Memorial Day, 2008

"We are Making a New World" (1918), Paul Nash

At a Calvary near the Ancre

One ever hangs where shelled roads part.
In this war He too lost a limb,
But His disciples hide apart;
And now the Soldiers bear with Him.

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest,
And in their faces there is pride
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast
By whom the gentle Christ's denied.

The scribes on all the people shove
And brawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918
WWI soldier poet, describing a roadside crucifix damaged in battle

What could I possibly add to this?

(via Gawker)

The John McMullen Show

I survived my first live radio experience with a minimum of anxiety this week. It was a longer interview than I've done before, and a little light on laughs, but he asked some questions that were different from past interviews, so that shook things up a little. Overall, I think the interview went pretty well.

Sadly, there were some weird technical issues that made the actual broadcast almost unlistenable. For some reason, the levels on my input kept getting louder and softer, over and over, as if I were walking around waving the phone like a maniac. In fact, I was sitting at my desk at work, with a minimum of maniacal gesturing, so I can only assume that there was something about my phone that was sabotaging the call. Stupid phone.

I did manage to get a clean copy from a nice person out there, and I went into iMovie and futzed around with the levels to try to minimize some of the weirdness. It still sounds a little strange, but I think it's at least listenable now.

Anyway, here it is.

Is Schuyler a political pundit or a techie futurist?

You talk too much.
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob

This question was on Schuyler's home work. I'm still trying to decide what to make of her answer.

-----

New Things

The White House is where the U.S. president lives. Life in this building has changed over time. The White House got its first telephone in 1879. It got electric lights in 1891. An indoor swimming pool was added in 1942. The White House got its first fire alarm in 1965. After that came other new inventions such as computers and cell phone.

1. Make a prediction. What do you think the White House will get next?

Her answer?

"A brain hat."

-----

I asked her about the brain hat. She says it looks like a helmet, hers is yellow and mine is green. "Brain hat help you work."

Where did she get the idea that the current White House occupant needs a brain hat? I guess she's paying attention after all.

Apology

As you'll see when you finally get a chance to read SCHUYLER'S MONSTER, I don't shy away from talking about my own shortcomings as a father. No one's perfect, and sometimes I feel farther from from that perfection than most. And today, I need to address something.

I owe an apology. To Schuyler.

The first time I wrote an article for PajamasMedia.com, I wasn't completely aware of just how conservative their readership was, but if I had gotten a better feel for the site, I probably would have written for them anyway. My own liberal outlook doesn't mean I'm closed to conservatives and their beliefs. One of Schuyler's most adamant and consistent supporters, going back for years, is standing out on the very leading edge of the right wing, his toes dangling happily in the wind. Julie's parents are pretty conservative, and few people do more for Schuyler on a daily basis than they do. One of the themes of my first essay on PajamasMedia, and a big chunk of the book as well, addresses how wrong I was to prejudge the conservatives of Plano in the first place. I don't believe that the issues surrounding special needs parenting fall into partisan ideological areas, any more than the monsters that stalk these kids do so according to how their parents vote.

Nevertheless, after some of the personal comments left on that first essay, I wrote a second essay with some hesitation, and sure enough, the reactions were incrementally worse. I wasn't bothered by the personal attacks this time, either, although I did make an attempt to clarify a few things and also to defend myself against one particularly dishonest remark. (And a reminder to the kids: RESPONDING TO TROLLS IS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS A MISTAKE.) I was accused of being bitter and rude, as if the opponents of inclusion would happily invite our broken kids into their kids' classrooms, if only we'd just ask politely. I was accused of ignoring the plight of kids whose problem is that they are too gifted for their public schools, which is absolutely true. I certainly don't oppose the same kinds of programs for exceptionally gifted children as for those with disabilities. Not one bit. Why would I? It's simply not my fight, and it's not an issue that I know much about, so I didn't take it on. And best of all, I was even accused on one site of being a wealthy, pretentious snob, mostly because I have a hyphenated last name. Everyone knows that hyphens are plated in gold. I keep mine in a special vault.

But when someone posted at length last night about how my "feeble minded" child was destroying the schools for the rest of the kids, it bothered me. It bothered me even more when PajamasMedia deleted the comment today. The comment was rude, and it was vile. But it wasn't obscene and it wasn't threatening. I feel like perhaps they cut it because they were embarrassed by having one of their readers say something so ugly about a little girl, but I can also accept that they chose to delete the comment because they felt responsible for exposing Schuyler to something like that.

