Photo: Reflection

Copyright, 2008, Pat Grauer

Till all success be nobleness . . .

America! America!

May God thy gold refine

Till all success be nobleness

And every gain divine!
--Katherine Lee Bates, “America the Beautiful”

There’s no doubt in my mind that, of the whole glorious globe, the United States is the best place for me to live. For better or worse, I love our land, our people, our independence, our creativity, our generosity and our day-to-day decency.

But I don’t love everything that we do. Our greed is wrecking the world’s economy. Our entrenched ways of life are, more than any other nation, destroying the planet’s climate. We export violence and sex and human degradation in our media. We are, at this time, one of the most warmongering countries on earth. In our name as consumers, corporations steal, pillage, kill and manipulate the most vulnerable populations to get us the products we “need.”

None of these extremes shows the full spectrum of American life. As I think about who we are, it occurs to me that some data are in order. The quality-of-life data below carry multiple caveats, though every effort was made to find reliable sources. They represent different snapshots at different times, and much of it will be outdated in the minutes between its compilation and posting here. Credible sources (e.g. the CIA Factbook and the International Monetary Fund) differ on data. Many countries do not have the resources to collect valid information on their people. Suffice it to say, it would be dangerous to the truth to compare one data set with another, since so many differing assumptions would be involved. Please click to see the source, and weigh your decision-making carefully.

All that being said, the results are fascinating, and say a lot about our values, our perceptions and our place in the world. Here we go!

General

Population: 3rd, at 303,824,000+ people, or 4.6% of the world’s population of 6.65+ billion
Population density: 142nd, with about 80 people per square mile
Land mass: tied for 3rd with China (behind Russia and Canada) at 6.5% of world’s land mass
Gross domestic product: 1st, at $13,843,825,000,000, more than a quarter of world’s total GDP
Per capita income: 7th, at $46,000 per person

International relations
Military spending: 1st at $623 billion; rest of world combined is $500 billion
Foreign aid per capita: 15th of 21 weathiest nations for government aid; 4th of 21 for private aid

Health
Life expectancy: 45th, with average of 78 years
Health care spending per capita: 1st at $4,271 per person
Percentage of GDP that is spent on health care: 1st at 13.9%
Percent of health spending that is public: 25th, at 44.9%
Obesity: 9th in world with 74.1% of the population overweight or obese
Birth rate: 155th, at 14.2 births per 1,000 people
Death rate: 96th of 195, at 8.2 deaths per 1,000 people
Infant mortality: 163rd of 195, at 6.3 deaths per 1000 live births
Suicide rate: 43rd at 11 deaths per 100,000

Social/ lifestyle
Marriage rate: 1st of 27 selected countries at 9.8 marriages per 1000 people
Divorce rate: 1st of 34 selected countries at 4.95 divorces per 1000 people

Crime
Incarceration: 1st, with 2,078,570 prisoners
Incarceration per capita: 1st, with 714 per 1,000 people
Executions: 3rd, with 68
Corruption: 17th, with “clean” score of 7.6 out of 10
Rapes per capita: 9th, with 0.30 per thousand
Murder per capita: 24th at 0.04 per 1000 people
Murder with firearms per capita: 8th at 0.03 per 1,000 people

Democracy
Democracy: 17th by The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy
Human rights: Top rankings of “1” on a scale of 7 for both political rights and civil liberties
Free press: 48th of 169 countries

Education
School life expectancy: 14th, at 15.2 years
Literacy rate: Tied for 15th with numerous other nations at 99%

Unranked data on United States
Number of pets: 382.2 million
Spent on pets: $43.4 billion (estimate for 2008)
Spent on restaurant meals: $974 per capita in 2004, totaling more than $286 billion
Spent on all advertising: $149 billion in 2007
Spent on prescription drugs: $200.7 billion in 2005; 12.4 prescriptions per capita
Total U.S. public debt: $9,341,527,250,070+
U.S. trade deficit: $62.3 billion in February 2008; annualized would be $747.6 billion
Personal debt (not including mortgages): $2,460,000,000,000+

Fight to keep what makes you proud. Pray and work to change what disappoints. Join with all of us who love this nation enough to want greater discipline, greater sacrifice, greater support for the most vulnerable, greater moral strength and healthier lifestyles. Together, with God’s help, we can do it. But we must act quickly.

