Being the nudge . . .

Last May, NPR declared a winner in round #4 of its Three-Minute Fiction contest. Novelist Ann Patchett sat in final judgment of the thousands of entries, and she selected Ben Yoseph's story, "Not Calling Attention to Ourselves."

"As always," it says at NPR.org, "the stories had to be 600 words or fewer — fiction that can be read in roughly three minutes. This round, however, the stories had to include four words: 'plant,' 'button,' 'trick' and 'fly.' "

Hmmmm. . . (Which I do recognize is getting to be one of my favorite blog expressions. But I've decided that when one produces a daily blog, one is allowed some of those.)

I consider short fiction to be one of life's greatest creative challenges. You have to create a world and move characters around in it, while simultaneously telling a story that carries a larger meaning. Writers try to write short fiction all the time. Few writers do it well.

When you think about it short, short fiction just might be the  fiction writer's ultimate thrown gauntlet.  You have to create that world and move those characters around in it, while simultaneously telling a story that carries a larger meaning -- all in 600 words. What a fun and festive challenge!

My take on the WMRA Community is that we're a hotbed of writers and wanna-be writers -- and by wanna-be writers, I mean those of you who are just waiting for the right nudge to start putting all those stories in your head down on the page.So, we at WMRA have decided to Be the Nudge.

This is the official call for short, short stories. Selected winners will be published on this blog and if, in the opinion of our judges (myself and others yet to be named) it is deemed workable, on the air. And I will take the big winner out to lunch at the restaurant of her/his choice (unless, of course, you'd rather not). There is no final deadline for submissions as of yet, just a plea to submit with all deliberate speed. 

Here are the rules:

1. 600 words or less
2. entirely original work by the author/submittor
3. there are no other rules. We're not shameless copiers of NPR, after all. . .

Feel free to e-mail me or call  800-677-9672 and ask for me if you need encouragement or have questions. And please e-mail your submission, as well.

The photographs of writers are meant to inspire you. After all, two of them live in the WMRA listening area. . .

No news today, just some Monday morning musings on the difference between patience and tolerance . . .

This is a post about a mysterious absence of impatience. Which is a condition I am often mildly (mostly mildly) afflicted with. Stick me behind a car or a minivan driving 38 miles-an-hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone when I am trying to get to work on a weekday morning, and I have to Work Hard at Being Patient. And, in truth, I don't always succeed.

I'm writing this on Monday morning. The weekend was lovely, slow-moving, restful, just sociable enough. Plus, it included a road trip to West Virginia, which is always something I look forward to and enjoy.

around home/Charles Woodroof

We left around nine yesterday morning. To get where we were going, we had to drive through Dayton, which meant we had to drive through Old Order Mennonite country. Where, on any given Sunday morning, you are likely to get stuck behind a gaggle of buggies, clip-clopping along at about 18 mph downhill and maybe 3 mph uphill. And this, on curvy, hilly roads where it is often difficult to pass.

Wikipedia image

Yesterday, we indeed fetched up behind a half-dozen or so buggies heading to church, nicely spaced out in recognition that motorists want to pass them; and that, if motorists pass buggies one at a time, it is safer for all concerned.

I queued with the rest of the trapped cars, but instead of chafing at the slowness, I simply looked out the window and enjoyed the view. I did not feel the first whisper of impatience.

Now this is not just because it was the weekend. Put me behind a pack of recreational bicyclists riding four abreast on a Sunday morning so that I have to trundle along behind them, and I am blowing steam out my ears. Which, I know, is heresy to many, but this is confession time and I feel what I feel. Why cannot those bicyclists ride single file so I can get around them?!!!!!!  Is this what "share the road" means?!!!!!!! AAARGH!

Whatever the reason is for my tolerance of the speed of Mennonite buggies, what I would really like to remember is how peaceful tolerance feels. This morning as I write, I remain acutely mindful of that experience yesterday; of how good it felt not simply being patient with those who were slowing me down, but not having it occur to me to be otherwise. I am going to try to hang on to this awareness when I head into work and get stuck behind a mini-van going 38-miles-an-hour for all those no-pass miles.

I think it's a matter of being patient vs. feeling tolerant. The first takes an act of will; the second feels like a gift. And boy-howdy am I open to receiving it. Life is too short to waste chunks of it feeling annoyed at things that just are the way they are.

buggies parked outside Sunday church/http://billhooker.blogspot.com/

Two Gun Terry, talking . . .

