Buying rubbers was not as it is now. They were sold only in drug stores and only from under the counter, like something illegal. You had to ask the pharmacist for them. I hated this process and was embarrassed every time I made such a purchase. So I would buy as many as I could afford each time. But being a poor college student, that was often not a lot.

The time I remember most went like this:

I entered the drug store and pretended to browse the aisles while scoping out the situation. I located the pharmacist and made sure he was a man. Then I monitored other customers and waited for an opportunity to approach him privately. The last thing I wanted was to be in the middle of this transaction and have a woman walk up and listen in. The sense of danger could hardly have been greater had I been planning to rob the local bank. 

I saw my opportunity and approached the pharmacist. I quickly told him my business. My face was very serious as was his. He asked me how many I needed. I said three dozen. He looked me up and down, sizing me up. There was something of a twinkle in his eye. He reached down behind the counter and got the three boxes. He placed them embarrassingly on the counter in plain view, although that was actually the only place he could have placed them. Then he smiled broadly and said out loud: "Think this will last you to the end of the week?"  I was not amused then as I am now. My cheeks burned red and I did not answer the question.

This was around the time that Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical letter known as Humanae Vitae (Latin for "Human Life"), which reemphasized the Catholic Church teaching that it is always wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence. Contraception is defined as "any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act , or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible."  This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus, the Pill, and all other such methods. (Catholic Answers – www.catholic.com) This certainly applied to my purchse at the drug store counter.

Until recently, I had thought that debate over birth control was a curious and rather humerous relic of the past. Like my purchase of rubbers from under the counter. I probably knew that for Catholics the Humanae Vitae letter was "still on the books," but I also knew that practicing Catholics paid no attention to it. Some 98% of Catholic women have used sterilization, condoms or other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus, the Pill, or other such methods. One would certainly assume the same for Evangelical Christians and other members of conservative religious groups. Why then this outcry against planning parenthood? Why then these efforts to enforce bans on contraception through State and Federal laws? Is it not pathetic that religious leaders who cannot get their members to observe such a ban through teaching and instruction should try to get it enforced through government legislation?

Up in nearby Pennsylvania there are sincere Amish people who believe it is wrong to own and drive automobiles. They get around in horse-drawn carriages instead. We grant them this right, although it does pose some traffic and parking problems now and then. But the Amish are not trying to get legislation passed to ban automobiles for the rest of us.

You could argue, however, that if their religion was large enough and strong enough and political enough, they might be doing just that. The English Puritans who became American Pilgrims had suffered under religious persecution in their homeland. But when they came to the New World and found themselves in the majority, they turned around and practiced religious intolerance themselves. From this did Roger Williams flee to found Rhode Island as a colony based on religious toleration, separation of church and state, and political democracy. It became a refuge people seeking liberty from religious persecution.

The temptation of all religion has been to ally itself with the State and use the power of the State to enforce its beliefs and support its institutions. That works well for religious majorities but not for religious minorities or for those who choose to opt out of religion altogether. Because of this, America was founded on a separation of Church and State.

If Churches wish to refrain from cars or condoms, let them do it. But don't let them use the power of Government to impose it on the rest of us.

I guess someone decided they could be attractive, though, and might be better accepted as part of the landscape if they were. I can imagine the discussion in some corporate boardroom now. Different people presenting their innovative concepts for how to make these things attractive. And the winning plan was . . . to disguise them as trees! Brilliant, right? We already have lots of trees, so who would object to a few more? This can even be considered an environmental beautification plan, like planting wildflowers in the highway medians. 

Now you may think I am making this up, because it sounds so ridiculous. I would have thought I was making it up until yesterday when I was driving along a new highway in Montgomery County, Maryland. Off to the right I saw this tree-like thing, but not a tree. I could tell instantly it was not a real tree, at least not any variety of tree I had ever seen before. It did have sticking out things with green stuff on them like a tree, but clearly fake. And the top of this tree–a dead giveaway–held the same shiny metal relay equipment as those other towers we see everywhere.

