7 December

Portrait: Connie, At The Mansion

by Jon Katz
Portrait: Connie
Portrait: Connie

When I come into the room with Red, Connie is often sitting in her chair, her head bent over looking down to her lap. I had not yet seen her full face or seen her radiant smile, although I know she smiles when she looks down at Red. Today, sitting with her and Red, I said, “Connie, you know I’ve never seen your full face, or the smile I always hear about, I’ve never taken a picture of it. Is that possible?”

And she lifted up her head and gave me the warmest smile, another strong and beautiful woman. I know the holidays are hard for me, and it was a wonderful thing to see her smile, so I asked to take her portrait and she enthusiastically agreed. She wanted the people who are sending her letters and gifts to know what looks like and to see how grateful she is to them.

Connie’s address is: The Mansion, 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

7 December

At The Mansion: Seeing Bill. The Love Of Dogs

by Jon Katz
The Love Of Dogs
The Love Of Dogs

We knocked on the door and asked Bill through the door if he wanted to see Red, and he shouted back, “sure.” Bill is new to the mansion, he said he worked hard in rehab to get to the Mansion, and is grateful to be there. We talked at some length about his dog Duke, whom he had to give away and misses dearly.

Duke brought him the paper every day and barked when strangers came by. “But if somebody wanted to come into the house and cart all the furniture away, he’d let him,” he said, smiling at the mention of Duke.

Bill said he received more than 20 letters this week, they are all in a stack by the window. The afternoon light was pouring through the window and so I stepped out into the hallway to let these two talk and to take a photograph.

Bill’s wife of 62 years died last year, but he said friends and relatives have been looking at the blog and saw his photograph. He wanted me to be sure and say hello to them, and also to thank the many people who wrote to him. Red and I are stepping up our visits to the Mansion during this holiday season, it seems we are all lifting a lot of spirits there.

I am grateful for the opportunity to do that, and to you for opening your hearts and talent to people who can really use it. Holidays are challenging inside of institutions. There is a lot for people to miss.

If you wish to contact Bill, you can write to him (he loves reading about dogs) c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

7 December

At the Mansion: Connie’s Mittens. She Thanks You

by Jon Katz
Connie's Mittens
Connie’s Mittens

Red and I went to the Mansion Assisted Care Facility today, we brought some fresh flowers for Connie and the other residents. Red made a beeline for Connie’s room, the door was open and when I got there, the two of them were communing, she was telling Red about the mittens she just knitted from the yarn sent to her by some readers of the blog.

“Please thank them for me,” she said. “It is wonderful.”

It was the first time I’ve seen Connie smiled like that, she was just beaming, her head was up and she was smiling. She is working on some other mittens to make for the other residents. She said she still is looking for a simple crochet pattern for scarves, and I can’t find one, online or in local bookstores.

When I got into the room, Julie Smith, the activities director at the Mansion, was reading to Connie from several of the  many letters sent to her from all over the country. The Mansion has started a project to help the residents write thank you notes and messages back, everyone I met was talking about your messages and gifts and support. You have made this holiday season at the Mansion something that is warm and bright.

Maria and I are looking forward to the Christmas Party at the Mansion in a week or so, Red is also invited. I wouldn’t dare go without him. It is very gratifying to see how this attention and generosity has so lifted the spirits of the residents. Many have told me that their relatives will not be able to come and see them this Christmas for one reason or another.

But they are surely not alone, and they know that this holiday season.

Your messages line the walls and brighten the rooms and hearts. Everywhere I go, someone is clutching one of your letters or cards or sitting with a quilt or caftan. I am happy to show you Connie’s mittens, which your big hearts made possible. Connie and I yakked for a good while, I will carry her bright smile with me for a good while.

Red is drawing closer to Connie. He sat with his head in her lap for a long time, then lay down at her feet. It is always a remarkable thing for me to see the impact a dog can have on people.

If you wish to write to Connie, you can mail  her c/o Connie, The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816,

7 December

Red’s Massage With Cassandra

by Jon Katz
Red's Massage
Red’s Massage

Red went to see Cassandra Comety of the Cambridge Valley Veterinary Service, it was time for a massage for Red, who runs hard every single day with the sheep, and also did a full afternoon of therapy work. Red is stiff sometimes, but doing well, his laser treatments and massage have helped him.