Note: I’m Martha Woodroof, editor of WMRA’s "Civic Soapbox". And since it’s both summertime and very hot, I decided to let someone who’s simply fun to hear talk hop up on the Civic Soapbox and hold forth for our listening pleasure. 

Incidentally, legendary Shenandoah string player, Wilbur Terry, says the name most of us know him by know him comes from the funny papers and was given to him by colleagues years ago. The following is transcript of part of conversation we had one hot, summer afternoon, out in his music shop. 

Even better than reading  this, is listening to Two Gun say it . . .

They call me Two-gun Terry . And I am 68 years old. It comes natural for me since I was 8-9 years old.

I grew up a mile west of Lacey Spring. We had a farm there. Sixty acres. I grew up on farms, you see. We always had guitar and banjo and other instruments around the house when I grew up. Had a lot of people on my Dad’s side of the family who played music. Got a fiddle for Christmas one year when I was about 9 years old. It come natural to me ’cause I had an ability for it. A natural ability for it.

I’ve talked a whole lot about this over the years. Basically right here in the Shenandoah Valley, it was Bluegrass. Now we got what we call Bluegrass and Old-Time music, which is a lot of the same material presented in different ways.

Old-Time music goes back to old-timey playing styles. It’s always has been here. It’s just kind of a closet thing or in somebody’s kitchen. It’s a thing musicians like to do. It’s a sociable kind of thing. Musicians love to sit down and play because they play together. Bluegrass musicians they don’t they got their band and they don’t want to play with anybody else. They just want to do their thing. That’s difference between lot of blue grass bands and old time bands. Old-Time bands, the more the merrier.

I played tuba when I was in high school, also, because we didn’t have strings. So I was educated in tuba a little bit. But I studied 2 years of violin when I was like 30-years old. Over the years you acquire stacks of books, and if you can’t read music there no good to you. So I learned to read music so I could learn what I want to learn. Everything from fiddle tunes to light classical.

I think I read fifty-two books last year. Psychology. Religion. Jewish history, Egyptian history, Greek history, Greek philosophers. All kind of stuff. I think people who don’t read are not very smart. Well, I don’t care to be stupid. There’s plenty of those people walking around. Dead people. The walking dead. The sad thing about it is they don’t know anything and don’t really care that they don’t know anything. Don’t want to know anything and don’t care.

Happy all my life? Well, mostly. Although I grumble a lot about things. . .

Give you advice. How old are you? Sixty-three! Well you shouldn’t need any advice if you’re that old.

Peddling cheap and thrilling fear . . .

If you go to the website of the Cordoba Initiative (founded in 2003) you find this mission statement:

Cordoba Initiative (CI) aims to achieve a tipping point in Muslim-West relations within the next decade, steering the world back to the course of mutual recognition and respect and away from heightened tensions.

The CI's proposed center, until recently known as Cordoba House and now known as Park51, has generated enormous controversy, first and foremost for its Ground Zero proximity. (Location circled in red above.) It may or may not be appropriate to locate it where it is to be located, and that is a subject for legitimate debate.

As for the stated purpose of Park51 (again according to the CI website):

This proposed project is about promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture.  Cordoba House will provide a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a center of learning, art and culture; and most importantly, a center guided by Islamic values in their truest form - compassion, generosity, and respect for all. 

 I lifted this description of Park51's physical plant from the ever-convenient Wikipedia:

While the media widely described the center as a mosque, the Initiative's official blog portrayed it as a community center with prayer space, making comparisons to the YMCA or Jewish Community Center.^[54] The plan is for it to have a Muslim prayer room, 500-seat auditorium, theater, performing arts center, fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, childcare services, art exhibitions, bookstore, a culinary school, and a food court serving halal dishes.

This certainly makes it sound like a welcome addition to any city, yet Cordoba's director, Imam Faisel Abdul Rauf, has yet to disclose how Park51 is being funded. And this has caused understandable concern. Peter King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said, "It's a house of worship, but we are at war with al-Qaida.  I think the 9/11 families have a right to know where the funding comes from; I think there are significant questions."

Independent (and erstwhile Democratic) Senator Joe Lieberman, said recently to Don Imus:

"I'd say I'm troubled by it [Park51], but I don't know enough to say that it ought to be prohibited. But frankly I've heard enough about it and read enough about it that I wish somebody in New York would just put the brakes on for a while and take a look at this. If the people building this large Islamic center are just looking to build a large facility — a house of worship and center — in New York, why so close to 9/11, with all the sensitivity associated with that?"

