Listen

There is a movie out on DVD called "August Rush" and it is a dripper. It is about a boy who had been put up for adoption at birth and had found himself listening to the music of the world around him. He heard everything and internalized it.

August believed that he could hear his parents and that if he could just figure out how to play the music he heard surrounding him in his life back to them they would find him. You may have to be a bit of the dreamer to enjoy this movie, someone who can suspend logic long enough just to be entertained, but it is worth it.

The movie did have an aura of the fairy tale, even at times way over the top with fantastical events that couldn't happen in real life. The screenwriter used a lot of creative license, but you know what, sometimes we just want the impossible to happen and it does in this movie in a good way. Plus the music is really really good.

My favorite parts were the scenes of August Rush just listening to everything, you could see him palpably connecting with his mother and father and they with him even though no one had ever met or spoken.

His life is a symphony of sound that impacts every one of the actions he takes. He commits to that sound because he understands that it is the path to being "Found". He fears not. He doesn't let the disease of fear stop him. His self confidence allows him to do things others think he can't do but he stamps out the hesitation before it stops him. He believes in being found, he knows that being found is his destiny even with all the other paths blocking his way to that eventual reunion.

Frequently he stops whatever he is doing just to listen and connect and that is where we are today.

Listening and connecting.

How many times have you half heartedly listened to another person speak? Barely containing yourself because your point of view was much more important than theirs, or your story was more detailed, funny and needing telling, needing telling so much that you interrupt the original speaker?

Huh?

Fess up!

We have all done it....interrupted someone so we could tell our story.

Communication and connection occur when each of us learns how to decode the others mode of transference. Talkers need listeners, they seek them out and listeners need talkers, sometimes listeners would rather listen than speak and talkers would rather talk than listen. In this respect we each need the other and the interaction is mutually beneficial, but not always.

Apparently there are three ways of listening, combative, passive and active. Which explains why there is a difference between "hearing the words" and "hearing the message". When we "hear the message" it is as if we have become that person. We have actively tried to understand what the message is and even if we don't agree with the message we understand it on the other persons terms, comprehending their feelings and their intent, for many times the surface words are not the entire message.

People use codes to deliver messages to other people. They use words and body language, they use music, literature, touch and emotion. Some use language while others use non verbal devices

A passive listener is one who listens to the story but stays passive and doesn't verify it.
A combative listener is one who waits for an opportunity or opening to take the floor.
While an active listener verifies what they have heard and shows a genuine interest in the topic and understanding it before they respond.

Are you looking for that opening to attack? Do you really listen or do you have to work at listening? Are you half there when someone else is talking or do you engage completely?

These are questions all of us should ask.

What kind of listener's are we? What are our codes? Do others have trouble understanding us or do we care?

If we all tried to listen the way August Rush did maybe our differences would recede and our commonalities would become more prominent. We could connect on a different level.

And so, remember, we can all connect even with those we don't really listen to.

Do you resent paying taxes?

Do you think your life would be improved if you paid less taxes?
Do you resent government?
Why?

For years i have been admonishing friends that hate paying taxes to view government less as an adversary and more as something you should and could be proud of. Imagine that club or church you belong to, you pay your dues to keep it running smoothly, you feel a certain amount of pride towards it, you want it maintained and well functioning. How would you feel if it wasn't? Why is it we don't have the same pride when we talk about what our government does for us as a nation? Why don't we tell the world we are proud to belong to and support with our taxes the greatest nation on earth? Why do we want our nation to deteriorate?

No one and i mean no one does their job with 100% accuracy and that includes government. Builders and contractors, college professors, architects, doctors, small business men, teachers, insurance agents, lawyers, judges, dentists etc. they all make mistakes, they all do bad jobs at some point but they are not held to the same standards as government.

Why?

By and large, the private sector does a good job providing services and so does government. Government for the most part provides clean water to drink while getting rid of the sewage we produce, they keep the peace and protect you(policemen and firemen) they send out Social Security checks on time, they provide dependable electricity and try to educate our children, they also ensure aircraft safety, they feed the hungry, they protect our food sources, they build roads and bridges and so on.

If one were to focus on the programs that actually work in government we would quickly realize that we all benefit from the taxes we pay. Its easy to point out things that don't work in government but why don't we hold the 80% of new business that start and fail every five years to the same standards? You know why we don't, its because we have been brainwashed to think government can't work.

