helping

It was a hot Houston August summer afternoon in 1994. I was the Assistant Executive Director of the Houston JCC and part of my job was supervising the Senior Adult Department. We had the contract for the Area Agency on Aging meal service and were responsible for feeding a majority of the elderly living in the Southwest part of Houston. As is typical in Houston in August we were in the middle of a thunder storm which had already dumped about half an inch of rain. The roads and the bayous were flooding and many of our volunteers could not get to the JCC to collect their delivery meals. 

My Senior Adult staff had picked up many of the routes of the volunteers who could not get out of their houses, and with many more routes to be serviced I then collect my two dozen packaged meals and started my delivery journey. Already the roads were scary, water every where some branches down and quite a few accidents. It was my first three deliveries and the street upon which I needed to travel was closed. Two policemen had their car parked blocking the street. Turn back they said the street is flooded. I, dressed in my suit and fancy shoes, got out of the car carrying the the three bags of lunches for the seniors. It was Friday and on that day we provided a meal for Saturday also. Go back the police demanded this road is closed. I was standing outside my car, my feet covered in a huge puddle of water, my suit drenched but I stood there pleading with the police to let me at least walk down the street to deliver my meals. I am delivering meals I said, if these three people don’t get them, I am not sure they will have anything to eat until next Monday. The police looked at me then the white plastic bags and both said in unison, good man, but go at your own risk. I did.

Sitting in the dark in their living/dining room were the individuals waiting patiently for someone to deliver them some food. The first lady reluctantly opened the door not recognizing me but noticing the white bags. She let me in slowly grabbing the bag and thanked me, thanked me, thanked me. I was ready to just to be hungry she said. The second lady, let me in asked me to place the bags on her counter. She then said she was unable to open the lids of the meals would I please do so for her. She pointed to a room, her kitchen and said there is a knife would I please cut both meals in half give her one quarter and place the three other halves in the refrigerator. I opened the fridge and all I saw was the left over of yesterdays meal, which had also been cut in quarters. The third lady was quite excited to see me. She asked if I would sit and just talk to her for about 10 minutes. She told me that she waits with eagerness for the volunteer to come by as that is the only time she has company. The food was substinance for her physical need, the conversation was food for her brain.

The storm got worse and I found myself climbing out of my car, standing in ankle deep water, delivering meals to people who prayed that even in this horrible weather they would receive their meal. Some people were humble, some angry because I was late, some said very little, some didn’t want me to leave. I started the delivery at 11:00 and did not return to work until 5:30. During the drive I was wound up, worried more about getting there safely and anxious to deliver all the meals. During the delivery I put aside any emotion or actual event of meeting the seniors and concentrated on getting the deed done. 

When I got home, I realized how wet my shoes were and how ruined my fancy schmancy suit was. My body felt cold and I was sure it was the damp rain against the wool of my suit. I undressed, took a warm shower knowing that once dried and out of those clothes I would warm up. I stood under the water of the shower for half an hour, it seemed the water just didn’t warm me up. I stepped out of the shower, dried my body, but the towel didn’t seem to warm me either. I changed into jeans and a fresh new T-shirt, but somehow was still uncomfortable. My stomach growled, I realized i hadn’t eaten anything since I started my meal delivery. I found some left overs but when the plate was in front of me I was not hungry. I thought I had a headache, but after taking aspirin I still hurt. I realized my head didn’t hurt, but rather it was something deeper in my body.

I was no hero, but had I not delivered those meals at least 24 human beings might not have had a meal for two days. I was no hero but had I not made contact with at least 12 human beings they would have spent the next three days in total isolation. I was no hero but had I not delivered those meals I would have never known what hunger, poverty, loneliness, look like and feels like. I was no hero all I was, was one person impacted by and impacting another human beings life.

We are told mainly by the Republican/Tea Party politicians that Entitlement Programs  are evil. We are told that lazy, useless, UnAmerican like shysters are profiting from Entitlement programs. We are told that austerity will bring a brighter future to fruition and that all that the Entitlement Programs do is diminish the promise of America. We are told by men and women who have never delivered a meal to a hungry person, who have never watched a an ill person struggle to thrive, who preach a Gospel but have never read the Bible that helping, assisting, sharing is a bad thing. 

In 1994 I experienced how some human beings needed a village to survive. In 1994 I experienced how having even a bit of something is so much better then living with nothing. It is 2013 and all I see from the men and women calling themselves Republican/Tea Party Christian patriots are only empty, self serving selfish creeps who have never ever witnessed real life. I hear talk of the Sequester all the cut backs and my mind races to the human beings I met on that rainy awful Houston August day. I can’t imagine how they survived or do survive!

who are these people

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman-Sachs and his bevy of CEO’ buds have a problem with American workers.

