Category Archives: Greatest Generation, Boomers, Millennials, Alphabets

Social Media Boundary Setting

The well-off in the United States suffer from at least two kinds of gluttony. One is from eating an overabundance of physical food. The other is from overindulging in social media. Protecting ourselves from overindulgence in either requires self discipline.

Particularly in raising our children, we are responsible for properly using what we and they consume in each case.

To eat a proper diet, of course, we know that a healthy diet has to include proper amounts of fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and dairy products as well as guards against too many fatty meats and sweets and junk food.

As soon as we have our first candy bar as children, the race for a disciplined diet is on. For those of us blessed with enough money for food, a healthy diet is the result of disciplined choices, partly the discipline to refuse too many unhealthy foods.

Just as societies had to deal with food discipline as soon as affordable sugar became available to most of the population, so we must deal with the explosion of social media use with the development of the internet.

Boundary setting in the practices chosen by our family members in their use of social media is as important as boundary setting in our choice of foods. Good parenting requires the introduction and encouragement of both healthy foods and healthy habits regarding social media. The junk food kinds of social media should be as limited as candy bars.

We encourage healthy choices in food and in setting limits on junk food. So we also should encourage healthy choices in the amount of time we spend on social media.

Think of social media as dessert, not the main course.

A Still Regional Nation

Though Americans move frequently compared to citizens of many other nations, the United States still maintains regional differences. For many of us, how fellow Americans live in another region may seem vastly different, even perhaps strange.

I have moved about the country probably a bit more than most Americans, even though we are called a nation of movers. In the beginning, I lived with my family in the same house in Nashville, Tennessee, until I went off to college in Birmingham, Alabama.

After college, I began moving around: first within my native state of Tennessee, then a big change to the northeast—rural New Jersey. Later, Indiana, then California, then back to Nashville, then to a couple of places in Georgia.

After that, I joined the Foreign Service of the U.S. State Department and the changes were even further out of familiar territory. Washington, D.C., of course, for training. Then to different countries: Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia, Canada.

After the Foreign Service, my husband and I retired to his boyhood home on an island up from Seattle.

Even here, I still feel a little out of it—my accent, for one thing, nails me as soon as I open my mouth. After years of moving around, I never lost that accent.

So, yes, even though I’ve moved around more than most Americans, even in a nation with a lot of movers, I still see America’s distinct regions, remaining through generations.

The differences still exist between the Midwest and the South and the east coast and the Pacific region and New England—and all the others in between.

We remain, in some ways, sectional Americans. That is not a bad thing in itself, perhaps even a blessing. It gives us different perspectives and spices our national story, especially as the story is being added to by even more varieties of people.

It does require what has brought America, sometimes badly, but has brought us through all these centuries. That requirement is a tolerance for often very different views of looking at the country and sometimes with different goals in mind.

What is required and has to be prevalent in order for the country to work, is tolerance. We have to be willing to let others win when they have the votes. And we have to abide by those votes and guard with a vengeance any who would attempt to overcome the votes with false counts or narratives. In court case after court case, the past election has been ruled legitimate.

When you don’t have the votes to win, then have enough love of country to yield to those who do. When the other side wins, have the patriotism and love of America to become the loyal opposition—with emphasis on loyal.

 

Reconciling Christian and Patriot

I grew up in the days of the cold war between U.S. led western democracies and the Soviet Union. Easy, perhaps, to equate democracy with Christianity. The Soviet Union encouraged atheism, actively curtailing many expressions of religion, including Christianity. The encouragement of democracy by the United States, by default, included freedom of religion.

At this time, Christians were a growing and active part of American society. Religious crusades often included local officials and leaders. Not surprisingly, some of our inheritance includes a legacy of nationalistic Christianity.

Unfortunately, Christians—American or other—are not exempt from temptations. Sometimes Christian leaders took advantage of their favored status and used it to hide financial, sexual, and other personal sins. As these personal failings came to light, American Christianity was tarnished.

National affiliation and Christian calling are not in themselves enemies. The missionary preacher Paul sometimes used his Roman citizenship to his advantage, allowing his continued preaching of the gospel.

