Fear, Anger and Truth

Within days of Barack Obama’s election, the FBI and the CIA were developing strategies for dealing with a resurgence of armed militias. In a grim sort of way I have to tip my hat to them for their foresight. While I dared to hope we were about to enter a new era of national unity, they knew that having a liberal African-American in the White House would inevitably create fear in certain portions of the population who would take up arms to protect themselves from the coming (pick one) Communist/Socialist/Nazi takeover of America. I heard an interview with a militia member who sincerely believes that the Obama administration is supporting a secret plan by the Mexican government to reclaim the states of Arizona and New Mexico. When you mix fear, anger, misinformation and weapons you wind up with a very dangerous combination.

Perhaps the most poignant question asked in the Christian Gospels is the one posed by Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?” When a society cannot agree upon what constitutes truth, cannot agree upon what is fact and what is fiction, dialogue becomes impossible. We have seen this most notably in the debate over health-care reform, where bizarre rumors (such as the one about the government establishing “death panels”) are regarded as factual truth by many people. I confess that I took more pleasure than I perhaps should have in Congressman Barney Frank’s response to one such woman, who accused the congressman of supporting the President’s “Nazi health plan”—“Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”

It is not realistic to expect everyone to be in agreement about complex political and cultural issues. It is healthy and productive to dialog with one another in a respectful manner about those issues on which we hold different views. But in order to do so we need common grounding in the facts which define the issue. Lewis Carroll gave us the line “If I say it three times it is true,” and between the media and the internet such “truths” are being created and believed in alarming numbers. Misinformation has become the single greatest threat to civilized society.

By all means hold your own convictions and argue them with passion. But first, pause to ask yourself “Is this true? How do I know it is the truth? Where can I check my facts?” Persons of moral integrity will not always agree with one another, but they must not allow themselves to be guilty of spreading misinformation, rumors, or lies.

Baby Strollers, Faith and Hope

Yesterday I visited a store that sells Baby Stuff for the first time in 27 years. Our daughter and her husband are expecting a child in November, and we are giving them a stroller as a gift. I came out of the store shell-shocked; I had no idea how much the technology of Baby Stuff has changed since our children were young. The stroller that the lady described as a “good quality basic unit” includes a base that mounts in the car, an infant car seat that snaps securely into either that base or the stroller, and a variety of other features (I counted three cup-holders but saw no holster for the baby’s cell phone). “Deluxe” strollers with even more features sell for as much as $800. I think we paid fifteen bucks for the stroller our kids rode in, an “umbrella stroller” made of some kind of nylon slightly stronger than toilet tissue. When we brought our daughter home from the hospital in 1976, we were given a cardboard box in which to transport her on her mother’s lap. How our kids survived until adulthood is a great mystery.

It seems to me that the Baby Stuff industry preys on young parents’ fears and anxieties: if you don’t buy the very safest and most expensive Stuff for your child (I assume that earthquake-proof cribs are available in California), you are a Bad Parent. Certainly I am in favor of anything that makes children safer, especially car seats. But I believe there is a down side to the notion that parents can build an impregnable bubble of safety around their child by overspending on these products. Unless we are equally invested in building safe, just and healthy communities for our children to grow up in, none of us will know real safety. Even the best parent cannot provide a child with absolute protection—it is a world of joy and beauty, but also a world of risk and danger. I want my grandchild to ride in a safe stroller, but I want even more for him (yes, it will be a boy) to grow up in a world where all children have adequate food, housing, education and medical care. Such a world would be a much safer one for our grandchild, and for everyone else’s grandchildren.

Purchasing a stroller for a child whose birth is still more than three months away is its own kind of act of faith and hope, of course—we are investing ourselves in the joyous expectation that the rest of our daughter’s pregnancy will go well and her son will be born more-or-less on schedule. Of course, every time we buy a gift for a family member or friend several months before their birthday we are engaging in a similar act of faith. Life is uncertain, and we can never know what tomorrow may bring. I remember an interview comedian George Burns gave on his 90th birthday. A reporter teased him by saying “At your age, I guess you aren’t buying any long-term bonds.” Burns answered “Young man, at my age I don’t even buy green bananas!” If we allowed ourselves to be ruled by fear, we would not buy green bananas, birthday gifts, or baby strollers. But faith inspires us to live into the future in hope. I look forward to pushing my grandchild in his fancy stroller. And I look forward to having him grow up and join me in the effort to build a better world for all God’s children.

Do Things “Work Out” in the End?

A friend’s life recently turned the corner after a period of great difficulty. As she caught me up on her story and its (relatively) happy conclusion she smiled softly and said “I guess things have a way of working out in the end.”

It’s the kind of thing we say without thinking too deeply about what we are saying. Is it true? Do things in fact “work out” in the end? An honest answer would be “sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.” Some things get broken and cannot be mended. Some losses are so painful that the ache never completely goes away. Sometimes the bad guys win. And some people, no better or worse than anyone else, suffer more than their fair share of things that do not work out in the end.

