Calacirian

I may or may not have mentioned it here before but I regularly take some medication that requires the oversight of a psychiatrist.  Mostly this is because I also take some meds for my seizure disorder and it’s good to have someone in charge of all brain medication who knows what they do.  This is the theory anyway.

In any case, I was meeting with my psychiatrist the other day in order to check on all my meds and how I’m doing and I told her that I’m feeling very unfocused.  It’s something I have been struggling with for several years now, but lately it’s been almost overwhelming.  She asked me a couple of pointed questions about current events in my life and pointed out what some side effects were for some of the seizure meds I take and said, “I don’t think you’re unfocused.  I think you’re distracted by what’s going on with you.”

Um.  Really.  So what’s the difference?  It made sense when she said it, now I’m wondering.

Diversion -
1. the act of diverting from a specified course
2. ( Brit ) an official detour used by traffic when a main route is closed
3. something that distracts from business, etc; amusement
4. (military) a feint attack designed to draw an enemy away from the main attack

Distraction -
1. the act or an instance of distracting or the state of being distracted
2. something that serves as a diversion or entertainment
3. an interruption; an obstacle to concentration
4. mental turmoil or madness

Sooo … it looks to me as though being unfocused (or diverted) is makes me the subject of my own sentence.  But being distracted makes me the object.  Or is it vice versa?  I’m not sure … but I think that’s the difference between the two.  I don’t think knowing which is which really matters either.  I just needed to know what was what.

There was an ad campaign for something (I can’t remember what) not too long ago that went, “Life is messy.  Clean it up.”  For the record, all the ads for cleaning products bug me.  More than that, they piss me off.  Who can live in those pristine houses?  Life IS messy.  It’s gross and kind of disgusting down here in the trenches of our own stuff.  I’m not so sure we should clean it up.  I wonder about that sometimes.

Do you wonder about that?  Is just cleaning it up a distraction?  Or a diversion?  What if what we are supposed to do is get rid of that stuff?  What if we are supposed to make it new again?  Redeem it or reconcile it and by swiping it with some magic eraser, we’re diverting our attention to something else?  Have we got “stuff” in our lives that is like that old family room carpet.  It’s old and grungy because it’s in the most used room in the home.  People are always in and out and yes, they eat in there.  Yes, they eat dinner in front of the television on more occasions than any of us would like to admit.  And popcorn during movies and sporting events.  And snacks at other odd times.  So there are probably bits of food ground in there somewhere.  Years worth of pets and children going in and out the back door have ground in bits of mud and grass and heaven-knows-what.  This carpet has seen better days.  We keep vacuuming it and occasionally cleaning it because we know that replacing it is going to be time consuming and expensive.  Eventually we won’t be able to avoid that time and expense, but for now we get by.

We all have stuff in our lives that is deeply ground in, musty and yucky that needs to be replaced with good new and clean stuff.  We want to get at it.  We know we’ll be better off for it, healthier, more well-rounded, and we might even like ourselves better.  But … there it is.  It’s going to be time consuming and expensive.  I don’t mean money.  I mean it’s going to be hard.  It might hurt.  It might cost us some friends.  It might cost us some intangible things that we don’t even imagine when we set out on that journey.  We know that … somewhere in the remote places of our hearts.  So we divert and distract by vacuuming and dusting and saying it’s okay for now.  It’s really okay.  I’ll get to that later.

Life is messy.  I don’t want to clean it up.  I want to embrace the mess and understand it.  I want to own it and then.  I want to redeem it.  But I don’t want to just clean it up with a whitewash of pretty paint.  Because that’s just a mask and I’m done with that now.

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This post is part of October’s Synchroblog – Down We Go.  You can read other, insightful, posts at these links:

If I say it’s been rollercoaster summer here in the LightHouse will any of you out there in teh webz accuse me of sounding like a broken record?

I thought you might.  Sigh.  It has though.  We’ve had some awesome highs … and some bummer lows.  Most recently that has included watching our beloved home state of Vermont wash away in a flood of epic proportions.  Our families are safe, but some members are struggling through.  It’s hard to see places you grew up with washed away and know how terribly that will affect the people who live there.

So I’ve been seeking balance as the new school year approaches.  I’m not a huge fan of rollercoasters.  I can be persuaded to take my life in my hands and get on an old woodie once every ten years or so.  But I don’t particularly care for those huge highs and gut-busting lows.  I like balance.  I understand that it’s elusive, but I also know that in seeking it, I will find other interesting, appealing and engrossing things with which to engage my mind and time.

One of the ways I do this is by following creative blogs.  Some are devoted to art.  Others are devoted to quilting.  Still others are devoted to sewing.  And others are a mix of everything.  One of those blogs threw out a challenge the other day and it got me rolling in a way I haven’t for a long time.  The Coletterie issued a Fall Palette Challenge … create a color palette at ColourLovers and use that palette to sew one or more items of clothing for one’s fall wardrobe.

Sooo … I began by creating a palette -

I want to restrict my sewing (and any purchases I might make) to these colors.  Inspiration for this palette came from a tea towel that BlazingEwe gave me one day.  That beautiful magenta-y/plum is in the towel and I built this palette around that.

