Author Archives: The Night Writer

Coming home

Posted on by
4

by the Night Writer

A convicted would-be bomber and accessory to murder and armed robbery has been paroled from prison in California and is returning to Minnesota.

That may be “so what?” news for folks not from around here but it has been quite a story in Minnesota since 1999 when Kathleen Soliah (now known as Sara Jane Olson), one of the FBI’s “most wanted”, was found living a politically progressive, upper-middle class life in a toney St. Paul neighborhood. Soliah/Olson, a sympathizer and likely member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (of Patty Hearst fame) in the 70s had disappeared 23 years prior to her arrest following her grand jury indictment for her role in a bank robbery that resulted in the killing of a female bank customer and for participating in two attempts to bomb police cars in retaliation for a police shoot-out that killed many of her SLA friends. During the time she was “missing”, she adopted her new identity, married a St. Paul physician, raised a family, performed in several community theater productions and became well-known in activist circles for her support various liberal causes.

Her friends in turn took up her cause after her arrest, with well-known St. Paul office-holders Andy Dawkins and Sandy Pappas especially front and center protesting that she had lived a good life in the intervening years while also introducing the novel “everyone was an anarchist bomb-thrower in those days anyway” defense. Olson, nee Soliah, for her part pretty much denied anything other than being an admirer of the SLA. A lot of people, or at least the media, seemed to be buying it, too but a couple of things happened. One, the government started releasing more details of its case against her. The second thing was 9/11.

Any indulgence or sympathy for youthful, terroristic activities began to dry up, and Olson ultimately accepted (then tried to renege on) a plea bargain on the charges of planting bombs under two California police cars. After she started serving her sentence she was also convicted of the accessory to murder charge, and seven years were added to run concurrently with her original 14-year sentence, to be served in California. A year ago she was just about to be paroled a year early due to a clerical error but this was discovered and corrected and she returned prison. The calendar has now turned, but in the days leading up to her release the respective police unions in California and Minnesota, as well as the governors of the two states, have each insisted that they didn’t want her serving her parole anywhere near them. The public statements became a political side-show in a time when there are some real issues to be dealt with. Nevertheless, Kathleen Soliah/Sara Jane Olson is back in Minnesota after serving seven years of her sentence, with three years of parole to come.

Personally, I think I’m ready to call it square.

I didn’t sympathize with her story when she was finally captured and I didn’t appreciate the local DFL’s embrace of her and their attempts to minimize the serious offenses she committed. Nor do I downplay the seriousness of her intent and participation back in the day, or discount that her actions contributed to the death of another mother who will never come home. I was satisfied, however, to see her ultimately convicted and for the political and moral equivalency smokescreens to get hosed down. I also appreciated it when the amount of time she served turned out to be greater than the “two, three years, tops” predicted by the experts at the time she plead.

The fact is, she has done a significant amount of time and absorbed a (justified) amount of public humiliation. Points have been made. Frankly, I don’t feel our community is a more dangerous place with her in it, and I don’t expect a wave of police bombings or bank robberies even though some of her comments during her trial and incarceration suggest that she still harbors more than a little resentment against “The Man”.

The possibility exists that she might become a public figure again due to her infamy, but outside of a small, hard-core group of supporters I don’t think she has the credibility or gravitas to be anything better than a distraction at best — and a liability at worst — for any cause or campaign she aligns with.

If she wants to come back here, be with her family, and live a quiet, invisible life, I’m fine with that. I don’t have any interest in following her around and I hope she will be left in peace. If she desires a more public platform then the abuse that will likely be heaped on her — as with the time she spent incarcerated — will be something she brought on herself.

Thinking Green

Posted on by
1

by the Night Writer

Here’s a little recycling in honor of St. Patrick’s day — a couple of older posts that I’m re-running here because they fit the occasion. If you weren’t reading this blog in 2006 they’ll be new to you, and if you were, well, you’ve probably forgotten and they will seem new to you.

