Category Archives: Society

I Need a Friend

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The lovely gekko uses the story of the [broken] teacup to illustrate the transience of friendships, but I have a different viewpoint.

In the story of the glass or teacup, Ajahn Chah points to a glass at his side. “Do you see this glass?” he asked. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”

I know a lot of people. A lot more people probably know me.

  • I was the voice of the Maple Festival, on stage in front of 50,000.
  • I chair an arts council with very public events.
  • I was the elected School Moderator at Town Meeting in my Vermont Town for a decade.
  • I had a TV interview show for six years.
  • I have a fairly extensive Internoodle presence.

And more. All those folks I’ve met are very friendly but maybe not close friends.

The peeps who see me at concerts, on stage, on television, in the grocery story may very well see me as “the already broken glass” of relationships, but that’s because they are acquaintances. I prefer the story of the teacup that I caught before it shattered, the teacup I cared for and groomed, the teacup that can last forever. My bone china teacup holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. And it can last forever.


A friend will help you move. A real friend will help you move a body.

“You are also a hoarder,” Liz Arden noted. “You would never throw away the body.”

I do have Quaker roots but I wouldn’t keep it after the stink set in.

I ran into some old friends, the kind who carry shovels in the trunk. One was our flag marshal from my racing days, a man I hadn’t seen for a quarter century. We picked up the conversation we had interrupted at Bridgehampton and haven’t stopped yattering since. I can call Tom an old friend because he is so much older than I. Likewise, one of my college roommates shanghaied me for our reunion last year. All four of us who shared a fourth-floor, cold water, walk-up in downtown Hoboken were there. I’m not sure we’d really use shovels anymore — digging a hole that size by hand is hard work when there are backhoes around — but there’s no question that I’d trailer in the hoe if any of them called.

Those guys are the exception. Lucky, I am.

“Many adults find it hard to develop new friendships or keep up existing friendships,” says the Mayo Clinic. “Friendships may take a back seat to other priorities, such as work or caring for children or aging parents. You and your friends may have grown apart due to changes in your lives or interests. Or maybe you’ve moved to a new community and haven’t yet found a way to meet people. Developing and maintaining good friendships takes effort.”

Friendship takes work.

The teacup story is a far better tale than the broken glass because the teacup has pathos averted, a lesson in maintenance, and a very bright future.

My friend Rufus and I live 400 miles apart. Tom is 1,200 miles away. Gekko and I average 2,000 miles. That means we don’t go to many ball games together; we haven’t worked side by side under the hood of a car for years. We remain besties not only because we have a bond but also because we work at it with cards and calls, email and Skype, and occasional visits. With or without the excavator.

Still, it would be nice to be physically closer. I’ll keep looking.

“It’s never too late to build new friendships or reconnect with old friends,” the Mayo Clinic reminds us. “Investing time in … strengthening your friendships can pay off in better health and a brighter outlook for years to come.”

Exactly. It’s more important to keep the teacup from breaking than to expect to see the broken shards on the floor.

A friend may well be reckoned a masterpiece of nature.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
It’s more satisfying to dig a ditch with friends
than to design a skyscraper with a team of sociopaths.
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail
A really good friend will be sitting next to you saying,
“Damn…that was fun!”
Jerry said we don’t tend to the friendships in our lives
I’ve spent perhaps most of my adult life talking to strangers
Why don’t people take more time to talk to the ones we love?
–Alan Shore
A man’s never so rich as he is with friendship.
-Denny Crane
Keep only cheerful friends.
The grouches pull you down.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.
–Martin Luther King Jr.

 

 

Jail – the Liberal Paradise?

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My friend Nola “Fanny” Guay is ticked off this morning. Someone sent her this poster by email:

Jail - The Liberal Paradise

“I hate it when people send stuff like this around that just isn’t true,” she said.

Me, too.

Especially when the truth is worse.

No liberal really wants to put the rest of us in jail. Not really. Not even the farthest green protester whose mantra is that the Earth would be sooooo much better without humans.

