Lift Up Your Hearts!

On the eve of Election Day, as I await the results with some trepidation, I ponder the question, "Are you sorry you voted for Trump?"

Many who voted for him in 2024 are disappointed in what President Trump has accomplished in the first two years of this term. But after much consideration, I can say, "Absolutely I do not regret my vote. I am happy that Donald Trump is our president." Of course he has disappointed me in some areas, but no more than any other president and a lot less than many. The state America was in when he took office was dire, and still is. The problems have been building for a long time, under administrations of both political parties, and accelerated markedly under President Biden—or whoever was holding the reins of power at that time. Critical situations that have developed over several decades will not be fixed in a couple of years, and not without pain.

Does that mean I approve of President Trump's behavior? Often not. But after more than seven decades, I've realized that the people you need most in some situations are not always the most polished.

More than two years ago, shortly before the last presidential election, I clipped something that Jordan Peterson had to say about Donald Trump's flaws in a conversation with Elon Musk, and I finally have occasion to use it:

He's a complicated person, and I've been trying to figure him out, because some of the things that look like flaws might be advantages in disguise. He seems to me to be pretty good at standing up to psychopathic bullies, for example, and that's a useful skill, and it's not easy. You have to be a bit of a monster to manage that. And it isn't obvious to me how many of even the divisive idiosyncrasies of Trump are the mirror image of his capacity to stand up to bullies, and that's a tough call.

When I look at what President Trump has actually accomplished, I am more impressed than I have been with any president since Ronald Reagan—who was himself a rough character I came to appreciate slowly.

On border security Trump has done remarkably well: reducing new illegal immigration and encouraging the departure of those who are already in the country without permission—through financial incentives when possible, force of law when not. Unfortunately, a president with a different attitude toward wide-open borders could wreak havoc again, but that's another issue.

Many people are bitterly disappointed because of our involvement in new foreign wars, and I don't blame them. America has been notoriously bad at overseas military involvement: stepping into hornets' nests and leaving after accomplishing little more than stirring them up. But I also realize that our national security is in bad shape on many levels and that sometimes war is necessary. At least Trump recognizes the danger that faces us on many fronts and is trying to address it. 

He has been hindered by the many court battles dogging his steps. The right to challenge policies in court is essential in a democracy, but it's hard to be effective when your actions keep getting put on hold. Even if you win in the end, delay is costly in battle. The process may be necessary, but I don't hold it against President Trump when others keep undercutting his efforts.

What pleases me most about this administration is that I, along with a great many others, finally feel heard. At last someone in power is considering some of the concerns I've had for decades. RFK Jr. hasn't done nearly as much in his position as I had hoped, but nonetheless he has successfully shone a spotlight on issues that many of us feel need addressing, especially in the areas of nutrition and health.

Overall, I am encouraged by what President Trump has accomplished. Am I satisfied? No. But I will hold to the path that still seems best.

My sister-in-law lives in coastal Connecticut. When your home is dominated by the ebb and flow of the waters, paying attention to what the tides are doing is an important life skill. Hence this tide clock, which has pride of place on her wall.

As part of her semi-annual clock-changing ritual this morning, she stepped from clock to clock, meticulously setting each one back an hour. When she came to the tide clock, she picked it up ... then smiled and returned it to its place.

Time and Tide, Sun and Moon have their own natural logic, no matter what man in his hubris may attempt.

I don't much like early voting, or vote-by-mail except for situations of absence or infirmity. There's something almost sacred about the act of voting at one's polling place on Election Day.

That said, we've voted all three ways in recent years, and today we used the Early Voting option. The political situation has become so dire, and election results so critical, that I'd rather vote early and know it's done than risk having an illness or an emergency make it impossible to get to the polls on the day itself.

I will not say, as some do, "Vote! It doesn't matter how you vote; what counts is that you participate." That's almost as ridiculous as the participation trophies so readily handed out to kids. What counts is learning the facts, considering the issues, and voting your conscience. If you and I disagree on candidates and ballot issues, I absolutely wish you'd stay home. But that's not my call. What your conscience tells you is between you and God—far above my pay grade.

