Osler's Razor

When I was the fifth-grader pictured here, I was a student at John R. Barnes Elementary School in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.  It was a good school, with many decent teachers and some great ones, too, along with a committed and caring principal, Mr. McMahon.

The school had a choir composed of fifth and sixth graders.  The music teacher had tryouts in the fall, well ahead of the holiday concert the choir would present.  We each trooped into her music room individually and sang for her.  When it was my turn, I came in, sang what she asked, and turned around.  She said nothing.

A few days later, the names of those who had made the choir went up-- every name but mine and one other kid in the class.  The other kid, Vince, was developmentally disabled.  He spent only some of his day with our class, and even then had special assignments.  My classroom teacher told the whole class that when everyone else went to choir, Vince and I would stay behind and work on a project in our classroom.

I suppose that this is where the story usually veers off into a bitter remembrance of being teased and bullied by the other kids, but that isn't what happened.  Sure, I was hurt and confused about why I was the only student besides Vince not to make the choir-- was I that much worse of a singer than Wally and Dave and Mike?-- but I don't remember anyone in the class saying a cruel word.

So I was left to do my project with Vince as everyone else marched off to the music room.  The teacher  struggled to come up with something Vince and I could work on, and finally told us to design and build a cereal box.

I didn't really know Vince; I was a shy kid, and he had his own challenges.  Now that we were thrown together, though, I had to get to know him.  And I did.

It was the first time in my life I had the chance to work with a handicapped person, to accommodate their needs and acknowledge their strengths, and I found it fascinating.  Vince loved the project.  His mom sent him in with boxes for us to look at, and for the first time I really examined what they put on the box, the marketing and busyness of it.  We went slowly, since we had weeks to finish.  I learned to settle down, to adjust to his pace, and be quiet sometimes with him.  He was often a good listener, it turned out, something that is rare in fifth grade.

After the concert (I didn't go) the choir was done with its task, and so were Vince and I.  Probably I learned much more than the choir kids.  That lesson, in my best moments at least, still informs my actions when I am with someone like Vince.  

That's what I am thankful for today.  I have had failures and humiliations in my life, grave disappointments, and each one has led to something good.  I realize how rare that is, how fortunate I am.  The grace I have received was unearned-- like those afternoons with Vince, I did nothing to bring them on except to fail in some way.  What can be more remarkable than that?

The gentle hand of such grace is a precious thing, and I am a very fortunate man.

Here in Minneapolis there is a place that is a little hard to describe.  The Bryant Lake Bowl is part bar, part hipster restaurant, part bowling alley, and part live theater.

The theater is directly adjacent to the bowling alley, and the soundproofing is... well, I think hipsters installed it.  Which means that when you see a play there, you also hear all the sounds that go with people bowling.  And, inevitably, that means you are sitting there in the theater wondering if it might not be a better evening to be bowling than to be watching this particular play.

I like bowling.  I'm not good at it, but I enjoy it.  That said, last night when I went to see Tom Ward's 31 Plays at the Bryant Lake Bowl, I never once thought I would be better off bowling.

The play, featuring Tom and his wife Sherry, hit pretty close to home.  It centered around Jesus problems, Baylor, Minneapolis culture, and drinking, in about that order of importance.  Needless to say, these are all things I have had on my mind lately.  This is stuff I know.  I have been working on a book about the Trial of Jesus and the fascinating cast of characters associated with that, and there was a certain continuity to my day.

Though a lot of the play would be construed by some as "anti-religious," I would never describe it that way.  It was an honest, painfully honest, revelation by someone about their own faith, a revelation that showed ambivalence, doubt, and (sometimes) rejection.  What truly honest discussion of faith wouldn't include those things?  In truth, the play served the same function as the very best church services-- the ones that tell a story, the kind of story that troubles you deeply, hits close to home, and demands honesty, ambivalence, doubt, and rejection.

That probably isn't a mistake.  Ward grew up with storytelling in church the way that Aretha Franklin grew up with singing in church-- it formed and shaped the tools, which could then be used for other things.

So many great haiku last week!  Go back and read them all-- such excellent entries.

