Is kindness catching? We can only hope so -- Nov. 27, 2013, column

By MARSHA MERCER

It’s not just a bumper strip slogan. Some Americans actually do practice random acts of kindness.

At fast food restaurants around the country, some customers are paying for the orders placed by strangers in the next car.

“Drive-through generosity is happening across America and parts of Canada, sometimes resulting in unbroken chains of hundreds of cars paying in turn for the person behind them,” Kate Murphy reported last month in The New York Times.

“We really don’t know why it’s happening but if I had to guess, I’d say there is just a lot of stuff going on in the country that people find discouraging,” Mark Moraitakis, director of hospitality at Chick-fil-A, told Murphy, adding, “Paying it forward is a way to counteract that.”

“Pay it forward” refers to repaying a kindness by doing something kind for another person.  The concept was popularized by a 1999 novel by Catherine Hyde Ryan and movie starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt. A high school teacher challenges his students to change the world. One boy helps three people and asks each of them to help three more people…You see where this is going.

Moraitakis is onto something.  People like helping others – on their own terms. Compulsory kindness doesn’t cut it.

You don’t see many people paying it forward in Washington, a city famous for pay backs. But when legendary comedian Carol Burnett came to town last month to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, she showed how it’s done.

Burnett asked that Rosemary Watson, a comedic newcomer who does dead-on impersonations of Hillary Clinton and other prominent female politicians, be given the chance to perform at the Kennedy Center awards gala.  The two had never met. Watson had written Burnett a fan letter, and Burnett had watched Watson’s videos on YouTube. Impressed, she wanted to give a boost to the younger woman’s career.    

“The thing is, you pay it forward,” Burnett said.”Because when I got started, somebody gave me a break when I was 21 years old, and I wanted to go to New York.”

Paying it forward can be as simple as letting someone go ahead in line at the grocery store. Many people pay it forward with their time. It turns out there are special benefits for people who volunteer.

The December issue of Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine touts “Four Amazing Health Benefits of Helping Others.”  Studies show that volunteers may live longer, be happier, manage their pain better and lower their blood pressure more than non-volunteers.

Many people prefer to pay it forward with cash. Individual charitable giving rose almost 4 percent last year but still lags its pre-recession peak. This is one area where young people are a shining example.

Nine of 10 kids between the ages of 8 and 19 give to charity, according to a recent study by the Women’s Philanthropic Institute at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Parents, take note:  Moms and dads who talk to their children about giving to charity significantly increase the likelihood that the children will give. Talking may be more influential than parental role-modeling of charitable giving, the report says.

We all have a chance to pay it forward on Giving Tuesday -- the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. It’s a day to give back at the start of the holiday season, after our two biggest days of getting, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Giving Tuesday was created last year by Henry Timms of the 92^nd Street Y, a cultural and community nonprofit center in New York City.  He’s the son of one of my closest friends, but I’d be writing about this brilliant project anyway.

In its first year, Giving Tuesday raised $10 million for more than 2,500 nonprofit groups. More groups are participating this year. Giving Tuesday doesn’t collect the money. Its genius is that it encourages each person to choose a favorite charity and publicize the choice on social media.

If you’re interested in paying it forward, join the movement. It might make you feel as good as those you help.  

©2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

The endangered art of writing by hand -- Nov. 21, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When President Barack Obama composed his thoughts about the Gettysburg address, he wrote much as Abraham Lincoln did 150 years ago.  He used pen and paper.

     

The White House Tuesday released both the handwritten and typed versions of Obama’s essay. Had Obama, or more likely an aide, simply typed the tribute on a laptop and hit Send, the text would have been just another news release.  Instead, many people stopped to read the handwritten page.

In our aggressively digital age, the handwritten note or essay may be as practical as a top hat, but no writing is more personal.  (OK, writing a check for the electric bill is hardly personal, but online banking has freed people from most check-writing.)

