A Father's Thoughts

Email to Senators Hatch and Lee

I am on a Republican email list and am getting some atrocious requests. The latest one is asking me to sign a list of those who have voted to repeal Obamacare because Trump “is eager to rip ObamaCare to shreds, but some in the Senate are refusing to even put a simple repeal bill on his desk.” The RNC Chairwoman is compiling a “massive list” of voters who want Obamacare repealed.

This is absurd. The President has repeatedly and clearly told the American public that he wants to replace Obamacare with a better plan that will provide good health care at a lower cost. The CBO has estimated that if the Republicans vote to repeal Obamacare 17 million people will lose health care in 2018 and 32 million will lose health care over 10 years.

Certainly you are aware that current polls by the Kaiser Foundation show that the Affordable Care Act is now supported by a majority of Americans. I urge you to oppose any attempts to replace the ACA with the current Senate proposal and to forcefully oppose any attempt to repeal the ACA outright. I understand that you live in a political world. I am a retired psychotherapist and the patriarch of a large and wonderful family. While I had my practice, I devoted time providing mental health services to those who could not afford the cost of treatment. That experience helped me understand how difficult it is for too many in this the richest nation in the world to access reasonable health care.

I wonder if you can imagine what it would be like for a middle class family to be faced with having to find health care and other services for a family member with early onset Alzheimer’s disease? Monthly cost for an appropriate treatment facility can be $4000 to $6000. Can you imagine what it must be like for a spouse to lose her husband to the disease as his memory fails? That loss is then compounded by the challenge she faces in protecting her own financial future as the years of residential care continue.

I have in the past respected the Republican Party and believe that our government works best when all sides on important issues engage in a robust public debate. But, now that the Republicans have to power to govern you are demonstrating daily that the priority is to relieve the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy without any public debate.

Do you have any sensitivity or awareness of what life is like for those who are not millionaires in our country? It is time to stop this political process that is threatening to so many and focus on improving the ACA.

I'm back, perhaps

Recently I returned to my blog after nearly three years and reviewed some of my earlier writing. Today I find myself frustrated and helpless as I see our nation on a path that has no good end. I am not comfortable feeling helpless because unless remedied it can lead to despair.

This month Cherie and I had a wonderful short vacation, well earned for her, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It felt good to be out of the country. Later this year I am going to the United Kingdom to visit two granddaughters, three new great-grandsons and their families. I am looking forward to that trip and the opportunity to rejoin my family members if only for a couple of weeks.

At the same time, while I am excited to get out of my country, I am uncomfortable having the feelings that feed that excitement. Neither am I content with the discomfort I feel about the current dysfunctionality of our toxic politics. Therefore I have decided to return to writing in the hopes of sorting out my own troubled thoughts and feeling. 

I plan to publish my writings on my long dormant blog and share it with those who might be interested. I will welcome and respond to any who feel moved to contact me. I have no illusions about my ability to change anything but am hopeful that some might be interested in engaging in a dialogue about the concerns that I express.

Will we finally act on gun violence?

This is my column published in the Spectrum on 12/24/12:

“As I look at the photos of those who died, I wonder how many more must die before we come to our senses and begin to converse with each other while searching together for a way to reduce gun deaths in our nation?”

I concluded an earlier column in August after the Aurora Colorado tragedy with those words. Sadly the conversation never happened.

Now here I am again with horrific images floating through my mind of a Connecticut grade school and the unimaginable carnage that leaves the families and friends of twenty innocent 6 and 7-year-old children in unbearable pain and grief. In the midst of the chaos the loving dedicated professionals, who went to work on that Friday committed to doing their job of enriching the minds of these precious children, acted heroically, six at the cost of their own lives.

Many of the first responders rushed onto the scene to help and were confronted with overwhelming horror and helplessness. 

My thoughts return to my own experience with guns. I lived in the Northeast for nearly half of my life where gun ownership was not encouraged. My family included adopted children some of whom came from deeply troubled early childhood experiences. At no time did I consider it desirable to have guns in the home.

Then I moved to the South and the culture was more accepting of guns. With my children gone I purchased two revolvers. Trying to develop and maintain a reasonable level of proficiency I visited a local shooting range periodically and did some target shooting at the bulls eye type targets.

One day in the stall next to me there was a young man with some type of a weapon that was larger than a pistol but smaller than an assault weapon. His cardboard target was the silhouette of a person. As he fired rapidly he was becoming more excited verging on what at the time I thought to be ecstasy. I left the range feeling stunned, went home and locked up my guns and eventually sold them.

