Heroes

Posted on 12/28/2010 by paulefallon

My fourth grade teacher asked us to name our hero.  Simple for me.  Thomas Paine.  I had just read his biography and was enchanted with the man who had so much influence in the founding or our country without raising a weapon.  I was a pacifist before I could even spell the word.

Thomas Paine suited me well as my hero for years.  He was a singular figure, claimed by few others, literate and influential.  In graduate school I added Charles Corea, an Indian architect who mentored at MIT.  To my mind he has the most perfect architectural practice – designing significant public buildings, small gems of art, mansions for the wealthy and a strong body of thoughtful work for the poor. It would be difficult for one architect to design such a broad range of buildings in the United States, where we cultivate specialization.

I never considered why I selected these two men as my heroes until I listened to the 1988 Bush/Dukakis debate.  Each contender was asked to name their personal hero.  Bush announced Jaime Escalante, the inner city math teacher immortalized in the movie Stand and Deliver.  Dukakis wavered in fuzzy liberal fashion and eventually landed on Jonas Salk.  That was the moment I knew Bush would win the election.  Salk was better known and arguably did more for the greater good than Jaime Escalante, but a lab scientist is a lame choice as a hero.  Heroes are not measured by their statistical influence, rather how they touch individuals in a positive way.  They must be human, they may even stumble and fall, yet they achieve the outer reach or our aspirations, and that makes them worthy of emulation.  I decided my two heroes still fit the bill pretty well. 

In the past two years I have gained three more heroes, an unexpected bounty.  Each of my heroes is different yet each shares a common approach to how they inspire.  First, they work outside systems of government and institutions.  Second, they work local.  Just as Lean process improvement in business focuses on an endless series of continuous improvements, so the ongoing effort to improve the conditions of our earth succeeds by concentrating on one small, achievable part rather than tackling an entrenched system.  Third, they do what they know.  The doctor doesn’t build roads, the builder doesn’t teach English, the teacher doesn’t treat illness.  Fourth, and most importantly, they are patient.  All of my heroes work in Haiti, and if there is any lesson that Haiti can teach the world, it is that the individual has little control, but with patience change can occur.

I met John Mulqueen in 2008 in response to an office email looking for help to design a clinic in Haiti.  John is a pediatrician in Gardner, an hour west of Boston.  He lives in a big, doctor-size house, is married to Paula, a nurse, and has a couple of children in their teens and twenties. About ten years ago John and Paula began going to Haiti and ran clinics in open fields and churches.  Eventually, they focused on an area around Les Cayes, the third largest city, started an organization called Forward in Health, and in 2008 bought a piece of land to build a permanent clinic.  There are enough mementoes around their house in indicate that the Mulqueen’s are religious, which may influence their dedication to Haiti, but that is never transmitted to anyone who works with them.  The first thing Paula tells new visitors to Haiti at her orientation is, “We are not going to change Haiti.”  It is deflating to an earnest volunteer, but it needs to be said, and when you travel to Haiti with Forward in Health, that dictum takes heart.  We work hard running clinics, but we also take rest afternoons, spend a day at a beach, even go to a night club.  All work is no play is antithetical to the Haitian experience, and the Mulqueen’s perspective emphasizes that our role it not to parachute in and save people, but to be among Haitians, to witness their lives, to influence positively where possible and accept where it is not. 

Almost ten years on, Forward in Health owns a parcel of land outside of Les Cayes with a ten foot wall around it and the foundations in place for Phase 1 of the clinic.  They have been stymied by lack of money and lack of technology as well as by flood and hurricane and earthquake and revolt.  They accept that they do not know when their clinic will be finished.  They accept that the there are many unresolved aspects to the work.  They also accept the benefits that follow disaster – money is more available in Haiti since the earthquake and they have expanded their clinic plans to include operating rooms, tossing me the challenge of how to provide reliable power for anesthesia in an area with no power grid. In the meantime they hold clinics for the community under the mango tree on the site a few times a year, they take Gardner high school students to Haiti on exchange visits, and they have spun off a group to develop a separate orphanage.  They see a need, they address the parts they know how to handle directly and delegate the rest. 

It takes about two seconds to warm up to John Mulqueen, and once you do you would never consider saying no to anything he needs.  He tells great stories, loves a good drink, banters freely and seems so easy going you would never guess he has the determination to take on this remarkable, unlikely endeavor. He laughs off every setback and always finds a work around that allows progress, which is why I am sure he will eventually succeed.

Lexidam Edme was one of those children who benefited from a kindly woman who sent $10 a month to support a deserving child in a foreign land.  Her investment has paid off in returns unseen on any financial market.  Lex grew up on Gonave; the large island in the middle of the Gulf of Gonave, the forms the wide backwards ‘C’ that defines Haiti.  He is one of seven children, but the benefits of his sponsor set him apart.  He learned to read and write, received proper nutrition, and in his twenties he departed for the United States, like many other Haitians of advantage.  After ten years or so, having married an American missionary he met as a youth and reunited with in Massachusetts, Lex and Renee returned to Haiti and founded the Mission of Hope in the town of Grand Goave, ninety minutes from Port-au-Prince, along the shore overlooking Isle de Gonave.  Grand Goave has a mayor and a government, but as far as I can tell, Lex is ‘the man’.  Mission of Hope is what we might call a Settlement House. There is a church, with Lex as pastor, and a school, with Lex as principal, and an orphanage, with Lex as the father, and a food distribution center, with Lex as disperser, and a transitional housing construction  project, with Lex as the superintendent, and a fresh water system, with Lex as… well you get the idea.