I may not forgive Sara Sommervold for this:

Always the same song,
My Baby Takes The Morning...
We waltz, teens in gym.

Because now I can't get that stupid song out of my head! Here, Sara, I think it is important that you listen to this a few times:

Well, if you really are into Baylor football...

ESPN's College Gameday is in Stillwater, Oklahoma for the big Baylor/Oklahoma State game.  It's a game that really matters, too-- Baylor is undefeated and ranked #4, and OSU has one lost and is ranked #10.  Baylor has a bad history in Stillwater, but this might be the year...

It will be an uphill fight, though.  Oklahoma State has a good squad... and such interesting names!:


 

At any rate, even if you don't like football, there are some good options today.  For example, the new Hunger Games movie is out.  It is about a dystopian society where children from different districts have the "honor" of opposing one another in brutal combat, which is televised to millions of people as a way of distracting them from economic inequalities in their society.  I'm glad I don't live there!

Maybe you don't have a song stuck in your head right now (like I do), but you know it has happened at some time or another.  An advertising jingle, "Muskrat Love," that song about gum that IPLawGuy wrote in 1984, whatever.

Here is mine:

Vampire Weekend;
That Bari sax as a drone...
It's stuck in my head!

Now it is your turn.  Just make it 5 syllables/7 syllables/5 syllables and vent!

Robert Shiller, a Nobel laureate in economics, has called income disparity in the United States "the most important problem that we are facing."  There can be no doubt that income disparity has grown in my lifetime:  from 1979-2007, the top 1% of households saw their income increase by 275%, while the bottom one-fifth saw only an 18% increase.  That's a remarkable difference.

Should it matter that the middle class is shrinking?  Smarter people than me think it does, and even my economics-challenged brain tells me that this is something contrary to the way we Americans see ourselves-- as a hard-working, middle-class country.  In reality, though, we are moving towards a society with a large underclass and a smaller upper class, with fewer people in between.

If you accept that this is a problem (and not everyone does), then the question is what to do about it.

There are several possible approaches, but the two that are most discussed are a more progressive tax structure and a higher minimum wage.  The latter has been in the news lately, as activists have coalesced around a specific target:  the $15 per hour minimum wage.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25, which has been true since 2009.  A full time worker making $7.25 an hour will earn about $15,080 a year.  As President Obama noted, a family with two kids making minimum wage is living far below the poverty line.

Some economists argue that raising the minimum wage would be ineffective or counter-productive at reducing poverty, in part because many poor people don't work and because many minimum-wage earners don't live in poverty.  Common sense tells us, too, that the economic disruption caused by a swift hike in the minimum wage is a bad idea during a fragile economic recovery.  Moreover, price hikes caused by such a change would disproportionately affect the poor-- because they more often than others shop at low-wage employers like Wal-Mart and eat at low-wage employers like McDonalds.

As a long-term strategy, though, I have sympathy to the idea.  It makes sense to me that hard work should be rewarded with something more than poverty, if it is that low-wage work which sustains you. Our society too often imposes policies that disfavors work.  For example, profits from investments are taxed at a much lower rate than most wages.

If I am working for $7.25 an hour, a two-dollar raise is a big deal.  It matters.  It has been a long time since I made $15,000 a year (and things were cheaper then), but I remember acutely how careful I had to be, and how little I could afford.

I know that if the minimum wage is improved significantly the price for some things would go up, but I am willing to pay that difference.  I suspect that I'm not alone...

Rebecca Black is back with a new song:



And if you are into movies, there is that new Hunger Games film coming out this weekend:

This week, Brett Favre said that if he had a son, he probably wouldn't let him play football.

Football may be fading as an American sport.  Not because people don't want to watch it, but because people don't want to play it-- or at least don't want their kids to play.

What might this mean?

I fear that something terrible has happened.

For the first time ever, Mustang's Former Sally has written a haiku, and Geoffrey has not responded.  Here was her poem:

Geoff wanted to be a
Doctor in his youth.Auditioned
Gals for experiments.

Invited Trixie,
For Boudoir experiments,I
Had to put foot down.

