University of Iowa Dance Marathon 19

The art of charity is a good thing to learn.  The earlier you learn it the better, and the more you exercise it the better.

I am personally invested in the University of Iowa's Dance Marathon mission, which is childhood cancer and all things related to it, that I sometimes forget that there is a broader message to be learned by the thousands of dancers who participate each year.  They have the opportunity to do two things--they are giving of themselves for the benefit of others, which is a good lesson to experience, even if you don't learn much from it.  The other is that they acknowledge that bad things happen to people, some of them children.  They get a chance to talk to families of children with cancer and hear what their experience with illness and trouble has been like.

Pictured here are two of this year's dancers.  On the right is my youngest son, himself a childhood cancer survivor.  This year is his 13th Dance Marathon as a survivor, but it is his first year as a dancer.  He raised a reasonable amount of money and he usually stays up all night anyway, so I don't think the experience of dancing will have the impact that it does for many participants.  On the right is my daughter in law--she has danced before, and she has a long standing relationship not just with her husband, but with the whole family, so the impact is not so great for her either.

There are many college students who have not had a personal brush with serious illness.  You can't learn in 24 hours what that is like, but it at least opens your eyes.  Then there is the work that the students who get involved at the leadership level do--they really work year round on the effort to not just raise and distribute money for the greater good.  They are also exposed to what it is like to be a child in the hospital, what that is like for families, and I think you can't help but come away from that experience a better person.  It is true altruism--you get as much as you give.

Ground Hog Day Reflections

In Iowa, it used to be that there was no question.  On February 2^nd, whether the groundhog saw his shadow or not, there were six more weeks of winter.  And I don’t mean low key around freezing winter.  I mean temperatures could hover in the single digits—or lower—for weeks to come.  Not so these past few years.  This year at Groundhog Day we have yet to have any sustained Iowa winter weather.  By that I mean we have had a lack of consecutive days where the temperature is bone crushingly cold.  We have had weeks where the low might be 1, but the high is 52.  Or higher still.  So while we have had a bit of snow, and nights where you wouldn’t go out without full winter gear, we have also had weather in the 50’s and 60’s.  And lots of it. 

In the meantime, Australia has had the hottest summer on record—with day time highs going to 130 degrees.  China has had more snow than they can withstand—literally.  Roof cave-ins from snow burden are at an all time high.  The world has more storms and weather variation than anyone can remember—yes, that is a poor indication of climate changes, but that is not all.  Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been in the 21^st century.  That, combined with the accumulated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, lead to what some would have hoped would have been obvious conclusions.  We have a problem.

I hope that in the next four years we see our way to energy sustainability and independence as containing lots more wind and solar.  Fracking oil is not the legacy I want to leave my grandchildren with.  The current lack of leadership in the country makes planning for the future challenging at best, but as the numbers of young people soar, people who see themselves as needing a functional planet 50 years down the road, and who see that there might be profit in being pioneers in those solutions, then we might stand a chance.

In the meantime, get ready for spring.

Disposition To Be Rich by Geoffrey Ward

The subtitle of the book, which is a bit of a run on sentence, is like the executive summary for the book: How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States.  I can’t speak to the ‘best-hated man’ part, but the rest of it is not an exaggeration. 
The book is about the life of Ferdinand Ward, and it was written by his great grandson, so there was excellent access to family records, as well as to people who knew the man himself.  The book contains the usual stuff of biographies—an examination of the background and family that might have adversely influenced a man who grew up to be a successful con man and a sociopath to the end.
Whether or not Ferd had the makings of a man who wrecked havoc before the Civil War, the events of the war did nothing to improve his character.  In 1863, the young Ferdinand Ward was alone with his mother in their parsonage in Geneseo, N.Y., his minister father and older brother both off to war and his older sister visiting relatives out of town. Diphtheria swept through the village, killing friends and neighbors, and each mail delivery carried the risk of disaster.  Ferd was exposed to the quixotic nature of death, and that life contains no guarantees.  And his mother didn’t help any.   She had a religious zealot's dour view of the secular world and of the wages of sin. Hers was not a reassuring presence during those fearful days, and under her tutelage, young Ferd absorbed a lesson that would mark the sweep of his adult life: "No one should expect virtue, no matter how conspicuous, ever to be rewarded in this world."

