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Click the following titles to review my credentials as a member of what my colleague George Will likes to call "the chattering class."
Why should Pennsylvania subsidize seniors to stay in their family homes when they ought to downsize?
Mom and Dad have lived in the same house since the Eisenhower administration. In 1958, they owned a two-bedroom ranch when a ... ahem ... failure of birth control produced my kid sister and a need for more space. Construction began the following spring and, in December 1959, our family of five moved into a four-bedroom colonial with French pretensions. My brother, sister and I were gone by the mid-1970s, but the shrines to our childhoods remain. My sister's room is still the same pink "princess" chamber that Mom decorated nearly a half century ago, with a gilded crown-shaped wall-hanging over her bed. In the upstairs room I shared with my brother, the blankets printed with images from NASA's Gemini program remain on the bed. A model of the frigate "Constitution" that I built in the summer of '68 is still on the dresser. Mom and Dad don't go upstairs much anymore. They're 84. Mom has had both hips replaced, but she still has pain and avoids the stairs. She doesn't drive. Dad, a retired physician, mostly takes care of Mom. He'd love to sell the place and move into a retirement community. But Mom will have none of it. So, he continues to rake the leaves, mow the grass and shovel the snow. A retired physician, Dad has had an irregular heartbeat for years. Eventually, he predicts, he will simply fall over from a stroke -- dying quickly if he's lucky, slowly if he's not. Then, Mom will cling ever more tightly to her house. Her own mother lived to be 98, so it's perfectly possible that Mom will remain there until her children are in their 70s -- while voting against every proposal to increase school millage. Someday, of course, one of us will identify her body for the EMTs. Welcome to the reality that lies beneath the promises of politicians like Ed Rendell to lower property taxes. More than any other single wedge issue, the notion that Pennsylvania should enable senior citizens to avoid the natural end-of-life imperative to downsize has been used to sell the state lottery and, more recently, the slot-box casinos now on their way. Currently, the Pennsylvania Lottery brags of generating $123.1 million annually to reduce seniors' property taxes -- $383, on average, for more than 320,000 households. In 2006, Gov. Rendell signed Act 1, which provides a way for school districts to relieve property taxes by raising income taxes. The governor also promised that the casinos will provide $1 billion a year to cut property taxes and that "seniors will get the most significant property tax relief." Scratch a bit deeper, I suspect, and it would become apparent that helping seniors is mostly sophistry. What concerns too many of us is lower property taxes for ourselves. But spending less for our children's education is not a worthy goal, so it helps to dress it up in a cause that sounds noble. Still, the property tax remains the best way to fund schools. It hits everyone, which is the definition of a good tax. Homeowners and renters, we all pay. And money raised locally is controlled locally. Do you really want your schools' funding -- and, inevitably, their curricula and textbooks -- chosen in Harrisburg or, worse, Washington? ("Sure, senator, I'll vote for your bridge-to-nowhere if you vote for my bill that adopts a national creationist biology text.") Me neither. Still, the seniors myth has clout in a state with the second-oldest proportion of elderly after Florida. So, let's knock it down. Keeping seniors in homes larger than they need, or can afford, or can care for, serves no social benefit and deserves no public subsidy. After a lifetime of work and raising a family, a house is an asset that seniors can sell and then live on the proceeds in smaller quarters. It is not the state's job to spend public revenue to help seniors hold onto assets that will only enrich their heirs. (Don't look to me to reimburse the commonwealth when my siblings and I split Mom's estate.) Nor is it the state's job to fund a museum to my past. Visiting a house with rotary phones -- but no computer access or cable TV -- amuses my daughters (for brief periods) but do you really want to pay for that? Earlier this month, voters across Pennsylvania overwhelmingly rejected Rendell's Act 1 tax-switching scheme. In my district, 88 percent of voters shot it down. So, Ed? You have an out. Respect the people and drop this issue now. Pennsylvanians? It's time to stop whining and pay the taxes that educate our children. Denying this basic responsibility rewards political hacks and will inevitably hurt our children. And Mom? Dad? It's time to sell. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette / 3 June, 2007
The guilty pleasure is gone from collecting political items
Now e-commerce has taken away the thrill – and the larceny. Thanks to the Internet, it's possible to easily and honestly buy buttons, bumper stickers and other political paraphernalia. But where’s the fun in that? The point of collecting was the quest, in which – like war – moral rules were suspended in hope of a big score. Do you admire the…um, "confidence" that allows President Bush to ask for a second term based on the success of his first? How about the chutzpah that enables John Kerry to enlist opponents of the Iraq war in a campaign that promises to wage it "better?" Then you'd admire how I got a 1976 Ford-Dole banner from the campaign's Lansing, Mich., Headquarters - even though it was "promised" to a volunteer. (I rolled it up, tossed it out a window and retrieved it later.) My 30-year career began in the early 1960s - when metal campaign buttons were offered in bowls, free, like jelly beans - and ended when they were replaced by chintzy lapel stickers. As a sport, collecting "politicals" was completely non-partisan: I lied to everyone. In 1976, I told Jimmy Carter's campaign workers of my devout grandmother's passion for the born-again peanut farmer - and that, while she couldn't leave the nursing home, would so appreciate a small button. In 1972, as a college student, I allowed two old ladies - thrilled by a twenty-something's interest in the Prohibition Party - to shower me with buttons of their presidential ticket. In 1984, I volunteered to distribute Walter Mondale yard signs and kept them. I was good – meaning, of course, bad. Petty larceny was standard operating procedure. Seven campaign cycles ago, it allowed me to snag a 4-by-6-foot, full-color poster from Jerry Ford's last campaign rally. I remember it well. On Monday evening, Nov. 7, 1976, he had returned to Grand Rapids, Mich. - his and my hometown - for one last hurrah with the folks who had sent him to Congress since 1948. Rather than push forward to see him up close, I got in front of one of the posters that Ford's people had taped on nearby shop windows. As local notables spoke, I began lifting its corners. Well before the President spoke, I had the poster down, rolled and under my arm - only to turn and find myself face-to-face with a