Tom's Musings

I remember when watching the news on television was a sacred obligation for me. I wanted to be informed and enlightened. In recent years I avoid it like the plague, fearing I would go bankrupt after buying new TV sets after repeatedly putting my foot through the screen or buying expensive tranquilizers. I don’t have a lot of time this morning but I’ll share some tidbits after a quick look through my phone.

On the bright side, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has been ordered to pay $5 million to an expert who debunked his data related to alleged fraud in the 2020 election. An arbitration panel ordered him to pay Robert Zeidman, who has decades of software development experience, this amount. You might recall that Mike, ever the genius and great defender of the Donald, offered that amount to anyone who could prove his claims and data about rampant election fraud false. All these ‘fraud purveyors’ (and there have been many attempts to prove such including an expensive GOP led effort in Wisconsin) has proven is that our elections are remarkably honest.

On a down note, GOP Speaker McCarthy wants to cut federal spending as part of debt ceiling deal. As a reminder, we reached our authorized spending spending limit in January and are functioning as a nation only because of creative book keeping which cannot last for long. The pending deal would raise the limit to $35 trillion but the GOP House is balking. They claim excess spending is the culprit while conveniently overlooking the fact that Trump’s tax givaway to the unber rich added more to the debt than anything else. Even Speaker McCarthy has said ‘default is not an option.’ In such a scenario, the U.S. would not meet its obligations and become the laughing stock of the world (consider us going to the World Bank, hat in hand, begging for help), along with plunging the global economy into the crapper. What is frightening is that the zealots in his party don’t seem to care.

The GOP is trying to play brinkmanship with this issue. Their proposal would not touch taxes and would exempt the military from any cuts. They would go after public spending outside of mandated programs. They are calling for domestic spending cuts to 2022 levels with minimal future increases. That might sound benign but discussed impacts might include losing 125 air traffic control towers, slashing nutrition services to 1 million senior citizens, gutting Pell grants to 6.6 million students, ignoring the needs of 1.2 million poorer mothers getting WIC help, knocking 200,000 children off of Head Start, and resulting in 100,000 kids losing Child Care.

The list goes on including cutting recent additions to IRS which have greatly improved response to taxpayer’s questions AND would actually increase revenue to the government. Perhaps the worst proposed GOP idea would be to rescind Biden’s initiative to battle climate change passed last year. Some $370 billion across a variety of initiatives would be lost along with needed regulations on extractive fossil fuel industries. At a minimum, methane emissions would increase and you could kiss the antarctic good by. I suppose Trump and friends assume they will be dead before the ocean rises and puts their fairy land under several feet of sea water.

In other news, the Trump appointed Texas Judge who suspended the abortion pill is in the news again. Matthew Kacsmaryk, a poster boy for an ideal Gestapo agent, failed to release all his public speeches during hearings on assesing his suitability for the Federal Bench, as required by law. In these ommitted speeches, he said being gay is a lifestyle choice (conradicted by all the evidence) and expressed concerns about things like ‘no-fault divorce’ and ‘permissive policies on contraception.’ This troglodyte would bring us back to the ‘no sex except for procreation’ era of the early Catholic Church. As he advocates for his vision of a Talban ideal for America, some 60% of young women choosing coleges say reproductive rights will be important to their choice. They don’t want to go to school in states that would rescind their ability to exercise control over thier own bodies.

Then there was a CEO of a furniture making company who tried to fire up her employees to meet company financial goals. When some employees expressed concern about future bonuses, Andi Owens responded with: “I had a boss who said … you can visit pity city but you can’t live there. So, people, leave pity city. Lets get it done {achieve bottom line corporate goals}.” Her rah-rah speech, and utter dismissal of her worker’s financial needs was less compelling when the remuneration levels between workers and their bosses was examined. She made $5 million last year while her typical worker made $45,000. She later apologized for being tone deaf. DUH!

Finally, let’s go to McCurtain County Oklahoma … several local officials lamented that they could not go back to the good old days when they could whoop black people’s asses and hang them to a tree. In this pining for what they saw as utopia, they also looked forward to shooting a few media folk before arriving at the astonishing conclusion that blacks have more rights than they have. I guess the right not to be tortured and lynched is too much for these good Christians. How dare minorities wish to live in peace. One of these visionaries has resigned but I believe the others are digging in.

It may have always been this bad but in these days of cell phones and 24 hour news, it is in our faces every damn day. We seem to be drowning in a sea of stupidity and hate. I will leave you with a lighter touch on how I see the typical MAGA type of today.

Have a good day!

If you were to sit around with a bunch of old farts, as I did yesterday afternoon, you will find a lot of reminiscing about the ‘good old days.’ And there were no ‘old days’ better than the infamous decade of the 60s. It was a magical period of exuberance, experimentation, revolution, and hope, above all … hope. Somehow, we geezers look back on this magical time of drugs, sex, and rock and roll with unmitigated longing. But better than all that, we could watch the antics of Rocky and Bullwinkle on TV while learning so much from Peabody’s improbable history.

Mr. Peabody, a really smart dog, would take this doofus Sherman, a clueless boy, back into time (see cartoon above) where he would instruct his dim bulb of a student on the nuances of past historical periods. These instructive lessons turned me into a history buff, a love that has never diminsished yet will never be mastered.

Later in life, my spouse would catch me watching reruns of Rocky, and Gilligans Island, and the Beverly Hillbillies. I always tried to watch them on the down-low, like I did when sneaking a peak at some dirty magazine. Ah, but she was a sly woman … often catching me as I laughed out loud while viewing my favorite brain rot. “I can’t believe it,” she would huff. “You are so intelligent, how can you watch that junk.” (NOTE: I somehow fooled her into thinking I was smart.) I would grant that Gilligans Island and the others were geared for 6 year old minds but Rocky and Bullwinkle were way ahead of their times, and have yet to be equalled for sophisticated adult humor posing as a kid’s cartoon. Then she would sigh, roll her eyes, and mentioned ruefully something about the good catches she let get away.

I did get the last laugh one day. At some event we ran into Gary Sandefur and his spouse. Gary enjoyed a distinguished career as a professor of Sociology and later Dean of Letter and Sciences at UW before ending his career as Provost at Oklahoma State University, his home state. More importantly, he was a good guy whom Mary admired greatly. As we were chatting, Mary thought she could employ him as an ally in her ongoing (and futile) campaign to turn me into an adult. (Men are always amazed that women continue to tilt at this hopeless windmill.) So, she says confidently, “Gary, can you believe that Tom still watches Rocky and Bullwinkle. Really, what adult watches stuff like that.” Gary evidenced a crooked and slightly embarrassed smile while responding quietly “Mary, I just purchased a complete set of that series.” She was struck dumb by his words. Ah, sweet victory, so rarely experienced.

