Author: Henry

We all like balance in life. It helps us climb stairs without falling, especially when we’re really young or really old. It keeps us from going too far left or too far right. It keeps boats from keeling over, airplanes flying straight, and parents from disowning teenagers. 

Oh! And it helps nature provide for us.

But some lack of balance is fun, too. Otherwise why have seesaws? Imagine our form of democracy surviving if we had only two branches of government? Where would we be without men and women, and vice versa?  

Actually, although we talk a lot about the balance of nature, nature is usually at least a little out of balance – even as it continually tries to achieve balance. It has always been that way, as different species competed for superiority, as the earth revolved around the sun, as continents grew and shrank. 

Some imbalance makes life interesting.  Three may be a crowd, but two is boring.

When mankind first arrived on earth, wooly mammoths ruled the world, (even as bacteria ruled the netherworld). Humans had a competitive edge no animal or insect, fish or fowl had ever had before: the human brain. Gradually, over time, it proved more powerful than the biggest mammoth or the smallest bacteria.

We’ve harnessed energy, invented bacteria-fighting drugs, made food production predictable, and brought heat to cold areas and cold to hot areas (one of the most significant change agents of the 20th Century was the air conditioner). 

We turned useless black rock into energy. Then we repeated it with all that messy goo and foul-smelling stuff from under earth and ocean. We used them as tools for everything from food to cars to skyscrapers to computers. 

By the late-twentieth century, mankind had won the competition with other elements of nature. We were riding high.

But maybe not. Mankind is part of nature. By defeating parts of nature to benefit ourselves, we’ve directly altered the balance of nature.

And nature is our ultimate – and only – provider.

A few hundred years after arriving at one of the most bountiful continents in the world, America, we started cut the tops off of mountains for coal. We filled rivers with chemical pollutants from factories and sewage from animals and humans. We filled the air with fumes from the mid-west which the wind carried to the rivers of New York and New England, making them less drinkable. And we thrived.

Not to be outdone, other emerging countries in the Middle East and Asia, did many of the same things.

Now, one third of bird species are extinct. Hundreds of animal species are gone. Ditto plant life.

China is the biggest producer and user of coal in the world. People there and in other parts of Asia have to wear masks outside. Water is undrinkable in many parts of the world. There are droughts in places that were once fertile. Qatar is so hot, they are – literally – trying to air condition the outdoors now.

Without burning of coal or oil, climate change would not be occurring. There are now droughts where there was once water, water where there was once ice. There is less clean water, more poisoned soil. 

So people are beginning to leave once bountiful lands in the Middle East and Central and South America to become refugees in still fertile countries – where they are treated like invading armies. What’s next – refugees from California’s drought and fires?

We’ve won against wooly mammoths and thousands of other creatures and plants.

But in winning we have also destroyed parts of nature that we need for survival. As we stand surrounded by the spoils of what once sustained us, there is now little to prevent us from becoming extinct. 

Nature doesn’t need us to survive. It is ever rebalancing and evolving. And there is no rule that says it has to include us. Just as evolved bacteria can now survive mankind’s medicines, nature can rebalance and evolve past mankind altogether. 

Without massive, major, and immediate efforts, mankind’s survival is now in doubt.  

To the victor belong the spoils.

When Bill Clinton was impeached, a lot of people thought it was stupid. After all, he was just committing adultery. People do that everyday. 

Others thought impeachment was appropriate, not just because it was adultery, but because he was using the power of his office to seduce an intern. They were shocked at the abuse of power.

But when, during his testimony, he came out with “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”, we all groaned together.

“Come on, Bill! ” we seemed to say.  “Is that the best you can come up with?”

Quaint, huh?  

We now have a President who makes Bill Clinton look positively amatuer. We elected him even though we knew all about his lying, bullying, cheating, misogyny, adultery, etc., even though we knew he would easily be the most sleazy President in history.

But, sleaze isn’t a high crime or misdemeanor in this country. In fact there’s no mention of sleaze (or lying, bullying, cheating, misogyny, adultery, etc.) anywhere in the Constitution. 

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it. 

Is it because people who wrote the Constitution had too much integrity to consider the notion of a sleazy person running for office? That would be my guess. Remember, that was before the Clintons, before Citizens United, before greed became the screed of politics. 

George Washington was elected President because he was impeccably honest, because he put country first. As a result of his integrity, he could very easily have become King George Washington. In fact, a lot of people wanted him to be. But he turned them down. He had too much integrity.

