May I?

Mother, May I?, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

They all start out cute, cuddly, compliant. They grow up and become their own person. Sometimes we are pleased with the results. Sometimes we are not happy. Each child is her/his own person. At some point each has the unique right to destroy/build according to his/her own design a life. Our job as parents is to give them the tools to do this and hope for the best. That is the true test. Ask yourself, have you given the child the tools that you think will be needed to make good choices? Have you been as attentive as you could be? At some point they may no longer ask permission.

Crossing Over

Crossing Over, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

I am at the crossroads of many things in my life. My daughter is growing up and growing away. I think too fast; she thinks I am dull and overcautious. I think she is unrealistic about her skills and abilities. Ultimately the decision will be hers. She is too big to do much with these days. Reasoning is what I have as my tool right now. We see things differently. She sees unlimited opportunity and I see possibilities but those possibilities have challenges associated with them. The baggage she carries worries me.

My challenge then is to let go and see what kind of help I need to be prepared to offer, if any at all.

My days are filled with distress and despair. The families are hurting. Few services are available to them and they squirm and fall deeper into an abyss of dysfunction and isolation. Poverty sucks.

But today I am sitting at the MSP airport waiting for a flight to ATL to visit with my mother. Hopefully this will be a good trip. She is stronger than she has been for some time now. The potassium that was sucking the energy out of her has been eliminated from her meds and her diet. Adelante.

Say What

My work consumes a ton of energy. My work is about kids and families. Sometimes we are successful with changing the relationships and sometimes not. I picked up my own child today. We were talking (a semi-serious conversation) about something she wants to do. Chirp goes her phone. She is busy texting her friends back. I just shut down. We talked last week about how she does not feel like I pay attention to her. She told her therapist she wants to work on our relationship but she is not willing to do anything at all. I have to make all the advances. I have to make all the changes. I have to give when there is an impasse. I have to do what she wants to do, lest she run again.

She lied about Mothers's Day. She lied about getting her mid-quarter grades. She seems to have trouble accepting what others may think of as true. She doesn't want to protect my feelings. She seems to want to protect her own. Say what!?

...I hate you.

those three words...are uttered in total frustration from a teen daughter who thinks her cell phone is her birthright. For me it just signifies the ongoing objectification of relationships. My frustration stems from the "expectation" that she turn it off at 9:00 p.m. weekdays and 11:00 or so on weekends. But the data shows that she has 1) texted all night with friends (then was too tired for school) 2) talked all night with friends 3) texted during school hours 4) goodness knows what else since I can't as easily track her web use.

Shrieks the daughter...I am almost 16 and I pay for my phone. Must be a debt paid in expletives and piles of laundry on the floor of her bedroom or unwashed dishes in the kitchen sink.

Part of me relishes the idea that my punishment will be that she will "hole up" in her bedroom trading tragic stories with her teenaged girlfriends. Part of me longs for the simpler days when homes had but one phone and maybe a long cord for "privacy" and text was something seen in a newspaper, magazine article or a book.

But I am half-way through the tough times with this one if she keeps her promise to vacate the premises on her 18th birthday. But I have a son who will just be entering those volatile and vitriolic years as well. Time will tell. Time will tell.

Interest

Rayas, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Usu·ry
Pronunciation: \ˈyü-zhə-rē, ˈyüzh-rē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural usu·ries
Etymology: Middle English usurie, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin usuria, alteration of Latin usura, from usus, past participle of uti to use
Date: 14th century
1 archaic : interest
2 : the lending of money with an interest charge for its use; especially : the lending of money at exorbitant interest rates
3 : an unconscionable or exorbitant rate or amount of interest; specifically : interest in excess of a legal rate charged to a borrower for the use of money

We have come a long way here in the USA. Bankers and financial institutions feel that they are above the law. When did it become conscionable to charge users outrageous amounts of interest and pay executives outlandishly exorbitant amounts of money, but pay the stakeholders (savings, CDs, etc) such a pittance? When did we lose our interest in fairness? When did it become acceptable to be a robber baron again? Some say it never changed. I wonder how much longer the great institutions will practice usury? How much money will they spend on fighting financial reform? How will they find a way to tighten the screws on Joe the Plumber now? Joe, will of course, blame liberals, who he thinks are stealing his hard earned money. Hopefully, Joe will wake up in time to hear that instead of loaning small business men (like him) funds to operate, they choose to hide the money in sleazy "investments" like derivatives and hedge funds and losing portfolios, while counter investing in something else. Both ends against the middle.

