In Bold defiance of irony McConnell frets over partisanship!

"Listening to Mitch McConnell talk about the decline of bipartisanship is like listening to Jeffrey Dahmer complain about the decline of dinner party etiquette."  

I can not take credit for either of the above two quotes but I thought they were excellent opening words to what I have to say about partisanship and politics.  Before anyone gets their panties in a wad rest assured that the second quote is not accusing Senator McConnell of being a serial killer, nuff said.  

Politics in America today is a nasty, smelly cesspool and almost every member of Congress is guilty of helping to create the current mess.  Of course, they don't get all the blame, at least an equal amount is our own fault.  We keep electing the same people over and over again.  We never demand any sort of change. We don't hold them accountable.  We know next to nothing about what they are doing in our name, partly because we don't pay attention, and partly because they only tell us what they want us to know. 

How many of us know who the ten largest donors are to the campaign fund of our Congressional representatives or Senators?  How many of us know anything about those donors, who do they work for, what sort of things do they expect for their donations.  How many of us know whether our Senators or our Representatives have written or sponsored any legislation at all and if they have what it was.  Do you pay any attention at all to the votes those people have made?  Did they vote no on a piece of legislation that would have made your life better? How about something even more basic....what did your congressperson do before they got into politics?  Do you even know what town or county they are from or how long they have lived in your district?   

 Politicians in Washington figured out a very long time ago that they can pretty much get away with anything and the majority of their voters will never know a thing about it.  We have been willfully ignorant and we are paying the price.  

What the above quotes actually say about Senator McConnell is that it is absolutely laughable for him to complain about partisanship when he had been one of the biggest drivers of that partisanship,  for the past dozen years, at least.  

Some partisanship is expected from the leaders in Congress, some is even desirable from the point of view of "keeping the team in together working on common goals" so to speak, but enough is enough and too much is a disaster for everyone.  In one sense we send our representatives to congress and expect them to act in our favor, but at the same time to use their best judgment in that regard regardless of how the "leaders" think they should act. I would not want my Senator doing only what the party leader in that chamber wanted....I mean really, if that's what we are going to do then why do we even need two senators from every state if only two senators are making all the decisions.   

Often two people can look at a problem and come up with different solutions to that problem.  I believe we expect our representatives will not always agree on what solution to a problem works best and I get that, but we are currently in a much worse predicament than not agreeing on solutions. Where we are now is that we don't even agree on what is a problem and what isn't a problem and that my friends is a disaster.  Once upon a time, there was a center that held the right and left together.  The center has grown weak, having been chipped away by both the right and left.  There is very little holding the two sides together these days. Maybe nothing at all.    

Finally, I will leave you with this one simple example of how Mitch McConnell has broken the Senate.  You really only need to look at McConnell's treatment of Judicial appointments under President Obama to understand just how far McConnell is willing to take partisanship.  Under all the presidents before Obama, in other words from George Washington to George Bush 86 Judicial nominations had been blocked by filibuster.  In just the Obama presidency McConnell used the filibuster to block 82 nominations and that does not include his refusal to even consider taking a vote on Obama's last Supreme court nominee.  

Hearing him whine about partisanship turns my stomach.   

Why Me?

So it comes to this...   Why me? Why did I become a cancer victim, but more importantly, why have I been allowed to survive cancer?  Of course, there isn't anyone who is going to be able to answer that one, but that doesn't stop me from thinking about it.  

I'm not sure of a lot, but this much I am sure of. God does not use disease to punish people, nor to reward people. I guess that leaves the answer to the "Why me?" question as a simple unlucky spin on this wheel of fortune we call life. That spin was followed then by a lucky spin, some great doctors, advanced medical equipment, testing, and treatment.  

Actually the question of "why me" isn't even important.  The more important question and one with which I have absolute control of the answer is this.  What am I going to do with the rest of my life?  What will I do with my gratitude? 

I hope that the answer is that I'll practice kindness, that I will be a responsible steward of my part of the planet, that I will practice generosity and respect for others.  When my last day on earth has come and gone I don't want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to wonder what I believed and what I valued in life. 

