Archive for the ‘compassion’ Category
A few seconds
We all have those “few seconds” moments, something that happens over the length of a moment or two yet is so indelible it stays with us, sometimes for a lifetime.
I’ve just written about one of those few seconds moments, the first of two essays on a very personal, enlightening incident. It’s titled A Few Seconds, Part One: Bach. We all have moments like these. I chose to write about this one because I knew nothing about the actor at the core of this memory for forty years, not his name and not the name of the film he was in that I saw, once, in the late ’60s.
It’s on my Scribd site. I’ll let all of you know if I hear from the actor.
The toughest communication challenge
Convincing people to accept reality over belief may be the toughest challenge in communication. Even if evidence is presented that empirically demonstrates that a person’s notion or perspective on a subject is skewed or incorrect, it won’t matter a’tall. Often, the belief is related to a subject or situation that develops at a distance from the believer, something conceptually or literally too big to experience directly, so the believer relies on a variety of sources to inform, or inflame, their belief.
There are people who still believe there were WMD in Iraq, even though the architects that relied on the premise of WMD to go to war have admitted, on the record, that none existed in a form or manner that constituted imminent danger to other countries.
There are people who do not believe that our modern, industrial presence on the planet has altered the atmosphere in a detrimental manner, even though ninety-eight percent of the world’s climate scientist and researchers state or have research results that indicate our climate is already exhibiting changes that do not bode well for mankind.
And then there are the those who believe that welfare drug addicts are cheating our government, and, therefore, those addicts are actually taking advantage of the honest, hard working men and women who pay taxes and live by the rules. These welfare drug addicts need to be stopped, because while the rest of us have to bust-butt to survive in this country, those other miscreants and lazy bastards are getting free money to fuel their irresponsible, addicted lifestyles.
Good thing there’s the Internet and email to let me know about this situation.
Here’s the email that alerted me, a missive that many of you may have already seen in one form or another:
I have a job.
I work, they pay me.
I pay my taxes & the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.
In order to get that paycheck, in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem! ).
What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test.
So, here is my question: Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?
Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their BUTT —-doing drugs while I work.
Can you imagine how much money each state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?
I guess we could call the program “URINE OR YOU’RE OUT”!
Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don’t. Hope you all will pass it along, though. Something has to change in this country – AND SOON!
Sigh.
Like so much other crap that circulates around the ‘net labeled “This is True!” and “The real story behind…” I would normally dump this and not spend any time on it whatsoever. But, this came to me — twice — from people I know, and who know me and my communication-obsessed personality.
And soon thereafter I read several public assistance-related news stories, and I realized it was time to communicate on this, because: states are already passing drug test requirement programs for those on public assistance; candidates for political office are including it as part of their campaign platforms; and otherwise rational people who I know personally believe this approach to be a good idea.
What may be the most significant reason to comment on this situation, though, is to offer and point to some relevant reality to offset the momentum of personal-but-skewed belief, like with this from Huff Post reporter Arthur Delaney a few weeks ago (edited for brevity, with nothing taken out of context):
Indiana was among the states where Republicans pushed laws requiring drug tests for various government benefits in 2011, and the state GOP successfully passed a version requiring unemployed workers to undergo drug tests for unemployment benefits or to participate in the state’s job training program. Anyone who didn’t pass such a test, the law stated, was considered to have “refused an offer of suitable work.”
In the immediate wake of the laws, little evidence has emerged that they were necessary. The first round of drug tests on those participating in the job training program, in fact, yielded just a 1 percent rate of failure, the Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney reported today:
[A]ccording to the state’s Department of Workforce Development…of 1,240 job applicants tested from July to December, only 13 failed the test. Three additional people refused to provide a urine sample and seven submitted urine that was too watery.
Though government data suggests that those on benefits are twice as likely to use drugs as those who aren’t, outright evidence from the states has thus far yielded little evidence. In Florida, only 2 percent of welfare recipients failed the first round of tests, meaning the program isn’t likely to save much money, if any at all. If the 1 percent numbers hold up in Indiana, it isn’t likely to save a significant amount of money either, and like in Florida, the cost of the program could actually outpace the savings from it.