More importantly, when is middle-America going to awaken from the trance and take back what Wall Street has taken from them? When will Mom and Pop and Sis and Bro get a fair interest rate on the savings? When will they have credit cards that they can actually use in emergencies?

Rayas

Rayas, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Living by the code of silence. Wiped out by life, work, executor responsibilities. I can't sleep, my appetite is down. My head won't stop spinning and I am feeling overwhelmed. Hopefully the siblings will respond and I can move along with the monster list of tasks.

Abstract

Abstract, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

People are funny.
They talk about love, but practice hate.
They moon over babies, but chase the dollar.
They say they value education, but don't hear about how schools are hurting.
They purport to value life, but have disdain for the poor and hurting.

May we all know love, happiness, kindness, a full belly.
Would that we all know connectedness, friendship and beauty at some point in each of our lives.
Pray that we live to learn and learn to live. That we see the beauty in each spirit and heart. That we heal from our wounds.

Flowers for the Living

Flowers for the Living, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Sometimes I feel like I don't belong anywhere.
It's gonna take so long for me to get somewhere

Alicia Keys

Some people are just selfish. They want everything for themselves.
Not that they don't give to others, but only when someone is taking notice of that gift. Easy to give to your friends. Not so easy to give to those who are your enemies.

One Day

soldier, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

...your father is here, sitting in his lounge chair and the very next day he is dead. I have had time to think about all the things I have wanted to do for him or with him in the last seven days. Instead I have been working through the details of smiling and keeping my chin up, making decisions about where he will be buried and what kind of suit he must have on. I have been confronted by the angels and demons of my childhood. Strong emotions and sibling conflicts have become the dominant feature of my every day. Personality versus cooperation.

This really never makes sense until you experience it for yourself.

En Silhouette

En Silhouette, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

I have thought carefully what are issues that our society faces. We have an economic crisis. We have employment problems. We have an identity crisis. We have political turmoil. We have worker unrest. We have dissatisfaction with government. We have structural failure looming at every bridge and culvert. We have become the juggernaut and we don't know which way to turn. So here are my ideas.

Big business has always served the US well. Today Toyota Japan issued STOP orders on 8 of their best selling products. Seems that there is an acceleration issue.

So in response to the liberals I say this: Go back to the good ol' boy USA. Less government and more free enterprise. Business will always prevail when the market is allowed to set price and policies. We don't need the FDA - pharma will not try to push dangerous drugs into a stable healthy market. Why people would not buy those drugs. People, like businesses always look after their self-interest. If we eliminate the FDA, then there is more tax money to be returned to the PRODUCERS.

If we don't need the FDA, we surely do not need the EPA. Why would businesses pollute the water and air that we all have to breathe? It is counter intuitive to expect the government to be able to look after the environment when big business has a giant interest in the health of our water, air and soil. No smart business man would risk tainting the water of his work force. No smart business man would put toxins into pesticides or herbicides that could weaken a strong and sturdy proletariat. We need those workers to be healthy.

Let's eliminate public education, too! The CEOs don't really need an educated worker base. As long as they can take orders and follow directions we should be able to have a bristling economy. Education should be reserved for the ruling class; the elites. Workers can sign for their checks with iris scans or something that we can count on business to develop.

Child Labor laws are superfluous, too! We can achieve full employment when the restrictions on business is eliminated. Since we will not have even slightly higher education for the masses, we might as well put those children to work for the good of all. Safer streets and playgrounds are the immediate results. Curfews and not more than 10 hours a day.

