Voting For Life Or Death In Minnesota

A Minnesota couple have established an online poll at their blog to determine whether or the pregnant wife should give birth to their baby, or not.

"Help Us Decide"

You can vote and choose whether we abort or keep our unborn child. For the first time, your vote on the topic of abortion can make a difference.

A grim countdown calendar ticks downward, day after day, with a fateful cut-off to determine whether or not a child will live or die.

Dec. 9th is the last day we could legally get an abortion in our state. This vote will remain open until 2 days prior to allow for the procedure if decided.

The Daily Mail UK newspaper, whose reporter has more time to read blogs than I do, quotes an older post (without supplying the link) from the mother-to-be:

She wrote: 'I'm not convinced that I want to change the status quo. I feel that as I age I've actually gotten more selfish and set in my ways.
'I'm afraid that I will eventually regret starting a family and "settling down", as they say.
'I fear that the constant pressure to be the perfect wife and mother while maintaining a full-time job will eventually cause my brain to implode and lead to a nervous breakdown.

To value life as the blessed gift that it is, why not grow to see how we can never really "know" whether or not we will succeed at the tasks most worth doing. We can hope, but we can't "know". Studying for a trade, starting a business, getting married, starting a family. These acts require faith, and embracing these challenges is an act of faith.

Sometimes simply living is an act of faith.

Breathing New Life Into The American Trinity

There is much truth to be found in fantasy, which helps explain, I suppose, our ongoing fascination with dreams. And cartoons.

No matter how old I get I hope I never grow too old to enjoy cartoons. Watching some childhood favorites again through Youtube, I see them today with new eyes, as exhibits of something I absorbed but never understood, when first observing them at a younger age.


The Hollywood theatrical cartoon of the forties and fifties is so delightfully, unapologetically, indelibly American. The best of them reflect the best of American civilization: its capacity for keeping faith, its belief in re-invention... both cultural tenets joining as one, in the form of the Happy Ending. (In the above example, a pragmatic Happy Ending, making it all the more quintessentially American: where else is it so ingrained to take lemons and turn them into lemonade..?)

A further American trait I see on display in many of the old cartoons, going hand in hand with the ideal of re-invention, are their many examples of forgiveness. Old enemies putting aside deeply-held grievances in order to rally and address a new and greater problem, exhibiting the rare self-discipline of not holding a grudge.


Growing out from the ability to keep faith in oneself, benefiting from the belief in the Second Chance formula of “try, try again”, comes the true arena for success: a forum that preserves the freedom to fail, so that by trial and error you may learn what you are best suited to become. We are not born to follow in our parents' footsteps unless that ends up being the choice we select for ourselves.


Put them all together and what do you get?

In God We Trust (the most self-renewing source of self-confidence), e pluribus unum [“from the many, one”] (the recipe for moving on from old grudges arising out of old relationships, looking to see what may be shared in common as well as where there may be differences), and Liberty (the freedom to fail while searching for the best version of ourselves to become): the three stages of the American Trinity, as described on American coinage... and older American cartoons.

For how much longer will this Trinity prevail, with anti-theism on the march, with old grudges increasingly unforgiven, with ever increasing suffocation of Liberty, the fragile laboratory so necessary for innovation and self-discovery?

These besieged older values desperately need to be re-animated with a fresh breath of new life, a new will to forestall a final fade-to-black on the last best hope on Earth.

I imagine we will find a way to win, in the end; it's a dream I picked up from watching a lot of old cartoons...

[With thanks to Dennis Prager]

Radio Memories: Easter Renewal

We talked of many things, of the changes that living with cancer brings, of the changes seen by eyes living through eight decades of love and loss, growth and decay, grief and joy.

Many of her oldest friends have passed on, and she bears their loss on shoulders frail with age, in a body failing her in ever increasing measure. Yet just as the cane supports her fragile frame, her faith supports her spirit, allowing her to persevere through the decline with grace, gratitude, and a smile beaming with hope.

As our lunch went on, our talk moved from insights about the present to memories of the far past, eventually to her previous life as a high school teacher. "Are the teenagers of today any different than the teenagers of your time?", I asked her. "Despite all the changes in the world around us, have young people themselves really changed all that much, since you used to teach them?"

Her eyes looked into space, as if turning the pages of a large book, and after a pause she related an anecdote that instantly hit home with me. About how when they think nobody is looking they will come to you after class and ask to talk, and the young person sitting there, crushed by their insurmountable problems, hoping there is someone to go to for answers, that this young person is the same person in every age, looking for confirmation of the same eternal truths.

Our time was almost up, and I ventured a last question on a subject untouched so far: the future. "Are you hopeful?", I asked.

"Yes and no", the former teacher answered, hesitating, clearly favoring the "no" but not willing to go against her hard-won positive attitude. She did permit herself a quick glance in my direction, as she gathered her things to leave our table, adding a final caveat through a whimsical smile:

"Well, maybe a little more hopeful than I used to be..."

That humbling Good Friday experience was the perfect prelude to Easter Sunday, and the spirit of renewal in general.

It's Sunday, and when time allows it I take advantage of Sundays to slip in another in our series of Radio Memories, a weekly pause spent listening to, and learning from, echoes from the past.

There's much to enjoy from television's predecessor, the dead-but-not-forgotten medium of dramatic radio, the theater of the mind.

One of the most entertaining programs from that bygone time was the comedy series "The Great Gildersleeve", following the adventures of Uncle Gildy's challenges in raising his orphaned niece and nephew. Sponsored throughout the majority of its run by Kraft Foods, to help sell the (relatively) new wonders of Kraft Processed Cheese and fast-cooking Kraft Macaroni, the show matured in style year after year, abandoning its initial cartoon-like trappings (although not losing the voice talent of supporting actor Arthur Q Bryan, more recognizable to modern audiences from his lifetime job as cartoon star Elmer Fudd, than from his busy radio work of the time), evolving closer to soap opera, with plotlines stretching through the length of entire seasons.

One of those later serialized stories proved to be profoundly bittersweet, centered as it was on Gildersleeve's stumbling attempts to kindle a romance with his nephew's piano teacher. The listening audience cringes in sympathy as week after week Gildy never seems to catch the break he needs, never seems to find the right word for the right occasion, and we begin to sense that this is a romance that is not meant to be. We tune in, episode after episode, not so much to learn how he will win, but instead to discover how he'll handle the eventual, inevitable heartbreak.

This particular story overlapped with the series' Easter tradition, where the last few minutes of the show would be turned over to the Seventy Two year-old patriarch of the Kraft Foods company, Mr James L Kraft himself. Last Easter we introduced you his poignant, 1943 wartime Easter broadcast; this Easter we bring to you the message he delivered Wednesday, April 2nd, 1947.

At the 26-minute mark of the show, star Harold Peary assumes an uncharacteristically solemn tone to introduce what, by that year, a cherished moment for the audience listening at home, the annual visit from the elderly gentleman considered as much a part of the Gildersleeve family as Gildy himself.

