The Vasectomy
I squint into the blinding lights while the nurse snaps on latex gloves and my doctor shaves my scrotum. Then it’s time. He warns me: In a moment, I will feel a prick like a hornet’s sting—the local anesthetic. There it is, the sharpness easing into a spreading dullness. Weeks later a friend will tell me that if he had one bit of advice for someone undergoing the v-sec, it would be this: When the doctor asks if you can feel it, say yes. You get a second shot. When my doctor asks if I can feel it, I mutter something noncommittal, and he takes this as a green light and slices me open.
I don’t scream, but I clamp my jaw so tightly it clicks. I arch my back so much I end up looking behind me at the door. The technique differs from doctor to doctor. Some cut diagonally. Some puncture “keyholes” with a hemostat on either side of the scrotum. Mine scalpels a vertical slash right down the middle. The room is cold, but I am sweating. How I regret not accepting the Valium. The doctor explains the procedure as it progresses. Apparently some men don’t have pronounced enough vas deferens, the tubes that carry sperm outward from the testicles, making the vasectomy impossible. But mine look great, he says. I would tell him thank you if I had a voice.
He will now sever the right vas deferens and excise a length of the tube, making recanalization close to impossible. “Now,” he says, his voice lowering, “you may feel a hot nauseating spike of pain that reaches up your right side.” Nobody I have spoken to, nothing I have read, mentioned anything about hot nauseating spikes of pain. Before I can steel myself to the idea, I hear a snip. The noise of garden shears deadheading geraniums.
I am unable to breathe. I cannot see what the doctor is doing, but he very well might have shoved a furnace-baked length of rebar through my groin and into my torso. I am introduced to vast, intricate networks of pain I never knew existed.
No. No, no, no.
Your Obituary Here
You wouldn’t know it from reading this blog, but I’ve been in bed pretty much since Sunday with a nasty bronchial virus, and seasonal allergies. Yesterday was a better day, and I got out a bit, but today I was down for the count again. One good thing about this blogging software is I can write posts ahead of time, and publish them between naps. I’ve turned my phone off, and on the occasion I’ve answered it, the person on the other end has wondered who they were talking to. (“Froggy, zat you?”)
This isn’t much, and it too shall pass, but it’s a reminder of how precarious one’s health always is, no matter how solid everything seems. I have a surprising number of friends whose lives have been intimately touched in the past year by cancer. Just this afternoon came word that a friend back East lost someone very dear to her last night, to cancer. He died in his sleep. Not long ago, a friend’s wife had radical cancer surgery days after her mother died from cancer. And, of course, my sister Ruthie died from lung cancer at age 42. Never smoked a day in her life. One day she started coughing, and couldn’t stop. And that was that.
Yesterday I interviewed one of my sister’s friends for the book I’m doing about her. The consistent thing that everyone — I mean every single person — who knew Ruthie always says is this: “When you were with her, she made you feel like you were the most important person to her.” The guy I talked to yesterday said that as well. He added that the reason so many people around here loved Ruthie and her husband Mike so fiercely is because they both were so good, and treated everyone with such kindness. “They were not takers,” he said. “They never were looking out for themselves. They only wanted to be good to people, and to do right. They didn’t want what they didn’t have. They were so humble, and just so thankful for everything.”
That really was true of Ruthie, and is true of Mike. Those five lines are just about the best tribute to a life well lived any of us could hope to receive. They were not takers. Having read Breitbart’s obituaries today, and working every day on this book about Ruthie’s well-lived life, I drifted off to sleep this afternoon thinking about what my own obituary would say if I dropped dead tomorrow. It wouldn’t be anywhere close to Ruthie’s, I can tell you that. The thing is, it’s in my power for it to be. There’s nothing saying that I can’t wake up tomorrow and choose to be more like her.
To be sure, Ruthie was a peacemaker by nature. She hated controversy, and was willing to endure all kinds of things she shouldn’t have put up with, for the sake of keeping the peace. The last conversation I had with her, four days before she died, I was pushing her to let me get involved in a situation in which a tradesman was taking advantage of her and Mike. No, she said, let me handle this. I’ve got this thing. I knew good and well she didn’t have that thing, but I also knew that she was the kind of person who would try her best to convince the lazy tradesman to do the right thing out of love and a sense of personal honor, not because she got in his face and read him the riot act, which he absolutely deserved.
