Stephen Raburn

Packing Heat Probably Not a Good Idea for Me, Most People

2017-08-11T06:55:00.003-04:00

I like to think of myself as a calm, rational, peaceful, non-violent, non-threatening, non-confrontational kind of guy. I bet most people who know me would agree with that description.

But here’s the thing: I’m not one hundred percent certain that if I’d had a gun in my pocket every day since it was legal for me to own one, something terribly wrong wouldn’t have gone down at some point. At least once. Humans are fragile creatures. I am. The human psyche is precarious. Anyone can snap.

And if I’m not sure that a peace-loving, conflict-avoiding, pacifist, beatnik- wannabe like me wouldn’t have snapped once or twice and pulled the trigger under certain circumstances — changing the course of my life and other lives in one regrettable furious moment — I sure don’t feel safe knowing I’m surrounded by a bunch of civilians packing heat, permit or not, many of whom I’m guessing more inclined to violent ways than I am. What about you? If you happen to live in one of the 33 “right-to-carry” states, which allow everyday citizens to carry concealed handguns, that’s likely to be the case. Makes you think twice about cutting line at the grocery store.

I’m lucky. There hasn’t been a single occasion in my life I can remember when possessing a firearm would have been helpful to me. Knock on wood. Never been mugged, never seen a robbery going down where I could have intervened and saved the day, never been attacked by a bear in the woods.

I can think of a few times when having easy access to one could have caused trouble, though.

There was a very late night in San Francisco when I got a little lost looking for my car. I found myself in a dark and sketchy and unfamiliar part of the Mission District. The streets were mostly empty, except for myself and a man who seemed to be following me, twenty feet or so behind. Every time I turned down a different street, so did he. This went on for several blocks. I felt threatened. I could feel my heart pounding. Now, in my wildest dreams, I can’t imagine myself wheeling around and pulling out the trusty Glock and opening fire. But I’d had a few drinks earlier in the night; maybe my judgement was impaired just enough to do something stupid. I was afraid. Fear distorts. What if I turned around to confront him to find that he was also armed? Whatever the results, it surely wouldn’t have ended as well as it actually did: after a few more blocks, he headed a different direction. I soon found my car and drove home. Chances are, the threat I perceived that night was a product of my overactive imagination. The man was probably just trying to find his car too. The streets of San Francisco can be confusing.

Here’s a little confession: part of being the acquiescing peace-maker/conflict-avoider that I am is that I let things build up sometimes. That’s not always healthy. Sometimes I take in as much as I can and then I lose my cool. Every six or seven years, I have a Mount St. Helens’ moment. I can think of a couple of eruptions when I’m glad I didn’t have quick access to a deadly weapon. To date, worst case scenario has been a slammed door or two and a string of groveling apologies soon thereafter. I’d like to believe that even in the most heated of quarrels, my good morals and proper upbringing and sense of right and wrong and sound judgement and fear of incarceration would prevail. But rage is a powerful thing. Think back to the maddest you’ve ever been. How does it feel with a gun in your hand?

I’m sure many of you reading this know that I’m often critical of law enforcement. Too many cops are racist and too many departments corrupt. I don’t automatically trust the police and don’t always feel safe in their presence. I know my level of distrust pales in comparison to many of my non-White friends, for good reason. I’ll save that conversation for another day. Nevertheless, I do feel safer knowing that it’s trained professionals, most of whom are competent and upstanding and well-vetted, who are the ones carrying weapons in my town. Yes, the bad guys have guns. But a bunch of untrained citizens brandishing weapons, fragile humans like me — each dealing with their own set of demons, some with vigilantism on their minds and grudges in their hearts and “right-to-carry” permits in their back pockets… these good guys prone to road rage and jealousy and subject to accidents and errors in judgment (as we all are)… isn’t helpful to law enforcement and doesn’t make the streets safer; it makes the streets more dangerous.

And that’s exactly what a report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research this week indicates; what many of us who promote gun control find unsurprising: allowing citizens to carry handguns doesn’t decrease crime, as the NRA always tried to convince us; it increases it, especially violent crime such as aggravated assault. In fact, after examining decades of crime data, Stanford Law School Professor John Donohue found that states which adopted right-to-carry laws have experienced a 13 to 15 percent increase in violent crime in the 10 years after enacting those laws.

Simply put, putting guns in the hands of more citizens is no remedy for gun violence. Which seems like a no-brainer to me. You’ll never see one in mine.

Electing Obama wasn't Sign of Post-Racial America I Was Hoping For (Blogging During the Obama Presidency)

2016-08-01T20:21:00.002-04:00

I started my blog just after Barrack Obama was elected president in 2008 - when blogging was still a relatively new platform. In hindsight, many of my early posts were naive and idealistic, as I still tend to be at times. I honestly thought electing our first non-white president was indicative of a tipping point in US race relations, the beginning of a post-racial America in which MLK’s dream for its people to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin would finally come to pass, at last. What was exposed, instead, in the months and years that’s followed, is a vile and venomous undercurrent of racism, which still sadly flows freely across this nation.

America is a racist nation. Period. The bane of racism is its greatest threat. It tears at the fabric of our society. The Obama presidency exposed its prevalence. Fox News and an emergent social media provided affinity and affirmation for droves of white supremacists itching to come out of the closet. And, as the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump has provided legitimacy to its hateful agenda.

At the risk of giving in to cynicism I’ve so long resisted, it’s tempting to concede that it is perhaps simply unrealistic to expect otherwise from a nation founded by the savage murder and displacement of millions of indigenous peoples and built on slave labor. Racial disparities are everywhere, still. The kind of racial unrest boiling over in the summer of 2016 is the evil fruit of what centuries of white supremacy have sewn. When police kill black people who pose no threat, or someone bearing the confederate flag kills innocent black church goers, or a black former soldier says he wants to shoot white police - these are all tragic consequences of our history of systemic racism. White America is fortunate that most blacks want only equality, not revenge.

More than a half century after Governor Wallace stood at the front of Foster Auditorium blocking blacks from entering the University of Alabama, racism is an illness that still infects our institutions to the core, the worst of which comes in the form of racist, corrupt, morally bankrupt police departments and at every level of the legal and justice systems. Institutional racism is by design, not unintentional. There are systems in place (and have been since slavery) to keep blacks down and dis-empowered.

The Black Lives Matter movement took root in 2013 following George Zimmerman’s acquittal of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. It gained momentum as the number of senseless killings of blacks by cops mounted, many of which caught on police dash cams or camera phones providing irrefutable and damning evidence of rampant police brutality those of us heretofore inclined to give cops the benefit of the doubt could no longer ignore. Predictably, white supremacists countered with cries of “All Lives Matter” and illogical inferences to reverse racism. Whereas rational people have always understood an implicit “also” or “as much as” at the end of the Black Lives Matter hashtag, racists conjured an implicit “instead” or “more than” at the end - threatening to their sense of supremacy and privilege, spurring retaliation and fueling further racist acts and widening the divide.

This is white privilege: When I read about the deaths of Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling or any of the other horrifying instances of police brutality against black people, I am outraged instead of terrified. I am able to voice my anger, to show up to protests, to loudly condemn the racist criminal justice system because I will not be its next victim.

As racial tensions heightened throughout the land, the vitriol hurled at President Obama was unprecedented in its viciousness. Republicans have plotted and planned to destroy the man and his administration since his first day in office, flooding the country with an intentional and negative barrage of misinformation about him. There’s no way you’ll convince me that the animus directed against Obama was based on his policies or politics. No, it’s based on something far deeper: a gut-wrenching fear of color change in our nation. The foreshadowing of a browner America which is relentlessly approaching just over the horizon.

Consider this: when Obama took office, the country was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month. The auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Financial institutions were in shambles under the weight of its own greed and gluttony while our deregulate at all cost government turned a blind eye. We were in process of destroying Iraq (killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, women and children and losing over 4,000 of our own, along the way) – destabilizing the region and creating the kind of terrorist backlash that exists there today - as many predicted it would - in a misguided act of retaliation by President Bush. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden was still alive (you know, the one who actually had something to do with 9/11, not Saddam Hussein). Gas prices were hovering around $4 a gallon. The unemployment rate was 7.8% by the time President Bush left office, but was on a skyrocketing trajectory that would eventually peak at 10%. The stock market was in free-fall.

The country was in the throes of the Great Recession with somber speculation that a depression was right around the corner.
Today, the unemployment rate is under 5% (about 7 million more people have jobs than when Obama took office). In fact, the country has added five times more jobs than it did during the Bush administration. Gas prices are under $2 in most places. The resuscitated auto industry produced 11 million vehicles in 2014. Stock prices have soared. The economy has enjoyed 70-plus straight months of private-sector job growth. The deficit has shrunk by nearly $1 trillion and Medicare's long-term solvency has been extended by 13 years. The Great Recession is over.

Osama bin Laden was executed during Obama’s first term. Gays can now serve openly in the military. Solar energy installations are up nearly two-thousand per cent, and carbon emissions have dropped. More Americans have health insurance than ever before (despite continuous efforts by Congress to thwart the Affordable Care Act). Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

America is safer than it’s been in decades too. Even though 70 percent of Americans think that the crime rate is increasing, in reality, the national crime rate is about half of what it was at the peak in 1991. And while an average of 101 police officers were intentionally killed every year during Reagan’s presidency, the annual number is just 62 under Obama — the lowest recorded amount, even as the far right describes Obama as a race-baiting cop hater responsible for the shootings of police officers in Dallas earlier this summer.

I have no doubt that history will be kind to Barack Obama. The accomplishments are many, indeed. But instead of acknowledging the President’s steady leadership out of tumultuous times, he’s mocked and vilified. Just imagine, though, what could have been accomplished had the Koch-sponsored Congress not successfully attempted to obstruct and sabotage everything President Obama attempted. Electing Donald Trump would be disastrous on many levels. But the inevitable escalation of racial unrest unseen since the days of Appomattox and from which this country may never recover might be the worst of it.

Supremacy isn’t just about violence, though. White privilege, white ignorance, white apathy… is in no great shortage. Think of it as the bulging middle of the bell curve with small percentages of whites who are openly racist and dangerous on one end; and enlightened, activist, open-minded whites on the other. The majority in the middle are whites who are indifferent, clueless, naive, misinformed, and content with the status quo. They don't burn crosses in their yards but their inaction is harmful, nevertheless.

Now, the Obama presidency is in its twilight. As I write this, the General Election is less than one hundred days away. The choice between the two candidates vying to follow Obama is as stark as it has ever been: a seasoned public servant with unprecedented international and domestic experience and credentials prepared to build on the progress made during the Obama administration against Donald Trump, a poisonous mix of white supremacy and ultra-nationalism, woefully unfit to be president. A misogynist, ego-maniac whose candidacy is built on anger, fear, lies, and racism.

For the sake of the country and the future of my children and yours, choose wisely, America.

Drug Testing Confirms that Welfare Recipients are a Bunch of Drug-Addicted Slackers Looking for a Handout

2014-08-12T19:04:00.000-04:00

Not.

1 out of 812 applicants tested positive for drugs in Tennessee.

One.

After instituting dehumanizing drug-testing requirements to welfare recipients on July 1, just one person tested positive. That means that just 0.12% of all people applying for cash assistance in Tennessee have tested positive for drugs, compared to the 8% who have reported using drugs in the past month among the state's general population.

