Category Archives: Random Blogging

Home Again, Home Again…

If my blog posts have been somewhat erratic over the past three weeks, it is because my husband and I have been traveling in South America, a continent we had never before visited. We began in Buenos Aires—an absolutely delightful city—and proceeded via ship through the Chilean fjords, around Cape Horn and Ushuaia (the southern-most city in the world—self-proclaimed “City at the End of the World”) and along the Pacific Coast to Valparaiso, Chile.

Very few Hoosiers know that Valparaiso, Indiana, was named for Valparaiso, Chile—an intriguing bit of history shared with us by a very cheerful Assistant Pastor of the Lutheran Church in Valparaiso, Chile, when we wandered in off the street. Admiral Porter—for whom Indiana’s Porter County was named—changed the name of Porter County’s town, formerly Porterville, to Valparaiso in recognition of the only naval battle he ever lost—in Valparaiso, in the War of 1812. It was a classy gesture.

Our cruise concluded at Valparaiso, and most of those who disembarked went straight to Santiago and its international airport, approximately a two hour drive. We elected to stay a few days to explore the quirky, art-filled city that is now a World Heritage Site.

It was well worth the exploration. Valparaiso is unlike any city we’ve visited anywhere. Santiago, which we briefly toured on our last day, is a vibrant and beautiful metropolis, and Vina Del Mar (virtually next door) reminded us of Miami, with its high-rise condominiums and beachfront cafes, but  Valparaiso didn’t remind us of anywhere else; it’s one of a kind.

Only 3% of Valparaiso is on flat ground; the rest is built, haphazardly, on thirty-plus hills. Very, very steep hills that overlook the sparkling bay and ocean.

Virtually all of the structures in the city look like flimsy shacks. Most of the siding used is painted corrugated metal, of the kind commonly seen on shipping containers. When we saw our hotel (this is the upscale part of the city? It looks like a slum!), we wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into, but the ramshackle exterior was a shocking contrast with the sleek, modern interior. We soon found that this contrast between interior and exterior was common—that preservation of the original architecture is strictly enforced, and any “rebuilding” or modernization occurs inside.

Art and art galleries are everywhere, as are museums—far more than might be expected in a city of 300,000. There are murals on the retaining walls, flowers painted on the light fixture poles. Restaurants showcase art.

Everywhere, too, are impossibly long and steep staircases built into the hills–stairs that allow people to reach the homes and shops scattered willy-nilly on the steep slopes—many of which are accessible only by those stairs and through neighboring properties. (I can’t imagine what aged or disabled folks do…)

While we were there, the city was rebuilding the streets in two of the “Cerros”—neighborhoods, or hills. They completely dug up the original streets, poured concrete, then laid granite blocks in sand/mortar on top of the concrete. The rebuilt streets will last a century or more. (Not exactly the way we do it here in Hoosier-land….)

Everyone we met was helpful and friendly (few spoke much English, and of course, being the Ugly Americans we are, we spoke no Spanish. Why didn’t I pay attention in my college Spanish class!?) The weather reminded me of San Francisco’s micro-climates. We were told that the city is generally temperate—they get very little snow and ice, and summer highs rarely reach 80.

Politically, the current issue appears to be a debate between members of the City Council who want to allow construction of a shopping center on the waterfront and those who are—as we were told—philosophically opposed to the notion of shopping as entertainment (we saw no malls or shopping centers—just small shops, galleries, cafes and street markets).

Europe is closer to the U.S., both culturally and geographically, than South America, and that’s probably the major reason we had never previously traveled to our own Southern Hemisphere. This trip was a revelation, and well worth the ten-hour flight from Dallas-Ft. Worth. Admiral Porter was onto something.

Enough travelogue; tomorrow, I’ll return to our originally-scheduled programming.

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About that “Culture of Dependency”

There’s been a lot of discussion about Paul Ryan’s racially-tinged dismissal of inner-city poverty as evidence of a cultural deficit. As Timothy Egan’s recent column in the New York Times reminds us, there’s a particular irony in Ryan’s appropriation of an argument that used to be mounted against his own Irish forebears.

“We have this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” In other words, these people are bred poor and lazy.

Where have I heard that before? Ah, yes — 19th-century England. The Irish national character, Trevelyan confided to a fellow aristocrat, was “defective.” The hungry millions were “a selfish, perverse, and turbulent” people, said the man in charge of relieving their plight.

You never hear Ryan make character judgments about generations of wealthy who live off their inheritance, or farmers who get paid not to grow anything. Nor, for that matter, does he target plutocrats like Romney who might be lulled into not taking risks because they pay an absurdly low tax rate simply by moving money around. Dependency is all one-way.

