How Congress can help the birds and the bees (butterflies, too) -- June 5, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Lady Bird Johnson was right. We need more wildflowers along our highways.  

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 to fulfill Lady Bird’s vision, although early results were disappointing. Some states enthusiastically planted Texas wildflowers on their roadsides despite soil and weather conditions far different from the Lone Star State’s – only to watch them die.

 “In a culture where failures are not discussed, those learning experiences were not shared with other states. So each was left to plant, fail, and learn the same hard lesson,” Bonnie L. Harper-Lore writes in “Roadside Use of Native Plants,” first published by the Federal Highway Administration. 

Lady Bird, though, knew the importance of choosing native plants. She once said, “Wherever I go in America, I like it when the land speaks its own language in its own regional accent.”

We’re a lot savvier today about sharing our gardening failures and about the value of natives -- not just for their beauty but, increasingly, for birds, honeybees, monarch butterflies and other pollinators.

Congress has another chance to encourage states to plant natives on roadsides and enhance more than the scenery. The proposed Highways Bettering the Economy and Environment Act, known as the Highways BEE Act, would encourage states to mow and spray chemicals less and plant more native herbaceous plants and grasses.

Using what’s called integrated vegetation management practices would create a healthier habitat for the insects and animals we rely upon to move the pollen that fertilizes many fruit, nut and vegetable plants.

The BEE bill has zero additional cost and imposes no requirements from Washington. It simply directs the U.S. Department of Transportation to use existing authority and funds to encourage willing state transportation departments and rights-of-way managers to use practices that support pollinators, ground nesting birds, monarch butterflies and other creatures.

The bill is a bipartisan no-brainer, and it could save states money. Texas, for example, saved about 25 percent annually in roadside maintenance in areas where it planted wildflowers and stopped mowing.

States manage about 17 million acres of highway rights-of-way. This amounts to “17 million acres of opportunity,” says the Pollinator Partnership, a nonprofit group that strongly supports the Highways BEE Act.

Sensible though it is, Highways BEE is no sure thing. This is Congress we’re talking about.

An identical bill, also supported by the pollinators group and others, failed in 2012 when backers were unable to attach it to a transportation bill. The plan is to try again with an amendment to the Highway Trust Fund reauthorization bill. Congress is moving to approve highway funding soon; the trust fund is expected to run out of money at the end of August. 

“Under this bill, all states will be able to make the choices that are in the best interest of pollinators when managing their lands,” said Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., a sponsor with Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla.

“Seventy-five percent of all flowering plant species rely on creatures like birds, bats, bees and butterflies for fertilization,” said Hastings. “This kind of roadside vegetation management provides much-needed habitat for pollinators and other small nesting animals.”

Denham and Hastings are co-chairs of the Congressional Pollinator Protection Caucus. Both men represent agricultural districts, and Denham owns an almond orchard.

Bees are responsible for pollinating more than 90 crops and contribute $15 billion in added crop value annually. Almonds are one of the biggest crops that rely on bees. More than half the nation’s commercial bees are needed to pollinate almonds. 

But bees have been in decline. In the 1980s, beekeepers managed about 3 million colonies and suffering winter bee losses of 10 to 15 percent. Today, beekeepers have a tough time maintaining 2.5 million colonies and their winter losses average more than 30 percent. The precise cause of the decline is still a mystery.

The Obama White House is taking an interest. First lady Michelle Obama planted a pollinator garden for the first time this year, and President Barack Obama agreed with the leaders of Mexico and Canada in February to create a joint task force to help restore the monarch butterfly.

Congress should pass the Highways BEE Act. Soon, native plants blooming along our highways will speak to us, as Lady Bird Johnson said, in their regional accents. More importantly, they’ll help bees and butterflies go about their invaluable work.

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Innovative libraries meet traditional, today's and tomorrow's needs -- on Stateline June 4, 2014

Libraries See Light After Years of Cuts

By Marsha Mercer, Special to Stateline

Librarian Sandy Irwin displays e-readers that can be checked out of the Durango, Colorado public library. Libraries are struggling to be relevant to the public after suffering years of budget cuts. (AP)

When Louisiana eliminated state aid to public libraries in 2012, Mary Bennett Lindsey had one thought:  “How are we ever going to keep those computers going?”

