Tag Archives: Frank W. Summers III

Ideal Wetlands Policy on the Louisiana Coast

Posted on October 2, 2009 | 10 comments

I have decided to address the issues of wetlands conservation in Louisiana briefly in this post. In the past I have conspired for significant political change which would address the challenge of wetlands and coastal preservation and restoration along with many other issues that would be addressed only in the context of some very large political changes. This post is sort of an admission of defeat compared to those nearly forgotten goals. On the other hand it is for more than I am ever likely to see happen.

1. I would like to see some kind of stimulus fund used to by not one very large single tract but a series of many smaller tracts operated as a single National park with a total of perhaps 100,000 acres in all from the Atchafalya Swamp, the Chandeleur Islands, Cheniere Au Tigre, Grand Isle, Vermilion Bay’s coast, the Mississippi natural levees, and Ile des Dernier among other places.

2. I would like to see each oil and gas drilling and production corporation which has a part in developing the resources of Louisiana’s share of the Gulf madeto participate or have its own artificial barrier island. Each of these would have to include a fish hatchery, a wetlands plants nursery and  an artificial beach as well as a grassy wetlands section of several times the dry acreage on the inland side of the island. These islands would also have to hold a clinic, a regional drilling office, serve as a juncture for pipelines and have a public docks and small hotel. On the gulfside of the islands the corporations must operate or lease out underwater habitats and laboratories joined to a central umbilicus running up the island. The islands must be  built of at least eighty percent certified clean waste such as wrecks,  broken concrete, compressed and sealed garbage and other materials.

3. A Louisiana State Park should be set up in long lanes connected to several giant purification and oxidation farms worked by convicts and detainees as well as other workers. Part of this farm would be leased out as cattle pasture to offset expenses. As much as possible of emergency drainage and partialy cleaned sewerage would go from the cities of South Louisiana to these farms. After going through a simple plant and oxidation ponds the waters would go through an artificial eco system until reaching the park lanes. These lanes would resort to canals and pipes where necessary but would generaly run as continous fishing, hunting and camping stips of wetlands and coulees dep into the Gulf waters.

4.The lanes would enter the fully flooded areas and there would be an artificial long island causeway with many breaks through which as many as possible future pipelines should be run. The surface of this would have to be ninety percent suitable and reseved for ither simple recreational use or pure wildlife reservation.

5. There would be a designated spillway zones between the island causeway and the ends of the lanes. These  zones would  have a concentration of wetlands preserves, erosion fences and jetties and all of the storm water pumps sediment rich floods and excess waters which could not be used in ordinary diversions would be pumped ad diverted into these areas. The state would also operate commercial species hatcheries and nurseries for seafood supported by a special tax and operate lease and overseen new oysterbeds in this zone.

6. When this was done a series of sites for artificial islands set in between and landward from the oil and gas islands would be leased to casino resorts.

7.  A series of  levees and canals would be built around and between the lanes which would try to use existing structures and make a coherent feature of wildlife, wetlands, transit and drainage policies.

I expect things would be far from perfect if we did all of this. However, I also expect this is far better than the horror to which we are headed and have always been headed.

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America’s economic crossroads in the darkness

Posted on October 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

I do not know how to say this simply. I know that America is in a very dangerous place. I am still watching the Ken Burns film The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.  I look at this complicated and difficult story of difficult and complex events and life struggles. Of course it is mostly a story of beautiful places and beautiful creatures being preserved. However, the story was written in the blood sweat and tears of so many and Ken Burns does a good job of setting these things out in a clear and crisp narrative.

We are in a very bad situation and the need for radical change is quite great. However, the chances of having the right changes come into effect are almost nonexistent as far as I can see. Here are some problems which I think come together to make a much larger problem than merely the sum of their parts.

1.We have the river delta of the sixth largest river in the world in this coutry and we do not have abalnced view of it at all. The Mississippi Delta is in a state of ecological freefall and collapse and the consequences for theTexas, Louisiana and Mississippi on the Nothern Gulf Coast have been disastrous. We do have the will power to manage these challenges.

2.We have a huge number of bridges, roads, tunnels and levees that we are not maintaining to solid standards.

3. We consume a huge percentage of the world’s resources and much of it on credit from China where the average citizen ought to be living a higher standard of living.

4. We are almost all agreed to make the coverage of vastly expensive healthcare options and absolute right, not covering undesirable aliens any more than we used to and barely adressing wellness and primary care. This is outrageous and a sign of where we are going to destroy ourselves.

5.In the recent Chicago shooting many saw the crime and almost nobody has spoken to the police and yet this community is seen as equaly desrving of funding and advancement as if it were not a rebel community in arms.

6. Our political theory is insanely simplistic and raw and deluded. None of the nuance and depth that built the best in this country is understood. Calculator democracy and quarterly profits battle in milieu devoid of serious statecraft.

7. We have a huge deficits, huge debt and a slow economy.

8. We have no real sense of justice and proportion in matters related to human community. More or less all forms of real human community (as opposed to state related society or corporate organization) have simply been made ilegal. We have toolittle recognition for Indian Nations and marriage and other than those we have lawsthat effectively prohibit:

A. Native Hawaiian and Samoan near-state tribalism and nationhood.

B. Polygamy is ilegal.

C. Clans, extended families, neighborhoods and monasteries cannot really gain much if any legal recognition of what they actualy are and a structure that supports them.

9. We do nothing really to redefine the narcotrafficking crisis which has contibute to the slaughter in Mexico, to FARC and its wars in Colombia, to the Taliban and it wars including 9-11.

10. We are increasingly isolated form several important sectors of the world and challenged by the European Union and other players which are almost brand new in historic terms.

11. We are unable to manage resources like occupied territories, space station access, nuclear fission technologies and other products of our greatest and most expensive efforts very effectively.

12. Our automobile industry is a major driver of innovation and progress and is in shambles.

13.Subsistence and biodiverse safety first farming is almost nonexistent in this country.

14.Our world is getting smaller in very many ways but for mostly political reasons it is not getting larger in almost any way other than those directly related to population.

In some of my other notes and pages in this site I have tried to show how all of these things went together and worked. I have showedwhat I believe might be some ways out and forward. I will leave it to anyone who reads this to decide whether  they want to explore this blogsite and try to piece together the policy questions and answers in this site. I think that I have made quite a few statements about how bad things seem to me and a lot of that is about personal issues and some is about even bigger trends than the one listed here.

