a blog about binding values
Yesterday, I picked up the Washington Post and read the headline on the top left of the front page:
Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say
As an American who believes that a free and unfettered press is essential to the continuation of our democracy, I was shaken by the first three paragraphs in Craig Timburg’s article… Continue reading “Rigged…”
My mom grew up in an immigrant enclave in Brooklyn. When her father died a few short months before the Depression began in October 1929, he left a widow with limited English and three children.
To help support the family, my mom – a woman who loved to read and learn – had to drop out of high school in her sophomore year.
Growing up, I learned a lot from this natural born teacher. Perhaps the greatest lesson was this:
“Always judge people as individuals.”
As a child, I incorporated that as a part of our human and our American values.
I find myself thinking about that often these days, as I hear our president-elect group people into boxes and tweet and speak about them as a single entity. A particularly disturbing example has been ”the crooked media”. Continue reading “An evolving conversation…on essential values”
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” A.J. Liebling
Today’s headline – “Viral Fake Election News Outperformed Real News on Facebook in Final Months of the U.S. Election” – got me thinking about how we got to this dangerous place.
Many years ago, while in college, I remember a Sociology professor discussing then new statistics that showed, for the first time, more people were getting their news from TV than from newspapers. He made the point that TV news pieces were by definition brief and that the deeper analysis offered by newspapers would fade. He described this as a danger to democracy.
In those days, TV news departments were seen as a public service. As time went by, that value was decayed by networks and stations whose values shifted to profit as their business became more competitive.
Almost two decades ago, in 1999, Marc Gunther authored a report for the Nieman Foundation. Titled, The Transformation of Network News: How Profitability Has Moved Networks Out of Hard News, Gunther opened the document with these words: Continue reading “Freedom of the Press: An essential value”
My interview with Sister Marie Augusta Neal took place in 1998 on a rainy afternoon in a quiet kitchen in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her spirit and what she achieved lit the room brightly. I have interviewed many extraordinary people over the years and been ehttp://library.emmanuel.edu/Archive/content/sr-marie-augusta-neal-snd-professor-sociology-1969-1970nriched by their stories. Sr. Marie Augusta Neal is certainly at or near the top.
One story she told me that was not included in the final publication was about her invitation to South Africa after she published the Sisters Survey described below. The white Sisters there – all white at the time – were caught between the apartheid system (1948 to 1994) ‘ in which they worked and their own sense of justice. They walked out of the white schools where they had taught for generations and opened new schools in the black neighborhoods. Often that also meant walking away from their families. It was an important step to end apartheid.
Continue reading “The Sisters 2: Building Knowledge for Justice”
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.”
1984
George Orwell
Many years ago, in the summer between graduating from St. Raymond’s Elementary School in the Bronx, NY and beginning high school at Fordham Prep I received a reading list that changed my world.
Fordham sent hundreds of book choices to its incoming freshmen…with the instruction to read any 30. That summer, from basketball court to beach, I went everywhere with a book. My view of the world and how it worked expanded beyond the bounds of Parkchester, the housing project where I grew up.
In today’s politics, three of those books stand out: 1984 and Animal Farm, written in 1945 and 1949 by George Orwell and Brave New World written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley. It’s 1984 that I find myself thinking most about today as I try to understand the confusion our recent election and the debasement of our electoral process.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them.” Orwell, 1984
Destroying truth in favor of a chosen reality has been going on in our politics, talk radio, talk TV and the internet for many years now. if scientific proof is inconvenient, it can be replaced by voices repeated loudly and often. We have certainly seen that in the fight over protecting our environment. It occurs over and over in policy arguments. And, if a political argument is weak, character assassination is a convenient alternative.
“The party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.” Orwell, 1984
In this environment, Donald Trump was not a surprise. He was a predictable outcome. The failure of the parties to produce – to work in compromise – allowed him to present himself as a strong man solution.
“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
Orwell, 1984
Early in the campaign, during the primaries, it was observed that Trump used his rallies and interviews to test his insults and lies. If they got a strong response – they were repeated often. For example, his assault on Ted Cruz…
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said Tuesday during a phone interview with Fox News. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”
If they did not catch with his audience, like a mocking of Bernie Sanders for a hernia operation, they were dropped.
Unlike Orwell’s Big Brother, whose lies required a systematic bureaucratic erasing of the truth, Trump ran his campaign as a one man show…say it loud, say it proud, mix it up with contradictions and convince people that only what you say matters…that you are the only solution. It’s the show that brings a new reality.
“Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
Orwell, 1984
So where does this take us?
There are two paths…
The first is that we will find that lying to 325 million people is different from cutting deals with individuals. The good people who believed in him will remember his words that came before and see them shifting as he takes power. They will reject his opportunism. The other good people who didn’t support him will continue to assert their democratic role. America will revert to the core values that brought it greatness through our imperfect union, an open and free society where people can honestly discuss their disagreements.