Mr Kraft's 1947 Easter message:

Again this year it gives me the greatest pleasure to send Easter Greetings to Kraft men around the globe, and to friends both known and unknown everywhere.

The Easter season is a time for rejoicing all over the Earth. A time for renewing faith, and re-examining the true values of life. Even nature, at this time of the year, seems to join in this affirmation of eternal hope and everlasting life.

A long time ago it was said, “know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” To find eternal and unchanging values amidst so much that passes away, had always been a goal of men. And much of modern science, invention and education, holds this knowledge of the Truth as their objective.

Yet, in the field of the human spirit and moral conduct, it is of even greater importance that we seek out the unchanging Truth, that it may make us free.

Our Truth may be regarded as an abstract quality, a far-away goal to be desired by the seeking mind. But it is also, and more vitally, a living quality, revealed in a way of dwelling in harmony with one’s fellow men.

This Living Truth was expressed perfectly in the life of Him who’s death and resurrection from the dead the whole Christian world observes this week.

I’ve been reading once again the story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. It is a profoundly moving story. You will remember that after Pilate’s interrogation of Christ, Jesus said, in substance, “I came into the world, that I should bear witness of the Truth.”

Then Pilate asked a question, which many before him and many since have asked: “What is Truth?”

By His death and resurrection as by His life among men, Christ gave the answer to that question. For only as men are able to live humbly and unselfishly together, expressing by all that we do the Truth that is in us, will we be able to solve the great problems of the world today. Only by casting aside all pettiness and selfishness, and by following a straight and simple path of doing unto others as we would have others do unto us, can nations and people learn to live in peace and harmony together.

At this Easter season, let us all witness by our daily living, the Faith and Hope and Truth that in us lie, let us walk daily in our great faith, and hold the flame high for all to see.

Only thus can the eternal promise of this sacred day come to flower on the Earth.

Previous 2010 Radio Memories posts:

Lux Radio Theater: Hitler's Children
Biography In Sound: The Story Of Science Fiction
Mr President: Romance In The White House
Frontier Fighters: George Pickett
Destination Freedom: Citizen Toussaint [Toussaint L'Ouverture]
Ports Of Call: Haiti

For a list of our 2009 Radio Memories listings, go here.

The Best Advice...

...is often the simplest.

I was standing in church, and felt a nudge on the arm; I turned to see my friend looking at me, concerned. "Hey", he whispers helpfully, "Smile."

So I did.

And suddenly things didn't look, or feel, so bad anymore.

For a while. A moment respite. But that was enough.

Ready now for tomorrow.

Smile and maybe tomorrow
Youll see the sun come shining through, for you

Aristotle, Free Food, And The Illusion Of Intelligence

I ran across this interesting passage from Aristotle over the weekend. From Book One of Ethics:

Since in every case a man judges rightly what he understands, and of this only is a good critic, it follows that while in a special field the good critic is a specialist, the good critic in general is the man with a general education.

That is why a young man is not a fit person to attend lectures on political science, because he is not versed in the practical business of life from which politics draws its premises and subject-matter.

Besides, he tends to follow his feelings, with the result that he will make no headway and derive no benefit from his course, since the object of it is not knowledge but action.

It makes no difference whether he is young in age or youthful in character; the defect is due not to lack of years but to living, and pursuing one's various aims, under sway of the feelings; for to people like this knowledge becomes as unprofitable as it is for the incontinent.

Aristotle's observation on the value of life experience seemed the perfect commentary upon this video, featuring a young lady as sincere as she is enthusiastic, delivering an (impromptu?) address to a 2008 Santa Cruz City Council meeting. [I'm having trouble embedding the video, for some reason, so you'll have to follow the link. Fortunately I had made a transcript of the speech shortly after I first heard the audio broadcast over last week's Northern Alliance Radio Network talk show. I let myself miss the occasional "umm" and "uhh", otherwise I hope the transcript is pretty accurate..:]

Young Speaker: Well, the crops are, um, growing very well, and they’re organic and have pesticides and I think that we should make a perfect pesticide for the crops, that is good for people, and uh, healthy, and keeps the crops preserved, because, we need the FOOD, because it’s food and stuff, and organic food is good also…
Um… and the businesses downtown really need to lower their rent, because if the rent was lower those people would really have their own businesses, they have enough stuff, they’re very good at making things, they’re experts, they’re really good…
And we can really be a community, and make good things, and, um, sell them in our stores, that it can be a California thing, it can really work out, because we can be rich in cotton, and mining metals, and silkworms, and we can make things, things like cars, the machine can make it for us. And we can have the community, and the city, and San Francisco things, and put them in a store…
On the East Coast they have slaves, they believe in slavery, and Made In China, but, on the West Coast, the new West Coast, we don’t believe in that, we believe in the union, and that’s what we are….
In the Bush administration, which is really good, he has government funding for small business owners…
You can grow every type of fruit and vegetable you want, that’s how they do it. They have fruit trees, and vegetable trees, that’s where fruit and vegetable comes from…
You freeze the fruit and vegetables, and it’ll last forever. You can put, you know, broccoli or strawberries in the freezer and it’ll last forever. If you don’t, you know, it might go bad in a bit…
People, we live in California, this is our home, this is where we live…
Growing food is so good, for the people, because, it’s free. All’s you have to do is pay the farmers. And pay for the land. But, why do we have to pay for the land, the land’s free, it’s new land, you know, I mean do we have to pay for the land, do we have to pay rent; the food’s free. So we should just sell it… at the farmer’s market.

City Councillor: [laconically] Thank You. Next speaker…

It probably won't seem like it, but I'm really not trying to make fun of the young lady; Lord knows this is probably what I sound like half the time I try to make myself sound smart. I think, in fact, I have much to learn from watching the video; it's helped to bring into clearer focus some half-formed ideas I've been writing about, off-and-on over the years, on what it means to actually be intelligent.

Starting with the recognition of how valuable the simple act of conversation can be as the backbone to one's education. I wonder how many of the holes in this young lady's knowledge base arose from never having anyone really test that knowledge by honestly discussing her ideas with her... what intellectual poverty it must be, to be surrounded with friends and family (and teachers) who completely agree with everything you believe. The hallmark of civility, the art of agreeing to disagree, is sadly becoming a lost art, it seems, through being increasingly unpracticed, and therefore unappreciated. ("As Iron Sharpens Iron, So One Man Sharpens Another." Proverbs 27:17)

The fame (or should I say, infamy) of this video suggests the next lesson: the contribution that humility makes in the march towards intelligence. Presumably the young lady in the video knows by now how many hundreds of thousands of people around the world have watched her speech since she gave it last year. (I guess I'm contributing to her humiliation by posting it here... sorry about that) I hope the sometimes cruel comments and mocking criticisms don't end up discouraging her from picking herself up and trying to fill some of those holes in her education. This, I think, is the key to the second most important facet of being "intelligent": the acceptance that improving our intelligence comes with a heavy price tag... it costs us the illusion of our infallibility.

