So long, and thanks for all the fish!

So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear!

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that
grow around you

So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish

The world's about to be destroyed
There's no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the planet dissolve around you

Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought that most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your
pregnant women

So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish

If I had just one last wish
I would like a tasty fish
If we could just change one thing
We would all have learned to sing

Come one and all
Man and mammal
side by side, in life's great gene pool.

So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish!

And this is all we know for sure

I can only assume this is true because the past was and the present is. Why not the future?

because

Nous sommes tous.

Not true

Despite rumors, there is no evidence that Donal Trump actually told Ben Carson that he is a doody head and that Carson said, "I know you are, but what am I?"

It is, however, the level of political discussion we are being forced to listen to from Republican contenders these days.

Bread and circuses

With all due respect, "occupied with fantasy football, red paper cups, religion and phony political debates."

Problems in Spiritual Discernment 101

Actually I sometimes wonder about some of the prophets in the Nevi'im ...

What boggles the mind is ...

he still thinks that's what they are.

Would you want this man messing around in your brain?

Funny, huh?

Missing the point at full volume

US Rep. Kevin McCarthy's situation

Hasten the day

And now for a happier moment ...

Indeed!

Sadly

Click on image to enlarge for easier reading.

Okay, the poster is brutal in one way, but it makes a point. 

We have an acquaintance who routinely gambles away his savings. I don't mean part of his savings. I mean his entire savings, which never amounts to much because ... well, gambling. He is divorced and shares custody of three children, one already in high school. He has a part time job that pays a little above minimum wage. In addition he gets a small monthly sum for an emotional disability that prevents him from getting a better job, although he once was manager of a restaurant. He has other addictive issues, but he thinks he deserves to have fun at the casino because, well, fun. 

He relies on another friend of ours for advice, but he seldom follows it. When it comes to the gambling, he never follows it effectively. Recently he called the friend to report that he was at a casino and was up two hundred dollars. (The week before he had blown several hundred dollars and the friend had told him not to go back there.) He couldn't figure out what to do. The friend talked him into leaving the casino, getting into his car and kept him talking on the phone until he arrived home.

Two days later he went back to the casino and lost the two hundred dollars and the little bit of savings he had left.

Does he have the power to stop? I want to believe he does.

And I am so glad I am not the friend who gets those phone calls in the middle of the night. I would not be good at handling it.

Just a reminder

I wonder?

Look for the anti-union label!

A lawyer friend in another state recently had a couple of revealing conversations with his neighbor. The neighbor has his own contracting and remodeling business, which muddles along in the best of times. His wife has encouraged him to get a job with the local power company where some of their friends work, where he would make much more per hour, work full time and have good benefits. 

He refuses because, "That's a union job!" 

Unions, in his conservative fundamentalist mind, are equivalent to the devil's minions. I note that his wife, equally conservative and fundamentalist, does not see the problem. What she does see is the low income he produces which barely sustains them and their four children -- whom she home schools -- and the fifth one on the way. But in her religion, the husband makes the decisions.

Anyway, my friend was recently helping the neighbor with a project and the neighbor began to complain that carpenters don't get paid enough where he lives and works.

"Now in [insert name of large city in neighboring Midwestern state], they make two or three times as much! Why can't I get paid that rate?"

My friend calmly remarked, "Well, those are union carpenters, aren't they?"

The neighbor didn't respond, just hammered harder.

So many people who hate unions fail to see that their own difficulties might be alleviated were they able to have the support of organized labor. But they demean unions and vote for politicians who avow to destroy them, often under the guise of protecting the worker.

From the newsdesk

Political candidates continue to pander and cast blame! 

Homophobes continue to claim God as their sole possession!

Religious leaders remain silent!

Calls for establishment of restrictive Christian law as only protection against foreign and evil Sharia law!

Xenophobes continue to demand walls along every border!

Sun continues to rise and set!

Updates as events warrant! 

Back to you, Dave and Eileen.

Do your job or resign

In 2002, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explained that if he were to conclude that the death penalty is fundamentally immoral, he should no longer serve on the bench:

[I]n my view the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply the laws and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course if he feels strongly enough he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty” and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do.

Although Justice Scalia was not addressing the Kim Davis case in these remarks, it is noteworthy that -- to the best of my knowledge -- he did not dissent from the court's refusal to grant her recent request that the court issue an emergency stay in her case, despite his record as a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage.

Here's hoping ...

I hope you have lots of these today!

Feel free to tell me about them if you want. I promise lawyer-client confidentiality.

The problem

It bothers me that this even needs to be said, but every day brings more tragedies like that in Virginia. Until we learn to glorify peaceful solutions, instead of cheering loudly when someone in a movie beats up the person perceived as the bad guy, the world will never change. 

