Texan By Chance

After Surgery

2011-07-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

It's now been three weeks since my surgery and I am finally getting down to writing my first post.

First, I'd like to thank Nancy, Sean, and JoAnne for all their help. I couldn't have made it without y'all.

Adjusting to the drastic change in my plumbing has been quite difficult. Trust me, human technology is no substitute for the human body, as "designed" by millions of years of natural selection. The notion that this is how my body is going to work for the rest of my life is taking some getting used to.

So far, my last year of cancer treatment has resulted in a distinct decline in my quality of life in return for a purely theoretical extension in my life expectancy. I guess I won't know for some time how the calculus comes out in the end, but, right now, it's not at all clear that the cost/benefit ratio is less than 1.

Astrodome.

2011-06-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

The hotel room where I'm staying the night before my surgery overlooks the Astrodome, where I've attended many a baseball game during my life. I once slept in the parking lot to get playoff tickets. I took my daughter there when she was just a few months old--smuggling beer in her diaper bag to avoid paying high prices for warm beer. On a night like this, it's a good view.

Tomorrow's the Day

2011-06-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow's the day for my bladder surgery. At best, the beginning of new way of life. I hope everything turns out OK.

Mutilation

2011-06-21T02:36:00.000-07:00

So, next week I'm going into to surgery to have my bladder removed. I'll go under anesthesia with a relatively intact body and wake up with pee coming out of a hole in my belly. I think that this is one of the strange things about cancer therapy in general. As a cancer patient, you let doctors do horrible things to you when you are feeling relatively well in complete reliance on the expert's assertion that, if you don't, you will get sick in the future.

Decisions

2011-06-10T07:17:00.000-07:00

My doctor did a cystoscope yesterday and decided after looking around inside my bladder and kidney that the best thing to do is to remove the bladder. This presents all sorts of decisions. What happens if I decide to keep my bladder? If I have it removed, do I replace it with a new surgically constructed bladder (which involves wearing a diaper while being toilet-trained again)or an external stoma (which involves walking around with a bag of pee on my stomach for the rest of my life)? What to do about work, housing, caregiving, etc.? Lots of questions floating around. I need to work on the answers.

Going Home

2011-06-04T00:14:00.000-07:00

This morning I'm flying to Philadelphia for a brief visit to see my mother, brother, and sister. I'm going this weekend because next week I'm beginning my treatment at MD Anderson and I suspect that I will not be able travel easily for some time in the future, if ever. Because of their disabilities, my mother and brother can not easily travel from Pennsylvania to Texas to visit me, so I'm going to see them. I'm glad to be able to go, but it will be a bittersweet trip for me.

One-Hoss Shay

2011-05-29T07:06:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of the wonderful one-horse shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it--ah but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Oliver Wendell Holmes "The Deacon's Masterpiece or the 'Wonderful One-Hoss Shay'"

For more that sixty years, my body worked pretty well without much intervention by medical science. No broken bones, not much in the way of infections, not too much routine maintenance. I got fat in my forties, but other than slowing me down a bit, it didn't change my general perception that I was a healthy guy. I ate what I wanted, did what I wanted, and generally felt fine.

Last fall that sense came to a sudden end. Within the course of a few weeks, I was labeled a borderline diabetic and diagnosed with urothelial cancer of my kidney. I had my kidney removed and learned to control my blood sugar by changing my diet. I lost a few pounds. I felt pretty normal, but my sense of immunity was gone.

Now, the cancer has come back in my bladder and I have lost all confidence in my body. It's like Oliver Wendall Holmes's "Wonderful One-Hoss Shay," the buggy that was built to last 100 years, each part equally strong. It ran perfectly for a century and then, on the anniversary of its construction, collapsed into a pile of rubble, as every part failed at once. It seems like a perfect metaphor for my situation, but when I've alluded to it, nobody gets it--apparently Holmes isn't much read any more.

So, follow the link and read the poem. It's funny. And it helps me think about my mortality.

What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once,
All at once, and nothing first,
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.

M.D. Anderson

2011-05-25T04:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I visited M.D. Anderson Cancer Center for the first time as a patient. This is the cancer hospital in Houston where my wife was treated for almost 7 years before she died. The hospital has grown (sort of like a tumor)during my 11-year absence, and the clinic building was built since my last visit. Nonetheless, much about the place was familiar and it brought back lots of memories.

My doctor seems very knowledgeable and inspired a good deal more confidence than the doctors who have been treating me in Austin. I hope its not too late.

Positive Thinking

2011-05-21T06:18:00.000-07:00

Since my diagnosis with bladder cancer, I have had several conversations with friends who have urged me to "think positive!" This is an admonition to which I respond generally negatively, for reasons that go back to the time when my father was dying of cancer in the mid-seventies.

In those days, there was a popular idea that there was a "cancer personality:" introverted, pessimistic. I found the idea hurtful and unscientific. Cancer, I believed, was strictly a consequence of events in the physical world. The idea of preventing or curing cancer by thinking happy thoughts was superstitious nonsense designed to blame the victim and, perhaps obscure the reponsibility of polluters who were pumping carcinogens ino the environment.

Since then, my ideas about how the mind interacts with the body have changed significantly. Since I conceive of human consciousness as a manifestation of physical events in the brain and since we know that the major function of the brain is to control the functioning of the body, it seems perfectly possible to imagine that how a person thinks and feels can effect how his body reacts to cancer or anything else. The brain is an organ of the body connected to the rest of it by nerve, blood, bone, etc. and the function of the brain effects the other organs just as their function effects the brain.

So, what bothers me now about the admonition to "think positive" is not the notion that positive thinking might help, but my inability to understand what it means for "me" to decide how I will think or feel. If my self, my ego, is, in fact, a consequence of my brain function, how can "I" cause my brain to think about things differently when "I" am, in fact, an idea or sensation produced by the material action of my brain? The causation arrow runs the wrong way. Indeed, it seems that my optimism waxes and wanes with my physical state--I think optimistic thoughts when I have had enough sleep and eaten healthy food.

So, rather than trying to fool myself into believing things that are not true, my conclusion is to try to improve my state of mind by taking care of my physical body by making decisions about what to eat, exercise, etc. Hopefully, that will produce the positive brain activity that will help me survive.

A slight change in direction

2011-05-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a year since my last post on this blog and I am sure that no one is still checking to see if anything new has been posted. So, I've decided to revive it for a new and different purpose. Maybe someone will find it and read it, but mostly I'm just writing for myself. If you do happen to come across it feel free to comment.

Last September (2010), I was diagnosed with a urothelial tumor in my left kidney. I had my kidney removed and hoped that the surgery would cure the problem. Within a few weeks I was up and about--about 30 pounds lighter and with a big scar on my belly--but otherwise no worse for wear. However, recently I discovered that the cancer has now manifested itself as multiple tumors in my bladder. Obviously, this new development ups the ante considerably.

