J Daniel Hess’ Blog

The day deserves a leap-year entry, but I seem not to be able to find an every-fourth-year thought.

Rather, in these days of Republican discussions of political theory I would like to offer a brief commentary on being entitled. Yes, I am among the crowd that receives entitlements. Let me name some: social security that covers most of hospital and doctor costs and a portion of prescription drug fees; a huge batch of government services ranging from highway maintenance to safety enforcement; library services; consumer protection services; fire protection; garbage collection and many, many more “gimmes.”

Thus, being entitled and qualified, I shall opine.

—  It is much more difficult to take away an entitlement than to give it.

—  It is less difficult to slow down an ambitious, hardworking person than to motivate and speed up a person who has gone inactive and unmotivated.

—  It is extremely difficult for people to assume personal responsibility in an area of service previously supplied by someone else.

I shall illustrate.  There is on occasion a problem at the corner of Bolton and Michigan. Two problems, actually.  (1) Leaves clog the drain to the storm sewer, so the intersection can get lightly flooded.  (2) For reasons I know not, a hole develops on the southwest corner of the intersection.

We get a bit fussy when the city is slow to remove the leaves and to refill the hole.

It would be difficult to convince the people on my street to clear the leaves, not only from the drain screen but also on the block leading to the drain.  It would also be difficult to expect Todd or Mary or Scott to go to Home Depot for a big of $15 driveway patch every other month.

The moral of my opinion?

This kind of personal responsibility is assumed by Libertarians and Tea Party Conservatives.  I would like to hear from them in this election season not only which services they would want to drop, but also how they would reactivate people who have become accustomed to those services.

On a wall here in Gretchen’s house (our daughter) is an arrangement of photos from Guatemala. She can look at the photos all year long (and they can look at her). Then in early spring she has opportunity to go there.  She is in Guatemala now.

A team of doctors and nurses travel there once a year, to a distant rural village where nuns run a school. The nuns clear one of the classrooms. The medical team sets up a surgery center where in a week’s time they perform more than 75 procedures. Gretchen is part-time nurse and full-time interpreter.

Meanwhile we are in Dayton, grandparenting Ben and Sam and looking around for jobs we might accomplish. I think my first task will be tubing water away from the southwest corner of the house.

At the very time we chide Congress for its inability to reduce spending, I/we scratch our heads about cutting our own expenditures. How does one do it?  Where do you start? What “necessity” should be dropped first?

So I’ll work in the open, allowing you “outsiders” to give the clear and objective perspective of disinterest. We’ll work on the budget category that we label DISCRETIONARY. More specifically we will look at items related to communication. Here are some monthly figures.

U-verse TV (AT&T)  $65.70
U-verse Internet (AT&T)  $38.00
U-verse land line (ATUT)  $29.90
CREDO long distance  $10.62
CREDO 2 cell phones  $83.22
The Economist $8.00
New York Times $31.20
The New Yorker $ 6.00
Atlantic $ 5.00
Indianapolis Star $18.05
Indianap0lis Monthly $ 2.00

The total is about $300 a month or $3,600 per year. This figure does not include church publications or publications that come as a result of annual dues/donations.  At first review, I conclude that we need them all. We can’t reduce. But then I hear Democrats in Washington saying the same thing. So let’s begin.

I’ll cancel U-verse TV, leaving us with only six local stations that include public television. Savings $65.70 a month or $788.40 a year.  That’s a 20% cut.

Land line phone goes next. $29.90 a month. That’s another cut of 10%.

Now it gets harder yet. I’ll cut in this order:  The New Yorker, The Indianapolis Monthly, Atlantic. If I do that, there is  savings of $13.00 a month or about 4%.

What have we chopped?  About $108 a month, or a bit more than one third. I could, if necessary, visit the public library daily to read The New York Times, The Indianapolis Star and The Economist.  That would be both a savings and an inconvenience.

As for phones, we could buy calling cards, but for the amount of traveling we do, we’d be in hinterland too much of the time, and beyond reach for others. Phoning is indeed expensive but difficult to get rid of. The internet?  Hardly.

