Who gets to eat out?

I don’t especially want to have dinner with Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You know, be at the same table in a restaurant. She strongly supports political policies with which I disagree. Her ejection from a restaurant in Virginia last weekend, however, is way beyond acceptable norms of behavior. Is her ejection a barometer of the wave of populism that is changing American culture?

Mrs. Sanders is the Press Secretary for the Trump administration. We see her on television almost daily, reporting on the events at the White House, explaining the president’s policies and sometimes trying to explain the president himself or his tweets. It’s a difficult job that requires her to varnish the truth from time to time. Everyone knows it and goes along with the game. It’s too bad that press secretaries have to do that. She directs most of her pronouncements at the 30 percent of the population that form the Trump base of voters. I disagree with most of the things that energize them. But, that’s not the point!

Mrs. Sanders, accompanied by her husband and friends went to a small restaurant for dinner last weekend. The Red Hen has about 12 tables. When the wait-staff noticed that Mrs. Sanders was in the room, they, totally flummoxed, called the owner at home, to see what they should do about it. The owner came to her restaurant, asked Mrs. Sanders to go to the patio where they could talk privately. She asked Mrs. Sanders to leave. The restaurant owner did not want to serve anyone who worked for Trump. The rest of the dinner party left with her. The firestorm on social media was quick and ferocious, with about equal numbers of supporters and detractors.

Mrs. Sanders should not have been asked to leave. We must ask ourselves what has become of our country. Politics, always a blood sport, operated within certain rules of behavior. It is not acceptable to refuse service to someone because of who employs them. Disagree with their politics all you want, but they have the right to go out to dinner, expect a degree of privacy and expect good service. Regrettably, the owner of the restaurant did not extend that courtesy to Mrs. Sanders, and we, as a nation, are the worse for it.

The political divide in the country is severe; people no longer understand the idea of freedom of speech, expression, religion, or politics. Our values demand that we respect other people’s opinions, politics, or religion. Our ethos tells us not to discriminate against people for who they are, what they believe, or whom they worship. Yet, the nation is split down the middle on these core values.  People won’t invite members of the opposite party into their homes, associate with them socially, or eat dinner in a restaurant with them.

We have seen balkanization too often in our history and the rest of the world. It never turns out ok. It leads to populism, and that never turns out ok. The issues that divide the nation are so great that few have real ideas for fixing them. We might start by letting families go to the restaurant of their choice. We might start by trying to be nicer to our fellow citizens. We might start by being more polite to those with whom we disagree politically. We might try staying calm.

Will Durant summarized one of Aristotle’s famous works this way: “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.” Isn’t it time for us to be, repeatedly, a tolerant people, not a divisive people, to be a people willing, repeatedly, to consider other points of view, to be a people repeatedly willing to let even our political opposites enjoy an evening meal with friends?  

What will you tell your grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

We are a nation of immigrants, yet too many of us are anti-immigration. Once our ancestors settled in and the third generation became the norm, many of us discourage others from coming.

People immigrated to the US because of intolerable situations in their homelands: religious persecutions in England, famine in Ireland, the extermination of Jews in Germany, oppression in Russia, civil unrest in Central America, lack of living wages in Mexico, or killing rampages after the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands of people came through Ellis Island in the East, and Angel Island in the West. They came for a better life for their families or simple survival. My ancestors came from France, Ireland, and Hungary.

Once here, all was never as expected. Those who were already here feared the loss of jobs, they feared possible changes in norms and culture, and they feared fear itself. Irish-need-not –apply signs were prominently placed on factory walls and store windows. The KKK burned crosses on church lawns. Racial segregation was enforced. National and ethnic segregation was the norm in much of the country. We beckoned people to come and then treated them in unwelcoming ways.

The nation’s immigration policies of the last three or four decades resulted in millions of people coming into the country illegally. Some, in fact many, have lived in the US for over ten years; they got jobs, bought homes, educated their kids in public schools, and sent them to college. The parents are illegal but most of the kids are citizens or dream of citizenship in the only country they know.

