May You Live In Interesting Times!

These are interesting times.  I really don’t think too many people would disagree with that.  Although there is an old curse which I have heard attributed either to the Chinese or to Yiddish that states, “May you live in interesting times”.  At first hearing I couldn’t figure out what it meant but finally it dawned on me that to live in boring times meant that all is well in the best of all possible worlds.  That certainly cannot fit the definition of what we are living in now.

 

Although every country, it seems, across and around the globe has problems, in this short blog it is not possible to enumerate them all, so I will simply name two that are happening here in the United States. 

At this particular time the most glaring is the rampant racism that we all thought had gone away with the election of President Obama.  I think that perhaps his election and re-election indicates that the majority of people in this country are on board with people of color or LGBT people having the same equal rights as everyone else.  The problem is that there is a sub-culture that ebbs and flows in numbers and intensity that has a tendency to shock the more rational rungs of our society in manners that are violent and horrifying.  Although the majority of law enforcement officers are good and decent people who view everyone equally, there is a subculture among them that is imbued with the idea that anyone of color is automatically a criminal suspect on the grounds that if that person is not doing something wrong right now, they probably were yesterday and will tomorrow, so we might as well shoot them now.  All one needs do is go to the website for League of the South and read to the very end.  It is scary!  So African-American citizens now have to deal with another domestic terrorist attack on people, at prayer, and in a church.  This alone is such an obscenity, but to be perpetrated by a young man who is hardly out of short pants is an obscenity in itself.   

As if racism isn’t enough we have the overwhelming looming disaster of climate change.  If one looks at a drought monitor map on television, the part of California where the red is the darkest indicating the severity of the drought, above where the shore line takes a curve inland at Santa Barbara, is where I live.  Our little community has cut its water use by 40%, but the trees in this area are under severe stress.  In our canyon we have some mighty native Sycamore trees that should be in full and glorious leaf.  Instead they have a few straggly greenish brown leaves that look very thirsty.  Of course the community is worried about fire, and is taking steps to educate itself on how to make a house more fire safe, and if evacuation is required, what to take and how to take it.   

Most of us, Catholic or not, are thrilled with the Pope’s Encyclical on Climate Change.  One need not share his religion, but can certainly be excited that he calls out climate deniers for what many of them are:  greedy.  To curtail our destruction of the earth, many of them will not be able to make such massive profits at the expense of both the environment herself (Mother Nature), but our children and their children.  Some climate deniers have the quaint belief that we should just let God take care of it.  Fortunately I have low blood pressure to start out with because that statement usually raises  it for me. 

For the sake of this argument, we are going to assume that God created the earth and people.  If that is the case, then God also created the emotions that people have.  If that is the case, then God created the emotion called in our culture, “worry”.  If no one worried about anything, nothing good and positive would ever get done!   It is only by worrying about something that gets people up off their respective derrière’s to do something about what they are worrying about.  Of course there will be some things people can do nothing about, and then worrying about those things won’t help at all, becomes anxiety, and could become debilitating, so some discretion is required to avoid that.  But by and large, worrying is a good thing, and always sitting back and “letting God take care of it” is a cop-out. 

We worry about climate change so we consolidate our trips as much as possible.  We always run multiple errands when we leave home because it takes us 10 miles to the nearest small community.  We recycle; we have solar panels on our home; we do what we can where we are.  The Pope worries about climate change and writes an Encyclical to alert the world to what it can do.  We all need to worry, and do what we can, where we are, with what we have. 

As for racism, this is going to take a concerted effort on the part of Caucasians to change the hearts and minds of their fellow white humans to understand that rather than say there is the black race, white race, brown race, yellow race, pink with purple stripes race, we are all members of the human race.  And this human race had better start working on climate change, or it won’t matter what we are, we will all be living in deep yogurt. 

I would rather live in more boring times!!

Just Rambling

Sat down at the computer to write this blog, and nothing emerged!  I played a couple of games of solitaire since this at times lets something simmer to the top.  Nothing!  So, today is going to be “other irrelevant matters”.

The first thing is an update on my husband’s knee replacement.  He is doing remarkably well, and follows the physical therapist’s suggestions carefully.  It will be five weeks this coming Tuesday.

I believe most people who have heard of the death of Joe Biden’s son, Beau, feels deeply for this family.  At least my prayers are that Beau Biden’s soul rests in peace, and that much comfort comes to the rest of his family.  Probably much grief comes to every family at some time in their lives, and although one may come to realize that it is just part of life, that doesn’t make it any easier.  This morning I was rather appalled to hear a young news person comment on how the Biden family always “bounces back” from grief.  And I thought, no, they don’t.  They crawl back through a great darkness toward a speck of light off in the distance.  It takes time and courage, but it can be done.  This has nothing to do with whether one has a religious faith or not.  Faith may give one comfort and additional strength to keep crawling, but I have seen people with little or no faith make the journey back. 

