Walking Capitol Hill

I’ve recently had the occasion to walk the halls of Congress on Capitol Hill, and the experience is comforting and, at the same time, unsettling.

Comforting, because office visits still seem to be the most viable way for ordinary citizens like you or me to directly contact our elected Representatives and Senators. It’s a tradition that stretches far back in our national history.  Even Presidents used to greet people at the White House; Abraham Lincoln set aside major parts of his work day to meet with job seekers, psychics, schemers and pastors.  Not many people get appointments with the President these days, but the labyrinthian buildings on each side of the Capitol where the Members have their offices are typically very crowded.  Wherever I went, I was preceded or followed by groups representing causes as varied as the protection of Israel, tax breaks for medical equipment manufacturers, pro- and anti-abortion advocates . . . and God knows what else.

Yet I had the distinct feeling that much of this activity, although earnest, was very much a pro forma ritual.  By that I mean that there appears to be a widening psychological and physical gulf between those who hold elective office and the voters who put them there.  It’s grown to such an extent that, in my view, the world of politics and government resides in a parallel universe with it own language, codes of behavior and established procedures.  We citizens are offered a glimpse into this world, but we seldom penetrate it.

Meeting Your Member of Congress

The sense of estrangement is accentuated by security concerns that have, since 2001, placed a series of access barriers between the general public and the offices of official government. You can still visit with your representative, but it takes some doing.  Scheduling is something of a challenge, and there’s never any guarantee that the Member will be able to keep the appointment.

Because there’s such demand for visits, and with so much else to do, it is impossible to accommodate everyone who wants a meeting and still leave time for the representative to carry out official duties, such as voting or attending committee hearings. The most common result is the five to 10 minute fast-track meeting, in which the Member quickly shakes hands and extends best wishes to the visiting delegation, and then exits through a side door, leaving a staff person to politely take notes. No wonder Congressional staffers appear glassy-eyed by mid-morning.

There’s nothing at all odious or objectionable about this situation; much of it is unavoidable.  And to be fair, many such meetings are pre-scripted by the visitors with “talking points” about whatever issue or cause has brought them to Washington. Members and their staffs have their own repertoire of practiced or canned responses designed to placate the visitors without committing to any particular action.  So there is little spontaneity. The result is that many meetings are not much different from those you might have when you exchange pleasant “hellos” with someone you pass by on the street whose name you can’t quite recall.

You could say that Hill visits are mostly all show, but there’s more to be said on this subject.  And that is that while we value Congressional visits as our right as citizens, even if they end up being pleasantly perfunctory, there are many others who rely upon these brief interactions as opportunities to influence government policy for themselves and those they represent.  Highly paid and politically astute professionals (many are attorneys) representing untold numbers of special interest causes, foreign and domestic, ceaselessly make the rounds of Congressional offices. It’s their job. The good ones, whose names you never see or read about, make comfortable livings securing legislation that benefits or protects small, narrow slices of the American population:  ethanol producers, for instance, or insurance carriers, or assault weapon manufacturers.  With so much at stake and with so many causes competing for access, money and power frequently determine the winners and the also-rans.

None of this represents an earth-shattering revelation.  Lobbying and special interest pleading are as much a part of the fabric of our democracy as Memorial Day parades. But it does help illuminate a cold, blunt reality of the political process in these times:   money and power still speak louder than the voice of the common citizen.

We should all expect more, probably, for our five minute appointment.

Grading the Band

I found myself, with family, seated in the local high school gym for our daughter’s season-ending fifth grade band concert.  It is an event — a ritual, really — that is repeated inumerable times across America as spring rolls toward summer and another school year winds down.  I’m sure many of you have attended one of these musical events — no doubt many times, if you have several children — and if you’re like me, you probably don’t have much in the way of expectations that there will be soaring music or startlingly original solos. Instead, you count on your son or daughter doing well, not dropping the instrument on the gym floor and completing the evening with pride intact amid a light rain of polite applause.

These concerts are worth noticing for what they may say about how the ebb and flow of household life in America unfolds in such a surprisingly uniform way. How everyone ends up at one of these concerts on a mid-week May night — students, teachers and family members alike — is the culmination of many individual and community decisions stretching back months:  the decision that your son or daughter is going to play in the band; the choice of instrument that will be played (flute or saxophone or drums or violin or trombone), and the over-arching decision of your child’s school district that band is a desirable and necessary component of a elementary school education. (There is, of course, the even farther back decision to have children and see to their upbringing).

Kids play in band, school administrators insist on having band, and band teachers teach band earnestly if not entirely successfully, because there is a fundamental belief that youngsters need to be exposed to music.  What better way to learn about music than to play an instrument, even if it is not one of your child’s choosing!  Once, in the fourth grade, someone had the bright idea that I was a tuba prodigy and so, for six agonizing months, I twisted myself into the giant instrument and nearly blew out my innards attempting to create the sound a tuba makes.  I wanted to play the clarinet (then and still), but apparently there were already sufficient numbers of clarinetists in the band, so tuba it was for me.

Fifth Grade Band Concert

As parents, we must support band, and of course our child’s participation.  However, support in this sense is largely one of logistics, in that parents are expected to drop off and pick up their children for band practice. Parents are also expected to be on hand whenever a concert is scheduled, even if it conflicts with soccer, private piano lessons or fast pitch softball practice.  Somehow, everyone gets to where they are supposed to be, more often than not. I sometimes feel that delicate surgery would have to be postponed if it meant missing a performance.

