Steubenville, Chardon

For the better part of two weeks, I’ve been asked whether or not I would write a blog regarding the criminal trials in Steubenville and Chardon.  What can one say to express sufficient outrage at the actions of these young men and the devastation they have caused to the victims, the victims’ families, and their communities? 

In the end, I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said, and I would rather not waste my words on the perpetrators.  They have received more than enough publicity, and they won’t get more from me.  Rather, I will direct my prayers and positive thoughts toward the victims and their families.  They need all the support they can get to face the challenges of the future. 

Rob Portman: A Leopard Changes His Spots

In a singular act of courage (or political suicide), Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio publically changed his stance on same-sex marriage.  I admire his courage in making that change.  It cannot have been easy for him to do so.  I have been reading his Facebook page and other online comments.  There have been supportive posts; then again, I have seen horrific, vile, and inflammatory ones.  I wonder if the latter comment posters ever listen to themselves.

I do find it interesting that politicians think it is okay to blatantly orate and legislate discrimination, then suddenly change their minds when it becomes “personal.”  When I vote for someone, I do so with the hope that he or she will govern in a way that reflects the needs of those that put him or her in office.  That requires the elected official put aside personal feelings and do what is best for the constituents, not use that power to foist his or her own personal or religious beliefs on the people who voted. 

We are all equal under the law, and that means something to me.  It’s important to remember that equality under the law means the right to equal protection of the laws, a law being any basic right or freedom to which all human beings are entitled and in whose exercise a government may not interfere (including rights to life and liberty as well as freedom of thought and expression and equality before the law).  This applies to everyone, not just to those who are white, or Christian, or male, or straight.

I have always believed in organized religion.  I think it’s important for children to grow up learning the religious basics:  love God, love your neighbor, and do no harm.  It gives them a foundation from which to become responsible, ethical adults.  But more and more I see hateful rhetoric, name calling, and discrimination…all couched under the umbrella of religion.  Love your neighbor means every neighbor, not just the white neighbor, or the Christian neighbor, or the male neighbor, or the straight neighbor.  It means treating everyone the way you want to be treated.  It means giving everyone you meet your respect.

There are those who think that acceptance and legalization of same-sex unions or marriages will bring the downfall of America; that God, in his wrath, will strike us down like Sodom and Gomorrah.  I believe that the downfall of this nation will come not because we accept and legalize such unions, but because we don’t accept them.  We promote intolerance, and in doing so, we inflame division.  It is the division that will be our undoing. 

If the God we believe in created the universe and everything in it, then he doesn’t care if his creations are white, black, red, green, male, female, gay, straight, or in between.  He doesn’t care if they are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi, Hari Krishna, Wiccan, Pagan, Agnostic, or Atheist.  God loves ALL his creations in their myriad of differences and in the wonders of their diversity.  Who are we to question God’s wisdom?  Who are we to harangue, berate, judge, disrespect, or condemn what God has created? 

Think about it.

Pop Tartillary

Just when you think things can’t get any more ludicrous, a 7-year-old kid is suspended from school because he "used food to make an inappropriate gesture."

What kind of gesture, you ask?  It must be pretty bad if he was suspended from school.  Did he chew his Pop Tart into the shape of a one-finger salute and wave it at the teacher?  Did he sculpt it into a phallic symbol, complete with a pair of gonads?  Did he carve it into a swastika? No.

He tried to make it into a mountain, and it ended up resembling a hand gun.  Was he threatening to shoot his classmates with his Pop Tartillary?  Again, no.

What we have is a very young, very artistic kid with a great imagination.  Undoubtedly, some school official or psychologist is going to brand this child as a future home-grown terrorist because the bites he took of his breakfast left a remnant of food that resembled a gun.  Even if he picked it up in gun fashion and pointed it, he was only doing what any 7-year-old kid would do.  There was no threat, there was no danger.  There was only pastry.

The only thing in that classroom in danger because of a half-eaten Pop Tart was the health of the kid who was eating it.

Zero tolerance policies have been shown, time and time again, to go well beyond their intended purpose when paranoid officials spin their interpretations. 

Then again, it was a "Pop" Tart...breakfast at its finest.

The Musician vs. the Restauranteur

I know, I know.  It has been far too long since I managed to pound out a blog.  Life is what’s happening while you make other plans, or something of that ilk.  But I saw a post on Facebook today that made me want to stand up and scream YES! YES! YES!

