Writing X-rays

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“Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly–they’ll go through anything.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

I’m a writer (or at least I flatter myself that I am), so words are kind of my thing. Every once in a while, I’ll run across something that seriously changes my outlook, or how I think, or even my world. A few days ago, I was reading Huxley’s Brave New World, and I came across the line that starts this post. I read that, and my brain just kind of melted.

Over the years, I’ve had thoughts similar to that, but Huxley actually articulated what I’ve always thought, far better than I ever did, and actually put my ambition into words: I want to write X-rays. I want to write words in a way that cuts through to the heart of the matter, whatever the matter happens to be. Words that illuminate the hidden problems and that help to solve them. Words that make people think. Words that make people think, “That’s what I’ve been thinking!” Words that make people think, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Ever since I was a kid, certain phrases or sayings have stuck with me that either changed my life or formed the way I thought. Phrases like “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” which I always thought was said by Patrick Henry, but was apparently originally written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her book The Friends of Voltaire, published in 1906. That saying, to my young mind, represented the entire idea of Free Speech, and much of what it meant to be an American. I remember a time when Americans were proud to quote that phrase.

Patrick Henry’s famous “Give me liberty, or give me death!” is another phrase that formed the way I saw the world. To this day, I resent anything I see as an intrusion of my liberty. Of course, I’ve come to understand that there is no such thing as absolute liberty. In any society, there are necessarily going to be limits to what members of that society are at liberty to do. I think the closest we can get to absolute liberty is a society where every member is actually treated equally, regardless of sex, race, religion, or financial status.

It’s funny how so much of my identity as a person is tied to my identity as an American. I really believe the words “All men are created equal” but it troubles me that, as a country, we still have trouble accepting it. I don’t think that any objective observer looking at our country would really believe that it is, or ever has been, a central tenet of our national consciousness. That bothers me, both as a person, and as an American. In our defense, I will say that we are closer than we were at the beginning, and I do think that we’re continually making progress in that direction, but clearly, we’ve got a long way to go.

Perhaps all the kerfuffle over Columbus Day has brought another phrase that has haunted me, and informed how I see the world, to the forefront of my mind. I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was 10 or 11 years old. In his forward to The Lord of the Rings, Peter S. Beagle wrote, “We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers–thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses.”

Even though I was too young to understand what he meant, I knew that what he was saying was important, and more importantly, right. As I got older and began to study history, and especially as I began to study history outside of history class, I came to see how right he was. Columbus’ “discovery” of America began centuries of genocide and exploitation so vile that it makes the Nazis look like pikers. Much of it was carried out under the guise of Christian Evangelism and Manifest Destiny, and, in a thousand little ways, in a thousand little places out of the way enough that we don’t notice, it continues to this day, but under the guise of economic pragmatism.

Don’t believe me? Just go to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in S. Dakota, or the Navajo or Apache reservations in Arizona, or the inner city of, well, pretty much any city in America, or the coal country of Appalachia, or the factory towns of the rust belt. The machine doesn’t care about your race, or your color; it just cares about being fed and moving on.

Another saying that really puzzled me as a kid was “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Samuel Johnson said that back in 1775. As a kid in love with the America I learned about in school and by watching John Wayne defeat not only the Indians, but the Japanese, and thrilling to the hyper-patriotic fervor of the Bicentennial, it just didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense, but it just wouldn’t let me go, either. Once again, as I grew, and studied, I came to see what he meant, and to realize that he was right. Or almost right. Patriotism isn’t the “last refuge” any more (if it ever was).

It isn’t the scoundrel’s Alamo, where they make their last stand; these days it’s their launching pad, from which the flag-pin wearing bastards use the flag-draped caskets of dead soldiers to justify stripping away our rights, to brand those who protest injustice as unAmerican, to present themselves as the only ones who can save us from all of the “evils” that they have worked so hard to make us afraid of.

I want to write words like that. Words and phrases that cut through the constant 24-7 barrage of bullshit that we’re all dealing with. Of course, if you’ve read to this point, you’re probably thinking, “Well, you’re not there yet,” and you’re right, my writing (and my thinking) is still a work in progress. Hopefully though, I’m getting there. Hopefully, at this point, I’m at least making you think.

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation: Link to Mission Report

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For those of you who are interested in the mission trip that a group of friends and I make annually to Pine Ridge Indian reservation in S. Dakota, I’m posting a link to the Nape Na Si (pronounced Naw-pay Naw See, and means “Hands and Feet” in the Lakota dialect) Ministries website here. The link will take you to a report on our doings and activities out there. I hope you enjoy it.

If by chance, you’ve already read it, it’s been updated since its original publication–as usual, right after I hit “publish”, I thought of a bunch of stuff that I forgot to say.’

Anyway, enjoy!

Some Days It Just Doesn’t Pay to Get Out of Bed.

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Some days, you just know going in, that it’s going to be a shitty day. Take the other day for example; I woke up when the alarm went off – my least favorite way to wake up, or at least least favorite normal way to wake up (waking up to being swallowed alive by a giant anaconda for example, would be worse, but extremely abnormal). Anyway, I get up, stagger through the canine obstacle course that is our bedroom, and head to the bathroom to find the lid on the toilet down (almost always a harbinger of impending doom).

“Huh,” I thought, with my cloudy, morning-brain, “I wonder why Jess put that down?” I figured it was to keep the dogs from drinking out of the toilet.

It wasn’t.

It turned out that my wife, the lovely-but-tragically-digestively-challenged Jess was running late for work when the previous night’s meatloaf hit her. I blame myself of course, after all, it was me who made it, and me who got careless with the garlic powder (I like garlic, sometimes a little too much). It was a new container, and instead of opening the shaker side of the lid, I accidentally opened the spoon side of the lid and gave it a hearty shake. I estimate that I dumped at least a quarter to half-cup of garlic powder into the meatloaf, hence the ensuing (and ongoing) digestive tragedy.

At any rate, not to be too indelicate, our pipes were apparently not up to the challenge, and since the diligent, and extremely time-conscious Jess was (conveniently?) running late, she simply had no choice but to leave me a fabulous parting gift. It was a disappointing and unpleasant start to the day.

Well, I got that taken care of, as well as my own ablutions (oh, don’t act so grossed out, you do the same thing), and got all the dogs outside to do their thing, had my morning smoke, got all the dogs back inside, managed to survive the three-ring-circus that is feeding time at Casa del Moon, and headed for the den to do some writing. My entry to the den was blocked, however, by the dog gate (Molly the old Golden Retriever sleeps loose in the den, and Mattie the young, crazy Jack Russel/Beagle mix sleeps in a kennel in there). Normally, the gate is only shut at night, to keep Molly from wandering.

“Huh,” I thought, “I wonder why Jess latched that gate?” I figured it was just an accident, one of those things you just do without thinking, because you’re busy thinking about other things.

It wasn’t.

It turned out that Molly had experienced a tragic digestive crisis of her own overnight. Three times (apparently what the lovely and resourceful Jess was thinking about was how glad she was that she was running late for work). For more info on why Jess latched the gate, see my post, My Dog Eats Poo: A Disgusting Allegorical Tale. ‘Nuff said on that.

So, my morning was pretty much eaten up by cleaning . . . well, let’s just leave it at that.

To top it all off, I had to go to work.