The first is an account of the events surrounding my first college St. Patty’s day, celebrated on a campus truly dedicated to the holiday:

I don’t think there will ever be a St. Patrick’s Day when I don’t think about my first semester of college when I enrolled in the Spring term at the University of Missouri-Rolla campus. UMR is mainly an engineering college but it was close to where I lived at the time and a convenient way for me to knock out some general liberal arts credits before transferring to the main Mizzou campus in Columbia.

St. Patrick’s “Day” was actually a 10-day party at UMR. The campus was about 90% male then, almost all in grueling engineering classes that seemed to require binge drinking in order to cope. The reason St. Pat is such a big deal at UMR is because he is deemed to be the patron saint of engineers for having driven the snakes from Ireland and thereby creating the first worm drive (engineering humor). The rites and festivities of the season were under the auspices of the St. Pat’s Board: upper classmen (some I think were in their 30s) elected by their fraternities, eating clubs and campus organizations. For most of the year their duties seemed to be based around regular “meetings” marked by drinking and carousing. Come March, however, they were especially prominent in their filthy green coats (part of their semi-secret initiation rites) as they enforced the rules and protocols of the holiday (for those familiar with the St. Paul Winter Carnival – especially in the older days – think green Vulcans).

Part of the tradition was that all freshmen males were to have beards in the week or so leading up to St. Pat’s, and were to carry shillelaghs (an Irish cudgel). Most people think of shillelaghs as being a bit like walking sticks, but at UMR there were specific requirements: the shillelagh had to be at least two-thirds the height of the student and at least one-third his weight, and it had to be cut from a whole tree with at least some of the roots showing. The punishment for being caught beardless by a Board Member (and they usually traveled in packs of two or more) was to have your face painted green. The penalty for being without your shillelagh was to be thrown into Frisco Pond. Frisco Pond was actually the town’s sewage lagoon, but was called Frisco Pond because the St. Pat’s Board of 1927 rerouted the Frisco railroad into the pond after one of their meetings. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea to them at the time.

Fortunately I was able to cultivate my first beard, red and wispy as it was, and I cut myself a suitable cudgel. Carrying books and a shillelagh of the stated dimensions was a challenge, and even more so when certain professors wouldn’t allow them into class, meaning they had to be stacked in the hallways and guarded because Board members liked nothing better than to snatch unattended shillelaghs and then wait for their rightful owners to appear — followed by a honking procession to Frisco Pond. (I did mention the campus was 90% male and fueled by alcohol, right? During St. Pat’s week the campus looked like No Name City from “Paint Your Wagon.”)

The reason we carried cudgels was in case a Board member approached you with a rubber snake and demanded that you “kill” it. This generally meant pounding on the snake with your cudgel until the Board member (not you) got tired. I weighed about 170 then; you do the math as to what my shillelagh weighed, minimum. I was fortunate to go largely unnoticed (as unnoticed as a guy carrying a tree can be) through most of this period. This was especially remarkable given that one of my friends from my hometown was on the Board. Toward the end of the week, however, he came up to me in the dining hall. “Red,” (for my beard) he said, “I think I see a snake.” With chants of “snake! snake! snake!” I was led outside and my “friend” tossed said snake on the ground. It landed, however, in a flower bed. “Freshman! Kill!” was the command. Hoisting my club over my head (and somehow not tipping over backwards) I brought it crashing down onto the hapless rubber creature — and even more hapless plants in the soft earth.

“Hit it again, it’s not dead,” was the order. I looked down once, then again. “Oh, it’s dead, alright,” I said. Actually, it would be more accurate to say, “Missing, presumed dead” because the rubber snake was nowhere to be found in the newly-created crater. Rather than wait around for CSI, or the gardener, the small group repaired to the dining hall to toast the success of the mission and I survived the week, the highlight of which was the St. Pat’s Parade.