Now, Tennessee, go test your state legislators and mayors and city councilmen and judges and see how those numbers stack up.

In Tennessee and other states, suspicions that welfare recipients are a bunch of drug-addicted slackers were proven dead wrong.

(a nice graphic to put things in perspective)

In Utah, just 12 of 4,730 (0.25%) welfare applicants tested positive for drugs over the course of a year.

In Florida, just 2.6% of applicants tested positive, costing the state much more than it saved. The program was thrown out in court last December as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In Virginia, a similar drug testing program was scrapped after analysts found it would cost $1.5 million to implement and save just $229,000 from un-disbursed benefits.

Maine’s governor set out to prove welfare recipients in his state were using their benefits to buy booze and cigarettes at bars and strip clubs, but turned up nothing.

Requiring people to pee in a cup for no reason other than being poor and in need of assistance is demoralizing and won’t pass constitutional muster.

And test results thus far only confirm what researchers already knew: Welfare recipients are not rampant drug users, and most of those who do take drugs are not addicts. Those who do have substance abuse problems mostly drink alcohol. It's a tired stereotype perpetuated by those who wish to further drive a wedge between the haves and the have-nots and is rooted in racism.

But even if the tests were finding many more drug addicts, denying them benefits would still be a cruel, stupid policy. It's the children of poor drug users who stand to lose the most if the food stamps get cut.

Nevertheless, last year, House Republicans voted to require states to drug test food stamp applicants (in the same bill that also cut benefits by $40 billion, by the way).

I’ve always thought it made a lot more sense to test members of Congress than Welfare applicants. The taxpayer funded checks they cash are much bigger.

On Donald Sterling

2014-05-16T12:11:00.001-04:00

I’ve known many Donald Sterlings in my life. I bet you have too.

When they start sentences with “There’s not a racist bone in my body, but…” you can pretty much be guaranteed the rest of the sentence will be racist. Ever notice how people who truly aren’t racist don’t really have to spend a lot of time convincing people?

I listen to Donald Sterling and I see the likes of Strom Thurmond and Jessie Helms and George Wallace, each of whom pointed to all the good they’d done for poor blacks in their states as a way to appease their racist attitudes and policies - in the same way plantation masters described their relationship with slaves as symbiotic, in the same way Donald Sterling talks about providing homes and cars and clothes for his players. You'll find various incarnations still lingering today in state houses and Congress halls and presiding over corporate board rooms.

Racists in the spotlight, like politicians and celebrities, are easy to see through. Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves. Or just keep recording long enough. Just as burning crosses are easier to spot than glass ceilings, today’s racism may be less noticeable...but there's no shortage of it, mostly flying under the radar and occasionally rearing its ugly head for all to see, as it is now. Will it die off with the eighty-somethings? Even an idealist like me knows it’s naïve to think racism will ever be fully extinguished. But there’s reason to be optimistic that it will fade in time - as society evolves and the US becomes more multi-cultural.

I was born in the rural south at the height of the civil rights movement. I grew up with racism all around me. Racism is always inexcusable. But to be honest, I shrugged off a lot of racist attitudes among the old timers from back in the day who never made it past the county line as them “just not knowing any better.” The same latitude can’t be given to a savvy businessman who lives in a world-class city and associates with fellow millionaires of all colors, even if he is eighty years old.

What the audio tapes and subsequent interview with Anderson Cooper reveal is an old man completely out of touch with post-millennium America. Adaptability is the key to growing old gracefully and Donald Sterling epitomizes the opposite - a curmudgeonly old man, stuck in his ways, desperately trying to hold on to the day when white men held all the power and did whatever they pleased to whomever they wanted because they had enough money to settle out of court.

But his dirty old tricks aren’t going to work this time. There still exist places in America where minorities have no voice. The NBA is not one of them. Legends like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and current superstars like LeBron James wield tremendous influence and power. The league’s commissioner acted swiftly and decisively when he banned Mr. Sterling from the NBA for life. Adam Silver seems genuinely disgusted by Sterling’s remarks. But he’s also no dummy. He knows that the multi-billion-dollar empire could come crumbling to the ground in an instant if the league’s most high profile minority players stand in solidarity and walk away.

For most African-American players, I’m imagining, this moment is bigger than the Clippers, bigger than basketball. It’s about the weight they’ve inherited from generations prior. It’s about their fathers and grandfathers who bit their lips and walked away from the condescending boss man because they needed to put food on the table. It’s about not having the votes to unseat a Strom Thurmond or the clout to face down Bull Connors. It’s about a legacy of powerlessness … But right now, with a hugely popular and successful professional sports league as the backdrop, and the whole world watching, they hold the power. And they’re not about to squander the opportunity to make a statement.

Some white people may not understand the level of ire Sterling’s comments inspired. We’ve all heard the tapes. When it comes to racist tirades, I’ve heard much worse. So has every NBA player, I bet. If Mr. Sterling were a decent guy, I imagine the NBA front office and league players would be open to giving him a second chance… a hefty fine and a suspension probably, but not a lifetime ban. Who hasn’t said things they didn’t mean in the throes of an argument with a lover? Maybe dismiss it as the jealous rant of an old man whose mental faculties might be on the decline. But he’s not a decent guy. He’s a slum lord with a long history of racial discrimination. He’s the antithesis of what the NBA is trying to project. The tapes provided the league with the ammunition it needed to get rid of him, and they did.

Mr. Sterling will undoubtedly fight this to the bitter end. The matter could be tied up in litigation for years. If the courts inexplicably return the team to him or his estranged wife, we can surely expect much upheaval… probably a boycott by NBA players who would likely refuse to play in a league that includes Donald Sterling. It could be the end of the NBA as we know it.

And I would support the players 100%.

Side note: Dear Lord, if I’m ever a billionaire, please grant me the wisdom to suspect that a girlfriend fifty years younger just might have ulterior motives.

America is Beautiful in Many Languages

2014-04-09T09:02:00.002-04:00

In 1971, when Coca-Cola launched its "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" ad promoting peace and included a variety of races, it ignited an outpouring of protest among segregationists and war-mongers and isolationists and bigots - still clinging to the then not-so-distant past when “coloreds” used separate water fountains and Jim Crow ruled the day and races certainly did not intermingle in “perfect harmony” for all the world to see. And, oh, the audacity of a company as Americana as Coca-Cola promoting world peace during the Viet Nam war!

Fast forward to Super Bowl XLVIII and, well, I guess nothing much has changed.Promptly after Coca-Cola aired an ad with “America the Beautiful” sung in a number of languages, social media was littered with claims that the company was unpatriotic and plans to boycott its products.

Sadly, there exists a contingency of people still longing for the good old days when blacks rode in the back of the bus and gays stayed hidden in the closet and women in the kitchen and children were seen and not heard and everybody spoke proper English, y’all, and old white men ran the nation. Thank God those days are over because it’s most certainly not the America the beautiful in which I aspire to raise my mixed-race children. Its diversity, in my opinion, is what makes America beautiful.

What’s so scary about languages? English will always be the dominant language spoken in the USA. But, it’s certainly not the only one. Spend an afternoon at a café in SoHo or a tea house in the Castro and you’ll likely hear dozens of languages being spoken in the tables around you. Right here in America. That's really okay. Note: Chinatown is just as much a part of America as Lubbock, Texas.

There are supposedly 27 different languages represented at my daughters' elementary school - diversity that adds to the richness of their education and childhood and better prepares them to engage in the 21st Century multicultural world in which they live. So far, neither of my daughters has contracted any contagions as a result, nor are they leaning toward Socialism because they hear non-English words spoken every now and then.

America is a big ol’ country and there’s a place for everyone. I’m sure there are plenty of trailer parks or country clubs in sprawling suburbs where everyone looks, talks, thinks, loves and votes the same way. If that's your cup of tea, embrace it. Meanwhile, the rest of us can appreciate the inspirational message Coke was trying to send, even as we’re shocked, yet again, by the things that get labeled unpatriotic by some.

Coca-Cola, 1971 - 'Hilltop' | "I'd like to buy the world a Coke"

Would You Let Your Child Play Football?

2013-09-28T09:05:00.000-04:00

Would you let your child play football?

That’s a hot question these days as information about long-term medical problems among former players in the National Football League (NFL) continues to be revealed. The NFL recently settled a lawsuit for $765 million involving thousands of its former players. The players claim that the league knew of the potential risk of brain damage due to repetitive concussions, but did little to educate them or prevent the injuries from occurring.

Some former players link their current medical conditions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), and other neurodegenerative diseases to their football playing days. A recent study suggests that professional football players are three times more likely to have such conditions than the general population.

The study, which was published September 5, 2012 in the medical journal Neurology, surveyed nearly 3,500 retired NFL players who were in the league between 1959 and 1988.

The NFL has taken major steps in recent years to make the game safer for its players, both in terms of equipment and protocol. In the past, though, whenever a player got his “bell rung” and wobbled to the sideline, he was sent right back into the game as soon as possible, exposing the player to further head injuries.

Obviously, there’s a big difference between Little League and the NFL. The massive size, speed and power of players competing at the highest level is in no way comparable to young kids just picking up the sport in elementary school. You won’t see the kind of violent collisions in Pee Wee games that you do on Monday Night Football.

On the other hand, there’s also a big difference in the quality of protective equipment used by pros versus youngsters. And, whereas qualified medical staff is always on the sidelines at practices and games for college and pro teams, that’s not the case for younger players.

The barrage of recent media coverage regarding the NFL lawsuit is shining a light on the dangers of the sport and making parents across the country wonder whether the risks are worth it.

Undeniably, football at any level is violent. Toughness is rewarded. To “shake off” an injury and get back in the game is seen as admirable. That’s just part of the culture of the sport and true whether it’s the New York Jets or some Pop Warner team in Chapel Hill. Taping an ankle and limping back to the gridiron to the applause of the fans in the stands is one thing; returning to the line of fire once you’ve “shaken the cobwebs” after a blow to the head is an entirely different matter.

It’s hard for a parent to draw the line. Maybe youth leagues are safe but reservations start to creep in along about the junior high or high school level as the size, speed and power of its participants increase. Regardless of the dangers, the sport remains a very popular activity among young people. It is estimated that 3.5 million kids play in youth leagues and one million play in high school.

Most youngsters who play football don’t sustain serious injuries, although almost everyone who plays long enough will get a little banged up from time to time, a twisted ankle or bruised knee here and there. Head injuries, however, aren’t as easy to detect as a twisted ankle and a bruised brain poses a much greater risk for problems down the road.

But how risky is it? A group of researchers in North Carolina and Virginia is hoping to shed some light on the subject, according to an article in Technology Review. The researchers worked with two youth teams and one high school team, representing children aged 6-18, during the 2012-2013 football season. With helmets equipped with accelerometers, more than 16,000 head impacts were recorded and measured over the course of that season. Players were given neurological tests and brain scans using magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography to look for changes in the brain before and after the season. Results are still being analyzed.

The researchers hope to develop tools to identify when a player has been hit hard enough, or repeatedly enough, to risk a concussion or other brain injury.

The decision can be a tough one for parents. Most of us want our kids involved in extracurricular activities and believe participating on an athletic team builds confidence and discipline. We may wonder whether football is really more dangerous than soccer or skateboarding or surfing or driving a car or other activities in which we allow our child to participate. Many of us have fond memories of Friday nights under the lights and feel like a hypocrite denying the same experience to our children.