While Rocky (and his friends) helped me immensely during this ‘coming of age’ era, the times themselves seemed exceptional. It was as if our worlds tilted on their axes. I came out of the previous decade as a conventional Catholic, ethnic, working class kid. Here I am (the middle one) in the 1950s, an innocent kid playing little league baseball. The other two kids are my cousins, the one on the left eventually signed with the Los Angleles Angels and played in their minor league sysytem for a number of years. Aside from having a few unconventional ideas for my cultural environment, I was indistinguishable from all the other ruffians who would go on to live ordinary lives.

Then the 60s hit. Remember the movie ‘American Graffitti?’ It is about some high school kids graduating in 1962. They made different decisions and went in different directions and thus experienced radically different life trajectories. The underlying theme was that 1962 was a pivotal tipping point in our culture and history. So much was about to change after Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam War heated up. And so it did … the civil rights revolution, the anti-war movement, the feminist awakening, gay rights and native American rights and so much more. By the way, I graduated from high school in June of 1962.

I left the seminary in the fall of 1963 after realizing my lack of any conventional belief in a personal God made the priesthood a poor vocational choice and then matriculated at Clark University for the Spring semester of 1964. At that moment, I was still the conventional kid who grew up in a very ordinary way. By the time I went off to India in 1967, I was a totally different person. I had experienced every dimension and emotion of the turmoil that ravaged my belief structures and challenged my established world views. Most people never endure such a reclamation of their assumptions and their moral cores. Life for them is relatively linear. For me and many of my peers, it was the opposite. We examined and then reframed all that we thought we knew and believed. We recreated ourselves.

Here I was sitting at a beach on Cape Cod toward the end of my college years, musing about the world and my future. I don’t look different on the outside but the inside of me had been totally rebuilt. During my college years I went from a life unexamined to a world fully examined. While I may have learned a few things in classes, most of my education happened outside of class while spending endless hours debating the issues and challenges of the day.

I can still recall the moment I became an anti-war activist. I had an NSF grant to do original undergrad research (in psychology) and got into a debate with one of the other recipients (a kid who went on to Harvard for his doctorate). I was still hanging on to my conservative Catholic cultural beliefs (some of them at least) and tried to defend what we were doing there. He and I went at it for hours, no project research would be done that day. At the end of our personal debate, I knew I had lost that battle (though I could not admit it to him in the moment). Later that year, he sought me out in the cafeteria (I spent way more time there in dialiogue than in the library studying) to praise an anti-war article I had written for the college newspaper. He did not gloat at all, but his victory was in black and white.

That was a small vignette that was repeated endlessly as we rebuilt ourselves, at least as many of us did. Several decades ago, I recall reading an article that has stuck with me. It was by a State Supreme Court Justice in New York State. He talked about coming of age in the 1930s, another period when beliefs and world views were tested as the depression and an impending world war loomed. Like many of his intellectual college peers, he flirted with Communism and other utopian solutions to the looming problems surrounding them. He discarded the extreme remedies but, in the process of fully confrionting the most problematic challenges of his era, was required to rebuild his approach to life from the ground up. He felt that process made him a deeper and better thinker. He was so thankfull for the time in which he had the fortune to mature.

That same epiphany struck me as well. I joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) before they went off the crazy end. The important thing is that I had to think hard and long about what I believed and why. That process was largely forced on me by events and the challenges of the time … would I cooperate with the draft or resist for example. I am struck by how most people wander through life without change or challenge. I would watch students toward the end of the Vietnam War protest era spouting slogans while realizing that they had little understanding as to what they were opposing or why. For many of them, it simply was the thing to do. I found that sad, and commiserated with their situation.

There is nothing more precious than having come to your own set of of values after being through a cauldron of doubt and examination. There are few things so disappointing as going through life without really seeing what is about you.

And here I am in the late 1970s, after several years wandering about trying to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up. By this time I’ve stumbled into the University of Wisconsin and was getting a doctorate in Social Welfare. Almost by accident I would become a pretty decent policy wonk who was lucky enough to be involved in some of the more important social questions of my era. It was a heady time and I felt like I was at the center of it all. I also worked with the brightest academic and policy minds of my generation as well as having the opportunity to pass on my thoughts and skills to the next generation in my policy courses. How much fun was that? It beat working for a living.

To be honest, I was never a great student myself and was never disposed to be a conventional scholar (I stayed in academia with smoke and mirrors). But I always felt I had one advantage. I had been a child of the 60s who used that period of turmoil to full advantage. I had rebuilt nyaself from the ground up. More importantly, I could think for myself and connect the dots in unconventional ways. I had developed a skill at doing lateral thinking. I retrospect, that gave me an advantage no matter what room I was in, and I often was among some pretty impressive heavyweights in many of those rooms. I am so thankful.

We were not omniscient by any means. There are no final answers to life’s challenges and no end to the sifting and winnowing process. And sometimes, I got things dead wrong. I remember saying many times in the 60s, “wait until we grow up and assume positions of power. We will right the world.” When my cohort did take full power, all we did was turn the country toward the ‘right.’ How diasppointing is that. Now we look to the next generation to bail us out from the Reagan and Trump revolutions that have turned America into a near banana republic.

My god, how did that happen? What did happen to Camelot?

PS: I have written extensively on the times and on these issues.

http://www.booksbytomcorbett.com

Before launching into my rant of the day, a couple of quick notes:

First, Fox News has settled with Dominion Inc., the voting machine company that sued them for $1.6 billion for intentionally defaming the company with false news reports of irreguarities in their voting machines. Fow will reportedly kick over $787 million to Dominion. Sounds like a lot of money until you realize that Fox has over $4 billion in cash on hand and the company is worth $17 billion. Who knew that spewing propoganda was so profitable. [Actually, that was obvious to amy moron out there … there really are a lot of Bubbas to be scammed.]

Second, let us not forget that we hit the legal U.S. debt ceiling of $31 trillion in January. The wizards at Treasury are keeping the economy going with smoke and mirrors. Their magic will run out sooner rather than later. When that happens, and if the ceiling is not raised by Congress, we will not be able to borrow money to pay our debts. The U.S. will officially and publicly become a banana republic. The economic fallout is hard to imagine but hard line Republicans could care less.

Now to the main event of the day! Aren’t you excited? The Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR) at the University of Wisconsin has just released a report exploring what they called the civic fracture growing in the Badger State, long known for Midwest niceness, though not as nice as Minnesota which was ranked as the least rudest state in the union recently. I definitely want a recount on that one.

The UW researchers surveyed over 3,000 residents on a variety of issues. One thing that stands out is our growing disconnect with one another. Some 60% responded that they have stopped talking as much about politics because the topic has become toxic, twice the proportion measured just a decade ago. Some 17% reported losing connection with a close friend or family member over a political dispute. The researchers concluded that “we are bcoming more polarized” and that we are “less able to think about ways that we can at least reach common ground, or at least reach and understand opposing perspectives.”

