Bill Pickett's Blog

Four American Families: A History

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 14:50:00 +0000

For the past 25 plus years, I have been collecting and organizing information on my ancestors. Nine years ago, I began writing narratives based on that information. COVID provided me with the impetus and opportunity to expand those narratives and gather them into a book. I completed that work by end of 2022 and began work on preparing it for printing. Finally, it is completed and is available for purchase either as a paperback ($15.57) or an e-book (.99).

This 239 page book tells the stories of the Pickett, Muir, Platt, and Campbell families. These families came to America at different times and under different circumstances. Two were here before the Revolutionary War and had significant financial resources. Another came from Scotland and Ireland and struggled to establish itself. The history of the fourth is murky and can only be traced to the early 19th Century. In different ways, all four ended up in Kansas City, both Missouri and Kansas.

These narratives work backwards from my four grandparents and trace the ancestors along the male line. Souurces include family documents and photographs, a wonderful 19th Century family history, DNA analysis, maps, legal documents, scholarly articles, census records, newspaper articles, interviews and family stories...many of which are true. There are unsolved mysteries, a lurid murder and trail, and plenty of local history. The text is annotated and extensively illustrated.

The narratives also focus on Ruth Marie Platt and William Lee Pickett, Sr., a daughter and a son of the above grandparents, whose marraiage in 1934 created my family of origin.

Thee book is available on Lulu.com and is only acessible thrrough the following direct links:

Paperback: https://www.lulu.com/shop/william-pickett/four-american-families/paperback/product-e94de9.html?page=1&pageSize=4

E-book: https://www.lulu.com/shop/william-pickett/four-american-families/ebook/product-ppe9mp.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Eulogy for Thomas M. McFadden 1935-2022

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 16:58:00 +0000

Tom McFadden

Tom McFadden was my closest friend. His passing on December 6 left me, his family and his many friends bereft of a remarkable human being. As his request, his wife Monica, also a dear friend, asked me to make some remarks at his memorial service on December 17.

You can click here to download a copy of the eulogy which you can read below.

Thomas More McFadden 1935-2022

Eulogy delivered by William Pickett

December 17, 2022

Good morning. I'm Bill Pickett, and I'm the person who had the good sense to hire Tom at St. John Fisher College as our chief academic officer. I had the pleasure of working with him for the five years he was there. Then like everybody else, when Tom was a part of your life, he never let go. He's been a part of my life ever since that time.

When Tom asked me to do this..well he didn’t quite asked me, exactly. It was a typical kind of McFadden] move with a little charm and some humor. So, this was a telephone conversation the week before he died. At the time there seemed like there might have been a path to a treatment that he was considering. And he said to me--Marilyn and I were both on the phone with him--he said, "Now, Bill, I want you to do me a favor. Will you try and keep my eulogy to under 50 minutes? Maybe 45 if you can't quite fit it in?"

I, of course, did what you just did. I laughed. I said, "Well, Tom, it's going to be hard to do, but I'll give it a go." And I kind of knew in the back of my head, and certainly once we got off the phone, I realized what had just happened. Maybe he didn't know he was going to die so soon, but he was beginning to make preparations. And he had asked me, in his own way, to give his eulogy. So, here I am.

Irenaeus was a second century bishop who had a line that is often translated as, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." And that's Tom. I mean, he fully inhabited who he was. He fully inhabited his abilities and skills and his relationships. He was, as David said and Ed said, fully present in whatever the moment was. He was fully alive. He was a student, a scholar, a teacher, a priest, an educational leader. And if that weren't enough, he was, from a young age, a gifted athlete. He played baseball and had a lifelong love for the game. Tennis, golf, sailing. I didn't know about the tennis until I read David's very fine obituary, which if you haven't read, you should. I learned some things about Tom. It's such a well-done job.

Eventually you get to the point where you can't participate, but Tom was a great fan of any kind of athletic endeavor, great fan of baseball from an early age, a lifelong ... Well, I thought he was a lifelong Dodgers fan, but turned out he was not because as a young boy--this is almost unbelievable, growing up in Brooklyn--he decided that he needed to decide who he was going to root for among baseball teams by figuring out which baseball team had the most Catholics. And to this day, I'm not quite sure how he figured that out. Something to do with players wearing scapulars. I don't know how this all worked, but he determined that it was the St. Louis Cardinals. So, as a young boy, he was a Cardinal fan. He got over that and became a Dodgers' fan, of course. And then, when they left and scampered out to Los Angeles, there he was back home with the Dodgers.

He was also a fan of his children and especially his grandchildren. You couldn't spend any time with Tom and not know what the four of them were up to, what their academic achievements were, what their athletics, their professional. He always had that information, and he was always so proud of them. He attended as many of the athletic events as he could, and thankfully, many of them were close enough to drive to, and he really enjoyed that. And somehow, he got the nickname on the fields at Mercyhurst after games of being Grandpa Jello Shot. I'm a little confused as to how that happened. It had something to do with celebrations at mid field, and Tom participated as he did. I'm not sure he completely was down with the Jello shots, but [inaudible 00:05:22] he wasn't having a scotch in the evening.

Tom was a man of many accomplishments, as we've heard, but people aren't really remembered that much for their accomplishments. Any of us can have a list of things we've done, institutions we've served, all of that. What we remember about people is how they did it, who they were as a person. And Tom, from my time working with him and being with him as a friend, did his work and did his accomplishments with a grace. He was graceful in these settings. It was the grace of a natural athlete, the one who can stand relaxed, crack jokes, talk about other things even though there's an impending task because he knows he has the confidence in his own ability. And when that task comes, he'll be able to perform.

Now sometimes, that confidence as a natural athlete put Tom in some perilous conditions. He and young David, younger than David is now, found themselves on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii because they, after all, were skilled at being in the surf off the Jersey Shore. So, they wanted to go see what all of this big wave stuff was about on the North Shore. And as they entered the water, they noticed somehow that the lifeguard towers were much, much higher than the ones on the Jersey shore. But they didn't take time to figure out why that would be the case until as they're out chest deep in the water, they hear a claxon go off and an announcement that, in fact, from one of those high towers, they have now spotted a 40-foot wave that was headed their way. And anyone who wasn't very experienced should get the hell out of the water immediately, which they did thankfully, as we know.

But Tom did have that grace of a natural athlete. And another thing about him that I know my wife, Marilyn, always treasured, and I know you do too, it was particularly evident during Covid when we had to cover our face, was that Tom's eyes were always smiling eyes. There was something alive and comfortable and humorous in the twinkling of those eyes that came through to people as they related to him. Now, for someone who was as comfortable doing all the things he did, a lot of people didn't realize how hard he worked because that kind of easiness. It's like the story about the dock, very calm on the surface, underneath paddling like hell.

And one example of that is his work on accreditation. Something that most of us don't thankfully have anything to do with, but if you have had anything to do with accreditation, you know it requires a close reading of some of the worst writing that exists in the world. It's not graceful writing, and it's about material that is absolutely dull, but essential to the accreditation process. And Tom, even after he left California, as president of a college when you're expected to do that, he continued doing accreditation work and was actually called in to handle some very difficult cases. Things like, "Should we pull the accreditation from a college or not?" That's a very serious step. And Tom was called in to work on that team, "Should we grant accreditation to new institutions?" One in California. And he worked in Kurdistan, I think working with some institutions there.

He was trusted by his fellow professionals, and they knew how hard he worked. The only other person who knows how hard he worked is Monica, who would see him constantly in the den, in the study, reading these reports, taking careful notes, and then working to write those to send back those reports and going out visits. And most people may be outside of the higher ed network, don't know this, but you don't get paid for that work. That's all volunteer work. That's commitment to the enterprise of higher education, to which Tom was very committed, and he worked so hard at that.

But if I had to say one thing about Tom, it would be he was a great teammate. He really was. He loved nothing more than being part of a group with a common goal. And everybody wanted to be on a team with Tom, or if you had a team, you wanted Tom to be on. When I interviewed him in 1987, I was in that position, and I knew that I wanted Tom McFadden to bring himself and his person into the team that was responsible for the college. And he had an impact well beyond what you might think he would've had at the college. And it still stands as the best decision I ever made in my career.

But you wanted to be on a team with Tom because he found joy in whatever the work was, no matter how unpleasant or how difficult. He found a sense of joy in that. And he was always affirming other team members. I don't think I ever heard him be critical. He was affirming of other people and their attempts and the ways in which they were trying to help the enterprise. And he found humor in all the appropriate places, especially himself.

So, towards the end of Tom's first year at Fisher, he came up with this idea that there should be a baseball game between administrators and faculty at St. John Fisher College and St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia from whence he had come. And he found out that you could, without paying any fee, use Abner Doubleday Field in Cooperstown because they want baseball being played here. I'm not sure they wanted our kind of baseball. So, the only requirements were two, you had to have team uniforms, and you had to pay these two old umpires because you needed to have an umpire. You just couldn't go off and make calls yourself. And if any of you have remembered the film “League of Their Own, at the very end of that, there's a reunion game in Cooperstown, and if you ever see that, you'll see those same two umpires. Those are the guys who umpired our games.

Each team got a ringer. And so, my son, Brendan, who was going into his junior at Aquinas was our ringer because God knows we needed somebody to play catcher. That was way beyond any of our capabilities. And the other team had a ringer, as well. So, we had our ringer, and turns out we only really had one pitcher, Thomas More McFadden. We decided we probably needed to get together for a practice. So, we did. We gathered on a field, and as my son, Brendan, told me this week when I was telling him, he said, "You know, Dad, none of you guys had any business being on baseball field." But we had to practice batting. So, we had Tom throw batting practice during our practice, which meant that the next day his arm was absolutely dead. So, we go down to Cooperstown without a pitcher. Although he throws the ball, it was not a pretty picture. So, we lost both games. We came from behind and stayed behind.

But while we were there playing, looking kind of like two baseball teams, people would come in. People who are visiting Cooperstown would come into the stadium. You know, you kind of go in, peek around, see what's going on. And so, there were a group of Japanese tourists who come into the stadium, and they're all over, and they're taking pictures of us playing baseball, and they're going to go back home and talk about how at the birthplace of baseball, they saw these two teams slugging it out on their Field of Dreams. Tom loved telling that tale because of what it said about him and his ability to find humor in what we were doing. It was so ridiculous what we were doing. We never did it again. Tom couldn't recruit anyone to do it again. But as I said before, once you were part of a team with Tom, he just never let you go. He stayed in touch with people from every organization he had been a part of over his entire life. It's just amazing.

Some of us, maybe most of us don't do that, but Tom did. He did. And when Tom asked you, "How are you doing?" it wasn't the way I asked, "Hey, how you doing?" It was, "No, how are you doing?" And he really wanted to know, and he listened to what you said, and because of that, you really told him how you were doing right then at that moment. I've had conversations with Tom, such a close friend of mine, that I've never had with anyone else because he listened and was present and listened to you. And because you no matter what you said, you didn't put anything at risk in terms of Tom's love and affection for you. You weren't risking anything. And no matter how things were going, people always felt that Tom had a profound sense of happiness about him, no matter what.

Some people set high bars for friendship but Tom didn't. He saw humanity in every person, and he was inherently interested in anyone that he came across. Tom and I had breakfast every Saturday, once they got back to Rochester, every Saturday for years until Covid and then, his illness began to make that impossible, or to interfere with it, at least. And these were not quick breakfasts. No, they went on at least two hours, and we talk about all sorts of things. I mean everything. And the image that came to my mind, and it came to Tom's, those of you that ever saw The Muppet Show, the two old guys in the balcony looking down at what's going on in the stage, a stage they had been on. But they weren't on that stage anymore. They were up here, and they were outraged that the stupidity and they couldn't explain was going on in the world. And then, maybe not like those two guys, soon we would find things that would generate hope for the future in the country, politics, higher education. And there was so much about today's world that neither one of us really understood. I used to explain a lot of technical things to Tom, but I couldn't explain TikTok. I mean, I can't. I know what it is, but why? I don't know. So, we would throw up our hands just like those old guys.

We all miss Tom. My life, your lives, all of our lives are less light-filled, less bright, certainly less filled with good news. We miss him. And what I'm about to say is probably theologically suspect, but I'm sure Ed will appreciate it. And I know Tom would.

We miss Tom, but I think Tom misses us. Tom's life was never a one-way street, a street laid out to get efficiently from point A to point B. It was never that kind of street. I like to think, to imagine, it was like those streets in Brooklyn where he grew up. It was filled with traffic and vehicles of all types, stick ball games, jump rope, hopscotch, street vendors, people gathered on stoops, children, parents, teenagers, and seniors. And then,, Tom walked through those streets, stopping to engage with groups, sharing his life with each one and receiving back from them that energy that came from that interchange. This past week, we've been reading about fusion. Some of you may have been reading about that. I mean, I don't really understand what's going on, but I know that they've reached something called ignition, which was for a very brief second, the energy that they bombarded this BB with created more energy than that total energy used. And I thought, "That's Tom." That's Tom and his relationship with people. His energy created something in us and our relationship that generated even more more energy, more affection, more sharing.

Until Covid came, we would go to a lot of movies, the four of us, Monica and Tom and Marilyn and I. Tom and I had very different aesthetics when it came to movies. I always accused Tom, not accused him, well yeah, of being way too Aristotelian. He wanted a straight narrative line. And at the end of that, he wanted to find a message, some deeper meaning. And I was a little more post-modern. I just said, "Tom, sometimes there isn't any meaning. It's just stuff is happening, and you just got to engage with it. Maybe meaning emerges, maybe not." Never did get him convinced to go see the Lobster or the Swiss Army Man, if anybody remembers that. But we did go to see The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, with Nicholas Cage. And Tom admitted, he said, "I really enjoyed that." And he said, "I wouldn't have gone to see it unless it was your week to pick the movie." So, I felt great victory there. We would go to these movies, and Marilyn knows I always want to get there before the trailers start because I want to see what's coming. Right? And so we go, and the four of us, in the nice comfortable recliners now, would be watching the trailers. And at the end of that, the three of them would go like this. And I'd be down on the end saying, "Oh, I think this is pretty good." I never did get around to trying to convince him to see “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

But I think now Tom would say, "Well, Bill, if what you described is a movie about my life, what's the meaning? What does it all amount to when you get to the end?" And I think it's pretty simple. For Tom, the most important thing in life was human relationships. And they were too important to be left to chance. You needed to step out and be proactive and contact people and be in touch with people. Don't let it go because a relationship can die and wither away. And then your life becomes less full. And the life of people you would be in touch with would be less full. So, if each one of us, going forward, just would do that a little bit more than we've done or than we think is comfortable for us, we'll do great honor to the memory of this remarkable human being who was father, husband, grandfather, uncle, and my closest friend.

Why" Black Lives Matter" matters to me.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 13:08:00 +0000

Black Lives Matter began in July 2013 as a hashtag #blacklivesmatter in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2011. It gained national attention in 2014 with the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City. While there is a national organization of sorts, BLM is best described as a “decentralized network of activists with no formal hierarchy.” (Wikipedia) For me and many others, however, the phrase is a simple expression of a powerful truth: All human lives matter. When I see or hear these words, I think of the Old Testament prophets speaking out against injustice. I think of the Psalms crying out for mercy and justice.

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear grief in my soul,
have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy prevail over me? Psalm 13

Since I believe this, I am forced to speak out when there is clear evidence that some lives do not matter.

How we treat our neighbor is not a zero-sum game. It is a false proposition that we can only value some lives at the expense of other lives. When I hear people respond to BLM by asking about “blue lives,” or “white lives,” or “unborn lives,” I think, “That’s exactly right.” All lives matter and so too should black lives, not instead of other lives but just like other lives. Black lives should matter just as much as white lives but, in fact, they do not.

