Labeled For Life

Which File Extension are You?

via emdot (Be sure to check out Marya's Flickr site, too).

"Thing" and "Mimi"

I don't know why I had such a problem remembering my grandfather's (second) wife's name when I was a kid. I think it had to do with the fact that we knew our parents and grandparents not by their names but by their familial relationship to us. With Charlotte, I think I simply didn't know what to call her, since she wasn't my grandmother, so.. I called her "Thing." It wasn't intentional. I didn't think to myself, "I'll call her 'Thing'"... it just popped out.

My mom got rather upset every time I did. I think I'd broken the habit by the time I'd taken this picture, which I think dates back to about 1977 or 1978 – I think they were in town for my younger brother's wedding.



In all the years my grandfather and I were alive at the same time (he died in early 1981), I probably saw him fewer than ten times. He lived in New York City (Manhattan) and rarely traveled to Ohio. We made occasional trips to New York but not so often as to develop a relationship with the man.

Charlotte, as the picture illustrates was rather unassuming and withdrawn. I've never given a whole lot of thought about why she didn't seem particularly friendly, but I often wonder if my mother hadn't rejected her at some point for having become her mother's "replacement." My grandparents divorced and my grandmother died before I had been born, I think. I'm not quite sure when Charlotte came onto the scene, but the picture reflects precisely how I recall her. From what I recall, though, she was a dancer on Broadway at one time. My grandfather was in show business, and at one time, I've been told, he kept books for Guy Lombardo.

While I was digging up the above picture, I came across several others worth mentioning...



Mimi was my favorite aunt. Bar none.

Above is Mimi on the morning of my brother's wedding, sitting at our kitchen table with her husband, my mom's brother, my favorite uncle, "Skip". I think that Mimi was my first relative outside of our household who seemed to genuinely like me — and showed it. Skip is one of the most generous people I've ever known. (By the way, on the right is the piano I played as a kid. Also, note the milk container on the table — pre-HDPE-2.)

Her real name was Madeline, but she was Mimi to everybody. She and Skip married when I was about ten, if I recall... my parents went to New York for the wedding and we kids didn't. Skip had a job with United Air Lines in Chicago, so Mimi moved to be with him in Elk Grove Village (recently shortened to Elk Grove), Illinois, but we visited them quite often and once, when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I stayed with them for a couple of weeks, returning home to Toledo via my first airplane trip.

I don't know that I can recall much about Mimi in particular, except that she was possibly the first adult woman to whom I was attracted (as young boys might be). She was pretty and funny and kind and had one of the thickest New York accents I'd ever heard — and I lived with one! Somehow, I just knew that I was her favorite nephew, too.

Mimi died of cancer that had developed in her pelvis. It was, from all accounts, an excruciating death for her. I was playing softball near Flint, Michigan when I got the news and it was quite devastating to hear it. When I talked to Skip about it, he told me that on the day she died, she had become delusional. The pain was so bad that she hadn't remembered that Skip had already given her her dose of morphine. She was violently belligerent, accusing him of holding out on her. It sounded right out of a movie.

I learned only a few years before she died that she played violin prior to getting married. I never got to hear her play... I'm sorry I never asked her to. After she died, I fantasized that Skip might offer her violin to me, but that never came to be. I wonder what became of it.

I thought of Mimi last evening as I was preparing dinner. I was slicing an onion for dinner and it was a seriously strong one; it got my eyes to watering big time. I recalled that Mimi was the first person I'd ever seen "cry" as a result of slicing onions — I'd seen it in cartoons or TV shows, but had never witnessed it first-hand.

The most recent photo I have of Mimi is this one with her near carbon-copy son, Donald, taken while I was in college. I can't recall the occasion, but I think I hadn't graduated yet. Her cancer hadn't been discovered yet.

The ACLU

I'm posting yet another Sydney J. Harris essay today... I have been reading through Pieces Of Eight quite a bit these last few days, and it sometimes seems rather silly to write my own words when I've got Sydney around to quote.

