Happy Birthday Eve, Mr. Darwin

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Tomorrow is the 200th birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Tomorrow I’ll be writing about President Lincoln but today I want to remember Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin is best known for his book, The Origin of Species. He has become the flashpoint in a debate between evolution and creationism. Before the 19th century most people believed that the creation of the world happened as it was described in the Bible. Charles Darwin and others began to observe through scientific experimentation that there was another story.

Therein lies the rub. People who use the Bible as the only source for the world’s creation trace our orign to October 23, 4004 BC. You can read more about it here. Darwin and others began to posit the theory that the world is much older and that species evolved. In other words, the first people were not Adam and Eve. We, instead, evolved from other creatures and other primates are (in a sense) our distant cousins.

Almost immediately after the publication of his book there were those who believed that Darwin wrote his book only to destroy Christianity. They felt that anything that talked about evolution would cause well meaning believers to renounce belief in God and that the world would become atheists (and would therefore be condemned to hell.)

On the other hand, many of us believed that there is not problem in believing in both evolution and God. We were heartened by Pope John Paul II who claimed that Genesis answers the “why” of creation and not the “how.” As a lifelong Catholic it never occurred to me as a child that evolution was wrong. I never saw the connection between science class and church. I always believed in both evolution and God.

It wasn’t until I became an adult that I discovered that there were people who though the world was only 6000 years old. When I first learned about creationism (or its first cousin “intelligent design”) I couldn’t believe intelligent people could believe in such a thing. I quickly recognized that, despite their claims, this wasn’t science.

The scientific method, developed in the 1700s, follows a strict course: you begin with observation, which leads to a hypothesis, followed by experimentation. If the experimentation confirms the hypothesis, it becomes (over a series of experiments) a theory. If it doesn’t, the hypothesis is discarded in favor of another hypothesis. Over time the theory becomes more and more significant and more and more accepted (like gravity).

Creationism isn’t science because it doesn’t follow this course. It begins with the conclusion that must be found. It then develops a hypothesis that picks and chooses observations that lead to the conclusion that must be found. Any experimentation that leads in another direction is discarded, and any experimentation (no matter how suspect) that leads in the right direction must be true.

In the final word, I think the Christian Churches picked a fight with Darwin that didn’t need to be fought. Faith doesn’t mean you have to disbelieve what science finds to be true and it doesn’t mean you have to stop using your brain. My belief in God includes the possibility that God created the world and watches over its evolution. I pray for the day when all Christians believe this.

Rest in Peace Aunt Freda

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When Nancy and I were on our way home from Yosemite we got a call from my father that his older sister Alfreda Theresa Allain Ladroga died. I had to ask him if I had heard it right because she was not the person I expected to be the one to die. My father is the youngest of seven children: Jeanne, Ed, Joe, Freda, Norman, Andre, and Donald (my father). Andre was always known as “Tonto” and I always heard him referred to as “Uncle Tonto.” He died in a drowning accident in 1964 and I’m too young to remember him. My father is 77 and his siblings are all in their 80s. I’ve known for a while that in the next few years I’ll be getting some calls with this news, but this call was a surprise. At 83 she was one of the younger ones and appeared to be in good health. On the other hand I found that the last time she had seen a doctor was when my cousin Rick was born in 1960.

As I understand it she was talking about abdominal pain and my cousin John noticed that she appeared weak. Last week he finally convinced her to go to the hospital. When she got there they noticed her liver enzymes were off and further tests showed she had advanced colon cancer that had spread to her kidneys and liver. In a few days she was gone. My theory is that she had known for a while she was sick and chose not to have it treated. I respect that as she was in her 80s and probably didn’t look forward to facing chemotherapy and/or radiation for the rest of her life.

In any case I will miss her. Earlier in my life Gardner, Massachusetts was an important part of my life as were my father’s siblings. A few times I visited Gardner in college I stayed with her since she had the room and she was very kind to me. She had also been important to my father as she could give him information on what was going on with his siblings (this may not make much sense unless you’re French and understand that communication is not our strong suit).

