J Daniel Hess’ Blog

Alfalfa to Ivy is the most detailed memoir that I have ever read. Its author, Joe Martin, was a member of our class of 1959 at Eastern Mennonite College. Like many of my best friends in that class, he gained an MD from the University of Alberta. He added a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.

Then, instead of becoming a medical missionary (his earlier intention) he went into the specialty of neurobiology wherein he conducted research (University of Rochester and Montreal Neurological Institute ) and then was drawn into administration (director of Massachusetts General Hospital, dean of the medical school and later chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco, and finally the dean of the Harvard Medical School for ten years.

He is currently the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. In other words, his career has been in the big leagues.

The memoir is remarkable for its detail and precision. He tells of scores of people he worked with, emphasizing what each brought to the profession.  He elaborated on medical mysteries he worked on. He described the complicated political issues that faced him as an administer. His report will be useful for historians as well as medical administrators.

This is not a chatty memoir interlaced with cheap shots. It is a work of scholarship and leadership.

I note with appreciation Joe’s continuing regard for his home base and his Mennonite affiliation. His report does not contain the anger and sorrow of an ex-Mennonite reacting against a harsh religious upbringing.

A final chapter, prior to the epilogue, outlines sixteen plus one “Maxims, Proverbs, and Aphorisms: A Humble Guide to Successful (Enjoyable) Leadership.”  That chapter is a gem.

The 457-page tome was printed by The University of Alberta Press.  Amazon carries it at significant discount.

Indianapolis, led by its mayor, decided to sell the city’s water system to a private agency for $425 million.  This so-called windfall came to the city in the midst of enormous budget problems, caused in part by an earlier referendum to limit real estate taxes to 1% of assessed value for residential properties and no higher than 3% for business properties.

How we spend that $425 million is at issue  in the mayoral election.

The current mayor (Republican) prefers to spend the money in two ways — repairing the infrastructure (streets, sidewalks, bridges) and tearing down vacated houses (of which there are thousands in the city).  The challenger (Democratic) wants to use a large chunk of the money in a new education venture — providing a free pre-school program.

Beyond argument is the need for updating the infrastructure. Beyond argument are the benefits of nursery and kindergarten education, beginning at age 3. What IS arguable is the spending of this $425 million.

At the moment I don’t know how I will vote. Here is the territory of my disquiet: money alone won’t solve the education crisis in our city.

I am an educator. I believe that strong schools are a requisite for tomorrow’s good society. I am painfully aware of the extremely poor performance of students in Indianapolis Public Schools and of the controversy having to do with the roles of the teachers’ union and the state in addressing this poor performance.

In all of this controversy and hand-wringing, nobody can show a correlation between the amount of money spent on education and the results of the schools. Currently the financial investment in American education is higher than most of the other developed nations, yet our performance has been shown to be relatively low.

In my inchoate opinion, the heart of the problem is not financial, but rather social, cultural and moral. A public school teacher of my acquaintance reports that her students have little respect for their teachers. That is not a problem that money will fix.

Another of my friends in the Indianapolis system describes the many students who come to her school in the morning quite unprepared physically and psychologically to study. A high percentage of families are broken, neighborhoods are not invested in schools. Our newspaper has run series of articles on the multilayered expression of school failures.

I do not know how to solve the education problem. Yet I know that in an earlier era when I was a child, our elementary and junior and high schools were simple and low priced in comparison with today’s schools. However a culture supported respect, hard work, discipline and learning.

I do not want to write a jeremiad, saying things were better in the old days. Rather I am trying to make a case that the current education challenge is as much (or more) cultural than it is financial.

It still to be seen whether I vote for infrastructure or for pre-school education.

“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world!” writes Carl Sagan in the Introduction to Stephen W. Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

Sagan continues, “We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend.”

He’s correct. Today while raking leaves, I didn’t think about gravity or atoms. I was aware, however, of the warm sun when I took Annie out in the autumn chill to see the colored leaves.

Sagan’s words increased my curiosity about Hawking’s book. Could I understand any of it? Even if he wrote for dimwits, would I get it?

Stephen W. Hawking

My questions are now answered, after several days of reading just small portions at a time. No, I can not follow the astronomer’s logic. However, the theories that emerge from the paths of logic happen to connect with me at a very general and elementary level. Indeed, I am in awe of this world and of the work of people such as Hawking.

I had never before known how important was gravity in the larger picture. Gravity is a “player” writ large.

While I couldn’t give a coherent speech on the Big Bang or black holes, I “get” that gravity was/is there. (I’ve never encountered a spookier notion than a black hole.)

Then there is the matter of time, which seems so culturally and historically and personally important to me. Hawking explains in third-grade terms that gravity and space bend time.

