The Recipe

I remember being very young and sitting at the piano, hearing the notes and chords ring out as I played.  I knew there was something special in that sound, some kind of freedom.

 - Laura Nyro (October 18, 1947 - April 8, 1997)

Ingredients

1 Italian, Catholic, jazz musician, kind hearted father

1 Russian, Jewish, classical music loving, social activist mother

2 heaping cups of mid 20^th century New York City culture
1 subtle sense of an early mortality

Season liberally with poetry and painting

Instructions

Combine ingredients and marinate for 17 years.

Could it be this easy?  If you’ve done it correctly, you should be able to create a song like “And When I Die”, with all it’s musical homages and lyrical creativity and depth when you are 17 years of age.  But don’t try it.  You will only be disappointed.  You can’t go back in time anymore than there will ever be another Laura Nyro.

On April 8, 1997, the world lost a true artist when Laura Nyro passed away at the age of 49 due to ovarian cancer.  The disease also claimed the life of her grandmother, her aunt, and her mother, also at the age of 49.  I don't use the term "artist" here lightly.  Quietly in her writing Laura often grappled with the idea that she may have a short time on this earth, and yet she left us with a most glorious and celebratory music.  She came of age in a time of great unrest in our country and the world which affected her deeply, and yet she transformed that angst into a very hopeful and purposeful music.

Laura Nyro was turned off by fame and celebrity and as her popularity grew beyond anything she was ever comfortable with, the people who were making money off of her asked her to do something that she didn't know how to do - stay the same.  They wanted more "Wedding Bell Blues" and more "Stoned Soul Picnic", but Laura, ever the artist, saw it as if they were asking her to die.  Laura was only comfortable in her music if she was exploring.  Of her song "Wedding Bell Blues" she said, "It's a three minute song with a simple hook; the universe captured in a three minute song, like a painting on a page.  It's a musical starting point and you could stay with it or take it to the ends of the earth, but, as beautiful as simplicity is, it can become a tradition that stands in the way of exploration.".  She fought the industry "suits" for a few years before she "retired" at the age of 24 in 1971, and I thank God that she did as in 1969 she created a record that is one of the most important in my life, New York Tendaberry.  All of Laura's music is a comfort and a joy and a companion and it reminds me to continue to explore, especially when it feels uncomfortable.

After years of advocacy by her fans, Laura will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in April 2012.  It is not that I think this is needed to validate Laura's career, talent, and her influence, but I do take pleasure in her getting her due.  The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame eligibility criteria has become something of a joke, but they actually got this right.  I just wish Laura was here to see it.

In case you were wondering, yes, there was "one child born", Laura's son, Gil, and "a world to carry on", us.  It's like she knew.  It's like she saw ahead.

Two Women, One Faith, A Fractured Nation

I wrote this entry about two months ago.  Thinking it read like a book report, I put it aside.  However, for various reasons, I’m finding that these two women, Benazir Bhutto and Margaret Marcus, will not let me go. In their own complex way both were misfit to the time and place they were born.  While they never met, each touched the other’s life in a profound way.  The West seems to know only of Bhutto’s death and nothing of her life.  And what a life it was.  Perhaps most poignantly for me, both were willing to follow the path their faith laid before them no matter the consequences to themselves.   At times, I struggle to do this in my life. 

Last week I started reading “Playing With Fire: Pakistan At War With Itself” by Pamela Constable.  The title alone tells you it’s relevancy to my decision to publish this entry.  If I still had doubt, recent fighting between Egypt and Israel, the evolving storylines of Arab spring, and the approaching 10^th anniversary of September 11, 2001 convinced me.

You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.

- Benazir Bhutto

  June 21, 1953 – December 27, 2007

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Pakistan lately, figuratively speaking.  Having recently watched Bhutto, Duane Baughman’s excellent documentary on the life of Benazir Bhutto, and read The Convert: A Tale of Extremism and Exile, Deborah Baker’s wonderful book on the transformation of Margaret Marcus into Maryam Jameelah, I often find myself reflecting on the interplay of faith, fate, and action.  How could two women, each possessing a love of the same faith and the same country, shape such opposing views of the very purpose of that faith and that country?   In a country such as ours, despite our differences, these affiliations are ties that bind.  In an Islamic republic, it seems this would be even more salient.  However, the origin of this paradox manifested by way of these commonalities may lie within the story of how these very same commonalities were acquired.

