I've always liked Biden

March 4

I’ve always liked Joe Biden, maybe not always always but close enough as the general election looms nearer. Last night Biden performed in a way no one has ever seen before and no one really expected. Sanders did take California, but Biden showed well and won delegates here and Texas as well as 9 other Southern states. It looks like he will be our nominee for President in the Fall.

I’d rather a younger and stronger and less vulnerable candidate than Joe Biden but if Joe Biden is going to be the candidate, then I’m going to get behind Joe Biden period.

I’ve started reading his biography more closely. It turns out he did grow up in uncertain family economics. His family was below mine on the scale. We went through a few hard times. Joe went through some hard times too.  Most of my time growing up we were solidly middle class. Biden’s father was a car salesman not a dealer, so that’s better. He has a good voting record considering the times. His heart is obviously in the right place. I would like less dwelling on his hardships, which are quite real, and more on holding the plutocracy accountable.

I’m not an Obama Democrat, I’m more a Warren Democrat, not so in favor of protecting the financial status quo, but Biden was a good vice president, served the president well. Obama was a good president just frustrating that we made so little progress. Sure McConnell stalled it, but Obama was soft on the banks and hard on immigration, not positions I liked. Obama care is half way there but not all the way. Insurance Companies and Pharma still do very well and in my opinion they are responsible for high health care costs with lowered results.

But Biden versus Trump, a good man versus an evil man. It’s not even a contest. I’ve always liked Joe. And I’ll like him more if he chooses the right Vice President.

March 6

I keep hearing the good pundits and Elizabeth Warren say vote your heart and your beliefs not who you think is going to win.  I still like Sanders better than Biden, Booker better than all of them and Warren a lot.  So I'm not in the Biden camp yet.  I'm very interested in how well he does going forward.  Can he sustain the effort it will take to be the candidate?  

I still think there is a good chance that the country will overwhelming reject a second term for Donald Trump, whether the candidate is Biden, Sanders or my dog.  I think normal people are disgusted with Trump and the first real crisis that will personally affect all of us will only illustrate his incompetence and inability to run an organization.  Bankrupt as a businessman, bankrupt as a politician.  But I'm not sure and that scares the hell out of me. 

Sanders or Biden and all of us who care need to work hard to save American democracy and the credibility of our government supporting whoever runs against Trump.  .  

Undecided Voter

I am an undecided voter. Not undecided for the national election. My dog runs against Donald Trump, I’d vote for Bella.

In the California Primary tomorrow I will vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Do I vote for the candidate that I was originally leaning toward, Elizabeth Warrrn, or the candidate who can win the nomination and could well beat Donald Trump?

Buttigieg dropped out of the race yesterday and this morning Amy Klobuchar dropped out, both victims of the South Carolina primary. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is barely alive and even in California she is polling more than 16 points behind Sanders.

I’m not considering Joe Biden. Joe is a good guy. I like Uncle Joe. But for all of his talk of being a man of the people, he is not a left wing Democrat. He has been an establishment Democrat all along. He voted for Clarence Thomas. He voted for George Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He voted for Clinton’s Crime Bill. He has been around a long time and people change but Biden is the Establishment and the Democratic Establishment is why we are still in the Reagan Revolution. Enough small government and pro-Wall Street legislation.

And all this bullshit talk about knowing how working people feel, his father owned a car dealership. That’s like John Edwards whose father worked in a mill, yeah his father was the manager. It’s just disingenuous.

I like Bernie Sanders. I like what he stands for. Ideally I am a left wing Democrat and a Democratic Socialist. So if it’s a contest between Joe Biden I vote for Bernie.

Another problem I have is with old white guys, even Elizabeth Warren is over 70. Isn’t there anybody younger out there we can vote for? By the way I’m a 73 year old white guy and a retired banker.

So do I vote for Elizabeth Warren because I think her policies are very similar to mine?  And she would make a better President than Bernie Sanders, though the bankers and the establishment will fight her tooth and nail for that very reason in a general election, not to mention it is still a misogynist electorate, some women included.

