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The Justice Chronicles, Volume 2: Rethinking Tzedakah

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In my previous Justice Chronicles post I talked about the ladder of tzedakah. I’ve been thinking about this ladder and wonder if we need to rethink this. I take nothing away from the brilliance of Moses Maimonides, but he wrote nearly 900 years ago and built his ladder on one very specific theme. He believed that giving charity (or doing justice) becomes more altruistic as the receiver is not able to repay, either because they don’t have the means or don’t know the giver.

I still hold to the validity of the highest rung (enabling the recipient to become self reliant), but I’m not so certain of the 7th rung (giving when neither party knows the others identity). In the last few years we’ve read about and seen devastating tragedies with Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and most recently earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and we Americans have responded generously. Catholic Relief Services has already raised $90,000,000 for Haiti, and it’s all 7th rung tzedakah. None of us who gave know who will benefit, and nobody who benefits will know us.

But at the end of the day, is that a good thing? In the 12th century it was fairly difficult to be anonymous. Most people lived in small villages and didn’t travel much. If you wanted to give to someone without knowing who, and without them knowing you, you needed to search out a middle man. Now it’s much easier, and I think perhaps not as noble. The sheer volume of money that goes to Haiti, Chile, etc. shows how generous Americans are, but it also shows that it’s easy to write a check or call a toll free number and know we are doing good.

But what about tzedakah that needs to happen close to home? Can we be as generous and give while looking at someone in the eye? Several years ago I met a man from St. Eulalia Catholic Church in Winchester, Massachusetts. A few years before that he attended an event where the speaker was Mother Teresa. He was so impressed with her talk that he came up to her and gave her a $50 bill and said: “Give this to the poor.” She gave him the bill back and said: “No, you give this to the poor. Find someone who needs it and give it to him.” As he told me the story he explained that while it was hard to find someone in Winchester, Massachusetts who was poor, he was on a mission. He eventually found someone to give the money to, and it transformed him to actually meet someone who needed what he had.

I don’t normally do New Years’ resolutions, but last year I made one that I still hold to: I will not avoid eye contact with people who stand at intersections and ask for money. You know what I’m talking about: they hold signs that say “Please help. God bless,” or “Will work for food.” Admit it, you’ve hoped that the traffic light would work in your favor and you wouldn’t have the uncomfortable few minutes when you’re only separated by the car window. Most people don’t give them money because “they’ll just use it for booze or drugs.”

Is that true? Maybe it is, but maybe it’s because we don’t want to do level 3 (giving after being asked). Maybe it’s because giving to someone who asks is, on some level, creating a relationship that we don’t want to create. I’ll confess that I keep a $5 bill handy to give to these folks and in return I ask them to pray for me. Nobody has ever refused my request. OK, maybe they don’t have any intention to pray for me, and maybe they’ll just use the money to make themselves worse, but does that make my tzedakah worse or wasteful? If the only good that happened out of this encounter is that two strangers made eye contact, is that a bad thing?

Maybe it advances the cause of tzedakah.

The Money Chronicles: Volume I

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I recently read a book about everyday finances called Stop Getting Ripped Off: Why Consumers Get Screwed, and How You Can Always Get a Fair Deal by Bob Sullivan that has me thinking. The premise of the book is that many of us don’t know much about simple arithmetic and we get ripped off by people who take advantage of that. I’m calling this series “The Money Chronicles” in the hopes that this will (like the Justice Chronicles) will become a recurring theme.

Virtually everyone I know borrows money in some form, be it a mortgage, a car loan, or a credit card. Very few people are going to let you use their money for free, and it makes sense to charge interest. If you borrow $100.00 at 10% interest and pay it back in a year, you’ll pay $110. Easy, right?

Well… It is, but like most debt it isn’t that clear cut. Because we’ve gotten used to phrases like “annual percentage rate” (APR), “revolving credit,” and “compounding interest,” we tend to sign up for a loan, pay the bill each month, and let somebody else do the math. In a world where everyone is virtuous that would be fine. I’m blogging about this because we don’t live in such a world and there are armies of people out there who are happy to advantage of us, and take our money.