As an FDR Democrat, or Eisenhower Republican, I am, of course, really thrilled that Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have decided to declare their candidacies.  I read that older people really relate to Bernie.  Well, of course we do.  We remember the good times in this country when the policies he has always supported were well entrenched in our political system.  And some of us remember the bad times of the Great Depression and the economic safety net FDR gave to really poor people, and the hope for a better life he gave to everyone else.  That better life came during the three decades between the end of WWII and Ronald Reagan.  By bringing those policies back to the forefront, maybe we can get some sanity back into Washington, D.C. 

Before this week, however, the one thing that really got me excited was the comment by Jeb Bush that it was probably a mistake to invade Iraq.  A mistake, my foot!!  It was a deliberate action taken for purely economic reasons, and based on lies, lies and more lies.  My greatest disappointment when we achieved a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate in 2006 was the decision not to impeach George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.  Vincent Bugliosi’s book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder” is a must read for an excellent legal basis for that prosecution.  These past years since 9/11 have greatly eroded the internal strength the United States had that gave us the world-wide respect that we had enjoyed since WWII.  It was the adherence, at least on the surface, to the principles that we said we believed in that made us so respected.  George W. Bush, et al, absolutely destroyed that. 

Oh, well.  The Giants’ game is on, and I have rambled enough for a Sunday afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Hint of Yellow?

Bernie Sanders has announced his candidacy for President of the United States.  (wow)  That is how the news media has reacted to this announcement.  For months when only Hillary Clinton was expected to run, or had announced, there were outcries from the media that there needed to be another Democratic candidate so during the Democratic debates there could be an actual debate – not just one person up there essentially giving a speech.

So why isn’t the media reacting more positively and vigorously to Sander’s announcement?  Even so-called liberal MSNBC?  For one thing, as far as I can tell, MSNBC is owned by Comcast, and one can be sure a corporation as big as Comcast does not want Bernie Sanders to become President. The prospect of paying more in taxes probably curdles its corporate heart. If it has one.   It will be interesting to observe how the corporate owned media will respond if Martin O’Malley announces he is running on the Democratic ticket since he is as avowed a member of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party as is Sanders.  I really wish Elizabeth Warren would run, but since she has adamantly refused to acknowledge that she is, or will, I must take her at her word. 

With all of the above being said, why am I not on the Hillary Clinton band-wagon?  I certainly believe that it is past the time that a woman could, would and should be President.  Hillary also certainly has a tremendous amount of experience at the federal level – we all know what that is.  There certainly is a tremendous amount of support for her out there.  And if she is the Democratic candidate after the primaries, I will certainly support her.  When I listen to a lot of the whoop-de-do about her not following in Bill’s footsteps, it just about makes me want to throw-up.  I’ve been married for 61 years.  I am a Catholic and my husband is not.  It is perfectly reasonable for a married couple not to share every thought and emotion that crosses their path.  In fact, if they are both strong-minded, they certainly will not.  The political malarkey about her e-mail accounts while Secretary of State and the continuing made-up scandal about Benghazi really are also irrelevant. 

Bear with me here while I digress for a moment.  The third time I ran when I finally won, as a candidate I was doing the “hot-dog appearance” at a fund-raiser in one of the communities in my future District Two.  A woman approached me and very politely said that she and her husband had decided to vote for me this time because, as she said, I had held the same basic opinions all three times I had run.   Taking what that woman said and applying it to the political show playing out on the national level, one of the things the TV “talking heads” do say about a Sanders or O’Malley, or Warren, for that matter, candidacy would do is bring Hillary further to the progressive wing of the party.  And that is where I dig in my heels.

If she could, would or should change her basic positions on domestic policy issues during the campaign because of pressure from the progressive left, what will stop her from changing her basic positions on domestic policies after she is elected?  There will be plenty of pressure on her from the political right to do so, for sure.  Does she have the courage to stick to what she will say during the campaign, or does she have a hint of ‘yellow’ in her character.

In my opinion, pay no attention to what any candidate says during a campaign, whether on the local, state or national level.  Go back and look at their record.  Read what their positions were on policies you favor, or don’t, before there was any hint of running for another office.  If they have held office before, look at their voting record to determine where their basic values tend.  Listen to what they have to say during the campaign to determine if they have shifted positions for political reasons. 

And then support, preferably in my order, Warren, Sanders and/or O’Malley.  They stand firm now, as they have in the past, on their populist values.

I Can Say Whatever I Want

I wonder what would happen to me if I ran into a crowded theater and ran down the aisle shouting, “Fire, fire?”  Since by this time I would be at the front of the theater, I could watch all of the people screaming, shouting and clawing their way back up the aisles, perhaps trampling on others who were slower moving to get away from the supposed fire.  So, a few people were injured, or maybe killed in the ensuing stampede. So what?

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of us got together at some gathering and began to use language that incited a riot, thereby causing injury to life, limb and property?  Or went to a peaceful protest of some kind, and used language to incite that peaceful protest to turn violent?  Or used speech with someone to urge them to commit a crime?