Fortunately, if the necessary lesson in humility is learned early enough in life, the gift of time can counter-balance the follies that come with youthful vanity. Believing that, however, requires what I have grown to consider the single most important facet to intelligence: the ability to have faith, the imagination to believe that no matter how far we fall, how little we may become, how deeply we end up regretting our choices in life... we have within us the potential to always renew our self.

American Hegemony

Former Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Dean remarked in 2003's New Hampshire primary, that America "should be planning for a time when it is not the world's greatest superpower : 'We have to take a different approach [to diplomacy]. We won't always have the strongest military.' "

I was remined of that famous quote the moment I watched this ominous scene:



For all his faults, and despite all the disagreements I have with his policies, I don't get any pleasure out of seeing this done to the President of the United States. It's a sight to sadden the soul. All America is being humiliated in this video, not just its President.


The genius of the American system of government is that it perceived the truth about the people it governs: that Man is a fallen being, with a capacity for evil, and certainly a propensity for error. The checks and balances, the struggle that is involved in getting anything done, is meant to test ideas and the mettle of the mind's they spring from. The notion that Man can become so wise as to not need advice, as to not benefit from the judgment that comes with scrutiny, must surely, almost by definition, be un-American.


Yet when balance and judgment and humility were most needed, where were they? How to keep faith in democracy if its implementation seems to weaken the very system it's meant to uphold? How to keep faith in America?

Why are these modern-day commissars not shaking the democratically-elected President's hand as he moves down this line-up? Are they not supposed to, according to the protocol of the event? If not, why doesn't President Obama know that? If they are deliberately snubbing him, why do they think they can get away with that? What faith do they have in America, and in Americans?


God help the Republic.

The Sound Of Hope

A tale of two emails.

The first message is from a beloved friend who shares in confidence news of a tragic personal development. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Not for the first time, I close my eyes in despair as to how cruel life can be to the nicest of people.

Then, after a shocked moment spent coming to grips with the implications of her bad news, the next email in cue leads me to this video, providentially sent by a friend who thought I’d enjoy it.

"Enjoy" it? What an understatement..!

It’s medicine for the grieving soul. Maybe it's the timely circumstances, and coincidences, surrounding it's arrival, but I can’t help but hear within the video the very sound of Hope.

I hear the sound of faith fulfilled, the fruit of love directed outwards as well as inwards, the further reward that may come when we express our gratitude for the many blessings that fill our daily lives.

My faith teaches me that it’s by seeking the good that we may find happiness, and eventual peace. Most of the time this seems a false promise, an impossible burden, for the world is filled with such evil, and from it springs such eternal misery. Is there truly sufficient goodness out there, somewhere, that would make it worthwhile to remain positive in our thinking, optimistic in our attitude? Is there really a reason to believe that, ultimately, it’s rational to live in hope?

I watch the video and hear a reminder, just when I needed it the most, of how the search for good continues to be a habit worth cultivating. Indeed, all the more so: it renews my understanding of how our individual searches for inner peace may strengthen others, looking to us for encouragement in their time of deepest trouble, in their moments of gravest doubt.

And so I hope that through this video you can hear what I hear, a gentle re-affirmation of hope; that despite a life filled with despair, suffering, and injustice, alongside it can be found joy, wonder, and mercy. Watching the video, we pause to ask: is it really so impossible to find good in the world..?

Wednesday Wondering

Three stories about denial, how we can't live with it, yet can't live without it, on a grey Wednesday morning.

Heater: Some damaging indictments of the global warming religion, as a new study exposes how compromised much of the warming data has been, and how little blind faith we should put on the extrapolations made from that data:

The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.
During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found.
We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.
In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.
In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.
It gets worse...

Our pollution must be having some negative effect upon our environment. But let's not let our good intentions fall like an acid rain upon reasoned responses to the problem, let's have the humility to accept that we really don't know as much as we think we did about what in the world is going on. [Hat Tip to Vox Day]

Pill-pusher: The doctor who prescribed painkillers by the shovel-full to patients such as homicidal wrestler Chris Benoit, has been sentenced to ten years in prison.

Dr. Phil Astin, 54, had pleaded guilty Jan. 29 to a 175-count federal indictment that accused him of writing illegal prescriptions to known drug abusers, some of them for years.
...
"I take full responsibility," Astin told U.S. District Judge Jack Camp... "I am sorry I hurt so many lives. I was thinking that I was looking after my patients."

Two of Dr. Astin's patients died from drug overdoses, and the prosecution made it clear that it wasn't referring to the high-profile Benoit murder/suicide case. Given that it was that tragic event that triggered the investigation in the first place, it feels like the indictment followed the kind of logic more common to pro wrestling angles by how it avoided the whole issue of steroids altogether, despite a search warrant revealing that Dr. Astin had prescribed Benoit a ten-month supply of steroids every three to four weeks.

Media sensationalism in the aftermath of the Benoit incident notwithstanding, the connection between massive use of steroids and a mind so corrupted as to kill one's wife and 7-year old child is not a slam-dunk case. There's another, stronger link besides 'roid-rage', however, that needs to be pursued, and that's the heavyweight-class degree of denial going on within, and without, the wrestling industry.

The suspension of disbelief that we use to enjoy movies and plays gets tapped into to also appreciate a pro wrestling match, but unlike film and theater, when it comes to wrestling it seems that once engaged that denial of reality can't seem to shut itself off. The result is a deadly dance between diehard wrestling fans and the wrestlers who die hard in order to please them.

In his autobiography, veteran wrestler 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper called this desire to please the fans and be liked by them, "The Sickness", as it led wrestlers to continually act against their own best self-interest, both physically and spiritually.

Where the in-ring pain leaves off, the outside-the-ring lifestyle picks up: "It takes over your life 24/7 and, especially before cellphones and email, no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible not to become distant from my family, my kids. Most, maybe all, the boys suffered the same isolation, and soon strangers became family and family became strangers. Almost all who escaped came back, having no clue how to make it on the outside."

The bandmasters for this waltz of doom are promoters like Vince McMahon, who insist on pushing the stars with the biggest bodies, and try to condition fans to only accept bigger as better. If you don't have the large size, what do you do to make up for it in the eyes of the fans and the promoters? The answer isn't pretty. It's certainly not wrestling, and surely it's not "entertainment"..?

Unfortunately, since no one takes the shows in the ring seriously, few people take the pain outside the ring seriously either. A shroud of denial has fallen upon the wrestling business; even with the publicity in the last few years, the appalling death rate for the young performers in that field is still ignored as a messy, unwelcome needle that could pop the whole illusion. Ignored, especially, by the fans.


Swister: An anonymous tip (from a guilty conscience..?) leads two 56-year old women to the shocking discoverery that they were switched at birth.