My mind can’t grasp that “there is so much matter in the universe. There are something like ten million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million,million, million, million, million particles in the region of the universe that we can observe.” Nor can I narrow my mind to imagine a nutrino, that lightest particle in an atom that recently made the news for its possible faster-than-light speed.

Decades ago I came across the concept of entropy as related to communication. Hawking makes it part of the expanding universe.

After rereading Hawking, I want to see again the COSMOS series by Carl Sagan. Amazon offers it for $108.00. Maybe I’ll understand better what Sagan meant when saying “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

That’s what I told students in Communicating Across Cultures class:  ”We all have prejudices. Unwrap them. Look them straight in the face.”

Tonight I hope the Cardinals win. Why?  I’m prejudiced. Let’s unwrap my prejudice. Why do I prefer the Cards? Here are ten reasons, any one of which is sufficient to justify my prejudice.

1. Kenny Bowers, back in grade school, liked the Cardinals.

2. The Cardinals have nice uniforms.

3. I enjoy feeding cardinals, especially those that are really red.

4. The St. Louis arch is a wonder, although I’d never travel up the elevator. There is a huge arch pattern in the outfield grass at the stadium.

5. The weather we get in Indianapolis comes from St. Louis. In other words, it gives us early warning.

6. Years ago I walked by the old Busch Stadium.

7. St. Louis is by the Mississippi. I think I’d like to live by it and then again read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

8. Harry Truman came from Missouri.

9. Interstate 70 which runs right through our heart connects us to the heart of St. Louis.

10. St. Louis isn’t in the American League.

Our beloved writer’s group, established more than ten years ago, has continued to quicken our perceptions, stimulate our imaginations, shape our consciences and, germane to our interest in writing, supported our publications. I wonder how many times we individually have published since our first time together.  Here we are  – Martha Yoder Maust, Shari Wagner, Rod Deaton, Ryan Ahlgrim and me. The photo has been doctored. Ryan is as tall or taller than Rod.

Rod, a psychiatrist (and lawyer and musician and teacher and husband and father) is a member of the American Psychological Association’s Division 51, the Society for the Study of Men and Masculinities.  A few weeks ago they had a “call-out”  for articles on the “end of gender.”   He wrote an essay, read it to us at our breakfast meeting and simultaneously submitted it.

“So here I am, all published and everything,” he said to us in an e-mail this week.

If you have a moment to spare, take a look.  Know that Rod devotes part of each week to psychiatric care at the local veterans hospital.

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/damaged-from-combat-burdened-with-insight/

Jess, here is my Occupy blog entry.

If I were to join an Occupy event downtown — and it would be easier now that I’m out of the boot — I’d want to carry a sign. What would I place on the sign?

CAIN IS NOT ABEL.
NOR ARE ANY
OF THE OTHER CANDIDATES

No. Such a sign would be sassy and silly. While there are appropriate times to be negative, this is not that time. Mass movements that build upon negatives can turn nasty. I am told that protests against austerity (such as in Greece today) are especially vulnerable to violence.

Nor do I want to be associated with the anarchist movement. It is not enough, these days, to tear down. I don’t want to encourage what The Economist labels as “obstructive nihilism.” We’ve got to build up, which takes resources such as imagination, wisdom, discipline, restraint, daring and lots of luck.

My sign would say

Let us Occupy Earth
with justice and peace.

I know and identify with the concerns of Occupy. One term covers it all: economic injustice. The particulars are many: lack of jobs, expensive housing, longer working lives, a threatened social security program, reduced health care, unavailable credit. Most occupiers talk about the 1% of the population that controls more than 50% of recent economic gain.

Might we dig below the surface? Is not the world-wide Occupy movement a statement of angry critique of western economic systems — European social democracy and American free-enterprise capitalism?  Do you not sense with me the emergence of economic systems that do not build on the western systems?  I’m thinking of India, China, Brazil and South Korea.

I do not, for a moment, think any of those emerging systems are superior to the western systems. Rather, one can’t help but see them flourish as Europe and America languish.

Capitalism, in my opinion, is at a crossroads. A turn is called for. Unfortunately the movers and shakers (which includes most of our politicians) will hang on to the present system for dear life. Those in power fight to preserve their power.

An Occupy Earth movement, however, might provide a large sign for the crossroads.

1. Encourage a healthy economy. Help new business entrepreneurs. Stimulate innovation a la Steve Jobs. Place limits, that is, regulations on unsafe, unhealthy, greedy business practice.

2. Tax fairly, simply, and enforcibly.

3. Limit the size of government to what the tax base affords. (This would mean for our country a huge decrease in defense spending.)

4. Encourage healthy, fulfilling habits for a strong middle class.

5. Respond to poverty in positive ways: benevolence for those unable to help themselves; opportunity (certainly includes education and jobs) and guidance for the able ones to participate actively in building sustainable lives.

