A Vacation to Remember, Part 1

My wife and I returned Sunday from a one week vacation in New York City and Washington D.C. It may be the last time I'll ever travel far away from home, but I hope it isn't.

I haven't flown many times in my 59 years, but I've always enjoyed it when I have. This time was no exception, despite the choppier than usual flight near Denver on our way home and the baby who kept screaming most of the way there from D.C.

I've written many times in this blog about my learning difficulties. This post from 2007 provides a pretty good overview. As long as I stay cocooned in my house, I don't think or worry too much about my learning problems. I just think about other things instead. But when I go on trips, they are brought into vivid focus.

For instance, on the airplanes, I couldn't make much sense of the demonstrated emergency procedures, and I realized that if I'd had the misfortune of being seated next to an emergency exit, I would have had to relinquish my seat to someone who could open the door in a jiffy if he or she needed to.

But that was nothing compared to figuring out subway and bus routes in New York City. There is no way I could have done that myself and, therefore, no way I could travel to a place like New York City myself unless I was rich enough to have cabs take me everywhere to which I couldn't walk. My wife was the navigator, and I constantly marveled at how easy it seemed to be for her to figure everything out.

I'm not saying she's better at it than most, although I suspect that she is. I'm saying that I'm far, far worse at it than most. The subway and bus routes remained totally incomprehensible to me the whole four days we were in New York City and rode subways and buses all over Manhattan and beyond.

And when we arrived at Union Station in D.C., I was more than overwhelmed by the fare schedules, not to mention the routing of public transit there. For, unlike New York City, where one can ride an MTA bus or subway anywhere in the city at any time of day or night for the same $2.25 fare (which we made even simpler by buying one-week unlimited-ride MTA cards for $29 apiece), in Washington D.C. the amount you pay depends on whether you're riding a bus or train, how far you travel, and what time of day you do it. Even my wife was initially confused by this as we tried to figure out how to get from Union Station to our hotel, and I was hopelessly benumbed by it.

But let me stop talking about my learning deficits and backtrack to our first day in New York City. We landed at LaGuardia Airport and took a cab that we thought would cost us around $60 to get to our hotel a few miles away in New Jersey. It ended up costing us almost twice that. My wife and I were both upset over this, yet, there didn't seem to be anything we could do about it. The price we were charged corresponded to an official looking fare schedule the driver showed us.

I guess the moral of the story is to ask beforehand how much it will cost to get where you want to go from the airport and look for someone who will charge you what your research tells you is a reasonable fare. Or, better still, go online before your trip and try to reach an agreement on the fare with some cab company at your destination, the way I did with the cab that took us from home to the Sacramento airport and back home after the return flight.

After we checked in to our hotel in Fort Lee, New Jersey, we discovered that we couldn't walk to any restaurant or fast food joint nearby, since there was only a freeway and no sidewalks outside the hotel, and we didn't want to pay the exorbitant prices for the food served at the hotel, so we ate complimentary chocolate chip cookies sweet enough to almost gag us and called it a night. But not until we were roused from our room by a fire alarm that necessitated evacuation of all guests from the building for over half an hour while the fire department checked things out and determined that a broken water main to one of the hotel restrooms triggered the alarm and we were allowed back into the hotel.

However, the hotel did provide shuttle service to downtown Manhattan, and we checked out the next morning as scheduled, boarded the shuttle, and made our way to the big city. Now I caught my first glimpse of the New York skyline that I had seen only on TV and in the movies since my only other visit there almost fifty years ago.

Ever since my first visit decades ago, I've held this fascination with the Big Apple that periodically surfaces in dreams or in unusually intense reactions to songs such as "New York State of Mind." Now I was back in the city of my recurring dreams and awed by the skyscrapers and energy of the city. I began to pick out landmarks such as the David Letterman studio and CBS headquarters as we drove past them in the shuttle.

Once we were let off at a hotel (but not our hotel) in midtown Manhattan, I was characteristically clueless and helpless about what to do or where to go next, but fortunately my wife wasn't. She found a subway station pretty quickly, bought us MTA cards from the machine, and figured out which subway train to take and where to get off, and our New York adventure began in earnest.

We were allowed to check in to our hotel early and even eat the complimentary breakfast served there, and then we set off on foot to check out the local terrain. It just so happened that it was Memorial Day, and the weather was so unusually hot and muggy for that time of year that even New Yorkers were complaining, but I guess we were so thrilled with the novelty of our fabled surroundings that we didn't notice the heat so much. At least not until after we'd walked a couple of miles or so to the harbor where we stood in line to take a speedboat ride on New York Harbor. By then I was awfully thirsty and a little tired.



But after baking in the sun in line for what seemed like longer than it was, the speedboat ride cooled us off and provided me with the first of many uncharacteristically patriotic moments.

If you've wasted any time reading this blog or you know me personally, you realize that I'm not the flag-waving, gun-toting, " apple-pie-gorging, America's #1" chest-beating type by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, if I were to wave any flag, it would have to be one of those "Earth flags" adorned with a photo of the whole Earth as viewed from space. Yet, as we sped down the Hudson River and slowed as we passed Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, I was nearly overcome with tears as I imagined how immigrants seeking a better life here in the States must have felt for almost a century when they saw the glorious "Green Lady," as my wife calls her, beckoning them to freedom in a land of plenty. At that moment, I felt tremendous pride in my country.

And there were more such moments to come...

(To be continued)

Not Just Another Birthday

I received a birthday card in the mail from my mom on my birthday today, and it said, "At the end of the day, may you look back and say "It was perfect.""

Well, it's not over yet, but I have to say that it's been a pretty nice day so far. I've done nothing spectacular, but I've almost always been someone who enjoys the simple things of life. Good food, good company, my loving wife and beautiful pets, good music, and time online are among those simple but hugely satisfying pleasures. And I've enjoyed all of those things in abundance today.

Beyond this day, when I look back on my entire life, there's a part of me that says, "It was perfect." Then another part of me says, "How can you say your life has been perfect when you've not only wasted so much of it but also done things you deeply regret? What is 'perfect' about THAT?"

