chastity vs celibacy

I’m watching a show on the History Channel about the early Christian church. They are talking about writings by, or about, some of the Apostles, like Peter and Paul, that were excluded from the New Testament for one reason or another. A section of the show is on celibacy and how it came to be part of the doctrine of the early church. Which it didn’t. It became doctrine for a few of the churches but not most, until the Nicene Creed, by which time the practice was so entrenched and protected by special interest groups that it was retained.
In one of the apocrypha, something attributed to Peter, the experts explain that while Paul’s admonition in the New Testament to separate from one another for a time for prayer and meditation, then return to intimacy, Peter advises us to “remain chaste and avoid the [putrefaction] of the flesh.” (Brackets indicate I don’t remember the actual word, but that one is close).
It is assumed from this that Peter is demanding we all be celibate to be counted as serious Christians, and that this is the genesis of the practice in the early church and later Catholicism. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the same misunderstanding Paul suffers from. Chastity is not the same thing as celibacy. Celibacy is the total abstinence from sexual activity. Chastity is maintaining ones purity and virtue, but does not (necessarily) involve abstinence. Chastity is being true to marriage vows, remaining faithful to a spouse, and keeping sexual appetites and activity set within the bounds God gave us. Thus a married woman (or man) who is sexually active and maintaining fidelity, is being chaste. A person maintains his or her virtue through fidelity, not abstinence. Peter was telling the church (assuming the document is authentic) to be chaste in the sense of keeping vows. If they were to stray, they would be subject to the sins of the flesh. Paul was saying the same thing by the way. Neither Christ nor the Apostles ever preached any form of abstinence other than abstinence from adultery and fornication—which are defined as extra-marital sex and pre-marital sex. Indeed, marriage is one of the saving ordinances given us by God. Remember, He didn’t tell Adam and Eve to reject one another, He told them to multiply, and replenish the earth. These days sex is so mundane, promiscuity so common, that it no longer occurs to anyone that the Apostles might have been speaking about pre-and extra-marital sex. Society can now only imagine they must have been talking about no sex at all, because these days the only realities are sex or no sex, nothing in between. It’s too bad really. Makes God’s job that much harder.

open letter to Govenor Gibbons and Citizens of NV

December 24, 2007




Governor Jim Gibbons
Carson City, NV





Wayne Leavitt

Las Vegas NV


Dear Governor Gibbons,

I am writing concerning the continuing Yucca Mountain situation which faces the state of Nevada. I have a serious proposal I wish to present to you and the other lawmakers of the state.
While I empathize with those who are concerned about the health, safety and security issues surrounding the storage of nuclear waste, I am equally empathetic with the need to keep this long-term radioactive residue in one, relatively safe place.
There is no doubt that Nevada has seen more than its share of the nuclear age. I was born in Las Vegas and have seen home movies, filmed from the heart of the valley, of the mushroom clouds of above ground tests rising over the city. I have seen the effects working at the test site had on my uncle and others. I have lived in Cedar City, Utah and seen the radiation detector station in front of the high school and I have spoken with many of the “Down Winders” who were anxious to tell their stories—recollections of thousands of sheep dying en mass, stories of cancer clusters, etc. As a result, while I am far from a nuclear physicist, I am not unaware of the problems associated with the use of radioactive material. I understand the attitudes of those who wish to keep all such things out of our state, claiming (rightfully so) that Nevada has done its duty to the country and should be spared more involvement. I have little sympathy however for the people who are reacting with the irrational fear of the ignorant; those who know nothing about the nature of the material, of the storage facility, of the actual proposals or the consequences if all the nuclear waste in the country is left where it is.
I submit that the problem of safely storing the waste must take precedence over the concerns and fears of the people of Nevada. While I may not like it personally, this seems to be one of those situations where the common good outweighs personal considerations.
I believe it is time we stop fighting the Yucca Mountain project and take advantage of the reality that it is here. Following are my reasons for this position and a plan to make the situation palatable for Nevadans:
It is time we realize and admit to ourselves that “the fix is in”. As soon as construction started on the facility the fact of its location was a foregone conclusion. The Federal Government is a juggernaut; once the machine starts rolling there is no stopping it and no turning it. Yucca Mountain has been the chosen location for national nuclear storage for years. It should be evident to everyone by now this is not going to change. I realize our politicians and other concerned citizens claim to be fighting Yucca Mountain and I do not doubt their sincerity, but ultimately their efforts will be in vain. I say this because I do not believe the government will simply pull up stakes and move after they have spent years and billions of dollars on the facility. Any reasonable person understands this.
Let us suppose the foregoing is an accurate assessment. Is there anything we can do to mitigate the situation? Is there a way to somehow give ourselves an advantage, assuming that Yucca Mountain is here to stay and that nuclear waste will be traveling through-out the state and city on a regular basis? I believe there is. At this point the Federal Government must be very annoyed and frustrated over all the efforts to close Yucca Mountain down. I’m sure they wish we would all just go away and acquiesce. Why don’t we, as a state, make them an offer to compromise?
Let’s tell the government we will stop the fighting and the court battles, stop the press conferences and the protest marches under the following conditions:

1. When Yucca Mountain is finished 90% of all employees (including management) must be citizens of Nevada.
2. Two independent watchdog groups must be formed besides the normal government oversight. One would be made up of qualified Nevada citizens and the other would be a team of international experts, possibly under the auspices of the UN. Both groups would have regular and unlimited access to the facility and would report directly to the governor and the president.
3. Recommendations which came independently from two (or all three) groups must put into action.
4. The US government must agree to enter into a lease with the state of Nevada for the property and for our willingness to yet again sacrifice for the rest of the country.
5. The money from the lease would be divided in two; one half to the state general fund to be used for environmentally-related projects such as clean up, enforcement and funding state parks and other recreation areas, and one half to state education with the caveat that the money could only be spent on salaries, supplies and equipment. Normal state funding and bonds would continue to pay for other requirements, such as construction of new schools. I don’t know what kind of money this might involve but I suggest a starting bid of three billion dollars per year with automatic increases figured in to reflect inflation, cost of living and other factors. More if we can get it. This would substantially increase the education budget and hopefully bring our schools up to parity with the best in the nation. (Obviously, legislation would have to be in place requiring the state to continue all traditional funding to education or they would simply use that money for something else.)
6. The federal government must agree to build new, restricted access roads to Yucca Mountain which would allow all waste being delivered by truck or rail to bypass the Las Vegas valley. (This would have to be negotiable; I am not a civil engineer and am ignorant of the feasibility of such an undertaking.) I do know this would be an expensive endeavor. To quote Buckminster Fuller; “Nothing that has to be done ever costs too much.” It seems to me if we are willing to accept the risk and the facility which will house radioactive material for several thousand years these compromises are the least the rest of the country can do. A marketing campaign stressing this plan as a willing sacrifice by the state of Nevada and its citizens, for the benefit of the nation, would, if done correctly, turn the hearts of the nation to sympathize, thus causing pressure to accept the proposal.
7. Nevada should immediately apply for the construction of a major, multi-reactor, nuclear power-generation facility at or near Yucca Mountain. We need the energy and could generate income by selling our excess. Yucca Mountain is a logical place for such a facility. The reactor should be one of the new generation designs such as HTR (high temperature reactor, ALWR (advanced light water reactor) or the PBMR (pebble-bed modular reactor). The new designs, based on cutting edge technology, are far more efficient and safer than the old designs.