Belief was native for one, but searched for by the other.  Birth was destiny for one, but anything but for the other.  Bravery for one was the opening of her country to the best of Western ideals, but bravery for the other was leaving those same ideals behind.  Faith… fate…action.

The eldest child of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s UN representative and later its President and Prime Minter, and his wife, Nusrat, Benazir benefited from her father’s peculiar notion that “a woman is not a lesser creature”.  It was he who objected to the idea that Benazir wear a burqa as she matured, and it was he who included her in his work and taught her the lessons of leadership.  Zulfikar founded the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and groomed Benazir to be the party leader after his time passed.  This was a highly unusual move in a Muslim country, as power would normally be left to the eldest son.  Although Benazir had two brothers, Zulfikar recognized his daughter’s strengths and consolidated political power into the child he felt would use it the most wisely and justly.

Zulfikar’s father had greatly benefited from the partitioning of India in 1947, gaining a very large tract of land in the newly created Pakistan.  In this feudal system, Zulfikar quickly realized that the benefits he reaped were often at the cost of the opportunities of others not as fortunate.  He was determined to pay back that debt and instilled in Benazir that she must do the same, always reminding her that it is because of the Pakistani field laborers that she has the chance to be educated.  During her secondary education in the West, at Harvard and subsequently at Oxford, Benazir formed numerous close friendships with American and European classmates that would last her lifetime.  She became active in the nascent feminist movement, and her father involved her in many of his diplomatic missions.  In 1972 during the peace negotiations following the India / Pakistan War, Benazir, 19, accompanied her father to India.  In an event thick with foreshadowing, she observed a powerful female leader, Indira Gandhi, president of India.  Zulfikar, representing the vanquished nation, had been so powerful in these negotiations and in his defiant stance at the UN Security Council meetings that he was swept into office as Prime Minister in 1973.

In a series of tragic and politically charged events between the late 1970’s and the late 1990’s, the Bhutto family suffered greatly.  Pakistan’s political atmosphere had always pulsed with military and religious presence, neither of which would ever claim Zulfikar as their chosen leader.  In 1977, Zulfikar was deposed by a military coup, led by General Muhammad Zhia-ul-Haq, whom Zulfikar had declared Chief of the Army in 1976 to appease the army.  He was imprisoned for two years and when he would not break he was killed.  For years Islamic fundamentalism had been gaining a strong foothold in Pakistan, and despite the fact that the Bhuttos were faithful Muslims, much of what they espoused – education for all, a path for upward mobility, the equality of girls and women, dialogue and negotiations with the West – were anathema to fundamentalists and the teachings of the madrassas.  The Bhuttos quickly became personae non grata.

As the struggle for control of the center played out during the next 28 years, Benazir would witness the murder of her two brothers and the division of her family as a result, be imprisoned and suffer a life threatening illness[1],  released and elected Prime Minister for the first time, removed from office on corruption charges (a favorite Pakistani past time and a sure way to remove a politician from office as it does not need to be proven), re-elected Prime Minister, and removed on corruption charges again.  For the safety of her children and her health, she went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.  In October 2007, she returned to Pakistan having reached an agreement with President Musharaff that the corruption charges would be withdrawn.  Leaving her children and husband in Dubai for their own safety, she explained to them that this was her road, her calling.  She firmly believed that she must fulfill the role she was born for; to restore democracy to Pakistan, even if it may be at the cost may be her own life as there were serious and credible death threats against her from Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.  “Allah will provide.” she often told her children to comfort them.  As she prepared to leave Dubai for Karachi, she told the press, “I am unaware of the details of the security arrangements, but the biggest protection comes from God and God willing, all will go well”.  On December 27, 2007 she was assassinated as she was leaving a campaign rally for the PPP where she had just given a motivational and stirring address for the run up to the January 2008 elections in which she was an opposition candidate.  Al-Qaeda, whom Benazir had been openly critical of throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s, claimed responsibility for the attack, calling her “the most precious American asset”.

