Once a Catholic, always a Catholic?

I was raised Roman Catholic, albeit not quite in the same manner as my mother, who attended Catholic school from grades 1 through 12. I only attended Catholic school through grade 3, and upon entering 4th grade, transferred to public schools. I still attended Sunday Mass and had to go to Catechism afterward, but it was around 7th or 8th grade or so that we left the Catholic Church, never to return. Still, those experiences in my formative years most definitely left an indelible impression that remains to this day. I currently attend the local Unitarian Universalist Church, where I've been going for the past 15 years and have been active on several committees as well as our Adult Religious Exploration program. Still, in spite of this, I find that I can never really completely shake off the old Catholicism of my youth. It informs my sense of ethics, right and wrong as well as the fact that it also helps me to find a sacred place in which to "ground and center" when I feel as if I need it. This time of year in particular, during Advent and Christmas, I find myself burning a lot of frankincense and myrrh incense and playing a lot of decidedly religious music here at home. In particular, I find that I really like Gregorian Chant or Renaissance choral music because it somehow reminds me of the old High Masses of my childhood, which were characterized by an incense filled procession down the nave of the church, which was filled with ceremonial chant and the entire Mass was sung in chant as well. It was all very mysterious and beautiful and gave you a real sense of the sacred. Masses in those days were in Latin, which I didn't understand a word of, but I didn't really care, either, because it gave it an air of the mysterious and sacred. I suppose in retrospect you could say that it was great theatre, and it was, because it very successfully achieved what it set out to do, and that was to put you on a different plane of existence and to create a sense of the holy. I loved it and when Masses were switched to the vernacular, and then went to these awful "folk masses", something was lost. I remember a lot of the old Italian matriarchs who sat in the pews with their large extended families, lace mantillas on their white haired heads and crystal rosaries clutched in their time worn hands, and how they seemed to disappear when the Mass was spoken in English and then went folk. Doubtless they spoke little English and were put off by not being able to follow the Mass as they could when it was in Latin.

One thing I find interesting, in retrospect, was how much emphasis seemed to be put on Mary, mother of Jesus, and a lot of the female saints. Our parish was mostly made up of Italian families, and it leads me to wonder if Italian Catholicism tends to be more "Marian" oriented. I've spoken to friends raised in other ethnic Catholic parishes and it does seem that the worship differs depending on the ethnicity of the parish. I remember how we girls were taken into the church and how we stood before the stained glass windows of female saints and how we were told to emulate their lives. St. Therese of Liseux, in particular, stands out in memory because she died of consumption at age 24 and I remember thinking that I didn't want to die young like that, so why should I try to live like her? Looking back, I remember how skeptical I was of a lot of the things that we were taught, even as a small girl. I could not figure out how this God that was supposed to be so merciful and good could allow my father to die so young and leave behind a young family like that. Whenever I would ask the priests and the nuns about that, they would just tell me that I had to accept it on an article of faith that it was meant to happen, but I simply could not do that. I wanted concrete answers, not just some pablum handed down from on high from a nun or a priest. I suppose this tended to cause me to be a bit rebellious in school because I wasn't easily satisfied by answers to my tough questions. I remember the confusion of Confirmation and how we were told that we were now becoming "soldiers of Christ". What in the hell did that mean, anyhow? It was all so utterly confusing to my young mind what we were being taught and as a result, I never really fully embraced my childhood Catholic faith. Still, some part of it all has left a permanent impression on me and as a result, I find myself still drawn to what friends of mine call the "smells and bells" part of it all, that being using music and incense to bring myself to a sacred place in my life when I feel like I need it. So I suppose it is somewhat true what Father Andrew Greeley once told me in a lengthy e-mailed conversation I was having with him not long ago, "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic." (PS - I've worn a St. Brigid of Kildare cross necklace since 1989 and I also have a St. Christopher medallion on my key ring, so there are just some things you can never quite get past when you've been raised Catholic, especially pre-Vatican II Catholic. In some ways, I am hopelessly "old school" in my old Catholic school ways....comes with the territory, I suppose!)

