Memorize this

Google has replaced the need to remember much of anything. “Who starred in that movie?” “Does ‘edited’ have one T or two?” “What’s the capital of Wisconsin?”

Can’t remember? Google it.

But Caroline Kennedy, whose latest book is “Poems to Learn by Heart,” suggests memorizing poetry helps us understand someone else’s emotions, put words to universal feelings and connects people.

“You share with someone and you have this bond that I think is very intense,” she told interviewer Neal Conan. “You know you have this poem — you gave them something that means something to you and those are the best kinds of gifts to give or to receive.”

I imagine if I ever was a hostage or POW, imprisoned without so much as a dial-up internet connection and left to the games of my mind, I’d be grateful for the poems and Bible verses I’d memorized throughout my life (why I imagine I’d ever be a POW is beyond me — this is how my strange mind operates).

As I listened to her interview on NPR this week, I thought of my maternal grandfather, who loved poetry and often recited lines and verses as I spent time with him as a child. He especially loved bawdy bits (to which my little brother attached himself fully), but the poem I remember my grandfather encouraged me to memorize (he quizzed me on my recall more than once) had a lesson in its rhyming words:

The Guy in the Glass
by Dave Wimbrow

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.

Deep thinking on the ethics of compromise

Well, I’m not a great American thinker.

This year anyway.

The finalists for the Great American Think-off next month in New York Mills, Minn., have been announced and I’m not among them. Congratulations to those finalists, who will debate the following question on June 8:

Which is more ethical: sticking to your principles
or being willing to compromise?

I entered the competition with the following essay. Since I’m not a finalist, I’m making the most of my well intended effort by sharing it here and encouraging debate. Here’s to deep thinking on a Friday in May when snow is falling on my home state.

* * *

At 23, with a freshly pressed bachelor’s degree in hand, I was what society would consider well educated. After two marriage courses, I was what both a Lutheran pastor and a Catholic priest would consider prepared. After two and half years of dating the groom, I was informed. In a beautiful ceremony in front of 150 people, I promised, “For better and for worse. Until death do us part.”

And yet, 16 years later, the words coming out of my mouth were “I want a divorce.”

I could not stand by my publicly stated and privately held principle that marriage was forever. I compromised.

Now remarried (yes, I promised my commitment and fidelity until death do us part at a second, equally beautiful ceremony), I am most definitely happier. But compromise on this life principle does not make me more ethical.

It is always more ethical to stick to one’s principles. The very definition of compromise betrays its noble intent: A compromise is a settlement to a dispute in which both sides make concessions. If a principle is a fundamental truth and if ethics require upholding a fundamental truth, then yielding a point cannot be ethical.

Let’s consider my first marriage.

In principle, I married for better or for worse until death. In practice, though we promised our fidelity, we cheated. We compromised by remaining wedded only until multiple affairs rendered our emotional bond irredeemable.

Was this an ethical decision? No. It was a convenient decision, an act which permitted new pursuits of happiness. Was it the right decision? Yes. It was the right decision for me.

Note the important addition of the clause “for me.” Let’s consider how a personal principle should be applied to the community in which one lives.

Among tenets in my personal mission statement is the obligation that I seek to treat my body as a holy gift from God. I nourish it, rest sufficiently and eschew bad habits. Among other behaviors, this principle requires that I don’t drink soda pop. Pop is filled with sugar and chemicals that offer no nourishment and in fact may contribute to obesity. I, therefore, would have had no issue with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to limit the size of sugary drinks sold to no more than 16 ounces.

The proposal, recently struck down by the New York Supreme Court, is itself a compromise on a principle. Paragraphs of principled language relate details of the obesity epidemic, how sugary drinks are driving this epidemic and how oversize portions contribute to ever greater consumption of sugary drinks, yet the proposed health code did not outlaw said beverages, it only limited portion sizes.

When I choose to indulge in a sugary drink whatever the size, I am not making an ethical decision. I am compromising for convenience. Though I believe it is fundamentally wrong to manufacture, market and consume sugary beverages, my principle does not necessarily require me to slap Big Gulps out of the hands of every thirsty shopper in my neighborhood 7-Eleven. It requires me to limit my own consumption.