I don’t like going to work. I’ve been doing it all my life, and I’ve never liked it. That’s why I want to be a writer-it’s so much more fun. Sadly-so far at least-it’s also far less lucrative, so I get the dogs all squared away, saddle up, and head to work.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like this job better than any other job I’ve ever had. I like helping people to improve their writing skills, especially when they really want to improve. Unfortunately, this particular day’s students didn’t really seem to want to improve, they just wanted me to tell them what to write so they could pass their classes. This always puts me in a bad mood.

Then a kid comes in. While one of my colleagues is reading his paper, this kid is blathering on about one of his classes which focused (in part) on the Civil War, and he didn’t feel that the other side (the side he identified with) was fairly represented. Then, he made the mistake of asking me what I thought.

I knew where he was coming from: when I was a kid, most of my heroes were Confederates (my family also has southern roots). Let’s face it-the South had all the cool guys: Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Mosby’s Rangers, etc. What did the Union have? A bunch of incompetents, an alcoholic, and a couple of deeply devoted arsonists. But then, I told him, I read some books, a whole bunch of books, in fact, and had come to the conclusion that better men never fought and/or died for worse cause, i.e. the right to own another human being as property.

He seemed to take offense to that, pointing out that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about state’s rights.

I pointed out to him that the only state’s right the South was specifically interested in, the only one that couldn’t have been settled peaceably was the right to own slaves. If you doubt me, and I’m sure some of you do, here’s a link to the Declarations of Secession of Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. As far as I can tell, the other nine states never really mentioned any specific reasons (other than hating Lincoln, and/or perceived unfair treatment) for seceding. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

He, of course, countered with that old chestnut, “But most confederates didn’t even own slaves!” True enough, but, those guys were talked into war by the guys who did own slaves.

He then asked if I thought all people who fly the Confederate Flag now are racists. I told him no, I didn’t think that, but, I asked him, what would you think of me if I was flying a Nazi flag over my house, not because I was a racist, but because I was proud of my German heritage and had ancestors that fought for Germany? He didn’t seem to have an answer for this.

All this time, I was getting more and more aggravated. I have a pretty low tolerance for stupidity, and virtually no tolerance at all for willful stupidity, and this kid was pretty much the poster child for it.

It got quiet for a while, and then he asked me what I thought about the cool kids club. I didn’t know what that was, until he said it’s spelled with all K’s. I told him I wasn’t a fan.

He didn’t say anything, so I waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, I asked him what he thought about the KKK. He was really quick to point out that he wasn’t in favor of hurting anybody, and he really liked black people, in fact, he had a lot of black friends, but there were some things that he did like about the KKK. I asked him what those were, and he hemmed and hawed around for quite a while, just um-ing, and well-ing, etc.

I finally asked him if he was having trouble thinking of something good to say about them that wouldn’t make him sound like a racist, and he just laughed, and said something about racism being pretty much over in the good ol’ USA.

By this time, my head was about to explode, and of course, my mouth started moving faster than my brain. I told him that, of course, he could say that, he was safe. He asked me what I meant by that.

It’s important to understand, at this point, that we were not alone. There were several others present, all young white men, including one gay kid.

I said, “I mean you’re safe. I’m the safest person in this room. I’m white, middle-aged, at least marginally middle-class, and married. At this point, I am pretty much my only natural predator. You guys are less safe than me, because you’re younger, and more likely to get yourself into stupid, potentially life-threatening situations, a stage I’ve already survived. You guys are safer than Xxxxx.”

Xxxxx asked why they were safer than him, and I said, “Because you’re gay.”

This came as a complete surprise to Xxxxx, who pointed out that no, as a matter of fact, he was not gay.

Talk about derailing your own argument. Here I was, trying to point out that there are segments of our society that live their lives at considerably more risk than others, and that for those who are at virtually no risk to deny the evils of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, etc., that plague large portions of our society is, quite simply, deluded and disingenuous bullshit, and instead of making my point, I merely succeeded in making myself look (or at least feel) like the biggest asshole in the room.

Xxxxx wanted to know why I thought he was gay, and all I could think of was that I just thought he was. I had of course launched into that compulsively and diarrheatically vocal apology mode which usually only makes things worse, and makes you look like an even bigger asshole than if you’d just said, “I’m sorry” and shut the hell up.

I make no defense for myself. Xxxxx is a really nice kid. He’s very soft- and well-spoken, and speaks proper english, is always neatly and tidily dressed, doesn’t curse, doesn’t talk about women, and has good posture. Apparently, to my hunched, slouching, profane, vulgar, only conditionally showered, torn-T-shirt and worn-out jeans and shoes-wearing mind, that all adds up to gay. I made assumptions about him, based on purely circumstantial evidence, and, in a twisted kind of way, I supposed I proved my point, just not the way I expected to.

Hell, for all I know, that other kid, the stupid one, probably does have a lot of black friends.

All I know for sure is that I should have stayed in bed.

And, of course, that I, and most likely most of you too, have a lot farther to go on a personal level toward fixing the problems our society faces.

What I Think: About Participation Trophies

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Disclaimer:

Sorry folks, but this one probably isn’t going to be very funny either: For the sake of expediency in future posts, lets just agree that, when you see the title begins with “What I Think:”, you should just skip right on by if you’re just looking for a laugh. Hopefully I’ll find something to laugh at soon (after all, I do stupid stuff on a pretty regular basis). That said, if you proceed, you have no one to blame but yourself.

I hope you do read on, and I hope it makes you think (even if it just makes you think I’m a jackass.) Enjoy!

What I Think: About Participation Trophies:

A lot of people out there seem to think that one of the problems with America, one of the primary reasons our society seems to be circling the drain, one of the liberal travesties inflicted upon us by political correctness that has caused the manhood of our nation to whither, is participation trophies, and, as much as I hate to say it; I have to agree.

I’ve received my fair share of participation trophies; we all have. I was a kid in Little League before the advent of these horrific, priority-twisting, manhood-cheapening, touchy-feely symbols of the liberal mommy-state, but I’ve done the “fun runs” (talk about two words that should never be used together), and the charity events where everybody gets a t-shirt, and sometimes even a cheap medal) just for participating. You don’t have to win, or even place. You just have to get to the finish line before the organizers get bored with waiting and go home. Sometimes they even pass them out beforehand.

I’ve gone to college, where they give you free stuff all the time, just for being a student. There’s no GPA requirement, no minimum class position, hell, most of the time, you don’t really even have to be a student; you just have to be willing to stand in line to get whatever crap they’re giving away! Thanks for playing!!!

I was in the Air Force for 20 years, and trust me, the military is the gold standard for participation trophies – they just call ’em medals. Now I want to be perfectly clear here, not all military medals are mere participation trophies; the combat medals, Purple Heart, Bronze and Silver Stars, Congressional Medal of Honor, and many more are the real deal, and I have nothing but respect for the brave men and women who sacrificed so much on our behalf.

No, what I’m talking about are the Good Conduct Medals, the Longevity Ribbons, and the others that you get for basically showing up and not screwing up (too badly anyway), and that includes some of the important-sounding ones, like the USAF Global War On Terror Service Medal. Here is the criteria for that one, direct from the AF Personnel Center website.

Not only does the criteria specifically say, “Individuals must have participated in or served in support of the Global War on Terrorism-specified operations . . .” but read the last paragraph of the criteria; you don’t even have to have left the country, or faced any danger to qualify. You simply have to have participated somehow.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not belittling those medals either; I’m the recipient of several of them. The people who got them earned them doing vital jobs. It doesn’t change the fact that it is still basically a participation medal.

Today, when I got up, there was an email from the school, telling me I had been selected as the “Outstanding Student in English” for 2017 (I know, this is a long way to go for a little cheap self-congratulation, huh?). I skimmed it, and went on with my day. No big deal. I figured there were probably at least 10 of us who’d been selected.

