Being candid on obvious concerns

Last night, “60 Minutes” did a piece on the continuing forest fires in Australia. The risk has heightened due to climate change on this very hot and dry continent.

One of those whose home has been destroyed is incredulous by the lack of planning and execution by the prime minister and government. She said our country is on fire and the risk will continue and they cannot focus on that? Another person joined others and refused to shake the prime minister’s hand saying “you’re an idiot, mate.”

Not to be outdone, former conservative PM Malcolm Turnbull noted climate change is making the Australian forest fires worse. He referred to climate change naysayers in his own party as “idiotic.”

Their candor is needed. In the US, Republican lawmakers are now pushing the planting of a million trees. This is a good start, especially after twenty years of varying degrees of climate change denial, but addresses only one side of the issue. We need to also stop putting so much carbon and methane into the atmosphere as well as taking carbon out of the air with more trees (and other measures).

I am not advocating the use of derogatory terms like idiot or idiotic, but in the case of the current Australian PM, Scott Morrison, many would not shake his hand after he took a planned vacation to Hawaii while the fires were raging back home. That was not the wisest of moves.

Jo Jo Rabbit – a weirdly profound parody

After its Oscar nomination and attention, my wife and I watched “Jo Jo Rabbit” yesterday. While it is an unusual film, it is entertaining and will take you through a range of emotions. Did I say it was unusual?

Without giving too much away, the story is about a Nazi brainwashed boy of ten whose imaginary friend is his version of Adolph Hitler. The boy discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish teen girl in the attic who helps him pick away at what he has been erroneously taught to dehumanizs Jews.

The film is a parody, but is poignant and powerful as well. It is written by Taika Waititi who also plays the imaginery Hitler. It should be noted, Waititi won the Oscar for his screenwriting. Newcomer Rowan Griffin Davis stars Jo Jo with Thomasin McKenzie starring as Elsa, the Jewish girl. Scarlett Johansson plays Jo Jo’s mother Rosie with Sam Rockwell playing an odd mentor role. Rebel Wilson offers an over-zealous Nazi instructor. Johansson waa nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the role.

Strange as it sounds, the movie is worth watching. Its mission is to reveal how hatred is taught and how interaction with people can change even the most strident of beliefs. There are several poignant moments between mother/ son, Jo Jo/ Elsa and Elsa/ Rosie.

If you have seen it, please let me know what you think (caution to those who have not to beware of the comments for spoiler alerts).

You can never have enough cups of coffee with people

Happy Valentine’s Day. To honor the day, let’s invite a friend, acquaintance, colleague or even adversary for a cup of coffee. An old friend told me once “You can never have enough cups of coffee with people.”

Note, having coffee is a metaphor for getting together. When I was working, getting a cup of coffee was a smaller investment of time and expense than lunch. As a result, it is less threatening. Having to stand in line affords the opportunity to go Dutch and take care of your own cost. And, if one buys, it is not that expensive a gesture, so no one feels beholden.

So, invest a little time to catch up or get better acquainted. I am reminded of how the city of Charlotte broke down some racial barriers after the Woolworth sit-ins and Civil Rights Act. White and Black business and religious leaders went to lunch together. This made a huge statement.

Having a cup of Joe need not be groundbreaking. But, if you are having an email, text or social media tussle with someone, invite them for a cup of coffee.

Face to face in a one to one setting will grease the skids for better dialogue. Decaf works as well.

Forget the original Jesus, follow the new savior

It saddens me the US president is the most corrupt and untruthful president in my lifetime, including Richard Nixon. It further saddens me that some Christian leaders are whitewashing his indecency saying he is God ordained. Really?

At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, the US president followed a speaker who rightfully shared the teachings of Jesus about loving your enemies. He was followed by the US president, who forewarned the first speaker that he might not like what the president was about to say.

The president then proceeded to trash and ridicule all of his critics. With disdain, he took aim at Senator Mitt Romney denigrating his use of a faith to come to a conclusion the president did wrong. He then ridiculed Speaker Nancy Pelosi for saying she would pray for the president.

Conservative author and pundit David Brooks has described the president as lacking empathy and common decency. When we need someone to galvanize Americans or lament over a tragedy, he is not up to the task. He has followed the Machiavelian tactics of dividing and conquering. Even at a prayer conference.

I am not alone in saying the president is a threat to our democracy, running the country in a regal fashion. Yet, he is also a threat to the teachings of Jesus that Christians adhere to.

What may have been even more sad than a corrupt and indecent person trashing and ridiculing his enemies are two things. First, Mitt Romney delivered a heartfelt speech about voting his conscience following his religious upbringing. Second, after the president trashed Romney, people at the prayer conference cheered.

Jesus said to treat people like you want to be treated. The new savior said to make people fear you and destroy your critics.