Next week I'm off for a consult at the GenitoUrinary department at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the same hospital where my late wife, Helen, was treated for breast cancer for almost seven years, a place that, I fervently hoped, I would never see the inside of again. Having confronted death by cancer in people I loved on several occasions, I have developed some pretty definite notions as to how one ought to deal with the challenge of this life-threatening disease. We'll see if I'm up to it now that it's my turn.

My plan is to post ongoing reports on my journey through life as a cancer patient--a journey I've observed from close quarters but never before from the inside. I hope this will be helpful for me, and, if anyone ever reads this, for my readers.

Oil Business

2010-06-13T05:39:00.000-07:00

The blowout of British Petroleum's deep sea oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is a bill come due for the people of the Gulf Coast. For the people of Louisiana and Texas,at least, it is a bill that we thought would never have to be paid.

I have lived most of my life on the upper Texas Gulf Coast, in the midst of one of the largest concentrations of petroleum-related industrial activity in the world. In the sixties, when I lived there, the motto of Port Arthur, Texas, a refinery town situated on the Louisiana border, was "We Oil the World!" In those days, the environmental degradation that accompanied the production of petroleum products was seen as a minor inconvenience that was more than compensated for by the prosperity attendant to the "awl bidness." When I complained to my father about the toxic fumes that permeated the air of Port Arthur, he told me that the putrid hydrocarbon odors that made me gag were "the smell of money." This attitude was widespread among Gulf Coast residents who worked in the industry. As time went on, people became more aware of the environment, the attitude of those in the oil business changed slightly--now the story was that the risks posed by the production, transportation, and refining of crude oil could be protected against by technical means and--not to worry--the industry was doing just that.

At no time in my memory were the people of Louisiana and Texas (the two Gulf Coast states that were most involved in oil) ever told by their leaders that we had made a bargain with the rest of the country to accept the environmental harm inherent in petroleum extraction in return for money. Indeed, here on the Gulf Coast, the evironmentalists on the east and west coasts who refused to allow drilling off their coasts were seen as impractical, privileged aesthetes who didn't have enough entrepreneurial gumption to exploit the resources around them. Occasionally someone would point out the hypocrisy of Yankees who drove SUVs but didn't want to see a drilling rig from their beach house, but this trope was not generally pursued because, if you thought about it very long, it necessarily implied that we Gulf Coasters who welcomed the chance to foul our land and waters in order to provide fuel for Northern suburbanites were, in fact, the suckers in the deal.

Now, the note has been called. The marshes and estuaries of the Louisiana coast are becoming more polluted every day. Hundreds of thousand gallons of crude oil are pouring into the open Gulf and will continue to do so for months. While Texas waters have not yet been affected, they no doubt will be. The beaches of the Florida Panhandle, as white as sugar, will soon be blackened, despite the fact that Florida never sold its soul to the awl bidness. And after a hundred years of serfdom, Gulf Coasters can't afford to extract ourselves from this bargain with the devil. Our politicians demand that the federal government allow continued offshore drilling despite the BP disaster, because that's the only way we know to earn a living. Decisions have consequences, but I wish that had told us what the deal was.

False Positives

2009-12-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

Last month, the Preventive Services Task Force of the United States Department of Health and Human Services issued a report recommending a significant reduction in mammographic screening for breast cancer. This recommendation was received with what can only be described as hysteria. While some of the protest was a cynical ploy by those who oppose Obama's proposed health insurance reform and some of it (very little) was a serious disagreement over the Task Force's calculation of the net benefits of mass breast cancer screenings, most criticism of the report centered on the idea that it is immoral not to screen millions of healthy women if, by not screening, there is one life lost that could have been saved. "So what," these critics argued, "if the chances of saving a life of a woman between ages 40 and 50 by screening is 1 in 1900, we should do everything we can to save that life." The problem with this sort of thinking is that it completely ignores or minimizes the costs of routine mammography for the 1899 women who undergo the test but whose lives are not saved by it.

In most of those cases, the x-ray shows no sign of cancer. These women are reassured, but they do pay a price in radiation, money, inconvenience, and discomfort. They receive no tangible benefit from the test; indeed, the radiation exposure slightly increases their chances of developing breast cancer in the future. Most women who are now being screened probably think that the psychological comfort of a "negative" mammogram is worth these risks, but this "benefit" is purchased at a cost, much of it paid by other women.

In a significant number of cases, the mammogram shows a suspicious breast lesion which is biopsied and diagnosed as benign. These are the classic "false positives." These women typically receive more radiation in the form of additional imaging and suffer additional expense and pain. Most importantly, however, they understandably suffer a good deal of anxiety during the time between the "positive" mammogram and the post-biopsy "all clear" signal. Mammography advocates typically dismiss this psychological cost as trivial, but they can't have it both ways. If the emotional reassurance provided by a true negative mammogram is a good reason to do them, then the psychic pain caused by a false positive is a reason not to do them.

The group of women most hurt by being screened are those in whom the mammogram leads to the discovery of a slow-growing cancer, one which, if undiscovered, would never have cause illness or which, at least, would not have metastasized before it reached a size at which it would have been discovered without x-rays. Some of these women will be treated unnecessarily, typically undergoing surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation. All of these treatments are dangerous and unpleasant. In addition, these patients are deprived by the screening test of the blissful ignorance which allows them to live their lives innocent of the existence of mutated cells within them.

The same considerations apply to those women in whom mammography finds aggressive, incurable tumors. They will die with or without mammography, but without it they will have more time in which to live normal lives,free of the knowledge they they have a life-threatening disease.

While it is impossible to tell in advance which woman is in which of these groups, it is possible for scientists to make informed judgments about the relative sizes of these groups and to consider these facts in making a cost-benefit analysis of the benefit of screening mammography for different groups. That is apparently what the Task Force tried to do. Others can contest their measurements of costs versus benefits in good faith, but many of those denouncing their recommendations do so without acknowledging that there are, in fact, serious costs to mass screening of healthy people.

The Torture Debate

2009-04-25T03:41:00.000-07:00

1. People who torture, or who order others to torture, are criminals under US and international law.

2. People who admit to having ordered torture are confessed criminals.

3. Confessed criminals should be prosecuted for their crimes.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THERE TO DEBATE?

November 22

2008-11-22T04:40:00.000-08:00

The anniversary of the murder of Jack Kennedy usually sets me thinking about that long-ago day. But this year I was yanked back to it in particularly brutal fashion. Yesterday, I had a meeting at a law office in the 3300 block of Elm Street in Dallas, in the now hip, formerly industrial neighborhood of Deep Ellum. At the end of the meeting, two of the participants, both baby boomers, walked me to my car. "What's the best way," I asked, "to get onto Interstate 35?"