Turkey Day

Yesterday was that very American holiday, Thanksgiving. At my mom's house, we began the day with a breakfast cooked by my brother, who called my house just as I was settling down with the newspapers and my own breakfast. I went ahead and drank my coffee as I read the papers and then dressed and went over to my mom's for our morning repast. The cat was curled up in his favorite chair, looking perfectly adorable as he usually does when he's asleep, and for once he didn't seem to mind my petting him and telling him how beautiful he is. (He's a long haired black cat who now sports some grey hairs as he's now, in cat years, an elderly gent who seems to sleep a lot these days.) After breakfast, my brother, his girlfriend and I went on a walk, choosing to go to a neighborhood just south of downtown that has some beautiful old homes. Upon parking, we observed a cat who came up right behind a squirrel who either didn't notice or didn't mind the cat being right behind it. The cat very gently touched the squirrel's back and it didn't flinch a bit. We were amazed to see how the squirrel didn't even seem to react to the cat not only being right there behind it but touching it gently with its paw. Eventually the squirrel did react and ran but the cat ran right after it, nearly catching it a few times. The cat then pursued other squirrels who allowed it to get remarkably close before running. I suspect that the squirrels must know the cat and be used to it, because I have never seen any squirrel who allowed a cat to get anywhere even near it like that. We got out of the car after this spectacle and the cat came up to us and was extremely affectionate, purring and rubbing against us. It was all white with some grey spots on it and obviously very loveable with adorable pink paws and a pink nose. Continuing with our walk, the cat did follow us a bit but then finally stopped and went a different direction. We were quite afraid that the cat would follow us through our entire walk and get lost, but it did have a little tag on its collar, so it would be able to be returned to its owner just in case it did wander off. So we finished our walk and I went back to my apartment to read a bit and take a shower and naturally I fell alsleep reading as I seem wont do to these days.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was ready at an unusually early 4 p.m. We had a 4 lb. turkey breast, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce and a dish we jokingly call "Company Jello". This consists of strawberries, bananas, pineapples and peaches mixed in with strawberry jello. You then pour this mixture into a casserole dish, let it harden, then spread sour cream on top of that and pour the rest of the jello mixture on top of that and let it harden. It's become a holiday favorite around our house and I can't imagine any special occasion without it. Needless to say, we stuffed ourselves into the usual post-dinner stupor (accompanied by pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top for dessert) and then settled down to watch another Thanksgiving tradition, the 1938 version of "Robin Hood" starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia DeHavilland and Claude Rains. All those wonderful scenes of feasting are a good part of why this movie became sort of a holiday tradition when we were growing up. It seemed like there was some channel on TV every year that showed this movie and "A Man For All Seasons" with Paul Scofield and Robert Shaw. These period pieces always feature great scenes of feast halls and tables laden with tons of food and people satiating themselves with plenty of good fare with merry entertainment to accompany one's feasting, perfect viewing for the Thanksgiving holiday that seems dedicated to overeating and then falling into a post feast tryptophan laden stupor. As much as I rail against overeating and obesity most of the rest of the year, holidays are the one time when I can eat far too much food and not live to regret it. Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving seem to be the three holidays where I love to stuff myself silly and enjoy that contented feeling afterward of sitting on the sofa digesting a good meal and reminding myself that I can always work it off later. After all, it's only a few times of year that seem dedicated to the very idea of overeating. The rest of the year I can do my best to eat in moderation and try to keep my weight down. Right now, however, I have a monumental task before me as I need to lose 12 pounds gained this year that have begun to have a negative effect on my knees, so as we go into this holiday season, I'm going to have to step it up a bit and work even harder to make sure that I don't put on extra holiday pounds. Therein lies the challenge before me!

Hibernation mode

Now that the days are so short and night comes on so early, I feel myself getting sleepy almost as soon as it gets dark. Settling down on the sofa to read, I almost inevitably fall asleep, sometimes for hours on end. It gets darn near impossible to get any meaningful reading done despite the fact that the weather keeps us largely indoors this time of year. Even during daylight hours, I've been known to fall asleep reading on weekends. There just seems to be something about this time of year that makes me feel lethargic and sleepy and almost wanting to go into something of a hibernation mode. It makes sense to me that people feel this way because doubtless our primitive forebears were forced to slow down during the colder months in order to pack on more body fat to protect themselves during the leaner colder months when food was scarce. Other creatures hibernate this time of year, why not humans? But our hurly-burly 24/7 lives now force us to get less sleep and work harder and longer because that's what our economy demands. Is it any wonder we've become such a dysfunctional lot as humans? We're forced to answer alarm clocks that rouse us out of deep REM sleep and work long hours at our jobs, thus robbing us of our normal body rhythms. In fact, just today, I read an article in the newspaper that said that naps refresh us in more than just physical ways - they also refresh and improve our memories and enhance our creative thought processes. But our workaday world does not allow us to take a nap on the job. Nope, gotta work, work, work to keep up our warped American Protestant work ethic. We drink too much coffee to stay awake during the day (myself included) and then drag our exhausted bodies back home. Our 24/7 economy means that people work days or nights or late nights, depending on their jobs, which is completely contrary to our natural circadian rhythms. It's just all so screwy. So it's no wonder that this time of year tends to make people a lot crankier. Not only is there the natural stress of the holiday season to have to cope with, but I suspect that like me, most folks would be content just to curl under the covers and sleep the winter months away until spring. There are those snow loving folk who look forward to ski and winter sports season, but I suspect that they are in the distinct minority.

RESCUE ME!