Jesus, when religious leaders attempted to trap him by asking if taxes should be paid to Caesar, replied “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”

The problem comes when we set up our country as a kind of god. We sometimes unthinkingly equate America with Christianity. Some of the early leaders of the United States were practicing Christians. Others, like Thomas Jefferson, appeared to regard Christianity as merely a philosophy. Many of them owned slaves and saw no problem with this practice of human ownership and abuse.

We are inheritors of this double speak. Christians should be loyal but not unthinking American citizens. It is not a Christian nation. No nation is or can be.

Choose Your Influence

An article recently highlighted young career couples and their decisions on having children. In many cases, if they decided to take the parenthood leap, they opted for one child only.

Taking time to raise a child may cut into a career. It may mean less money in retirement. It may mean less influence and less time to succeed.

Yet only a few people influence for generations: a few political and/or military leaders, certainly a few religious leaders, a few creative geniuses. Most of us will die and be forgotten in a short while, including our career accomplishments.

We should pick our influences carefully. Careers influence. So do children.

Parenthood should be a choice. All choices bring risks, and parents can be deeply disappointed in how a son or daughter turns out. Sometimes children die, leaving behind a different kind of heartache.

Still, even a baby can soften the views of those around them, can be an object of love that leads a parent and others toward better choices, to think long term. And children who live and become successful adults influence beyond the lives of their parents and usually their parents’ careers as well.

American Problem: Who Are We?

U.S. diplomatic families sometimes take part in “international days.” These are celebrations by diplomats in a particular country of all the countries with representatives there. Each country serves foods of their particular nation.

The question by one American diplomatic wife relates to the difficulty of finding foods representative of the United States. Laura Keys Ellsworth , a U.S. diplomatic family member, asks “. . . each year I desperately wrack my brain to come up with something beautifully American to present.” (“International Day: The American Problem,” The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018)

So far as I know, most of my ancestors immigrated from the British Isles. However, I love Mexican tacos, Near Eastern/African stews, and Japanese teriyaki. Add to that, a Chinese meal or maybe a dessert of French crème brûlée.

Perhaps nowhere are our melting pot origins more evident than in our foods. Our various menus are a delectable variety. This variety is one example of the advantages we have enjoyed by welcoming immigrants from every country on earth. Of course, we welcome more than additions to our culinary menus.

We welcome laborers and professionals and students and refugees. Yes, sometimes the number who wish to come challenge us with the need for orderly ways to manage the flow. Yet, isn’t it better to live in a country where people want to come than living where people want to leave?

Parent Early

Beginning in the later twentieth century, women with small children began increasingly entering the labor force. Some were fortunate in being able to afford adequate child care, or perhaps a grandparent enjoyed keeping the children during the day.

Many women found their jobs to be stimulating and affirming. Many more worked simply because their families could not survive without the money their jobs brought in. This segment included, obviously, many single mothers.

Regardless, working at a paid job is now a major part of life for many young and middle-aged women. Many of these women also want to be parents in a world which increasingly separates parenthood from paid work.

The great separation between jobs and homes began centuries ago. The laboring world became largely male while the home world was mostly composed of mothers and other women. However, this began to change for many reasons, including the need for women to hold civilian jobs during World War II. Regardless, women became a major part of the work force, even while jobs became increasingly performed outside the home.

One effect of the Covid pandemic was the realization that work done through computers could often be done from home. After vaccination against the disease made office work again feasible, some newly home based workers resented returning to the office.

While adjustments are still being made in work/home arrangements, the birth rate continues to fall in developed societies, where a significant percentage of adults work outside the home. Obviously work/home separation especially affects mothers or potential mothers, since they are the ones whose wombs carry the babies and who usually are most important to children in their first years.

Surveys show that many women desire more children than they actually have. For families able to survive on one income for a few years, women might consider reversing the career model: children in the early years of their lives, then beginning a career in their thirties.

This would mean more time to think about career choices. It might also mean time to take academic classes, which can more easily fit into flexible schedules than a job.

We also live longer now. Starting a career in the thirties, or even the forties, may mean choosing with more wisdom than we might have at an earlier age.

