Author: admin

“The days of wine and roses laugh and run away like a child at play
Through the meadow land toward a closing door
A door marked “nevermore” that wasn’t there before”

From the Song “The Days of Wine and Roses” – Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini

When I started with the Commonwealth of Commonsense, I was enthused about writing down the thoughts that were rattling around in my head. I even explained that enthusiasm in my first post. I did have a concern that I might reach a point where writing with frequency would no longer be fun and become a burden. But I thought that I would have something at least every couple of weeks that would be worth saying. But as you can observe the fount of my wisdom has flowed far less frequently as time has gone on. I didn’t really see this coming, but I often just do not feel that I have anything to say.

There are a lot of things that I did not see coming. This growing old thing is different than I thought it would be. I have talked before about how we were taught that we were nothing special. We just needed to keep our heads down, work hard, do the right thing and to not get an inflated ego. And if you ask me today, I will still tell you that I am just an average kind of guy, not too strong, not too smart, not too rich, not too successful. But as life goes on, it is becoming more and more clear to me that I have been deluding myself a little bit. Beneath a couple veneered layers of modesty, I really do think that the problems that others experience won’t affect me. And I am kind of surprised when they do!!

I certainly didn’t see this health stuff coming. Through most of my “days of wine and roses” I pretty much thought I was bullet proof. Oh, I had a couple little blips, knee surgery, gall bladder surgery, you know the kind of stuff that you get taken care of and then move on as if nothing ever happened. They were certainly nothing that ever slowed me down from pursuing absolutely anything that I wanted to do. I never missed work and I was always the one that would be in the harness no matter what.

The health issues that I have now are a different kind of thing. Now I have atrial fibrillation and bradycardia. I have one functioning kidney and am prone to kidney stones. Those are not things where you go in for a same-day surgery, get fixed and then forget about them. These are things that will afflict me for the rest of my life, however long that is. And unlike an arthroscopic knee procedure these things DO curtail what I can do- significantly. Like everyone, I certainly knew on a certain level, that I would grow old and that my capabilities would decrease. But as they say, knowing it in your head and knowing it in your heart are two different things. As I walk thorough the meadow land of old age, I am finding several “doors marked nevermore” now that weren’t there before.

Geez, now I am getting depressed. But wait, some of those doors are actually not all bad. Here is an example. When I was a kid, our family visited my Grandpa’s house on Saturday evening. I don’t mean occasionally; I mean EVERY Saturday night. When Christmas Eve was on Saturday evening it felt strange to be in church instead of at Grandpa’s house. And the routine was kind of the same each week. The Moms were in the kitchen talking about Mom kinds of stuff and the Dads and Grandpa were in the living room talking about “important” things – social, economic, and political realities. Before 8:30 PM the conversation was in English but later in the evening or whenever the discussion veered into areas unsuitable for children, the dialogue transitioned directly into German. These discussions often grew pretty heated, most often pitting my Uncle George against my Dad and my Uncle Louis. My Grandpa was at least to our minds, strangely quiet. He sat off to the side in his favorite rocker taking it all in. If queried, he would respond but he felt no need to assert his point of view and seemed to me to be more intent on listening to what other people said. I have observed this with many elderly people. They no longer feel the need to advocate and they really do not care if people think they should. I count this freedom as a blessing.

I have walked through another door. It is called the door of “being-satisfied-with-what-we-have”. This is NOT the door of wealth or even the door of economic well-being. When we are young, we are driven to acquire. Some are not simply driven by the need to acquire, but instead by the need to acquire MORE AND MORE. This rarely ends well. Others of us reach a point where we realize that we will not want to be on the “milk train” for ever and that there will come a point where we might not actually WANT that next promotion and would prefer to give work a much smaller portion of our life. The best financial thing about retirement is that you no longer have to save for retirement. We are far from wealthy, but we are satisfied with what we have and actually would prefer that we have less “stuff”. I realize that no matter what, we will not be multi-millionaires and I have become simply fine with that.

Here is another “door nevermore” that I am fine with. One day our daughter Libby and I were driving down the street, probably heading for some sports thing somewhere, maybe just on an errand. She was in 4th or 5th grade. In any event Libby had reached the point in her life where she was thinking about important issues. Right out of nowhere she asked me about abortion. I explained to her as best I could what was involved. She asked why there was so much disagreement about it. I said that there were multiple points of view and a lot of things to consider. Libby’s eyes have always mesmerized me from the day they handed her to me in the delivery room. She looked at me with those beguiling eyes and said: “But what do WE BELIEVE Dad?” I felt the weight of the world descending on my shoulders. Libby was certain that I was wise, that I had the CORRECT answer about any question and she was totally ready to accept it. (Thankfully, she has now realized how far from truth that was!!!) I no longer bear that burden. I am totally fine with saying; “That is a very difficult question, and I am not certain that I know the right answer”.

So, I am learning to be satisfied, wandering around the meadow land of aging. There are certainly a lot of things I did not anticipate and do not fully understand. It is a lot different than I thought, but not all bad. So, if you thought there would be more thoughts from the Commonwealth of Common Sense, well so did I. But I am fine being like my Grandpa, listening a lot and occasionally talking.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away

Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more

Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

From the Song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane

My Mother was rarely sentimental as we grew up. With five boys and one girl I suppose there was really no time for it! Her days were filled with the more mundane things – feeding a hungry family of eight, keeping our busy farmhouse clean, working in our monstrous garden, and doing the mountain of laundry that always seemed to be accumulating. Laundry alone consumed one entire workday each week. We were in no way deprived growing up on the farm even though I guess by any American standard we were poor. But because of my Dad’s industrious ways and my Mom’s hard work we really didn’t know it.

So, it is memorable to me that one Christmas carol would bring tears to her eyes each time she heard it – “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sung by Judy Garland. My Mother was especially close to her brother Les – the namesake of MY oldest brother. They were closest in age in her very large family. So, she was filled with such pride and such fear when he marched off with Patton’s army in World War II. He served as a medical corpsman in North Africa and Italy and then waited in England where they served as a decoy to the Germans in preparation for D-Day. He was not part of that invasion but came to the European Theater later with Patton and fought in the Battle of the Bulge and numerous other engagements. As with most veterans from The Greatest Generation he did not talk a lot about his experiences in the war. But he witnessed horrific things. When he enlisted in 1941, he wrote to my Mother that he expected that it would all be over in four or five months. As time went by, he thought it might take a year. He came home in October of 1945 – FOUR YEARS LATER!

I think we really fail to properly understand how things were on the home front in those dark days. For a long time at the beginning of the war, there wasn’t a lot of good news. It was not assumed that the Allies would prevail. And even if we did, every family worried about what THE PERSONAL cost of that victory would be for them. Would their loved ones come home? And we all know that hundreds of thousands of our troops did NOT come home. When Judy Garland recorded this song in 1943, my Mother was not at all certain when or even if she would celebrate Christmas with her brother again. So, she had to cling to the phrase – “through the years we all will be together if the fates allow, until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow”. She “muddled through” and she was blessed, Uncle Les DID come home safely.

