Missives from TIH

The Constitution - Living Dangerously

2011-11-19T13:07:00.002-05:00

In the preface to my blog, I note that they are: “at times controversial or even opinionated. If they cause people to think and consider and discuss then by definition their purpose has been met”

That is indeed the crux of what a blog is and the ability of readers to offer comments in an interactive format is why this unique outgrowth of the information age has become a critical means of sharing personal opinions, thoughts, reflections, comments.

In early October of this year I posted a blog in which I offered my thoughts on the debate as to whether our Constitution should be, emblematically, living or dead. The question is one that gained a degree of recognition and dialogue following testimony given by Justice Antonin Scalia.

Feedback came from both sides of the political and philosophical divide and that answers the question as to why blogs are in themselves one of the better definitions of not only free speech but also effective evidence that we are indeed a species differing from all others. We have an intellect and a free will.

To that end I have the distinct pleasure of posting a rejoinder from two friends of decades' duration. My initial response was that it also upholds that science and philosophical hypotheses both respond to Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law: they are equal, opposite and collinear. That is how it should be.

We, Carl, Joe and I, invite others to offer their comments. Together, and in the spirit of the Founders, the title of Thomas Paine’s book will be the result as it has throughout the history of our country: "Common Sense".

From: Carl A. Palminteri & Joe McHugh

We are vital cogs living within the beast known as The Great Right Wing Conspiracy. As such we conspired to respond to your SCOTUS Blog entry.

Do with it what you will but never let it be said I (we) ducked a challenge (although it did take a bit of time to get the collaboration down pat).

The Constitution - Living Dangerously

Tom......To you, the idea of a "Living Constitution" seems both benign and useful. On our side of the political divide, though, it seems as if the idea is a threat, not a solution. To further it the Left seems to be hanging its hat on the Commerce Clause. Their use of this clause shows how "originalism," once overwhelmingly the orthodox belief of our judges, has been distorted by our present day judiciary. It is our belief that our judges have taken the plain meaning of the words of the Framers and turned the Commerce Clause into a catchall of the fanciful Big Brother whims of the 'Living Constitution' crowd. Sorry if you can see the sparks flashing here but we see this idea as very very dangerous.

As Martin Luther said, "Here I stand." The decisions of our courts must never be grounded on the personal preferences and prejudices and likes and dislikes of an individual justice. Yet that is exactly what the "Living Constitution" idea allows.

You like having it this way. Why not? It seems to you that the Living Constitution gives you results that you usually like.

You shouldn't like it at all, though.

Why?

Let's start with this hypothetical example:
Say it's a few years in the future. As it happens these few years have resulted in a swing of of the political pendulum. A (formerly) frequently liberal judiciary has now been superseded by a judiciary that contains a surprising preponderance of conservatives.

In this new era a new wave of political protests, much like Occupy Wall Street and originating on the Left, has once again spread across the nation. It is enjoying significant success and the groups at which the protests are aimed feel seriously threatened.

They thank God, though, because they have two assets that can save them. One of these assets is a conservative judiciary that has grown tired of what they view as disorder in the streets. The other is a Commerce Clause first stretched beyond recognition and then bequeathed to conservatives by their liberal predecessors on the bench.

The upshot? Recall the Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890? Remember how it was aimed at monopolies but often was used to suppress labor unions as "conspiracies in restraint of trade?" Well, now we have a (living, Commerce Clause and in the right hands it can be used in exactly in the same way. So groups are protesting against business? They are hindering the smooth functioning of our economy? Isn't it important then that the First Amendment rights of these protesters be "balanced" (read, "restricted") against the need to maintain interstate commerce, the lifeblood of the nation?

We don't think that's exactly the kind of "Living Constitution" today's liberals have in mind but, absent a return to originalism, this, or something like it, could well end up as exactly what they get.

Liberals must keep it in their minds that a "Living Constitution" only lives for liberals when liberals are in power. However it will do the same for conservatives should they ever rule the roost. Looked at from this perspective, for both conservatives and liberals, the idea of a Living Constitution is really quite dangerous.

Our Constitution restricts the power of each of the branches of government, including the courts. In the case of the judiciary the mechanism that restricts them is the need to respect the original meaning of the Constitution and of the laws that the courts are called upon to interpret. It is a danger of the Living Constitution that it allows the courts to ignore original intent and by doing so to set the boundaries of their own powers.

The Constitution is a LEGAL document...not a growing baby. But, without a Living Constitution the Constitution can't adapt to a changing world, can it?

Nonsense.

The Founders knew full well that over time there needed to be room for our controlling documents to adapt. So they specifically provided for an amendment process. Indeed, it is this amendment process incorporated in the obvious original intent of the Framers that puts real life into the Constitution, starting with the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.
Note, by the way, that the process of amending the Constitution as laid out in Article V is specifically the responsibility of legislatures at the federal and state levels and/or of state conventions.

The Constitution gives judges no role in the process. Repeat...the judges have no role.The Constitution can be inconvenient at times and there's a reason for this. It is a simple fact that the Constitution was designed to prevent the State from being that which coerces the individual.

We can feel comfortable and safe if we live under the protection of our Constitution --- but only as long as it is not a "Living Constitution"

Hoping Our Constitution Dies?

2011-10-08T19:25:00.009-04:00

Sometime around third or fourth grade we learned that America has three branches of government. Maybe they taught us then then that the members of one branch, the judicial, are nominated by the executive branch and confirmed by a part of the legislative. This includes all Federal judges and specifically the United States Supreme Court. Most of us probably forgot that quirk in our governmental process.

These judges serve for life, often still making decisions at ages that would be seen as inappropriate for other positions of such importance. Generally, unless we are avid intellectuals or constitutional scholars or perhaps members of the legal profession, we know little about them professionally. We see their annual picture; hear about some of their findings; watch the Chief Justice give the oath of office to the President and probably could not name the last five Chief Justices. Pointedly nor could we in truth describe precisely how and why they make their decisions.

We say we are a country of laws; well, they are the final arbiter of law-making. Their decisions are the very definition of de jure. If there is a pedestal, they are on it.

Like many of us, I don’t think I gave the Supreme Court much reflection. Oh sure, there were the famous cases: Dred Scott, Plessey v Ferguson, Brown v Board of Education, Roe v Wade, Miranda Rights and a lot of other names from Law & Order and unquestionably the bewildering selection of the winner in the presidential election of 2000.

But nothing till now got me into thinking about the philosophical values and tenets that form the persona, the soul of individual justices. I always saw them as some sort of a team. That changed.

Last week, October 5th to be precise, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Steven Breyer appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During his remarks, Justice Scalia, longest serving member of the Court stated for the record: "I'm hoping that the 'living Constitution' will die."

He is long known as a fervent advocate of "originalism", a mode of constitutional interpretation that left to Scalia’s decision, would compel judges to look to the meaning of the Constitution's text at the time of its ratification two hundred twenty plus years ago. There is also therefore a logical corollary: to essentially ignore the significant changes that have taken place in America and the world since then, changes that have a relatively few times impelled re-examining the Constitution.

He wants his fellow law lords in the federal judiciary to look into the minds of the framers, a term that generally refers to the 57 members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and more specifically to Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson and Franklin and who were its primary authors.

He further sees this as a litmus-test for selection of judges, a conviction that belies the idea of free and open debate among legal scholars. Consider this: if all judges were of the same single-minded opinion, there would be no descent on any issue of constitutionality.

One wonders then why the Founders of our Republic decided that the highest court in the land would have nine members. If consistent agreement was expected by these learned gentlemen then why not three or five.

More on-point why is there an included mechanism (actually two) in the Constitution to countenance change? The answer must lie in what Justice Breyer reminded the Senate: "It is a constitution we are expounding….. to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." This is a quote from Chief Justice John Marshall in 1819, a time in which a number of the Founding Fathers including Jefferson, Madison and Adams were still alive.

Surely, by including these measures they foresaw the necessity to “adapt”, i.e. to modify or revise or to use the very word they incorporated in the Constitution: to amend. They wisely made the process difficult to succeed but by the mere inclusion of these mechanisms they acknowledged it would be inevitably needed. They also assured that changes should not and could not be executed without the greatest deliberation, two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate and further, even requiring the concurrence of 75% of the state legislatures.

Parenthetically, there is no place within the amendment process for action by the President.

Assuming we had a court composed of such judges; what would it mean? Does strict construction or originalism eradicate the first ten amendments, The Bill of Rights? Of course not. They are stare decisis, the obligation of the U.S. Supreme Court to honor past precedents. But it would bring into question the position of other amendments should similar questions to them arise today. Simple question: term limits for the President was never a question for the Founders yet we have the 22nd Amendment that limits the executive to two terms. Should we revert to the former as it was the choice of those who penned the original document?

And then there are others: giving electoral power to the residents of the District of Columbia; the elimination of the poll tax; changing the voting age to 18; women’s suffrage.

Are we to believe that all these were with the thought process of our Founding Fathers? Doubtful. Consider that these remarkable men fought a war about taxes; how do you think they would feel about the 16th amendment that allowed for taxation on their incomes?

Want to see a clear example: we began our First Congress with the legislatures of the various states choosing the US Senators. Think about that: the body of people with the most legislative clout being picked largely by cronyism and not all by the people. That practice, a part of the Constitution, lasted till amended in 1912, a hundred and twenty years later. My guess is that “originalists” of today would have left it as it was.

Even better was the 11th Amendment that limited the power of the Supreme Court. Was it important: yes it was and as such passed in 340 days start to finish. Contrast that with the 27th that took 74,003 days to be ratified – do the math: 203 years. That one dealt with congressional pay. There is a message there.

I think it is good to have public debates that include outermost views if for no other reason than they enable us to set the borders of common sense. Whether it is Ron Paul and Michelle Bachman today or Norman Thomas and Henry Wallace in former times, the views they proffer motivate discussion and encourage debate and that is good for the process and for the nation. However, ultimately, as we have seen with Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, the voting public rejects presidential aspirants who were clearly outside of the left-right centrist mode.

In a recent blog I offered my views that the American people were largely critical of extremist views when it came to electing senior public officials. I stand by that opinion as have others who have shared their thoughts after reading the piece. Let’s hope that this applies to all the branches of government, notably the appointed one.

And let’s be thankful that the judicial appointment process in our beloved constitution allows for differing views. Our political changes are not brought about by revolution but by evolution and thus the instruments of government must have the flexibility to evolve, to evolve as they have since the founding of our Republic.

So Where Are We Now?

2011-08-16T13:31:00.003-04:00

Huge financial institutions seemingly control a corresponding amount of our very being; a rating agency who thought credit default swaps were four star investments declares now that investing in the United States is not and the market (whatever that means today) reacts and behaves like a sine curve.

The same people who passed budgets that failed to include two wars now call for balanced budgets and somehow that makes sense and in the midst of all this a handful of people at a picnic in Iowa decide the final three candidates for our most important office after paying thirty dollars for the privilege to vote. Poll taxes apparently still have a place in the American process. Common sense: not so much.

With record unemployment across the land, no action of any kind is taken on job creation whereas critical legislative time over several months is dedicated to something that in reality is meaningless to those desperate to find work, the debt ceiling.

Our government has clearly lost the confidence of the American people and it is not at all surprising. Patient we may be; stupid we are not.

It so brings back memories of 1964 and the actual physical walk-out from the Republican Convention by the “not-so-wildly-conservative wing”, i.e. Nelson Rockefeller, Jack Javits, George Romney, William Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge etc., immediately after Goldwater accepted the nomination and on national TV. The so-called Rockefeller Republicans included John Lindsay of New York and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut.

Thankfully the bulk of the electorate that November felt as I did that the Senator from Arizona’s claim that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice” was morally wrong. Extremism is morally wrong by the very definition of the word. History tells us what happened in that election. Goldwater won but 58 electoral votes, his own state as well as Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina – these because of the soon to be passed civil rights legislation, once again an extremist view.

Similarly when George McGovern ran against Nixon eight years later, the same was true but 180 degrees apart. Extreme liberals also “fall from grace with the sea”. This time the erstwhile democrat standard bearer carried one state (Massachusetts) (plus DC) for a total of 17 votes only eclipsed by Alf Landon in ‘36 who won two states but small ones (Vermont and Maine) and only eight votes.