Copyright, 2008, Pat Grauer

Photo: Early Mountain Spring

Copyright 2008, Pat Grauer

Gaea

Will she shrug us from her skin?
We are fleas who gnaw and defecate in the open wounds.
We are insects who crawl the surface of her body,
Oozing toxins.

Our appetites are so voracious that the bites
Coalesce into gaping sores.
Our trails, packed hard, mark her skin with lines.
We fly about her body,
Unconcerned about her certain death.

Her salty blue blood is poisoned
But we continue to drink.
Her breath, so thick it is visible,
Carries the stench of decay.

This is our Mother.
She will give to us forever, everything.
We gnaw and suck and bloat,
Ignoring the fear that seeps into our guts
When we hear the rattle of death in her throat.

Copyright, 2008, Pat Grauer

Photo: Safe Harbor

Copyright, 2008, Pat Grauer

Notes from "Keep Making Peace"

Peace, poverty and Planet Earth were the foci of the “Keep Making Peace” conference held by Michigan's United Methodist Churches in Lansing on Saturday, April 12. Bob Edgar, pastor, former U.S. representative, former leader of the National Council of Churches in Christ, and now CEO of Common Cause, emphasized three messages that cut across the issues
We are the leaders we have been waiting for.
Lord, help me notice the stains when people get spilled on.
I love you and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Edgar on peace

He became a strong peace advocate when he visited U.S. missile silos and discovered that the finger on the button of potential nuclear annihilation belonged to a 21-year-old man

If you want to get Castro, lift the embargo. It has provided a great vehicle for demonizing the United States without moderating messages

We have the distinction of being the first generation capable of destroying the entire planet – whether by nuclear weaponry or global warming or pollution

If the whole population of the planet were 100 people, 52 would be women, 8 African, 14 would live in the Western Hemisphere, 57 would be Asians, 6 would own half the wealth and all would live in the United States, 80 would live in substandard housing, 70 would be illiterate, 50 would be hungry and 1 would own a computer

Of the 800 lifetimes of human history, 650 would have been spent in caves, in the last four people could measure time, in the past two people used lightbulbs or fossil fuels, and in the last lifetime 95% of everything that humans have ever made has been created

The earth has been present for 4.8 billion years. In 1830, the population first reached one billion; in 1930 two billion; in 1960 three billion; in 1975 four billion, in 1987 five billion, in 1999 six billion, and in 2008, 6.6 billion. More than half the people who have ever lived are alive today

“Elected officials may not have a clue. They think they can get terrorists by bombing a capital. We’re exquisitely preparing our defense for World War II,” when we should be focuses on cooperating with other nations for police actions against terror

“A courageous remnant of people can change the world.”

Edgar on how to be a peacemaker

We need to be the leaders we have been waiting for. Elected officials (especially Congress) follow, not lead

A president who leaves office popular probably hasn’t done a good job

People of faith need to learn to lobby, to infiltrate the system. Should have eye contact with Congressional delegates twice a year in their home offices

Visit their staff in Washington, and then call them quarterly

Letters, email and petitions are the “lousiest” ways to contact legislators. If must use letter, mark it “personal”

Figure out what it takes to change your mind when planning to change a legislator’s mind

Reinvent civil disobedience; there are times it is necessary

We need to change our “be-attitudes”

The 2006 election may have been the first to start pulling the country back to the middle. How will the new president help us become a superpower with humility?

Make sure that every high school student in your church has experience in working with poverty. Provide scholarships to assist college students in Peace Corps and other international missions. Mobilize seniors for conflict resolution, Senior Adult Peace Corps, etc.

Edgar on poverty

We as Americans believe we have a right to consumption, and have used two-thirds of the known oil

People cherry-pick the Bible. For example, homosexuality is condemned in only two verses, but poverty is condemned in more than 2,000

Tainted money = “ ‘tain’t enough.”

There is $35 billion in the country’s benefit bank for poverty that no one has applied for: food stamps, tax credits, etc.