I watched us lose the abortion war, and it's happening again.

In my late teens it became inevitable that America would broaden the situations in which abortions could be legally performed, and at that critical juncture the pro-life side made a wrong turn. Many Americans wanted the restrictions loosened a bit, but still recognized the terrible consequences of taking an innocent human life.  Even the pro-choice side wanted abortions to be "safe, legal, and rare" (emphasis mine). Many who would have supported laws that eased restrictions on early-term abortions and extreme situations (such as where the baby would die soon after being born) still opposed abortion for sex selection, for the elimination of children with medical challenges, or as backup birth control.  And they were horrified by the idea of late-term abortion.

But we made a fatal mistake: we refused to compromise. Politics is the art of compromise, and we were naïve. To be fair, if you believe that abortion is the deliberate choice to destroy a human life, it's hard to accept it at all. But I'm certain that if we had not been so absolutist at that point, we would ultimately have saved many millions of lives with the restrictions that then could have been put in place. Instead, we facilitated the culture of abortion in which we now live. You can't always get what you want.

I tell this story because I see the same thing happening today. Many people who voted for President Trump are so disappointed by what he has not been able to accomplish that they plan to turn their backs on this election and not vote. This is a serious mistake. America is in a precarious situation and we need to take a larger view. Now is not the time to give up just because we can't get all we'd hoped for. We've slipped into this peril slowly, and hoping to get out of it quickly is like expecting that the pounds we gained over the past 20 years can be lost in a month.

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
Well, you just might find
You get what you need

I posted this back in May, but it's time for a reprise.

President Trump is trying to make Daylight Saving Time permanent!  If you're against him and everything he believes in, then I'm counting on you.  I'm COUNTING ON YOU to rise up against this affront to nature.  Tell your senators, tell your representatives, tell your state and local leaders.  (Don't tell Trump himself; that might have the opposite effect.)

IT'S TIME to take a stand against this unnatural practice!

(And if you're not against President Trump, I'm counting on YOU, too.)

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candlelight.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I cannot wait for the return of Standard Time!

The above lines by Robert Louis Stevenson return to me every morning these days. In point of fact, I have been "dressing by yellow candlelight" all summer, too. In Orlando, the earliest sunrise is about 6:30 EDT, which occurs in early June, and the latest sunset about 8:30 EDT, in late June. According to reality (sun time as opposed to clock time), these numbers are 5:30 for the earliest sunrise, and 7:30 for the latest sunset, which my own body clock finds much more reasonable.

Recently I came upon the advice that the first thing we should do when we awaken in the morning—specifically, within the first 10 minutes—is to expose our eyes to sunlight.

I'm a big fan of sunshine—I live in the Sunshine State after all—but my immediate reaction was the impossibility of following that advice for anyone who, like me, is up well before the sun peeks over the horizon. And what about Alaskans and Scandinavians?

I decided to ask Claude for the extremes of sunrise and sunset for Central Florida, and that led into the following conversation:

My prompt: These thoughts were inspired by reading someone's theory that it's important for our metabolic health that our eyes take in actual sunlight during the first 10 minutes or so after waking up. My reaction was that that sounds good, but it's not going to happen with any consistency, not only because of modern artificial light, but because the times of sunlight vary so much geographically. Have you ever heard of that theory? If so, what do you know about it?

Claude's response:

Yes — that's a real and pretty widely discussed idea, most associated these days with Andrew Huberman (Stanford neuroscientist with a popular podcast), though the underlying science predates him by decades in circadian biology research.

The core mechanism, briefly: Your eyes have specialized retinal cells (ipRGCs — intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells) that don't contribute to vision but feed directly into your suprachiasmatic nucleus, the brain's master circadian clock. Bright light exposure early in the day — especially the low-angle light around sunrise, which is rich in certain wavelengths — helps set that clock, which cascades into timing for cortisol release, melatonin onset later that night, and various metabolic processes (insulin sensitivity, body temperature rhythm, etc.).