Under these circumstances do I have the right to say anything I want, anywhere I want, and is my right to free speech unequivocally guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

These are generally accepted as probable crimes, and I could be prosecuted for committing them.  So what is the difference with what occurred in Garland, TX, this past week when that anti-Muslim woman, Geller, knowingly and willingly convened a contest for cartoonists to come up with a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad?  I say knowingly and willingly because anyone who follows the news at all should know by this time, Muslim or not, that to depict in any art form a depiction of the Prophet will cause radical-right Islamists (similar to radical-right Christians) to freak out and perhaps cause violence.

Closer to home, does the attorney, Matthew McLaughlin, from Orange County, California, have the right to advocate killing any gay person who touches another for sexual gratification?  What is the difference between conspiring to have someone else commit a crime that you want committed and deliberating creating situations – the cartoon convention in Texas or the attorney paying his $200 in California to get his petition on the ballot to kill gays – that will if carried out result in injury or death to someone, even though that someone is not a specific person. 

Probably the thing that is missing here is the realization, which many of us instinctively have, that with every right guaranteed in the Constitution, comes a corresponding responsibility to use that right carefully.  Thus, we don’t cry ‘fire’ in a crowded theater; we don’t deliberately incite a riot; we don’t conspire to have a surrogate commit our desired crime; we don’t deliberately enflame people on the radical fringes of a religion, knowing they may resort to violence, for example.   

Rational people do not react to provocation, regardless of their cultural background.  We are not talking about the responses of rational people however.  We are talking about the irrational responses of irrational people to irrational people!  Our right to free speech must be absolutely protected.  But it cannot be abused.  Rational minds need to work this one out pretty damn fast, or irrational people will start putting irrational restrictions on our rights.

 

Reason for Late Blog

Friends,  This is only the reason I have not written a blog this week.  My husband had knee replacement surgery Tuesday morning, and he is doing really well.  But on the way down to the hospital on the highway, we hit a deer, mashing in the front of the driver's side.  We were fine.  The deer was not.  Our insurance company has been fantastic -- The Hartford -- so have no complaints there.  But along with everything else, up our isolated canyon we have an encampment of less than desirable neighbors, and one of them apparently committed suicide earlier this week, so that has meant much time on the phone.  And on, and on, and on!!! 

Next week, much on policing, Bernie Sanders, and whatever else I can come up with.

You Are Being Trickled Upon

In my opinion the whole mess surfaced on a national level with Ronald Reagan when he famously spoke his infamous nine words, “Government is not the solution; government is the problem”.  I don’t believe for a minute those words were original with him, but I must acknowledge he had some great speech writers.  At one point in our lives, we knew an Oscar-winning cinematographer who told us that a Director had told him that he loved working with Ronald Reagan.  Reagan could memorize his lines, find his mark and ride a horse.   

That being said, it brought to the national level this hatred of government, and the long time animosity of the radical right for any part of government that did not make a profit for them, and they had the perfect foil to express this in Reagan.  Thus, war was a good thing because the military-industrial complex, which Dwight Eisenhower had warned us about, make big profits from building and selling war machinery, to us, our allies and probably enemies as well.  Social justice programs such as Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and veterans’ medical care because they were no longer profitable, or any other government program that required the wealthy 1%ers to pay taxes, and thus were to be eliminated.  Even our national infrastructure was a drag on their profits, so our roads, bridges, schools, and any government building or program was anathema.  Taxes were the very worst thing that could happen to them, and if the 99% wanted these things, they had to pay the taxes for them, or donate to charity to take care of the poor, elderly, homeless, and mentally ill, etc.   

As a result of this constant anti-government rhetoric, along with anti-union rhetoric, the government agencies that people rely on the most have had their budgets slashed beyond belief.  It is possible to drive around potholes, when bridges fall down usually not too many people are killed, and schools don’t do a good job anyway, so why bother.  But emergency response agencies such as fire departments, ambulance and medical response, and law enforcement had their budgets slashed as well.  I remember an incident when I was in office when our local bomb squad had come in for approval of the acquisition of a robot to pick up potential bombs and place them in the bomb container.  One of my fellow Supervisors voted “no” because she said it was just “more toys for the boys”.  No thought to the fact that this robot would save both civilian and officer’s lives.  Pre-employment screening of personnel hiring was cut drastically.  Training was slashed because there were no tax dollars to pay for that continuing training.  All of the emergency response personnel must have continual training in order to weed out inappropriate individuals who slipped through the employment screening, as well as keep the skills required to respond to violent situations foremost in officer’s automatic responses.   

We are now seeing the result of these short-sighted policies in the surfacing of the totally nauseating behavior of some law enforcement personnel.  If these shootings, chokings and vehicle ramming’s have indeed been race related, these officers should never have been hired in the first place.  Their prior records should have been scrutinized in detail, but, alas, there was no funding for that.  Apparently there was no funding to scrutinize the behavior of officers who had already been hired to determine if their behavior was going over the line when they were found to use excessive force more than once.  Citizens have the right to be up in arms over these violent actions by law enforcement. But putting the blame on officers only is avoiding the issue of why these situations are occurring in the first place.  Further, if one officer takes it upon him or herself to complain about the actions of another, retaliation of some degree is sure to happen.   