Like many white people I was disposed to view the disturbing string of deaths of black citizens as isolated incidents each of which seemed to have extenuating circumstances. In other words I was disposed toward the status quo. All that changed with the homicide of George Floyd. The video of an officer sworn to protect and serve casually killing a citizen who posed no threat to himself, the officer or bystanders lives vividly and disturbingly in my memory. When the EMT crew arrived, they dragged Floyd’s lifeless body as though he was roadkill. They acted with the assurance and arrogance of impunity. Because of a 17-year-old girl and her cell phone, the entire world has been able to witness this tragic interaction between police and citizen in a country which most of the world sees as a beacon of liberty. I was horrified at what I saw, not because it has not happened before but because this time it was blatant, out in the open, and undeniable. I do not want this done in my name, not ever.

I also realized that this had happened too often in the past several years to view it as an isolated incident; there is a systemic problem that goes well beyond individual police officers. I want to believe that most police officers would condemn this and other instances of excessive force but this abuse of power may be more common than we know. Unfortunately, the lack of comprehensive and transparent information on police use of force makes it difficult to know for sure. We do know that as the interaction between militarized police and demonstrators increased, the acts of violence also increased. Things got worse, not better.

I believe this is not just about individual police officers who have acted illegally. We ask those sworn to serve and protect us to do so in a society awash with guns of all kinds so that even a simple traffic stop can erupt into deadly gunfire. We ask them to serve in a society with endemic racism which has become more visible in the last three years. We ask them to protect us in a society riven by polarizing political differences that our political leaders have exacerbated rather than diminished. We ask them to provide public safety in a society in which social and economic inequality has increased and predictably resulted in social and health dysfunctions. We must begin to deal with these systemic problems.

The fact that George Floyd was a black man has underscored the racial issues involved in policing. As a white man, I have never experienced what it is like to view police as dangerous protagonists. However, I have no doubt that what my black friends say about their experience is valid and true. I have never had to have “the talk” with my children but if I or they were black, it would be irresponsible not to. This is a deeply sad situation.

All this has happened during a pandemic which has impacted black and brown people and communities more severely than white people and communities. Clearly income and economic inequality drives much of this impact, but that inequality is also driven by racism against people of color. To be poor is one thing but to be poor because of your race is a death sentence.

All this matters to me because I try to live my life as a follower of Jesus Christ. He accepted and welcomed all, no matter their circumstances. He was particularly concerned about those on the margins, the “nobodies,” the excluded, the different. His Kingdom was for all and still is. His earliest followers lived their lives as expressions of that fundamental equality. No one was to count more than any other. All lives mattered to him but he gave special attention to those whose lives the “powers that be” devalued. So, I believe, must we.

George Edward Pickett: Is Fort Pickett a good idea?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 18:29:00 +0000

Fort Pickett was established in 1942 as Camp Pickett. It has been in more or less continuous use since then. It was initially home to the 79th Infantry Division but has served many purposes and army units since then. It is currently used by Virginia National Guard and Air Guard units. It was named for George Edward Pickett. The fort's website tells us that "the name was chosen to honor Richmond, Virginia native Major General George E. Pickett, whose ill-fated charge at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania during the US Civil War, holds a unique place in the history of warfare."

Almost 80 years later does it make sense to name a military facility after a general who led troops against the United States and its soldiers? I am distantly related to General Pickett and I want to tell you something about his background and my thinking on the issue. I will conclude that I think it was a bad idea in 1942 and an even worse one today.

My reasoning has nothing to do with the fact that he and his family were owners of enslaved people. This is a sad and disturbing fact about my ancestors on my father's side of the family. Even the branch of the family that left Virginia for Kentucky and then Missouri, my home state, brought enslaved persons with them. They came to Missouri precisely because it was a state in which slavery was permitted through the Missouri Compromise of 1820. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers owned enslaved persons. Whether or not the abominable practice of chattel slavery ought to cancel out the achievements of these men is a different question from the one I will discuss here.

George Edward Pickett graduated last in his class from Westpoint and served in the United States Army until the outbreak of the Civil War. He resigned his commission and joined the Confederate Army. He quickly rose to the rank of Major General, a divisional commander, and demonstrated over and over again that he was well beyond his competence. He is best known for the final decisive battle at Gettysburg that bears his name, Pickett's Charge. Known as the High Watermark of the Confederacy, it marked the turning point in the war and the beginning of the end for the Army of Virginia. The Fort Pickett website delicately describes this as holding a "unique place in the history of warfare."

As a boy and young man growing up in Missouri, I remember my Pickett relatives talking about "The General" with the pride that comes from a family relationship. Pickett's wife and widow, La Salle (Sally) Corbell Pickett, was a prolific though minor novelist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her work was part of the Lost Cause literature. "According to Lost Cause writers, the Civil War did not start because of slavery, secession was a constitutional right, Confederate generals were knightly heroes, and the South only lost because it was outmanned and outgunned." (Wikipedia)

From "The Heart of a
Soldier"

I read the first of her twelve books, "Pickett and His Men" (1899) and believed her depiction of George as possessing "the greatest capacity for happiness and such dauntless courage and self-control that, to all appearances, he could as cheerfully and buoyantly steer his way over the angry, menacing, tumultuous surges of life as over the waves that glide in tranquil smoothness and sparkle in the sunlight of a calm, clear sky." Her depiction of George as "gallant and graceful as a knight of chivalry riding to a tournament" was the epitome of the Lost Cause romanticization of the rebellion to retain the practice of chattel slavery in the United States.

I'm sure you heard that "history is written by the winners." However, in terms of the American imagination about the Civil War, this was reversed. It was the South's version that most of the country bought into. It even found its way into mainstream history books which taught that the war wasn't about slavery but states rights and economics. That narrative conveniently never pointed out that the rebel states wanted to retain the rights to own other human beings which was essential to the economics of the South. In his biography of General Grant, Ron Chernow quotes General James Longstreet--Robert E. Lee's "old warhorse"--"I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery."

There were enough statements by the leadership of the Confederacy to establish the goal of the rebellion. It was indisputably to maintain the institution of chattel slavery. The Vice-President of the Confederate States, Alexander Stephens, put the matter plainly. The Confederacy was based on “…the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.”

Writing in the Atlantic Ta-Nihis Coates observes the obvious: "Thus in 1861, when the Civil War began, the Union did not face a peaceful Southern society wanting to be left alone. It faced an aggressive power, a Genosha, an entire society based on the bondage of a third of its residents, with dreams of expanding its fields of the bondage further South. It faced the dream of a vast American empire of slavery. In January of 1861, three months before the Civil War commenced, Florida secessionists articulated the position directly:

'At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property. This party, now soon to take possession of the powers of the Government, is sectional, irresponsible to us, and driven on by an infuriated fanatical madness that defies all opposition, must inevitably destroy every vestige or right growing out of property in slaves.'"

Frederick Douglass

The Lost Cause literature sought to obfuscate the obvious. It presented a genteel southern life with cultured gentlemen, beautiful women, obedient children and happy--yes, HAPPY--enslaved persons. Slavery had elevated them from their natural circumstances into a world of care and concern by generous and thoughtful owners. This was the view of slavery perpetuated by that literature. Other literature, generally not read by the white population, presented a different picture. Read the three autobiographies of Frederick Douglass or Solomon Northrup's memoir "12 Years a Slave" to gain a true picture of what chattel slavery was really like. The image of George E. Pickett that I experienced in Missouri came from that Southern propaganda.

So let's be clear. Upon his graduation from West Point and his commissioning, Pickett took an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. He decided to join the rebellion of the Confederacy and then served in the resulting war that took 750,000 American lives. Eight percent of all white males age 13 through 43 died including a devastating 18 percent of that age group in the South. This war to preserve the right to own other human beings was not a benign effort to preserve a genteel way of life. It was an assault on justice in defense of white supremacy and Pickett was a leader in that effort.

All of that is horrid enough but there is more. After the disaster of Gettysburg, Pickett was eventually placed in command of the Department of North Carolina. When the war began, the available trained North Carolina troops were sent to Virginia to protect Richmond, the Confederate capital. Home guard units were organized in North Carolina but little attention was paid to defending against Union invasions. In 1862 the Union forces attacked and took control of New Bern, an important port on the Neuse River with direct access to the Atlantic. From the beginning of the war, many North Carolinians held Union sympathies and did not support succession. Many of these enlisted in home guard units rather than join the Confederate Army. As the recruiting pressure mounted even to impressment gangs, they presented themselves to Union forces and enlisted. In almost all cases, they were never part of the Confederate army.

In 1864 with his division still recovering from its mauling at Cemetary Ridge, Pickett was ordered to retake New Berne. As with most of his endeavors in the Civil War, he and his troops were not successful. Most historians lay the blame at his failure to prepare, organize and properly deploy his troops. However, he did capture more than 200 Union soldiers from a relief column that the Confederates surprised. Included in these 200 were 22 Union soldiers whom Pickett ordered hanged, claiming they were Confederate Army deserters. Both Pickett and General Robert E. Lee advocated executions for deserters to stem the hemorrhaging of their troops, particularly in the last two years of the war. While a few of those executed might have come from Confederate units, most were North Carolinians with Union sentiments who joined the Union units in their area. When the war ended, Pickett was under investigation for this action as a war crime. He and his family fled to Montreal in fear of those charges. He returned to the United States only when granted a promise of non-prosecution at the urging of General Grant, a classmate at West Point and fellow soldier during the Mexican War.

Full disclosure: I am related to Pickett. We share a common ancestor: William Pickett (1700-1766.) He was my 5th Great Grandfather and George's Great Grandfather. This makes us second cousins four times removed. A slight but verified relationship. In light of the foregoing information, it makes little sense to me to continue with the name Fort Pickett. It perpetuates an idea that somehow the Civil War wasn't that bad and that those who led it are worthy of emulation. I think George Edward Pickett V summed up my position:

“I support removal of all statues commemorating and celebrating the Southern Confederates in public locations. They should be permanently removed and either destroyed or sunk in the ocean for a fishing/diving reef: the Graveyard of the Confederacy.

“As to the statues on battlefields, such as Gettysburg, where both Union and Confederate soldiers are represented, it is my opinion that they serve a valid historical purpose in that context, where people can learn about history and the terrible consequences when people refuse to treat all people as equal.”

I think the same applies to all ten bases named for Confederate generals. While some of them may have been better military leaders than Pickett, they still fought against the United States to protect the institution of slavery. We should not memorialize these men and set them as examples to others. All ten are located in states that rebelled. Their existence perpetuates a view of the Civil War as it was depicted in the Lost Cause. Statues of these and other Confederate leaders that dot the landscape of the southern United States are not only part of that interpretation effort but also reflect the white supremacy politics of the era of their erection: the second rise of the Klu Klux Klan in the early 20th Century and the opposition to full civil rights for black Americans in the sixties and seventies. These monuments were not historical statements about the Civil War but contemporary statements to the descendants of enslaved persons that they were still under the heel of the Old South and its politics of enslavement.

We all need to remember the history of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation and the fight against equality and justice. This is not best done by heroic statues honoring those who engaged in and supported those efforts. It is best done by honest and complete interpretative material in battlegrounds, museums, school curricula and celebrations. The Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte is a fine example of how this can be done. In a statement reflecting on nationwide reaction to the murder of George Floyd, the head of the museum wrote these words:

None of us at Levine Museum pretends to have the answer, but what we do know is that healing begins with history. If you do not understand the history that got us to this place, then you will not make a difference. If you don’t know the history, then you are not talking about the right things or addressing the right questions.
Levine Museum of the New South connects the past with the present to realize the promises of a New South – a place of justice and equity and opportunity for all. We use history to build community.

Indeed, let us use history to build community.

Take a pledge to reduce racial polarization

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 18:00:00 +0000

I am asking each of you to take a pledge to reduce racial polarization. I believe that this or something very similar is the only way to begin to address the issues that have become so apparent to the white majority in the past three months. I want to share my thoughts about why this is the time for action. The text of the pledge is at the end of this blog post. If you prefer to listen to a podcast, click here.

We find ourselves at a critical point in our national history. Through a concurrence of events--COVID-19, the chilling, cold-blooded murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the hunting down and murdering of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, the police assault with a no-knock warrant that ended with the bullet-ridden body of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and the militarized police response to peaceful protests particularly in our nation's capital--Americans seem to have come, finally, to a recognition of the damage done to us all by the 400-year tradition of racism in America.

Demonstrations have taken place in more than 60 countries on all continents except Antarctica. In the United States, the demonstrations are unprecedented in scope and size. Since May 26 there have been more than 4,700 demonstrations. The estimate of the number of participants ranges from 15 to 26 million. Self-reported participation may well be exaggerated but if the number is only 7 to 13 million it dwarfs the number of participants in the civil rights marches during the sixties. According to the NY Times demonstration database and the Crowd Counting

Consortium database, "more than 40 percent of counties in the United States — at least 1,360 — have had a protest. Unlike past Black Lives Matter protests, nearly 95 percent of counties that had a protest recently are majority white, and nearly three-quarters of the counties are more than 75 percent white." Mainline organizations almost immediately lent their support in both words and actions. The National Football League and NASCAR are two of the most significant. Political action has already taken place in New York state and city, Minneapolis and several other jurisdictions.

It is not overblown to say that a tipping point has been reached. People of all races and socioeconomic levels have heard something and they don't like it. They are demanding their government at all levels take action to change. If governmental leaders don't hear them or ignore them, they will change those leaders. And this is as it should be.

But let's be honest. Legal and administrative changes are important and necessary but they are not sufficient. Didn't we learn that lesson with Brown v the Topeka Board of Education? We can declare separate but equal to be unconstitutional but unless people's hearts change, the problem will remain and even get worse. White flight from the urban core cities left behind school systems effectively segregated and chronically underfunded to educate a lower socioeconomic clientele. Hearts don't change because laws change; hearts change through relationships.

The changes in the legal status of LGBTQ Americans followed changes in attitudes of people toward people whose sexual orientation was different than theirs. As more people discovered that family members, valued colleagues, friends, and even celebrities were lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender, they realized that their sexual orientation didn't define them. The opposition to the constitutional and legal rights of LGBTQ people evaporated in a remarkably short time. Unless, of course, race entered the equation. White people began to accept white LGBTQ people. That acceptance came through relationships. The same can happen with race relations but it has to come through personal relationships. I know in my own case my heart has been changed from the relationships I had with people who are different from me in sexual orientation and in race. If the only people I ever had meaningful relationships with were white, straight males and females, I would not be the person I am today.

I know that many of you understand the damage that systemic racism has done to America and Americans--all Americans. I know that many of you have taken action in your private and public lives to work for change and justice. These

recent events have an unsettling message for us: no matter how much we have done, it has not been enough. We have to do more if we hope to come close to realizing the ideals on which America was founded: That all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That's why I am renewing my commitment to a Pledge to Reduce Racial Polarization in My Neighborhood and Community and I invite you to do the same. This pledge is adapted from a pledge developed and promoted by the Urban League of Rochester in 1992. (I was privileged to serve as a board member and chair of the membership committee of the Rochester Urban League.) The structural and procedural changes needed in this moment are beyond any individual's scope of responsibility. We can and should pressure our elected officials to enact needed reforms in program and funding. But we--each of us--need to take action in our own sphere. I encourage each of us to commit to this pledge. I think it is particularly important to reach out to people of color in our neighborhoods, social organizations, workplaces, and other networks and to have honest conversations about race in America. For me as a white male, this means more listening and less talking. This is how hearts are changed.

Below is a copy of the pledge. You can click here to download a PDF of the pledge.

Pledge to Reduce Racial Polarization in my Neighborhood and Community

I will not engage in racial polarization and will intervene when others do.
I will identify and implement specific actions to improve race relations in my neighborhood and community.
I will reach out to neighbors, friends or colleagues of a different race and have honest conversations about race based on our personal experiences.
I will publicize my pledge to my network of family, friends and colleagues and bring it to the attention of organizations of which I am a part.

