Discreetly minding my own business, I was walking home from Harvard Square last week when I was accosted by a middle-aged man with whom I am slightly acquainted. He looked to be on a mission, one that turned out to be directed against me. With some passion, he stopped me on the sidewalk and embarked on a tirade against what he considers the sins of liberals.

His first attack was against my friend James Carroll, the author of the newly published “Constantine’s Sword: the Church and the Jews,” a book already making a strong impact on the reading public. My interceptor had not read the book itself, only an interview with its author, but that had supplied enough material for his attack.

He charged that James Carroll is anti-Catholic, guilty over and over of writing what offends the church and its members. Carroll’s weekly columns in the Globe show the same bias, according to his critic. They make clear that the writer finds whatever he can to embarrass the church and to hold it up to ridicule.

In response, I found it difficult to know where to start. I protested to the critic that I was a long-time friend of the author and hold him in much esteem. As a Catholic himself, James Carroll is committed to the faith and does not embrace negativity for its own sake, I pointed out.  That I had read a fair amount of the book under discussion gave me confidence over against my antagonist who could not make the same claim.

The latter then went on to attack the Boston Globe, a newspaper he also labeled as anti-Catholic. In particular, he lambasted the Globe for its cartoonists who, he charged, draw cartoons offensive to Catholics. Here, too, I do not share my disputant’s view and thus found myself defending a newspaper that I do not regard as having attained journalistic perfection.

Besides showing that a walk in the vicinity of Harvard Square can easily turn into an intellectual adventure, what else does this encounter prove? Perhaps, little or nothing. However, I take pleasure and some profit from the events of each day and am addicted to sifting them for meaning. I believe that they help define me as a person and that reflection on these encounters can lead to growth in self- understanding and a better grasp of the world.

In this instance, I discovered myself to have something of a local reputation, both true and false. Yes, I am a self-avowed political liberal who has survived the ups and downs of this approach through many years. As a former candidate for public office, though an unsuccessful one, not to mention my current status as a columnist pledged to stir readers, I know what it is like to take positions before my fellow citizens.

But no one with reason has ever accused me of being normal. I like to think of myself as not entirely defined by any political label. I feel free to take positions that may not accord with conventional expectations of what the label means. Sometimes those positions may even prove offensive to some members of the public. Is not this unconventionality and frankness one of privileges that those of us of a certain age claim for ourselves?

Some of us have lived too long to serve as prisoners of the politically correct. We have seized the freedom to hold opinions that may surprise people and views that do not fit the categories. No matter the conventional pieties about age: we can cherish radical opinions about the world whenever we want.

But my antagonist apparently considers me Mr. Liberal, a person ready to defend anything and everything that supposedly belongs to my chosen political creed. In fact, I am always prepared to defend dear friends from the attacks of others, no matter their views, as I did in this instance for my friend Jim. In this instance it helps that I find his book full of insight and admirably provocative.

That said, I do not wish to be counted on for a reflex response in defense of the Boston Globe or any other institution or agency. Surely by a certain age everyone should have learned that all institutions are flawed, many badly so. Nor will I take a pledge to shield every political doctrine associated with liberals.

The next time I meet my critic or someone else who considers me merely a spokesman for a predictable point of view, I shall again stand my ground but this time perhaps I shall plead the privileges of my age. Having reached decade number eight ought to be worth something, after all.

Richard Griffin

By the time we reach a certain age, many of us have developed at least a few rules of thumb by which to live. These rules offer an assurance and stability that help us navigate through heaving seas. Some of the rules may have been handed down to us by our parents; others are our own invention

To cite one that I have invented, let me regale you with my first law of economics: “Expect the level of your expenditures to rise inexorably until it meets the level of your income, or probably surpasses it.” This rule makes living with debt seem normal.

Writing books with such rules is a tradition that goes far back in English literature. The most famous American example dates to 1733 when Benjamin Franklin published his “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” That small volume comes filled with maxims designed to help readers live well.

Franklin’s sayings are pithy and pointed so that they have been often quoted. Among them is the famous dictum: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” The most recent edition of Bartlett’s Quotations has dozens more of them.