I’m going to start with the place that most people first run into trouble: credit cards. I can’t tell you how many offers I get over the course of a year that promise me all sorts of stuff if I sign up for their card. They do everything they can to tell you that by signing this line you can enter a world of free money. Let’s see what happens with this card.

I’m going to use my current American Express bill as an example. My current balance is $1319.19, the interest rate (annual percentage rate or APR) is 15.24% and the minimum amount due is $28.00. If I pay off the entire balance (as I intend to), I pay no interest. As long as I do this, I’ll never pay a penny of interest.

But if I pay only the $28.00 and continue to pay only the minimum, and never use the card for new purchases it will take 12 years to pay it off and I’ll have ended up paying $2677.00. Better than that, if I make the payment even one day late I’ll be charged an additional $39.00 late fee.

If I spend the next 12 years paying off the card, I’ll be 61 years old when I’m done. In fairness I’ll have gotten the benefit of whatever I bought for the $1319.19, but the rest? The rest of the money ($1357.81) does nothing but make the credit card companies wealthier. And frankly, the 15.24% isn’t too bad. If my interest rate were 20%, I would need 23 years to pay it off and the total payoff amount would be $3722.00. In 23 years I’ll be 72 and will probably have no memory of what I bought in 2010.

There’s lots more, but there’s one thing I encourage you to do: buy Bob Sullivan’s book. One eye opener for me was how the credit cards use average daily balance and how you can save money by making large purchases toward the end of the month. If you do nothing else, read pages 84 to 89.

The Proper Role Of Religion (According to Me)

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A few years ago in my literary travels I came across Karen Armstrong. She is British, and was a nun in the 1960s. She left the convent and has done many things, but most importantly (for me) is that she is a terrific writer. I met her when she signed my copy of The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions. She is creative, inviting, and challenging. I like that.

I recently finished her latest book The Case for God. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but had not thought about blogging about it until I read the epilogue. She states something I’ve felt for a long time, as well as I’ve ever read it expressed:

We have become used to thinking that religion should provide us with information. Is there a God? How did the world come into being? But this is a modern preoccupation. Religion was never supposed to provide answers to questions that lay within the reach of human reason. That was the role of logos [reason]. Religion’s task, closely allied to that of art, was to help us to live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously within realities for which there were no easy explanations and problems that we could not solve: mortality, pain, grief, despair, and outrage at the injustice and cruelty of life. Over the centuries people in all cultures discovered that by pushing their reasoning powers to the limit, stretching language to the end of its tether, and living as selflessly and compassionately as possible, they experienced a transcendence that enabled them to affirm their suffering with serenity and courage. Scientific rationality can tells us why we have cancer; it can even cure us of our disease. But it cannot assuage the terror, disappointment, and sorrow that come with the diagnosis, nor can it help us to die well. That is not within its competence. Religion will not work automatically, however; it requires a great deal of effort and cannot succeed if it is facile, false, idolatrous, or self-indulgent.

Frankly, I couldn’t say it any better. I find great frustration in the ways that religion gets misused these days. We use it manipulate behavior (“Do you think God is pleased with what you are doing?”), justify our actions (“God rejoices when an abortion doctor is murdered”), discriminate (“He looks like a good candidate for the job, but I worry that he doesn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus”), or rewrite history (“If the Bible says the world is only 6,000 years old, I don’t care about anything else: that’s what I believe”).

Too often we use faith and religion not to expand our world and increase compassion, but to exclude people we fear or justify our prejudices. That’s wrong. Our faith should not provide us an excuse to retreat into our fears, but a safe place to explore what scares us.

I pray that my faith makes me a better man; that it makes me more compassionate and understanding; that it makes my life more manageable and less fearful. I pray that my faith makes people of other religions respect and care for me, even if they don’t completely understand what I believe.

And I pray that Karen Armstrong keeps writing.

The Justice Chronicles: Volume I

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The recent events in Haiti have caused me to think a great deal about the role of justice. They suffered a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12th and thousands lost their lives. Countless others survived but are in need of basic services (food, water, shelter, etc.) and that has lead to a very public debate.

Organizations like the Red Cross and Catholic Relief Services have raised millions of dollars. President Obama asked former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to spearhead a fundraising effort.