Here is her obit in the Gardner News:

GARDNER — Alfreda Therese “Freda” (Allain) Ladroga, 83, of 61 Lake Street, Gardner, died Friday, January 23rd in UMASS-Memorial Medical Center, 55 Lake Ave N., Worcester, surrounded by her family, following a brief illness.

Born in Gardner on March 18, 1925, she was the daughter of the late Calixte and Emma (LeBlanc) Allain.

Alfreda graduated from Gardner High School with the Class of 1943.

She was a Personal Care Attendant, employed by Worcester State Hospital, Worcester for several years, retiring in 1985. She was previously employed by Rutland State Hospital, Rutland and Gardner State Hospital, Gardner.

Alfreda was a member of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church, Gardner.

She enjoyed playing scrabble, crocheting and doing crossword puzzles “in ink”. Alfreda loved to cook and was generous with her special recipes. She most enjoyed her family, friends and church.

Alfreda was predeceased by her husband of 53 years, Zigmond Ladroga, who died in 2001.

She leaves two sons, John A. Ladroga and his companion Renee Haley of Phillipston and Richard K. Ladroga and his wife Tracy of Athol; one daughter, Kathleen A. Gallant and her husband Laurie of Gardner; four brothers, Edward Allain and his wife Eva of Gardner, Norman Allain and his wife Lempi of Gardner, Joseph Allain of Gardner and Donald Allain and his wife Claire of Woodbridge, VA; one sister, Jeanne Hetnik of Otter River; ten grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; several nieces, nephews and cousins.

She was predeceased by a son, John Henry Ladroga and by one brother, Andre Allain.

Funeral services will be held Wednesday, January 28th from the Boucher Funeral Home, Inc., 110 Nichols Street, Gardner with a Mass at 10:00 a.m. in Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church, 135 Nichols Street, Gardner. Burial will be in Notre Dame Cemetery, Gardner, at a later date.

Calling hours in the funeral home are Tuesday, January 27th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and Wednesday, January 28th from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.

Memorial contributions may be made to Our Lady of the Holy Rosary School, 135 Nichols Street, Gardner, MA 01440.

Rest in peace, Aunt Freda. I’m sorry I’ll miss your sendoff.

The Day Has Arrived

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No doubt about it: yesterday was a historic day. I hope that years from now all of us will remember where we were when President Obama was inaugurated as our nation’s 44th President. Nancy and I, alas, couldn’t watch it as we were traveling to Yosemite National Park for our annual Chef’s Holidays trip. We were able to listen to it compliments of National Public Radio and we’re grateful for that.

Yesterday’s events held meaning for so many people on so many levels it’s hard, even a day later, to encapsulate all the emotions. As I said in a previous post, I always believed we would have a President of African descent in my lifetime and in that sense this isn’t much of a surprise. I was raised to always believe racism to be a sin and I believed that our nation wouldn’t keep excluding the gifts and talents of all our men and women of color. That said, perhaps the most moving part of yesterday was hearing from the aging generation who still vividly remembers segregation, and how grateful they are to live long enough to see this.

For me the inauguration of President Obama has less to do with race and more to do with hope. His inaugural address struck several chords with me. Here are a few excerpts:

  • On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
  • In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom. For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
  • The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do. (emphasis mine)
  • Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
  • As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.

OK, maybe I should have included the whole address.

Finally, you can see some changes in this page. I did take down the countdown clock of the last President’s administration, but for the time being I’ve edited it to be the days since this inauguration. I may leave it up indefinitely or I may take it down after the first 100 days; I haven’t decided yet. I’ve also added the new White House blog under “political blogs.” I found it this morning; it seems that Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media, will be keeping a blog. I’ll be interested to read his stuff.

That’s all for now.

My Hopes for the Next Four Years

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I’m writing this a few days before the Inauguration. As I’m looking over my web page I’m realizing that I should take down the countdown clock; I could take it down now, but I want to see “0” just once. It will come down soon. I’m also thinking about taking down the Bert and Ernie terror alert level. It’s a spoof of the Department of Homeland Security’s Terror Alert Level. It’s an easy thing to spoof and I hope it’s one of the things that President Obama eliminates.