To compromise on my personal principle by allowing others to choose to drink pop is not compromise. It is required in order to coexist because not everyone holds the same principles.

Are there any principles so fundamental that all people can agree to them without compromise?

Consider “Thou shalt not kill,” a universally accepted tenet of ethical behavior.

Unless the victim is a blob of cells unable to exist outside of a woman’s womb.

Or the victim intended to kill first.

Or the victim is a cold-blooded killer on death row.

Or the victim is the diabolical head of an evil organization bent on the annihilation of all for which the United States of America stands.

Is legal abortion or lethal force used in defense of self or the death penalty or the killing of Osama Bin Laden ethical? No. They are acts that compromise a central tenet accepted by most fair-minded people. But these compromises in principle are necessary to ensure the safety of the populace.

Would I personally have an abortion, shoot back, earn my salary as an executioner or volunteer as a Navy Seal on a secret mission in Pakistan? Unlikely. These activities violate my ethical principles. But I concede their necessity.

Compromise may be convenient. It may be expedient. It may even be necessary in order to coexist or even to survive. But to compromise is never more ethical.

Keeping the faith

Some people listen to music with exactly 180 beats per minute while they run.

Some people listen to the sound of their breathing and the sound of their footsteps.

I listen to National Public Radio.

Which may explain why I’m among the world’s slowest runners.

In any case, as I ran to the highest point in Hampshire this morning, I was mesmerized by Krista Tippett’s interview of poet and author Marie Howe who talked about words and writing with depth and magic. On Being’s Tippett recites part of one of Howe’s poems, “The Meadow”:

Bedeviled,
human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the
words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know
that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that
could change your life

Tangled on my tongue — or between my brain and my typing fingers — is the sentence that could change my life. Said Howe, “Language is almost all we have left of action in the modern world. I mean unless we’re in Syria, you know, or we’re in Iraq. But for many of us, action has become what we say. The moral life is lived out in what we say more often than what we do.”

A writer, of course, worships at the altar of Words Are Action.

“It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation.
It’s a lot more difficult to perform one.”

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Life isn’t fair

It’s that time of year.

Before terrorist marathon bombings, bankruptcy filings, terroristic letters filled with poison, possibly terrorist-inspired explosions, metropolitan stay-in-place orders and terrorist man hunts mesmerized the news junkie in me this week, the biggest news in my life was that my Adored Stepson was about to graduate from high school.

It’s still the biggest news in my life. I’m proud of him.

As has happened repeatedly when he takes another step towards adulthood, I reflect on those steps in my own life (and I try to forget I graduated 28 years ago — uffda).

As I pondered my own maturity (and lack thereof) at that age, I ran across the editorial I wrote for the last edition of my high school school newspaper, which at the time was called “The Tomahawk.”

Oh, how times have changed. The Indians were the mascot of my high school back then so naming our newspaper after an implement of violence made perfect sense.

The headline of the editorial was “Life isn’t fair.” I thought it was brilliant at the time. Some of it is still brilliant. Some of it is so simplistic. And some of it is so dated (does anyone say “brown nosers” anymore? and does anyone remember why Nicaragua was relevant?).

In any case, here is my 28-year-old editorial, for your weekend reading pleasure. May life return to simple pleasures like graduation parties and old newspaper clips.

From The Tomahawk, May 24, 1985

“Hey, That isn’t fair! He got more than I did!”

When we were in elementary, our teachers and parents did their best to even things out so that everything was fair. Our parents gave each kid the same number of Christmas presents and made us take our turn washing dishes. Our teachers made sure that everyone got a chance to be line leader or team captain. Of course, sometimes there’s a teacher’s pet, but if some things weren’t equal, it generally didn’t matter much anyway. Your future didn’t depend on an extra piece of cake or losing your recess because you punched somebody (and it was his fault!).

But life got more complicated. Fancy Nancy had nice clothes and a boyfriend. Athletic Al could run faster than anyone and never got less than straight A grades. It wasn’t fair! But it got worse. The National Honor Society was just “a bunch of brown nosers,” and you were the one who decorated for the prom — why does someone else get to enjoy it? And how fair is it when someone in the spring of their life is handicapped? Or worse yet, killed? It isn’t fair.

