Saturday, August 20, 2005

Homage aux soeurs   While visiting Québec City last week for the Fêtes de la nouvelle France, we were wandering through Place Royale surrounded by early Québec re-enactors in period pantaloons, rough linen shirts and tricorne hats with conspicuous cell phones hanging from their beautiful woven sashes. Surrounded by countless camcorder-bearing tourists visiting for the Fêtes, the International Fireworks Expo at Montmorency and the sheer beauty of this ancient outcrop in the middle of the St Lawrence River, they were demonstrating early craft skills associated with agrarian and river life. Early Québecois music played somewhere in the distance, a mixture of ribec, galician pipes and fiddle, when suddenly a small flock of elderly nuns strolled by in their beautiful off-white habits smiling broadly at us. I had not seen such a sight in years and I was inundated with memories of an earlier Vermont, my own Catholic upbringing and the extraordinary impact of nuns on our own state.   Jeanne Mance School of Nursing, Fanny Allen Hospital, Bishop Degoesbriand Hospital, Trinity College, the cloistered convent in Williston, Mater Christi School, Rice High School, Christ the King, Sacre Coeur in Newport and countless other reminders of the benevolence and good works of Vermont’s large population of sisters. These institutions and more were started and managed by the various orders whose sole mission was charitable works. Others were started by priests, but staffed by nuns.   There was in all this a commitment to good works and community, seemingly subsumed now in today’s culture of consumerism. Young woman facing poor prospects for marriage or worse, the fear of an abusive one filled with hard work, often sought refuge in a convent where they might enjoy the safety of a sisterhood, even as they faced the daunting task of helping others in need.   Vermonters of all faiths owe a great deal to the many orders of nuns who have been an important part of the fabric of our state, the Benedictines, the Ursulines, Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of the Sacred Heart, Sisters of Providence, Atonement Sisters, Daughters of the Holy Spirit, Sisters of St. Joseph and The Hospitallers of St. Joseph. While the male hierarchy of the Church struggles with their own misdeeds, a steep decline in their own numbers and the rise in orthodoxy that puts them at odds with many in their own flock, we can all be grateful for their female counterparts and for their simple good works of faith.   So often in life it is what we do rather than what we say that makes all the difference. Our children become who we are, not who we tell them to be. The exemplary life stands in stark contrast to the proffered life of harsh sermons, canon law, black and white orthodoxies and commandments.   Throughout the volatile history of the Catholic Church, nuns from many religious communities have suffered the edicts, politics and even retribution of the Church’s male hierarchy, getting their spiritual sustenance from helping others in need: raising orphan children, helping young men and woman in trouble find their way back into society, teaching, nursing and caring for the ill or infirm, tending the dying, feeding and caring for the poor.   There have been many leaders among the sisters themselves who have served Vermonters in government leadership positions, as college heads and hospital managers. The Bishop Degoesbriand and Fanny Allen hospitals were staffed largely by the Hospitallers of St. Joseph. Trinity College, whose early mission was to help young woman off the farm or from factory families become educated and have an economic choice beyond the first proposal of marriage was staffed largely by the Sisters of Mercy. And always behind these leaders, there were countless nuns whose only residual image might be a gentle smile, the beautiful habits of their particular order and the countless good works they have done in their community of faith.   In the temptation in the desert, Christ rejects the gifts of mystery power and authority in favor of the exemplary life and free will – a lesson not lost on the extraordinary nuns who have woven so much into the fabric of Vermont for 150 years. To simply care for someone without judging them is a great gift. We owe them much.   Bill Schubart 081208 2:53:01 PM    comment []

