Bruce's Singing Cyclist Musings
A blog about life as seen by a retired Middle School Science Teacher from California
Seeking Common Ground
I’ve made some changes to the Welcome and Introduction post that is now hidden at the bottom of this Blog. I’ve added a bit more information about myself and my goals for publishing it for you to see. While you’re there, you might enjoy my two latest posts titled Win-Win-Win and Musical Interlude.
You can read it at: https://singingcyclistmusings.com/?p=1
Thanks,
Bruce
Some people are in it to win just for themselves. Others who know better are more selfless about it and look for the Win-Win where both parties benefit from a result. Maybe, if the stars are aligned, you might even find that the Win can go in even more than just two directions.
My wife has taken responsibility for the care and well being of her 91 year-old aunt. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about that except that her aunt lives a five hour drive away, has macular degeneration and glaucoma, has severe hearing loss, needs a hip replacement and remains fiercely independent. The job of meeting her needs is, to say the least, difficult.
She makes the five hour drive about once a month to check up on her aunt and make contact with her small network of caregivers. Aunty Nan loves her cats and pretty much the only way that she can live with her beloved felines is to stay in her split level home. She is in no way capable of living independently as much as she would like to think that she is.
Her network of caregivers includes her longtime once-a-month house cleaner, a wonderful loud voiced Visiting Angel who visits daily and makes sure that Aunty Nan is eating and does daily tasks to keep the house neat, hygienic and livable and a kind and competent young woman with a natural talent for working with elderly folks.
It is a fragile system that, if it works flawlessly, allows Aunty Nan to receive the basic care that she needs to at least function in the comfort and familiarity of her own home. But, the operative word is fragile. If one of the parts of this network is unable to carry out their role, the system falls apart. Ultimately that would mean that Aunty Nan would need to be moved to assisted living or perhaps even memory care. She has money, but not an unlimited amount of it. She has undiagnosed cognitive issues that raise questions about her ability to live alone in her home even with the two daily visits, and the diligent efforts of her niece.
For the sake of confidentiality, the kind and competent young woman will remain “the kind and competent young woman (KCYW from now on).” KCYW lives with her mother who has early onset dementia. KCYW is on her own to provide care for her own mother on her own with no other sibling support, financial or otherwise. She works for a home health care agency and cares for other needy elderly folks in order to support their small household. She works for Aunty Nan (and my wife) on the side to bring in a little more income.
KCYW’s job requires her to drive. Here’s where the Win-Win-Win comes in. KCYW was facing the prospect of having to give up her job caring part-time for Aunty Nan because her car was in worse shape than her clients. It barely got up the hill and then she was afraid to turn it off for fear that it wouldn’t restart. That would limit the length and quality of her visits because she was worried about the car.
KCYW is incredibly valuable to Aunty Nan and to my wife’s peace of mind. So, my wife and I discussed options on how to solve her car problem. We thought about Uber as an option. Under normal, non-COVID conditions, this might have worked. But, exposing KCYW to different drivers each day didn’t seem like a workable plan. The plan needed to involve a car, because mass transportation options simply aren’t available for her in her community.
So, we decided on an option that worked for us, Aunty Nan and KCYW. We researched the possibility of buying a dependable used car for KCYW. We had KCYW come to pick out the car that fit within our budget and together we made the purchase in her name. She will chip away at paying us back by having half of her pay for caring for Aunty Nan go toward paying us back for the car.
That could be where the cycle of winning ends, but the story isn’t finished. KCYW has a car (Win). My wife can relax knowing that KCYW is still able to continue caring for Aunty Nan (Win). Aunty Nan maintains her caregiver (Win). KCYW was surprised that someone would do this for her. Her mother didn’t believe that it was true.
But, it was true. I believe that KCYW got much more than just a car out of this experience. She also got a boost of self esteem. The fact that someone believed in her enough and valued her enough to consider putting her into a vehicle that would bring her peace of mind and allow her to focus on her job and the care of her mother, has the potential change KCYW’s life. How much change it will make is now in her hands. The possibilities of directly experiencing the generosity and thoughtfulness of another person can only result in good things for the other person.
KCYW knows that somebody cares. She received some bootstraps to pull up. What she does with those bootstraps is the gift that keeps on giving. The future is a little brighter for KCYW.