Still, keeping our children safe is a fundamental task as a parent. Each family must consider the pros and cons and make a decision that’s right for their child.

A Note to My Classmates on the Occasion of Our Thirtieth High School Class Reunion

2013-06-01T11:17:00.003-04:00

In the 30 years since graduation, we have seen the Berlin Wall come down, the dawn of a new millennium, and our first non-white President (regardless of where you come down politically, this is an event once thought unimaginable), a technology explosion which is allowing me to sit in my living room on my iPad in my pj’s and communicate with classmates across the world. You would have all said I was crazy back then had I tried to explain Twitter or Facebook or Skype or YouTube… who could have pointed to Silicon Valley on a map… who wouldn't have been giddy at the idea of listening to any song ever recorded for free on ear-buds plugged into your phone that sounds just as good as the stereo in Michael Gann’s mustang?

We have a robot roving Mars sending back pictures and drones in the fields fighting our battles. We've seen fascists and dictators and empires rise…. and fascists and dictators and empires fall (repeat again)… and desert storms and Arab Springs and a meltdown in Chernobyl and New Orleans under water and our beloved Gulf of Mexico sullied with BP oil. A disease called AIDS we had never even heard of in 1983 has since claimed the lives of 30 million people.

We've seen our share of triumphs and tragedies…we all remember where we were when the space shuttle exploded and when the twin towers came tumbling down. Nelson Mandela was released from prison; OJ Simpson may spend the rest of his life there. We've seen unprecedented wealth. And unprecedented poverty. The stock market soared, the housing bubble burst. Many of us have brought children into the world. Many of us have said goodbye to our parents. Who knew back then: Madonna would still be relevant and the USSR wouldn't?

Take any three-decade chunk of time in world history and you’ll find good and bad, progress and setbacks, heroes and villains, optimists and naysayers…just like this time has seen. I would like to think that we've become a little more understanding, tolerant, compassionate, aware, sympathetic society and that the ties that bind us will trump the differences that seem to be tearing us apart (although sometimes I wonder).

My dad remembers a time when there were only a handful of cars in Marion County. He remembers seeing a black person for the first time. He remembers drawing water from a well and the first house he lived in that had electricity and remembers picking cotton from sunrise to sunset. Yet, he predicted our generation would experience even more change than his. He was right. Change is exponential. It’s happening at warp speed. And inevitable. Embrace it. Adaptability is the key to growing old gracefully.

ANYTHING is possible!

Stephen Raburn

HHS Class of 83

What Bothers Me Most about the Manti Te’o Story

2013-01-19T09:56:00.002-05:00

As everyone who doesn’t live under a rock knows by now, the story of the deceased girlfriend of grieving star Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o was all a hoax. Who knows whether Te’o was the victim or perpetrator? If I were a betting man, I’d say somewhere in the middle. I can imagine a scenario in which he fell for a girl on-line and then let things spiral out of control instead of ‘fessing up when he realized it was a ruse.

Or, Manti could be entirely complicit: he could have conjured the entire story from scratch as a carefully plotted strategy to win sympathy and, presumably, votes for the Heisman Trophy, as some have suggested. That’s weird, but somewhat plausible.

He claims he’s completely innocent, save for telling a few white lies about actually meeting the girl since he didn’t want his family to think he was nuts for falling in love with someone he’d never seen.

Only Manti Te’o knows the honest truth.

What bothers me the most has been the reaction to the story.

My Facebook page and Twitter feeds have been littered with jokes and sneers about the situation since the story broke.

This isn’t a politician who asked for our trust and got caught with his pants down. This isn’t Lance Armstrong who deliberately set out to ruin people’s lives in the interest of gold and glory. This is a college kid who, chances are, did something really stupid and is paying for it today. I don’t know about you, but I did a lot of really stupid things in college. Still do.

The kid owes his family and close friends an explanation. Apparently, he’s satisfied the University of Notre Dame, who came out in full support of him. As a casual college football fan, he owes me nothing.

If he were a punter on a Sun Belt Conference team, the story wouldn’t have made the back page of a single second rate weekly newspaper.

But he’s not. He’s the best player on one of the most notorious brands in sport. So, that gives everyone with a keyboard the right to poke fun, I guess.

In the overall scheme of things, I know Manti Te’o, who is poised to become a very wealthy individual come NFL draft day, is unaffected and likely unconcerned about what some hack in Spokane posts on his blog. To me, the bigger story is about who we are as a society: quick to judge and quick to kick someone when they’re down. Callous and uncompassionate and snarky and insensitive and hypocritical.

It’s a strange story, for sure. But, in the end, whether he brought it all on himself or not, a college kid who just happens to be a talented football player is having a rough day. He’s embarrassed, humiliated and probably kicking himself for letting things get this out of hand. To me, that’s just not funny.

Tell the President, Congress to Stand Up to the NRA

2012-12-21T01:03:00.001-05:00

People kill people.

If we pass the strictest gun laws imaginable, people will still find guns and use them.

If we eradicate all guns from the planet, violent people will find other tools to carry out their violent acts.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't enact common sense gun laws in an effort to reduce the number of gun killings.

The NRA would like you to believe that those of us who support reasonable gun restrictions are unpatriotic or that we want to repeal the Second Amendment or that we all naively believe that gun control is a panacea to end all murders or that we want to take away all your guns.

None of that is true.

The NRA spews lies in order to incite paranoia and hysteria among a radical fringe of its membership.

The NRA is a powerful lobby that pretends to represent gun owners. In reality, it represents the deadly interests of arms dealers and gun manufacturers and has been astonishingly successful at blocking regulations that would make the country safer from gun violence.

Most gun owners are unaware of the organization's extreme stances that have blocked the passage of any significant piece of gun legislation in nearly two decades.

Through lobbying, campaign spending and propaganda, the NRA has helped defeat common sense gun measures that polls show an overwhelming majority of gun owners support, including:

Efforts to limit the availability to purchase military-style semi-automatic assault rifles and high capacity ammunition clips (the kind that were recently used in Aurora, CO and Newtown, CT).

Efforts to restrict weapon sales to individuals on the US terrorism watch list.

A United Nations Arms Trade Treaty which would have required countries exporting conventional weapons to certify that they weren't being shipped to a terrorist group or a nation under a UN arms embargo like North Korea or Iran.

Due to a legal loophole the NRA is determined to keep in place, 40% of all guns are sold through private sellers who are not required to conduct a criminal background check. Over 80% of all gun owners (including 74% of NRA members) support criminal background checks on people buying guns.

In the past four years, a wave of measures across 37 states have made it easier to own, carry and conceal weapons.

America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws, and record casualties from mass killers.

The NRA relies on overly-simplistic rhetoric and bullet-point jargon. Guns don't kill people, they say.

That may be true, but unstable people with unfettered access to guns and an unlimited amount of ammunition kill people (thanks NRA). Guns may not kill people, but people who kill with guns kill a lot more people when they do kill people.

Reasonable, common sense gun control legislation is just one step - but a necessary first step - in addressing perhaps the greatest social issue facing our nation: the senseless deaths - through murder and accidents - of thousands of innocent people, including children, every year by gunfire.

Did You Know?

The gun murder rate in the US is 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populace countries combined. Every one of those countries has stricter gun laws than the US.

Add together all the gun deaths in the 23 wealthiest countries in the world and 80% of those are American deaths. Of all the children killed by guns in those countries, 87% were American children.

Killings with handguns last year: 48 in Japan, 8 in Great Britain, 34 in Switzerland, 52 in Canada, 42 in Germany... and 10,728 in the US.

32 Americans die from guns every day.

The US loses more people to gun violence in six months than all the casualties of terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Two common sense gun control measures we all should be able to agree on:

A ban on the manufacture, possession, transfer, and sale of assault weapons, such as AK-47s and AR-15s. These weapons of mass destruction are intended for the military and law enforcement and designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. They have no place in the general marketplace. Over time, a ban of these weapons will decrease the numbers in circulation and make it more difficult for people with sinister intent to get their hands on them.

Close loopholes to ensure that felons, people with mental illnesses and perpetrators of domestic violence are not able to buy guns at gun shows and over the Internet.

Please join me in demanding President Obama and Congress stand up to the NRA and do the right thing: pass reasonable gun control legislation in 2013.

See: Pro Gun Myths Fact Check

Related articles:
Smoking Gun
An Open Letter to the NRA

Smoking Gun

2012-12-15T21:14:00.000-05:00

Guns don’t kill people.

But unstable people with unfettered access to guns and unlimited amount of ammunition kill people.

Guns don’t kill people.

But people who kill with guns kill A LOT more people when they do kill people.

Killings with handguns last year: 48 in Japan, 8 in Great Britain, 34 in Switzerland, 52 in Canada, 42 in Germany.... and 10,728 in the US. Are we that much more morally bankrupt than these other countries? Or mentally unstable?
Mike Huckabee thinks it's because we don't make 3rd graders pray in class any more. Been to Amsterdam lately, Mike? Not exactly the most puritanical place on the planet, yet Holland has exponentially fewer gun murders than we do.

Guns don't kill people?

I'm over the overly-simplistic ideological slogans and rhetorical soundbites.

The gun murder rate in the US is 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populace countries combined. Every one of those countries has stricter gun laws than we do. Add together all the gun deaths in the 23 wealthiest countries in the world and 80% of those are American deaths. Of all the children killed by guns in those countries, 87% were American children.

The gun lobby has one agenda: sell more guns to make more money. They buy politicians and dupe the naïve into believing it’s about the Constitution then laugh all the way to the bank with blood on their hands. Every one of its members is an accomplice to murder, in my opinion. One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and now we all take our shoes off at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine but not a single change in our regulation of guns. That's the power of the gun lobby.

Ultimately, everything that's wrong with the US comes down to one thing: greed. And that includes the senseless death of 20 innocent children and six innocent adults and one fragile gunman, hardly more than a child himself, at an elementary school in Connecticut on December 14, 2012.

My Christmas Story

2012-12-12T12:51:00.005-05:00

“You know Santa Claus isn’t real, don’t you?” my older brother asked me, somewhat exasperated at my naiveté.

“Yes,” I replied matter-of-factly, with my eyes rolling slightly.

In actuality, it was the first time I’d even considered the possibility. Now, I just felt stupid. Like I was the oldest kid in the world who still believed in Santa.

I asked my mama.

“Tommy said Santa Claus isn’t real. Is that true?”

“He’s real if you want him to be, son,” Mama said.

Maybe deep down I’d known for some time, but I wasn’t ready to let it go. Maybe I knew that, if I did, Christmas would never feel the same again and in the deep recesses of my mind I wanted to hold onto this little piece of childhood just a little while longer.

But things started to make better sense. Like when Mama told me not to expect too much for Christmas this year, times were tough. I knew times were tough but that didn’t really seem to matter when it came to being naughty or nice. Now I get it.

To say times were tough is an understatement.

The coal mine closed down and Daddy hadn’t worked in almost a year. We had food on the table but not much else. Daddy was gone a lot, I remember. It wasn’t until many years later that I came to learn that he spent most nights coon hunting and most days drinking moonshine from a still he had hidden in the woods behind the house. It’s hard on a man when he loses the only work he's ever known. I remember my mama crying a lot and being awakened in the middle of the night to the sounds of the two of them fighting.