Grand Rapids police officer. He grinned. Taking the poster was OK, he said, but the Secret Service didn't like people carrying long, cylindrical packages around the President. Best to beat it, he said. I did, and still have it. My collector's passion started at a Goldwater headquarters in 1964. I was 13. Mother was writing a check, so campaign workers let me help myself to buttons in all shapes and varieties. From then on, it was one quadrennial snipe hunt after another. I have no practical explanation for this. Most Americans despise politics and politicians. One result is that political paraphernalia is not highly valued. You can make a modest living selling Beanie Babies, but my LBJ buttons are still worth only $2 each. But, ah, the memories... In the spring of 1968, I joined a crowd of protesters headed to a rally for George Wallace, then the darling of the right wing. We took over a section of bleachers and shouted "Sieg Heil" throughout his speech while giving him the Nazi salute. From that rally I appropriated a poster that read, "It Takes Courage. Wallace Has It. Do You?" If chutzpah is courage, I guess I did. In college, I dated Anne, whose father worked in a Washington building that was also Richard Nixon's transition headquarters. In January 1969, when reams of stationery with Nixon's name and "Office of the President-Elect" on the letterhead were chucked, Daddy retrieved it as scratch paper and his daughter took it to college. I'm not sure what became of Anne, but the stationery is in a box in my attic. After 1980, presidential candidates began pumping most of their money into TV ads. Buttons, bumper stickers and the rest were no longer a priority. With that new scarcity, security seemed to increase around the materials that still existed. In 1992, when I did some work for the Clinton campaign, I still couldn't get anything more substantial than a lapel sticker. Today, most campaigns simply license vendors, which take orders online, handle distribution and pay a percentage. It’s a win for candidates, who must no longer tie up cash in buttons and posters. But it’s a loss for me. True, there’s now plenty of stuff out there. It’s not expensive. But buying campaign buttons isn’t as satisfying as convincing earnest volunteers that i admire their candidate’s tax plan, then walking out with their last button. Politics is about believing and i helped the true believers to believe. I was good. Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 Oct., 2004
Death be not fittingly handled
In an era in which Americans increasingly prefer to dispose of their loved ones' remains as quickly and discreetly as week-old fish, the prolonged honor and homage paid to the body of Reagan is a useful reminder that death deserves our attention. Perhaps the last farewell to this old actor might prompt modern Americans to better consider how we handle our own final acts. After Reagan's death in California on June 5, his casket was displayed at his presidential library in Simi Valley, flown to Washington, paraded through the streets to the Capitol for further display before a funeral at the National Cathedral, and, finally, sent back to California for burial. The memorials, which lasted five days, were expected to be the largest and most-watched since those of John F. Kennedy in 1963, following a pattern laid down at Lincoln's funeral in 1865. Such grand observances, of course, are appropriate only for rare individuals. Ronald Reagan meant a lot to the nation, so it is natural that the nation should want to pay him its respects. But don't our own friends and loved ones deserve a measure of the same sort of respect? Apparently not. According to a 1999 survey for the Funeral and Memorial Information Council, 44 percent of Americans now prefer to go out with a private ceremony, a memorial service, or no ceremony at all. That's an enormous change in just a couple of decades. As recently as 1979, the overwhelming national preference was for a traditional funeral with the body present, followed by burial or cremation in the presence of mourners. In addition, 46 percent now prefer cremation, according to the survey. There's nothing wrong with cremation in itself, but those who choose it are statistically more likely to skip a traditional funeral, more likely to scatter ashes than to bury or entomb them, and less likely to erect a monument. This trend is strongest among the educated and affluent. In an upper-end neighborhood in the Philadelphia suburbs, one funeral director reports that 60 percent of his clients choose a memorial service. A memorial service is an odd form of funeral lite: People arrive. Sometimes they are dressed up. They spend an hour or so saying nice things about someone who - for unstated reasons - isn't there. A memorial service may occur weeks or months after the deceased is buried or cremated. Lots of old ladies who die in midwinter are slipped quietly into the ground. "We'll do something in the spring," their children promise. Perhaps the worst example of modern death practices is so-called direct cremation, in which a warm corpse is taken - sometimes still wearing a hospital gown - straight to the crematory. No coffin. No wake. No funeral. No eulogy. This "service" is sufficiently popular that one Main Line funeral director created a separate division - significantly, under a different name - to provide it. Excuse me, but is there anything this more resembles than taking out the trash? I'm not advocating elaborate and expensive funerals. Financial resources are best expended on the living. But I believe a little more respect is in order. Regular folks seem to understand this. According to the Funeral and Memorial Information Council, high school graduates are 43 percent more likely to attend funerals than college graduates. African Americans are more likely than white people to prefer an open casket at their funerals but less likely to choose cremation. After a death, high school graduates are more likely to spend time with the bereaved; those with college degrees prefer to send a cash donation. It doesn't matter what you believe about an afterlife. For atheists and believers, death is as central a fact of life as birth, and as deserving of appropriate ceremony as marriage. Is this so much trouble? Would it have been just as well if Ronald Reagan had been buried the day he died, or if Nancy Reagan had remained in California while the nation went about the folderol of a state funeral? Of course not. The nation needed to say goodbye and to witness Nancy Reagan's strength in adversity. Jackie Kennedy won the nation's enduring respect with her composure at her husband's funeral. Mary Lincoln, in contrast, immediately took to her bed and stayed there, thus confirming the nation's already low opinion of her. The Great Equalizer will prevail in the end, and - especially in a nation with aspirations to social equality - that alone makes participation in the rituals of death worthy of our time. No one should simply disappear. Today, Reagan is celebrated for having renewed Americans' faith in basic values. In death, he has done it again. Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 June, 2004 Feedback to this piece.
