Digital Divide

My phone broke in half. Seriously. I went to the Verizon store to "upgrade." An iPhone 4 is free with data plan. A basic phone is $130 with 2 year contact. The salesman explained they are phasing out basic phones- the manufacturers are going to stop producing them. 

I ask "what about folks who can't afford a data plan?" 

He said "we are working on some all inclusive plans." 

I ask "will it cost more than what I have now?" 

He fiddles with his computer for a while, but we both know the answer. Of Course it will. 

I know that we could afford a data plan if that was the most important thing to us. If I gave up Yoga, or if my son gave up Soccer, or if we never bought anything fancy at the grocery store. But it is not the most important thing to me. In fact, I'm starting to feel downright ornery about it.

We've all heard in theory about the digital divide, but it wasn't until I was called to serve a congregation in the Endless Mountains that I met so many people who can't get cell phone coverage or cable or DSL at their homes. 

When I go to collegial events I seem to be one of the only UU ministers without a laptop or smart phone. I run into a colleague in the hall at a conference who asks "can you reply to my e-mail..." and the answer is "no, I am 1500 miles from my computer, you are going to have to talk to me now in person if you want an answer." Another colleague suggests "couldn't you get a grant to buy a laptop?" But in fact we all know that technology is not a capitol expense like a building, it is an ongoing expense requiring frequent upgrades- not one grant this year, but a new grant every 3 years or so to stay even vaguely current. And, more to the point, my congregation does not expect me to answer e-mail when I'm on the road. Because they don't have laptops or smart phone either. They have my phone number and they know they can call me if it's important. 

I write this blog on a desktop with a CPU I can barely lift. I use Word  2003 and an OS so old it has to take a nap after opening iTunes. 

I'm not even going to get into the carbon footprint of replacing our technology so often, I just want to stand at the edge of this digital divide and witness. Why does it matter? Because our elected representatives are saying things like "no one needs welfare any more because they can just start a business on the Internet." Really? Are going to buy everyone a computer and pay for their monthly DSL line. Oh, and are you going to run cable out into the truly rural areas so they aren't running their business with dial up?

I attended an anti-oppression conference and one of the other participants pondered, "don't you think all these differences are going to resolve themselves with technology?" So it's not just that some folks have technology and others don't, it's that too many of the folks who have pre-ordered their iPhone 5 don't realize that millions of Americans are completely app-less. 

Or let's think closer to home. Our own UUA has shifted some of their funding and focus from districts to regions, with tons of new webinars. Have you ever tried to attend a webinar without a high speed connection? 

Even if I could afford the data plan and could, right now, be writing all this to you from my brand new iPhone 4, I wonder if I would. I want that daily reminder that the more we transition our communications to exclusive technology, the harder we make it to communicate with all those folks on the other side of the digital divide.

Update

Sandy Dog started a fancy designer drug for dogs in  heart failure. The first 2 days on the drug her condition was unchanged. Her resting respiratory rate was twice what it should be, and she looked worn out. I worried about making it through the weekend when our vet and the animal hospital have no regular hours. At least Sunday night I noticed she was sleeping better, and I was glad for that. Then Monday morning something changed. Dog was back. She was bounding on and off of couches and dashing (in an only slightly labored way) up the stairs. When Underdog got his toy, Dog got her toy- an old rag doll that was hers before we even adopted her - and gave it a triumphant shake, then chewed energetically on it. Her respiratory rate is below the danger level and she seems glad to be alive.

Of course there is no cure for heart failure, so this is only a temporary reprieve. We worry about the significant costs of her treatment, and we worry about the end when it will inevitably come.  My mother-in-law came to visit this past weekend and Dog jumped up onto the sofa and climbed over my son to roll on her back in Nonnie's lap. Nonnie told us the story of her cat that lived 2 years after being diagnosed with heart failure, and his surprise recovery from a stroke! As one who obsessively plans for the future it is stressful not to know what lays ahead, but as my sister wisely suggested "for now, couldn't you just enjoy having Sandy back?"