A fellow musician and friend, Jim Snively, posted an image of a Craigslist ad and a response that I believe epitomizes one of the biggest cultural issues that exists today.

There is no value placed on the arts. 

Everyone has some God-given talent.  A gifted surgeon makes his living saving lives.  He gets paid handsomely to do his work.  A gifted architect makes his living designing structures.  He gets paid handsomely to do his work.  A gifted lawyer, a gifted financier, a gifted accountant, a gifted teacher, a gifted janitor…well you get the drift.  But gifted writers, artists, and musicians are expected to entertain others simply for the love of doing so? 

Unfortunately, that is the case.  Not all, but many establishments want you to entertain their customers and bring in more money for their coffers but want you to work only for tips.  Of course the customers are busy spending their money for food and drink and paying tips to waitresses and bartenders with the mistaken idea that the musicians are being PAID by the establishment to provide entertainment.

In the writing world, many magazines generously offer to “publish” your work for 10 copies of the publication.  In some cases, they want a 500-word article for $3.00.  You, the writer should be ever so grateful for the opportunity to have your work seen by the magazine’s readership…the readership that is paying for the magazine while assuming that the writers of the content are being PAID for their work.

Here’s a clue for all the clueless audiences out there.  Musicians, writers, and artists have bills to pay; they have to eat; they incur expenses creating, transporting, and providing such entertainment.  So when you enjoy that guy playing music at the restaurant, or bar, or coffee shop, please show your appreciation by tipping them.  What you put in that jar may be all they have to show for a night of commuting to and from home and then spending 2-3 hours sharing their talents with you.

And for all the clueless establishments, reread the Craigslist response above.  It applies to you.

The Water's Edge...

Writing is, for the most part, a solitary avocation.  A writer needs, wants, even craves time alone to create.  This can be a double-edged sword.  Some writers squirrel themselves away like hermits, not talking to anyone and not seeking contact with the outside world.  Other writers have outside world overload and are forced to squeeze tiny segments of writing time between kids, work, parents, school activities, and the chores of daily life.  These mundane tasks can consume days, weeks, months, and years like a ravenous black hole consumes planets.  Those writers look back and wonder what happened to all that time.

As human beings, we need human contact.  It enriches our intellectual and emotional life, and it makes us better, more rounded, happier individuals.  A writer who shuns outside contact, while he or she may write brilliantly, eventually falls short of the human experiences needed to enrich the writer’s personal life and work.  A writer on life overload never has time to slow down enough to process his or her experiences and translate them into brilliant writing.

Is there a happy medium?  Probably not, but there are coping mechanisms that writers can use to deal with either situation.  I’ve spent some time over the last few years trekking to downtown Cleveland, then to Lakewood, to attend the once-a-month meeting of the Greater Cleveland Writers Meet-Up in Lakewood.  I’ve never been a huge joiner of groups, and often feel that I’m in that awkward stage between the “wanna-be” author and the best-selling author.  I don’t quite fit in the retiree’s writing group, nor do I have time for the local critique groups.  I barely have time to do edits and rewrites on my own stuff, much less edit and critique someone else’s work.  At the Greater Cleveland Writers Meet-Up, I found an incredibly diverse group of poets, screen writers, novelists, journalists, article writers, bloggers, editors, illustrators, technical writers, and self-publishers.  The meetings are lively, interesting, and provide both that human contact perspective and the networking perspective needed to move forward, no matter what your genre or associated specialty.

The writer’s meet-up isn’t just for the hermit writer.  The overloaded writer who attends finds that many of the others they meet there are fighting that same battle…finding enough quality time to write.  They share their ideas with others who are struggling to find that blessed hour, or day, to sit undisturbed and let the writing muse take over.

I would highly recommend the Greater Cleveland Writers Meet-Up to any writer who needs or wants contact with like-minded individuals, and who doesn't mind driving to Lakewood.  Dave Van Horn, who runs the GCWMU, is a great resource and has a terrific and successful group of over 500 people who are somehow involved in writing.  These people are at all levels, from thinking about it to multiply published.  This is what networking with other writers is all about.

That said, the biggest obstacle for me is the commute.  I have no problem making a 50-minute commute in each direction in the good weather months, but with all the other commitments I am juggling, making that commute in the nasty weather…well it just isn’t worth the risk.  The other thing is that I kept running into writers in Lake County who balked at the thought of making that kind of commute for a voluntary meeting.  I can’t say that I blame them.

