Shari Della Penna
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"Small acts of kindness can change and humanise our world."
   Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 1948-2020
   ​Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, 1991-2020
                         Author, Advocate, Advisor

Culture Clash or Immigrant Embrace

11/26/2019

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        “What’s a Pilgrim, shaynkeit?” Mama asked. “A Pilgrim is someone who came here from the other side to find freedom. That’s me, Molly. I’m a Pilgrim!”
                                                          from Molly’s Pilgrim
                                                            by Barbara Cohen
                                            illustrated by Michael J. Deraney
                                      Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1983

       My grandparents were Pilgrims, too. All four of them. They came to America for religious freedom and for opportunity. They were astonishingly brave. They each, in their own time, left their families, everything they knew, put behind everything they feared and sailed into a future full of strangers, strange languages, strange food, strange money. They learned English. They learned how to buy groceries, set up a bank account, build a business. They became citizens. They adopted America and America adopted them.
       I am grateful for their stalwart acts, their courageous ventures, their self-sufficiency. This Thanksgiving, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.
My grandparents exhibited:
  • Self-reliance
  • Determination
  • Ability to comply with rules that are fair
  • Capacity to stand strong and speak out against rules that are not fair
  • Generosity
  • Compassion for those less fortunate
       I like to think those character traits flow through my own veins, too. 
       My grandparents did not give up everything for their own selves, for a better life for themselves. They did it for their (future) children, and for me and for my kids and my own grandchildren and even their grandchildren. 
       Today my grandparents would not be called Pilgrims, even though they were. They’d be called immigrants, which they also were. 
       This Thanksgiving I define immigrants as people whose courage, self-determinism, and faith in a bright future, allow them to pull up the roots of everything familiar and re-plant themselves into the unknown.
    
        If that sounded familiar, thanks. (see 11/21/17) We’ve been together for a long time. But I’d like to continue for a bit.
        Although we are still a country mostly of immigrants, Uncle Sam has become much more selective of late. Immigrants, notably asylum-seekers, are stopped at our southern border especially. They are treated unkindly, even turned back. Children of immigrants who arrived years ago, but don’t have legal status are worried and confused.  
        I think my grandparents would still have been allowed entry into this land of opportunity. They would have sought asylum as a result of religious persecution. But that was very early in the last century, over 100 years ago.
        As a nation, we have serious problems regarding immigration. This is not new or something that hasn’t been addressed before. But focus has become laser-sharp and pretty unforgiving, especially since 2017. The government separated children from their families without being able to keep track of where each family member was sent. Many are still separated. According to NBC News (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-5-400-children-split-border-according-new-count-n1071791), the ACLU reported that, as of Oct. 16, 2019, volunteers are still unable to reach 362 families, for a variety of reasons. The total number of children separated from their families at our southern border is more than 5,400.       
        Last month, PRI (Public Radio International) reported that Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have signed agreements to allow the US to return asylum-seekers to countries they traveled through on their way here. Now the burden of stopping asylum-seekers from reaching the United States is on the very countries from which most of them are fleeing. Asylum-seekers cannot be sent back to their country of origin. That would violate international law. (https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-10-02/how-trump-s-bilateral-deals-central-america-undermine-us-asylum-system) Because of current policies, the number of people entering the United States through our southern border will continue to shrink. 
        Even though people want to come here from all over the world, immigration to the United States decreased by about 58% from 2017 to 2018.  Interestingly, so far in 2019, about three-quarters of immigrants are from Africa or East Asia..(https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/refugees-and-asylees-united-states)       
        Only when Uncle Sam and Miss Liberty stand strong and united and open their arms to embrace everyone from sea to shining sea: indigenous people, people brought here against their will, people looking for safety, people looking for opportunity, and those of us who are descended from them all, will freedom finally ring. 
                          Happy Thanksgiving!
                                             --stay curious! (and welcoming)      
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Supreme DREAMs (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act)

11/19/2019

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    …President Bill Clinton asked her to be a justice on the Supreme Court. Along with the eight other Supreme Court justices, her job would be to decide the most significant cases and answer the most difficult legal questions in the United States.
                  from: I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark
                                                      written by Debbie Levy
                                           illustrations by Elizabeth Baddeley
                      Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2016