I might be the new poster boy for cancer survivors.  I had it, it was discovered, it was cut out, and I'm cancer-free.  One would think that such a thing would result in a lot of joy, and while there is joy what I have discovered is that Cancer left me a parting gift.  I imagine cancer saying this just before the surgeon sliced it away:   "I couldn't kill you, not this time, but I'll make sure I screw with your head, here's some guilt for your enjoyment, until next time, have a nice life." 

The little bastard might be gone but I'm stuck with guilt?  What?  Why should I feel guilty?  Oh...and what the hell did it mean by "not this time" and "until next time"?  The little bastard is screwing with my head all right.  

My God! I lived.  But then, in creeps thoughts of others, others who did not have this level of success.  My friend David Harvey, dead of stomach cancer,  my mother in law Florence, dead of lymphoma, my uncle Gwin, dead of glioblastoma, my friend Julie, defeated cancer but through a long and painful process involving surgery, chemo, and radiation lasting months longer than my short experience.  So my joy is tempered by those ghosts.  

My experience might have been more like those but for one thing....the more, or less, accidental discovery of that little bastard tumor before it had a chance to infect any other parts of my body

What I do have that isn't tempered at all is gratitude.  I realize how lucky or blessed, or both, I have been with this experience and that makes my heart overflow with humbleness.  

  

How I spent my Summer vacation.

C A N C E R.   Cancer is a disease that other people get.  At least that's a fact I tried hard to convince myself of this summer.  It's a scary thing, in part because it is so many things, and none of them are good. It is the disease with the bad ending -  every - single - time.  From brain to blood to bone and every piece of human real estate in between, cancer can take root anywhere and lay there quietly plotting the demise of its host.  Sometimes though Cancer does not win.  This is one of those stories. It did put up a decent sneak attack and it did not go without some lasting damage. 

For me, it all started around Father's Day.  My daughter cheerfully recommended "hey Dad, you should go get one of those $49. heart scans".  I've always had good blood readings on my annual physicals but I love a bargain and that sounded like a bargain.  I scheduled one for the following week.  I was given the results not long after the scan....as expected my heart is in pretty good shape.  I'm not at risk of heart disease. I felt a little smug.  My grandmother lived to be 99...I've got the stuff to meet or beat her record.    Then about 3 days later a letter arrived with more information about the scan.  Something else had been observed....something in my left lung that I should see my doctor about.  

My family doctor ordered a chest Xray and made an appointment with a pulmonologist for me.  More Xrays and tests followed, and eventually, a lung biopsy and the nature of the suspicious blob seen on the scans was revealed:  "well-defined neuroendocrine tumor".   Tumor, that was a word I latched onto for a while....if you say tumor then you don't have to say cancer. Tumor sounds less threatening, especially when it is measured in only a few centimeters.  

With that diagnosis I was passed off to yet another doctor, this time an oncologist, again if I use that word I don't have to say or think cancer but it is getting harder since her office is located in the Lafayette Cancer clinic and it isn't like I don't know what an Oncologist does.  It was getting harder for me to avoid the word.  

It's now full-blown summer, I feel fine, I can't be sick, if I had cancer I'd feel sick.  I'm taking long hikes in the State park with dog and camera in tow, proving I feel healthy.  Showing my wife that there's nothing to worry about.  Assuring everyone that everything is fine.  I'm not worried, you shouldn't worry either.  

The oncologist described the nature of the tumor and the treatment.  Of course she didn't have any trouble calling it cancer but said the treatment of choice is surgery, you just cut the tumors out.  If they have not spread then the operation to remove is the extent of the treatment.  She's an oncologist, now I need a surgeon. 

So another new face, another appointment, more talk about cancer....although I'm still avoiding the word as much as I can.  I like this guy, he explains things, he invites questions, he does not avoid hard questions.  I asked him to describe the actual surgery....he did so in great detail....he did fail to mention one thing, but he caught me up on that item just before the operation two weeks later.  

