Category: Reflections

Quiz on American presidents

Quiz on our Presidents?

We’re all human, even our Presidents, of whom there have now been 44 in our brief appearance on the world scene. Let’s have a little fun and see how much you know about some of them. My answers come at the end. Be patient. Don’t cheat.

1. Which president spoke to his wife in a foreign language to avoid others from listening in? Extra credit: which language?

2. Which president liked telling racist jokes?

3. Which president formerly served as a public executioner?

4. Which president was known for his high pitched, squeaky voice?

5. Which president hated cats and would shoot them?

6. Which president was our shortest?

7. Which president killed a man and never served a day?

8. Which president had a different birth name?

9. Which president spoke with a lisp?

10. Which president couldn’t stop running to the outhouse?

Answers:

1. Herbert Hoover. He and his wife were both fluent in Chinese, having resided in China during the Boxer Rebellion.

2. Woodrow Wilson. He was considered an excellent mimic.

3. Grover Cleveland. While sheriff of Erie County, NY, in the 1870s, he twice put the noose around the condemned and sprang the trap door.

4. Abraham Lincoln.

5. Dwight Eisenhower. In his retirement, He would shoot stray cats at his Gettysburg farm.

6. James Madison. He was 5’4″. Our tallest? Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Baines Johnson at 6’4″.

7. Andrew Jackson. He had killed a man in a duel, surviving his own wounds.

8. Gerald R. Ford. He was originally named after his biological father, Henry Lynch King, who abandoned his family.

9. John Adams. He refused to wear dentures.

10. James K. Polk. He suffered from chronic diarrhea and would die from a bowel disorder.

How banks war on you and me

According to Wikipedia, “Bank robbery is the crime of stealing from a bank during opening hours.” Let me try a new definition: “Robbery is theft from the people during opening and closing hours.” Yes, banks are quite capable of committing crimes, and often do, as bullies motivated by greed. Banks, in case you missed it, were the primary culprits in fomenting our economic downturn in 2008, the worst America has faced since the Great Depression and likely to continue for several years. In the process, they’ve been able to pull off nearly a trillion dollars in bail out money to cover their profligate scheming and spending, passing their debts on to the citizenry; another two trillion has been spent in trying to re-right the economy. What is more, along with behemoth corporations, banks are kingpins in a concerted effort to dismantle government regulation, giving them a freer hand in accumulating profit.

The banking sector is grateful for our help, screwing us at every turn in efforts to extract still more from the masses they’ve victimized, moving with alacrity in foreclosing on money that shouldn’t have been loaned, often for houses no longer worth their original loan amounts, and doing so without properly reviewing delinquent mortgages (i.e., robo signings). With regard to bank issued credit cards, despite government efforts to safeguard consumers from excessive interest escalation, the banks have found other ways to accumulate capital, imposing charges, for example, on using tellers rather than ATMs and fees on checking accounts below a designated amount. Take Bank of America, for example. It had originally opted to charge debit card users $5 monthly. Public outrage, however, curtailed its implementation. Look for the banks to move more quietly to introduce other charges. You name it, they’ve got a gimmick, proving it’s easier to catch a greased pig than a banker in his Mercedes.

Although our government rightly views consumer spending as a key catalyst to stimulating the economy, banks have made it difficult for many to borrow money, especially for mortgage loans, requiring up to 20% down payment. Obviously, this leaves out many young people and middle class wage earners. Home construction, along with the auto and aircraft industry, is a key component of the American economy. Currently, banks are sitting on a mound of money while looking for better investment returns elsewhere. You and I don’t figure into the equation.

Make no mistake about it: both Wall Street and the banks created the bubbles that got us here, resulting in millions without work and depleted federal and state coffers. It’s gotten so bad that many cash-strapped states are now resorting to selling off their infrastructure such as highways to raise revenue and avoid upkeep outlays. Ultimately this represents an impetus yet again in the dismantling of government, transferring the people’s assets to the private domain. It’s among a speculator’s greatest dreams, and don’t think for a moment that Wall Street and the banks don’t have their eyes on it.