I don’t think we are all called to be that irenic. It’s hard for me sometimes to understand why Ruthie did some of the things she did. Nevertheless, you ought to hear what I’m hearing these days: these conversations in which people talk about the way she was, the compassion she had for people, and the things she did for them that made everybody walk away from her feeling loved. We should all want people to remember us that way, I think, or at least to remember us with such kindness, respect, and gratitude. A woman I talked to about Ruthie today said all the great things everybody else did about her, and added, “The amazing thing about her is that she wasn’t a goody-two-shoes. She was real. She was the most authentic person I’ve ever known.” The point here is that her goodness wasn’t the sort of plaster-saint sanctity that’s untouchable. As her daughter Hannah told me, “Mama didn’t know the Bible all that well, but she lived it.”
It’s a humbling exercise to think about what your obituary would say if you died tomorrow, if it were honest. The best mine could say about me is that I loved my family. Beyond that, there’s only a list of professional accomplishments, about which … so what? In the gaze of eternity, so what? I do h0pe and pray, though, that I live long enough to finish this book about my sister. That will count for something, I think. Still, I can’t get away from the thought that there’s no reason I can’t live more like her now, today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. No reason, except for that it’s hard.
Let me put the question to you, readers: What would your obituary say if you died tomorrow, and if it were honest? Are you satisfied with that? Why or why not? Answer anonymously if you prefer.
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Breitbart: A Man of His Times
Please read David Frum’s judicious assessment of Andrew Breitbart’s legacy. My objection earlier was not to people critically analyzing Breitbart’s public work and his legacy. That is completely fair, even if one takes a dim view of what he did, and what he stood for. What I objected to was people like Matt Yglesias taking pleasure in the man’s death (and yes, it was just as foul when Breitbart took public pleasure in Ted Kennedy’s passing). In his essay, Frum avoids that, but also does not allow sentiment to prevent him from making a negative — and, to my way of thinking, accurate and justified — assessment of Breitbart’s work. Excerpt:
Yet perhaps Breitbart’s most consequential innovation was his invention of a new kind of culture war. Until recently, the phrase “culture war” mainly described the political struggle over religion and sexuality. When Pat Buchanan declared a “culture war” from the rostrum of the Republican convention in 1992, he specifically cited abortion, gay rights, pornography, prayer in schools, and women in combat as the outstanding issues.
Those were not the issues that much interested Andrew Breitbart. On gay rights, he held almost the polar opposite view of Buchanan’s in 1992.
In fact, it’s hard even to use the word “issues” in connection with Andrew Breitbart. He may have used the words “left” and “right,” but it’s hard to imagine what he ever meant by those words. He waged a culture war minus the “culture,” as a pure struggle between personalities. [For Breitbart, the] attack was everything, the details nothing.
More:
It’s difficult for me to assess Breitbart’s impact upon American media and American politics as anything other than poisonous. When one of the leading media figures of the day achieves his success by his giddy disdain for truth and fairness—when one of our leading political figures offers to his admirers a politics inflamed by rage and devoid of ideas—how to withhold a profoundly negative judgment on his life and career?
Especially when that career was so representative of his times?
True, this — and do not miss the crucial point: Breitbart was not so much representative of the Right as he was representative of the times in which he lives. Breitbart was an exceptionally effective practitioner of a poisonous form of polemics that are as widespread on the left as on the right. Of course one of the defining characteristics of this dark art is the genuine conviction that when They do it, they’re evil, but when We do it, we are justified because We Are Good And They Are Evil, And Anyway, They Started It.
I do not understand people who run on hatred of the Other. I mean, I understand why they do what they do, and how fulfilling pure hate can be; every one of us, at some point in our lives, have tasted the narcotic pleasure of pure hatred. What makes it pure is believing that it is just, that the object of our hatred deserves our undiluted contempt; in that sense, the purity of our hatred absolves us, at least in our own minds.
When I was in college, we had on campus twin brothers who were students, fundamentalist Christians and self-appointed campus evangelists. They made a point of presenting the Gospel in such provocative and antagonistic terms that most people found them repugnant. If you watched them, you could see that they took apparent pleasure in being hated, as if the spite they brought out of others was proof of their own righteousness. True, the hatred of bad men can be the price a good man pays for doing and saying the right thing. But provoking the hatred of others is not a sign of one’s own righteousness.