The morning of surgery I'm sitting on the edge of the operating table watching all the prep going on around me.  Wow, there are a lot of people in here doing stuff.  This was the first time I've ever been that alert for that length of time upon arrival in an operating room.  The anesthesiologist was administering an epidural prior to beginning general anesthesia when he let me know that "this" operation is ranked as one of the top three "most painful" you can have and that was the reason for the epidural.   Oh Boy....the surgeon had wisely left that tidbit out of his description of what was going to happen when we chatted 2 weeks earlier....and that was the thought that went through my mind right then....I would have remembered if he had told me that.  Five hours of unconsciousness later, or thereabout, I found myself waking up with a mouth and throat that felt like the Sahara had settled there.  My first word was a feeble "water".  

For the next 5 days, with the help of a lot of nurses, aides, and others my healing began.  They were all exceptional.  Things were progressing wonderfully and the doctor was going to send me home in two more days.  That evening something unexpected happened.  Very, very unexpected.  

I had been checking in at Facebook a little bit, but mostly just reading what friends and family were doing.   First I see that a friend who is being treated for cancer was having difficulty with his insurance company over a test or treatment and I made a supportive post.   Then another friend posted a little blurb about being a grandparent "I can't promise how long I'll be your grandparent, but I can promise I will love you every second of that time..."  I reposted it to my own page, I am after all a grandparent 7 times over and now a great grandparent x3.  Then another friend posted that he might have ended up adopting a stray kitten....just another little life event of a friend, insignificant in every respect to my own life....but unknown to me it was the next to the last piece of code that was going to unlock something from my heart that I was not expecting.  

Finally, the loss of a cherished pet cat by another friend.  I remember thinking I need to say something to him, losing a pet is every bit as traumatic as losing any other member of the family but my mind wasn't able to form an idea of what to say, instead,  at that second  something sort of like a massive chain reaction series of rear-end crashes, or Like what happens when 100 cows try to leave the pasture at the same time through a gate designed for 1 at a time was happening.  Thoughts, emotions, words, faces, 70 years worth of memories, more emotions, all crashing around inside the limited space of my skull. Then the taps got turned on and my breathing changed and I was taking big gulps of air that sounded like sobs.  Just like big, loud, chest heaving sobs.  

Mercifully I wasn't left in that state for very long.  The day nurse and the night nurse entered my room, as they did every shift change and they both asked if I was all right, maybe fearing that some terrible medical emergency was in progress.  I had to pull myself together enough to explain to them that no, there was no medical issue, that I was just "having a moment".    So now I know what happens when you push all your fear and emotion out of view from June through September.....it always does find a way to surface and tears really do wash our eyes and give us a clearer view of life.  

It was anti-climactic but the next morning the surgeon told me that the final biopsy results had been returned and that none of the surrounding tissue or lymph nodes that he had removed showed any cancer cells.  I really am cancer-free.  I absolutely understand that I am extremely lucky,  very blessed, or both and that realization makes me feel very, very humble.   

What's in a Name?

On this page spelling with double H

Very Often, when dealing with old documents,  we researchers and historians find the names of ancestors and relatives spelled wrong...or at least wrong as far as you have always known the family name to be spelled.  Sometimes you know what the family preference was for a given name, but often you don't know because existing records show a name a particular person spelled several different ways. A hundred or more years ago people who could read and write were not so common as they are today and those that could write often spelled words like they sound, regardless of what today is considered the "right" way to spell it.  

A while back though I was researching the family of my wife's paternal Grandmother. Gladys Fern Clark.  Clark is pretty easy, not usually found messed up in old written material, however, the mother of Gladys F Clark was Louisa Ann Welchhons before her marriage to James Clark.  The Welchhons family was one of the hardest nuts to crack because the name appears in all sorts of records spelled a variety of different ways.  Welshonce, Welshons, Welchance, Welshans, Welshous, and Welchanch, Welchouse and Welshhons.  I finally got a look at the Welchhons Family Bible and discovered the name was not even spelled the same way on the same page of the family information recorded in that Bible.  