Lindsey is director of the rural Audubon Regional Library—three small branch libraries and a 10-year-old bookmobile that serve 30,000 residents of two parishes about an hour’s drive north of Baton Rouge. The cut in state aid meant Audubon Regional lost $50,000, or 10 percent, of its annual budget.

“I went down to the legislature and said we needed the money put back,” Lindsey said. At the budget hearing, though, all she heard were other stories of desperate need for state funds.   

“We were competing with autistic children, with residential care for adults who couldn’t take care of themselves – all good causes, all heart-breaking stories,” she said. Audubon would have to make do without state money for its 19 public Internet access computers, three children’s computers, 10 staff computers as well as 20 loaner laptops.

Buffeted by financial and cultural pressures, public libraries around the country are struggling to remain relevant and connect with patrons in the high-cost digital age. States, never a deep pocket for public libraries, have cut or even zeroed out aid, forcing libraries to rely more heavily on local funds.  

Reliance on Local Funds Grows

Overall, states slashed funding to public libraries 37.6 percent from fiscal 2001 to 2010, from $1.28 billion to $799.4 million, the Institute of Museum and Library Services reported in a survey for fiscal 2010 which was released in January. The institute is the primary source of federal funds to libraries and museums. (See the institute’s 50-state interactive here.)

Meanwhile, local revenue dedicated to libraries grew 23.5 percent over the 10 years, from $7.76 billion in 2001 to $9.59 billion in 2010.

States provide only about 7.5 percent of operating revenue for public libraries; local governments shoulder 85 percent. Gifts, fines, fees and grants contribute about 7 percent and the federal government just 0.5 percent, according to the institute.

  TWEET THIS FACT

States that fail to support their public libraries risk losing federal Library Services and Technology Act grants, which are part of the 0.5 percent federal contribution. The grants total $154.8 million in fiscal 2014. Designed to supplement, not replace, state library funding, the grants require a 34 percent state match. States can receive waiversfrom the requirement if they show that libraries were not singled out for budget cuts. Illinois, Louisiana and Texas received waivers last year. Nebraska applied for a waiver and was denied, reducing its grant funds. Michigan was denied a waiver and did not appeal. 

Besides Louisiana, 11 states provide no direct aid to public libraries, an American Library Association surveyfound. They are California, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Two Examples

In Seattle, voters agreed in August 2012 to a seven-year, $123 million local real estate excise tax in order to reopen branches and restore services of the Seattle Public Library that had been drastically curtailed during the recession.

Since the levy went into effect last year, all library locations are open on Sundays, more than 800 Internet-connected computers have been replaced, and 50,000 new e-books and e-audio files purchased.

 “We’ve been fortunate to have a city that appreciates what we do,” said Seattle city librarian Marcellus Turner.

“We’ve had the opportunity to bring in new staff and conduct marketing studies to find out what our community needs,” he said. The next project is drawing Seattle’s large population of 20-somethings to the library.

In contrast, funding for almost all public libraries in Kentucky is on hold as tea party activists challenge library local taxing authority in court. The lawsuits contend that jurisdictions improperly raised taxes for decades because they did not seek voter approval of tax changes.

Brandon Voelker, lawyer for the plaintiffs, said, “It’s not about the library. We’re all in agreement libraries are good.” But he said, “The government needs to ask for permission to raise taxes.”  

The tea party-backed lawsuit won in circuit court and awaits a ruling by the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

If the lawsuit succeeds, 99 library systems in the state could lose about $62 million a year, said Lisa Rice, director of the Warren County Public Library and chair of the Kentucky Public Library Association’s advocacy committee.

“Up to 78 percent of the libraries’ funding would be lost, and (the lawsuit) also opens the possibility of tax refunds,” said Rice. Library supporters had hoped the legislature would solve the problem, but it adjourned without acting. 

Changing Library Experience

Studies by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that Americans appreciate and support their public libraries.

“The vast majority of Americans use the library at some point in their lives, and over half of those 16 and older did so in the last year,” said Kathryn Zickuhr, Pew research associate. More patrons are visiting their libraries online, but 48 percent visited a library building last year, indicating that people value the physical space, even if they engage in digital activities once they get there, she said. (Stateline is funded by Pew)

One key to libraries’ success is offering the public the “expensive and scarce resource,” Zickuhr said. While books once were expensive and scarce, people now seek a broader range of services such as laser cutters, 3-D printers and even recording studios.  