Our history has its warts, to be sure. From the early days, starting with Jefferson, our national belief in Manifest Destiny was our excuse for taking over large swaths of the continent, starting with the Louisiana Purchase, going to war with Mexico to gain control of California and the Southwest, and attempts to annex large parts of the Oregon Territory claimed by the English. President Polk, in 1844, ran on a ticket of “54/40 or fight.” Our history is replete with government actions to displace people from their lands. We cannot be proud of how we treated Native Americans, many religious groups, and minorities in general. We have had several periods in our history when immigration was discouraged when immigrants were abused, and when we treated people badly. Today we are witnessing a new level of disdain with which we are not comfortable.

Our current government administration is enforcing a zero tolerance level of immigration that we have not seen in modern times. They do it arbitrarily and without compassion. Our government does not distinguish between refugees seeking asylum and those just crossing the border for personal advantage. All are treated as criminals. Instead of caring for families until their cases are adjudicated, children are yanked from their parents and then sent to detention facilities. Thousands of children, even babies who were breastfeeding, are sent to warehouse facilities run by Homeland Security. Even in our dark days when we sent Japanese citizens to internment camps in WWII, we did not separate children from their parents.

News organizations publish pictures of thousands of children incarcerated in chain-link fence cages, pictures of others sent to the heat of Arizona to live in tents, pictures of kids living on energy bars, and pictures of toddlers bewildered by their situation. We see pictures of small children in diapers in those cages with other children too young to care for them. Even with all the published pictures and the anecdotal stories that grow every day, the Director of Homeland Security denies the existence of a policy of family separation. The president says it’s a law created by the opposition party, denies the Department of Justice’s policy of zero tolerance; both are lies.

Is this the nation we want to be? Is this the nation we have become? The outrage is growing. People of principle are outraged. Religious leaders of all faiths are outraged. Former First Ladies are outraged. The general population is outraged. The United Nations Human Rights Council has decried our outrageous policies as inhumane.

Newspaper articles tell riveting stories of mothers deported without their children, of parents arrested while mowing the lawn in front of their homes, of children sent back to countries they do not know or to which they no longer have any connections.

Countries have a right and a duty to protect their borders, but they must do it humanely. Our country and its leadership, the executive branch and the legislative branch are shameful in their pursuit of these family-separation policies. It is time to stop this inhumane treatment of people. It is time to raise the cry for change. It may be a time to take to the streets in protest. We are sickened by the behavior of our government, and by the election fears of Congress who are complicit in these inhuman actions.

What will we tell our grandchildren and great-grandchildren that we did while our country tore children from their mothers and put them in concentration camps?

Startling Primary Results

California will have a Democrat and a Republican running for Governor in the general election in November. Can you believe that? What is the big deal, you ask?

If you do not live in California, you may not understand our surprise. Pundits and talking heads had predicted we would have two Democrats running against each other in the race for Governor. Remember, this is California. We do things a little differently.

In our primaries, all candidates for each office are on the same ballot, regardless of party affiliation. Correct! There isn’t a separate ballot for Republican candidates and another ballot for Democratic candidates. All the candidates are on the same ballot. The top two winners go at each other in November, regardless of party. Go figure.

The race for governor will feature Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and John Cox, a Republican. The race for Lieutenant Governor will be between two Democrats. In the race for US Senator, Feinstein, an 84-year-old Democrat garnered 1.7 million votes, and Kevin De Leon, a 51-year-old Democrat received 441 thousand votes. All the Republicans running for the Senate seat received fewer votes so they won’t be on the ballot in November. (Shades of Reagan’s debate with Mondale: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.") The six Republican Candidates split 1.1 million votes. One wonders if the results would be different if the GOP had united behind one candidate.

There are 53 congressional districts in the state, most represented by Democrats. An independent commission was established a number of years ago to design the congressional districts. It reduces the influence of one party over the other and avoids the gerrymandering that results when the legislatures design the districts. They do a pretty good job. Democrats polled well in most of the heavy Republican congressional districts. Republicans did well enough to get on the ballot in most heavy Democratic districts. This resulted in candidates from two parties in most district elections in November. Go figure.

