Category Archives: Social comment

Penn State

November 10, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

Well, that’s about as painful as it gets. All of a sudden UW going 0-12 a few years back, and keeping Tyrone Willingham around purely out of Seattle racial guilt, doesn’t look quite as bad as it felt at the time. I guess when they say ‘it could always be worse,’ this would be what they meant.

For those unfamiliar with the story, evidently a Penn State assistant football coach has been raping young boys at their facilities for a decade at least, and evidently the coaching staff and university knew to varying degrees that it was going on, and didn’t take steps to put a stop to it. PSU’s head coach, Joe Paterno, was the longest-tenured and most admired coach in US college football, the symbol of Doing It Right. So the idea of such an upstanding figure looking the other way, in a case like this, is something just about no one can feel neutral about. The issue here: while it happening is bad enough, people who know it happens–and allow it to continue–share at least some of the guilt. In one especially bad aspect, an assistant (named, disastrously, McQueary) actually caught the rapist in the act at one point, and didn’t do anything about it so far as we’re aware.

Paterno, the AD, the boy-raping assistant, someone else in the athletic department and the president of the university have all been sacked, and several will face felony charges (not Paterno). Look ahead to about ten years of litigation (probably longer than Paterno will live; he’s 84, had coached there since I was a toddler), profiting only lawyers. The students are somewhat rioting in support of Paterno, and the country is taking sides. You either want him and everyone involved hanging from a lamppost, or you think it’s a horrible disservice to the most visible symbol the school ever had.

My own take is that I don’t see either side doing a damn thing for the real victims, which are the boys who got raped. I see all anger and recrimination, and I understand why, but I do not understand why no one can seem to spare some emotion for those who suffered most. They certainly suffered more than a half dozen six- (in one case seven-) figure employees, though if a couple of those can’t buy their way into the nice jails, or out of jail altogether, those may get a taste of what the original victims experienced. My dominant emotion here is not fury and punishment, but what can we do for the real innocents?

I wish I heard more of that, and less rioting and screaming and such. We get so angry in these situations we forget to invest some energy in support for and kindness to the most damaged.

Social comment

Behavior vs. character

November 7, 2011 jkkblog 2 Comments

Some people judge and react to you mainly by your behavior. Others react primarily to your character. Is it about doing, or being?

In the case of children at nearly all times, the primary reaction is to behavior. (Not always. We’ve all known children with character way beyond their years.) In adults, behavior is usually the first evidence we have of who they are, so there it begins–but typically gives precedence to character in time.

This is why a child will try to rack up some good deeds to cancel out the bad deeds, or presume eternal forgiveness for all errors and misbehaviors; life is a ledger to them, gold stars and black marks, reward and penalty. An adult–at least one who thinks like an adult–will seek to correct wrongdoing going forward as well as making amends or atonement. After paying the bill, a child looks forward to getting by with the deed (or one like it) again. Plenty of adults in relationships lapse into child thinking, or never actually grow out of it. Entire segments of society have it as their foundation. Most families would have no idea how to intrarelate without it, because family is most people’s refuge for bad character. If you have people who will never reject you for lack of character, why bother to show them good character? For many, that really is what family boils down to. Paradox: that’s the low character response anyway. In short, if one is of low character with family and high character with non-relatives, maybe it means one is of basic low character and just puts on a better front to the world. Maybe it also means character can be situational, and that the entire subject is more nuanced and complex than I have thought through. You tell me. I don’t pretend to be an authority on this. Dissect the fallacies in my thinking, and I will thank you.

Does behavior reflect character? Not always, but that’s really the fundamental question, is it not? If my wife says something cruel and unjustified to me, does that mean she’s of low character, or that she’s simply having a bad behavioral lapse? If she is of high character, such an utterance is out of her character, and doesn’t reflect who she is. Of course, if she is of high character, it won’t be long before she’s pretty embarrassed by it, because it is not who she really is. But while her words may have offended me, my fundamental reaction to her is to her character, not one action. It would take more than one bad behavior to convince me her character had altered. Hope she sees me the same way. She must, because she has self-respect and she stays married to me. Surely there’s something about my character she likes, because it certainly isn’t because of my mighty deeds (or mighty misdeeds never committed).