(I have a suspicion – just a suspicion, mind you – that our current President would not turn down the word “King” in front of his name.)

Integrity seems such an old-fashioned concept in today’s world. There was a time when movies and books and newspapers lauded integrity.  Comic book heroes, movie heroes, book heroes were models for integrity. Granted, they were pretty one-dimensional, but they celebrated qualities like self-sacrifice, hard work, honesty, reliability, working for the common good, and what was called “the American Way”. 

Quaint, huh?

The American Way helped save the world from genuine disaster in World War II. Without the US, fascists would be running the world now. Although it wasn’t as dramatic, the world also benefitted from US involvement in the Cold War.

While corruption has been around as long as the Republic, it was once disdained. Our institutions fought it and usually won.  As a result, people had faith in our institutions and leaders.

Then, in the 1980’s, the ethos changed. The Wolf of Wall Street pushed aside Superman and the other models. Greed became a respected motive. Win for the sake of winning became the mantra. 

Whether it’s cynicism or reality, many Americans today consider our institutions corrupt. Only 25% of us approve of Congress. Our health system ranks worst among the wealthy countries. The gap between rich and poor has been widening since the 1980’s. Our educational system is graduating people from high school who can’t read or do basic math, much less think critically.

We have elected a President with the vocabulary and temperament of a 3rd grader and the ethics of a mafia don. His corruption of the Office of the Presidency is ongoing and relentless. From using the Presidency to fill his hotels to trying to extort Ukraine, it never stops.  

A few examples: over 13000 lies since taking office, shredding international relationships, taking 5400 children away from their parents since 2017, relentlessly attacking the press, deserting allies on the battlefield, denying Climate Change, using tax payer money to attack his political opponent, obstructing the Mueller and Impeachment investigations, using his Presidency to fill his hotels. 

So, how did we wind up with such a corrupt President?

“The whole system is corrupt” was the reason a friend recently gave me for supporting Trump, this after acknowledging Trump’s corruption.   

When I brought up the lack of integrity in politics today, when I suggested the notion of fighting corruption instead of tolerating it, he smiled and patted me on the shoulder as you would a child after The Santa Clause talk. 

He was too polite to call me quaint.

The sun is setting as I take my standard French poodle for a walk.

He speaks French, Bark! and English. My other poodle, Philo, did too, but Philo also preferred wit on our walks – the way D’Artagnan preferred a sword – to skewer the less intelligent. Me.

My new Poodle’s name is “Buddy”. That, alone, should tell you the difference between him and Philo. At just under two years old, Buddy focuses on more basic things, like watering the neighborhood fire hydrant. There is none of Philo’s haughtiness. 

On this evening he spots a squirrel near the hydrant. 

“What’s that?” he asks. All 60 pounds of him lunges toward it, almost yanking my arm out of its socket. “Did you see that? Did you? What is that? Looks cool, huh? I think I’d like to play with it?“

I heave back on the leash as the squirrel darts over to a tree trunk, where it stops and looks back, flicking its tail mockingly at Buddy.

Buddy lunges again, nearly upending me. 

“It’s just a squirrel, Buddy.” 

“Oh cool! Do they like dogs?” Then to the squirrel, “Do you like dogs? I can bark in French! Really, I can!”

He strains against the leash. The squirrel suddenly darts up the tree and sits on the branch, scolding Buddy. 

Buddy starts up the tree, too, but falls off.

“Jeez!” he says, getting up and starting back down the sidewalk. ”Squirrels aren’t very fun.” 

A moment later, he sees a much bigger squirrel and, once again, hurls himself at it. I use both hands on the leash and yell something too strong for family readers. The really big squirrel doesn’t move an inch. Then slowly it turns, not away from Buddy, but toward him. Buddy keeps pulling closer.

“I wouldn’t do that Buddy.” I say, struggling. “That’s not a squirrel.”

The cat, tail flicking back and forth, teeth bared and menacing, ears back, is now facing Buddy in a “want to make something of it!” crouch. 

Buddy pulls closer and closer to the cat, until…there is a short spitting sound as the cat swipes a paw at him, then dashes off. Buddy jumps behind me, wrapping me in the leash.

“What the…! Mon Dieu! ” 

“See, cats, if they don’t know you, can be very nasty.”

“Yeah…”, he says. “But you’ll notice he ran, not me!” He starts walking purposefully again. “I must be a pretty tough Poodle. Bien sur.”

The sun drops completely away and we continue our walk in the dark. His tail and nose are up. He is fully alert. 