We’re hearing that the President Elect is planning on closing the prison at Guantanamo. This is nothing but good news; I’m one of the people who have been troubled by the fact that our government, in complete disregard of the 4th Amendment has imprisoned people without due process, representation, or opportunity to have their case heard.

There is much to write here as it has been a long 8 years. The bottom line is that I pray we once again become a country that lives its dreams and not its fears. We are in a bad place economically and I don’t expect we are going to inaugurate a Messiah who will fix things overnight. But I do think we are, at the very least, turning the ship of state back to a good direction. I ask that we all pray for him.

Electric Cars: Is This a Lateral Shift to Another Fossil Fuel?

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As everyone who reads this knows, I drive a Toyota Prius and my gas milage is in the low 40s MPG. I enjoy it (and especially enjoy the sticker that allows me to drive in the carpool lane even if I’m alone). But the drawback is that my gas mileage isn’t all that much better than the 35MPG I used to get in my 1997 Honda Civic. My Prius uses a battery that is recharged by use of the gas engine and isn’t running all that much.

In the last few weeks I’ve been hearing news out of Detroit that American car manufacturers are increasingly looking at cars that run on 100% electricity and plug in overnight. This would save us from lots of the oil we now convert to gas and burn and it would lower our dependence on OPEC. But it raises an obvious question for me: If, over time, we switch from gas powered cars to electric powered cars, where does the electricity come from? And if it’s coal, does switching from one finite fossil fuel to another really help?

I did some looking on the internet and found a page from the Department of Energy. It broke down all the energy consumption in the United States in 2006 and from my calculation, we used 1,990,926 thousand Megawatt hours in coal compated to 4,064,702 thousand Megawatt hours total. If my 3rd grade math is corrrect (Mrs. Moore, are you checking this?) we get about 49% of our electricty from coal. The numbers in California are dramatically different; I found a group called One Block Off the Grid that shows in 2007 California got only 16.6% of its power from coal, but 45.2% from natural gas, another fossil fuel.

I find this a little disturbing for three reasons: First, I’m not sure that in the long run we gain much from switching to another fossil fuel. Granted we have more coal and natural gas under our own soil and this would free us up from OPEC. But the bottom line is that we’re still burning a finite fuel and it, too, will run out some day. Second, coal and natural gas are also greenhouse gases. According to naturalgas.org all three release CO2 with coal being the highest, oil in the middle, and natural gas being the least. You can find the numbers there. Finally, it’s clear that the American car industry needs to change things and change things fast to stay competitive and in business. When they start making the switch to electricity, will the current grid be able to accept all the increase in demand? We here in Southern California know well that there are times during the summer where increased use of air conditioners has led to rolling blackouts because the grid just couldn’t keep up with demand. Granted if we do start switching over to electric cars it will be a gradual thing, and the industry is saying simply “The grid will have to grow” but can it? Can we mine enough coal and natural gas to keep up with demand?

We hear all the time about areas around the world that have electricity for only a few hours a day, if at all. Most of us have never experienced that. We expect, and have come to expect, that whatever we plug in, no matter how power hungry and no matter what time of the day, will work. Those days may be changing.

Exit Thoughts on 2008

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted; I keep thinking that someday I’ll have the time to post on a more regular basis.

It’s been quite a year; the most important news is good: George W. Bush leaves office in 20 days and Barack Obama will take the helm. It’s been a long 8 years and I believe the country has suffered greatly under the Bush years. He believes that history will vindicate him and his reputation (like Harry Truman’s) will improve. I, on the other hand, believe in 20 years it will be hard to find anyone who will admit that they voted for him.

Much of the rest of the news is bad. It’s hard to believe what’s happened to the economy in the last year. Wall Street will be open tomorrow and these numbers will change, but not significantly. Stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average have declined nearly 35% this year. Unemployment is up and it appears we are in the beginning stages of a long and painful recession. As for Nancy and me, our portfolio has gone down 28% (even with our contributions to our retirement plans). My employer, San Diego Hospice, like many nonprofits, is feeling the twin blows of decreased donations and declining stock portfolios. So far they’ve announced no payraises in 2009 as well as no employer contributions to our 401(k)’s. We’ve also had some layoffs in the bereavement department. It appears my job is safe though.