Well, what is "perfect" about it is that I don't believe it could have been otherwise. Given my nature, which I believe has always been inseparable from the nature of the whole unified universe, I think I have been and done exactly what I had to be and do.

I realize that this is not the conventional definition of "perfection," which has more to do with meeting some lofty standard of flawless fulfillment, whatever that might be. And goodness knows that I haven't even come close to meeting my or society's standards and fulfilling my personal and human potential.

Yet, unlike past birthdays when I've posted some pretty uninspired if not gloomy entries about what another wasted year I've just suffered through and how desperately I need to, but probably won't, overcome my fearful inertia and jump in the pool and either sink or swim, this year I'm going to say that I believe I can do better with what remains of my life.

I've got rough times ahead of me, without a doubt, but I believe I can rise to heights of  sustained effort and accomplishment that dwarf anything I've exhibited before, and if I'm still around next year, I look forward to writing all about it.

Super Bowl Ambivalence

"An athlete can find as much virtue, luminosity, and self-transcendence through sports as a monk can find through his or her spiritual practice." ~ Corey deVos

I watched the Super Bowl last Sunday.

Yes, even though I'm not a football fan, especially when the San Francisco 49'ers aren't playing, I watched the whole game with my wife. I think I did it primarily because I wanted my foreign born wife and myself to share a brief, bonding immersion in the glory and garishness of American culture on one of its most "sacred" days.

She and I immersed ourselves alright, and I almost sheepishly admit that I kind of enjoyed it. I say "almost sheepishly," because I have my share of misgivings concerning the rampant greed and crass commercialism in American sports in general and concerning the additional bone-crunching brutality of American football and disturbing bloodlust of its fans in particular.

But there's also a part of my male psyche that enjoys watching and vicariously experiencing the brute physicality, intense competitiveness, complex and shifting strategies, and kinesthetic artistry of the sport, and that likes to participate, albeit it in the cozy comfort of my living room, in a grand communal experience of all that for a few hours.

I recently read a brilliant article that masterfully exposes the roots of my ambivalence about sports. English professor and one time mediocre high school football player Mark Edmundson writes that athletics CAN "do great good: build the body, create a stronger, more resilient will, impart confidence, stimulate bravery, foment daring. But at the same time, sports often brutalize the player--they make him more aggressive, more violent. They make him intolerant of gentleness; they help turn him into a member of the pack, which defines itself by maltreating others--the weak, the tender, the differently made."

And integral writer Corey deVos writes that "There is nothing Spirit doesn't touch--from our highest ideals of love, respect, and sportsmanship to the drunken bloodlust of hearing millions of people cheering you to victory--everything finds its home in the transcendent mind of God, nestled in the immanent heart of the Sacred, where the line between winning and losing becomes the very same line that separates self and other, part and whole, here and eternity."

I admit that I would like to see sports assume a less important place in American culture than it does. I'd like to see people spending less time cheering for their favorite athletic team while stuffing their faces with junk food in front of their TV sets or in the stadium stands, and more time in their own physical activities, visiting with family and friends, or educating themselves in subjects in which they're so appallingly ignorant that it's no wonder they're such woefully underinformed voters in our democratic elections.

Yet, I have to concede that sports are not the thoroughgoing evil that some simplistically make them out to be and that, when enjoyed in moderation, they can range from harmless to uplifting.

Prolonged Labor and Innate Resistance to Change?

My wife asked me recently what time of the day I was born. I told her I didn't know and asked her why she wanted to. She didn't answer, but I'm guessing it was for some kind of Thai astrological purpose. She told me to ask my mom when I was born, and so I did.

My mom told me the time and said she went to the hospital that day to have labor induced because I was "too lazy to emerge" on my own since she had probably made it too cozy for me "on the inside." I wasn't born until twelve hours later. This got me to thinking.

I've been late to do a lot of things that most people do much earlier in their lives, and I suppose this could be construed as laziness. But I think it's probably more attributable to fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change. Fear of failure.

I've always been afraid--unusually afraid, I think--to step outside the comfort zone of my routines. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I feel inadequate, and rightfully so, for meeting the adaptive challenges of change. I've learned over the decades that I don't handle change well, because it takes me longer than most, if not forever, to figure out my new circumstances and develop a way to deal with them effectively.

But I'm thinking my fear of change might not be only a learned tendency but also an innate one, one that was programmed into my genes or into my basic biology in some other way and that began expressing itself when it was time for me to face one of the biggest changes one ever faces in life--the change of being born, and I somehow resisted.

I can't help but wonder if any research has been done or might be done that investigates what if any relationship there might be between the length of a woman's labor and the resistance of her offspring to changes throughout life.

Enthralled With Hiromi Uehara

Don't tell my wife, but I'm in love with another woman. Well, actually, I'm exaggerating a little. I'm not in love with the woman (you know I have to say that), but I am in love with her musical brilliance.

I'm talking about Hiromi Uehara, a 32-year-old Japanese pianist who is called a jazz pianist but actually blends and transcends musical categories to deliver phenomenal keyboard virtuosity and passion in solo and group performances all over the world.

I had never even heard of Hiromi until today, but now that I've watched some of her videos on YouTube and listened to one of her albums, I will certainly never forget her and will do my best to attend one or more of her concerts if she ever comes to my neck of the California woods.

Rarely has a musician bowled me over from the very beginning the way she has. In fact, I can think of only one other who has had this kind of earth-shaking immediate impact on me.

No doubt, Hiromi's looks and joyful exhuberance on stage have something to do with it, but her music is also extraordinary. That's what the great jazz pianist Chick Corea must have thought when he discovered her in Tokyo years ago and had her play with him the next evening. And that's what jazz bassist extraordinaire Stanley Clarke must have thought when she toured and recorded with him sometime back.