As citizens personally involved in the reality of Yucca Mountain we Nevadans need to realize there are no guarantees. No system is perfect, no plan can anticipate every possible contingency, and no one gets everything the way they want it to be. At some point we have to trust others to have our best interests at heart; that designers will do everything they can to engineer a safe facility, that construction workers will do their best and not cut corners and that inspectors will find any problems. We can neither ask nor expect more. Those of us whose fear is potent enough to interfere with our daily lives may have to relocate. It is unreasonable at this point (in fact it is irrational) to believe that our fears and apprehension will cause the government to relocate the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Storage Facility. It is important to remember (in light of the anxiety many of our citizens feel concerning the transportation of radioactive materials) that nuclear weapons—or at least components of such weapons—have been stored for years here in the valley at a facility near Nellis AFB. Consequently, we can assume these things have been traveling through our valley unnoticed for at least fifty years.
While I applaud the sentiment of “NO YUCCA MOUNTAIN” being broadcast by so many of our representatives I believe it to be nothing more than political posturing. They know it is inevitable. It is their hope, I suspect, that their protests will stand them in good stead in the future. They need not be successful to achieve their goal of re-election as long as they can say “look at the record; I opposed Yucca Mountain to the end. Alas, the government was just too strong an adversary, but I tried. I fought the good fight!” Their sincerity—or lack thereof—is irrelevant. In the meantime the crisis increases and large sections of the country remain in jeopardy.
I call on all Nevada citizens to take a leap of faith. The science behind the facility is all we have. There is no place 100% safe. And in the end, the waste must be put somewhere. The helter-skelter storage going on now is far more dangerous than the alternative.
It is important to consider that all radioactive materials decay at a steady rate. While these processes are very lengthy in some cases, most take only a few decades. As an example, at the Hanford Washington facility (where enormous amounts are currently being stored in less than optimum conditions) over the last thirty or so years 50% of all the cesium-137 and strontium-90 has decayed into non-radioactive products. 100% of the iodine-131 and 85% of the low-energy radioactive tritium have decayed into non-radioactive materials as well, and all radioactive material continues to decay at a steady rate. [21st Century Science & Technology, summer, 2004 issue]. In other words the radioactive waste will slowly but steadily become less dangerous. We must remember too, that at some point in the future we will learn how to store the material with “total” safety, or render it inert or even find a way to recycle it and make it both useful and benign. We always do. The fear that the waste will always be with us is unfounded. It will decay over time. And we will discover methods of producing energy, medical testing, and other processes that do not require radioactive materials.
There can be no completely positive outcome to the Yucca Mountain debate. This proposal would at least benefit Nevada in meaningful ways, and keep the federal government honest with on-site, independent inspections.

Sincerely,
Wayne A. Leavitt




Cc:
Senator Reid
Senator Ensign
The Review Journal

Water Water Everywhere

Water. Have you noticed how everyone is saying we’re running out? At the exact same time all the ice is supposed to be melting. Georgia is in the middle of a severe drought, Atlanta is worried about running out of drinking water. That’s scary. We live in Las Vegas, which is perpetually in a drought because, well, you know, it’s a desert.
Personally, I don’t think we’re running out of water, but let’s examine the situation just in case. We live on a planet that is, on the surface, 7/8ths water. Some water vapor is lost escaping the planets gravity, but not much. More importantly, scientists now believe that the building blocks for water are constantly being replenished by capturing cometary fragments and dust as it collides with our atmosphere. But for all practical purposes, ours is a closed system; we maintain the same amount of planetary water over geological time periods. Back in the 70’s Buckminster Fuller coined the phrase “Space Ship Earth” in order to help us understand the idea of a closed system, like a terrarium, or the space shuttle. He wrote a book called Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, explaining his concept about natural resources and how to husband them. But he took the opposite view of the then neophyte environmental movement, which was bent on taking humanity back to the stone age, or eliminating humanity altogether in order to safeguard nature. His view, as I’ve mentioned before, was to do what we do best. Produce more of everything while using less of everything.
Some places seem to have more water than they want while others don’t have enough. Here in Vegas our favorite past time is yelling at the city planners for not planning anything while they let the developers build whatever they want, regardless (in some minds) of whether or not we can support the ever-increasing number of people and demands for scarce resources. We have a million golf courses here. Dancing fountains the size of football fields, a billion hotel rooms, each with its own tub and sink, thousands of luxury suites with tubs capable of holding fast-attack submarines, and more swimming pools than people. Not to mention shark tanks you can walk through, the world’s densest collection of restaurants and a Cirque de Soleil show called O, which is performed entirely in water. But the truth is the resorts conserve huge amounts of water. They use grey water for their golf courses and fountains, they recycle water like crazy—they do a good job with conservation. The problem is there are over a million of us now and dozens of hotel-casinos, all of which use huge chillers for air-conditioning, etc., etc.
We have drought in Sub-Saharan Africa, in parts of China, Washington DC (but that one is not so much a water problem as a shortage of brains and common sense) and dire predictions of things getting worse as rapid climate change continues, assuming it is happening at all and who cares of it does? Other places are being hit with way to much water. Wait till the spring thaw hits and let’s see how much flooding occurs. Has anyone heard any reports about the monsoons disappearing? As far as I know, half of the Amazon basin is still under a few feet of water during the wet season, and Holland is still having to maintain dikes to keep the ocean out.
But—and this is important—we have as much water in and on the planet as we ever have, maybe more. The problem is one of logistics, not shortages. We need to figure out plans for continental water transport systems because that is something we can actually do, if we really want to, as opposed to the idiotic idea that we can effect, alter or control the climate. No one knows how much water is in the deep crust and mantle of the earth, but there is a lot. We have the oceans, which are handy, and very convenient storage reservoirs—except they are a touch salty. So, we might need to invent efficient methods of desalinating large amounts of water. Which means coming up with substantial increases in energy in the form of electricity, which means—for the time being anyway—nuclear power plants. We also have the ice caps which have the advantage of being solid and fresh water. But they are a long way off and cold. Still, we lay cables and pipelines across continents and oceans, I’m sure we could pump ice melt from Greenland and Antarctica wherever it needs to go. Or just wrangle ice bergs into holding pens on coasts around the world and pump the water out as it melts—or as we melt it. And we can transport water in pipelines from the great rivers of the world to other areas. We’d have to be careful with that lest the rivers dry up. Maybe we need to rethink how we farm, who knows? And as we get better at going deep with wells, we should be able to bring up lots of water from the deep. That has dangers of its own—no one is sure what that will do to the stability of the crust and continental plates, but if we have to we can pump our carbon dioxide back down the holes to fill gaps. Or really big batches of epoxy. That should hold things together. There is an aquifer under New Mexico which, I am told, has more water in it than the combined Great Lakes. It’s brackish though, and would have to be purified; desalinated. Which is just a matter of deciding to do it. And remember, the water doesn’t disappear—it just moves around. It’s all always here. Over time aquifers will fill up, rivers will get healthy again, the ice will come back. Never fear. (Geologic time, of course, but whose counting epochs?) The problem, as usual, is mostly political and territorial. Nobody wants to share. Let’s ask Nevada to make a deal with some other states; tell them we’ll store their nuclear waste (because c’mon, get real, it’s gonna happen anyway) if they’ll let us borrow some of their river water. The Snake, Columbia, Salmon. Idaho has so many big rivers, with more water than I knew existed, I’m sure they could spare a few billion gallons. Washington has even more—and lots of radioactive waste sitting around in rapidly decaying barrels. And don’t even get me started about Canada and the Yukon! We could pump it down here during the peak runoff seasons, store it in our massive reservoirs (lake Mead, Lake Havasu, Lake Powell, just to name a few), then cut back a little in the dryer season and rely on the storage.
Eventually we may have to go off-planet to get water. No big deal. Grab some comets from the Kuiper Belt, sling them from some rail-gun type machines, or attach computer-controlled boosters to them, send them into a sunward orbit and then chop them up into little pieces and bring them down on the space elevator (which is in the design phase as we speak.) Piece of cake. We’ll be out there eventually anyway, mining the asteroids for important minerals and metals—may as well grab some water too.
The point is, this is doable. It would take lots of money and time and material, but once the infrastructure was in place it wouldn’t cost much (comparatively speaking) to maintain. I really like the iceberg thing. Stick motors and props on them—controlled by a GPS-rigged computer, and send them on their way. We could probably put modular structures on them and charge top dollar for exotic vacations on a melting hunk of ice. Just imagine, puttering along at three knots, whales swimming by, penguins jumping on and off (in the southern climes), sea birds pooping on your heads. Awesome! Think of the fishing you could get in. And yes, I know bergs shift and roll as the melting changes their shapes and centers of gravity . . . but that’s part of the fun! The modular housing would be designed to compensate, crawling around the berg, trying to find a new stable foundation. And you’d never run out of cold drinks. I hate when that happens, don’t you?

