Sadly, We Maintain the Status Quo

Holy Week is always something of a roller coaster ride. We go from the triumphant march into Jerusalem during which "sweet Hosannas ring" to a steady plodding toward death. We know, even as we sing Hosanna, that we will, before the week ends, be singing "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded." And then, in the dark at the start of the Easter Vigil we see the new fire, we baptize new brothers and sisters in Christ and we begin the rejoicing of the resurrection. For church musicians, the rapid cycling of Holy Week comes in two hour blocks of rehearsals, so we are really buffeted.
For most believers, this Holy Week roller coaster ride is tempered by "normal" life, the life led outside devotion and worship. For those of us who supported repeal of the death penalty in Colorado, the roller coaster dominated more aspects of our lives.
I was struck by a meditation I read this week:

But, let me ask you, what of someone who is not a good person?  How do we feel about that person's death?  I think the basic human reaction is one of justification -- they got what they deserved.  So, in considering the death of Judas, don't we withhold our sympathies?  Maybe shake our heads and purse our lips?
The thing about death is that it is so final, whether it is the death of a good person, like Jesus, or a "bad" person, like Judas.  Scripture tells us that God does not value the death of anyone. But we, in our humanness, do make a distinction. In the death of Jesus, isn't that fallacy uncovered as well? Are we not to seek and serve Christ in all persons, regardless?
The demands of the Gospel are both for compassion for those who suffer, and for action that raises the dignity of every person. Sin does much to devalue human life. As disciples of Jesus, should we not, as he did, do what we can to be a corrective to that trajectory?

 I was hopeful that our House Judiciary committee would do their part to correct our death penalty trajectory, Sadly, they did not. Maybe they salved their consciences with the possibility of putting the death penalty before the people, but that will not happen. We will continue to kill people as our way of saying that killing someone is deserving of death. We will maintain the status quo.
This year, the roller coaster of Holy Week has a different perspective for me. I've hit an extra bottom this year, the disappointment of today's vote on the repeal of the death penalty feels like an extra trip to Golgatha. It is only in the certainty of the coming Easter that I find hope.

Politics, Faith and the Death Penalty

It has been a strange couple of days. Unlike last year when I was a volunteer advocate for both health care and juvenile justice, this year we have more volunteer advocates and I thought I could concentrate on health care. But there were few health care bills early in the session and my justice friends started begging me to sign on with the repeal of the death penalty, so last week I agreed. The repeal bill was introduced late on Friday and the first hearing, before the House Judiciary, came yesterday. It was a long hearing -- more than nine hours of testimony from families of victims both for and against the death penalty, former wardens, people speaking from their faith perspectives, exonerees, District Attorneys both for and against, prosecuting and defense attorneys, professors, law enforcement officers, even a death penalty jury foreman. We heard a letter from a former corrections official who said "when you execute the death penalty, dig two graves -- one for the prisoner and one for the executioner. My grave is a psychological one." Those words stuck with me, echoing in my head much of the afternoon and evening. I can quote them almost exactly even more than 24 hours later.
Those in favor of repeal, in purple clothing and wearing purple ribbons, far outnumbered those opposed to repeal. Even most of the families of victims testified, amidst tears, that the lengthy process of a death penalty trial constantly kept their wounds open, that the execution itself was painful and did not bring the healing they had expected. Several said "killing him did nothing to bring back my brother/sister/son/husband/etc."
Even though I testified in favor of the death penalty, I had to wonder about the victim's families who felt confident that an execution would bring justice and/or resolution to their suffering. In one case, there are many years of appeals to come before the execution. For another victim's brother, the execution was converted to life in prison without possibility for parole (LWOP). For him, it seemed there was no hope of resolution. He testified in great, gruesome detail about the grizzly details of his sister's kidnapping, torture and murder by a gang. It sounded like a story he felt compelled to tell, almost as if the telling of it might eventually relieve his pain.
I wondered if hearing so many witnesses quote  the Bible about "Vengeance is mine. says the Lord" was painful. Did they still have faith in God? Had that died along with the relative? Had their need for revenge or justice or whatever replaced their faith? Did it anger them to hear others who lost loved ones in a violent murder scene take a different view than theirs? Is their grave a psychological one, dug along with their loved one's grave? I heard one victim's sister testify in a hearing today say that it hurt to see the attorney that initially represented her brother's murderers. Her anger extended to that attorney and his mere presence at at the hearing the night before upset her.
I found myself praying for the families, that they might come to some sense of peace within themselves, that they not have a psychological grave.
There was no vote on the bill last night. At the time, I took the Chairman's words at face value, that the decision was too serious to be made at such a late hour after so many hours of wrenching testimony. The technical term is that the bill was laid over until a later, unspecified time. It was sadly unfulfilling. There was no resolution. I began to identify with the victims families, needing resolution. What I did not know until much later was that the Executive Director of the Department of Corrections had been murdered in his home. Apparently, word of the murder had reached the members of the committee.
In the middle of today's flurry of calls about what might or might not happen with our repeal bill, a friend called to tell me that her father decided not to have surgery to remove the large tumor growing in his brain. He is at peace with his decision to die, but his daughter is not there. Everything in her screams that it is too soon for her father to die, she is too young to be without a parent. Her son doesn't understand why his grandfather is not fighting this tumor. We talked about how hard it is to relinquish control or our perception that we are in control. I wonder if my friend will find her sense of peace and resolution at her father's death, if she will recognize that the decision was not hers to make or if she will wonder if things would have been different if only... I pray she will not find a psychological grave, but instead bury her need to "fix" in time to share a few peaceful months with her father. She has that opportunity.
The families of the victims don't have that possibility and I do not think the death penalty will help.

