The Great Dance
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/01/2009 - 12:39Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. I start the first blog post of every month with the phrase “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit” harkening back to a hope of childhood that saying those words first thing in the morning of the first day of the month would some how bring luck for the month. The beginning of a new month can be like the beginning of a new year, in whatever calendar, or a new administration, a chance to hope again.
Yet hope can be a fleeting thing. I’ve been a bit out of sorts over the past week. My wife, Kim, has commented on it and I’ve been wondering what it has all been about. Have the incessant winter storms been finally worn me down? Am I struggling from season affective disorders? Is it a “Blue Monday” sort of effect? Are there other factors, new twist in our difficult financial situation? Could it be related to health, the endless coughs, headaches and other symptoms of the winter cold season? Could it be my continued struggle to find the right combination of medications to keep my blood pressure and cholesterol under control? Might it be concerns about residual affects of Kim’s battle with Lyme disease?
All of these seam reasonable explanations. However, most of these have been ongoing struggles. Was there something particular about last week? As I think about what is going on in the nation and the world, I see reasons for hope. Yes, President Obama has a rough road ahead of him as he tries to deal with the issues our country faces. Yes, wars continue overseas. Yes, the end of economic woes does not appear to be around the corner, but all in all, things in the world seem like they are starting to head in a better direction.
I remember years ago when Star Wars came out. I seem to recall a scene where the Death Star destroys a planet, and Obi-Wan feels and comments upon this disturbance in the force. Yeah, it’s science fiction, but I’ve often felt that we can sense something wrong, a long ways away. I’ve often had these feelings right before getting a phone call from my mother about some death or serious illness in the family. Perhaps, there was a disturbance in the force this past week that has somehow affected me.
I’ve often written about a mailing list of Group Psychotherapists that I’m on. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to meet one of the members face to face. Danielle Fraenkel is a dance/movement therapist from Rochester, NY. She was in New York City to care for her aging mother so my wife and I trekked into the city to have dinner with her.
It was a wonderful dinner. At the time, my eldest daughter, Mairead, was studying the holocaust, and Dani’s mother had lots of stories that would have helped make Mairead’s studies much more real and immediate. Unfortunately, Dani’s mother was too weak to speak with Mairead. However, Dani did give us a copy of a book, Samuel Mendelsson: A Man Who Must Not Be Forgotten. It was written by H. Alexander Fraenkel, who, if I remember properly was Dani’s father.
In the introduction, Mr. Fraenkel writes,
It may be that some of the many are still alive and will remember; it may be that others will learn about this Jewish gentleman, and – it may be wishful thinking – that someone may begin to think, and no more to hate.
Over the years, I’ve met others from the mailing list, and last year I went to the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) annual conference in Washington DC. There, I had the chance to have dinner with Carol Lark.
Carol is an art therapist in St. Louis. I had been talking about the possible uses of Second Life as a therapeutic environment on the mailing list. Carol had joined Second Life and was looking around. Over a wonderful dinner we talked about many things, including the potential for Second Life.
What had gotten me interested in the therapeutic potential of Second Life was a chance encounter I had had sometime earlier in Second Life.
I had been invited to a pajama party. May people in Second Life spend a lot of money on clothes there and had very nice pajamas. I had nothing notable. However, I did have the shape of a cat that I had received when I covered an art opening in Second Life.
So, I changed shape into a cat and ran around the pajama party, dragging a pillow behind me and tripping up even the most agile avatars. Everyone cursed that damn cat, but it seemed as if that was all part of the fun for everyone, so I only redoubled my efforts.
Afterwards, a woman named Gentle Heron, who appeared to be an agile and attractive twenty-something approached me and wanted to make sure that my feelings had not been hurt by all the curses and that it was, for me, as much part of the game, as it was for her and others.
I reassured her that I had a good time and enjoyed the role I was in. She then proceeded to thank me. You see, she is the head of the Heron Society, a group of people in Second Life dedicated to helping others with disabilities. People in the Heron society were going through the difficult task of processing grief over the suicide of a friend, and Gentle really needed a chance to just relax and run around like everyone else.
Gentle and I became good friends and I later learned more about her. In real life, she has advanced multiple sclerosis. She gets around with the use of crutches or a wheelchair and doesn’t get out that much. Second Life is a great tool to connect with others for her and through her, I have learned a lot about people with various disabilities. So, when Carol entered Second Life I made sure the two of them connected.
At the same AGPA annual conference, I attended one of Dani’s workshops. It is hard to find words for what a powerful experience it was, and I encourage everyone to try to get to one of her workshops if you can. With my thoughts about the disabled community in the forefront of my mind, I was very pleased to hear Dani talk about how she used dance and movement therapy for people of all levels of ability and dreamed of ways of bringing her expertise, through Second Life, to those who are very limited in their physical abilities, except when they are in Second Life.
