Mensamom’s Musings

We have a movie theater in our town that screens only classic films – ones that you are sure would have been amazing to watch on the large screen when they were new, but (at least in my case) they were new before you were born.  This weekend they were screening It’s A Wonderful Life.  Now, I have seen this movie so many times, I could probably recite the lines along with the movie, Rocky Horror style, but it is still the quintessential holiday film.  There are others, of course – A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th St., and just about any version of A Christmas Carol – but Wonderful Life seems to epitomize that simpler time that we all seem to long for.  The question remains, if given the opportunity, would we really enjoy returning to that kind of existence?  Or can we somehow find a compromise?

I think about all of the technological advances that have come, in a wide variety of fields, and I know that there are many I would be loathe to live without.  At the top of my list would be some of the medical advances that have happened in the past 30 years, particularly in the area of breast cancer research.  When I was 12, my paternal grandmother died of the disease.  At that time, there was no such thing as yearly mammograms, ultrasound to inspect suspected lumps, or even any training on any front for women to self-examine.  My grandmother did not even know she had cancer until it had spread so far into her body that there was not much anyone could do other than to make her comfortable until the end.  Fast forward 25 years.  One day, my mother found a lump.  Within the span of two weeks, she had been examined by her doctor, had mammograms, a sonogram, a needle biopsy and a diagnosis.  Within a week of that she had started treatment.  Last month she met with her oncologist for the last time.  After all, since she has been cancer-free for the last 10 years, he really doesn’t see the need for her ever to come back.

Similarly, the progress that has been made in the area of HIV-AIDS is amazing.  When I was in high school, the worst thing that could happen to you if you had unprotected sex was a disease that required a visit to a doctor’s office and a rather embarrassing discussion that ended with a shot of penicillin.  When I was in college, the worst was a viral disease that you would have for the rest of your life, with some rather unpleasant sores, but there were drugs that would control it.  Toward the end of my college career was the first time I had heard of a sexually transmitted disease that could kill you, but even so, I figured I was immune, as I was never going to be having sex with a gay man.  Today, there are over 30 million people living with HIV.  Part of that statistic is the rampant spread of the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, but the other part is that today, due to medical advances that have occurred in the last 30 years, people are no longer dying of AIDS like they were in the 80’s.  As a matter of fact, with proper treatment and maintenance, an person with HIV can expect to live a normal lifespan, into their 80’s or 90’s, with relatively few HIV-related problems.

I also think about communications.  In Frank Capra’s world, the local police officer had to drive up and down the city streets, looking for George to let him know he was needed at home.  Running out of gas on a lonely stretch of road used to mean hiking for miles or accepting a ride from a stranger.  Clark Kent changed into Superman by ducking into the nearest telephone booth.  Enter the cell phone, and suddenly theses scenarios are obsolete.  And speaking of Superman, no where has there been a better harbinger of things to come than the scene in Superman: The Movie of Christopher Reeve desperately searching for a phone booth, only to discover an open-style pay phone with no enclosure or door.  When cell phones first came into existence, they were big, bulky bricks that were unwieldy tools used only by certain business people.  Today, if you are 12 and your parents haven’t gotten you a phone that allows you to text, surf the net, check your email, play games, take pictures and stream movies (not to mention make calls), you are considered a total dweeb by your peers.  The ability to communicate with almost anyone on the planet at a moments notice is second nature to us now.  I know I have felt lost on those rare occasions that I walk out the door without my phone.  How can I call home to check in?  What if I feel a sudden urge to call my aunt in Seattle while I am waiting in line at the grocery store?  What if there’s an EMERGENCY?  If only cell phone usage was limited to emergency situations . . .