Our Sandy Dog

It looks as if our dog Sandy is coming to the end of her life. The vets tell us she is in heart failure, and she is on a series of medications to help her heart work and to help keep fluid out of her lungs. Sigh.

Obviously this is on our minds all the time. Day by day her breathing is more work for her. I wake sometimes at night hearing her change her position, and as she curls up close to my head, I hear her ragged breath. But each morning she bound downstairs for breakfast, and greets us as we come home from work with great enthusiasm. She has a passion for dinner, and still follows us up the stairs even if we are just carrying loads of laundry back and forth.

I am deep in a quagmire of the most difficult ethical decisions I've ever had to make. It was so easy to say, back when she was healthy "we don't want any major interventions to lengthen her life." We had declined to follow up on procedures the vet recommended with cost estimates in hundreds and thousands of dollars. Longevity, we thought, is not the most important factor.

Now that she is truly engaged with the medical problem that will end her life, I look in my heart and am glad that we kept aside some savings for this final emergency, rather than paying for, for example, the dental cleaning that would have wiped out our savings. (the rub comes in knowing that sometimes the bacteria found on infected teeth can cause heart trouble).

But whereas I so easily could decide that 14 years was a good long life when she was healthy, the choices we are making now about whether her last day will come today, this week or next month are just excruciating. Vet bills and prescriptions are coming in each week at $100 or more (some weeks a lot more), but that seems crass to even notice the cost of keeping her comfortable. We saved money for an emergency, right? And isn't this an emergency? It all comes down to her quality of life, but even that is so mixed from moment to moment. Do we allow her to endure a night where breathing is not always easy in exchange for her joy as we put down her home cooked chicken and rice dinner or snuggle her on the couch? How much breathing difficulty is too much?

In minister school they say never to preach on a topic before you have really worked through the issues and come out the other side. But this is a blog, not a sermon. And I am deep in the middle of this journey. Tonight is not her night though. Tonight we are still glad for every moment we have her, for every time I get to hold my face next to her furry face and scratch behind her ears.

My forty-something advice to my twenty-something friends

My forty-something advice to my twenty-something friends:

As long as you are not racking up debit or collecting addictions, please have all the adventures (large and small) that you can imagine. Go to a Halloween party in an abandoned funeral home. Make a pilgrimage to the playa. Spend a weekend at a monastery. Pursue esoteric knowledge. Grab a picket sign and a clip board and change the world. Track down your favorite living author/musician/artist and drive however many days is necessary to watch them in their craft. Pitch a tent under the redwoods with your friends. Buy a set of turn tables and a mixer and become a DJ. Do your internship in Nepal. Paint a mural on your living room wall.

These are investments in your own life every bit as important as your 401k. As long as you have not frittered your future on addiction and debit, your fourty-something self will be grateful for each and every time you burst out your front door with an eye toward adventure.

Anchors in a Storm

Last summer my son and I took advantage of a clergy scholarship to visit Star Island for the first time. It can be reached only by ferry. We stayed at the historic and now somewhat dilapidated Grand Oceanic hotel built in the 1800s when time when that sort of thing was all the rage. Many of the folks we met as we nervously boarded the ferry had been making the annual pilgrimage for years. There is a history center on the island where you can see old-timey black and white photos showing people engaged in many of the same traditions that still live on there today. One of those traditions is polar bearing at 7:00 am. Now remember this island is pretty far north, and out a few miles into the Atlantic. The ocean water is not warm even on a sunny summer afternoon, but these folks start their day every morning with a walk out to the end of the dock and a dive into the chilly early morning water.

When I first heard of this tradition, I knew it was one that was not for me. Just taking a ferry out to this strange island to spend a week single mom-ing it with my son and 200 some total strangers was challenge enough. But one day as I sat at lunch getting to know yet another new person, she told me that she was 80 and had been coming to the island for decades. I noticed around her neck the plastic beads that reward those brave enough to take the plunge. I was amazed. I had imagined a gang of burly 20-something men lining up on the dock in the early morning, but my dining companion said she never missed a morning. It was all the more remarkable since weather was just horrible for almost the whole week. There was drenching rain every day; Nick and I quickly ran out of dry clothes. The winds were so severe that the ferries to and from the island were canceled, and staying warm was a challenge even in the middle of the afternoon.The wind caused the cracked single pane window in our room to hum like the rudder on a Sunfish in good wind.