Blankfein's Goldman Sachs got billions from the federal government during the Wall Street bailouts, enabling him to hold a job that paid him $16.1 million in 2011, and now he wants the rest of us to take a pay cut -- now and in the future. Referring to Social Security, he told CBS "You're going to have to do something, undoubtedly, to lower people's expectations of what they're going to get." That's a second-rate vision for a first world country, and we just voted for a lot better than that. (Ethan Rome, E.D. Health Care for America Now)

Lower expectations are the resolution for this very, very wealthy CEO to solve the problems of debt in this nation. The man who received corporate handouts in the millions feels that too many others are too needy and certainly undeserving of any government support and should indeed lower their expectations to do something as simple as live their life as they grow older. Mr. Blankfein pampered and primal in his love for his fellow Americans is also a spoiled rich guy who has no idea of the needs, desires and functions of he real world. He dares to to kick his well healed heels up and down telling the rest of the non millionaire world lower those expectations cause i don’t want to increase the amount of taxes me or my corporation pay.

Blankfein is one of many Fortune 500 CEOs who joined together under the name "Fix the Debt" a campaign to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to address the federal deficit during the fiscal showdown. This group of more than 90 CEOs is pushing cuts to middle-class programs while shielding millionaires, billionaires and big corporations from tax increases. (Ethan Rome, E.D. Health Care for America Now). 

Cuts to middle class programs, the kind that help feed, shelter, educate and keep healthy the middle class American population need to be cut back, some eliminated forgotten so say these individuals whose taxable contribution to this nations revenues are either nil or void. And arrogantly these men/women pooh-pooh anything  that may raise the standard of living for anyone but themselves. 

We are told we may fall off the fiscal cliff, but in reality not all of US will fall to the bottom bloody and bruised. Nope, people like Mr. Blankfein and his CEO cronies will hire someone else to fall off the cliff or will have purchased  golden parachutes to keep them afloat while the rest of us careen to our death. Who are these people?

day by day

When my sister and I were very young, my Aunt Meercy, would take us to the museum in Pittsburgh. The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh back in the day was a combo history museum with dinosaurs and artifacts from the early days of Pennsylvania as well as a location for fine and contemporary art. Our first journeys to the museum were more like work then pleasure as Aunt Meercy insisted that we actually stop at each exhibit, study it and discuss what we just viewed. Aunt Meercy insisted that we should never ignore the moment, but enjoy the opportunity as it happened. Aunt Meercy urged my sister and I to participate in the here and now. She would add, dreams can only exist from reality. We can never find the future unless we understand why we are in the present. She would also add, the next thing can be exciting, but if you have nothing to compare it to just how exciting can it be? My little sister were too young to understand her philosophy on the here and now, but my Aunt’s actions were learning tools for the two of us to begin the process of appreciating the moment and the importance of being. The here and now, the enjoyment of the moment lessons in life that still resonate with richness and rewards.

Here it is Black Friday, which started on Thanksgiving Thursday for some at 8 pm for some at 9 pm for others at midnight. We were cautioned to warm up, get ready, eat quickly , forget the family get out stand in line and buy baby buy! The moment of celebrating the Thanksgiving Holiday, was not as important as anticipating the Christmas season and of course leaving your family and their holiday traditions behind and buy baby buy. Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, Toys-R-Us employees work comes before family gatherings. Crazed Americans eager to celebrate the Christmas season, not in the celebration of the birth of Christ but in the worship of materialism, let your family share the Thanksgiving meal without you. Look forward, straight ahead, don’t delay, Thanksgiving is just a roadblock an irritant for the Christmas season. But don’t be so comfortable with Christmas Day either, cause the sales on December 26 will blow your minds. Who knows but the sales may start at 8pm/9pm on the eve of Christmas Day.

When did we stop to take the time to appreciate the moment, the meaning of the holiday? When did our memories become less important then the shopping, the time away, the urgency to buy baby buy?

I don’t get it, just don’t understand it, why can’t we, like Aunt Meercy told us to do, stop look at life in front of us and grasp its meaning? Why is the next thing the best thing and the current thing just not important enough to recognize or respect?  Life lived one day at a time seems to be a life appreciated, seems to me many of us just don’t care! Happy Black Friday.

dear john

Senator Mc Cain,

What has happened to you? You came back from a hard fought war as a hero. You demonstrated the ability to endure to survive, to find principle and stick to it. Your nation welcomed you back and we thought we had a man with conscience when you returned; someone who had morals, values and scruples.