What got me thinking about this is a period of watching a child in an adult body, experiencing the world from one unsustainable pleasure or toy to the next, seemingly contrite over black marks and happy over gold stars, happy to do the minimum to get by. The individual never fully grasped that it wasn’t about bookkeeping good and bad acts, but the development of personal character. And when it became clear that this person’s priority was not the same as my priority, there was nothing left to do but turn her/him loose to find it as s/he might.

Or might not.

Looking back at this, I am alarmed how much I sound like a mediocre Andy Rooney knockoff. But I’m posting it anyway. The disappointment hurt, and maybe talking about it will help.

Married life, Social comment

Facebook chain sermons about animal love

October 22, 2011 jkkblog 6 Comments

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that a lot of folks find themselves deeply moved by some of these–and sometimes they even affect me. Today I had a good rejoinder for one and was feeling self-promoting enough to share it, with the kind permission of Lisa, who gets props for being a great sport about it. It accompanied a cartoon picture of a couple in bed, each perched on an edge, with several animals hogging the middle:

“IF I DIDN’T HAVE MY DOGS OR CATS:

I could walk around the yard barefoot in safety
My house could be carpeted instead of tiled and laminated
All flat surfaces, clothing, furniture and cars would be free of hair
When the doorbell rings, it wouldn’t sound like a kennel
When the doorbell rings, I could get to the door without wading through fuzzy bodies who got there before me
I could sit on the couch and bed the way I wanted without taking into consideration how much space several fur bodies would need to get comfortable.
I would have money and no guilt to go on a real vacation.
I would not be on a first-name basis with 6 veterinarians, as I put their yet unborn grandkids through college.
The most used words in my vocabulary would not be: out, sit, down, come, no, stay and leave it ALONE.
My house would not be cordoned off into zones with baby gates or barriers.
I would not talk ‘baby talk’. ‘Eat your din din’. ‘Yummy yummy for the tummy’…
My house would not look like a day care center, toys everywhere.
My pockets would not contain things like poop bags, treats and an extra leash.
I would no longer have to spell the words B-A-L-L, W-A-L-K, T-R-E-A-T, O-U-T, G-O, R-I-D-E, C-O-O-K-I-E.
I would not have as many leaves INSIDE my house as outside.
I would not look strangely at people who think having ONE dog/cat ties them down too much
I’d look forward to spring and the rainy season instead of dreading ‘mud’ season.
I would not have to answer the question ‘Why do you have so many animals?’ from people who will never have the joy in their lives of knowing they are loved unconditionally by someone as close to an ANGEL as they will ever get.”

How EMPTY my life would be!!!

[last known credit: Wanda Jones]

I thought about it for a moment, then replied:

“Well, I’ll be able to go along with that the day an actual angel uses my basement as a celestial urinal, or lays a holy steamer next to my wife while she’s decorating our fake holiday tree, or throws up angel yack on my bedroom carpet causing naked me (coming in late and in the dark) to slip and fall on my bare ass in about six quarts of angel vomitus.”

No, I wasn’t making that up or exaggerating. It happened about six years back. We have a Labrador Retriever named Fabius. I named him for Q. Fabius Maximus Verrocosus Cunctator, Dictator of Rome, for a number of reasons. The chief one was that as a puppy (he was primarily ears and paws), Fabius would not come on his leash. He delayed us frequently. Fabius Maximus’ epithet ‘Cunctator’ means ‘the delayer’ or ‘the procrastinator,’ depending on whether you are admiring his tactics of wearing Hannibal down, or grousing that he doesn’t immediately win the war for Rome…’Fabian Tactics’ remain the term for this in military science to this day. I finally had to drag him along until he got the idea, thus, ‘Fabius.’