We humans evidently have a deep-seated need to distinguish the virtuous “us” from the undeserving “them.” As Egan demonstrates, however, the identity of “us” and “them” is anything but static. Many upstanding Americans can trace their roots back to a once-despised “them.”

Accordingly, a bit of humility might be in order.

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A Zero-Sum World

A couple of days ago, a friend sent me an email about recent remarks made by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal. Deal wants Congress to repeal the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986. That’s the law–approved and signed by President Reagan–that requires hospitals to treat anyone in an emergency, regardless of citizenship or ability to pay.

In other words, if you are shot, giving birth, having a heart attack–whatever–and you make it to the nearest emergency room, they have to stabilize you before they determine whether you can pay and if not, send you elsewhere. They can’t just turn you away to drop the baby on the pavement or die from the heart attack.

To most sane people, this seems pretty reasonable, and by all accounts, the Act has saved many lives since it was enacted. 

I spend a lot of electronic “ink” wondering what’s wrong with people like Governor Deal. Why are they so adamantly opposed to expansion of Medicaid, increased access to health insurance, or a modest raise in the minimum wage? I could understand it if they were arguing about the best way to provide healthcare or alleviate poverty,  if they were offering alternatives, but they clearly aren’t–they are opposed to the goals themselves. And that’s what I’ve had so much trouble understanding.

However, I think I may have figured it out. These people live in a zero-sum reality.

In the zero-sum worldview, every social good exists in a fixed amount. If you get X, I lose X or its equivalent.

Thankfully, the real world doesn’t work that way. In countries with single-payer systems, for example, healthcare costs less, and everyone benefits. Studies have also confirmed that raising the minimum wage puts more money in the economy, and actually increases employment (counter-intuitive as that may seem.)

It must be exhausting to live in a zero-sum reality, where you must constantly on guard to protect your personal fiefdom. I know I need to cultivate some compassion for the denizens of that world, but it’s hard to feel sympathy for mean-spirited people.

On the other hand, maybe there’s a fixed amount of human-kindness, and they didn’t get any?

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Uncomfortable Questions, Depressing Answers

In a recent INforefront post, James Madison asked some uncomfortable questions about the role class distinctions play in (theoretically classless) America.

Does the Land of the Free have class distinctions? Are such distinctions inevitable? Defensible?

American notions of class aren’t grounded in lineage and tradition—at least, not to the extent they are elsewhere. Class in America gets confused with concepts of meritocracy and echoes of Calvinism, the belief that earthly success was a sign of God’s favor and one’s  “chosen-ness.”

The conviction that material wealth was evidence of moral merit was accompanied by the conclusion that poverty must signal moral defect. Over the years, these doctrinal roots of our belief in the comparative worth of rich and poor was lost, subsumed into a secular, class-based proposition: poor folks are lazy “takers” who lack “middle-class values.”

In a culture that celebrates (fast-disappearing) meritocracy and social mobility, it’s easy to conclude that poverty is a result of class-based attitudes and characteristics. And of course, if you’re privileged, it’s satisfying to attribute your good fortune to individual merit rather than the fact you were born (with the “right” race, religion, gender and sexual orientation) into a family with the wherewithal to feed, clothe, educate and endow you.

These attitudes foster policies that favor the fortunate, diminish the middle class, and make social mobility virtually impossible for the working poor.

There will always be winners and losers. There will always be some people who work harder than others, who are smarter or more entrepreneurial and deserve to do better. But a society that confuses individual worth with money and social status is a class-based society.

Right now, unfortunately, that describes America.

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Words Fail….Again

NOTE: HAVING INTERNET PROBLEMS. HERE’S TOMORROW’S BLOG. IF YOU DON’T HEAR FROM ME FOR A DAY OR SO, I’M WORKING ON MY ACCESS….

This post from DailyKos mirrors two others I’ve seen, reporting the response of several Texans (!) to the use of a term derived from Arabic to describe a dust storm.

  • Hateful hubbub arises over haboob. The word, from the Arabic for “strong wind,” and, in particular, a dust storm in North Africa or the Arabian peninsula, has been used by meteorologists to describe such storms in the United States since the 1950s. But after KCBD News Channel 11 in Lubbock, Texas, posted a photo on its Facebook page with the caption “Haboob headed toward Lubbock,” some Texans went crazy:

“Since when do we need to apply a Muslim vocabulary to a good ole AMERICAN dirt storm?? …I take great offense to such terminology! GO BACK TO CALLING THEM DIRT STORMS!!”

“It’s called a dust storm..Texas is not a rag head country.”

“Never had a haboob until we got that Muslim boob for POTUS.” […]

America is doomed.

If this were an isolated instance, or even limited to Texas, it would be embarrassing, but this sort of assholery is everywhere. Including Congress.

It’s bad enough that people are this ignorant and bigoted; that they feel compelled to publicly express that ignorance and bigotry is really more than I can take.

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