On the List

Here in Utah the news when I returned from Wyoming this week was about a list somebody or some group had compiled and spread anonymously throughout the news media and government. The list, it is said, contains the names of some 1300 people, their addresses and telephone numbers, their Social Security numbers, whether or not they were pregnant, if they were women, and the like. Apparently, the list was also sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, too. It argues that all of the named individuals should be deported from the United States because they are, the document argues, illegally here.

So "the list" has been in all the news stories broadcast on television and radio, in the newspaper, both locally and nationally. It coincides with the extremists who want to apply Arizona-like tactics to everyone they think shouldn't be here.

My observation is this. People with this type of vitriol should go after the perpetrators of the problem: the holders of office in the federal government. It is our congressmen and our president, present and past, who have caused this crisis.

And this is a crisis that affects real human beings, ones without much of a voice at all, ones living a bare existence here, always having to "lay low" and watch their backs. The extremists, it seems to me, seem to have little heart or soul in analyzing the nuances of the problem as it pertains to real individuals affected by their sad and callous tactics. Instead of raising their ire against politicians who hold offices and could have done something about the problem over the years, they want to cause heartache and catastrophe for families. I find it particularly ironic, in a state where people laud the supremacy of family, that these individuals are so allied and agitated in this ugly manner against individuals in families.

But I don't blame just the politicians. I blame the citizens, including myself, who haven't held and didn't hold the politicians accountable; I blame the citizens who didn't care enough to do anything substantive relative to the situation to hold politicians accountable for their lack of doing anything, because it didn't matter to we, the citizens, in years past, when life was good and rosy , when jobs were plentiful and paid well. Now, when because of past policies that favor big business and the rich and powerful our  economy has crashed and is still trying to recover slowly, such individuals blame the people who came here hoping for something better than their sad lives someplace else, who we, collectively, tolerated and even, to some degree, esteemed and appreciated, or, at the very least, cared nothing about. They weren't on our radar. They were seen as a threat to us. Now, these extremists seek to put a target on their chests and shoot them, in a figurative sense.

The Republican Party and the so-called Tea Party Movement, the Libertarians, and others unaffiliated but who perpetuate this vitriol are hypocrites. They have contributed to the enduring situation as much as anybody else, and now they are contributing to something even worse: the disruption of family life and security for all these people.

For believing this way, I would probably be and have been labeled by these types of individuals who spew hatred a bleeding heart liberal, a socialist, and/or a Communist.

Go ahead, label me. Say what you will about what I am. Maybe I am a bleeding heart, a liberal, inclined to socialism. At the same time, I am inclined to argue that such detritus as people who would disrupt family lives like these groups belatedly seek to do to people who have been here for years and years trying to seek a better way of life for them and their families are not unlike those who showed disdain and hatred for Jews in Hitler Germany or whowanted to perpetuate slavery in early America and segregation more recently.

An Ugly Wart

I want to write about a wart --- well, I think it's a wart, but my wife thinks it's cancer --- that I have. I also want to write about a senator of mine, Orrin Hatch. I've had them both too long. I want to get rid of each of them. They have gone about irritating me for far too long, and it's time to do something about them. I didn't do anything to deserve either one of them, not that I know of at least. I want them gone.
First, let me describe, even though you might not want to know about it, my wart. It is on my right forearm out of my sight, about to the end of the arm of a short-sleeved shirt. I can see it in the mirror or if I twist my arm with my hand. It is an unusual growth.

It is quite ugly. Other people usually can't see it because of my shirt sleeve, at least I don't think they can, and they don't mention it. It would stick straight up, probably four fifths of an inch or so, if it weren't kind of bent over. It is flesh-colored at the base, but crusty looking and pointed at the top. The tip is the part which is bent over, probably from my lying on my arm at night and, hence, it, when I'm trying to sleep. It has become very awkward and uncomfortable to cope with it. It hurts when it catches on my clothing or when I accidentally bump it.

I am not by nature, a warty person, or haven't been for most of my life, at least not in a literal sense. Those who know me may describe my thinking, personality, or humor as warty, though, I suppose. Many years ago, before this wart appeared, I had another strange wart on my left hand. It was at the base of my thumb. While it never grew as big or as ugly as the one which now resides on my arm, it was still itchy and uncomfortable. Eventually, I showed it to my physician, a family doctor, and he removed it, had it checked for cancer, and found it was benign. It has never come back, unless you think perhaps the wart on my right arm is its reincarnation. I don't think so, and I have my reasons, but they don't pertain to this particular essay.