Then you ran for president, an office whose heartbeat could lead this nation, but decided to select Sarah Palin as your running mate lacking any serious vetting process, the person who could be one heart beat away from the Oval Office. Your concern for the welfare of the US disappeared and was replaced with a selfish desire to further your own career. You selected a woman with lack of knowledge, biased, ignorant of the history of this nation a person who would rather divide then unite. Your love of country was less then your desire to win.

Senator McCain you lost the election. A better man beat you, a man more Americans decided should run this nation. You became a belligerent, bitter loser, a man who would rather lash out then join in. Even as the newly elected president reached out to you, you tried your best to diminish his victory. You threw a tantrum acting as if the people really wanted a McCain/Palin ticket and snubbed any outreach from the president.

Senator McCain you never cease to make an ass out of yourself. You seem to have this penchant to make yourself a laughing stock. Your run for the senate of Arizona found you flip/flopping on issues you initiated. Where once you were pro on an issue you were con. Where you prided yourself in being maverick, you were on the attack. You refused to to permit your history on issues be relevant, and you happily invited divide into your own homestead.

Now, again your ‘sour grapes’, your poor loser, your inability to find a conscience is shining through and you are kicking and screaming about President Obama and the incident with our embassy staff in Benghazi. You are ranting and raving, throwing out here-say, innuendo and sound bytes to make it seem President Obama is that Kenyan Socialist your party has deemed him to be. You ask for more information, but prefer to speak to the media and miss a major closed door meeting to answer your questions. You select Susan Rice to be the scapegoat for your inability to recognize your election loss to the president. And you display your powers of hypocrisy by defending the horrible misuse of information of Condoleezza Rice, but insist that Susan Rice is a leader of some anti-American cabal. Condi Rice was part of a plan by the Republicans (your party Senator McCain) to lie to the people, and Ambassador Rice preferred he remarks by stating this is what she knew at that moment.

Senator McCain, your service to this country heralded great admiration, your current behavior only warrants admonishment of all you say. You are an angry man who normally would be left alone to pout in his own preconceived misery. But you are a Senator of the US, and your actions have grave percussions for far too many people. Go away Senator McCain, lick your wounds, sulk, bitch and moan about not being the president and just go away. You add nothing but dismal dissent to a nation trying so hard o find consensus. 

Let us hold on to the hero you once were, and don’t leave us with the jerk you have become.

The scary thing so it seems is that even though the GOP, FOX News and the other under the rock critters like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity made up the facts regarding truth and honest, they have also fallen for their own charades forgetting real from fiction. We are told that liars sometimes get so caught up in the machinations of lies they forgo reality for the reality they invented. These anti-American idiots polling numbers were invented, their state-by-state organizations falsified statistics, and their account of who would vote was actually skewed not by the people voting but the misunderstanding of who either who would not vote or be restricted to vote. In other words the best laid plans by the GOP operatives were never attached to anything but a pipe dream. Their constant harangue about voting against the president did nothing to get out the vote for their candidate.

So now we have chicken littles running around as if the sky was falling, and it was they who actually told us the sky would fall. But of course when the GOP talking heads predicted the sky would fall, it was presumed the sky would only fall on the Democrats/Progressive's heads.

Most liars will never admit to their lies. They assume that if a lie is large enough room to hide will be easy for them and weaseling out of admitting the truth will come just as easy. And so when found out to be lying, another lie is hatched in its place. It wasn't us it was you. It wasn't our fault it was you offensive behavior to our lie. We had to lie to keep you from acting like the bully in the first place.  On and on the excuses will mount until the pile of BS gets so large those standing on tip will surely fall.

Holding on to the lie, Sean Hannity still uses words like Kenyan, Muslim to pronounce President Obama not a victor in the election but a fake. Donald trump still utters nonsense of birth certificates to trump the victory of President Obama. Karl Rove with his sinister synopsis of the post election events swears it was Hurricane Sandy that did he and his billionaire puppet masters in. And Pat Robertson announces from his place at the gates of hell that the Gay agenda was the sole reason for defeating Romney.

As scary as is the lying pundents and politicos of the Republican/Tea Party is the millions of Americans who through their own lack of intelligence, bigotry, greed, gluttony, bias, religious zealotry, still believe in fiction as fact. The mere idea that baloney is still being served as the main course for millions of Americans by religious leaders who place Bible over Constitution/far right wing entertainers who place
Ideology over integrity is a frightening thought. Until 'we vs they' is replaced with us, all we will hear is that the sky is falling. The Republican leadership found a friend in fiction. They caressed, cuddled, cared for it. They nurtured it hoping that fiction could eventually be found as fact. And the fact is that even to tis moment, those who speak louder for the Republican/Tea Party still embrace the lies they hatched. All of America will never heal while this cancer still lives.

young adult

Suddenly it dawns on you your children have become young adults. Not only young adults but smart, mature, caring and sensitive adults. You can remember the first day of school, the removal of training wheels from the bicycle, the soccer games, their first kiss filled with wonder and awe, and the the time teen age meant trauma, torment and torture. All of those years traveling slower than a snail at rest, now so far behind you leaving you with a your child as a young adult. Suddenly all of the past has led to your child as a young adult.

