This Kinda Sums Up Christmas, for a Kid

Mister Tristan--the 6 year old human being, not the blog--models a new Christmas acquisition:

All the best to you all as the year draws to a close....

"She's In a Better Place"...Really?

Tough post to write.  The bride and I recently spent some time with friends, a couple who had lost an adult daughter in an auto accident.

Unlike some such social get-togethers, they were very free and open in discussing their daughter: her life and death, the grief process, the healing, the hurt...in short, anything and everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask for fear of offending or creating an awkward situation.  It was a sad (at times) but also comfortable evening.

Now this was a "typical" church family, regular attendees but not overtly zealous or the like.  The mom mentioned that the one comment she frequently got--from well-meaning church friends--was "She's in a better place."

Our friends related how they grew to loathe that comment, just wanting to shake the commenter (or worse) and scream "Really?  Danielle is better off dead in a car crash than with her family?"

I get it--religious people think comments like that one are helpful.  But to a parent who has lost the light of their lives, it's insensitive at best.

I cannot fathom what it is to actually lose a child, but we came close when a loved one went off for awhile to a very dark, life-threatening place.  The bride and I were prepared (or as prepared as one can get) to receive that dreaded phone call in the middle of the night.  In sharing that sentiment with the dear friends of a support group that helped keep us sane during that time, we found that many of the other parents, like us, had already accepted the practical necessity of thinking about funeral planning, what type of service, what clothes we'd pick out, etc.

It was a grim, dark time...from which we have had the happiest of outcomes.  Unlike our friends, who have somehow managed to keep on going without their daughter.  They are OK now, but changed forever.

School Shooting Thoughts

I have many thoughts, as we all do, and I know I'm mine are not unique enough to warrant sharing.

But I did run across a very cogent post at Lawyers, Guns, and Money that I will share.  It addressed the predictable conservative call for arming the nation's teachers as a measure to protect kids.  This crazy idea fills me with revulsion and fear, and I think I'm giving it too much credit to only use go so far as to describe it using the word "crazy"...just so you know what side of the issue I'm on as you read this.

One of the especially sane comments to the basic post (from a teacher called Sly--you'll have to scroll down a ways) dealt with the absurdity of the whole arming notion, from a political theory standpoint:

So I’m a teacher. According to conservative orthodoxy, I’m a parasite on the public’s dime who is only interested in indoctrinating the precious children of America into communism or atheism or whatever. I can’t be trusted to have any control over the curriculum I teach. I can’t be trusted to fairly and impartially evaluate my students, let alone my colleagues. I can’t be trusted to have collective bargaining rights. I can’t be trusted to have an objective view of governmental policy when it comes to my own profession.

But they’ll trust me to keep a gun in a room filled with children.

Even the cynicism-producing neurons of my prefrontal cortex can’t wrap themselves around this kind of stupid bullshit.
 

I love irony and calling out of hypocrisy; thus I cannot improve on this gem of a thought.

Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, my spouse is a public school teacher.  She--as well as the overwhelming majority of her colleagues--agrees with the sentiments of the commenter, Sly, above--and cannot imagine how arming the nation's teachers is anything but a vigilante fantasy.

The Republican Trifecta

Haven't been political in few days, so here's a pretty succinct quote from Bob Burnett at The Smirking Chimp that resonated strongly with me:

Rather than move forward, Republicans want America to return to the fifties. They've resurrected Cold War themes: plutocracy, patriarchy and militarism. Plutocracy: Today's GOP wants America to be run by the 1 percent. Patriarchy: Republicans regard American women as second-class citizens, who should have no access to birth control. Militarism: GOP presidential candidates want a gargantuan military and believe the United States should prepare to "drop the big one" on Iran.

Burnett pretty much nails it in my book.  Any one of these three is a deal-breaker for me, but when the mainstream Republican position consists of all three, my mind is utterly boggled. 

Again I must ask: have they no children?  No grandchildren?

 

When a "Cut" is Really an Increase

Watch Weeks After Iraq Withdrawal, Obama Announces Plans to Shrink U.S. Military on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Credit to PBS, here.  The relevant segment is at 1:17 and is short.

Last week (5 Jan 2012) at the Pentagon, President Obama announced plans to restructure our defense spending.  I've been all over the usual news sources but somehow this quote, straight out of the mouth of the President, did NOT become front page news.

