A Question of Conviction

I read an editorial by David Brooks in the New York Times this morning that is one of the best pieces he has written lately.  It asks the question whether the President has the determination and tenacity to win if he commits more troops to the war effort in Afghanistan.  While all of us listen to the arguments about troop levels and counter-insurgency and Taliban attacks, Brooks asks a simple question: If Obama commits troops, is he committing himself?  Is he going to have the determination to follow through and make this his war;  his own priority ahead of things he clearly is more passionate about like health care and energy independence? 


The debate is really about the man and what is important to him, since he ultimately will decide.  The most important meeting will be “the one with the mirror, in which he looks for some firm conviction about whether Afghanistan is worthy of his full and unshakable commitment.”, says Brooks.

That is a very perceptive take on this whole issue and is really one that all of us can relate to.  When was the last time any of us really succeeded without that firm conviction that we were following the right course of action?  I doubt we had the weighty implications that Obama has with this commitment, but we all understand that moment when we must affirm to ourselves that we have the conviction we need to succeed.  It is the point of no return.

Until that tenacity is visible to those surrounding you, everyone will hedge their bets as to what direction they each will take in the event you don’t show the conviction necessary to complete the task. 

As for me, I think we have had enough war and bloodshed in Afghanistan.  We don’t have a partner there.  We instead have a corrupt government that is only concerned about perpetuating it’s poppy crop and marketing opium worldwide!  We have a situation that will continue to devour our young men and provide us no additional security against attack.  We are spending more than 10 times the amount of our tax money in Afghanistan than we spend in Pakistan, and that is where the Taliban are actually hiding!  Not to mention the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons that are certainly less secure than we would like!  For eight years we have been pouring our treasure and blood into an effort that has showered only death and grief on our people.  We can’t save the world.  We can only be an example to the world.  Let us come back to that conviction!

Are our priorities backwards?  If we are going to ‘nation build’ why not do it here in the good ole' US of A?  We could sure use some of that cash!!  Let’s show some tenacity and commitment to helping our countrymen at home.

Is it time for all of us have a meeting with the person in the mirror and ask ourselves whether we have the tenacity and conviction to fix our problems here …..  starting with our own families and ending with our country’s desperate need for new thinking on race, greed, humanity and compassion, not to mention health care, energy, taxes, and the economy?

Distant Thunder Getting Closer......

I am so thrilled that the current recession is over!  Listen to the Wall Street pundits, the banking gurus, our government experts and it seems like prosperity is just around the corner.  Just this nagging little thing called unemployment is standing in the way of our getting back to ‘normal’.

Wake up folks!

We are in for a long haul, and it is going to get worse before it gets better.  ‘Normal’ ain’t coming back for a loooong time.  I don’t have to read all the reports and projections.  Neither do you.  Just ask your friends! 

How many of you have stories to relate about your friends or acquaintances having difficulty?  Either they are out of a job, having trouble getting a modification for their mortgage (Hey, why do they need one in the first place?), having to get part time work tutoring, or at the diner, or doing childcare.  How many of your kids can’t afford nannies or baby sitters and leave the kids off with you for the day while they go to work or look for work?

If you have a small business, are your credit cards maxed out?  What if you needed $10,000 for an emergency to buy inventory or make payroll?  How many times could you meet that need compared to a year ago?  Thank God gasoline has been steady—what would happen to your budget if it went back up to $4/gallon?  Can you afford to make that health insurance payment since it doubled when you turned 61?  How many of your friends have increasing medical bills and needs and no insurance at all?

How many of you have lost 50%+ in your retirement accounts?  And the stock market is back to 10,000+!  (Has your retirement account recovered?)  How many of you have basically tapped out your home equity lines?  How many of you are burdened by credit card debt where the banks are charging you anywhere from 15-30% interest, and you can’t reduce the balance enough to make the payments less every month?  How many of you are worried where the money is going to come from for all four years of your kid’s college education?

How about real estate?  Anyone freaked out about mortgage payments you are making on real estate investments that have declined in value by almost 50%?  No one is buying anything except the lowest bracket buyers, and they are buying foreclosures, short sales and auction properties.  How many homes in your neighborhoods are up for sale or foreclosed already?