Somewhere we have to remind ourselves that we are, for the most part, a centrist Republic and we can leave broad swings right and left to France and Italy and maybe sometimes to local elections but not in one that counts towards public policy and protection of the Constitution in the spirit that was intended by the founders.

Speaking of those folks, you know, the ones who actually worked together to forge a document, let’s forget this “strict constructionist” craziness that we hear all the time today. The founders never intended that or they would not have gone to the lengths they did to include mechanisms for amending this document.

They knew that matters change with time and that some important points today may well mean nothing two hundred years later. Want an example: how often do we hear today of Granting Letters of Marque and Reprisal, or of Bills of Attainder, yet they are mentioned more than once in our Constitution.

Just an aside: I looked through the Constitution targeting the rights and duties of the Senate and nowhere did I see that the minority leader has, as one of his responsibilities, to guarantee how many terms the President may serve. Maybe someone can point this out to the senior Senator from Kentucky: Sir, it is we the people who will elect or not elect our President and in that process, Sir, you have the same right as I do, i.e. to vote, once, and nothing more.

We hear about States’ Rights as if John C Calhoun had arisen from his South Carolina grave. Once again the cry is “Leave it to the States to decide these issues”. Just a reminder: Article 4; Section 4 states: “ Republican government: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them….against domestic Violence.” That is actually in the legal framework of our very fabric. Simply put: our Federal government guarantees the states their rights not the other way around.

As to the right of Texas to secede or form several states, I doubt that is so enshrined and even if it was in the annexation agreement, surely it was obviated by the agreement that Texas and “all states formerly under rebellion” had to pledge to re-enter the Union.

Those gentlemen who wrote our founding documents were as diverse a group as we have today. The difference between then and now is the “spirit of compromise”, that term we learned in sixth grade civics class and that is sadly seen by the extreme right and sometimes the equally extreme left as capitulation. Tell that to Madison or Jefferson or Hamilton or Adams. Better still, read the Federalist Papers.

While we are at it, can someone remind those who claim to be running to “get Washington out of our lives as far as we can”, that calling for constitutional amendments that stipulate what marriage is, or the prohibition of abortion, or the right to pray in our schools seems to my eyes to be increased control of our basic rights to make decisions based on our intellect and free-will.

Does strict construction demand we reverse woman’s suffrage or reinstate poll taxes or do we take away the right to levy income taxes? Now there’s an idea that might appeal to the Tea Party. Think of it: no income tax effectively means no Federal spending and therefore we can all repair to our individual enclaves and build walls and prance right back into the dark ages.

So much for the shining city on the hill.

Listen to Yourselves America!

2011-02-10T13:58:00.006-05:00

Listen to the hatred you are preaching.

Listen to your refusal to acknowledge any views but your own even if what you champion just might be based on false premises. Or don’t you think that even possible?

And far from just not accepting any other view, no, you ridicule and demonize both the opinions and those that hold them.

And while you do so, you and all like you who call yourselves patriots: maybe you should read what the real patriots thought and wrote or shall we ignore them too?

Listen to you threatening Orrin Hatch of Utah. Orrin Hatch, who is conservative to his very bone marrow. Yet you threaten him publicly with a primary challenge because, listen to yourselves, because he was friendly with Ted Kennedy. Friendship in your eyes has become a character fault. Shame on you.

Listen to more than half of those at a political forum in Iowa agreeing, that your, yes, your President is a Muslim. Half of the people at a meeting in Iowa. You don’t want to hear that the fact that he is not a Muslim is irrelevant, do you? Colin Powell told us that even if he was; so what? In case you have forgotten it’s called Freedom of Religion and it is in the First Amendment which ranks it even ahead of your likely right to bear arms.

That annoying First Amendment is also what allowed Hatch and Kennedy to be friends and to speak civilly. It’s called Free Speech and if you disdain that you fall into the realm of the black shirts in the 30’s or the not so fictional Orwellian world of 1984.

Those amendments; the Constitution; the Federalist Papers: that is what the patriots gave us. The also gave us the concept of tolerance.

You see, the thing you cannot stomach is tolerance. I challenge you to look up the word. Never mind, I will do it for you: tolerance is being fair, objective and understanding of those whose views differ from yours.

How hard is that? So hard that your children will grow up as bigoted and closed minded as you are? So hard that you would rather destroy the very fabric of this nation than to allow a single voice of dissent? Is that what you want?

Don’t like what someone is saying? Simple, shout them down; don’t like a political point? Simple, call them un-American; don’t like immigrants? Simple, build walls and shut the borders and while you are at it arm yourselves just in case.

Have friends with other views? You can’t even consider that can you? They could not by your definition be friends.

Think about that. Do you really want everyone to think the way you do? Is that what our God-given ability to reason and debate, to use our intellect and will has come to?

Ever even consider in the quiet of your own mind that even just one of your opinions might be in error? Be honest, at least honest to yourself.

Because if you say no to that question, then you consider yourself omniscient, and as best as I know, that term only applies to a single entity: the Deity.

But you probably don’t believe that definition either, do you?

Thomas Ignatius Hayes, Jr.
St Petersburg FL
10 February 2011

Words Have Meanings And Consequences

2011-01-15T14:57:00.002-05:00

I am remembering Nixon's aide, Gordon Liddy telling Chuck Colson, White House Counsel that he was off to kill columnist Jack Anderson. Why? Because HR Halderman, POTUS’ Chief of Staff had in frustration said, referring to the columnist, "we have to get rid of this guy". No saint himself, Colson at least had the common sense to stop Liddy.

That was then; this is now. So, when do we begin realizing that words have consequences; that what some might see as over-reaching campaign rhetoric is seen by others as a "call to exercise second amendment rights". In a Florida congressional race this fall, we heard: "If ballots don't work we will use bullets!" In New York, a candidate for governor threatened a reporter that he would "take him out". These utterances are from candidates for high public office not some backyard argument and in the age of replicating news cycles, they are seen and re-seen on the cable outlets.

Even Pat Buchanan’s eloquent call to “Mount up and ride to the sound of the guns” is only meaningful when taken with the historic understanding that it is a historical reference to the Battle of Waterloo and not, as some might think, a call to arms. Thinking about that, maybe Buchanan was with Wellington and Blucher that day.

Thankfully, the vast majority of us ignore histrionic declarations like that and maybe even laugh them off but it only takes one who does not, one who takes the utterance seriously, or is deranged, or maybe, like my fellow Fordham alumnus, Liddy, is a true Machiavellian.

Our parents taught us: "Sticks and stones etc" but that lovely allegory is no longer applicable in this age of instant action and equally instant reaction. YouTube and FaceBook et al have changed the scene forever and words do cause harm as seen by recent cyber-bullying cases.

Putting the picture of a congresswoman’s district on a leaflet with gun sights around it is without a doubt First Amendment protected speech. But just because we have a constitutional right to do something does not mean we must or sometimes even should.

Civility must not be seen as archaic. The vitriol that we heard at Tea Party meetings this year was scary but the reality that very few of our political leaders spoke out against it was equally disheartening.Recent events in Arizona should press everyone: politicians and supporters, pundits and handlers, TV commentators and talk-radio personalities, even blog writers, all of us to tone back the rhetoric but I sadly doubt it will.

For that, shame on all of us.

John-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett and Duck

2010-12-01T15:17:00.005-05:00

It is Sunday morning here in Dar-es-Salaam and I'm feeling a little like Garcin in No Exit. I remember Sartre’s quote: "l'enfer, c'est les autres" – Hell is other people. There are days that sentiment matches my mood in Tanzania. Thankfully those thoughts are an extreme – and they pass. Extremes must be momentary or they will consume us.

There are more days that equate Samuel Beckett’s plot-line in Waiting for Godot: Estragon wants to leave but he can’t; he has to wait for Godot. Godot never arrives. It is the absolute of never that chills me or maybe it is a slight case of malaria.

If metaphorically the two plays are joined into the reality of my time in Tanzania, Sartre trumps Beckett hands-down: There must be hope; even Garcin got out; how many months did he endure in that room? How many months will I? Good question but no answer. It is still better than the tomorrow that Godot promised and the promise he never kept. C'est l'enfer.

Waiting is such a part of life here in this dusty and lately rainy East African city. Waiting for people, predictable, as after all this is Tanzania, but also waiting for endorsements and agreements and even expected criticisms. Censure I can and have endured; it arrived quickly and was actually humorous – something about Troy New York and math majors. That aside, I must strive, as Beckett so aptly says, “to hold the terrible silence at bay”, more so since my sole colleague set out for home.

So, what is all this about? Well, pictures tell stories, yes? Here stories must make pictures.

It is breakfast, this very Sunday morning, breakfast with Duck. He eats very little; truth be told he eats nothing. What he does and does so well is connect me to home. You see, over the last ten years, Duck and I have travelled more miles than most people let alone ducks and always together.

We “met” at our parish fair in St Pete where I used a drop curve to knock ersatz milk bottles off a platform. Marge says it was luck but I am sticking to the cross seam curve story. Whatever, he entered our life that evening and spent the next few months on a book shelf in our office.

Suddenly his world changed as I was called by WHO to the Kosovo Conflict and Duck found himself, courtesy of Marge and unknowing to me, in my duffel. He became my mascot in that cold and damp place; a piece of home where there was no other. Duck and I survived and returned home. We had become a team.

Every time I have been assigned since then, Duck has joined me: in the Egypt I love so; in beautiful Jordan and in not so beautiful Indonesia (memory-wise) where together we heard and felt the horrors of 9/11. Through it all he travelled well - most often in my back pack - a fact that necessitated at times an explanation to airport security. Try that in Singapore.

Another war, Iraq, summer of 2003 and again he came with me and lived through a summer of heat and tragedy. There were some good times; he met some furry friends courtesy of our security chief. Here we were, a humanitarian Team Leader and an ex SAS officer both holding on to what my daughter Hilary discourteously calls a stuffed animal. Alan’s were two small dogs. All of us endured the heat and the bullets and bombs and the RPG’s and what was called food and most of all thanked God for the good graces of the regiment safeguarding us. We came through when so many others did not. Duck came home again. I think I left something behind.

I promised Marge and Duck no more wars and to date have kept my pledge. After all, what conflict wants a gray haired sixty (plus) year old public health guy that travels with a slightly shop-worn duck?

Duck has had good trips: cruises to Alaska and Central America replete with black-tie dinners. He dresses accordingly.He has dined on the Queen Mary crossing to and from England and been to Casablanca and Rome and Monaco. He joined Marge and me in London and Paris and Bruges. He even went to the game parks in Tanzania and travelled the mountains of Swaziland.

He has met special companions like himself. On a flight to Zurich, the attendant looked at Duck sitting on my arm rest and brought back her bag to show me a stuffed dog. He had belonged to a soldier in the 101st Airborne, a soldier wounded and being flown back to Walter Reed. The soldier has asked her to keep it for him. She has. We both cried a little.

So here we are having breakfast. Must have been a good omen as the hotel uncovered a stash of Earl Grey tea just as my last remaining bag was lowered into the requisite daily pot.

Duck and I will do what we have to do here because that is what we do. We cope and strive and push and cajole but we, he and I, will succeed. If I did not believe that I would not be here.

He has to keep reminding me that it will end and we will go home and that is certain. So, do we conclude Sartre was right about other people? I do seem to do better with Duck.

I wonder what ever happened to Garcin and Estragon.

Maybe if they had a duck?

Written originally at the Movenpick Hotel; Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania; 3 May 2008 and modified (slightly) recently.

Speaking of Immigration - Swaziland Style

2010-11-29T14:22:00.002-05:00

I think this could be a screen play. Could you please arrange for Robert Redford to play me? Anyone but Tom Cruise.

This is the saga of one Abdul Hakeem, a good man, no terrorist motives, a religious man, a family man; and a member of our team in Swaziland.

I had almost given up on ever seeing our Civil Engineer, not having heard anything positive for days and then hearing from him on Friday that he was “ready to come” but needed a ticket and etc. You know the rest.

