Pennsylvania Dutch Country Lessons

If you live in Northern Chester County, Pennsylvania, then the Amish are your neighbors. On our way to Lancaster, we drive around their horses and buggies, or watch them doing outdoor chores on their farms as we speed down country roads way faster then we need to. Even those of us who don't stare at a person in a wheelchair, or teach our children to treat all of their classmates as equal, seem to make an exception, a condescending one, for the Amish. After all, their black and white garb, their centuries-old ways of living, make them different from us. But as Scott Simon reminded us on his Saturday radio show, its simply wrong to make the Amish into simply another tourist attraction. They are, as we have learned this week, a remarkably strong people-capable of practicing a disciplined Christianity and faith in the mercy of God which sustains them. For centuries, they have asked only to have the freedom to live out the vision of Christian community that guided them through persecutions in their home countries and led them to America. The best thing we can do, now , is to a. send money to support the families that have lost children and those that have to pay hospital bills. b. pray for them c. leave them alone and d. meditate on what it is we can learn about real Christianity from the example of a people who take the words of a Nazarene carpenter as seriously as they deserve.

Lies, Sex and Videotape

Sorry-when I wrote about Congressman Foley on Monday I hadn't thought about the possible "I am an alcoholic formerly molested by a priest" defense. This one probably puts anything former Gov. McGreevey admitted to shame. Faster than the speed of light, we have gone from the "covered-up" Mark Foley to the "naked" Mark Foley-and I find them both repulsive and horribly compelling. Actually, this is not the former Florida Congressman's fault-not entirely. In the head-shrinking (therapeutic and cannibalistic) world of American politics, Foley, his lawyer, and ABC News have thrown a whole pile of manure out for the public to sift through as it will-since "icck, go back to your cave, Foley" apparently is not an option. How prudish it sounds to say that if Foley was indeed molested by a clergyman (one assumes a Catholic priest, since he is Roman Catholic), then he needs to deal with his problems in counseling. The striptease with the American public is just another way in which he can cosset his craving for perversity..and ours. The phrase TMI (too much information) is clearly tailored for this age in which not only are secrets disgorged by anonymous bloggers, but they spill out from so many directions that readers are invariably forced into the position of journalists and editors. The fact that it seems newsworthy that Foley is "taking responsibility" for his own behavior doesn't begin to excuse it. The behavior of the House leadership is revolting beyond belief-its bad enough to view them as they prance around like bugs in quicksand. But we, too, end up feeling soiled, as though we were watching unspeakable acts through someone else's apartment window. Try not to watch the peep show! I dare you. If you can, I commend you. I watch...and read...and then, probably like Mr. Foley after one of his lurid escapades...I hate myself in the morning

The McGreevey Defense

I just hope that former Congressman Mark Foley, alleged sexual predator, doesn't use the Jim McGreevey defense. Foley, who resigned his well-to-do Florida congressional seat on Friday, is accused of writing sexually explicit notes to the male pages who worked on Capitol Hill. Formerly the Governor of New Jersey, McGreevey, who put his alleged (Cipel, the alleged boyfriend, denies it) male lover in a powerful New Jersey post while in office, recently came out with a book retailing his journey out of the closet (and out of the Governor's mansion). I don't know about you, but I am sick of men (and it's mostly men) who excuse their bad, immoral and dishonest dealings by claiming that they were rent by the pressures of having to lead double lives. Now that they have repented of their misdeeds, they can finally walk in the sunlight of disclosure, write books that will bring in lots of money, and serve as consultants. Caveat-McGreevey, as far as I know, has never been accused of being a sexual predator. Nor is this a "gay issue." Think ex-President Bill Clinton. If Foley is guilty, he's not the first member of Congress to harass male and female pages. What is so infuriating is that these men seem to think that a public apology, expressed remorse, a scrub in the confessional bath, is enough to exonerate them. No way. They have left a trail of hurt and mistrust in their path. Reparations for that kind of abuse won't be made right with a book that hits the top of the charts on Amazon. Rebuilding faith and hope, restoring trust takes a lifetime of quiet, non-public, repair and rehabilitation.

Love's mystery

Last night, as I was cleaning up the dinner dishes left over from our applesauce and broccoli binge (we girls like to eat weird stuff when we don't have fellows around), Sian came into the kitchen. We had returned from the library about 20 minutes or so before that, and it was rapidly getting towards bedtime. Water dripping from her brown hair, blue eyes determined, she sat down at the kitchen table. Before she jumped into the task at hand, she warned me not to laugh at her. One thing I have learned from being a mother is that whether the questions are large, random, or just moderately off the wall to an adult, kids just hate being laughed at...wouldn't you? I put down the plates, dried my hands, and walked over to her chair. "Mom, why do you love me?" she asked. Stunned, I looked at my eleven year old daughter as though she had just taken up an endowed chair in the philosophy department of some major educational institution . Do you mean why do I love or you or what makes you lovable? I stammered. "I've always loved you." You mean that you love me beause you are supposed to? she asked with a little apparent disappointment. Wondering if I could say something that would illuminate the alchemy of a parent's attachment, I babbled about having loved her from the moment she was born, and all of the ways in which that love manifests itself in protection, hope, pride and discipline. I'm not sure I came any closer to analyzing the roots of love. I'll have to ask Sian if she got anything from our conversation. Returning to her room later to wish her good night, I told her that part of the reason I know how to love her was because my parents had taught me how to be loving. "Sleepily she lifted her lovely eyes to my face and asked: "Does that mean you are teaching me?" With a mixture of terror, honesty and desire, I answered "Yes. I hope so."