About seventy people work for Lex, everyone in towns knows Lex, and he carries off his role with a wonderful mix of pride and humility.  He is a talented, gregarious, open-hearted and demonstrative.  In the same two seconds you take to appreciate John Mulqueen’s unassuming earnestness, Lex captivates with charisma.  He has a million projects and dreams and even if only a fraction come true, Grand Goave will be immeasurably improved.  In a country lethargic from heat and malnutrition and scant opportunity, Lex is lightening rod of action.

Len Gengal is not the kind of guy I typically like.  He is big, I mean big, and loud and occupies whatever space he’s in with so much energy you feel pushed to the wall.  He develops subdivisions of big single family houses in central Massachusetts, so his environmental impact is anathema to my Cambridge sensibilities.  Education is not his strong suit; his success is in making the deal. But when Len Gengal’s qualities are channeled on a mission, he is a force of nature awesome to behold.

The tragedy of Britney Gengel, who died in the Haitian earthquake January 12, 2010, is well documented elsewhere.  Since I don’t watch much TV I had never heard of the Gengel’s, or their tragedy, or how they became the personal face of the earthquake for many Americans.  I met the Gengel’s through the Mulqueen’s and offered to help them design the orphanage in honor of Brit.  Within two seconds of meeting you like Len, not because he is earnest or charismatic, but because he simply will not have it any other way.  The first time he bear hugged me I shuddered, then I got used to it; now I look forward to it.  Len grows on you so fast you can’t remember when he wasn’t there.

Whenever I am with Len I wonder, if something happened to my daughter, the same age as Britney, would I have the strength to do something so public, so ambitious, in her honor?  Len inspires me to think I could though hopefully I will never be put to that test.  He is a media impresario.  By keeping Britney’s story in the public eye, Len not only raises money for the orphanage, he also keeps his daughter present.  He cajoles the newscasters, politicians, and the building community for assistance with a story so heartfelt we are honored to play a part in realizing the dream.  But what is most heroic about Len Gengel is his naivety.  The first time Len ever left the United States was to visit Haiti ten days after the earthquake.  As his wife CherylAnn once told me, “Before the earthquake, we could not have found Haiti on a map.”   Now the family has been there four times in one year, they have bought a piece of land, imported a truckload of supplies and intend to build one of the most earthquake resistant structures in the country to house 66 children they have never met.  Len has none of John Mulqueen’s patience.  This orphanage is going to happen and he is going to make it happen soon.  That is why Len is in Haiti as I write this, and why next week I will be there to stake out his daughter’s orphanage and start the foundations.  The ground breaking will take place before the first anniversary of the earthquake; a notable feat for a charitable project in any country, a miracle in Haiti.  The only reason is it happening is that Len refused to listen to those who said that is couldn’t.

I feel so fortunate to have three heroes in my daily life whom I can assist.  They inspire me, they teach me important lessons.  Think small, stay the course, do what you know.  You can make a difference.

Posted in Haiti | Leave a comment

Living with my Mother after Death

Posted on 12/25/2010 by paulefallon

I woke early on Christmas morning to a dream of my mother.  She was lumbering down a narrow alley wearing a hefty coat.  All around her were pillars of concrete block infilled with giant industrial windows divided into dozens of black-framed mullions.  She was only a silhouette, yet there was no mistaking her.  She raised her heavy arm.  I could not discern if she held a mallet or a hammer or just a clenched fist.  She struck at the windows, pane after pane, breaking the glass.  In the instant before I came full awake I was confused – was she was trying to get in or trying to get out?

My mother died in June this year after what I like to describe as the perfect death.  My brother found her struggling in her apartment one afternoon.  He took her to emergency, they diagnosed an array of system failures, transported her to hospice and after eight days she was gone.  No extended lingering; just enough time for the family to rally and pay respects.  A month before she died my mother had been on a vacation with her cousins, two days before my brother found her she had been shopping at Target.  My mother was well prepared for death and fortunate that it fell so swiftly

I was fortunate as well. I had been to Denver in late May and had a lovely afternoon with her.  My sister and two brothers stood vigil the entire time she was in hospice; I did not feel compelled to go. When I returned for her funeral my sister asked me to do the eulogy, a welcome opportunity to reflect and compose and send mom off in a wobbly, tearful voice.  All nine of us were there – the five siblings and four spouses.  We spent two days sitting around eating and talking and reliving ancient particulars.  When I flew home I felt at peace with my mother’s passing.

Mom has a healthy presence in my life these days.  Traces of her laughing, the scent of her housecoat, her morning songs, all pass fluidly in my mind.  My children and I talk about her with ease, always in fun.  Her liberal spirit and family dedication don’t get as much attention as the tales of her terrible cooking and horrific gift-giving, but that seems only right in a family where sarcasm has always been the supreme sign of affection.  Fallon’s are not constituted to deify the dead.  Occasionally I miss her – she was my go-to girl when I craved idle phone chat – but mostly she pops in and out of mind with a welcome, cheery countenance.

Abby resurrected the Christmas gift my mother gave her last year from the Goodwill box in the basement to wear to an ‘ugly sweater’ party.  She danced around the dining room in the mauve polyester track jacket festooned with a blurry procession of reindeer.  “I could never give this sweater away!  It’s so bad that it’s good.  Besides, it’s the last present Grandma gave me.”  To which I replied, “No wonder mom had to die – she reached the epitome of bad presents and had nowhere else to go.” We laughed to convulsion.

In wakeful moments my mother is comforting as milk and cookies but grieving demands more sustenance than sweets can offer; we have to swallow gruel before it can be satisfied. 

