The righteous chest-beating debate drones on, denouncing illegal immigrants as nefarious lawbreakers destroying America. I’m reminded of similar debates in my youth of the lawbreaking civil rights protesters who wouldn’t eat where they were supposed to eat or go to the schools made just for them. If you’re my age (about to turn sixty) you don’t have to ask too many agemates to find someone who recalls their grandparents who immigrated from Europe. Many speak of their grandmothers “who never learned English” and who didn’t wait in long lines to get into the country but basically “just had to show up.” My parents spoke fondly of the neighborhood where they grew up in Denver being filled with immigrants from several different countries. Most were poor, hard-working, looking for a better life. Most were white. Now the lines are years and years long, and most regular folks shouldn’t bother to queue up since they haven’t a chance of ever getting in legally. My friends who are here legally face no end of harrassment from the INS and have little chance of becoming citizens. The Statue of Liberty, once the proud symbol of America’s welcoming ways is to be replaced by bigger and better walls. Don’t give us your poor anymore; we only want Ph.D.’s. It breaks my heart.

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker began a recent column with the following:

“In a nation where 91 percent of citizens profess to believe in God, it’s a safe bet we won’t see an atheist in the White House any time soon.”

I don’t doubt her assertion, but it did raise a few questions in my mind. I’m an atheist, but I’ve voted for Christians , Jews, god-believers of all sorts, without hesitation. I’ve counted among my friends ministers, priests, rabbis, and wiccan priestesses. Is there something about the belief in God that prompts religious intolerance? Clearly, if her numbers are right, there must be people in that 91 percent who murder, commit treason, steal, lie to the American public. Clearly belief in God is no guarantee of anything. Kropotkin in his Ethics and in Mutual Aid lays out but one moral system that doesn’t depend upon God, and Taoism is a moral, but godless religion. So what’s your problem, God-believers? Don’t you believe in religious tolerance? Should the pledge read “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all—except atheists”? Or maybe Kathleen is wrong and belief in God doesn’t close people’s minds. Maybe someday there will be an atheist president. What do you think?

Mother’s Day wasn’t always another excuse to consume. Julia Ward Howe’s “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” proclaimed quite a different purpose for such a holiday in 1870. It seems particularly relevant these days:

Mother’s Day Proclamation

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

The makers of OxyContin just admitted that they knowingly and deliberately deceived doctors—and chronic pain sufferers—by saying that their drug was not an addictive opiate, thus addicting thousands. The local street dealers at least tell you what they’re selling you (unless it’s talcum powder) and nobody ever lost an election by calling for locking those guys up and throwing away the key. But if you’re rich enough, you can pay a big fine with the profits you make off your drugs, and keep selling the drugs to boot. No one’s going to serve a minute of hard time, because, well, they’re rich, aren’t they? So if you want to be a crook, think big, incorporate, make a contribution to the economy, and you can keep doing business. It’s the American way.

I just found the coolest site while researching Stephen Foster for a story I’m working on. The University of Pittsburgh has one of his sketchbooks with sixty four of his songs in it. You can view the pages of the Stephen Foster Sketchbook online. There’s a Song List so you can go to the one you want, or you can browse. I went to “Hard Times Come Again No More,” a favorite, and there you have it, in four fascinating pages, the whole process of that song being born—writing, rewriting, jaunty little squiggles under the title when he finally gets it right and copies all the verses down. I got chills.
Foster died at 37 with 38 cents to his name. He made less than $20,000 in his life for the 285 songs he wrote.

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears

While we all sup sorrow with the poor;

There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears—

Oh, hard times come again no more.