"Oh," one of them replied, "just follow Elm Street all the way through downtown, like you were in the Kennedy motorcade."

November 22, 1963, was a bright, beautiful fall day in suburban Philadelphia, where I was an eighth-grader. Shortly after we began our Latin class, the principal came on the PA system to announce that our president hat been shot in Texas--a few minutes later he came on to say that President Kennedy was dead. The teacher tried to continue with the lesson, but without much luck. I sat in my seat sobbing. The following Wednesday my family stood in a long line at Arlington National Cemetery, waiting for hours for the privilege of filing past his fresh grave.

I loved John Kennedy in a way that I have never loved any public figure since. He was for me, and millions of my generation, much more that a politician. He was young and beautiful and full of possibility. He was the promise of what we could grow up to be in a post-war America that was the greatest country that had ever been. The announcement over the junior high school public address system yanked the veil of innocence from my eyes; it never returned. For me, part of the attraction of the Obama campaign was the suggestion, the hint, that, if we could manage to elect this man, perhaps we could return to the world as it was on November 21, 1963, before we saw what was behind the facade.

Mormons and Marriage

2008-11-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

Being thrice married myself, I'm pretty reluctant to advise anyone else about his or her marriage. I'm always cognizant of the fact that my ex-wife might interrupt one of my most lustrous pearls of domestic wisdom to inform my listeners of the true facts of my track record as a marital partner. If the wisdom of taking my own past into consideration before making public pronouncements on other people's lives is self-evident to me, someone with no communication with divine beings, one would think that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose leadership claims to be in touch with the Creator of the Universe, could see the same thing.

However, this does not seem to be the case. The Mormon Church recently organized the donations of millions of dollars from its members to support Proposition 8, the anti-same-sex marriage amendment to the California Constitution. The amendment passed. This is the same church whose founding prophet, Joseph Smith, had at least 28 wives and whose charter was revoked by the United States Congress because of its practice of polygamy.

One might think that, given this history, the Mormon Church would be among the most sexually tolerant of religious sects. After all "Joe and Emma and Fanny and Lucinda and Louisa and Zina and . . ." makes "Adam and Steve" look like small potatoes when it comes to marital unconventionality. But no such luck. With the zeal of a convert, the LDS Church, which abandoned its revealed doctrine of "celestial marriage" in the face of political and legal opposition in the late 19th century, now advocates a particularly stringent version of the orthodox Christian sexual code.

Nobody likes a hypocrite. And Mormon hypocrisy is particularly annoying. The passage of Prop 8 sets back the move for full equality for sexual minorities. I have confidence that, in the end, justice will prevail. In the meantime, what goes around comes around.

Bearing False Witness

2008-11-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, a case in which a new age cult has won, in the lower court, the right to place a stone monument inscribed with the "Seven Aphorisms" of its faith in the same park that already contains a similar stone containing the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament.

This is an interesting case for a number of reasons, but what it got me thinking about was the propensity for religious public officials and their lawyers to lie when it comes to defending governmental endorsement of religion. It's my observation the propensity for outright prevarication about officials' motives in these cases is so great that the courts, the media, and the public don't even seem to take notice of it any more. The Pleasant Grove City case demonstrates what a tangled web can be woven when government officials try to get around the Constitution's prohibition of the establishment of religion.

In 1971, the Fraternal Order of Eagles donated the Ten Commandments monument for placement in a city park in Pleasant Grove City, Utah. In 2003, Summum, one of several strange religious groups based in Salt Lake City, applied to the city government for permission to donate their religious monument for erection in the same park. The city fathers rejected the Seven Aphorisms monument. But they didn't tell the truth about why they did so. The real reason that they were rejecting the cult's request was simple: a vast majority of the citizens and officials of Pleasant Grove City believe the Ten Commandments to be divinely ordained by the Creator; none of them think the same of the Seven Aphorisms. Instead of just saying that, the mayor wrote a letter claiming that the city was applying some (made-up after the fact) unwritten rule that allowed them to accept for placement in the park only displays that were relevant to the town's history.

The Mayor told this lie because his lawyer told him that, if he told the truth, his city would be violating the First Amendment's prohibition on the establishment of religion, but that the Court of Appeals had suggested in an earlier case that this "town history" gambit might work. So, the case is grinding on and on wasting dollars and other resources that governments and tax-exempt entities like Summum and the fundamentalist non-profit law firm representing the city could be devoting to worthwhile activities like educating our children or replacing our infrastructure.

There is, of course, a simple way to avoid all this never-ending litigation. Leave the Ten Commandments, the Seven Aphorisms, the crosses, the crucifixes, the Islamic crescents, the Magen Davids, the creches, the menorahs, and all the other religious totems in the churches, mosques, synagogues, and other private property where they belong. But our religious fellow citizens are not willing to do that for a very simple reason: despite what the First Amendment says, they want to establish their religion. Christian fundamentalists believe that this is a Christian nation and that non-Christians are second or third-class citizens, and nothing makes that point like the cross in the city park or the Decalogue in the courthouse square. Putting it on the church lawn next door just won't do, and they feel so strongly on the issue that they're willing to violate the First Amendment AND the Ninth Commandment just to let the rest of know that they're in charge.

Iowa

2008-11-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, I read Gilead, a novel by Marilynne Robinson. I knew nothing of her work at the time--my recollection is that I selected the book at random from the "new arrivals" shelf at my local library. I loved it so much so that I emailed passionate recommendations to my family and friends, not something that I am in the practice of doing. This was strange because the book is explicitly a Christian one--the novel is in the form of a long letter written by a dying Congregationalist minister in the small town of Gilead, Iowa. Since I am not a Christian, I was hard put to explain my attraction to the book. In the end I put it down to my interpretation of the book as being largely about the history of white northerners' attitudes toward race--that and the fact that, as an alumnus of a congregationalist-founded college and Presbyterian Sunday School, I am familiar with and interested in the culture and theology of American Calvinism . My admiration for the book was widely shared; it won the Pulitzer Prize and our President-to-be listed it as as one his favorite books.

I've just finished reading Robinson's new novel, Home. It is also set in Gilead. And it has strong theological themes. And I love it, despite the fact that the racial/political/historical threads are much less prominent than in the earlier book.

Home is a presentation of the incidents of Gilead from another vantage point. Jack Boughton, the ne'er-do-well namesake of Gilead's narrator John Ames, has returned to town after a twenty-year absence. His father, a retired Presbyterian minister, welcomes him but cannot resist the impulse to judge him. If this brief summary brings the words "prodigal son" leaping into your consciousness, you are probably part of the audience for this book.

The novel is not particularly strong on plot, but there is a mildly surprising incident at the end. The writing is beautiful in a plain, Midwestern way that is artful without seeming self-consciously artsy. The characters are carefully drawn. The themes of family, alienation, moral responsibility, and mortality are universal, but the setting is distinctly American.