My point is that the signs are all around us.  When you look at them one at a time it is daunting but psychologically manageable.  But when you collectively take stock of the state of the nation and its people, it is very discouraging.  You hear the employment projections every night on the news—after a while your mind is desensitized to it. 

The biggest segment of the population right now is the Baby Boomer generation—people born in the late 40’s and early 50’s.   76 Million babies were born in this post WWII generation.  They are all reaching retirement age now.  How many of them can afford to retire?  What happens when Social Security craters?  In a society where information industries have eclipsed service industries, how many of these people are equipped to be out searching for jobs in the new information environment?  By the way, who is going to hire a 60 year old?

I am a Boomer.  I can’t think of one friend I have in my demographic that has told me what a grand time this is to be living in, and how they are so glad they provided adequately for these years.  The stories I hear are about the fact that they are running out of money, or they are broke already.  Business has dried up.  Those that are entrepreneurs are struggling, with declining revenues for their businesses.  Their credit lines have disappeared.  One friend whose husband is a lawyer said that they don’t know how long they can continue to live on their savings before exhausting it.  What will they do then?

How does a 60 year old person who has been successful all their lives and has had a career, and who expected to be able to ‘take their foot off the accelerator’ at this point in their lives, compete with people hungry for jobs who are twenty and thirty years younger?  They don’t.

Of the 76 million Boomers born, only a small percentage of those are entrepreneurs.  The vast majority are wage earners with limited or fixed incomes.  When those people lose their jobs or their savings, what will they do?  Who will take care of them as their medical needs become greater and all their savings run out?

These are penetrating questions with no answers.  But it is clear to me that as we pass into 2010, the condition of all working class and middle income people is going to get worse.  The dollar is going to continue to lose value and there will be much more unemployment, human suffering, hunger and possibly civil unrest.  One thing we can count on is little or no help from our lawmakers.  They are all living in a bubble in Washington.

What can we do?   We can be kinder to each other.  We are going to have to find new ways of living in our communities that are more about sharing and not so much about consuming.    Pull your families and friends closer to you.  There is strength and comfort in compassion and empathy.  We are all truly in this together and I hope we ultimately see the rise of new kinds of leaders to usher us in to a new kind of era.

I don't want to be completely negative here, but I can't help remembering the words of the old Dylan song:

“Come senators, congressmen
 Please heed the call
 Don't stand in the doorway
 Don't block up the hall
 For he that gets hurt
 Will be he who has stalled
 The battle outside ragin'
 Will soon shake your windows *)
 And rattle your walls
 For the times they are a-changin'..”

Sleep Study II

Sleep Study II

I never thought I would be able to sleep with a hose connected to my nose.  I looked like an elephant to myself!  And yet, there I was Wednesday night with all the wires on my body again, only this time with the CPAP attached to my nose.  I have to tell you….it was the best night of sleep I have had in a very long time!  I slept all through the night without waking up and felt more rested than I have in months!  I walked in the door the next morning and my wife sat up and said I sounded ‘different’.  My voice was stronger and more vibrant than she had heard it in months.

Sleep science has made incredible gains over the last 20 years.  Doctors have discovered that sleep apnea can have hugely deleterious effects on your health.  People who snore are at risk.  When you snore it is symptomatic of airway blockage. 

Blockage can be anything from oversize tonsils to lack of muscle tone in your throat.  Whatever the reason, the result is that as your body relaxes during sleep, the blockage starts to occur and you eventually can’t get enough air--you can’t breathe!  The deeper and more restful sleep your body seeks, the more it relaxes.  Unfortunately your body’s desire for oxygen trumps the ability to get to the deepest level of sleep where you get the most restorative rest. The result is that you never get to the ‘REM’ state of sleep where you get the most benefit. 

If you think about it, there are lots of resultant problems:  You never feel truly rested, you fall asleep during the day, you have less energy and therefore exercise less, you are probably overweight because of it.  Overweight people have a cascade of other problems that result from that: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney problems,etc. 

I asked the technician the other night what age groups of people does she see the most.  Her answer was disconcerting to say the least!  She said in the beginning 15-20 years ago she was seeing mostly people 50 and above.  Now she says that 25% of her patients are in their 20s and 30s!  She said that most of those patients are big or overweight.   That is congruent with the national problem we are having with obesity in children and young adults.