Several counties in California use a vote-by-mail only system for this primary. Sacramento County, as an example, is reporting a 40% voter turnout, a historic high for a mid-term election in the last few decades. If these numbers hold, it bodes well for the turnout in the 2020 elections when the whole state will vote by mail.

I like the new vote-by-mail system and I like the top-two system for primaries. I do not know, yet, if either is better than the old systems, but they are more convenient and will change campaign dynamics in the years to come.

If most people are voting by mail, the campaign is really over a few weeks before Election Day. If that discourages candidates from mailing tons of printed material or reduces the number of TV ads, that would really be plus for the trees and us.

The Vote-By-Mail Primary

Tomorrow, June 5, 2018, is the last day to submit a ballot for the California primaries. I voted on May 15, 2018. I filled in the circles on the ballots, I inserted the ballots into pink envelopes, I sealed the envelopes, and then I signed the envelopes. I dropped it off at City Hall on May 16, 2018. Done!

I haven’t voted at a polling place in years, but this time was different. Every registered voter in our county, about 740,000 of us, received their ballots in the mail last month. We will all vote by mail in future elections as well. This may seem strange to folks in some states that seem to limit voter registration and voting itself.

The governor signed a bill in 2016 that allows 14 counties to hold mail-only elections in 2018. The rest of the counties will follow in 2020. It makes sense. By 2016, over 51% of voters in California voted by mail anyway. Conducting elections is expensive. It requires large staffs at each of the hundreds of voter precincts in each county. Vote-by-mail only requires 53 drop-off points in Sacramento County. If one feels the need, a few voting centers opened for a few days ago, where one can actually vote in person.

We used to stand in line to vote. The clerk checked off our names, verified our address, and we signed our name next to our printed name in the Registrar’s book. Then we went to a booth to fill out the ballot. We put the completed ballot in a locked box with the slit in the top. We stood in line, we did our civic duty, and we felt good about it.  

I remember voting on a large mechanical voting machine a few times that let you push one lever to cast all your votes for one party. They called it voting the party line. Does the party mean all that much anymore? The local paper just reported that there are more people in California registered as no party preference than there are registered Republicans. The county estimates that the vote-by-mail system will save about four million dollars for this primary alone, about nine dollars per registered voter. The whole idea is to make voting easier, make it more convenient, and to encourage more people to vote. We have come a long way.

When I cast my first vote, I was required to have paid my poll tax, a levy on every citizen of the state who was over 21 years old. I think it was $10 or $12, but still … In the South, the poll tax was a way to keep non-whites from voting.  The courts ruled it unconstitutional a couple of years later. 

Voting is still a state function. If you are an 18-year-old US citizen, you should be able to register to vote with no barriers to the process. If you have an address in the county and state in which you want to vote, you should be able to register to vote with no barriers. If you are a registered voter and have a government-issued photo ID, you should be able to vote with no barriers. Proclamations that requiring a government photo ID to register to vote, or to actually vote, is a deterrent to actually registering or voting is pure tommyrot.

The least we should require at the voting station is an ID to match the registration. Some say the poor cannot afford an ID. If they don’t have an ID, they can’t sign up for Social Security benefits, food stamps, they can't drive or open a bank account; why not to vote. Getting an acceptable ID is pretty easy and cheap and in many states, free.

Registering to vote should be easy. In our state and some others, you are automatically registered to vote when you apply for a driver’s license or state ID, (you can decline if you want) or you can register online. In fact, in California, you can register in any of ten languages.[i] People in many parts of the country may find that odd, but in Florida, you can register in Creole.[ii] In California, about 800,000 people speak Tagalog as a first language at home, more than the population of some states. Nearly 100,000 people speak Khmer at home. In some parts of the state, over 70% of the people speak Spanish. In LA there are 244 recognized languages used on the streets every day. I’m a bit torn about this. I think people should vote in English.