A Moral Issue Should Transcend Politics.

Chairman, members of the Judiciary,
My name is Deborah Sampson. I am a Volunteer Advocate for Colorado Interfaith Voices for Justice and a member of the Colorado Episcopal Public Policy Network.

I recently read a quote from Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice:

I'm opposed to the death penalty not because I think it's unconstitutional per se -- although I think it's been applied in ways that are unconstitutional -- but it really is a moral view and that is that the taking of life is not the way to handle even the most significant of crimes. Who amongst anyone is not above redemption? I think we have to be careful in executing final judgement. The one thing my faith teaches me - I don't get to play God. I think you are short cutting the whole process of redemption... I don't want to be the person that stops that process from taking place.

Repeal of the death penalty is not a conservative issue or a liberal issue - politically or theologically. It is a moral issue that should transcend politics.

 Theologically, the scriptures set a tone:
In Hebrew scriptures, Deuteronomy is a book of law.

34 Is not this laid up in store with me,
    sealed up in my treasuries?
35 Vengeance is mine, and recompense,
    for the time when their foot shall slip;
because the day of their calamity is at hand,
    their doom comes swiftly.
36 Indeed the Lord will vindicate his people,
    have compassion on his servants,
when he sees that their power is gone,
    neither bond nor free remaining.

In Christian scriptures, Paul admonishes the church in Rome:

18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God;[a] for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”

The death penalty is final. It leaves no room for pardon, mercy or forgiveness and these concepts are central to the Bible and, thus, to our theology. In that context, we ask for your vote to repeal.

And that is what I said before the Colorado House Judiciary. It is, by no means, the entirety of my stance on the death penalty which is also informed by the huge price tag for death penalty prosecution and defense and the incredibly high percentage of low-income, black death row inhabitants. In Colorado, all three men on death row even attended the same high school. One must go back some 50 years to see a white man on death row. No statistics seem to exist on which, if any, defendants given the death penalty had private representation from the beginning of their trial process. I'd wager a guess the answer is none. It is a policy that should be repealed on moral and financial grounds.

Back After a Long Interruption

It has been a while. In September 2009, my dear husband was diagnosed with follicular B-cell lymphoma. This is a disease that goes into remission, but cannot be cured. Suddenly, the strong and reliable one in our marriage, the one who supported me through countless medical tests, procedures and appointments was the one in need of support.
In December 2009, about halfway through chemo, he was laid off from his job. Thus began the my education in COBRA and, later, in the effects of pre-existing conditions in the individual insurance market. While we were thankful for any insurance at all in August 2010 when he had surgery for colon cancer, COBRA is a constant battle between the consumer and the administrator who wants to cut off your insurance as quickly as possible.  The surgery was considered a cure, for which we are thankful. As hubby reached the magic Medicare age of 65 and COBRA was running out, I learned that there was really no point in applying for an individual insurance plan. With my medical history, there was no way I was getting insurance. Actually, despite my excellent cholesterol numbers, excellent blood sugar, etc., the ratio between my height and my weight meant insurance companies didn't even care about my medical history, I was simply not insurable. I contemplating running an ad "Will work for health insurance," but I really didn't want to take a job. I do valuable volunteer work and I was not ready to give that up for health insurance. Enter a special program called CoverColorado that offers health insurance to folks with pre-existing conditions. I had insurance. It isn't cheap and the deductible is high, but it is insurance that equals what many others get from small employers.
At the same time that I was getting my hard-knocks education on buying individual insurance, Congress was considering the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Thanks, ObamaCare! I read that bill thoroughly and repeatedly. I found myself trying to correct misconceptions about what the bill did and did not do. No, there is no death panel. A nationwide ID card is a good thing that protects our wishes if we are injured outside our home state. And on and on and on. At one point, I had a standard document I sent to anyone who sent me the "55 terrible things ObamaCare will do to ruin your life" email. I studied single-payer insurance options, programs that reduce health care costs, options in health care delivery and countless other related topics. I educated myself in ways most folks don't have the time or inclination to do.
In January 2012, I added to my volunteer titles Volunteer Advocate for Colorado Interfaith Voices for Justice. Yes, I became a lobbyist! My primary area was, and is, health care, though I dabbled in Juvenile Justice to help pass a bill eliminating direct file of juveniles as adults in most cases. I learned about Medicaid, long-term care and loads of other subjects I never thought I'd need to know. In May, I was named to the Individual Experience Advisory Group for Colorado Health Benefits Exchange (COHBE).
Now, in March 2013, we've adjusted to our new normal. Hubby is in remission from lymphoma, I'm more comfortable with all my new volunteer jobs, and I have the time to resume my blog.
It is good to be back!