But they're wrong. They're not responsible. I am.

This blog and the upcoming book are going to open the door for all sorts of experiences for Schuyler, and while I expect most of them to be positive, we're prepared for the occasional ugliness as well. But in the case of PajamasMedia, I chose to go back into an arena that I knew from experience was likely to be hostile, and I took her with me. My only excuse is that I didn't think it through, and once again I underestimated the capacity for people to become animals when sitting safely and anonymously behind their keyboards.

Schuyler is a warrior, and she gives her monster a thorough beatdown on a regular basis. I suspect that if she were old enough to understand the worst of what was being said about her online, she'd simply fire up her Big Box of Words and send a two word response (hint: not "happy birthday") before going off to live her life, loudly and unhesitatingly.

Nevertheless, I invited more monsters into her home, and for that, I can only say that I was wrong to do so, and I am very, very sorry.

Harvey does not in fact want to eat you

As an ugly American, I haven't heard of any of the parties involved, including Heat Magazine, but the sentiments are familiar. Make fun of a kid with a disability, get called out for it, issue a heartfelt apology, hope that people start buying your product again.

Heat magazine apologises to Jordan for using disabled son on sticker.

I am a steadfast advocate of freedom of speech, but it's nice to see someone get bitten on the ass for abusing that freedom. Dicks.

Because "separate but equal" worked out so well the first time...

The following was posted on another site, in response to this. While it's unusually blunt, it nevertheless represents a viewpoint that I've heard many times before, in some form or another.

Every special ed kid costs schools more money. They are incredibly expensive. Wealthy parents get lawyers and game the system for millions, and all the rest of the kids get inadequate educations that still cost more money.

They should be removed from the system and their education funded differently. Public schools should be reserved for the "neurotypical".

That doesn't mean they shouldn't receive funding; it should just come from a different pool of money–health care, probably.

When I think back to my elementary school days, and even later, the thing I don't remember is ever seeing any kids with disabilities in my classes. If you're about my age or older, you probably don't, either. They were sent to different places, special schools or institutions or other "alternative facilities" where they wouldn't interfere with the fine education that the rest of us received.

As with anything, there are extremes to be avoided. I wrote about the warehousing of special needs kids (and caught a little flack for it) and how their curriculum needs to be more specific to their disabilities, rather than just dumping them into the mix and wishing them good luck. But that individualized education needs to take place within the context of mainstream schooling.

Schuyler spends much of her day in a regular second grade class, and so does just about every other kid in her Box Class. Most of them have more serious physical impairments than she does, and cognitively, at this stage it's still anyone's guess for most of them, Schuyler included. And yet, as far as I can tell, most of them are thriving in their mainstream environments.

I've seen the looks they occasionally get from a few other parents, and I suspect they get the same thing from some teachers as well. And the thing that I am 100% certain of is this: when people advocate sending special needs kids away to "special schools", they are not thinking about the welfare or comfort of those kids. They are thinking of their own.

Yes, special education is expensive. Good education of any kind is, for that matter. But no matter what your politics, nor how extreme your position within those beliefs, a little socialism isn't going to hurt you, and it is going to help Schuyler and millions like her.

This is my opinion, but one in which I believe so strongly that as far as I'm concerned, it is a Big-F Fact: a society that doesn't take care of its own least fortunate, whether that's the poor or the disabled or whoever, is a society that does not deserve to survive. If we as a civilization can't do better than "Public schools should be reserved for the 'neurotypical'", then we deserve nothing less than to implode on our own selfish appetites and our own primping narcissism. I'll be the first one at the barricades when the revolution begins.

If you believe that you as a citizen have a right to decide that every penny of your tax dollars should go to providing your neurotypical child with the best education possible, and that you shouldn't be expected to help fund programs that do not directly benefit your kid, I'm not sure what to say to you.

Well, yes I am. I hope you take a moment out of your self-absorbed life every so often to thank your God (if you have one) that your kid didn't draw that card, the one that twists their genes or gives them an extra chromosome or stirs their brain chemistry or breaks their bodies. As you ponder your own child and their perfect world where they shouldn't have to share funding with or even look at kids who did draw that card, I hope you understand that inside every one of those unfortunate bodies and minds is a human being, one with aspirations and dreams and abilities just as big as your own kid's.