“Guns don’t kill, people do” has become a cliché. It is an expression intended to limit thought. But is it true?

What is the attraction of semiautomatic instruments of death? As you approach Las Vegas on I-15 there is a large billboard with the photo of a military style weapon, large clip and all, along with an invitation to visit the gun store and to shoot it. With all of the pleasures available in Las Vegas, what is the visceral feeling evoked by shooting an instrument of death?

Do mentally disturbed killers who engage in these senseless slaughters find power in the gun, power that is promised by our advertising, films, and other violent cultural symbols? Is it the availability of guns that empowers the powerless with tragic consequences?

In the coming weeks we will learn more details about why these precious people lost their lives in Newtown.

Will we do anything this time? 

The Missing Link Between Anger and Blame

This is my Column published in the Spectrum on 11/27/12:

Many years ago my wife and I were sitting with friends in an ice cream parlor. I recall expressing anger about a letter to the editor in the local paper. My friend, a psychotherapist, asked me a simple question: “George, what is the source of your anger?” I responded with a superficial explanation, but the question lingered in my mind. Obviously the content of the troubling letter didn’t justify the intensity of my emotions.

Anger is an essential ingredient of our being. From an evolutionary perspective it along with fear is important for our survival, helping marshal biological resources in the face of threats or danger.

When expressed appropriately anger can be an effective communication tool. On the other hand out of control or misdirected anger can be harmful or worse brutally destructive.

A classic example of misdirected anger is being unable to argue with an employer because of the risks to one’s livelihood; then getting home from work and kicking the dog or picking a fight with your spouse.

Honoring, understanding, and accepting responsibility for our feelings is essential for personal growth and development.

When we channel feelings and emotions into blame we concede control to others or to external events. We omit an essential step of introspection. Our thinking shuts down and is not available to evaluate or modulate our feelings. In relationships rather than constructively expressing our anger, we attack the other thus provoking defensiveness and a dynamic that is potentially injurious and nonproductive.

A current example of the negative consequences of merging anger and blaming is the response of Mr. Romney to his election defeat. Reportedly he is angry about the loss. That is understandable given the commitment he and others made to his campaign and the deep disappointment he must feel. But he also seems to be in denial about the reasons for his loss.

The LA Times reported that during a recent conference call to high-level donors he attributed his loss to, among other events, the following:

“The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go to the polls, specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people,” (LA Times 11/15/12). Mr. Romney characterized extended health insurance benefits to young people as “a big gift”.

This demeaning attitude and these divisive post-election remarks reinforced my belief that this man lacks empathy or sensitivity for the real life experiences of those he previously characterized as the 47 percent or the “takers” in our society.

Thanks to the collective wisdom of the American people, we now have hope that, among other moves forward, those earning $20,000 to $35,000 may gain access to reasonable health care just as have the many young people already covered by the Affordable Care Act.

I readily admit that Mr. Romney’s recent remarks provoked my own anger.

And so I write. 

Student becomes the teacher on love

This was my column for The Spectrum on 6/12/12.

Victor Frankl, a German psychiatrist who survived the World War II Nazi death camps, wrote powerfully in “Man’s Search for Meaning” about the spiritual lessons he learned. As one reviewer noted, Frankl reminded us of “the responsibility each of us owes in valuing the community of our humanity.”

Frankl asserted that a core drive for humans is our search for meaning. He wrote from the perspective of life in the death camps. We also find meaning in the antithesis of the horrors of the death camps, in those precious moments when we experience spiritual love.

All of this came to mind as I thought about one of those spiritual moments that occurred three years ago while hiking in a beautiful Kayenta wash with my wife. We had gone deep into the wash and stopped to rest and listen to the quiet amongst huge boulders that had fallen many millennia ago. Cherie was sitting across from me with the sun reflecting off the rocks giving her face a subtle red glow while the early afternoon sun highlighted her beautiful blond hair. In a scene that could only be described adequately by a poet, which I am not, she was, at that moment, the center of my world and my existence. The love that I felt for this woman after 25 years of marriage was indescribable. The moment passed and we began our walk back to the world, while I continued in the afterglow of my experience.

As we walked I recalled the letter to the editor I had written a few days earlier trying to address the sources of our sexual orientation. I asserted that sexual orientation is not a behavioral issue but it is rooted in our human experience of love. My letter drew the predictable responses online by some unable or uninterested in understanding my argument.