The following essay is one that I very distinctly recall having read when it was published in The Blade, my hometown newspaper, twenty years ago or more. I read Sydney's column's pretty religiously by the time I had started going to university, but I recall this particular essay having more of an effect on me than those I'd read previously.

I'm quite sure that Reagan was president at the time, but in any event, the ACLU was no doubt at the center of some political firestorm, prompting the essay.

The ACLU – like liberalism – has been caricatured by the Republicans and the radical right as un-American. Recall George Bush's befouling Michael Dukakis for being a "card-carrying member of the ACLU." (It's great to see that at the top of their website they urge: "Become a card-carrying member of the ACLU.")

Frankly, I think that the ACLU is probably the one organization in this country of which every United States citizen could be a member if any wished to be a "card-carrying patriot."

The ACLU Fights For What It Hates

WHAT I LOVE MOST about the American Civil Liberties Union is that it is unique, in the pure and original sense of the word. It does what nobody else does.

What it does is fight for what it hates, while the rest of us fight (if we do at all) against what we hate. We defend only what we believe; the ACLU defends what it detests.

In New Jersey not long ago, a parochial high school refused to issue a diploma to a student because he was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in the town, and he refused to renounce his membership in this rancid organization.

Nobody respectable rushed to his defense except the ACLU, which branded the school's action "a clear-cut violation of constitutional rights." It will take the case to court if it has to, and I have no doubt it will win. It usually does, in matters of civil rights.

Sometimes I think it is almost the only group in America that really understands, respects, and upholds our Constitution. Other groups are interested mostly in the rights they think will help them; the ACLU alone seems to realize that you have no protection unless you protect those you violently disagree with.

The organization was nearly wrecked a few years ago, when it also defended the right of the Nazi Party in Chicago to march through a suburb heavily populated with Jews. It lost a lot of Jewish members (who had been among its most stalwart supporters until then), but it stuck to its guns and was vindicated by the courts.

What has surprised and saddened me over the years is that its membership has been recruited largely from those who are called liberals in the political spectrum. Relatively few conservatives have ever joined it — but it seems clear to me that a genuine conservative has a deep and irrevocable stake in civil liberties.

If we really believe in our Constitution and in the freedoms it guarantees to those opinions we find most hateful, we have a moral and patriotic obligation to see that such freedoms are not curtailed for anyone. Otherwise we are phonies, invoking a liberty for ourselves that we are not willing to grant or defend for others.

When conservatives generally show as much alacrity in defending free expression — no matter how far left or right — as they do in invoking free enterprise, then I will begin to believe that they are something more than self-serving. And the best way they can demonstrate their sincerity and devotion to the Constitution is by signing up with the only group in the country that puts it on the line.

JFK and Operation Iraqi Freedom

This is the first year since 1963 that November 22 slipped by without my having recalled the day's historical significance. I feel like I should either go to confession or to a doctor — that sort of scares me! Especially since I just last week saw President Kennedy's nephew — you'd've thunk that would have jogged the ol' memory.

Now that I have recalled Kennedy, I can't help but recall, too, how at the time of his death, he — as well as America in general — enjoyed great admiration amongst the people of Europe and the world. Compare that with the popularity of the miserable failure in foreign lands.

One of my favorite speeches of Kennedy's is the one he gave in the Rudolph Wilde Platz in the shadow of the Berlin Wall in June of 1963 &mdash a little less than six months before his assassination.

What strikes me about the speech today as I read it and listen to it again, is that Kennedy went to Germany to speak directly to those immediately affected by Soviet domination. He let them know that there was reason to hope; he let them know that he — as well as his country — were on the other side of the wall, thinking of them; that we were working to help them gain their freedom.

This, of course, contrasts starkly with the miserable failure's tack. He knows nothing of winning the hearts and minds of a foreign people. (Hell, he can't even do it here at home.) He simply proclaims himself the world's champion of freedom, bombs his way through the door and installs a government. Screw their hearts and minds — oh, yeah... and their lives!

Kennedy's speech:

I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."

