My Two Political Cents

I don’t like politics and try to stay as far away from it as I can, usually. But all the health care hubbub that’s going on now, the economic uncertainties we still face, all the strained race relations in our country and the world, plus some of the international situations that have occurred in the past few months, have got me thinking.

I’ve been thinking about how typically the traits that are a person’s strongest, or a nation’s, can also tend to become their weaknesses when taken to the extreme. Someone may be very giving, for example, and people will love them for their selfless acts toward others. But that means that some people will probably take advantage of that generosity, which can make it a weakness. For our country, I believe one word sums up our strengths and weaknesses: more. We were founded to build a country based on religious freedom. We were also founded as a Christian nation, and our founders wanted the citizens of this country to be able to worship God in whatever way they saw best.

We were founded in a land brimming with resources, wide open with opportunity. One settlement led to another, and another. One denomination led to another. Growth sparked trade and entrepreneurs. Our leaders continued to place their faith and trust in God, like explorers staking a flag at the North Pole. And more was good.

And now we find ourselves trying to dig out and recover from greed, basically. More became a weakness as loans were approved for people who really couldn’t afford them. Deals were made between institutions that were shaky at best. And our house of cards fell in. So what has more really gotten us?

As we all try to endure and even make the most of these challenging economic times, so many people have gotten back to the basics of life. Instead of going on vacations, families have stayed home, having BBQs in the back yard, traveling to local atractions. Neighbors have helped neighbors, family members have helped each other. Many of us have really re-evaluated our lives, trying to figure out what we really need and what we can do without.

And it seems like we need to do that as a nation. The healthcare debate surely shows that people are worried, nervous, on edge, and it seems like many members of our government seem to be ignoring us, trying to ignore our outcries by downplaying them or just plain ignoring them by taking cell phone calls when they should be listening to the citizens standing before them. A few have acknowledged that many people are upset, but “they aren’t representative.” How many public forums is it going to take? How much outcry does there have to be?

But I don’t want to get stuck on healthcare, because that’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing because I think we need to get back to our basics. We need to tear down the house of cards and get back to the foundation. I just watched a video of a speech by Congressman Randy Forbes from Virginia, and to me it just cuts to the heart of the whole thing. You do not have to be a Christian to be an American–because of the freedoms our country was formed upon, you can choose to worship the God or a god however you choose–but you cannot deny the importance of the God–the only God–that our country was built upon. “Our Constitution was designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other,” John Adams, 2nd President of the United States.

And that’s the way it was …

I was sad to learn that Walter Cronkite had passed away. I remember watching him on CBS, at a plain desk with the countries of the world on the wall behind him. As a kid in the ’60s, I watched him then and throughout his career. He retired in 1981, the year I graduated from high school. I’ve read articles recently about how trusted he was. I was young, but I trusted him, and in a way he helped teach me about right and wrong.

Before the age of talk shows and pundits and endless coverage of events, there was the nightly news. One broadcast. One opportunity to inform viewers about what had happened in the world that day. He was a professional, and yet he seemed like one of us. As Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote in the New York Times, “His job was to appear unfazed, unchanged by the events he described. But from time to time — reporting President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, reporting from Vietnam, reporting that first step on the moon — he made it clear that the news of the day had changed not only us but him.”

My maternal grandparents were all about CBS. I’m not sure why they never really watched any other network, but they didn’t. So if we were ever over there in the evening, we definitely watched Walter Cronkite.

One memory that still sticks out in my mind is having supper with Mamaw and Papaw one night. I don’t know exactly how old I was, but I was in elementary school and probably in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Parts of the memory are sketchy. I think Papaw may have been working, because it seems like it was just Mamaw there, and we were eating at the little table in the den. Mr. Cronkite was telling us that there had been severe flooding in Bangladesh or somewhere–I don’t remember the exact place. A typhoon or monsoon or some kind of ’soon’ had hit, and hundreds of people were without homes. Some had died.

