Let's talk about food: Naked, no doubt hungry, and definitely not ashamed

[Rodin, Le baiser]

It's odd that Christians--people who claim to believe that God created the earth, sustains it day by day, and intends to create a new earth--are often so mixed up about sex and food. How long would the earth's inhabitants last without coupling and eating?

And yet most Christian writers right up to the 16th century praised celibacy, sexless marriages, and arduous fasting. Bless Martin Luther for loving his wife (and the beer she brewed), but lots of us still seem to think that good sex and good food--if not actually sinful--are at least pretty low on the religious values hierarchy.

Has it escaped our attention that, according to our most sacred literature, God made a naked male and a naked female, put them in the midst of grain fields and orchards, and told them to multiply?

Have we noticed that, in the great poem that is the last book of Christian scripture, the celebration of the triumph of good over evil is portrayed as a marriage supper?

Why are we so nervous about our bodies?

Well, such nervousness has a long history. Philosophers going back at least as far as Plato have favored the soul over the body. St. Paul often sounds like he does too (though theologians, e.g. E.P. Sanders, point out that his spirit/flesh dichotomy isn't really talking about the soul vs the body at all). And the Roman Empire was full of teachers who posited a radical dualism between soul and body--with the soul, of course, on top. The author of the first letter to Timothy described such teachings, and rejected them:

They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer (1 Timothy 4.3-5).

I wanted to illustrate this post with a painting of Adam and Eve enjoying themselves in paradise. I thought it would be easy to find: just Google "creation" or "paradise" or "Eden," throw in "Adam" or "Eve" to narrow the search results--piece of cake, right?

Sadly, no. Just about every painting that came up was about the Fall. Eve having a chat with a snake. Eve sharing her apple with Adam. The primal pair fleeing Eden, earnestly hiding their genitals.

My Google search discovered no rejoicing in the beauty and goodness of the fresh-made earth. No sumptuous breakfasts prepared by the Creator for the wakening humans. No primordial picnics au naturel.

Just guilt.

Hey, Christians, can't we do better than that?
_______________________________

This is part of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'll be leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll post about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.

Death with Dignity

Seneca the Younger committing
suicide with the help of his friends,
A.D. 65 (Luca Giordano, 1684)

Next month Massachusetts voters will decide whether to allow "Death with Dignity," aka physician-assisted suicide. If a majority vote yes, Massachusetts will become the fourth state (after Oregon, Washington, and Montana) to allow a licensed physician "to prescribe medication, at the request of a terminally-ill patient meeting certain conditions, to end that person’s life."

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a Catholic priest and fierce right-to-lifer who weighed in on the issue in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, plans to vote no.

In "Please Step Back from the Assisted Suicide Ledge," Pacholczyk argues that physicians who provided lethal medications would destroy public trust as surely as policemen who provided guns or lifeguards who provided millstones (millstones?) to despondent people. He then offers two anecdotes: one about a woman who felt betrayed by her grandparents' joint suicide (they did not have a terminal illness, and their deaths were not physician assisted, so her story does not apply), and the other about a friend with multiple sclerosis who is glad he's still alive to enjoy his grandchildren (nobody is suggesting that PAS be mandatory, for Pete's sake, so this story doesn't apply either).

Father Pacholczyk makes me embarrassed to admit that I too would vote No.

I'm not going to make an argument here. I'll just point out that, when it comes to dying, there are more than two or three choices. Some people believe dying people should be kept alive for as long as medically possible, no matter how they or their families feel about it, no matter how much suffering is involved. Other people believe that, in extreme cases, doctors should have the right to administer lethal drugs to dying patients (euthanasia). Physician-assisted suicide lies between these two positions. So do hospice care, palliative care, and other dignified alternatives to either prolonging suffering, on the one hand, or causing death, on the other.

I believe that a lot of people support physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia because they fear they have only one alternative--to be kept alive for days, weeks, months, or even years of misery through painful interventions. Extremism breeds extremism. There are other approaches to terminal illness, however, as Bill Keller's excellent article in Sunday's New York Times points out. Last month Keller's father-in-law, Anthony Gilbey, died in a U.K. hospital of inoperable cancer. In "How to Die," Keller describes the older man's six-day dying process and the decisions--personal, medical, and political--that made his death dignified, loving, and peaceful. "We should all die so well," Keller concludes.

The approach used with Mr Gilbey, the Liverpool Care Pathway, doesn't appeal to extremists on either side, says Keller. "'Pro-life' lobbyists ... portray it as a back-door form of euthanasia.... Euthanasia advocates ... say it isn’t euthanasia-like enough." It is, however, realistic, compassionate, family oriented, spiritually sensitive, and sensible. It allowed Mr Gilbey to die at peace with God and his family, knowing he was loved.

The Liverpool Care Pathway is the standard approach "in most British hospitals and in several other countries [where, by the way, assisted suicide is illegal] — but not ours," writes Keller. "When I asked one American end-of-life specialist what chance he saw that something of the kind could be replicated here, the answer was immediate: 'Zero.'"

Learn more about how we Americans could choose to die with dignity, if only we were willing to give up our politically exacerbated extremism. Read Bill Keller's moving (and short) article. Click here.

Dear Mr. Romney: Don't lie. Care.

Dear Mr. Romney:

I am a woman. Like most other women, I am not likely to vote for you. Your unpopularity among women worries you, I know. That's no doubt why you're claiming that Mr. Obama's policies have been disastrous for women's jobs. Promoting a cynical lie, however, is not a good way to attract women's votes.

These days the word lie is thrown around too often and too loosely. Since I am accusing you of using a lie--a serious charge--let me define my terms. A lie is a statement intended to deceive. It can be nonfactual or factual; the speaker's intent is what matters. President Bush was probably not lying when he said Iraq had WMD, even though they didn't. If he believed what he said, though it was untrue, it was not a lie.

By contrast, when your press secretary tweeted that "92.3% jobs lost under [Obama} r women's," she was making a true statement. She may or may not have intended to deceive: I don't know if she paid attention to all the relevant facts before tweeting. By now, though, the facts have been checked, and you have no excuse for repeating her claim on your website. To do so is to turn truth into falsehood.

Here are the facts: The recession officially began in December 2007, while Mr. Bush was president. From that date until June 2009, six months into Mr. Obama's presidency, men lost some 5.3 million jobs while women lost about 2.1 million. This is a typical pattern, says Betsey Stevenson, a business and public policy professor at Princeton University: "In every recession men’s job loss occurs first and most, with unemployment rates for men being more cyclical than those of women’s."

My mother finished secretarial school and began her first job in 1929, the year the Great Depression hit. She managed a small office for maybe half a dozen church administrators--all male, of course. Then the stock market crashed, donations plummeted, and most of the men were let go.  Before long the only people left in the office were the president and my poorly paid 20-year-old mother.

That's how it has always worked. Men lose jobs first; women lose  jobs later. Still, with women making up 47% of the labor force (2010 figures), they "account for just 39.7 percent of the total" jobs lost from the beginning of the recession to the present. It is grossly misleading to imply that the recession was caused or worsened by Mr. Obama, and that it was harder on women than on men. You need to distance yourself from that claim, not promote it.

The recession was indeed hard on many women--and on just about everybody else except people in your income bracket, Mr. Romney. I suspect you truly believe that you are better suited than Mr. Obama to restore America's prosperity. Do you want women to give you a chance to try? Then forget about badmouthing the president. Instead, show us you care.