Which is really helpful as we approach the driveway next to our house and he is greeted – not by a squirrel, not by a cat – but a whole slew of huge orange creatures with open mouths exposing jagged teeth and glowing yellow throats. 

There is the sound of un-oiled hinges opening and closing as shadows race across the front of the darkened house behind them.

Buddy doesn’t leap forward; he leaps behind me, pulling the leash, and thus me, backward. Fortunately a bush breaks my fall. 

Unfortunately it is a rose bush. 

I get back up on my feet. He gingerly approaches one of the orange things. Unlike the squirrel, it doesn’t budge. He slowly moves closer, wriggling his nose in an effort to get a clue about this new creature. Nothing.

He stops and barks, once. The creature stands its ground.

Buddy barks several more times. A dog inside the house starts barking.  

Buddy looks at the house in surprise. In seconds other dogs in the neighborhood join in. It’s a cacophony.

There are sounds from the sidewalk behind us. A crowd of kids is coming toward us in the darkness. They are wearing masks and scary clothes. Grownups behind them are waving flashlights.  

Buddy grabs the leash in his teeth and starts pulling me away from them, toward our house. He doesn’t stop until we’re home.

Once inside I tell him he didn’t have to be afraid. It is just Halloween. The scary orange creatures were pumpkins and the kids were trick or treaters, looking for candy.

He slowly lets go of the leash and looks at me with disdain. “Mais oui!”, he says. “I knew that. But you looked so scared, I just wanted to get you home so you’d feel safe. I am a French Poodle, after all. We protect our minors.”

“You mean, “masters”, don’t you?”

“Really? I save your life and you want to be called ‘master’?”  

I guess there’s a little of Philo in him, after all.

It’s not that I look down on liars. I do, but that’s not the reason I don’t lie much. 

And it’s not that I don’t find myself, on occasion, in need of a really good, really inventive lie. For example, when I’m at a restaurant with a new friend and the food is really expensive but just OK tasting and the server interrupts my attempt scintillating conversation with “How’s the food?”, I wish I could say something truthful, like ”It’s not great, but I’m really trying hard here, so could you please just buzz off?!”

But I don’t. “Great!” I say, hoping he won’t ask anything else and run my train of thought further off the track. It’s a lie. And not very clever, but it allows me to get back at the task at hand quickly.

There are all kinds of lies; for example: Loyalty Lies. 

If a friend asks how I like her new dress I always, always like it. Ditto hairdos, shoes, and all her friends.

My friends’ kids are also cute as buttons and very smart. 

Or Silly Lies.

Years ago, and I mean many, many years, a single friend and I were at a bar, sitting a few stools away from a very pretty woman. He told me to pretend to argue with him – and loudly. So I did. We yelled back and forth for a minute or so and then he held his hands up. He walked over to the woman and said, “Could you settle an argument? My friend thinks you’re 40. I don’t think you’re a day over 30. Which of us is right?” 

Of course, not everyone appreciates Silly Lies. The woman paid her bill and left. 

I think one reason so many young people like Bernie Sanders is he doesn’t seem to lie that much. If he did, I doubt he’d even use the word “socialist”, as in “Democratic Socialist”.  The “S-#@!“ word has been taboo since the 1930’s, when it was first confused with “communism”. In the 1950’s, McCarthy used it to great advantage until he got caught lying. Trump is already polishing it for use next year on any and every Democrat.

The media and Democrats say Trump has lied over 10,000 times since taking office. His fans call that a Statistical Lie – or would, except they really don’t care; he’s their liar, after all.

Also, at this point we all know he lies. So, no big deal, right?

When other politicians lie, though, it is a big deal. When Elizabeth Warren kept saying she’d raise “taxes” on the wealthy to pay for Medicare For All, but “costs” wouldn’t go up for the middle class, I was really impressed. Until I realized “costs” sounded like another word for “taxes”, but it could have meant that overall “costs”, including “medical” would shrink, but “taxes” would still grow. She just didn’t want to tell the middle class their taxes could still go up.

That’s called a Clever Lie. Most politicians excel at those.

Trump is one of the best liars ever – no matter what the reason. For example, I’m sure he never had to lean on his dog for a missing homework. Nope, I’ll bet his excuse was, “I’m sorry to say teacher, your dog ate my homework.” 

The thing that makes him such a great liar is he never backs down from a lie. He lies about the lies. 

It’s a very good tactic, but you have to be good at it.  