I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin. While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

What is true of this city is true of Germany — real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In eighteen years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

Remarks in the Rudolph Wilde Platz
President John F. Kennedy
West Berlin
June 26, 1963

More Sydney J. Harris

With recent events in Iraq – particularly the murder of an injured, unarmed Iraqi by a U.S. Marine – the following essay is appropriate.

I suppose, as Harris states, that any killing that takes place is – by the sheer nature of war – atrocious, but watching a Marine coldly raise his rifle and fire a bullet through a man's head seems far beyond the pale; far beyond what is deemed "necessary" the warmongering miserable failure's hideous war.

As if the above act wasn't hideous enough, Kevin Sites – the imbedded freelance journalist who recorded the video (and whose blog I've linked to above) – is being castigated by the right wing nutjobs, some of whom have gone so far as to implicate Sites in the murder; others suggest Marines take reprisal in the form of violence against him. Another loony even insinuates that Sites could have been in cahoots with the insurgents amongst other things.

These are the so-called believers in "moral values" that have been touted as having elected the miserable failure a few weeks ago.

The Atrocity of War

I HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE to understand the indignation aroused in so many people by "atrocities" of war. In fact, I have never been able to grasp what an "atrocity" is in wartime. For what could be more atrocious than two bands of people resolving a conflict by killing one another?

Once you decide you are going to kill, why should there be any "rules," and why should such rules be observed? The object is to win; any means will do, if winning is the prime objective. War is not a game, where lives are restored when the victor has been decided. All armies are more alike than they are different, just as all flags and all uniforms and all weapons are more alike than different. Once you have resolved that there is no way to change your opponents' views except by slaughtering them, what difference does it make how or why or where you do it?

It seems to me that the greatest hypocrisy of nations is exhibited at their resentment of "atrocities" committed by the other side. Although I think of the Allies as "good guys" and the Axis as "bad guys" in World War II, both sides bombed cities with equal destructiveness when they felt it was to their advantage.

And it was the good guys who detonated the atomic bomb, not once but twice, despite the later verdict of many competent historians that it was a cruelly unnecessary act, prompted by political rather than by military motives. It was not the bad guys who loosed that evil upon the world – an evil that is going to come back to haunt us a thousandfold.

There is no such thing as an atrocity in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself, just as no part can be larger than the whole. Killing is the ultimate act of impiety; all other acts are merely subordinate to it.

It is possible, barely possible, to have a just war, a war waged in self-defense only, as a final desperate expedient. But this is a rare exception in history: Almost all have been avoidable, and were seen to have been so after they ended. They have been wars not of survival, but of pride, power, possession, stupidity, and vengeance.

In man's thousands of years on Earth, virtually everything has changed but this. The world is a totally different place in nearly every aspect of life, so much so that an early Greek or Roman would not recognize it as the same place.

Only one important thing has remained: the way in which sovereign states settle their disputes, by force, by violence, by death. And what is most shocking of all is the fact that we now can kill a million times as many people a thousand times as fast as ever before. The more "progress" we make in warfare, the more barbarous we become. This, beyond anything else, is our terrible legacy to the future.

The "Christian" Right

More Sydney J. Harris from a temporarily blogged-out blogger...

The New Pharisees

ONE OF THE RICH IRONIES of the so-called fundamentalist movement is that while it preaches Christ, it forgets Jesus. For the fact is that the living Jesus would not be an appealing figure to the members of the Moral Majority. For the fact further is that he was a thorn in the side of the fundamentalists of his own time.

Jesus wanted to reform and humanize the religion of his time and his church. He saw it as failing into the hands of the legalists and the narrow moralists. He saw it as becoming proud and priggish and punitive, when it should be humble and compassionate and forgiving.

The fundamentalists of his church reviled and condemned him for his actions, his attitudes, and his sayings. He associated with prostitutes and tavern-keepers and tax collectors. He mingled with the riffraff, not with the respectable members of the clergy.

He was a revolutionary in a moral, not in a political, sense. He reminded us that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath - which means that what is right or wrong to do depends upon the human end, not on the legal code or the ecclesiastical edict.