I thought about this from my own experience. When Mary and I wintered in Florida, we had a home that was in a golf club community comprised of mostly Republicans (based on impression) but lived in one of the smaller ‘villages’ within the community that was more of a 50-50 political split. Our smaller community got along because there was a tacit understanding to avoid politics. That agreement was fraying toward the end of our stay there as Obama’s election spawned first the ‘Tea Party’ and then the ‘Trump’ fiasco.

The civility we had managed to maintain was fraying at the edges, at least in my opinion. I recall leaving one social event rather that confront some neighbors over what I considered total nonsense. Obamacare was NOT a Communist plot in my opinion. Okay, I have become crankier in my dotage but the level of common sense has been quickly eroding. My next door neighber there told me story that captured the changes. After the 2020 election, a new resident in the village was absolutely sure Trump would be retuned to power by April of 2021. He was willing to bet $500 he was so positive. Another neighbor took that bet and gleefully took his money when the April deadline passed. Yup, seeing different realities.

Some 66% of the Wisconsin survey respondents agreed that democracy in America is weaker than it used to be though people come at that pessimistic view from different perspectives. Some focused on increased voting impediments. Low-income residents were 3 times as likely to report issues in casting their votes than wealthier respondents. Younger voters were twice as likely to report issues than older farts. Over 30% of Blacks, Jews, and Muslims have become less involved in politics because of some level of fear, or so they report.

It is no secret that Wisconsin Republicans have been engaged in voter suppression tactics since they assumed control of the Assembly and Senate earlier in this century. That is how the Badger State earned the dubious honor of being the most gerrymandered state in the Union and how Republicans have gained a ‘super-majority’ of local seats even as they lose Statewide contests more often than not in recent years. So much for the rule of the majority.

Republicans are concerned about a separate set of issues. Some 77% fear that traditional views (or what they care about) are under attack. Some 43% expressed a belief that force may well be necessary to save their values, traditions, and way of life. And 29% agree that citizens may be pushed to take the law in their own hands. Since I don’t watch Fox or Newsmax or One America, I don’t know what kind of propoganda they receive on a daily basis, but it appears that they see their world disintegrating around them.

None of this is news to anyone paying the least bit of attention. I live in Dane County, a highly educated and affluent liberal mecca. You might call it a bubble. In the past election, over 80 percent of the voters went for the very liberal Supreme Court candidate (over her hard right opponent) and the turnout in the county was huge for an off-season election. If, however, you go far beyond the borders of the county into more rural parts of the state, you run into a totally different country. The cultural differences are stark.

This rural-urban split is palpable. There are many gaps between these two worlds in race and ethnicity, in education, in social and economic opportunities, and in world views. Many Americans see their world vanishing in the face of demographic change, technological revolutions, and disruptive cultural eruptions. When fed by hard-right news outlets and a political party dedicated to using division and fear as weapons, you have the ingredients for the disintegration of what we call the ‘United’ States, even if that were never totally the case in reality.

Our divisions are not new by any stretch. But they do seem sharper now. The communication bridge appears more daunting. Our willingness to communicate and tolerate is waning. It is for me and I feel bad about that. It could be age or it could be that the ‘other’ side really has become batshit crazy. The latter definitely seems to be the case though the ‘cranky old geezer’ explanation cannot be discounted..

I was going to follow up with a few more reflections on the AI revolution that has been capturing so much attention these days, and which I have touched on more than once. As is often the case, my restless mind was captured by several news items of the moment … current headlines that beg for comment.

In Florida, two crazies traveling on the highway with their families got into a Macho one upmanship game that oft leads to road rage. And it did. After the usual dodge-em antics, one threw a full water bottle into the other car which escalated the incident to an exchange of gunfire. The victims were two children, one of the daughters in each car. Fortunately, they will survive but will likely be scarred by the incident.

Then we have the story of Ralph Paul Yarl. He was a 16 year old black student in Missouri who was sent by his mother to pick up his younger siblings. Described by a former teacher as a ‘gifted student and gentle soul’ he mistakingly went to a house located on a Street when he should have gone to the same address on a Terrace, a mistake any of us might make. The elderly white owner of the residence, seeing a Black youth ringing his door bell, immediately opened fire. He hit the boy twice.

Just another day in America. At least the victims above are alive. In Dadeville Alabama, a gunman opened up at a Sweet Sixteen party. So far, four are dead and over two dozen wounded. As of this writing little is known about the perpetrator or any motives but this shooting took place in a town of 3,000 not known for vilolence. Those slain seem, at first glance, to be your average youth enjoying a joyous event. It is the 160th mass shooting of 2023, and we are not yet one-third the way through the calendar year. God Bless America!

Why do these things happen so often in the ‘land of the free and home of the brave?’ In the road rage incident, the usual frustrations associated with traveling on busy roads was elevated to an almost lethal level by our easy access to guns. Don’t leave home without your weapon. In the case of the black teen picking up his siblings, it likely was a case of pure racism. What else could a black teen at your door be but a gang banger intent on conducting a home invasion? Grab your weapon and blast away, ask questions later.

Our divided country is being brought to a boil with over 300 million firearms being added to the lethal broth. The NRA would have everyone armed and ready for conflict. Florida has a ‘stand your ground’ law which apparenly permitted one of the ‘crazies’ to fire back at the person who threw a water bottle at him. I recall the debate in Wisconsin where Republican lawmakers argued that students on campus should carry concealed weapons. His rationale … absent that, the crroks would know that students would be easy targets. Like I had any money when I was in college. On the other hand, as a professor, I doubt I would have given out any grade below an A.

The Alabama mass shooting is of a somewhat different nature. In the first two, there were no fatalities, simply wounded bodies and psyches that will need much time to repair. But 4 dead and some 28 wounded is another level of carnage. The first two will hardly be reflected in the national shame but mass murders do become part of the score by which we measure our soul and our moral culpability. I don’t need to provide the data. We all know that one dimension of our country’s ‘exceptionalism’ is our front-runner’s place (among advanced nations )in per-capita gun violence, and by a very large margin. We should be so proud. We also lead the world in the incarceration levels of our citizens. I soon expect to see travel posters saying, ‘need a break from the violence here … visit Somalia for a safe getaway‘ (relatively speaking that is).

But here is the real story today. A new Alabama law that took effect in January allows ‘anyone 18 and over to carry a handgun in the state without a permit or a background check or any safety training.’ Not even in Dodge City, the famous cattle town of the 1880s, were gun laws so lax. There, guns were not permitted within the city limits (the famous Western shootout at the Okay Corral occured when the cowboys violated the local gun restriction ordinance.)

Republicans continue to fall all over themselves in the race to make gun violence our national pastime. When will enough be enough, when each and every citizens ir armed with his or her own tank and rocket launcher? Perhaps they will pass laws requiring everyone be armed in public, particularly if gun sales flag. At the recent NRA gathering, a Republican Governor bragged to the assembly that her 2-year old daughter already owned her own weapons. She should be able to shoot her teacher at six years of age with considerable skill, just as a recent toddler did.