Revised truth, my mother’s death was not easy.  Her final system failure was a leaking aortic aneurysm, a lingering, painful way to go.  Hospice plied her with morphine upon morphine to stem the pain, but the drugs loosed my mother’s strict composure and she spent her final days in an agitated soup of regret and recrimination.  We can pretend that my mother on drugs wasn’t really my mother, but all of that stuff about our father, about us, about her failures and unsatisfied dreams, that all came from somewhere.

Revised truth, despite trying to keep it light, I have grieved more than the passing of ugly sweaters.  The summer was a blur; I grew absent-minded, I took naps, time passed unacknowledged.  I couldn’t understand why; my mother had not been an active part of my life for over thirty years, until I realized that understanding was not the point.  The point is to accept. The body and the mind take the time they need to accept, even if that time is not consciously given. 

In the Fall I read The Glass Castle by Jeanette Wells.  Actually I consumed it.  The family she portrays may have been more troubled than my own, but the dance of dysfunction and devotion between her two beautiful, damaged, narcissistic parents is the tale of my growing up.  I cried page after page.  I was happy to find someone who described the wonder and the hell of it with such accuracy. I was comforted, but also saddened, to know that others had persevered a grueling childhood and emerged strong.  The book was a catharsis.  All the years of adventure and uncertainty, of parents behaving as children and children forced to behave as adults, are behind me now.  My mother and father’s drama has played itself out in this life.  All that is left is sorting it out, itself a considerable task.

Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, bore on me like a steamroller.  Last year my mother was with us, with my aunt and my children and my cousins.  It was a worthy feast.  This year we were only nine, two of them friends of friends I had never met.  I slogged through the preparation.  My sister called, ever astute, and reminded me how often my mother travelled to Cambridge for Thanksgiving, how mom was wrapped in that holiday for me.  People arrived, the food was delicious, the conversation lively.  We toasted mom.  More people came for dessert.  It wasn’t the same without her, but I got through it.  People say it will be easier next year.  Perhaps, though I make no assumptions.

On December 9, the morning after my mother’s birthday, I woke to a different dream.  I was in the room I grew up in New Jersey, the room with the baseball wallpaper that I shared with my brothers.  I was grown, the time was the present.  My mother was dead, laid out on the bottom bunk bed and I was tending her.  In the dream I had been tending her for some time.  She had been dead for weeks and I was holding her captive in my boyhood room.  I had not told anyone she was dead.  I was keeping her for myself.

I spend about as much time with my mother in death as I did in life.  And just as in life, most of our time together is good; some of it hurts.  Is my mother breaking windows in death to escape the constraints of the life she lived on earth?  Am I keeping her captive in my room to claim time I craved as a boy?  These yearnings will never be satisfied for either of us.  I cannot control the weird dreams and unrequited longings that will pop up for the rest of my days.  But when my spirits are keen and I can appreciate the value of good intention no matter how well executed, that’s when I remember mom in her glory; a terrible cook who longed to nurture, a purveyor of bad gifts who loved to bestow them, a woman with the most generous smile and the sweetest laugh who tried, to her dying day, to be the best mother she could.

Posted in Personal | 1 Comment

Eulogy for Pat Fallon

Posted on 12/25/2010 by paulefallon

This is the eulogy I gave at my mother’s funeral in Dnever on June 26, 2010.

November 15 of 2001 was the height of the Indian summer in Massachusetts.  My mother and I drove up to the North Shore of Boston on a crisp and sunny day to stroll the streets of Rockport.  On the drive Mom gave me the low-down on her most recent project – funeral planning.  She had her living will in order, labeled prize possessions for distribution, and arranged for her cremation and burial next to her parents in Totowa, New Jersey.

I listened politely.  It gave Mom peace to know that everything was planned, but the discussion was too morbid for such a vibrant day.  Mom was fully alive and I did not want to contemplate her death.

We had lunch in a seaside café, wandered through trinket stores, bought some beautiful shells to craft into Christmas ornaments.  Then out of the blue she said “And more thing, Paulie, when I die nobody needs to come see my dead face.”

I smiled, but knew that when the time came, I would be a disobedient son.

I want to thank all of you for coming here this morning to be part of the disobedient band who have come together against Pat’s wishes for the purpose of singing her praises.  This may not be what Mom said she wanted, but I bet she is pretty pleased with everybody who showed up.

_______________

Pat Fallon was an iconic representative of what is often called ‘The Greatest Generation’.

She lived the Depression first hand, bunking in with the Flanagan’s while her father held on to his job walking door to door to collect dime premiums for Prudential.

World War II clouded her high school and college years, and swept her brother Bill into a watery grave.

She celebrated the Allies victory and enjoyed the affluence that followed, working in New York at Bonwit Teller until she married the man of her dreams, had six children and lived in a tidy suburban house.

Even as the century wore on and the vision of the Greatest Generation began to fracture, Mom represented its evolution.  In the 1970’s she reentered the world of work, then in the 1980’s she got divorced.  She lived alone the rest of her life, like so many women of her generation.

While all of this is true, it falls short as a way to measure the unique individual who was my mother.

Our Mom was warm, thoughtful, and at times, wicked funny, but in these last few months I have developed a much wider perspective on her life.  I think that she was stronger than she appeared, certainly stronger than she portrayed herself, and it is fair to say that she was even courageous.

The world changed. Nuclear families became networked families.  Ethnic and religious ties loosened.  Individuals pursued singular dreams. Each of these changes bumped and stretched Mom’s idea of a family, but she absorbed the change, she adapted to it, and I think she even thrived on the adventures that resulted.