Computer Modeling

I read a lot about science and technology. I have several websites bookmarked that I visit almost everyday, I have stacks of books I have read and that are patiently waiting to be read and I watch the Discovery Channel and the History Channel incessantly, not to mention all the sci-fi shows available (yes, that includes the Saturday Sci-Fi Channel Movie Premier of the Week, everyone of which are absolutely terrible.)
Over the past few years a new research tool has gone from fledgling enterprise to mainstream bandwagon, the new ‘must have’ item for the sophisticated researcher. I’m talking, of course, about Computer Modeling. As computers became smaller, faster and more sophisticated, a few mad-scientists discovered they could write their own code and build programs that would mimic real-world applications of whatever they were studying. Things like earthquakes, climate, high-energy particle behavior, mass-transit, volcanoes, ocean currents, population, supernovas, galactic collisions, tumor growth, what dinosaurs looked like, well . . . . you get the idea. Suddenly computer modeling is everywhere.
I don’t remember when I first began to be skeptical of the idea, but I do know it was when people began making dire predictions concerning the global climate based on models of earths atmospheric systems. “Wait a minute,” I said to myself. “The climates of the planet are some of the most complex, dynamic systems of which humans are aware. They involve millions of permutations (think the Butterfly Effect), conditions, combinations and the like, all of which are constantly changing.” Are these guys really that good? What is computer modeling exactly? Here’s my best guess (because, you know, no way am I going to go out and research all this).
A person or group of persons wants to study something that, for whatever reason, they are not able to study. (Say, what do you suppose goes on in the deep mantle of the earth?) So they write a program describing what they know about the topic and what they think they know, based on the bias of whoever is in charge (what can we allow, what is too controversial to allow) and whatever past research has shown them. The program is designed to allow all kinds of data to be plugged into the design—“let’s add a few more metric tons of magma, just to see what happens”—and let the program run. Based on all the information they put in, and the starting parameters, they will get a picture of what the mantle might be doing—in their computer. Because see, the program isn’t the mantle. It can’t be; we know almost nothing about the deep interior of the earth. We think we do, but no one’s ever been there to take samples, to watch what really happens, to take measurements etc.
Then it occurred to me . . . . these models are very familiar. Has anyone ever played Sim City? Or any number of other games for computers?
I am going to take a stand, here and now. I’m drawing a line on the carpet (Nita’s going to kill me) and daring science to step over. Here it is: Computer modeling is not real science. It is gaming. What these guys do has much more in common with game designers than research. This isn’t research, it’s playing guessing games based on personal bias, incomplete data, speculation and hubris. I realize scientists are serious people, sincere, hard working, often brilliant. But they are subject to the same foibles and myopic vision as the rest of us. Sure, some models are helpful. But if you look at the record (which I did not) I think you’ll find that the best use of modeling is in the field of engineering, not science. And games, obviously.
We are decades away from being able to do any real science by mimicking nature with computers. Maybe longer. They should keep trying, get better at it, learn more, gather ever more data. But they should not expect us (me) to take them seriously until they can prove that their programs are sophisticated enough, complex enough and open-ended enough to reveal actual, real scenarios. Sounds a little like God, doesn’t it?
And they should absolutely not rely on their efforts, or reveal them to the public, before they know what they’re doing. Which, to a large degree, they don’t.
So remember, you heard it here first. When I am proven completely wrong I will have changed my e-mail address so don’t bother with the whole nyah-nyah-nyah thing.

Roe V Wade

Let’s revisit Roe V Wade, shall we? As you know by now, I am the shy retiring sort who is loathe to invigorate any sort of controversy, which is why I stay away from subjects bound to foment passion or animosity. Over the years this particular topic has remained at number one with a bullet for a very long time—sort of the Dark Side of the Moon of touchy subjects. Rather than increase the bad feelings and polarize sides to even more outrageous extremes, I have decided to set the record straight, put the heart of the debate where it belongs, and thereby remove the animus from this long-standing question. Cool, huh?

First I suppose I’d better see if I have the argument straight. If at any time you think I have erred, veered from the salient points or made a mistake, feel free to stop me and correct whatever faux paux I may have made.

So, in a test case of epic proportions, a woman (Jane Roe) challenged the laws of Texas regarding abortion. She (real name Norma McCorvey) claimed that the state didn’t have the authority to deny her access to medical treatment of her choice (aka abortion) following a rape. (She later recanted on the whole rape thing) The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the claim, citing both the 9^th amendment (the reservation of all rights not specifically mentioned in the constitution to belong to the people) and the 14^th amendment (the right to privacy.)

Tough call. The constitution doesn’t specifically mention abortion—or a lot of other things. We always hope the answer is in there somewhere, but it is usually best to err on the side of caution when it isn’t. But I’m in favor of letting a woman make that choice when a rape or incest is involved. Not that it’s any of my business, other than a vested interest in civilization.

The simple answer is as follows: Of course a woman has the right to choose. How could it be any other way? And of course choosing an abortion is the wrong choice 99% of the time. How could it not be? I’m not going to go into all of that “viability” stuff, or “it’s a human life” or “it’s my body and I can do what I want.” Well, maybe that last one. But those aren’t where the real answer lies.

The real answer lies in the nature of the choice, and under what principle the question of abortion is rightly embedded.

Is the right to an abortion vs. the right to life a political question or a moral question? If it is a political question then we stop the debate right here. The state has the right to rule. If it a moral question, the debate becomes a little more complicated. Now we have to decide what morality is, how it is created, and whose morality will hold sway. Dicey, at best. And we have to decide if moral precepts are immutable or changeable. Personally, I’m in the immutable camp. I accept the idea that morality is one of God’s creations, given to us as one of the tools to perfect our lives. Unfortunately, I can’t prove it, which puts a damper on my credibility. But let’s assume I’m right for a moment. What did God have to say about abortion? Nothing that we know of, at least not directly. It does say “Thou Shalt Not Kill” or “Thou Shalt Not Shed Innocent Blood,” depending on which version you look at. This commandment is used as the case against abortion, and it is a good one, if we accept the idea that abortion is killing a viable human being. Many of us don’t. But abortion isn’t the causal sin. It is a smoke screen, used to distract us from the real issue, which is, and always has been, personal chastity. And that the Bible does say something about. Oh, sure, I think abortion is a sin, but nobody cares. It just isn’t the big sin. The Pro Choice camp—if you haven’t noticed by now—is adamant, shrill to the point of frenzy, in their crusade to defend choice. How could anyone object to that, right? I mean, free will, the ability to choose, is the foundation of Christian theology. Unless you’re a Calvinist. Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. This is universally interpreted as a commandment against sexual impropriety of any kind—pre and extra-marital sex, in other words. Fornication and Adultery. Once upon a time people paid attention to that idea. A lot of us may have fallen short of the ideal, but we were serious about trying, and remain so after the fact.

So, God told us—commanded us—to only have sexual relations with our spouse and within the covenant of marriage. The sin, the one no one wants to talk about because it would be too restricting to their lifestyle, is unauthorized sex. God told us to keep sex within the bounds He set, in order to insure the health of the family and the purity of the human body—a Temple, according to scripture. I’m sure there are lots of reasons for the commandment I’m not even aware of, but the main ones are obedience and faith. Will we have the requisite faith to obey? Nowadays of course, no one pays any attention, other than a few loony Christians, Muslims and Jews.

But here’s the thing. The choice everyone is arguing over is the choice to have sex—not an abortion. The desire for an abortion stems directly from the first, causal choice, not the other way around. We demand our freedom to choose sexual promiscuity, then balk at the consequences. One of which is pregnancy—a baby. Once a woman is pregnant—except in the very rare cases of rape or immediate danger to her life—she has used up her freedom to choose. Sure, she can pretend otherwise, but the dilemma remains. She has “sinned” (and so has he) and now faces the consequence, demanding to exacerbate the situation by sinning again. The abortion is anti-climactic. It’s easy to hide the sexual impropriety, but not the pregnancy, which is why all the effort was focused on the latter; freedom to choose the abortion. Hide the evidence. It reminds me of Adam and Eve putting on aprons of fig leaves to hide their nakedness. Duh . . .

But what does any of this matter to all the secularists out there? The atheists, agnostics, the don’t-give-a-damn hedonists? Not much, I’m sure. Many people now believe that humans are just another animal, an organism and nothing more, making procreation nothing more or less than what any other living thing goes through as a matter course. Welcome to the Monkey House. (If you are one of those, why are you reading this at all?) If that’s the case, language is nothing more than evolutionary adaptation, a matter of survival, signifying nothing beyond marks on a page.

“It’s my body and I am the only one able to make decisions concerning it.” That’s how I feel too. Except it’s not true. It’s God’s body. The life force, the spirit, the physical ingredients—all belong to Him, were organized by Him, for the express purpose of allowing us to have bodies. Thus, any woman who professes the acceptance of Christian beliefs, really doesn’t have that total ownership she things she does. The same goes for men of course. And I would argue (along with thousands of others) that it’s our body until another body starts to grow inside it. A unique ability only women have and for which I am eternally grateful. Does the fact that a fetus cannot, as yet, make choices for itself negate the sure knowledge that it will be able to eventually? We have no problem with the idea of “eating for two” or filing two homicide charges against Lacey’s husband for killing his wife and unborn child . . . so why do we have such a problem with the idea of “existing for two?”