A lot of us, as you've pointed out, need work. How would your administration help us meet our obligations and feed our families until we find it? A lot of us, or our family members, have serious health problems. How would you help us pay for medical care? A lot of us want to strengthen our public schools. How would you improve the quality of elementary and high school education? A lot of us would like to send our children to college. How would you make higher education affordable? A lot of us are concerned about the effects of pollution on our families' health. How would you keep our food and air clean? A lot of us are getting older and frailer. How would you deal with our needs for housing and medical care?

I know that some vocal Americans believe the federal government should do just about nothing except arm our young people and send them out to kill. I know there are people who cry "socialism!" whenever the government tries to make people's lives better. Fortunately, most Americans disagree with such extremists. And yet there are honest differences between conservatives and progressives as to how the common good is best served.

Mr. Romney, if you have ways of serving the common good that you think are more effective than Mr. Obama's ways, please tell us about them. Don't worry about your supposedly stiff persona; it doesn't bother us nearly as much as it bothers the press. And don't try to scare us with lies and negative ads. That just turns us off. If you convince us that you care about us when we need help, and if you offer us solutions that will help us survive and thrive, we will listen. Otherwise, we'll vote for the candidate who does.

Why even hard-working, frugal, clean-living Tea Partiers may someday need Social Security and Medicare

I have to ask myself: am I part of the American majority who wants to scale back government expenses – as long as none of my personal benefits are touched?

I confess: I will turn 63 next week, and I don’t want Social Security or Medicare reduced or – heaven help us – privatized.

I have personal reasons.

My husband and I have been saving heavily for 20 years, have paid off the mortgage on our modest house, have nursing-home insurance policies, and have no debts whatsoever. Nevertheless, our retirement accounts have been significantly diminished by the recession of 2008–11, and the future of stocks and bonds does not look good. Without Social Security to supplement our savings, we’d have a rough retirement.

Both of us take good care of our health. We’ve never smoked, and we exercise daily. We eat no red meat, few desserts, and lots of whole grains, vegetables, and fruit. My weight has always been right where it’s supposed to be, and his isn’t far off. Nevertheless, I’m scheduled to have open heart surgery later this month, and I will need to have costly check-ups and possibly medications for the rest of my life. Without Medicare, I’d probably have a very short retirement.

So yes, I’d much prefer that we strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and our entire health-care system and stop paying for 46.5 percent of global military spending, for example.

But my reasons are not entirely personal. Although my husband and I are the kind of people Republicans love (and Jesus worried about), we will be in trouble if the senior safety nets come down, right along with people who have had to face unemployment, divorce, foreclosure, addictions, natural disasters, accidents, disabilities, and catastrophic illness; right along with people who don’t know how to manage money, who abuse their health, and who long ago stopped thinking about tomorrow (see my previous post, "The United States of Florida").

Really, folks, this isn’t a question of deserving. As Jesus pointed out, God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). God may or may not be the sender, but I’ve noticed that crap falls on both the good and the bad as well. We all benefit from God’s grace, and we’re all just one step away from catastrophe.

Government programs can’t give us comfortable lifestyles if we have no job and no savings. They may not be able to give us good health if our bodies are faulty or abused. They can’t keep us from getting old and dying. What they can do is help us – all of us who need help – have food, shelter, and necessary medical care.

If this means additional funding – a payroll tax on all earned income, for example, and not just the first $106,800 – so be it. If it means ending President Obama’s extremely unwise payroll tax holiday , so be it. If it means I have to pay more taxes, so be it.

Our government is not only of the people and by the people, it is also for the people. May Lincoln’s vision of a nation dedicated to the common good not perish from the earth.

______________________________

P.S. I’m not saying that Social Security and Medicare are our most important social programs, by the way. Nothing is more important than educating our young, and comparative test scores show that the U.S. is in trouble here (22nd place in math!). Still, many of our suburban schools are excellent. We say we believe in equality of opportunity: what are we doing to assure that all of our children, no matter where they live or how much their parents pay in property tax, have access to good schools?

Social Security , individual responsibility, and the common good

Several of my conservative Facebook friends responded to yesterday's post about Social Security. I commented that "my dad, who was born in 1910, used to thank God every day for Social Security. Beforehand, he said, Grandpa too often lived in a tiny unheated room in the attic."

One of my friends responded, "LaVonne, I would be willing to bet money that your father would have done fine had he been allowed to keep what is taxed away in Social Security. What would he have been able to do had his lifetime income been 15-20% higher?"

My first response is historical: his income would not have been 15-20% higher, because payroll taxes gradually increased between 1937, when the first taxes were levied, until 1975, when he retired. Combining his tax and his employer's, he actually paid at a rate of between 1% and 5.85% (you can check the table here). If my dad had had that extra money, I'm sure he would have saved it - but it would not have financed his retirement.

My second response is practical. Yes, Facebook friend, at today's rates a person could take that extra 15% a year and finance his or her own Social Security. That is, if the person never was overwhelmed by huge educational loans, never lost his or her job, never lost a wage-earning spouse, never decided to use the extra money for the kids' college education or to pay down a mortgage or for catastrophic illness, never was disabled, and never ever spent the money on a vacation.

But now back to the real world.

Look at what's happening with 401(k)s. The theory behind 401(k)s, like my Facebook friend's theory about Social Security, was that individuals could save for their retirement more efficiently than their employers could. Maybe they could, but very few do. As I pointed out in my previous post, the average 50-something American has saved $29,000. If that person needs $50,000/year (before taxes and medical insurance) to live on during retirement, that person is going to need to have a savings account of $1.25 million dollars, or - if he or she gets the average Social Security benefit of $1164/month - a mere $900,800. According to this nifty goal calculator that takes varying interest rates, inflation, and personal parameters into account, our average wage-earner would need to save $1101.22/month for 40 years in order to save up that $1.25 million. And yes, it could be done - by perfect people in a perfect world.

My third response is moral. My dad would have provided for himself, and probably could have, since he was never jobless, had work with good benefits, was never widowed, and was retired for only 20 years, dying just before a debilitating illness completely exhausted his resources. But my dad wasn't thinking only about himself. He was thinking about his responsibility, as a Christian and as a citizen, to the people that used to be called "the less fortunate." He did not want public social programs cut - even if he would benefit by not having to pay taxes to support them - because he believed they were necessary for the common good.

Is Social Security the best way to assure the well-being of widows, orphans, the disabled, and the elderly? So far, it's the best we've got. No doubt it could be improved. There may be other, better ways to achieve the same goals: if our politicians were all working to serve the common good, their policy debates would serve to strengthen our programs. Sadly, the loudest voices in the land are preaching individual liberty without community concern, or community concern without individual sacrifice, or sacrifice for future generations but not for us.

GIVE SMART - three ideas for making your charitable donations count

A lot of us don't have as much disposable income as we had two or three years ago. Some of us have a lot less. But Christmas is coming, and we still want to give. "It is more blessed to give than to receive," Jesus said (Acts 20:35). Giving makes us feel rich.

Giving is up in 2010, and for that we rejoice. But, warns an article in yesterday's Business Wire, "the small rebound hasn’t been enough to help many nonprofits that are grappling with staff and service cuts even as demand for their services has increased."