He trusts Cassandra completely, standing still for her, leaning into her. I brought my new portrait lens and my monochrome camera and I wanted to capture the intimate feeling and trust of the massage. Red gave himself over to it.

7 December

The End Of Objective Truth: The Call To Talk With One Another

by Jon Katz
The End Of Absolute Truth
The End Of Absolute Truth

The very concept of objective truth, wrote George Orwell, is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

America has always been a much more divided country than the teachers like to talk about- whites and people of color, slaves, women, Native-Americans, immigrants, the rich and the poor, the rural and the urban, the gay and the straight, the right and the left.

But within those divisions were many universal truths about the kinds of country we wanted to be, the kinds of freedom we wished to guarantee, the kinds of people we elected to lead us, the kinds of people we invited to our country, the idea that at some point in every disagreement or conflict, we came together for the common good, we viewed the world through similar prisms.

Those ideas  – liberty, prosperity – were considered to be absolute, or universal truths in that they were the common values and ethics that shaped the idea of the country, if not always the realitya. It is true that these were the universal truths of mostly white men, it is also true that there are few, if any absolute or universal truths that bind the system together now.

And the white men- and women – are rising up once more, and demanding change again.

The left and the right, the Republicans and Democrats, the old institutions of journalism,  are much too small and shallow to handle all of the new truths erupting all around us. They never saw it coming, none of them. That’s how you know they’re over.

It is all much bigger than them. I have no real idea if this is all for the better or all for the worse, or some of each.

But I do know that the election is changing the way I look at the world, challenging me to think differently about what I know and believe.

Do we all share any absolute or objective truths?

Objectivity is a central philosophical concept, related to reality and truth. Generally, objective truth means the state or quality of being true even outside of a subject’s individual biases, interpretations, feelings, fantasies and imaginations. I am a seeker of Objective  Truth in all of my writing.

Like absolute truth, objective truth is fading out of the world, and away from our political system.

Absolute truth is defined as an inflexible and unalterable reality: fixed, invariable, unalterable facts. The nature of truth is crucial is crucial to the Christian faith. Not only does Christianity claim there is absolute truth (truth for everyone, everywhere, at all times) but it insists that truth about the world – reality – is that which corresponds to the way things truly are.

In John 14.6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

One absolute truth is that the sun heats the earth, although nothing else about the sun and the earth are universally believed now if they ever were.

I have lived with absolute and objective truths my whole life, and they are beginning to crumble around me, many of them. The idea of absolute truth and the idea of universal truth – a truth that applies to all places and all things – were first advanced by the Greeks, who invented the notion of democracy. The journalism I cherished and practiced preached Objective Truth, not always possible or each to do.

Universal truths – Jefferson and the founders talked of liberty and equality and the rights of property for white  men – were accepted in one form or another by all peoples. Many of those universal truths do not apply any longer in the post-ideology election.

It is a fixed fact that five plus five equals ten, or that there are absolutely no square circles and there are absolutely no round squares. Our politics were held together by certain truths – Abraham Lincoln had a genius for articulating them, at least to part of the country – and by a common and shared information culture. They did not include everyone, but they did include most, if not all, of  the people who were governing or seeking to govern the country.

There were always quarrels and divides,  some awful and bloody, but the universal truths – a peaceful transition of power, the press as check and balance, the ethos of bi-partisan co-operation  – held the center together, they were the glue that held the system in place.

They are no longer universally accepted or embraced truths. Many people are arguing about whether Donald Trump did this or reflected this, and I believe the latter. These new truths were out there simmering and boiling for years, he alone saw them and spoke to them.

In recent years, new communications and information technologies – blogs like this one, social media like Facebook and Twitter – have revolutionized the idea of what  an absolute truth is.   People don’t need media or politicians to tell them what to believe, they can set out on their own and choose their own truth. And they are. They do not pursue facts, but their own truth.

Truth is different from facts as I understand them both. If you go on Facebook, you will see vast streams of absolute truth, and hardly any real fact.  Once, facts shaped and informed truth, now they are malleable, they follow “truth,” and are bent to fit into it. Politics itself, said George Orwell, is a mass of lies, evasions, hatred and schizophrenia.

The Internet, for better or worse, is the world’ most powerful empowerment tool.

It has enabled people to define their own truth, to coalesce around others who shared their idea of what the truth was. And truth has changed because of it, the priests and prophets of truth are being driven from the Temple.

