Damn Websites!!

Yesterday I sat down at this computer to write my blog, and had a serious case of writer’s block.  Nothing came to mind to write about that hadn’t been covered so completely in the news.  Since I have never watched Duck Dynasty, nor intend to in the future, that was out of bounds.  Congress not passing an extension of long-term unemployment benefits had been covered so completely in all of the news channels that seemed pointless.  There didn’t seem to be any point in discussing Rand Paul’s remarks about extending said benefits being “a disservice to the people receiving them” because it would cause them to not look for work was just stupid, so there was no point in belaboring that point.   

Consequently I decided to go to a website from a company that makes my little floor vacuum to determine if it is indeed repairable or if I need to replace it.  After spending several hours unable to connect with them on a rational basis, a gave up and went to the website of a company known for its tech savvy, and from which I had received a birthday present of one of their devices.  After spending another couple of hours with that website entering my birthdate and having that site refusing to accept it, then telling me I had spent too long trying to access my account indicating that I was an “illegal” accessor, or words to that effect, and that they were closing my ability to continue for at least 8 hours, I sent them an e-mail to which they have not responded that I have had that same birthdate for 84 years now, and I knew with a certainty that it is, in fact, my birthdate.  So, after I write this blog, I will try again to get my little device up and running.  I feel like a friend of mine with her new smart phone, which she calls a “dumb phone”, I assume because it will not do what she wants. 

All of this problem with business websites could only lead to one other thought, and that is Healthcare.gov, the website for citizens who have state governors who refuse to implement Obamacare in their states.  Apparently the website is running pretty well by this time, but for all of those people who rant and rave about government not being able to do anything right, let me tell you all that neither can the private sector sometimes.   

Perhaps if I keep rambling on about websites, I won’t have to knuckle down and go back to those two.  But if the one rejects my birthday again, I might actually get my old landline phone out of the drawer we keep it in for when the electricity goes out, and use somewhat outdated technology to contact them.  It might just work.

 

 

Why the Chimes Rang

Why the Chimes Rang

I need to say something about the story below.  Although it is couched as a Christian story, the sentiments expressed are to be found in every religion and philosophy.  This is another favorite story from my childhood, and it is my “Happy Holiday of your choice” present from me to you. The author is Raymond MacDonald Alden, published in 1906, and appears in a book by the same name.  I have typed it, grammar, punctuation and all as it appears in my book.  I hope you enjoy it. 

There was, once, in a far-away country where few people have ever traveled, a wonderful church.  It stood on  a high hill in the midst of a great city; and every Sunday, as well as on sacred days like Christmas, thousands of people climbed the hill to its great archways, looking like lines of ants all moving in the same direction.

            When you came to the building itself, you found stone columns and dark passages, and a grand entrance leading to the main room of the church.  This room was so long that one standing at the doorway could scarcely see to the other end, where the choir stood by the marble altar.  In the farthest corner was the organ; and this organ was so loud that sometimes when it played, the people for miles around would close their shutters and prepare for a great thunderstorm.  Altogether, no such church as this was ever seen before, especially when it was lighted up for some festival, and crowded with people, young and old.  

            But the strangest thing about the whole building was the wonderful chime of bells.  At one corner of the church was a great gray tower, with ivy growing over it as far up as one could see.  I say as far as one could see, because the tower was quite great enough to fit the great church, and it rose so far into the sky that it was only in very fair weather that anyone claimed to be able to see the top.  Even then one could not be certain that it was in sight.  Up, and up, and up climbed the stones and the ivy; and, as the men who built the church had been dead for hundreds of years, every one had forgotten how high the tower was supposed to be.

            Now all the people knew that at the top of the tower was a chime of Christmas bells.  They had hung there ever since the church had been built, and were the most beautiful bells in the world.  Some thought it was because a great musician had cast them and arranged them in their place; others said it was because of the great height, which reached up where the air was clearest and purest; however that might be, no one who had ever heard the chimes denied that they were the sweetest in the world.  Some described them as sounding like angels far up in the sky; others, as sounding like strange winds singing through the trees.

            But the fact was that no one had heard them for years and years.  There was an old man living not far from the church, who said that his mother had spoken of hearing them when she was a little girl, and he was the only one who was sure of as much as that.  They were Christmas chimes, you see, and were not meant to be played by men or on common days.  It was the custom on Christmas Eve for all the people to bring to the church their offerings to the Christ-child; and when the greatest and best offering was laid on the altar, there used to come sounding through the music of the choir the Christmas chimes far up in the tower.  Some said that the wind rang them, and others that they were so high that the angels could set them swinging.  But for many long years they had never been heard.

It was said that people had been growing less careful of their gifts for the Christ-child, and that no offering was brought, great enough to deserve the music of the chimes.  Every Christmas Eve the rich people still crowded to the altar, each one trying to bring some better gift than any other, without giving anything that he wanted for himself, and the church was crowded with those who thought that perhaps the wonderful bells might be heard again.  But although the service was splendid, and the offerings plenty, only the roar of the wind could be heard, far up in the stone tower.