I found it via Corrente, who lead me thru Steve Clemons (who, by the way, thinks Obama should dredge up former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to oversee the cuts to the military), and ultimately to the PBS clip above.  Here's the transcript of the quote I want to highlight:

BARACK OBAMA: Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this. It will still grow. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration. And I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand that we can keep our military strong and our nation secure with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined.

Let me repeat that quote, lest you missed it, with highlighting:

BARACK OBAMA: Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this. It will still grow. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration. And I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand that we can keep our military strong and our nation secure with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined.

In a sane world, people all over the country would have been driven to torches and pitchforks, demanding his ouster.  You want to plus up the Pentagon and call it cutting?  And with a straight face applaud the fact that the U.S. spends more than the next 10 countries combined, and act like that's somehow a desirable statistic?  Seriously?  When children in this country are going to bed hungry?

According to CNN, here in the U.S. some 22% of U.S. children are in poverty according to the government's own statistics. 

More children in poverty: The poverty rate for children under age 18 increased to 22% in 2010, meaning more than 1 in 5 children in America are living in poverty.

 

The nation's poverty rate rose to 15.1% in 2010, its highest level since 1993. In 2009, 14.3% of people in America were living in poverty.

About 46.2 million people are now considered in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year.

The government defines the poverty line as income of $22,314 a year for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual. The Office of Management and Budget updates the poverty line each year to account for inflation.

For. The. Children.  I guess not.

 

Nature, Kids, and Ultrarunning

From a Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail.  Those crazy citizens of the former British empire have the best ideas!

At the Coombes school in southern England, the playground looks like an arboretum. Narrow paths snake through the shrubbery past apple, willow and walnut trees. There is a pond, two labyrinths, a garden and plenty of good spots to dig for worms. Lessons often take place outside.

It is the creation of Sue Humphries, an educator who, over four decades, transformed the once barren yard into a verdant outdoor classroom because of her conviction that sitting in chairs is not the best way for children to learn. There is mounting scientific evidence that she is on to something and it has become part of a growing outdoor movement that could transform the way school yards are designed and built.

Read the rest, then hear my radical idea.

Back now?  My radical idea is that things that are good for kids are good for adults, too!!  I'm pretty sure that this breakthrough concept is going to make me very wealthy any time now.

There's more:

Studies suggest that interacting with nature can help children pay attention, motivate them to learn and improve both classroom behaviour and scores on standardized tests. Neuroscientists and psychologists are investigating why nature is good for young brains and how being around trees and shrubs helps recharge the circuitry that children use to focus on a page of fractions or a spelling test.

I need nature time to recharge MY batteries, too.  This is why Ultrarunning will always beat road running--the mental component is so much richer.

 

Real Worries vs. Fake Worries...and Ultrarunning

Via NPR, some things parents (and us grandparents) should--and should not--be worried about for the little ones.  Again it all goes back to science, and a basic understanding of probability and statistics.

Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:


1.Kidnapping

2.School snipers

3.Terrorists

4.Dangerous strangers

5.Drugs

But how do children really get hurt or killed?

1.Car accidents

2.Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)

3.Abuse

4.Suicide

5.Drowning

Why such a big discrepancy between worries and reality? Barnes says parents fixate on rare events because they internalize horrific stories they hear on the news or from a friend without stopping to think about the odds the same thing could happen to their children.

I used to worry about getting hurt or lost on the trail when I was out running.  I gotta say that in my years of back country running, I have never heard of such an occurrence resulting in death. 

No that it can't or won't, and I'm sure it's happened.  But all in all, this is a pretty safe endeavor.  The universe of participants is extraordinarily fit, and I'd say, resourceful.

  

Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in 5 Minutes

I could also have entitled this post “Have They No Grandchildren?”

This article, "Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in 5 Minutes" was succinct and very well written.  I found it via Barry Ritholtz, writing on the blog The Big Picture.  For those of us who love running in the back country, I'd call it a must-read.

It really provides the gist of the facts that an informed person needs on the subject.  The article contains some 13 bullet points; I've excerpted a few here to whet your appetite for reading the whole thing.

1) The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, after at least several hundred thousand years of remaining within a constant range, started to rise with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. It has increased by almost 40% and is rising each year. This is certain and straightforward.

3) Several other factors, like changes in solar output, have major influences on climate over millennia, but these effects have been observed and measured. They alone cannot explain the rise in the global temperature over the past 50 years.