To become a US citizen, a person must sit through an interview and take a civics test in English, unless they have been in the country for a long time and are over 55 years of age. I don’t think 55 years old is very old, anymore! Generally, registration forms and ballots are printed in English in most states.

I find it a bit disconcerting that in California, the home of modern technology, we can’t vote on our phones, tablets, or computers. Then again, the Russians might like that. Just maybe a vote-by-mail paper ballot, in a sealed pink envelope, is the way to go.

I like the vote-by-mail system. You can read about the candidate’s biography if he or she paid to have it included. You don’t need a “sample ballot” to take into the voting booth with you because you can’t remember for whom you wanted to vote. You can discuss proposition pros and cons before you vote. Mostly I like it because it is easy, it lets me vote when I want to and Mr. Putin will never know which circle I filled in.

Tomorrow we will know who won the primaries, and that’s another story!

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[i] English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese,

[ii] Miamidadecounty.gov

What's Love Got To Do With It?

OK, I admit it! I recorded the Harry and Meghan wedding and watched it later in the day. All the women in the family were at a lets-watch-the-rerun-of-the-wedding brunch. It too was very formal. Everyone in sweats, flowery hats, and flutes filled with bubbly. I was home alone, so why not get in on the social event of the year.

The Brits know how to do pageantry like no one else; no red carpet for them. The swells walked down the middle of the road from the castle to the chapel, the better to be seen. There’s Fergie. There are George and Amal. There is Prince Harry with his future-king brother. Is that Elton John? The Queen and Phillip rode to the chapel; they are in their 90s after all.

Like all major events of this type, we knew what to expect. We’ve seen it before. Pomp and circumstance, bishops in bejeweled copes and miters, trumpet fanfares for the Queen, organs bellowing Bach and Faure with a little Mozart mixed in for good measure. The men donned morning suits and the women wore Givenchy, Armani, and Alexander McQueen frocks with plumed fascinators atop their heads. If we’ve seen one royal wedding, we’ve seen them all. Until . . . !

A descendant of slaves and sharecroppers, Chicago born, Buffalo raised, a graduate of Hobart College, Yale Divinity School, and Wake Forest, the Primate and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US rose to say a few words about love to the bride and groom, and he lit up the world. “Two young people fell in love, and we all showed up.”[i]

I’ve spent a lot of time in churches over the years, but I’ve heard very few sermons, homilies, exhortations, that really got my attention, made me sit up straight, pay attention, listen to the nuance, feel the cadence, or shout “Amen.” Bishop Curry’s plea for love in the world was a spellbinder, one for the ages, historic!

Remember Tina Turner’s question – What’s love got to do with it?[ii]  Michael Curry took us on a fifteen-minute journey that answered that question, with a passion seldom heard,  seen, or felt in staid, traditional worship spaces, or denominations more accustomed to the classic, the ritual, and the quiet.

Bishop Curry lifted up Martin Luther King Jr.; ‘We must discover the power of love. And when we do that, we will make this old world a new world.” He lifted up Scripture; “Love your neighbor as yourself” and think of the difference that would make in the world. People listened. “Love God, love your neighbors and while you’re at it, love yourself” and think of how that would change the world.

He asked us to imagine, “Think and imagine a world where love is the way, imagine homes and families where love is the way, imagine neighborhoods and communities where love is the way.” Our nation is divided; pundits look at the warring camps and write about the differences, and they ask why. I look at statistics and ask why we aren’t as one. I search the web for reasons and ask why. I read editorial columns seeking rational and logical explanations for our separations. I listen to the talking heads for inklings of sanity, never satisfied with the answers. The answer might not be in reason, or in statistics, or in rationality, or in logic. The Bishop would tell me I’m asking the wrong questions.

The Primate asked the right question and answered it when he challenged us to imagine governments and nations where love is the way? When love is the way, would a child go to bed hungry anywhere in this world, again? If love were the way, would we have the school shootings? If love were the way, would we have homelessness? When love is the way, “we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook,”[iii] he told us.