It would be great if we could give more. Some of us, if we're honest with ourselves, could do just that. Most of us, though, could give smarter.

How can we make our donations do the most good? Here are three suggestions.

1. Check out charities before donating.
Some charities are outright scams. Some are woefully mismanaged. Even ethical charities differ in their effectiveness - that is, in their ability to get our money to the people we're hoping to help. Before writing those checks, go to Charity Navigator and search for your favorite charities. Beware of any organization that rates less than three stars.

If you have time, browse the website. The top ten lists are especially interesting: for example, "10 Highly Paid CEOs at Low-Rated Charities" and "10 of the Best Charities Everyone's Heard Of." Or look through the entire list of 1770 (as of today) four-star charities.

Charity Navigator does not cover all charities, however. Some excellent not-for-profit organizations fall outside their specifications. If you are interested in a charity that is not listed there, check it out some other way. GuideStar offers information (including tax returns) on a wide range of charities. MinistryWatch profiles and rates primarily Christian ministries and charitable organizations. Or check out Charity Navigator's article, "6 Questions to Ask Charities Before Donating."

2. Give bigger checks to fewer charities.
If you're used to contributing to several charities, it feels somehow wrong to take several off the list. But $1000 given to one charity does more good than $100 given to ten charities, and $100 given to one charity is more effective than $10 given to ten charities. Number 9 on Charity Navigator's "Top 10 Best Practices of Savvy Donors" is this: Concentrate your giving. They explain:

When it comes to financial investments, diversification is the key to reducing risk. The opposite is true for philanthropic investments. If you've really taken the time to identify a well-run charity that is engaged in a cause that you are passionate about, you should then feel confident in giving it a donation. Spreading your money among multiple organizations not only results in your mail box filling up with more appeals, it also diminishes the possibility of any of those groups bringing about substantive change as each charity is wasting a large percentage of your gift on fundraising and overhead expenses.

See, when you give a small gift, you barely pay for the expense of all those letters that start coming your way begging for more gifts. In order to make your gift profitable, many charities sell your name to other charities, who will send still more letters. Your mailbox will fill up rapidly, but not a whole lot will be accomplished for the people or organizations you are hoping to help.

By contrast, when you give a larger gift, the charity wants to hang on to you. No way will they sell the names of their top donors - why risk diluting their gifts next year? They still have to deduct marketing costs, but a lot more remains to do its intended work.

3. Turn your favorite charity into a Christmas present.
Unless you really need more books, liquor, fruitcakes, or whatever your friends tend to get you, put your favorite charity on your Amazon wish list. It's easy to do with the universal wish list button. If you want to know more about how it works for me, read my blog post from last December 1.

In addition, instead of giving friends, colleagues, and neighbors gifts that are useless or fattening, consider donating to a charity on their behalf. Be careful if you choose this approach - be sure the charity you choose is one that will also mean something to them.

This year our parish is especially concerned about a Sudanese health clinic we've been supporting. Sudan is holding an election January 9 to decide whether the southern part of the country should remain part of Sudan, or should separate and form its own independent country. The clinic is in Renk, a border town that will certainly face violence if the vote goes as expected (Aljazeera posted a fascinating article, "South Sudan braces for trouble," today; for more background information, check out my husband's interview with Geoff Tunnicliffe, "Pray for the Peace of Sudan").

Our outreach commission is collecting funds to send to the clinic before the referendum, so it can stock up on medicine and supplies before supply channels are disrupted. Because many of us are concerned about Sudan, David and I have decided to give this card to some of our friends at church and at work. It will cost us about the same as the small gifts we've given in previous years. We hope it will do more lasting good.

Eradicating Alzheimer's disease - if not now, when?

Are you hoping to live to at least age 85? If so, there's good news and bad news.

• The bad news - If you turn 85 in the next ten years or so, you'll have about a 50% chance of getting Alzheimer's disease.
• The good news - Researchers have never been closer to finding a cure.
• The unfortunate news - Alzheimer's research is inadequately funded.
• The hopeful news - Last February a bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate that would commit adequate personnel and resources to fighting this disease.
• The frustrating news - The bill went immediately to committee, which means it is competing with thousands of other bills for attention. Most bills die in committee.
• The scary news - The Alzheimer's Association projects that the number of people affected with the disease will increase by 50% over the next 20 years; by 40 years from now, it will have doubled or even tripled.

For me, Alzheimer's has a human face. The pictures on the left show my mother as a bride, a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She died at age 85, a few weeks after the last picture was taken, after living for about six years with Alzheimer's. My father died four months earlier, the week before his 85th birthday, with the same disease. My mother-in-law suffered increasingly for about 10 years before dying with Alzheimer's at age 86.

I, for one, want to get this bill out of committee and onto the Senate floor immediately.

No time to waste
 We have no time to waste, say Sandra Day O'Connor, Stanley Prusiner, and Ken Dychtwald in "The Age of Alzheimer's," an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times:

Starting on Jan. 1, our 79-million-strong baby boom generation will be turning 65 at the rate of one every eight seconds. That means more than 10,000 people per day, or more than four million per year, for the next 19 years facing an increased risk of Alzheimer’s.

The authors argue that ignoring the oncoming wave of people with Alzheimer's is going to cost the government (and individual families) huge amounts of money. Adequately funding research, by contrast, could save trillions of dollars in Alzheimer's-related care by relegating "Alzheimer's to the list of former diseases like typhoid, polio, and many childhood cancers." Eventually Alzheimer's will be conquered - but "unless we get to work now, any breakthrough will come too late to benefit the baby boomers."

As a 62-year-old boomer myself, I would like to see this disease wiped out soon - not only for my sake, but also for the sake of my husband, children, and grandchildren.

Alzheimer's is a terrible disease. It isn't just Grandma getting pleasantly vague. As Alzheimer's progresses, a person no longer knows where she is or what she is doing there. She doesn't recognize friends, family members, or - eventually - even herself. Her emotions rage out of control. She may leave the house and wander strange neighborhoods, gather small objects and redistribute them throughout the house, forget what she is cooking and start small fires. She may become paranoid or even violent. And because she knows something is terribly wrong but she doesn't know how to get help, she is often depressed, angry, or frightened.

Some of my friends believe that the government should stay out of health care. Good health habits and private funding, they have told me, should suffice, and families should take care of their own. In dealing with Alzheimer's, however, those solutions are inadequate.

There is currently no way to prevent Alzheimer's. My parents, who both died with Alzheimer's,  did not get it because of bad habits. They ate a mostly vegetarian diet and never drank alcohol or smoked. They exercised regularly, walking three miles most days. They were sociable people who spent lots of time with friends. They were people of faith. They were well educated. They read books. My father even wrote books. The thing is, you can do everything on those how-to-prevent-Alzheimer's lists and still get Alzheimer's.

Few families are equipped to take care of a person in the middle or later stages of Alzheimer's. I wanted to take care of my parents myself, but Alzheimer's is not like other debilitating illnesses. People with Alzheimer's are a danger to themselves and to others 24/7. One daughter with two sick parents is not up to the task. One elderly father-in-law with one sick wife eventually needs help. Nursing homes can't do a good job on their own either. But a good nursing home or board-and-care home, working in cooperation with caring family members, can at least keep the patient clean, fed, safe, and somewhat socialized.