This raises lots of questions to me on the nature of justice and charity. In a previous post I spoke of medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonmides (1120-1190) and his teaching on the “ladder of tzedakah.” Tzedakah is normally translated as “charity” but it means much more. In a sense, true tzedakah is not simply a rich person giving something to a poor person; it’s an act of fairness and justice, an act that works to restore all of us to equality.

More than that, the “ladder” part tells us that there are rungs, or levels; not all tzedakah is the same. Maimonmides taught that this ladder had 8 rungs:

1. Giving begrudgingly
2. Giving less that you should, but giving it cheerfully.
3. Giving after being asked
4. Giving before being asked
5. Giving when you do not know the recipient’s identity, but the recipient knows your identity
6. Giving when you know the recipient’s identity, but the recipient doesn’t know your identity
7. Giving when neither party knows the other’s identity
8. Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant

For most people who are giving to the relief in Haiti, it’s really the 7th rung. That’s pretty good particularly given that the people who will benefit from these donations will never have the opportunity to give back, but I wonder if we shouldn’t think more about moving to the 8th rung.

This may be too politically sensitive to discuss directly, so let me get to this at a slant. Going back a century, I think most people are aware of the name Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919). He founded United States Steel (now called USX). In building his empire he earned a phenomenal amount of money and when he retired he gave much of it away. In total, he donated approximately $350,000,000 and was instrumental in the building of over 2500 libraries. Even today the <a href="Carnegie Corporation is continuing Andrew’s vision.

Much of the work they do is 7th rung stuff. The people who fund the charity don’t know the people they help and they don’t know the donors. But when Mr. Carnegie was amassing his fortune, did he need to keep it all himself? Did his workers need to live in poverty and work in poor conditions so those of the next generation would have a library? In 1892 Carnegie broke the union that represented his workers. Had he worked with the union and given everyone a living wage, couldn’t that have been 8th rung tzedakah? Maybe Carnegie wouldn’t have been so famous, and maybe we wouldn’t have as many libraries, but workers in the late 19th and early 20th century might have had less poverty, disease, and shortened lives.

Maybe the earthquake in Haiti gives all the rest of us the opportunity to not only provide food and water, but also the tools to allow their economy to grow. Maybe this is our opportunity to make them better able to survive the next earthquake.

I entitled this “Volume 1” in the hopes that I’ll write about justice/tzedakah on a regular basis.

A La Jolla Couple Had a Close Call Yesterday as an Asteroid Passed Within 50,000,000 Miles Of Earth

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OK, I’ve been thinking about this post for several weeks, and recent events have pushed me to write this:

It’s time to stop listening to fearmongerers and get better at assessing risk.

As much as I can, I avoid watching local news as it seems to be the worst offender, but yesterday I couldn’t. I was at a nursing home writing up my note on one of my patients and the local news was on in the background. It seems that the night before, somebody (or somebodies) set fire to the teacher’s lounge at an elementary school in Carlsbad. You can read about it here.

It’s a fairly simple story, and as it plays out it will probably be some neighborhood kids who wanted a day off from school (which didn’t happen, by the way). But the local news played it like it was 9/11 all over again. They sent a camera crew who set up base on a hill near the school (higher ground is always a good visual) to report this case of terrorist arson. They talked about how it could have been worse (the fire alarm alerted the authorities who extinguished it in 10 minutes): Imagine if there was no fire alarm? Imagine if the fire spread to somewhere where there was flammable liquids? Imagine if it happened when there were students in the school. Imagine if … You get the picture.

This story goes against the backdrop of the whole Toyota scare. I have a 2006 Prius so I have some interest in this. A few months ago we heard there was a possibility that the floor mats could slide under the gas pedal and cause it to stick and make the car hard to stop. It was the cause of a fatal accident here in San Diego. On my next tune up I asked and they put something under the mat to make sure it didn’t slide. That may or may not have solved the problem for some Toyotas (though not mine). Toyota is trying figure out what’s causing the problem; that makes sense. Yesterday Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said that anyone driving one of these cars should immediately stop driving them until they get them fixed.

The reality is that the risk of a bad outcome is pretty remote. Nevertheless all sorts of news organizations are sending out crews to stake out minivans, asking suburban moms if they are afraid for their children. Nobody wants to sound like they don’t care about their kids so there are miles of film of suburban moms talking about how scared they are. The reality is that there are much greater risks than this.