The other path is darker. We further cede our freedom to the person who said, “I alone can fix it.”‘
For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?” Orwell, 1984
It was my privilege to work with Pat Paton at the Pulmonary Hypertension Association from 1999 to my retirement in 2016. The values she and her sister Judy and their husbands Jerry and Ed brought to the organization allowed for the creation of better and longer lives.
What I learned from Pat and so many others is that in the face of overwhelming odds, some people give up and become lost; others find a better self and become heroes. Pat is one of the heroes.
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In December 1987 Patricia (Pat) Paton was diagnosed with Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PH). At that time, less than 200 cases had been recorded in the United States.
PH is a terrible illness. Described as a hardening of the arteries in the lungs, it leads to breathlessness and eventually death through right heart failure.
Diagnosis is difficult. In Pat’s case, after two years of constant fatigue, fainting and doctors who could not tell her what was wrong, her husband, Jerry, packed her in their car and drove 9 hours from their home in Zionsville, Indiana to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Forty-eight hours later, she had her diagnosis. She was told she had primary pulmonary hypertension and was NY Heart Class IV (the worst level). She was given six weeks to six months to live and was sent home.
Pat and Jerry looked at their lives and decided to make the most of their remaining time together. They sold their Indiana home and their business and moved to Florida.
An unexpected thing happened…Pat continued to stay alive.
Pat and her sister Judy began a two year search for another patient…a search to end isolation.
When she finally found two other patients, they met around her kitchen That meeting turned out to be the founding of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association.
Funding their little group out of their own pockets, they launched a newsletter which they gave to their PH doctors, who sent it to other PH doctors. The doctors gave the newsletters to their patients and soon they had been able to find more patients than NIH had located during its five year registry.
The level of patient-to-patient sharing and service inherent in the processes Pat and her sister Judy and others established (and often staffed as a volunteer) in the early years built the organization on bedrock values of loyalty and trust.
With less than $1,000 in their treasury, the little group took on the daunting task of organizing an International Conference. For the first time, they drew together patients, caregivers and medical professionals. Today, that risky Conference has become the largest PH meeting in the world. The little organization they founded is now the second largest rare disease association in the U.S. It has helped seed the founding and development of over 80 sister PH associations globally. PHA has committed over $18.000.000 to research, so far. It publishes the world’s first medical journal dedicated to PH. Recently, it has become the accrediting body for U.S. PH Centers., with a registry poised to improve the quality of medical care in this disease.
Since Pat was diagnosed, the disease has gone from no treatments to 13…more than all but two of the 7,000 identified rare disease.
Pat lives on and her style of leadership is deeply rooted in her attitude of hope. She says that many people on this earth never learn why they are here. That is not the case with her. She knows exactly why she is here and will not hesitate to tell you. Her job is to make the journey a little easier for those who suffer from pulmonary hypertension. She has done and continues to do her job well.
The U.S. has a long history of people coming to our shores for a better life.
The genius of our nation is that- despite the change immigrants bring, frightening some and breeding hostility – we have absorbed generation after generation of immigrants who have brought new thinking and ideas and the hard work required of people starting out in a new land. We are all better for this part of us. This is a story of immigration and success well over 150 years ago. It is not an easy story, forged by determination in the face of threats and reaction.
As the son of a hard working man who came to this country the year before I was born, I know that my family’s American story was not so different from those who came before and those who continue to come today. I thank those who came before and welcome those still to come.
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In 1846, the Potato Famine began in Ireland. From farms, cities and villages, Catholic immigrants fled to America as an alternative to starvation. Through the last years of the 1840’s, many thousands of new Americans arrived in Boston.
Those who survived the raging illness known as “ship fever” arrived in weak condition into an often hostile environment. Meetings protesting their presence were common; anti-immigrant fliers were distributed throughout the city of Boston.
It was into this environment that the first three Sisters of Notre Dame came. On Saturday evening, November 12, 1849 Sister Louis de Gonzague, Sister Mary Stanislaus and Sister Magdalene arrived in Boston. For safety, the long trip from Cincinnati was made not in religious habit but, as Sister Mary Stanislaus expressed it, in “old ladies’ costumes”.
They had come to Boston at the invitation of Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick and Father John McElroy, S.J. who had sent a petition to Sister Superior Louise and Bishop Purcell in Cincinnati. Father McElroy was then pastor of Saint Mary’s parish and was anxious for qualified teachers for the parish school. At the time, St. Mary’s School was the only Catholic school in the city. (The only earlier Catholic school had been moved to Charlestown in 1826 and was burned by an anti-Catholic mob in 1834.)
On Tuesday, November 15 the three Sisters began to teach the children of Saint Mary’s. Over 100 children came that first day to fill the two small classrooms.
By September, the little community of Sisters in Boston grew to seven to serve the rapidly growing numbers of pupils.
In 1852, Sister Superior Louise brought another group of five Sisters from Cincinnati. They arrived at St. Patrick’s parish in Lowell on September 21.