He was strict about the way we ought to behave toward one another, but lenient toward our personal weaknesses. He warned the self-righteous to "judge not, that ye be not judged. "He preferred the poor, the outcast, the struggling, often the sinner, to the pious, respectable, hypocritical upholders of the law and trustees of the temple.

This is why they hated him and hounded him: because he saw that religion had hardened into ritual, that the early faith of the fathers had turned cold and formal and self-righteous, that the zeal of the prophets had been replaced by the dogmas of the priests.

You cannot read the New Testament without realizing that Jesus was irrevocably opposed to the Moral Majority of his time. His mission was to revitalize and rehumanize the Jewish church, to reawaken its early passion against injustice and oppression.

His idea of morality had nothing to do with gambling or dancing or drinking wine or such frailties. His idea was truly "fundamental" in that it went right to the bottom of men's relations with one another, in terms of brotherliness, tolerance, help, mercy.

His parable of the Good Samaritan was shocking and revolting to the Moral Majority of his day, for he showed how the priests and the pious passed by a fallen man, while the despised Samaritan (the outcast of Palestine) was the only one who tried to work God's will.

Whatever the modem fundamentalist claims in the name of Christ to be, he is taking the name of Jesus in vain. For Jesus was not setting up a church, or establishing rules, or condemning his brothers. He was showing us how God wants us to act toward one another, by his own example. It is a lesson the fundamentalists still have to learn.

History's Course

We all know how our romantic relationships affect our daily lives -- our decisions, our choices, our eating habits... Have you ever wondered how a past flame might have affected the course of history had he or she lived at an earlier time?

From The Banterist...

How Past Girlfriends Could Have Changed History

Adolf Hitler

Tammy wouldn't like Hitler's sense of humor and would give him a frowny face every time he told a joke. He would invite her to his parades and she'd tell him the goose-stepping looked "gay" and that she "didn't get" the swastika. This would undermine his confidence and make it harder for him to retain an iron grip on power. "I don't know what you see in that Goebbels," she'd say. "He seems like kind of a loser." Her constant criticisms would result in Hitler and Goebbels not hanging out as much. As a result, Nazi propaganda would suffer. Tammy would also insist that they forgo his favorite watering holes and instead go to places she likes. The putsch would then happen at a tacky folk-music bar with her ex-boyfriend playing guitar. Most of Hitler's friends wouldn't have shown up, because they couldn't stand the constant arguing. In the middle of their relationship, Tammy would tell Hitler she was going on a trip with some guy she worked with. With Hitler's self-esteem in the gutter, he'd lack the support and influence necessary to invade Poland and start World War II. Eventually, he'd break up with Tammy and call Himmler, whom he'd blown off for two years.

Robert Kennedy, Jr.

I just got back from a speech (if it could be called that — it seemed to be completely extemporaneous) by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that was quite the medicine for the doldrums of the last couple of weeks (need I remind you of a particular election?).

If Kennedy can continue his fight with the miserable failure and his administration's systematic ruination of our environment (amongst other things), then I and like-minded liberal Americans need to buck up and quit moping.

I wish I'd taken a tape recorder. I wish I'd taken notes.

Kennedy noted, as I've heard him tell before, that he considers himself a "free marketeer" — that the Bush administration believes not in a free market economy, but in a crony capitalist economy. They don't believe in a true free market, in which the success of a company is based on its ability to make it in the marketplace — they believe in maximizing profits at the expense of the environment and to the detriment of the least advantaged in this country. They believe in privatizing the commonwealth:

The environmental movement is a struggle over the control of the commons — the publicly owned resources, the things that cannot be reduced to private property — the air, the water, the wandering animals, the public land, the wildlife, the fisheries. The things that from the beginning of time have always been part of the public trust.

[...]

The best thing that could happen to the environment is free-market capitalism. In a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community. In a true free-market economy, you get efficiencies and efficiency means the elimination of waste. Waste is pollution. So in true free-market capitalism, you eliminate pollution and you properly value our natural resources so you won't cut them down. What polluters do is escape the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy — a fat cat who's using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market.