Honest questions about the project's funding sources and location are one thing; questionably vague and inflammatory allegations about Islam are another. Take Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey's suggestion that Islam might be a cult instead of a religion.

And New Gingrich's controversial and loosely sourced speech "No Mosque at Ground Zero" in which he denounced "creeping sharia" (Islamic law) in America, and closed  by saying:

Building this structure [Park51] on the edge of the battlefield created by radical Islamists is not a celebration of religious pluralism and mutual tolerance; it is a political statement of shocking arrogance and hypocrisy.

We need to have the moral courage to denounce it. It is simply grotesque to erect a mosque at the site of the most visible and powerful symbol of the horrible consequences of radical Islamist ideology. Well-meaning Muslims, with common human sensitivity to the victims’ families, realize they have plenty of other places to gather and worship. But for radical Islamists, the mosque would become an icon of triumph, encouraging them in their challenge to our civilization.

Apologists for radical Islamist hypocrisy are trying to argue that we have to allow the construction of this mosque in order to prove America’s commitment to religious liberty. They say this despite the fact that there are already over 100 mosques in New York City.

In fact, they’re partially correct—this is a test of our commitment to religious liberty. It is a test to see if we have the resolve to face down an ideology that aims to destroy religious liberty in America, and every other freedom we hold dear.

And it was Park51 that Sarah Palin, ever alert to the threat of Islam, famously called upon peace-loving Muslims to "refudiate."

It is undeniably true that the 9/11 terrorists were Muslims. It's also undeniably true that most Muslims are as peace loving as most Christians, most Americans.

Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon were American politicians who gained political power by fanning Americans' fear of the Red Menace. They built their arguments around a kernel of truth: Americans were dealing with a world power whose values and goals and intentions they didn't understand. The sad part was that a lot of us preferred fearing to understanding. Fear is much easier. Understanding takes work

It's seeming more and more like deja vu all over again. Only this time it is Islam about which we have vague fears and little understanding.

There are certainly questions about the funding of  Park 51, and about the suitability of its location. And Americans are certainly uneasy about the presence of terrorists in our sweet old world. But are we really ready to make the leap to the full throttle anti-Muslim cry that some of our politicians seem to be calling for?.

Supporting our troops?

Day before yesterday President Obama told a group of Disabled American Veterans that American's military involvement in Iraq will end, as scheduled, by the end of next year. Our involvement in Afghanistan, however, continues.

The veterans group's most vigorous applause sounded in response to President Obama's promise of the nation's continuing support of wounded soldiers; which, if done as promised, will be terribly expensive.

President Obama:

We’re directing unprecedented resources to treating the signature wounds of today’s wars -- traumatic brain injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  (Applause.)  And I recently signed into law the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act.  That’s a long name, but let me tell you what it does.  It not only improves treatment for traumatic brain injury and PTSD, it gives new support to many of the caregivers who put their own lives on hold to care for their loved one.  (Applause.)

And as so many of you know, PTSD is a pain like no other -- the nightmares that keep coming back, the rage that strikes suddenly, the hopelessness that’s led too many of our troops and veterans to take their own lives.  So today, I want to say in very personal terms to anyone who is struggling -- don’t suffer in silence.  It’s not a sign of weakness to reach out for support -- it’s a sign of strength.  Your country needs you.  We are here for you.  We are here to help you stand tall.  Don’t give up.  Reach out.  (Applause.)

We’re making major investments in awareness, outreach, and suicide prevention -- hiring more mental health professionals, improving care and treatment.  For those of you suffering from PTSD, we’re making it a whole lot easier to qualify for VA benefits.  From now on, if a VA doctor confirms a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, that is enough -- no matter what war you served in.  (Applause.)

Back in the late 60's and early 70's, I was a full-blown hippie peacenik. I was also a person of great passion and less sense, who identified the warrior firmly with the war and demonstrated against both. And who served in Vietnam, I'm sure, thought just as highly of my actions as I did of theirs. It was not until I stood in line at he Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall that I understood that Vietnam soldiers had done what they'd done either because they had no choice (there was a draft in those days) or because they loved their country, or both.

Vietnam Vets, as nearly as I can tell from those I've know well, came home with physical injuries, disease, PTSD, depression, drug addiction, sleep disorders, etc. They also came home to a mixed welcome; little help, less public support, and a strong message that they should just get over their war experiences and get on with ordinary life. Those of us on the home front either lacked the perceptiveness, the will, or the information to spot how many of them were in real trouble.