“You meet a need in your community that no one else is meeting,” said Kendall Wiggin, state librarian of Connecticut, and president-elect of the chief library officers group.  “When I was younger, it was framed art work. We loaned a lot of paintings.”

These days, libraries are meeting community needs with technology. The Westport Public Library in Connecticut invites sixth through ninth graders to “hang out and geek out” at the library on “Maker Mondays.” Each session features a different hands-on activity, such as stop-motion animation or making a Doodle Bot drawing robot.

In Tennessee, the Chattanooga Public Library became “a lab for the freelance job market,” said Corrine Hill, the library’s executive director. She said the library’s broadband access gives people the opportunity to take an idea “from discovery to traction.”

Hill said one father used a 3-D library printer to create a robotic device that allows his quadriplegic child to eat without assistance.

From Books to Seeds

Librarians help toddlers get ready to learn in school and seniors to apply for Social Security. If you need a checkup in Pima County, Arizona, the library has a full-time county health nurse. The homeless go for help to the San Francisco Public Library, which hired its first social worker five years ago. About three dozen libraries have started garden seed libraries; others loan power tools. 

“In the old days, we bought that set of World Book encyclopedias because people couldn’t afford it,” said Gina Millsap, chief executive officer of the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library. The library even loans cake pans.

Struggling with budget cuts in 2009 and 2010, Topeka & Shawnee cut its annual budget for books, films, music and other content by 50 percent – from $2 million to $1 million -- and cut staff 6 percent.  The library, which has no branches, kept the content budget at $1 million. When the financial picture brightened, it expanded services, including deliveries to work sites, retirement centers and nursing homes in its 550-mile service area.

The Topeka library loans digital cameras and teaches classes in video production. A 3-D printer recently arrived for the digital media lab. The library checks out exercise kits as well as adaptive devices, such as magnifiers for those with macular degeneration, so that people can try before they buy.

Signs of Improvement

There are signs the slowly improving economy is helping libraries’ budgets. Revenue from all sources to the nation’s 8,956 public libraries ticked up slightly, from $11.3 billion in 2010 to $11.4 billion in 2011.

“There continue to be reductions in hours and flat budgets – but perhaps the constant budget cuts are leveling off for public libraries,” said the library association’s  report on its 2013-2014 survey of Chiefs of State Library Agencies.

When they were surveyed last December and January, most state librarians believed their states’ direct aid to public libraries would remain the same or that it was too soon to say. Eleven chiefs expected their states to increase library funds by more than 10 percent. They were Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico and Oregon.

In Louisiana, the good news at Audubon Regional is that the economy has improved, thanks to oil and gas production, and local tax revenues are up. The library’s current budget is just above $500,000, slightly higher than before the state cut off funds.

Six days a week, residents sit at library computers to fill out online applications for jobs, Social Security and other benefits. They use the free Wi-Fi – a big draw in a rural area with spotty Internet access – and check out DVDs, the latest books and laptops.

“Once we get people into the libraries, they say, `Oh, wow!’” Lindsey said. 

http://bit.ly/1m8vaNu

Pension predators prey on retirees -- June 2014 AARP Bulletin

Beware of the Pension Predators

Retirees hit with sky-high interest rates

by Marsha Mercer, AARP Bulletin, June 2014

One form of pension poaching involves attorneys, financial planners and insurance agents trying to persuade veterans over 65 who have pensions to invest in insurance products. — Adam Voorhes; Styling by Robin Finlay

Daryl Henry, a disabled Navy retiree from Laurel, Md., was beset by bills. In 2003 he read an ad and arranged to get a cash advance in exchange for signing over almost all of his $1,083 monthly pension for eight years.

Henry, who spent 20 years in the Navy, agreed to pay a company associated with Structured Investments Co. of Southern California $1,070 a month in return for money upfront. The repayment cost for the $42,131 advance: $102,720.

Henry was named the lead plaintiff among 61 retirees in a suit against Structured Investments in 2005. A California Superior Court judge ruled in 2011 that the company's advances violated a federal law that forbids assignment or sale of military pensions. The judge ordered that people who were still paying could stop their payments and the retirees would be repaid nearly $3 million.

