Across the Great Divide

The Parable of the Wandering Pit Bull

We We started out sharing positive experiences that had shaped our attitudes toward winter. But as happens at our Peace House meditations, we veered off on a tangent about animals in our lives.

Lawrence told us about walking past a yard in his sister's neighborhood that was enclosed with a stout metal fence. Every time he walked by that house, a dog would rush the fence, repeatedly slamming its face into the bars hard enough to raise welts. 

He learned to ignore the dog, but it never stopped its charges or moderated its furious barking.  

His sister had a pit bull she kept in her yard. It was mild mannered and bit mischievous. Occasionally the dog would escape its tether and run off to explore the neighborhood.

One night when the dog slipped its collar, Lawrence volunteered to find it and bring it home. A few blocks away, he spotted it. The dog would stop when he called its name but then would head off again when Lawrence got too close.

They had played that game before. Sometimes the dog would lead him on for a mile before it would agree to be caught.

After a few blocks of this, Lawrence stopped trying to command the dog and dropped down on his hands and knees, making higher pitched puppy talk and wiggling his butt like another dog. 

It worked. The dog came to him. He stroked its ears, nuzzled its face with his and offered all kinds of good doggy positive reinforcement, until he was confident the dog would return with him.

Okay, go home, he said.

The dog trotted ahead and then took a turn into the open gate of the house with the metal fence.

This pit bull was not his sister's after all.

I had my face right down with his, Lawrence said. It could have ripped it off or clamped onto me before I had a chance.

The moral of the tale seemed self-evident. Affection and kindness can work wonders where anger and aggression fail.

Lawrence starting thinking differently about a few things in his own life after that.

But the next time he saw the dog, it hurtled into the fence, barking and drooling just like old times.

The Peripatetic Bicycle.

You realize I'm making up stories here, don't you?

I mean, I don't fabricate and I usually try to verify, but I'm still filling the blanks with some of my stuff, like we all do.

In fact, I specialize in stories about how often people tell themselves untrue stories about other people and the world, because they are so confident in their own experiences, perceptions and character judgment. I tell these stories to encourage others to look beyond what they believe to be the truth. And I accept that as an obligation in my own life.

Then, there's reality.

A few weeks ago, I told a poignant story about giving away a cherished but underused bicycle. If you haven't read it yet, you should go here and do so before you continue with this post.

This is where, if I had advertisers, I would insert an ad to create a little space so you don't just breeze on through.

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On Friday at Peace House, two weeks after I wrote the wistful account of the Sky Rider's fate—a fate, I might add, I accepted with grace—I saw Marsh again.

This time, he greeted me immediately when I entered the large common room.

And immediately, I knew why he was so much more effusive this time. 

Because the Marsh I wrote about two weeks ago—the heavyset black man with the little beard evading me behind the sunglasses and hat—was not Marsh. As soon as I saw the real Marsh I thought, how could I be so blind, such a prototypical white dude, blending these two people into one, and inventing an explanation for the other Marsh's distance. 

Oh sure, I thought I had the facts and a credible witness. But even more important, I had a story that satisfied my need to tell a story.

You gave me a bike that needs work, Marsh said.

I thought you got rid of it. Calvin said he saw someone else riding it.

Nah, nah, it's in my front room, Marsh said.

There were things he wanted to change on the bike but he didn't have the money because he owed a debt to Social Security thanks to his former case worker screwing him somehow. (A long story we will skip over, because at this point, Calvin appeared.)

You got me, I said.

What?

You told me Marsh had unloaded the bike, that you'd seen it down on Lake Street.

Yeah, black, chrome fenders, with a big basket and its chain all rusty.  A girl's bike, right?

Uh, no.

Ah, man, I wasn't putting you on. I thought it was yours!

The peripatetic bike made such a compelling tale, wrapped up with a pretty good lesson about the perils of attaching expectations to the gifts we give. And I got to play the wise man, so that was cool.

But I suppose this story is just as good, if not better. And heck, it might even be truer.

 

 

 

Our Lesson Today is: Spare Us the Lessons.

"Do you work here?" he asked. We'll call him Joe.

