Of, By, and For the People

 I began my teaching position here on Monday in Madurai. I am teaching English at the Vikaash World School, which has around 2,000 students or more it seems as we had an assembly to begin the day and I saw the full student body. Originally supposed to be held in the auditorium, it was much more refreshingly done outside in the main courtyard.

The day began similar, yet different to what I have experienced with teaching at the Antwerp International School in Belgium. Similar in that the assembly had the typical student announcements, which are part hamming it up, part nervousness, and part just pure tweenage awkwardness. There were several songs sung throughout the assembly in English, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Tamil. That was quite a nice surprise I must admit.

The eighth grade sponsored a brief presentation on Ramadan, which is currently winding up with EID and the benefits, both physical and spiritual of fasting. There is a minority (perhaps 10%) of Muslim students both at the school and in Madurai, but the presence of Ramadan is felt. During the fasting period, devotees may not eat or drink during the hours that the sun is up, and for some, there are additional restrictions depending on one’s level of devotion. In addition, this weekend included zakat, which is when Muslims will offer 10% of their income to the poor. Pradeep, my host, told me of one of his friends who has a sari or a new khodi made for every woman and man in the village each year, as an example.

After that, I was introduced to the entire student body on the makeshift podium and was asked to say something about myself. I think, for the first time in a very long time, I was nearly lost for words. I stumbled through a brief, formal introduction of myself and congratulated them on their singing, and then sheepishly walked off to the eighteen hundred eyes fixed on me. It was humbling in a way I have not experienced in quite some time.

Afterwards, for the next several hours, I was greeted quite formally by literally hundreds of kids, wanting to shake my hand, ask me where I was from, my name, my father’s name, my mother’s name, what color my eyes were, and so forth. I probably said “good morning” in response to “good morning, Sir” about two hundred times at least. It was very touching to say the least. I know that leaving these kids will be difficult in two months.

I had three classes throughout the day in which I did a more thorough introduction of myself and about Belgium, where I live, and America, where I am from. This was the most interesting part for me, finding out what they did or did not know about America. Most of them had heard of Texas (which does come in handy, rather than say being from Delaware), and California. They knew the two oceans (these were 7th graders, for a reference) on each side of the US. They are very adamant about saying “the United States of America” here and not just “America” as in Europe as a side note. Then, came the curious part. I pointed to the East Coast and asked them what big city is up here in the corner? Without fail, in each class, the answer was “Washington D.C.,” not “New York City.” Many of them had not really heard of New York, which was when I really felt that I was on the other side of the globe.

All of them knew Barack Obama was the President and that he lived in the White House, and some of them knew that D.C. meant District of Columbia, but not New York! And, they knew Chicago (my sister will be happy to hear), which I found curious. Then, the teacher accompanying me told me why. Swami Vivekananda, a famous Indian sage who left from Mumbai to go to the US delivered a famous oration there called, “Brothers and Sisters” on equality. When I asked for them to tell me two famous Americans? The answer, without exception in all three classes: Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Bill Gates. Yet, that sums up Southern India quite well. Tamil Nadu has a long history of being the most difficult state in India to “subdue” and was never really “conquered” by the British and is rather strident in their distinction from the North, particularly when it comes to keeping the Tamil language free from Hindi loan words. In addition, Madurai is known as being a center for IT innovation in India, so I imagine that many of the children knew Gates from their parents’ professions in some way or another.

It was interesting though that King and Lincoln were their model Americans, something I was quite proud to hear, and it did send a shiver up the spine in the first class when they knew the phrase from the Gettysburg Address that the government shall be “of the people, by the people and for the people.” India is in the midst of its own political sticking points including a recent (and successful) hunger fast by the “Anna Party” to combat graft and corruption in the central government.

Part of my assignment here will be to help educate them about “my” world while also learning about theirs. However, they set the bar pretty high on the first day for me to be thinking about what I can provide them about my own history, which I may evern be learning more about from them.

Tell Me About Your Family

For the next two months I will be a visiting teacher at a couple of schools in Madurai, teaching English and a sundry of other projects while learning Tamil myself. Today, I went to visit two of the schools and to meet some of the administrative and teaching staff. On Monday I will begin my teaching assignment after attending the all-school assembly in the morning.

After I had entered the headmaster’s office was introduced, we sat down, and the first, and nearly only question he asked was, “Tell me about your family.” I had read that Indians would often ask this question pretty early on in a conversation, so I was mildly prepared, but was still somewhat taken for surprise at how directly he asked it. It was not really the question itself, but the situation and the delivery.

