Elizabeth the Great

As I walked towards the schoolyard, I heard the crowd yelling.
“Go home! You do not belong here,” one woman yelled. The other
said with a furious face, “Do you want to get lynched? Burned?”

They told us to go home and get out of here, or get lynched. They
saw me and started chasing me. There was no room for me to
escape. I was surrounded. I was hit on the head by several
bottles and even rocks. I was so terrified I can’t talk. My
lips just froze and my eyes set to look straightforward. I was
unable to cry, unable to scream, and I regret my decision to
go to school. Never before I felt fear at this level.

Suddenly out of the blue, a nice old white woman came out
of the crowd. She held my hand and calms me down, whispering.
“Its okay darling, don’t be afraid. Lets try to walk towards the bus
stop right by the soccer field, and I’ll bring you home”

I skipped school for days.
I was traumatized and haunted by nightmares. ...
One day, an agent from the US marshal came to my house.  ...
They took me to school in their black cars, followed by several
 military jeeps with canons on the roof. For once, I felt safe.
 I was sure I’m going to school from that day onwards.

Elizabeth was met by an angry mob on her way to school.  It was 58 years ago today in 1957. Elizabeth Eckford was just 15 years old. 

Our Supreme Court had ruled that segregation was unconstitutional, but it was not a popular decision in southern states.  Elizabeth Eckford and eight other teenagers were the Little Rock Nine. They were to be the first black students to attend Little Rock Central High School after the court ruling.  Vicious opponents gathered at the school to challenge them and their decision.

The plan was for the nine students to enter the school together, but the meeting place was changed the night before and Eckford didn't get word of the change.  She arrived alone and was met by 400 angry white folks shouting threats and insults.  

The governor, Orval Faubus whom some of us remember with chagrin, had deployed the Arkansas National Guard around the school to keep the black students out.

Faced with armed soldiers and threats from the crowd, Eckford ran from the school grounds in tears.   So much for day one.

The city's Mayor, Woodrow Wilson Mann, asked President Eisenhower for federal troops to step in.  Eisenhower sent the Army 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock and took command of the Arkansas National Guard.  With the governor stymied for the moment, the Little Rock Nine started school at the end of September. Soldiers were deployed at the school for the entire year, yet many of the students were abused, including Eckford who at one point was pushed down the stairs.

Governor Faubus continued to fight integration.  The following year, he ordered Little Rock’s four high schools closed rather than allow it to continue. As a result, Eckford did not graduate from Central High but took correspondence courses to complete her requirements. She went on to college and received a BA in history from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio.

At just fifteen years old, Elizabeth and the others did their part to change things.  They did what was right, it had a price tag, and it wasn't over quickly.  Being the target of hate and malicious intent is devastating, and more so when you're a child and you're aggressively attacked by adults.  With extraordinary courage rarely seen at any age, young Elizabeth did her part for what was right.

On my short list of heroes, Elizabeth Eckford.

Also on the short list, Ruby and her family.

Three years later, Ruby Bridges fought the same battle in New Orleans.  Ruby’s family made the decision to stand up for their rights and enrolled Ruby into the first grade at an all white school. She would be the only black child there.  

Ruby arrived for her first day of school in the escort of four U.S federal marshals and to a threatening crowd of angry parents and teenagers. Ruby remembers thinking the crowd must have been for Mardi Gras. Furious parents took their children out of school claiming that they would not return until Ruby had left. It was a promise they kept. For that academic year, the school taught only five students, Ruby and four white kids.  Ruby was only 6 years old.

Imagine, if you will, the effect of such prejudice on both black and white children.   What might be happening in the mind of one of those little first graders whose parents, spewing their ignorance and bigotry, snatched them out of school.

Apparently, not every battle is for old warriors.

Today, economic inequality and unaddressed system failures are returning America's schools to virtually the same segregation we fought so hard to change.  Should the issue again be a priority?  Is the same courage still required?

Life, Abortion, and Conscience

How does one face the issues objectively?

