Category: Current Affairs

This morning I saw a five minute segment about the polar ice cap crisis on the "Today" show. Holy Smokes! It seems the North Pole is shrinking because of greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Ever wonder why Americans can’t come up with anything resembling an environmental policy?

Might this have something to do with TV?

As soon as the Today show finished their absolutely dire story about the death of the polar ice cap they jumped to a story about a new kind of Tupperware party that’s all the rage in suburbia.

As Kurt Vonnegut would have said: "And so on…"

Meanwhile it’s about 8 degrees in Iowa and there are snow drifts against the back of the house, a matter that delights our Labradors. Roscoe, our black Lab, who is 14 walks arthritically out into the fresh powder and puts his old face down in a snow bank and glories in a deeply personal icy joy.

One would think that Americans would want to save the environment just for the sake of their house pets.

I was thinking about this idea yesterday when Connie and I were listening to a campaign speech by John Edwards. (Connie by the way got to shake Senator Edwards’ hand. I am told that his hand was attached to the rest of him.)

Sen. Edwards was arguing that we ought to clean up the environment and fix the economy for the sake of our children.

I was packed in the back of a huge crowd at the Holiday Inn in Coralville, Iowa, and I was conceiving of the possibility that Americans love dogs and cats more than they care about children. (Several socially befuddled people came up to pet my guide dog. These are the sorts of people who otherwise show no signs of social connection. So I rest my case.)

Accordingly I wonder if the candidates who really care about global warming might be wise to adopt a new strategy and urge everyone to save the planet for "Fluffy" and "Rin Tin Tin".

As my friend Lorraine would say: "I’m just sayin’".

While Connie got to shake John Edwards’ hand, I got to shake James Lowe’s hand. James Lowe is a man who was born with a cleft palate and owing to the fact that he had no medical insurance he lived with this condition for fifty years. During those five decades he was literally unable to speak.

Now he’s campaigning for John Edwards.

Mr. Lowe’s voice is like words emitted by a Victrola: he sounds both sweet and a little dark. His voice comes from a long way to reach our ears. He has a lovely mountain accent from West Virginia.

As we left the rally we found ourselves following John Edwards’ campaign bus for a few miles. The snow storm was coming on. We got a little bit lost and found ourselves driving down a dirt road in the wintry twilight. We rode in silence, each enjoying some inner light.

S.K.

What’s the difference between a kiss and lip service? I’ve been pondering this during our current political season. In the running of the political bulls we’re now in the "gotcha" part of the race when every campaign is out to demonstrate the white lies being tossed off by the competition. This is a proper phase in a free election and there’s nothing wrong with it.

Except for one thing: there’s a vast difference between a kiss and lip service. Most of our nation’s contemporary problems are systemic and they are not simply matters of human character. "Character" as promulgated by the ultra-conservative machinery is just another variant of lip service. When the GOP candidates say that the private sector can take care of the nation’s health crisis you’re getting lip service. When the Dems say that we need to become a neo-isolationist nation and turn the Pentagon into condos, well, you get the point.

My lip service radar is highly tuned because I see how people with disabilities are getting the lip all the time. Lately I’ve been in the market for a blind friendly cell phone and shame on Verizon for not having one. Shame on Apple for producing generation after generation of blind unfriendly computers and mobile products. Shame on the nation’s airports for relentlessly offering horrific passenger assistance for people with disabilities. I’ve been manhandled and talked down to by sub-contracted wheelchair pushers in airports from Philadelphia to Seattle and back again. I’m proud of the fact that I can maintain my sense of humor around 80 per cent of the time. I think that’s a pretty good record when someone is routinely treated like a trash bag by airport personnel.

As I say, we’re a nation given over to lip service. It’s been almost twenty years since the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act and still there are very few blind friendly electronic products available. In Iowa City, Iowa, where I now live, I see scores of shops and restaurants that are entirely inaccessible: these are businesses that would otherwise think of themselves as being progressive. I mentioned to one local coffee shop that they ought to remove the chairs and tables from a wheelchair ramp and they stared at me as though I was asking them to turn cat litter into Christmas cookies. Lip service.

And notice how few of the candidates have mentioned disability in any of the debates so far. That’s because tackling the nation’s health care crisis will be as big a job as restoring our nation’s economy under the New Deal. Tens of millions of Americans are about to become disabled as the population ages. Current plans call for them to live in the streets. Lip.

Someone has to lead this nation on a crusade for equitable and humane social services and for enforcement of our national civil rights laws.