You don't need to have read Gilead to read Home, but you ought to read both because they are such good books. Home was published in the midst of the recent campaign, so I don't imagine that Barack Obama has had a chance to read it yet. I know he's busy these days, but I hope that someone will send him a copy for Christmas.

Culture Wars

2008-09-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin's nomination is being widely interpreted as another attempt by the Republican Party to exploit the public's resentment of the cultural liberalization that began in the 1960s. I agree. An interesting thing about this iteration of the "culture wars" is the extent to which Sarah Palin herself demonstrates the fact that, while the right may have won elections with cultural issues, the cultural left consistently wins the culture war itself.

Most of the "culture war" issues relate to the perception that our culture has abandoned the strict sexual mores which prevailed in earlier times. Opposition to abortion, homosexuality, sex education, and sexually explicit entertainment all rests on a sense that society now tolerates, or even embraces, extra-marital sexual behavior which was once taboo and on a desire to restore these old strict standards.

This call for a return to old fashioned morality has worked well as an electoral political issue, but, strangely enough, no matter how many Republican culture warriors are elected to office, the culture continues to move away from the sexual shaming that is necessary to enforce sexually repressive cultural codes. Americans, no matter what their religious/political stance, now accept the fact that it is normal for people to engage in heterosexual activity before marriage. The tiny minority who "save themselves" for marriage are, depending on your outlook, either virtuous heroes or self-denying prudes, but nobody thinks that they are not statistically anomalous. Consequentially, pre-marital sex no longer carries the stigma that it did in the 50s and unwed motherhood no longer excludes a young woman from "respectability" as it did then. As proof of that, when was the last time that you heard of a pregnant teenager "going to visit relatives" so that she could give birth and put her child up for adoption. The trend toward accepting pre-marital sex as "normal" was clearly manifested by the welcome given Bristol Palin and her fiance by the hordes of fundamentalist delegates at the Republican National Convention who treated Bristol as a hero because she had decided not to have an abortion.

Of course, proclaiming this young, single mother an admirable hero instead an object of contempt, the religious right is essentially declaring its defeat in the culture wars. Whereas it once fought legal abortion because the ability to quietly end a pregnancy freed "promiscuous" women from the stigma that was their rightful punishment for violating sexual codes, they now lionize a young woman solely because she decided to keep her baby, seemingly ignoring the issue of what she did to get it. These folks have, over the last several decades, thrown out the baby and kept the bath water!

Similarly, cultural traditionalists opposed the movement of women into the workforce because it undercut God-given gender roles. Now they are supporting a married mother of young children as a potential chief executive of the United States without the slightest concern for how that might effect the "proper" division of authority within her marriage or what kind of example it might set for young women, AND they accuse anyone who opposes Gov. Palin's candidacy of engaging in improper sex discrimination, invoking a principle whose legitimacy they rejected until a few years ago! Of course, if they openly favored sex discrimination, they would be seen as outside the mainstream culture.

Inerrant

2008-09-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

The nomination of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate of a party whose presidential nominee is a 72-year-old cancer patient raises the possibility that, in the near future, the President of the United States could be a fundamentalist Protestant who actually believes that the King James Bible is the inerrant word of God. This would represent a cataclysmic change in American politics, a fact that is recognized by the fundamentalists of the religious right, but not so much by the mainstream media or the Democratic Party. Indeed, the possibility of revolutionary change that John McCain has presented to his party's theocratic base by nominating Palin is the reason that it is now willing to overlook its multiple disagreements with McCain and enthusiastically support the GOP ticket.

Palin was baptized as a Roman Catholic but began attending the pentecostal Assemblies of God church as a young girl. She was baptized in that faith at age 12. Recently, she changed her church affiliation from the A of G to a non-denominational "bible church," perhaps to advance her political career by escaping the stigma attached to "holy roller" pentecostal sects, who practice speaking in tongues and other extreme forms of worship. While her new church may not worship in as flamboyant a style as her old one, both groups share a belief in the infallibility of the Bible. As one of her Alaska neighbors told the New York Times, “The churches that Sarah has attended all believe in a literal translation of the Bible." There is significant evidence that Palin sees her political career as a mission from God and that she understands the world primarily through the lens of her religion. As a former pastor said, ""I believe Sarah would not live in a fragmented world. The idea that Sarah would take this huge influence of the worldview that really only the Bible and the relationship with Jesus opens up ... and suddenly marginalize it and put it over on the shelf somewhere and live apart from it—that would be entirely inconsistent." As President, we could recently expect Palin to look to the Bible for specific instructions. In this she would differ from almost all of her predecessors in the Oval Office, who have generally tended to adhere to a conventional sort of public Protestantism, but have not sought much more than general inspiration from the Bible.

Recent Republican presidents have relied on support from religious fundamentalists, but have not been one of them. Nixon was a non-practicing Quaker. Reagan was notoriously lax in his church attendance. Bush Senior is a country club Episcopalian. Even "Dubya," who sometimes appears to believe that that the Lord has chosen him as president, is a mainstream Methodist whose religious life before becoming president seems to consist primarily of the belief that Jesus helped him give up Demon Rum.

Unlike her GOP predecessors who simply exploited the votes of biblical literalists, a president Palin (who ran for for her public office with the slogan that it was time for "our first Christian mayor,") might very well seek the advice of a pentecostal preacher on her Middle East policy or pore over the Book of Genesis for clues as to Jehovah's views on global warming. Let's hope she doesn't get the chance to put the doctrine of inerrancy to the test!

John Edwards

2008-08-15T02:23:00.000-07:00

Once again, the pundits chew over the question of the relevance of a politician's private life to his public career. I am not a prude, nor do I think that I am naive about human beings' capacity for duplicity. But I do think, in this case at least, John Edwards's behavior in his private life does have something to say to us about his politics.

When this year's Democratic presidential contest was first taking shape, Edwards positioned himself to appeal to people like me: left-liberals concerned about economic inequality and the plight of the poor. Despite the attractiveness of his message, I was skeptical of Edwards's candidacy, primarily because it didn't jibe with his record as a senator and vice-presidential candidate, where he had positioned himself as Southern moderate. However, the issue which ultimately convinced me not to support Edwards was his decision to continue his campaign in the face of his wife Elizabeth's diagnosis with terminal metastatic breast cancer.

My decision was not based, however, on a belief that Edwards was selfish or evil; rather it derived from my history as the spouse of woman who died of breast cancer. Based on my own experience, I thought that John Edwards needed to be with his wife and children during the next few years whether the Edwardses knew it or not. In other words, I opposed John Edwards's candidacy for his own good and that of his family.