   

When we handwrite a letter, we send something beyond the words. Holding the same paper, the reader glimpses the fallible human being who held the pen.  For example, the president sometimes forgets to cross his Ts. This may not come as a surprise.

It’s rare for most adults to take the time to find pen and paper, wait for thoughts to flow and put them down – although we can. Sadly, we’re in danger of losing the art of writing by hand.

Schools long ago let penmanship slip. Cursive writing is so foreign that some children can’t read the handwritten letters their grandparents send.  Parents have to translate.

The Common Core educational standards for grades K-12 dropped penmanship in favor of keyboarding as an important skill. Everyone needs to use a computer keyboard, of course. Word processing is the inelegant term for what we do at the keyboard. We produce a commodity called content.

We moderns talk and type constantly, but our tweets and status updates are often out of our hands before our brain has registered the meaning of our words.

Must our choice be keyboard or pen? Why not both? Among the 45 states that have adopted Common Core standards, seven want to reinstate cursive writing instruction, the Associated Press reports. They are California, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Utah.  

In North Carolina, the “back to basics” educational movement means that students are learning to write by hand and to memorize the multiplication tables.  Proponents say cursive writing helps eye-hand coordination and improves reading and writing. Critics say practicing cursive script is irrelevant, similar to using an abacus or slide rule. 

While that debate simmers, we all could learn from the presidents who believed in the power of the handwritten word.

Ronald Reagan was a prolific letter writer, penning thousands upon thousands of letters. In the White House, he turned his handwritten letters over to typists who prepared them for mailing. The former president was 83 when he wrote by hand the poignant letter telling Americans that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

“I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life,” Reagan wrote on Nov. 6, 1994. “I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.” He died in June 2004. His letters have been gathered in several books. 

The letters of President George H.W. Bush, another prodigious correspondent by hand, were compiled in “All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings,” published earlier this year.

Obama has had a habit of reading 10 letters a night from citizens, and he responds by hand to a lucky few.  Some recipients burst into tears and vow to save the president’s missives for posterity. Human nature being what it is, though, others race to see how much the letters will fetch from online auctions.

Speaking of which, earlier this year Obama’s half-brother put two of the president’s hand-written notes for sale for $30,000.

Such commercialism cheapens the seller but not the handwritten word or the writer. 

Obama’s handwritten essay about the Gettysburg address at 150, along with similar essays by several former presidents and other notables, will be on display at the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill.

You don’t have to be famous to pick up a pen and write. Your handwritten words are just as priceless.  

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Thanksgiving -- to shop or not to shop? Nov. 14, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Shopping on Thanksgiving Day is a recent – and regrettable – trend, but there’s nothing new about retailers trying to maximize the number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In the 1930s, business interests persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to alter the calendar, and therein lies a cautionary tale.

By the tradition established by Abraham Lincoln, Thanksgiving was on the last Thursday of November, although there was no law. Starting about 1933, the National Retail Dry Goods Association began agitating to advance the holiday’s date to help spur sales as the country tried to emerge from the Depression.

Roosevelt finally agreed in 1939, when the last Thursday fell on Nov. 30, just 24 days before Christmas. He announced in August that Thanksgiving would be on Nov. 23.

The New Yorker explained that “Americans traditionally delay their Christmas shopping until after they have eaten their turkey, and when, as would have happened this year, the period is narrowed down to scarcely more than three weeks, the retail business takes a beating.”

Roosevelt’s proclamation applied only to the District of Columbia and federal workers, but it started a war over those seven days. A front page headline in The New York Times read: “Shift in Thanksgiving Date Arouses the Whole Country.”

Among the aggrieved were makers of calendars and schedulers of school vacations and college football games. Half the governors chose different dates for Thanksgiving, so people were perplexed about when to celebrate. The turkey growers, though, said they’d have no problem fattening up the birds a week early.