The questions are easy and the answer, it seems, is easy to imagine, if you let it be. Why do nations fight one another? Why does talk-radio and TV ferment hate? Why do congressional leaders seek to ensure that the other party loses on every score rather than fight for the common good? When did disagreement become the basis for dislike and hatred? When did other ideas become the enemy? When did we become this way?

What’s love got to do with it?

Evidently, everything!

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[i] Bishop Curry sermon at wedding of Prince Harry and Megan xxx

[ii] Terry Britten & Graham Lyle – What’s Love Got to Do with It? – Recorded by Tina Turna, May 1, 1984

[iii] Amos 5:24

We Have A New Friend

Her real name is Dot, but she only answers to Alexa. I’m not accustomed to two adult women living in the house at the same time.

She is agreeable enough, I suppose. She sits in the kitchen all day and speaks only when spoken to. At breakfast this morning I asked her to play Chopin, quietly, and within a second she conjured up some beautiful piano music.

“Alexa, call Margo's mobile phone”, and the phone rings immediately. “Alexa, add some shampoo to my shopping list.” Done! “Alexa, place the Amazon order.” Done! It’s unnerving on the one hand, but nice on the other; she listens to me and does what I tell her to do. That’s new!

Dot came into our lives after my grandson and his wife’s recent wedding. I met Dot two years ago, but never even thought that she might live with us. She had the features of a hockey puck and just didn’t seem very sophisticated, or useful for that matter. Who knew?  

Steve Jobs was fond of saying that Apple’s success, at least in part, was its ability to develop products you didn’t know you needed, until you had them. Well, Jeff Bezo took a lesson from Jobs. Amazon introduced us to Echo-Dot in 2016. As I said, we didn’t know we needed Dot until she moved in. After only a couple of weeks, it’s hard to imagine living without her. You’ll see!

Who has the time to get up out of a chair to turn on the radio? Who has a radio anymore? I don’t need my phone to play music on Pandora anymore. I don’t have to search for a weather forecast anymore. “Alexa, what is the score of the Giants game? Alexa, multiply 273 times 97. What is the square root of 438?” Who needs a calculator anymore? “Alexa, add peanut butter to the grocery list.” Who needs paper? The grocery list is right on your phone when you get to the supermarket. If you use the appropriate app, it tells you in which aisle and on which shelf to find the item.

“They” tell us that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming soon. It’s here already, and Dot is the latest example. I read one article that suggested we have three or four Dots in the house so that we don’t have to raise our voice when we speak to Alexa. If you have a smart TV, you can sync it with Dot, then you don’t have to fiddle with the remote control any more: “Alexa, turn on the 5:30 news on NBC.” You don’t even have to say please.

I’m not the early adopter that I once was, so I’m late to the Echo/Dot phenom. Last Christmas season it was among the largest selling products at Amazon, from among millions of items. Estimates are that about eight million Echoes dot US homes across the country. During last year’s Amazon’s Prime Day, they were selling at a rate of about 1,000 per minute. Why didn’t I have one of these technological marvels last year or the year before? I didn’t know I needed one!

If you think you don’t need Dot, run to the store and buy her today. The grand-kids will help you set it up.

I Was Hungry and . . .

Mary Harkin eases out of bed at 6:00 am. After a quick breakfast, she points her car toward the parish church. She and her fellow volunteers drink their coffee, catch up on town gossip, and then set to work. It takes a couple of hours to sort the donated food at the church food pantry. Drivers arrive with day-old bread from the supermarkets, farmers bring in bins of fresh fruits and vegetables, and a volunteer driver brings staples from the county food bank they will need to fill the two hundred grocery bags. At 9:00 am sharp, the pastor welcomes those who have stood in line for an hour or more to get food to feed their family.