Communication advances have also improved the dissemination of information.  The advent of the 24-hour news channel and the internet makes us all aware of world news any time of the day or night.  I was having a conversation with my husband just the other night about how Nancy Grace’s HLN show anymore seems to be nothing but trying to find the latest missing child.  Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that a missing child, in any situation, is a horrendous tragedy that I would not ever wish on anyone.  But 10 years ago, if a child went missing, it was local news.  They didn’t broadcast it on any national networks, and there certainly wasn’t the attention given to missing children today.  If a child goes missing today, the ability to let the entire country or world know about the situation, post pictures and descriptions, issue Amber Alerts, and get everyone looking for the child greatly improves the probability that that child will be returned home, safe and sound.

The information age has also sounded the death knell for the old door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.  After all, who needs an encyclopedia when one has Google or Wikipedia?  Despite that, when a neighbor held a garage sale several years ago, and had a World Book set from 1987 available for $10, I snatched it up.  It’s not like there is suddenly going to be new information on folks like Beethoven, George Washington, or Elvis Presley.  There is valuable information to be had in an encyclopedia, and even “outdated” ones can be useful.  As a matter of fact, we now have two sets of encyclopedias in our home.  The other set is Encyclopædia Brittanica from the 1880’s.  It belonged to my great-grandparents.  I figure if I am still around in 2080, I will buy another set.  One every 100 years should keep me up to date.  Seriously, having the world at my fingertips is an advance I would not want to give up.  Being able to learn about situations around the world help me to appreciate what I have at home or, conversely, prompt me to try and improve myself and my situation.

In the working world, technology has improved the safety of the work environment, expanded job opportunities to entirely new classes of people, and improved the qualities of the products we buy.  Labor unions gave workers the ability to unite forces and demand better working environments.  Henry Ford’s assembly line revolutionized manufacturing.  The US involvement in World War II introduced women to the manufacturing fields, and equal pay laws helped to level the playing field.  At the same time, child labor laws forced children out of the factory and back into the schools, where, by improving their education, they are able to improve their prospects for employment opportunities in the future.  And in “Research and Design”, the goal of trying to make the latest widget smaller, faster, stronger, cheaper, longer-lasting and more environmentally friendly seems to be never ending.  Computer aided design makes reaching for that goal even easier.  Engineers can “test” virtual models in a simulated environment without the cost of actually making a prototype.  The end result being better products for the consumer at prices that seem to plummet the longer the product is on the market.  Priced a GPS unit or big-screen TV lately?

All of this technology has admittedly improved our lives, but at what price?  I am lucky if I can get my family to unite at the dinner table four nights a week.  Even so, breakfast and lunch are usually in front of the TV, watching something or playing the XBox.  I don’t know most of my kids’ friends because, rather than going to each others’ house’s to play, they party on their gaming systems and text each other late into the night.  If they want to see each other, they wait until they are at school.  Gone are the days of the entire gang descending upon one child’s house to raid the refrigerator and disappear to study or play a game or just “hang out.”  Being able to talk to anyone at the drop of a hat doesn’t mean I am any more connected with those people who are most important in my life.  On the contrary, I think to a certain extent  I take for granted that I can talk to someone at any time, and therefore I don’t talk to them unless there is a pressing need.

For this holiday season, I propose that we all try and take a moment, and make our lives Wonderful.  Take a look at the people around you and really appreciate them for who they are and how they contribute to your happiness.  Look at the value of the quality of your life, not just the quantity of what you have.  Turn off the cell phone and the TV and gather the family for some Christmas caroling in the neighborhood. Invite your friends to join you for Christmas Eve services at church, and repeat the following mantra:

“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.”

Merry Christmas.

I grew up going to church.  I still go to church.  As a matter of fact, in my lifetime, I have attended many churches of varying denominations, and the messages were always the same – Love thy neighbor as thyself, Do unto others, and For God so loved the world, etc..   The problem is that much of the time, very nice, well-meaning people go to the church of their choice, listen to the sermon, recite the prayers, sing the songs, sit, stand or kneel when appropriate, and then go home, feeling that they have met their religious “obligation” for the week.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I have, on occasion, fallen into this categorization myself.)  It is one thing to say, “I believe,” and quite another to put that belief into behavior.