            Now, a number of miles from the city, in a little country village, where nothing could be seen of the great church but glimpses of the tower when the weather was fine, lived a boy named Pedro, and his little brother.  They knew very little about the Christmas chimes, but they had heard of the service in the church on Christmas Eve, and had a secret plan, which they had often talked over when by themselves, to go to see the beautiful celebration.

            “Nobody can guess, Little Brother,” Pedro would say, “all the fine things there are to see and hear; and I have even heard it said that the Christ-child sometimes comes down to bless the service.  What if we could see Him?”

            The day before Christmas was bitterly cold, with a few lonely snowflakes flying in the air, and a hard white crust on the ground.  Sure enough, Pedro and Little Brother were able to slip quietly away early in the afternoon; and although the walking was hard in the frosty air, before nightfall they had trudged so far, hand in hand, that they saw the lights of the big city just ahead of them.  Indeed, they were about to enter one of the great gates in the wall that surrounded it, when they saw something dark on the snow near their path, and stepped aside to look at it.

            It was a poor woman, who had fallen just outside the city, too sick and tired to get in where she might have found shelter.  The soft snow made of a drift a sort of pillow for her, and she would soon be so sound asleep, in the wintry air, that no one could ever waken her again.  All this Pedro saw in a moment, and he knelt down beside her and tried to rouse her, even tugging at her arm a little, as though he would have tried to carry her away.  He turned her face toward him so that he could rub some of the snow on it, and when he had looked at her silently a moment he stood up again, and said:

“It’s no use, Little Brother.  You will have to go on alone.” 

“Alone?” cried Little Brother.  “And you not see the Christmas festival?”

            “No,” said Pedro, and he could not keep back a bit of choking sound in his throat.  “See this poor woman.  Her face looks like the Madonna in the chapel window, and she will freeze to death if nobody cares for her.  Every one has gone to the church now, but when you come back you can bring some one to help her.  I will rub her to keep her from freezing, and perhaps get her to eat the bun that is left in my pocket.”

            “But I can not bear to leave you, and go on alone,” said Little Brother.

            “Both of us need not miss the service” said Pedro, “and it had better be I than you.  You can easily find your way to the church; and you must see and hear everything twice, Little Brother—once for you and once for me.  I am sure the Christ-child must know how I should love to come with you and worship Him; and oh! If you get a chance, Little Brother, to slip up to the altar without getting in anyone’s way, take this little silver piece of mine, and lay it down for my offering, when no one is looking.  Do not forget where you have left me, and forgive me for not going with you.”

            In this way he hurried Little Brother off to the city, and winked hard to keep back the tears, as he heard the crunching footsteps sounding farther and farther away in the twilight.  It was pretty hard to lose the music and splendor of the Christmas celebration that he had been planning for so long, and spend the time instead in that lonely place in the snow.

            The great church was a wonderful place that night.  Everyone said that it had never looked so bright and beautiful before.  When the organ played and the thousands of people sang, the walls shook with the sound, and little Pedro, away outside the city wall, felt the earth tremble around him.

            At the close of the service came the procession with the offerings to be laid on the altar.  Rich men and great men marched proudly up to lay down their gifts to the Christ-child.  Some brought wonderful jewels, some baskets of gold so heavy that they could scarcely carry them down the aisle.  A great writer laid down a book that he had been making for years and years.  And last of all walked the king of the country, hoping with all the rest to win for himself the chime of the Christmas bells.  There went a great murmur through the church, as the people saw the king take from his head the royal crown, all set with precious stones, and lay it gleaming on the altar, as his offering to the holy Child.  “Surely,” every one said, “we shall hear the bells now, for nothing like this has ever happened before.”

            But still only the cold old wind was heard in the tower, and the people shook their heads; and some of them said, as they had before, that they never really believed the story of the chimes, and doubted if they ever rang at all.

            The procession was over, and the choir began the closing hymn.  Suddenly the organist stopped playing as though he had been shot, and every one looked at the old minister, who was standing by the altar, holding up his hand for silence.  Not a sound could be heard from any one in the church, but as all the people strained their ears to listen, there came softly, but distinctly, swinging through the air, the sound of the chimes in the tower.  So far away, and yet so clear the music seemed—so much sweeter were the notes than anything that had been heard before, rising and falling away up there in the sky, that the people in the church sat for a moment as still as though something held each of them by the shoulders.  Then they all stood up together and stared straight at the altar, to see what great gift had awakened the long-silent bells.

            But all that the nearest of them saw was the childish figure of Little Brother, who had crept softly down the aisle when no one was looking, and had laid Pedro’s little piece of silver on the altar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Good Samaritan Revisited

This is California, and we don’t usually get quite so cold as it was here last week.  It was nothing like what was happening in the northern climes of this world, but we do not have the clothes, nor all of the other stuff we need to keep warm.  As a result, I shivered for at least four days. 