Look at where she started.  Pat grew up the youngest daughter in a very Irish Catholic family, pious and close knit, god-loving and god-fearing, in a small town with her twelve cousins nearby.  Her oldest brother became a priest, her sister a nun, her closest brother a war hero. Pat married.  That may appear to be a conventional act, but anyone who ever met Jack Fallon knew that marrying him was rebellious, and my mother signed on for the full ride.

So how has Pat’s family evolved today?

We are spread apart. Her five children live in four different states; she has fourteen grandchildren who live thousands of miles from each other.

We are less Irish.  Mom and her children have 100% Irish blood.   But all five of us married people with zero Irish ancestry, and our children married an even wider pool.  For Mom’s eleven great grandchildren, Irish is just another ingredient in their unique ethnic cocktail.  They are simply ‘American’.

We are also less Catholic.  In fact, none of us are Catholic.

So how did each of Pat Fallon’s children develop the strength of character, or independence, or whatever you want to call it, to carve out our own lives in our own places with our own partners and our own set of beliefs?

The answer lies at the source, with our mother.  Pat Fallon had a fierce belief in family and in church, but it was never a narrow belief, it was always a broad and inclusive view of the world, and she translated that to each of us.  Our mother valued her roots, and she remained true to them, but she never tied us down with them.  She gave us the strength to find our own.

___________________

Most of the time when I think about my mother I feel like I am eight years old again, living in New Jersey in that very noisy house on Ray Drive.  We had two parents, like everyone else on the street, but it often felt like there was about six.  There was Mom, and Dad, but there were also Rogers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Lowe.

The Magnavox at the foot of the stairs, the one I polished with Pledge every Saturday morning, was the center of our house, and the albums that we kept in the storage compartment were our well worn treasures.  The two most popular by far, were The Sound of Music, a picture of Mary Martin standing tall and confident with an impish grin and a guitar strung around her neck, and My Fair Lady, with the Hirschfield line drawing of a benevolent George Bernard Shaw peering over the clouds, manipulating the marionette of a cockney Julie Andrews with strings.

Those two album covers conveyed all the important lessons I needed to know. First, that good things happen to people with pluck and good cheer, and second, that the hand of God guides everything.

Mom sang.  Mom sang a lot.  We learned early on that when there was torch song screaming out of the kitchen it was a good idea to steer clear, but when the tunes of Broadway’s golden age filled our house, everything was right in the world.  When Dad handed over his Friday night paycheck she would ‘Look, look, look to the rainbow and follow the fellow who followed the dream.’  When she reminisced about days before children she would sing “I could have danced all night’ and in those three glorious years when John Kennedy was President, our house was cloaked in the glory of ‘Camelot’.

That intense musical indoctrination of catchy tunes sticks to person.  Even today, I still whistle whenever I feel afraid.  Apparently show tune philosophy even crosses generational boundaries, because even as we speak, Mom’s grandson Andy is taking the directive to ‘Climb Every Mountain’ with dogged literacy as he hikes the 2100 mile Appalachian Trail.

There was a lot of Broadway in our house in New Jersey, and I always associate it with the best of our times there.  But the zeal to live life as lyricized by Rogers and Hammerstein reached its apex in 1971 when my parents actually moved to O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A-!

I will never forget one sunny morning in the spring of 1972, a typical school day.  I was eating my breakfast cereal, decked out in my plaid hip huggers and wide collar mango shirt, thinking I was pretty cool.  The house was silent.  I thought everyone was asleep, and then Mom and Dad burst in from the driveway, laughing and sparkling, giddy as kids fresh off a Ferris wheel.

“Where have you been?” I asked, with some suspicion.

“We got up early and went to see the sunrise.”  Dad said.

“We watched it from the overpass on the highway” my mother could not stop laughing, “it was the highest place we could find!”

It is uncomfortable for a 17 year old boy to see his parents so much in love, but the vision imprints on your heart and reveals a potential for joy that teenage cynicism denies.  For an instant my parent’s insane decision to uproot us and head west made at least a little sense.  He wanted to be Curly, she wanted to be Laurey; they wanted the wide open spaces and possibilities so vast it hardly mattered whether they were actually realized.  Oh, it was a beautiful morning.

___________________

Grand though it may be to reflect on my mother’s life through the lens of the twentieth century and the vast sweep of the Oklahoma plains, memories do not span decades or continents.  Memories are like drops of spring rain; each one uniquely felt as it stings our skin and nourishes our soul.  When I think of my mother, the little things come to mind first, and they bring the most heartfelt reactions.

Like the way she used to sit on the front steps in the summer with sweat pouring from her brow and she would say “Paulie, feel the back of my neck.”  It was gross, feeling her clammy skin with the thin lines of wrinkle, but it was so incredibly intimate, touching my mother in such an obscure place.

Or the way she cut our toe nails.  Mom made a production of it, sitting in the living couch while I propped up next to her, my leg draped over her lap, my feet in the strong light.  It was part surgical, part ritual.

Mom had her characteristic sayings. 

“Jesus Mary and Joseph give me strength,” which was always followed by a mammoth sigh.

“Little friend,” a gender neutral label for whoever we were dating.

“Rise and shine,” which she always shouted when we didn’t feel like doing either.

And of course, “It’s the easiest thing,” which usually described a meal fabricated from boxes of frozen food and a brave head of iceberg lettuce cut into six defiant wedges and drenched in a bottle of Russian Dressing.

Mom wasn’t much of a cook, but her shortcomings in that department became a kind of personal style in itself.  Her Tater Tot casserole was famously bad; crispy to a fault on top, covering god only knows what mush loitered below.  Fortunately, we believed in a benevolent God and so we remained ignorant of what was actually underneath.