I didn’t realize it was a big deal (and I’ll grant you that “big deal” is really subjective), until I got to work at the Writing Center, and my boss told me “Congratulations!”

I asked her, “For what?”

She was kind enough to explain to me that it really was a big deal (at least in the world of Richmond, Indiana academia – like I said, importance is subjective). I didn’t really know how to respond. Still don’t really. I don’t know how to accept accolades – I’ve never really had one.

The closest I’ve ever really come to being singled out for distinction (at least in a good way) was, ironically enough, in Little League. One of the coaches bought, every year, and out of his own pocket, two trophies (and these were the big, cool ones, not the tiny ones); one for his team’s MVP, and one for the player with the best batting average (or some similar accomplishment). The year I was on his team, he bought three trophies; I didn’t get the MVP trophy, nor was I eligible for the Batting Trophy.

Nope, my performance on his team had inspired him to purchase and award to me the Sportsmanship Trophy! He said he’d never seen a kid who was such a good sport, and that I had really impressed him. Yay me!

Now, I don’t want to downplay that trophy, it was really nice of him to recognize me like that, but trust me, as a 10- or 12-year old kid who worshiped Pete Rose, I didn’t want to be a good sport, I wanted to be a good baseball player. Well, you can’t always get what you want. At any rate, you get the idea, my entire life, including a career in the military distinguished only by it’s utter lack of distinction, has left me completely unprepared to accept any genuine recognition of excellence.

The numerous free t-shirts and various other “participant” awards, ribbons, and medals I’ve received over the years meant exactly that to me – just a nice reminder that I was a part of something bigger for a while.

I suppose it could be argued that the problem isn’t with the participation trophies – after all, 95% of all the kids who get them know their significance immediately, or quickly figure it out, and, if the remaining 5% need that sort of validation at that tender age, then it’s good that they get it – but that the problem lies with those who so vehemently oppose the idea of them; the people who think that because of their own, or their child’s, special skill with a stick or a ball, that their trophy’s significance is decreased by the participation trophies. That it makes them, or their kid, less special, less deserving of respect, recognition, or special treatment.

Because that’s what a trophy really comes down to isn’t it? Trophies should only go to stars. We all want to be stars, but if everyone is a star, then no one is. And we need stars, don’t we? If there were no stars with trophies or awards for “excellence” in sports, or music, or acting, or war, then who would all those masses of losers look up to?

It could also be argued that an equally fair solution to the problem would be to get rid of all the trophies; after all, which is more pitiful – the 10-year-old with a participation trophy, or the adult, clinging to his or her Little League/High School/College glory days with his or her trophy collection on the mantle? It could be argued that without all those loser “participants” then the stars wouldn’t have anything to compare their own excellence to, so how would they (and everyone else) know how special they are?

It could even be argued that really, it’s just a manufactured issue; an overly simple judas goat, meant to distract people from recognizing the very real, actual sources of the myriad problems with our modern society (and yes, I know that Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source. I’m the IU East 2017 Outstanding Student in English, for Pete’s sake!).

Nah, it’s probably just those damned participation trophies. We get rid of them, everything’ll be right as rain.

What I Think: About LGBT&Q Rights and Marriage Equality

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Disclaimer:

You (yes, you) should only read the following post if you are actually interested is finding out what I think about LGBT&Q rights and Marriage Equality. I’m going to warn you right off the bat – this is probably not going to be very funny (of course, on the other hand, it may be; I’m a pretty funny guy). If you’re just looking for a laugh, or you don’t care what I think, then just move right along. It’s okay, I won’t be hurt.

Why I’m Writing This:

More and more, lately, I find myself being questioned about why I believe many of the things I do. Frequently, it is by people who are already convinced that I’ve gone completely off the rails, and are less interested in what I think, and why, than they are in seeing how far away from the tracks they think I should be on I’ve gotten (these people, of course, generally believe I should be on the same tracks as them).

I’m not writing this for them because frankly, I think that they’re mostly just looking for a fight, not a discussion. I’m writing this for the others, those few friends I have who, although they may believe I’m wrong, still have enough respect for me to genuinely want to know why I believe all the crazy stuff that I believe, and those who don’t actually know me, but may want to know what I think.

I’m also not writing this to try to convince, or convert, anybody to my way of thinking. I’m just putting it out there in hopes that it will make people think. This will be the first of a series in which I address some of the common sources of division in our society, in hopes of, not only making you think, but of clearly and rationally stating my own position on these issues (sometimes it’s hard to make a case for something on the fly; that kind of conversation usually devolves into issues of “feelings”, without the availability of sources to back up a position or line of reasoning).

I figured I’d start with a fairly easy one; LGBT&Q Rights and Marriage Equality (gay marriage); not that it’s particularly easy, but it (to me anyway) is a little less emotionally charged.

To start with, I’m in favor of not only LGBT&Q rights (and for the sake of expediency, from here on out I’m just gonna call ’em gay rights, which I freely acknowledge is probably insensitive and politically incorrect, but I’m a lazy typist, and it’s my blog. I apologize for any hurt feelings this may cause), I’m in favor of equal rights for all. I believe in liberty.

For Reasons of Liberty:

Now, there are a lot of people, much smarter than I, who have done a lot of thinking about this stuff. Sadly, a lot of them (at least the ones I know of) are also a lot deader than I am, so I’ll just take this opportunity to share some of their thoughts with you:

John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty, said this (among other liberty-related stuff):

“the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others . . . Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

In other words, no harm, no foul – if it doesn’t hurt anybody else, it’s none of your business. Mill goes on to state expressly that this applies only to people, “in the maturity of their faculties,” i.e. adults who are capable of taking care of themselves. (it is a great book, full of a lot of pretty important thoughts on liberty, and what it means. I highly recommend it. You can probably find it online for free).

The preamble to the U.S. Constitution states:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The parts about establishing justice, securing the blessings of Liberty, and providing for the common defense can be applied directly to this issue.

Justice

Being LGBT or Q is not illegal. It follows then, that in the interests of justice, they are entitled to the same civil rights as I am. Instead, states and the federal government are introducing more and more legislation designed to specifically allow discrimination against them, mostly under the guise of protecting my religious freedom which frankly, needs no defense. The Constitution is all the protection I need.

Honestly, I really feel that if your relationship with God is so tenuous that it can be irreparably harmed by baking a wedding cake or arranging some flowers for two dudes’ wedding, then you’ve probably got bigger issues that you should be working on.

Here are a couple of articles for your consideration: Washington Post and LA Times. I want to point out that the LA Times piece is from the Opinion section, and should be considered as opinion, not fact, but it is still worthy of consideration.

Liberty

It seems to me that to encroach on any citizen’s or demographic’s liberties opens the door to encroaching on the liberty of all. After all, if we can deny rights and protection to LGBT&Q folks, then that just creates a road map for how to deny them to my group or yours should they ever become unpopular.

Defence

I believe that to deny gay folks (or anyone else, for that matter) their liberty harms not only them, but our country. A few years back, when they made it legal for gay folks to serve in the military, there were a lot of people who were convinced that it would destroy our war-fighting ability. Clearly, it hasn’t. Back in my day, of course, it was illegal for gay people to serve, and then we were subjected to the namby-pamby hypocrisy of Bill Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which basically said that gays could serve, as long as nobody knew they were gay.

