Dr. Ellen’s online PATRIOT’S LIBRARY houses information that American Patriots need to keep in focus as we work our way through the many political and congressional mazes that will culminate in the 2012 presidential election and beyond.

The library is a Constitutionally-driven educational resource. It offers an opportunity to read what our founding documents actually say and to learn about the very real constitutional dangers that threaten our Republic.

Learn why it is important to say NO to big government spending and its trillions of dollars of escalating debt. Learn why it is important to say NO to the many unconstitutional actions that have been taken by every Congress and President since the days of FDR and Woodrow Wilson. Learn, too, why time is of the essence.

Arm yourself with the facts and beware the fictions, as there are many.

Certain economists, historians, authors of all persuasions, university professors, members of Congress and the ruling elite, even Hollywood moviemakers, promote agendas that are not always in our best interests as a nation. At local, state and national levels you need to be able to differentiate radical progressive ideology from policies of governance that are, in fact, firmly grounded in the U.S. Constitution.

Americans can no longer afford to remain silent. The surest way to topple our Republic is through ignorance…citizen ignorance of our own American history.

Visit A PATRIOT’S LIBRARY today!

Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph
CURATOR

by Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph

I don’t think I have ever witnessed such bold-faced lying to the American public as I am seeing today from the so-called Ruling Elite…you know, the elites in Congress and in the White House, in Presidential Commissions, at the Federal Reserve, yes, even in our activist judiciary and in many university classrooms.

The liars are Progressives from both extremes of the political spectrum that are aided by a mainstream media that blatantly encourages them.

They are everywhere, making pronouncements that we all know to be untrue – bolstering their case for raising the debt ceiling, dropping bombs on Libya, ganging up against Israel, ratcheting up federal spending to historic highs, bankrupting America with entitlement programs, printing money – they even tell little green lies to make environmentally friendly technologies look like manna from heaven when they are nothing but greedy smoke screens. [This, by the way, includes a new wave of political interest in climate engineering that postures itself as the latest greatest answer to global climate woes.]

In support for their aspirations they trot out handpicked numbers from nowhere with math that is fuzzy and woefully stacked against the American taxpayer.

Dragons Waiting to be Slain

Yup, that’s us – the taxpayers, we’re the dragons waiting to be slain – not the 47% of Americans who pay no taxes — but the rest of us who pay taxes – you and me and every small business struggling to make it in this overly regulated world.

They are robbing us blind and redistributing the wealth to make that other 47% ever-more dependent on them.

So who’s kidding whom here: are we all too dumbstruck to raise a ruckus? Is the ruling elite in such abject control of us that our shouts of dismay have finally been suffocated? Shouldn’t we all be yelling FIRE! or something?

All those lofty promises of Nirvana have not materialized yet the pockets of American taxpayers by now are as drained as their psyches. They are tired of the rip-offs and the lies and all the charades yet we do nothing…collectively we sit and wait…and wait.

For what? For more change that we can believe in?

Sunshine is the Best Disinfectant

Materially false and misleading statements from the ruling elite must finally see the light of day. The lies must be exposed, and every citizen has a civic responsibility to do just that. It means calling your representatives in congress, your senator, your governor – whoever will listen – and tell them that you are sick and tired of all the lies and you want them stopped.

Taxpayers in revolt are a weighty adversary, something to be reckoned with. We are in the majority and we have the numbers behind us. We also have all the money even though the elites (seem) to have all the strings. At least that’s what they want us to think.

But the truth is, Americans are a bunch of dolts. We haven’t been paying the slightest bit of attention and look what’s happened on our watch.

We need to turn off American Idol and turn our attention to the news of the day. We also have to start reading books (remember those?) – public policy books, political books, history books, economics books, books about our Republic form of governance; anything of consequence that will turn our minds back on and kick-start our imagination. Forget the novels, find out about the real world staring you in the face.

One thing is for sure: our schools have put us to sleep. Since the early 50’s school boards all over this country have sanitized the history books and homogenized the topics that populate our textbooks – they’ve done so quietly, in the background, erasing words and substituting others more befitting of Johnson’s by now transparent Great Society ideals.

All this crap going on around us – yes, all of it – is the direct result of our collective drowsiness. We have let the schools and the pundits and their cohorts in the mainstream media lull us into thinking that all is well when it isn’t; that life is good and that America is undergoing CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

This is mind control. It is deception at its best. It is a conscious conspiracy on the part of the Progressive ruling elite to lull us into an ever-deeper mindlessness.

But listen up: the real change we can believe in rises up from deep inside of us, not from without. Nothing of consequence comes from without. The SELF is what is real. The SELF defines and determines what happens to us in life. It reveals us to the world. Throughout the history of the world despots always have risen up in the middle of the night when their subjects were asleep. Like cattle, they robbed them of their self-determination and fenced them in.

The Moral to the Story is This

To change the world we have to change ourselves, not the other way around. We have to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and start acting like we are alive and well. And awake!

Followers are mindless no-selves. The elitist controllers are lying and conniving pseudo-selves. They control others because they have nothing of consequence inside of them – they are no-selves with high ambitions and zero principles who only know to project their selfishness at others.

Beware liars in sheep’s clothing for that’s what the ruling elite are. They want us to think that they are working tirelessly on our behalf, that they have only our best interests at stake, but this is not the case. They are using us to further their own aims and there is no more clear reflection of this than a highly disrespected Congress that sincerely thinks it is there to win re-election through the funding of earmarks for special interests.

Contrast that to Americans who get up and go to work every day to make a simple living so that they can feed the mouths of babes and pay their taxes.

Look closely at Capitol Hill

What do you see, other than a righteous collective of know-it-alls? These are the gutless gladiators of a Republic that they have long been dismantling one precious brick at a time by their spineless approach to governing. They speak with forked tongues because that is all they know how to do; that and getting re-elected year after year. These career politicians lie when they need to and they lie when they don’t need to. They lie because that’s the culture of Washington through and through.

And for that they have us to thank!

Americans have, by and large, forfeited their control of this Republic by their mindlessness. Americans would rather play games and drink beer and rant and rave about the likes of Charlie Sheen; and most of us don’t even bother to vote – ever, even at Presidential elections like the one to come in 2012. If they do vote, those with union armbands allow themselves to be bused like cattle to election booths where, once inside, they only know to put the check before a name they were (paid?) to mark.

Most folks in this country wouldn’t know a Republic from a Democratic Monarchy, or a flat from a fair tax. Find someone who cares about waste and fraud in Medicare, for there but for the grace of god go us, huh? Comedic interviews with the man on the street is laughable for its entertainment value because most of these blokes know what VIAGRA is but not the freedoms that the U. S. Constitution guarantees them.

Many Americans can’t even remember the name of the sitting Vice President of the United States (not that I necessarily blame them). Many can’t even recite the Pledge of Allegiance from beginning to end, or the National Anthem. Show them a picture of the Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, and they scratch their heads. It is of no consequence to the man on the street to learn that Geithner was previously the 9th president and chief executive office of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; or even that he is a current member of the Trilateral Commission.

So much for our schools, huh? So much for memorizing names and dates.

Who is John Galt?

The fact is, Baby Boomers and their progeny don’t collectively deserve this country. They take but they don’t give back. They use and then throw things away. They drive fast because they can, they text because they can, they dance like there is no tomorrow while their knowledge of American history and world geography stinks. They also don’t recycle unless the government makes it as easy as possible for them to do so.

We are the great ZERO GENERATION. We couldn’t have an intelligent conversation about the fate and future of this great Republic if our lives depended on it.

Oh, and it’s OK that we are dropping bombs on Libya because we don’t even know where Libya is and who cares anyway? Those folks are half a world away and they dress funny.

That’s the sad state of affairs today, kids, like it or not. And that’s why all those liars out there lie to us. They lie to us because they can.

They sold us mortgages we couldn’t afford because it sounded good, and it made us look good. We liked that. They talked us into Iraq because, after all, America is the proud POLICEMAN OF WORLD, no matter what the cost. We let our porous borders soak up millions of undocumented aliens because the jerkos on Capitol Hill and their progressive friends tell us it is the humane thing to do.

Not to mention the fact that it brings them (cough) votes and us more Great Society entitlements.

We live in a world where the average American thinks the government owes them. In their minds the government owes them everything from free health care to free tickets to the Red Sox – not to mention food stamps and soup kitchens, oh, and pensions that allow more and more of American workers to retire at the age of 50 with nearly 100% of their annual earnings (someone probably got a lot of votes for that). Most Americans today think government is the answer to everything, so much so that they don’t even laugh at all the new regulations that tell us what toilets to buy or what foods we can eat.

We do seem to collectively treasure our NANNY STATE, maybe because it relieves us of having to take care of ourselves?

And Finally…

Americans aren’t stupid. We aren’t blind. Some of us see what’s happening around us. We just don’t know any more what to do about it. We are empty-headed and dumbfounded, that’s what we are.

We’ve lost our tongues.

We’ve forgotten that the Founders gave their lives so that we could have a country to be proud of, an exceptional one. We’ve forgotten about the years of denial and strive previous generations of Americans endured so that we could have a better life than them. We don’t read any more. We don’t dialogue with each about life’s important issues. We don’t even say hello when we encounter each other on the street.

Our grand Republic is going down the tubes as we speak because we don’t have the balls to stop it. We could, but we won’t.

Still, do yourself a favor and read Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg. All those who fight for individual liberty will appreciate this important work. According one Amazon.com reviewer, “Fascism in all its forms is the enemy of liberty, and recognizing it for what it is will always be a prerequisite for stopping it.”

OK OK, so you’re not a dolt. That’s great! Then it’s time to stand up and be counted. It’s now or never. The future of our Republic depends on it.

“Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
~ Ronald Reagan ~

Larry J. Sabato’s commentary on the recent Tucson tragedy is excellent. I have some followup comments of my own as a long-time student and practitioner of Dr. Murray Bowen’s pioneering family work.

The public discourse [never] focuses on the roots of an assassin’s rage but it is high time that it did.

Until we do, the public at large (including the media) grasps at any straws they can to try to explain things that are not understandable by simply looking at the assassin himself. All that brings is a flood of inaccurate and naive finger-pointing, and a lot a politically-charged hoopala.

The fact is, credible knowledge about how family emotional systems function has long been available. But the mental health system is dominated by individually-focused practitioners in both psychology and psychiatry who point the public discourse in all the wrong directions. For them, the individual is primary and the family is secondary, if that. Mainly they see the family as a collection of individuals without defining patterns that connect them.

What we need to be looking at are the defining emotional patterns that characterize the Tucson assassin and his multigenerational family of origin — distinct patterns that can be traced back two, three, even four generations or more — patterns that track the transmission of familial anxiety and the dysfunctional adaptations that arise in certain family members in the face of that anxiety.

Once the focus is properly placed on the facts of the emotional relationship system it is not difficult to see the roots of rage that suddenly abrupt in violence.

But what we do hear about instead? We hear about the assassin’s current college experiences and occasionally his high school history; we sometimes hear stories from teachers who expressed concern about him several years back; and we endure interviews with neighbors who typically describe the assassin as ‘a nice neighbor, OMG.”

We never get any real familial information about the assassin because the assassin’s family is allowed, out of deference to their feelings, to remain out of the pubic eye. And, of course, there are legal prerogatives in that regard, as well. That said, the public discourse must necessarily include this information if we are going to make any real sense out of the tragedies that occur around us. In my mind, once violence is perpetrated in a public place the assassin’s background should be open and transparent.

Lawyers and police investigators don’t know any more about family emotional patterns than the next guy, even when those patterns stare them in the face day after day after day. They come up with profiles of serial killers but for the most part they act on the basis of little or no real familial information and concentrate, instead, on assassin motives.

Every tragedy like the most recent one in Tucson is an opportunity for public education and we are missing the boat on that.

We need to change the direction of the public discourse now — today. There are answers out there that will surely be eye-openers for all concerned. Maybe, just maybe, some in-depth background information about assassins for the public to digest will help make us all more aware of our surroundings.

Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph
Bowen Theorist and Therapist

It was Christmas and three weeks shy of my sixth birthday and there I was, decked out in brand new blue jeans that Santa had left under the tree for me. I was awash with shyness, and it had taken a bit of doing just to get me to try them on for everybody.

1951

Santa had come to other kids’ houses but never to mine before, and I didn’t quite know what to do with it all.

The year was 1951 and it had been a tumultuous year. Earlier that summer I was separated from my five older brothers by the local Welfare Department and placed in a childless foster home in a distant town. We six had actually been in foster homes as a group since I was three years of age, but the department had finally run out of foster care options for us; and I was deemed too vulnerable as a girl to be left in that situation.

The story was a typical one: by the time I was three our family of origin had been fractured beyond repair by marital discord and poverty, our young mother had run off with another man, and our father — an older alcoholic with an abusive, heavy-hand towards his five young sons –voluntarily gave us all up for adoption and went on to marry someone else to produce yet another child.

Talk about bad models for marriage, this was one of them. While we were still together as a family we kids and our parents lived in a one-bedroom house with a small kitchen off an even tinier living room. In the living room there was a double bed and a raggedy old arm chair, which is where we kids played, slept, and comforted each other as we listened to raucous marital quarrels behind that closed bedroom door.

I can remember many a cold winter day when the boys were not able to go to school for the lack of shoes. Instead, we’d wrap our feet in layers of socks and pile outside to slide down a big hill on large pieces of cardboard retrieved from behind the local grocery store.

Meals in those days came sparingly and mainly were provided us by a neighbor, Mrs. Vaca, who had taken our young mother under her wing. That’s about all I can remember of Mrs. Vaca, except that I saw her again some years later when an older brother married, and she almost fainted when she was introduced to me at the wedding reception. It seems that I looked the splitting image of my natural mother although I wouldn’t have known that, having been so young when I last saw her.

I do have a single family photo from those days that I treasure: it is a picture of our mother, Mary, and the six of us kids. I was sitting on a brother’s lap in baby clothes and the name of each child was scrawled on their chest for posterity. But not only did Mary confuse the names of two of my brothers pictured, the photo itself is blurry. Mary’s features in particular were entirely blurred but at least we know that she was there (for awhile).

How that photo survived the years I will never know but I am certain I have my oldest brother, Philip, to thank for it. He was our tireless guardian who kept us going and kept us all together as best he could in the face of adversity. We were each one year apart, so when I was three Philip the guardian was pushing all of nine.

And then there were none

My rememberances from those days are also a gift from Philip. Despite being young and vulnerable himself he was our rock, and he stayed close in touch with all of us even when the Welfare Department separated us into different foster environments. He was particularly attentive to me and he and I remained the best of friends until his death at the age of sixty from heart problems — through foster separations, through my eventual adoption at the age of six, and despite his own conflicted life journey that ended in his living thousands of miles from me in Seattle, Washington.

