An Introduction and a Short Essay

"What the hell is this?", you might ask. Fair enough...

I am interested in all kinds of things as the title of this blog suggests, and I intend to write about them.

It may prove to be the case that I have nothing of any great import to contribute to the ether, in which case this is simply another dose of electronic narcissism. The web is full of such stuff.

Or this may pass as entertainment,grist for various mills, education, advocacy, and other high and low minded doings.

I'll try to post here weekly and I guess we'll see what it is.

DBear

La Pietá

I saw her on my way out of the building after work; a prim and pretty young woman in a sweater and a modest skirt. She sat on a concrete bench out by the sidewalk and next to her was a potted plant and a stack of boxes, the measure of a career begun and cut short by the wave of Government layoffs here in Pennsylvania. She held a cell phone to her ear and was silent as I walked past. There was a blue well of sorrow in her eyes, but no tears. She sat upright, calm and composed, dignified.

Twain said “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not the absence of fear.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about this young woman as I drove home. It is a month before Christmas. I imagine there may be a mortgage, no health insurance, a car payment, kids, and a spouse whose own job security is threadbare. These are circumstances that can leave families on the street, even in the richest country on earth. Her calm and her strength and her sorrow seemed bigger than the whole world. They contrasted mightily with those who put her on that bench.

It is not necessarily the fault of political and agency leadership that the economy took a tumble or that layoffs occurred. The same thing has happened in the private sector. There are other things, things more egregious, which can be laid at their feet. There is the spinelessness that keeps legislators and executives from telling the voters that you get what you pay for. There is the cynicism that allows them to blame the world’s troubles on “big government” or “faceless bureaucrats” as a smokescreen for ruining some people and rewarding their friends. There is the cold calculation that causes them to heap the worst of the cutbacks on environmental, community planning and cultural programs, and other program areas with small voting constituencies and limited capacities for political contributions. There is the ruthlessness that allows them to withhold the likely effects of the cutbacks from the affected employees until a day or two before they are sitting on a concrete bench next to a potted plant and a stack of boxes. There is the hubris that allows them to bicker their way through legally mandated deadlines and play chicken with other people’s futures.

When our legislative and executive leadership is held up to the light of that young woman’s courage, they all wither into small and pathetic things. While they all pull down substantial salaries and are all immune to the reign of terror they have unleashed, they will leave this world like the rest of us will. When that last moment comes their status and money and power won’t matter. What will matter is strength, integrity and dignity. They will come up short.

I will likely never see that young woman again, but I hope she is OK. If she really does have children, I hope her kids inherit her composure and bravery. I hope they grow into the kinds of people who make a better world with better leaders. I think their mother deserves no less.