Hatred, the Buddha told us, is never ended by hatred but by love. Jesus said similar things, like turning the other cheek. 

No one listens.

(Background music: Theme from Jaws)

Life lessons

I have decided that I may do better to look at the political process in this country as a source of many lessons that I need to learn.

For example, Donal Trump has already taught me the value of keeping my mouth shut about things concerning which I know little but still have an opinion.

Yes, I am retired and so you may wonder that I need a vacation. But Damien is still working, after his fashion, and we are taking a few days away to visit friends in the country.

Sound familiar?

Political Discourse Today

What we are

As we move further along in the presidential nomination process, I ponder what it means that as a people, we -- or at least a significant and vocal number of us -- seem to love being entertained by bullies who shout insults, tell blatant lies and so on. We seem to have mistaken the faux reality of (un)reality television for the real thing, to have succumbed to the temptation to think the political process is a matter of voting someone off the island for no reason other than the joy of forming alliances with people we don't trust. 

The most disturbing news story I saw this morning about last night's mis-named debate was that it broke ratings records.

Because that is what matters. We have arrived at the status of the Roman empire -- bread and circuses. Worse, all we are getting is the circus.

Is it time to re-think this?

Amusing as this assertion is, things are not as simple as that makes it sound. The TSA has in fact found people carrying weapons and explosives. Whether they intended them for terrorist acts is a matter for discussion. They catch a number of other criminals, such as people carrying illegal drugs.

It is true, however, that after the Department of Homeland Security spent over nine hundred million dollars between 2007 and 2013 on the TSA program, the GAO released a study indicating that there was no evidence that the program had had any impact whatsoever on uncovering or detaining terrorists.

This, however, leads to an interesting problem of interpretation. You know the joke about the guy who went outside and screamed every morning to scare away tigers? His neighbor, irritated by the noise, pointed out that there were no tigers in the area. The man smiled and said, "It's working very well, isn't it?"

So there are those who will say the TSA scares terrorists away, and the proof is that we don't find terrorists boarding airplanes.

This leaves unresolved questions about whether TSA procedures are a form of low-level terrorism on their own.

Old friends

For International Friendship Day, I thought I would share this Simon and Garfunkel memory from the days when I could never imagine being seventy, which is now not all that far away.

Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends.
A newspaper blowin' through the grass
Falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends.
Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun.
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends.
Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy.
Old friends, memory brushes the same years, silently sharing the same fears...

Old friends ...

Paul Simon

1968

Ignorance

As the political campaign stumbles along, I cannot be more dismayed by the outright absurdities mouthed by some people running for the highest office in the land. Yet equally dismaying is the willingness of large numbers of the voting public to accept whatever is said often enough and loudly enough. The failure of the media to challenge many of these things renders what was once a safeguard virtually useless. Worse, the media itself colludes actively with some candidates, amplifying the problem.

We may be sincere but that does not make us right. We may be conscientious but that does not make us smart. We may even think we are informed, but if the sources of our information are distorted, we are no better off.

So now you know

Click on image to enlarge for easier reading.

True, dat! But no hate!

Hate

Recently I have been reading more widely in Buddhist literature at the recommendation of several friends who know that, while interested in topics of spirituality in general, I am not a religious man. I believe in the value of many of the spiritual traditions, but I have no desire to join any organized religion or religious movement. This is not because, like Groucho Marx, I would not want to belong to any group that would accept me. Rather it is because I have yet to find such a group that does not claim to have access to the whole and complete truth while at the same time preaching at least some things that are patently untrue. Sorry if that offends you. Perhaps I should say, at least some things that appear to me, under my most careful scrutiny, to fail the evidential demands of the case. Maybe it is that undergraduate training in philosophy and that graduate training in law. Whatever.

One thing I like about the Buddhist literature I am reading is that it is much like what Jews and Christians call the wisdom literature. It tends to the practical and realistic rather than the theoretical and speculative. I find that, as with the wisdom literature of the Kethuvim, parts of what Christians call amusingly the Old Testament, the life lessons are often helpful even when the theological and cosmological background is not.

At the moment, I am reading the Dhammapada, a collection of sayings attributed to the Buddha. There I encountered this valuable note: 

Let us live happily then, not hating those who hate us! 
Among men who hate us, let us dwell free from hatred! 
~ Dhammapada 197

As a gay man in America, as a progressive man in America, as a man from a Jewish background in America, I need to ponder this advice. To live happily. To not hate those who hate me. To live free from the hatred of others and free from my own inclinations to hate.

This is a life task in itself.

Listen before speaking

Recently a comment I posted on another blog caused the author of the blog some unhappiness. It was not my intention, but the fact is I spoke before I knew all the facts. This always gets me in trouble and despite my professional training, I slip up in ordinary interactions with people.

I will try to do better.

