JMan has a rich and wonderful voice.  He is a bit of a ham, which I guess he gets from me.  He works on English dialects, and since the only one I attempt is Cockney, he has a poor teacher.  He shifts his voice down.  ”Suddenly, Bob found himself covered with screaming children.”  JMan starts to climb on top of Bookzilla.  I know the chair won’t take all three of us.  I keep him from climbing all the way on.  He ends up mobbing on Bookzilla.

He has a wonderful voice.

I remember something.  I remember.  Memories are funny things.  Unused, they fade.  I remember.

I pull up his t-shirt and give him a barump on the belly.  He yelps and jumps back.  We are both laughing like crazy.  I can barely remember doing that to the kids.  I stopped doing things like that because I didn’t think they were age appropriate for him anymore.  He pulls my shirt collar down and gets revenge on my neck.  A bunch of times.

I was sitting out side with him on Friday, at a table in front of a Thai restaurant in downtown Kirkland.  The waitress had taken our order and I started talking about the future.  He stopped me.

“If this is about what I’m going to do when I grow up, I don’t want to talk about it.”

He just turned eleven.  I cracked up with laughter.  He joined in.  I was laughing heartily and I high-fived him.  A wicked thought crossed my mind and I wondered if I could pull it off.

I froze my face, serious and gave him a stare down look.

“Do it anyway.”

I held it for a second or three and then cracked up again just as his face started to react to me.

His explosive laugh hit a high pitched note it doesn’t often hit.  I had gotten him and he knew it.  We laughed for quite a while about it.

I had referenced something from Carolyn Hax before, here, and she ran something from one of her readers that I thought was pretty good.

While I’m away, readers give the advice.

On living together before marriage:

So often I observe — when a young couple has been living together — one partner is far more interested in marriage than the other, but they are both too insecure to break up after investing several years in the relationship. (Not to mention the daunting task of disentangling their finances, furniture, pets, etc.)

The years they lived together were the years they coulda/shoulda been independent: learning to know themselves, to stand on their own two feet and meet other people. I find it heartbreaking to perform these weddings, but haven’t had a lot of luck talking couples out of them.

Bottom line: The lack of courage and money to live independently gives birth to a lot of short-term marriages. Having comfort and companionship like marriage, without the commitment, short-circuits a lot of growing up.

– The Reverend Mrs. E.

This is the bit I mentioned at the party, and while the guys didn’t read the stuff, they all agreed with it.  As a divorced parent of small children, I often wonder what paths they will take in life.  I want them to think that being a partner, being married, having a family is a good thing and fulfilling.  Too many children of divorce bounce around a lot before figuring those things out.  I don’t know if that is just the way these things work, but my hope for them is an opportunity for happiness.

I called her on it.  I told her that I saw her timing her laugh.  ”You wouldn’t like it if your roles were reversed”.  She replied:

“Stupid empathy”.

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.  These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.  While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.

Time to unplug.

When I was a soldier, I wouldn’t say that I was homophobic, but it was close for me.   I started to write stories here about what I knew about homosexuality in the Army, but I don’t think I could cover the topic well in the amount of time I have to write this.

This article this morning is what prompted this post.  A lieutenant colonel in a combat arms unit is gay.  For those who don’t know what that means, this is a guy who has been at the top of his promotional group for a long time.  He is a top soldier.  He is probably a battalion commander.  There are not that many battalions to command in the combat arms, and he commands one of them.  Most officers will not get the opportunity to command a battalion in the combat arms.  He wrote this:

I deeply believe that America is fighting the right fight in Afghanistan. I believe in this battle against our enemies. And, I believe that the US Army is the single greatest force for good the world has ever known.

But I want to tell the guys I eat lunch with every day about my partner. After all, these are the guys I risk my life with—the guys who think they know me. I can tell you every detail of how each of them met their wives; how one of them still feels guilty about an affair he never had, but thought about; how one of them cried so hard the day his son was born.

Yet they don’t know much about my life, except the most superficial details. Over the years, I have become good at evading and changing subjects artfully. To slip up—using the wrong pronoun when describing whom I was with during R&R, or mentioning who I talked to on Skype last night—is no longer something I worry about. I have become so good at this lying game it eats at my soul.

