Beautiful Weater and My Bike

I enjoyed biking this morning.  I always enjoy biking, but beautiful weather, like the weather we have today, adds a special dimension.  This would be the weather I came to the Phoenix area for, if I had come for the weather, but I didn’t – I came for my career.  When the highs in June, July, August, and September rise to above 110 deg. F, I try to remember late October and early November.  When I lived in Michigan and New Jersey, these were the days of overcast skies and cold and damp weather, but not here.  In Phoenix, these are the days of brilliant sunshine, warm temperatures, and pleasant breezes.  It has been almost exactly 12 years since my mastectomy and I remember how pleasant it felt, after I left the hospital, to sit in the backyard, read, and feel the warm sun.  Sitting outside at this time of year is something that isn’t possible in New Jersey or Michigan.

I’ve tried to analyze why a morning ride on my bike leaves me with a feeling of peace and serenity.  Yes, I am aware of all of the problems facing our society, but they seem to fade away while I’m on my bike.   Once each week, instead of biking, I get my exercise by going to the gym and using the treadmill and weight lifting machines, as my doctor suggested.  I find that going to the gym is work and I’m happy when my workout is finished.  When the weather is beautiful, as it is now, I don’t feel that way at all, I have a feeling of peace and contentment, even though my bike ride is generally twice as long as a session in the gym.

I’m very aware of the traffic around me – I monitor cars in my vicinity very carefully.  I think that I’m even more aware of cars than I was before my accident (the one that put me in a rehab hospital for over a week) a few years ago – but my mind seems to be in a separate world, far away.

After I finish my ride and lock my bike, I return to the real world.  I suffer over and am bothered by the problems, both of society and in my family.  I’m aware of these problems when I’m on my bike, when the gentle sun’s rays stream down, when I’m caressed by warm, gentle breezes, but they seem far away, as though I’m in another universe.

Bittersweet Trip

The tennis lady and I returned from a long trip yesterday.  We had flown to the Providence, RI, airport, where one of our daughters had met us and driven us to her home in a western suburb of Boston.  Our daughter, her husband, and our three grandchildren all live near Boston.  It was wonderful to see our daughter, her husband, and our 2 granddaughters, but that isn’t why we flew from Phoenix to Providence.  We had vacationed with our daughter and our granddaughters, Becca and Nadia, in July.  We had seen our daughter, her husband, Becca, and Nadia at another granddaughter’s wedding in August, but we hadn’t visited with David for over a year.  David is Becca’s twin brother and is severely autistic, at the low end of the developmental scale.  David hasn’t spoken a word since he was almost 2 years old and he is now 14.  He communicates his desires for food or specific activities through the use of picture exchange.  David is the reason that our daughter and her family live in the Boston area - they used to live in Scottsdale, a 10 minute drive fr4om our house.  Ten years ago they moved to the Boston area because there so many more facilities there for autistic children then there were (and there still are) in Arizona.  David has lived in a residential facility run by the New England Center for Children in Framingham, MA, and he attends their school in Framingham.  The school is designed for autistic children and for higher functioning, non-residential students, the curriculum is much like a public school.  For children at David’s level, the concentration is at a more basic level.  David has learned how to dress himself, how to take care of his hygiene, how to tie his shoelaces, and a number of things that may be basic developments for other children, but are great achievements for David.

David seemed to be developing normally until just before his second birthday.  He walked early, had a small vocabulary, seemed to relate to his parents and twin sister, and then he regressed.  His vocabulary disappeared and he seemed to retreat into a world of his own, a world that he was trapped in and no one else could enter.  The change came shortly after David (and Becca) had their MMT vaccination.  But, it wasn’t caused by the vaccination.  After David was diagnosed with autism, his parents reviewed his first year, using both their memories and videotapes they had taken.  They found that David had shown signs of autism before his first birthday.  They had Becca’s development to compare to David’s development  and there was no question: David had shown definite signs of autism before his first birthday.  That was over 10 years ago.  Epidemiologic studies have proved, conclusively, that there is no link between vaccines and autism.  Yet, a large number of parents of autistic children continue to blame the MMT vaccine and maintain that those scientists who have done the many epidemiologic studies are in the pay of the companies who produce the vaccine.  When one looks at David over the past 14 years, when one feels the frustration of not being able to communicate with a child one loves, the reason becomes obvious: the situation can’t have just developed randomly, it must have been caused.  From this understanding all of the current political conspiritorialism can be understood: the events we find distasteful can’t just have happened, they must have been caused and someone is causing them.

I’m happy to be able to report that the tennis lady and I enjoyed visiting with David.  He even recognizes us.  No, I doubt that he recognizes us as grandparents – I doubt if he would even know what that means – but he did seem happy to see us.  He manages to show his affection to us and he seems to accept that we are part of his world, whatever that is.

His twin sister, Becca, is very emotionally attached to David. She has devoted a tremendous amount of her energy to fund raising for research by the organization Autism Speaks.  She has organized a team for the Greater Boston Autism Walk, she spends a great deal of time doing bake sales, organizing car washes, running yard sales, and other activities.  Last year, at age 13, she raised over $15,000 for Autism Speaks.  This year, she was asked to speak at the kick-off meeting for the walk.  She knows that all of the research is too late to help David, but she said to me that “in the future, no twin will be unable to share life with her brother.”  