Bigger, probably, because when you have to fight as hard as these kids fight just to be able to sit in a classroom with neurotypical children, you learn not to take those dreams for granted. And as much as most of them would like to be just like everyone else, I'm proud to say that for most of these kids, there's not a goddamn thing about them that is "typical".

I lost out by not being able to attend school with special needs students. Your little darlings would be just as diminished as human beings if you had your way. Fortunately, I have no intention of allowing you to have our kids "removed from the system". And I am not alone.

"Paths of Glory"

"Paths of Glory"
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

I haven't written about this before now, mostly because I know how my writing about music tends to make crickets chirp and the baby Jesus cry. However, I thought Veterans Day presents a pretty good occasion to explain why I am boycotting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Money concerns force DSO to drop concert

Britten's 'Requiem' 'very expensive'

One of the headliner concerts promised for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's 2007-08 season is being scratched. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, which was to have been performed under principal guest conductor Claus Peter Flor, will be replaced by another program because of money concerns.

"We were reviewing the budget for next year, and we determined the need to make a few programming adjustments," says Fred Bronstein, president and CEO of the Dallas Symphony Association. "It's a very expensive piece to produce, and we just determined it would be prudent to postpone it."

You know, I understand that the War Requiem is an expensive piece to perform. It requires a full orchestra, a chamber orchestra, a full chorus, a boys' choir and soloists, and it's still a rental piece. It's modern and difficult and probably not a huge audience draw, although every time I've seen it performed, it has been to a full house.

However, in a time of war, when the message of Benjamin Britten and Wilfred Owen is as relevant as ever before, and particularly in a community as conservative as Dallas, in which support for the president's increasingly unpopular and idiotic war remains inconceivably high, it is, in my opinion, impossible to cancel a performance of this piece without covering yourself in the stink of artistic cowardice.

I mean, the War Requiem didn't get more expensive to perform in the time since it was programmed by the DSO. But the statement that it stood to make about the futility and pity of war? That just becomes more relevant and desperate (and controversial, at least in this town) by the day. The War Requiem is a vastly important work, one that an audience has much to learn from. It represents the very best of what a contemporary symphony orchestra should be trying to accomplish, bringing music of the highest quality and most significant social relevance to a community. Canceling a performance like this one, even for financial reasons (or perhaps especially so) doesn't just disrespect the veterans who have faced these issues in a slightly more harrowing setting than a cushy concert hall. It disrespects art.

Because I have become a grouchy old man, I sent an email saying as much to the DSO back in May. After getting a response from an anonymous Patron Services Center representative (a response that felt like a canned response, which I found to be a hopeful sign since it suggests I'm not the only person who responded negatively), I sent the following, which pretty accurately represents my current thinking about the issue and the responsibility of artists in troubled times.

I did not receive a response. I did not require one.

-----

Subject: War Requiem
From: robert@schuylersmonster.com
Date: May 21, 2007
To: customerservice@dalsym.com

I understand the financial difficulties of putting together a performance like that. But it is also unfortunate and frankly suspect timing that this piece should find itself on the block in the midst of a controversial and politically charged time of war. Britten's piece is divorced of politics, addressing instead the undeniable horror, futility and suffering of war, topics that go beyond politics and patriotism and force the listener, no matter what their partisan beliefs, to look deeper. Regardless of the financial reasons for doing so, canceling your performance of this piece in particular sends a strong message, and not a positive one.

Music matters. The artistic choices that an orchestra makes send a message to a community. If this is a matter of purely financial concern, then I and a great many other will be watching your choice of replacement repertoire with great interest. I wish you the best of luck in maintaining your organization's artistic integrity as you make that choice.

Robert Rummel-Hudson
Plano, TX

Eagerly awaiting the revolution

Sometimes I get email from old skool readers asking why I don't write about politics anymore.

I don't know. I guess I usually just find it easier to stick my finger down my throat...

Programming

Red
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

Julie has been busy lately, working on last minute Harry Potter preparations for the book store where she works as a community relations monkey, so Schuyler and I have been spending a lot of alone time together these days.

