Jess Banks schools you.

Snuggled up with my boys on the capitol steps for the Read-In For Civility, in support of Neil Gaiman and libraries, May 2011

Reverb Broads 2011, December 14: Is volunteering something you do regularly? If yes, where do you volunteer? If not, why not? (courtesy of Kassie at http://bravelyobey.blogspot.com)

I am a total philanthropy geek — so much so that, last fall when I helped admin an event called Speak Out With Your Geek Out, I wrote about loving philanthropy like some people love video games and stuff. I love helping, and I love geeking out about new ideas and systems for getting that help to the people and places that need it most.

And volunteering is something I was brought up to do. As I’ve mentioned before, my grandma taught Red Cross first aid and swimming classes, and led Girl Scout troops for ages. My mom ran a dozen things at our church, not least of which the Sunday School program for a while, and did a stint as PTO president, too. And they were both the kind of people who wrote little cards to sick friends, or drove old people to doctors’ appointments — in fact, by the time she stopped doing that, my grandma was regularly driving people a decade or two younger than her, who would tell her how horrible it was to get old!

So it should come as no surprise that I volunteer in lots of places, all the time. This year, my sons’ school is the main focus of my volunteerism, so much so that it’s actually made me cut back on my level of involvement other places. I had to give up my shifts at the library when I picked up more work hours, and when I got elected president of the PTO, something had to give, so I dropped out of church choir for the time being.

As I’ve said before, we are incredibly blessed with an awesome neighborhood school, and I absolutely love volunteering there. This is going to sound horrible, but I like my own kids better when I’m spending time with other kids. I read aloud in their classes, I chaperone field trips, I advise the Student Council, and I do a whole host of things for the PTO. The kids all know me by name, and they wave and grin and stop me to tell me new (horrible) jokes and Important Things about their lives. I get paid in spontaneous hugs and flattering adoration. It’s a pretty awesome deal.

At the March for Women's Rights in Washington D.C., April 25, 2004. My sign says "Pro-Choice, Pro-Child"

I’m also very active politically. There are few things I like more than puttin’ on my protest boots and pounding the pavement for a cause I believe in. I dragged my family down to the capitol steps on a bright spring afternoon for a Read-In for Civility, after a stupid state legislator insulted awesome author Neil Gaiman for taking public money for a library program. I helped a friend with his city council campaign. I marched with supportive signs in front of Planned Parenthood on Good Friday. I attended activist training with Minnesotans United for All Families to help fight the proposed “marriage amendment” next year. When I believe in something, I think it’s worth acting on.

All of this is to compensate for the fact that we have almost no money at all to spare for charitable causes. I struggle constantly with wanting to support every worthy cause I encounter, especially this time of year, when the appeals are coming in hard and fast. I’ve reconciled the fact that time and talent are just as valuable to many organizations as treasure, but my heart still hasn’t relinquished all of the guilt that comes from having to turn down so many appeals. It’s hard to esteem your gifts when you don’t always esteem yourself.

Kid hugs go a long way, though.

Confession time: I’m a total news junkie, and politics are the top of the list. World politics, national politics, issue politics — doesn’t matter. Find that vein, stick it, and give me a mainline 24/7.

I went to college intending to get double degrees in French and journalism, and spend the rest of my life dashing from one global hotspot to the next, sending home breaking stories of crucial importance. But I had a come-to-Jesus-type moment about the depth of my twin history and teaching vocations in the manuscript library, and with that came the conviction that I couldn’t concentrate on telling the stories unfolding now as long as I knew that so many stories from our past lay still untold.

That doesn’t mean I still don’t long for those credentials. And, until Rachel Maddow came along, I thought I was the only one who did a little butt dance in her chair when the network election music played. I love the whole messy, unpredictable, thrilling, hair-tearing, nail-biting, eye-rolling, stranger-hugging, flag-waving, bumper-sticking, petition-signing process.

But this presidential race is already testing my limits. I make no bones about being a total, dedicated, activist, bleeding heart, crackpot, commie pinko liberal. At the same time, I believe in the spectrum, and I believe wholeheartedly and — however paradoxically — almost militantly in the decorum and civility of public service. The minute you care about scoring points, or filling your war chest, or denying the “other side” some victory more than helping all of your constituents? Out of the pool, bucko.

And yes, Washington is dysfunctional. And yes, Obama the president and Obama the candidate are further apart than anyone would’ve hoped. And yes, the array of characters on stage at the GOP debates look like a cross between an Edward Gorey illustration and one of Jim Henson’s darker menageries. But the most ghoulish, terrifying thing so far in this campaign has been the audiences at these debates.

America’s had a problem for a little while now with its growing resemblance to the Roman Empire. Let’s leave alone for a moment the 500K+ troops in more than 20 countries around the world, and practices like stop-loss and use of mercenary contractors, at the same time as we lack enough National Guard troops and equipment to dig out from natural disasters at home. And this isn’t the time to get into the culture of consumption that clogs our ports with empty shipping containers, our bodies with empty calories, our economy with empty promises.

(By the way, that thing I just did there, where I brought things up by saying I’d be skipping over them? That’s an awesome Roman rhetorical device, called praeteritio. Cicero used it all the time. It’s my favorite. Now you can use it too!)

I thought our appetite for reality TV was the way our Colosseum-audience attitudes would manifest, but then came that rousing round of applause for Rick Perry’s execution record at the GOP debate in California. Perry’s answer that he’d never lost a night of sleep over the possibility that he’d ever put an innocent man to death– an extremely high probability, in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, which hopefully enters the discussion soon — came as an only slightly-more-soulless afterthought.

The next debate crowd may as well have been wearing tunics and stolae, because when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul what should happen to a 30-something uninsured man who is stricken with sudden catastrophic illness, several audience members actually called out, “Let him die!” Other attendees applauded that sentiment vigorously, since no one had briefed them on the use of the proper thumb gesture to indicate their favor (it’s actually a thumbs-up to vote for death*).

I’m hoping the booing of an active-duty soldier, who hid an essential part of his identity for the “privilege” of shipping out to serve in Iraq, will be where everyone draws the line. Defense is a pretty sacred cow for Republicans, and while the crowd’s actions were repellent, the candidates’ cowardly silence was truly shocking.

In the meantime, the media needs to act the grown-up for once, and reinstate the strict audience rules which governed political debates for so long. Sure, those long silent exchanges feel stilted and awkward, but it’s got to be better than debasing ourselves another notch. And while I think the clappers and yellers and booers in those crowds were aware of what they were doing, it’s worth remembering that even the Romans knew that crowds lost their consciences a lot faster than individuals.

Augustine of Hippo wrote of a former student who was addicted to the arena spectacles. The effect on the crowd in that ancient stadium seems to describe what took hold of those audiences in California and Florida:

“… [T]he entire place seethed with the most monstrous delight in the cruelty… He was not now the person who      had come in, but just one of the crowd which he had joined, and a true member of the group which had brought      him. What should I add? He looked, he yelled, he was on fire, he took the madness home with him so that it            urged him to return not only with those by whom he had originally been drawn there, but even more than them,      taking others with him.” (Confessions VI. viii (13))

The great thing about history is that we know how it ended. Our discomfort with the Roman comparison surely stems in part from the last hour of that particular film. There are certainly lots of ways we aren’t like the Romans, for the better, and lots of ways we can avoid that particular exit ramp. But maybe a good place to start is to leave the bloodthirsty crowd behavior in the arena.

*No, really! Read more: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/gladiators.html