You can read her Wikipedia bio here, check out her website here, read a 2003 interview with her here, and sample some of her amazing musical artistry below. But be sure to watch and not just listen:

Stop the Debate and Start the Dialogue

I'm participating in a discussion group on Facebook that just changed its name from "Christian Debate" to plain ole "Christianity." I like the change. For as much as part of me relishes the galvanizing heat of intellectual battle, I want to believe that the whole me cherishes dialogue more. This is what I posted there this morning about it:

What I'd like to see us left with is DIALOGUE about Christianity. Dialogue isn't debate. That is, it's not about people defending their preconceptions and attacking opposing ones in a forensic battle of intellect, biting wit, and clever gotchas. It's people of every participating persuasion respectfully, even reverently opening themselves to one another intellectually, emotionally, and, for want of a better word, spiritually in deep sharing and examination of each others' perspectives in an effort to apprehend and clarify truth or, at the very least, to arrive at a greater degree of mutual empathy.

Is this possible in a "place" such as this with the vast diversity of people participating? Not on your life! Is it an "impossible dream" worth approximating as closely as possible by those of us who share it? I think so, and I hope I'm not the only one who does.

To Carry or Not to Carry?

A friend of mine recently informed me that it's relatively easy for law abiding citizens in my neck of the woods to obtain a permit that will allow them to carry concealed firearms throughout the state. All one has to do is apply for the permit, pass a background check, be interviewed by a law enforcement officer, pass a sixteen hour course on gun safety, and qualify with whatever firearm(s) one intends to carry.

I'm giving serious thought to applying for one of these permits. But should I do it? These seem like fairly dangerous times, and I don't live in the best of neighborhoods or the safest of cities. Not only that, but local and statewide budget cuts have led to mass layoffs of cops, making communities even less safe than they were before. There's something to be said for taking one's safety and the safety of one's loved ones into one's own hands, since, even under the best of circumstances, cops function more to arrest perpetrators after they've already victimized people than to prevent them from victimizing us in the first place.

Yet, it would cost me a lot of money to obtain and periodically renew the permit, buy a relatively concealable firearm or two, and purchase the ammunition and pay the range fees to practice enough to get and stay sharp and safe with my weapon(s). And even if I did all of that, how much safer would I be than without a weapon?

I have a firearm in the house now, and I admit that I feel a lot safer with it than I would without it, whether I actually am or not. If someone tries to break into my house or actually does so, I'd far rather have my formidable weapon in hand than not. But what are the chances of anyone actually doing this while I'm home? And what are the chances of my facing a situation outside the home where I'm carrying a weapon, will need to use it to defend myself or another innocent person, and will be able to do so effectively? Is it worth the trouble to get and keep the permit and the weapon(s), and would it be worth the possible risk that I and the public would incur by my doing it and carrying a loaded firearm around with me?

Cops undergo far more intensive and regular training to safely handle their firearms than most private citizens with permits, myself included, ever will, and even they still make mistakes. Is it really a good idea for private citizens to be walking around literally loaded? Well, all I know is that if I obtain my permit and end up carrying a firearm with me, I'll handle it with extreme respect and conscientiously follow all the rules to the letter.

Bad Fortune

My wife is Thai, and she, like apparently most Thais, believes in paranormal phenomena such as ghosts and fortune telling. She says two reputable Thai fortune tellers independently told her Thai friend that her husband would die this December. Her friend believes this and is understandably distressed over the prospect.

Her husband is around 70 years old, had angioplasty a few years ago, and has been diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm on which his doctors are keeping a close watch. Nevertheless, he looks good, takes excellent care of himself, and says he feels fine. I would be very surprised and sad if the fortune tellers' predictions came true.

But what if they do? Will this lessen or even dispel my skepticism toward fortune telling? Should it? I will post here about what happens either way.

Precious Life

My wife called after she drove to work this morning to tell me that a car almost hit her on the freeway as its driver heedlessly began to steer into her lane. Fortunately, she caught this out the corner of her eye and honked her horn just in time, and the driver swerved back fully into his lane.

Let this make me mindful of how I could lose my wife any day, any moment she is behind the wheel, or in any one of countless other ways. Let it also remind me that I could die any moment from one cause or another.

Life is uncertain and insecure. Yet, let me respond not with anxiety and by clinging to life so hard that I strangle it, but by opening my mind and heart to life just as it is and living and loving it to the fullest. And may I let my wife know every moment we have left together, in ways both subtle and overt, that I love and cherish her.

Another Missed Reunion

My 40th high school reunion is today. I won’t be attending. I also didn’t attend my 10th, 20th, or 30th reunion. I wanted to go to all of them. I want to go to this one. But if you’ve been reading this blog from the outset, I hardly need to explain why I didn’t and won’t go. If you haven’t been reading it, aside from this hint, I’ll just say that I would feel too uncomfortable among people I didn’t give myself the chance to get to know in high school and who have lived profoundly different lives than I have ever since.

I’ve been fortunate to re-establish contact via Facebook with some people I knew as far back as elementary school but haven’t seen since elementary, junior, or senior high school. And I’ve even become Facebook “friends” with people from back then that I never had anything to do with in those days because we ran in completely different social circles, or I was just too darn awkward and shy to approach them.

One guy in particular used to be a pretty good athlete in high school. He was one of the “jocks,” and I decidedly wasn’t, despite my brief and painful flirtation with basketball. I don’t know if there’s a word for what I was. I wasn’t exactly a geek or a nerd. I wasn’t smart enough or adept enough at anything to qualify for either distinction. I was just weird. A bumbling outcast largely of my own making.

Anyway, the guy I mentioned in the previous paragraph is Christian, and he has tried a couple of times to convert me since we became Facebook friends. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I don’t need to tell you what the outcome of his attempts were, and if you haven’t been reading this blog, suffice it to say that I’m still vociferously agnostic bordering perilously on downright atheistic. Yesterday, he asked me if I was coming to the reunion today. I told him I wasn’t and briefly explained why. He seemed genuinely moved by my reply, and I was moved by his subsequent response. We connected in a way I wish I could have connected with him and others in high school. But it really IS true that late is better than never, and over the Internet is better than not at all.