Then I discovered the engrossing wonders of building patterns at ColourLovers.

I spent hours.  H O U R S playing with patterns and color at ColourLovers one day.  I made my own pattern template.  I played with templates of other people.  What fun that is.  It’s coloring for grown-ups.  When you’ve made something you really like and you love fabric (like … ahem … me), you can transfer your design to Spoonflower and have your design printed on fabric and really make something that you truly designed yourself.  I am utterly fascinated by this.

Here are a couple of patterns I’m thinking of having made into fabric –

All of which brings me to this … my mood board for the challenge.  I’m going to commit to making one of the three items on this board, not sure which one yet.  I might go so far as to make all three.  But I’m gonna make one for sure.  I think I’m even going to post my progress and photos here.  Don’t worry.  I’m still going to post my rantings and ravings about politics, church, human nature and all that other good stuff I like to write about.  But I want this blog to be more reflective of who I am.  And I am a mix of a lot of things … and mostly, I’m not a guy, so I find it really hard to keep all my stuff separate on separate blogs.  So … here’s my mood board:

I think I’ll likely be starting with the blouse, since I purchased some very yummy purple poplin last night. The patterns are on sale this weekend, and I’ll have the chance to get them and begin the process then. In the meantime, I have quilts that are humming along and school to teach with my kiddos. Balance is somewhere nearby … but in the meantime, we are engaged, thoughtful and happy. Life is good!

My first real job when I graduated from college was working as a secretary in the new construction division of a construction company.  Suffice it to say that I was a huge pain in the ass.  Huge.

I could type.  60 words per minute.  On a really, really good day.  I could answer the phone, but when those construction foremen got mouthy with me, I got mouthy back.  It did not end well.  I could do dictation tapes, if you gave me a really, really long time.  The first one I did I had to slow down so much that I thought I was typing for an old man.  Imagine my surprise when I handed my work to a handsome young man about 3 years older than I.  I believe I blushed to the roots of my hair and he walked away shaking his head at the new bumbling idiot he had to work with.  We eventually became very good co-workers, but those first weeks were very bumpy.  One of my tasks was to clean the office kitchen each day.  The first afternoon, I ran the dishwasher.  I had never before in my life encountered a dishwasher, although I knew about them.  I just never ran one on my own before and so at the ripe old age of 22 did not know that there was a key difference between dishwasher detergent and dishwashing liquid.  I thought they were interchangeable.  Not knowing or caring about the difference, I put dishwashing liquid in the dispenser, turned the machine on and walked out.

That was when I learned to know and care about the difference.

Shortly after I was hired a decision was made streamline the contracting process.  This meant that the office was going to get …

(insert drum roll here)

… a desktop computer!

All of our data had to be input.  This was a mysterious process involving … you know?  I can’t remember what it involved.  I just remember that it was a lengthy, cumbersome process that involved a nightly back up of the enormous processor with floppy disks the size of elephant ears. I am

Not.

Kidding.

It took two hands for me to hold those suckers and put them into the machine every night.  Every.  Single.  Night.  Plus there was some sort of extended back up process that had to be done on a weekly basis.  It drove me nuts.  That was my first foray into the jungle of computers.  It was cutting edge, I tell you.

The larger problem was inputting all of the data.  That took an enormous amount of dedicated time.  Because while technically the computer was a desktop computer, it was not actually “at” anyone’s desk.  And each of the secretarys (I think there were 3 or 4 of us) had ongoing work to do each day that superseded the data input.  In short order, a decision was made that some office temporaries would be hired to enter the data into the computer.  So it was.  That is when the problems began.  This was not difficult work, but it did require a little bit of training and then some oversight to ensure that it was being done correctly.  Not a lot … just a little.  So we needed one or two people who would commit to doing this for maybe one or two weeks.  I think we saw new people every other day.  It was sooo not worth it.  We (I) spent more time training new people than I might have if I’d just been allowed to do the input myself.  They would show up late or not at all. They would disappear during their lunch break and not return til the next day, if ever.  We’d show them what to do and work with them on how to do it and the work would be sloppy, incomplete and unacceptable unless someone was standing over them.  Very often the young women were not dressed appropriately for working in an office.  Their fashion choices would be more appropriate for an evening at a club.  It was very frustrating for everyone concerned.  We were frustrated because our work was not getting done.  But the women coming in and attempting to work with/for us were also clearly frustrated.  Everyone was perplexed and confused by the apparent miscommunication of expectations.

Fast forward a few years and I decided to pursue a masters degree in education.  While I was doing that, it seemed like a good idea to work as a temporary office worker so that I would be able to concentrate on my school work when I needed to.  It wasn’t a big deal at all.  I applied to a temp firm and started getting assignments.  Within a few weeks, I was a superstar.  It was the strangest position I’d ever been in.  All it took to be a superstar was showing up every day and being kind.  I got to pick my assignments each week and always got the best places.  The ironic thing was that my skill set was mediocre at best, although I did have a good handle on software.  And in the midst of my classwork and working each day I began to wonder about this incongruous state of affairs.