But no one promised us that life was going to be fair. I think our teachers misled us. And what’s fair anyway? It’s all relative — fair is inside the third base line until it reaches the outfield. And it isn’t always we who are cheated. We come out on top just as often as we’re stepped on.

We can say, “It’s not fair” all day long and blame someone else because we were stepped on, but it doesn’t change anything. Instead of expecting life to treat us all equally, we should hope that it does but expect that it probably won’t. And when it doesn’t, instead of holding a pity party for ourselves, we should go out there and attempt to right the wrong.

You’re right. Life isn’t fair. But complaining about it wastes a great deal of time. Life is a journey, and a bad attitude ruins the trip. Accept life’s inequalities. Don’t let them get to you — take them in stride and take consolation in the fact that Fancy Nancy will probably become an unwed mother and Athletic Al will die in Nicaragua. It all evens out.

Soothing the savage soul

Anyone else feeling a little “deathed out” this week?

I don’t mean in any way to minimize the sorrow the families of those who died in this week’s various explosions because I’m not. I can only imagine the long roads ahead for those who are grieving or recovering.

But the nature of the news has whipped the media into a frenzy, and I’ve been hanging on their every word a little too much. I don’t live in Boston; I wasn’t there. I don’t know the bombers. And I’m not even a gardener, let alone a fertilizer aficionado. My inflated interest in all things explosive has been fed by the media dragon. Obsession does not equal compassion.

As it is said, physician, heal thyself, so I’m prescribing the following:

• A news diet. It’s OK to listen to National Public Radio tomorrow morning, but after that: Music. I can catch up with news conferences and memorial services in the next day’s newspaper.
• Distraction. Tonight it’s my favorite empty indulgence: Reality TV in the form of “Project Runway.”
• Comfort food. That creamy mushroom gravy with my pork chop tonight was divine. Ice cream, here I come.
• Make a difference where I can. I know — actually know in the real, relationship sense, not in simply the Facebook or mass media sense — some people who could use a little comfort this week. I’ll try to be a member of the supportive community of friends and colleagues who reminds people of the goodness of humanity.
• Cultivate a creative outlet. I’m pondering another book, sort of a muckraker’s fantasy. I think I’ll outline it.

Book about Congresswoman who was shot packs emotional wallop

The best memoirs enlighten and inspire, and “Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope” manages to recount a romance with tenderness, to tell a story of politics without wonkiness, to share a tale of tragedy without melodrama.

I loved this book.

“Gabby” is about Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Congresswoman who was shot in the head by a lunatic two years ago. Six people died, and 12 others were injured. The story is told by Mark Kelly, her astronaut husband. If I have any quibbles about the book at all, it’s that the title should have included his name since the details of his life that have cultivated his courage and tenacity are major themes in the book.

I received this book as a gift from my parents more than a year ago. I finally picked it up to read it because I wanted to understand the woman behind the recent push for more gun safety regulations. I expected a carefully worded account of policy and crime (Hillary Clinton’s “Living History” was disappointingly unrevealing like that). Instead, I got a love story, a detailed chronicle of the ups and downs of recovery from brain injury and the seemingly unguarded perspective of a devoted care giver.

The beginning of the book is about Giffords and Kelly before the shooting and how they fell in love and married. It’s interspersed with small details of her rehab after the shooting which serve to prepare the reader for the second half of the book about the attack (thankfully, only one line is devoted to a description of the shooter) and her recovery.

The extent of my knowledge of Giffords extended primarily to the reports of her shooting in January 2011. I was working at a convention in St. Louis at the time, and I remember checking the CNN twitter feed on my phone at the back of the room between speakers. First there was the news that Giffords was shot in Tuscon, not all that far from Phoenix where my company had hosted the same convention only a year before. I remember feeling stricken; the news wasn’t as grave as a presidential assassination attempt but it was disturbing to think Congressional representatives would be targeted. Then there was the news that Giffords was dead. I remember thinking “how awful” before having to take the stage at the convention again. By afternoon, CNN had retracted its inaccurate reports of her demise; as a former reporter, I found it unconscionable to have made such a mistake. Reading Kelly’s account of that morning and the behind-the-scenes reactions to those reports was compelling.