Diplomatic friends came to the rescue somehow on a weekend with EU politicians and PM’s and heaven knows what else involved and I am advised he will be here today on a plane landing in Manzini at 10:50, coincidentally the same flight I was on what seemed to be eons ago but in fact was one solitary week. Good on who figured all this out.

By the way, the airport has one gate and one runway. The plane holds 30 people.

So, foolish man that I am, I assume that in due course, maybe an hour or so, we will be graced by the presence of this long sought after gentleman from Nigeria. The timing seemed propitious as we were leaving shortly on a two week very rural sojourn.

That hour came and went.

Then a phone call from a Mr. Makosi, chief of immigration at the Manzini Airport (an impressive title for a locale with one gate). He grilled me on how a person with no visa would dare to enter Swaziland (to be accurate - try to enter but I chose not to be that specific). I of course had little or no answer to his enquiries. Public Health I am good at; Swaziland immigration procedures are above my pay grade.

When asked about my visa I demurred and said I was an American working on behalf of the European Union (I thought that might either impress or confuse him). I also, in a firm voice, pointed out that neither I nor my Australian, Italian, Kenyan colleagues needed such a document. All that was true (I think).

I told him that we worked with the Ministry of Health and he asked me for a name from that organization and I gave him that of our liaison. He said he would could call her. No answer but should not be a surprise: it is Sunday but still he was persistent and said he would call her on Monday. That is until he heard her name and said: "that is not a Swazi name". This of course was true as the young lady was in fact a resident intern on loan from the British government.

Perhaps out of desperation or perhaps his shift was ending, all of that aside my now frustrated bureaucrat friend got serious and asked me if I trusted Abdul Hakeem and being a good soldier I said yes and mirabile dictu, he said our Nigerian colleague could precede to Mbabane to meet us.

I thought this was the end of a bad dream but whatever the antonym to the above Latin phrase, no. As Abdul Hakeem exited the one room airport, he was taken into custody by the local gendarmerie. A call came explaing that as he apparently had no visa he could not enter Swaziland.

I calmly, well as calm as I am known to get) explained the past several hours of negotiations. The answer was simple: Mr. Makosi had “exceeded his authority”. I decided that this was not the time to argue.

In desperation I turned to a local contact with whom we had become friendly, a Mr. Mandla Masuku. On this day he was dressed to the nines in local garb including a not too modest outer garment, a spear and some sort of a club. Never mind, I figured, how worse could it get?
He spoke to the police and then told me he had to go to Manzini to act as our agent. In for a penny; in for a pound I figured so off he went with about 50 Euros of the money I had for travel costs.

To the shock of everyone, one hour later he was back with Abdul Hakeem but was keeping his passport. He had given his word to the police and also promised them (and us) he would secure a visa for him by Tuesday. He says he can and that it will cost 50 more Euros. Sounds OK – but what do I know.

So, off we went: north to Piggs Peak and checked ourselves and Abdul Hakeem into a hotel sans passport (not an easy task but we pulled it off) and here we are: one Nigerian Civil Engineer without a passport and one dread-locked Swazi holding his future (as well as our Euros) in his hands.

Sometimes I try to be serious; this time……well, I tried and failed.

Please understand that I must use humor in cases like this; either that or go crazy – though some may well argue it is too late for that. Their point is well taken.

I might just tell everyone that all is well. Why upset them. Right now our colleague is with us and we are somewhere – and I say somewhere and I really have no idea – travelling what are euphemistically called roads though the mountains of Swaziland.

Somehow with the knowledge that Abdul Hakeem is safe and with us and that we will solve the visa problem. But first I have a Project to run and miles to go before…..no, wait, these are Kilometers. Never mind, you get the metaphor.

Ther Names Live Forever More

2010-05-17T13:46:00.004-04:00

Preface: Amara, Iraq; that terribly hot summer of 2003; a place of war and suffering for countless and for those of us who chose to perform humanitarian missions, a glint, an opportunity for hope.

We are a relatively few miles from the un-guarded border with Iran, a border that existed even in 1916 when Amara or Kut as it was called was one of many provincial cities in Mesopotamia, a far-flung component of the Ottoman Empire. There was no Iraq.

Mesopotamia, a Greek word interpreted as the land between two rivers is exactly that; the rivers in question being the Tigris and Euphrates. This is ancient Sumeria, where the bronze age was born; where language and alphabets developed; where the first cities arose. In a way, where history began to be recorded.

Ur, birthplace of Abraham and thus of the three great monotheistic religions lies to the west; to the north, Babylon and biblical Nineveh; to the East the natural border between Arabs and Persians, the Zagros Mountains; and to the south, a few scant miles, the sacred meeting of the great rivers, forming the southern boundary of the fittingly termed “cradle of civilization.”

Armies have fought here throughout the millennia, history only remembering some. Now America and its allies had come to this primordial land. In the “Great War” it had been British troops from her homeland and her empire. In the 1916 siege of Kut, the British lost more men, 23,000, than in any other battle except on the European mainland.

Like most, I had never heard of that battle and yet here I was, in Amara, to coordinate UN efforts to repatriate refugees from Iran back to Iraq. One afternoon I was asked by Iraqi staff to come see “some graves.” Thinking I was about to see additional mass graves from Saadam Hussein, I accompanied them. What I was shown staggered me: the memorialized remnants of that battle from almost a century ago, names and regiments carved in stone.

I wrote the missive that night literally by candle light because, as always, there was no power. I gave it to the British Garrison Commander in Amara and he asked if I would permit him sending it on to London.

There is an epilogue or afterword at its completion.

Ther Names Live Forever More

The white crosses that once marked their resting place have long since been carried away for “storage”. Possibly their Christian symbolism offended Muslim sensibility; perhaps it was a political decision. The reasons matter not.

It has been such a long time.

For the thousands of men who forever rest in the sandy sun-baked ground of Amara, Iraq it has been almost ninety years. Their names, still clearly readable are inscribed on a stonewall, listed as they always are by regiment and by rank. Their proud regimental crests precede the tally of their names; in the din of battle they did not but in this their final rest Colonels pave the way for Corporals and Privates. The Brigade remains formed: all present or accounted for. Certainly the Almighty does not abide by these protocols but nevertheless here it seems fitting.

The came from the empire: Aussies and Kiwis; Sikhs and Punjabis; West Indians and Africans; but mostly they were and are forever British. The tally of regiments includes many long gone: the quaintness of the East Kent Cycling Corps: they lost men. Did they bring their bicycles all the way from the green pastures of Southern England to the hell-like temperatures of Iraq? The Royal Flying Corps is here, names testimony to the flimsy planes of the day but so is the Chaplain Corps; how did they die?

Is it important?

The Black Watch lost so many men as they have in so many battles. Did the pipes play one final dirge for them? Did they beat the drums slowly?

And what of the lads from Wales and Ireland; from the heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire and oh so many counties and towns in Blake’s green and verdant land? Who said farewells to them, those young men who died for King and Country in a place not long remembered except by those left behind. Does anyone think of John or Nigel or James or Patrick on Remembrance Sunday or are they all part of the honored dead on the empty tomb on Whitehall we call the Cenotaph.

It has been such a long time.

Come you back you British Soldier! cries Kipling, and in truth the British Army has come back, back to Amara. For the King’s Own Scottish Borderers now occupy the Governor’s House; their armored tanks and cars traversing the streets and fields where once their olden comrades fought; fought and died; died by the thousand; died and were buried; their granite carved names forever to remain their testimony.

But these are not Flanders’s Fields; no poppies grow here. There is a grounds keeper but this is the Iraq of today and he like so many others is poor. He tries to grow something where crosses once stood but fails. Perhaps there is meaning in that but it would be lost on a hungry man.

He shows the maps of the graves and the books with their names and he reveals a gesture from today’s British forces: new roses, resting beneath each of the panels that hold the impressed names. The broken stone tablets that once proudly graced the archway now rest on the dirt, the honoured dirt that holds these heroes. The British have returned to Amara. Their dead comrades welcome them.

It has been such a long time.

Listen…..Listen to the dirt speaking….Remember them…..Lest we forget.

Let their names live forever more here where they fought and died. Let their memories live in the hearts of their countrymen and of free men everywhere.

Dr Thomas I Hayes Jr
Amara, Iraq
August 2003

Epilogue:

I left Amara and Iraq in the autumn of 2003 and after a short respite home in St Petersburg was posted to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, East Africa. In November, and shortly before Remembrance Sunday, I received an e-mail from the then Officer-in-Charge in Amara. He asked if I would let my missive be read to the troops during their remembrance ceremonies. I agreed immediately.

For myself, I attended services at the British and Commonwealth Cemetery in Dar. I don’t remember much of what was said that sunny day though I was pleased the German Ambassador stood next to his British counterpart. I felt that was fitting.

I can be forgiven I hope for my thoughts that day were thousands of miles north, north and east to Amara, to where young men in battle dress and formed ranks were remembering other young men who stood, where they stood, so long ago.

I was and remain so very honoured that my words were heard that day and later published in London.

It has been such a long time.

TIH

SHAKING HANDS

2010-04-05T15:42:00.002-04:00

Preface: Baseball, our self-defined but probably accurately national pastime came back to us last night albeit in a single game: the New York Yankees vs. the Boston Red Sox. Fittingly though it hurts to admit it, the Sox came back from what appeared to be a sure loss to win, 9-7, due in some part, perhaps, to it being opening day in venerable Fenway Park.

No other team played yesterday, a startling difference from the historic opening days that I remember as a young man: Cincinnati and Washington, DC. The Queen City fixture commemorating the birthplace of the major leagues and the capital city of the Republic, replete for the last hundred years (excepting when there was no team) with the President throwing out the first pitch. What would we have done without William Howard Taft?

Returning to the present-day, well almost present, I recalled an occasion somewhere between the Sox winning the American League Pennant in 2004 and their trying to win their first World Series in more or less four-score and something years. They would be playing the Cardinals and strangely I found myself rooting for Boston, ghosts of The Babe aside.

In 2004, I commemorated a personal historic happening with a missive, a writing based on something I do not believe I had ever done before, at least not knowingly. I shook hands and offered congratulations and good fortune against the St Louis team to a Red Sox fan. I was not struck down by bolts of lightning nor visited by specters more normally to be found in Iowa.

Boston did prevail and to show it was not a fluke did so again 3 years later.

It must also be admitted that my conversion could in large part be attributed to my living in St Petersburg where our local team, The Rays, compete each and every year in the same division as do the Yankees and Sox.

It seems fitting that I should post that missive here as once again the cycle of we call spring has, as happens every year, brought out cries of “Play Ball” throughout this wonderful land of ours.

SHAKING HANDS

I did something the other day that I have not knowingly done in my sixty-two years or at least since gaining what was then euphemistically referred to as the “age or reason”.

I shook hands with a Boston Red Sox fan and said congratulations!

The Red Sox fan in question, somewhat half my age, accepted my gesture graciously then looked me in the eye and questioned: “It hurts doesn’t it?” I acceded it did adding that it was comparable to the 1955 experience of losing to Brooklyn when Sandy Amoros made a catch off the bat of Yogi that even now seems impossible. My new found companion had no idea of the incident in question so we parted, he to watch and wait for the Series to begin and me to wonder how this had happened.

You see, I come from New York and the operative phrase is “come-from”. Like so many others coming from that landing place for immigrants, I have not lived there for forty years, distinctively since graduating from Fordham, a fine University and perhaps as important, situated only a few miles from the “Big Ballpark in the Bronx”, Yankee Stadium. My father first took me there from our home in Queens when I was six. The occasion was the lying in state of Babe Ruth. Babe was the raison d'être for the Stadium; the dynasty started with him; he is also according to many the reason the Red Sox have not won a World Series in what Lincoln would have calculated as four score and six years.

Recollections are clear. I remember the late 40’s and early 50’s and the improbability of Jerry Coleman’s triple and Phil Rizzuto’s suicide squeeze bunt; I remember we somehow always won. Reynolds and Raschi, Lopat and Ford; Henrich, Keller and DiMaggio I remember being in Nashville in the 70’s and taking the afternoon off for the playoff game, again to see the unpredictable, a homerun by Bucky Dent and another Boston defeat. New heroes: Reggie and Nettles, Catfish and Sparky.