In light of the latest revelations (and the fact that I believe that Edwards has still not come completely clean), I see John and Elizabeth in a different light. John's cheating on his cancer patient wife is reprehensible, no matter what his role in life. But the fact that he and, apparently, Elizabeth were willing to subject their children, their party, and their country to the risk that his affair with Rielle Hunter would become public during his presidential campaign strikes me as evidence of a self-centered ambition seldom seen in American politics. It's not really surprising that a bigtime plaintiff's lawyer would be comfortable risking other people's welfare to advance his own interests, but it is still sort of shocking to me that he would risk putting a Republican in the White House to satisfy his own desires. I now see John and Elizabeth as hillbilly MacBeths: as ambitious as the Clintons, but not as principled!

More Two-Wheeled Politics

2008-07-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

Word on the street is that the readers of TBC just can't get enough of the bike politics posts!

In case you missed it, check out this video of a New York City cop body slamming a Critical Mass rider off his bike into the curb. The cop then proceeded to arrest the rider for assaulting a police officer, etc., basing his arrest on a affidavit that the video shows is a pack of lies. Apparently there is a long history of conflict, legal and otherwise, between the Critical Mass folks and NYPD, but, to me, the hatred manifested by Officer Patrick Pogan when he shoved Christopher Long off his bike on to the sidewalk is hard to understand. My God, the man was riding a bike down the street! It's not a crime!

I'm sure that fans of the internal combustion engine are already raising money for Officer Pogan's defense, but, in the end, I expect that this outburst will wind up costing the City some money and, I hope, the cop his job.

Fatal Attractions

2008-07-22T03:53:00.000-07:00

Advocates of bikes as transportation often make the point (as I have here ) that motorists' anger at reckless bike riders is overblown because such bikers are primarily risks to themselves. Well, its a good theory, and, I think it's true, but I feel compelled to point out that, here in Austin, we've had 2 fatal traffic accidents this month in which one of the those involved was on a bike but the person who was killed was NOT.

On July 6, Jessie McFarlin, who was struck by a bicycle while he was trying to cross the street at night , died after several days in the hospital. The cyclist was not charged, as police said that McFarlin was jay walking. The bike was traveling 25-30 mph. I don't know many of the details, but the accident does point out the particular dangers of biking after dark. Most bicycle lighting is designed primarily to make the bike visible to drivers, not to illuminate the bike's path to its rider. Thus, it's easy to outride your headlight.

The stranger of the 2 accidents occurred on July 20, when Ernest Kirchner was killed when his motorcycle collided with a bicycle. The bicyclist was treated and released. The story is not very clear as to how the accident occurred, but it did note that Kirchner was not wearing a helmet.

So, I guess that the exception proves the rule. Neither of the people killed in these accidents was in a car. Indeed, the two accidents are notable precisely because of their "man bites dog" aspect. But they do serve as reminders that bike riders can hurt others if they are not careful.

Suburbia

2008-07-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

It's often tempting to see (for me at least) to see short-term crises as symptomatic of major change, but as I've noted before I think we are at the beginning of a real change in the American culture as a result of the end of cheap oil. It looks as though high gas prices are triggering the end of the suburban America in which the Baby Boom and subsequent generations have lived our entire lives. It seems possible that 10 or 20 years American cities will look very different from the sprawling middle class suburbs we are used to, with the rich in center cities, the poor occupying the outer ring of abandoned middle class subdivisions, and the various middle class strata arranged in rings between them.

Big John Cornyn

2008-06-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

For those of you wonder what it's really like to live in Texas, check out this honest-to-god ad for our incumbent U.S. Senator. Now try to imagine living some place where someone who gets paid to do this kind of stuff honestly thinks that this will help Cornyn get re-elected. Got that? OK, now . . . a little bigger stretch . . . imagine that you're living in a place where this ad really will help Cornyn get elected.

Obama and the Death Penalty

2008-06-26T03:43:00.000-07:00

On June 25 the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the imposition of a death sentence for the crime of rape of a child is cruel and unusual punishment and therefore unconstitutional. The opinion (pdf), written by Justice Kennedy on behalf of himself and 4 of his colleagues, is well-reasoned. As an opponent of the death penalty, I believe that the Court's decision is correct.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama immediately announced that he opposed the decision, saying, "I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable that that does not violate our Constitution." He has thus put himself in the position of attacking the ultra-conservative Supreme Court from the right on the issue of capital punishment.

Those of us who believe that capital punishment is a moral and legal nightmare are, unfortunately, used to watching liberal politicians pander to the public's pro-death penalty sentiments, especially if we live in Texas. All of the Democratic candidates for Texas governor in my memory have supported executions, including the sainted Ann Richards. Bill Clinton notoriously took a break from campaigning for president in 1992 so that he could go home to Arkansas and sign the death warrant for Ricky Ray Rector, a brain-damaged death row inmate. Nevertheless, given the facts that public support for the death penalty seems to be declining and Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, might be expected to have a more sophisticated view of the subject than most politicians, I had hoped for better from this candidate.

1972-2008

2008-06-06T03:08:00.000-07:00

Although Barack Obama likes to say that his campaign represents a break from the boomers' obsessive re-fighting of the battles of the Sixties, the McCain-Obama race represents the most clear-cut contrast of Vietnam era symbols since the last Vietnam era Presidential race, Nixon-McGovern in 1972.

The most obvious similarity between the two campaigns is that, like McGovern, Obama, a longtime opponent of the Iraq War, is running as a peace candidate, while McCain, like Nixon, is a war supporter who wants to fight to "victory" in Iraq. But there are other ways in which McCain and Obama remind us of the Age of Aquarius.

McCain is, of course, a Vietnam vet, a Navy pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam and held as a POW for 5 years. This aspect of his life is fraught with meaning to Americans who lived through the Vietnam disaster. To those of us who opposed the war, bomber pilots represented the most personally culpable of the American warriors fighting what we knew was an "immoral" war. They were volunteers, officers, "lifers" -- true believers in the American war who rained anonymous death on the Vietnamese peasants below them. (My ex-wife's freshman roommate, whose father was an Air Force pilot in Vietnam, came back to their room crying after a fellow student told her that her father was a "murderer." The girl sobbed that she knew that most of her fellow students didn't agree with this assessment. My ex-wife tried to explain to her gently that, in fact, they did.)

From the standpoint of those Americans who supported the war, McCain's status as a POW plays into one of their major archetypes of the war, that of the American serviceman who, having given his all to win the war, was abandoned by the backstabbing anti-war movement on the home front. This right wing tendency operated for decades under the black POW-MIA flag, and, McCain, subliminally at least, evokes that trope.

Obama was a middle schooler when the Vietnam War ended in 1975, so he doesn't have the kind of personal history in the events of the era that McCain does. However, his life story clearly puts him on the counter-cultural side of the Sixties divide. First of all, of course, he's black, and whether it wants to remember it or not, the defining issue of the Sixties-era right was opposition to black liberation. Second, he's the son of an African, suggesting the Pan-African elements of the Black Nationalist movements of the era, as does the Black Liberation theology of his now infamous pastor, Jeremiah Wright. As an adult, Obama chose to work as a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer, both jobs that were essentially invented during the Sixties. No matter how mainstream his politics are, he reminds people of the old issues.

