I testify

My mother is really close to her oldest sister in Italy, and they talk about once a week. They do talk about us quite a bit. Elda does not have any children of her own, so she just adores her brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and grandnieces and nephews, and always wants to know about them. Anyway, Mom said that Elda had mentioned something about how I am always going.

This seems funny because I do not consider myself energetic—in fact I feel tired a lot. However, I am always coming up with some new project. Elda remembers me as always being up for any excursion, no matter how minor, and studying when there was nothing else to do, or asking questions or looking through books—always being “on”.

Well, my aunt is eighty-eight, so by comparison I should look energetic, but also, I do very much always feel a need to be doing something. I am always getting ideas for things that I want to accomplish or ways to challenge myself, and I do tend to get overly ambitious, but every now and then I complete something cool.

The lead-in to this is that even though I am working, and doing a web site, and reading some thick books that are due soon, and have a lot of blogs and family history and preparedness stuff to do, I have given myself another project.

There were a few things that led to it. One is that a friend asked me if we observed Lent. My church does not officially do that, no. I have done it at times, given up or taking up something, because I do think it is nice to do something special while looking forward to Easter, but not on a regular basis. She called us slackers, of course, but actually what we do is fast one day every month instead of for a month, and sometimes we may do additional fasting if there is a special need.

For some reason the Lenten forty-day fast, symbolic of Christ’s forty-day fast, put me in mind of the forty-day fast our ward has been doing this pretty much annually. They have people sign up for a one day in a forty-day period, so that at any given time there is someone fasting for missionary work.

Somehow with those two things in mind, and sitting in fast and testimony meeting, I started thinking about how people say that when you bear your testimony your sins are forgiven. I believe the scripture they are referring to is Doctrine and Covenants section 62, verse 3: “Nevertheless, ye are blessed, for the testimony which ye have borne is recorded in Heaven for the angels to look upon; and they rejoice over you, and your sins are forgiven you.”

While this scripture is given to specific people as a greeting to them, a lot of people take it as a general rule. Even if there is not an exact correlation, bearing witness invites the Holy Ghost, which sanctifies us, and that is how we become clean and forgiven, and if we are bearing witness on a regular basis we are probably trying to do what’s right on a regular basis, so it all works.
And I was thinking that I would like the extra help. I feel like I just keep making the same mistakes over and over again, without really progressing, and I am tired of it. That busy-little-beaver aspect of my personality is that compulsion to improve myself and really be better and wiser and achieve my full potential. The point of all this being that I have decided that I will bear my testimony every day between Easter and the Feast of the Pentecost, which we also do not celebrate.

After all, the Resurrection is the turning point that changed everything. Yes, there were people who had already accepted him as the Messiah, but many still saw him as a prophet and many misunderstood his mission. His miracles were impressive, but not unprecedented. Yes, Lazarus had been dead longer than anyone else raised from the dead, but still, other prophets had raised the dead. No one had ever raised himself. Suddenly His power is certain, His mission is understood, and everything is brought together. I’m not doing it justice, but it is a watershed. Not only does it happen, but suddenly the Savior is everywhere, appearing to multiple people, and there are many witnesses, for fifty days, after which He goes and visits North America and gets even more witnesses.

So I will be bearing witness in one way or another from yesterday through May 23rd. I don’t know how all it will go. Yesterday after family scripture study I expressed my belief in and gratitude for the Resurrection to my family. Tonight, I am blogging it.

In other cases I may talk to people, or send e-mail, or write out cards, and maybe even pray it. Bearing your testimony to God can be really special. Yes, He already knows, but that does not detract from it. I assume I will get us on the fast Sunday in May—it seems like kind of an obvious one.

I don’t know how all it will go. I have some impressions of people with whom I will share my testimony, and some of them are a little intimidating, and I certainly don’t have fifty in mind yet, which is a lot—this is longer than Lent. But it will be okay, and I expect to be better at the end of it.

So, in case it was not clear enough a few paragraphs ago, I know that God lives, yesterday, today, and forever. Christ died, but He did not stay dead, and neither will we, and I don’t know how I would bear the separations of life if I did not know that. I know that Heavenly Father knows me and loves me, and that is true for all of His children. And through the Holy Ghost, I know that it is possible for anyone to know.

April Foolishness

I came across the paradox of me today. I knew April Fools Day was coming up, and wanted to acknowledge it in some way. I am a little mischievous, and I am certainly good at working out plans.

A good prank is not so over-the-top that it is not believable, and I don’t have time for anything really elaborate, and I certainly would not want anything malicious, so I kind of thought that changing my Facebook relationship status from “single” to “engaged” would be good—simple and non-labor intensive and harmless.

I didn’t want anyone to be going on too long, and feel really fooled, so I thought I would make a status update referring to April 1st as a clue. At the same time, I didn’t want the new status and the new relationship status to appear to close together and be too obvious, so I set the status update about April 1st at midnight, right before I went to bed, and then set the new relationship status first thing in the morning.

The way I believed this would work was that people would see I was engaged, think, “Really?” and then see the status update and realize it was a prank, so this was a one-minute thing. I was so wrong.

There were a few things I didn’t think through. With people you see on a regular basis, they know to be suspicious if you are suddenly engaged when you haven’t been seeing anyone. With Facebook people can see the status who may be sincerely interested in you, but not see you enough to be automatically suspicious. Therefore, I received a flood of well wishes, and begin to feel really guilty.

I was surprised at how bad I felt. I thought I was being a little bit bratty, which is not really so unusual for me, and there is the paradox: I am a brat, but I am also very susceptible to guilt about it.

I guess I felt bad that I had squandered all that good will. Suddenly I was feeling like I was letting people down by not being engaged, because they would all really like that for me. Bad Gina. And also I fooled them, which is not nice.

This is sometimes an issue in my daily life as well. My sisters and I rip on each other (and Mom) quite a bit too. We’re not really mean, but our humor kind of is. Anyway, I’m not sure of the best way to express this, but usually I score the most points. Generally that is fun, and no one seems to feel bad about it (unless they are in a bad mood and I notice too late), but what if it is having a harmful effect on their self-esteem that even they do not realize? I guess I will just have to stick to making fun of other people—only ones who are not around.

Maybe next April Fools I should go with something more elaborate and less believable, like a series of pictures of me with the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot and things like that. We’ll see.

Quick update because I am lame

Well, maybe not that lame, but I was really on a roll there, and getting pretty close to the conclusion of that particular series, and then life happened again, as it does.

There was some stress about the burning smell coming from our dryer, sure, but after a week that is resolved. Certainly, I am always fairly busy anyway, but I was busy when I actually was doing the daily updates too.

No the real issue now is helping my friend with her mother's web site. I learned HTML ages ago, and have had different web-based responsibilities on and off, but my current assignment has beefed up my skills considerably. I have been repairing broken links, and have done some resizing and little things like that. I am still no expert, not by a long shot, and also, every interface is different.

Well, I have a friend whose mother is setting up a beach rental, and she wants a site set up. She asked if I would help. She has done a lot of stuff for me before, including helping with the dryer and she is currently troubleshooting my desktop. Of course I want to help her.

I am glad to be helping her, not just for friendship but also for the ability to stretch my skills. I could be unemployed again in a few weeks (I am definitely employed through April 9th, and it could go all the way to August 6th, but it is being decided one month at a time), and increased abilities can only be a good thing.

Still, it is a little consuming. This time I am working with Wordpress, which I had only had a passing familiarity with, and I am doing a lot more. It is really cool, but there is not much time for blogging. That will probably only be for another week or so, then I will get back to the other 36 planned regular blog posts, and finally finish that animal-centric travel blog post, and oh, I'll do all sorts of good stuff.

And if somehow I am ever able to afford another trip, I have a place in the Cook Islands where I can stay for free!

Taxes and Terrorists

I took the weekend off, but now I am back at it.

Before leaving off, I was writing about the financial decisions we make as a society—what we will fund, and how it will be paid for. Those decisions affect us on two levels. Perhaps you could call it external and internal. We get the society we pay for certainly, so that is the external, and whether we were in the majority or not, that affects us and has its own perils. There are also some internal perils though, in the person that we become as we make those decisions. We’ll start with the external.

Back on the topic of infrastructure, there are some things that we need to be able to rely on if society is going to function smoothly and support positive growth. Sadly a lot of the watchdog agencies are not doing their jobs, so you may have waste dumped into your water, or find that your electricity rates go up and it is generating profit for shareholders rather than improving service, but that’s a topic for another day.