So, what is my point? This Christmas will be difficult for most of us, or at least strange and so different from our traditions. Jan and I will not gather with our family as we always do. We won’t be in church on Christmas Eve, substituting a video or a parking lot candle-light service. It makes me sad and a little emotional. But then I think of the profound sadness and worry that my Mother and all those families caught up in the maelstrom of war felt. How did they muddle through? And then I think of the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones to COVID 19, many in our church and among our acquaintances. How will THEY muddle through? I feel pretty silly to be sad at how we are NOT going to celebrate Christmas. Clearly, we WILL muddle through this all somehow. And we will be together again soon. Why am I so sure of that? I think that it has to do with hope. This is after all, the season of hope.

Well, truthfully there are lots of reasons to NOT be hopeful. There has been so much death this year and so many people grieving. The economy is in tatters. There is a reported NEW strain of the virus with unknown potential for hurting us. Climate change is real, and I believe it to be an existential threat. We just went through a bitterly fought election that is STILL not resolved in the minds of many. We are more divided than we have ever been. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is ever widening. Things are kind of a mess. We truly ARE unfit stewards for this world that God has left us in.

But there is the key to our hope. There is a Higher Power. God is still on his throne. We are especially mindful at this time of year that He will spare no cost to take care of us. After all, He sent a part of himself, his only Son on a rescue mission that cost more than we can really even understand. So that is why I believe that things ARE going to be better. We should not despair. Or to quote the other Christmas carol that makes ME a little misty eyed – “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth and good will to men.”

May this find you hopeful, healthy, and happy and may you have a Very Merry Christmas and a Joyous Happy New Year.

You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
You get what you need

From the Song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – Keith Richards and Mick Jagger

You may or may not have noticed that there have been very few pearls of wisdom from the Commonwealth of Common Sense lately. I tried a couple of times during the election season to write, but it just would not come. I suppose it could be that “writer’s block” that I sometimes hear about. But I think there was more. I kept coming back to the word “common” in the name of the blog. I just really started to question if what I thought made sense was in any meaningful way “in common” with other people. Oh, you can always find SOMEBODY who will agree with you, I guess. But I really became convinced that there is a significant part of our population that I really do not understand.

Now, before you go off telling me that I am just another one of those urban, elitist, over-politically-correct, socialistic Biden-supporting snobs let me hasten to add, I am not even trying to say that my understanding, my world view, is the right one. It is true that I voted for Joe Biden for president, but I am totally ready to admit that I don’t have the corner on truth. It just troubled me that I was so out of step with over 70,000,000 of my fellow Americans. That’s right, seventy MILLION people voted for Donald Trump compared to only about five million more who voted for Joe Biden. Maybe that is always the way elections turn out. There is never going to be a winner that is that far ahead of his or her election opponent.

But the numbers sort of intimidated me a little bit. How could what I think be so far away from what so MANY of my friends and neighbors think. It scared me to wonder what I DO have in common with this huge group of people. And the separation is a HARD separation. There seems to be very little inclination from either side to try to find middle ground. That would be compromise, a concept that is reviled by both sides.

As we totter in the no-man’s-land of the period between the election and the inauguration, I was very much ill at ease. I was sure that one or the other would be president. It certainly seemed like Biden was the clear-cut winner based on the election data that I had seen. But the troubling thing was that whatever way it turned out, half of the country would be outraged. Trump supporters would say that the election was stolen from him by corrupt election officials. I will say more on corrupt election officials later. If the Trump campaign convinced several state courts that for whatever reason their results could not be certified and HE prevailed there would be howls of complaint, demonstrations etc. etc. from Biden supporters. I sort of felt that there could be no real winner is this mess.

So, for the first time in a long time I must say that I was NOT optimistic about the future of our country. I felt that we would be headed for something much closer to an autocracy if President Trump were to sit for another four years (or more – he has talked about attempting to extend his stay to a THIRD term). I feared what he would do. But if Biden were elected, I thought that there would be four years of contested actions and gridlock with Republican resistance at every turn, but MORE IMPORTANTLY that seventy million people would have no confidence in their president. Republicans can argue that this is exactly what happened to Trump when he was elected. I think this is a little different in that during the first two years of Trump’s term he had a Republican House and a Republican Senate. Adding it all up I determined to let the “Commonwealth of Common Sense” ride into the sunset, to close the site and cocoon.

And then as if God-sent (maybe it was), I read the recent editorial by D. J. Tice from the Strib. For those of you who haven’t read his work, Tice is a conservative voice in a mostly liberal newspaper. I read his writing faithfully, but I must tell you that while I most often agree with or at least understand what he says, what he writes often irritates me. I guess maybe he is making me think of things in a different way. This time Tice helped me to believe that maybe I am NOT so in-step with some of the 75 million who voted for Biden and maybe NOT so far out-of-step with many of the 70 million who voted for Trump. I won’t replay the whole article but the following excerpts I think are the most important to understanding what just happened in our country.

While the bragging, trash-talking, semiliterate tough guy shtick obviously has an enthusiastic core audience, many other Americans among Trump’s 70 million voters merely put up with his barbarisms, and only with some difficulty.
What they’re enthusiastic about is Trump as a living, snarling repudiation to America’s smug, know-it-all professional, managerial, academic, bureaucratic urban elite — those self-anointed sophisticates who disdain, as much as anything, Trump’s unembarrassed declarations of love for America and respect for everyday, working-class Americans, with their admiration for their nation’s history, ideals and traditional culture.
Many millions, in short, dislike much about Trump, but dislike even more about his enemies.

And then further:

The reality is that this week’s apparent result is exactly the outcome the nation needed — but did not seem likely to get. It’s the kind of moderate, difference-splitting division of power that frustrates radicals of all stripes and demands — egad — compromise for government to get anything done.
Given the proud peacocks who presume to govern us, gridlock is often underrated. Voters last week contrived to at once reject Donald Trump while also humbling and hobbling those delirious with hatred of Trump and drunk with admiration of their own virtue.
America needed to jettison this president — his coarseness, his cruelty, his dishonesty, his addiction to strife. But it needed to do it without endorsing and empowering the leftist fanaticism that threatens to stampede a weary Joe Biden into unaffordable expansions of government largesse and power, and imprudent remodelings of constitutional structures. The results seem likely to both require and reinforce Biden’s moderate impulses.

Before concluding, a word about election fraud – as many of you know I spent more than half of my career working for cities. Cities and townships are the first and I would argue the most important layers in the election process. I will give personal testimony that in all of those years I NEVER EVEN ONCE came across anything that was one iota short of total compliance with the legal requirements of impartiality. I can’t recite all the regulations governing elections in our state – the statutes are hundreds of pages long. But I would talk about just one – the appointment of election judges. Local governments are REQUIRED to have equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans serving as election judges in every precinct. I find that MOST people either don’t know that or more probably haven’t even thought about it. These faithful volunteers are required to have hours and hours of training where the impartiality and accuracy themes are pounded over and over. And they get to watch each other doing their jobs – that is the intent.

