Story: A Very Hard Year

***

1

August 25, 2001

2001 was altogether a very tough year for me, he wrote, as though the year was already over. But he marked out altogether. That was better, more direct. He marked out very, and then for me.  The opening sentence in his "Memoirette" had become:

2001 was a tough year.

That's a lot better, he thought. Then, he went on:

 First, it was just a little fainting spell.

That seemed okay too, so he launched in.

After the first of the year, like most recent years I went down south to visit my aging mother. This time, since both children had grown up and moved away, my wife A----- went with me that time.


For months, I'd been feeling what I now know were symptoms of my condition. I had noticed at work that I didn't feel right when walking back from lunch. When I had to climb up a flight of stairs, I felt worse. My vision was disturbed, for instance. Everything looked as though it was lit in a painfully bright light ("photo-sensitive," they call it). I wasn't exactly out of breath, but my legs were weak - once in a while actually shaking uncontrollably for a minute or two.

The odd thing was, Although I felt strange and bad, I didn't feel like I was going to fall or black out. And I could both think and talk normally. When my symptoms were worst, sometimes it happened that I would cross paths with a colleague, and we would chat just as though everything were normal... As I imagine they thought it was. I do remember one time when someone said, "Are you all right? You look a little pale." I just said I had to catch my breath after coming up the stairs too fast.

And, sure enough, after a few minutes I could go along as usual.

He took a break, then read what he had written. That's okay, he thought. But why was he bothering to do this, just because his daughter suggested he write it down? He decided he'd come back to it later.

2

August 26, 2001

So, while I was at home, my childhood home, A----- and I took Mother to church on Sunday. Maybe it was a little stuffy in the sanctuary, I don't know. But once when we all stood up to sing a hymn, I sat back down again, hard. I'd actually passed out for just a second. I got right back up.


Mother didn't seem to notice, but A----- certainly did. "What happened?" she said with some concern.


Back home the routine started up again normally. I had gone to a cardiologist a year earlier, just for a routine EKG. There was something I liked about the doctor. But I wasn't thinking of medical help after the sanctuary incident. I was getting older, of course, working hard and sometimes facing stressful work situations, some of which lasted for as long as a week...


I couldn't help noticing that it was often after a working lunch that I had my light-sensitive, short of breath, weak legged episode. It was easy to find plausible causes of my little symptoms.

3

He had written three or four paragraphs all at once. He read it over and didn't see anything to change and was ready to move on. All without a break too.

Next, it was one night when I got up to go the bathroom. It was in the dead of night, say around 2 or 3 a.m. Rather than turn on the light, in the middle of the night I always sat down on the toilet. Still do, in fact.

No. He marked out the last two sentences and added this one.

In the middle of the night, I always sit down on the toilet, he wrote instead.


When I had finished, flushed and all, I naturally stood up and started moving toward the door. Next thing I knew, A----- was trying to pick up my head, which was tangled in the shower curtain where I had fallen.

"You fainted!" she said. "Did you hurt yourself?"

I hadn't, as far as I could tell. But I sure had lost consciousness for a minute or two. It was more embarrassing than damaging, but still...

The next morning, A----- and I decided I should go back to the cardiologist. Or maybe, just by coincidence, I had a follow-up or check-up already scheduled, I can't remember. But anyway, we went in to see Dr. S----- a few days later.

He checked me out, listened not just to my heart but also to what we said, seeming to know instinctively that A----- was providing the most useful information. He set up a hospital test or two - an ultrasound of my heart, for instance - but didn't seem particularly concerned.

When A----- told him of the fainting in church, he said: "You know, we all do that!"

4

Aug 27, '01

All right, he thought.  Where should he pick up the story now?  He tried to recall, Were there some other warning signs?  There must have been, but - he told himself - Get on with it!

We had a little break in the workload at the office in early April, so I took a couple of days off, taking in effect a four-day weekend. A----- and I had been looking for a chance of something like that so that - new for spring - we could fix up and rearrange some things in the house. I can't remember what all was involved.  Seems like there was stripping and replacing wallpaper at an early point.

That's it.  Keep going; it's just memory now.  Vivid memories at that.


Then, on the Saturday of that weekend, two days before I was planning to go back into the office, we'd been talking about updating our downstairs t.v. We found an appropriate replacement on Friday afternoon and didn't have too much trouble swapping it out with the old one in the den. Years before, we'd put a new portable inside a neat-looking wood console we'd had since we were first married, so that was the one we were swapping out. The new one eventually did go into the narrow space, and we got it all hooked up to a new DVD/VCR player we had bought only a few months earlier.

So far, so good, he was thinking.

So far, so good.

The next step in the spring re-do was to put a t.v. upstairs too, where we'd never had one. The little old one we were taking out of the old console would be just right. We even had an old wheeled t.v. table we'd been keeping in the attic for eons.


Right after lunch, we couldn't help ourselves, we just had to get the portable upstairs onto the new-old table. We talked about it and decided that A----- would take the one side while climbing backwards up the stairs, which meant that I was moving straight ahead, carrying a little bit more of the weight. We were already not young anymore, you know?


5

So that, next thing you knew, there was A----- climbing steadily backwards up the stairs holding up her side, while I labored along unsteadily behind, going forward.  I was especially concerned to avoid scratching either the banister on the left or the stairwell wall on the right.

Up we went, step by step, talking to each other to be sure the other one was under control and was plodding along at the same steady pace.  And then, after a minute, there we were.  A----- had positioned the t.v. stand with the casters a little beyond the top step of the stairs.  We set the little RCA down, just as we'd planned.  Done!

6

A couple of years ago, right after the children had moved out on their own, we'd made a creature-comfort kind of purchase - quite uncharacteristic of us - in the form of a recliner chair.  It was just a couple of steps away.

After setting the little t.v. down, I spotted that chair and said cheerily to A----- words to the effect that I thought I would just sit down for a minute.

The next thing I knew A----- was pounding on my chest, peering up critically into my face, while holding the phone receiver to her ear.  Fortunately, it had a long chord; we don't have a cell phone.

"Is that 911?" I asked sweetly.

She continued talking into the telephone, but she nodded it was indeed 911.

"Tell them I'm fine," I said.  And then I blacked out again.

When I came to, Sheila was still holding the telephone.  She told me she had to go downstairs to let the EMT folks in.  I told her pleasantly to go right ahead.

The heavy steps of the men carrying their paraphernalia boomed up the stairs toward me, and then one of them asked heartily, "Well, how are we feeling?"

I said comfortably that I was feeling okay, no chest pain or anything, no headache, I could move everything.  He took my blood pressure and listened to my heartbeat.  "But I think I lost consciousness for a second or two."

A----- spoke up.

While they carried me down the stairs, I was hoping the stretcher didn't scratch the banister or the wall.

While folks were scurrying around me in the emergency room, as A----- was registering me at the desk outside, I was feeling kind of cozy and sleepy, but alert.  I answered everyone's questions.

After A----- had arrived at my bedside, the staff cardiologist appeared, studied the chart and had a conversation with A-----, and pretty soon I was admitted and taken up to a semi-private room (no one else was there).  I think a nurse hooked me up to a heart monitor so that an alarm would sound at her desk in the hall if my poor old thing stopped beating, but I was looking at the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday with nothing to do but lie there, because of course they couldn't run any tests until Monday.

7

(By this point, he couldn't have stopped if he'd wanted to.)

A whole battery of tests indeed ensued over the first two or three days of the next week, including a CAT scan of my head.  A neurologist showed up shortly afterwards and said I had a normal brain and my little episode - that's what they called these little fainting spells - my episode could not have been caused neurologically.