I've been reading in the papers how the executives of the Big Three automakers in Detroit have been going to Washington to beg for money to save their companies. What's ironic is that they flew down in their private jets, which completely sends the wrong message about how serious they are regarding their collective futures. Naturally, this was the subject of much scorn so there is talk that next time, they will carpool down instead. What I wonder is this: if they get their big chunk of change (thanks once again to us taxpayers, who keep having to foot the bill for utter corporate mismanagement), will they retool to create more fuel efficient cars, or will they keep to their misguided strategies of wanting to sell gas guzzling SUV's and big trucks? Yes, gas is about 50% cheaper now than it was just a few months ago, but prices are bound to rise again if speculators feel that the environment is profitable for them to do so. So it's better to retool Detroit to produce better made, more fuel efficient cars than to keep to the losing strategy of trying to sell America on big gas guzzlers. True, America has always been the land of "bigger is better", but I think that this recent financial crisis has shown people that thrifty can also be better. We're a nation of shameless consumers who buy far more than we need and spend more than we make, thanks to far too easy access to credit. But years of this kind of materialistic behavior have caused the chickens to come home to roost. We're a nation deeply mired in mortgage and credit card debt, thanks to overspeculation and overspending and buying far more car and house than people need. You don't need a quarter million dollar McMansion in the countryside to be comfortable. You don't need to drive a Hummer H2 in order to get from point A to point B. Sure, we live in a climate where in particular the winter weather can be pretty brutal and road conditions can get pretty nasty in a big hurry, but I feel perfectly safe in my small economical Hyundai Accent hatchback, a thrifty little car bought new for a very reasonable price that even someone on my tight budget can afford to own. Sure, it's an Asian car, but it's solid, well made and has a warranty like gold. I've driven Chevy's, Fords and other American made vehicles and found them wanting. Up until this recent purchase of a South Korean car, I was sold on good German technology and exclusively drove VW's. But the Asians have been rapidly catching up and Hyundai's, once considered the Yugo of the Asian car market, has now just about caught up with Toyota in reliability ratings. That was enough to convince me to buy one, plus their amazing warranty package convinced me that they stood behind their product and believed in its reliability. That they do so was enough to convince me that maybe this car warranted a good look when I went car shopping last year, and frankly, if you're in the market for a good, solid, reliable and economical Asian car, I could do no better than to recommend taking a look at Hyundai. I love mine and intend to drive it as long as I can. So America, get with the program, catch up to your Asian and European counterparts, and maybe the next time I go car shopping, I'll have a look at one of your products. But until you do, I'll stick with imports, thank you very much!

Where have all the salt trucks gone?

We've had snow all week long and I have yet to see a salt truck on the roads. Unfortunately, it's likely that I won't because for some reason that I have yet to figure out, the price of a ton of salt has skyrocketed this year. Worse, cities and counties and the state department of transportation have no surplus from last winter to spare. Why they didn't restock their supplies during the spring and summer months in preparation for this winter is beyond me, but now that winter has arrived in its full fury, there's no salt to be had and it's likely there won't be this year, meaning that driving conditions are going to be quite treacherous for those of us living in the Lake Erie snow belt areas. I suppose this is fallout from the deep recession that we're in and not likely to be out of anytime soon, so it's going to be a long, cold and tough winter for driving this year. The very prospect of this depresses the hell out of me because I hate being housebound as it is during the winter and to know that driving conditions are likely to be far tougher than usual and that roads won't be cleaned in time for rush hour commutes in the morning and evening hours means that it's going to take me far longer to get to and from work. I've heard that forecasts are calling for a milder winter for the Midwest, but if our weather so far is any indication, I'd say that they're dead wrong on this. I'm thinking that it's going to be a far colder and snowier winter than usual if it's this bad this early in the year. I just hope that cities and counties can somehow find some emergency funding to buy some road salt, but given the financial crunches being felt all around the world, that's really not going to be very likely, unfortunately.

EXHAUSTION

Yesterday I badly overslept my alarm clock and didn't awaken until 8:00 a.m., the time at which I am supposed to report to work. The night before, I had fallen asleep on the sofa sometime before 8:00 p.m. after a day of feeling achy and sleepy all day. This time of year, I begin to feel a nagging exhaustion that begins to drag at my stamina and causes me to feel tired constantly. I suppose a part of that is Seasonal Affective Disorder, because I'm a lot more prone to depression this time of year from lack of sunlight. Add to that the fact that I have been denied my usual holiday vacation time and I am feeling pretty upset that nearly every vacation request I have put in this year has been denied. The only reason I got my summer vacation off is because I pleaded that it had already been paid for and I could not get a refund, but my supervisor was more than ready to deny my summer vacation request as well. Why he's being so stingy with my vacation requests this year is beyond me, given my 25 years of seniority, but where I work, seniority means nothing, from what we've been told, and that it doesn't give you any more leverage than someone with 1 year of seniority, which to me seems downright unfair. I haven't given my workplace a full quarter of a century of my hard work only to be told that it means nothing. I remember a time when seniority meant that you were given preference for your vacation requests, among other perks, but now, that privilege has been revoked. It makes me even more eager to retire in June of 2013, knowing that I won't have to deal anymore with that kind of BS. In the meantime, I am wondering how I am going to get through this time of year without my usual winter break to recharge my already expended battery. That I slept over 12 hours the other night is a sure sign that I am in major need of some serious rest, but apparently, I won't get it this year. If this pattern of vacation denial continues into 2009, I am going to have to ask why I am no longer being given my requested time off and what I have to do in order to get it back. It seems unfair to give preference to less senior employees over someone with my seniority, but alas, as mentioned before, where I work, the issue of seniority is moot. Which really sucks, if you ask me.