Margaret Marcus was born into a loving, upper middle class, secular but culturally Jewish family in New York in 1934.   Early on her parents recognized that while Margaret was “unusually bright”, she was also very sensitive to her surroundings, almost nervously so.  Her parents indulged her precociousness, and Margaret’s intellect flourished as a result of her autodidacticism.  She read voraciously, and was particularly attracted to music and painting.  She loved Christmas and her family “celebrated” Christmas so she could enjoy it.  She had no concept of her Jewish heritage or any real grounding in religion until some children on the playground took to throwing stones at her and calling her “Christ killer”.  Flummoxed, she turned to her parents for answers and they sent her to temple and to Hebrew school.  Margaret was enthralled by stories of ancient Judea and her ancestry, and yet the more she learned the more questions she had.  Initially, she was excited at the prospect of the creation of Israel, feeling the Jews and the Arabs would live side by side in peace.  However, she began to realize that picture may not be quite as rosy as she thought.  She was upset by what she viewed as the forced movement and marginalization of Arabs for Israel to be created.

Just as the news of the Nazi atrocities and the Final Solution began to sink into the American consciousness, Margaret became fiercely interested in Arab culture and politics.  As you can imagine, this was unusual for a 14 year old Jewish girl in Larchmont, NY in 1948.  As she grew older, she identified strongly with the Palestinian cause and tried to dissuade her parents from supporting Israel.  Attempts at conversation with her father about it often ended in desperate, hysterical arguments as he stood his ground while trying to calm her.  When Margaret felt, she felt deeply.  Her parents tried to convince her that the Arabs were “abusive toward women”, and were “a dirty, low people.”  At times, Margaret was swayed, and she would destroy paintings she had done of Arab scenes.  But more often she was resolute.  “Are you not the ones who taught me it is wrong to be prejudice?” she earnestly inquired of her parents.

During her teen years, Margaret studied Islam, first through her own reading, and later at small mosque in Brooklyn.  Her new found passions and commitments heightened the tensions in the house as did her erratic behavior, but Margaret had found the spiritual community she had been looking for.  By her own account, Margaret’s had been a bookish, friendless existence.  The friends she had as a young girl faded away as she entered adolescence, and it is only later in her story that we begin to understand why.  Her need to belong would take an even more consequential turn, as she began a correspondence with the Pakistani Abul Ala Mawdudi, the leading figure in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.  Their relationship grew through the letters, and Mawdudi was impressed by Margaret’s knowledge and her intellect.  Hoping to provide her with a spiritual home as well as take advantage of the fact that she was a Western Jewish woman who chose to live as a Muslim Pakistani (imagine the publicity!), he invited her to live with his family as an adopted daughter.  Margaret made her full conversion to Islam at the age of 27, and moved to Lahore to live with Mawdudi and his family.  She was a celebrity when she arrived in Pakistan, and did several interviews on why she chose to live in Pakistan.   Taking the name Maryam Jameelah after her conversion, she continued her writing.  Although she continued a warm and generous correspondence with her parents in the United States, she became the voice of Islam’s argument with the West.  From 1960’s through the 1990’s this American Jewish woman turned militant Islamic ideologue published several books and pamphlets condemning the West and urging young Muslims to be martyrs and “freedom fighters” against the West and secular Muslims.  In the Islamic world, her word is revered and her fame knows no bounds.  One of her and Mawdudi’s followers was a young Pakistani man named Muhammad Zhia-ul-Haq.  Remember him?   In fact, several leaders of the Pakistani army and the IIS, Pakistan’s intelligence service, were followers. 

Margaret Marcus cum Maryam Jameelah was obviously brilliant, but she paid a price for that brilliance.  She suffered from schizophrenia, and was hospitalized in the United States and in Pakistan.  Deborah Baker, the author, traveled to Pakistan to meet Jameelah.  Baker, a New Yorker, witnessed the 9/11 attacks and lost people she knew in the attack on the World Trade Center.  Along with the reader, she wondered what Jameelah felt as she watched people she helped to incite attack her home city (although Jameelah vehemently denies this was her intention).  In the book’s most riveting scene, as she mentally prepared to confront her, Baker was taken aback as Jameelah recounted how she had been assaulted by some neighborhood boys when she was in her early teens.  How much of her religious zeal was the product of her illness and confusion over the rape is not quantifiable, but how much of her search for conformity was done to quiet and control her mind?  Did she turn to a religion that contains strict sexual mores and the separation of the sexes as a way to deal with her pain, confusion, and guilt about the rape?  Do these two women have a “Jesus and Judas” element to their cosmic relationship?