Bloomberg ---of course not.  Bloomberg another good guy is a billionaire former Republican who has spent his way into contending for the presidency.  I vote Democratic.  

I really think Bernie has a good chance of winning in the general election. Ross Perot voters will vote for Bernie along with young people, genuine populists and people who want change Democratic or Republican. Hell I think some Trump voters, ones who wanted a change but have had enough of his blatant incompetence and self serving egomania, will vote for Bernie. Though it is amazing to me how few Republicans are disgusted with this worst President ever, but that’s a problem for the Republican Party not me. I don’t think we need Republican votes and while I enjoy listening to Joe Scarborough I don’t need him or David Brooks to tell me which Democrat to choose.

Bernie is the 77 year old white guy who is honest and authentic.  I worry he is a rabble rouser not a team player. I think the President needs to know how to govern not stir the pot.

Do I vote my heart or do I vote with an eye to November?

As I finish this I think I'm going to vote for Bernie because it’s come down to him or Biden and Bernie is certainly the better of the two and Bernie has a better chance of winning than Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden.

And in November I’ll vote Democratic because I think it’s time and because Donald Trump is the worst President in the history of the United States.

Update March 3.  I voted for Bernie.  I guess by the time I finished these notes I had made up my mind.  But even as I filled in the bubble on my ballot I still had second thoughts.  And by the way, I'm thinking a Bernie Sanders/Stacy Abrams ticket.  

Paloma the Lifesaver

April 20, 2019

Yesterday on the way back from LA, my 9 year old daughter Paloma saved my life.

We had gone down to stay at my son’s property in the Mojave Desert for Spring break. Paloma loves the desert and after three wonderful days there we drove to Los Angeles and spent time with my eldest son and his fiance. We went to dinner, stayed overnight and had a nice long breakfast at an LA coffee shop.

It had been a good week and at 11:30 am we started the long drive up Highway 5 to Oakland and home. Traffic was heavy in LA as usual. But once out of LA County it moved pretty well. We stopped in Canyon Country and then again and again. We had our dog Bella and we stopped every hour or so, so Bella could stretch her legs and run around for a bit. The last stop we made we were lucky to find a Baja Fresh and have tacos for lunch that weren’t that bad. Bella got to run around and we had a break.

But a few miles further down the highway my eyes began to droop. I fought it a little bit but at 72 years old I need my naps, particularly after lunch. I pulled over at an off ramp that was just a two lane road going off in either direction from the interstate. We parked in an area, flattened by farm equipment and the big tractor trailer trucks using it as a quiet rest stop. I parked our car about 50 yards in from the road. It was all weedy around us. There was an irrigation canal that ran parallel to the road a further 75 yards from where we had parked. It was a good space for the dog to run in.

The dog took off running through the weeds and Paloma chasing after her. I put the windows down on the car and put the seat back a little. It was warm in the Valley, there was a nice breeze and I thought after a few minutes I’d probably nod off. Paloma would be fine, she knew to wake me if she needed me. I started to play solitaire on my phone. I’d didn’t fall asleep so easily and we were there for awhile. From the canal I could see water splashing up above the berm, a pump or something.

I looked around, Paloma was playing in the weeds and I didn’t see the dog. I got out of the car and asked Paloma where Bella was. We both started calling Bella and she didn’t come. I remembered the splashes I could see just over the canal berm. Oh no, I thought. Bella loves water. A year ago we got Bella as a rescue dog when she was a year old, a ¾ size German Shepherd shaped mixed breed. I have no idea where her love of water came from, but she ran every creek she crossed and once even started swimming out into the Columbia River chasing ducks.

I ran to the canal imagining the worst, that she had floated away and out of sight and hoping she would be there. Paloma and I got to the top of the berm at the same moment and there was Bella splashing to get out, but the canal had a thick plastic liner that came up and over the berm. She couldn’t get any traction. The splashes had been her struggling and she had been in there for at least ten minutes and probably more. I’m not sure how dogs look so expressive but the look on Bella’s face was pure panic turning to relief at our arrival.