Old Man Winter

It's November, and inevitably, that means snow in NE Ohio, and today we got our first real blast of winter with a lake effect snowstorm that overnight dumped several inches of snow on the ground. Unfortunately, even though we live in a temperate climate, people often forget how to drive in this kind of weather. Even yesterday's slight dusting of snowfall caused numerous crashes and fender benders and roads were jammed up with traffic going nowhere. Today wasn't much better, and what was worse was that there is no salt available to clear the roads, so without snowplows and road saltings, the road conditions were perfectly treacherous today and it took me over an hour just to drive a mere 15 miles to work. I guess this is a side effect of the recession in that they can't even send the trucks out to plow the roads, let alone salt them, meaning that if this continues well into the winter months, driving conditions in this, a part of the state whose weather is very much controlled by Lake Erie, is going to be rough going the deeper we get into winter. Cities and counties are feeling the pinch of the recession and since there isn't any salt left over from last winter, they don't have any to spare for the upcoming snowstorms and tight budgets are preventing them from being able to purchase new supplies of it. Either this means I'll start taking the bus to work and letting someone else do the driving or I'm going to have to depart a full hour and a half before my report time at work to give myself adequate time to crawl down icy snow covered roads between Kent and Akron. Either way, winter's going to be tough if the local cities and counties can't get adequate salt supplies to get us through yet another Lake Erie winter.

FEAR OF ANGRY WHITE MEN

One of my biggest fears as Obama takes office as our 44th President is that there are cabals of angry white men who won't accept a President who doesn't look like them. In other words, white. I know that there are a lot of folks out there who feel as if their country is slipping away from them and that there are more people who are not white and/or Christian, and these same folks feel threatened by it all. And now we have our first black President and I am desperately afraid for his safety because of people who still listen to what I call "dittohead radio", people like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and other right wingnut types and who believe everything they say. I see plenty of battered old pickup trucks with gun racks and Confederate flags on them and I begin to wonder just what kind of rednecks are out there who under no circumstances whatsoever will accept a black President, no matter what, and it makes me afraid of those kinds of people. Racism hasn't gone away just because we elected Obama. It's still very much there, simmering under the surface. I see it at work, I hear it from people on the streets, I know it exists. So I suppose I have every reason to fear that some disgruntled right wingnut will try to do some kind of harm to our new President and it makes me worry and fear that even with Secret Service protection, that someone's going to find a way to try something as a way to express their hatred of people of color. I hope and pray that I am wrong, but all you have to do is to go to Obama's Facebook page and you can see some of the hateful comments posted there. For example, some dittohead posted about a dozen messages with just one word in them, that being the "N" word. There were other posts filled with nasty pejoratives that just go to show that there are plenty of angry white folks that simply won't stand for a black man in the highest office in the land. It makes me afraid. I know I shouldn't be, but I am, because there are just enough wingnuts out there who believe all the hateful comments they hear on hate radio programs and who may just try to express their anger by trying to do something stupid to do harm to our next President. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I'm afraid that I'm not.

Unbridled jubilation

What I found particularly striking about this just past Presidential election was the sheer unbridled jubilation that it caused, not just here in the US, but around the world. It's a bit of a sad testament to the extreme unpopularity of our outgoing administration and the seeming desire to take back our country from the clutches of what people realized too late was a bunch of radical right wing extremists bent on American hegemony by military force around the world. In other words, empire. It's also a testament to the magnetic power of Barack Obama, his charisma, his idealism, his unswerving optimism that we can take back our country and propel it forward into the new century and make it great again. The very fact that more people turned out to vote in this election, creating what Time magazine called "Extreme Democracy" is also very reassuring. And in previous election victories, most successful candidates usually address their followers in a crowded ballroom in a hotel, but in Obama's case, the election night victory party was forced to be held outdoors in Grant Park in Chicago due to the sheer numbers expected to show up. Fortunately, it was an unseasonably balmy night, so the hundreds of thousands of people who were there to hear Obama's victory speech were also treated to a beautiful night weatherwise. But it's just the idea that crowds of tens and hundreds of thousands of people who, throughout the long, arduous campaign showed up to hear Obama that is absolutely unprecedented. Two days before Election Day, some friends from church and I went to a Cleveland Obama rally and were among the 80,000 who showed up to see him. Eighty....THOUSAND! That's rock star numbers, to be sure. Obama held his Democratic Party nomination speech in Denver's big football stadium and addressed an adoring crowd of 84,000. Let me repeat that.....eighty four THOUSAND! When he went to Berlin, Germany, he attracted a crowd of 200,000! That speaks volumes that a candidate like him could attract such astronomical numbers to hear him. And on Election Night in Grant Park in Chicago, a crowd estimated at over 100,000 turned out to hear his victory speech. I've never, in all my years, heard of such a thing, ever. I've never seen this kind of sheer unbridled exuberation over a Presidential election. Extreme Democracy, indeed. I can only hope that people will continue to stay so involved in their country as we enter this new era in politics. It would speak well of my fellow Americans if we could always expect large crowds on future Election Days.