No.  Let’s place the blame where it ultimately belongs.  On us.  Why do I say that?  Because so many of us don’t bother to find out what elected officials really mean when they say that they must cut government spending, or that government is out of control, and they will fix it.  Make them be specific from the local all the way to the federal levels.  When we have such low turnouts during an election, we get the government we deserve.  We need people at the federal level who understand that tax dollars must be made available to government agencies to assist them in working economically and efficiently, but properly and adequately.  And we need voters who will go to the polls and vote people in to office who will raise taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, bring tax dollars back from where they are stashed overseas, and see to it that these dollars are distributed to agencies that serve the people.   

It is not just the President who makes things happen.  We need to vote in US Congresspeople and Senators who understand that “trickle down” economics is really unscrupulous.  Instead it ends up with the people being “trickled on”! 

Taxes are the dues we pay to live in a democratic society.  To rig tax laws to benefit corporations and people who do not need to be benefitted is extremely detrimental to a democratic society, creating what we have now, which is profound income inequality.  It is destroying our nation, and our souls.

 

God is greater than...an Easter meditation

 

An Easter meditation.  If you wish to read it.

 

God is greater than religion;

Faith is greater than dogma.

     Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

 

God is greater than…

 

There is a hole in the heart that is wide as the sky.  Nothing fills it.  Nothing touches it.  Nothing takes it away.  It cannot be cured, this search for the ultimate in life.

 

It’s not that people do not struggle mightily to grasp it as life goes by.  On the contrary.  Like children on a carousel, adults old enough and smart enough to know better, reach for false stars and watch them all turn to mist on their fingertips.  They stretch themselves to the limits of their strength to grab the gold ring of life’s happiness as they go from one attempt to another, always disappointed by the last one.

 

They go into debt they can’t handle.  They take risks that fail.  They succumb to the failures of them all and sink back into the anodynes of life.  They substitute drink or drugs or work to anesthetize the pain of it.  Or sometimes, a kind of magic they call “religion.”

The problem is that there is a thin line between magic and what some people call religion.  Magic is what we ourselves can perform on command.  Religion has to do with what we believe about creation, its origins, its purpose, its end.  People often mix the two.

Magic makes God “a cosmic bellboy,” as the American clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick put it.  God the magician runs the world by pulling strings from behind a hidden screen.  If we ask in the right way.  In the right language.  With the right prayer.  In the right liturgy.  Then we get what we want.  Unless God is being surly that day for some reason that we cannot imagine.

So, as a result, we go through life praying for things rather than for God’s grace either to bear our burdens or to reshape our worlds ourselves.

We call faith the notion that religion is a set of ideas designed to get us to heaven.  No questions asked.

The effect of that kind of thinking is worrisome.  It keeps us spiritual children all of our lives.  It means that we may think we know a lot about God but ourselves never really know God at all.

It means that the great hole in our hearts will never be filled at all.

And that’s why this insight from the great rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel is so important.  Indeed, God is greater than religion.  Faith is greater than dogma.

It is our search for the God who is searching for us that is what life and religion and faith must really be about.  Whatever we do, we must not be fooled by anything less parading as religion, posturing as faith. 

Sister Joan Chittister,  Benedictine  Sisters of Eire.

           

 

 

Hate Crime Unlimited

The last time I was a candidate for office in 1997, although it was the third time I had been a candidate, my youngest had moved here to San Luis Obispo County.  She had long before let us know that she was a lesbian.  That required that the two of us should have a really down to earth talk.  We both of us recognized that if we did not get out ahead of the media with her lesbianism, someone, somewhere would try to make it an issue.  At the same time, we did not want to make it a hot-button issue ourselves.  Therefore, we decided that I should comment truthfully if the subject came up, but certainly not try to “hide” it.  It so happened that there was an incident in South County where she and her then partner were shopping where someone stopped them and was really quite disgustingly rude.  The incident so infuriated our other locally living daughter that she wrote a great letter to the editor about it.  That, needless to say, surfaced the issue quite nicely, although we were sorry the incident happened in the first place.

 

Our family was very supportive of our daughter marrying her partner of 18 years, because we love that woman very much as well.  We had the wedding ceremony, and a small reception here at the house.  They had a much bigger whoop-de-do later in the year.  And we still support them, and their friends who are in same-sex relationships, as we do all in any committed marital relationship, same-sex or not.

