Thoughts about America from an Englishmen

I received this email from my very good friend Will this morning. Will is an older gent who lives in Wales and who has seen a good bit of the world in his lifetime.  I have to say, much of what he said I agree with.  It's almost difficult to explain to people who don't live here, how stupid-crazy things have gotten in our country.


From Will: I was sat watching TV last night in my studio with next doors cat satting on my lap when I was just so over come with tears running down my cheeks. What I saw was so tragic that I couldn’t even get it out to tell my wife later. It was all about the homeless in the USA. People living in storm drains in Las Vegas and tented cities in the Mid West and the most tear jerking of all was this field in the dark of night where thousands of cars and people parked up to wait for a huge barn to open its doors at six in the morning for free medical and dentistry care. An Englishman it seems runs this operation and if anyone deserved a knighthood it’s him! What a wonderful man!


How can the richest country in the world treat its poor so appallingly? Billions are spent every day on wars and corrupt countries and yet your own people starve and are homeless.


It seemed the answer was “Welfare makes people lazy and not prepared to stand up for themselves.” The most prosperous countries I have ever been in like all the Scandinavian ones and also Switzerland, are wonderful places to live because all the people are so well educated, not because of money in their bank accounts; it’s all a matter of outlook on life. How they view and respect others.


What I want to see from any Politian in the entire world is for him to say to the people “This is what I am going to do. This is my one point plan and till I’ve ticked it off my list I shall not waver nor falter from it. Only when I have accomplished it will we move on to my next task.”


It’s all just hopes but one-day just one honest man will come forward and do just that and live up to his ideas and promises.


Susan- Yes, wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air....

RED email

I've gotten tired of receiving politically conservative email forwards, you know the ones I mean....they hit your in-box labeled "RED." I get them from one of my brothers and from a few acquaintances I have who must not have been paying attention when I was sending out my "Sarah Palin sucks" emails last year. In the past I would normally just hit the delete key, which is something I do regularly when my brother sends me forwards. I'm not sure what his motivation is, since I think it should be pretty clear to him by now where my loyalties lie. Maybe he thinks he can convert me?

Today I got a forward from a guy I went to high school with that sent me over the edge. It was a "What's wrong with this picture" email. When opened, there was a picture of a dollar coin with George Washington's picture on it and nowhere on it were the words "In God We Trust." I knew what he was getting at, but decided I needed to yank his chain just a bit. That, and he calls me "Sue," which is a huge no-no in my world.

My response started out with an innocent question (even though I already knew the answer), and a bit of humor.

Susan:
"I'm not sure why this is a problem? Not to mention it would be a bit difficult when buying a train ticket from the vending machine, since all they use to give you change are dollar coins."

A few hours later, this was his response.

Tony:
"Sue what will they take next"

(Maybe I'm being catty, but the again, the man refers to me a "Sue," and does not use punctuation.)

Susan:
"I'm not really sure who you mean by "they?" The English pound note has a picture of Charles Darwin on it.......and if not Darwin, I'd like to see Einstein on a dollar bill...instead of a pyramid with an eye on top of it, which I'm sure is some sort of mystical, religious symbolism. I absolutely believe in the separation of church and state.

I think we're at very different ends of the political spectrum, Tony. I'm very much a political liberal. I believe in evolution, stem cell research, global warming, a woman's right to choose what happens with her body and that homosexuality is not a life style choice, but driven by biology. I have an intense dislike for Sarah Palin and after the first year of his first term, could not listen to one thing that came out of W's mouth.

I believe that everyone has the right to decent, affordable health care and don't think people should loose their homes or go broke due to the cost of medical care. I do believe that more restrictions are needed in regard to immigration and that we should do whatever is necessary to protect people from terrorists though. I'm not exactly sure where that falls in regard to my political leanings, but I do want my government to protected me and those I love from zealots to whatever extent possible.

It's interesting how political ideology evolves. I am a political liberal........and one of my brothers is an NRA card carrying conservative Republican....with a McCain bumper sticker on the back of his truck.... and we grew up in the same household. My bumper sticker (when I had a car), read "Well behaved women seldom make history." My mission is to never be well behaved. My refrigerator magnets read 'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. -Thomas Jefferson' and 'Run Hillary, Run!'"