42nd ANNUAL KENT STATE FOLK FESTIVAL

This past weekend was conclusion of the two week long 42nd Annual Kent State Folk Festival. I can't say that I attended any of the concerts leading up to the final weekend, money being tight as it is right now, but I did attend the Saturday workshops and worked as a room monitor/MC volunteer during the workshops and got to hear some fabulous music in the process and got to meet some outstanding musicians as well. I was stationed in Room 313 of the Kent State Student Center from noon to 3 p.m. as that room's MC to introduce each act, and was then kindly relieved by Larry Bruner, a local folkie, so that I could attend desired workshops for the remainder of the afternoon. While I was the MC in my room, I got to hear a group of classical violin, viola and cello players try to learn how to play in the folk style, a workshop on what distinguishes the difference between Cajun and Zydeco music (Cajun, to my ear, seems more "home grown, front porch" music as opposed to Zydeco, which is more influenced by blues, rock and other musical traditions), and a workshop on something inherently familiar to me, the anatomy of an Irish "seisiún", or "session". Having attended Irish Week at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center in Elkins, WV since 1989, I am more than familiar with how "seisiúns" work and what the overall etiquette is when you are playing in one. The music was quite rousing and the people performing together had not played with each other, which is perfect, because this is usually the case when Irish musicians get together to play. After I was relieved, I attended a discussion style workshop on Performing Abroad, which I found fascinating given the potential for language and cultural barriers. After that, the final workshop of the day that I went to was on Fiddle Tunes for Guitar, which requires elaborate flat picking, something perfectly mysterious to a finger style guitarist like me. The music was wonderful and everyone played great tunes. The final activity of the afternoon before the concert was the annual Talent Show, and apparently I missed the first four acts, which my mom said were mediocre. Those remaining acts that performed were also underwhelming, and one of the artists in the Fiddle Tunes for Guitar workshop fortunately saved the day and won the competition, the prize being the honor of opening for the Main Stage Concert, which was held, in a change of pace, at the historic downtown Kent Stage. The act for the night was Nancy Griffith, who was fabulous, but as usual, I got sleepy toward the end of the concert and didn't stay for the after-party because by the time I left, hardly anyone had stayed anyway. So I made my way home and fell into a good sound sleep, exhausted from the long day. Overall, I think it's safe to say that a good time was had by all.

Generation "Jones"?

Apparently we who were born between the years of 1954-1964 are not quite considered to be real "Baby Boomers" in the sense that our peers born between 1946 and 1953 are. They experienced far more of the trauma of the Vietnam War, the Summer of Love (1967), Woodstock and all the rest of that stuff that we were too young to have experienced. Thus, we are labeled "Generation Jones", as in, our generation's main experience has been the proverbial "keeping up with the Joneses" type of thing: bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger yards and doing our absolute level best to one-up our neighbors and friends with our accumulated wealth. I've never felt compelled to do this, of course, and I suppose I more clearly identify with the older "Boomers" except for the fact that I was too young to be caught up in the "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" thing of the 60's. The events of 1968 were the one thing that did leave an indelible mark on me because I was old enough to understand that something was radically shifting in our society. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were seminal events in my late childhood and early adolescence that caused me to think as I have pretty much ever since. Add to that the tragedy of Kent State in 1970 and it really drove home to me that something was fundamentally wrong with a war that had grown increasingly unpopular and costly in human blood. I was shaped by those years in ways that my fellow "Jonesers" evidently weren't. Their reaction was to rebel against the wild and free 1960's and become conservatives that lifted Ronald Reagan to office in the 80's, who is the politician who came to power about the time our generation was coming of age and who seems to have drawn on our generation's dissatisfaction with the 1960's and the desire to turn the clock backward to the Ozzie and Harriet days of the 1950's. But if last week's Presidential election proved anything, it's that the era of Reagan conservativism is dead and gone, to be replaced by a new idealism that we haven't seen since the days of John F. Kennedy. This can only be a good thing as our generation approaches its retirement years and the waning days of our careers. We tried the unbridled greed thing, bought McMansions in pseudo-Englishy sounding development names with massive garages in which to park our gas guzzling SUV's and somehow found the whole thing wanting. In recent years, more and more of us have been going back to the land and trying to recapture some lost organic sense of life by simplifying and downsizing. Trying to "keep up with the Joneses" isn't exactly all it's cut up to be, it seems. And that realization can only be a good thing for our country's future. The Ronald Reagan Era is dead and gone at last.

WHY NO NEWS MAGAZINES?