Then, yesterday, it became all so much more complicated, as life is wont to do. The ripple in the force arrived. I received an email that Carol has acute leukemia. Carol, the ever loving kind and artistic therapist, has written a little bit about this part of her journey at CareBridge. CareBridge is a wonderful “nonprofit web service that connects family and friends during a critical illness, treatment or recovery.”
The unit she is in “has a grant to offer complementary/holistic medicine procedures to the patients on demand for free.” Carol describes “a guided imagery session” she sees “a distant horizon of women dancing with bare feet, all kinds of women, young and old form all over the world.”
Through the magic of Second Life, the physically disabled can dance, men can become cats or even women dancing with bare feet. We can join in the guided imagery and dance a dance of healing for Carol. Whatever your tradition or beliefs, please send prayers, kind thoughts, positive energy, or whatever you can in Carol’s direction.
With all of this in mind, I had an interesting discussion with my seven-year-old daughter Fiona. We were sitting in the car while Kim was trying to get some prescriptions filled. We were listening to the band Red Molly. It is a trio that we’ve often heard at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival and it is one of Fiona’s favorite bands.
Fiona really likes their upbeat tunes, like their rendition of “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.” When the slower, more contemplative songs come on, she wants me to skip over them.
Yet I like some of their slower more contemplative songs, so we listened to “May I Suggest” which I suggested to Fiona was a very important song. She wanted to know why I thought it was so important, so we listened to the lyrics and talked about them a little bit, in terms of Carol’s battle.
May I suggest, may I suggest to you, may I suggest this is the best part of your life.
May I suggest, this time is blest for you
This time is blest in shining almost blinding bright.
Now amidst all the fear, pain and confusion that I imagine Carol must be facing right now, I suggested that this moment, now, just might be the best part of her life. It is a moment where her she will use all her skills to battle a horrible disease. It is a time that the words she gets a chance to write are an important gift to anyone that reads them.
More importantly, for each one of us, this is, or at least can be, the best part of our lives. This moment. Now. Simply by being in the moment and seeing the beauty around us, this can be the best part of our lives.
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
So, I worry about finances, health and just getting by from day to day. Yet I also join in the Great Dance, with Carol, and Gentle, and Dani, and Alexander and Samuel and anyone else who will join in. I hold on to the hope of a new month, a new year, a new administration, or simply a new day and a new moment, and I say “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit”.
SimpleXML PHP and Top EntreCard droppers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/31/2009 - 12:41Today is a day that EntreCard has asked people to highlight those that have dropped the most cards on their site. It is easy to get this as an RSS feed, and I could have just done something like thrown it into the Drupal Feed Aggregator and put it up as a block. Or, I could have used one of many different widgets to highlight top droppers.
Instead, I’ve been playing with parsing XML with using SimpleXML in PHP. I’ll be writing more about this later. For the time being, let me present my top droppers, as retrieved as an RSS feed from EntreCard, formatted for this blog, along with some of my own comments.
twitterwordle
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 23:37
I wrote a program that extracts the most recent status of each of the nearly 1300 people that I'm following on Twitter.
I fed the results into Wordle at www.wordle.net to come up with this representation of what my friends are up to.
Budget Deficits, Patronage, and Symbolic Gestures
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 13:35As Connecticut faces its worst budget deficit in years, blogs and newspapers are providing useful information and valuable places to discuss the deficit and how it can best be addressed. Topics that have gotten discussed have included legislative salaries, patronage, and corruption.
When the General Assembly discussed deficit mitigation, Reps. Cafero, Hamzy and Klarides proposed an amendment calling for a five percent reduction in salaries for members and officers of the General Assembly. During the discussion of the amendment, Rep. Hamzy pledged that if the amendment did not pass, he would contact the Comptroller’s office and take a voluntary pay cut.
The Comptroller’s officer reports that legislative salaries are handled by the Office of Legislative Management. A call to this office revealed that Rep. Hamzy has in fact followed through with his pledge. Rep. Tim Larson has asked for a voluntary ten percent reduction and Sen. DeFronzo has asked for a two percent cut. These are great symbolic gestures and I wish to particularly applaud Rep. Hamzy for following through with his pledge.
Yet as I noted in my blog post, Republican Efforts to Protect CT Dems Majority:
Rep. Hamzy, a partner at Hamzy and Conlin, a law firm which focuses on bankruptcy and divorce can probably afford the $1,500 pay cut much easier than his clients. Yet this gets to my concern about the effort. We need to make the job of State Legislator accessible to more people in Connecticut, including people like Rep. Hamzy’s clients, and not only to successful lawyers.