I have an appointment with a doctor, a dermatologist, who just happens to be the son-in-law of the doctor who removed my other wart, in a few days. Hopefully, he will be able to remove the growth and restore me to normality, and at the same time, benefit his son-in-law through having referred me to him.

I am looking for a similar solution to get Orrin Hatch out of my life as a senator. To me, he is just as irritating as that wart, although I have to admit, he isn't nearly as scary looking as it. Besides that, Orrin does have other redeeming characteristics my wart doesn't seem to have. I have enjoyed that he has been willing in some very limited instances to cross party lines and join with his colleagues in the Democratic Party to get helpful legislation enacted and enforced. Nonetheless, I think I have put up with him and his deceptive antics long enough. Here though, what I want to mention is my latest aggravation with him. It involves immigration reform or, rather, his obstruction of immigration reform.
Let me tell you what I mean.

This past week eight senators sent the President of the United States a letter which demanded that he stop going around the will of Congress on immigration. There is no evidence whatsoever that the President ever did or intended to go around the will of Congress on immigration. Orrin was one of the eight who signed that letter. It alleges a secret illegal agreement exists to grant "deferred action" --- the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in refraining from removing someone from the United States --- to undocumented immigrants. It suggests that the President subscribes to the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no way the President or his administration is interested in granting more than 10 million undocumented people in the United States some kind of immunity from prosecution. What the President is and has been interested in is comprehensive immigration reform. And he is probably also interested in utilizing whatever presidential power he has to afford relief where it is warranted in the most sensitive specific cases. For example, he would use the relief where immigrant children have grown up in the United States, have done extraordinary in their studies, and want to continue their education in our colleges and universities without being deported for a lack of documentation.

The letter of the senators is an ugly wart on the public, like the ugly wart on my forearm. It --- the letter --- is intended to perpetuate ugly rumors grounded in nothing more than bigoted people's imaginations. Those people in this particular case are interested in a political agenda that opposes comprehensive immigration reform. It is quite obvious, although their specific intent is left unclear. Of course, these individuals know something about "deferred action" because the Bush administration used it during Hurricane Katrina, granting rights to individuals victimized by the storm. And that is when it is usually appropriate, when there is some serious crisis that pulls at the heartstrings, when things are fundamentally unfair and inequitable and against our basic ideals for our fellow beings.

Sen. Orrin Hatch and the other senators who wrote the President are being disingenuous. In their letter they suggest that they agree that immigration laws need to be fixed, but then they go on to gripe about the potential of the administration using "deferred action" or some type of parole for large populations of undocumented immigrants, although that is impossible. Sen. Hatch and the others seven senators have never done anything whatsoever to reform immigration laws. Hatch has served in the Senate for years and years. He defeated Frank Moss in 1976 and has been Utah's ranking senator almost ever since. Pray tell, what has he ever done to correct immigration laws? Nothing. Even during the period when his party held the presidency and controlled both houses of Congress, he did nothing. Nothing! He intends to do nothing about immigration reform. That's why he voted against the Senate bill that would have been a first step in giving us comprehensive immigration reform. That bill passed the Senate in 2007. In fact, the senators who wrote the subject letter, moved to close the debate on the bill and to prepare the bill for a vote in order to kill it.

Orrin Hatch is bound to big business, which benefits with the situation relative to immigration as it stands in this country. Senator Hatch is interested only in doing whatever furthers the funding he needs to retain his position and power.

Sen. Orrin Hatch is a useless wart on the forearm of the public, worthy of removal. Hopefully, he is not a cancerous growth, who will lead to more serious problems or our demise. One thing for sure, Senator Hatch's intent is to scare people and frighten them, rather than simply doing what is helpful and compassionate.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

When I got home from Wyoming, there was a package from Amazon on the porch. I hadn't ordered anything from Amazon that I remembered, and I didn't know that Shelley had, but that is always a possibility. The box was addressed to me, not her. I opened up the box to see what was in it and it was the complete National Geographic, I mean every National Geographic issue since 1888. I knew I didn't order it, although I would've liked to have had it, and I didn't think Shelley had, either.