 

You can imagine our horror and absolute freak-out anger this morning as we read in The Tribune, our local county paper, that some lawyer, Matt McLaughlin, in Orange County has paid his $200 fee to get his “Sodomite Suppression Act” which authorizes the killing of gays and lesbians by “bullets to the head” or any “other convenient method”.  From The Tribune:  [“McLaughlin’s plan refers to “buggery” or “sodomy” as “a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.”  Under the proposal, “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification (would) be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”]  This in itself is bad enough but one could assume that this would be after a legal trial, with lawyers on both sides, and decent judges.  But then there is:

 

f) The state has an affirmative duty to defend and enforce this law as written, and every member of the public has standing to seek its enforcement and obtain reimbursement for all costs and attorney's fees in so doing, and further, should the state persist in inaction over 1 year after due notice, the general public is empowered and deputized to execute all the provisions hereunder extra-judicially, immune from any charge and indemnified by the state against any and all liability.

 

Think about this for a moment.  If the State of California rightly drags its feet on this, then after a year, if I were seen with any of my daughters or female friends, and we gave each other a big hug on parting, conceivably some religious whack job could haul out his/her gun and shoot us in the head, using the excuse that it was obvious we were just getting ready for “sexual gratification”.  And get away with it!  This is not free speech.  If it is illegal to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre, then it is certainly a hate crime to advocate shooting people in the head extra-judicially, and with immunity for the actions!  
 

I used to wonder about not using the name of God in vain, the 4^th Commandment, considering that OMG is such a frequent and wonderful expletive.  I think rather it refers to using God’s name to justify evil, as this lawyer from Orange County is doing.  For a Christian to use what a Christian believes is God’s Word to justify such hate, in direct contradiction to what is taught in the Christian Bible is about as blasphemous as one can get, in my opinion.  What a travesty of the Great Commandments of Jesus:  Love God with all of your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.  Using a reverse logic, if this man hates his neighbor to this extent, he must really hate himself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Little of This; A Little of That

Ah, what to write about this week?  So many things; so little lengthy inspiration!  How about a little about a whole lot?  No!  Too bad!!  Here goes.  Some of value – some not.

I guess the new Republican budget could be worse, but I’m not sure how.  Although I have Medicare, and it helps us a great deal, we would still be able to scrape along without it.  But there are many my age, or younger or older, who desperately need it.  In good conscience, how could these people who call themselves Christian call for an almost total gutting of our country’s social safety net in order to cut taxes for those who don’t need to have their taxes cut.  Medicare, children’s health care, social security are all programs that truly help people who need the help.  There are many more that need help than churches, synagogues, temples and NGOs can conceivably supply.  Register to vote, then vote the bums out!

Last night we heard that a bunch of Christians are starting a Christian militia to go over and fight with the Iraqis against ISIS.  Oh, goody!!  A new crusade with their marching song, Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war?  This will certainly not endear us to the radical Islamist right to have a bunch of radical Christian right soldiers on their land.  That, by the way, is a song I refuse to play, along with Battle Hymn of the Republic in my music group at church.  It is not an issue at this time, but one pastor told the director to go ahead and schedule Battle Hymn, and that I would play it if everyone else was singing.  They sang without me. 

Closer to home, yesterday was a good day for me.  I got new “speakers” in my hearing aids, and my new glasses came in.  So now I can hear young women’s higher pitched voices much better, and can actually see some details I didn’t know were there.  Of course, that means I’ll have to haul out the sewing machine and mend some shirts of Bill’s that were ordered, delivered to our front door when we weren’t home, and our then puppies had a great time tearing the package open and playing tug-of-war with one of the shirts.  We took corrective action after that, but the shirt still has holes in the sleeve.  Fortunately it is a work shirt. 

Yesterday in between getting my new “ears” and “eyes”, we had a fender bender when a young driver thought he could make a left-hand turn in front of us before we entered the intersection.  Could have been much worse, but the good thing is the insurance adjuster today was a young woman with a very high voice, and I could hear her clearly!  How nice that was.  We used the fender bender as an excuse to have lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.  Hey, whatever works!

We have lived in our house now for some 35 years, so the inside really needed painting.  Which would not have been a problem except that I had a 60 year supply of books on one wall; books I considered as friends.  It took me about six months to slowly go through each book to determine if it should be given away, or kept in the new cabinet our neighbor/furniture maker was going to make for me.  Then I simply couldn’t part with any of the books until one of our daughters committed to taking them to the local homeless shelter for me.  She said they were always looking for books.  But then that meant that I had to take down all of the pictures as well, which of course presented the problem of what to do with them since we wanted to “unclutter” our walls.  I was complaining to a friend about what to do with all of the “kid” pictures which are about 40 years out of date, and her suggestion was brilliant.  Give them to the kids so we can enjoy them on their walls (if they chose to put them up).  We are in the process of doing that, but the guest bed is still awash in pictures, so hope no one wants to come and stay for a bit. 