 

Where Do We Work?

When my children were very small, I was fortunate that I could work from home. That’s because my vocation was free-lance writing.

Of course, for generations almost everyone, both men and women, worked from home. Our work was there—farms, woodlands, preparing food. Our work activities were in our homes or close by.

The industrial revolution changed the location of jobs in developed countries and led to a larger separation between home and work. Some factories produced unhealthy waste. Businesses searched for efficiency and created job centers for workers only.

For those who could afford it, the men mostly worked at paying jobs in the cities while more women and children moved further out into the suburbs. Women no longer were a significant part of providing income or producing goods for the family.

Gradually, women came back into the labor force, but children generally were taken care of elsewhere—sometimes adequately, sometimes not. The birth rate lowered as some adults solved the problem of childcare by not having children at all.

The ability of some to work remotely through computers raised the possibility of more work done at home—if our office culture could adjust to this practice. The Covid pandemic, of course, quickened the amount of work done remotely.

Questions are still debated: Did this reduction of shared office space affect the quality of work done? Restrict needed worker interaction?

But what about our city centers and the jobs seemingly dependent on a work force spending five days a week there? Or can city centers reinvent themselves to be family friendly? Places where families can live as well as work and go to school?

How can we connect social need for close relationships with economic need for work places?

What Size Houses Do We Need?

Somebody has suggested that the country has plenty of space for housing. The problem, they believe, is a perceived desire for large lots and houses versus smaller lots and houses. Large houses make more money for builders and perhaps for sellers later on, it is suggested. Yet few families need large houses (unless they are the increasingly rare multi-generational family.)

The ability of some to work online while living physically away from traditional job centers adds to current ideas about where a home is supposed to be.

My housing history has included a variety of housing. I grew up in a close in city suburb with varying size houses and lots. My father commuted to his job in the city by bus. Our house was on a small plat, but my parents kept a lot on one side as a possible investment. It’s still there with the current owners of my childhood home.

Since then, I have lived in about as many varieties of built housing as is possible in a life time. I have lived in a typical suburban small house as well as in apartments and in a condo.

After joining the U.S. foreign service, my housing varied even more. In less developed countries, I sometimes lived in a compact embassy housing compound. In a first world country, I rented my own housing, a small apartment. In a failing north African country, I lived in a mansion because the U.S. embassy was able to rent it cheaply when the country’s well-off fled political turmoil. (I only stayed a few months before the embassy was drawn down due to the turmoil.)

Currently, my husband and I live in our own home, on the top two floors while we rent the bottom apartment. It’s on a small lot, close to our small town’s restaurants, stores, churches, city hall, and post office. Near our house, a community group is building small housing intended for those working in the lesser paying jobs of the area.

I consider the current location the best of any we’ve lived in. The answer, I believe, is community, encouraged by smaller housing.

We often are fixated on housing when perhaps community is a more important need.

Dominion, by Tom Holland

The recent book, Dominion, by Tom Holland, is a thought-provoking history of Christianity. For me, it comes in the back door of secular journalism toward an unusual defense of the religion. I saw Dominion not as the work of an apologist but of a bare-knuckled but admiring observer.

I gained a sense of the revolutionary teachings of Jesus and the very human capabilities of those attempting to follow those teachings.

We are right to condemn atrocities in the name of any religion, including Christianity. Give Christianity its due, however. It’s difficult to find a religion having more influence toward the uplifting of women or the abolishment of slavery.

In the name of Christ, despite the failings of some who go by that name, the hungry are fed, the thirsty have wells built for them, the homeless are given shelter, hospitals are built for the sick, clothes are gathered for the raggedly clothed, and ministries are begun for those in prison.

One of the miracles of Christianity is its call to the weak, its raising of hope that we, though sinners, can change and become healers.

Generations

Plough magazine devoted its Winter 2023 issue to the topic of “generations.” In the recent history of western nations, interaction between generations has become less important. Suburban growth led first to the nuclear family, then to an increase in single adults living away from any daily family connection.