First love

I'm not a sitcom type of single mom beset with comedic adventures involving eccentric neighbors, screwball romances, and precocious kids. In fact, I don't even like to call myself a single mother, because it implies that I'm doing most of the work of rearing Sian and Colin myself. To me, that seems very unfair to their dad, who is so involved in their life. That being said, I do run my household a little differently now than when we were married. In general, I tend to be less lenient about such items as computer time than their father is. But I did, in a moment of temporary insanity, tell my children that they could stay up in bed as late as they wanted to if they were reading a book. No, I did not make sure all of the books had won literary awards, or appeared on some reading list of great books. Recalling what great pleasure fiction had given me as a child, I just wanted my children to grow up to love escaping into a book. Although Colin would rather play some arcane computer game than read a novel, he is a facile reader. His father observed that our son is not bothered by discovering words he has not learned-he just navigates around the word and moves on. On the other hand, Sian has long looked at reading as a duty rather than a pleasure. She was so opposed to it that we thought she had a reading problem. In hindsight, it appears that Sian had simply not met the "right" book. A libraria's recommendation led her to a novel about Doll-People...and my little girl fell in love with a novel for the first time. On school nights, the over head lamp was on so late that I had to go into her room and tell her that I was breaking my own rule-no reading past ten o'clock on school nights! I hope that this love affair is merely the first in a long line of literary engagements-we shall see. I wonder what other crazy rules I can come up with.

Mudslide

You'd think we'd get over it by now--trusting that our elected officials have any integrity, that is. In the great showdown that wasn't, Senators McCain, Warner and Graham have kept the letter of the law-Common Article 3 of the General Conventions- intact, while allowing the Administration to flout it whenever they decide to want to. Apparently CIA officers who torture prisoners in a manner incompatible with international standards of human rights will not be liable for prosecution. After all of the fancy wrapping paper is pulled off, we are left with the same stinking pile of garbage. So much for the soi-disant evangelical Christians in high governmental places. Apparently they have forgotten one fundamental Judeo-Christian principle of a godly life-Jesus' injunction to "love your neighbor as yourself."For the United States, setting a moral standard in the midst of war is not just a matter of paying respect to our heritage as a cradle of democracy-it is wise policy. When we give human rights homage in theory while abusing our enemies in practice, we set an example for fundamentalists in other nations who consider us degenerate and immoral already. Why should they not emulate us?

Whose Life is it Anyway?

Lat. "you have the body" Prisoners often seek release by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment. The petition must show that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual error. Habeas corpus petitions are usually filed by persons serving prison sentences. In family law, a parent who has been denied custody of his child by a trial court may file a habeas corpus petition. Also, a party may file a habeas corpus petition if a judge declares her in contempt of court and jails or threatens to jail her.
http://www.lectlaw.com/ Electric Law
Habeas corpus is one of those phrases that is both maddening and a wonderful proof of our mixed breed American heritage. Where's the nursery rhyme that will help the average schlemiel remember what it means? "You have the body"...yeah, wanna make something of it?
However, in keeping with my new resolution to look up words I didn't comprehend instead of looking sage and erudite when someone mentioned them at a party or in a speech (or on the pages of the newspaper, for that matter), I decided to look up 'habeas corpus." I had the feeling that the precise meaning of this term might be pretty important in following the battle over the status of prisoners being held at Guantanamo and other potential future suspects in our battle against "terror."
In all of the outcry (still limited to a relatively small segment of the American public, not to mention some of the smarter members of Congress) over the rights of prisoners to see secret evidence or over the Bush administration's wish to define for itself the meaning of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, the fact that the Administration wishes to deny federal courts any jurisdiction over the Guantanamo cases has been almost ignored.
Congress has already apparently said that future alleged terrorists can't appeal their imprisonment in federal courts under habeas corpus. But if the President has his way, the men now languishing at the prison who have already filed petitions won't be able to have their day in court, either.
Forget about whether you can trust the word of this Administration. Make up your own mind about that. The fact is that we don't know whether these men or guilty or innocent...don't they deserve a full hearing in the sunlight of the American legal system?
Even if you think that these prisoners, whoever they are, don't deserve American justice, would you like to see the tables turned on us? If your son or daughter was imprisoned in an allegedly democratic foreign country (say, Italy or Finland), would you like to see them cast into the darkness of a judicial system where the evidence against them was secret and they were tried by military tribunals?
It seems as though each day brings new revelations of this Administration's assault on basic tenets of American democracy. That doesn't mean that we should stop being shocked, however. Or stop fighting. Today they are dicing with the lives of nameless, faceless "terrorist subjects..." Tomorrow...exactly who did you say you were?