However, I am ready to say that a great deal of my unhappiness is related to these aspects of American economics. We are in my view in a state of advanced entropy right before all the forces reach a zenith of destruction. That right before may not seem so soon to many people even if iot keeps coming. However, for me reversing the trend is the only solution that would bring comfort. I do believe it is possible we will revers these trends but I do not think it is likely at all.  

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American Samoan Tsunami and Polynesian Memories

Posted on September 30, 2009 | 1 comment

Maranatha field tripPh.Nz.Smiths&usI have ties that run through many categories. Many of these categories overlap with some of the others. The Spanish Empire in its historical contexts includes large parts of the United States where I have lived including my Louisiana Home. It also includes Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines which between them have made up a great deal of my life. The USA in a broad sense of histoice sweep includes the Philippines, the Federated States of Micronesia, American Samoa, Guam and the States themselves. Likewise the British Commonwealth has formed me in central assets like the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and penumbras like Fiji and Tonga as well as the historicaly tied Thirteen Colonies which became the revolutionary USA. The French Empire has formed me in France, Louisiana, Louisville (Kentucky), Acadie, Quebec and the francophone world that gather in Louisiana from time to time. China in China herself, Manila, San Francisco New York and the Chinese food industry I wonce worked with from time to time. One reason I find it hard to form intimate relationships is that each of these cultural matrices is real to me and has formed me and I cannot entirely leave it behind.

That sounds like quite a lot but it leaves out a part of my life that has been brought to the surface by the news of the Tsunami striking Samoa. I am deeply formed by Polynesia. I lived in Tonga on the Island of Tongatapu and attended Tonga Side School in the last independent Polynesian Kingdom. I lived in American Samoa in the city of PagoPago which was among the places hit by today’s tsuanmi and fished in its deep blue surrounding waters. I attended Viard College in Porirua near Wellington on New Zealand’s North Island and  lived in nearby Titahi Bay just off Cook Strait. My friends were mostly a mix of unmixed Samoans, Maoris, English, Scot, Irish and Welsh youth and adults. The majority were either Samoan or Irish. I have made several trips to the Hawaii I would still like to spend more time getting to know. Pearl Harbor is one of the great national American places I hold in memory.

Tongatapu is a flat island and if I had heard of a tsunami there I would dread hearing of huge death tolls. However, Pago Pago is located with hills and Rainmaker mountain rising up in all directions reaching elevated tendrils down to villages, beaches and neighborhoods. I have not been to Western Samoa but have been told that much of Samoa has the hills which can save the most lives in the event of a tsunami. I have various versions of the two pictures above from New Zealand and these are the worst versions but they are in some ways symbolic of my fading memory.

Polynesians tend to be chubby if they are not starving (and very few are) but very muscular, fit and attentive to family if there is a hilll nearby they are likely to get the children and elderly up the hill with alacrity. Their war dances, Chrsitianity, baptised and unbaptised  animism, their love of the sea and music that fills their lives is much on my mind tonight. I hope that the world can find a way to show some solidarity in this time as they recover. I am sure there will be much suffering that will find its way into their cultural coping mechanisms and scarcely be noticed. But patronizing as it may sound a few dollars well allocated would make a lasting difference in recovery and development in both Samoas. Polynesians know how to maximise limited resources on their farflung islands.

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Secrets in the Time of Bush and Obama

Posted on September 29, 2009 | Leave a comment
We live in a time when Americans are dealing with many different issues related to secrets. We have  George Bush’s recent legacy of seeking agressive new agencies for the seeking out of secrets held by America’s enemies.  People of goodwill and integrity have been rightly or wrongly concerned that he also increased the number of secrets he gathered about others in America doing things other than destroying our society.
Now we have Obama and his ties to the ACORN set with an apparent love for violating the law. We know he was an associate of Weatherman domestic terrotists and and has been proclaimed as a Candidate for African Emperor of the United States by Qaddafi in the UN General Assembly. With so many things  going on we know about many wonder what his secrets may be. I think all nations at all times have issues with secrets and I am pulling up an old post on the subject for consideration. While the current issues  change, the reality of the human condition and secrecy has some real  continuity.     
The following post was first posted on my Facebook site.
 Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 10:17pm
It is never easy to face the fact that one is nearing the end of of a long and arduous journey and has not arrived at a good place to stop. In many ways that is the situation in which I find myself. I may end up living for many years more but many parts of my life journey have already assumed a pretty permanently derailed state. I have an associate whom I reasonably believe is my half-brother whom I reasonbably believe will not live a lot longer and he is not much older than me. (Paul died earlier this year.) His existence was a secret from me for most of my life and something else I do not know might seem to show that either he is not dying or is not my half-brother but that is the way it currently looks. Paul’s dying of AIDS is not a secret but my telling of it is a revelation. It is a strange line between the intimate and private and the secret. It is in that world of secrets and confidences that I have spent much of my life.

One of my purposes in this set of notes has been to try to set down in wrting thisngs that I would not have wanted to die leaving unwritten.To set out some basic patterns and frameworks of evidence that make me feel that I have preserved some of this knowledge in a certain way and clarified some issues that might be of interest to any who might choose to use this information to follow along some intellectual or spatial path on which I have trod. However, in this note I wish to deal with the matter of secrets deliberately and specificaly. While I do not intend to open up about the vast majority of things which I have held secret I do wish to lay out some clearer paths to a few secrets that have mattered a good bit. I wish to add to the confirmable record relating to them.

I went to Law school twice and have worked in many law offices. In such places and that profession secrets and confidences are a stock in trade. In ministry as a young person I was told many secrets as well. People sought my advice about relationships, pregnancies, family problems and gangs. Because I was very young I tried to refer them when I could but always with their permission. In that youthful mempory I see an image related to that of one of the people who has inspired me to choose this topic. The very young Madison Elizabeth Holland. When I was her age I was advising young gangsterss and pregnant girls who were looking to find Jesus and some help. Her role has nothing to do with gangs or teen pregnancy but it does have to do with the world of secrets when one does not have all the links to the facts which one knows were concealed.