Merry Christmas KCYW and Happy New Year.
In need of a lift? Maybe these will help!
Tribute to my friend Guadalupe (Lupe, Roh-Mahn) Roman who is being buried today in Tulare County. Lupe died the day before Thanksgiving in a head-on collision on Highway 65 between Bakersfield and Porterville. Another Terra Bella Administator, Luis Mena, also died in the crash.
I met Lupe in the Winter of 1990 while interning at SCICON following a two year stint with the Peace Corps in Belize. Roman was there with his (and my future) colleague Elaine Barnard and the Sixth Grade class from Carl F. Smith Middle School in Terra Bella. It was my first week on the job and Roman was in full recruitment mode for a Science teacher at Carl Smith. To meet Lupe Roman is to never forget Lupe Roman. He was a big man with a boisterous laugh and a mouth that was seldom ever closed.
That Fall, I began a nine year stay in Terra Bella. Lupe new the kids and families of Terra Bella well. He was one of them. Born, raised, educated and nurtured there. I was a newbie teacher at 34 with much to learn about teaching when I arrived in Terra Bella. Roman taught me what I now know to be the most important lesson that a teacher can ever learn. The kids come first. Get to know them and where they are before you try to teach them your subject. It seems like a no-brainer now, but it took Roman and a few years of teaching for that to sink in.
Guadalupe Roman went on to become Principal at Carl F. Smith Middle School and then Superintendent of the Terra Bella Union School District. A few years ago we buried Elaine. Now I’m saying goodbye to my friend and colleague.
You can say a lot of things about Lupe Roman, but I will remember him as a genuine, in-your-face, intelligent, kind hearted and dedicated man that put others first. He was a true human being and model teacher.
I miss you my friend. Stop in for a visit once in awhile.
Brucie
PS: The only people that I ever let call me Brucie were Roman and my Mom.
(Note: One of my primary goals with this Blog is to be positive and inclusive. Since this is my opinion, there will be times when our opinions will not be in sync with one another. I want you to know that even though we may have opposing view points we are not enemies. I am striving to find common ground, sew up divisions and communicate with you.)
One of the reasons that I decided to make my journal writing public in this Blog, are the strong feelings that I have for my Country, Democracy and Truth. Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United Sates has done his best to weaken or destroy all three.
Before I go on about Mr. Trump, I acknowledge that The United States of America is flawed, deeply flawed. We, the privileged European-based Americans have treated the non-European based Americans of our country with disrespect since our arrival in the 17th Century. We have confused our economic system (Capitalism) with our political system (Democracy). We have often used our global influence for not-so-good ends. We have functioned throughout our history on the thin edge between government of the people (Democracy) with government of the wealthy business class under the thin veneer that we, the common folks, actually get to choose how our affairs are governed (Oligarchy). Weaknesses aside, we have a system worth fighting for and one that can improve if we put in the energy required to make it better.
Our fragility has been exposed by Mr. Trump. His O+ D strategy over the past four years has been intended to subvert, weaken or destroy the foundational institutions of the United States, our Democracy and Truth. I’ve heard it described as a “soft coup.”
His weapons have not been guns and bombs. Rather, he (and whoever is behind his puppet presidency), have attacked our institutions through language and the dissemination of that language. The written word and the spoken word have been used with the goal of obstructing (O) the real words and intentions of our founding fathers in the Constitution and using those words to widen the ethnic, racial and economic divisions (D) that are among our collective national flaws.
Words are powerful. Authoritarian-style tyrants like Mussolini, Hitler, Castro, Karadzic and Authoritarian wannabees like Donald Trump, among many others in the 20th Century, have learned that to gain, hold power and exert their will, that they need to control the message to their people. Words are strung together in sequences designed to train us to believe and follow messages that we know deep down are wrong. Good people can be trained to do bad things or to do nothing at all by leaders with bad intentions. But, they/we become helpless to resist the words when under the influence of tyrants.