Qualls, Bobby Reed and one of their sisters met Shafer at a Kennewick, Wash., clinic last month for DNA testing. A week later, Qualls got the results, learning her likely probability of being related to her brother and sister was zero.
"I cried," she said. "I wanted to be a Reed _ my life wasn't my life." Shafer's DNA report said she had 99.9 percent of being related to Bobby and Dorothy Reed. Now living in Richland, Wash., Shafer said the report only confirmed what she knew after meeting Qualls.
"After seeing Kay Rene, I went home and told my husband, I don't know why she's doing the DNA testing," she said. "I was shocked _ she looked just like my sister's twin."
...

Mid-way through reading this article I paused to discuss the story with my wife, curious to get her take on what it must be like to be faced with a revelation like this. "It must make your life feel almost illegitimate", I suggested; "you would look back and feel like you had lived the 'wrong life'..." My wife had a more positive reaction: "It would be like getting a whole new set of brothers and sisters, an extra family on top of your own!" Oriented toward the past as I am, I hadn't thought of things from that angle... and not for the first time, learned from her forward-thinking attitude, another reminder of the complex nature of faith. It's not about ignoring the doubts, denying the bad; it's about having sufficient imagination, and courage, to be able to see the potential good as well as the obvious bad. I was, therefore, not surprised in the least when I soon reached the concluding paragraph...:

The two have become friends and celebrated their May 3 birthday together. Recently, Qualls introduced Shafer to her work colleagues, calling her "my swister."
"I'm trying to move forward at look at the positive," Shafer said.
"You can't look back. It just drives you crazy."

Hitting The Right Note On Worship

Our pastor occasionally, and gently, chides us for our singing; not for singing poorly, but for how few of us in the pews participate in the expected singing at church.

In fufilling his request, we are virtually at war with ourself. We are all too painfully aware that we are not "great" singers, and this snapshot view leads us to be silent when we should be joining the choir. After all, we wouldn't want our failings to tarnish the success of others.

It's not that different from the challenge in trying to be a "great" person; we seem destined to fall short, so why try at all? Wouldn't our sorry example just end up discouraging those who need all the encouragement they can get?

Yet, when enough voices join in, an interesting phenomenon occurs; the less-than-angelic voices (like mine) not only get drowned out, they seem to actually add to the overall value of the experience. The individual notes may contain our failings, but they nonetheless also project our act of faith. We no longer hear the sour notes, the building instead echoes with the sound of earnest effort spent towards fulfilling a worthwhile mission. The louder the volume, the more likely the reluctant singer will add his voice to the choir... a reminder that the more that people try to follow the path of a good life, the more encouraged others will be to take their own small steps along the same trail.

When it comes to being good, we're all amateurs... which is one of the reasons I get a huge kick out of this witty video: "What if worship was like an NBA game?"

[Hat Tip to James at Sanctus]

Radio Memories: The Return Of Hope

Back when my wife and I were still engaged we took an afternoon to visit the picturesque community of White Rock, curious to see the actual white rock there. The end of our pleasant day together saw us strolling, hand in hand, along a deserted sidewalk when suddenly our path crossed that of an elderly woman heading in the other direction. I forget what she looked like, but I’ve never forgotten the advice she offered us as we passed by. After we smiled and greeted her with a friendly hello, she suddenly said to us, a note of urgency in her voice: “Love each other while you still can, while you’re still young together”.

Easter is around the corner, and not too many decades ago that meant a lot of Easter-themed programs broadcast over television’s entertainment ancestor, the theater of the mind: radio drama. Resurrecting the tradition I had to put temporarily aside in February, this week we resume our regular Sunday Radio Memories posts, taking a break from blogging about more serious subjects in order to spare a moment to renew our hope in better things to come, by remembering the good things that have already come our way.

To help get in the mood for Easter weekend, this week’s Radio Memory is a sentimental favorite, a radio play with an important plot point revolving around an encounter similar to the forementioned one my wife and I personally experienced that unforgettable afternoon in White Rock.

The episode is entitled “Easter Rabbits” and was first broadcast Sunday evening, April 25th, 1943. It is from the immensely enjoyable situation comedy series The Great Gildersleeve, sponsored for the first 13 of its long 16-year run by Kraft Foods. In those simpler days the common practice was that one sponsor could afford one whole program themselves, which frequently led to a fascinating, almost quixotic individuality in programming, as a series would grow to reflect something of the values of the individual family business sponsoring it. For The Great Gildersleeve, Kraft alternated advertising its still comparatively new products, Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner (introduced in 1936), and Parkay margarine (introduced in 1937), as well as their contribution to renewing America's love of cheese, courtesy of Kraft's development of long-lasting, processed cheese.

A remarkable tradition began with this particular wartime episode: each year septuagenarian Mr. Kraft himself, Canadian-born Mennonite (and later Baptist convert) James Lewis Kraft, would offer Gildersleeve's listeners some hopeful thoughts on the spirit of Easter, through a short talk re-routed to Hollywood from his company's home base in Chicago. Starting at the 25:49 mark in the closing moments of this Easter broadcast, Mr. Kraft delivered the following three-minute address, which I've transcribed below for the sake of those who may not be able to listen to the actual episode.
I find J.L. Kraft's epilogue invigorating to listen to today, and as comforting to those of us challenged in our time to keep faith in a positive future, as it must have been to those back in 1943:

“I’m glad of this opportunity to bring Easter Greetings to Kraft men and women everywhere, and to the families of our boys and girls who are now in the service of their country.

When we think of Easter we naturally think of the Resurrection; the two words are eternally linked together. In every Christian land today, the celebration of Easter will bring its age-old message of hope to a war-darkened world. The fact of the Resurrection and the faith which it symbolizes, have never been so significant to so many nations and to so many peoples in the world’s history.

In itself, the word ‘resurrection’ is one of the most beautiful in our language. It means bringing back to life, the conquest of death, the return of hope.

At this springtime of the year, all nature tells the story of resurrection. We read its meaning in the budding trees, and in the miracle of nature’s re-awakening to vibrant life.

There is still another significance to the word ‘resurrection’: to bring back to memory that which was forgotten or lost. And it is upon this meaning of resurrection that I have been reflecting on this Easter Sunday. While our boys are away fighting for freedom around the world, enduring hardships, loneliness, weariness, we on the home front have a high responsibility toward them. While they are absent, our virtues grow in their minds and our shortcomings are forgotten.

Let us so live our lives that their ideals shall not be shattered when they return. Let us make them as proud of us as we are proud of them.

And so it seems particularly fitting to me that each of us at Easter time should resurrect our faith in God, and in the ideals of our forefathers. That faith and those ideals upon which this nation was founded, and by which it grew strong and great.

As youngsters our mothers taught us to say, when we pray, ‘now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee Lord my soul to keep’. I have just had a letter from one of our own boys in North Africa, in which he says that eight men of his group kneel at their bunks every night and speak this prayer as they go to sleep. It means something to them, it meant something to us as children.