Speaking of jobs, there has been some good news in that department. In February I’ll celebrate 4 years at San Diego Hospice (and I just passed 11 years as a hospice chaplain). For the past 3 years I’ve been a preceptor: I’ve been one of the chaplains who has mentored new chaplains in the agency. I’ve found that I really love meeting and mentoring new folk. I appear to have some success: of the 7 new chaplains I’ve mentored, all are still with the agency. I’ve been asked if I’m interested in going up the ladder in management, and while that’s flattering I have no desire to do that. Last month ago the agency decided to come up with a new classification: advanced clinician master preceptor. We are developing two teams where everyone (nurse, social worker, home health aide, and chaplain) is a preceptor and will mentor new employees as a team. This sounds complicated as I’m describing this, but let me say this: I applied for one of the positions and was accepted into the program.

This is really the best of both worlds as I will continue to see patients and do more mentoring. I’ll also be working on a team where all of us are advanced clinicians. Since there are two teams, I’ll be working with another chaplain and it’s someone I work well with. The teams will be working closely together to develop curricula, not only for new employees, but for the agency as a whole. I’ll be working on a nursing home team (not a home team) and I haven’t worked in nursing homes since I was with Odyssey over 4 years ago. As I told my new boss, there will be a definite “remembering curve.” I’ll also be working at nursing homes much closer to home which will give my Prius a break.

One of the reasons I haven’t posted in a while is that I was down with a bad case of pertussis, also known as whooping cough. I came down with it the beginning of November, and ironically enough, my worst day with it was election day. As I told Nancy, I never remember being this sick, and the day I’ve been anticipating for 8 years was not even a day I could celebrate well. It was horrible and I can’t imagine what it must be like for infants and children. It’s not hard to imagine how this can be fatal in infants. I missed a week and a half of work and probably came back too soon. Even now I have an occasional coughing fit. It was probably exacerbated by my asthma but even so, my heart goes out to anyone who has this illness. It’s good to be feeling better.

Finally, let us all pray that 2009 is a good year for all.

T Plus 5 Days and Counting

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I’m writing this on Sunday night after the Presidential election. I hope everyone knows this, but Barack Obama defeated John McCain last Thursday. The popular vote was 65,431,955 (53%) for Obama and 57,434,084 (46%) for McCain. In the electoral map, Obama won 364 electoral votes vs. 173 for McCain (different news organizations have different numbers, but they are close enough for my doing). As a sidebar I looked at some of the web pages of the independent candidates I listed on my page. I wasn’t able to find much information on how many votes they received, and I have to say that as a group they are not gracious losers. I didn’t see any of them offer their support or prayers to the new president; none of them took a page from Senator McCain’s gracious and benevolent remarks.

In any case it’s still hard to believe that the campaign really is over. With all the buildup, all the twists and turns, it didn’t take long on Tuesday night to have a winner. By the time our polls closed at 8PM local time the networks knew and shortly after 8 the race was over. We had some friends and family over and when Senator Obama was announced we all looked at each other in disbelief.

Since then there has been an outpouring and it’s moved me to tears several times. I grew up in Virginia and thought I was aware of racial politics and beliefs but I was not prepared for the welling of emotion over the election of an African American man for President. I guess I was one of the few people of my generation who did believe I’d see an African American President in my lifetime (mostly at this point I’m still getting my head wrapped around the fact that Obama is younger than me). On the other hand “knowing I’ll see it happen someday” is very different from actually experiencing it. I’ll never forget the faces in the crowds in Grant Park in Chicago where thousands gathered. This time just feels so . . . hopeful.

I say this against backdrop of the horrible racial politics that the other side attempted. I wrote about this a few days ago, how blogs all over the country were trying to portray Obama as an outsider with a “secret agenda” who is “not one of us” and “secretly wants to destroy America.” These words make his victory all the sweeter in that this type of ignorance didn’t work.