Now all we have left is the idea that abortion is murder, killing a baby. Once again, the whole thing is misdirection, sleight of hand. It’s not the abortion, it’s the misuse of the procreative powers. Look at it this way. Say life is a coin, minted by God, with death on one side and life on the other. He owns the coin. We all understand the death side of the coin. It is wrong to kill, to murder. Under special circumstances, the State has the authority to take a life, but even there many of us disagree with the process of capital punishment. But killing is wrong—this is a universal standard. Yes there are exceptions, like criminals, psychotics and the like, and war, which is another topic altogether. By and large however, we agree that killing is wrong, even if we don’t believe in God. I’m not sure why—no God no rules, right? Those of us who do believe in a Supreme Being understand that death belongs to God. He takes whom he takes. Accidents happen, people break and do something rash . . . whatever. No one has a problem with the concept.

The other side of the coin is life, which also belongs to God. He made the coin. This one we don’t understand as well. I believe (and this is a personal belief, not necessarily a Christian tenant, as far as I know) that God views life and death as the same thing. He made us. Life belongs to Him in exactly the same sense that death does. We know it’s wrong to kill in an unauthorized manner. But we are having a great deal of trouble with the idea that the creation of unauthorized life is the same sin as killing—just the other side of the coin. In other words, we don’t have permission to create life outside of marriage. The fact that we ignore that doesn’t change the reality of it. And the reality that we often choose to abort the life we create, only makes the whole thing worse—but the damage is already done. I don’t believe any life is born into sin—that’s not what I’m suggesting. The concept is just wrong. Pernicious. God is sending us here for a reason. That reason must be compelling because He lets us make kids under just about any circumstances at all. Freedom of choice again. But we are not cooperating. We keep killing the new people He sends. I wonder how that makes Him feel? I know how it makes me feel.

For the record, I am not condemning anyone. My heart goes out to all those who are faced with decisions like these. I understand the fear and guilt; I certainly understand the overwhelming urge that starts the whole thing. I’m no judge of the human heart. I love humanity, the very idea of it. I love infants, regardless of their origins. I love my daughters, all of whom could have had to face this situation but didn’t. And I would have loved them right through it all, stood with them, and honored whatever decision they made. After all, sin is a useful and necessary tool on the way to perfection. It teaches us what perfection might be like, it gives us experience, wisdom (if we’re lucky) and resolve.

Now, aren’t you glad you stuck it out to the end?

So long Harry

Gosh. This is a tough one. I’ve thought long and hard about this one (not really; it took about ten seconds after a read the latest quote) and it makes me sad, but I am going to have to call for the forced retirement of one of our Senators. Consider this an official grass-roots movement—and you’re in on the ground floor. Pretty keen, huh?

It’s about poor Senator Harry Reid. We have to get rid of him. I think he should be impeached. We need to make him an example. Hold a special vote of no-confidence, ask him to move to Mexico, or Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, or some other country so corrupt his presence won’t be noticed. I don’t know him, or much about him. I’m in no position to pass judgment on what kind of a man he is, and I won’t. But I am in position to pass judgment on his professionalism and quality of work as well as his report card as a Senator for Nevada. He sucks. Ever since he became Majority Leader, it has gone straight to his head. Everything he’s said in the last two or three years has been misleading, disingenuous, spurious, often bordering on slander, mean-spirited, stupid, ignorant, and dead wrong. He is an embarrassment to this state and the country. He has become a laughing stock, negligent, incompetent. Truthfully, I suspect he never really had what it takes to fill the job. He has become the worst kind of party hack, a trained attack dog for the Democratic party. If I were a Dem, I wouldn’t want to claim him, anymore than I want to claim Bush. (He’s mine though, dammit.)

Every public word out of Senator Reid’s mouth has been petty, callous, personal, and disrespectful. He’s wishy-washy. The perfect collaborator, a weather vane, a poll-worshiping demagogue. The worst kind of hypocrite. Far worse than me, and I can be pretty hypocritical. He appears to have no sense of propriety, no common decency, no respect for the rules of the Senate, any office, or himself. He has become an ineffective, doddering, cantankerous, old fool. I’m sure he’s a great dad, grandfather, husband, does community service (if the cameras are rolling), has friends, tells jokes, carves the turkey, and teaches a good Sunday school class. But it’s time he sticks to what he can do well, and being a Senator ain’t it.

Arrowheads

I was reading a brief synopsis of an article recently submitted to some professional journal of Archeology. It was online at Physorg.com, where I go to keep up with what’s happening in the wacky world of science and technology.

The author (I never write this stuff down and I have no short term memory, and I’m not online right now to look it up—I’m taking my shift in the hospital to be with my Uncle who broke his hip and is waiting for surgery. He’s 62 and has Down’s Syndrome and we don’t want him to be alone) has an interesting new theory, developed, he said, because of some research and testing he and others did. The theory involves early Americans, Neolithic and later. I don’t remember if he mentioned Europe or other places.

His theory (I’m giggling now because every time some one says “my theory” I do that Python sketch about the Brontosaurus in my head) involves the extent to which the Amerinds actually relied on chipped-stone arrowheads. Apparently he made a bunch of arrows from sticks, sharpened some and put arrow heads on others. Then he and his friends shot the arrows and discovered that the sharpened ones performed about as well as the others (which, in the case of modern Archeologists, I suspect was worthy of submission to America’s Funniest Home Videos). They determined, through careful and thorough observation and record keeping, that it took less time to make the sharp sticks that it did to make the stone tipped ones. I’m assuming all the arrows were fletched, but with these kids today, who knows?

So, based on this exhaustive study (probably a Saturday morning on campus) which determined that it took longer to make stone-tipped arrows, and that the sharpened sticks worked pretty good, he is theorizing that the Neolithic people all the way down to the Indians (oops, sorry, Native Americans) probably didn’t depend much on the arrow heads. He thinks the importance placed on stone hunting implements is over-rated and played only a minor role in the lives of the Bearing Straight Land Bridge Association. (BSLBA—check out their website).

Let’s see now . . . that would make those people way to stupid to breathe, wouldn’t it? Much less kill anything. I’m thinking this: millions of arrow heads have been found, all over the world, surviving long past the shaft and feathers because they’re made of stone. Which means they could be used again and again, but probably weren’t because arrow heads were so quick and easy to make with some practice. In fact, a friend of mine, a practical-joke-making Paleontologist, told me that most professionals now believer that they (the “primitives”) didn’t bother to make the head until they actually spotted game. Then they would squat, take the makings out of a pouch, and chip the head right there, lacing it on to a prepared shaft, and then stalk, shoot, and dress. Hopefully with more accuracy than I envision the scholars managing.

I was skeptical of this claim by my friend since he was well know to lie, steal, cheat, and rob other people’s sites. (Not really. Although he did enjoy salting sites with artifacts of his own making that the experts invariably took for the real thing). But he convinced me when he whipped out a leather patch, put it on his thigh, took a chunk of flint and used part of a deer antler to chip a nice piece off then turned the antler over to the point and carefully chipped it into a perfect arrowhead shape, all in about five minutes. And he’s a dorky, pasty, white guy who digs things up for a living. (Think of Ross Geller). I could easily imagine someone who was actually competent doing the whole thing in a minute or so, including tying it on.

I spend what time I am able out in the woods, fishing streams mostly (you try catching a stream sometimes—it’s hard work!) and hunting, Although not for many years) and even I, who doesn’t know anything about such things, have found both arrowheads and lots of little piles of stone chips, which, after my friend showed me what to look for, are easy to spot. These are places where someone stopped and made something, more or less on the fly.