The memory of those responses brought me back to another moment I experienced in 1994 while working as a mental health counselor at an agency in Atlanta, Georgia. We provided services to predominantly young gay men and their families as they struggled with the prospect of premature death from complications related to AIDS. At the time there were no effective medications to counter the effects of this disease.

During an emotionally intense counseling session with a young man we were exploring aspects of our lives and our mutual experiences of romantic love. At one point he looked at me and said: “George, can you understand that the love that I feel for my partner is not different than that that you feel for your wife?” In that moment of genuine human intimacy and meaning, the student became the teacher. Reflecting later, I came to understand that in that moment I was confronting the last vestiges of my own homophobia and this man who sat across from me in this quiet room facing his own death had invited me into the “community of our humanity.” 

Celebrate everyone's radical uniqueness

This is my article published in the Spectrum on April 17, 2012

Marilynne Robinson, novelist and essayist won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her second novel Gilead. Her most recent book, When I Was a Child I Read Books, is a collection of essays to which she brings her life experience, her intelligence, and her profound religious understanding and faith. Much of her language resonated with me as I responded to her eloquent articulation and clarification of ideas.

Robinson grabbed my attention in the preface quoting Walt Whitman honoring the “radical uniqueness” of each individual; a uniqueness and complexity that we obscure by assigning ideologically based labels that simplify or categorize ourselves and others, e.g., conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat, rich/poor and so forth. This reductionism threatens the core of our democracy as what passes for public discourse loses “the character of generosity, and the largeness of spirit that has created and supported the best of our institutions”.

At the center of this collection is her essay, When I Was a Child, in which she writes very personally of growing up in the West. Robinson learned of an individualism, devoid of ideological self-interest, that empowers each person to contribute to the diversity and wholeness of the community, a community that validates and honors its members.

In the first essay, Freedom of Thought, she encourages us to push against the limitations and constraints too often found in our religions, our education, and our economically driven society and to expand our thinking while exploring the mysteries of the sacred, the opportunities we have to love, and the beauty in our world.

Robinson cites multiple passages from the Bible unambiguously admonishing us to care for the poor with a spirit of generosity and gratitude. How do we view the poor among us? She notes that today we hear harsh judgments of the plight of poor and a growing resistance to providing help that is consistent with the message of Jesus.

Robinson writes of the essential nature of gratitude. It is “more stabilizing, more gratifying in every way, especially in dark times” and in spite of our contemporary challenges, she argues that we have much to be grateful for living in a nation blessed by God.

As I write I am aware that I may be guilty of that which Robinson argues against by simplifying the beautiful and the wondrous complexity of her work.

She writes of the importance of “imaginative love” for those other than our family in a healthy community, the role of ideology in capitalism and austerity, the fate of ideas, the understanding of human nature, the complexity of the human brain, and much more.

The scope of her essays extends well beyond what I can address in this short column. These few ideas may provide a taste or sip of the richness within this artful book.

Some books amply reward the time and thought spent reading and pondering. This is one.

George Stoddard is an Ivins resident and a member of The Spectrum & Daily News Writers Group. His email is [email protected]

 

 

The Maraschino Cherry

This is an essay I wrote a few years ago narrating one experience during my work as a counselor intern in Atlanta Georgia.

Every time I eat a chocolate cake with cherries, I think of Robert. I met Robert in 1994 while working as a mental health intern providing counseling services and support to those who were either infected with the virus that causes AIDS or who were diagnosed with AIDS.

My interest in learning about AIDS began in November of 1991 when my daughter Cindy telephoned and said “Dad, I have AIDS.” In what Joan Didion describes as an ordinary moment when life changes, my life changed forever.  At the time, I was 55 years old, committed to beginning a new career, and a student in college studying psychology. After recovering from the distress and anguish that Cindy’s disclosure caused, I immersed myself in an effort to learn as much as I could about the disease. I welcomed the opportunity in 1994 to participate in an internship in Atlanta with Positive Impact, an agency providing mental health services to the HIV/AIDS community. I had faith that if I helped someone in Georgia, someone would help my daughter in Utah

Robert, a forty-two year old man living with Walter, his partner of a few years, was an early client during that internship. While Robert lived openly as a gay man for much of his adult life, Walter, a retired college professor, had foregone any open or serious intimate relationships until after completing his career. Neither of them was aware of Robert’s HIV status until Robert became ill.

Our early meetings took place in the agency counseling offices and then were continued in their home and eventually in the hospital as Robert’s health deteriorated. As we worked together over the months in this heavy emotionally laden atmosphere, gradually a meaningful three way therapeutic relationship developed.       