Other tests showed I had no arterial sclerosis, no blockages, had had no heart attack...  When Dr. S----- came by after having reviewed all these results, he said I had a condition sometimes called "Athlete's Heart" (a surprising, if flattering discovery), where the heart under exertion sometimes beats so strongly that just about all the blood in the whole heart chamber is pushed out and not enough time is left before the next too-strong beat for the chamber to fill up again.  As a result, not enough blood reaches my brain, and... Well, I knew the rest.

Eating causes exertion by itself, for digestion, so other exertion like walking uphill, or climbing up stairs, or lugging a somewhat heavy object was exertion on the heart too, for muscular exercise.

The upshot was that I should go to another hospital where they would implant a pacemaker in my chest.  This little machine could help keep my heart from beating so fast that the heart chamber wouldn't fill up before the next beat came along.

And I would arrive at the other place Friday afternoon, just in time to spend the weekend.

8

Aug 28, '01

A week or so later when A----- and I returned home from the other hospital 90 miles away, we discussed the experience we'd been through.  Over there our expectation from Dr. S-----'s team that I would be having a pacemaker implanted was re-enforced by a handout given us by the surgeon's team explaining what a pacemaker was, what a pacemaker was designed to do, and how to take care of a pacemaker.  (One thing I learned, for example, was that the magnetism in those doorways you have to go through at libraries and stores is too weak to cause any problem, while the airport ones are too strong.)  I had all weekend to study the handout on pacemakers.

So it was a surprise when I was on the gurney going into the operating room and the man who would do the actual surgery, whom I had not met before, talked instead of implanting a defibrillator. 

I said "Whoa, wait a minute.  I was told to expect a pacemaker."  The surgeon explained whythe defibrillator was required for a condition like mine. It did seem like a higher level of security, I thought, but was it more than necessary?  (I later have wondered how necessary even the pacemaker is.) 

I told them to page A---- in the lunchroom so that we could make the decision together.  This new guy wasn't happy at all but went away to do so.  In 20 minutes he came back and said my wife hadn't answered the page, so I would either have to go ahead or go back to the room and hope it wouldn't be too many days before a new opening in the operating room could be scheduled.  I said to go ahead.

When we got home, then, we looked over the spot near my left shoulder where the darn thing had been implanted.  It bulged out a lot and was a little crooked.  That didn't seem right, but apparently it was working and I seemed to be healing normally.

The health insurance at my job paid for all this.  That defibrillator - the little instrument itself - had cost $40,000.

9

After five days or so, I noticed that my left arm and hand were a little red.  The day after that there was a little swelling too.  A----- called Dr. S-----'s nurse, who set up an appointment for an ultrasound on my arm for the next day.  That took only a few minutes.  Looking back, I can realize now that there was a little more meaning than there usually is in the way the technician said that my doctor would be contacting me soon.

...Because the phone rang just as we walked in the door getting back from the test.  Dr. S-----'s nurse (W----), said could I please come right in.  It seemed routine, so A----- stayed home.

I checked in at the desk as usual at the office, but instead of being able to sit down comfortably and glance at a magazine or too, W---- came out and said right up close to my face that I needed to start taking a blood-thinner right away.  She said she would call in the prescription to my drug store right then and I should go get it and take the first pill before leaving the store.

I had a blood clot near my left bicep, another little blow.  With the thinner and all, though, the clot seemed to dissolve and disappear over the next few days.  When I went in for a check-up the next week, Dr. S----- explained that he'd been planning to prescribe a blood thinner anyway because when someone's heart starts beating too hard, a little blood could pool up for a few seconds in the bottom on the heart chamber, so it was good to slow down any possible clotting process.

Anyway, that was the beginning of a new regime of various drugs that I will be taking from now on: one to help relax my heart and at the same time to keep my blood pressure down, the blood thinner, and another drug to help the heart beat regularly without having to engage the pacemaker part of the defibrillator.

My work day had to change a little too, since I was to start taking a brief little nap everyday after lunch... to avoid muscular exertion after eating.  At least most of it makes sense, and after a month or so, I starting feeling pretty good.  In fact, I've been feeling better than I had in years!

10

8/29/01

Then, he couldn't help but remember, there was the other surprise.
Then came the final surprise.

I still talked with my mother down south every weekend on the phone, but of course I hadn't shared anything with her about all this health upset.  She was still very much herself, but her dementia had progressed enough a year and a half ago or so that I couldn't rely on her own reports of how she herself was doing.  A year ago, the family had arranged for Mother to have care-givers looking after her in the daytime, but A----- and I realized that we would have to be going down a little more often to see how she was doing for ourselves.

She was delighted in early May when I told her we would be dropping by again in a few days.

There had been some new developments before our last visit (when I had fainted for a second at church).  The first was about eating.  Mother had always had a good appetite.  A fine cook herself, she enjoyed eating and had to watch her weight.  She could really do much cooking now - it wasn't safe - and it wasn't surprising to observe that the meals care-givers prepared for her seemed less appealing to her than meals she'd usually had. 

But it turned out to be more than that.

She and Dad had found a particular restaurant where they were really comfortable, and Mother had continued to go there, with friends or family, two or three times a month. Over the last three or four years, whenever A----- and I had visited, it was a settled question that we would take Mother to L---'s for dinner.  She knew the menu up and down, even now, and could pick out just what she wanted.  Only, by last January, she seemed more to be just going through the motions and just picked at her food.

The meals A---- had fixed for us during that two-day visit were just Mother's kind of thing, and healthy too, but she'd been much more interested in having ice cream afterwards than anything.  Cookies were not bad either.  The zest for food had dwindled substantially, it was clear.

Mother had seemed more tired than usual too, sleeping late in the mornings - totally new for her - and lying down on her bed for long naps in the early afternoon.  She had been troubled by insomnia for a long time after Dad died in 1980, and by her bed she still had a radio and an old cassette player with tapes of old radio shows.  But there was no insomnia anymore, as we'd learned before January.

She wouldn't have missed Sunday church, of course, but she hadn't wanted to visit with all the friendly folks who hung around after the service, as she had done even as long as I could remember.

She just no longer seemed to be the perky, engaged little old lady she had been.

11

8/30/01

Before we went down in June, then, the care manager let me know that Mother's doctor was a little concerned about a partial blockage in her bowel, and an appointment had been set up for a cancer specialist in that first week of the month.  We had been planning on visiting soon anyway, so we timed it so we could take her to this new doctor.

He was a younger man than I had expected in a gerontologist, soft-spoken.  It turned out he had the results of a lot of tests, including an MRI, I guess.  Anyway, he took Mother into a private examination room to check her out and ask her some questions.  A curious thing about Mother's intellectual state was that she couldn't possibly generalize as to her overall condition, but as accurately as ever she could tell you what she was feeling at the moment.  "Does your back hurt?" "Do you feel tired?"  "Do you have a headache?"  That kind of question she could answer fine.

They weren't gone long.  Then the doctor asked A----- to sit with Mother while he and I could "get acquainted."

Inside his private office, he showed me on a screen the picture of Mother's colon (he said, you know, not that I would know on my own).  He pointed out a shadowy blob and said if we had it biopsied, we could tell if it was cancer.  His manner indicated that wasn't the best option.

The family had agreed years before that, as I believe this doctor knew, that Mother had lived a long, good life and that none of us would want to prolong it into worry, suffering, expense (Mother was very frugal!)... particularly as her mind slipped away.

I asked What if we didn't have the biopsy?

"If I'm right, he said, and the mass is malignant, then your Mother will decline either rapidly or slowly.  We would minimize her discomfort, with this in the colon, and I can alert Hospice now, if you want me to."

I told him to go ahead.  "So what'll come next?"

He explained that the Hospice people - with whom he worked often - had to have their own physician and nurse verify the situation before they would take on Mother's care.  They wouldn't intervene before in their judgment the end was six weeks or fewer away.

