05/16/2013

Render Unto Caesar

I’ve been watching with great interest the unfolding controversy over whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) singled out “tea party” groups for special scrutiny.  It’s good to see Attorney General Eric Holder take this issue seriously enough to open an investigation although such an investigation need not be limited to these narrow circumstances.

While anyone might have serious philosophical differences with any number of groups, corporations and organizations on the political spectrum, the place to resolve those differences is in legislatures, courts, executive branch agencies and the public square.  Let all bring ideas and plans for what they think will lead to a better society and let’s debate them freely and openly without fear of intimidation.

Although the IRS should be among the most apolitical of agencies, accusations of its mission being subverted to serve political ends exist in recent memory going back to Richard Nixon’s “enemies” list.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Electoral Politics, Global Warming | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
05/02/2013

Cascadia

The refrigerator died Friday.  It had not been a great week to begin with and although a broken refrigerator is not tragedy, I didn’t need the hassle.

Like the immediate hassle of suddenly parceling out what has essentially become the family’s pantry to various neighbors, foods frozen or merely chilled.  Fortunately, we have intimate relations with the folks who live all around us.  Intimate?  Yes, intimate.

The intimacy of the refrigerator is on the spectrum with medicine and liquor cabinets, checkbooks, closets and bookshelves.  Each tells a story about the people in its house.  One day, with no warning, I’m visiting several neighbors’ kitchens, deep in their fridges, moving their stuff around, clearing a space and putting our food next to theirs.  Some fridges are cleaner than ours, some not so much.  Either condition makes me a bit anxious. (“Wow, are we that slovenly?”/”Do I want my food in there?”)  I became aware one neighbor eats healthier, better quality food than we do.  I tucked my half bottle of Hannaford’s brand Worcestershire sauce in the back, hoping it wouldn’t be seen.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Economy | Comments (0)
04/25/2013

Live Free and Remember

In the Monday morning edition of my neighborhood listserv, the Five Sisters (aka the Five Snitchers), my melodically-named State Representative Suzi Wizowaty posted a call for opinions on the state’s genetic engineering (GE) labeling bill, being considered under the statehouse dome.

She’s for the bill, as are most Vermonters.  Local food is big here and even if it’s from away, we want to know as much about it as we can.  After all, this is what computers are good at.  If UPS and FedEx can track every package around the world in real time, then why should we not know where and by what means the food we eat – and the ingredients in it – came to be inside our bodies?

Perhaps I digress.  It’s not a “can” question.  Of course we can get that information, that’s the easy part.  With Quick Response (QR) codes, each batch of Twinkies could tell you where each of its 39 ingredients came from (should a Twinkie eater care to know).  The question is whether or not we’ll be allowed to know.  We live in an age in which the companies that sell use everything from food to war have data mined us to a gossamer transparency and yet we’re not allowed to know what’s in our food.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
04/18/2013

Rereading an Old Letter

By Tuesday night I already knew the best decision I would make all week was to reread Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that afternoon.

The letter came to the world 50 years ago this week (not exactly published, it was mimeographed at first) and was written in response to an open letter to Dr. King from eight white ministers, calling his campaign of nonviolent direction action for equal access to public accommodations in Birmingham “unwise and untimely” along with the usual patronizing inanity passed around by comfortable people who resist change.   The letter is long for cyber age people used to no more than two screens full of text, but read it; it’s rewarding.

Of course the police in Boston went after men they believed to be Saudis.  How would they not? (It’s jarring, I know, but this is how my thoughts intrude on each other after the latest crisis.  How would they not?) It’s not easy distinguishing a lunatic or militia member from the white Boston faces in the marathon crowd

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, but it’s easy enough to see brown skin.  No cop wants to be the guy to let a perp get away.  Hell, they only caught Tim McVeigh because his contempt for the system ran so deep he refused to put license plates on his car.  Had he been saner or more strategic, who knows how many he’d have gone on to kill?
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
04/11/2013

Baseball, North of the Border

I’m in Washington, DC this week and since summer is the oppressive season here, people are bemoaning the 90-degree weather, much as I might be enjoying it after a cold spring in Vermont.

This town not only swelters with heat but also with passion for the Washington Nationals, who have (for now) the best record in baseball and are commonly suspected (too early for expected) to go deep into the post-season this year.  My loyalties are up the road with the Baltimore Orioles , but at least I’m close enough that I’m not the only person wearing the black-and-orange O’s cap, as I am back home.

Sharing my enthusiasm last weekend with my Canadian friend Rob, I realized many of the significant moments in my baseball life involve Canada.  Since I’ve lived most of my life within 100 miles of the US/Canada border – a fact I share with 75 percent of Canadians – this shouldn’t be a surprised, but still.

First major league game – July 3, 1985, Toronto Blue Jays 3, New York Yankees 2.  Forty-six-year-old knuckleballer Phil Niekro was denied his 296th win on a Wednesday afternoon.  Toronto’s old Exhibition Stadium was a pit.  A football stadium by design, our cheap seats were so far out in right field, I wound up with a stiff neck from staring hard left for three and half hours.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
04/04/2013

Black Face, White Face

I didn’t understand what was happening during the Louisville-Duke NCAA tournament game Sunday evening.  Suddenly, all the Louisville players were lying on the court, curled in the fetal position.  The announcers seemed equally confused.

Then it became clear: Louisville guard Kevin Ware had gone down in front of his team’s bench, his leg unnaturally twisted.  We later learned it was a compound fracture of the right tibia and fibula.

My neighbor Rob, a former college player, former high school coach with a locally famous weak stomach, stood and turned his back on the television.  The director at CBS sports, clearly caught between the demands of journalism and taste, showed just two replays and from a camera positioned across the court from young Mr. Ware.

The game stopped for ten minutes as players and coaches wiped tears of shock and grief from their eyes as medical personnel stabilized Mr. Ware and got him on a gurney.  For his part, Kevin asked his teammates to concentrate on the game, not his injury.  For all its flaws – and there are many – academic sports, even at their most corrupted collegiate level, still build character. Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
03/28/2013

Entertaining, Unaware

I read the Bible.  This seems to irritate everyone.

My atheist friends don’t get it; many of them fail to appreciate the book at any level.  That’s a pity, because even if the Bible is just a collection of stories, its echoes are heard throughout western culture.  (Is that hegemonic?  Yep, but that’s the culture I grew up in.  There’s wisdom in any number of books – holy or unholy – and while I can appreciate them, I don’t have cultural context for the Popul Vuh or the Egyptian Book of the Dead.)  Only Mr. Shakespeare is as tightly woven in our literary fabric.  The drop in the bucket, the salt of the Earth, the writing on the wall and the fat of the land and dozens of others are all from the Bible.

My family’s Catholic and Catholics tend to own Bibles but not read them, waiting instead for a priest to tell us what we’re supposed to know (and think).  It must be the greatest bottlenecking of information in history. Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Catholicism, Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)