I want to live in a community where people

·         Accept all cultural, religious and racial heritages rather than fighting them.
·         Use language that unites rather than divides.
·         Reach out to neighbors rather than avoid those who are different.
·         Learn about others who appear different rather than believe and accept stereotypes.
·         Organize, educate and encourage others to eliminate all forms of racism rather than just live with it.
·         Object to racial jokes rather than listen to or laugh at them.
·         Speak out against racism rather than passively observe it.
·         Refuse to use any form of racially derogatory language rather than accept it as part of my vocabulary.

William L Pickett Henrietta NY July 3, 2020

wpickett41@gmail.com 585-732-1832

This an adaptation of a pledge developed by the Urban League of Rochester NY in 1992.

What I have learned during the pandemic - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 16:46:00 +0000

This is the second of two posts on what I learned during the pandemic. You can read about the first five in Part 1 of this blog post.

6. Racism continues to be a central issue for America

W. E. B. Du Bois

In 1903 W. E. B. DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.” COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis remind all of us that this statement is also true of 21st Century America. The infection and death rates of Covid-19 are disproportionally high for black and brown communities. This is not because of any inherent characteristics of these communities and people but because of the disproportionate rate of poverty of these groups. The pandemic has brought into shocking visibility the lethal combination of racism and poverty in this country. In biology a specimen is often stained with dye so the structure and features show up more clearly under a microscope. The pandemic has been such a dye for the social, economic and health disparities in our country.

The murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer was captured in a chilling video. It has left indelible impressions in our minds and hearts. We white people can see unmistakably what our fellow black and brown citizens have been telling us for decades, even centuries. We now can understand that all those previous instances of black people dying at the hands of police were not exaggerations. In fact, all those separate incidents are not separate at all but expressions of systemic issues with our policing agencies reflecting the systemic issues in our communities. This time, perhaps, enough is enough.

7. National leadership is abominable while state leaders shine.

I have developed a new appreciation for the leadership at state and local levels. Given the disarray at the federal level, I along with most others have turned to our local and state leaders for information and guidance as we live during this pandemic. I am fortunate to live in New York where Governor Cuomo has risen to the occasion. His daily news briefings have been consistent, coherent, and based on information. He has also been more self-disclosive than I have ever experienced him. His reflections on his family and his personal feelings have helped me connect with him as a person not just as a political official. This has been repeated in many other states as governors have stepped into the leadership void. I have also experienced this at the local county level. Governors and county executives care about us in ways that the national leadership does not appear to.

8. Solitude is not all bad.

It turns out that I have never been a big fan of constant social interaction. My professional life was spent interacting with people constantly. However, my leisure activities were all solitary: photography (capturing, developing and printing images), reading, writing, hiking, walking/running, and web site development. With the pandemic, I have more time to do these very things and do not miss social interaction as much as others.

9. I have upped my cooking game with Ninja Foodi Deluxe

View this post on Instagram

Jambalaya fresh out of the Ninja Foodi. Tasted as good as it looks.

A post shared by Bill Pickett (@pickett.bill) on May 24, 2020 at 3:40pm PDT

Typically, I cook dinner. I got into that habit when I had retired, and Marilyn was still working. It was a way of lightening her load a bit but also allowed me to set the time for dinner rather than have it vary depending on Marilyn. I like to eat between 6 and 6:30 and cooking, which I like, was not any price at all to pay to ensure that. Once Marilyn retired, she began to do some more cooking but I probably did more than she did. My meals have been pretty basic and prepared quickly. With the Ninja Foodi Deluxe, I have been doing more complicated recipes that often include sauces. So far I have done the following: several salmon dinners with tasty sauces, braised short ribs, jambalaya, pineapple upside-down cake, berry upside-down cake, seared scallops and pearled couscous, chicken and fried rice, chicken and dirty rice and more. So far I am having a lot of fun and Marilyn is enjoying the food. Come to think of it, this reminds me of a certain fence getting whitewashed in Hannibal Missouri.

10. My sleep has improved

In some ways, this has been the most surprising. Ove a year ago I decided to focus on getting at least seven and a half hours of sleep a night. That means that I would need to be in bed for at least eight and a half hours since I typically am awake about an hour a night, according to Fitbit. The key is going to bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time. Before the pandemic, that would work for most nights but if we went out for the evening, I was rarely able to get back home in time to hit my target of between nine and nine-thirty. Now I can because we are not going out. If I go to bed between nine and nine-thirty and get up around six, I can routinely get my goal. In addition, the Fitbit gives me all sorts of information on the quality of that sleep. This encourages me to stick to my routine so I get a “good grade” in the morning when I sync with the app.

11. Zoom, zoom

I have joined most Americans and have spent a lot of time on Zoom. It was novel at first but now has settled into a routine. I have regularly scheduled zoom calls with friends, my siblings, and my children. The pandemic has meant that the interaction has increased with my siblings and children. Plus interacting with both as groups has added an element that would otherwise never be the case. The conversations cover all sorts of topics. There is natural storytelling and reminiscing about our times together. But we also talk about current issues. It is a constant pleasure for me to listen to my children expressing their views about what is going on in their worlds. Each of the seven is a fully developed individual with their own ideas, experiences and families. They don't necessarily agree on issues but they express affection and respect for their brothers and sisters.

I have learned or come to an awareness of many other things as well but these are the ones that are the most significant.

What I have learned during the pandemic - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 16:44:00 +0000

In the over three months that I have restricted my life because of the pandemic, I have learned a lot about myself and others. Here are the first five things I learned. There are another six in Part 2 of this blog.

1. The clown car national administration is incapable of keeping us safe.

This was not that much of a surprise, but still. Specifically I mean the top political leadership. This ramshackle collection of politically correct top leadership is supported by a honeycomb of acting deputies. None of these are particularly adept at their jobs but they understand their audience and their clientele. And it’s not us! They are in their jobs because they tell Trump what he wants to hear. Ideologically most of them are hell-bent on reducing or destroying the civilian agencies they lead. Of course, it made no sense to them to continue the work of the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. This office was established after the Ebola epidemic of 2014 to marshal the resources of the federal government to be ready for the next epidemic or pandemic. It was as if the captain of the Titanic was hobnobbing with wealthy passengers with no one on the bridge. “We haven’t hit an iceberg yet and besides this ship is unsinkable.”

When we did hit the inevitable iceberg, no one was in charge. Valuable time was lost while rookies tried to understand what was going on. They were getting briefed by “experts”—the very people they had spent three years belittling and undercutting. Once they understood the danger, they lost even more time trying to convince the captain to leave the lights and adulation of the ballroom and focus on a clear and present danger. Once he began to grasp what had happened and what was about to happen, he began to make sure that no one blamed him. Famously, he finally said that “I am not responsible for anything.” Stirring words as we began to sink into the frigid North Atlantic. If he had been the captain of the Titanic, we all know that he would not have gone down with his ship but would have found a way to bully his way into a lifeboat and leave most of us behind.

It is sad that we have a president who is incapable of leadership, especially sad when we need leadership desperately. More about that later.

2. Epidemiology

I have learned a lot about epidemiology. Here is a list of the terms I now know but of which I had been unaware two months ago.

SARS CoV 2: The name of the virus that is spreading throughout the world. Full name: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
COVID-19: The disease caused by SARS CoV-2
R₀: Infection rate: How many people single infected person in turn infects. “Epidemiological studies estimate each infection results in 1.4 to 3.9 new ones when no members of the community are immune and no preventive measures are taken.” (Wikipedia) Public health measures (social distancing, masks, and handwashing) attempt to reduce R₀ to less than 1.
Semi log graph: Not sure I actually understand this but it gives a better picture of the rate of infection.
Ventilators: Breathing machines required when a patient cannot provide enough oxygen on his or her own.
Face masks: These are worn to protect others by reducing the free flow of water particles with normal breathing and especially coughing.
N95: These facemasks are worn by health care workers and other front line workers to protect themselves from infected people.
PPE: Personal protective equipment
Social distancing: Staying at least six feet away from other people except those with whom you share a home.
Herd immunity: a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through vaccination or previous infections, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune. It appears that 60-70 percent of a population is required for herd immunity which effectively stops the spread of the infection. As of June 16, the CDC reports 2.1 million cases or less than one percent of U. S. population. With the public health measures in place to flatten the curve, it will take years rather than months to reach herd immunity.
Vaccine: A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease. While there has been extensive research to develop a vaccine against other coronaviruses—SARS and MERS—none of these were able to successfully emerge from clinical trials and gain licensing. The World Health Organization said early on that it would take at least 18 months to have a vaccine ready for deployment. That, of course, assumes that some of those under development will be successful in the clinical trials required for licensing. 18 months would be a record given that the average for vaccine development is more like four years. This also leaves unanswered how one or possibly two injections will be made available to the global population of 7.8 billion.

3. Being outdoors is better no matter the weather.

View this post on Instagram

The birds are here but where are the people? #socialdistancing #rochesterspriny

A post shared by Bill Pickett (@pickett.bill) on Mar 23, 2020 at 10:36am PDT

In the early 1970s, I began regular aerobic exercises. The exact exercise has varied: running, rope jumping and race walking. More recently I have been walking four miles a day in an average week at a rapid but not racewalking pace. During pleasant weather, I would walk outside, sometimes substituting hiking or biking for walking. If the weather was inclement, I would walk indoors at our local recreation center, YMCA or mall. The definition of inclement was beginning to expand to include light rain or even coolish weather. Once the pandemic hit us, the rec center and the YMCA closed and I ventured outside to walk on days when I would normally go inside. Guess what? I found that being outdoors was great even if it seemed a little cool even cold or was raining a bit. There was something about being in the fresh air especially feeling a breeze that really turns on my endorphins. Now as the Y and the rec center are beginning to open, I find them much less appealing. Whenever possible I try to do my walking outside as long as the footing is safe.

4. Exercise bands are not as good as machines at the YMCA.

Weight lifting was the other part of my regular workouts. Nothing extreme but just enough to keep what muscles I had functioning. Our YMCA has a full set of E-Gym equipment and I quickly became addicted to them. I made sure that I worked out on the machines three times a week. Their technology ensures I am doing the exercise correctly and gradually increases the weight as I get stronger. The real kicker was an estimate of my biological age based on muscle strength. I was able to get mine down to 50! You can see why I was addicted. That is all in the past and I probably won’t be using them for some months more. Two months into the shutdown, I bought a set of exercise bands and began to use them but it as just not the same. I keep asking them what my biological age is but get no response. Without that kind of re-enforcement, I just can’t tolerate the boredom of using them.

5. There is even more to watch on TV than I thought.

Other than the occasional national network news, we haven’t watched network television for months. Before we left for Florida, I got a great deal from Spectrum and we decided to try cable again. We added HBO Go to our other services: Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix. We can also stream PBS shows. We were avid moviegoers and will be again but television and streaming are more than enough for us right now. We are using a Roku so no wires. Here are some of the shows we have been watching, both series and movies:

a. A Hidden Life
b. Tiger King
c. Dead to Me
d. Succession
e. Westworld
f. My Brilliant Friend
g. Veep
h. Silicon Valley
i. Ozark
j. Bosch
k. Unorthodox

I learned a lot more during the pandemic and you can read about those in Part 2 of this blog.

George Floyd

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 19:17:00 +0000

The tragedy of the homicide of George Floyd has triggered demonstrations throughout the United States and indeed the world. There have been similar moments during my 80 years of life but somehow this time it feels different. We may be witnessing the beginning of a significant change in American life. I hope so. I think most Americans feel that enough is enough and now is the time to begin to make changes. Not just in policing but in other areas as well. Today I heard Governor Cuomo say essentially that. This is the time to "carpe momentum," to seize the moment.

Marilyn and I spent the weekend working out our feelings and ideas about this moment. We did not feel comfortable going to any demonstration so we decided to express our view directly to our elected officials on the town, county, state and federal levels. We did not waste paper or postage sending anything to the President which is sad but realistic. Here is that letter.

As an about to be 80-year-old male and 69-year-old female, we have not been participating in the demonstrations occasioned by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. However, we do not want our absence from these demonstrations to silence our voices. And so we write to you as one of our elected officials to ask you, what actions are you going to take to address four issues: police violence, guns, racism and economic inequality?

The video of an officer sworn to protect and serve almost casually killing a citizen who posed no threat to himself, the officer or bystanders lives vividly and disturbingly in our memories. When the EMT crew arrived, they dragged Floyd’s lifeless body as though he was roadkill. They acted with the assurance and arrogance of impunity. Because of a 17-year-old girl and her cell phone, the entire world has been able to witness this tragic interaction between police and citizen in a country which most of the world sees as a beacon of liberty. We were horrified at what we saw, not because it has not happened before but because this time it was blatant, out in the open, and undeniable. We do not want this done in our name, not ever.

We also know that this has happened too often in the past several years to view it as an isolated incident; there is a systemic problem that goes well beyond individual police officers. We want to believe that most police officers would condemn this and other instances of excessive force but this abuse of power may be more common than we know. Unfortunately, the lack of comprehensive and transparent information on police use of force makes it difficult to know for sure. We do know that as the interaction between militarized police and demonstrators increased, the acts of violence also increased and have made things worse, not better.

We believe this is not just about individual police officers who have acted illegally. We ask those sworn to serve and protect us to do so in a society awash with guns of all kinds so that even a simple traffic stop can erupt into deadly gun fire. We ask them to serve in a society with endemic racism which has become more visible in the last three years. We ask them to protect us in a society riven by polarizing political differences which our political leaders have exacerbated rather than diminished. We ask them to provide public safety in a society in which social and economic inequality has increased and predictably resulted in social and health disfunctions. Beyond the need for justice in the Floyd case, we must begin to deal with these systemic problems

The fact that George Floyd was a black man has underscored the racial issues involved in policing. As a white couple, we have never experienced what it is like to view police as dangerous protagonists. However, we have no doubt that what our few black friends say about their experience is valid and true. We have never had to have “the talk” with our children but if we or they were black, it would be irresponsible not to. This is a deeply sad situation.

All this has happened during a pandemic which has impacted black and brown people and communities more severely than white people and communities. Clearly income and economic inequality drives much of this impact, but that inequality is also driven by racism against people of color. To be poor is one thing but to be poor because of your race is a death sentence.

Police violence, gun ownership and control, racism and economic inequality are the foremost issues confronting our community. Our national administration is incapable of providing any leadership—let alone “mature” leadership as General Mattis termed it. As with the coronavirus, it is up to others to step forward and provide that leadership.

I ask that you publicly acknowledge these issues and describe the actions you will take to begin to address them. Please do not suggest that we need to study these issues before we begin to change things. There have been more than enough commissions and reports on these topics. Recommendations have been made but rarely has there been the follow through required to change cultures and outcomes. We ask you along with other elected officials to commit to concrete steps to begin the address these core issues.

Governor Walz of Minnesota said, “I don’t think we get another chance to fix this. I really don’t.” This time must be the last time and you must step forward to provide the leadership we all need. You will have our support in whatever way we can as you do this.

There are already initiatives underway in New York with state legislation to address some of the policing issues but more needs to be done in other areas. The governor has publicly spoken of these issues and we look forward to actions to match his words. At the federal level, Congressional Democrats have introduced legislation that will address some of the policing issues. But again, much more remains to be addressed. And simply introducing legislation, while a good step, does not change anything. We intend to keep ourselves informed about these developments and to communicate our thoughts directly to our representatives. Little or nothing has been done at the local level to recognize these issues and to respond with actions. Again we will keep ourselves informed.