Global Warming of course is another drag on an otherwise healthy economy. Can't believe those educated and biased scientists. The real science is coming from the labs and studies of corporate scientists on the payrolls of America's greatest producers. And the USA certainly need not heed the warnings of 3rd World hacks who simply want to undermine the productivity of our emerging global dominance. Why the US is only a small part of the world population. Why should we assume responsibility for the alleged warming problems. What about China and India?

Services to the underprivileged, developmentally delayed and vulnerable populations are best handled within the confines of family. We did not contribute to the problems those families have and we should not have to assume compassionate care for them. Each home is its own private castle with one KING.

Domestic Abuse Laws/Divorce/etc.
We simply do not want to know about those social ills. Again a private matter.

See how much we can save. Those new and pending government agencies are also a waste of taxpayer funds. Bankers and loan officers are best suited for making decisions about who gets what. Usury is an old idea that has no merit in our present society. Money costs and those darn regulations drive up the costs of making money.

Cowgirl

Cowgirl, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Cowboy has so many meanings. In this sense it means "highly individualistic" not so willing to trust or count on others.

We do the best that we can as parents. We give as unconditionally as we possibly can. We make sacrifices with the hope and expectation that those sacrifices will bear the likes of Mother Theresa or JFK, a sports or political hero. We hope for the Albert Schweitzers of the world and the kinds of winners that become Poet Laureates, or Nobel Prize Winners.

Life is not so neatly packaged though. Most of us are ordinary people. We go to work day in and day out. We toil at jobs that we sometimes love but may also abhor at times. We have great days and then some not-so-great days.

Wednesday evening was one of those not-so-great days. My daughter took off for school on her bus just as she routinely does. She probably gabbed with her friends. She laughed and she probably worried about her attire. Being a girl is tougher than I could ever begin to imagine. I have told her that I was part of the pocket protector brigade at her age. A bonafide geek. She, on the other hand, is a popular girl. She dates and she goes to dances.

But Wednesday was different. She had been planning something. Something I had no clue about. She was up at 4:30 the day before conspiring with acquaintances and cohorts to do what I can only think of as unimaginable. She did not actually go to school on Wednesday. This we found out much later. She probably continued to conspire with the people she had been busy and meticulously planning with for some time.

She somehow found herself back at home. She walked in the front door, up to her bedroom and gathered some items (she had probably pre-selected these) and stomped back downstairs. Uncharacteristically, she gave her brother a hug goodbye, expressed her love for him and walked out the door to a waiting car. That was the last that any family member saw of her.

We have had contact with her since. I hacked her cell phone (she left it if you can imagine) and texted her to the person that we suspect is her accomplice in this heartbreaking story. She did not want the cell because she knows that it has GPS tracking "capability". Smart enough to know that.

We did not have a clue that she could be so very miserable. We did not have a clue that she was contemplating her grand escape from the mundane and boring world of the day-to-day drones that we so easily and quickly become.

She has made it clear that she 1) WILL not tell us where she is; and 2) has no intention of coming home.

Chew on that!

Pantages

From the Barfly, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

I have listened politely to the detractors of Health Care Reform. I have heard the arguments that it will bankrupt this country; that it will mean that illegal aliens get free health care; it will mean that the quality of care that we have come to know will diminish. I am tired of the government bashing; the lack of respect for civil servants and the slavish devotion to a market economy gone beserk.

Here is my take on what has happened in the grande ol' USA. We let the pundits and financial wizards convince us that they could spin gold from straw. We bought it all. Profits beyond your imagination. Those profits came at the expense of the working people, the safety of our economy, and very physical environment in which we live. Easier to make huge profits and pay pennance to a government agency for fines than to take a look at the big picture.

We all allowed our greed to blur our vision. We eagerly trod upon those lower than us on so many scales - education, SES, racial, gender, work hierarchy. We were thoughtless and callous because the never-going-to-end profit orgy was too good to pass up.