Unless one is very rich or dies very quickly, private funds will not cover the cost of necessary Alzheimer's care. Many families can't afford any paid help. If the wage-earners must continue working, they may have to leave Mom at home alone, hoping she won't get lost, set the house on fire, or break a hip. Middle-aged and older daughters often quit their jobs to care for an ailing parent, thus reducing their own retirement savings and Social Security benefits and making it more likely that their children will have to do the same for them.

My parents were fortunate - they had private insurance, including nursing-home insurance. Those funds, together with Medicare, Social Security, and their life savings, barely paid for their combined total of seven years of care, even though they received quite basic services in a nursing home that charged comparatively modest rates. (If a family wants to keep the patient at home and hire helpers, the cost is far higher.) If my parents had lived just a few months longer, I would have had to apply for public aid for them, in spite of their lifetime of frugality, saving, and wise decisions.

But there is reason to hope that one day Alzheimer's disease will be eliminated!

Researchers in the private sector are making tremendous strides toward eradicating this disease. A lot more funding is needed, however - not just for patient care (though that need is growing at an alarming rate), but especially for research so that patient care will no longer be necessary.

O'Connor, Prusiner, and Dychtwald compare Alzheimer's research today with AIDS research 25 years ago:

In the mid-1980s, when our country finally made a commitment to fight AIDS, it took roughly 10 years of sustained investment (and about $10 billion) to create the antiretroviral therapies that made AIDS a manageable disease. These medicines also added $1.4 trillion to the American economy. The National Institutes of Health still spend about $3 billion a year on AIDS research, while Alzheimer’s, with five times as many victims, receives a mere $469 million. 

That means we are spending 32 times as much on each person with AIDS as on each person with Alzheimer's, and with demonstrably good results - people with AIDS are living longer, and more money has been injected  into the U.S. economy. We were wise to commit to fighting AIDS. Now it's time - past time - to commit to fighting Alzheimer's as well.

What we can do today
If you've read this far, you probably have a personal interest in wiping out or containing Alzheimer's disease. Perhaps you already donate to the Alzheimer's Association. Consider contacting one or both of your senators as well. If one of them is among the 23 on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee where the National Alzheimer's Project Act is languishing, urge him or her to recommend its passage to the full Senate. If your senators are not on the committee, encourage them to schmooze with those who are. Here's what I've written to Senator Dick Durbin. If you wish to borrow any of my words when writing to your senators, feel free. You can find an easy-to-use e-mail form for contacting your senators here.

Dear Senator Durbin:

I'm writing in support of S 3036, the National Alzheimer's Project Act, which was introduced to the Senate last February 24, read twice, and referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease would save untold billions of federal, state, and private dollars over the next 40 years as we boomers age and decline.

Without a strong federal commitment to eradicating the disease, however, a cure is unlikely to be developed before millions of people suffer and billions of dollars are spent, all unnecessarily.

I realize that you are not on the committee that is supposed to be studying this bill, but you know the people who are. You have consistently supported legislation that improves health and helps the needy. As an aging boomer and the daughter of two parents who died with Alzheimer's disease, I hope you will be able to influence your Senate colleagues to get S 3036 out of committee and to get moving on a strong national commitment to eradicate this tragic disease.

Respectfully yours,
LaVonne Neff

A different idea for Ground Zero

Here's an idea for people who are unhappy about having an Islamic Center near the site of the World Trade Center, especially if those people are Bible-believing Christians and/or defenders of the U.S. Constitution. What if American Christians got together and offered to build an interfaith memorial instead?

Since we follow someone who suggested loving our enemies and forgiving seventy times seven (which we tend to ignore when we rant against the Islamic center), this would allow us to be more literal about our faith. And since believe in our Constitutional rights of religious liberty and freedom to assemble (which we might jeopardize by refusing to allow the Islamic center to be built), this would allow us to be more traditional about our politics as well - all without making the Muslims pay for the building.

See, we could pay for it ourselves. It would be cheap: only 50 cents from every American Christian would do it. We probably wouldn't want to call it Córdoba, since that brings to mind a city where medieval Muslims gave a fair amount of religious liberty to Christians (something Christians at the time were not doing for Muslims in neighboring cities). But we might call it something like The Reconciliation Center - a very biblical term that evangelicals should like.

We could include separate worship rooms for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and every other faith held by victims of the 9/11 attacks. We could also include a multifaith meditation room for everybody, with pictures of the deceased and symbols of hope and peace.

Just as important, we could use the memorial to bring the community together now and in the future. I don't know what the neighborhood needs - apparently it's rather rich in strip clubs and sex toys - but how about a gym where kids of all faiths could play together? A food pantry staffed by and serving all people? A library with great works from many traditions? An auditorium where speakers, films, and concerts promoting reconciliation could be featured? A clinic offering free medical care for the homeless?

The only drawback I can think of in building such a center is that terrorists would absolutely hate it. They're already upset at Sufi Muslims such as Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Córdoba Initiative.Think how mad they would get if Christians co-opted his idea, improved it, and invited him to join them. They might even bomb the place!

But as Jesus said, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake."

Clarification: What I meant to say about Missouri

When my previous post about Missouri's health-care insurance vote and obesity rates was re-posted on Sojourners' God's Politics blog, commenters told me I was "a little unfriendly," "insulting," "trashing obese people," and lacking compassion for the poor. Among other things.

I went back and reread my post, and I wish I hadn't used the word "fat." My "good luck, Missouri" remark was meant to be sarcastic, but not all readers saw it that way. I am sorry for my insensitivity and have made a few changes to the post.

In addition, I discovered that some important text had been inadvertently dropped. I would like to blame blogpost, but I suspect the fault was my own. The WSJ quote was missing, which meant much of the rest of the article made less sense. The stats on health-care costs were then wrongly attributed to the WSJ, whereas the report actually came from Trust for America's Health. I got it right in the first draft, but somehow the published article was incorrect. I have no idea what happened in the meantime. I have made more changes to the post to fix these errors.

Here's what I meant to say, with a few points of added clarification:

Every year, more and more Americans cross the line into obesity. Obese people, on average, have lots more health problems than normal-weight people. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be obese. (This is partly because the government subsidizes corn, which is turned into high-fructose corn syrup, which is especially prevalent in inexpensive junk food.) When health insurance is not mandatory - and subsidized for people who can't afford it - a lot of poor people suffer unnecessarily. They have more health problems than their richer neighbors, and unless they have Medicaid or health insurance, they have fewer resources for treating them.

I strongly believe America needs a mandatory, not-for-profit health system that provides basic health care for everyone in the country. I also strongly believe our agricultural policies have led to eating habits that are harming us all, but especially the poor. I found it ironic that last Wednesday's news included both Missouri's vote against mandatory health insurance and Missouri's joining the list of states with obesity rates of over 30%. I do not think either of those facts is going to be good for the poor.

And I would like to add a P.S. I am not putting down on obese people. I am not unaware of eating disorders (I wrote about my aunt's experience here). There are lots of theories out there about why Americans are getting heavier every year, and about why countries that adopt American eating habits are also getting heavier: some of them are probably right. But that's not my point. My point is this: we need to provide basic health care for everybody - especially since we appear to be getting less healthy every year.

LITTLE BEE by Chris Cleave

Thanks to my friend Beth Spring for recommending Little Bee (or, in the U.K., The Other Hand). It's the best novel I've read so far this year.