I have tried to come to grips with the military and how it relates to a free society and I think he nails it.  I signed up because I wanted to be part of that force for good.  So did he.  And it has cost him.

In my own life, my partner has none of the privileges of a spouse. We have weathered three long deployments like any other couple might. But should I die in the line of duty, my partner would get no support from any official channels. He would be notified after my brother who is listed as my legal next of kin.

My partner and I have happily accepted my various assignments because we’re truly committed to the army, its soldiers and their families. But after our ten years together, my partner has earned the right to be told first about my death. He has earned the right to make my health emergency decisions. And, he has earned the right to be recognized for his sacrifices just as any other spouse.

I don’t think I am as homophobic as I once was.  Some of my friends may be gay, I don’t know.

It looks like President Obama is going to end DADT, and that is a good thing.

Martin Gardner, who teased brains with math puzzles in Scientific American for a quarter-century and who indulged his own restless curiosity by writing more than 70 books on topics as diverse as magic, philosophy and the nuances of Alice in Wonderland, died Saturday in Norman, Okla. He was 95.

From Scientific American:

The 81-year-old Gardner seems more comfortable talking about others than about himself. Perhaps part of the reason is that he has no formal training in mathematics. In discussing his youth, he muses on religion and philosophy, topics to which we keep veering back. “When I grew up in Tulsa, it was called the oil capital of the word,” he says. “Now it’s known as the home of Oral Roberts. That’s how far Tulsa has gone down the hill.”

I used to read his column in Scientific American because it was so much fun.

Here is a taste: 3 Martin Gardner puzzles.

Thanks, Martin.

Oh, here it comes and there it goes
The unbearable sound of the earth making men out of boys
First you learn and then you’ll teach
About that bright, bright light

Making its way
On up the mountain night and day
And you’ll get tired and you’ll get weak
But you won’t abandon your masterpiece

Now there’s a light making its way
On up the mountain night and day
And you’ll go down and you’ll go deep
But you won’t surrender your masterpiece

You won’t surrender your masterpiece
You will deliver your masterpiece

It can be heard on line at Rhapsody, iLife and other places.

Jakob Dylan and Jack Johnson speak to me more than most song writers.  They are fathers and I think they get it.  I’m listening to the secret song that was on The Wallflowers album, Breach.

Come back babybird/ With your dirty wings in tatters/ Come home where you belong/ Nobody knows you better/ Now bring back your velvet heart/ And we’ll make you brand new feathers/ Sleep through the morning light/ With your arms around your brother

Now outside faces cry/ With the tears of lonesome orphans/ And behind every mask/ is the face of another/ Wherever you have been/ wherever you took cover/ No arms that pulled you in/ could hold you like your mother

When all my colors fade/ And my wings, they’ve turned to leather/ I’ll know the reasons why/ God let me get older/ When all my days are through/ And I fly these hills no longer/ I’ll lay beneath the stars/ And I’ll watch you flying over

Jakob Dylan gets it.

I remember once when I came back to the States from Germany for another brother’s wedding.  We were in the car on the way to the wedding and my older brother was pontificating about something that had religious overtones and I interjected that there was no absolute evil.  My brother shouted me down angrily, saying “Yes there is!  It is the Satan, and God is the absolute good.”  I didn’t respond (to the best of my memory).  It didn’t seem like it was worth getting into a beef with him.

Over the years, we have had a chancy relationship.  After Barack Hussein Obama was elected, I wrote him an email titled “I just voted for Obama”

This is a good day for America.  We are probably on different sides on this election, but I think we have a chance to correct the policies of the last eight years that have doubled the national debt.

Peace, Dan

another one titled “A banker’s story”

A banker goes canvassing for Obama: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1103/p09s02-coop.html

–Dan

and a third, “I didn’t vote for Obama today”, a cut and paste from somewhere.

I have a confession to make.

I did not vote for Barack Obama today.

I’ve openly supported Obama since March.  But I didn’t vote for him today.