Mamaw had no idea where Bangladesh was–didn’t know anything about it at all. But she did know that many of these people had lost everything they owned in this storm. And as we watched black and white footage of homes and huts washed away, Walter gave us the story about what had happened and how many people were affected. Mamaw cried. And I learned from him and her what it meant to have compassion, empathy and sympathy for others.

If Mr. Cronkite reported on a burglary or a murder, Mamaw again showed compassion for the victims and talked about how wrong it was for the suspects to have done what they did. And I learned more about right and wrong.

“Some deaths end only a life. Some end a generation. Walter Cronkite’s death ends something larger and more profound. He stood for a world, a century, that no longer exists. His death is like losing the last veteran of a world-changing war, one of those men who saw too much but was never embittered by it. Walter Cronkite’s gift was to talk to us about what he saw, and we are very lucky to have been able to listen.” Verlyn Klinkenborg.

Go rest high on that mountain, Mr. Cronkite. Thank you for being such a positive influence in my life.

Some good things about not having air conditioning

I’m trying to be a positive, glass-half-full kinda gal, although as Coldplay says, Don’t ask neither how full nor empty is your glass. So maybe I should be grateful that I just have a glass. Anyhoo, this laptop is scorching my already-toasty legs, so let me just get to the point:

• My house probably needed to be aired out anyway.
• Having to raise the windows has forced me to clean all the spider webs and stuff in and around them.
• Most every room has a ceiling fan (thank you Jesus, Aunt Betty and Uncle Johnny).
• Hopefully having said fans cranked up on high will knock the dust off those blades. (Is it becoming obvious that I’m sorely lacking in my dedication to cleaning house?)
• Having the windows up and fans on reminds me of when I was little and air conditioning was a luxury. Yes, I’m old. But I did not walk to school barefoot in the snow–I”m not that old.
• It reminds me of the end of 3rd grade, when I got the chicken pox and stood in front of our window unit a/c, slathered in calamine lotion, trying not to scratch.
• At night I can hear the big ole bullfrogs croaking down at the pond. This is probably my favorite “perk” so far.
• The old unit has had troubles every summer for the past three years at least, so maybe getting a new unit will mean it will be a long time before I’ll have to go without cool air again.
• Sweating is good for my pores.
• That’s all for now, but if it takes a few more days before the new unit can be installed, I may come up with more.
• Oh yeah, it makes me very grateful when I’m in a place that does have cool air.

Gobsmacked

Hopefully by now you’ve watched the video clip of Susan Boyles’ performance on “Britain’s Got Talent,” where she completely wow-ed the audience and judges with her incredibly wonderful performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables.

Susan has been described as frumpy, middle-aged, even a hairy angel. All of these describe perceptions of her physical appearance. I admit that when I watched her clip for the firs time, I was probably like most other people who’ve watched it—I focused on her looks and had pretty low expectations of her singing abilities. What one has to do with the other, I don’t know, except that here in America we are bombarded daily with news of celebrities and “beautiful” people (at least according to some), so it’s hard not to focus on that right off the bat. Plus, just as a human being, the first thing we learn about another person, provided we have sight, is what they look like, and it just seems ingrained into our nature to automatically start making impressions and judgments based on what we see.

So now the bandwagon, which is rolling quickly and picking up a lot of followers, is that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. I saw a Susan Boyle fan site tonight that’s offering pins and mugs that say, “I Dreamed a Dream,” and “Never judge a book by its cover.” The song title and lyrics were a perfect fit for Susan to sing, as she’d carried this dream of being a singer for so many years. And it’s true that we shouldn’t judge people by their looks. I mean, really, who are we to declare the beauty (or non-beauty) of a fellow creation? Yet we do.