Let us then, as we think of these simple prayers, resurrect the trusting faith of our childhood, and approach God understandably. Let us resurrect and renew our strength in the God-given pioneer virtues.

Let us, at home in our daily lives, have the courage, the strength and the fortitude of those who fight for freedom; that we and our children, and they and their children, may live in peace. They are counting on us, depending on us, to maintain their ideals of home and family, until they join us again.

And in this we cannot fail them.

The times change, but the message remains the same, doesn't it: to love each other as we can, so that even in the aftermath of painful loss the darkness of personal despair may be gently dispelled by the light of another's love, sparking a renewal of individual faith, leading to a general return of hope.



Previous Radio Memories posts:
Dimension X: Time And Time Again
An American In England: Women Of Britain
Cavalcade Of America: Bob Hope Reports
The March Of Time: Feb 10 1938 broadcast
Hear It Now: Coming Home From The Korean War
Escape: Vanishing Lady
Rogers Of The Gazette: Rewinding The Town Clock

Keeping Faith In Music

With many schools eliminating the funding for all their art programs, especially music, this latest study linking reading skills to musical literacy may strike just the right note for keeping faith in the value of music to the life of a child:

Children tutored in music involving progressively complex rhythmic, tonal and practical skills display superior reading skills than their peers, according to a new study.
...
[Joseph M. Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University] investigated the hypothesis that children (in two elementary schools) who have received keyboard instruction as part of a music curriculum that becomes progressively difficult over the years, would demonstrate significantly better performance on vocabulary and verbal sequencing than students who did not receive keyboard instruction.
Several studies have reported positive associations between music education and increased abilities in non-musical (linguistic, mathematical, and spatial) domains in children.
The authors said there are similarities in the way individuals interpret music and language and “because neural response to music is a widely distributed system within the brain…. It would not be unreasonable to expect that some processing networks for music and language behaviours, namely reading, located in both hemispheres of the brain would overlap.”
Using a quasi-experimental design, the investigators selected second-grade children from two school sites located in the same geographic vicinity and with similar demographic characteristics, to ensure the two groups of children were as similar as possible apart from their music experience.
Children in the intervention school studied piano formally for a period of three consecutive years as part of a comprehensive instructional intervention program.
Children attending control school received no formal musical training on any musical instrument and had never taken music lessons as part of their general school curriculum or in private study.
Both schools followed comprehensive balanced literacy programmes that integrate skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening.
All participants were individually tested to assess their reading skills at the start and close of a standard 10-month school year using the Structure of Intellect (SOI) measure, said a Long Island University release.
Results analysed at the end of the year showed that the music-learning group had significantly better vocabulary and verbal sequencing scores than did the non-music-learning control group.

There comes an age when children listen to their childish efforts at music and suddenly hear it all with new ears, causing many of them to declare, "Hey, I'm not really a good musician"; this fresh insight leads them to abandon their flutes and pianos for other things, as it might with their singing, with their painting, with their writing... with most of their acts of creation.

It seems a rite of passage into adulthood, to assess one's abilities as "amateurish", and therefore so second-rate that their very existence is a threat against our adult pose as "professional" experts at living. Who will take us seriously, if they hear our amateurish attempts at music, if they see our amateurish approach to creativity itself?

Once upon a time, the word "amateur" was not the sour note it tends to be thought of today. In its original, literal definition, to be an "amateur" means simply to be "a lover of something"... in French, it still retains this old-fashioned sense of the term, as we would say that I'm an "amateur de baseball", a lover of baseball. My skill has no relation to my passion.

I think one of the reasons that adolescents tend to be so cynical, so nihilistic in their point of view, is that there is not enough effort placed on convincing them to stay in love with life. They've left so much behind, all they can see is the hole that such abandonment brings; no wonder they wear black, I'd be in mourning too if I felt I had left so much of my previous life behind me.

The amateur's passion they once may have felt when devoting themselves for hours to their various acts of creation, especially playing music, is a romance worth remembering, and renewing. The courage needed to create new things comes partially from the childlike faith that our personal accomplishments can actually make a genuine difference in the world around us. As adults, our supposedly heightened powers of observation often end up obscuring that which is most important to perceive: it pays to have faith, to stretch our perspective so that it sees the single note of the present in the context of an overall melody of moments, especially those to come. That which we are today, is not necessarily all that we ever will be: we are creations forever in the process of becoming.

It's a lesson renewed by the experience of parenthood, probably the ultimate example of amateurism. That first time where a parent cradles their new-born baby, and takes inventory of their creation: what is there to see, except the fog of a far-off future? The little, tiny hands, inexpert at the simplest of tasks. The closed eyes, not yet able to register much of anything in their orbit. The probing mind, not yet aware of even what questions there are to ask about the world it's entered into. And yet from parental love springs the faith to perceive the hoped-for symphony, that the hand, the eyes and the mind that orchestrates this harmonious duet will someday truly make a difference.

It takes a lifetime to practice this art, so why not start as early and as often as possible, especially by keeping faith in the blessing that making music may bring to the life of a child.

Meeting Strangers

"You wonder if you can ever make a difference", she said after a pause, a distant look in her eyes. "You do it week after week, and you wonder if you should stop. What good does it do. Well: one day, a young lady came over to us, and I braced for the usual sharp criticisms. The woman started to talk to me. She said that that five years ago, she was going to enter the very building we were praying in front of; when she got there, she saw us. She read our signs, thought one last time, hesitated, then turned around and went home. 'I couldn't go through with the abortion', she said. 'Now I'd like you to meet my five-year old daughter', and that's when I noticed the shy little girl standing there, holding her hand.

"So you just never know."

She was a stranger to me the morning I met her, but overcoming the usual shyness I have with strangers, we got to talking, and at a later meeting one of my questions led to the above story as a response. I can recount the story with words, but I can't find the means to duplicate the look in her eyes as she told it to me. It was unforgettable, to see her eyes seeing an act of faith fulfilled. But then, the look is not so rare, is it... We see it renewed every time a mother holds their new-born child, a blessed gift of hopes and dreams, given human shape. A stranger, but only for a moment; a stranger, but there will be a lifetime to meet the person that the child is in the constant process of becoming.

It pays to meet strangers... you never can know which of them can teach you about life's most important lessons, about choosing to act on faith, and to live in hope for a better future.

This week, and today especially, is a good time to reflect on that truth...



[thanks to Suzanne at Big Blue Wave for the video]

A Blur Of Contradictions

Vaucluse, France: It's 8:00 AM and a mother is driving her sick young son to a doctor, when a sudden fainting spell makes her lose control of their car; it leaves the road, hits a guard post, skirts a row of cypress trees before perching itself on an embankment above a thirty-foot drop.