Does that mean we are destined to be a nation of sleep deprived, unhealthy people?  People who don’t get enough rest tend to be overweight, have decreased short-term memory and a level of alertness that is below what is needed for us as a nation to be competitive on the world stage.  

Didn’t mean to go so ‘global’ on that jag, but it is kind of scary.  Sleep is still a part of life that is a mystery to most of us.  We spend a third of our lives in that state and aren’t really aware of what is going on during those times….

Anyway, I am looking forward to restful, healthy, positive pressure air clearing away the cobwebs of my mind……….

Shaune Lauren Lancit

My daughter, Shaune, has been pestering me to write a column about her.  I have hesitated because I don’t really know how to capture all the feelings I have about her in a short essay.  I have spent many hours considering how I would write about her and what I would say.

Being a parent is such a complicated experience.  We never ponder the length of service we sign on for when we father a child.  We don’t think about the fact that for the rest of our days we will have this person in our lives, for better or for worse.  We have no concept of the responsibility, the trials, the joys, the pain, the anxiety, the terror, the happiness, the anger, the pride, the love we are going to experience for the rest of our days because of this human being we have created.  When Cecily and I discovered that Shaune was coming, all we could think about was the ‘baby’ and the immediate future.  The rest of it was just a haze of possibility with no real thought as to the magnitude of the task that lay ahead of us.  We just knew we would do what everyone else did who had a child.

Shaune is 25 years old.  Those are my 25 years as well.  40% of my life has been about her.  I could never have imagined the journey—it is so overwhelming.  Any description of her; any column I could write about her is about me too.  She is a product of me, a result of me, a consequence of me.  We are told by all the psychiatrists that we are not responsible for the actions of our children; that their decisions in life are wholly their own, that we should not feel responsible for what they choose for themselves.  Do you parents out there really believe that?  Perhaps that is true on a functional level, but not on a metaphysical one—at least for me.

I could never have imagined what her life (or mine for that matter) has become thus far.  It has been a path with unbelievable twists and turns.   It is the quintessential adventure for both of us that we could never have planned.

The biggest surprise is that my daughter has become what every father at his core wants for his child.  He wants her to be healthy, happy, self-aware and fulfilled.  We both know that her success in reaching this state of being was incredibly difficult, and is by no means locked in forever.  It can all disappear in a heartbeat.  We know this because it was a struggle to get here.  We know this because we are both aware of the vagaries and fickleness of life.  But we also know that being here, now, in each other’s lives with each of ourselves basically intact is the most joyous thing.  We share our lives, our love, our family.  We don’t know what tomorrow may bring, but we are thankful for today and the journey we have made together so far.

We are the lucky ones.  I love you my darling Honeysuit!  You have given me one helluva ride, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!

The Politics of Spite

I was terribly disheartened by the response of many of our conservative Republican citizens to the loss of the Olympics for the City of Chicago and America.  Can it really be that we have citizens who are gleeful and thrilled that our country lost,  simply because they wished and hoped for embarrassment and failure for Barak Obama and the administration? 

Now we suddenly see these people for what they really are:  immature 12 year-old children who are motivated by spite!  We knew it subconsciously, but now it is blatantly obvious.

Do any of these selfish, malicious malcontents acknowledge the people that have lost a desperately needed opportunity to work or benefit from hosting the games?  Limbaugh and Beck were positively giddy that Obama had been thwarted and failed.  What kind of human beings are these?


This cabal of people are pissed simply because they cannot govern any more.  If they can’t be in control of things, then no one should!  Their view: better that the country have hardship; better that they can thwart any positive action at all that might make living in today’s world better for all Americans than for those damn liberal ‘socialists’ to succeed at running the country!  Their mission is to de-legitimize our President and his administration.  Republicans lost an election, but that is not enough.  They want to make sure that whoever is running things (since it is not them) fails!  It defies reason.

Suddenly the whole Health Care debate takes on a new perspective.  The Republicans, who have traditionally been the enemies of Medicare, are now howling that Obama’s push for a Public Option in the Health Care Reform Bill will somehow destroy Medicare.  Weren’t these the same people that fought tooth and nail to neuter Medicare during the Reagan and Clinton Administrations?   Morality be damned!---let’s make sure those Democrats just don’t succeed at anything!

