The House Where Immigration Reform Goes to Die

Did you see the big news out of Washington, D.C. this week?  I am not referring to the Supreme Court’s rulings on Affirmative Action, DOMA, or California’s Prop 8.  I am talking about the fact that 68 Senators agreed on a major piece of legislation.  Yes, 68 (!!!) Senators in this remarkably polarized era agreed on both the need to pass an immigration reform bill AND on the actual bill itself.  This is momentous.

Every Democrat and 14 Senate Republicans voted for the bill.  There were 32 Republican Senators who voted against the bill.  When I read the news, I was surprised and heartened—for about 30 seconds.

And then I turned my attention to the Place Where Bipartisan Bills Go To Die—the United States House of Representatives.  Speaker John Boehner has already said that he is not going to bring the Senate bill to a vote in the House.  Rather, he is going to bring to a vote a House version of the bill.  Boehner said, "For any legislation, including a conference report, to pass the House, it's going to have to be a bill that has the support of a majority of our members."

In English what he said is, “My crazy-ass Tea Party Caucus is, once again, going to kill this commonsense legislation because they do not know how to govern.  They only know how to say “no” to any idea that exhibits even a whiff of rational compromise.”

Boehner’s more conservative members have certainly gone to Washington and done just what they have said they would do—stand uncompromisingly against anything they feel is not conservative enough.  The thing is, the country is not an extremely conservative country.  America has always been a middle-of-the-road place.  Our politics play themselves out in the spaces just slightly left and right of center.   Ronald Reagan was not a right wing ideologue.  Barack Obama is about as Marxist as Richard Nixon was.  We value predictability in our national policies and we have had a remarkably stable national political history because of this.

The Republican Party is legislating itself into a corner where they will be left with older white voters as their only constituency.  Personally, this is fine with me.  They will be relegated to the status of a regional party with little chance of winning the Presidency.  It is fascinating to watch a Party struggle to find its own future.  The Tea Party radicals are pushing hard to the right, but the nation is not following.  Congress currently has a 10 percent approval rating.  I would argue that the main reason behind this abysmally low rating is the perception that the inmates have taken over the asylum in the Republican House.

Most Americans want immigration reform to happen.  When The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal agree on something, it must have some merit, right?  Many experts agree that immigration reform would be a boon to America’s efforts to reduce the deficit.  

Immigration reform needs to happen and the US Senate has crafted a compromise bill that tightens the border AND allows for a path to citizenship to people who have come to this country illegally but who have since worked hard, paid taxes, and made this a better country.  For any immigration bill to pass it will need to have pieces that please each side in the debate.  But it will also need to have pieces that displease each side.  Speaker John Boehner has proven unable to make his Tea Partiers see this truth.  They are willing—and PROUD of the fact that they are willing—to tear it all down in the name of ideological purity. 

So, my happiness over the Senate’s passage of the Immigration Reform bill passed quickly and was replaced by resignation that together, Congress cannot pass any meaningful bills until someone steps forward and gets the Tea Party Caucus in the House to act like grown ups instead of petulant children.

Some Thoughts Inspired by Texas State Senator Wendy Davis

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis’s filibuster in Austin Tuesday night managed to temporarily derail a restrictive Texas abortion bill that would have had the effect of closing 37 of the state’s 42 clinics currently providing abortions to women in Texas.  I say “temporarily” because it is pretty likely that governor Rick Perry will call for another special session of the Texas Legislature in the near future and this bill will pass easily.  Those opposed to abortion view passage of this bill as a great victory in the battle against legalized abortion.  Those who support a woman’s right to choose to end her pregnancy see this law as further erosion of the right secured in the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

            The abortion debate has been raging for as long as I have been politically aware.  The pendulum seems to be swinging toward more restrictions on abortion.  Lately, anti-abortion forces have taken the battle to the legislatures of more conservative states and have managed to pass bills that:

• ·      require pregnant women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image of their fetus,
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• ·      ban telemedicine “visits” as the basis for prescribing an abortion,
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• ·      shorten the gestational time period during which abortions can be provided,
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• ·      and exempt employers from requirements to provide contraceptive coverage in their health care plans.

In the end, though, using state laws to limit (or even to ban) abortions is a losing strategy.  Cleary people have very strong feelings about abortion.  I have seen this in my own life when we lived in New Haven right around the corner from a Planned Parenthood clinic that provides abortions.  There were dedicated protesters on the corner every Saturday and Sunday morning.  Passersby would sometimes get into heated discussions with the protesters, though I doubt any minds were changed as a result of any of these interactions.