The topic for today is whether we really want a system that widens the gulf between the rich and the poor? Money can buy you bottled water if the water supply becomes untrustworthy, and can move you into the country if the air becomes polluted, and if you have enough money maybe you can even have your own helicopter so that the state of the roads never matters. Most of us will not be able to take our private helicopter into the country, but we will be living in neighborhoods and traveling through civilization to a job, and humanity will be around all of the time. We shouldn’t want to avoid humanity, but we can’t anyway, so we need to think about how they are turning out.

Say schools struggle with funding. Wealthy people can send their children to private schools, and less financially secure but still dedicated people could try home schooling or maybe setting up a charter school, but the majority of children will be relying on public school. If the public school does not have adequate resources to prepare their students for a future of employment and social responsibility, enough of that can bleed over into the lives of the private school kids also.

First of all, you need an educated workforce. This goes beyond being able to attract economic investment to simply being able to support it, as well as having a population that will come up with its own innovations. If you have your own company and can put Junior in charge of running it one day, that is great, but it is a more meaningful gift if he can find good employees who know how to think and develop. Even if you have no children, it makes sense that as you age you will want there to be good doctors and city planners and safety inspectors, not to mention people continuing to pay into Social Security and Medicare once you are collecting. For that to work smoothly, you need success in the schools.

You could argue that you also need healthcare, living wages, and other things like that, and could argue about how much is really necessary, but there shouldn’t be an argument that you productive citizens for a smoothly-functioning society where pretty much any citizen can feel safe and accomplish what they need.

Yes, it was Afghanistan that sheltered Al-Quaeda, and there have been attacks against our troops in Lebanon and Yemen, but the great majority of terrorists come from Saudi Arabia, which is considered a close ally. Well, our government is allied with their government, and we like buying their oil, and they find perks in the relationship, so why the terrorists? There are a couple of things that make Saudi Arabia a fertile breeding ground.

First, you have an economy where there is great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, and great poverty in other places. You also have fairly high unemployment. This is getting better, and I could not find statistics for before September 11th, but two years later, in 2003, it was 25%. In addition, they practice polygamy, and assuming they have a fairly even birthrate, with the same number of men and women, and polygamy is common, there are not enough women to go around. Finally, although the government is friendly to us, and they do not have the same interest in freedom of the press and freedom of religion as us, they don’t interfere with a strongly anti-American press and clerics, because they would rather have the hate being spewed at America than them.

So, imagine a young man born poor, with limited opportunities. He can’t find a job. He is interested in girls, but with no money or job, or prospects of that changing, he will never have a girl either. With no job or girl, he has a lot of time on his hands, and the people who are really interested in him are the mullahs, who will preach to him for hours, and may even feed him, and they will teach him how corrupt and evil Western civilization is, and how glorious martyrdom is, and then you do get the women.

It may sound overly simplistic, but why don’t we get more terrorists from Jordan or Lebanon or Indonesia for that matter? You get a lot of Palestinians, even if they are not directed at us, but again, they are coming from horrible living conditions, with a lot of time to listen to the preaching of hate.

I first came across this theory in Psychology Today, and one point they made is that we just don’t get a lot of American suicide bombers, even in our lunatic fringe, and it’s a combination of those differences. There are people who will listen to a lot of hate speech, but they can still have families. There are people who are unemployed, but they have gotten a balanced education. Generally speaking, our conditions do not create the complete lack of hope for the future that is then coached into anger and hatred. Not yet.

This is a big reason why I worry so much about the lack of civil discourse. We have been moving into uglier times. I believe I expressed some anger towards Aaron Campbell for the choices he made, despite feeling compassion for him. I will also give him this credit in that I don’t believe he was trying to cause any destruction other than his own.

I cannot say that about Jeffrey Grahn. It wasn’t enough to shoot himself, and it wasn’t enough to shoot himself—he also needed to shoot two of her friends. I can’t say that about Joe Stack, who loaded his plane with an extra fuel tank before flying it into a building. I’m sure he was very disappointed to find out he had only taken one additional life. People call him a hero because it was the IRS—no way. And if you won’t get over your anti-government feelings to see the wrongness of that, how about him burning down the house where his wife and step-daughter still lived first? Okay, I guess it was nice of him not to shoot them, but leaving them homeless is still a pretty big “Screw you.” He just wanted to destroy.

Not everyone will turn hopelessness into hatred, but it does happen, and with prolonged hopelessness it’s a fairly easy step.

Life is difficult enough—we should not be setting things up to make it harder for anyone to progress a little and get somewhere. They say a rising tide raises all boats. Well, a little scuttling might end up sinking the whole fleet. We are connected. At best we have a society that gradually becomes less efficient and poorer; at worst life imitates Grand Theft Auto, We can do better than that, and we should want to. That will be the next piece.

On a side note, I can only imagine what kind of keyword flags this one is going to throw out. I guess its a good thing I don't have any trips planned.

Pride and Prejudice

I forgot to mention something earlier. I had written about how it seems to me that the conservative side is ruder, and less interested in reasoned, fact-based debate, but that I do understand that there are examples of the same issues on the liberal side. I did briefly toy with the idea of making more of a point to seek those out, but I decided against it. Reading inflammatory and ignorant comments leads me into hating people. More of that would be bad.

I don’t want to quit reading the op-ed page, or keeping up with conservative friends, but I will try and exert more willpower in refraining from reading comments posted on internet articles. Also, if with friends my comments can help raise the level of discourse somewhat, where they do keep their opinions but lose some of the hostility, I would like that. These next few posts will be specifically about what is wrong with the hostility.

One thing that bothers me is that often people are too content with a status quo that benefits them but not others, like they deserve it but others would not. For example, one person who was incensed about voters passing 66 and 67 has benefitted from the Oregon Health Plan. That comes out of tax money. Another one who spoke out against health care is married to a school district employee. Well, they probably have excellent healthcare, and they have that through the efforts of a labor union. It’s not because they are good people and do a good job—they are, and they do, but that’s no guarantee.

Recently I was reading an article about charity and economic development, and what they had to admit is that we don’t really know what works. Microloans have some good effects, but there is a limit to how far they can take an area. Large aid distribution has flaws too. (Throw in a natural disaster and it gets even harder.)

I believe there are two main complications. One is just luck—that somehow there is an opportunity for growth where the timing is right and everything aligns. That would be hard to reproduce.

I think the other factor is infrastructure. Are there roads connecting the producer to the market? Is there a workforce capable of filling the needs? Are water and electricity available? That is something that microloans can’t provide, and it would be hard for a charity organization to really fix the big picture. It becomes capital development once you get beyond residential clean water and health care. It really would be the role of government, and it takes money.

One prominent supporter of this is Bill Gates Sr. and his support of the estate tax. Junior has become wildly successful, but his ability to do so was not just a matter of his ingenuity (and we can start getting snarky there about what made his success, but it would be getting off-track), and timing, but also having an available framework.

There are resources that the government provides like public schools so you can have literate employees, and there are resources that the government regulates, like the provision of utilities so your employees and customers can even fire up those PCs. Often these things get taken for granted, because they tend to run well, but imagine them being taken away and you can see the importance. Remember, Enron didn’t just cause people to lose investment money—they also faked an energy crisis that led to rolling blackouts and higher rates when the whole thing had been manipulated. And yes, that was related to deregulation.

So that infrastructure affects us on a macro level, and if there are problems a lot of people will be feeling it, but lets look at the micro-level, and it is just easy to stick with health care.

Some people have good healthcare, because they have good jobs, and they feel good about that. “You should just find a job where you get good benefits.” Yes, after being unemployed I should totally have turned down that job offer because it did not include health insurance. I’ve only had good health coverage once, and that company has changed their plans quite a bit now as well. It is more expensive for an individual now than it used to be, but still decent. However, if you want to cover a spouse and children too it gets pretty hard.

Labor unions fight for good benefits, but in the case of local teachers, they took good health and retirement in place of good pay, and now there are always people resenting that and wanting it “fixed”. (That is why when given a choice you should always choose good pay over good benefits, but nowadays most people aren’t really given a shot at either.)

Another comment on the ballot measures, regarding a higher income tax on those making more than $125,000 per year, was that if they are working harder let them enjoy it. I doubt they are working that much harder. I know the difference between what a department manager and an admin makes, and I know who usually works harder. Teachers work really hard, and we had some who voluntarily worked ten days last year so the school year wouldn’t be curtailed anymore than it was. Teachers usually need to work summer jobs to get by, so they took ten days they could have put into their other job and volunteered it for the kids. I know there is hard work there, but somehow the higher pay just isn’t attached.

I guess my point there is that we aren’t really a meritocracy. The last group I worked with started everyone at pretty much the same rate, but there was a vast difference in ability, and there has also (due to poor management) been a big difference in performance. So some people are working and some are surfing the internet or chatting, and everyone is making the same.

