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Passings–Lessons From Two Lives Well Lived

In the course of the last two weeks, two very influential people in my life have passed away, one of my Mother’s closest friends and one of my Dad’s.  They were both in their 80’s and vibrant, active people right up until the end of their lives.  Over the many decades of knowing both of them, they were, each in their own way, people who embraced life to the fullest.

Naomi Wagner was a single mom in an era when divorced women faced a great deal more stigma than they do today. And somehow she seemed to always have a smile on her face, despite many personal difficulties.  When I too became a single mom, she was really the only one of my elders that I could look to as a roll model when I was exhausted and not sure how on earth I would manage.  She also knit the most gorgeous blankets, with an eye for color that was truly amazing.  And most of all, for me, she was my Mother’s dear friend.

Barry Blumberg was larger than life in oh so many ways, a powerhouse in the world of medical research and then some, with a Nobel Prize to prove it.  He was possibly the most enthusiastic, in love with life person I’ve ever known, not to mention warm, caring and hilariously funny. It is strange to read the rather lengthy obits written about him, so many accomplishments, but the thing that sticks in my head are the walks he led us on at Cape Cod so many years ago, the stories of his adventurous life and the long enduring friendship he had with my Dad.

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As I write this I am in Washington, DC where there is a strong likelihood that the government is about to shut down.  When you walk down the street, it is the only topic people are talking about for the simple reason that a rather significant percentage of the population in this town is employed by the federal government.  People don’t know if they will suddenly lose their paychecks, and unlike any state or city, DC’s municipal services are also at stake.  And why?  Because the GOP party of spoiled, selfish vindictive obstructionists are bound and determined to throw a hissy fit if they don’t get every last ridiculous thing they ask for. And while they bring the government and this city to a grinding halt, they will be among the few who still collect a paycheck.  Outrage is really not an adequate word.

Nor is it an adequate word for an energy policy where nuclear energy and coal are still touted as clean and safe in the face of irrefutable evidence that they are not or for our inability to truly address climate change.  It is also not an adequate word for our oily logic when we set up ‘no fly zones’ over Libya  but ignore the humanitarian tragedies in the Ivory Coast and Sudan.

And it is most certainly not an adequate word for the union busting Scott Walker or the too many to count attempts by the Republican Party to colonize women’s uteri.

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So why the juxtaposition of sharing memories about two people that I loved and admired with a rant about the myriad of dysfunctional events that permeate our existence?  Because the contrast is instructive.  Naomi and Barry were people who made things happen because it brought them great pleasure to love life and to live it to its fullest.  They each impacted my life in profound ways and those who today seem hell-bent on destruction and obstruction, motivated by hate and greed, would be well served to be instructed and inspired by these two wonderful, enabling people.

Shameless Sibling Promotion–My Brother’s New Book

I come from a family of writers.  Between us, we are journalists, poets, novelists and essayists.  We’ve produced a rather ridiculous amount of published work.  I know this because I was just boxing some of the family books in preparation for a move.  It took awhile.

The latest offering is from my youngest brother, Jon, and is a thought-provoking and very readable book about the journalistic legacy of Watergate.  My little bro teaches journalism at Northwestern University and authored the very successful News Gems blog.  And I will personally vouch for his life-long interest in journalism.  His first investigative reporting assignment was to find out what my high school boyfriend and I were doing on the couch and report back to my parents.  He even used his instamatic camera as part of his assignment.  I have tried to be nice to him ever since for fear of those pictures re-surfacing.

For those of us who inhaled the Watergate hearings and spent years wondering who Deep Throat was, it is a fresh look at familiar territory.  For those who are too young to remember, it is necessary understanding of a critical part of our history.  Fully understanding that my objectivity might be considered suspect, you might also want to check out this review,

“In regards to Watergate, learning how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein overcame a plethora of powerful government officials’ criticism to break the story, all while risking the Washington Post’s reputation, was inspiring. Instead, the duo sparked other publications to follow suit.