Inside the box as always there was a document giving the details of the transaction. The first thing I looked for was the label they include to make returning items sent easy. That label was gone. I looked at the shipping address, and it was mine, and I looked at the billing address and it wasn't mine. I don't know how I looked at just the address without seeing the name with the address but I did. It was an address that seemed foreign, and I jumped to a conclusion that somebody had used my credit card to make the purchase and I immediately thought I'd better call Shelley to tell her I needed to cancel the credit card. Then I got to looking closer. The name with the address was the name of my son-in-law, and it immediately became clear that this was a gift, probably a Father's Day gift from my daughter and him.

Shelley called a little while after that and I told her what had happened and she laughed and said that my daughter had mentioned that there would be something in the mail for me for Father's Day --- my daughter had been ill and had been unable to visit on Father's Day.

It is such a nice gift and I'm grateful. Thank you very much. And it's nice to not have to cancel that credit card.

The Rivalry of Saul for David

Rivalry. What does it mean? The dictionary says it is the act of competing or emulating. A second definition indicates it is the state or condition of being a rival. A rival is one who attempts to equal or surpass another, or who pursues the same object as another. We would say, a competitor. Can rivalry get us into trouble?

Do you remember David, from the Bible, the guy who killed Goliath with his sling shot? Would it be difficult for you or for any of us today to have envied David, to have jealousy for what he did?

Well, let me talk about somebody who did for a moment. After David has this great victory and receives all these great accolades for taking care of the fearsome, loathsome Goliath, Saul, who is the king, brings David to court, figuring he could honor David, probably thinking he could utilize David some way to make life better there for himself and the inhabitants who lived there with him. In fact, the invitation from Saul to David is somewhat of an honor for David, but at the same time David was just a boy and his place of honor was inferior, or should have been, to the place of a king's.

However, the news of David's victory over Goliath apparently spreads, possibly gets amplified and exaggerated, maybe, and David receives the attention, fully deserved or not, of the masses --- well, possibly not the masses, but whatever. He soon becomes, it appears, more popular than even the king, Saul. This can all be read in 1 Samuel 18:5-16. So Saul has to contend with this circumstance, with David receiving greater attention and a greater following of the people than he himself. That had to be galling and incite jealousy and envy within Saul. And the Old Testament narrative indicates the same. Saul wavers between a type of submission to David because of David's popularity and a desire to kill the boy. Saul blames his son, Jonathan, saying the boy is unfaithful to his father, and that he is supporting his arrival, David. Saul massacres the priests at Nob just for honoring David. They become victims for merely honoring David for helping the people defeat an enemy.

So instead of killing David, who was still so popular, Saul has had these priests all killed, substituting them for David. I guess he thought nobody would care about the priests but they would about him killing David. Nonetheless, the killing doesn't solve this problem of Saul's of David getting more attention than him, and David continues to receive accolades and praise of the people, all to Saul's chagrin.

Next Saul sends his soldiers into battle with the Philistines, hoping to regain the attention of his people and receive their praise. But before the battle, he consults with a medium in Endor and lapses into a kind of insanity, receiving a chastisement from the dead prophet, Samuel. Saul loses the battle and kills himself.

What is interesting in this situation for me is that Saul, who held a more powerful position and place, becomes the rival the rival of David, a mere youth. Powerful people can become rivals of people generally seen as weaker than them.

Sunday Musings

The title of the Sunday school lesson today was "God will honor those who honor him." Now, that is a conditional premise. If I honor God, he will honor me. The implication is that, if I don't honor God, he won't honor me. God, therefore, does not love unconditionally, but conditionally. That seems to fly in the face of everything I believe and know about God. I believe he does love unconditionally. The ramifications of our bad behavior toward him or toward anyone else or even toward ourselves operate independent of His love and devotion to us. That's what I believe.

Now, thinking about that notion --- you respect me and I'll respect you --- I try to reconcile it with the Golden rule, which says, as I recall, that I should do to others what I would want them to do to me.