Though it all the voice of Bob Sheppard resonating across the years:

“Welcome to Yankee Stadium!”

Even in the wilderness years when my Yankees were in second division wilderness, we always had the fallback of being a fan of not only the Yankees but of “any team playing Boston”. I knew that Jim Lomborg would not be able to defeat Bob Gibson; he didn’t. I remember living in London and seeing the CNN transmission of Bill Buckner’s boot and the Mets next day victory. I watched Carlton Fisk’s magnificent home run, knowing in my heart that surely the next day Cincinnati would rebound; they did. I remembered last year, getting the scores on the internet while living in Tanzania. Yankees Win!

So what happened this year? How could a Yankee team drop four straight games including the last two in the Bronx to a Boston team they had just embarrassed in Fenway? Looking back, perhaps I had a premonition on that final seventh game evening. I remembered that Brooklyn’s Archbishop Molloy had once asked for prayers for Gil Hodges, the Dodger icon who was batting poorly; He went 4 for 5 that day.

Surely God loves the Yankees as much or probably more since that cur O'Malley took the beloved Dodgers west of Philadelphia.

I implored the deity in our dinner prayers to wake up the Babe and Joe and Lou and Mickey (on his birthday) and give us another victory.

They always had; but this year they didn’t.

The Red Sox fan was right: it did hurt.

Yet I am incredulous that a part of me wants Boston to beat the Cardinals. Maybe it evolves from Grover Cleveland Alexander striking out “Push Um Up” Tony Lazzeri in the 20’s or the four straight against the Yankees in the 60’s. Maybe it is for Pesky and Doer; for Dominick and Teddy Ballgame and Yaz. Then again, maybe it is acceptance that even Babe feels enough punishment has been administered. I don't know maybe it is just time, time for their fans to experience what we have so many times.

When Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, the British band played “The World Turned Upside Down.” Perhaps the Yankee Stadium organist could learn the tune for next year’s opening day.

October 2004

From Gallatin to Ghent to Gag Rules

2010-03-08T12:05:00.002-05:00

Prologue: Funny how things happen.

Last week I was in Montana to see my daughter married. The site of the wedding was close to the Gallatin River, one of the headwaters of the Missouri and a place where my daughter and her now-husband “white-water raft.”

Even as a student of history, I only knew of the name Gallatin from a town named after him in Tennessee. So, I looked and researched and thus starts another missive.

Albert Gallatin, Swiss born, Harvard Professor; Senator (till deceitfully removed for not having lived in US for ten years); Congressman; Majority Leader; nemesis to Alexander Hamilton; appointed as Treasury Secretary by Jefferson; reappointed by Madison; began Ways and Means Committee; Ambassador to France and later Great Britain; Founder of New York University. Not too bad a resume for someone about whom I would voice the average American knows little or nothing, until recently myself included.

Important to this discussion, however, is that he, along with Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams formed the American team sent to negotiate the end of the correspondingly little known War of 1812, a conflict ending by signature shortly before Christmas 1814 with the treaty of Ghent and as well before the much more notable battle of New Orleans.

Besides this unfortunate lack of punctuality, two elements are important from the treaty. First: though America had now defeated Britain twice in armed conflict, the trio of Adams, Clay and Gallatin were unable to negotiate solutions to the principal causes of the war in question: neutrality and impressments of sailors.

Of greater potential consequence was the inclusion in the treaty, annotated as Article X, of a specific call for the end of slavery. No historian would say that slavery was even a remote cause of this conflict and never before had such language been included in any official American document. Nevertheless, it was and the treaty was unanimously approved by the Senate and signed by the President with these remarkable words enduring:

“Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice, and whereas both His Majesty and the United States are desirous of continuing their efforts to promote its entire abolition, it is hereby agreed that both the contracting parties shall use their best endeavours to accomplish so desirable an object”

This was a mere twenty five years after the Constitution had for most purposes excluded even recognizing slaves as anything more than property and yet here, in a treaty to end a war having nothing to do with slavery, we, the American we, agreed to use our “best endeavours” to “promote its entire abolition”. Pretty strong language and pre-dating the 13th Amendment by some fifty years.

So: what happened to stop the implementation of Article X of the Treaty of Ghent?

Well, for twenty odd years very little except constant fighting over states rights, free and slave states and Henry Clay’s Missouri Compromise. Finally, it appears Congress, both houses had enough and from that came a unique piece of congressional gamesmanship called the Gag Rule.

Since the Constitution came into effect, pro-slavery forces had barred any discussion of slavery in Congress. Using their First Amendment rights, anti slavery groups, believing that since there was a clear right to petition the government, de-jure such petitions and consequently slavery itself, would have to be discussed. Numerous petitions for the abolition of slavery were submitted year after year. Congressional leaders had no interest in bringing these matters to the floor so devised Gag Rules.

Utterly ignoring the First Amendment right to petition the government, the initial Gag Resolution was enacted in 1835. The United States House of Representatives and Senate ruled that all petitions to Congress about slavery would not be read or discussed but would be tabled without consideration. In so many words they were filed in the trash bin or whatever the equivalent was then. The gagging of anti-slavery petitions by Congress continued until 1844.

In effect, Gag Resolutions / Rules permitted Congress to abridge its own First Amendment right to petition the Government. Furthermore, by doing this, Congress countermanded the specifications contained within Article X of the Treaty of Ghent requiring that both nations attempt to end slavery. All this was ignored.

Two House resolutions passed in the spring of 1836. The first stated that Congress had no constitutional authority to interfere with slavery in the states and the second that it "ought not do so” in the District of Columbia. Amendments to the contrary were tabled.

Former President John Quincy Adams, himself a signer of the Treaty of Ghent and after his presidency a congressman from Massachusetts, fought these Gag Resolutions every year as they were being re-introduced. To stop his use of parliamentary procedures to virtually hold up Congress from its scheduled efforts, the House passed the Twenty-first Rule (1840), which banned even the acceptance of anti-slavery petitions. As a House Rule it took precedence over any petition or resolution and thus stopped Quincy Adams.

Today we question signing statements and the sixty vote rule in the Senate or the right of a single senator from Kentucky or Alabama or Florida to literally stop critical government functions but that is what our Constitution allows. Article I, Section 4 says:

“Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

We look today at the inability of Congress to enact meaningful legislation whether it be on healthcare or jobs or financial reform. In each generation our forebears have expressed their equivalent frustrations with Congress. Where are we now on Social Security Reforms? This is the “third rail” today; in the 1840’s it was slavery. In time the matters are solved and they are solved by patience and not by “going to the mattresses”. These ae not new issues; the pandering by members of both houses to TV cameras is in fact a vast improvement to the 1800’s unabridged use of the print media. At least today members are aware that cameras are on.

Oh, and if you think that Gag Rules are old history consider this: The Mexico City Policy, comes close to a reincarnation of a Gag Rule, though this time from the Executive branch. It is a discontinuous executive policy enacted in 1984 by President Reagan that required all non-governmental organizations in other countries receiving US funding to cease performing or promoting abortion services as a method of family planning. This non- law policy was continued by President GHW Bush in 1989; ended by President Clinton(1993); reinstituted by President GW Bush (2001) and retracted (2009) by President Barack Obama. I expect that Quincy Adams would rile against this use of executive power as well.

More to the point: how would we react today knowing that a momentous clause in a treaty approved by not only the required two-thirds of the Senate but unanimously was completely ignored for 50 years? Hopefully as we always have with editorials and speeches and finally with our ballots and not our bullets. Sadly of course it was left to bullets to end slavery.

Someone said “History is the same garden entered into from different gates”; I suppose that is correct and as evidence: that is how while driving to a wedding, seeing a river in Montana, named after a politician I did not know and reading a treaty ending a fairly inconsequential war, this missive was written.

By the way, the wedding was wonderful.

A Ride In The Desert

2010-03-06T13:45:00.005-05:00

Prologue: I experienced the terrible happenings of 9/11 in Palembang, Indonesia. To that extent I was probably among the least informed due to the shortcomings in South Sumatra of electronic communication as well as the bias of local print media. Leaving Indonesia towards the end of October that year, I arrived in Egypt to complete a project begun the previous spring. As I had lived in Cairo for several years in the middle 90’s, I had the opportunity of once again seeing old friends. This is a commentary I wrote on October 26, 2001.

I had a date this morning with a beautiful lady named Nour. I had not seen her for a long while and it was a very special time. Some of you have seen a picture of the two of us and that picture has become my screen saver. You see, Nour is the lovely white mare that I have been riding for many years whenever my labors bring me to Egypt. Maybe it is that in this misguided world, a world getting more fanatical each day, the simple act of riding a wonderful horse into the desert is reassuring.

I rode with Osama, my Bedouin friend of many years. He is one of the people I am closest to in this ancient land and it was indeed good to be back in the desert with him, just the two of us, riding and laughing and remembering. Over the years we have seen friends come and go, shared experiences, sought advice, told many stories, but always trusting in each other's honesty. In a way that is a one way street because Bedouins cannot lie; it is not a part of their character.

I had not seen Osama since the terrible events of 11 September. Life is important to Bedouins and the specter of thousands of people dying in moments is as unthinkable to them as perhaps it was to us before we watched that horror unfolding.

We slowed our horses to a comfortable walk and crossed a sand-dune. There in front of us stood the Pyramids. In many ways the WTC Towers were the Pyramids of our age. Now they are gone. We shared our mutual horror and disgust. He asked me who committed this act and I responded with an unequivocal: Bin Laden. There, in the shadows of millennia, in this meeting of two cultures, I immediately realized we held different views. There was not anger in our discussion; there never is. What there was is reciprocal tolerance. The conflict is not between he and I as persons but between what we are. I can lament with Osama but I cannot feel the frustrations of the Muslim people nor can they feel ours.

Perhaps we don't want to admit it but realistically our respective cultures are presently in conflict and pragmatically they have been for centuries. Was not and is not our response to 11 Sept that of outrage? Can we not feel in our wrath some of what they have felt for so much longer? Or is it that we do not care to feel? Maybe what we are seeing in Pakistan and Indonesia is but the beginning of a ground swell of their outrage, a fury built up for so long and, yes, exacerbated by happenings in Palestine, but having roots in our different views of history.

Have we looked at the alternatives to what we are told is history? We sometimes do when it is to our benefit; we reviled apartheid though we were guilty of it ourselves. Is there some measure of truth in history seen through the eyes of others? If there is, then we must study this and search inside ourselves for answers and find them before those answers become moot.

This is what I learned today, on a wonderful horse, in the desert, with a friend I cherish and who I know is searching as I am for answers to the same vexing questions.

Please God grant Osama and I wisdom, the wisdom that all of us need to live together so that as he and I did today, all people can ride into their deserts and ride together.

Cairo, Egypt
Friday 26 October 2001

The Dance Card

2010-02-20T13:28:00.004-05:00

Nineteen Hundred and Three: an insignificant year compared to others. Even the important headlines seemed, with a few exceptions, to be not awesomely significant: the Wright Brothers flew 120 feet; the Panama Canal was constructed; the Red Sox won the first World Series beating the Pirates; Henry Ford sent his first Model T down the assembly line; and telegraph messages were sent between San Francisco and Manila.

Far beyond our seemingly protective oceans, France and England signed the “Entente Cordiale”; the King and Queen of Serbia were assassinated by their own people; and in news sadly long forgotten, the Russian town of Kishinev was the scene of a massive pogrom against the Jews while at the same time thousands of Bulgarian men, women and children were killed by Turkish troops.

Terrorism was not conceived in our times.

Historians would later note the births of George Orwell and Bob Hope.

Unchanging into the late Spring, 1903 was by all accounts a pretty ordinary year at Fordham, a relatively small University in The Bronx, New York, then sixty-two years old, having adopted its name from a 17th century Dutch Plantation.

George A. Pettit, SJ, Rector of Fordham’s tree- lined Rose Hill Campus was preparing to dispatch a contingent of young men into society. Unquestionably they attended Mass at the University Chapel, beckoned daily to worship by the unchanged clarion that inspired Edgar Alan Poe to pen ‘The Bells” during his short tenure on campus.

Perhaps they thought of the football team coached by Harry Ely that had beaten Rutgers but was crushed by Lafayette. The following year they would go undefeated.