I wanted to vote for Ronald Woods. He was my algebra teacher at Clark Junior High in East St. Louis, IL.  He died 15 years ago when his truck skidded head-first into a utility pole.  He spent many a day teaching us many things besides the Pythagorean Theorem.  He taught us about Medgar Evers, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis and many other civil rights figures who get lost in the shadow cast by Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I didn’t vote for Mr. Woods.

I wanted to vote for Willie Mae Cross. She owned and operated Crossroads Preparatory Academy for almost 30 years, educating and empowering thousands of kids before her death in 2003.  I was her first student.  She gave me my first job, teaching chess and math concepts to kids in grades K-4 in her summer program.  She was always there for advice, cheer and consolation.  Ms. Cross, in her own way, taught me more about walking in faith than anyone else I ever knew.

But I didn’t vote for Ms. Cross.

I wanted to vote for Arthur Mells Jackson, Sr. and Jr. Jackson Senior was a Latin professor.  He has a gifted school named for him in my hometown.  Jackson Junior was the pre-eminent physician in my hometown for over 30 years.  He has a heliport named for him at a hospital in my hometown.  They were my great-grandfather and great-uncle, respectively.

But I didn’t vote for Prof. Jackson or Dr. Jackson.

I wanted to vote for A.B. Palmer. She was a leading civil rights figure in Shreveport, Louisiana, where my mother grew up and where I still have dozens of family members.  She was a strong-willed woman who earned the grudging respect of the town’s leaders because she never, ever backed down from anyone and always gave better than she got.  She lived to the ripe old age of 99, and has a community center named for her in Shreveport.

But I didn’t vote for Mrs. Palmer.

I wanted to vote for these people, who did not live to see a day where a Black man would appear on their ballots on a crisp November morning.

In the end, though, I realized that I could not vote for them any more than I could vote for Obama himself.

So who did I vote for?

No one.

I didn’t vote.  Not for President, anyway.

Oh, I went to the voting booth.  I signed, was given my stub, and was walked over to a voting machine.  I cast votes for statewide races and a state referendum on water and sewer improvements.

I stood there, and I thought about all of these people, who influenced my life so greatly.  But I didn’t vote for who would be the 44th President of the United States.

When my ballot was complete, except for the top line, I finally decided who I was going to vote for – and then decided to let him vote for me.  I reached down, picked him up, and told him to find Obama’s name on the screen and touch it.

And so it came to pass that Alexander Reed, age 5, read the voting screen, found the right candidate, touched his name, and actually cast a vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Oh, the vote will be recorded as mine.  But I didn’t cast it.

Then again, the person who actually pressed the Obama box and the red “vote” button was the person I was really voting for all along.

It made the months of donating, phonebanking, canvassing, door hanger distributing, sign posting, blogging, arguing and persuading so much sweeter.

So, no, I didn’t vote for Barack Obama.  I voted for a boy who now has every reason to believe he, too, can grow up to be anything he wants…even President.

– Boyd Reed

I didn’t hear from him.  Several days later, I got an email that basically asked me not to email him anything political anymore.  I won’t quote it here, because I haven’t asked his permission.  He quoted Moses talking to the tribes of Israel before going into the Promised Land.  He indicated that he had not read these emails and said that for several years, he thought that I hand been trying to draw him into a conversation about things so I could ridicule his beliefs.  I responded:

Well, Ron, maybe you don’t understand me and I don’t understand you.  I have had a political orientation for all of my adult life. I volunteered in a Congressional race, Mark Carr, in 1972, at age 17.  Politics, of the conservative, Republican variety were a staple in the house in which I grew up.  I can remember John saying, at the dinner table, that if Martin Luther King ever showed up in Holland, he would shoot him, calling him a “black son of a bitch”.  That talk wasn’t the norm at our house, but “None Dare Call It Treason” was.  For the record, I think that John was influenced by guys at work; I don’t think he actively thought about doing violence.