What was the initial response by local officials to this tragedy in Alabama. One said, “the best you can do is love your kids, let them know how much you are there for them, and be there for them.” Nice sentiment but not of much use when a bullet is ripping through their flesh and internal organs. Another offered these inspired words. “We’ve got to pray our way out of this. There is no other way.” Really, they can’t think of anything else to do? Good thing they were not in any of my policy classes since the dumbest students I had could think up a whole bunch of things to do beyond useless thoughts and prayers. We could start by reversing the trend toward arming everyone to the teeth. Remember, the above cited examples to the contrary, the vast majority of gun deaths are self-inflicted or by someone known to the victim. The ‘good guy’ acting as a vigilante stopping a ‘bad guy’ is a myth propogated to sell more instruments of death.

Alabama already ranked in the bottom (WORST) five in per-capita gun violence. No surprise there but let’s look more broadly at the state level data. Focusing on gun deaths per 100,000 citizens, what can we see? At the top of the list (MOST VIOLENT), we find (in alphabetical order) Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisianna, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming.

Now let’s look at the states at the bottom (LEAST VIOLENT), at least in terms of gun-related deaths. We find California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode island. The Bay State, where I was raised, was the least violent jurisdiction in the nation. How about that! And Boston has the craziest drivers in the country, with my home town of Worcester ranked second (Note: I do not second-guess their high spots for a nano-second). What would happen if all thes drivers were packing heat and Mass had a ‘stand your ground’ law like the Sunshine state. The bodies would be stacked up in the streets.

What jumps out at you. It strikes me that you take your life in your own hands when you cross into Republican controlled areas. The old saw of ‘guns saving lives’ is an NRA talking point, nothing more. It is merely bullshit that survives despite all the evidence to the contrary. Where are you safer, acording to the data at least … in blue states controlled largely by Democrats who are desperately trying to keep national Republicans from turning the whole country into a free fire zone. I’m not sure we have to worry about the AI machines rising up, or any apocolyptic climactic disaster, or some global biological pathogen created in some secret Chinese laboratory. Forget about those ends to the human experiment. We will have killed each other off before any of those things happen, one shootout at a time.

Okay, I’m getting too cranky here but I’m old and that is my right. Time for a joke:

Passing an office building, a Republican and strong MAGA supporter saw a sign on the door thar said ‘press bell for night watchman.’

He did so, and after several minutes heard the watchman clomping down the stairs. The uniformed man proceeded to unlock first one gate, then another, before shutting down the alarm system. Finally, the guard made his way to the revolving door.

“Well,” the irritated guard snarled, “what do you want?”

The Republican replied, “For the life of me, I just couldn’t figure out why you couldn’t ring the bell by yourself.”

You are spared more humor since I am off to see another doctor this morning, also routine. It does take a village of medical professionals to keep me vertical and able to take nourishment. Some days, given the insanity I see about me, I question whether that is even worth the effort!

I woke up to this scene this morning. It is April 17. I’m supposed to be looking out over freaking blooming flowers, not this crap. And I have to venture out this morning for a routine doctor’s appointment. One dare’s not miss these since it takes 6 months to reschedule one. Really, they would be celebrating the 1 year memorial of my passing before I could get to see the doc again.

Time to lighten up. How about a joke:

An Irishman and an Englishman walk into a bakery. The Englishman steals 3 buns and puts them into his pockets and leaves. He says to the Irishman ‘”It took great skill and guile to steal those buns. The owner didn’t even see me.”

The Irishman replied: “That’s just simple thievery. I’ll show you how to do it the honest way and get the same results.” The Irihman then proceeded to call out the owner of the bakery and says “Sir, I want to show you a magic trick.” The owner was intrigued so he came over to see the trick.

The Irishman asked him for a bun and then proceeded to eat it. He asked for two more and ate them. “Wait,” the bakery owner exclaimed, “where’s the trick?”

The Irishman then said, “Look in the Englisman’s pockets.”

I was perhaps 4 years old, if that, when I first was made aware of the historic tensions between the Irish and the English. I was with my father one day when an acquaintance of his asked me the classic question in New England, “What are you?” I was supposed to answer with my ethnic makeup … half Irish and half Polish. But I was a tot at the time and confused. Now I’m an old fart and still confused.

Displaying my cunning deductive reasoning that later made me such a successful academic (LOL), I reasoned that I was English since that’s the language I spoke. “English,” I said proud of myself for figuring all this out.

Wrong answer. My father pulled me aside and gave me my first lesson in ancient hatreds though, to be honest, he was perhaps the least prejudiced person among my family and friends since everyone back then seemed to hate everyone else. That was the reason for the ‘what are you’ question in the first place … the inquirer wanted to know where on the hierarchy of ethnicities you were to be assigned. You were defined by your ancestry.

Now, there was a rationale for the Irish-English animosity. For several hundred years, the so-called ‘limeys’ oppressed and exploited my ancestors and tried to obliterate their culture. In the great Irish famines of the 1850’s and 1870s, as hundreds of thousand perished from humger or fled their homeland, English landlords piled Irish crops on to ships to sell for profit elsewhere. There was much to be angry about.

Nevertheless, the sense of ridiculous ethnic pride or, worse, ethnic and racial hatreds never took hold with me. I resisted them from the very beginning. I’m not sure why though I’ve thought about than conundrum many a time.

I’m not claiming to be perfect. There is one group I detest intensly. But it is not based on an ascribed attribute over which the members have no control … like ethnicity or race. No, my prejudice is rooted in their chosen beliefs and behaviors.

Whom do I hate …. today’s Republicans!

I guess I’m not ready for Sainthood yet.

Damn, now I have to slip and slide over to my medical appointment.

For some reason, my neighbors and friends have been focused on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) phenomenon in recent days, a topic I discussed a while back. Given the recent spate of doom and gloom articles on the topic, virtually all echo my feelings that it is a blessing to be an old fart since we won’t have to confront the unknown world ahead of us. And it’s not just a bunch of retirees who fret about such things. The chief scientist at DeepMind, one of the companies frantically developing the next generation of AI technology, perhaps better labeled AGI or Artificical General Intelligence, offers a horrific possibilitiy. AGI, he recently said, is the greatest existential threat we as a species face, even greater than a global biological pathogen. Yet, the work on this threat continues at an increasingly frantic pace.

I am reminded of Robert Oppenheimer who, upon successfully igniting the first nuclear blast in the New Mexico desert in 1945, likened what he and his fellow scientists had done to the Hindu God of death and destruction. Had they created their own destruction he wondered in that moment. Many of those working on the Manhatten Project later regretted their participation. Besides, I would put anthropogenic climate change at the top of the list of existential threats and I wouldn’t excluse nuclear holocaust just yet. I recall scrambling under my elementary school desk in the 50s when we practiced against the Russkies dropping the Big One. I was sure I would be toast in those days. But it hasn’t happened so far, though there have been at least two very close calls. Iss this a reason for hope?