After considerable thought and much discussion with other Lake County writers (and other “East of Clevelanders”), I took the plunge and created Water’s Edge Writers Meet-Up.  We had our first meeting on Wednesday at the Kirtland Public Library.  We have 22 members so far, and nine people came to the meeting on one of the worst weather days of the year.  I thank them all for doing so.  We had a good time, got to know each other a little, and shared a lot of information and ideas.  Feel free to join our merry band of writers!  Eventually, I hope our brand new group will be as successful as Dave and the GCWMU over in Lakewood. 

2012 - That's the way the old year passes...

January started off pretty well, at least for the first five days.  On day six, I popped all the tendons in my right knee.  As of today, they are still not totally healed.  My appointment the following day with the hip surgeon resulted in the determination that I had the left hip of a healthy 40-year old and the right hip of a badly deteriorated 97-year-old.  I left with the command to wear a brace on the knee, to walk with a cane, and not to fall before the first possible surgery date of March 6.

Hip surgery went extremely well.  Days after my surgery, however, my elderly mother’s health took a turn, and I spent much of my own recuperation time visiting her in hospital, rehab, and assisted living facilities.  I returned to work the first week of June, but my mother’s health issues have not ceased, so the visiting continues after work hours most days of the week and on weekends.

Since June, things at work have been unsettled.  I lost members of my staff, and those remaining have taken on much more work than can reasonably be done well by their dwindling number, even as the expectations of management increase.

To make things even more interesting, the country has endured a spate of freakish and destructive storms, children have been mass murdered in their classrooms, and billions of dollars were spent on political ads by both parties while people were starving, lacking in medical treatment, and were losing their savings as the deficit was rising.  This was made even more ironic when the incumbent won and the challenger was outed by his own son as never really wanting the presidency in the first place.  What an enormous waste of time and resources.  The negativism of the election served only to divide and polarize the population.  Now we have a government where our elected officials stubbornly refuse to compromise, rendering the entire political structure unable to function. 

I was taught that government was in place to serve the people…ALL the people.  Our elected officials are voted into office to serve US.  They are paid by US.  Good solid management requires that all options are weighed, and the options that accomplish the most good for the most people are the ones chosen.  This requires compromise on all sides.  Good management also requires housekeeping.  If an employee cannot or will not perform the tasks for which he or she was hired, they are fired from the position.  Congressmen and senators are OUR employees.  If they are not performing the function of governing, which requires intelligence and compromise, then they should be fired.  If they are basing political decisions that affect ALL the citizens of this country on their own narrow set of religious beliefs, then they should be fired.  Our forefathers created our constitution and our government with separation of church and state for a reason.  In religion, there is only right and wrong; there is only black and white.  Compromise requires gray.  If the mind sees only right or wrong, there is no ability to compromise.  If one lacks the ability to compromise, then one lacks the qualifications for governing.

What we need is to focus on the greater good…not the good for the rich, or the good for the poor, or the good for any particular race, religion, gender, age, or sexual preference.  We need to stop harping and blaming each other, or any group, and start working together for the greater good of our country, our economy, and our standing in the global view.  If we do not put aside our differences and work together to fix the real issues in this country, we may cease to exist.

How do I feel about the passing of 2012 into history?  2012 was such that I have ambivalent feelings about the inaccuracy of the Mayan prediction.  But perhaps the prediction was accurate.  Perhaps the prediction was a warning, not that the earth would end, but that our way of life would end if we didn’t learn to work together for the greater good.  Quite frankly, considering the behavior of many in this country and around the world in 2012, it would have served us right to be blown to bits in an earth-destroying cataclysm. 

2013 gives us one more chance to get it right.  I’m not sure how many chances we’re going to get.  Just remember, those who don’t learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.  So my advice to everyone in the New Year is this:  You have a chance to do it right…don’t blow it.

Time Moves On...

A lot of things have happened since I last posted.  Sometimes life just throws one curve ball after the next, and you’re so busy jumping from side-to-side trying to handle what’s coming at you that the game is over before you realize it.  Once again, the holidays are upon me. Thanksgiving has come and gone. Christmas is two days away, and I’m still searching for my Christmas spirit. I really should be in the swing of things. Normally, by now, I would have made a dozen different types of cookies, four or five flavors of pizzelles, had Christmas dinner planned, and maniacally trimmed my tree by carefully unwrapping each ornament and deciding whether to use it or not.

This year, I actually considered not putting up a tree. Until my daughter called and asked if she could use my oven (yesterday), I had not made a single cookie. The pizzelle iron sits cold and unused in the cupboard and likely will remain there. As of today, I still don’t know how many people will be sitting around my table on Tuesday.