Someone else had asked, “Is $125,000 really that rich?” Well, the 2006 data showed the median male income to be $42389 per year (I specify male because for females the median income was $32,538). So, you make more than three times as much as half the people in the state. When Mom was still working both days and nights, and I was employed in my old job, and Julie and Maria were both employed, the four of us combined made less than that. Yes, I guess it does seem a little rich to me.

It was the same thing with the business measure. Someone wrote in to his representative saying that because the tax passed he was letting two employees go. More messages were exchanged and it turned out that his yearly gross was $5.4 million, and the tax he was going to have to pay because of the bill was $4000. So really, the issue is that the business had been struggling anyway, and he was not making a profit, and that is why he let two people go. Because if it is only the $4000, you can give them both 39 hour work weeks, or just lay off one, or make them take an unpaid vacation, it’s easy. But he focused on the taxes, because that’s what he resented. I would like to submit to you that the impact of that extra revenue on the economy can do more good collectively than leaving it there could have done for the individual businesses.

Earlier I was alluding to people taking the credit for things that were at least partly luck, and that would be one form of pride. Resenting those around you, and making assumptions about their unworthiness is pride too.

Last example on this one. Back when they were looking at expanding SCHIP, so all Oregon children would have health coverage, I remember a letter where the writer had calculated that all a parent would have to do is to give up one pack of cigarettes a day, or a six-pack, and they could afford to cover a child. I guess that way if you give up beer and smokes, you can cover two children, but what if you have three?

Joking aside, the contempt of that letter just oozed off the page, and there are so many things wrong with it. First of all, with most plans you have to put yourself in before you can add coverage for family, so looking at the cost of covering the child does not give the whole picture. Secondly, just that assumption that all poor people are blowing what they do have on vices is offensive, and there are a lot of people to whom it wouldn't apply.

Finally, okay, let's say that you do have parents who choose their addictions over the health of their children, do we really want to say to those children, "Sorry, I know you are getting a bad start in life, but doing things to make it better will cost a lot of money. Sure, by the time we spread it out over all of the taxpayers, it is not that much, but you're not my kid and I don't care." Is that really the right message?

Having had to re-examine my spending habits. I know that what you buy, and what you don't buy, says a lot about who you are. So, what do we want to say about who we are as a state and a country?

How I got here

I remember once asking my mother about her family, and the main legacy that she remembered was that they were all hard-working people. They were good at their jobs, but also quite constant in them, most people starting with one job and staying with it through retirement (generally working for the railroad, as far as I can tell).

On my father’s side, well, I think everyone is a good worker, but there has been a lot more innovation. My grandfather owned an electronics shop at one point, and did maintenance at a Joss house (it’s a temple for worship in various Chinese religions), and lots of other things that I can’t even begin to tell you. This was probably due to a combination of hard economic times and some restlessness. This approach is not great for accumulating wealth, but you learn to do a lot of different things, and it takes some capability to pull off.

Nature or nurture, my siblings and I are all good workers. We do good jobs, and we started working early. I started at McDonald’s at 16, but had earned money baby-sitting, pet-sitting, berry picking, doing yard work, and keeping score at athletic events before that, and it was kind of the same for all of us. Because we worked, we got paid and we had money, and that was cool. It brought a certain independence and confidence with it. Unfortunately, we did not have good money-management skills.

I have mentioned this somewhere before, but books about teaching your children about money will say to make them save half. That always sounded so excessive to me, but I finally get it. When you have no living expenses, it makes sense to take out a large chunk like that. Then, when most of your income is being pulled away on rent and groceries and utilities, you have developed the habit of being responsible with the disposable income. You learned it when everything was disposable income. I did not learn that.

My father was pretty free-spending. It used to be that every time he opened his mail, he would say “Dear Deadbeat” aloud, and kind of trail off. I assumed it was a joke. When he would bring home shiny new gadgets, or take us on vacations, it never occurred to me that this was stuff we could not, or at least should not, afford. Instant gratification seemed to be the norm.

I did a lot of things right. I did graduate from college, paying for it myself. I worked steadily, always being a good employee. I used my earnings to help my family and give to charity, just like you should. However, I did rely too much on credit.

First of all, I used my credit cards for purchases without thinking about it, because I could always afford my payments, and there were different rewards programs, and it was convenient to just put it on the card instead of carrying around cash. But it added up, and many of those purchases were unnecessary and not even really that wanted. How many figurines does anyone really need?

Also, there were unplanned necessities. I didn’t expect to charge a new roof and furnace, but we needed them, we didn’t have savings, and I wanted to help. I did start a savings account, but the hole was already being dug. The other thing that it took me a while to catch on to was that the cost of living was going up, and my pay wasn’t.

I should have known better. The prophets were always counseling to avoid debt, and I would hear that and think, yeah, but I’m okay. I was wrong. Of course, the advantage of having prophets is that they will tell you things before the reason becomes obvious, at which point getting in line is much harder.

Buying the house from Mom was supposed to help, because we would use some of the money for repairs, and some for her retirement, and some to pay off my credit cards. Then the repairs took more than we planned on, and I didn’t want to short her retirement, so I left the balances on the credit cards, which were still manageable. And then I lost my job.

Now, if you are in the mood to condemn, you can certainly say that my actions were wrong here. Julie was going to go on her sabbatical to Australia. She was going to go with a friend, but things weren’t working out, and she asked me to go, and Maria and I both decided to go. We made plans and bought tickets and I asked my supervisor how to arrange for unpaid non-medical leave, since I did not have enough vacation time to cover the entire trip.

I had accommodated every time-off request I ever got, some of which were pretty ridiculous. Maybe I shouldn’t even have asked, but just remotely filled out my time card with 0 hours and come back. Anyway, I could not get a straight answer. Weeks went by with no response, and I would call and they would say “We are still looking into that.” Finally, three days before I was going to be leaving, I called again, and they said no, I couldn’t go. It turns out what they were really investigating was not what I needed to do, but whether they were legally obligated to let me go. I guess I asked the wrong question.

All this time I had been frantically working to make sure everything I ever did was documented, and that other people knew how to do it, and suddenly it became a lot more frantic. My manager thanked me for being so professional about everything, and said to call when I got back and maybe I could reapply for the job. I thought the purpose of that was so they could make me take a pay cut, but that I would still have the job. Instead they launched a search for a replacement. I was already back when she started training, so they did not save any time and they lost a lot of experience, as well as chucking morale for the team, apparently largely because I had hurt their egos by going anyway, but you know, as long as they made a good decision.

Was my decision good? At the time it felt like the only decision. A lot of what we paid was non-refundable, it would have ruined Julie’s sabbatical, and I wanted to go. It was a great trip. I loved it. I just had no income and no unemployment when I got back, and the economy collapsed while we were gone, killing the already not-so-great job market.

I had some savings, and some vacation time paid out, and I got fairly decent tax refunds, but there were some months when there was just no money for the bills. Mom helped sometimes, so now I was really shorting her retirement, because that’s where it was coming from, and the church helped sometimes, and eleven months to the day later I am working again.

It is not enough to cover everything, so I have charged medicine, and I charge the cable bill, which on one level makes the credit card payment cover two bill (credit card and cable), but is no way to get ahead, but the money is just not there. A lot of things that seem like options are not.

For example, my sister-in-law suggested cancelling the cable. Well, that is television, internet, and phone actually, two of which are necessary for a job hunter, and getting the phone that way took a bill away from my mother, who is also stretched thin. Also, to lock in the lower rate, I signed a two-year contract back when I was employed. My cell phone is also on a contract, which will come up eventually, but again, as a non-driver and job hunter that phone is important.

Selling the house could get me out of debt, because even though it is not a great housing market, I could recover my mortgage and other debts without charging too much, but then I am not just homeless, but I am also evicting my mother, sisters, and pets, and we are not going to find a less expensive place to live. One advantage of a place built in the ‘70’s is that it has four bedrooms and a large yard. My house payment is about $1200 a month. I can’t do better.

Here’s my other problem. My current contract (which could end next week anyway) does not cover healthcare. Diabetes is a pre-existing condition. I don’t have enough money for my current bills, and there is no way that I can handle the sort of exorbitant coverage that would be available if I could find someone to take me.

Again, there is some responsibility here, because even though I clearly do have the gene for diabetes, I am sure that my weight triggered it becoming active, and I know I could have taken better care of myself over the years. That being said, there was nothing malicious there, and no willful laziness. There was some genetic tendency, and some societal shift in that direction, and some choices to prioritize other things over fitness, which did include jobs and helping others. (There’s a whole complicated other topic there.)