Marshall’s book addresses what impact they had on the industry, government and history itself. He dives into the public service role of journalism and explores examples of past and future opportunities for reporters.

The forward of the book was written by veteran journalist, Woodward himself, something Marshall said surprised and delighted him.”

Watergate’s Legacy and the Press:  The Investigative Impulse by Jon Marshall is available on Amazon.

And in the interest of not playing favorites, you should also definitely read my brother Robert’s novel which came out a few years ago.

And That Was The Day That Was–Monday Edition

Epic Days are becoming far too common place, and not in a good way.  From today’s headlines–A no fly zone in Libya that seems to be taking out about as many civilians as targets in order to support rebels of uncertain political aspirations (perhaps on the assumption that they could hardly be crazier than Gaddafi and dammit, we need that oil).  Memo to the good people of Sudan, Ivory Coast and other places where innocent civilians are under siege–sorry, your lives aren’t worth jack unless you’ve got something we want.

And while everyone is totally distracted, Israel starts in on Gaza again.  Meanwhile existing home sales skidded, well actually nose-dived would be a better adjective, the NRC says no changes needed in the U.S. nuclear program while the Japanese figure out how to deal with radioactive lettuce and milk and still smoking reactors not to mention the significant percentage of their country that just got trashed by Mother Nature.

The World Bank says no worries though, the Japanese disaster won’t have a long term effect on the global economy. Oh and trophy pictures have surfaced of U.S. soldiers gloating over dead civilians in Afghanistan, which couldn’t possibly be true because Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples.

I probably missed a few things, but truly that is enough, and that was just today.  Dear ones, we cannot continue like this.  Kurt Vonnegut warned us about becoming what we pretend to be.  But we seem hellbent in doing just that and it is a very sorry sight.

Saturday Night Oil Slick Dictator Overthrowing Nuclear Rant

Early Saturday evening I decided to just ignore the fact that President Obama decided to start another war on a weekend after we’d just spent a week being totally traumatized by the disaster in Japan. I mean really? This couldn’t have waited until Monday? So I selfishly took two hours off to watch a cheesy movie without my laptop at my side. I know, you can see this coming– the second the credits are rolling I tune back in and bam! Now we have an oil slick too? I need to join a union, didn’t they bring us weekends?

But let’s go back to that morally uplifting idea of helping the Libyan rebels by enforcing a no-fly zone because the dude in charge is bombing his own people. Yes, I’m all about supporting people who are overthrowing dictators. Especially dictators that are bat-shit crazy. But guess what–that isn’t why we’re there and anyhow, we bomb innocent civilians all the time–think Afghanistan and Pakistan. If it  actually was the reason why we’re now lobbing missiles, don’t you think maybe we might have possibly put in an appearance in other countries with violent ruthless leaders? The Congo and Sudan come to mind. Burma, Indonesia Uganda. I could keep going.

And doesn’t this sound scary familiar–shouldn’t take too long we’re told, it’s about taking out strategic targets, not bombing civilians. Oh yeah and there is an Al Queda connection. Only a matter of days until we’re there to rescue women too. But guess what, it’s not about that either–the reason we are really there–one word and it isn’t plastics–OIL.  Oil that we lust after that has the unmitigated chutzpah to be under their sand.

But hey it’s March, how are your brackets working out? We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality show.

Rant over, feeling much better and looking forward to whatever tomorrow’s crisis du jour might be.

Nuclear Spring

I went for a walk this morning. The sky was clear and the birds were chirping, trees were beginning to show their buds and flowers peeped up from the earth.  I thought about Rachel Carson and her warnings about pesticides because as the temperatures warm, the annual obsessive quest for the perfectly green lawn will begin in suburbia.  And when rains like those that we had last week come, they wash those pesticides into the mighty Ohio River that flows near my home.  I thought about the honeybees that used to be so plentiful and are now largely absent, pesticides likely play a large part in the reason for their dying off.

