It's a Matter of Respect - Part 2

Prejudice comes in many forms.  It is disrespectful toward the victim, and it magnifies the flaws in the perpetrators.  Racism is the most often “reported” type of prejudice, as evidenced by the current rash of police violence against young and often unarmed African American men and boys.  Hateful language and actions against anyone of a race or religion that is not our own is abhorrent and defies every religious concept that the perpetrators claim to hold so dear.

 

The bile being spewed (whether it be racist or race baiting) sickens me.  It doesn’t seem to matter to the perpetrators of such actions whether the victim is young or old, Mexican, African American, Jewish, Muslim, Indian, Chinese, Buddhist, Sikh, or any other race or religion.  They attack what they don’t understand.  They seem to think that their supposed Christianity or their genetics make them superior to others, or better than others.  They see those others as a threat to their insulated way of life and they lash out.  They live and breathe lives of hypocrisy.  They are emulating the Nazi way of thought and action…those who don’t learn from history’s atrocities are bound to repeat them.

Prejudice can also be more insidious, coming in physically non-violent, but just as damaging, verbal attacks.  It affects not only those who endure it by virtue of their race or religion, but also those who are different in other ways, be it mentally challenged, physically infirmed, poorly dressed, or overweight.

I have been on the receiving end of prejudice and assumptions made by those who saw me as a fat woman rather than as a woman.  I can tell you that it was emotionally and psychologically damaging.  However, I have the option of putting forth enough effort to be thinner...I could change the perspective and opinions of those who see and judge me.  This is not the case for a woman of color.  When a very good friend of mine posted an open letter to an obviously racist woman who assumed she was a waitress simply because she was African American, I was fuming.  I’ve spent the last several days thinking about how much more difficult it is for women of color to endure such wrongs.  No amount of effort on their part can change the perspective or opinions of those who see and judge them, because that judgement is based on the color of their skin.

My friend Liz is terrific!  She is warm, smart, funny, and well educated.  She is now retired, but when she was in the workforce, she was an attorney, a journalist, and a published author.  She volunteers her time running writing workshops that helping veterans tell their stories.  It is a wonderful program that is incredibly beneficial to young and old veterans alike.  Her husband Larry is a Vietnam Vet and extremely active in veteran’s organizations.  They were attending a Disabled American Veterans Christmas party, and they were the only African Americans in the room.  You can read what happened in Liz’s blog “Headblind” posted December 16^th.

I have run through a million scenarios on how I might have handled what happened, but none would have been as classy and non-confrontational as the way Liz reacted.  I think I might have gotten a root beer for the woman and dumped it in her lap, then apologized profusely while stating that I really had no experience as a waitress because I had been too busy as a lawyer, a journalist, and an author.  But then I realized that as a white woman, I could get away with that action and would just be considered a fat (and therefore stupid) bitch, but had Liz done it, she would have been vilified as an angry, race-baiting, African American woman.

 

Prejudice is a game with no winners.

I am disheartened by what I see in our country.  We have become a nation of spoiled, enabled, haters.  We need to change the paradigm before we lose all hope of recovering our national pride and our place as the premier democracy on the planet.

 

Shooting young black men, deporting immigrants, and preaching hatred and death for those who don’t conform to some rigid belief system is not the way to become a great nation.  It is the way to become the Fourth Reich.

Regaining our national perspective starts with respect.  It is simple.  Treat everyone the way you wish to be treated.  

EVERYONE!

All I want for Christmas is a good book!

My very favorite gift to receive for Christmas was always a book.  I was an avid reader, sometimes putting away a book a day.  I frustrated my mother when our weekly trip to the library required a box to tote my choices home.  As a general rule, I was allowed to read whatever I chose, but she did make me take Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales back unread.  I guess she felt it was too worldly and graphic for my grade school sensibilities.

 

Fast forward many years.  It was only natural that I would graduate from reading books to writing them.  My first completed novel is gathering dust, never submitted for publication.  It was a well-written romance novel, whose sole purpose for existing was to convince me that I could write a book from beginning to end.  As a writing exercise, it was perfect.  It accomplished the task, but it will never see the light of day.  Romance novels are not my genre of choice, for reading or for writing.

This Saturday, I will be signing my books for those wanting to give a gift of reading to someone on their Christmas list.  I'll be at Kosicek’s Vineyards from 1 to 5, along with fellow authors Margie DeLong and Tim McCarthy.  There will be something for everyone, book-wise.  If you don’t like to read, the wine is highly palatable!  So take a little drive out to wine country and enjoy the offerings!

"...for you do not know the day, nor the hour..."

Never was a line of scripture more meaningful to me than this morning, when I learned that an old friend and colleague had been aboard the corporate jet that crashed into a house in Maryland yesterday.  David Hartman was a really good person.  He leaves a wife, Janet, and two adult children, Elaine and Andrew.  Only 52, David was the Vice President of Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacokinetics, and Nonclinical Developement at Nuventra Pharma Sciences in Durham , NC.  We worked together here from 1991-2004 before he moved on to other adventures. He will be sorely missed.  May you rest in peace, David. 