[...]

In terms of the conventional way that we think of civil rights, the burden of environmental injury always falls on the backs of the poorest people. Four out of every five toxic-waste dumps in America is in a black neighborhood. The largest toxic-waste dump in America is in a community in Alabama that is 85 percent black. The highest concentration of toxic-waste dumps is in the South Side of Chicago. The most contaminated ZIP code in California is East L.A. There's 150,000 Hispanic farm workers that are poisoned by pesticides every year. And God knows what's happening to their families. Navajo youth have 17 times the rate of sexual-organ cancer as other Americans because of the thousands of tons of toxic uranium tailings that have been dumped on their reservation land. So the poor are shouldering the burden for pollution-based prosperity by large corporations who have control of the political process.

Really all environmental injury is an assault on democracy, because the most important measure of how a democracy is functioning is how it distributes the goods of the land, the commons. Democracy must ensure that the public-trust assets stay within the hands of the people.

I found an interview which includes much of what he addressed tonight (and from which the above quotes were taken), so take a look.

I was amazed at his ability to move me nearly to tears on several occasions. This man is the type of person I want leading my country; I couldn't help but wondering why there aren't more liberal politicians who are as capable of speaking so adroitly and passionately about the environment. I wondered what a room full of red state Bush voters would think of what he had to say; I couldn't imagine that they could disagree with anything he had to say.

War: A Rationale

Because my work of late has kept me from any protracted posts, I've decided to begin blogging some of Sydney J. Harris' essays from his various collections (which I'm able to read during bathroom breaks!). This one is from Pieces Of Eight, and was written sometime prior to 1982 (the essays aren't dated).

Clearly, it was written before the end of the Cold War, as atomic warfare is somewhat of a centerpiece in the essay. While some of this still applies today -- considering the proliferation of nuclear weaponry in North Korea and (possibly) Iran -- I was most drawn to the idea that war, a "conservative" solution judging by the miserable failure's agenda, contradicts conservative ideas in that the youngest -- those who would otherwise be around fifty years hence -- die first.

War: The Revenge of Age on Youth

I do not think we can explain the recurrence of war on a political or economic or social basis. These elements make war possible; they do not make it inevitable. But war has been as certain as death and taxes in human history.

It has long been my conviction that deep irrational impulses are at work in the promotion and perpetuation of war, in every century, in every society, in every part of the world. We can see it most clearly now, in the atomic age.

Atomic war has been proclaimed "unthinkable," but we are far from giving up thinking about it. Indeed, the atomic powers seem embarked on a collision course of building up such arms that nothing will avert a confrontation. But a war fought with nuclear weapons can only end in mutual destrutcion.

The main impulse I perceive, hidden well below the level of consciousness, is the envy of the fathers toward the sons. Nothing else fully explains why the fathers are willing to see their sons slaughtered in battle in nearly every generation.

In the past they might have justified it by victory -- but there can be no victory now, as every leader on every side well knows.

I think that as men grow older and feel life and sexual vitality and power beginning to slip from their hands, they develop a death-wish for the young and vibrant who are about to seize the reins and control the future. They do not want a world to exist without them.

So they send to war the best, the healthiest, the youngest, the most capable, while they remain behind to pick up the pieces, if any. If war were rational and if men were rational about it, then the oldest, the weakest, the most dispensable for the future would go first. The freshest and strongest would be preserved for the ultimate need.

Can anyone explain why people everywhere, who profess to love their children so deeply, have at all times sent them forth to battle in wars that benefited only kings and chieftains and munitions makers? Why after each war was it seen to be "unnecessary" if only the right few steps had been taken -- and they never were taken? All the historical interpretations fail, one by one, and we are left with the frightful suspicion that we do not love our sons as much as we fear and resent them; that perpetual wars are the revenge age takes against youth; that other "reasons" and "causes" are mere camouflage for a hate that dares not speak its name.

An atomic war, precisely because it threatens universal annihilation, is the perfect "final solution" for this demonic urge.