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Can the Center Hold?   There is a deep tradition in Vermont of comity, people of diverse opinions coming together in civil debate, listening to one another, suffering compromise and getting things done that are in the best interests of community. This happens in cabinet-level meetings in the Executive branch, in the Vermont Supreme Court, the two legislative branches, in annual town meetings, select board meetings, local taverns and diners, and at home in kitchens.   I was reminded of this recently in a community gathering in which an array of top political officials from diverse political camps rose to speak and expressed clear and genuine respect for one another. The extent of any hortatory efforts to lay claim to a political position were gently teasing in nature and always respectful. We must not lose this sense of comity. The strident “my way or the highway” tenor of Washington political debate threatens us deeply as a nation.   An ideological camp is an easy, if not cozy, resort. It has clear tenets and facile sound bites (“Take Back Vermont” “No More War”) and is enriched and entrenched in an environment of fear, insecurity and malaise, becoming a repository for all that is wrong --recliner politics if you will. There is no need to rise to an occasion, understand a complex problem, discuss a solution or meet someone with whom you might disagree.   The place between ideologies is the uncomfortable place to be. It is a place that calls on us to listen, think, question and remain open to any articulate idea. It requires work of us, work policy makers in Vermont have historically been willing to come together and do.   There is a wonderful construct of dialogue called "Second Order Agreement” in which the adherent of one idea is called upon to defend the idea he or she opposes in the presence of a third and neutral party—each to the other’s satisfaction. It requires opponents at least to have thought enough about the idea they oppose to be able to articulate it and propose the opponent’s defense of it, a beginning of mutual understanding, if not agreement. Many of our schools have maintained a tradition of debate, essay writing and even documentary production all of which foster skills that support a center.   As neoconservative theorists pull political strings and demand a zealous allegiance to their ideology, punishing those who question or, God forbid, defect from their ranks, and as Democrats scramble to redefine themselves, the center in Washington is not holding. Ideologues in both camps gird up for battle, not dialogue. It is a crusade, more about money, allegiance, testosterone and religion than grappling with complex problems like national security, healthcare and economic justice. We need simply to adhere to the founding principles that self-proclaimed patriots claim to revere, the free expression of ideas without fear of retribution, a free and articulate press and electronic media that can differentiate between entertainment, journalism, opinion and the ideological compromises to each they seem willing to make to achieve their deregulatory ends.   Shortly after one of the most senseless wars in our history, Yeats wrote:               Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,             The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.   A wise, open and vibrant society pays attention to its poets and artists.   America has flourished respecting these principles of free expression, open debate and comity. How can we sell democracy abroad if we cannot practice it effectively at home? We owe it to those we serve in a democracy to preserve and protect this tradition, none of which can exist in a climate of fear and intimidation created by political and religious ideologues seeking to transfuse democratic principles with their “passionate intensity.”   In Vermont, for the most part, our political leaders of all camps have worked hard to ensure that the center holds. Let’s keep it up.   Bill Schubart   11:15:23 AM    comment []

Thursday, June 16, 2005

The Political Threat to Public Broadcasting   The proposed elimination of more than $100 million dollars from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will have dire consequences for public radio and television stations across the country.  The House Appropriations Subcommittee is expected to vote next week on these punitive cuts, and if the Senate follows suit it would dramatically impact both Vermont Public Radio and Vermont Public Television.   If the current cuts are approved, the Community Service Grants that help fund local VPR productions like Switchboard, Camels Hump Radio and regional news coverage as well as help VPR to pay for programs like Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace and other nationally produced shows will be reduced by about 40%. Vermont Public Television will feel the pain as well. Capital projects will be slashed as well, such as the technology to enable digital radio, the technology necessary for PBS to stay connected to the satellite system and most critically the Ready to Learn programs which partially fund Sesame Street, Dragon Tales and several other essential early learning programs.   The hardest hit, however, will be the rural public broadcasters.  Their challenge is to maintain the infrastructure and programming staff to cover vast and mountainous areas like Alaska, Wyoming and New Mexico with sparse populations to provide membership and donations. There is also concern that the stations serving small minority populations, such as Native American and Hispanic stations and historically black college stations, who have listeners, but little or no economic base to provide support, will simply shut down.   Not only has the current administration, by their own admission, hired adherents to pose as reporters, bloggers and correspondents, they have supplanted CPB's professional managers with administration ideologues. Kathleen Cox was summarily dismissed by CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson and replaced with Ken Ferree, formerly Michael Powell's deputy at the FCC and architect of a plan to further deregulate media ownership rules. When Ken Ferree visited VPR recently and met five of us, we had a frank and open discussion about public broadcasting. But the political maneuvering at the CPB has left a vacuum in leadership that is being exploited by the Republicans in the House.   Although independent polls have indicated a high degree of public trust in the public broadcasting system, Tomlinson undertook several secret investigations into PBS and NPR programming, the results of which have never been published. He is said to have suggested that Fox News could teach NPR a thing or two about how to gather news.   One indication of how thoroughly Chairman Tomlinson misunderstands the principles of journalism is his recent appointment of two CPB ombudsmen, one a strong conservative and good friend of his and the other a liberal.  This sets up the very real specter of a funding agency making political determinations on journalistic standards which cannot be compromised.  If news is dubbed conservative or liberal, it becomes neither. It is not news. The best news organizations simply adhere rigorously to principles of journalism and need but one ombudsman to judge their performance against principles, not competing ideologies.   The sad part about all this is the gradual erosion of principles that Americans purport to hold sacred. Our country was founded on the principle of a free press. It is vital for any democracy to examine its principles and understand what they mean. A free press is not governed by which party is in power. Legal protections were encouraged to ensure that governments could not meddle with "free and open expression." Public radio and TV have become a trusted part of our democratic society and a critical source of independent information for Vermonters. The political effort to reduce funding is a misguided and dangerous effort.   Bill Schubart is former Chair of Vermont Public Radio and currently serves on their Board   6:11:52 AM    comment []