While we were gluttonously stuffing our bank accounts and putting profit before service or profit before resources we forgot that you can't fool nature. Like us she is bound by the laws - physics, gravity, economics. We manipulated those laws but that was only a small detour on the road back to reality. You can't devour your capital and still hope to profit.

Human capital. Human resources. Human productivity. We keep wanting to take the humanity out of our reality. Examples abound in the real world. My wife works for a Big Ten university whose president is determined to make it a world class institution. The football coach makes $3,000,000 a year. She is in HR and specializes in compensation. Many of the employees are now looking at furloughs. Days without pay. Days when they will not work but will still be responsible for the end product. Has anyone asked that coach to give back anything? No, she said.

Corporations invest in art so that they have an air of prestige while denying health care for children, the elderly and the disadvantaged. This is the face of someone who might be denied health care because she can't afford it



The corporations and the Christian Right (what does that really mean anyway?) are stuffing their pockets with your dollars and building temples. What is in those temples? The riches of our labor. Will that protect them from aging? - No!

Walmart keeps lowering prices. Ironically, even the Walmart employees don't really make enough to shop there, but where do you go if Walmart is too expensive. At what price have we saved a penny? My money is going to the local seller, if I am able to do so. That local seller may have a relationship with a supplier who has a family to feed. What happens when all the manufacturers in the USA have been put out of business by cheaper (both definitions) suppliers in other places? What happens when there are no jobs here at all that pay a living wage because the corporations have uprooted themselves and moved on to cheaper labor somewhere else? Think it could not happen?

Ask yourself how the USA has changed since this



Is it better? Do immigrants (all of us nearly) make this a better place? Did your family have opportunity? What kind of social programs really exist here? Does education count? Maybe we should all just pay for the services we get benefit from! Or better still, just the services we approve of and really need.

Children do not need music in their lives.



We can eliminate art, too, because it is a frivolous endeavor. No life was ever enriched by art education.

Education should serve a purpose. That purpose should be determined by the market. Market needs slave labor. No need for education. There are enough managers for now and they can tell us when we need more bodies, more middle management, engineers, and...

See what I mean.

Teens

Andy, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Andy is the teen son of one of my co-workers. His mother has an incredible heart. She cares for the world literally and figuratively. The night before this image was taken one of her dogs died. She was wounded and was kind of low-key. That was not a surprise. The surprise for me was to see her revel in the joy of her son. We were just loosening up a bit here, but it might be one of my favorite photos for 2009. Next year even better photos to come.

All Smiles

All Smiles, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Families are strange configurations. We strive to be part of one and simultaneously seek to divide and separate out. We laugh with our families and then we laugh at them. We complain that they are too little of this and too much of that. We praise their great work/family ethic and then whine about the way they choose to live out their lives. We include and exclude. We talk behind their backs and will not share our feelings to their faces. We all belong to one and we have all some if not all of the acts listed above.

Families are everything and nothing. They are the beginning and end of many people's problems. They are our alpha and our omegas. Families make you laugh and they also make you cry. We live in them even when we do not want to. We die as part of one even when we are not wanted. We sacrifice for families, too.

It is Thanksgiving 2009. I am a natural born US citizen. I have lived under the tutelage of what we think of as "Our Greatest Generation" . They survived World War II, the Korean Conflict, the Cuban Missle Crisis and the the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, The Gulf War, the invasions of Grenada and some have lived long enough to experience both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have seen facism, totaltarianism, communism, socialsim, and fundamentalism, and extreme idealism as motivations for war.

Families and war have these unquantifiable abstract associations. I still do not comprehend what makes people kill each other for an idea and I do not comprehend family systems at all.

Ruler or Lawyer

SOP, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Sometimes at the most innocuous moments, life will toss you a bone of wisdom. Today was one of those days, as I soaked in the warm soapy water of my morning shower. Lawyer vs Ruler.

