang and danced along with it while holding the baby. It worked. The baby went to sleep and Murphy was able to go to bed.

My son is not a Barry Manilow fan - thank goodness - but he is interested in NASCAR. He told me the other day that he wants to go to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina on summer vacation. I understand that children learn better if they can follow their interests, but geez, NASCAR? I think auto racing is loud, obnoxious, dangerous, and pretty boring to watch unless one has a morbid desire to see crashes. I think NASCAR is a waste of resources and is responsible for much of the aggressive driving we see on our streets and highways. I don’t discourage the boy’s interest in the sport because I hope it will provide motivation for him to learn about mathematics and physics and chemistry.

I am surprised to find myself using Murphy Brown as a parent role model. She is a fictional character, but I know that there are many parents out there who allow themselves to be tortured by their children’s preferences in order to get them to sleep or to assist in their development.

Maybe it won’t be so bad. The boy is not asking to go to an actual race, after all. It will probably be 100 degrees in Charlotte next August, but maybe we will both learn something.  If we make it to Charlotte next summer, I will feel entitled to brag about being a good parent.

Drama Queens

“Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.” - Frank Zappa

The deal reached between Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend years ago. The conversation started out with him asking me about my disinterest in professional sports. He loved to watch NBA games. I told him sports are boring to watch unless I have a bet on the contest, and I want to avoid gambling. Besides, I told my friend, it’s a racket. All the games are fixed. I don’t see the difference between professional basketball and professional wrestling. To support this argument, I asked him how often the NBA championships go to seven games.

A championship series that goes to seven games generates more advertising revenue than a series that ends in four games. It also provides more opportunities for suckers to bet. So, they make sure that the series is dramatic. It has to come down to the wire. Maybe the seventh game of the NBA championship is a true athletic contest, but the first through sixth games are scripted. Similarly, the government shutdown and the last minute agreement on the debt ceiling were scripted. They were scripted for the same reason that professional sports matches are scripted: to generate advertising revenue.

Someone is keeping track of our Likes and Comments and Shares, as well as the online articles we read about our dysfunctional government. This allows them to target advertisements that will catch our attention. President Obama and members of the United States Congress are merely actors playing out their scripts to get us to agree or disagree with posts so that they will know how we think.

I heard that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is self funded. That is, the funding for the program was established when the act was passed into law. If that is true, the Republicans merely pandered to their constituents when they shut down the government in order to block funding for the program. However, the Democrats need to give more thought to reducing our debt. We are getting deeper into debt, and many people are calling the Republicans insane for trying to do something about it. We cannot continue to ignore this problem.

Smarter

I recently posted an essay on NPR on the Atheist group on Google+.  The essay called for civil discussion of theological beliefs, or lack thereof, between theists and atheists. The post generated more discussion than I expected. One person wrote that religions are making humans less intelligent. I don’t agree with that comment, but I can see why someone would think so. The Westboro Baptist Church is a very convenient example.

Religion made me more intelligent. I grew up with a lot of problems that extended into adulthood. I went through therapy and self-help groups. At the age of 30 I enrolled in a self-esteem class that helped me turn a corner. It helped a lot, but I still needed something else. I came upon the Parable of the Ungrateful Servant. This story liberated me from my resentment for people who had harmed me and got me on a path to correcting my own behavior. The self-esteem class prepared me to understand the parable. If there were no excuses for the bad things people had done to me, there was no excuse for the bad things I did to others.

Letting go of resentment and behaving responsibly are more intelligent than holding grudges and making others suffer from one’s anger, whether one is a theist or atheist.

The President's Remarks

I may get in trouble for saying it, but I don’t hear anyone else saying it, and someone has to say it:  The whole thing about the Zimmerman verdict is that many black men have been executed in America on much less evidence than the people of Florida had against George Zimmerman.  Not only that, but many black men and women have been lynched without benefit of trial for petty crimes or no crimes.  If President Obama cannot address this issue, he should be quiet about the Zimmerman verdict and Florida law.  The prosecution had a weak case against Mr. Zimmerman, but many people consider that a lame excuse for his acquittal.

It is unreasonable to expect any president to repair a criminal justice system that is rigged against black males.  After all, it took Dwight D. Eisenhower – the man who had commanded the largest army in history and who had won the most decisive battle in history – to send federal troops to a high school in Little Rock so that some kids could attend classes without being burned alive.  It took Lyndon B. Johnson – a lifelong political wheeler-dealer – to push the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

When President Eisenhower sent the troops to Central High School he was enforcing a court ruling.  President Johnson needed a law to enforce to ensure that all citizens had equal access to the voting booth.  It is unreasonable to expect a president to solve our racial problems because that is the role of Congress and of the courts.  It is also the responsibility of us as individual citizens.  The president’s job is to enforce the decisions of Congress and the courts. 