Once the car steadied itself from this unorthodox stop, 9-year old Arthur Pipard springs into action, to save his mother. Despite the shock of the last few moments, young Arthur has the presence of mind to dig through his mom's purse, to make a call on her cel phone, selecting to phone his father, a firefighter whom he knew to be on duty that day. The child then examines his unconscious mother, adjusting her head, which had been stuck between the headrest and the seatbelt as a result of the accident.

His father, no stranger to heroics himself, given his career as a volunteer firefighter for the community of Voconces, as well as a member of the GRIMP mountain rescue unit, remarks with pride on his son's response to the crisis: "Usually, in these types of situations, reactions tend to be more self-oriented. One tries to first protect oneself. Which is normal..."

[Translated from Le Dauphine's reports here and here.]

Studying events like the one above leave us with a blur of contradictions. It's always amazing to me to read of situations like these, where individuals seem to be able to act against all expectations. That it can happen at all ages makes it even more revealing about what it says about potential as human beings... and how foggy might be our appreciation of the fullness of that potential. When it would be normal for people to be hesitate, they act, like 11-year old Dustan; when they should panic, they remain calm, like 9-year old Drew; when every impulse is to flee, they stand their ground, like 8-year old Drayden, even leaping into the fray, like 7-year old Alexis.

Of course, we've all been given an unforgettable example of accomplishing the impossible this week, courtesy of Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III and his staggeringly succesful piloting of US Airways Flight 1549 to safety in the Hudson River. He should have lost hope, he should have been numb from despair, his fear should have crashed that plane.

On the outside looking in, we might presume that there simply wasn't any fear to overcome; maybe that's how these heroic children, as well as the Captain, were able to think, and act, as they did. But that's not seeing the big picture:

In recent years, neuroscientists have been able to see what happens inside the brain when people, like Sullenberger, are forced to make decisions under pressure. Though the typical assumption is that some people don't feel fear -- that they are somehow less scared than the rest of us -- that assumption turns out to be false. The fear circuits in the brain, such as the amygdala, generate their response automatically; it's almost certain that everyone on board Flight 1549 was terrified.

What, then, allows people like Sullenberger to make effective decisions in harrowing circumstances? How do they keep their fear from turning into panic? Scientists have found that the crucial variable is the ability to balance visceral emotions against a more rational and deliberate thought process, which is centered in the prefrontal cortex. This balancing act is known as metacognition -- a sort of thinking about thinking.

Pilots have a different name for this skill: They call it "deliberate calm," because staying calm under fraught circumstances requires both conscious effort and regular practice.

This is where flight simulators enter the picture. The advantage of these realistic simulators, which have been in widespread use since the early 1980s, is that they allow pilots to practice extreme flight scenarios, such as a total loss of engine power over water. The training provides pilots with important technical skills -- they can practice flying crippled planes -- but it also teaches them something more important: how to draw on an optimal blend of reason and emotion.

I’d like to think that, for those of us without access to such high-tech gadgetry, who might be interested in learning the same self-discipline for own times of personal crisis, there's another simulation more readily available, one that aims to provide the same balanced resolution: humble prayer.

Prayer is a study in contradictions: in our stillness there is a flurry of activity. By temporarily shutting out the world we try open ourselves up to its possibilities; by closing our eyes we strive to imagine, with as much clarity as we can summon, everything from our most dreaded fear to our most cherished wish. In doing so we think about how to think about them... how to possibly survive the arrival of the former, how to probably bring about the arrival of the latter. We pause our life in order to review whether we're heading in the right direction, usually recognizing a need to take a step back so that we can resume our way forward. We measure our past actions, stretching them out into the fog of an unlived future, to dare to see how they may weigh in a more long-term balance.

Whether it's seeing children behaving with the utmost calm when our natural expectations of childhood tells us that there should be little such reserves to draw strength from... or busy people dropping everything in order to be of maximum service to total strangers, when “everybody knows” that city people aren’t friendly to strangers… we have many examples of incongruities and impossibilities to help penetrate the fog to let us see the unimaginable: an emotional light to find hope in a darkness where reason tells us there should be no hope, an emotional faith in solutions when reason denies us the likelihood of success… a simulation of the miracle of balancing contradictions.

Reborn Babies: Filling A Hole With A Bigger Hole

This can't be a healthy trend in toymaking...:

They’re called “reborns”: incredibly lifelike baby dolls that sell for up to $4,000 to adult women who collect them, change their clothes, and in some ways treat them like real babies.
...
The vinyl dolls don’t just look exactly like real babies — they also feel real. Their bodies are stuffed and weighted to have the same heft and a similar feel to a live baby.
...
Dolls may be one of a kind, or one of a limited series made from the same mold. Some customers order special dolls that are exact replicas of their own children who died at birth or in infancy.
...
The customers are almost all women. Some buy them because they collect dolls. Others buy them as surrogates for children that were lost or have grown and left the home. Some women dress the dolls, wash their hair, take them for walks in strollers and take them shopping.

One woman in the BBC documentary, married and in her 40s, said she wanted a real baby, but was too busy to commit to caring for a real one. A reborn doll satisfies her maternal instincts, she said, without all the carrying on and mess.

Reborns, she said, “never grow out of their clothes, never soil them. It's just fabulous. The only difference, of course, is these guys don't move.”

"A reborn doll satisfies her maternal instincts..." And here I thought the main purpose of parenthood in general, and motherhood in particular, was giving, not getting. From personal experience I can certainly sympathize with the customers who are buying these toys because of the traumatic loss of their own baby, but I'm sorry, I just cannot see how living with such an illusion is helpful. If you really feel like "mothering" something, get a REAL thing to mother, so that you can make a difference. Adopt! Get a pet! If you fear long-term commitment, adopt an old pet. Help a neighbor by babysitting more often, become a Big Sister... good grief, there are no end of practical substitutes, that allow others to benefit from these unfulfilled maternal instincts.

Officially, the definition of maturity, "having completed natural growth and development", "having attained a final or desired state", implies that we've stopped changing... but doesn't maturity really mean that we're finally ready to be changed..? We usually give children toys to play with so that they can practice growing up; to prepare for the changes to come. What greater change to we have to make ourselves go through, than to be prepared for the long, unpredictable struggle undertaken in order to raise a good child? What challenge needs more faith, the faith that one can learn from mistakes made along the way, than that of being a good enough parent?

Here, "mature" adults, by avoiding the struggle, and the "messy" mistakes that go with it, are using their new toys as a selfish excuse to avoid adulthood itself. What a lack of faith...

[Thanks to Jeff at The Curt Jester]

The Power Of Prayer

A little time-out for an expression of deep appreciation.

After a depressing year of setbacks and struggles, leading to a rather melancholy Christmas, my wife and I find ourselves in amazingly better spirits this week, thanks to a Heaven-sent series of sudden circumstances that have made many hoped-for dreams come true.