Two of the three things I sent to you were human stories that made me cry.  One was a written by a guy who went into to voting booth and recalled the people who had made a difference in his life.  He didn’t vote for Obama, his five year old son did.  He voted for his son.  I tried to put myself in his shoes and it was emotionally overwhelming.  The other story was the about a guy who is white, conservative, a banker, and who, at his wife’s prodding, went canvassing for Obama.  He acknowledges that his taxes will go up under Obama.  He talked about two white people, he and his wife, going into a housing project and what he found there.  There was no condescension on his part, no liberal guilt.  He is someone who loves America and that was his story.  I put myself in his shoes and his humility and openness touched me.  The third thing was a simple message that I had voted and why I voted the way I did.  If I had received that email, I would probably have responded with a message about who I voted for and why.

I have been puzzled by your reaction for the last 24 hours.  One of the books in my library is “The Genius of The People” about the writing of the Constitution.  People of wildly disparate views were able to come together and form a  government.  They did it by being willing to listen to the other side.  You and I may have different views, but I am always willing to listen.

I didn’t cry on Tuesday night.  I was at a party and when Obama gave his speech in Chicago, there were a lot of people crying.  I didn’t.  My thoughts were, “Okay, let’s go.  Debt, deficit, two wars, financial crisis.  Let’s go.”  GM is set to run out of cash in the middle of next year.  That’s a problem.  For example, anyone who steps up and says that the biggest problem facing the country is gay marriage is not someone I would treat seriously.  I’ll listen, but be sceptical.  Banning gay marriage isn’t going to solve any of the real problems we face today.

As for ridicule and culpability, I don’t know where your comments about that come from.

And that is the way I left it.  I was not going to talk politics to him.

But a couple of weeks ago, he sent me an email.

Increasing the minimum wage was meant to raise the living standards of millions of Americans holding unskilled, entry level positions.  But it may have led to the elimination of 550,000 jobs — opening the possibility that such wage levels should be revised, suggests a new study from Ball State University.  A study of part-time workers monitored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1999 to 2009 found that raising the minimum wage to its current level of $7.25 during the recent recession caused some businesses to scale back on filling vacant positions or eliminate jobs altogether, says Michael J. Hicks, director of Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER).

I responded:

I don’t know about the this report.  I note that it begins with a qualifier, ‘may have led’.  I would like to see the data that correlates minimum wage to job loss.  In an economic downturn, there are a lot of forces at work and the data would have to show an dependent relationship between minimum wage increases and job loss, to the exclusion of all other independent variables.  I don’t have the data, but the skeptic in me things that the probability of such a relationship is low.

I went on to talk about the general questions of capitalism and noted that capitalism would not survive without the altruism of individuals, and socialism/communism would not survive with the greed of individuals.

I saw an article this morning on Juan Cole’s blog about Iranian doctors helping a town in Mississippi.

Iran is an interesting country.  There are those in our political/government structure who want war with Iran.  There are those who assure us that the Iranian people like Americans, it is just their theocratic government that is a problem.  Because I don’t know any Iranians directly (although I have in the past) I don’t have all the facts, but I thought this was interesting.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6962844.ece

But with Congress acrimoniously debating the reform of healthcare, it is to Iran that one of America’s poorest communities is turning to try to resolve its own health crisis.  A US doctor and a development consultant visited Iran in May to study a primary healthcare system that has cut infant mortality by more than two-thirds since the Islamic revolution in 1979.  Then, in October, five top Iranian doctors, including a senior official at the health ministry in Tehran, were quietly brought to Mississippi to advise on how the system could be implemented there.  The Mississippi Delta has some of the worst health statistics in the country, including infant mortality rates for non-whites at Third World levels.

I think if more Iranians came over here and saw that we are not the Great Satan, then went back to Iran and spread the word, maybe we could find a way to resolve these nuclear issues peacefully.  But I don’t know.

My brother responded:

I really have no desire to discuss health care.  Or a country that denies the Holocaust and wants to obliterate Israel.

I started to write a response to soft shoe it, but then I heard Rush Limbaugh say about Democratic members of the House and Senate, “We  need to defeat these bastards.  We need to wipe them out.”  I thought about what my brother would say about that and I knew he would not speak against them.  He has not ever done so in the past when I have tried to get him to say that this sort of speech is wrong.  I thought about John Lewis getting called a n*gger while walking to the House.  Would he call that wrong?  What is wrong to him?  I don’t know.

And I got tired of it.

I wrote: Have it  your way.