If we do not like the decisions our government makes, we need to vote for or against people who run for offices other than President of the United States.  Many of our citizens do not understand the Three Branches of Government and the system of Checks and Balances between them.  They think of our president as The Big Boss who has to stand for election every four years.  This ignorance contributes to a too-powerful presidency.  The way I learned it in my high school civics class is that Congress makes the laws, the courts interpret the laws, and the president enforces the laws.

I can understand why President Obama felt compelled to speak.  He is a legal scholar and probably felt pressured to display some leadership.  But, George Zimmerman is now a free man and a private citizen.  Unless the president can announce a plan to address imbalances in the criminal justice system, it is inappropriate for him to voice his personal opinion on a specific case.  He cannot introduce a bill in the Florida legislature to change the Stand Your Ground statute there, so he should not say anything about that, either.  It is up to the voters and legislators in Florida to decide if they want to change that statute.  President Obama’s legal opinions can wait until he leaves office.  I cannot see how it can be useful for any president to comment on legal issues of which he can do nothing about.  It may lead to unrealistic expectations about what he can do to solve problems such as racial profiling.

Mandate Parental Involvement

I believe that I comprehend arguments both for and against adoption of the Common Core state standards.  Those in favor want to make sure that the quality of education that a child receives does not depend on where the child lives.  Those opposed fear federalized indoctrination of children and that local school boards will have responsibility without authority.  What surprises me is that most of the opposition to the adoption was not organized until most of the states had already adopted the standards.  Some educators predict that implementation of the standards next year will reveal how poorly we are educating our children.

The unspoken issue in debates about Common Core, No Child Left Behind and other education reform programs is lack of parental involvement.  This is the crisis in education.  There is plenty of work to be done to improve the teaching done by teachers in the United States, but there is much more work to be done to convince parents that the education of their children is their responsibility.  We hire teachers to help us with the time-consuming aspects of this responsibility, not to abandon this responsibility to them.

We can help teachers spend more time teaching reading and math by teaching our children to not bully each other, teaching them how to not be victims of bullying and teaching them to not disrupt their classes.  School systems throughout our nation are doing what they can to prevent bullying and provide character education programs, but this means that they are allocating resources for these programs that could be used for art, physical education or science.  In order to be a successful teacher, a teacher must know more about classroom management than any academic subject.

There are parents who do more than make sure their children do not make it more difficult for other children to learn.  They read to their children, have their children read aloud, do drills with flash cards and answer questions about homework.  Many of them are single parents.  We do not have enough such parents.  We have plenty of parents who are more interested in reality TV than reality.  Communicating with teachers can be inconvenient for parents, but it must be done.  A parent who cannot tutor a child can find resources for tutoring.

Perhaps the most important thing a parent can do is to show their children by example that education is important.  This means looking at report cards, making sure that homework assignments are completed and attending conferences with teachers whenever possible.  A child is much more likely to take education seriously if a parent takes education seriously.  American history is full of examples of poor children who grew up to be successful because they took advantage of a free education in the public schools.

But how do we mandate parental involvement?  Doing so might be more effective than all the reforms of the education system itself.  We need incentives for parents who educate their children and intervention for parents who fail to put in any effort.  We could start with letters, numbers, shapes and colors.  Children who cannot identify these things on the first day of Kindergarten should be classified as either neglected or learning disabled and appropriate plans made on their behalf.  Parents who teach these things to their children could attend subsidized college classes or given some other incentive.

We must do something.  Our present school system operates on the outdated premise that parents are eager and grateful for an opportunity for their children to receive an education.  The present reality is that many apathetic students have apathetic parents.  They are failing classes and dropping out in vast numbers.  We cannot expect teachers and administrators to provide motivation for these students.  That is the responsibility of parents.  Our world has become so complex that ignoring a child’s education amounts to child abuse.  An uneducated adult is unemployable and vulnerable to many kinds of exploitation.  Parents who do not attend to their children’s education should be just as answerable to charges of child abuse as parents who withhold food or beat their children.

Letter to Ohio Representative John Patrick Carney re: HB 69

Please vote against House Bill 69, which would ban the use of red-light cameras and speed cameras in Ohio.  Such devices could be effective tools for improving public safety.  Arguments in favor of House Bill 69 boil down to the fact that people do not want to be told that they drive recklessly, and that cameras are more effective than police officers at identifying recklessness.  