The reasoning behind all that was that they were a security risk; if enemy agents found someone gay in the military, they could use that information to blackmail the gay service member into betraying classified information, or other treasonous acts. Not until 2010 did we face the fact that, if we removed the ban, we also removed the possibility of our enemies using that as leverage. By removing that ban, we actually made our country safer.

Of course, I can already hear the cries of “think of the children! We’ve got to protect the children!” I agree, we need to protect children; just not from gay folks. We need to protect them from pedophiles – there’s a difference, and here’s a link to a very informative paper on the subject: Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation. In case you didn’t take the time to read it, it basically cites a whole lot of studies which found no link between homosexuality and molesting children. The overwhelming majority of child molesters are just that – child molesters, with no sexual interest in adults of either sex.

For Reasons of Humanity:

To deny gay folks equal rights is to deny them their humanity; it tells them that they are less than fully human. Think about the damage that does to a person. To be told that your life is worth less than others, every day, in hundreds, if not thousands, of ways, both direct and indirect. That’s what happens every time a gay person’s partner is denied access to their hospital room because they’re “not family.” When they are rejected by society, by their own family. when they’re openly mocked, and all too frequently humiliated, beaten, and even killed. In fact, gay folks are way more likely to be the victims of hate crimes. Here’s a very informative NY Times article with links to FBI and Justice Departments stats and reports.

When they’re denied the right to marry, they are denied the same rights as straight folks, which seems even more ridiculous in these days of disposable marriages.

I had a good friend, who disagrees with me on a lot of these issues, ask me, “Why do they have to call it marriage?” The answer is simple; for the same reason that “Separate but Equal” didn’t work out for black folks.

I’ve never understood the idea that the existence of gay marriage somehow invalidates my own; the only people who can invalidate my marriage are me, and my wife, the long-suffering and wonderfully forgiving Jess. Two dudes or two chicks being married has no more effect on my marriage than two Muslims, or two Hindus, or two Catholics, or two Atheists, for that matter.

That same friend, who is a much better Christian, and human being, than me, brought up the biblical “marriage is between one man and one woman” argument. I countered that marriage in the bible often is one man and one woman, but it is also one man and two women (Jacob, Leah, & Rachel), one man and many women (Solomon), and apparently allowances were made for one man and one woman + one didn’t-have-any-choice-in-the-matter slave girl (Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar), just to name a few popular biblical variations on marriage. For that matter, were Adam and Eve even technically married?

I also don’t buy that whole “pastors will be forced to perform gay marriages against their will!” argument. Neither does Travis Weber, Director of the Center for Religious Liberty, a part of the Family Research Council, as conservative a bunch as you’re likely to find. He explains it much better than I could in this article, going into a lot of detail on the Constitutional protections for the clergy. He does, of course, only say that it’s not likely, and that it will probably be challenged in the courts, but what isn’t?

For Reasons of Religion:

I am a Christian. Now I know that there’s a lot of stuff in there that pretty clearly says don’t do gay stuff (at least as far as men are concerned. Oddly enough, women seem to have received a pass on this, perhaps to make up for all the other stuff they weren’t allowed to do), especially in Leviticus. However, there’s a lot of stuff in Leviticus that we no longer worry about. Things like: eating shellfish (Lev. 11:10-12), eating pork (Lev. 11:7,8), eating rabbit (Lev. 11:6), a whole chapter on female purification after childbirth (Lev. 12), and mistreating aliens (Lev. 19:33, 34) (of course, that’s a whole other post – bet you can’t wait), and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Now, I’m not being facetious (at least not too facetious), and I don’t want to turn this into a whole religious argument. Anyone who’s read any of my stuff can tell you that I’m not much of a theologian.

What I think, as a Christian, is that it is our duty to spread the word to everyone that God loves them, and spread the good news of his Grace and forgiveness. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God, and that the second greatest was to love one another. I’m pretty sure he meant that to be pretty much all-inclusive.

As far as is it possible for gay folks to be Christian, I believe it is. I know that in my little country church, there is gluttony, gossip, trouble-making, foul-mouthed taking-of-the-Lord’s-name-in-vain, pridefulness, lack of forgiveness, pettiness, anger, sloth, smoking, and drinking, pretty much the whole gamut of sin, and that’s just me. If the body is supposed to be a temple, then mine is the temple of doom. That’s why I’m there; I need Jesus. They might too, and, if I behave toward them, or treat them, in a way that pushes them farther from Jesus, then I’m gonna have to answer for that, and I’ve already got enough to answer for.

Anyway, that’s what I think, and I also think I’ve beaten this dead horse enough for now. I welcome your opinions and comments on this, even if you don’t agree with me. Like I said, I don’t expect you to.

Thanks for reading anyway!

Just When You Think You’ve Stuck the Landing: Life Happens

All About Me, Home Life, Pets, , , , ,

Life is weird, uncertain, and, more often than not, annoying. We all expect a certain amount of troubles, trials, and travails, but we generally expect to get through them and, we also expect a certain amount of calm after the storm ends. Not a lot, but at least enough time to catch our breath. Sometimes (usually) though, the universe and powers that be have other plans.

Take Tucker for example: Tucker is the name we’ve given to the newest addition to our apparently-endlessly-growing furry family. He’s a little beagle who turned up at our house last week; rail-thin from hunger, with claws so long they’d turned sideways, and with a pretty unbearable stench. He’d clearly been on his own for a while, and was equally clearly not good at it.

Now, both I and my wife, the lovely and compassionate Jess, both immediately realized, and verbally agreed that the last thing we needed was another dog. We’ve already got four dogs, five if you count Ralph the compound dog, and two of them were strays who were dumped. We’ve done our bit for the homeless dog population of Wayne county.

We both stated this emphatically, and with great conviction, and then I opened the gate and let him in, and Jess took him downstairs and gave him a bath and clipped his nails, and I fixed him a bowl of food. What can I say? We’re both soft touches when it comes to sad strays (I’m not complaining, that’s actually how I got Jess to take me in).

We both agreed however, that we weren’t keeping him. I got on the computer to put an ad in the paper, something that the local paper used to do for free. Guess what? Not any more! So, we called the animal shelter to see if anyone had called about a missing beagle.

Finally, we found a guy willing to take Tucker, and after a couple days with us, Tucker went to his new home. At the new home, he wasn’t allowed in the house, and was on a chain, which, apparently, he didn’t care for. This last Saturday, Tucker returned to us, just as smelly as before, but with a serious case of the runs added on.

Since the guy who had taken him never came looking for him, we figured he probably wasn’t all that attached to Tucker anyway, so we’ve sort of adopted Tucker (theoretically temporarily) while we look for a better permanent home for him.

Tucker was thrilled. He’s a timid little guy, and spent most of the first couple of days he was with us crying and panicking anytime Jess or I got up and moved around. Fortunately, Jess and I lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle, so he settled in pretty well. He learned the hard way to stay away from Elsie when she’s eating (his nose is healing nicely, by the way), and was actually starting to want to play with Mattie and Dude (who are kind of over-enthusiastic and scared the crap out of Tucker initially).

Yep, Tucker really thought he’d landed on his feet. The storm had passed, and he was safe. He’d found people to take care of him, other kids to play with, plenty of food, and a comfortable, warm home. Life was looking up. It was going to be nothing but kibble and fun forever!

Until yesterday. Yesterday, Tucker got no breakfast, new dad took him for a ride in the truck and left him with new friends. He wasn’t really thrilled about all this, and his trepidation proved to be justified when his new friends stuck him with a needle and he dozed off to wake up with no balls!