That, combined with a narcissism that was truly impressive, became the calling card of his life.  He deserved what he could beg, borrow, and steal from people.  He married well, parlayed his wife’s money and standing into an investment firm, an associated bank, and the influence of Ulysses S. Grant, the ex-President and Civil War hero.  After the whole scam goes down the tubes, the Grant families lose everything.  Ulysses lives in a house that he no longer owns, and occupies through the kindness of the new owner.  His sons both lose their homes.  Ferd, showing no remorse, starts to go after what money is left of his wife’s estate, which she has wisely tied up in the hands of others.  It is in some ways the tale of the classic con man.  But in others, it is a reminder that we want to belief what is too good to be true, and that the greed of man is infinite.  Our most recent brush with disaster was at the hands of men like Ferd, men who took everything they could get and had absolutely no regard for others.  These sorts of men are alive and well.

As Shakespeare so aptly put it, hell is empty, all the devils’ are here.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)

Ok, the title of the movie does not inspire confidence in it’s potential for greatness, I will admit that.  In fact, if it had not been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Film, I might have missed it all together.  That would have been a mistake—or at least a shame, because this is my favorite animated movie of 2012, to date.

The film is British and the animation is claymation, which I love.  It is directed by Peter Lord (who co-directed "Chicken Run"—and the sense of humor in this movie is very similar to that movie—if you didn’t enjoy that, you are unlikely to really enjoy this one), "Pirates" creates a sense of fun that feels hand-made rather than machine manufactured.  This comes not only from its absurd slap stick humor, but also from the physical nature of the stop-motion animation process Aardman Animation (of ‘Wallace and Gromit’ fame) specializes in.

The plot is the least of the fun.  Captain Pirate is not the sharpest sword in the shed, but he is a good and loyal pirate—the bad guy in this film is Queen Victoria, who is depicted entirely different from any other historical representation that I am familiar with.  She is officious, difficult, and unlikable.  Captain Pirate aspires to being the Pirate of the Year, which means that he raises the most booty of any pirate—there are so many pirates that are completely out of his league, you feel sorry for him and his loyal crew.  They encounter the world famous Charles Darwin on one of their ship raids, and Darwin lets them know that they have a thought-to-be extinct dodo in their possession.  Captain Pirate misinterprets scientifically valuable to be financially valuable, and there begins his fall from grace with his crew.  He manages to redeem himself by movie’s end, though, and it is a very enjoyable ride for the rest of us.

Black Beans and Rice

This is a classic Latin flavor combination--called Moros Y Cristianos--which alludes to the Spanish expulsion of the Moors  from Spain, legend has it--but the fanning of the flames of race and religion with such a name for one simple dish, the staple food throughout Latin America, seems unnecessary.

The version that my spouse most recently made takes cooked black beans (make them in the way that you usually do--I usually just cook them in stock, but he added cumin, many chopped sweet peppers, and a hot pepper).  You have to make them because you use the liquid to cook the rice.  I prefer them as two dishes, usually--you can then adjust how much of each you would like--but this is a very nice rice side dish.

1 tablespoon canola oil or extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium onion, thinly sliced across the grain
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups cooked medium- or long-grain white rice, or brown basmati rice
1 1/2 c. cooked black beans with about 1/2 cup of their cooking liquid
Salt to taste
1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy saucepan or skillet over medium heat, and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until the onion is tender, about five minutes. Stir in the garlic. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, 30 seconds to a minute. Add the rice, beans and about 1/2 cup broth from the beans. Stir gently for about five minutes until the mixture is heated through, and serve. The mixture should be moist. Add more broth if necessary.

Thomas Jefferson--The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

Despite the subtitle, this book accomplishes something more impressive than dissecting Jefferson's political skills—it goes about explaining his greatness, a different task from chronicling a life, though he does that, too.

One thing about Jefferson is that he was at the center of American public life between 1776 and 1826, so the biography goes  through every important event in that critical half-century.   While Meacham adroitly weaves together his narrative, we're learning how the summoning of the Estates-General in France led to revolution. Although he covers Jefferson's life comprehensively, he doesn't dwell on the more problematic Jeffersonian initiatives such as the treason trial of Aaron Burr or the Embargo of 1807.