I once heard a professor argue that a core conviction behind all faiths is that there is a power at work in the universe that wills for all life to flourish. That is very broad, but I think it is fair. Spiritually mature people know that there is no special divine protection afforded to the righteous and that life is a risky and uncertain business. Yet they choose to live in hope rather than in despair because they believe that the universe is kindly disposed towards us.

If we believe this, it means that we know that even though things will not always work out for us, more often than not they will. It means that most of the frightening possibilities we worry about will never happen. And it means that we believe that in the long-term—in God’s time, not ours—life and love will prevail.

Our little cabin in the U.P. is near the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, a beautiful place. One of its many attractions is Chapel Rock (it is an eight-mile hike to get there and back, but well worth it). Even though it is a barren rock, there is a huge tree on top of it. One root of the tree reaches across six feet of open air to lodge itself in the soil of a nearby hillside, providing the only source of moisture and nutrition for the tree. Each time I visit, I stare at that tree and its adventuresome root in awe, a reminder that life somehow finds a way to endure in even the most difficult circumstances.

Our own lives sometimes resemble that tree – we find ourselves in a barren place, with no source of strength or support to keep us going. Then we manage to grow a new root or someone tosses us a lifeline, and we somehow endure, even flourish. Life wins, hope prevails. We lose a round here or there, we suffer setbacks, we grieve losses. But looking at the larger picture, I agree with my friend: Things have a way of working out in the end.

Report from the War Zone

Many have inquired about how my backyard bunny wars are going, so herewith an an update:

I purchased a live trap and began a Rabbit Relocation Program. Two rabbits were successfully relocated, and they will probably be the only two that are. This is because the baby bunnies are too small to activate the trap’s trigger and the larger ones have learned how to avoid it. In other words, my Rabbit Relocation Program has evolved into a Rabbit Feeding Program. They seem to enjoy the apples I purchase for them, and I am appropriately proud of my success in training rabbits to get in and out of a rabbit trap without being captured.

The chipmunk that ravaged Susan's shade garden is no longer with us. I do not want to be terribly specific about the details. Let us simply say that I provided him with a one-way ticket to a better place.

The beans are now coming in. They are in the one garden that is fenced so securely that the rabbits – even the babies – cannot enter. I am growing four varieties of beans, of which our favorite are the French fillet beans (the very skinny ones). As the beans mature, something is nibbling off the very end of each one. I am guessing it is mice standing on tippy-toe, no doubt looking adorable like the mice in children’s books. You cannot fence out mice, especially French mice.

Something ate an entire heirloom tomato plant down to the ground. There have been reports of a groundhog in the neighborhood. I do not think this is a coincidence.

Speaking of tomatoes, I have lost two additional plants to a disease that caused them to wilt overnight. The appeared to be perfectly healthy except for the bottom of the stem, which essentially shriveled away. I did a fair amount of research on the web, and this condition points to either a fungal or bacterial disease. I took a plant to the county extension office where I talked to a nice guy who knew less about wilting diseases than I did. All signs point to a soil-borne bacterial disease that can only be treated by removing the soil to a depth of 18 inches then leaving that garden unplanted for at least four years. I have five tomato plants left, but I don’t know for how long. I am guessing I will be buying a lot of tomatoes this year, and growing them in pots next summer. This should allow me to reach my goal of enjoying home-grown tomatoes that cost me more than four dollars apiece.

The Challenge of Retro-Tech

Household things tend to wear out or go bust in clusters. On a hot and humid morning earlier this week I realized that the air conditioning was not working and traced the problem to a corroded, leaking battery in the thermostat. That same day the cordless phone in the kitchen began whining that it wanted a new battery, sending me into the blister-pack jungle of phone batteries that look almost exactly alike to find the only one that would actually fit (memo to phone manufacturers: it would be really swell if you put the model number of your phone on the actual phone).

Brief Old Guy Rant here: Remember when the only difference between light bulbs was the wattage? Now I have eleven completely different kinds of bulbs in the kitchen alone, some of which cost what I once considered a reasonable price for an entire fixture. I have a considerable portion of my retirement savings tied up in spare light bulbs. Batteries may be even worse – I do not even try to keep spares on hand except for the basic AA, AAA and 9V varieties. I initially thought it was ridiculous when a chain of stores selling nothing but batteries opened, now I’m thinking there may be a wonderful franchise opportunity in stores selling nothing but light bulbs.

But the real challenge is in maintaining “legacy” products. We still have several phones with receivers connected to the phone by an actual cord. These are the only landline phones that will still work if the power goes out (at least they will until the expensive back-up battery on the cable modem gives out). One of these primitive phones is critical to my wife. It sits on a small table in the upstairs hallway, just outside her office. There is no electrical outlet there, so a cordless phone is not an option. She loves that phone; loves the solid heft of the receiver in her hand. Often she needs to take it into her office so she can pull information up on her computer while chatting with her caller. Long ago I made two modifications to the phone that make this possible – an extra length coiled cord for the receiver, and a 16-foot retractable cord for the phone line. This last item is what prompted me to write.