12

8/31/01

That was three months ago, he realized now, as he straightened up from the keyboard and monitor.  His wife and he had been home after the funeral now about a week.  He had returned to work only a few days after that talk with his mother's doctor.  Hospice had started in after only a week or so.  Mother had declined very slowly, not going permanantly to her bed until the last week.

His daughter told him that someone at work said their parents had learned that it helped the grieving period significantly to write something down.  Knowing her Dad, she had encouraged him to write the story.

"It's been a very hard year for you, Dad," she'd said.

13

9/1/01

I guess I won't try to recall the details of the funeral arrangements and all that.  Even though I knew it was for the best and was comfortable, even pleased, with the decisions we'd made about the Hospice care, her death still took a lot out of me.  And I dream now, almost every night, that I am me, an adult, but I live in my Mother's house.  So, I'm just worn out.

I'm the executor of the will.  The house will be on the market in a few weeks.  The process is complicated but - well - routine.

But it didn't seem quite right to...

But it doesn't seem quite right to just stop.  So here is a closing thought:

You never know what to expect.  I certainly didn't know I even had a heart problem back in January 2001.  It's now just the end of August, and I have a lot of maintenance drugs to take and a little machine silently working under my skin up in my chest.

Mother has had a quiet decline and is at peace, as they say.

So it's been tough, but one thing, It can't go on forever, can it?  I mean, so many unfortunate things have happened to me this year already, I feel confident - at least - we've had our quota of disasters for the whole year already!  You know?


***

National Debt: Let's Add Some Sense to the Debate (essay)

***

1

I heard one of the new Congressmen say recently, "We don't have a revenue problem.  We have a spending problem!"  He was very certain about that.  I have heard other national leaders interviewed saying much the same thing, just as emphatically.


What I have not heard is on what basis this firm conviction is grounded.

2

It is true that we have a national debt of a size that is very rare for our country.  As a percentage of the U. S. Gross Domestic Product, our current debt is even higher than the national debts of many other developed countries such as Germany or Sweden.  Our normal, or expected level of national debt - it may be worth remembering - is quite a bit lower than those planned in other developed countries.

The size of our current debt could be a problem under certain circumstances, such as a reasonable chance of domestic inflation or international fear for the stability of the U. S. economy when compared with the economic stability of other developed nations. 

Neither of these circumstances faces us today.  The U. S. economy is still the largest and most trusted in the world, even though the worldwide Great Recession has caused significant economic problems here as in other countries. 

And far from there being reasonable fear of inflation in our country, it is generally agreed that we have only recently escaped the danger of deflation, falling prices rather than falling value in the dollar.  In other words, the probability of the opposite of inflation - as far as we can tell - is greater than the likelihood of inflation.

Still, since either condition could possibly become a reality at some time in the future, it is prudent to keep the amount we add to the current national debt as small as possible.

3

Additions to the national debt occur when current government spending exceeds government revenues.  In a controlled capitalistic economy such as our own, government revenues come from federal taxes, not from corporations owned by the government. 

Adjusted for normal inflation over the years, our government's revenues today are considerably lower than they have been in the past because of the many reductions in federal taxes over the last 30 years.  Tax revenues have fallen especially because of the reduction of taxes on the wealthy, since the wealthy have been counted on to pay the largest share of federal taxes for 100 years or so, as they do in the other developed countries.  Such taxing is also a basic feature of modern capitalism.

And, most obviously, our tax revenues are significantly lower in 2011 because of the Great Recession of 2008-2010, from which we have just begun to recover.  The long-term unemployed pay little income tax, if any.  Businesses earning fewer dollars than in the recent past pay less tax too; those that are bankrupt may pay none. 

Even adjusted for inflation, government spending today is half the percentage of GDP of what it was in 1946.  It is below its level of the mid-1950s, a period cited as highly prosperous for our country.  The level of national debt today is comparable to what it was 20 years ago. 

The level of the national debt clearly is not a matter of urgent concern, especially when compared to the high rate of unemployment and the stagnant or falling income of 75% or 80% of Americans.

4

There may be some spending problems that need to be addressed.  However, the national debt is less a cause for worry than the fragile condition of the economy or the injustice of the current tax system.


***

Poem: Roman Vista

***

He stands on the roof, on the tall windblown tower
………overlooking the city--
Gazing past the tiled roofs clustered near beneath Him,
Past the brown, green, and black shingles covering the low
………and cool residences imbedded in the cedary hills
………forming a bowl to cradle His tower under Him,
Past the white cotton clouds, through the azure liquid sky,
………beyond the sun and the heavens, into nowhere.

He smiles and the sun glows warmly,
Sending fire into all natural things--
………tree, bush, dog, or man and woman--
Inducing all who wake or ever stirred on earth to peace--
………to peaceful, hot oblivion.

He laughs and the clouds start to move,
Enshrouding themselves
………with black violet,
Encircling the sun, shutting out its light
………but not its soporific heat.

He roars, and thunder stumbles out from behind the hills
………and careens through the clouds,
Smashing the peace with heavy, loud, bootsteps
………that roll back and forth in the hills' cradles.

A tear builds in His eye, larger, until it bleeds
……….down His soft cheek, and the rains
Begin to stroke the fertile soil,
Splashing the gutters with a coolish clearness
………restoring peace once more.

He sobs, and the cool of the rain turns to heat,
Boiling the tile-covered roofs
………and the trees
...........and everything beneath Him
………with fever.

He sobs again and the clear waters
………turn to filth,
Coating everything touched by the searing rain
………with a blistering, sticky mud.

He cries on and on, and the rain turns to fire
           as it pounds the earth,
Kindling the city, the trees,
           the roofs, the streets, the gutters,
          even His own tower
With flames that shoot up
          into the cotton clouds,
Billowing smoke to the liquid sky.

Finding his violin, still crying,
He plays wild songs
         into the fire and ash,
Bowing and laughing at the same time
         until the whole city is destroyed
         and even His tower is steaming
Black rubble
         beneath the quietly smiling sun.

***

Deductions and Conclusions (from Essays)

***

1. Founding Principles

… American culture grows out of the dual between our great intellectual, legal, and social heritage and our practical desire to overcome real, material dangers and risks.
                                                          The Secrets of American Success 2/12/10

The greatest thing about our great nation is the ideals upon which it was founded. If we are to continue America’s noble traditions and live up to our great mission in the world and in human history, we must do everything in our power to nurture, sustain, and pursue our essential values. Highly concentrated wealth and power threatens all that we hold most dear in the United States of America: peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all.
                    The “Too Big to Fail” Discussion: the National Interest 4/18/10

As issues arise in the public debate, it seems obvious that [the] founding principles [in the Preamble to the Constitution] should be the first considerations in our minds as we attempt to decide where we stand. We should not argue for a proposal, that is, merely because it "seems right" to us at the time. The prohibition against one person's freedom impinging on that of another must be considered as well. What is obviously right from my point of view is not necessarily what seems right from another's perspective; I do not have the right to impose my belief on others, unless my view of what is right also serves the national purpose as described in the Preamble.
                                               Present Implications of the Constitution 5/2/10

A political party that is based on these six freedoms – [freedom] from fear, want, force and violence, injustice, and unequal opportunity – and that actively, proudly, and aggressively pursues them would be one we could enthusiastically support.  Yet somehow, I am inclined to think that the actions of the party [claiming to be “based on freedom”] are not in fact founded on principles of freedom as I understand it, or at least not on freedom for all.
                                    Freedom in America: Who Cares? 5/9/2010

It is much more useful both for ourselves and particularly for our nation, or any nation, to think in terms of right and wrong, rather than in terms of good and evil. Avoiding the temptation to think of public issues as absolutes, like good vs. evil, is not just wordplay …; it is significant … as well as useful and valuable.