Besides, it didn’t much feel like Christmas anyway. Most winters are mild in the deep south, but this year was even warmer than usual. All the trees were still covered with leaves until a vicious thunderstorm roared through and blew them all to the ground, just a couple days before Christmas. It hadn’t snowed in three or four years. I'd never experienced a white Christmas before and wanted one more than just about anything. Every night I prayed for snow.

I fell asleep early on Christmas Eve, but was jolted awake just after midnight when I heard loud clanking and banging coming from somewhere. I was thinking that maybe another storm had come through and blown tree limbs onto the tin roof. I got up to investigate and that’s when I saw him, standing in front of the Christmas tree beside the fireplace. A man with a flowing white beard and red coat and black boots. It was Santa Claus.

Santa glanced at me and smiled a smile that danced across his entire face and called me over to him to give me a big hug.

“You are real, Santa,” I said.

“Of course I am,” he said. “Now where are my cookies, boy? Every year you leave me oatmeal cookies and a tall glass of milk.”

I ran as fast as I could to the kitchen and came back with cookies and milk for Santa and some for me too. His crystal blue eyes lit up when he saw them.

“I’m sorry for all the commotion. The reindeer got a little reckless landing on your roof tonight.” We both laughed.

Santa asked me if I could hold the bag open for him while he got out the presents, which were many more than I could have ever dreamed of – a bicycle for me, a basketball for my brother, a radio for my sister, a coat for Daddy and gloves for Mama... and so much more. The presents just kept coming until they were spilling out from under the tree and into the dining room.

Finally, after all the presents were put out and all the cookies eaten, Santa told me it was time for me to go back to bed and time for him to head to the next house, as he caressed my face with his gloved hand.

“But I have one more present for you,” he said. “Go look out the window.”

From the window, I watched Santa and his sleigh disappear into the black Winter sky then noticed the first flakes of snow begin to fall. It snowed the rest of the night and all of Christmas Day and most of the days leading up to New Years Eve. There’s no telling how many snowmen my brothers and sisters and I built or how many snowball fights we had in our back yard. We’d never laughed so hard in our entire lives.

The next Spring my daddy got a job in another town and we moved away. Mama and Daddy quit fighting and life got back to being normal. Many Christmas’s have come and gone since then, but that's the one I remember the most. I guess you can say it’s the best Christmas I ever had. It’s the one and only time I ever saw Santa Claus, but I’ve never since questioned his existence.

Now, when my children ask me if Santa Claus is really real, I always say “Yes, he is.”

He’s real if you want him to be.

So, you want to sign a petition to secede from the Union, do you?

2012-11-13T07:22:00.001-05:00

So, you want to sign a petition to secede from the Union, do you?

Ask yourself: How’d that secession thing work out for us the first time? Abraham Lincoln is rolling his eyes at the absurdity. What a mockery of the hell our fledgling country endured during the Civil War in order to preserve a more perfect union.

It’s not surprising where these petitions are being circulated, which, for the most part, are the states of the old Confederacy; the sons and daughters of Jim Crow who can’t concede that a brown man is their leader.

Do I think everyone who signs one of these petitions is racist? No. But I certainly believe racism is playing a role. And ignorance of history, as well. Mostly, it’s just about being a sore loser.

I get it. Both times Dubya won, I swore I was moving to Costa Rica. But I didn't. I pouted for a while (like a child) and moved on (like a grown-up).

It’s time for all of us to put aside our petty differences and get down to the business of fixing the problems of our country. It sounds like Congressional leadership is finally striking a more conciliatory tone in the interest of moving the nation forward. You should too.

Your window to pout is closing. Time to act like a grown up.

This SEC Purist Having a Hard Time Accepting Mizzou into the Fold

2012-10-09T22:30:00.000-04:00

As the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide prepares to travel to Columbia on Saturday to take on Missouri, I have to admit I’m still having a hard time accepting the Tigers into the SEC.

There are very few things in life about which I consider myself a traditionalist, college football being one exception. I’m just now warming up to the idea of South Carolina and Arkansas, some twenty years after they joined the conference. Don’t even bother asking my opinion of those hideous uniforms everybody's wearing these days.

I know. Time marches on. The world evolves and that includes uniforms and athletic conferences. Nothing is permanent. There was a time when Sewanee was a member of the SEC, after all.

Nostalgia is experienced through rose colored glasses. My good old days are charted by countless hours in my Alabama backyard pretending to run the wishbone alongside imaginary teammates as Paul “Bear” Bryant looked on with nodding approval from the sideline. The wishbone formation has long since found its way to some grandma’s attic next to a dusty typewriter and Thin Lizzy 8-tracks. But, in my nostalgia-warped mind, it represents Bama’s heyday, the Tide’s current dominance on the gridiron and its uber-successful coach notwithstanding.

When it comes to football, I'll admit that I'm a little bit stuck in the 70's. No, I don't think we need a playoff. Yes, I think it's fine for games to end in a tie. Yes, I think a 9-6 defensive slug-fest is a thing of beauty. And, yes, I think the SEC was fine the way it was.

I understand the economics of big time college sports and the motivation for adding the St. Louis and Kansas City TV markets into the equation. I know those high dollar television contracts help fund dozens of non-revenue sports across the conference. Revenue from major college football programs dwarfs other sports and other university departments. Football is money. And when so much of it is on the table, neither history nor geography are particularly relevant.

But come on. Missouri? Don’t you think a southern drawl should be among the criteria for inclusion in the Southeastern Conference? Do they even eat grits in Missouri?

To me, it’s more about sociology than athletics. Football is just different in the Deep South than it is in the rest of the world. The SEC is a source of tremendous pride among its residents who, perhaps, still have a chip on their collective shoulders and something of an inferiority complex - still fighting stigmas and stereotypes held over from Reconstruction and reinforced during the ugly days of the civil rights movement.

The South may still lag behind the rest of the country in numerous measures of well-being, but college football is something it does better than anybody else.

When we chant “SEC” in unison at our gargantuan sold out cathedrals it’s not so much about an athletic conference as it is about all things southern. It’s Major Ogilvie and Johnny Majors and Archie Manning and Pat Sullivan and Uga and The Swamp and the Iron Bowl. It’s about not having to explain why you don’t plan a wedding on the third Saturday in October. It's gravel roads and sweet tea and mama’s biscuits and Leonard’s Losers and kudzu and a congenital disdain for Notre Dame. Does all that fly in Springfield and Jefferson City?

Don't get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with the University of Missouri - undeniably a fine institution of higher learning which will do well enough in most of the teams it fields.

I just don’t think they belong in the SEC, y’all.

I bet "Bear" agrees with me.

Romney's disdain for "those people" (the poor and the elderly)

2012-09-21T09:05:00.002-04:00

Mitt Romney:

“There are 47 percent of the population who don’t pay taxes. That’s 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That it’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And so, my job is not to worry about those people; I’ll never convince them.”

Clarifying Romney’s numbers:

First of all, it's inaccurate to say that 47 percent of Americans pay no taxes at all. Most people pay state taxes, local taxes, and property taxes. Almost all pay sales tax, and most pay payroll tax. Only 18.1 percent of American households paid zero or negative federal income tax and zero or negative federal payroll tax in 2011. Of the 18.1 percent, more than half were elderly and most of the other half were non-elderly people making below $20,000 a year.

Whether it’s 47 percent or 18.1 percent, it is clear by his rhetoric and policy positions that Mr. Romney despises the poor and elderly (might as well throw in women and minorities while we’re at it).

Interestingly, among the 18.1 percent who paid no federal income taxes are approximately 3,000 people who made more than $2,178,866 in 2011 (putting them in the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers). Those people are likely hedge fund managers, real estate investors, or other wealthy financiers whose income comes primarily in the form of capital gains, which is taxed at a much lower rate than ordinary income. Combine the capital gains rate with a magical thing called a "tax-loss carryforward," which allows an investor to use last year's big loss to offset this year's gains for tax purposes, and voila — no federal income tax. Can we see some tax returns, please, Mr. Romney? Could it be that YOU are among the very group you're railing against?

In reality, Romney only cares about the wealthiest 1%, a vast majority of whom are white men like him. But, of course, it’s hard to win an election appealing to such a small minority, no matter how rich and powerful. So he does what his party has been doing for decades now: pandering to the gullible evangelical right - using deception and fear-mongering to cloud real issues, laughing (probably at them) all the way to the bank and in some cases into office.

It’s unrealistic to believe that the entirety of the “other 99%” will wise up and see Romney for who he is: a greedy and uncompassionate liar. Thankfully, enough seem to be catching on to prevent him from being the next president of the United States.

An Open Letter to My NRA Supporter Friends about Assault Weapons

2012-08-12T15:42:00.021-04:00

Dear NRA friend,

Please remind me again exactly why it should be legal to manufacture and sale assault weapons in the US?

Seriously.

I'm not trying to pick a fight. But for the life of me, I just can't figure this one out. I'd like to understand your rationale.

In the interest of full disclosure I will admit that I don't like guns. I don't own one and likely never will. I have no interest in shooting anyone or anything. I don't even know how. I do, however, respect the 2^ndAmendment and your right to own a gun to protect your family from me if I choose to break into your house or to go hunting turkeys in Tennessee or moose in Montana if that floats your boat.

But do you really need an AR-15 assault rifle that can hold 100 rounds (the kind James Holmes legally bought and used to open fire in a crowded Colorado theater recently) or an AK-47 (the kind that’s being legally bought at gun shows along the border and smuggled to Mexico to arm drug warlords)?

Weapons that were intended for the military to kill as many people as quickly as possible? Weapons of mass destruction?

Yes, you have the right to bear arms. But civilizations evolve. The need for arms is very different in the suburbs in 2012 than it was on the frontier in the 1700's. I bet our founding fathers are rolling around in their graves at how you guys interpret the 2^nd Amendment to justify your obsession with weapons.

Should Kroger have an Atomic Bomb aisle or your corner Handy Pantry sell hand grenades? Of course not. Reasonable restrictions on the sale of weapons isn't a radical, socialist position. Or a threat to your rights as an American citizen. Banning assault weapons seems like a reasonable restriction to me.

Do I think it is a panacea? No. I agree with you that the bad guys will always come up with tools with which to carry out their bad deeds. But I do think we should at least make it a little harder for them. I think an inadequate and woefully underfunded mental health system in the US is equally to blame for the kind of violent acts we've been seeing lately (but that's a topic for another day).

To be honest, it doesn't really make me feel so safe to think that good guys like you have an arsenal in your attic. I think there are a lot of vigilante wannabes out there itching to dust off the oozie, which is kinda scary to me. Everybody has the potential to snap one day, ya know.

But let’s be honest. The gun lobby in DC is untouchable. You’ll win this one.

Still, I want to understand your perspective. Tell me something good that comes from this type of ammo being in the marketplace? What's the benefit? I'm honestly having a hard time coming up with one.

Fire away.

Sincerely,

Stephen Raburn (baffled pacifist)

Please vote against Amendment One

2012-04-19T11:09:00.010-04:00

Question: How does Amendment One benefit the citizens of the state of North Carolina? Even when I remove the liberal prism from which I admittedly view the world and try as best I can to be objective, for the life of me, I can’t find a good answer. And that’s the best argument I can make for opposing it.