No recipe was allowed to be followed as prescribed and Mom always seemed surprised when a delicacy she had enjoyed at someone’s house didn’t taste quite the same after she substituted canned asparagus for fresh, skimmed milk for cream and left out the three spices she couldn’t find in her cupboard.

For all her cooking foibles, Mom’s food never lacked in devotion.  I will never witness another apple cut into such thin slices of love as the ones my mother carved for me when I came home for school lunches.  Nor will I ever dance with the same grace I mustered during those same periods when, after lunch, she taught me the box step in the kitchen while “Shall We Dance” played on the trusty Magnavox.

______

After 84 years we all come to realize that it is the little things that have mattered most.  The little things stick.  Mom never taught math or sold real estate or installed cable or designed hospitals or ran a school.  Her children do those things.  Her accomplishments are not measured in material goods she made, rather they are measured in the lives of the thirty direct descendents she nourished and nurtured on this earth.  She enabled us, through diligence and devotion, to be the best we could be, and that is quite an accomplishment on her part.

Each of us here has our own memories of Pat Fallon, and each of us will find our own path through our grief.  Sometimes we will share it, just as we are now, trading stories of how Pat influenced our lives.  Sometimes our grief will come from places we cannot anticipate.  Last Saturday night, the day after Mom died, I had a friend over for dinner and decided to make chicken salad with grapes and walnuts.  Only when I was carefully cutting the white grapes in half, to release their flavor, did I remember that Mom used to make that salad. And there is the grief that will only emerge over time, when a situation triggers a memory and allows Pat to linger in our hearts for many years to come.

Our time of reflection and remembrance began when Mom entered hospice.  Her sister Fran and the other nuns in Albany have added Pat to their daily prayers, Mom’s granddaughter Abby is lighting candles for her in the major cathedrals of Europe as Abby backpacks the Continent, and many, many people are remembering Pat by supporting hospice and the remarkable care she received there in her final days.

But Mom would never be one to leave us in a lurch and I believe, even now she is guiding us in our grief.  There was a time when my Mom and my Dad may have fancied themselves as Laurey and Curly from Oklahoma, but we all know that the Broadway couple they most emulated were Julie Jordan and Billy Bigelow, the tragic but eternal lovers from Carousel.  I have never witnessed a love as deep, or as dysfunctional, as the love my parents shared.  They were a couple destined for eternity who wore each other out on a daily basis.  Fortunately for both of them, their day-to-day existence is behind them and eternity lay ahead like a vast and blissful plain.  As Mom lay in her hospice bed she worried aloud whether she would cross over alone or whether Dad would be there, waiting for her on the other side.  We reassured her that he would, and I believe he was there to meet her.  They are together again, this time for good, this time forever.

And so the ending is pretty much like that classic musical.  Billy redeems himself in the afterlife.  Julie survives him and raises their daughter in dignity and grace. All strife ends.  All hopes are realized.

Even in death, Moms philosophy is valid.  She continues to teach us well.

“When you walk through a storm hold your chin up high

And don’t be afraid of the dark.

At the end of the storm is a golden sky

With the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on, through the wind

Walk on, through the rain,

Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk, on, walk on, with hope in your heart

And you’ll never walk alone. 

You’ll never walk alone.”

Posted in Personal | 1 Comment

The Mayor of New York Battles Soft Drinks

Posted on 12/19/2010 by paulefallon

On October 16 the New York Times published an article, “Unlikely Allies in Food Stamp Debate” which focused on how left leaning non-profit hunger groups and Big Food interests aligned in their opposition to Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to bar food stamp recipients from  purchasing sugar soft drinks with food stamps. The article gave a credible history of how the hunger community and corporate food interests have found common interest since the inception of the food stamp program during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.  With more than 1 in 8 Americans now receiving food stamps, their coalition is a telling one.  The hunger groups advocate that food stamps provide much needed food and the corporations reap about $4 billion per year in government payments from food stamp recipients.

The article touched on a wide range of arguments – that barring soft drink purchases infringed on individual rights, that it would ‘perpetuate the myth’ that the poor make unhealthy choices, and that despite a correlation between soft drink consumption and obesity and a correlation that women and boys on food stamps are more obese than their counterparts, that correlation does not prove causality.

Like so many arguments raged today in the media and over the air waves, the real issues are not addressed in the article.  They are too politically incorrect for the New York Times. Simply put, if we (the citizens of the US) give something to someone (people receiving food stamps) can we restrict how they use it? The answer is, yes, and the truth is, we do it all the time.

After all, why do we give people food stamps?  Because we don’t trust the poor enough to give them money. Besides food stamps for food, we have Section 8 subsidies for housing, Medicaid for health care, and fuel assistance to stay warm in winter.  We have a history of offering specific assistance, but we don’t like to give cold cash.  The most enduring cash program, AFDC (Aid for Families with Dependent Children) was wiped out in 1996 and replaced with TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), riddled with work requirements, time limitations and other restrictions.

I am against these patchwork programs for two reasons.  First, they keep poor people poor by never giving them quite enough resources to rise above their plight or enough incentive to actually change.  Second, they create a huge bloat of middle-class government level positions. With Federal employees making on average more than double their private sector counterparts, and the State of Maryland having the highest household income in the nation, the real beneficiaries of our social programs are not the poor but the people who administer them.

Then again, I am compelled to support these programs because they define, however feebly, the baseline against which society says ‘you cannot be trusted to take care of yourself and your family, and we will intervene’. This sounds stringent, but it is a fundamental measure of any civilized society – how well do we care for those who cannot care for themselves.  