I encourage you to examine your own views on these issues of police violence, guns, racism and inequality. I also encourage you to write those ideas down so you can communicate them to others. To do that, however, you will need to do more than Tweets or Facebook posts. It takes time and thought to work out your thoughts in a longer form but the exercise can help you think more clearly about what you really want to say. I encourage you not to get caught in the trap of responding to others. Focus on how you really feel and think about these issues. It will be a rewarding process even if you never share the results. But finally I encourage you to do exactly that.

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things...like characteristics of effective leaders

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 May 2020 20:19:00 +0000

This is the third of three posts on leadership. In the first, I wrote about my definition of leadership and in the second about the role of power in leadership. In this one, I will be reflecting on the characteristics of effective leaders. I defined leadership as influencing the behavior of other people in a way that fully respected their freedom and autonomy. This may not be everyone's definition but it is the one that I have concluded best describes leadership, the kind of leadership we are sorely missing today. People in formal leadership positions have the power to influence others based on the authority and prerogatives delegated to them by the organization. But everyone has personal power bases deriving from their personal characteristics and capacities. In general reliance on positional power alone is not an effective long term strategy for effective leadership.

Leadership has probably never been more important to our organizations and communities than it is today. Our ability to take collaborative action has become central to our social and economic health. Our notion of a leader as a strong individual who knows best, makes crucial decisions, and tells others what to do, is no longer consistent with our understandings of human behavior and our values of human dignity and freedom. Our society’s mistrust of authority should not be confused with a mistrust of leaders. We do and should mistrust leaders who do not respect our freedom and instead rely on authority, power, and manipulation. We do and should mistrust leaders who are more interested in their personal success rather than the common good. Our realization that leaders do not necessarily act in our best interests has made us less compliant to exercises of authority and more needful of true leadership.

Characteristics of Effective Leadership

Given these new realities, what can we say about true leaders, those who influence our behavior while fully respecting our freedom? After four years of listening to graduate students reflect on their experience and to the leaders who shared their experience with us, I came to the following conclusions about the characteristics of leaders. Think they are even more relevant today.

Leaders respect the dignity and worth of each follower

Two behaviors are key to this. First, such leaders do everything possible to reduce status differentials in groups and communities. Status based on socioeconomic factors and job titles can probably never be eliminated from human groups, but leaders must work to de-emphasize those differentials rather than emphasize them. Second, leaders must make clear by their behavior that they value and respect all followers, especially those who are less powerful, less healthy, less educated, younger, older, poorer, less skillful in communication, and different in race, language, religion, gender or sexual orientation from the majority.

No leader can successfully influence the behavior of other people unless they trust the leader. The cornerstone of that trust is the confirmed belief that the leader values each follower and is guided by what is fair to all.

Leaders are learners.

They learn from success, but they especially learn from their failures to which they freely admit. Leaders are constantly searching for the truth; they are open to reality even when that reality does not accord with their notions of what reality is or ought to be. They can see things as they are and they are not frightened of the change which that view of reality will cause in their own thinking. Leaders are not ideologues, though dictators typically are.

Leaders empower their followers.

The simplest way to understand the notion of empowerment is to appreciate that everyone in a group or community exercises leadership - not just the formal leader. This occurs in an environment in which leadership is not seen solely as something which the elites do to the rest, but in which everyone can legitimately exercise influence over others. Leaders must work diligently to create such a climate and to arrange the group or societal processes to nurture the leadership potential of all members, especially those who might be traditionally excluded from leadership. This is not as much a question of sharing power as it is of developing the capacity of each follower to influence the behavior of others. If empowerment is only seen as sharing power, one is acting out of a model of leadership that relies on coercion and manipulation because leaders can only share their positional power.

Leaders have a vision of how things can be different and better.

By definition, leaders are concerned about change. If one is trying to influence the behavior of another, one does so out of some dissatisfaction with the current or likely behavior of the other. One seeks to change that person’s behavior. The direction and content of leadership behavior must be guided by a vision of how things can be not just different but better. That vision of how things can be better must have the following characteristics. There must be an authenticity about the vision based on a clear consistency with the leader’s own personal values - not just espoused values, but values which can be clearly seen in the leader’s personal behavior. That vision must be clearly communicated in both the words and the personal behavior of the leader. That vision must be drawn from the values of the followers. That vision must draw people together around the fundamental values which give meaning to the lives of the individual members. A charismatic leader is not someone who creates a vision and then uses it to lead people, but rather someone who draws on the values and meanings of the followers to articulate a common mission that provides meaning and direction to the group.

Leaders include rather than exclude.

Ken Blanchard, the author of the One Minute Manager, has articulated the reason for inclusion by quoting from a poster in an elementary school. “None of us is as smart as all of us.” The individualism that is deep in the American DNA can lead us to think that the important contributions as made by super individuals acting alone. The reality is that important contributions are made by people working in teams. The more talented and motivated the members of the team, the more effective is the team's work. Effective leaders must facilitate the contributions of all followers. Only in this way will the group or community be able to identify its true interest and goals and be able to work effectively to achieve them.

Leaders do their homework.

Leadership is always task-specific. Leaders influence other people about specific issues, challenges, behaviors. To influence other people, therefore, leaders must do their homework on the issues or challenges. Leaders must develop and understand information on the specific issue and must be aware of the attitudes and positions of those they desire to influence. Leaders who do not do their homework often are forced to rely on raw authority and coercive power which moves them away from effective leadership.

Effective leaders must be able to deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflict

The number and rate of cultural and technological changes that characterize our world require leaders whose intellectual outlook and personal character enable them to operate effectively in a confused and conflicted situation. This ability to act in such situations communicates a sense of confidence and potency to followers.

Idealism and Pragmatism - A Necessary Combination

In short, effective leaders today can be characterized as pragmatic idealists. They must have a clear sense of values about the importance of all individuals and have the skills and understanding needed to influence the behavior of others while fully respecting their freedom. It is not enough to be a visionary. It has often been observed that there is no shortage of people with good, even revolutionary ideas; there is a shortage of people with good ideas who are able and willing to do the hard, pragmatic work of putting those ideas into practice. If I have a vision of how things ought to be, but I am not willing to engage in the work of leadership - listening, learning, empowering, taking risks, and driving relentlessly for real implementation - I will be irrelevant, a “hopeless idealist,” “a fuzzy-thinking liberal,” or worse. On the other hand, if I am skillful at implementing ideas without a clear sense of direction, I will become a “technocrat,” able to get things done, but not knowing what things to do or not do.

Conclusion

Never before in my lifetime, I have felt the lack of effective leadership in most areas of our life: church, business, nonprofit organizations, and government. As it always is, a crisis highlights the failings of leadership. As Warren Buffet has wisely observed, "You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out." In the church, it was the sexual abuse coverups. In business, it was the frauds and shady dealings leading up to the Great Recession of 2008. In the nonprofit world, it was the financial misappropriation of funds and failure to protect children. In government, it was the pathetic efforts of the clown car Trump administration to protect us from COVID-19. Americans can and do disagree on politics and government policies but surely all Americans can agree that we deserve competent and effective leadership from those who would present themselves as leaders.

I believe these characteristics of effective leadership should be the criteria by which we judge those who hold formal leadership positions:

Effective leaders

respect the dignity and worth of individuals
are constantly learning
empower followers and create a culture of leadership
have a vision of how things can be different and better and effectively communicate that vision
include rather than exclude
do their homework
effectively deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflict
must be pragmatic idealists

These are the standards of leadership to which we as employees, citizens, members, and clients have a right. As employees, members, and clients, we very often do not have a voice in the selection of those who would lead us. But in government we do. Elections and politics are our ways to have a voice in that selection. Before we look at policies and partisan issues, we need to look at the quality of the leadership candidates will provide us. This has never been more important.

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things...like leadership and power

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 May 2020 20:43:00 +0000

In the previous blog, I wrote about our current need for leadership on all levels but especially at the federal. I also defined leadership as the process of influencing others while fully respecting their freedom. While crisis situations can call for quick and decisive decisions, long term change relies on influence so that followers engage in the desired actions because they want to and not because they are ordered to do so. In this post, I will discuss "power" and its role in leadership as I have defined it.

At first glance, power seems incompatible with respecting the freedom and autonomy of followers. Often our experience with those who hold power is they use it to compel obedience. Power seems to inevitably lead to a command and control approach to leadership. That probably says more about the leaders we have experienced rather than the nature of leadership. Power is one of those words that have multiple meanings and uses. It comes from the Latin" posse" which means "to be able." Power is the energy that enables someone to exert leadership. It is the engine of leadership.

If leadership is the attempt to influence others, then power is the leader's potential for leadership. A leader has assets to use in leadership. These assets fall into two categories: positional power and personal power. Another word that is handy here is "base." Someone seeking to influence others has two power bases: positional and personal. Positional power comes from one's role in an organization. For example, if I am a Director of Marketing, I have authority delegated to that position. Also, I have power based on the relative importance and status of that function. If I report to the CEO, I have more clout than if I report to a Vice President. These are ex officio powers that an organization, group, or country grants to those who hold positions independent of the abilities and talents of the incumbent. We can assume that the best people are selected for every job and that the talents match the authority of the position. However, we have all had enough experience to realize that this is not always the case. This same analysis applies to national and local governments as well. Election to an office confers power to the incumbent quite apart from that person's actual talents and experience. We hope for the best but are often disappointed.

Positional power is a function of the authority inherent in organizations and their governing structures. Sometimes this power is limited and at other times quite expansive. It all depends on the level and importance of the position and urgency of any threat. In a democratic society, no position has absolute and unlimited power. Laws, social norms, unions and associations, organizational culture and values, professionalization, and a general distrust of authority limit the positional power of leaders.

There are four positional power bases. Coercive power is the perceived ability to force people to act in certain ways. This is the rawest form of power. It is the power of a dictator in a well established dictatorial system but it exists in all types of organizations. An order from your boss with the implied threat that you will be fired if you do not obey relies on coercive power. If you believe that the threat will be carried out, your compliance is being coerced.

Connection power is the perceived association with influential people or organizations. If I have a connection with powerful people in the organization, I carry some of their positional authority even if I do not formally do so. It was well known that there were several fiefdoms in the Ford Motor Company during the reign of Henry Ford II as chairman and CEO. Key Vice Presidents had shadow organizations of loyal operatives throughout the company. These operatives had power over others based on their relationship with their respective vice president even outside their "home" organization. Their power was a function of the power of their sponsoring vice president.

Reward power is the perceived ability to provide things people would like or need to have. These include salary, bonuses, titles, plum assignments, office location, reserved parking, expense accounts. The list is endless. If you control the allocation of these resources, you have enhanced power to influence others by rewarding the behavior you desire and withholding resources to punish behavior you do not want. Finally, legitimate power is based on the perception that it is appropriate for a leader to make decisions due to a title or position in the organization. If you are the president of an organization, the members will generally accept decisions because you are the president, independent of any other factor.

Personal power is the extent to which leaders gain the confidence and trust of those people they are attempting to influence. Unlike positional power which comes from an organization, personal power is granted by followers. As with positional power, there are several personal power bases.

Referent power is the perceived attractiveness of interacting with another person. This is obviously a highly subjective power base because it relies on personal preference. I may find someone very attractive and would enjoy spending time with him or her. However, another person might have exactly the opposite reaction. He or she would have more power to influence me than a person who just didn't like him or her. There is no particular rhyme or reason to this. It is just human preference. Social psychologists study attractiveness a lot. While there are no complete answers to this complex question, two factors appear to be key: physical attractiveness and similarity. The first has some gender differences (men can be tall but not women; men can be older but not women) but someone who is not physically attractive has less referent power. Followers appear to be more open to leadership from people with whom they can identify in some way: background, history, religion, geographic region, status, etc. Referent power can be important to a leader but it generally cannot be increased or decreased as long as honesty and openness are valued. What leaders can do, however, is to share their stories. Political leaders are typically very adept at this kind of self-disclosure.

Information power is the perceived access to or possession of useful information. This personal power base has become extremely important since the rise of the internet. While the amount of data has increased beyond measure, information has become more elusive. Raw data becomes information when meaning and significance become attached. "Actionable" is the term du jour. A person who has information who can present it in ways that everyone can understand has enhanced his or her ability to influence people. Unfortunately, the amplification of the internet works as well for false information as for true. Concocted conspiracy theories work about as well as well referenced and verified reports. People have realized that appearing to have information works as well as actually having it. A 2018 study found that only 25% of U.S. adults could correctly distinguish factual statements from personal opinion statements. Further, the study found that political affiliation had an impact on the evaluation of politically charged statements. In another study, only 9% of 15-year-olds could correctly distinguish between facts and opinions. This wholesale confusion of facts and opinion has eroded this personal power base. Your partisans agree with whatever you say which might make you feel good but actually impairs your ability to influence other people.

Expert power is the perception that the leader has relevant education, experience, and expertise. In the cacophony of information, we look for experts. We want to hear from people who have demonstrated expertise in the area of concern. Or more precisely, we used to want that. Expertise has become linked with elitism and often is rejected out of hand. We are often left with dueling experts who rail at us with more opinions than facts. This erodes our trust in each other under the guise of valuing ordinary people and common sense. In my lifetime I have experienced two presidential elections in which the obviously more qualified candidate lost the election to relatively inexperienced newcomers: George H. W. Bush and Hilary Clinton.

A leader who has a clear vision of the future and can articulate it effectively can use this as a personal power base. This power base offers hope of personal power beyond referent power. When information power and expert power bases have become weakened, a person who has an understanding of what is going on and has a clear view of the next steps toward a future that will be better has the opportunity to exert influence on people's behavior. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren exemplify this. Based on a diagnosis of the current social and economic circumstances, they articulated a future that would address these issues.

Personal power is a function of the character, intellect, and presentation of a leader, independent of his or her role in an organization. Of course, the most effective leaders will combine both a leadership role in an organization and highly cultivated personal power bases. But any individual can develop his or her power bases and thus his or her capacity for leadership. In fact, leadership is often exercised independently of the organizational position of a person. Members of a group other than the formal leader can use their referent, information, expert, and/or vision power bases to influence the behavior of others in the group. The highest performing groups are typically those whose members are all exercising leadership and not dependent on the formal leader alone. The most important task of a formal leader is to nurture and sustain the leadership capacity of every group member, to create a culture of leadership. Uncritical loyalty to the formal leader is incompatible with this approach to leadership.

An effective leader cultivates and uses as many power bases as possible. Given the challenges that formal leaders face today with the decline in public trust in institutions and authority, smart leaders will work on his or her personal power bases. So which is better: position authority or personal authority? Which power bases are better? Since most agree that leadership is situational, it all depends. But the most effective leaders develop their own personal power bases so they are not completely dependent on positional power. The more leader depends on positional authority, the more problematic. This is especially true for coercive and reward behavior. The more one relies on either of these, the more one must resort to them. As the legitimacy of coercion or the lack of rewards become evident, the ability to influence followers decays. Long term compliance is more reliably built on personal power bases.

This has been the second of three blogs about leadership. The first defined leadership and this one discussed power and its role in leadership. My third and final blog on leadership will present lessons about leadership from my own experiences of exercising leadership and teaching a graduate course in leadership.

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things...like leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 03 May 2020 19:50:00 +0000

Indeed, the time has come to talk of many things. In Alice in Wonderland, Tweedledee and Tweedledum recite The Walrus and the Carpenter to Alice. The Walrus and the Carpenter are strolling on the beach and find themselves at an oyster bed. They decide to trick the young oysters in going for a walk along the beach with them, a walk that ends with the oysters becoming dinner for the two. Midway through their walk, the Walrus says

The time has come,' the Walrus said,

To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —

Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

And whether pigs have wings.'

I am not sure what that list means but it did serve to distract the young oysters so they didn't realize what was happening to them. An old oyster let the Walrus know that he was having none of this but the young oysters fell for it. Let us not be distracted by nonsense in our national political life. This is the time to talk about leadership because our challenges with COVID-19 highlight our nation's need for leadership.