Some reviewers have taken issue with how much Kelly writes about himself and his career. Besides commanding the final mission of space shuttle Endeavour a few months after Giffords’ shooting, he is a veteran of the Gulf War. I found this information necessary to explaining his commitment to this marriage and to Giffords after she was profoundly changed by her brain injury. He reminded me a little bit of my brother-in-law, a commercial airline pilot, who saw my nephew through a scary battle with leukemia 10 years ago. After seeing how my brother-in-law questioned doctors, vigilantly patrolled my nephew’s bedside for exhausting months and advocated for him in every way, I knew that sort of person is the last one to cover their eyes and hysterically scream “We’re gonna die!” when the plane is going down; instead, people like Mark Kelly and my brother-in-law keep their wits in the midst of disaster; they calmly and assertively look for answers and try every contingency.

I learned Kelly’s marriage to Giffords is his second, which makes her a stepmother to his two girls. As a stepmother myself, I found this chapter about the challenges and rewards of stepmotherhood to be especially poignant. I cried as he told of his teenage daughter’s guilt about not appreciating Giffords more before the shooting when she wanted little to do with her. In fact, I cried several times reading passages from the book. Writer Jeffery Zaslow is given “with” credit in the authorship of “Gabby,” and I’ve got to believe it’s his magic that expertly knits that story together with Kelly’s emotion and the facts of a brain injury that left Giffords nearly mute for months during the writing of this book. The final chapter is written by her. Those 189 halting words manage to say so much as the culmination to the rest of the book.

There’s a lot in this book for readers of all sorts, even ones who don’t like politics or space travel. Its subtitle, “A Story of Courage and Hope” is apt.

Say hello to my little friend: My elected official’s answering machine

Don’t piss me off, Inside-The-Beltwayers, when I’m PMSing.

I listened to way too much National Public Radio in the past 48 hours, and I am completely fed up with the hand wringing  about sequestration from the current administration and spokespersons for every federal program this side of Mexico.

You can’t cut 10% from your bloated budget? Really? The American people and every surviving American corporation in the country had to figure it out during the Great Recession, and you can, too.

I don’t care if there are fewer meat inspectors. We all should be eating beans once a week anyway.

I don’t care if there are longer lines at the airport. The TSA is waste of resources that should be financed by airlines and its fliers anyway.

I don’t care of federal unemployment benefits are cut 10%. They don’t pay the mortgage anyway.

I don’t care if the Pentagon has to do more with less. We all have had to do it, and you can figure out how to buy fewer $3,000 solar-powered toilets, too. Word to the wise: You can probably get a good deal on used AK-47s confiscated from the streets on Chicago’s South Side; America’s housewives could teach you a thing or two about couponing.

I don’t care if HIV patients in Washington, D.C., will get 10% fewer free condoms. Have 10% less sex in the name of patriotism.

I don’t care about the so-called multiplier effect — seriously, did the bank bailout in 2008 multiple the good effects of spending? I don’t think so! The bad effects of spending cuts are an illusion, too!

So I called my elected representatives — I’m talking to you Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Mark Kirk and Rep. Randy Hultgren – and told them not to make any deals. Seriously, I looked up the phone numbers and called them. “Let sequestration happen!” I shouted into their answering machines (OK, spoke loudly — I don’t need more trouble. Sen. Durbin had a live person answering the phone — I guess that’s one of the perks of 16 years in the Senate, but for the record, we all could have made do with an answering machine!

I’m not only a fan of sequestration (fanatic?!), but I’m a fan of 10% more cuts in six months! Bring it on!

A memory of mail that sticks

When I was in seventh or eighth grade, I joined stamp club.

Stamp club wasn’t like the band twirlers, who had sparkly outfits and cute marching boots. They got to learn impressive gymnastic routines while throwing their batons in the air.

That was a cool group.

I wasn’t that cool.

But stamp club had stamps!