Here are some programs that have actually worked and been well administered by government.
* Regulation of the Business Cycle. The federal government uses a variety of monetary and fiscal policies to limit the boom and bust cycles of the economy. For example, it adjusts interest rates to give a boost to the economy when it is slowing down. Thanks to these policies, the U.S. has not suffered an economic depression since the 1930s. We tend to overlook the fact that before government took on this responsibility, severe depressions were a routine and recurring problem in this country – occurring in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907 and 1929. And we have all but forgotten the enormous amount of human suffering caused by these economic meltdowns – the massive joblessness, the destitution, the rampant hunger, the disease, the riots, the hopelessness and the despair. By any measure, eliminating these depressions and this misery has been one of the greatest – and largely unheralded – achievements of our federal government. * Public Health Programs. A variety of programs run by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local Public Health departments have greatly improved the health of most Americans. For example, the scourges of polio, cholera, and smallpox have been effectively eradicated from this country – a huge achievement. And vaccination programs have reduced by 95% our risks of contracting potentially debilitating diseases like hepatitis B, measles, mumps, tetanus, rubella, and diphtheria. Federal funds spent on buying and distributing these vaccines have saved countless lives and the billions of dollars it would cost to treat these illnesses. In addition, the dedicated scientists who work for the CDC are all that stand between Americans and a potentially catastrophic epidemic imported from abroad. The most likely and worrisome threat is from a new and deadly strain of bird flu. The last deadly flu epidemic to hit the United States, in 1918, killed over 675,000 people in matter of months. * The Interstate Highway System. Started by the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, this system now forms the backbone of long-distance travel and commerce in the United States. It makes up less than 1% of our highways, but carries almost a quarter of all roadway traffic. It has also allowed millions of Americans to move out of big cities and live in more pleasant suburban and small town environments. In addition, the interstate system has the benefit of being considerably safer than the old two-lane highways it replaced – saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Even some conservatives have been forced to admit the success of this building program, with George Will calling it "the most successful public works program in the history of the world." It's hard to imagine the U.S. without this interstate highway system, and this system would not exist at all if it weren't for the government. * Social Security and Medicare. Without these two government programs, growing old would be hell for many Americans. Before Social Security and Medicare, millions of the elderly were doomed to spend their retirement years in poverty and illness. Social Security has cut the rate of poverty for the elderly by over half – from 29% in 1966 to 10% today. Not surprisingly, financial columnist Jane Bryant Quinn has described Social Security as "arguably the U.S. government's greatest success." Medicare has also been incredibly successful. It has doubled the number of the elderly covered by health insurance, so that 99% now enjoy that benefit. Without this form of "socialized" medicine, 15 million of our neediest citizens would be going without many vital medical services and many would have to choose between food and medicine. Older Americans are now living 20% longer, thanks in part to this effective program. These two programs have done more than anything else to relieve the pain and suffering of our elderly population. * GI Bill Without this program, the middle class as we know it would not exist. The GI Bill provided government funds for 16 million World War II and Korean veterans to attend college. It allowed my father to become the first one in his family to graduate college, to become an engineer, and to go on to build a middle-class life for our family. Historian David Kennedy has remarked that "GI Bill beneficiaries changed the face of higher education, dramatically raised the educational level and hence the productivity of the workforce, and in the process unimaginably altered their own lives. * Federal Housing Authority. The middle class housing building and buying boom in the United States was initially financed by cheap GI Bill housing loans and by Federal Housing Authority insurance of conventional home loans. In 1945, only 44% of Americans owned their own home. But thanks in large part to the FHA program that lowered interest rates and down payments, 63% of Americans owned a home by 1968. These homes have become a multi-generational source of wealth for tens of millions of Americans. The FHA still insures over $50 billion a year in mortgages, and remains especially important for low-income house buyers. * Consumer Protection. In reaction to increasing pubic pressure in the early 1970s, government began to pass legislation to protect consumers from shoddy and dangerous products. The Consumer Product Safety Commission remains the key agency enforcing these laws. The need it fills is still a vital one – products kill over 20,000 consumers a year and injure over 25 million more. It would be far worse if the CPSC did not recall hundreds of products every year. It is estimated that its activities produce $10 billion in savings on the health care bills, property damage, and other costs that would have been created by these defective products. * Anti-Discrimination Policies. Since the 1960s, policies like the Civil Rights Act and Title IX have chalked up impressive gains in decreasing discrimination against minorities and women. Racial segregation in hotels, restaurants and other public facilities has been eliminated. Housing discrimination and workplace discrimination, while not completely eradicated, have been substantially reduced. College enrollment for minorities has greatly increased, jumping 48% during the 1990s alone. In terms of gender, workplace discrimination and sexual harassment have decreased and record numbers of women are now attending colleges and graduate schools. There is still room for improvement – particularly in the area of equal wages – but it is clear that these policies have made substantial progress in eliminating racist and sexist practices that had existed for hundreds of years. * Clean Water and Clean Air Programs. America's water and air are significantly cleaner than they were in the 1960s, thanks to federal legislation. The levels of four of the six air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act – nitrogen dioxide, smog, sulfur dioxide, and lead – have been reduced dramatically, by an average of 53%. The quality of the air has significantly increased in virtually every metropolitan area in the U.S. The Clean Water act has been similarly successful. When it was passed in 1972, only one-third of the nation's waterways were safe enough for fishing or swimming. Today that has doubled to two-thirds. And while only 85 million Americans were served by sewage treatment plants in 1972, that figure has now risen to 170 million. * Workplace Safety. Businesses love to complain about the rules of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and sometimes its policies have been a bit overboard – but it has clearly been very effective in greatly increasing the level of protection for American workers. In 1970, the year before the creation of OSHA, 22,000,000 people were injured on the job and 14,000 died from job-related injuries. Since then, OSHA has