Occasionally the reality vs. myth communication challenge is best served by both reality, like the example above, and a point-of-view that might not be considered by those blinded to objectivity.
We are all entitled to our beliefs, just as we are all entitled to reveal what kind of person we really are by what we do and how we address our own temporary ignorance.
And so, my response to the random urine test email is this:
For the sake of discussion, let’s take this whole thing up a notch. Let’s say we all have to take government-mandated urine tests, for everything from credit card applications to mortgages.
Now, since nothing is infallible, if there’s a mistake on the urine test — because the government doesn’t do everything right or they wouldn’t just be giving free money to lowlife addicts on public assistance — and the test comes back positive, what will you do then?
Ask to have another one?
If you’re a teacher, for example, will you be alright with the week, or two, or month, or more that a database somewhere flags you as having failed a drug test?
And, of course, all the other teachers will believe you when you say it was mistake.
Think that’s just an exaggeration? Ever had to have something corrected like a bill that’s wrong, or something on a credit report.
Was it always easy?
Did it always get fixed with one short phone call?
So imagine if you had to take a government supervised urine test, and it was wrong. Imagine what you might have to go through to get a mistake corrected.
The mindset that the vast majority of people on public assistance are sitting around smoking dope and shooting up is trite, inaccurate and, frankly, un-Christian. The tens-of-thousands of people who can’t find work in this economy (including people you may know, I’ll bet) would probably take issue with the notion that because they’re not working and need to feed themselves and their kids they should be forced to take a urine test to qualify for public assistance.
Most prefer to be working, and many who blame the current administration for their lack of employment would have plenty to say about putting their good citizen reputation under the control of someone who worked for the very government that can’t get them a job.
And is the urine test going to test for weed, cocaine and heroin, or is it going to also include alcohol? Of all those, which is the more abused? Ask the Georgia state representative how he feels about all this now since, shortly after co-sponsoring a drug test bill for public assistance, he was popped for DUI just two weeks ago.
I’m not saying that there aren’t people on public assistance who do drugs, but I am saying that before we go right to “Throw the bums in jail,” there are other ways to work things out.
If anyone thinks that the country is full of public assistance drugies sucking the money out or our pockets, they should get their own butts down to a food bank or charitable kitchen on a holiday and see how many families show up to get their kids a holiday meal…because the family can’t afford to buy one and have it in their foreclosed house…
I suppose my attitude and views are what people might call “bleeding heart”, but with the whole urine test thing I’d say that it’s more about seeing all sides of a situation. I’d also say there’s a reason that many images of Christ focus on his heart, glowing or bleeding. I’m not anything close to being a mainstream Christian, but I do know that JC was a guy who embraced the leper when no one else would, and the “he who is without sin cast the first stone” dude.
And here’s what I imagine the conversation would be if he were around and someone said,
“Hey, these lazy sons-a-bitches who are living off the government should be forced to take a drug test to get their money.”
“You mean the Medicare and social security recipients?”
“No, the public assistance bums.”
“The unemployed?”
“No, no, those other people, you know…”
“Huh. Not sure; can you describe them for me?”
“Oh, never mind.”
Finally, that little bit at the end of the email — “Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don’t” — gosh, guess that means there’s only one way to look at this issue. Didn’t realize there could be only one obscenely misconstrued side of the story.
For Speedy
If someone you know texts you in the middle of the night and their message is troubling, call them.
If a someone you know calls you in the middle of the night or early in the morning, answer and talk until you have an inkling that they’re okay, and then call them later, and keep calling until you get them.
If someone you know seems to be down, different, pulling away, get ahold of them and ask, “Are you okay?” and then don’t be afraid to draw out more than they at first were willing to share.
If someone begins to say things that are a bit troubling, about their state of mind, or about the uselessness of the world, even if it’s supposed to sound like they’re ‘just saying stuff’, follow the instructions above.
If you’ve never understood why someone would think the world is no place to be, if you’ve often wondered why anyone who wondered that could be so weak, or why anyone would be unable to pull themselves out of a funky mood, then commit to finding out why yourself.