What's solid: The general principle that morning light exposure helps anchor circadian rhythms is well-established in sleep and chronobiology research, going back to work in the 1980s-90s. Poor circadian alignment is genuinely linked to worse metabolic outcomes — shift workers, for instance, show elevated rates of metabolic syndrome. Light intensity matters a lot: outdoor light even on an overcast day is far brighter than typical indoor lighting (think 1,000-10,000+ lux outside vs. 100-300 lux in a typical room).

Where it gets oversold: The specific claims — that it has to be within the first 10 minutes, that it has to be actual sunrise, that you need a precise duration — go well beyond what the research actually nails down. Most of the underlying studies show benefits from "bright light exposure earlier in the day" generally, not a narrow 10-minute window. That kind of precision makes for a compelling podcast soundbite but isn't something the science actually demands.

Your instinct is right, too: the practical version of this advice — "get outside in the morning when you can" — is useful and low-cost. The rigid, must-be-within-minutes-of-waking version runs into exactly the problems you flagged: it's not achievable consistently for people with early alarms in winter, night-shift workers, or anyone at high latitudes where sunrise might be 9 AM in December. A "rule" that only works for early risers near the equator in summer isn't a robust health principle — it's a lifestyle-compatible one, dressed up as more universal than it is.

My next prompt: Thanks—although I would push back on the idea that it "works for early risers," since I am routinely up before the sun in Orlando (no alarm clock, just the way my body works), and natural light isn't available until much later. It's good to know that it's still helpful to get out in the sun once it shows up to the party.

Claude's response:

Fair pushback, and you're right — I stated that carelessly. "Early riser" doesn't line up with "sunlight available at wake time" at all; those are two different things that just happen to overlap for people whose wake time is late enough (or whose local sunrise is early enough) to coincide. You're up before the sun regardless of the clock, so the "within 10 minutes of waking" version of the rule was never going to apply to you no matter how you set your schedule.

The more accurate framing is probably: get bright light exposure reasonably early in your day, whenever the sun actually shows up relative to your own wake time — not tied to the moment you open your eyes. The circadian benefit comes from getting that light signal before too much of the day has passed, not from some magic window immediately post-wake. So for you, sun exposure shortly after sunrise (even if that's an hour or two after you're already up) should still be doing useful work — you're just not getting it in the first few minutes, and that's fine.

That is not only comforting but makes real sense. We humans could not have been designed (or evolved, if you prefer; for this point it makes no difference) to have our well-being depend on a very narrow window of time that has been unavailable for most of the population since long before the invention of electric lights.

It's also good to know that the anti-natural clock machinations of the government can't take away the benefits of early morning sunshine.

But I still can't wait for the return of Standard Time.

For me, September 11, 2001 might as well be yesterday. But not one of our 13 grandchildren was alive when my generation had its "Pearl Harbor" moment, and realized that our country is not invulnerable. Even for the eldest grandchild, it must feel as ancient as the division of Germany into East and West feels to me.

To mark this 25th anniversary of the day our world turned upside down, I offer two choir anthems that were written shortly after the events. Robert Kerr wrote Prayer for Peace for the Orlando Deanery Boychoir, and we had the privilege of singing it ourselves when Rob was our choir director.

Lord, grant us wisdom in our hour of need.
And give us vision, that we clearly see,
Your loving nature, Your mercies' might.
Bring us from darkness in to Your light.

Lord, touch our nation with Your healing hand.
And give us comfort o'er all the land.
Reveal Yourself to us and make us whole,
Reside within each heart and soul.

For there are battles we must fight,
And stand with courage for what is right.
Against the evil which infects us still,
Lord, give us conviction to know Your will.