helped to cut occupational injury and illness rates by 40 percent. Even more important, between 1980 and 2002, workplace deaths fell from 7.5 per 100,000 workers to 4.0. Particularly impressive has been its success against brown lung disease among textile workers, which has been virtually eliminated. * The Military. Even Rush Limbaugh, who has never met a government program that he likes, admits that the U.S. military is a great success story. Although debates continue to rage over how the military should be used, there is complete agreement that our Army, Navy, and Air Force are the most effective military organizations in the world today. We have the best trained and the best equipped armed forces, and they have an unparalleled ability to effectively project military force – as was demonstrated in the two recent Gulf wars. In the case of the military, the government has clearly done an exemplary job of creating a well-working and effective organization. * The West. Although few Americans think about this, much of the Western United States as we know it today is the creation of various federal programs. It has been that way from the very beginning, starting with government-sponsored explorations of the West in the early and mid-19th century. In continued with the federal government providing the money and troops for the depressingly efficient program of "Indian removal." The government also sold public land to settlers for low prices and sometimes even gave it away. The railroads, which spurred so much growth in the West, would not have been built without massive subsidies from the federal government. And today, much of the farming in many Western areas is made possible by federal water projects, substantial parts of the ranching are subsidized by the artificially low grazing fees on federal property, and much of the mining is made more profitable by dirt cheap access to federal land. Cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas would dry up and blow away without the federally funded dam and canal projects that provide water to those arid regions. So it is ironic that while anti-big government sentiment is very strong in parts of this region, the West literally would not and could not exist as it does today without the sustained help of the federal government. * National Weather Service. This government agency not only makes your life more convenient by forecasting your daily weather, it also helps to ensure the safety of planes in the air and ships at sea and it has saved countless lives with its hurricane and tornado warnings. It also just keeps getting better. It's predictions of hurricane paths has improved by fifty percent during the past 15 years; and its forecasts of weather 72 hours in advance is now as reliable as 36-hour forecasts 25 years ago. * Poverty Policies. This may seem counter-intuitive. Everybody knows that poverty policy is the classic example of government failure. How could it possibly be considered a success when the poverty rate is essentially the same as it was thirty years ago? The answer is that most of the policies aimed at the poor in the U.S. were never intended to get them out of poverty. They were only intended to alleviate the suffering of the poor – and studies have shown that they have been very successful in doing this.8 For example, food stamps have worked to greatly reduce hunger and malnutrition among the poor. The poor are much healthier and have more access to medical treatment thanks to Medicaid. And rent subsidies have allowed many of the poor to move out of places with leaking roofs, inadequate heat, and faulty plumbing. These three programs form the backbone of our anti-poverty efforts – their combined budgets are eight times larger than that for welfare – and in terms of achieving their stated goals, these programs have to be considered impressive government successes. * Student Financial Aid Programs. College is getting increasingly expensive and more and more students require financial help to attend. The federal grants, loans, and work study money provided by the Department of Education form the largest source of college financial assistance, providing billions of dollars in funding each year. These programs have worked to remove financial barriers for students and thus create more equal opportunity in higher education. They have been a major factor in producing the rapid increases in college enrollment seen in the last 50 years, and they have also contributed to the increasing class and racial diversity of the college population. * Food and Drug Safety Programs. The federal government enforces extensive rules to protect the public from tainted food and directly regulates both the meat and poultry industries. It also plays a key role in ensuring the safe use of pesticides on agricultural products, both from here and abroad. Federal authorities are also on the frontlines in combating new threats to our food system, such as mad-cow disease. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration ensures that the drugs we take are pure and effective – an enormously complicated enterprise. Every year the FDA identifies almost 3,000 products that are unfit for consumption and ensures their withdrawal from the marketplace. Americans are undoubtedly safer and healthier thanks to these government programs. * Funding Basic Science Research. Most research on basic scientific topics – in physics, biology, chemistry, etc. – does not have immediate commercial applications and so this work is highly dependent on government funding. Federal funds pay for 80% of the basic science research in this country, through laboratory facilities in universities and in government agencies such as the National Institutes for Health. For this reason, the government deserves a great deal of credit for the important scientific and technological breakthroughs produced by these efforts. In just one area – biomedical science – basic research has provided the foundation to develop new diagnostic technologies, such as nuclear magnetic resonance machines, and new treatments for cancer, diabetes, and many other diseases. It is revealing that nearly half of the most important medical treatments in the field of cardiovascular-pulmonary medicine have their origins in basic research attempting to unravel the mysteries of the lungs, heart, and muscles – work done by scientists not working in this specific disease area. Beyond such practical payoffs, government-funded basic research has also made important progress in answering many of the most profound questions that have baffled humanity for centuries: What is the nature of matter and energy – and the nature of reality itself? How did the universe begin? How will it end? Are we alone in the universe? What is the nature of life – and how did it begin? The achievements of basic science in the United States have been many and stunning – and these are achievements of government as well. Pretty impressive – and this list could go on much further. Other clearly effective programs and policies would include our National Parks, the Voting Rights Act, Rural Electrification, AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Cooperative Extension Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Crime Information Center. And again, these are just the accomplishments of government on the federal level – they don't count the thousands of other successful public sector endeavors on the state and local level.
And so to get to the point of my piece. Government can be a force for good. The good works accomplished by government have eclipsed those done by church's and charities. A few examples are abolishing slavery and ending child labor, almost eliminating poverty among the elderly, saving millions of lives through public health programs, inoculating children etc. and it may yet again be government that minimizes the destruction wrecking havoc with our economy.