In those days the St. Pat’s Board would be out early in the morning with mops and barrels of green paint, painting Pine Street in advance of the parade. High school bands from around the area would march, car dealers would drive demo models with pretty girls in them and various and sundry other parade standards would be present. In particular, however, I remember the Precision Pony Team: a group of students scooting along on empty pony kegs strapped to skateboards with rudimentary heads and yarn tails attached to the kegs. They wove patterns and formations down the street, stopping periodically to lift the tails of their “mounts” and drop handfuls of malted milk balls.

Much like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the event culminated in St. Pat (not St. Nick) appearing on the route, riding a manure spreader and attended by his Guard. The duties of the Guard were largely to keep St. Pat vertical (he’d probably been drinking for four days straight) and to bring any fetching lasses from the crowd to St. Pat for a good luck kiss. (I did say the campus was 90% male and fueled by alcohol, didn’t I?).

After this particular St. Patrick’s Day all the other ones I’ve experienced have just kind of faded from my memory.

Note: the annual UMR St. Pat’s parade and related festivities still go on, but in a much more muted manner. A couple of alchohol-poisoning deaths were a factor (sad and true) to be sure, but I also think it was because some of those Board members finally graduated.

Also in keeping with this sainted day, here’s my “Fundamentals in Film” review of the great John Ford and John Wayne classic, The Quiet Man:

From taxing fortunes to taxing the “fortunate”

Posted on by
6

by the Night Writer

In wartime it’s common to try to dehumanize the enemy, calling them derogatory names and ascribing vile and fiendish character traits to them to make it easier to hate and, I don’t know, drop bombs on them. In class warfare a similar dynamic occurs as it is simply assumed that anyone with any wealth or property could only have gotten it through pure dumb luck (such as inheritance) or by corruption and oppression, thereby justifying the redistribution of their possessions in the interests of being “fair.”

Of course, the definition of who the fortunate ones are can change according to the need at hand. The latest brainstorm of the economically illiterate, morally bankrupt yet somehow electable cotton-headed ninnymuggins in control of our government is that the lucky or evil greedos that get their health insurance through their employers (in other words, “people with jobs”) are not paying their fair share of taxes for this benefit. According to a recent article in Business Insurance magazine:

Sen. Baucus looking at taxing health benefits
March 03, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—A senior Senate Democrat said Tuesday he would consider taxing U.S. workers on their employer-sponsored health insurance to help pay for extending coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.

“I think that tax provision should be on the table,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who will play a major role in writing the legislation to revamp the U.S. healthcare system as promised by President Barack Obama.

“It’s too aggressive. It skews the system,” he said of the tax benefit.

Most U.S. workers with health insurance get it through their employers — 160 million of them — although recent surveys have shown that number is declining as businesses try to cope with the rapidly rising cost of insurance.

As a matter of fact, 19% of employers say they plan to drop health benefits, while 38% say they are uncertain they’ll be able to provide health benefits 10 years from now. Meanwhile, in the midst of a recession, the government is talking about wanting to essentially raise taxes on people who still have jobs, regardless of what those jobs pay. By the way, let’s have a show of hands from everyone who thinks that the premiums you pay for your employer-sponsored health insurance are too low. Apparently being employed makes you one of the “rich” to be targeted by Congress and President Obama’s cabinet of tax dodgers and community organizers — the people who have also promised a tax cut to “95%” of the country. Do you get the feeling they might not be very good with numbers?

Yet in another article about “Mad Max” Baucus and his cronies, the Washington Post reports:

In recent weeks, however, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee, has repeatedly advocated changing tax laws to include employer benefits, arguing that it makes sense to fund the health-care changes by sucking cash out of the existing system. Meanwhile, 13 other senators — from both sides of the aisle — have signed on to a plan for universal coverage that includes a tax on employer-provided benefits.

