A Good Year

In 2012 I accomplished some of my goals but fell short on a number of others.

I traveled, renewed relationships, completed consulting projects, and put in more volunteer hours. I didn't exercise as much as I had hoped, nor did I clear much clutter or finish more than a few continuing-education courses.

Coming down with the shingles, a painful, but not life-threatening condition, was a valuable reminder to pay attention to personal health, the absence of which would make attaining other goals much more difficult. After four months the symptoms are nearly gone.

In the new year, in addition to the usual resolutions, I resolve not to feel guilty about not accomplishing them. Guilt can be a useful prod, but dwelling on failure detracts from life's pleasure.

Above all, thank you, dear reader, for sharing this journey with me. May our walk together continue a while longer.  © 2012 Stephen Yuen

No Strings Attached

It was our fifth Sandwiches on Sunday in 2012. We had thought that there would be a low turnout during the week between Christmas and New Year's, but the 90 people we served, including 10 children, would be the largest number for the year.

I baked the entire package of Foster Farms chicken drumsticks, which, combined with the four trays that other church members brought, were enough to serve seconds.

Drumsticks over rice and cream of mushroom soup are easy to prepare.

Grace before meal is the only smidgeon of religion.

Our seminarian said grace, and we began piling the plates with chicken, rice, and salad. There was a minor hiccough because I forgot to bring the cups for the lemonade, but one of our volunteers was back in 15 minutes with a package of cups to make sure that all diners were adequately hydrated.

Fighting hunger are large government operations like food stamps and charities, like Second Harvest, that distribute tons of food each month. Nevertheless, there always seems a need for a program like Sandwiches on Sunday, where one can show up at the community center at noon on Sunday and count on getting a hot meal and a take-home bag lunch, no strings attached.  © 2012 Stephen Yuen

The Fiscal Cliff is Not the Real Problem

The Government balance sheet

As Washington works through the weekend to avoid the fiscal cliff, U.S. News editor-in-chief Mort Zuckerman says that the current budgetary woes (the U.S. budget deficit for fiscal 2012 was $1.1 trillion) are dwarfed by the liabilities that the U.S. government is adding each year [bold added]:

Today the estimated unfunded total is more than $87 trillion, or 550 percent of our GDP. And the debt per household is more than 10 times the median family income.

.... the real annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security alone is $7 trillion. The government's balance sheet does not include any of these unfunded obligations but focuses on the current year deficits and the accumulated national debt.

The government balance sheet is not only less transparent, but misleading for not including material obligations (below information obtained from 2011 GAO report) that any private-sector entity would be prosecuted for omitting.


If there's one New Year's hope that your humble observer has for public governance, it's that legislators and the public have better information to gauge the consequences of their decisions. One place to start would be in government reports that are held to the same requirements that are demanded for the rest of us. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Year-End Donations Frenzy

Dropped in the mail today

If one can cope with the stress of adding another item to the December task list, there are advantages to putting off donation decisions until the end of the year.

More information is available about one's tax, cash, and overall financial position.

Late changes to the tax law, both for the current year and future years, can be incorporated into the decisions.

Sometimes negative news hits charities that one is considering--too bad if a donation has already been made (the news need not be as bad as a scandal: maybe the charity has announced a public-policy position that one disagrees with).

Donors avoid the first-in bias, similar to that affecting interviewers of job candidates, of falling in love with the first person who walks through the door. I was favorably inclined toward, then decided against, a charity that helps wounded veterans when I matched it against similar organizations whose mailers came in later. (By the way, Charity Navigator is an invaluable research tool.)

Last word: this is a serious subject, but approach it with a light heart. "God loveth a cheerful giver. [2 Cor 9]" © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Gus

Gus is an 11-year-old pug. Our friend rescued him from the shelter when he was three.

Gus' fierce countenance belies his kind disposition. He greets strangers by rubbing their leg with the side of his body, perhaps something he learned from the cats he grew up with. During our one-hour visit, he was constantly on the move, running to each of us for an affectionate pat.

