Maybe the fighting is almost over ...

[The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir singing at
President Obama's second inauguration]

"Faith in America's Future" - that's the theme of today's inauguration activities.

Watching the prayers, the songs, the speeches, the crowd massed on the Washington Mall, I felt the faith. We don't have to hate each other. We can work together for a future that will be good for our country and for us as individuals. We can, as the President charged us to do, make the "values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American."

Inaugurations are times for setting aside differences and wildly celebrating.  While Richard Blanco read his inaugural poem, even John Boehner looked teary-eyed.

The political divisions will be back in full force tomorrow, of course. And yet we Americans are in the midst of some really big changes--changes that may make today's partisan squabbles look hopelessly antiquated in just a decade or two. Today's events are highlighting these changes.

This morning a Hispanic woman justice of the Supreme Court administered the oath of office. An African-American civil rights leader and a Cuban-American Episcopal priest, once a refugee, prayed. A gay Cuban-American, the son of exiles, wrote and read the inaugural poem. Music was provided by a white woman, a black woman, a white man, and the magnificent multi-colored Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.

As a Boomer woman of mostly British descent whose paternal ancestors came to America in 1634, I felt wonderfully, happily, and mercifully irrelevant. Once people like me--well, people like my father--ran America. They did a good job of it in their day, and we honor them as war heroes, institutional founders, philanthropists, and thought leaders. But the day of white Protestant male supremacy is almost over.

It's been a rocky ride as women, people of color, gays, immigrants, and people with unusual religions have moved onto the stage. We've clashed. We've attacked. We've huddled in fear with people of our own kind. But looking at this morning's participants I couldn't help thinking: the changes are almost complete.

Non-Hispanic whites now make up less than 2/3 of the American population; in less than 30 years we will be a minority. WASPs--white Anglo-Saxon Protestants--are already a minority.

When the 113th Congress convened, 101 women took their seats. Three women sit on the Supreme Court. A woman is a serious contender for the 2016 presidential nomination.

People of both parties seriously working on immigration reform and on equal justice for non-heterosexuals. There is rising concern for those marginalized by poverty, race, gender, sexual orientation, and inadequate healthcare and educational resources.

Most of these changes have occurred during the tumultuous administrations of our three Boomer Presidents, Bill Clinton (1993-2001), George W. Bush (2001-2009), and Barack Obama (2009-present). These have been contentious years: change is never easy. It often feels dangerous. It divides people, and nations.

But looking at the people on the inaugural platform this morning, I felt renewed hope. In another decade or two, the changes that are rocking the Boomer years may have produced an America in which people are truly equal--or at least a lot more equal than we are today. "America’s possibilities are limitless," President Obama exhorted the nation, "for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention."

Step up to the plate, youngsters. It's almost your turn.

A short rant about memes and rants

We Americans managed to make it past the 2012 election without descending into civil war. We somehow made it past the fiscal cliff without armed conflict (though who knows what will  happen over the debt ceiling). But once again we are at each other's throats, this time over gun regulation.

It was with great relief that I read the title of a forthcoming book from Johns Hopkins University Press: Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis.

The book won't be available for another couple of weeks, so I haven't seen it yet. I don't know if it is cogently argued, balanced, or even readable. If it's really based on evidence and analysis, though, I hope it will inform policy. So far there is little evidence that today's policymakers analyze any proposed measures much beyond the Congressional bottom line: Will such-and-such a policy help or hurt my reelection chances?

Unfortunately, Congressional reelection chances depend on a public that far too often forms its opinions from Facebook memes and emailed rants rather than from evidence and analysis. Alas, many of the "quotes" turn out to be inventions, especially if they are attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Much of the "history" has little to do with what actually happened (see "The Hitler Gun Control Lie," for example). And much of the data, even when not fabricated, is used in misleading ways.

Memes and rants do not create an informed electorate. They do not help us solve big problems, and they do not help us plan for a healthy future. What they do, if we let them, is drive us to political extremes and make us pawns of special interests.

If we do Facebook or email, we can't avoid memes and rants. We should, however, do our best to keep them from eating our brain cells.

Weight is a red herring

[The Venus de Milo
did not worry about
her BMI ]

Folks, it isn't about weight.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has comforted post-holiday dieters with the news that overweight and slightly obese people actually live longer than people of normal weight. You can read the JAMA study here, or you can read, for example, "Our Absurd Fear of Fat," a lively op-ed piece by Paul Campos,  author of The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession With Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health.

Could we inject a note of sanity here? Weight, in and of itself, tells us very little. The fact that Americans are heavier and less healthy than people in other developed nations, however, may be telling us something we'd rather not hear - and it isn't that we should lose weight.

Imagine that all of us Americans ate three hearty meals every day, including a total of at least four or five fruits or vegetables, four servings of food especially rich in protein (meat, fish, dairy, beans, nuts); and four servings of whole grains (oatmeal, shredded wheat, whole-wheat bread, brown rice, whole grain pasta).

Imagine, if you can, that we drank no soft drinks, no more than one glass of fruit juice (it's better to eat the fruit whole), no more than one or two alcoholic drinks a day.

Try to imagine that we limited desserts to one small serving a day (none is better), and that if we allowed ourselves any other refined carbohydrates (bread, pasta, white rice), we balanced it with an equal or greater amount of whole grains.

Suppose that we well-fed Americans all exercised for at least 30 minutes every day, and that we got at least 7 hours of sleep every night, and that we never, ever smoked.

OK, we're talking fantasy here. But if, say, a hundred people did all those good things for two years and then lined up to be weighed and measured, we'd see thin people and sturdy people and stout people and curvy people - yet, barring disease, they'd all be exactly the weight they should be.

The problem is, we're not doing all those good things. In fact, we're doing precious few of them. And to make up for the good stuff we're not eating and drinking, we graze on bad stuff all through the day. Adults buy exercise machines they never use, and schools remove recess from the curriculum. No one gets enough sleep. Nearly one in five adults smokes. So how can we possibly know whether we're the right weight or not?

BMI indicators and weight charts aren't going to tell us. A person with rolls of abdominal fat and scrawny muscles could easily be in poor health, right in the middle of the normal range. A person who eats good food and exercises a great deal might be lean and supposedly underweight - or, if he or she is of a different bodily build, might be solid and supposedly overweight - and yet be in excellent health either way.

Physical beauty isn't going to tell us, either. Two of the most beautiful women of the 20th century, Audrey Hepburn and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, stayed slim throughout their short lives - but both were heavy smokers and both reportedly had eating disorders, and both died of cancer in their early 60s.

The only way to be sure we're the right weight is to treat our bodies the right way, consistently. If we do that, then our weight won't matter.

By the way, Miss Elsie Rebecca Scheel, the "perfect woman" of 1913, was 5'7" tall, weighed 171 pounds, and was proportioned like the Venus de Milo, but with arms. You can check her out here.