And I thought about my Grandmother, Lenore Marshall, who devoted much of her work to stopping nuclear power.  She campaigned against the nuclear testing in Amchitka, Alaska where there is now a huge column of radioactive test material below the surface of the ocean in a place where we now know that the earth could easily shift and if it does, it is quite possible that toxic material will be unleashed into the ocean.

I cut my own activist teeth protesting the building of the Palo Verde nuclear power facility outside of Phoenix several decades ago because nuclear power is not safe or cost-effective.  It wasn’t then.  It isn’t now.  There is no such thing as a safe amount of radiation.  Radiation load is cumulative in the human body, so while an individual does may be low, it has to be considered in the context of other radiation exposure that you have experienced.  The other thing to consider is that radiation is, for all practical purposes, forever.  There is no safe way to dispose of it, which is why no self-respecting community in this country wants a nuclear waste dump built in its backyard.

As the nuclear disaster in Japan has been unfolding, I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard reassurances that necessary steps are being taken and that we should not worry unduly, that it is unlikely that even if these nuclear facilities melt down, the plants are designed so that large amounts of radiation won’t go into the air like it did at Chernobyl.  Even if that is true, and given that what is happening is so far off the charts of what we know from experience that that is questionable, the radiation has to go somewhere and the chances of it safely being contained aren’t good.  And it is still a huge problem if it goes into the ground or the ocean.

If you talk to residents of the Gulf Coast, they will tell you that never mind the official cleanup stories, the problems continue, dolphins are washing up on shore dead and people are suffering terrible health problems.  Ask the people who live near Three MIle Island or Chernobyl about the long term issues they have experienced.  Talk to people who live near Love Canal or the coal ash ponds in Tennessee.  There is a long, long history of covering up the long term impacts of man-made environmental disasters. And we would be naive to expect that not to happen with the disaster that is unfolding in Japan.

There have been so many environmental wake up calls since Carson wrote her seminal book.  But we humans have not heeded those calls and we are beginning to pay the price more and more often.  We couldn’t afford not to listen to Carson and the many other truthtellers who have tried to warn us, and we cannot afford to gloss over the catastrophic nature of what is happening in Japan.

Here in the U.S. the first thing we need to do is immediately stop including nuclear power as part of our long term energy strategy and start looking at shutting down the plants that we have.  That won’t make them safe, nothing can do that, but it will make them less dangerous.  And we need to remember that some of those plants are built near major fault lines, just as they were in Japan.  The peril of the same thing happening here is very, very real.  We won’t get that leadership from President Obama and we won’t get it from John Boehner who was waxing poetic about nuclear power just last week.  It is up to us to speak truth to power, and we have no time to spare.

Smokin’ Date Night In DC Takes Off

No sorry, this is not a post about my social life.  I swore I wouldn’t join the pundit-infested SOTU post-mortem, and I’m only going to do so briefly, but when we’ve reached a point where the analysis includes whether or not Emily Post would be rolling over in her grave, all bets are off, although I’ll keep it brief.

Sputnik?  Really?  What percentage of Americans even know what Sputnik was?  The analogy is old, stale and just plain off the mark. That the President sees the future as a winnable race does not bode well.

And then there was the salmon joke.  Ha ha.  But not really ha ha if you consider the peril to  survival that salmon populations face these days.

The speech was delusional as SOTU’s always are. Imagine if just once, a President got up to that podium and told the truth.  In the meantime, we should take heart from Miss (Judith) Manner’s comments about the speech,

“Date night worked,” said Judith Martin, author of the syndicated Miss Manners column. “Instead of looking like a hockey game … it looked like a dignified legislature.”

One can hope.  I give it about 24 hours until the pucks start flying again.

How To Respond To KO Being KO’ed–KO MSNBC On Monday Night During KO’s Timeslot

I haven’t been watching Keith Olbermann since his damaging and self-centered behavior regarding rape and the #MooreAndMe protest.  In the aftermath of that, I felt a strong need to just not listen to those who insist on operating from a position of patriarchal arrogance and ignorance.  The quiet reflection that has become possible in the absence of those voices has been wonderful and something I’ll write more about later.