As the family became less important, so did institutions that nurtured family, including religious gatherings and school support groups. Society became tethered to careers and the office. Social gatherings tended to coalesce around career.

The Covid pandemic isolated us further. Even our work togetherness deteriorated as workers carried out their duties through remote settings.

I grew up a long time ago in a community where neighbors met each other in unplanned social gatherings. We would sit out on our porch during the summer and neighbors would stop by and chat for a while. During the winter, they visited spontaneously in the evenings in our living room. I sat on the floor and listened to the adults tell jokes and share ideas.

Those same neighbors joined to support local school carnivals and other events to raise money for school projects. Churches sometimes hosted events for the entire neighborhood. Members of one church would support the events of neighboring churches.

We should not paint such an idyllic picture of such times that we forget the sins of the era, as well, like segregation and all white governments. Yet some of the movements that led to the dismantling of those systems were crafted in small groups of friends and in neighborhood settings.

Our current tendency to isolation can only increase unhealthy practices like drug use and hatred spewed over internet channels. And certainly, face to face meetings are not always ideal, as they can be overtaken by uncivil groups seeking to cause disruption.

What encourages civility and neighborliness? Perhaps those casual meetings between neighbors, as well as small groupings of the like-minded can begin to overcome the processes that are pulling us apart.

Worth a try, at least. Better to carry out the old saying: “It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

Jesus Was Not an American

I never actually made the mistake of thinking Jesus was an American. However, I may have assumed that my beloved country, the United States of America, was his, that is, a “Christian nation.”

In my childhood’s Vacation Bible School (of which I have many fond memories), our procession at the opening of the day included the American flag, the Bible, and the Christian flag. The American flag was the one I preferred to carry, as I think most of my classmates did. That was a long time ago when the Cold War was at its height.

Perhaps it’s safe to say that most of us in my beloved church automatically assumed that the U.S. was a Christian nation. We belonged right up there with Jesus and the Apostles.

The change for me did not come because I left my church, since I never “left” it. Though I’ve experienced plenty of examination of spiritual matters, my church’s love is probably the reason I’ve remained a member of a church group every place I’ve ever lived, even in foreign countries.

No secular movement has ever surpassed Jesus, in my estimation. I never joined protest movements. Instead, I joined the U.S. diplomatic service and served my country in embassies and consulates in other countries. Seeing “established” religions in some of those countries turned me off the idea of any partnership of religion with state.

Jesus, God’s Son, as I believe, was perfect. No nation can ever carry his name and not smear it.

As a Christian, my duty to my country, as I see it, is to serve it in civil matters: voting, service as I am able, and, keeping up with national and international happenings so that I can vote and serve with knowledge.

To equate America with Jesus or even Christianity is, I believe, a form of idolatry.

Family Time

No doubt Americans have left the work force in record numbers recently for many reasons. Their leaving, in what is called “The Great Resignation,” caused a surge in job openings after our recent Covid pandemic.

One reason may be a desire of some parents, often mothers, but not always, to spend more time taking care of their families, especially in the sometimes frightening era we now live in.

What would happen if we decided, as some have suggested, to actually pay parents to take care of their small children themselves?

In our haste to, rightly, give women the same chance for careers as men, perhaps we forgot that both fathers and mothers might like more time with their children, especially young children.

We supposed that equal job opportunities for women equated to day care for their children so they could do so. We seemed not to have thought of allowing fathers more time for their children and at the same time making it easier for mothers to share in work outside the home.

Somehow we assumed that the desire for equal work opportunities automatically equated to everybody taking a paid job away from home from the time they reached adulthood.

Perhaps we could instead offer payment for a parent to spend the first few years of a child’s life as a full time parent, if they desire it.

Dense Living and the Pandemic

City streets are deserted. Every day is like a macabre holiday, with everyone staying home or fleeing to less densely inhabited areas except—

When citizens wanted to express outrage at the death of George Floyd, what did they do?

They flocked to city streets to express that outrage. They needed each other and a public space.

We may argue about the judgement of those who gather in dense crowds during a time of pandemic. Nevertheless, even this pandemic could not stop the gathering. The people demanded a public expression, so they flocked to the public spaces of cities of all sizes.