But it’s more than logistics, of course. By some cultural imperative, parents are all but required to cheer and applaud at the appropriate moments, and bestow praise on their children afterwards.  Truth be told, if you can make out even one note played by your child, you have the ears of a field hawk.  The point of it all is the show of support for the effort expended, and it’s not just applicable to band, but also to the science fair, the Holiday pageant, the book fair, and so on.  You could reasonably conclude that much of elementary school is a series of showcase events, with our children playing the lead roles before a ready-made, captive audience.

No one really likes any of this, candidly.  You see a lot of fixed smiles on the faces of parents at band concerts.  And who can blame them; very few mothers are excited, at the end of the typical school year day, to check the calendar and see, with dismay, that the spring concert — all hands on deck — is starting in just 45 minutes and dinner prep hasn’t even begun. Parents can become nearly unglued trying to leave work on time to make the drive through rush hour traffic for two or three minutes of actual playing time.

Yet we all do it, every day, in cities and towns all over the United States. These school-related activities are an integral part of the lives we lead, like it or not. They represent the compact we have made that our children have priority status in everything we do, and we would not want it any other way. We gather together, us parents, like atoms collecting, to hear the muddled, halting renditions of “Home on the Range,” or “Ode to Joy,” with our eyes and attention fixed on our son, our daughter — the flautist third from the right, second row — who is sitting on the edge of her folding chair, precisely as instructed, blowing air into a perforated pipe.  Maybe she’s not Jethro Tull, but from where I am sitting, her playing is perfect, as good as good can be.

Up Close and Personal

This blog being about space, I thought I’d deal with what’s an increasingly common situation in which the space between people is momentarily reduced to a bare minimum.

I’m talking about hugging, of course (what did you think I had in mind?).

Hugging appears to be on the rise, despite the fact that can be cumbersome, awkward and potentially embarrassing. I have literally poked in the nose someone I was attempting to greet with a hug.  I’m sure something similar has happened to you.

Besides revealing my decreasing motor skills, hugging is an affront to my naturally reticent nature.  Somehow, I must be conveying that predilection because many people  I meet appear ready to launch a hug with me, but then back away and opt instead for the traditional handshake (which in itself is on furlough until the flu epidemic subsides).

A lot of people have misgivings about hugging, judging from what I read on the web.  Online posters will confess to the world that they find hugging distasteful or, as someone chose to describe the gesture, “irksome.”  That’s a good word, and it gets at my objections to hugging, but not quite.

I should digress for a moment to point out that I come from a family of non-huggers, so perhaps it’s a matter of genes.  The fortunate among us learn hugging from our parents because that’s what parents do:  hug us. Mine, however, not so much. My mom was restrained even on sun-filled days, but we’d hug every so often. While my father was ebullient and friendly (and a ballroom “pip,” according to his high school yearbook), he was not a hugger at all.

Hugging these days is proceeding full steam ahead and, unlike previous times of stress, it appears that hugging has become some kind of societal thumbs up. I’ve witnessed Starbucks barristas lean over the counter to hug customers.  Rugby, a game of organized hugs, is growing in popularity.  Ever notice that virtually everyone on television is always hugging everyone else?  A lot of celebrity types appear to be constantly trying to hug themselves.

In my dramatically more mundane world, professional behavior has created a hugging protocol that is more ritualistic than heartfelt.  The actual embrace goes down literally in an instant of arms entwined over shoulders, backs gently padded with the entire episode lasting no longer than, say, a lightning bolt.  Before you know it, things are back to normal, and you move on to the business at hand.

The rest of the world holds American-style hugging in barely concealed contempt, even among cultures in which rubbing noses is a traditional greeting.  And while it’s true that many Americans struggle with hugging, we are one nation, under God and indivisible in our loathing of European-style greetings (the ones with a kiss — on both cheeks, heaven help us — that is more like a bird poking at seed). Personally,  I lke the traditional greeting in India, in which people join their hands with palms pressed together (Alec Guiness was a master at this in movies) to greet another person or pay respect to an elder. When a person joins his hands and says namaste, he actually says in humility, “I bow to God in you; I love you and I respect you, as there is no one like you.”  How nice is that!

Misgivings aside, I am actually warming up to hugging as I enter my winter years.  It feels young to me, and (although awkward), fresh, and I want to be au courant, so I’m finding myself embraced in frequent rapid fire hugs, some of which I have initiated. I wish there were more to it, though; more emotion, more actual true feelings of happiness at seeing someone.  That’s difficult to do when you are about to confront your neighbor about the dog droppings left on your lawn — definitely not a hugging situation.  Certainly, you wouldn’t want to make a habit of greeting the people you work with every day with a hug; it’s how rumors start.

And so, because we don’t often mean anything by our hug, hugging is becoming devalued. A gentle suggestion, then — one that will be taken up by no one — would be that we vow to reserve hugs for those times in our lives when we absolutely need personal contact.  Like when we hit a walk-off home run or when two dear friends meet up at a high school reunion.  I’ve long admired the no-holds-barred hugs members of the military receive in airport waiting rooms.

Hugs also can be the only response in certain situations.  Years ago, when I was a reporter, I was covering a what everyone feared was a drowning.  A boy had fallen into a swollen creek and a crowd had gathered when the boy’s head bobbed up to the surface.  He was hauled onto the bank and his father came running, lifted up his child in his arms and squeezed him tight to his chest, holding on for dear life.

Hugs, reserved for the momentous occasions in our lives, are an acknowledgement of openness and vulnerability.  In that sense, they are intensely human. If you’re willing to hug or be embraced, you are signaling that your guard is down, that your defenses are on hold, and that your heart is out from behind its hiding place. They are the currency exchange of intimacy, when we have nothing left to give but ourselves.

Those are the hugs we most remember, like the moment when my Dad, in his last night in the hospital, kidneys failing, heart faltering, called me close for one last — and first — hug.