I laid on the berm and tried to grab her, the current was very strong and she was paddling as hard as she could to get to me, but her paws kept slipping on the thick plastic liner and she floated in and out. I reached down to grab her and I could touch her nose but I was a few inches from being able to get a grip on her collar. She tried and I tried and I reached out just a little further and slid into the canal.

The water was cold and I had to swim to stay where I was. Like Bella I couldn’t get any traction on the plastic liner. It rose a good 2 or 3 feet above my head. I tried to push Bella up on to it but she just kept sliding into the canal. Where I was at the bank I think the canal was about 6, 6 ½ feet deep and it seemed to be deepen a little more toward the center. A few feet down the side of the canal there was a metal plate about 2 feet by 2 feet half submerged. It was secured by small screws with heads that I could just barely grip one between my thumb and forefinger.

I held myself against the current that way and grabbed Bella by the collar and tried to push her up the plate. The traction wasn’t much better than the liner but on the third try she was able to get her paws on the top of the berm and Paloma pulled her out. Now I’m in the canal, the water is cold, I have to tread water to stay in place and I try to scramble up the plate but finger grips are just not enough and Paloma is too small to pull me out. I tell her to go to the car and get something to pull me out, a shirt maybe. I don’t know if that’s going to work, but at least we can try and she won’t come so close she might slip down the liner. Paloma said, “How about the dog leash?”

“Yeah get the dog leash.” That will be better, but I don’t know how a 75 pound girl is going to pull a 215 pound grown man out of the water, but we’ll try it.

While she’s gone I look around and there doesn’t seem to be any break in the bank and liner. The canal goes into a tunnel about 150 yards west of me. If I can’t get out in the next few minutes I’ll send her back to the car to call 9-1-1. Paloma came back and dangles the leash down to me. I tell her to sit down on the ground off the berm and hold on to the leash. She gives it to me and I pull a little bit, but even a little bit and she starts to come up.

I tell her, “No, lay down flat on the ground and hold the leash as hard as you can.” I really don’t think it’s going to work and I certainly don’t want to pull her in. She gets the leash to me one more time and I pull and try to leap out of the water at the same time and I get just far enough to get an arm on to the top of the berm and a little more with my torso mostly out of the water and get my fingers to the edge of the liner and pull myself out.

Paloma, Bella the dog and I are excited together; I’ve been rescued. Not so hard but I didn’t think it was going to work and I was pretty surprised and relieved to find myself out of the canal. It was probably going to be OK all along, but I never knew that for sure until Paloma got me out. I looked down the canal and there were yellow painted steel poles four of them in front of the tunnel. Maybe something there might have been enough to scramble out, maybe not, was there going to be downward suction? On the other side of the road in the field somebody was working a tractor and moving dirt. There was a house on the other side of the road a few hundred yards back and after I was out a truck came out and passed on our side of the road. I waved to the farmer.

I realized there were probably a number of ways I could have gotten out of the canal. But I couldn’t do it myself. And Paloma had done it, had saved me, gotten me out of the canal.

I’m a retired first responder and this situation was just the kind of thing I responded to and saved people from their own mistakes, that moment when you realize you’ve reached too far and you slide down the berm into the water. I was sure everything would be OK as I kept my head above the water in the cold canal, but I also knew that when things start to go bad sometimes they can go very badly and this is the way tragic accidents start. But it didn’t become a tragic accident, it probably wouldn’t have gone that way, but it didn’t because Paloma saved my life.

The Passage of Time

It’s the New Year and the old year has passed.

Trump. That said, I’ll go on.

I’ve always been obsessed with numbers, counting, comparing, ratios and the passage of time, in a day, in a week, over the span of my life. It could be my generation or just me, but I’m amazed to find myself old and whatever one says or thinks, dices it or explains it, 71 years old is old. I was born in 1946 and while I wasn’t there for World War II, I do remember the Red Cars in Los Angeles and when NBC was at Sunset and Vine.

