Madison Was Right -- Faction Broke It

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the Olympic Club on how our Democratic Republic form of governance is broken, just as James Madison feared.  My talk was triggered by Ann’s musing on why the British were being asked to vote on exit from the EU rather than Parliament deciding such a momentous and complex question.  That got us to talking about representative government – how it works and sometimes doesn’t work.

First, do I prefer representative government, a republic, to direct democracy?  Yes, if it’s a democratic republic. Not all republics are democratic; the Republic of North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, The Russian Federation have parliamentarians who are supposed to represent groups of citizens, but they are appointed by Chairmen Kim or Xi or by apparatchiks beholden to President Putin.  They are not elected democratically by those they are charged to represent.

Our US Democratic Republic is the best form of government ever created – when and if our representatives represent their constituents, all their constituents.  (That’s a tall order when the average constituency of a US Representative is over 700,000 citizens, but that’s a subject for another post.)  It’s the best form of government when their focus is on securing and improving the peace, prosperity, freedom and happiness of the entire commonwealth they represent.

The founding fathers believed in representative government in great part because they were wary of democracy.  That’s why they set voting qualifications (some quite misguided and subsequently dropped.) That’s why, while allowing direct election for the house of representatives,  they called for election of Senators by state legislators (which we’ve also changed.)  

Madison

But what worried them even more than direct democracy was the subversive effect of partisanship, what they called “faction.”  Madison warned us in Federalist #10 and #14 of the dangers of faction.  Looking at histories of popular governments, he concluded that their most common downfall was that“A zeal for different opinions. . . divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” Do you not picture Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid going at each other?  (He also commented that . “the most common and durable source of source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.” But that, too, is another story.)  

Is faction, i.e., parties and partisanship, always destructive?  Not necessarily, but it becomes so when representatives begin to represent only those of her or his constituents that voted for her or him, and to represent those who contributed to make their election possible – many of whom may not be constituents at all.  My God, haven’t we been living with just such subversion of representative government for the last eight or twelve years!?!  The Donald would undoubtedly denigrate Madison as “Little Jimmy” (he was 5'4") but James Madison had it right, and his concern was shared by the likes of Franklin, Mason of Virginia, Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington and many other “founding fathers” that the Trumps and Cruzes love to prattle about.

 

People wonder why we have an Electoral College.  It was born out of this same fear of faction, specifically to impede the formation of faction and protect independent judgment in electing a President.  Each state creates electors– a group of private citizens, neither representatives nor government officials -- who convene in their state but not convene with those of other states, who vote for President and Vice-President, and who then submit their votes in writing to the President of the United States Senate.  Today, of course, the Electoral College is a bit anachronistic in this age of instant communication that can facilitate formation of factions, but that it still exists is a reminder of the concern our founders had over the subversive effect of faction.

What are the signs of factional breakdown of representative government? 

• When a sizeable minority of constituents feel ignored, when they are angered and no longer trust their congress or legislature.
• When voting participation drops (‘my vote won’t make any difference’.)
• When representatives avoid accountability by kicking back tough decisions to the citizens, as has the UK Parliament re Brexit.  Here in Washington State, the legislature has kicked back to us citizens, through ballot referenda, 49 decisions since 2008 rather than do the job we pay them to do and make the hard decisions.  Forty-nine times they’ve ducked so they could say “don’t blame me; you guys voted for/against . . . “
• When their votes reflect the interests of campaign contributors (many of whom are out of their district or state) rather than that of their constituents.
• When ideas or pragmatic proposals that would benefit the whole constituency are rebuffed because they do not comport with party ideology.

Sound familiar?  Distressingly so.  When representative government breaks down, the field is plowed and fertilized for demagogues like Sanders and Trump.  (Yes, demagogues; I just offended beloved relatives of mine who are Sanders fans.  But he, too, fits the definition:  a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument; a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.)

Incidentally, an aside re the widely disparaged super delegates: aren’t these in fact representatives who are intended, as the Senate was intended by the founders, to be a vehicle for cooling down popular passions of direct democracy?  And are they not democratically elected representatives -- either members of the House of Representatives or Governors or elected party officers?  And are they not likely to save the Democrats from their demagogue? . . . And don’t the Republicans now wish they had some Super Delegates of their own!