Let me clarify that none of this stems from worry about the accurate prediction of the end of the world by the Mayans. But for some unknown reason, life seems particularly unsettled. Though the election is over, both parties are still sniping at each other rather than working together. Once again, the stock market is shifting because of the possibility of going over the fiscal cliff. Tempers are flaring as the extremists on both sides of the gun control issue take aim at each other.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I have not watched the news since the shootings in Connecticut. It’s as if my subconscious knows that subjecting my conscious mind to additional stress, sorrow, depressing news, or heartache would be mentally catastrophic. What I want to know is, where are the moderates? Where are those who are the voice of reason? Have we become so polarized that there is no hope for agreement or compromise on any issue? Even though I have not watched the news, I’ve seen plenty of extreme comments on the Internet and heard plenty of them on the radio.  Yes, I am horrified and mortified by what happened at Sandy Hook elementary school, but there are number of things that any intelligent, rational person should know.

1)     Someone intent on killing will find a way. A gun may be the weapon of choice. But if they can’t find a gun, they might use a knife, or start a fire, or build the bomb. Mass murders have been perpetrated by evil men for hundreds, even thousands, of years, including during the time when guns did not exist. Our cave dwelling ancestors clubbed each other to death over food, water, or mating partners, and we’ve been killing each other off ever since.

2)     Mental illness, in most cases, is not a precursor of violent behavior. By the same token, psychopathic personalities don’t always occur in mentally ill people.

3)     Having armed “good guys” on the premises may deter someone from attacking; however, it is not a guarantee that death and injury will be prevented, as demonstrated by the shootings at Virginia Tech where they had a police force and on a military base surrounded by armed soldiers trained in weaponry. As another example, after the concealed carry permit law was passed in Florida, the number of carjackings of Florida residents went down because the perpetrators were deterred by not knowing if the resident was carrying. However, carjackings of rental cars increased dramatically. Authorities determined that the perpetrators realized those renting the cars were from out of state and were unlikely to have a weapon. It stands to reason that if schools are armed to the teeth, the person intent on killing will find a place where there is no deterrent, such as a mall, a theater, a football game, or any place where he perceives that he can accomplish his mission with a minimum of interference.

4)     Why is it that arts and entertainment always seem to get the blame from the extreme right? I agree that if someone is entirely unbalanced or psychologically disturbed, seeing a violent movie or playing a violent videogame might trigger some sort of deviant behavior. However, millions of people see those movies and play those games and do not go out and execute innocent people because of that exposure. It’s like saying that anyone who drinks an alcoholic beverage is or will become an alcoholic. Telling people what they can read, watch, or listen to smacks of Nazi-ism. Reading Harry Potter or watching Harry Potter movies does not turn young children into witches and warlocks. There is a rating system for movies and video games in this country. It is the responsibility of parents to enforce that system in their own families. I saw a brief news clip on the Internet the other day where a kid and some of his friends turned in their video games and were signing people up to not play those games anymore. The father was asked about his son’s project and proceeded to tell the reporter how proud he was of his son. But when the reporter asked why the 10-year-old child owned an R-rated video game, the father hemmed and hawed, did not answer the question, and ended the interview.

To me it seems that the answers lie not in the extremes but in intelligent, dispassionate reasoning to determine how best to protect our innocent children. The fact of the matter is, we can’t put armed guards in every public place.

I listened to the media personalities asking the question, “What was in the mind of the shooter at school?” We are never going to know what is going on in the head of someone twisted enough to gun down innocent people. We can psychoanalyze mass murderers and serial killers up one side and down the other, but unless we are as twisted as they, it is not possible for us to understand what is going through their minds.

I’m not sure how long I will avoid watching the news. I know that I will be focusing only on things that are inspirational or humorous for the time being, because that’s what I need right now. Actually, I think that’s what a lot of us need right now. I don’t know how many more banal Hallmark Christmas movies I can stomach, but at least they are predictably positive. Of course, I could always plan on watching “A Christmas Story” for the millionth time, but I’m waiting for someone to protest its broadcast because Ralphie might shoot his eye out with his infamous Red Ryder BB gun.

As Christmas heads toward me like a tsunami, I will be doing my best to foster and keep a positive attitude. When the holiday is over, I plan to take a week of recuperation time. My batteries most definitely need to be recharged!

As for everyone else, I wish you a peaceful and joyful holiday!