Diluting tradition: With a ban on oil-paint, bit of heritage lost
Starting next year, Pennsylvania and neighboring states, in response to the EPA's tougher clean-air standards, will require the sale of low-emission water-based paint. Oil-based paint - "real paint," my grandfather called it - will be banned. Apparently, drying paint contributes to ground-level ozone, a chief ingredient in smog. Some people dislike the odor. Odd. It's my new-car smell. The smell of fresh paint reminds me of childless young couples with fresh marriage certificates and fixer-uppers. In the 1980s, my wife and I celebrated every Saturday morning with omelettes, orange juice, and alkyd enamel. Ah! I love the smell of petroleum distillates in the morning. The negatives of the new paints, say experts, are the same cheap-paint hazards of which my parents and grandparents warned: They dry funny and won't last. Tellingly, even paint manufacturer Rohm & Haas has come up with a definition of paint quality - flow, hiding and spattering - that focuses on convenient application, not durability. I'm not a professional painter. To my knowledge, no relative of mine has ever painted a house in which he or she didn't live. On the other hand, we did always paint our own houses. Where I came from in the Midwest, painting your house was one of those things you just did for your family - like raking leaves and shoveling snow. A man who would hire someone to paint his house might also pay a stranger to father his children. It wasn't done. Ironically, my parents never allowed me to paint our house. Mom, in particular, was so persnickety about even horizontal strokes that she insisted on doing it all herself. I didn't get to apply paint to siding until I became a homeowner. By then, I was "primed" to regard the process - choosing the colors, preparing the materials, even climbing on the roof - as one of the privileges of being an adult. People who paint their houses tend to do a good job. They scrape. They sand. They put on two coats. The competition was informal, but nobody wants to be the neighbor whose siding reveals inadequate preparation. Good paint jobs take time, and our neighbors spoke of painting the house as a summer project. My mother is convinced that she was blackballed by the Junior League when two members dropped by unannounced one day and found her on the roof, painting a gable. Now 82 and unable to climb ladders, she supervises professionals from a chair in the back yard. I'm sure they hate it. People who paint for money, I've noticed, seem to view prep work as a time-waster that only delays payment. Overshadowing everything in our family was the ghost of William Kenworthy (1794-1877), my great-great-great-grandfather, who ran a flax-oil mill in Richmond, Ind., in the 1840s. Today, flax oil is a vitamin supplement, but in the 19th century, it was mixed with pigments, lead and other ingredients to make paint. Flax also had an earlier history: In colonial America, it was grown to provide the fiber from which linen was woven. Linen-making was a home industry that was eclipsed in the early 19th century by cheap factory-made fabric processed from slave-grown cotton. Flax-oil paint took literally days to cure. But it made a durable finish that still survives on many old buildings. In the 20th century, paint manufacturers replaced flax oil with petroleum by-products - to which we're now as enslaved as 19th-century Americans were to cotton. I've always thought that modern oil paint performed respectably, though grandfather insisted no paint was worth a darn after lead was removed. Now, it is all going away. When latex paint appeared, my relatives spoke with contempt for anyone who would give up the quality of a good coat of oil-based paint for the fleeting pleasure of washing a brush in soap and water. Now, latex will be all that remains - and, it appears, it will be bad latex at that. Maybe in the case of "petroleum distillates" that's a good thing. But not on my house. Oil paint will still be available in Canada. Maybe I can hitch a ride with a busload of seniors on a prescription-buying trip. Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 May, 2004
Needed: A triumph
over fear
What's more, I'll bet you're not, either. Not really. And the fact that we're not afraid may constitute the hope of the Democratic Party. I'm not sure when I first realized I wasn't afraid. Maybe it was last week on Lancaster Avenue in Wayne, when I stopped to watch a panel truck, an SUV and a school bus - a school bus! - fly through an intersection I'd nearly entered. Their drivers, it seemed, were competing to see who could run the red light first. Or it may have been the week before, when an old lady was found beaten to death in her home just a short walk from mine. Statistically, these sorts of things are far greater threats than terrorism. Cars killed more than 40,000 Americans in 2001, compared with the roughly 3,000 murdered on 9/11. Non-Sept. 11 homicides killed nearly 16,000. And both auto and homicide statistics are dwarfed by the 280,000 deaths attributed to obesity or the 440,000 premature annual deaths caused by smoking. So, what's the hysteria about terrorism all about, really? We're used to cars and guns and Big Macs and smokes carrying off our fellow citizens by the tens of thousands. We've accepted them and adjusted. But we're outraged when large numbers of Americans are killed by fanatical, angry foreigners. Plus, Sept. 11 was done with malice. The killers we're willing to tolerate are byproducts of commerce and personal freedom. But malice ticks us off. I don't mean to diminish the tragedy of Sept. 11, particularly for those who lost loved ones. But I'm sure that those who lost friends or relatives for mundane, familiar reasons grieve just as hard. The difference is fear. Against reason, we're afraid of terrorism, so we choose leaders who promise to protect us from it. Ironically, we'd be less motivated to vote for them if they devoted their zeal to cigarettes, cars, overeating, and guns. As it is, we're willing to give up some freedoms for this problem that, in the large scheme of things, is not the greatest danger facing us. Alas, President Bush and the Republicans are not likely to take on the job of helping Americans replace fear with a more appropriate - and lower - level of concern. Perhaps, then, in its quest to find itself, the demoralized Democratic Party could take on this task. Unfortunately, its most prominent leader, former president Bill Clinton, has given contrary advice. Speaking in New York recently, Clinton told the party that it can't afford to be seen as "missing in action on national security" - meaning that Democrats should match or outdo President Bush in emphasizing terrorism's threat. Ratchet up the fear level, then score points by talking about how Democrats are helping reduce the "danger." As far as this advice goes, Clinton is absolutely right. All people crave security. And Americans, who are mostly ignorant of the world, are probably even more likely than others to