Talk about the universe yanking the rug out from under you. Actually it wouldn’t have been so bad if it had only been a rug. Then, to add insult to injury, new dad brought him home, and put this stupid cone on him so he couldn’t even kiss his own boo-boo (although frankly, “boo-boo” doesn’t really suit that sort of soul-crushing injury, does it? It’s not a skinned knee, or even a nipped nose).

Tucker is clearly less than thrilled with life’s current vicissitudes.

He spent most of yesterday afternoon just standing in one place for a while, looking sad. Then, he’d walk around a little bit, until the cone hit something, and he’d just stand there for a while. He spent about 30 minutes with his cone pressed up against my leg.

He seemed to think that the cone was a punishment for something. Think about that. He’s already had his balls cut off – through no fault of his own – and now he has to wear this embarrassing thing. He is one bummed little guy. The final blow came last night. He fell asleep standing up and fell over, which apparently brought an instant, and painful reminder of just how bad his day had been.

Does this cone make me look stupid? This was Tucker’s main activity yesterday.

He seems to be doing a little better today. His tail is wagging a little bit, but he’s clearly still not digging the cone.

Which brings me back to us (you and me, that is). We’ve all had similar experiences, when things are terrible, everything is going wrong, and there’s just no way things can get any worse. Then, just when we think we see a light at the end of the tunnel, it turns out to be an oncoming train. It’s sometimes even worse, when we think we’ve made it, and turn around to assess the past, to try to glean some meaning from our suffering, so we never even see the train coming.

I got some bad news from a friend of mine today, and I didn’t know what to tell him, other than I was sorry to hear it, and some lame comment about how I’ve found life to be largely just an ongoing source of failures, embarrassments, and humiliations, punctuated sporadically by minor personal triumphs, whiskey, and sex (which actually counts as a personal triumph in my book), and that sometimes the best you can do is to learn to embrace the awkward stupidity that is life (this may be why very few people ever ask me for advice, counsel, or comfort).

I know that usually, in my experience anyway, that feeling that I’ve stuck the landing on something is almost immediately followed by a usually very public faceplant. It just seems inevitable. However, I take comfort in the fact that, just like (no matter how much he fails to understand it, for very understandable reasons)Tucker has the extremely humane and compassionate Jess (and also me) looking out for him, I myself have, not only Jess, but an even more infinitely compassionate owner (not to get all spiritually/religiousy on you, but it’s what I believe)looking out for me.

No matter who you are, life is going to throw a lot of crap at you. Some of it happens for a reason, and some of it’s just bad luck. The trick, I think, is to learn to laugh at it (as much as possible), to be grateful for the good things, and to remember that, no matter how bad it gets, at least you’ve still got your balls (hey, listen, if you haven’t learned by now that you shouldn’t look to me for life-advice or general wisdom/philosophy of any kind, then it’s high time you did).

Reading Rousseau: The Problem With Education

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Culture, Politics, Politics & Culture, , , , , ,

I am currently writing a book, set 200 years in the future, after the near-total splintering of society following the election of a narcissistic, childish, manipulative con man/businessman to the American Presidency. The story takes place in two bordering countries: the remains of the U.S.A., and Bernietopia, i.e. the northeastern part of the U.S. It’s a lot of fun to write, and pretty funny too.

Now, the parts that take place in the U.S.A. are really pretty easy to write – I’m basically just laying down the worst-case scenario, based on the direction the country seems to be going (to me, anyway, and it’s my book, so there). The Bernietopia parts, which were the first parts I wrote, as a semester project in a class on American Utopian Literature, are proving much more difficult: see, in these parts, I’m trying to actually articulate a theory, or philosophy, of government which is not only true to the American Dream and the fundamental American Spirit that I still believe in, and faithful to the intent and spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, but also incorporating other sound principles of society and justice (many of which also influenced the thinking and philosophy of our own founding fathers).

So I’m doing a lot of reading on political philosophy, which brings me to the point of this post: the problem with education is that it never ends. It can stop, but it can never really end. No matter how much you read, there is always something more to be learned, on any given subject. Take the research I’ve been doing for this book. It started out as a school project, so I started with the material we’d studied in class: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Laura Ingalls Wilder, among others. Then I moved on to Thomas Carlyle, whom I was introduced to in a class on Victorian Literature. I was surprised to discover that Carlyle, although he seems to have been a pretty staunch capitalist and industrialist, had some very important insights and thoughts that really influenced my thinking.

Warning: The following paragraph is basically just a list of stuff Moon has read lately – feel free to skip ahead if you’d like – sincerely, Moon’s Conscience:

Then, I moved on to Thomas Paine, and his pamphlets The Rights of Man, The Age Of Reason, and Common Sense (a lot of good, thought-provoking stuff there), as well as The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson (oddly enough, not a lot of help), and Patrick Henry’s Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech, as well as The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels (I’ve gotta admit, I was a little leery of ordering that one – don’t want to end up on a list – but figured I really oughta read it and see what all the fuss is about), and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. And you know what I discovered after reading all that stuff? That there was a whole lot more to read.

Warning 2: the following 2 paragraphs are just more of the same – still sincerely, Moon’s Conscience:

I’ve added Ben Franklin’s Autobiography and Other Writings, The John Locke Collection, John Jay’s The Federalist Papers, The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, more stuff by Patrick Henry, and Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience and Other Essays to my library, and still have to order The Complete Works of Jeremy Bentham, as well as the works of John Stuart Mill, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s 1984, and Animal Farm (and those are just the ones I know of right now).

I also have to get back into Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, G.K. Chesterton, and the Bible. First, of course, I have to make it through The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Okay, I think he’s finished now – You’re welcome – Moon’s Conscience

I hope you understand that I’m not listing all these books and writers to make you think I’m smart or anything: one of the things I learned in college is that education won’t make you smarter (and any of you who actually know me, will know that I am living proof of that). However, I do believe that education can make you better – if you let it; if you’re willing to follow where it leads you, and you’re willing to keep an open mind, and actually think about what you’re learning.

No, the point of listing all this stuff is to illustrate (again) the point of this essay: that the problem with education is that it never ends.

I am also not just talking about formal education: for the first 48 years of my life, I was largely self-educated (no offense to my grade- and high-school teachers, it’s not your fault, it’s all mine), and many of the smartest and wisest people I know are also self-educated, and they, like me, continue to further their own education completely on their own. But I think that they would agree with me that education, whether formal or self-directed, not only never ends, but that it’s exhausting.

There’s just so much to learn – about everything, and we’ve all only got so much time. We’ve all got things to do: work, play, raise the kids, chase the wife (or husband) around the house (preferably in an amorous way), watch a little TV, keep up with the news, waste time on the Facebook, etc. It can be hard to make time for learning, but deep down, we need it, and you know what?

It’s worth it.

The stuff I’m reading right now is not easy to read. Those old dudes had a labyrinthine way with words. I frequently find myself having to go back and re-read something because by the time I get to the end of a sentence, I’ve forgotten what he’s talking about (sometimes I have to re-read 2 or 3 times – see what I mean about college not making you smarter?), but it’s worth it, because you frequently come across gems like this:

“by equality, we should understand, not that the degrees of power and riches are to be absolutely identical for everybody; but that power shall never be great enough for violence, and shall always be exercised by virtue of rank and law; and that, in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself:¹ which implies, on the part of the great, moderation in goods and position, and, on the side of the common sort, moderation in avarice and covetousness.”

¹If the object is to give the state consistency, bring the two extremes as near to each other as possible; allow neither rich men nor beggars. These two estates, which are naturally inseparable; are equally fatal to the common good; from the one come the friends of tyranny, and from the other tyrants. It is always between them that public liberty is put up to auction; the one buys, and the other sells.