Last night Schuyler and I curled up on the couch, just the two of us, and it would have been a really sweet picture if you were to peek in through the window and see us there. I'm not sure if you'd still get the same Normal Rockwell vibe, however, if you could see that we were watching Godzilla versus Space Godzilla.

After it was over, we changed into our sleep clothes and stomped around the living room, destroying imaginary Tokyo and attacking each other. Schuyler stopped in her rampage every now and then to open her mouth menacingly and breath imaginary Godzilla fire, although she ruined the effect by cracking herself up and giggling. Well, that and also by being a four foot tall little girl in very un-monstery Hello Kitty pajamas.

I was driving her to her summer program this morning when she suddenly called out excitedly, pointing out the car window.

"Ah-ee, oo! Eh UH!"

I followed where she was pointing and saw a police car, and that's when I realized what she was saying.

"Daddy, look! The FUZZ!"

"Is that the Fuzz?" I asked. She squealed with delight and clapped her hands at our (until now) private joke.

Judge me if you must for the things I end up teaching Schuyler, both intentionally and otherwise. We're like any parents, we pick our battles carefully, based on our own beliefs and the values we feel are important to pass down. Even if sometimes those values involve nothing more than being a smartass. Especially then, perhaps.

We'll watch some pretty questionable television sometimes, for example. Jurassic Park II: The Lost World was on last week, and I've never seen Schuyler's eyes as wide with wonder as when she watched a T-Rex walking down a quiet suburban street and into a back yard, drinking from the swimming pool and looking into a kid's bedroom window. I can't even begin to imagine how happy she would be to look out her own window to such a sight.

But after one too many trips to the bookstore when she ran straight to the Disney and Barbie sections as if there were no other conceivable book in the world, we stopped letting her watch shows that seem to be little more than merchandise disguised as educational television. So yes to rampaging dinosaurs eating the family dog, but no more Dora the Explor-ah^TM.

She knows that hitting and pushing other kids is wrong, but also that she's got the right to be anywhere anyone else is, with her Big Box of Words by her side. Schuyler knows that when other kids get bossy and start telling everyone what to do, there is no greater fun to be had than to cheerfully break those rules. She wears the punky clothes that she wants, with camouflage and little bead bracelets with pink skull-and-crossbones and red hair that exists nowhere in nature, but she also knows that short shorts and the slutty Bratz attire that is so popular with the North Dallas second grade set these days (WTF?) isn't going to happen, and it's not even worth putting up a fight.

She knows nothing about Jesus (as far as we're concerned, she already has plenty of imaginary friends), and isn't going to find out more until she's old enough to make the distinction between what's fact and what's opinion. She's trusting in a very unsophisticated way at this stage; she will take whatever she is told and process it as Truth-with-a-big-T, and we feel better about her believing in Santa and King Kong and monsters right now. The difference is that fewer people will be insisting that they are real as she gets older, and she's not ever going to be pressured to live her life a certain way because someone told her that it's Godzilla's will.

Most of all, Schuyler has inherited a "Fight the Man" attitude that she is going to need as she gets older and takes on more of her own battles for equal treatment and adequate concessions for her life in a mainstream society.

Being who she is, however, Schuyler infuses that attitude with a charm that her father has never possessed. As we pulled away from the police car this morning, she smiled, gave him a wave, and said "Eye, uh!"

"Bye, Fuzz!"

It's good to be the king.

When I posted excerpts from the Declaration of Independence the other day, I left out the middle part, the whole "here's what the king did to piss us off" section. In doing so, I left out the two best lines:

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.

and...

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

I know. I really need to grow up. Don't think I'm not aware of that.

--

"Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes."
-- Dazed & Confused (1993)

The Fourth

When in the Course of human events...
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The Fourth of July can inspire mixed feelings with some, particularly for people like myself who have lost faith in our government and who don't hold up much hope of regaining that faith, even if the White House changes parties in the next election. If anything, a Democratic administration might very well damage our faith even more; I may be appalled at the immorality and shamelessness of the Bush Administration, but I'm never surprised, and I don't reel particularly betrayed. Some people are fond of saying that Bush is not their president, completely missing the point that he decided they weren't his constituents long ago.