Writes Jennifer Keesmaat, a former city planner, “Cities will remain vibrant and dynamic centers of economic and cultural activity. The density that supposedly made them vulnerable to the pandemic does not have to be their undoing. “

Instead, she says, planners must work to make cities dense in the right ways. These include: “avoiding overcrowding, minimizing car use, and building inclusive communities with affordable housing.” (“The Pandemic Does Not Spell the End for Cities,” Foreign Affairs, May 28 2020.)

She points to the lower coronarius infection rates of dense cities like Seoul and Singapore. “Rates of infection have more to do with factors such as public health preparedness than with the sheer number of people per square kilometer.”

Zoom has been a blessing as a cyber meeting place during this time. But physical gathering is as instinctive as—well, as breathing.

Community in Small Acts of Grace

“ . . . confronted with the possibility of genuine community, people become fascinated, captivated, entranced. That’s because we humans know that living as isolated individuals or families is not how it’s meant to be.’”
(Brandon McGinley, “Small Acts of Grace: Building Urban Community in Pittsburgh,” Plough Quarterly, Winter 2020)

A few individuals may feel called to the path of the desert mystic. Most of us, however, are community creatures, compelled to gather in groups of one sort or another.

Some groups are decidedly unhealthy: criminal gangs, ethnic groups bent on destruction of other groups, drug cartels, and the like. If we lack the nurture of healthy groups, we may search for it in unhealthy ones.

Community in developed countries needs repair. We have substituted politics for care, group drunkenness for sharing over a meal, rants of hatred instead of listening to each other.

What’s the antidote? Probably no one answer suits the need for community among disparate individuals: introverts and extroverts, doers and thinkers, political and apolitical.

But each of us can seek out healthy group interaction. The article writer wrote of several families in Pittsburgh who moved into the same community, voluntarily, to be close to each other. It’s not a communal type of living, but rather for them “a rebirth of community-based Christian witness for decades and generations to come.”

They comfort when a an expectant mother suffers a miscarriage. They care for each others’ children. They share smaller gifts: walking to each other’s house for cookouts or birthday celebrations, or a game of cards. In the author’s words, they are “simply living as genuine friends.”

Entertainment Malls and Affordable Housing: Skiing But No Houses

Recently, our newspaper’s business section carried an article about an entertainment mall in the populous northeast. The mall features snow (manufactured within the mall) and skiing. The mall plans more than half its space, not for shopping, but for entertainment. (The Seattle Times, “The Mall of the Future? “February 5, 2020)

Included or under construction are an ice rink and a theme park. Apparently, investors believe malls now are candidates for “experiences” as well as for shopping. They hope this change will rescue the empty malls cluttering our landscape.

The same business section featured a commentary on the need for affordable housing in the United States. (“The puzzle affordable housing poses for America”)

According to the commentary, “Half of families who rent and nearly one-fourth of homeowners pay more than 30% of their monthly income toward their housing costs. This level is widely considered unsustainable.”

Perhaps the articles are not related, but to me they illustrate a grand division forming in the United States: the haves with money to spend on nonessential entertainment and the have-nots, who struggle merely for the basic necessities of life.

Homelessness is a condition we read about every day, but this commentary was basically not about the drug addicted or the mentally ill. It touched on working families who can barely survive in our society.

One does not need to be a socialist to see the devastating cleavage in our country. The different political factions—conservative, liberal, and in-between—face a crisis. Basic shelter, medical care, and education and job training are public needs that must be addressed if we are to survive as a successful democracy.

Time-Starved

Who’s minding the kids?

Who has time to mind the kids?

Who has time to read newspapers?

Who has time to work with the homeless? Or in youth shelters? Or with the handicapped?

Who has time to read or think or write or paint?

As we seek to balance our work lives with other roles, we find ourselves time-starved for anything outside of work.

With the industrial revolution, paid work became limited mainly to men. They went out—to the city, to the office—and women stayed home to raise the children. Only jobs with children and the sick remained open to them, usually with much less pay than the men earned.

Western culture cleaved: men worked at paying jobs; women worked at home. Home became increasingly separate from vocation.