Being a true friend, being human, means more than just sharing laughs and good times, it means being aware that other people may have internal views and thoughts that you, in your lucky way, can’t ever see yourself having, and then being aware that being a good friend means looking at the world as if through someone else’s eyes.
And after you do that last part, contemplate how you would see you.
Finally, even someone who seems to have super powers, a lust for life, a passion for good times, and anything related to those, may look at themselves in life’s mirror and see nothing but darkness.
Be someone’s light in their darkness.
10 years – a bittersweet anniversary
Mom's Voice
Lily Harkins died ten years ago today, but she lives on thanks to National Public Radio.
My sister Moe and I miss her, certainly, and we know she’s remembered fondly by everyone who knew her. Often when I think of her I hear my nieces doing their spot-on impersonations of her laugh.
She shouldn’t have died so young, and she shouldn’t have died of COPD. It took me years to understand, truly, that she had no choice in the matter, because she had started smoking cigarettes in her teens and by the time her lungs barely functioned anymore she and nicotine had a relationship that couldn’t be broken. I am thankful that I stopped giving her a hard time about it before she became ill, and I still carry some guilt at not recognizing sooner how serious her illness had become.
It’s all a little more poignant today because I’ve just recently collaborated on a how-to-quit smoking book with my good friend and fellow creative-guy Mick Anger. He quit after 40-ish years, on his own, using his own method; we’re shopping it around now. It almost certainly wouldn’t have helped my mom, for all sorts of different reasons, but I thought about her a lot while we worked on it.
So I don’t give people who smoke any grief, and wish only for them to find a way to quit. This is my yearly attempt to put into perspective what ‘can’ happen at the end of a smoker’s life. To describe my mom’s silence at the end of her life as ironic is an understatement, and the story presents that in a much better way than what I’m writing here.
Miss you mom. Moe, this one’s for me and you.
The truth, from a nineteen year-old
I had no plans to post today. I’ve become a once-every-four weeks poster, but I am close to starting a series of special video-related posts here and on Scribed about my roadie days; I’ll let you know when that begins.
Those who know me, though, will understand why I felt the urgency to share this. I haven’t seen anyone speak this eloquently, from the heart, in a long while.
This young man’s few minutes are impressive, moving, and important.
Sadly, in this ever-increasingly mean world, there are those who will view this and, replicating a few of the posts on the YouTube site, will respond with callousness, inhumanity, and ignorance. To you, let me be eloquent in my own way: the Buddhist that is me knows that your attempts to make the world a meaner, more judgmental place are sad and misguided; the old roadie that is me says go fuck yourself.
Zach Walls is one helluva guy.
We must change
The problem is us. The problem is that we continue to listen. The problem is that angry words, demeaning, fiery catchphrases, and motivation by paranoia have become the money that buys exposure. These are the qualities that get people their fifteen-minutes (and more on the Web) of face-time, images and sound-bites transmitted across the world for anyone to see, to listen to, and to act upon.
It’s not a free speech issue — it’s a selfish issue. From the local news photographer at the latest protest, to the executive producers and network execs who find $40 million dollars to create and broadcast shows which regal in the froth of doomsday prophecies, down to the deeply troubled, one-person vendetta shop, where pages of unsubstantiated, twisted history and research move from computer to printer to paper to anxious hands and into the malleable minds of tortured souls, the real problem for all of us is that we refuse to accept responsibility for influencing and promoting the ideas that fuel the lives of others.
You can’t — whether you are O’Reilly, Beck, a Tea Party leader, a Republican leader, a pundit, a celebrity, an influential Democrat, a Christian, an atheist, an anti-abortion supporter, a segregationist — you can’t separate yourself from the actions of people that you otherwise wouldn’t have anything to do with but who have been influenced by what you’ve said “to them”, because that’s the whole point of your show, your platform, your speech, your meeting, to talk to “them”. You can’t use words like “target”, then merge it with a crosshair symbol, and believe that its affect on someone cannot be attributable to you because you were only giving voice to your opinion.