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The victory was sweet, but brief. Within weeks, Structured Investments declared bankruptcy. None of the victims has received any restitution.

Robert Bramson, a Walnut Creek, Calif., attorney who filed Henry's suit, continues to work on the clients' behalf. He said he's already spent about $225,000 of his own money in legal fees and expenses, hoping they'll see some payment in the bankruptcy proceedings. "The business I'm in is to help people who are getting taken advantage of," Bramson said.

Henry is one of an unknown number of people who have signed over their pensions to a growing army of pension predators who go after veterans and other retirees who have a steady income stream. Smooth talkers encourage them to tap their future income for a cash lump sum now — often at an exorbitant cost.

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The good news is that Congress and some states are beginning to go after those who prey on people with pensions. AARP supports efforts to license lenders and ensure that they comply with federal and state consumer disclosure laws, state small-loan interest rate caps and usury laws. AARP also has urged the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to issue regulations "to eliminate unfair, deceptive and abusive practices in the alternative financial services industry." For now, though, people with pensions need to be their own first line of defense. Here's what you need to know to protect yourself.

Cash today, pension tomorrow

Companies with patriotic-sounding names and flag-waving websites court military retirees as well as teachers, firefighters, police officers and others who have pensions. The hard-to-resist pitch: Convert part of tomorrow's pension income into cash today. The question is: What's the cost? Effective annual interest rates for pension loans can top 100 percent.

Avoid Pension Benefit Scams

• Do the math. Figure out how much you will actually pay over time for the lump-sum amount.

• Never give a creditor access to the bank account where your benefits are deposited.

• Know that federal law prohibits assigning military and some other government pensions to a third party. Pension poachers get around this rule by calling the lump sum payment an advance, not a loan.

• Find more help ataarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork

Pension advances are a variation on payday loans — short-term loans, usually under $500, that come with sky-high interest rates. In contrast, pension advances typically run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and the repayment period can last more than three years. Contracts can be confusing.

Pension advance companies fly under the legal and regulatory radar by insisting they are not banks and therefore are not subject to truth-in-lending or usury laws. Although it is illegal for military and federal pensioners to assign or sell their pensions, companies skirt the law by having retirees deposit a hefty portion of their pensions into bank accounts controlled by the companies. The firms claim that the transactions are advances, not loans, and the payments aren't interest.

Mark Corbett, vice president of marketing at buyyourpension.com, said the term "loan" suggests that the money can be repaid early. A pension buyout customer who agrees to turn over a portion of his or her pension for six years has a firm commitment for six years.

"We buy income streams," he said. "Everything we do is completely legal and legitimate. We're completely transparent."

Corbett said business is booming and that he gets 30 to 50 calls a day from people who want cash for their pensions.

"The first thing I do is try to talk them out of it," he said. "It's expensive money. I tell them: 'Don't sell your pension unless you have a really good plan for the money.' "

Next page: Can pension poaching affect Medicaid services? »

If You Need Cash

If creditors are hounding you, here are 5 alternatives to pension loans:

1. Talk to creditors about a payment plan.

2. Get free credit counseling. Find a certified professional through theNational Foundation for Credit Counseling.

3. Workers can ask about an interest-free salary advance.

4. Consider advances on credit cards. The interest rate could be lower than the pension loan rate.

5. Look into a military loan. Some companies offer loans to military retirees that are less than the pension loan rate.

Another form of pension poaching involves attorneys, financial planners and insurance agents trying to persuade veterans over 65 who have pensions to invest in insurance products so they can qualify for VA Aid and Attendance benefits that help pay for assistance with daily living tasks. Such actions prompted a stern warning last year from the Federal Trade Commission.

"What they don't reveal is that these transactions could mean that the veteran loses eligibility for Medicaid services or loses the use of their money for a long time. Adding insult to injury, the advisers are charging fees that range from hundreds to thousands of dollars for their services," the FTC warned.

Beverly Walsh was a retired schoolteacher in Lynnwood, Wash., who had served in the Navy in World War II. In 2006, an insurance agent who specialized in senior finances sold Walsh, then 81, a 10-year annuity valued at $215,000. In 2009 she bought a second annuity valued at $100,000. The agent also persuaded her to set up a trust so that she and her husband, an Army vet with Alzheimer's, could qualify for Medicaid and the Aid and Attendance benefit, in addition to obtaining a veteran's pension.