Bank manipulation, or fraud, isn’t anything new. Take for instance, the banking scandals of the 1980s involving many savings and loan institutions. Insiders would falsify the books, making a failing bank appear healthy. Ultimately, the failing bank burdened the federal treasury with making good on consumer deposits up to $100,000 under USFDC guarantees. That means you and I paid the bill for their malfeasance. Hey! Sounds a lot like those recent bailouts. It continues to be difficult, however, for the courts to prosecute since the statutes require proof of intent to deceive.

Fortunately, we have a few watchdogs looking out for our interests, though scarcely enough, given the systemic problem of banking kleptomaniacs. Last week, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley sued five of the nation’s largest banks, alleging illegal foreclosures and deceptive mortgage servicing.

This suit seeks accountability against the banks for both cutting corners and also rushing to foreclose on homeowners without following the rule of law. There is no question that the deceptive and unlawful behavior by Wall Street and the large banks played a central role in causing this economic crisis. We believe they are not too big to have to obey the law.

The suit names Well Fargo, Bank of America, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and GMAC.

The Tea Party has it all wrong. We don’t need less government. We need more.

Brain-tickling: n- back tasking

I’ve just returned from North Carolina, visiting my wife’s father in a nursing home. He turns 92 this Christmas. Right now, he’s recovering from a series of falls, the last one resulting in a broken ankle and hence nursing facility. Daddy is lucky in some respects, for the facility strikes me as well run, with sensitive staff (blessed with a sense of humor), decent meals even if institutional, and clean premises.

Yet in all of this, I couldn’t help taking in the white-haired residents, all of them in wheelchairs. Some seemed fixed, no movement throughout the day, heads bent, silent. One dear lady, presumably a stroke victim, courageous, tried to greet strangers, but she might well have spoken another language. In place of words, cheerily pitched sounds, but murmurings for all of that. In nearly a day at the place, I saw few visitors. If “loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every person,” as writer Thomas Wolfe held, then its apex must be old age.

And yet there are things we can do to ease our journey into our senior years. For some time, I’ve been exercising daily, and rigorously, on our elliptical machine. Now I’ve added strength exercises three times a week, using weights to enhance muscle growth. After recently taking a bone scan test, I was delighted to learn I hadn’t lost any height, an occurrence as high as 80% in seniors.

I keep up with testing in general, whether annual blood checks or colonoscopies every three years, given my family’s cancer history. I get a flu shot every fall.

I haven’t touched meat in 15-years. I learned just the other day that only 15% of vegetarians suffer heart attacks. That’s good enough for me.

So much of preserving good health lies in adopting a preventative regimen, as Medicare and health insurers now increasingly recognize and encourage.

But there’s an aspect of maintaining good health that needs more attention. Consider that half of those past 85 suffer dementia. Now that’s huge! Think of the cost and the suffering, the diminishment in human dignity. We need to exercise our minds as well as our bodies.

I subscribe to Massachusetts General Hospital’s Mind, Mood & Memory. In its recent issue, the newsletter notes the success of those who exercise their brains, hence slowing down Alzheimer’s, or even preventing it. Cross word puzzles, Sudoku games, learning a language, etc., all help–and a lot. This hits my palette, for I’ve generally favored games of mental skill like chess over games of chance.

New research indicates that the key to warding off dementia lies in boosting working memory. But how best to do this?

Turns out there’s a brain exercise called n-back that not only stimulates working memory (the kind used in reasoning and solving problems), but increases IQ. Hey, it actually makes you smarter!

Well, this got me going on my own research. I even bought the iPad application N-Back Suite. It’s as gorgeous as it’s friendly to users, allowing for stretching the mind through sensory stimuli (letters, images, sounds, colors, etc.).

With n-back tasking the idea is to remember items appearing in sequences. You can adjust your speed and there are ten levels of difficulty. Most of us will be lucky to get to level 3. It’s challenging.

It’s been tried with children and young adults, too. After 30 days of exercising for 20 minutes, results showed significant gains in fluid intelligence, i.e., the ability to recognize unfamiliar patterns and solve problems. IQ scores averaged 5 point gains. These results lasted 3 months, even though the participants were no longer doing the n-tasks. MGH neuropychologist Mimi Castelo calls the results “impressive.”

