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May 2003

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Police masquerade as FBI to question high school student about her blog.  The way she tells the story, she had the savvy to through them out based on her work as a privacy advocate.  On the other hand, she pulled down her blog.  But how much courage can you expect of a 17 year old?  I do wonder about questioning a minor without informing her parents.  Pulling minors right from a suspected crime is one thing, but a pre-planned questioning ought to require notification of the parents.

Barbara Streisand suing some environmental activists because their photos of the California coastline happen to include her mansion.  The married couple looks like your typical strange California kind of people, which should be Barbara Streisand's kind of people.  And they do have the guts to keep their website up.

     Here's the section of the website with photos of Morro Bay.  I'm so pleased with these pictures and with the panarama photos I wrote about the other day.  You can't go home again... but in this amazing multimedia age you can have access to some really great pictures.

http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2579096p-2393565c.html

http://www.msnbc.com/local/ksby/M300005.asp

http://www.californiacoastline.org/

http://www.adelman.com/

"We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion."

Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 121:39

As U.S. troops secure Iraq, a man emerged from hiding 21 years between the walls of his mother's house.  His mother said, "I feel as if I had just given birth to him again."  And well she has, after 21 years of labor.

Lawrence Otis Graham has written a manual about the black upper class, Our Kind of People.  Know the right clubs, the rights schools, the right religion.  Know the people who controlled black society... once upon a time.  I grew up visiting the white upper class, and Graham's stories are all very familiar.  I know about the people who won't go to certain resorts any more because entertainers and athletes go there.  There is a certain stability to knowing exactly where you stand.

     But in general, even rich people aren't immune to the draw of wealth and fame.  It may be fun to sniff at entertainers and athletes, but you can't enjoy snubbing them if they aren't even around.  Fortunately the social turmoil that is America, with more regional and socio-economic mobility than ever, doesn't allow anyone to stay in power for very long.  Because one thing the rich are definitely not immune to is becoming poor.

     What I really like about this book is that you can see how Graham himself is torn between the stability of elite values and the turmoil of American values.  On the other hand, he likes the values that the elite preserves.  He is fully aware of the intelligence and ambition he has inherited from that culture.  And yet he knows very well that new money buys the same things as old money, and that a man is free to marry white if he happens to fall in love, and that the quality of a person isn't about what his parents did with their lives but about what he does with his life.

    And for anyone who wants to be surprised that black society has been fragmented and cruel just like white society has been, and like our combined society will continue to be, I refer you to principle introducing today's topic.

As the Catholic sex-abuse scandal dragged on, one of the things I thought was that it was a bit of a scapegoat issue.  Childhood sex abuse is incredibly common- why do we cling to our shock at where it turns up?  More households contain an abuse victim than contain a dog.  Who says, "Oh my!  There's a guy on that street with a dog!"  Yet we're amazed to find out that guy on that street abused a kid.

     So now there's sex-abuse in the Jewish community.  Oh yeah, never knew a Jew who owned a dog.  Now let me ask you a question, do you pet a stranger's dog, or do you pet a dog from someone you know really, really well?  When we're done chancing down every little group, then can we face the fact that sex abuse is a part of our society and get real?

     Once all the religious leaders and all the teachers and every other sort of professional is bound up in rules, the main child abusers (relatives and close family friends) are still going to be out there and are still going to be protected by our culture.  I don't know the answer to that problem, but I know that all this pretending and silliness doesn't get us very far.

     And a little media criticism:  The article from Newsday in the link above is split about 25/525 in text (the other 25/25 is some hand-wringing and some concrete steps to improve the situation in the future)- a guy who abused one boy and a guy who abused many, many girls.  The media just loves all these lurid stories about attacking boys.  Ever hear of a Catholic priest who had sex with an underage girl?!  Yet sexual assault on females is more than three times more common than sexual assault on males.

     I'm not saying that the boys should be ignored, I'm just saying that this is yet one more example of how we are playing & toying with the issue.  All this hand-wringing and fretting about is not the kind of powerful honesty that would be needed to shift a major entrenched part of our social structure.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2938998.stm

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-rabbi0527,0,3888512.story?coll=ny%2Dtop%2Dheadlines

Microchipped dog used to identify owner.  You've heard of microchip identification for pets (get them!!).  In this case, the dog was found with a disoriented elderly women.  Woman and dog were successfully returned to their family.

http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2567244p-2383121c.html

Ever wonder why those tiled fountains in California have decorative squiggles?  Because a Christians interacted with Muslims in medieval Spain they copied the Arabic script that decorated the Mosques.  Unable to actually read Arabic, they just copied the essence of the design.  What most fascinated me about The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain was how those long ago interacts had such a tangible impact on the surroundings of my life.  I grew up immersed in Californiano tradition with those distinctive fountains everywhere, even in the background of my bridal photographs.

     The Ornament of the World is worth reading for an understanding of the cultural treasures that the world inherited from those days in Medieval Spain.  The subtitle, on the other hand, is laughable.  Even Harold Bloom took a shot at it in the forward to the book (I'm not sure I've ever seen a forward include an insult of the book it is introducing.).  "Tolerance" emerged with success as it usually does- when everyone chucks their religions and their differences to the wind and intermarry and carry on in increased debauchery.  And, as usual, tolerance isn't very tolerant anyway- as powers shift Christians and Jews and Muslims are by turn repressed and exiled, ending in the final exile of the Muslims and suppression of the Jews.

     It is somewhat interesting to read just how tolerance fails.  Most commonly it is by outside radicals, who haven't lived with the "other" as friend and neighbor, that come in and stir up the pot.  Radical Muslims from the center of Arabia and radical Christian Crusaders from England.  Not much has changed in 1,900 years.