That all five are extremely radical may be confirmed by looking at laws and social systems and habits that militate against each of them. Our own government seems witless in moving toward any of the five. But we should persist by occupying earth.

Before you read about the lien, take a look at the gingko (ginko?) by day. Behind it is a plum. Poking itself into the left side is a serviceberry. You can see pampas grass left of center.

The lien.  We decided to donate our second car, a Honda Civic, to charity. The car, previously used by daughter Ingrid in Rochester, New York, is parked in her lot. (She purchased a newer Civic.)  I sent in the papers.

Last evening I received an e-mail from the car donation agency in Rhode Island. “We have received your donation documents; however, the title has a lien on it from Citizen Bank of Ct.”

One could have heard my sigh over beyond Arlington. After an acceptable amount of time huffing and puffing, I told myself that the lien was a challenge and not a crisis. I remembered my recent counsel to a friend about refusing to panic when an obstacle showed tentacles.

I told Joy we’d have to drive to Rochester for the car. One day going. One day returning. I didn’t want to bother Ingrid with our red tape.

When I went to bed, I saw the word “lien” scrawled in ugly letters on the ceiling.

We bought the car January 5, 2007 from neighbors two blocks away. The price was excellent, due, I thought, to some hail damage that was never repaired. I could live with the dents. But a lien — no way.  I would go to them on the morrow and find out the truth.

No, I would call the Citizens Bank of Connecticut to get the scoop on the car that I thought had been entirely mine. They would surely give me a history, including the name of the person (my neighbor) whose loans required a lien.

No, I would not call the Citizens Bank. What if they’ve been looking for the car in order to impound it? I would phone to the donation center to talk it over, to find out how to work through this kin of cartastrophe.

I went to sleep and dreamed we were in a foreign country, on the last day of our term there. Our urgent problem: we had a car that wouldn’t fit into the plane. We didn’t know what to do with it.

This morning when I was fully coffeed, I said to my spouse words that can generally be interpreted to mean that I was really, really bummed out about the lien.

Fortified with the second cup I dialed Rhode Island and to my satisfaction, Amanda, who had written the e-mail, answered the phone. I explained that I received the e-mail about the lien and wanted to talk it over.

“And what is your last name?”

Hess.

“What is your first name?”

J. Daniel  (There is the J. again. It follows me all through life.)

“Oh, here I found it … uh … the title … uh … there is no lien on your car … That was a mistake … I am so sorry.”

I’m glad she wasn’t in the room with me. I would have given her a hug that could have been misconstrued.

I was gone today, returned after dark. I could see, however, the beauty of the gingko in our yard. Since gingkos drop their leaves quickly, I decided to take a night photo, lest all the leaves be on the ground by morning.

According to Wikipedia, the gingko is an extremely old tree, a fossil they call it. We know it to be a tree that withstands the rigors of urban life. While a slow grower, the tree delights even when small. Ours is perhaps 30 feet high. Down the street is a huge gingko, possibly a hundred feet high and quite broad. When the big one sheds its leaves, the youth from the church come to help the folks with the big job of raking. I rake my gingko’s leaves, but slowly.

First on my list is the copper beech, but a close second is the gingko.

I’ve said it before: I am not fond of the sermon genre. Yes, it has become the centerpiece of Protestant worship. And I think something similar to a sermon shows up in the mosque. The centerpiece in the mass for Catholics is not a sermon, nor the 10-minute homily, but communion.

Today, however, I heard a thoughtful sermon, quite brief, spoken quietly and slowly by Wilma Bailey, a professor at Christian Theological Seminary. Two stories, one in the middle of the presentation, and the other at the ending served to build cohesion and emphasis.

Story One. As Old Testament Joshua, the warrior, arrived in Canaan and stood against his first target Jericho, “he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand.”  The warrior Joshua, ready for battle, spoke up: “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?”  The man replied that he was neither, not for the Israelites and not for the adversaries. He rather identified himself as “commander of the army of the LORD.” Joshua came to a realization that he was in an epiphany of some kind. His voice changed. He said to the man”What do you command your servant, my lord (small letters).” The commander of the army of the LORD replied, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy.”

Bailey used this story in her account of the emergence of the sense of us and them, our side and theirs, of separations due to differences of many kinds including race. On holy ground, there isn’t us and them.

She concluded her sermon with a story taken from one of her devotional books. An old tribal elder was asked by youth at what point morning began.  They set up a possibility.  ”When you can see well enough to distinguish a sheep from a dog?” they asked.  No replied the elder.  They offered another possibility: “When you can see well enough to distinguish a peach tree from a nut tree?”  ”No,” replied the elder, “when you can see the face of the other and know that you are similar to each other. Until you can see this, it is still night.”

I take no delight in the killing of Gadhafi or bin Laden or Tito or any other person. However evil may have been their reigns, they deserved a day in court  and, if convicted, a punishment other than death.