When I traveled to Pittsburgh last week, I was a guest in my daughters apartment. Dani expected me to spend the three nights of my visit staying at her place. This was my first time having the opportunity to spend the night at her place and witness my  daughter in her own home. My little girl, set up her household, established her routines, recognized her responsibilities and right in front of my eyes for four days and three nights I experienced all of it.

When did this happen, I wondered? When did my baby turn into a young woman? Where have I been when all of these maturity, maturation, milestones meandered into her life? I knew I was getting older but never realized that the movement of time affecting me was indeed finding its path to Dani’s doorsteps?

I turned 63 on October 21 and for some reason,(I have tried to contemplate and consider all the variables)I have become aware of time; however, time as it relates to me. I have great communications with my kids speaking with them very often, so the news of their lives was never a surprise. But somehow while mulling over my own machinations I never realized how time has affected my kids. Time caught up with me as we stood in her kitchen preparing dinner, sat at her table enjoying our dinner, lounged on her sofa, watching zombie movies on her television, riding in her car discussing things from politics to purpose, gossip to goals. We did all this as father to daughter, adult to adult.

I amaze at how even when something is right in front of you, smack dab in the face it is hardly noticed until you walk right in front of it. I am blessed to be a parent, some blessings I am aware of, but so many more I find and never realized existed. My trip to Pittsburgh to celebrate the wondrous 85 years of life of my aunt provided me with gifts. Suddenly, out of the blue so it seems my daughter Dani is this young adult. Life can be so full of mystery and beauty.

home again

1618A Denniston had been my home for 20 years. Six Buncher’s lived in that three bedroom one bathroom house and somehow we managed to cope, get ready for school and survive without killing anyone. Denniston Avenue was filled with neighbors who for the most part added zest and character to my life. Denniston provided adventure, angst, enjoyment, excitement hope and purpose. Denniston was my core, the relativity of all that made sense, the place that when defined was home. We shoveled feet of snow from our sidewalks, had over twenty people sit around our dining room table for holiday festivals, morned the death of those we called friends and family, sat in the dark as our house turned into a spooky abode during thunderstorms. It was a place where we viewed a double dose of chiller theater cuddled for safety under a homemade afghan. It was a venue for truth, emotion, admittance of both strength and weakness. Denniston then became a place my parents greeted their grandchildren. A place where stories from the past became news and joy for the next generation of Bunchers. 

One by one as is the case when the days turn into months and the months into years, we journeyed further away from Denniston until my mother was left as the only inhabitant. We grew older, and the moments of now became the priority, and the memories of then still around but fleeting and far between. 1618A Denniston became run down, a shell of what it once was and more of a burden then boom. Finally the next phase of purpose found its way into our lives and my Mother, with great reluctance moved and the house was sold. We helped her pack, picking through the last remnants of remembrance and said goodbye. 1618A Denniston the only place I had called home for the first 20 years of my life finally had the umbilical cord cut. 

Last week, while traveling to Pittsburgh for my Aunt’ 95th birthday my daughter provided me with an amazing surprise. Dani, introduced my sister Francie and I to the current owners of 1618A Denniston and they invited us to walk through their home. It had been almost 15 years since I last stepped foot inside 1618A, and now I was able to step inside and grab a bunch of memories that ha been stored away in some undisclosed file. Francie and I walked slowly visiting each room, carefully touching the walls, inhaling the aromas, closing our eyes and opening up our memory bank. The house was so different yet so much the same. It was new yet retained the old, the stuff that words cannot describe but still have meaning. 

The tour took no ore then 10 minutes but the journey to our past seemed endless. Flashes of youth, visions of family, moments of love, longing lingered caressed our souls inviting us to remember and telling us to never forget. I came to Pittsburgh to celebrate my Aunt’s 95th birthday amazed at how much time had passed in my life to find my Aunt so old. I knew it would be a moment filled with joy as well as contemplation. Where had the time gone and how did it travel by so fast? There I was standing in the living room of the house that was so important to my being, and there I was wondering how did all of that past seem so long ago.

The old adage states you can never go home again. Not sure I can accept that any longer. I did go home and in doing so, I learned that the travel back can stir visions of the future. Had it not been for 1618A Denniston parts of who I am today would have never emerged, and that would have left me a whole different kind of person I am today.