If all of this interests you, here are some web sites that offer sample n-back exercises. But don’t forget the iPad application I mentioned earlier.

http://dual-inback.com/nback.html

htpp://brainworkship.sourceforge.net

Good luck!

Harvesting awareness

Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again.

–Helen Keller

Are you a sleep walker? I’m not talking here of those who walk about rather than lie in bed when they sleep. I mean the way many of us live our lives, asleep to what goes on around us. Not surprisingly, we lose out on life’s conversation.

As sentient creatures, we’re able to respond to stimuli in the guise of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Think about it! Just take away any one of them and you get the picture. While losing your sight or hearing are surely impacting losses that severely limit, so is the loss of other sensory capacities. Imagine what it would be like being unable to relish mashed potatoes with gravy or the pleasure of your tongue indulging a chocolate ice cream cone.

My favorite poet has always been John Keats, poet extraordinaire in his sensory awareness. Reading a Keats poem is something like being locked up in a bakery. The one thing he feared was death, which he viewed as horrible in its annihilation of the senses, an end rendering us but sod. But we don’t need to die to forfeit awareness. Some of us are downright zombies in the here and now.

We live in a world now pervasively scientific and technological. They have their place in helping us live more ably and comfortably. And yet they often fail us when we live only for the quantitative or functional. We are not simply physical or material creatures. We are spirit, with the capacities to not only think, but to feel and choose. What would our world be like if we didn’t have music, or image (art/photo/film), smells of freshly cut hay, dinner on the stove, or garden roses? What if we couldn’t feel that soft velvet, the clasp of warm hand, the softness of the beloved’s cheek?

More than ever, we live in a world that can so busy us that we can become callous to what really matters. Each day simply repeats yesterday’s routine. Tomorrow promises more of the same.
Life is brief and tomorrow shouldn’t be assumed, for we live in a random universe. Our heaven lies in the Now.

Here are some tips that may help you increase your awareness and, consequently, your pleasure in life’s rich tapestry:

Keep a journal or blog

I can’t think of a better way to improve my awareness of what happens around me, or within myself for that matter, than keeping a journal or maintaining a blog: who, what, when, where, how. Writing this blog is a prime example. I’ve been writing on myriad topics for almost a year. Thinking about a topic has kept me on my toes, forced me to think about what I hear, see, or do. Good journals and blogs can be on anything, but simply centering in doings is more like keeping a diary. It’s not going to grow the senses. Select like you would at a gourmet restaurant, choose according to your palette, but choose wisely. Write not only about what matters, but why it matters.

Find space

We all need moments for ourselves. I find some of my best times are when I’m outside, working in the yard, the world very far away. My senses are kindled, and the birds, rustling leaves, and even the lowly worm, get noticed. Though I’m raking leaves, I’m alive, my mind a bubbling stream.

Meditate

I’m still working on this. Health authorities increasingly cite research, indicating a host of benefits in its alleviating stress and consequent anxiety, those salient features of modern life. Ironically, letting go or emptying ourselves leads to replenishment of awareness as we become absorbed in our breathing rhythms and are reduced to the sensory essentials. You can meditate anywhere with no equipment needed. Yoga, especially hatha yoga because of its slow pace and easy postures, affords a wonderful way to purge life’s pollutants and yield not only relaxation, but a reduced heart rate, lower blood pressure, better sleep, and improved moods.

Read

Become an omnivorous devourer of books, quality magazines and journals. Reading stimulates and prompts new conversations. But choose wisely. Some books are meant to be read; others, to be chewed; some, to be spat out. Some magazines, pulp publications devoted to stardom and gossip, are better left in the rack.

React

Reacting is fundamental to achieving improved awareness. When you read, go to movies, converse with others, see or listen to the news, ask questions, make associations, think about the validity of underlying assumptions, reign in generalizations. Be wary of too much TV. It breeds passivity, dulls the senses, makes the mind lazy, steals time for better things. Socrates wisely tells us that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Don’t be a sponge. Be a hose.

Change your routine

Waking or driving, do you take the same route to work or school? Try a different one.

Always eating at the same restaurants? Go for adventure. At home, why not try that new recipe?

Always watching the big three: football, basketball, baseball? Why not take a peek at soccer, lacrosse, or hockey?