And yet for me, Independence Day has a certain magic to it because I still have immense pride in being an American. Fourth century Romans could see the end coming, but that didn't stop them from recognizing what a remarkable achievement their very existence had been to the world. One can love with open eyes; what hope is there for any of us otherwise?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The main reason I love this day so much is simple. Independence Day isn't about the bravery of Minutemen, George Washington on a horse, or the rockets' red glare. It doesn't celebrate the beginning of the Revolutionary War, but rather the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Fourth of July celebrates nothing less than the power of words to change the world.

The words to the declaration have become so familiar, celebrated in marble and in textbooks, that it's easy to forget just how dangerous and seditious they really were at the time. The men who wrote them and signed their names were outlaws, and the cost to them could have been their very lives. They were writers and thinkers, and the power contained in their words, as well as the clever spin that gave their fellow colonists a deranged king as a villain rather than a faceless parliament, convinced a bunch of farmers and tradesmen to take up arms against the most powerful nation on earth. Those words changed the course of world history.

Guns and bombs and blood and bravery and sacrifice, all set in motion by pen to paper, and by minds at work. At the beginning of almost every world changing event, you'll find someone scribbling furiously, typing without pause, or speaking passionately to a gathering crowd.

Those of us who consider ourselves writers need to remember how our words can move the hearts of our fellow citizens of the world.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Memorial Day, 2007

"Paths of Glory", C.R.W. Nevinson

Futility

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)

Another Inconvenient Truth

Before the fluttering of TV-ready flags and the patriotic, outraged sputtering gets too loud for anyone to think clearly, let's hear it once straight up.

"I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and -- you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows -- (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday."

-- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, April 19, 2007

The thumping has already begun, the wailing of "They don't support the troooooops!", and if past experience is any indication, the Democrats will soon be issuing "clarifications" about what the senator really meant and trying to water down what was actually a much-needed stiff drink.

So before Senator Reid ascends the wobbly tower of public relations Jell-o, let me throw in my own opinion.

He's right. The war is lost.

It was lost long ago. Maybe from the very first day.

It wasn't lost by the troops. It was lost very much in spite of the troops.

It was lost by old men in Washington, D.C.

If they can resist the indignant cries from that small but loud percentage of the extreme right who would unconditionally support the president even if he shot up a college campus or ate a puppy on television, the Democrats might just turn back into a party with some measure of leadership.

They just need to know one thing most of all. Here's that thing, the one they might not completely know because no one on either side of the aisle seems to be able to hear the voice of the People (with a big P) very clearly,

We already know the war is lost.

We may be stupid, easily distracted, American Idol-watching children, but we know the war is lost. Speak what's true, and we'll listen, we'll listen because we already know it, even if we're not all ready to say it. We need leaders to say it and to actually lead us out of the dark.

I've had my heart broken in the past by Democrats who stood up and spoke hard truths, only to weasel and wiggle back across the line when the heat got turned up. But even knowing how it usually turns out, I do still so love that brief moment when the party of my idealistic youth stands up like an aging bull ready to take one last futile stab at the matador, forgetting for just that moment of clarity to fear the butcher's block and the Hamburger Helper yet to come.

Support the troops with more than a ribbon magnet on your SUV. Get our people out of there.

"I'm leeeeavin' on a jet plane..."

I'm sitting in the airport, leaving for LA in about an hour. I'm excited and nervous. Excited because I've never been to California, and nervous because I'm attending a dinner meeting thing with some cool, high-powered industry people. I'd like to make an impression beyond "some fat yokel". Although, you know, I'll take that if I have to.

I talked to Kerry on my way to the airport, and he's crazy busy with his book promotion tour. He did twenty-eight interviews and radio show phone-ins yesterday. I suspect that's a nice problem to have. He sounds exhausted and a little flustered, but to be honest, he also sounds happy. Good for him.

As for me, I'm happy to be getting out of town for a few days.

That's it. What, you were waiting for something meaningful?

Um, okay, a quick political observation. In recent weeks, both Barack Obama and John McCain have referred to the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq as a "waste", and both have quickly backtracked when patriotic eyebrows began wiggling menacingly across this great land.