When representative government is working, demagogues are trumped by confident voters.   When it is not working, they are embraced by folks each of whom have their own ills and complaints but are united in anger and in the conviction that they have not been listened to.  Demagogues cannot deliver what they promise and only breed further discontent that is even more dangerous to democratic republicanism.

What to do to restore our Democratic Republic, to assure representative government can work? 

• Test candidates on their intent to build, rather than tear down; to find workable solutions that can benefit the commonwealth.  (“I will repeal Obamacare.”  “I will rescind every Obama executive order.”)
• Reject the candidate who proudly proclaims “I will never compromise;” that disqualifies him or her from serving in a legislative body seeking to get something done, to progress and improve. 
• Suspect ideologues. 
• Suspect someone who promises much. 
• Suspect someone who promises “to listen to the people.” 
• Search for the modern John Stuart Mill who told those who asked him to run for parliament that, in effect, ‘I will use my best judgment to do what is right for us, but do not expect me to blindly follow your wishes.’ 
• Search for judgment and character that might make others of different views respect and want to work with this candidate.  

The only way to work out of this bind is to develop representatives who put constituency above party.  And, of course, to work to reduce or emasculate moneyed interests’ influence on your representative.  Easier said than done, I know, but done it must be. 

Hiking the Cheshiahud Trail

Note: This is written mainly for my out-of-town family, friends and acquaintances.  But you Seattleites might find it of interest nonetheless, for the Cheshiahud presents a microcosm of what makes Seattle tick.  I have lived here 31 years, longer than anywhere else; what Ann and I saw on this "hike" is what endears Seattle to me, warts and all.  I have adopted her as my hometown, and I like to think Seattle has adopted me.  

Cheshiahud and wife, 1904

The Cheshiahud Trail: sounds exotic, doesn't it -- rugged, Indian, backcountry?  Well, at least the Indian part, for Cheshiahud was a Duwamish elder, but he and his wife lived on a neck of Ahb-choo, "big lake" what the settlers re-named Lake Washington.  The neck made it a short portage to what we now call Lake Union.  Early Seattleites called him "Lake John" and Seattle proceeded to grow up around it, him, his people and Portage Bay.



The Cheshiahud Trail is right in the middle of town, a 6.2 mile loop around Lake Union.  Ann and I walked it (hike is a misnomer) Sunday last. We diverged here and there, so did about 6 1/2 miles in two hours and twenty minutes, including potty stop and photo ops.  (Some of these photos were taken a few days later since my camera battery died on the walk.)  The sights along the way capture so many of the elements of Seattle; I thought to share them with you for if you really look as you go, you see Seattle -- the ribs and sinews and muscle that make it work.

We started off in Freemont, upper left, and went clockwise.

Freemont is a quirky neighborhood fully living up to its name, with an annual nude cyclists parade, a cold war-era rocket mounted above a bar, a statue of patient commuters waiting for interurban rail -- which still hasn't come to the neighborhood -- a VW-eating troll under a bridge -- and, yes -- that's Lenin.    He was saved from melt down in Slovakia and beamed here by a communally spirited Freemonter.  No surprise: keep in mind that Seattle elected a member of the Socialist Alternative Party to city council after she proposed that Washington nationalize Boeing (statize?) to produce environmentally friendly aircraft and replace military products with electric light rail cars. And two years later, we re-elected Sawant by even bigger margins.  Do you wonder that Bernie only beat Hilary 76 to 24?  Sawant is not a complete flake, however; it was she who really pushed the $15 minimum wage issue.

Anyway, the Lake Union circuit is a mix of water sports, shipbuilding and repair, transportation, floating homes, house boats (there's a difference,) museums, history and new condos, apartments, offices, high tech and low.  All the character of Seattle is to be found around it. (Be patient with the formatting; photos with captions throw the placement gremlin for a loop.)

Home is a retired tug

On a lovely spring day, all is aglow

Freemont's crown jewel: industrial bones of City Light's
early century coal gasification plant.  Now Gasworks Park.

5 highways and roads span the waterway
 (the map shows 4 of them)
Note fishing trawlers in from Alaska

Folk singer Ivar Haglund, waterfront character
and entrepreneur, created a local chain of clam
 and seafood bars.  A buddy of mine, Chris T, was
 his marketing and development guru.   