As the world, our country and my state deal with a pandemic, the elected leader of the United States presents himself in daily briefings as a man unmoored from the standards that should guide the public behavior and statements of a leader, especially in a time of crisis and threat. First, he says he has absolute and complete authority to tell the states, and by extension, everyone in the country what to do. Then within days, he declares he is not responsible for anything. He makes wild statements about improbable and even dangerous cures in a way he has honed over the years so that he takes no responsibility for the statements. His speech is filled with "people say." "I've heard some people say." "Some people think." "Maybe it's true, maybe not. We'll see." He avoids taking a clear position so he can avoid any responsibility. Or even more unsettling, he will contradict himself and then claim he never said what everyone heard and saw him say. It always provides him with deniability if things turn out bad. He can also claim he knew it before anyone else if it turns out well. He seems obsessed with success and "winning" or at least with the appearance of success and winning.

Early in his career, he made himself into a celebrity by stimulating coverage on Page Six of the New York Post, basically a gossip page. He did that by making outrageous statements about himself and others, statements he knew would be repeated in print regardless of their truth. He even impersonated a media consultant to himself who would contact reporters and talk about "The Donald" in the third person. The reporters knew who it was but repeated what he said anyway because it made such good gossip page reading.

He graduated from Page Six when he was cast in the lead role of The Apprentice and later The Celebrity Apprentice. He went from a Manhattan-based notoriety to a national one as a leading CEO and business leader, not in reality but in a reality TV show. Once he found Twitter, he was off and running. He didn't change his tactics but they were amplified beyond anyone's imagination. And now he is confronting a crisis. And this crisis is not of his own making. It is not a public relations creation to build his image or expand his reach. It certainly gathers eyeballs but these eyeballs are looking for leadership, not entertainment. What we now see is a man who has no idea of what a leader is or does other than WIN.

It is not his fault. There are plenty of people who ascend to leadership positions without much of an idea about what leadership is or how to do it. "I'm on top. I have the supreme authority in this company, organization or country. What I say, goes." And that approach often works because people have gotten very good at letting leaders think they're in charge. When a crisis arises, things can change quickly and radically.

If the crisis is dangerous and imminent and the leader is decisive and clear, people will tend to go along with whatever the leader says, even commands, at least in the short run. But if neither of those conditions is true, it's a different ball game. It won't work for the simple reason that people don't like to be told what to do. Think about it. Do you like to be told what to do? I don't like it because it makes me feel like there is something wrong with me. Does someone think I am so dumb that I need to be told what to do? And having some in authority tell us what to do makes us feel impotent and no one likes that.

What a leader needs to do is get people to do what the leader wants voluntarily, not because someone told them to but because they genuinely want to do it. If a leader wants a lasting and significant change in behavior, people need to do it themselves. Leadership is the process of influencing people's behavior while fully respecting their freedom. Let's take a look at this in more detail.

First, leadership is a process, not a one-time event. Effective leaders can often seem repetitive. They realize that not everyone hears the message the first time and some who do forget it in the turbulence of everyday lives. Key themes and actions need to be said often and repeated in different settings. That consistency can often be boring and a challenge to leaders with short attention spans or a need for immediate results. Sometimes a crisis makes it feel like leadership needs to be immediate. If we feel threatened we are more likely to want someone to take charge and tells us what to do. In a crisis, Americans typically increase their support of whoever is President. This crisis bump can be squandered if the actions and decisions of the leader are not seen as effective and in the common interest.

Second, leadership is a process of influencing, not command/obedience. Effective leadership seeks not just short term compliance but a lasting change in behavior and that lasting change in behavior is in the hands of followers, not the leader. We don't need leadership if everything is staying the same. Most of us most of the time follow a set of rules about what to do. If A happens, we do B. Everyone does B and we have always been doing B. And B works. It is the appropriate response. Sometimes, it happens that B doesn't work. We may try it over and over again but it just doesn't work. Now what? We have to change but how, when, and why? This is where leadership comes in. If everything is working out just fine, management works quite well. But adapting to change requires leadership. This is especially true when the challenge is clear to leadership but it may be murky for the rest of us.

Third, effective leadership fully respects the freedom of followers. In other words, leadership is not about coercion. Sometimes coercion is needed because of the risk or speed of a threat. But we need to clarify that it is not leadership even though the leader may be the one coercing. There is a World War II maxim, "Nobody's smarter than 100 GI's." A commander could issue orders and depending on the situation the troops would comply. But if they didn't trust the commander or found the order not in their best interest, eventually, they would figure a way around the order. They would often go to extreme lengths to let the commander think they were complying. In Vietnam, infantry patrols would go out from fortified positions. It was not unusual for them to stop when they got out of the eyesight of the commanders and decide whether they were going out on patrol or not. It was called sandbagging and eventually led to outright mutiny or combat refusal.

It almost seems self-evident that leadership requires followers. Good leadership requires good followers. If no one is following, the leader is not very effective. The ultimate test of effective leadership is the extent to which followers change their behavior in response to leadership. To some leaders, it might seem that good followers do what they are told. Good followers are obedient followers. However, it turns out that good followers don't do what they told just because someone in authority tells them to. Good followers are empowered and autonomous and make their decisions based on information, assessment, understanding, and vision. These are the very same characteristics we want in a leader. In the end, everyone one of us can exert leadership in relation to others. The best leadership culture is one in which all members are capable of leadership and exert that leadership to achieve group goals. The prime directive for those in formal leadership positions is to create and sustain a culture of leadership rather than see themselves as the only ones to lead.

But what exactly do leaders do? And how does power figure into all this? We will get into that in the next episode.

Do you take a photo or make a photo? And why it makes a difference.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 18:51:00 +0000

"Excuse me but could you take a photo of us?" How many times have you said that or had someone say it to you? I bet a lot. I know I have. A cell phone is handed over and several photos are taken--"Let me take two or three just to make sure"--and then the favor is returned. More photos. Ever wonder how many photos are taken in a typical year? Mylio is a photo organizing and management

https://focus.mylio.com/tech-today/
how-many-photos-will-be-taken-in-2020

company. It estimates that people took 1.42 trillion photos in 2019 and will take 1.56 trillion by 2022. I tried to find an image that would give an idea of just how big a trillion of anything is but nothing really worked. For example, it would take you 31,309 years to count to one trillion. See, not very helpful. It is just too big a number. No matter what we think a trillion looks like, we can agree that we are drowning in photos and the water gets deeper and wider every year.

Cell phones account for 90% of that 1.4 trillion. Digital cameras, about eight percent. Tablets, typically in the hands of grandparents, the final two percent and that is declining. Personally, I use a cell phone and two digital cameras to contribute much more than my fair share of the total.

The ubiquitous cell phone with its increasingly capable camera and storage puts a camera in almost everyone's hands. We can take a photo almost instantaneously and then share it with friends, family, and followers. Taking a photo of a luncheon entree costs practically nothing in terms of time, cost and inconvenience. Imagine doing that with a film camera! You wouldn't and no one ever did. Now, we take photos of everything, everywhere. We take photographs to memorialize people, places, experiences, and even meals. We want to remember these and share the photos with others so they can share them. Without much thought, we say we "take" a photo. But some photographers say they "make" a photo. To understand the difference and why it is important, we need to visit the history of photography.

View of the Boulevard du Temple, a daguerreotype made by

Louis Daguerre in 1838, is generally accepted as the earliest

photograph to include people. It is a view of a busy street,

but because the exposure lasted for several minutes the

moving traffic left no trace. Only the two men near the

bottom left corner, one of them apparently having his

boots polished by the other remained in one place

long enough to be visible.

Photography, as we know it, began in 1839 when Louis Daguerre introduced his photographic method, daguerreotypy. This process used a camera to capture an image on a silver-surfaced metal plate that had been fumed with iodine vapor. This created a silver iodine surface that was light-sensitive. The process required long exposure times--in the minutes--and created a positive image which is to say a unique image. Each daguerreotype was one of a kind. Since there was no negative, the image could not be reprinted.

A daguerreotype was a pristine and detailed image but the process was complicated, expensive, limited to a single image, time-consuming, and cumbersome. It was limited to a studio. Nevertheless, it was the dominant form of photography until 1851 when a wet plate process was introduced.

The collodion method was dominant between 1851 and 1871. This required an elaborate process in which glass plates were coated with collodion and then immersed in silver nitrate. This had to be done in a darkroom. The plate was placed in a light-tight holder and then inserted into the camera which had previously been set up for the specific image. The lens cap was removed for two to three seconds and the image was imprinted on the plate, still wet with the chemicals. The plate was immediately removed and taken into a dark room where the image was fixed on the plate creating a negative to be used later to print the image. All this had to be done within 15 minutes to keep the plate wet and thus light sensitive. The resulting negative was used to contact print typically on albumen paper.

Matthew Brady (left foreground)
and assistants at Petersburg 1864

This wet plate photography required a lot of equipment and a professional photographer skilled in handling the many chemicals needed in the process. Matthew Brady used this collodion process for his Civil War photography of battlefields and camp life. To operate in the field, he needed to set up a darkroom on site. This meant he had to haul equipment, chemicals, and the darkroom along with at least one assistant. Brady could not take photographs of battles in progress because of long exposure times and the realities of active battlefields. His battleground photographs are after-action and often show the bodies of the dead soldiers. And that was enough to change forever how citizens saw war and its aftermath.

Dry plate photography was a major improvement since it did not require the plates to be wet during exposure and development. Dry plates were prepared ahead of time and then developed and printed in a darkroom at a later time. Even though simpler and more flexible, dry plate photography was still the domain of professionals.

If you look back at this brief history, you can see why "taking a photograph" would hardly do the process justice. Daguerreotypes, wet plates and even dry plates were "making photographs." It was a technically and creatively challenging activity, not something for the ordinary person to do even as a "hobby." And photography was expensive. A single ambrotype would cost $6 in today's dollars. Family and individual portraits predominated. Candid photography simply didn't exist.

1923 cartoon showing what Eastman might
have looked like as a wet plate photographer

All that changed because of a young man from Rochester NY, George Eastman. As a teenager working in a local bank to support his widowed mother and sisters, George became interested in photography and began to practice the art using wet plates and their necessary accouterments. We don't know exactly how good a photographer he was because none of his images survived. Eastman wasn't making photographs because of the finished product but rather to learn the process of making photographs. Using that understanding, he worked on inventing materials and processes that would improve photography and take it out of the hands of professionals and make it available to ordinary people.

In 1881 Eastman and his partner Frank Strong founded Eastman Dry Plate Company to provide dry plates to photographers. In 1885 Eastman patented the Eastman-Walker Roll Holder. This freed photographers from handling individual plates because it could advance a roll of paper film. In 1889, an Eastman chemist developed a transparent, flexible film that could be cut into strips and inserted into cameras. The age of modern photography had dawned.

When Kodak introduced the Brownie camera in 1900 for $1, the age of "snapshots" was born. Eastman realized that chemists and engineers could turn the exposed film into photographs. His engineers figured out how to automate the process. All the photographer had to do was "press the button" and Kodak would do the rest. What had been a professional and highly technical process was now in the hands of ordinary people to record their lives, people and places simply by pressing the shutter. Professional photography continued, of course, but more as an art form or for specialized purposes. So there were still people "making" photographs but most of us were now "taking" photographs.

With the advent of digital cameras, even film became unnecessary. What had taken a "pack-horse load" of equipment, chemicals and a portable darkroom plus an assistant now took place within a hand-sized camera. With cell phone cameras, the package grew both smaller and more capable. We are all "taking" photographs, trillions and trillions of them. What does it mean now to "make" a photo?

You can make a photograph with film or digital images. The process of getting from the image captured on film or the digital sensor is technically very different but essentially the same. Making a photograph requires the photographer to have an idea--the more detailed the better--of what the scene in front of her can be made to look like. It is not so much about documenting what she sees as it is bringing to life what she sees as a possible image. One image by Ansel Adams can clarify this.

On November 1, 1941, he was returning home after a disappointing day of photographing. Around 4:00 on a highway through Hernandez NM, he saw a scene that he instinctively knew he could make into a superb photograph. But it wasn't what he saw but what he knew he could make it look like. You may know the image: Moonrise Hernadez New Mexico.

Moonrise Hernandez N M: Straight contact print on the left and the iconic print on the right

Different prints of the same negative over 35 years

His young son, Michael, was with him as Adams and a companion hurriedly set up the 8x10 view camera on top of his "woody" station wagon to catch the waning light from the setting sun and the rising moon. Michael has famously said that the scene he saw was not the scene you see in Moonrise. In fact, a contact print from that negative is a more accurate capture of that scene. Precisely because Adams"made" photographs, he could visualize the photo that was there hiding in the apparent scene. Of course, he needed to properly expose the film. Then he needed to develop the film properly. Finally and most importantly, he needed to print the negative in a way that captured what he had visualized out in the New Mexican desert that afternoon. The high dynamic range of the image made the printing process extremely difficult and complicated. He did extensive "dodging" and "burning" to capture the darkest and the lightest parts. Adams personally made more than 1300 prints and freely admitted that each print would be unique and one-of-a-kind.

A recent photo from Tinker Park.
Camera exposure left and final image right.

So the difference between taking a photo and making a photo is the difference between snapshots with your phone camera and a more careful and more intentional capture. The photographer has a visualization in mind of the final product which is often different from what appears in the viewfinder at first glance. Ninety-five percent of the time I "take" photos. When I "make" photos, it is a slower, more intentional process. I visualize the final image. It may not be as specific as Adams had with that iconic image. And I may not be sure exactly how it will turn out but I have an idea of how I will capture and process it so that it will be different than a snapshot. I know for certain that I am out to "make" a photo when I take a tripod along. That means I will be setting up a shot and taking time to select appropriate settings rather than just "pressing the button" as the Kodak ad said.

So why is all this important? There are three reasons. First, while taking photos is important because it creates a record of our experiences, relationships, and locations, making a photo can create an image that is memorable and beautiful. Think about Adams and his unforgettable images, not just Moonrise Hernandez New Mexico which we talked about here.

Second, making a photograph requires me to slow down and more carefully observe what is around me. There is something about looking at the world through a lens that helps me see reality in a new way. It is the difference between lollygagging my way through life or paying close attention. I think it has something to do with the fact that a lens excludes a lot of reality and focuses my attention. After a while, I begin to do that even without a camera. I begin to see photographs in my surroundings. I experience what is around me in a more detailed and powerful way. And that is when I decide to return with my tripod and have a go at "making" some photographs.

Third, there is an important lesson about life and reality. Empiricism takes the position that sense experience is the basis of all human knowledge. "What you see is what you get" to outrageously oversimplify. Rationalism is the opposite. It takes the position that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. A botanist looks at a tree and sees a tree. A poet looks at a tree and sees a metaphor for a well-lived life. The poet sees something that is "not there" but is indisputably true.

A Christian looks at the world and sees the empirical reality of economics, politics and social status but also sees the deeper reality of the Kingdom of God where justice and charity prevail. It is a reality that can be "made" by the individual actions of Christians just as a photograph can be made. Both, however, require visualization of a reality that is not apparent but is real nonetheless. This is what Christians call faith. Jesus cautioned his followers to not be deceived by appearances. There can be a deeper reality in the empirical world if we take the time to look for it and open ourselves up to a knowledge of a different sort. This is true, I believe, of any of the great religious traditions. Just as we can find beautiful images in ordinary reality, we can find mercy and forgiveness in evil and deprivation.

It all depends on what we can visualize. In so many ways, it is up to us.

I think I've fallen into a triangle! Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 19:23:00 +0000

In Part 1 of this post, I described my understanding of triangulation as developed by Dr. Murray Bowen. Triangulation can help people deal honestly and directly with issues causing tension. However, it can also open the door to manipulation which can turn the relationship toxic. I applied this concept to the tension I experienced in my relationship with President Trump and found I was in a toxic and ultimately unhelpful triangle with the President. I realize this sounds weird so if you haven't read Part 1, you probably should before continuing.