Two candidates for the presidency are soooooooooo close to showing the courage to speak the truth about the war, but in the end, both hedged. I am both heartened and disgusted. As for the Democratic Party, which called on McCain to apologize for using the term mere weeks after Obama did the exact same thing, WTF? Knee-jerk, safe politics are going to serve you exactly as well in the next presidential election as they did in the last two. Show us something better, if you can. Some integrity and ideological consistency might be a good place to start.

I watched the Bob Woodruff story on traumatic brain injuries last week, and it rejuvenated all my anti-war feelings in a way that I hadn't felt in a long time. I don't think I'm going to be able to vote for anyone of either party who has supported this war, certainly not within the past two years or so. That narrows my choice of candidates considerably, at least as the field stands now. Who knows what will happen in the coming months?

Wouldn't it be funny, after my notorious Nader "Green Days of Shame" of 2000, if I ended up voting for Al Gore?

Okay, time to fly. See you when I get to the land of the Beautiful People. I assume I will feel like Jabba the Hutt the whole time.

Chasing Justice

Kerry & friend
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

My friend Kerry Max Cook's book, Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit, hit the stores today. I'm listening to him on NPR's Diane Rehm Show right now. He's doing a great job, but then, his story is compelling, almost unbearably so. He's my friend; we hang out and take our kids to movies together, and yet when I look at him and watch him move through the world, I still can't grasp that he survived this experience and came through the other side.

Here's how HarperCollins describes his story:

Wrongfully convicted of killing a young woman in Texas, Cook was sentenced to death in 1978 and served two decades on death row, in a prison system so notoriously brutal and violent that in 1980 a federal court ruled that serving time in Texas's jails was "cruel and unusual punishment." As scores of men around him were executed, Cook relentlessly battled a legal system that wanted him dead; meanwhile he fought daily to survive amid unspeakable conditions and routine assaults. When an advocate and a crusading lawyer joined his struggle in the 1990s, a series of retrials was forced. At last, in November 1996, Texas's highest appeals court threw out Cook's conviction, citing overwhelming evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct.

And finally in the spring of 1999 long-overlooked DNA evidence was tested and it linked another man to the rape and murder for which Cook had been convicted. Today, Cook is a free man and the proud father of a young son.

Kerry Max Cook was convicted on the basis of some very dubious testimony by one witness (who described a person with an entirely different appearance) and a fellow prisoner who claimed that Kerry confessed the crime to him, despite the fact that Kerry was held in solitary confinement at the time. The evidence against Kerry consisted of a fingerprint on the victim's patio door. An "expert" for the prosecution testified that the fingerprint had been left during the time frame of the murder. Such a time-sensitive determination on a fingerprint is scientifically impossible; they might as well have consulted a psychic.

The Kerry Max Cook that I know seems so far away from that life. He's a warm father and playful husband with a quick sense of humor a wildly optimistic nature. He talks openly about his terrible story, but his eye is on the future.

In a few days, I'll be flying to Los Angeles to join Kerry for a big celebrity book party being thrown for him. I'll be there as his photographer, and as his friend. I hope his book does well, but more than that, I hope Kerry gets the life he deserves.

God knows, if anyone has paid in advance for happiness, it's Kerry Max Cook.

Sad day in Texas

Well, crap.

Molly Ivins has died, after a long battle with breast cancer.

Following as it does the death of Ann Richards, Molly's passing further thins the already shaky list of worth-a-shit Texans. When I think of her, I think of one of my favorite sayings. "Comfort the disturbed. Disturb the comfortable." It'll be harder work without her in the world.

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?

If you are a parent who finds yourself in a position where you need to get work done on your laptop but you are also responsible for watching your kid, there are worse alternatives to "Television as Babysitter" than taking your kid to McDonald's. You get to watch from a nearby table while accessing the not too overpriced wireless and ogle the stay-at-home MILFs who ran out of scotch at home and threw on their matching sweatsuits to get out of the house for a few precious hours. Your child gets to eat some bland but probably mostly harmless food and burn off calories and psycho-kid energy while running around on giant plastic Habitrail tubes with strangers. As long as you have some fresh fruit and antibacterial handscrub waiting at home, you're golden.

Also, the Happy Meal toys are getting to be downright fancy. Schuyler received a farting cat last time we were there.