The treatment priority was to help Robert as he moved toward death experiencing many of the feelings described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her landmark work, On Death and Dying. Since this was before the development of medications that transformed this illness into a more chronic disease thus prolonging the lives of those carrying the virus, there was a feeling of inevitability about Robert’s prognosis. We addressed many personal issues, not the least of which was Robert’s concern about his eternal well being and his relationship with God. He felt an affinity for the Catholic Church but was conflicted about the Church teachings regarding homosexuality. He also hungered for the acceptance from his family that they never offered him as a gay man.

Robert was grateful for the love and support he received from Walter, and over the weeks and months Robert gradually reached some resolution of his conflicts and moved toward a position of acceptance of his situation. On more than one occasion he had the wisdom and kindness to tolerate this beginning therapist’s awkwardness and even clumsiness. Belying the seriousness of his situation, he often displayed a sense of humor, allowing us to laugh at each other as we shared these few steps of our life’s journey. Of the many gifts Robert gave me, one was to permit me to be a witness to his courage, his vulnerability, and the strength of his human spirit, particularly during our last session together before his death.

By this time, the disease had taken its toll. Robert was in the hospital, sleeping lightly in his bed, when I arrived for our regular weekly session. He slowly woke as I entered his room and we chatted briefly about the day’s events, his physical weakness obvious. While lying on his back he would lift his knee in an attempt to ease the pain and find some comfort. Just the act of bending that knee was an exertion.

While we talked, an aide came in with a white bag containing a piece of maraschino cherry chocolate cake tightly encased in Saran wrap. Being the helper I was, I began to take the cake out of the bag with the intent of feeding him. Robert, as emphatically as his condition allowed, let me know he didn’t want my help. I gave him the bag and over the next 20 or 30 minutes he removed the cake from the bag and with great effort struggled to loosen the tightly clinging Saran wrap. As the cake became accessible he would break off little pieces and lift them to his mouth. Robert created a glorious mess as chocolate crumbs scattered over the previously white and spotless sheets and floor.

 While eating, Robert occasionally bit into a succulent maraschino cherry, a smile spreading across his face, his lips glistening as traces of juice from the cherry escaped his mouth. He savored the sweet flavor and moisture of the cherry pausing to enjoy the happiness and near joy he found in that precious moment! After resting to regain his strength, he continued his heroic task.

When finished, Robert lay back exhausted and fell into a light sleep. After I quietly cleaned up his bed, I held his hand for a few moments. Our visiting time up, I tapped him lightly on the shoulder and softly announced that I was leaving. He opened his eyes, looked intently into mine, smiled, and squeezed my hand affectionately. In a moment, reminiscent of the moment that I had during my last meeting with my terminally ill father years earlier, our eyes and our touch conveyed what I understood to be our last goodbye.        

 

Helping kids today pays dividends in the future

This is a column that appeared in my local newspaper The Spectrum on February 21.

In my last column I wrote about the vulnerability of the poor in these difficult economic times. Poverty rates have been increasing and today one in four children live at or below the poverty line in our country.

Debbie Justice, Executive Director of The Learning Center for Families (www.tlc4families.org/), responded to my article and invited me to tour the St. George facility of her organization. She frames her programs as workforce development programs to help the children “grow up to be productive and engaged citizens.”

I share with David Brooks, author and New York Times columnist, a passionate interest in human development and neuroscience. I am concerned about the seeming disconnect between what we understand about the pre and postnatal needs of infants and young children and the resources available to address those needs. Recently Brooks cited how early childhood education and development or lack thereof hugely effects later years in life. He bemoans the fact that nationally nobody seems to want to do anything about it. There is no debate on this issue during our perpetual political campaigns. He notes that the lobbying guns in Washington and the prestige is focused on K-12 and higher education.

Because of my previous work as a psychotherapist and in my role as a father and grandfather, I am profoundly aware of the criticality of adequate nutrition and active human and social interaction to healthy brain development. The American Academy of Pediatricians recently reported on the evidence of the link between childhood toxic stress and other deficiencies in the family and social environment during early life and lifelong impairments in learning, behavior, and both physical and mental health.

Because of the dedicated work of The Learning Center for Families and the support it receives from government and community resources, many young children conceived and born in challenging circumstances will have the opportunity to experience an enriching and healthy support system.

Family services can begin before and during pregnancy and continue for the first three years of life. The Center’s most recent annual report cites The Early Intervention Program that identities children who are “showing any kind of early developmental delay such as Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy or extreme prematurity.” The early intervention team of professionals and other staff members work with each family individually, structuring a program to meet that family’s specific needs.