No applications for a pension, Medicaid or the Aid and Attendance benefit were ever filed, and no provisions were made for her or her husband's care.

Walsh's niece, Holly Beuthin of Renton, Wash., spent two years unraveling the details and complaining to state agencies.

The insurance agent "gained her trust over several years and then coerced her into making these financial decisions that she wasn't capable of understanding," said Beuthin, who had the pleasure of seeing the state fine the agent for financial misconduct in her aunt's case and revoke his license.

Beuthin was able to recover all of her aunt's money, but her aunt didn't live to see it. Beverly Walsh died last year at 88.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) proposes only a few laws every year. This year, one of the five he proposed was to protect veterans from what he calls "pension poachers."

"Aid & Attendance scams involve hucksters posing as investment 'advisers' who prey on vulnerable elderly veterans or their surviving spouses with the enticement of an untapped federal benefit," said a summary of the legislation prepared by his office.

In March, the Washington legislature passed a law, endorsed by AARP, which prohibits insurance agents from providing assistance to veterans in obtaining benefits that might lead to financial gain for the agent. 

"We hope this acts as a deterrent," said Ferguson, whose father and uncles served in World War II. "We see a lot of crimes, but few are more egregious than those that try to scam our veterans."

What's being done

In the past year, officials in several other states and on Capitol Hill have begun focusing on pension poaching.

• In Vermont, state Sen. Kevin Mullin (R) worked with AARP Vermont on a bill that passed unanimously in both houses of the legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) in April. It requires pension lenders to abide by the same banking and consumer protection regulations as other lenders — including a requirement that they be licensed.

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• In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) ordered an investigation of pension advance companies, and the state's Department of Financial Services issued subpoenas to 10 companies.

• In Arkansas and New Mexico, state security officials have issued cease-and-desist orders against companies owned by Voyager Financial Group, which bundled military pension plans for sale to investors.

At the federal level, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have issued warnings about pension and benefit scams.

"These schemes are usually very bad deals for the retirees," said Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

On Capitol Hill, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is investigating pension loans.

In the House, Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) introduced the Annuity Safety and Security Under Reasonable Enforcement Act, known as ASSURE, last year with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). Cartwright calls pension advance interest rates, ranging from 27 percent to 106 percent, "highway robbery." His bill would limit the interest rate on such loans to the prime rate plus 6 percent.

Thom Stoddert, 63, a Vietnam veteran in Olympia, Wash., and a writer for Veterans Voice, has devoted years to helping veterans avoid scams. "I come across these people who pretend they're advocates for veterans, but they're just making money," Stoddert said. "I didn't spend nights sleeping in the mud and cold, nor did I spend countless hours watching veterans and soldiers die, so those who never served could use us as a fountain for their greed."

Marsha Mercer is an independent journalist in Northern Virginia. http://bit.ly/1m8cJsm

Not too late for Obama's conservation legacy -- May 29, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

From the maddeningly crammed streets and vulgar displays along the Virginia Beach oceanfront, it’s only a 40-minute drive to the peaceful and scenic Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

Back Bay -- a 9,100-acre barrier island preserve of island marshes, maritime forests and pristine beaches – was established by President Franklin Roosevelt by proclamation in 1938 as a haven and breeding ground for migratory birds and other wildlife.

More than 120,000 people visit the refuge every year, most to watch the 10,000 snow geese and ducks that fly over Back Bay during the peak of the winter migration. Even in the off season, though, there’s plenty to see. Herons and snowy egrets pose majestically. Turtles sun themselves on log rivieras and snakes, naturally, slither. 

On the Blue Goose Express, an open air tram, local history buff Bob Baxter leads visitors back in time. A century ago, the area was dotted with duck hunting lodges, visited by wealthy industrialists. Life-saving stations every seven miles along the coast plucked unfortunate mariners from the sea.

We take a short hike to historic Wash Woods in False Cape State Park, which adjoins Back Bay. All that remains of the remote community of farmers, fishermen and hunters and a church that seated 300 worshippers are the steeple and about a dozen tombstones under whispering live oaks.  

About 47 million people will flee urban noise and stress for the tranquility of national refuges this year. 

Visitors will savor birdsong and unspoiled scenery; they’ll take pictures, swim and camp.