    Every year, thousands of cases are filed with the Supreme Court, and this year the Court has agreed to hear 55. 
    If the people involved in a case disagree with a lower court’s decision, the case can go to appeal, again and again. That is, a higher and higher court listens to the case until the ultimate deciders in the land, the nine Supreme Court Justices, agree (or don’t agree) to hear the case. Sometimes the Justices agree with the lower court, sometimes they don’t. But their decisions are  always news. 
    Last Tuesday, (11/12/19) the nine Justices heard Trump v. NAACP, McAleenan v. Vidal, and Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, better known to all of us as the DACA (Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals program) case.
    Sometimes called DREAMers, almost 670,000 people were brought here illegally by their parents. Many are adults now and have been here for a long time. Some came as infants and don’t remember living anywhere else. Most work. Most go to college. Most are contributing members of their communities. Many didn’t even know of their status until they applied for a driver’s license or filled out college applications and discovered they did not have a Social Security Number. DACA gave them temporary status to remain here legally.
    A long history of compassion lead to DACA. In 1956, President Eisenhower allowed foreign-born orphans who were adopted, but fell outside quota limits of the day, to remain here legally. In 1958, he granted asylum to tens of thousands of refugees from the Hungarian revolution. Both programs ended when Congress passed laws enabling all these people to seek lawful permanent status.
    President Reagan established the Family Fairness Program in 1987. Children of parents who were in the process of gaining legal status were allowed entry. In 1990, President Bush extended the program to include spouses of those seeking legal status. Melania Trump’s parents gained permanent legal status in 2018, when she used this expanded program, referred to as “chain migration” by her husband, the president.
    The Violence Against Women Act gave victims refuge beginning in 1994, and provided a pathway to lawful permanent residency. The Act was renewed and expanded four times since it began, “to include victims of human trafficking and victims of crimes such as domestic violence.” uscis.gov (Case 3:17-cv-05211-WHA Document 234 Filed 01/09/18 Page 5 of 49)
    By the time DACA was introduced in 2012, deferred actions had become well-established in the executive branch and recognized as such by Congress and the Supreme Court.
     DACA offered temporary protection from deportation without a path to citizenship. Since August 15, 2012, people have applied for acceptance into the program. They had to meet several criteria: 
          brought to the United States before they were 16 years old
          present in the United States on June 15, 2012
          continuously residing in the United States for at least the prior
                     five years

          enrolled in school, graduated from high school, obtained a GED
          or been honorably discharged from the United States military
                     or Coast Guard

          do not pose a threat to national security or public safety
      After filling out several forms and providing lots of substantiating documents, prospective recipients’ cases were reviewed and either granted DACA status or not. If status was granted, several benefits kicked in.
          They were eligible to receive employment authorization by
                applying for social security numbers and become
                legitimate taxpayers and contributing members of our
                open economy. 

          The status provided a measure of safety from deportation
                for a period of two years, until a renewal was granted. 

          DACA recipients could apply for permission to travel
                overseas and return to the US.

    On September 5, 2017, Trump ordered the program phased out. After July 17, 2019, no new applications were considered. A complicated description of  how to renew an individual’s DACA status is provided on the Homeland Security Website. It is dependent on when the original grant expired and when or if a renewal request was filed. https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-response-january-2018-preliminary-injunction 
    Jeff Sessions, Attorney General in 2017, claimed the DACA recipients were lawbreakers who adversely impacted the wages and employment of native-born Americans. (NYT 9/6/17) In the same article, he claimed DACA recipients were the cause of the surge of unaccompanied minors coming into our country. Fact-checkers have proved both of these claims to be false.
    So where are we now? And where are the DREAMers? DACA has lots of public support and broad bi-partisan support. Attorneys for both sides presented (in an oversimplified recap, I admit) whether to call DACA in Trump’s words, “unlawful and unconstitutional” or in Justice Sotomayor’s words, “This is not about the law. It is about our choice to destroy lives.”
    In any case, a decision will probably come down this summer. 
                                              -—stay curious! (and optimistic)
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Thank You