He did not ask it in a hostile way, but neither was it really asked as if it were a conversational ice breaker either, but rather that it was actually part of “the interview” for what I was doing in India. I balked, not really knowing how to jump in and said, “my family in Belgium, or America, or...both?” as I was fishing for a response or change in his facial expressions, neither of which happened. Instead, with his eyes remaining fixed quite intently on me, he replied, “Yes, tell me about your family.”

I went on then to first tell him about my parents and that they had been physicians, but that my father had passed away, and that my sisters lived in various places as well, though he was quite impressed that they were in film and education. He was saddened to hear that my father was no longer living and was puzzled as to why my sisters were not with my mother. However, when it comes to explaining my situation in Belgium, the responses are not as welcoming.

In India, and I had also read about this, and it has borne out in reality at this point a couple of times, I am more or less considered to be a failure because I am no longer married. There are four stages in a man’s life in traditional Indian life, and one of them is to be a father and husband. This transcends poverty on the level of what is important in Indian society, much more so here in the southern part. If your wife has not died, and you have children, then you have failed if you are no longer married.

This reminded me of one of the more moving scenes in Terrence Malinck’s recent film, Tree of Life, (which incidentally one of my sisters actually worked on) in which Brad Pitt delivers an incredible role as a man at odds with himself and his family, and who is just trying to make it in life, but hasn’t figured out how. When he loses his job, Pitt is simply brilliant in his turn from the domineering father to a seismically reduced shell of a man, who breaks down crying to his son, who has literally wanted to kill his father at times in the film, and just says that all he wanted to do was to make things work. Without them, he was nothing.

I could see the visible disappointment in the man’s face when I was explaining that I was here alone and that my daughter was with her mother in Belgium and that we are not together. It wasn’t condemnation, but it certainly was not enthusiastic. India has major domestic problems to be sure, and to be born a woman here is a burden that I can never fathom in a million years. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be born into their predetermined roles in society here, which is not usually a glamorous one, except for the extremes of the Bollywood scene on a larger scale. However, I did feel the pressure that Indian men have on the flipside today of having to be the “man” of a household and to fulfill that role at all costs, for to fail is, in essence, is to be less than a complete man in his stages of life.

Yet More Tramps Abroad

Back in my hotel after an excellent dinner of grilled paneer sandwiched between slices of onion and green peppers and an amazing dish of baby corn, spinach paneer spiced with some smoking hot capsicum and raw green peppers. I could feel eyes upon me from the waiter to see if the sahib would eat them, which I did and got a nice drip nose to prove it. Topped off with a lassi and a walked along the putrid-smelling back bay of Mumbai Harbor talking with Mayur Dixit, a self-taught tour guide, who gives tours of the enormous slums in Mumbai, and is actually featured in the Wall Street Journal, about Slumdog Tour Guides. He strolls the Colaba promenade near the Taj Palace, which is the site of the bombing a couple years ago, and is trying to build his "tourist business" as the article discusses. Quite affable and knowledgeable about Mumbai specifically, but India in general, I was not able to take advantage of his services today, but perhaps will meet him on the way back through Mumbai in November.

The slums are enormous, mind-blowing, and there really aren't many words for it. You have to pass along them most of the way, as it is hard not too as 54% of Mumbai's population lives in them, making for 8 million people living in squalor. You fly right over them coming in as they literally encroach upon the runway, right up to the tarmac. The rooftops, which is rather elaborate word for rusted out, trash-covered corrugated metal sheets, are often painted blue, or have blue tarps on them, most likely in homage to Krishna's "blue-faced" aspect.

Now, here's the rub, and is one of India's sure to be paradoxes that will be impossible to fully grasp, even after I am here. As I mentioned before in a another blog, when Slumdog Millionaire came out, I was teaching at the pricey Antwerp International School, whose population is comprised of nearly 54% of the richest families in India's kids, namely the diamond traders kids. One of them said about Slumdog, "but, that's not Mumbai,..." which was shocking to some who mentioned the drive from the airport. But, Mukhta's point was that the slums were also incredibly active as a financial entity, and, well they are. It is bustling with businesses and people are out on the streets selling goods to each other, making food, repairing bicycle "tyres" and well, sorry to spoil it for you, but manufacturing all of those fancy woodworks, bronzes, and textiles that us whities are paying high dollar for in so-called boutiques in America and Europe.