Passing new laws strikes me as the legislative equivalent of these heated street corner discussions.  Opinions get expressed, but nothing gets settled.  Whoever shouts louder (or collects more votes) temporarily holds sway.  And no good is accomplished.  Passing ever-more restrictive abortion laws does nothing about the root causes.  Women are not saying “I am going to get pregnant so that I can have an abortion.”  That’s like saying “I am going to develop a melanoma so that I can go through radiation and chemo.”  No.  Women are getting pregnant unintentionally and then having to decide what to do about it.

Some small percentage of these unintended pregnancies is the result of rape or incest.  Most are not.  According to data from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended.  About 4 in 10 of these are ended by abortion.  Roughly 22 percent of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion.  Severely restricting access to safe abortions will not suddenly make these 22 percent of pregnant American women carry their babies to term.  Many of them will continue to choose to have an abortion.  Only it would be an illegal choice, performed in unregulated conditions by unlicensed and possibly untrained abortionists.  As we have seen with marijuana and alcohol, making something illegal does not stop it from happening.  Outlawing abortion would only make it move back to the dark, dirty nooks and crannies of our country.

I am pro-choice, yet I often feel some reluctance to fully discuss abortion with my pro-choice friends.  I feel this hesitancy because when we really get into the details many of them will never use the word “baby.”   They say “fertilized egg,” “embryo,” and “fetus.”  It matters a LOT to them that we cannot say when “life” begins.  I have a different view.  To me, when a human egg and a human sperm unite their genetic payloads and then start dividing like crazy, the result is a human life.  It can be nothing BUT a human life.  (I will not address the issue of a soul because I do not believe such a thing exists—I am talking strictly biologically here.  And neither should our laws be based on any talk of when the soul enters the body—this is an argument for theologians, not politicians.)

Having said that the dividing cells in a woman are really an unwanted baby, it then makes me sound like a monster to support that woman’s right to kill that baby.  Yet, I do.  Women who are old enough to conceive a child have the right to decide whether to carry that child to term or not.  The Supreme Court has famously ruled that states must allow abortions before “fetal viability” at approximately 24 weeks.  This seems like a reasonable compromise that allows women to control their own reproduction while at the same time recognizing a baby’s right to be born once it becomes more and more viable outside the womb.  I am not pro-abortion.  I am pro-choice.  Other than a few corporations who profit from abortion, I do not think anyone is pro-abortion.

Which brings me to my real point here.  Rather than fighting it out over how permissive or restrictive state abortion laws should be, advocates on both sides of the fight should be working where they share common ground.  Good-hearted, well-meaning people from both sides should put down their placards, turn down their volumes, and get to work on reducing the incidence of unwanted pregnancies.  Women and girls should get good information about how pregnancies happen.  They should also have access to affordable, safe, and effective birth control.  If we can reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancy, we can reduce the number of abortions carried out each year.

In my (sometimes heated) conversations with some of the protesters outside of the Planned Parenthood on Whitney Avenue in New Haven, it was clear to me that they were certainly willing to sacrifice the good for the perfect.  When I asked them about reducing unwanted pregnancies through greater access to safe and effective birth control, they were adamantly opposed.  They stated again and again that sex outside of marriage, with pleasure as the purpose rather than procreation, is wrong and against God’s plan.  To facilitate this sort of sex by providing a means of birth control is absolutely immoral to these protesters.  They are remaining true to their religious beliefs, but in their own way perpetuating the high incidence of abortion in this country.  Rather than acknowledge the reality that people will have sex, they want to impose a world where everyone who has sex and gets pregnant MUST have her child.  Theirs is an unforgiving black and white world.

The world we live in is far messier than the one these anti-choice protesters wish we lived in.  This world is one of laws, not religious teachings and beliefs.  The way to advance the good (a reduction in the number of abortions) is for those strongly opposed to abortion to let go of their demand that we replace it with the perfect (a total ban on all abortions.)  I certainly respect the right of those opposed to abortion to protest.  It is their right, (I would argue their duty), to vociferously make their opinions known.  But I would respect them much more if they took the practical step of working to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. 

So, Senator Wendy Davis has won a small temporary victory in Texas.  When the legislature there reconvenes and passes the law that was thwarted last night, the anti-abortion forces will feel like they have won a major victory.  They will be wrong.  They will really just have forced women to have unwanted babies, to travel hundreds of miles for a safe abortion in one of Texas’s five remaining clinics, to go to Mexico for an abortion, or to have an unsafe, illegal abortion closer to home.  Changing the law will not reduce the number of unintended, unwanted pregnancies.  Other things will.  If the “pro-lifers” are really pro-life, they should work to reduce these pregnancies, not to reduce the options available to women.