It took a lot of work, and I fell short of the goal a few times along the way, but we did our best to remain cheerful despite the torrent of bad news that hit us personally in 2008, and that struggle sure paid off. Which is why I wanted to write this post. I firmly believe in the power of positive thinking, and that this ongoing effort to renew our positive attitude, coupled with persistent prayer, brought a trio of timely blessings to our lives over the past few days, more wonderful than I ever would have dared to ask for.

As it always seems to happen with miracles, they all fell into place at the absolute last minute, renewing light after a despairing period of prolongued darkness.

So (keeping a long story short…), despite the negative signs that filled each day all the way to Christmas Eve, I won’t be losing my job this spring after all, thanks to an incredibly fortunate turn of events, which means we don’t have to move away as we dreaded we might; the personal health problem that worried me so much this past year was able to be addressed successfully, so far anyway (that’s an even longer story); and, last but not least, we were able to find a new dog to replace our old buddy who passed away late last year... and the stream of coincidences that led us, step by step, to finding such a perfectly suitable replacement still leave me awestruck by it all. Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

As the old saying goes, to become happy you should first act happy. To which I've learned to add: to act happy you have to first believe that you should be happy.

Seeing the forebearance of others carrying much bigger crosses than my own made it just a little more possible to imagine a time beyond our present problems, seeing their determination to remain cheerful despite their situation made it that much more probable to resolve to stay cheerful myself, seeing their faith in action made it just that much easier to keep my own.

And now my perseverance has been rewarded, in all respects, even fulfilled beyond my expectations, for which I humbly Thank God for these blessings that He has seen fit to have come my way.

Thanks to the power of prayer, for us, in our little world, it seems to have become a truly Happy New Year.

Youssif's Christmas Cheer: The Best Medicine

When he was four years old, Youssif was doused with gasoline and set on fire by jihadi savages in Iraq. As we blogged last July, Youssif and his family have since been brought to the United States, where generous donations of time and money have given the little boy an increasingly promising second chance at happiness. Multiple operations are saving his badly burned face, slowly but surely bringing back to the surface the child, and the childhood, that had been so terribly scarred, seemingly beyond hope.

His mother, Zaineb, stands at the back, ...tears rolling down her face. "I am so proud of him," she says. "It reminds me of what he was like in Iraq when he used to sing in kindergarten. I felt for a moment that none of this had happened. My son was back, without fear, strong."
...
Today Youssif plays freely, without fear. "Let's race" he shouts to his friend Brandon as the two boys dash across the schoolyard. A couple of minutes later the two are playfully jostling over a rubber ball. Youssif shrieks and bursts into laughter as the two play catch.
"It's like this weight has been lifted off of me, off of him," his father, Wissam, says. "It's like we've left this dark, depressing state where we were consumed by Youssif and the attack that had happened. You know, it's so hard to see a child, my child, go through something like this. When I see him like this, I feel like he's coming back."
...
Youssif has undergone more than a dozen surgeries. Much of the thick scar tissue around his eyes, mouth and nose -- left by his treatment in Baghdad -- has been removed. He currently has yet another tissue expander in his left cheek, intended to stretch out "good skin" to be used to replace his scar tissue.
...
He's thriving at school, loving the first grade. "He's amazing," his teacher Mario Daley says. "I work with children of all levels of ability, and Youssif, with what he's gone through, his motivation, what he produces is fantastic. He just tries so hard."
…
Before the attack, Zaineb says, Youssif wanted to be a doctor. Now he says "I want to be a doctor to help burned Iraqi children."

Very moving video accompanying the story, here.

Seeing Youssif at school, at home, at play, the normalcy of it all, reaffirms the miraculous power that comes in the wake of a positive attitude. A realist may dispute the technical accuracy of the old saying that applauds Laughter as the Best Medicine; for a romantic like myself, Youssif’s playful giggles and guffaws renew my faith in that lesson, along with one more: that hope is the best trigger for laughter.

The Migration of Joy

It’s been hard for my wife and myself to keep the joyful spirit of Christmas this year; seeing my friend’s family soldier on through his onerous cancer treatment, my wife keeping a watchful eye on her far-away friend as he deals with his wife’s worrisome health decline, the despair of my retired colleague slowly losing his eyesight, the haunting memory of my co-worker who committed suicide, another co-worker fearing her father’s stay in the hospital this month will likely be his Final Visit, our grief in recently losing our old dog to old age… all this avalanche of bad news has made it a struggle to keep finding reasons to be happy, and I find myself challenged indeed to feel “merry” this Christmas.

Christmas time seemed so much simpler, when I was a child. The anticipation triggered by waking up to the first snowfall of the season, the thrill of shopping for The Right Gift for my parents and each new sibling as they were introduced to their first Christmas with our growing family, and especially the delight of waking up to a sea of presents under the tree on Christmas morning. Those were the days…

The childhood innocence that accompanied the narrow joys of Christmas Past must today co-exist with the adult awareness of the bigger picture within which these tableaux take place, in Christmas Present. It seems such a petty thing to shed a tear over, what with each day’s new horrors to contend with, but the passing of our dog has really hit me hard, and I miss my little buddy terribly.

How to live in hope for good times ahead, when the world gives us every reason to abandon such ideals, when each day seems to take away far more joy than it provides? The Christmas season carries the whispered answer, half-hidden but nevertheless visible, if we but have the insight to perceive it: the lesson that joy is a gift that we can give to ourselves, anew. As every thing changes, some things must never change, they must be re-embraced, they must be re-created, so that there may be a re-joicing… the experiencing of a renewed joy.

We change as we live, as our lives change us; we gain and we lose, often both at the same time, in a way that the child with his nose pressed against the frosty window, gazing expectedly at the freshly-set white blanket of snow in his front yard, could never have foreseen, or understood.
The objects, the places, even the people, that bring us joy are ever-changing as well... not always changing for the better. And maybe this is the hardest lesson to learn of all; that it is not the material present that brought us joy, but the spiritual love that inspired the initiative to give the gift in the first place. The source of that love is as ever-changing as life itself, as new friendships are made, new families are formed... new pets are found to replace the old.

In the blizzard of life’s constant change it’s hard to see the snowflake that remains unchanged: the lifelong ability to migrate from a focus on the decay of the physical, towards that which can’t truly be seen or touched, only felt; as real as a promise is real, actual in the way an imagined hope may be actual. It’s hard to act on the faith that, despite everything we learn about life as we live it, life includes the possibility for rejoicing. Renewed joy is out there, somewhere, waiting for us to move on, and find it again. Like a fresh snow blanketing the neighborhood, each one is different, however much they are similar to the ones that came before. Each one is special, however much it stirs memories of the past. Like snowflakes: countless in the ways in which they are unique.

Pressing my nose against the window and seeing the first snowfall this weekend, this older child now with white in his hair as well as his front yard looked into his past to see his future, and hopes that by this post he will commit to keep working on that act of faith required to rejoice in time for Christmas.