I think we have a tendency to think that the problems that plague our society and world currently are somehow new, or that they are something someone has made up to cause trouble, or that, (if we are smart enough to realize that some ((most)) of our problems are at least centuries old) since something (like wealth inequality) is still a problem, then there just clearly isn’t anything we can do about it, at least as a society. Then you read something like that, and have to realize that yes, it’s been a problem for centuries, and that perhaps the reason it still is, is that no society has ever really even tried to fix it, at least not seriously.

Warning: Look out, he’s starting to philosophize – don’t say you weren’t warned – Moon’s Conscience:

When it comes to things like that, a lot of folks like to fall back on the old, “well, you can’t legislate morality” argument. The thing is though, we can, and do, legislate morality all the time. That is largely the purpose of laws: to make immoral things illegal so that 1) people won’t do ’em, and 2) so that the ones that do can be punished. Killing is immoral. Stealing is immoral. Perjury is immoral.

Now I’ll grant you that there is a difference between religious morality and societal morality. That’s why only three of the Ten Commandments are actually reflected in our laws (except in some southern states of course). The founding fathers were wise enough to realize it was best to stick to legislating against things that could be proven and, if truth be told, ignoring those commandments which they themselves had a proclivity for breaking (I’m looking at you, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin).

But I digress: the point is that we often insist on legislating morality – hence the pro-life movement.

Okay, it should be safe now – Moon’s Conscience

Which brings me to another problem with education: it has no limits, no boundaries. You never know where it’s going to take you.

Nope, sorry – Moon’s Conscience

Studying one thing can suddenly branch out into something completely different. The hardest part of The Social Contract for me to understand was a bit in which Rousseau suddenly started using math to prove his point: I am not a math guy. I just don’t get it. When I look at math, or even just numbers, really, my brain glazes over, and I just go into a kind of trance (and not the cool kind where your spirit animal pops up and takes you to hang out with Jim Morrison, but the other kind, where you suddenly snap out of it and you have no idea what just happened, but you’re not happy, and Donald Trump is suddenly President). Math is hard.

Or you’re studying literature, and all of a sudden, you’re reading non-fiction about the industrial revolution, and the rise of the labor movement.

Or you’re studying military history, and suddenly discover that if the economy hadn’t taken a giant dump on itself in 1873, then Custer might have died of old age, and the history of our relations with Native Peoples might have been very different over the last 150 years (okay, probably not, but an intriguing possibility).

The point of this is simply that everything is related: nothing exists in a vacuum, it’s all intertwined; Literature, Philosophy, Science, Math, the past, the present, the future, morality, religion, truth, lies, good, evil, war, peace, terror, joy, everything you can imagine, all twisted and tied together like some sort of extremely complex DNA of Life, and every new thing you learn unravels just a little bit more of it, and you gradually see, and kind of understand it all just a tiny bit more. It’s fascinating, and scary, and frequently annoying, all at the same time.

Finally, what may actually be the biggest actual problem with education: There is often an uncontrollable urge to share what you’ve learned. No matter how you resist, there’s just some part of you that says, “Hey, I should tell this to EVERYBODY!!!!!” regardless of whether EVERYBODY!!!!! cares, or is even curious or not (chances are they’re not). The next thing you know, you’re trying to think of gimmicks to make reading what you have to say at least somewhat palatable.

Screw you fat boy – Moon’s Conscience

See what I mean?

Which leads me to the last big problem with education (okay, not really, but transitions are hard): Education, as unending, confusing, and unlimited as it is, is important. Really, really, really important. Too important to be used as a pawn in the endless political gamesmanship that our government seems to prefer over actually governing.

 

A Few Thoughts On: The Dakota Pipelines

Culture, Politics, Politics & Culture, , , , , ,

As you may have noticed (or may not have), I haven’t posted anything in awhile. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to: I have. There really are just two reasons why I haven’t.

Reason #1: I’m working on a book. It’s a satire that looks at the U.S.A. in about 200 years, based on my own extrapolation of the worst-case scenario springing from a Trump presidency. It is a LOT of fun to write.

Reason #2: I’ve just been too pissed off. I find it kind of hard to be funny or thoughtful when I’m angry and, while I would dearly love to just come unglued here and just really cut loose, that’s not what I want this blog to be about. I’m not here to make you angry, not here to start a fight. I’m here to try to make you laugh, and/or make you think. While there are people who are really good at venting entertainingly, generally it seems they end up just venting to the choir which, while entertaining, isn’t really very productive.

Anyway, that’s why this blog is called Moonsthoughts, instead of Moonsrants.

But enough of that. Today, someone asked me what I think about the Dakota pipelines so, like it or not, I’m gonna tell you.

I’m against them: vehemently against them, and for much the same reasons I’m against fracking, and drilling for oil in National Parks. Because it is stupid, short-sighted, destructive, greedy, and keeps not only us, but the world, reliant on what I think is becoming outdated and obsolete technology that is doing much more harm to the environment than it is benefiting anyone (except the rich, that is).

Point 1.

The Dakota pipelines will run under both the Missouri and the Platte rivers, and through the Oglalla aquifer, all of which are major sources of water in the west. Oil pipelines leak. If the Dakota pipelines leak, which is pretty much inevitable at some point in the future, they could contaminate the drinking water of much of the west. In 2016, there were 297 pipeline incidents deemed “significant”. To be significant, one or more of the following conditions has to be met: https://hip.phmsa.dot.gov/analyticsSOAP/saw.dll?Portalpages   

  1. Fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization
  2. $50,000 or more in total costs, measured in 1984 dollars
  3. Highly volatile liquid releases of 5 barrels or more or other liquid releases of 50 barrels or more
  4. Liquid releases resulting in an unintentional fire or explosion

In 2016, those incidents amounted to 16 fatalities, 80 injuries, and cost $273,376,637.00, and 2016 was a fairly average year (1997-present).

The original route for at least one of the pipelines was changed, partly because of the risk of contaminating the water supply of Bismark, N.D. Now Bismark wasn’t the only reason for re-routing the pipeline, but the other reasons were environmentally or safety-based as well: http://www.snopes.com/dapl-routed-through-standing-rock-after-bismarck-residents-said-no/  If you don’t trust Snopes, here’s the Bismark Tribune’s story on it: http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/pipeline-route-plan-first-called-for-crossing-north-of-bismarck/article_64d053e4-8a1a-5198-a1dd-498d386c933c.html It is also notable, I think, that the Congressional Research Service noted that, “In general, however, Bakken crude oil is much more volatile than other types of crude.” It is definitely not the sort of thing I would want running through my water supply (although I’ll grant you that there is every chance that there is already a pipeline running through my water supply somewhere – I’m not happy about that either).

Anyway, the point is that pipelines leak, and that running them under or through the major sources of water for the Great Plains seems pretty freaking stupid to me.

Point 2:

They are, by and large, unnecessary. It’s not like all that oil is just being stored until the pipelines are built. Those oil fields have been active since the 1950’s, and they’ve got the oil to market, enough to make Harold Hamm, the first guy to lease those fields, a billionaire.

Now, I will grant you that moving oil via pipeline may be safer and more economical than moving it by truck. In fact, here’s a Forbe’s article that shows just how hard it can be to decide which form of transport is safer: Forbes article One of the things I thought was significant in that article was that in two of the three short-answer scenarios, pipelines came in second-worst, and in the chart farther down in the story (which is taken from the Congressional Research Service), pipelines were again the silver-medal winner for most oil spilled in all three time periods charted (although it did tie for second-worst in one). In fact, rail transport looks significantly safer (of course, it’s probably not nearly as cheap).

