Monthly Archives: June 2016

Things fall apart

FalcolnWilliam Butler Yeats wrote that “things fall apart” and “the center cannot hold.”

By his dark and beautiful poetry, Yeats wrote what he saw and felt after the close of World War I.

Yeats described the alarming trends we find today in the too easy inclination among some citizens to redress the effects of conflict and war by isolation, intolerance and doomsday desperation.

Our political partisans fail to work together to hold the center.

This condition is not without historical precedent.

In Great Britain, the citizens voted to withdraw from the EU and only after they voted did they bother to learn what EU meant to their economic well-being and national security.

The Tory Prime Minister (PM) David Cameron couldn’t get his Labor Party opposite, Jeremy Corbyn, to join the fight to remain in the EU.

The former London Mayor, Boris Johnson, the PM’s old Eton “friend,” took up the “leave the EU” campaign in opposition.

“Light information voters” are voters too lazy to know much about what they are voting on; many EU voters, however, had “no information,” not a clue about the EU.

Yeats wrote how, “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” listen here.

Public policy generated by a voter’s xenophobic intolerance is anarchy.

Yeats described how “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

The ceremony of sense, of comity and of tolerance fell beneath Britain’s electoral wave. Continue reading

The nation’s untreated wound

Terrorist_nation_gunsThe nation suffers an open wound that we refuse to treat even after the worst mass shooting in American history.

In Orlando, a semi-automatic assault rifle, in the hands of a soulless assassin, hurled 20 deathly shots every 9 seconds, ripping the flesh and organs of the young and defenseless with the fury and power one could hardly resist.

Innocent young men and women who tried to hide couldn’t.

In the moments before the rain of fire, they were unsuspecting, happy, having fun, dancing at a club about to close in the early morning hours, and, what sounded like fire crackers, as they couldn’t know better, was gunfire; those who were not close to an exit to escape, were stranded, shot at will, as they cowered, and, in the end, 49 would die, and another 53 would be injured or left fighting to live.

Those who ran and escaped were torn, felt guilty, for those they left behind.

This place of unholy devastation was encircled by a community of compassion while the killer continued to hunt those trapped inside.

A Mother traded anxious texts with her son, hiding inside, waiting for the police, hoping to be reunited with his Mom, until the moment he texted, “I’m gonna die.” And he did. Continue reading

The glass ceiling shatters!

Hillary Clinton – shattering the glass ceiling

Hillary Clinton – shattering the glass ceiling

Shirley Chisholm in 1972 was the first black person to announce for President, and the first woman as well.

Shirley said, “I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.”

Shirley faced death threats and knew she might likely fail but ran anyhow to “change the face and future of American politics.”

In 2008, two separate candidates vied to “change the face” America presents to the world.

America fulfilled part of Shirley’s prophecy in 2008 with the election of then Senator Barack Obama.

This year we are trying to meet Shirley’s second hope – to inoculate the oval office against the sexual discrimination Shirley suffered.

I’ve worked for some great women over the years who pushed against the glass ceiling and some were certainly inspired by Shirley.

What sex discrimination has been and mostly remains today is that a woman must excel, be better than a man, to hope to be treated equally.

Over the years, I’ve worked with Bella Abzug, and Liz Holtzman and Mary Sue Terry and Emilie Miller and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Maxine Waters and Loretta Sanchez and Nancy Pelosi. I served as Special Counsel to Rep. Patsy Mink from Hawaii and Rep. Zoe Lofgren from California.

All these women were strong, striving to make a difference, to advance individual rights, with the stamina required of women to break through the slights they suffer, like when a woman makes a point among men and women, but is not heard until a man repeats the point she made.

It’s an encouraging shift toward equal rights this year that more men found they could hear what Hillary had to say.
Continue reading

Loudoun citizens battle AT&T, declaring “not on our mountain”

The “view” from the Lovettsville Squircle on Memorial Day

The “view” from the Lovettsville Squircle on Memorial Day


The Short Hill Mountain is a scenic and pre-historic geologic treasure for which the County Board of Supervisors is responsible as stewards to maintain and preserve and protect; the County’s Comprehensive Plan memorializes this praiseworthy obligation.

Many citizens have objected that AT&T wants to deface the mountain, by placing a Costco size industrial building, atop the mountain, visible for miles around, sucking up millions of gallons of water, and megawatts of electricity, in a rural and residential area, and the community is calling foul, and demanding that the Board stop AT&T in its tracks.

Citizens on both sides of the Mountain are demanding that the Board overrule the permit that the Planning Commission, they charge, improvidently granted, and that the Board do this at its meeting scheduled for June 23, 2016.

There have been public and private gatherings all for the purpose of defeating this permit. There have been statements and letters published and forwarded to the Board and on social media. There are resolutions to this effect. Some are drafting reports they may submit to the Board. Citizens are seeking audiences with their elected representatives at every level – county, state and federal government. Continue reading