Our big room is now all painted, the furniture is back where it belongs, a few pictures are up, and the only thing left is to have the new cabinet/console stained and a wall decoration put up.  I had looked in stores, catalogues, other people’s houses, etc., but really didn’t see anything I liked.  Then one Sunday morning a group of us decided to have brunch at a local restaurant after Mass.  I walked in, happened to look up at their big wall, and there it was!!  My perfect wall décor.  Bill liked it as well, so we bought it.  How nice of them to sell me their wall décor for my house.  Lovely people.  Now our neighbor is going to measure where it should go for me, since I am notorious for not being able to measure anything correctly, and we will be through with that.  Except that I bought a new quilt for the bed, and it doesn’t match the paint on the wall.  Ah, but I do love the smell of new paint!

Now if I could only get the Republicans in Congress to coordinate their often proffered religious beliefs to their actions, all would be well in my world!!

So VOTE, Damn It!!

This blog is either quite late for last week, or a tad early for next week.  But, the timing is right, I hope.

The fact that so many people didn’t bother to vote in the last election really bothered me.  As an almost member of the Greatest Generation (missed it by 3 years), watching as my cousins, friends and brother went in the Navy in WWII, worrying over whether they would be wounded, or worse, killed fighting against countries wherein the citizens could not vote, or else could vote for one candidate, and were jailed, or worse, if they didn’t vote for that one person, I was most distressed, to say the least.

Then I read that the son of a good friend of mine didn’t vote because he couldn’t see the point, and that bothered me to the point that I decided to write a blog about it.  Fortunately, life, in a good way, got in the way of having the time to write because the events of this past week have emphasized in my mind the importance of voting.

Sunday will be the 50^th year anniversary of the march of black citizens of this country crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge to protest the fact that black citizens were denied the right to vote by all sorts of techniques such as cumulative poll taxes and difficult literacy tests.  There were about 600 marchers who were told they could not cross the bridge and who refused to stop marching.  They were then attacked by police officers who beat them with billy clubs, sending some 50 marchers to the hospital, including John Lewis, now a respected Congressman from Alabama.  They regrouped, marched again a few days later, and were turned back again.  A few days later, they marched again and crossed the bridge.  These protests led to the voting rights act of 1965.

Fast forward to this week.  I would imagine that anyone reading this blog has heard about the scathing report from the US Attorney General’s Office regarding the really horrendous situation in Ferguson, MO, and the reasons the community erupted so forcefully after the shooting of the black teen-ager, Michael Brown.  What has also emerged from the mess in Ferguson is that over time, and probably with discouragement from the non-black side of town, was that the black community in Ferguson did not vote.  And they ended up with a government that had no regard for them whatsoever to the point of using them to fund the government by arresting the black citizens for specious reasons, then imposing outrageous fines for arrests.  And, if the individuals could not pay the fine, putting them in jail!  The citizens of Ferguson are now organizing themselves to register citizens, and then making sure they get to the polls because they have recognized that they need to vote for a government that will regard them as the lawful citizens that they are.

So what does this have to do with me?  I’m not black, nor even maybe brown.  I’m OK.

First they came for the Communists,

and I didn’t speak up,

because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak up,

because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,

and by that time

there was no one left to speak up for me.  

There is an offshoot of Christianity called the Dominionists.  These folks want to make the United States a Dominionist Christian nation by being elected to local, then state and federal offices, school boards, special district boards, etc. thereby gaining control over all of our governmental institutions.  Google them if you think I am off center on this.  For the sake of the argument, let’s assume the Dominionists win.  There is no way I could subscribe to the government they want to impose.  But if I don’t speak up now for the black citizens of all of the Fergusons of this country, how can I demand that people speak up for me if the Domionists are in power, if there would be any left to do so.

There is another old, but excellent, maxim.  Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.  We all must register and vote; we all must start attending local board meetings, including the Board of Supervisors, and demand that these meetings be conducted in a civil and respectful manner, whether we want to go or not.  We must respectfully demand that people of all ages have a reason for voting, and that they recognize that if they want to enjoy the benefits of democracy, they sure as hell need to work for those benefits by at least voting.  Voting is the primary requirement of citizenship in a democracy.

Scott Walker and Christianity

Oh, good!  President Obama is not even running for anything and Rudy Giuliani who used to have a shred of respectability lost it this week when he said he didn’t think the President loved his country.  But he was not impugning the President’s patriotism!!  And right on the heels of that, Scott Walker implied that President Obama wasn’t a Christian!!!  Other than the fact that the U.S. Constitution under Article XI states, “…but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”  So what’s up with all of this range-land waste with whether someone is a Christian or not?

And just what is Walker’s definition of Christian?  Is he referring to the deceased pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church that protested at the funerals of soldiers for some obscure reason dealing with homosexuality?  Is he referring to the brand of Christianity that Jeff Sharlet described in his book, C Street, Jesus plus nothing?  That is, all one needs is a personal relationship with Jesus so that when one prays for guidance, Jesus will let you know what to do.  With this one, as Sharlet pointed out, it was amazing how many times Jesus agreed with the person doing the praying.  Some churches proclaim that all one need do is accept Jesus as your personal savior, and read the Bible.  Others say that if one accepts Jesus, God will reward you, so that if you are poor, you don’t love Jesus enough. But the problem with that is which translation is being read.  As one infamous Texas preacher said, “If the King James Version of the Bible was good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for me.”  Or is it one of the more theologically vague, but social justice very savvy Protestant churches.  How about the politically conservative rigid and monolithic church that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI tried to lead, and Cardinal Burke, et al, tried to force on American Catholics?  How about the Catholic Church Pope Francis is leading, with an emphasis on the love of God first and equally necessary, mercy, love and compassion for everyone else?  There are so many ways to say one is Christian that it boggles the mind if one is not an adherent to any of them.  It is hard enough if one is an “insider”.