The idea that people from this group of civic minded people would conspire, in hundreds of thousands of precincts across the country in some controlled way to throw an election one way or another is unfathomable to me. There has been discussion of the absentee voting process. These votes are counted under the SAME regulations as regular voting. Now, when 150,000,000 votes are cast, there are going to be some weird situations. Handling of these weird situations can certainly be scrutinized. But in the overall scheme of things they are infinitesimal and the likelihood of them deciding an outcome is similarly infinitesimal. Trying to use these extremely rare abnormalities to question the overall validity of an election, implying that the process is fatally flawed to me is inexcusable and attacks the very foundation of our country.

SOOOOOO, the Commonwealth is NOT dissolving. My perspective is corrected. I think Tice is right, the election probably turned out the way that is best for the country. The fractious elements of our elected officials are going to HAVE to find a way to get along and to get things done. As I have said in the past, call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I think they will.

“Blessed are the peacekeepers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

Jesus in Matthew 5:9

A couple of years ago Jan and I took some of the kids on a European vacation. We spent three days in London. Its safe to say that if we were not “Anglophiles” before, we certainly were after our visit. We were fascinated by the history and culture. One of the things that we found most interesting was the police presence. We had one isolated incident where we saw policemen with weapons but nearly everywhere the “bobbies” were unarmed, and I might add disarming. Despite the crush of tourists milling about most were very personable and happy to talk with us. A recent editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune posted by Melvin W. Carter Jr. reminded me about the bobbies. If you haven’t read that piece it really is worth a review. Carter (who is the father of the present Mayor of St. Paul) was a St. Paul cop for twenty-eight years. I thought what he said was so “right-on” it was worth talking about.

Some history on bobbies and British policing – Sir Robert Peel was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as well as its Home Secretary in the early to mid-1800’s. He is regarded as the father of modern British policing, owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service. Tradition says that he was the original author of the “Principles of Policing”. Thus, the Metro policemen came to be called “bobbies” or “peelies”. I have seen several versions of the Principles with some versions listing nine and some up to twelve. But the following is the generally accepted version:

PRINCIPLE 1 “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.”
PRINCIPLE 2 “The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.”
PRINCIPLE 3 “Police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.”
PRINCIPLE 4 “The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.”
PRINCIPLE 5 “Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to the public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.”
PRINCIPLE 6 “Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.”
PRINCIPLE 7 “Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
PRINCIPLE 8 “Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.”
PRINCIPLE 9 “The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”

These principles form the basis of what many now refer to as Community Oriented Policing. I would think that most of us would say a hardy “Amen” to these Principles. At least I certainly would. But I think especially given the disorder of the last months we would also sadly note how far away some police departments are from fully embracing them. Why is that?

My brother is a career cop. I love hearing stories about his work (when he is willing to share them). Sometimes they are hilarious and sometimes so, so sad. I spent more than half of my career working for cities where I had ample opportunities to work with police departments. Heck, the last ten years of my career the Chief of Police even reported to me (at least in principal on the org chart)! A background like that can lead you to think you know more about policing than you really do. In my more lucid moments, I realize that I am NOT a cop and never have been. This is mostly theoretical for me. It occurred to me that maybe after spewing out my uninformed opinions I should have some REAL cops tell me what they thought of them. So, I called on three cops that I know, love and respect. Here are a few of their points.

• Police work is incredibly difficult. It is burdened with achieving a myriad of different goals all at once. I was reminded that policing is a “Service Industry”. We expect our cops to be friendly and professional in what can be VERY unfriendly and chaotic situations. My brother reminds me that cops deal with people, even the best of us, at our worst moments. But we demand that cops be friendly, kind and professional all day, every day. At the same time there is this “honor” burden that they carry around, or as one chief put it – they must NOT tarnish the badge.
• Police work is dangerous. One of my friends told me that in addition to everything else they had to think about, he charged his people with the responsibility to go home every night to their loved ones – they had to be reminded that they have a responsibility to preserve their own lives. My brother has been injured in altercations with uncooperative citizens. He was at risk many times, probably more times than he would even want his family to know. His story is probably very similar to what every cop has experienced. I can attest to the fact that police work extremely hard to keep themselves AND the citizens that they serve safe – this includes those that they arrest. I have heard them talk about how having adequate force in place when dealing with difficult situations is necessary for everyone’s safety. Unfortunately, adequate force is NOT always in place, in fact adequate force is probably more often lacking than it is in place. Or as one cop put it, community policing is a very fine concept, but it is difficult to remember it when “wrestling a drunk who takes a poke at you” especially when you are all by yourself.
• It is so easy for cops to feel isolated. As I said I believe I have a more-than-average familiarity with what is involved with police work. But many cops feel that NOBODY other than other cops really know what they go through. That is probably because when they are wrestling that drunk and need help, another cop is the only one who is going to help them. And that same abusive drunkard may well accuse the cop of using unnecessary force when it all said and done. And then, amidst all that stress, we demand that cops tell the truth – 100% of the truth.

What can be done to make this difficult task more doable? If Peel’s ideals are to be achieved what needs to happen in our world? Here are a few items, I am sure there are more.
• We cannot underfund this effort. The cries to “defund” the police are so counterproductive. If anything, they need MORE funding. They need to minimize the number of times when cops are exposed to situations without adequate resources.
• We need to make certain that we can attract good qualified candidates for policing. Policing is a service industry that must compete with OTHER service industries for the best and the brightest. Yes, this will cost more money.
• We need to make adequate resources available for training. One of my friends ALSO marvels at the demeanor exhibited by the bobbies. How do they do that? He attributes that to a couple of factors one of which is training. Many departments are including training that recognizes that they will be placed in situations where they will be harassed and under pressure. We must not only equip our cops with adequate physical tools but also with adequate training to successfully use those tools.
• We need to make adequate resources available for recruitment. From my peripheral-police background, I can tell you that finding good candidates is exceedingly difficult. Still that recruitment process must be rigorous and include extensive psychological testing. One of my friends confessed that he was not an early adaptor of the importance of this part of the recruiting process. But he came to see it as indispensable as time went on.

But MORE is needed. A wise man once told me that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. We have tended to address the task of preserving the peace, by adding more and more law enforcement personnel and more and more sophisticated enforcement tools. The amount of military grade equipment utilized in police work these days is alarming to many. What if we really addressed some of the root causes of the disruption of the peace and funded these, ALONG with funding enforcement, to prevent crime and disorder? You know, bring a few more tools to the job. Here are a couple of things to start with:

• Poverty – I have said before that we have far too many people in our society who are so financially down-trodden they feel they have nothing to lose. And they do not see any possible road for them to escape their situation. Minimum wage increases are part of the solution there. But the real key here is education and training. We are wasting the skills and talents of millions of people simply because they cannot acquire the skills that they need to be productive members of our society and to reap the rewards that go with that status. We must adequately fund Pre-K, elementary, secondary AND post-secondary education FOR EVERYONE.
• Housing – While people are on the road to escaping poverty (this doesn’t happen overnight) they need to have a SAFE roof over their head. And yes, I mean this might need to include PROPERLY OPERATED public housing and other publicly funded efforts to assist working-class housing.
• Mental Health – Ask any first line police officer how many of their problems revolve around people with mental health issues. I think they will tell you that this is a SIGNIFICANT problem for them. When did we come to expect that the police department is the best tool to address this societal problem? We have steadily reduced resources for the mentally ill over decades and have main-streamed far too many ill people with little or no resources to help them. Our police departments “inherit” the issues that go with this neglect simply because THERE IS NO ONE ELSE left. After arresting these often-times volatile people, far too often our cops have NO PLACE FOR THEM TO GO, except to jail. How does that help ANYONE?