Anyway, I thought about those campus evangelists today when I read that Breitbart once said that he “enjoyed making enemies.” Look, anybody who takes a controversial stand on anything, political and otherwise, in today’s culture risks drawing the hatred of others. It can’t be helped. You want everyone to love you? Then don’t do anything controversial — and even then, there’s no guarantee (see the case of Hitchens vs. Mother Teresa). What is perverse is delighting in making people hate you.
UPDATE: The people who knew Breitbart personally speak with conviction, and in detail, about how lovable he was in person (e.g., here and here). I did not know Breitbart, and can’t say one way or another, but I do think their testimony is worth considering.
UPDATE.2:Lovely remembrance by Conor Friedersdorf, who was often a strong critic of Breitbart’s work. Excerpt:
I dissent from the proposition that exposing hate by provoking the worst in people is the part of the man’s legacy to celebrate. Better to glean wisdom from the evident love he had for his family, the energy with which he conducted his work, the personal generosity he showed friends, and his passion. To take seriously his life’s work is to debate its impact in coming days. For now, there is much more to life and death than the political arena, and evidence even for folks who found his public persona vile that beneath it lurked a man with many admirable qualities to mournfully remember. For today, condolences to all those who loved Andrew Breitbart, especially his wife and children; and condolences as well to those media consumers who found special value in his voice.
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The Priest and the Lesbian Communicant
Oh joy, just what we all want — another thread about homosexuality. Alas, as so often happens, the controversy now in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington involves homosexuality, religion, and changing social mores. Let us dive in, shall we?
Here is the front page story that appeared the other day in the Washington Post. Excerpt:
Deep in grief, Barbara Johnson stood first in the line for Communion at her mother’s funeral Saturday morning. But the priest in front of her immediately made it clear that she would not receive the sacramental bread and wine.
Johnson, an art-studio owner from the District, had come to St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg with her lesbian partner. The Rev. Marcel Guarnizo had learned of their relationship just before the service.
“He put his hand over the body of Christ and looked at me and said, ‘I can’t give you Communion because you live with a woman, and in the eyes of the church, that is a sin,’ ” she recalled Tuesday.
She reacted with stunned silence. Her anger and outrage have now led her and members of her family to demand that Guarnizo be removed from his ministry.
Family members said the priest left the altar while Johnson, 51, was delivering a eulogy and did not attend the burial or find another priest to be there.
“You brought your politics, not your God into that Church yesterday, and you will pay dearly on the day of judgment for judging me,” she wrote in a letter to Guarnizo. “I will pray for your soul, but first I will do everything in my power to see that you are removed from parish life so that you will not be permitted to harm any more families.”
Late Tuesday, Johnson received a letter of apology from the Rev. Barry Knestout, one of the archdiocese’s highest-ranking administrators, who said the lack of “kindness” she and her family received “is a cause of great concern and personal regret to me.”
“I am sorry that what should have been a celebration of your mother’s life, in light of her faith in Jesus Christ, was overshadowed by a lack of pastoral sensitivity,” Knestout wrote. “I hope that healing and reconciliation with the Church might be possible for you and any others who were affected by this experience. In the meantime, I will offer Mass for the happy repose of your mother’s soul. May God bring you and your family comfort in your grief and hope in the Resurrection.”
Johnson called the letter “comforting” and said she greatly appreciates the apology. But, she added, “I will not be satisfied” until Guarnizo is removed.
Read the whole thing. But notice what Get Religion points out about the story:
While this story contains a variety of voices representing various flocks of stakeholders, including the archdiocesan leadership, it does not contain any material that attempts to explain the viewpoint of the priest.
In other words, to use Poynter language, it appears that Father Guarnizo is not a stakeholder in a story that centers on his actions and beliefs. This is most strange.
I know that the comments thread here is going to fill up with people saying that Fr. Guarnizo doesn’t deny communion to divorced people who don’t have annulments, or other unrepentant sinners. For one thing, how would you know? Unless you are part of his parish, and know this for a fact, this claim would be groundless. For another, even if Fr. Guarnizo is selective in his application of this pastoral practice, that doesn’t mean he was wrong in principle to have observed it here; it may simply mean that he should be more consistent.