11/12/2019

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    …I want to say to her: Plants are not people. Plants eat and grow and breathe, but they cannot laugh or sing or wonder. And now she cannot laugh or sing or wonder.
    I want to say to her: Come back.
    Because maybe she is doing all of those laughing, crying things on the inside, just like her beloved plants, and she only needs someone to push her out, out, out again so she can laugh and sing and wonder on the outside, with me.
                                 from: The Science of Breakable Things
                                                       written by Tae Keller
                                                        Random House, 2018
    
    Air travel was not part of what my family did until my uncle and his family moved to California in the late 1960s. My grandparents flew to visit several times. It was an event, airplane travel. I remember taking them to the Cleveland Airport. We all dressed up in school clothes and were on our best behavior. 
    My grandparents flew on propellor planes in those days and boarded on an exterior stairway, like the one in Casablanca. It wasn’t until years later that a jet took them to California in just three hours.
    Sometimes, Dad and Mom would take us for a drive on a sunny Sunday. Many times, we’d end up at the airport where we’d watch planes take off and land. 
    I didn’t fly anywhere until the late 1970s when I flew to Miami Beach. I understand why people love to fly. The beauty, the perspective, the reality of blue sky above even the grayest, cloudiest day. I also understand why people dread the experience.
    Orville and Wilber Wright are credited with inventing the first successful airplane in 1903. And like all technology, its destructive capabilities were soon exploited. A German plane from 1915 included an “interrupter gear.” It allowed a machine gun to fire through the propeller without hitting the rotating blades.
    As World War 1 progressed, air combat and ground combat merged into a new strategy called Bombardment. Battle lines were altered to allow aircraft to bomb supplies and communications. War theories and tactics continued to evolve and were thoroughly tested during the late 30s and into the 40s in the different theaters of the Second World War.
    My dad was a radio operator in the Air Corps which was part of the Army during that War. That’s all I ever knew about what he did. He spent some time in Austria. I only know that because he brought back some Austrian pipes for my grandfather. They are beautiful works of art. 
    From what I can gather, his place was in the rear of the plane, inside a large glass enclosed dome where he watched the maneuvers and logged all communications. He recorded downed planes, parachute jumps, and and probably tended wounded soldiers on their way to a medical facility. https://www.armyaircorpsmuseum.org/Radio_Operator.cfm
    Daddy never talked about the war.
    Shortly after the official end of the war, September 2, 1945, the day the Japanese delegation formally signed the instrument of surrender, soldiers and sailors became veterans. The expectation was they would re-enter civilian life, pick up their jobs, their marriages, families, and carry on. Most did. Many could not. They were damaged, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Shell-shock, it was called, and it came with a stigma, a big one.
    Our country’s history can be listed as a timeline of wars fought, from the Revolutionary War to whatever we are calling this longest war of all in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq … the War on Terror, maybe?
    Everyone who serves in any branch of the military is a hero in my book. I can’t wrap my head around the experience of being in a war and all that means. Life or death, for one thing. Long deployments, for another. Modern medicine has been invaluable in saving lives on and off the battlefield, but that means more people are returning with more serious trauma. Lost and damaged limbs are only the visible signs. 
    PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, is a recognized illness. Help is available, civilian and through the Veterans Association.
    But the stigma remains. And regardless, it’s hard to ask for help. 
    Some veterans are homeless. Some are hungry. Depression and suicide claim many others. The suicide rate among veterans is twice that of the general public, https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/suicide-rate-for-veterans-far-exceeds-that-of-civilian-population/ and continues to rise. 
    The majority of veterans do NOT suffer from PTSD, but it is common and becoming more common. 
    Life for all of us means adapting to change, helping others, and learning to accept all our own “turnings.”
    Adapted in the 1950s from a passage in Ecclesiastes, Pete Seeger added two lines at the end. The song was recorded many times, but hit the charts again whenThe Byrds released the most famous version on December 6, 1965, the day before the 21st anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day, when the United States entered World War II.
                  To everything (Turn, turn, turn)
                  There is a season (Turn, turn, turn)
                  And a time to every purpose under Heaven.
                                    .  .  .
                  A time to gain, a time to lose
                  A time to rend, a time to sew
                  A time for love, a time for hate
                  A time for peace, I swear it's not too late.