It is high time that we recognize that our police departments cannot keep the peace by themselves. We need to recognize that keeping the peace is a job that requires MANY types of efforts, ONLY ONE OF WHICH is law enforcement. Despite the scathing criticism that has fallen to some of our police departments, I believe that there is near universal support for keeping the peace. Why not recognize that the strengthening of our social fabric through efforts like those noted above is a part of that job? I do not see how it can work if we don’t. We can’t ever hire enough cops. We must address policing in the context of all our societal needs. As noted above, cops are not mental health professionals. They are not housing experts / housing providers. They are not educators. All these needs must be addressed ALONG with a fully functional, adequately funded and trained police force. THEN maybe we have a chance to reach Bobbie’s principles.

“There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything.”

Steve Jobs

Yesterday, President Trump signed several Executive Orders and issued several Presidential Memoranda. The president’s four actions would extend unemployment benefits, provide a payroll tax holiday, defer student loan payments through 2020 and extend the federal moratorium on evictions. The effect of the payroll tax holiday action was to “defer” certain payroll taxes, if I understand correctly those covered by 26 U.S.C. 3101(a). I don’t mind putting in the qualifier about my understanding because as of this writing there is a lot of head-scratching going on as to if he is empowered to do any of this, whether or not there will be court challenges, how would it all be implemented etc. etc.

When I first heard this I thought: Well if Congress can’t get past their partisan gridlock to do something in these difficult times, maybe the President DOES have to “grab the bull by the horns” as they say. And if as he says that failure by Congress was all related to those intransigent spend-thrift Democrats, a pock on their house. Don’t we all want to hear about taxes being reduced? But I did a little more thinking about it and read some of what the President has pledged if he is re-elected and I am concerned, yes, even alarmed. By the way, I am NOT taking sides on which of our polarized parties in Congress screwed this up. I am sure there is probably plenty of blame to go around on that.

But getting back to the reduced tax part of all this, I started to think back about the times in my checkered past when my part of the payroll process was to be the PAYER not just the RECIEVER. And by the way those were not all pleasant memories. There were many occasions when I was the LAST one paid on pay day and many times when I WASN’T paid on pay day!! That wasn’t all bad in retrospect, it gave me a healthy respect for what employers contend with. For those of you who have NOT had the privilege of being responsible for payroll, or more likely just haven’t thought about it, there are generally four kinds of “payroll taxes” that are paid at least in Minnesota.

• Social Security or I guess more officially, Old Age Survivor and Disability Insurance (OASDI) payable under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). This amount is with some exceptions, 6.2% of gross pay withheld from the employees check and a match paid by the employer of 6.2%.
• Medicare, also payable under FICA, a withholding of 1.45% from employees and a match from the employer of the same amount.
• Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) – This is paid by the employer only and after credits normally available its rate is 0.6%.
• State Unemployment Tax Act (SUTA) – This is paid by the employer only and the rate is determined by the state based on claims history.

Interestingly the Executive Order covers ONLY the OASDI segment. With all the flak flying around these days let me be clear. OASDI contributions by employees and employers ARE THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR SOCIAL SECURITY. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin advises that if these dollars are PERMANENTLY deferred, the President will affect a transfer from the Homeland Security budget to make up the shortfall. I sure would hate to be a payroll officer tomorrow morning because I am not sure what I would do. If they do not withhold and or set aside funds of their own to pay these deferred costs in December, what happens when they come due? Are they going to send a bill to employees for the deferred amounts or make one huge deduction on the first check in January? WOW, that doesn’t seem like it is going to go well. But setting aside the fog about this “deferment” issue, the President’s statements AFTER the signing are much more troubling to me. The President pledged that if he is re-elected, he will make the deferment PERMANENT, as in he will eliminate the funding mechanism for Social Security. Let me say that again, he pledged to eliminate the funding mechanism for Social Security. I think that is about as plain as anyone can make it. If the funding source for a program is eliminated does not that really make it impossible to have the program?

Now, I have a hard time believing that Congress is going to agree to eliminate Social Security, but then again who knows how all of that would play out? I believe that there are some in our great country who really could get by quite nicely without Social Security when they retire. Certainly President Trump could, if we are to believe he is the multi-billionaire that he professes to be. But I believe that the data shows that most retirees depend on Social Security for a significant part of their retirement budget, to say nothing of the disabled and dependent people who are also covered. This just all seems WAY TOO RADICAL to be true. But I have stopped saying that radical things cannot happen in our country. In fact, radicalism seems to be the trend these days. This concerns me greatly. Let us not gloss over the “tax cut – tax deferment” language that is being tossed around here to the point that we forget we are talking about eliminating the bedrock plank of our social safety net for the country.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

President Ronald Reagan

I think I have written on these pages that Janice and I have a bit of a ritual on Independence Day. We usually spend part of the day with some of our children and grandchildren. We have not been to a live fireworks display for several years, opting instead to watch the Capitol Celebration on PBS. One of our other traditions is that we play patriotic music. Janice nearly always plays “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, among others. That song still makes me choke up a little bit. Since I was in college, I have always listened to the Declaration Medley by the Fifth Dimension. That song always puts my patriotism in a slightly more reflective mood. Of course, Greenwood’s chorus is “I’m Proud to be an American”. I know that I am proud, and one tends to think that everybody thinks the way that I do. (Wouldn’t it be irrational of them not to?) Imagine my chagrin when I read a recount of the latest Gallup Poll on this subject. It turns out FEWER of us are proud to be Americans. While most Americans are proud, the percentage has slipped by over twenty-nine percentage points over the last twenty years, most of that coming over the last four years. That is jolting to me. What’s up with that?

When we were in high school, we learned about the principal of Manifest Destiny. This line of thinking which first emerged in the 1800’s related to the country’s western expansion. The thinking was that it was America’s “Destiny” to encompass land from the Atlantic to the Pacific – it was God’s will. We were destined to have this land and resistance to this inexorable force was futile. Historians argue that this theory lead to unintended consequences including the expansion of slavery and the ill-treatment of Native Americans as the new settlers “appropriated” their land. But for me and many others “Manifest Destiny” sort of expanded to this feeling of invincibility and pride in America. America will always prevail. Don’t bet against America. America is the best country in the world and ALWAYS will be. Apparently not everybody is feeling this way so much these days.

I do believe, perhaps irrationally, that America IS the greatest. But I would imagine that I am going to diverge from many when I tell you how I think we got this way and whether we can stay this way. First, I do not think that it was “God’s will”. There are those who believe that because our Founding Fathers were religious men who dedicated this country to God, we will always be God’s chosen land. I mean “In God We Trust” IS on our currency, right? I just don’t think that history if we really study it, bears this out. If anything, it was the opposite – not that our Founding Fathers were antireligious – but that they steadfastly wanted to separate church and state. Many if not most of them had diverging religious views and several were at most agnostic. Remember that many of our first settlers here came to escape religious state persecution. It is also important to remember that many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave owners. The union of the original thirteen colonies under the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution of 1889 was only possible because there was a tacit agreement that the slavery “question” could not be resolved. So, everyone determined to move ahead believing that this would be resolved later. Of course, it was, at the cost of 820,000 American lives in a conflict that was an existential crisis for the country.

