So they hung Saddam Hussein. He was a horrible man, just like all too many other horrible men around the world- a tyrant who gained power and then used and abused it in ways that are probably unimaginable to most of us who’ve been lucky enough to not be exposed to torture and war.

I can’t really say I’m sorry he’s dead. I am generally against the death penalty, for many reasons (the simplest one being that it doesn’t work, at least not in terms of reducing the crimes it’s used for) but something that I struggle with is that despite my convictions, despite my relatively newly-found spiritual faith, I can still see times and instances where it’s tolerable- to me, anyway.

Can I be a good Buddhist and still think that keeping a man in a jail cell, then taking him out and deliberately killing him is acceptable in certain instances? What does that say about me? What does it say about any of us? We can rationalize it with whatever we desire- that it’s justice, that the guy would have eagerly done the same to us without hesitation. Even a Buddhist can explain it, in a manner, by pointing out that we believe in cause and effect, and one of the effects of being a mass murderer is that if your opponents catch you, they’re liable to try you for your crimes and then punish you by killing you.

But that doesn’t change the brutality of capital punishment. No matter how you paint it, it’s still taking a man who need no longer be a threat- who is caged up in a concrete and iron box- and deliberately killing him.

I also struggle with the notion, the belief that all humans- no matter how vile, how scummy, even a waste of space like Saddam- all humans are Buddhas, have a buddha nature, are eventually destined- no matter how many lifetimes it will take- to reach enlightenment. Can we really believe that about a Saddam? An Idi Amin? A Hitler? I have a really hard time believing that.

And yet now that he’s dead, a little part in me says “good, the asshole got what he deserved and earned.”

I suppose that’s why this is called a Buddhist practice. Apparently I need more practice- and maybe more study, to try and discover what Nichiren Daishonin and Shakyamuni Buddha said about this kind of thing. Tonight, I say a little prayer for Saddam’s life spirit, his soul- and a much bigger prayer for the life forces and souls of his many victims.

Back in the mists of time, when I was a young kid, prior to the Internet and cell phones and cable TV and when Michael Jackson was still fairly normal, we used to frequently hear people answer the phone by saying “Smith residence, Timmy speaking”.

Remember then? When you only had one phone per family, and whoever answered it did so in a proper manner? And when you called someone, you couldn’t assume that the person you were wanting to talk to would be the one to pick up the phone, because most phone numbers- even business phones- were shared among several people?

I was thinking about this the other day because I called the cellphone number of a friend of mine, and she didn’t answer- but someone else, her significant other, did answer it. It threw me for a loop because instead of getting the person I expected, I got someone else. (Somewhat complicating the matter is the fact that my friend is a lesbian and I got her partner, and so I got a female voice- which was what I was expecting.)

What I realized is that now that everyone not only has their own individual telephone number, but frequently has more than ONE individual telephone number (cell, work, home) we are used to calling and either getting THAT PERSON, or getting their voice mail.

Oh, sure, there’s still lots of families where they all share a single number, and the kids don’t all have their own individual cellphones, and sometimes even the parents don’t have cells- one of my best friends at work finally relented and “allowed” his wife to get a cellphone, but he absolutely refuses to get one for himself.

It was such a shock when my friend’s partner answered that I almost couldn’t remember how to leave a message with a normal, live human being.

I have to wonder if, in our rush for convenience (and believe me, I think all these options do make life more convenient overall) if we’ve lost a little something, though. We used to be able to chat a bit with the person as we left a message, which gave us a feeling of being a little bit more connected. Our lives were all more tied together somehow.

Anyway, I wonder how many other folks have had the same semi-jarring experience of… actually getting someone on the phone, but not the person we were aiming at. We tend to think of our phones as being much more personal now, I think, and I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing.

To everyone, I wish a happy holidy, no matter what your holiday of choice is.

Sometimes people at work asked me if I’m “doing Christmas” now that I’m a Buddhist. Sure. Why not? For one thing, I appreciate the sentiments that go into someone wishing me a Merry Christmas. Second, my personal opinion is that Jesus was a pretty damn smart, compassionate dude, and a bodhisattava to boot- someone motivated by the highest desire to serve others and relieve their suffering. Third, Buddhism has always been as much a philosophy as a religion, and as such is flexible enough to withstand and join into the cultural context of wherever the buddhist practitioner is… which leads me into the last point, which is that Jesus probably wasn’t born around this time of year anyway, and most of what we do around “Christmas” are actually traditions from other, non-Christian sources anyway (tree, Santa Claus as a big fat guy with the reindeer, Yule log, etc).

So absolutely, I do Christmas, and I wish a Merry Christmas to anyone who DOES celebrate it as a Christian holiday as well. Have a great holiday and I hope Santa brings you something particularly nice this year. Me, I’m working Christmas, so I’ll be keeping the skies safe for him.

So last Thursday night we had a big windstorm slam into the Puget Sound area. At one point power was out for almost two million people in Washington and Oregon.

As of this morning (that’s Thursday), power still hadn’t been restored for over 100,000 people. Six days and counting without electricity, and in most of those places also no phones, no cable TV, etc.

Naturally enough, people are starting to bitch.

One of the areas hardest-hit by the storm was the eastside community of Woodinville. A city councilman there was trying to organize a protest and I’ve heard sound bites from him on the radio, whining that “a little wind” shouldn’t knock out power to so many people.

From the Seattle P-I:

But in Woodinville, City Councilman Mike Roskind had had it.

He organized residents tired of being stuck in the dark every time a strong windstorm hits the region, and they rallied late Tuesday outside Woodinville’s City Hall to call for improvements to the region’s power grid.

“We want a strategy to reduce the impact of wind on power, whether it’s burying lines where they need to be buried or clearing trees where they need to be cleared,” Roskind said. “We shouldn’t have to go through this again, again and again.”

Puget Sound Energy, the private company that supplies power to vast areas in western Washington, isn’t taking these whiners lightly. They fired back pointing out that they can’t just go onto people’s property and cut back trees. The area where the councilman lives? Instead of roughly 10 to 12 percent of the people refusing the company permission to cut back trees that were threatening power lines, in that area over 35% of the people said “no”.

Mercer Island, a wealthy enclave in the middle of Lake Washington between Seattle and Bellevue, also still has some people without power. Pretty much the whole island was without power for at least a few days, creating “storm refugees”. Turns out that Mercer Island only lets the power company cut back trees on public right-of-ways in a four-foot circle around the lines, instead of ten feet like a lot of other governments do.

I suspect that they’ll be rethinking THAT little town regulation in the near future.

In any case, while I sympathize greatly with the people living without power (believe me, it sucks) the fact is that this was not “just a little wind”. What’s more, burying lines is tremendously expensive, and there’s a reason they don’t do it as a standard deal in most areas around here; nobody wants to pay the rates that would be required to cover the costs of burying all the lines. (One thing to say in favor of density, like where I live- it makes underground power lines cost-effective. I never lost power, phone, or cable TV.)

I know people are just blowing off steam and venting their frustration, but it’s irritating to see so many lettting their emotions so completely overrule logic and common sense.

Mr Roskind, you want Woodinville to lose power less? Tell your constituents to let PSE cut the damn trees back more. Pretty simple. Cause and effect. (Sometimes even us compassionate-for-others Buddhist types can be a bit… um… brusque. )