Indignant Republicans claimed the president had assumed dictatorial powers.  (Sound familiar?) The mayor of Atlantic City said residents could eat twice – on Thanksgiving and “Franksgiving.”

The Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who later would popularize “positive thinking,” preached that it was “questionable thinking and contrary to the meaning of Thanksgiving for the president of this great nation to tinker with a sacred religious day on the specious excuse it will help Christmas sales.”

Citizens on both sides of the issue flooded the White House with letters and telegrams.  From South Dakota came a letter urging the president to remember that “we are not running a Russia or communistic government.”

For more reaction, take a look at documents in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and the National Archives, including an article in the Archives’ Fall 1990 Prologue magazine by the late historian G. Wallace Chessman, all available online.

So, did changing the date work to boost sales? Not really. Business analysts said retail spending was about the same in 1939 as in 1938. In states with an early Thanksgiving, sales were more spread out; in late Thanksgiving states, spending was more concentrated in the week before Christmas.

Two years later, as confusion still reigned, FDR announced his “experiment” of changing the date had failed. Congress officially made Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.

That, of course, didn’t fix the shopping dilemma. Thanksgiving 2013 is Nov. 28, which means about a week less of prime holiday shopping. Many who work in retail will have to cut their Thanksgiving celebrations short and head to the mall.

More big chain stores are starting Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving, including Macy’s, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Kohls, JC Penney and the Gap.

So does opening on Thanksgiving Day boost overall sales? Not really. Analysts say it just cuts sales on the actual Black Friday. Last year, when a few retailers took the bold step of opening on Thanksgiving, holiday sales were up 3.5 percent over 2011. That was a smaller gain than in 2011, before stores opened on Thanksgiving, when sales rose 5.6 percent over 2010.

Retailers keep encroaching on Thanksgiving because they face ever stronger pressure from online merchants. And, let’s face it, some people do like to shop on Thanksgiving. They tend to be between 18 to 34, which is also the largest group of Black Friday shoppers.

Some marketing analysts predict that in five years Thanksgiving will be just another shopping day.

Enjoy your pumpkin pie while you still can – before galloping commercialism triumphs over tradition.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Gettysburg address still powerful at 150 -- Nov. 7, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Rarely has a president been so wrong.

“The world will little note nor long remember what we say here…” So Abraham Lincoln predicted in his brief, eloquent speech at the dedication of the cemetery in Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863.

The sesquicentennial of the Civil War mostly has commemorated bloody battles. Now we turn to the powerful words that shaped our views.

    

At Gettysburg National Battlefield Park, Dedication Day ceremonies are Nov. 19. A series of lectures, book-signings and other events Nov. 16 to 23 will commemorate the Gettysburg address.

 

The address is one of the most noted and quoted speeches in history, but Lincoln wasn’t the main speaker that day. The orator was Edward Everett, a former senator and secretary of state who delivered a two-hour address. We laugh about long-winded Everett, but, historian Garry Wills reminds us, in the 19^th century lengthy dramatic speeches were a kind of performance art.

Four months earlier, on July 3, 1863, the Union had won the three-day Battle of Gettysburg. More than 50,000 Confederate and Union troops were dead, captured, missing or wounded. Bodies that had been hastily buried in makeshift graves on the battlefield were still being interred in the new Soldiers’ National Cemetery.

Lincoln had been invited to make “a few appropriate remarks.” His 272-word speech changed forever the way Americans think about our country and the Civil War.

“Up to the Civil War `the United States’ was invariably a plural noun: `The United States are a free country.’ After Gettysburg it became a singular: `The United States is a free country,’” writes Wills, author of the 1992 book “Lincoln at Gettysburg.”

In his remarks, Lincoln reached back to the Declaration of Independence to reframe the war as a fight for liberty and freedom. The nation was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” he said.