Between evil and good, there is no possibility of finding a middle ground, no possible agreement, no peace. If we think of behaviors in the contentious issues that divide us as moral or immoral, we are much more likely to be able to approach them rationally, without dogma, bias, or superstition, and with a practical chance to move toward understanding and accommodation of others’ opposing views and beliefs.
                                                       Beware of Evil (and of Good also) 1/25/10

We need … leaders and newscasters who are bold enough to tell us that the world we have to deal with is not simple and easy, but difficult and complicated. They can flatter our vanity by saying to us, “I know you would prefer to be moved, but it is more important for you to be informed.” But whether they flatter us or not, they need to appeal to our highest ideals and our highest abilities, our abilities to listen and learn, to seek the real truth rather than the “simple truth,” to seek to become fully informed and to think for ourselves.

If we continue to prefer simple platitudes to careful explanations, if we continue to prefer to have our leaders appeal to us through emotion rather than reason, we have little hope of adequately facing up to the hard realities surrounding us.
                                                                The Simple and the Complex 7/24/10

Since so many loud media voices today espouse the views fanatics are known to hold, and identify opponents of these views as enemies to be hated and attacked - though fanatics remain in the minority - they are mobilized to "defend the faith," and they can be unwittingly used to support the policies and actions that their leaders secretly pursue for personal gain and extension of their own power. And since they are convinced it is their duty to impose their views on others, fanatics are willing to use force and violence when necessary to do so, extending their leaders' control or at least influence over others.

Through intimidation and manipulation, fanatics can be led to espouse a cause that more reflective individuals - like the humane and rational Founding Fathers whom we all profess to venerate - would probably see as distinct from the fanatics' own cherished beliefs, seeking to force not only their adherents but all of us to follow their narrow dictates and in so doing to bring us under the control of leaders whose goals they do not accurately perceive.
                                                                          Dealing With Fanatics 6/20/10

Today, we can see honor systems driving unempowered and impoverished peoples, from the Middle East to Los Angeles (and all the other cities with powerful gangs), from Congo to New Guinea. A gang member may murder someone who is considered to have “disrespected” that individual, in other words to have wounded his honor. But such a system – or code – was still strong enough to tie our late eighteenth-century patriots together as they undertook their most treacherous endeavor in 1776.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were proud men seeking to establish a social system of just laws, bound to their cause by a real sense of their sacred honor.
                                                                   Pride, Revenge, and Honor 9/10/10

The cardinal American values are peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty, and justice for all. These values should be pursued, supported, and honored above all others. Actions that threaten or diminish them should be avoided or prohibited, vilified, or at least highly taxed. Public leaders praising these essential values should be supported; those whose decisions undermine them should be hounded out of their positions of influence.

These basic values must be kept foremost in our minds as we consider any proposed change in government. The size and forms of government as well as methods used to determine the size of each income-earner’s fair share of its funding should be decided not on some abstract or dogmatic principle about either the size of government or about the amount of taxes imposed on everyone; but about making government better and the tax system more just.
                            Too Much Government? Not Enough? Taxes? 7/15/2010

…The Constitution is the supreme law of our land. For us to belittle or deride its provision for equal civil rights to all citizens is unpatriotic and un-American, whether one is referring to the duties of the Judicial branch of the U. S. government or to the way we speak and write about each other.
                             The California Decision and Political Correctness 8/27/10

The question, then, about conservatives who claim they are champions of freedom is, "Who do they want to be free?" Libertines value only their own personal freedom to do as they please. Libertarians certainly value their own freedom, but also seem to think it would be good for everyone else to be free too, although how that could come about is unclear. Everyone with enough money, as produced by the current social order, which is dominated by rich global corporations, are those who conservatives seem to want to be free. Liberals, unlike libertines or libertarians, or even some conservatives, claim to be working to bring a significant degree of freedom to everyone (except perhaps to criminals who threaten both individuals and society).

The socially difficult issue of where the right balance is between the good of the individual and the good of society is exacerbated today by the morally difficult issue of to whom a significant degree of freedom should be extended.
                  Liberals, Libertarians, and Libertines: and Freedom 11/26/10

2. Government

As long as we are at war, in two distant lands, if we are to have good government in the United States of America, our government will need to be better funded than it is today. This would be true even if we had no corruption (such as paying unscrupulous corporations grossly inflated fees or winking at wealthy companies’ or individuals’ unwise or unprincipled actions).

Our government is under-funded. We do not want to take on more debt. Our only remaining alternative is to devise a raise in our taxes that the majority of Americans, despite our distrust and our desire for immediate gratification, can recognize as fair and just to all.

To fail to accept this conclusion, is to prevent our nation from moving forward, as we all want.
                                              Why We Don’t Want Higher Taxes 7/15/2010

Facing the indefinite continuation of both our time of war and our time of recession, our government – if it is responsible – will inevitably raise its expenditures beyond current levels; this is the greater good in our time. To finance this additional spending, we should consider a modest raise in the national debt and a modest increase in the taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
                                       In Times of War, Times of Recession 8/3/10

If the House [of Representatives] procedures favor the need for action a bit more than the protection of the minority’s opportunity to voice its views, more than standard parliamentary procedure; then the Senate procedure favors very significantly the minority power over the need for the whole body to take action. The result is that in our Congress, we do not have a proper balance between, on the one hand, the need to hear contrary opinions and on the other, the need (of all citizens) for Congress to take action.
                                                                      Let’s End This Debate! 2/4/10

The question of timing is very important in any form of dispute-resolution. …Also of critical importance is to avoid offering to give up something one desires too early in the process.

Doing so, even if what is given up is less important than what one gains, short-circuits the process which if allowed to take its course might allow limiting the final concession to only a portion of the valuable objective; whereas offering the major concession too early guarantees the loss of that desirable gain and – even worse – causes the negotiations to start with the assumption that the other side will make a minor concession, as a response to the offered bargain, and will go on to seek further concessions from the first party. The key in seeking compromise, as in resolving disputes through agreement or consensus, is to start by asking for everything one hopes to achieve and only then being willing to make compromises – first on minor objectives – only in return for significant concessions from the other side.
                                                          Compromise: Good? Bad? When? 2/4/10

It may not be a Constitutional matter, …but everyone professes to believe that only legal aptitude and experience matter in the selection of a Supreme Court Justice. But the fact is that many Senators – and especially today, most Republican Senators - clearly don’t really believe this. Why lie about it?

Could it be that Senators recognize that a great majority of the electorate believes that neither the nomination nor the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice should be based primarily on partisan politics?
                                 Supreme Court Appointments and Politics 8/15/10

For all these reasons, it is difficult for large media outlets to focus their reports where they should: on what’s at stake in an election really, truly, and accurately, taking upon themselves responsibility for the facts they report.
                                                                     Elections and the Media 10/19/10

So, unless we want to grant corporations the right to vote - by using their resources to guarantee the election of only those who will do their bidding - then, we should push our representatives to pass a federal law saying that the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech applies not to "legal persons" but only to human individuals.
                                           Corporations Are Not People, Are They? 12/17/10
[repeat]
The greatest thing about our great nation is the ideals upon which it was founded. If we are to continue America’s noble traditions and live up to our great mission in the world and in human history, we must do everything in our power to nurture, sustain, and pursue our essential values. Highly concentrated wealth and power threatens all that we hold most dear in the United States of America: peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all.
                    The “Too Big to Fail” Discussion: the National Interest 4/18/10

***

Encounter With The Chinese

***

1

My wife S----- was raised in a mid-sized Midwestern city.  She went to a small religious college there too.  She had met only one person who came directly from a non-English- speaking country in her life, a non-traditionally aged young man from China whom she thought was by now an architect.  He had enrolled in the little liberal arts college primarily, my wife-to-be had speculated, in order to learn English.  His name was Albert Liu (pronounced "loo").