No, I won’t be attending my 40th high school reunion tonight, and even if I’m still around by the time of my 50th, I almost certainly won’t be going then either. But I don’t think I will be around by then, so tonight is almost certainly my last chance to connect in a very personal way with a past that didn’t amount to much but was still a whole lot better than it could have been.

Yet I can still connect with my past and with people from it in other ways, as I’ve been doing recently, and I plan to continue doing that. And after tonight’s reunion, I’ll be looking at the photos and reading comments by the attendees and vicariously enjoying some of what I missed in person tonight. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology.

Try...Try Again

Still working at fulfilling my pledge, and, clearly, judging from some of my Facebook comments this morning regarding "bag-dangling, Bible-thumping Republicons" bent on turning this nation into a "homophobic, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, plutarchic, money-grubbing, environment-destroying, militaristic, imperialistic, Christian fundamentalistic theocracy" I still have a herculean amount of work to do.

Of course, my characterization is correct. But I need to find a less hyperbolic and more respectful way to express it. ;-)

If At First I Don't Succeed...

I've discovered or, rather, re-discovered that I'm much better at making pledges than I am at keeping them. But that's all the more reason to keep on trying.

Renewing My Pledge

Six months ago, in the wake of Jared Loughner's shooting rampage in Tuscon, AZ, I posted an entry in which I pledged to stop vilifying and heatedly arguing with people who disagreed with me about politics or other matters and to start dialoguing with them with civility, respect, and even lovingkindness.

But when I look at comments I've written on Facebook and elsewhere since that time, I see that I've failed miserably to live up to my pledge. This has been especially true here of late as my anger over the so-called deficit crisis in Washington DC swells, and I've felt mounting hatred toward the Republicans and others with whom I disagree on all kinds of issues.

Well, I renew my pledge today. I can still disagree with people very strongly, but I don't have to demean or insult them. That won't advance my cause, and, even if it did, I doubt that the end would justify the means. There has to be a better way to speak my mind and heart. And part of it entails listening more openly to people who disagree with me and regarding them not as stupid, selfish, or greedy assholes, but as human beings who believe and do what they do because of the nature they've acquired from their genes and experiences.

My heart has filled with so much anger and hatred recently. Time to fill it with respect and love.

Once Again

Today's my birthday. This evening I'll dine at my favorite Asian buffet, and tonight I'll bowl in my travel league. Beyond that, I have nothing more to say worth saying except that I hope to still be here one year from today to have more and better things to say about the year that was and my well-formed plans and realistic hopes for times to come.

Obama's Arizona Memorial Speech: A Personal Distillation

"To rate this address on any political meter would be to demean it. The president wrested free of politics tonight and spoke of greater things. I pledge myself to try and follow his advice and debate with vigor and spirit and candor and bluntness, but with more civility, more empathy, and, yes, more love."

--Andrew Sullivan

I watched President Obama's memorial speech last night. At first I felt a little uncomfortable with the exuberance of the crowd. Many smiled, clapped, and cheered more like they were at a political pep rally than gathered to pay their sober respects to last Saturday's fallen and to the heroes who came to their aid, and it almost seemed to me that President Obama himself was initially a little uncertain as how to pace and voice his oratory in that milieu of ambivalent emotions and mixed expectations.

But as he continued, he gradually seemed to find his stride, and I, in turn, became so focused on the meaning of the message that the aesthetics of its delivery, the style of the messenger, and the response of the crowd ceased to hold any great importance for me.

Beyond his poignant recounting of Gabrielle Giffords opening her eyes for the first time, his moving tributes to the slain and wounded, and his glowing praise for the heroes who risked life and limb to save the fallen and subdue a murderous madman, what was President Obama's message when distilled to its essence?

What I distilled from it was that we honor the fallen by doing our level best to rise above partisan bickering, blaming, hating, and vilifying to find the human and spiritual ties that bind us and work together to make ourselves, each other, and our great nation better than they were before. Yes, we can speculate on and even debate what led to the shootings and how to prevent such tragedies in the future, and we can disagree on the answers, but we can and should do it with empathy and love in our hearts and with respect and civility in our demeanors.

After the speech, I read Andrew Sullivan's words above and resolved to make his pledge my own as well. Following through is not an easy thing to do though. Last night, in the immediate wake of President Obama's soul- stirring words, it seemed easy enough. But by now, after seeing business return to quarrelsome normality on TV, talk radio, and the blogosphere, it's tempting to let myself follow suit and regress back to snide remarks, finger pointing, angry denunciations, and other derogations of those, especially on the political right, who don't believe as I do. Yet, I am determined to resist these regressive urges and at the very least, as I wrote yesterday, not contribute to the divisiveness that plagues our country when we can ill afford to let it rage on.

Below is my selection of the most substantive passages from the president's speech followed by an embedded video of the entire speech.

What, beyond the prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?

You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations - to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless. Already we've seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized - at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do - it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "when I looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

After all, that's what most of us do when we lose someone in our family - especially if the loss is unexpected. We're shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

So sudden loss causes us to look backward - but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we've shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame - but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others...

If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let's make sure it's worthy of those we have lost. Let's make sure it's not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives - to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let's remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other's ideas without questioning each other's love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here - they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

Jared Loughner, Free Speech, Guns, and Me

Ever since the horrible shootings in a shopping mall in Tucson, AZ last Saturday, I've been reading all kinds of articles about the incident itself and the people involved as well as commentary about the contributory role violent political rhetoric did, didn't, may have, or may not have played in this terrible tragedy. And when I think about all I've read in light of my own life experience and understandings, I come to the conclusion that it's all too complicated for me to be as simple and conclusive in my opinions as many people across the entire political spectrum appear to be in theirs.

For one thing, although I hate what Jared Loughner did, I don't know what "we the people" should do to him in legal response. I think he acted crazy before, during, and after the shootings, and I don't think this was just an "act."