7) The biggest cost of all from global warming is likely to be the accumulated loss of biodiversity. This features nowhere in economic cost-benefit analysis because, not surprisingly, it is hard to put a price on that which is priceless.

10) Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for … what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs, and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? Most hard scientists hate themselves or their colleagues for being in the news. Being a climate scientist spokesman has already become a hindrance to an academic career, including tenure. I have a much simpler but plausible “conspiracy theory”: that fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results.

11) Why are we arguing the issue? Challenging vested interests as powerful as the oil and coal lobbies was never going to be easy. Scientists are not naturally aggressive defenders of arguments. In short, they are conservatives by training: never, ever risk overstating your ideas. The skeptics are far, far more determined and expert propagandists to boot. They are also well funded. That smoking caused cancer was obfuscated deliberately and effectively for 20 years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of extra deaths.

We know that for certain now, yet those who caused this fatal delay have never been held accountable. The profits of the oil and coal industry make tobacco’s resources look like a rounding error. In some notable cases, the obfuscators of global warming actually use the same “experts” as the tobacco industry did! The obfuscators’ simple and direct motivation – making money in the near term, which anyone can relate to – combined with their resources and, as it turns out, propaganda talents, have meant that we are arguing the science long after it has been nailed down. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”

Indeed.

 

Ocean Warfare Exercises..vs For The Children

Now this, from the 5 Aug 2010 USA Today,  is alarming.  As a career DOD employee I know better than most the need for military readiness....within reason.

But in this case, analogous to the classic guns vs. butter argument, I come down wholeheartedly on the side of the critters.

The Navy plans to increase ocean warfare exercises, conduct more sonar tests and expand coastal training areas by hundreds of square miles - activities that could injure hundreds of thousands of marine mammals or disturb their habitats, federal records show.

Training areas already are established along most of the continental U.S. coastline, so the Navy is seeking federal permits to broaden an existing range off the Pacific Northwest and dramatically expand exercises and sonar use in the Gulf of Alaska.

The Navy estimates in federal permit applications that its activity in those areas will impact about half a million sea mammals each year, including seals, sea lions and whales, some of which are endangered.

The effects range from brief interruptions in normal feedings to significant injury and, in very rare instances, death.

However, the Navy's plans have ignited a debate with environmental groups that say the service underestimates the long-term impact of its activities and fails to restrict training sufficiently in marine sanctuaries and other areas where it is likely to affect sensitive species. The plans to expand training off the Pacific Northwest, where the service's exercise areas reach into the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, have drawn about 3,500 public comments, most in opposition.

Trading off safety and security for a few marine mammals?  Many would think that's a good trade, but I don't.  We need biodiversity and healthy ecosystems more than we can possibly imagine.

Just think, For. The. Children.  If that's our credo, we will always do the right thing.

If the Shoe Fits....

Please read the post below slowly, objectively, and thoughtfully. 

From at Jun 12 edition of Glenn Grenwalt's blog on Salon:

John McCain on the Evil, Barbaric Iranians

John McCain has a new article in The New Republic -- which is exactly where it should be -- calling for regime change in Iran. The whole article contains one paragraph after the next of the favorite pastime of America's political and media class: self-righteously condemning other nations for what we ourselves do (at least) as much. Of all McCain's paragraphs, this is probably my favorite:

"Is it any wonder that this is the same regime that spends its people's precious resources not on roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all Iranians -- but on funding violent groups of foreign extremists who murder the innocent?"

As the American war in Afghanistan enters its ninth full year and our occupation of Iraq its seventh, and as we continue to find all new ways to kill innocent civilians in various countries around the world, and as we continue to transfer billions of dollars every year to Israel and the Egyptian dictatorship -- all while thinking about how to slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and thus erode the weak safety net even further, while confronting collapsing domestic infrastructure, rampant unemployment, and massive teacher lay-offs and even grade elimination for American children -- is there any other country you can think of, besides Iran, which "spends its people's precious resources not on roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all [citizens]" but rather on wars and support for foreign groups which kill "the innocent"? And over the last decade, what was the position of John McCain and his party on whether the "people's precious resources" should be spent (a) on "roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all" or (b) wars that kill the innocent?

It seems as though the foreign policy of the United States is mired in what I'd call the "Knuckle Sandwich School of Problem-Solving."  I don't know the overarching objective of that foreign policy, but it's not about making the world a better place for our children. 