Any author who elects to focus on what made Jefferson a great historical figure has to deal with the disfiguring features in his life: his status as a slave-holder and the likelihood that he sired children by his slave Sally Hemings.  He doesn’t focus much on the thing that I found most fascinating—Sally Hemings was Jefferson’s beloved wife Patsy’s  ½ sister.  Upon the death of Patsy’s father, the children of his slave-mistress were moved into the Jefferson household, and they held positions of prominence.  It is not clear why she so honored her father in this way, but she did.  When Patsy died, Jefferson was 38 years old—and she made him swear on her death bed to not remarry.  Jefferson was known as a man who loved his wife and children—but he also loved women.  Could Sally Hemings have had qualities that reminded Jefferson of his wife?  If that is the case, while he treated her well, she was still his slave, and he was never a father to his children by her—who were ¾ white, as well as being closely related to his own children (sharing 37.5% of their genes).

Not given to psychologizing (unlike myself), Meacham takes us into the overarching motivations and predictable reactions of Jefferson by closely analyzing his pattern of behavior. Thrust into the role of slave master and man of the family at age 14 when his father died, Jefferson tolerated no opposition from his subordinates, but, among his political colleagues, he used hospitality to grease the way to his goals. His aversion to contention was his powerful political tactic. Meacham shows how Jefferson's melding of an unrelenting drive to achieve his republican goals with a pragmatic response to the possibilities of the moment worked for him again and again.

What remains mysterious is how Jefferson acquired the reforming principles that guided his career. What was the source of his faith in ordinary men? Many of his contemporaries believed in liberty and self-government. Yet they found his convictions about the masses' capacity to take care of themselves so bizarre that they had to call Jefferson a hypocrite. The mystery deepens when you consider that the most conservative electorate in the United States — the planters of Virginia — repeatedly elected to high office this cerebral, provocative statesman for the people.

Le Havre (2011)

This is a French movie by a Finnish director, and it has a charming  Buster Keaton deadpan humor kind of feel about it.  The wonderful things that I adore in French films are present, but there is also a plot.  Just lovely.

The story follows a ne'er-do-well shoe shine man, Marcel (André Wilms).  He is cobbling out a minimal existence with his wife, Arletty in a community that lets him buy bread on credit and the shop owners cloe up when he walks by for fear that he will take more wares on credit that he cannot pay for.  His life is in slow motion—nothing much happens, nothing much changes.  That is until he gets involved with an on-the-run young African migrant, Idrissa.  Idrissa is found in a container from a ship that has been unexpectedly delayed en route to London, and a police officer Marcel knows well is tasked with finding the boy.  The cop turns out to have a heart, and redeems himself in Marcel’s eyes by the end of the movie.  The film is set in the port city of the same name, and Marcel sets about both hiding the boy, and finding out who he is and how he might help him.  "Le Havre" above all adheres to Kaurismäki's aesthetic of expressionlessness.  His actors must convey what they're feeling without changing the look on their faces.  They do this with remarkable results, and the film is a joy to watch.

A droll ode to the downtrodden and dispossessed, "Le Havre" joins Ari Kaurismäki's unmistakable stylistic flourishes with two things additional features: an overt social conscience and a sweet-natured fairy tale sensibility.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

This is the best Barbara Kingsolver book in years.  For my taste, the very best of fiction has multiple layers of messages that are woven together in a well told story.  This book has all the elements that make a book enjoyable, thought-provoking, and memorable for me.

Dellarobia Turnbow is our heroine—she is young, just 28 years old, and she already has two young children, one of them in school.  She is trapped, not just by her poverty, her appalling education and her geography—she is trapped because she has no ability to envision another life for herself.  Her horizons are as bleak as those of inner city women who grew up in the projects, and her ability see beyond them is no better.  Dellarobia is not lucky and she is not cursed.  She doesn’t have family of origin who support her, but her spouse has a close knit family.  She finished high school, but she didn’t have the educational background to get into a four year college—her high school’s lack of a math and science curriculum were reflected in her ACT scores.  She got pregnant in high school, but her partner and his family.  But she is trapped.  Trapped in a marriage she does not love and a life that doesn’t speak to her soul.  She is not bitter about it—she sees her husband as a good man, she sees value in taking care of her family farm land and animals, and she is unhappy with her desires to have sexual affairs and cigarettes.  She is a good and understandable person with virtues and flaws and no rough edges.