For a girl who played office with her mother’s tape dispenser and a rickety metal TV tray, postage stamps were a must-have prop, as crucial as notepaper and a telephone (preferable one with push buttons — “Yes, Mr. Kadiddlehopper? You want me to take dictation? I’ll be right in”).

Back then, in the stone age, stamps had to be licked to affix. People back then mailed things, too, I guess, rather than Drop-Boxing or Instagramming or Facebooking important paperwork.

In any case, stamps prettied up an envelope, and we cavemen found it fun to collect the colorful bits of paper.

I bring up stamps at all, not because I’m waxing nostalgic for stamp club, but because I want to remind you to invest in Forever stamps now. The U.S. Postal Service is charging a penny more per letter beginning Saturday, Jan. 27; first-class postage goes up to 46 cents.

Honestly, it amazes me that I can send a letter across the country from my yard to a friend’s house for just 45 cents, so 1 cent more doesn’t bother me. But saving money is still saving money. So get thee to the post office today.

The intersection of ‘a good leader’ and ‘what I’d like to see in a leader’

Is a good leader the same as what matters most to you in a leader?

These two questions crossed my mind as I was reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers.

In a fit of insomnia, I read 100 pages of the 571-page tome in the middle of the night last night just after I found an article in November’s Real Simple magazine about “What Matters to You Most in a Leader?”

Real Simple was posing the question in light of Election Day, but it’s relevant in light of Obama’s inauguration, too.

Answers from Real Simple readers included:

• “An open mind and a tolerant attitude.”
• “Humility.”
• “Kindness and sympathy.”
• “The ability to help people with opposing viewpoints find common ground.”

Meanwhile, Isaacson uses words like “bratty,” “arrogant,” “demanding” and “harsh” to describe the perfectionist behind such products as the Macintosh personal computer and iEverything.

Which leads me to wonder, “Is what we want in a leader what we really need?”

After reading just the beginning of Jobs’ biography, I know I’d never have made it at Apple Computers. I would have hated working for such a jerk. Yet I admire the work of that jerk.

I wonder if, like a spoiled 5-year-old who gets everything she wants and then throws tantrums anyway, we’re getting exactly what we ask for in our politicians and business leaders?

Senator’s return to work sparks memories of great uncle

U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk returned to work today, an impressive act for a man who suffered a major stroke a year ago.

Kirk, 52, represents Illinois. I’m not exactly a fan of Kirk’s or politicians in general, but I’m interested in his recovery.

For a while, I was irked that Kirk could be absent from his job representing me and the other residents of Illinois while he underwent multiple surgeries and months of rehab, but as I reflected, I’m glad he can retake his place in the Senate. If he were a school custodian, I would want the district to offer him his job back, so why not a politician?

His condition reminds me of my great uncle Art, who suffered a stroke in the mid-60s before I was born. I remember nothing of a man who must have been strong and effective as a life-long farmer in north central Minnesota except his halting walk and garbled speech. He and his wife, Great Aunt Freda, were frequent guests around our holiday table because Art was my grandfather’s brother and Freda was my grandmother’s sister (yes, the pair of brothers married a pair of sisters).

Great Uncle Art used a four-pronged cane to get around, on which I read Mark Kirk also depends. To tackle the 40-some steps of the Capitol, as Mark Kirk did today, would have been impossible for Great Uncle Art, I believe.

Art farmed when he was struck down by his stroke. My dad tells me my uncle and grandfather took over Art’s cows and chores for a while until it became apparent Art would never be able to farm again.

Art lived for nearly 20 years after his stroke. He scared me as a child because I couldn’t understand a word he said; I’d like to think I as an adult would be more kind to him. Dad said Art was most articulate when he swore, which he didn’t do much before his stroke, probably because he was frustrated with his state. Nowadays, Kirk likely benefits from better stroke medications, better rehab and a senatorial staff of dozens.

In any case, Mark Kirk gets points for perseverance. Great Uncle Art was nothing if not indomitable to endure his weakened condition for nearly two decades.

Kirk’s return to Congress also is heartening for its symbolism. The Republican was greeted at the Capitol steps by Illinois’ Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Vice President Joe Biden (read the Chicago Tribune’s story here). If only Congress as a whole could share that perseverance and nonpartisan support.