So Two Thousand and Eighteen is well into the 21^st century and I am rooted in the 20^th century. I’ve been listening to people younger than I am talk about a neighborhood, Highland Park, York Avenue in Los Angeles when it used to be rougher, more dangerous back in the mid-90’s. Mid-90’s I think. Yeah, it has changed a lot since then, but I left York Avenue in the 80’s. I first lived there in the 70’s.

I often think of my grandmother who was born and aware before there were automobiles. I went to work when computers occupied floors of sprawling new data centers. And like the automobile in the 1920’s the computer today is just at the beginning of the changes it will work. An information technology manager for a small bank I worked at, bragged in 1992 that we were set for the future with a central computer that had, can you believe it, 3 gigabytes of storage. I am writing this on a laptop computer with hundreds of gigabytes of storage.

I’m more aware that now death is getting closer. One of my three sisters passed away last year at the age of 74. My best friend from high school and my best friend from college have passed on, one young at 45 and the other died of a heart attack the same year I had a heart attack at the age of 63. That was eight years ago. Anyone who is living eight years after a heart attack is doing well.

I remember years ago when I stopped by the Village Bakery in Glendale. The owner behind the counter wondered why I was looking at it so hard. Oh I told her, I used to work here . . . 20 years ago.

Twenty years in which I had graduated from high school, become a monk, gone to college, served in the Air Force, lived in England, graduated from college, worked for Bank of America, left Bank of America, then UARCO, and then City National Bank. Years in which I got married, three sons were born, I bought two different houses, I got divorced, I got sober and stopped by to visit a bakery that I had once worked in.

I’m thinking in 20 year increments. I’m better than half way through my fourth increment.

And so this young man, a father with a wife and two children, wanted to talk about York Avenue in the old days, but he didn’t mean 42 years ago when I first went there, but 20 years ago when I had already moved to the Bay Area.

Twenty year increments. I was born in the mid-40’s, the first to 1966, the second to 1986, 60 years old in 2006 and now more than half way to 2026, in my fourth score of years, a third marriage, an eight year old daughter, retirement and remembering York Avenue in the 80’s, some 37 years ago.

Time streteches, twists, shrinks, and expands, it is unpredictable, a short time, a long time, when I was young, when my children were young, when my grandchildren were babies. Two of my granddaughters, both 18, took my daughter, 8, on a shopping trip and bought her very stylish and trendy clothes, she looks like one of her nieces.

I have a friend who this year turns 80 and begins his 5^th score of years and I’m not far behind, the 20 year increment where we dodder, lose touch and probably die, that is if I make it through my fourth score of years.

And once there was someone who remembered the Congress of Vienna as a new beginning and so it was.

Still Crazy After All These Years

I've struggled with mania and depression all my life. One time I was hospitalized, locked up and treated until I came down. Since that experience I've spent my life trying to explain how it was brought on by unique circumstances and I've been very vigilant to make sure it never happens again. (See “Insanity” in my blog)

A few years ago I heard an interview and I realized there was nothing unique about my experience at all.  It is just your garden variety mental illness and the name of that illness is bipolar. I am bipolar and I have learned to live with it. I've done OK,. Twenty-four years ago and 20 years after my hospitalization I went too far again. That time I wasn't caught. I've had a lifetime of doing the best I can.

Bipolar and alcoholism are closely related and for awhile it seemed like everyone in AA was bipolar. It took me awhile to realize “bipolar” was plain old manic-depression. I didn't think I was bipolar then, maybe a little bit manic-depressive but not bipolar.

My mental crash and burn, locked up in an Air Force psychiatric ward, occurred in 1970. I've always regarded it as a unique and scary event in my life. For years afterwards I guarded against a recurrence. In the Air Force I fought against a label and got my experience labeled a drug reaction, at least that's what they told me. I never answered yes to any question about mental illness. For a short time I did serve on the board of the Los Angeles Mental Health Association and was a volunteer in their programs. I felt a kinship with the crazies we served. They were like my friends and myself on the Psych Ward at Lackenheath.