I’ve spent a lot time in the intervening years wondering about that.  Studying demographic trends and trying to figure out why it was that I became successful with mediocre skills and many others couldn’t make it with stellar skills.  What did I have that they did not?  I don’t know that I have any answers yet, but I do have some clues.  Some of them can be found in the world around us and some of them date back to the days that formed our country.

It’s very popular and somewhat easy to condemn those who receive public assistance as lazy, stupid, irresponsible, and self-indulgent on the public’s dime.  I’ve lived in less desirable neighborhoods, been on public assistance myself for a short period and spent my time volunteering among those in need with Project Angel Tree.  My experiences are not vast by any stretch of the imagination, but they are enough for me to say that I haven’t met any one who was lazy or stupid or irresponsible or self-indulgent.  I met a lot of people along the way who were struggling along with enormous burdens on their backs.  Being poor is hard work.  Stretching a dollar to cover $5 or $10 is just as hard as being a CEO and requires a great deal of creativity.  When you’re struggling along with a huge boulder on your back, it’s a lot easier to stumble and fall.  It’s a lot easier to make mistakes and lose your way because you can’t see the horizon anymore, all you can see is the next place to put your foot down.  And often times you end up going in endless circles, perhaps even circling the toilet.  It’s very discouraging.  What makes this scenario even more discouraging?  All of the shiny happy people on continuous cable television telling you that the path to happiness lies in the acquisition of stuff.  Adults may be able to withstand this, but children do not understand their lack in a land of plenty.

Current scientific research suggests that our brains are wired to tolerate a certain amount of decision-making in a day.  When we push beyond that threshold, we experience fatigue and either make poor decisions or no decisions.  Further research suggests that this phenomenon effects those with less wealth to a greater extent than those with more wealth:

Spears and other researchers argue that this sort of decision fatigue is a major — and hitherto ignored — factor in trapping people in poverty. Because their financial situation forces them to make so many trade-offs, they have less willpower to devote to school, work and other activities that might get them into the middle class. It’s hard to know exactly how important this factor is, but there’s no doubt that willpower is a special problem for poor people. Study after study has shown that low self-control correlates with low income as well as with a host of other problems, including poor achievement in school, divorce, crime, alcoholism and poor health. Lapses in self-control have led to the notion of the “undeserving poor” — epitomized by the image of the welfare mom using food stamps to buy junk food — but Spears urges sympathy for someone who makes decisions all day on a tight budget.

There’s a lot more to this idea than I have space for, so I encourage you to read this fascinating article.  However, it may be that our current notion of public assistance recipients as lazy and lacking in self-control could be putting the cart before the horse!  This is not to suggest that they require more money, but that they require additional support and help from those in their community.  By which I mean … us.

There are issues and values that we hold both in the dominant culture and in the minority culture that are in conflict with one another.  Those need to be openly and honestly discussed, wrestled with and negotiated.  Electing a black president will not resolve our problems.  Putting more money into public assistance programs will not resolve our problems.  As I reflected on the differences between me and the women who just couldn’t seem to make things work for them I came to understand what some of our differences were.  I knew how to show up on time, every day.  I knew how to go to lunch and come back.  I knew how to work independently and get my work done without talking on the phone or succumbing to other distractions.  At first this was sort of strange to me.  After all, who doesn’t understand those things?  Why wouldn’t you know how to go to work every day?  But what if you lived in a home where no one went to work?  What if you lived in a home where there was no father?  No grandfather?  What if you lived in a home where there were few rules about time and showing up?  If you grew up like that, would you know how to show up for a job every day?  You might think you do and you might say you do, but it would be very difficult to learn that.

Now take this idea back … way back.  Back to the early days of our country.  We brought the ancestors of many of these people over in chains.  We brought them here with an utter disregard for the long, complex and well developed culture they came from.  The expectation was that their culture was to be erased with the flick of a whip and they would assimilate into ours.  I know next to nothing about African history or culture; I am sadly uninformed.  What I can tell you is that it was very, very different from Western European culture.  The values and mores that Africans held were utterly different from ours.  Brought over here to work, the motivation was fear of pain, death and familial separation.

Fear is an excellent motivator, if your goal is efficiency.  However, fear can never change the human heart.  It can change what a person does on the outside and to a certain extent it can change who they become, but it cannot change who they were meant to be.  That indomitable part in each of us remains, passed on to our children in each generation.  In large part, fear is the motivating factor for people who live in poverty … not having enough to eat, a place to live, that the home they have is safe, etc.  We continue to anticipate that through fear we will dominate and assimilate these people brought to our shores through various means 300 years ago.  I wonder what would happen if we decided that the modern day cultural expressions of their heritage have as much to contribute to our national conversation as the western European expression does?  What if we took the blinders of our dominant culture off and truly began to explore our racist heritage?  I think that part of the long-term pay-off to that would be to reduce the numbers of people who require public assistance.  And what an all around victory that would be!