I think you get my meaning. Routine dulls the senses. Hey, it happens in relationships, too. Take heed!

Only the rich get to see Europe

I had promised my sister-in-law, ailing in Germany, that my wife and I would be visiting her next June. That may not be possible.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I checked into Orbitz this morning and discovered the cheapest fare was $902 with United/Continental. Wait! It gets better. That’s just the airfare. Add taxes, $617.19, and you’re looking at $1,519.19 per person. In other words, the taxes are two thirds the actual fare. I think that’s outrageous.

I decided to find out why the high taxes. It’s the EU countries that are doing this. Scrapped for cash to finance their deficit welfare-state budgets, they’re looking everywhere. Tourists don’t vote. Voila! Well, and I think I’m not alone, I’ll vote with my feet.

Have they no clue they’re busting their own economies? No more flotillas of Americans and Canadians. Already, you can hear the screams of the European travel industry, not to mention airlines. So far, to no avail.

It’s amazing. I can book a trip from Lexington, KY, all the way to gorgeous Hawaii for just 754 rt, taxes included.

What a mess Europe’s gotten itself into. For decades since WWII, they’ve pretty much thought they had a free lunch, given their generous government outlays. Did they really think Disney World would go on forever? As is, they’ve got this heavy value added tax on virtually everything you buy, their touted free medical care is escalating in cost, and all of this while cutting their defense spending, already meager, by 50% in some countries. What a milk toast ally!

They don’t work as hard as Americans. Most retire 30 years and out. Vacations average 6 weeks, versus two for Americans, many of them not taking any vacation.

What’s awful is that their sorry mess could plunge all of us on this side of the pond into recession again. But what do you do about people who riot in the streets whenever austerity measures are adopted?

And there’s a warning in all of this for America to get its own financial house in order to avoid becoming a version of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland. My own state of Ky is nearly 8 billion dollars delinquent in funding pensions for its public employees, including teachers.

Republicans, cutting spending without revenue increases through higher taxation won’t get the job done.

Democrats, increasing taxes without meaningful cuts in spending only delays our day of reckoning.

Better book that trip to Hawaii–don’t I wish–before Congress fancies imitating our European brethren and we all go down the tubes.

They, too are family

The other day I came upon this picture of an emaciated Somali child. Unfortunately, we can multiply his number into the hundreds of thousands across the East Horn of Africa (Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti). A drought like this hasn’t been seen in 60 years. In Somalia, conflict waged by al Shabab, an extremist Islamist group, has added to the tragedy, killing aid workers and kidnapping would-be refugees desperately fleeing for help. We can’t do much about the gratuitous evil nature sometimes wreaks, but worse than the horrors of earthquake, tsunami, and drought is Man’s savagery across his recorded history. Voltaire once suggested we kill more in our wars than all the natural disasters, and he missed the two World Wars of the previous century. Ironically, throughout history much of this bloodshed has born the imprint of religion that frequently breeds intolerance. Reading history and following current events, I am distrustful of all euphorias, claiming to have found the the person or way. As Robert Brault puts it, “I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.”

In Kenya, there is now a huge refugee camp that’s arisen, a tent city sheltering perhaps 500,000 refugees who cross into Kenya at about 1000 a day. Some have walked for 15-days, only to reach the final 50-mile stretch frequented by bandits, often fellow Somalis, who rob and rape. The UN says that up to 750,000 may die in this drought. That’s sufficient horror in itself.

In the West, I think the vast majority of us don’t think about places like Africa and its teeming poverty, pickpocket governments, roving militants and, now, famine. Africa seems far away and the people very different from ourselves. It’s convenient to think this way, a way of walking across the street rather than encountering people who, shed of the cultural baggage, mirror ourselves with names, families and the same desire for love, security, and happiness. Geography is often accidental. By chance, we drew the lucky cards, born in the West, where even our have-nots are rich by comparison.

I went to India years ago, and not with a tour. It changed my life. Again, these were people like ourselves. Compassion doesn’t hide behind a fence. Drawn from empathy, the putting on another’s shoes, it overflows geography. Everyone should visit a third world country. Better, go as a helper. Nothing comparable helps us catch the vision: to see ourselves as one.

