Reach Out

Some of my - how shall I put this? - more chronologically advanced readers may recall AT&T's "Reach Out" advertising campaign from the 80s and 90s. If you need something to jog your memory, watch the video, then keep reading.



I don't know if any of you have noticed it, but the phrase "Reach Out" has become a cliche in the USA. As I prepared breakfast this morning, I saw a flyer from our Congressman on the table. It's a good flyer with great information about the services the Congressman and his staff provide for their constituents. The part that made me gag was near the bottom of page 5, in a textbox entitled, "7 Tips for Working with Congressman Connolly's Office." Tip #4 opens with the phrase,

Reach out early...

I hate the phrase, "Reach Out!" It's so- cutesy, warm fuzzyish, New Ageish and fake. It reeks of faux intimacy. And, I hear it all the time. I'll be on the phone with someone from a job placement center, and that person will inevitably say, "I'll reach out to XXX and see if he's interested in the position you have open." What's wrong with saying, "I'll call XXX...?" Or, if I'm speaking with someone whom I haven't heard from in a month or so, she or he will say, "I just wanted to reach out to you and find out...." No one in the HR field calls, writes or contacts anyone. Instead of doing such mundane activities, we supposedly "reach out" to people. And now, I can't just call, write or contact my Congressman and his staff; I'm supposed to "reach out" to them too.

I don't mean to be rude to Congressman Connolly or HR professionals or job applicants, but, frankly, I have no desire to be bosom buddies, BFFs, or pals with any of them. I'm interested in conducting business in a professional manner with them. To do that, I will write, call, or otherwise contact them. What I most certainly won't do, is "reach out" to them.

An Inside Look at American Health Care

For those of you who don't know much about the American health insurance industry (which politicians, pharmaceutical companies and insurance deniers providers misleadingly called our health care system), I offer a link to an insightful glimpse of what it's like to navigate through that system industry.

Shoe on Other Foot Still Poor Fit

You may recall that some churches held what they called a Pulpit Freedom Sunday during last year's presidential election. Many people - including me - decried this as an inappropriate intrusion of religion into the political arena. People had similar concerns when Saddleback Church hosted a presidential forum.

It seems that the shoe is now on the other foot. Two days ago, President Obama held a conference call and a webcast with over 140,000 religious leaders across the USA to urge them to encourage their congregations to support his health care plan. I am calling this out as an inappropriate intrusion of politics into the religious sphere. I say this even though I support health care reform.

These two events are opposite sides of a coin, or mirror images of each other. Religious leaders should not use their pulpits as forums from which to preach their political preferences, and presidents should not use their office as a forum from which to push their policies as religiously correct positions.

Yes, religious people vote their consciences, as do non-religious people, but they should not let the religious foundations of their positions dominate public discourse. They should appeal to the public on secular grounds, not religious ones. Similarly, presidents should not appeal to the religious sensitivities of a select contingent of their constituents to garner support for their political positions. They should appeal for support of their policies on secular grounds alone. President Obama (in what can only be construed as an act of political desperation) committed an egregious act of spiritual abuse yesterday by implying that religious adherents who don't support his plan may not be acting according to the dictates of their religions.

Perhaps those religious people who supported Pulpit Freedom Sunday and other intrusions of religion into electoral politics will now have a better understanding of why those behaviors were wrong. Just as importantly, I hope that President Obama - who, as a Constitutional scholar, clearly should have known better - will also learn, sooner rather than later, why his behavior was wrong. The ill-designed shoe of religio-politics fits both feet equally poorly.

The Republicans Have Lost Their Minds

The political climate in the USA has gotten vicious since Barack Obama's election. In fact, it's gotten even worse than that since his inauguration. Dave has already written a couple of posts about the nonsensical health care reform "debate" that is underway right now, and Jonathan has weighed in on the issue too.

Sarah Palin, the inarticulate, pathetically parochial former beauty queen, former vice-presidential candidate (thankfully) and former governor (again, thankfully) has drawn deeply upon her resources of scary rhetoric to voice her opposition to Obama's proposed Public Option health plan. Instead of making a reasoned argument (yes, I know, she appears to be incapable of doing this, so it may be an unfair expectation on my part, which is all the more reason why she should exit the national political scene ASAP), she spoke emotionally of "Death Squads" that would, given half a chance, judge her Down Syndrome child as unworthy of life.