When I got sober in 1983 I was afraid of life without alcohol I would not be able to treat my episodes of euphoria, short circuit the mania I always feared. Alcohol calmed the agitation that made mania so uncomfortable. I had some sense it stopped the mania. The insanity of alcoholism was another problem and one that I was not as aware of until I had been sober for awhile. When I stayed sober I felt less fear of insanity. It seemed I had found a way to deal with myself and find equanimity.

AA is not proof against insanity. In 1992 I was 10 years sober and working my program when I had a long manic episode that I wasn't aware of at the time. It deeply affected me personally and professionally. There were incidents of being out of control that I looked back on with embarrassment and I don't think at the time I was fully aware until much later how much mania affected my life.

Even with that my insanity never came up until over 30 years after the incident in the Air Force. I took a psych test to be a peace officer. Somehow the test showed an anomaly that I had to explain. I was honest on the test and I was honest, and positive in my interview with the psychologist. I was passed and became a juvenile hall counselor, a peace officer.

It came up again when I took the psych test to become a sworn peace officer, a cop. I got a letter asking me to send my medical records from the Air Force to Sacramento. Who knew they still existed but they did and I sent them on to Sacramento. A long six months passed and I was scheduled for an interview with a psychiatrist. The contracted psychiatrist also consulted with San Francisco Juvenile Hall. We talked about Unit B-4 where I worked. Apparently for him anyone who could work well on unit B-4 was good enough to be a police officer and he passed me.

As a police officer I was very aware that in a way I had slipped through the cracks. There were highly stressful situations that occurred and long nights without sleep, but I was careful to control my stress and never let the lack of sleep go on very long. The Angel Island Fire was one of those incidents and there was a lot of euphoria in the event itself, being part of a force that in the end won, but afterwards, I enjoyed the calm and slowed down, finding a balance within a few days.

In 2011 I retired as a California State Park Ranger. It has been 46 years since 1970 and my stay at Lackenheath hospital. After 1970 there was never again a mention of any insanity or mental illness in any of my personnel files and no lock downs in any special wards.

In the interview on NPR I heard someone tell about their struggle with bipolar illness throughout their life. They had struggled with it and overcome it, though it was always there and they had gone on to a successful life.

The person's story resonated with me. Yes, I am bipolar. Bipolar is a mental illness. I have struggled with it, fought it, and lived a good life without being overcome. But I have a mental illness. I am just another person with mental illness, a mild case maybe, but who's to say.

I've been known as a risk taker, an unpredictable and volatile personality. How much of that is personality, how much is insanity? I suppose it's a spectrum. Most of the time I'm within the norm.

A few days ago I was working on my blog and it was going very well, I became euphoric at the way the words were coming together and worked late into the morning one night. There it was the euphoria that becomes insomnia that gets worse and becomes mania. So I did what I've tried to do all my life since 1970, I got careful about my sleep. I made myself go to bed on time. No more staying up late. This morning I got up at 5:30 am. I'll continue to monitor my sleep, make sure I get enough, go to bed when I don't feel like it, stay in bed when I feel like getting up. I will get enough sleep and the mild euphoria I'm experiencing will pass. No danger of going into mania, only a slight and lingering fear of what could happen.

As I finish this two weeks later I know that was a phase of euphoria that passed. Euphoria puts me on edge. What happens if I can't make myself fall asleep, if the insomnia and mania continues? But one more time it didn't.


Thanks to Paul Simon 1975 for the title

On Becoming a Protestant

In a Glasgow pub an American returning from the urinal through a narrow passage was accosted by two locals and backed up against the wall. “Are ye a Protestant or ye Catholic?” he was asked.

“I'm an agnostic,” the American said.

“That's all well and good man,”one of the locals answered, “but are ye a Catholic agnostic or a Protestant agnostic?”


I was baptized at St. Robert Bellarimine Catholic Church. I attended St. Robert Bellarmine Grammar School, St. Francis of Asissi High School, and two years at Loyola University of Los Angeles. Most of my life I've identified myself as Irish Catholic, explaining that it wasn't so much a religion as a political statement.