Last night I spent an hour and a half scouring local stores for the most recent copies of Time and Newsweek and was shocked to discover that most store newsstands do not include any news magazines or even newspapers. (They do carry plenty of fluff like magazines geared specifically for men and women, like outdoor and gun and hunting stuff for the guys, and home decorating, fashion and crafts for the gals.) It would seem, then, that most folks are getting their news online instead of in hard copy format, but I simply find it too difficult to sit down in front of a computer for several hours to read a news magazine or a newspaper online. I am one of those hopelessly old fashioned creatures that finds great pleasure in sitting down on the sofa, cup of coffee in hand, and spending time holding a newspaper or news magazine and reading it. Perhaps I'm something of a Luddite where it comes to this sort of thing: after all, there are now cell phones that include a GPS, Internet surfing, a digital camera, .mp3 players, e-mail, television and of course, the ability to make a phone call. In short, you can have one small pocket sized entertainment device that does it all and admittedly, I find myself thinking how nice it'd be to have one of these wonder devices, but then, I might get so hooked on it that I'd probably have withdrawal symptoms without it, so my cell phone is your basic, no-nonsense cell phone that only makes phone calls and nothing else. But it would seem that where news is concerned, newspapers are rapidly beginning to downsize to the point where they are close to disappearing altogether, and news magazine sales have slowed to a crawl as well. The print media that I so cherish is rapidly becoming an endangered species in this, our new digital age. And I don't know what to make of it except that I guess it's all a matter of adapt or get left behind. Even desktop computers are becoming a dinosaur as they are being rapidly replaced by laptops and iPhones and other devices that are faster and smaller than a breadbox. So again, I am beginning to be painfully aware of my generation's need to adapt to a rapidly changing world ruled by tech savvy kids with cell phones that can do everything but make your lunch. Admittedly, at times I am beginning to feel like a veritable technological Luddite who is always many steps behind the current wave of new electronic devices. I have an ancient Gateway computer still on 56K dial-up that runs Windows 98SE as its operating system and is pokey slow compared today's lightning fast new computers that can do everything. My cell phone is your basic strip down model. I still carry a hard copy small calendar book in my purse to keep track of appointments. Maybe someday, I'll have enough cash to catch up to the technology revolution, but that's not likely anytime soon. In the meantime, I'm perfectly content to sit on the sofa with my cup of coffee and my newspapers and magazines and read. That, my friends, is something that I don't ever plan to give up, no matter what. Unless, that is, hard copy newspapers and magazine go the way of the dodo, in which case I'll have to figure out what to do. But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

An aging Baby Boomer

Lately I've begun to feel a certain frustration about growing older. Wearing trifocals, experiencing more frequent changes in my eyesight, waking up in the mornings stiff and sore, especially after any kind of physical activity, and the knowledge that no matter how I may try, I cannot get my body to do the things it could do when I was 20 are grating on me a lot more these days. I still experience acne breakouts like I was a teenager, though, and no matter what I do or what soaps and lotions and medications I try, I can't control them, particularly when the hormones kick in. I want so much to have nice clear skin, not blotchy red rosacea combined with acne breakouts that embarrass the heck out of me. I want knees that don't ache in the mornings and hands that aren't stiff as hell when I wake up. I want a stubborn Achilles tendon injury to just get over itself and heal up. And most of all, I don't want to depend on medication to deal with these issues. If you ask me, this country is far too dependent on the idea that there's a pill to cure everything, and I'd rather try natural means first before turning to medicine to cure what ails me. I don't know why all of this has suddenly begun to grate on me as much as it has lately. Maybe it's the longer, darker and colder nights. Maybe it's the frustration that happens every time I go to the gym and realize that I am slower than everyone else at finishing various exercises because my age seems to make me take longer to do things that come more easily to younger people. Maybe I'm just being too hard on myself, but I've just begun to feel a certain gnawing frustration at feeling my age sometimes.

We Baby Boomers were raised in such a youth oriented culture that it's hard for us to accept that we're growing older and experiencing its effects. I want to feel 20 again, not have my body rudely remind me upon waking each morning that I'm 51 and each night when I get tired faster and want to fall asleep by 9 p.m. instead of my usual later hour. I fall asleep reading more readily as well and find night driving to be something that's harder to do these days. I can last maybe an hour at most before getting too sleepy when before, driving several hours at a time was easy for me to do. I probably drink too much coffee just to keep going when really, I'd much prefer to just lie down and take a nap to recharge my battery. I remember as a child coming home from school, it wasn't uncommon for us to find our mother asleep on the sofa and I remember wondering why she was doing this in the middle of the day, and now I completely understand why. It's what I do more often than not when coming home from work anymore. Within a half hour of coming home from work, more often than not I fall asleep, sometimes for hours at a time, and have no subsequent problems falling asleep later on in the evenings, usually in front of the TV. I can't stay awake through entire episodes of Saturday Night Live when it used to be so easy to do so. I can't even stay awake in front of prime time programs some nights. It's these sorts of things along with the aches and pains of age that are beginning to genuinely grate on me. And sad to say, there's very little can be done about it except gracefully accept that it's all a part of the aging process and that it will probably get worse as I grow older. Not the sort of thing I necessarily look forward to as I advance into middle age.