The experience was largely the same for Gulf War veterans.

U.S. Army soldiers from 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division are seen on board a C-17 aircraft at Baghdad International Airport as they begin their journey back to the United States, July 13, 2010. (AP)

The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are a complicated issue for Americans. A lot of us, including evidently some who are fighting over there, are not sure why we're there, and what we're supposed to accomplish. On Point yesterday had a stunning first hour discussing the war from the perspective of the American soldier -- all of whom did, after all, volunteer to serve. They joined up for a mix of reasons -- personal, financial, patriotic. But they went where our policy makers told them to go; did what our policy makers told them to do. And if they didn't get killed, they eventually came back home to the rest of us, deserving what from the rest of us?

Yesterday while listening to On Point, I finally got that anyone serving in Iraq or Afghanistan goes over there as one person and come back as a different one. Which means it is foolish of us to expect  returning soldiers  simply to pick up where they left off in their own lives. We can either abandon them or ante-up what it costs to give them the help that a lot of them need.

It is so easy to stick a "Support our Troops" sticker on one's car and feel a swell of patriotism. But how we feel does not help these returning soldiers. This is a democracy, after all; a majority of us elected the people who sent them to war. Does that or doesn't that make these men and women's iffy emotional and physical future our national responsibility?

The kind of help these soldiers need will span decades and cost billions. It seems to me that as a nation we have a somewhat spotty history of looking after our veterans. I would argue that anyone who supports the troops with a bumper sticker, but isn't willing to have our government ante-up financially to help those same troops after they stop fighting, should remove that bumper sticker.

George Clooney and the Bush tax cuts. . .

Last week, a package arrived from Picador publishing bringing me a book with George Clooney on the cover.  

The American is a reissue of Martin Booth's strange little moralistic thriller previously published as A Very Private Gentleman. George Clooney is on the book's cover because he made the book into a movie that is due for release on September 1.

Any thriller good enough for George Clooney to film (Charlie and I had just watched him in the truly impressive Up in the Air), is good enough for me to read. So I dove into The American and shortly (page 32) came upon this little gem:  

It is better to change the manner in which a man perceives the world than it is to change the world he perceives. Think upon this.

I did think upon it, which got me thinking about how this country's elected officials recently landed us in two seemingly un-winnable wars, as well as a deep economic recession. And yet now we appear to be somehow considering revising our opinion of these past policies into something we should consider giving another run around the track. Martin Booth's little gem of a two-sentence paragraph got me to wondering if we are revising our opinions of the policies themselves, or just having our perceptions revised by political speak.

Take the Bush Tax Cuts (or BTCs as I plan on referring to them from now on).

To extend or not extend, that is the question. The BTCs expire December 31st, which means Congress has a mere 5 months to decide -- not a lot of time in the slow-grinding wheels of American government.

President Bush signs his $1.35 trillion tax cut on June 7, 2001, at the White House.   SOURCE: AP/Ron Edwards

Every Sunday, for fun, The Washington Post offers us a different "Five Myths: A challenge to everything you think you know." Last Sunday,we got  Five Myths about the Bush Tax Cuts by economist William Gale, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Dr. Gale offers what seems to be a pretty balanced take on what the BTCs have done, and might do for the economy, if they are extended, by arguing that the following five assertions about them are bogus.  1) Extending the tax cuts would be a good way to stimulate the economy; 2) Allowing the high-income tax cuts to expire would hurt small businesses; 3) Making the tax cuts permanent will lead to long-term growth; 4) The Bush tax cuts are the main cause of the budget deficit; and 5) Continuing the tax cuts won't doom the long-term fiscal picture; entitlements are the real problem.  

Dr. Gale, of course, has no horse in the midterm election race. He has everything to gain by educating us about good economic policy (he is an economic scholar, after all) and nothing to gain (our votes, for example) by simply changing our perception of bad economic policy. And it does seem that when it comes to extending or not extending the BTCs, one has to be better for the economy than the other.

But our politicians inhabit a parallel universe where what is alleged to be true appears to depend upon what  they think their supporters want to hear. The Democrats pretty much (though not exclusively) want a big part of the BTC's axed (the part they term "tax cuts for the rich") in order to help shrink the deficit; while Republicans pretty much want the BTCs left intact (it's the economy, stupid); saying that we can afford these tax cuts, even though we can't afford to extend unemployment benefits. Why is this? According to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, "There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue."

Oh dear. Where's the beef? i.e.the truth?