We are not good at understanding risk.

We are also very susceptible to voices that tell us to be afraid of something we can’t control. A large percentage of us are afraid to fly when in reality the drive to the airport is much riskier. We worry about being robbed when identity theft is much greater (and we are fairly cavalier about giving out personal information).

We obsess over the Dow Jones stock average when most of us don’t contribute enough to our 401(k).

There are many other examples, but the point is clear: news organizations make money by telling us about things we can’t control but can harm us. We are more than willing to hear these stories and make bad decisions based on them. Catastrophic events can do great harm to us, but the chances of them actually happening are remote.

Let’s all understand that there is risk in most of what we do, but ignore those people and organizations who profit from making us afraid.

Here’s a Health Care Idea: Stop Trying to Live to Be 100

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Working for hospice for the past 12 years I’ve had the opportunity to see how we age in this country, and I keep coming back to a disturbing thought: in many ways our health care system is intended to keep people alive forever and in many cases we sacrifice quality of life for quantity of life.

Now, before you start making unkind comparisons between me and Jack Kevorkian let me assure you that I’m not talking about death panels and assisted suicide. I’m also willing to concede that long life sometimes goes hand in hand with good quality of life (my 91 year old father in law who still drives, sits on several boards, and plays bridge every Thursday is a case in point).

I’m also aware that average life expectancy in this country has grown from 46 years in 1900 to 76 years now. Vaccines, clean water, antibiotics and many other avenues of health care have given us this gift.

But we also see improved health care can cause us to live longer, but live sicker and we accept this because we are obsessed with living as long as we can. Look how much we cheer the centenarians that Willard Scott brings us on the Today Show. I love Willard but he shows these people looking good and talks about how everybody loves them. Just once I’d like to see him celebrate someone who has advanced dementia or has been bedridden for the past 5 years. Those centenarians never seem to get on the show.

I’m guessing that this obsession for living to be 100 is rooted in our fear of death. On one level that makes sense and we are often guided by fear more than anything else. But on another level, we need to stop fooling ourselves. The oldest documented person in the world was Jeanne Calment (1875-1997) who lived to be 122. And the death rate for all of us is the same: one per person.

The harsh truth is that no matter what we do, if we eat healthy, eschew alcohol and tobacco, exercise, moderate fat intake, whatever, we’re going to die. We can’t control that. We can, however, control how we live given the finite nature of our lives.

I think we need to rethink our goal. Instead of trying to live forever, or at least as long as we can, we should think about living well for the time we have. That sounds easy, but it’s not what we do. It means we have to acknowledge the point where it’s not working. For my part, here’s what I’ve decided:

  • I’m currently 49. On May 11th I turn 50. I acknowledge that I probably have more yesterdays than tomorrows.
  • If I make it to 80 I will have outlived half of my grandparents. At that point I will have ice cream for breakfast and stop caring what I eat.
  • I hope to retire at an age where we can enjoy our retirement. I don’t know if this is possible but if it is, I will accept the fact that I will have to live on a fixed budget for the rest of my life
  • I hope to travel but will accept that this may not be possible. If I never see Paris or Mongolia before I die, I will live with that fact.
  • I don’t want to spend my last years in a nursing home, but if it happens, I will make the best of it.
  • If the last years of my life are centered on caring for someone at the expense of my fulfillment, I accept that fact with grace and gratitude
  • None of us chooses the disease that takes our life. I pray that it is not ALS (Lou Geherig’s disease) or Alzheimer’s, but I accept that it may be a disease I wouldn’t choose.
  • I accept that at the end of my life I may need someone to do personal care for me. That means when I can no longer bathe or toilet myself, someone else will help me. I pray for the ability to accept this help without shame or embarrassment
  • I don’t want to live to be 100 unless I am reasonably healthy. If I am diagnosed with advanced cancer at age 90 I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the hospital. If I choose not to undergo chemotherapy or radiation I hope my family can accept this.
  • Finally, I pray for the opportunity to die well: I hope my death will cause those who survive me to to find my death peaceful enough to not fear their own death. I hope my funeral is a joyful one where people can laugh and celebrate my life.