Perhaps some of the men let their thoughts return to April fifteenth, a Wednesday Evening spent at their Prom at the Waldorf Astoria. We know the names of the Chairman and Treasurer and the Members of the Executive, Reception and Floor Committees for that event and we know that there were 20 scheduled dances: eleven Two-Step’s; seven Waltzes’; and two Lancers’ and an evening-ending romantic waltz, Macy’s Good Night Little Girl, an 1898 hit.

We are denied the names of the young men who nattily attired in the Edwardian fashion of the day reveled that night in April. Those details are lost, important then, yes but now, a hundred years later, even knowing their names would probably be no more than that, names, like the lines from Gray’s Elegy Written In A Country Church-yard: “Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen”.

Obligingly the mists of history do allow us a brief glimpse of that evening: we know that for one man, a Miss Farrell was his partner for two dances and Misses Reilly and Butler for one each and that a certain Miss Hamilton was his partner for six, including the first and the afore-mentioned last waltz.

We know these things from his Dance Card, that anachronistic element of Victorian times, a survivor, perhaps the only one, of that night a century-ago. The gold embossed logo on the leather cover states Collegium Fordhamensis. Opening reveals a charming packet with an attached ivory colored – maroon tasseled—pencil. The pages are not as bright as that night one hundred years ago but the pictures they connote are of vibrancy and happiness, the exhilaration of a young man leaving the shelter of university, entering adulthood and, for that evening, dancing at the Waldorf.

The questions beg:
Who was he?
Was it simply an enjoyable evening?
Was she a sister of a classmate?
Did they meet again?

Perpetual questions.

Fittingly we are denied answers, for the shadows of a century ago stretch far and the riposte will not be found nor perhaps should it be.

What we appreciate is that he preserved the Dance Card and with it the memories it held for him. Perhaps it was that last waltz and then the carriage ride back to Rose Hill.

He has departed this life, though we know not when, and so did all his Fordham Class of ‘03 classmates and, at some time, Miss Hamilton.

Men of Fordham and their ladies - Rest in Peace

Postscript: I acquired the actual dance card some ten years ago and wrote and published this story originally for the hundredth anniversary of the prom, 2003.

Since then I have uncovered the name of the gentleman; he was a member of a prominent New Jersey political family. I know he married and fathered a number of children. I also know his first wife passed away at a young age. Was she one of the young ladies listed in the card?

Try as I might I have not answered that question.

Perhaps it is best not to.

Thomas I Hayes
2010

2010-02-17T11:33:00.003-05:00

This is my published letter as it appears in the St Pete Times today. The original editorial by Daniel Ruth follows. Hope you agree with my sentiments.
Tom

Unneeded admissions

Both as a former Scout and as the father of an Eagle Scout with three Palms, I was incensed at Daniel Ruth's use of editorial space in the St. Petersburg Times to share his seedy experiences in an organization that for 100 years has helped millions of young men worldwide.

I fail to see what purpose his revelations might advance except to cast negative aspersions on his fellow Scouts and their parents from those many years ago as well as the leaders of the troop he actually had the temerity to identify.

He admits to stealing, though he uses the word "pilfering," specific brands of cigarettes, in addition to scotch, gin, vodka and bourbon in a bragging way. He appears proud of the fact that he and his fellow adolescents broke numerous laws, something most adults would be ashamed to admit except as an example to help young people. Rather, he is self-satisfied in his actions and fully places blame on the organization of Scouting.

If Ruth feels the need to make known his shortcomings there are better places to do so — including the confessional at the church he has maligned — but not the editorial pages of the Times.

Thomas I. Hayes, St. Petersburg

My merit badge in martini mixology
By Daniel Ruth, Times correspondent In Print: Friday, February 12, 2010

It is probably safe to say that all my years as a Boy Scout in Troop 96, camping in the rain, the snow, the muck, the mire, served me well for a lifetime appreciating the charms — of room service.

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America, a proud and noble institution in our national life. And while Scouting honors some of the more famous in its ranks — Hank Aaron, John F. Kennedy, Neil Armstrong, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates and Barack Obama — alas, there are some of us of whom it can probably be said we never were quite prepared.

Or to put it more succinctly — I was sort of the Beetle Bailey of Scouting. Certain questions haunt my life, never to be understood, or answered.

I'm not sure why I ever joined my Boy Scout troop in Akron. This was a bit like Paris Hilton deciding to move into an Amish community. At first, things seemed to go along just fine. The uniform for an 11-year-old was sort of spiffy, and the meetings in the school cafeteria at St. Sebastians were nice.

Who knew we had to go camping, too? Why? I was just getting comfortable. I have never figured out the camping thing. Why should people leave the warmth of their homes and conveniences to schlep into the woods to sleep in dirt and run the risk of being eaten by some annoyed beast? Please? Anybody? Any help with this at all?

It wasn't as if I was unaccustomed to the outdoors. I had spent many summers at a Catholic Youth Organization camp. But at least we had a roof over our heads and a bed and a bathroom to use and the only thing one had to worry about was fending off the odd randy seminarian camp counselor.

The Boy Scouts insisted on a more traditional Lewis and Clark form of camping. On weekends I'd find myself being carted off to the woods to commune with nature and eat Dinty Moore beef stew out of a can. I was informed this was supposed to be fun.

Many former Scouts can point to their merit badges for canoeing, or astronomy, or bugling, or bird study, or climbing. I learned to drink and smoke. And I was good at it, too! Unfortunately there was no merit badge for hangovers. Otherwise, I would have been an Eagle Scout for cocktails.

I was hardly alone. Before each camping trip many of my fellow Scouts would pilfer a few cigarettes from their parents. One kid, whose father apparently had drinking issues, would abscond with some of his parent's hooch. Then we would all assemble in a tent and pass a canteen around with our own unique concoctions.

Here's what I learned. Filtered Marlboros were preferable to nonfiltered Chesterfields. And it is a really bad idea to mix scotch, gin, vodka and bourbon together. Life lessons, life lessons.
You are probably wondering right about now — where were the Scout leaders while all this was going on?

We wondered that, too.

During my two or three years as a Boy Scout I do not remember going on a single weekend camping trip where it did not rain, or snow, or both. This was Akron, Ohio, after all; Mother Nature's idea of practical joke.

I've often thought my years roughing it out in the middle of the wilds would have prepared me for a life as a Navy SEAL, just as long as the commando raids involved Paris, London or New York's Upper East Side.

Finally — FINALLY — Sunday morning would arrive and my worn and weary Scouting brethren — smelling like Sasquatch meets the boat people — would be delivered back to our families. I had to re-enter the house through the basement to deposit all my musty clothes into the washing machine to be properly deloused.

I still carry with me a souvenir of my last Scout outing. As a bumbling, stumbling, accident-prone child, I probably spent more time in the emergency room getting stitches for one mishap after another than I ever did taking in the wonders of the woods.

It was called a "Leadership" camping weekend. About the only thing I was capable of leading was the proper ratio of vermouth to gin in a martini. Okay, I have arcane skills. But there I was.
Walking through the campsite as dusk descended, I tripped over a rope and landed on a tent stake, ripping open a gash on my knee. Not exactly a Walden Pond moment.

Instead of spending the weekend once again turning myself into Jeremiah Johnson, it was back to the ER. Darn.

I left Scouting shortly afterward. But I still have the scar on my right knee — my own personal and well-earned merit badge for klutziness.

This Is the Africa I Know and Love

2010-02-11T16:29:00.004-05:00

It is somewhere between African Queen and National Geographic;
This is the Africa where I have lived and worked.

It is an abundant yet tired land teeming with struggling and tired people; it is a place of plenty for the few and poverty for the many. It is a people who sold their own into slavery and by doing so perhaps lost the ability to resist empire building by the powers of Europe. It is a land rich in minerals, from the copper and tin of the Congo Basin to the gold and diamonds of southern Africa to the flawlessly purplish-blue gems we call Tanzanite from the savannahs of the Sub Saharran. All these and countless others, scratched-out by Africans from mines and rocks and for but a fraction of their market value.

So often, the wealth leaves Africa as it always has, be it from the slave trade of the past or the minerals of today.

The plantations of Mississippi have not metaphorically vanished with the wind as in Margaret Mitchell’s annals; indeed they have been re-born in lands whose names we barely know: Botswana and Swaziland, Zambia and Malawi; Namibia and Mozambique.

Names may have changed from colonial days: found only in history books are the Rhodesias; the Gold, Ivory and Grain Coasts; Dahomey and Nyassaland; Togoland and Upper Volta, but name changing does not transform reality; sadly it too often replaces foreign colonialism with domestic corruption.

The coast of East Africa where I called home has witnessed the flags of many nations from Arab to German to British and finally Uhuru – Freedom! Tanganyika’s freedom arose from its dusty roads and savannahs and from its jungles and rivers; it swam ashore from lakes named Victoria and Albert and Nyassa; it descended from the snow-capped rim of the volcano we call Kilimanjaro. It fused its future with the Arabic dominated spice island of Zanzibar and the land called Tanzania took its place in the family of nations. It did so freely and without violence.

Problems were myriad and so they remain. Draft animals that turned the European and North American plains and the vast steppes of Asia into arable farm land are not to be found here: they fall to the tsetse fly. Malaria killed millions; it still does. Cholera and typhoid and yellow fever and so many other maladies that we eradicated elsewhere live-on here, testimony on the one hand to human perseverance but yet on the other to the shame of those whose chose not to do here what they did so easily elsewhere.

Whatever you do for the least of my brothers……

Slavery – Utumwah – that chronicler of squalor and havoc; it speaks in the language of Kiswahili, the East African dialect whose sentences are interspaced with Arabic words, a reminder of those who purchased the millions of slaves, dragged from the rain-forested interior by their brothers to be transported to the hellish world of Arabia to toil there till death brought them their only freedom.

I don't know but perhaps there is a blurred but sadly logical bond between Utumwah and Uhuru: cause and effect; quid pro quo? Or perhaps the ying and yang of the latest trespasser.

My Africa is found in the grass hut villages of Mtwara and Massasi; found in the toil of women whose one and only purpose is to bring water back to the village, water carried on their heads from miles away. It is found in the young girls fetching firewood, training for the day that they will replace their mothers as an African Gungha Din. It is found where there is no electricity; where the rainfalls are welcomed with the fervor of religion. It is found in the simple happiness of children and in the utter bleakness that only hopelessness begets.

Because of why I was there, I am in the present tense compelled to see the people of Africa in other ways: the people of leprosy and tuberculosis; of schistosomiasis and river blindness; of dysentery and parasites; of pneumonia and measles; of women dying giving birth and the despondency of skin-and-bone children.

And then there is HIV………but that story must wait for another day………

For now it is sunset in Dar; soon the moon will rise; seemingly born from the very nadir of the Indian Ocean. Africa will bid adieu to another day and welcome again the hours of its darkness, the darkness of Conrad shrouding the mystery of its heart.

Remember this land; pray for its people. Remember as I do.

2010-02-03T22:28:00.003-05:00

A BOX COMPASS

What do you give to a four-score plus seven man?
What can you give?
More importantly what should you give?

Sweaters…he lives in Florida;Shirts, socks…heaven knows he has ample;And as for ties…humorous at best;

The man is an engineer, an engineer of distinction; retired for more than thirty years, nevertheless he still thinks like an engineer. He understands computers, relishes in e-mails, analyzes new buildings and bridges and sadly recognized on September 11 that the buildings could not stand even before they fell.

Engineers are like that.

Sixty-years earlier, on a Sunday afternoon in December, as the duty engineer at US Steel in Pittsburgh, he took the orders for thousands of tons of special steel plates......plates that joined together would form barriers against the sea.......barriers allowing sunken battleships to be raised and fight again. Three days later the plates were designed, made, and on their way to Pearl Harbor.

He did not get a medal for that; He would not have wanted one; it was his job and he did it.

Steel might have been his life's work but this man's soul was and is that of a man of the sea; in his heart a son of Norway like his father who came to America in 1905. He was raised on the sea – not in the fjords of Scandinavia as his ancestors - but in a boat-yard on the Jersey shore.

