Bird song

Enjoy this.  (Hat tip: Orion magazine’s tweet.)

Update: Sorry, tried to embed it, but WordPress seems unhappy with Vimeo code.  So just click on that link.

What if…?

A guest reflection by Duff Beach.

What if it’s true that the 47 million number is inflated? What if it’s true that the current for-profit medical care system is a major driver of advances in medical care?  What if it’s true that those profits effectively subsidize single-payer systems in the West by driving medical innovation that is then passed on at a lower cost elsewhere? What if it’s true that the for-profit medical care providers won’t be able to compete with a government run system over the long term, eventually leading to a single-payer system?

It is a moral imperative to provide quality medical care for our people.
Our system of providing medical care is too expensive and getting more so every day. It seems self-evident that we, as a society, are overly medicated, and under educated about living healthy lives.

The “government option” would be very expensive at a time when our government is already vastly overextended.  A single-payer system would be even more so.  But what would the net cost be (given the lowering of medical care costs)? Are there people willing to engage in an honest debate?  What a fascinating thing that would be . . .

Buzzed

Fabulous photo by Martin Harvey, and from Orion magazine, and absolutely not mine, but click it to reach them!

I’ve been graced – yes, graced – with two up-close encounters with buzzards.  (The birder in me must point out that we are actually talking about Turkey Vultures, but I grew up calling them buzzards.)  The first time was while hiking in the Sunol Regional Wilderness, through an area that I think is known as “Little Yosemite.”  At one point, the trail/access road runs alongside, but well above, a lovely, winding river.  We stopped to gaze down at the river, and were nearly startled out of our hiking boots by a small “kettle” of buzzards that suddenly appeared from somewhere directly beneath us, rising up the canyon wall as if on puppet strings, wings fully extended.  They hovered right there, in the air space between our shoes and our eyes, dipping down, floating back up – it seemed we could have reached down and stroked the tops of their wings or their bald heads – and then they quietly slid on down the canyon.  It was one of those moments where you check your sanity by turning to your companion and gasping stupidly, “did you see that?!”

The second time was in our back yard.  For two years, until this past June, we lived in Vallejo CA, in a neighborhood nearing “the outskirts of town” and some open undeveloped spaces.  One hot late afternoon last summer, I went outside to dump a bucket of vegetable trimmings into our compost bin.  As I turned the corner to the small sideyard nook behind the tool shed where we kept the bin, I was spooked by a sudden, large overheard shadow, and a sound like someone beating or shaking out a heavy rug or a comforter.  Fooomp, fooomp. I instinctively ducked, but looked up just in time to see a buzzard lifting away, over my head, over our fence, and to a nearby electrical pole.  Then I noticed an AWFUL smell.  I slowly entered the small fenced area, creeping toward the compost bin, my heart literally thundering from the surprise of the buzzard, and then the worry of what I would find in or around the bin.  But there was nothing — nothing except, ugh, a liquid fly trap I had set up a month earlier to keep the bin flies under control.  It was now full, and had been cooking in the hot Vallejo summer sun, and reeked badly enough to draw the buzzard (one of the few North American birds that has a sense of smell).

Buzzards are not conventionally pretty.  And their thermoregulatory and defense mechanisms couldn’t be more revolting if they were designed by a group of sixth-graders trying to gross each other out at recess: they defecate or urinate on their own legs to cool off; they regurgitate when cornered by a predator (including humans).  But they are so grand!  And so needed.  As Lia Purpura imagines in her fabulous essay, “On Coming Back as a Buzzard,”  “I would be missed if I were not there.”

Read it, please.  It’s marvelous.

As a buzzard, I’d know the end of a thing is precisely not that. Things go on, in their way. My presence making the end a beginning, reinterpreting the idea of abundance, allowing for the ever-giving nature of Nature—I’d know these not as religious thoughts. It’s rather that, apportioned rightly, there’s always enough, more than enough. “Nothing but gifts on this poor, poor earth,” says Milosz, who understood perfectly the resemblance between dissolve and increase. Rain scours and sun burns away excesses of form. And rain also seeds, and sun urges forth fuses of green.

I’ve read the essay four times, already, savoring the language.  I love finding writing that grabs me like this.  I’ve ordered Lia Purpura’s book, “On Looking.”  I’m listening to her poetry.  I’m hooked.

(*slightly revised intro. I didn’t like the post title, then I decided it works in silly way.)

“It’s just a matter of time”

I’ve heard that many times, from many friends in the last few years, as same-sex marriage rights are granted, then taken away, then granted again – perhaps elsewhere (and with ever-shrinking vote margins between those for and against)…  as my own (institutional) church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, repeatedly debated its “stand” on homosexuality and how it would instruct pastors and congregations to receive openly gay persons in congregational life… and as openly gay, non-celibate seminarians and pastors tried to find ways to live out their calling in the church.   A few years ago, the ban on ordaining non-celibate gay clergy was allowed to stand, but with the recommendation (if I’m remembering correctly) that regional bishops could use pastoral discretion in deciding whether to remove such pastors from the roster if they were already ordained.  “Baby steps,” I thought then.  But I was frankly not expecting major changes from this year’s Churchwide Assembly.  In fact, I thought NPR was wildly overstating the case when they reported, a week before the assembly, that the ELCA was “on the brink” of sanctioning the ordination of gay clergy in committed relationships.