In my 20's I ceased to believe in the divinity of Jesus and by the time I was thirty I was pretty much an agnostic. I did and continue to believe in ritual and tradition and the connection we make through ritual with what is beyond our understanding. I sent my sons to Catholic schools, more because the alternative in the urban neighborhood we lived in was unacceptable than from any need to make them Catholics, but I did want them be exposed to a world view that was more about service than materialism. I became an active member of the local parish. I was OK as long as we didn't talk about theology and the stories I heard from the pulpit were so familiar they seemed like old friends to be accepted, not necessarily believed, but not openly questioned.

And then I got divorced. There's not much room for a divorced man with an active social life in the Catholic Church. I like church, I like the community of it. At the same time I got sober through a 12 Step Program. While my atheism/agnosticism was becoming more refined I experienced the miracle of recovery and the blessing of grace. For awhile I attended Episcopalian services. As I got more deeply involved it was obvious that Episcopalians, Christians, believe in Jesus Christ and while it didn't seem to be required it did make me feel out of step.

One day a Jewish girlfriend asked me to explain the Trinity.. I wasn't much of a believer but I had always hung on to the idea that Catholicism and Christianity was a reasonable way to view the world, that it made sense, just not to me. As I tried to explain the Trinity, the reasonableness of it vanished, like the Psych 101 picture of the cups and the faces, once I tried to explain it, the Trinity went away. It was the moment that my Christian viewpoint vanished.

My alienation from Catholicism was only confirmed when John Paul II canonized St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei.

When I went to Mt. Diablo State Park, I realized I was going to be alone in a community where I didn't know anyone. I was reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone which had me thinking about connecting with community in a way beyond what AA offered, I searched around having some idea that Unitarians might be interesting. Before that my only experience with Unitarians was going to 12 step meetings in a Unitarian Church in Santa Monica and reading the posters and bulletin boards in the room we used.

I attended a service of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Walnut Creek. I was amazed, it was the first church I had ever attended that didn't care about belief or dogma and didn't require I accept some sort of defined metaphysics. I could openly talk about my experience and beliefs, talk about the questions, not the answers. I was among similar minded people in an open and free thinking church.

When Suzette and I first began seeing each other she was searching for a church she might attend. She was brought up Catholic and attended Catholic school just as I had. I took her to a Unitarian Universalist Church and I was pleased when she took to it immediately. When Suzette and I left Angel Island we looked for a Unitarian Church we could attend. When we went to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, transplanted from Berkeley to Kensington in 1961, we found a home. Within the year we became members.

We quickly became involved with the church. Our daughter Paloma enjoyed the pre-school and we enjoyed the social connections . Bill and Barbara Hamilton-Holway were the co-ministers. They were warm, loving, and interesting people. Laura, the family minister, was wonderful.

One day early on at dinner Paloma held up her hands making two 'U's with her thumb and index fingers and said “U, U for Unitarian Universalist.” I thought, oh my god, she's being propagandized and then I realized, no that was a big reason we joined a Church. Since then she's learned the principles, been through a course of early childhood sex education, performed in various plays and skits and played the harp for a Vesper Service. She knows we're not Christians as some of her evangelizing classmates have been, not followers of Jesus or Mohamed. As we discussed it she suggested instead that we're followers of Martin Luther King Jr. Close enough, I thought.

I was asked to join the religious education group, Sunday School. I read to the pre-school group Paloma was in and enjoyed it. Slowly I began to admit I am a Sunday School teacher, which sounds incredibly Protestant to me. I now teach kindergarten and will stay with that age group for awhile. I know it's shallow but just the sound of these things grates on my Catholic soul. Anyone who knows Unitarians knows that we number among us a significant number of ex-Catholics, along with Jews, atheists, and others who would never describe themselves as Protestants but . . .
The history and tradition of the Unitarians and Universalists is a direct line from the dissenters in the Reformation. The tradition of a unified godhead goes back to the third century C.E. and there have been unitarians since then, many burned at the stake and in the Reformation they were burned by both Protestant and Catholic Trinitarians. However the real roots of today's Unitarianism go back to the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th century and Chritisan rationalists like J.B. Priestley. Charles Darwin had Unitarian connections. Early in the 19^th century Harvard Divinity School began to have a Unitarian bent to it.