feel insecure. Certainly, we're not as used to terrorism as the Israelis. But instead of stoking and using our fear, perhaps the Democrats could help us get over it. A minority party that doesn't hold the White House is not in a position to out-demagogue Bush on a war agenda. Trying will only further distract the country from an agenda - the economy, jobs, education, health care - on which more people agree with Democrats than with Republicans. Visuals might help. How about buttons? Democrats could take a page from Jerry Ford, inventor of the Whip Inflation Now (WIN) button. Turn on the presses and equip the nation with lapel pins printed with statistics that challenge current priorities: Medically uninsured: 41 million Functionally illiterate: 40 million Smoking deaths: 440,000 Auto deaths: 40,000 Homicides: 16,000 Terrorism-related deaths: 3,000 The point is to put terrorism into proper perspective somewhere closer to auto accidents. Or, if you insist, put it up there with health insurance. Terrorism, you see, is not a war. It's a crime. And, as a crime, it shouldn't be the central focus of our national life. We have important work to do once we realize that we are not afraid. Philadelphia Inquirer / 30 Dec., 2002 Feedback to this piece.
For 'God bless America,' a question mark
And for the past two months, I've been puzzling over what to do with these three words: "God Bless America." Since Sept. 11, they're everywhere. In political speeches, banners, newspaper ads, billboards and bumper stickers. But "God Bless America" always seems to appear without punctuation. And that, to me, leaves the meaning unclear. By experimenting with the punctuation, I came up with several possible meanings - and theologies. Maybe you can suggest others. God! Bless! America! This is how Kate Smith sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" - loud and bombastic. When released in 1939, "God Bless America" (Berlin didn't punctuate it) quickly became a favorite of America Firsters who wanted to stay out of World War II. It has a strong inward tone and, while it mentions God, doesn't seem to be speaking either to Him or to His people as a whole. Instead, it speaks to other listeners - that is, to residents of the United States of America alone - and is an expression, perhaps, of a desire to be at the center of God's attention. In many ways, it's reminiscent of a street chant: "We're Number 1! We're Number 1!" (Frankly, it creeps me out. In the Old Testament, whole cities were thrown down for less.) God, bless America. Perhaps this is closer to what Berlin meant. When read on paper, the lyrics to his "God Bless America" are fundamentally a prayer for guidance. "Stand beside her, and guide her." On the surface, therefore, it seems less self-involved than the "gimme" nature of petitionary prayers. Of course, even praying for guidance presumes that God missed something the first time around and, therefore, that we need to ask for more blessings. More enlightenment. More guidance. I'm from a religious tradition, based as much in family as church, that holds that God provided everything we need to solve our problems at the moment of Creation. This means that prayers of thanks are always appropriate. And praying for understanding is, or should be, routine, akin to reading life's instruction manual. But prayers for more are somehow . . . presumptuous. Even ungrateful. My wife calls this the "clockmaker" theory: God made the "clock" and it's up to us to keep it in order. We have the resources, the know-how and an instinctive understanding of what is right, if we will only use them. Some people interpret this as meaning God doesn't hear our prayers; I prefer to think He anticipated them. God bless. America. Frankly, I like this version best. I read it with what a long-ago English teacher called an "implied" word: May God bless. I like this because it isn't asking for anything. Therefore, it isn't treating God as a celestial gumball machine into which one puts prayers to get wishes. Nor does it suggest God's incompetence. It is perfectly reasonable, I think, for "May God bless" to be understood as "I desire the best for you." Second, "May God bless" doesn't presume to tell God where His blessings should be targeted. At my church, we occasionally sing a version of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius' "Song of Peace," which honors "my home, my country where my heart is," while also acknowledging that "other hearts in other lands are beating, with hopes and dreams as high and true as mine." Punctuated in this manner, the phrase expresses the belief that God will be just with all His people. Afghans, Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and all the rest. "May God Bless." Everyone. Everywhere. "America"? Oh, that's the signature. Philadelphia Inquirer / 2 Dec., 2001
Manners: An insidious menace to roadways
Chicago Tribune / 12 Aug., 2001
For this, today’s woman can thank the late Harry Burn (1895-1977) and his mother, Febb Ensminger Burn, who, at that moment in 1920, became one of the century’s most influential couples – even if post-game suffragist propaganda has left them mostly forgotten. What? You thought woman’s suffrage was won by the likes of Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt and thousands of marching suffragists? Never. Women’s votes were made possible by the votes of hundreds of male legislators at the state and federal levels. Ultimately, it was 24-year-old Burn, a freshman representative from tiny Niota, Tenn., whose Yes vote broke the tie that would have killed – or, at least – delayed approval. He did it, he later said, because his mother asked him to. Approval of the 19th Amendment was never a sure thing. After Congress passed the measure in June 1919, a flurry of ratifications followed, mostly in northern and eastern states. Then, the pace slowed. By the end of the year, 22 of the 36 states required for approval had ratified. Then, another rush: 10 states ratified in January and February 1920, followed by approvals in Oklahoma, Washington and West Virginia where, in March, pro-suffrage Sen. Jesse Block broke a deadlock after chartering a special train to race him home from California for the vote. That made a total of 35 states. Of the remaining 13, six had rejected the amendment. Those, plus another three that had not yet voted, were all in the South where opponents campaigning under the Confederate flag lobbied vigorously against the "anti-family" amendment and approval was considered unlikely. Anti-suffrage governors in Connecticut and Vermont refused to call their legislatures into session. In Ohio, meanwhile, opponents were trying to rescind that state’s ratification. That left Delaware, where the amendment was tied up in a Republican intra-party feud, and Tennessee, whose legislature took up the issue in a special session in August. After passing comfortably (25-4) in the senate, the amendment arrived at the Tennessee house on August 18. Antis opened the debate with a motion to table the measure. This failed