Gus wants everyone in the group to stay together. When I went to the bathroom, he barked at the closed door until I opened it. When we finally got up to leave, he blocked the front door, and our friend had to pick him up. He cried mournfully at our exit.

We met Gus for the first time today. I wonder how friendly he'll be when next we visit, now that he's gotten to know us. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Well Worth the Effort

Earlier this month author, columnist, and TV commentator George Will lectured at Washington University on religion and politics in American life (hat tip Ann Althouse). It's a sweeping overview that spends as much time in the 18th and 19th centuries as the 20th and 21st, but if one has 30-45 minutes to spare, the text is well worth the effort. Excerpts:

Next comes perhaps the most important word in the Declaration, the word "secure." To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." Government's primary purpose is to secure pre-existing rights. Government does not create rights. It does not dispense them.

[Woodrow Wilson] criticized [the Declaration of Independence] root and branch, beginning with the doctrine of natural rights.

His criticism began there precisely because that doctrine dictates limited government, which he considered a cramped, unscientific understanding of the new possibilities of politics. Wilson disparaged the doctrine of natural rights as "Fourth of July sentiments." He did so because this doctrine limited progressives'' plans to make government more scientific in the service of a politics that is more ambitious.

Progressives tend to exalt the role of far-sighted leaders, and hence to exalt the role of the president. This, too, puts them at odds with the Founders.

The words "leader" or "leaders' appears just 13 times in the Federalist Papers. Once is a reference to those who led the Revolution. The other dozen times are all in contexts of disparagement. The Founders were wary of the people's potential for irrational and unruly passions, and therefore were wary of leaders who would seek to ascend to power by arousing waves of such passions.

William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote in 1955 that the purpose of his conservative magazine, the National Review, was to "stand[] athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." After Mr. Buckley's passing, there are very few individuals with the heft and intellectual chops to stand against the tidal expansion of government and its overwhelming support from academia, entertainment, and mass media. One such voice is George Will; may he live long and prosper.

The Kingdom of this World, Transformed for a While

The video was posted on YouTube two years ago, which makes it an oldie in the Internet era. It's still the best Christmas flash mob, in my humble opinion.

Hope you had yourself a very Merry Christmas now.

The Wait Is Over

The gifts are wrapped and waiting. On Christmas Eve the anticipation of Advent reaches its climax. On a cold, silent night the Light came into the world. Adeste fidelis.

Good Tidings We Bring

On a very stormy Sunday the caroling was nearly canceled. Once the singers arrived at their destination, the audience's welcome made them glad they came.

Enthusiasm more than makes up for inexperience. 

Seniors make the best audience: they don't walk out of a performance.

A Chaplain for Atheists

Stanford gets a chaplain for atheists. Jonathan Figdor, holder of a Harvard Divinity degree, "is one of a growing number of faith-free chaplains at universities, in the military and in the community who believe that nonbelievers can benefit from just about everything religion offers except God."

Interestingly, it was Stanford's religious community that insisted that atheists have their own ministry. Mainstream American Protestantism and Catholicism have come a long way from the holier-than-thou preachiness and the relentless proselytization that are grist for the media and entertainment mills. (When looking for a story the latter invariably find individual religious examples of intolerance and unconventional viewpoints to publicize, then ridicule.)

Jonathan Figdor: "But atheist, agnostic and humanist students suffer the same problems as religious students - deaths or illnesses in the family, questions about the meaning of life, etc. - and would like a sympathetic nontheist to talk to."

I'm old enough to remember when atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair was the "most hated woman in America." Times have changed. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Today is a Gift

Tomorrow is promised to no one.

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. --- Matt 24:36

Fear is Ascendant

Fear controls our lives.