Those words are then used to compel good people to do unspeakable acts of bad. And, they can also be used to hide the truth from average citizens who honestly don’t know what’s going on because they are not being told the truth by these leaders. As Ivan Pavlov did with his techniques to train dogs, so have authoritarian rulers learned to use words and sounds to train people to listen to and follow their evil deeds. Hitler and his Nazi wordsmith Joseph Goebbels used words to create the depths of human depravity in 1930’s-40’s Germany. The vast majority of Germans really didn’t know what they were agreeing to through their silence because they didn’t know what was going on in their country in their name.
Words are powerful and minds are malleable. The two together can be used for extraordinary evil or powerful good. The evils of the recent past are happening again right here and right now. Country, Democracy and Truth are under attack.
Words are the weapons.
Be vigilant.
And respond.
Elizabeth was born on Thanksgiving Day of 1932 in the rural central California town of Lindsay to Surpoohe and Garabed Gavian. The Thanksgiving turkey got left on the barbeque that year. She grew up on the family ranch near Lindsay and lived there until she completed her Junior year of high school at Lindsay High School.
She moved to Visalia, the largest city in Tulare County for her Senior year of high school. Elizabeth continued her education at College of the Sequoias in Visalia. Shortly after finishing her formal education at COS, Elizabeth went to work for the Tulare County Health Department as a Clerk/Typist.
It was typical of the women of her time to marry and raise a family. Elizabeth was a typical woman of her time. She met and married a handsome young Public Health Sanitarian at the Tulare County Health Department named Walter Halen.
As was also typical of the time, Elizabeth (Betty) quit working for money and went to work raising two children that came along after two miscarriages at the start of her marriage to Walter. First came a boy, Bruce born in April of 1956, followed 13 months later by a daughter, Susan.
Caring for two babies in diapers was very challenging. Elizabeth struggled with staying mentally healthy. With the help of her mother, Surpoohe, she made through the difficult early years of child rearing. Walter was the provider and loving husband. But, much of the day-to-day child raising was done by Betty. She worked in PTA all through Bruce and Susan’s childhoods and would eventually become the District PTA President.
Once her children were through school and on their own ways in life, Elizabeth continued a life of dedicated service to family and community. She volunteered for several years with our local Congressman, Cal Dooley and at the Well Baby Clinic. For many years, Betty and Walter’s garage became a polling place for voting in the elections central to the core tenets of Democracy.
Later, that same garage would become a distribution site for the Visalia Senior Gleaners program. The Gleaners would go to the yards of Visalians and pick excess fruit and then bring it to distribution sites where it was bagged and prepared for pick-up by senior citizens.
Elizabeth would struggle with mental health issues in later life, but her final two years at Alma Via Assisted Living in Camarillo, California were wonderful years for her and Walt. She received competent and loving care and she flourished while at Alma Via. Susan was a rock in seeing to regular visits and outings from her home in nearby Oxnard.
Walter passed away in March of 2017 at 95. Elizabeth lived until the following February. She is buried in Visalia with Walter, her husband of over 60 years in Visalia.
Thanks, Mom.
Saturday, November 7 eased my anxiety a great deal. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were declared the winners of the 2020 Presidential Election.
So, why do I feel only calmish? Well, unlike Barack Obama who invited the president-elect to the White House three days after the results of the election were determined, it is almost Thanksgiving and no such invitation has come from the sitting president.
“God Grant Me the Courage to Change the Things I Can Change, the Serenity to Accept the Things That I Can’t Change and the Wisdom to know the Difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr
I clearly haven’t fully embraced the message in the Serenity Prayer. I believe that I have the first third of it, the Courage part. But I’ve yet to grasp the Serenity and Wisdom parts of the prayer. I if did have a grasp on the meaning of the entirety of the prayer, I would be feeling calm. Not just calmish, but calm. Sort of like I feel when I gaze at this photograph for a while.
Deep down inside, I do believe in the words of Unitarian Theologian Theodore H. Parker that “the moral arc of the Universe bends toward justice.” But, I am finding it very hard to have the patience to see the arc reaching justice.
The arc has made it part way to its goal. A new president has been elected. One that will work to unite Americans and not divide Americans. One that will work to ease the suffering from the Coronavirus Pandemic, not make it worse. One that will tell you the truth regardless of whether or not you want to hear it. One that will address the long swept-under- the-rug issue of Race so that the long trip to equality and justice can get on the road.