My husband is a Netflix junkie.  He regularly scours the Netflix site looking for interesting things to add to our instant queue.  Recently, he pulled up Netflix and told me, “You need to watch this movie.  I watched it last night, and it was certainly not what I expected, but it was really good.  You need to watch this.”  And with that he started Lord, Save Us From Your Followers.  If you have not heard of this movie, I highly encourage you to seek it out.  It is available for instant streaming on Netflix, and has also been released on DVD.  There is also a companion book (which I have not read, but would like to).  The simple premise of this book/movie is “Why is the Gospel of Love dividing America?”  Dan Merchant set out to discover why “Christians” have gotten such a bad rap over the years and why, if we all agree that Jesus calls his followers to “Love One Another,” we don’t seem to be doing that in our daily practice.  It is a provocative look at faith and how that faith translates into daily behavior.  Several years ago, a minister I knew told me that he believed that Religion had given Faith a bad name, and this movie really seems to drive that point home.

Now don’t get me wrong, this film is not Christian-bashing or Religion-bashing.  It asks the question “What would Jesus do?’ and then sets out to try and answer it.  Would Jesus have a political party affiliation?  Would he be hanging out with the movers and shakers or would he be found with the homeless under the bridge?  And if we are really striving to live “Christ-like” lives, what should we be doing?  Ironically, several of the most “Christ-like” insights come from none other than Al Franken, a life-long Jew.  Franken is not the only notable name that shows up in this film, either.  Tony Campolo, Rick Santorum, Lars Larson, and Tom Krattenmaker also contribute their insights on the subject.  Archival footage including the likes of Bono, President Bush, Bill Maher, Pope John Paul II, and Jon Stewart is also used.  Many times when someone used archival footage under Fair Use, the user will “selectively edit” the footage to help support the point that they are trying to make (see “Michael Moore”), but I don’t get that here.  Merchant uses footage to help tell the story, but his point is made without the footage by virtue of the first-hand experiences shown throughout the film.  Merchant filmed a group going under the bridge for a once-a-week service to provide the homeless food, clothing, and personal hygiene. Watching that segment really made me stop and question what I had done recently to help those less fortunate.

Now, all the way through the movie, Dan Merchant stresses repeatedly that he is not trying to rate anyone, judge anyone, or belittle anyone for things that they may or may not have done in their lives.  He is also not taking sides, by any stretch of the imagination.  What he IS trying to do is “start the conversation” – get people talking about what they really believe, why they believe it, how strongly they believe it, and how that belief can be translated into action.  What results is one of those films that seems to continue beyond the ending credits.  It causes you to stop and think, and then want to talk about what you just experienced and how, if at all, it affected you.

Ironically, as we head, full-throttle, into the Christmas season, we see a lot more people doing those things that this movie encourages us to do year-round – giving to the less fortunate, taking time out of our busy lives to help another, and showing compassion and caring to everyone we encounter.  When I was in my early teens, someone gave my mother a poster at Christmastime that said, “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.”  She hung this poster up in our big eat-in kitchen, where we could see it every day, at every meal.  I teased her in January when she did not take it down with the other Christmas decorations, but she told me she liked being reminded of that “Christmas feeling” even beyond Christmas.  I didn’t understand then.  I do now.  So does Dan Merchant.  I think Dan Merchant is a hero.  Not the kind that rushes forward to face the danger, but the kind that is slowly, methodically, one person at a time, trying to change the world.  And I like the direction he thinks we should take.

I have often been accused of being fatally optimistic.  I can’t help it.  I truly believe that, for the most part, people are good, kind, honest, and hard-working.  I also believe that many of the societal problems that plague our world could be solved with education, compassion and patience.  It was, therefore, with a very heavy heart, that I read an item in this morning’s local paper about a child in Spain.  More to the point, two children in Spain.  As modern, civilized nations, there is no way something like this should ever happen, but it does.