People who say that Barbara Johnson ought to have been given communion that morning have to explain why a priest ought to have knowingly violated canon law to have done so. That’s not nothing for a priest. Personally, I believe that there can be situations in which a priest is justified in violating the law out of a sense of mercy. In my opinion, this probably would have been one of those occasions. Had Fr. Guarnizo given her communion under these circumstances, I believe it would have been uncharitable for orthodox Catholics to insist that he ought to have stood on the letter of the law, instead of showing mercy in this extraordinary situation. Still, I say “probably” because if it is true that Johnson introduced Fr. Guarnizo to her “lover” (her alleged words) in the sacristy before the service, and that Fr. Guarnizo instructed her not to present herself for communion, then the scandal here is entirely on Johnson, who in that case would have chosen this sacred moment to make a point. Let me make this clear: if Father Guarnizo privately told her not to present herself to communion, and she did so defiantly, in public, then Johnson is guilty of exactly what she accused Guarnizo of: politicizing the Eucharist. If, after that, Johnson was bound and determined to defy the priest and receive communion, then she could have presented herself to a Eucharistic minister — as she ended up doing, and receiving communion.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that Fr. Guarnizo — who, it must be said, behaved badly by leaving the altar and subsequently refusing to go to the graveside service — did exactly what canon law tells him to do. Barbara Johnson is trying to get him fired from his job as pastor for upholding the teaching and practice of the Roman Catholic Church. The demand for his firing is so absurd it’s hard to believe anybody is taking it seriously. The Archdiocese of Washington has already distanced itself from Fr. Guarnizo’s actions, but I find it hard to believe that it hasn’t issued a formal statement of support for Fr. Guarnizo, putting to rest any question that he will be removed from his ministry, as Johnson demands.
Catholics (and Orthodox) these days have such misguided ideas about the Eucharist. Unlike in Protestant churches that practice communion, Catholics and Orthodox are expected to have had a recent confession before receiving the Eucharist, and not to be conscious of any serious sin. The idea is that to receive the Eucharist — which, in Catholic and Orthodox theology, is not a symbol but is actually, and mystically, the Body and Blood of Jesus — while in a state of serious sin is blasphemous. Barbara Johnson may not believe that being an active (= non-chaste) homosexual is sinful, but the Roman Catholic Church believes it is. Does Barbara Johnson’s opinion trump the Church’s teaching? Does she have a right to expect the Eucharist? She apparently thinks she does. So do a lot of Catholics and Orthodox. It is also undoubtedly the case that with certain exceptions, the clergy of both churches have done little or nothing to instruct them otherwise.
A similar controversy erupted at the Orthodox (OCA) cathedral in Washington, DC, last year. A deacon declined to commune an Orthodox lesbian living openly with a female partner. It caused a big row. The deacon was driven out of the parish — which is Metropolitan Jonah’s own parish, note well. As the Archdiocese of Washington appears to be doing with Father Guarnizo, the hierarchy of my church allowed a principled member of the clergy to be thrown under the bus for defending official Church teaching and practice regarding the sanctity of the Eucharist.
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Andrew Breitbart Dead
Andrew Breitbart has reportedly died “of natural causes” at the age of 43. What does it mean to die “of natural causes” at 43? This is stunning news. You almost wonder if it’s some sort of hoax, given his skill as a prankster.
That was an angry young man. I hope he has peace now.
UPDATE: Good grief, where is the decency? Matthew Yglesias, of all people, tweeted:
“Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart dead.”
I couldn’t stand some of what Breitbart did, and criticized certain of his stunts on this blog. But Lord have mercy, a 43 year old man dropped dead and left a widow and four fatherless children. He was a provocateur, not a criminal. The thing Breitbart suffered from is the same thing Yglesias here suffers from, which is the thing too many of us suffer from: making ideology more important than basic human decency.
Earlier this week I re-read all of the postings on my old Beliefnet blog having to do with my sister Ruthie’s diagnosis of lung cancer at 41. That event knocked me flat. Re-reading these posts was an excellent way to start Lent, because they reminded me of how far I’ve strayed from the things I saw and learned during those awful days. It might do you some good to re-read a couple of them. If you’re interested, take a look below the jump.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 18
Back home in the country from a long day at the hospital. The word from the oncologist was pretty grim. Ruthie is in Stage Four. They rushed Ruthie into radiation therapy at once after he read her latest MRI results. We have to hope and pray they can knock out the cancer in her brain so they can start with chemotherapy to work on the cancer elsewhere. The oncologist was staggered by how aggressive this cancer is. Five weeks ago, there was scarcely a sign of this on her MRI. And now, it’s in a number of places.