One that will address Climate Change and work to mitigate it’s effects for the benefit of generations to come. One that will see that the best way to get along in a diverse and ever changing world is to collaborate and communicate with other world leaders to solve problems that don’t end at the waters edge or a man-made political boundary.
Next comes the recognition on the part of the President that, as they did four years earlier, the American people have made a choice. The people, as will be finalized in the coming weeks, have chosen a president.
Perhaps remembering the items on this list from the book “All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” would encourage the president, and us, to do the right thing at this moment in time. The things that formed us into who we are today.
–Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
I feel much calmer now.
My initial inspiration for this post began with Stanford Blood Center’s annual Precious Mettle event. It is an event where speakers offer stories about their experiences as donors or recipients in order to encourage donors to continue to donate and to thank them for their continued support as blood donors.
This is important. Especially considering that of the 38% of Americans eligible to donate, only 10% of that 38% actually donate. So, we are a valued commodity. More on donating blood in a future posting.
Subsequent inspiration is coming from a Netflix series on Medal of Honor recipients. I watched the first four stories as my way of remembering our military veterans on Veteran’s Day. What I learned about these heroes is that their stories were similar in one very important way. They cared more about others and their wellbeing than they cared about themselves.
Sgt. Sylvester Antolak (WW 2), Sgt. Edward Carter (WW 2), Sgt. Clinton Romesha (rome-eh-shay, Afghanistan) and Sgt. Hiroshi Miyamura (Korea) are not exactly household names. Nor would they or any of the 3500+ men and women who have received the Medal of Honor want to be household names.
In their minds they were helping their mates and in so doing their duty, they performed acts of courage and bravery that earned them the attention of grateful comrades and their country . They put their comrades and friends before themselves in extraordinary ways in military combat situations. These stories have been so moving that I decided to post my thoughts on what I call the culture of giving.
The Culture of Giving can take countless forms. For example, to donate blood a person must often overcome a fear of needles. They do it because like the Medal of Honor heroes, they are willing to overcome their own personal fear in order to help someone else. Someone else that they likely will never meet. But they do it because they have been taught that being of service to others is the greatest goal in life.
First responders, doctors, nurses, health care workers of all kinds, elder care workers immediately come to mind as people who most obviously share this Culture of Giving. Teachers come to mind as well. In fact I would say that we are all come into this world with this characteristic.
Psychologists and counselors correct me if I’m wrong, but all people are born good. It’s our nature. Simply by the act of being born, we default to the Culture of Giving. When faced with the opportunity to help out in a difficult situation, we instantly start asking what can I do to help. Then we act on that impulse and help those in need or danger.
But it seems that the process of living or our “Nurture” has an affect on this giving culture. It can be taken out of us. The different human nurturing experiences that each of us grows up in has an impact on how we feel about giving later in life.
Let me take myself as an example using the Culture of Giving idea. I can honestly say that giving for me is a way of life. The things that I do are done out of a sense of mission that I started learning as a child at home, at church and at school. I simply don’t know any other way to be. It took me awhile, but I found my life’s work as a middle school teacher. I volunteer with my church choir because I am a singer. I donate blood platelets because it is another way that I can give. I ride my bicycle and practice yoga so that I am physically and mentally prepared to give the most that I can.
I view all things that I do, the teaching, the donating of blood, the singing, the cycling, the serving on the church board, the writing of get out the vote letters for the recently completed election and anything else that I have the privilege to do as merely another opportunity to give back to my communities and my planet.
This is what I call the Culture of Giving. This is the time of year when Americans lift up giving in the form of “Thanksgiving.” Giving, of course, is not limited to one day of the year. It comes out of a deeper, internalized Culture of Giving which I mindfully adhere to with a loving sense of thanks and giving every day.
Happy Thanksgiving and may you be aware of the Culture of Giving around you.
I lean significantly to the political left. My posts make no effort to hide that bias. Quite possibly the largest contributor to my political bias (and yours) are where we go for our news and entertainment.
In the aftermath of the 2020 Election, those media biases are on full and stark display. Yesterday, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that an early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial was “robustly” effective in preventing COVID-19.
Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham ran clips of Dr. Anthony Fauci and another prominent physician making statements about the vaccine being six months to a year away. She then ran a clip of a post election celebration which she said indicated a double standard in media coverage of Republicans not wearing masks and Democrats wearing masks. In the clip, she was attempting to show that people participating in the Biden celebrations following the election call on Saturday morning were not wearing masks. The clip went by very quickly and was shot from some distance away that made it hard to see if people were wearing masks or not. Ingraham has a sarcastic delivery style. She was using the Pfizer announcement as a way to poke fun at the doctors saying that the vaccine was still six months to a year away. Ingraham also suggested that the timing of the Pfizer announcement was saved until after the election for political reasons. This was a clear example of media bias.
Pfizer’s early results are optimistic, but they don’t mean that the vaccine is ready right now. A corporate announcement doesn’t mean that the vaccine has been independently tested and evaluated for safety and long term effectiveness against the coronavirus. Nor does it mean that it can be produced in the quantities and delivered to the 328.2 million Americans that it needs to reach for 100% coverage of the population. Reality is that the vaccine, as stated by the doctors on MSNBC, is still several months to a year away from reaching people.
The media bias applied to this vaccine story can be easily discerned. But, to discern the bias, you need to listen to different reports of the same story to see that a story can be manipulated to communicate the desired message of the news source. In this case whether it was Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp/Fox News or NBCUniversal’s MSNBC.
So, my message for you is to look at different sources of news. Pick a story and make yourself leave the comfortable source that you agree with and examine the story as told by at least one other news source with a different point of view. This is not to say that one or the other source is right or wrong in this instance, but it will give you an idea where our division comes from.
I suggested in a previous post “From My Almost Daily Journal” of November 6, 2020, that what we need is a “Middle Media.” This Middle Media would be a hybridized news organization that combines these mega moguls into a trusted news source where information is scrutinized, analyzed and factually presented so that we all develop our opinions based on a common news source
Please do pay attention to the links. They help provide some visual perspective to where new organizations fall on the scale of partisanship and analysis of the news. Here are some other graphic representations of news organizations and how they compare with other news organizations in the areas of partisanship and analysis.
I’m a big fan of The News Hour on PBS. One of my favorite segments is the Friday interaction between New York Times Columnist David Brooks and Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields moderated by respected journalist Judy Woodruff.
Today, of course, they were talking about the November 3 Election. I have tremendous respect for the two journalists, the former leans to the right and the former to the left. Brooks was musing about how this race should have been a much easier election for the Democrats to win given the wide spread unpopularity of the sitting president.
Black, Latino, LGBTQ+ voters expressed themselves as individuals showing that they were not homogenous groups that would automatically vote Democrat. Non-college graduate White males voted heavily Republican. The clear message of repudiation that the Democrats were seeking did not materialize in the final vote count. We can debate the reasons why people voted the way they voted.
I want to write briefly about my concern for Brooks’ suggestion that the Republican Party may have found a way to re-define itself by becoming the party of the non-College educated working class. This is a dangerous way to run a country. Divide us on the grounds of education.
Just as I have characterized the Republican Party as the party of the rich, which I still believe is essentially accurate, the Democratic Party would then be characterized as the party of the educated? I certainly hope not. Yale educated, Conservative intellectual William F. Buckley must be shifting in his grave. Buckley was an author, commentator and founder of the magazine National Review that served as a stimulus for political conservatism in 1950’s-60’s before it gained large scale popularity. I think that he would take exception to this characterization of his party.
College educated indicates to me a group of people who, despite their many and varied areas of study, have been trained to think about issues critically, to question and be skeptical of claims made by people and parties. This division along educational lines just simply cannot be allowed to happen in this great country where opportunities exist for every American to advance to the highest levels of their potential and drives.
We will need to put more emphasis on critical thinking skills in K-12 education. This will help foster a more independent thinking and discerning group of American voters without requiring a college education to develop those skills.
Thanks to David Brooks for bringing up this point. It has had a big impact on me. That is a microcosm of what we need in our country right now. The ability to listen to each other and learn from each other. Things that divide us need to discouraged and things that unite us need to be encouraged.
Post Script:
MSNBC called the Presidential Election for Joe Biden at 8:24 a.m. PST. Fox and CNN a few minutes later. Now, we need to allow the legal challenges to go through the process. Then, we can start the hard work of once again becoming the United States of America. God Bless America.