I'm a volunteer, I said. 

Joe stared at me but I couldn't see his eyes. They were squeezed between a squint and full closure. The gaze of a man shutting out as much of the world as possible. 

"What does that mean?" he said.

I help out once a week... Talk to people. 

A terrible answer but what more could I say? That I am being present? That I am working out some strain of guilty privilege? That I am trying to tilt the universe in a more benign direction? 

A lunch for the price of a meditation. A fresh-baked roll. Salad with some greens from the Peace House garden. Lentils. Brats with StoveTop Stuffing that fooled me because it was so tasty. I cleaned my plate.

Joe didn't say anything. He did not want a conversation. He was looking for someone in charge, someone who could authorize him to get something to eat, although he had arrived too late for the free lunch.

In the middle of the five hours Peace House Community is open each weekday, we lock the doors and conduct a group discussion called a meditation.  A meal is served to those who attend the meditation. Afterwards, the doors are opened to those who choose not to participate and trickle in later.

Usually, the subject for the meditation is introduced by a volunteer. Last week I led one based on the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories we make up about others, and whether it's permissible to share stories that might not be ours to tell. Some meditations may have a more spiritual or inspirational tone. Current events are a recurrent topic.

This Friday, I was sure the volunteers were prepared to talk about the terrible week of graphic shootings that began in Baton Rouge, followed by the deaths of Philando Castile and the Dallas police officers. But when one of us expressed her concern, there was a quick reaction against discussing it.

"We'll talk about this among ourselves," said Calvin, "but there's enough negativity when you're homeless. Let's have the meditation be something positive."

Mel, a burly employee who functions as something of a sergeant at arms, then led a game that was a cross between an AA meeting and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," in which people were encouraged to tell three things about themselves, one of which could be lie. The rest of us were to pick out truth from falsehood.

The tales ranged from positive moments (a year of medical school, appearing as a schoolboy on the front page of a newspaper) to humorous declarations (I'm not a lesbian but I like to hit on women) to police chases, claims of drug convictions and prison stints, and surviving a hammer attack.

Mel said his game was pointless, but it posed a reminder of the resilience in the room without going all heavy. There are lessons to be found at Peace House without some volunteer circling them with a Sharpie.

***

With the help of a Native woman who's a regular, Joe got some food from the kitchen—a sandwich and a frozen pasta dinner for later. He left the packaged food on a table and went outside, where he managed to get the sandwich stolen before he could eat it.

When Joe returned, I was sitting on the porch. Once again looking for something to eat, he denied he'd been given any other food. Maybe he'd forgotten. Maybe I was mistaken. I went inside to sort things out.

I came back out to tell him the pasta was still there and it was his. I didn't expect my little intercession to be met with cold fury.

"Don't ever go in there and talk for me, understand?"

I think I do.

Here I was, dragging in my politics, my sincerity, maybe my need to expiate. Trying too hard to be the good guy.

Joe doesn't want a savior, he wants something to eat, and he felt capable of sorting it out himself. Of course, he is. He knows more about finding food in this town than I ever will.

Mel doesn't want a heavy discussion, he wants to give people in the room a chance to say, I've been through hell, I've made stupid mistakes and kicked away chances, but here I am.

None of them came to hear comfortable old white people say how much we care, even if this week we badly need to hear ourselves say it. 

Righteous Hiker Meets Trespassing Four-Wheeler.

Less than a mile from our house sit a few hundred acres of empty private land. It's unfenced and unposted and apparently—except for its future value as desert home sites—unloved by the people who own it.

But others do. It attracts dog walkers by day, underage partiers by night, and according to the season,  occasional cross-country skiers, mountain bikers and four-wheelers who find this a convenient playground, though far inferior to public lands farther from town.

In fact, we have better trails out our back door, but lately our dog has wanted to walk in this direction and, permissive father that I am, I let her pick the route.

Today, Roxy spotted a man in blaze orange walking his Shiba Inu across the road from the paved trail where we were walking, so I let her cross and we made our way along the maze of double track the four-wheelers have made through the snow. I know from biking here the ground shifts from a soft red sand to a sticky gumbo—each nearly impassible in their own way and therefore irresistible to a guy with a 4X4.