Now comes the hard part

While I am still elated over the Obama victory, I am also painfully aware of what an enormous task he faces when he becomes President of the United States in January. I heard a funny comment on the NPR show "Wait, wait, don't tell me!" on Saturday about how what Obama is basically going to have to do is to clean up after an eight year long drunken frat party, and nothing could be closer to the truth, as funny as that sounds. They've been spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave and plunging our economy into record deficits. They've so badly damaged our country, both internationally and at home, that it's going to be a long, tough haul for the Obama administration to clean up the mess they are leaving behind. What concerns me the most is that there are extremely high expectations riding on Obama's shoulders and given that he's black, he'll doubtless be judged by harsher standards than if he were white. The first misstep or mistake he makes, and the Republicans are going to be all over him, demanding that heads roll over it. There will be no mercy shown, no quarter given by the Republicans, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. Given their defeat in this election and the net gain of seats in both the Congress and the Senate, and of course, the ultimate prize, the White House, they're doubtless bitter and angry over their loss of power. But they have no one but themselves to blame for it. They allowed their party to be hijacked by extremists bent on world domination by military power like Rome, and the result has been a major repudiation of their agenda and a demand to steer our country in a totally different direction, or, rather, back to what it's supposed to be.

The thing that needs to happen now is to start a new "New Deal" to invest in clean energy "green collar" jobs and to rebuild our crumbling inftrastructure, much of which is over 100 years old. We need a new electrical grid, sewer lines, water lines, roads, bridges, and we need to find ways to end our dependence on foreign oil from nations that don't really have our best interests at heart. We need to wire our nation coast to coast for broadband internet access for everyone, regardless of where they live. We need to re-instate our passenger rail lines with high speed commuter trains to take the burden off of already overcrowded roads. We can do all of this and get this nation back to work again, just like during the New Deal during the Depression years. We can use all of the money wasted on these two wars we're waging to do this and more. I just hope that people can be patient with Mr. Obama. After all, none of this will happen overnight, and he's already said so any number of times in recent speeches. He's warned us that change won't happen in one week, one month, one year - maybe not even in one term, and people are going to have to understand that. These things are going to take time, and the sooner people realize that, the more prepared they are going to be for the long haul it's going to take to get this nation moving again after eight disastrous years of the Bush-Cheney years. What can get done immediately is to rebuild aging sewer and water lines, bridges and roads, invest in a massive upgrade of our hopelessly outdated electrical grid and other deteriorating parts of our infrastructure. That's something that can get done now, rather than later, and in the meantime, the government can make investments in green collar clean energy jobs of the future and increased research and development into various means of creating clean energy sources. That's going to take a bit more time to accomplish, but the eventual outcome will be a new manufacturing base for the US creating the clean energy systems of the future and three to five million new high paying jobs for Americans. If we can accomplish these visions, then I have no doubt that we have a far brighter future ahead, but I would beg everyone to please be patient as this new administration takes over soon. Give them time to clean up the mess left behind by their predecessors. It took eight years to create it, and it may take just as long to fix it all. So for Mr. Obama, now comes the really hard part of the job: actually becoming President of the United States and charting our course for the future. May he be guided by wiser hands and cooler minds than we have had for the past eight long agonizing years.

And the world cheered with us

Barack Obama's election as our 44th President not only has been hailed by minorities in this country for offering them hope that they can dream and dare to be anything their heart desires, but it is also being hailed around the world. Our standing in the international community has been severely damaged by the Bush administration's disastrous policies and arrogant attitude. But now we have someone coming into office who is willing to adopt a far more conciliatory attitude to where even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has offered his congratulations to Obama on his victory, practically unheard of, given the recent antagonistic attiude toward Iran that the Bush administration has adopted. I think we can rest easy now that Iran won't be bombed into submission and that the Middle East war won't be expanded into that country. It bodes well for the future in that troubled part of the world that we have an intelligent, thoughtful and scholarly man about to become our President who is willing to talk to our enemies rather than cut them off. For sure, any negotiated peace in the Middle East won't come easy. The creation of a peaceful and sovereign Palestinian state will have to be the key to starting the ball rolling in the quelling of Middle East tensions and being willing to talk to Iran and to work with Iraq to end the war and bring about a stable government of some sort will also have to be priorities. But it's so nice to know that the US will no longer be adopting some kind of hard line antagonistic stance against the rest of the world. We will have a President willing to be open to dialogue with both enemies and friends and who will be welcome by world leaders as a new player on the world stage who has the intelligence and thoughtfulness to listen and learn and weigh his decisions with great care. No more cowboy politics. No more white hats and black hats, no more good and evil, good guys vs. bad guys. Sure, the international challenges facing Obama are steep ones, a massive mess created by a bunch of NeoCon radicals bent on imperial military power to keep the world in line, but I trust that he will surround himself with wise advisors who will guide our young President to careful and thoughtful decisions that will restore our lost international luster. It will be good for our country to once again become the beacon of hope and liberty that it has been for so many for so long. I want to feel proud to be an American, and today, I do feel just that way. I want to sing, shout, dance in the streets and cheer our new President like I've never cheered anyone before, because overseas, foreigners are once again waving American flags instead of burning them and celebrating Obama's victory along with us. If that isn't a reason to feel proud today, I don't know what is.