I wasn't sure what to do as far as adding their names to my family tree, which particular record is correct, and which one is the one most often accepted as correct by the family?  Since I don't know anyone alive today who might shed some light on the question I felt I had to pick something, right or wrong.  I wanted to be consistent in the spelling of surnames throughout the tree, even if some old records show spellings different from what I am using on my tree. 

On this page a single H was used.  

I finally settled on the spelling of Welshhons because that was the spelling carved into their tombstones at the cemetery where Louisa and her parents are buried as well as some cousins of her father.  That spelling was consistent for a half dozen burials at that cemetery though I don't remember seeing that spelling anywhere other than those tombstones.  It may or may not be the preferred spelling of any Welshhons living today, and may not be the way Louisa's family thought the name should be spelled, but I opted to record that on my tree in order to be consistent through the tree. 

As researchers, we probably put more importance on name spelling than did some of our ancestors.  

  

  

Democracy vs Dictatorship

We are a nation of humans. No two humans have ever agreed on everything.  Throughout history, various groups of humans have tried different systems designed to minimize the bad results that can happen when humans do disagree.

Instead of throwing rocks and spears at one another to settle our differences our forefathers gave us a democratic system of government that includes a constitution, an independent judicial system, an independent press, and a government based on the rule of law.  It can sometimes be a messy system and sometimes it seems that those on either side of a disagreement do not gain a thing.  Sometimes issues are left unresolved for a very long time.  For more than 200 years our democratic system has kept us (mostly) from picking up rocks and beating the brains out of those we don't agree with.

Through history groups of humans have tried all sorts of methods of living together.  Frequently dictatorships have been tried, sometimes willingly, and sometimes dictatorships were thrust upon them unwillingly.  I recently read a really good description of the difference between a Democracy and a Dictatorship.  Democracy is about means, a dictatorship about ends. The ends are always those things that increase the power and prestige of the dictator. A system led by a dictator is in a lot of ways less messy.  Everyone does what #1 wants, end of story.  Dictators care only about the end result...how they get to that end result is of no consequence to them.  

That brings us to President Trump.  Whoa!! you say?  No, I am not suggesting Trump is a dictator, he is not, at least not yet. It is worrisome that he has on more than one occasion expressed admiration for several world leaders of that variety but admiring and being are not the same.  A core duty of a president is to protect American Democracy (all that messy stuff that are about the means, not the ends) but he has failed at that again and again.  

Shutting down the government in order to get his way on a controversial issue is not protecting democracy.  He used the government and almost a million government workers as bargaining chips.   

He has demonized the press and calls them the "enemies of the people". He has attacked judges who have ruled against him.  He has encouraged followers to actual violence against those who attempt to speak out against him.  He has had conversations with Vladimir Putin of which no one else knows what was discussed, even other members of his administration.  Since day one he has not tried to unify this nation.   

No,  I can't say Donald Trump is a dictator but he has shown no desire to nurture our democracy either. I'm not sure he even understands our democracy.   

Cold War Neighbors

It doesn't have to be this way, but it has been this way before and it feels like we are there again. They want what they want and it legally belongs to them, not to us.  But we want something too.  We are tired of seeing our neighborhood eroded.  Contrary to what some people believe...what you see around where you live is important and as a society we mostly agree that property rights do not trump all other rights.  That is how we got laws like zoning laws that limit, to some degree, what you can do with your own property.  It's why you can't mow your lawn at midnight, or throw your trash out into the alley or let sewage spill onto your neighbor's property.   I'm not saying this current disagreement that the neighborhood, and others are having with St. Mary's and the Lafayette Diocese are the same as any of that, but I am pointing out that not wanting your sight line spoiled or changed is a valid feeling to have. The feelings of those who don't want the house destroyed are as valid as the feelings the Church has about wanting to remove the house.