The issue of legislative pay grew as an issue when House Speaker Donovan announced plans to hirer for former House Speaker Amann for $120,000 which is over four times the salary of a typical State Representative in Connecticut. Amidst the outcry, former House Speaker Amann decided not to accept the position.
Yet this got the attention of various journalists around the state. Ken Dixon posted two articles about Legislative Staff Salaries. A little analysis provides some interesting information. The total legislative staff salary listed in Dixon’s first post is nearly $14 million and the average staffer makes around $65,000/yr which is over twice the salary of a typical State Representative.
On top of that, there are some particularly notable high salaries. Joseph Quinn, Jr. is the top paid Democrat followed by Douglas Whiting at $170,719 and $165,000 respectively. They are followed by Republicans Paul Pimentel and George Gallo at $151,000 and $149,000 respectively. George Gallo is the former chair of the State Republican Party.
Coming in fifth and sixth are Democrat Kevin Graff and Republican Deborah L. Hutton at $147,160 and $144,000 respectively. Various websites make reference to a Deb or Deborah Hutton who had been listed as a VP of Government Affairs for Cablevision and Treasurer of Cablevision Systems Connecticut Political Committee back in about 2006. I do not know if this is the same Deborah Hutton, but I suspect it may be.
In addition to the annual salaries listed, Mr. Dixon posted another article listing Sessional Employees. This works out to be another $13,000 for each day that the General Assembly is in session. The average is a little over a hundred dollars a day, however there are some larger numbers with Robert Frankel leading the list at nearly $700/day.
Should any of these people be considering paycuts? Do we have concerns about their roles in the legislative process given their backgrounds? Is there political patronage going on here?
Chris Powell, managing editor at the Journal Inquirer approaches this from an interesting perspective. He suggest that Patronage is problem only if taken too far.
Amann notes that candidacy for major office imposes great personal financial burdens. These burdens discourage many good candidates, and Connecticut's new system of public financing for political campaigns does nothing about it. Indeed, promising as it is, the public-financing system may fail to achieve one of its objectives -- more competitive elections -- unless more people can afford to become candidates. That's why it might be good to extend the public-financing system to pay salaries to candidates who are challenging incumbents and who are not already on the public payroll themselves, or to allow such challenge candidates who have qualified for public financing to draw reasonable and temporary salaries from their campaigns.
I suspect that in the current fiscal climate, this idea isn’t likely to go very far, but it gets to the core of the problem. How do we get the best possible people to run for office?
The importance of this is underscored other recent events. Yesterday, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was removed from office for, among other things, plotting to “sign legislation related to the horse racing industry”, “award a tollway contract and expand a tollway project”, “release pediatric care reimbursements to Illinois doctors and hospitals”, “appoint someone to the Illinois Finance Authority”, “award state contracts in exchange” and “award permits and authorizations” all “in exchange for campaign contributions”.
While the Citizens’ Election Program would have eliminated half of the charges against former Gov. Blagojevich, he still would most likely have been impeached on other charges.
Public financing of elections, in and of itself, will reduce some of the opportunities for corrupt politicians to act corruptly, but it won’t eliminate corruption. Instead, the key goal of public financing of elections, at least as I see it, is to help give voters better choices for candidates.
This leads me to the discussion on Connecticut Local Politics about the arrest of Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez on charges of bribery and fabricating evidence. I should note that the article was written by my wife, Kim Hynes, who is a senior organizer for Common Cause.
People who oppose public financing of elections were quick to jump on the discussion arguing that if we had public financing of elections, Rowland and Perez probably would have been elected anyway. Their conjecture might be true. Making it easier for better, non-corrupt politicians to run doesn’t guarantee that non-corrupt politicians will always, in the end, get elected.
One person suggested that “Elected officials are always accountable to voters”. Well, that is true, if they are facing meaningful opposition in elections. However, a corrupt incumbent that goes unopposed will most likely win re-election, and when a corrupt incumbent faces a corrupt challenger, you can be pretty sure that the winner will be corrupt.
The cost of corruption can be very high. So, as we try to reduce governmental costs, the question remains, how do we reduce corruption in government? Public financing of elections reduces one avenue of corruption. It makes it easier for better candidates to run. Should candidates collect salaries while they run? Should legislators be paid better so that more people can afford to take a state legislative job? Where does civic education fit into the equation, and where does the media fit in?
Here in Connecticut, it is good to see newspaper editors and bloggers grappling with these questions. It’s a good start.
Using GraphViz, a Brief Tutorial
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 01/29/2009 - 12:52Yesterday, I wrote a blog post about installing GraphViz on Drupal. Today, I will describe a little bit about how to create interesting images using GraphViz. This is a bit of a long and geeky post, so I’ll spare my less geeky friends the details. Click on read more to see the full blog post.