I also don’t believe that American’s are inherently “better” people. We are not physically, mentally, or morally superior to Europeans, Africans, or Asians. I believe we have all been created equal under God and that this equality does not stop at our borders. Americans are capable of amazing generosity, bravery and other positive qualities. But so are human beings from every other place on this planet. I’m sorry if that makes me seem Un-American. Like other human beings on the planet we are ALSO capable of great cruelty and selfishness. Actually, it is not reasonable to assume we are inherently different than others populating the earth, because more than most countries, Americans are immigrants (with the obvious exception of the Native Americans.) So, in fact we ARE German, French, Russian, Chinese Japanese, Nigerian, Egyptian, Filipino, etc. etc. I still DO believe that despite our shortcomings our government is LESS corrupt than many if not most of the governments in the world.

So how DID we get here? Perhaps because of the theory of Manifest Destiny but in any event, we found ourselves in the mid 1800’s owning a huge amount of land brimming with forests, minerals and other treasures. It is also not stressed enough that our Midwest contains rich farmland the likes and extent of which is unmatched in the world. No other place even comes close. I would argue that what we did was to take our burgeoning population, many of whom were immigrants, and allow them to diligently work harvesting and mining the vast wealth that we had in the country. This progress would NOT have been possible without the capitalist economy that we had and a government that mostly struck an appropriate balance between laissez faire and reasonable regulation.

Still I would argue that there WAS something different about Americans. Yes, we were just average Joes from other countries of the world. But we were and are a subset of those diverse populations. We were the risk takers – we set out to a largely unknown destination and fate. And we did it with optimism and a commitment to do whatever it took to succeed in this wild new land. I think that was our ace-in-the-hole. I just finished a book about the Manhattan Project – the massive program to invent and perfect the first atomic bomb. The bulk of the key scientists on the project were immigrants – people who fled or were ejected from other countries. The potent mixture of talented, motivated, hard-working risk takers fueled our remarkable ascendancy to preeminence.

But there is one more factor that I believe allowed us to flourish. That is our ability to adapt and change. It was a sometimes-grudging recognition that what may have worked in the past no longer was workable and in fact was an impediment to our continued progress. I mentioned the failure of the Founding Fathers to address the slavery issue at our formation. That failure was actually “functional” for a while. I’m sure that it was a lot more functional for slave owners than it was for slaves, but the country didn’t come apart and actually progressed in many measures – until it didn’t. What was acceptable in 1789 was no longer workable in 1860. So, in a giant cataclysm that was nearly our undoing, we changed that.

After the Civil War, the growing industrial and financial markets of the eastern United States generally prospered. But that prosperity didn’t penetrate to all parts of the economy. This led to the formation of political organizations such as the Grange, the Greenback Party, the National Farmers’ Alliance, and the People’s (Populist) Party. All of these groups advocated many reforms considered radical for the times, including a graduated income tax. After great wailing and gnashing of teeth and predictions of doom, the 16th Amendment was passed authorizing the collection of a federal income tax – unthinkable in the decades preceding it. In these same decades, “The Jungle” was written by Upton Sinclair detailing the sorry conditions prevalent in our meat packing plants and other factories. We reached a time when these conditions were no longer acceptable and despite cries that industry would be decimated, mandates for improved conditions were passed and everyone was better off for it. When Americans found that the dire state in which many senior citizens were forced to live to be unacceptable, despite cries of “Socialism”, Social Security was enacted. Similarly, when Americans found that seniors were unable to afford adequate medical services in their retirement years, again despite heated debate, Medicare was enacted.

So, what is my point? I think America has thrived because we have been willing to adapt to changing times, as necessary. This has nearly always been difficult, but we did it without blasting the country apart. I think that THIS has been what has fueled our continued progress over the decades and centuries. And I think we are perhaps reaching another inflection point. I believe that Americans no longer consider it to be “OK” to stay quiet while racial discrimination proliferates just under the surface of our culture. There are far too many events like the murder of a police suspect in our own state. Income inequality is becoming too wide. I don’t think this is going to go away. And I don’t think it SHOULD go away. Americans are no longer willing to accept the right to the pursuit of happiness in THEORY only. It needs to be real and we need for ALL of us to believe it – to believe that if we work hard, study hard, do the right thing, that we CAN have a good life in this country. All need to believe that this is possible for EVERY American regardless of their race creed or color. And that we will all have EQUAL treatment under the law, regardless of our wealth and position in society. Seems simple but I tell you we are NOT there now. What remains to be seen is if we can facilitate the changes that are necessary now, without blowing the thing up. As countries and civilizations go, we are but a youth. I do not think that it is manifest destiny that there will always be an America, and that we will always be the preeminent power on the planet. We can EASILY screw this up if we don’t make changes as they are necessary. Trying to blindly get back to the “good old days” will not work, just as it did not work in the past.

Can we do it? Call me a cock-eyed optimist but I think we can. I spent several days in the hospital last week. Of all the nurses and nursing assistants that took GREAT care of me, I would estimate that more than 75% of them were immigrants. Isla was the last person to help me. She wheeled me to the car where Janice picked me up. She is originally from Kenya. She told me about her family and how she happened to be here in Minnesota. Isla was telling me what a GREAT country America is and what a GREAT state Minnesota is. SHE is proud to be an American. Oh, that we were all as grateful to be here as she is.

“Never do business with someone who has nothing to lose.”
Wiard B. Ebeling – Country Gentleman, Wise Sage, and My Dad

I am going to tell you from the outset, this is not going to be another “I’m outraged – I’m MORE outraged than the other politicians” thing. I AM outraged at the events that have taken place, but I want to be a little more incisive than just screaming about the injustice, the murder of George Floyd. For several days last week, it just seemed that the looting and arson were going on unabated. People were asking: Why isn’t law enforcement doing something? People were enraged over these behaviors – some it seems, almost as much as the murder. And of course, when something bad happens we immediately need to blame someone. Over the weekend in some of the press conferences there was talk about this failure to keep order as being a “numbers game”. Governor Walz said that we just did not have the number of law enforcement personnel in place to deal with the number of demonstrators that they were confronting. Thus, mutual aid was summoned from other police agencies throughout the state and the National Guard was mobilized.

In watching the coverage of the horrors of the last week I heard several reporters and commentators talk about the “social contract”. I am not sure if the social contract is written anyplace but there is a tacit, maybe even explicit understanding of what it means. I heard Pat Kessler from our local WCCO television station invoke that phrase and I also heard a riveting commentary by Trevor Noah discussing the contract. (Thanks to Jon Hohenstein for pointing me to that.) The reason that we don’t have five thousand police on duty (or however many there were beginning on Saturday) is that we don’t expect this. We RELY on people not looting and not committing arson. How many cops would it take if all three million of us in the metro area decided that we were going to break into Target and every other store? You could not HAVE enough police for that. Most people abide by the contract – and one of those things in the contract is that we don’t go around looting and burning stores. AHA – so those demonstrators – those BLACK demonstrators – are not holding up their end of the contract then. Why is that?