Certainly, there are those who would be harmed.

Passing the amendment would deny legal recognition of civil unions and benefits that accompany domestic partnerships across the state. A child of an unmarried parent could lose health coverage or even be taken away from a loving parent and denied visitation. Unmarried couples wouldn’t be able to make emergency medical decisions or potentially even visit one another in the hospital. It could invalidate trusts and wills and domestic violence protection orders. And who knows what other intended and unintended consequences?

But who does it help?

Even if you’re not keen on gays marrying each other, is it really worth the hassle and cost of a statewide referendum and lawsuits which would undoubtedly follow and the undeniable polarization and divisiveness it's causing? For what? For the majority to monopolize rights that they themselves are in no danger of losing? The lives of married heterosexuals won’t change one bit whether Amendment One passes or doesn’t.

One would think that the desired result of a constitutional amendment would be improvements to the quality of life of its citizens. Or at least some sort of economic gain for the state. This amendment does neither. Quite the opposite. It specifically harms a significant percentage of our population and threatens to damage the reputation of our state as a fair, friendly place to visit and do business.

The issue doesn't affect me directly. I’m a recently divorced straight man. I doubt I’ll ever get married again and if I do I’m pretty sure it will be to a woman. But the jury is still out on whom exactly my two young daughters will love. It wouldn't bother me one iota if it happens to be someone of their same gender. My hope for them is that they find true love and happiness in this life. It breaks my heart to think that their rights could be compromised and the legitimacy of their love nullified if they happen to love someone the State doesn't approve.

Where are the libertarians and anti-government throngs when you need them?

Like certain immigration laws, Amendment One is hardly thinly-veiled in its bigotry. It specifically attempts to identify a minority group to exclude and marginalize and strip away rights. It’s profiling. It’s the bully on the playground. It's separate water fountains revisited. It’s a big step backwards in the civil rights movement, for which this state played such a major role.

And it’s a slippery slope.

Maybe you’re not directly affected by this issue, either. But ask yourself: who will they come after next?

There are those who feel passionately on either side of the debate and will show up at the polls. For us, there’s no changing our minds. I’m appealing to the majority in the middle who may still be straddling the fence: If in doubt, please defer to a position of inclusion (not exclusion), open-mindedness (not close-mindedness), acceptance (not rejection) and tolerance (not intolerance).

Vote "No" on May 8.

The Farm Where Donald Lives

2012-03-31T10:39:00.008-04:00

Note: It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since I first stepped foot onto the farm where Donald lives, but it has. In March, 1987 I was an undergrad psychology student and was hired by the Lackeys to help run the Center for Living and Learning, a new residential treatment facility located just south of Nashville. It was my first job in the field. I worked at the Center for nearly three years before moving to North Carolina. My experiences at the farm, and specifically with Donald, had a profound impact on my career and life. I stumbled upon this essay tucked among some other old papers at my Mom’s house recently. It was written not long after I left the Center, circa 1990. Twenty-five years later, the Center is thriving. Donald still lives there and is doing great! Center for Living and Learning

“Time it was,

And what a time it was,

It was….

A time of innocence

A time of confidences

Long ago… it must be…

I have a photograph.

Preserve your memories,

They’re all that’s left you.”

-from Bookend’s Theme

by Paul Simon

Three autumns I witnessed magic sprinkle hues of orange across the farm where Donald lives. Falls there are spectacular. In Fall, farmland stands boldly and boasts: “It’s harvest, labor’s reward.”

Arrangements were being made to turn six acres behind the house in preparation for next spring’s planting. The gourds were all gutted, the martin’s descended, harvest moon had come and gone, and I had decided to go. One final time, though, I paused to marvel at God’s handiwork in the fields. And inside the house where Donald lives.

Inside the farmhouse, situated on 30 acres of lush Dixie soil, Donald has just rendered a water color portrait, a conglomeration of facial semblances the artist reveals as a friend once known well, now rarely remembered. For hours, the newly retrieved soul mate of long ago is the topic of conversation: Tommy Adair played shortstop, Tommy Adair spat watermelon seeds on the girls at Vacation Bible School. Within the thick brush strokes of abstract blues and greens lie an intimation to the beauty of this man’s soul.

Donald has schizophrenia. The illness which has been a part of his life for over two decades doesn’t usually interfere with his daily farm chores or activities, although a severe case of tardive dyskinesia, a muscular disorder resulting from psychotropic drugs prescribed several years ago, often turns his muscles to knots and causes his limbs to contort in pain. A good rub-down helps. Yet, at times the pain is unbearable and he’ll scream out into the Tennessee wood. There were times we wondered whether God still heard his cries.

Fortunately, Donald has benefitted from Clozapine, an experimental drug which is proving effective in the treatment of patients suffering from severe mental illnesses, although it is likely to be years before the medicine is readily available to the masses in need.

Life at the farm these past few years has helped Donald, as well. When the pain subsides, Donald tends to his rows of snow peas and his cries are replaced by some song he bellows like a pubescent choir boy. I’ve accused him of being the only person in Nashville who sings more off-key than I do. Together, we’re like a pair of hound dogs serenading the neighborhood. But I swear the man has memorized the lyrics to every song recorded since the 1950’s even though he couldn’t tell you where he put his shoe strings ten minutes ago. And we go on pretending we’re Simon and Garfunkel for audiences with fingers plugging their ears.

Like a lot of people with schizophrenia, Donald was stricken with the illness at the onset of adulthood, an above average college student and decent tennis player at the University of Tennessee. The illness eventually ended his college career and sent him on a journey to a string of psychiatric facilities throughout the country for the better part of 20 years - including the past 10 years at the Ann Sippy Clinic in Los Angeles.

Finally, his family recognized his health deteriorating and his chances for recovery growing nil. The Lackeys, a prominent Nashville family, banded together and bought a serene farm just south of the city for their brother, then proceeded to invite others with mental illnesses to join him. The founding board of directors included a number of prominent celebrities and politicians such as UT football coach Johnny Majors, former Governor Winfield Dunn, Grand Ole Opry star Minnie Pearl (Sarah Cannon), who is a family friend, and Dr. William Lawson, renowned for his research on the topic at Vanderbilt University.

In the meantime, interest was arousing among professionals in the mid-state area dedicated to the treatment of mental illness. Thus, the Center for Living and Learning was born.

A young psychology student, I responded to a classified ad in the Nashville Banner and jumped at the opportunity for free room and board. For the first six months, only Donald and I lived at the Center – on the cusp of growth and progress.

Three years later, the Center has become an important cog in the mental health community, thanks largely to the directorship of Donald’s youngest sister Fran, a dedicated staff, and hundreds of others who have contributed in significant ways.

The annual celebrity golf tournament was a huge success this year and is expected to fund several new projects, including a six-acre pick-your-own garden located on the premises scheduled to be in operation next Fall that will feature pumpkins, strawberries and vegetables. The brunt of the labor will be performed by the residents, which is congruent with one of the Center’s most basic philosophies: that work – in whatever form in may take – is both generative and re-integrative. Profits will go toward reducing admission fees paid by the client’s families. And benefits of the daily interaction among the general public could prove enormous in each resident developing the self-confidence, interpersonal skills and practical tools necessary to integrate back into mainstream society, the Center’s loftiest goal for each resident.

The twenty-minute drive from my Nashville apartment each day is a spiritual experience, as I meander beyond the city through sprawling horse farms, antebellum estates, crape myrtle, and finally to the doorsteps at the Center. If I’m early enough, I’ll catch sight of the Barbar’s milk truck which stumbles down the laneway. Once more, Donald has cajoled the milk man out of a quart carton of chocolate milk which he slyly consumes before anyone notices. The smells of country morning ooze from the kitchen throughout the dew-wet yards in vapors of black coffee and scrambled eggs.

John greets me first. He’s en route to the mailbox to retrieve the newspaper, his morning chore which you could set your clock by. John is a classical guitarist. He plays in solitude for hours each day on a six-string which echoes the magic of Northeastern concert halls he once knew. He was once of Carnegie Hall caliber, claim his parents, who live in Maryland. He misses them, at times dearly. And in quiet moments, I believe he and his instrument speak to each other in piquant communication that those of us who don’t know heartache on a first-name basis can understand. In my wildest dreams, I cannot fondle the nape and neck of a guitar as swiftly and gracefully as John.

Despite being wildly delusional (he sees the dog move his bone telepathically across the back yard and swears aliens visit him regularly at night), John is a scholar of Greek philosophy, literature and culinary. His family owns a Greek restaurant in Annapolis. We often beg John to cook for us which he sometimes does and is always delicious.

There’s Jules. A while back, my girlfriend and I had had Jules over to our place for dinner. Afterward, topics of conversation over strong coffee ranged from Tolstoy to the Boston Red Sox to the American Rural South. Jules is a gentle man from a family of academia whose failings at Vanderbilt still gnaw at him ten years later. Jules represents the most frustrating of patients for care-takers of the mentally ill: he is so often lucid and capable of maintaining appropriate behavior that his moments of occasional regression are always surprising. And violent. Soon, surely, we believe some combination of drugs and therapy will boost Jules just over that imaginary line of sanity to the wife and children he so longs for.

Alison was a young and pretty equestrian and the most tormented person I’ve ever known. The demons of her sickness danced in her mind like savage nightmares night and day until they were quieted forever when she overdosed on anti-psychotic drugs. God himself, I believe, smiled quietly the day Alison’s suffering ended.

Bobby thought he was Jesus and insisted on laying his hands on any woman he thought might be pregnant; Robert was a poet; Michael could whip anyone at ping pong and cried at night for his mother. Others came and went, some successfully, some not; all have provided this disciple of psychology a wealth of experiences I shall forever cherish.

My role at the Center evolved. I tended to research and development and public relations in the end, most of my time spent on the telephone or in meetings alongside professionals in the field, instead of the corn field. College behind me, opportunities I couldn't deny awaited me in another state. So I left.

But, as Autumns wiggle in and reminiscence calls back memories tucked tidily away, I know that I will recall my first few months with Donald with longing and childlike fondness. The times Donald and I waded the Harpeth River with blue jeans rolled up past our calves or baked our shoulders in the summer sun waiting for just one fish to test its fate on the other end of the line. Much laughter and many tears we shared. I re-taught him to shave his face and he taught me about life. I quickly learned the meaning within what at first appeared a language unintelligible and found there much wisdom as we floated down the river in his sister’s canoe or rambled shirtless about the farm like little boys. I’ll remember the glimmer in his pale blue eyes when he witnessed the first gracious cardinal waddle onto the patio to accept the bread crumbs he left for it. And the time we ran through the lit streets of downtown Nashville laughing freely during the Summer Light’s Festival. With bands beating cadence boldly on both sides of us – our hearts mocked the pounding.

Oh, what a time it was, Donald Lackey, my dear friend.

Observations of an August day in Hackleburg, AL

2011-08-22T21:30:00.008-04:00

I’m pumping gas at the Shell station alongside Hwy 43 in tornado-ravaged Hackleburg, a small town tucked among the hills and hollows of Northwest Alabama, not far from where I spent much of my childhood and where my mother now lives.

I’m hearing the lone sound coming from a shirtless man atop his tarp-draped roof as he rhythmically, methodically hammers in the hot August sun. The tornado cleared out the thickets of pines which would have muffled such sounds that now drift unimpeded to me, a subtle hint of the storm’s affect among many more obvious ones.