Most people working are only a paycheck away from poverty

If we cut the defense budget in half we would still spend more than all other nations combined

If we’re going to lift people out of poverty, we need a new way to fund public education than poverty taxes, which perpetuate what is

Forty-seven million Americans – nine million of them children – have no health insurance

In 2004, 97% of the people who voted had health care

Until the minimum wage was raised last year, an employee on minimum wage could work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, and the family be $5,000 below the poverty line

The new minimum wage has only 65% of the buying power of the minimum wage in 1965

Millennium goals show that we can end the poverty that kills. Charity is not enough; we have to change the environment

Michigan is on life support. The Michigan legislature is weak (because of short term limits) and lobbyists are strong

The churches should quit meeting so often, and come back together when they’ve accomplished something. Take on a ten-year campaign to end poverty in Michigan

Edgar on Planet Earth

If all the possible land on earth was cultivated, it could sustain a population of 6.5 billion. We must regenerate, not just sustain

Our whole economic system is based on presumptions of cheap energy and access to oil

Biblical idea of taking dominion of planet: Capitalists interpret as “dominance,” whereas the original Hebrew means “stewardship”

Water is the next big crisis, especially in areas like the Middle East

The community’s right to know about what chemicals are contained in Superfund sites was eliminated by the Patriot Act

Copyright, 2008, Pat Grauer

Photo: Redsky

Copyright, 2008, Pat Grauer

Back to the future

Last Sunday we left a sunny fresh spring afternoon to duck into a cavernous university field house -- dim, slightly musty and very noisy. Inside were a few women and hundreds of boys, but the boys were trapped inside bodies sporting beer bellies, beards, and balding heads.

It was a model train show.

It was all there -- from postage stamp N-gauge to garden trains big enough for cats to ride, from antique Lionel to bullet trains, brand new to more than “gently” used. Freight and passenger. Historic and imaginative. Short routes and international lines. Maps and dining-car china and whistles and warning lights and pictures and videos and miniature trees and books. I would tell you I think I even saw a full-scale cannon, but I don’t believe it either.

At one end, full layouts were displayed with great pride, representing thousands of hours of artfully designing landscapes, tunnels, mountains, and whole cities. As astounding as they were, I found the fact that they could be transported to a temporary site for a two-day show equally impressive.

Most of the men fell into two camps: those on a mission to either buy or sell, and those who were simply stupefied. The latter were the greatest pleasure to watch, wandering from table to table, picking up small coal cars or flatbeds, affectionately stroking gleaming locomotives, carefully sifting through trays of plastic boxes. I felt as if I could see their memories projected on the back of their wide eyes: a close moment with their dad, a happy time with a brother, enjoying a collection that had now been lost, or perhaps a summer day spent along a track near home, watching trains go by and dreaming of far-off places.

The passion is not all reverie, however. The knowledge of many these men about railroading, the history of trains here and abroad, the mechanics of engines and drive wheels, or the inside track of freight management is impressive.

The women? They wandered behind an oblivious spouse, congregated near the coffee and hotdogs to chat, or assisted with sales and food. A few were walking small dogs dressed in costumes. I didn’t want to know.

I saw fewer than ten children at the whole event – most with men I’d presumed to be their grandfathers, and most impatient to go home.

It’s likely in quarter-century that this wonderful little piece of Americana will be gone. Almost everyone in that field house had been knocking around this planet for 50 years or more, the younger folks enticed away by glitzier recreation.

That’s sad, because trains not only occupy an important place in our past, but an extremely important place in our future. They have the potential, properly managed (please note this caveat), to be an exceedingly safe, efficient, and economical means of moving freight and people. Most other developed nations have recognized the power of trains for mass transit within and between cities, but it’s far underdeveloped in the United States.

There was a ray of hope. At one small table in the middle of everything, a young man, a representative of a state train passenger association, was handing out literature and advocating a propagation of new lines. Perhaps, in 2050 there may be model trains shows after all, and, more importantly, the real thing saving us time, money, fuel, congestion, frayed tempers and death by auto.

Perhaps, I must confess, I often find myself a child living in a little house next to the tracks, counting cars, inhaling soot, catching tableware rattling off the edge, and listening to the whistle and clatter Doppler their way through our days and nights.

Copyright 2008, Pat Grauer

Photo: Silverquick

Copyright, 2008, Pat Grauer

Saving water at home

With shortages of safe water supplies projected world wide – some immediate, some long-range – I’ve been thinking a lot about what I could do to conserve this precious resource. Here are some simple ideas that have worked for me. Please share yours!

Buy dry. If a product (like detergent) is offered in powder or liquid form, go for the powder. It saves water in manufacturing and energy in transporting less weight. It also saves you money at the store when you're paying for product instead of water. If powders aren't available, see if there's a concentrate, which is a good compromise.

Wash only full loads of laundry and use the soak cycle (unless you’re washing fabrics that might bleed) a few minutes before the agitator starts.