Why do we turn to religion?  Is it not a cause of guilt, but an absolver of guilt?  Is it to put order to our own internal chaos, or is it, as I believe it should be, to cause external chaos?   Co-opted by the power structure, organized religions have long forgotten the revolutionary spark and incendiary nature of their prophets.  After meeting these women, I have more questions than answers.

        

---

[1] Mark Siegel, a journalist and Benazir’s co-author and friend, spoke with General Muhammad Zhia-ul-Haq,
and Zhia said to Siegel, “The greatest mistake I have ever made in my life was to allow your friend to live.”
According to Siegel, when he related the story to Benazir, she looked at him and “with out any emotion,
she said, “‘He’s right.’”.

The Medium, The Message, And One Confused Child

"God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back."  - Gloria Steinem

When I was a kid I was afraid of Gloria Steinem, and not just by the big glasses and striped hair.  Whenever I would see her on the news she seemed to be unhappy, and the crowds around her always seemed agitated.  I would listen to what the predominately male media was saying at the time, and from what little I could understand she didn’t seem the least bit likeable.  She was so different from the women I knew, but, then again, as a 7 year old my adult social circle was limited.

A few years on, I began to realize that yes, there had been some minor inequities, but seriously, did she really help overcome those small matters?  I was doubtful.  A few more years on, I learned that there were more than minor inequities, and, in a selfish moment, I simply thought that I was glad I was born when I was, and I chuckled when I thought of my 7 year old fearful self.

In my later teens, having forgotten about my childhood angst caused by Ms. Steinem, I stumbled across an interview with her.  She was warm and open, intelligent, deeply thoughtful and insightful, and she laughed easily, usually at herself.  She had a wonderful sense of humor, and often, when the interviewer tried to give her credit for her accomplishments, she deftly and graciously deflected it toward others.  Could this be the woman I had been afraid of?   I began to realize how limited my choices in life may have been had she not been so willing to use her talents for the cause of opportunities for the generations to come, to be the establishment’s punching bag, and to lift others up.

HBO is showing a new documentary, “Gloria: In Her Own Words”.  When seen through the lens of the cultural norms of the time and her own humanity, her accomplishments are all the greater and I am all the more grateful for Gloria Steinem.  After viewing the documentary (where she explained the big glasses and striped hair :-) ), I thought back to my childhood fear of her.  Was I not mature enough to understand what she was she was trying to do and how she was trying to do it?  Without question, but an equally strong element in the formation of my perception was the media’s portrayal of her.  The more things change…well, you know the rest.

Elysian Fields

Tomorrow, March 25, 2011, is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.  It marked the beginning of the end of the Gilded Age.

No doubt even if you had never heard about the fire before, you heard about it this week leading up to its centennial anniversary.  Despite being interested in labor history and reform, I am ashamed to say that I had never heard about the fire until 2003.  I read a review of a new book by David Von Drehle called Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, and it promptly went on my Christmas list.  While so many books of this ilk sensationalize, sanitize, or simplify, Von Drehle does not venture into such shallow territory.

The fire claimed the lives of 146 people.  Most were poor young women and children, and many of them could barely speak English.  Two years prior to the fire, the women of the factory and other garment workers went on strike for better working conditions, better pay, and shorter hours.  They were harassed, threatened, and beaten.  These women were earning meager wages on which their families were utterly dependent.  Understand, by striking and not getting paid, these women were not skipping a movie or giving up a luxury; they and their families were going hungry and being threatened by homelessness.  And still they endured, for us more than for themselves.

The photo above is of Clara Lemlich, a Russian immigrant, who was 19 years old at the time of the 1909 strike.  While the newly formed International Ladies Garment Workers Union Local 25 was meeting at Cooper Union, speaker after speaker encouraged the women to hold steady, that striking would not be in their interest.  Noted labor organizer Samuel Gompers had just finished addressing the crowd, sounding these notes and he was about to introduce another speaker, male of course.  Clara Lemlich suddenly rose and started walking toward the podium saying, "I want say a few words.  I have no further patience for talk as I am one of those who suffers from the things pictured.  I move that we go on a general strike...now!"  The women cheered, a thunderous applause filled the hall.  The strike was on.