It’s been a few months since the late April twister obliterated Hackleburg.

My mother’s neighborhood was spared, but not much else was. The school, the one grocery store, the pharmacy, the bank, the dollar store, and dozens of homes reduced to rubble in a matter of furious moments.

I’m struck by the silence. I guess I thought it would be different. I expected the town to be a hubbub of activity. I envisioned teams of volunteers here helping victims pick up the pieces, big trucks with FEMA plastered on the sides rolling down the road. I’m realizing that recovery is a slow process, one hammer and one nail at a time. Now there’s a chain saw buzzing far away in the distance.

This would make for a better story if I could describe Hackleburg as a quaint and charming town, but it’s not. In fact, most of the buildings downtown here have been empty and deteriorating for many years. It would be hard for an outsider to distinguish which were destroyed by the tornado from the ones destroyed from a generation of neglect. I’m thinking most owners of these buildings will be more likely to pocket whatever insurance money they can collect than rebuild and that no one would blame them if they did.

The good news is that the Wrangler plant announced it would rebuild. That’s been the chatter among locals the last few days. The factory was by far the largest employer in town and the news was welcome indeed and makes it much more likely that the Piggly Wiggly and the hardware store will rebuild too.

Earlier in the day, I drove down to the place I claim as my childhood home. Time is a funny thing. Is it really true that I only lived here for six years, I think to myself and redo the math in my head. Six years fly by in leaps and bounds now but back then they inched along at a snail’s pace. I was antsy to escape the woods and childhood, now I long for both. My best and worst memories reside there: learning to drive and to shave and falling in love and getting my heart broken for the first time and being terrified by the ghosts that lived inside the house that would eventually burn to the ground not long after we moved away.

The patch of land where my daddy planted rows of peas and corn has been overcome by pine trees and kudzu. The pond where I used to walk to is gone too, the result of one too many summer draughts I suppose. We always said that pond was haunted and I prefer to believe that evil spirits just decided to make it disappear one Harvest moon midnight.

I realize for the first time that I’ve lived long enough to notice a significant change in landscape. And I’m not sure what to make of that. I realize that the world changes, nature she has her way and that it doesn’t take a bulldozer to alter the scenery, that the world is an organic, fluid, evolving thing.

No matter what one does to try and slow things down, time marches on. And time changes things.

Back at my mom’s house, it’s her 86^th birthday and my two little girls are here with me, making decorations and presents for her. Mother’s tired eyes sparkle when my girls bound into the room. I catch her staring at them and I speculate that her mind has wandered to the days of her own childhood and I wonder if she’s thinking to herself, “my how the time has flown by” and I wonder if it’s comforting to her to think that the day is soon coming when she’ll be reunited with my daddy in heaven and I think of a thousand other things in a blink of an eye but mostly I’m just glad that circumstances have allowed me to be here for this moment in time with the most important people in the world.

Outside, the August sun settles in the west and the familiar smells of honeysuckle and mimosa and chicken houses mingle with the sounds of hammering and a chainsaw across the hollow.

Teach children to stay positive in a world filled with yucky stuff

2011-08-18T09:34:00.006-04:00

Tsunamis, a disappearing college fund, global warming, wars with no end in sight…... there’s plenty for young people to worry about these days. It can be downright depressing.

It’s important, however, that parents and other care-takers of small children help them maintain a positive outlook on life. We’ve long known that negative thoughts are toxic. Gloom and doom thinking takes its toll on the still-developing brain (no one wants an underperforming hippocampus!) -- the results of which can show up in the classroom, the playground, around the dinner table and everywhere else. Worry can literally make us sick.

Like most things, modeling is key. If parents and teachers tend toward the morbid and macabre, chances are their little ones will follow closely behind in their footsteps.

Since humans are creatures of habit, a big part of a parent’s job is to help their kiddos develop good ones. And that includes how we deal with life’s boo-boos, boogey-men and other yucky stuff.

First, a disclaimer: Clinical Depression is a very real brain disease and not uncommon among young folks. It can be debilitating if not treated properly by a physician. In no way I am trying to minimize the importance of seeking appropriate medical care for the condition.

But, I’m not talking about Clinical Depression. I’m talking about worry and fear. I’m talking about coping with life’s day-to-day circumstances, some of which is indeed frightful.

Here’s the thing: most children are more worried with being left off the birthday party list than any mutating influenza virus and impending pandemic. Bullies on the playground pose more of a threat than Taliban insurgents in the hills of Afghanistan in the eyes of your typical kindergartner.

But the playground provides many great lessons for the larger world in which they occupy. Here’s one: this too shall pass.

My theory is that if we can help children understand perspective, balance and problem-solving with the (seemingly) small stuff, they’ll better be able to deal with the big stuff in constructive ways down the road. And, hopefully avoid turning into pessimists, hypochondriacs, hermits and doomsdayers. We’ll need the next generation to be on its toes if it’s going to fix all the messes we’ve made for them.

My daughters are eight and five. I love our bedtime talks. Their understanding of the world in which they live and place in it always amazes me. In a few years, I’ll be invited to their private world less often, just as they’re confronting more sophisticated fears. I know that this is my window to lay the foundation for effective patterns of communication and methods of deconstructing problems. Hopefully the foundation will serve us well through the slings and arrows of adolescence and beyond.

I’ve learned from my daughters that frequent reality checks are important in order to dispel misinterpretations and misconceptions picked up on the playground or overheard from the evening news when I thought they were sound asleep. Fear tells lies. No, we don’t have an ogre that lives in our woods; no it’s unlikely we’ll have a monsoon in North Carolina; yes, it’s a good idea to come inside when it starts lightning. I try to practice active listening with my daughters (that mostly means shut up and let them talk) and help them sort through fact and fiction. Most times, the logical conclusion is… “that’s not so scary, after all.”

It’s not that I’m encouraging my daughters to be naïve or Pollyanna. I know there is plenty of scary stuff out there. I’m terrified for my little girls. But living out a life filled with fearfulness only warps ones sense of reality. Fear distorts. In fact, the sky is NOT falling.

Like most parents, my instinct is to hold on (too) tightly and not let anything bad happen. But, I’ve seen “Finding Nemo” enough to learn my lesson. Better judgment prevails. I’m not really going to find a deserted island to ship them off to before boys start sniffing around. I will teach them, however, that a swift kick in a certain area will promptly stop a boy in his tracks if he’s getting too fresh.

And I also know this: hanging on too tightly will just make then want to go bungee jumping and get things pierced by the time they’re in 4th grade. Deep down, I do want them to experience the joy of racing wildly on their bicycles with their hair blowing crazily in the wind. But I’ll be cringing every second until they come to a complete stop at the bottom of the hill and be there with kisses for their boo-boos and Dora the Explorer Band-Aids when they crash.

Most times, experience is the best teacher. Every now and then my girls will need to experience failure to fully gain a sense of their own strength and resiliency… You now, take a few lumps and get back up off the mat (as hard as that might be for me to watch). If you face fear head on a few times, he starts to seem a little less menacing. Now is a good time to learn that lesson, while I’m just around the corner to help them pick up the pieces.

Balance is important, too. Sure, there’s plenty to worry about. We either dwell on it or we go outside and splash in mud puddles. Childhood is fleeting. Negativity is bound to creep in. Meanness and jealousy and greed and fear will have their say. Anything we can do to preserve the natural state of childhood (which is, of course, purely innocent and downright goofy) and encourage milk-shooting-through-nose uproarious laughter and other such silliness, to me, is the best way to ward off the sinister forces of fear.

I’m thinking if my girls are spending most of their time playing Twister and catching lightning bugs then they’ll just be too busy having fun to worry themselves with the darker elements of life… at least it can be postponed until they’re more mature and prepared to do so, both cognitively and psychologically. The last thing I want is for the joy of childhood to be compromised by a bunch of grown-up worries. Fear robs.

Here’s more of what I want for my children (all children): I want them to see the beauty in everyday things. To see the glass half full. To stop and smell the roses. To see the good in people and trust in the good-ness of humankind, not in a naïve way, but in a faithful way (the opposite of fear is faith).

I want them to understand that it’s always darkest just before dawn and that just behind every thunderstorm is a clear, blue sky. I want them to value the simple things in life: that the birth of a butterfly is magic and an afternoon looking for four-leaf-clovers is a perfect antidote for an absolutely dreadful math teacher or the obligatory tragic lead story on the seven o’clock news.

Life is good. It’s a little scary sometimes, but good, nevertheless. Dangerous? It can be, but most times it’s safe (just look both ways, buckle-up, scrub your fruits and vegetables and keep plugging along). Yes, there are some downright awful people in the world, but the nice ones outnumber them a thousand to one.

Mostly I want my children to know this: in this life there is a constant tug and pull between good and evil, love and hate. But in the end, good wins out. Love prevails.

Sixty million orphans will go to bed hungry tonight; $15 will feed an orphan for a month

2011-02-11T12:29:00.009-05:00

When I hung up the phone after a long conversation with my friend Gary VanDyke, I knew what I had to do. Gary had just returned from a trip to China where he was exploring new orphanages the nonprofit he runs, Food for Orphans, could support.

His stories were heart-wrenching.

He told me about the orphanage he visited that was packed with about 70 babies, all of them blind… the brave little girl he met, fighting for her life, after her parents tossed her out of a moving car because they didn't want her any more… the children at the orphan school who are only allowed to eat two bites from their school lunch because they have to take the rest back to share with their foster families....the orphanage of abandoned children of prostitutes... the AIDS babies....

As the father of two little girls, it was too much for me to just ignore. I decided to put aside my other projects for the time being and devote my full time and energy to helping Gary raise money for Food for Orphans.

I'm hoping you will help me.

Although the issues contributing to poverty, hunger and orphaned children are indeed complex ones, the mission of Food for Orphans is simple and straightforward: make sure every orphan receives at least one nutritious meal per day. Many times, that’s the difference between life and death.

The numbers may seem overwhelming:

• There are over 150 million orphans worldwide
• 44,000 new orphans every day
• Every 90 seconds another orphan starves to death
• 60 million orphans go to bed hungry every night

But here’s the amazing part: It only takes $15 to feed an orphan EVERY DAY for a MONTH.

Think about it, what we pay for a cheap entrée in a restaurant here will feed a kid for a month in a third-world country. $150 per month will feed ten orphans every day and $600 per month will feed 40 orphans (an entire average-size orphanage).

I’m asking everyone I know to consider making a donation.

The easiest way is on the Food for Orphans website. It’s quick and secure. Click on the Donate Now button on the Food for Orphans website.

Food for Orphans is a 501(c)3 organization; your donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent provided by the IRS.

You can rest assured that the money you donate will get to the orphans who need it. We've all heard stories about unscrupulous officials intercepting monies intended for charitable purposes. Food for Orphans is very active and involved in the orphanages, orphan schools and foster care facilities it supports and keeps close tabs on its donations.

Well-trained and experienced staff at Food for Orphans visit orphanages, evaluate programs, measure the needs of orphans and projects, and train the orphan caregivers on diet and nutrition.

I am confident that Food for Orphans is providing food for children who truly need help, mostly in orphanages in the poorest third-world countries – currently in Asia, Africa, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.