First published in 2008 and now available in paperback, the story concerns a teen-aged Nigerian girl who calls herself Little Bee. Fearing imprisonment or death, she seeks asylum in the U.K., is intercepted at sea, and is thrown into an immigration detention center.

The story also concerns a British couple, Andrew and Sarah, both journalists. Having briefly crossed paths with Little Bee while on holiday in Nigeria, they meet up with her again in England two years later. Sarah befriends her - and finds her whole life being called into question.

If you want to know more than that, you'll just have to read the book yourself. Much of its charm is in the way the author gradually unpacks and enriches the story, and I would not be doing you a favor by telling you what happens.

As a best book must be, Little Bee is excellent in many categories:

• Exquisite writing, right from the start: "Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl. Everyone would be pleased to see me coming."
• Rich characterization of the two first-person narrators, Little Bee and Sarah. An interesting supporting cast as well, especially Batman, age 4, who removes his bat suit only at bath time.
• Conflict and suspense. Little Bee is in danger, and every character faces a moral dilemma. Batman neatly divides the world into "goodies" and "baddies," but things are less clear for the others.
• Significance. Without ever preaching, the book looks at immigration policy, journalistic responsibility, and selfishness vs. self-sacrifice.
• Comic relief. And yet the author manages to inject humor into the darkest situations - not inappropriately, but as a survival technique. "I don't get you," a man says to Little Bee. "If you understood how serious your situation is, I don't think you'd smile." Little Bee shrugs. "If I could not smile," she answers, "I think my situation would be even more serious."

Above all, the book is simply a joy to read. Take this paragraph, for example, where Sarah encourages Little Bee to go with the family to London. "It's a beautiful day, we'll laze about on the South Bank and just watch the world go by.... Come on, it'll be an adventure for you," she says. Little Bee thinks:

What is an adventure? That depends on where you are starting from. Little girls in your country, they hide in the gap between the washing machine and the refrigerator and they make believe they are in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around them. Me and my sister, we used to hide in a gap in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around us, and make believe that we had a washing machine and a refrigerator. You live in a world of machines and you dream of things with beating hearts. We dream of machines, because we see where beating hearts have left us.

To learn about the author, Chris Cleave, or to read the first chapter of Little Bee, check out the author's website here.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Memo to fans of Precious Ramotswe, Alexander McCall Smith's Motswana heroine of the Number One Ladies' Detective Agency series: Mma Ramotswe is magnificent, no doubt about it. But she is, after all, the creation of a man from Scotland. It's time to meet a real African woman, this time from Nigeria: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Don't panic. You can pronounce her name, even if you've never set foot in her country. Take it one syllable at a time and you'll have it in no time. Read her books and you'll never forget it.

Adichie, 33, is the author of two novels and one book of short stories. Purple Hibiscus (2003) is a family drama, partly the coming-of-age story of a 15-year-old girl and partly the character study of her father, who is both a philanthropist and a vicious tyrant. Publishers Weekly called this debut novel "lush, cadenced and often disconcerting." For American readers, the setting may seem as exotic as Mma Ramotswe's, but the characters, especially the girl Kambili, are far more nuanced and intimately depicted than are the cheerful citizens of Gabarone.

Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) is also rooted in a family's experience, but set against the background of the Biafran War (1967 - 1970). Adichie's publicity website describes it well: "Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all."

Adichie's most recent book, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of twelve short stories, most of them previously published. I'm not usually a short-story fan, and I'm glad I read the novels first because they introduced me to contemporary Nigerian characters. With that preparation, however, I found these short stories fascinating. All the central characters are Nigerian, but several - like Adichie herself, part of the time - live in America. "The Arrangers of Marriage," for example, features a Nigerian woman brought to Flatbush (Brooklyn) after a hasty marriage to a Nigerian doctor who has not been entirely honest about his life in the U.S.

Last October Adichie gave a wonderful speech at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) called "The danger of a single story" (thanks to my Kenyan friend Wambura Kimunyu for pointing this out). Listen to the whole thing: it's a great introduction to Adichie, and she is full of insights about literature and other cultures. One of her observations helps to explain her title:

I recently spoke at a university where a student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called “American Psycho” — and that it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.

I've learned a lot about Nigeria from Adichie's books, and I've enjoyed immersing myself in a culture that is so different from my own. More important, she has shown me people who are very much like me and like people I know. She has added her stories to my stories and other stories I already knew - and, if a single story is dangerous, then the more stories we listen to and tell, the richer and more compassionate we will be.

Say her name again: Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie.

Fixing immigration: President Obama's speech at American University

President Obama is getting no respite from contentious issues. Today, speaking at American University’s School of International Service, he tackled immigration reform, held hostage for decades, he said, by political posturing. “We will not just kick the can down the road,” he promised his audience of faculty, students, and select legislators, police chiefs, mayors, and evangelical religious leaders. Despite the fact that the topic of immigration reform arouses emotions and "lends itself to demagoguery," he said, "I believe we can put politics aside and finally have an immigration system that's accountable."

I hope he is right. I have friends who are undocumented immigrants, despite more than 20 years of trying desperately to become legal residents. At last count they had spent over $30,000 on lawyers. They have appeared before panels of judges who manifested complete ignorance of their home country and the reason they need political asylum before turning down their petitions. Their amnesty applications were improperly handled by bureaucrats, who then said the deadline had passed and nothing could be done. They have been ordered to take time off work, only to wait for hours in immigration offices while the office staff rudely ignored them.

I'm not telling you their name or their country of origin, because I suspect they have simply given up and are now flying beneath the radar. There are networks of fellow refugees who will help them, but this is not the way they want to live. They are law-abiding people who work and pay taxes. They have raised their children in America (in fact, one child was born here so is a U.S. citizen) and now have American grandchildren. In fact, many in their extended family are Americans. And yet, due to a series of departmental snafus, they continue to wait for permission to stay in their adopted country. Apparently it would take an Act of Congress to legally admit this fine family to the United States - and indeed, two Senate bills have been introduced in their favor. Both bills died in committee.

As I watched President Obama's speech, I was thinking about my friends. They are part of the "steady stream of hard-working and talented people" that have allowed our country to thrive. If the president is right that "being American is not a matter of blood and birth, but of faith," then my friends are more American than I am. They still hold on to the hope that someday the system will be fixed and they will be fully welcome in the land they love. I hope so too, but unless something drastically changes the political climate, my faith is weak.

As the president pointed out, people are afraid of immigrants - especially during economic downturns. This was true in 1798, just 11 years after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed. It was true in the 19th century when waves of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Poland swarmed our shores. It was true at the turn of the 20th century when Jewish immigrants fled persecutors in Eastern Europe, and from 1882 to 1943 when Chinese immigrants were routinely detained and deported. It is certainly true now.

As the president also pointed out, "without bipartisan support, we cannot solve this problem. Reform cannot pass without Republican votes."

Bipartisan action is possible. Some Republicans, "including my predecessor, President Bush," Mr. Obama said, "have shown courageous leadership." For example, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and the late Ted Kennedy (D-MA) worked together on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, though it failed to get through Congress. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have collaborated on a proposal to mend our "badly broken" immigration system that sounds a great deal like President Obama's suggestions in this morning's speech. And yet, as the president said, "the natural impulse among those who run for office is to turn away and defer decisions for another day, another year, another administration."

