Category Archives: Personal

Who is the Church?

Posted on by davald

As I’ve mentioned on this blog, I was born and raised a Catholic. My parents were rigid in their faith, at least by outward appearance. Our family never missed a Sunday mass or a holy day of obligation. We strictly adhered to eating no meat on Fridays and abstaining from food and beverage before communion, both prohibitions having long since disappeared. (These two about faces alone should disabuse the notion that the Church cannot change.) We said grace before each meal and the rosary during Novenas. But, we never participated in the social aspects of the Church; the idea of being part of a community did not occur to my parents. So, we attended what we were supposed to then headed straight back home. This went on for me until my emancipation, departing for Berkeley in the 60s, no less. Before then I had my first communion, preceded by my first confession, then later my confirmation. Here’s what I looked like when I was confirmed. (I look like a young Republican. But the red should advise.)

Over my adult years, raising my own family, I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with the Church. As is my wont, I don’t do things half-heartedly. So, when I was “with the Church” I really was involved. Yet, I can never say that I believed in (a) god. Church for me as I grew older was community, from playing softball to creating liturgies.

Liturgy means ‘the work of the people.’ And that’s how I chose to view the Church. It was all about the people who came, played, talked, listened, and thought together. We made music. We sang.

For me, the clergy were almost irrelevant. Indeed, they often impeded the work of the people. My “passion,” as others call it, inevitably drove confrontations with the parish priest. The last such encounter was precipitated by the pastor, who accused me of usurping his role, and St. Mary’s had room for only one. The message was clear, so I packed up my guitar and beat a hasty retreat never to return.

I pondered this bit of biography while reading Maureen Dowd’s column this morning. She, too, was raised Catholic by strict adherents of the faith. But she also has a problem with the clergy, all the way up to the pope. What galls her this morning is the hierarchy’s harsh tones against the Obama administration, specifically its health care act that obligates insurers to provide birth-control measures.

Dowd tells us a few statistics about the attitudes of Catholic laity, which don’t differ all that much from non-Catholics’. Even to the point of contraception, Catholics disagree with Church dogma that intercourse can be practiced only by a married, heterosexual couple with the clear intention of producing offspring. Sex, in other words, can just be sex, without having procreation in mind.

A few posts back I said, “Damn the church.” In that case I equated the church with the clergy, especially the archly conservative bishops and cardinals who vehemently protest the contraceptive mandate of “Obamacare,” calling it a violation of religious freedom. For Dowd, the Church hierarchy is at war with Catholic women. She writes:

The church leaders headed to court hope to undermine the president, but they may help him. Voters who think sex is only for procreation were not going to vote for Obama anyway. And the lawsuit reminds the rest that what the bishops portray as an attack on religion by the president is really an attack on women by the bishops.

I’d go further. The bishops, the cardinals, and the pope are at war against the “work of the people.” They expect the faithful to fork over their dollars, obey all the commandments, including those of the Church, and otherwise shut up.

Catholics of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your clergy.

Mother

Posted on by davald

Well, I called her ‘Mom,’ but when she phoned me she always said, “This is your mother,” as if I wouldn’t recognize her voice. It was distinctive, so no danger of that happening.

My mother passed away in 2003, a year that began with my assuming elected office, followed closely by my brother’s suicide, then a few months later with Mom’s death. A pair of debilitating strokes took their toll. She died in a very expensive senior-care facility in Reno, a city she had often visited to play the slot machines. Fitting. This is the last photo I have of my mother, with my brother John behind her.

My mother was born in New York state, graduated high school at the age of 15. Yes, she was smart. But in 1937 women had few career opportunities. So, she became a crack secretary, setting records for typing and dictation. Her skills eventually landed her a position at West Point, where she was the administrative assistant to the commanding general. And there is where she met my dad, who had spent some time at the academy following the end of WWII. They married in 1946.

I spoiled the party the next year, followed a year later by my sister Nancy. Three years later Elizabeth joined us, before we moved to a house in the suburbs to accommodate a growing family. Jim was born in 1955. John, “the accident,” came into the world in 1963.

This is the earliest photo I have of Mom. I don’t know the date.

Not bad, for a mom.

For as long as I can recollect, I’ve believed that my mother was frustrated in her role as mother and wife. I can vaguely recall her saying something to the effect that she “should have married” someone else, someone with more ambition than my father possessed. It was only after I was long since out of the house that she seemed to resign herself to a life of modest leisure, with a husband devoted to the golf course. In the few years of healthy retirement they had together, they both seemed relatively content and comfortable. But it didn’t last long, as Dad developed cancer and died quickly after the initial diagnosis.