Therefore, when I picked up my insulin in January and found out that the price had gone up $7, I nearly started to cry in the pharmacy. (It’s over a $100 now. I am on the uninsured discount program too; it just doesn’t help much with injectables.) This is why sometimes I will go without my medicine for a few days, because I can’t afford it or I can’t afford the needles, even though my family helps a lot, and would want to help more, but how much can you ask of people who are already broke? And this is why I am out of Lisinopril, and almost out of Metformin, and I need to go back to the doctor, but she said that I needed to get my eye exam done before I come back, and I cannot afford to pay an ophthalmologist right now. Maybe I am making bad choices, but where is the good choice?

People mention free clinics, but those are practically mythical. I was being badgered to call Virginia Garcia, and I did, and they are useless. They take two uninsured people a week, and it is first come first served, but you need to call in the same week. If they are already full, you try again next week. They should just sell raffle tickets and be done with it. I thought going through the sliding scale discussion would be bad, but I can’t even get there.

So yes, I would love nationalized healthcare, where it does not matter who my employer is, or if I am employed. And the fact that all of these discount places for poor people seem to expect that you will have some kind of insurance really gives pause. Exactly how bad are their plans?

So, that’s where I am financially and physically. I have not always made good decisions, but I also don’t know anyone who can say that. I can say that I have not been lazy or tried to freeload. I have helped others where I could and still try to do so. So why don’t you want me to have healthcare? What have I ever done to you?

Yes, that’s taking it kind of personally, but I am a person, and I don’t believe that I am that much of an exception.

“The Others” in other applications

I know, these titles are getting repetitive. As long as each post is, they are part of a greater whole, and I am going somewhere. I think the titles will start using different words though, for differentiation if nothing else.

My main contention has been that the problem is with taking sides. I don’t know why we are like this. I guess choosing one side over another takes away ambiguity, but it also takes away accuracy. So the police feel beleaguered, and it is reasonable, and citizens are worried about police brutality, which is also reasonable, but the end result seems to be that people quit examining what they need to change and only focus on how they are wronged. (Maybe the reason I don’t relate is my deeply ingrained tendency to always think things are my fault. There are problems with that too.)

Anyway, this leads to my concern with how partisan politics has become lately. It’s the same principle. My side is threatened by your side, so it becomes perfectly okay to vilify and lie and do whatever is necessary to make sure your side loses. The weird thing is that I think it is important to let emotions play a part in your political philosophy, but it feels like it gets taken too far, where no intellect is taken into account.

Here is where I will admit some possible shortsightedness. It seems to be that this mindset is worse on the right. That may just be a result of the last cycle of losses, which did upset the balance, and so the threat factor comes into play again, but it seemed like it was that way before too—that conservatives were more likely to deal in insults and ignore facts, while liberals were more likely to be giving reasoned responses and trying to keep the argument calm.

Now, an article I recently read mentioned this occurring on both sides, and gave specific examples, so clearly there are liberals doing it too. I guess I still feel it less because I am not encountering it as often. My opportunities to encounter things primarily come through conversations with acquaintances, as well as Facebook postings, letters to the editor as featured in The Oregonian, and comments posted on AOL articles. I don’t generally watch television news shows or listen to talk radio—I prefer getting that information through print and internet media.

Probably that preference is because it seems to be more intellectual rather than emotional. I assume they write scripts for these shows, but I believe they spend more time on the writing when it is being turned into an actual article, and going through that process makes a difference. It can make you be clearer, because you have to stop and think, and the reader will have time to stop and think, and it is just a different mindset.

So, coming from that background, it looks like the conservatives are bigger jerks. I remember when I wrote my own posts against Matt Wingard, I did go back to check various sources, and I spent some time on blueoregon.com, reading their articles and the comments posted. Again, most of the people who were in agreement were very thoughtful—they referred to board history (going back two decades no less), they quoted other articles, they wrote in complete sentences—and the people who were against it could only say “You’re bad!” (I’m paraphrasing, but not as much as you might think.)

Now, do you see what I did here in expressing myself? I explained what my impression was, admitted some lack of knowledge but explained where the knowledge that I did have came from, and it’s civil. That’s what I like. Sure, it’s nice when I agree with someone, but you can disagree without calling someone a cancer and wishing them dead.
When we take that mentality of it being a fight, with a wrong side and a right side, suddenly we have created enemies, and we assume the worst about them.

I remember recently a small dust-up over whether Costco should be allowed to take food stamps, and how dare anyone who could afford a Costco membership get government aid! Well, okay, but what if they had just renewed, and then lost their job and were getting aid, or had a friend who had a card and would help? Because if you are feeding a family on a tight budget, Costco is great. You can get a 25-lb bag of rice for $8, when 5-lb will cost you $6 at a regular store. Peanut butter is a great deal too. Not everything there is a good deal, but there are some things that can really help.

Also there is a poll on whether drug tests should be administered to welfare recipients. Certainly, the purpose of welfare is not to free up money for drugs, but if you have your hard cases scamming the system, they probably have a method for passing the test. Apparently those tests are easy to work around. Would it really prevent bad people from getting something for nothing, or would we just be taking another shred of dignity from someone who doesn’t have much left? (I admit, my feelings on drug testing have changed since reading Nickled and Dimed.)

I have another example, but I am going to save it for later. The next post will be deeply personal, putting a face on this liberal who has been unemployed, underemployed, and struggling with debt and hoping for socialized healthcare.

Follow-up to The Others

More information has come out, and a lot of it is bad in different ways, but again what really bothers me is the reactions. There have been opinion pieces about how cops need to be aggressive, because their job is so dangerous, and others about how they are too trigger-happy, and maybe their guns should be taken away, and an article on this guy who goes around flipping cops off whenever he sees them. Apparently “I’m Ron Frashour” t-shirts are being printed, but I don’t know if any other protests are planned.

One development that I am somewhat hopeful about is that there will be a federal investigation. An outside look, but by law enforcement without regional ties or loyalty, might be the kind of clear-eyed antidote that is needed. I hope that’s not too optimistic. Clearly there are training and coordination issues, and those should be resolved.

In the meantime, there are several important points that are worth remembering. We know there are training issues and communication breakdowns, and that is bad, but if Frashour can be taken at his word, he was trying to protect his own life and that of the other officers and civilians. In addition, it sounds like James Quackenbush was doing good work, and de-escalating the situation, and it is tragic that other factors ambushed his efforts, but it is only fair to acknowledge the good with the bad.

From the other side, in general the police should remember that if they cannot hear what the other officers are saying, then the other people may not be able to hear them either. So if a person’s only offense is not following instructions, and it is loud, you can’t hold that against him. Also, if a person is hit in the back, they might put their hand there, and falling is not necessarily an aggressive move.

I know, that makes it sound like more of the blame is on the officers, but it’s not. Some people have stated that it is offensive to say that Aaron Campbell is responsible for his own death, but he is. His intended result was for the police to kill him, and that is what happened. Honestly, we don’t even know that Campbell was being honest with Quackenbush—he may have still intended to die at that point, and we can’t know—but even if he had changed his mind, the events were already set in motion, and there is a thought process that makes me really angry and sad here.

Campbell’s reasoning for wanting to have the police kill him was that if he killed himself, he would not be able to go to Heaven—because suicide is a sin. That makes sense. It violates the commandment to not kill, it flouts God’s will for living out the days ordained to you, and it hurts people horribly. They are left feeling betrayed and angry and guilty, because they take the blame for not being able to help. It’s a rotten thing to do, but a person can get to the point where they are in so much pain that all they can think about is ending it. How do you decide that making someone else do your dirty work makes it less of a sin?

We could go over legal precedents of pre-meditated murder versus manslaughter, or penalties for the person who hires someone to do a crime, but I think it is more useful to look at the damage. If Aaron Campbell shot himself, his mother would be devastated, especially having already been brought down by the death of one son, and friends and family would feel bad.

With a police shooting, we still have the devastated mother and sad family and friends. We also have (I assume, and hope) several police officers who have to deal with the guilt of that. It is not an easy thing to take a life, and even if you think that they did it too easily, that doesn’t mean that they shrug it off and forget about it. That leaves a burden.

This has not been mentioned, but presumable we have a traumatized girlfriend and three children, who were dealing with a desperate man with a gun, which can be pretty terrifying.

We have the guilt of the aunt for calling. The Skanner is saying that if you have a crisis situation that you should not call the police. So how do you feel if you made a call and someone ended up dead?

Most of all, we have more pressure on a relationship that was already strained, and that needs to be a good relationship.

How is that less sinful?

The police did not cause or create a tragedy. They failed to prevent a tragedy, and yes, I totally agree that there was incompetence in that failure, and it needs to be addressed, and this particular bureau has not shown themselves to be good at addressing their own failures in the past, so it’s really good that the feds are stepping in, but theirs is not the only fault.

