'Let Them Eat Cake...'

Now it’s clearer. The federal prosecution of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife spotlights the potential behavior of many serving politicians – behavior that has been with us for many years.

Argue all we want about the felony convictions of the two and the inevitable effect on partisan politics in the near-term, the case should challenge our disingenuous view of “democracy.”

That is because in today’s America – one foreshadowed  by Alexis deToqueville in the 19^th Century – if we the peeps want to have our views acted upon, we must bring wads of cash to the table. It is naive to lean upon the ideals we learned in the seventh grade.

We still have the power of the ballot. It could be our last, best hope of retrieving the “democracy” we inherited, fought wars to keep, paid taxes to support, and still brag about to the rest of the world.

On the other hand, all this happy talk dulls, once we think more about the implications of the McDonnell case.

The truth is that politicians are not going to enact meaningful campaign finance reform. Big bucks still drive political outcomes. Now federal prosecutors are going to fill in for our failure to demand campaign and ethical reform. Are you comfortable with a politicized federal Justice Department overseeing what goes on in your local courthouse?

We have reaped what we have sown by inattention. We shrink into our comfy little niches and seem to assume that somehow  it’s “all going to work out.” That’s a cop-out with an important corollary: that it does not make any difference anyway, so why bother. We’ve got soccer matches to get to.

In a significant op-ed piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch Sept. 13 Bob Rayner, associate editorial page editor, wrote this:

“The federal government’s choice to criminalize the bad decisions of one politician made within the framework of a set of lax state laws, the same laws followed by his predecessors and countless legislators over many years, should terrify anyone who believes society benefits from the rule of law."

Think about that the next time a politician comes calling…and remember your history:

"Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette said. And on the boulevard, the tricoteuses knitted shawls while the manacled doomed were trundled to the spectacle of heads rolling from the guillotine.

Flash-Mob Your Writing...Maybe

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Studio School in Richmond is a jewel of creative buzz just  waiting for you to discover, if you haven't already.

I got to spend yesterday afternoon there with an eclectic gathering of local authors and writers convened by Piper Nichole just to talk about our stuff.

A wonderful experience! Sort of a slo-mo creative flash mob that Piper organized just because. It was a sunny and mild Saturday @RVA, and there was no more of an agenda than that…just because – just because we can and just because we like it like that.

There was a lot to take away. The most important for me perhaps was a reaffirmation of one of my basic rules of good writing: that it doesn’t happen until I sit down and start. That sounds sort of dumb, doesn’t it. But it’s true. Often my best work happens only after I have settled in to write. The physicality: sitting, using a pen, hearing it scratch across paper, seeing words appear, feeling the mind search in a way it may not during most of a day’s routine. Something gets lit up  in that process.

When I first heard an accomplished author say that she sat to write at a certain time each day whether she felt like or not, I was puzzled. I thought you had to feel inspired first…and then sit. Nope. It seems almost universal among writers I’ve learned from. They sit and start…then it happens.

And how about that pen and paper thing? I do that -- most of the time with a fountain pen. And my computer’s word processor? Or my voice recognition software? I use them for recording notes. Or writing press releases. Formula business writing. But the creative stuff doesn’t work so well for me at a computer.

Except this time. Just this once maybe. I wanted to get this blog out there. So it was like working for the newspaper again. Click-clack, and here it is. There were only a billion other things I wanted to tell you. But you don’t have all day, either, do you.

 

'To The Seekers...'

     Nearly 100,000 U.S. students between 18 and 24 reported alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape during the past 12 months.

     Almost 700,000 students said they had experienced alcohol-related assaults during the year.

More than 1,800 college-aged individuals were killed in alcohol-related accidents, including vehicular.

     Almost 18 million adult Americans are alcoholic, and the problems they cause cost our economy more than $225 billion a year.

     These stats are from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a division of the National Institutes of Health. You can read more here.

     Go to the link, and you will see. We have big problems with chemical dependency illness. And I should know.

    I was a statistic earlier in life. But I found the way out.

    Today it has been more than 40 years since I stopped drinking and found successful recovery from alcoholism.

      If you would like to know how that happened – and the positive results that have flowed from my experiences, you may find my book, War Baby, helpful. I wrote it to be so.

     War Baby is available here as a paperback and as an e-book. This is how I introduce it to would-be readers:

     How does a life go so awry that a bright and generous upbringing turns to thoughts of  slamming a nine-millimeter Luger bullet through one’s temporal lobe?

    That’s the fulcrum War Baby twists upon, as a hopeful upbringing goes off the tracks to an insane slow slog into active alcoholism, the Luger always lurking just outside life’s stage-lights.

     The book grew out of more than 30 years of personal journaling. But the result is not just some “journaling adventure.” It sticks with the guts of the near-death experience active alcoholism can bring to a life – mine.

With drama, humor, and pathos, my life is redeemed in a true story told for those who are seekers of what Dante described in the first canto of The Divine Comedy, Inferno, “the path that does not stray.”

     Yet the book’s three broad themes – the dark of a personal bottom, the light of a stable childhood, and a denouement of crazy experiences – lead not to some Pollyannaish “new life.” Rather, with humor offsetting more than a few living nightmares – War Baby follows an unexpected and challenging path, and how it looks after a 40-year sojourn.

     The story plays out scenically, and I dedicate it to “The Seekers,” those who would follow “the path,” their families, friends, and  many others who will be perhaps surprised by the wisdom that can be found along the way. Many seek but not all find the way to recovery; but to those who do seek, it is to them I write in the  hope that they will hear what I heard and see what I saw.