I wish I had the words to express how brave my sister is. I write this through tears tonight — tears not of sadness for her, though God knows that’s there, but tears of admiration. Who among us could get such news today, and react with such evenness? Not me. She apologized to her husband, saying softly, “I’m sorry, I was hoping for better news.” Later in the day, I spoke with Dr. Tim Lindsey, her GP, and we talked about how astonishingly courageous she’s been throughout this short, terrible ordeal. He went on about how she’s not wanted to hide from anything, and how she’s withstood horrific blows without bowing. Dr. Tim and I agreed that there is something miraculous about the witness she’s showing to the rest of us, in how to suffer. He said that however long she has to live, whether it’s weeks or years or decades, her children will always remember the courage under fire — Hemingway’s definition of grace — that their mother showed in these days.
But you know, she’s not the only one. I am glad you were not there in the hospital today when Ruthie and Mike told their girls the news. You can imagine how heartbreaking it was for everyone. And yet, the moment passed. The children’s father, Mike, is hurting hard, but he’s also holding up his little family. This is the man who got the Bronze Star in Iraq for the incredible work he did supporting fellow troops logistically. He is tempered steel. These three girls — Hannah, Claire and Rebekah — are ravaged by grief, but they are also rallying to their mother’s side. The way that family is coming together for each other now is so beautiful and poignant it hurts to look at it, but you can’t look away because there is a lesson in truth and love, and indeed in life, playing out for us all.
If you don’t believe in love, you should come to Our Lady of the Lake hospital, and to this community, to see what I’m seeing. I won’t even start listing the people who have poured themselves out for us, because I’m afraid I’ll forget somebody. If you can judge a person by the quality and devotion of their friends, then surely Ruthie and Mike are among the finest people in the world. Firefighter friends, National Guard friends, schoolteacher friends, family members, neighbors — all helping, all loving, all saying, in their own way, what do you need? what can we do? let us help you through this, please. Even the nurses in this wing of the hospital got together and bought the little girls presents, and told them, Come talk to us anytime. A nurse named Chantina is the primary nurse caring for my sister, and look, after only three days, she’s like a member of the family. Really and truly. My mother hugged her and kissed her on the way home tonight. When we got home, there was waiting for us an icon Philadelphia friends had overnighted us: St. Ruth and St. Naomi, “for your Ruthie.” I showed it to my dad, who wept that strangers would do this for us.
How is it that people who barely even know us can be so good to us? Ruthie’s suffering is calling forth all this love. Tonight as I kissed her and told her goodnight, she told me how much she loved seeing me get closer to her girls. I’ve never had the opportunity to spend much time with them, because our visits here in the past have been so short. This is a small thing, but not a trivial one. God knows we would all rather this cup pass by Ruthie, but it must be said that even as darkness increases, the light increases that much more.
I read this post, and I think it must sound like I’m emotional, and laying the sentimentality on thick, because we’re going through a stressful time. Like I said, I don’t want to discuss this in detail, because I haven’t seen everything, but I will let one example speak for the kind of thing we’re witnessing here. Ruthie’s general practitioner, as I’ve said, is Dr. Tim Lindsey, whom she began to see at the beginning of this ordeal in January. Tim is a local guy who returned to St. Francisville to set up a medical practice with his friend, Dr. Chaillie Daniel. What kind of young doctors are these, and what kind of town is this? Look at this excerpt from a 2005 New York Times article about how St. Francisville stepped up to help Katrina refugees who showed up in town:
At Fred’s Pharmacy, the Police Jury picked up the tab for filling prescriptions for the week until a foundation took over. The sick turned to the splendid new clinic of Chaillie P. Daniel and Timothy R. Lindsey, young family doctors.
“Everyone was seen,” Dr. Lindsey said. “In September we saw 250 evacuees. Of the 250, about half could not pay and had no insurance. For the most part they were people running out of medicines or needing preventive care, routine labs, tetanus, hepatitis.”
Dr. Daniel said, “We treated postoperative people.” One lady had had two knees replaced 48 hours earlier. “She had no follow up,” he said. “She came in in a wheelchair. We had a lady with acute pancreatitis, in a lot of pain. She definitely would have required a hospital. She wanted to fly to San Francisco. We looked up a doctor in San Francisco, and she had surgery the next day.”
As for the payments, Dr. Lindsey said: “We have kept track of it as office overhead. We will probably turn in some charges to FEMA, but we don’t know if we will be paid.”