And, “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln did not mention the Emancipation Proclamation. In effect for less than a year, it had freed many, but not all, slaves. The war would grind on for two more years, but in two minutes, he assigned surviving Americans the task of renewing the promise of freedom for all. His critics were livid. Some complained that the president was deliberately misleading the public about American history. The country was founded on the Constitution, which had avoided any mention of equality.

A Chicago newspaper called the address “a perversion of history so flagrant that the most extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful,” historian David Herbert Donald writes in his 1995 book, “Lincoln.”

Donald says Wilbur F. Storey also wrote that the soldiers who perished on the battlefield died “to uphold the Constitution and the Union created by it,” not to “dedicate the nation to `the proposition that all men are created equal.’”

It seems odd in our word-flooded society that a few simple words could have such lasting impact. Our politicians blab constantly, their every forgettable syllable and gesture recorded, tweeted and analyzed.

In contrast, there’s no definitive account of the Gettysburg ceremonies. We don’t know when Lincoln wrote his remarks. Historian Wills dismisses as a silly myth the familiar story that the president scribbled his remarks on scrap paper on the train from Washington. At least five handwritten, slightly different copies survive.

The crowd interrupted Lincoln multiple times with applause -- or not at all, depending on who’s telling the story. The Associated Press reporter who transcribed Lincoln’s speech inserted brackets five times to indicate applause, but years later said he’d arbitrarily included the brackets and wasn’t sure there had been any applause, says historian Glenn LaFantasie.

   

Some say Lincoln thought the speech a failure. “That speech won’t scour!” he supposedly said afterwards. “Scour” referred to plows used on the prairies that failed to turn over the heavy soil, Donald explains. Wills says Lincoln was satisfied with the speech.

One thing is clear. When we read the address 150 years later, Lincoln’s ideas still speak to us. It’s well worth remembering the power of words.      

30

So sorry -- apologies matter -- Oct. 31, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the health exchange website debacle, Washington has moved through denial, anger and finger pointing. Now we’ve hit the apology stage.

On Wednesday, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, called the online marketplace where people were supposed to be able to compare and buy insurance easily starting Oct. 1 “a miserably frustrating experience for way too many Americans.”

“You deserve better,” she said at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. “I apologize.”

And when the terrier from Tennessee, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, snapped at Sebelius, asking who was responsible for the mess, Sebelius said, “Hold me accountable for the debacle. I’m responsible.”

A day earlier, Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for setting up the online marketplaces, also apologized.
  

“To the millions of Americans who’ve attempted to use HealthCare.gov to shop and enroll in health care coverage, I want to apologize to you that the Web site has not worked as well as it should,” Tavenner said at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.

President Barack Obama, while stopping short of an actual apology, has said “nobody is madder than me.” He apparently can’t brake for pronouns at a time like this.

Seriously, the president must be mad at himself for letting this fiasco befall his signature legislative achievement. It’s his legacy at stake. Obama struck a confident note Wednesday in Boston, insisting that the rollout problems are solvable. A lot is riding on whether the website is running smoothly Nov. 30, as promised,

In his speech at Faneuil Hall, Obama sought to clear up confusion about his oft-repeated promise that people could keep their insurance under the new system. Some people who buy health insurance on the individual market have received cancellation notices. Obama explained that a few policies fail to meet consumer protection standards in the health law, but the people will be eligible for better coverage and possibly for premium subsidies.  

Typically, embattled public figures follow the old legal advice to doctors facing malpractice claims: “Defend and deny.” Testifying before Congress, the lawyered-up contractors who engineered the troubled marketplace avoided showing even a smidgen of remorse.  

When a top-level public servant like Sibelius has the wit to apologize and sound sincere, she conveys the sense that she gets it, that she knows real people are being hurt by her agency’s ineptitude.   

Don’t get me wrong. An apology – many apologies -- from Washington won’t shorten anyone’s wait on HealthCare.gov or pay the insurance premium. People want results; they want their government to work.

At the same time, though, people should realize that Obamacare is a moving political target.