“I think it’s extremely important from a credibility standpoint to show the American people that you’re making savings in the enormous sums now being spent on health care before you go out and ask them for billions of dollars more,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the sponsors of that proposal. “And I don’t think I’m the only senator who feels that way.”

What? How do you translate taking money out of the pockets of working Americans by making them pay more for their health insurance as “making savings”? Credibility is, indeed, a problem. Perhaps we’ll find out how big a problem that is when the Obama administration weighs in, as the Post further reports:

So far, administration officials have been careful not to endorse the idea, which Obama blasted as a major tax increase last year after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made it the centerpiece of his presidential campaign’s health plan. But the president hasn’t slammed the door on it, either.

This week, White House budget director Peter Orszag said taxing employer benefits was among several ideas that “most firmly should remain on the table.” White House economic adviser Jason Furman called for an end to the so-called “employer exclusion” before he joined the administration. Meanwhile, some congressional Democrats say the White House has signaled that Obama would accept a tax on employer benefits as long as he didn’t have to propose it himself.

Riiight. Congress passes the tax increase and President Obama merely comes in at the end and says it’s “an imperfect bill” but something he has to sign anyway. It’s almost enough to make you wonder how much of a grasp on reality our leaders have, and if they’ve ever had to enroll in a group health plan in recent years when employers are passing more and more of the costs on to employees. And then there’s this:

Many economists and tax analysts have long argued for changing current tax law on health coverage, which disproportionately benefits wealthier workers. The law encourages people to enroll in the most comprehensive health plans on offer, the so-called Cadillac plans that provide vast coverage, mask the true cost of health care and contribute to skyrocketing costs.

I don’t know about your job, but my benefit enrollment forms certainly don’t encourage me to select the most comprehensive, or “Cadillac” plans offering “vast” coverage. As a matter of fact, I’ve chosen high deductible plans with an Health Savings Account (HSA) option the past several years to save money. Further, the so-called Cadillac plans aren’t driven by consumer demand, but by state and federal government mandates that require additional coverage (and wait until you see the effects of the Mental Health Parity bill that was recently signed). If consumers were allowed to pick and choose the coverages they actually need the costs would go down. Somehow, however, once the money is on the table there’s no way to get it back in your pocket.

Many lobbyists and others involved in the health-care debate say they see few other places to go for the kind of money that will be needed to meet Obama’s demand for ambitious change. In their view, the question is not whether employer benefits will be taxed but how much of the benefit will be spared.

My personal opinion is that taxing employee benefits is not really intended to raise money for health care. It’s meant to make the current system even more dysfunctional in the hopes that employers will be even more anxious to get out of the system and the public will desperately embrace change — specifically, universal health care.

I’m actually in favor of getting employers out of the business of proving health insurance…but I want to do it by dumping the whole third-party-payer model that is the main reason health care continues to skyrocket, and universal (aka “single-payer”) health care does nothing to relieve that problem while simultaneously reducing the standard of care as I and others have pointed out before. Let’s not forget that the reason we got into this health care predicament in the first place was because of government interference via wage and price controls in World War II that led employers to offer health insurance benefits as a way of attracting a limited pool of workers. That opened the door to the wasteful and expensive third-party-payer system we currently have, the inefficiencies of which can only be outdone by a government-run system.

42 and 57, or “Let’s see who rusts first”

Posted on by
1

by the Night Writer

Today’s the birthday of the man who, along with the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is responsible for most of the catch-phrases in my vocabulary. As noted by The Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of the man who said, “Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.” That was science fiction writer Douglas Adams, born in Cambridge, England (1952), the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The series begins with the main character, Arthur Dent, lying on the ground in front of bulldozers that are about to demolish his house to make room for a highway. His friend Ford Prefect shows up and explains to Arthur that he, Ford, is actually from another planet; and that Arthur doesn’t need to worry about his house getting demolished because Earth itself is about to be demolished to make room for an interstellar highway. Ford and Arthur hitchhike on a spaceship and begin their adventures through the galaxy.