But even though I'm philosophically opposed to punishing people for committing crimes their apparent mental disorderdness caused them to commit, I emotionally want Jared Loughner to pay for his crimes in a manner that goes beyond mere lifetime incarceration in a mental ward or prison. I want him to suffer to the point where he genuinely regrets the harm and devastation he caused, even if it's only regret for the way it destroyed his own life and prospects for happiness, and to where other potential mass murderers are deterred by his well-publicized suffering from acting out their own murderous proclivities and fantasies. But what kind and degree of suffering would this entail in order to be effective without being grossly unjust? I don't know.

For another thing, I hear people blaming Loughner's parents for raising him to be crazy or, at least, for not getting him the help he needed to overcome his craziness or, at least, not act it out in a murderous frenzy last Saturday morning. But what do these critics know that I don't about Loughner's parents? I certainly don't know enough to pass scathing judgement on them or to pass any judgement on them whatsoever, and so I won't.

Finally, people on the left are accusing people on the right of spurring Loughner to violence with their violent political rhetoric and of enabling him to be so destructive with it by their legal blocking of attempts to keep people like him from getting their deranged hands on semi-automatic firearms and extended ammo clips meant for SWAT teams and soldiers at war, while there are those on the right who excoriate the left for, as one of the right's more brilliantly intellectual albeit obscure spokespersons calls it, its "vicious" and "exploitative" attacks on the right.

Well, I consider myself strongly inclined toward the left end of the political spectrum, but I don't flatly accuse right-wing rhetoric of causing the shootings in question or seek to have such rhetoric outlawed, nor do I wish to pry firearms from the patriotic hands of the American public. But I do think it would be a good idea to seize the moment to discuss and reflect upon the corrosive and provocative effects the prevailingly bitter political partisanship and violent rhetoric coming from people of all political persuasions may be having on this great nation, and I also think that no private citizen, at least not without special and well-considered dispensation, needs to be legally entitled to carry around unlicensed, concealed, autoloading firearms with 30+ round clips in public.

What's more, I don't think that one needs to be a "vicious" liberal exploiting a tragedy in order to sock it to conservatives to believe as I do and express it in this or any forum.

Beyond what I do and don't think about all of this, I don't know what to do about any of it except continue to discuss it with people who seem receptive to dialogue, but discuss it and all subjects and issues of political or other significance with civility and respect for the people with whom I'm discussing them. For whether angry rhetoric and debate played or didn't play a significant role in Loughner's actions, I think it's a real problem in this country, and I don't want to be part of the problem.

Maybe I can or can't help bring the country together, but I can darn sure stop doing anything to drive it further apart.

Autism's Paradox

"You've never been in my body. I wish for one day you could be in my body."

--Autistic girl Carly's typed message to her father

A little boy in my family is autistic. I knew this before his parents, grandparents, and even doctors knew it or, at least, were willing to concede it. Perhaps this is because "it takes one to know one." That is, when I was a little boy myself, my mother thought I was autistic because of the weird ways I would withdraw from the world outside and immerse myself in an inner world of my own. And I think it's fair to say that I haven't completely outgrown this condition even to this late day. I have never been "normal," and, at almost 58 years of age, I think it's more than reasonable to say that I never will be.

Yet, at least I was always able to express myself well, perhaps uncommonly so, with spoken and, later, written language. If I've been endowed with any cognitive gifts whatsoever, however modest they may be, it's the gift of my linguistic ability. At least this is true of my English. I don't speak any other languages and have a devil of a time whenever I try to learn them. My greatest fear, at least for this life, is what would happen to me if I lost this gift to some brain-crippling condition and became cognitively impaired in every way instead of in every way but verbally the way I am now.

But what would it be like if I had never grown enough out of my autistic or autistic-like immersion in myself to be able to express myself to others or manage the other demands of everyday life well enough to be able to live with any independence at all? What would my life be like? How happy could I be locked inside myself, and how would I experience the world?

This remarkable video may provide some inkling of how an autistic person experiences the world in that she is able, with stunning eloquence, to communicate that experience, by typing on a computer, in a way that she could never convey by any other means. To look at her hand-flapping, incessant fidgeting, paroxysmic shouting, and other stereotypically autistic behaviors, you'd think there was nothing beyond the most rudimentary, animalistic consciousness going on between her ears.

But when you read her typed words on a computer monitor, you are overwhelmed with the realization that autistic people can be extremely intelligent and incredibly aware of what's going on around and inside them, and they know full well how strangely they're acting, but they just can't stop themselves. As the girl in the video explains, she does the strange things she does "to drown out all the sensory input that overloads us all at once. We create output to block out input."

Isn't it ironic that autistic people sometimes look as though they're almost unaware of the outside world precisely because, in a sense, they're TOO aware of it?

Henry Bemis and Me: Time Enough For What?

Yesterday I caught an episode of SyFy's Twilight Zone marathon. It happened to be the most famous if not beloved episode of the iconic original version of the series.

Time Enough at Last features the great Burgess Meredith as henpecked bibliophile and bank clerk Henry Bemis who emerges one afternoon from the bank vault in which he takes his daily lunch and reading break to discover that he's the lone survivor of a nuclear holocaust. In his desperate wanderings through the decimated city, he becomes so despondent that he's ready to commit suicide until he discovers the public library nearby with its gazillions of intact books waiting for him.

Between all these books and his access to all the unspoiled food he can eat for the rest of his life, he has almost everything he's ever truly wanted, and his despondency turns to elation as he realizes that he'll no longer be barred by duties at the bank and at home from reading to his joyful heart's content. Yet, when he bends down to read one of the books he's selected, his very thick glasses fall off his nose and shatter on the pavement, he's rendered all but blind, and he's left sobbing, "It's not fair...that's not fair."

This episode resonates with me partly because I consider myself to be a little like Henry Bemis. I've always been more at home in the world of words and ideas than in the one of people and things, and, even though my wife doesn't treat my reading with the contempt that Mr. Bemis meets from his wife and his boss, I never feel as though I have enough time to do all the reading I'd like to do. I think I would be uncommonly happy to be able to spend most of the rest of my life just reading and writing, and if I were to end up in Mr. Bemis's shoes as the only survivor of some kind of catastrophe, I think I'd spend a good deal of my time, if possible, reading books and writing.