We lived for a number of years where I could find my first professional job, in Washington, D. C.  After a couple of years, I learned of a professional conference in New York City that I could attend, expenses paid.  S----- and I decided we couldn't afford to pass up the opportunity to make our first visit to the big metropolis.  The only unbooked hotel with the conference rates was located rather a distance from the conference... but, after all, the conference was the excuse, not the reason for the whole trip.  (Don't tell my boss.)

2

For weeks we plotted how we would spend every hour of our three-day, two-night visit.  We would take the bus to get there from D. C. and get around the city on the subway.  We expected to do a lot of walking, which we thought would have the advantage of letting us see "the real city."

One of our favorite neighborhood restaurants in the Washington suburb where we lived was "The Golden Buddha" featuring the standard Cantonese fare.  Although both S----- and I had visited New York before we married, neither of us had ever gone down to Chinatown.  We thought now that on our second night, it would be great to have dinner there in an authentic ethnic Chinese restaurant. 

That must have been why I knew about Al Liu in the first place:

"Let's have dinner one night in Chinatown," one of us might have said.

"I knew a Chinaman once..." S----- would have said...

So we studied the subway map to find on our line the most convenient station to Chinatown.  We'd go early so we could wander around a while.  We might eat first, though, in order to avoid the dinner crowd.

3

When we came up from underground, I was a little concerned to see that everything around us was not in Chinese, but Italian.  A quick consult of the pocket map, however, made us think Chinatown was a block uptown, bordering "Little Italy" on the downtown side.

Sure enough, it was just a block or two away.  We sauntered around, ogling the storefronts, fingering the little trinkets at the sidewalk stands, and casually checking out the restaurants.  We wanted to find a backstreet, not pretentious (i.e. pricey) place where "real Chinese" people were going to eat.

And after a bit, we spotted just the right place.  When we peered though the windows, trying not to be boorish tourists, the only folks we could see looked Asian.  No tablecloths, little tables crowded together... We were sure this was the perfect spot.  The only trouble was, they told us inside, that they were full and didn't expect to be sure to have room for us for a couple of hours yet.

It was a Friday, which meant the crowd showed up right after work and would then be heading home after a little while.  But, no problem, we'd come early on purpose so we could look around.  We told the nice Chinese lady we would return.

4

It was still rather crowded when we came back, we thought, but they found a table for us back by the kitchen.  All of us were sort of elbow-to-elbow.  I was facing the kitchen.  S----- was facing the front door some distance away.

When the Asian teenager brought the tea, he provided us with the menus.  Till then, we had just been looking around at all the people.  If we were not the only Anglos present, it was close to that.

As I began to glance at the menu, S----- said brightly, "Hey, there's Al Liu."

I snorted.

"No.  It's really him."

"Where?" I turned around, still thinking there was a punch line coming.

"At the table near the corner," S----- said, "with that gorgeous Chinese woman."

Well, I didn't get the joke, and besides after all that time walking around, I was feeling pretty hungry.

"I'm going over to say Hello," S----- said.

"Oh no, S-----," I said as it dawned on me that she might be serious.  "Don't you remember what everybody says?!"  I know they didn't all look alike, but still...

"I'll just go say Hi," she said and made her way forward.

I buried my head in the menu, already embarrassed.  How could she fall for that?

She didn't come back right away, and I relaxed a little.  She must have thought better of it and gone on to look for the restroom.  That would be a good cover.

Then, over my shoulder came S-----'s voice:  "'Byron'?" and as I turned, "I'd like you to meet Al Liu!"

5 

Yes, it was indeed her college acquaintance.  He was an architect now.  In fact, it turned out he didn't live in New York but was only there for a short visit... because he actually lived in D. C.!

And the pretty woman with him was his girlfriend, the reigning "Miss Chinatown."

... And if it had been me, I would not have gone over to say Hello.

***

Story: Destiny or Just Dumb Luck?

***

1

The day after Richard Nixon was elected President, I started looking for a job abroad.  I was committed through the next summer, 1969, but I thought it was time to go as soon as I could.  I told myself it was likely to be a permanent emigration.

Sure enough, in early September, there I was in New York City, climbing aboard a somewhat worn Atlantic cruiser, headed for my new job in south-central France.  There was no one to see me off, so I was lost in a quiet reverie as I walked up the gangplank.  It was about noon.  I hadn't thought about lunch.

"Welcome aboard, sir," the Purser said as I reached the top of the gangplank.  I showed him my passport, and he told me my cabin number and showed me on a little diagram how to find it.  It turned out to be on E deck (down under water, the least expensive way to travel).  He added that the first seating for "luncheon" was scheduled for directly after we steamed past the Statue of Liberty.  That was my "seating."

I dumped my hand baggage - a little grip or valise - in the cabin.  There was no one else around at the time, but there were three other empty berths.  I went right back up to the part of the ship the Purser had recommended for the best view of the Statue of Liberty.  One couldn't miss that, could he?  The deck wasn't too crowded, so I was able to move right up to the rail.  The view at that time was of the pier and the busyness of freeing up the big ship to take off... not to mention the skyline of the lower half of Manhattan.  This was all pretty heady stuff, even for a grizzled 28-year-old like me.  Was I an adult yet?

After twenty minutes or so, as we sailed by that iconic monument, I was still lost in my own thoughts.  I was thinking I was probably the only one on that deck who was saying to myself how ironic it was for us to be admiring this mighty symbol of all the best about America - about the United States - at a time when the country itself was going to the dogs.

So I looked around at the others.  Standing next to me at the rail was a smart-looking young woman in a neat, khaki trench coat.  She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts too, and our eyes did not meet.  But when I went down to the dining room a half-hour later, it turned out that all the single young people on board had been seated together... and she ended up next to me.  Her name was Teri.

2

Two weeks later, I was sitting in an out-of-the-way staircase in the basement of American Express in Paris.  I was hot, tired, hungry, and most of all frustrated.  What I should do next? I wondered.

After arriving early that morning at the Gare de Lyon, Paris's station for trains from the south, I had taken the Metro to the modest little street in the student district, la Rue de Rennes, where I'd told Teri I remembered from my JYA in Paris a whole row of decent but moderately priced hotels.  Since I hadn't heard from Teri in the week I'd spent in my new home city, I just started looking for her at the first hotel on the left side of the street, coming from the Metro.

At each of the eight little hotels, I explained I was looking a friend.  Everyone was most cooperative, but no one had seen Teri.  Most did have rooms available. 

It was a warm mid-September day.  My little grip felt heavier every time I left each hotel.  When Teri was nowhere to be found... "I know she said the 20th," I said to myself, "That's today."  

"Something must have happened."

It dawned on me that, wherever she was staying, maybe Teri might have read in her little guidebook that the American Express office over near the Opera across town had a message service where you could find or leave messages.  I got back on the subway and headed over there.

The basement was crowded and stuffy.  As I waited in the particular line for the names in the alphabet that included my own, I jotted a note on a little scrap of paper I ripped from a tiny notebook in my shirt pocket.  "Where are you staying?" I wrote.  "It's almost 1 p.m. now, on Thursday.  I'll check back here to see if you have left me a message at 4 today and at 10 tomorrow morning.  Ron."

There was no message.  Teri's last name started with a different letter from mine the line for which was down the counter a station or two.  But the young woman who waited on me was nice enough to take my little note down to her colleague at the right spot.  I thanked her and looked around for a place where I could observe the crowd for a while, and rest my legs, and cool off, and figure out my next step.  Along the wall behind us, there was a little staircase going to an office door. 

I flopped down there, nearly out of hope, wondering again if I could have screwed up somehow...  when Teri walked in!