on a 48-48 vote, so the next step was to vote on the amendment itself. A tie meant failure. Burn had voted to table. He favored suffrage, but wanted to delay the issue until after the fall elections when he had to face voters – male voters, remember – who mostly opposed the amendment. All summer, as the two sides lobbied furiously in what the newspapers called the "War of the Roses," Burn had worn the opposition symbol, a red rose, in his lapel. Pro-suffrage activists wore yellow roses. As the roll was called, however, he had something else – a letter from his mother – tucked in the inside pocket of his suit. Back in Niota, the widow Burn had been reading the published rants of anti-ratification leaders. She was a slightly built woman who nevertheless found time to read a dozen magazines, books and four newspapers between milking cows, churning butter, cleaning and mending. Febb Burn resented having no voice in political affairs while her illiterate farm hands were allowed to vote. "Dear Son, Hurray and vote for suffrage," she had written from a chair on the front porch. "Don’t keep them in doubt…be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification." And he did. Despite the blatant red rose on his chest, when the roll reached him, Harry Burn voted "yea," delivering universal suffrage to American women. As pandemonium broke out in the house and yellow roses rained from the House balcony, outraged opponents chased Burn around the room. To escape a mob, he climbed out a third-floor window, made his way along a ledge and hid in the Capitol attic until tempers cooled. Now, suppose for a moment that woman’s suffrage had failed. What might have happened to Burn’s political ambitions and those of the hundreds of other male legislators across the nation who also voted "yea"? Success would enfranchise a huge group of people who might be grateful, but whose future electoral behavior was unknowable. Failure would have meant facing only the highly predictable men. And even with passage, many legislators went home to face "indignation" meetings of angry voters. In Cleveland, Tenn., Rep. Jacob Simpson, the father of nine daughters, arrived home to a mass protest where he defiantly announced his pride to have voted "in behalf of the women of the nation." Burn had a similar reception and, for a time, traveled around Niota with a bodyguard. Ironically, suffragists such as Catt may not have appreciated his bravery. A cynic who described herself as "recovered from a…faith in the action of men based upon a love of justice," Catt told her allies on the eve of the vote that "ratification in Tennessee will go through the work and action of men, and the great motive that will put it through will be political and nothing else." But Harry was capable of better, and his mother knew it. Philadelphia Inquirer / 9 Oct., 2000 Feedback to this piece.
Turn Census form into a time capsule
Why am I so forthcoming? Simple. The census offers me, Mr. Average American, one of my few opportunities to be immortal. For free! Time will waste my body. The dream house my wife and I are sweating away our working lives to buy will eventually fall down or be bulldozed to make way for someone else’s dream. Vandals will sledgehammer my tombstone. But government paperwork lives forever. Longer, even, than the governments that create it. The oldest form of writing known to man – cuneiform clay tablets – are nothing more than some ancient Assyrian IRS official’s record of taxes paid. But the U.S. census is better. The United States is the only country in history that – at least in theory – has a record of every citizen since the Constitution took effect. Sure, it has always missed people, but the very notion of creating such a record is remarkable. The census offers each of us what the pharaohs lusted for: the opportunity to speak to generations yet unborn about who we were, what we believed and why we lived. For this I should use a short form? I’m a genealogist who first saw an original U.S. census report more than 20 years ago at a National Archives office in San Francisco. It’s an experience millions have shared: You sit in a dark room, thread the microfilm into the reader and, then, crank slowly as images of handwritten forms fly by. In my case, I found my long-dead great-grandmother – my father’s mother’s mother – listed as an 11-year-old child in the 1880 returns for Bushnell, Illinois. Her father, born in England, was a farmer; her mother, born in Ireland, was "keeping house." Great grandmother was "attending school." No commode count, darn it And that was about it. The old censuses also listed ages, identified the head of the household (always the man) and listed the value of his (not their) real estate. The census that year didn’t ask Americans how many toilets they had though, frankly, I wish it did. Well, someday the names on the forms will be ours and those searching will be our great grandchildren. If they’re like me, their only frustration will be that the forms record so little. What did they look like? they’ll ask. What did they wear? What did they do? Did they own one of those funny personal computers like we’ve seen in museums? What did they think about the events of their time? Why did they choose those names for their children? Answering such questions is not why Washington begs and pleads us to return our census forms. Believing us more government-oriented than we are, the bureaucrats stress that census statistics are the basis for political representation and the doling out of federal funds. The future's archaeological dig Ho hum. Congresses and pork barrels shall all pass away. But the forms we put in the mail next month will someday be the sole surviving evidence that we once walked the earth. According to law, our forms are used only for statistical purposes. Yes, there have been abuses in the past, but I generally trust the feds on this point. After the statisticians have lost interest, however, the forms go into bureaucratic deep freeze for 72 years. After that, they’re like Nixon’s White House tapes: open for anyone to inspect. In two years, the 1930 census will be released. So here’s my suggestion to the Census Bureau. You want to increase returns? Add a place on the form where we can write anything we want or, maybe, paste a photograph. On the short form, there’s a three-by-five-inch space on the last page – right below the bureau’s thank-you message – and it’s just going to waste. Like a message in a bottle, the whole package would eventually be microfilmed for posterity. I don’t know how the Census Bureau will react, but here’s what I did. In the margin below our birth dates, I added a few words about each member of my household. My wife, an attorney, I described as "one of a rare breed: an honest lawyer." Abigail, 9, is "a real great kid and a budding cellist." Rachel, 2, is also a great kid "but with a temper." I’m "a journalist and writer of marketing materials." Posterity is listening. What will you say? USA Today / 27 March 2000
Inside the marriage bedroom...