After trying to divert myself with hobbies and after infecting many of my personal relationships with unending Trump-rage, I turned to national news outlets to better understand what was happening. I subscribed to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Until a couple of months ago, we didn't have cable. I only watched or listened to CNN and MSNBC when traveling or working out at the gym. I became an eager consumer of news from these outlets.

I now realize that the triangulation that began with the far-right media during the Obama administration has now infected almost all of the "mainstream" media. The right-wing media realized that many people were uncomfortable with Obama as president. Targeting people susceptible to triangulation could build a loyal audience for the media and its personalities. This audience eagerly accepted the most irrelevant and preposterous stories about Obama. They amplified these stories by sharing them on emerging social media. No story seemed over the top: Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. Hilary Clinton was involved in a child pornography ring operating out of a pizza parlor. Like a predator on the prowl for tension-filled dyads--remember them--the right-wing press, radio, and TV found vulnerable targets from whom they could extract a lot of money. The outrageous Alex Jones--he of Infowars--admitted through his attorney in his child custody hearing that he was a performer, playing a role. In short, he was simply using his audience to make money, not at all to inform them. I hope this came as a shock to his audience.

With the election of Donald Trump, however, the mainstream media gradually began to use the same dynamic. They may have begun with just covering the news but they soon realized that they had the same kind of market with liberals and mainstream moderates as the right-wing media did with conservatives. While they have not gone to the extreme of concocting patently false stories, they have targeted me and other vulnerable Trump-stressed people. Here are two examples from the day I am writing this.

As CNN was waiting for Governor Cuomo's daily briefing on COVID-19 in New York, John King read a story about the increasing deaths in the US and the rate at which they were increasing. As part of that story, he ran a clip that showed Trump making statements in January and February about coronavirus. Trump clearly downplayed the threat to America. The clip contained true statements. No question about that. However, including these in the story was calculated to engage me emotionally, stoking my outrage at the ineptness of Trump and his willingness to lie or his unwillingness to do his homework. None of that was relevant to the story about the increasing deaths. It added no new information; it didn't help me understand the pandemic and prepare for it. It used time and space to stimulate me emotionally and thus hook me into a triangle with CNN designed to make Trump the outsider.

Here's another example. Nicholas Kristof published a piece in the NY Times this morning with this title: "Trump Wants to ‘Reopen America.’ Here’s What Happens if We Do." The first paragraph mentions Trump and "other political conservatives" and their desire to end the social distancing by Easter and treating this epidemic as though it were the flu. From that point on, the article is a careful and creative analysis of how epidemics spread and why closing down is the best way to "flatten the curve." The article includes a simulation model that shows the impact of longer or shorter periods of social distancing. It is dramatic and instructive. I have no quarrel with the article but what grabbed me was the title about Trump. But the article really wasn't about Trump. I know the editors would argue that that's the point. I got pulled in to read the article because of the headline and thus learned a lot about the epidemic that I would otherwise not have known. But still, that headline was crafted to appeal to someone like me, filled with anxiety about my relationship with the president.

While I was gaining more information about public issues from the mainstream media, my anxiety was constantly stimulated by the same media. If this were not bad enough, I began to realize that my personal communications became infected with this virus. There are family members and friends with whom I avoid talking politics and I am very careful when discussing national issues. I love them and value our relationship deeply and do not want to run the risk of disrupting that relationship. I think they might feel the same way. But then I realized that the conversations I have with friends and family who do share my views and my Trump anxiety have also been impacted. I haven't tried to measure the proportion of these interactions devoted to discussions about President Trump. My sense is that these have consumed a growing share of our time. Triangulation helps explain why. I can ease my distress and tension by interacting with others who feel the same way. Our relationship may grow closer but for all the wrong reasons.

The calming effect of some amount of such sharing is valuable but it does nothing to deal with the cause of the anxiety. More important, increasing this component of the interaction can easily weaken the relationship. For example, the more time I spend talking to my daughter about Trump and his outrages, the less time we have to talk about our lives, our relationship, our challenges, our joys, our experiences, our achievements, and our failures. These are all the subjects that build, sustain and deepen relationships and yet I fear that I have substituted calming my anxiety for deepening a relationship that is important to me. For daughter, I could have written son, wife, sister, brother, grandson, granddaughter, or friend. The point is that my personal relationships have fallen victim to triangulation. It is not that these relationships are not good but that they could be much better. Think about what we all talked about five years ago. What are we giving up because Trump-talk takes so much of our time?

As with all toxic triangulation, it hasn't helped me deal with the underlying issue. I am still anxious in my dyad with the President. The momentary relief provided by the liberal media or these conversations with friends--both of which tend to repeat themselves to the point of boredom and thus require constant shots of new outrage over the latest twitch of Trump--keep me from taking positive and direct steps to change the situation. And that is important because I believe that Trump poses a threat to the values and traditions that actually do make America great.

Here are five steps that I am trying to take. First, gain a deeper understanding of why I get so anxious about his antics and tweets. That might be an appropriate and healthy conversation to have with family and friends. A therapist might be a good idea as well. Whenever an emotional reaction is more than could reasonably be expected, there are often underlying personality problems that are asking to be addressed.

Second, take positive steps to change government policies with which I do not agree and support those in line with my thinking. Volunteer and/or financially support campaigns on the national, state and local levels. Spend time listening to candidates whose personal style is to include rather than exclude. Avoid any politician who thinks the only problem is the man the nation chose as president in 2016. Five years ago, there were plenty of problems. What about those? At the very least, I would be putting my energy to use rather than just endlessly talking about the problems.

Third, think and express myself more clearly about concerns and issues without becoming overly polemical and partisan. This means I would have to inform myself on the issues and not just the politics of the issues. Discover sources of information that are not infected with this triangulation. Since that might be impossible, vigilantly look for triangulation and resist the temptation to let it take over and distract from the information. Perhaps I could just be a responsible citizen, able to see and hear both sides. Imagine that! And come to my own position without any ideological bias. Imagine that!

Fourth, find media that deliver information in a way that is not so partisan. We need media that do not focus on our anxieties as a way to drive circulation and eyeballs...and thus profits. I have found USA Today to be a welcome change. It covers the news but does so in a way that creates a sense of normalcy and balance. The PBS Newshour and NPR news do the same. They present the news with a sense of decorum and balance. There are others as well. We just need to look for them.

Fifth, engage with family and friends focusing on all those things and experiences we used to share. Time has slowed down for many of us during the COVID-19 isolation. We can be more reflective. We can share with each other how our day-to-day life has changed. It can be a time to reconnect and focus on what's important to us. For me, that means family relationships. My children and grandchildren, my wife and in-laws, my friends especially those I haven't connected with for a while. It means spirituality and religious beliefs. It means the art of making photographs. It means learning more about website design. It means writing which has always been central to my life. Writing helps me be clear about what I think, how I understand the world. As Flannery O'Connor said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

These are all ways we can reconnect with what and who we truly care about. We can step aside from the madness that plays out around us. We may not be able to change that madness but we can stake out our own world where sanity, courtesy, respect and compassion live and grow.

I think I've fallen into a triangle! Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 20:27:00 +0000

Murray Bowen, the founder of Family Systems Theory, spent his professional life studying the dynamics of human relationships. He described the complex interrelationships within a family. And he used systems theory to analyze them He formulated his thinking into Family Systems Theory.

I am certainly no expert in Bowen's theory although I have personally benefitted from his insights. I have used them to understand better my own and others' behavior in my families. I have also experienced how they can clarify interrelationships and resulting behavior in other human groups. Perhaps, even an entire society. With apologies to the late Dr. Bowen and his many highly trained followers, I want to use my version of one of his basic ideas to look at my own behavior.

Triangles: Matin Tiller on YouTube

Bowen taught that two-person relationships, or dyads, are inherently unstable. They have a low tolerance for tension and quickly turn to third parties. A triangle with a third person can stabilize a two-person relationship experiencing tension. For example, a mother and a teenage daughter are experiencing tension in their relationship. The mother reaches out to a friend to talk about her daughter and the behavior that is creating the tension. The friend can play a vital and useful role in helping to stabilize the mother-daughter relationship. If the friend listens sympathetically and suggests strategies to help the mother and daughter communicate directly, the third person can help reduce tension and reestablish a livable balance. We can probably all recall times when we reached out to a third person this way. Perhaps we have been a third person for a dyad.

But triangles don't always turn out that way. Sometimes triangulating a third person accentuates problems in the relations making it harder for the dyad to grapple directly with problems and feelings. This can be especially toxic, I believe, if the third person is also experiencing tension in other relationships. Let's adjust the genders in the example. A father experiences tension with his teenage son. He reaches out to a female friend who it happens is also experiencing stress in her marital relationship. It is deceptively easy for the two people to calm their tension and anxiety by bonding together through sharing information and criticism of the other person in the relation. The friend deepens her relationship with the father by listening to criticism of the son. She agrees with it and even stimulates it. She never says or does anything that would help the father deal directly with the son. She may even begin to share about her marital relationship. Over time, the two may grow more emotionally enmeshed and thus more distant from the son and the husband, as well as the father's wife. They have calmed their anxiety but have done nothing to address underlying issues. The situation has become worse by inserting a third person into two family dyads and creating two new outsiders, the mother and the son. They may, in turn, triangulate in retribution. (By the way, I could change the genders in the examples and the result would stay the same. These are human dynamics.)

There are also predators who cruise around the social landscape probing relationships to see if one or both members of a dyad are experiencing tension. This creates an opening for a third party whose motivation is typically not benign. This is especially disastrous in marital relationships. An outsider senses a vulnerability in a couple of which even they may be unaware. The predator typically focuses on the dyad member of the opposite sex and begins to ingratiate him or herself into the relationship as a friend of both. Under the cover of friendship, the predator cultivates emotional closeness with his or her target. This eventually pushes the other member into an outsider role. The predator may become physically intimate with the target thus achieving his or her ultimate goal. There may be a reduction of the tension for the target member and surely for the predator but the original relationship can be damaged beyond repair.

So, this is a long way around to get to the triangle I think I have fallen into. What I am about to say may sound ridiculous. I know it did to me as it began to emerge into my consciousness. Each of us as citizens of the United States is in a relationship with our elected leader, currently Donald J. Trump.

In my lifetime, there have been 14 presidents beginning with Franklin Roosevelt. I have had a good relationship with the first 13. I didn't like or agree with all of them. I felt closer to some than to others. (Disclosure: I was born in Kansas City MO into a line of Democrats stretching five generations in rural Missouri and further still in Virginia. While many of those would probably be Republicans today, my Dad would certainly not be. However, this essay is not about politics although it seems to be headed that way. Just hold on.)

The current president is the problem, or at least my problem. On every level--personal behavior, style, and policy--I simply cannot stand Trump. Beginning with the night of his election, I experienced intense anxiety that I had never felt with other presidents. As time passed after the election, my anxiety didn't decrease; it increased. The more he talked in those elliptical sentences, blurting out nouns without verbs, the more anxious I became. My response was predictable, I began to recruit third persons into my Trump triangle.

Some of these weren't persons at all. I began reading theology to try to understand some of the more fundamental issues of life. I especially was drawn to Reality, Grief and Hope by Walter Brueggemann. I needed to deal with reality, grieve what had been lost and experience hope. It helped...a bit. I got more engaged in hobbies: photography, writing, web design. Not much help there. I was trying to find something to which I could become emotionally engaged and thus calm my anxiety. It worked as long as I was actively engaged in those activities, but the impact quickly waned.

Next, I began to spend a lot of time talking about Trump with my wife and other like-minded people. We would share outrage after outrage. It felt good to let it all out with another person who shared my feelings. This strengthened my emotional bonds with them. My emotional space grew more settled. The acceptance of those with whom I shared my feelings reduced the Trump-induced anxiety. This is a classic triangulation. I was bonding with a third person and reducing tension while doing nothing to deal with whatever was causing the disruption. If I kept on this way without dealing with the real problem, there would be no end to this.

Then I turned to the national media to understand better what was happening. What I now think happened then was a surprise. I will pick up there in the next blog.

A crisis, an opportunity.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 14:45:00 +0000

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before." Rahm Emanuel November 19, 2008

Emanuel said this as the Obama administration was preparing to take over the national government. During the growing COVID-19 crisis, I think it has a particular relevance although I would restate the opportunity. It is not that we can do things we should have done but for which we have been unable to build political support. Rather this is an opportunity to reconnect with values that have become substantially less salient to our national life.

In 1985 Robert Bellah and a group of fellow sociologists published a study of the American character entitled "Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life."

"The title is from Alexis de Tocqueville who, writing about us in “Democracy in America” from 1835 to 1839, discovered habits of the heart--he named family life, religious convictions and participation in local politics--as helping to form the unique American character. They were habits that would help sustain free institutions, De Tocqueville said. But he also suggested that individualism , a word he was one of the earliest to use and long since a catchword for the American character, could prove dangerous, setting citizens apart from one another, making positive collective action difficult if not impossible, and therefore threatening those same free institutions." Charles Champlin Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1985

I read it shortly after publication and found it insightful. It helped me--as a college administrator--understand the society for which we were preparing students. My takeaway was this: There were two principles at work in the American character: communitarian and individual. Our past could be read as the dynamic interplay between these two: the urge to be a strong individual and the urge to be part of a community. Bellah and his fellow authors expressed a concern that the creative balance between these two had been shifting. Since the late 1940s individualism had been gaining strength and communitarian values were fading. If this trend continued, the American character and society could be damaged in significant ways.

More than 30 years later, that concern has become urgent. I believe that the COVID-19 pandemic can be an opportunity for America to rediscover its deeply rooted communitarian values which have been overshadowed by individualism. Perhaps a rebalancing is possible.

The pandemic is and will be a challenging and intrusive experience for all Americans. It may well be the marker for the rising generation much as 9/11 was for the Millenials. The pandemic is forcing many but not all Americans to confront the reality that short term optimization of one's economic and social assets may lead to a sub-optimization of the economic and social assets of the larger community. It would be nice, I suppose, if the single-minded pursuit of my own self-interest would somehow result in the improvement of the conditions of everyone. Even Adam Smith's "invisible hand," required a society where the common good was clearly in mind for all. It didn't take some special focus on the common good because that was assumed. All that worked pretty well in more rural-based, face to face societies. That focus began to break down with industrialization and urbanization.

While we could discuss which is the better--individualism or commitment to community--we would never come to conclude that one is better than the other, or a least we shouldn't. We need both, not one at the expense of the other. Ours is not a choice between a totalitarian communism or the objectivism of Ayn Rand. We need a slider variable that will move toward individualism or toward communitarianism based on the circumstances and challenges. The creative tension between these two fosters the vitality and creativity of a social group. There is no absolute "best" state. The optimum moves between but never to the two extremes. Bellah et. al. were concerned that the movement toward individualism would be so drastic that the balance would be permanently damaged.

What we are all experiencing now is the dysfunction of extreme individualism that sees no problem with compromising the health of others as long as people can do what they want to do. "I deserve a spring break so I am going to the beach and the bars." "I always get together with this group of friends at a restaurant. Why should I change my plans?" "I am willing to run the risk of getting the virus. Let other people worry about themselves; I'll worry about me." "The virus has not come to my neighborhood. Why should I change my behavior?"

Some are realizing now and soon everyone will that what I do impacts not only my health but also that of others, especially those whose age and/or underlying conditions place them at increased risk of negative outcomes from an infection. We all have the chance to experience not our equality with others but our solidarity with them. We have the opportunity to experience a conversion, a change of heart. I don't mean this in any political or economic sense. I don't even mean this in a religious sense. We have the opportunity to experience an always present but often hidden reality. We, all of us, are in this together. Not just this pandemic but life.