The poster should read,

“Projects — The Liberal Paradise.“
A little history of public housing in the United States: The first “model tenements” begin to appear in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn in the 1870s. Alfred Tredway White, a great believer in progressive reform efforts, built a series of buildings for the people known in the nineteenth century as the “deserving poor.”

The working poor, those hardworking people who couldn’t make enough to live in the nineteenth century were called the deserving poor.

Those first public housing residents were carefully screened. Only employed families with two parents were allowed. Alcoholics and those with social problems were banned.

There were other similar efforts but Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the first permanent, federally funded housing in the United States. His 1933 New Deal program, the National Industrial Recovery Act, directed the Public Works Administration to undertake the “construction, reconstruction, alteration, or repair under public regulation or control of low-cost housing and slum-clearance projects…” Liberal program.

Harry Truman’s Fair Deal dramatically expanded the role of the federal government in public and private housing with the Housing Act of 1949. Liberal program.

All the discontent with “Urban Renewal” led to Lyndon Johnson’s Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965. Liberal program.

Over those years the rules morphed from allowing only employed families and banning addicts to, in many cases, banning employed families and recruiting addicts. Poor, but maybe not so deserving. Still, the ways of keeping the poor, poor, do match the liberal mantra:

  • Each resident is exactly the same as everyone else.
  • Meals are provided free, along with exercise equipment, library services, television, and more.
  • Free healthcare is to be available on site.
  • Weapons are forbidden even for self-defense.

Now that I’ve done my Liberal pounding for the day, it is worth noting that the Conservative Banker approach to public housing is simpler: “indenture ’em with a mortgage.”

Join us next week when we wonder why under Obamacare (“Free healthcare is to be available to everyone”), a Key West family with insurance received two denial letters this past week for their 2-year old son’s Lymphoma treatment.

 

Outrage!

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The Post-Tribune reported on a murder and nobody cared.

Other than the fringe bloggers, no one is outraged that three men choked and shot 24-year-old Jacqueline Gardner to death and stole the tip money she earned as a waitress.

Jacqueline Gardner85 Dollars.

Ms. Gardner suffered and died right outside her Hidden Lake apartment. Her 8-month-old daughter, Alessandra, will never know her mother. Her 4-year-old daughter, Bobbie, will remember her mother and wonder why no one cared.

They killed her for $85.

No one held vigils. There were no demonstrations. Social media was silent.

Where was the NAACP after that 2012 murder in Schererville, Indiana? After all, they were outraged in Florida over Trayvon Martin’s death. Where was Bill Moyers? He, too, was in Florida to deplore the George Zimmerman verdict. Where was Alec Baldwin? OK. Alec Baldwin was making another commercial; no one cares what plane he was on.

Where were the 47,800 outraged tweets per minute, tweets that surpassed the peak for the Sandy Hook massacre?

Where was Ellen Page (@EllenPage) who tweeted “If u really believe racism isnt a massive problem, that the oppression of minorities is not a horrific and systemic issue. U R in denial.”

Where was Dwyane Wade who asked, “How do I explain this to my young boys????”

Where was QTip who wrote “Can’t be surprised… Black life has no value in this country,” in a tweet that was shared more than 2,000 times?

Where was Barack Obama who could have adopted this young woman from his own Chicago metropolitan area “who could have been [his daughter]”?

I know where they were. They were nowhere to be found.

They were nowhere to be found because Jacqueline Gardner was a woman. Women get killed sometimes.

They were nowhere to be found because Jacqueline Gardner was white. Whites aren’t victims.

They were nowhere to be found because Stephen Lee Henderson, Michael A. Craig, and William Blasingame III, all charged with the murder of Jacqueline Gardner, are all black. In the universe of the 47,800 outraged tweeters per minute, even black murderers are the victims and “it’s not fair to play the race card.”

Even Google is nearly silent about Ms. Gardner’s fate.

 

Guest Post: George says It Was Mis-Identification

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Years ago I went to the supermarket breakfast section and ordered toast and butter for fifty-cents.  That day I was not particularly well groomed — in fact I was downright raunchy.  I was a man in his seventies.  My white beard was scraggly, my hair was unkempt, and I looked like I had dressed in a hurry in a burning house.  But I was hungry and not concerned about what people thought.