I fear we come up pretty short on that measure.  As long as our definition of the social safety net is the hodgepodge of poorly coordinated programs, we will muddle through. But until we come to the point where we will give cash to people who need it and allow them to spend it as they like (which will be like, never), I am in sync with Mayor Bloomberg – sugar soda is bad for us and should be exempted from any list of fundamental needs.

Posted in United States | Leave a comment

My Organizations in Haiti

Posted on 12/12/2010 by paulefallon

Several people have asked me how they can learn more about the organizations I am involved with in Haiti.  If you would like to know more about them, or would like to support them, I am involved with three groups that are truly making a difference.

Forward in Health is a non-religious affiliated group out of Gardner, MA that has run visiting clinics in the area around Les Cayes, Haiti for the past six years.  Since the earthquake they have run several emergency medical clinics.  They have a seven acre site in Fond Fred, Haiti and are in the process of building a permanent clinic with two operating rooms.  They have long term plans to expand the clinic to include dental and radiology care and have a place for permanent and visiting medical staff.  Eventually, FIH hopes to build a food distribution facility with a nutrition program and an orphanage.  Visit forwardinhealth.org to see construction photos.

Mission of Hope is a non-denominational Christian settlement house in Grand Goave Haiti.  The mission has a school with 600 students, distributes food, hosts visiting clinics, and these days performs a variety of emergency assistance programs, such as building transitional houses.  Lex and Renee Edme have been operating Mission of Hope for ten years.  They recently received a grant from a group in Germany to build a permanent school, which I have designed.  The school will include 12 classrooms, a library, computer room, support spaces and a community meeting space that will also serve as their church meeting room. Visit missionofhopehaiti.net to learn more about their programs.

BeLikeBrit is the non-profit foundation started by the Gengel family to honor their daughter.  The foundation’s goal is to build and operate an orphanage to house 66 orphans in Haiti.  Visit belikebrit.org or friend belikebrit on facebook to see terrific photos of our trip.  You can also see Len Gengel’s post trip interview:

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/12002323846385/father-to-open-orphanage-in-haiti-for-daughter/

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Jameson

Posted on 12/11/2010 by paulefallon

There’s a little boy in Haiti who owns a piece of my heart.

One morning last August when Andy and I were part of a building crew erecting transitional houses we came to a dusty flat midway up the mountain where there were two shacks, an open fire, a thin, pregnant women, a jaundiced husband and a swarm of children.  As we were nailing the prefabricated frames in place Andy mentioned that you know you’ve been in Haiti a while when you start to differentiate the gradations of poverty.  These people were very poor.  The children’s bellies were distended, their eyes listless from lack of everything.

I stood on a ladder as we unrolled the reinforced tarp wall covering and when I reached down to my bucket of roofing nails with wide plastic washers a small black hand held three up to me.  I had not seen this boy before; it was hard to believe he was of this family.  He was small, for sure, but his smile was quick, his skin shiny.  He was thin but his proportions suggested meals on a regular basis.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the nails, reaching up to bang them into place, finding another handful ready for me the next time I leaned over.

“Quel nom?” I asked on the third round, when it was clear that I had acquired a helper. “Jameson.”  He called up at me with an eager smile.

I nailed my way along the top of the wall, double folding the tarp as Pedro, our crew supervisor, had demonstrated.  If I dropped a nail Jameson picked it up and put in my bucket, but he was always ready with the next handful when I needed them.  We communicated in perfect pigeon – a bit of English, a bit of French, a lot of hand gestures and plenty of smiles. It turns out that Jameson is eight, though he looks no more than six, that he lives ‘over there’ and that he goes to school.  Every Haitian child tells every white person that they attend school, whether they do or not, but I believed Jameson. He possessed a confidence and authority that suggested experience beyond a simple shack and a charcoal fire.  If other children tried to help me he nudged them aside.  They shuffled off to help others, but Jameson was clearly the most adroit at the job.

When we finished the house Jameson tagged along to the next.  We chatted along the path, a conversation more convivial than informative.  I carried the bucket of nails; he gripped his tiny hand around the handle as well, sharing the burden.

When we returned to Mission of Hope for lunch Jameson disappeared.  He was not allowed inside except for class or church services; the Mission would be overrun if locals wandered in at will.  After lunch, he found our crew and became my assistant once again.  And every day thereafter, whether we were building in the flat near the Bay or the hillside beyond the highway, Jameson sought us out and joined the effort.

I returned to Grand Goave in late September with Len and Bernie Gengel to witness the land for the Be Like Brit orphanage.  As we descended the dirt road after surveying the site a familiar face popped out between two tents.  “Jameson!” I called out.  He ran to me and clung to my thigh.  I put my hand around his bony shoulder and we walked tight against each other, chattering away with no greater comprehension nor lesser warmth than we’d shared a month before.  We clung to each other until we reached the highway.  Our group turned right towards the Mission.  He darted his eyes both ways, slipped from under my hand and raced across the pavement to the flats.

I am not a person who holds many premonitions in life.  But I feel quite sure that I will see Jameson again; and that notion is a great comfort to me.

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Looking for Health in Las Vegas

Posted on 12/05/2010 by paulefallon

The Center for Health Design is a non-profit group out of California that advocates for creating healthcare environments that are patient and family-centered and utilize evidence-based design, meaning that design decisions are backed by documented environmental research. As an organization it is a microcosm of our healthcare system- well intentioned, fixated on ‘high end’ trappings of the business, and ultimately missing the point.

The Center for Health Design has done some great stuff. They have been instrumental in making private patient rooms a regulatory requirement by supporting research that demonstrates patients in private rooms have better outcomes under many measures.  They support research that correlates reduced patient stress with improved clinical communication and the benefits of bringing nature into the healing environment.  The Center for Health Design is literally a breath of fresh air after the technology obsessed 1960’s and 1970’s that bequeathed us gigantic windowless hospitals of endless beige corridors where patients shuttle from device to device.

