In a democracy, we engage in political discussion so that we can come to agreement and take action in areas of our lives that require coordinated action. Defense of our nation against an invader or response to a disaster like a tornado are easy examples to see. Solving problems, whether in the home, larger community, or nation requires problem-solving skills. Participants need to present and work to clearly define ideas, make compromises, and choose and implement the most effective solutions. Hubris, snark, contempt, focus on ideology, owning the other side, insult –all these actions impede solutions we want and need.
As I read today’s news and discussions about twitter, I implore my fellow citizens to choose civility and reason so we may move ahead as a nation. Extinguish the oxygen around uncivil chatter. Have and encourage respectful, productive conversations. Help create a movement for effective conversation in our nation today!
That word, cancer, casts an ominous aura over any associated medical visit. Cancer brings a seriousness not associated with infections or cardiac issues, even though both can also bring death. Once, I panicked at the entryway to a doctor I was visiting for unexplained bruising. I was terrified solely because his sign said “Hematologist and Oncologist.” Oncologist implied cancer, which should have been irrelevant because my visit was for his knowledge of hematology. However, my normally very low blood pressure shot up 20 points. Higher blood pressure made much more painful the Rumpel-Leede capillary fragility test, placement of a tight blood pressure cuff on my arm. I suffered because of my fear of the word oncologist, cancerdoctor, not because of my actual medical condition.
I suffered because of my fear of the word cancer, not because of my actual medical condition.
This week I accompanied my husband to a urology appointment to discuss treating a 1.6cm cyst thought to be renal cell carcinoma.
“RDSVS pathology: Renal Carcinoma” by RDSVS is licensed with CC BY-NC 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
He had hoped to have cryoablation, the insertion of a probe into the cyst to alternately freeze and thaw it until the tissue is destroyed. This doctor suggested alternatives of taking out a wedge of the kidney surgically or even removing the kidney. Leaning close to us, he said, “to make sure we get it all. We certainly would not want to leave any behind.” This intense concern is for a tumor that grows a mere 0.5cm a year. But remember, this is a cancer, so the atmosphere is charged with intensity. We all remember lives lost to cancer.
1,780 children and teens die ofcancer annually but 6,800 die from suicide.
Suicide is the second most common cause of death in those 10 to 19 and 60% of all adult firearm deaths are by suicide. More policemen die of suicide than die on the job; more soldiers die of suicide than die in combat; more firefighters die of suicide than die in fires. 1,780 children and teens die of cancer annually but 6,800 die from suicide. Consider, however, which cause, cancer or suicide, draws more charity organizations and dollars?
When I was a child, sixty years ago, cancer very often led to death but that is no longer true. Yet, cancer continues to strike terror far more than any other diagnosis. Let us become more alert to the emotional load of the word cancer so we can bring rationality to both our treatment and our funding decisions.
“How would you like to help Owen get a good start in eighth grade?” My son, Chris, ever the salesman and fisherman, readily hooked me. I am a former teacher and school technology facilitator and currently tutor. Since Chris and Owen moved away to Tampa last summer, I have had little time with my grandson. I was willing. We developed a plan. Chris and Owen would drive to New Jersey from Florida, getting Covid tested on route. They would quarantine at our small family cabin in the Sussex County forest west of New York City. I would drive 65 miles daily to the cabin from my home in the suburbs. Chris would use Zoom for his highly stressful technical position in our Covid economic downturn. Owen’s remote schooling would begin on August 24.
On Sunday, August 23, our family gathered at the cabin to celebrate Chris’s birthday. I looked forward to beginning work on Monday. Friends from my age cohort and beyond, including my former pastor, 103, urged me to report back about this new way to educate. Monday morning I bounded out of bed at the previously unthinkable hour of 6 am and arrived at Dunkin’ donuts by seven. There I armed myself with an extra large green tea and a Power Breakfast Sandwich and purchased jelly and powdered sugar donuts to lure Owen from his bed. I arrived at the cabin before 8:30, seventy minutes before start time. All week I managed to continue this routine, although by Friday I was too late to pick up donuts.
The cabin has a good internet connection, so I had no worries unless a storm knocked out power. Fortunately it was sunny all week, with temperatures up to 90. With two fans and many open windows, the lack of air conditioning did not deter even the Floridians.Tampa schools (Hillsborough County School District, the seventh largest in the nation), had just adopted Canvas, a new online instructional delivery system that incorporates Zoom for live instruction. I had watched several training videos for parents and felt equipped to handle technical problems.
Zoom had failed all over Tampa
Classes followed a normal schedule. Class attendance, however, was only taken when Zoom was part of the lesson and many classes did not use Zoom. As Owen’s mentor/monitor, I wanted to observe that the system was recording Owen’s attendance at each class accurately, important in future weeks when Chris and Owen returned home and Chris was busy working. However, I was never able to locate such historic information, despite being logged in as his parent. This puzzled me. In the last school I worked, I became very familiar with Power School, another online student information system with easy access to attendance and grading information for parents. In fact, I still regularly teach newly arrived refugees how to monitor their children’s progress using Power School, which even provides translation. Not having easy access to historical class attendance records is a serious issue for parents who are keeping track of multiple children while engaged in household chores and employment, whether from home or job site. Few families can dedicate a single adult to watch each child in the family every minute.