The dark spot of the election for me here in California was the passage of Proposition 8. Last May the California Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for California to deny marriage to same sex couples; almost immediately groups in and out of the state began this proposition to change the state constitution to define marriage as only for heterosexual couples. It passed by a thin margin. I’m not sure where it goes from here, but it does strike me as unfair that the state constitution can be changed by a simple majority on a proposition. By contrast, the U.S. Constitution can be amended only after a two step process: a resolution is passed by 2/3 majority of the House and Senate, and is ratified by the state legislatures of 3/4 of the states.

The supporters of Prop 8 disagree with me on this reasoning but I do draw a line from this to the debate about interracial marriage that took place last century. Until 1967 (in the case of Loving vs. Virginia) it was against the law in several states for people of different races to marry. The Supreme Court argued here that there was no constitutional right to define marriage as between people of the same race.

The landmark Supreme Court case in the civil rights era is Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954. What is not well known is that it overturned a previous Supreme Court case, Plessy vs. Ferguson, 1896. In the Plessy case the Court ruled 8-1 that it was permissible to allow “separate but equal” facilities. The Brown case, 58 years later, argued that separate is inherently unequal and there can be no double standard.

That’s the issue I have with those who hold that our gay brothers and sisters still have domestic partnerships. The argument is that they have this provision and marriage can still be reserved to a man and a woman. Only it can’t. Justice Warren in 1954 was right: separate is simply not equal.

So let’s take a moment to celebrate Barack’s victory, but then remember that we still have work to do.

Today's the Day

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8:00 PM Western Time (Midnight in the East, 0400 GMT)

It appears to have happened: NBC, ABC, CNN have all declared Senator Obama as our next president. The polls have just closed on the West Coast and the Obama support has been strong enough to declare California, Oregon, and Washington for Obama. It also appears that my home state of Virginia will go for Obama. I’m watching the celebration from Grant Park in Chicago and it’s jubilation. As an aside, we haven’t seen the McCain headquarters as they are in the Phoenix Biltmore and it’s closed to the public. No more need be said.

OK, maybe more can be said. It’s been a long 8 years for many of us and President Elect Obama has a great deal of cleaning up to do. He will certainly need our prayers in the years ahead. Whatever has been said about the “color barrier” this is a historic moment and years from now I’ll remember this moment. But more than that, I believe he is the man who will best be able to reunite our country.

6:00 PM Western Time (9:00 in the East, and 0200 GMT)

Every hour brings new states that have closed their polls, and things continue to look up for Sen. Obama. NBC has 175 Electoral Votes for him and 76 for Sen. McCain. He appears to have some downticket momentum. John Warner (R-Va.) retired and it has gone to Democrat Mark Warner (no relation). That wasn’t a surprise but it was a surprise to see that incumbent Senator John Sununu (R-NH) was defeated by Jean Shaheen and incumbent Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) has been defeated by Kay Hagan. We’re a long way off from this, but there is an outside chance that the Democrats will have 60 seats in the Senate.

That’s important because of the role of the filibuster in the Senate. Any Senator can block discussion or a vote on any bill simply by taking the podium and not giving it up. It takes a vote of at least 60 senators for “cloture” to end the filibuster. The Democrats currently have a majority if the Senate but they don’t have 60 seats and the Republicans have been able to effectively block a great deal of progress. Assuming Sen. Obama wins, if he has a 60 seat majority in the Senate, he will have a tremendous opportunity to move us beyond the Bush years.

4:45 PM Western Time (7:45 in the East, and 2345 GMT)

Well it’s already started: as I write this Kentucky and South Carolina have gone for Sen. McCain and Vermont for Sen. Obama. None of these were surprises, though perhaps if South Carolina had gone for Obama, the race would pretty much have been over by now. As of now, McCain is ahead 16 electoral votes to 3 (at this point I’m watching NBC; other networks have different totals).