I first heard of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 1979 when some co-worker’s had a bootleg copy of the BBC’s original radio-play. I later ended up buying four of the five books in the HHGTTG “trilogy”, video-taping the Beeb’s technically awful television version and dozing through the big-bucks movie version a couple of years ago. I wouldn’t recommend Adams for spiritual guidance (re Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?) but just the other day I found myself saying, “Pleased to be of service” and, in the comment section of another blog, typing “Flying is the knack of learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” Other common expressions one is apt to hear around me are, “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so”; “This is obviously some new usage of the word ‘safe’ (or whatever word fits the moment) that I previously wasn’t aware of”; “Mostly harmless”; “It will all end in tears, I just know it”; along with random references to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, Slartibartfast and of course, the classic, “42!”

57. That’s how old Adams’ would have been today if he were still alive.

Well I’ve never been to Spain…

Posted on by
2

by the Night Writer

…but that may be about to change. Over the weekend my wife, Tiger Lilly and I applied to be accepted into the Pueblo Ingles program to help Spaniards learn to speak English. Pueblo Ingles is an organization that sets up week-long English immersion training for Spanish-speakers eager to perfect their English for business and social purposes. All we have to do is provide our own transportation to and from Madrid and any personal travel we want to do before or after the program. Otherwise the program provides all meals and accommodations during the week plus transportation from Madrid to the village where the instruction takes place. Oh, and we have to swear not to speak a word of Spanish while we’re there!

This afternoon I received an email enthusiastically accepting me into one of the weeks, and we’re hoping that the Reverend Mother’s and Tiger Lilly’s acceptance will be coming soon — I won’t go without them! Our program would run from July 24th through 31st and would take place in the village of Valdelavilla, which is described as follows:

Valdelavilla is a small town in the highlands of Soria, just south of the wine-producing region of La Rioja. It dates back to the 18th century but it was reconstructed as a rural tourist complex after it was abandoned in the 1960’s for demographic reasons. It is considered as one of the best-preserved natural sites in Spain with unique architectural and landscaping characteristics, a rich abundance of flora and fauna, and a quite magical atmosphere.

The village is nestled in a valley and even in its heyday, its population probably never surpassed 30 families. It has rustic feel to it with twelve traditional stone-walled houses, cobblestone streets and plenty of exposed brick and timber. Open countryside and beautiful panoramic views complete the quaint atmosphere and make this venue a favourite for volunteers who want that “authentic Spanish experience”, and “to get away from it all”. Valdelavilla arguably represents Pueblo Ingles in its rawest form.

Ok, so it’s not exactly five-star accommodations (other Pueblo Ingles venues are more polished) but the site sounds beautiful and we can book more stylish quarters when we’re back in Madrid after the program is finished and we continue our vacation. The images I’ve found of Valdelavilla show buildings and scenery very similar to the part of Tuscany where we stayed a couple of years ago (and loved).

The Rev. Mum discovered the program through an article in the Strib a few weeks ago. The Spanish-speakers pay to participate, but the Anglos are comped (a word I’ll likely have to explain to the “students”). It’s not exactly a free ride, however, as we’ll spend several hours each day speaking English with the students in a variety of business and social setting, including telephone conversations, and the evenings are spent doing skits and enjoying long (and late) suppers — and talking, talking, talking (a challenge for me, I know). We’re encouraged to talk about anything and everything in order to help the Spaniards acclimate to idioms and cultural nuances. I’m sure it will be tiring, but at the same time we’ll be learning a lot about Spain and the lives of the people we’re talking to and it should be very educational. Perhaps we’ll even pick up some very useful details to make the rest of our trip even more interesting!

All in all it sounds like a great way to see a new country and learn about other ways of life — all while helping other people. What can be better than that?