3

"Well, I never thought you would actually come!" Teri said a little later while we had a sandwich at the grand Cafe de la Paix next door.  "I know how it is."

"So, on the ship when we talked about getting back together in Paris... You didn't think I meant it?"  I found that hard to believe, but I laughed gaily.

"Oh, you meant it at the time," she said, laughing in her turn.  We were both happy to be together again, after all.  "But you get to a new place, start getting settled..."  She shrugged.  "I didn't think much about it."

I'd been thinking of little else, myself, but why mention that?  I was telling myself she'd been thinking it was too good to be true... so she just went on with her vacation.  When I'd had to get off in Le Havre while she went on to England, that was it, for her.  The five days on the ship had been fun... but life goes on.

When she arrived at the Paris train station last night, right there in front of her she saw a tourist office with signs - in English and other languages - saying they could find a hotel for her.  That seemed too great to pass up.  They had respected her expense limits, the hotel was nice, that was that.

She'd been to Versailles on a tour that morning, and on returning, the bus made a stop at American Express.  On a whim she got off.

And there I was!

4

Teri's original plan was to spend three days in Paris and then move on to Geneva for three days, before ending her four-week vacation in Italy.  I toyed with the idea of going to Geneva too, but I wasn't exactly sure when I was expected at my new job.  We ended up staying four days in Paris, when Teri headed off to Geneva for only two days, and I went back to the one-room apartment I'd rented in my new home city.

We'd exchanged addresses, of course.  I fretted over how long I should wait to send my first letter so that it would just get to Wisconsin in time to meet her coming back from Europe.  It was after all a good thing I'd checked in at work, since my French employers had been a little anxious I might not show up, but the work itself did not actually begin right away, so I could concentrate on finding a grocery store, a self-serve laundry, the nearest Post Office, and start a local bank account.  That all took about a day...

I took long walks down by the beautiful, wide river that flowed right through the center of town.  Like Teri's and my time in Paris, it was sunny and warm.  But I was busy wondering where in Italy Teri would be each day and what I should say in that important first letter.  I had the lightweight blue, special "air letter" paper unfolded on my little desk under my only window, but I didn't want to write until the day I would send the letter off.

5

When I hadn't heard anything from Teri two full weeks after she would have returned to Wisconsin, I was getting impatient.  I sent her a cheery airmail post card:  "How was your return trip?  How's everything going?  I've started on the new job.  A few surprises.  Nothing bad!  Please let me know you're okay... OK?  Ron."

First-class mail to the U. S. was supposed to take about three days, maybe four, so I thought a reply could come in ten days, two weeks...

When a full month had passed, with no mail from Teri, I was sure I must have had the wrong address.  But there it was, in her own hand-writing, on the page I'd torn from my little notebook ...  What could I make of that? 

To be honest, it never occurred to me that maybe Teri had just been stringing me along.  Maybe it was good to have a companion going from one tourist attraction to another - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral... - but a long-term friendship may have been another thing altogether?  No, I didn't think of that, frankly.  Maybe she was sick?  It was more than impatience I was feeling by then (but less than self-doubt, I guess).

6

"The gentleman would wish to send a cable to the United States?" the postal manager asked me politely.

"Yes, if you please, sir,"  I replied, equally politely and correctly.  This was the second person I had spoken to in the nearest Post Office to my apartment.  I realized that my upset must have been obvious to them from my manner, the strain in my voice, and the expression on my face.  But I could tell it myself mainly in my uncharacteristically bad French accent.  I was thinking of what I would say to Teri so much that it seemed to be hard to switch to French.  To myself I sounded like an American trying to speak good French, rather than - my usual pose - a European raised in France speaking his native tongue.

I was upset because another two weeks had passed with no word from Wisconsin.  When the morning mail that day - about 9 a.m. - had brought nothing from Teri, I walked straight from the mailboxes near the front door of the building, outside and to the left across the square, and down the two blocks to the Poste.

A pleasant young woman seemed concerned that I - evidently - was feeling an emergency, when she responded to my inquiry about sending a cable, "Yes, sir.  One moment, if you please."

Then she had returned with the man, who I presumed was her supervisor.  "You know the precise postal address in the U. S.?" he asked as he sorted through papers behind the counter.

"Yes, sir."

"Please write the name and address here and your message here," he said, pointing.

"In English?" I asked.

"But yes, monsieur," he replied in a reassuring tone.  "No one will know what you write."  And he smiled and nodded.

I wrote:  "Teri:  I have written you twice but had no reply.  Please cable if you are well.  Ron."  I had edited the message down - saying "twice" instead of "a couple of times," for instance - in order to reduce the number of words.   I didn't know how much this was going to cost.

It seemed like a bargain, after all, when I paid.

7

Then, it seemed like in no time (since everything really is relative), a letter from Teri came.  It was not effusive, but friendly. 

"I had been meaning to write sooner.  There was no reason for you to worry.

"Things have been busy here.  I am moving to a new apartment with my friend Joanie.  I must have mentioned her.  It is much nearer my work in Milwaukee.  Joanie is a teacher.

"Have you made many friends?  I'll bet you have been busy too.  I hope the job really is going well.  What were the surprises anyway?"

That was the tone, more or less like our conversations on the ship and in Paris.  I was still puzzled about the long delay, but I relaxed... and enjoyed the long-range conversation.

I wrote back that day, and in a couple of weeks there was another letter from her.  And a pleasant sort of rhythm set in.  I never found out if she replied to my letters on the very day when they arrived.  Probably not, but they came pretty soon.  Once in a while, we got out of sync and letters crossed in the air mail.

After a while, she actually sent me something I had never seen before, a little camera that you could only use one time before sending it all in to be developed.  "Use it to take some pictures of your apartment," Teri had written.  "I want to see what it's like.  Take a lot.  There's no reason to waste any."

Before I had my friends at the Poste send it back, with customs stamps and everything, I photographed about every square inch of the apartment.  I stopped short of snapping the primitive toilet and the cramped shower down the hall.

8

In February, Teri had another vacation coming.  She and another high school friend had found out that the cheapest way to travel was to sign up for a ski trip.  The first stop was on the French side of the Alps, not far from where I lived.   She came to see me before joining the group with her friend Kate.  Then we both went to Chamonix and then on to Grindelwald, Switzerland.

This time she wasn't surprised when I met her at the train station.

When I finished work that summer, I went to Wisconsin.  We got married.  We did return to France, where I had another one-year job. 

But then, we came home... just about 40 years ago.

***

Corporations Are Not People, Are They? (essay)

***


Do you find it difficult to distinguish business corporations from human beings?  It seems hard to believe, but apparently some do.  Let us think about this...


The American Declaration of Independence says,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

1

The first truth self-evident to our forefathers was "that all men are created equal."  Today, we would expect them to say something like "all people" instead of "all men."  Did these men mean to exclude people of color (like slaves) - as sub-human - and women - as insignificant in public affairs?  Did even Thomas Jefferson mean to do that?  Probably, they did. Yes.

To be sure, slave-owners could feel affection, even love, for some of their slaves, but that kind of affection was to them more like their sympathy for their trusted animals than like their feeling toward other human beings.  Yes, our forefathers - like John Adams - could "remember" and respect "the ladies," but  they surely thought that public affairs (especially war, which they were at that time promoting) was a realm for men only.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the supreme law of our land, the U. S. Constitution, puts to right one part of this central sentence in the Declaration by stating:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

American slaves had already been emancipated when this amendment was ratified, so when it was, ex-slaves and other men of color were hereby ordered to be treated like everyone else.