Soon thereafter Mom suffered the first of her two strokes. Her speech was slurred. She had difficulty with fine motor skills. But she and John, a chef by profession, decided to make the move to Sparks. Before the stroke, they had planned to sell the Concord house then buy a huge, new, sprawling house in the middle of a major sprawling development. She would be able to trek off to Reno, a short drive away, for gambling and eating, I suppose, while my brother would secure a chef’s position in one of the many restaurants.

After the move, a second stroke forced her into the hospital and then to a convalescent center. She never returned to the Sparks house.

I should think it fair to call my mother difficult. While she had a few friends, her habit was to dismiss rather than seek potential new ones. Despite her situation, she always appeared to think of herself superior to those around her. Perhaps this attitude emerged along with her bitterness for what might have been. I don’t know, since we never talked about such things. But she never seemed happy, although it seems clear that she liked to party—without the children present.

So, she died alone far removed from her three surviving children. When we got the word that she had taken a turn for the worse, our hastily arranged flights to Reno landed us an hour or so too late to say goodbye.

Yet, I still miss her.

Postscript: I set out to write this post upon reading Timothy Egan’s piece on his mother. He’s a far better writer than I, so I encourage you to read him.

Faux foodie

Posted on by davald

I naturally gravitate toward food. All kinds and, from time to time, lots of it. I was raised in a meat-and-potatoes family, with my dad earning the sobriquet “Murph,” because of his love of the Irish staple. Each meal was a feast, as if the brood would commence plowing the back forty after the last crumb disappeared. So, surplus calories were the norm, and the addiction rarely wanes.

Some element of mind-over-matter has worked of late to reduce the surplus. While I could hardly be mistaken for a stick, I am a considerably smaller man than a couple of years ago. I’m now “watching” my diet, as if I never before glanced at the small mountains of food sitting atop my plate before entering my mouth. Yet the cravings continue.

Okay. Keep eating, but eat “better.” That’s another way of saying “consume more fruits and vegetables,” which I have incorporated into my new eating regime. I also avoid milkshakes, fries, candy, and my favorite cookies. No fun in that.

On occasion I subscribe to food-related magazines, mostly through some deal or other. I figure that if I spend more time preparing the meals than actually eating them, I’ll be doing my body a favor. What comes into my mailbox now is Bon Appétit, a Condé Nast publication. Years ago Food & Wine received my attention.

Here’s my gripe about them: I can guarantee that I will lack one or more ingredients for any of their recipes. At random, I find a recipe on page 114 of the May issue of Bon Appétit. It’s called ‘jerk chicken.’

As it happens, I have some chicken in the refrigerator. So far, so good. I even have an extra red onion and garlic cloves. However, the list of what I lack includes:

  • Scotch bonnet chiles (whatever the hell they are)
  • scallions
  • fresh thyme (mine’s dried and in a small jar)
  • fresh ginger (again, dried but in a small can)
  • allspice
  • kosher salt (I’ve got plenty of Morton’s in a cardboard container with the metal spout)
  • adobo (what?)
  • Maggi Liquid Seasoning (it’s capitalized, though I have no idea why)

You can appreciate that I cannot make any “jerk chicken” tonight. Heck, I doubt that I could find some of these missing ingredients at the store, which caters more to meat-and-potatoes folks.

Oh, and I don’t have any Vietnamese coffee or pine nuts or bottles of clam juice. That means the other recipes in this issue are off limits.

It really is a magazine for snobs, for people who obsess over food (“foodies”) and spend an inordinate amount of time preparing rare dishes requiring ingredients from far-off lands that one might discover in a specialty store. Everett has none.

Well, I do confess to setting out to try some of these during momentary lapses of good judgment. I motor off to the store, then traipse up and down the aisles in search of items found only on the pages of Bon Appétit. I strike out.

“What do you mean you have no Scotch bonnet chiles?” I intone to the poor clerk. “What kind of place is this?”

“Sir,” she says. “We have ample supplies of meat and potatoes.”

“That works,” I reply, quickly abandoning my foolish project. After all, I do like them potatoes.

The “common cold”

Posted on by davald

So innocuous-sounding, the “common cold.” Experience teaches otherwise.

Last Thursday I was feeling fine, fine enough for someone about to measure his life at 65 years. Upon awaking Friday morning, though, I might have preferred death.

How could a cold be associated with so much pain and torture? Head ache. Muscle ache. Fever. Chills. And the coughing. Please let me die.