We have laws that we like to think of as fair and impartial. We have rules that we also like to think of as objective. Neither is really true. Here is the pearl: There are laws of physics and gravity and mathematics. And there are human laws based on the Old English interpretation of Judaic-Christian principles. We presume to think that everyone should abide by these principles. If human laws were as specific and certain as gravity and inertia, perhaps we would not need prisons and corrections people. But they are not certain. And they certainly are not impartial or objective. New evidence is "unearthed" daily about convictions by the Law users that were based on rumor, suspicion, falsehoods and innuendo. We had lawyers arguing the admissability of evidence and we still manage to unjustly convicted and execute a number of innocent people.

We have rules, too! These rules are based on our Constitution and the Judaeo-Christian ethics. The rules are based on the laws that the lawyers and legal beagles think we should all be following. Only problem is that our laws are always subject to interpretation. We have judges and appelate courts and supreme courts that all look at interpretations of the law.

So are we overrun with Rulers or Lawyers? I purport that our problems arise because we don't recognize laws and that we put too much faith in rulers. Do you understand the difference?

Time

Primary Color, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Catch the light
From dusk to dawn
From morn to night
Simply catch the light

Take a breath
Breathe a moment
Each one unique
Each one special.

Smell the peonies
Roses and thistle
Hear the faint buzz of the bees
The wind as it whistles

The leaves as they scritch
across the now slippery streets
Wet with welcome rain

Feel the earth as it
starts it beautiful descent
into a well-deserved rest.

Once in a Blue Moon

Once in a Blue Moon, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

I have been giving long and serious thought to the arguments about HEALTHCARE reform. I have read some of the arguments from the conservative (what is in a name) and the non-reformists perspectives. I have also read arguments of those who are in favor of this reform and the liberals (again just a name).

Here is what I am taking from all this. Many people are fearful of GOVERNMENT intervention into an already failing system. Healthcare is about having healthy citizenry. We need a healthy citizenry so that we can have a productive and enjoyable life and productive social environment.

One large question looms. Why do we fear government involvement? Have we truly forgotten that WE are the government. WE chose the elected officials. We have a right to use monies that WE have collected for the collective good.

We the people elected to bail out banks, credit card companies, and automobile companies. We the people choose to work daily, pay our taxes and produce so that some can have MORE. WE choose to have police departments, National Guard and an active military rather than mob rule. We choose to have public schools (and private) so that we have standards for learning and excellence. We choose to pave roads, provide sanitation services, and have agencies that oversee our food, our infrastructure and our lives.

If we do not trust the government, we in reality are simply saying that we do not trust ourselves. That we are not capable of compromise, self-regulation and meeting the needs of our families and our society. Corporations do not have souls. Corporations do not have neighbors. Capitalism is no more an ideal than democracy. Each man (women and some minorities were excluded) had a vote and all did not take advantage of that system.

Women, minorities, and non-citizens have had to go with the flow. It is only less that 1/2 century that African-Americans have begun to be fully participative individuals within our system. That time the majority was wrong. Women were deprived of the right to participate. That time the minority was wrong. We encamped Asians, but not Germans (why did we let this happen?) We enslaved generations of Africans for cheap labor (WE know this was a rationalization). We herded Native-Americans into reservations (majority was wrong).

We performed experiments on unwitting people. We provided unsafe drugs to people and had thalidomide problems. We are purposefully fed misinformation because the motive is not progress but to maintain the status quo.

Each time in our history that we have had opportunity to make the right moral decisions we have come to this same crossroad. This time, WE the PEOPLE should exercise the freedoms others have fought to gain for us and DO what is in our common good. If we do not, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

I do not have the answer to this problem or many of the problems that plague us as an aging, diverse and influential culture; but WE do.

We have to start honest dialogues. Start talking with each other and stop talking about each other. WE have to stop pretending that someone else is doing this to US.

Waiting

Waiting, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

...for the end of the world. What should do in the mean time. The Mayan calendar predicts this. We should prepare somehow? We should probably all quit our jobs and spend time with our loved ones. We should end air travel and simply go back to horse and buggy. We should all gather around the campfires and tell wild stories of our exploits and deeds.