You can’t scream at a person, or a viewer, or a reader, warning them of some kind of impending doom that needs action taken to prevent it, and then recluse yourself from the consequences by saying that your words are expressing a point of view, and were never meant to incite someone to do something tragic.
You can’t tell someone they’re an aberration against god, that they’re not going to heaven, that they should be removed from common decent society, that they have no right to be in love with whoever they choose, that they are inferior, that they will bankrupt the country, that their presence in society will be the downfall of our nation, that the people who support those kinds of people and their beliefs must be stopped, you can’t do that and not expect someone to believe you’re right and take action based on what you said.
You can tell people you don’t agree with them. You can hate a person’s politics while still loving the person. You can eventually learn not to hate at all. It is possible.
You cannot distance yourself from your words. You cannot stand on the platform of free speech and democracy to build your own empire, whether in a church basement, an ethnic-bashing meeting over coffee, a political strategy session, or network production meeting, and remove yourself from consequences that you had encouraged your listener to strive for.
You cannot bring a gun to a public gathering and expect to be received without fanfare. If you bring a gun to a public gathering, you are doing it to further an agenda, not to keep yourself safe, and certainly not to keep those around you safe. You cannot call someone demonic and describe what they do for a living as deplorable and ignore that somewhere amongst the 20,000,000 viewers of your show, one or two people will do something to please you.
You can’t utter the words “I know someone, and they know it’s true…”, and follow those with Internet-fueled, unsupportable, hyperbolic stories, the kind that come from Web pages with animated waving American Flags and promote patriotism with pithy quotes, and not at least be a small part of the spark that lights an inferno.
Our problems are not pro-gun, anti-gun, easy access, too much information, or too many channels. Our problem is our reluctance to accept our own culpability, our complicity, when hideous events occur. and to remember that complicity so we can alter the course of our lives and stop being complicit.
Every person loses a treasured piece of humanity whenever another suffers at human hands, but more and more that loss occurs long before the suffering is rendered, it occurs the moment we listen to words and views which we know in our heart shouldn’t be said, which we know we should stand against.
There is no suitable “Yeah, but…”
There is only one way forward.
We must change.
My love and thoughts to those who suffer.
My annual post: Still on the road
I was on the road when John Lennon died.
I was in Ohio. Gonzo and I were on tour with The Babys, a band with a brief career and some good tunes. They had been the opening act for Journey’s tour, but within a year The Babys would break up, and Journey would snag Jonathan Cain, The Babys keyboardist, to replace Greg Rollie, Journey’s co-founder, keyboard player and vocalist (who is also the voice on classic early Santana hits).
I don’t remember specifics about exactly what I was doing when I heard the news. That’s one of the downsides of actually being part of the music and concert industry way back when, at least for some of us. I’m pretty sure we were watching Monday Night Football, and we heard Howard Cosell make the announcement. I remember being stunned.It just wasn’t what you’d expect. It was a foreign concept, that John Lennon would be shot and killed. It made no sense. Then again, with a few exceptions, it never makes sense whenever someone is shot.
But, John Lennon?
It hurt all of us, sure, but, me and Gonzo, we were in it, y’know? We weren’t rock stars, but we worked for a rock band. We didn’t hear our music on the radio, but we heard the music of the guys that we hung out with every night. We were getting good paychecks and having a great time because we were in the industry. Little tiny specks in the industry, certainly, but, in it, nonetheless.
We were in it, really, because of the Beatles. We were in it for the same reason young guys formed bands and played music and held on to a dream of some day doing nothing but playing music for a living, and living the music. We had those notions, for good or for bad, because we had been brought to the dream by the Beatles. I’m pretty freaking old in a lot of people’s eyes now days (I’m fifty-six), old enough to have gone to the Marquette Theatre on the corner of 59th and Kedzie to see a Hard Days Night (it’s where I also saw Ferry Cross the Mersey, with Jerry and the Pacemakers) the day it was released. I was already interested in the guitar before the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, but me and thousands of other kids ramped up our dreams by learning how to play Day Tripper and every other Beatles tune we could figure out.