So how does this play out in this year's election? It's hard to tell. McCain's status as a Vietnam vet explains a good deal of the deference given him by boomer reporters who didn't serve and it also makes it more difficult for Obama to attack him personally. Obama's evocation of Sixties symbols explains, I think, much of the reason why he attracted the support of white educated upper-income Democrats, many of whom were part of the anti-war counter-culture and the opposition of working class white primary voters who were on the other side of that divide. But 2008 is not 1972. The end of the Cold War and the disastrous Iraq War have reduced the appeal of the bellicose right. And, of course, millions of Americans who will vote in this election were not yet born when the last American helicopter left the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon.

$4 Gas

2008-05-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

Unlike other Americans, Texans are accustomed to seeing high oil prices as a good thing. Historically, enough of us have had oil under our land, worked in the oil business, or sold things to people who worked in the oil business, that we tended to see to see every uptick in the price of a barrel of West Texas crude as another dollar in our pocket. During the oil bust of the early 80s, bumper stickers on Texans' pick-ups prayed plaintively, "Lord, please bring back $30 oil. I promise I won't piss it away this time." Back in 1990, when Poppy Bush was getting ready to go to war against Saddam Hussein the first time, a number of us were heard to mutter under our breaths that we weren't sure why it was in Texas's interest to fight a war to lower the price of oil.

However, the current surge in oil prices has been a little different. In the decades since the last oil boom, Texas oil fields have played out, the Texas economy has diversified, and Texas suburbs have sprawled further and further. As a result, more Texans see the current run-up in petroleum prices through the lens of the higher gas prices they pay at the pump, the same way their fellow Americans do. I, however, think that $4 gas is a good thing.

Americans have been exhorted to conserve oil since the OPEC oil boycott of the 70s, to no avail. We've continued to commute from more distant subdivisions in more gigantic vehicles. But this price surge seems to be getting folks' attention. The buses are more crowded. More bikes are on the streets. The state agency I work for is allowing more of us to work from home. People seem to actually be changing the way they live. A change this big will be difficult, but I think that $4 gas is starting to make it happen.

Two-Wheeled Politics III

2008-05-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

One of the common complaints that car drivers have about bike riders is that cyclists "disobey traffic rules". This is true, of course. It is also true that drivers and pedestrians violate traffic laws, but nobody seems to write letters to the editor waxing indignant about speeders on Interstate 35 or jaywalkers on 4th Street. So why does the issue of cyclists compliance with traffic regulations loom so large in motorists' responses to bicycle riders?

One reason that cyclists violate traffic laws is that the rules of the road are basically designed for motor vehicles and therefore make much less sense when applied to bicycles. A cyclist approaching a 4-way stop sign at 10 miles an hour has much more time to make sure that the way is clear than does a car that's going 40 mph. In my experience, some maneuvers are safer for all concerned when carried out "illegally." For example, at some intersections on my commuting route, it is clearly safer for me to go through an intersection against a red light when there is no traffic in the cross street and I have a lane all to myself (because the car next to me is stopped for the red light) than it is to start off from a stop while sharing a lane with a car to my left. Indeed, at least one state has modified its traffic regulations (pdf) to take into account the intrinsic differences between motorized and pedal-powered vehicles. In any event, a 200-lb. cyclist, even one who runs stop signs, represents much less of a danger to others than a two-ton sedan, no matter how carefully the car is operated.

But what really bugs me about the constant refrain about bikes and traffic laws is that it is typically trotted out in reponse to arguments to which it is absolutely irrelevant:

"Bikes are non-polluting."
"Yeah, but I saw a bike run a stop sign on my way to work this morning."

"Riding a bike is good exercise."
"But why do you always see them riding the wrong way on one-way streets?"

"We really need to take some serious measures to encourage people to ride bikes."
"You know those crazy cyclists are just a bunch of scoff-laws!"

Cut it out! If you want to make a serious argument against bikes as transportation, make it! If you just think riding a bike sounds too much like work, say so. If you think that riding a bike is just not cool enough for you, ok. But stop claiming to be shocked by traffic violations!

Hard Working White Americans

2008-05-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton's recent remark that she has the support of "hard working Americans, white Americans," is probably the first time since May 15, 1972 that a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination explicitly claimed to be running on behalf of white people.

Of course, Clinton would deny that her campaign has any similarity to George Wallace's. Her remark, she claims, was simply an attempt to point out to her fellow Democrats (and more particularly the party's "super delegates") a gap in Barack Obama's electoral coalition and to argue that she is more "electable."

Whatever her reasons, I can't help but see Clinton's remark as a step backward for the party and the country. After all, Lyndon Johnson, the most accomplished political realist ever to hold the office of president, willingly gave up the Southern white vote that had long been part of the Democrats' coalition in order to pass the civil rights acts of the 1960s. He did it because it was the right thing to do. To raise the flag of white resentment in 2008 in a mainstream political campaign only points out how much our political discourse has deteriorated in recent decades.

Apostasy

2008-05-17T04:23:00.000-07:00

On Monday the New York Times published a really slimy op-ed by Edward Luttwak, a military historian, in which he argues that, under Islamic law, Barack Obama, as the son of a father who left Islam, is himself regarded as an apostate and is, therefore, a pariah in the Muslim world. His ostensible purpose in discussing this matter is to counter the argument made by many Obama supporters (including the TBC) that Obama's status as the son of a Kenyan immigrant would help him repair the Bush-inflicted damage on the United States' reputation in the Islamic world and the Third World generally. Its real purpose is to reinforce, under a legitimate guise, the whispering campaign that Obama is a Muslim.

Luttwak's argument reminded me of the arguments made against a Catholic president back when Kennedy was running: "The papal bull of 1876 says that Catholics must do whatever the pope says, therefore Senator Kennedy as President would transfer the gold in Fort Knox to the Vatican," ignoring the fact that Kennedy was a pragmatic American politician who simply did not take his religion all that seriously. Similarly, Luttwak seems to assume that, because some Muslim religious text urges the punishment of apostates unto the last generation, the world's Muslims, faced with President Obama, will, instead of thanking Allah that the Americans have come their senses and elected a president who is not a trigger-happy fool, launch a fatwa against him because his grandfather, whom he never met, may have practiced Islam. Does that make any sense in the real world?

Two-Wheeled Politics II

2008-05-14T04:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday, May 10, was Election Day for the Austin City Council. I voted for the three candidates endorsed by the League of Bicycle Voters. They all lost--even the incumbent, Jennifer Kim! I guess bicycle politics has a way to go here!