I have great compassion on Aaron Campbell. I know what it feels like to wish you did not have to deal with life anymore, and to know that actually stopping dealing with life would be wrong. I also believe that God is a lot more merciful than we understand, and while I know that suicide is wrong, I have hope for the people who have done it. I have to, there are people I care about who have.

But I also know that despair does not last. Pain subsides, and new pain comes along, but new joys will too. I was thinking today about how they say that big things like getting married or winning the lottery generally only improve happiness for a year, and then you are pretty much back where you were. I thought it seemed like kind of a bummer, but then I remembered that I am usually happy, so it’s okay. I can be happy married or single, rich or poor.

It just stands to reason that a loss should wear off in about a year too. I know you still carry around the sadness—there are some things that I will remember suddenly, and it feels just as sad as it did when it was fresh, and maybe it always will, but my overall disposition does not change. But that is for an event.

If there is a choice to give yourself over to anger, or bitterness, or hate, that could be a permanent change. If you are an unhappy person and want to change that, it is more important to change your mindset than your circumstances. What I am afraid we will have here is people who are going to choose unhappiness, because they have enemies, and we shouldn’t be enemies. I think most of us want a peaceful community. That will require cooperation.

I read an essay recently likening civilians, criminals, and law enforcement to sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. I get the appeal of it, but it is exactly wrong, because it puts the sheepdogs as these creatures that the sheep don’t like, until they need them, but they are needed. No, lots of people love the police, and lots of people want to like them but have trust issues that can be kind of reasonable, and some people are just anti-authority, and besides which sometimes there’s kind of a thin line between a wolf and sheep, but really, the biggest problem of all is that we are all just people. For all of the good qualities of people, we also screw up a lot, and one of the big screw-ups is that we seem to have a hard time drawing a line without it becoming a gulf. We need to focus on what we share.

Reasons I am grateful for my sisters

Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows that I have spells where I let a lot of time go by. What you may not know is that when I do this there are always different topics going through my head. One thing that is really important to me is being present in any given moment, and I am least able to do this when I am not caught up on writing, because the words are spinning off and trying to get formed right. Anyway, yesterday I wrote out the various topics that I had ideas on, and, well, there are about 40 that I think are specifically blogs. That does not count ones that might be better for journal writing or fictional ideas, or things that would go in the travel or preparedness blogs.

I’m not saying that I am going to post daily until I get through them, but I intend to try. Again, for those who like to read and keep up, well, it’s okay if you don’t read them all. The side menu shows the titles of the various posts, so you can see which ones sound interesting. Believe me, no one gets as frustrated with me as I do with myself. On the other hand, if anyone is still trying to use the blog to keep tabs on me in a not-friendly way, this could be really frustrating for them, and I’m okay with that. Wow—40. If I observed Lent, blogging every day could have been perfect.

Regardless of all that, I am very grateful for Julie and Maria. We didn’t start out really close. I love all of my family members, then and now, but while I was growing up Lance was distant, Misty was resentful, and Julie and Maria were bratty and mean. Some of that was because of the age differences. Lance was seven years older, and that’s a lot before you become adults, which brings some equality. Five years is still kind of a lot, but I think the main thing that meant with Misty is that she had strong memories of being displaced as the youngest and the only girl, whereas if we had been two or three years apart it might not have been such a big deal.

Despite being five myself when it happened, I don’t really remember feeling displaced when Julie and Maria were born. It was more when they started walking and talking and hitting and biting that it became an issue. They were into everything, which often included my stuff, and if I tried to protest it was easy for them to gang up on me because there were two of them, and I would get in a lot more trouble for fighting with them than they would for me. Here and there I remember playing games with them and making stuff for them or twirling them around, but I had gotten into the habit of calling them brats. One day I realized that my friends thought of them as brats, because that’s what I called them, and it’s not that it was wrong, exactly, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. I started to mature a bit then.

We gradually started getting along better, and becoming closer, but it has really blossomed now that we are adults. Vacationing together probably helped, and we have tackled many projects together, and working together helps too. Ultimately though, I think it is the sum of the little moments.

One thing is that I can say anything to them. I did do standup comedy at the talent show, and it was fine, but when bits are inspired by a specific person, I can tell my sisters the name. I can, but I don’t have to because they already know. I can use the harsher material too. I have this one punch line about ending up in a landfill in Utah, and it is dark humor. It does not stem from any bad feelings about anyone, and it is not intended to be hurtful to anyone, but there are still people who would be offended by it, and that’s okay. I have a home audience where I can be unadulterated. Sure, my dark side is pretty tame compared to most professionals, and still involves no profanity or vulgarity, but it’s still there, and it’s nice to have a safe haven for it.

Another thing is that feeling of connectedness with our similarities. I am so wordy—I know my posts are probably a lot longer than they need to be. I think I know why. It was never safe talking to my father. No matter how carefully I would plan what I needed to say, trying to choose the words carefully so that the meaning is totally clear and there is no reason for offense, there was always offense and I was always wrong. So one night we (Mom, Julie, Maria, and I) were sitting around talking, and Dad came up, and how you could not talk to him because you were always setting him off without meaning to, and I mentioned how I am paranoid about being misunderstood, and it makes me wordy. Julie laughed and asked, “Is that where that comes from?” It turns out she does the same thing at work. She got dinged on a review because she does not seem to be able to give simple explanations. They know she understands the material, and it was a good review anyway because she does a great job, but she just cannot abridge. Well, somehow the things that are wrong about yourself don’t seem quite as bad when you can laugh along with the other passengers in that particular boat.

I love their generosity of spirit, and that they are always thinking about other people and have great instincts as to what will be good for someone. Not only is it good in them, but it also means that I am not alone when I want to serve people. We aid and abet each other in that.

I am grateful that they have been following along with me. Somehow spiritual growth was easy for me, and I got a lot of it in early. They did not seem to have as much of an interest, maybe because of the vulnerability that it entails. But, when our attendance in that institute class (Writings of John) ended up being so spotty, they did agree to read the material as a family, and they agreed to keep going until we have read the entire New Testament, The Pearl of Great Price, Genesis, and are now in The Doctrine and Covenants and that has been good for us, and ultimately it would never have worked without their commitment. Now we are praying together, and that has changed us too.

I have referred to adulthood bringing some equality, and that may be the most profound way in which our relationship has grown. There were struggles at different times, but from about a year after I graduated from college to when I lost my job, I was always doing pretty well financially. I helped them with tuition, and bought them presents and gave them pocket money, and that was fine and I loved them a lot, but I was very much the big sister and benefactor.

That has changed a lot in the past year or so. Now they have had to help me, and sometimes we are almost playing Hot Potato with the money. The other week Mom got the water bill, garbage bill, and newspaper bill on the same day, but the water was unusually high, and was going to clean her out. I grabbed garbage and Julie grabbed the newspaper. Mom felt guilty about me taking garbage, so she signed over a refund check to me, but then I just bought groceries with it, and Julie bought some other items for the household, and then Maria picked up something, and it is just as close to living the law of consecration as we have ever been. It would be nice if money was not always so short (and believe me, it is short), but there is hope because we have each other. We can stay just enough ahead of the tide.

So maybe I owed them that one. There are still people who think I am nice and that they are not, and no, you just don’t know them. (And I think evil thoughts about people who talk smack about my sisters.) I am better at talking to strangers, so I can be friendlier that way, but that’s just because I have mostly given up on trying to not feel stupid, which is mostly because I have had five years more to figure out that there is just no point. Seriously, it’s excruciating for me too; I just do it anyway.

I have really come to see the value of having someone there, that you like and that believes the same way you do. On one hand I see sisters who are torn apart by competition, but there are others who are so lonely because they had to do everything on their own, and I’m blessed. We are blessed. This is not the future that any of us saw, but it has its good points.

Black History Month

I’ve mentioned my abiding love for The Ramones before, and one of my birthday gifts was a new book by Joey’s brother, I Slept with Joey Ramone. I was looking forward to starting that, but then a friend posted something about February being Black History Month, and I thought “Yeah, I should do something for that.”

On the shelf next to my desk are several books that I think of as being on deck. They are books that I have bought and not gotten around to reading, and there are more than the ones on this shelf, but I hope that keeping these nearby reminds me to get to them. After I read one, I can bring something else out. Anyway, two of the books on deck were directly related to black history: Time on the Cross (Robert William Fogel and Stanley Engerman) and The Slave Community (John W. Blassingame).

Well, I decided to hold off on Joey, and read Time on the Cross instead, which was reasonable, and then I got really ambitious and decided to read both of those and Beloved (Toni Morrison) and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou).