It's a matter of Respect...Part 1

When I grew up, I was taught to have respect.  Respect your parents and elders.  Respect your teachers.  Respect public servants.  Treat everyone you meet the way you want to be treated.  Lying, cheating, stealing, and bullying were all forms of disrespect toward those around you.  The insidious part is that those things are also a form of disrespecting yourself.

 

There is no perfect human being.  We are all born with flaws.  We are taught to hate.  We learn bad behavior.  We learn prejudice.  We become hypocritical, professing to have Christian values while harboring vitriol and treating others in a way Christ himself would condemn.  We reap what we sow.

This was clearly demonstrated by the congressional aide who criticized the Obama children for acting like the teenagers that they are, and told them, in essence, that they were dressed like bar-hopping bad girls on the prowl, and that nothing better could be expected from them because “your mother and father don't respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I'm guessing you're coming up a little short in the "good role model" department.”

This aide is a perfect example of how to be disrespectful.  The fault she found in the Obama children is a reflection of her own self-loathing.  The fact that it took her “hours” of prayer and reflection and the counsel of her parents before apologizing leads me to believe that, like a typical self-absorbed teenager, she really was sorry…that she was caught in a quagmire of her own making.  She never really expressed remorse to the Obama girls for insulting them and then twisting the knife by insulting their parents.

We are guaranteed freedom of speech by our constitution.  That constitutional right does not give anyone a license to insult other people or be hurtful toward them.  Respect is a two-way street.  If you want people to respect you, then you need to respect them.  You don’t have to like someone to treat them with respect.

 

I find the blatant disrespect heaped on the President and his family to be unacceptable.  The insulting cartoons and obvious untruths that show up in my email or on Facebook are irritating in the extreme.  I delete them all.  I don’t pass trash on to other people.  The disrespect has to stop somewhere, or it will pull us down a rabbit hole from which there is no extradition.  Just to be clear, I didn’t pass on the Bush insults or the Clinton insults either.  Like him or not, Barack Obama is the President of the United States and deserves the same respect that Presidents Bush Jr, Bush Sr, Clinton, Kennedy, Ford, Nixon and all the others were afforded simply by virtue of taking on the responsibility of leading this nation.  It is a thankless, incredibly stressful job.  Anyone willing to take it on has my respect, whether I personally like them or not.

Perhaps those who insult the First Family should take an honest inventory of their actions and motives.  What kind of example do they want to be for their children?  They may find that their own children lack “good role models” if they are letting their likes and dislikes, their hatred, their prejudices, and their lack of respect for others, take the forefront in the example they are setting for their kids.  They may find that they are perpetuating the worst of themselves.

 

In the words of the Harry Chapin song “Cat’s in the Cradle”

"And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He’d grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me."

Handel’s Messiah: a classical start to the Christmas season…

St. John Vianney, Mentor OH, Sunday - December 7th at 7 p.m.

From the time I was small, I remember hearing the Hallelujah Chorus during the holidays.  I think it was one of the cuts on a Mantovani album of classical music my parents used to pop onto the turntable while decorating.  I was about 28 years old when a friend talked me into joining the Messiah Chorus of Lake County.  I had no idea how extensive a score I would be required to learn, because I had never heard the rest of the piece.  At the time, I was a young second soprano, but prone to allergy driven bronchitis, so when the seconds had to sing the first soprano line, the muscles in my neck screamed.  I lasted until the half-way break, then moved over to the alto section where there was no straining to hit the high notes.  I’ve been there ever since.

 

This year, I’m singing Messiah for the 31^st time.  I’ve only missed singing two years; once when heavily pregnant with Meredith and once when I was a confirmation sponsor at my own church on the day of the concert.  It sounds like a long time, but this group has been performing Messiah annually for 66 years, and one woman has sung in 65 of those!

I’m but one of 170 voices, singing in harmony with harpsichord, piano, organ, trumpet and strings.  The Messiah Chorus of Lake County is comprised of singers and musicians from all of Northeast Ohio.  They come here from as far away as Strongsville or Orwell or Middlefield or Mantua.  Our trumpet player comes from Kent.  Our concert pianist lives in Cincinnati.  Our professional soloists are scattered all over the area.  They come in questionable weather and sometimes on nasty, icy roads.  And yet they come.

They come from churches of all denominations.  Some come who don’t attend any church of any denomination.

They come to sing, to perform, and to raise music to the highest level.  Handel’s Messiah is not just classical music.  It is not only scripture put to music.  It is a profound and moving spiritual experience for those performing and for those attending.  But to get the full effect, the miracle of the music, the magic of the performance, you have to attend...and you have to stay to the end.  The piece is not over when the Hallelujah Chorus is finished.  Those who leave after the Hallelujah Chorus miss the best and most inspiring part of the concert.

Taken as a whole, it is a powerful, goose-bump raising, enervating evening that no recording can equal.  I urge anyone who has never before experienced a live performance of Handel’s Messiah to attend.  If you can’t attend the performance at St. John Vianney in Mentor, Sunday at 7 p.m., then find another performance in the area during this holiday season and make it a point to go.  