In a prior post I described some societal and demographic changes as part of why church and the neighborhood association (and others)  seem to be in a sort of "cold war" now and for the last 20 or 30 years.  I think there is more to the story, something more personal and I think there is blame enough to go around.

It might have started about the time St. Mary's was doing some major restoration work an also planning to add a large fellowship hall to the west side of the Cathedral.  The building committee hired an architectural firm for the building project and they came up with a design that appeared to all of us to be horribly wrong...it tried to meld a sort of modern feel to the front of the church.  It looked like (on the drawings and plans that two opposite styles were fighting for control of the facade of the building.

There was an uproar from those who did not like the proposal...enough so that a  new facade design was adopted that everyone mostly agreed on.  Of course that resulted in some delays and probably additional design costs for St. Mary's.  I'm certain some folks thought of the plan change as a "victory" over the big, pushy church, while others thought of it as a loss to a random bunch stuck up nosey neighbors in other words that whole episode amounted to a zero-sum game that set the tone for the next quarter century.

 The next big skirmish in our ongoing cold war happened when the  Munger house and the Walgamuth house were slated to be town down. Just as soon as the notices were tacked to the fronts of the houses neighbors went into action trying to find a solution, other than demolition. Those two houses were important historic lynchpins for that part of the neighborhood.  Both highly visible and in good solid condition.  This time no one from the church had bothered to talk to the neighborhood before they applied for demolition permits What the leadership at St. Mary's church were telling was that they needed to remove those houses in order to give the children at St. Mary's school a "real" playground.  It was being done "for the children" because playing on the large asphalt parking lot just wasn't any fun, although students there had been playing on that lot for at least a couple of generations. The Walgamuth home had been one of the two oldest homes built in the neighborhood, possibly even predating the erection of the church. 

The whole disagreement could not have come at a worse time.  Bishop Doherty had been appointed to the Lafayette Diocese and arrived in town during the thick of  the debates.  On the day of his Ordination when there were hundreds of parishioners and clergy from many parts of the country in attendance.  Some neighbors made large signs promoting the preservation of the two houses.  I don't recall what any of the signs said, but they had been posted in a very public location near the church.  I heard, but can't confirm, that flyers were placed on many of the cars parked in their parking lots or parked near the Church on Columbia and South Streets.

I have no trouble understanding why Bishop Doherty would have been sore at the people of St. Mary's neighborhood. Is he still sore at us?  We lost that skirmish and lost two fine old homes and many of us were angry also.  For a long time that anger was renewed each time we drove or walked past those now vacant lots.  But, there was more disappointment and anger to come after it became known that the REAL REASON the church wanted to vacate those lots was for future school expansion and had nothing to do with a "playground".  We had been lied to and today those lots remain vacant.

About two years ago St. Mary's neighborhood did get invited to the unveiling of the master plan St. Mary's hopes to carry out over the next few years.  They pointed proudly at 1014 South and announced that they would be restoring that one as the new rectory after the old rectory was torn down....two years passed, the old rectory was torn down and all of a sudden we see the "intent to demolish" legal notice on the front of the building that they had promised would be turned into the new rectory.  From our point of view we have been lied to,  twice,  by the same people.  At what point do you consider something to be a habit? I would note that when the historic rectory was demolished last year there was no pushback from the neighborhood because we knew they would be moving to the house on South Street.

Probably the most hurtful of all is that all of this negative activity in our neighborhood happens without so much as a second thought about any of us who live here, and then they seem surprised and hurt that we are not happy.  As the cartoon says...it needn't be this way.  Talking is always more productive than silence and right now all I'm hearing is a lot of silence. Was the timing their latest "intent to demolish" random, or did they choose holiday time on purpose, knowing it will be difficult for any opposition to get much traction during the Christmas Holiday season?

Can the clock be reset on this relationship between a church and those of us who live around the church?  That remains to be seen but it is my Christmas wish...that St. Mary's would become a part of our neighborhood, instead of apart from the neighborhood.  Wouldn't it be really great if St. Mary's church became a partner with and an advocate for the neighborhood?  Just a daydream?