True Love

2008-05-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Much has been made recently of Barack Obama's patriotism or lack thereof. The flag pin issue is the one most obviously about patriotism, but many of the other "electability" attacks are, at bottom, a suggestion that Obama doesn't really love America. After all, he's got a funny name, his preacher asks God to "damn America," he went to school at a "madrassa" in Indonesia, and he doesn't put his hand over his heart during the national anthem. Seems to be a common thread here!

At first glance, it takes a lot of gall for anyone who has ever supported George W. Bush or Bill Clinton to attack anyones patriotism. After all, by the classical measure of patriotism--the willingness to die in battle for ones country--our last 2 presidents, who actively avoided combat while young, are certifiably unpatriotic. However, the folks worrying about Obama's patriotism seem oblivious to this irony.

So is the Obama patriotism issue just a cynical maneuver by opposing political campaigns? While it's certainly true that the political operatives are using this issue, in order to work, the issue has to resonate with real voters. So why is Obama vulnerable to this attack?

At the risk of being accused of "playing the race card," I'd say that the basic source of concerns about Obama's patriotism is white guilt. White people know, whether they acknowledge it or not, that African Americans have a long list of legitimate historical grievances against white America. They find it hard to believe, therefore, that blacks can love America in the same sense that whites do, notwithstanding the fact that blacks have lived in this land for 400 years and died in her service since before the United States was born. In other words, some whites feel like, "if somebody had treated me like we've treated them, I wouldn't love them."

I suspect that the patriotism issue will not go away during the general election campaign. The Obama campaign is addressing it by, essentially, affirming his patriotism, which is probably the only way to go in that context. But individual Obama supporters can and should, I think, confront friends and family members with the source of this concern in America's racial history.

Ruffian

2008-05-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not an animal lover, at least not in the sense that the term is used among the American middle class these days. I'm not an animal hater either--I've had pets and I love them, but I don't feel about animals the way many of my fellow citizens seem to these days. I've never paid a thousand-dollar vet bill. I've never stayed awake at night because my brother, the dairy farmer, sends his dry cows and bull calves to the slaughterhouse. Indeed, I've never been a vegetarian, even for a day. As I write this post, I am simmering a stew composed primarily of the cubed leg muscle of an adolescent sheep who met its untimely end just a few miles from where I live.

So I'm not an animal lover. But this morning, when I opened the Sunday paper and saw that Eight Belles, the filly who placed in these year's Kentucky Derby, had broken down at the finish line and been put down right there on the track, I teared up. I cried partly because thoroughbreds are beautiful animals who deserve better than to die for our amusement, but mostly I cried because I remembered the day, more than 30 years ago, when I mourned the death of a thoroughbred filly whom I had never even seen.

In 1975, Ruffian was the outstanding 3-year-old female race horse in the United States. She had won the Triple Crown for fillies and, in the era of second-wave feminism and Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King tennis matches, it was inevitable that somebody would decide that a buck was to me made by racing her against the year's outstanding colt, Foolish Pleasure, the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

The match race was held at Belmont Park on July 6, 1975. That summer, I was a 25-year-old law student doing a summer internship in Chicago and living near the lake. I remember driving through the green, elm-lined streets of Evanston, listening to the race on the radio. When Ruffian broke her leg a half mile into the race, I broke down bawling. I was crying so hard that I had to pull over to the side of Dempster Avenue, so that I didn't run my car into one of the beautiful old trees that were dying of Dutch Elm disease.

A few weeks later, I left my internship early to drive to California where my father was waiting for my arrival so that he could die. Maybe that's why I cried for Ruffian and maybe that's why I cried this morning for another horse whom I had never met.

College Education

2008-05-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

Since we didn't have a popular uprising after the judicial coup of 2000, the least we could have done would have been to abolish the electoral college, that bizarre remnant of the 18th century which gave Florida's hanging chads their determinative power in the first place and ultimately allowed the Gang of Five to award the White House to the guy who lost the election to Al Gore.

The framers of the Constitution believed that the best protection against tyranny was the separation of powers, the division of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government. However, the executives with whom the framers were familiar were hereditary monarchs, chosen by their pedigree; the problem of selecting an executive by non-genetic mechanisms was a perplexing one. The suggestion that the President be chosen by national popular vote was rejected. In a society in which the vote in local elections was restricted to white men of property, this was deemed way too democratic. Instead, they invented the electoral college.

The formal structure of the EC is impressively complex. Each state legislature selects a slate of electors in a number equal to the total number of representatives and senators that the state sends to the U.S. Congress. The college elects the president and vice president, with a majority vote required for election. As originally designed, the person who came in second in the electoral college vote became vice-president. Although these days the college is described as giving an advantage to small states (because of the additional 2 votes that each state gets regardless of population), the important (and intended) consequence of the system in 1787 was that it gave disproportionate power to slave states because it incorporated into the presidential election the three-fifths rule which counted 60% of non-voting slaves in calculating the number of representives in Congress each state was entitled to. Similarly, it protected those states in which white men's right to vote was more restricted by property qualifications.

Apparently, the members of the Constitutional Convention imagined that the EC would be a quadrennial convocation of the country's natural aristocracy (i.e., rich white guys like them) who would choose one of their number to serve as a temporary king, with their second favorite to become the vice-president, the heir apparent. They did not contemplate political parties, presidential campaigns, multi-million-dollar campaign chests, primary elections, or poll-guided pandering, all the hallmarks of our modern presidential selection "system." The framers' fantasy lasted for the two presidential elections in which George Washington was elected unanimously. By 1796, when it was time to select Washington's successor, there were two political parties and the dream of the college as a republican version of the Privy Council was over.

For most of the last 200 years, the EC has functioned like it does now. Two major parties compete for popular votes in the states, each of whose electors are awarded, winner-take-all, to the candidate who wins the popular vote of the state. It is the winner-take-all aspect of this system which creates the biggest possibility for electing a president who loses the popular vote, a situation which has actually occurred at least 4 times in American history, most recently in 2000.

In the 21st century, when the democratic principle of popular sovereignty is universally accepted as the fundamental basis for political legitimacy, it is hard to imagine how anyone can defend an election system that allows the loser of the national popular vote to take office as president. After all, when every other office in the country is filled by the candidate who gets the most votes, why should the highest office in the land be subject to a system which sometimes allows the person with the smaller number of votes to win? The usual defense of the college is that it protects small states from being trampled by their bigger sisters, (This argument is made in particularly impenetrable fashion in this 2000 N.Y. Times editorial. The Times has since changed its mind.), but this argument is idiotic. It may be consistent with democratic principles to protect minorities by allowing them to block small majorities from taking certain actions, i.e., amending the constitution or overriding a presidential veto, but it how in hell can anyone justify "protecting" the minority by allowing it to elect the president? What about the majority's rights?