I don’t remember if the academics shot their arrows into anything other than a target, but I have been bow hunting and I can tell you that an arrow head with sharp, tapering edges will do a great deal more damage than a practice arrow (which only has a sharpened point—sound familiar?). Now, I realize you might not enjoy the mental image of some nice deer or Elk getting shot, whatever the projectile, but arrows kill, for the most part, by blood-letting, (Bullets by massive trauma and systems shock). The more surface area on the edges of the arrowhead, the more veins and arteries are severed, the more it bleeds and the faster it dies. If we’re going to kill the thing, we want it done with the least amount of pain and suffering possible—contrary to popular belief. A wooden stick stuck into an animal that size is not likely to kill it at all, unless it happened to his a vital organ, which is equally unlikely. It’s the bleeding that does it, most of the time. There is a hunting term known as the Blood Trail. Bow hunters are especially familiar with it because 95% of the time they have to follow the trail for miles, waiting for the animal to lie down and die. You haven’t lived until you and your buddies are out in the middle of the night with lanterns and flashlights, trying to find spots of blood (black at night) and find your kill. I shot a buck once, with a rifle (.30-.30) from about fifteen feet (that’s another story . . .) which means I got a good shot off and the bullet went through both lungs. That sucker still managed to run about an eighth of a mile before it collapsed and every step it took left a quart of it’s life blood on the ground. Incredible.

My brother took aim at a nice buck once and when he had it in the scope he saw an old aluminum arrow sticking through it’s neck, bent, head long gone, each end visible. That arrow had been there for years. Somebody didn’t look hard enough or long enough, but the point is, these animals are hard to kill—they do not want to die. (And my brother let that one go, he figured any buck tough enough to live through that had earned his right to be left alone). Anything ancient hunters could do to facilitate feeding the family group, they would have done. They used the best technology available, just like we do now.
In summation, I have concluded that it was not the ancients who were too stupid to breathe, it is in fact, the archeologist dumb enough to come up with such a theory, mush less publish it. I have a friend (she died yesterday in fact) who has her grandfathers collection of arrowheads he found in the hills around Boise, Idaho. There are hundreds of them. Museums have thousands and thousands, private citizens have hundreds of thousands, collectively. There are places you can go in this country and walk around and you can’t not find one. They were ubiquitous. But, the expert says they were of little consequence. I guess they made them just for fun and then tossed them around for some one to find, like my friend the Paleontologist does. Those Neolithicists, fun-loving pranksters every one.

Science and Religion

Science and Religion. What is it with these two? Is it love? Is it hate? Is it professional jealousy? I can’t decide which one is capable of more pretensions and hubris.
I was sitting in church today, listening to the talks in a mildly desultory way, when something someone said made me think of science and religion and how, despite the strident protests to the contrary, the two clubs have a lot in common. Now, I know that there are a lot of ‘scientists’ who are devoutly religious and a bunch of very religious people who nonetheless are working in one scientific field or another, which leads me to suspect that they are not as incompatible as both camps would like to believe.
What I started thinking about was dark matter and dark energy, the new hot topic in cosmology, and how the method of arriving at the necessity for each has striking similarities to how many people make their progress toward faith in God.
Since one or two of you may not be fully aware of the Dark Twins, let me give a very brief and wholly-made-up synopsis of what has been going on. I won’t take the time to refresh my memory, because, as we all know, (say it with me everybody!) I hate research!
In the past decade or two really bright guys and gals made some startling discoveries having to do with the nature and ultimate fate of, the universe. First, it is much bigger than we thought—or even imagined. (I’m happy to say that we Mormons already knew that based on some inside information). Then, the most recent observations, done with highly sophisticated sensors, satellites, telescopes of various types, and trillions of digital calculations, informed us that the universe is expanding at a much faster rate that was previously supposed. And accelerating. This is known as an “observable phenomenon”. No one had a clue as to why that might be happening because the theoretical models then being used did not predict such a thing, and could not be tweaked into accepting the new data. Then, to add insult to injury, it was discovered that massive objects ( like galaxy’s, galactic clusters, Very Large Attractors and the like) were not behaving as they should, according to the completely accepted notion of Newton’s laws and gravity. This phenomenon could only be detected when the gravitational influence was truly massive—thus families of galaxy’s were what clued them in.
As you can imagine, there was a certain amount of anxiety in the worlds of cosmology, astronomy and physics (to name a few) as careers became suddenly irrelevant.
Why was the expansion accelerating when gravitationally it should be at least slowing, if not shrinking? And why were very massive objects behaving in ways not predicted by current models?
A great deal of work, and thought, and experimentation went into finding the answers to these questions, and the answers are; Dark Energy and Dark Matter.
Dark Energy is some kind of unknown and undetectable energy which must be counteracting gravity (which wants to pull everything together), and which is powerful enough to not only keep the entire universe expanding, but is able to accelerate the process. It is calculated that at least three-fourths of all the energy in the universe must be Dark Energy in order for observed phenomenon to be explained.
Dark Matter, on the other hand must exist—again, despite being invisible, undetectable, and having no known characteristics—in unimaginable quantities. This is the only explanation for the observed behavior of RSMO’s. (Really, seriously, Massive Objects). Oh, and Dark Matter has to make up about ninety percent of all matter in the universe.
To recap: Despite absolutely no evidence whatsoever, other than what is seen to be happening, science has had to invent two new theories in order to explain the latest observations, and has been forced to allocate the vast majority of everything in the universe to these two, invisible, unknown, non-emitting, undetectable forces. They are looking hard for evidence other than the necessity of deduction. There are all kinds of theories and ideas floating around vying for attention. “Hey look here guys! Here’s a spot with nothing in it that might be attracting that galaxy over there . . . must be dark matter huh?”
It makes sense that if everything is moving away from everything else faster than we thought, and despite the homogenous influence of gravity, there must be a force providing the energy, right? Ergo, Dark Energy. It exists not because we can see it or sense it, but because it must exist. It is self-evident. But, it could be gremlins pushing everything, their little gossamer wings beating a million times faster than a hummingbirds, getting traction from the Dark Matter. It could be that too, right? Because no one knows. I guess Occam’s Razor suggests the Energy to be more likely, but who knows?
What’s the point Wayne? You’ve been rambling for thirty minutes now.
Well . . . let’s look at another example of belief in something unseen. Got any ideas? Have I let it out of the box? That’s right! It’s God. For thousands of years people have been saying virtually the same thing the scientists are now resorting to. “I look around, I see things I can’t explain, mysterious things, and I conclude based on all this observable phenomenon, that there must be a God. I can’t see Him or describe Him or prove experimentally that He exists, but nature and the endless series of cosmic ‘coincidences’ and the human condition, all compel me to deduce His Reality. And, just like the current state in Cosmology, theologians have been running around for centuries arguing, brain-storming, trying to build a picture of God’s Characteristics based on what we can see of His work. Hardly anybody agrees because its all a matter of perspective. The one thing they do agree on is the Reality of the Necessity of God. Similar in many ways—don’t you think?—to the agreement that Dark Energy and Matter are real because of the necessity of their existence—and no other reason.
Now, some people look around and see no evidence at all. “Just because all this stuff is here, and happening, and there seems to be some order to the universe, doesn’t compel me to believe in a God. I can explain those things without God,” they say. But really, it’s just a mind-set; nothing to do with reality one way or the other. If God can be so easily dismissed by so many, am I not justified to dismiss the idea of Dark Matter and Energy on the basis that there is no evidence of any kind that they exist?
Don’t get me wrong now, I’m perfectly willing to accept the Dark Twins until they are either proven to be real or a better explanation comes along. Personally, I like the gremlins. I like the image of a gazillion of the little tykes pushing against—oh, say . . . anything—a star or galaxy or atom, their little wings buzzing (in frequencies we cannot detect obviously), their cute little faces screwed up with exertion so extreme it makes little balls of Gremlin poop shoot out their butts (forming Dark Matter), which makes them all laugh, which explains the phenomenon of humor.
I’m a huge fan of science and technology, I love all that stuff, even when I don’t understand it—which is nearly all the time. But I find it amusing that science routinely relegates itself to faith, and never realizes it’s happening, while at the same time, so many of its practitioners ridicule religion for the same thing. At least most religious people have the good taste and humility to admit they can’t prove anything, that their faith is based on the unseen, the unknown, on a feeling in their hearts. While science pretends it can know everything. Again, what hubris. They can’t even find the mind, much less the spirit.