Technology has its own compelling drive. We are a curious species and want to pursue the unknown. Besides, there are untold riches to be had by those who win command the AGI market. Certain entrepreneurial breakthroughs bring undreamed riches to those who bring a new concept to scale. Think of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, or Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. The returns to those who command future machines that can replace an estimated 300 million jobs globally (one estimate of the labor force impact of AGI) at the start of this next technological innovation cannot even be imagined.

Judy Faulkner, a local Madison entrepreneur, has become a billionaire by taking a small University of Wisconsin Project and turning it into a major company that dominates the medical records industry. She could use this emerging AGI technology to replace the thousands of programmers that toil in the amazing, sprawling campus syill being erected just outside Madison WI (According to my neighbor whose daughter works close to Ms. Faulkner). Think of the returns when you bring to the market a set of machine that can replace the millions of humans hard at work in the medical industry, an empire that represents some 17 or 18 percent of America’s GDP. Croeses would have to step aside for this new wealthy elite which would command unimagined resources and power.

Perhaps, though, all this alarm is overstated. As a good friend has assured me, AI is all around us. It is in our cars, our watches, on our factory floors. It is omnipresent and mostly does good things. And she is right. So far, removing humans (or complementing them) from many functions has improved the world. And yet, I cannot help but think these are tasks being replaced or enhanced at the very beginning of this revolution. It is like the Wright Brothers getting excited when their rickety craft left the ground for some 120 feet on the first try. About a half century later, we were sending our ships into deep space. Don’t be fooled by what you see at the beginning.

Not long ago, we used to talk about the ‘singularity,’ a magical moment when human consiousness could be uploaded onto machines and achieve a kind of immortality. On an episode of the Big Bang Theory, nerdy Sheldon Cooper lamented that he would not live longe enough to be around for this milestone which, when I paid attention to such things, was projected to arrive in the 2040s. Most of those at the forefront of AGI now think any such qualitative breakthrough will happen much sooner than that, though uncertainty remains.

Two facts might be considered. The amount of money being poured into AGI research and development is growing exponentially. In recent years an estimated $21 billion has been invested. In the first 3 months of this year, another $11 billion has been poured in as the race heats up and the functionality of these ‘machines’ leaps forward. Second, the progress in mimicking, replacing, and surpassing human functioning is proceeding at an astounding pace. A decade ago, we were tacken aback that this technology could recognize images at the level of a child and play chess at the level of a Master. By 2022, our friendly devices had mastered virtually all computer games, could pass the Medical Licensing and Bar exams, could write at least 40 percent of the code now done by advanced programmers, could engage in self-reflection and improvement, and could reason at a level way above any and all Republicans.

Some estimate that the sophistication and power of this technology has advanced by a factor of 100 million in that decade. What will this technology look like in another decade, another generation. No one knows. This is why hundreds of top tech people including Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Elon Musk, and Bill Gates have called for a moratorium on this growing beast to think things through. Would that be enough? Can government take control and regulate this monster when we cannot even agree on our debt ceiling which could plunge the U.S. and world economy into a horrific economic crisis? Look how good we are at dealing with the climate crisis in which warning signals about carbon dioxide emissions were being sounded over a century ago. I am not hopeful.

It is easy to speculate about the millions upon millions of jobs that will be replaced. On a recent trip to the Twin Cities, I passed many over the road trucks, most of which were begging for drivers. Wages and benefits for these positions have gone up in response to the shortages. Some make $100,000 per year now, unheard of in the past. Robotics will replace them in short order, and likely will given the current labor costs. Getting a diagnosis from a doctor? It takes me 6 months to get a freaking appointment now and I live in a city which has a medical facility on every other corner. Even today, AGI can accurately diagnose most conditions faster and as accurately as my smiling internist (who is damn good at what he does.) And professors? Who will need them as teachers? The latest AGI machines can absorb virtually the entire internet. My peers at Wisconsin, as smart as they were, could not keep up with the outpouring of research in their own and increasingly narrow sub-specialities. I could go on but you get the picture.

This leaves us pondering what will happen to people. How will they survive without work? Perhaps more to the point, how will they find purpose in life? I recall a Star Trek episode where the crew of the Enterprize stumbled across a civilization living in a world where machines had taken over all the required tasks. The humans that remained had reverted to a child like level, simply existing without purpose or meaning. Hmm, sounds like my life. In any case, that could well be an idealized scenario.

What I find ironic is that the capacity to replace humans comes at a time when we have so many of them. In the past, children perished in large numbers … half died before puberty across time and over all societies. It was as if it were an iron law. That rate began to fall over the past century plus. It went from 1 in 2 at the onset of the 19th century to 1 in 4 by 1950; then fell to 1 in 5 by 1960; then plunged to less than 1 in 25 by 2017. Sure, we have far fewer pregnancies (and I suppose we could outlaw sex), but the world’s population continues to grow. We have over 8 billion souls seeking to survive today with a growth rate of almost 1 percent annually. That’s a lot of new folks every year given the huge base. What will we do with them all when they become irrelevant?

The pessimists among us (and I sometimes am with them) consider even more horrific outcomes. Machines that smart, and having access to all of human history and our record of unimaginable stupidity and barbarism, cannot help but conclude that the hom-sapien species was wildly misnamed. There is nothing wise about us. What would they need with us, or most of us at least? In the aggregate our resume is not impressive. One wag speculated that our demise from any rising up of AGI would at least be more efficient and painless than alternative armageddons like climate disaster or nuclear war. That’s a consolationI suppose.

In Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece (2001: A Space Oddyssey), one of the space ship’s crew members eventually shut down HAL, the onboard computer when it decided the human crew was not worth the effort, though it was a close run thing. I wonder if we will have a Dave when our time comes, and what the outcome will be?

When I was in India back in the 60s, faking it as an farming expert, I had a bad feeling. All my life, my feelings have been on the dark side. As I keep pointing out, I’m irish. That’s what we do … see black clouds everywhere.

Here’s my point. I saw small farms in my backward, rural site that could barely support one family. Yet, there were many children in each family while health services and disease control had progressed to the point where most children were now surviving. Male family heads, however, still thought they needed many children to ensure male survivors.

Remember this. Global child mortality rates hovered at an estimated 50 percent throughout the history of our species. That began to fall precipitously as modern hygiene and public health measures kicked in. The global rate fell to about 1-4 by 1950 and less that 1-25 today. In Scandinavian countries, the rate approaches 0 though, as usual, the U.S. lags far behind more advanced nations.

Below is a pic of two volunteers I trained with who did public health work in Maharasthra. Unlike my pathetic agricultural efforts, these programs worked.