Mark your shower control or faucets exactly where the water temp is best for you. It saves the water running while you’re trying to fine-tune temperature. More importantly, it allows you to turn the shower off while you’re lathering your bod and then easily on again to rinse.

Reuse water whenever feasible. For example, when I’m cleaning our betta’s bowl, I pour the nutrient rich fish-water into the sprinkling can for my houseplants. The pan of water (cooled) in which corn was cooked could be dumped in the garden.

If you’re creative, it’s possible to use the same water (and heat) to cook two or more items. For example, place eggs in cold water and heat until the eggs are hard-boiled. Remove the eggs with a spoon and use the hot water for cooking pasta, with vegetables simultaneously in a steamer above the water surface.

Keep a jug of drinking water in the fridge so you don’t have to run the faucet to get it cold.

Avoid watering your lawn. If you have a sprinkler system, set it manually to run only when needed, and don’t leave it programmed so that it operates when it’s raining.

When cleaning fruits and veggies, wet them all quickly, turn off the water, scrub, and then rinse quickly.

If you’re lucky enough to have a dishwasher, it will save water over doing dishes in the sink, but only if you run it when full. That said, of course, there’s a tradeoff to consider with energy conservation.

Keep a pump of dilute dish detergent at the kitchen sink and use it on a dishrag for those “justacoupla” dishes. Then rinse.

Uh, don’t flush unless you really have to. This is decidedly one for personal values, but at the least something like a used tissue doesn’t deserve the full royal flush.

Think about decorating your yard with an old-fashioned rain barrel to use as a water source outside.

Most of all, just be aware of your water use. Billions of people on our planet – mostly women and children – spend significant portions of their day seeking water for home use, often carrying it distances that are staggering. It’s a precious resource, and it’s one that belongs to us all. Thanks!

Copyright 2008, Pat Grauer

Photo: Footprints

Copyright 2008, Pat Grauer

Breakfast with Jeremiah Wright

Mr. Obama, would you please leave the room for the next few minutes? Your shadow's so large that it hides the very issues I'd like to discuss.

We're killing the messenger
I've been nothing short of saddened by the controversy surrounding The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, the former senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago -- the man at the center of Barack Obama's storm. Denounced as a "cranky uncle," "outrageous," "racist," "unpatriotic," and worse for his sermons, his life of service has been reduced to a few seconds of bad video propagated on YouTube and all the other media.

Three times over the last eight years, including last February, about 25 of us have had the privilege of sharing breakfast with Jeremiah Wright when he came to Michigan State University. It's an intimate gathering with no media invited. Here the man is kind, sociable, and funny as all get-out. He doesn't foam at the mouth. He doesn't berate others. But he also doesn't pull punches, sharing with great integrity his beliefs and stunning us with his courage.

Look at his life.
In the Vietnam Era, Wright walked out of a student draft deferment into two years of service in the U.S. Marines, and then four in the Navy. As a Naval technician in CPR, he was assigned to the team that cared for President Lyndon Johnson, for which he received three letters of commendation. Four academic degrees later, he was assigned to Chicago's Trinity, an 87-member congregation in 1972. Since then, Wright's achievements have been legion. At 6,000 members, Trinity is said to be now the largest church in the entire, mostly white, United Church of Christ denomination. He has established programs that have moved the church into the community -- meeting the needs of the neediest for dignity, health, and spiritual support. The author of several books, he has served on the faculty of a number of prestigious institutions, has received seven honorary doctorate degrees, and was named by Ebony as one of the 15 best preachers in the nation.

I had -- and have -- enormous respect and admiration for Dr. Wright. I was stunned at the reaction to his words.

Jesus on steroids
Many churches today have created a 21st-century Jesus Christ in one of two unhealthy images. The first is insipid: perpetually sweet, kind, offering blessing and solace and refuge. The second is a spiritual capitalist, promising good returns on your investments and a prosperous life. In stark contrast, the Jesus of a social justice church like Trinity has muscle. He whips the moneylenders into shape, compares public officials to the rotting contents of tombs, and singlehandedly stands down an angry mob armed with stones to defend someone surely guilty of the indefensible. This Jesus isn't nice or polite or politically correct, but every action is based on righteous love: he comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. This is Jeremiah Wright's Jesus, and he'll follow Him anywhere, even to his own scourging and crucifixion.