Now another rules maker has come along, namely Roger Rosenblatt, the writer and television commentator. His “Rules for Aging” is witty, acerbic, and ambiguously tongue-in-cheek. The book’s subtitle warns you what to expect: “Resist normal impulses, live longer, attain perfection.” Slight though it is, this slim volume will stir many readers to amusement and, occasionally, serious thought.

Rosenblatt provides 58 rules in all. Some of them are immediately clear and need no explanation. For example, “After the age of 30, it is unseemly to blame one’s parents for one’s life.”  The need for this rule is certainly confirmed by experience, even with people long past 30. Think of the current literary vogue whereby authors of allegedly mature years badmouth their parents for their own problems.

And in this same category: “Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot doesn’t make him wrong.” In commenting on it, Rosenblatt instructs us: “Treat all criticism as if it has been produced by the monkey with the typewriter; that is, see it as a lucky shot that happened to hit the mark.”

The wisdom in this next one is easy to appreciate: “Never attempt to improve anyone, especially when you know it will help.” I blush to admit how recently I have violated this absolutely essential rule. Keeping it would have saved me much grief.

A favorite duo of mine are the what the author calls “male and female compatibility rules.” They go like this: “a) She’s right. b) He’s really thinking about nothing. Really.” No commentary from me putting a price on these two nuggets of wisdom is needed.

Other good rules follow but I will not show myself so shameless as to keep quoting from the book. Go read it yourself. If you like sophisticated playing with the vagaries of human experience, you will enjoy it. The investment of an hour or so to read it will amply repay your time. Even if you take offense at some of poor Roger’s sayings, you might still be tickled into a sharp riposte or two of your own.

Roger, of course, is sometimes clearly wrong. For example, he warns “Attend no opera that begins with the word ‘Der.’” And right after, “Attend no other opera.”

As an opera fan from teenage years who loves, among many others, Der Rosenkavalier, I take umbrage at these instructions. (At the moment of writing, I am listening to the Verdi orgy on WHRB, the Harvard student radio station, an action that would surely draw heavy fire from Rosenblatt.)

The author also does not give enough space to one of my prime rules of thumb, namely, do not expect things to turn out well. For many decades this approach of low expectations has served me remarkably well. Perhaps it derives from the character of the first paid job I ever had. It involved putting ten small red feathers into an envelope all day for a summer.

Or from my second, gathering sheets of papers from the editors’ desk at the old Boston Globe, putting them in a steel container, shoving the canister into a pneumatic tube and shooting it up to the composing room.

How could I reasonably expect ever to have much of a job after this kind of start in the world of work?

Roger Rosenblatt, however, seems ironic enough in his approach to the world that he would sympathize with my philosophy of low expectations. He suggests as much when he states that five minutes of happiness is about all one should look for. He thinks people deluded in expecting long periods of being happy.

Try that approach for improving your life.

Richard Griffin

Forty years ago, I felt excited about the inauguration of a new president. The ceremony in which Jack Kennedy took the oath of office amid much hoopla stirred in me pride and a new hope for the future. The idealism to which he gave expression in his eloquent speech to the nation promised that we Americans were entering upon a new era that would bring out the best in us all.

I will always remember, as those of us of a certain age do, that wintry day in Washington when the young man from Massachusetts called on us to ask what we could do for our country, rather than posing the question the other way around.

This past week my feelings were very different. The passage of decades has changed my outlook on many things: in particular I am no longer easily impressed by public officials. Maturity has given me a more realistic sense of how complicated national and international issues are and how intractable. Though leadership often makes a crucial difference, few people have the qualities of mind and heart needed to bring about a better world.

The ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency in particular disturbs me and makes me fear for the well-being of our nation. These feelings are grounded, not so much in the personality of the man, but rather in some of his basic values. It is upsetting to see take over the top position for at least four years someone who espouses public policy positions that I consider harmful to this country and the world.

To mention only five of the positions espoused by Bush II, I cringe at the prospect of large increases in military expenditures (especially for the missile shield), the despoiling of forests and other environmental treasures for the sake of industrial profit, reluctance to support gun control, refusal to back even mild measures for campaign finance control, and continued enthusiasm for imprisonment and capital punishment as answers to problems of crime.