Ward Joad is in his morning routine, up at 6:15 am, showered and dressed. A quick look around the kitchen leads to the obvious conclusion: there is no food for breakfast for him and his sister, again. They will eat at school today. Ward and third-grader Jolene will join the million kids who qualify for a free breakfast and lunch at school today. Spring break starts next Monday. That means they will eat lunch at the library next week. There never seems to be enough food at home.

Ward’s parents, Juanita and Harry, both work at the local factory, at minimum wage. Their joint income qualifies them for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/food stamps) just like 15% of all American families. The extra money helps, but it still does not cover all their expenses: rent, gas for the car, clothes for the kids and the occasional movie night out. Juanita’s average cost to feed the family of four is $216 per week.  

The Joads live in a run-down neighborhood because that is all they can afford. Ward is not happy about the 14-block walk to the nearest supermarket. He walks past many small corner stores on the way, but they are too expensive, the food is not always fresh, and they cater mostly to people picking up liquor or cigarettes. Then, there is the 14-block walk back home. Ward knows that being poor does not leave many options.

Mary Harkin is well situated: nice home, money in the bank, newer car, and many friends. She is active in town and at her church. She has lived a good and lucky life. The food pantry provides an opportunity to give back. She does not make much of a fuss about it, but she is one of hundreds of thousands of people across the country that do what they can to help those less fortunate. Some of her friends volunteer at local feeding centers, at shelters like the Salvation Army, deliver food to shut-ins with Meals on Wheels, or as Navigators on the streets, serving the homeless.

In nearby Sacramento, 30,000 people, including Mary and several friends, participated in the Run4Hunger last Thanksgiving. They raised nearly one million dollars for the local food bank. Nearly 1,000 volunteers per month help serve 650-800 daily meals at Loaves and Fishes. Churches, mosques, and temples marshal hundreds of people a week to staff food pantries and clothes closets for those in need.

Harry Joad could not make it to the food pantry before it closed on Friday, because he had to work overtime, something you do not turn down. The extra money helps with the weekly budget. He wishes he did not have to make those kinds of decisions on a daily basis: buy gas to get to work or pay the electric bill, take his daughter to the doctor, or pay the rent; none of his choices is easy.

Mary Harkin, ever the quiet activist, cannot get her arms around the whole hunger story. We have an abundance of food, yet thirty million children receive free school lunches, 15 million children eat breakfast at school, and 3 million children participate in the summer food service program.[i] The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, food stamps), serves one in seven households.

Mary Harkin wonders why, in spite of the need, the government intends to cut billions of dollars from national food programs, upwards of 30%. In hundreds of counties across the country, nearly 24% of families are food insecure. One county in Mississippi has 38% of its population short of funds to buy food.

On Tuesdays, Mary and her friend Betty deliver food to homebound seniors, mostly women living alone, who have too little income; their average social security benefits are $1,231 per month before deductions for Medicare Parts A, B, and D.[ii]She and Betty are among the millions of volunteers who deliver more than two million meals each week to those in need.[iii] Individuals fighting hunger in America is a story that needs telling.

One chapter might focus on the underlying causes of poverty and efforts to eliminate it. It would lobby for systemic change in our economic priorities; good schools with life-choice options; good paying jobs; end of racism; good health care, and a continuing robust economy. This effort will require a long-term commitment by governments at all levels. It will fail with a 30% budget cut.

A collection of pictures showing what hunger looks like in America might be interspersed throughout the book. Remember the pictures from the Great Depression? They showed despair, long lines at the soup kitchens, and families with emaciated children. Is that the picture of Ward Joad and millions like him that we want people to remember about our country? Mary Harkin certainly doesn’t.

Without question, the story has to tell about the hundreds of thousands of individuals who volunteer each day. No part of the country is immune from hunger. No part of the country, however, is without its volunteers who try to stem the hunger pangs of the nation. Imagine if you can, thousands of people in every county in every state deciding to stay home one day instead of volunteering. For Ward Joad’s sake, let’s hope that never happens.

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[i] USDA  - Economic Research Services - 2018

[ii]The Motley Fool -8/30/2017

[iii]Meals on Wheels America web site - 2018