Part 1

Part 2

Way back in the dark ages before electricity, indoor plumbing, and television.  Back when I was a young adult in the mid-1980’s … at least that’s how the LightChildren think of my early adulthood and childhood … snort.  Anyway.  Back in the day, my first apartment was a tiny studio in an old brownstone in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC.  That’s a couple streets up behind the National Zoo off of Rock Creek Parkway for those of you who don’t know the DC neighborhoods.  These days, Mt. Pleasant has been somewhat re-gentrified and somewhat claimed by the Hispanic wave of immigration.  It’s still one of the more interesting neighborhoods in the District and fairly integrated.

The building I lived in was originally a brownstone rowhouse built sometime in the early 1900’s or late 1800’s and meant to be used as a single family domicile.  It was part of a wave of development that hit the city during that time period after the Civil War and before WWI when times were good and people could afford fancy homes.  In particular, they built those homes up the northwest side of the city starting with Embassy Row and heading towards what is now Chevy Chase Circle.  When hard times came as they did in the 30’s and again in the 60’s with the riots, homes closer to the center of the city lost more value and were left for those who had less money.  This was a common occurrence in cities across the country.  During the 80’s and 90’s as wealth grew, it became common again to re-gentrify or rebuild these old neighborhoods.  In other words, the white people brought their money back.

By the time I came along in early 1984 the building I would live in had been carved up into 6 apartments from its original single family rowhouse.  There were 2 apartments on the top (or 3rd) floor, 2 on the middle (or 2nd) floor, 1 on the first floor and 1 in the basement.  My apartment was on the second floor and looked out on the street.  I had a bathroom, two enormous closets, a living area and a kitchen in which if I stretched out my arms I could touch the opposing walls on all sides.  I had a tiny, antique refrigerator with an even tinier freezer than hung down into the refrigeration area and I had to defrost it once a month with my hair dryer.  In order to create a counter top, I covered a 1 x 10 with some contact paper and put it on top of the radiator.  It was a tiny kitchen, but just right for me.  I was enormously proud of achieving that first apartment.  I slept on two 3″ thick foam cot mattresses; sometimes I stacked them, other times I laid them side by side … on the floor.  I had a table, two chairs, a rocking chair (which is still in my basement), a dresser (which LightGirl now has) and a desk.  Everything was a hand-me-down.  I purchased sheets to make curtains and a Garfield poster for the bathroom.  I had a bicycle to ride to work each day.  I took the bus to buy my groceries and to do my laundry.

There were 5 other apartments in our building and the people in them were as different as night and day.  On the top floor was an apartment which seemed to have a revolving door and I never quite knew who was in it.  The other apartment was inhabited by a slightly older man (in his 30’s) who rode an English motorcycle.  He took me for a ride once and I was never sure if I was flirting with him or the idea of having a relationship with an older slightly dangerous man. The flirtation was fun, but it never went anywhere anyway.  The basement had the largest apartment and it was occupied by a large Hispanic family who I worried about having enough space to sleep.  There seemed to be many more people than there was enough space for beds, but they were always pleasant, kind, quiet and clean.  The first floor had a slightly larger apartment than mine and it was occupied by a middle aged African-American couple who always seemed to have their eye on me … in a very good and inconspicuous way.  I knew that if I was in trouble, they had my back.  If I remember correctly, he was also the building superintendent and he did a good job of keeping things running smoothly.

I’d like to focus, though, on the family unit with which I shared the second floor.  I didn’t know who they were for a long time.  When I finally got to know them, it was quite a shock.  But then I began to spend time with them on a regular basis … well … as regular as a young woman of 23 can manage.  Living next door to me was a middle-aged (in her 50’s) African-American woman and her 7 year old son.  I was particularly bothered by the fact that the lights were never on in that apartment.  Never.  The only light that ever escaped from under the door or that I could see when she opened the door, came from the cathode ray tube and it was on permanently.  24-7.  An occasional ray of sunshine might sneak through the curtains which staunchly guarded the windows, but that and the television were the only available light.

As I got to know them, I began to spend time with the little boy.  He was an absolute darling and I really enjoyed having him come to my place to hang out with me.  He was fascinated by the fact that I did not have a television.  I read books to him and we talked.  Or he talked fairly non-stop and I listened.  I’m not sure if I could ever have told you one word he said to me, but he had a lot of seven-year-old words to say.  He was also fascinated by my coke-bottle-bottom glasses.  Back in those days, I wore my contact lenses every waking moment, so he thought it great fun to prance around the house with my glasses on and be amazed by how funny the world looked to him.  I know he went to school with some regularity and I remember seeing grocery bags filled with food that made me cringe.  It made me cringe because the mom had very few teeth in her mouth and the food she chose was not helpful to her remaining teeth.  I never quite knew what to do about that or if I should do anything.  I was perplexed by the idea that a woman who was my mother’s age looked and acted older than both of my grandmothers and seemed to be less equipped to handle the world than I was.