Life is a Fascinating Topic

Life is a fascinating topic, don’t you think? What it is, how it came to be, and why, and does it have any purpose outside of itself? Is there a relationship between living and non-living things, between life and the universe-at-large?
Sometimes I think about stuff like that—Kurt Vonnegut Jr. believed that this habit was the result of having “bad chemicals”.
How did life on earth begin? With a bang, they say. There are actually at least four theories I know of.
Spontaneous Generation
Panspermia
Intelligent Design
Seeding by advanced, Extra-Terrestrial Races
Spontaneous Generation is the idea, spawned from the Theory of Evolution, that life was the result of a nearly infinite variations of a complex set of original parameters, including; heat, pressure, electrical energy, and the slow accumulation of more and more complex proteins until somehow, (a huge blank in the theory) a few of these “experiments” managed to wriggle. I call it the “First There Was This Soup Theory”.
Panspermia is the theory that life traveled here on pieces of galactic detritus, like rocks and ice and stuff, from somewhere else, or lots of somewhere else’s, over millions of years, and ended up here by accident, at a time when conditions were pleasing to the spores or whatever they were. (I prefer large, tentacled creatures on the order of Cthulhu).
Intelligent Design is the code word for God, used in order not to damage the pudding-brained sensibilities of people unwilling to acknowledge even the possibility of such a thing. This idea suggests that someone or something, always alive, created life for purposes unknown, perhaps incomprehensible. Opinions vary as to why. Some people think it was part of an ongoing experiment, others believe it was a passing fancy and that whatever started it all has long gone on to other things, and a few of us (two or three billion, more or less) think it was an actual intelligence, with comprehensible motives which include (paternal or maternal) feelings for humans and some kind of plan involving progression, education, experience and a system of punishments and rewards, otherwise known as natural consequences. The details are still being debated.
Seeding by advanced, Extra-Terrestrial Races is the notion that some other life-form, for mysterious, inscrutable reasons, planted the seeds of life here ( and probably elsewhere) and then went on their way. A variant of this idea is that actual, already complex creatures were set down on earth after the planet had agreed to be nice. Hominids, we call these creatures—humans, homo-sapiens.
Here’s the interesting thing; all of these theories are equally valid, relevant, and possible. One reason for this claim is that in an infinite universe everything is possible. What can be imagined, is. Another is that none of them offer any hard evidence as proof (despite the strident claims to the contrary by certain factions of the science community). But only one of them actually addresses the origin of life. Aliens brought us here? Fine, where did they come from? Why do they exist? The same for Panspermia—great, life traveled here on random blocks of rock and ice; but how did the bacteria, virus, spores—whatever—come to be? Spontaneous generation (which is the foundation of modern evolution) does not address itself, in any meaningful way, to the actual process of the formation of life—of dead, inanimate objects transforming into live, animate, organisms. I know, I know, someone out there in reader land is saying;
“Yes we have! We know almost everything about it!” and they will give us a long, detailed description of what probably happened. But they have nothing to explain that moment between not-alive and alive. Did you catch that ‘probably’ thing? We use that word when we don’t know for sure. A certain type of technical mind will insist that it deals with ‘facts’ which makes it’s position on a subject superior to the rest of us. Sometimes we call this kind of mind a scientist. I know several scientists and I respect each of them, enjoy their company and love to listen to them. I am not anti-scientist. I am, however, anti-presumption, arrogance, and conceit. They deal in facts only? Nothing could be further from the truth, and any good researcher will tell you that. Have you ever watched one of those documentaries on dinosaurs or the big bang or black holes or possible disasters, climate change, geological prognostication, early man, the deep ocean, plate-tectonics, the formation of the solar system, etc? Next time you do, keep track of how many times words and phrases like “perhaps, maybe, could have, may have, it can be assumed, we think, we believe, some scientists predict, possible, likely, probable, reasonably certain, assume, promising, feasible, computer models suggest, ad naseum, are used. They like facts, they pine for the absolute, the verifiable, they worship the “proof”, but they actually deal with very few facts. Mostly it is creative guesswork. Extrapolated theory based on observable phenomena heaped on top of a nearly-infinite number of assumptions. And there’s nothing wrong with that—I do it all the time. I just resent the holier-than-thou hubris, the exact same kind of certainty, of wild-eyed confidence they ridicule in other, less empirically-minded people, like, say, religionists. (Nor am I defending true-believers—many of those people have toe-jam for brains).
So lets take a look at this ‘how did life begin’ thing. Did you know more and more researchers are beginning to question the whole “primordial ocean” idea? Look it up.
Supposedly, life began in a thick, nutrient-rich liquid which was being bombarded with cosmic debris on a constant basis, was hot (well, warm anyway) and was being stirred up by thermal vents, volcanic activity and excessive lightening discharges. All this kept mixing and re-mixing until things began to curdle out of the soup. Amino acids, proteins, hydro-carbons, and according to urban legend, Twinkies. None of these things were “alive” however. They wanted to be, they tried. But they just couldn’t quite get the hang of making themselves live. Some very clever scientists back in the fifties or sixties, tried to reproduce these primal conditions in the laboratory, mixing raw ingredients and warming them up, them zapping them with thousands of jolts of electricity. And low and behold! They managed to create amino acids and proteins and hydro-carbons. (Possibly Twinkies as well, but this was repressed in the literature). Except, none of those things were alive either. How dare they not live! Somebody goes to the trouble of getting a grant, setting up a lab where the experiment can take place, mixing stuff in a bowl and plugging in a toaster to toss into the sludge . . . and nothing happens! Now they know how Dr. Frankenstein felt. In, fact, isn’t that what Dr. Frankenstein did, more or less? Put a bunch of inanimate pieces of flesh together (which had at one time actually been alive) and zap them with lightening?
“Elevate me!”
“Right here, Herr Doctor?”
And yet, we call that fantasy, fiction.
Let’s review, shall we? So, we have this sludge full of all kinds of ingredients, and lots of energy being pumped into it and eventually we find “the stuff of life” coagulating into slimy clumps of snot-like objects. But it still isn’t alive, is it? Maybe we need to define life. “I’m not sure what it is but I know it when I see it!” Ba-da-boom.
Okay, as a minimum set of requirements for very simple, one celled “life” let’s try this.
It must be able to ingest nutrients.
It must be able to convert the nutrients to fuel.
It must be able to eliminate waste.
It must be able to reproduce.
It must be able to dance (a well-known pre-requisite to reproduction.)
Soon after it comes into being, but not right away, it must be capable of mobility and defense.
It’s possible to get really close, to form complex chains of protein molecules, have them bunch together and even begin to organize themselves. But that isn’t life.
All this happened over millions and millions of years, so the proto-organisms were able to occur imperfectly, again and again, going through the endless permutations of chaotic, random, chance. It came about gradually. So say the experts.
Really? So . . . one came along that could eliminate waste, but had no way to take in nutrients? Interesting. One came along that could move around but not reproduce? Not even with itself? (thus eliminating the need to dance).
Oh, I get it, eventually, after hundreds of millions of years, and hundreds of millions of failures, something came along one day, at an actual moment, a point in time, and existed with each and every one of these requirements for life, where nothing had existed before. Because, if it couldn’t reproduce, we’re never going to, that’s for sure. And isn’t it lucky that the nutrients it evolved into needing were the very nutrients floating around in its immediate vicinity—because it couldn’t move around yet—not for several million more years. But you know, even with all these characteristics, how did it go from being not alive to alive? From ingredients with no life, to an organism with all of it? Can a thing be a little alive? Almost alive? Can it gradually become alive? (Well, that last one is verified every morning in my classroom . . .).
Vladimir Verdansky (biochemist, geochemist, radiogeologist, mineralogist, cool beard) once said “only life is capable of creating life.” Think about it. Have we ever seen any evidence, ever, that life sprang spontaneously from inorganic, non-living matter? No. Some people assume it did because they can’t think of it happening any other way.
Life is not an intrinsic characteristic of matter. Matter is an intrinsic characteristic of life. We do not find a rock animating itself into a living thing. We don’t even see those hundreds of attempts in the lab, full of energy and promise and all the building blocks life needs, crossing the gap from non-living to living. Think about it some more. It never happened. Not spontaneously, accidentally, randomly. I don’t know what did happen, but I’m just not willing to accept an idea so replete with inconsistencies. I’m really good at the willing suspension of disbelief, but this is way beyond what I can swallow.
“So what did happen, you loud-mouthed, opinionated, obnoxious freak?”
Glad you asked. I have no idea. But! Panspermia and Alien Seeding both have the same basic problem. They can only speak to life on earth, not life itself. The only one left, through a near-genius process of elimination, is Intelligent Design. As yet, I haven’t figured out all the details, but I’m working on it. If someone could prove to me that something came along which was alive, and therefore could somehow pass aliveness on, and did something to the Soup, I could accept that. Barely. But I’m working on an alternative theory. It’s called Genesis.