He and I used to talk on the telephone with each other every Friday night, coast to coast. We did that for more than thirty years, beginning with my emancipation as an adult.

In the course of almost every phone call we recalled our early years growing up in northern Minnesota’s iron ore country, and Philip was forever uncovering tidbits that helped piece together for me a collage of days gone by.

I still retain many visual memories from those days but it was Philip who added in the names and dates and detailed descriptions of the noteworthy events that shaped our lives.

After I was placed with the Keans as a foster child, the two youngest brothers were put in a Catholic orphanage. One was adopted by a Wisconsin family a few years later, and the other one promptly ran away from the orphanage in despair — eventually taking on a whole new identity and loosing himself to the family entirely. The next two brothers went to live with Mrs. Vaca while Philip, the eldest, went to live for a while with our natural mother, Mary, who quietly resurfaced and wanted him around to help her. He went with her, but she ended up dying in childbirth and her nameless partner took that child with him from the hospital, who knows where. Philip eventually talked his best friend’s parents into letting him live with them while he finished high school, and then he left Minnesota for what he hoped were greener pastures.

That ended our group foster home saga which was a bitter sweet experience by all accounts. We at least had each other and I had all of them, which was good. Nothing else much mattered to us.

Other recollections

I do think the Welfare system tried its best with us. I can remember many trips in the caseworker’s car that took us to yet another indistinct farmhouse somewhere in the middle of nowhere. On one occasion the caseworker was unduly distraught and, as we were motoring down the long dirt driveway to the county road, she accidently ran over and killed the foster farmer’s dog. That left quite an impression on the six of us as we contemplated the days ahead in the backseat of that big old black buick.

At one particularly awful place — where the foster farmer shot the cattle (and sometimes the boys) in the butt with a BB Gun — some unknown matronly woman with a displeasing personality came to visit. Well, she didn’t come to visit us, but we had to endure her. I crawled under her straight-backed chair and drew a picture of her with pencil and paper. It was a masterpiece if I do say so; my childlike figure was of a lady with long grey hair tied up in a bun, big drooping boobs, protruding teeth under flaring lips, and a nose to nowhere. The foster mother, of course, confiscated the masterpiece and sent us all to bed giggling wildly. That was the last of my drawing tools if I recall.

We endured more than a dozen foster homes in those years, so that by the time I stepped out of the car at the Kean’s home as their soon to be only child, I was battle weary to say the least.

When I think about what happened to the boys after the group saga ended it was, in retrospect, a good thing for all of us that the Welfare Department worked so hard to keep us all together for so long. Today I know enough to thank them for that but at that time fostering in general was mainly a budgetary decision, with quality control sorely lacking in most cases — for lack of money and also for lack of dedicated employees. It was just something to be endured.

Once, when I was in high school working at a student job in the local courthouse, happily adopted by then, I happened upon a big fat file of caseworker notes about THE JOHNSON KIDS and I read it with relish. I was, after all, the youngest of those Johnson kids. It painted a pretty bleak picture of our family of origin years and the folder was filled with newspaper articles about the multi-year effort to keep us kids together against all odds.

If they just could have pinned our dysfunctional parents back together again…

Kids are resilient and, if given half a chance, they can make lemonade out of lemons in the midst of some semblance of nurturance. Some of us kids more than others got the requisite doses of nurturance and we clearly thrived better because of it. Those who didn’t — like the brother who was indiscriminantly abused sexually by a local Catholic priest — faired much less well, including the one who ran away from the orphanage and eventually ended up in the California prison system. That’s a story for another time.

The emotional toll in every case was huge but it was less so for me because of the buffering presence of my five older brothers who treated me like a little princess. I can recall many situations during those early days where the boys stood with their backs to me, protecting me from some crazy kook or other bent on hurting me. Those boys saved me from the worst of the worst and I am forever grateful to them. They protected me, consoled me, laughed with me, and sometimes they laughed at me; but mostly they served as knights on white horses that carried me into adulthood intact.

The Judge

My final foster care situation transitioned into a permanent adoption in January of my sixth birthday. At that point I went from being the youngest sister of five older brothers to an only child of six in a family of means and education and fifty first cousins.

The brightly decorated Christmas tree three weeks earlier that blew me away was the very first time in my life that someone had put up a tree with packages under it just for me. I couldn’t believe it, as I really felt no ownership of the toys given me. After all, my brothers didn’t have their names on any of the packages and that didn’t seem fair to me. I freely gave those toys away, prompting my adoptive mother on more than one occasion to call out to me from the backdoor to come home with all of my toys, please.

A Judge would later sit me on his knee to ask me questions about my pending adoption by the Keans, and one question of his still sticks with me.
He wondered if I had had a wonderful Christmas and, while answering yes, I lowered my eyes, wondering out loud why my brothers didn’t. He said with great wisdom that it all would work out one day for the best, and to give the Keans a chance — after all, they chose me.

That was the gift under the tree in the long run that meant the most to me and it still means the most to me to this day. Indeed, dutiful packages mean little to me and I am repelled by tinsel-city shopping spree approaches to Christmas.

By now Christmas 2010 has come and gone and I am a few weeks shy of my 65th birthday. But instead of flannel-lined blue jeans I am happily decked out in Mac Pros and Miatas and lots of precious critters and friends galore, including Philip who watches over me still.

Yes, I’ve heard it all before. Some sit out elections because they refuse to vote ‘for the lesser of two evils.’ Some don’t vote for philosophical reasons although I am not sure what those reasons are. Others simply do not feel informed enough to cast a vote for anyone, even someone in their own local district. Still more are privately vowing NOT TO VOTE, feeling that this will somehow put pressure on the ruling party to do their bidding. The fact is, it doesn’t. It won’t. They could care less how you feel, and they would be just as happy if you did not vote.

That said, we happen to live in a Republic, and that Republic depends on us to participate and help protect the individual liberties that are afforded us by our Constitution.

So deciding not to vote is really a vote in favor of those who would rule us as they (not you) see fit.

Calvin Coolidge said it best:

The right to vote is confered upon our citizens not only that they may exercise it for their own benefit, but in order that they may exercise it also for the benefit of others. People who have the right to vote are trustees for the benefit of their country and their countrymen. They have no right to say that do not care. must care! They have no right to say that whatever the result of the election they can get along. They must remember that their country and their countrymen cannot get along, cannot remain sound, cannot preserve its institutions, cannot protect its citizens, cannot maintain its place in the world, unless those who have the right to vote do sustain and do guide the course of the public affairs by the thoughtful exercise of that right on election day. They do not hold a mere privilege to be exercised or not, as passing fancy may move them. They are charged with a great trust, one of the most important and most solemn which can be given into the keeping of an American Citizen. It should be discharged thoughtfully and seriously, in accordance with its vast importance.

He suggests that we approach the ballot box in the spirit that we would approach a sacrament, wholly dedicated to the welfare of our country.

That’s wonderful advice that we all should heed.

The American Revolution was the struggle of a free people trying to hold onto their freedom. They were defending themselves against the military despotism of King George the III, and they were intent on establishing the rule of law as the founding principle of our government.

Our forebearers fought that battle so that we may have the individual liberties that we have today. Those liberties, therefore, should never be taken lightly.

Our Constitution is under increasing attack by those who would interpret it solely to further their own cause. Back in the days of our Founding Fathers it was the Federalists versus the Republicans. Today it is still about the Federalists versus the Jeffersonian Republicans, despite the passage of years.

The continuing struggle is between those who want to rigorously follow the Constitution as it was written, and those (the Federalists) who would interpret the Constitution for their own best interests. The Federalists believe that the country should be ruled by the wealthy because they do not trust the common people who, they fear, are simply too ignorant. And they favor a powerful central government featuring a strong executive and social entitlements.

The Jeffersonian Republicans, on the other hand, favor a weaker central government with extremely limited responsibility, reserving everything else for the sovereign states to control. They feel that giving the states more power preserves a better relationship between the people and their government; and they feel it better protects our individual liberties from those whose desire is to erode them. The Jeffersonian Republicans seek to protect our individual liberties at all cost.

So, please, cast your vote in the upcoming election. Make your choice about the kind of government you prefer to live under. Study the issues, and find out who is running for office that best reflects your own personal views, and vote for them.

Stand tall and make your voice heard!

Sometimes I think the whole world is falling down around our feet, including right here at home. Recently I read the following commentary about something the conservative analyst Newt Gingrich offered in reference to the anti-colonial leanings of President Obama.

The problem here is not so much who said what but, rather, what was said about Mr. Gingrich without any basis in fact.

Here is the original commentary that appeared in a Virginia newspaper. See what you think:

WHAT’S NEWT DRINKING?
“Newt Gingrich has finally convinced me that I am not paranoid. After President Obama’s election, I sensed an anger in some quarters that I thought was far too intense for the policies expected from his administration.

I suspected that some of the disquiet was due to racism. Some folks were not merely uncomfortable with an African American in the presidency, they were furious about it. The detractors adamantly proclaimed that race had nothing to do with any of their criticism. Was I a bit too sensitive?

Unfortunately it turns out that at least some of those who dislike Obama do so in part because he’s a person of color
with extraordinary credentials.

There’s no other explanation for Newt’s nonsensical rant that Obama may be “so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]…”

As Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post noted: “What in the world is ‘Kenyan, anti- colonial behavior’ supposed to mean? That Obama is waging a secret campaign to free us from the yoke of British oppression?”

The obvious answer is that “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior” really means: “Don’t forget, Obama is black.” And somehow, while white presidents can be trusted to respond to consti- tuencies of all races and policies with worldwide implications regardless of who the president’s parents were, Newt blathers that a black, like Obama, can only react as his biological father might have reacted.

Newt’s psychoanalysis of Obama is not grounded in fact or experience, since Obama’s father was not in his life after the age of 2. But the pop psychologist in me leads me to conclude that Newt’s real problem is that he is simply “impotent… [and] …limp” in contemplating this African- American president who is a little too good-looking and accomplished for Newt’s world view.”

Deborah

To me, Deborah’s prickly letter misses the point. The more important question is, WHAT IS NEWT READING?

Newt Gingrich, in case you missed it, was referring to a compelling article entitled How Obama Thinks by Dinesh D’Souza, president of King’s College in New York City and author of the forthcoming book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage. You can find the article at Forbes.com

Deborah should have taken the time to read the D’Souza article before demeaning Mr. Gingrich with unsubstantiated claims of racism, since his ‘nonsensical rant’ is clearly a transparent warning about the perils of anti-colonialism.

Anti-colonialism views America and its military as a force for ‘global domination and destruction.’ At best, it is about class warfare.

For Obama’s long-dead, Harvard-educated economist father, from whom our President lays claim to his own anti-colonial ideology, this means: “We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now.” The senior Obama also proposed (yes, in the mid-50′s) that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit on the ‘oppressive rich class’.

According to his anti-colonialist way of thinking, American imperialism was trampling the peoples of the world and it must be stopped by any means possible, preferrably by bankrupting America and toppling it from its global superpower position.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE: a great many Americans are deeply worried about this today.

Indeed, these ideas have an erie ring of familiarity as we observe his son’s collective Presidential maneuvers — maneuvers that are food for thought, not fuel for racist fires.

Newt merely begs the question: “Are we willing to be ruled by the antiquated dreams of a Luo tribesman from the 1950′s?”

His question is provocative, yes, but also worrisome if Gingrich and Dinesh D’Souza are right. They are looking for the theoretical framework that underlies Obama’s political posturing and they think they have found it.

Let’s be clear here: those who point insulting fingers, like Deborah, and call people racist, are projecting their own racist inclinations onto others. This is a standard psychological ploy called PROJECTION that characterizes the communications of anxious individuals. Projection is akin to the timeless game of hot potato where no one has to own up to their own psychological shortcomings by passing the buck to others, who may or may not warrant the scrutiny.

Whatever happened to the art of listening? Or to common courtesy? What’s with all the name-calling? All questions are good questions, right? And it seems to me that in a Republic like ours citizens have both the right and a responsibility to ask hard questions when our leaders do and say things that concern us.

No American President deserves our unquestioning allegiance. They must earn it. And, if you look at the polls, both partisan and nonpartisan, they clearly show that 70% of Americans today are deeply troubled by the direction that President Obama is taking our country.

The day we can no longer ask hard questions is the day our Republic starts coming apart at the seams, brick by brick. That’s the stuff of communism, or socialism — it is not what has made our country great.

By Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph

Do you know? Black bears are timid and easily frightened, reclusive, mostly solitary, and inherently non-confrontational animals. Despite what many think, they are not dangerous and unpredictable. They also do not snarl and show their teeth in aggressive displays (like dogs). And they are not ferociously protective of their cubs like the Grizzly bear is.

Indeed, the American black bear (Ursus americanus) is nothing like the grizzly and we need to stop demonizing this interesting creature and replace our ingrained fears with understanding. To date, black bears have lost 60% of their historical range in North America and you and I stand in the way, or not, of their ultimate survival.

I live in black bear country. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a stone’s throw from me and we have black bears, even mother bears with cubs, climbing up to our deck that is a towering 22-ft off the ground. The dry months have not been kind to the bears this year, leaving them hungry for berries that are no longer there. With hibernation closing in on mother bears, and their vulnerable cubs, the problem is becoming more and more critical for them by the day.

Consequently, they are migrating from remote forest outposts to mountaintop residences – even city scapes – looking for food wherever they can find it.

SOME RESEARCH FINDINGS

In a quest for reliable information about the black bear I have culled physical and behavioral information about Ursus americanus from black bear experts in North America, and have summarized that information at THE BEAR FACTS.

I hope you will visit my extensive links and become an advocate yourself for the black bear! If you are anything like me, you will have great fun in the process.

I have to tell you: I literally scoured the web for reliable black bear information. It is out there but it is scattered far and wide, and a lot of the information is repetitive. My effort was to tie the important information together in a quick reference format so that the information is easier to find, and also easier to remember. At THE BEAR FACTS pages you will get the big picture, and the important facts you need to know about the black bear.

Black bears are generally protected within the confines of our national park system but, even there, most of the information given us by parks personnel is necessarily (?) filtered through dense pages of legalese — the singular aim of which is to protect the parks from visitor liability.

The result is that factual bear information takes a backseat to *WARNINGS* and *CAUTIONS* about the perils of getting too close to bears.

This legalistic approach is misleading at best, and fear-mongering at worst. And it fosters the exact same fears about bears that all those demonizing magazine covers have done since the mid-1940′s. You’ll find numerous examples of such covers on THE BEAR FACTS pages, but this is one of them — note the snarling face and the frightening affect.

For more than two generations now Americans have been bombarded with unrealistic and frightening notions about bears by outdoor and hunting publications bent on triggering just such fears. As a result, we harbor needless fears and wild imaginations, but nothing much that is factual about the bear.