But what of the gift? We found a box-compass in a store – a copy to be sure – but still it functioned. Buying it was an impulse……..what would he say? How would he react?

He opened the Christmas wrappings and struggled with the clasp on the box – his hands are still those of a Norwegian sailor and Pittsburgh steel man – more attuned to heavy lifting than fine manipulation.

It opened and the look in his eyes broadcast that our idea was right.

Minutes went by….he held the compass…turned it to and fro…. and remembered…..his eyes misting….remembering back to a time long in the past….more than seventy years ago.

He was fifteen when his father sent him by train from their boat-yard to New York and up the Hudson to bring back a boat. He gave him a box compass with which to navigate… back down the Hudson.....across a foggy New York harbor..... around Staten Island and Sandy Hook .....down the Jersey shore to the rock-lined inlet his Father had built, the inlet leading to their boat yard in Brielle and home.

He was fifteen and his sole companion a box compass.

It has been lifetimes since that day – no one knows where the old box compass went – but for moments on this Christmas Day seventy years later it was in his hands again. His eyes told the story….his father…the train ride….the boat..navigating……finding the tiny inlet. And his reward for sure was a dinner from his Mother, Gerda, and a perception from his Father that he was right about his son.

He spoke to us of that day long ago…of his Father and of the pride he had in being trusted to do this task…… and we knew………we knew our gift was welcome.

It sits on his desk now…….the memories are fresh……the gift was time-honored.

He once again has a box compass.

He is my Father-in-law, John Haakan Hansen.

Postscript

The Box Compass was originally written in London, England a week after that Christmas in 2001. It was written out of joy for the life of a man who himself gave so much joy.

Along with his slide-rule, the compass resided on his desk until he passed two years later. It now has its home on my desk.

In accordance with his wishes his body was buried at sea, in the blue waters of the Atlantic that he knew so well. His spirit lives with his father, Haakan and all the other Vikings in their Valhalla.

Thomas Ignatius Hayes
At sea on Queen Mary II

Listening to Plato and Madison

2010-01-31T17:16:00.005-05:00

Someone has to tell our congress, both parties, that the sentiment Mr. Lincoln spoke of: government of, by and for the people, applies today just as it did 150 years ago. In our day, we see politicians ignoring the will of the people and voting yea or nay simply to stand with their party or with a particular base of that party.

I have never liked the symbolism in deliberative bodies of the term “whips”, it conjuring up Dickensian images of cajoling or bantering members of the House or Senate to vote a certain way because the party demands it. Even worse are those who agree to vote in the proscribed way in exchange for pet projects or bills that benefit a few people who parenthetically may well be major contributors. Inducements like that may come terribly close to corruption to “we the people” but they are merely Washington’s brand of insider trading.

Consider Mr. Nelson of Nebraska and his similarly named colleague from Florida at the critical moment of the healthcare debate. Shameful is not the word for their actions.

Are we really so naïve as to believe that pharmaceutical and petro-chemical companies, insurance and banking interests really believe in the precepts of either major party? Hardly: as their donations indicate: they give money for one thing only: votes.

It is not an accident that our key legislative branch is called the House of Representatives. Indeed it is what separates a democracy from a republic. These individuals were elected to be our spokespersons. Unfortunately, the reality is not that. The cost of remaining in office dictates that money is the major factor. Major donors, major companies, major industries call the shots much more than individuals or groups of individuals. Political action groups get on the evening news but do not come c lose to the power wielded by lobbyists and their funding sources.
James Madison who wrote much of our Constitution fully understood the difference between a democracy and a republic. Sadly, many citizens today do not.

The republic form of government he and the founders gave us empowers the people with the responsibility to elect representatives at all levels from local government to Washington. Idealistically and no doubt at times naively, we vote for these individuals because they are intelligent men and women who should be able to reason their decisions based on evidence presented to them, their personal understanding of the matter, and also, expectantly, the views of the people who elected them.

The theory is that we should not elect anyone simply because they have taken the party line consistently nor because they passed some litmus test. Madison would recoil at the very thought of that. He envisaged individuals who had the capacity to think and reason and not to be tools of the leadership, irrespective or party allegiance. The House votes on legislation not the parties but sadly this has changed.

Can individual congressmen challenge the current format? Regrettably they and therefore we are often compelled to follow these edicts because the party leadership will summarily withhold funding for those candidates who don’t toe the line or pass these tests. That is why we see the Republican Party crumbling: Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, Lincoln Chafey in Rhode Island, even General Colin Powell: not acceptable to the Republican “base”. This is the same base that reportedly denied Senator McCain his choice of a running mate and in doing so probably cost him any chance he had of winning. This is the base that will not listen to what even the majority of the people even in their own party say. Rather they listen to demagogues and ideologues.
Litmus tests for Roe v Wade, sanctity of marriage, stimulus packages, global climate change are hauled out and if not agreed without question, the wrath of conservative pundits crashes down on potential candidates. There is a new term: “primary them”: and it is not the sole prerogative of the Republicans. Ask Joe Lieberman.

Even as the minority party, The Republicans would rather fund a primary challenge than support a party incumbent who is opposed to the death penalty or is pro choice. This is the base speaking.; not the vox populi but a small contingent of self appointed individuals who feel they are chosen to lead their party and at some point the country as a whole to a imaginary world of happiness as evidenced by wealth, power and status.

Republicans do not have a corner on this market. Democrats have similar one-sidedness as evidenced by actions of the Majority Leader and Speaker adding hundreds of pages to a healthcare bill before anyone can read them and expecting the faithful to vote on trust while failing to communicate in a meaningful way with the party in opposition.

I purposely did not use the term “loyal opposition” as it does not apply. Neither party appears to be loyal to the people and if not to them, then to whom? Pharmaceutical industry? Labor Unions? Oil and Coal interests? The lists are long but it is from these groups that money, the only fuel that really drives politics, comes. Loyalty to those who elected them takes a very distant back-seat in most processes except when it is election time.

Today the American people, two out of three in some polls, are saying we need meaningful changes in how we pay for healthcare. The Republican Party “base” cries socialism to scare us and sadly it does many. Presidents back to Truman have been trying to change healthcare to no avail. Yet the people entrusted to do this have wonderful policies for themselves, their families, and their staff and they are not losing their health insurance. However, by their adamancy not to modify the current system, they are proving they care little for those who could benefit from universal coverage.

Returning to Madison and his use of Plato as one of the foundations for our government: Plato believed that morality must be based on objective truth and must be reconciled with self-interest. That is, morality must be in the interest of the individual. This simple premise is all but absent in the unbending doctrinal approach of party politics today. Politicians speak of the “Founders” but truly they take little or no notice of what these brilliant men foresaw when they gave us our Republic.

Degeneration of leadership is brought about by leaders focusing on the interest of their own offices and with their own profit and not as both Plato and Madison envisaged with the welfare of the individually governed, the very people that elected them. Further, economic self-interest and political power must be kept separate and not be allowed to work in combination to the disadvantage of the state or the people the state represents.

Harmony, Plato believed, is in the remuneration both of the state and the individual. Conversely, a dictatorial government with a disenfranchised people will fail. Division fostered by the conflict between the interests of individuals with those of the state is the cause of this failure.
History has shown this to be correct. Will our grand experiment be next or are we in truth a work in progress that can self correct. Let us hope it is not too late.

Today, the American people are looking to their government to listen to them, not to lobbyists; not to political donors; not to talk radio pundits; not to party spokespersons but to who the first three words of our constitution proclaim: We The People.

Ranting of Revered Robertson

2010-01-31T16:28:00.001-05:00

The Reverend Pat Robertson, he who claims to converse one on one with God, now says that the tragedy in Haiti is retribution for a deal reached with the devil centuries ago by the forebears of the current stricken Haitian people.

From what I have heard and read from this man of the cloth, this should be categorized as a cross between dangerous and ludicrous with more than a little narrow-mindedness, bigotry and senility thrown in.

It sounded to me like a re-make of The Devil and Daniel Webster or more recently The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

His nonsensical claim however is shoddier as it endeavors to explain away the horrific death and destruction of a helpless poverty stricken people by introducing a fallacious claim that two hundred plus years ago their Haitian ancestors made a contract with the devil to throw out the French.

Assuming the Deity chose to get involved in human tragedy: you would have thought He would have had some previous reaction to Genocide in Africa, the Holocaust in Europe or the Tsunami catastrophe in Asia. And yet history, modern and written, does not bear this out: not since Joshua at Jericho at least.

Moreover, the esteemed Reverend’s ranting if considered logically would align the Creator with slaveholders and that, even to real fundamentalists, must, by definition be anathema. Well, maybe not to all of the Revered Robertson’s flock.

Or did Robertson forget God's Covenant with Noah never to destroy the world again; or perhaps he thinks that only applies to floods? Perhaps he believes the Mississippians and Louisianans had a similar contract and therefore Katrina and its aftermath was truly a quasi-legal matter? Now that is predestination!

On the other hand, any time you can make an argument that ends up with blaming the French, there just might be a scintilla of reason!

But I’ll leave that discussion for some other time.

The Humanity of Rush Limbaugh

2010-01-31T16:07:00.002-05:00

I refer to of Roger Ebert’s 'You should be horse-whipped’ comment to Rush Limbaugh following Limbaugh’s twisting American Haitian refugee assistance into a defamation of President Obama. It reminded me of H. L. Mencken who defined a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

I think there may be a better way to quiet this particular demagogue using Florida law to do so. The Baker Act declares that people who are “a harm to self or harm to others” may be involuntarily committed. As we already know that Mr. Limbaugh meets the test of the former though his admitted prescription drug abuse and we can now attribute his Haitian relief ranting as self declared evidence of the latter.

If nothing else it may compel this modern day Joe McCarthy to move elsewhere - assuming anyone would have him.

One last note, my tongue in cheek rhetorical taunting could be an example to Mr. Limbaugh. Sadly however, the use of irony which makes otherwise rude criticism appear somewhat more polite necessitates a degree of second-order interpretation, a sophistication often lacking in people with dementia.

A Scary Number

2010-01-31T15:49:00.004-05:00

I don’t remember ever experiencing the hatred against almost anyone let alone the man we the people elected our President just one year ago. It is not just the vitriolic attacks from extreme right wing writers and talk-show hosts; that was easily but sadly predictable. They are the same people who ignored the fact that the approved federal budgets did not include the two wars because that would show what the country’s tenuous financial condition really was; the same people who eagerly proclaimed belief in a fictitious link between Bin Laden and Saadam; the same people who to this day think that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Remember the appointed leader of the Republican Party, the anointed candidate for President trying to continue the smoke and mirror economics with his utterance “the fundamentals of the American economy are sound” when almost every economist not connected with the party in power said otherwise.

Never mind.

All that is history as is the fact that more Americans died in Iraq than on 9/11 and all the other combined terror attacks against America (Kenya, Tanzania, USS Cole, First WTC); never mind that the raison d’être for the war were wrong and logically therefore the deaths of so many thousands of our young men and women and the wounding of multiple thousands more is by definition of logic morally wrong.

Never mind.

Ignore that, that and so much more. Ignore facts and re-construct history. Most important, don’t write e-mails even remotely criticizing the first nine years of this new millennium; this period that Time magazine has rightly called the Decade from Hell.

Never mind.

Better you think to write or paraphrase or forward to countless others hatred of your, yes your President; the man who has been in office ten months. Tell people he is not qualified because he was born in Kenya; tell people he is a Muslim as if that alone would be bad? Call him a mongrel. Criticize every detail about him, his parents; call his mother a whore and his father worse. Tell the readers that his wife slept her way into college and that her brother is just a dumb jock.

Writing or forwarding these things must bestow a warm and fuzzy feeling; perhaps something to share with your children or grand-children. Your legacy to them; something to be proud of.

While you are at it, don’t bother with “Love thy enemies”.

Create stories about “real agendas”; scare the American people with innuendo about element upon element of one person’s life or decisions or writings knowing that he will not answer because he is what we the people elected him to be: President of the United States and no President ever involve themselves in arguing against such hateful discussions nor should they. Other than President Truman (note to the vitriols: the title goes with the name) who threatened a writer for demeaning his daughter’s singing ability, or President Franklin Roosevelt defending his Scotty, Falla, slander and liable actions are rarely taken by sitting Presidents.