These five positions and others championed by the new administration make me wince at what is happening to our country. I feel uneasy because of the values that underlie these policies. Excessive reliance upon military power and legalized violence rather than the slow, painstaking education of our people in the ways of peace seems to me self-defeating in the long run. Capital punishment, rampant gun use, and the dominance of money over everything else will, I fear, lead to a worse rather than a better society.  

In addition to these substantive issues I must confess not liking George W. Bush’s style.  Here is a man who went to Andover, Yale, and Harvard and yet he gives precious little evidence of caring about intellectual life. The joke about him having read a book when he was an undergraduate is a joke: the reason why we laugh in response is our recognition that W. does not in fact seem to care much about learning.

Nor does he evidence much personal interest in countries other than his own. Mexico counts as an exception but, in general, the former country of Texas seems to satisfy his cultural life. This I say, not out of prejudice against that state, but because I consider interest in the history and culture of other parts of the world to be a valuable quality in an American  president.

Some readers will undoubtedly find this column to be a mere exercise in political prejudice. They will see my words as those of a liberal Democrat disgruntled that one of his did not get to the White House.  

Instead, I intend this column as a further sharing of my own personal experience of growing older. As we age, often we find ourselves out of sympathy with what is happening in our society. Many people I talk to express disappointment, even disillusion with the organizations for which they have worked. They see things changing in ways that distress them because they are convinced that the changes do not serve the best interests of the organizations themselves or the people who work for them.

That’s the way I am feeling this week about the changes in national leadership. And I contrast these feelings with what I experienced forty years ago and at other times in our national life. Of course, I realize that the Kennedy administration did not fulfill the idealism that it professed. Nor did his successors who spoke grandiose words but did not follow through on their promises.

So while watching the inauguration last week I felt some pain. Perhaps W. and his allies will surprise us but whatever little wisdom that I have gained over the years gives me precious little confidence that any leader with the values that he has promulgated can give his fellow citizens what we really need.

Richard Griffin

Every once in a while one meets a person who represents history. To look into that person’s face is to be reminded of events that have made a notable difference in the world and continue to resound.

Such was my encounter with Freya von Moltke. Hers is not a household name, at least in most American families, but it reverberated in me when she introduced herself at a party following a concert last month at the New England Conservatory of Music. She had come, as did I, to listen to her sister-in-law, Veronica Jochum of Cambridge, play beautifully the piano music of Gunther Schuller, Brahms, Schubert, and Bach.

Freya von Moltke, now aged 88, is the widow of Helmuth James von Moltke who died in 1945, a hero of conscience at the hands of Hitler’s executioners. He bore a name celebrated in German history  for the military exploits during the Franco-Prussian War and World War I of his ancestors, the two famous Moltke generals.

In 1990 a book appeared called “Letters to Freya 1939-1945” that made available to readers of English the words that her husband sent to her in the years before his imprisonment and those that led up to his death. These letters provide a moving testimony to the man’s spiritual stature (and hers) as he faced the penalty for following conscience in the face of Hitler’s murderous regime.

This saga deserves to be better known because Helmuth was one of the relative few among believing Christians who worked to save Jews and to resist the Nazi atrocities against his country. Recognition of these actions and of her work since that time led Dartmouth College last spring to give an honorary degree to his widow Freya von Moltke.

A distinguished woman in her own right, Freya has preserved her husband’s memory, distributed the books and papers of one of his professors, and founded a publishing company. As she approaches ninety, she serves as a vital link with the German Resistance,  the story of which gives hope in the midst of the darkness of the Nazi era.

Helmuth was a leader of what is known as the Kreisau Circle, a group of Germans who felt anxiously concerned about what was happening to their country. In 1940, he gathered some people who shared his concerns in order to plan what principles should guide Germany after the war had ended.

Meeting in Kreisau (now named Krzyzowa and located in Poland), the  Moltke family estate, these men dealt with issues such as political structure, education, universities, and church/state relations. They had some variety of opinion with regard to a proposed attack on Hitler himself. Moltke usually favored nonviolence but, Freya has told me in a subsequent interview, “He was against silly wars but he was not a pacifist.”

His letters make clear that Helmuth had a deep religious faith that gave structure to his thought and his actions. The New Testament, from which he quotes frequently, provided inspiration in his terrible ordeals. He showed great courage as he faced death knowing that he was acting by the truth. The distortions of the Nazis could not make him lose sight of the scourge that was devastating his own country and much of Europe.