Kayaks -- Seattle is mad about kayaks

These are house boats -- powered, safety equipment, etc.
and can be moved from moorage to moorage

I-5 from Canada to San Diego

To University Bridge and turning south.  Boats, boats, boats.

And these are floating homes, permanently moored
and built on wood or Styrofoam logs. Styrofoam!?
 Is nothing sacred in the home of Weyerhaeuser?
A mini-neighborhood of them with waterway avenues.

Above the lake, condos -- everybody wants a water view.  

Note the pea patches, hangovers from the hardscrabble 

'30s and the Victory Gardens of WWII 

Jan and Tom, sister-in-law and brother-in-la-la,
have a floating home on the dock beyond this gate.

Their dock is typical -- 11 homes cheek by jowl with boats moored
waterside.  Homes on the end of docks, with unobstructed views of
the lake, are most sought after.

On down the way, we're back into deep water, maritime industry
-- boat repair and shipwrights and hard hats

South end of the Lake, moving from old tech to new, pushing out into new frontiers.

Fred Hutch Cancer Center -- one of the top research and experimental
treatment centers in the nation.

After coal gasification, came electricity.  An early City Light
coal-fired generating plant became the home of ZymoGenetics,
a hot bio-tech start-up snapped up by Bristol Meyers

Old tech and new-old tech: that's ford's 1918 Model T
assembly plant in the background with newly laid electric trolley lines in the
foreground, a puny answer to traffic clogging our arteries.  Seattle pulled out its 
electric trolleys back in the 1920s.

Across the street from the lake is Amazonia.  Five years ago, this was a
neighborhood of low industrial warehouses and plants.  Now Gen-Xers lead armies of Millenials intent on making Amazon the world's largest retailer -- and on enjoying the world's most overpriced stock: PE? 480+ ! 

But those fortunes are not always blown on high-priced condos, Ferraris or fancy yachts , , ,

On the left: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the world's largest.)
On the right: The Paul Allen Brain Science Institute.  In the background, the
1962 Space Needle, symbol of Seattle's thrust into the late 20th and 21st centuries. 

Despite our worship of new tech, traditions and history are not forgotten.  The former Coast Guard Station, important when Lake Union played a critical support role in our war in the Pacific, has been converted into MOHAI, the Museum of History and Industry.  Adjacent to it is the Wooden Boat Center, for restoration of and and education on what wood, the Salish Sea, and boats have meant to Seattle.  

Rounding the south end and heading north

Ubiquitous cranes.  Seattle's construction boom -- apartments and condos for those techies coming into
town; office spaces; high rises; all pushing out the working stiffs and lower middle income households.
Connection to one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country?  You think?

A signature feature of Lake Union: scheduled passenger flights heading
to and from Victoria, Friday Harbor and points north.  When visiting
 the Westin Bayshore in Vancouver, I'd fly from the lake, 5 minutes from the office,
and they'd drop me off on the Bayshore's dock.  In these times
of drugs, illegals, TSA, those courtesies are gone forever.

Building and boating, boating and building . . . .  We walked on north to the Freemont Bridge.  It was open to let sailboats through (and I with no camera.)

The circuit complete: two and a half hours of seeing Seattle -- while Freemont still awaits their Interurban light rail . . . .

A microcosm of Seattle in six and a half miles -- the new, the old; at play, at work; the troubling, the promise.  It's all here.  Come. Take a hike and take a look.

The Birth (and Death?) of the Republican Party

For the life of me, I don't understand the embrace of Ted Cruz by the heretofore "leadership" of the Grand Old Party.  Are we watching a death-wish or just old elephants wandering off to die un-mourned?  Are Republicans 21st Century Whigs  . . . is history repeating itself?

Let's dial back to the Whigs and the election of 1848

Democrat James K. Polk had scored four successful years.  He had settled the border dispute with Britain over the Oregon Territory and welcomed Texas into the Union.  He capped his Presidency with the Treaty of Hidalgo ending an unpopular war with Mexico and ingesting into the United States what is now California, Arizona, and New Mexico.  Expansion West and gold fever fired the imagination.  Polk, like Peyton Manning, decided to go out on a high; he chose not to run for a second term.