Please help the strong to defend the weak,
But not in anger or revenge to seek,
So through Your justice let conflict cease.
Oh, unify us, and bring us peace.

For there are battles we must fight,
And stand with courage for what is right.
Against all evil, sin, and wrong,
Give us conviction to carry on!

Alleluia!

Lord, bless our soldiers across the sea,
And help them to set more people free.
And in their hearts, may they have pride to sing,
"God bless America,"

God bless America, Let freedom ring!

Our current choir sings this next anthem, A Prayer for Our Time by Pamela and Joseph Martin, for every 9/11 anniversary and at other appropriate times. This recording is really of us; thanks to Noah's work, we finally have a sound system that doesn't totally mangle the music—though I apologize for the extraneous sounds that crept in through a microphone error. The version below should start and stop at the right places, but if you can't see the embedded video, the link above takes you directly to YouTube and you'll have to scroll forward to timestamp 58:34.

Our God to thee we pray.
Heal our nation Lord today.
God of mercy, grant us courage, give us peace.
Give us peace, give us peace.

When evil draws its angry sword
And seeks to sever freedom's cord,
When death and darkness shake our faith
In God's unfailing power to save.
Eternal Father, ever be our courage in the time of need.

When war is raged by faceless foes
Who battle peace with fiery blows,
When storms of hate and fear assail
Our Father's mighty arm prevails.
Eternal Father, ever be
Our refuge in the time of need.

There is no tyrant who can stand
Against our sure defender's hand.
No threat or danger can defeat
The strong and righteous Prince of Peace.
Eternal Father, ever be our fortress in the time of need.

 Amen!

And amen! The United States of America is even more vulnerable now than it was a quarter of a century ago, and our enemies more sophisticated and more effective. The crude events of September 11, 2001 brought our country together, along with much of the world. The more subtle attacks of our enemies throughout the intervening years are ripping us apart. "Deliver us from evil" is no longer just a line in the Lord's Prayer, but a desperate plea.

It's time to stop half-staff flag abuse.

I've nothing in particular against Dolly Parton, but the decision to lower flags to half mast when she died prompted me to write about something that's been irking me for quite a while.

Flags are so frequently flying at half-staff nowadays that my reaction has been reduced to a guessing game, with all the impact of an emoji: I wonder who died now.  If we lowered our flags every time someone we think important dies, they'd never be flying high and free.

There's nothing wrong with being sorrowful when people die, nor for honoring those to whom honor is due.  But half-staff flag honors should be few and far-between.  If everyone is special, no one is special.  (This is not exactly what Dash said in the movie, The Incredibles, but it's what he meant, and how it's generally remembered.)  

Curious about what the official flag rules are, I asked Claude; here is his response (specific citations removed for clarity).

The rules live in the U.S. Flag Code (specifically 4 U.S.C. § 7), and there's an important distinction to start with: it's the law for government buildings, but only etiquette — advisory, not enforceable — for private citizens. Government buildings must comply with proclamations, but homeowners are encouraged, not required, to follow half-staff orders. So nothing here is legally binding on you personally at home, though most people who care about flag etiquette follow it anyway.

Who can order it: the President, a state governor, or the mayor of the District of Columbia can order flags to fly at half-staff. A 2007 amendment also extended this: when a governor proclaims half-staff to honor a member of the Armed Forces who died on active duty, federal facilities within that state must follow the state's proclamation too — so a governor's order can now bind federal buildings, not just state ones.

Fixed durations set by law, upon death:

• President or former President: 30 days
• Vice President, Chief Justice (or retired Chief Justice), or Speaker of the House: 10 days
• Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a Cabinet secretary, a former Vice President, or a state/territory Governor: from day of death until interment (burial)
• Member of Congress: day of death and the following day only

Recurring annual observances, fixed by law regardless of proclamation:

• Memorial Day — half-staff until noon, then raised to full staff for the rest of the day
• Peace Officers Memorial Day (May 15), Patriot Day (September 11), and Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (December 7) — though if Peace Officers Memorial Day falls on the same day as Armed Forces Day, that exception is waived

Discretionary/other deaths: for other officials or foreign dignitaries, it's done according to presidential order or established custom, not a hard rule

The correct mechanical procedure, regardless of occasion: the flag should first be hoisted briskly to the very top of the staff for a moment, then lowered to the half-staff position — and at the end of the day, raised back to the peak briefly before being lowered entirely. Skipping straight to half-staff without that initial full hoist is a common mistake.