Now here is my point! What would happen to all these children who would now grow to adulthood. You could not divide up these postage size farms any further. India’s urban areas already seemed crammed with too many people scrapping to survive, and barely managing that. I can yet recall watching men carry cases of Coke up a steep mountain to a hill station where I was vacationing since that was cheaper than motoring the liquid up, and it gave them a job. I really was the ‘ugly American’ in those moments. I felt I was at ground zero of the ‘population bomb’ we all talked about back then. Within a generation, India would collapse, or so I predicted.

Fortunately, as my future spouse would repeatedly point out, I was wrong … again. India’s population continued to grow. Recent headlines announced that, at 1.4 billion souls, the population had surpassed China’s and placed her at the top of the list. Yet, no collapse. What happened? In point of fact, population growth has slowed and is projected to trend down not long in the future.

The obvious answer is that I’m a dumb shit but let’s put that possibility to the side for the moment. Normally, the solution to such difficult questions are multifaceted in character. There are few single and simple answers. It was not that India’s leaders were not trying hard to stem population growth even back then. A national birth control campaign started in 1952 with the slogan ‘hum do; hamare do’ or ‘we are two, and will have only two.’ {children}. Indira Gandhi, the PM in the 1960s, was very aggressive in getting men sterilized sometimes forcibly which generated considerable blowback.

I can recall sitting in a meeting where local officials explained the benefits of family planning (i.e., getting a vasectomy) to men, I don’t recall any women in the room. One grizzled man asked what would happen if he had this procedure and then his wife got pregnant … the room erupted in laughter. Even with the incentive of a promised cheap transistor radio, I doubt there were few takers that day.

Perhaps the answers can be found in an article I ran across a couple of days ago. It told the story of two provinces, Bihar in the far northeast of the country and Tamil Nadu located in the far southeast. They have had very different outcomes in dealing with India’s challenges. Let’s look:

Bihar is a conservative area, still steeped in the past and largely agricultural. You might consider this the Indian version of America’s south … stuck in tradition and rigid views. There, women still have a high (though not as high as in the past) birth rates … about 3 children per family. Education is lacking, with only 55 percent of the women being literate. And most married females remain in traditional roles. Only 19% are employed.

Tamil Nadu is like a different country. The birth rate is less than 2 (1.8), which is comparable to many western countries. The women are better educated with a female literacy rate of 84%. Finally, more married women function outside the home with a 46 % labor force participation rate. Bihar and Tamil Nadu have taken very different paths, not unlike the split we see in the States.

Tamil Nadu does some interesting things. As soon as a pregnancy is registered with local authorities, a ‘village nurse’ will start visits with prenatal care and health information. The birth will take place in an advanced medical facility where family planning counselors will work with the mother to determine what is best for her regarding future pregnancies. Depending on circumstances, cash incentives are available up to $240 U.S. dollars to cease producing children though all is voluntary. All family options are explored and made available at no cost. Later on, as girls transiton toward adulthood, an incentive of 1,000 Rupees is awarded those who stay in school and delay marriage. This campaign is far ahead of what you would find in Mississippi. Tamil Nadu got the simple fact that you work with the women if you want an effective family planning program.

But not everything is explained by what happens at the micro or individual level. India also had an economic rennaissance beginning in the 1980s. For 3 or 4 decades after achieving independence, economic growth was slow, hampered by too much bureaucracy and red tape. A campaign to remove many impediments worked in some areas. Tamil Nadu, for example, looks a lot like other booming East Asia countries with new industries flourishing and economic opportunities growing. The joke about the service technician calling himself ‘Steve from Wichita’ really being ‘Patel from Hyderabad’ is not a joke. Send in your tech problem and a highly educated technician on the other side of the world will work on it over night.

Local community development efforts undoubtedly also helped to avert the apocolypse … a possibility I did not see at the time.

Below are two shots. The first, which I shared before, is my home during my glorious Peace Core experience. The surrounding ares was bleak and nothing but desert.

The next shot is the same location. It is developed, with agricultural work ongoing where only sand and dirt once dominated everything. I did not see such growth in the future. BTW … where it says Panchayet Samiti Office (or Community Development Center) is the exact location of my home in the first shot.

India still has many problems, the biggest of which is a conservative national government that appeals to Hindu Nationalism, a kind of Trumpian view of the world. However, at least it has not collapsed as I once feared.

My late wife was right … I am an idiot!

One regret I’ve had from my misspent youth involves the utter lack of curiosity evidenced in my personal ancestry. Oh, I had some curiosity in the family background but not enough to sytemically gather information back when direct sources of that information were yet available to me. Alas, my grandparents passed when I was quite young and lacked all curiosity in such matters. The few questions I asked relatives from my parent’s generation usually resulted in vague information like … your grandpatents immigrated from somewhere in Ireland or Poland. That wasn’t good enough, especially if I now wanted to pursue Irish citizenship available to those who could prove a direct linkage to the old sod. That possibility, you see, became more attractive as America went into the crapper.

Any way, I finally got my shit together, so to speak, spit into a tube and then shipped that off to Ancesty.com early this year. Since then, information has been dribbling in on my roots based both on that DNA sample and on public records. You can get a rough estimate from the location where your family was from for a surprisingly modest investment but then they tease you into making additional investments as they occasionally share additional details. But I’ve wasted my money in more ridiculous ways.

One issue intrigued me. I knew my father’s parents came somewhere in Ireland. At the same time, I also knew that Corbett was not an original clan name from Eire. It likely was Norman in origins and my roots would be linked back to Northern France (Corbett with an e on the end) or even back to Viking roots which settled in the north of France during the period when the Norsemen expanded their reach to North America (well before Colombus) all the way into Russia before it was Russia. [NOTE: Normandy comes from words to describe men from the ‘north’ or Norsemen.] These Vikings even raided and settled along rivers like the Dnieper. The very word Russia come from Rus which referred to some aspect of the river boats used by Vikings as they made their way along rivers in that part of the world, or so I recall.

But I digress. It turns out I am officially half Irish. On my mothers side I expected to be Polish but that was more vague. The wizards at Ancesrty said I was 31 percent Baltic and 19 percent East European Russian. What the hell does that mean other than the people of that region moved around a bit before my mother’s parents emigrated from an area in Poland around the time of the the first world war. I did know that my mother’s older sister was born in what is now known as Poland. Exactly where I don’t know and parts or all of Poland was often gobbled up by their bigger neighbors from time to time.

They have come up with surprisingly little on that side of the family. My grandfather was named Constantin Spolinski who married an Isabelle Boguszewics. My mother was born as Jenny Anna Spolinski in 1920, not long after they arrived in the U.S. and just before the immigration crackdown on undesirable aliens like Eastern Europeans. They have provided little additonal information like immigration details, marriages, children etc. I do know they first settled in Wisconsin before moving east and eventually ending up in Worcester Mass, the garden spot of New England (LOL). Sometime in her youth, my mother changed her name to Jane Ann Spiglanin, which became the family moniker sometime after arriving here. I have no idea when or why.

Jane Ann Spiglanin married Jeremiah Thomas Corbett (he went by Tom) in 1942.