One of the reasons that I am inspired to undertake this note on this topic at this time is because Madison Elizabeth Holland invited me to join a group which she founded as an aid to a paper she is writing. The name of the group is “Why are People so Fascinated by the Strange/Macabre/Horrifyiing/ Alien?????” I have posted some things to the Discussion Board and that has inspired me to want to include some related insights into the next note I did. So that would be the note I am currently typing and you are currently reading at some time current to you.

In Madison’s group I posted something about werewolves and something about dragons. It is one of the many quirky things about me — that I take a real interest in the space programs and industry of our time but also have a fairly highly developed interest in both dragons and werewolves. My own Christian faith is Catholic in several senses of the word. On is that it is open to and embraces that “yearning of ALL creation as it groans in anticipation {like a woman in labor} for the revelation of the sons of God”. That is my own loose interpretation/ translation of the Pauline verse. I do not utterly renounce all the “varied and fragmantary ways” in which God has revealed himself to the Pagans as Paul assured the Aeropagus. I will not worship the Sun for example but I will see the image and fingerprints of its maker imperfectly in it as I also see them a little more perfectly in the most perfect human beings. With that point of view and with my life history it is not surprising that some secret of ancient traditions should have come to rest in my hands and head.

This is also a time when it is easy for me to think about secrets and disclosing what I can. I am at a place where I find myself letting go of everything and that is the mood and mode in which secrets are readily revealed. I am not in a clinging and guarding mood very much. There are different levels of screcy. For example, anyone can find out or be told that I once joined the Knights of Columbus. Knowing that they know that I went through some sort of secret initiation. Within the effort of disclosed materials in oublic record they know that these initiation events have the name “Rite of Passage”. Similar things are true for the Masons and a variety of other groups including college fraternities. Then there are more open groups with a few unoffical secrets and most of us can remember belonging to at least one of those if we think long enough. Then there are much more secret groups whose very existence is never admitted outside of confidence. Finally there are super secret groups who may be discussed but who most people agree do not exist and whose members alone really are sure of their existence. I have belonged to groups of all such categories.

Then there are individual secrets not directly tied to any group. We have secrets often for more than one reason. However, usually one is the most important. Sometimes thesereasons change over the years:
1. We have secrets we protect to spare friends or family from harm to all facets of their reputation.
2. We have secrets we keep to prevent prevenge for harms we have done to others of which they are not fully aware.
3. We have secrets we keep to protect ourselves or others from being marked fortheft of property, injury or death because of the valuye of a thing concealed.
4.We keep secretsbecuase we are producing something of value or importance to us or others and it is notcompleted and we do not wish it to be judged by the unfinished version.
5. We keep secrets because simply disclosing a thing in any way is emotionally painful or difficult.
6. We keep secrets becuse their are legal or social penatlies associated with disclosure.
7. We keep secrets becuse we find an environment so hostile that any and all information we release will for part of the mosaic image compiled by our enemies or adversarial forces to use against us.
8. We keep secrets because something is near and dear to us and treasuring it in solitude or with a few confidants makes it seem more special and keeps its memory clearer and apart from other memories of discussion and thirdhand accounts.
9. We keep secrets becauseknowledge of a thing provides a useful identifier of any number of things about a person or group but publishing information would make the knowledge less useful.
10. We keep secrets because for one or more of many reasons we are unable and not so much unwilling to disclose the secrets. These reasons include forgetting the secret, death, severe disability, incapactity to articulte the secret information and total isolation.

I often think of books and movies that I might allude to in these notes and do not do so. The ones that are mentioned are a small representative fraction of a much larger body of works. One movie that I have always liked is “Sneakers” starring Robert Redford, Ben Kingsley and I think Mary MacDonald. There is a cipher that the crew led by Redford must decode to be informed of the rest of password. Redford’s character and his on-again-off-again love interest are seated across some kind of table top from eachother and to find the password they start off with a somewhat nondescript phrase and using an ordinary Scrabble set they scramble the letters into all the intlleigible combinations that they can think of together. After a number of false starts they end up with “Too Many Secrets”. Not only is that the password they need but it is at the heart both of the viewer’s understanding of the movie and of the characters understanding of their predicament.

Not every life is, needs to be or should be as much about secrets as mine is but I do tend to think of life as being in large part about solving riddles and unlcking and controlling secrets. Judging from the testimony of a great deal of art and literature — many other people find this process speaks to and illuminates their own life experience as well. What I do not do much of these days is to really get involved in the internal struggle of people seeking to come to clarity about moral truth. However, I have done a good bit of that in my life. I think that there are many reasons why we are obsessed with solving secrets as a species. However, one of the reasons is that in a very complex sort of socio-biological economy we have to be aware of deceitful and lethal human bings in order to survive and pass on our genetic and cultural traits. We also have to be able to hide some tings and keep some secrets in order to survive. Then of course to varying degrees many of us are the lethaly deceitful and the ones seeking out hiding places.

In most cases the really ardent and devoted explorers reach a point when the sense of thrill with secrets is diminished and replaced with a system of categorizations, crossreferences, tactical maneuvres used to stay alive and tecniques used to record and trasmit information. Marco Polo set out with a really large group when he left Italian spheres of influence for his great journeys the vast majority of these people were dead and almost all were taken permanently off their intended course when he returned home. He was the kind of adventurer who learns many secrets and successfully reports them to his home base. Magellan and Cook are other explorers who manged both to die violently in the course of discovery and to discover and report many things to their home community and culture before they died.
Early test pilots seeking out the secret of aerodynamics often died and so did pioneeers in atomic and subatomic physics. What seems clear is that as a species it is vital that we unlock new information. It is also vital that we retain a cpacity for some kinds of privacy, secrecy and control over the information we possess. Finally even when guarded by something as nonhuman as the properties of radioactive particles there are often very serious risks whenever one seeks to unveil secrets of importance.

I think that this note is more stopping than ending. I have a great deal on my mind that I choose not to share today and in this note. If all these notes have an unfinished quality this does more than most. I think I will just stop here with an invitation to check out Madison’s group. It is open and not secret and she may close it down after she write the paper so now is the time to check it out.(I have taken over administration of this group since her departure)

The End…
Well, as the UK deals with scandals and their related secrets in the Baroness Scotland affairs and many countries deal with the secrets of the underworld and corporate privacy I hope the world does not become a place with even less room for the quiet and secret work of life which cannot occur except in secret and is vital to the future of humanity. I hope we all find those secret lodges in the soul we need to be truly human.

