A common good: The gift of sharing.

I've been writing about patience & waiting in the days before December. I've also been listening to our national debate over health care. The debate is coming to an end w/the Senate floor action. During this discussion many ideas flop around, assertions made, facts determined, and opinions expressed.

The Headline: Sunday, November 29, 2009,
New York Times:

Food Stamp Use Soars Across US, Stigma Fades

The Maps:

1) Growth of Food Stamp use from June 2007- June 2009.

Front page map shows high growth in food stamp in FL, home of the head "Ditto-Head" and in ID, WY, UT, NV, & GA. (These six states have ten GOP Senators.)

2) Percentage people in each county who receive food stamps, June 2009.

Jump page map show use highest across the south from AZ thru NM, TX, OK, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, KY, TN, NC, GA, SC WV, & FL. (These 16 states have twenty-two GOP Senators.)

I feel really good about sharing the wealth of our nation with anyone who needs. Using the Department of Agriculture Food Stamp Program should be stigma free and available to any citizen who is hungry. Even if they are Republican. I ask are these the same places where people are organizing against a right to affordable health care insurance under the label of the Tea Party Patriots? I didn't do a scientific study but looking at the lists of links by state at the Tea Party Patriots Web site and at the Wikipedia page it seems like a large number of these states are the same places. Citizens in good conscience rail against "socialist health care" yet while use the roads, libraries, fire departments, public gathering places and our shared wealth in the form of food stamps. Where are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the like most popular? I looked around and it looks like they are popular all over. I guess the masters of misinformation drive the discussion on this point and they'll certainly ignore this story.

In many cases these are the same people who think nothing spending millions of dollars for three days of intensive care for a malformed premature infant whose prognosis at birth, or even before birth, is for three to six months of life. Life, they say, is sacred. Often the same folks who would force a pregnant woman to seek illegal care to control the outcome of her pregnancy, on the notion that God endows life and life begins when sperm meets egg & genes are intertwined. A poor definition of life in my book. Life is a line, not series of dots, lined up. People exist along the line we don't start & end, we participate. Each moment of consciousness is a decision to continue participating. Life began 3.X billion years ago on Earth and now it is in every crevice and nook.

We can disagree about policies and programs a government should promote. We can disagree about what unseen, or unknown things to believe in. We can teach our children what we choose even if it is a lie like the Easter Bunny exists or Santa comes down the chimney on Christmas morning to celebrate the birth on earth of God made man. But we need each other. We need all of humanity to continue our life on this planet. We even need people who believe such wild stories as are being told in the ultra-conservative, "taxes are only for poor" mainstream media like Fox. We need to share our world if we are to live on it long enough for our species to survive. Self-awareness should allow us to plan the next step in human culture but only if we can move as one.

Health is key to life so it should be a basic right. We need our neighbors to be healthy or we will get infected by them. Our children deserve to be taught how to be healthy. Our government is a great place to mediate & govern the vast and complex issues that make up the public, individual health care universe. A doctor is only a small part of the healthcare system. Patients have responsibility to monitor their own health, instead we've become a nation of fools paying more for less and believing we're getting the best. It's as if we have are the Emperor in the story of the Emperor Has No Clothes. I mourn for our democracy if the loud voices who led us with the failed policies of the past 3 decades can win this debate just by lying to their fans.

One final note on the health care debate: Our nation deserves to have healthy citizens, we need healthy citizens so we can once again lead the world in: innovation; creativity; social, cultural, economic, & artistic ideas; sports; technology; and medicine. We can afford to have the best if we stand up and demand reason prevail over faith, lies, and superstition. We can not afford to continue the byzantine system of healthcare delivery we have now, it bankrupts individuals, small & large businesses across the country. We need the Senate and the House to finish their work and deliver a bill to President Obama for signature.

Patience: the gift of delayed gratification

At my household we celebrate the mid-winter holiday from December 20 or 21, 'til about January 13. In America today we are already weeks into a consumer frenzy called Xmas. The third Walmart Holiday ad came in the Sunday paper this weekend. Santas across the globe are talking about their gigs starting. I take deep breaths & hope to stay calm during the next several weeks. I'm rehearsing to sing in the choir with Open Eye Figure Theatre's Holiday Pageant.