The National at The State Theater in Ithaca

The National opened their world tour at the State Theater in Ithaca Thursday night. I was not sure what to expect. I saw their last show when they closed out their High Violet tour in New York and by then they had worked the set into perfection. As I sat down for Thursday's show I could practically still hear Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks as it closed that last tour--it was sublime.

The setlist for this first show of the new tour included 10 of the songs they played at that last show in New York in December, 2011. But it also had 10 songs from their new release Trouble Will Find Me. The mix of old and new worked well. I love how aggressively The National include new songs in their shows. The new disc is not even out yet, but they are confident enough about the material to have it comprise half the show. It did not disappoint.

They began with the new Don't Swallow the Cap, (which would have fit right into High Violet), then went into Bloodbuzz, Ohio and another new one called Sea of Love. The three songs together got the show off to an intense start, driven relentlessly by the amazing drumming of Bryan Devendorf. The venue did not lend itself to people to being up and able to move to the music, so the energy in the crowd felt a bit restrained, but the audience certainly responded enthusiastically to the new songs right away.

Matt Berninger did not include much banter from the stage between songs, but he seemed relaxed and in good spirits. He joked a few times with audience members who shouted out requests. At one point he gestured out at three specific places and said in his barritone, "No. No. And No." He went on to explain that The National are not the sort of band to accept requests--they plan their setlist carefully and stick to it. He was not being an asshole, just explaining that calling out requests was pointless.

For someone who talks about being uncomfortable in the role of frontman, Berninger seemed totally at ease on the stage. Maybe it's just the wine, but I don't think so. He, and the rest of the band, seem like people who have put in their 10,000 hours and now just kick ass at what they do. And what they do is write complex music with deceptively simple, repetitive lyrics that are more like supercharged poems and then deliver these songs live with stellar musicianship and Matt Berninger's wine-soaked baritone.

Speaking of The Voice, there are a few songs on the list that are delivered in a higher range and really stand out for the vulnerability the change introduces--Pink Rabbits and parts of Demons, specifically. These songs make Berninger seem less The Observer (that he usually strikes me as) and more as a participant in the emotions he is singing about. Somehow his baritone makes him seem like he is commenting on his own thoughts and feeling from a distance. The higher voice makes things feel more immediate for me as a listener and I like how it changed things up a bit during the concert.

Highlights of the show for me were Bloodbuzz, Ohio, a haunting Daughters of the SoHo Riots, the new I Need My Girl, and all three encore songs--I Should Live in Salt, Mr. November, and Terrible Love. This was a great start to the new tour. Dwight Eisenhower once said "Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before." These new songs and this show by The National made me feel the same thing about them as a band: they are a band who is it the height of its powers as both song writers and performers. They are more The National now than they have ever been before.


THE NATIONAL SETLIST


STATE THEATER - ITHACA, NY - MARCH 16, 2013
Don't Swallow the Cap*
Bloodbuzz Ohio
Sea of Love*
Afraid of Everyone
Conversation 16
Demons*
Heavenfaced*
This is the Last Time*
Mistaken for Strangers
Daughters of the Soho Riots
Apartment Story
Pink Rabbits*
Humiliation*
I Need My Girl*
England
Graceless*
About Today
Fake Empire
Encore:
I Should Live In Salt*
Mr. November
Terrible Love


* From Trouble Will Find Me

Where Are The Dads?

The preschool where I work is run as a co-op.  As such, parents are expected to stay in the classroom and help the two paid teachers each day.  There is a schedule printed far in advance and just one parent stays each day.  As you might imagine, some days having the extra adult in the room is a real boon; other days, not so much.  It depends on two things:  the skill of the parent in working with three year-olds (other than their own child), and the ability of the child to share her/his parent with the other kids.  There are several parents who, when I see their names on the schedule for the day, I get excited because I know they will really bring some skills and excitement to the room and be a true help.  Others, …

Ithaca, where my preschool is located, is a very progressive town.  Yet the diversity of the place is not very evident in my classroom.  I have a total of 15 children and none have anything other than a mom and a dad as their parents.  This is not a complaint.  I am not saying, “Shit, why don’t I have any same-sex couples in my class?”  I only bring it up because it is relevant to my point.

So far this school year there have been approximately 120 days when a parent has stayed to help in my classroom.  Of those 120 days, a father has been the one to stay no more than 15 times.   Rounding up, this means a father has been the one to stay just 13% of the time and a mother has been the one to stay 87% of the time.  In the other classroom where a parent is expected to stay, the days when a father has stayed are even fewer and farther between.  In general, the parents in my school are highly educated with some sort of advanced or professional degrees.  I would certainly say they are modern, open-minded, and aware of gender stereotypes.

