Category: Reflections

The lost art of letter writing

I don’t know about you, but I miss the old-fashioned letter, the seeming casualty of email in our time of computer dominance. I miss both the sending and receiving. My father was a faithful letter writer and if we kids didn’t answer, we got hell.

Though I appreciate their virtually instant delivery devoid of stamps and mailboxes, there is just something too impersonal about emails, To me, they seem modern substitutes for the telegram. Abounding in brevity, they tend to forfeit depth and perhaps sincerity. The idea is to get things said hurriedly.

Letter writing has a long history, and some of the best letters exhibit art in their beauty and substance. I remember how struck I was with this when I first came upon the letters exchanged between Vincent van Gogh and his brother, Theo. Voltaire was one of the most prolific letter writers, writing thousands of them in several languages on virtually every subject. In America, Jefferson stands in the forefront, writing some 26,000 letters.

Letters can be illuminating. I think of those letter writers I’m familiar with: Keats, Dickinson. Woolf, and Joyce. We’d be at a substantial loss in understanding their motivation and the context of their art without those letters. Do today’s great thinkers and artists still write letters? I wouldn’t bet on it. The loss is incalculable. Emails, in any event, usually get deleted or, worse-case scenario, get lost in computer crashes.

Letter-writing gave us opportunity to be pianists with words and sentences, playing out their chords rhythmically and infinitely.

Letter writing brought us into deeper knowledge of ourselves as well as each other. In so many ways, writing has always been a means to self-discovery, the finding in reflection of who we are and what we really want to say.

In one of life’s telling ironies, technology now threatens the email with even greater minimization of written discourse in the increasing popularity of texting to get the job done. Messaging may even be making in-roads on telephone calls. Again, the idea is brevity.

In my teaching years, I would always counsel that when you really care about someone, you write a letter. I hold to that counsel still.

New Year reflections

Can you believe another year is gone?

And quite a year it was. I lost three of my heroes: Kevorkian, Jobs, and Hitchens.

Key world happenings included the Arab Spring, setting in motion regime change in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, in turn, inspiring protest in Syria and Russia and leading to the founding of our own Occupy Wall Street movement.

European economies experienced unprecedented strains, with Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and, now, Italy facing fiscal default, with potential to affect global markets and renew recession.

In Washington, Congress saw itself embroiled in unprecedented partisan conflict over government spending and revenue sources.

In December, the last American combat troops withdrew from Iraq, bringing an end to America’s nearly decade long war.

Some things didn’t change at all:

In the Middle East, Iran, by all informed accounts, continued efforts to achieve a nuclear bomb.

Here at home, our economy remained enmeshed in stagnancy, with markets weak and millions unemployed.

At the personal level, we had a joyful event in the marriage of Matthew, my step-son, to Meredith in a lovely September wedding at a horse ranch, with the foothills of Sonoma County, CA, as its backdrop.

Last January I began this blog. Now, nearly, a year later, it has somehow survived.

I hope good things happened for each of you as well.

For me, entering into a new year always has this spooky edge to it, given our inability to know its events, doubtless a good thing. The idea should be to live with the flexibility of trees, flowing with rather than against life’s winds. We can just maybe push a new year in a direction more to our liking, choosing to act rather than react.

To be sure, 2012 will see another presidential election, dooming us to ubiquitous sound bites orchestrated to manipulate voter trust. As I write, I foresee a third political party, led by Ron Paul; the nomination of Romney to oppose Obama; and a decisive victory for the latter. The health of our economy will prove the defining issue.

I think most of us are likely to view the passage of a year with mixed feelings. Hopefully, we came out on top in 2011.

A new year, on the other hand, can help rekindle our hope it will conclude better than the one we relinquish. If humans possess any nobility, it includes its capacity for buoyancy, the fervency to take resolve to somehow compensate for the previous year’s follies of external events and our own inertia. After all, life is hardly all fate and conspiracy, caprice and malice, or simply a throw of the dice.

The poet Tennyson expresses my sentiments, and I think yours, in these memorable lines from In Memoriam. I wish each of you the New Year’s best.

–rj

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

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No, I will not give-up my computer!

I smile every time I read something about simplifying our lives, conveyed online, usually on a blog, harping on Zen or the like, yet dependent on high tech. That’s not to say I don’t admire writer Wendell Berry, who eschews TV and computers, writes everything out, since he practices a consistency I admire, though choose not to practice. I may admire Thoreau, but I’m not for building a cabin in the woods or begging the Amish to show me in. I will not give up my computer.

Can you imagine a world without the computer? Actually, I can’t do it, as it’s become a staple of my daily life with its untold benefits. I think it’s probably the same for you. This holiday season, for example, we’ve been able to Skype with our children on the West Coast, and for free. I don’t know about you, but we did our Christmas shopping all online. Smiles come to our faces every time we drive past our biggest mall with its jammed parking.

If we want quick info, there’s Google or Wikipedia.

Want to find a good movie, starting times, prices, you’ve got it.

Want to stick around the house instead, then you can stream that movie right into your computer, iPad, or television.

Get a reserved seat for a concert or sports event? No problem.

Like a good book or music album? At your finger tips.

Like to travel and at the best fares? Good lodging? Car rentals? Try Orbitz, Expedia and the like, or go direct to the airlines themselves.

Me, I’m a news buff and draw on my iPad for my daily fix.

Computers are also changing the way we learn, and present in virtually every school. Computers are making college accessible for millions, especially working adults. As a retired educator, I know this area first hand, having taught several courses online.