Later, the Nineteenth Amendment set straight the second part of the Declaration's central sentence by saying:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Women may not be prevented from voting, because they are citizens.  Women, like men of color, will be treated like everyone else.  So, whatever our forefathers may have intended by saying, "All men are created equal," we have known since 1920 that both all men and all women are equal under U. S. law.

Thus, today we would read the Declaration's central sentence as though it said, "All human individuals ( or 'All people') are created equal, [and] ...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."  And, of course, other rights - many of them addressed in the first eight amendments to the Constitution - are not innate but are granted to all citizens, not by the Creator but by the laws adopted by legislatures.

2

Business corporations are not "human individuals"; they are not "people."  That truth must be as "evident" as those truths referred to in the Declaration. So, whatever "rights" corporations may have, they are not endowed in them by a divine Creator. Corporations' rights are granted by law (if indeed corporations may be properly said to "have rights" at all).

Nor are corporations, of course, citizens. No one has ever suggested that corporations should be allowed to vote, for instance.


Now, as we know, the first amendments of the Constitution, or the "Bill of Rights," confer fundamental rights on U. S. citizens.  These include:

the right to follow any religion of one's choice

the right to speak one's mind without danger of legal punishment

the right of the press to do the same

the people's right to meet

the right to petition the government for redress of a grievance

the right to own firearms (reference is made to the need for militias)

the right to say No to an order to house soldiers in your home

     and

in amendments 6, 7, and 8, a significant number of rights related to allegations of crime: such as the right to be tried by a jury of one's peers, the right not to have your privacy invaded by government officers unless ordered to do so by a court, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, the right to a speedy trial, and so on.

These rights are granted to citizens by the U. S. Constitution.  Additional rights may be granted by federal laws, such as patent laws or laws relating to interstate commerce, or so long as they do not conflict with federal law, by specific states' laws, such as the right to marry or to operate a school.

3

Corporations come into existence for a wide variety of reasons, but they would not exist if they did not have some legal rights, implied if not expressly stated.  All corporations may enter into contracts, for instance, such as renting or owning a building, and they are legally bound to fulfill the obligations they take on through contracts.  A corporation may own property, of course, and it would be against the law for anyone - even government officials - to take their property without paying just compensation.  Corporations may incur debt, in  fact would often not exist without this privilege, and they are held responsible for their debts.  Corporations are liable to be be taxed, and they may be sued (for illegal discrimination against employees or customers, for example).  Finally, like people corporations can be punished for breaking the law, such as by committing fraud, breaking a contract, or even manslaughter.


These corporate privileges and responsibilities are all necessary if corporations are to exist at all, and all of these particular privileges are also rights and responsibilities of human individuals.


Perhaps because these fundamental "rights" adhere both to people and to corporations, corporations are sometimes and in some ways considered "legal persons," even though they are not human beings, as the first Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court famously wrote of corporations:


“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.  Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.”

Corporate charters are granted by states.  Whether explicitly stated or not, some of the essential corporate rights - such as the provisions pertaining to contracts and to property, corporations' being subject to criminal law and to taxation, and their being guaranteed due process of law - are also guaranteed to citizens, that is to human individuals, by the Constitution.

On the other hand, of course, as one might assume, the Constitution also grants rights to human citizens - such as the right to vote - which are not granted to corporations.

4


So, not all of the rights granted to citizens are granted to corporations.  The Constitution says that "the people" elect representatives to serve in the government; it does not say "legal persons" elect representatives, nor of course does it say that corporations should do so.  Some rights granted to citizens, in other words, are explicitly granted to human individuals exclusively, such as the right to keep and bear arms:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.  [emphasis added]


Keeping arms is "the right of the people" (not of legal persons).  "Thank goodness," we might say: imagine entering a corporate headquarters - a high rise, say, on Sixth Avenue in New York - and seeing everyone carrying a sidearm and finding the word "Armory" over a large steel door in the back, flanked by men with AK-47s!


Other provisions of rights in the Constitution, on the other hand, are stated in the passive voice, leaving it unclear whether these rights are granted exclusively to human individuals or also to "legal persons." 


This is the case with what we call the right of free speech:


Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech... .

Although it may seen clear to many of us that only human individuals can literally speak, this section of the first amendment does not say explicitly whose speech may not be "abridged," as the following phrase later in the same amendment does:


Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  [emphasis added]


State legislatures or the President and  the houses of the federal government are not prohibited by the Constitution (or anything else) from passing laws saying explicitly that certain "legal persons" do not have this right.


So, unless we want to grant corporations the right to vote - by using their resources to guarantee the election of only those who will do their bidding - then, we should push our representatives to pass a federal law saying that the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech applies not to "legal persons" but only to human individuals.  Or is common sense no longer useful to the common good?




***

Childhood Treats, etc.

***

1

It is clear to me now, looking back, that I was an odd child... and I liked it that way! 

If just about everybody I knew preferred one thing, I said (having first convinced myself) that I preferred something else. This peculiar effort to seem "special" extended to almost everything.  When just about all the boys I knew, for instance, were especially looking forward to the next Hopalong Cassidy comic, I focused all my attention on waiting for the next Red Ryder.  On Sundays, a bunch of us used to take the half-hour or so between Sunday School and Church to make a quick trip to a drug store two blocks away for a "cold drink" (as we called a soda); when the fad was for everyone to order a cherry coke at the soda fountain, I had a vanilla coke instead.  And later, when everyone was using ballpoint pens, I always used the equally-new ink cartridge fountain pens.

But, as for candy: when we went to the movies - which cost at that time 7 cents for each child - of course a few of us would get a box of popcorn, but as I recall it now, most seemed to prefer candy.  Milk Duds were the most popular, as I think back, with Junior Mints as a back-up.  Some would get Dots, and everyone who did gave their licorice Dots to me (since no one else would eat licorice).  I think it was later when M & Ms showed up, to great acclaim...

But as for me, I always bought... Bit-O-Honey. 

I know I did that because no one else I knew would eat Bit-O-Honey at all.  It wasn't just that I wanted it all to myself either; I sincerely tried to convince the others they should share in my delight.  No, the real reason was I had to be different, didn't I?

At a candy counter, if someone bought a Baby-Ruth, I pointed out that I preferred Oh Henry but they were harder to find where we lived in the depths of Texas.  Get the point?

2

But my fondest memories of all those thoughts of childhood candy are focused on the one summer before junior high when almost everyday, I went with one friend of mine - a guy nick-named by his parents Dos in order to avoid calling him "Junior" - to the best swimming pool in town, one of the few that opened at 9 a.m. seven days a week even though many days we were the only ones there at that time besides the lifeguards.  Our Moms took turns driving us out to the pool around 10 and then picking us up at 11:30 or so in order for us to be home in time for lunch.

Ordinarily, especially in a public venue, both Dos and I were rather inhibited.  But something in that cold spring water seemed to liberate us, and every day we did cannonballs off the diving board, or tried flips (and sometimes flops) and other silly plunges and splashes, howling and cheering all the way.  What must have those cool, handsome, tanned and well-muscled, 16-year-old lifeguards have thought of us two lunatics?

Anyway, this went on - believe it or not - for over an hour, every day.  Ten or fifteen minutes before the designated mother was to pick us up, we would drag our shivering and exhausted selves up the beautiful green hill from the pool to the street level... and stop by the candy-vending machine.  Dos introduced me to a special treat: the white chocolate covered Zero bar.

Now, that was perfect!  No one I knew (other than Dos, of course) had even noticed the Zero bar before.  I had one most days, although I would sometimes vary the series with another unusual choice, which I introduced to Dos (who was unimpressed): the Payday bar, covered with peanuts without chocolate. 

What's that?  No chocolate coating?  How could anyone want that? I imagined my friends asking, as I crunched my Payday, waiting for one of our mothers.