Some of those who spoke against traffic cameras at the Transportation, Public Safety and Homeland Security committee on June 25th mentioned Elmwood Place, a village of 2,100 that used cameras to identify 20,000 speeders on one block during a two-week period last year.  This shows me that the use of speed cameras is effective, not abusive.  Most drivers are not aware of how carelessly they drive.  

If you feel that Elmwood Place or other municipalities violate due process in the way that they use traffic cameras, then please draft legislation to establish guidelines to help law enforcement officials comply with due process.  This would be a much better alternative than an outright ban.  As to privacy; streets and roads are public property.  It is unreasonable to expect privacy on public thoroughfares.  Violation of traffic laws is public, not private.

We could reduce traffic injuries by installing more traffic cameras.  It would help drivers to be aware of their recklessness and drive more carefully.  This would also allow police officers to spend more of their time preventing assaults, robberies and burglaries.

When the time comes for you to vote on House Bill 69, I ask that you consider the safety of all Ohioans and not listen to those who want to drive however they want.

Doctrine is Blasphemy

When I was a child I asked my parents questions about religion.  My father told me that he was an agnostic.  He told me that he regarded much of religion as silly, and that no one could prove that a God exists.  He also told me that he believed that it was equally silly and arrogant to assume that there is no God.  No one can prove that, either.  My mother did not speak much about her beliefs, but sent me to summer Bible school and took me to church sometimes.

I took an interest in history as I grew up.  I saw that religion may have been based on good intentions, but caused more problems than it solved.  The Crusades and The Inquisition galled me.  Those are merely two examples of people torturing and killing in the name of a person who preached about love and forgiveness and preached against idolatry.  The more I learn about Islam, the more I suspect that the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed have been corrupted by the greedy and those who need an excuse to commit violence.  Outside of books, some of the most angry and obnoxious people I have known have been fervently religious.  Some of the most bighearted people I have known have been criminal or foulmouthed.  Many atheists I have known have clearer ideas about morality and compassion than many people who consider themselves religious.

These experiences, along with some things I read, helped me understand that religion and faith are two different things.  The fact that Roman historians explained the darkness that accompanied the Crucifixion as natural phenomena made me suspect that this darkness actually occurred.  This does not by itself prove that the Resurrection also occurred, but I learned that many historians regard the Gospels as historical documents.  I had assumed that someone just made them up.  Jesus taught us the difference between faith and religion:

So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”  He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me

In vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”  Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!  For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’  But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban (that is, an offering to God) – then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on.  And you do many things like this.”  (Mark 7: 5-13, NRSV)

We “do many things like this” to this day.  The actions of the Westboro Baptist Church are the easiest examples to cite.  Here is an organization that wants to remind us that our sexual practices as a nation violate the will of God while they violate the Second Greatest Commandment.  I wonder if the Pope also noticed that many atheists have a better understanding of the teachings of Christ than many religious folk.  My father is one person I know who does not call himself a Christian, but lives more of a Christian life than many Christians.  I can think of others.

Enough things have happened in my life to convince me that there is a God and that He is looking out for me.  There have been too many coincidences.  I used to believe that it did not matter which church or even which religion I followed.  They were all different cultural expressions of the same universal love and morality with which we are all born.  I now see that many people who propagate religions have their own agenda and will lead us astray if we let them.  The love of money also corrupts our inborn inclination to love each other.  That is why Jesus went to the cross.  His Crucifixion and Resurrection gave us something on which to focus.  They are reminders of a loving God and that we can overcome death through love.  Remembering this sacrifice and victory makes it more difficult to be led astray.

All of this is a longwinded explanation of why I consider myself a Christian Deist.  I am a Deist in that I would be an agnostic because I do not know and cannot prove that there is a God, but I feel him.  I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ is The Word Made Flesh.  He helped me understand the difference between faith and superstition and that we do not have to be victims of religion as a racket.

Happy Mother's Day

I grew up with a rather cynical attitude about Mother's Day.  I learned that the person who founded the observance became disappointed in how commercialized it became just a few years after she started it.  I saw it as a marketing device for furniture stores, restaurants, florists and greeting card companies.  I love sending and receiving Christmas cards, so I don’t begrudge greeting card companies the opportunity too much.  They have to make a living from one Christmas to the next.  I became a little annoyed this year because 1-800-FLOWERS sent me at least two emails a day over the past week.  I used them to send flowers to my late mother in past years.

Mother's Day may be commercial, but it is still an opportunity to express gratitude.  I am grateful for the woman who gave me life.  She not only gestated me for nine months, but also gave me survival skills.  She made sure I learned how to tell time and learned how to swim.  She taught me some manners.  I am also grateful for the woman who bravely bore me a fine son.  She continues to provide our child with care and attention.  She works with me to teach our child the skills he will need to survive and thrive.