Point 3:

I don’t believe all that crap about the pipelines creating 28,000 new jobs, especially “good construction jobs”. A state department report estimated that it would create either 4,000 or 2,000 construction jobs, depending on whether it was built in 1 year or 2. Granted there would be jobs created to support the construction workers, but how many of those would be left when the pipelines are completed and require only about 50 people to operate it? That’s the whole point of the pipeline: TO SAVE MONEY!!!!! Of course, I could be wrong. God knows that the oil industry is famed for its willing to sacrifice for the good of the country and its citizens.

Point 4:

Finally, oil is on its way to becoming largely obsolete, or at least it should be: with the advances being made in renewable energy like solar and wind (they’re also finding ways of generating energy using the ocean tides, and even electricity-producing plankton. Don’t ask me how it works, I’m an English geek, not a science wonk), if we made a national effort, like the one we made to get to the moon, we could significantly reduce our independence on oil, regardless of whether it’s foreign or domestic. That means less pollution, better national security (no more worries about losing our sources of energy, and as far as terrorism goes, its a lot less damaging to have a windmill or field of solar panels broken or blown up than a refinery or pipeline), less power in the hands of utilities and power companies, and more power in the hands of the people (literally and figuratively).

Of course, it’s naive to think we’ll be able to get off of oil completely, at least any time soon. As far as I know, there is currently no electric motor that can push a truck or a freight train (although I read that Germany is trying out a hydrogen-powered passenger train on one line, with plans to expand it if it works out). It seems to me though, that a concerted effort to switch to renewable energy wherever possible and feasible (such as personal transportation, residential power needs, etc.) will be much more beneficial for us individually and collectively. As it is, it seems like we are dragging our heels while other nations are taking the lead, and making the progress that we could and should be making.

But wait! I hear you say, “What about all the poor oil, gas, and coal workers who will lose their jobs?” Yes, I answer, that is a valid concern. However, I don’t think that blacksmiths, farriers, liveries and other horse-based industries were all that excited about the advent of the automobile. Look around you now. How many of those jobs still exist? Basically none. However, the advent of new technology has pretty much always produced new jobs to replace those rendered obsolete. Another consideration is automation. As industries, including the fossil fuel industries become more and more automated, how many of those oil, gas, and coal workers are going to lose their jobs anyway?

We are, I believe, on the cusp of a technical revolution that will change the world just as much as the industrial revolution did. Resistance is not only futile, in the case of fossil fuels, it is also stupid.

Conclusion:

Well, that’s pretty much it as far as my thoughts on the Dakota pipelines in particular, and fossil fuels in general, go. You may have noticed that I failed to mention anything about the tribal lands or ancestral burying grounds. To me, that is more of a matter of sentiment. I absolutely respect the protesters in N. Dakota, and what they’re doing: they have my full support (whatever that’s worth), because I believe that they are absolutely correct, and I am amazed at the resilience, courage, and restraint they’ve shown in persevering through not only unbelievably harsh winter conditions, but also unbelievably unjust and un-American abuse at the hands of law enforcement. There can be no justification for using water cannons, tear gas, concussion grenades, or bullets (whether rubber or lead), on peaceful protesters standing up for their rights. It is damned un-American, in my opinion, and a national shame.

Even so, like I said, the tribal lands and burial ground thing is basically a matter of sentiment, and sentiment is not going to win this fight. We have a long tradition of screwing over Native people for profit. Sentiment is not going to stop it. I’m hoping that reason will.

Finally, feel free to let me know what you think. I always welcome comments and civil discussion. As always, thanks for reading!

Ordinary, Red-Neck Indiana Farmer Defies Expectations, Finds Solution to Most of World’s Problems

Culture, Politics & Culture, Religion, , , , , , ,

My church is a pretty typical Indiana country church; it varies anywhere from pretty conservative to very conservative. A large portion of our congregation are veterans, and we have a large number of our children who are either currently serving in the military, or waiting for graduation to leave for basic training. We have a lot of farmers, and most of us who aren’t farmers grew up on farms.

It is home to a lot of ordinary people, but also has more than its fair share of characters; you know what I mean – people who, despite their seeming ordinariness, are just a bit skewed. They are the tellers of tall tales, or the basis for them. A few weeks ago, during the prayer request time, one of them stood up.

Now, if your church is like mine, most of the time, folks with a prayer request just raise their hand, and briefly share it when called upon by the preacher. Not this guy. I always look forward to this guy talking, because he doesn’t just make an announcement or a request, he always has a story, and I love stories. I’m going to share this one with you as close to exactly as I can remember it:

Larry’s Prayer Request:

Well . . . Shirley and I were at the Dayton Mall the other day, and she was off shoppin’, and I was lookin’ around, like I do, and I seen this woman sitting on a bench with one o’ them scarf things on her head. Now you know me, I like to talk to the girlies, so I went up and asked her did that thing have something to do with her religion.

She looked a little scared, but said yes, she was a Muslim. Well, we got to talkin’ and it turned out that she was from Iraq. She’d been here seven years, and still talked to her family back home every day on the phone. Now ain’t that somethin’?

I asked her how she liked it here, and she said she loved it. She couldn’t believe all the opportunities there were here. She said right now, she was working three jobs, and had just started her own business, and was trying to get it goin’. She said she didn’t have no opportunities like this for her back in Iraq. She just kept goin’ on and on about what a wonderful country this was.

I asked her about her family, and she said she worried about them all the time, and was tryin’ to save up money to bring more of them over here. She said a lot of them had been killed in all the fighting over the years, especially the men. She’d got pretty teary-eyed talkin’ about that, and I asked her if it’d be okay if I put her family on the prayer list at church.

She said, but aren’t you a Christian? And I said, well yeah, but it really sounded like her family could use all the prayers they could get. Well, that little gal started in cryin’ for real, and give me a big hug, and said yes, that’d be fine, and thank you very much, that would be wonderful. Then she told me to wait, and she run over to this little store, I don’t know if she worked there or not, but she bought up a big bunch of stuff, mostly for girl’s hair, flowers with clips, and the like, and run back over to me and gave ’em to me and said they were for the children in our congregation.

Well, about this time, Shirley come back, and seen this girl a’cryin’, and wanted to know what I’d done, so I told that gal good luck, and I hoped everything worked out okay for her and her family, and we got on out of there. So I want to put her and her family in Iraq on the prayer list. It don’t matter that they’re Muslims, they’re people, and they need the Lord’s help as much as anybody.

So we did.

It strikes me that Larry, an ordinary, redneck, Indiana farmer has found the solutions to much of the world’s problems. I don’t think that Larry’s offer to put Muslims on our prayer list is really that far out of the box. What is unusual is that Larry, unlike the rest of us, is less afraid of appearing foolish than most of the rest of us, and willing to speak openly and frankly with people differently than him, just to satisfy his curiosity about people. If that makes him a fool, then he’s God’s fool, which makes him wiser than most of us.

Note that he didn’t try to convert her, he showed her what a Christian is. He didn’t tell her she didn’t belong, he listened to her. He didn’t try to defend the violence that has cost her so much of her family, he sympathized with her. He didn’t project his fears onto her because of her appearance, he showed her his heart, and in doing so, maybe changed her perception of people like himself. I’m glad to be part of a church that’s home to a character like Larry; A character of character.