The headline itself is enough to grab your attention, and on several fronts: Mom in Spain happy that her 10-year-old gave birth.  Let’s look at this for just a minute.  The first thing that really bothered me was the part about a 10-year-old girl giving birth.  I have done this.  It is not easy, even for a woman with a couple of decades under her belt.  But a 10-year-old?  At 10, I was still playing with my Barbies and coloring with crayons (I was not allowed to have markers until later, as they did not have washable markers back in the dark ages).  At 10, I was in 5th and 6th grade.  I knew that the stork did not bring the babies, and they came out of the mother’s tummy, but I was still unclear about how they got there.  I don’t even think we had the “girls only” class at school where they taught us big words like “menstruation” and “chocolate” until 7th grade.  Not knowing exactly how old this girl is, she may have been as young as 9 when she got pregnant.  This, also, is doubly disturbing.  First, I am still trying to wrap my head around a 9-year-old who is physically mature enough to become pregnant.  When did that start happening?  Secondly, any time a 9-year-old engages in sexual intercourse someone should be going to jail, whether it is the abuser who committed the sex act (in this case, the “abuser” is the girl’s 13-year-old ex?) or the parents who allowed the sex to take place.  There will never be any circumstances or evidence that will convince me a 9-year-old is mentally mature enough to handle sex and all that comes with it.  Case in point, did you hear about the 10-year-old who gave birth in Spain this week?

Now, let’s go back to our original headline.  “Mom in Spain happy . . . “ Happy?  Really?  Happy that her daughter has had a child of her own?  Either this mother is completely delusional or she is terribly uneducated (For clarification purposes, from hereon out, I will be referring to this woman as the Grandmother.).  I believe that she may be both an uneducated and delusional woman who just doesn’t know that certain things should never be done.  The story details how this Grandma is a Romanian Gypsy and how these things are commonplace in their culture.  Now, none of the people in this story are actually identified, but the reporter does mention that the Grandmother appears to be in her 30’s.  If this sort of behavior is so common in her culture, shouldn’t she appear to be about 19 or 20?  After all, if she was only 10 when her daughter was born, that would put her at about 20 now.  But she’s not.  She’s in her 30’s, which means that she was at least old enough to know what she was doing when she got pregnant with the new mother.  Or, maybe Grandma was a horrible disappointment to her own parents, having waited so long to have children.  In any case, apparently the 10-year-old had been “married” to the 13-year-old Romanian father, but the couple is now “separated” and Mother and Grandmother moved to Spain about two weeks before the birth of the new baby.  Grandma has indicated that the family is planning on staying in Spain, so it is unlikely that Daddy will have anything to do with his new daughter, not that he would really know what to do with his new daughter.

Which brings us back to the part about someone going to jail.  Spanish authorities are at a bit of a loss regarding how to proceed with this situation.  There are several aspects that have them stymied: 1) The criminal behavior in this case, i.e. the sex act, took place in Romania, not Spain; 2) the “perpetrator” is himself a minor, and therefore also not legally able to engage in sexual behaviors; and 3) the “perpetrator” is still in Romania, not Spain, and with all of the above noted, Spain may not have any jurisdiction over him.  OK, so let’s shift focus to the Grandmother.  Obviously, she became aware sometime in the past 6 months that something unusual was going on with her daughter.  Based upon the body types of your typical tweenager, Mom probably began developing her “baby bump” roughly 15 or 20 minutes after having sex, so Grandma had to know something was up.  For all we know, Grandma was the one who arranged the “marriage” of her daughter to the young Casanova, in which case an argument could be made for her part in child trafficking offenses.  However, again, the offending behavior occurred outside Spanish jurisdiction 8 – 9 months ago, and, even more frightening, situations similar to this are somewhat common in Romania.  The Romanian government seems to have let the cultural “norms” of its Roma Gypsy population drop way down on its priority list, so laws like making sure all children attend school until age 16 are largely left unenforced.  Too bad, because if Romania was keeping a better eye on its children, situations like these could be dealt with much sooner than after one child gives birth to another child.