Do the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes?

I was rummaging through the local county paper yesterday, sent to me free as a subscription  enticement, when I came across a guest editorial arguing that the “wealthy deserve to keep more than a hunk of their profits.”  This, of course, goes against the grain for the Obama folks and the occupy movement, who feel that the 1.1 percent, as they put it, isn’t paying its fair share in taxes.
 
The columnist argued that the IRS’ own figures show that the top 10 percent actually paid $721 billion of  the more than $1 trillion the government collected in federal income taxes in 2008.  In short, the rich really do pay taxes, or about two dollars out of every three collected. More than $392 billion of this came from the top 1 percent.  In fact, just 0.2 percent of the population pays 21 percent of the taxes.  As for the rest of us, some 47 percent pay no tax, while collecting many social benefits.
 
Do the poor pay taxes?
 
Is there any truth to the writer’s claim?  If you’re talking about federal taxes, the answer is, yes.  But this doesn’t get to the bottom line.  Virtually everybody pays taxes.  For example, there’s the payroll tax of 6.1 percent on the initial $106, 800 of wages (temporally reduced) for Social Security and 1.45 percent on all wages for Medicare. Then there are state and local taxes, e. g., sales, income, property, gasoline, utilities, etc.  Everybody, including the poor, the disabled, and the retired pays taxes.  According to the Tax Foundation, the 2008 earnings average for the bottom 50 percent, was just $15,300.  In short, these wage earners didn’t earn enough to pay federal taxes, though they paid other taxes at the same tax rates.  Broken down proportionally,  the poor pay more per capita than the rich, with the one exception of Vermont.  At this point, I’d urge everybody to read Barbara Ehrenreich’s monumental expose,  Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America.
 
Do the rich pay their fair share?
 
Initially it would appear they do.  One percent of  the top wage earners paid 38% of  the total income tax in 2008, the last year figures were available (published at the IRS online site).  Left out is the fact that federal tax revenues aren’t solely collected from income taxes.  Payroll taxes for Social Security, Medicare, and even unemployment insurance, are paid by the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers.  This is because the payroll tax for Social Security is restricted to a maximum $106,800, after which there’s no tax.  Bill Gates and Steve Forbes pay the same amount as you and I.  Although they’re subject to paying a means tax on their social security income when they retire, so are you and I.  Don’t even get me started!
 
Is there a growing tax gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent?
 
Yes!  When Reagan took office in 1980, the marginal tax rate (the tax rate paid on the top earned income)  stood at 70%.  By 1987, he reduced it to 50 percent  Under George Bush, the rate was reduced to 35 percent.  Since 1980, the average income of the bottom 90%, adjusted for inflation, has increased to $303, or 1 percent.  In the meantime, the 1 percent did a considerably better, doubling their income to $1.1 million.
 
And how goes it for the corporate sector?
 

According to IRS figures, 2008, corporate profits rose 12 percent since 2000, even though corporate taxes show an 8 percent decline.  This discrepancy is occurring  because of increasing loopholes or transferring of profits to offshore hideaways such as the Cayman Islands.  Currently, corporations have stashed an estimated 2 trillion in cash holdings, unwilling to reinvest in a volatile economy.  I’m not saying this is wrong in itself.  The spending of the average American family is down as well and for the same reasons.  Spending is the key catalyst to market regeneration. 
The point is, many of the banks were bailed out in 2008 to a tune of nearly a trillion.  They seem to have a short memory, and it hasn’t decreased either their zeal to close on beleaguered mortgages or award themselves bonuses in the millions while enjoying unparalleled tax breaks.  At the moment, bonus outlays exceed pre-recession levels, this in a down economy that has produced incalculable suffering for many Americans unable to afford their homes, buy health care, or find meaningful work.  JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon recently took home a $19 million dollar bonus, enough to keep food on the table.  While not all CEOs receive this kind of payout, the vast majority of CEOs continue to enjoy perks with the consent of their shareholders.  Forbes reports that investors at only 36 companies out of 2250 voted against pay increases for their CEOs.  Meanwhile, new data shows that nearly 25% of us now lives in poverty. 
Have the occupiers got it wrong?  Not by a long shot!