This is what really is obnoxious about the current bunch of radical religious right people in our Congress now, who are putting pressure, financial or otherwise, on their buddies in Congress.  All of this nonsense about how it is the Christian thing to do to cut taxes on the wealthy so corporations will have more money to invest in their companies, and the result will be a “trickling down” of that wealth to the poorer people. That in their view is compassion.  No one has said just what century this is supposed to occur in, since trickle down started in the 20^th century, and now it is the 21^st. 

The contention is asinine that it is the Christian thing to do to cut the safety net for people all the way from seniors with Social Security and Medicare down to children with no health insurance, no food stamps, and no education, etc., in order to force people to get out to work which will then enable them to realize their potential.  Rand Paul made the comment that people on Social Security Disability are “gaming the system”.  Some probably are, but the majority simply require it to survive, or for their families to survive.

One of the Bible stories that is told often is that of the Good Samaritan.  For those who may not be acquainted with it, it is the story of a man who belonged to a tribe not accepted by the Jewish nation as a whole.  And it is the story of another man who was travelling, was met by robbers, beaten, robbed and left for dead.  A couple of upstanding citizens came by, but not wanting to be involved, crossed to the other side of the road, and went on their way.  But the Samaritan stopped, put the battered man on his donkey, took him to an Inn, paid the innkeeper to take care of the man, promised to stop on his way back to pay more if the Innkeeper required it, then the Samaritan went on his way.  This story is told as the reason why churches need to teach compassion.  Which is a good thing, but it is only half the story.  The Samaritan did not care for the man himself.  He went on his way, after paying the Innkeeper to do that. 

My point in citing this story is that it is directly applicable to our current political situation.  The upstanding citizens now could be those who just want to go by the people who are hurting and hungry.  The Samaritan now is the rest of us, who want to help out and do what we can.  Now instead of paying the Innkeeper and going on our way, we pay our taxes to the government to supplement what our churches and other non-profits simply cannot keep up with.  The Samaritan did not care for that battered man himself.  He paid someone else to do it for him.  The Innkeeper then; taxes now.

Scott Walker is probably one of the most hard-hearted governors in this country.  There are quite a few, but he takes the cake.  For him to impugn our President for not being a Christian, I wonder which of the above definitions he would claim as his own.  Or is he an upstanding citizen who simply crosses the road before he might have to be involved.

 

 

A Traumatic Experience

Yesterday I had a very traumatic experience that left me shaking.  Really!  The unflappable me! What was it?  I had to listen to Fox News for about 10 minutes!!!

I needed a test at French Hospital (nothing serious).  I checked in quickly, but then had to wait for a while.  Bill got tired of waiting, and said he would dash to Farm Supply and would be back and would look for me in the same waiting room.  That sounded OK to me, and I continued to watch a home renovation channe.  So, I eventually had the test, came back to the waiting room, and there was a woman watching Fox News.  She turned to me and asked if I could hear it, to which I not very nicely responded that I would probably take out my hearing aids since I didn’t like Fox News.  She not only didn’t take the pretty overt hint, but said that she did like it.  So, there I was trying to convince myself that this would be a learning experience, and that I should just be quiet and treat it as such.

The first segment I came in the middle of, so don’t know what set them off, but there were two people talking about how Obama’s (no title) executive orders were unconstitutional, were thus illegal, and were his way or the highway.  Nothing about the 291 executive orders George W. Bush (W) signed, or what they contained.  Nothing, for example, about the executive order Bush signed on 10/08/2001 creating the Department of Homeland Security.  Nothing about what executive order President Obama had signed, though as I said I came in late, but only how awful President Obama is to be signing these orders.

The segment ended, and the next one included a Republican Congressman from some State back East (where I live everything is back East).  I think it was Ohio.  Anyway, the subject was voter fraud, and how it was very necessary to curtail voting in order to stop voter fraud.  In the discussion it left me with no doubt they were talking about stopping brown, black, young and old people from voting.  They did everything but blatantly say that it was necessary to keep “those people” from voting because they would not vote Republican, and any other vote was fraudulent.  And with Obama and the left-wing so awful it is absolutely necessary to make sure there is no voter fraud.  Nothing about how very important voting is – for everyone.

I could feel my blood pressure start to go up, but not to worry.  It is low anyway.