Then women began to notice the cleavage. Having worked for the entire history of the world until that time–on farms and in small family operations—they began to question why they now were kept from the economic work force. They began joining this work force.

However, since most economic activity now takes place away from home, it means no one is around to do home things—taking care of children, the elderly, the sick and the needy.

Our vocations are in need of newer forms: parental leave, fewer penalties for dropping out of the work force for a while to follow other pursuits: family/people/spiritual activities. Replacement of the standard 40-hour work week.

The patterns for work and home need restructuring.

Youth: Climate Change—and Now They’re Reporting the News for Us Too

Amid stories coming out of the Trump/Ukraine affair, one bit of news was broken—but not by The Washington Post or The New York Times.

It was broken by a student newspaper, The State Press, managed by journalism students at Arizona State University.

The students were the first newspaper to inform the public that Kurt Volker, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, had resigned, an event important to the congressional inquiries.

Can it be that our youth will lead us even beyond measures to combat climate change? Maybe they’ll also lead us back to fact-based newspaper journalism.

“A Nation of Strong Communities”

A column in The Economist (August 3 2019, “Lexington: The mighty Dolphins”) praised one American community’s enthusiasm for its swim team. The columnist then reflected on this country’s unique community spirit.

The nineteenth century French commentator on America, Alexis de Tocqueville, noted “a nation of strong communities founded on voluntary service.”

Yet Americans have been commenting for some time about the weakening of their community spirit.

Churches and labor unions have less influence, Lexington said. Careers have become more important for both fathers and mothers. Exhausted parents have less time for groups outside the home.

Well-off parents and activists are more likely to practice community activities. They are more likely to have freer hours, as well as money.

What can we do to give other citizens opportunities for such activities? More paid leave time? Perhaps we should also praise those who are able to temporarily drop careers for a while to serve their families and communities. Less time on digital media and more time with family and friends would serve community, too.

What Happens if We Stop Having Babies and Stop Letting in Immigrants?

The United States faces demographic challenges. A rise in suicides, especially for the young, and in drug overdoses, has contributed to an ominous drop in life expectancy for the first time in a century. The employment rate for men of laboring age also is low.

Working couples have less time for children. One child families now are common. Raising a child is expensive. Higher education and medical costs can swamp families with debt.

Nicholas Eberstadt, at the American Enterprise Institute, explores the relationship between a country’s population growth and its power in “With Great Demographics Comes Great Power.” (Foreign Affairs, July/August 2019)

He suggests China’s rise is due in part to its large population. Close to 1 in 5 people in the world today are Chinese. Yet China’s demographic advantage may change due to the aftermath of the now abandoned one child policy of past years. It appears that China’s birth rate has dropped below replacement level.

While the birth rate in the United States is falling, many Americans view immigration with disfavor. In the past, even when our birth rates fell, immigration made up some of the loss. Now even that is in doubt.

Anti-family, Finance-dominated System?

In a column in The New York Times, Ross Douthat noted a Fox News commentary in which Tucker Carlson accused Republicans of building “an anti-family, finance-dominated economic system.” (“Tucker Carlson Versus Conservatism,” January 12, 2019)

Among Douthat’s comments on Carlson’s commentary, was his mention of the “family wage” of the 1940’s and 50’s—a wage that allowed “a single breadwinner to support a family.”

Today, women have followed men into employment, often a necessity since one wage no longer supports an average family.

However, it also has to do with women finding their way back into the economic sphere, where they always played a role until the industrial revolution began separating work and family.

Today we have need of different career models for men as well as women .

Careers, more often than not, require a major investment of time while workers are in their twenties and thirties—also the years when parenting is a vital job.

Writes Douthat: “Is there really nothing conservatives can do to address the costs of child care, the unfulfilled parental desire to shift to part-time work, the problem that a slightly more reactionary iteration of Elizabeth Warren once dubbed ‘the two-income trap’?

“If marriages and intact families and birthrates declined as the family wage crumbled, perhaps we should try rebuilding that economic foundation before we declare the crisis of the family a wound that policy can’t heal.”