Anyway, around 1:30 AM, I came in to go to bed, shucked my clothes in the pitch dark, and worked my way along the base of the bed with caution for the Thigh Hunters–the square bedpost capitals that seek out an author’s quadriceps if he is incautious in the dark, causing him to hiss a curse. It did not occur to me that Fabius might have cut loose with a spectacular vomit on the carpet, nicely cooled down by now. I stepped right in it, barefoot, slipped, and landed on my butt with a thud and a volley of pain-pumped swearing. While I realize this is not what my lovely bride wants to wake her up at 1:30 AM, you try falling on your nalgas in dog puke at that hour (without advance warning, mind you) in silence.

Let me know how that went.

I didn’t take it out on Fabius. While certainly one shouldn’t, I still think I deserve at least a minor commendation ribbon for not losing it.

Feel free to share your funniest pet disaster in the comments.

Social comment

On aging

October 13, 2011 jkkblog 2 Comments

One of our greatest challenges in life and maturity is to see the world through other eyes, empathize with how other people feel. There are limits to it. A man may, with significant effort, apply the assumptions of femaleness to life, and see that life somewhat through her eyes. An adult may quite easily see the world through a child’s eyes, having once owned a pair. A white person will probably strain to empathize with the experience of being black, but to a degree, it can be done. Most of this is really a matter of thinking things through: what would it be like for the other person, and what attitudes, preferences and behaviors does this explain?

One firm bar exists that I do not think we can breach: age. I’m 48. At 24, half a life ago, I could not have conceived how it felt to be double my age, much less quadruple. This, it seems, only years confer. My grandmother is 92, nearly double my current age. The impact of the changes, cycles, generations, the sheer accumulated mass of people she has known, the realization that a vast percentage of them have passed on, the icy reality that even in excellent health and with much luck, the clock of life ticks ahead, these I believe are beyond me despite the greatest effort I might make.

This is why it’s good to talk to people older than ourselves. They simply know things we do not. Even a glimmer of their realizations is precious to those of us younger. And once those realizations fall silent and still with the passing of life, or fade into forgetfulness or loss of mind, they are lost and gone forever. There will be others, but that set of memories and that gathered mass of realization is no longer available.

I think of this sometimes when working with older clients, and as I become elder myself. Much is there to learn, and to teach if people wish to learn.

I will share with you one bit of that elderly wisdom I gathered up, just over half a lifetime ago. It was the time Queen Elizabeth II came to UW for a visit, and ROTC cadets and midshipmen were invited to volunteer to help the police and Secret Service with security. There’s a lot else about the story, but the pertinent part here is where we were assigned to help usher people to their seats.

Well, the bleachers at Hec Ed are not always an easy climb for the ancient and frail. Noting a very elderly lady struggling to get up to her place, a NROTC midshipman and I simultaneously arrived at her sides. We somewhat helped and somewhat lifted the lady up the bleachers into her seat. An unremarkable act of duty in itself, but what was remarkable was her eyes, eyes that had known at least four British monarchs despite Her Majesty’s considerable longevity. As we set her down gently on the varnished wood, she looked at each of us in turn with an intensity that pierced the soul. She said quietly but very firmly, “Thank you, you young gentlemen. Someday, someone will do this for you.”

You’re welcome, ma’am, but I wasn’t the giver. What I gave was insignificant in comparison to what I received.

Adventures, Social comment

Grandmother’s Land

October 10, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

For our anniversary, we went up to Canada. It was a great pleasure: marital togetherness, great hosts, all the scenic beauty Canada has to offer, the basic warm goodwill of rural Canadians, and Tim Horton’s.

Did you know that Indians of the northern Rockies referred to Canada as the Land of the Great Grandmother? We’ve all heard, of course, about the concept of the Great White Father in D.C., though I suspect a few of the Indians realized how utterly paternalistic the reference was (among its other detracting characteristics). Anyway, since Victoria I was Queen of Canada during the white invasion of the West, and Canada was often thought a refuge (often it was anything but), some Indians called it after Her Majesty.

One of the best parts was our success at smuggling by full disclosure. We were bringing two six-packs of Ice Harbor IPA to our friends, plus some homemade salsa. Problem: you cannot bring in alcohol as a gift duty-free. If it’s for your own consumption, yes; as a gift, no. You also can get in trouble bringing in homemade food. Bozo, our navigator and planner, put the salsa in with the beer in bubble-wrap to keep it safe.