It's not my property and thus none of my business who else is using the land, but it does grate me when I come upon a hidden bowl where four-wheelers have been spinning circles and unsuccessfully trying to climb one of the hills. Elsewhere their driving has simply packed the snow, but here they've churned up the ground enough that the crust had melted and my boot slipped into a generous patch of the gumbo. (Think rubberized wet concrete that will adhere the rest of the walk, even as I scuff through snowbanks and stomp on rocks.)

When someone's sport tears up the earth this way, it doesn't seem like a game to me. I entertained a scenario in which I'd come upon some of them, pretend to be the property owner and run them off.

As Roxy and I circled back toward home, I spied one of those trucks coming up the road toward us. And then I saw the two big Labradors running along behind.

I confess uncharitable thoughts in that moment. A trespassing four-wheeler too lazy-ass to walk his dogs. We stepped off road which cut through a hillock and waited for him to pass. Meanwhile, the yellow Lab of the pair passed the truck and ran toward us.

"Tahoe... Tahoe, get back here," the driver yelled.

Though Tahoe was twice Roxy's size he didn't look like trouble, and Roxy is usually fine with other dogs, but she was leashed and you always have to watch how dogs react in that situation. They sniffed each other and then Tahoe headed back to the truck, which had stopped partway up the incline. The driver was out and loading the other dog into the covered back.

Roxy and I moved closer and to the other side of the road so he could see us better when he resumed.

That's when I saw the wheelchair symbol on his license plate.

He worked his way slowly back to the cab, leaning on the side of the truck for support and shuffling his feet a few inches at a time. When he reached the door, he had to use it to lift himself up to the seat, but because of the truck's angle, the door kept trying to swing closed on his fingers.

I said, "Your dog was fine," and he just nodded. He had a long greying ponytail (Western Colorado must be the men's ponytail capital of the world) and looked to me like a motorcyclist who'd come back from a bad accident, but not all the way. He had one leg up on the floor and rocked a bit as he lifted his left leg with his hands against the closing door and the skew of gravity.

Not the sort of man you ask if he wants help.

I waved as he drove past. He kept both hands on the wheel and drove out of there, and I realized I felt like the guilty one for cutting his outing short.

Self-serving or Serving People: My Dinner with Teachers.

A dinner party last night got me thinking about the interface between political rhetoric and where people's hearts really are. Of the seven gathered at the table, two were former teachers, one taught seventh grade and a fourth worked in a high school and was also involved in its drama productions.

Despite the depths of Colorado's educational funding problems and the precariousness of teaching jobs — seen in increasingly challenging classrooms, threats of layoffs and the red tide against "public employees — the table talk didn't go there.

Instead, it focused on the kids: The hard-working ones, the medicated ADHD kids, the malingerers, the amazing ones, the autistic one, the singers and dancers and shot putters and drug users. And it was spoken with an  awareness of and concern for their nutrition, upbringing, social circles, inspirations and prospects.

An ex-teacher inquired about one of his former students and whether he'd stayed out of trouble in high school. The math teacher, who taught a "gifted" class in addition to classes for kids with behavioral problems, said her gifted group was largely made of kids who might have been considered normal a generation or two ago. She also expressed mild regret that she'd passed on an opening to teach science (her specialty) because she believed science positions would be the next ones to be cut.

That's as political as it got last night.

This morning, back in the realm of daily news and conflict, I wondered how the conversation at a table of political job holders might go — say, appointees who rode the coattails of November's victory and are now intent on shaving government down to size as they collect nice paychecks and enjoy benefits just like other public employees. Would their undirected talk focus on the people they serve — all of them — or toward the advance of power and the progress of their unmaking government?

I don't know for sure, but this framework comes to mind as way to imagine it.

Let's say we can derive satisfaction from four dimensions of work: the work itself, the people we serve, the compensation we receive, and the control we can achieve. All are forms of reward, and the greatest theoretical reward comes from achieving satisfaction in all four dimensions. In reality, there are variations, overlaps and exceptions, but let's keep this simple.