As a male, I probably cannot completely comprehend what women go through in pregnancy and childbirth.  I appreciate all they do to teach and nurture the children.

Look Away, Dixieland

The first thing I thought of when I heard about “Accidental Racist” by Brad Paisley and LL Cool J was a conversation I had with a person I supervised back in the 1990s.  She was a young woman, about 17 years old.  Her boyfriend would pick her up from work at the end of her shift.  The first couple of times the boyfriend picked her up, he pulled into the parking lot and blew his car horn.  The car horn played “Dixie.”  In the interest of not aggravating the African-Americans on the staff I asked the young woman to tell her boyfriend to not blow the horn to let her know that he had arrived to pick her up from work.

“But that’s his Dukes of Hazzard horn,” she told me. 

That conversation was one of my first clues that many people have little knowledge of history.  Millions of my fellow citizens do not understand the significance of “Dixie” or the Confederate battle flag.  They do not know that hundreds of thousands of Americans died to liberate other people from slavery, or that hundreds of thousands of other Americans died fighting to retain the right to keep human beings as property.  I have the impression that Mr. Paisley was one such person who knew little about American history until his encounter with a clerk at Starbucks while wearing a t-shirt with the Stars and Bars on it.

The second thing I thought of when I heard about “Accidental Racist” was my father telling me as a boy that there are no such things as accidents.  Bad things happen because of lack of preparation or lack of foresight.  Ignorance is no excuse.  If you don’t know that a car horn that plays “Dixie” or wearing a t-shirt with the Stars and Bars will offend your neighbors, you need to think about whether you make decisions about who you talk to based on race.  I wish they still taught about the Civil War in schools.

Lorraine Rhinehart (nee Althoff) 1936-2013

Lorraine Grace Althoff Stevens Hill Rhinehart was born in Stillwater, Minnesota.  She is preceded in death by her parents, Harold and Enid Althoff, and her husband, John Rhinehart, Jr.  She is survived by brothers Donald Althoff (Arlene) and Charles Althoff, sisters Judith Blinn (Jerry), Valerie DeLong, and Patricia Pikala (David), sons John Stevens (Lillie) and Kevin Stevens (Maria) daughter Sara Bratsch (Roger), and grandchildren Marcus Bratsch, Katie Bratsch, Devon and David Stevens.

My mother had a long career in nursing.  One of the nurses who cared for her late in her life told me that she and other nurses regarded her as a mentor.  She had many friends who cared for her deeply.

My mother gave me many gifts.  As a child, she taught me about survival.  She taught me how to tell time and how to call to learn about bus schedules.  Later in life, my mother taught me about faith by her example.  She had more reason to complain that almost anyone I have ever known, but she complained less than almost anyone I have ever known.  She showed me that life can have joy and beauty even when it is difficult and painful.

An Irritating Question

The question, “What’s the difference?” irritates me.  A person who asks this question is not interested in learning about differences.  A person who asks this is using the question to say that a difference is so insignificant that it is not worth discussing.  People often say “What’s the difference?” inappropriately.  They ask this when the difference is important and they do not understand it, or when they are hiding something.

I wanted to give Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the benefit of the doubt about the Benghazi attack.  Initial reports of such an event can be inaccurate.  The fact that the attack occurred on September 11^th made me suspect that it had been planned ahead of time.  Still, it seemed reasonable that the attack could be a spontaneous reaction to an offensive video.  I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt until she said at a recent United States Senate hearing, “What difference does it make?” 

By asking about initial statements about the Benghazi attack, Senator Ron Johnson may have been attempting to learn about deficiencies in intelligence as they relate to embassy security.  This does make a difference.  Saying “What difference does it make?” makes me suspect that Secretary Clinton does not understand everything she should understand, or she is hiding something.

The Reverend King Dreamt of a Christian Nation

“Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.”  (Luke 11:47)

Those who want the United States of America to be a Christian nation would do well to read or listen to the “I Have a Dream” speech by The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The speech describes a nation in which the citizens love each other, as Christ instructed.  Before his death, Dr. King moved us closer to a society that respects the fact that all men are created equal.  We still have work to do, but Dr. King helped us to equalize voting opportunities and educational opportunities.  He did this without shedding blood.

Dr. King showed us that much more can be accomplished by non-violence than by violence.  By showing us this, he showed us that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are not abstract spiritual concepts.  Following these teachings can bring about real and positive change in the world.  The work and goals of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. can provide a model of how we can become a Christian nation.