Few may think about how important presidents have been in keeping our wild spaces in citizens’ hands.

Since Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill establishing Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872, presidents have played a crucial role in conservation. 

“I will do everything in my power to protect . . . great natural beauties of this country,” vowed Theodore Roosevelt, who enjoyed being president because he liked having “my hand on the lever.”

The 26^th president set aside 230 million acres in public land and created 150 national forests, 51 bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks and 18 national monuments.

He left his successors the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president or Congress the power to designate national monuments. The president can act unilaterally. 

He’s no TR, but Obama still could leave a conservation legacy.

“I’ve preserved more than 3 million acres of public lands for future generations. And I am not finished,” 

Obama said May 21 when he used the Antiquities Act to create the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, protecting half a million acres in New Mexico.

But the congressional resistance Obama faces extends even to conservation. Dozens of bills that would protect lands and wildlife are stalled in Congress.

In February, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed rules to regulate oil and gas production on the national refuge system.  Yes, more than 200 wildlife refuges have existing oil and gas infrastructure and 100 have active oil and gas wells.

The government owns the land but not the oil and gas mineral rights beneath the ground, and the government lacks the authority to regulate private oil and gas development on the refuges. That’s why it has proposed rules.

Noah Matson, vice president of Lands Conservation for Defenders of Wildlife, warned a House panel May 20 of instances on wildlife refuges of oil drums oozing toxic chemicals, oil-topped open waste ponds, abandoned storage tanks and rusted, leaking oil pipes “fixed” with plastic bags and duct tape.

Two Louisiana Republicans on the committee blasted Matson for his “emotional” testimony and for failing to credit the “innovative” fixes.

Republicans also want to curb presidential power under the Antiquities Act, which presidents of both parties have used. Obama has used the act 11 times, starting in November 2011 with the Fort Monroe National Monument in Hampton, Va.  

The House voted in March to limit the president’s power to designate monuments, requiring reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act. The bill has little chance in the current Senate because the Democratic majority is opposed.

When signing the order designating Organ Mountains a national monument, Obama said he understands “our obligation to be good stewards to the next generation – to make sure that our children’s children get the same chance to experience all of these natural wonders.”

He needs to follow TR’s lead, keep his hand on the lever and follow through on his conservation promises.

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Restoring the meaning of Memorial Day -- May 22, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

For many of us, Memorial Day is a long weekend of backyard barbecues and beach trips, the unofficial start of summer fun.

But it wasn’t always so. Memorial Day began as a spontaneous outpouring of grief after the ravages of the Civil War.

At least 620,000 soldiers – about 2.5 percent of the population – perished in that war. Recent estimates put the toll far higher – closer to 20 percent of the population. Nearly every family lost someone. To cope with their sorrow, groups of women began visiting their loved ones’ graves and decorating them with spring flowers.

The ritual, known as Decoration Day, sprang up in the North and South. One of the first was in Columbus, Ga., in April 1866, when women visited a cemetery to put flowers on the graves of Confederate soldiers who had died in the bloody battle of Shiloh four years earlier. Seeing the neglected graves of Union soldiers, the women also placed flowers there.    

In 1868, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, who led an organization of Union veterans, declared that Decoration Day should be observed on May 30 with ceremonies and strewn flowers. It’s thought he chose the date because flowers would be in bloom all over the country, according to a Department of Veterans Affairs history.

By the end of the 19^th century, nearly every community dedicated May 30 to remember their Civil War dead. After World War I, the commemoration was extended to honor all who died in American wars.

How, you ask, did we go from solemnly strewing flower petals to buying mattresses, appliances and big screen TVs?

Thank -- or blame – the 1960s, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson. LBJ signed the Uniform Holiday bill in 1968, and, since 1971, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Washington’s birthday (now Presidents Day) have been commemorated on Mondays.

“This will mean a great deal to our families and our children,” LBJ said in a signing statement. “It will enable families who live some distance apart to spend more time together. Americans will be able to travel farther and see more of this beautiful land of ours. They will be able to participate in a wide range of recreational and cultural activities.”

He didn’t predict that the true meaning of the holidays might get lost in traffic jams.  

For years, the late Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii tried to restore the dignity of Memorial Day. Inouye, a veteran who lost his right arm in combat in World War II, introduced a bill in every Congress to move Memorial Day back to May 30.