Back to the movies. . . In Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) famously whispers to whomever Kevin Kostner plays: "If you build it, they will come."  Might our politicians be hearing a similar voice whispering, if you say it, it is true?

It is better to change the manner in which a man perceives the world than it is to change the world he perceives. Think upon this.

So, you got any thoughts?

Cuccinelli Cliff Notes. . .

There was a long and interesting profile of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in yesterday's Washington Post Magazine. It's called "The Rise of the Confounding Conservative."

Confounding, perhaps, as in confusing? As in how can such a principled family man with, evidently, such a good sense of humor be so inflexibly certain that his views are the right views? (And no pun intended with that "right.")

David Montgomery's profile is around 5,000 words, and well worth reading if you're interested in either Virginia politics or Tea Party activism, as Montgomery describes Cuccinelli as "a conservative superman, a toast of the Tea Party movement." But the profile is more about Cuccinelli, himself, than his politics; about our Attorney General's life-long and profound confidence in his own rectitude.

It begins in Charlottesville in 1989 when Cuccinelli was an undergraduate at UVa. He was up past midnight, studying calculus, when he heard a woman cry out as she battled off sexual assault by an intruder. I think what follows in Montgomery's article is worth transposing to this blog:

Cuccinelli had never heard a cry so loud and long, so pained and panicked. It became a call to action. He transformed himself into a self-taught campus expert and agitator on the problem of sexual assault. He helped establish Sexual Assault Facts and Education (SAFE), a student group that raises awareness about the issue, and designed a brochure on preventing sexual assault. Survivors confided in him. It was emotionally scalding work.

By April 1991, he was standing with a candle in his hand on the steps of the university's Rotunda, the historic center of the genteel campus designed by Thomas Jefferson. Cuccinelli was an organizer of dozens of student protesters who occupied the steps for 134 hours -- one for each of the 134 alleged victims of sexual assault at the university the previous year -- and demanded that the university fund the new full-time position of sexual assault education coordinator.

"The university tried like hell to talk us out of it," recalls Alexia Pittas, another leader of the demonstration, now a lawyer in Savannah. "I can remember Ken standing next to me. Ken said, 'Lex, I'll go to jail with you. I'll go to jail for this.'"

Pittas was surprised. Cuccinelli showed signs of being what some campus social anthropologists referred to as the classic "Joe Wahoo," the preppy, careerist, gung-ho U-Va. male, clad in J. Crew or the equivalent, baseball cap worn backward. Members of this tribe did not collaborate with Women's Center feminists such as Pittas, who thought that fraternities should be banned "because of the predatory nature of men drinking in packs." Cuccinelli was a frat boy by inclination; he rushed a fraternity but didn't end up joining because events conflicted with training to become a residential adviser.

"I said to him, 'Why are you doing this?'" Pittas recalls. "This isn't your issue. I remember him looking at me and saying: This is everybody's issue."

Just hours into the vigil, the university proposed hiring a part-time coordinator. The vigil continued for the full 134 hours. Before the year was out, a full-time coordinator was hired.
Victory.

"The thing about Ken Cuccinelli is, there's right and there's wrong, and there's very little of a liberal gray in between," Pittas says. "If he deems something to be wrong, he will pursue it, no matter the cost."

It's interesting to note that two decades later, Pittas says she doesn't "like the man's politics at all."

But there you evidently have Virginia's attorney general pretty much summed up in one story from his undergraduate experience: Ken Cuccinelli is fearless once he determines that a cause is just. His confidence in his take on health care, climate change and the legal reach of the federal government have made national headlines. He sues the federal government to block health care reform and challenge its ability to regulate greenhouse gasses, sues UVa. for a professor's documents relative to climate change research, and issues an opinion that colleges and universities in the Commonwealth didn't have the authority to ban anti-gay discrimination.

Perhaps less well-known is his opinion that George Mason University does have the right to ban guns on campus. And perhaps his least popular stance with his own base has been his defense of a Kansas church's right to wave signs saying "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" at military funerals. Cuccinelli sees these signs, hoisted to protest the nation's alleged tolerance of homosexuality, as a First Amendment right.

David Montgomery's excellent and interesting profile certainly leaves us better acquainted with Virginia's Attorney General. But it leaves unanswered the question of why Cuccinelli is so confident in his own take on controversial subjects.

And, depending upon whether or not you hold the same opinions as Virginia's Attorney General, you are left to either worry about or cheer Ken Cuccinelli's increasingly prominent national political profile.

Ken Cuccinelli, his wife Teiro, and six of their seven children