But now that the scandal has drawn to a close, perhaps we can drop that nonsense and face the likely truth. Maybe Bill was entitled. Maybe what drew him to Monica Lewinsky (and Paula and Gennifer) wasn't the arrogance of a man with power, but the quiet desperation of another guy married to a woman whose favorite word is no. Bear with me. I don't know what the first couple does in private. Yes, Hillary deserves credit for standing by her husband, but that's only the public side of their marriage. Most of what makes a marriage worthwhile goes on in private and, in the Clinton's case, we can only guess at its quality. But here's a clue dropped by Clinton's former pollster and buddy, Dick Morris. "None of what I'm about to say is necessarily a fact," said Morris a year ago in an interview on KABC radio in Los Angeles. "But let's assume, OK?, that his [Bill Clinton's] sexual relationship with Hillary is not all it's supposed to be, let's assume that some of the allegations that Hillary -- sometimes not necessarily being into regular sex with men -- might be true." At the time, commentators focused on "with men," treating the remark as a slur about Hillary Clinton's sexual orientation. Right-wing nuts gleefully jumped on the comment as confirmation of their belief that any woman who (1) worked for Richard Nixon's impeachment, (2) used her maiden name, and (3) didn't bake cookies must be a lesbian. But perhaps the emphasis should have been on "regular." Maybe Morris was, in his indiscreet way, merely echoing a certain male friend's lament about a wife who never seemed in the mood. That wouldn't make Hillary gay, just typical -- at least if one believes the famous 1985 Ann Landers poll in which 77 percent of 90,000 women said hugging, not sex, was their favorite marital act. More recently, Landers printed a letter from a woman whose husband of nearly a year had never approached her for sex. Nearly 200 women wrote asking for the man's name and address. Said one: "Hers is a life that is too good to be true. Send him to me." So, is it too much to presume, given this apparently common predilection, that many women make unilateral decisions about sex with which many husbands are unhappy? It's one of those little secrets of married life -- seldom acknowledged, but always there if one listens carefully to popular culture. Possibly it's what motivated Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston and Bob Barr. This is not a partisan thing. "It's a Mars-Venus thing," said "DB," one of several anonymous fellows I recently encountered on the Internet. "After marriage, women decrease the frequency of sex. When the men stop complaining, the women believe that they are content. In fact, they've often found another outlet." The outlets vary. Some are illegal, immoral, expensive and, sometimes, dangerous -- but, to those who turn to them, better than nothing. Perhaps, just perhaps, something like that went through Bill Clinton's head, too. Soccer moms, you may be bored with the Lewinsky scandal. But this story involves you more than you know. Philadelphia Inquirer / 6 March, 1999 Feedback to this piece.
Liberals simply must face facts
Why? Let me tell you about my little epiphany, which occurred when I chaired a committee that my liberal church formed to recommend a policy on same-sex marriage. We failed for reasons that shocked me, a proponent. Confronted with the intellectual laziness of liberalism, I now wonder whether conservative worries about social change aren’t justified. I won’t tell you my church’s name or denomination. Just know that it is small, very old and tolerant in a Main Line sort of way that "welcomes" minorities but doesn’t attract any. Our 10-person committee began this project in the usual way – with prayer and a pile of handouts. We read the policies of other congregations and historical analyses of our denomination’s approach to marriage, plus various writings both pro and con. We also referred to the Bible, where the language on homosexuality ranges from blunt – "an abomination" meriting death (Leviticus 20:13) – to plain strange, such as Paul’s claim (Romans 1:18-32) that homosexuality was punishment for worshipping graven images. From this, we distilled a list of issues – Biblical, legal, social, personal – to resolve. Imagine my surprise when, at our first meeting, most of the committee wanted to skip discussions. "Why?" I asked. Because, said one, we’re all in favor anyway, so let’s just adapt another congregation’s policy and get it over with. Well, I reminded them, same sex marriage may be favored by the committee, but it wasn’t favored by the entire congregation, which must approve, or society, which would feel the effect. Many would cite Leviticus or Paul to prove our error. What would we say? "Can’t we just mention Jesus’ words, that only those without sin should throw stones?" asked another. Perhaps, I said. But after Christ had saved the adulterous woman from stoning, he told her, "Go and sin no more." Did she agree with Leviticus that homosexuality was a sin? "I didn’t say that," she retorted, a bit hotly. Here, I attempted to interest the group in an interpretation of Leviticus as an attempt by the Jews to maintain their distinct identity as God’s Chosen People. It was simply a way of drawing boundaries between themselves and those, such as the Greeks, among whom homosexuality was more accepted. For Christians, however, Jewish group identity is a moot point. One evidence of this is Jesus’ dismissal of the Jewish dietary laws, another effort to promote group cohesion. This is why many Christians ritually break those laws each Easter by eating ham. Similarly, I offered, Easter should be a celebration for gay and lesbian Christians because – among other things – it marks their freedom from Leviticus. "I’m not much into that Bible stuff," announced one. "I still like the woman-and-the-stones story better," said the other. We moved on. What about legality? I asked. Those who officiate at heterosexual marriages at my church take care that they are officially recorded. How would we reconcile this careful attendance on the law with simultaneous disregard of it? Discussion warmed. The marriages of our denomination’s founders were not legally recognized. Because of that, our tradition is that marriage is primarily a spiritual relationship and secondarily a legal one. This was quickly pointed out. True, I conceded. But the founders were scrupulous about reporting their illegal marriages to the nearest magistrate, often to invite punishment. Recognizing that laws are necessary, they endured official wrath to change a bad one. Silence. Besides, I continued, our decision will affect the ongoing social debate about homosexuality. Wasn’t it, therefore, our duty to consider same-sex marriage’s social effects? For instance, wouldn’t offering health and other benefits to same-sex spouses help safeguard the welfare of children in their care? "I don’t want to bring children into this," interjected one. "What if we didn’t call it ‘marriage?’ " asked another. "Maybe we could use ‘partnership’ or ‘union’ or…" Now I was peeved. We had gathered to consider same-sex marriage, not a jump-the-broom substitute. If we couldn’t marry gays and lesbians with the same wholeheartedness as straights, I said, perhaps we shouldn’t do so at all. "But it’s important," said one. "I just don’t want to spend time on all this other stuff." And so it went. My co-religionists hedged and dodged to avoid any position that involved responsibility. All favored same-sex marriage, but none could say why. Worse, none saw a need to. Yes, they wanted conservative Christians to cease opposition to same-sex marriage. But my friends weren’t interested in addressing the conservatives’ concerns. What my folks most wanted, it seemed, was to comfort themselves with a cost-free demonstration of their own tolerance. In this, they revealed what may be liberalism’s central failing – its refusal to deal respectfully with facts. Conservative opposition to same-sex marriage is such a fact. And unless liberals truly face that opposition – and, thus, endure the hard work of reasoning with the conservatives – they will be unable to markedly improve the social status of gays and lesbians. Unfortunately, liberals (Christian and otherwise) are handicapped in this because they resist any notion of an ultimate truth that might demand a personal commitment and, thereby, limit someone’s freedom. This gives credibility to critics such as Philadelphia Council President John F. Street, who claimed recently that same-sex marriage would lead to "a totally open society where there are no rules." This need not be so, of course. But a democratic society can’t set rules without first discussing them, something many liberal minds are too closed to manage. Meanwhile, conservatives are in the streets. Philadelphia Inquirer / 28 June, 1997 Feedback to this piece.
I think that I shall never see the right kind of suburban tree
The tree is easy to find. In fact, that's part of the problem. Because it's only three feet from south Creek Road, a twisting two-laner that parallels Brandywine Creek, the sycamore is responsible for a couple of accidents, plus a lawsuit against PennDot. So it will probably fall unless the township agrees to take over and close that section of road, which seems unlikely. This upsets some residents but, hey, it's only a tree and not worth getting someone killed for. On the other hand, a tree old enough to have lived in William Penn's time isn't exactly nothing. Ancient trees are rare and likely to become more so. Why? Part of the answer is that we keep building houses, stores and roads. The trees are in the way, so we cut them down. The rest of the answer is evident in places like the Highlands, a housing development no better or worse than a lot of others that some developer splashed across the rolling hills that overlook the doomed sycamore. Driving into the Highlands on St. Finnegan Drive, one of the first things a visitor sees on the left is a line of white pines that screens a house from public view. White pine is a fast grower that can put on as much as a foot a year in good soil. So it's a common tree in new developments; builders want an immediate impact that will help sell their houses. Homeowners after privacy also choose it. Trouble is: White pines get funky with age, often losing their value as a screen. They lose their pyramidal shape, flatten out on top and -- because they love sunlight -- their shaded lower branches often thin and die out. What's left often looks like a telephone pole with a misshapen scrub brush on top. they're fascinating to look at, but whoever owns the property in the future will probably miss the screening effect and have them cut down. Up ahead is a birch in front of someone's picture window. People plant birches because the white bark stands out visually in the landscape and, again, because they grow fast. They're also short-lived. The slender trunks grow in clumps and often bend with snow and ice in winter. If they break, the tree is quickly finished off by disease and rot. This tree is also misplaced. Birches can reach a height of 35 feet with a spread of perhaps 20 feed. This one, however, is planted about 10 feet from the house. So, whatever its health, the owner will cut it down when it begins bumping into the gutters. Farther on is a group of three eastern redbuds planted in a triangle roughly eight feet on a side. Surrounding them is a bed of pachysandra bordering a driveway. Redbuds are gorgeous in spring. That's likely why three are grouped together in the middle of a green carpet. Someone wanted to make a statement, and he or she wanted it made immediately. Unfortunately redbuds are prone to pests, plus they get more than 30 feet tall and about a third as wide. Grouped as tightly as they are, and so close to that driveway, someone is going to need a chainsaw to solve the problem. Now, contrast what's growing at the Highlands with what surrounds most pre-20th-century houses: oaks, poplars, walnuts and maples -- usually well-spaced and towering two and three times the height of the structure. In Louisiana, I once visited Oak Alley, an old plantation house from whose veranda a double row of 300-year-old live oaks marches a quarter-mile down to the bank of the Mississippi. The house dates only to the late 1700s and nobody knows who planted the trees, though it was likely an early French settler who also built a modest house on the site of the current mansion. What's remarkable is that the Frenchman planted the oaks 100 feet apart, their mature spread. Because of that, the trees probably never made much of an impression in his lifetime. Because the Frenchman was thinking in the context of centuries, however, today's visitors have an opportunity for a rare experience. Late 20th-century gardens, however, are a reflection of the fact that we live almost wholly in the present tense. Like Al Dunlap, who fires 10,000 people to bump up stock prices in the next quarter, we choose trees for what they'll look like this spring. Nobody plants with an eye to the year 2297. They're also not planting sycamores. My local nurseryman, Ralph D'Maio of Conestoga Nursery, explained why. "A sycamore is a lot of work," he said. "The bark peels, and it drops nuts on the lawn. It's not a big seller." So, here's the bottom line: There are two ways to get trees like the East Bradford sycamore or those live oaks in Louisiana. One way is to let God plant them, which, of course, He is perfectly happy to do. But, if we don't like where God puts them, we'll have to go to Plan Two:
Otherwise, all that we'll leave our descendants are daffodils and rhododendron. Philadelphia Inquirer / 13 April, 1997 Feedback to this piece.