I was into my second slice of toast when I sensed a female figure standing nearby.  I lifted my eyes to behold a late middle-age woman with blue hair, nicely dressed.   I squinted — thinking that she wanted to canvass me for a donation to some liberal cause–for which I have a dozen practiced reasons whereby I can sensibly decline.   But this was not the case.

“Sir?”  She said, before I could speak.

“Yes, Ma’am?” I squeaked.

She extended a frail hand which held a half-folded five dollar bill.  “Sir, I give you this in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

I held back my embarrassed gasp and feigned humility — as I realized she had (mis)taken me for one of the homeless guys who begs at the intersection.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” I garbled, as I turned my eyes away and shyly took the bill.

“God bless you, Sir,” she said and quickly walked away.

“Goblusyoumam”, I mumbled to her quickly departing back.

I was both embarrassed and humbled.   And I vowed that in the future I would spiff up before venturing down for breakfast.  And it’s a good thing because I have since seen this good woman shopping with her grandchildren.  I purposely avoid their glances, but it is doubtful that she would recognize me anyway because I have since lost the beard.

My experience with mis-identification has not always been benevolent, as I was once mistaken for a marital interloper and got slammed between the eyes as I exited the men’s room at a local club.   I awoke with my tormentor applying wet toilet paper to my face and apologizing.

In a similar vein, Mr. Patel, who lives a block from me, is from India, and he works at WalMart five days a week.  He is a diligent worker, and when at work, he wears a white shirt and pleated slacks.  But at home he often prefers to drape himself in some variation of his native Hindu bedeckery.   One day he wore it to the Chinese restaurant for lunch, and somebody called him a Muslim.

This morning at WalMart he told me about it and complained.   I jokingly said he ought to wear a sign.   His hot response produced a dab of spittle on his lip–which I did not understand and could not spell if I had.

There is a moral to this story:  Don’t judge people by how they look.   Judge them by how they vote.

– George Poleczech

Memorial Day

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Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday once known as Decoration Day commemorates the men and women who perished under the flag of this country, fighting for what sets our America apart: the freedom to live as we please.

Holiday is a contraction of holy and day; the word originally referred only to special religious days. Here in the U.S. of A. “holiday” means any special day off work or school instead of a normal day off work or school.

The Uniform Holidays Bill which gave us some 38 or 50 Monday shopaholidays moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. Today is not May 30 but perhaps we can shut up and salute anyway.

Editorial cartoon from Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Lest we forget, the Americans we honor did not “give their lives.” They did not merely perish. They did not just cease living, check out, croak, depart, drop, expire, kick off. kick the bucket, pass away or pass on, pop off, or bite the dust. Their lives were taken from them by force on battlefields around the world. They were killed. Whether you believe they died with honor, whether you believe our cause just, died they did.

Today is not a “free” day off work or school. Today is not the big sale day at the Dollar Store. Today is a day of Honor.

“All persons present in uniform should render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute. All other persons present should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Citizens of other countries present should stand at attention. All such conduct toward the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.”

The American flag today should first be raised to the top of the flagpole for a moment, then lowered to the half-staff position where it will remain until Noon. The flag should be raised to the peak at Noon for the remainder of Memorial Day.

There are those in this country who would use today to legislate the man out of the fight. They can do that but the men and women we honor today knew you cannot legislate the fight out of the man. They have fought and they have died to protect us from those who would kill us. And perhaps to protect us from those who would sell out our birthright.

There is no end to the mutts who would kill our men and women in uniform even faster than they would kill their own. And there is no end to the mutts in our capitol who would let them. If I had but one wish granted on this day, I wish not another soldier dies. Ever. But die they did around the world again this year and die they will. For us. For me.

Because those men and women died, I get to write these words again this year. And you get to read them. Please pause and reflect as you go to a concert, stop at an artist’s studio, grill a burger, or simply read a book in the sunshine the price we pay to keep our right to do those things. Thank a soldier today. And then do it again tomorrow.

Editor’s Note: This column is slightly updated from one that appeared first in 2008.