Yet, when the rubber hits the road, it is the moms who clear their morning schedules and come in.  Not the dads.  Why is this?  It is 2013 and, as a society we have decided, in theory, that if a child has two parents, those parents should share the parenting duties equally.  If one of the parents is a male and the other a female, there is no reason for the female parent to be the one who comes to the preschool to help with childcare all the time, is there?

Running Up That Road, Running Up That Hill

I have been running for about eleven years now, (and boy are my legs tired—ba-dum-bum.)  In that time I have found running to be a great metaphor for many things.  It gives me a way to wrap my head around the difficulties of marriage and parenting, the process of developing a good habit, and the work and commitment required to tackle any large undertaking.  I often find that my running life gives me a way to make sense of my non-running life.

Lately I have found that sometimes the opposite can be true, too.  Sometimes my non-running life can give me a unique way to think about my running.  This has happened twice in the past few months here in the hills around Ithaca.  

When life gives you lemons you are supposed to make lemonade (and maybe add a bit of ice and gin).  When life gives you hills, as it does so abundantly here in the Finger Lakes, you just need to build them right into your runs on purpose.  Make them useful.  So that is what I have been doing with a particular beast-of-a-hill called Besemer Hill Road.

After living and running in New Haven, CT for nine years, (elevation 43 feet above sea level), Besemer Hill looks like a mountain.  If I get to the end of the driveway and turn left, then climbing Besemer will not be a part of my run.  If instead I turn right, I know that 1.7 miles down the road comes The Hill.  It is a decision I make in the driveway, without the terrible image of the Hill before me.  Once I turn right, it is already a done deal.  All told, the Hill is 1.5 miles long and gains more than 500 feet of altitude.  The worst section gains more than 300 feet in a half-mile.  It is a killer.

To get myself up and over Besemer without stopping to walk I sometimes have to play tricks on myself.  (Being human, this is very easy to do.)  And this is where I have noticed my non-running life coming in useful to my runs.  One trick I play is to remember a scene from Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent novel Animal Dreams.  One of the characters in the book is a train engineer in the mountain West.  In one scene he describes the difficulties involved in getting a long train up and over a big hill.  Once the front of the train crests the hill and begins its descent, the train experiences gravity pulling it apart from the center.  Both the front cars and the rear cars are being pulled back down their respective sides of the hill and an unskilled engineer can lose the entire train if it uncouples.

To prevent this from happening, there are engines at the rear of the train to provide a push up the hill, but they must be in synch with the front engines providing pull so the cars in the middle are not accordioned.  It is a hard process to get right and requires much skill.  So when I am trudging up Besemer Hill I sometimes take part of my brain and send it on ahead up and over the top.  I imagine it coming down the other side of the hill and back toward the driveway.  And then I trick myself into believing that that part of me that has already made it to the top is providing some pull as my legs provide some push and, together, they get me over the top and back home.  And in that way Barbara Kingsolver gets me over Besemer Hill.

This past weekend I listened to a Radiolab episode called Emergence while driving back from New Haven.  There was a segment explaining how ants seek, find, and collect food to bring back to the nest.  It has to do with order emerging from chaos, and the way this happens in ants is through the pheromone trails each individual lays as it walks.  As individual ants search for and then find a food source, they are constantly secreting chemical trails.  At first these trails are random but over time, as more ants discover the food, the trails in the vicinity have more and more pheromone laid down on top and become stronger and easier to follow.  If five ants have walked the same trail, the scent is stronger than if just one or two have gone that way, making it more likely that successive ants will follow that particular path and in doing so, they will add their scent to the trail as well, making it even stronger.

I had this image in mind two days ago as I got to the end of the driveway and had to decide—left or right?  It was a very long and snowy winter here and I had not run up Besemer Hill since November.  In ant terms, there were no pheromone trails going off to the right and therefore nothing for me to follow that way.  But I knew that I wanted to start building the Hill back into some of my regular runs.  In the end, what helped me decide to go right was thinking about future-me getting to the end of the driveway and sniffing around for a direction.  I wanted that day’s me to get there and be able to tell that the freshest, most recent trail goes to the right and that I should follow that runner who took that trail on Tuesday.  And when I again choose that trail, I will be helping Saturday’s me make the same decision, but it will be less of a decision and more of a built-in instinct.  The trail will get stronger and stronger and the decision will get easier and easier.

Sometimes I love how simultaneously stupid and complex our minds can be.  It is like we are both: the dumb individual ants out in the world basing every move and action on blind instinct, and the larger colony benefiting from the results of all those unplanned, unexamined actions.  In the end, whatever gets me up and over Besemer Hill can only be good.