The Center for Health Design makes things better, but it also makes things more expensive.  In a new hospital today, private rooms and other family centered features push the size of inpatient units to over 800 square feet per bed.(it was in the 500-600 square foot range).  Due to patient privacy and family accommodations, the spaces patients occupy before and after their procedures in new surgical suites now equal or exceed the amount of space dedicated to the operating rooms themselves. Hospitals have grand piano players in their lobbies, patient rooms so large that families require their own TV’s, and project costs that can exceed $1000 per square foot.

Every year The Center for Health Design holds a conference filled with impressive seminars on how firms are creating these fabulous environments, networking opportunities galore, and an exhibition hall where manufacturers of healthcare products trot out their latest wares.  Healthcare spending now surpasses 17% of our Gross National Product, and with our aging population, the 20% mark is not far off.  Wandering the exhibit halls of Healthcare Design ’10, I wondered if perhaps the Military Industrial Complex had finally met its match in the Healthcare Industrial Complex.

If you are rich the American healthcare system is likely the preferred choice in the world. If you are middle class with the benefit of insurance you can have access to incredible technology as long as you are willing to do battle with the insurers whose first response to almost any claim is ‘denied’.  If you are very poor you can receive consistent care as long as you are willing to suffer the indignity we bestow on anyone who claims a need from the government.  But if you are struggling and uninsured you are in the worst bucket – priced out of care you can afford, the only place you can get medical attention is in the emergency room environment – the most expensive, least comprehensive form of care.

Our healthcare system is so dysfunctional; the term ‘system’ is too generous to apply.  So why can’t we make fundamental change?  The answer lies in the chime of every slot machine, the spin of every roulette wheel, and the cacophony energy we call Las Vegas.  Americans demand the opportunity to have the best and we will not settle for anything less.  We do not require that everyone actually get the best healthcare so long as at least some of us have the chance.  Actually, we rather like that it is not universally available; access to healthcare has become another way to reward the ‘haves’ and condemn the ‘have-nots’.  We don’t care that the most expensive healthcare system in the world ranks a middling eighth in terms of quality among industrial nations or that we lag Cuba in life expectancy.  Averages do not excite our imagination. We like a hierarchical system because we each believe that we are smart enough or special enough or just plain lucky enough, to rise to its top.  Having a shot at phenomenal care for the few trumps care that is merely good care for all.

At one seminar I attended a nurse turned architect presented a sophisticated medication dispensing system that involved computer tags on individual medications, expensive distribution stations and patient banding.  It was a well conceived system with demonstrated improvements in patient safety.  At one point in the presentation she lowered her voice and whispered. “Two babies at XXYY Children’s Hospital died due to medication errors. These children could have been saved with this system; you cannot put a price on human life.”  The crowd hushed out of respect for the lost children.  I envisioned an ad campaign for this system based upon these two children and some philanthropist rising to donate a cool million or so to implement in a hospital in their honor.  The deceased infants give a human face to the problem. 

But no one asked the opposing question, which is, how many children could be saved by allocating those resources for inoculations or nutrition or wellness?  Could we save two, or twenty, or two hundred?  The question of statistical lives saved is mute before a pair of flesh and blood babies that we can identify.

And so we chug along, thrilled by the whizz-bang technology that our healthcare system offers, heedless of the simple math it takes to determine that healthcare system pays out a weird set of odds.  There are the lucky few who can have it all – like the star gambler the casinos promote.  But for most of us the healthcare system delivers less value than we deserve.  We walk away from the casino measurably poorer.

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In The Moment

Posted on 11/27/2010 by paulefallon

On a raised meadow overlooking the Gulf of Gonave outside of Grand Goave, Haiti, a singular moment washed over me; a thunderous wave of euphoria.  I have never experienced a slice of time fueled with such intensity. It filled me with well-being, purpose and elation; it left me light headed, breathless and completely satisfied.  Through the rest of that day similar sparks of awareness flashed through me, aftershocks of bliss.  As a proponent of the tenet that an unexamined life is not worth living, I wanted to know why this occurred.  As a creature who solicits positive sensation, I wanted to know how I could make this happen again.

We have all heard the phrase, ‘being in the moment’.  Therapists, talk show hosts, and twelve step groups tout the benefits of a centered presence as a strategy for greater self-understanding and contentment.  For most of my life the concept eluded me.  I considered being in the moment a static state of passive meditation, while I am a person of action.  I have to do things. When guests come to dinner I get up after the meal is over and wash the dishes; too antsy to simply sit and talk.  My actions are always purposeful, future oriented.  I am not adroit at being in the present. 

About ten years ago a friend recommended The Experience of Buddhism.  The book contains a beautiful passage of an elderly woman weaving high on a Tibetan mountain. She is absorbed by her task yet not burdened by it. Her movements fulfill the requirements of weaving yet her spirit is detached from the specifics.  The passage has stayed with me – a correlation of action and mindfulness that made me consider if perhaps being active and being in the moment are not mutually exclusive.

Bikram yoga calls itself a moving meditation, though the meditative aspects are not evident for the first hundred classes or so, when the struggle against the heat is the sole occupation of your mind.  In the beginning what keeps you coming back is not what transpires during class, but how wonderful you feel afterwards.  At some point you make peace with the heat, at least momentarily, and you open up to the potential for a meditative complement to the strenuous poses.  Bikram is a ritual; the same postures in the same sequence with the same instructor format every class.  Over time you internalize the ritual, your body performs from motor memory, or even better, motor memory triggers the body to new depths, while the mind explores its own yoga journey.

