One bad apple

One bad apple
Originally uploaded by waɪ.tiː

Last week on This American Life the theme was 'Ruining it for the rest of us...' and what happens when one person's actions or choices affect a lot of other people.

The opening was a study of group dynamics and behavior by a Professor of Management who found that one bad apple could spoil the whole bunch girl; and it's something that I have seen myself as a manager of people. It's so easy to be negative that if someone on your team starts enticing you there you tend to slide right into hell with them.

This business of our choices affecting others is nowhere more evident than the subprime lending crisis. People borrowing money they can't afford to repay affects us all. Our choices aren't made in a vacuum.

Story Corps

Story Corps
Originally uploaded by BinaryLA

I love this program on NPR - Story Corps is an organization that lets ordinary people record stories of their lives. This morning, in a story from Atlanta, the story was a hospital chaplain reflecting upon her retirement. A friend interviews her and asks her about the most significant moments in her ministry. The chaplain's answer moved me.

First she spoke of blessing the hands of hospital workers, not just doctors and nurses but the janitorial staff who clean toilets, the people who do food prep, each of them getting a blessing to carry out their efforts. it struck me how forward thinking and comprehensive her ministry was - to honor the work and labor of each person doing the meanest task.

Then she told of a place in the hospital, in windowless rooms, where surgical technicians assemble the instruments for each surgery. They are given an order with patient's name and all the instruments required for that person's surgery. The chaplain said that as she blessed the hands of a woman technician who was doing this work, the technician told her that she'd been doing the job for 40 years and for all that time, as she assembled the tools for each surgery she prayed for that person by name as she added each instrument.

The chaplain said she found out that many of the technicians did this and she talked of the importance of this work that no one knew about - the families didn't know their loved one was being prayed for, the person having surgery didn't know and the technician would never meet these people or know the outcome of the surgery. But each had this quiet ministry, requiring no reconginition of their work.

It would be easy to look at the job description of one of these surgical techs and to list the requirements and duties of the job. But it's impossible to estimate the value of the creativity and energy someone brings to a job, where it's not required and there is no tangible benefit to the worker to do more and go above what's asked of them.

On The Porch of Charlie

It's so funny how children discern new concepts and the questions they ask reflect that. Wilbur plays around with syntax as he learns the rules of expressing oneself. Lately he keeps asking us what certain things are - conceptually, he's trying to understand it. Like midnight - he asked what time is midnight. But he'll also ask what something is when it just is what it is...

Yesterday, as we got 12 inches of snow between sunrise and sunset, they went out to play at our next-door-neighbor's house. I bundled them up and put a hat on Wilbur under his parka hood. When Wilbur got home I noticed that the hat wasn't on his head and asked him about it. "Oh NO!" he said - "I left it on the porch of Charlie!"

Barack Obama and Rick Warren

I have no fondness for Pastor Warren, but I totally understand this strategy from our future President and I think it's more than a ploy. If you want people to understand your position and have any respect for you at all, you have to bring them into your fold, and it's so obvious that Obama is one of those people who could find some kind of value in sitting down for a beer with almost anyone.

It's the smart move. If democrats and religious progressives like myself ever hope to be understood by the religious right, we have to talk to them. We can't all keep playing this game where when I'm in charge you're shut out and when you're in charge I am.

I am encouraged, like some kind of Libra, that this man keeps his friends close and his enemies closer and that he shows deference and respect for people whose views are very different from his own. We need this kind of dispassionate, reasoned, rational approach. Someone from any part of the spectrum may be the one with the bright idea. It'd be a shame to miss it because of ideology.

Richie, Ralph and Ponzi

What is Ponzi I asked myself? Is it an acronym?

What's interesting to me about this kind of greed is that Bernie Madoff and Ken Lay and the Tyco guy and Ted Stevens ET AL are people who are generally bright and well-educated, completely aware of the thing they are doing and how the ripple will stretch out from the center. It's not like some person embroiled in poverty for a lifetime who steals a TV from WalMart.

I have just been shocked at the unscrupulousness of Americans in general; like people who buy a house they absolutely know they can't afford, or the woman on 60 Minutes the other night in Miami who is a successful acupuncturist but got involved in real estate on the side. Rula Giosmas. The acupuncturist. The real estate speculator. This woman/prototype has brought our financial system to its knees.

This idiot woman bought 6 properties - some of them apartment complexes and multi-family homes - and now has them financed with adjustable rate mortgages which she cannot afford to pay. When asked by Scott Pelley if she'd read the paperwork, if she'd understood that the interest rate was ADJUSTABLE, she looked unblinking back at him and said, I KID YOU NOT, 'I was very busy. ' As if that is some sort of reason or answer. As if we care that she was busy. Or that since she was busy it was clearly incumbent upon someone else to understand her financial wheeling and dealing.