Changes day by day

Apologies for my many weeks of silence.  In my last post, I wrote about change, the good and the not so good.  It was, in fact, a commentary on my work situation, which has been in a constant state of flux since the end of August.  I’ve been living and dealing with continually changing circumstances both at work and at home.  Coupled with scheduled weekend activities, such as Messiah rehearsals and holiday craft shows with Meredith, the draw on my energy and my creativity has been equivalent to the vacuum power of Dyson Cyclone technology!  Although my attitude remains positive, I’ve been feeling mentally fried for the last two months.

That being said, I decided to change things up for Thanksgiving.  Rather than turkey, I served roasted chickens with my infamous stuffing, mashed Klondike Gold potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole (but made with fresh beans, fresh mushrooms and homemade sauce rather than the typical cream of mushroom soup).  I also served Stone Dragon Bakery’s herb focaccia and my niece brought her very yummy salad.  Of course, I did make pies; two pumpkin and one apple.  Added a little tasty wine and the occasion was complete.  In spite of all the turmoil in our lives right now, it was a wonderful, relaxed, and very enjoyable dinner.  There were only six of us, our smallest holiday dinner in recent history.  Last year I cooked for 10 on Thanksgiving and for 30 the next day, so this year was a definite change.

Today, I stayed in sweats most of the day and spent some time dealing with the leftover situation.  As the carcasses boiled on the stove, I chopped the chicken and prepped carrots, celery, onions, peas and garlic.  I combined it all, thickened it up with some flour and chicken broth and leftover gravy, and made a chicken pot pie for dinner.  Then I divided the rest of it up into containers and put them in the freezer for future pot pies.  After dinner, Jim and I went out for a little wine at Kosicek’s and had the pleasure of listening to Alex Bevan play and sing.

I hope the rest of this weekend is as laid back and calming as yesterday and today have been, because I really could use the peace.  

Comfortable?

Being comfortable is a wonderful thing.  We value comfort, in our homes, our cars, our clothes (especially our shoes), our communities, our relationships, our jobs.  We get angry and resentful when things upset our apple-cart of comfort.  It is much too easy to become complacent in our lives.  Everything’s smooth, everything’s normal, no disruptions to ruin our day, our week, our lifetime.  And we like it that way.

I had a boss who once accused me of being averse to change.  I told him I had no problem with change, as long as it made sense.  Changing work procedures for the sake of change, rather than to make things more efficient or profitable, made no sense to me.  He did not like my response.  But having worked in the same field for 25 years, I had a pretty good idea of where his change was going to put us 6 months down the line…and it did…and it wasn’t productive, efficient or profitable.

 

Those who know me best never know what to expect of me next.  They often refer to me as a renaissance woman.  Sometimes people ask me how I could possibly do all the things I have done in the last 20 years.  I admit, it’s not always comfortable to put yourself out there or try new things.  When my first book was published, a friend asked me how I found the time to write a book with work and home and kids.  She said that work and home and kids were all she had time for, so she had no other interests.  She had no idea what she would do with her time if she ever lost her job.  My response was that there were not enough hours or days left in my lifetime for all the things I would try if I had that extra 40 hours a week in which to do them.

The fact of the matter is, without change, we wilt.  Change is as necessary to a full life as water and sun are to growing plants.  Everyone needs to change and grow, to learn and think, to read and imagine.  Without these things, we may be comfortable, but we are not taking advantage of all the creative gifts we’ve been given.  When you expand your universe, you expand yourself.  It may not be a comfortable expansion, but in the end, you will be better off than you were when it started.

Then there is involuntary change.  When your universe thinks you need a boot in the butt, something inevitably happens that you don’t like.  You get angry and resentful and feel that you’ve been dealt a harsh blow.  And it’s true.  But if you wallow in those feelings of anger and self-pity, you don’t allow yourself to grow...you don’t allow yourself to think clearly and come up with a plan for handling the change that was thrust on you.  You can either say “Woe is me” or you can take stock of your life and make some voluntary changes of your own.  Chances are you were way past due in kicking up some dust in your comfortable life.

I know a lot of people right now, myself included, are on the receiving end of that kind of involuntary change.  It’s about as far from comfortable as you can get.  It feels as if all the security you’ve had for these many years has been ripped away from you.  How we react to that change will define our lives for months and perhaps years to come.

 

I thought to myself, for the first time in my life (and for a few short seconds), Mom never had this problem.  Dad worked and Mom stayed home and kept the house and kids in order.  She never complained and she did everything she did the very best she could because she was doing it for those she loved.  Dad brought home the money and all was well with the world.  Then I just shook my head.  I am not my mother.  I need to be out there working, doing old things, trying new things, meeting new people, writing new stories and singing new songs.

I’m not too old to change.  I’m not too old to realize the value of not getting complacent or comfortable, in my life or in my job.  And I’m a firm believer that all things happen together for good.  Even when something seems bad or hopeless at the moment, there is a greater, far-reaching purpose.  And I, for one, am willing to find out what that is!