“We did not wage this long and contentious battle just around a website,” the president says. As rocky as the rollout of the exchanges has been, the president insists, the Affordable Care Act is already working to make insurance more readily available and affordable. That, of course, won’t satisfy the law’s foes.

Obama repeatedly says he’ll work with anyone who wants to fix the law, but congressional Republicans have no interest in mending it. If it’s not the website, it’s the canceled policies or the cost of premiums or something else. The GOP needs to be accountable too.

Where,Republicans, is your long-promised alternative to the health law? Let us see it – or help fix what’s broken.    

A president saves his apologies for big moments. Obama reportedly apologized to irate German Chancellor Angela Merkel after news broke that the United States had been listening to her phone calls for years. He apologized Oct. 8, during the government shutdown, for the unfolding fiscal dramas in Washington.

“To all the American people: I apologize,” he said, but he couldn’t resist turning the apology into a rebuke, saying what he needs to do is to break his foes of their bad habits in negotiations.  

Speaking of apologies, I’ve yet to see tea party Republicans apologize for shutting down the government or 
sending the world’s blood pressure sky high with games over raising the debt ceiling.

An apology is not a solution, but it is a start. It takes guts to say you’re sorry. Who’ll be next?

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Battle of man vs. machine hits insurance exchanges -- Oct. 24, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Barack Obama has called in the cavalry to fix the health exchange rollout fiasco. He has a new tech czar and “some of the best IT talent in the country” working 24-7 to remove the chewing  gum clogging the system.   

Too bad Obama can’t fix human nature. People naturally resent playing by tech rules, even when it’s in their best interest. More on that in a minute.

Congressional hearings with political overtones are investigating the botched healthcare.gov website. Contractors who engineered parts of the contraption blame each other and the federal government. Republicans, and even a few Democrats, want the head of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She will face the wrath of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next week.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which was in charge of the rollout, went ahead with it despite warnings the system wouldn’t work.

An insurance executive who was involved in an industry testing group told The Washington Post that it was clear a month before the launch that CMS was still working on how the exchanges would handle enrollment, federal subsidies and the security of consumers’ personal information, such as income.

That’s a lot. But the last item -- security of personal information – is most crucial. Millions of people have to give up their birth dates, Social Security numbers, employment and income information to sign up for insurance. For people to sign up, they must be confident the government will keep their sensitive information safe.   

And that leads to another issue. As bad as the tech problems are, the inevitable conflict between man and machine is more troublesome. The insurance marketplaces – like other online accounts – safeguard personal information by requiring customers to answer security questions to verify their identity.

Big problem: Many people are flummoxed by online security questions, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Among the questions: What was your high school mascot? Favorite childhood superhero? Street you lived on in third grade?

“I don’t think they took baby boomers into account when they invented those questions,” a 58-year-old massage therapist in Texas told the Journal. Margo Benge said she gave up when she could answer only two of the 12 possible questions – and she needed to answer three.  “I barely remember two weeks ago, let alone childhood,” she said.

And I thought it was just me.

I’ve been resisting online security questions for years. The problem is the questions sound so reasonable.  In what school did you start first grade?

Anyone would know that, right? Not necessarily. An Air Force brat, I went to 10 schools before I graduated from high school. I don’t remember a thing about my school in first grade, except that it was in Germany.

The street I lived on in third grade? No clue. It was in Maryland.

Favorite color? It varies.

Favorite song? Movie?  Ditto. Ditto.

In California, the state’s insurance exchange presents 30 security questions; shoppers must  answer five, the Journal reported. Among them: “What is your significant other’s favorite color?” and “what is your youngest child’s birth weight?” And the ever popular: “What color was your first bicycle?”

These are details a machine can summon effortlessly. It’s not as easy for men and women. Life is messy. Our memories overlap, fade and reconstitute.     