Blame everything that happens even if it happened long before January 20th, 2009 on “the current occupant”. Blame him for dithering when the person who uttered this blame himself ignored the Afghan situation for years. Why should facts matter?

Never mind.

Of course President Obama collapsed the economy and ruined healthcare and made GM make cars that no one wanted and made us dependent on Chinese imports to a level that is staggering. At the same time he ordered the downfall of Lehman and single-handedly created credit default swaps to effectively crash the housing market worldwide. What power this one man has and all in ten months or even more for six months before he was even sworn! Oh and yes, tell people his oath like is birth records was false.

Dig up articles from minor publications written by lesser known people and offer these as evidence of something when the only thing that undertaking proves is the wisdom of the Founding Fathers who gave us the First Amendment.

While you are at it you might want to read it: that one simple sentence also allows people to peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Town Hall meetings driving out people who do not think your way or tea parties that bar any contrary opinions seem to disregard this.

Never mind.

Listen to the Joe the Plumbers; they must speak for America, no?

I see e-mails comparing the President both to Hitler and to Stalin which if not so disgusting would be humorous as these two individuals are tantamount to being book-ends for right and left extreme views. Do the writers know this or even care?

Never mind.

I see a talk show host who after being told by his producer during his presentation that the premise for his daily rant was false as it was taken from a Sunday Satire column responds not with an apology or even a criticism of his writers. No, he responds by saying that he believes that there is some truth in everything and thus he stands by what he has uttered. Not amazingly but expectedly, his followers agreed. Why should we not be surprised with everything else being tossed about for public consumption?

I do not understand hatred or loathing or revulsion; it serves no real purpose except perhaps to incite people to violence. We are a violent people; much more than most other civilized countries. Do we need more violence? Do we need more leaders killed? How many developed and educated countries can count Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy dead; Presidents Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Frankin Roosevelt, Truman, Ford, Reagan who were attacked. That is ten out of 43 - almost 25%.

Do the authors of these writings and those who send them on to millions of people give a momentary thought to the possible consequences? Please let them remember that all rights like Free Speech mandate by designation corresponding responsibilities.

Why am I writing today? I have been thinking about it for weeks but recently I heard a number that chilled me: 400%. Four Hundred Percent.

That is the increase in threats against President Obama since he was sworn in.

Please let us not reap what we sow.

That we must mind.

Learning from Vytorin and Zetia

2008-02-10T15:09:00.000-05:00

Not only should we all be angry at the drug manufacturers Merck and Schering-Plough for not disclosing that Vytorin and Zetia had serious flaws, we must look at the process that allowed that to happen and try to correct it.

Current findings indicate that for two years these companies knew that while their drugs reduced cholesterol, they also increased plaque, the major cause of heart attack and strokes and thus potentially catastrophic.

They did not find this out accidentally. Medical and clinical pharmacology investigators who conducted this study established these findings. Why then did these healthcare professionals not speak out when the manufacturers did not? I would hazard a guess that they were either directly employed by Merck and Schering-Plough or had been compelled to sign a non-disclosure agreement. In either case they cast aside the basic principle of “do no harm”.

In the past studies regarding drug efficacy and safety were far more independently conducted using strict FDA protocols and results were communicated both to the manufacturer as well as to the FDA. Clearly this is no longer the case. Why? We must consider that the staggering amount of political contributions from the pharmaceutical industry to both major parties has made oversight of their activities a sham.

If the FDA had been a party to the study as it should have been, at the very least Merck and Schering-Plough would have been obliged to advise doctors what the study had determined. Conceivably the FDA could have compelled the removal of these products pending further investigation. To hide such results from government agencies and practitioners while continuing to market these products with flashy TV spots to the lay public is reprehensible and without a doubt grossly indifferent to the safety of the public.

We can only guess how many other unfavorable studies are hidden away by pharmaceutical companies far more interested in bottom line profits than in the safety and well being of the American public.

Sadly, it appears the FDA has become as political as many other parts of government whereas its mission was and should be to safeguard the public. Recently we saw a similar situation with the CDC. Surely agencies such as these should be above the petty frays of political interference.

We could of course hope that one or more of the current candidates would pledge to change these policies. Doubtful.

Contemplating Calamity

2008-02-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

This was written in July 2005 in Tanzania

So far all of my work has been in the City and not in the rural provinces and for that I’m relieved in one way because the time pressures to complete the writing are great.

On the other hand, a part of me misses seeing basic primary healthcare provided in a rural dispensary without electricity or running water. It misses the wonderment of glimpsing women trudging miles to fetch water and maybe a few twigs to make a fire and knowing that they do that every day and always will. What I don’t miss is hearing there is no water or if there is that an “entrepreneur” has decided that he will collect a few shillings for the privilege of letting you take water from the stream - or if you have no money – well, you can imagine what the barter system means then. I don’t miss the look of hopelessness on the faces of these women, as they know they will probably become one more statistic to the “skinny disease”.

I miss seeing real humanitarians – not people like me who come and go – but people who came and stayed, stayed because this was the life they chose.

I miss traveling to the villages and visiting with old women with young children gathered around - what I don’t miss is knowing that the children are orphaned from AIDS; that most of them are positive and that she is one of the few adults left alive.

One of the aspects of Public Health that takes some getting used to is that the needs of the many are what drive your efforts and sometimes the needs of the few or the one cannot be answered.

I met a young woman last time I was here; an Irish Doctor, a Nun, who has been here 35 years, introduced her to me. She was HIV positive – not AIDS yet – but nevertheless…She had been a grad student in Greece when she was screened for HIV and found to be positive. The Greek government gave her a 6-month supply of ARV drugs and sent her back home to Tanzania. She told me she had sold the drugs here in Dar! I was speechless. This was an educated, well-spoken woman who knew full well what she was doing and yet that allowed her make that decision. She explained that her family could never have afforded the drugs after the six-month supply was finished, assuming that the type of pharmaceutical was even available in Dar. On the other hand, she could (and did) sell the drugs to a wealthy family and use the money to make her family a little better off.

I knew that her raison d'être was logical; this is East Africa, and accordingly I had to accept her judgment. That still did not make it any easier as we sat there and quietly drank coffee together. She has passed away.

She was the “one” - the “few” - and as for the needs of the many? - I know that someone (not me of course) but someone can and will find a way to stop this scourge. If I did not believe that I would certainly go mad.

Bill Clinton is coming here today; he was in Lesotho yesterday. Lesotho is a small country, completely surrounded by South Africa to whom it “exports” water when there is a drought. There has not been one in a few years now. Clinton told the people there that unless they took drastic measures to curb the rate of HIV infection that their country would cease to exist – reflect on that! A country wiped out, not by war or nuclear winters but by a pestilence that is biblical in proportion. He is right.

Governments must be honest with the scale and intensity of this epidemic.
Tanzania reports HIV solely from voluntary testing and blood donors. Consider the futility of that process in a country with a per-capita income less than the cost of tickets for a Broadway play. Do they really believe that they can accurately estimate the incursion by these simplistic methods? They know better of course but this is an election year and so we hear figures like 4% and 6% - when the reality is probably five times that. The cause of death statistics shows almost no HIV occurrences, partly because of the lack of clinical algorithms to diagnose but also the embarrassment to the families. Yet everyone knows the truth; it is just not spoken.

The very fabric of society is disintegrating as we watch - in a way like we watched the genocide in Rwanda or the horrifying policies of Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Civil servants leave rural postings out of fear; farmers die before they can teach the next generation; teachers die and cannot be replaced; mothers and fathers die; and young girls die because men are…I don’t even know the word.

Is there a future for Lesotho and Malawi and Botswana and Tanzania and so many other places? I don’t know. Perhaps the people and these political entities will quietly disappear into history, the weeping of the “few” being the only sounds to linger.

It has happened before on this terribly beautiful continent.; Conrad’s Africa had a heart but now it is bleeding.

Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
July 2005

Safe Or Not Safe: Drugs from China or Canada?

2008-02-09T15:22:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reported recently that a subsidiary of Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group, one of the largest drug makers in China was accused of covering up contamination of some of its products resulting in serious injuries to untold number of Chinese patients. The same company is the sole supplier to the United States of the morning-after pill known as RU-486.

The FDA has not commented on the situation except to say that RU-486 was made in a separate plant that had passed FDA inspection.

Just a year or two ago the Bush Administration said that it was taking steps to forbid Americans from purchasing Canadian drugs saying that they could not guarantee their safety. Yet they allow their appointed regulators at the FDA to license the importation of drugs made in China. Is this not the height of hypocrisy?

The FDA Commissioner has stated his agency had found "thousands of examples of unapproved and potentially unsafe medicines" coming into the United States from "many countries, including from Canada" and in a subsequent news conference went further, saying there were "lots of examples of unsafe drugs coming into the United States from Canada." Yet both the FDA's director of pharmacy affairs and the Congressional Research Service support the safety of drugs from Canada, reporting that medications manufactured and distributed in Canada meet or surpass quality control guidelines set by the FDA. Comparing this, last year China executed its top drug safety official after he was shown to have accepted bribes. An example perhaps of extreme actions calling for extreme measures but then again it is China.

All the evidence and rhetoric aside, someone in the FDA came to the conclusion that drugs from China were safe while drugs from Canada were not. Does this make any sense to anyone?

The dependence by the FDA on the US Pharmaceutical industry is well documented. Many FDA senior staff leave their posts to take jobs in the same industry they were regulating. In addition, the political contributions from US Pharmaceutical companies are legendary leading to the obvious question: Who is really safeguarding the American people from contaminated drugs?

St Petersburg, Florida

Thoughts and Impressions from Tanzania

2008-02-09T13:26:00.000-05:00

Social and economic underpinnings and their effect on the provision of healthcare

Tanzania is many things.

For those drawn to the vision of Hemingway-esque safaris, of wide savannas and dense forests all under a snow capped mountain, Tanzania is Nirvana. In the Hemingway short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", Harry Street, a lazy, indifferent and cynical writer, reflects on his life, his successes and failures. Today’s Harry judges his success and failure by catching a glimpse of the majestic “Big Five” animals. With energy and passion that Harry lacked, his inheritor’s goals and dreams are met in places with names like Ngorogoro and Serengeti and Selous. Twenty thousand other heirs to Harry’s legacy follow each year, each seeking to see elephant and rhino and leopard and buffalo and lion. Paradoxically, Tanzania’s truly indigenous occupiers remain its largest source of foreign income.

That picture aside, Tanzania is poor, one of the poorest countries in the world. Larger than twice the size of California, 36% of its nearly 40 million people live below the poverty line as reported by the Government of Tanzania. More than half its citizens live on less than 70 cents a day. The GDP per capita ranks 188 out of 194 countries: a mere $800; Gross National Income is $350. As a comparison, in Europe it is $34,000; Latin America and Caribbean $4,800 and even neighboring sub Saharan countries average $850. Tanzania has an external debt of $8 billion and servicing this debt accounts for 40% of total government expenditures. Every World Bank or African Development Bank loan exacerbates this problem even if the project meets its goals. Many do not. It is valid to ask if the purpose of all these study projects is to further learning and understanding or to keep local bureaucrats in their jobs.

In developing nations there is hope; in the underdeveloped there is little but despair. Tanzania is not a developing country; rather it is in that group termed under-developed, characterized by highly dependent economies chiefly producing primary products for the developed world while importing back finished goods; traditional, rural social structures; high population growth; and widespread poverty. Coffee beans are grown and harvested by small landowners, sold for little profit and sent raw to Switzerland to be returned by Nescafe as coffee to be purchased by Tanzanians at high prices. The scenario is the same for cotton returned as clothing and wood as furniture.

The median age of the population is less than eighteen; the birth rate per woman is more than five; infant mortality is among the highest in the world; Malaria and HIV are a scourge; Typhoid, Plague and Leprosy common. The current AIDS crisis, even at its admittedly understated level, nevertheless will decrease the gross domestic product by 15–20% by 2010. If the real incidence is higher as international public health authorities believe, that effect could be catastrophic. Few will live long enough to become contributing productive adults who can pass on skills to the rapidly increasing younger generation. Civil and social order could literally cease functioning within a decade of that happening.