Friday, May 13, 2005

Posting Land: Not the Vermont Way   When I was young in Morrisville fifty years ago people did not post their land. No Trespassing signs were a rarity and were usually found around the properties of newcomers who had moved in from down south or, in a few cases, not very cunning Vermonters themselves hiding a moonshine still or, later on in the Sixties, a modest marijuana crop. But a No Trespassing sign in those days was an invitation to investigate, especially if the landowner had a reputation for secrecy or nefarious activity. Farmers with large holdings did not need to post because, on the whole, hikers, hunters, anglers and amblers respected fence lines and knew not to tromp through unmown fields. Vermonters simply did not need to post their land, and, besides, it was seen by neighbors as an inherently hostile and reproving act.   The advice of Robert Frost’s neighbor as Frost encounters him in his poem Mending Fence, is “Good fences make good neighbors.” This dictum sufficed for most Vermonters.   Why now is “posting” land so common?  Is it the staggering run up in land values and an imagined need to protect private investment? Fifty years ago the run up in land values was just as steep. A hill farm bought after the war for $3,400 could fetch $12,000 ten years later.   Is it our shameful reputation for believing that behind every adverse occurrence in life someone is at fault and must be held legally and financially accountable?  Is it the propensity of a few to build wealth the easy way, to sue for it? Is it a manifestation our new “ownership society?”   There are laws on the books that protect property owners to a degree if they have an “attractive hazard” such as a naturally occurring swimming hole or a precipitous hiking trail. A local attorney who is well informed on such matters says there are very few such actions brought and, unless a landholder is clearly and personally culpable, adverse settlements are a rarity.   What is behind all these yellow signs littering the landscape of Vermont? What is the impact on our sense of community? Just as so many suburban developments have become gated communities, are we in Vermont to become a posted community? What has changed?   Some or all of the following may, of course, play a role: fear of liability litigation, the emergence of animal rights groups dedicated to protecting wild animals, environmental concerns for wilderness areas and loss of habitat, the rise of invasive off-road vehicles such as snow mobiles, ATV’s and dirt bikes. To varying degrees, these may be legitimate concerns, but do they warrant closing off one’s land to all?   There are less drastic measures one can take. It is possible to selectively post against off-road vehicles for example, or against hunters and trappers. Unfortunately one cannot post against “litigious individuals.”   The loss of open land for hiking, cross country skiing and snow shoeing and, yes, even for hunting, marks a significant change in how we Vermonters view our property, our neighbors and the communities in which we live. We would do well to ask ourselves whether we see ourselves as just owners of our land or whether indeed we are owners and stewards of our lands, as well as members of a community.   My wife did the cross-England walk last year. Besides Wainwright’s well traveled “coast to coast” route there are thousands of miles of footpaths available to amblers and hikers, a tradition that goes back centuries. The paths cross hundreds of miles of private property on which tens of thousands of cattle and sheep graze and crops grow. There are “kissing gates” and stiles built into all the fences for the walkers. Walkers by tradition respect the land and landowners welcome the walkers. This much loved and venerable tradition was formally endorsed by Parliament again last year.   Sadly, this is no longer an American tradition. Vermonters were once free to cross one and others land for foot travel. Imagine the opportunity for environmental tourism if we had such access for cross country skiers and hikers. Some 8000 people a year walk across England through the Lake District and the Yorkshire Moors.   If we continue to post all of Vermont, where will our children walk, fish, explore and hunt?   Bill Schubart 3:47:34 AM    comment []