The three of us went there last week so that Schuyler could de-vegetate while Julie and I worked on the infamous, soul-eating marketing plan for my book. We'd been working on it for maybe an hour or so when Julie got up to get a drink refill. A man was sitting quietly at the table next to us, reading while his son played (with Schuyler, as it turned out). He took that opportunity to introduce himself, initially by asking an innocuous question about how I was getting internet access. Then he said that he couldn't help but overhear us (not in a creepy way, but in the manner that I imagine you hear bits of a conversation when someone at the next table is a blowhard author talking about himself), and said he was a writer, too, with a book coming out soon.

I'll be perfectly honest with you and admit that I was about to give a condescending little "Oh, really? That's great!" that a newly fancy snob author like me might give to the no doubt esteemed writers that you could expect to meet at McDonald's Playland. ("Ones like you?" -- Shut up.) I was waiting to hear about his no doubt print-on-demand volume (perhaps of cowboy poetry!) when he told me that his book was coming out next month, published by HarperCollins.

At that point, he had my undivided attention. HarperCollins is huge.

We ended up talking for over an hour, all book stuff and marketing and such, the boring yet terrifying parts of this whole publishing adventure that would put most of you to sleep but which are keeping me up at night. He asked a lot of questions about my book, but seemed hesitant to talk much about his own, so I didn't pry.

He mentioned some of the media events he was doing, including some biggies like The Today Show and Tavis Smiley and Diane Rehm (all on my media wish list, of course), and I waited for my internal bullshitometer to go off, but it never did. He'd handed me his card, which had the title of his book on it, and it was ringing a bell like crazy in my head.

While we all talked, his son and Schuyler played and bonded, not in the bullying "I can talk so you do what I say" way that Schuyler has experienced with neurotypical kids in the past, but in a more sincere, egalitarian way. When he invited us to meet his wife and son for ice cream the next night, we agreed immediately.

On the way out the door, he pulled us aside and nervously said, "I just have to tell you one thing since you're going to read it when you go to the HarperCollins site. I was in prison for a long time before I was released after I was cleared by DNA evidence. There's a lot of really bad stuff that happened."

So yeah. We drove home and Googled pretty damned fast.

All of this, just to let you know how it came to pass last week that we became friends with Kerry Max Cook.

I can't tell you the last time I met nicer people, and I can't tell you if I've ever met someone with a story as interesting as his. (My own very strong feelings about the death penalty are pretty well documented.) When his book, Chasing Justice, comes out in February, I'll be picking it up. And when I write my own book on fathers, I'm not sure if I'll write about him and his new, second life as a father trying to raise a sensitive son in what has been for him a brutal, unfair world, but I imagine it'll be hard not to.

So there you go. McDonald's. How random was that?

Quality of Life

Schuyler at sunset
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

I was driving home today and listening to NPR, and a story came on about a young woman in Oklahoma named Misty Cargill who suffers from mild mental retardation and abnormally small kidneys.

Misty Cargill needs a kidney transplant.

Out of 69,000 Americans on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, only about 16,000 will receive one this year. No one knows who will be next to get a kidney, but Misty knows it won't be her. She knows because she can't get on the list.

Because of her mental disability.

Misty Cargill was rejected from the list, despite the fact that she meets all the criteria for transplant. She's within the correct age and weight range, and aside from the fact that she will need a kidney very soon, she is otherwise in good health. She has Medicaid and is therefore able to pay for the operation and the follow-up anti-rejection medications. A patient must be capable of telling their doctors how they feel and of taking the medications that will prevent organ rejection. Cargill can do so; she's employed and lives in an assisted living community, where she lives mostly independently but with medical supervision.

But even though the state of Oklahoma considers Misty competent to make her own decisions, the Oklahoma University Medical Center transplant center rejected her referral on the grounds that she might not have the mental capacity to give informed consent to have the operation. They even went so far as to claim that her own doctors declared her incompetent to give informed consent, a claim denied by her personal physician and her kidney doctor, who say that she is a good candidate for transplant and could die without it.

In the story, an expert on developmental disabilities at Ohio State, Steven Reiss, said exactly what I was thinking: doctors appear to be making decisions based not on medical concerns, but a discriminatory "quality of life" judgment.

"There's thinking out there that some people's lives are more valuable than others," he said. "It's very hard to keep that thinking totally out of the transplant process."