Let me give you some background on how big of a procrastinator I am. My first encounter with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was in June of 1991. I had just started college, and I was trying to stay in town over the summer and earn some money. That did not work well at all, but one hot day I was hanging out at the library. I saw a copy, and started reading and got drawn in, but I did not check it out. I had so much to do, and everything was so uncertain, that I just decided that I would need to get back to it.

After I came back from my mission I got a job at Clear Connections, and I worked there for a little bit after graduation too. I can’t swear as to whether this happened in 1994 or 1996, but sometimes if I had a little extra money I would end up at B. Dalton, or the Book Vault, or the PSU bookstore, and blow it. Actually, it was probably before graduation, because one of my impulse purchases (Soul Stealers) ended up being a required text in my Chinese history class. Anyway, I bought Time on the Cross and The Slave Community at the PSU bookstore. Some professor had them in his assigned reading. I bet Sweetness and Power was for the same class, and maybe even How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, though I can’t be sure on that one.

Beloved was the most recent one to come up, and even that was probably 1998. I just remember I was working with Rose at Intel, and she was reading it and saying how good it was. Actually, I know we were talking about it when the movie came out, so that was 1998. Basically, I decided to undo over a decade’s worth of procrastination in a month.

The library provided the two books I didn’t own, and that was fine. They were both well-written, and gripping. I did not like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as much as I thought I would. I was frustrated with the people, who made bad choices. There are some horrible choices in Beloved, but I didn’t feel the same way about it.

Honestly, there are very horrible things in Beloved. It does not feel as harsh as it could, probably due to the poetic dreamlike writing, but still, there is some pretty horrible stuff. At the same time, I just felt more compassion than judgment. I guess all of the horrible choices came out of horrible situations, whereas maybe I felt that in the other book, they really should have known better. Maybe we shouldn’t even be able to quantify everything about the emotional response a book gives an individual. Regardless, I couldn’t stop reading either.

That was totally not the case for the other two. I started with Time on the Cross, and I stopped reading it to read Beloved, just to get a break. I have not finished The Slave Community yet. I will, but I may need to take more breaks. It’s not that there isn’t good information. Maybe I am just out of the academic mindset. I’m not sure “pedantic” is a fair word, but I’m kind of leaning towards that.

To be fair, they both have different problems. With Time on the Cross, they are using cliometrics to analyze the various aspects of slave life, and it was a new technique at the time, so it is very figure-heavy rather than being a narrative. Also, because they end up coming with many positive aspects of slave life, I felt a little disturbed reading it. Slavery is bad, and they are never trying to say that it is not a bad thing, but there’s a disconnect that can be a little off-putting. In the end, I did learn a lot about slave life, and about ways of studying history, and it was a good reminder about how data can be misinterpreted and twisted, so that constant re-examination is good. I’m glad I read it.

The Slave Community seems very poorly connected. A lot of information is thrown out, possibly to the point of overkill, and then sometimes the information is contradictory so I don’t feel like I am really getting anywhere, except that here and there I have picked up on some things that I didn’t know and that make sense. Also, I am not done with it yet, and Time on the Cross improved as I was reading it—so maybe in another thirty pages I will get into The Slave Community, and regret badmouthing it here. I will finish it.

I will say, though, that the reason that I think it might be the same professor who assigned both of these and Sweetness and Power is that Sweetness and Power (which covered the sugar trade and so related to slavery in South America and the Caribbean) was so pedantic that I gave up on it, and gave it away without ever reading it. That would have been a rough class.

In retrospect, I am really glad that I did this. I think understanding history is very important, and understanding viewpoints other than your own is very important. If we also had an Asian history month, and a Latin American history month, and so on, it would start feeling like a bit much (though we would learn a lot). I think there is something to be said for having black history month specifically, and I will probably gum up explaining it.

Asian Americans faced prejudice and hardships, but they came here on their own, and often they were settling in groups where they maintained some cultural identity. It is the same for Latin Americans. The Europeans who came here basically became what we think of as American history. Africans were brought here by force, integrated in some ways but separate in others, and that relationship has been a huge factor in shaping American history. We should be revisiting it over and over again. The only other history month that it might make sense to have annually would be Native American history month. Maybe I should campaign for that. (But really what I will always be hoping for is people reading more history and more literature and more science and more knowledge, all the time.)

I do regret a little bit that it was so much focused on one period. Beloved occurs partly after slavery, but there are a lot of flashbacks to slave times, and everything is an aftermath of slavery. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the only one that was at all modern, covering time during the Depression and World War II. Maybe next year I can spend some time with Garvey or Abernathy or Bunche. At some point I know I will want to read Haley’s book on Malcolm X.

For now though, we have other library books to finish before the due date. Maria reserved Playing the Enemy after we saw Invictus and The Blind Side after we saw that, and when a book is tied to a movie there are a lot of holds, and it was just dumb luck that we got both at the same time, but there are many more holds so we will not be able to renew and we need to read them now. Then I need to read Born to Run, because a friend lent it to me, and then I can get to Joey. (And then I think I will just need to catch up on magazines for a while!)

If you would like to increase your own black history reading, I do have a few recommendations. First of all, it is a big commitment, but Alex Haley’s Roots is just phenomenal. Yes, it is fiction, but it is more than fiction too. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney, is a textbook, but it is a compelling and easy read (which is why it might not be from that one professor). From Slavery to Freedom, by John Hope Franklin, is the work on the subject, but it’s been so long since I read it that I can’t really remember it. I should probably re-read it at some point.

It’s not much of a list, but the faded memory is a problem. There was a great book on the Buffalo Soldiers that I read when I was doing my research paper on them, but I can’t remember the name. One the plus side, there was a collection of various papers and letters that I could not recall, and because of reading The Slave Community, I think it might have been Blassingame’s collection, so maybe I will be able to find it again. I just found this Spanish poem that has been haunting me since 1991 (Y yo me ire by Juan Ramon Jimenez), because someone finally posted it online. So someday, I am going to find those letters, and that other poem. But taking better notes back then would have been good too.

The Others

Sometimes a news item weighs on me, and then I feel like I have missed the opportunity by waiting. Funny how things repeat, and the opportunity just keeps coming back. So, before we need another incident to come up, let’s just talk about relationships between Portland Police and African Americans.

It’s so much easier if I just type cops and blacks, but I want to keep a level of respect—there’s not enough of that.

I originally wanted to write about the bean bag incident, so we can start there. First off, the use of the bean bag on the thirteen-year old girl seemed completely appropriate to me. She got a bruise on her thigh but did not require further medical treatment, so that part certainly sounds right. She had been banned from Tri-met but was not complying with that or with police orders, so some action is necessary, but what else would you do? Using a regular bullet would certainly be worse, and excessive for the situation, and would anyone feel happier if the adult male officer tried subduing the teenage girl with his body? The action was appropriate and justified. It probably wouldn’t have even been that big of a deal if anyone else had done it, but it was Chris Humphreys.

One appropriate use of force does not mean that every use of force is appropriate, and there certainly do seem to be grounds for concern in the James Chasse case—not even necessarily that excessive force was used, but was any force necessary and could medical attention have been provided more quickly? Because of the way that incident was handled, people have concerns about police behavior and accountability, and again, that can be reasonable.

So, then between City Hall and the Chief, Humphreys gets put on leave, and the force rallies behind him, because due process was ignored and the move was political. Well, yes, that move looked extremely political. Of course, people who get elected to their positions, or appointed by elected politicians, will sometimes need to think and act politically, but it wasn’t the right action for that incident. I believe it was an attempt to make up for mishandling the death of James Chasse.

At the same time, it’s hard to feel good about the rally, or the vote of no confidence. The history doesn’t help. The last time a vote of no confidence occurred was when two police officers were fired for leaving dead opossums at a black business. You know, even if we assume that any potential racial overtones are strictly coincidental, that sounds like harassment, and really inappropriate, and a good reason to be fired. Plus, my understanding was that Sizer had been doing a good job, and its important to have a good chief, with the confidence of the officers, so that’s a lot of harm being done, and probably without much help.

At the same time, it is really the wrong time to be crying racism, because if anyone punches a cop and comes away with no injuries but a bruised thigh, that is not persecution. Yes, thirteen sounds young, but physically she was large enough to do some damage, and she was way out of line.

I guess the point of the above is that I don’t agree with anyone, so ha! Except that it is not “Ha!” because I really hate situations like this, where everyone is in conflict and maybe no one is completely wrong but certainly no one is completely right. My stomach knots up and I hate it.

So now we have something worse than a bruised thigh. We have a dead man, and possibly inappropriate action, and probably a traumatized cop, certainly a bereft family, and Jesse Jackson to top it off, whom I wish I believed would be helpful, and a different kinds of rally.