Then along comes our agent of change.  Monarch butterflies, who legendarily migrate to Mexico for the winter, have gotten thrown off by the changes in the global climate and land in the millions on the Turnbow farm in the Tennessee hills.  While spectacular to watch, it is a very bad sign indeed—for the monarchs in the short run and for everybody else in the long run.  The monarchs have not landed in an eco-friendly village—far from it.  Luckily, Dellarobia helps the monarch scientists set up shop in her empty barn, and her good deed turns her life around. It is her exposure to two things at more or less the same time that end up being change agents for her.  The first is that one of the scientists, Ovid, sees Dellarobia for who she could be rather than who she is.  He teaches her about the monarchs, and she in turn gives him the language to communicate with non-scientists about the perils he sees in his world.  The second is that Ovid and his wife give Dellarobia a glimpse at what a good marriage is—that, combined with her conviction that her son needs an education that he will not get where he is, gives her both the means and the will to change.  It is moving and believable.

Then there is the not-so-subtle subtext of the novel.  Our stewardship of this warming, melting planet, with its rising seas and alarming new weather extremes, is of primary concern here.   It’s set in a rural, deep red pocket of the country, where God is presumed to work in mysterious ways and climate change is perceived as an elitist lie.  But autumn has brought rains that will not stop. The neighbors’ orchard is rotting, tree roots slip their moorings in waterlogged soil, and the mountainside forest, thick with winged refugees, is in danger of being clear-cut and leaving mudslides behind.   The butterflies are just one of many symptoms, and it is clear—there is a message here that many do not want to acknowledge.  Which it is why it is so lovely to have another story wrapped around this core message of taking care of our planet.  For Kingsolver, the tree is not a symbol of life but a herald of death. The book’s question is whether we can steer the earth toward something better than this.  This is a good one--do not miss it.

Kale, Peas, and Chorizo

My local Costco has bags of baby kale, so I am actively thinking about different ways to eat kale.
I made this one, a modification of a recipe from 'Eat Greens'.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 c. diced onions
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
2 cups frozen peas--I used less--depends on how much kale you want
1/4 cup white wine
6 cups chopped fresh kale
1/4 cup finely chopped chorizo, or ham, or another cured meat--optional
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 


In a large skillet or sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, and then the garlic  and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the peas and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the wine, bring to a boil, and simmer for 1 minute. Add the kale and cook, stirring and shaking the pan, until wilted. Add the chorizo and salt and pepper to taste and cook for 1 minute longer. Serve at once.

Women--We Can Be Our Own Worst Enemy

New Mexican State Representative Cathrynn Brown (R) introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial.

House Bill 206 would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for tampering with evidence:  “Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime," the bill says.  Third-degree felonies in New Mexico carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.

So, first and foremost, the basis of this is ludicrous.  Tampering with evidence definitely is an offense, and there are statutes proscribing tampering with evidence, fabricating evidence, and the concealment or destruction of evidence for the purpose of impairing its availability as evidence in an investigation or official proceeding. At common law, suppression, fabrication, or destruction of physical evidence amounts to obstruction of justice.  However, for something to be "destroyed" within the context of a tampering with evidence statute, the evidentiary value of the item must be ruined, and a mere abandonment of evidence does not amount to criminal tampering with evidence.

So abortion does not amount to tampering with evidence--once the fetus is aborted, there is a plethora of available DNA to verify the identity of the sex offender.  Evidence for the crime at hand is not destroyed.  The fact that the offense led to pregnancy has no bearing on the legality of or penalty for the crime.  So requiring the maintenance of the pregnancy provides no additional evidence of legal value, physical or otherwise.  It is just a further assault on the woman and her autonomy.

The restriction of the civil rights of women continues, and as we previously suspected, it is not just men at the helm.  Apparently there are quite a number of women that would prefer not to have their choices be their own.  Women and the men who love them need to vociferously fight back.  The two U.S. Senatorial candidates who spoke with the biological background of a kindergartner and the compassion that belongs in the 18^th century are not alone.  They have a lot of company, and the defeat of the radical social agenda they represent in the last election has convinced them they need to be more vocal rather than less so—it is definitely time to redefine ‘lady like’ as someone who is a well informed, independent thinker thoroughly capable of making her own choices. Once again the party who decries ‘big government’ proposes to dictate personal health choices.  Just say no!