Many of us fear bad or crazy people with guns, so we buy a gun ourselves. That protective behavior raises the fear quotient, because those who don't have guns fear everyone who has one, not just the aforementioned bad or crazy people. (It doesn't help in the gun debate, by the way, that opponents are calling each other stupid and evil. Anger and demonization of the other adds to the general meanness of civic discourse and leads to hardening of positions.)

The fiscal cliff has been in the news. This colorful metaphor is most likely an exaggeration of what will happen to the economy under higher tax rates and reduced government spending. True, there are some sectors, like defense, that will fare much worse than others (and for whom the cliff imagery may be apt), but few economists are forecasting a widespread collapse or even a near-collapse like the one in 2008. These comforting rationalizations, however, mean little to the stock market, which has been dropping in recent days.

Then there's the Mayan prophecy of doomsday on December 21, 2012 (if you're reading this after Thursday, hooray, mankind dodged another one).

Your humble observer can't wait for these latest concerns to be resolved (or forgotten) so that he can go back to worrying about global warming, the war on terror, Iranian nuclear weapons, and the breakup of the Euro. Ah, the good, old, less-fearful days. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

The Last Thing on Her Mind

The last group of packages, ready for delivery

We've remarked before about Jill and her noble calling to spread Christmas cheer to shut-ins around the Peninsula. This year she and volunteers from the Model A and Thunderbird clubs, the Boy Scouts, and the local Episcopal church produced an all-time high of 934 "stocking-stuffer" bags.

Other volunteers made the deliveries to Meals on Wheels, the VA Hospital, the San Carlos adult day care center, and hospice and homeless organizations.

Large-scale charitable efforts during this time of the year get the publicity, but there are thousands of individual local acts of kindness that go unheralded. Of course, recognition is the last thing on their, and Jill's, mind.

We'll Get There

As the country lurches (again) into the swamp of legislative and court battles over guns and gun control, workplace violence is down in the real world:

Mass shootings are not less common than before, but fewer are employment-related. Of 20 this year, only one killer was a disgruntled co-worker. Learning has taken place. If laws haven't changed to help corral dangerous personalities or keep guns out of their hands, at least employers, who get to see people in their everyday interactions, have become wiser about personality and risk.

Businesses turned to none other than the United States Postal Service on how to become alert to grievance nursers in their midst. Most important: Don't ignore employees who mutter threats. Police around the country teach the "Run, Hide, Fight" discipline to local businesses, developed by Houston cops with a Homeland Security grant. Half of employers now have violence prevention programs and workplace shootings are down by two-thirds since the early '90s.

It's encouraging that workplaces, both private- and public-sector, have been able to implement measures that have reduced violence. Even greater wisdom and dedication will be required to protect schools, however, given the vulnerability of potential victims and the (presumed) fewer occasions to be alerted to the behavior of killers such as the Newtown shooter. We'll get there eventually, but "there" is years away.

Aloha, Senator Dan

Two war heroes

After my college graduation ceremonies were over, we took a car trip along the Eastern seaboard to the nation's capital. We gaped at the monuments and spent days walking about the Smithsonian. We toured the Capitol and took a peek at the offices of Daniel Inouye, our home state's then-junior senator. To our surprise, his secretary told us to come right in.

Senator Dan recognized my father as a fellow graduate of McKinley High and reminisced about the McCully neighborhood. They shot the breeze about old times and old friends. We had arrived unannounced, and he spoke to us as if he didn't have anything else on his calendar. (It was the summer of 1973, and the national spotlight was beginning to focus on him and other members of the Senate Watergate Committee.)

When he died earlier today, Senator Dan, as president pro tempore, was third in line to the Presidency. He had acquired enormous influence in the "world's most exclusive club", yet one never got the sense that he was owned by Washington. A staunch Democrat, Senator Dan had close Republican friends. He refrained from extreme partisanship, possibly costing himself a party leadership position in the Senate.

"A remarkable American life," said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). Amen. © 2012 Stephen Yuen