Here's the story:

Asked what she understood about the loans, Giosmas says, "Well, unfortunately, I didn't ask too many questions. I mean in the old days, I would shop around. But because of the frenzy, and I was so busy looking to buy other properties, I didn't really focus on shopping around for mortgage brokers."

"But if you're investing in real estate, you're buying multiple properties, you should be asking a lot of questions," Pelley remarks. "Why didn't you ask?"

"I was busy. I was really busy looking at property all the time, all day long," she replies. She also acknowledges that she didn't read the paperwork. Now she’s losing money on every property.

I want homeowners to get help and Main Street to get help, but this kind of stupidity should experience the Darwinian result of its actions.

Here's what wikipedia says about Ponzi Schemes:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high returns to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from the profit from any real business. It is named after Charles Ponzi.[1] The term "Ponzi scheme" is used primarily in the United States, while other English-speaking countries do not distinguish verbally between this scheme and other forms of pyramid scheme.[2]
The scheme usually offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice new investors. The perpetuation of the high returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises (and pays) requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.
The system is destined to collapse because there are little or no underlying earnings from the money received by the promoter. However, the scheme is often interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses, because a Ponzi scheme is suspected and/or because the promoter is selling unregistered securities. As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities
increases.
The scheme is named after Charles Ponzi, who became notorious for using the technique after emigrating from Italy to the United States in 1903. Ponzi was not the first to invent such a scheme, but his operation took in so much money that it was the first to become known throughout the United States. His original scheme was in theory based on arbitraging international reply coupons for postage stamps, but soon diverted later investors' money to support payments to earlier investors and Ponzi's personal wealth. Today's schemes are often considerably more sophisticated than Ponzi's, although the underlying formula is quite similar and the principle behind every Ponzi scheme is to exploit investor naïveté. However, it has been shown that entering a Ponzi scheme can be rational even at the last round of the scheme if a government will likely bail out those participating in the Ponzi scheme.[3]

nunchuck and weremote

Yesterday the boys were going upstairs to play the wii and since we only have one nunchuck at the moment (I know, we are getting another one for Christmas, who knew so many games required the remote and nunchuck?)... since we only have one nunchuck Emery said, "I call nunchuck!" and Wilbur said, "I call weremote!"

D and I laughed with each other about this. First of all, it's so funny that the little 0ne calls the thing that's left. But even funnier is how Wilbur has always called the REmote the WEREmote. Like Werewolf but Weremote. I don't know how this is because he pronounces other words with RE just fine.

It's one of those things that I hope never goes away, even though I know it will.

A Triumph!

We saw Emery's first acting efforts tonight in front of a full house and it was glorious! He was so wonderful, natural, beautiful to watch! I don't want him to be an actor, but I loved seeing him up there; he was confident and self-assured and when he had the briefest glimmer of uncertainty in the first moments he was out there he just breathed a deep breath and found his place and blew on by.

We don't act anymore, Doug and me... But we certainly benefit from our experience and we know Emery will, too. It's a skill, to stand up in front of a crowd and play a part - whether speaking on some subject or being a character. Tonight he was the narrator - sort of a master of ceremonies - and he played it to the hilt. And we were so proud.

What if there were no hell?

What if Jesus died for everyone, really? Like he really did and no matter what you did or said or what religion you were or where you were born or how you were raised? What if? What would church mean if he just died for everyone? If he just died for everyone. period. What if that was his gift and he gave it - he didn't expect anything in return. A true gift.

What if Jesus said, "I am a way, a truth and a life?" What if Jesus said things that were transcribed in a slightly different way than the way he actually said them? What if we asked questions about how the bible became the bible? Who picked what's in there? What did they leave out? What could happen?

What if Jesus is a savior, a prophet, a messiah? Does he have to be the only one? Does he have to be the only way? What if he weren't? What if his message of love and inclusion is for you, whether you believe it or not? What does that mean to people who believe? Is that a threat? Why?

What if we have a creator who loves his creation? What if we are the collective creators and the creation? What if we can't really understand what that all means? Is it worth killing for, When we may not really understand it?

What does it mean to believe without fear? What would it mean to just have faith for today and nothing else happens - no hell, no heaven? Or what if heaven is a sleeping child in the crook of his parents' arms? What if it's just peace? Would that be ok?

