A Just Verdict in the Heartland

Today, Sedgwick County (Kansas) District Judge Warren Wilbert sentenced anti-abortion killer Scott Roeder to life in prison for the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Judge Wilbert could have given the convicted murderer a lesser sentence, opening up the possibility of parole in 25 years, but in a remarkable example of responsible jurisprudence, he recognized that Mr. Roeder is not only a murderer, but an evil miscreant who believes he can kill people in the name of his god.

Spurred on by organizations like Operation Rescue, former Republican Congressman Bob Dornan, and thuggish talking heads like Bill O’Reilly, who referred to the late doctor as “Tiller the Baby Killer” at least 28 times from his bully pulpit on Fox News, radical anti-abortion opponents terrorized Dr. Tiller’s family, staff, and patients for years.

Inspired by a belief that women had a right to safe, clinical abortions, Dr. Tiller endured thirty years of death threats, a fire-bombing of his clinic in 1986, and survived after being shot five times by Shelley Shannon in 1993. Scott Roeder, after months of stalking the doctor, finally succeeded in the name of the radical anti-abortion movement, murdering him in cold blood during services at a Lutheran Church in Wichita, KS., on May 31, 2009.

Abortion is legal in the United States, and Dr. Tiller provided a lawful medical service to the women of central Kansas. Mr. Roeder, age 52, will not be eligible for parole until 2060, when he will be 102 years-old. I hope he takes a long hard look at the walls of his prison cell, because he’s going to die there.

Why We Needed Healthcare Reform Now

After a long, drawn out battle complete with racist, hate-filled diatribes courtesy of the Tea Party protestors and a Republican opposition that brought nothing to the table except a warped desire to block every initiative of the Obama presidency, I was overjoyed when our chief executive signed the healthcare bill this week. For the first time in months, Democrats seized the initiative and delivered on one of the President's campaign platforms.

The system is broken, plain and simple. Our unregulated, for-profit health insurance companies have become the scourge of the middle class and working poor. Unlike many of my friends and some family members, I believe that affordable healthcare in one of the wealthiest nations on earth is an inalienable right, not a privilege. According to the Health Affairs website, 52 million Americans will at some point be without insurance in 2010. That's one in every six Americans, and it's absolutely shameful.

Thankfully, the entire healthcare bill is available online at opencongress.org. In numerous debates I have had with conservative friends and foes in the last week, the vast majority of them are relying on information from Fox News or the usual right wing scare tactic of e-mail chains filled with lies and outrageous claims. I can rebut ninety percent of their falsehoods with specific sections in the bill (healthcare for illegal immigrants, IRS access to our bank accounts, health care rationing, ad nauseum), yet they only believe what Glenn Beck told them about "the socialization of medicine in this country" and refuse to use their reading skills to separate fact from fiction. It's not only maddening, but also a sad indictment about the paranoid inroads that these so-called pundits have made on the American psyche.

It reminds me of the Jack Nicholson outburst from "A Few Good Men."

"You want to know the truth? You can't handle the truth!"

I understand that people are scared of this legislation. Not only is it a significant change to the current healthcare system but it also contains some ambiguity regarding cost reductions in the Medicare budget. I think it's also realistic to question whether the nonpartisan, Congressional Budget Office's assurance that the legislation will reduce the deficit by 138 million dollars over the next ten years and 1.2 trillion dollars in the following decade is accurate. It's not a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a start.

Regardless of whether the number of Americans who die each year because of their lack of access to affordable healthcare is 40,000 or 25,000, we must accept the fact that is an atrocious legacy of our system. All of the right wing's incessant lies about government run "death panels" have in fact been a sanctioned corporate parade of death for years. Shareholders profit when the insurance company drops a sick newborn or cancer patient from their rolls, and the consumer or their family member pays that price, sometimes with their life.

Hello Spring...