Thoughts on Voting Rights and SCOTUS

A siren, flashing lights. Fred pulled over. The police car stopped right behind us. We had no idea why we were being pulled over. We weren't speeding. We were on the way home from Junior Achievement where I was CEO of our company and Fred was the CFO. We were good kids.

"Girl, does your Daddy know you got a nigger boyfriend."

"No, sir. He isn't my boyfriend. He's giving me a ride home because Dad has the car at work."

Crunch.

"You kids know you got a taillight out? Gotta write you up."

That was Topeka, Kansas circa 1968, almost 20 years after Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education. It was not acceptable to that policeman to see a white girl in a car with a black boy.

Lydia and I were new neighbors out walking and talking, learning our new neighborhood. Children of the '50's, we were nervous when we noticed the sheriff's car that seemed to be on every street corner.

"You ladies live around here?"

"Yes, sir. We just moved in next door to each other on ??? Circle."

"Got any proof of that?"

In Denver suburbia late 1990's, there was still a bit of paranoia among law enforcement about blacks.

On another morning walk, we saw "NIGGER GO HOME! BLACKS GET OUT!" painted on the van around the corner.

A 4-year old says to a fellow student in her pre-school class, "I can't play with you because you have brown skin." The year was 2000. Again in Denver suburbs, not one of the areas covered by section 5 of Voting Rights Act.

Those last three events happened rather recently, more than 40 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed and 50 years after Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education. We still don't live in a color-blind world. Even though I thought we'd gotten past the prejudices of the 50's and 60's, we haven't, not even here in our middle-class, highly educated suburban neighborhood. What must it be like in the areas specified in section 5?

How incredibly naive is Justice Thomas when he declares that there is no need for the Voting Rights Act? When Justice Scalia says it is perpetuation of racial entitlement? If this old white lady in suburbia can see that prejudice is still systemic and some SCOTUS justices can't, what hope is there for justice? Just seven years ago, Congress did a massive review of facts and almost unanimously voted to renew the Voting Rights Act. Is it justice if five members of the Court acting on their opinions, and obviously willfully ignorant of facts, can strike down a law that is still necessary?

Some might say that the voter suppression activities that we saw in 2012 were color-blind changes. If they are honest, they might say they were efforts geared toward suppressing Democrat voters, but those most directly impacted were minorities. Look at the photos and you will see long lines of black Americans waiting in 6-hour long lines to cast their ballots. The Sunday voting programs are predominant in Black dominant churches. The counties restricting voter registration were often counties with large percentages of black or Latino citizens. Even if the discriminatory practices were designed to keep Democrats from voting, the evidence indicates the majority of the victims were non-white. 

So long as a young girl hears "I can't play with you because you have brown skin" and hoodlums paint vans with racial epithets and law enforcement expresses suspicion based solely on skin color, the Voting Rights Act and all its provisions must be preserved. To kill it in the Supreme Court is to kill justice in this country.