What got me through those rainy days so far from home, what I had to be sure of even before I registered for the program, was yoga. Every afternoon there were several programs to choose from, and I always chose yoga. I had discovered the first day that this was to be a gentle yoga class- the teacher was very specific about that. Some of the women who enjoy the same kind of vigorous yoga that I enjoy left the class to do their own practice, but in an island full of strangers, I needed a yoga community. Even though this was not the same kind of yoga I was used to, what was important to me was to have that yoga discipline to anchor my day. Even on the days when the storm was so intense that rain dripped through the roof onto the yoga mats of the folks in the back row and we kept running out for more buckets, even on the days when a cold wind whipped through the swinging doors. Even, and this was the hard one, on the beautiful sunny day when sensible people played hooky from their workshops and basked in the sun after days of being locked up inside in the rain, there I was on my yoga mat.

That last weekend of our stay, the sun finally broke. My son insisted we join the group of singers who gather each morning to walk the whole of the residential part of the island singing a wake-up song at every dorm and cabin. As we gathered, another group of folks sat in the white wooden rocking chairs on the deck enjoying a pre-breakfast cup of coffee and watching the island wake up. The polar bears were also gathering there at the edge of the dock in the glittering early morning sunlight. There were people of all shapes and sizes from elementary aged children to the octogenarian friend I had met at lunch earlier in the week. While I could see the appeal of taking an early morning walk around the island singing, I had this sudden knowing that I MUST polar bear before I left the island, or I would always regret it. So the next morning I got up even earlier, left my son abed, wrapped a towel around me and headed out to the dock. It was just as scary and cold and exciting as I’d thought it would be. There was a lovely sense of camaraderie, and after I proudly emerged from the water I reported to the guy in change for my very own plastic beads on a string to show I had been a polar bear at Star Island. I could see why those folks did it even in the cold and the rain. Because you felt like you had already DONE something, even before breakfast. No matter what else the day held, you had had your moment of excitement and camaraderie and you were awake and ready to face the day.

I thought about all the little traditions that made up the Star Island Experience, and how different people needed different things to make up their day- the folks who went door to door singing, the folks who gathered quietly on the deck with their coffee, the kids who massed in the snack bar in the evening, the night owls who walked out to the stone village for coffee house after the rest of us were tucking in for the night. I thought fondly of the morning worship after breakfast, and the procession of the lanterns in the darkness for worship at the close of day. I imagined these things like pillars that hold up the day we each build for ourselves. I had a vision of how days and weeks and years and lifetimes have pillars, and how I now had a whole bunch of sermons I needed to preach right away.

Progress

A few months back a editorial in a local paper chastised those of us who have concerns about the environmental impact of hydrofracking. He accused us of standing in the way of progress. This has been like a pebble in my shoe ever since. I mean what is progress anyway? Just the inertial flow of inevitability? I was raised to believe that progress meant "building a better world" and I can't understand how watching out for the health of our planet, how thinking about sustainability of human endeavor stands in the way of building a better world. How is staving off the collapse of our fossil fuel driven economy for one more decade anything more than an addict finding one more dose of his/her drug of choice and so putting off hitting bottom one more day? Finally these words of Wendell Berry helped the pieces fall into place:

"That is to say what happened happened because it had to happen; Thus the apologists for the ruin of agricultural lands, economies and communities have shown always that they did nothing to stop it because there was nothing they could have done to stop it; (It's just progress folks.)" (Berry p. 323)

"Eventually that mechanistic line of thought beings us to the doctrine of whatever happens is inevitable. Actually, this stark determinism is altered in general use to a doctrine that is even more contemptible; every bad thing that happens is inevitable." (p. 231)