Ted Rall

While I'm trying to get back into the everyday aspect of every day, election day continues to haunt. Today I talked at length with a co-worker about the whole sordid affair and the prospects o four more years of a lying, murderous administration. (I fear what Ashcroft's resignation might bring!)

I continue to gloss over a few political blogs to see if there have been any serious developments in the fraud investigations in Ohio and Florida, and to see what kind of reports are coming out of Fallujah. (Christ, what a mess!)

Yesterday, I read a blog in which someone called the war in Iraq "Bush's folly"... I don't recall having heard anyone call it that (though folly is indeed what it is) and I wished that someone would have fed that on a regular basis to the press, if only to have them cite someone on air as having said it. You know... just like how the media continued to quiz Republican operatives about Kerry's flip-flops or how he'd "voted for the 87 billion..."

Until tonight, I hadn't read Ted Rall's column in some time, so as I was scrolling through the My Yahoo! newsfeed, I couldn't resist; I clicked on his headline: GUILTY, DISGUSTED, AMERICAN...

The day after a shady election handed to a maniacal buffoon, New Yorkers whose dead remain scandalously unavenged were in the streets. Civil strife, rage, the fight for decency and democracy--they were nowhere to be found.

People looked up at the sky, taking in the sun on a crisp fall day. They streamed in and out of the Disney store. They lived their lives. I lived mine. Half a world away, meanwhile, AC-130 planes and tanks bought by American citizens and dispatched on the orders of criminal goons busily declaring themselves a mandate dropped bombs and shot shells into a city called Fallujah. "Marine Expeditionary Forces will continue to conduct operations and will not cease until Fallujah is free of foreign terrorists and insurgents," read an official military statement. Issam Mohammad, spokesman for the Fallujah hospital, said that a woman was "badly wounded." A young girl lost her leg.

Yes, many people took to the streets, subways, buses and thoroughfares on Wednesday as if it were just another day... as if they'd only lost a buck or two in the Super Bowl pool at work.

The rest of us contemplated how to save the country and the world from this miserable failure.

Lost Frog

Hilarious!

What a wonderful web-wide world!

A New Map

I came across another version of a post-election map of North America tonight.

Be sure to roll your cursor over it.

Another Bush Victim

I have been rather despondent and lethargic after last Tuesday's election results, but I can't imagine going this far...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A 25-year-old from Georgia who was distraught over President Bush's re-election apparently killed himself at ground zero.

Andrew Veal's body was found Saturday morning inside the off-limits area of the former World Trade Center site, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

A shotgun was found nearby, but no suicide note was found, Coleman said.

Veal's mother said her son was upset about the result of the presidential election and had driven to New York, Gus Danese, president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told The New York Times in Sunday's editions.

Friends said Veal worked in a computer lab at the University of Georgia and was planning to marry.

"I'm absolutely sure it's a protest," Mary Anne Mauney, Veal's supervisor at the lab, told The Daily News. "I don't know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic."

Blogging

With a couple of major projects pending, my blogging will time will be trimmed a bit. Thankfully, the election is over. Too much time was spent reading blogs and posting about the events leading up to last Tuesday's dreary, dreary results.

Actually, I'm hoping that my blogging will turn a bit more introspective and less political as the hours, days, weeks, months and years go by. Perhaps this will eventually lead me to the drink I've wanted to taste for so long -- a book.

If I were to write a novel, my working title is Look Before Spitting.

If I were to write a "current events" type book, it would be titled It's Not The Economy, Stupid.

If I were to write something academic (stop laughing!), it would be a biography or profile of Sydney J. Harris, perhaps the single most influential person in my non-songwriting writing life. I have been able to find very little about Harris on the web and he was a critic/thinker/philosopher whose writings I think more people should read and think about. Quotes from his writings are all over the web, but I've yet to find anything that provides much substance about the man and his life.

To quote a dweeb, "Developing..."

My Daughter: Microcosm of America?

In 1972, I was still in high school. The war in Vietnam was as much a debacle as anything in our history and the President of the United States was less than veracious.