In his last letter Helmuth, as he awaited execution,  wrote: “Dear heart, my life is finished and I can say of myself: He died in the fullness of years and of life’s experience. This doesn’t alter the fact that I would gladly go on living and that I would gladly accompany you a bit further on this earth. But then I would need a new task from God. The task for which God made me is done. If he has another task for me, we shall hear of it. Therefore by all means continue your efforts to save my life, if I survive this day. Perhaps there is another task.”

The former estate of the Moltkes has become a center where young people can come and learn habits of peace and unity. When it was dedicated in 1989, the leaders of German and Poland came together as a Mass was celebrated to mark the beginning of a new era of peace and understanding among nations.

This history, both the terror of it and the new hope, came to my mind as Freya von Moltke introduced herself to me. To me she continues to represent the brave few who stood up against a murderous regime that had no respect at all for human rights and violated universal standards of human behavior.

I was a teenager during World War II, one who followed with rapt attention daily reports in the newspapers about the battles and other horrors of that great struggle. Had I then known of the Moltkes’ heroic efforts to combat Hitler and to plan for a future marked by peace and justice, I would have had reason for being more hopeful that some good might emerge from the catastrophe.

Richard Griffin

The early stages of the New Year demand a report on the current status of Phileas J. Fogg, our redoubtable cat. Like his human companions in our household, he appears to be aging remarkably well, all things considered.

On January first, in fact, he celebrated his tenth birthday, an anniversary that in the past would have made him quite old. However, the proprietor of our local pet store whose husband is a veterinarian, informs me that ten now qualifies only as middle age. Change has a ways of creeping up on us, doesn’t it?

This woman claims that her cat customers are now living twice has long as they did when she first started her business some twenty years ago. My guess at the reason for this increased longevity proved correct: scientific diet. The stuff that looks so unappetizing to me has the power, it seems, to lengthen feline life wondrously. If I ever thought I was going to get off easily by serving only one ten-year term of living with our beast, I have been sadly deluded.

So, clearly, was my friend the author Tom Lynch who in his most recent book “Bodies In Motion, Bodies At Rest,” promises on page 199: “By the time you read this, the cat will be dead.” But Tom was so severely provoked by his beast that I strongly suspect he was planning a desperate act of ailuricide rather than allowing nature to take its certain but slow course.

My conversation with the pet-store proprietor  mentioned above took place recently on the occasion of Phil boarding at her place of business for four days. Because of interior renovations in our house, he had to get out of it during that time. For him, it turned out to be a bitter exile; for me, it was a welcome first experience in a long time of living in a Phil-free zone.

When we came to pick Phil up after this exile, the store manager suggested that he could not possibly be that difficult at home; there he must surely be better behaved, she wanted to think. My wife Susan, though she felt impelled not to betray the whole truth about Phil, for fear of perjuring herself could only mutter something like “well, not all that better.”

So Phil’s reputation for decorum may have been seriously damaged in the community. If word gets around town, we will have to deal with even children knowing his real nature – –  untamed and ornery.

You would think, however, that his period of exile might have made Phil more appreciative of the sweet comforts of home. After four days of being confined to a small space, our house should now seem to him luxury in itself. And the face time he gets from us every day should have forced him to recognize when he is well off.

But, if he felt at all chastened, he was determined not to show it. Instead, Phil claimed all the same privileges he had enjoyed previously. In fact, he protested loudly at any moves on our part to limit his freedoms. Where we thought ourselves magnanimous toward him, Phil looked upon our largesse as simply his due.

Phil’s trip to the vet’s place was his first licit excursion outside the house in several months. From the vantage point of his carrying case, he had the chance to survey the scene on our street and to take in the winter vistas of nearby city blocks.

How that looked to him has not yet emerged but we presume it must have stirred dreams of freedom. As noted in this space previously, I would be glad to make those dreams a reality but find myself inhibited by the hardheaded approach of my wife and daughter. They seem resolved to keep Phil immune from the dangers of the street, insuring that he will live long.

Despite my willingness to expose him to the unexpected outside, I consider myself a fairly responsible cat manager. However, a chance encounter at a neighborhood party has made me enter into a period of doubt about whether I am fulfilling my basic duty toward Phil.