The first Superior of the Lowell foundation, Sister Desiree wrote:
“Our arrival was a source of rejoicing for the Catholic inhabitants. The house was surrounded by a great many good persons. Two days after our arrival we opened our school, without having it announced in the Church. We called together all the children who lived in the neighborhood and on the first day we had one hundred and fifty. Three days later our number was three hundred. As no school rooms had been prepared, the rooms in our house had to be used and we were obliged to send the little ones with their teacher to the basement of the church. Father O’Brien has commenced to build a school for the accommodation of the classes.”
“The 15th of June we were exposed to a great trial, at the door a group called the ‘Know-Nothings’ said they were determined to burn us. The alarm was so great that we were many nights in our clothes and our effects were packed for more than 15 days so we would be ready at the first word. The good Priest O’Brien had a guard of 60 men guarding the church and house for a month…the women and girls did not stay behind, they were charged with prayers for our defense. Little by little we got back to preparing our students.”
The Annals
Lowell, 1854
During her twenty-seven years as Superior, Sister Desiree made sure that the Sisters of Notre Dame not only educated the children of the poor but that the adult poor were fed as well. No one who came to the Sisters’ door was turned away.
As the years passed and the Lowell Foundation grew, a priest asked Sister Desiree – who, by now, had come to be called Good Mother Desiree – how she could erect so many buildings and be responsible for such a large family. She replied:
“Reverend Father, we do all this by the blessing God bestows on us in return for feeding the tramps.”
On May 8, 1854 Sister Mary Aloysius, Sister Mary Joseph, Sister Mary Clemence, Sister Stanislaus Kostka and Sister Mary Ignatius arrived from Cincinnati to begin the Roxbury Foundation. Since St. Joseph’s parish had no building for a school, the Sisters opened classes in the unfinished basement of the Church. They started out with forty students, amid the hammering of carpenters and other workers. By the following September, one hundred and thirty children were enrolled.
The Sisters came to Lawrence in 1859, opening a school at St. Mary’s on August 29. The three Sisters had over 300 girls the first day.
The first postulant from Lowell was Johanna Coughlin. She entered in Cincinnati on May 2, 1860 and, after a short stay, it was suggested that she return home for medical reasons. Besides an apparent frailty, the doctors said she was threatened with blindness. Before leaving, she asked for time to make a novena to Blessed Mother Julia for her cure. Her request was granted and when the doctors examined her after the novena, they declared her completely healthy with no danger of impending blindness. She took the religious habit with the name of Sister Mary Ignatia.
Also in 1859, two Sisters began teaching 180 children at Our Holy Redeemer in East Boston. By 1860, the Sisters’ community had grown to seven. In September of 1860, the seven Sisters who made the foundation in South Boston, came to the basement of Saints Peter and Paul Church expecting 300 children; twelve hundred were present. They began by instructing the children twelve years and older.
In 1867, the Sisters came to teach the children of Holy Name Parish in Chicopee and after a year added an evening school for the benefit of the girls who were obliged to work during the day. On to Worcester (St. John) in 1872, Cambridge in 1876, Springfield (Sacred Heart) in 1877, Salem (St. James) in 1878, Lynn (St. Mary’s) and Somerville (St. Ann’s) in 1881. Everywhere, the Sisters where welcomed with hundreds of students. Thousands of children were taught, sodalities were formed and buildings were built. The immigrant church in Massachusetts was flourishing and the Sisters of Notre Dame were offering education as a door to a better future.
In 1884, Sister Superior Louise, whose efforts spanned so much of the pioneering work in New England, completed arrangements for the Sisters house in Woburn. It was to be her last foundation. But the work did not stop. New waves of immigrants were coming to New England from many new countries and the Sisters who never had enough resources were becoming stretched even thinner. In the face of such difficulties, Sister Superior Louise’s successor, Sister Superior Julia sent seven Sisters to Waltham (St. Joseph’s) in 1888 and in 1891 six to open Saint Teresa’s school in Providence, Rhode Island.
Between 1900 and 1927 the Sisters continued to expand into new areas of Massachusetts. The began teaching in West Lynn (1902), Andover (1914), Hudson (1918), Dorchester (1921), Brighton (1924), Beverly (1927),West Newton (1927) and Tyngsboro (1927). In 1919, Emmanuel College, the first Catholic college for women in New England was established on the Fenway in Boston. Also during this period, six Sisters of Notre Dame left Waltham in 1924 to begin the first foundation in Okayama, Japan.
The New England journey of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur continued on the path of growth set in 1849 for well over a century, leading generations of children into the American mainstream and imparting faith and trust in a good and loving God.
During my life, I have met and been inspired by many people I would describe as heroes. While they were often different from each other, they all lived by deeply held values.
As I begin this blog, I can think of no more appropriate place to start than the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a congregation of Catholic nuns.
I got to know them well in the mid-1990’s when I helped them on various funding projects. In 1999, I was honored to be invited to write a short book marking the 150th anniversary of their arrival in New England in 1999.
Through face-to-face interviews and research, I came to more deeply appreciate the faith-based values upon which this congregation of teachers built their lives…equality, justice and charity.
I hope the stories I begin posting today reflect those values with a relevance to today’s world.