Food for Orphans only supports reputable orphanages who are trying their best to tend to the needs of the children in their care, yet struggle to provide food for them. They require financial accountability, monthly reports, updates on the condition of the orphans, and unlimited access to the project.

In most cases, food is purchased in the village where the orphanage is located which helps bolster the local economy. Sometimes they ship large containers of dehydrated meals.

Last year, Food for Orphans provided 600,000 nutritious meals to hungry orphans. The goal for 2011 is one million.

I know times are tough and many of you are struggling to make ends meet. I also know that there are hungry children who need help right here in the US.

But, the level of poverty in some of these third-world countries is unimaginable to most of us. Orphan children, already with so many odds stacked against them, are the poorest of the poor, certainly “the least among us.”

For them, we may be their only safety net. For them, a $15 donation may be the difference between life and death.

Whatever you can do will be greatly appreciated.

Food for Orphans
PO Box 26123
Colorado Springs, CO 80936

Visit the Food for Orphans website

Bikram Yoga: That's Hot! One Man's Testimonial on the Latest Health Craze

2010-12-17T09:03:00.006-05:00

Not being one to miss out on anything that’s “all the rage,” I recently tried Bikram Yoga. And I’m hooked.

Profile: I’m 40-something, reasonably fit, tried yoga a few times several years ago, and have a few aches and pains from old sports injuries. I don’t stretch much but know that I should.

I also despise the cold. The favorite part of my “workout” is typically the sauna, particularly in the winter. So the thoughts of clearing my mind and sweating out some toxins and getting in some good stretches in a 105 degree room seemed like a great idea. Maybe meet some interesting new people too.

Also, being known to throw back a few beers with my buddies from time to time and being a sucker for Chubby Tacos on 9th St., I figured Bikram was a great way to shed some calories reasonably painlessly and efficiently (as in not running, which I hate). I heard rumors that one could drop as many as 900 calories in a single 90-minute session.

A swanky new studio opened up not far from where I live in a converted warehouse next to a bunch of art studios. I signed up for the 7-day trial.

Like many newbies to Bikram I’m guessing, mid-way through the first session, I honestly thought I was going to die right there on my mat. But I survived.

The session was intense and difficult. Note: 90 minutes can seem like a VERY long time. The heat was almost overwhelming, even to a heat miser like me. I got home around 9 PM, ready to collapse in bed. I slept like a baby.

But here’s the thing: I was fully expecting to wake up the next morning stiff and sore. I wasn’t. I felt great!

I’ve now endured three sessions. I plan on going every day that I can during this 7-day trial period, mostly because I’m cheap and I want to make sure I get my money’s worth, but also because I am totally addicted to it. Seriously, three sessions later, I feel like a new man.

I still can’t do all the postures properly, but I’m making progress. Each time I get a little closer.

I feel energized and alert. And, I think it has positively affected my appetite. I don’t feel as hungry as I did before I started (not sure if there is empirical evidence to support the correlation, but I can’t think of any other reason I’m not craving tacos from Chubby’s).

The meditative part is nice too… I have a lot of clutter bouncing around the lobes these days so it's nice to unwind and clear my brain and be grounded and focused, if only for an hour-and-a-half.

And, yes, there are some interesting people there I’d like to get to know. Like Carmen, my first instructor, who is visiting from Chile. Note: if you are totally unfamiliar with yoga, it may be smart to find an instructor who speaks the same language you do (at least until you figure out what's going on).

Here’s a nice touch: When the final postures are done and the lights are dimmed and you’re resting comfortably on a mat in a puddle of your own sweat, slowly trying to convince your body to peel itself off the floor and head to the locker room… along comes the instructor delivering an ice-cold, wonderfully (mint-ish) scented wash cloth for your head, which is heavenly. And Ice Pops await you in the lobby on the way out the door (not sure if this is standard Bikram procedure or just a little something extra here at Durham Bikram).

Seems like small things, but to be honest, it’s become my motivation for getting through the last 30 minutes or so. Mantra: Cold, minty wash cloth, ice pop. Cold, minty wash cloth, ice pop….

Camel pose

What is Bikram Yoga?

Bikram Yoga is widely regarded as the most intense type of yoga. It involves 26 postures and two breathing exercises in 90 minutes, all performed in a room heated to 105 degrees, facilitated by a certified instructor. Each pose is done twice with a Savasana (rest pose) between each.

What’s going on during the Bikram Yoga session?

· Heavy sweating helps detoxify the body

· As the blood thins, the circulatory system is cleared

· The output of cells which fight infection is increased

· The heart rate is elevated

· Weight loss is made easier because the muscles are warmed and can burn fat more easily

What are the benefits of Bikram Yoga?

· Many bodily systems and functions – digestion, respiration, endocrine, lymphatic, and elimination – work in better harmony

· Balance, flexibility and coordination are increased

· Energy is increased

· Appetite is normalized (likely decreased)

· Cravings for unhealthful foods is decreased or eliminated

· Risk for sports injury is reduced

Yes, I admit it; I am addicted to Bikram Yoga. And I highly encourage everyone to give it a try. Couple pointers for the first timer: don’t eat for a few hours before the session and drink plenty of water beforehand. Also, just know that your clothes will be sopping wet almost immediately; so wear something appropriate or you will be miserable.

Namaste!

Bikram Yoga Durham

As Number of Recent Gay Teen Suicides Mount, Schools and Parents Must Do More to End Bullying and Intolerance

2010-10-01T11:37:00.006-04:00

What in the world is going on?

In the month of September alone, there have been at least four teens in the US who were teased and humiliated to the point of suicide - apparently because they were gay or perceived as gay by their peers.

The most recent was 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey; his young life, so full of promise, senselessly cut short when he was “outed” on the internet and subsequently jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River 600 feet below and died.

The others were even younger: 13-year-old Seth Walsh in California, 13-year-old Asher Brown in Texas, and 15-year-old Billy Lucas in Indiana.

Last year, an 11-year-old in Massachusetts hanged himself with an extension cord after being bullied by classmates who thought he was gay. An 11-year-old?

Certainly we have to look carefully at the data and determine whether these deaths are a coincidental blip or a disturbing trend. Whenever the media or politicians latch onto a story and run with it there’s always concern for knee-jerk reactions and unintended consequences.

Nevertheless, even one senseless, preventable teen-age death is a tragedy, so hopefully the light that mainstream media is shining on the issue will raise awareness and prompt schools and other institutions with influence to take action.

Schools, in particular, simply cannot ignore the issue. The consequences are too tragic.

Fortunately, there are quality resources available to schools, like the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Teaching Tolerance" program which provides free curriculum and other tools for teachers.

And hopefully all the media attention will spur meaningful dialogue in living rooms and kitchen tables across the country among parents and their children, gay and straight.

Parents need to understand that values such as sympathy, compassion, understanding and acceptance are primarily learned and reinforced in the home, mostly through modeling. As grownups, we have to show children with our actions what it means to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. As role models, we have to behave better ourselves.

I’ll be honest. As the father of two little girls, I’m terrified. Right now, they seem safe and secure in the cocoon of a wonderfully nurturing humanities elementary school in a particularly progressive college town. But time marches on and I know that middle and high school may be a different story. Being a parent isn’t easy these days. It’s even harder being a kid these days. And so much harder still if you are perceived as somehow “different” among your classmates.

According to a survey by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), nearly nine of out 10 students who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender experienced harassment in the past year – a rate three times higher than students in general.

What’s so disappointing to me is this: I thought we would be further along in our evolution by now.

I remember thinking last year when my then first grade daughter spoke nonchalantly in passing about a classmate with two fathers, how the times they were (finally) changing. When instinctively she described the African-American classmate as the one with the bright orange dress instead of identifying her by skin color, it reaffirmed my hope for a color-blind future.

I thought bigotry, hatred, prejudice, intolerance… would soon be obsolete, destined for the junk heap along with rotary telephones and manual typewriters. Open-mindedness and tolerance seem much more consistent with the iPad generation.

If the findings in a recent study by the University of Michigan are factual, I may be wrong.

The report suggests that college students today are significantly less empathetic than their peers from 30 years ago. The researchers speculated that overexposure to media has desensitized an entire generation.

So, it looks like we still have a lot of work ahead of us. October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Seems like a good time to get started.

Below are some resources that might be helpful:

"Teaching Tolerance” is project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama (www.splcenter.org) that provides free anti-bias resources to schools and other groups (www.tolerance.org)

The Trevor Project (866) 4U TREVOR is a 24-hour national help line for gay and questioning teens.

Angels and Doves is a nation-wide anti-bullying non-profit organization (www.angelsanddoves.com)

Fourth of July Confessions of a Cynical Patriot

2010-07-04T13:45:00.011-04:00

A friend recently accused me of being unpatriotic. This is my response to him:

I’ve come to realize that one can be patriotic and not be nationalistic… love your country without draping yourself in the flag and chanting “we’re number one” all the time.

I think it’s ok that an inspired futbol team from tiny Ghana kicked our ass in the World Cup… Clearly, it means more to them than it does to us. Let the Canadians have hockey. We don’t need to be #1 in everything (nor do we need to host the Olympics again). Maybe that makes me unpatriotic.

But did anybody really like the guy in high school who always got the girl and made straight A’s and made the winning shot at the buzzer? A little humility is a good thing.

In the wake of the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001, exposed and vulnerable, the world responded to us with compassion and support, which our renegade cowboy president at the time squandered with his arrogance and misplaced retaliation… so, we stopped eating French fries. How American.

Sometimes I think the rest of the world must sit back and chuckle at us. Comparatively, we’re just a young, fledgling country. As far as nations go, we’re an adolescent. Full of bravado... ego-centric... with our delusions of invincibility.

Dynasties rise and fall. Laws of gravity apply. More mature nations understand this better than we do. If I happen to think we’ve begun our slide, does that make me unpatriotic?

I’ve come to realize that I love my country the same way I love my great-grandmother who died before I was born… more as a matter of principle. But not passionately like a new lover or unconditionally like I love my children. Some people do.

I love my country. But I’m not infatuated with her.

My father was a sailor in World War II and two of my older brothers were drafted into the army during the Vietnam War. I know that their patriotism is different from mine in ways that I could never possibly understand. They might say that I live a cushy life and take freedom for granted. Perhaps that is true.

I love my country but I think it is flawed in many ways. Its past isn’t as glorious as revisionist text book writers would have us believe… From the near extinction of the natives to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow to the needless occupation of Iraq today…

All "systems" seem broken (economic, justice, regulatory, welfare, housing, health care, education...).

Our brand of capitalism has seen its better day. Greed and gluttony and corruption caused its downfall. I still believe that free-market is preferable to socialism (or fill in the blank with whatever ism you prefer) but Goldman Sachs and the like are doing their part to close the gap.

Statesmanship has given way to ridiculousness; partisanship rules the day. Politicians are petty and self-serving and the electorate is apathetic and uninformed.

Maybe the gap between the haves and the have-nots is too great to bridge and never the twain shall meet and maybe we really do care more about cheap gas than we do Planet Earth and maybe there will never again be a time in which civility and bi-partisanship have a place in political discourse and maybe, just maybe, our founding fathers' little experiment has run its course.

Truth be told, this is the extent of my loyalty to the USA: when I no longer believe this is the best place to live and to raise my children, I’m out of here… Can one be patriotic and an ex-pat-in-waiting at the same time?