On one side, we have the Portland Police Bureau. Many of them are good men, and it is their job to take risks to ensure the safety of the city. They volunteer for that. Sure, they get paid, but not really that much and with a lot of risk. Especially lately, when there have been so many shooters targeting police, it is an act of courage to keep going out there day after day. They need our support.

On the other side we have the African American community. They have good reason to be afraid of cops. There are disproportionate traffic stops and sentencing, and a long history of conflict, and it’s not hard to understand that when an unarmed woman gets shot, or a young girl walking in the middle of the street ends up with her head under an officer’s knee, or a professor gets arrested in his own house, all of that adds to a sense of fear and distrust. They shouldn’t have to feel that way. (And by the way, yes, he lost his temper, but why couldn’t the guy have just given his name and badge number? Could that have maybe defused it? He had been responding appropriately until then, so having his name attached to it should have been fine!)

A few years ago, I was almost asleep, and then suddenly I was wide awake as several shots were fired. I listened in the dark, trying to figure out what was going on, and just as I had almost decided it was nothing, voices started up, and police radio, and I was listening to a standoff about two blocks away. A man who had been drinking and was upset, not necessarily in that order, took two guns outside, fired them both, then took the guns back into the house, and went outside to wait for the police to show up and shoot him. He was asking for it, but he didn’t get it. He was arrested instead.

Talking about it to a neighbor, she became very agitated. She was a white woman, but she had a black son, and just having that happen so near to her house gave her visions of the police showing up and shooting her son. (Incidentally, the guy trying to get himself killed was white.) To help bring her nerves down a little, I told her it was probably lucky for this guy that he wasn’t in Portland. Somehow, I have always thought of them as a bit more trigger-happy. (Our responders are the Washington Country Sheriff’s Department.)

For me, sure, I am a white female in the suburbs, and I am not likely to ever be hassled, but I have to worry about appropriate responses too. I’m diabetic, and my blood sugar can suddenly drop, and such an incident led to one diabetic getting tased. (Why the people with her, when she told them her blood sugar was falling, called the cops instead of feeding her, I have no idea. If she asked for juice, I know she didn’t mean electricity.) That was also in Portland.

I don’t feel good about feeling that way. I know there are many Portland officers who try hard, and heroically, to protect and serve and keep everyone safe. Maybe it only seems like more happens because it is a bigger city, with more happening. But maybe there is something to that perception, and then it needs to be dealt with. If somehow in the attitudes or training or traditions, something makes the them more likely to fire, or in other ways act inappropriately, that needs to be investigated and dealt with. If the problem is just that there are a lot of good cops and some bullies, those bullies need to be brought out, and not protected.

On cop shows whenever the Internal Affairs team shows up it is bad news, and they are despised and traitors, but that kind of oversight is really important. Isn’t the real traitor the one who shames the job? There is work for the police to do, but it is not all up to them.
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We owe them a better world and a better citizenry. Yes, a lot of the scuffles involve people of color, but they also frequently involve the mentally ill. With the way resources have been cut, the streets are full of them, and that’s something we haven’t had the will to solve.

The black community needs to be addressing the issues of youth in gangs, who shoot each other, and cops, and the issue of wild thirteen year old girls roaming around and getting into trouble on Tri-met. That’s not to pick on them. I realize that there is a long history of problems that have affected African Americas, starting with slavery, and then Jim Crow and segregated housing and welfare rules and many things leading to the social problems today, and that those problems are not uniquely black and pretty much spread out and touch all poverty. I know that and have compassion on it.

It’s just that all you can ever really be responsible for you. Jackson can chastise the cops, and the cops can point out all the reasons that every perp deserved and needed deadly force, but all it does is create bad feelings. If instead everyone worked to correct their part of the problem, then we could actually get somewhere.

A major disappointment for me was reading Fixing Broken Windows. It talked about community policing (Kroker was a fan), and I expected it to be all about making connections between police and government and citizens. Instead it was about order management. Yes, you fix broken windows and paint over graffiti, but also you don’t allow jaywalking or fare jumping and then because everyone realizes that the man is breathing down their neck they get into line (basically).

Maybe that would work, but what if maybe it was just showing that somebody cared? People keep things repaired because they care about the community, and that caring can spread to include caring about people. There was an emphasis on beat cops, and those can be great. What if there had been outreach to the point that Chris Humphreys knew James Chasse, and recognized him right away and could see, okay, he’s off his meds, better call his sister? This teenage boy is Walter, and he is a high-functioning autistic and if he does not respond right away, it is not insubordination. It’s a lot of work, but it’s not impossible.

Everything is different when we know each other. Most of the time, we don’t, and so when one of your own is attacked you circle the wagons and defend, and put on a “Don’t choke ‘em; smoke ‘em” t-shirt, because it is supposed to represent your tough choices, but what it really does is make a joke out of a loss of human life. Or you get all righteous about how violent the police are when someone who talks to others about suicide while holding a gun has put himself in a pretty bad situation. Everyone has a point, but they are still missing the one that matters.

Liking and Loving

The other day I was talking to a friend, and I told her “I like you.” She responded that she loved me, and then I said that I loved her too, all of which was true, but the reason that I started off with liking her is that for me that is the bigger compliment.

I try to love everyone. I don’t always succeed, but my end goal is to have Christ-like love for everyone. I love many people that I don’t like. If I like you, I do love you too, but the point is that I also enjoy spending time with you.

It’s not completely unrelated. If I like you, it is easier to love you, because there isn’t anything getting in the way. It’s amazing how difficult it is to feel love when you are constantly irritated. At the same time, as I love you, it becomes easier to like you. Having a vested interest in you makes it easier to spot your good qualities, and excuse your flaws, and find you enjoyable.

I won’t deny that my loving you gets you farther. If you need help, it is love that makes me do it, but I will help the annoying ones too, if I can—it’s just not as gratifying. I guess my point is that I love you because of whom I am (or am trying to be), but if I like you it is because of you.

I do have a long way to go. First of all, there is the question of boundaries. If I love you, I want what is best for you, but that may not mean giving you money, or not calling the police on you, depending on the circumstances. It may even mean that if spending time with you would be bad for me, even if it might be good for you. I get that, but somehow maintaining love for people who do bad things can be difficult.

That is still not my biggest problem. The worst is loving those who annoy. My personal kryptonite is stupidity, especially combined with neediness. Since a persistent focus on getting others to pay attention to you interferes with your ability to accurately perceive the feelings of those around you, or pretty much anything anchored in reality, stupidity accompanies neediness more often than not.

At times I have justified my preference for other types of people in that those who are constantly seeking attention will probably get it, but it won’t be enough, and also, people who are not like that still need occasional support and encouragement, and you can make more of a difference there. The logic is sound, but my real motivation is probably just a desire to not be anywhere near the stupid.

Naturally, this is bad of me. At the same time, I believe that as I keep going, I will improve, and that it will get easier—I will find another level of love.

In some ways I have already seen growth. One interesting thing about Facebook is how greatly it exceeds the number of people you can be aware of, and care about. I have often found myself praying for multiple people in my personal prayers based on their statuses. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to know what was going on, and help, but before Facebook it was impossible to know what was happening with whom on that scale.

On a smaller level, I see it in our family prayers. Some time ago my sisters and I decided to start praying for a few people. We started with three guys in the ward whom we felt were fairly marriageable—no big issues stopping them—but maybe just needed a little push to move forward. (I know it sounds weird. We want to get out of the singles ward, but we know we are still needed there, so we are trying to pray other people out to the point where we are not needed anymore.)

Some months later, we are usually praying for about thirteen people, plus this family, plus other individuals who may have specific temporary things going on. No one has complained about the prayers getting too long, or the slowness of the process. In addition, sure, praying does not feel like much, but sometimes it is all you can do, and then sometimes we get ideas about other things we can do, and opportunities come up. As we open our hearts, they expand. (And two of the original three guys have serious girlfriends now too, so we feel good about that.)

I may have some hope in the stupid area too. One person I have a lot of difficulty with is my older sister, who is so focused on getting attention that there is nothing else to her. I used to be able to talk to her about this, and she would agree with me, but nothing would change. Now we can’t even have the conversations. I prayed for her to get better, but nothing was happening there. I tried feeling differently, and nothing happened there. Finally I decided all I could do was try and act nicer to her, so my behavior was at least more correct, even if nothing else was.

I made a point of exchanging a few responses with her each night, acknowledging what she was saying. She enjoyed it, and both Mom and Julie mentioned how I seemed to be getting along better with her. They thought I was feeling better about her, which I was not, so it was not everything I had been hoping for, but it was a small improvement, and maybe that was enough.