While I think it’s a valid lesson to try and keep our hearts and minds open to people, that’s not the main thing that has touched me the most about Susan’s story. After I watched her performance for the first time, I was awed and wanted to learn more about her. A search revealed a link to STV, a Scottish TV station, who brought Susan, a fellow Scot, onto one of their shows for a brief interview.  http://video.stv.tv/?bcpid=1610699553&bctid=19521357001 .

What I keep focusing on is Susan saying, “Basically I wanted to fulfil a wish to my mother that I wanted to do something with my life. Not only that but I felt like I had a bit more to offer.”

A bit more, yes, you could say that. Quite a bit more.

I think there are several reasons why Susan’s performance has resonated with so many of us: none of us want to be judged by our looks either; we admire her courage to sing on TV and in front of judges and so many people; she is the quintessential underdog and we love it when the underdog wins. Her performance has stuck with me more for the way her dream and her desire for more–to have more and to do more–overcame her fear. I have felt many times like I wasn’t being given a chance, was overlooked and underutilized, but a variety of fears kept me from doing anything about it.

I read online today that the female judge on “Britain’s Got Talent,” Amanda Holden, said, “I won’t let Simon make her go to his dentist and I certainly won’t be letting her go to his hairdresser. I think she needs to stay exactly as she is because that’s the reason we love her. The minute we spoil her by turning her into a glamourpuss is going to be when it’s spoilt.” I was happy to read that.

But when asked about a makeover, Susan told one US show: “I’d like that!”I would say the same thing. I just hope they don’t Hollywoodize her so that she becomes a creation of man rather than a creation of her Creator.

Susan cared for her ailing mother, is a devoted cat owner, and according to townspeople a wonderful friend, neighbor and fellow citizen. But she does have more to offer, and I’m so glad she found the courage to share some of it with us. Obviously we need it, since her performance has been watched almost 17 million times! (At least 8 or 10 of those are mine.)

Susan’s story has touched me so much not just because she has an incredible voice—it’s because she wanted more in her life, more from life, and she actually did something about it. Maybe some of the millions of us who are so inspired by her will follow her example.

The Value of Life

I am troubled by so many recent reports of murders. The recent one in New York was terrible, especially knowing the gunman barricaded the back door to prevent anyone from getting out, then walked in the front door with guns blazing. How terrifying. Or the policemen in Pennsylvania and California who were brutally murdered just trying to do their job. Especially distressing are the stories of family members murdering family members. Fathers killing their wives and children. Brothers brutally killing their sisters.

Some of the troubling stories don’t involve murder but are distressing nonetheless, such as the mom who really wanted to have a child with her boyfriend but wasn’t able to because she’d had a hysterectomy, so she decided to let her daughter have the child, and tried to get the daughter drunk and drugged so the boyfriend could rape her. How in the world did that idea ever make any sense?

The current headline on msnbc.com asks if America has become numb to tragedy. I think a more appropriate question to ask is, have we lost our sense of the value of life? I’m afraid that’s what we’ve become numb to. And I fear that until we can get back to honoring the gift of life, it’s only going to get worse.

On the iPhone and Some Randomocity

I don’t know if randomocity is a word or not, but I’m going with it.

This weekend I ported my number from AT&T to Verizon. I switched from a first generation iPhone to a BlackBerry curve, and I love it. I’m a Mac and loved everything about my iPhone except the actual phone part. AT&T just has terrible service in the places I need it most: home and work, and I decided I didn’t want to wait till the end of June when my contract is up, so I’ve been reading and researching and trying to decide what kind of device to get. Verizon has the best coverage around here, and they’re what I had before the iPhone, so I knew I’d go back.

I went with the BlackBerry Curve and love it. E-mail is super fast, I can use voicedialing again (I know there were apps for that on the iPhone but it wasn’t the same), and I can use my iPhone like an iTouch. The best part is that while I had no service or maybe one bar with AT&T while sitting in my recliner, I now have four bars, so I can make calls without losing the connection, plus I can hear the other person and they can hear me much clearer. Oh happy day!