Don't get me wrong, when I say squalor, I mean literally the poorest people on the planet, but they are out there "making a living." I have already seen the scenes of women, children, goats, and surprisingly well-fed stray dogs standing on trash heaps the size of Times Square. You can't really miss it. Mayur, whose name means "peacock" from the Sanskrit because of the sound they make, says that now it is particularly bad because of the rains and water rises to knee-deep with no where to go, but, he says, that is not as bad as the "hot season." He has an infant and 4 year-old daughter as well. He used to live with about a dozen people, but now lives with his family in the size of my bed, not bedroom, but bed. I have seen dozens of little girls my daughters age on the streets begging, orphaned, or asleep under plastic bags. Cows pulling carts of burned out air conditioners in the middle of lunch-time rush-hour traffic.

In short, there is no preparation as the saying goes. The is literally, no-thing that can prepare you for what you will see in 24 hours here. Lewis Carroll's Alice muses on thinking about the six impossible things before breakfast. From what I have already seen, that pretty much happens on an hourly basis.

But, there is time. I am tired, having tramped around the better half of downtown Mumbai today, though taking a break under the Regal Cinemas awning during the heaviest part of the rain, and well, saw six more impossible things during those 45 minutes as well.

This is just the beginning...

Only the Alone-ly

(Note: Written 2 hours prior in Brussels, now in Heathrow, London, broke down and paid for wi-fi...)

Sitting in the Brussels Airport, getting ready to board for my London connection through to Mumbai. Alone.

And, Roy Orbison is playing on the radio at the only coffee shop in the terminal, Starbucks. However, the ubiquitous free wi-fi that one would find in an American terminal is lacking, so either I will give in and actually pay for the wi-fi to make posts and check emails, or I will wait to see what Heathrow has to offer. I had better get used to being quite a bit more touch and go with my Internet access for the next two months.

Looking up at the Departures board when I came in, if not mistaken, I counted 35 different countries, many with multiple cities within them as destinations. That is 1/5 of the world’s countries, pretty impressive for a few hours’ span, I must say. Not quite the Departures board that I saw leaving the newly renovated Rick Husband International (yes, indeed) Amarillo Airport. And yet, sitting here at Starbucks, listening to Roy, from Wink, Texas, it is really hard to even begin to comprehend where I will be tomorrow morning. I feel rather like I am in a shopping mall somewhere in the US Midwest, like Nebraska or something. Very difficult to get in the mood at the moment in all honesty. And yet, it is a strange feeling.

But, such is life. We find ourselves in situations all of the time that we never expected, nor hope to be in, for better and for worse. As I get older, (and much grayer as my daughter likes to point out), I realize that it is nearly worthless to come to the table with many expectations of the future. Now, that is not as fatalistic, nor pessimistic as it may seem, but rather, really, just the way it seems to be. What unfolds before us is seldom, if ever what we imagine in our heads, and again, for better or for worse.

I had a conversation last evening with a very dear friend about the difficulty of “living in the present” and she recalled the quote from Kung Fu Panda about the here and now being a gift, which is why it is called the “present.” I have heard that said in a variety of contexts, but I must say, Jack Black’s Panda receiving this wisdom from his Master is as good as any I know to keep in mind.

The quality of the present is so precious and yet, seemingly so damn elusive at times. To actually stay in the present that is given to us is incredibly hard for we are just as apt to slip into the memories of the past as the expectations of the future, and all the while, as the saying goes, our lives are passing right before our eyes. Maybe that’s why I really like to listen to music, as it can really get me in the present.

Of course, music can also remind us of the past, or get us excited about the future. I cannot tell you how many times I listened to KISS Alive II on my Sony Walkman (!!!!) before swim races. I would listen to Gene, Paul, Peter, and Ace belt it out and get totally, radically fired up, dude before my race, in the future. I had an amazing knack for being able to “visualize” my future race, down to the tenth of a second most of the time, and then go do that swim. But, that seems to be the extent of my ability to predict the future correctly.

But, back to the music in the present. When it is not reminding me of the past, or prompting me to think about the future, I really feel “in the present” when I am listening to music. Like Eminem, I “lose myself” in the music, but there is the irony. When I lose myself into the music, it begs the question, “from what?” What I am losing from? Maybe it is Time itself, or from Me.