The two notions seem to be in conflict with each other. If God will only honor me if I honor him then he is not following the admonition to do to others what you want them to do to you. I believe God will honor me because he wants me to honor him. And I should want to honor him because I want to be honored by him. The lesson seems to have it backward.

I wish though when we talk about these Old Testament cases we could utilize a different Bible than the King James version that the church insists on us using. It's very irritating to have to wade through prose that is difficult to understand when prose that is more modern and easy to grasp is available.

In any event, Eli's sons are a little out of control --- and that's putting it mildly, because the scripture says they were sons of Belial --- and they were doing things they shouldn't be doing according to Eli and according to the traditions and commandments of their religion. And so Eli, like most parents, takes them to task. He tells them they are setting a bad example and make the faithful people also transgress (which seems like a non sequitur). Eli goes on to say that if a person sins against another person, a judge will sit in judgment and impose, in essence, some sanction or punishment. If they sin against the Lord, Eli asks rhetorically, who will judge them then? He goes on to say that if they didn't follow the counsel of him, their father, the Lord would slay them.

Hmmm. Curious. What exactly is meant there? The Lord kills people for doing evil against him? Well, does he? It seems to me there are plenty of influences around in real life where that hasn't and doesn't happen, where people are warned by good, wholesome people not to do evil or not to do this or that which seems simple, yet people still do it and doing it would be, at least in the view of the faithful person, a sin against God. Yet, we don't see God taking revenge and killing the individual for their behavior. Of course, the argument can always be made that in the end God gets them, just as he gets all of us because we die.

In 1 Samuel 2:30 it suggests that God will honor those who honor him and those who despise him he will esteem lightly. The verses after that go on to talk about cutting off arms and killing people and destroying progeny, if I understand it correctly.

I just don't understand how you reconcile the two notions. God wants us to love one another. Yet killing is not thought of as showing love but hate.

I think the Old Testament manifests the inclination of man to put words into God's mouth and make him something He isn't at all. It is man's inclination to mimic others and to scapegoat whenever mankind gets into trouble.

Time for All Eternity

I finally gave up hope and surrendered patience and published Time for All Eternity. I had explored the possibility of obtaining a literary agent based upon the work, but after months and months of trying and submitting time after time queries to various agents in a number of different agencies and being rejected, I decided to just go ahead and do it myself.

So far, relative to money spent on the project --- other than of course the value of my time and the other pursuits relative to more literary proficiency and contacts, generally, like the costs of driving to and from critiquing and to participate in Wasatch Writers and the League of Utah Writers and attending a few Roundup writers conferences --- I spent nothing to make the work available as a Kindle book and $49.22 to make it available as a 450 page print-on-demand book available on Amazon and through other distribution channels.

My friend, and fellow critiquer, Matt Kirby, have discussed frequently the merits of self-publishing over against the merits of finding a publisher. Matt, who is very talented and able as a writer, was able to enter into contracts for a few books and a short period of time with Scholastic through his agent. So, he was prone to argue the merits of getting an agent and being published through a conventional publisher. He was less enamored with self-publishing. Today, he e-mailed me with a link to an article in the Huffington Post written by a literary agent on the merits of self-publishing for those who can't find a literary agent or a publisher.

It will take few sales for me to recoup my total investment in setting up the book. I don't know if it's the right thing to do or not, I just know I wanted to do it. I had spent a lot of time and effort doing it, and doing it itself was its own reward, but nonetheless it was nice to see in print and available to those who want to read it. I think it's a good book. I think it's not that bad for a first novel for somebody who has my type of background.

I hope somebody will read it and like it.

Clichés Don’t Tell the Whole Story

My wife told me about an email she got at lunch today, and I asked her to forward it to me. I wanted to respond. The email had pictures posted here on Snopes with the following verbiage:

Hey everyone out there!

We, in Arizona , know you're boycotting us -- but you really should come out here and see our Beautiful Sonoran Desert .

It's just gorgeous right now! We know you'd love it and maybe you can share what you saw with the rest of the country so they can love it too!

This is on an 'illegal super - highway' from Mexico to the USA ( Tucson ) used by human smugglers.

This area is located in a wash, approximately 1.5 miles long, just south of Tucson , Arizona . If a flood came, all this would be washed to the river and then onto the sea!