It’s been a long winter for my family here in northern Indiana. We had snow on the ground for nearly eight consecutive weeks and it seemed like we would never see a day where the mercury hit fifty degrees. It wasn't a particularly hard winter. My kids only missed a half day of school due to the weather, and that was due to a fog delay of all things. No major snow storms, just four or five inches here and there, a seemingly never ending reload whenever the earth threatened to melt the white stuff away.

Well, it finally happened two weeks ago. Several consecutive days of fifty degree weather finally allowed us to see grass in our yard. Even the black squirrels were happy. Instead of hanging out up in the trees or digging through last year’s flower boxes on our deck, the squirrels have been darting around the property checking for hidden stashes of walnuts. The birds seem happy as well. Cardinals and even a Red-Wing Blackbird have been making touch and go landings in the backyard, ever vigilant of the Cooper’s Hawk that has taken up residence in our cul-de-sac.

Both of my kids have abandoned their video games, computers and the television, instead spending their time outdoors playing with friends or sharpening their baseball and softball skills. They haven’t broken any windows yet (which seems to be a spring ritual), so we go about our chores in nervous anticipation of that first hard sound of shattered glass. Between playing family games of “horse” in the driveway and cleaning up the collateral damage of broken limbs in the yard, we have rediscovered the joy of being unburdened by coats and mittens.

Even our neighbors appear to be on a “spring high.” The dog walkers have an exaggerated bounce to their step and contented smiles on their faces. The kids are getting fewer after-school phone calls and more knocks on the door inviting them to jump on a neighbor’s trampoline, play hopscotch or shoot hoops. People are out working in their yards, pausing from their tasks when we drive by, and shouting greetings that I haven’t heard in six months.

I’m not quite ready to dust off my golf clubs or get the bikes down from the racks in the garage, but it won’t be long. Summer is a marvelous season, but spring is the time when we shake off our chilly exteriors and embrace civilization again.

Vacation

I am on the last day of a three day break that was supposed to last a week. We haven’t done a whole lot (went to the movies, had a cookout with the in-laws, laid around and dreaded going back to work on Monday), but I find myself wondering if we will ever get back to the days of taking that much needed summer hiatus of year’s past. Like many typical American families, we have grown accustomed to taking one week every summer and heading for the beach or the mountains. Unfortunately, over the last three years I haven’t managed to get out of the state with the wife and kids due to work commitments and our son’s grueling baseball schedule.

Frankly, this has been the summer from hell. Between working a job that has become increasingly stressful and unfulfilling as my hours have continued to increase to the point that I’m working ten hours a day, six days a week, my son tore his MCL playing baseball and my wife tore a calf muscle playing kickball. In the course of a just a few months, we have become a family that was constantly on the go to one of crutches and doctor’s appointments. No baseball was the perfect excuse for scheduling a quick trip to Savannah or the mountains of Tennessee , but the thought of carting one half of the family up the Appalachian Trail on a dolly didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, not to mention the fact that my nine year old daughter would probably hop on the daddy-pulled four wheeler as well.

So here we are rapidly approaching school and we have yet to have that defining moment of summer’s past. How do you give your kids that “wow” experience when you live in the northern part of a state that has a cooler-than-normal summer season that lasts about as long as Janet Leigh in the shower scene from the movie “Psycho?” We have to drive four hours to southern Indiana just to see hills (the kind of land buds that the glaciers laughed their asses off and didn’t even give a second glance to as they headed east millions of years ago). Hell, the tallest point in Indiana is in the middle of a corn field in the east-central part of the state where I grew up. How many Sherpa’s would it take to summit a corn field?

We’ve already done the Lake Michigan day trip this summer, a quick 75 minute drive to Saint Joseph, Michigan, on a chilly weekend in June. It’s a beautiful town on the lake, but about the only thing it has in common with the sunny Gulf of Mexico is water. And let me tell you, it’s really cold water. It’s the kind of water that comes out of a drinking fountain that’s so close to 32 degrees it gives you a brain freeze. If I ever want to experience water that cold again I’ll just go jump in the Elkhart River in January.