Like the Congregationalist, descendants of the Puritans, the Unitarians were from upper crust Boston.  In the 19^th century it was said of the Unitarians, “They believe in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Boston.” In Ireland the Unitarians, there is a congregation in Dublin and one in Cork, are direct descendants of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterians, similar to our descent from the Puritans. The evolution of religion seems to naturally flow to a rationalist acceptance of the indefinable divine and awe at the miracle of the universe and our inter-connectedness in it. Or something like that. The Unitarians of today have a direct ancestry to the opening of minds in the Reformation through the Age of Enlightenment. It is a Protestant heritage, not a Catholic one.

The Irish website says, “Our ethos is ‘faith guided by reason and conscience’ and we advocate liberal and tolerant Christianity.” I think they're saying they're Protestants though I'm sure some of their congregants aren't and among us UU's that's OK.

In Unitarian Universalist congregations there are Catholics, Jews and Buddhists and there are Christians. It varies in the United States. Our church in Berkeley and many like us don't see ourselves as Christian. There's a joke about Unitarians that the only time you hear the name of Jesus in a Unitarian Church is when the janitor falls down the basement steps. When a minister talks too much about the Bible or Jesus in churches like ours some people complain. I don't complain but I do cringe.

However the UUCB service is the traditional non-conforming Protestant liturgy, hymns, preaching from the pulpit and more hymns. Music is also an important element of our services. Lately the services last an hour and a half, something else some of us complain about. Socializing afterwards can be another hour or two. And I attend board meetings, talks, family events, trainings, and more. Suzette and I probably go to the church at least once or twice a week other than Sunday. All that time spent at church makes me feel much more Protestant than Catholic. As a Catholic I went to a 45 minute mass on Sunday and school events. No Sunday school and little socializing at church. I feel like an Evangelical who goes to church most of Sunday, Bible study one night a week, church dinners another night and maybe something else.

When I first started going to the UU church I told my park mates that I attended the Church of the God Who Isn't. I didn't want anyone to think I was a “Christian,” one of those evangelicals who thinks everyone but they are going to hell. But when I became a Sunday School teacher I thought it was time that I own up to what I've become. So I told people I taught Sunday School without qualifying it, me and Jimmy Carter, not bad company. I even put it on my resume when asked about my teaching experience. The formerly welcoming principle at the school I wanted to volunteer at wouldn't return my phone calls. I suspect she thought I was one of those Christian fundamentalists. I did get a job at Coronado Elementary School. I believe even fundamentalists have a right to teach in our schools, I just don't happen to be one, but I am a Sunday School teacher.

So more and more I tell people I attend church, a Unitarian Universalist church and less and less do I explain it. Let them think what they will.

But I feel very far removed from my Catholic roots. I surprised myself when I followed the election of the Pope so closely and I still have strong opinions about the new Pope and how far he should go. But I am no longer Catholic; I am a Unitarian. Unitarian Universalism has a Protestant heritage and it does not feel or act Catholic in any way.

At Episcopal churches I felt like a dissenting Catholic. As an Irish Catholic, Catholicism wasn't just a religion, it was a connection with my Irish heritage, Irish independence, and Irish specialness, even here in the United States. My Irish bias, bigotry maybe, is deeply rooted. When I meet someone who claims to be Irish, reflexively I think if you weren't raised Catholic how can you be Irish. The truth of it is that just having an Irish name or some Irish ancestor doesn't make a person Irish. It's the culture, the traditions and the shared history. It doesn't have to be Irish Catholic but it most often is, the shared history of nuns and St. Mary Queen of the Martyrs school. The Catholic church, the local parish with it's Irish pastor, was the keeper of our culture, our tie with the Emerald Isle.