When I was a Boy Scout, I earned the Forestry Merit Badge which required you to identify a lot of trees by name. Sometimes we had to identify trees just from a piece of their bark. I have always liked trees and a home surrounded by them. I hate it that developers often start by bulldozing their subdivision land and removing all the trees. Then they build these expensive new homes out there in bare fields. Not for me. I'll buy an older place with trees around it. And if I had a vote, I'd vote to outlaw the practice of killing off millions of nice young trees just to decorate and stand in our houses for a few days around Christmas. I was mad as hell about the State of California allowing logging companies to cut down almost the last of the Redwoods. I am tree-friendly, I guess.

The designers of the tree-disguised relay tower may have considered themselves tree-friendly also. They may have held focus groups where they showed pictures of their "trees" and paid people to give approval. They may have paid ad agencies to print slick brochures and plant advertising in strategic publications. They may have bought the votes of politicians for support.

We sadly live in a time when money can sell a lie for the truth, when money can substitute something fake for something genuine. We grow accustomed to advertising that is all about lying and fakery. A radio ad I heard the other day promised to eliminate your debt no matter what you owe or how much you earn. And some people will hear that and believe it, just as some people will accept these "trees" as trees.

Not me.

I suppose you could trim nose hair by using a set of small, sharp scissors. That option is not appealing to me. I do not fancy sticking small sharp scissors up my nose and scissoring blindly. So I looked for something powered by batteries with an assurance of protection for my sensitive areas. 

An Amazon.com search on "nose hair trimmer" will return 743 buying choices as of today. I have not tried all 743. But I have tried several, and I can put them in two categories. The first is a trimmer that trims effectively but scares the heck out of you and often grabs onto things and makes you jerk. It gets the job done but you are never comfortable with the way it works. You keep saying to yourself that there must be a better way, and back you go browsing through the 743 choices.

The second type of trimmer is the opposite of the first. It is comfortable and reassuring, but unfortunately it does not trim very well. Given a lot of time and persistence you may eventually do the job with it, but the effort is frustrating. You keep saying there must be a better way. And back you go browsing through the 743 choices. This could be an endless loop.

The dilemma this illustrates is common to our society in particular and our human condition in general. Consider the following:

• We want fast food that tastes fatty or salty or sweet, but we also want good nutrition. You can have one or the other, but not both.
   
• We want to think of ourselves as good and generous, but we practice greed and selfishness. It doesn't work both ways.
   
• We want good political leaders, but we don't want to be involved in the political process. Guess what?
   
• We want the services of government, but not the obligation to pay for those services. Keep looking and good luck.
   
• We want to be entertained by violent sports, but we don't want any players getting hurt. That isn't possible.
   
• We want clean air to breathe and water to drink, but we don't want and regulations that restrain corporations. You can have one approach or the other, but not both.
   
• We'd like a trim, athletic body but we hate to exercise or to restrain our appetites. How will that come out?
   
• We don't want banks that are too big to fail, but we don't want any restraints on business. Which will it be?
   
• We don't want politicians whose votes are for sale, but we don't support restrictions on giving them money. Go figure the outcome.
   
• We want our children to stand on their own two feet, but we insist on making their decisions for them.
   
• We feel guilty if we indulge ourselves, but cheated if we don't. And so it goes. And so it goes. 

In a perfect world we wouldn't have to deal with these dilemmas. But there is no perfect world. Or nose hair trimmer.

Today was a day to catch up on the leaves, nearly the last of the season. And I was about to get the leaf rake out of the garage when a tempting thought occurred. I could run up to Lowe's and buy a leaf blower like so many of the neighbors use. Actually, if I listen, I can hear them running in the distance. The neighbors who use them seem to take a long time to blow the leaves into piles, and some of them blow the yard entirely clean of leaves. They work till they get every last one.  I could do that too.  I decided to research this before heading to the store.

When you shop for a leaf blower you have a choice of several types: electric (plug in a cord and pull it around), 2-cycle gasoline (measure and mix oil with the gas), and 4-cycle gasoline (use straight gas but make sure you have oil in the tank). And then you have brands to choose from: Husqvarna, Troy, Black & Decker, Weed Eater, Poulan, Hitachi, and others I never heard of.

I decided that dragging an electric cord around was not for me. I found that the 4-cycle models are more expensive than the 2-cycles, and I don't have a problem with the need to mix oil. It looked like the price range for a brand and model I favored would be around $125. I could afford that.

It was there at the point of getting my wallet and heading to the car that I began to debate this decision. I remembered reading that small lawnmower-type engines are highly polluting, and I looked up some information. I found a Swedish study concluding that air pollution from cutting grass for an hour with a gasoline powered lawn mower is about the same as from a 100-mile automobile trip. I found that according to the EPA some 54 million Americans mow their lawns with gas-powered mowers each weekend, and this may be contributing as much as 5% of the nation's air pollution.

I began to question my intention to buy a leaf blower. Why should I burn gasoline to accomplish something I can do just as well by hand? Why should I increase the clutter of the garage by adding another machine? Why buy a machine that has no use except for a few short weeks of the year? Why add to the noise and fumes of the neighborhood when I can do just as well with an inexpensive hand rake.

Have you ever wandered around among all the kitchen appliances and powered gadgets you can purchase to "save your time and effort"? These include robot tea infusers, digital measuring spoons, electronic nutcrackers, frozen fruit soft serve processors, self stirring electric pots, retractable kitchen islands controlled by iPhone, radio toasters that "wake you to the sweet smell of perfectly toasted bread with your favorite artiste singing in the background," electronic fuzzy rice cookers, text message controllers for pretty much everything in your kitchen, and more kinds of coffee makers than there are kinds of coffee. This is just a tiny sample.

I thought about the disconnect between our world-wide energy crisis and all the "energy saving" devices we manufacture and hook up. Whose energy are all these saving? We are "saving" ourselves the energy of chopping something by hand, opting to get out a machine, connect it, load it, turn it on, and then clean it up later. We are "saving" ourselves the energy of leaf raking by hand, opting to get out a machine, fill it with oil and gasoline, start the thing up, and make noise and smoke as we blow the leaves into a pile. And for these labor savings we will drill baby drill at any cost and risk to extract the last gallons of oil the earth has left.

It was a cool, fall day with a bright sun and a little breeze. I got out my rake and enjoyed the effort.

Lincoln knew this well, and he pressed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (April 4, 1864) which completed the abolition of slavery in the United States. The vote in the Senate was 38 to 6. The vote in the House of Representatives was 119 to 56.

Why today's Republicans might have voted against these measures:

• This promotes class warfare
• It will lead to higher unemployment by punishing our job creators
• We should promote the success of our leaders and not the incompetence of the working class
• The States should decide about slavery for themselves.
• We don't need more of Big Government telling us what to do.
• This amounts to a tax on success
• Our Constitution has nothing against slavery and we should leave it alone
• People who want us to be like the European countries ought to move there
• This is just another step toward Socialism
• If we don't control these people, one of them might become President someday

But what do you assume when you hear one of these alarms going off? Do you assume a robbery in progress and call the police? Heavens no. We hear the damn things so regularly that we hardly notice, much less doing anything about it. 

No study has ever shown that these devices actually reduce auto theft. Their warnings are totally ignored, and even if they weren't, any car thief knows how to defeat them. There are now a collection of organizations making efforts to have the devices banned as a public nuisance. I would not count on the success of such efforts. Any thing that promises to add to our security is an easy sell these days, whether it makes any sense or not. 

Eisenhower warned of the excessive influence of a "military/industrial complex."  Two additional elements have been added to this threat.  One is a security industry that thrives on the fact that any promise of dealing with a perceived threat is given a blank check. The second element is that the blank check writers are our politicians who owe their jobs and allegience to this same industry. 