I want to believe that people are good, kind, honest, and hard-working, but when I hear about things like this, it is like a sucker punch to the gut.  I imagine my niece sitting in a hospital room somewhere clutching a baby and listening to the nurse try and explain the complexities of breast feeding, and it sends chills down my spine.  Global warming and nuclear war are not what will bring an end to civilization as we know it.  It will be a systemic rotting from the inside unless we wake up, smell the coffee, and begin a global campaign to bring human rights and education to every person on the planet.  Only by educating the world population and bringing the awareness of human rights and behavioral expectations to those outside modern society will we be able to end tragedies like this.

Every once in a while, I stumble upon a tidbit that reassures me that the modern experience is truly a universal one.  This time, the story comes to me by way of a silly email I get once a week from a website that does nothing more than compile odd little news stories from around the globe.  They got it from The Guardian in London, who got it from the Calgary (Canada) Herald, who got it from the Associated Foreign Press, who got it from the official state news service in China. So, in a way, the story is third- or fourth-hand, but I did take the time to look up the original Calgary story, so I feel rather confident sharing it here.

To set the scene: You see a trailer for a film you are interested in seeing.  You go to the bank and speak to your friendly loan officer and see if you can get enough money scraped together to pay the current going rate for a movie ticket (OK, I might be exaggerating here).  The paper says the movie starts at 7:30, so you diligently arrive at the theater at 7:20, buy your ticket and popcorn, and are snuggly in your seat promptly at 7:30.  At which point the “Coming Attractions” begin.  It is a modern nemesis, and it seems that there is nothing you can do about it, but one woman in the People’s Republic of China is taking back the power.

Chen Xiaomei, who just happens to be a lawyer, actually sued her local movie theater for wasting her time with 20 minutes of movie trailers.  Granted, it will be a token suit, as she is only requesting damages that total about $12: actual damages of her ticket price, and the ticket price again, plus $1 as punitive damages for the Chinese equivalent of “pain and suffering”.  She is also asking for a written apology and calling for pre-show ads to total no more than 5 minutes, with the actual ad times being listed in the paper along with the movie times.  The whole thing will probably come to nothing, but it is the principle of the thing that impresses me.

After all, how many times have you sat in a darkened theater thinking, “Can we just get on with it, already?”  I know I have, and I have always felt helpless to do anything about it.  If you take into consideration that there are going to be trailers, and arrive fashionably late, then you have to try to find a seat in the dark.  If you arrive on time, you have to sit there and watch the  best 4 minutes of every movie being released in the next 18 months, along with the repeated “commercials” requesting you turn off your cell phone (I use that time to text friends).  The longer these ads and announcements go on, the more restless and bored the audience gets, so they start talking to each other, and the next thing you know, you have missed the pivotal first 45 seconds of the movie because you were eavesdropping on the woman in front of you who was describing her recent gallbladder surgery to her companion.  You have just wasted $7.50 (or more if the movie is 3-D).  Now you only have two choices (OK, really you have three, but personal ethics prevent me from encouraging anyone to illegally download current run movies): you can either pay another ticket price and see the movie again, or you can wait for it to come out on DVD or Netflix and buy or rent it.  Either way, since you have already missed the first 45 seconds, the entire rest of the movie will be ruined.  You might as well have stayed home.

I hope Ms. Chen wins.  I hope her local theater is suitably chastised and slapped on the wrist, and I hope that the rest of the world sits up and takes notice.  Who knows, maybe this time next year, the local paper will be listing: “Doors open at 7:15, actual movie time at 7:53.”

Ver·klempt´ – adj.  To be overcome with emotion; extremely emotional.

Maybe it is a sign of getting older, or maybe it is just hormones, but I am finding that more and more things affect me in ways I did not foresee.  On the first day of school, I watched the 3-yr-old climb (literally, climb because they are so big) up the steps of the school bus and head to his new preschool.  My best friend asked me if I was OK, or did she need me to come over and give me a shoulder to cry on.  I told her I was fine, and I was.  To me, watching my child go off to school is no big deal.  I am excited for him and the adventures he will have there, but there are other things that have me totally bewildered.  And the ironic thing is that most of them are things that don’t even directly affect me personally, it is just the situations that get me all choked up.