Taking A Second Look At Self-Esteem

Seeing is believing, as the old saying goes. We believe what we think we are seeing. As we age our observation skills may grow alongside our other abilities, and with that growth comes the likelihood that increased perception, especially our self-perception, will demand a change of our beliefs.

How do we handle this sudden recognition, how does our self-esteem negotiate the obvious need for self-criticism, this self-adjustment to new revelations?

How terrifying is the question, "what if I've been wrong..?"

As I approached my fortieth birthday a few years ago, I started realizing how much there was to look back on; one fascinating perspective was to see how many times I had been wrong in my life up to that date, wrong about deeply-held beliefs that had once been vitally important to me. So many times, the awareness that I had been mistaken about something came long before the acceptance of it; I could see it, but didn't want to believe it. This delayed acknowledgment seemed to come from the can't-live-with-it, can't-live-without-it baggage we human beings lug around within ourselves, called "self-esteem".

Self-esteem, like so much else about life, seems at best a mixed blessing; without self-esteem, how would we care enough about ourselves to improve ourselves? Yet with self-esteem, how do we dare change ourselves for the better, since the revelation that we even had room for improvement, the honest assessment of just how much room for improvement there may be, this courts the risk of obliterating our self-regard.

It seems to be a never-ending struggle to maintain a balanced self-esteem, as we individually grope in the dark for a way of understanding the contradictory belief that we're worth improving, no matter how pitifully small we shall forever remain. For myself the balance only came late in life, through my religious faith; it massages the pain that comes with increased observation skills, just as it humbles the pride that can also accompany more thorough self-perception. An article this week in Yahoo Health leaves me hoping that the same happy ending can be found for the next generation, the one currently overflowing with self-esteem:

Today's American high school students are far likelier than those in the 1970s to believe they'll make outstanding spouses, parents and workers, new research shows.

They're also much more likely to claim they are "A" students with high IQs -- even though other research shows that today's students do less homework than their counterparts did in the 1970s. The findings, published in the November issue of Psychological Science, support the idea that the "self-esteem" movement popular among today's parents and teachers may have gone too far, the study's co-author said.

"What this shows is that confidence has crossed over into overconfidence," said Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University.

She believes that decades of relentless, uncritical boosterism by parents and school systems may be producing a generation of kids with expectations that are out of sync with the challenges of the real world.

"High school students' responses have crossed over into a really unrealistic realm, with three-fourths of them expecting performance that's effectively in the top 20 percent," Twenge said. For the study, she and co-researcher W. Keith Campbell, of the University of Georgia, pored over data from the Monitoring the Future study, a large national survey of thousands of U.S. high school students conducted periodically over the past three decades.

The researchers compared the answers kids gave in 1975 and 2006 to 13 questions centered on students' "self-views." These questions solicited students' opinions on such things as how smart they thought they were, or how likely they were to be successful as adults.

"When we look at the responses of the students in the '70s, they are certainly confident that they are going to perform well, but their responses are more modest, a little more realistic" than teens in 2006, Twenge said.

For example, in 1975, less than 37 percent of teens thought they'd be "very good" spouses, compared to more than 56 percent of those surveyed in 2006. Likewise, the number of students who thought they'd become "very good" parents rose from less than 36 percent in 1975 to more than 54 percent in 2006. And almost two-thirds of teens in 2006 thought they'd be exemplary workers, compared to about half of those polled in 1975.

As for self-reported academic achievement, twice as many students in 2006 than in 1976 said they earned an "A" average in high school -- 15.6 percent vs. 7.7 percent, the report found. Compared to their counterparts from the '70s, today's youth also tended to rate themselves as more intelligent and were more likely to say they were "completely satisfied" with themselves. ...

Twenge stressed that youthful confidence isn't necessarily bad. "Young people have always had some degree of starry-eyed optimism, and that's probably a good thing," she said. "And setting goals for yourself is a good thing. It's just when those goals are wildly unrealistic, then that can cause trouble for everyone."

For example, young people entering the workforce may score well in job interviews if they exude self-confidence, she said, but that can quickly sour if a new employer doesn't provide them with the perks or promotions they feel they deserve. "They don't set the right goals for themselves, because they are overconfident -- and that's when it blows up in their face," Twenge said. The blame for all this may lie with well-intentioned adults, she suggested.

"These kids didn't raise themselves, they got these ideas from somewhere," Twenge said. With Mom and Dad handing out endless praise, kids today readily believe they are somehow superior, she said. And teachers aren't blameless, either: According to Twenge, research shows that high school teachers now give out an "A" grade more easily than their counterparts did in the 1970s, even though today's high school students report doing less homework than students from that era.
...

"The Grave Is Not The Goal..."

The US election has been really getting to me lately. I needed some serious cheering up yesterday, and got it at Mass, ironically through a sermon on death.

I find it hard to resist the idea that no matter who wins the election Tuesday, we all lose. So how to remain optimistic about The Day After? Ultimately we have two choices, don't we: to live in hope, or to live in despair. No matter what we do day to day on stage, we all share the same last act: a cold grave. So how to live happily ever after? I see our old, old dog, wracked with age, and I can see what lies in the near future for him, as he approaches his last Christmas with us. It's the same future in store for us all. So why try to accomplish anything, if it all turns to dust?

How to live in hope of a better future, when the present seems so grim?

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if there's one thing I've come to understand on my uphill climb it's that, whether we are happy or sad, whether we are living in hope or in despair, both are ultimately our personal choice. Whether you're picking one or the other, both involve struggle, an exhausting battle with ourselves, within ourselves, to force us to see everything there is to see, leaving nothing out because it might affect the image we expect to find. I work with a colleague who is relentless in seeing the worst in every situation, such is his supreme negativity, and I can see the immense effort this takes, to sustain that kind of overwhelmingly negative and pessimistic point of view. He has to work damn hard to refute my little observations of the good shining all around him. Just as, these days, I have to work equally hard to continue summoning some light at the end of the tunnel.

To move towards the light, to live in hope, to choose to be positive, is not to live a lie, through selective reasoning and clouded judgement. Doubt is necessary to faith, for what else sharpens our wits and exercises the mind sufficiently so that our perception skills are at their peak proficiency for the task at hand: not just to look, but to see, as far as the eye can see... even straining to see a far-off time and place beyond the grave, by placing death in the middle, rather than at the end.

From the pulpit yesterday I was treated to a poem whose stirring message could not have come at a better time for those of us wondering about our tomorrows. What better medicine could there be, what better incentive could there be, to help us dream of a more pleasant Day After Tomorrow..?

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
"Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us further than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act -- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

H. W. Longfellow
A Psalm Of Life

A Role Model For Perseverance

For all of us who struggle to stay motivated, here's a young fellow giving us a timely example of faith and perseverance in the face of adversity:



Pretty transcendent moment at the end, when his friend arrives late and trivializes all the unseen hard work by pointing our hero and saying, "boy you're lucky".

The video cuts out before we get to hear the likely reply: "Hey, the harder I work the luckier I get."