So it was with a great deal of relief one night that, even though I was having trouble getting to sleep, I was warm, so I snuggled in and let my mind wander.  Eventually it wandered to the news of the day, which included some dim-wit Congressman stating he wasn’t going to vote for the extension of federal unemployment insurance because of some obscure Bible verse that suggested that if one doesn’t work, one doesn’t get to eat.  That swirled around for a while in my brain until I thought about the parable of The Good Samaritan.  For those not acquainted with that parable, I quote it from the King James Version of the Bible.  I use that translation because that way the radical religious right can’t complain that I’m using a wrong translation.  As one preacher from Texas famously said, “If English was good enough for Jesus, its good enough for me!” 

Luke 10:29-37

But he, wiling to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?  And Jesus answering said, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.  And by chance there came down a certain priest that way; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.  But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, take care of him; and whatsoever though spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.  Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?”  And he said, he that shewed mercy on him.  Then said Jesus unto him, “Go and do thou likewise.” 

Usually when this parable is preached or spoken about, it is that someone from a different culture, or tribe, acted with more compassion than the members of the beaten man’s own tribe, and that we must be compassionate toward everyone.  Which in and of itself is certainly true.  But the thought that came to me was that after the initial compassionate acts of binding up the beaten man’s wounds and taking him to an inn and caring for him for one night, the Samaritan, having obligations he needed to attend to in the next days, paid the inn keeper to care for the man, with the promise that he would come back and see to it that the inn keeper was reimbursed for any further costs.  What the Samaritan didn’t do was berate the beaten man for having been so negligent as to not having learned the ancient equivalent of tae kwan do in order to defend himself and not  be beaten in the first place, and then behave toward him with contempt for being a “loser”, and for deserving everything that happened to him. 

With that being said, we don’t have inns or inn keepers like that anymore.  But we do have government agencies that are substitutes for them.  We have food stamps, we have unemployment insurance, we have emergency rooms in hospitals, and we have Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.  We pay the “inn keepers” of our time with our taxes.  There is no way I can be everywhere, nor can anyone else, but we can see to it, as the Samaritan did, that people who have been beaten down by life are cared for by the appropriate government agency, if there is no other means possible.   

Shame on those who do not want to fund these programs through closing tax loopholes, readjusting an outrageous tax system back to a progressive tax rather than the regressive one we have now.  How have we as a country, sunk so low that we would deprive people of any age food, but particularly children and seniors!  Now, in my book, this is viciousness personified!  

 

 

And Then We Have The City of Detroit

And then we have the city of Detroit – the automobile manufacturing center of America for decades.  And unfortunately for the city of Detroit, it is in the State of Michigan. 

When Michigan elected an all Republican state legislature and Governor, together they managed beyond all belief to pass a law that allows the Governor to dissolve the duly elected governments of cities or counties (or whatever they call them back there), if the Governor deems the boards or commissions to not be acting in what he believes to be a fiscally responsible manner.  The law gave him the authority to appoint an emergency manager to replace these duly elected boards.  Since I was a duly elected county Supervisor in our county for some eight years, I nearly blew a valve when I read that the Governor had started implementing this law in some six cities in Michigan, ending with the largest being Detroit.   

The final straw for me was when Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Kevin Orr to be the emergency manager.  Why, other than the fact that he was appointed, was I disturbed?  Because Kevin Orr is, or was, a bankruptcy attorney for Goldman Sachs.  And then the city of Detroit files for bankruptcy.  I am shocked, shocked that a bankruptcy attorney would do such a thing! 

The upshot of this is that the judge approved the bankruptcy, with the proviso that the banks and bondholders who hold Detroit’s debt be paid back first, and the city’s assets can be used for this.  The nasty part about all of this is the city’s pension fund is part of the city’s assets.   

Imagine yourself how you would feel if after working as a public employee for any number of years up to 30 years, expecting a pension of a certain amount, adjusting your housing, etc., based on that amount, and then have some outside entity come in, and give half of your pension to some bank which is already too big to fail.  All at the same time that your state government has refused to give your city the funds owed it through revenue sharing with the state.  In Detroit’s case, this amounts to million upon millions of dollars Detroit could really use at this time.  OK.  Detroit is in a sad fiscal state.  Jobs are extremely hard to come by.  Your retirement has been cut in half, and somebody in a silk suit and gold cuff links is telling you that you can augment your pension by getting a job.   

This next is not a change of subject.  We’ll get back to Detroit in a moment.  Last night on All In with Chris Hayes, there was a segment discussing whether Nelson Mandela was a terrorist or not.  One of the panelists claimed that, contrary to what our government was saying at the time, namely Ronald Reagan, was calling Mandela, he was not a terrorist.  A terrorist is someone who kills completely innocent people for some abstract reason.  When a government basically declares war on its people, as the South African government did with its apartheid laws, the people who fight back are fighting for their lost freedoms.  This is not terrorism, and it is sloppy thinking to call it terrorism.  These were ideas I had not heard so clearly delineated before. 

In Michigan with the new rules about restricting the opportunities to vote, cutting funding for education, and other essential services, and now with the decimation of retiree’s pensions, and heaven only knows what else will be imposed on the poor people of Michigan, we all might keep the above definitions in mind.  I think if I lived in Michigan, I would be highly motivated.  For what?  I’m not sure, but I would think of something.