Nothing New Under the Sun

A couple thousand years ago, a teacher wrote “Ayn chadash tachat ha-shemesh,” which means “There is nothing new under the sun.”  I know how he must have felt to have lived long enough to hear the same arguments and discussions repeated endlessly with the same results – usually nothing.  Yes, there are new discoveries in science, but the people as a whole remain the same as if the discoveries had never been made.  I’m over 80 years old and, it seems to me, that I’ve heard the same discussions about healthcare repeated every 10 years or so.

Harry Truman spoke about the need for universal healthcare and there were a myriad reasons against it.

Lyndon Johnson spoke about the need for universal  healthcare and there were the same arguments against it.  Johnson did get universal healthcare for retirees (it’s called Medicare and is a single-payer system), but opponents swore it would destroy America.  There are still plenty of opponents, but they won’t dare say so.

Jimmy Carter spoke about the need for healthcare, but he didn’t do much about it.

Bill Clinton tried to pass universal healthcare, but they say that he tried to present congress with a specific bill and it was defeated.  His proposal aroused a storm of opposition.

Now, Obama is trying to pass a bill for universal health care, but they say that he didn’t present a specific bill.   It really doesn’t matter how he did it – the arguments against it are eerily similar to the ones I heard in the 1990s.

Oh, yes, to be fair there was one Republican president who tried for universal health care – Richard Nixon.

The arguments I hear about many things are the same arguments I heard when I was going to college back in the late 1940s.  It isn’t just about healthcare, it seems to be about everything.  I hear people talking about  Socialism, Nazism, Fascism, and they seem to have no idea of what these terms mean beyond that they mean something bad.  I guess by that definition, the Army is Socialist.  We certainly are trying to do something about that – there are more private “contractors” (mercenaries?) than there are government troops.

I’ve tried to write a post a number of times in the past few weeks but, each time, I’ve been overwhelmed by a feeling of déjà vu, a feeling that I’m repeating myself.  I’m not withdrawing from Xanga, but I won’t post until I feel that I have something new to say, or at least that I have a different way to say it.  There are many jokes about how to tell when you are old, but I guess a sure sign is when you are more likely to quote “Ecclesiastes” rather than “Song of Songs.”  

A Wedding in Milwaukee

I haven't posted much lately because I haven't had much to say.  That seems strange - after all, after 81 years, one would think that I had a lot to say.  It doesn't work that way - I think that I've said it all and then I keep repeating myself.  As Kohelet said "There is nothing new under the sun." and I usually agree with him.  (My guerss is that he was pretty old when he said it.)  Well, last Sunday, there was something new under the sun.  The clouds parted in Milwaukee and my oldest granddaughter was married.  Actually, she was married in a Reform Temple, not directly under the sun, but the Temple was under the sun.  I guess I'm privileged to have lived long enough to see a grandchild get married and it was a wonderful feeling to watch the ceremony.  It was beautiful, but not overly serious.  Both the bride and groom laughed and smiled during the ceremony and the bride laughed out loud when, during the ceremony, the rabbi referred referred to the groom as "humble."  At first, my thought was that my granddaughter was too young to be married, but then I realized that she was six months older than the "tennis lady" was when I married her.  That marriage has last only 55 years, so far.  It was a wonderful time in Milwaukee.  Below is a picture of the bride and groom under the wedding canopy - see, there is something new under the sun: I've never posted a picture before!  By the way, the bride's mother (my daughter) made the wedding dress.  Not bad sewing for a lawyer.  The picture below is the bride with her parents.  (her mother made her own dress, too.)  The boquet was the one my daughter used when she was married 25 years ago.

Empathy

The Republicans seem bothered that Obama believes that a Supreme Court Judge should have the quality of empathy.  They seem to believe that a judge should only be worried about The Law and not worry about fairness or true justice.  Perhaps their model of what a judge should be is Chief Justice John Roberts.  According to an article in The Wall Street Journal (June 19, page A3),  The Supreme Court voted, by a margin of 5-4, that the use of DNA evidence, in the case of incarcerated prisoners, be left to the states.  Justice Roberts wrote the opinion that acknowledged “modern DNA testing can provide powerful new evidence unlike anything known before,’ but Justice Roberts went on to write “a criminal defendant proved guilty after a fair trial does not have the same liberty interests as a free man.”  He went on to say that it remains an “open question” whether “proof of actual innocence” is enough to overturn a conviction after a fair trial.

In other words, Justice Roberts doesn’t seem to think that whether a person is actually guilty or innocent has any importance, as long as all of the formalism of a “fair” trial is in place.  If an indigent defendant doesn’t have a lawyer smart enough to ask for any DNA evidence (if available), that’s the defendant’s problem if he/she is found guilty.

Perhaps someone who has the quality of empathy will think that actual guilt or innocence is important, that someone who is innocent of a crime should not be in jail, even if that person had a “fair trial.”  This might be one of those cases where a “wise Latina” would come to a better conclusion than a privileged white male.