Notwithstanding this the population increases by almost 4% annually. Logic would indicate that feeding this burgeoning populace would seem within the means of an agrarian country. It is not. Though agriculture is the foundation of the Tanzanian economy, less than 5% of its vast land resources are arable. Amazingly, these bleak resources account for half of the national income, three quarters of exports and provide employment opportunities for 80 percent of Tanzanians. Still, hunger is an every day issue for most of the population.

Whereas in Western Europe and the Americas, agriculture was patently enhanced by the use of draft animals, in most of sub Saharan Africa this growth did not happen as oxen and horses were victims of the tsetse fly. Post feudal Europe population centers saw transport systems such as roads escalate as the necessary means to get bigger agricultural production to market. In Africa this never happened. Here, agriculture is transparently local.

Agriculture in Tanzania is dominated by small peasant farmers cultivating between two and seven acres. Without tractors or draft animals, 70 % of Tanzania’s almost exclusively domestic food crops are cultivated by hand. For these difficult tasks, women constitute the main part of the agricultural labour force. Productivity is poor due to substandard skill levels and technology and on unreliable and irregular weather conditions. Simply put, the vast majority of agriculture is grown in individual gardens not farms. Subsistence growing such as this allows a family to produce for its own needs and maybe a little extra with which to barter with a neighbor. Tradition plus the quality of the soil and the lack of irrigation do not permit consolidation of these efforts.

The growth of population coupled with low agricultural outputs has brought the country to the point of being unable to provide sufficient foodstuffs for its own people. The numbers are staggering: 80% of the Tanzanian workforce cannot feed 100% of the people. In developed nations, 5% do so. The textbook short-term remedy is to import food and to pay for it with exports of industrial goods. In Tanzania that is problematical. Accounting for only about 10% of Gross Domestic Product, Tanzania's industrial sector is one of the smallest in Africa.

The industrial sector is also dominated by foreign corporate ownership together with a growing white South African sphere. Thus, even if manufacturing growth were to be seen, the earnings from these efforts would most probably not be retained in country. This is evident now in areas such as gold mining in which the most difficult jobs are performed by local unskilled labour while earnings from these activities are sent overseas after a relatively small payment to the Tanzanian Government.

There exists a small middle class, almost exclusively in Dar-es-Salaam, and is composed principally of multi-generation Tanzanians of Asian decent who account for 1% of the population. Retail shops, information technology providers, import-export companies and cross-licensing operations are most commonly conducted by this faction.

The indigenous peoples, 99% African, representing more than 130 tribes are ranked lowest on most economic indicators. Education should be part of the solution but the numbers of native Tanzanian children completing school are decreasing. In part this is the result of mandatory payments for secondary education which though small, nonetheless in traditional large families means that one or two of the older sons may be sent to school and the remainder, particularly young girls, not. Coupled with this is the growth of fundamental Islam on the mainland and the corresponding drop off of young women attending mixed-gender schools. Finally, the dire economic circumstances of the country as a whole compels parents to have their children work in a desperate attempt to survive. If that was not enough, the effects of HIV-AIDS have impacted the numbers of teachers especially in rural areas.

And what of the health of the people?

UN Statistics and WHO comparisons do not tell the story. They are but numbers on a page; numbers that tell us what health experts in Geneva say about “average” families in Tanzania. Try doing that for America or just Texas. Are the demographics for healthcare the same in Galveston as in El Paso? Not according to the American Psychiatric Association.

Traveling across the wide distances of this or most any other sub Saharan country tells you much more. It tells us that even in major (regional) hospitals, those in larger population centres, seventy percent of the beds are occupied by HIV-AIDS patients. Occupied is the operative word because the healthcare system cannot begin to treat these patients even assuming such treatments were available. Recent US programs may move some of these victims to home based programs assuming that efforts to educate rural communities that they need to take care of these people are successful. Till then, other patients who perhaps could be successfully treated cannot be with often tragic results.

The AIDS crisis has also decreased the number of people entering healthcare occupations in never seen before numbers. Currently district health authorities are reporting 60-70% vacancies in approved positions. Most critical are highly skilled professions such as physicians and nurses. Many who complete their training move on to better paying posts in other countries in Africa or to Western Europe. Correcting these problems is a long term issue.

The Tanzanian government is far from self-directed in forming health policy. International organizations from IMF to UNESCO and AfDB all dictate their requirements before monies are made available. Even within the government, the Ministries of Health and Finance as well as the Prime Ministers Office for Regional and Local Government all vie for control. Decentralization, mandated by the World Bank, has placed decision making into the hands of locally elected officials who too often have little knowledge of the complexities of health issues to say nothing of the financial resources to solve them.

Past government policies ultimately failed because they were inadequately implemented and financed. The same is happening today. The health sector is pitifully under-resourced. The current level of finance provided by the government meets only a third of the requirements of the public health system. Donors fund nearly 50% of minimally targeted total health care spending. The remainder remains unfunded, leading to further degradation of the system.

Tanzania is in an economic crisis and healthcare is no exception. Government health care expenditures are falling, reserves of foreign exchange (needed to import vital drugs and equipment) are reduced by currency fluctuations, and structural adjustment programmes have cut back on allocations to the social sectors. The health of the population has declined; mortality rates have begun to increase, and morbidity rates are rising. Healthcare is in crisis.

Worldwide but especially in third world countries, women are the key factor in health seeking activities. The too often repeated scenario of a mother being discriminated against by male health care staff has a direct negative effect on the wellbeing of children and their mothers. In the majority of rural villages, healthcare is provided by native healers and they are trusted far more than the dispensaries or health centers that are either closed or lacking both equipment and drugs.

Accurate data on burden of disease is questionable. Tanzania is a rural country and an individual’s entry into the healthcare system begins at a local dispensary, a government administered echelon with minimum staff and equipment but responsible for up to ten thousand people. The diagnoses agreed here flow up the information trail and are rarely changed. Consequently, the least trained of the medical cadre are those who determine the initial diagnoses and in turn the statistics that are determined from them. Among the top one hundred illnesses, there is no mention of breast cancer or cardiac disease or leukemia. Fevers in children equal malaria; coughs in adults equal pneumonia or TB. Lack of diagnostic equipment and trained staff dictates this and true or not the numbers are published.

At each level in the healthcare hierarchy, dispensary, health center and hospital, equipment is either non existent or is non-functioning, to an estimated eighty percent nation wide. So deep are the shortages of skilled personnel that even if equipment such as an x-ray machine is available, usually from a donor, there is often no technician to use it; no mechanism to process the film (assuming films were available); no radiologist to interpret the film and most importantly, no maintenance system to keep the machine in safe working order.

Adding to the problem is a lack of transport and communication and many rural locations are completely isolated during the rainy season resulting in no transfer of patients up the line from dispensary to health centres and then hospitals, district and regional. Pharmaceuticals and supplies are distributed from a central purchasing source in the capital city and losses of products over and above well known distribution problems are an every day occurrence.

Resulting from years of bureaucratic mismanagement, government hospitals are understaffed, poorly equipped, under funded and often lack electricity, clean water and basic sanitation. The absence of qualified medical and nursing staff anywhere but in the capital makes even simple medical care challenging. Finally, the little qualified staff that exists is often enticed to the private sector by larger salaries or to other countries where they can have both better incomes and a better life style.

Bureaucracy was certainly not invented by Tanzania but its bureaucrats have learned well how to use their status for personal profit. A multitude of studies, investigations, reports and analyses have been conducted in every region and district, many in healthcare. The results are most often known in advance; the effort merely confirms them and of course keeps more staff employed to write and edit the findings. They also serve to increase the debt as many of these programs are not grants but loans and part of the loan pays the bureaucrats.

To affect a paradigm shift in the provision of effective and consequential healthcare will require much more than the good intentions of the Tanzanian government and donor nations and multi-national organizations. The social and economic underpinnings of Tanzania as a whole must change. The non metaphorical question is: are those changes possible within the context of the political dynamics of not only Tanzania but of much of sub Saharan Africa.

It takes a developing nation to even consider beginning to keep its sick alive so that when well they can return as productive citizens. It is easy to let them die but what is then lost cannot be recovered. Tanzania may never be “developed” but it can become a place of hope, a hope that comes from its own people and then is supported by the humanity of others.

It is far too undemanding to say that Africa must help itself and stop there. Rather, should the collective “we” of Europe and North America accept a degree perhaps not of blame but of responsibility.

That answer is far from easy.

A Catastrophe of Leadership

2008-02-09T12:53:00.000-05:00

A year ago, frustrated with the failure of the newly empowered Democratic leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to do anything meaningful, I changed my party designation to independent. To be true, I have always voted my conscience and that included votes for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41 and even once for the current occupant. Nevertheless, for an Irish Catholic brought up in traditional Democratic Party politics in New York, it was a big step to admit that I was now an independent.

Admittedly, this year’s cycle of presidential primaries made me question if being neither fish nor fowl was a good idea. Initially there were candidates galore. The Democrats seemed to have found a new inner force with aspirants from previously unrepresented social groups: African-American, Women and Latino in the persons of Obama, Clinton and Richardson. Their deliberations with Edwards and the counter-balancing main stream candidacies of Dodd and Biden, were exciting. There were for a time even others including the rather droll Mike Gravel, whose debating approach was characterized by Tim Russert as a family dinner when your eccentric uncle comes down from the attic. It was fun; it was politics; it was American.

In accordance with tradition we culturally went through the peculiarity of pot-luck supper caucuses in Iowa; the polling non-accord of New Hampshire; the bickering in South Carolina and for perhaps its first time, Nevada whose very name pronunciation was national news. Then the supposed non events in Florida and Michigan and finally the long awaited Super Tuesday. Even after all that, we appear to have a statistical tie: Obama and Clinton!

Having witnessed these interminable prefaces and the ensuing commentary from the leadership of the Democratic Party I am more convinced than ever that I was right to quit. Here’s why.

We welcomed proportional voting in the primary but clearly the party leadership did not trust the judgment of the masses. We now realize that there are non elected delegates, not chosen by the people but appointed by the party privileged largely because of Howard Dean’s insistence. Apparently in the Democratic Party, all men might well be created equal but some are more equal. They are the Super Delegates. The end result is that these people, largely elected officials, major contributors, back-room power brokers and, to use a word from my youth, ward healers, could actually be the ones to pick the final democratic candidate for president. So much for democracy or one man one vote and all that other stuff we learned in civics class.

There are voices calling for change. Donna Brazille, a respected member of the Democratic Party, a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, and an Adjunct Professor of Government at Georgetown stated yesterday that if the party allows the so-called super delegates to be the deciders in the nomination process, she will resign from the party. This is very meaningful not the least because she herself is a super delegate. Let us hope there are more with her convictions.

Chairman Dean pompously pronounced after the Super Tuesday results that irrespective of his previous declarations, the question of seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan would be decided by the Party’s Credentials Committee. In reality this is an assemblage selected proportionately by the leading candidates and augmented by twenty five members selected by the Party Chairman, Dean. So, after vilifying the state party leadership and forcing all candidates to sign a pledge that they would not campaign in these states, it appears that Chairman’s prerogative trumps fairness.

For some reason, the erstwhile physician, governor and devotee of Edvard Munch had elected to hold the quadrennial gathering of party faithful in September, a mere eight weeks before the national election. Would the possible become the probable? Woud there conceivably be a brokered convention? Could it be that the rights of the people to select candidates would actually be upheld? Alas, no.

Dean stated that he would not tolerate an open convention and if there was no winner, consensus or otherwise by the late spring he would meet with the leading candidates and knock some heads together to pick the ticket. This sounds more like a Mugabe or Putin form of democracy and makes you wonder why we even need a convention. Tradition I expect. But tradition of the party chairmen brings back memories of Jim Farley but only because he spent much of his time at Yankee Stadium. The names of most of the other chairman are about as well remembered as our ambassadors to Luxembourg.

The party of Jefferson and Madison; of Wilson and Roosevelt and Truman; of Kennedy and Johnson should be very discomfited in the realization that the actions of the current party leadership may well cause whoever is its candidate to fail to win back the presidency.

St Petersburg Florida
February 2008