But then came the 66% vote adopting the Sexuality Social Statement.  And the voting down of a procedural maneuver that would have required a 2/3 majority on the ordination vote, instead of a simple majority.  Could the time finally be here?

Yes! Unbelievably, amazingly, yes.  The Assembly voted to allow congregations “that choose to do so” to recognize same-sex marriages (this won’t help much in states that still refuse them, but the framework will be in place):

“Resolved that the ELCA commit itself to finding ways to allow congregations that choose to do so to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountable, life-long, monogamous same gender relationships.”

AND then:

“Resolved, that the ELCA commit itself to finding a way for people in such publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church.”

(I swiped these two excerpts from Spirit of a Liberal, whose blog and tweets kept me up to speed all week.)

I shared the news with my pastor, who was on vacation.  “You must be so proud and grateful,” he said.  Yes, that’s exactly it.

Many of the proceedings, and the lovely and thoughtful “pastoral remarks” from Bishop Hanson, can be viewed/read here.

The pits

In light of the recent news that Michael Vicks signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, and the news in July that federal authorities had broken up a nationwide dog-fighting ring and rescued more than 400 dogs, I found myself thinking again about Vicks’ pit bulls and what had become of them.  I knew that some of them had been rehabilitated and adopted by folks in the Bay Area.  Several of them even walked in last year’s Pride Parade!  But I didn’t know that they starred in this terrific story from the December ‘08 Sports Illustrated.  (Hat tip to Laughs and Rants.)  It does good PR work for Pit Bulls, while not glossing over some controversies:

Zippy is proof that pit bulls have an image problem. In truth these dogs are among the most people-friendly on the planet. It has to be. In an organized dogfight three or four people are in the ring, and the dogs are often pulled apart to rest before resuming combat. (The fight usually ends when one of the dogs refuses to reengage.) When separating two angry, adrenaline-filled animals, the handlers have to be sure the dogs won’t turn on them, so over the years dogfighters have either killed or not bred dogs that showed signs of aggression toward humans. “Of all dogs,” says Dr. Frank McMillan, the director of well-being studies at Best Friends Animal Society, a 33,000-acre sanctuary in southern Utah, “pit bulls possess the single greatest ability to bond with people.”

Perhaps that’s why for decades pit bulls were considered great family dogs and in England were known as “nanny dogs” for their care of children. Petey in The Little Rascals was a pit bull, as was Stubby, a World War I hero for his actions with the 102nd Infantry in Europe, such as locating wounded U.S. soldiers and a German spy. Most dog experts will attest that a pit bull properly trained and socialized from a young age is a great pet.

Still, pit bulls historically have been bred for aggression against other dogs, and if they’re put in uncontrolled situations, some of them will fight, and if they’re not properly socialized or have been abused, they can become aggressive toward people. It doesn’t mean that all pit bulls are instinctively inclined to fight, but there is that potential.

Ultimately, 47 of Vicks’ 51 dogs were saved – either adopted out or retired to an animal sanctuary.

I’ve cheered them before*: BAD RAP is doing great things for pit bulls.  (*Here, on my short-lived other blog.  Scroll way down to “A Dog’s Life.”)  Here’s their blog on the Vick dogs.  here’s a beautiful (and occasionally haunting) Washington Post slide show, “Shelter for the Scarred” (click on “back to index” to get links to each chapter; chapter 2 is about BAD RAP).

“Popular stereotypes about the spiritual life of gays and lesbians are simply wrong”

Good article following up on a survey study of gay and lesbian spirituality.  (I tweeted about the survey awhile back.)   I hope to have more to say on it later, but wanted to share it while it’s “fresh.”

John Hughes

Wow.  Just read and enjoy.  (Hat tip: Dorothy Snarker.)

Just messing around…

While I contemplate moving Left at the Altar to its own domain, I thought I’d play around with different templates here at WordPress.  Feel free to vote up or down.  (This one is WordPress’s “Freshy,” with a custom header.)

Update: Never mind.  Didn’t like it.

The loons are back

And by loons, I mean bat**** crazy tin-foil hat lunatic fringe right-wingers whose worldview is threatened – as always – by just and meaningful change.  I mean no offense to the lovely water birds.  I simply cannot believe that we are giving any credence and legitimation to the nutball “birthers,” but I suppose Bill Mahrer has a point:

Here it is in writing.  (Think he exaggerates?  Almost half of Virginians believe Obama was not born in the United States.)

As for the GOP-staged healthcare townhall “riots,” Bill Scher nails it.  And Pelosi.

But I’m sure the media will do its job and expose these “uprisings” for what they really are, right?  Riiight.

On the Archbishop’s “two-track model” of Anglicanism

In light of Archbishop Rowan William’s latest statement on gay clergy and same-sex unions, The Immanent Frame asked a small panel of law, political science and religion professors “why has homosexuality persisted as a divisive issue for religious traditions and communities, within the Anglican Communion and beyond? And what are the likely effects of the Archbishop’s recent intervention?”

They got some very thoughtful responses.