Here is the happy couple around that time. I look upon this picture in wonder. They seemed to like one another. I never experienced that, only the constant fights though they stayed together for reasons I could never fathom. I recall one or the other saying a divorce would be too expensive. Really? The real problem was that my mother married for love when she was seeking someone who would support her in the manner she thought she deserved. Bad choice. My dad was an exciing guy in his early days who operated on the edges of the Irish mob (he would be considered a ‘bad boy’ today), but he settled into a life as a factory worker after I was born. I have always felt guilty about that.

I have more info on my dad’s side of things. His father was Jeremiah Timothy Corbett, born in Munster Ireland (southwest) in 1886.

This was Jerry in the middle with his two sons. My uncle Timothy is on the left in his WWII uniform and my dad on the right. They are standing in front of the State Mental hospital in Worcester where my gradfather spent his later years for a condition never explained to me. I never met him though I recall as a tot staying in a car while my dad went in to see him [It wasn’t child abuse to let tots stay in cars back then].

My dad’s mother was born in 1880. Mary Agnes Boland grew up in Country Clare, just south of Galway on the west coast. Not sure when they came over but they were married in 1912 and settled in the South Boston Irish ghetto before moving to Worcester sometime later. There were several children born in the subsequent years including my dad in 1918. At least one, perhaps two, died in infancy since I never recall any mention of them. Who is Bridget?

However, my parents met when my dad worked for a Bingo operation (which was a form of legalized gambling then). He was, as I mentioned, an exciting bad boy at the time. They married in 1942 and I came along in 1944. They took one look at me and said … no more sex for us. That was a wise decision with which I have no argument.

Here I am on my grandmother’s lap.

Some of the mystery is being filled in but so much remains, especially on my mother’s side. I’m guessing the Irish spend a lot more time thinking about their roots. Ancestry did lay out an area where my maternal DNA is prominent. That area covers an expansive area from today’s eastern Poland, the Baltic nations, through Eastern and southern Russia far to the east. My stock very likely came from Eastern Poland and the Baltic region adjacent to the North Sea. These regions are located close to one another. I will need to do more digging one day.

However, I do have enough evidence to start the process of obtaining dual citizenship with Ireland. That might come in very handy if Trump or one of those Republican crazies captures the White House in 2024.

One of my book clubs read the Secrets of the Sprakkar by Eliza Reid. The author is the ‘First Lady’ of Iceland. She is a Canadien by birth who met her husband, the current President of this small nation, when they were both students at Oxford University. She believes her perspective is unique, moving to this insular society in 2003 without any knowledge of the language or culture. Now she represents the place around the globe. Still, she feels she has an ‘outsiders’ perspective that can be of use in telling the world what she has experienced here.

The word Sprakkar is icelandic for exceptional women, and that is the theme of her book. Iceland is at the top of the world list for gender equality (America lags behind in about 30th place). Then again, America lags behind in so many areas, health outcomes, education outcomes, personal saftety, income equality, and national happiness. In the last category, Finland is #1 with places like Iceland right on their heels.

Everywhere you look American is way behind except in rankings of bad things. Mass murders, we top the list. Child poverty, way up there. I just read that 100 million Americans have racked up $200 billion dollars in medical debt. An unplanned medical emergency is the no. 1 reason for U.S. bankruptcies. Other advanced countries treat access to medical care as a ‘right.’ We treat it as just another profit center except for certain groups. American exeptionalism has come to mean exceptionally bad and that American Dream is more like the American Nightmare.

The author, Ms. Reid, focuses on gender issues. Iceland was not always the nirvana it is today even though the country’s females always had to be strong and independent given the prime occupations of the land and that they were on their own a lot. As in many lands, women felt they were second class citizens until almost five decades ago. In 1975, women called a national strike. Of course, there are fewer citizens in the whole country than in Dane County Wisconsin where I live. Still, some 90 percent of the women turned out and the repercussions were profound (note, there have been several additional strikes, the most recent in 2018).

In just a few years, 1980, the people of Iceland elected the first female President in the world, Vigdis Finndogattir, not exactly a household name in the world. Few Icelanders achieve the notoriety of a household name since no one can pronounce their damn names. I might also note that there were earlier female Prime Minister (e.g., Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi among others) but these politicians rose to this postion by a party vote and not a general election.

With that, the race to gender equality was on. At the time of the national women’s strike, only 5 percent of Althing members (their elected governing body) were female. It rose to 15 percent by 1983 and now stands at 48 percent, far outstripping the U.S. and most other peer countries. About three out of four women have paid jobs; the comparable rates are 61 percent in Canada and 56 percent in the U.S.

The statistics could go on but that is not what struck me about her story. In fact, the members of the book club (the majority are women) were not enthused about the book, finding it sanitized and vanilla, as if problems were being downplayed. She is, after all a sitting ‘First lady’ (that is not what she is called there), so political sensitvity has to be an issue in what she publishes.

For example, I noticed she discussed the casual attitude toward sex there, which she praises as a form of liberation, along with the wide availaility of contraceptives and early sex education. Since I came of age in a period and culture (the 1950s, Catholic, working class) of total repression of all things sexual, my immediate response was to take the first plane to Rekyavik. One of her more humorous vignettes was the exasperation expressed by a young gal who felt pressured to introduce to her parents the young men she brought home for a night of carnal delights. What a burden! Then she mentions that only 30 percent of births are to married couples though many more co-habitate (note: there are far fewer teen and unwanted births, however). What she doesn’t explore are the longer term effects of the erosion of traditional marriage. I wish she had since I suspect a downside.

What really imprssed me was something else, not so much gender eqiality (a good thing indeed), but the safety net that makes the people of Iceland (and other Scandinavian countries) so relatively secure and content. It starts with pregnancy. The state supplies free midwife-based prenatal care in the home for the duration of the pregnancy. The birth process itself take splace in a high quality medical facility at a nominal fee (I think she said about 5 American dollars). A full year of paid family leave is guaranteed by the state that can be shared between the male and female parents. The cost of child care is very reasonable, and education through college incurs only a nominal administration fee of about $550 U.S. dollars. Of course, medical care is a right available to all citizens.

Thus, it is easy to have children. Ms. Reid had 4 kids in her first 6 years in the country. The birth rate in Iceland remains among the highest among advance dcountries. Having a child is not a huge economic risk. Living period is not fraught with anxiety where the loss of a job or a pre-exisiting medical condition can spell disaster. One public service caught my attention. She mentioned that the government directly pays child support to the parent raising the child and then attempts to collaect that amount from the absent party. Here, in Wisconsin, I and my collaegues tried to introduce a similar scheme back in the 1980s. We called it the Child Support Assurance scheme. Though we had federal permission to try it, we ran into a firestorm of opposition. Among other things it was seen as government over reach and radical socialism.

Natually, all this cost money and their tax rates are very high, even without any military exenditures. Americans would howl at the rates Icelanders pay. But thay don’t seem to mind. Why?