• 2014: Half of pregnancies among American
women are unintended, and four in 10 of 
these are terminated by abortion.[1]

• The U.S. unintended pregnancy rate is
 significantly higher than the
 rate in many developed
 countries.[2]

• The reasons women give for choosing abortion 
underscore their understanding of the responsibilities
of parenting and family life. Three-fourths cite concern for
or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they
cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby
would interfere with work, school or the ability to care
for dependents; half say they do not want to be a
single parent or are having problems with their
 husband or partner.[3]

An unplanned pregnancy is not a minor event.  It's a life changer. Choices available can challenge both our conscience and our ability to walk them through.

In the news, we see the industry that removes a developed fetus and disassembles it for the sale of individual organs and tissue samples.

Planned Parenthood explains on their website, "...you may also need a shot through your abdomen to make sure that the fetus's heart stops before the procedure begins."  See more here.

Ultrasound technology now gives us a better view of the unborn child, and the visual impact is significant.

So where can we find an objective position that's consistent with conscience?

In a perfect world perhaps, every unintended pregnancy would be prevented. The world isn't perfect, though, and hundreds of thousands every year have to face the reality.  Is abortion a choice I can make in good conscience?

• What about when birth control failed?
• What about a forced or coerced impregnation?
• What about a problem that threatens the mother's health or life?
• What about an underaged victim?
• What about a life that is totally unprepared for a child?
• What about a single mom who just can't afford another child?
• Is it different if the baby has a significant health problem?
• Is it different if pregnancy is just a few days or weeks along?
• Is there a difference between the first weeks and the last weeks of a pregnancy?

The difficult choice is often faced by women and girls who've perhaps had little opportunity to see life beyond their microcosm, who've been coached by equally uninformed friends, or who only have access to a way out rather than a way forward.

• Medication abortion accounted 36% of abortions

 before nine weeks’ gestation, in 2011.[5]

Far be it from me to judge the conscience or decision of another. Often, I suspect, they're hard-pressed by difficult circumstances with no good options in sight.  That's their reality.  Some have alternatives for real help like CareNet in southern Maryland.

Planned Parenthood, however, is a separate issue.  As a corporate entity, they've taken the position that abortion is the solution.  It accounts for about half of their clinic income, not the 3% they claim. Their business model preferentially provides termination for their pregnant client with virtually no attention to healthy alternatives that exist.  The organization is openly hostile to those who would offer help that didn't include abortion as the preferred end.

Recent news shows PP staff and management as they deal with the business of abortion and disposal of the remains. Publically, they discuss 'fetal tissue', but the reality is troubling if you look further. There is in fact a market for hearts, lungs, brains, various glands and tissue from well developed fetuses,  We call them fetuses because it would be troublesome if we called them children.

A six-week embryo

At what point is that transition identifiable? From fetus to child; ovum and sperm, fertilized ovum, embryo, implantation in the womb, first movement, and later, viability.  At some point, we have a child in the equation.

Amelia was born at 23 weeks

and a few days.  Her twin brother

was born 10 days later.  PPHood 

would routinely abort such a child

and sell her remains.

The result of the political and ideological battle is that our culture now allows the termination of pregnancy as a convenience for any reason.  The argument for choice is largely based on misrepresentation of both the act and the meaning.   It's rather large and divisive.

The questions continue.

Trickle Up

In past centuries, we called it 'divine right'.  Today, it's 'trickle down', the obvious rightness of the rich living at the top of the nation's immense economy and at the expense of a workforce that gets the leftovers.

Equal opportunity suggests that anyone can rise on their own efforts. We have so many stories of folks who began with a good idea and hard work, and made their way to success.  Supposedly, anybody can do it in America, the land of opportunity.  That's not today's reality.

The capitalist process of competition and a free market may actually shed a portion of the population from the bottom of the model.  Those who miss out on education and a safe childhood are the usual victims.  That isn't the path they would have chosen.

Poverty is not a choice.  No one chooses to be poor, to be unable to feed their children or to afford a home in a safe neighborhood.  No one chooses for their children to grow up with crime and drugs and violence on the street where they live.  It's done to them by a series of social structures and mechanisms.