On the morning after election night 1972, I felt much the same as I feel this morning... not understanding how an electorate could accept an administration that deceived them and seemed -- at times -- to practically flaunt criminality.

There is a difference, though, now that I have over thirty years of life and living under my ever-loosening belt. This time I'm seriously concerned about how the results of this election are going to cause a severe shift in the direction of this country.

I recall having a little bit of the same fear that came with Reagan's re-election in 1984, but that election didn't bring an increase in Republican control of Congress. That election didn't bring the prospect of further movement of the Supreme Court to the right. That election didn't place hate-based referenda onto ballots eventually to be approved.

As I look at the results of this election, and try to somehow understand how the preponderance of a nation could vote against its own self-interests, I grow very worried. Very, very worried. My shoulders are slumped. I'm feeling an exasperation I've never felt before -- an exasperation that is based in the belief that 50% of this country's voters simply don't think about the nation (or the world, for that matter) as a whole.

I am probably no different than many of you in that regard.

This one hit me particularly hard, however, as my 17-year-old daughter -- while not a voter -- cheered on Bush/Cheney. There is something about raising children to be mindful of the environment and human life only to watch them give support to such a crooked administration that cuts very, very deep.

It's not that I would expect her opinions to be entirely in line with mine and her mother's. It's not that I would want her to blindly follow the political leanings of her parents. It's that I feel as though I failed as a parent to communicate the values that I believe to be more precious than those she seems to espouse: wealth and consumerism. Both of which, by the way, are not within the grasp of either of her divorced parents.

As I was thinking about all this, it occurred to me that my situation with my daughter is a microcosm of the country. My daughter's primary political influence is her cousin's husband, a man whose father's wealth has provided him a life of leisure and material goods. Cadillacs and HumVees are more attractive to a young woman whose parents' working lives are involved in the arts.

The headline of Nicholas Kristof's column in the today's New York Times seems to fit my daughter's model: Living Poor, Voting Rich.

Somehow, the failure that is the Bush administration has been perceived as worthy of support. And just as I need to truly understand why my daughter would support such an abomination (besides her belief that "the only reason the economy is so bad is because of 9/11"), so, too, does the Democratic party need to learn -- really learn -- what it is that has turned so many to vote against not only their own economic self-interests but for policies that weaken the United States' standing in the world as a promoter of peace and justice. The Democratic party needs to educate -- really educate -- people about the value of seeing themselves as world citizens in addition to being moms and dads and paycheck earners.

The Democratic party needs to educate America not only why the environment needs protection, but why it needs to be protected at some expense. A good environment needs to be recognized as a benefit -- something to value -- so that its protection and upkeep aren't seen as a foolish waste of tax money.

Somehow, the Democratic party has to educate the electorate well in advance of the next election. It needs to illuminate the electorate about the benefits of voting for nominees that represent the interests of the people.

But for the Democratic party to have a chance of making inroads into what appears to be an increasingly right-wing leaning electorate, it needs to truly understand why it voted as it did. It needs to go to the people and ask them why -- not merely rely on exit poll data.

The Democratic party needs to understand -- then explain -- exactly how the policies of the current administration affect them -- in ways that they will understand; in ways that they will feel a resonance.

There are moments in which I deeply believe that this election was stolen by voting machine tampering (a 5% advantage?!?), because it was so clear that Americans had no reason to elect Bush to four more years. But then, we're never likely to prove tampering existed, and more importantly, whining about conspiracies not only makes us look like sore losers, but it eventually leads to a "cry wolf" caricature that the Republicans will beat like a drum, and -- if the flip-flop caricature of Kerry has shown -- the American electorate will believe it.

We need to re-think how we communicate with the public so that the next time a George Bush lies to them, we don't have to spend so much time and energy and money convincing them he's lying -- they will already know it. And they will know that there is an alternative to the status quo.

It is very clear to me that we can no longer hope for -- much less expect -- the national media to provide a fair, honest and thorough discussion of the issues in a national campaign, as ratings and advertising dollars will dictate keeping things as muddied as possible. So we need to take it to the people, one community at a time, and it needs to happen immediately.