“In our effort to accommodate many Americans by making the last Monday in May Memorial Day, we have lost sight of the significance of this day to our nation,” Inouye said in a speech on the Senate floor in 1999. “Instead of using Memorial Day as a time to honor and reflect on the sacrifices made by Americans in combat, many Americans use the day as a celebration of the beginning of summer,” he said.

Inouye continued his valiant effort until his death in 2012. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa of Hawaii has taken up the quest, introducing the bill last year. 

We don’t have to wait on Washington to honor the fallen on Memorial Day. Many of the 131 national cemeteries as well as state veterans cemeteries have ceremonies on or around Memorial Day. To find one near you, check out the list on the VA's National Cemetery Administration page.

  

At a time when the VA is suffering from a health care scandal, here’s some good news. Veterans’ survivors rank employees at the national cemeteries tops in customer service among all federal agencies and major national corporations.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index surveys people about their dealings with government agencies and companies. Every three years, the survey asks about national cemeteries. In each of the last five surveys – 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010 and 2013 – the cemeteries have received the top rating for customer service in the public and private sectors.  

National cemeteries are quiet, green spaces that invite solemn reflection. Make time for a walk in history. Read the names and dates on the white markers. Thank those who gave their all for us and our freedom. Happy Memorial Day.

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

A storyteller turns preacher for math, science in digital age -- May 14, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Twenty-five years ago, a rising star at Time magazine got on a train in New York bound for Washington to hear one of his heroes give a lecture.

How quaint, I hear you saying, with 21^st century impatience. Print. Train. Hero. Lecture. Ho hum.

Not so fast. The magazine man was Walter Isaacson, then 36, who had been writing on a computer since the early 1980s, the only writer at Time doing so. Apple’s Steve Jobs would later ask him to write his biography. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Isaacson’s hero was novelist Walker Percy, chosen to deliver the 1989 Jefferson Lecture. Its sponsor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, says the lecture is “the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.”

Percy’s lecture on “The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind” was one of his last public appearances. He died a year later at 74.

Isaacson had known “Uncle Walker” – actually the uncle of a friend -- since his boyhood in New Orleans. Isaacson tried to figure out what Percy did. He had trained as a doctor and people called him Dr. Percy, but he didn’t practice medicine.

“He seemed to be at home most days, eating hog’s head cheese and sipping bourbon,” said Isaacson, who was about 9 when Percy’s first novel, “The Moviegoer,” appeared in 1961. That’s when Isaacson realized someone could make a living as a writer the way others did as an engineer or a fisherman.  “The Moviegoer” won the National Book Award, and Percy kept writing.

Percy told him two types of people come out of Louisiana: preachers and storytellers.

“For God’s sake, he said, be a storyteller. The world has far too many preachers,” Isaacson recalled Monday night onstage at the Kennedy Center where he delivered the 43^rd Jefferson Lecture.  

It’s heartening to know that the federal government still honors intellectual achievement – and with an old-fashioned lecture and $10,000 prize. It’s encouraging that the Concert Hall was nearly filled, although a reporter for Inside Higher Ed observed that the audience may have been slightly smaller and grayer than previously.  

That’s not surprising. Filmmaker Martin Scorsese was last year’s lecturer. Conservationist and author Wendell Berry spoke in 2012, and Harvard president and Civil War historian Drew Gilpin Faust was the speaker in 2011.

Isaacson, who turns 62 on May 20, is one of those achievers who make even industrious bees feel like they’ve wasted too many hours flitting around Facebook and the Food Channel.

A Harvard grad and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, he was a political reporter, national editor and editor of new media before becoming the editor of Time. He then was chairman and CEO of CNN. He’s the author of bestselling biographies on Jobs (2011), Albert Einstein (2007) and Benjamin Franklin (2003), among others.  He’s president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan policy studies institute based in Washington.

In January 1984, Jobs lugged an original Macintosh to Time magazine to show it off. The editors called in Isaacson so they’d have one person there who actually used a computer. The two men kept in touch and in 2003, after he was diagnosed with cancer, Jobs asked Isaacson to write his biography. He didn’t mention the diagnosis. Isaacson took the opportunity to tell Jobs’s story.