So we get to the border. I won’t name the crossing lest it get the guard in trouble. Customs Canada, which isn’t called that anymore, asked most of the usual questions. They are more inquisitive nowadays, and make an effort to catch one in a fishy story.

“Do you have any alcohol?”

“Yes, two six-packs of beer.”

“For your own consumption?”

“No, it’s a gift for our friends.” This was an answer so retardedly honest it was plausible.

“In the future, you may want to reconsider that. The duties are fairly punitive on alcohol, unless it is for your own consumption. Please pull around to the left and stop, remaining in your vehicle.”

I was pretty sure we were going to be in trouble, at least to the tune of C$50 for the duty. When I saw a sign about a C$1000 fine directly before us, I assumed the salsa would be found when they inspected. We would be asked why we had not disclosed it, and there would not really be a very good reason. Ouch, ouch. However, I have an inkling that when they have you pull around, in part they are watching to see if you hurriedly dive back into the back seat and start trying to rearrange things/cover up contraband. That would have been very unwise, so we just sat cool. After a few minutes, the officer brought back our passports and wished us a safe drive. No duty, and no trouble for the salsa!

When we reached Jenn and Marcel’s (our wonderful hosts), Jenn advised me from the description that we’d gotten the border guard she considered a ‘douchebag.’ Well, all I can say is that in our case he combined taking his duty seriously with a sense of fairness and goodwill, which is a great combo in a border guard.

Score one for giving a response so self-adversely candid and true that it is believed, since no one would make up something like that. And thank you, Customs Canada, for not being rough on us.

Social comment

Why the US Postal Service is sinking

September 14, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

Today we had a perfect metaphor for why the P.O. can’t get any revenue and why the private sector is eating its lunch.

I had to mail some valuables to Seattle. I wanted to insure them. I could have gone to the post office; my route took me right past it. Why did I not want to do that? Because the postal employees there make it quite clear that my personal satisfaction is not a priority. The rules are the rules, they take pleasure in articulating them, and they seem to enjoy when it turns out to be a lot more expensive than one imagined. Plus, you cannot get angry at them; the slightest action that could even be imagined by the most paranoid mind could be construed as one of the various felonies against the postal service which are punishable with heavy fines and long imprisonment. In short, one has to just take it. Or go elsewhere, which I prefer. So already, we are with me preferring not to deal with the option that should be easiest and cheapest.

So I go to my usual mail place, where they are helpful and friendly and offer a variety of shipping options, including USPS, which is probably what I’ll use anyway. (My complaint is not that they fail to carry the mail reliably–at that, they do fairly well.) I explain what I want to do, assuming it’ll cost a little extra, which is fair. They regretfully inform me that they can’t do insured mail anymore. Why? Evidently the USPS took that option away. Brilliant! Force people to come to the dungeon since you can’t entice them with pleasant helpfulness! So I ask what my options are. My mail place makes three phone calls on my behalf (try getting the post office to do that). Short version: I could send it registered through them, for a hefty fee, but if I want it insured I must go to the post office.

I think about this possibility. I could do that. Then I do mental math, and based entirely on past experience, figure out that it will be significantly more expensive than my most irrational upward estimates. Plus, no one there has any incentive to be helpful–I’m just annoying extra work to them, a pain to be endured, one more person in the long line. I decide that insuring it just isn’t going to happen, and I send it UPS with a tracking number.

So, let’s recap. Basic aversion to cold indifference and apathy sent me elsewhere, where I learned that in order to do what I wanted to do, thanks to the PO trying to force people to go to its facilities to use its services, I have to go to cold indifference and apathyland. And I get disgusted enough that rather than do that, I choose to do without the service. It bothers me that they get to be the government when they want to make rules, and a corporation when they want to advertise and make money, able to punish the competition by fiat on a whim.