Yet, if there were no one around with whom to discuss what I read or to read what I wrote, and if I weren't faced with the normal challenges of life and people to which I could apply the insights I gleaned from my readings and ponderings, what would be the point of them? When one comes right down to it, it seems that the purpose of reading, learning, and pondering is not simply to do and enjoy them in a vacuum but to share them and use them in other ways with other people.

Even if I weren't the lone survivor of a holocaust but simply living, reading, and writing, like Thoreau, in a cabin in the wilderness, I would ultimately be doing all of this to bring something back to civilization when I finally returned to it. If I knew that I'd have to spend the rest of my life in that isolated cabin with no one else around, I might read and write simply for diversion's sake, but much of my enthusiasm for it would probably be gone and, even surrounded by books and food enough to last me for years, I'd probably soon fall into implacable despair. And I'm guessing that even Henry Bemis would too.

For even when we want to escape the world by plunging ourselves into books or television or whatever, we often do it to become wiser and happier in the real world and with real people outside the artificial realms of books, television, and ideas. We escape to reemerge wiser and better than before.

Impact vs Fame

I recently discovered a delightful blog by a young man named Jason Summers. Jason creates software, majors in physics at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and spends a lot of his leisure time philosophizing and studying “visual spatial cognition.” He says, “My goal in life is to understand what space and time really are, and how the virtual reality within our brains differs from the real world we live in.”

But in a recent blogpost, Jason says he doesn’t pursue his interests for “honors and fame,” and he laments the facts that too many people these days want to reap the fortune or at least the fame of being “the next guru or sage” and that the brightest young people going into science don’t want to do “observations and grunt work which needs to be done,” but desire, instead, “to be the next Einstein.” Jason concludes by saying, “I believe that the men and women who have the greatest impact on the world for the better are unknown and do good deeds without asking for any recognition.”

Here is the comment (slightly modified here) I posted to his blog in response:

Jason, while I agree that doing good deeds without expectation of rewarding recognition is laudable, I question your assertion that those who've had the greatest impact on the world are unknown. For instance, Jesus, for better or worse, has arguably had the greatest impact ever, and there's probably no one more famous.

It stands to reason that those who've had the greatest impact in religion, science, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, technology, and other fields of endeavor are precisely those who have garnered the most fame for their accomplishments, whether or not they sought it.

Also, I can't say that I blame the brightest people for eschewing the laboratory for the chalkboard, figuratively or literally speaking. It seems to me that it would be an awful waste for a "monster mind" like Ed Witten to spend a great deal of time running mundane experiments designed to confirm other people's results. His singular talents are much better deployed, at least most of the time, in Einsteins' old office.

This was Jason’s thoughtful reply:

Hi Steve. You bring up some good points. While I for the most part agree with you, in some respects I also disagree. Though the pursuit of truth is admirable, I feel it’s just as important to work on projects and inventions which relieve human suffering. I suppose you never know what abstract research may eventually lead to, but even so, it’s very important that scientific research efforts work on the mundane aspects of life, improving the everyday lives of people on this planet. Einstein’s work is certainly valuable, but I think other unknown scientists in various fields are the ones responsible for the majority of my own happiness. Scientists at Intel designed my computer. Scientists from Sony designed this computer monitor. Scientists designed my stereo system, the navigation system in my car, my home’s heating and air conditioning systems, and the list goes on. None of these people are known yet they are responsible for most of what I value in life. I don’t feel it’s beneath a genius to work for a company and design a city’s plumbing and sewage systems. I think this is what my professor was trying to tell me.

What do you think. Do you think unsung heroes have had the greatest impact on our lives, or has it been famous people? And do you think the brightest of us should toil away at mundane labors in laboratories and “drafting boards,” or should they be applying their prodigious intellectual gifts to a “higher” or at least more intellectual calling?

Martin Luther King to President Obama

"Cowardice asks the question- Is it safe? Expediency asks the question- Is it politic? Vanity asks the question- Is it popular? But conscience asks the question- Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.”

--Martin Luther King Jr.

Health Care For All is Not an Entitlement, It's a Necessity

Here is most of a comment I posted yesterday to a Facebook discussion of the recent federal court decision ruling that some parts of the new health care coverage bill are unconstitutional:

You're absolutely right. Health care coverage for all should NOT be viewed as a "handout" or "entitlement" for those unable to acquire it otherwise but as every bit as much if not more of a necessity for the "pursuit of happiness" as is police protection, military defense, and public education, to name just a few of the public services we legitimately look to government to provide.

We don't require people to have jobs providing coverage for these public services at reduced cost or to pay exorbitant fees out of their own pockets for privately obtained coverage for these public services, so why should we require this for health care coverage?

We don't deny coverage to people with "pre-existing" vulnerabilities to having to use these public services or to those who have reached a utilization "ceiling" for these public services, so why should we do this for health care coverage?

And if those opposed to so-called "Obamacare" don't like the fact that it requires everyone to purchase health insurance from private insurers, then let's just tax everyone and provide "Medicare for all" via the "public option," which is what we should have been doing all along anyway, with those who want something more and "better" and who can afford it paying extra to get it.

What I find so disturbing in this debate is that people who oppose the new health care law seem so callous to the suffering of the ill and injured and their families and to the concerns of growing multitudes unable to obtain adequate health care coverage or who are afraid of losing it if they lose their jobs or become sick enough or injured badly enough to exhaust their "caps."

These uncaring individuals talk as though this is unimportant and that we either don't need to do anything about it or we'll solve the problem simply by allowing more "competition" between the insurers and paltry tax breaks to consumers. Clearly more than this needs to be done, but I don't see any viable solutions from those opposed to "Obamacare." I just see a sneering dismissal of those who are trying to do something effective to provide everyone with coverage, and I find this disgusting.

Why Shouldn't There be Something Rather Than Nothing?