Hard to imagine that anyone else will come along in my lifetime and make a global, cultural change like the Beatles did.
And so there I was, in Ohio, having achieved some tiny level of satisfaction as a roadie, for bands that got airplay, that played concerts in small halls and big stadiums, and I was just doing it, living it, feeling it…
And John Lennon was dead.
Allow me to digress briefly: Years after Lennon’s death, the industry lost another great, influential soul when Bill Graham was killed in a helicopter accident. He didn’t have the stature of Lennon, but he was a major force in live music. Shit, he was THE force. Clarence Clemons had a condo just beyond my backyard in Sausalito, and we’d see each other, shoot the shit every now and then (I was on the video crew for some of the Born in the USA tour), and we saw each other the day after Bill’s accident.
Clarence looked at me and asked, “Now what?”
He was asking how on earth do we fill that void? Who would we turn to now, who would keep things happening, who would put on shows that people would remember their entire lives, who could musicians and artists and managers and fans rely on to make the impossible possible, how would we ever find our way to nirvana without the guru?
That night in Ohio was a “Now what?” moment.
Everything would be the same after that, because everything keeps going no matter who lives and who dies, just as everything would be the same after Graham, but, just like it is for all our tragedies, personal and distant, nothing would ever be the same.
As I get older, I realize how powerful the “Now What?” moments are in our lives, and I grudgingly accept, with sadness, that the “Now what?” moments must occur, and all I can do is carry them with me, remember them, and use them to guide me, to remind me of how I should treat people, and make the most of every moment, because the next moment isn’t promised to anyone. Not to me. Not to you. Not to John Lennon.
Lennon and millions of other souls are gone, and I can ask “”Now what?”, but, more importantly, I think John Lennon would say it’s okay to ask the question, as long as I move my ass down the road to look for the answer. It’s the moving that’s the answer; the journey is the answer; the knowing that life is full of “Now what?”, and you may never know why, but the only way you’ll ever a chance in hell of figuring out anything is to keep moving…
On the road.
She was big
She was big, and we’ll never forget her.
Katrina came along five years ago and changed a lot of things. She changed me, not just because of her enormity, but because exposed me to several new levels of the human experience.
I’m no stranger to those layers of the human experience of which most people aren’t aware. I don’t consider myself anything but grateful and better for having been occasionally in a circle of people, emotions, places, and circumstances that informed and educated my soul. The Army in the early ’70s immersed me in one kind of world; my seven years in a row of fasting and cooking in San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon on every Thanksgiving and Christmas, working with everyone else to serve 5,000, immersed me in another world; doing adult literacy tutoring for inmates in one of our county jails is another world.
A related aside: one Thanksgiving night after having worked in Glide’s kitchen all day, I was invited to spend that evening with the parents of the woman I was dating at the time, which I did, even though I wouldn’t be eating. As I sat down across from the woman’s father, a man I will diplomatically describe as conservative, asked, “So, Michael, how many of those people today would you describe as just freeloaders?”
“I’d describe most of the people I saw today as families,” was my answer.
Every world we experience — gated communities, slums, blue collar, white collar, discretionary income, welfare — is the same — this world.
Katrina hit us, hit me, hit you, and that world was a nightmare.
It hit Louisiana five years ago. I was driving an American Red Cross truck from California to Louisiana with another volunteer about a week after it tore through. I came home three weeks after that somewhat altered, somewhat the same, and a year later did a solo performance based on my experiences in and around the Lake Charles Coliseum shelter. Next week I’ll do a series of posts about my experiences. I’ll do them for the same reason I did the show, and for the reasons I write and create: because every day, someone experiences their own Katrina on some level, and people need help every day, and they need it from us. I have the creative skills to share what I’ve experienced, and I believe people can learn and grow if I share those things that help me learn and grow. It’s not a big deal, it’s not anything special, it’s just a way I’ve found to contribute to this thing we call our existence.
She was indeed big, and we’ll never forget her. I’ll never forget the things she taught me, and I’ll be sharing some of those things with anyone who’s interested.