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Sundays and television

Posted on September 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

Today, I had a very indoor Sunday. I fed some animals, broke a piece of wood that was jamming a large garbage bin open, moved a few items out on the lawn section of Big Woods and I went to the little chapel nearby where I usually attend Mass. But mostly I stayed home and watched television. I watched most of CBS Sunday Morning which is one of my favorite shows, the Saints beating the Bills and snippets of other NFL games and the first installment of the Ken Burns National Park film. It was not a bad way to spend much of the day. I do not object to cutting up on Sunday and I do take advantage of services available on Sunday. But I know that the old Sunday laws of various kinds gave many people a day off who seldom get one now. Ihave at times been one of those “tirelessly” working people who will fill all available time (almost) with paid labor and now there is no resistance to filling all that time.

I do not work really hard just now.  However while this is written Sunday night, I often take Sunday nights  and all of my Sunday off from blogging and it still shows up as Sunday posting because of the time differences. This evening I am thinking of all the forms of inactivity that actually make great activity. Like mapping, surveying, certifying, declaring and protecting National Parks so that cars, buses, trains, planes, uniform makers, carpenters, rangers, filmmakers, writers and many others can make their living from this seemingly uneconomic enterprise. Days off and holidays add value too. Normaly my Sundays have a bit more community and family and that could have been the case today. However, today was a day to watch TV and rest. As it ends I do feel relatively refreshed and hope humanity moves towards more such refreshing times for more people who seldom get them.

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National Parks and Ken Burns

Posted on September 27, 2009 | Leave a comment

Tomorrow night my PBS station with Louisiana Public Broadcasting will be airing the Ken Burns film The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. I have spent a significant amount of time in America’s National Parks. My times in Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Smoky Mountains,  Mammoth Caves and some of the other large natural areas are among my most precious memories and times in my life. Additionaly Jean Lafite and numerous other sites protected by the  National Park Service have enriched and been part of my life.  We have all got some capacity to appreciate the beauty of nature, all of us have a potential to be moved at the majesty of it all. I have been to Kunyu National Park in China, to numerous state and city parks in the USA and I truly do have some great memories of all these places. However, the National Parks of the United States hold a very special place in my heart and memory.  I remember my ex wife and I getting into a tent just before dark at a Mammoth Caves tentsite and then getting up to spend a good part of the day making two cave tours and then diving to Louisville where I spent two days a researching the Roy Striker deposit of files on and copies of  documentary film and photography at the Ekstrom Photographic Archives at the University of Louisville. We did other things that trip when the archives were closed but the National Park was the highlight of them all.

I will never forget the sense of awe which I experienced in going to see and walk through the giant sequoias. I will always remember the many conversations I had with rangers and the many lectures that I listened to given by rangers.   There have been analogous experiences and overlapping ones like visiting the twenty-one (actually not an exact number) California Missions that started the Great State of California on its path into Western Civilization. But in a life that has brought me also London and Truk Lagoon I have a very high esteem for the US National Park system. 

I also remember a bear coming into our camping area when I was a child at a national park and fishing for trout with my father in the clearest natural water I had ever seen.  I will never forget the awe I felt when I first saw the Grand Canyon. Those experiences have given me hope about humanity interacting with nature over the long haul. I have been away too long to be sure if some of the other sites that I have visited were National Parks or some other clasification. Petrified Forest and Painted Desert are among those.

I look forward to watching the PBS specials and enjoying Burns view of all this. We must face a future with the courage to build islands and undersea habitats and to colonize space. That must happen for us to be who we are and when we are doing that well then we will also be able to bring the Parks and new parks into their highest glory. I am not joking whne I say that Ilook forward to the day when our national parks are used to seed apecies into  artificial environments where no life exists today. I look forward today to see the  day when we use waste to build islands and colonize crater and free up more land to act as clean natural corridors connecting parks.

For now I hope that I will get to watch the Burns movie and let it move and educate me a little bit. Maybe it will be a bit of a tie to the future and the past. That would be both my personal past and future and larger collective and communal pasts and futures.

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Entertainment and Childhood

Posted on September 26, 2009 | 2 comments

I took my nieces and nephew to see the three dimensional version of the movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs it was a cleverly written adaptation of  a popular children’s  book and had both a well written screenplay and excellent voice actors. The quality of the 3D experience was really excellent.  I really enjoyed the visit with my homeschooled (for this year) nieces and nephew who could go to a matinee. The film was a first for me. I had seen 3D I-Max (or imitators I am unsure now) films, 3D films at World’s fairs and have looked at 3D films in correlation with scientific seminars but had never seen a major commercial feature entertainment film in three dimensions at a theater or movie house. I enjoyed that experience .

We drove back to our place in the country where they live in a different house than I do on the same property. I know they enjoy the dogs, horses and fish here at Big Woods. They are also very well traveled.

However, today I remembered my own childhood which had its own joys and sorrows. I went to the wake of the grandfather of one of my closest early childhood friends. I remember riding minibikes at that family’s ranch, going out on their boat The  Escape for deep sea fishing and listening to the man I knew as Mr. Revis tell an occasional war story. My buddy and I did not always get along in those days and we have drifted apart over the years. Our grandfathers were in business together, Dannon and I went to school together and our mothers were good friends.

I was an avid freshwater fisherman as well as an occasional deep sea fisherman when I was a kid. I remember on time I was out at the back of my Dad’s family’s Lac Misere Farm fishing and my grandfather and Mr. Revis flew by in a light plane. They dropped me a shake and a cheeseburger as they flew by. It would be a better story if I could say the packages arrived perfectly in good order but in that living experience of food falling from the sky it was rather like the 3D movie. There was some damage although I did catch the food and drink more or less. It is remarkable enough that I got some eating and drinking out of the expereience. That was certainly an unusual experience. However, it was in keeping with the personality of the men who served in the military during World War II. Revis Greene Sirmon was the “Scatterbrain Kid” as was his plane when he was a fighter pilot. His zest for life and willingness to take chances were telltale signs of his years as a fighter pilot in combat. Whatever else he was he could take the time to bring some magic to a kid’s life. I hope he rests in peace and that the country and world he leaves behind becomes a better and not a worse place.