Churches and gay marriage

The Episcopal Church on Tuesday voted to allow religious weddings for gay couples, joining the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ in allowing same-sex marriages in all their congregations.

The decision by the House of Deputies – which includes lay people and clergy – came at the Episcopalian General Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, when delegates voted overwhelmingly in favor of amending canon law so that instead of marriage being defined as between "a man and a woman" or "husband and wife", it is now gender-neutral and between “these persons” or “the couple”.

The resolutions, which will take effect after November 1, follow last Friday’s US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling to legalize same-sex marriages across the country.

NB: The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) and the United Church of Christ already allow same-sex marriages in all their congregations. This means that they not only recognize civil marriage for same-sex couples but that they hold that those marriages can have religious sanction for those who desire it.

Don't hold your breath for all the ecclesiastical dominoes to start tumbling, but I imagine this is a sign of the future, one that will eventually render the religious exemption movement useless except in the usual pockets of resistance in the Deep South and such places.

To Texas

If I may quote U.S. Representative Brian Sims who said this about publicly sworn officials: 

"Each of us put our hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution., We did not place our hands on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

Stop playing hypocritical games with the people of Texas, all of whom have the same rights under the Contitution that you allegedly swore to uphold.


And quit wasting their tax money with what are bound to be ridiculous, frivolous and doomed lawsuits. For which they will wind up having to pay not only state costs, but the costs of those forced to bring the suit.

Oh, and that Bible: You might want to read what it says sometime. I suggest something from your Christian New Testament, King James Version:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Paul's Letter to the Galatians 3:28

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

The Supreme Court has upheld the Obamacare subsidies for more than 6 million Americans with a 6-3 vote in the King v. Burwell decision, handed down moments ago.

This means that individuals who get their health insurance through an exchange established by the federal government will be eligible for tax subsidies.

Six voting for the Affordable Care Act are Chief Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

This is, of course, great news for those people who can now feel secure about Affordable Health Care and their own health needs. It is great news for the Obama administration and oddly enough, for Republicans, who can continue to moan and groan about it to their radical base without having to watch millions of people suddenly lose health care while the Grand Old Party stands by cheering without having any plan to put in its place.

Realty reality

 

Click on the image above to enlarge image

The National Low Income Housing Coalition has calculated the hourly wage a resident would need to earn to afford a moderate, two-bedroom apartment in each state. They found that the average hourly wage needed to rent a $1,006 two-bedroom unit in the United States is $19.35  -- $40,240 per year.

And yet there are those among us who believe that a single mother with two children should be happy to get by with the minimum wage of  $7.25. Even someone earning $19.35 a hour would have to work forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks of the year to earn the $40,240 needed. And people working for minimum wage are usually not working full-time all year long.

Labor

No small part of this situation is the deliberate destruction of labor unions and other efforts to organize workers. That the so-called religious leaders of this country have not only stood by but actively colluded in this process is one of the scandals of our times.

Sinister

Sinister: adjective

1. threatening or portending evil, harm, or trouble; ominous:

a sinister remark.

2. bad, evil, base, or wicked; fell:

his sinister purposes.

3. unfortunate; disastrous; unfavorable:

a sinister accident.

4. of or on the left side; left.

From the Latin sinistra: on the left hand or side, hence unfavorable, injurious   

Hence? 

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

Well, I made it home Sunday night after a dreadful flight and all sorts of hassles at customs and missing my connecting flight to O'Hare and ... well, I made it home exhausted.  I am getting too old for this. There was a time when ... Never mind.

I took a limo from O'Hare down to Barona. Damien welcomed me with open arms and heart, but immediately shushed me because we had a house guest. The plaguey Hank Pharr was still here. Fortunately I was too wiped out to care about anything but taking some aspirin and going to bed. Damien assured me that the Pharr thing would be gone by the time I awoke.

Which, I am happy to say, was true. I slept until nearly noon and woke to the nuzzle of two cats and the sound of Damien moving about in the kitchen.

It is good to be home.

Homeward bound!

Well, almost. By week's end, I should have finished marking papers, submitted grades, packed the bags and started for Illinois. It's been an interesting experience and I am grateful that I had the opportunity. I am happy to announce that Edeline, the woman whose course I came here to oversee during her absence due to pregnancy complications, was safely delivered of a healthy boy. Charles William Trenton Sleigh arrived on May 19, weighing in at a hefty nine pounds, seven ounces. Baby and parents are doing fine. 

There are some things I will miss. I think I have adjusted well to pub grub and the environs. I got the hang, more or less, of the richly varied accents of the students, staff and townsfolk. Still, I am ready to return to the homeland. By plane, of course, not by ship.

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said ..."

A few lines later the poet speaks of "whose heart hath ne'er within him burned." That may just be a lasting reminder of some of the pub grub.