One clarifying note on terminology, since you may see both used interchangeably: "half-staff" refers to a flag on land (a flagpole), while "half-mast" technically refers to a ship's mast — the position is identical, just different vocabulary depending on where the pole is.

When people call for the Fed to fix housing inflation, I often smile because the Fed is a prime cause of housing inflation (and inflation generally). It may have been with the best of intentions, but that’s just reality. Relying on the arsonist to put out the fire is rarely effective. — John Mauldin

Emphasis mine.

For most of my voting life I've been reluctant to talk about for whom I have voted. Even when I've discussed politics, I believe so strongly in the value of a secret ballot that I would almost never admit which lever I had actually pulled. (Even though almost none of my subsequent votes have involved voting machines and levers, that was my first experience with voting and I still think of it that way.)

So it remained for half a century of voting, until the political situation became in my eyes so dire I could not fail to pay attention, and felt an obligation to speak up. But don't worry, this is not going to be a somber political post. 

But I simply cannot resist revealing one of the votes I cast in today's primary election. It was for our county school board, and I proudly cast my vote for...

Antonio Pizza!

I mean, who could resist?

The school board elections are non-partisan, but I think pizza belongs at all parties, don't you?

When God lays his hand on a man, I take mine off. — Thomas H. Benton

This.  I'm too moved to comment further.

Although we occasionally checked in with the home front while we were overseas, for three weeks we had very little exposure to news headlines and social media.  I'm not saying that was a bad thing, but it meant we were met with some surprises when we returned home.  One very encouraging surprise was that the Internet had been flooded with reports and stories from international visitors who had come to the United States on the occasion of the World Cup and had had their stereotypes of America and Americans overwhelmed by reality.

For the last 20 years or so I have experienced a lot more foreign travel than I ever imagined, and one thing I have noticed is that very few people have any idea of how vast and how diverse America is.  Looking at a map of Texas alone, superimposed on a map of Europe, I see that it covers all or part of Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Poland!  That kind of vastness is hard for many Europeans to imagine.

As for culture, even Americans get their impressions of our country from Hollywood and whatever highly-curated news filters their way—how much more so those who don't live here?  I've learned the futility of trying to convince Europeans that their conception of America does not reflect the reality of America, but where I failed, the World Cup succeeded.  Visitor after visitor reported, with amazement, "Everything I was told about the United States was wrong!"  They were astounded by what they found, so different from what they had expected, everything from the flavor of ranch dressing to the kindness and warm welcome they experienced in the Deep South—from the people they had been taught to hate.  (Indeed, I had to unlearn that low opinion of the American South myself, having grown up in the Northeast.)  Americans, trapped in self-flagellation because we allow our flaws to mask our strengths, need to see our country through such eyes!

Why is this relevant to our trip?  Because these happy stories mirror ours, both on this trip and indeed on all the trips we've taken to foreign parts.  "Everyone said" that the French, especially Parisians, are rude and hate Americans, but our experience was exactly the opposite.  We met one, just one rude cab driver in Paris; everyone else was friendly and kind and patient with my very broken French.  In our experience—which can't be the same as someone else's but is the only experience by which we can truly judge—people in Europe, and Japan, and Brazil, and The Gambia are as kind and friendly as people anywhere, and do not universally hate Americans.  My greatest surprise on this trip was the respect and even admiration we heard expressed for American leadership; I had expected dismay and contempt.  Fear-mongering reports flow both ways across the Atlantic!