What if Jesus doesn't need your belief? What if he just gave a gift and he doesn't need something back? What if we all get to be one with creation in death? What could that mean? What if all the things that matter now fell away? Deeds, misdeeds, loves, failures, crimes great and small? Is that bad?

Capital Disgrace

At the Death House Door - Fresh Air
Originally uploaded by WhipTheDo

I don't think of myself as an activist with regard to capital punishment and the failure of the death penalty as either a deterrent or as a just solution, but whenever I hear any story of any death row inmate - no matter how guilty, no matter the circumstance, I start to feel like an activist.

I watched the documentary At The Death House Door on Saturday (on IFC) and I kept thinking 'this is a Good Friday drama'. The death row inmate, Carlos de Luna, is proclaimed innocent by an overwhelming number of people and yet he's dead, killed by the State of Texas. And it didn't go well. It took 11 minutes.

The man at the center of the documentary though is Carol Pickett, whose death house ministry has turned him into an activist, although he's uncomfortable with that word. He crusades all over Texas against the death penalty.

I want to take this story and use it for Good Friday and Easter. That idea hit me right between the eyes when de Luna asked to call Carol Pickett Daddy. It just jumped out at me - Abba, Father...

Emery On Stage

Emery's first dramatic performance will be this coming Wednesday with Woodinville Montessori School's Christmas Caper. Emery has a near photographic memory, so if he'll read through his lines a few times he'll have it, and with some basic maintenance he can have it down cold. The thing is, IF he'll read through it and do the basic maintenance.

It's funny that when I was acting the most pesky question was, "how do you learn all those lines?" because it seemed like the least of the work and here you'd just sweated it out all over the stage and someone asked you about memorization. It'd be like watching a mechanical genius rebuild an automobile engine and then asking him or her, "How did you slide under the car?"

But, having said that, I realized when Emery joined the drama club and came home with his first script, memorization was going to be the biggest hurdle. All of a sudden I wanted to ask him, "How are you going to memorize all these lines?" Because there were a lot of them - big long speeches... And I had no concept of the rehearsal strategies or methodology. So, we've gone over and over the lines; trying to have him slow down to a pace where human ears can hear what he's saying and he doesn't sound like an announcer on a car commercial. We've tried to give him pointers without telling him how to do it or making him frustrated or, God Forbid, giving him a line reading. We've said things like, "you're going to be nervous at the performance so you really want to have this down cold." And, "you know, if you go up during the show you'll have to SAY something - you can't call for line."

I realize he doesn't really know what we're talking about. He's never done this so he can't imagine how naked and vulnerable it feels 2 minutes before the show starts, or how you question all the work you've done and think thinks like, 'what in the world have we been doing for the past 6 weeks - I don't remember anything! Have we even rehearsed?' So we just keep urging him on, and looking forward to seeing him up there. We know he'll understand it all very soon.

You Can't Take It With You

David Sedaris!
Originally uploaded by Aaron_M

I'm sure it's just because I'm reading Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, but... We saw Seattle Rep's production of YCTIWY last night and the Vanderhof/Sycamore family had resonances to me with my visions of the Sedaris family.

I don't mean to say that David Sedaris sees his family the way Alice sees hers, but they are so eccentric and funny.

It was a lovely production and so timely, what with the state of the world the way it is.

Happy Birthday Granny

Today would have been Granny's 93rd birthday. Doug and I were talking about this last night and saying it was still hard to imagine that she is gone.

I hear her every now and then and I talk to her too. Just like I talk to Daddy. I was watching an old Andy Williams Christmas special on PBS the other night and he got choked up about still missing his parents, even though now he is a very old man. Time changes the pain and lessens it, but it also makes me sad to be less sad. I don't want to keep losing the people I've lost. I don't want to lose my memories of them or the sharpness of their image in my mind. So feeling better is a different kind of grief.

out of the habit

I haven't been journaling/blogging for a few days and I find I'm a bit out of the habit. Our Thanksgiving was lovely - Leigh & Alex and Gabrielle and Charles Henry came and stayed the night. Erick and his girlfriend Amber came (and Erick did a lot of the cooking). Tyler came and brought Green Bean Casserole. It was a great time and everything was delicious. It made a huge difference having Erick there to do most of the cooking. I did all my stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday (cranberry sauce, cheesecake, cornbread and dry ingredients for dressing, fruit salad, brining) and he was really on the spot Thursday (he made brussel sprouts with pancetta, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, a lovely salad and a fabulous banana/butterscotch dessert).

It is always so nice to see my nephews, and it just makes me even more excited for Christmas!