But the result is that I am reacting to his departure from MSNBC with mixed feelings. Yes he has often said what needs to be said, but as the #MooreAndMe episode illustrated, not always.  He was a white guy working for a large, white-guy preserving corporation. And some of his behavior on Twitter of late has been quite childish.  I have no idea all the factors that have led to that–the enormous stress of his job, his father’s death, etc.

So there is a bit of tarnish there, and while it is not clear whether he got fired, left or what–one thing is for sure–even if he did quit–Comcast should have begged him to stay.  But that was never in the cards and is a first very ominous indicator of just how bad their takeover of the NBCs is likely to be.

Differences aside–we can rant all we want about this, but here’s a better idea–a one night viewing stoppage.  Don’t watch  MSNBC on Monday night during Olbermann’s timeslot.  Turn it off.  Read a book, go for a walk, water your plants, talk to your neighbors and your children–whatever it takes to deal with the dt’s but turn it off and turn away. No it won’t solve the problem but Comcast bought MSNBC to make money and they need to hear that flipping off their viewers is not a good business model.  And aside from that, everybody gets a bit of tv detox, and that could be the start of a good thing.

Dear Keith

In case you missed it, the other day, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann flew the coop on Twitter after numerous people called him out for giving a pass to Michael Moore’s inappropriate comments about the rape charges against Julian Assange.  He informed the Twitter world that he didn’t like being under attack and announced that he would quit Twittering, the online equivalent of taking your marbles and going home.

Not a great way to treat your viewing public to say the least but for a moment, tis the season, let’s be charitable and cut the guy some slack–it has got to be exhausting to have your very own well-watched show and sometimes we all do dumb things in the heat of the moment.  So Keith, take a break, rest up and maybe ask yourself this–in fact, let me re-phrase it–I’m asking you, call it my holiday wish–please ask yourself whether you are perhaps the victim of your own show.

Week after week, most of the people who you invite on your show are men.  Most of them are white.  They look a lot like you.  They sound a lot like you.  The impression one gets is that white dudes are the most important voices to listen to.  It sends a message and not a good one.

But the truth is, if you stop and really listen to what was said to you on Twitter, sometimes white dude myopia gets it very wrong.  In fact that happens a lot and it needs to be called out.  And when it is, covering your ears, or in this case your computer monitor is not the right response.

In fact it is kind of scary because let’s just consider this–Over the last few weeks, a concerted effort has been made to knock Wikileaks off the internet and cut off their funding. The U.S. military is cutting off access to the New York Times and other news outlets because they have participated in the release of the Wikileaks documents.  These actions point to the very real vulnerability we face regarding our access to the internet and information. Right now Comcast, a major internet service provider and media outlet is trying to buy the NBCs.  And what happens if they don’t like what you say?  All they have to do is pull the plug and take their marbles and go elsewhere.  So please, enough of this juvenile behavior.  Realize the possibility that you got it very wrong and open yourself to listening and learning.

If there is anything we should learn from Wikileaks, it is that the communications business has changed.  Corporate media can no longer say this is the frame and walk away without expectation of being challenged. It’s not a one-way street anymore, the traffic now flows both ways and  goodnight and good luck won’t cut it anymore.

Unpacking Wikileaks–A Few Observations

When I saw that Wikileaks’ Julian Assange was scheduled to do a live chat via The Guardian a few days ago, I had this fantasy that this would be a bit like the scene in The Sound of Music where the Von Trapp family escapes while they are supposed to be receiving an award.*  And maybe it was–with reports that he has been in England and that British law enforcement know where he is–and yet funny thing, The Guardian site glitched out due to overload when the chat was supposed to happen and they then posted not so live answers to viewers questions  instead.  Assange never appeared live and as I write this, still no word of arrest.

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But the question of whether Assange should be arrested bears some examination.