But it’s only a cold, you say? Balderdash.

It’s now Monday morning, and I think the worst is behind me. Still, I ambulate slowly, tired, and aching. Coughing is less frequent now, which gives my diaphragm a break.

Why don’t they call the cold “a near-death experience.” That’s far more accurate.

Statins and exercise

Posted on by davald

While I am hardly a marathoner, I do put in four to five miles of vigorous walking each day. But not without some muscular discomfort. I also take statins, as many in my cohort do (older men with a—previous?—weight problem).

Then I came across this article in the New York Times. It seems that there is a correlation between statins and painful exercising.

For years, physicians and scientists have been aware that statins, the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, can cause muscle aches and fatigue in some patients. What many people don’t know is that these side effects are especially pronounced in people who exercise.

Research has shown that when people stopped taking statins their aches and pains disappeared. Citing researchers the article suggests that those who have low risks of heart disease halt their medications.

Well, having passed a stress test a couple of years ago (“your heart and vascular system are just fine”), I decided to remove statins from my list of meds, starting last night. I’ll test the hypothesis later this morning.

My new enemy

Posted on by davald

As the years pass by and I realize that the lazy scientists have failed to cure death, I’m greeted each day by a cursed object that marks my latest wrinkle, nose hair, and droopy jowls. This, of course, is my bathroom mirror.

I haven’t always been so contemptuous of the mirror. When I was young, relatively svelte, and even athletic, I practiced my pitching delivery for hours at a time in front of my parents’ large living room mirror. And I was a real pitcher. Some days I’d be Bob Friend, or Sandy Koufax (the mirror made me appear left-handed), or on those occasions when I felt especially limber I’d be Juan Marichal, extending my left leg skyward. How he managed to pitch like that is beyond me.

But, mirror, I detest you now. You are no longer my friend. Keep it up, and I’ll leave the lights off so you won’t find me.

War on women

Posted on by davald

That phrase is included in this morning’s Seattle Times‘ editorial. If you’ve been reading the recent exchanges following my post yesterday on this topic, you’ll appreciate that not everyone supports Sandra Fluke in her attempts to change Georgetown University’s policy on providing contraceptives to its students. My interlocutor accuses me of bias and a failure to question Ms. Fluke’s motives. I’ll offer one more comment before I move on to other topics.

I’m old enough to have witnessed and participated in several political issues, from civil rights and environmental protection to Washington’s propping up authoritarian Central American regimes and wars in Iraq. I’ve demonstrated in some, wrote letters on others. In years past I helped establish and operate a half-dozen or more groups devoted to one cause or another, including educational reform, land use matters, dental care for the poor, and opposition to nuclear weapons. Some time ago I was featured on the front page of the local paper, described as a “citizen activist.”

I mention all this to suggest that for many decades there have been serious people engaged in serious efforts to right terrible wrongs. Among these was, for lack of a better term, feminism, which I took to be a movement to win equal rights, if not also outcomes, for women. Those like the modern-day Rush Limbaugh earned the moniker “sexist, chauvinist pig.” This struggle was long in incubation, and while advocates did not attain all that they had wanted they managed to get significant legislation passed (e.g., the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act) and favorable court rulings (e.g., Roe v. Wade).

So, it strikes me as a big step backward to observe a resurgent denigration of women. While I would expect the reactionary Catholic Church to oppose birth control, despite the fact that almost all Catholic women practice it, I am appalled that there are still so many who would impute ulterior motives, in the case of my interlocutor, and utter contemptible expressions to publicly humiliate a young woman deeply committed to social justice, in the case of Rush Limbaugh—I’m sure just one among others.

Yet, I really shouldn’t be surprised. After six-plus decades on this planet I’ve concluded that America falls far short of being that “city on a hill,” a shining example to the rest of the world. We’ve got deep pockets of nativism, sexism, and racism—along with extreme poverty. That these revanchist attitudes seem to have found a secure place within the modern-day Republican Party should give us pause, in the least, if not great consternation.

For this party is determined to chip away at hard-won gains by people of color, women, labor, and environmental advocates. I certainly hope that there are sufficient numbers of the Rest of Us to resist the chiseling.

A refreshing perspective on educational reform

Posted on by davald

I’ve always had this nagging suspicion that teachers know best about their students, and that those furthest removed from the classroom know the least. So, why don’t we pay attention to teachers?