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The Crusades   As political and religious ideologies clash venomously in Washington, we need to pause and reexamine our values. A subset of our elected leaders have become so polarized in their thinking and so rigid in their political, economic, religious and constitutional ideologies that the problems we discuss over the table at home may not even be on the agenda in our nation’s capital.   While Vermont and many other states struggle with the Medicaid funding crisis and how to staunch the hemorrhage of citizens losing medical insurance, the current administration in Washington inveighs against every government program since their nemesis FDR held office, including some of their own. There is little discussion inside the Beltway of how Americans will either afford or access healthcare. More importantly, there is no discussion of what healthcare is. The administration’s solution for funding the shortfall in Social Security several decades out is simply not to, but rather to entitle disruptive private sector competition in financial markets that recently brought us the mutual fund debacle and the savings and loan scandal.   At work here is a deep clash in ideologies. For some it’s religious, for others, constitutional, but for either side, it is a force that brooks no debate or compromise, only edicts and blind allegiance.   On the religious side, I am unable to reconcile the Christ to whom I was introduced in catechism at Holy Family Catholic church in Morrisville in the fifties and, later in college in the sixties, the Christ of St Thomas Aquinas, with the administration’s Christ who blesses the unimaginable personal fortunes of today and promises the same to the struggling poor and middle class adherents of today’s suburban megachurches. Did Christ promise us the products of our own industry like SUV’s and WalMart gas grills, or spiritual salvation? How did this materialized vision of Christ get swept up in free market economics? How did Christ become a Hollywood star in an S&M flick? Will there be a place in our new society for the Christ who lived with and assuaged the poor and ejected the merchants from the temple and suggested that the well-heeled have a harder road to heaven? Will there be room in our society for Buddha, Allah, Yahweh. the Hindu deities and other spiritual entities greater than ourselves?   At the heart of this argument for which Christ seems to have become a hood ornament is the idea that property, the accretion and retention of wealth, are dominant values. The basis of this would appear to be the idea that anything the government does which abridges one’s personal wealth is either unacceptable or must be remunerated, even to future value. The flaw in this thinking is that the remuneration for abridgements such as taxation, zoning, regulation of any sort, minimum wage, OSHA, FTC, FCC, FDA and the like must be monetary. It is unacceptable that these government-imposed impositions on personal wealth could be in the service of a greater societal good that is not, in fact, monetary. In fact, there is little belief in this group in a “greater good.” Their argument is that, left to its own devices and the exigencies of a free market, businesses and individuals will, of necessity, do the right thing. Have we not tested this theory before?   The great service of religion to society is that it articulates an ethos, a moral structure that guides our behavior and enhances the spiritual well-being of its citizens with faith and grace. Children, adults, non-profit institutions, businesses and governments on an international scale need principles to guide them and laws reflecting those principles. We are a nation of laws. Law does not abridge the creation of wealth, it makes it possible. The lawless or corrupt societies of some African countries and post- Soviet Russia have lead to highly concentrated wealth, criminal chaos and genocide. The kind of measured economic growth that engenders broad-spectrum wealth creation and opportunity for all has as its base the principal of economic justice.   Hopefully the crusades will end soon and we will return to the business of solving real social and economic problems in our executive, legislative and judicial chambers.   Bill Schubart 3:47:22 AM    comment []

Saturday, March 05, 2005

What is wrong with our schools?   A number of things…   As a community, we have lost respect for our schools. We speak disparagingly of our schools in front of our children. We no longer instill in our children a sense of the deep value and importance of education. Foreign shores are teeming with people who would die to be in our schools, yet we ourselves have little regard for them.   We often assume our children are right and their school is wrong, reflexively defending them from a teacher’s disciplines or scholarly demands instead of teaching them to respect their school and their teachers.   We send our schools five and six-year olds who may not have had the benefits of a home life with a fulltime parent there to bond with and care for them, as one or both parents must work to subsist.   If they’re lucky, our children may spend their pre-school years in a good daycare center, but there are precious few that provide the nurturing and wealth of early education and sensory experiences that young children need to grow into healthy learners.   With steep cutbacks coming in housing and nutrition subsidies for the poor and the working poor, we are already sending children to our schools malnourished with junk food and suffering from developmental problems brought on by poor nutrition, rising poverty and homelessness.   In many cases, we send them children who watch hours of TV daily and go out and about wearing headsets blaring rap or techno, isolated from the sounds and sights of a world rife with excitement and natural lessons. Their eyes are glued to tiny game, cell phone or PDA screens as they IM their friends or play electronic games in a fantasy world filled with implied sex and violence, both of which are now “in their face.” The wonders of sexual discovery at an appropriate age and in appropriate circumstances are lost on our children who have seen it all. The real horrors of war and societal violence are quotidian and vicarious, and conveyed without physical pain or pain of loss.   We pass school budgets that have little or no positive impact on the quality of teaching, but are escalated by rising healthcare, labor, utility, insurance and maintenance costs.   We have schools themselves serving towns that now house as many children in their centralized school as there are people in the town they came from.   Too many politicians give speeches and pass laws about how schools should work while rarely visiting them to see how they do work or asking those who teach there what they need to enhance the culture of learning.   The current administration in Washington, under their new rubric of “starve the beast” or “the ownership society” - or “whatever” as our children now say - passes lofty sounding legislation rife with doublespeak while providing little, if any, funding to realize those lofty goals.   As a society we will be judged not only by our material wealth but also by how well we care for our children, our aged and our poor and infirm. In our obsession with consumerism, our abiding belief in the salvation of mankind through free market economics, we are losing aspects of community which are vitally important and will inevitably define us in history. Archeologists may paw through the detritus of our consumer age and remark on the size of our cars and houses, but history will judge us by our human and cultural values.     When I look back on how education changed my life, I see no schools, gyms or technology- no physical plant. I see the faces of about six or eight people who cared so deeply about my learning that they would not let go of me. Sometimes they made me afraid, sometimes they pushed me further than I thought could go, but in the end, I learned from them in spite of myself. I remember books, music, plays and science and math experiments that amazed me. I also remember competitions and recess games, but mostly I remember with fondness and respect those who made a difference in my life. We need to celebrate and support them, make them leaders in our schools. This is where the much vaunted “creative economy” begins.   Much of what is wrong with our schools lies within us.   We must support quality, accountability and educational leadership, and personally help to create a culture of learning in our homes and schools, instead of talking about what they aren’t, especially in front of our children.   Bill Schubart 030405                 9:03:04 AM    comment []