Idle tears

Recently I came again upon Tennyson’s moving poem, “Tears, Idle Tears,” resonant with the poet’s regret for days and friends reduced to memory; spent days that can never be renewed.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart of things, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

I think we’ve all known, even the toughest among us, those days when we really don’t want to laugh, we feel out-of-sorts, and not necessarily because things haven’t gone well. We’re just not fun to be around. How does it happen, this sudden change in mood, like a hovering cloud, casting its shadow? We may even weep.

Tears have a way of bringing-us in touch with the cavernous depths of our deeper selves; as such, they’re often messengers of our need to clarify, to discern the wheat from the chaff, to both forfeit and embrace. Tears give opportunity for a tabula rasa, or clean slate.

As Merle Shain put it, “Unexpected emotions are a good way to figure out what hurts us. Tempers that flare about unimportant things, tears that appear at odd times when we don’t expect them, tell us what we feel even when we aren’t telling ourselves (Hearts That We Broke Long Ago).

Many think it unseemly to weep, especially men who frequently dismiss it as weakness. In a world of poverty, war and disease, I wish we’d weep more. In war, especially, we often lose our capacity to feel, which is to say we forfeit our humanity. At the personal level, we lose our potential to discern our best self.

I have always liked the sensitive ones for their defining gentleness, limitless compassion, abounding insight; their ability to weep for another’s pain or unjust fate.

They are the lucky ones. They are the noble ones.

Life’s law of averages

I had just been finishing up Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, inspired by the recent movie by the same name, when I came across his Bill James quote that startled me in its confirmation of my own lifelong observations on the ups and downs of human fortune:

Every form of strength covers one weakness and creates another, and therefore every form of strength is also a form of weakness and every weakness a strength. The balance of strategies always favors the team which is behind. Psychology tends to pull the winners down and push the losers upwards.

I said startled because it triggered this vivid flashback to Dr. Maddox’s wonderful eye-opening college class in American Literature Survey way back in the mid-sixties. We had been reading American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, classic essays like Nature, The Over Soul, and The American Scholar. Now it was Compensation, which became my abiding favorite. It’s not often you read or hear something years back and remember it keenly.

Emerson, who grieved the loss of his 8-year old son, wrote the essay to assuage his sorrow–the idea that life is volatile and not always under our control. Still, a kind of karma exists, or law of averages governs, as a baseball fan might say. With talent comes weakness. (I think of the Achilles heel syndrome; in baseball, the phenomenon of an extended winning streak, followed paradoxically by a slump; the latter notoriously true of batters as well.) As Emerson put it, “Everything has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax.” Emerson’s law of compensation likewise offers solace that good can succeed pain.

I know Emerson’s philosophy can be simplistic, pilfering happiness by denying the reality of nature’s gratuitous wrongs and man’s calculated evil. The law of compensation I would rephrase as the law of balance, and it operates individually and universally in the cosmic roll of the dice. No ethical or religious import applies here. Again, as in baseball, the law of averages governs. We can gauge how long a pitcher will be effective in a game; determine player potential; measure the worth of successful stolen bases vs. times tossed out; the contribution of walks vs. hits, etc.

We employ the law of averages pervasively in economics. We know that market economies are cyclic; in insurance circles, that life expectancy can be measured, governing the issuance and policy cost; that even in the history arena, nations like mountains rise and fall.

This notion of balance has helped me come to terms with much of life’s sheer unfairness, what Rabbi Kushner compassionately tries to address in his popular When Bad Things Happen to Good People

I don’t worry, however. about the ethics of it. I know bad things happen, whether by way of tsunami or bullet; accident or malice. I also know good things happen, too, sometimes quite unexpectedly, call it hitting the lottery, if you will: getting the job, the promotion, the girl; the escape from the near accident.

Not always is luck with us. Sometimes you just get tossed from the game. Hopefully, the good proves more frequent than the bad.

On a trip to India many years ago I got into this fabulous discussion with an older man dressed entirely in white, including the famous Nehru hat. At one point, I used the phrase, “problem of evil” to which he replied, “Problem of evil? What problem of evil? Do we not have day and night? Heat and cold? Summer and winter?