Those who enjoy the work itself can include writers, programmers, scientists, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs and others who don't necessarily require other people to enrich what is already a rich interior experience. The work can be primarily mental or physical; it's the activity itself that gives pleasure.

Others may primarily derive satisfaction from serving others. Let's include teachers, ministers, health professionals, restauranteurs, certain salespeople and various social service professionals.

Then there are the managers and financial types who could be equally at home in banking, consumer electronics, taco franchising, insurance or the cake mix business. They need other people, but primarily as abstractions — "human resources," "consumers" and "shareholders" — necessary to the system that provides their financial gain.

The fourth dimension certainly overlaps with the others, but the control sought by a composer or a farmer is very different from that sought by the political and business classes, which must exert power over others to achieve their goals. And one of the levers of their power comes from characterizing and mischaracterizing others.

Of course, people aren't this simple, but these categories provide a framework for seeing through motivations as well as self-deceptions.

After all, there's more than one way to serve people.

 

 

 

 

 

Fiery Illumination.

Fires are a pretty common news item out here, usually meriting a photo and brief story — whether the structure affected was a high-end home, tract house with melted vinyl siding or a remote trailer.

When this fire photo ran in the paper last week, it was black and white, which made a salient detail a bit harder to pick up.

What do you see?

Daily Sentinel photo by Dean Humphrey

Grand Junction firefighters battle a blaze on a frame structure at the Rocky Mt. Court at 1211 South Fifth Street early this morning. A man living there fell asleep with a lit cigarette while on oxygen, which investigators believe started the fire. With the help of neighbors, the man and his dog escaped.

In the Blink of an Ear.

Many moons ago, in the hand-held timing era, I went home from a conference track meet with the white ribbon instead of the green one because a coin toss was the only way officials could break down our "photo finish" in the 100-yard dash. With today's timing technology, they could probably have fitted the entire final of runners in the imperceptible gap between me and the other guy.

For spectators of many Winter Olympics events, it's extremely to difficult acquire a sensory appreciation of how the race concluded. Some are run as time trials rather than head-to-head, but even seeing racers together, it's difficult to discriminate when they hit the finish within hundredths of a second. Abstracting the result  to a number makes it clear, but not visceral.

Of course, television viewers can watch in-progress digital readouts and time comparisons, and we can rerun the "tape" and break it down in slow motion. These methods all rely on the visual sense to convey the information.

The New York Times takes an interesting approach to illustrating the very small differences among finalist finishers, using sound to portray the intervals. (The player for listening to several finishes is here.)

We experience races primarily in the visual realm, but our visual sense is best at discriminating totality. Our sense of hearing, the player demonstrates, is highly attuned to picking up these small differences that are very difficult to judge in a visual field.

Although we don't usually think of it this way, when we listen to music, we are perceiving the spaces between the time and intervals — exactly what race officials have to do. 

*****

One other thought about finishes after watching the end of the women's hockey final the other night. The gold-winning Canadians were joyous, naturally, and the second-best Americans seemed to hold onto disappointment bordering on despair.

Elite athletes in all sports want to win, of course, but I wonder if there is a psychological difference in the way competitors react to defeat, based on the style of competition — whether it is team vs. individual sport, and whether the final competition is against the field or a single opponent.

Folks and Similar Stories.

My domestic partner has noticed a recent profusion of "folks" in broadcast media. Lately, reporters, anchors and commentators seem incapable of talking about people, taxpayers, citizens or men and women. [It's hard to capture this from the airwaves, but Katherine Kersten used the term five times in a recent Minnpost interview.]

Candidates, too:

"I would look at myself as being someone who can bring all of those folks together," [Republican State Rep. Marty Seifert] said. "Because, frankly, to win this election you not only need the traditional Republicans and the main street folks and the tea party folks, you also need a good chunk of conservative Democrats and independents, and I've done that in my legislative district seven times."

Is this all because of Gary Eichten and Barack Obama, or are we experiencing a deeper culture shift?

Or have we always been folks, and I'm only just noticing it?

*****

Another weirdity is how the "similar stories" algorithms work on news sites. For example, here's a helpful set up links that appeared under a recent online editorial. See if you can guess the subject before you click the link.