Update: The program couldn’t fit all of us into the July 24 week, but later added a week to this summer’s schedule. The Rev. Mum and I will go to Cazorla in the sunny south the week of July 3-10, while Tiger Lilly participates in a teen program in El Avets near the French border.

Fighting with Tiger Lilly

Posted on by
4

I cashed in some of my Best Buy Reward Zone points recently and picked up a couple of classic Xbox games — Halo and Halo 2. Tiger Lilly and I enjoy gaming together and these games have been a lot of fun. I can’t help but notice some differences in our styles of combat, however.

For example, in my other gaming I typically play the WWII “Brothers in Arms” series. These games pride themselves on being realistic, so there are no health packs and “level ups” to be found. As such, I’ve learned to move carefully and to peek around corners to keep myself and my squad alive and it’s a hard habit to break. TL on the other hand goes charging off in the direction of enemies as soon as they pop up on the tactical display, typically wreaking carnage with an occasional, “Whoops, I died.” Her eyes and reflexes are also sharper than mine, so as she’s blowing Covenant and Flood to pieces she’s also scooping up useful debris before I even see it. “Cool — a rocket launcher!” or “Whoa, sentinel beam!” are usually my first clue that valuable items arewere for the picking.

She’s also liable to run out of the range of my HUD so that I lose track of her in a melee. My most common utterance when we’re playing is, “Okay, now where are you?” This usually results in her making her character (and its green overhead triangle) jump up and down until I can draw a bead on her. Either that or I simply follow the trail of body parts she’s left in her wake. Nevertheless, we’re getting pretty good at working in tandem, flanking enemies and alerting the other when we’re throwing a plasma grenade, and she hardly ever runs in front of my sniper rifle any more.

It does feel a little odd serving as wingman for a 15-year-old, and I suppose there are more edifying things I could be doing with her other than burning a few hours a week saving humankind. I figure it doesn’t hurt, though, to let her know I’ve got her back. And that — wingman or not — I am the Master Chief.

Turning on the Gino signal

Posted on by
3

Gino, here are a 24 to 50 more reasons to come to Minnesota for the wedding…

Pet Pigs Go Hog Wild in Western Minnesota
Officials recently discovered that pot-bellied pigs — a southeast Asian species imported to the United States, often as pets — have been roaming wild and apparently reproducing for the past few years. The pigs could number 25 to 50, and the first ones either escaped captivity or were illegally released into the wild.

“It’s just really, really bad news,” said Steve Merchant of the Department of Natural Resources. “They can be very destructive to native plants and wildlife habitat, and they carry diseases that can affect wildlife and livestock. We’re definitely concerned. We want to get them out of there.”
…
Pot-bellied pigs can grow to 300 pounds. Vacek said the carcass of one pig he examined probably weighed 90 to 100 pounds. It was a boar with 4-inch tusks.

Come out a few days early and maybe you can help us save some money on the reception menu!

Send us your tired, your hungry, your huddled polar bears

Posted on by
Reply

Satellite photos show Lake Superior nearly iced-over on March 3, 2009.


Image from N.O.A.A.

Reportedly, this phenomenon happens about every 20-30 years. Another source reports that global floating sea ice levels this year are as high as they were in 1979, using data and a chart from the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center:

Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago.

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

The data is being reported by the University of Illinois’s Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.

“Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months.” You’ve got to give President Obama credit; he said he’d stop global warming and he has!

The Depths of the Night

Posted on by
Reply

I was combing through my blog archives earlier looking for a study that I’ve previously cited because I want to use it in another post that I’m working on. In the process I came across a short piece that I wrote here back in 2005, my first year of blogging. It seemed especially appropriate for the present day when so many people appear to have so much to worry about. I’m re-running it here in the hope that it might help someone find a little peace and comfort.

A Beast in the Night

It’s two a.m. and the beast slides in under the bedroom door while I’m sleeping, a darkness deeper than the dark. I feel his weight as he sits on my chest and the tingling sensation of the tips of his talons as he takes my head and turns it slightly to face him. “Let’s talk,” he hisses.