Perhaps that is why the White House invited evangelical leaders to join the audience this morning, and why megachurch pastor Bill Hybels was asked to introduce the president. Evangelicals, though far from a solid bloc, tend to vote Republican. However, as Hybels pointed out, many evangelicals know that "a recurring theme in Scripture is a mandate from God to care for widows, strangers, and orphans." Believing that religious salvation depends on faith, not on blood or birth, they may be receptive to the president's suggestion that faith (presumably in American ideals) is also the basis of citizenship. If Hybels is correct, "today an earnest bipartisan conversation begins that those of us in the faith community have been praying about for years."

I hope that good people of both parties will unite to fix our immigration system. I hope that we can find a just approach that is both hospitable and responsible. I hope that businesses who exploit undocumented immigrants will be forced to straighten up or shut down, and that people who wish to move here and work hard will be given the means to do so legally. I hope that my friends will someday be able to say the Pledge of Allegiance along with other new American citizens.

As the president said, "Fixing our broken immigration system is a moral imperative."

Caregetting

Yesterday I wrote about the toll caregiving takes, especially on women. This is not news. For several decades we Boomers, shocked at the fatigue and messiness and expense and relational difficulties of caring for our parents, have been writing about it. And we have written truthfully: caregiving is hard work.

We’re used to hard work, of course. We’re the generation that brought you the two-or-more-career household, the omnipresent electronic office, and the answer “Keeping busy” to the question “How are you?” Thanks to us Boomers, younger folks have no memory of long winter evenings playing board games, Sundays without shopping, or even family dinner.

But caregiving is not like our other work. Caregiving is unpaid. It does not lead to career advancement – in fact, it often makes it hard for us to keep our jobs. And since it still falls primarily to women, it serves to widen the status gap between men and women.

Here’s a heretical thought: maybe it’s time for us to talk less about the pain of giving care and more about the pain of needing care.

I do not need care yet, so I am only guessing at what care-getting feels like. I did, however, care for and observe my parents as their health declined. I have also come face to face with a life-threatening condition myself, and I can affirm Samuel Johnson’s observation: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Lacking British reserve, I would speak not of concentration but of primal terror. The healthy body – or at least the body that feels healthy – struggles to live. Yet many people who are very old or very sick or very demented find sweet release in death. What, then, must their lives feel like?

How does it feel when your spouse of sixty years dies and nearly all your friends are either dead or too infirm to visit you? When your body aches constantly from head to toe, whether you’re sitting or standing or lying down? When you can’t walk to the bathroom without help? When you can’t make it to the bathroom even with help and have to wear diapers? When your vision dims and your hearing is nearly gone? When you no longer recognize your children and feel as if you are living among strangers?

How does it feel to be nobody, to be called by your first name by nursing-home and hospital attendants younger than your grandchildren, to be told what to eat and where to live and how to spend your time, to know that even the kindest people are treating you like a kindergartner?

How does it feel to think you are a burden to the people you love most, to suspect that they are forfeiting jobs and money and family time and much-needed rest because you desperately need their care?

Pretty soon a lot of us Boomers are going to know exactly how these things feel. And I’ll bet any amount of money that we’ll start focusing a lot less on the stress of giving care and a lot more on the stress of needing it. We’re selfish that way.

Truth is, of course, that there’s plenty of stress to go around. It is very stressful to care for someone you love as she gradually, and often painfully, disintegrates. It is very stressful to become dependent on your children and strangers as your body, and often your mind, weaken. Parents and children who respect and honor one another recognize the mutual stress and are grateful for the bond of love that continues to hold them together.

Still, when it comes to caregiving, I’ll go with Jesus’ observation: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Caregiving

A few minutes ago I got the news that my daughter’s mother-in-law has stage 4 cancer. I was still staring at the computer screen, trying to digest the information, when a friend forwarded me a report on a Canadian study with this headline: “Female Caregivers Face a Heavier Toll.”

Yes, we do. My mother died almost exactly 15 years ago, four months after my father died. Both had Alzheimer’s disease. Both were in a nursing home about five minutes from my house. I visited them at least several times a week, sometimes daily.

“We’re so glad we had a daughter,” my mother used to tell me. “It’s only the daughters who visit.” She wasn’t entirely right: several sons joined the many women who visited regularly. Though the study said six in ten caregivers are women, in my parents’ nursing home the number must have been closer to eight in ten.

Warning: If you are a woman with a spouse, parents, or parents-in-law, you are likely to spend a number of years as a caregiver.

"In terms of society's norms, the responsibility to care for parents tends to fall on the women," said Marina Bastawrous, the author of the study, who discovered that forty percent of female caregivers experience high-level stress. Women, she noted, are more likely than men to quit their jobs in order to care for their parents. When my parents started needing more care than I could handle along with my demanding job, I cut my hours back to 30 a week. Eventually I quit altogether. (More information on the toll caregiving takes is available from the Family Caregiver Alliance).

Sadly, according to the Canadian study, despite—or perhaps because of—all their hard work, “adult daughters suffer more than adult sons from poor relationships with ailing and aging parents who need their care.” If we care for our parents because we want to be thanked, or because we want to be closer to them, or because we have a romantic vision of saintly elders, we are likely to be disappointed. A bookstore assistant, noticing the book I was buying on caregiving, said to me, “God bless you, dear—I remember those days. Nothing you do is ever right.”

To be sure, nothing is ever enough. Nothing will restore our parents’ youth. Nothing will keep them from eventually dying. Nothing will keep us from our own certain decline. And yet we continue to care and to hope. That is what love does. Not sentimental, stress-free, feel-good love, but tough love that does what needs doing.

My daughter’s mother-in-law has no daughters, but she has an excellent husband and three good sons who love her very much and are already doing what they can for her. She also has three fine daughters-in-law, one of whom has been taking her to her doctors’ appointments all week. Chemo begins Monday. We are all praying for their strength and her healing. Please pray with us.
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See also my next post, "Caregetting."

Why we love Mma Ramotswe

In The Double Comfort Safari Club, the 11th installment in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the suspense level is low. There are no murders, grisly or otherwise, and Mma Ramotswe's investigations have fairly predictable outcomes, though she sometimes engineers win-win situations that defy the laws of probability. But suspense is not the reason to read one of McCall Smith's detective stories. Mma Ramotswe herself is.

"Traditionally built" in moral values as well as physical appearance, Mma Ramotswe believes in honesty, fidelity, and hard work. At the same time, she affirms family, friendship, courtesy, and red bush tea. She's the kind of woman you'd like to have as a best friend or a mother - unless you're planning to misbehave. You know she'll see right through you.

In Double Comfort, nobody outwits Mma Ramotswe for long. An adulterer's secret is revealed. An angry aunt is foiled. An evil schemer gets her comeuppance. Villains in the No. 1 Ladies series are rarely murderers or rapists. They are ordinary people who are extraordinarily selfish, who are willing to hurt others in order to get their own way.

Heroes, by contrast, are kind.

Kindness, in fact, is what Double Comfort is all about. An American tourist, Mrs. Grant, is so impressed by the kindness of strangers that she decides to send a generous gift. Mma Felo, a philanthropist, is known for her kindness, even if she mentions it herself. Mma Ramotswe's husband and Mma Makutsi's fiancé are both kind men.