One More Opinion

I have been wanting to write about the Tea Party impact for years, but have held my peace, thinking they would go away. I was most certainly delusional! I still think they will go away, but not until they have cut the noses off all their faces and our faces to spite the black man in the White House. Yes, for all they profess they want to limit government and cut taxes, I've come to think their primary desire is to get rid of Barack Obama, to besmirch his name and destroy his reputation. It may be the color of his skin, it may be his multi-cultural ancestry, it may be that he is the unfortunate recipient of the same ill-temper that made President Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretion a matter of national security, an anger that grew and was refined during 8 years of a Republican White House. Whatever it is, it is less a threat to the Democratic Party than it is a threat to the very democracy and economy of our country.
Bob Dole, Tip O'Neil, even Newt Gingrich -- those fellows were as loyal to their parties as possible, but they knew how to work with the other side of the aisle to get things done for the best of the American people. Today, things are falling apart. Harry Reid probably remembers how to work across party lines, but he has to have someone to work with and it seems like Mitch McConnell has forgotten the art. He and John Boehner are in tough positions. Boehner, particularly, know he has to stand for re-election soon and he is afraid to anger the Tea Party for fear they will run someone against him to defeat him or, at minimum, weaken his coffers and standing with the electorate. Republicans have to have incredible strength and courage to do what they probably know is the right thing because their political futures are in danger. Democrats, on the other hand, have less to worry about. Sure, it is possible that a tea party candidate will beat a traditional Republican. It happened a few times in 2010. A few Democrats had to run against Tea Party Republicans, but most were successful. Here in Colorado, certainly, Republican in-fighting led to several easy elections for Democrats. In my book, the 2012 elections will demonstrate that the Tea Party is very good for Democrats. A strong Democrat will have no trouble placing the current stock market disaster square on the Tea Party and their insistence on running the country off the cliff of debt ceiling.
As I listen to the news this afternoon, there is some nebulous deal that may be in the works. It certainly bodes little good to the real people in the USA. It probably isn't even good for most of the Tea Partiers, but they won't realize it until their parents or grandparents are forced to choose between eating or keeping a roof over their heads. Even then, they will want to twist it to blame President Obama for their hardships. But, in their hearts of hearts, they will know that their parents are in a terrible financial mess and unable to afford even minimal health care because Congress was locked in partisanship and it caused the parents to lose their investment income before Congress passed the spending cuts that removed the safety nets of Social Security and Medicare. If they are honest with themselves, they will know that they were responsible for their parent's dire circumstances. Worse yet, those currently on Medicare and Social Security will know they brought about their own problems with their determination to bring the country to ruin.
Sadly, they are taking other Americans down the rathole with them. I can only hope that the 2012 election will be the end of this Tea Party heyday and rational Americans can begin to hope again for the bi-partisan governing that works for our country.