I can only imagine how strange this posts looks for most people, but accept it for what it is.

Yosemite 2010: The Agony and the Ecstasy

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Every January Nancy and I make the trek to Yosemite National Park to participate in the Chef’s Holidays. It’s an annual event where the park brings in gourmet chefs to do cooking demonstrations and cook meals that are out of this world. We’ve been going for about 10 years.

Every year we know there is a chance we will hit inclement weather. We rent a minivan from Enterprise Rent-a-Car and get tire chains in the hopes that we don’t need to use them. Even in 2005, the last El Niño winter, we didn’t have to drive through snow or ice. This year our luck was up. The time in Yosemite was the ecstasy; the travel too and from was the agony.

We left San Diego on Monday the 18th knowing that a series of fronts were taking aim on most of California. We had been told that the week would be very rainy and we feared our time in Yosemite would be spent looking out the window at the rain. We did hit rain, at times heavy, going through Los Angeles, but nothing we couldn’t handle. As is our tradition we stayed overnight at the Marriott Courtyard in Bakersfield. Once in Bakersfield we found that there was a slow leak in one of the van’s tires. Enterprise directed us to a Firestone in Fresno. As we were sweating the weather we got to sit at the Firestone dealer for the better part of an hour as we found out that both front tires were worn and needed replacing (in fairness, Enterprise paid for the new tires and has given us a 15% discount on our next rental to compensate us for the pain of being in Fresno for nearly an hour).

We hit rain most of the rest of the way, and the snow began almost as soon as we got inside the park on Tuesday afternoon. It’s been about 18 years since I’ve driven in the snow, but this wasn’t bad. We felt lucky to get there when we did.

Wednesday, our first full day in the park, found the snow hitting full force. It seems the weather forecasts were right about the precipitation but wrong about the temperature. We did some hiking on the valley floor as we kept brushing snow off our jackets. It was wonderful to see.

Thursday was mostly snow free in the morning but not the afternoon. Since we planned to leave on Friday morning, this was more than a little concerning. The temperature was just around freezing which made the snow wet and heavy. It made for beautiful photographs but strained the trees.

Friday morning we learned that the park was closed. All the snow not only blocked the roads, but weighed down the trees enough to cause multiple road closures by fallen branches and trunks. Nobody was coming in or out of Yosemite by any route. By mid morning we learned that we should learn something by 12:30 PM; later it was moved to 1:30 PM. Shortly before 1:00 PM we learned that there was a window: between 1PM and 3PM escorted caravans could leave the park. That started a frenzy where we (and dozens of other guests of the Ahwahnee) needed to pack, check out, dig out our cars, put on chains, and get to the staging area. We were able to do this only with the cooperation and hard work of the Ahwahnee staff. We got out of the park at about 2:30PM.

We got out, got to Bakersfield that night, and home tonight. It was a wild ride, but we are grateful for all the people who made it possible. We hope next year is boring.

By the way, Nancy took some great pictures. You can see them here.

Twenty Gallons and Counting

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I started donating blood in 1979 as a student at George Mason University. I was walking by the student union building and saw a Red Cross bloodmobile. I had a few hours before my next class so I decided to roll up my sleeve and do some good for someone I’ll never meet. I wasn’t afraid of needles, found that giving a pint of blood didn’t make me overly dizzy or tired, and I liked the karma bump.

In the 31 years since I’ve donated blood, or plasma, or platelets, pretty consistently. I’ve had some good experiences and met some fun people.

