Spewing Hatred

"Horrified" is the only word I can use to describe my feelings about what I was seeing and hearing this afternoon on the television. As much as I dislike Senator Stupak and his manipulation of the legislative process for personal gain, that dislike pales to how I feel about threats of violence, racial epithets, and epithets against sexual orientation I have seen from Tea Partyers. There is no situation in the struggles of the legislative process where that is appropriate, and I personally feel that this is a wake-up call to some violent racist, fascist, forces operating unchecked in our society currently.

We have seen the murders of any number of people over the past year by people using guns. I have been concerned for the life of our president as the underlying racist elements of this Republican obstructionism has become clear in the Tea Party movement. I watched as John Boehner stoked the flames of these violent sentiments by saying that this had always existed. He said he was outraged anyone would suggest that anyone in Congress had fostered this and that democrats would even suggest that were the cause. As for the reasons, well, he had always gotten these kinds of threats because he is a Jew. Being a Jew is not related to any political issue, Jews are commonly liberal. I should know. I am one and live with another one. A black president in the White House is.

The racial tones seem to be the true colors of the Tea Partyers. That, along with the support of Big Business at all cost, is just too reminiscent of WW II Germany to be comfortable. The people throwing bricks through the windows of democratic offices is like the Brown Shirts on Kristal Nacht. To see our country repeating these pages in history is shocking and troubling to say the least. I call on the FBI and local law enforcement to take an immediate and determined stand to stop these threats and to head off any violence swiftly and with the full consequences of the law of the land.

I also see no place for the personal ownership of handguns. Those are used virtually exclusively against people, and this gun-toting in Starbuck's Wild West attitude has no place in modern society. There are few places I felt safer than in a Starbuck's until they began a policy of tolerance for that. Now, I drink my coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.

Stop the Hate!
Living and Loving is what I am about,
Grover Lawlis, MD

My Father

I recently had the opportunity to spend a week with my father nursing him after surgery for a shoulder injury, a torn rotator cuff if you know what that is. My mother passed away last year after a long serious illness. the visit with my father inspired this poem:
The Old Man
© Grover Lawlis

Clack! Clack! Emptying cans
of pet food upon rising.
Dawn, slivers of light fall on the bed,
I’m roused by both and coffee smells.

Farm life, feeding the animals,
has a cadence that’s timeless
constant as sunrise and sunset
life streams one day to the next.

Gray, drawn, his words slower
since Mom died. He works the
New York Times crossword, alone now,
slurping his soggy Cheerios.

His truth comes in sound bytes,
“I’m a Christian.”
Yet inside, a mind far more
complicated slices, dices, processes.

He faces the Reaper knowing,
“I’ll die of a stroke.
All my kin did.”
Old doctors never die,

They mosey into the next dimension.
Once rash, arrogant, even cruel, now
wiser, measured, tempered,
a more generous, loving soul.


Hope you enjoy it,and have a good week!