From my own experience and what I’ve read online, if Apple and Verizon ever get together on a phone–watchout! They will gain some serious market share.

Next topic: Super Bowl. Wow–way to go, Jennifer Hudson. I’m sorry your family couldn’t be there to see and hear you sing the national anthem, but I’m sure they would be incredibly proud. God bless you. The game was good; I was pulling for the Cards because they seemed to be the underdog and it was such a shock that they made it that far in the season, but it’s fine that the Steelers won. I think they made a great choice in Mike Tomlin for their head coach. The commercials seemed a bit blah to me. The NBC lmao cracked me up, and I love those E-Trade commercials with the talking toddler.

One last thought: I went to the assisted living place this afternoon to visit my 93-year-old grandmother. She’s lived there just over a year; prior to that, she lived alone in her home. She’s fallen several times the past few years, and last fall she fell and broke her hip. She made it fine through surgery and rehab, and physically has done really well. Mentally, things are slipping. She knows who we are still, most of the time, but she doesn’t really make much sense when she talks.

She was OK at first today, but then, for whatever reason, she got into this funk. Her voice got weak and shaky, she seemed really confused, asking where her family had gone while we were all sitting around her, and then she began to talk to the Lord, asking Him what she was gonna do, who was gonna take care of her. Then she wondered why He didn’t just take her on. She’s said this a few times before, but today it just broke my heart. I have no idea how much longer she’ll be with us, but I feel her utter exhaustion and think it may not be much longer. It’s like she’s absolutely, completely exhausted and is just almost at the point where she can’t, and maybe doesn’t want to, go on. I think it’s a blessing and a curse to live such a long life.

When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers

I voted today, because it’s such a privilege. Then I determined I wasn’t going to watch the election coverage, because I just can’t take it. We’ve even got turmoil here in my hometown with our mayoral election, which is a huge mess because the guy who won can’t be certified as mayor because he didn’t turn in all his paperwork on time. So even though he won the majority of votes, he’s out of luck. I understand he didn’t follow the rules, and while I hate it for him, I understand that it’s fair for him to bear the consequences. What I’m not OK with is that the new city council was deemed to have the right to choose one of its members to serve as mayor. I didn’t vote for any of them for mayor, nor did any of the other residents here. It’s a huge mess, and I don’t think anyone is going to be happy with anything unless we all just get to vote again, but I don’t see that happening. So the next 4 years are going to be strange ones locally, and now it looks like they’ll be the same nationally as well.

Obviously I’m a Republican and I voted for McCain/Palin. I am bummed about Obama winning, not because of his race–that wasn’t even a factor for me. I heard so many people talking about Palin’s lack of experience and that she was just too much of a gamble, but to me, Obama was the bigger gamble, because he seemed to be trying to be all things to all people, saying whatever he thought they wanted to hear. I deal with that with my dad, and I don’t think I can say clearly enough that I hate it. It’s lying, flat out. Since the beginning of the campaign, every time I thought of Obama, I thought of MGM Studios at Disney World. When you walk into the park, it looks like you’re in New York City. As you walk down the streets, the buildings look like the ones in the Big Apple. It even sounds like the Big Apple. But behind all that, it’s empty.

Obama made some great speeches and got everyone all excited. So excited that they ignored any information that portrayed him in any kind of negative light at all. “Change!” they cried. “We want change!” Well, now we’ve got it, and now we’ll see if he’s really NYC or just MGM.

When I saw online that McCain had conceded the election to Obama, I thought of the Karen Blixen quote from Out of Africa: “When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers.”

I believe in the One, True God—not gods. And I believe that God is loving, not hateful and punishing. And I also know that when His creation chooses something other than Him, He will let them. He did it when the Israelites wanted a king, and that surely didn’t turn out all that great.

I don’t mean to say that McCain is all good and Obama is all bad. Nothing is ever all one or the other. We are all flawed, sinful, broken. I pray that Obama’s Christian faith is real, although I question it when I see some of the things he supports that seem so against what love and faith stand for.