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Politics and the lost cause of a woman from Alaska

Posted on September 3, 2009 | Leave a comment
I have a lot on my mind today. It seems that there are a lot of political issues on my mind and these are seen in light of a good number of other factors, influences and issues.  One thing is that I like to think of myself as having a fairly high degree of intellectual honesty. I look for occasions and opportunities to test my basic honesty and to evaluate how honestly I have assessed previous situations. In that vein of assessment there has been an obvious opportunity for me to test my instincts. That is my chance to see how long it would seem to me that President Obama had been President of the United States by the time that the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks came around. I think my feeling is not totally off base from my earlier frame of reference. However, it does seem that he has been POTUS for a while. I am icreasingly willing to blame him for the bad things that happen on any given day.
That is relevant. Because when I voted for George W. Bush for his first term as President it seemed clear to me that he had not been President long enough to be really the president principaly  responsible for the tragedy of that day. I still see that Bush inherited a mess and I still see Obama as mostly working on an inherited economic problem but I am able to see thepercentage of blame for each president increase in my own mind as regards problems which emerge in the middle of September in their first year. Not a real clear definite change in opinion but it is some of that change which Obama was talking about during the campaign.
I did not vote for George Bush for his second term because I could not get to the embassy in Beijing during the allowed time period when I was teaching in China that year. I would very probably have voted for him if I could have voted at all that year. I tend to believe that it takes a while to really formulate and put in place a program of governance.  It seems likely to me that President Obama will be most effective following his re-election if that happens in 2012. That is the structure of the American Presidency today. I would have wanted to give Bush 2 a chance to really establish Homeland Security initiatives and to see if he could come up with a working program for Faith Based Initiatives  in reaching out to communities and populations most in crisis.
I was a solid Bush supporter who had once been a Democrat voting for Dukakis. I had left the party when Clinton was trying to start a war on Catholics, was barbecuing wierd religious kids in Waco and shooting families at Ruby Ridge for wanting to be left alone. I have never wanted to rejoin.  I have friends in many parties throughout the world. Conservatives in Britain and Communists in China are among the  groups with whom I have had the most dialog in the last decade. I do not belong to either.
However, the candidacy of Governor Sarah Palin  really excited me. I think she had a lot to offer. I am reproducing below some of the thoughts I had before last year’s election.   
The post reproduced first appeared on Facebook on my page on October 15,2008.
It is a season of winning and losing. I returned from a weekend at the Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting and have watched Tampa Bay beating the Red Sox, NFL teams struggling to win and the prognosticators saying that Obama is likely to win the election. The election is different than the sporting events. It occurs in a political arena where we either are or should be trying to build something to make our world and nation better. Once a President is elected there will not be such clear standards as to who must be beaten. It will not be so clear what a win is and how to measure it. If you think the wrong guy won it is harder to lose gracefully becuase more than pride and one’s salary is at stake. Nobody can ever say exactly what is at stake. Even historians have trouble deciding what came of an election after the fact. The President has no magic wand for remaking the coutnry according to dreams he may have. But we know a successful President will shape the way all of us and future generations live to some real extent.

I have decided to write a note exploring both the idea of success and the idea of losing gracefully in one piece of writing. It is true that we all live within a great number of pre-set limits and conditions. Most people at least claim not to be worried by most of them. We know some insects can live in suspended animation for years at a time, sperm whales can swim unaided into deep ocean trenches to hunt the giant squid, some trees live with their neighbors and relatives in peaceful adult coexistence for venturies if they can survive the traumas and trial of youth wheteher a male or a female most of us can find other living creatures which seem to have more sexual fun and a better deal than any humans we associate with of our gender. Except for artists (in the broadest sense),shamans, a few saints and the occasional lunatic most of us don’t empathize enough with other creatures to really feel the sense of watching some animal or being and knowing the sense of not having somethng they take for granted. Beyond interspecies differences, we can be aware that Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, Plato and Sun Tzu were all completely unable to win the World Series or the NASCAR trophies that we watch others compete for or avoid watching people compete for each day. The world rushes by each of us according to the age and space in which we live and there are no persons who have all human options open to them. Thus, whenever we speak of success and even of the most extreme kind of success we are speaking of a limited and relative kind of thing.

In fact, a rather well known line of poetry encourages us to see our limits in achieving the greatness we percieve in a good and happy way. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp else what’s a Heaven for?” On a clear night the naked eye can see Arcturus many billions of miles away while a naked and unaided body can leap and grab an object not much over twenty feet from one’s naked resting eyeballs. Therefore, there does seem to be rather a disparity between the reachof purely physical perception and the grasp of grip. However, its hard to measure exactly how much further away is the farthest thing we can touch with our finger tips from the farthest thing we can grasp in our hands. Such a difference seems subpoetic somehow. So perhaps reach is meant in its broadest literal meaning as the underlying foundation of this metaphor. Some of us compare our actual achievements to goals analagous to those objects just at our fingertips and others of us tned to compare our achievements to goals as practically remote as Arcturus is distant. While I don’t think loftier goals always mean a less happy person they may certainly break down smugness and self satisfaction.

What about all the many how-to books of the self-help variety that tend to promote success as a goal which is relatively universal and easily identified? Can success reaslly be at all ambiguous or mysterious if so many agree on what is meant in the writing, publishing and purchase of all these books?

Perhaps one reason that sports and other games are so widely enjoyed by so many kinds of people is that in these games success can be identified more easily than in life. While in practice winning may not be the only goal that players and coaches address it is certainly one of the major goals in everygame. And even when a team or player is involved in a game or competition where winning is not a realistic goal and is not reall sought, winning remains the standard by which their efoorts are measured and assessed. This sort of game theory applies readily war. One hopes for and should seek victory but often it is best to put up a great fight and lose utterly than simply to lose utterly. The conqueror’s desire for revenge will not often cause as much harm as will be avoided by having taught them to fear renewed hostility, having reduced their forces, having proved unpredictable and having proven that one can stand strong for commitments given. The way one achieves these secondary objectives however is usually by trying to win.