Tim and his wife Laura are Christians active with the Young Life group in town, to which my niece Hannah belongs. Someone from town who came by to visit the hospital today said, “Oh, you can’t imagine how lucky we are to have Tim in town.” I know that Tim has been an incredibly calming influence on Ruthie and everyone in my family through this. He’s given them the gift of time and attention, even after hours. You hear the stories about this guy and his compassion, and you can’t believe they make doctors like this anymore. But there he is … and there he was today, all six-foot-four of him, when I got back from taking a walk with my mom. He had been on the phone with the oncologist, and was gently and thoroughly explaining what it all means to us outside Ruthie’s room. Then he went into Ruthie’s room to talk to her children, who were still distraught. I don’t know what he said to them, but after he left, they were okay. Before he left, he hugged Hannah, gave her his private cellphone number, and told her if ever she was scared for her mom or needed to talk, even if it was in the middle of the night, to just call.
“Half the town has Tim’s personal cell phone number,” someone told me later. “That’s just the kind of doctor he is.”
I walked out with him to the parking garage to tell him how much his care for Ruthie and her family meant to all of us, and what a comfort it was being so far away in Philadelphia to hear from my parents all the time how safe they all felt in his care. He was very modest about it all, and said that this is the privilege of being a small-town doctor. You don’t see your patients as clients. You see them as people. You know their histories, you know their suffering takes place within a personal context, and you can treat the whole person — not only their body, but also their heart and soul. He said he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“Not all doctors are healers,” I told him. “You’re a healer.”
(No surprise there; look who his father was.)
Something beautiful and important is going on in all this pain and grief, a drama that may well turn out to be a tragedy, but which will also be a triumph. We would not choose this, but in time, we may count ourselves blessed to have been witness to it, and a part of it.
—
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 20
… Then Ruthie and I talked about anger, and about how some of us in the family are struggling not to be mad at the doctor who was her family physician for many years, and who (to our mind, perhaps unfairly) downplayed the severity of her symptoms early in this crisis, until she finally was compelled to go see Dr. Lindsey for a second opinion.
“Don’t be mad at the doctors, Rod,” she said, gripping my forearm. “I don’t want any of you to be. Dr. [X.] couldn’t have found this cancer. Not even the specialists saw it five weeks ago. But oh, I am being taken such good care of now.”
She then spoke in arresting detail about the compassion shown her by Dr. Lindsey, her oncologist, Dr. Miletello, her radiation oncologist Dr. Sanders, and the entire staff at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital. She said, “They treat 200 patients in that radiation unit every day. Two hundred! Can you believe? And they still find it in themselves to be so kind to me. It’s amazing.”
At one point, Ruthie and I talked about the parade of visitors who have come around since her diagnosis. I feel so protective of her, and so eager to help her rest, and to spend time with her children before the radiation and the chemo take over her life. But she has insisted on seeing everyone, for their sake. Her patience is legendary. I was talking with her daughter Hannah the other day, and we agreed that neither of us could be teachers because we both lack patience. Ruthie, however, is the soul of patience. Her determination to see the good in everyone, and not to push back or get mad, has been a source of befuddlement and annoyance to some of us who know her, and who have thought at times she let people take advantage of her because she was unwilling to provoke a conflict.
Our mother told me today, “Her class this year is really tough, and the other teachers said to her once, ‘How do you put up with them?’ She told them, ‘I love those kids, and maybe they can change.”
It’s that simple with Ruthie. But of course, for many of us, that’s the hardest thing in the world. Me, I find it hard to love anybody that’s not lovable. Ruthie finds everyone lovable, if not necessarily likeable. I never really thought about where this comes from until this week, and until I saw this habit of Ruthie’s heart in light of mortality – and in light of the outpouring of generosity and mercy from all those she’s touched over the years. Do you know that a student she taught 15 years ago sent her flowers in the hospital? Read the various comments people who know her have been leaving – it’s the same thing, over and over. Things like that keep happening this week, and it’s made me think, Who have we been living with all these years?