3

Some kids liked the straightforward milk chocolate Hershey Bar; I didn't particularly.  Others wanted Snickers or either Almond Joy or Mounds; I liked the flat, semi-sweet chocolate Mars bar.  Some liked Milky Way; I preferred Three Musketeers.

I mentioned earlier that when someone expressed a preference for Baby Ruths, I claimed to prefer the Oh Henry bar.  That one I confess I knew was not true, but the contrarian habit on these delectable matters was too strong to break, apparently. 

I had an interesting experience with Oh Henry many years later in France.

I had met an eminent French university professor, who for some reason seemed to have taken a liking to me.  M. W----- was a well-known French scholar of modern American literature, and maybe he enjoyed hearing Americans talk as part of his cultural education.

Well, one day M. W----- called and asked me to drop by his office at the university.  It seemed to suit his imposing position that he sat on his side of the wide dark wood desk in a big cushioned arm chair while his visitor was left to perch uncomfortably on the edge of a little light-colored straight chair.  On this occasion, he gestured that I should lean forward so he could show me the papers he was working on.

It turns out that M. W----- was working on a translation of Cane, which I learned was a novel written in the 1920's by a Harlem Renaissance figure named Jean Toomer.  M. W----- asked me to read a particular paragraph, which was about a kid walking along a littered railroad track, apparently in an urban area.  Describing the trash stirring around in the breeze, Toomer mentioned an old Oh Henry wrapper.

M. W-----, naturally, knew O. Henry as a popular writer of short stories, like "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Furnished Room."  What an O. Henry wrapper could be, he just couldn't figure out.  I believe he was embarrassed to ask me, but of course he couldn't translate what he did not understand.

It actually took me a minute or two before I had figured out the somewhat elliptical syntax.  Then I explained to M. W----- what an Oh Henry candy bar was.  (No, he didn't say he preferred Baby Ruth!)  Once he got it, by the way, he quickly changed the subject, and speaking in English, he asked:  "And what in the world is 'near beer'?"  Even though M. W----- was a known connoisseur of wine, not beer like those Germans, he was still offended to think that Prohibition had made Americans reduce the natural alcohol content in any drink.

5

When folks visited Mother or Dad at home when I was young, they would be welcomed into the living-room and offered a "cold drink."  At a soda counter, that meant what we now call a soda.  But in a private home, it might mean iced tea (which we called "ice tea" as though it were frozen) or even iced water.  In the home refrigerator when I was growing up, there was usually a six-bottle carton of Dr. Pepper or now and then RC Cola, and sometimes when I was being pampered there would be my own choice, Orange Crush.

It was always hot enough to make us thirsty two or three times during the day.  At most once a day, maybe after supper, we could have a cola or an Orange Crush.  But most of the time, we just grabbed for the flat-sided bottle Mother always kept full of iced water.  Sometimes there was also a pitcher of ice tea, but we had to ask before swilling any of it down; it took a long time to brew up some tea and then cool it down to the right sipping  or gulping temperature.  We often had milk at meals, and iced water was always available.

Once in a great while, Dad would be a little later than usual arriving for lunch.  That would be because he had stopped at a stand along his usual route to and from work to pick up some hamburgers for us.  It was a local chain that he preferred (as all of us did).  There must have been five or six scattered around the town.  There just weren't any national chain restaurants in my hometown, especially not for just hamburgers.  And these places weren't really restaurants either.  You went up to a little window and told the man or woman what you wanted, and after a few minutes, a brown paper bag would come out the window, and you paid and went away.  There was no indoor seating, only - sometimes - one or two wooden picnic tables jammed up against the outside wall of the stand.  The best one, where Dad stopped on the way home, was called Somewhere, serving Someburgers.

A hamburger anywhere in my hometown included lettuce, tomato, pickles, mustard and mayonnaise, and - unless you said otherwise - a big slice of onion.  The Someburger was a little bigger than the average and had more pepper on it than most.  Boy, would I like one now.

Were these fast-food stands? Well, you didn't have to wait very long, I guess.  But the kind of stand that served real cheap little patties on buns with ketchup, mustard, and pickle (onions? I guess so, chopped up real fine) did not appear at home until I was about ready to graduate from high school, and that place too was entirely local and was called 2-K's after the husband wife owners.

My family did not go out to eat very often, except after church on Sundays.  Then, we would usually go to this particular coffee-shop like, sit-down restaurant that was famous for its home-cooked fried chicken.  They always served biscuits and clover honey from Waxahachie, Texas, 100 miles or more to the north.

There was no pretending I preferred anything besides these family favorites, but on really hot nights when Dad would take us to that special (local) place where you could get an ice cream cone right in your car, when everybody else had chocolate or strawberry, or maybe peach, I would always get lime sherbet.

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And then, what about the over-the-counter medicines we always seemed to have around?

My parents seemed to get what they called "sinus headaches" often.  They always had aspirin around, particularly Bayer in the little tins or St. Joseph in the same-sized cardboard containers.  But the pain-reliever of choice in the Derrick household became, and stayed, Anacin.  For years the ads for Anacin stressed that Anacin had two, not one but two active ingredients.  I don't think we figured it out that taking a regular aspirin and drinking a cup of coffee would have the same result, since the special ingredient was caffeine.  (It worked too.)

My Mother always liked to have diet control handy.  I don't think I ever chewed on an Ayds, as advertised by Arthur Godfrey (between Lipton tea ads), but that became another standard in our house.  Vaseline, of course, was always on hand.  For those skinned knees and other little scrapes, Mercurachrome was always around, since we didn't know at that time that mercury posed a health threat.  I also remember once in a while Dad's applying a bright purple fluid to splits in the skin between his toes (a typical problem in hot, humid climates).

We must have had cough drops around too, but I don't remember the favorites.  I did have a memorable experience in high school, though.  I had gone all the way through junior high with this one big guy.  He was a starting lineman on the football team, which by our junior year in high school (in Texas) was a big deal.  He was generally considered a nice person, but I didn't know him well and was a little intimidated by him.

Well, we had one class together, probably the required Texas History.  R--- sat right in front of me, so that the size of that huge frame was obvious to me all the time.  One day during class I had one of those nagging coughs.  I just couldn't get it under control.  After 15 or 20 minutes, when our teacher turned around to the chalkboard, R--- turned around to me and said, "These things really work" as he handed over a little box of something I'd never seen before: Throat Disks.

I didn't hesitate to pop one of these flat, little brown disks into my mouth, but immediately wondered if I'd made a mistake.  Could Mr. Nice-Guy R--- be playing a little trick on me?  The Throat Disk had a sharp odor and taste that moved right up my nose.  (I knew years later that one of the active ingredients was chloroform!)  The taste itself was kind of good, but utterly new.  Was I going to be the laughing stock of school by the end of that hour?

Before I got through wondering if I had been tricked, though, the cough was gone.  And it didn't come back.  R--- started moving to the door after class, but I got to him, thanked him, and noted that the Throat Disks had stopped my cough once and for all.  He just treated this whole thing as just normal, it would seem.

7

Unguentine, remember that?  In our house we usually had some around in case of little burns... What caused burns?  I don't remember, but we had some; I remember that.  I also don't remember why we sometimes had Absorbine Junior on hand.  Campho-Phenique was always in the medicine cabinet, primarily to treat my many fever blisters.  Benedryl was the typical prescription medicine to address my perpetual allergy problems.

And... oh, I hate to remember it.   Mother kept in the refrigerator a little bottle of Cod Liver Oil; what was that for anyway?  We kids did hate to take that stuff.

It's surprising to discover now that looking back on all of those things - the smelly or foul-tasting medicines right along with the burgers, soft drinks, and candy - is all equally pleasant.

And oh, by the way, when there was the big argument among my friends about which was better, Spearmint or Doublemint?  My own choice of chewing gum ... was Clove.

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