That world is gone. There are no Irish pastors left, not a bad thing. The local parish instead of being a bridge to the larger world and at the same time protection against it has become an alien place to me. The progressive church of my youth has become the conservative church of today. While my own world has grown in acceptance and tolerance the Catholic Church has regressed. Irish Catholics are as likely to be Republicans as Democrats. While I take pride in Ted Kennedy, there's no pride in Paul Ryan.

In Ireland I met Irish who were Church of Ireland, the Anglican Irish Church, Unitarian, and Protestant, all of whom were at least as Irish and patriotiotic as I am. One doesn't have to be Catholic to be Irish and I can convert to a Protestant Intellectual tradition that runs through Ireland as well. But it feels like I've given up something for my conversion. Nonetheless I'm proud to be a Unitarian.

Like the Commitments in Roddy Doyle's novel of the same name, I'm Unitarian (almost Protestant) and I'm proud.

And if confronted in a Glasgow pub I might just dodge the bullet and tell them I'm a Celtic fan, the Irish Nationalist Football Club in Glasgow, and an Irish Unitarian.
















Notes

The UUs as we call ourselves share the 7 principles which are the basis of our community:

1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person
   
2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations
   
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations
   
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
   
5. The right of conscience and the use of democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.
   
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all
   
7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part
   

 The Unitarians and the Universalists merged in 1961. It's easiest to simply say Unitarian but in fact we are Unitarian Universalists. An early crack in my Catholic faith occurred when I heard the Episcopalian Bishop Pike of San Francisco preach a Universalist message.

 Feeling my nostalgia for the Catholic Mass I sometimes sneak off to an Epsicopalian church for a mass. One time in Richmond I went to the local Episcopal Church. The church in Richmond is named Holy Trinity. I felt like a Unitarian heretic. Now I go to Iglesia Santiago in Oakland, a less inflammatory named Epsicopal church. Of course, both of these Episcopal churches are well attended by a lot of ex-Catholics. There are a lot of us.

Unitarian beliefs have evolved a long way from just asserting that there is only one God. The joke is that in the 1990's the Unitarians updated their belief from: There is only one God, to there is only one god more or less.

A Book Review

You Had to Be There: From Web Town to Psych Ward – A Memoir
by Terrence McCarthy
Published June 15, 2010 by Createspace


Sometimes when I'm with my friend Bob and his wife Penny, she will interrupt him saying “TMI, Bob.” Too much Information. So when Bob and I get together without Penny we exchange TMI and tell the whole story, sometimes for the third or fourth time. I think it's in those long detours to explain that Bob and I learn about each other and tell each other who we really are.

Terrence McCarthy's memoir “You Had to Be There” is TMI. McCarthy's memoir is incredibly honest. In reading it we learn who Terrence McCarthy really is. In his unpolished style with detours and repetitions McCarthy seems unconsciously to reveal more and more about himself.

Born at the beginning of the Baby Boom, growing up in an unremarkable town in an ordinary family McCarthy is in some ways a Baby Boomer Everyman. It isn't the usual memoir we read, grunts in Vietnam, famous reporters or writers, movers and shakers, people who make history or stand in the middle of it. But he's not Everyman, he's Terry McCarthy and in reading the book he has written we come to know Terry McCarthy like a good friend.

If I were teaching a class about the 60s and 70s in America I would assign “You Had to Be There” as required reading. It is full of anecdotes that make the era real. He struggles with his inner demon and goes from one college to another and finally drops out. He joins the Air Force and goes to Myrtle Beach and then England while Vietnam is raging. He gets out of the Air Force and is lost at home, finding a job in a local factory or mill, meets his future wife in a local watering hole, finishes college, becomes a journalist, a copywriter and then quits and works for 11 years in a locked psych ward as a counselor.

It's not the stuff of history but in fact it really is, an ordinary life in extraordinary times, lived well and with great awareness. It is ordinary and good people like Terrence McCarthy who make an age what it is and in this Terrence McCarthy is an extraordinary person, a person I enjoyed getting to know.

I hope McCarthy gives us a sequel, this book brings us to the middle of a good life.  A sequel and we can share with McCarthy the insights of growing old. More information, please.

You Had to Be There at Amazon