Anyway, small states do not really receive much benefit from the EC as currently constituted. The states that benefit from the system these days are the swing states. Small states like Idaho and Vermont, adjudged safely in the camp of one party, are ignored, while large swing states like Pennsylvania are courted assiduously and pandered to shamelessly. In a national popular election, without the distorting of the effect of the electoral college, every vote would be equally valuable and equally sought after by a rational candidate, no matter how deeply embedded it was among "red" or "blue" neighbors.

Of course, the problems with our presidential election system are recognized whenever it manages to defeat the popular will or comes close to doing so. It hasn't been changed because amending the constitution is extremely difficult; there are enough players who are advantaged by the current system to block an amendment. Recently, however, some smart folks have figured out a way to effectively abolish the EC by individual state legislative action. It's called "National Popular Vote" and it will go into effect once its been enacted by states having a majority of the electoral votes (270). So far 4 states (with 50 electoral votes) have enacted the law. (Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed it in California.) So, tell your state representatives to support the National Popular Vote in your state. Tell them its time that the United States caught up with democratic countries like South Africa when it comes to "One (Hu)man, One Vote!"

Two-Wheeled Politics

2008-05-01T02:37:00.000-07:00

I was only 9 years old when I was introduced to the idea of bicycling as liberation. My family moved to a new house about 4 miles from the house I had grown up in. Playmates were scarce in the new neighborhood, so I began riding my bike back to the old neighborhood to hang out on weekends and during the summer. Quickly, I understood the fact that my bike gave me the freedom to escape from my parents' supervision years before I was old enough to drive. By the time I was in my early teens, my friends and I were taking long "bike hikes" to local points of interest, delighting in the fact that we were able to escape the parental sphere of influence merely by pedaling the 13 miles to Valley Forge Park.

The summer before my sophomore year in high school, we moved to a refinery town in Texas. The terrain was absolutely flat, favoring bike travel, but, in August, at least, the Turkish bath-like climate deterred it. Nonetheless, when school opened in September I jumped on my bike to ride to school, only to discover that all of my classmates had obtained their driver's licenses the previous summer and would rather be dead than be seen riding a bicycle! Despite the fact that I was the one of only two people riding to school in a student body of almost 3000, I persisted in my two-wheeled commute the entire school year--my first experience with bicycling as rebellion! However, my non-conformity had limits; at the beginning of junior year I got my own driver's license and put the bike back in the garage.

In the years that followed, my biking was sporadic. Most notably, my student years in Austin began during the first OPEC oil boycott--I saved gas and avoided the on-campus parking problem by bike commuting. On leaving Austin for Houston, however, my biking fell to near zero. While Houston's topography favors pedal power, its traffic patterns are wholly auto-centric.

In the early part of this decade, my daughter, then a college student in New York, told me that some of her friends were engaging in mass bike rides in which they would take over the city streets, ignoring traffic signals and flowing through Manhattan like a force of nature. She seemed to view these rides as being, somehow, political, but I confess that I couldn't really understand the content of the politics.

Last year, a few months after moving to Austin, I bought a bicycle and began bike commuting. My motive for doing so was vaguely green, but, mostly, I was looking for a way to force myself to exercise. However, once I hit the streets on my bike, I soon realized that there is a war going on between drivers and bikers, a war that is simultaneously ideological, territorial, and cultural. In the decades since I had last biked, the motor vehicles, like the American empire, had grown larger and more hegemonic. At the same time, the downside of America's auto culture had become more obvious; global warming and a failed war for Iraqi oil were merely two sides of the coin first minted in Detroit. Given, this state of conflict, everyday encounters on the streets of Austin took on new significance--that guy in the Escalade who pulled out in front of me like I wasn't even there wasn't just a dangerous driver, he was trying to stop me from saving the planet!

Last October, I decided to ride with Critical Mass, a worldwide movement of anarcho-cyclists that stage monthly mass rides. (My daughter's friends in New York were part of CM). I loved it! After only a few months of bike commuting, I understood intuitively that the act of bikes taking over the streets was political, and so did the drivers whose commutes we disrupted. It was the most organic demonstration I had ever been a part of--the medium was the message!

This spring, I participated in a more conventional sort of bike politics when I attended a candidate forum sponsored by the Austin League of Bicycle Voters. More than 100 Austinites showed up to grill candidates for city council about how they planned to incorporate the bicycle as serious transportation into the city's plans for the 21st century. Some of the candidates seemed to actually get it, and I could see that the politicians were impressed by the turn-out.

So, I guess I'm a born-again bicyclist. Better that than other conversion experiences. At least, it doesn't require me to give up my vices or talk to imaginary beings.

Craig

2008-04-30T01:54:00.000-07:00

Last week former Houston Congressman Craig Washington was charged with aggravated assault, a felony.

Craig, who is one of the best trial lawyers I've ever seen, was one of a group of talented young minority and liberal white politicians who came to power in Houston in the 1970s, as the result of the enfranchisement of blacks and the political upheaval of the sixties. Washington, Mickey Leland, Barbara Jordan, Ben Reyes, Fred Hofheinz, Kathy Whitmire, and Lance Lalor all represented, in their individual ways, significant change from the old days in which Houston was controlled by a small group of Downtown businessmen, who literally met in a hotel room every week to decide the city's fate.

The careers of every one of these insurgents, except for Barbara Jordan, ended at a relatively young age, often in disgrace, or at least without having achieved the great things once expected of them. In Craig's case, it was clear that his downfall was ultimately accomplished because he crossed the Downtown crowd by voting against the funding of the space station, a sacred cow in Houston. The local establishment instigated a successful primary challenge by Sheila Jackson Lee, a city council member who was notable primarily for the number of times she had run for office unsuccessfully.

In his heyday, Craig Washington was the Barack Obama of Houston: a smart attractive figure who appealed to white liberals as much as he did to African Americans. I hope that he can overcome his current difficulties.

Commencement

2008-04-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

So, here I am--starting a blog. I'm not sure where this is all going, but I guess the best thing is to introduce myself-more or less.

When I was 15 years old my father was transferred to Texas, ripping me and my siblings from our native heath in the suburbs of a Northeastern city and replanting us in the malarial clime of the Texas Gulf Coast. In the forty-odd years since that happened, I have been trying, with only limited success, to figure out how to get out of Texas.

My most recent endeavor along those lines involved owning a small business in New Jersey, one of those undertakings which seemed like a good idea at the time. After five years in the wilderness of Jersey, I started looking for a job and wound up in Austin, where I had attended grad school at UT in the mid-70s. Austin has the well-deserved reputation of being the best city in Texas (and I've lived in several others over the years), but it is still Texas nonetheless.

I'm pretty sure that this blog is going to be about politics and other stuff, but as a well-known Southern philosopher once said, "Tomorrow is another day!" So we'll figure that out then.