These new technologies are still in their infancy, they are just beginning to show their power and range. The future will bring more truths, not fewer, there is no reversing this tide. And truth is now personal and individual and fluid and dynamic.

In politics, it is hard to find a universal truth –  not about the poor, the environment, foreign policy, criminal reform, government spending, women’s rights, the nature of marriage, the role of faith in public life, gay and transgender rights, race, policing, taxation, health care. We will either find ways of talking to one another and working with one another, or we will all perish together.

I am curiously drawn to this challenge, it is an opportunity to see the world anew, to build something better, to defend truths that are sacred to me.

That rarely happens in a lifetime. There is nothing more creative than change, there is nothing healthier for entrenched ideologues and elites to get thrown into the dryer and twirled around. That is how democracy either reinvents itself or falls apart, and I feel I am witness to a rebirth, not an end. For me, Standing Rock is a window into the future, as significant a happening as the election.

For me, the work is clear.  For most of my life, political parties and ideologue have been shaping my ideas, my mind, my beliefs. Not it is my turn to think for myself. No one will put a label on me, not the left, not the right, and I will not put one on myself. I hope I can never think that small.

We can flee the country or jump into the pool. I’m in.

In some ways, I have been doing this since the election, which has changed my mind. I have talked with at least a score or more people who voted differently than I did, the conversations were interesting and civil and revealing. I never felt as if I was talking to an enemy, I never felt threatened or endangered.

We can definitely talk to one another, we can even listen sometimes. It is absolutely possible, if we can stop talking to the mirror sometimes. A friend of mine said he would never sit down and talk with “racists, sexists, and idiots.”  He suggested I was a faithless and weak-minded traitor for trying. He is free to do as he wishes.

If there are few absolute truths left in politics, there are many on a different and more personal level. I believe people are committed to community, and value community for themselves and their children. I believe people are committed to family. People seek personal connection and are eager and willing to help one another. I believe people wish to do good, given the chance. I believe people will hear Jesus’s plea and give hope to the poor.

We can argue all we want about entitlement programs for the elderly, but when I ask for help and support for the elderly people living in the Mansion Assisted Care Facility, an absolute truth quickly emerges: People of all ages, and different political truths, the left and the right and many others, send cards and messages, food and clothing, love and support.

From rural and urban areas, from all kinds of people hearts open and  reach out. We all have mothers and fathers who get old, we all know what it means for people to care for them.

There are absolute truths beyond  political parties and political labels, they are personal and very human. But I think now they live below our broken system, and apart from it.  They are not connected to it. There is no humanity or inspiration in our politics. We are deserving of more choices than this.

People  exist in a post-argument, post-ideological world. I see it every day in my work.

Many people fear and oppose immigration, but when we asked for donations to give 200 refugee children Welcome Bags, people from many different places and ideologies sent more than $3,000 in donations in 48 hours. There was no argument, no division, no raging on Facebook. Immigrant support organizations are being flooded with volunteers.

When I tried to help support the New York Carriage horses, I found myself in the company of conservatives and liberals, Jews and Catholics and Muslims, rich and poor people, lawyers and artists, immigrants and socialites, people on the left and people on the right, white people and black people.

We had no trouble working together.

Our political parties are morally bankrupt and broken, even corrupt.

They stand for nothing.

They make promises they can’t keep, they need too much money and take too much money, embittering the people they are supposed to serve. Our media has lost its soul and purpose, thus its credibility and trust, choking in the grip of corporate masters seeking only profit. They have made our  country’s kind of ethical journalism, once the envy of the world, valueless and without honor.

Are we really living in a populist revolution? I’ll believe it when as many out-of-work steelworkers and coal miners join the cabinet as billionaires and generals.

The Greeks, who invented the idea of absolute truth, believed it to be a logical necessity for governing and for democracy.

It’s never going back to the old way, not for journalism, for politics, for ideologues, for people who love to stick labels on their words and the ideas of other people. Some people call this a revolution. They might be right. We are called to find new ways to talk to one another.

The information revolution has re-defined what truth means for almost everyone who uses it, and the Information Revolution is just a baby in terms of human history.

For me, there is a lot of good news. If I can reach across many of these divides with my blog, others can. And are.

For me, a new time, a new way to think about the world and my own humble part in it.

Beyond argument. Beyond ideology. Beyond the idea that there are absolute truths and no one but us knows what they are.

 

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