In some kinds of play winning is not so clear and not so important. Often there are still victories involved but they are the victories of the type whiich actors describe in doing a scene. They are subtle kinds of plays for and calculations of dominance and position. Some forms of feminism have tried to hide the fact that in most cases and at most times women will avoid forms of direct contest in zero-sum competition with their husbands, potential husbands and potential sons-in-law. There are very good reasons for that. Nonetheless, in Greek which was so dominant over so much of culture for so long the women had their Heraklion games as a counterpart to the Olympic games and competed fiercely in athletics with one another. I think society is much richer when women speak the language of competition as men experience it. A little man to woman competiton in formal systems can add some spice as well. But men competing directly with women in hard fought games will never be the main course of a healthy society. Danika Patrick enhances INDY racing’s appeal because she is the sexy, good-looking woman who gives the guys a good run for their money. Other women come and go and she keeps the door open for them. INDY could probably handle another ten women of her caliber or better. But another 25 women like her would hurt its appeal. I watch the sport more because of her, but I enjoy watching her and the men compete in a man’s sport.

Coed soccer with little boys and girls is laying a foundation for a better future I think. Any good future will involve a lot of single sex competition. Cheerleading is a kind of sport and artform used to emphasize the really maco qualities of a given sport by accenting the fit and able females cheering for it. Male cheerleaders exist and can be important but they support and supplement the women involved. Men can also benefit from learining some female-dominated skill sets. It can be refreshing to everyone if old Widower Fred puts on a good social event as his wife once did. If men are throwing most of the dinner parties then that group of dinner parties will surely be in decline.

All of the kinds of success that I have mentioned are distinct from the big life-defining measure of overall success. Those seem different as well from the suceess measures of a society. I think that in my own life there has been a pretty good level of mixture between success and failure, winning and losing. I have had more than a few victories of various kinds. However, most of my life I have felt very aware that I could not overcome many of the difficulties that seemed most important to me. By most of the standards I value my life has been largely a failure. In may ways, things have gone mostly from bad to worse. I would describe myself as divorced, childless, unemloyed, not really solvent, physically challenged unhappy and without much rapport with people. While sincerely mean all of those things they are not the whole story. My situation is actually very complex. Even as a young child however I began to calculate that I was not likely to have a very happy life. My experiences and studies since then have mostly made me believe that as a child I was insightful rather than pessimistic or emotionally or mentally damaged. I think that the modern era has so much literal and metaphorical blood on its hands that it must take refuge in the idea of depression as mental illness. Modern society cannot begin to make ammends for all the evil it does, therefore it must say that thoses it injures have something wrong with the apparatus that records and evaluates injury. Painkillers are given when really the assault causing the pain and the wounds resulting should be the focus of attention.

The world has always been a place of great suffering and much that is wrong and evil has often happened here in every age of humankind. But I do think that as a species there are almost always fewer chances for the best tmes and structures of the human race to reassert themselves. The most squalid slums and refugee camps endure for generations now. Vast mountains of waste are produced by the rich and inflicted upon the environment. The healthiest expressions of each religion are often driven out and held out by the pincer action of secularism and fanaticism. I think a lot of things are getting worse.I favor the advance of technology and I don’t blame all problems on technological change. However, I think that it is less of an offset than some people technical advancement is probable in many scenarios. Knowledge tends to expand we should not celebrate ourselves too much as a result.

If we had a culture building sustainable seamount and undersea colonies on a big scale, turning waste into energy, colonizing mars and creating vast parks near all major megalopolises then I would say that such a technostorm was offestting most of the evils of the modern age. Instead, I see the human race as getting poorer over all.

In the coming Election I will be very glad to vote for Sarah Palin and won’t mind voting for McCain. If they lose I will see the election of Obama as a very bad thing for the futrure. I have discussed why in other notes. I believe that we will be losing some thing that cannot be quickly remedied.

However, it does not seem much worse or as bad as many other events that shaped history. I think that from a philosophical point of view I am getting more and more accustomed to losing gracefully. At a personal level I find that society exists as a place where my values are often destined to lose. When I do have a play to make I often think that I am in a situation where even a solid win will be a loss. But of course I may lose and often do. I have not been very active in this campaign season and I have not regretted not being a Republican. Yet I will be sad to see the lady from Alaska lose no matter how gracefully she does it.

 The End.
I see the Palins struggling with notoriety and am wondering how they will deal with it all. So many people have injuries in this administration. I hear that Robert Gates, Justice Alito, Jusitce Sotomayor, Hillary Clinton and many others have had injuries and I see the Governor of Alaska resigning. If I was paranoid I would see a pattern of limited mayhem marking the administration of President B. Hussein O.  Life is hard all over and I am able to see that Obama supporters have things to change. But I am still sad that the little lady from Alaska is not bringing her lovely smile to the Naval Observatory and the world stage. That is one area that has not changed within my mental framework about politics.
For now I will just muse, blog and think. Maybe one day I will do more.  But we will be in a very different place than we would have been. Where we will be standing remains to be seen.   

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Society, Mental Health and Relationships

Posted on September 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

I think we have quite a few people who voted for Barak Hussein Obama because they were very upset. I think that we have a lot of people yelling at town hall meetings because they are very upset. These two groups of people also wanted to change things but they are certainly upset and the emotional baggage is just as important as the ideas andvalues that they would like to see expressed.

We also live in a world where increasingly large numbers of people take medicines to relieve symptoms of emotional discomfort if they have access to them. I do not object to people taking medicines that relieve emotional symptoms and I also am able to accept the expression of emotion in politics.  However, I think we as a human race have a need for emotional bonding in communities and families. I think we have a need to be able to call on emotional reserves to sacrifice in our striving for greatness in may challenges we face. Sadly but certainly peoples and nations need to have healthy agressive emotions to fight for their defense, integrity and survival.

Because I think that all these energies are important I cannot accept the idea that emotional states are sort of irelevant. Nor do I think that people should be governed simply and purely by their emotions. So as I think about all this I return to a post from last summer. It reminds me that emotional health can be seen as part of a larger social architecture.  

The following post was originaly posted on my page on Facebook on July 12, 2008.

Most of all my life I have had the sense that “things” were generally very bad. I have usually felt that that there was a sort of waking nightmare that had taken over the world. There is no doubt that I also had many dreams come true and many moments of joy. But I was forced to confront both the possibility that I was defectively attuned to bad things going on and also the possibility that the overall tone of things on Earth in my time was not very good.