  • In about 1982 I was at Dulles Airport and my flight was delayed. I saw that there was a bloodmobile at the fire station next door and I decided to fill the time by giving a pint. It went well with one small exception. It was a cold day with the temperature in the low 20s. They had moved the fire trucks out of the station and moved the gurneys in; unfortunately when the fire alarm goes off, it automatically raises the garage doors. We were there, lying on the gurneys, needles in our arms, when the doors opened and the cold air blasted in. Amazing how fast blood stops flowing when it’s that cold; also amazing that nobody there knew how to close the garage doors. It was a frigid 5 minutes or so.
  • When I lived in Boston there was a bloodmobile at the Boston Children’s Museum. In an interesting twist, they had a unique giveaway. If you gave a pint of blood you got a free pass to visit the museum, but you also got a coupon for a free pint of ice cream at any Brigham’s Ice Cream Store. It was called “Give a pint, get a pint.” I did.
  • As a seminarian I gave blood at a bloodmobile at the Washington Theological Union. The Red Cross folk knew we were all studying to be Catholic priests, and the questions they had to ask about our sexual histories were hilarious for us and deeply embarrassing for them the ask. I loved every minute of it.
  • In my brief time at St. Patrick’s Church in Memphis, Tennessee in 1994 I connected with St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. When they found out I would be a regular donor they suggested that I switch from donating whole blood to donating platelets. It was more invasive in that (at the time) they needed to put needles in both arms. The blood was drawn out of one arm, the platelets were spun out, and the blood was replaced in the other. It took two hours and they would set me up with a movie in the VCR. The technology is much improved now; they can draw and return the blood with the same needle and it takes less than an hour. I donated platelets until 2006 when my veins made it harder for the return cycle. I’m now back to donating whole blood. I guess all the donations have built up so much scar tissue on my veins that they aren’t as sturdy as they used to be.

From 1979 to 1995 I donated blood in several different locations for several different organizations. I have no idea how much blood I gave during that time. In 1995 I moved to San Diego and connected with the San Diego Blood Bank. As of this past Tuesday, I have now given them 20 gallons of blood. That’s almost an entire gas tank for a large SUV. Pretty amazing.

As I look back, I feel very, very blessed. I know many people who would be happy to give, but can’t (Nancy included). I’m grateful that I can. I’ve never known where my blood has gone and that has been a gift in itself. It’s given me the opportunity to imagine that I’ve saved lives.

The medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonmides (1120-1190) wrote about what he calls the “ladder of tzedakah.” Tzedakah is often translated as “charity” but is probably better understood as “justice.” The lowest form of tzedakah is to give unwillingly (e.g. being guilted into it). The 2nd highest form is to give anonymously to an unknown recepient and the highest form is to give to someone before he is in need of it. I like to think of blood donations as the 2nd highest form. Over the years I’ve given to people I’ll never meet who will never be able to repay me. I like that.

There are many who can give blood who don’t. If you are one of those, give some thought to sharing in the joy I have experienced in the last 31 years and (more than) 20 gallons.

Is Air Travel Ever Going To Not Suck?

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They tell me that there was a golden age of air travel. There was a time when air passengers were treated like kings and queens and the idea of flying somewhere came with a sense of elegance. It’s hard to imagine what those days were like.

I flew for the first time in the early 1970s, going to visit my grandparents; it was a quick flight from Washington DC to Boston and I remember that people dressed up to fly. It was almost like going to church. The good news back then was that we were treated well; the bad news is that flying was so expensive that it was beyond the reach of most people. That changed in 1978 when the airlines were deregulated. It made air travel cheap, but much more complicated as there were more airlines, more routes, more choices, and more variables.

It all changed for the worse on September 11, 2001. Virtually everything we believed about air travel changed. There was a flurry of hijackings in the early 1970s and we learned to get used to screenings before we boarded a plane. But we also learned that the hijackers expected to survive the incident and we were better off cooperating with the hijackers and allowing the negotiators on the ground to fix the problem. Finding out that hijackers were now suicide bombers told us that we needed to be aware of the people we sit next to.

This new awareness benefited us; in 2002 the shoe bomber was unable to blow up the plane because of the quick thinking of those around him.

It also benefited us on Christmas Day, 2009, when a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit landed safely despite the efforts of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He boarded the plane with the intent to destroy the plane and kill everyone on it. He had, hidden in his underwear, a chemical called PETN; it’s related to TNT and he intended to detonate it by lighting it on fire. It’s a compound that’s easy to get past security but hard to detonate. Passengers around him noticed that he was attempting to light something and stopped him. There’s been no end to the gnashing of teeth about how he was allowed to get this far, and the Obama administration conceded that their security failed.

I disagree. If we’ve learned anything from September 11th, it’s that the last line of defense are the seatmates of the suicide bomber. I agree that it’s scary to think that the bomber got that close to success, but the fact that the plane landed safely and nobody died indicates that the system worked.