There are some that I have come to expect.  Movies with tragic stories fall into this category.  You know the kind – the ones where, when you ask someone if they liked the movie, they say, “I cried during the movie, but it was a good cry.”  I am not really sure what that means, but if I am planning on seeing one of these, I make sure I have some tissues along.  I also have difficulty when I hear about harm coming to a child, but not just any harm.  When I read the paper and there is a story about a parent or other caregiver who did something to injure or kill a child, I don’t get upset, per se, I get angry.  There is no Hell good enough for those people who would willingly injure a child.  No, it is the stories of children dying from a dreadful cancer they couldn’t overcome or being hit by a car while playing that get to me.  Those “There-but-for-the-Grace-of-God-go-I” situations hit me right in the gut.

More recently, I have found myself getting worked up over those things related to pride and patriotism.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am very proud of who I am and where I come from, but I never considered myself a Flag-Waving, G0d-and-Country kind of girl.  However, things are beginning to change.  Things like the singing of our national anthem.  I have heard this song and sung this song thousands of times in my lifetime, but nowadays I find it difficult to get all the way through the song without a catch somewhere.  I choked back the tears when I saw workers in New Orleans rebuilding after the devastation of Katrina.  I held my breath while the waters climbed the banks in Nashville and prayed for the kids from our church who went to the scene three weeks after the floods receded.  And I have cried outright when seeing troop-related coverage on TV and in person.

The most recent event that caught me off-guard occurred this morning.  For the past several days, the local paper and news media have been covering the story of a local man who joined the Marines and was killed in Afghanistan.  Several friends on Facebook had posted comments related to honoring fallen heroes, but most were the generic sort of messages you see at times like this.  This soldier returned home earlier this week, and his funeral was this morning.  Until 10 days ago, I had never heard of this man.  I never met him or his family.  To the best of my knowledge, our paths never crossed.  I did not attend his visitation and was at work this morning during the funeral.  I had read the stories in the paper and looked at the pictures, but none of it meant much to me until I was at work this morning and saw the fire department blocking off our road at the corner.  I was a little confused, until I realized that the funeral procession to the cemetery was about to pass by.  The procession was amazing.  I can’t remember ever seeing anything like it.  It was led by two motorcycle officers, followed by a contingent of police, fire, and sheriff’s department vehicles, all with lights flashing.  Next came the motorcycles – 40 or 50 riders on a variety of bikes, some single riders, some with passengers behind, a few flying large American flags off their back bumpers.  The hearse, the limos, and the throng of assembled friends and family followed.  Trucks and cars with flags.  SUVs with farewell messages written on the windows.  It took a full 20 minutes for the entire parade to pass by.

As the procession was approaching our building, I was right in the middle of helping one of our customers.  As the cars went by, time seemed to stop.  I lost all track of what I was doing, and found myself staring, with one hand over my open mouth, while tears flowed silently and unceasingly down my face.  I stood there, watching, and was completely unaware of anything around me.  Nothing seemed to exist except this solemn, quiet parade passing by.  Slowly, I started to regain my sense of place and become aware of my surroundings.  I have no idea what the woman I was helping was thinking, but she seemed rather put out that she would not be able to jump in her car and drive away, as all the roads were blocked off.  I was appalled as I overheard another customer make a comment to the effect that if someone was stupid enough to join the military, they deserved whatever they got.  Right then, my sorrow turned to anger, and I just wanted to scream.  For the life of me, I could not wrap my head around how this person could be so callous as to not be affected by the devastation that this young man’s death had caused those who loved him.  I realized then how lucky I am, not only to live in a place where a young man would voluntarily sacrifice his life for his country, but also to not be so jaded that I am unable to appreciate that sacrifice.

Rest in peace, RJ.  You did good.