The Whigs -- believers in a strong Congress and a weaker Executive, in bankers and manufacturers, in high tariffs and protectionism, and opposed to war and territorial expansion that would weaken the power of Northeastern interests -- those Whigs now found themselves on the wrong side of popular opinion.  Whig senators, forsaking their principles,  had endorsed the Treaty of Hidalgo 2:1.

Polk's retirement left a vacuum.  Democrats split over the issue of slavery in all these new territories.  Lewis Cass took the slavery-tolerant Democrats one way; former President Martin Van Buren took the anti-slavery Democrats, now calling themselves Free Soilers, another.  The Whigs took advantage, turned their back on traditional leaders and ideals, and opted for a popular war hero, General Zach Taylor.  (Read Taft/Eisenhower?)

Taylor won, so the Whigs found themselves in power but with campaign promises that conflicted with their core beliefs.  Further confounding the Whigs, Taylor died half-way through his term, just months before the mid-term elections of 1850.  VP Millard Fillmore, a 19thC Jerry Ford, assumed the Presidency and struggled to straddle the increasingly polarizing slavery issue.  The mid-terms of 1850 were a disaster for the Whigs.

1852

By 1852, the Fillmore administration was in total disarray -- industrialists v farmers and planters; pro slavers v free-Staters.  At their convention, Whigs tossed Fillmore aside and tried the war hero ploy once more, nominating General Winfield Scott, "Old Fuss and Feathers", a 6'5", bloviating military patriot incapable of addressing the issues and principles at stake.  For Whigs, the election was a disaster: Democrat Franklin Pierce won with the most lopsided electoral vote up to that time.

March 20, 1854, The Grand New Party

Disaffected Whigs, intolerant of the compromises re slavery and disheartened with their party mates, convened in Ripon, Wisconsin to found a new political party, incorporating northeastern industrial and mercantile principles along with free-holders' opposition to slavery.  They named it the Republican Party.

By the election of 1856, Whigs had disappeared.  Millard Fillmore re-surfaced as candidate of the new Know-Nothings, an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic nativist party silent on slavery.  The Democrats, in turn, tossed aside Pierce over his support of slavery in Kansas and a scheme of annexing Cuba as a new slave state.  They nominated James Buchanan in hopes of smoothing over the troubles.

 

Buchanan won with a popular vote plurality, becoming what some historians view as the most incompetent US President.  But the Republicans, just a two year-old rump party, had attracted attention with nominee John C. Fremont, heroic explorer of the West, thus neatly combining pride of expansion with strong anti-slavery creds.

 

1860

In the 1858 mid-terms, the Republican Party gained momentum.  The Lincoln - Douglas debates -- substantive debates -- addressed the real issues.  Two years later,  the six year-old Republican Party triumphed with the election of Abraham Lincoln -- only a plurality, true, but they had captured the White House -- a grand new party indeed.

Dial forward to 2017

Are our Republicans the Whigs of today?  Forsaking Republican principles and kow-towing to populist demagogues?  Embracing an anti-free trade, anti-immigrant, strong executive despite their core beliefs?  Turning their backs on a qualified Governor Kasich to pander with a Trump or Cruz?  Could this be harbinger of a new, radical, fascistic party, Yeat's "rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching toward" Ripon "to be born?"  Or, if the Grand Old Party suffers the resounding defeat most predict, could this bring about the birth of a reasonable, moderate conservatism dedicated to making government work for everyone, a Dan Evans Republican Party?

In either case, something new will emerge in 2017.  The GOP as we have known it these last 30 years are heading to join the Whigs in the wastebasket of history.

A Death in the Family

A Death in The Family

With apologies to James Agee, whose remarkable opening sentence: "We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child." is one of the great opening lines in American literature: thanks to Robert Blake, my Director of Advertising at General Mills, who taught me to revere Agee, and so often made me look smarter than I was . . . and am.  

Anyway, we are talking now about the death of the wolf spider who inhabited our laundry room -- or perhaps it is we who inhabited his.  He was a surreptitious member of the family; he and I both knew to keep his presence secret, for Ann does not share my regard for nor tolerance of wolf spiders. 