In the last couple of presidential elections, at least, the outcome has teetered right at the top of the fulcrum and could have gone either way, but tilted just barely toward the more conservative side. It was just a matter of time, really, till it tilted the other way. I just wonder if most people really knew what kind of change they wanted. Did they have specifics for what they haven’t liked, and is it really the Republicans fault? Or did it all just sound good because it was different and therefore it had to be better? I guess we’ll see.

This was not my prayer, but it is now reality. May God’s truth prevail in the hearts of men, no matter what and no matter where—whether it’s NYC or MGM.

Can’t Get No … Satisfaction

Just a few random thoughts from stuff that’s going on this week.

FOOTBALL: Terrell Owens complained about not getting the ball enough during the Cowboys loss to the Redskins last Sunday. This is the same kind of crap we’ve heard from him before in San Francisco and Philadelphia. He clarified today that it’s only because he’s a competitor and doesn’t like to lose. I don’t buy it. It sounds to me like he’s just incredibly selfish. If you truly are a team player, yes—you would be upset about losing, but you would focus on what you did well as a team and what you need to keep working on. As a team. Because as good as many players are individually, ain’t nobody ever won a game all by their self. If you made the game-winning catch, good for you—but it’s also good for the quarterback who threw the pass, the linemen and backs who blocked, and the other receivers who ran routes to pull the defenders away from you. If you’re going to relish the spotlight when you’ve had a good game and your team won, then you’ve got be able to stand in that same light when it doesn’t turn out so good. I would hate to be on a team that had a diva like that.

ECONOMY: I’ve tried to read a bit and get a better understanding of just exactly what’s going on with the economy. I’ve learned a little bit, but it’s still kind of vague, like the stock market has always been to me. So this is a total oversimplification, and it could also be incredibly wrong, but it’s my take, and that’s OK, because this is my blog. It seems to me that we as Americans have just gotten caught up in the whirlwind that is life today. We move too fast, we try to do too much, and we overextend ourselves. We want more than we can actually afford right now, so we charge it. We get risky mortgages because they sound good now—we’ll worry about “later” later. Banks and mortgage companies did the same thing. But then an unexpected guest arrives. There’s someone at the front door: Later. It got here quicker than any of us thought it would. And it’s not happy.

As I said, I know I’m completely oversimplifying this; I know many people lost their jobs and couldn’t pay their mortgages, and many banks overextended just like their customers did. And I keep saying “we” because I’m guilty of this myself. Too many times I’ve bought things I really couldn’t pay for now, and I can always justify it somehow. A couple of years ago, I decided that the stress and the weight of trying to pay these off wasn’t worth the instant gratification I got from buying them in the first place, and I’m still working hard to pay them off. I am blessed to have a job that allows me to pay my bills; I know many people are trying, but they’re just having a really hard time right now.

I couldn’t get no satisfaction, so I charged stuff I couldn’t really pay for. Terrell Owens can’t get no satisfaction either. A lot of banks and lenders couldn’t get none either, and now here we are, in a big ole mess. My wish for our country is my wish for myself, and was my grandmother’s philosphy of life: if you ain’t got what you need, make do with what you got.

Protective Lens?

Last night I watched “102 Minutes That Changed America,” on the History Channel. It featured rarely-seen footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center, filmed by various people in different parts of the city who felt moved to tape what they were seeing. It was troubling, disturbing, moving. I was glad I watched it, and yet also wished I hadn’t, or maybe more appropriately, wish it hadn’t happened and thus had never been taped.

Several things stood out to me, such as how one man was asking people he passed on the street if they knew what was going on—rumors were spreading quickly and no one seemed to really know for sure what was happening. It reminded me of the initial confusion of 9/11/01, when it seemed as if our whole country was being attacked.