Oh, the Serious People in charge will say that they are trying to protect the children, but overall such animosity towards Iran will only serve to create more problems downstream than it solves today.

Does the shoe fit?  It's about time for our short-sightedness to change--for the children.  This is my theme, the credo to guide all my actions.  See my previous post, here.

For the Children....Thomas the Tank Engine...and Ultrarunning

(photo by Gary)

Over the weekend we took Mister Tristan (the 2 1/2 year old human, not the blog) over to the excursion railroad at Strasburg, PA and took a ride on Thomas the Tank engine's train.  Of course, we adults were also enthralled at the festivities, and I mean that seriously.  The Thomas children's program and DVDs are actually quite good, I think, at teaching kids lessons in self-image, responsibility, cooperation, etc.

We had a wonderful day, and the kids were well-behaved and loved the day out.  This was Mister Tristan's first experience up close with a real train--other than the ones we see from our front porch about 1/2 mile away across the fields--and his first actual ride. 

Later, when we got home, I marveled at the good fortune that we have at being born in the US, and being in a stable and financially secure family.  Our problems are largely logistical (how can we fit in the Thomas trip?) while the problems faced by most of the children of the world have to do with food clean water and shelter and health care...you name it.

Which also brings up the parallels with Ultrarunning.  Face it, this is for most of us a leisure pursuit made possible by our comfortable standard of living here in the US.  We don't have to scramble for food and water and medicine, we mostly worry about fitting in that trail run or buying a new Petzl headlamp.

I'm not going to give up Ultrarunning because there are needy children in the world, I'm just saying that we do have the moral obligation to help those in need.  My volunteerism and charitable giving need to be a priority and not an afterthought.

For the children, you know.

A Very Deep Hole

Bob Herbert of the New York Times is always one of my favorite reads.  He has the vision that is seemingly lacking--despite all our fond hopes--in President Obama.  I guess I'm feeling about him as I felt about President Carter: the time was right and ripe for a strong person of vision to seriously change the way this country was heading.  But neither president proved up to the task.

From Mr. Herbert's column on 7 June 2010:

For all the money that has been spent so far, the Obama administration and Congress have not made the kinds of investments that would put large numbers of Americans back to work and lead to robust economic growth. What is needed are the same things that have been needed all along: a vast program of infrastructure repair and renewal; an enormous national investment in clean energy aimed at transforming the way we develop and use energy in this country; and a transformation of the public schools to guarantee every child a first-rate education in a first-rate facility.

This would be a staggeringly expensive and difficult undertaking and would entail a great deal of shared sacrifice. (It would also require an end to our insane waste of resources on mindless and endless warfare.) The benefits over the long term would be enormous.

Bold and effective leadership would have put us on this road to a sustainable future. Instead, we’re approaching a dead end.

Our children deserve better.

DC Running: the Mount Vernon Trail

As a Defense Department employee, I have had my share or business travel, to some sucky locations but also to some very nice destinations (such as Hawaii, Japan, Alaska, Puerto Rico, San Diego, San Francisco, New Orleans, to name a few).

This week I attended a conference in Arlington, VA (across the Potomac River from Washington, DC and within spitting distance of the Pentagon). This conference focused upon research and development projects specifically set aside for small business under the Small Business Innovation Research program. I manage a couple of these contracts and wanted to attend this conference to see what other projects were in the works.

So that’s why I was in Arlington. After the conclusion of today’s sessions, I put on my running clothes to knock out 10 miles on the Mount Vernon Trail. This is a multiuse paved trail that runs on the south (Virginia) side of the Potomac River from Mount Vernon to Theodore Roosevelt Island (opposite Rosslyn, VA). I picked up the trail at the Crystal City section of Arlington and ran upstream some 4 miles to Theodore Roosevelt Island. There I logged a couple of miles on the trails of the island, then returned via the same route to my hotel.

Over the 8 or so multiuse jogging trail miles run between 4:00 and 6:00 PM, I passed many bikers, runners, and roller bladers and had several observations that I thought were interesting:

1. Of the roughly 150+ bikers, about 90% were wearing helmets. I am ambivalent over the mandatory use of helmets or seat belts—my libertarian streak, I guess—I see it as a good end but a questionable means. But I do support mandatory helmet usage for children. So even if you don’t want to wear a bike helmet yourself you absolutely should wear a helmet to set a good example for the children…which is one of my personal crusades (see here, here,  here, and here).