The next segment included John Bolton, former Bush appointee to the United Nations, and a very “interesting” person with a radical right-wing religious perspective discussing the recent events in Yemen.  There was nothing on what had led up to the problems; nothing about anything the Yemeni government had or had not done to prevent the problems.  Only that it was Obama’s fault; that he didn’t know what he was doing; if only he were someone else, and on, and on.

But the final straw started out with a sort of hysterical introduction that federal employees had been caught watching porn on their work computers.  Then came, “Federal employees watch porn on their work computers, and are wasting your tax dollars, etc…”  At that I came unglued.  The segment started out with the proper setting that federal employees had been caught, although it did not mention whether this was two or two hundred, or two thousand.  But by the time it got to inferring that all federal employees watch porn, I was livid.  It was another right wing attack on legitimate government.  There was no corresponding study done on how many private-business employees watch porn.  The study needn’t include Fox News employees because in my opinion they were spewing porn the whole time I was watching. 

At that point, I told the lady that I deeply resented the inference that all federal employees watch porn because my husband had been a federal employee, and I could assure her that neither he nor anyone else in his office had ever watched porn.  At that point I left the waiting room and went out into the hallway.  Fortunately Bill arrived about 2-3 minutes later, so didn’t have to stand there for any length of time.  When he realized how pissed off I was, we went to the cafeteria.  When in doubt, feed me!

It was so obvious to me in that 10 minutes that this is where the current divisiveness in our society is coming from.  It was hate and fear, hate and fear.  I was so angry to the point I was shaking because to me this was a form of evil.  I don’t use that word lightly, by the way.  A deliberate distortion of the truth for either personal or political aggrandizement is evil.

More Irrelevant Stuff

There is so much on the national level one could write about, but this week I will write about other stuff.  Like the fact we have had a tad over 3 inches of rain this week.  For those overseas readers, I live in the very, very darkest red of the red covering the drought area of California on the maps.  We have our own water supply so to celebrate the rain, I let the water run while I rinsed off the dishes!!!  Not for long – just enough to feel decadent.  We are so dry here that even after 3 inches there are no standing puddles.  It just soaks in, and in, and then in some more.  We are supposed to receive more rain about Feb. 17, but haven’t read whether that will be some or a whole lot of it.  Hope for the whole lot.

We have lived in our house for 35 years now.  When we were building it from 1977-1979, we lived in Fresno, CA.  For those two years, all but about 4 weekends, we would leave Fresno at 3:00PM, arrive here about 6:00 PM, work on the house all weekend, then leave here at 6:00 AM, and arrive back in Fresno by 9:00 AM.  A good friend of ours had a contractor’s license, so he would work on the house while we were in Fresno.  One weekend we arrived to find that he had decided to fit the ceilings to his height, which was about 6’9”.  He had always wanted a house where the ceiling was way above his head, so our ceilings are about 14’ in our living/dining room!  We have heated with wood, primarily, so after 35 years this room has really needed painting.  We did it last time, but no way could we do this again.  So, we have professional painters.  I’m looking forward to when they are finished.  They are not only going to do the walls, but will paint the bricks behind our wood stove.  The bricks are beige, but our friend thought I would like black grout with those, and they were done before I saw them.  So, finally, the bricks, and grout will all be one color to match the fireplace at the other end of the room.  Oh, joy!!!

While getting ready for the painters, however, taking stuff off of the walls, etc., I came to the conclusion that I have too much “stuff”.  Some of it I don’t want to throw away, so will get a plastic bin and pack pictures away.  Years ago a friend gave me a picture of a Japanese Madonna and Child which I really liked.  Then I inherited an Italian Madonna and Child.  When our adopted granddaughters arrived, since their fathers were from El Salvador, I found a Salvadoran Madonna and Child.  Over time people have given me others from Greece, Russia, Italy, and the United States.  But I don’t want to put them back up.  I think I want to keep my walls clear for a time, but neither do I want to throw them away.  So, into a bin they will go, along with about two dozen family pictures in frames. 

I’m glad that my “office” isn’t going to be painted this time because I have a bad habit (or not) of cutting out, or typing off quips or comments that I really like and taping them to the side of my antique wood file cabinet.  One I wrote myself.  At one time, Bill was involved in a discussion on the placement of nuclear waste in unlined trenches in Ward Valley, which is very near the border of California and Nevada, and the Colorado River.  It took some time, but Bill proved that Ward Valley drained into the Colorado River in five places.   There was a hearing in Needles, CA, which, of course, we drove over to.  If anyone has driven across California to Nevada, you know what a long trip it can be, with nothing for about 90 miles of it through the Mojave Desert.  So, to occupy my mind I wrote the following take off on the old cowboy song, Home On the Range.  I will complete my blog with this:

Oh, give me a home, where the isotopes roam,

And the children play, let’s mutate today.

Where the tortoises’ are so big

They could swallow a pig,

             And the vadose zone is wet all the way. 

Home, home on the range,

Where neither deer nor the antelope can play.

Where good values of old

Have been sold for some gold

And we wait for the river to glow.