From time to time, one finds dead wolf spiders -- legs drawn up in stiff angles -- but never before have I found one in the process of dying.  He was sitting on the floor in morning daylight, acting quite dead for they usually hightail for darkness when caught out in light.  But when I probed him with my toe, he stirred, took a few steps and went back into his retracted leg position.  He did not appear to have been attacked, nor eaten by a female after copulation as so often happens to the males.  He was dying, that was clear -- whether from illness or old age or something he ate -- who could tell?

How can you not love that face?

Wolf spiders are prodigious eaters.  They hunt, at night, with astounding night vision -- six eyes, two large for max sensitivity, four smaller for discerning movement and depth perception.  They forage the house for mites, bugs large and small, and other less welcome spiders (if wolf spiders can be considered welcome other than by sorts such as I.)

When I returned from rowing after three hours, he was hunkered down where I had left him.  Ann had not noticed.  I leaned down and gently prodded him.  He took off with a typical burst of speed but lasted only eight inches or so before settling down into his death pose once again.  When I checked back about four hours later, he was still there, but dead.  I felt loss; a remarkable fellow creature gone.

I had known of his presence before this morning.  I know of a couple more in the house, where they hang out, and there are undoubtedly others unknown to me.  He was the first I have ever watched die, however.  A death in the family.

(photos from Wikipedia)

A Photo of Meanings

How many meanings can a photo hold? 

• There she is, a twenty-something American girl abroad -- Doc Martins; contra-conventional, near buzz cut; shades; skate board in hand; guitar and pack on her back; the very picture of openness to the world. 

• Under the signs of St. Peter of Rome and Santo san Pere -- the Catalan born Pedro Nolasco who founded the Order of Mercy to redeem captives held by the Moors -- Europe struggles for a unity which once Rome provided and a pluralism with succor for today's victims of Muslim chaos.
• A Catalan street, where independence from and loyalty to engage in a timeless struggle being played out in one nation or another on every continent.
• A drain; is Spain going down the drain? Or Cataluña?   Or Europe?  Or her generation?  Or our Western values of tolerance and progress?  No way; no way if she and her generation have anything to say.
• An arrow points to the future -- and she looks that way in confident expectation.

BTW, "she" is my granddaughter Liza.  

Here is another shot of a romantic-moody Liza by her Indian friend Radhika, also an exchange student in Barcelona, with a wonderfully evocative eye.

A Groundhog Day Foreign Policy

No, not Punxsutawney Phil; I mean Bill Murray's classic Groundhog Day  -- in which he's trapped in days and events that repeat themselves again and again.  Unlike Nick Payne's Constellations, which Ann and I saw last night at the Rep -- don't miss it --  which movingly explores a loving relationship through the quantum mechanics concept of co-existent, multiple universes and an infinity of possible outcomes, our foreign and defense policies appear to have only one, universal outcome -- more, more, again and again.  Like Bill Murray, we are condemned to re-live it.

Despite Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter's call (Feb 2nd) "Today's security environment is dramatically different than the one we've been engaged with for the last 25 years and it requires new ways of thinking and new ways of acting" here's what's up:

• The Pentagon is calling for more advisors and trainers in Iraq. Please, go re- read Frances Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake on how we got sucked ever deeper into Viet Nam after Dien Bien Phu.  
• No boots on the ground.  Oh, don't worry; those aren't boots, just a few special forces units doing black ops around Damascus and Raqqa.  What -- are they wearing tennies?
• Feb 3rd: Secretary Carter names Russia our number one threat. Uh, about those ISIS guys who want to behead me . . . .
• Last July, both Putin and Carter hinted at new nuclear arms development and Carter talked of "affordable" nuclear encounters. OMG!
• Yesterday, the Administration announced a 25% build up of NATO forces and equipment in Eastern Europe.  Dr. Evelyn Farkas,  Dep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine & Eurasia, said on NPR today "We're still in the game and we're putting more in."  Uh, that's the cold war game, right, like Kennedy/Khrushchev and  Reagan/Brezhnev?
• And where's that $3.4billion expense coming from?  Why, the Iraq/Afghanistan pot of money, of course. And where's it going to be spent?  In Romania and Poland. Huh?
• Doesn't that contravene the 1997 NATO - Russia Founding Act, prohibiting NATO bases in Russian's adjacent, neighboring countries?  No, these are just rotating deployments, not permanent bases, so they don't count. What the . . .!?!
• DOD Secretary Carter also asked Congress for more billions to counter China's initiatives in the South China Sea. Remember Quemoy and Matsu and the 7th Fleet?