The strike went on for some time, but some shops settled early.  Triangle was not one of those shops.  In the end, the Triangle workers won some concessions from management, but management succeed at it's ultimate goal; they kept the union out of their shop.  The right to run your business as you saw fit was thought to be a right in America.  People were simply cogs of industry, as much a machine as the sewing machines the women broke their backs over.  There was no fire code, no mandatory fire drills, no fire safety training, no mandate to install sprinklers.  People, as long as they lived in a certain area of the city (read Lower East Side), were expendable.  This fire changed it all, with America shaking its head at itself, knowing they had failed these women.  Today, as we debate governements' role in our lives, the right to collectively bargain, income inequality, and the need for reform in certain industries to protect the innocent, I can sense these women looking down on us, shaking their heads and hoping they have not died in vain.

Tomorrow at 5:40 PM EDT (which would have been 4:40 PM EST on March 25, 1911, the time the fire broke out), I will be observing a moment of silence for these people.  I hope you will join me.

For more about the fire and it's aftermath, click HERE

The Familiarity of Princes

Indulge me for a moment and, in return, I shall breathe new life into that most hackneyed of phrases, "Life is funny".

In 2003 I decided to buy a satellite radio for my car.  I spend quite a bit of time in my car and as a music lover the thought of such eclectic, commercial free music at my fingertips was very appealing.  I compared the two major carriers at the time, Sirius and XM, carefully pondering the seemingly endless list of channels each had to offer.  After some consideration and a bit of cash, a Sportster Radio with Sirius service was mine.

Most who know me will tell you of one of my most defining characteristics: I am a music snob.  I cop to it.  Life is to short to listen to bad music.  This is why despite being a Christian, I never took Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) seriously.  Bad musicianship and, if I may borrow a phrase from a certain pastor, the "Jesus is my boyfriend" lyrics did not play in its favor.

It was with this mindset I stumbled upon Spirit, Sirius's CCM station, as I was exploring the stations on my new radio.  A song was ending and with a smirk I decided to stay on the station and count how many times "Jesus" was sung in the next song.  A song called Whole Again by someone named Jennifer Knapp was the next song to play.  Impressed by the song musically, touched by it lyrically, and moved by its performance, I was jostled out of my self-satisfied moment.

Now, I am a typical human, so when confronted with evidence contrary to a long held belief, my brain searched for a way to protect my silly notion.  "Well, it's one song.  She got lucky.  A studio enabled song, that's all.", I scoffed.  A few days later, here she was again, except this time the song was Undo Me:

Put away my flesh and bone

Till You own this spirit through me, Lord

Undo me

The craft work of a true artist filled the car; the sly internal rhymes, the intelligently constructed melody, the tension building bridge releasing itself into revelatory verse, the expression of a personal journey universally experienced.  My silly notion had no defense, her very words proving their point.  Pride before the fall, indeed.

As I consumed Jennifer's music (yes, consumed, as it is sustenance to me, modern day manna), I felt a kinship I could not quite explain, something obviously deeper than just enjoying her music.  I have only been able to describe it one way - Two eternal seekers met, took comfort in this welcome yet momentary comradery, saluted one another, and then turned and quietly sailed toward the oceans of our own hearts.

When I met Jennifer, she had only recently returned from a several year, self-imposed hiatus from making music. In fact, she was never sure if she would ever return.  I had come to terms with the fact that I may never be able to hear her play live.  At sound check, she performed a new song she was in the process of writing, her amazing voice echoing beautifully in the hall, expertly conjuring up images found in Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry.  What she could not know at that moment was that I had brought her a volume of Letters To A Young Poet by Rilke as a gift.  When I gave her the book, each of us held onto our respective end of the book, looking down at the cover for a time and then at each other.  We slowly smiled.  As we shared and learned more about each other and as I explained how important her music has been to me, the closing paragraph of Rilke's ninth letter came to mind - "Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good.  His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours.  Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words."

That other Good Book, The Farmer's Almanac, contains an aphorism about the four things that should never flatter us.  The first is the familiarity of princes.  Maybe, but I think I'll allow it, just this once.  Because here she is again, this time in my church, in my hometown.  Life is funny.

 



This New Ocean

In May 1961, President Kennedy threw down the gauntlet and America responded.