Escape from poverty for you and your family  requires an opportunity context.  There has to be a place, schools, employment, adequate income for living, and a safe community for your kids.  The notable individuals who've made it out of poverty and achieved significant success had help along the way.  Without help, there's little chance of success for anyone.

Here's the challenge for Republicans and Democrats alike.  

The poverty numbers are not the measure of our health.  
The relevant metric is economic inequality.
The GAP between rich and poor has widened in recent decades, and it continues to do so.

All but the top 20% have lost ground, and the bottom 60% has effectively been left behind.

Consider the impact that might have on most of the population.

----------

Trickle Up!  Among the more grotesque examples of what actually happens is the Walton family.

Mom and Dad Walton did well with putting Walmart on the map.  They built the company, enjoyed the success of their efforts, and gave about $5B to charitable work.

The second generation Walton heirs, worth about $148B, have given 0.04% of their income to charity.  When compared to Buffet and Gates (who've given 27% and 36%, respectively, according to Forbes), the Waltons are oddly ... stingy, selfish, what?

The heirs own about 50% of the corporation and will receive about $3.21B in dividends this year, yet their employees are rather poorly treated.  A single mom working at Walmart is likely to be below the national poverty level and eligible for food stamps.

Since Walmart and the Waltons have refused to budge on wages, you and I pick up the tab.  Our taxes subsidize Walmart's operating expenses.  Walmart has been under scrutiny lately for costing taxpayers $6+ billion a year in social assistance because of low wages and the artificially limited hours they give employees.

“A single Walmart Supercenter costs area taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year," according to The Americans for Tax Fairness. (That's $3000 to $5,800 on average for each of 300 workers).”  

Most Walmart workers can only dream of making $25,000 in a year. Meanwhile, the Waltons get $25,000 per minute from their Walmart dividends.

That's how trickle-up works.  Corporations and the top level wealthy individuals extract extraordinary wealth from both their employees and their community.  The gap widens, mobility decreases, poverty and crime increase along with social unrest.  It has happened before.

The U.S. economy is one of the most unequal in the developed world.  Do your own inquiry, then perhaps make sure your representatives are aware of your concern.

Great Questions

Curious where your life is headed?  Or why?

The right question might provide a clue.

1. When it’s all said and done, will I have said more than I’ve done? (Ouch!)
2. What is the one thing I’d most like to change about the world?
3. To what degree have I actually controlled the course my life has taken?
4. Five years from now, will I remember what I did yesterday?  Or the day before that?

Imagine a person trying to use a straw hat as a cooking pot.  Now imagine a person using up years of their life before finding its purpose.  Perhaps until we know what our lives are for, we are like that hat on the fire.  We can use up our days without any particular purpose.  Just passing the time.

It's easy to shrug off the idea of purpose and say that life is just natural, that the survival rules are all there is, and there's no real purpose beyond that.

If that were true, though, much would remain without explanation.  Great music, grand art, noble service, and unselfish love, all have nothing to do with survival.  They are inexplicable from that starting point.  If the 'natural' model is true, such things are insanity, dysfunctional behaviors.

Imagine the whole of humanity as a consistent model of natural selection.  Famous competitors for survival like Hitler and Stalin are understandable, striving for power, for the top rung at the expense of others.  History's great industrialists are similarly appropriate in that category, pursuing wealth and advantage much like today's financial industry moguls.  And winning is everything.  Parents raising their children are a nicer illustration, of course.

Supply, demand, food, arable land, energy, clean water, politics, and growing inequality all illustrate and confirm the natural competitive processes.

My atheist friends are big on 'life

without purpose'.  It's been an

interesting discussion over

the years.

But then there are those who just don't fit.  The ones who care for the poor, who feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, the ones who share what they have so that others might have hope.  In the evolutionary model of competition, there's no explanation for such behavior.  Caring for the oppressed and disadvantaged is the opposite of what the model allows.  The ones who fall ill or into poverty, they aren't among the 'fittest' who should survive, at least according to the science.

Philosophers who conjecture about free will provide the most convoluted reasons for why someone would unselfishly care about another or if it were even possible. They struggle with such things much like the natural science purists.  For them all, it appears, one cannot give unselfishly, give from a good heart, or genuinely care for the good of another outside the context of survival, self-benefit, and self-perpetuation.