One of the tests we have not put Schuyler through is a cognitive evaluation, an IQ test. There are plenty of good reasons not to and not really any compelling reasons to do so. She's receiving the services she needs in her school, above and beyond, in fact, so a test showing some sort of diminished cognitive capacity isn't going to help her get more help. More importantly, an IQ test administered on a non-verbal subject is extremely subjective and dependent upon the independent interpretive judgment of the test administrator. When we saw Dr. Dobyns in Chicago, he warned that such a test should only be administered by a qualified pediatric psychiatrist, and even then we should take the test results with a grain of salt.

I have no idea how profoundly Schuyler's cognitive abilities are affected by her monster, although my gut feeling (and those of the medical evaluators who have seen her before) is that her impairment is mild and probably due more to her communications difficulty and developmental delay than to her brain malformation.

Today, it suddenly became clear once again why we were correct not to have such a test administered to Schuyler, and why we likely never will. Today, I heard the story of Misty Cargill, a young woman who goes to a job and has a boyfriend who takes her to the movies and who bowls in a league and who can't get a life-saving procedure because someone somewhere has decided that she's retarded, and retards don't deserve to live as much as the rest of us. Today, I remembered the emails I have gotten, not many but a few, suggesting that Schuyler's class is a drain on the resources of the public schools, and that she and the other members of her box class should be institutionalized (and marginalized), not mainstreamed.

It's a hard, rough, shitty world for broken people. Don't you ever doubt that, not for a goddamned second.

Comfort the disturbed.

Disturb the comfortable
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

I put a new sticker on my car, replacing all my snotty political dogma with my equally snotty socialist trouble-making dogma. To be honest, I no longer believe that either party is really concerned with the broken of our society. Both are fighting over the middle class and pandering to the super rich. Neither seem to be giving even the most rudimentary lip service to helping the poor or the displaced in this country.

I feel like I'm back in the Reagan 80s, when the President and Edwin Meese claimed that most street people chose their situation and went to soup kitchens because they didn't want to pay for their meals. At the time the Reagan Administration was making these claims, one third of the homeless were estimated to suffer from serious mental illness, another 25-50% had alcohol or drug abuse problems, and most of the rest were jobless or displaced by the gentrification of the inner cities -- the "new poor".

I don't think things have changed much, and I hear the same "get a job" or "giving to the homeless just perpetuates their situation" arguments now, from both predictable and surprising sources. Where does the solution begin? I don't have an answer. Between the sham of faith based initiatives, scandals within groups like the United Way and political indifference to a class of people who, after all, never vote, who is left to make a difference?

Someone I know lives near an overpass with a regular group of homeless who camp out under its protection. Last week, she stopped and asked them what they needed, then drove to Wal-Mart and bought them blankets, a bunch of food, batteries, propane and a tent. She knew it was supposed to get nasty cold in a day or two, and so she just went and helped them.

I have no idea how to fix the problem. All I know is that while we as communities and as a government are letting the poor and broken of this country fall through the cracks, as individuals we're touched, we feel, and in doing so, we reach out in our big-hearted and inefficient ways and we try to help. Remember the tsunami, or Katrina? Do you remember how feckless the government responses were but how generous the private citizens of this country showed themselves to be?

Imagine for a moment if our elected officials felt those same impulses of humanity and reached out with the full force of the nation to help those among us who don't vote and don't power the engines of commerce. Imagine the things we could do, not just in this country but also in Africa and Asia. Imagine how the people in parts of the world that hate us would feel when their villages began to get electricity and medicine, and American financial institutions began investing in microeconomics, not for their direct gain but in order to shrink the Third World a little. What if we had a New & Improved World Order, the central tenet of which might be "Let's get the whole world's shit together"?

I don't mean to be all John Lennon (or Karl Marx, for that matter) on you tonight. I know that I'm usually concerned with helping one person, one little girl who has a big problem but who also has a lot of people helping her and lifting her up. But the fact is that there are a lot of people out there who have no one, and they have problems that we can barely even comprehend. I've suffered from depression from time to time, and trust me, I know that a lot of you are frankly not always well in the head, bless your nutty little hearts. What if you had no safety margin? What if the next time you stumble, you lose it all?

I'm not sure why I'm writing this. It's cold outside. Maybe that's it. Just think about it, please.

Maybe I'll go help the poor of Plano. Oh, wait. Shit, I think that's us.