At a very basic level, there have been many people in human history who have had worse days and seasons than most people reading this note will be having on the day that they first read it. That is almost guaranteed to be true. However, the overall tone of things can be bleak and unpromising and that could still be true.

Let us consider all the things that have been developed to help people make it through the challenge of relating to one another. Obviously we cannot really examine a significant percentage of those methods used for working things out in all cultures throughout the world. Instead we will consider a representative sample of half a dozen technologies for coping with and resolving interpersonal stress.

Lets discuss:
1. Jesus’s directions for dealing with conflict in the Church.
2.Dueling
3. The pracitce of Penance as it existed in the medieval Catholic Church.
4. Freudian Psychoanalysis.
5. That body of disciplines known as Wu Shu, Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan.
6. Carnival, Mardi Gras and festivals generally.

While we discuss these six topics in a ridiculously brief note we will also look at some of the other issues and institutions that impinge on our discussion. A sort of main point will be that getting along with other people is a challenge that has often commanded very serious attention. A certain tone of casual informality can be as freakishly wierd as anything else humans have ever done.

1. Jesus’s words are distinctly out of sync with the unbalanced teaching on forgiveness which has dominated much Christian preaching for a long time. In Matthew 18:15-19 is a teaching which is quite in accord with the teaching of Christ Jesus elsewhere during his ministry. The steps are roughly outlined below:
First someone in the church must sin against you. Then you must notice it and decide to act. Then you must confront the Christian privately face-to-face. The person must refuse the remedy you see as just. Then you must select two Christian witnesses (who have also heard a correct doctrine of patience and forgiveness) and tbey must agree to go with you to the offender. Then the three of you must confront the offender. Then the offender must reject the remedy you see as just. Then you as the offended Christian must bring the case before the Church and if the church finds against the offender and he refuses to do the just thing then they shall excommunicate that Christian. This is a very active, formal process which has almost nothing to do with just struggling to internally bear with slings and missiles of outrageous fortune. Forgiveness makes things better because it comes when they are better. Many will not forgive when amends are made, Christians must do so. Very slim evidence in recognized serious Christian thought or Holy Scripture supports a general teaching of the kind of unilateral forgiveness that is preached as the remedy for everything.

2. Skipping right ahead and out of context, there was a vast institution of dueling which made up an enormous force in shaping polite society throughout many countries and during many centuries. Dueling was very common in Louisiana up until the end of the War Between the States, or the the Civil War or the War for Southern Independence or the War of Northern Agression. This custom made it possible for men with large egos and refined sensibilities to get along despite all the evils of a given time and place. It certainly allowed for evils of its own but at its best it was far from a license for wide open bloodletting on a wholesale basis. Some say that in late antebellum Louisiana on in 400 challenges resulted in a homicide. Lots of steps — published challenges, choice of seconds, interviews between seconds, choice of grounds, time and weapons and the hiring of an attending physisican — stood between potentialy mortal offense and mortality. Abolishing duelling has not stopped people killing eachother but it has eliminated a huge and complex infrastructure for working out grievances.

3. While the pracitice of reconciliation as a modern Catholic Christian rite is rooted in our secttion on Jesus’s practice for resolving dispute, and in apostolic words related the “mysterion”, “semaeion” of healing the sickand praying for their healing in the Middle Ages of Europe Penance reached a kind of apogee. It was tied to a culture that understood the Doctrine of the Two Swords. It was tied to well-defined and developed practices of Exorcism and Interdict and it was tied to the rich culture of pilgrimage of which Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales gives us some idea. It was also tied to all the glory, horror and productive dialog of the Crusader and Jihadi. The energy of this vast complex of institutions lagely came from the fact of humans taking offense at the behavior of other humans and taking seriously the need to resolve the conflict and right the wrong.

4. A recent means for dealing with the injuries arising from civilization and its discontents is the psychoanalysis of Freud. This arose from the glorious last gasp of the Hapsburg Empire and its community of elite Jewish intellectuals. Psychoanalysis was often known as “the talking cure” in its early days. Whilre the Austrian, Austro-Hungarian and greater Hapsburg Empires knew many moments of glory in war, exploration, and invention they were a great power built more on diplomacy, marriage and legal procedure. While jews served in the armed forces and had guards they were the largest ethnic group without regimantal status in the Imperial military at any time. Perhaps it is natural that from them should have emerged a man who found talking things out to resolve internal conflict very important. But it must be remembered that Freud sought to free people to live a life more fully in the open and more expressively as themselves. Further his professional, therapeutic and literary edifice built on the sense of human injury was immense.

5. Leaping quickly elsewhere, we come to examine Wu Shu, Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan. Internal meditation,physical fitness, religious education, warrior training, and a basis for self-assertion have been developed into a single complex of disciplines in China. From China they have diseminated to the rest of North East Asia ,then evolved and expanded directly from China as well as from Japan and Korea. It seems that this whole complex of knowledge and skill falls neatly into the category of dealing w the interanl causes of conflict and the resolution of actual conflict. A vast amount of very productive effort is spent to gain or create self-mastery and then teach those with self-control to handle the conflicts which arise between them and others. Good health, balance, artistic motion, and deterrent against attack all belong to the practitioner of Kung Fu.

6. Humans have always sort of known that no matter what we do with our serious and formal efforts to organize ourselve and our societies the result will not be totally fair or entirely decent. Therefore wise societies find ways to combine inversion of normal rules and status norms with new kinds of commerce,uninhibited dancing and loosening of moral sensibilities. This behavior occurs at Mardi Gras, carnivals and Festivals. Many people in the modern world seldom experience one of these. Arguably few of us get a reasonable dose of these events. Therefore we live trapped in the full-time observation of our particular social absurdities. I actually am a sincere conservative who values the contribution of the community in Hollywood, New York,  Cinecitta, Ballywood and many other places who bring us carnival like experiences on discs, in film and on the airwaves. Nonetheless, There are values in the mixture of marketing products of hard work to visitors and religious prayer on the one hand with street dancing, sexual naughtiness and  spectacle on the other hand which will never be reproduced on artificial media. The movies and TV can help but festivals and carnivals really do some of the basic work of individual and community healing. Like all these listed techniques there are risks in this one that I may visit in another  post but I do think that this feature of life has real importance. 