I think what has probably become clear in my blogs is that although I am anything but a musician, music is absolutely crucial to my life. Besides loved ones, and of course daily sustenance, if I had to say that there was one thing that I would miss most in life if it were suddenly gone, I believe that it would be music. If you have seen the movie, Immortal Beloved with Gary Oldman as Beethoven, I believe that film captures the essence of that special bond with have with music. The scene in which the Master is “listening” to his 9th Symphony being performed is truly moving. Oldman nails it. With that scene, the music that is in Beethoven’s head dissolves Space and Time and he is completely on another plane of existence. He is completely and utterly alone with his music, as he can only “hear” it in his head, now being deaf.

I know that many people have written much more eloquently about Time, including St. Augustine, Heidegger, and Hawking, inter alia, but it is a compelling subject to go back to, again and again for me.

One of the questions that I have been thinking about lately, however, is the relationship between feelings and Time. Can we feel more than one emotion at any given Time? Earlier today I experienced a mixture of feelings and emotions for a variety of reasons dealing with my departure from Belgium. What I noticed was that I would feel a mosaic of these feelings, alternating quite quickly, but each one of them had to make space for the other emotion. Each one demanded being only in the present to be experienced. At some point, I seemed to be stepping away from all of them and actually choosing which one I wanted to be feeling, which felt rather awe-some, in the sense of striking awe into me, rather than the surfer dude version.

However, now that I am sitting here, listening to some horrible piped in Jazz and Lounge Music (Roy, why did you leave me?), I am not able to choose an emotion that is not here, present because there is no stimulus. Rather, strangely, I feel no-thing. And, what I am trying to puzzle through with this rambling is, “is that a bad thing?” The joke runs, “Q: What is the difference between ignorance and indifference? A: I don’t know and I don’t care.” Kant says that to truly view something as beautiful, it takes a state of pure indifference, no judgment, no prejudice whatsoever. In other words, to experience something in a pure state, we need to step out of Time, out of Emotion, and just observe it, with indifference. Krishnamurti says the same thing about being alone. To truly be alone means to step out of the moment and to observe ourselves being alone and not be upset by it, but just to really look at it, experience it, be it.

Maybe that is what I feel at this moment. Not lonely, like poor ol’ Roy sings about often, because I can readily think about those whom I love dearly and picture them quite vividly and feel all warm and fuzzy, and yet, there is an overwhelmingly calm feeling in this serenity as I am really, truly, and indifferently alone here in the terminal.

The Tyranny of Distance

In one of my typical shuffling sessions of my mental iPod, I thought about Split Enz today and ended up watching a few of their videos, including “Six Months in a Leaky Boat.” Split Enz is a New Zealand (...NZ) band that you may remember from the 80’s with such the hit “I Got You” or “One Step Ahead of You” and so forth. “Six Months” is slightly less well-known but just as catchy as any good Split Enz song that you are likely to hear.

A line caught my ear, and because of my inability to remember lyrics, I played it a few times to make sure I got it right, which goes “The tyranny of distance/ didn’t stop the cav-a-lier...,” which I thought was brilliant. But, it was too good for an 80’s pop band that usually repeats a single line for three minutes, so I looked it up. The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History by Geoffrey Blainey is a study on how Austalia’s physical geography was highly responsible for Australia’s ability to create its own, unique culture, despite being part of a larger empire.

That got me to thinking about living abroad (but then again, what doesn’t?), and I was thinking about the tyranny of distance in my own life, both self-inflicted and incidental. Because of my own interests in other lands, languages, and cultures, I have obviously found myself moving around a bit over the years, as evidenced by the fact that by the time you read this I may already have moved on from Belgium to India, having come from Texas a couple days ago. Now, this feat could only be done with the aid of modern aircraft and my communications because of technology, but aircrafts and technology don’t change the human condition of separation and distance.

Thinking just of my “best” (not really keen on that term, myself) friends and family, there is quite a bit of distance there. From Amarillo, Texas to Antwerp, Belgium, to Beirut, Lebanon to Byron Bay, Australia and all points in between, I can think of over a dozen locations that the people “closest” to me are furthest away. At any one point I am physically closer to one, but further from the rest. In other words, there is no way that I can be close to very many of the any given time. But, those to whom I am “closest” to it has never been a determining factor as to whether we stayed close or not. I am very “close” to some people whom I have only seen once or twice in a decade or so, whereas people I may see every day, it wouldn’t matter to me one wit if I ever saw them again in my life.

When I graduated from High School, I was in the position to give a speech to the graduating class, and if people know me well, it is sometimes a dangerous thing to hand me a microphone (I am thinking particularly of a bus trip to Venice with 35 antsy college students, but that is for another blog), and well, this was no exception. As I was to be giving the “fare thee well” speech, I did just that and ended with, more or less, the words, “for many of you tonight, this will merely be ‘good-bye’ when you leave these doors, but for me, I bid you farewell.” Nothing like a flair for the dramatic to end your high school career on, one that for me was about three years too long.

