Susan's Musings

Inspiration and Memories of the Boston Marathon

I just got back from watching the Boston Marathon.

Now mind you I'm not a runner nor do I have any interest in becoming one. I can't run to the end of the block.

But...I have been going to the Marathon since I was 2 years old, sitting on my dad's shoulders. He was a runner in college (Syracuse) so he took a special interest in running although I have to say I never saw him run and he never ran the Boston Marathon or any other as far as I know. He was a sprinter not a long distance runner. And by the time I came along, running was a thing of the past except on Marathon Day.

For most of my life, I have lived within walking distance of the route, somewhere near the halfway point, so I have missed very few--just when I was living in New Orleans and a year or two when I was working retail. And for most of my life, I have watched from the same street corners where we'd catch up with family friends (and one of my mother's high school boyfriends) who also watched from the same corner. The old timers are all gone, my dad along with the rest in the past couple of years. Strange not having them there.

Johnny Kelley is gone too. He died last fall at age 97. He won 2 marathons back in 1935 and 1945 and ran his last in 1992 when he was 84 years old. After that he got to ride the course as Grand Marshall.

Every year I am so inspired by the commitment these runners make. So many of them only running to meet a challenge set for themselves. It is all about personal bests. If I were to walk down to the route now at 5 pm, 5 hours after the start, I would find men and women walking the route, amid the Belmont Springs and Gatoraide cups, still headed for the finish line. Many of them will make it.

The most inspirational are the ones who run for love. Team Hoyt is such a team. Dick Hoyt pushes his son, Rick, who has cerebral palsy. This year was their 24th running. They missed one year after Dick had a heart attack but they are back heading through town 10-15 minutes after the lead men come through. It's quite remarkable. Check out their website at teamhoyt.com

This year, there was a man with a prosthetic leg. Everyone just stopped and clapped for a very long time. And every year there are the folks in wheelchairs.

The crowds love them all--clapping and callling out words of encouragement. The runners say that's what keeps them going.

So this year as always I went to support the runners, to be inspired by them and to remember the tradition I had with my dad.

Next year when I'm living in Rhode Island, I will come back for the Marathon.

The Most Important Part of Language is Listening

After reading Moral Politics by George Lakoff, it seems to me that the best way to change conservative thinking is to listen to them without trying to convert them. One of the major attributes missing in the Strict Father model of family is engaging in dialogue with children. It can be presumed that most conservatives grew up in this kind of family. Given how alienating and anger provoking not being listened to can be, it seems to me that listening to them and engaging in a dialogue rather than an argument would do more to heal the wounds that are tearing this country apart than anything else.

Part of what makes it hard for the rest of us to listen is that we too have been influenced by the Strict Father model of family. Although we may not have experienced the lack of nurturance that many raised in that model did, we have been influenced by the struggle around us, the struggle that now pervades our politics. And, I expect that for most of us, there is a Strict Father lurking in our unconscious who we despise. As long as we despise that part of ourselves and the conservatives who constantly throw it in our faces, we will be unable to listen. As long as that part stays unconscious it feeds our distaste for conservative views. Making this part conscious does not mean that we have to embrace it and become Strict Father advocates. It does mean that we can acknowledge it and stop allowing it to have any influence on how we interact with conservatives particularly the neo conservatives and fundamentalists. We don't listen because we are in part afraid they might be right. They're not but we have to confront the fear that they may be in order to really listen to them.

Once we can listen, we can give them the experience of being listened to. Being listened to when one has never experienced it is powerful healing and conservatives are desperately in need of healing. Part of their rancor and self righteousness is coming from a very disempowered place. And just like bullies all over the world, they will continue to try to impose their will on the rest of us. Have you noticed how they twist things? While working so hard to impose their will on us, they keep saying that it is because we (or the liberal judges at the moment) are doing it to them. Interesting turn around don't you think?

We will never convince them that they are wrong. They can't see it nor are they willing to listen. But for those of us who grew up with the Nurturant Parent model of family, we know how to listen. That is one of the major attributes that distinguishes the Nurturant Parent model from the Strict Father. These folks have never had the experience of really being listened to.

So I guess that I would disagree with George Lakoff, that liberals need to reclaim the language of morality. We do but that's not the first step. The first step is to listen and try to understand the experience of people who have never felt listened to. We must seek to understand and in that sense Moral Politics is a giant leap forward.

Multitasking: Something to Think About

Great op-ed piece appeared in the New York Times on February 19, 2005.

Here are some excerpts from "The Boss in the Machine" by Ellen Ullman

"It's scary to think that it took less than 50 years for what once was a deep, internal machine concept - multitasking - to work its way outward and change the course of human social life. Introduced in the 1960's, multitasking is an engineering strategy for making computers more efficient. Human beings are the slowest elements in a system...."

"...And soon we, the users, give in to the idea that rapidly switching the focus of our attention is not just normal but advisable. So we drive and eat and talk on the cellphone, check e-mail in the middle of conversations, stop writing a paragraph to check its spelling, get used to ads that dazzle us while we try to read Web pages or watch TV. Everything in our machines encourages us to be like them: busy, attention-hopping."

"Multitasking, throughput, efficiency: these are excellent machine concepts, useful in the design of computer systems. But are they principles that nurture human thought and imagination? Not that long ago, we didn't think so. I am reminded of the scene in the 1976 movie "The Man Who Fell to Earth" in which David Bowie, playing an alien, sits watching a bank of television sets, each tuned to a different channel. The screens flash, the sound blares - the sensory overload is almost unbearable. Yet he watches unfazed. It is the surest sign that he is not human."

"This may come as a shock to some engineering designers, but there really are people in the world who would rather rub two thoughts together than be efficient. Among such oddballs I would count many Silicon Valley dreamers and truly creative programmers I have known, the sort of people whose desks (and sometimes lives) tend to be messy."

Are We Entering the Dark Ages?

With the impact of fundamentalism, both Christian and Islamic, the uproar about teaching evolution in the schools, the banning stem cell research, and now a new study out about how little high school students appreciate the First Amendment to the Constitution, it feels like we are sinking into the Dark Ages. What's next the Inquisition?

Here are some of the findings from a study of high school students and the First Amendment:

1. High school students tend to express little appreciation for the First Amendment. Nearly three-fourths say either they don't know how they feel about it or take it for granted.

2. Students are less likely than adults to think that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions or newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories. More Here

And, although not new, there was an article in the "New York Times" today about how many teachers are not teaching evolution, even when it is part of the curriculum, because they are afraid of the reactions of principals, communities and parents. Article Here

And there's more from the same article:

"...scientists are feeling increasing pressure to make their case, in part, Dr. Miller said, because scriptural literalists are moving beyond evolution to challenge the teaching of geology and physics on issues like the age of the earth and the origin of the universe.

"They have now decided the Big Bang has to be wrong," he said. "There are now a lot of people who are insisting that that be called only a theory without evidence and so on..."

Personally, I don't get the conflict. As far as I'm concerned, evolution is the way God created us but that's a discussion for another time.

What concerns me about all of this is that the freedoms upon which our country and culture are based, are being erroded by lack of appreciation and downright hostility. I expect we can do something about the lack of appreciation but what do we do about the hostility?

Rome and Greece collapsed because they were invaded. And, although we have been invaded, the terrorists aren't the real threat. The real threat is an internal threat. It's really is like a cancer cell running amok, taking over an entire body and killing it. At least that's the danger as I see it.

Anyone have any answers?