Best friend? Don’t make me choose.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I want websites to do whatever they can to assure privacy. But many web-savvy people say the questions don’t stop determined hackers anyway. Sarah Palin’s email was hacked by someone who found out her birth date, ZIP code and the name of her high school – information that’s widely available on Google and Facebook.

Here’s a solution. Anyone can arbitrarily decide from today forward that he or she had Miss Raven as first grade teacher, lived on Lenore Street in third grade and rode a red bike to Edgar Allen Poe Elementary School.  Stumped by security questions? Nevermore.    

We humans just have to remember what we made up. We can make a note. On paper.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

We all pay for shutdown in dollars and trust -- Oct. 17, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Barack Obama says there were no political winners in the crisis over the federal government shutdown and debt limit. Most Americans, regardless of their political persuasion, probably agree.

In Washington, though, every moment has a winner and a loser. Once the latest financial calamity was averted, most political analysts thought the president was a winner because he showed some spine, gave up nothing and kept his signature health care legislation intact.

Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, were losers because they totally misread the political landscape. Their ill-conceived attempt to defund Obamacare shut down the government, idled 800,000 workers for 16 days and hurt the economy – but it yielded only a minor tweak in the health care law. People who seek subsidies to buy insurance on the exchanges will have to provide income verification.

Some tea party Republicans cling to the fig leaf notion that their failed fight over the shutdown actually awakened the nation to the evils of the Affordable Care Act and support will blossom.  Really?  

Meanwhile, every Democrat, Republican and independent coast to coast will pay the cost of the federal shutdown in dollars -- and also in the incalculable currency of trust.

The pricetag of the latest shutdown hasn’t been released, but two shutdowns lasting a total of 26 days in 1995-96 cost more than $1.4 billion, the Congressional Research Service reported. That’s $2.1 billion in current dollars. Most of the money went for back pay for furloughed federal workers.

The dollar waste is unnecessary and maddening. Trust in our institutions and government is in short supply.  

To squander the people’s trust hurts our political system and is heartbreaking.  

“The American people are completely fed up with Washington,” Obama said Thursday.  He’s right, of course, but it would be nice if he or anyone else could say that Washington has learned from its misadventure and will work to rebuild the trust it has squandered. There are only glimmers that some in Congress have learned lessons.   

In reaching the deal, members of Congress did what they should have done months ago. They did their jobs. 

The bipartisan agreement reopened the government and raised the debt limit, allowing the United States to pay the bills it racked up with two unfunded wars and an unfunded Medicare drug benefit. It’s merely a reprieve that postpones the fight. In two months or so, we may face another fiscal crisis. 

The plan Obama signed Thursday funds the government through Jan. 15 and raises the debt ceiling through Feb. 7. On the way there, a bipartisan, bicameral budget conference is supposed to come up with a long-term plan on tax and spending policies by Dec. 13. The two Republicans on the conference committee voted against the bill ending the crisis, and the two Democrats voted for it. That’s hardly a promising sign.

A glimmer of hope is the 14 centrist senators led by Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who worked together on an agreement that served as a point of departure for the final deal. The centrists were disappointed their plan didn’t prevail, but they pledge to keep working together.   

The next round of negotiations could take place in an even  more acidic political atmosphere because of the calendar.  

Obama chided Republicans on Thursday, saying, “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break…what our predecessors spent over two centuries building.”

Some analysts say the looming 2014 congressional elections could have a sobering effect on conservatives in the House. In most congressional districts, though, a Republican incumbent fears a challenger from his right more than a Democratic one. For most House members, compromise in Washington can be a terrible career move.

Traditionally, people hate Congress but like their own member of Congress. That may be changing. About three in four people said they want to see most members of Congress defeated next year. And about four in 10 said they’d like to retire their own member of Congress, a new Pew Research Center survey found.

It’s very possible that we’ll  lurch once again from one financial crisis to the next. That not only would be a shame but would be a drain on what’s left of trust in government.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30