Unfortunately this has led to the “we have to do something” syndrome and it’s started in spades. Camera crews in seeming every major city were dispatched to seemingly every airport to see what changes the airlines made and to ask random travelers if they felt safer. This was not the best way to cover the story and it certainly wasn’t the best way to figure out how to make air travel safer.

One suggested (kneejerk) change was that passengers not be allowed to have anything in their laps for the last hour of the flight. This came out of the fact that the bomber waited until the flight was nearly over before attempting the detonation. This appears foolish because a bomber who knows this will simply detonate the bomb before the last hour. This is my best example of a change that makes us feel better but doesn’t make us safer.

There is also a hue and cry to use body scans before passengers are allowed on planes. The only real concern I’ve heard is about privacy. That argument normally appeals to me, but I have different concerns about these scans. My primary concern is the radiation used; from what I can read they use T-Rays instead of X-Rays which are not as dangerous, but I’m not convinced. We already know of a link between overuse of X-Rays and cancer, and we know that there are lots of people who fly lots of miles. Do we know there is not a cumulative, bad outcome to being scanned? I hope I’m wrong.

The other problem is that while it will detect a weapon that is wedged between skin and clothing, it will not detect anything hidden in folds of skin (either body cavities or skin folds in overweight people). Simply put, it’s easy to circumvent.

Clearly we need to do a better job screening people before they get on a plane but that story does not report well. This most recent bomber paid cash for a one way ticket from Lagos, Nigeria to Amsterdam to Detroit. His father warned us that he might be trouble. We need to improve screening so someone like him doesn’t get on the plane to begin with.

The hysteria over this reached a crescendo on Sunday, January 3rd. A man at Newark (N.J.) Airport walked past the TSA screening and made it into a secure area without being screened. The terminal was essentially shut down and no flights were allowed to take off; flights that landed were left on the tarmac and not allowed to get to the gates. This went on for the better part of six hours. The man who breached security apparently left the airport 20 minutes later and has not been identified. We’re approaching the point where a trip to the airport (or connecting flights) needs to include the contingency of finding a place to stay if the airport gets shut down. That’s right: if you’re elderly, if you have health troubles, if you’re an unaccompanied minor, or you’re too poor to afford a hotel room near the airport, you may well spend the night sleeping on the floor with your suitcase as a pillow. I don’t want to travel like that.

We need to be honest about the steps that really will make air travel safer. We need to be better at screening people before they get on the plane. We need to be willing to say that my 78 year old father with an artificial hip is not the same security risk as someone from Yemen who pays cash for a one way ticket to the U.S. the day before the flight. And we need to continue to be as vigilant as the passengers on the flight to Detroit were on Christmas Day.

Uncle Joe: Couldn't You Spend Christmas With Us?

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This past year has been a tough one for my father’s side of the family. We lost two of my aunts, Aunt Freda and Aunt Lempi in the winter and spring. The day before Christmas Eve we leaned that my Uncle Joe died. He had congestive heart failure and squeezed a great deal of life out his body; as a matter of fact he died after climbing a flight of stairs. The good news is that his nephew John was with him and told us that Uncle Joe didn’t suffer.

Even though he had a long life it’s still tough to lose someone right around the holidays. His death gave this Christmas a tinge of sadness. It’s also hard when it’s winter in Massachusetts. Uncle Joe’s wake is starting as I write this (from sunny and warm San Diego) and the current temperature in Gardner, MA is 11° F. I doubt that most of his family will even be able to attend.

My father is the youngest of seven, and one of four surviving. As a group they’ve been blessed with length of years, if not always good health. Uncle Joe was a case in point. He’s had heart failure for a number of years and needed to be on oxygen for a long time. Had he lived a hundred years ago it’s pretty clear that he wouldn’t have lived this long, and I sometimes wonder if his extra years were a blessing to him. It was certainly good to see him on my infrequent visits to Gardner and I’ll certainly miss him when I’m there next but I think it’s a fair question whether our current state of health care has served him well.

This is probably grist for another post, but our health care system is good at keeping our hearts beating, and moderately good at pain relief. We are also good at providing equipment to keep us mobile (e.g. oxygen tanks, wheelchairs, etc.). But we’re not as good at helping people stay healthy and avoid getting sick. Well, more later.