Uh, you wanna rephrase that?
OK. I'll admit that had he asked, I would have suggested that the use of "nigger" and "God damn" in the pulpit might come back to bite him. Note, though, that he said "God damn" -- as in praying "God condemn" -- not "goddam," an expletive that would have violated a teaching of his own faith. Even a cursory reading of the Bible gives us plenty of insight into what God condemns. But what hypocrisy! A society that tolerates obscene and violent language without an eyebat gets frothed when a preacher from the pulpit tells what God condemns? And a man who has suffered the hateful sting of "nigger" should be criticized when he points out that a white person hasn't?

Red, white, black and blue
Many have, despite his six years of service to country in the military and an exemplary life, pasted Wright with the "unpatriotic" label. Righteously calling our government into accountability no more makes us un-American than rightfully disciplining our children makes us bad parents. In fact, the most basic of our freedoms is the ability to speak truth to power, and few have the combination of courage, interest and credibility that Wright has to do so. We are a great nation filled with good people, but Wright is correct in calling us into greater self-discipline. But when he holds up the mirror, we'd rather smash it than deal with the image we see. Here's truth. We are the only nation in history to drop nuclear weapons on millions of human beings. Here's another. A nation that trades in violence will ultimately become its victim.

Who does he think he is, anyway?
Jeremiah Wright's parents named him well. He is much like his ultimate namesake, the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. The ancient prophet carried God's messages of repentance and warning to the rulers and the people, and they were not well received. Old Jeremiah knew how to get himself noticed, often using props or street theatre to draw an audience. He was castigated and often threatened, but continued his work. In fact, about the time of the American Revolution, the word "jeremiad" was coined to describe just this type of speech. I have no suspicion that Wright envisions himself as a modern-day prophet, but I also have no doubt that he in many ways fills a prophetic role.

He loves the skin he's in.
C'mon. Racist? It's clear that Jeremiah Wright is steeped in the pride, history, culture, music, language, political enterprises, spiritual health, and enhancing the lives of African American people. He's the epitome of Afrocentrism, and he developed a rockin' black church. But loving the skin you're in doesn't make you a racist. That requires hate, a commodity not in his store. Wright has moved beyond the society in which origin doesn't matter and therefore is ignored in polite company, to a paradigm in which our differences are celebrated, critiqued, contrasted and then embraced in common humanity. Vive la difference!

Sound bites bite.
In all of the media frenzy following the YouTubous videos, Roland Martin of CNN was one of the few reporters and commentators who bothered to look at the context of the clips. It was a fruitful exercise in objectivity. Wright's "chicken-roosting" comment about 9/11, for example, was actually part of a long quote from Edward Peck, the deputy director of President Reagan's terrorism task force and a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, speaking on FOX news. The words, correctly attributed to Peck by Wright, were not Wright's at all, but he paid for them dearly. As a people, starved for stimulation in an overstimulated world, we're far too quick to report, believe and act upon what seems obvious rather than give truth its due, and we end up with cartoon perceptions.

At that breakfast in East Lansing in February, Jeremiah Wright shared his disappointment that after serving as a family's pastor for two decades, marrying the couple and baptizing the children, he was uninvited at the last minute to Barack Obama's announcement of his candidacy for president. He also said that we could expect to see him excoriated in the media in the near future. He was prophetic on that.

Jeremiah Wright deserves better than he's getting. Hey! How about a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t?

Copyright, 2008, Pat Grauer

Photo: Peace be with us

Copyright 2008, Pat Grauer

Welcome! Please come in . . .

It's getting scary out there. Billions suffer in hopeless silence or chaotic revolt. Violence and greed  seem to grow all the more powerful.  Economies are faltering, and reason is thwarted at every turn. The very life of our planet is in great peril.

It's easy to forget that there are good and generous people.  It's easy to lose sight of hope and healing and positive creativity.  It's  easy to begin to believe that the world really is what it's portrayed to be on screen.  Eyes to the ground looking for land mines, we can miss the beauty around us.

I'm an ordinary person living an ordinary life in an ordinary community.  This blog is to represent just that perspective on a broad array of topics, and to invite others to share in safety.

I believe that together all of us ordinary people can change our present and our future, even in the face of military power, economic oppression, twisted values,  and outright evil.  When we share the spirit of the common good -- taught by every major faith  and the basis of every true ethical paradigm -- we can build the world with justice and peace.

So, come on in.  Laugh.  Tell a joke. Talk politics and religion. Share a recipe. Start a garden. Work for change. Get acquainted. Bring a problem. We'll appreciate all about life that is good, and seek together to find ways to change what is not.

Blessings.

--Pat