“I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” Jobs told Isaacson. 

“Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” 

The authorized biography was rushed into print in 2011, days after Jobs died at 56.

Isaacson titled his lecture “The Intersection of the Humanities and the Sciences.” Offering a rosy view of a digital future in which human creativity fuses with technology, he acknowledged he was “singing to the choir” about indispensible human imagination.

But he also challenged those who love the arts and humanities to shake off their complacency about not knowing math or appreciating science.

“Many people who extol the arts and the humanities…will proclaim without shame (and perhaps even joke) that they don’t understand math or physics. They would consider people who don’t know Hamlet from Macbeth to be uncultured, yet they might merrily admit that they don’t know the difference between a gene and a chromosome,” he said.

“Trust me, our patron Thomas Jefferson and his mentor Benjamin Franklin would regard as a Philistine anyone who felt smug about not understanding math or complacent about not appreciating science,” he said.

And so the storyteller preached on the need for math and science in the digital age. My guess is that both Walker Percy and Steve Jobs would have approved.  

(c) 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Whose prayer? Minority gets short shrift at Supreme Court -- May 8, 2014 column

By Marsha Mercer

Imagine that you have a child with Down syndrome, and you want your town to open a group home for children with the condition.  

When you go to your town board to make your case, the meeting starts with a Christian prayer. A minister stands at a lectern. facing the small group of assembled citizens, and invites everyone to join in a prayer to Jesus Christ, the savior of the world.

For more than a decade, residents of Greece, N.Y., a town of 94,000 near Rochester, faced such a situation whenever they had business with their town board. Then, two women – one Jewish and one an atheist – complained about the Christian prayers and filed a lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court.

The women contended that the board’s practice of inviting only Christian clergy to lead the opening prayer violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by preferring Christians over others and by sponsoring sectarian prayer.

The practice was coercive because “it is impossible not to participate without attracting attention to yourself, and moments later you stand up to ask for a group home…having just, so far as you can tell, irritated the people that you were trying to persuade,” Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor, told the court in oral arguments last November.

On Monday, a majority of justices disagreed. The court ruled 5-4 in Town of Greece v. Galloway that the board could continue opening its meetings with Christian prayers. The majority upheld the majority religion; the minority got short shrift. 

“Adults often encounter speech they find disagreeable,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.  People who “feel excluded or disrespected” by the prayers should ignore them or leave the room, Kennedy brusquely suggested.  So much for walking in someone else’s shoes.

Kennedy noted that all the clergy in the town directory from which prayer-givers were chosen were Christians, reflecting the town. His opinion was joined by the court’s four conservatives – Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. 

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote:  “I think the town of Greece’s prayer practices violate the norm of religious equality – the breathtakingly generous constitutional idea that our public institutions belong no less to the Buddhist or Hindu than to the Methodist or Episcopalian.”

Kagan made clear she was not advocating a prayer- or religion-free zone but the board had done nothing to recognize religious diversity.  Until the lawsuit was filed, the “chaplain of the month” was always a Christian.

“So month in and month out for over a decade, prayers steeped in only one faith, addressed toward members of the public, commenced meetings to discuss local affairs and distribute government benefits,” Kagan wrote. That practice “does not square with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share in her government,” she said. 

Joining Kagan’s dissent were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

About three in four Americans approve of prayer at public meetings as long as officials don’t favor one belief over another, a national poll last December by Fairleigh Dickinson University found.

As with any case involving religion and government, reaction on both sides was swift and strong.  

“This is the first good thing the Supreme Court has done in a long time,” declared Randall Wise, mayor of Niceville, Fla., where the city council has been praying at meetings since before he became mayor 42 years ago.

Even if the court had ruled against the prayers, Niceville’s city council would have kept praying, he insisted.

“We would have kept doing it until they stopped us with guns or took us off to jail,” the mayor said, the Northwest Florida Daily News reported.

But the red headline on the website of Americans United for Separation of Church and State was unequivocal in its opposition:  “Supreme Mistake!”

Laycock, the University of Virginia law professor, told NPR the ruling “is a green light for local majorities to impose their religious practices on their fellow citizens.”

And that goes against the grain in our pluralistic society.

Kagan had it right. “When the citizens of this country approach their government, they do so only as Americans, not as members of one faith or another,” she wrote.

©2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.