2. Of the runners, I observed how many were wearing headphones/ear buds, etc. I only counted up the women, just because I was thinking about personal safety issues. Of some 40 female solo runners, only 10 were NOT wearing headphones/ear buds. I was astounded, I guess, at their trust.  The Mount Vernon Trail is heavily used but is largely bordered by thick vegetation where a victim could be quickly dragged. Maybe, though, the wearing of headphones is a statement that "I will not be intimidated."  Gotta think more about this.

3. Of the handful of roller bladers (less than 10), all were wearing helmets but nobody wore elbow or knee pads. Again, that’s your personal choice, but what is the example you are setting for the children?

4. Of the dozens of bikers that overtook me from behind, a slim majority was courteous and safety conscious enough to ring their bell or call out “on your left” by way of warning. There were many bikers, however, who zoomed by with no warning and who came very close to me, as though they owned the multiuse trail.

5. Last observation: when I run on the local roads around my home, or on the C + O Canal, or on the Appalachian Trail, I always greet other runners and bikers and even nod or wave to passing motorists. This was not the case along the Mount Vernon Trail, where of the couple hundred people who passed me coming from the other direction, NOT A SINGLE PERSON waved or offered any sort of greeting. Zero. Zilch.

Now, I realize that: 1) this is a metro area and people become sort of insulated and isolated, putting on their anonymous faces, and 2) the Mount Vernon Trail is a local Mecca as a running/biking venue for the more serious athlete to do some serious traffic-free miles. But c’mon people, could you just be a tiny bit friendly?????

Who are the REAL Robber Barons?

An interesting point from the folks at Corrente:

Per President Obama on 27 May 2010: “What’s also been made clear from this disaster is that for years the oil and gas industry has leveraged such power that they have effectively been allowed to regulate themselves.”

Well, the banksters have "leveraged such power that they have effectively been allowed to regulate themselves." Then they crashed the economy, squeezed the taxpayers for the largest transfer of wealth in world history, and the same people are still in charge, and the big banks are bigger than ever. That is a mighty FAIL, and just as mighty as Deepwater Horizon. So why the double standard?

Are Goldman and JP Morgan really all that different from BP? Why?

I mean, say what you like about the oil companies, but they actually deliver oil that people use, a tangible product. They didn't inflate a huge financial bubble based on phony paperwork and accounting control fraud, and then loot the wreckage when the bubble burst, either.

To answer the question posed by the title of this post, obviously both the Banksters and the Oil Companies are culpable for their respective disasters. 

Oh, and I do know what the answer is to preventing these types of rape and pillage.  Just follow this advice:

I can’t help but think that if we so-called “mature” people would ALWAYS guide our actions by the credo, “Is this good for the children?” then we’d all be much better off. Especially the children.

For. The. Children.

(Image credit here)

Speaking of the birth of his new grandson last fall, Larry J. Schweiger (President & CEO, National Wildlife Federation) wrote in an editorial in the Feb/Mar 2010 edition of National Wildlife:

I knew he was leaving his mother's womb to enter a world that is increasingly warming and more uncertain with intensifying storms, deepening droughts, massive forest fires and overheating cities. He deserves to live in a safer world.

You see, in the end, it's about the common property that is all around us: the air we breathe. It belongs to everyone on Earth-and no one-at the same time.

....

When I was a senior in high school in 1968, I read a provocative article in the journal Science titled "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Garrett Hardin that greatly influenced my thinking. Hardin described a number of herdsmen who were sharing a public grazing land called the commons. Each sought to get the most grass for their animals without limits and collectively they destroyed the commons. One line in his article has long haunted me: "Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

Global warming may soon be seen as the penultimate tragedy of the commons. If the nearly 7 billion people on the planet are free to continue dumping billions upon billions of tons of carbon dioxide, soot and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we will surely destroy the atmospheric commons that gives and protects all life.

Again--and again--and again--I keep going back to a simple rule. I guess it's a lot like the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you), but it forces us to focus on the children:

For. The. Children.

It's that simple--is what I am doing good for the Mister Tristans of this world? If not, don't do it. This rule must look to the larger as well as the short term picture, and applies to agriculture, to banking, to pollution, to government, to war, to morality, to health care, to religion, to interpersonal relationships, to whatever....you fill in the blank.