I hope and pray the last line is still true. 
    To contact the Veteran Crisis Line, callers can dial 1-800-273-8255 and select option 1 for a VA staffer. Veterans, troops or their families members can also text 838255 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net for assistance.
                                             --stay curious! (and grateful)

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Who’s the Real Winner, Anyway?

11/5/2019

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    Then Sue said, “We passed out flyers, but we haven’t seen any of yours. You’ll be lucky if you get one customer!
    “Arghhhh!!!! Oh no! We should’ve made our flyers days ago!!”
    I called an emergency meeting at lunchtime. We looked at our to-do list.
    “There’s still so much to do!”
    “How did we forget about the flyers? Now no one knows about our shop!”
                                from: Owl Diaries: The Wildwood Bakery
                                 written and illustrated by Rebecca Elliot
                                                 Branches/Scholastic, 2017

    By now, even I know The Washington D. C. Nationals won the World Series last week, winning 4 games in a 7 game series. All the games they won were in the “away” field. The Houston Astros also won their 3 games in their “away” field. It was the first time in the history of the World Series that neither team won a home game. Someone will probably attach some importance to that piece of trivia, or maybe someone already has.
    The way I see it both cities won, too. Lots of fans came to the game, many from out of town. They stayed in hotels and ate in restaurants and brought home souvenirs. 
    A long World Series is good for local and not-so-local economies. 
    I checked https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/ just because I wondered. Six World Series championships in the last 10 years (2010-2019) were decided in 6 or 7 games. Since I don’t want to be accused of “cherry-picking” my statistics, only 1 championship was decided in a sweep of 4 games. Three championships were decided by 4 wins to 1 in a 5-game series.
    Many fans stayed home, and watched the games on TV. Some fast-forward through the commercials. I’m not one who does that, though (even if I were a fan). First of all, I don’t have that kind of TV. Second, I use my commercial time for important breaks of my own: snacks, bathroom breaks, texting to my kids. But that creates a problem for advertisers.
    They need to show their products and services to the public. Otherwise how would we know which laundry detergent cleans best and which medicine helps which ailment, what car to buy (or lease)? And which beer to drink?
    But seriously, there is a legitimate need for advertising in our culture. Companies need to make and sell stuff, and we need to buy it. Truth in advertising, like truth in journalism, and truth in general needs to be evaluated by the person receiving that “truth.”
    That said, advertisers were also winners. Did you see the “Beer Guy” during game 5? He held onto a tall, $15 can of Bud Light in each hand as a baseball hurtled toward him. He did not drop his beer, not either one. His name is Jeff Adams (would have been funnier if his first name was Sam!) and was in a televised ad 48 hours later, during game 6. Marketers for Bud Light say the moment is worth about $8 million to their company. 
    The ball hit Jeff in the gut, but he claims he didn’t feel a thing. So he was also a winner.
    The network showing the games was a winner. The advertisers paid to ply their wares during all 7 games. 
    The price advertisers paid for a 30-second ad during the game was $500,000. Not even close to Super Bowl prices, but Fox did something interesting in addition to running traditional commercials. 
    They added content in a break-away moment. In the middle of the third inning in game 1, Kevin Burkhardt announced, “this commercial-free break is brought to you by T-Mobile.” The whole two minutes he and his colleagues commented on the game, a T-Mobile logo sat prominently on their desk. At the end of the “content piece,” Kevin read a prepared 30-second statement describing the current T-Mobile ad campaign. This would presumably work with any commentator commenting on any content, subtly (or obviously) advertising any company.
    This type of advertising is called a native ad, and it’s something broadcasters want to do more of. It might be the opposite of subliminal advertising, but the effect is the same. Native ads don’t seem so bad. They keep our eyeballs attached to the message, as it is said in the advertising world. And we get to learn something, too.
    The players are also winners. For their regular season, a rookie earns about $555,000. The highest paid players get salaries in the tens of millions. And that’s not counting the bonus each player receives for post-season games. It depends on the position he plays, but that bonus can be worth many tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
    The team coming in runner-up in the Series gets a bonus to split, too. It’s only a little smaller.
    No wonder baseball is our national past time. Everybody wins.
                                                 -—stay curious! (and playful)    
                       Today's Election Day. Please vote!    
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         I'm a children's writer and poet intent on observing the world and nurturing those I find in my small space .

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