What is your response? As far as public communication is concerned, what is essential for you? What can you do without?

I feel akin to the Amish. When I meet them here in town or on the road, I want to stop and chat. I like to buy their produce. I applaud their way of life. I am not in the least reticent to reveal my ties to the Amish.

Mennonites and Amish come from the same radical Reformation sources. For the years that have followed, Amish and Mennonites have stayed close to each other, have lived in the same communities, have done business together. Typically more Amish move over to Mennonite churches than the other way around. Yet the Amish have “kept their own” at a higher rate than Mennonites.

Both my spouse and I have rather fresh Amish blood in our lines. Although Mennonite, I/we wore plain clothing into our late teens. Pennsylvania Dutch was my spouse’s first language. On a wall at home is a fine Amish quilt made by a relative. The photo above was taken on the Glick home place that now is nearly surrounded by Amish farms.

Thus I am pleased to tell you that the PBS show, “The American Experience,” will feature the Amish on Tuesday, February 28 at 8:00 PM. I’ve seen the first chapter. The treatment is respectful and accurate.  I recommend it to you.

Sorry to admit it, I do not recognize the song “I will always love you.” I didn’t hear the ” little girl in the New Hope gospel choir (with) eyes closed tight (singing) ‘Guide me, O thou Great Jehovah ‘ in church, and the Holy Spirit … rolled out over the congregation.” (The  Economist) And if I heard the national anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991, the name of the soloist didn’t register with me.

I’m sorry to admit that I didn’t know Whitney Houston.

Further, I was abashed upon hearing a grandson howl when he heard me asking whether Justin Bieber was a classmate. Often I haven’t seen the current film, nor do I know the items in People magazine.

The issue isn’t so much personal as cultural. In our culture we have three big categories of activity: popular culture, folk culture, and fine arts or high culture. (In my opinion the third category is not higher than the other two. I am simply repeating currently used labels.)

Popular culture describes what the current stars are producing that attracts a large audience. Usually this art is short-lived. Whitney Houston and Justin Bieber belong to this category.

Folk culture labels what emerges from the traditions and expeience and  mythology of a people.  Stephen Foster’s songs belong to this category.

High culture has to do with informed, disciplined, cultivated, tested, enduring art, such as you see in galleries and in concert halls.

Know that these categories aren’t mutually exclusive. Some works of art move from one category to another.

With this brief description I will try to explain “my problem.”  It is the nature of popular culture to be age specific. In fact the age brackets can be very tight. For example, what early teenagers listen to is likely not to be what late teenagers enjoy. Late teenagers can not understand why young adults seem not to appreciate or even know the tennagers’ stars. Mid-adults listen to radio stations that play music two or three or four decades old.

Seniors?  As a group, we are minimally involved in popular culture. Some of us may go to county fairs. Some of us see popular films. But few of us subscribe to People magazine. Some of us are so disconnected that we cancelled subscriptions to Newsweek when it shifted toward popular culture. Seniors, however, not only go to hear concerts, they may even give donations to the orchestra. Ditto the local art museum and  reperrtory theater and the ballet company.

I conform to this age-thing, yet I regret it to an extent. The separation caused by age differences or generation gaps deprives people of the resources of those in the other groups. I now wish I had been inspired by Whitney Houston. And, may I admit this too, I hope not to become irrelevant to children, teenagers and young adults.

Now that our last three homes have had fireplaces, I think of them as an essential luxury.

Yes, a house needs a place to cook and eat in, a place to sleep, a place to meet friends, and a wash room. Beyond that, a house is luxurious.  Quite certainly, a house with a fireplace is luxurious.

Yet the luxury that I speak of has to do with soul. A fireplace and hearth provide a space for the soul, space for quiet meditation.

A small hardwood fire gives to the end of my day an appropriate punctuation mark. The following morning when I close the flue, I say thank you.

To a person whose favorite treat is a lollipop and whose dream is a fairy, this glitter-glue composition is art at its best.