They interviewed some of the videographers to find out why they filmed, what their reactions were to the events, and what their video had meant to them. One clean cut, professional-looking guy, David Vogler, shared that for some reason, he felt emboldened as he taped, and instead of moving away from the Towers like everyone else, he went toward them to try to find out more about what was happening. “I felt detached from this horrible event because I was seeing it through a viewfinder,” he said.

A quote from another videographer stood out to me too. Cheryl Dunn taped from her apartment building and then out on the street. She always has a camera with her, she said; on that day, it was probably how she dealt with the trauma: she had a mission—to document this horrible tragedy. Her boyfriend didn’t have such a mission that day, and he was affected emotionally by what he saw. For Cheryl, she didn’t feel the brunt of her emotions till later, because, as she said, “I had an objective, and I had a mission, and I had … maybe I had this thing between me and this, um, situation.”

The “thing” she was referring to was her video camera. David felt distanced from the events surrounding him because he was looking at them through a lens. I find that fascinating, that this little piece of glass that would fit in the palm of a hand could make someone feel so bold, so separate, so impenetrable. The lens didn’t form a protective shield around their whole body, blocking any debris that might fall on them; nor did it distort the scenes and images they were seeing, but it did give them a different way of seeing it.

Now, tonight, I’m watching hurricane coverage on the Weather Channel (again). This is our ninth storm of the year, I believe, and I’ve watched coverage of most every one. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been inundated by storm after storm, and watching the reports squint and brace in the driving rain and wind has made me wonder, Why do they do this? Are they just that passionate about weather and storms? Are they gluttons for punishment? Is there a big adrenaline rush when they stand out there, so raw and exposed and vulnerable?

The Weather Channel folks were saying earlier that people are getting used to the hurricane rating system (1 through 5, with 5 being the most devastating), and that many people blow off a 2 or 3 because it won’t be as bad as “fill in the blank,” whatever the most recent devastating storm was in their area. We get complacent and think the worst can’t happen to us. But it does. And the TV acts as my lens, shielding me from the emotional impact of a killer hurricane. I’m all for the news and for being informed, but it still strikes me as odd and sometimes almost cruel that as I watch peoples’ lives and homes get blown away, and watch these meteoroligsts flap in the wind, adrenaline pumping, as they tell us how fierce and devastating it is, I watch it in the comfort of my recliner, peaceful and dry.

Football Friday Night

I went to the Albertville High football game tonight—the first high school game I’ve been to in a long time … maybe since I was in high school, back in the day. There’s a brand new stadium now and tonight was the first game there. It’s built on the site where the city’s first elementary school used to sit. It had long been left behind for a newer, bigger school, so they bulldozed it down. They took great care, however, to protect a huge old oak tree that had been there long before the old elementary school, and it now frames the goal post at one end of the stadium.

I met my sister, brother-in-law and nephew at the public library and we walked the block to the stadium. My nephew is a freshman, so as soon as we’d gotten in the gate, he disappeared so as not to be seen actually walking with his family. Two of my cousins were going in at the same time, and I don’t see them very often, so that was a treat.

The cheerleaders took to the field and led a cheer to get things started, joined by mini-me cheerleaders in their cute little outfits. The ROTC group attended to the flag and the band played the national anthem. Our band is one of the best in the state; they were in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade last year and have been a number of times before.

The sun set, the quarter moon began to glow as the sky turned from lilac to purple to black, and it was so beautiful in a hometown way, I got teary.

The game got underway, and it wasn’t really pretty at first, but the guys hung in there and had the momentum going into halftime. The band played some classic rock: Queen, the Rolling Stones, even a little Chuck Berry. Wow, it was great. Click here for a clip of the Macy’s parade last year.

I had chill bumps the whole time, and it was 80 degrees out.

Then in the second half of the game, the team rallied, led by the running of a kid whose last name is Hubbard and who looked like he might be 4′8″. We won 28-20. Go us! Go hometown! Go America! It was awesome.