TOURISM AND BEARS

Tourists to National Parks in bear country partuclarly need to be more properly educated about bears and about how they can help conserve and protect these amazing forest dwellers. In the process people will learn to respect them for what they are — wild animals that can, indeed, be unpredictable at times.

Unfortunately, most park warnings and cautionary signs about bears don’t work. People tend to ignore them, rushing in as they so often do, with compact camera in hand, to photograph them. The black bear is the #1 reason most people visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They want to see them. Many even think it is cool to fed them. They want to get close to them.

Consequently, some bears in the parks become acclimated to humans, and they come in dangerously close to humans in their quest for food scraps. By dangerous I mean, DANGEROUS FOR THE BEARS!

The one thing we know for sure is that feeding bears kills bears.

When they forsake their remote forest havens for the human interface, bears loose their instinctual fear of humans and they become disoriented and disaffected, and no longer protected by their remote habitat. And if that weren’t enough, they also fall prey to killing automobiles and hunters and poachers, as well as to chemicals and pollutants, adversarial molds, spoiled food, and indigestible objects found in human garbage.

Humans are frail and they do dumb things out of ignorance and immaturity. My essay, Animals: why can’t we just do the right thing? speaks to a growing awareness that we are not an animal friendly society.

Don’t be lulled into thinking that you are I are in the majority, we are not.

So arm yourself with the facts and be sure that YOU, at least, do the right thing when it comes to bears. Your behavior will model for others how to best interact with them, which is to not interact with them at all.

LET THEM BE WILD!

Visit Go to THE BEAR FACTS

Strategic Book Club recently did a 30-minute interview with Dr. Ellen about her children’s book, and the thinking that went into its construction. The name of her book is WILLI GETS A HISTORY LESSON in Virginia’s Historic Triangle.

You can also listen to the actual interview at Blog Talk Radio.

Cover of Dr. Ellen's Book

Question: Dr. Ellen, can you talk about your reasons for writing WILLI GETS A HISTORY LESSON in Virginia’s Historic Triangle?

I lived in Virginia’s Historic Triangle region for 35 years, and also photographed it professionally for most of those years.

I wanted children to have a way to experience the region even if they were not able to visit it in person.

Elementary school-aged children (for which the book is geared) study Virginia’s role in the birth of our nation, but rarely with photo-driven books like the WILLI book which uses more than 70 photo illustrations, each of which is worth more than a thousand words as the saying goes.

I selected photos that would resonate with children while building a heart-warming story of friendship around them.

But, photo illustrated books are expensive to publish, which is why you don’t see too many of them. But I wanted to do this kind of book anyway because I know the power of images to evoke learning.

I did the illustrations myself using my graphics skills to import the dog, WILLI, into my professional photographs of the region. That forced me to THINK LIKE A CHILD – which I found important in actually writing the book!

Question: So your book is a history book, then?

No, it is actually classified as juvenile fiction because it is about a small dog that gets lost in the Historic Triangle region and embarks on a search to find her owner. Along the way the dog, Willi, encounters many Virginia animals and historic figures who come to her assistance, and help direct her eventually to the Yorktown Battlefields where she reunites with her owner – but not before many exciting adventures occur, some of which lead the reader to worry that she will never find her owner!

Because the story is set in a very historic region, the photographic plates have considerable educational value in exposing the reader to many historically significant sites in Virginia’s history.

The dog’s journey starts in Jamestown, VA and continues through Williamsburg and Colonial Williamsburg properties, as well as the College of William and Mary campus, and ends in Yorktown where the war for Independence was won. A very historic Byway – the Colonial Parkway – connects all three areas. The dog, Willi, learns in passing about the wildlife that inhabit the parkway and the two major river systems that embrace it (the mighty James and York Rivers).

In addition, the book includes a 23-page appendix of reference material to help parents and teachers answer all those questions that children love to ask! Many adults, including local residents, have told me that they learned things by reading the appendix that they had not known before.

Older children can conduct their own historical research using the appendix.

In addition to the appendix, I established a Companion Website for Young Readers at www.willigetsahistorylesson.com.

At this Internet site children can find book-related puzzles, a history quiz, a pdf download of the book’s appendix, coloring plates, and child-safe Internet links where they can find out even more about Virginia’s role in the founding of this nation.

They also can read about how the book was created using my professional photographic illustrations, find maps and guides including a large map of Willi’s journey from Jamestown to Yorktown, a glossary of unusual words used in the book, and photos of the dog, Willi, in real life.

BTW, the book’s heroine, Willi, is owned by a friend of mine who also happens to be Willi’s owner in the story, Mr. V. David Hazzard of Williamsburg is a Virginia archaeologist and Director of Virginia’s Threatened Sites Program. This fact gave me liberal access to the dog for photographic purposes, which was important because I had to posture the dog in so many different ways to make the story believable to kids. That alone was great fun!

Not long ago I brought Mr. V and Willi with me to the Rawls Byrd Elementary School in Williamsburg to talk with the kids about the book and their reactions to it – two other characters from the book also joined us there; Colonial Williamsburg’s Thomas Jefferson and also the leader of CW’s famous Fifes and Drum Corps, Mr. Lance Pedigo. They came in their colonial-era clothing which totally thrilled the kids.

Also, the opportunity to touch and talk with major characters in the book helped bring the story home to the children who were also equally thrilled to be able to meet the dog, WILLI, in real life.

That visit was videoed for the school and also for my use as a book promotional tool and is now available for viewing on my Book Blog and also on YouTube.

Question: The companion website is a nice touch…did you do that yourself?

Yes, I have many years of web-mastering experience and feel that there is no better vehicle than the web to expand the potential of the book as a learning tool and also – in this case – as a guide for young visitors to Virginia’s Historic Triangle Region.

In addition I created Dr. Ellen’s Book Blog that includes many real life photographs of the dog, Willi, and myself interacting with children in schools from Florida to Virginia. The blog acquaints readers with me, allows them to read book reviews, find other books about Virginia’s Historic Triangle – you can even download a sample chapter from the book, as well.

I encourage other authors to explore the use of BOOK BLOGS – the sky is the limit from a creative standpoint! And they also fun to do, besides.

Question: Can you elaborate a bit on the significance of Virginia’s Historic Triangle for our listeners?

Yes, of course! For starters:
(1) The Historic Triangle gave birth to the United States, how’s that for significance?!

(2) Ideas of REVOLUTION were fanned at Williamsburg.

(3) Our independence was won in the final victory at Yorktown.

(4) Our Representative form of government has its origins in the Historic Triangle – Virginia colonists convened at Jamestown in 1619 in the first representative assembly ever held in the New World (a long, long time before, according to historian Martha McCartney, Williamsburg was even a twinkle in anyone’s eye!)

(5) Had the revolutionaries in Williamsburg been less intent – or if the French had won at Yorktown – what kind of nation might we have become instead?

These are engaging questions for eager young minds – 400 years later we are still trying to deal with the struggles between Europeans, American Indians, and Africans as they played out in the Historic Triangle.

When the early English settlers landed at Jamestown in 1607 they were expecting to easily subdue “this land of plenty” and found, instead, rugged harrowing conditions that nearly did them in.

These things raise even more questions for inquiring young minds: how did that first representative assembly at Jamestown work? How does it compare to what we have today?

The seeds of representative government spring from events that happened in Virginia’s Historic Triangle – so it is not just a pretty place to visit – it is history that is critical to our current day experience as Americans.

I worry that children are not getting a sufficient grounding in early American history. In thinking back to my own school days, about all I can (really) remember about history are all the names and dates that I had to memorize, along with those preamble statements to various Liberty documents. You know, things like…”Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

While memorizing that preamble may be important, it is still an approach to history that fails to cultivate a sense of excitement and interest in our early American origins. It doesn’t transport us there emotionally, I want to be part of any movement that highlights interest in the lessons of Virginia’s Historic Triangle.

For example, we are still learning a lot about those days at Jamestown through the work of Dr. Bill Kelso and his archeological colleagues in the Jamestown Rediscovery project. Willi learns a bit about this project in my book but there is so much more to learn!

The lesson for all of us at every age is that we cannot make good political decisions without knowing what came before us in history. A collective ignorance about the past allows patterns to repeat without our even questioning them, which is something that is happening more and more in our society.

I have asked whole auditoriums full of young kids what subjects they like best in school…and least…and history is clearly in the ‘least liked’ category. We need to fix that.

I, personally, wasn’t too keen about history until I took a freshman class at the University of Minnesota from a professor who really made history come alive for me! You would have thought those historic figures were right there in that classroom with us. I loved that class.

Question: I guess you a fan of history in your own adult life?

I am, indeed. And I find that it is ever more important for me to know what actually happened in our Republic’s past as I read about challenge after challenge to our most precious form of self-government of the people, by the people and for the people.

We currently face some horrific challenges to our most basic freedoms and sense of self-reliance as citizens.

Our founding fathers promoted the notion that less government is the ideal in a free society, not more government. I want young children today to learn about that, and about why it is such an important concept in our evolution as a Republic and political force in the world.

What I have found in my own research – and I suspect this plays out in the very textbooks that our children read – is that textbook writers themselves are often seriously biased in their approach. They often leave out important things that don’t ‘fit’ well with the particular political case they are making in their textbooks or, if not that, they seriously distort history by virtue of focusing on some things more than other things. Sometimes this is a deliberate process, sometimes it is a mindless thing that goes unscrutinized…

The current issues confronting the Texas State Board of Education is a case in point. There are major discussions going on there about what to include (or not) in their social studies curriculums. It bears your close attention, for what our children learn in school is at stake here.

We need to know our true history, warts and all. Indeed, I think it is rather shocking that some Board of Education somewhere can scratch this or that fact from a major textbook, just for political reasons!

Question: This leads me to your notion of ‘character education’ that you speak of on your blog and elsewhere. Can you tell us more about that?

One of the most important things we can do for our children is to give them experiences in character building. There is no doubt about it, people with good character are the best models we have in our world.

I am an expert in Bowen Family Theory and Therapy. In that regard, an over-riding preoccupation of mine as a writer of children’s books is to evoke awareness in my child readers of the natural history of the Historic Triangle region, right along with the regional and people history.

This is the STUFF of character building! Character building promotes an upbeat attitude about life. It fosters good will between people. It fosters a nurturing environment where – as in my Willi book – getting lost is not necessarily the end of the world. Character building fosters a reverence for all living things.

So the Willi story is not just about an endearing little dog, or even just about exposure to good early American history. It is about the evolution of thinking in children that encourages discovery and interactivity with others in a respectful way.

Character education, however, is sorely lacking in this era of SOL’s (Standards of Learning) and NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND legislation. Such curriculum mandates do not leave much time for character building or for the analysis of what constitutes character building, or why it is even important to think about it.

A child’s wider-community necessarily models many things, some of them good like character building experiences, and some of them not so good; like disconnectedness and cutoffness, family and marital discord, fraudulent and violent behavior – to name but a few problematic things.

Adults who model strong character to their children in turn raise children who grow up to have strong character themselves. Things do intervene to change this but for the most part this is how familial dynamics work.

Question: So what are the core ethical values that make up character building, Dr. Ellen?

Core ethical values of caring, honesty, fairness, a sense of self-responsibility, and a respect for others – these are the fruits of true character building experiences. They form the basis of good character development and affirm our human dignity and promote the development of (and the welfare of) the individual.

Individual self-directedness and self-fullness, if you will – these are the things that keep us from being engulfed by the forces of anxious fuision that are so prevalent around us. [You can read more about this in my Essay Blog at www.drellenr.wordpress.com.]

Children with solid character-building experiences go out into the world with potent tools at their disposal. With these tools they can fight off the hapless forces that only want to drag them down, if possible, or lead them astray. A self-directed child who has learned how to evaluate the world around them in these terms knows clearly who possesses self-respect and who does not – who harbors good-will towards others and who does not. And that alone is vital, self-preserving information!

Children grow to understand core values by studying them and through an ongoing discussion of such values, and also by observing good models and successfully resolving problems involving these values.

Willi’s experience of being lost and then found helps promote this kind of understanding.

It’s all about empathy and a sense of community, and about forming caring relationships that do not degrade SELF in the process. Many relationships in life unfortunately do serve to degrade self.

Everything that goes on in the life of a child affects his or her character. But it always interests me that schools have (a) academic curriculums and also (b) extra-curricular activities – yet there is also a more hidden curriculum that affects character development which schools routinely ignore:

-the existence of natural consequences (good and bad) for ones behavior
-repercussions for anti-social behavior
-ostracism, rejection, or banishment from a group’s activities
-unfairness in dealings with others
-political correctness (whatever that is)
-bias
-power-mongering
-corruption and its insidious effects

We need to be spending more time on such things and on open and frank analysis of what goes wrong in our Society that allows such things to occur. This effort, though, takes time, thoughtfulness, introspection, thinking out loud – things that fast-paced curriculums simply do not allow for.

Children have strong needs for safety, belonging, and the experience of contributing to society. [Willi’s friends all come to her aid, even some historical figures]. We also know that children learn by doing. And by so doing they see how cooperating with others works and why that might be important in the grand scheme of things.

But the experience of character building (like any good childrens book) has to be inherently interesting and meaningful to children. Boring stories do not work…boring, endless strings of unintelligible paragraphs do not work…nor do boring lectures work…dictatorial, coercive teaching methods do not work…even government dictums do not work.

Character building evolves over time as opportunities for dialogue and character analysis arise in a child’s life with adults who are important to them.

Question: How can all of this be applied to reading your WILLI book?

Well, parents and teachers interested in character development will surely discuss Willi’s lost and found experiences in this regard, and they will reflect on the dog’s owner, Mr. V, who initially leaves the dog in a parked car on a hot summer day while visiting a living museum in Jamestown. They will also discuss, though, how Mr. V. redeemed himself later on by doing everything in his power to find his dog, no matter what it took.

‘Character’ is often described as doing the right thing when no one is looking.

For example, a person with character will not run a red light because it is the right thing to do to stop at the red light, not only out of self-preservation but in respect for others around them. A person with character will not pocket the $100 bill found on the street, but will first try to find its owner if possible – they may even turn the $100 bill into the local police department with information about where it was found, etc.

A person with character will pocket his or her trash rather than dumping it indiscriminately on the ground. They will vote in political elections because they see it as their civic responsibility to do so. They will take classes in school and study for them in a way that will help them learn the material, not just to get a passing grade on a test.

There are many examples of what constitutes ‘character’ – but in all of them you see a self-responsible person acting on their own accord after thinking through a dilemma and then responding appropriately to it.

You can see some of this as our heroine, Willi, walks along the Colonial Parkway expressing lonely feelings and abandonment and moments of self-doubt. It is not that self-doubt is problematic, but one of strong character can ultimately rise above such feelings and go on.

These kinds of moments occur in everyone’s life and they offer invaluable opportunities for children to evaluate and analyze how they might respond under similar circumstances.

Using the dog, WILLI, to evoke such discussions in very helpful. It is not so anxiety-provoking as using examples from a child’s own life until they, themselves, are ready to do so.

Question: In other words, children benefit from adult reflections on moral matters, even in books like yours.

Exactly! Parents and teachers should be asking what children can gain from Willi’s historic adventures in the way of character development. They should be thinking out loud with the children, wondering along with them what is going on and why…as Willi travels through history.

Does Willi respond appropriately? What other things might have happened to her in her lost state? How do they feel about Willi’s animal friends?

Whether we are mindful of it or not, a child’s wider-community experiences offer up countless experiences that are potentially character-building if only we know to draw the child’s attention to them.

We all know that some communities – and some families – make us feel more a part of the community than others. Some don’t allow for community building in any sense of the word; in fact, they work against community-building efforts. We also know that those communities and families that do not promote character development end up creating unhappy and often unhealthy children who grow up to be unhappy and endlessly unhealthy adults.

About the best we can do is point the child in the direction of good models and be there for them when they have questions.

Question: Can you offer some kind of summary statement about all of this, Dr. Ellen?

Most importantly, I would say without question that helping kids learn HOW TO THINK – rather than teaching them WHAT TO THINK – builds character and gives them experience in analyzing the things that go on in their world and then – hopefully – deciding how to properly respond to them.

I would rather we dispense with rote memorization in our schools and focus, instead, on giving our children expansive opportunities to learn from doing, and to learn by talking out loud with each other about the puzzles we sometimes face.

Additionally, I want to encourage other authors to combine history learning with character development experiences in their children’s books, so that their young readers will walk away with a renewed sense of who they are. THAT is a story that will stick with them!

See what your child thinks about WILLI’s adventures – they may just floor you with their insights!

To find out more about Dr. Ellen’s children’s book, visit her comprehensive BOOK BLOG.

You can also view of VIDEO of her recent visit to the Rawls Byrd School to promote her book.

The book can be purchased directly from the publisher and also at Barnes and Noble and amazon.com

This is a commentary sent to Megyn Kelly (Fox News, America Live) – SUBTITLE: John Stossel is right!

Megyn, nothing works when it is prohibited. Prohibition stirs opposition. It is a well known psychological fact of life. Prohibition also has no effect whatsoever except on those who would have done the right thing to start with.

FACT: Nancy Reagan’s JUST SAY NO campaign ultimately served to increase drug trafficking to the United States. The statistics bear this out. Drug activity proliferates. Prostitution proliferates. Marijuana use proliferates. Crime proliferates. No amount of legalized prohibitions curb these or other things.

People do the right thing when they grow up with models that also did the right thing. Children with good character have parents with good character, and those children grow up to be adults with good character.

The average progeny produced by the ‘Baby Boomers’ are ill-defined individuals of poor character development and unabashed selfishness. They have no real moral compass because their parents gave them everything, primarily to compensate for the parents’ (and grandparents’) Great Depression struggles and Post WWII struggles. These kids, as a result, grew up with no boundaries surrounded by boundless material goods. They were given LIFE on a silver platter – a Leave it to Beaver existence if you will – and those kids are turning around and doing the same thing to THEIR kids.

Materialism without consequences, that’s what it is all about: THE ME GENERATION – GENERATION X. You need to spend some time covering the new documentary, GENERATION ZERO, which is absolutely on target, Megyn.

Those ‘Baby Boomers’ who grew up differently had different kinds of parents – parents with a good moral compass, parents with boundaries, parents with good character – parents who deliberately deprived their progeny of life’s vast array of material goods…why? So that their progeny would come to appreciate these things on their own and understand better how LIFE works: You get what you earn in life. It does not come to you on a silver platter. You have to work for what you get in life, respecting others in the process.

We know from long experience that sex education works. But tell that to many ‘Baby Boomer’ parents who think that if the school (or anyone else) talks with their children about sex education matters their children will rush out and get themselves or someone else pregnant. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. Kids armed with sexual knowledge make better decisions for the right reasons, given that they have good character to start with.

Kids lacking good models and, consequently, kids without good character development, are going to have sex because that’s what their parents did and often in front of them. Such patterns repeat – that is the nature of the beast. They use sex as power. Or, if not that, as comfort for otherwise pitiful lives.

Our primary and most important influences in life are our parents and the extended families they come from.

The worrisome problem for many is the presence of legions of kids out there who lack good character development, who are also woefully undereducated, over-pregnant, excessively anxious, and mostly jobless. But no amount of legislation will change the fact that they exist and that they will continue to do the amoral or poor character things they do. Their models were powerful models for the choices they make! What will they do if we lift all the prohibitions? THEY WILL CONTINUE TO DO WHAT THEY DO. It won’t matter that the prohibitions continue to exist or are lifted…THEY WILL CONTINUE TO DO WHAT THEY DO. This is a fact of life.

Laws do [not] dictate the moral behavior of an individual. Laws also do not contain the amoral individual, only prisons do (and then not always). Laws mainly come to the aide of law-abiding citizens who desire legal remedies for those who are hell-bent on breaking laws for self-serving reasons and threatening (our) safety and well-being.

Increasingly proliferating laws demean those with good character development. They serve to (1) grow our government and (2) they serve to take responsibility away from the individual. In the wake, proliferating laws assume that without such laws Americans will not behave appropriately: an assumption that is grossly false. Most Americans are exceptional, even with the deadwood amongst us. The great majority of Americans, in fact, lead a good and moral life with great respect for our Republic and the traditions it represents. And they respect each other.

You, Megyn, are a lawyer but your vision is necessarily [limited] by that. Laws are not the end-all of a quality American life style. Fewer good laws with seriously strict consequences attached to them work best. The best form of government is a small government whose primary purpose (according to our Founding Fathers) is to regulate safety internally to a limited degree, but to mostly protect our country from assault by anti-American others.

Our individual liberties are at stake here. John Stossel is correct in saying that we [should] lift all the prohibitions out there and leave Americans to determine for themselves the quality of their lives and also the quality of their health. They will reap the benefits (or consequences) of the actions they take in life, and that’s a fact that you can take to the bank.

Yes, we will be decades if not longer waiting for the ME GENERATION to die off, while those of good character will hopefully produce new generations with good character to help counter the errant ones.

The future of this country depends on it.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © 2010 Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph. All rights reserved.

I agree, but why is that? Why are local governments and animal shelters and even ordinary citizens still treating animals as expendable? Ed calls this speciesism: the belief in the inherent superiority of one species (humans) over others.

I call it irresponsible and ignorant.

And it’s a Deadly Form of Human Ignorance

SPCA’s and animal shelters of all kinds, government supported and not, kill animals ‘in kindness’ because there simply are not enough homes for them. Some No-kill shelters exist but they cannot handle the sheer volume of needy animals and, even if they could, the reality is that a great many abandoned or abused animals are beyond repair because they have been broken by humans.

Like it or not, we are all morally culpable for the stacks of animal bodies that are thrown away every day for no good reason, or that are slaughtered on our roadways just because they happened to be there.

You and I are culpable because we are allowing such things to continue unabated.

Consider this:

•Millions of Americans let their domestic pets reproduce simply because they don’t want to [or can’t] afford the cost of neutering and spaying them.

•Many of those same Americans drop the unwanted puppies and kittens off on back roads, hoping that no one will bear witness to this cruel act.

•Even more look the other way when they know that animals are dying needlessly in pet shops or at the hands of greedy breeders who fail to provide even a semblance of humanity in their filthy puppy mills.

•A great many Americans also think nothing of leaving their pets out in the cold without adequate housing, or even adequate food and water. They let dogs die with collars embedded in their necks, with untreated diseases, even with their paws frozen into icy backyard mud holes for lack of attention. Others can barely remember to toss a bit of warm dinner out into an unlit backyard for their chained and lonely dog.

We don’t have animal shelters; we have animal reception and euthanasia centers in this country because the public is just not that concerned. And, anyway, road and public buildings matter more.

There’s More!

•Horses in untold numbers are tied by short tethers to trees and left to fend for themselves or allowed to die slowly from starvation in unsanitary stalls and barnyards.

•Pet shops are filled to the brim with tiny parakeets and finches too numerous to ever find homes, along with hamsters and rabbits who will ultimately be relegated to backyard cages of death and despair by folks who once thought they were ‘cute.’

It is not just cats and dogs that are the victims here.

•Parrots of every kind spend their long, intelligent lives caged in harrowing, lonely circumstances; a majority are systematically shuttled from one chaotic adaptive home to another as if they were merely a bag of potatoes needing a place to be stored.

•And don’t forget about the millions of hunters who kill for the sport. They come out in droves during hunting season in their pickup trucks with dogs and high-powered rifles and and pockets of bullets to stalk and kill animals that already have nowhere else to go.

•Kosher and Muslim methods of animal slaughter are hugely problematic in a society that values the humane treatment of animals. It takes cattle up to two minutes to bleed to death after being hung upside down by a leg and all the vessels in their neck severed by a knife. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says this:

“Most developed and many developing countries of the world require by law an animal to be rendered unconscious before it is slaughtered. This is in order to ensure that the animal does not suffer pain during slaughter. However, exceptions are made for the Jewish (Kosher) and Muslim (Halal) slaughter of livestock. Here stunning generally is not allowed and the animal is bled directly using a sharp knife to cut the throat and sever the main blood vessels. This results in sudden and massive loss of blood with loss of consciousness and death. However, many authorities consider that religious slaughter can be very unsatisfactory and that the animal may not be rendered unconscious and suffer considerable discomfort and pain in the slaughter process.”

Click here for an overview of livestock slaughter methodologies, and then remember what you read the next time you buy meat at your local grocery store.

Meat markets are necessarily sterile places that take great care to help us forget how the plastic-wrapped meats came to be.

•Consider male calves: veal is the meat produced from them and, since only a few males are needed for breeding stock, most are sent to slaughter before puberty brings on the ill-tempered behavior that is characteristic of adult bulls. More importantly, veal enthusiasts demand the milk-fed meat from calves that are kept in tiny, single-calf crates. Limiting the movement of the calf, you see, produces a much more tender meat. Although the practice is now banned in the UK, many U.S. dairy farms still use crating as a calf-raising technique.

•Have you had chicken for dinner of late? The vast majority of luckless chickens – arguably the most abused animals in all of agribusiness – are stuffed into barren, wire battery cages so restrictive that the birds don’t even have room to spread their wings. And they are typically [and cruelly] debeaked first so that they do not peck each other to death.

•Have you ever personally witnessed a murderous cockfight or a dogfight? If you have, you are part of a growing interstate problem that promotes illegal gambling for high stakes along with countless other crimes.

•Think also about the last time you had a lobster dinner: either you or someone else killed that lobster, probably in a dreadful way. There are humane ways to cook lobster but boiling them alive still seems to be the preferred choice.

[Do lobsters feel pain? Well, I'll let you be the judge as you watch it thrash around and even squeal for a minute or two as it is thrown into that pot of boiling water.]

•Trapping animals is another egregious practice that still lingers. So, too, poaching…and aerial shootings…and the cutting off of limbs, skinning, or scalding of an animal that still shows any sign of sensibility.

One wonders how anyone can do such things but they do – we just usually don’t have to watch it.

•And finally, the medical research arena has long been burdened with charges of inhumane treatment of their animal charges. But, here again, we don’t usually get to see what is going on inside those research facilities so we don’t give it another thought.

“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.” – Thomas Edison, American Inventor and Scientist

So Who Cares?

You ought to care, for the measure of our humanity rests in how we treat other living beings. And so far, the data is disheartening.

If you are a parent you ought to care, for the models your children are being exposed to on a daily basis are horrific ones, many of them mere blocks from your home, even in your child’s school.

You also should understand that virtually every serious violent offender in our society has a history of animal abuse in their past. Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology over the last 25 years have demonstrated this again and again. Any kind of abuse is a way for a depraved human to find power and fulfillment through the torture of a victim they know cannot defend themselves.

Animal abuse in violent homes can take many forms – some overt, others more hidden. The animals in question are victimized only because they happened to be there. Indeed, many violent people threaten to kill household pets to intimidate family members into sexual abuse or even to just psychologically torture them.

For What it is Worth

We are not, by any account, an animal friendly society. The above examples are illustrative of that. Some would say that we are not even a child-friendly society for all the abuse and neglect that takes place behind closed doors in American homes.

Yes, of course – there are those who love animals and who are doing the right thing by them. But don’t be lulled into thinking that we (you and I) are in the majority. We are not, by any stretch. The unthinking masses are not concerned about treating animals humanely. It is not even in their sphere of influence to do so.

As a result, we are a grossly ignorant society even though America is by all standards one of the most affluent and technologically advanced countries in the world. We are, nevertheless, grossly ignorant about our bodies, about preserving our health, about how to have healthy family relationships, about politics – you name it, we’re collectively ignorant about it.

Somewhere along the way we have forsaken good education practices for inadequate ones, ones that prioritize math and science and successful wealth-generation practices over health and human happiness. As a result, the smart ones get ahead but with a minimal value system in place while the ignorant get ever more ignorant by the day.

Is it so difficult to understand that texting while driving is just plain stupid?

We are not equipping young people to survive emotionally in our combative, competitive world and they are falling through the cracks as fast as we can catch them. Healthy relationships matter. Ethics matter. Mindfulness matters. Being able to feel the Earth under our feet matters.

But it seems that such things are no longer part of our educational curriculums.

How in the world can young people find any sense of fulfillment from pet ownership or closeness to wildlife when we have literally paved over our available greenspaces and most of us live in towers of molten steel? What we are seeing and experiencing is a gross disconnect from the natural world and animal abuse is but the most visible tip of a large and very scary iceberg that looms ahead.

What to Do?

There is really little that we can do. You don’t do anything to a barometer; you just take a reading and then (hopefully) act accordingly.

Sure, there are some things you can do but they are no panacea. You can be sure that your animals are safe from abuse and loved, and not let to wander unattended or afraid in the world. You can also lock your doors against human demons intent upon spoiling your children.

And you can model an exemplary life for your children by talking with them face to face, and interacting with them in tender loving ways and with a spot of excitement and joy in your voice.

When collective ignorance prevails, about all we can do is watch from the sidelines in horror.

The next time you drive down that lovely mountain road, or along that beautiful stretch of coastal road, take note of the road-kill that you encounter. Bear witness to them. Maybe you didn’t run over those pitiful animals but someone did, and they could have cared less that they did. Many probably even did it gleefully. Trust me, I have seen it.

These folks are difficult to pinpoint in daily life but you can eventually tune in to them by following the dead or distressed animals in their wake. They are the ones that leave a hot, thirsty animal in their locked car as they sip beer in an air-conditioned bar. They are also the neighbors whose dogs and cats roam in ever-widening circles, destroying all remnants of wildlife in the process and leaving unwanted litters in their wake. They even include the local politicos who are too busy to love and enjoy that lonely, barking dog whose sole purpose in life is apparently to protect their owners’ homes from intrusion.

Yes, Saving the Planet is All the Rage Today

But in order to save the planet we have to first learn how to save ourselves. It is all for naught if saving ourselves does not come first.

And saving ourselves, by and large, means coming to terms with the sanctity of life and respecting it at every level: from babies in the womb to black bears in the national park, to hapless kittens and puppies in a frantic search for milk. Wherever there is life, there is an opportunity for us to learn more about ourselves.

Their fate, then, is ours in the long run.

“Our treatment of animals will someday be considered barbarous. There cannot be perfect civilization until man realizes that the rights of every living creature are as sacred as his own.” – Dr. David Starr Jordan, American Biologist and Educator

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © 2010 Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph. All rights reserved.

Richard Lindzen gives us an idea of the intensity of this debate in an article entitled Climate of Fear:

“There have been repeated claims that this past year’s hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.“

So let’s see what this debate is really about. And let’s ask ourselves how can we best prepare ourselves for the difficult decisions that we are being called upon to make in the wake of such a frenzied dabate.

Some Background

Think about it this way: if humans everywhere lived with certain environmental principles in mind there wouldn’t be much argument about the man-made pressures on climate. There wouldn’t be that many. We would be deliberately keeping the human population in check; we would be actively constraining deforestation; we would have strict global standards in place for pollution and corporate excess; we would already have made climate change an integral part of educational curriculums beginning in our grade schools; and we would long ago have halted the production and use of PLASTICS that are grossly damaging to the environment including our oceans.

See this powerful video on our seas of plastic by Capt. Charles Moore

We would also not be continuously polluting the air with excessive carbon emissions from our automobiles and chimneystacks. Our cars would be smaller, our public transit systems would be more prominent, and citizen demands for a clean environment would be echoed in the hallowed halls of congresses worldwide.

But this is not how it is today.

Today we are exerting undue pressure on the finite resources of the of Earth in terms of its oil and coal reserves. We are overpopulating the Earth and, in the process, exacting huge associated demands on available green spaces. Human encroachment is also pushing many life forms to the brink of extinction. Too many carbon dioxide emissions, too many people, too many industrial pollutants, not to mention aerosols in the atmosphere, snow, ice albedo, volcanoes – all of these things are taking an irrefutable toll on our ability to make accurate, long-range predictions about future climate changes.

Collectively, we are not even close to having an EARTH FIRST! approach to the world around us. We are luxuriating in our highly urban settings and demanding more and more from an increasing array of technologies that have seemingly unlimited (and benign) potential to enhance our lives.

Is there a problem with that? You bet! So are we to blame for the current climate crisis? Maybe, maybe not.

But what is certain is that we are not living in harmony with the planet, regardless of any climate change concerns we may have.

There is Plenty of Blame to go Around

What does blame ever do for us in the end? In this case it has polarized thinking into the hot ticket climate camps that are now battling for our allegiance. Such polarization is highly triangulating at best and, at worst, it intensifies and distorts our struggles to better understand the physical world around us.

Fear distorts.

And it results in an explosion of green profiteering schemes and the emergence of what some call junk science. This is when good science is forsaken for alarmist science.

Emotional triangulation at any level of human interaction is a largely dysfunctional process that begets dysfunctional behavior. As anxiety escalates the emotional process deterioriates, and intellectual functioning also deterioriates; resulting in problematic analysis no matter where we focus. This happens in family relationships, in our houses of Congress, even in the cut-throat and often combative world of science.

Triangulation is a process that pits Camp A against Camp B over some weighty Camp C outcomes. In the realm of climate change this translates to DENIAL, ALARM, and POLITICKING as disparate players struggle to stay on top in their highly unstable game.

But That’s Not All

My dissatisfaction with the climate change debate today is that it is myopic at best.

The Earth’s geophysical self was in place three billion or more years before we humans left our first footprints here, and it will continue long after we have worn our planetary welcome out. We humans are the ones we should be concerned about, not the Earth. The Earth will prevail.

The question is – will we?

Instead of worrying about a changing climate, we ought to be worried about whether (or not) we are adequately positioning ourselves to adapt to whatever Nature sends our way. Nation states need to be building self-sufficiency for food production and energy. Clearly, if the alarmist predictions do materialize, it will result in severely reduced greenspace for agricultural pursuits. Millions will starve as more and more arid hot spots erupt on the warming Earth’s surface, making food production increasingly difficult.

But no one is talking about that. Instead, we’re myopically focused on how to [fix] something that we still know too little about.

Political Agendas Corrupt Absolutely.

And when those political agendas involve science, then they corrupt science absolutely as well, resulting in what is referred to by some today as ‘junk science’, a concept I agree whole-heartedly with.

Today’s junk science mob is generating faulty scientific data to persuade others that its aims are humanistic: the media, lawyers, social activists, government regulators, businesses, politicos, yes even scientists, are just some of the major players in schemes to profit from scientific alarmism.

Of these mobsters we must beware, for theirs are self-interests. Even if the climate warnings hold some measure of truth, their offerings are not going to free us from any future climate predicament; the reason being, they don’t understand any better than anyone else what is going on with climate today because their own science is faulty.

Their data-gathering techniques leave [living organisms] out of the entire climate-change equation!

The mobsters may actually be underestimating the problem without realizing it. The truth is, atmospheric physics and its elaborate computer-generated equilibrium models have never yet accurately predicted climate into the future.

Indeed, models from the 1960′s forward predicted the onset of an ice age, which has not happened to date. And the measured sea level from then to now has actually risen nearly two times faster than was predicted. There are other discrepancies, as well, involving the dynamics of melting glaciers and an unseen progressive decline in the population of ocean algae (algae acts to cool the Earth by reducing barren areas of black, open ocean).

Equilibrium models do note take into account the living organisms that make up our biosphere – organisms (including us) that clearly help determine the surface composition and temperature of the planet. Geophysiology tells us this. Geophysiology studies the impact of organisms of the Earth and their ancestral past while atmospheric physics deals strictly with our geologic history minus the presence and impact of living organisms. Climate scientists tend to see Earth as a dead planet, maybe because dead planets are so much easier to model…

But an Earth science like geophysiology encompasses all of the Earth including its oceans, surface rocks, atmosphere, and living organisms – all in a dynamic system of self-regulation. It is a true systems science; atmospheric physics is not although it continues to be our primary scientific discipline for studying climate.

But what if the atmospheric physicists are wrong? What if seeing the Earth as something that they can [manage] is totally off-base? What if the Earth, as James Lovelock postulates, is more than “a ball of rock moistened by the oceans and sitting within a tenuous sphere of air.”

Systems Thinkers They are Not

Climatologists today align themselves in the atmospheric physics camp because systemic thinking has not yet been widely embraced by science in general, but most certainly not by those in atmospheric physics. Until that happens we must rely on non-interactive climate change models with therefore unreliable predictive abilities. This needs to change. The methods of scientific research need to change.

By now there is ample evidence to support a large-scale shift to dynamic models of climate change.

* We cannot begin to predict the prevailing economic dynamics fifty years from now; why do we think we can predict the future of climate which embraces far more complex variables that are not yet being fully assessed?

An interesting characteristic of science historically is that it is a largely fragmented domain. The different scientific disciplines (physics, biology, chemistry, genetics – to name but a few) do not communicate among themselves; their communications are discipline-specific to the point of having their own separate, disciplinary languages that are indecipherable by others outside of that discipline. They have their own research publications, as well. Scientists in one discipline do not talk to scientists in other disciplines. Frankly, there are no free-flowing information highways that allow us to systematically pull data from all corners of the life sciences, as this data is simply too hard to get.

This must change.

And we (you and I) must become much more knowledgeable about those who are doing our work for us. We also have to know exactly what special interests prevail (and why) so that we can avoid being caught up in their schemes and misconceptions. This is true in the case of those who represent us in Congress, as well as for those scientists in whom we invest our trust to accurately analyze the physical world around us.

Even our textbooks need to be challenged for they, too, fall prey to distortions and political agendas.

Romantic Nonsense Prevails

Whatever our problems related to climate change are, they are much bigger than us and they are certainly bigger than any individual efforts to plant trees and drive smaller cars, or install wind turbines and other so-called green technologies in our homes and businesses.

Certainly we need to turn off our electric lights when not used, and we need to conserve our own individual energy uses at all times, for the sake of future generations if nothing else. Maybe a little carbon trading is not so bad, even sustainable development schemes are at least in theory good – but a panecea they are not.

Understand that climate change, natural or otherwise, will always rear its ugly head. That’s what climates do, they change. And there may be little that we can do about it except learn to (hopefully) adapt as the Earth’s cooling and heating cycles continue to vacillate.

The green technologies give us the illusion of power over climate change. And while the illusion is comforting, they fail to prepare us for the realities that lie ahead; realities that will not likely be as controllable as some would think.

The Real World of Climate Forecasting

The bottom line is that those accountable to governments and business markets do not make reliable arguers for the future climate on Earth and its consequences. They have, after all, motives for what they say and do.

According to Voice of America, “This month’s UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen comes amid growing scientific consensus that global temperatures are rising, and that the warming trend is having a measurable impact on life on the planet. According to a 2007 UN intergovernmental panel report on climate change, 11 of the previous 12 years were the warmest on record. Although disagreements persist on the extent to which human activity is responsible for climate change, the Earth’s warming no longer appears in doubt, and the long-term consequences look increasingly grim.”

But is it true? Is there really a consensus about what our future climate holds for humankind? No, there is no such consensus.

Consensus is a political beast, normally it is not even a part of science as we know it. So we should already be suspect. Science is concerned with probabilities, not with certainties. Its forecasts are conceptual models that very often differ greatly from real-world measurements. In science, consensus is never a priority.

So it doesn’t really matter then that 1,000 IPCC alarmist scientists claim consensus because that consensus, if it does exist, is primarily about what international markets and governments want to hear and think about climate change.

It also doesn’t help to DENY alarmist notions about climate change. The truth, if anything, lies somewhere in between.

Our aging planet is showing signs of buckling under the weight of its 7 billion human inhabitants who live increasingly urbanized lives. This fact alone is effecting climate in a multitude of interacting ways. Climate change, then, is not just about the Earth’s surface environment as the alarmist warnings would have us believe: it is far more complex than those models suggest. If serious climate change looms it is partly because [we] are an interactive and integral part of the climate system and we are not living sustainable lives.

We have, in fact, been reckless inhabitants of the Earth.

What to Do Then?

For starters we each need to responsibly educate ourselves about climate and about the historical patterns observed so far in the Earth’s adaptations to periodic climate variations. We can no longer leave this job to the atmospheric physicists, and most certainly not to others with obvious political agendas, Al Gore included. Clear thinking does not emanate from triangulated agendas.

An educated public is a powerful public but to a politician, ignorance is bliss.

We must arm ourselves with knowledge against those who think we can’t possibly know what they are talking about. We can know. We can learn to decipher junk from real science, and humanitarian offerings from profiteering ones. Education is key, and it demands that we insert the climate and systems-oriented Earth sciences into our elementary and secondary curriculums before it is too late.

History is another critical discipline that must be expanded and enriched as primary curriculums. We need to understand what has happened in the past so that we can respond knowledgeably to present and future concerns. This is true not only in terms of the history of science, but also with regard to the social, cultural, biological and geophysical worlds around us.

AN ASIDE: At center stage in the current climate debate is the very interesting notion of cognitive dissonance. Leon Festinger originally described cognitive dissonance as the feeling of discomfort we feel when trying to reconcile two simultaneous but contradictory ideas. We tend to try to reduce the dissonance (or confusion and uncomfortability) by rejecting one of the conflicting ideas in favor of the other. While this most certainly oversimplifies the issues involved, it does serve to make us feel more comfortable. And so we tend to do just that whenever we can, because uncomfortable feelings don’t feel good.

This is what you are [really] seeing when folks band together into the different ideological camps of climatology. They are reducing their feelings of dissonance but…at what cost?

Surely we can do better than this.

So get busy. Do your homework. Keep an open mind. And find out for yourself what is reliable and what isn’t in the climate change debate. Do it because it is the right thing to do for yourself. Learn to think systemically about the world around you.

And if I may, let me suggest these places to start:

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).

Charlson, Robert, ed. Earth System Science (London: Academic Press, 2000)

Flannery, Tim. Now or Never: Wy We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009).

Lawson, Nigel. An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming (London: Gerald Euckworth & Co., 2008).

Lovelock, James. The Revenge of Gaia (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2006).

Lovelock, James. The Vanishing Face of Gaia (New York: Basic Books, 2009).

Mabey, Richard. Country Matters (London: Earthscan, 2005)

Margulis, Lynn. The Symbiotic Planet (London: Phoenix Press 1998).

Schneider, Stephen H., Global Warming (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1989).

Wilson, Edward O. The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Wilson, Edward O. The Future of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © 2010 Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph. All rights reserved.

Few people have seen William and Mary as intimately as has Ellen Rudolph. As a graduate student here in the 1970s, as a longstanding friend of numerous staff and faculty members, and as a leader within the greater Williamsburg community, Rudolph has fostered a love affair with the College impassioned both by its storied past and its wide-open future. Over the years she has documented that passion through her photography. The W&M News is privileged to share samples of her photographic work, along with the insights she imparted in answering the following questions. Ed.

Q: Of the hundreds of photographs you have taken of William and Mary, what do these say individually and collectively about the College?

Rudolph: There is great beauty in our W&M environment and it can be found in the most unexpected places.

I am always looking for the unexpected—everyone sees those published images of the Wren Building facade but do they see that reflection as the late afternoon sun peeks into the circular window in the Chapel choir loft? Do students notice the intricate patterns of that stairwell that they climb every day in the University Center? The details of the Wren Building are really quite exquisite, and I have spent days wandering around that building with camera in hand.

Thanks to Louise Kale I have even been able to climb up into the cupola to photograph what can be seen from there. It’s high up there! And it is not so easy to climb—but the view of Lord Botetourt looking down the mile long stretch of Duke of Gloucester Street is better than any I have ever seen.

Collectively, these images speak to my personal fascination with W&M. During my graduate school days here throughout the ’70s I really didn’t appreciate W&M in the way that I do now. Back then I saw the school, the buildings, mainly. It was a community of students and faculty, for sure, but I didn’t really see much beyond that. Perhaps it is a function of aging that I now see well beyond those surface things to the loveliness of its architectural patterns and its history.

When I walk around the historic campus I feel the impact of time and the presence of historic figures. And I often wonder if they, too, appreciated the way the sunlight and the seasons adorn these worn exteriors.

I have more than a thousand images of W&M in my personal archives, many of which have not been published. The ones I have published represent collections of those images – to give others a sense of the many facets of the college that I have spent time photographing over the years – architecture, seasonal views, patterns, process, people enjoying themselves, color, its natural beauty.

Q: How would you describe your relationship to William and Mary?

Rudolph: I am a graduate alum, as I said. I went to the University of Minnesota (Mpls) as an undergraduate. And nine years later I found myself graduating with a doctorate from W&M. I loved those days. I am also a photographer for many diverse interests here at the College, from University Development to the Alumni Society, and the President’s Office, as well as for the Business School, The ITA Tennis Hall of Fame, the School of Education, and the Law School. I shoot weddings occasionally at the Wren Chapel. Recently I spent some time at Kinesiology’s ropes course, which was great fun. Getting the images was as challenging as the student’s own work there was!

Q: If you were sitting with a friend over tea or brandy, how would you describe William and Mary?

Rudolph: I often describe William & Mary as a paradoxical place. It is touted for its historical roots and architectural ambience, at the same time that growing pains are forcing it to give way to modernization with nothing but boring bricks and mortar to show for it. It is hard, I know, to modernize with historical imperatives governing things but W&M should be doing just that—preserving its lovely ambience even in its newest structures. I would rather, for example, banish all cars from the campus rather than build a huge, ugly parking garage.

The historic buildings are so interesting to explore, and they are such beautiful spaces to think in. The ‘new’ campus buildings look shabby by comparison, and they show signs and wear and tear more quickly than the old, and they just don’t inspire me in the same way. I would tear all those buildings down and start over.

I would take Barksdale Field and build something on it with historical significance, much like Colonial Williamsburg has done with its architectural projects over the years. One by one, let’s replace those tired ‘new’ buildings with something that preserves the wonderful, historic character of the College.

I also find the College to be paradoxical in its ever-widening embrace of purely cognitive science. We know that mind and body reflect and enhance one another, and that the body cannot be left out of any equation for healthy living. Yet, over the years we have de-emphasized many interesting, team-building intramural activities. That is not good for the College or for its diverse students. Kinesiology’s ropes course is a profound experience for those who partake of it, yet it is purely elective and considerably underfunded. We can do better than that. That troubles me. I don’t think we are sending the right messages to students with so selective a focus on data gathering at the expense of the fully-developed self. Learning is more than that. I don’t think that Thomas Jefferson would be happy about this, either.

On the other hand, I am proud of the College, and I am proud to be an alum. It has greatness if only we take care to ensure the survival of that greatness. That is our imperative today.

Maybe there are lessons to be had from Thomas Jefferson’s days. Time was slower then, the sense of community back then was larger, and the small but beautiful world of the College was warm and embracing. There was an emphasis on the whole person and on the acquisition of a broad spectrum of ideas instead of on ever-increasing specializations that characterize most university experiences today. I try to show that old ambience as often as I can.

Q: What are some of the photographs of the College that you have yet to take that you believe are important?

Rudolph: Currently I am working on a project related to the Adam’s Garden. This is a veritable jewel in our midst, this garden, thanks in main to the efforts of Madelynn Watkinson. She knows that I have spent quite a bit of time exploring that garden with my camera but she will be surprised, I think, by the expansiveness of this project. In my own mind, natural beauty inspires and moves us deeply. It helps us move beyond our focus on ourselves to comprehend the larger imperatives of the world around us. We need to preserve those green spaces and to expand upon our efforts to incorporate them into our lives. Greenspace is vanishing as we speak, yet if W&M is going to retain its true historical character then it needs to rekindle those green spaces that embraced our founding fathers.

At some point I also plan to do a photojournalist essay on the blight that I see invading the campus. Tired, twisted chain link fences, they are everywhere. Cars are everywhere where bicycles should be. I hate to see these things that rob our campus of its integrity and beauty.

While I do have many opportunities to photograph W&M leaders and donors, I don’t ever get enough time to photograph the students who are the heartbeat of W&M. I would like to do that in some avant guard way.

Q: What is a non-photographer in danger of missing when he or she looks at the College?

Rudolph: The average person with a camera is looking to put herself in the picture, using W&M’s historic architecture as a backdrop. And this is fine, but there is much, much more to be had, even by a novice photographer. I tell students who work with me to use the camera to help extend their vision—sometimes even I am surprised by what I see in my images, things that weren’t apparent to the eye alone.

Look for patterns, because W&M has a thrilling array of them. I particularly love the juxtapositions of the old architecture with light, and with natural symbols. I also love to get as close to my subject as possible because what I see then is so different from what can be seen from yards away. There is an intimacy to be had in that kind of photography.

The W&M sign on Jamestown Rd. near the Wren Building has long been a favorite subject of mine. In recent years I think that cutbacks have probably downgraded the plantings there but I must have 10 years of images in my archives of that sign cloaked in fantastic seasonal plantings. The one shown here is but one example—I haven’t seen that particular constellation of color and flowers there for years but it should be repeated! It surely reflects W&M at its best!

Q: Compared to all of the subjects you have photographed around the world, what is special about Williamsburg and, in particular, William and Mary?

Rudolph: Well, as I tell photographers all the time, your own backyard is one of your best subjects. You know it intimately, and seasonally, and you know it in the best light. Visitors don’t. When I travel elsewhere, I have to learn the place first before I can adequately photograph it, or at least I have to bring folks with me who know the place intimately. That’s why I tend to spend extended time on these international projects.

If I were a student today I would have a digital camera with me constantly, so as to capture the experience for posterity. Those priceless expressions, that perfect light, that unrepeatable moment—those make great images even in the hands of an inexperienced photographer. And the College should be using those images to help project itself to the world.

W&M is a very alive place. Let the dancing light tell the real story!

Q: When you’re not shooting the College, what might we find you engaged in?

Rudolph: I teach some psychology classes and then I take time off to travel internationally as a conservation photographer. I spent a year in Australia on a conservation project, which gave me the opportunity to travel 45,000 km around the Outback by 4-wheel drive.

I have also done conservation projects in Ecuador, and Costa Rica, as well as in South Africa and Namibia, and Suriname. And recently I spent four and a half months in Provence—in the South of France—doing the photography for a book on the petite villages of the Luberon Region of Provence.

As a photojournalist I am also frequently involved in writing and illustrating articles for various publications. Right now I am even working on several children’s books. I have spent more than 20 years working with animals in various ways, as longtime President of the Williamsburg Area SPCA (now called the Heritage Humane Society) and as a wildlife rehabilitator. My goal is to share my many wonderful animal rescue stories with children who will be tomorrow’s conservationists. And maybe even some historic triangle stories, who knows!

I also build Web sites as part of my digital workflow. Today’s digital era has changed how I do things as a professional photographer, which is just fine with me, as I am inspired by the challenges it brings. I have a digital desktop that looks like the helm of the Starship Enterprise.

Read more of Dr. Ellen’s essays and access her personal photo galleries at www.drellenrudolph.com.

Pops was 57 years old when he and Pearl Kean adopted me. I was just five years old at the time and fresh from a series of seventeen different foster homes that I shared over a three-year period with my five older brothers: Darryl, Dale, Curt, Kenneth, and [the eldest] Philip. Our natural parents gave us up for adoption when our house burned down and their ill-fated marriage consequently collapsed.

The welfare system tried their best to keep us all together but in the end they couldn’t; and eventually we were all sent our separate ways like it or not.

The path I took was an improbable one. Doc Kean had one son from a prior marriage that ended in death. His son, Dudley, was five years old at the time and Doc raised him on his own. Doc remarried later in life when he had means and a professional career of consequence; plus time to give to a little girl who quickly became the apple of his eye.

I learned many things from Pops over the years but one that stands out from all the rest is his insistence that, no matter what, I somehow make a difference; that I find a way to stand out from the crowd in whatever I did and take stands on things that are important to me. That was all he asked, he said.

It was a tall order and one that I didn’t entirely understand until years later.

What form did this take?
My initial foray into making a difference came in Kindergarten when I was appointed director of the first-ever Kindergarten Band. I had a white director’s uniform made just for me and a long, thin baton, as well as a very important director’s hat. I remember looking back at the others in the band and thinking that this was fun!

Not long after that I visited Chicago with the Keans and sat on my first-ever Santa’s lap. I was bowled over by all the tinsel and toys and Santa’s bright red velveteen suit and I know I talked his ear off. I was jubilant; that is, until I eventually came down with the mumps.

“There is always a little bit of bad with the good.” Pops told me as he held a cooling washcloth to my forehead. “You have to learn to take the lumps.”

Those were pretty big lumps as I saw it and right then and there I had my first inkling that the road ahead was not necessarily going to be a smooth one.

That first Christmas at the Keans came and went and I was awash with gifts enough for ten of me. The tree was gigantic and sparkled with hundreds of colored lights, joyful music played throughout the house, and well-wishing neighbors came and went as I sat beneath that Christmas tree and quietly wept.

Yes, I wept for my five brothers because I did not know where they were at the moment. Our connection had been lost. These presents should have been theirs, too; yes, and all the rest.

Later, as children came to my house to play with me, I sent them home with my newly acquired gifts. I didn’t feel any sense of ownership and I really didn’t feel all that happy to have them. That was my first lesson.

Things do not make us happy
To this day I experience a sense of dread about presents. I appreciate gift giving and I feel that I am a giving person, but I still do not like the commercialism of Christmas as I approach my 63rd birthday. I prefer to [make] presents for others, or at least to make a present of my time that I then give to others. I dislike purchased gifts because they rarely come from the heart.

Curt, my middle brother, gave me a doll when I was eight. I had been living with the Keans for a number of years by then and he wanted to show me that he was thinking of me. He brought me a rag doll that he had made in school – he even sewed the bibbed corduroy pants and shirt that the doll was wearing! – and he painted a welcoming smile on the doll’s face.

I still have that precious doll. It means the world to me.
Years later I invited my brother, Philip, on a trip to Africa with me. It wasn’t the trip itself that was important; it was the thought and the time that he and I would be able to spend together. He hemmed and hawed because his health wasn’t good and he worried about his ability to manage such an adventure physically. But he went anyway and we had a wonderful time, the two of us.

Little did we know that it would be Philip’s last adventure. Shortly thereafter he died in his sleep and I was left to grieve for him with bittersweet thoughts of black rhinos and leopards and lions and African elephants roaring in the background. It was a trip of a lifetime for him and a precious time of togetherness for us both.

Then this last fall I visited Doc Kean’s old hunting and fishing camp on Bowstring Lake in northern Minnesota. I found my way to the camp with a little help from my buddy, Larke Huntley, who got directions and permission for me to go out there. Visiting the old camp was fun and filled with memories for me, but the real treasure was in the camp’s LOG BOOK that brought my past zip zip into the present. There, on its pages, in handwriting that I recognized, were words that told the world that I had been there, on which dates, and that I had been there with dear old Pops at my side.

No one can possibly know how important that day was for me.

Music for the soul
A lasting gift that the Keans gave to me was the gift of music.

I danced up a storm when I was a child and I took all kinds of music lessons – not to become a famous musician but to become a soulful grown-up. Music is an international language of love. It’s meaning transcends all barriers. I didn’t necessarily know that as a child or teenager practicing BACH on one instrument or another; but I know it now. I know that music moves me in ways that nothing else can.

When Pearl Kean died, years after Pop Kean’s death, I had a grand piano placed on the altar of the Catholic Church where Pearl’s funeral was officiated. I stepped up to the altar and spoke with the audience of friends and family that had gathered and told them of the gift that the Keans had given me – the gift of music. Then I sat down and played a soulful AUTUMN LEAVES and EXODUS to friends whose tears were audible between the bars of music.

Many years later I had an opportunity to take over a classroom of emotionally troubled children in Newport News, Virginia. Their teacher had suddenly taken ill and I was her replacement, much to the chagrin of the children, of course. They missed their teacher and they balked at my sudden intrusion into their lives.

But I got to them through music. They learned to spell to music, count to music, march to music, dance to music – indeed, everything that happened in that classroom of twelve children was done to music. We even laughed to music. And it wasn’t long before they loved me as much as they had loved their prior teacher and that made me glad. This lesson was that music, indeed, is a tool for life.

What then?
It seems that Pops was a stickler for words. He was an avid reader and he expected me to be one as well. Whenever I approached him about the meaning of a certain word or two he would send me immediately to the dictionary. I would beg him to tell me whatever it was but he persisted and, before I knew it, books became my best friends, too.

To this day I treasure books, good books – not necessarily any book – but books that inspire and force me to think big thoughts. I have found, over the years, that anxiety escalates when one becomes cocooned and cutoff from the rest of the world.

Books – words – forge friendships between strangers half way around the world.

During my years as a family therapist clients often asked me what books they could read to help them through their trials and tribulations. There were none, I said, except for those literary classics that had confounded philosophers from the Middle Ages forward. Read those, I told them. Don’t read dreary SELF-HELP books. Read about the real world. Read about life and the passion of pursuit and the untold joys of discovery.

Read to your heart’s content.
I learned over the years to read authors, not just one author’s book; but also every book that someone I admired has ever written. As a result I learned how that person thinks, how they view the world, how they manage adversity and, most importantly, how they see themselves in relation to the world around them.

This is important. For me to admire a person that admiration must be grounded in some larger context. David Bohm, for example, is an internationally acclaimed theoretical physicist. His thoughts became increasingly important to me as I tracked his initial musings about wholeness and the implicate order. Those musings infatuated me beyond belief.

I became a systems thinker at Bohm’s feet, and also coincidentally at Dr. Murray Bowen’s feet, and I will treasure those musings to my dying day.

I do believe I have made a difference in the lives of some for whom the world was broken and senseless. I gave them structure, a framework, if you will, to hang their hat on. I engaged them a systemic dance of a lifetime, a dance that would, if they let it, transport them to higher realms of thinking and being where anxiety was a mere afterthought.
The lesson? That big thoughts crowd out lesser thoughts. Pops would be proud of me, I think.

So I continue my trek through life to stand apart. I am politically an Independent. I am religiously private. I give voice to the downtrodden. And I try to give voice, as well, to the animals in our midst, both companion and wild, who cannot speak for themselves. I will always give voice to dissent when I think the situation merits it.

I also strive to be creative which is not always easy. The business of life constantly interferes with creativity. But I thrive on creativity. I wake up in the middle of the night filled with fanciful thoughts. Later I sit at the piano and imagine a world without war with Beethoven at its helm.

I also wonder at the constellations and how I might one day get to visit them.

I wish for nothing, I hope for nothing. I am moved by everything. I think, therefore I am.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © 2010 Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph. All rights reserved.

Ours [is] a government that strictly separates ‘Church’ and ‘State’ and for good reason. Our Founding Fathers fought long and hard to preserve RELIGIOUS FREEDOM – the freedom to believe or not believe in a deity as the individual citizen sees fit, without fear of reprisal. But our Founding Fathers clearly made that a personal freedom, not a state right to govern according to religious principles.

Politicians who want to bring their deity onto center state in political discourse are just as misguided as those who wantonly attack others for failing to believe as they do. Both groups need to get off their high horse.

The reality is this: humans behave in accordance with their own intrinsic set of moral imperatives whether we like it or not.

The fact that some lean this way or that, or do this or that, reflects a lack of education in some cases; and perhaps a certain mindlessness of the consequences of their actions. But mostly it reflects the trek a person has taken through life, which is exactly what we are seeing in the health care (and other) choices that people make. We can hate their choices but we have a Constitution that also protects that process of choosing.

The behaviors we see around us reflect where our Society is at any given moment. As with any barameter, you don’t bash the glass in and reset it if you don’t like how it reads; you merely adjust your plans accordingly.

FACT: The medical area is fraught with personal choice options.

Therefore nothing medical should ever have been allowed to become a political football, for that drags polarizing religious imperatives into the public dialogue when such decisions should be left to the individual and his or her physician. This includes life and death decisions as well as birthing decisions, and many other such decisions that even the highest court should not be allowed to overshadow…things like ‘pulling the plug’, medical suicide, effective pain relieving protocols, and the like.

THESE ARE PERSONAL CHOICES, NOT POLITICAL FREE-FOR-ALLS. The fact that you don’t like the way someone chooses does not give you the right to infringe on that process. And visa versa.

Where are all those personal freedoms that this country was built on? Do we all really have to believe in the same, exact thing in order to support one political party or another? Isn’t it possible to have legislation that protects the greater good without doing so at the expense of differing points of view?

Ideological battles are emotional, not political, battles and they don’t belong in the political discourse. They erode our personal freedoms as sure as socialism does.

NOTE: If Person [A] doesn’t believe in abortion because of their religious underpinnings, then Person [A] can probably be counted on not to have an abortion. And they should be free to think and behave along those lines accordingly, and without reprisal. If Person [B] feels differently about abortion because of their own set of ideological beliefs, then so be it. The two should be able to live in harmony in an ideal world where personal beliefs can co-exist so long as they do not harm others’ ability to act in accordance with their own beliefs.

While science has its theories about when an embryo becomes a sentient being, it is all still supposition in the end. People can and will take sides around such issues but they have to understand that when they do it is merely ‘black box thinking’; thinking that is born out of undocumented hypothesizing and nothing more. This provokes interesting discussion at times but also endless (and unnecessary) battles of wills. The extension of that line of thought to the legal ‘rights’ of the unborn only provokes more of the same unresovlable dilemmas.

Most people don’t want government to intrude in their bedrooms; but at the very same time more and more people seem to think it is perfectly fine for government to intrude on personal ideology. The acid test is whether a line of thought can be applied equally to divergent arenas without bending to continually accommodate exceptions.

You don’t [fix] personal ideologies; they evolve in the wake of encouraging forces in the social milieu in which individuals find themselves. The gross lack of quality education is the most frightening thing of all to me, and it rears its ugly head whenever one segment of society inflicts itself upon another segment of society for any reason. Such people lack greatly in terms of individual self-direction but, more importantly, they deify themselves as societal change-agents when they are not.

End-of-life health care and associated decisions in that regard is yet another domain in which the government and the polarizing public has no moral authority.

Why is it so hard to mind one’s own business? We all have to make choices in life, and they needn’t have identical outcomes.

That said, the health care reform battle is raging so let’s talk about personal choices regarding one’s physical self and well-being.

Until individuals begin to take self-responsibility for their own health (or lack thereof), there will always be a flood of impaired individuals who approach the end of their lives needing excessive medical support. This is something that Congress can do little or nothing about.

The fact is, we do not espouse primary prevention efforts in western medicine – a fix-it mentality prevails instead – and until that changes we will see increasing ranks of dysfunctional humans needing a lion’s share of health care services not only at the end of their pitiful lives but throughout their lives, as well.

Health care itself is not the expensive part: it is the growing ranks of the dysfunctional who are bankrupting us. Their genes may predispose them to certain things but mostly their physical health is the result of personal choices they make over the course of their lives.

Yes, personal choice has its downsides. And education is the key to unraveling the consequences of the choices we make.

The self-responsible individual takes calculated risks but not stupid risks; and they eat, sleep, consume food and behave in the world in a manner intended to preserve their health and well-being at all times. This individual is preventively oriented and does not generally fall prey to the numbing litany of things that go wrong with their body under normal, responsible self-care.

But guess what, millions of Americans don’t even wash their hands after relieving themselves; and they gorge themselves with junk foods and junk drinks. Follow the average person around a grocery store sometime and watch what they put in their cart – junk! – they grab sugars and carbs and highly processed foods and almost no fresh fruits or vegetables to speak of.
If anything, their veggies come in cans loaded down with salt and other preservatives. They eat for comfort, not for a long life.

Add to that a lifestyle of stress and relationship chaos, and high risk behaviors of all kinds, and you have a prescription for failure.

It is unlikely that these kinds of people will follow prevention-oriented dictates, even if coerced. Their ignorance exerts undue strain on a health care system that has not done its job of educating J Q PUBLIC about their bodies and how their bodies work. Their ignorance is surely killing them and about all you and I can do is watch this happen and pick up the tab for most of them.

FACT: it is a malady that cannot be legislated. In terms of the choices that people make, we can lead them to water but we can’t make them drink. Nor can medicine do much about any of this because medicine itself fails to recognize the role of the mind and the psyche in the overall balance and functioning of the body.

So there you are. The health care system today urgently needs tort reform and insurance regulation in the form of opening up interstate insurance options – and Congress needs to make this happen now – without having to reinvent the wheel in the process.

But the rest is up to us. And that’s the scary part!

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © 2010 Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph. All rights reserved.

Dr. Rudolph, I have enjoyed your articles about photography and psychology! I’m wondering if you could answer a question for me? I am doing a speech in my public speaking class about why we should hire a professional photographer for weddings and special events. I’m a professional photographer myself and want to convey to the audience the impact a photograph can have on us mentally as we look back on it over time. Is it healthy to look back at photographs, and what type of psychological effects occur as we gaze at old memories found in a photo? ~ Billy F.

Well, for starters, Billy, even professional photographers don’t always ‘get it right’. Some staid, lifeless, and utterly boring photographs can pop out of a PRO’s camera if the PRO comes to the event with the wrong attitude.

Attitude is everything, in every aspect of life from loving someone to doing an exceptional job at work.

A person with a soulful sense of self will convey that soulfulness in his or her photographs. It behooves the bride and groom, then, to select carefully; to select not just a person with a professional camera, but a person who comes highly recommended for the LIFE that they bring to their images. This is not that easy to come by.

I have known many a wedding photographer whose exposures were all right-on, where the bride’s dress was white white white like it was supposed to be; and whose technical expertise with the camera was rock solid. But the results, never-the-less, were B-O-R-I-N-G because the photographer lacked a sense of spontaneity as person, and therefore they couldn’t inject spontaneity into their images if their life depended on it.

The impact can go both ways

That said, you are absolutely right about the impact a photograph can have on us over time. But that can go both ways, as you know.

When a bride and groom enter marriage they are typically loving and focused on each other, and it shows in good photographs of them at that stage in their life. Should one of the spouses die prematurely, that soulful photograph of themselves at a lovely moment in time will comfort the survivor; and it will greatly enrich the remainder of their trek through life.

Should the couple later divorce, that same soulful photograph may serve, instead, as a painful reminder of the rocky road that their twosome traveled. The better the photograph, the more painful the reminder. (That’s probably when most folks wish for bad photographs instead, right?)

A good photograph tells a story. It engages us. It evokes powerful memories as deep, abiding emotional currents stir in us. It reflects like a mirror reflects when we look into it – and even though the road traveled since then might turn out to be problematic for us, it at least tells us important things about how we were back then, and about how we viewed the world at that stage in our development.

A poor choice in a spouse reflects, at the very least, relationship immaturity. A good choice in a spouse reflects a larger sense of self and a certain maturity about one’s own expectations in life. And if we were in our mid-twenties at the time of that choice-making, it serves as a tell-tale sign of what is to come – whether we were ready for it at the time or not.

A good photograph at a wedding

A good photograph at a wedding won’t just focus on the bridal pair; it will include as many of the couple’s significant others as possible, in subgroupings, certainly. But too many images fail to do this. The couple itself is an almost exclusive focus by wedding photographers, save for those with a more photojournalistic approach.

A wedding is a family affair – it is an affirmation of family if ever there was one. When three or four generations of family are embraced in a single shot, there will always be positive vibrations by viewers for decades to come. That is because the photograph forces us to look more broadly and to see our family multigenerationally at a finite moment in time, which is a wonderful thing.

But this is hardly a ‘catch as you can’ kind of photo. It was deliberately posed by a professional with all the right sensibilities, who saw their job as one of freezing those precious moments in time. This is in contrast to the professional who saw their job as a three-to-four hour revenue producer.

A good ‘people’ photographer, therefore, brings certain important things to the table: he or she has to enjoy people; they have to have a sense of humor and sense of immediacy and touch; and they have an ability to make friends easily. This isn’t something they learn – these are qualities that they bring with them.

When armed with these qualities and professional training and experience, they make all the difference when memories are evoked.

A powerful link to the past

It is no accident that many soldiers carry photographs of loved ones into war with them, and they experience a certain overwhelming sense of comfort, even at the moment of death, to have that photograph in hand. Photographs, therefore, can and do serve as replacements for lost loved ones, and in that capacity they are hugely powerful in their impact.

So, too, with the elderly person who enters a retirement or assisted living environment. You can tell a lot about them by the number and types of photographs that they have around them in their new surroundings. This is no small indicator of the quality of relationships that they have had over the course of a lifetime.

One of the best things a visitor to such an environment can do is to bring old family photographs with them, and share them with the now-institutionalized person. Talk with them about the photograph, and about the persons in the photographs, and share your own personal remembrances with them. The photograph serves as a powerful link to the past for them, without which the past seems remote and no longer accessible.

They, in turn, become more distant and inaccessible themselves.

See also this essay of mine about visiting family in a nursing home:
http://drellenr.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/nursing-home-horrors/

Dr. Ellen, I recently discovered your website and have found it incredibly interesting in the research I am conducting for my journalism dissertation at University in London.

I especially found your essays on photojournalism interesting, as I am focusing on this topic. My working title for my Dissertation is: ‘An Examination of the Power of Photography as a Journalistic Tool, Through a Study of Iconic Images from The Vietnam War.’

The images that I have chosen to study are: ‘Self-immolation of a Monk, 1963,’ by Malcolm Browne, ‘Mai Lai Massacre, 1968,’ by Robert Haeberle, ‘The Execution, 1968,’ by Eddie Adams, ‘young boy discovering his dead sister, 1968’ by Philip Jones Griffiths, and ‘Napalm Attack, 1972,’ by Nick Ut.

I wonder if you have any opinions on these images as ‘iconic’ and what qualities you think an ‘iconic’ photograph holds? I would be honoured to have your thoughts on the subject I have chosen for my Dissertation.” ~Nadine

Nadine, I think of an iconic photograph from the Vietnam War era as one that has taken on value to different parties for different reasons. In other words, it has a certain social usefulness.

The iconic photograph, such as the one above by Eddie Adams ( Saigon Execution – photograph – 1968 – Vietnam), instantly becomes a kind of visual rhetoric, similar in ways to the rhetoric of social liberalism. It is taken to stand for something that heretofore had no expressive outlet. The viewers of the iconic image are suddenly confronted and overwhelmed by the drama unfolding before their eyes because it is something they have not personally experienced.

The pain represented, the cruel act shown, the inhumane circumstances of death, the loss – these are things that non-warring citizens of the world try not to think about in their daily lives. 

But images of war are iconic for those very reasons. They mirror a level of pain and suffering that is shockingly unfamiliar to us and it is this reaction, on our part, that helps determine whether that image becomes iconic or not.

If a much larger percent of humanity had close exposure to such pain and suffering, war would no longer be acceptable. It is only acceptable so long as it happens in some distant place with designated ‘enemies’ of the state. 

Iconic wartime images are ones that further the aims of conflicting interests by becoming an emotional hot potato that is furiously passed between divergent groups: between the US Milliary or the US Government and, say, left-wing liberals who decry war. Or between the Vietcong and the US Government, etc.

But even iconic images, such as the ones you are studying, don’t always tell the whole truth.

As with any photograph, it can be cropped to project one version of reality over another. In the same vein, a color photograph will have less impact than a black and white image under special circumstances such as war.[A black and white images of war arouses more dread and angst in the viewer.] Inner city urban icons follow suit. A colorful comatose drug addict is not nearly so iconic as one depicted in some shadowy, grayscale realm.

The men whose work you are studying have by now become icons themselves. All of their photos are now iconic in the sense that they all are pieces of their larger visual portfolio of war. And we know that thematic collections have more lasting impact than more fragmented collections, i.e., collections that range widely in content and scope.]

Other photographers with less direct access to the front, or with less good timing, or who have more fragmented collections  – they may shoot similar scenes but their portfolio does not form an iconic whole. They don’t hone in on ground zero; they focus their lens more broadly, not just in war but generally. The result is they lack a cohesive body of work necessary to produce an ‘iconic’ image – even though they may have a wonderful portfolio otherwise.

Wars have produced the bulk of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers for this reason: their body of work has a looming wholeness to it.

There are other things to consider here, as well.

One wonders, for example, about governments capitalizing on an iconic image to further their political agendas. Eddie Adams in particular felt bastardized by this. He even discussed ’The Execution, 1968′ in public venues like YouTube - as if to say that it wasn’t what it seemed. He clearly worried that he might have furthered the execution merely by being present.

It is an interesting thought because he was the only photojournalist in attendance; others photographers were asked but decided not to respond to the invitation to attend that particular event.

Yet his image suddenly took on a life of its own, such that some claim it signaled the end of the war.

Political agendas inevitably underscore iconic images of this nature and, because of it, they can and do distort the circumstances surround the image. The image becomes an integral part of ‘group think’ which is a dysfunctional process at best, and which almost always characterizes high-anxiety situations.

I would also say this about exceptional wartime photographers: they very likely brought certain depressive sensibilities with them to the front. They understood angst better than others if angst somehow also characterized their own lives. If they had already suffered cumulative loss, they knew loss more intimately than those who had not suffered it; and they therefore responded to it differently. And their photographs therefore had more potency.