When we learned to wait, to be patient, we built several strong, new connections in our brains that serve us today in ways we are only beginning to understand. Patience is ultimately the basis of economy. A look at the word economy reveals the notion of managing a household: in other words food, shelter, & offspring or dependents. If a strong economy means the ability to eat well, live & sleep well, and bring great kids into the world then patience gives us real advantages.

Over the next few weeks I expect to write about how our ability to wait: for delicious food; the ecstasy of sex; the comfort of home; the exhilaration of games well played, art well made, songs well sung, dances well danced; or the transcendence of preforming a physical feat, has helped our brains to become better at guiding & planning fulfilling lives.

• Patience, a real gift for the holiday.

A Gift of Trains: 30+ Santas Visit Bud's Playground.

Sometimes the words have to give way for the pictures! Thanks Bud.

Faith: A gift with unintended consequences

Today I heard about a man, Dr. George Tiller, a medical doctor, shot and killed while he volunteered as an usher in his church in Wichita, KS. This story is based on the story of Dr. Tiller. but the facts are made up by me to illustrate how a gift can backfire.

Our faith is often nurtured by our family and the leaders of our church from a time when we are very young. Faith is first placed in myths, like Santa Claus, the Easter Rabbit and Tooth Fairy. As we grow in our understanding of religion our faith is supposed to transferred to God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and in his Only Begotten Son Jesus! We're not told that GOD created hell too and despite Commandments like Thou Shall Not Kill! Ol' God spends a lot of time smiting people, cities, and whole populations. Today we'd call it genocide but in the Old Testament its called God's Will.

I'm really not down with this.  I never was down with this even as a young Lutheran. Now we have this story. I imagine a 51 year old guy, spends his whole life wanting to be a dad but he's anti-social, he plays with guns, he's indignant that someone might take away his right to protect himself. He's also indignant that while he can't attract a woman to bear him children, there's a doctor in Wichita performing abortions! He's going save those pre-born lives in self defense he walks into a church, the so called House of God, and using his government given right to bear munitions, shoots to death a man married for 45 years, father of four, grandfather of ten. 

This is how Pro-Life looks. This is Scott Roeder's, the presumed killer, idea of justice. 

I heard a woman speaking at a memorial service for Dr. Tiller. She said, 

"I had been abused, mistreated, and violated. Dr. Tiller helped me. Thank God for that." 

I understand her feeling, but I have to say, 

"No! Thank science for Dr. Tiller. Thank God for Scott Roeder, the killer, and for many others like him who think they are called to impose their faith on other people." 

I say,

"Thank God for the crazed, faith addled killers everywhere who fight in the name of the Lord."

The gift of faith, our society's fall from grace if we do not also use our critical thinking faculties.

Counting time: Joining the magic of number & life's events

Back on Santa's Birthday I talked about the magic of number. How our ability to count beyond one, two, a few and many has allowed us amazing advances. Today, in honor of my beloved's birthday I want to expand on number to the counting of time. I think this might bring us to the origin of SANTA, that bearded gift giver who came at the winter solstice to predict the return of the sun from the south after it seemed to fall almost to the horizon in some northern reaches. Those first Santas brought seeds, and that prediction. They were able to predict the return on f the sun because they had learned to count time.

Counting time seems a simple, unimportant task now but this shared skill allowed some groups of people to thrive while their contemporaries who could not count time floundered. As with all deeply rooted memes, this gift pushes evolution without directly affecting the genome, or the phenotype. It means a slowing of change in physical characteristics and advance for those skilled at manipulating abstract concepts. My goodness! What a gift. Counting time!

Greetings from Santa Erik

Gifts: my interesting study traipsing across eons of our shared heritage. I've learned so much about sharing and curiosity that I'm thinking I must report my findings in a quiet corner of the web. I'm hoping this blog will include selected occasional posts with my thinking about our gift economy and the magic of human social interaction.