We could all learn a lesson from this ordinary, redneck, Indiana farmer, and, if we did, then we might start breaking down the walls that divide us, and maybe make a start on ushering in an age of understanding, empathy, and understanding; three things that really seem to have fallen out of fashion lately. Just a thought.

My Dog Eats Poo: A Disgusting Allegorical Tale

Culture, Politics, Politics & Culture, , , , ,

Our current oldest dog, Elsie, is a sweetie; she’s the princess of our little doggie family. She’s an English Springer Spaniel which, for my money, is one of the most beautiful breeds of dog. She is also probably the smartest dog we have. Now, at thirteen, she’s almost blind, and pretty much deaf (although the deafness seems to come and go a little bit, depending on what you’re saying to her), and fairly constantly confused. She spends most of her days napping on the couch, although, due to her arthritis, she frequently needs help getting up there. Even though she’s not the cute little puppy she used to be, everybody still loves Elsie. There’s just one problem: she eats poo. She seems to like it best when the weather is cold (poocicles!), the colder the better (crunchy poo!), although she doesn’t turn up her nose at it when the weather is warm either (gummy poo!).

Elsie, the Princess of our little doggie family

There’s nothing like seeing this beautiful little dog wandering around the yard, and then she looks up at you, and she looks like she’s doing an imitation of Winston Churchill, with a big ol’ poo stogie hanging out of her mouth as she enthusiastically gnaws on it. It’s kind of funny, but disgusting, and no matter how we try to keep the yard clean, with four dogs, there’s always some out there. It also doesn’t help that two of the four are big dogs with consistently impressive output. At least she’s not a big licker; trust me, nobody wants puppy kisses from Elsie.

The weird thing is that she’s a picky eater, and getting pickier every day. We’ve got her on special dog food formulated for older dogs, and she ate it for a while, and then just stopped. For a couple of days, we just couldn’t get her to eat. Finally, my wife, the beautiful and compassionate Jess, started mixing canned dog food in with Elsie’s kibble, and she started eating again.

She’s the same way with her medicine; she just pretty much refuses to take it. She’s on two different types of pills, and wants nothing to do with either of them. She would take them from Jess (well who wouldn’t?), so it was no big deal for a while, but when Jess went back to work, I had to give them to her, and she wasn’t having any of it. For a while, I could stuff the pills into chunks of hot dog, but she got wise to that; she’d chew up the hot dog, spit the pills out, and then swallow the hot dog.

This caused numerous problems because, for one thing, at this point, the pills smelled like hot dog, so I had to get to them before the other dogs (who seem to believe they are perpetually being starved) scarfed them down, and secondly, now, the pills were all slimy and hard to get hold of, but by the time I caught Elsie (who knew what was coming, and still moves pretty fast for an old dog), they had become spit-glued to my hand, so when I finally got her jaws pried open, the damned pills wouldn’t come off of my fingers. So there I was, having the thumb I was using to keep her mouth open gnawed through, while trying to scrape the pills off my finger with her teeth, without dropping them out of her mouth. It was a traumatic experience for both of us, and there were some days when she just didn’t get her pills.

Meatloaf seemed to solve the problem, at least until the leftovers ran out, but to be honest, I kind of resented having to save the meatloaf leftovers to pack her pills in (I love her, but I also love cold meatloaf sandwiches), and cooking an entire meatloaf just for her seemed like going just too far. I tried just mixing her pills in with her food, but she would eat around them. Trying to keep her comfortable and alive is no easy task.

For now, we’ve solved the problem with peanut butter; we stick the pills in a big glob of it, and stick it to the side of her food bowl. That’s worked for a couple of weeks, but this morning, when she’d finished breakfast, sure enough, there were the pills, spit-glued to the bowl, licked clean of peanut butter. I don’t know what we’ll do if the peanut butter stops working. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve actually thought of going out to the yard, and sticking them into some poo. Hopefully it won’t come to that. Also, I’m not sure she wouldn’t just eat the poo and spit the pills out. It’s really kind of disturbing. She sees the yard as one great big smorgasbord, greedily scarfing down all the recycled dog food she can find, but the stuff she needs, the stuff that will keep her alive and relatively healthy, she will go to any length to avoid.

It seems to me that she approaches food with the same attitude that we humans approach reality. More and more, we seem to seek out the reality we want, the reality that tastes good to us, no matter how shitty it might actually be (and a lot of that poo is really shitty).

For at least a year now, we, as a nation, have been gorging ourselves on an all-you-can-stomach poo buffet, with no sign of slowing down, much less stopping. We schlerp it up on the Facebook and Twitter, on the radio and TV, even go hunting for wilder and more rarified varieties in the untamed jungles of the internet. We just can’t get enough, or at least not enough with our packaging preference (after all, poo is just poo. A dog turd is a dog turd, whether it’s dressed up to suit the purposes of the right or the left). Plus, with electronic poo, with brain poo, there’s always plenty to go around, so we can not only share our favorite poo with all our friends, we can also inflict it on our enemies (’cause that’ll show ’em!). Besides, you know how they say we only use like 5% of our brains (although personally, I think that’s a high estimate for much of the world’s population), so we clearly have lots of poo storage available. Let’s shovel some more in!

Most of the time, it’s not even specific poo, it’s just broad, generic, generalized poo. So much of it is “liberals all do this” or “Conservatives all think that” or “all protesters want to destroy America” or “all politicians are corrupt” (actually, this is one of my own favorites. That’s why I keep using the term “we”).

Granted, sometimes it’s kind of funny – every time I see one of those “shares” that says “Watch Bill O’Reilly DESTROY Obama!” or “Rachel Maddow CRUSHES Mitch McConnell with this argument!”, I get a visual in my head of the allegedly “DEMOLISHED” party exploding, or melting like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz, which is kinda fun, except it never really happens. They’re never even slowed down, much less destroyed or demolished (That’s one of the problems with the Facebook & Twitter: It gets used by a lot of people who either don’t know what words mean, or just don’t care).

But really, what are our options? Oh sure, there are books we could read, books by great thinkers and writers, who’ve really studied the world & what it means to be human, what it means to be a citizen of the nation or the world, who’ve spent a lot of time trying to answer the big questions, and of course, reading those books might make us wiser and smarter, but isn’t it just easier, more efficient, and just tastier to our brains to just trust the makers of memes read that stuff, digest it, and poop out the important parts? It’s really like being on a diet. Reading Thomas Carlyle or Thomas Paine or Voltaire is just going to turn us into fatheads (especially Carlyle – that guy never used one word when ten would do); it’s just too much. Besides, reading books might make us think, and dammit, we’re Americans! Thinking didn’t make this country great! Getting out and doing stuff made this country what it is today (granted, genocide, slavery, exploitation of immigrants, women, and minorities are some of the things we got out and did, but you’ve gotta take the good with the bad, right?)!

Stuffing ourselves on pre-digested, pre-packaged, intellectual poo leaves lots of brain-room for remembering sports, movie, or book trivia, or to remember all the passwords to our accounts on the Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, and all the rest (because if we can’t remember our passwords, how are we going to get our yummy intellectual excrement).

Reading and thinking is really just too much like taking our medication or eating healthy; yes, we all know it’s probably better for us, but who has the time? We’ve gotta get out and do stuff – although “getting out and doing stuff” seems to involve a lot more video games, Netflix, and watching other people doing stuff on TV, but why argue semantics? The point is: We’re Americans! We eat Poo! It doesn’t matter whether it’s greasy fast food for our bodies, or intentional misinformation for our brains, we’re apparently not gonna stop.

So there!