As time went on, I discovered that the little boy had some older siblings.  I can’t remember how many … maybe three?  They were all around my age or a little younger; in their early 20’s. They lived in Maryland; Howard and PG County for the most part.  All of them were independent and had jobs.  I think at least one was engaged or married.  There were girls and boys in some combination (2 of one and 1 of the other).  Hey … it’s been almost 30 years and I did not know the siblings very well.  As I got to know them, I became aware that it was a family fact that the little boy had been conceived out of necessity for the mom to remain on welfare.  This information was not viewed in either a negative or a positive light, but merely as a fact of how their mom was getting through life.  The older siblings seemed to have come to an understanding that they did not have any desire to receive public assistance or continue in that form of lifestyle.  They were insistent that they would make it on their own.  But they were not particularly embarrassed by their mom either.  She did her thing and they did theirs.

Then one day I came home from work to find that the apartment next to mine had been emptied and the mom and little boy were gone.

The mom had died very suddenly in the night.  To this day, I find that shocking and appalling.  How does a 50-ish woman just die like that??  She had a 7 year old son to take care of.  Not that she was doing a particularly good job of it, but he did love his mom and now she was gone.  I know he went to live with one of his siblings.  I always hoped that things worked out for all of them.  That in her younger days, the mom had been able to give them enough starch to see that through.  The little boy would be in his early 30’s by now.  I’ve always hoped that those young people went on to have productive normal lives with problems which are dull and manageable (as a friend likes to say).  That they managed to remain self-sufficient and healthy and to raise their little brother into that paradigm as well.  I know the odds against them were long, but that’s what I hoped.

Part 1

Part 3

Put me in charge . . ..
Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov’t welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

Now, if you have the guts – PASS IT ON…

According to an e-mail LightHusband received the above was a letter to the editor in the Waco Herald Tribune in November 2010. It’s rather blunt point is something I bet we’ve all heard and perhaps felt at one time or another in reference to what many see as the profligate waste associated with aid programs for the impoverished in our country. We all think those programs would be really easy to run. So for kicks and giggles I thought I’d respond to this letter myself. Just for fun. Here’s what I would say to this person … paragraph by paragraph. And for arguments sake, I’m going to assume that the author was a man, the writing seems very masculine to me. So I’m going to respond to a man.

Food Stamps – You’re correct, sir. Food assistance should not be allowed to purchase Ding Dongs or Ho Hos or other known unhealthy foods (such as Captain Crunch or other sugary cereal). But I also happen to think that it would be wise to include some healthy fruits and vegetables in your list of approved items for people to purchase. I have never understood why it was acceptable for the WIC (Women with Infants and Children) to have a limited number of items for purchase with their funds, but Food Stamps was a free for all. WIC money is too limited, but Food Stamps are too open. There needs to be a healthy and wise middle ground in which people learn about a healthy diet … and I’m sorry but rice, beans, cheese and milk ain’t it. Steak and frozen pizza probably isn’t it either.

There are a lot of ways to feed a family a healthy diet on a tight budget. This is going to mean educating moms and dads because they did not learn this from their parents. Education costs money, so in the short run this would make the food stamp program more expensive. In the long run (over a period of years) it would become less expensive. But we would have to be prepared to invest our time, effort and money in it to eventually wean people off of it.

Medicaid – Forced birth control, tubal ligations, drug testing etc. I think I understand the reasoning and emotion behind this. However, when the large majority of people receiving Medicaid are people with dark skin it smacks of racism and there is no getting around that. If you are poor, you cannot have children. If you are poor, your options are limited. We have an amendment in the Constitution which addresses this issue – Amendment 14; Article 1 states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. While individual (private) companies can require drug testing for the right to employment and the federal government can require it for security purposes and has done so through the due process of law, there is no reason to require drug testing as a prerequisite for the receipt of public funds. I know that two states are currently attempting to make this law and they are on shaky Constitutional ground. In addition … there are huge costs involved with drug testing. How is this going to be paid for?

Government Housing – I completely understand the desire to tell folks who live in public housing to clean up their act. It is disgraceful the way our country has treated those housing projects. We’ve left them to rot. But have you ever gone to Home Depot and noted the cost of purchasing a basic home repair kit? When you have nothing, it’s pretty expensive. Then you have to learn how to use it. Now I do love LightHusband, but I am here to tell you that of his many talents, home repair is not one of them.  He has 10 thumbs. We hire that out or we do things with friends. But what do you do when you live in an apartment building and you rent? It is common knowledge that a renter relies on the owner or the superintendent of the facility to keep the place in good repair. It is the owner’s responsibility to keep a place looking ship shape and tidy, not the renter’s. Your plan puts the onus in the wrong place. If we want our government housing projects to look like someone cares for them, then perhaps “we, the people” as owners of those public housing projects ought to start caring for them. Perhaps we need to get down off our high horse and take care of our neighbors. Maybe we could teach them some skills and give them some of our excess tools in the process.

As for the plasma televisions and gaming devices, first of all there is no way to inspect for those. Secondly, what do you do if someone receives those sorts of luxury items as a gift? Take it away? That is ludicrous to begin to monitor gifts and decide which are worthy and which are not. We will become a police state if we do that.