In an address at Rice University in September 1962, he used a wonderful metaphor to describe the promise of exploring the vast reaches of space:

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.

Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the Columbia disaster.  And yet, I heard nothing about it from local or national media or from conversations held in public or private squares.  However, I was the unwilling recipient of information about The Bachelor, catty gossip about colleagues,  and a briefing on the status of Charlie Sheen.

As a young girl growing up in India, Kaplana Chawla dreamt of flying.  She became fascinated by space travel, purposely moved the the United States and chased that dream with the purest of passions.  The prospect of mastering the physics of space travel mattered to her almost as much as the fact that by risking her life (and it's an utter shame that only when tragedy occurs do people get reminded of the fact that astronauts risk their lives) she was helping people, people she had never met.  On February 1, 2003, along with her fellow crew members, she gave her life for that dream.  I believe given a mulligan, she'd make the same decisions in a heartbeat.

Laurel Clark showed her orientation toward helping others early in life.  An animal lover and a skilled and dedicated physician, she served with distinction in the U.S. Navy as a flight surgeon.  She routinley told friends and family how blessed she was in this life, and people said they always heard the smile in her voice.  She felt honored to be carrying out experiments while in space, knowing their benefit to mankind.  While in orbit she watched new life spring from cocoons, and in an email home she said, "Life continues in a lot of places and life is a magical thing."  She perished on February 1, 2003, along with her crewmates, leaving her husband and eight year old son.  A mixture of pain and pride must wash over them every day since.

Ilan Ramon was the son of an Auschwitz survivor, and he was Israel's first astronaut.  He was immensely proud to be living proof that the struggle for an independent Israel mattered, and the pleasure that his achievments brought to Holocaust survivors made him weep when asked about it.   On February 1, 2003, moments before they passed, he and his crewmates, knowing they were going to leave this earth once again, must have felt their brotherhood as crew and human beings to an unimaginable depth.

I could continue, but the picture is clear.  Make life matter; make their sacrifice matter.

Memento mori.

I, too, am America

"I, too, am America"

 from I, Too, Sing America by Langston Hughes (1933)

January 8, 2011 started out as a typical Saturday for me.  Feed the cats, newspaper and coffee, breakfast with a friend, on duty at the cat shelter, library, errands.  Early afternoon found me driving home while listening to NPR, ever present Starbucks in hand.  The program I was listening to was interrupted to report on the shootings in Tuscon.  My hand began to shake as I turned the volume up.  "Please, no", gently escaped from my lips, as if  willing not to be true what my gut knew was true. 

It is worth declaring here:  I am a bit of governement nerd.  Despite the fact that I am not an Arizonian, Gabrielle Giffords had caught my attention in the last couple of years.  Indeed, she has that effect on many people.  Intelligent, honest, articulate, thoughtful, and committed, her charisma is always evident.  After her performance in the last mid-term elections, my thoughts turned to her possibly running for president in the future. Why?  It is not just because of the adjectives I used to describe her, and, although we agree on many issues, I cannot tell you we agree on all the issues. 

What attracts me to Giffords is her ego-free leadership.  This oxymoronical quality of hers allows her to be a good listener while simultaneously being a good communicater.  Intelligent negotiation is her strength, her sweet spot.  Inherent in negotiation is the art of comprimise.  Do you remember when Americans were good at compromise?  It was our real genius as a country.  America is fascinated by extremism in all its forms, especially in politics.  Since this fateful day, we have debated if the violence of our political rhetoric prompted the shootings in any way.  We are in a struggle for who will speak for America.  However, a more powerful fact remains overlooked.

This grand experiment in democracy, some 223 years in the making, works.  At the Safeway in Tuscon, we saw a cross-section of modern America directly affected by that days' tragic events.  Male and female, young and old, Republican and Democrat, gay and straight, people of color and non, blue collar and white collar, native born and immigrant were all collected in one spot at one time to meet or to work for a person who they feel has spoken for them.  Their message cuts through the polemical speech, and Giffords proudly carries that message to Washington: "I, too, am America.".

Legend has it that as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked him what type of government had been created.  "A republic, madam, if you can keep it.", he replied.  I challenge all Americans to get to work on keeping it.  A suggested first step -Move away from the noise and frenzy of extremes, and get to know the Gabrielle Giffordses of our country.  You just might rediscover your sense of hope and wonder.