  

". . . new ways of thinking and new ways of acting . .  ." ??? 

Nine smart friends of mine -- they get together once a month to discuss foreign affairs -- spent yesterday afternoon dissecting NATO.  I learned a lot.  First, how bureaucratic and far-flung its structure; how ambiguous its decision making process (no votes, no majority rule.)  Second, a new way of thinking about NATO's eastward expansion -- not to thwart (and alarm) Russia but as one WWII vet said "to spread the blanket of non-aggression over more of Europe." That view posits NATO as the EU's Defense Department, not withstanding that we pay for 3/4ths of it, and the prime vehicle through which Europe has enjoyed 70 years of peace.  To them, NATO is an asset.

The group's younger members (that's a relative term) see NATO as a potential entanglement, a liability in the sense that countries like Turkey and Estonia hold us hostage; they have a call on us.  And, it was pointed out, there is a co-dependency between our military - industrial complex and Russia's military - industrial complex; they each need the other to scare the bejeezus out of their citizenry so as to be granted ever larger budgets.

I conclude, in the end,  that NATO is all of the above -- asset, entanglement, liability, and self-perpetuating burden -- all at the same time.

The group strongly agreed that unilateral expansion of NATO is old thinking.  Such expansion must be accompanied by, if not replaced by, candid summit talks about intentions and goals, common interests, collisions of interests, and conflict avoidance.  Candid talk and active listening generates empathy and new options.  Out of such talk come deals. Such talk and listening must take place. 

Two of my smart friends, one a seasoned internationalist, the other a Russian now naturalized US citizen, proposed that Presidents Putin and Obama go on three week exchange tours of each other's country.  That might be a start.  Premier Khrushchev spent two weeks touring the US in September of 1959, changing both his and Eisenhower's views of each other.  And, in 1961, it was Eisenhower that called out the military - industrial complex.  (The original, more accurate phrase was military - industrial - congressional complex, but "congressional" was removed so as not to incite Congressional ire.) 

And now it's Obama's turn, who said of the Pentagon's proposed "McChrystal surge" into Afghanistan “So what’s my option? You’ve given me only one option.”  

One option: that's the tyranny of the military -- what C. Wright Mills in 1956 called “military metaphysics”, that "cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.”  When our only option is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; we must have other options.

 

Today, God knows, "new ways of thinking and new ways of acting" are long overdue.  Let's not trap ourselves in a Groundhog Days Foreign Policy any longer.

(I'm going to resist the temptation to speculate on the quanta of possible outcomes under the next administration. I leave that for you to imagine; it's too scary for me.  But I am going to send this to my Congressional Representative and Senators.  If you agree with any of it, please send it to yours, share it and ask your friends to do the same.)

Christmas and New Year's Letters -- Cheesy?

Our egos went Pop! when two of our (five) kids pronounced our new year's "annual report" Cheesy.  We thought the 100 or so letters sent to family, friends and acquaintances rather clever and informative.  Cheesy?

Well, they really meant -- isn't it cheesy to crow about what a great year we had, how lucky we are, what travels our good health accommodates?  It's cheesy enough to puff ourselves up, but to be cute to boot?  And on reflection -- they're right.  While we did wish others well, as such holiday greetings ought to do, even then it was self-congratulatory; we wished 2016 would be as good for them as 2015 had been for us.  OMG, Cheesy indeed!

Good for Amy and Cam.  Despite a few (very few) comments from friends and acquaintances that they welcomed the update, we feel properly chastised.  One New Year's resolution is not to be cheesy next year.

Some news might be welcome to those far away -- in time or distance.  But perhaps the best model is the card from Tiger and Babs -- a lovely poem about the holidays, a photo of them showing good health and happiness without bragging about it, and a heartfelt wish for us.  Simple and thoughtful -- with no preening or crowing. So here's to simple, short and other-centered.

2016 launches with a good lesson for me.  Cheers.