I have often talked about what was expected of us as we grew up. We were never to think more of ourselves than we should. But we were ALWAYS expected to do right. When I was eighteen years old, I was rightfully convicted of unlawful assembly. A group of us assembled unlawfully to tap a beer keg. About twenty-five uninvited police guests came and that sort of ruined the party. Here is my point – when my day in court came, we knew in advance that the fine would be $32. I did not have $32. If the fine were not paid, we would be (at least temporarily) put in jail. This episode broke my mother’s heart, but my Pop was a little more steely about it. We were expected to DO RIGHT, to abide by the contract, and since I had failed, he had no intention of giving me money for that failure. And he did NOT. I walked out of that courtroom (the court of Hanging Hank Fauskee) only because some buddies had more money than their fine and loaned it to me.

But there was the other side to the contract. We were expected to abide by society’s norms but in exchange for that we had unlimited opportunities. I went to college on partial scholarships for my first two years at community college. When I was a junior at the University after my first quarter, a professor stopped me in the hall one day, told me to fill out an application form, and I never paid another penny of tuition to the University again. I qualified for and received National Defense Student Loans in addition and with all those combined with what I earned working part time I had virtually no debt when I graduated. But my privilege went a lot further than that. I grew up in a stable home. There was no domestic violence (other than when we threw the basketball through the window one cold Saturday night). We had plenty to eat. We had adequate clothing and our house was warm. But even more importantly we were privileged to learn how to WORK, how to run a business, how to engage with other people. Does this NOT sound like privilege? Well these things are SOOOOO far away, so absolutely unattainable for so many of our people, particularly so many black and brown people.

My point is, it was and IS easy for me to abide by the contract. Oh, I have had a few ups and downs, but life has been good to me. I have accumulated a LOT to lose. Yes, there are the material blessings – a house, a car, and some savings, but more than that I live in a nice, quiet neighborhood, in the middle of suburban affluence. We have very, very few murders, arson, or other crime. I have a LOT to lose if the societal contract breaks down. And even at that, our material blessings by the standards of MANY in our society are paltry. Think of how much Jeff Bezos “has to lose” or all of the other “Captains of Industry”. Do not misinterpret this – I am in no way condoning the violence and mayhem that I saw last week. But I think the looters and arsonists that I saw were VOIDING the contract because they have NOTHING to lose. And according to my Pop, when people have nothing to lose, they do things that we don’t expect, they do things that don’t seem reasonable to us. Or as Trevor Noah said, while they were gaining nothing from setting a Target on fire, neither were they losing anything. If they get caught it is not like they are going to pay a huge fine draining the thousands of dollars they have saved. For years many of these “have-nots” as they are called, have unilaterally kept the contract. But when they see people who look like them, too many people, murdered or beaten simply because of the color of their skin, they look around and see that they have NOTHING and that they probably never will have much. They believe that their possibilities are systematically minimized. Their pursuit of happiness, promised to them in our constitution, is hamstrung. They conclude that THE OTHER SIDE has broken the contract. They have nothing to lose, and as my Dad said, that is NOT a good place to be.

So, do I have a solution? I have told you before I only write this blog so that I can spout off. I don’t want to do the hard work that is going to be necessary to restore the contract. But MAYBE part of that restoration involves somehow making sure that both parties to the social contract have some skin in the game. How can our minorities feel like they have something to lose? Well for starters, maybe if they had gainful employment that paid a living wage. I am not saying that every minority person is going to be a rocket scientist. But we could at least allow them to have the dignity to receive a wage that can put food on their tables, a wage that does not require them to seek hand-outs to survive. But there needs to be more than just providing a minimum wage to every American. Every American needs to BELIEVE that they have a CHANCE to live the good life, to believe that if they work hard, study hard, do the right things – keep the contract – that they can make it. WAY too many Americans no longer believe this. We have got to find a way to restore that hope and belief, and we need to be systematic about it. Yes, this may involve a government program. And of course, well-intentioned government programs can fail. But we have GOT to try. Our society can not survive unless we as members of the society believe in the contract and abide by the contract. We will never have peace and prosperity as long as we have this significant segment of the population who is opting out.

“Freedom is not only a gift, but a summons to personal responsibility.”
— Pope Benedict XVI

It’s Friday afternoon. I’m usually in very good spirits on Fridays, because as many of you know it’s laundry day. And laundry day is a good thing at Craig’s house. But I’m having a hard time being buoyant today. Maybe part of it relates to the cancellation of the State Fair. That is really a bummer. But there is this other thing that has been percolating in my head that I’m having a little trouble getting past.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how we’re all in this together. I totally believe that is true. And there’s also the sense that we will get through this. I believe that too. But I’m a little discouraged about HOW we will get through this – what the cost will be. Those of you who have read my blog know that my thoughts oftentimes are formed when disparate events come together. Today I went to Home Depot to make a small purchase. This is not something that we do lightly because of the lecture that we received from our cardiologist. We are quite religious about wearing our masks. I also have been instructed to wear gloves which I do. The masks according to our cardiologist are not so much for us but rather for protecting others. It was quite discouraging to me to see that very few of the customers and NONE of the employees were wearing masks or bothering to stay apart.

I was ruminating over this while Janice received a text message from one of her former colleagues. Many of you know that Janice was a registered nurse. You may not be aware that she was something called a critical care registered nurse. I know that because I helped her through hundreds of hours of study and testing that it took for her to achieve that little CC in front of her RN. A Critical Care Registered Nurse is a nurse that is qualified to be in attendance in intensive care rooms. I don’t report this out of pride for my wife (although I am intensely proud of her), but instead to buttress some information presented later that shows that these folks who staff ICU’s are in short supply. This leads me to the text that I am forwarding from a nurse who is NOT an ICU nurse but is being forced into the role without proper training and proper equipment and facilities. I’m not going to name this person because I don’t have their permission. I will tell you that they are a Registered Nurse in one of the Trauma One hospitals in the state. The report is pretty discouraging. I think that we are heading for difficult days ahead and I’m not sure even yet, that we’re prepared.

You all cannot imagine what’s going on right now. The last 2 days have been, by far, the worst I’ve seen in my career. Monday, we tried desperately to keep Covid patients alive all day, only to go back Tuesday and find out several of them coded and died on evening shift. Only one, they were able to bring back. After struggling all day and doing our best, my coworkers still had to run BACK TO BACK codes and lose most of them.

Why? Because despite the reassurance from above, NO, we do not have ICU beds for everyone. And even if we have a couple open ICU beds, there is now no nurses for them, so they are useless. We do not have enough resources. In person, I watched the house supervisor try to pound it through the physicians’ heads, yes there was an open bed, but no one to staff it, they could NOT transfer the patient. That patient is one that later died, NOT in the ICU, but still with us.