We seem to be surrounded and engulfed by threats, some real and many imagined. Warnings are everywhere. Every product we buy seems to hold danger, judging by the warning labels and the pages of dangers described in the user manuals. Warning signs frown at us from roads, parks, workplaces, stores, schools, hospitals. The media and entertainment industries report or imagine the worst that can be imagined in gory detail. Security cameras spy on us, often unseen. Airports swarm with police and security personnel. We are told to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior and report it on the tip line.

And yet, as a whole, most Americans manage to live fairly peaceful lives. Although told that we have much to fear, we manage not to be so fearful. How do we manage?

It is much like the car alarms. We grow used to it and learn to ignore it like the political rhetoric that much of it actually is. Scare tactics have a diminishing return. And that is good, I suppose. Otherwise we would live in fear all our lives.

When I visited Guadalajara I was lucky to hire a private tour guide with his own car for a full day of looking around. I told him what I was interested in, and he took me there. He was a nice man who did accounting for the hotel and took people touring on the side. He took me places I would never have found or gone on my own, and I felt safe and comfortable being with him.

Sometime during this day, we found ourselves sitting in traffic behind a bus. When the light turned and the bus moved ahead, a cloud of thick, black, evil-smelling fumes surrounded us. My driver squirmed in his seat, made an exasperated sound, and then said to me, embarrased, that this should not be allowed in a modern city like Guadalajara. It was an awkward moment. He had just been describing the accomplishments of his city with some pride and satisfaction. And now this. I can't recall what I said, but it was probably something to the effect that the U.S. has a lot of problems with air pollution also.

Indeed, our problems with air pollution could get even worse. Efforts are underway to scale back or eliminate laws that seek to keep our air and water clean. Those laws reduce corporate profit, almost like taxes, and they should be eliminated, many claim. Even the agencies that seek to protect our environment should be eliminated, they propose. The polluters will regulate themselves, it seems to be assumed. Yeah, right. As in Guadalajara.

The need for clean air to breathe and clean water to drink is basic to the human condition. And these are in a special category of life-sustaining resources. The choices others make about their diet do not control my choices. You can eat what you want, and I can eat what I want. But air and water are shared resources. When someone pollutes them it affects us all. It isn't just the choice of the bus in front of me.

The condition of that bus affects the air I must breathe. It affects my health and well-being. It affects the futures of my children and grandchildren, and ultimately the future of our shared planet. How we would jeopardize those futures in the name of corporate greed is hard to imagine.

The planet we live on is a closed system where everything is not only shared, it is also finite. What happens to the air and water in one place affects all the other places too. It is always healthier and cheaper to keep from making a mess than to try cleaning it up afterward. The EPA has evidence that each dollar spent on pollution control results in a $30 savings in later health coasts. We can pay now or pay later, but the later costs will be be huge. 

Also, if we ignore all warnings, there could be no later later.

They stand on the long concrete lane dividers. As the cars line up, they walk slowly along holding their hand-lettered signs and sometimes a container for contributions. They watch for a window rolled down and an outstretched hand. Mostly the windows stay rolled up and people avoid eye contact. Sometimes they walk down the actual pavement between the rows of cars. There are men and women, old and young, many appearing crippled or otherwise impaired.

I see this all day long, every day, since my desk faces this window.  I have only to glance above my computer screen and there it is. Although I am used to this sight, it remains disturbing, an embarrassment.  I know that nationwide over 100,000 of these homeless are veterans of our wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Most are disabled in one way or another. In another day, or in another country, these would be helped, But no more in America. We say we can't afford that. We can't afford helping people who aren't helping us.

Some of the people passing by think these homeless should get a job and work for a living like everyone else. America is the land of opportunity, after all. They should be ashamed of themselves, out there begging for handouts. They could take care of themselves like everyone else if only they were willing to work.

Some of the people passing by think that many of these are actually very well off. They read a story once that claimed a man who begged on the street during the day lived on his yacht in the evenings, or had a chauffeur, or owned a condo in Florida. Or maybe it was on the radio they heard about this.