Job Corps – Here is something I can give marginal support to. With one large question. How sir, do you propose to care for the minor children that moms may have in their care? I can see a number of solutions to this problem, but you do not seem to have accounted for children or their wellbeing in your scheme. I wonder how you will do that? My other large problem is that what you have outlined looks more like a chain gang than a public works program. While I agree with the notion that having people work in some manner for the public assistance they receive, I also believe that the work they do should train them in some way for eventually getting off public assistance. It should be a road that leads them in a positive direction, rather than a dead end alley of endless work for endless public assistance. This just feeds the cycle that we desire to break.

Voting – Once again, I would like to refer you to the Constitution and Amendment 24 in which it states “1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.” This means that no one can ask or require that voting rights or privileges be restricted for any reason, whether “voluntary” or otherwise.

Last, I’m going to call you out, sir. You are being disingenuous when you make the claim that when you are in charge all of your changes are “voluntary.” That people have the choice to knuckle under to your demands or they can reject public assistance. In other words, it’s your way or the highway (in popular vernacular). When the alternative is starvation, homelessness and perhaps death, especially for one’s children, there’s not really much of a choice, now, is there? And I’d like to ask you, if you were that person, or those people, just how free would you think this country is?

Part 2

Part 3

One of LightGirl’s most favorite little girl books was a lesser known book called, I Went Walking. It featured a small child who walked around her world discovering animals of varying colors who were looking at her. LightGirl adored this book and it was in her hands as required reading most days; sometimes two or three times a day. Walking with friends is still one of her favorite pastimes.

So it came as no surprise when I heard from her that a group of her friends had gone walking from their home to a nearby shopping center for dinner lovely spring evening. I was driving the friends and the LightChildren from pillar to post (and a stop at Dairy Queen for sustenance) the next day. They were recounting their adventures on the sleepover (not so much sleep) with dinner (Chinese) and their walk when they told the following story:

“While we were out walking this group of brown-skinned kids came up to us. They said they were new to the area and didn’t know very many kids yet. They seemed to be really cool. They told us their names and we told them ours. And we were talking. I (LightGirl) was thinking that this was really cool that we were going to make new friends right here on the street like that. I thought it was really cool because they seemed genuinely interested in us. And then all of a sudden they started in with this stuff about Jesus loves us too and we should come to their church.

“Yeah, Matt wanted to say something like he’s a Satan worshiper. [giggle giggle] I wanted to say that I love Jesus too, I love listening to those fictional bedtime stories before I go to sleep. [more laughter]

“Did you guys notice how long they waited for us outside the restaurant? Yeah, we stayed there til like 10 and that’s past their bedtime.”

I talked to them all about the event a little bit. If I’m interpreting their responses correctly, and I think I am, they felt a little bit betrayed and used. And sort of angry. These are a really good group of kids who offer their friendship very openly to any who ask. They do not discriminate based on anything. I have seen them open their ranks to all kinds of teens, from all walks of life. Literally … all are welcomed. Then this very openness was turned and used as a tool for sales on them.

I tried to apologize for those in my faith who feel the need to use the openness of others to assuage their own sense of helplessness. But the words died in my throat. After all, the encounters with Jesus or his disciples did not leave people feeling used for someone else’s ends. Why is that so often the case with His 21st century followers?

The bright blue sedan sped merrily down that major artery; providing oxygen on an otherwise dreary journey into the city. Small and fuel-efficent, there were a number of profiles the driver might fit into. But it was the array of festive bumper stickers that made the car merry. They were happy; cheeky. Then there was the central sticker, located under the brake light: “I pray that God isn’t too picky.”

Hmmmm …

That one made me think of the firestorm that has recently engulfed the social media world (blogs, twitter, facebook) concerning a certain book by a certain young cheeky pastor (Rockstar) and his (potential) views on Hell and who might go there.

I never planned to write about this one. I don’t care about it. Mostly, I’m no theologian. The finer points that these people are arguing make my head spin and in a world where much more interesting things are happening (like democracies emerging in the Middle East) and tragedies must be observed (Japan), my poor brain has very little space left over for jots and tittles. But then, along sped this merry little automobile and I began to think.

Why is it that the Gospel, the so-called Good News, has become this? Yay! When you die, you don’t go to your room. If you are very, very lucky or something … you get to go to God’s room.

Now. I know that a bunch of people are going to come on here in comments to correct my description of the Gospel. Yep. You are all probably correct. I’m not talking about that. I’m writing about what our popular culture HEARS from the church. Because it doesn’t matter what we think we’re saying. What matters is what people hear. If what people hear sounds like the teachers/adults in a Charlie Brown television special, why then it doesn’t really matter what Rockstar writes (good, bad or ugly) or what his detractors say about him … because the only people listening are the choir.

The church is now arguing over how many camels will fit on the head of a pin … really?

This year has been interesting here in the LightHouse. By year, I mean calendar year. The year which began on January 1, 2011.

One could speculate that it all really began back in the holiday season of 2010. Yep, I think that’s where I’ll start.

We were busy (as usual) prepping for Christmas, getting gifts sent. Purchasing gifts for each other and friends. Wrapping, decorating, baking. Best of all, anticipating the arrival of LightMom and TheGrandPea for a Christmas visit. We love having my parents visit and hanging out with them. There aren’t a lot of expectations and we just take things as they come. There was one thing I wanted to do; I wanted to see True Grit with both my parents, but especially with my dad. We both love westerns, you see (so does my mom) and I remembered that he had seen the original when it came out.