I have yet to receive a response to my reply, but it should be interesting. I'm normally non-confrontational and quietly use my delete key as opposed to making waves with someone who does not share my political ideology. I don't send the die-hard RED people the political emails I find inspiring, quite frankly considering it a waste of my time. My brother is never going to become a Democrat, or a liberal, and neither is Tony. I do however, cherish the inspiring emails that come my way from friends with whom I share more common political interests. I try to hold my tongue when discussing anything even remotely political with people like my brother, since it's not really worth boiling my blood over. Yet, for some weird reason, today I decided to take a stand over something as small as a dollar coin. Perhaps I was just feeling like misbehaving.........

Senator Ted Kennedy

Just finished crying my way through Ted Kennedy's funeral. In spite of the drama surrounding his life and the demons he overcame, he became one of the most influential political figures of our time. His life was as tragic as it was inspiring and our world is all the better for having had him in it.

I doubt I will ever see someone of his caliber again in my lifetime.

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following about Sarah Palin............
"Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears.

Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them.

It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story-- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves.

She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan.

She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered.

The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently.

She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters.

I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet.

It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable forhumans.

It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack.

It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction.

It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing.

It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalismand aggression.
If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill."

I think of teeth when I think of drills.

I think of rape.

I think of destruction.

I think of domination.

I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent.

I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?"

Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008

What I wish I knew

Published in the Long Island Advance, May 22, 2008

OK, so…I’m going to dip a toe into a pond that I would normally be afraid to venture into. Normally I stick to “writing what I know,” which is usually a good policy to have. Today it will be more like writing about what I wish I knew.

If I wasn’t working in Human Services, I’d like to think that I might have stumbled into a career as a scientist. I’m sure this revelation will come as a surprise to my family, but it shouldn’t. At one time I wanted to be a marine biologist and it was all I can remember talking about. The movie Jaws cured me of that dream. And, let’s face it, if becoming a marine biologist was really that important to me I would not have let a mechanical shark scare me away.

Although I love sitting by the ocean, or standing at the edge getting my feet wet, rarely do I go in, and the moment I do the theme song from Jaws starts to play in my head and it’s just not worth the anxiety I feel not knowing what might be swimming around under me. Hence a career spent in the water did not seem like a good idea in the end.

In my fantasy career world of today, I can envision being a geological archeologist, or some sort of environmental biologist. I’ve been able to satisfy this need by visiting places like the Museum of Natural History, by attending lectures on the arts and sciences, or just by sitting in my living room, watching the Discovery or National Geographic channels. Yet, as a rule, I don’t write about science not feeling anywhere near qualified to do so.

I do have a growing concern about our environment though, and last year I ventured into that arena and wrote about it. So, in an effort to stretch my abilities just a bit more and set out once again into uncharted waters, I’d like to tell you about Science Debate 2008.

I’m on a few science related email lists and ScienceDebate2008.com is one of them. The people who run this website have for months been trying to engage those candidates running for the office of President of the United States in a debate to see where they stand on issues such as “healthcare, climate change and energy and how science can tackle them.” They took many, many steps in order to make their invitation to discuss these topics appealing to the candidates, yet none other than McCain responded, and he declined.

There seems to be a misconception within the mainstream media that people don’t want to hear about this, therefore having this very important invitation publicized has been almost impossible. In an effort to prove that people are interested in what those running for office think about science related issues, a poll was commissioned by Research!America and ScienceDebate2008 and conducted by Harris Interactive ® that showed that 85% of U.S. adults agree that the presidential candidates should participate in a discussion of this kind.

“’This topic has been virtually ignored by the candidates, but this poll shows that Americans of all walks know how important science and technology are to our health and way of life,’ said Shawn Lawrence Otto, CEO of Science Debate 2008. ‘We’ve heard a lot about lapel pins and preachers. But tackling the big science challenges is critical to our children’s future – to the future of the country and the future of the planet. Americans want to know that candidates take these issues seriously, and the candidates have a responsibility to let voters know what they think.’”

I don’t have room here to go into detail about what I consider a very critical issue for our country. Clearly it’s not about the political party you belong to though. We all belong to the human race and we should care about what those who want to lead our country think about climate change, global poverty, education and renewable energy.

The Long Island Advance is about as mainstream media as I can come up with in order to publicize what I think is a very important topic. If I’ve tweaked your interest even the littlest bit, please check out http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/ and see what you might do to help bring attention to something that is so important to us all. You don’t have to be a “wanna-be” scientist to have a desire to be well informed prior to casting your vote in November.