In addition to spouting scary rhetoric, complete with comparisons of the Obama administration to the Nazis (you really must check out this video - Barney Frank's response is priceless), some right-wing gun nuts have been toting their firearms - including assault weapons - to town hall meetings at which the president addresses citizens about his plan. Are these people crazy? Given this country's morbid history of presidential assassinations and assassination attempts, what compels these jerks to think that town hall meetings about health care are appropriate places to parade their 2nd amendment rights?

To top it off, I learned today that Senator David Vitter of Louisiana (what were Louisianans smoking when they elected, then re-elected this man?) has added his unique contribution to the American health care "debate" (it's difficult to type that word without choking, as what is occurring is most certainly not a debate in any meaningful sense of the word). He opposes a public health care option in the USA, but supports the re-importation into the USA of cheap, subsidized drugs from Canada. Why?

"My ultimate goal," Vitter explained, "is to use that (re-importation) to cause that (pricing) system to collapse."

The way his idea works is that, if large numbers of Americans buy cheap prescriptions drugs from countries like Canada (in which the government subsidizes some portion of drug costs), then those subsidy systems will be overwhelmed into insolvency. Of course, the more likely scenario is that Canada's

government would very quickly crack down on re-importation, cutting off the supply to the Yankees.

Senator Vitter's opposition to government subsidized health care is so vicious that he opposes it in other countries, as well as in the USA. What a creep! What utter arrogance!

Too many Republicans and Republican supporters have surrendered their minds to blind hatred and unreasonable fear and their insanity is seriously damaging living conditions across the country. The USA desperately needs health care reform and desperately needs to have a reasoned discussion of how to bring that about. Instead of participating constructively in such a process, Republicans and many of their supporters abandoned reasoned discourse long ago. Sadly, their idiocy is going to have dire consequences for 307 million Americans.

Gone With the Wind - Part Two

Finally, at long last, I've uploaded and edited the photos from the final few days of our vacation. As Dave has already mentioned, we spent some time in Charleston, South Carolina, before returning home.

Charleston is not a major setting for Gone With the Wind. Its primary significance to the story is that it is the ancestral home of the charming rascal, Rhett Butler (definitely one of the sexiest male characters ever to grace both a novel and the big screen).

Our hotel was in the historic district, just around the corner from this Confederate Museum. The admission was only $5, and the collection of Civil War artifacts was pretty decent.


We also spent some time walking around the city. The College of Charleston, founded in 1770, has one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen. The Rotunda is the site of the outdoor graduation ceremony. In lieu of caps and gowns, graduands wear formal white gowns and white tuxedos. Classy! Also, notice the graceful "Welcoming Arms" staircases (I prefer the curved ones below, as opposed to the squared ones in the photo above). Male graduands exit the building and enter the courtyard from the left staircase, and female graduands enter from the right.


It must be terribly difficult to toil away in an office in a building like this every day.


Rainbow Row, which is adjacent to The Battery, is lined with colorful homes.



A typical Battery mansion:


Another view of the Battery - don't miss the heron - we saw quite a few of them on our trip to Fort Sumter:



One of many seagulls we saw on the way to Fort Sumter:



Thus concludes our Gone With the Wind vacation. Now that we've gotten a good overview of the city, Dave and I are looking forward to going back again, sometime, and exploring the city in more depth.

Gone With the Wind - Intermission

You may recall that Gone With the Wind is a very long book. The movie is also long, about four hours. The movie has an intermission shortly after Scarlett flees from Atlanta and returns to Tara. Dave and I didn't flee from Atlanta, but we did leave the city a few days ago. On our way home, we headed to the east coast and spent a night in the quaint little town of Beaufort, South Carolina. The name is pronounced BYEW-fort, not to be confused with Beaufort (BO-fort), North Carolina.

Beaufort has been featured in several movies. Two of these are The Prince of Tides, and Forrest Gump. The author of The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy, grew up in Beaufort, and the South Carolina portions of the book are set there. Forrest Gump is set in Alabama, but some of the southern scenes were filmed in Beaufort. I first heard of Beaufort when my mother and I saw a movie called, Conrack, back in the mid-70s. That movie was based on another Pat Conroy book, The Water is Wide, which I read after seeing the movie.

Dave and I stayed in a beautiful little hotel called The Rhett House Inn.



This was our room:




As we walked back to the hotel after supper, we saw a lovely sunset over the bay:



The next morning, as we ate breakfast on the porch, I took this picture with my cellphone camera:



After we finished breakfast, we packed the car and headed north to our final Gone With the Wind destination.