What’s more, I’m one of their few remaining customers who actually buys stamps and mails first class letters (specifically, paying my bills). I buy the stamps from someplace other than a P.O. and choose to pay more rather than go there. I’m one of the holdouts who refuses to bank online, to have a debit card, to allow automatic withdrawals from my checking, or to make payment online at the company’s website. I am one of their last old school customers. And I don’t want to go to their store and transact business. I would rather pay more and go to some other vendor.

That isn’t the only reason the USPS is in a state of fail, but I can’t believe I am the only one, and it’s certainly one reason.

Scumbag studies, Social comment

The strange story of Gary Thomas Rowe Jr.

September 13, 2011 jkkblog 6 Comments

A great American died recently: Sheldon Kennedy. He infiltrated the third Ku Klux Klan in the WWII and post-WWII years, then wrote about them. The Klan never forgave him, which made him my friend in spirit on some level. That got me back to some re-reading in a subject that has long interested me: the KKK and its kind.

In the mid-1970s (age 12 or so), I happened to pick up a book called My Undercover Years in the Ku Klux Klan, by Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. In brief: “Tommy” Rowe was a working-class Georgian who liked to fight, and who infiltrated Bobby Shelton’s Alabama branch of the KKK (at FBI instigation) during the civil rights movement. He informed (how truthfully, we are uncertain) on the Klan until the 1965 day he was in a vehicle from which Michigan civil rights volunteer Viola Liuzzo was shot to oblivion near the Edmund Pettus Bridge, not far from Birmingham and Selma, AL. The jig was up, of course. Rowe testified against the assassins (never quite shedding suspicion that he was among them), his cover was well beyond retrieval, and he went into Witness Protection. He passed away in 1998. Here is a brief catchup on his story from a biographer, a more reputable source than the NYT.

In a way, Rowe’s ghosted autobio was one of my first introductions to historiography: how much of what he said could I believe? I wanted to believe as much of it as possible. As the descendant of a Kansas Ku Klux Klansman (unless my grandfather lied to me in one of his last fully lucid moments, which I doubt), I have had a longtime antipathy toward their kind–and toward all such organizations. With a little luck, they feel the same way about me. Any time you start researching any intelligence matter–and anything to do with the FBI qualifies as such–your historiography and skepticism must kick into passing gear. You must realize that any of your sources have axes to grind and would willingly lie like rugs, the G-Men as much as the racists. It’s all up to what you believe credible. The greatest handicap is to be so emotionally involved that there are sources from which you would believe nothing, and on this topic I leave some paint on that guardrail.

So, thinking of Sheldon Kennedy, I revisited The Informant. This investigative bio of Rowe came out in 2005. As one may imagine, so long as Rowe lived, information about him would be elusive; he had betrayed a terrorist organization whose propensity for violence and reprisal he knew as well as any man alive. Even after his death, it wasn’t easy for Prof. May to find the full story of Tommy Rowe. At the very least, I can re-read what he did find–and even that must be considered historiographically. Two of Liuzzo’s living relatives call May a liar. Whom do we believe? Now you see why history can get so fuzzy. The sister says she didn’t talk to May. May disagrees. Even though the principals are still living, we still must decide who’s lying.

All right. What do I now make of Tommy Rowe, FBI informant, known racist, thug and adrenaline junkie? There is zero doubt that he participated in violence against the civil rights movement (we’ve got pictures). Was that justified in the name of maintaining cover? Not an easy ethical question. Did he fire at Viola Liuzzo? He may have, in order to avoid being immediately next, which does not necessarily mean he fired accurately. FBI agents with motive to lie said his pistol had not been fired, but that means nothing except that someone (with a motive to lie) told us that a given weapon hadn’t been used. (His was not the only weapon in existence, of course. Lots of Americans have more than one pistol. Some have dozens. Show them this .22, not that one.) We cannot know if Rowe fired, nor how effectively. What is well documented: whether Rowe fired effectively at Viola Liuzzo and her passenger Leroy Moton (a black civil rights volunteer), or shot to death the three other Klansman in the car as they overtook the Liuzzo vehicle, fatal violence was imminent. Someone was about to die, by his hand or another. Rowe could not have doubted that.