On his sorry ass. (Syllables suck!) 

Despite being called out, Geoffrey never showed up.  I'm pretty sure that means that he has died, probably in some kind of defective-toy-related accident.  Sigh. WHY him?  Why?

UPDATE:  It turns out he is ok.  He penned this late entry:

Curious lad,loved
To go to the doctor.When
The nurse looked at him

With soft doe-ish browns,
Felt his heart melt,when her warm
Hand took pulse...med school!!! 

As the Obamacare rollout continues to struggle, one defense we are hearing from Democrats is that George W. Bush had the exact same problems when his administration rolled out his own signature health care initiative, Medicare Part D.  Yes, it's true-- Bush's expansion of prescription drug benefits did suffer some of the same issues.  However, I'm a little tired of that line:  that Bush did it, too.  Admittedly, in the past I have done exactly that at times, but not anymore.

My major problem is that this equivalency masks the true weaknesses of each administration, which are very different.

It's becoming clear that the Obama administration is saddled with a certain and dangerous stubbornness borne of defensiveness.  With Obamacare, for example, they knew it was going to be a mess at rollout.  The logical thing, the responsible thing to do would have been to have fronted the problems, delayed implementation and the individual mandate to get insurance, and get it fixed.  They didn't do that, and it is hard to believe that defensiveness didn't play a role, given that such a delay would have come in the midst of the bitter debate over a government shutdown.  I'm guessing, but it seems like that stubbornness comes from the top.  It's not a good thing, especially when it is so rooted in political concerns.

The Bush administration had a very different weakness.  It appears that (with the exception of the Scooter Libby pardon), George W. Bush was a weak leader within his own administration.  He was swayed by stronger personalities such as Dick Cheney, who had distinct agendas.  Two of his biggest failures (and they were huge) were the reaction to Hurricane Katrina (remember him flying over in the plane?) and initiating the Iraq War, a debacle that wasted a trillion dollars or more and was based on lies in the first place.  Both were from weakness-- an inability to take charge and make sure things were done right. 

President Obama is not much like President Bush, and we need to stop trying so hard to make that comparison. 

I am the child of an artist.  That has been a wonderful thing; from the time I was a small child, I was taught by example to look for beauty everywhere.

Recently, he put together some of his photos of jazz musicians in Detroit into a wonderful book.  You can see some of the images from the book here, and you can (and should!) buy the book using the online form here.

It's only $29.95, which is pretty good!

So... Razorite Bob Darden is changing the world.  He and Mary Darden have traveled the South collecting gospel records for preservation, and now their work is going to become part of the Smithsonian Institute's new African American Museum in Washington, DC.  You can read the excellent Waco Tribune Herald story about it here.

How amazing is that?

100 years from now, no one will care much what the Baylor football team did in 2013, or how nice their stadium was.  They will, however, have the benefit of this musical legacy because of Bob's work, and many WILL care about that.

This morning, I'm on my way back to Minnesota after a long weekend in Louisiana.  We did the Trial of Jesus in New Orleans (on Friday) and in Baton Rouge (yesterday).  It was, as always, a remarkable and fascinating experience.  One of the best articles I've read about the trial, by Jarvis DeBerry, appeared in yesterday's New Orleans Times-Picayune; you can read it here.

The plane ride gives me a good chance, of course, to review the latest crop of haiku, which came up quite nicely!  Our focus was great magazines.  On that topic, in New Orleans it was great to have Abby Rapoport there, who writes for the American Prospect. 

So... what magazines did people write about?  Highlights, Life, National Geographic, Time, National Lampoon, the New Yorker, the Wacoan, Playboy, Penthouse, The Howler, People, Atlantic (twice!),  Cosmopolitan, Weekly Reader, Vanity Fair, House Beautiful (is that really a magazine?), Town and Country, the Saturday Evening Post, something about Kirk Cameron, and "Sheep Fantasies."  Someone (Geoffrey) also mentioned O Magazine, which I had to look up-- sadly, it is not a magazine for and about Oslers.