But, I meant it. I left Amarillo and said, “Farewell.” And, for nearly two decades, except for visiting family, there was not much reason for me to be there. However, perhaps the tyranny of distance has allowed some perspective, that or sitting down to blog about the various places that I have lived. The past couple of times I have been to Amarillo I have actually re-discovered a town that I didn’t even know existed, one that I had lived in for five or so years of my life, but never really knew. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not packing up and moving back to Amarillo, but having the distance from it for so long has allowed me to go back, nearly as a tourist, and to discover the good things that it has to offer, alongside the reasons that made we want to leave town within minutes of finishing my graduation speech, which I did more or less.

Coming back to Antwerp this time as well, I am met with fresh eyes and experiences and I know that when I return from India, I will be “moving” to Antwerp, as if it were a new experience. Because I have somewhat recently moved within the city, though only slightly, I have already begun to discover an entirely new city within the old city that I once knew. So, here again, the physical distance from where I used to live, albeit quite short, is enough to provide an entirely different perspective.

So, I am bound then to question if whether distance has in fact been a tyrant in my life? Some might say so, but for the most part I believe that distance has been a chance for me to step back and to see the value in people, places, and things in my life that otherwise I may have been taking for granted while being right next to them.

Living in Europe it is easy to see that proximity does not mean intimacy, in fact quite the opposite, especially when it comes to considering relationships amongst people. Within Belgium, for example, the fact that people are so concentrated and close just as often as not makes for divisions rather than unity. When space is such a premium and dialects and/or separate languages and lineages are put on the table, Europe becomes downright tribal and communities just a stone’s throw from each other are more distant than relatives who left for America decades or centuries before.

How often do we find that we do not know our own neighbor, but we do know people across the world because we are reading their blogs, for example? Not a new thought, I know, but one that never gets old repeating either.

So, is distance a tyrant? Yes and No, for me at least. While distance can make the heart grow fonder, it can indeed cause rifts that would not otherwise be present if location was not a factor. Currently I am greatly enjoying getting to know certain people better via electronic epistolary correspondence, but at the same time, feel the pangs of distance. I will miss my daughter enormously when I am in India, for example, but via my blog I will actually be communicating with her on a (hopefully) daily basis and gaining experiences that I will share with her and others to last a lifetime.

Though I will not be spending six months in a leaky boat, but rather two months in Tamil Nadu, I agree that with Split Enz that the Tyranny of Distance will not stop me either.

We’ll be in touch.

School House Rocks!

I (heart) Miss Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty, that is, Miss Liberty of Ellis Island.

Back in Belgium, thinking about the recent past of being in the United States with my daughter and contemplating the unthinkable future of soon to be in India, here I am in Antwerp, my head filled with thoughts about giants , islands, and statues. Go figure.

I flew out of Amarillo two days ago, which now seem like a lifetime with all of the thoughts going through my head of people, places, and things...those nouns that seem to dominate so much of our thoughts. Speaking of nouns, one of the greatest traveling companions for a little traveling companion such as my five-year old daughter, is the videos from Schoolhouse Rock from the 1970's. These can be downloaded now via iTunes for a nominal fee, but well worth it.

If you are of my generation, you will never forget the opening twangy notes of "Nouns," nor will you ever forget that a Noun is a person, place, or thing. However, you have to know something before you can forget it. Each time I encounter American education, however, there is a bittersweet feeling that no-one will ever forget much because we aren't taught much any longer. Now, before you jump on the bandwagon of saying I am on the bandwagon that education is so much better elsewhere (it isn't), then let me vent.

I had several conversations with many friends while traveling in the States, friends with kids, kids who are in schools, schools that often suck, etc. And, to then see that the biggest anti-educational governor in recent memory in Texas, Rick Perry, is now a possible frontrunner for the Presidential bid of America, I fear for education, deeply. I am not so naive to think that one politician can ruin a country, but yikes, this is scary.

So, I am making a proposal. Bring back Schoolhouse Rock! to our kids! If you read this, "pass it on" as the ubiquitous billboards around America suggest. Pass on the message of making education something that kids actually want to have more than the latest xBox. Trust me, if your kid is not humming along to "Lolly, Lolly, Get your Adverbs Here" after two viewings, well, I would be surprised. "Conjunction, Conjuction,..." come on, you know the rest "what's your function..." Brilliant, sheer brilliance.