"This model is different, because the universe never collapses." (Roger Penrose)

This morning, I read this brief article outlining a theory advanced by the genius mathematician-cosmologist Roger Penrose that the universe existed BEFORE the Big Bang. I don't pretend to understand the sketchy explanation offered by the article or even the somewhat more expansive, if less detailed, one Penrose himself serves up in the interview below, but I'm intrigued by the notion of a cyclical universe that may have had no beginning and may have no end. This inspired me to post the following "note" to my Facebook page this morning:

I used to buy into the popular belief that nothingness is necessarily the "default position" of reality and that we need to explain the appearance of the universe out of original nothingness, which, of course, theists do by insisting that only God, by whatever name, could be responsible. But lately I've come to question this prevailing assumption. I've begun to think that, given the presence of something rather than nothing, which seems awfully difficult to explain in terms of something originating from nothing, perhaps the real default position of reality is somethingness. In other words, perhaps the universe has always existed and has, as Penrose might be taken to imply, cycled through an eternity of eons.

Sci-Fi Justice

“Take away a man’s life, memory, payment for his crimes...it’s still not enough. Where does revenge end and justice begin?” --Captain Sheridan, Babylon 5

Babylon 5 is one of the finest sci-fi shows to ever grace television. It originally aired in the mid-to-late 90’s. It takes place 250 years in the future mostly on a giant space station named Babylon 5 that began as a kind of galactic UN but later became the base of operations for the good guys versus the malevolent Shadows and their alien allies in the great war to end all great wars.

Spoiler alert

I’ve been re-watching this wonderful series from the beginning on Instant Netflix for over a month and have worked my way into the early part of Season 3. Last night, I watched one of the most provocative and poignant episodes of the entire series. Titled Passing Through Gethsemane, it focuses on a remarkably devoted and endearing Catholic monk (played by the always mesmerizing Brad Dourif) named Brother Edward who painfully discovers that he isn’t who he thought he was.

For “Br. Edward” had previously been a psychopathic serial killer of women who was caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to “death of personality” for his crimes. That is, his memories were wiped clean by a telepathic process, and he was given false memories of his past and turned into a very different person bent on selflessly serving others for the rest of his life as a Christian monk. He did this beautifully for eight years until his past caught up with him when family members of some of his victims found him on Babylon 5 and enacted their revenge after restoring his memories of his previous crimes.

Early in the episode, before Br. Edward made his shattering discovery, he was asked what he regarded as the emotional core of his Christian faith and he replied that it was when Jesus stood in the Garden of Gethsemane contemplating his fate and fearfully wondering, in a moment of human weakness, whether he could and should go through with it as planned. Br. Edward confided that he too wondered whether he, if he ever found himself in his own Gethsemane moment, would have the courage to do what needed to be done. And, as you might suspect, he learned the answer to that nagging question.

This episode raises the vexing issue of the nature of justice. As I’ve written many times in this blog, I don’t believe in free will, so I’m not sure what justice entails. That is, if a person’s nature--shaped by an almost infinitely complex set of interconnected physical, biological, psychological, and social factors--at the time he commits a crime causes him to commit that crime, what is the just response to his crime. Should justice consist of punishment even if the person to be punished is blameless? Should it consist of retribution? Reparation? Rehabilitation?

“Death of personality” seems, on the surface, like an ideal form of justice. Out with the old criminal personality or nature and in with a new and benevolent one. The person isn’t punished for crimes his previous nature made him commit; he’s rehabilitated or given a new nature that causes him to behave in a very different manner that enables him to at least begin to make reparations to the community he harmed before.

But one problem is that the survivors of the people he harmed didn’t feel in their hearts that justice was served, and I think there’s something to be said, unfortunate as it may be, for the human need to see a person suffer for his crimes whether he could help committing those crimes or not.

Another, perhaps more theological, problem is that suppose Br. Edward is right when he says, “How can I confess my sins to God if I don’t even know what they are. The mind forgets, but the stain remains with the soul.” In other words, if the soul and sin are not Christian fabrications, what would happen to a soul that can’t confess because the mind that overlays it doesn’t remember what it needs to confess?

"Passing Through Gethsemane" is a fascinating and powerful episode well worth watching, which you can do by clicking on here.

Fiddle or Fight While America Burns?

I hang out on Facebook a lot. More than I should, actually, although I've decided to back off on it over the coming days. But I read a post today from one of my Facebook friends in which she says she's tried of all the doom and gloom that people are spreading about America's alleged decline, and she's going to stop listening to them and get on with her business.

She thinks that we certainly have problems, but bright minds and natural cycles will solve them unless and until we allow ourselves to become so obsessed with the dire and unflaggingly repetitious pronouncements of such pompous prophets of doom as Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, and Tom Friedman that we become too demoralized and debilitated.

I disagree with her. I think our problems are very serious and that we have no chance whatsoever of solving them unless we begin by acknowledging and understanding them. This, with some minor modifications, is what I wrote to her:

I don't believe we are "functioning well" at all. Wall Street continues to grow richer while Main Street continues to grow poorer and our infrastructure continues to crumble and collapse before our eyes. Our educational system is in shambles at a time when it desperately needs to get its act together. Our political system is so polarized that very little can be accomplished. Health care is becoming more expensive and so-called Obamacare, a piss-poor patchwork substitute for single-payer but still better than what we've had before, is on its way out as Republicans continue to attack it and Democrats continue to cave to their demands. Our national debt continues to rise with no viable prospects for reversal. Soon China will be the world's dominant technological, economic and geopolitical power if it isn't already, and India and other rising countries such as Brazil may also relegate us soon enough to second tier, has-been status while our only preeminence, at least for a time, will be as militarily musclebound freaks.

These and a million other serious, serious problems eat away at our nation, and whether you want to collectively characterize them as "brokenness" or to use some other, more euphemistic term for them, they are real, and they are destroying us from the inside out while other countries chip away at us from the outside in.