Towards the end of every Bikram class is camel pose, the deepest back bend from kneeling position. My back makes a 360 degree bend; my eyes look at the floor beneath me. The only measure of my effort in camel is how dizzy I am when I come back straight. Dizziness defines effort.  One day, about eight months into my practice, I came of out camel with bees buzzing around my head, I slid round to sabasana and the moment I hit the floor I was eight years old on a summer night, pinching the juice of the snap dragon flowers that lined the side walk of our house.  The scent of the flowers, the touch of their hairy stems, the trace of wind cooling my cheek after a hot day, the child heart beating up in anticipation of the fluid squirt.  I was transformed to a place and time I had not recalled in almost fifty years.

Although I have tried to recapture the snap dragons on subsequent camel poses, that specific experience has never returned.  However, other modes of mindfulness take place during yoga in regular, if unpredictable, ways. Sometimes I have moments when the physical nature of the pose we are doing fills my brain until there is no differentiation between the body and the mind.  Other times an entire posture takes place without registering with me. I complete the moves but my mind is independent of the action.  Not because I am worrying about a problem at work or the heat, but because my mind is blank, suspended in the studio, held apart from the physical acts of my body.  At this point I do not have control the fusions and dissociations of my body and my mind, deep the yoga penetrates my being.

Back to Haiti.  In my three trips there I often feel ‘in the moment’ and strive to understand why.  The obvious reason is that I am in a heightened state of awareness when I am in Haiti. The place is so different from anywhere I have ever been, it makes sense that a ‘moment’ in Haiti is more compelling than a ‘moment’ in the US, where I have lived through billions of moments. Also when I go to Haiti I am on vacation, and we all tend to elevate our vacation moments as superior to everyday moments at home.  True, Haiti lacks many of the traditional trappings of vacation, like luxury surroundings or great food, or even cold drinks and hot water.  Still, some vacation components remain and may actually be stronger there. When I am in Haiti I give up all control. I cannot speak the language, I travel with a group leader who makes key decisions, I have no agenda.  If I am able to do useful work, great, but if not, I shrug my shoulders and acknowledge I’m in Haiti. I have never experienced less stress than I do in Haiti.  And when a mind is not flooded with stress, the opportunity for mindfulness increases.

These contributing factors are relevant but by themselves cannot account for the sheer number of ‘in the moment’ experiences I have in Haiti.  Those I attribute to the magic of the place.  Haitians don’t have much of anything, and that includes stress.  Once you give up the expectations of a Westerner hell bent on ‘doing something’ and give up your covert annoyance at people we term lazy, you understand that the parameters by which Haitians live their lives are completely different than ours. “Lazy’ is not a relevant term in Haiti. Haitians live in the moment pretty much all the time.  They have so little experience in controlling their destiny, the idea of shaping their future, so dear to us, is not part of their world view.  When bad things come their way, like earthquakes, hurricanes and cholera, they suffer and they cope.   When good things come their way, like white guys with food and houses, they accept.  When work presents itself, they do it, but they don’t seek it out, they don’t have preconceived ideas of ‘how things ought to be’.  It is not a winning attitude for advancement in a global economy, but it certainly doesn’t generate stress.

So on that beautiful, hot day, walking the site of the Be Like Brit orphanage with an entourage of Haitians showing us the extents of the property, I experienced an intense sense of the moment. I could not have welcomed it without my introductory experiences through Buddhism and yoga, nor could I have found it in our ‘go and do’ culture.  But the synergy of the exotic place, the release from stress, and the wonderful prospects of what this orphanage could be as seen through my architect’s eye combusted.  I was swept by an unparalleled flash of excitement balanced by an equally calm awareness that everything was ‘right’.

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The Awkward Pose

Posted on 11/27/2010 by paulefallon

Awkward pose is a sequence of three yoga positions that increase focus and build leg strength by shifting the body’s center of gravity out from under our feet.  The objective is to achieve balance without stability.  As a Bikram yoga practitioner I have performed it hundreds of times.  Unlike other yoga postures, awkward pose never feels ‘right’.  The tension of my haunches hovering over empty space, supporting the mass of my core, countered only by the spindly tension of outstretched arms, never feels comfortable.  In time I have learned to strike the pose with increasing depth and steady breath, but the act of balancing contradictory tension requires constant diligence.  Awkward pose is the metaphor for my life.

This blog is about opposing tension everywhere in our world, and my attempt to find balance through understanding that opposition.  The decision to blog grew out of my experiences working in Haiti.  Friends and family sought out my stories of this country, so enchanting and so damned.  After my third visit I realized that Haiti had settled into a permanent corner of my psyche.  It became a benchmark against the everyday habits of my abundant life.  As an upper middle class American white male, I have more choice in how I conduct my life than most anyone in the world, yet I am so often riddled with anxiety and doubt.  In Haiti I witnessed many people of scant opportunity who lead lives of meaning and grace.  Call it fortitude or resignation, their accord with a world of scarcity highlights the arbitrary, indulgent folly of American society. 

I have no desire to live as a Haitian; I am neither saint nor missionary and it would be disingenuous for me to pretend at being poor.  But having witnessed the patience, the endurance, the sense of family and community, and the immediate vitality that permeates Haiti, I realize how much Americans have forfeited in our dogged pursuit of acquiring stuff.  Haiti is dysfunctional and unbalanced, but so is the United States.  The poorest and richest countries in the Western Hemisphere are tottering in a deep awkward pose.  Somewhere in the vast expanse between these two worlds, lies balance.

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