What I would say is that lots of folks are miserable because the world they live in is really bad. they are miserable because people feel free to do great harm to them and others all their life without consequence. They are miserable because the means for dealing with problems make them worse and those in charge of normalcy are entirely nuts.

I think it is time for change bigger than most of us can dream of, I really do. But I do not think it likely that I will live to see it. I am not sure it will come at all, only sure that it is needed.

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Some thoughts on healthcare….

Posted on September 1, 2009 | 1 comment

Today I am coming back from a vacation and after canoeing, swimming, being with family and other things I am feeling a lot more healthy than I have been lately. That has me thinking about healthcare. I think that a lot of other people are probably thinking about the same topic these days.  

This Post which is a bit parable and a bit bad joke was posted  by me on Facebook on my 44th birthday on June 15, 2008.  It is meant to suggest that we take a hard look at healthcare as many are doing. It is not meant suggest any solutions in and of itself. 

It is my conclusion tthat 44 year old today enjoy many of the benefits and opportunities that 42 year old people enjoyed in my parents generation. A booming set of industries in abortion, stolen organs, cut drugs, insurance fraud, nursing home abuse and the pinching of legitimate first response and family care medical people forbodes dire things for some. But after years of careful study I feel that I have proven that because of medicine as it is, a 44 year old oday can live almost the same quality of life which a 42 year old enjoyed when my parents were that age.  As a 44 year old how can I be anything but grateful.

In our hotter world as the idealist rural practitioner finishes his seven hours of paperwork to prepare for half an hour of patient contact, he feels unhappy. Two of last week’s patients  who are admitted to the hospital received a mixture of laxatives and amphetamines when he prescribed antibiotics and the bank is foreclosing on his house. But he is being selfish. The evidence is all around him. His patients are all living people, could they be if modern medicine were not great?

As I wait to see him he is distracted by the news that the blood components he prescribed last week came from people murdered for body parts in a foreign country. However his professional limited partnership group assures him that this only happened because the regular suppy of blood components was contaminated by addicts to a new ilegal recreational drug which in turn was cut with five different poisons coming from the shadows of a new gang — possibly linked to Al Quaeda.  He tries to report his concerns to a government public health line for physicians. After five attempts he hears the voicemail explaining that health is not really public and he should seek a free market solution to his problem.  However he can call back on Tuesdays between 11:00 and 11:09 a.m.  He comes out and looks at my file and talks to the Assistant Sub Vice Advisory Practical Nurse. This country doctor and I are old friends so he actually waves his stethothoscope in my direction. I leave the pink slip to my car with his receptionist and walk to the drug store, hoping the robbery will go well and they won’t notice the name on the prescription and be able to arrest me later. I thank goodness for the advances in medical science and our increased quality of life.

The End

I have suggested a few policy points on Politico’s “Speak to Power”.  These ideas are not being considered seriously so far as I know.  However, I still believe in them and while I am sure this summary will differ from the other summary submitted to Congress it has many of the same ideals and ideas.

So…

A Dozen Policy Points on Healthcare:

1.Medicare and S-CHIP programs should be mostly preserved.  Medicaid should be reformed but not abolished.

2.  Americans should each be allowed to join three  or fewer family associations and pay in one percent of their taxable income tax dedudtibly to each and these should be able to buy health insurance, get loans and make investments in a structure designed by the government to address the Healthcare situation. One investment which would qualify for some Federal support would be a Community Clinic.

3. A National Wellness Agency should be established. One mil of all FICA revenues and  small fee of say $1.00  collected from everyone entering the United States would be devoted exclusively to this NWA. The NWA would have various chartering regimes for Community Clinics being especially generous to those already existing in getting Agency approval.

4. The NWA would have a subagency devoted to collecting, inspecting and dating unused medicines from institutions and deceased persons and would distribute them to Community Clinics.

5. Every physician who received federal financial aid would be required to spend one day for every thousand dollars of Federal loans and five days for every thousand dollars of Federal grants working for an approved Community Clinic after basic medical school graduation and before any extended residency or specialty training. The National Wellness Agency would oversee this program. 

6.  The National Wellness Agency would receive a dedicated tax of one mil of every health and life insurance premium collected in the United States. This money would largely (but not exclusively) pay for a  coordination program linking Community Clinics to  school nurses, fitness centers, foodbanks,  shelters, eldercare and daycare facilitites as well as other community institutions.

7. The Community Clinics would have hours reserved for only those invested in the clinic or owning cheap Community Clinic Insurance which would be available to all including fugitive felons and ilegal aliens on confidential basis. The Community Clinics would also charge a visit fee of five dollars and a file fee of twenty dollars per year to any one able to pay and not insured. Half of one percent of the revenues of each clinic would be paid to the National Wellness Agency. Insurance would be about ten dollars per household per month and would cover clinic fees if current. 

8. The National Wellness Agency would also receive a small dedicated of perhaps one percent on all imported alcohol, tobacco, firearms and high performance recreational vehicles.   These funds would be largely dedicated to the Volunteer Support Program.  Meals and seminars would be provided where possible for Health and Medical Professionals volunteering at  Community Clinics. The Clinics would keep track of hours and the volunteers would receive a check at the end of each year for the federal minimum wage or one fifth of their normal hourly rate of pay — whichever was less.

9. The National Wellness Agency would offer a  lottery for tests, specialists and referals for all those holding  Community Clinic insurance.    The NWA would also interface with research instituions, charity hospitals and other players. These agencies would also be required to dedicate at least one percent of the value of Federal funds received to the network of deserving cases.

10. The National Wellness Agency would train community workers in churches, clubs and sports leagues and sponsor nutrition, hygiene and other programs. This  activity would be paid for in large part by a one mil tax on the wholesale  and a one percent tax on the reatil of all  prescribed pharmaceuticals. These community workers would be trained to transport persons needing care to the Community Clinics. Clinics would work with other nonprofit organizations of all types to create medical transport with donated vehicles and other assets.

11.  Emergency Rooms and Ambulances would be required to give some triage preference to those coming from Community Clinics over those coming from the open street.

12. Corporations which sponsored a Community Clinic would receive a Wellness Program Support Package from the NWA tied to their level of support.

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