ICU admits are reportedly down, here’s the truth why… If a Covid patient is a certain age group and has certain comorbidities, they are being ruled out for ICU potential. We are told they are not to be transferred to the ICU. Numbers are down because they never make it there. The doctors are having “Serious Illness,” conversations with their families, trying to obtain DNR/DNI orders.
I will say, sometimes these decisions ARE in the best interest of the patient, but right now, I’m starting to see this on a large scale and with patients we would not have done it with before. Many of these patients do not want to die. Their families do not want them to die. The MD notes in the chart are literally reading like, “During times of crisis, when resources are strained… This patient likely would not experience a positive outcome…” Basically, if they don’t think the patient would do as well as others, well, the others are more deserving of the few beds we have and this patient is prevented access. Yup, we’re 100% already doing this in Minnesota. Choosing who lives and dies.

So, we are being forced to care for patients who need an ICU level of care, in a lower care environment with lower levels of intervention. BiPap and Hi flow will work for some patients, but often we are desperately trying to maintain patients who are really too critically ill to remain on them, because ICU space is now at a premium. It is NOT WORKING AND PEOPLE ARE DYING.

I don’t know what to do or say anymore… It’s seeing horrible things already happening, feeling helpless to stop them, and knowing so much more is on the way. I’m seeing our government leaders claim “we have prepared,” but going to work and having no support. Nurse/patient ratios are the same, even though patients are 10 times sicker and staying on my unit, when they need ICU. We’re short on staff, because we are also getting sick. I would usually be able to call a flying squad nurse for assistance when I’m getting in over my head, now they’re all being pulled to the ICU to replace staff and there is no back up. We had no aide on one of the hallways, like so often lately, so we do the work of aide, on top of nurse, with those patients. We’re not getting breaks. We’re not drinking fluids adequately, too short on time and afraid to remove our N95s. There’s headaches, dizziness, crying and fatigue. We are under pressure to literally keep those patients alive, because there’s no alternative. And this is the tip of the iceberg…

Please wear your masks and maintain distance if we must open. Follow the rules. I am BEGGING you, please! Please, please have humility and compassion for others, please think about your family, neighbors and their families. Please think about us. Have enough heart to care for people you don’t know.

How widespread is this situation? Is the nurse overstating the situation? I suppose we can’t be sure, but my wife worked in critical care for twenty-five years and SHE believes it. There are issues that are going to come home to roost and be very problematic for us. And why do I believe this? I believe this because I hear this from epidemiologists and doctors. There is a great discounting these days of science and particularly medical science. I trust Dr. Anthony Fauci and I trust Dr. Michael Osterholm. Why? Because they are renowned experts and they know a lot more than I do! And by the way they know a lot more than anyone else who is not an epidemiologist. And that includes our president. When I wear my mask, it is because I want to protect others. I don’t think I have COVID-19, but I don’t know for sure. And to reduce risk for anybody that I’m close to I’m going to wear a mask When I see my fellow citizens going about their business AS USUAL I have to conclude that they are not ready to reciprocate that concern. They really do not care about me. Oh, I hear comments from the people who are protesting the partial closures that they will die when it is their time. Even if I accept that they really mean that, we all know that’s not the way it’s going to go when these people contract COVID -19. They’re going to go to the hospital. And they’re going to take up one of those hospital beds and perhaps an ICU unit. And this is an ICU unit that could be used by someone who has done everything they can to avoid COVID-19 and who DOESN’T think it’s their time to die.

My point is let’s not be cavalier about the situation we’re in. What is the downside to wearing a mask or staying six feet apart?! I think that there is a lot of evidence that shows that it lessens the probability of those around you getting COVID-19. Isn’t that something that we should do as Americans? We should worry about fellow Americans! Will we get through this? Of course we will. But what will be the cost for our cavalier attitude and for our casual disregard of science? It seems to be fashionable these days to disrespect everything we have gained through the advances of science because we want to be independent or because the economy is suffering. I realize the economy is suffering. I have a daughter that has been laid off since the beginning of this mess. She is financially hurting! She would dearly love to get back to work. Do I want that? Of course I do. Am I willing to sacrifice my life and her life to achieve it? NO. Let’s keep our eye on the ball. Wearing a mask is an exceedingly small price to pay for me as a citizen. Maintaining social distance is an exceedingly small price to pay. And following rules is an exceedingly small price to pay.

Phew, I feel so much better now. Put on your mask! Maintain social distancing!! Wash your hands!!

“So, on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out. So much left to know, and I’m on the road to find out.”

Cat Stevens from the Song “On the Road to Find Out”

“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”

Isaac Newton

“That’s all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That’s all your house is- a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.”

George Carlin

I hope this posting finds everyone well. These are very strange times. When I sit in my quiet time in the morning, I often find that I feel sort of “empty”, as in I really don’t know what to make of all of it. So, this might give you a sense of how much value there will be in this writing. I read the other day that bloggers “fail” because they don’t give anything of value to their readers. They went on to say that just spouting your opinion is not of value to your readers. But………… that was my whole goal with the blog – I WANT to spout off! Now in my own defense as I study the things I am spouting about I often learn things that I share with you that MIGHT be of value.

Isn’t it kind of strange how one event can start a chain of events that have an unexpected outcome? This happened to me this week. I heard from an old college friend and roommate. He had been doing some house-organizing and came across a couple of pictures of a camping trip to Rocky Mountain National Park long ago. Funny, I have been on that same mission lately – organizing, simplifying and discarding. I am really bummed that Goodwill and other “stuff-recycling” centers are not taking donations now. There is going to be a hell of a load waiting for them when they finally open again. What is it in these days that causes me and others to want to go simplify and downsize? Maybe its just that we are colossally bored and this is something to do. Or maybe there is this need in old age to “prepare” and to not leave a mess for our kids to go through. I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal whose title as I recall was “Your Kids Don’t Want Your Stuff”. Or at least if that wasn’t the title it should have been, because that was the gist of the article.

Anyway, searching through my memory about that trip it brought to mind that period in my life. I am sure that we all do this to some degree, we associate times in our life with certain music. So, this all brought Cat Stevens to mind (or Yusef Islam as he is now known). One of the neat things about today’s technology is that it provides ready access to old stuff. So, I went on my Amazon music and sought out Cat Stevens. Wow, I forgot how much I enjoyed his music and what he had to say. He was certainly wise beyond his years – artists are kind of that way aren’t they? And I came across the lyrics written above from one of his lesser known songs that is one of my favorites. Because even at my advanced age there is still so much left for me to know and I am on the road to learn it.

Simplification is one of the things that I am still learning about. Our understanding of life’s meaning changes as we go through the various phases of life. When we leave our parents’ homes we feel the need to acquire things of our own – we can no longer use the things that are owned by our parents. So, we need cars, we need furniture and appliances, we need clothes, we need kitchen equipment, we need laundry equipment, we need sports and fitness equipment, we need yard equipment, we need a boat and a motorcycle and we need a house or maybe two houses and garages and storage places to put our stuff in. As George Carlin says, our house is just our stuff with a roof on it. We find a place near people just like us who are also accumulating stuff and living a certain lifestyle – this involves travel and recreation and kids. And we all know how much stuff KIDS require us to have!!!! But as we go along the road that Cat is talking about and we start to contemplate the end of the road, it becomes clear that we really don’t need all of that stuff and actually it is kind of a burden. We feel the need to divest ourselves of it. Sadly, unlike our generation, as noted above our children want no part of our stuff – its dated, its old, its out of style and if they really need stuff of this nature, they will acquire their OWN stuff – and that will be the stuff exactly as they want it. So, we try to bring our stuff to agencies who hopefully can get our stuff to people who are not so blessed, who actually can put our old stuff to some use. But sometimes our stuff really has no value to ANYONE and it is just a burden that can only be discharged – to the landfill. It probably says something about me, but I find that a lot of my stuff already has been or is in the process of being destined for THAT ultimate resting place.