Children are a gift, a treasure, and are utterly dependent upon the unselfish and altruistic actions of their caregivers. In the example above, is overgrazing the commons in the best interest of the children? Of course not--perhaps there would be a short-term benefit, but it would be followed by a long-term collapse.

This isn't rocket science, people--we all have that little voice of conscience within us that tells us when we are straying from the rule:

For. The. Children.

For the Children (2)

I saved this photo from April 2008 and taped it in my work cube where I would see it every single day. 

The caption: Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of his home after a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad's Sadr City. The 2-year-old died at a hospital.

Mister Tristan (the human, not the blog) is now 2 years old.  I cannot imagine losing him in any way, much less to experience the grief and horror of losing him in a senseless war without end.

I could no longer recall from whence my clipped photo came, so I went on the web to try to source it properly.  The best I could do was here at dcMemorials, where the author says he borrowed it from the Associated Press and photographer Karim Kadim.

I echo the sentiments of the author, who wrote:

This page is dedicated to the late Ali Hussein

& all the other children of Iraq so tragically affected by this war.

And to the hundreds of thousands of American fighters

who have faithfully discharged the duties

thrust upon them by their Commander in Chief.

My heart weeps for the children...

& shares the pain of the soldiers

upon whom this horrible burden has been placed.

(I've posted on Children before and about our sacred duty to protect them at all costs.)

Remembrance for Nathan: What I Should Have Written

On 11 April I posted Remembrance for Nathan (see here).

Here I am redoing the post that I did 2 weeks ago, adding to it and making it what I should have written.

In that post basically I showed a Holocaust picture of an old Jewish woman holding a child beside the railroad cars at a concentration camp, made a brief analogy between Mister Tristan and Nathan (in the photo) both being 2 years old, then sent readers over to another blog saying "Read this."

That was sort of lazy--if I don't contribute any value added, coming from my own thinking, when I post something, then I should not do that post.

Here's how the post did read:

Photo credit: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

Mister Tristan--the human being, not the blog--is 2 years old.

Nathan, in the left foreground of the photo, was also 2 years old. Rather than try to summarize the story, I'm afraid I would not do it justice. Please go read the whole thing, by Lea Lane, here. This is a must-read for anyone with a heart.

So here's what I should have written:

Mister Tristan--the human being, not the blog--is 2 years old.

Nathan, in the left foreground of the photo, was also 2 years old. Rather than try to summarize the story, I'm afraid I would not do it justice. Please go read the whole thing, by Lea Lane, here. This is a must-read for anyone with a heart.

The bottom line is that a Holocaust survivor, Cecile, who was a teenager in the Nazi concentration camps, many decades later happened to see a photo that she recognized. It was of her mother holding her 2 year old grandson (Cecile's nephew), Nathan.  While Cecile and her sister did survive, Nathan did not, nor did mother or her brother-in-law.

No, it is too mild to use the passive voice and just say that they did not survive--the Nazis murdered them. And as I read this terrible story, I began to weep and to rage and to scream at the type of Homo sapiens (I won't use the term human) who could deliberately and cold-bloodedly murder a 2 year old child. I love Mister Tristan more than life itself and would gladly lay down my life for his. The innocence, the promise, the trust, in a child's eyes--to violate that is the most heinous of acts.

Speaking purely in a biological sense, children are our reason for living--we exist to reproduce and to pass on our genes to the next generation. But moreover, in a philosophical sense, children are a gift. They keep us young and give us an altruistic reason for living--to nurture, to teach, to grow.

It took me a long time that night to get my emotions under control over the 60+ year old tragedy of Nathan, as I held Mister Tristan and nestled him under my wings. He knew something was wrong and was content to snuggle there, somehow knowing that we were comforting one another. Then we read "Goodnight, Moon" and I told him the story of Tristan's day, and I put him into his crib.

I would spend a long time that night just watching him sleep, work forgotten, politics forgotten, ultrarunning forgotten. Just watching him sleep.

Remembrance for Nathan

Photo credit: www.holocaustresearchproject.org

Mister Tristan--the human being, not the blog--is 2 years old.

Nathan, in the left foreground of the photo, was also 2 years old. 

Rather than try to summarize the story, I'm afraid I would not do it justice.  Please go read the whole thing, by Lea Lane, here.  This is a must-read for anyone with a heart.