Those preciously funny memories

You will never truly know how much your parents love you until you have children. But, with families come family memories, some of them are preciously funny. Here are a few to mull over:

– My sons could recite verbatim lines from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” complete with accents. It made for interesting car trips.
– When smaller, these same boys mistook the word “sassy” for “sexy” and took delight in using it as such. After we finally figured it out, I felt obligated to inform of the more apt word.
– My daughter would hold her own with her older brothers. When our younger son became a Pescatarian, meaning he ate fish, but no other meats, she would teasingly tell him and his friends, he was an “Episcopalian.”
– My daughter had dozens of stuffed animals when she was little, but they all had female names. Yet, she was old enough to know, when I asked her the name of a very red cardinal and she gave me a female name, that she messed up. “I thought the red cardinals were boys,” I teasingly queried. She started laughing.
– In our first house, our kitchen table was my parents old contemporary dining table and reupholstered chairs. When another couple came for dinner, the chair our male guest was sitting in just collapsed. Fortunately, he was not hurt.
– Speaking of collapsing, our oldest son was sitting in a small garden area in the woods behind our house. My wife and I joined him and sat down on a wooden bench that had deteriorated with the weather. It came down like a house of cards.
– Our kids shared their friends and we would often have kids, even as they came back from college, in our upstairs game room. Our kids wondered why we knew so much about their friends, but it was a simple exercise of chatting with them before they headed upstairs.

These memories make me smile. I am sure you have a few in your families. Please feel free to share.

Visiting people and places is the ticket

I wrote a few years ago about the wonderful visit we had to New England, made more enjoyable because we reconnected with some relatives. The combination of using a visit to a place to visit people can be marvelous, the caveat is to make sure it is people who you want to be around.

The past few days, my wife and I did a similar kind of visit to my home state of Florida and roots in south Georgia. Starting with my hometown of Jacksonville, we stayed with my brother and visited with his oldest daughter who is temporarily staying with him. The next night, we had dinner with his son, who we had not seen for a few years. It was wonderful to catch up. Earlier that day, we had yet another four hour lunch with my three best friends dating back to grade school, along with their wives. We did hear a few new stories, along with the old, and got to catch up.

The next day we drove to Tampa where we spent a couple of days enjoying its wonderful River Walk and a cool place called the Oxford Exchange suggested by our niece, my brother’s youngest daughter. The key to our trip was to visit with her, which was lots of fun. But, while there, we got to meet our blogging friend Gronda, who I had never met in person. She is a delight and has lived a wonderful life with various experiences, which she shared. We walked to and from the restaurant with Gronda, which was on the River Walk, as we sat outside and enjoyed the meal.

As for meeting our niece, it is lovely to meet her now as a wonderful young woman, as contrasted to the child we saw grow up. Meeting her alone in her new home city was quite fun. We had a nice brunch at the Oxford Exchange which is a rehabbed old building filled with shops and restaurants.

Finally, we ventured north and had a wonderful meal with members of my father’s family in south Georgia. I won’t mention the town, because everyone knows everyone else. There were eight of us, which included the three children (and their spouses) of a man raised with my father after his parents divorced. My dad was brought up largely by his aunt and her husband, who had two children as well. This aunt had helped raise his mother, as her biological mother was not part of the picture.

We had so much fun catching up, trading stories and filling in gaps in other stories. I hope the visits spawn reciprocal ones. It did with our New England trip. In fact, another niece we reconnected with in Maine is coming down for a few days later today.

I cannot emphasize enough how happy we are to have made these trips. I recognize this may not be newsworthy, but let me say don’t wait until it is too late to connect or reconnect.

Bank CEO blasts peers for not seeing inequality (per The Charlotte Observer)

With more interest and advocacy for the disenfranchised in our midst, an article by Austin Weinstein of The Charlotte Observer caught my this week called “Bank CEO blasts peers for not seeing inequality. A link to the article is below.

I have written often about the “haves and have-nots” in America. The disparity has been worsening for years and it now matters more to whom and where you were born than merit. Sadly, the declining middle class and growing poverty problem has been addressed by more trickle down economics and attacks on benefits to help people in need.

Per The Charlotte Observer:

“Kelly King, the CEO of Truist — America’s sixth largest bank — issued an exhortation to the economic elite of North Carolina and the country: We are blind to the difficult lives of many in the U.S. and must work to resolve the country’s educational and economic divides, or risk the consequences.

‘We see what happens when we have this giant divide between the haves and the have-nots,’ King said to bankers and executives gathered in Durham for an annual economic forecast hosted by the North Carolina Chamber and North Carolina Bankers Association. ‘If we have this scenario where people lose hope, they have no sense of opportunity, they’re dysfunctional. They get mad, they get on drugs, they get guns, they start shooting.’…

While there are many origins to America’s widespread educational and economic inequality, King pointed to the perceived failures of American public school system as one of the paramount reasons for the divides in the country. If people can’t read or do simple math, he said, they are effectively left out of much of the U.S. economy.

‘We are cheating our kids and our grandkids of a future,’ King said. ‘They will not have the same kind of life we have had,” he warned, if the current course of the country isn’t changed.'”

We must invest in our children and our communities. Asset Based Community Development means repurposing depleted assets or restoring them to original form. A neighborhood school is more than a place of seven hour education. It offers a community meeting place for after-school programs, neighborhood meetings, civic meetings, exercise classes, etc. Inviting schools, rewarded teachers, safety mind-sets, etc. will reinforce better education for our kids.

King’s admonition speaks to the crisis it is. The US disparity has widened at the same time our educational ranks in science and math have fallen. If we don’t invest in our kids, we really don’t have the standing to speak of American exceptionalism. It is hard to be a shining light on a hill if we fall from the top.

Read more here: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/banking/article239048138.html#storylink=cpy