But getting back to simplification – I want to leave you something of value in this blog; this is how I have been told to increase my readership. So, here are some helpful hints at decluttering:

• Wait for your significant other to be indisposed – they could be napping, out of the house on errands or just otherwise away. Go to one of those out-of-the-way places where stuff is and throw that stuff in a bag. Ideally you would get the stuff to Goodwill before they awake or come home, but if not, you could place the stuff out of view and dispose of it later. IF and WHEN they ever notice that the stuff is gone, you just feign ignorance.
• More difficult – your own stuff – I wait until laundry day. Many of you know that I do our laundry and that it involves a beer refrigerator in our laundry room. The laundry room is adjacent to TWO of our storage rooms where there is a lot of stuff. I sort the laundry and load the first load. I administer one Miller High Life. I sit down and reflect. I administer a second Miller High Life. I move the first load from the washer to the drier and administer a third Miller High Life. I load the second load into the washer and open the door to the storage room. At this point I am much less attached to all the stuff and I tear into it putting the stuff into bags destined for Goodwill or the landfill. I move the stuff into the garage hoping that this discourages me from bringing it back in. This usually works because to bring stuff back in would look really stupid.
• Go into the storage rooms and using an agreed-upon-in-advance marking system, designate stuff for disposal using We Got Junk or Junk Kings. Schedule the removal for a time when you and your significant other are going to be gone. When you get home, pretend that it was a break-in, fake outrage, and volunteer to handle all the reporting to the police.
• Make sure that the stuff that needs to be “addressed” is stored in the lowest level in your house, ideally close to the water heater. Open the drain port at the bottom of the water heater making certain that water damages the stuff that must go. When the “damage” is discovered, fake outrage and disappointment and volunteer to take care of the insurance claim. Take the stuff to the landfill. Later report that your policy does not cover such an event.

Now I realize that these helpful hints involve deception and half-truths – OK lying. This may lead to a future discussion on the age-old question: Do the ends ever justify the means? Still, I am hoping that you will find these practical, real-world solutions are of value and that you will continue to read my rantings.

“Remember us – if at all – not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men, the stuffed men.”
“This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.”

T. S. Eliot” – From the Poem “The Hollow Men”

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.”

Alexander Hamilton

My Big Brother Les and his wife often meet with Jan and me in Mankato for dinner to catch up on things. We planned to meet this week. Of course, that didn’t work out. We decided we should wait for a few weeks until things “settle down”. Things really AREN’T very “settled” right now are they? When I left for my run the other morning, I was struck by how quiet it was – after a minute or two it occurred to me that there wasn’t the customary freeway noise that I am accustomed to hearing. There just weren’t as many cars on the freeway. On Sunday, our church did not meet, opting instead for an “on-line” service (which incidentally we watched and it was good). We went to Panera Monday morning and noted that every-other table had a sign on it that prohibited anyone from sitting there – social distancing. Now the governor has ordered restaurants CLOSED. The school busses are notably NOT rumbling up and down the streets. The news channels are caught up in non-stop coverage of the tsunami of sickness that is overtaking us. Nancy Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin just agreed on a piece of legislation for crying out loud. What is the world coming to? So many unknowns – I must confess that I am a little frightened at what lies ahead.

Clearly this “tsunami” that we are contending with is uncharted waters for us. What do we do? The above quote from T. S. Eliot is probably his most quoted line. It conjures up visions of man’s impotence, his own self-destructiveness, his helplessness. I hear it a lot when people consider nuclear war. We may be so foolish with our exercise of power that we destroy our civilization and everyone in it. After the roar of the bomb, civilization will whimper its way to extinction.

I am a lot more familiar with that quote than I am with the poem from which it comes. That poem is entitled “The Hollow Men”. I have read it several times but its meaning was always obscure to me. (Engineers just can’t grasp the beauty of poetry. Where are the dang formulas?) The commentaries I have read suggest various interpretations of Eliot’s cryptic language. But there is some agreement at least that the poem reflects Eliot’s state of mind immediately after World War I. Interestingly the poem’s most quoted lines were written long before nuclear bombs were ever envisioned.

But as I think about the ominous last lines of the poem, I choose to take hope from it. Say what??!?!? As I read the entire poem over again MY interpretation is that Eliot is lamenting the INACTIONS of man in the face of challenges. If we don’t fight against the torrents of adversity, we are nothing more than “Hollow Men” (actually scarecrows in the poem). There is a lot of language in the poem about death and how we address it and how those who have already “crossed over” will view us. Those who have crossed over will “remember us – if at all – not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men, the stuffed men” if we fail to struggle against adversity. But if all we do is to fight with the other customers at Costco and then cower and hide away in our bunkers with our eight hundred rolls of toilet paper and seventy-eight gallons of Purell, we truly we will end it all not with a bang, but with a whimper.

So how can we be courageous? How can we not be hollow? How can we rise above in acts of heroism and bravery? We aren’t being invaded by the Mongrel Hoard or the Commies. We are being invaded with something a lot more insidious but perhaps even more deadly. How do we fight it? Some ideas – I bet that you may have other, better ideas:

• Give Blood
• Wash your hands
• Stay at home if you are ill
• Help those who are temporarily unemployed or underemployed – financially if they need it and if you are able
• Tip any hourly employees who are still working
• Wash your hands
• Pick up groceries for your elderly neighbors
• Pick up prescriptions for those who are unable to do so
• Wash your hands
• Maintain your civility as you interact with others
• Patronize businesses in their efforts to conduct their operations in whatever limited ways they can figure out
• Maintain social distancing
• Wash your hands

Whatever you come up with, remember we are truly in this together. If we can’t get through without massive loss of life and a decimated economy NONE of us will win. I can’t really tell you why you should be optimistic. There isn’t a lot of optimism going around the news shows. But some of those are the same shows that six weeks ago told us there was no problem. My point is, they don’t always know what they are talking about.

We have a lot of entitled, selfish people who have never been tested and I fully expect some to hoard toilet paper, push ahead of us in the lines to by hand sanitizer or pasta. Some of our kids are juggling day care while trying to watch their kids from home. One of them was laid off and found out about it by reading Facebook. They will struggle along with many others. But I just came from the pharmacy. The pharmacist said you can’t believe how many people are picking up meds for their neighbors who can’t get out or picking up groceries for people who are shut in. People are donating towards research; people are donating to food shelves; people are donating blood. I can’t tell you why, but I totally believe that we are going to come through this, certainly not undented, but unbowed. And it is going to take a while, I don’t know how long, I pray not a long time, but we will be stronger because of the testing. God Bless You – GO WASH YOUR HANDS.