There were many wonderful entries, but the one that spoke to me most clearly was by Lily of the Valley:

THE NEW YORKER

Ah,the guilt looms large
Your cartoons,your poems like
White-trunked birches grasp.

Noon-day sun essays
Sit unread and pile up like
Excuses.I must read you.

But--what if your brother
Comes next week and insists!!Shame!
I love and loathe you.







Yes, I know that feeling of guilt...

My colleague, Susan Stabile (featured in the video here, before her trip), has just returned from six weeks spent walking the Camino de Santiago (and a little beyond, too).  You can can recap some of her trip via her wonderful blog posts. 

It's got to be hard to return.  A pilgrimage strips away much of what defines our everyday life, and then upon your return-- wham!  It must be a challenge. 

I suspect that many of the most important lessons of a pilgrimage come out in the months and even years that follow... but Susan will know far better than I, and I can't wait to hear about it.

I have this piece about clemency.  I thought I would do something different for Thanksgiving this year....

IPLawGuy sent me this video a few days ago, in response (for some reason-- it doesn't have to make sense with him) to my post about the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto.

It's a great song by a band called the Zambonis, who (1) have licensed that name from the Zamboni Corporation, and (2) write and perform only songs about hockey.  Really.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zambonis  What's not to love?

Hi!  So, today I have a piece in the Detroit News about drug policy, and another one up on the Huffington Post about people who pray outside the grocery store.  I hope you like them.  Now get down there to the post below and haiku!

At Harvard last week, I used issues of Lucky and Glamour as part of my talk.  (It's kind of a long story).  I found myself flipping through them on the way home and... what a bunch of dreck!  It made me go buy some better magazines. 

There are some wonderful periodicals out there right now-- I think the challenges to journalism have inspired some new creative forces.  I even bought a subscription to Garden and Gun, and greatly enjoy it. 

Let's haiku about magazines:  The good, the bad, the old (Highlights for Children?) and the new.  I will go first:

Willome, both Dardens,
Writing about what matters.
I miss the Wacoan!

It's true.  I miss holding it in my hand and seeing all the content.  Ok, now you guys write-- follow the simple 5/7/5 recipe for syllables, and have some fun!  (I will admit some excitement at getting to find out, perhaps, what magazines the Spanish Medievalist reads).

Here are my top three political stories of the week:

1)  Chris Christie brings it

The moderate/conservative Republican won deep blue New Jersey in a landslide.  People just like the guy.  He has some issues, but people seem ok with that-- even the many Democrats who ended up voting for him.

This means he would be an attractive presidential candidate for the Republicans in the next round.  Could he make through the primaries?  Some people say no, but I would point out that the candidate with one of the the most moderate prior records has won out in the end the last few times (Bush and Romney).

2)  Toronto's Crack-Smoking Mayor

So, Rob Ford, the fairly successful mayor of Toronto, finally had to admit that he's been smoking crack.  He's staying in office, too.  Hmmmm... will he be treated differently than Marion Barry?  Should he be?

He reminds some people of Chris Christie in terms of likability... other than the whole crack-smoking thing. 

3)  McAulliffe Beats Cucinelli in Virginia

Terry McAuliffe beat Ken Cucinelli in the Virginia gubernatorial race, but not by much.  As a result, it looks like Fox News scores this as McAuliffe 1, Cucinelli 1/2, and Obamacare 0.  I'll leave further analysis to our resident Virginia Republican, IPLawGuy...

Bonus!

The rollout of Obamacare (not the idea, but the implementation) has been the biggest failure of the Obama administration.  When they knew it was going to be a mess, they should have asked for more time.  Do you agree?

The nice people at the Harvard Law ACS chapter posted a good photo from my talk there last week:

So, Sally is really being mean to poor Geoffrey!  Not that he doesn't deserve it, I'm sure...

So, whoever "Maribelle Winslow III" is (and I have my hunches), I thank her for this halloween reflection:

She was Celtic Saint
Gobnait in cloak bee buttons 
Pinned on.No one answered door.

'Course she was 60 
At the time. The kids asked who
She was. Hard to explain.

One usually dresses
As a sinner for Halloween.
No one informed her.