Whenever I received a call, I had to walk the length of the house, up the driveway, and down the road to a tree stump I adopted as my telephone booth.
At one point when no one was on Zoom, Chris began talking about a difficult issue. Just then, Owen’s class began. “Dad,” Owen quickly warned, “unless you want my whole class to know our personal business, it is necessary for you to stop talking now.” Such difficulties we had when locked in together are more severe in other families. My other son’s wife, twenty weeks pregnant, has to monitor three children, 6, 8, and 10. With live remote learning, she would have to go up and down three flights of stairs constantly moving from one child to another for seven hours. Therefore, she has decided to use the curriculum from Montgomery County Schools to home school all three children together at the dining room table from 8 to 12 while her four-year old goes to live pre-K classes at a local church. This seems to be a more effective solution for them. Meanwhile, during the non-school hours of her day, she is employed, writing and self-publishing a manual on how to obtain parole in the Maryland correctional system. Quite a challenge she faces.
My local public radio station recently interviewed college freshmen. On girl had opted to live in the New York University dormitory, where her only live human contact is to receive a tray of food three times daily. Why submit yourself to such a prison, you ask? Her.family of seven lives in an apartment in New York City. Both of her parents work remotely on Zoom from their apartment as do two of her younger siblings. Her older sister is a college student working from home and the youngest is a 10-month old baby, producing her own quantity of noise, I am sure. For this young woman, residing in the lonely dormitory was the best option.
Last night, I received a help call from a student I have tutored for the past three years. Today, he was to begin Middle School online, but he had not yet received adequate instructions. Fortunately, a member of my extended family works in that district’s other Middle School. Unfortunately, between the two schools there is no standardization of procedures. However, she sent us a copy of the letter she had written for her students which explained about how to log onto to the new Schoology learning system. Using this, my student was enabled to contact one of his teachers for more details about start time, since no schedules had been sent out. In our current environment, chaos continues to reign..
However, compared to the life-threatening situations we faced here in New Jersey and New York City last March, the challenges of remote schooling and working seem mild. For so many are these frustrations are amplified by wildfires, hurricane damage, food insecurity, potential evictions, language difficulties, and poor or no internet connections. We need to keep our neighbors in mind when we consider complaining and rather, try to maintain an attitude of gratitude if we have food, shelter, work, and access to learning. Let us continually support one another through encouragement, information, and donations of food and money. That is how we best can get through these tough times.
Recently, my writing group discussed whether a writer could adequately portray someone with far different life experiences. One member gave as an example of a male writing a sympathetic protrayal of a woman, Thomas Hardy in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. My immediate reaction was emotional. I was required to read that book in high school English class and the experience has forever haunted me. My recollection of details may be highly inaccurate after more than fifty years, but I still feel personally angry at that author for creating a deterministic world where a young woman spent her whole life stalked by her powerful rapist. The story reinforced the message pounded into me as a young woman: any sexual encounter you have will ruin your life, even if you are a victim of rape. Perhaps the author accurately portrayed the young woman’s emotions, but the overall misogynistic fatalism displaying the powerful man always getting what he wants from a powerless woman has troubled me ever since. In fact, the message so endured, that I dared not read even a synopsis to fact check until after I had finished composing this blog post. Be careful what you write! Is it oppressive for any segment of your readership? What could be its impact?
Art in government buildings should affirm our national unity and ideals; church art should support our beliefs.Two stained glass windows at Washington’s National Cathedral do neither.
They honor Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, heroes of the Confederacy. The Cathedral is an Episcopal church with quasi-governmental status, not receiving Federal financing, but serving as a location for government officials to gather for prayer during national emergencies and a place to bury Presidents. Currently, in the shadow of the Charleston massacre, the Cathedral community ponders the presence of these windows and their Confederate flags.
As an American citizen and a Christian believer, I call for the Cathedral to change the context and the message of these windows: Move them to a museum and surround them by the visual displays of the painful fruits of the Confederate state’s violent ideology of racial domination. Show shackles, slave auction blocks, lynchings, Klan terrorism, the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the Charleston massacre. Racial domination is an ideology we must renounce just as South Africa abandoned apartheid. Glorifying these ideas gives them power to remain an accepted part of our national dialog. Art can be used to bring division to a country and genocide against its minorities. In the recent past, for example, Serbia looked for support for genocide against Muslims from The Mountain Wreath, a 19th century epic poem celebrating the killing of local Muslims. Better we should look to Germany, where World War II veterans are looked on with suspicion,and swastikas may not be displayed. Contrast Japan’s current government, which is considering bringing back its World War II “Rising Sun” flag, while at the same time retracting apologies for wartime acts .
We do not need to hide the Confederate flag from view, but rather undermine its use as a battle flag for racist ideologies . Delegitimize the narrative that the Southern struggle was honorable. Our national unity and our integrity as Christians call for such a stand.