The Early Head Start Program “is a comprehensive family development program that promotes the physical, cognitive, social and emotional growth of infants and toddlers while assisting their parents in achieving greater degrees of self sufficiency.”

I ended my tour heartened by the obvious commitment of so many focusing on the needs of young children and their families, but as with other social support programs, there is a bulging wait list of those needing these services.

As Frederick Douglas wrote in the 19^th century “It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men.”

 

 

Can we believe in helping the poor

This was my column for the writers' group in the Spectrum on January 24, 2012   

Last week I attended a ceremony at the St. George Tabernacle celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day helping me to reflect again on the life of Reverend King and the impact he had during the nation’s struggle to expand civil rights to the African-American community and the effort he was beginning, shortly before his tragic assassination, to bring attention to the plight of the poor.

More than forty years ago, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Convention, Dr. King was planning to dramatize the needs of the poor and bring national attention to jobs, income, and housing. He recognized the negative impact that long-term poverty has on the human soul. At the time, he felt that Congress was showing “hostility to the poor.”

Are we hearing voices of hostility to the poor today in this election year as attacks on “entitlements” are made by the same politicians who are intent on protecting the inordinate financial gains of the “job creators” from even the smallest of tax increases?

A recent study by Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs titled At Risk: America’s Poor During and After the Great Recession focuses on the impact of the Great Recession on poverty in America. The full report can be found at: http://www.indiana.edu/~spea/pubs/white_paper_at_risk.pdf

Briefly the researchers found: “The Great Recession has left behind the largest number of long-term unemployed people since the records were first kept in 1948.” “Large numbers of Americans are already poor.” In 2010 about 46.2 million Americans or about 15.1% were living in poverty, the number having increased 27% between 2006 and 2010.

Other data show that the devastating impact of the financial decline has not been spread evenly throughout the economy. The net worth of white households has decreased by 16% while African-American and Latino household net worth dropped 53% and 66% respectively. The unemployment statistics show similar disparities with the official unemployment in Black communities approaching 20%.

The executive summary of the University’s report concludes: “Promoting sustained economic growth, while at the same time protecting the well-being of the poor, the near poor, and the new poor, is the central challenge for leaders of the United States.”

It takes no great economic wisdom to realize that the way out of our current fiscal morass has to include reductions in expenditures along with increases in revenues. Both entitlements and taxes need to be reformed. As we delay the hard decisions the pain being felt by the poor and near poor in the richest country in the world is real.

Inscribed on a stone panel at the King memorial in Washington are the following words of Dr. King: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

Can we believe?

DADT repealed but the struggle continues

It has been a difficult political year for our nation. Our dysfunctional politics have validated the concerns of columnist and author Tom Friedman who concluded a while ago that we could only adopt sub-optimal solutions for the many serious challenges we face in the 21^st century. It becomes increasingly difficult to be optimistic about the future.

But this week we observed the official end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the military confirming and bolstering my confidence in the ability of our political system to make constructive policy changes consistent with the core values of equality and freedom in our nation. We will no longer discharge members of our military solely because they are gay.

As Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated, “we are a stronger joint force, a more tolerant joint force, a force of more character and honor.”

This marks another significant step forward in our continuing national civil rights debate, but married same-sex couples are still denied benefits available to heterosexual families including spousal health care, equal financial support if a service member makes the ultimate sacrifice, and more.

The road forward will remain contentious. At the Republican Presidential Debate in Orlando a gay soldier serving in Iraq asked a question by video and was booed by members of the audience and treated with disrespect by Senator Santorum who showed his ignorance and bigotry. Live blogging the debate Andrew Sullivan comments:

10.18 pm. Santorum claims bizarrely that repealing DADT means permission for sexual activity for gays in the military. This is a lie. The same rules of sexual misconduct apply to gays and straights alike. And a gay servicemember is booed by this foul crowd. Santorum keeps saying "sex is not an issue." But that's the current policy! This has nothing to do with sex, as Santorum surely knows. And again, the crowd reveals itself as hateful - even when it comes to those serving their country in uniform. This is one core reason why I cannot be a Republican. So many are bigots - and no one - no one - stands up against them. They're a bunch of bullies congratulating themselves on rooting out the queers.

How does one understand the hateful response of so many self-professed patriots to the words of a soldier serving in a combat zone and risking all for our nation?

 We are a better people than this.