Life promises us nothing. The quality of our lives is determined as much by arbitrary circumstance as it is by our individual capacity for learning and enterprise. And if we go by our standards here in America, the arbitrary circumstance for most of the world is pretty rough. Take those in Syria, or in other countries desperate for survival, food and a form of government that offers them a chance at modest prosperity. We already have those things, yet our sense of well-being seems to be “slip-sliding away” as Paul Simon sang in the 70s. We worry about what the future holds for us. Our high school graduates now have about the same chance of finding work as those coming …
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Social conservatives like to use the phrase “moral relativism” to describe their liberal counterparts, perhaps because absolutes are simple and easy to remember, if not to live by. Our judicial system was designed for the reality of moral relativism. Whenever we try to impose moral absolutes they fail. A judge must understand and act on the relative merits of each case. Remember the Rockefeller drug laws and their mandated sentencing? In the ensuing decades judges had little choice but to lock up more young adults than ever before in our history and drug crimes went from street to pharmacy. A judge must have the same leeway to punish the “feel good” doctor, liberally dispensing opiates to patients , as he …
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Life is a balancing act. Complex truths are easily overwhelmed by simplistic ideologies and yes-no answers. The currently popular debate that pits free-market capitalism against shared responsibility for our community’s wellbeing makes for juicy, gladiatorial media bytes but obscures the known fact that it’s always in a capitalist democracy’s best financial interest to support strong communities. If you don’t believe this, consider the alternative. As communities degrade and finally collapse, the costs in healthcare, corrections, deferred infrastructure maintenance and remedial education skyrocket. Then the debate shifts to whether or not to spend ever more collective wealth managing the ills of a broken society on top of the costs of preventing further collapse. Preemptive investments have always proven more cost-efficient than …
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The most expensive service our government provides to its citizens, other than heroic healthcare in Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, is to lock them up. According to the Bureau of Prisons, the annual average cost per prisoner in 2008 was $26,000 at the federal level and $24,000 at the local level. Small states likeRhode IslandandVermontestimate their costs much higher at $35-$45,000 a year. This is two to three times our per-pupil costs for public education. At 743 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, the US incarceration rate is roughly six times greater than that of England, Australia or China. It’s even significantly greater than that of Russia. The “Land of the Free” now incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in …
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Whether I am ushered into the next world by a choir of cherubs or a bevy of trident-bearing imps, or whether I just compost quietly in nature’s great recycling system is not a matter on which I spend a great deal of thought. I am, by genetic endowment half-Jewish, by upbringing Roman Catholic, and by choice, agnostic. I neither deny nor assert the existence of God. I have seen the great comfort and goodness wrought by small churches of all persuasions in the small communities in which I have lived. I also see the hell-born misery ultra-orthodoxies of all religious types wreak on people the world over. Be it the Taliban, ultra-Orthodox Jews, the far-right Christians or the Sunni-Shiite internecine …
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I was what conservative business interests would have you believe is a “job creator.” I, and several very smart managers ran, and some still do, a company that worked with national clients. At our peak, we employed more than 250 Vermonters. Today the company employs fewer than 100, but not because its current owners are paralyzed by fear of taxes or regulation, but because the market has shrunk to that level and any company committed to its own survival must adjust its overheads to profitably match its revenues. I hate to disappoint you, but as president and part-owner I was not the “job creator.” The market was. We were entrepreneurs and an overheated consumer market created our jobs. Neither tax …
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In time and perhaps with age, we learn to doubt or at least question the predictions of gurus and futurists. Our landscapes are riddled with the remnants of “model communities” and retail and industrial endeavors that either turned out to be fads or investment pipedreams. Nature, or our “higher power,” or whomever we personally delegate with cosmic change, has a way of humbling our dreams and periodically reminding us of our rightful place in the universe. Tropical storm Irene,  recently did so, reminding us that our peaceable kingdom can be swept away. Watching the city of Detroit – decimated not by nature, but by man-made reversals of fortune – plow vacant residential communities under to make way for urban farming …
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 I recently read an editorial juxtaposing two disparate yet related visions that have haunted me, as any good op-ed should. The writer alluded to the crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square clamoring for democracy and free speech and to the crowds of American shoppers clamoring for Blu-Rays, Xboxes, and Wii consoles. The piece made me stop again and ask myself who and what we are becoming. Was the shopper who pepper-sprayed her competing shoppers as she charged a display of x-boxes really a sign of what we’ve become or just another nutcase? If we invested as much in observing our democratic rights and obligations as we do in consumption and the accumulation of wealth, would we not be the better for …
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On our occasional visits to England, we’ve taken up renting Landmark Trust properties, which are considerably less expensive than hotels, especially when friends and family join in. We usually rent an eccentric building such as a grange, hunting lodge, or folly. That comes with a kitchen, bath, bedrooms and medieval living quarters. We just returned from a weeklong stay at Wolveton, the 14th century stone gatehouse to a Tudor estate. The owner introduced himself the first day, evincing his life-long passion for spirits, his disdain for British animal rights types, hoi polloi from the former colonies, and modern conveniences. The latter was evident after we climbed the round oak staircase in the turret to our living room and realized he …
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We recently visited London’s Victoria and Albert Museum to see a show called “The Power of Making.” The show begins with this eloquent statement by its curator, Daniel Charny: “Making is the most powerful way that we solve problems, express ideas and shape our world. What and how we make defines who we are and communicates who we want to be. For many people, making is critical for survival, for others…a way of thinking, inventing and innovating. And for some it’s simply a delight to be able to shape a material and say, ‘I made that.’ The power of making is that it fulfills each of these human needs and desires.” Charny concluded by saying, “The knowledge of how to …
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