As I told my folks today on the drive to the airport, Ruthie’s way has always been so humble and unassuming. She never has made a show of her religious faith – she is not the openly pious sort — but it has always been there, quiet and steadfast. She’s never been one for extravagant gestures of kindness, or for any kind of extravagance, or calling attention to herself. Ruthie just treats everybody with plain decency and everyday goodness, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s so subtle you may hardly notice it. Years ago, I recall wondering how it was that in high school, Ruthie was one of those people who was a friend to everybody, and who had no enemies. Who gets through high school liked by everybody? Many people who are seen as “good” are also disliked by others because they are taken as somehow being above the ordinary people. That wasn’t Ruthie. Never has been. She has a strong moral sense, but it includes a natural inclination not to judge others. She loves them, and besides, they might change.
How would our lives be different if we all lived by that modest rule? It’s heart-shaking to consider. How much easier it is to continue as we were, caught up in ordinary time, holding on to slights, nurturing irritations and outrages, while the beautiful and redeeming gifts given to us, and the opportunities for grace, are replaced by the everyday. Why does it take catastrophe to remind us how to live, and how to love, and to wake us up to the chances to show patience and kindness and compassion to all?
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The Poor Rich
Megan McArdle makes a serious case for why we shouldn’t be so quick to snark about income reversals among the wealthy. Excerpt:
I believe that Elizabeth Warren has made this point–when people get into financial trouble, they often say, “Well, I didn’t take fancy vacations or go to restaurants all the time or buy 17 pairs of Jimmy Choos.” But (with the exception of some really compulsive spenders) this isn’t the stuff that gets people into trouble. It’s the big house with the stretch mortgage that you convinced yourself you had to have because it was in a good school district and you needed a yard and a bedroom apiece for the kids. It’s that brand new SUV (or Volvo station wagon) you persuaded yourself to buy because it was important to have a safe car. It’s the school activities or travel sports teams that cost thousands of dollars, which you let your kids start in ninth grade because you didn’t know that you’d have to break their hearts by pulling them out in their junior year. The divorce decree you signed because you didn’t realize your income was going to drop by a third.Pricey vacations can be cut back. Mortgage payments can’t. It’s not the luxuries that usually get people into trouble–it’s paying too much for “the basics”.
And in New York, it’s really, really easy to pay too much. One of the guys in the article makes $350,000 and lives in 1200 square feet with three kids. This is the way the lower rungs of the lower middle class lives in the rest of the country. New Yorkers face an overwhelming temptation to push their housing budget to the limit, because what’s available on a conservative budget is really inconvenient unless you either make a whole lot of money, or lucked into a great deal in a down market or a transitional neighborhood.That’s not to excuse the folks who spend too much on housing–apartments in vibrant New York neighborhoods are a consumption good, not an entitlement, and people who find the privations unbearable should move to the suburbs. But I certainly understand it–especially because people tend to take cues on what is “safe” or “reasonable” from the behavior of the people around them. Virtually every single person I know in New York spends well over a third of their income on housing. Which is one of the reasons I no longer live in New York.
You can focus on the loudest numbers and conclude that young peoples’ aversion to home owning is an overreaction to a unique recession. Housing prices have fallen by a third in some cities. Couples have had a few years to pay off their debts. Mortgage interest rates are historically tiny. Could there possibly be a better time to buy?
Maybe not. But if the last 30 years have taught us anything, it’s that planning for the future is an act of faith. Supply chains and software eat our jobs. Financial wizardry eats our savings. The cost of insuring against these risks — that is, both college and literal insurance — is rising. “It feels like anytime we hit around $20,000 something terrible or some unexpected thing happens,” Steve Kinney, a Brooklyn resident, told theNew York Times last year. He’s part of a new renters society, and rental prices are rising now that housing prices aren’t. Three in five net jobs in the last two years have gone to people in their twenties and lower-thirties, “a crucial rental group,” according to an analysis of Labor Department data by G. Ronald Witten, an apartment firm consultant.
It’s no wonder that in an environment that punishes the long-term faithful, more young people are planning month to month.
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Romney Bungles Blunt
Jim Heath, a reporter for ONN-TV in Ohio, just Tweeted a remarkable piece of news: Mitt Romney told him he does not support the Blunt amendment, which would empower employers and insurers to deny health coverage they find morally objectionable.
I just got off the phone with Heath, and he graciously played me the audio. Heath asks Romney if he’s for the “Blunt-Rubio” amendment, and defines it. Romney replies:
“I’m not for the bill. But, look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife, I’m not going there.”That’s pretty remarkable. If Romney knew what he was saying, the Senate GOP caucus, which is set to vote on this amendment tomorrow, may feel as if Romney has pulled the rug out from underneath them. And this has become an important issue for conservatives. So it’ll be interesting to see how the base reacts to this, particularly since the GOP primary is anything but over and Rick Santorum — who’s perceived as a more reliable social conservative — is likely to use this to attack Romney, who will be under continued pressure to connect with social and religious conservatives.