If we acknowledge and understand our problems, there's always the risk that we'll succumb to debilitating and paralyzing despair and not only sink into the morass of mediocrity or worse but be miserable the whole way down. But if we don't acknowledge and understand our problems and just "fiddle while Rome burns" (pardon my mixed metaphors), expecting everything to right itself as part of some natural and inexorable cycle, we have no chance whatsoever.

The choice is ours. Fiddle or fight.

Your Bet

"So here’s the math: 98 climate scientists out of 100 will tell you that man’s continued carbon emissions pose the risk of disruptive climate change this century. Two out of 100 will tell you it doesn’t. And “conservatives” today tell you to bet on the two."

--Tom Friedman

First Webcam Video

I just bought a new webcam, installed it, and posted my first video with it to Facebook earlier today. And then I figured that if I'm using this blog to nakedly reflect the "real me," this would be a good place to post the video as well. Actually, I plan to post more videos of myself here over time, if I can think of anything to talk about, but this is my first foray into such Internet visibility.

To Chew or Not to Chew?

A local news channel posted on its Facebook page the following question: A congressman has asked the Giants and the Rangers not to chew tobacco on the field in this year's World Series. What do you think about that?

Almost everyone has responded by excoriating the congressman for not attending to more important things and by defending the right of baseball players to do what baseball players have always done. Yet, as you might suspect, I posted a rather different response that, despite its deliberate rhetorical excess, makes what I consider to be some valid points:

Why do any of you care if a congressman merely ASKS the players not to chew tobacco during the World Series? He's not trying to legislate against tobacco chewing. Apparently nobody else had the testicular fortitude to do it, so he stepped up to the plate to try to spare our nation's impressionable youth from being exposed to that vile habit during American baseball's most visible and iconic event. You should be applauding him for what he did instead of condemning him for it! How is it that you've allowed your exaggerated, reflexive hatred of government to override your concern for the health and well-being of your children?

The only problem I have with the good congressman is his naivety in thinking that major league baseball players are smart enough to heed his intelligent advice or that they give a damn about our children or anyone else but their overpaid and overly famous and pampered selves.

My Comment to Roger Ebert About Life and Death

Roger Ebert has an outstanding blog that uses the films he reviews as a taking off point for more extended reflections on the themes and issues raised by those films. In a recent entry about Clint Eastwood's new film "Hereafter," he makes the following comments about death:

"When I write that I expect to experience no more after death than I experienced before birth, I receive comments from people who pity me. They wonder how I can possibly live with such a bleak prospect. I find it more cheerful than most of the other possibilities that have been floated. I don't want to come back as an insect, haunt unquiet places as a ghost, or gaze down benevolently on my loved ones below as they, and all their generations to the end of time, die from mayhem or disease. I am also offered the possibility that I will be absorbed in God's love for all eternity, which is a better offer, but lacking in definition. If that means what it seems to mean, and if God is infinite (as he must be), then the role played by "me" can hardly be aware or conscious in any meaningful way. But I will become part of the universal, you say? I already am. You, too...We live, we die. That is not a tragedy. The tragedy would be never having been born."

I just replied with a comment that awaits Ebert's approval before it appears. Here is what I wrote:

Roger, I agree with you that there's nothing "bleak" about the prospect of dying and returning to the same state of non-consciousness that presumably characterized us before we existed. But I disagree with you that there would be anything "tragic" about never being born in the first place. For whom would it be tragic? If one never existed, there would be nothing to regret missing out on the experience it never existed to have.

In fact, I'd go further and agree with philosopher David Benetar's premise in "Better Never to Have Been" that if our lives are simply, as Alan Watts characterized the prevailing non-religious view, "a trip from the maternity ward to the crematorium," and, as Benatar argues, fraught with more pain and suffering than pleasure and happiness, the REAL "tragedy" for most if not all of us is that we WERE born. We'd have been better off had we never been at all.

Road Rage

Last week my wife and I were driving somewhere when I almost got into a violent altercation with someone. I was driving to an unfamiliar location and realized that I was in the wrong lane with a left turn coming up, and when I signaled and tried to move into the left turn lane, the big SUV behind me sped up to make sure I couldn't move over, as a woman in the passenger seat glared down at me as they raced by like she was thinking, "Screw you."

Well, I did manage to get over behind the SUV, and as we both sat at a red light, I made an angry gesture to the driver of the SUV. No, I didn't flip him the bird. I shook my fist at him. He saw me and opened the driver side door part way as though he was going to jump out and confront me right there, but it appeared as though the woman passenger stopped him from following through on his folly. He slammed his door shut and jerked around in his seat like he was completely beside himself with fury.

I don't know what I would have done if he had gotten out of his vehicle and moved toward me. I know I would have stayed in the car, but what if he started pounding on it or kicking it? What if he had a gun? He certainly seemed angry enough that if he had a gun, he wouldn't have thought twice about using it, especially if he hadn't had a female passenger to talk him out of it.

If he had had a gun and started walking toward me with it, I think I'd have tried to run him over. If he'd damaged the car with punches or kicks, I or my wife would have tried to get his license number and report him.

But what about the gesture I made to him? Should I have done it? Did he deserve to see my displeasure over the way he conducted himself when I tried to move into the left turn lane just before the stoplight? I think he deserved it. But what people deserve and what we should give them if it puts ourselves and our loved ones in danger are, perhaps, separate issues with the latter overriding the former.

In retrospect, I wish I had made no gesture, although a perverse part of me is glad I did. But if I had it to do over, should I have made the gesture I did or some other one? If another one, what should it have been? I kind of think that showing him the back of my open hand would have been better. It wouldn't have been overtly vulgar like flipping him the bird, or confrontational like showing him my fist. He would have probably thought I was flipping him the bird or challenging him to a fight anyway, but at least I'd have the satisfaction of knowing that I did neither, assuming he didn't shoot me and I was able to feel anything afterward.

What kind of society do we live in with people like the jerk in the SUV with his stereotypical Harley sticker on the back and, perhaps, a gun or crowbar under his seat driving on our public roads? Or am I the villain in this story?