Saturday, January 01, 2005

“The Ownership Society”   I don’t know what President Bush means by the “Ownership Society.” Does he mean we must own our own destiny and embrace personal responsibility? Does he mean we must be good consumers and own things like oversize houses, electronics gadgets that relieve us of quiet, deliberative time, downsized military vehicles to transport our things and children from home to mall to school? Does he mean that we are to become portfolio managers and day traders owning are own financial destiny, stewarded by those who brought us the savings and loan debacle, the mutual fund scandals and raised money from us to shore up Enron? What is the “Ownership Society?”   At issue here is the deep tradition in this country of balancing ownership and commonwealth. If we credit this administration with philosophical thinking and imagine their meaning to be “ownership” of our fate and accepting personal responsibility, then we must measure this new and somewhat ironic Darwinism on their part against our deep tradition of supporting the commonweal.  Distinct from socialism, the commonweal  is the spiritual and political understanding deep in our history that not everyone in this country will or can own everything they need to get along or even survive. Collectively, it comprises education, research, eldercare, environmental protection, the criminal justice and regulatory systems, healthcare, defense of the nation and help for the “impoverished” to use Bishop Oscar Romero’s term. As Christ tells us in the Bible, “The poor will always be among us.” One can hear this as an expressed obligation to aid the poor or one can hear it as a “accept this and move on.” Like much in the Bible, different interpretations can be applied to endorse any current political theory.   If, however, the “Ownership Society” means that we are to privatize and profitize a key tenet of organized societies, Social Security, the one that ensures a modest, but secure retirement for our elders, we had better do so with more than just profits in mind. Conservatives have for years sought to reconcile the “for profit” motive with the “social mission” around which governments are designed. But it is an inherent and irreconcilable conflict. Either one is committed to enhancing the bottom line or fulfilling mission. It is very hard to do both. The record of serving these two masters is not stellar as we have seen in healthcare, private contractors in Iraq, for-profit schools and many private prison systems.   As financial experts have pointed out, Social Security is not a near-term train wreck, it is a system that needs refueling. People who want more control over their own financial destiny in retirement are now free to save for their retirement in anyway they choose, but their contributions in the form of SSI deductions are vital to fund the commonweal, the common good.   It’s a well know fact that to win or maintain power in a democracy, one must give the voters what they want or at least promise to. This can take the form of popular new programs, tax cuts, or both as this administration has done. Once in power, however, one must then either run up huge deficits or not fund what one has promised or, again as this administration is doing, both, especially if one is also trying to fund a costly and ill planned war. Privatizing key elements of social mission can seem like an easy solution to reconciling what one has promised and what one can deliver.   But the relentless conservative drive to privatize and generate profit from these elements of mission puts the most fundamental elements of community at risk.   In Vermont, we have a deep tradition of recognizing and ensuring a common good. It descended from the Republican Century of Vermont and was revitalized in the Democratic Revolution of Governor Hoff. It runs deep as well in the country at large and is embedded in our founding documents. The sense of a commonweal originated in the tenuous communities that sprang up in the early colonies. Our predecessors understood that the good of the whole was vital to the good of the individual. They certainly knew that commerce was fundamental to healthy communities, but knew also that commerce, like individuals, needed rules by which to play.   The harmony between the individual, commerce and community has always been a delicate balance. Let’s not profitize everything to build an “ownership society.”   Bill Schubart                   4:21:28 AM    comment []