Thinking of the Past

I was young once. I know it sounds odd to say it, but it’s easy to forget when you’re fifty-seven and have grandchildren. Maybe we were all young once, I don’t know. Some of you are still young, not even thirty. It’s a mystery. I have children older than that. I’m not suggesting I’m old—far from it. But I’m sitting at home, taking care of my uncle while Nita helps our daughter-in-law with Salem, their one-and-a-half year-old, because she’s (mom) about two hours away from delivering the second, (Grahson—a few of you will smile at that) and is tired, and needs a break. So I’m watching some CMT special with Faith Hill because she can sing and picks mostly good songs and is easy to look at. And while I watch, I am taken back to that time when I was young and knew things I have slowly forgotten, or perhaps I didn’t know enough.
When I was seventeen and eighteen, in Glen Burnie Maryland, going to school while dad snuck away to the Pentagon every day to do secret stuff for the Air Force, I fell in with a couple folkies; Rick and Kay. Rick was a good friend, although I’m not sure why—Dever calls the phenomenon of friendship “filling gaps”, and I suppose Rick and I filled some gaps for one another—and he had been singing with Kay for about a year, and her last name was Funk, so you can see right away that fate was playing a Royal Flush, and I was helpless. They were into very old, traditional folk music. Rick played a fine twelve-string guitar and harmonica, and had a rough, gravelly voice somewhere between George Thoroughgood and Bob Dylan, (and if you know who all these musicians are I will be talking about, you either had rockin’ parents or you are, like me, no longer young.) Kay on the other hand, had a voice like an angel, a true soprano, great control and a whole lota soul. I started hanging out with them and pretty soon I was singing along while they practiced, putting on harmonies (I knew the songs) and then playing a little guitar as an accent for Rick, and one day they came to me and said “we’ve talked it over and we want you to join us and be a trio.”
Well, sure, I said, that’d be fine. So I did. We began to rearrange the songs to fit another voice, and I began to gently push them into a more contemporary direction, while not forsaking the heart of folk music. We started playing Peter Paul and Mary, The Kingston Trio, Donovan, Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy St. Marie, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen, all those greats—even a little Tom Waits. I tricked ‘em into doing a version of Ghost Riders in the Sky because my dad had turned me on to The Sons of the Pioneers, and they are still one of my all time favorites. We even messed around with writing original material. We worked hard and got pretty good and started getting gigs. Not paying gigs of course, but we worked steady, and eventually a little money came our way. We played the coffee house circuit between Baltimore and Washington DC, when there was such a thing as a coffee house circuit. And we got a following, which consisted of our friends at school and then even strangers were tagging along, following us around, (and by strangers, I mean extremely odd people from parts unknown, and, more than likely, unknowable).
I miss it sometimes, and I want to tell you why—which is the point of this silly little diversion. (As an aside, we once were kicked off the Governors Mansion lawn in Annapolis, by the Gov himself, Spiro Agnew. He was in a bathrobe and a cigar and used language I’d never heard before. We had a gig that night at a place called the Toadstool and were practicing on what we thought was the greensward of a park).
Here’s the thing. While I’m watching Faith, the close-ups, her interaction with the guys and gals in the band, I’m suddenly back there with Rick and Kay, singing Well, Well, Well, and Polly Von, Who Knows Where the Time Goes, and Tom Dooley, The Story of Isaac, and Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night, among many others. I’m remembering what it felt like, and it felt good. We went through several names for our little group, all horrible and pretentious, but we always called the music we made “The Great Song”, and vowed that would be the name of our first album. I can see that same feeling in Faith’s eyes and the faces of her band and singers—because everyone shares in the magic that is live music. I cannot describe what that feeling is like, but when we were on and in the groove, it was amazing, timeless, intense beyond feeling, and extremely contagious. It fed on itself, and grew, until we were smiling at each other—or nobody—without knowing we were, our faces no doubt contorted, but not in pain—we were transformed by genuine ecstasy. When you hit that unexpected note perfectly and get that response from the audience, and you’re shivering because the chords on the guitars mingling with the three voices, all belting out their own parts makes a moment, an instant, which only lasts as long as the melody demands and is gone, but in that instant, you discover it’s possible to find eternity, and visions are seen, invisible voices are heard, and you are, as C.S. Lewis puts it, “surprised by joy”. Practicing was sometimes the same; transcendent, taking us beyond what we could possibly do. We became more than the sum of whatever talent each of us brought to the sound. And we made each other better. Kay and I had some kind of bizarre, annoying gift for harmony. We came up with the same one so often that we worked hard at trying to invent new, strange, and compelling harmony and counterpoint. And then we’d still end up singing the same one! It got to the point where we had to come up with each harmony together, then go one to the next one, again, together, and so forth. I guess we were good enough to have been given a record contract—at least if we’d kept going with it, but my family moved back to Albuquerque at the end of that two years.
We sang a few songs for Kay’s voice teacher in Baltimore one Saturday. He taught at the Peabody Conservatory, and offered me a scholarship right then and there, but I was so naive, I barely knew what a scholarship was and had never even heard of Peabody.
I’ll never forget those two years. And I’ll never forget how it felt to be inside that moment, inside the Great Song. Most people don’t ever get to experience it. There are similar moments in other areas of life—I’ve felt something like it playing basketball from time to time, when we all got into the “zone” and lost ourselves to the motion and seamless team-mind, and while playing with my kids certainly. All night talks with good friends, moments of real, intimate communication between God and me, that kind of thing. But music is different. Not better, but more, visceral, more . . . something. I have no regrets about it ending—I would never have met Nita if I’d stayed back east, and she is the ultimate transcendent experience. Wouldn’t change a thing. But sometimes I miss it a little, and wonder how Rick and Kay are getting along and if the Great Song still exists out there somewhere, like it does for Faith and her band. In the scriptures there’s a verse about using our God-given talents or we will lose them. I can’t sing anymore—I’ve lost a third of my range, most of my wind, and the control I used to have—and I only play the guitar once or twice a year, living proof of that warning. Over the years other things took the place of the music; bereft of Rick and Kay, and the Great Song, I sort of grew up—it was an accident, I swear!—turned to raising a family, school, and work while it slipped through my fingers. I tried, but I’ve never found it again.

Intergalactic Memo Marriage and Divorce

Let’s talk about marriage today. Don’t worry, I’m an expert—I’ve been married almost 38 years and I have a license, which means I’m a licensed professional, like a teacher or a doctor.
On the way home from work this afternoon, I heard what sounded like a PSA, although there was no credit given, and the voice-over sounded like Dick Morris, but I can’t imagine Dick ever doing something for free, or out of any altruistic impulse, so its kind of a mystery.
Whatever . . . . in the ad we are told that despite everyone’s assumptions, the divorce rate has been going slowly but steadily down, since 1970, a little bit every decade. Counter-intuitive huh? There wasn’t even a point to the piece that I could discern. But it got me thinking. (Are we noticing a recurring theme here?)
Unless you’ve been living on the Nautilus with Captain Nemo since the turn of the century (the last century) you have probably noticed a decline, not only with the success and value of marriage, but as a critical social lynchpin as well. It has been battered, denigrated, scoffed-at, maligned, ridiculed as hopelessly outdated and bourgeois, misunderstood, taken for granted, abused and rendered morally impotent. (Is there a pun in there somewhere?)
A significant portion of this decline, I believe, is the urban legend that divorce had been on the rise all this time. The belief that divorce is increasing has a tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, which places the thought in people’s minds that the stigma of divorce is loosing it’s behavior-tempering animus, gives us the idea that marriage is a convenient social contract and nothing more.
But what would happen if that belief were brought into serious doubt? What would happen if marriage was seen to be more healthy than it currently is? Would we care? What would happen if we discovered that divorce has been declining for thirty years? Would our attitudes, our unconscious, collective identity shift back to believing in a more reasonable and nurturing—and dare we say it, sacred—institution?
Now let’s add something explosive to the mix and see what kind of boom we get. What if the state and national divorce rate percentages were skewed enough to give us a false reading? Of course I realize the chances of this are extremely slim—because we’re dealing with government statisticians, and the dreaded ‘Computer Modelers’—that the question is just silly, but bare with me. The states all calculate the divorce-rate ratio (to marriage, which would be the opposite) with the same formula. They compare the number of marriages in the state, in a given year, to the number of divorces, (hopefully in the same state and the same year, but who knows?) then some kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo called long division takes place, and before you can say “I do!”, we have a fifty percent divorce rate.
But! This is a spurious comparison, and everybody knows it. (you probably just haven’t thought about it yet). In order to get a valid percentage, we have to compare the number of divorces in a given year, in a given state, (It’s important to be specific with these bureaucratic bean-counters because they’re so easily distracted by things like Brittany Spears sans underwear) with the total number of existing marriages in the same state. Think about it now, don’t let it scare you. The number of divorces is relevant as a ratio to all the marriages, not the marriages in the same year. And when you do that math (I assume, because, you know, I’m never gonna do it) you find the actual rate is more like fifteen percent. (Again, I made that up, but I’m sure it’s close). I have anecdotal evidence too. All the people I know have never been divorced, almost. Okay, my brother has, twice, and a few of my friends, and Elizabeth Taylor, but hey, Even Bill Clinton figured how to keep a marriage going.
Oh yeah, there’s another well-know method of forcing marriage to win. You can add up the years. Take all the marriages in the state and add up the total number of years they represent. Then take all the divorces and add up all the years those people were married, and marriage beats the crap out of divorce. I think I’ve run rings around the bean-counters, logically.
Heck, my great-great grandfather Dudley had five wives for like, ever, and he didn’t divorce any of them. Although Jane’s descendants are pretty seriously pissed at the rest of us and I don’t know why. Jane was a Piute.
To summarize, marriage is almost always better than divorce, despite the mountains of anecdotal data to the contrary. God likes marriage, because He really likes kids, which is why He gave us the institution in the first place, to create a commitment powerful enough and deep enough to make sure the kids (which, c’mon, we made) were taken care of. And you thought it was about you . . .