Conservatives are so twisted in their abhorrence of anything that smacks of success at the hands of Barak Obama that they will stonewall issues even though they KNOW they are morally on the wrong side of an argument. 

Why is America the only developed country in the world where a major portion of its citizens don’t feel the moral obligation to care for one another?  In European countries that have successfully instituted universal health coverage, the citizens understand the need to make sure, from a moral perspective, that all members of society should have a basic right to be healthy, and are therefore willing to share resources to make that possible.  Here in the United States, we seem to have people who would rather focus on whether someone’s right to health care means they are somehow getting more than their fair share of resources, and therefore not deserve it! 

That is really twisted.  Being healthy is not about the quest for individual achievement and profit, and whether someone is getting something more than they deserve!  Being healthy is a basic right that is a moral imperative in a compassionate and caring society.

But now that we see the real motivation behind the obstructionist conservatives, we understand their true hearts.  The issue is only incidental!  The only important thing to these people is that whoever opposes them fail.  Their mantra is “let’s embarrass and obstruct anyone who is not us.  If we can’t govern, no one should be able to!  Any argument, even though it makes no sense and might be a lie, is okay in this quest!”

Unless we can somehow re-define the word “WE” in a way that is morally inclusive, or in a way that is productively positive for our society, then I fear we are lost as a country.

Sleep Study

So, you might ask, why the hell are you wearing all that spaghetti?

Yes, friends, this is a look at a man who is about to bed down for the night in a small windowless room with a little camera mounted on the ceiling--its unblinking red light a constant reminder of the nurse/technician watching me from the adjacent room.  All those wires get plugged into an outlet in the wall, meaning that when I lay my head on the pillow, it will be a constant battle all night with all the wires wrapped around my neck and finding their way into my mouth.

I may be suffering from sleep apnea, actually a very common problem among extremely virile middle aged men!  Apparently as we age (gracefully of course!) our throats become blighted with unneeded excess tissue which blocks our airways when we sleep.   The result is what my wife likes to call my 'tuba symphony at 3am'.

What the medical community has discovered is that people who suffer from snoring and sleep apnea are at greater risk for high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes because of the stress that snoring and not being able to breathe puts on your circulatory system.  Your airway becomes blocked and you literally wake yourself up trying to get a breath.  Of course you're not aware of it and it may happen as many as hundreds of times a night.   Then there is the fatigue and napping that are a result of this condition as well.

Well, I am definitely not interested in having any of the above, so I am submitting to a sleep study to see if I am a candidate for the treatment---something called CPAP (Controlled Positive Air Pressure).  Basically it is a mask that pumps air down your throat and keeps your airway open at night.  My brother-in-law has been using one for years and he says it is the best sleep he has ever had.  What fun!
I don't think I can think of anything more sensuous then cuddling with a mask on!  Ah well, better to be alive I guess.

Anyway, "now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord to let me sleep.  If I should choke before I wake, I pray the Lord will pay my bill!"

Report from the next morning:

Probably one of the most irritating experiences I have ever had!  All those wires and the doo-dads up my nose did not make it a particularly restful night.  I usually fall asleep within seconds of putting my head down, but last night after 45 minutes of trying without success to disregard all the wires and the camera,  the tech gave me an Ambien to push me into the arms of Morpheus.  I drifted off for three hours, then woke up once and went back to sleep for another couple of hours, but at about 6:00 am I was done... there was no way I was going to give them any more data.  I apparently suffered from what is known in the sleep trade as 'the lab effect'.  No Kidding!

Cindy the smiling tech told me that I had given them enough data to study, and I had actually snored during the night---oh yes they have microphones recording all your sleeping noises too!  I wonder what other personal sounds they captured while I was unconscious??

Can you imagine being a sleep study technician and doing this job several times a week?  Cindy had to stay awake all night and watch me sleeping!  She loves her job, although I can't imagine what the excitement is.

Well, dear readers, I will keep you up to date on my sleep adventures.  I find out next week whether I get to wear the CPAP, and if the answer is yes, I have to go back to Cindy and the sleep lab and do this all again---this time wearing the mask!

I guess it is better than having my teeth drilled or heart bypass surgery!