Well, they feel they get a lot for their taxes, and they do. What Americans pay out of pocket are included in an advanced scheme of public support. But I think the difference goes beyond that. They have a strong sense of community. They tend to see themselves as part of a large family where the burdens and risks of life are shared. When I asked a colleague many years ago why we in the States have such an inadequate saftey net, he respnded with one word … heterogenity. We have no common sense of identity, no common culture, no shared community. It is all ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ Our foundational myths ar based on the settlers who dominated the new land and the cowboy who, on his own, fought off all others for his space and his family. Images such as independence and self-reliance define the core attributes of the good American. Let everyone get their AR-15.

In my fictional book just coming out (Refractive Reflections) I write at length (through my characters) about what is needed to alter the American zeitgeist. It is not only a change in policy that is needed but a transformation in our foundational myths. We somehow must transition from selfishness, conflict, and domination to a something closer to collaboration, civility, and community. That is why I liked this book. It showed a society build on radically different presumptions than here and where the people also were much happier. True enough, they live on a smaller and more manageable scale, but I’ll overlook that for the moment.

Back in pre-historical times, before the internet and smart phones, I still had dreams and, incredibly, values. I even went to church as a kid. Surprisingly, I took it all that spiritual instruction seriously while absorbing the lessons that most others seemed to miss. You know, love thy neighbor and not just cute Suzy the next block over but those who don’t look like you and those who need help. You might remember those lessons, Christ’s message that others, like Evangelicals, conveniently over look.

So, I tried the Catholic Seminary for a while until I realized you had to believe in God to be a priest before doing other do-gooder stuff like working in a hospital and with poor kids in a rough neighborhood while working my way through college. And what does a Psych major with such delusions of sainthood do after they hand him his BA degree? He joins the Peace Corps. What else?

Peace Corps was big back in the 1965 when I applied. The program was still in its so called ‘wild west’ days when huge numbers applied, only a few were chosen, and fewer still survived the long training and arduous placements. I actually chose India, what I later found to be one of the program’s tougher sites. I also thought I had signed on for a rural Public Health program, spurred on by my vast experience emptying bed pans on the 11-7 shift at a Catholic Hospital while I slept through my classes during the daylight hours. I had visions of being the next Albert Schweitzer. I doubt I was very swift in those days, having tried a shot at Sainthood and then giving SDS (Stidents for a Democratic Society) a shot as I tried to stop the war in Vietnam.

Two surprising things happened. Peace Corps took me and I made it. However, instead of healing the sick, I was first assigned to a poultry program and later agriculture. Talk about a mismanaged and misguided effort. We were all urban kids with a rather large proportion from elite colleges … Berkeley, Yale, Columbia, and so forth. Farmers we were not, but we had some great discussions. It later struck me as a classic ‘bait and switch’ scheme.

One day, in 1967, I was dumped in a small town some 60 kilometers or so south of Udaipur, Rajasthan. Here is my abode for two years:

My home was the building on the far right. It was part of the government complex devoted to developing this backward part of a Province located on the Northwest border adjacent to Pakistan. While there were several accomomadations for goverment workers, they all lived in the town about a mile away. I shared my living quarter with scorpians and other unseemly creatures. I got some flip flops since I never wanted to insert my feet in real shoes, not knowing what surprize might await. I had no running water but I did get electricity after six months. I thought that luxurious indeed.

The real challenge is that we had no idea what we were doing. You can’t take city kids and turn them into ag experts with a little training. And we were isolated. No cell phones or internet or any means of communication. Making things worse, the Hindu culture was complex and rather rule bound … rigid actually. There was no bar to carouse with the locals and women were strictly off limits. This enforced chastity, though, was not that hard for me. After all, I had grown up with Catholic girls. Still, the relentles heat, isolation, and lack of any obvious purpose in the desert tested us all. Crapping in a hole in the floor with no toilet paper added to the charm of the place.

But some of us perservered. From about a hundred of us excited kids on day one of training, about two dozen of us were left standing at the end. Many were asked to leave and more self-selected out. Below are the hopefuls on the first day of training and next are many of the male survivors (about a similar number of females that we trained with were in the Public Health program I wanted and served in a different Province) when we gathered some four decades after returning to the States.

When we gathered many decdes later, we shared our horror stories and laughed at our ineptness. And yet, we all tried. Though working in technical areas we knew little about, we were a bright bunch (the accomplishments of this group in life are quite amazing, with the exception of me that is). Let me amaze you with my achievments:

Ah yes, even before we made it to our villages, we cemented Indo-American relations through a series of basketball games with the local college kids. We beat them easily until we showed up for the final match and they brought in a bunch of ringers from the military or a local prison, we never found out which. No matter, they beat us in every way possible including in the score. A riot almost broke out but we were all friends in the end. Three of us joined the local Udaipur team in an ‘All India’ tournament in Jaipur. There, we found out they could play the game in othe rparts of the country. We were crushed.

Beyond that, there were gardening projects, poultry projects, and demonstration plots marketing new types of seed. I have no idea how much good all this did. I did become aware that there were two rumors about why we were there. Either, I was a CIA spy OR I was there to learn farming so I could become a farmer when I returned to the States. No one saw me as an expert. I do like to poimt out that India was importing grain when I arrived in 1967 and exporting grain when I left in 69. I hate to take all the credit but numbers don’t lie. LOL!

In the end, we got way more out of the experience than the natives. We formed friendships that would last a lifetime for one thing. In the foto below, I’m with Haywood on the left and Bill on the right. Haywood grew up dirt poor to a North Carolina sharecropper family. He credits peace Corps witjh inspiring him in his future life which included getting advanced degrees and securing a high postion in a national labor union. Bill, a Yale scholarshop student, went on to get an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. in economics from NYU. He did international banking before the lack of ethics in that field disillusioned him. He later worked for the U.S. Federal reserve System. Here, we are visiting the family of one of our language instructors in Delhi.

As we discussed our experiences during several gatherings over the past dozen years or so, one thing became clear. Our India experience changed us. I became more confident, though the imposter syndrome has stalked me through life. And I learned so much about the power and influence of culture and how to work with diverse people. Those lessons shaped my peronality and informed my approaches to the policy issues I struggled with in my career as an academic and policy wonk. I brought a unique approach to my labors which, I believe, came out of this experience. I am so thankful.

Perhaps there is some merit in making such experiences more available to our youth today. I realize you cannot replicate what we endured back then in the ‘primitive’ days of the Peace Corps experment. Still, exposing young people to starkly different cultures and getting them out of their familiar comfort zones cannot help but expand their view of the world.

Obviously, this is a cook’s tour of an unforgettable period of my life. And being me, I’ve written a book about it, drawing upon the thoughts and writings of my fellow sufferers. It is witty, insightful, sad, and hopeful all at the same time. ‘It really was a good idea at the time.’