For the Children

This past Easter weekend was magnificent, weather wise—the temperature was at near-record highs, the sky was blue, life was good. We had a large family gathering at our home on Saturday, some 18 people, ranging in age from my father-in-law, at age 82 probably one of the youngest WWII vets (he saw service in 1945 as a 17 year old) to granddaughter Miss Sophia, who arrived a month ago. Mister Tristan was the next youngest, at just over 2 years of age.

This family, as do all families, has had its share of grief, of sadness, of tragedy….and joy, happiness, and contentment. This weekend’s gathering was happy and tranquil, and to a large extent all about the children--the Easter baskets full of treats nestled in their (fake) grass, the colored eggs, the egg hunt, the bean bag toss in the back yard….

When I think, say, of the recent issues of the sexual abuse and cover-up scandal rocking the Catholic Church, or Tiger Woods’ recent difficulties as he re-enters tournament play, I can’t help but think that if we so-called “mature” people would ALWAYS guide our actions by the credo, “Is this good for the children?” then we’d all be much better off. Especially the children.

In the case of the Pope and high ranking Vatican officials, naturally we first must observe that the actual abuse of a child, of course, is wrong. But then when they put protecting the welfare of the Catholic Church as an institution above that of protecting the welfare of defenseless children, they committed an unconscionable, unforgiveable act. When Tiger Woods chose to dally with women outside of his marriage, he deliberately chose to place his desires above the welfare of his children. Again, unconscionable.

Our children are a gift, and as children do not have the ability to defend themselves. That’s up to the responsible adults.

For the children….remember and act upon it.

To connect this to UltraRunning (and of course this’ll be a stretch!), I strive mightily to not have my ultra pursuits negatively affect my wife and family. But the fact remains that when I’m away doing ultra things I am torn between the need to be home versus the need to keep myself sane and healthy via running. Balance in all things, but whenever in doubt, the default setting must be to always choose in favor of the children.

(Photo credit here.)

A Feminist Perspective

One of my (almost) daily reads is Echidne of the Snakes. I consider myself to be a feminist, and strive to improve my understanding of women's issues by reading some feminist blogs such as Echidne's.

When I went there on Wed after not having visited the site since last week, I found not only 1 post that I thought was worthy about sharing with the Mister Tristan audience, but 4 such posts. Note: the blog is continuous, sequenced by date, so you'll just need to scroll down to see the separate posts mentioned below:

1.  Repentance During The Holy Week of Christianity (30 March): about the Pope's complicity in covering up the rape of children. 

They tell us that they are speaking on behalf of a divine source, after all. They tell us how we should live our lives, what is wrong and what is right. For all this they get freedom from taxes, lots of kowtowing and respect. Something has to be given in return, and at a minimum that something should be higher ethical standards of personal behavior.

2.  The Black Widows (also 30 March): about the recent Russian female suicide bombers.

"While there is no single reason women decide to give up their lives, experts say they have usually suffered a traumatic event that makes them burn with revenge or question whether they want to live. This can be the death of a child, husband or other family member at the hands of Russian forces or a rape. Russian authorities have said the women are sometimes drugged."

And why do men become suicide bombers or terrorists? What drives them to do that? That question is not asked as often which is insulting to men. It's as if all men could just become suicide bombers and we don't really have to wonder about the reasons they have, however distorted they may be.

3.  Stripped Bare (29 March): about banning strip clubs in Iceland, and particularly the variations in how newspapers covered same.

That's where we stand: The Icelandic ban on strip clubs is under lifestyles/women and the U.S. coverage is a concern about spending tax money on the titillation of men who work for the Republican party.

4.  A Small Corrupt Clique of Men Shouldn’t Rule Anything by Anthony McCarthy (27 March): another about the corruption in the Vatican hierarchy (and, I hasten to add, NOT against the rank and file ordinary Catholics who do good work from within the church).

The use of scripture to explain things is a sometimes thing and, at times, a two edged sword. The vast variety of texts by different authors writing in various conditions and of varying experience passed down to us in copies of varying textual quality and authenticity, lends itself to contradiction. But I don’t believe the text in which Jesus said that people who corrupted children would have been better of drowned with a millstone around their neck is really ambiguous. Pope Benedict has had a hand in corrupting children. Many Cardinals such as Bernard Law have permitted the abuse of children...But this pope, who has been among the greatest proponents of the revival of confession, is stonewalling on his own, disqualifying, sins. The hypocrisy of the conservatives in control of the hierarchy doesn't seem to have a bottom.