One may argue that this is exactly what Lowe should have done: three quick, calm shots, executions of backseat fellow, shotgun rider, driver. Two seconds, three violent bigots erased. All very well to say, except that neither I nor most of you have ever lived a double life for several years while infiltrating a hate organization. At this remove, it isn’t so easy to lay fair judgment about Tommy Rowe; he was there, deciding on the spot, and I was not. Blowing people away in a speeding vehicle (in which you too are riding), before they actually commit a crime, in cold blood, well…that’s asking a lot. Rowe had no more desire to spend life in jail than anyone else, and up to the moment guns blazed, he was still in cover with a job to do. When does the infiltrator decide that the game is over, and to change his life forever? Judging this is like judging combat veterans. We weren’t there; they were.

To call Rowe a civil rights hero is unsupportable, but it is equally indefensible to call him a racist redneck out for only a few thrills, some government dollars and shielding for beating people up (preferably integrationists). He did tremendous damage to the Ku Klux Klan; unless he murdered a baby doing it, that goal was valuable to any enemy of the KKK. I don’t have to think him an admirable man to be glad he was where he was. I think he was a moderate racist, the garden variety who knew the cant and could pass, rather than a virulent bigot who only showed up so that he could beat up blacks with Federal impunity. (You think there is no such thing as a moderate racist? Don’t let the desire to demonize racism make you forget to be careful what you wish for. I know people who use racist language but aren’t ever going to blow up a church. I can disapprove of their attitudes while being glad they aren’t going to commit murder.) Meta-fact: fear of informers was a leading paralytic to KKK violence in the civil rights era, and after Rowe, it wasn’t paranoia on the Klan’s part; the Feds truly were out to get them. (Go Feds!) In the end, Tommy Rowe probably prevented far more racist violence than he participated in, and did vast harm to the Ku Klux Klan.

Sometimes we have to take what we can get–unless we ourselves are willing to step up. Who’s volunteering for such a thing? Had I not married, I might have done so–but that’s not a story I’ll ever tell in a blog. Rowe was what the FBI could get. I would have a very hard time constructing an argument that decency would have been better served had he told the FBI and KKK both to go to hell, or had he died before then in a car accident and we never known him.

Book reviews, Social comment

Rereading: James Michener’s ‘Iberia’

August 16, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

I have come up with a recurring topic idea I’ll continue if people find it interesting: re-reads. I have a lot of books, enough that I could not re-read them all in five years, including many to which I later return. I don’t like to post reviews on Amazon, unless I have a motive; I resent them shipping my content to affiliates. (Yes, they have the legal right. Not disputed. Nor should they dispute my legal right to refrain from donating my content to them.)

♣

When most of us think of Michener, we think of his great historical fiction novels that span great ranges of time. They walk us through the development of a culture, and in so doing they help us see that culture’s modern residents in light of their forebears. My personal favorites are The Covenant (South Africa), Centennial (Colorado), Alaska, Texas and The Source (Palestine).

Iberia differs. It is a composite personal travelogue of the author’s experiences in Spain (Portugal is not really included). This is that rare book for which hardcover is by far the best edition, because I own it in both hardback and paperback, and the hardback contains many more of Robert Vavra’s excellent photographs. James Michener met Spain as a very young man, came to know it well, and its people showed him their country as thoroughly as a people can. Spaniards can be sensitive about the world’s take on their world-shaping, gold-glittering, intensely religious past. Said world has given them ample cause. It follows that they considered Michener an honest broker worthy of hidden knowledge, frank debate and candid admission.

It reads differently from his fiction, as you would expect, because fiction and non-fiction narrative often differ slightly. In the editing world, we must take account of this. If this is his natural style, though, I like it. It is sophisticated yet word-economical.

What it means for you: a trove of cultural enrichment. Think of every social science and humanity discipline applied to a given nation, from history to fine arts. That describes Iberia with respect to Spain and Spaniards.

Blogging freelance editing, writing, and life in general. You can also Like my Facebook page for more frequent updates: J.K. Kelley, Editor.