Pondering implications of an American dilemma from across the waves ...

Yoicks!

Okay, that is an expression used by fox hunters to urge on the hounds. I am learning lots of totally useless bits of information during my Durham sojourn.

I haven't put anything up here because, well to be frank, nothing much has been happening worth reporting. 

 If Damien were here, though, he would probably want to attend a lecture this evening: "The coherence of being a Catholic-Buddhist? The question of dual-belonging theologically analysed" by someone from the University of Bristol. The topic interests me somewhat, but I don't know if I will attend. The main attraction, besides the fact that it is held at the Dun Cow Cottage in Dun Cow Lane (pictured), is that there are pre-seminar drinks. I don't imbibe, but it might be a chance to chat a bit with interesting folks. And there is certainly nothing on the telly. Not even a penguin, to reference Monty Python.

The class I am teaching -- or rather, that I am substitute teaching -- falls in the Easter term according to a usage traditional to the law courts and students which will finish up at the end of May. This is what we in the States might consider a sort of midterm in the actual academic schedule. We are in what they call the summer term, which runs from Easter until July. Fortunately my work will be done sooner, being something they call a module. I have enjoyed my time here, but I am looking forward to getting back to Damien, the cats and Barona. It will be pleasant to be able to make myself understood in English again.

Πάντα ῥεῖ

Don Shula was a professional football player and coach, not a lawyer. This quote, however, applies in many ways to legal history as I pointed out to my students. There is cause here both for rejoicing and concern.

Πάντα ῥεῖ means "everything flows" and is associated with the philosopher Heraclitus, he of the "Never step in the same river twice" school of thought. 

Perhaps I have a solution

As I watch the ridiculous "religious liberty" laws being put forward in the Land of the Free to preserve poor persecuted Christians from having to participate in a same-sex wedding by baking a cake, I have a simple suggestion to offer from the perspective of someone who is teaching a legal history course.

When same-sex couples approach any business to request that the business perform the service it advertises, the couple should make clear right up front that the business, the owners, the staff and anyone associated with it is NOT INVITED to the wedding. That way there should be no confusion about what is being asked: that you bake a cake, not that you show up and eat it.

That should solve any scruples. You are absolutely NOT being asked to attend or approve or give a gift. You are only being asked to bake the stupid cake for which you will be paid your usual outrageous fee.

Thank you.

Bank holiday

A bank holiday is a public holiday in the United Kingdom, some Commonwealth countries, other European countries such as Switzerland, and a colloquialism for a public holiday in Ireland. There is no automatic right to time off on these days, although banks close and the majority of the working population is granted time off work or extra pay for working on these days, depending on their contract. The first official bank holidays were the four days named in the Bank Holidays Act 1871*, but today the term is colloquially used (albeit incorrectly) for the two public holidays which are not official bank holidays in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, namely Good Friday and Christmas Day. These last two days were considered such traditional days of rest in those places that it was deemed unnecessary to mention them in the law.

All of that means that today, Easter Monday, was a holiday here in Durham. Since the class I teach doesn't meet again until Wednesday, I am in the middle of a five-day break ... with no where to go!

Perhaps I will wander into the fields looking for lost synagogues or something. If only I had a basket of plover's eggs, some champagne and a Teddy Bear ...

*[And here is where you know you are dealing with someone teaching a History of Law course] The Act designated four bank holidays in England, Wales and Ireland (Easter Monday; Whit Monday [Monday following Pentecost]; First Monday in August; Boxing Day in England and Wales and St Stephen's Day in Ireland), and five in Scotland (New Year's Day; Good Friday; First Monday in May; First Monday in August; Christmas Day).

A Jew in Durham

Although brought up in a somewhat relaxed Orthodox Jewish home, I no longer follow most of the traditions of my ancestors. Nonetheless, I am a Jew, born of a Jewish mother and a Son of the Covenant. And grimly, I have distant relatives who died in the Holocaust.

This being the season of Passover, I thought I would check out what's happening among the Jews in Durham.

Not so much. The Jews, as you no doubt recall, were expelled from England by King Edward I in 1290. Although individuals may have been around, there was no communal presence until the 1650s and their presence was only fully legalized in the nineteenth century.

As for Durham, from what I have been able to glean, the first settlement was in 1888. There was a small synagogue for the first part of the twentieth century, but it folded in the 1950s and is today a Presbyterian chapel. Kind of says it all. It looks lovely with all the ivy, but they were not hosting any seder.

The front bit, though, with the ivy on the poles does look a bit like a sukkah.

Callum?

Damien asked about my friend Callum, the one who explained about the governmental advocacy of the ploughman's lunch in order to increase consumption of cheese.

Here he is:

April fool!

The real Callum: Sir Callum Mitchum, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, St. Acca College, Durham University: