In the last few days I have pumped my own gas, self rung my own store purchase, used an automated system to refill my prescription, and entered numbers to tell the New York Times that the paper was incomplete. I have listened to a phone call from a woman in India who told me that my Windows software was in danger, but she didn’t want to listen to me tell her I used IOS only. So that wasn’t an interaction either.

For some reason, it is now assumed that we value speed over interaction, solitude over engagement. This can make for a pretty lonely daily routine. I have tried to counter this trend by consciously deciding to go against it. I use a human teller when my bank is open. I go through the staffed checkout lane at the store when I can. But it has led me to wonder what we are gaining in this new self-help world and what we are losing.

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.” Robert Frost

It would be wonderful to go back to living in a country where young men didn’t  take machine guns into schools and kill first graders, or into movie theaters and kill attendees, or into shopping malls and kill shoppers. But all those young men were American citizens, not foreigners here on visas. Screening visitors to the United States wouldn’t have prevented any of those senseless murders. Neither would a wall.

It would be wonderful if young men didn’t kill each other every day across for perceived slights; if disgruntled husbands didn’t kill their wives for asking for divorces; if angry drivers didn’t fire shots at other cars. But all these are enacted by American citizens, not foreigners here on visas. Screening visitors to the United States won’t prevent any of these senseless murders. Neither will a wall.

If we abandon simplistic solutions to a very complex set of problems, we are left with the hard work of deep change. We would have to confront our country’s love of violence, our fascination with guns, our romance with revenge. It would require humility, a commodity in short supply this election season.

One of the best things about living on a busy road is the ability to set unwanted objects out on the curb for others to take. We live in a working class neighborhood, and things disappear pretty fast. In fact, we have sometimes timed how long it takes for something to be picked up. Furniture is snatched up almost as soon as it is set out. Some things take longer–broken fans, old lawnmowers. But sooner or later, everything is taken.

I especially enjoy the men(always men) who drive around in beat-up pick-up trucks collecting anything metal. Once an old piano was on the curb near us, and a man was meticulously removing the its metal sounding board. I lent him an additional wrench and gave him some water. And he determinedly disassembled it all afternoon. He told me he didn’t make much money taking his metal to the place he sells it, but “it gets me out of the house.”

Just because I can’t see the value in something doesn’t mean someone else can’t. I will try to remember that the next time my husband brings home a broken fan he finds on the curb.

Our neighbors have a six year old who has spent the past year learning the difference between fantasy and reality, exaggeration and lying; and joking and lying. This is actually challenging developmentally. Five year olds can still tell fantastic stories and adults will indulge them. After all, these kids are just on the edge of believing in the tooth fairy.

But we expect more as a child turns six or seven. You can see that reflected in various religions. In Catholicism, a child makes a first reconciliation(formerly confession)at around this age. So we spend a lot of time with children teaching them about truth and lies.

I have watched the various ways this child has tried to get away with a lie. Sometimes the child says,”I was just making that up.” Or “I really thought I said something else.” More often, however, the excuse when caught in a lie is “I was just kidding.” The neighbors won’t tolerate these ways to weasel out of the reality that the child has lied. They insist that the child tell the truth. In fact, sometimes they add, “we don’t joke about those things.”

It’s a lesson that some politicians seem to have missed. I am grateful for those journalists who still insist, “we don’t joke about those things.”

I had the joy this evening of attending a break dancing version of Romeo and Juliet by a group of incredibly talented high school students from the greater Hartford region. It plays for another two nights at Hartford Stage for the unbelievably low price of $10. The cast was outstanding; the performance clearly worth many times the admission.

The energy, talent and enthusiasm of this ethnically diverse troupe lifted my spirits up and away from the current political insanity.

Thanks Hartford Stage.

You are right. This picture has nothing to do with the Bossa Nova. I feel that way right now when all sorts of blame is being laid on all sorts of sources. THE MEDIA is causing one candidate to look good or the same candidate to look bad. THE ESTABLISHMENT has made the country go downhill or made the country thrive. BIG BUSINESS is the source of our country’s greatest wealth or the source of our greatest poverty.

When I was in high school we heard the song “Blame it On the Bossa Nova,” and it became a joke whenever we were trying to find an excuse for something. Rather than think through the myriad causes and effects that are present in many puzzling situations, we would just chant, “blame it on the bossa nova.” It certainly was easier than dealing with complexity.

Listen to contemporary rhetoric. See how often you can find a scapegoat mentioned when describing  a problem. Try to remember that it is never that simple. At least we knew that when we blamed it on the bossa nova.

All over eastern Connecticut, foundations of homes built thirty years ago are crumbling. It turns out that the particular mix of concrete used incorporated a kind of stone which produced this problem. While the issue was known to geologists, it was apparently not known to concrete makers. Everyone is currently trying to assess blame; no one is accepting it. Insurers are refusing to pay. The homeowners are facing a catastrophic loss of home value or an enormous bill to replace their foundation. They are turning to the state for assistance.

When we have a widespread problem facing many people, we expect the government to help us. We look for flood relief, hurricane relief, tornado relief and drought relief. How sad that while we have widespread economic hardship affecting millions because of the structural change in our economy some see them as undeserving of government help. These people cannot expect that same relief. But their foundations are crumbling too. And they seem to be looking for someone to blame.