Lucy Bea

To a person whose favorite treat is a lollipop and whose dream is a fair, this glitter-glue composition is art at its best.

Lucy Bea

On a bright but chilly February day, “I love to go a-wandering … ” on our little property here on North Bolton. It’s a time when trees awaken to thoughts of sap and human dreams create spring chores.

What might we plant in the urn?

The birds seem pleased with the three-year-old brush pile out back.

The embankment, facing northward, continues to challenge. The yews are growing but I'll add a ground cover.

The fire pit needs attention too.

The rain barrel ought to be set back onto the foundation in a month or so.

The 250 cubic feet of stuff will soon speed up its trip into compost.

The fire place wood stack is quite small.

There's lots of trimming and pruning to do: grasses, herbs, nine bark, doitsia, hydrangea. I won't touch the plum tree this year, given the butcher job last year..s

Shoes go a-wandering also ... with consequences.

If I recall correctly, yesterday I prevailed on you to hear my sad tale of trying to get a passport picture.

Today I got up bright and late, put extra strawberries on my cereal, and headed out to Walgreens for a passport picture. They called last evening to say they’d give me an employee discount if I’d come back. I wasn’t miffed with them. Stuff happens. So there I was for the fourth “shoot.”  Believe it or not, the machines twirled and swirled and out came two photos, not silk purses by any means but a couple of evolutions above a sow’s ear.  Then they discovered that the photo computer broke down so we went to another clerk — a senior female about ten years older than I — whose computer took my credit card. She thought my picture was cute. She said that if I stayed around long enough, she’d pinch my cheek.  I pulled in my stomach and said thanks and headed to the post office to finish up this renewal of my passport.

I distinctly recall, long about when I was passing the Irvington library or Starbucks that finally I’d get this task finished … for another ten years.  The post office desk that handles passports opens at 10:00 so I headed there to be ahead of the crowd.

One party was ahead of me, but that was OK since I was calm and collected.  A minute passed.  Two minutes. Hey I am a patient guy. In a break in the action I asked them (two people) if they were going to travel.  ”No,”  she said, pleased to be asked. “We are going to get married next month on the 24th and then we are going to the Bahamas.”  Gee, how nice. I was glad that they got there ahead of me.  Four minutes.  Five.  Six. Patience is something one can learn. That is, one can do patience exercises. Seven. Eight. Apparently the couple, possibly mid 40s, was going to take children, because I could see five applications. The clerk said where to sign on each page, and to do the DOB on this other line.  Nine.  Ten minutes.  Eleven.  I happened to think of the long lines that I had to stand in in Costa Rica.  Twelve.  Thirteen.  Sooner or later, this post office clerk would finish the papers and collect the money. Fourteen.  Fifteen.  When I was a kid at church, during the long sermons we’d try to hold our breath for a whole minute, my brother and I, and end up with a gasp for air. If we were too noisy, Daddy gave us schnellers.  I didn’t try that here, since we weren’t dealing with seconds but minutes. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. It’s amazing to me how complicated tax forms and passport forms can be.  Nineteen. Then the clerk said, “Do you swear or affirm that the information is correct.”  Yes, she said. Long ago Mennonites didn’t swear. I remember when I had to register as an 18 year old I did like a Mennonite: I affirmed.  Now that she swore or affirmed I knew the transaction was about finished. Twenty. Twenty one. There are forms to complete because she was using a money order of $629 to pay for the passports.  And more forms. The clerk finally got out the envelope into which the items were carefully placed. Twenty two. Twenty three. Patience, they said, is like something stretched out. Really stretched.  Twenty four. Twenty five. At twenty six minutes and 43 seconds this party was finished and headed for marital bliss.

I happily, without a slightest sigh, took three steps forward and pulled out the carefully completed passport application and the Walgreens photograph. He looked at the application and shook his head. “You can’t apply for a passport renewal here. You’ll have to send it there (where his finger pointed).”

As I walked out of the post office I wondered whether that senior clerk at Walgreens would still like to pinch my cheek.