When it comes to having a bit of fun, it’s exciting to play scrabble, chess or bridge with others across the globe; or in your privacy, play mind games such as Sudoku, WhirlyWords, and Ladder; do crossword puzzles, or for just sheer fun, have a go at Angry Birds. No need for guilt here about wasted time. Medicine increasingly tells us that playing these games keeps our minds young, our reflexes nimble, and may even ward off dementia.

Some say computers are lessening our social contact. Unfounded in my book, what with Facebook and Twitter, along with countless chat sites offering a wide range of interests. I ride an MP3 500 Piaggio scooter. Sure enough, there’s a forum dedicated to my scooter. Believe me, I couldn’t ride without it.

Time Magazine has just selected “The Protestor” as its annual person of the year for 2011, a year that began with the Arab Spring and the subsequent collapse of entrenched tyrannies in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; incipient revolts in Syria and in Russia; and in our own country, the groundswell of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. All of these dynamic, history shaping movements have been, and are, energized by the Internet’s capacity to publicize and coordinate universally in mega seconds. Isolating us? I think not.

I like languages and I’m crazy about Spanish. With a computer, I can now listen, read, and share one of the world’s most spoken languages.

And let me not forget my being able to blog with you guys out there across the globe, a number of you responding via Twitter. By the way, my largest number of readers next to Americans, happens to be those of you in Russia, followed by Germany. The Internet makes this togetherness possible, and I rejoice in my new brothers and sisters.

If you asked me what I thought was the greatest of tech break-throughs, I’d be hard-pressed. They all build on each other: Gutenberg’s movable press, widening reader access; the steam engine, ushering in the Industrial Revolution and leading to railroads and, eventually, to cars and trucks; the typewriter, electric light, radio, telephone, TV. Don’t forget the airplane. How about the miracle of movies, today’s primary art form? The list goes on. I can’t really say which has been the most ground-breaking, but I do know computers, enhanced by the World Wide Web and its HTML linkage, has made all of us players in the modern landscape.

Gotta go now. Got emails to send out!

–rj

America’s assault on walking

Whatever happened to the good old activity known as walking? Doubtless the ease in using a car to get where you want to go is its principal cause. Add to the list, our addiction to television. According to the American Time Use Survey (June 2011), the average American watches TV nearly three hours a day. It’s just so much easier after working all day to adopt the couch-potato route.

I don’t know about you, but in America we walk so seldom that sometimes I have this paranoia about it akin to the way I feel when I bring cloth bags to the grocery store as a gesture to keep things green. Hey, am I the only guy doing this thing? What am I, some kind of goon? Hey, stop your staring!

But, then, walking can prove quite hazardous these days. Here in Lexington, Ky, we’ve lost several pedestrians to cars over the last several weeks, people simply trying to cross the street. Guess you don’t have to ride a motorcycle to invite danger. Looking for an adrenal rush? Can’t beat walking! In 2009, The National Highway Traffic Safety Board reported that some 4200 of our fellow citizens were bumpered into eternity, another 59,000 injured.

Doctors nonetheless frequently recommend walking as part of the health regimen, say 30-minutes five days a week minimum; and, oh, emphasis on vigorous. Strolling just doesn’t cut it. Damn! Why do they have to weigh me down with still more guilt?

I don’t know how it goes in Europe these days, but I have memories as a student there walking with European friends distances measured in hours, not miles. How far is it to Magdalen (an Oxford college). Answer: about a half-hour. I so hope the American paralysis, already widespread over there, has exempted walking.

It wasn’t like this for me as a kid. In Philly, we didn’t have this yellow funnel showing up at your door. I walked to school day-in and day-out over a mile going and coming in all kinds of weather and through all kinds of danger (not necessarily of bumper mode). I was hit by a car once, but I take responsibility for that, a 10-year old jay-walking kid not looking both ways.

On days off from school, I mean days I took off as a hookey addicted kid, I’d easily rack up miles that would test the limits of any pedometer, scouting the sites of the downtown city. On several occasions, I’d even venture walking over the Ben Franklin Bridge to Camden, NJ, no mean feat as any Philadelphian can tell you.

Just maybe behind our growing aversion to walking lies a value shift, or preference for insularity over the great outdoors. Gone are the porches that once fronted American homes. Today we prefer our stadiums domed, our shopping in sequestered malls. We ride around in our cars with windows rolled-up. Blame it on the rise of air conditioning, if you will, but the plain fact is we venture out less.

Even our children. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to gulp down breakfast and get to the good stuff like playing stick ball against factory facades in urban streets. Nowadays, more often than not, many of us have to oust our kids from their rooms, away from keyboards, video games, and cell phones, thrusting them outside. On a summer day, our streets resonate a Stephen King air of eery quiet in their absence of children. Where are the Jonnys and Susys riding their bikes, running down the street, playing hop scotch or jumping rope? Where have all the children gone? Long, long time ago.

For the few of us still mustering that evening walk, the same solemn emptiness as evening huddles in street corridors and, everywhere, a blue light emanating from house windows.

Our aversion to walking extends even to what wilderness remains. We want roads. We want even more of them so we can look out from our metal cages, while enjoying the boon of instrument panels that can nullify outdoor temperatures. As adults, we take our insularity with us in an umbilical cord of laptop, smart phone, and iPad. Our assault on walking is simply a facet of our declaring war on the great outdoors. We want our gadgets with us in our tents.

Now the wilderness is one thing. What we really prefer are parking lots. The idea is to park close and keep the motor running.

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.