This implies conversation, but it is one-sided. Doom seems to be the theme, oppression the objective, but I’m not paying too much attention to specifics as I sort through and catalog the degrees of my awareness. The house is quiet and still. No strange lights from outside, no smell of smoke through the screened windows. My wife rests peacefully beside me. There is just this…thing, hunkering down, pressing on my thorax. My breathing seems shallow; does it have to be? I fill my lungs several times, deeply. Breathing is good, the weight remains. I experimentally try shifting my position.

“Ah-ah,” says the beast, “does it hurt when I do this?”

Actually, no, nothing hurts. I easily move my arm and place my hand below my collarbone. The river courses deep and wide and steady beneath my fingertips in a familiar rhythm. My skin is cool and dry and yet I know the beast has found something, deep within. A tiny flame of fear, like a pilot light, and now he breathes on it and his very breath is combustible – the flame roars, seeking more fuel, wanting to consume me. In the light of day I hardly notice the steady but small flame; now in the dark every flicker seems to cast an ominous shadow. This is beyond reason, but reason I must: there is money in the bank, we are whole, the jobs are good, the basement will be dry again. I am fine and no weapon formed against us will prosper.

The beast is unimpressed, and answers each thought with a “But…” of his own, his own butt and haunches squeezing against my ribs. The debate goes on quietly for an hour. I should get up. I should get some water. I should change the scenery, but I feel trapped. “Yes…trapped,” the beast says, “trapped, trapped, trapped.” This is going nowhere. Reason is not sufficient, and argument is ineffective. If he won’t listen to me, then I won’t listen to him. I deliberately turn my mind to the old songs, the songs of deliverance and praise, I repeat them to myself, sometimes running verses together or in different order, simply using what comes to mind, from another pilot light, a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, replacing fear with power, strength and a sound mind.

The darkness in the room changes perceptibly. It’s nowhere near dawn, but it seems lighter somehow. Peace returns, if sleep does not. At 4:00 a.m. I’m aware that my wife is awake, lying quietly in the dark. I speak softly, “Are you awake?”

“Yes. Why are you?”

I tell her what happened. She draws closer, hooks one of her legs over one of mine, her arm brushes the last traces of the beast from my chest.

“I’m feeling better,” I say.

This also reminds me of something else that I’ve written here before, a quote from Edwin Louis Cole: “Fear is the belief that something I cannot see will come to pass. Faith is the belief that something I cannot see will come to pass.”

Which will you choose to believe?

I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.”…You shall not
be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence
that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.
— Psalm 91: 2, 5-6

Wasting away again in an Obama-ville

Posted on by
4

Obama: It’s a Good Time to Buy Stocks

President Obama said Tuesday that now is a good time for investors to buy stocks if they focus on the big picture.

The Dow plunged Monday to its lowest level in 12 years.

“What you’re now seeing is a profit and earnings ratios get to the point that buying stocks is a good thing if you have a long-term perspective on it,” he said to reporters after meeting in the Oval Office with visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

That sounds very familiar. Let’s access the ol’ mental jukebox….ah, yes, Fred Waring and Pennsylvanians from 1932 with an Irving Berlin song called “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee”:

Just around the corner,
There’s a rainbow in the sky,
So let’s have another cup of coffee,
And let’s have another piece of pie.

Trouble’s like a bubble,
And the clouds will soon roll by,
So let’s have another cup of coffee,
And let’s have another piece of pie.

Let a smile be your umbrella,
For it’s just an April shower,
Even John D. Rockefeller
Is looking for the silver lining!

Mr. Herbert Hoover
Says that now’s the time to buy,
So let’s have another cup of coffee,
And let’s have another piece of pie!

Back in the 1930s the shanty-towns of homeless people were called Hoovervilles. Perhaps tomorrow they’ll be called Obama-villes, or maybe just “affordable housing.”