I don't know whether this is some kind of evil meta-commentary or just random key word nonsense.

Focus on Happiness & Taxes "a Mistake."

Like swallows to Capistrano — they are still showing up aren't they? — people bearing Tax Foundation numbers return to the notion that everything is better in low-tax states because (you guessed it) taxes are low.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal mined this familiar territory with the help of  an article about testing the reliability of "happiness" studies. The Journal also tossed in a United Van Lines study of mobility that is a recurring, non-scientific, source of glee. (I wrote about a previous example here.)

Mitch Berg jumped on the Journal's pastiche with this:

We’ve always known that those “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota” signs and slogans were buncombe – but it was more of a gut feeling.

But now we have empirical, clinical proof it’s all bull-effluvia.  The unhappiest states are the ones with the highest taxes; the happiest ones, pretty much, have the lowest taxes (with occasional emphasis added by me):

Does living in a blue state make people blue? It seems so, according to a new study in Science magazine that ranks states according to their happiness. The study finds that New Yorkers are the unhappiest people in America and their neighbors in Connecticut come in a close second, followed by Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, California, and Illinois. And the happiest states? Drum roll, please…Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee, and Arizona.

Actually, there's no empirical, clinical proof of a connection, of course, even though Mitch is impressed the name of the magazine is Science.

Here's what the study by two economists tested:  whether the subjective (and presumably unreliable) responses of individuals about their happiness correlated with objective estimates of life satisfaction based on economic theory. The study found that subjective responses aligned closely state-by-state with what economists might predict.

Put more plainly, for those who like research to correspond with their gut feelings, the study says: If you live in a place with warm weather, relatively open spaces, few services and no pressure, an economist says you're probably happy. Next time, if you say you're happy, the economists will believe you.

Bingo! Bubba is probably happier than an MIT professor, a Wall Street Banker, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, the the Connecticut-based CEO of $100-billion company. Fortunately for the happy states, they have the unhappy ones to keep the country from turning into Tobago.

The state rankings, however, attracted most of the attention. And the correlation with tax rankings had nothing to do with the Science article. Cue the Wall Street Journal with opinionators with the Tax Foundation crush.

To its credit, the Tax Foundation cautions in its Tax Policy Blog not to put much store in this sort of speculation and points to a Cato Institute article that questions the entire notion of happiness studies.

But while unhappiness is correlated with high tax burdens, high income is also kind of correlated with high tax burdens.  People in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut might be taxed a lot, but they earn a lot too.  So it is unlikely that disposable income is a major cause of "happiness", or whatever this survey recorded, because people in those states would still have relatively high levels of disposable income. 

Also noteworthy is in a world wide happiness survey Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands (not thought of as low tax countries) came out on top.  Although citizens in those countries receive a lot of quality public services—a point the editorial makes. That is something one cannot say about living in New Jersey.

Focusing on one policy area, like tax policy, and happiness is a mistake.

So is looking for analysis from people happy to find preconceptions reinforced.

Seeing Her Ideas in a New Light.

Mina Bissell will never forget the reception she got from a prominent scientist visiting Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she worked. She gave him a paper she had just published on the genesis of cancer.

“He took the paper and held it over the wastebasket and said, ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ Then he dropped it in.”

– "Old ideas spur new approaches in cancer fight," New York Times

Interesting piece on new/old thinking about how cancer tumors spread, and how that spread might be arrested by addressing the healthy cells around the tumor.

“Think of it as this kid in a bad neighborhood,” said Dr. Susan Love, a breast cancer surgeon and president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. “You can take the kid out of the neighborhood and put him in a different environment and he will behave totally differently.”

“It’s exciting,” Dr. Love added. “What it means, if all this environmental stuff is right, is that we should be able to reverse cancer without having to kill cells. This could open up a whole new way of thinking about cancer that would be much less assaultive.”

There's more research to be done, especially since this direction has been largely dismissed by the cancer establishment for decades.

I also can't help but notice that two of the key scientists, whose early papers are now seen a new light, are named Mina and Beatrice.