Kindness may not be evident on the surface. Mma Potokwane, for instance, does not look kind - indeed, she can look "severe, or strict, or even bossy" - but inside her "there was a big dam of kindness, as there is inside so many people, like the great dam to the south of Gaborone, ready to release its healing waters."

The kindest person of all is, of course, Mma Ramotswe. In a deliciously vengeful scene, Mma Ramotswe is even able to have sympathy for the terrible Violet Sephotho. This amazes her assistant detective, Mma Makutsi, until she remembers that "this woman, this traditionally built woman, this understanding, tolerant employer, this detective, was composed of kindness, just of kindness."

One Sunday Mma Ramotswe goes to the Anglican cathedral, letting her mind wander until the visiting priest begins to speak. McCall Smith generally avoids preaching; instead, his characters ruminate until they come up with bits of wisdom. But in this case he lets us listen in on the whole homily, which pretty much sums up this book's theme and Mma Ramotswe's character:

My brothers and sisters, ... we are seated here with those we know and those we do not know. But even those we do not know are not strangers. We are united with them in a community which is brought together by one thing, and that one thing is love....

There are people who say that what we are doing here has no meaning. That it is superstition, that it is wishful thinking. Wishful thinking? It is not that; it is not. Is it wishful thinking to say to yourself and to others that we must love one another? Is it wishful thinking to say that we must forgive others, so that love might grow within our hearts? Is it wishful thinking to imagine that it is only through an effort to love others that a hard and unhappy world may be transformed into a world of kindness and compassion? I do not think that it is.

The No. 1 Ladies books are the visual equivalent of comfort food - double comfort, even - but they are not sentimental or treacly. Mma Ramotswe knows that the world is hard and unhappy, and that loving others is often more effort than emotion. Still, instead of reacting with bitterness or cynicism, she is kind. And little by little the world is transformed, and that is why we love her.

America, Switzerland, and the scandalous 5%

Whew. The health-care bill passed. It isn't the complete overhaul we need, but at least it's a start. An editorial in today's New York Times rejoiced that, although "the bill does not quite reach full universality, ... by 2019, fully 94 to 95 percent of American citizens and legal residents below Medicare age will have coverage."

Something about that percentage sounded familiar, so I got out my copy of T.R. Reid's The Healing of America (an illuminating survey of health care in other developed nations) and turned to chapter 10, "Too Big to Change?" Acknowledging that revamping a nation's health care can seem overwhelming if not impossible, Reid tells how Switzerland did it in 1994.

The Swiss, he points out, have a lot in common with Americans. They spend "a good chunk of their federal budget maintaining an army." Their rate of gun ownership is higher than ours. They have a strong financial sector. And in the 1980s Swiss insurers, like their American counterparts, changed into for-profit institutions and began denying claims. Costs skyrocketed, bankruptcies increased, and an unacceptably high percentage of Swiss citizens began living without health insurance. The Swiss, who prize solidarity (that's a secular term for "love your neighbor as yourself"), decided that something had to be done.

Here's the shocker: the Swiss were moved to action in 1994 because five percent of their people were uninsured. Five percent was their starting point. They changed their entire system so those five percent could have health care.

We Americans have just taken step one toward reforming our broken health-care system. The media is hailing the health-care bill as "transformative," "landmark," "historic"--and it is indeed a major shift for a nation that has been resisting universal health care for a century. It is also inadequate.

Nine years from now, if all goes well, only five or six percent of our people will be without health insurance. Five or six percent--not a cause for rejoicing in Switzerland, but the shameful statistic that launched their health-care revolution!

So how did the Swiss achieve their goal of 100% coverage? By a narrow margin (there was a lot of opposition from the insurance and drug industries and much of the business community), they passed reform measures requiring insurance companies to operate as not-for-profit businesses and requiring all Swiss citizens to purchase insurance. Reid describes the result:

When I visited Switzerland a dozen years later, universal health care coverage was so firmly entrenched as an element of Swiss life that nobody seemed to oppose it anymore. Even M. Couchepin, the conservative businessman who became president, agreed. "Nobody would want to go back to the system before, when some people were locked out of the insurance," he told me. "We have a system now that means everybody, rich or poor, can have the best health care we can provide. It is accepted; it is working. We are happy that we made the changes in 1994."

Perhaps in another nine years, when only five or six percent of our people are uninsured, we Americans will have the courage and compassion to do more than nibble around the edges of our highly inefficient health-care practices. Perhaps by then we'll be as troubled as the Swiss were when five percent of their citizens lacked access to health care. Perhaps we will finally be ready to restructure our entire health-care system from the ground up.

At least now we're facing the right direction.

Alexander McCall Smith: La's Orchestra Saves the World

Alexander McCall Smith's third book in 2009 (after The Lost Art of Gratitude, the sixth Isabel Dalhousie book, and Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, the tenth Mma Ramotswe book) is a bit of a departure from his usual approach. It takes place in England, with only one brief mention of Edinburgh and none at all of Botswana. It probably is not going to spawn a series: he pretty much covers the central character's whole life in this one volume. Most of the story takes place during World War II, and it's rather serious for McCall Smith. Lavender Stone--La for short--is betrayed, widowed, and sent to the country where she, a Cambridge scholar, tends chickens to help the war effort.

And yet the McCall Smith fan club, of which I am a devout member, will not be disappointed in La's Orchestra Saves the World. Once again the incredibly prolic author tells a short, uncomplicated, gentle story about a good woman who speaks in simple sentences and probably thinks too much. Get past the first chapter, which somewhat confusingly bookends the story: it doesn't make a lot of sense until you've read the rest of the tale, so read it quickly and then come back to it later. The real story starts in chapter 2, which begins: "La's childhood was spent in the shadow of Death."

As always, McCall Smith pokes fun at the foibles of his very human characters: a man-hating academic, a venial pig farmer, a philandering husband. But he does this in the nicest way, because for McCall Smith, an ethicist by training, the bottom line is always kindness, even and perhaps especially toward the undeserving. Why, for example, should La fix up a nice room for the injured Polish airman-turned-farmworker?

Surely she should feel indifferent towards him--there were so many displaced persons, people washed up by the war, people from somewhere else--and yet already she felt that looking after him was something that she had to do. But why? Because he was in need and he was about to cross her path. That, perhaps, was the basis of our responsibility to one another; the simple fact that we collided with one another.

Like other McCall Smith characters, La does not base her ethics on theology.

"We can't afford to be without God," Feliks continued.... If you take God out of it, then right and justice become small, human things. And weak things, too."

La thought about this. He was right, perhaps, even if she did not feel that she needed God in the same way Feliks seems to need him. She would do whatever she had to do--even if it was for the sake of simple decency. You did not wipe a child's tears because God told you to do so. You did it because the tears were there.

And as in other McCall Smith books, there are no heroes, no stars, no larger-than-life characters. If La's orchestra saves the world, the world is unaware of it. Near the end of the book, when La is in her 50s, she looks out her kitchen window at fields and clouds, and this is what she thinks:

For her, life seemed unchanged, barely touched by the movements and shifts of the times. Again I have missed it, she thought; heady things are happening, and I am not there; I am somewhere in the wings, watching what is happening on the stage, in a play in which I have no real part. That is what my life has been.... I have been a handmaiden; she relished the word--a handmaiden; one who waits and watches; assists, perhaps, but only in a small way....

So each of us, thought La, each one of us should do something to make life better for somebody, to change the course of events, even if only in the most local sense. Even a handmaiden can do something about that.