Intergalactic memo—Language, Borders, Culture

I read an “article” tonight, emailed from a friend, which was talking about English in America. A veteran wrote it in response to the Senate voting against making English our official language. Some of us are going to approve of that vote, believing such a move to be unnecessary, and others of us are dismayed, or at least disappointed, by the Senates failure to enact something which seems so obviously necessary. I thought I might take a moment to throw my two cents worth into the storm.
I am in favor of English as the official language, and not just because it happens to be the (only) language I speak. Nor, I hope, is it out of any chauvinist sentiment, believing America to be superior to all other nations (which I do.)
There is a man in talk radio (who will remain nameless because he is a raving lunatic) who proclaims to anyone who will listen, that it is about “Language, Borders, and Culture.” Despite his lunacy, he is exactly right on this one point. Some who will read this will be angry that I would take a stand so “Selfish” or “Parochial” or even “evil”. Obviously, I don’t agree, as I don’t think of myself as any of those things. Every nation, however, has not only the right, but the absolute imperative, to maintain at least a core of commonality. No nation survives for long if it contains competing cultures and languages. The former Yugoslavia is an example, as is Iraq and even Canada. An argument will be made that people should be free, especially in America, to speak what they want, etc., etc., and I would agree. But the commonality, what my brother in law calls a “common cultural base” is an absolute requisite for a people to remain a people.
It is often said, these days as a slogan for “diversity,” that America is, and always has been, a melting pot. And this is true. But we’ve gotten sloppy with our definitions. People now use the phrase to mean a stew pot. Let me explain.
A stew pot is where we cook a delicious soup with a variety of ingredients, bringing them together with herbs and spices, creating a kind of new thing out of separate parts. But in a stew, the parts remain separate; we can pick them out (which I do with the celery), identify them individually—this is potato, this is carrot, this is Thumper, etc. In other words, while the flavors combine, the raw ingredients never do. They maintain their unique, molecular identities.
A melting pot is different. A melting pot is used to combine metals into an alloy. We might want to put several different metals in, like iron and nickel, chromium and carbon, some metallic salts, etc, depending on what we are making. Each metal has unique characteristics which add specific and important elements to the alloy. But when we melt metals they become an amalgam, they recombine on the molecular level to make a truly new thing. Think of putting three kinds of chewing gum into your mouth and chewing for an hour, then trying to separate them again. Can’t be done. Same with metals in the furnace.
So it is with cultures, nations and people. We are in fact, a melting pot. Unique in history. We bring every tradition, language, religion, ethnicity, culture, and history into this country and make a new thing. We are a crucible, purified in the refiner’s fire until what emerges is better, stronger, more beautiful and useful. The people and their traditions still exist—they are what make the alloy strong and flexible. The religions and languages still exist, so that we might all celebrate one another’s heritage and customs. I am reminded of that very powerful scene in A Walk in the Clouds when all the vintner families in California’s wine country come together to celebrate the harvest, each in the traditional costumes of their native lands, accepting, forming bonds of friendship and respect in the growing commonality, the core-culture, new to them all.
For a people to remain intact, especially when they are as diverse as we are in the U.S., it is absolutely necessary to maintain that core, to accept, even celebrate all good things we share in common. If we don’t do this, we are merely a collection of diverse and suspicious tenants, with no compelling reason to cooperate, to form those bonds so desired by all decent people. So we have our traditions, our rituals and celebrations. We speak a hundred languages in this country, but everyone needs to speak a common one as well. We share one another’s holidays and sacred days, while respecting those which were here from the beginning, brought by the people who colonized the country. And yes, I know the Spanish were here hundreds of years ago. I lived in New Mexico for nearly twenty years and have known people whose ancestors were deeded land by the King of Spain—that’s how long they’ve been here, and we should respect that. I quietly celebrate, Cinco de Mayo, The Day of the Dead, Chanukah, Ramadan, The Corn Festival of the Pueblo Indians, and others, not because they are mine, but out of respect, and because I like the food. We need to keep our diversity while allowing it to be gently subsumed by the core culture. We see signs of our country splintering around us and wonder why it’s happening. This is why; too few of us understand how great societies work. We no longer appreciate the glue which holds us together. We are separating into cabals of pride and isolation, all in the well-intentioned but badly miss-informed name of diversity and tolerance. Both of which are fine values, unless taken to extremes. Is anyone seriously suggesting we tolerate everything? Does anyone not understand the importance of a balance between commonality and diversity?
The veteran mentioned that four people running for President voted against the “English as official language” bill; Senators Dodd, Obama, Clinton and Biden. All Democrats, incidentally. They could not be more wrong. No one (I hope) wants an “English Only” country. I don’t. I want a universal language, under which as many other languages as possible should survive and thrive. Hell, they speak five languages in my sister’s home! (Not all of them—except English—but five different languages.)
Yes, passing such a bill would be a burden on new immigrants from other nations. But that has always been the case, and still is in every country on the planet. People would be at a disadvantage for a while, because they couldn’t read the signs or understand the television, but making one language “official” is the compelling incentive to learn that language. In the long run it is by far the best thing to do—in fact the necessary thing to do. It does not put anyone at an unfair advantage, since all immigrants suffer equally. Remember, those of us who speak only English can’t understand them either. It motivates people to do what it takes to learn the common language. No one is going to be kicked out of the country because they don’t speak English. But it will set a precedence that all people can understand; the American Dream speaks English. Would any of us, if moving to Germany or France or China, expect those countries to bend over backwards and alter their laws and traditions just for us? The idea is absurd. Does it make more sense to print voting ballots in over a hundred languages (with the risk of poor translations) or to let citizens vote as soon as they can read the ballot in English? More incentive.
It had never been necessary, in the past, to worry about this issue, because people learned English when they got here. (Yeah, I know your grandparents didn’t, but we aren’t dealing with anecdotal anomalies). But these days, may people refuse to learn it as a matter of pride. That kind of short-sighted, self-serving attitude will become a socially and financial self-defeating behavior in the end. No one should come here who does not want to become an American. In every sense of the word. And we should be accepting, patient and as helpful as possible, to all the ones who do. But being American does not preclude retaining the traditions and culture of our original home.
Most of us (not all) are Christians, practicing or not. In our tradition Christ accepted the Jew, the Gentile, the Samaritan, the sinner, the rich and poor . . . everyone. But when they came to Him, they found common ground in His teachings and learned to live His commandments, becoming “one mind and heart.” They retained their ethnicity, their status or lack thereof, their various traditions, and adopted new ones as well. They became one people, a new thing, an alloy, made up of diversity. I feel strongly we need to do the same, or we are not long for the world—at least not as a nation. It is a moral imperative that we retain our Language, Borders, and Culture, while celebrating all that is good about all other traditions which come to us in the hearts of those “yearning to be free.”