But we rarely talked politics, at least not directly; ordinary stories about our own lives and all that we have in common were what everyone delighted in sharing.  We spoke with people from all over the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Norway, Sweden, France, Portugal, Zimbabwe, South Africa, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Germany, Turkey, and more—and found nearly everyone to be interesting, friendly, polite, kind, and sometimes above-and-beyond helpful.

Not everyone can, or should, take a Mediterranean cruise or travel far to see World Cup soccer in person, but surely the world would be better off if we spent less time listening to stories that make us angry and more time experiencing the humanity of our neighbors.

I'm not unsympathetic to those who are genuinely suffering in the heat. I spent the first 30+ years of my life in the Northeast, where air conditioning was almost unheard of, even in critical care hospitals. The laboratory where I worked in the 1970's only had air conditioning in the computer rooms, and that only because—like art—the machines would not work under conditions that people were expected to endure with patience. Even in Florida, my grandparents' house, like most buildings before the late 20th century, had no air conditioning. (It was, however, intelligently built: two blocks from the ocean, and constructed for maximum cross-ventilation, to take advantage of every breeze.) I know unrelenting heat.

So how did we manage?

• Buildings, like my grandparents' house, were built to take the heat into account, with cross-ventilating windows, breezy porches, and shady trees arching over the roofs. Central Florida as it is built now could not exist without the HVAC industry.
• House windows were habitually opened as soon as the outside air cooled off at night, which it did most weeks of the year in the Northeast, and closed when the day began to heat up. This practice has a power that I didn't fully appreciate until we moved to Florida, where the nighttime cooling is ofttimes non-existent.
• Swimming: in ponds, lakes, pools, and/or the ocean. Plastic kiddie pools and running through the sprinkler helped a lot, too. When we first moved to Florida, we kept the A/C set in the 80's, and spent a lot of time in the pool. That kept us cool, but took a terrible toll on our energy. Once we gave in and brought the inside temperature down to the high 70's, we used the pool less—but got a lot more accomplished.
• Another advantage the more northern climes have is that the really unbearable temperatures are only for a short time. When we lived in Rochester, there were usually only two or three weeks in the summer when I was reduced to nursing my baby while immersed in a cool-water bath, and planning excursions based on whether or not the destination was air conditioned. In Florida, sans A/C, that would be the majority of the year.
• A few very lucky people had jobs in air conditioned buildings. As for the rest of us: we suffered; we endured; we dialed down our activities to keep our bodies cooler and our minds saner. And we looked forward to the first hints of autumn.

But that was then, and this is now, and now what makes it possible to have a comfortable, productive society is air conditioning. It's no secret that the closest thing the American South has to a secular saint is Willis Carrier. Air conditioning is as critical in the Sun Belt as heating is in the Snow Belt. Having heard people seriously suggest that the cause of France's heat wave is American air conditioning, I can only say, "Come back and talk to me about giving up my A/C after you've lived a winter in your country without heating." Better yet, discover air conditioning for yourself. Even if you only need it for a few weeks out of the year, you'll feel better, and can be pleased with how low your A/C bills are compared with ours, just as we Southerners feel better about our heating bills in winter when we look at yours.

You might also consider investing in public places of respite, as I've seen in various cities here, where people can come in to get warm, or to get cool, depending on the season. As I said in my last post, one can stand a much greater intensity and duration of heat or cold if one can occasionally retreat to a more comfortable situation.

And gelaterias. We all need more gelaterias.

It was a small gesture, but it felt so good.

The government gave us these for free, and they've been stashed in our closet ever since. The last time I used one was ages ago, in order to be able to assure members of our choir that my symptoms were seasonal allergies, not covid. They are now three years past their putative expiration dates, and I needed the space in the closet—and in my mind.

Tossing these boxes into the trash did nothing to undo the harm that was done during the covid era, nor to erase the shame I carry for my own behavior in that time of mass delusion and conformity.

But it still felt really good.