First and foremost, I am a citizen of the world. The ultimate freedom to me is to be unconfined by unfettered allegiances and invented borders.

By the way, I also think Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” is just god-awful. It’s trite and contrived and most any high school sophomore could come up with better lyrics. There I said it. Maybe that makes me unpatriotic.

Eighteen months after Barrack Obama was sworn into office, I’m beginning to question whether real change can happen. Progressives desperately wanted change and thought it would happen when we elected one of us. Maybe that was unrealistic. We’re a disillusioned and fatigued lot. Maybe that’s what this rambling on is really all about.

Whether it’s a series of natural ones or careless man-made ones, seems like our government really only has time for managing crises. If Obama isn’t the answer, maybe our problems are just too intractable and overwhelming to solve.

If my “Yes We Can” has turned into “I Just Don’t Know if We Can,” does that make me unpatriotic?

I just wanted, expected better from us. We have the potential for greatness, but, in my humble opinion, have fallen way short....

So, this evening as the NC Symphony strikes up the Star Spangled Banner before the fireworks illuminate the summer sky, I'll stand and place my right hand over my heart and sing along... "oh say can you see...." because these are the rituals that accompany this holiday and I'll try my best to feel proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free because I guess that's what it means to be patriotic.

But, it won't be without a little cynicism. And sadness.

Hunger in America: Reports Confirm Escalating Crisis among Children; Federal Programs Effective, Important

2010-05-19T08:48:00.006-04:00

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service recently reported that 49 million Americans, including nearly 17 million children, are food insecure - which means they do not always know where they will find their next meal.

The new data reinforces recent findings from a comprehensive research study conducted by Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief organization, reflecting a dramatic increase in requests for emergency food assistance from food banks across the country.

Feeding America Study Confirms Hunger Crisis

Conducted last September, the Feeding America study shows that its network of food banks experienced an average increase in need of nearly 30 percent in 2008, the year during which this data was collected. While the numbers vary geographically, some food banks are reporting increases of more than 50 percent in requests for emergency food assistance over the year prior.

“It is tragic that so many people in this nation of plenty don’t have access to adequate amounts of nutritious food,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America.

Although these new numbers are staggering, it should be noted that they reflect the state of the nation in 2008. National socio-economic indicators, including the high unemployment rate and the number of working-poor, would lead one to assume that the number of people facing hunger will be even higher when 2009 data is released.

The Implications of Food Insecurity

From birth, the intake of vital nutrients is essential to the growth and development of a healthy individual. Good nutrition, particularly in the first three years of life, is important in establishing and maintaining a good foundation that has implications on a child’s future physical and mental health, academic achievement, and economic productivity. Unfortunately, food insecurity is an obstacle that threatens that critical foundation.

In the United States, more than one out of six children lives in a household with food insecurity.

Inadequate Nutrition or Food Insecurity Has Adverse Affects on:

Physical Health: Insufficient nutrition puts children at risk for illness and weakens their immune system. The immature immune systems of young children, ages birth to 5, make them especially vulnerable to nutritional deprivation and as a result, the ability to learn, grow, and fight infections is adversely affected. Research reveals, in comparison to food secure children, children from food insecure families are 90 percent more likely to be in fair or poor health and have 30 percent higher rates of hospitalization. Not only does the lack of sufficient nutrition take a toll on a child’s health but has economic consequences for families as well. The average cost for a single hospitalization for pediatric illness is $11,300.

Behavior and Mental Heath: The lack of adequate nutrition affects the cognitive and behavioral development of children. Child development is the manner in which children attain skills in memory, cognition, language, motor ability, social interaction, behavior and perception. Children without reliable food are more likely to experience irritability, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating compared to other children. Research has shown that food insecurity was associated with grade repetition, absenteeism, tardiness, anxiety, aggression, poor mathematics scores, psychosocial dysfunction and difficulty with social interaction among 6 to 12 year old children (Watson, Davison 2007). Food insecurity has also shown to be associated with suicide and depressive disorders among 15 to 16 year old children after controlling for income and other factors.

Child Development: Food insecurity puts children in jeopardy of developmental risk in areas such as language, behavior, and movement, which subsequently increases the likelihood of later problems with attention, learning, and social interaction.

School Readiness and Achievement: Children from food insecure households are likely to be behind in their academic development compared to other children which ultimately makes it difficult for them to reach the same level of development as their fellow food secure peers.

Assistance for Vulnerable Children is Available

Fortunately, there are federal nutrition assistance programs available to help low income families with meeting the nutritional needs of their children and protect them from the consequences of malnutrition and under nutrition, about which research consistently bears out the efficacy and positive outcomes.

Nevertheless, during periods of budget shortfall and recession, school nutrition programs often get cut, which is unfortunate considering the valuable safety net they provide to some of country’s more vulnerable young people.

Economists and social scientists alike point to the positive return on investment in early childhood nutrition programs; without which, the social, moral and fiscal costs of a generation of unhealthy and underachieving students are likely to be exponentially more.

A few of the critical federal programs:

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Research includes a 2005 study (Fronillo, Jyoti, and Jones) that shows an association between improved math and reading scores during Kindergarten to third grade among children participating in SNAP in comparison to children who did not participate or who dropped out of the program during the same time period.

National School Lunch Program: Research shows that children participating in the program consume more vitamin B12, calcium, protein, magnesium, riboflavin, zinc and fiber compared to children not participating in the program. Participation in the program has been shown to be associated with higher average intake of nutrients and lower intake of added sugars; participants are more likely to consume milk, vegetables, meat and other protein-rich foods than non-participants.

Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC): There is vast amount of research that participation in the WIC program increases the intake of nutrients among children. Research reveals that WIC decreases the prevalence of anemia and iron deficiency among children. Participation in the program increases the intake of vitamin B6, folate and iron.

These minerals are important because vitamin B6 assists the body’s use of protein, carbohydrates and fat, folate assists in producing and maintaining new cells and iron assists in transporting oxygen and maintaining a healthy immune system.

Physicians have rated the health status of children participating in WIC as better than children not participating in the program. WIC participation also increases the chances that children will get immunized and assist children in retrieving preventive health services.

School Breakfast Program (SBP): Research by Bhattacharya, Currie, and Haider 2004 found that the SBP assists in improving the quality of calories consumed, decreasing the percentage of calories from fat and reducing the probability of low fiber intake. In addition, the program reduces the probability of low intake of vitamins C and E, folate, iron, and potassium. Research by Meyers Sampson, Weitzman, Rogers, and Kayne found that children who eat breakfast at school have better standardized achievement test scores, reduced tardiness, and improved attendance. Numerous other studies make the correlation between children who eat breakfast have improved academic, behavioral, and emotional functioning.

Clearly, nutrition is not only vital for the growth and development of children but has direct and indirect implications for the education, health, and productivity of our nation as a whole. Of particular concern are children of color who face disproportionately higher rates of poverty, food insecurity, and lower academic achievement.

Nutrition is and will continue to be an important component to the health and prosperity of the country. Consequently, it is crucial to ensure that our nation continues to invest in federal nutrition programs which provide a critical safety net, anything short of which is unconscionable.

Number of Homeless Families and Children on the Rise in US: National Disgrace

2010-02-15T14:35:00.010-05:00

Homeless. What image comes to mind? There’s the dirty old woman in tattered clothes who hunkers down on the sidewalk outside my office. She mumbles unintelligibly to no one in particular and smokes cigarillos. She’s known to verbally assault anyone who makes eye contact, so I don’t.

There’s the self-identified Viet Nam vet on the corner of the Interstate exit ramp holding a handmade sign in one hand and a fifth of Jack Daniels in the other.

Those two are easy to peg as homeless.

Certainly mental illness and substance abuse play a major role in the issue. But the truth of the matter is that the homeless come in all packages. It’s not as easy to peg the cute kid who sits next to my daughter in kindergarten as homeless.

Most homeless are hidden from view – in cardboard camps like the one in the woods behind the big box stores out University Drive between Durham and Chapel Hill, otherwise a shining example of capitalism a-flourishing. Or the ones bouncing from one temporary shelter to another or to the houses of classmate to classmate - perhaps never sleeping out in the cold, but homeless nevertheless.

The ranks of the homeless include hard-working families living paycheck to paycheck when the paychecks stop coming for some reason.... and runaway teens and displaced immigrants, and social renegades. And battered women and their young children with nowhere to turn. There are those who find themselves in such dire straits because of a lifetime of bad choices and others through no fault of their own.

There are those who will get their lives back together with a little help and others who will die on the streets.

They all deserve another chance.

The most tragic victims of homelessness are children, who make up about 27% of the homeless population, according to estimates recently reported by the National Center on Family Homelessness (NCFH). An alarming 1.5 million children (or 1 out of every 50 children in America) are homeless, which is unconscionable in a nation as prosperous as the US.

Families with children are now the fastest growing sub-group among the homeless population; they account for about 40% of the people who become homeless each year. About 50% of America's homeless women and children are running from domestic abuse.

The effects of the economic downturn – including increasing numbers of foreclosures, job losses, rising food and fuel prices, and inadequate supplies of low-cost housing – will surely add to the numbers of children and families among the ranks of the homeless.

Homeless Children More Likely to be Hungry, Sick and Underachieve in School

Not surprising: children without homes are twice as likely to experience hunger as other children; two-thirds worry they won’t have enough to eat; more than one-third report being forced to skip meals.

Homeless children are more than twice as likely as middle class children to have moderate to severe acute and chronic health problems.

They are twice as likely as other children to repeat a grade in school, to be expelled or suspended and to drop out of school. The graduation rate among homeless children is less than 25%.

Not only do homeless children lack basic shelter, but they also suffer from a lack of safety, comfort, privacy, a sense of routine and normalcy, adequate health care, sustaining relationships, and a sense of community. These factors combine to create a life-altering experience that inflicts profound and lasting scars.

Ultimately, homelessness is a death sentence. The average age of death for individuals living without shelter is 48 years. That’s about a 30-year shorter life expectancy than the average American.

Like most social ills, the issues surrounding child homelessness are complex. Solutions aren’t easy to find, but they do exist.

In its America’s Youngest Outcasts: State Report Card on Child Homelessness, the NCFH suggests that it is possible to “end child homelessness within a decade” but only if it becomes a national priority.

The Report provides a number of recommendations for federal and state governments which should be implemented right away.

According to the report, at least six states have created extensive plans to combat child homelessness, and a dozen additional states have done significant planning. We should learn from the states that are successful and replicate what works everywhere else.

For me, stable shelter should be considered a basic human right and among the nation’s most urgent priorities. If we fail to act, the consequences will play out for years to come as a generation of lost children grows to adulthood.

Government alone can't solve the problem of homelessness (and shouldn't be expected to). It should, however, recognize the issue as a crisis and assert the political will to solve it. Other sectors should follow: corporate, faith, media, nonprofits, education, entertainment and individuals from all walks of life.

The outpouring of support following the recent earthquake in Haiti once again demonstrated America's generosity and desire to lend a helping hand during times of crisis, which is inspiring. Still, there are children and families in every large and small city across the US struggling to survive, as well.

As you read this, I urge you to agree with me that it is unacceptable for even one child in the United States to be homeless for even one day. Each of us must take the actions necessary to end this national disgrace.

Homeless family living in a car - flickr