Author: Danielle Levy

It’s hard to see how the children will receive the parenting they need–Let’s forget the ethical issues surrounding the octuplets, the medical, legal, financial and religious ones, and focus on the day to day lives of the children. My experience is that children thrive with a certain amount of attention, they look, they observe, they mimic, they seem to be sponges for the love around them, being loving back, responding to cuddles, hugs, to what is said to them. Neglect them and their little brain shuts down, or at least stops opening. That’s why protective children services are concerned about this kind of neglect. How is one mother going to attend to fourteen children in a 24-hour cycle? How much time can she give to each, how much attention, more importantly how much energy will she humanly have for each? Let’s say she gets help. Fine, but isn’t the idea for them to bond with the parents, the anchor, thread, continuity in their lives when everything else changes? And in this case since there is only one parent, isn’t that even more important? And what happens to the others when one is ill and needs more attention? Often babies like to be held when they are not well. Even if the mother is the best in the world, I don’t understand how there can be the kind of parenting the children need.
That’s my concern now that those children are here–that and the fact that this mother ought to have realized this.

There is something we can do towards the many painful problems we hear about each day, remember them–If anyone knows Los Angeles, they probably know that at the corner of PCH and Chautauqua a driver is usually greeted by panhandlers. Each time it happens to me, I’ve been in a quandary, do I or do I not give them money? Each time I listen to NPR I hear of so many abuses towards people near and far, I ask myself what am I to do? And then there are problems like Darfur, like Zimbabwe, and those not in the news these days but still on the map of suffering, North Korea and Myanmar. What is my responsibility as a private citizen? I keep thinking of those cholera victims in Zimbabwe with no care and no food, of those women being raped in Darfur, of the famine in North Korea and it’s so easy to feel despondent, or at the very least helpless.
We are accustomed to feeling that such huge problems, ongoing tragedies and abuses are beyond the pale of our abilities. I’m no longer so sure. We can certainly keep informed, but beyond that, there is something important we can do, something that gives each of these suffering beings worth, relevance and dignity, we can remember them. We can hold them in our hearts like the brothers and sisters they are and keep holding them there until their lot improves. Would we want them to do any less were we in their shoes?

We’re in an era where people are sharper about discerning the public good and partisan politicians ought to take notice—Suddenly, it’s not the same America. Everyone I talk to here or abroad, young or old, professional or not, feels differently about all matters related to government. People are hopeful that agencies and office holders will be responsive to the needs before them. Even more clearly one of the differences with the past is simply that now the public good seems within reach. In the same way that we believe president Obama himself seeks what is good for all, people who support him similarly support how they see his values. This has implications, many implications, which several Washington politicians seem to not have yet grasped. They are still being partisan at a time where public good is meant to transcend the party line. Their name and title seem to give them an authority, at least for a while, until one really listens to what they have to say about the stimulus package, or other aspects of economic recovery. It is then that one hears that their objections far from being the result of true thought or of commitment to the good of all are rooted in party ideology and probably the ego invested in such rhetoric.
They can continue their poorly thought out objections, they can go on being partisan (sadly it is something that afflicts both parties) but in this renewed atmosphere where people have developed new expectations of their elected officials, they engage in business as usual without realizing that many more have now been empowered to see through them.

The success of Martin and Barak lies in the millions beneath them–There’s a saying inserted into some of the cookies at one of the presidential inaugural gala, “Rosa sat so Martin could walk so Barak could run and our children can fly.” It’s difficult not to take that saying to heart, and at the very least to say, “how true.” But underneath the cleverness, the sentiments, and even the facts it reveals, the statement is not as true as it seems on the surface. What moves me at the intersection of Martin Luther King’s Birthday and Barak Obama’s inauguration is how many millions it took for each of them to succeed, for their success indeed rests on the millions beneath them. The civil rights movement rests on the millions throughout the land who walked and marched, and sat and went to jail and endured, Barak’s on the millions who voted and believe in him. To acknowledge the fabric that underlies their walk to success neither gives us undue importance, nor diminishes theirs. It simply reflects that we are all part of a grander picture, all interrelated and that like a stitch in an afghan we are each equally important.
What may be of interest to some is that it is an instance where an inner reality matches an outer one.