I guess I’m just thankful that I’ve got pretty good kids. The type of kids that understand how hard we work to provide them with the creature comforts of a decent life, don’t give us a whole lot of grief when we fall asleep at the movie theater watching a PG movie, and say “thanks” when we deliver them safely home from practices and sleepovers. When I look at our lives in that dimension, I can rest easy at night knowing that even if we didn’t make it past the state line for a ten day vacation, my children understand that we are doing the best we can.

And that’s all I can ask of my family. Work, love, and dream of a better tomorrow.

This Journey

As my son, Ethan, quickly approaches his fourteenth birthday, I’ve found myself reflecting on the wondrous journey that has brought us to this first summit in our lives; the beginning of manhood for himself and the long, slow recognition of this milestone on my part. There is a hint of sadness in this realization, even though I’ve know for years this day was coming. I guess I thought it would be a little later in his teen years (like sixteen or seventeen, which is around the time I started pulling away from my parent’s arms). Either way, I should have been prepared for this unmarked date on my calendar, but truthfully, the years have raced by so quickly that I find myself stunned at where we find ourselves today.

In many respects, he is still the same delightful child that we brought home from the hospital bundled in a blue blanket. He is honest, respectful to adults, opens doors for little old ladies, and works hard at school to bring home honor roll grades. His sparkling brown eyes and infectious laugh still bring a smile to my face, but at the same time he is beginning to assert his independence in a way that sometimes leads us to hours or days of sullen silence. In this supposedly enlightened age of cell phones and instant communication via text messaging, I’m still struggling to loosen the reins and set him free.

Trust is like swimming. I know he can dog paddle from one end of the pool to the other, but could he save himself if he got swept out to sea by an invisible rip tide? Those parents who can cut their kids loose at the county fair with a twenty dollar bill (o.k., maybe two twenty dollar bills) and brief instructions to meet at the entrance in three hours are a marvel to me. In my heart I know he will almost always behave and do the right thing (like staying away from strangers who look like Billy Bob Thornton on a three day Budweiser binge), but I cannot seem to get past that parental hump in the road that our children have to learn from their mistakes.

I’ve also noticed subtle changes in the bonds that have wrapped us together over the years. Many of the activities we used to do together have been cast aside for his need to constantly be around his friends and my growing need for down time from a life that has become more stressful in the last twelve months. Those frequent intersecting times when we would go to see a movie, play golf, or go fishing have dwindled to the point where we seldom spend just father/son time together. Looking hard into the mirror, I have belatedly started coming to grips with the fact that, like his mother and younger sister, he is an extrovert- and I am an introvert.

But the bond between a father and his son is a funny, quirky sort of thing. It hits you very hard and at the least expected times. It happens after a frosty exchange of “Why you can’t spend the night at your friend’s house three nights in a row.” It happens after a bad game where the ball just wouldn’t fall through the basket. It happens when I’ve said the word “no” so many times it flies out of my mouth before I’ve had a chance to consider the question.

Just when I think this impenetrable wall is sliding between us, when I think he only needs me to put a roof over his head or give him spending money, he will ask me something that knocks me back a few steps. Something like “Are you proud of me for getting straight A’s in school last semester?” It’s times like these… that after I’ve assured him how very proud I am and that he has the potential to do or be anything he wants in life, that I find myself getting teary with the knowledge that he is my lovely son, and that we have a bond so strong and resilient that it will never be broken.

Happy Hour at Shooter's Bar, Grill & Crime Scene

Where else but in America can you go out and drink while packing a .45 caliber handgun? Thanks in large part to the election of President Obama and a Democrat majority in Congress, gun nuts across the country have become convinced that Big Brother is going to break down their doors and confiscate their beloved handguns (as well as their Thompson submachine guns, hand grenades and their treasured collection of vintage Hustler Magazines).

Today, the Tennessee State Legislature became the 38th state to allow gun owners to bring their weapons to their local watering hole. The measure, which of course was supported and encouraged by the National Rifle Association (NRA), does have a caveat that you cannot actually drink while playing with your gun, hence, you must be sober before entering the nightly game of Russian roulette at Shooter’s Bar & Grill.