Here’s one who deserves a look. Dan Magill teaches high school in the Seattle public school district. He offers an interesting take on who is involved in the education of a child. He writes:

I would like to reframe the reality. There aren’t two sides. There are four corners. And in the middle hangs the goal: a sober-minded, analytical, skilled population that seizes opportunities by the gray matter.

In his four corners are: teachers, future employers, reformers (he calls them ‘meddlers’), and students. But not just all students.

Magill, correctly I think, tells us that the motivation to learn comes from within. Educational writer and speaker Alfie Kohn suggests that all motivation is intrinsic; there is no such thing as extrinsic motivation. Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards makes this case, I believe. So neither carrot nor stick facilitates learning. Dangling an ‘A’ before students does not result in A-quality work. Magill proposes to qualify the term ‘student.’

Too many of us consider a student someone who goes to school. This is incorrect. A student is a person who goes to school for a specific and laudable purpose, and possesses the corresponding motivation and work ethic required to meet his goal.

I’ve spent some time in the classroom, enough to know that I was an absolutely horrible teacher. To be sure, I had received no formal training. I was hired by a Catholic school that I had attended some years before whose principal also wanted a coach and athletic director. My qualifications were thus: a degree from Berkeley in history, with a minor in physical education; a member of the Cal Bears baseball team; and an acquaintance of my predecessor at the school who recommended me for the position. Oh, and like everyone else I had spent considerable time in classrooms—as a “student.”

What immediately got me in trouble was the erroneous assumption that my charges were sufficiently motivated to learn. For the most part they were not, and evidently I had no clue how to instill a desire for learning.

Although we should never ignore the many external factors that affect a student’s motivation, poverty being the most pernicious, there is something about the “good” teachers that “bad” teachers lack.

I happen to know one of the “good” teachers. I’ve been married to her for almost 44 years. She is known for her “magic.”

Almost all of her students arrive in the fall with other things on their minds than wanting to learn. It’s a monumental struggle for the first couple of months, but beginning just after the Christmas break my wife’s investment starts paying dividends. She has created a community of learners who care about one another and desire to understand math and reading and writing. And they do learn, as the test results confirm.

Dan Magill calls the motivated students “teachable.” Unlike my wife he appears not to be in the transformation business, molding an apathetic child into one that is receptive to his teaching efforts. He wonders if he should be spending so much time on the unmotivated pupils.

With 150 students and an hour a day with each, should teachers devote the bulk of our time to the handful of attenders who reject all overtures to prioritize their education, or to the larger number of students who want help so they can reach their great potential?

In an ideal world all students entering high school would already be teachable. They would become so through the “magic” of “good” primary and middle-school teachers—like my wife, actually.

 

I feel fine

Posted on by davald

Not perfect, mind you, but okay. Do I have a false sense of security? Are there diseases lurking within my bodily systems just waiting to be triggered? By what, I haven’t a clue. Yet, each time I undergo a “routine” test I’m anxious about the results, though they have been “negative”—so far.  As I age the odds are that one of these tests will yield a “positive.” Will it be the next time or a few tests down the road?

Writing for this morning’s New York Times, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine, tell us:

Screening the apparently healthy potentially saves a few lives (although the National Cancer Institute couldn’t find any evidence for this in its recent large studies of prostate and ovarian cancer screening). But it definitely drags many others into the system needlessly — into needless appointments, needless tests, needless drugs and needless operations (not to mention all the accompanying needless insurance forms).

This process doesn’t promote health; it promotes disease. People suffer from more anxiety about their health, from drug side effects, from complications of surgery. A few die. And remember: these people felt fine when they entered the health care system.

All of us, I’m sure, have either suffered from a serious ailment or witnessed a relative going through those awful stages of diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, then…well, death. Horrible stuff. I’ve lost a brother a sister and two parents to one disease or another. In my sister’s case, she felt fine before undergoing a routine examination. She emerged “a very sick daughter,” the doctor told my mother. Nancy died after a two-and-a-half year battle with cancer. And battle she did, until the very bitter end. She was 39.

The professor:

Let me be clear: early diagnosis is not always wrong. Doctors would rather see patients early in the course of their heart attack than wait until they develop low blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat. And we’d rather see women with small breast lumps than wait until they develop large breast masses. The question is how often and how far we should get ahead of symptoms.

For years now, people have been encouraged to look to medical care as the way to make them healthy. But that’s your job — you can’t contract that out. Doctors might be able to help, but so might an author of a good cookbook, a personal trainer, a cleric or a good friend. We would all be better off if the medical system got a little closer to its original mission of helping sick patients, and let the healthy be.