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.

I’m working on a story about rats. Back when B.F. Skinner was a BFD, I had a job working for the psych. department raising rats. That’s where the action was then, animal studies. If we could just figure out rats, humans were right around the corner. I was an English major, but they couldn’t get a psych major to take the job. They used to buy their rats from a laboratory supply company, but that runs into some money, and they were going through serious quantities of rats. You couldn’t really reuse them. Once you’d messed with them in one way, they were pretty much useless for another. Next stop: The Ft. Worth herpetarium.

They were Long-Evans rats, the black and white kind. I was responsible for about 500 of them. There was a batch of gerbils, and one guy had a roomful of rabbits that were strictly off limits, but mostly it was all rats. My main job was producing more and more of them. This wasn’t hard. The gestation period was 21 days, average litter size 7, weaned at 21 days. We gave the females another 21 days before breeding them again. I also issued experimental animals with all their records to the experimenters, mostly students doing the work for professors looking for publication, tenure, promotions. The grad students, like the rats in a maze were just trying to get out of there.

I’ve joined Sarah who’s here for the national APA convention. I went through the fabulous Philadelphia Museum of Art on Saturday, and we had a wonderful time hanging out with Jeff Ford and his wife Lynn on Saturday night, but it’s been awful weather ever since. I have a great view of the nor’easter, however, from the 22nd floor of the Sheraton. The rain’s leaking in through the window. Ideal writing circumstances. I’ve revised a story Sarah read on the train coming up. She helped me identify some deadwood. I’m working on a novella today, Hard Luck Charlie, that just may turn into a novel if the storm lasts long enough. Stay dry and warm.

I caught a clip of some righteous politician intoning about The Rule of Law yesterday. The phrase always sets my teeth on edge. He was talking about immigration laws, but I’ll bet he, or someone in his employ, had already broken the law that day, perhaps repeatedly. Everyone who doesn’t regularly violate the posted speed limit, raise your hand. Don’t own a car? You’re tied up? The speed limit on my street, for example, is 25 mph. No one goes that speed. Typical is 40; 50+ is not unusual. The chance of these lawbreakers being caught and punished for violating the duly constituted laws of the Commonwealth, are practically zip. What part of “speed limit” don’t these people understand? They know they won’t be caught—the linchpin of the Rule of Law—so they do as they please. Laws are only obeyed when enforced. That’s what’s wrong with them. They separate people from their decisions. Good behavior becomes defined as not getting caught—like a little kid. More sophisticated moral principles like “Do Unto Others,” for example, simply atrophy.

What’s the harm in breaking a speed limit, you might say. They’re too low anyway. It’s a busy world. Your time is important, you’re careful, and you won’t get caught. Let me give you a little additional information. A study was done on car-pedestrian accidents and the relationship between the likelihood of the pedestrian’s death and how fast the driver was going. At 20 mph, the pedestrian made out pretty well, with an 80% chance of surviving. (The study didn’t say how many of the 80% were in a wheelchair thereafter). If the driver, in a bit more of a hurry, his time being no doubt more valuable, was going 30 mph, the odds of killing the pedestrian were roughly 50%. A slight nudge on the gas to 40 mph, and anyone the driver hits with his car has a 90% chance of dying. So, while laws are demonstrably useless in slowing people down, here’s hoping more information might help, since with knowledge comes responsibility. Now you know. If by chance you’re speeding along in a hurry, unlikely to get caught, and some poor schmuck steps out from behind a parked van and you kill him, you’ll know if you’d been going slower, he might still be alive.

As for the immigration debate, a little less rant about the rule of law, and a little more knowledge of the people and economics involved might produce more humane results.

How about neither? I spent part of the Easter holiday resurrecting a pair of jeans that never fit me right by turning them into a cloth shopping bag with big handles. Upon the astute advice of one Jan Andrea, I disassembled one of the many Kroger paper bags around the place and used it as a pattern—the right size rectangle. I disassembled the jeans and pieced them together for a piece large enough, plus seam allowances. The site gives excellent sewing instructions. If you decide to go patchwork like I did, I would recommend removing pockets and other thickness boosters where seams fall first, unless you have a large supply of extra strong needles. I didn’t remove the pockets, and several needles gave their lives in the undertaking, but it was a learning experience. I do all the grocery shopping, like my father before me—we’re a weird family that way—and I have a sentimental attachment to the paper grocery bag. When I used to go with my dad (to give my mother some peace and to educate me in the ways of the grocery store) groceries cost roughly $5/bag. I went grocery shopping this morning, for substantially more. Dad was a label reader back in the fifties. He would’ve loved all the additional info. now. How did the new bag work, you ask? I forgot it, of course.

I bet you never thought you’d see a headline like that here. I was waiting for the bus to take me to jury duty again this morning when I glanced over at the marquee outside the church across the street: TOO MANY CHRISTIANS ARE NO LONGER FISHERS OF MEN BUT KEEPERS OF THE AQUARIUM. I love it. Of course, all groups have their aquarium keepers.

Jury duty went as expected: We all go downtown, and the parties settle before there’s a trial. The case involved a huge insurance company vs. a Spanish surname victim. I can’t imagine I would’ve been selected anyway. “Mr. Danvers, can you think of any reason why you might not be able to render an impartial verdict in this matter?” Where do I begin? I could just read passages from The Fourth World, I suppose.