Among the guests at the party was a woman who felt guilty about having taken inadequate car e of her cat. What bothered her, she confessed to me, was that she had not flossed her cat’s teeth that day. She felt conscience-struck about this dereliction in her duty to take care of the animal’s dental health.

To show you how delinquent I have been, I must confess never once having imagined that I should floss Phil’s teeth. Perhaps my lack of awareness came from the unacknowledged desire never to get my fingers close enough to Phil’s mouth that I might lose any of them. In any event, I am sufficiently calloused not to have lost sleep over comparing myself unfavorably with the lady who flosses her cat’s teeth every day.

Richard Griffin

Of his role as alto sax player in the big band Soft Touch, Harvey Cox says: “What I do most of the time is very cerebral; to do something that uses another part of my brain, a whole other side of me, is an activity I really enjoy.”

The “very cerebral” job refers to Cox’s position as theology professor at Harvard Divinity School. Now age seventy-one, he has built a fine reputation for teaching both ministerial students and Harvard undergrads. He also is skilled at analyzing trends in religion worldwide, producing books on such subjects as liberation theology and the Pentecostal movement.

Last week Cox took me with him to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Bedford for Soft Touch’s Christmas gig. Nineteen men strong, with a female vocalist, the band entertained a large audience assembled in a gymnasium on hospital grounds.

In attendance were veterans of World War II and all the other conflicts in which America has been involved since then. I sat among men who fought in Korea, Vietnam and in the Persian Gulf war. But no longer does a veteran of the First World War live at the Bedford institution: the last one died there two years ago aged one-hundred-and-four.

The vets obviously loved hearing the songs of the big band era along with some tunes appropriate to the Christmas season. Some of them kept returning to the dance floor at the invitation of uniformed girls from the Bedford High School junior ROTC and other guests from outside. Often they swayed very slowly from side to side, obviously working against disabilities.

Currently some five hundred veterans are hospitalized at Bedford, fewer by a half than there used to be. One explanation I heard from a physician with experience in veterans’ hospitals was that, because the United States has not been involved for a generation in wars with heavy  casualties, there are no longer so many vets with service-related injuries.

About a hundred of those at Bedford are men with Alzheimer’s disease. Some of them usually come to the monthly celebration but, for various reasons, they were not there this time. Speaking about the participation of these patients, staff member Jim Cutrumbes told me that “it’s a great therapy.”

The band members themselves turned out to be older than most of the veterans for whom they played. The majority of the band members are aged enough to have danced to the big band tunes they now play.

Murray Sheinfield of Newton, eighty-five, has been playing drums for sixty-five years. I discovered him to be a person who likes a challenge: “Anything that’s new, I like to do,” he told me.

Eighty-year-old Don Gillespie of Lexington, on piano, is himself a veteran of World War II and loves playing in this band “primarily because they play music of my era.”

Roy Fowler, of Waltham, plays the tenor sax, an instrument that he did not start until he was fifty-nine. Previously, he had never played any instrument at all. Now approaching seventy-eight, he served for many years as an Olympic trainer for the American hockey team.

My friend Harvey Cox shows the same spirit of enterprise as his musical colleagues. After many years of playing the tenor sax, often with his own band “the Embraceables,” he recently took up the alto sax.

It’s a whole other instrument and has demanded a lot of effort for him to learn. But he relishes the challenge and works hard at it, as I could tell from observing him in action at Bedford.

From that evening one scene will stay lodged in my memory for a long time. As the last number of the night, the band played a medley of patriotic pieces. One after another, the theme songs of the military branches all came rolling out. The army, the navy, the marines, and other groups had their hymns performed with snappy martial beats.

During this selection, the veterans present gathered in a large circle and marched around the dance floor. Not all really marched – some were pushed in reclining beds, others traversed the circle by wheel chair. All these men, in various states of disrepair (some missing legs), made a spectacle, at once grand and inevitably somewhat distressing.

I admired these veterans of America’s wars and peacetime military service too. They have given so much for their country and are continuing to suffer the isolation of hospital living. No matter how kind the staff and attentive their visitors, it cannot be an easy life for them.