Suddenly I understood. Life has its oppositions, as the biblical writer of Ecclesiastes so eloquently testifies in his summation of life’s polarities. There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to sow and a time to reap, etc.

Our task is to do what we can, pushing the odds in our favor when we can. Bill James probably didn’t have Emerson or the Ecclesiastes writer in mind, let alone even read them, but it matters little. His words ring with the truth of human experience: “Every form of strength covers one weakness and creates another.”

This law of reciprocal balance offers both admonition and expectancy: that we take nothing for granted and that tomorrow can be better than today.

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Let’s do away with Columbus Day

I know this past Monday marked the observance of Columbus Day, but traditionally it’s been October 12 in keeping with Columbus’ historic landfall in the New World in 1492. Like many of you, I grew up on the Columbus lore, right down to his three ships, the Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta.

I’ve been thinking about the guy a lot in the last 24-hours after watching Thom Hartmann’s TV talk show on Monday. Hartmann, by the way, is America’s foremost talk host for the political left, or the progressives as they increasingly call themselves. Hartmann doesn’t like Columbus one bit. In fact, he calls Columbus a pathological killer guilty of genocide. Is this simply another revisionist history from the Left? What are the facts about this man anyway?

The truth is we may never know, as a lot of embellishment has occurred over the 500 years since his “discovery” of America. While we grew up learning the names of his ships, we now know we got the names wrong on two of them.

Nor was Columbus the first European to discover the Western hemisphere. The viking Leif Ericson voyaged here centuries earlier. There may have been others still earlier such as the Irish voyager, St. Brendhan of Clonfert.

And Columbus didn’t prove the world was round either. Virtually all the intelligentsia of the time held to a spherical view. It wasn’t his point anyway. His motive was to line his pockets by offering an alternative trade route. Land routes to China and India via the Middle East were proving hazardous, given Arab marauders.

Anyway, he was considerably off in charting the distance to India. Originally, he had offered his services to Portugal, but they glimpsed an easier route around the horn of Africa, and they were right.

At an earlier point in his life, he lived as a pirate, plundering Moor ships.

We’ve grown-up, thinking he was Italian. Evidence, however, may point to Corsica. As for his parents, it’s conceivable they were converted Jews.

We don’t even know where Columbus is buried, since his remains have been moved several times.

But what do we know about the man? I wish he could stay on my hero list in this age of debunking, but I’m afraid he’s grown suspect in the light of recent, more astute scholarship, which you can pursue in any good history on Haiti or in books by Madison Smart Bell.

It’s clear from his journal he was a devout Christian Catholic, but this didn’t keep him from looking upon the Indians on Hispaniola as slave fodder. By he way, it was the intervention of a priest arguing the potential for converts that finally won Ferdinand and Isabella’s ’s consent for the undertaking. On arriving on Hispaniola, he was met by friendly Taino; on his second visit, however, Columbus and his men took nearly 2000 of them captive. In the words of one of his literate crew, Miguel Cuneo,

when our caravels were to leave for Spain, we gathered one thousand six hundred male and female persons f those Indians, and these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495. For those who remained, we let iet be know (to the Spaniards who manned the island’s fort) in the vicinity that anyone who wanted take some of them could do so, to the amount desired, which was done.

In fairness to Columbus, however, Hartmann is over-the-top in alleging genocide. Yes, the Indians were decimated and disappeared from Hispaniola within 50 years, but due to diseases such as small pox, against which they lacked immunity. (Ironically, in one of fate’s paybacks, they introduced the Europeans to syphilis.)

On the other hand, Columbus and his brothers were ruthless exploiters, plundering the wealth of indigenous peoples for their own gain like so many subsequent colonists the world over. With his brothers, he established a family dynasty and was despised. Several assassination attempts were made, and ultimately he would be sent back to Spain in chains, though later released.

Moreover, Columbus set into motion the subsequent arrival of the cruel conquistadors in the New World.

All of this marks a horrendous chapter in the history of the Americas, and in own nation’s participation in its legacy by way of our Indian wars.

Some argue that Columbus was simply a man of his time and culture. I don’t buy into this easy acceptance of crimes against humanity. Neither do the just in all generations, however few, in their vehement protest against the criminality of a culture.

This is one holiday we should do away with.