On the Nouns video, the little girl goes to the Statue of Liberty to meet her friend ("he took an early fer-ry) in middle of June and it started to snow. Well, not exactly snowing when I flew into Newark's Liberty International airport five weeks ago, but it was great to see the Statue of Liberty and to have that song running through my head since my daughter had been watching it on iTunes on our flight from Brussels. I made her a promise to one day take her up in the real statue as we only got to see a small replica in the customs area at Liberty airport.

I missed seeing Miss Liberty on the way out of the US this time. We flew through O'Hare, which I have always disliked, and still do as I always encounter a delay or rudeness there, but hey, that's just me, and we didn't get to see her waving us onwards towards our Belgian destination this time.

Perhaps those are two things that I do really love about America though. The concepts of Freedom and Liberty and the innovations in education such as Schoolhouse Rock. We've got our flaws and our faults like the best of them, but for just those two things, I am pretty proud of those visionary minds who came before me from back home.

The School House does indeed Rock, as does Miss Liberty.

PS Yes, I know she came from France...

Don't Take Your Guns to Town

The other day, while getting a coffee in Amarillo, I overheard a few men talking. It was the question of "freedom isn't free" as they were all Veterans of Foreign Wars, and they were talking about the issues of downsizing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From their conversation, it became apparent that the were in their seventies and had rather a lot of combined military service amongst the three of them.

They were lamenting the fact that Americans don't understand the need to spill some blood to preserve our freedoms. Though it was not said directly, it reminded me of Rumsfeld's justification of Iraq in 2003, "You have to break some eggs to make an omelette." The coffee-house triumvirate definitely shared this sentiment and began to cite the staggering facts of the two World Wars, which are truly staggering. In short, it was that more men had died on any given day of significant military engagement than in all of the Middle East conflicts that we have been involved in.

That is truly mind-boggling when you think about it. It is also the sign of the technological times, beginning with the Vietnam conflict in that moving images and negative reports of the battle began to circulate back home.

The first course for which I was a teaching assistant was "Myths of War and Violence" with Tom Palaima, a MacArthur Fellow who teaches Classics and Plan II at The University of Texas at Austin. The course traced literatures of war and violence from Homer's Iliad to Tim O'Brien's fictional non-fictions of Vietnam.

On the reading list was the book, Bloods, by Wallace Terry, which was about the modern-day "Buffalo Soldiers" in Vietnam. For the most part, these African-American men were given the choice between prison or Vietnam. Without exception, most chose Vietnam. Many of them were sent directly to the jungle, gun in hand, with no preparation, then when their term was up, if they survived, they were dropped back on the streets of East L.A. or Kansas City, or the like.

Most of them ended up on the streets for good, or in prison, or in mental hospitals.

One of the books the students read for the course was Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam, written by a professional health physician and shows pretty conclusively that Achilles suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, exhibited by his "rage" and desecration of Hector's body, even to the abject disgust of all of the God in Olympus.

I was talking with my friend yesterday who had had a discussion with her daughters about some criticism they had heard about Obama's Health Care initiative. We discussed the differences between health care systems in the US and Europe, both regarding cost and availability. As a single mother with three kids, supporting herself, she has had to make some very difficult decisions regarding health care. Unlike living in Belgium or Italy, where I have benefited from the socialized medicine, she has much greater mountains to climb than me.

Her message to her children was that everybody's life is worthy of care from someone, whether they are homeless, mentally ill, or wealthy and white.

For the past few decades, a large percentage of America's homeless population was comprised of Vietnam and Gulf War veterans. While the three vets of the coffee shop say that we need to send more troops, we seldom say what we are going to do with those troops if they don't come home in a pine box. Usually, they are dropped off on the streets, trained to kill, and without mental decompression back into the "real world." A blind eye is turned more often than not.

One of the men in the impromptu military strategic planning group started talking about a town nearby Amarillo at one point and said, "it's one of those towns where you better take your gun with you when you go to Wal-Mart" and the conversation then turned to the problem of the "Browning of America" with minority populations on the rise, threatening the white population.

However, who is it that this veteran needs to protect himself against? Is it in fact the returned veteran of a more recent foreign war, not one of the "good wars" of old? Or, is it, when apprehended, a young Hispanic man that will be given the choice of "Prison or Afghanistan/Syria/Iraq...?" to ensure that our freedom isn't free?