To suggest that life has no meaning beyond the natural goes against the evidence we see around us daily and in ourselves as well.  So much of what we admire and strive for is 'unnatural', if you will.  It reaches beyond 'natural' to ... what?  A higher truth, a spiritual realm beyond just surviving?  Of course.

Fuji at night with lights

Ever notice that the most significant times in life, the ones that last in our memories, are found in healthy relationship to others?  Making a  difference, being a helpful contributor to the life of another is the most fun anyone can have.  It ranks above wealth or physical accomplishments like skydiving or climbing Mt. Fuji.  (Ask M; she's done that.)  And when examined, it is decidedly not 'natural'.

“The marketplace is full of materials designed to meet every circumstance in life.  Except the spiritual.  But, ironically enough, it's the spiritual ones that pursue us even when we don't pursue them.  It's the spiritual ones that plague us for answers even in the midst of plenty.  The fact is that people are far more interested in the great questions of life than they are in the small ones about making a living." ~ Joan Chittister

If it was easy...

It's not easy, but these are common human values.  Across cultural and ethnic lines, these are recognized and affirmed.

Equally common are selfishness, greed, envy, arrogance, and immorality.  The noble exist alongside the baser ways, all in the mind of each individual.

A friend lamenting her way through psychology 101 gives us the following summary ...

Social Cognitive Theory - applied to the behavior of enjoying tomatoes

• Observational Learning - I see people enjoy tomatoes
• Reproduction - I can eat them and if I do I can eat something else
• Self-efficacy - I will try them more often
• Emotional coping - Chanting the mantra "positive thoughts" while eating tomatoes
• Self-regulatory capability - I can choose to eat the tomatoes or I can choose not to.
• Cognitive Dissonance -- Although I want to eat tomatoes because I know they are good for me, SCREW TOMATOES!

Perhaps we live with a continual cognitive dissonance like she describes, that internal conflict of good vs. not-so-good in our own thinking. It sure seems that way.

Walking along the good path is a choice, but more accurately, it's perhaps continual choices, a prolonged war, and no one wins every engagement.

The 'good news', however; there is indeed a path.
A sense of humor helps, I suspect, when it comes to things like tomatoes and whatever.  Those of us who eat tomatoes are probably better people.

No tears in Zimbabwe for Cecil

The death of Cecil the lion has been covered from perhaps every angle except the one that matters most.  
How do the locals feel about lions?

Goodwell Nzou tells us, "In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.

When I was 9 years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside. My sisters no longer went alone to the river to collect water or wash dishes; my mother waited for my father and older brothers, armed with machetes, axes and spears, to escort her into the bush to collect firewood.

A week later, my mother gathered me with nine of my siblings to explain that her uncle had been attacked but escaped with nothing more than an injured leg.  The lion sucked the life out of the village.  No one socialized by fires at night, no one dared stroll over to a neighbor’s homestead.

When the lion was finally killed, no one cared whether its murderer was a local person or a white trophy hunter, whether it was poached or killed legally.  We danced and sang about the vanquishing of the fearsome beast and our escape from serious harm.
...
We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.

Don’t tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States.  Don’t bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into concrete jungles.

And please, don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger."

~Goodwell Nzou is a doctoral student in molecular and cellular biosciences at Wake Forest University.

The BBC's Farai Sevenzo reports: "The lion's death has not registered much with the locals"

Perhaps Goodwell Nzou and others with such relevant insight should be the ones interviewed by CNN and the rest of the media.

Zimbabwe is a volatile environment fraught with corruption, oppression, and abuse of human rights.
The economy is in free fall. In the two years before September 2015, no less than 650 000 workers have lost their jobs.  In the same period, about 9 000 companies have either collapsed or gone into voluntary liquidation, and at least nine financial institutions have closed. The government will have to import at least 800 000 metric tonnes of maize within the next few months if Zimbabwe is to avert the impending humanitarian catastrophe; particularly in the southern provinces.  Cecil and the protestors are the only reference to Zimbabwe in the major U.S. media recently.