Thus, the uniqueness of the photographer’s trek through life to date lends credibility, or not, to his or her wartime work. These same kinds of things underscore all artists to one degree or another, including writers. 

So if I were doing a study such as yours, Nadine, I would broaden my focus to include the person who depressed the shutter button, not just their images themselves.

Nothing happens in a vacuum, we are all interconnected; and what fails for one, serves another.

Some wonderful photographs are just ‘snaps worth remembering” – i.e., they capture zenith moments in time that represent intersecting cultures, or a past culture that no longer is. They stick with us like so many U.S. photos from the mid-to-late 40′s stick with us. These post-war photographs celebrated WW II successes back home and were urgently needed by Americans tired of that long wartime experience.

We remember those images with bittersweetness, those of us who had parents in that era of American life, and the images are even more famous today than they were back then. But are they iconic? Not in the sense that Vietnam War era photographs were iconic, no; but then they aren’t used as political footballs, either.

Photography is a competitive business and newcomers trying to get into this field do what newcomers tend to do in any field, which is to charge less in order to ‘get their foot in the door.’ This is hardly news.

But I personally don’t think that is what is generally affecting revenues in photography.

With some glaring exceptions, many photographers take a unilateral approach to photography. They think of their photographs as ‘products’ to be sold. They fail to see the educational value of their images and therefore they miss many opportunities to make an impact with their photography.

If you are well-known personally in your community, photography acclaim will follow assuming that you are also an excellent photographer. But the moral is:

Sell yourself first.

Here is an example from my own field of psychology: hordes of newly graduated masters and Ph.D. psychologists every year rush to hang out their shingle for outpatient practice. They think that if they advertise that they are there, people will come.

Not true.

Nameless practitioners live pretty much in a nameless world. In a psychology practice they see nameless folks sent to them from nameless bureaucrats. Many of these nameless practices close within a year or two because of these factors. They haven’t done their homework, or made any effort to give something of themselves back to the community. They fail to sell themselves first.

Those who survive [in any field] do so because they make a mark. They stand out. They push the envelope. They become involved in their communities. They speak out on issues important to all of us, not just on issues pertinent to their particular field. In other words, they touch others’ lives.

They are not just nameless artisans selling nameles wares under the cloak of anonymity.

Photographers generally also good business skills and good writing skills. Software, no matter how good, is no substitute for these skills. Photography, in combination with other talents, raises the ante significantly. The more a person has to offer a prospective client the more valuable they are to the client in the long run.

Don’t be like some photographers who like to put ‘the cart before the horse’ by trying to sell photographs of subjects that they do not fully understand, with skills that are not yet sufficiently honed.

The fact is, a photographer’s most important tool is the library, not whether they have this or that lens in their Domke.

Artie Morris, for example, understands birds. He knows their habits and biology, and his images are remarkable as a result. Artie is not just a good photographer with a big lens to be emulated for that reason alone.

Look at all the web sites out there today that are done by photographers. Most of these sites are product-driven. They are cyber storefronts, which is not enough.

Moose Peterson, in my opinion, still stands out as one of the best models of how to use the web to sell photographs while also educating his cyber visitors. When you visit Moose’s site you come away with technical information as well as conservation information that he has freely given away. I admire him for this. Even if Moose only sells a fraction of images via his web site, he is still way ahead of the pack in terms of visibility and connectivity with others. Moose is selling himself!

Good things then follow.

There is an old axiom about not selling something before its time. If one hasn’t evolved into an impassioned artisan with high ideals and ethics and a real sense of place in the world, with real skills, then that person’s efforts to sell his or her work is premature.

An artist evolves slowly.

The quickness of a shutter-release button probably fools many into thinking that their artistry evolves equally as quickly, but it does’t. As we mature as individuals we also mature as artists and professionals. The aging process and living life fully informs us as well as our work. They go hand in hand.

If you are a pianest you will intuitively understand that having a technical grasp of the keyboard is just the beginning of the long road to fame. The artistry comes with knowing what’s in your soul and finding ways to adequately express those feelings via the keyboard. The keyboard, therefore, is merely a means to an end.

First the musician feels, and only then can their song be heard by others.

Someone to emulate

I once met a photographer in Provence – his name was Denis Brihat. I spent the afternoon with Denis and his wife, Solange, in their country home in Bonnieux. Such a wonderful experience that was! I went there expecting to meet a photographer and I encountered a Renaissance Man.

We talked of great artists, great books, we philosophized about urban versus country living, and we shared stories about ourselves with each other. Then I saw Denis’ work – all of which made great sense after getting to know him. His work, without knowing something of the man behind it, is unidimensional. But this multidimensional man brings a force to images that, as a result, literally jump out at you from the page.

At one point he was showing me an image of a dew drop on an iris that reflected the garden within itself and, as Denis’ hands added expression to his words about the interconnectedness of all things, of all of life, I suddenly recognized my own mentor, physicist David Bohm, between the lines.

We laughed, the connection at that moment was sudden and swift.

Denis sent me away with some samples of his work his work and I could hardly wait to get back to my office in the States to prepare some work of my own to share with him.

This man works in black and white and uses chemistry in the darkroom to add color to various aspects of his image. It is a tedious but privately thrilling process to watch his own work evolve, he says. Most of his work over forty years of his career has been of fruits and vegetables and flowers from his country garden in Bonnieux.

He only makes three large-scale gallery prints of a single image and, when they are sold, he goes back into the garden to make some more images. He has put his children through college and he lives a wonderful life in Provence because of the fruits of these labors.

That speaks volumes.

I know, I know, the pundits out there are quick to say that we live in a cut-throat world where we have to do things differently if we are, as photographers, to get ahead.

How many of these pundits, I wonder, have sold their work in galleries all over the world like Denis has?

There is clearly more to photography than photography and it has to do with how rich and complex we are as individuals. Everything else follows.

Photography fills a creative void for me. I have explored the creative arts over the years – classical piano, flute, rhythm tap dancing when I was young, watercolor and oil painting, note card making – these things have gone with me through life and all hold a special place for me. But still, they don’t quite touch that part of me that wants to ‘draw’ the real world as I see it around me.

I am a systems philosopher and an educator at heart, and these things fit wonderfully well with photography. I don’t just go out looking for pretty pictures – I search for patterns that repeat, for flowing movement, for undercurrents that subtly define a subject. I look for shadows and reflections, and contrasts, and interesting juxtapositions. Even in faces I look for the defining angle, the personality revealed, that glimmer of life looking back at me through my viewfinder.

Photography for me is just another way of being in the world. [Also, my piano is way too big for my Domke.]

Photography is also a marvelous mid-life accessory. Like a kid on a field trip, I slip a camera into my backpack and off I go, looking under rocks and crossing creeks to find another window into the world. Nothing much separates the ten year old in me from my sixty-some self at those times; except that as a ten year old I watched a butterfly with glee and captured tadpoles just to watch them grow in little glass jars on my back stoop, all with nothing so much as a few marbles in my hand. As a sixty-some self I also watch the butterfly with glee and I capture tadpoles just to be able to witness the miracle of life emerge, but I do these things with a camera in my hands now.

More than most things, photography keeps me reaching.

I have had the fortune to travel the world from Paris to Provence, from Switzerland and the UK to Singapore, from one corner of the Australian continent to the other, through most all of South Africa and Namibia, Suriname, Mexico, Canada – as well as the United States. Yet it always comes down to this simple fact: that the world at large is a magical place, and it is constantly underfoot. We don’t really have to go far afield to find magical things to photograph.

They are everywhere if only we take the time to look.

A frog in the Australian outback is no more interesting than the frog I used to stick in my pocket from the creek and carry home to grace my back stoop for a while, long enough to teach me that frogs are really amazing things. It is just as fun for me to sit in my garden all day photographing spring flowers under a diffusion tent as it is for me to hang half-way out of a helicopter photographing the marvels of Australia’s Bungle Bungles.

It’s just when I travel I also get to meet new friends.

I told people, for example, that I was headed to Provence “to do photography” but, really, if the truth be known, I went there to meet Jean Percet the painter and Mark Dumas the Provencal poet, and his interesting friends Denis and Solange Brihat; and my neighbor in the tiny village of St. Saturnin d’Apt whose dog greeted me every morning in search of a sausage treat.

I also went there to meet Ursula and Hans-Peter from Switzerland who were lying in that luxurious poppy field just waiting for a photograph to happen.

If I get any good photographs of that wonderful Luberon region of Provence then it will be because of the feelings that stirred in me as I interacted with the people who made that place come alive for me.

Remember that the next time you click the shutter button. If it were just about the graceful Irises that line my back fence I wouldn’t ever have to go anywhere again. I would be content to just sit here in my garden.

Flowers aren’t the thing, though, are they?

I am reminded of my eldest brother, Philip, who had more friends in life than most people have flowers in their garden. The only real difference between us is that my garden hugs the planet and I might have a few more interesting memories in my pockets.

Some years ago I traded a computer for Philip’s dusty 16mm f2.8 manual Nikkor lens. Little did I know what interesting things were ahead for me to ponder with that magical lens. Every time I reach for it now I feel just a little closer to my ever-watchful brother who died in his sleep as my plane was racing across the Atlantic.

Click….Click. Count them – life doesn’t give us enough of them.

“A lot has been tossed around about violations and abuses by some nature photographers. One of the glaring gaps exposed by the facts and debate is the lack of effective leadership and advocacy in the nature photography community.” [Anonymous comment]

The fact is, ‘field ethics’ are beyond most professional organizations to control. We can, with education, help modify the behavior of some of the people within our ranks. But it is highly idealistic to assume that we can effectively control the behavior of nature photographers everywhere.

You can bet that the worst offenders among us are the least involved in any professional organization.

We bring our personal ethics into the field with us. We do not create them on the spot. The ethics we each have were instilled in us as a result of our life circumstances and the models that surrounded us.

For example, those who come from adversarial environments had less time as a young peron to focus on building a system of solid personal ethics. They constantly had to ‘shoot from the hip’ just to survive a hostile environment.

I like to think that the majority of nature photographers share my views of the world but, frankly, they do not. Some so-called nature photographers are out to ‘get the shot’ no matter what the cost. I am not. Some so-called nature photographers also are willing to put wildlife at risk if it means getting the shot. I will not.

I have traveled widely, and I have a solid base in conservation and environmental politics. Most nature shooters do not.

But you can’t look to NANPA or any other photography organization to instill Earth-friendly ethics in shooters. This is something you have to do for yourself. You have to evaluate your own system of ethics and see where they fall – and where they fall may very well surprise you!

In other words, clean your own house first.

One’s ehavior in the field reflects how a person lives in the world. Some of us are better models than others and, frankly, some so-called nature photographers are poor to middlin’ models at best.

Steer clear of them.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © 2010 Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph. All rights reserved.

Once upon a time in a far off land there lived a man in a beautiful forest. He lived there with the animals and birds, and flowers, and trees, and rivers and the moon overhead. These were his friends, as no other humans lived there with him.

But he wasn’t lonely or afraid, this man. He wandered the forest during the day in search of fresh fruits and nuts to eat and in the early evenings he stopped to light a camp fire to warm his tea; and also for light to prepare a bed for himself amongst the trees. This man was a man of the earth, a man who knew how to talk to the animals and to whisper with the wind. Each flower he knew by heart and each passing fish in the stream he called out to by name. He loved his world and Nature looked out for him there.

During raging storms he would crawl under an over-hanging rock and watch with amazement at the sky and feel with great glee Nature’s wet fingers as they danced across his face. Around his campfire on such nights there were any number of eager eyes sharing the raging darkness with him. Such was life in this man’s forest. This forest was his life. And Life was good.

And then it happened

Quite unexpectedly, there rained down on him a horde of foreigners who were eager to tell the world about this pristine forest of his. They had struggled for days and weeks, fighting against impossible odds, to find their way to him.

They came from out of nowhere, bearing gifts and large trunks full of things, strange things; things he had never before seen. Dozens upon dozens of people were suddenly in his midst, climbing tall ladders and lashing wooden platforms high up in the trees so that they could see forever, like him. Little black boxes in their hands clicked away from dawn to dusk. Lights flashed when the moon would have been enough. They brought with them noise, too, like he had never heard before. And debris that suddenly filled the waterways and fluttered in front of him like a dying butterfly in its final hour. Instead of hooting owls the stillness of the night was broken by raucous laughter.

These were fellow human beings, all right, but they didn’t seem at all like him, thought the man.

Indeed, the men left as quickly as they came. They didn’t really harm him. But they left behind many reminders of their stay; ropes to nowhere dangled from the trees; discarded lofts swayed as the wind changed; and the once pristine forest floor where he lived was ravaged and denuded of its fruits now from the many trunks that these men carried with them. It saddened him. Where beautiful flowers once stood waving in the wind there were flattened grasses now and careless holes in the protective cover of the forest where birds once sang.

The thing that devastated him, though, was the fact that none of his old friends remained behind with him. They were all gone now. Fearful of this sudden intrusion into their once-quiet space they fled as if chased by a searing forest fire. The tall trees were stilled, and there were no eager eyes any more sharing his campfires at night. The days grew long without his friends, and the nights heavy.

Now when he walked he could only think of what might lie ahead of him. His eyes anxiously scanned the horizon when they used to only drink it in.

He fell quiet as he contemplated his forest and his lost friends. Where had they gone? What will become of them? And him? Before the intruders left he had overheard some of the men talking excitedly about ‘bringing the world to this man’s doorstep.” What did that mean?

He cupped his arms in his hands as he pulled his shirt tighter around him. The wind was picking up and suddenly it didn’t feel the same, or so friendly, this wind. Today it sent chills through him.

Tired and lonely, he picked up his walking stick one morning and headed towards the distant hills. The man was determined to find his friends again. Surely they were there, somewhere, he mused. If they were, he would find them.

Little did he know that that very night others would be tending the coals in his abandoned campsite. And there were more behind them; hordes, in fact, waiting impatiently in long lines to fly, drive, boat or hike into this once pristine forest of his.

The word had spread. From the United Kingdom and the great European cities to the golden coast of California, beautiful pictures and reports of untold natural treasures beckoned the adventurous.

CNN, of course, pitched camp at the entrance to this beautiful forest. And newspapers from around the world sent representatives to document the unfolding story of ‘a paradise lost and found’. Everyone the world over was intrigued by this special place on earth that heretofore had escaped their attention.

What they didn’t know was that the soul was already gone from this place; that it was nothing without the animals and birds, and flowers, and trees, and rivers and the moon overhead – and the man who befriended them. Without that circle of life it was just another place on earth, but no longer so special a one.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © 2010 Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph. All rights reserved.