Something was off though. Something with me. I was walking through thigh deep water and could not get myself together. Plus I had a horrible cough that would not let go. When LightMom says, “You really need to see the doctor.” Yep. You make the call. Off I went. And came home with a diagnosis of pneumonia.

That just takes all the fun out of everything.

So, I spent January recovering from pneumonia. It’s a long slow boring slog.

LightHusband (in the meantime) was having a series of treatments on his back which left him … well … on his back for most of January and February. A home with two teenagers and no drivers for the better part of a month was … ahhhh … interesting. We muddled through, but none of us are really sure how that happened.

Along came March and I got sick AGAIN! This time no pneumonia, just an ordinary upper respiratory infection/bronchitisy kind of thing. The problem was that my lungs had not fully recovered from the pneumonia and it put me flat on my back because I couldn’t breath. This time though I fought the beast hard. I sequestered myself in our guest room with not one, but two vaporizers going. LightHusband brought me a television and meals. And that’s where I was for about 18 – 20 hours a day for the better part of a week.

Now one would think (being an introvert and all) that being alone in a room for 18 – 20 hours a day would be heaven. And I won’t deny that there are parts of that journey that I loved. I loved being able to say, “I’m going away now for awhile, I need to rest.” Sometimes that rest was just as much mental/emotional as it was physical. But, that room got awfully tiny after a while and I wanted to be out and around people. It got lonely in that room. When you have to make a hot, steamy environment for yourself, people don’t like to visit too often … even when they are family. And, like all sick rooms, apparently it began to take on a certain aroma, defined by LightHusband as “sweat and stale bananas.” I told him that it was the tropical atmosphere …

One thing it did give me was a lot of time to think … and read. I’ve been reading a lot about what’s going politically and economically in our country. No surprise there. And I am disturbed. Deeply, profoundly disturbed. The progress and protections that were put in place for children, for women, for the disenfranchised of all ilk in the 20th century are being attacked at every level … both in state and federal legislation. I cannot keep quiet any longer.

I started this blog July 2005 as an exercise in community. I am no longer a member of that community and have not been for four years this week. The focus changed and for a long time I wrote about the state of the church and often about women in the church. There’s not much more for me to say about that here. It’s been said. And I think that is why my pen (keyboard) has been still for so long. I haven’t had anything new to say.

Calaciriya is a place. A mythical place to be sure. But a place nonetheless. It is a place that is noted but once in the Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Rings (I think on page 229?). The translation of the name is “Ravine of Light.” And that is where this blog gets it’s name and it’s focus from … to be light shining in darkness. To be a place of light. A place where we can be reminded of who we are, who we are meant to be and what we can strive for. So the minutae of this blog is going to change and I will be writing more from a justice perspective. How does love (sometimes specifically Christian love) intersect in the public sphere to create justice? What does that look like now and what could it look like?

What, indeed, are we striving for?

One of the best new things about this school year has been that I’m teaching/leading a class with some of the LightChildren’s peers.  We started out with about 15 students, and we’re down to about 8 or 9 now.  That’s okay because we’re intense and learning a lot.  It’s a philosophy class.  We’re using a text book called (without much inspiration), Philosophy For Teens:  Questioning Life’s Big Ideas.  It’s a really good text which is introducing the kids to a lot of great philosophers and (yeah, I’ll say it) big ideas.  Lately class has consisted of the kids reading the chapter and then we discuss the ideas contained therein.  This unit of four chapters is focusing on justice and began with a chapter on civil rights (Malcomb X).  The chapter we discussed the other day moved to animal rights.  That chapter opened with a dialogue between two boys about whether one of them had the right to force his dog to jump through a burning hoop and withhold food when the animal refused to comply.

So.  Of course, I opened our discussion with cell phones.  All of the students have one.  I wanted to know how they took care of their cell phones (there was a range of caring from downright love to abuse), how they would respond if their cell phone was lost or mangled, and how they would respond if/when the cell phone was replaced.  We talked about that for a while and I moved them to an understanding of the idea that cell phones are “property.”  They got that.  Everyone was happy.  But I sucked in my breath because I knew what I was about to do and it was going to be hard.

I asked them to think about our last class when we talked about civil rights and slavery.  I asked them to take a moment and consider all of the ideas we had just expressed about property as they concerned our cell phones and apply those ideas to human beings as slaves.  Everyone stopped for just a few seconds.  Most of the kids didn’t quite know where to put their eyes.  One even said, “Wow.  This isn’t so funny when we’re talking about people.”  Then we spent a few minutes talking about how just as there had been a spectrum of care for cell phones, there was a spectrum of care for slaves.  That most people throughout history had been considered property at one time or another (feudalism) and that slavery has existed in many forms.  We talked about slavery today (sex trade and child warriors).  I recommended “Half the Sky” by Nicholas Kristoff to them because if they can handle this discussion, they can more than handle that book.