That server not hopping fast enough for you with your drink order? Show him/her your killing piece and you’ll be amazed at how quick that pitcher of beer hits your table. Sick of losing every game of pool? Instead of hitting your opponent over the head with your cue stick, pull your legally licensed six-shooter from your ankle holster and kill the cheating bastard. Tired of getting hit on by Tom, Dick and Harry, ladies? Pluck that nickel-plated nine millimeter from your purse and start shooting. After all, that’s why we call it Happy Hour, right?

Is it any wonder that we have the highest death by handgun rate of any civilized country on the planet? The inmates are running the asylum in this country these days, and with the paranoid greenbacks of the NRA fueling their political fervor, politicians are passing some of the most asinine gun laws this country has ever seen. I have nothing against people owning guns (I even have one myself)- but mixing alcohol with stupid people who have a John Wayne complex or the mind of a frat boy, is a recipe for a sloppy reenactment of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral every Saturday night at your favorite watering hole.

I guess we’ve reached a point of lunacy where if you live in one of these 38 states where you can carry and imbibe (I’m not sure if we can in Indiana, although you can carry a weapon in our state parks- just in case you get attacked by a rabid mole on a grub binge), it’s probably safer to stay home and listen to the crickets from your back deck while you knock back a Budweiser.

The World Without Us?

I’ve never considered myself to be a day-to-day environmentalist, but late last year I read a book titled The World Without Us, written by Alan Weisman. The book was a fascinating “what if” scientific perspective of what might happen to the planet and all the crap we’ve built- if one day man simply vanished from the face of the earth. Not exactly a pleasant thought (especially since we’re planning a family vacation in early August), but a very interesting thesis given how mankind has treated our home as if it were a giant porta-potty.

I have to admit that I picked up the book primarily out of a fascination of how long it might take the average American home (like mine) and the Gotham-like super structures of our cities to erode, corrode, and simply fall apart or collapse. The book didn’t disappoint in that regard. I was simply amazed at how short a lifespan my house, and for that matter, New York City, would have if we were gone and nobody was home to take care of basic maintenance.

I was also pleasantly surprised to read that cockroaches might soon follow our great leap into oblivion. Apparently without our nuclear-fired squalor and propensity for leaving Cheetos laying around the house like stale popcorn on the floor of your local cinema, these disgusting little bastards would starve to death. Other than mosquitoes and the common house fly, I can’t think of another creature I would rather have rotting beside my dusty corpse.

However, the true beauty of Mr. Weisman’s tome wasn’t the scientific expertise of how our post Dark Ages structures would fall apart, but the resurging aftermath of nature taking back the earth once we are all gone. No more fishing trawlers (or human demand) decimating the ocean’s vast species of aquatic life, no more man-made poisons in the fields, and no more cars spewing carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Environmentalist or not, it’s hard not to fall in love with the thought of a distant future where plants and animals reclaim what was, and is, rightfully their place in the cycle of this planet.

We currently live in a worldwide culture (with apologies to China and their one child per couple policy) where we have lost our ability to count. I’m not even remotely capable of doing the math on how we are going to feed the estimated 10 billion people who will probably be walking the earth in 2075, but I do know that too many people equals not enough food, a messy kitchen, and a very empty refrigerator.

Except for the premise that all mankind would simply disappear with the snap of Mr. Weisman’s talented fingers, I really don’t think it’s such a far-fetched scenario. At the rate mankind is overpopulating the planet, catastrophic disease and famine could be a very real possibility in our lifetimes. Add into the equation our reliance on everything nuclear, and you have the recipe for a disaster of biblical proportions. Given the scenario of the earth looking like a poisoned version of the moon or a landscape repopulated with towering forests and pristine waterways, I’ll take the National Geographic version every time.

Seriously, would it really be all that horrible to imagine a world without us?