What is it with Romney? He can’t help himself, can he?
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The Lesson of the Greek Coffeepot
Economist Megan Greene has recently been to Greece, and returns with an incredibly dispiriting report. The worst part about it, I think, was her discussion of how radically broken the entire economic culture in Greece is, such that it’s hard to imagine how they are going to reform absent total collapse. Excerpt:
A number of contacts described their experiences trying to open a business or buy property, which involved high fees, several trips to different tax offices and months of navigating bureaucracy. This gets at the very heart of how Greece landed up in its current condition and why rapid change is unlikely. Entire professions such as notaries, lawyers, tax men, architects and inspectors have for years had automatic income in that they have formed the layers of bureaucracy involved in doing business in Greece. At least half of the MPs in Greek parliament hail from these industries, and consequently are incentivized to perpetuate the bureaucracy that impedes opening up, running or finding investment for businesses.
This is best encapsulated in an anecdote from my visit to Athens. A friend and I met up at a new bookstore and café in the centre of town, which has only been open for a month. The establishment is in the center of an area filled with bars, and the owner decided the neighborhood could use a place for people to convene and talk without having to drink alcohol and listen to loud music. After we sat down, we asked the waitress for a coffee. She thanked us for our order and immediately turned and walked out the front door. My friend explained that the owner of the bookstore/café couldn’t get a license to provide coffee. She had tried to just buy a coffee machine and give the coffee away for free, thinking that lingering patrons would boost book sales. However, giving away coffee was illegal as well. Instead, the owner had to strike a deal with a bar across the street, whereby they make the coffee and the waitress spends all day shuttling between the bar and the bookstore/café. My friend also explained to me that books could not be purchased at the bookstore, as it was after 18h and it is illegal to sell books in Greece beyond that hour. I was in a bookstore/café that could neither sell books nor make coffee.
This brings to mind something Clay Shirky once wrote about the collapse of complex systems:
Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract and then some.
The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.
In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. Tainter doesn’t regard the sudden decoherence of these societies as either a tragedy or a mistake–”[U]nder a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”, to use his pitiless phrase. Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites.
When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification.
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Follow-Up on 'Muslim' Judge
Cathy Young has a great piece examining last week’s controversy over the supposedly Muslim judge in Pennsylvania letting a Muslim defendant accused of assaulting an atheist protester off scot-free. The takeaway:
1. Judge Martin is not Muslim. The notion that he is a Muslim originated with his own garbled speech, and an unclear audiotape.
2. Given the particulars of the case, the judge’s ruling is reasonable.
3. The judge badly erred with his civics lecture directed to the atheist. Excerpt:
Martin did not, of course, invoke Sharia law as a basis for his ruling; nor did he suggest that Elbayomy would have been justified in assaulting Perce because his religion commanded it. But he did seem to suggest that insults to the Muslim faith are especially bad because of how impermissible blasphemy is in many Muslim countries and because of the role religion plays in Muslims’ lives. Indeed, he specifically drew a distinction between “how Americans practice Christianity” and how Muslims practice Islam: “Islam is not just a religion, it’s their culture . . . it’s their very essence, their very being.”
Of course, there are many different ways in which Americans practice Christianity and Muslims practice Islam. Some American Christians respond to perceived slights to their faith in ugly ways (such as threats of violence against productions of Terrence McNally’s play “Corpus Christi,” featuring a gay Jesus). But American religious practice, overall, is strongly tied to a hard-won tradition of freedom of religion — and irreligion. Martin’s comments seem to suggest that Muslims are far less capable than Christians of dealing sensibly with insults or challenges to their faith. That does a serious disservice both to American democracy and to American Muslims.
Already, this case has given ammunition to peddlers of “Muslim menace” panic (some of whom are now spinning the paranoid fantasy that Martin really is a Muslim but is hiding it to mislead the infidels). The main culprits are those who would sensationalize and twist facts to advance their agenda, be it atheism or Muslim-bashing. But a misguided notion of cultural sensitivity that amounts to a special concern to avoid giving religious offense to Muslims can only lead us further down that path.
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