We needed a break at this point.  I knew ahead of time that this class was going to be hard and uncomfortable.  That my wonderful students were going to need some sustenance and assistance to get through this.  So I made brownies for them to have at break (it’s a two hour class).  There’s nothing like a brownie to boost your spirits and keep you going during a rough spot.  If I’d had my whole act together, I’d have had milk for them to drink with the brownies.  But I only had half my act together.  They all wanted the brownie recipe … so here it is, because some of you might need some sustenance too.  I got the original here, but I tinkered with it and my tinkering is below:

Brownies From Heaven

• 1 cup butter or margarine
• 6 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate (I used Ghirardelli)
• 4 eggs
• 1 cups white sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour (I used King Arthur)
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• confectioners’ sugar

1. In a saucepan over low heat, melt butter and chocolate; cool for 10 minutes.
2.  In a mixing bowl, beat eggs with wire whisk.  Add sugars, vanilla and salt, beating after each addition with whisk.
3.  Stir in the chocolate mixture. Add flour and nuts; mix well.
>4.  Pour into a greased 11-in. x 7-in. x 2-in. baking dish. Bake at 325 degrees F for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with moist crumbs. Cool.

I think peanut butter frosting or adding chocolate chips to this would be even more heavenly … but I didn’t have the chance to try either of those.  Ohhh … or I might add dried cherries and cream cheese frosting the next time I make these.  Yum!

Weren’t those good?  Are you revived enough to continue our discussion?  Well, the students were.  I told you … they are great kids.  I am really privileged to have the opportunity to meet with them, hear their ideas, and share mine with them.

After the break we carried on and moved to animal rights.  We talked about how animals are different from humans.  They are not really sentient beings and some cannot care for themselves, so we must care for them.  We talked about their relative intelligence and shared our favorite pet stories.  I shared some information from this sort of creepy article on crows and how they can recognize humans, pass on information to future generations and generally are smarter than you think.  This lead to a discussion on what rights should we give animals in the wild (i.e. wolves vs. sheep in our western states).  We talked about how it’s uncomfortable but okay to discuss euthanizing an animal, but that sort of discussion is off the table for people.  So we ended up in a place where we agreed that animals occupy a grey area.  They have rights, but they are sort of property … sort of.  It’s something we will probably discuss again.

Interestingly, at the very end of class one of the students wondered what would happen to a grizzly bear that had killed a man.  We joked about sentencing the bear to jail … the zoo.  Until the kids realized that wasn’t so funny.  Then another student wondered about dogs who had been so abused that they attacked people.  What happened to those animals.  Could they be redeemed?  And we decided that some could.  But some cannot.  So they decided that the ones who cannot should be euthanized.  So, I asked them … what should we do about the very real problem of criminals who cannot be rehabilitated?  What do we do with those individuals who are repeat offenders, who do their time in prison, but get out and are worse … sexual offenders, murderers, etc.?  I asked them to think about that and we’ll pick it up there at the next class.

But I have to say … these kids are fearless.

As long as I give them brownies.

I had a fairly interesting, if exhausting, Friday afternoon.  I spent it surrounded by teenagers.  So it was a good afternoon.  I was teaching them some new skills and bumping them just out of their comfort zones, so it was a little bit exhausting.  But mostly it was fun, because this group of teens is full of humor and good spirits and I enjoy spending time with them.

It’s a group of teens (and their moms or other parental units) that the LightChildren and I joined about a year ago to add some fun, fieldtrippy kind of activity to our school.  We meet once a week and do “stuff” together.  We’ve built things at the National Building Museum.  We’ve sorted eyeglasses with a local Lions Club.  We’ve done a scavenger hunt at an art museum.  We’ve gone to countless movies, played laser tag, board games and gone swimming in a variety of water sources.  We’ve built structures out of canned goods.  We’ve thought really hard about building medieval siege weapons.  This past Friday we made Cooling Neck Wraps for soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We will donate them through an organization known as Operation Gratitude (if you want to donate some stuff to soldiers, you can click on that link and find out how).  There we were a room full of teenagers learning how to iron, and mark and sew.  Of course, they are teenagers so the ratio of talking to working was kind of high, but we still got a good bit done.  And the teens peeked out of their comfort zones just a little and looked around.  It was good for everyone.

Me?  I felt like a walking signboard for irony that afternoon.  I despise those wars.  I think I’ve made it pretty clear here in my little corner of teh webz that I do not believe in the principle of a just war.  Nor do I believe that it is our role to play policeman throughout the world.  In short, we overstepped in a huge way in both countries, so why did I expend considerable time and effort supporting the soldiers of these wars?

Some days I’m not so sure of that myself.  Other days I remember what it’s like to be in the Army.  You are not your own.  The service owns you and unless an order is specifically illegal, you must obey it.  You cannot volunteer for service and then claim conscientious objector status because you think the war is illegal.  That just doesn’t fly, especially since we’ve been at war for 10 and 8 years now.  So we/I cannot hold the soldiers responsible for these wars; they are doing their best in a bad situation.  I feel for them.  Patriotic mythology notwithstanding, they have been put in harm’s way by an empire that views them as fodder for it’s mill.  I can but attempt to remember their humanity.