Some of the people passing by are religious, but they look the other way and pass on by like everyone else. Their "social issues" do not include this social issue. The mayor and bank president are greeted warmly in their church, but these street people would not be. They would be an embarrassment.

Some of the people passing by give money now and then, and wish for a solution to this problem. But the problem seems overwhelming and far beyond the the means of one concerned individual. If you give money at one intersection, someone looking just as needy is waiting for you at the next. 

As I follow these scenes every day, my feelings get mixed. I am thankful to have a good job, drive a nice car, work with pleasant people, and leave at the end of the day for a good wife and a good home. I do not know where the street people go, but I doubt that many will be sleeping on their own yachts. I sometimes wonder about them on dark, rainy nights or in the bitter cold of winter when some will freeze to death. I feel grateful and guilty both. 

 I could turn my desk around and face the wall, I suppose. 

When I was a young boy in elementary school, there sometimes were fights on the playground at recess. Usually it was two boys. Occasionally two girls would get into a fight and this drew great interest from the boys, but it was a rare event. Anytime there was a fight the other kids quit what they were doing and came running to form a circle of interest around the scrappers. There was cheering and commenting by the ring of spectators. It never lasted long because once it got to this point a teacher or principle would come running and break it up.

There was no peer pressure that discouraged these fights, as they provided a welcome diversion and usually resulted in no harm whatsoever. But there was an unwritten rule about fairness. A big boy was not supposed to pick on a little boy. Such a boy was said to be a "big bully" and in need of being "taught a lesson." The big boy should pick on someone his own size. The big kid might win the fight, but he always lost out in the playground court of public opinion.

Admittedly our playground was no perfect place. There were kids there who got satisfaction from pushing other kids around and would fight if given an opportunity. There were kids who would avoid a fight at all costs, even the cost of being taunted and made fun of. What fights there were occurred only occasionally. Most kids were welcome spectators if a fight did develop, but otherwise they wanted nothing to do with fighting.

But despite its imperfections, our playground did have its principle of fairness, and this usually served to protect the weak and helpless from the dominance of the strong.

Now we are long departed from these playgrounds. We now find ourselves in a "grown up" world. But our world, even the "civilized world," largely fails to provide protection for the weak and helpless. Large and powerful nations pick on small and helpless ones, with no shame at all. Dictators pick on dissidents among their own citizens, even with deadly force. States attempt to balance their budgets by picking on the meager salaries and benefits of school teachers, while protecting the powerful interests who stand to benefit. At the national level, the first targets for reducing costs are the social programs that benefit the poor, the sick, the children, the students, the wounded veterans, the homeless, the mentally ill, the bankrupt, the home foreclosed, the birth defected, the forgotten elderly, the incarcerated, the drug adicted, the disabled.

If you read the Bible, it is quite clear that Jesus would side with the weak and helpless in such discussions. But, strangely, his professed followers largely do the opposite. The Christian church aligns itself with the wealthy and powerful. It upholds a success mentality which assumes that the more God likes you the more he rewards you in dollars and cents. Then you can add to your riches by exploiting those he obviously does not like as much as you. God justifies the means to worldly success for his chosen ones. What a deal that is!

[Yes, I know the preceding paragraph is unfair to humble Christians who reject this mentality, work for low wages, and do much to help the poor. It is sad that the public face of Christianity is not their face. On the school playground, they would be the bullied, not the bullies.]

The economic mess we find ourselves in was not caused by school teacher salaries being high. It was caused by the greed and abuses of the powerful in collaboration with a political system that gave them free reign and shared their profits. These bullies have paid no price for their abuse, and now propose to cover their losses by continued abuse of the victims.

I had my teeth cleaned and checked the other day. They checked out great. You appreciate this news while sitting there in the bright lights with all the machines and shiny steel things ready to go to work.  My dentist gave me the good news in his own philosophical way: "If the country was in as good a shape as your mouth, we'd be a hell of a lot better off." I didn't argue.

Click here to view the embedded video.