Put the right document in our museum
Such a museum would be good for tourism. It would make better use of what is now mostly wasted space. And, not least, it would provide context for some historic relics -- Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, etc. -- which, in themselves, are really rather dull. There's just one problem. The document chosen by the project's backers -- the U.S. Constitution -- is altogether the wrong piece of parchment to exalt in the nation's birthplace. Fortunately, it's a mistake easily remedied. There's another document -- the Declaration of Independence, also written in Philadelphia -- which is a better statement of the national purpose, and which could also be the subject of a museum on the mall site. More on the Declaration in a moment. Written in 1787, the Constitution was an attempt by the Founding Fathers to lend a bit more structure to the nation they had created 11 years before while, at the same time, preserving the liberties for which the revolution had been fought. In their first mission, the founders were highly successful: The nation survives. In the second, they were less so and the reason was -- sit down, this may shock you -- politics! In 1787, as now, special interests could tolerate only so much liberty. So the Constitution ended up a patchwork of compromises which, while perhaps necessary in a purely practical sense, should never be regarded as anything less than measures of how far the Founders fell short of their goal. The most obvious compromise was over slavery, an institution that mocked liberty and whose legality was specifically recognized in the Constitution. The document calculated the worth of a slave at three-fifths of a person, required that escaped slaves be returned and decreed that international kidnapping (the slave trade) would be permitted for 20 more years. True, slavery is now abolished. But consider what remains:
Of course, the Constitution is critically important. It creates institutions that have been invaluable safeguards for liberty and permitted the addition of the vital Bill of Rights. My point is that American liberty predates the Constitution and we would be wiser to celebrate its origin than its imperfect preservation. That origin is the Declaration of Independence, which is not only our founding document, but the best statement of what makes the United States fundamentally different from other nations, such as the former Soviet Union, which have (or had) similar constitutions. And unlike the Constitution -- a document created by and for lawyers -- the Declaration was written by a band of hopeful revolutionaries as an appeal "to the opinions of mankind." The core of their argument was simple: "All men are created equal." It is, said Lincoln at Gettysburg, "the proposition" made by the Founders to a world which was, and is, skeptical. The dream of a society based on human equity is a utopian and fundamentally religious concept...and, yet, it is the ideal that has sustained the nation through its worst crises and inspired its greatest triumphs. It is also a concept on which Americans are mostly united. They may argue about abortion, civil rights, taxation, censorship, education and myriad other issues, but they do so in terms that define their own positions as the best way to achieve equality. Equality is what inspires us. That's what Stephen Douglas found out when, in 1858, he campaigned against a country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln for a U.S. Senate seat. The issue then was whether slavery should be allowed to spread to new Western territories. Douglas said yes: "I hold that if [slaveholders] want a slave state they have the right under the Constitution of the United States to make it." Abraham Lincoln took a different view, and relied on a different document. "There is no reason in the world," said Lincoln in the first Lincoln-Douglas debate at Ottawa, Ill., why the Negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man [and] in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." Lincoln won the popular vote, but lost the election because, in a system created by the Constitution, senators were chosen by the state legislature. And most Illinois legislators favored Douglas. It was, of course, a short-lived triumph. Word spread about Lincoln and, two years later, he defeated Douglas for the presidency. It was an event that led, among other things, to several amendments of the Constitution. Philadelphia Inquirer / 3 April, 1995 Feedback to this piece.
 Mark
E. Dixon
757 Upper Gulph Road
Wayne, PA 19087-2022
USA
610-971-0649
dixon_mark@verizon.net
|
Op-Eds.
Once upon a time, I wrote letters to the
editor. Then, I discovered that opinion-page editors would print (and,
sometimes, even pay) for my opinions -- provided they were timely, only
moderately outrageous and said what they had to say in 800 words or less.
Before I explain why Pennsylvania should abandon its destructive and
demagogic quest to reduce property taxes, let me tell you about my parents.
I used to love
elections. Not for the reasoned discourse of democracy. For the campaign
buttons.
I have a secret: I'm not afraid of terrorism.
Road rage, schmoad rage.
Our census form arrived the other day and – shoot – we got the short one
again. For years, I’ve hoped for the long form, with its nosy, time-consuming
questions about what I do, where I do it and how many toilets I have.
Ever since Bill Clinton admitted to "inappropriate" conduct with
Monica Lewinsky, it has been de rigeur for even his defenders to condemn his
behavior.
Until recently, a boycott of the gay-friendly Walt Disney Co. by conservative
Christians would have made this liberal’s eyeballs roll back. Now, I feel an
odd new respect for the boycotters.
A few weeks ago, I drove out to East Bradford Township, Chester County, to
see the 300-year-old sycamore that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
wants to cut down.
There is a lot to be said for the recent proposal to celebrate
one of America's founding documents with a $170 million museum on Independence
Mall.
Tip:
To break into the opinion pages, write frequently. Familiarity DOES
matter.