His “acting” Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, tried to pull a Trump in trying to “walk back” (lie) about his lie to Fox’s Chris Wallace last Sunday about Trumps’ “quid pro quo” phone call with Ukraine.  (See YouTube “Mick Mulvaney One-On-One with Chris Wallace 10 20 19”).

He got most of Trump’s moves right. He was measured, confident. And best of all, he kept a straight face. (“Who, me lie? Oh Gosh, No!”)

But he failed at the lie about the lie. All he offered was, “I didn’t say what I did say”. Definitely not up to Trump standards. Trump would have said something way more bombastic. 

It was like the Eagles Cody Kessler trying to become Carson Wentz.

That’s why I don’t lie much, except for Loyalty Lies. It’s too hard to make up a really good, believable lie, too hard to deny it when caught, and too hard to remember, down the road, what the heck I had lied about anyway.

One of the best things that ever happened to Malvern, PA was Pat McGuigan. This self-deprecating ex-Army Command Sergeant Major retired to Malvern in the 80’s, drawn by its rural, down-to-earth charm.  A doer instead of a talker, Pat became President of the Borough Council for a time and then retired again. 

One day in the 90’s, when Malvern woke up to being virtually broke, Sam and Betty Burke, town elders for whom Malvern’s Burke Park is named, brought McGuigan back as Manager. He did two things that had immediate impact: one, he stopped all but the most necessary spending (legend has it that when the Police Chief bought something without an OK, McGuigan made him pay for it) and two, every night after dinner, he and his wife Margaret walked different parts of the Borough, getting to know the people and spotting small problems before they became big.

Within two years, he had brought Malvern back to health.

Pre-McGuigan, many area realtors avoided Malvern; post-McGuigan, they feature it. Malvern had arrived. That’s one reason the Malvern government bulding is named McGuigan Hall.

This is the kind of leadership the country yearns for today: an honest, modest leader who gets things done. Despite all the headlines, these kinds of leaders still exist. You just have to look for them behind the blowhards and me-firsters.

Rural villages like Malvern are fragile things, easily overpowered by voracious developers and ego-centric politicians who want more high rise apartment complexes, more sidewalks, more stop signs, more speed bumps, and other symbols of “progress”- people who simply don’t get it.

And then there are people who do get it, like Pat McGuigan.

And Joe Bones. 

Joe and his wife, Sarah, first moved into an apartment on Woodland Avenue in 1976. Later they bought a small house on High Street where they raised two children and embarked on successful careers. She is a freelance photographer and video director; he has been one of the “experts” at Bartlett Tree Experts since 1971 when he graduated from Conestoga High School. An arborist who now supervises 300 people, he has lectured on tree care and safety as far away as Singapore.

In the middle 80’s, he and Sam Burke started the Malvern Tree Commission. Around the same time, Sarah joined the Borough Planning Commission and eventually became the Vice-President of the Borough Council. Their joint commitment to open space resulted in Randolf Woods, an untouched wooded area behind the Malvern Fire Station that is now protected by state law. 

Why do I tell you about one couple in this one little town? 

First, Malvern is a great example of what once was and still can be: a small town inhabited by people who – corny as it sounds – have timeless values like integrity, volunteering, and a strong sense of community. 

Second, Joe Bones is running for Malvern Borough Council. 

A few years ago, he noticed that Randolf Woods wasn’t being taken care of properly. Its neighbors were dumping rusty bikes and other trash. Walking paths were being vandalized. 

He went to the Borough Council with his concerns. 

“They listened politely, said ‘thanks for telling us’ – and did nothing”, he says.

But Joe understands process and perseverance. He went to the Planning Commission and together they formed a committee of 10 other citizens. Then all 10 went back to the Council. There is now a 90-page plan in place for maintaining, upgrading, and preserving Randolf Woods, along with funding. 

“Randolf Woods will be a jewel”, Joe says. 

Why run for Borough Council? Because of politics today. 

“I realized that standing on the sidelines isn’t enough anymore”, he says. “You have to do something.”

“Zoning needs to be updated,” he adds. “Something as simple as setbacks requirements (the space between properties) need to be revised.” 

He also noticed that Council votes have become somewhat automatic. “People don’t ask questions that much anymore. I just think we need more questions – from Council Members and the public. It’s our town, after all.”

Several days a week, Joe and Sarah walk the Borough. They chat with fellow Malvernites. When they see a defective telephone pole, a cracked sidewalk or other problems, they report it to the Borough Manager.  The problems get fixed.

Good people pick up on good practices.

And good people aren’t hard to find. You just have to vote for them.