The U.S. government is doing its best to paint him as an electronic terrorist. A large part of this latest release of documents has certainly been an embarrassing collection of diplomacy-speak accusations about various players on the international stage that has all the sophistication of third grade playground cooties banter.  Not flattering to be sure but if anything, it should  give us pause to consider the nature of what passes as ‘intelligence’.

Then however, there are those pesky cables documenting things like a scandal involving the private contracting firm DynCorp which paid for young “dancing boys” to entertain Afghan policemen that they were training in northern Afghanistan.  It really shouldn’t take us long to decide that the criminal in this case is Dyncorp, not Assange and like Abu Ghraib, this is a story that should be exposed.

Be that as it may, whether or not what Wikileaks is doing is a good thing or a bad thing, it is definitely not acceptable to be dismissive of the rape charges that have been brought against Assange.  Is it possible that they are trumped up?  Of course.  But as Reclusive Leftist points out, they should not be brushed aside by those who champion Assange merely because of the importance of his work.

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Perhaps one of the strangest parts of this story is that Wikileaks was being hosted on Amazon.  Who knew Amazon offered webhosting.  And how ironic it is that Amazon is perfectly willing to sell books by George Bush, Sarah Palin and Glen Beck, all of whom do not hesitate to play fast and loose with the truth, but when someone uses their services to tell the truth, that sends Amazon running for cover.  As Amy Davidson observes on The New Yorker website,

WikiLeaks may be a brilliant sort of classroom—full of books that, unfortunately, one can no longer find by way of Amazon.

Human Rights First is asking Amazon to explain why they removed Wikileaks from their servers.  In addition, PayPal has cut off Wikilieaks from receiving donations via their service and in a major weird, disturbing email,

Talking about WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger your job prospects, a State Department official warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs this week.

An email from SIPA’s Office of Career Services went out Tuesday afternoon with a caution from the official, an alumnus of the school. Students who will be applying for jobs in the federal government could jeopardize their prospects by posting links to WikiLeaks online, or even by discussing the leaked documents on social networking sites, the official was quoted as saying.

“[The alumnus] recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter,” the Office of Career Services advised students. “Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.”

As one observant student pointed out,

“They seem to be unable to make the distinction between having an opinion and having a contractual obligation to keep a secret,”

That the University sent out such a warning is deeply disturbing and sounds uncomfortably like, ‘nothing to see here, move along, move along’, go about your business, it’s dangerous to know or think about this.

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The Wikileaks documents should definitely give us pause to consider several issues.  First there is the question of what should and shouldn’t be state secrets.  When a nation or a company perpetrates crimes against humanity, such as the Dyncorp exploitation of children, it shouldn’t be a secret and those who keep those secrets are the ones who should be called to account.  As for the diplomatic backstabbing, who really cares and if, as my children were taught in grade school, people used there words appropriately, no one would have their feathers ruffled.

Another thing that is indeed quite worrisome is the denial of service by Amazon and PayPal.  With so many people using services such as Gmail or Yahoo, collecting funds via Pay Pal, getting our internet service from corporate giants like Comcast and the like, we need to consider that our access to these services can quickly be cut off, with little recourse.  We’ve known that for quite some time, and this is a grim reminder that freedom of information can be disappeared faster than you can say, “blue screen of death.”

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*The other metaphor that came to mind was the old television series about Carmen Sandiego.  Enjoy:

What We Should Really Be Scared Of

Donna Smith makes the excellent point that it isn’t WikiLeaks that is killing America, it is lack of healthcare:

Today, in cites and states across the United States, 123 people died because they lacked enough money to buy healthcare services.  That brings the annual death toll for 2010 to 41,082.

WikiLeaks had nothing to do with the deaths of the 123 people who died today or any of the 41,082 who died so far this year.

The 123 who died today did so with the full knowledge of all who allowed their deaths.  The 123 who died today might have lived if they had access to appropriate healthcare.  The 123 who died got no mention on any news program or website – liberal, conservative or otherwise.  So much for the value of 123 human lives.

And all that TSA groping and x-raying didn’t save them either.