Retractable cords are fragile creatures. They are very thin, which is what allows them to fit into a retractor of modest size. Sooner or later they become kinked or frayed and must be replaced. I used to be able to pick them up in any hardware or variety store, but they gradually vanished from the shelves. The last time I needed a new one I had to buy it at Radio Shack. This time I learned that even Radio Shack has dropped the item from their line.

Resigned to paying outrageous shipping charges, I turned to the web. Even there the pickings were slim. Shorter retractable lines are sold for laptop users who are forced to resort to dial-up connections, but it took a lengthy search to track down the classic 16-foot length we needed. I bought two. I can’t decide whether to keep the second as a back-up or to place it on a stand and display it as an antique. I recently read that there are now more households in the US that a have a cell phone and no landline than a landline and no cell, and the trend is accelerating. Susan is apparently the last human being on earth still using a corded landline phone with a retractable line. I am living with the Queen of Retro-Tech.

St. Francis and the Rabbits

It is said that St. Francis was so pure of heart that animals had no fear of him. I am not St. Francis, and I sincerely wish that animals feared me more than they do. I am speaking specifically of rabbits. Last winter they destroyed the hedge around our patio, and all through the spring they have been munching on various flowers and plants. They are clearly doing this with malicious intent. They sense in their evil bunny hearts which plants we value the most and single them out for destruction. If it is not a plant they care to eat, they taunt us by snipping it off and leaving it lying on the ground. These are very, very bad bunnies.

We have tried putting fencing around particularly prized plants, but this creates a garden that resembles a prisoner of war camp. Susan sprinkles plants with pepper and sprays them with various magic potions, but the rabbits regard these as salad dressing. They are indifferent to plastic snakes and snicker at plastic owls. We win the occasional battle, but the bunnies are winning the war.

In my mind there is an obvious solution, but the only thing Susan detests more than rabbits are guns. While I am a strong advocate of gun control, I believe that gardeners have an inalienable right to defend their forsythia with a pellet gun. She raises grim scenarios of me shooting my eye out or being hauled away in cuffs by law enforcement. This is not an argument I am going to win.

St. Francis is often credited as author of “the serenity prayer,” which was actually written by Reinhold Neibuhr. Here is his original version of it:
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

I cannot decide if rabbits are things that cannot be changed or things that should be changed. I like the second part of the prayer, the part most people have never heard. More of us should pray that “I may be reasonably happy in this life” because we are not likely to be completely happy. Not so long as there are rabbits.

Racetracks and Shared Cognition

A friend of mine agreed to teach her 16-year-old niece to drive. She began with a brief lecture on attentive driving – keep your eyes on the road ahead at all times, but also monitor your instrument panel, glance regularly at all three rear-view mirrors, know what is going on to your left and right… A look of panic came into her niece’s eyes. “Nobody can do all that at the same time!” But we do, of course, and most of the time we are barely aware that we are doing it (although it is not wise to add things like talking on the phone or applying make-up).

I was reminded of this story recently when I had the opportunity to drive on a racetrack. It was a privately-hosted “track day” at Road America in Elkhart Lake, one of the world’s great road courses, and I jumped at the opportunity. I wisely took my son, who has had some racing experience, as my passenger and coach. I drove my little Volvo hatchback. Other participants were driving Porsches, Corvettes, Cobras and Ferraris and actually knew what they were doing, which was a bit intimidating. Oh, and it rained all day, making the track greasy and treacherous. It is a bit disconcerting to glance in the rear-view mirror and see a Corvette sliding sideways. I was also keenly aware that my insurance would not cover any mishap that occurred on the track. What made me think this would be fun?

Take all the things we normally monitor while driving and multiply them by a factor of five on a racetrack. Then add the 14 turns on the Road America course, each of which must be approached in a different manner (when and how hard to brake; where to hit the apex and in what gear, etc.) I quickly discovered I simply could not process all this information at the same time, and turned the corners over to Colin, who calmly and clearly guided me (“Move left. Don’t brake yet. Now! Second gear. Turn! Accelerate!”) I could focus on the yellow Ferrari coming up behind me and the puddle to my right and leave the corners to him. Still I needed to pit after every three or four laps because I could only maintain mental focus that long (I claimed that it was to allow the brakes to cool when it was actually my brain that needed to cool down).

Later that evening I described the experience to my wife, the psychologist, who nodded wisely. “Cognitive overload,” she explained. “You are 61 years old and you can only maintain that kind of load for so long.” I wonder how long I could have maintained it if I had not had a second (and younger) brain in the seat next to me. I got by with a little help from my son.

People who are in a close relationship over a long period of time develop something called “shared cognition,” which means that they pool their mental resources without even being aware that they are doing it. One person drives, the other reads the map. One remembers to send birthday cards to family members; the other remembers to lock the doors at night. Two heads really are better than one.

On the racetrack, I went back and forth between “what in the world was I thinking?” and “I can’t wait to do this again!” I will likely return next year. But I certainly will not try to do it with just one brain.