UU CHURCH "GAL'S NIGHT OUT"

On Sunday after church, a bunch of us from the Unitarian Universalist Church went up to Cleveland for Obama's final appearance in our area before Election Day. We piled into a friend's van and then drove to another friend's house and piled into her SUV and drove up to Cleveland to the rally. Those of us who attended were, from L to R, Noah, Kathy (mother of Noah), Chris, Jill, myself, Vivien and Saunis. This photo was taken by a security guard at the Midland building in downtown Cleveland on our way home from the rally. We thought it'd be appropriate to have our picture taken in front of the American flag, given the historic occasion that we had just attended. The crowd of 80,000 was as diverse as you could have hoped for - black, white, Asian, Latino, Native American, old, young, gay, straight - you name it, we were there. It spoke highly of the coalition of people who were coming out to support Obama and I had a feeling that the fact that his appeal could cross so many lines was a good sign that he just might win this election. That Ohio went blue for the first time in a number of years is an excellent sign that we have a President of broad appeal in what has largely been a very conservative state in recent years. I am heartened by this fact but I also know that the economy was strongly on people's minds as Ohio has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs in recent years and it's strained our state economy as well. People put kitchen table issues first instead of stupid divisive issues like gay marriage and abortion, which the Religious Right have used very successfully as wedge issues to divide this country. I didn't hear people speaking of these issues at the rally. Mostly, they were concerned about their homes, their jobs, their children's futures and other middle class concerns. That seems to have drawn the 80,000 or so of us to hear this remarkable candidate to Cleveland on Sunday night. Even when the skies opened up and it began to rain, we did not leave but instead stood outside in the chilly night air to hear this amazing man speak to our hearts about what matters the most to us, and thank goodness, we delivered Ohio for Obama and put him over the top to become our next President!

Glory, glory HALLELUJAH!

Yesterday, on a bright, sunny, unseasonably warm (high temperatures in the 70's!) and dry late fall day, what seemed impossible just a few short years ago became a glorious reality! America elected its first black President, Barack Obama, by overwhelming numbers! A mere four years ago, we'd never heard of this young man. He was an obscure State Senator from Illinois, but when he gave a stirring oratory keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, something amazing happened. America began to learn about this remarkable man of a multi-cultural heritage who has captured the imagination of so many of us. Even four years ago, people were saying he ought to run for President someday, so impressed were they by his oratorical gifts. And sure enough, from obscure State Senator to United States Senator, he now finds himself making history by capturing the highest prize of them all, the Presidency and the White House! He's young, he's charismatic, he's handsome and his entire family are very attractive and photogenic, and for many of us, he kind of reminds us of a black Kennedy family, youthful, energetic and calling on all of the better angels of our nature to serve our country and to help him to seek out answers to the myriad problems that the Bush administration will leave behind when it skulks out of Washington in a few months. Public service is suddenly cool again. People are flocking to find out how to go to Washington to offer their service to this country again. People are once again seeing government not as the problem, but the solution to our problems, and they want to help.

So this morning, a brand new day dawned in our world. We have the first truly global President and the air is filled with excitement and hope for a better tomorrow. There is a blossoming spirit of unity in our nation that we must now bind up our nation's wounds, put aside partisan bickering, care for them who answered the call to service to fight our country's battles and have come home wounded and in need of care for themselves and their families, repair our aging infrastructure, invest in new green technologies and use that to grow new high paying jobs for the future, and find a solution to the vexing health care crisis that constantly threatens to drown so many of us in medical expenses that are unaffordable. President-elect Obama has told us, time and again, and even in his acceptance speech last night, that the job of fixing what the Bush years have broken won't be easy, that we can't expect results in one week, one month, one year or even quite possibly one Presidential term. We must be patient and expect things to take some time to get done. We've had eight long years of autocratic, oligarchic rule, a virtual shredding of the Constitution, hubris, mendaciousness, and downright criminality in office by any number of people. Yesterday was a solid repudiation of the entire disaster of the Bush years and I am sure that history won't treat this outgoing administration kindly. But now we can look ahead to a time of hope, a feeling that maybe, just maybe, we saved our country yesterday by electing a solid Democratic Congress and a Democratic President with a mandate from the people for the change that he has so often promised these past two years on the campaign trail. A brighter day is ahead. A new America is possible. Hope has returned from its long, dark eight year hiatus. The sun has been shining unseasonably warm and bright all week, highlighting the brilliant late autumn golds in the leaves that are still left on the trees. It's a harbinger of what is to come, a golden, brighter future for America and for the world. Glory, Glory HALLELUJAH! His TRUTH is marching on!