Those who marched, at least, would seem to have remained believers in patriotism. So far as I could tell, most of these veterans still carry, along with their wounds, faith in their country’s causes.

As they finished the evening by singing “God Bless America,” I hoped that divine blessings will fall, not just on the country at large, but upon them in particular.

Richard Griffin

Garrison Keillor, host of “Prairie Home Companion” on National Public Radio, joked recently about elderly voters in Florida’s Palm Beach County. They can manage fifteen different boards in a beano game, he gibed, but they could not cope with their election ballot.

Like most of Keillor’s quips, this one drew hearty laughter from the audience, but (leaving aside its somewhat ageist tinge) it also prompts serious questions about voting procedures in a society that is aging so dramatically. At a time when so many more of us have  passed age 65, does that mean public authority should make changes in the places where we vote and in the ways by which we indicate our electoral choices?

Surely the answer is yes, but not because we older Americans, having become so numerous, need user-friendly voting methods. Rather, citizens of every age, even those without notable disabilities, when they go to vote need to find places they can enter easily and procedures that are user-friendly. Also, whenever voting problems arise., we need to have help readily available. Younger people may require such assistance as well as their seniors.

As to polling places, a federal law enacted a dozen years ago, the “Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act,” requires them to be accessible to people with disabilities. So such access is, in the words of a lawyer friend who is expert in election issues, “not merely a good idea, but a federal requirement.”

The Secretary of State’s office in Massachusetts in cooperation with the disability commission, has recently surveyed all of the polling places in the Commonwealth to check on their accessibility. Though all the voting sites were found in conformity with regulations on designated election days, some of them are still not accessible at other  times, a situation state authorities regard as less than desirable.

Another problem deserves attention: voters are often not aware of help that is available.  Talking to Teresa Neighbor, the executive director of the Election Commission in Cambridge, I discovered, for example, that each voting site in our city has an area  marked “visual aids.” Voters who have vision problems can use the magnifying rulers and magnifying glasses available there.  But this is a service that I, a veteran voter, had never noticed or heard of.

In Massachusetts, the mechanics of voting are much more easily handled than in Florida and in other states where punch cards are still used. As Brian McNiff, spokesman for Secretary of State William Galvin, informed me, “Massachusetts got rid of punch cards three years ago.”  Some two percent of voters in this state, however, still use cards that are punched with a mechanical lever.

That move away from the old punch cards came as a result of the memorable contest for a congressional seat from the South Shore four years ago. There Philip Johnston had seemingly emerged as the winner in a very close election, only to lose to William Delahunt on the basis of a recount. In this instance the Supreme Judicial Court paved the way to the changed outcome by ruling that “discernable stylus impressions”  could be counted as genuine votes.

Residents of this commonwealth also do not have to cope with “butterfly ballots.” They have never been used here. However, voters here, as in other states, are increasingly confronted by referendum questions. Often these referenda present long and complicated texts for consideration in voting booths where lighting is often what my lawyer friend characterizes as “terrible.”

Secretary Galvin strongly encourages voters to read these questions at home before they come to vote. Otherwise, one may struggle to follow them in the narrow confines of the voting booth, sometimes feeling pressured because other voters may be waiting for their turn.

Whether or not the ballot is complicated by referenda, difficulties with the mechanics of voting often arise but not just for older people. Some voters in every age bracket have disabilities. Whatever is done to improve conditions at voting sites will benefit not just them but citizens in general. The evidence from Florida and many other places indicates that the need to reform and perhaps standardize American voting procedures has become inescapable.

Last week Secretary of State Galvin announced plans to request funds from the legislature for loans to Massachusetts cities and towns wishing to upgrade their voting systems. Even though none of them reported serious problems this year, many local governments have expressed interest in improving their equipment.

One change, recently proposed as a national model, should not be adopted. Television screens, with ATM-like features, would disadvantage many elders and other people not comfortable with electronic devices. In addition, my lawyer friend points out, “they do not create an audit trail.” Among other things, this means you could not use them for recounts.

Whatever the precise methods chosen, surely this is a favorable time for establishing greater uniformity in  procedures or, at least, making them as user-friendly as possible for everybody. As Teresa Neighbor says, “Florida serves as a good wake-up call.”  

Richard Griffin