This is a small book, and it will not change the world. But it is perfect for a long winter's evening, and it will increase the sum of goodness in the world.

Holiday wish lists--an easy way to remember others

I have mixed feelings about wish lists. They rob Christmas of creativity, surprise, and personal contact, but they make shopping much, much easier. And it's nice to know that if I pay attention to the lists, gift recipients won't roll their eyes and return the gifts before the tree is by the curb. To cut down on my family's December stress, I make my own wish list each year, feeling vaguely guilty (do I need those pearl earrings?). "Get better gifts," orders Amazon's wishlistmeister. I don't like his tone.

This year, though, Amazon has vastly improved its wish list. Now I can ask for anything I want from any online supplier. It doesn't even have to be a merchant: it can be a food bank, a cultural or educational organization, a humane society, a church--any organization that has a web site and is willing to accept money. All I have to do is put an "Add to Wish List" button on my Favorites or Bookmarks toolbar. It's extremely easy to do: click here to get started.

And 2009 is a good year, I think, to bypass the pearl earrings and go straight for the better gifts: gifts that will help people whose income went down more than ours did, or who lost their jobs or their homes, or who have unmanageable medical expenses, or who aren't sure they'll be able to afford Christmas dinner. According to a November 27 AP story,

food banks across the country report about a 30 percent increase in demand on average, but some have seen as much as a 150 percent jump in demand from 2008 through the middle of this year.... The U.S. Department of Agriculture said earlier this month that 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of U.S. households, struggle to put food on the table, the most since the agency began tracking food security levels in 1995.

Contributions can't keep pace. David R. Francis writes in the November 30 Christian Science Monitor:

Donations to the nation’s largest nonprofits, including prominent universities, hospitals, and foundations, are expected to fall 9 percent this year, according to a survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy last month. That’s the steepest drop the publication has reported in 17 years of surveying the 400 largest charities in the United States.

What to do?

1. Set up your Amazon wish list and add-to button.

2. Go to your favorite charity's web site. (If you don't have a favorite charity, or if you'd like to be sure that the charities you support are using your money wisely, go to Charity Navigator. There you can sort charities by name, location, purpose, budget, and rating. You can look at Top Ten lists and articles on how to give wisely; you can read users' comments on various charities; and you can learn how much each charity's CEO earns. You can even make a donation directly from the site.)

3. Navigate to the web page that describes the program you want to support, or that tells how to donate.

4. Click on your Add to Wish List button and follow instructions.

I've added a couple of charities to my wish list. One is the People's Resource Center in Wheaton, IL, a four-star charity according to Charity Navigator. I linked to their art studio program and added an explanatory note in case people reading my list thought I was asking for an art studio for Christmas. Here's more or less how this item in my list looks on Amazon:

People's Resource | Arts Studio peoplesrc.org $15.00 This item was added with the Universal Wish List Button.

“Scroll down: $15 provides an art class for a child. PRC does lots of other good things too, like feed and clothe people and teach them to read. They are always happy to get donations of any amount. And donations are tax deductible.” Quantity Desired: 10

Hey, the earrings are still on my wish list (I add them anew every year), along with the coffee grinder, the Harry Potter DVD, and the espresso cups. I'm not saying Christmas should be turned into a social-justice rally. I plan to add even more items to my list (rationale: a really long list allows friends and family to be creative, and even the recipient might be surprised at what she gets), and I'm already ordering wrappable gifts for the kids and grandkids.

I'm just saying that a little less for me and a little more for others, multiplied by however many people also put charities on their wish lists this year, could add up to a merrier Christmas for everyone.

Health care is a moral issue

A couple of weeks ago I previewed T.R. Reid's The Healing of America. I'm happy to see that today it is #18 on Amazon's sales ranking, #11 on Publishers Weekly's hardcover nonfiction best-seller list, and #6 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. With Congress deadlocked on health-care reform and President Obama scheduled to speak to the nation about health care tomorrow night, this is a book everyone should read. Immediately.

I'm going to be reviewing it for Christian Century, and once I've written and they've posted the review, I'll link to it here. (October 15: CC is hot off the press. Click here.) The mills of God and publishing grind slowly, however, so meanwhile let me emphasize three of Reid's important points:

1. “The primary issue for any health care system is a moral one." If we believe no one should die for want of access to health care, we can find a way to provide care for all. If we believe health care is a commodity like TVs and automobiles, we can continue to exclude those who can't pay. “All the developed countries I looked at provide health coverage for every resident, old or young, rich or poor. This is the underlying moral principle of the health care system in every rich country—every one, that is, except the United States.”

2. It is possible to improve health care and save money at the same time. Hey, those other rich nations that provide health care to everybody spend about half as much per capita as the United States spends, and their citizens also live longer and enjoy better health. If we are willing to study the ways other developed nations handle health care, we're smart enough to devise an approach that suits our needs.

And by the way, we don't need to fear "socialized medicine," whatever that may be. As Reid points out, "the term was popularized by a public relations firm working for the American Medical Association in 1947 to disparage President Truman’s proposal for a national health care system. It was a label, at the dawn of the cold war, meant to suggest that anybody advocating universal access to health care must be a communist.” In fact, successful health-care systems in other countries have widely varying approaches, ranging from public funding and public health-care provision (Britain) to private insurance and private providers (Germany, Japan, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan). In fact, some European systems are considerably more private than ours.

Nor do we need to fear loss of choice: almost all developed nations allow more choice of provider than our insurance companies currently permit, and some also have more insurance companies to choose among.

3. The biggest source of waste in American health care comes from our approach to insurance: “20 cents of every dollar people pay in premiums for health insurance doesn’t buy any health care.” Insurance per se isn't the problem. Many developed countries, like the United States, rely on competing private insurance companies to pay health-care bills. There is just one major difference between their systems and ours: most of our private insurance is for-profit, and all of their insurance that pays for basic health care is not-for profit.

Reid does not discuss the army of lobbyists currently working feverishly to sway public opinion and persuade Congress to veto any significant reform, nor does he mention the enormous contributions made by health-care lobbyists over the last five years to key Senators and members of Congress. His book was completed before Wendell Potter, former head of corporate communications at CIGNA, blew the whistle on common unfair industry practices, so he doesn't mention Potter either. Likewise, he is silent about possibly excessive executive compensation at health insurance companies.

Reid is not concerned with abuse and corruption in the health-care industry so much as with flaws in the system itself. Even operating at its best and most honest, a for-profit insurance system cannot provide health care for everybody as cheaply as a not-for-profit private company or a public system. This is counter-intuitive to free-market advocates, but Reid backs up his assertions with figures: contrast 20% administrative costs in America with 6% in Canada, 5% in France and Britain, less than 2% in Taiwan.

1. again (this is Reid's most important point): “The primary issue for any health care system is a moral one." If we have the will to care for all our people, we will find a way. I was thinking about that Sunday while listening to the day's readings from the Revised Common Lectionary:

The rich and the poor have this in common:

the LORD is the maker of them all.

Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity,

and the rod of anger will fail.

Those who are generous are blessed,

for they share their bread with the poor.

Do not rob the poor because they are poor,

or crush the afflicted at the gate;

for the LORD pleads their cause

and despoils of life those who despoil them.

--from Proverbs 22

Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? ... If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?

--from James 2