It is estimated over 5,000 discarded backpacks are in this wash. Countless water containers, food wrappers, clothing, feces, including thousands of soiled baby diapers. And as you can see in this picture, fresh footprints leading right into it.

As we kept walking down the wash, we thought for sure it was going to end, but around every corner was more and more trash!

And of course the trail leading out of the wash in our city, heads directly NORTH to Tucson , then leads to your town tomorrow.

They've already come through here. Isn't Arizona just beautiful, America ?

Why would you boycott us???

Our desert has basically been turned into a landfill.

The trash left behind by people illegally crossing our border is another Environmental Disaster to hit the USA .

If these actions had been done in one of our Northwest Forests or Seashore National Parks areas, there would be an uprising of the American people.....but this is the Arizona-Mexican border.

You won't see these pictures on CNN, ABC, NBC or the Arizona Republic newspaper. Nor will they mention the disease that comes from the uncovered human waste left in our desert.

However, with respect to CNN, ABC & NBC, they do offer us "Special Reports" on cheating celebrity spouses....

This information needs to be seen by the rest of the country.

 

This is what I said:

It is heart-wrenching. Not so much as a result of a little littering ---  a church congregation or a similar organization or two could clean up the detritus and make what's reusable available to Goodwill or Deseret Industries in an afternoon or two --- but because of all
of the lives behind it.

 

• The undocumented immigrants, whose lives were so desperate that they risked them (read The Devil's Highway, for example)
  to escape circumstances intolerable wherever they were coming from to cross a barren, harsh desert to come here to live like new-age slaves because living here as new-age slaves was better than what they had before.  
  
• The elected officials of the U.S. government, who through willful and ongoing neglect of responsibility essentially facilitated the building of this highway through the desert and all the other immigration woes and concerns (read We Are Americans) by failing to enact, fund, and enforce meaningful and comprehensive immigration reform years and years ago, when it could have done some good in avoiding this minor part --- some littering of a desert --- of the whole big problem.
  
• We citizens, who through toleration of a worsening situation and inaction by duly elected officials, augmented by our greed, allowed the situation to continue on and on through all the years, especially through the years of plenty when it was more advantageous to communally own these new-age slaves to do our drudgery before our economy went sour and it wasn't so easy to tolerate these folks any more, worsening the situation to its present proportions and making it more and more difficult to solve, heightening hatred and fear.
  
• The multitude of U.S. businesses, small and large, and the individuals who have hired and exploited such new-age slaves --- new-age slaves who, without documentation, are in little condition to stand up for basic human rights themselves, (read, for example by analogy, Slavery by Another Name) --- which businesses and individuals thereby benefited from their hard work and sacrifices as new-age slaves, using their massive financial and societal resources to influence lawmakers and avoid responsibility.
  

 

The problem for me with the email is its facile nature. Like everything political these days, it's a cliché (see, for example, "How to Skin a Moose"), lacking deep analysis and heartrending empathy for tender lives. (Think of the story of the good Samaritan.) There seems to be little frustration out there with easy clichés like this one. Some garbage, strewn through a desert, and people in dire need of relieving themselves on their way leaving it to soil the earth. Oy vey. I wonder what the pioneers did.

We're lacking in emotional and spiritual wisdom when we make this kind of argument. It suggests we're not up to date in humanity, contemporarily or historically.  It's a treacherously naive concept of existence. Sound bites and clichés thrive in societies of simpletons. Clichés can serve as tools in expressing our world, but not to move beyond them, to say that they are the end-all or that newer tools aren't required, suggests a stagnant world without insistence on growth of understanding. No doubt ease is an asset in communicating. But it's a liability when you sacrifice precision or respect for real complexity. That's what bothers me with this email.

Are we taking part in deep discussions or just enamored with pace and simplicity so that exploration means only synthesizing sound bites? Do we send such drivel as these pictures and cursory narrative as a dull tool to make a point because it's the limit of our articulation? Is fresh, creative, complex writing rhetorically ineffective because readers, like us getting this, can't or won't spend time for that which is deep or difficult? I hope not.

I have deleted the pictures below. They don't tell the whole story. Furthermore, they are, it appears, taken from the Snopes site which says the materials (e.g. pictures) can't be used without permission. I also note the originator's CYA at the end of his message. I don't wonder why he/she needs to put it there.