1:30 PM Western Time (4:30 PM in the East, and 2130 GMT)
OK, so at long last it’s here: Election Day 2008. My countdown clock goes until January 20, 2009 because that’s how much longer President Bush is in office. Sometime within the next few hours we’ll know who the President Elect is, but he won’t take office for another 76 days.

In the next several hours I’ll be making some changes on my web page. Primarily I’ll be removing the names of the candidates running for President. Keeping track of this has turned into a bit of a nightmare and I have only myself to blame. At the beginning of the primary season I hoped to list not only the major candidates of the major parties, but anyone I could find who announced candidacy for President. At first it wasn’t too bad as I was able to find most of what I wanted from Google or Wikipedia. It became more complicated when candidates would lose their primary and announce that they had either switched to another party or decided to run as independents. It also became clear that some of these candidates weren’t putting in much effort as there were no changes in the web pages over the course of the race. In any case, after tonight nobody is running for president in 2008.

I’m planning to keep most of the other boxes on the left side of the page. I’ll probably get rid of the Bert and Ernie terror alert level; it was a parody of the White House’s color coded terror alert level and I don’t know anyone who keeps track of that now.

I’ve been keeping track of the US combat deaths in Iraq with a counter I downloaded from antiwar.com. It doesn’t look like we’ll be out of there anytime soon and I’m inclined to keep it there as long as our troops are there. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a counter for deaths in Afghanistan; if I do I’ll add it. There are counters who attempt to keep track of deaths of US civilian contractors and Iraqi civilians but the Bush administration has been successful in keeping that information private and the counters aren’t very accurate.

As long as I’m housecleaning I’m making some changes on the right column too. Primarily I’ll be getting rid of some of the personal blogs that either no longer exist or now require permission to read.

I’m going to write several times during the night as the voting comes in. Right now there isn’t much as the first polls don’t even close for another 2 1/2 hours.

Nancy Means Business

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A few weeks ago Nancy got word that she had been nominated for an award called “Women Who Mean Business.” It’s sponsored by The San Diego Business Journal and every year they choose women who are leaders in their fields. Last night was the awards dinner and Nancy won the award for Community Service. This was her nomination:

Dr. Nancy Graff graduated with a B.A. and M.D. from UC San Diego. After completing residency at UCLA, she returned to San Diego as a fellow at the UCSD Division of General Pediatrics in 1990. She is currently a clinical professor at the UCSD School of Medicine. Graff has always wanted to be sure that everyone has a voice, especially those who can’t fight for themselves. For that reason she decided to focus her career on the prevention of family violence and the health and well-being of children in the foster care system.

Acknowledged as an expert on child abuse, Graff has served as the medical director of the Polinsky Children’s Center clinic since 1994. In this position, Graff meets the needs of children suspected of or found to be at risk of child abuse. Since returning to San Diego for fellowship since 1990, she has also addressed the needs of children and families at El Cajon Community Clinic, The Birthplace and Hillcrest Receiving Home. She worked closely with UCSD’s Academic Center of Excellence on Youth Violence Prevention for a number of years. While working with the center she developed and now leads a Youth Violence Seminar for medical students

Graff directs two programs at the UCSD Division of Community Pediatrics. As the director of Pediatricians and Communities Collaborating Together, a residency training program, she ensures that San Diego’s future pediatricians will competently practice culturally appropriate medicine, as well as understand appropriately respond to and prevent family violence. Graff also directs a program that provides varied developmental and behavioral services for children 0-5 and their families, including developmental/behavioral screening, assessments and evaluations

Graff serves as the State Governmental Affairs Representative for Chapter 3 of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and has chaired the chapter’s Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect since 2002. Currently Graff sits on the San Diego County Juvenile Policy Group Healthcare Committee and is a member of the following Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team, Developmental Screening and Evaluation Project Advisory Board, and San Diego County’s Fetal Infant Mortality Review Advisory Board and Case Review Workgroup. Graff has served on the board of La Cuna, a nonprofit foster family agency that places Latino babies in healthy and loving homes, and is a past chair of the AAP’s Community Access to Child Health Committee.