If you would like more articles about how government can work for all of us check out
www.governmentisgood.com spend a little time there, you might come away viewing government in a more positive light.

All of the text in blue is directly quoted from Douglas J. Amy, Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College who has more articles in support of government at:
www.governmentisgood.com

seeding the youth

"Creating New From Old"

i have a new signature attached to all my e-mails and i think i have settled into it as a fixture that will remain.

The lead up to the Iraq Invasion(notice i still refuse to call it a war) was the beginning of my political activity. i constantly changed the sig line on the bottom of my e-mails depending upon which new outrage of the day compelled me to express myself. i wanted people to see these notices on everything. i wanted them to think about things outside their insulated lives. i wanted them to get angry and many did during all these years. i only lost one family to political ideology which all in all was pretty good considering.

My e-mails made them too uncomfortable and unfortunately their ideology trumped our friendship. They thought i was writing the stuff myself, heard my voice and hated me for it even though most of the time i was only passing on what i had read. They put me in the spam box....lovely way to end a friendship....the spam box. It must have been too difficult to just delete the political ones and read the personal ones. They couldn't do that though because they might accidentally read something they didn't want to know about so into the spam box went i and all my hopes for change. i almost felt proud knowing they had to go to those depths not to know something.

i finally figured out i had been put in the spam box a few years ago when they stopped answering even the personal notes, i forgive them for they know not what they have done and i hope someday they come back.

i liked them a lot but keep uppermost a conversation i had with another friend who is also very conservative. i'm actually amazed at how many conservative friends i have. i love them all.