The world may end in 2012. In the meantime, we will still have hunger, pain, dysphoria and new strains of flu to confront. Of course, we will also still have love, children, joy to make the transitions easier.

What might we do to fulfill this prophesy? I do not know. Perhaps none of us do. Perhaps it simply is. What messages have we been given to heed? What warning signs? Does global warming count? Does MAND (Mutually Assured Nuclear Destruction) count?

I will leave here soon to shower and report to work. Today is a court day. I have to tell a judge new to this case that a mother has not completed nor adequately participated in her case plan, and now we are considering transferring custody of her daughter to some one else. It will be an emotional day. It will suck the energy right out of me. It will injure my immortal soul. It will forever change me.

These two eyes will be watching me. Waiting to see how I cope with this. Will I bring it home? Will I be aware of how it is affecting my relationships with those close to me? Will I embrace that fateful day in 2012 when the world comes to an end?

Calla in the Rain

Calla in the Rain, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Evveryday we have choices. We can choose to enter the senseless and nonproductive bickering about Republican vs Democratic politics. We can choose to ignore our changing and challenging environments. We can choose to spend our dollars on education or protection or assimilation or any number of other choices. But that is part of the point. We do have choices. In many places on the planet we call Earth there are not choices available. Someone tells the many HOW, WHEN, WHY and IF something is to be done. Someone decides everything and there is often little public discourse. There is minimal participation by the masses in the daily decisions. The newspapers and media are controlled by those who have the power. The police are puppets for the powerful. The banking system is flawed and unfair.

What will we choose here that will continue to separate us from the places we purport to despise? Each choice will take us closer or move us farther away, but it is our choice. Each and every individual has a choice. What you choose in the short term may not be in your long term best interests. Simple!

Rust

Rust, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Summer is winding on. We have had the beauty of a brilliant spring, the not-quite-so-hot, but very dry summer. We have had a couple of terrific storms, some occasional rain and some beautiful skies at sunset.

Our little corner of the world has visited the North Shore of Lake Superior; Dallas, TX; Lincoln, NE; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Hayward, WI; Detroit Lakes, MN; and a few shorter trips to the regular environs here around Minneapolis-St. Paul.

We will have seen almost all the family members that still count. Zoos, baseball and softball games. We have had a bonfire or two here with the visiting teens and pre-teens. We have had a basketball game or two, taken quite a few bike rides, visited DQ on a hot night; long for a fire on cooler nights, sweated when we chose not to use the air and pulled covers up to our chins on nights when the temperature seemed more like April or October rather than June or July.

We have frequented a couple of new local restaurants; Smash Burger (yuck); and the new deli (TU here). Marcus tried some new foods (salads and greens); and he spent a week being a vegetarian (don't know why, but he's a kid). Angel has a boyfriend (strong grip-plays football) and we are almost done with her braces.

Mary worked hard this summer. Struggling with a neck strain/back injury that plagued her most of the summer. I fought with the battle of bulge for the first real time in my life. It is harder to get on that tiny seat on my bike, but it is still just as fun. Wind in my face, sounds of birds and the slight hum of rubber tires on the blacktop.

Marcus took golf lessons through First Tee and loved it. He and Mary played a couple of 9 hole games. Angel fell really hard for softball and played on a championship team. She missed the final game though because of family vacation. Still, nothing like being a winner.

August is rust. Rust is tarnish. Tarnish is a covering. That covering starts to change things. What more changes might we see this year? Sometime in August the politcians are going to either make some decisions or continue with the nonsensical partisan ideologies about healthcare and economic recovery. They should have to shed the donkey and the elephant at the lawmaker's front steps and do simply what is right. Some of the best educated but little-boy-frightened-at-first-day-of-school people I have ever seen.

America is rusty herself. We can polish her up or let her decline. We have to decide. The status quo is no longer an option.

And my photography skills are a bit more polished. Trying hard to avoid rust and complacency. Where do we all go next?