We are called to act out of this change of heart in ways that most of us have never experienced. Because this pandemic will spread through the country touching every state and locality, we all can experience what it means to be a community, with each of us doing what we can to help others, especially those who are often invisible. I harbor no illusions that this spells the death of individualism. That would be disastrous. Maybe, just maybe, we can recalibrate our slider and move back toward those communitarian values that have always been an essential part of what makes us America.

Humanity has been at this point often in its history. When the poet and priest, John Dunn, lay seriously ill with spotted fever during an epidemic in 1624, he wrote a book of prose reflections entitled, "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions..." where his most famous lines--ironically prose not poetry--appear.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

We are likely to hear many bells tolling over the next months. If we can take Dunn's sentiment to heart and act on it, perhaps there will be fewer, and we will be less diminished.

What mitigation means and why it is important

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 19:06:00 +0000

Credit...
Drew Harris

I came across this graphic this morning in the NY Times. It was part of an interview with Drew Harris, a population health analyst at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. The graphic was created by Rosamund Pearce for an article in The Economist and is based on a 2017 CDC article about how to deal with a novel influenza A pandemic. In yesterday's White House briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, "What we need to do is flatten that [curve] down." I didn't understand the importance of that until I saw this graphic and read the interview.

Once a county moves to mitigation, as the U. S., there is no hope of stopping the spread of the virus. However, we can do something to impact the speed and trajectory of that spread. If we do nothing or do something too late, the virus infection increase dramatically in a short period of time. We get the red curve. If we take steps to "interfere with the natural flow of the outbreak," the infection spreads through the community at a slower rate over a longer period of time. The blue curve. These are called epi curves. The broken line in the chart shows the healthcare system's capacity in a community. The red curve rapidly exceeds that capacity which means that some people cannot get the treatment they need to survive. There are more people than the system can handle and there are fewer health care workers who are healthy enough to work. A double whammy.

This helped me understand the importance of doing my part in trying to mitigate this infectious disease and, in fact, any other including the seasonal flu. Even before more extreme measures (social distancing) are mandated by local health offices, I can begin to develop good habits to interrupt community transmission. Eventually, more severe measures will be needed but for now, I can do the common sense things recommended by the CDC.

For more information, go to www.coronavirus.gov

Some clarity for this Democrat...but only some.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 14:01:00 +0000

Leading Democrat candidates before New Hampshire primary

For the past six months, I have been making monthly contributions to Elizabeth Warren's campaign. I felt she brought an issues-oriented approach to a campaign that could easily descend into emotion and charisma. She was an outstanding debater in high school. She earned a debate scholarship to George Washington University. I was also a debater in high school and college. I understood her focus on problem analysis and well-articulated plans to address them. I decided that I would reevaluate after Iowa and New Hampshire.

The time for that assessment is now. Full disclosure: I am a life-long Democrat who grew up in a union family with a strong commitment to social justice and equality. Read the following with that in mind. I have not come to a commitment to a specific candidate. I would support any nominee, perhaps some with more enthusiasm than others. However, I have come to the following conclusions.

Here is a link to a handy quiz that The Washington Post is providing to see how the Democrat candidates align with your positions on 20 issues. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/policy-2020/quiz-which-candidate-agrees-with-me/

First, electability never has been and should not now be a major factor in my choice. I do not have the information or expertise to assess electability. Primaries by their nature only measure the electability within the Democrat base. If I try to get myself inside the head of a Republican moderate or an independent, I will only drive myself crazy. Much of what passes for political discourse today is distorted and unreliable. I have never been concerned about electability before. I viewed the primaries as the chance to learn which Democrat aligned with my views on the central issues of education, health care, immigration, and wealth inequality. I am competent to make that assessment. All I have to do is know my own mind and assess candidates accordingly.

President we elected in 2016 has begun an assault on the America I hope for. I have never felt the urgency to defeat someone as much as I do this election. While turning Trump out of office is necessary, it is not sufficient to move in the direction of my hopes. I am tired of thinking that all we have to do is defeat Trump and everything will return normal. It is that "normality" that led to the election of 2016. So much needs to be done beyond simply unraveling most of what has happened in the last three years. That process, however, won't begin until we have a President who is aligned with the values that have guided me and so many others.

Second, my enthusiasm and financial support will be directly proportional to that alignment of values. I will be most enthusiastic about a candidate who aligns with my values and who seems capable of taking action to implement them. Given our constitutional system, that means someone who can work with a divided country and Congress to support and pass legislation. Our divided system has meant that the last two presidents have used executive orders rather than legislation to move their agendas. That is not a sustainable path to a stable future.

Third, I am much more of a centrist Democrat than I might have thought before these primaries. As much as I might lean in a progressive direction, I am more of an evolutionist than a revolutionary. I am more comfortable making changes to the status quo in most areas rather than burning down what we have and replacing it with an extreme solution, even one that sounds very appealing as a solution. It turns out that I am not in favor of "Medicare for All." I believe that we should, through our government, provide basic health care to everyone in the United States in the same way we provide public education. However, the experience of other advanced economies shows that there are a variety of means to that end. A single-payer system is one but not the only way. We need to build on our mixed system of public and private insurance so that all residents are included. This same approach is true with most major issues with which I am concerned.

Fourth, Elizabeth Warren made a fatal mistake by falling for the litmus test required by the Sanders wing of the party. Even though she tried to walk back her endorsement of Medicare for all once she was attacked in one of the debates, it was too late. Litmus tests are political creatures that do not play well or at all with a policy approach. Much as I hate to say it, her candidacy is doomed. No one needs or wants a paler version of Bernie. You are either all in or all out. On this measure, I am out.

Fifth, Michael Bloomberg is a disruptive candidate whose impact is not yet clear. If he were not in the race, I would be moving toward Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar but I need to wait until March 3 and Super Tuesday before I settle on a final choice.

Stay tuned.

Louisa's Funeral

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 01:39:00 +0000

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020, the family and friends of Louisa Elizabeth Pickett VanHorne gathered at Abundant Life in Lee's Summit, MO. We celebrated her life, her family, her many interests, her faith in God and especially her devotion to the Scriptures.

She was laid to rest next to her husband, Van, in Longview Cemetery.

The following are videos of family members' remembrances of Louisa.

I delivered a remembrance on behalf of my brothers and sisters. You can click here to download a PDF.

Next Anola, the eldest sibling, read a message from Mary who was out of the country and not able to attend.

Heather Kopas, Louisa's daughter and first born shared her thoughts and feelings about her Momma.

Finally, Louisa's son, Lee Alan, shared his observations and expressed his thanks to all who attended.

It was a rich four days in Kansas City. To be with close family at a time of deep feelings is always a blessing. There is something special about being with people who have known you for your entire life and with people you have known their entire lives. I was especially blessed that three of my children were able to join us for their Aunt Louisa's funeral. Sean, Amy and Erin joined with the rest of the Picketts for grieving, story telling, laughing and crying.

After the burial, we returned to Abundant Life where the church provided a luncheon for family and friends. It was finally time to just relax and be with one another without any formal responsibilities. It was a time to catch up with cousins whom we see only every once in a while.

You can click here to view more photos in a Google Photos album.

Louisa Elizabeth Pickett Van Horne January 25, 1954 - January 15, 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 13:43:00 +0000

Ruth Platt Pickett holding her youngest child,
Louisa

Louisa Elizabeth was born on January 25, 1954 into the family of Lee and Ruth Pickett. She was the youngest of their six children. I and my brothers and sisters will miss our baby sister terribly. Her funeral will be 11:00 Wednesday January 22 with visitation from 10-11 at Abundant Life Church, Lee's Summit Campus Admin Building, 414 SW Persels Rd, Lee's Summit MO 64081. Burial at Longview Cemetery. Click here to view Louisa's obituary.

Her sweetness and cheerfulness belied the many challenges she faced in her life. Much like her grandma Nancy Norris, she found herself at 22 alone with a three year old daughter, Heather, and newborn son, Lee Alan.

Also much like Grandma, she devoted herself to providing a stable and loving home to her children in the face of challenges not of her making. With the help of Ruth and Lee, she worked to provide for her children, started a career in library work, and began the process of completing her college degree.

Van with Heather and Lee

She met, fell in love with, and married Willard VanHorne. She and Van loved each other deeply and grew even closer through their Christian commitment to a life of service both in and out of the church. Van legally adopted Heather and Lee and was a wonderful father to them. His passing in 2011 was a blow to Louisa and the family.

Heather and Lee pursued their lives and careers outside of Kansas City, Heather in Colorado and Lee in the Navy, currently Seattle area. Louisa was proud of their accomplishments but even more of the kind of people they were and are: deeply committed to their Christian faith, family and service.

Louisa celebrating her degree with Mom and Mary
at Andy and Lois Sciolaro's home

In 2000 she completed her college degree from Friends University in Wichita KS through an extension program in Kansas City. In 1990 she had began a career in cataloging for the Mid Continent Library which serves 35 libraries in three Missouri counties. She eventually became head of a cataloging unit at the Midwest Genealogy Center, a modern building housing a stand alone and world class genealogy collection and services. She retired in 2018 after 28 years of service. This video contains her remarks at a reception given by her co-workers.

Louesa Elizabeth Funk Muir
Louisa's namesake and Great
Grandmother

Louisa faced a number of health challenges. For most of her life, she suffered from a variety of auto-immune diseases including fibromyalgia . She suffered through a knee replacement which became infected, very nearly fatal. She then had to go through two more surgeries, first to remove the prosthetic and put in a spacer and antibiotics and then to remove that and place a second replacement. She faced the prospect of actually losing her leg if the infection could not be contained. She also was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer that forms in a type of white blood cell called a plasma cell. Multiple myeloma causes cancer cells to accumulate in the bone marrow, where they crowd out healthy blood cells. Her "smoldering" multiple myeloma became active and began to produce amyloids, a destructive protein, that resulted in amyloidosis. This attacked several organs but especially her kidneys which lost 85 percent of their function. This summer she underwent stem cell replacement therapy with all the attendant pain, discomfort and isolation.

I mention all this only to show the difficult health challenges she faced. And yet, with all this, she never lost hope, deepened her already strong faith in God and was cheerful and sweet when almost anyone else would have been overwhelmed. She left us on Wednesday January 15 and she leaves a hole in our hearts which will never be completely filled.

You can click here to view some photos of Louisa from the Pickett Family Photographs Archive.

Enough is enough! Please listen to us not the gun lobby!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:31:00 +0000

"In December 2012, a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children, six adults, and himself. Since then, there have been at least 1,607 mass shootings, with at least 1,846 people killed and 6,459 wounded." (https://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-sandy-hook) Here is a map that shows the locations of these 1607 mass shootings.

We are not sure why but the 1607th one has had a profound impact on us. What happened in Parkland FL made us, we are ashamed to say for the first time, realize that our grandchildren, especially the 17 who attend school in the United States, could have found themselves in that same situation because almost nothing has changed since Sandy Hook. Actually, that is not quite true since access to military-style weapons, really guns of any type, has increased rather than declined. (New York is an exception. Within two months of Sandy Hook, the legislature passed, and the governor signed an assault weapon ban along with a limitation of the capacity of magazines for those purchased before January 2013. The original capacity was set at seven, but a court case found that arbitrary and set it at 10. Magazines with a capacity of up to 30 and more are easily available in most other states.) But as a nation we talked and then did almost nothing. We can now see the results of doing nothing.

Perhaps it was thinking about our grandchildren. Perhaps it was hearing words that used to have meaning to us become hollow and meaningless and even disrespectful: "We'll keep them in our thoughts and prayers." Perhaps it was hearing those young survivors and the parents of those who died speaking of the unspeakable. Bill was moved to tears listening to a father and young survivor expressing their thoughts to the President on the evening news. For whatever reason, we can no longer do nothing. God forbid that these shootings have become so commonplace that we have gotten used to them. As long as they don't happen in our city or our school, we express outrage and then move on to the next thing. And there is always a next thing.

If we ignore this or distract ourselves with all the things and activities available to us, we am no different from the politicians who cynically say one thing and then do another. This is a bipartisan phenomenon. It includes Democrats who introduce all the "right kind" of laws but then sacrifice principle to political expediency because they fear political backlash that will compromise other issues they consider more important or will make it difficult to attract centrist voters so they can regain power. It includes Republicans who take millions from the gun lobby and are petrified that their support of any action which that lobby does not approve will generate a primary opponent who is well funded and ideologically pure. At least one can count on Libertarians to deplore what has happened and to make clear that they will not support any further intrusion of the government, especially at the federal level, into the lives of citizens.

We have taken three actions. They are not big, perhaps even puny considering the problem. But we have finally done something. We encourage you to consider this whole issue and to ask yourself, "Can I just do nothing and wait for it to happen again?" We realize that many of the people receiving this email have already done more than we could possibly hope to do. We appreciate that some of you may find our actions and advocacy to be things with which you disagree. But surely we must do something rather than just hope that it won't happen again.

Here is what we have done. First, Bill tried to write down our feelings and thoughts about all this and then used this as the content of contacting our federal, state and county representatives urging them to take action appropriate to their level. (We have attached a copy of that document.) Here are the four requests we made to those at the federal level:

1. If you receive financial support from the NRA, return it and publicly state that fact and your reasons for returning.

2. Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to re-establish the assault weapon ban that expired in 2004.

3. Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to buy back any assault weapon for its fair market value.

4. Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to permit the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence as the public health issue it clearly is. I understand that such a study is currently excluded by legislation. This is another example of the NRA’s influence.

Second, with our 20 grandchildren and our four children who work on campuses in mind, we are contributing to the Giffords Law Center to Reduce Gun Violence. We are no longer convinced that donations to politicians will achieve any meaningful result.

Third, we are trying to become more educated about this issue. We have learned a lot about the New York situation in just the last two days. Things we should have known but didn't.

It feels different this time and perhaps whatever might be done—and we might differ on what that is--can have some impact.

The Society of the Spectacle: Am I complicit?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 15:02:00 +0000

A recent Op-Ed piece in the NY Times caught my eye. The title was intriguing "Trump and the Society of the Spectacle" and a bit provocative but the content went well beyond the current political situation and analysis. Take a look and then come back here.

I have purchased Guy DeBord's book, The Society of the Spectacle, but have not yet read it. Hopefully my understanding will deepen when I do. But for now what struck me was the role that images play in our current reality. Fifty years ago DeBord saw that images--spectacles--were replacing direct and personal experience. Twenty years later, he saw nothing that dissuaded him. Imagine what he would think now with our media-drenched culture.

In 2000 Kodak estimated that 80 billion photos had been taken world wide. The low end of current estimates for 2017 is 1.3 trillion. That is the LOW estimate. The share taken by phones has sky rocketed to 80 percent from 40 percent in 2010. In addition to this flood of images, the internet and especially social sharing sites have made this torrent more available than ever before. (Click here for source article.)

DeBord's concern was that reality, direct experience, would become less and less present to people who relied more and more on images or what he called spectacles. We just celebrated the first 100 years of the National Park System. The George Eastman Museum here in Rochester mounted a major exhibit of the photography of the national parks and the role it played in their development and popularity. It turns out that images (first landscape paintings and then photographs) make for a very effective way of introducing people to places and people who are so different from everyday reality that the imagination isn't much use. You can describe the Grand Canyon all day but I will never be able to envision it until I see a photo which then provides at least a beginning point. Of course, to experience it directly is the best thing but for most people images have to suffice.

But here is the thing: Images have a life of their own and become a part of the cultural history of a place or people. The early landscape paintings and photographs of many of our national iconic sites determined how these sites would be viewed for generations following. The viewpoints in Yosemite National Park today are exactly the ones that early photographers shot from. There may be other views that are equally visually interesting but we tend to overlook them in the attempt to capture what others have captured.