But anyway she said to me.

"Friend, i will never let politics come between friendship."

And so moving on with my hope for humanity and forgiveness here is my new signature and something else to think about.

If Peace is to prevail we all have to become foes of violence.

How about if we start with young children and train them how to become peacemakers instead of warriors?

Here are a few ideas which most of you teachers already know and i found on a website that talks to non-violence and forgiveness:

Give a gift of your heart. Smile and talk with the children you see everyday. Befriend a child "in need" - get to know them, believe in them, and encourage their dreams. Show them you care.
Give a gift of your time. Volunteer with the many wonderful non-profit organizations that work with children. Serve as a coach, a tutor or a Big Brother or Big Sister "mentor."
Give your voice. Advocate & speak for the children who don't have a voice and often lack caring adults in their life to love and protect them.

i copied the above off the TKM website. At TKM they advocate non-violence and forgiveness.

TKM was formed after the killing of Tariq Khamisa who was a 20 year old college student delivering pizza in San Diego. He was killed by a 14 year old boy who had been given the order to shoot by his 18 year old gang leader.

Tariq's father was devastated by his death and through his journey with grief realized that he had to make some sense out of this horrific killing. He turned away from hostility and instead found forgiveness. He reached out to the killers grandfather and through that initial contact the two forged a relationship that endures to this day.

They formed a group that does outreach in schools in San Diego and around the country. They teach children the alternatives to violence.

To learn more about this group, visit their website at http://www.tkf.org/index.htm

Love, Care & Advocate for the Beloved Children In Your Community. There are countless ways to make a difference in the life of a child and spread peace not violence.

Also if you have a minute (its literally a minute) watch this You Tube which was an entry in a contest conducted by AARP. Pretty powerful stuff.

buttons

Ideas, those unconnected snippets of language that swim through our brains faster than we can catch them and absorb.

Today i started out with the word button.

Button...an object attached to a garment that is used to close an opening created when the garment was made so the eventual wearer could drape it over his or her body and close the whole darn thing up. Before i could read the definition of button in the dictionary...the above is mine...i was distracted by the word.....Babbit metal—which according to my dictionary is an antifriction alloy of copper, tin and antimony, used in bearings.

Antimony...hmmmm thinks i...lets go read about that.

Quick to the Wikipedia site where i type in antimony. Lordy, lordy there is all sorts of information about antimony.

First off i have to tell you that antimony is a chemical element and this piece is really supposed to be about buttons.
When antimony is stable(i keep writing alimony) it is blue and white and when it is unstable it is yellow and black.
It can vaporize and it can expand.
It can make some things hard and it can act as a flame retardant.
Some of it can even be used for medicinal or cosmetic purposes.
Muhammad said it can clear the vision and make the hair sprout.
Pliny the Elder claimed there were male and female forms of antimony(which must be why i keep writing alimony)
and it can be toxic (poisonous) which leads to an interesting parting shot.
The final entry at Wikipedia states that antimony may be leaching into bottled water from the PET (plastic)bottles but the concentrations may not be high enough to harm humans.

Now to get here from starting with the word button just boggles my mind. Mostly because every time i wash a plastic cup, dish or utensil (which is usually every day) i wonder if it is leaching some chemical into our bodies.

i now have one name that i discovered quite by accident which is probably leaching into us. It probably is...its leaching alimony into my body ahhhhh!

Is this important?

Yes!

It is! We need to pay attention to that which we put in our bodies.

Another thing to note here is that i really tried to write a piece that had a word starting with a different letter than A. If you've noticed, there has been a preponderance of essays with words beginning with A. i never planned it that way it just kept happening. When i noticed it was getting a bit much i decided to find some other topic and i thought of buttons. This was supposed to be about buttons and their ability to bring two things together, but antimony just dominated.

So there you have it. Antimony, a chemical element, known to be poisonous that may be leaching into your body from your water bottle or your plastic plates and cups. i have to say that i love plastic and am hoping my antimony levels are low and that yours are too.

Oh! To still be residing in that naive zone of unknowing, i could go on eating and drinking off of plastic forever not ever thinking of antimony.

i imagine i will write that other button piece sometime in the future.

By the way that century plant is just incredible. It has sent out another shoot and its blooming again. It does not give up.
Don't you give up either. Keep fighting for peace.