Graff has participated in the AIDS walk and the AIDS bicycle ride from San Francisco to L.A., where she volunteered as a member of the crew. Graff is also a member of Childrens’ Health is a Legal Duty (CHILD), which fights for the rights of children whoa re prevented from receiving health care due to their parents’ religious beliefs. Consistent with her beliefs that all children deserve health care, she has gone beyond the expectations of a pediatrician to simply treat ailing children, to fight for all children at a policy level.

Not a bad night, all things considered. It’s nice to see that the greater San Diego community recognizes what I’ve known all along: she’s an incredible person (and a terrific wife by the way).

T Minus 15 Days and Counting

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Fifteen days from tonight I will be up most of the night watching the election results. It’s going to be a long few weeks.

I received my sample ballot in the mail last week. You can see I have 37 candidates for President listed. Of those picks, only 6 are listed in my ballot (5 actually because I did not list Alan Keyes who is running on the American Independent Party ticket). My ballot lists only Alan Keyes, Ralph Nader, Barack Obama, Bob Barr, John McCain, and Cynthia McKinney.

I’ve made no secret that I support Senator Obama and I hope he wins. Yesterday on Meet The Press General Colin Powell endorsed Senator Obama. The interview is worth a watch and the transcript is here. General Powell was as gracious as ever and respectful of both candidates but in the final word he articulated good reasons to vote for Senator Obama. Allow me to highlight some of these reasons:

  • The economy. Senator McCain doesn’t seem to have a grasp of the economic troubles we have been facing, famously saying that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. In fairness he is caught between what clearly needs to be done (use government resources to stimulate the economy) and what the Republican Party is demanding (do nothing: look how successful it was for Herbert Hoover).
  • The choice of Sarah Palin. Senator McCain announces again and again that he is a maverick and owes his vote to no one. Yet when he clearly wanted to choose Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate, he buckled under and chose someone he had only met a few times and is clearly unqualified (meaning no disrespect to the Alaska PTA but that does not qualify someone for national office). The fact that she passes the Republican litmus test on abortion and gay marriage only shows that Senator McCain is not his own man.
  • The negative tone. Everyone knows that politics is hardball and it’s not bad to see how someone responds to being roughed up. But John McCain (whose 2000 campaign was destroyed by Karl Rove’s tactics; there is an excellent explanation in this Boston Globe article) has allowed this to get out of hand. He is an honorable man but he has allowed his campaign to smear Senator Obama with issues that are just plain wrong (he will raise everyone’s taxes) to issues that are simply offensive (he is secretly a Muslim and has an agenda he is hiding from the American people).

My only complaint with General Powell is that he didn’t do this in 2004. He was instrumental in selling the Iraq War in 2003 and it is now clear that he was using intelligence that the Bush administration knew to be wrong. He was the one person who could have blown the whistle and turned the voters against President Bush. I’m sorry he didn’t

Of all the issues, I’m most troubled by the ongoing negative campaigning. I had hoped that Senator McCain would repudiate these tactics but he clearly hasn’t. I’m proud to support Senator Obama who criticizes Senator McCain’s positions but never questions his patriotism or loyalty. The Republican Party, however, continues to hint darkly that Senator Obama is “not one of us” and Senator McCain is unwilling or unable to stop it. If you google “Obama” and “Muslim” it shows 12,100,000 hits, and the sponsored link above the results is McCain for President. The offensiveness here is deep and amazing. It hints that 1) Senator Obama isn’t running to President to serve the country but to destroy it, and 2) The mere fact (sic) that he is Muslim is proof because “they” can’t possibly love the United States.

I call this the Nat Turner strategy. Nat Turner was a slave on a plantation in Virginia; in 1831 he led an insurrection of slaves who rose up and murdered 55 people, beginning with the family that owned him. This led to harsh laws meant to prevent slaves from ever being able to do this again. The name Nat Turner now stands for anyone who appears to be loyal but is really looking for an opportunity to destroy you. In the context of the Presidential campaign the racial undertones are unmistakeable. Only a Obama win will quiet these voices.