A Tale of Two Restaurants

The wildflowers are amazing in Crested Butte! So is some of the food. It is easy to find ho hum, uninspired food and those restaurants are stuffed with tourists. It is also easy to find amazing food with great attention to detail. Some of those restaurants are full of locals and tourists, others are not so fortunate.
We recently made a whirlwind trip to Crested Butte to see the wildflowers. We've taken a couple of guided wildflower hikes in the fall when one has to identify the plant by the leaf. We wanted to see the flowers in all their glory and so we did. We also wanted to enjoy the food scene during Food and Wine Week. We didn't participate in the pricey activities, but we did eat some great food.
Our first evening, we dined at the Old Croatian Restaurant in what is commonly called The Forest Queen. The founders of this new restaurant where so many other restaurants have failed through the years wanted to honor the Slavic history of the community with modern twists on the old dishes. We were a bit worried by a nearly empty restaurant at 7:30pm. We made a reservation only to discover we pretty much had the run of the place. How sad because we found the food to be very good.
One special of the day was goat cheese stuffed mushrooms on baby greens drizzled with a balsamic reduction. These were tasty nibbles! Robert is not a fan of goat cheese, but our fight over the last button was only resolved when I agreed to let him have the last of the balsamic on the greens (and he is not terribly fond of greens either).I admit that by the time I had them drop the shrimp and tomatoes from the pesto pasta, it was an awful lot of the same thing, but the nuts were buttery, the olives added texture and the pesto was excellent. If I had a kitchen there, the leftovers would have made a great lunch.Admittedly, the leafy garnish does nothing to enhance a primarily green dish, but not even the superb and extremely popular restaurants do a great job of garnishing every dish as you will see in a later photo.
Robert is a major salmon fan, so I knew when there was a salmon special, salmon would be his choice for the evening. He is not a loquacious person, so I would take his "Fine" as words of highest praise. I loved the sugar snap peas garnished with cranberries and walnuts on his plate. On another visit, I might have made those my main course, they were so tasty with such a great variety in texture.Django's up the hill is quite a different story. Ever since it opened three years ago, it has been one of the hottest seats in the area. I admit, I had no trouble getting one of the sweetheart tables on my second visit that first year, but my previous visit had been a chilly one out on the patio and not very close to an anemic heater. I couldn't wait to go back. It's been a trick getting a seat at every visit. I've slid off bar stools and gladly taken any seat I could get ever since. This time, we wanted a 6:30pm reservation and gladly settled for a table at 7:45pm. Chris, owner and front manager, has a great software system that reminds him of your previous visits and tells him your favorite table by the way.
Django's is a small plate heaven, though we have seen over the years a trend to what I call small plate entrees, meaning one could order some of the meat dishes as a very light meal. I would love just a small plate entree, if I didn't find so darn many dishes on the menu that I just have to try!
We ordered a cheese plate to start. I am sure I took a picture of the housemade farmer's cheese, Haystack "Snowball" and Manchego with lavosh, polenta crackers, olives and such, but I could not find it on the camera. We also shared a quartino of Quinta da Avaleda Vinho Verde from Portugal. One of the mystery's at Django's and a tiny little criticism here, is the order in which dishes appear. We expected that our two salads would arrive together before any other dishes, but the Mixed Lettuces with fresh blueberries, pistachios and Moody Blue (from Rogue Creamery, blue cheese smoked over fruit wood) came first, rapidly followed by the unadorned Mushroom Croquettes. The Moody Blue cheese gave a chewy quality to the salad. I'm not big on smoky foods, but this smoky cheese played well with the sweet blueberries and lettuces. The pistachios, normally a bit I mention the unadorned mushroom croquettes because of my earlier statement about garnish. Personally, I think these are served in a cute and tiny dish and don't need adornment, but others might disagree. The croquettes are a mix of chanterelle, crimini, shitake and hedgehog mushrooms rolled in bechamel and Pecornio.
This is another place where I might have expected the second salad, thinking they might be separating appetizers from entrees. Nope, we got the first entree, the cocoa butter seared scallops with browned butter brittle, haricot verts and a Meyer lemon confit. It was a delightful contrast in textures with smooth scallops, chewy green beans and crisp, sweet brittle.Here I have to bring up one more tiny complaint. There had been much discussion with the servers and they with the barkeeper about a wine that might stand up to ribs but still not overpower the scallops. The answer was an amazing Chateau du Petit Thouars Touraines Cabernet Franc that is on the menu as a bottle, but which they served in quartino that night. One might think after all the discussion about the appropriate with for both entrees, that the entrees would arrive together and with the Cab Franc, but...
After the scallops, we saw the second salad, wild arugula with pear, pecans and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Neither of us is particularly fond of bitter arugula, but the sweet pear and pecans countered the bitterness beautifully and I'm never going to complain about having a true Parmigiano-Reggiano on my salad (or almost anything else, for that matter). Also, the folks sitting very near us at the next table (tables are very close!) said they had loved both salads and we concur.The sheets of Lavosh with the salads were welcomed to assist in dividing the salads between our plates and were downright tasty as well.
I finally savored my favorite grape, Cabernet Franc, while watching Robert (who was by then professing he couldn't eat another bite) down the Beef Shortribs, with fresh cherry-pepper "BBQ." By the description, he expected a BBQ sauce, but then we're more familiar with wet BBQ.Robert professed the ribs "Great" and I'll take his word for it.
Both of us were stuffed, but I just had to try the Orange Olive Oil Cake. It was light and airy and a perfect choice for two folks who had eaten way too much already.

So what makes a restaurant popular? I have to admit I have little idea. I love Django's for their creativity, but there were the little service slip-ups and, face it, the little cake is washed out on that big white plate and crying out for drizzles of color around it. I am sure the service errors are caused by the small plates that means there are more dishes per table and it is harder to get them all out in a logical order for all the tables. On the other hand, the service at Old Croatian was flawless, friendly and accurate and the food we ordered, while perhaps more pedestrian than the food at Django's, was well executed.
It could be location. There are several new hotel or condo facilities on the mountain crowded with folks looking for food and faced with ho hum bar food or going down the hill to Crested Butte. Django's is a joy to them. Old Croatian is at the far end of the main drag in town, but there is good parking and a pizza joint beyond them seems to do well. Their location has seen maybe seven restaurants in the 15 or so years we've been going to Crested Butte, so perhaps people forget to look there for good food. We talked to one couple at Django's who ate at Old Croatian last winter and while she thought her dish was good, he hated his dish. He won't go back to Old Croatian. Folks in Crested Butte have so many choices, that they don't give a lot of second chances. It can be a bit unforgiving kind of place. In town there are many good to superior restaurants, so Old Croatian has more competition down in town.
While I had a couple little criticisms of Django's, they are minor and mentioned only because the restaurant is so close to perfect. I can no longer imagine going to Crested Butte without eating at Django's. Old Croatian was a good new place with serviceable food and is head and shoulders above some of the other places in town. I only hope it is there next time I am in Crested Butte.