The GOP’s sentimental and nostalgic idea that Reaganism is the cure is entirely misplaced. We need a restoration of government by and for the people and that means decent public housing and education; equal health care for all; and yes, it might mean that those with deeper pockets might have to pay some taxes.

In the meantime I wonder if people with disabilities will be able to vote in Ohio this coming fall. I fear that while the candidates argue about who has the best character the people who have health care or mobility issues are still getting the lip.

S.K.

Two teenage siblings, Brittany and Robbie Bergquist of
Massachusetts, learned several years ago of an army reservist who owed
$7600 for making phone calls home from Iraq.  Initially, they raided
their piggy banks and held car washes in an effort to help this
reservist meet his bills.

"We take for granted our ability to call home and speak to our families.  The troops don’t do that…" — Brittany, 16

Since then, the Bergquists have founded "Cell Phones for Soldiers"
which they manage from their home.  In doing so, they’ve provided more
than 24 million minutes (worth $1.4 million) in the form of more than
400.000 phone cards.  That breaks down to approximately 25,000 one-hour
phone cards sent overseas each month.  Their ultimate goal: "a phone
card a month for each of the more than 185,000 U.S. service members in
Iraq, Afghanistan and the Person Gulf".

They need our help.  Recycle your old cell phones and help support our troops.  Cell Phones for Soldiers solicits
unwanted cell-phones, sells them to a recycler for about $5 each, uses
the proceeds to buy prepaid phone cards that are shipped to the war
zone.

To donate a "Cell Phone for Soldiers" (including all makes and
models, chargers, batteries, accessories, BlackBerry PDA’s and pagers,
go to www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/locateDropoff.html.  To download a postage paid shipping label, go to www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/shippingLabel-generic.html and send to:

Cell Phones for Soldiers
c/o ReCellular
2555 Bishop Circle West
Dexter, MI 48130

A hearty congratulations to Brittany and Robbie.  This is quite an
accomplishment for two young people.  And quite a gift for members of
our armed services and their families and friends.

Cross-posted on Blog [with]tv 

So my husband calls me up and tells me that he and friend Ken have been
invited to tag along to dinner with friend Gary.  And it just so
happens that Gary’s been invited to have dinner with Chris Dodd.  Gary is a corporate real estate attorney and apparently Chris wants to chat with him about the current real estate market.

Steve’s been in Iowa now since the end of August.  I’m moving out as of
December 5th.  I know one thing for sure…for such a tiny little
place, there sure seems to be a lot going on in Iowa City.  I have a feeling I may be in for a big surprise – as in who knows – I might REALLY like it.

~ Connie

Joe gone now, so sad.

Stick fork in Yankees .

Weeds grow in the outfield grass. 

S.K.

Last night I watched the Boston Red Sox win their second World Series in four years and I thought of my father, Allan Kuusisto, who loved the Sox and who never lived to see his team prevail. My eyes grew moist as the final out was made and the Boston catcher, Jason Varitek ran toward the pitcher’s mound to start the celebration. How my father loved the Red Sox and how he suffered through their multiple World Series defeats and late season collapses. A New York newspaper said today: "This is not your father’s Red Sox." I surely knew what they meant. My father’s teams never had the stamina and self-possession of the 21st century teams from Boston. These ballplayers from Fenway believe that they will win and they put the pressure on their opponents to prove them wrong. My dad’s Red Sox were always straining to win but they never had that intangible dynamic of belief. These Red Sox believe.

I have a friend who thinks that team sports are atavistic exercises in vanquishing others and that this kind of competition is a bad model for human cooperation. I don’t know if he’s right about that or not. It has always seemed to me that baseball is about physics–that, and the nearly impossible task of battling gravity and mass. Of course there’s athleticism and luck and team work and yes, the plan is to beat your opponent, but in the end, both teams have the same opponent and it isn’t the other guys, its space and time and mass.

In effect: baseball only appears to be a human competition. This is why so many artists and writers love the game. The game is always about something else. And if your team loses, I think its safe to say that they didn’t lose to the other guys, they lost to actuarial matters and the occult happenstance of solid bodies moving about in time and space.

You say, "Ah, he’s just spouting this claptrap because his team won." I think the Red Sox were lucky. At every turn things could have turned out differently. I think that the Red Sox might want to ponder their fortune with some humility. The only likeable winners are those who take stock of their luck.

I hope the Red Sox will be likeable as winners.

Hi Dad!

S.K.