Just before Gulf War II, the Prophet of the Mormon church gave a short speech on "War and Peace." It sets out the principles of a religious people on the bring of war in simple terms.  What are a people of peace, in a democratic nation, supposed to do in the days leading to war?

     President Hinckley says, "This places us in the position of those who long for peace, who teach peace, who work for peace, but who also are citizens of nations and are subject to the laws of our governments.  Furthermore, we are a freedom-loving people, committed to the defense of liberty wherever it is in jeopardy.  I believe that God will not hold men and women in uniform responsible as agents of their governments in carrying forward that which they are legally obligated to do.  It may even be that He will hold us responsible if we try to impede or hedge up the way of those who are involved in a contest with forces of evil and repression."

      Read the full text here.  

While looking for the tile link for the comments above, I found these darling miniature table-top Spanish tile fountains.  I also found a site of panorama's of historic California Spanish Missions and other landmarks, including the creek next to the mission in San Luis Obispo..  Really, its made me homesick... or less homesick, I'm not sure which.  It's amazing what a panorama does to a flat picture to really make it seem like you are there.

http://www.lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-353-27,00.html

http://www.mysticaldragon.com/specfoun.html

http://www.virtualguidebooks.com/ThematicLists/SpanishMissions.html

In World War II, captured American soldiers suspected being Jewish were put in a camp connected with the death camp Buchenwald. PBS presents their story this week, and in a very well done multimedia presentation.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/berga/index.html

Why is it that every couple that manages to end up in the papers is affianced?  Even when the facts indicate nothing more than a hooking-up of some level?  In this case, the couple was surely not affianced in the first place.  Affiance indicates a pledge to get married, often signified in our culture by "a ring and a date".  The guy was on the run- he certainly wasn't going to show up at the magistrate's to get married.  Plus he's still married to someone else.  The woman apparently pretty much has her life together, aside from the bit of insanity in having anything to do with this man and claiming that he really intends to marry her.  The relatively balanced woman going off the deep end about a man also seems to be a common thread in these stories. But why should we buy in to the craziness by calling her his fiancée?  We aren't the crazy ones; why are these newspaper writers trying to make us believe in a crazy mis-reality?

     This article actually takes it one step beyond that, since there is yet another reason not to call them affianced at the point where the article was written:  the woman had brought the police to the man to charge him with robbing her before skipping town.  I would say that pretty much breaks whatever level of affiance there may have been to begin with (which was zero, see above).

http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2546970p-2364874c.html

Boris the badger had a pretty good rampage in rural England.

I was flipping through the New Testament this morning and found something kind of interesting.  We all know the last line, no matter what religion, but the rest of the section is very well done.  Romans 5:6-8, the NIV for simplicity's sake:

     "You see, as just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

     Kind of an interesting partner to the example of loving your enemies because it is easy enough to love your friends.  Here the question is, "Any just how much do you love your friends?  Or those who you admire or who are blameless?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_news/england/hereford/worcs/3027681.stm

An American In Pakistan: Psychiatry and 9/11.  The article is from the Pakistan Daily Times and, while poorly written and serious flawed, not completely without merit.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_13-5-2003_pg3_6

Amadou Diallo was mistakenly gunned down by New York police in 1999.  Now, his mother has written a book to make sure that is not the only piece of her son that survives.  Article and interview on Newsday.com.

California is considering radical cuts to the 4-H program.  Because kids really don't need opportunities.  The story can be followed on the University of California Agricultural Extension (which oversees 4-H) budget news page.  It is part of an overall cut to the Agricultural Extension budget, which matters to you because it affects California Agriculture and that affects you no matter where you live.  You rely on California Agriculture, and you rely on food safety and pest control in California.

     But I care because I grew up in 4-H.  Learned Roberts Rules of Order, which means that I have a foundation for understanding how county commissioners and congress meet.  Was elected reporter and submitted monthly articles to the local paper.  Showed funny-looking miniature chickens in the county fair.

The U.S. President flew to an aircraft carrier in a jet- which was probably a wash with the cost of his usual helicopter and anyway he landed safely.  Meanwhile, our own North Carolina Governor crashed a car at Lowe's Motor Speedway and wasted about $80,000 of someone else's money.  Article on WRAL.com.

Abortionist killer sentenced.  Killing is a sin and there is no doubt that he's a bad guy.  But anyone who tries to correct him ends up sounding like a moron.  The judge told him, "What appears righteous to you is immoral to some else."  Um, sure, that's some good thinking.

    An abortion supporter wrote into evidence, "As a society we cannot allow people to take the law into their own hands."  Right, these are the people who practice home abortion methods just in case the day comes that the law disagrees with them.

A woman secretly infiltrated the family of a terrorist who had shot her father.  She extracted a promise from the shooter that he would never hurt someone again, then stood up in open court and revealed her identity and requested the release of the shooter from prison.  Laura Blumenfeld writes about the experience in her survey of the topic of revenge (Revenge: a story of hope).

     In searching for methods of revenge, Ms. Blumenfeld comes cross the idea of doing well as the best revenge.  She sites an example where men publicly study scripture near the Western Wall, sitting in witness of the fact that those who have forbidden them have failed.

     But I think that Ms. Blumenfeld did more than do well, she made the world better than it was before using herself.  That is, she was the only person in the world who could possible do this act of good.  She didn't get the shooter out of jail.  She did something far greater, she created healing, she created good out of nothing.  The family could have had a criminal child, end of story, instead they have a unique experience of healing.

    Here's an interview on Salon.com.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/09/kopp.sentencing/index.html

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This page last updated 04 July 2003.

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Original content copyright 2001, 2002, 2003.