But more to DeBord's point, the image, even photographs which purport to be accurate depictions, is not the same as engaging directly with the object. With the image, we lose the full human interaction with the subject and substitute whatever reaction we have to the image. Someone had that direct interaction and images make it possible for that person to share something of the interaction with others. But it is never completely and totally the same. Images are seen, discussed, shared and come to have a widely shared meaning that is only one among a number of possible meanings.

Consider the photo here, one that is familiar to anyone of a certain age. It was taken on February 1, 1968 in Saigon at the beginning of the Tet Offensive. It appears to be soldier executing a civilian on an ordinary street. It was adopted by anti-war activists as an example of the brutality of the Vietnamese regime toward civilians and quickly became a symbol for why the war should end. In fact, the photo was disconnected from the actual experience which showed a South Vietnamese General summarily executing a known Vietcong soldier who had led a murder squad targeting police and civil leaders. Violent and gruesome, yes. But it's meaning was manipulated to advance a political cause. This was possible because it had become disassociated from its reality. Click here to learn more about this photo.

This photo was a product of photojournalism with our expectation of visual accuracy. But what of other photographs? What is the relationship between the image we see and the object depicted. I will talk about digital photography a bit later but for now consider another iconic photograph by Ansel Adams, Moonrise Hernadez NM. On the left you see the image as he captured it and on the right the one we all saw after he manipulated in the darkroom. Adams famously said, “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.” A print is a work of art and will reflect the sensibilities and desires of the one who makes the print. We tend to think that a photo is an exact representation of the object captured. In fact, each photo is a rendering of the captured image of the object. Unless one is content with viewing the negative, one has to come to terms with the fact that the photo is the result of direct intervention by the print maker. Learn more about this photo. Learn more about Ansel Adams.

Digital photography makes this point even clearer. A digital image is a collection of "1"s and "0"s that record the characteristics of light falling on arrays of photodetectors. These are stored as computer files. Computer programs (algorithms) are used to convert this digital information into images. A series of choices and decisions about light, color, sharpness, light balance, luminance, etc. determine the exact characteristics of the visible image. With all these decisions to be made there is the same intervention of a "print maker" even if it the designer who programmed the software in the camera so we could see the image on the back of the camera or on the phone. One can achieve different results from different decisions. In addition, just as before, a print maker can further adjust and manipulate the image.

With digital photography, we cannot see the raw image since it is just a collection of those "1"s and "0's. Actually a typical photo has millions of pixels each one with digital information. Below are two renderings of a photo I took of a sunrise at the Grand Canyon. On the top is the original photo with just the processing provided as a default by the camera. Below is another rendering which has been enhanced in several ways.

Default development parameters

Additional manipulation

Most people would probably select the second rendering as the better one. I did because I made a set of specific decisions to achieve this. But this image is now, in a way, two steps away from the reality, that sunrise at the Grand Canyon. (By the way, most people might think that a video would be more accurate, more realistic. However with the advent of CGI, or computer generated imagery, you can't even be sure of that.)

All this is interesting and pretty tame but it part of a long development which has shifted our experience from first hand, direct experience to engagement with an image, in fact, trillions of images. Once we have made that transition, there is the danger that the image will become unmoored from the reality. At first, this might be in small ways, as with these images, but it can eventuate in bizarre distortions that can be used in political communication to distort reality in the service of an ideology. "Fake news" is often a third or higher generation of an actual event or even a completely fictitious but believable event. When people begin to act on these images, we have crossed into unknown territory of "The Society of the Spectacle."

Has my involvement with images and their manipulation been part of a larger cultural process to which I have been oblivious?

Trump: "...we will be protected by God."

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 21:24:00 +0000

When I read the president's inauguration speech, I noted this paragraph toward the end:

There should be no fear. We are protected, and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God.

It struck a jarring note but frankly I didn't spend time trying to figure out why. Then I read the lead article in the local Catholic newspaper, The Catholic Courier, which used this in both the headline and lead of an article by Mark Pattison of the Catholic News Service.

Now I realized how dangerous these words really are. That realization was heightened when I read to the end of the article and saw the only comment that had yet been posted: "Thanks be to God!! It's GREAT to have Him part of the American scene again." Now I was sure that the logic and theology of the passage in the speech was seriously flawed and alarmed that the only comment to date seemed oblivious to its non-orthodox stance.

I immediately posted the following comment which was approved for posting in the next day.

God protects all creation and always has. No nation or people has a special claim to protection that holds them immune to the consequences of what we humans do to each other and to creation. It is inconsistent with our faith tradition to think that God protects us and not others. I find it both ironic and disturbing to link God's protection with police power and military violence. Jesus preached a faithfulness to God which resulted in his murder by the police and military of his day. Whatever God's protection is must surely be of a different kind than the protection afforded by the world.

Walter Breuggeman, a leading scholar of the Hebrew Scriptures, has recently written in Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks about the ways in which 6th century BCE Israel misread its political, social and economic realities because of an absolute belief in being chosen by YHWH regardless of its faithfulness to the Sinai covenant, a covenant of law not birth (Abrahamic covenant.)

The Jerusalem destroyed in 587 B.C.E. was a product and carrier of the elemental conviction of Israel--and more specifically of the urban elite in the Jerusalem establishment--that it was indeed YHWH's chosen people and so enjoyed the full commitment of YHWH as patron and guarantor. (5)

None of the vagaries of history can disrupt this divine commitment. Thus David and his entourage, the entire company of urban elites, are given guarantees that do not require engagement with the facts on the ground. (10)

The prophets were not fortune tellers but rather voices raised against the behavior of the urban elites both civil and religious, in Jerusalem, who were oppressing the peasants of Israel siphoning off more and more money and crops to support their life style in Jerusalem. These elites felt that the Mosaic promises from YHWH gave them unconditional protection no matter how abusive they were and no matter how extreme the resulting equality.

This notion of chosenness morphed into an ideology which prevented them from seeing what was happening all around them. The prophets were basically saying that this inequality and abuse could not go on unfettered and with impunity. Whether or not YHWH would punish them, opponents in their dangerous neighborhood would prey on the weakness that such corruption bred and conquer Israel with overwhelming violence. Instead of waking up to what was happening, the leadership lived in denial holding on to this "promise" of being chosen. Ultimately that failure to engage with reality resulting in the despair of captivity and removal.

Language like that in the President's speech raises the specter of "exceptionalism" with all its attendant problems. If we add some God-given commitment of protection to the already overwhelming military power of the United States, we will be tempted to think that the United States can do whatever it wants or needs to do regardless of the impact on other people or nations. This ideology will prevent us from dealing with the realities we face in the world and at home. If we are prone to incredulity when we see others opposing us and ask in disbelief "Why do they hate us," we are already well on our way to to the denial and despair of which Breuggeman writes.

The irony for Christians should be compelling. Jesus opposed the civil and religious authorities of his day because he came to live a life of faithfulness to the will of the Father who sent him. That faithfulness brought him into conflict with the elites of his day who used their police and military power to dispose of this disturbing presence in their midst. They had ears but did not listen. Eyes but did not see. They were certain that they expressed YHWH's promise and power and that whatever they did was by definition right and defensible.

Over and over again the Christian scriptures and the Psalms remind us that we are not saved by "war chariots" or "strong horses" but by faithfulness to the will of the Divine One: love the Divine One with your whole heart and mind and love other humans (and all creation) with the same love that Jesus had for his friends, his enemies, and even strangers. We will be protected in all the ways that really count in the Reign of the Divine One if we live our lives that way.

A step back, a deep breath, a reassessment: Hope, a beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 21 Jan 2017 13:25:00 +0000

If I can be realistic about what happened and if I can grieve what I have lost, then I can begin to construct a sense of hope for the future. If I stay in a state of denial about what happened and what I have lost, I am left to find hope in the same realities, people, programs, etc. failed me to begin with. I remain trapped in a cul de sac that can only lead to the same place: repudiation, anger, and finally despair. If you have read my earlier blog postings this year, you know I am referring to the results of this fall's U.S. presidential election. Yesterday was the inauguration of Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States. It was a difficult day for me precisely because I had to again confront realistically what had happened and my feelings of repudiation. It also reminded me of what I have lost. I had placed my hope in outcomes of political processes thinking that if the "right" people were elected and if they enacted the "right" programs then everything would somehow be "OK." And, of course, there is my fear that with the "wrong" people with the "wrong" programs that everything would fall apart. You can see how easy it would be for someone with those feelings to fall into despair.

Yet all three Abrahamic religious traditions agree that we are to place our hope in Yahweh, the Triune Divinity, or Allah and not in the works and plans of human beings. As a Christian, I am called to place my hope in the Divine One incarnated as Jesus the Christ. I deeply desire to find hope exactly there but it is not as simple as saying that, at least for me. How can I get from the brink of despair to an enduring sense of hope that everything will be "OK." All I know for sure is that I cannot simply rely on politics and political action for that hope. Both are important and I certainly understand and accept my responsibility as a Christian and an American to promote actively my views on our local, state and national agenda. How we deal with each other in those contexts is vitally important and requires my attention and action. But if it ends there, I will inevitably end up exactly where I am now: on the edge of the precipice of despair.

Where do I begin to build a sense of hope? There are several steps but the first is surely to recognize the ancient wisdom from the Hebrew Scripture repeated by Jesus in his life and preaching: those who rely on the things of this world will not find eternal life but rather death.

16 A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.17 The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save.18 Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,19 to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Psalm 33

If we think about these verses in a modern context, we can get closer to the underlying meaning. First of all, although the verses are addressed to "a king" they are really meant for us. We are well past kings and the social-political order based on royal power and prerogatives. The source of our modern political polity is not a king or even a president but rather the people, each and all of us together. By what are we saved? Horses are not at the top or even on my list of things that I think can save us. But some of the following might be: strong military and police forces, laws that encode strict moral codes, laws that are inclusive of diversity of all types of people and live choices and orientations, restrictive immigration laws, humane and accepting immigration policy, free enterprise and unfettered markets, social programs with preeminent claims on public resources, and on and on.

My religious tradition is clear: none of these or anything like these will "save" us or will make "everything OK." Somehow our hope, my hope, is to be placed in the "steadfast love" of the Divine One. I am not asked to ignore all those political and policy concerns but rather to be realistic about what will save us. It will not be the right mix of social and economic government policies, important as they are, but rather a personal coming to terms with the deepest realities of life, of my life. Dare I say that what is needed for me is a conversion. Perhaps a renewal of conversion gives a better sense. If think that I can maintain my own spiritual framework and just tinker with some government programs, I am playing a fool's game which, like a Greek tragedy, will predictably end up with me on the same brink of despair.

A step back, a deep breath, a reassessment: Grief

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 12:32:00 +0000

Walter Breuggeman in Reality, Grief, Hope provides a scripture-based process for coming to terms with the signs of the times." In an earlier post, I dealt with the reality process of becoming clear about what has happened. In this case, it was the 2016 presidential election. I tried in that post to be as clear as I could by setting aside as much as I could my own ideological framework and accepting what had happened. As I have reflected further, I realize that the outcome of the election was not what was important. If the democrat or some other progressive had won, I might have missed the underlying message. Trump's win simply highlighted something I probably would have otherwise missed.

What I have lost and what I need to grieve is the notion that any political or social arrangement would somehow make "everything OK." Psalm 33 seeks to disabuse us of the notion that everything will be OK if we can just have the right arrangement in the world:

The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save. Psalm 33:17

As humans living in the world it is natural for us to hope that what we do and how we manage things will make everything OK. The Psalmist is telling us just the opposite. Relying on the things and powers of this world will not save us. In fact, focusing on them can easily make us lose sight of what is really important. The verses that follow make that crystal clear:

Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Psalm 33:18-19

We do, of course, live "in the world." But Christians are called by their faith to not be "of the world." We live in human community and our decisions, actions, and speech make a difference in that community. But it seems that the values that come to dominate that society are inimical to its very nature and make it difficult, perhaps even impossible, for a community to provide the resources, nourishment, attention and care to all those in the community, especially those who have been excluded for whatever reason.

I wish that it were possible for a well constructed political program and process to provide such a community. I now see this by itself is, while perhaps a necessary ingredient in a humane society, is not a sufficient cause of such a society. Such a society requires the conversion of the members of the society to a set of values and beliefs which are radically opposed to those which seem so prevalent today. This is a much more difficult, even impossible task, but it is the only one worth pursuing.

Still I wish it were otherwise. I wish that contributing to the right political causes, working for the right politicians, voting for the right candidates would make everything OK...without requiring me to change in such fundamental ways. I wish that it was simple but it is not. Yet, I wish it were and I grieve that loss of an ordered, settled, undisturbing approach which is only in the end a delusion that comforts me without changing me.

Unexpected modern prophets

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 19:15:00 +0000

Walter Breuggemann in Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks provides what was to me a revitalized understanding of the ministry of the Hebrew Scripture prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea. The easy popular understanding is that these prophets could foresee the future. This misunderstanding makes it difficult to see the full meaning of prophecy and those prophets. It is not that prophets foresee the future but that they see the current reality clearly, without the distortion that comes from ideological commitment.

The prophets call the urban [and temple] establishment to recognize that social reality is populated by neighbors and occupied by YHWH,...The neighbors among us wait to be treated by neighbors. The God who moves amid the poetic utterance will not be settled or domesticated or managed. Thus reality is always at risk. And how the powerful conduct themselves will determine the outcome. The acknowledgement of YHWH was the central agent will lead to well-being; but disregard of YHWH will lead to disaster and disorder. Respect for the neighbor will make for safety; but disregard of the neighbor will result in violence and dismay. pp. 22-23

Speaking out against an ideology of chosenness or exceptionalism, the prophets were looking at the reality on the ground where peasants around Jerusalem were being bled by the urban and temple elite of the city. They saw in this unjust manipulation a violation of both divine reality and human nature. They saw that it could not last but would end in disasters: economic, political, social and religious. Those who managed the pyramid that was this ancient culture could change these realities through decisions and policies which would accord with divine and human nature. If they did not but persisted in their abuse and in their delusions of invincibility, the inevitable destruction would be visited upon them. Thus prophets speak not about the future but about the way things are now and present a different view to "the powers that be." This description also describes the ministry of Jesus some 800 years later.

According to Breuggemann, these prophets chose "reality" over "ideology" and "grief" over "denial." Out of that coming to terms with loss in real terms, they were able to construct "hope" as over against the "despair" left to those whose focus on ideology can only lead to denial. In reflecting on this analysis, I realized that there have been American prophets whose words call us to consider how things really are and to set aside our ideology of "exceptionalism" in order to come to terms with our real challenges.

Robert Bellah published Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life in 1985. It identified two central values of the American experiment: individualism and communitarianism. The synergy between individual good and the common good were central to what became America. He described how one of these values had gained the ascendancy and threatened or could threaten the entire enterprise. Individualism without the countervailing power of the common good would threaten the whole.

In 2000 Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Reival of American Community. This painted a compelling picture of the ways in which the American sense of community was weakening and dissolving. The book is noted more for its analysis of the problem than for the solutions which are suggested.

Juliet B. Schur has written two books that look at the current American economy and find that it is not delivering the satisfaction in human terms that we want from our work. The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure and The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need. An overwhelming concern with individual wealth and welfare has led to overworking and overspending that has degraded for most people the value of simply making more money.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have shown in The Spirit-Level, as the subtitle says, more equal societies almost always do better than less equal ones. These two scholars take a look at the facts of economic status in developed countries and conclude that increasing inequality results in a more dangerous and less healthy society for everyone in the society. The focus on individual good without the balancing commitment to the common seems to result in benefits for some but even they turn out to be disadvantaged.

The "powers that be" who think they are winning in this current situation tend to deny these analyses and the inevitable consequences that arise from them.