I say “was” because there was a big setback. She got mad at Mom about something, so didn’t come around for a while, and we got used to the peace. Then she came back and started trying to make up for lost time, talking twice as much and twice as pointlessly. I have had a hard time trying again, but I will have to, because she is family and I do love her, even if I do not enjoy her.

I know, we haven’t even touched on romantic love yet, and it is the right time of year for it, but I think it will kind of be the same. I suppose that will be more similar to liking, but more exciting. In terms of being kind and faithful and honest with someone, again, I will do that because of who I am—loving him will just make it more of a joy.

So that’s where I’m at—still perpetually single, but there is a lot of love in my life, and I am still working on improving the love that I give. I feel like I love pretty well now, but I intend to love brilliantly.

I hate it when I am not logical

I am chagrined.

Lately, people have been doing a lot of themes on Facebook, and they have been getting kind of annoying. I loved the Thanksgiving status updates, but they were still highly individualized. I think the tide turned around the time that women were posting their bra colors for breast cancer awareness.

It’s not that there was necessarily anything wrong with that, mind you, but two thing combined to get me kind of irritated. One was an article about “slacktivism”, where some things you do for awareness or charity aren’t really that much work, and does that maybe cheapen some things. Believe me, I think about that a lot when I visit Green Patch and Sweet Shop. (It’s about the only way I can contribute now, but still, I realize its effects are limited.)

At the same time, there started just being a slew of status updates that were all, if you care about this, post this. It wasn’t exactly a new phenomenon, but a lot of new ones came out in a short period of time, and they seemed to be getting pushier. If you really care, you will post, and most people won’t.

I like finding out about things that are really going on with people. I like posting what is going on with me, even if it is just a movie quote that came into my head and made me laugh. That’s a big part of the fun of Facebook. So disrupting that with various causes, no matter how worthy, is a little annoying, and when it starts feeling like there is pressure and manipulation going on, it becomes really annoying. And it is trivial. I do love Jesus, but I will never honk because of it. It does not seem like an appropriate way of expressing my faith in the Savior. So I care about cancer and infertility and malnutrition, and many other things, but it will probably not affect my status updates.

At the same time, there were also new themes coming up for profile pictures. The first one that came up was Retro Week, where you posted old pictures. That seemed kind of fun, and I did it, and then people kept the old pictures up, and I started to see some issues with changing the profile picture, and then it got out of control too.

Retro Week was followed by Doppelganger Week, where you put up celebrities whom you resembled. There were some interesting ones, but I wasn’t going to participate because I am either going to be blatantly lying or putting up someone I don’t find that attractive, and I don’t like that choice. (We’ve covered my self-image issues.) Then it was Pet Week. Well, I love my pets, but I was annoyed again, and was not changing my profile picture. Besides, people really get out of sync, so it is never actually a week—any given theme sprawls out of time as it slowly makes the rounds.

Anyway, I was already non-participating, and I don’t know that I will participate in any profile picture or status update memes again, but then I saw one today—put up a picture of you and your significant other.

Much like my self-image issues, my love life has been covered. The coverage has shown that it has been basically non-existent. I have been attracted to many, and in love twice, and come close to love a few other times, but there has never been any known reciprocation ever. I’m sure when you have had relationships, being single is still hard, but there is something harsh about never having felt wanted by anyone.

The ridiculous thing is, I am usually okay with it, and yesterday I was great. I was feeling really grateful and joyful in church. In Relief Society we talked about loneliness, and I remember thinking that sure, anyone can have moments of sadness, but really, if you are focused on serving others it is not usually a problem. When you have a good relationship with God, you don’t need validation from other people, and you can enjoy it, but you don’t depend on it. That is huge. That ultimately, with my family and friends I have a lot to be thankful for, even if I am single for my entire life.

Maybe I was too prideful in thinking about those self-absorbed losers who are always waiting for someone else to prove to them that they have worth, so to speak. Anyway, I saw the thing about the photos, and knew it was impossible. Sure, I could put up a picture of my family or my pets, but there are a lot of dirty minds online, and besides, I am now against these constant changes in general. I couldn’t let it rest though, so I put up a smart remark, somewhat being sarcastic, but it is also perfectly true:

“But I have never had a picture taken with a significant other! Oh well, no reason to spoil everyone else’s fun.”

Again, this is completely true. The last time I was anyone’s girlfriend was for three days in sixth grade, and no photos were taken during that time. That being said, I don’t have anything against Valentine’s Day. My sisters and I will look for people we want to remember, but I don’t get depressed, or get into that weird rebel state at the other end of the spectrum where I would throw an anti-Valentine’s party. I’m just kind of mellow about it.

So explain to me then why after a few responses to the status update I found myself on the verge of tears. And that’s why I’m chagrined. It’s like, really? Now this is going to bug me? I guess it was posting the smart remark that did it, but if that’s a problem, well, I’m not ready to change that. I don’t think I have it in me.

Perhaps it’s for the best. I did sign up for the talent show, so I will be doing standup comedy in two weeks, and it’s no good without a little angst. Boys are so silly, and so am I.

Resolved

Maria is always looking for special events or days that she can incorporate into her lesson plans, and she saw somewhere that January 17th is Break your Resolutions day. That stuck with me because that’s my birthday. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do for resolutions this year, so I was taking my time deciding and I figured they could start on my birthday. So, I guess I will start while everyone else is breaking theirs.

As we know, the only one that stuck last year was the monthly picture, and I think it served its purpose. I don’t feel a need to do it again, though I will try and stick with an attitude of not avoiding pictures, and if I find that slipping, maybe I will start again.

For the one on writing one screenplay per month, well, yes, I did it once, but that one was absolutely ready to go. The ideas had been swirling around for a while, and then when Josh died it just crystallized everything, and I was completely ready to go. So I can write a screenplay in a month, but there needs to be prep time as well. Some things only get resolved as you write them, but (at least for me) there is a certain amount of thought that needs to go into it before you start writing. It’s not just to know the plot twists and turns, but also the tone. Like I think the next project will be Pen Pals, and that is basically a comedy, and the main plot and obstacles are romantic, but is it romcom, or farce, or dark humor? Some of the things I want to write need more research, like knowing more background information about the Great Depression, or about Alzheimer’s (no, not for the same things). So, it’s not exactly a realistic goal, though one every two months might be. I anticipate writing more about writing many times.

I probably should recycle the other two—keeping my thoughts pure and not playing with my hair.

In other ways, having resolutions seems kind of beside the point. I have largely switched to a project-based operating model. Back over those months when I was not blogging, I was doing journal writing exploring different options for my life, and the three main areas that I see as needing improvement. I was looking for clarity and I think I have it, but in the process of that I found smaller things I wanted to get done.

I have also found that I cannot function without making lists, and checking things off. Sure, I remember each thing at odd moments when there is nothing I can do about it, but that’s not really helpful. So, I have notebook pages filled with things to do, and then whenever I have some time, I can look over it and find something to work on.

I have been accomplishing more, which I like. At other times, I feel frustrated with how much more there is that is undone. Is it a paradox—the more you do the more you have to do? It feels a little unfair, and yet, I do want to be doing many things. I don’t really want to be lazy, no matter how fascinating television can be.

So that’s where I’m at. I wanted to finish the original checklist before the end of the year, and then before my birthday, neither of which happened, but some things are done, and others will follow.

I intend to get back into sort of a weekly blogging schedule, where I write one regular blog post and one travel blog post per week. (The preparedness blog will still just be an update of the monthly newsletter, unless good bonus material comes up.) The regular blog will go over my main area of focus, the two areas that I am not focusing on now, things that can’t fall to the side regardless of my main focus, and different checklist items, done or not done. I don’t know what order they will go in though, and by the time I am done with them, we could be getting pretty close to 2011.

Anyway, happy New Year. It is one for me.

I’ve always had such a crush on you

One thing that never ceases to amaze me about men is that they do not realize that women talk to each other. We love to share, and hey, if we talk to each other, it can get you off the hook for some listening. The downside is that if you are a bad boy, it gets found out. More likely, if you are lame, that gets found out too. If you cast a wide net, where none of the various women in your life know each other, it buys you time, but it is just something to be aware of.

I mention this because there is a guy I went to school with who has been working his way through the class, telling each one, “I always had such a crush on you. I thought you were so cute.” I can’t remember if the count is at seven or nine girls now who have heard it. Sometimes they hear about it in conjunction with what a jerk I am. The last time it came up, I didn’t even get confirmation, because the girl was kind of sounding me out sneakily, and I suddenly realized she was trying to determine if the reason for the rift between us was thwarted love. (No.) I suddenly realized I was tired, and did not want to go down that road, and so I alluded to the crush/cute thing, and suddenly the conversation stalled.

Anyway, the point of this is not that someone needs a new pickup line (although that would be true), but because my mind churns on things and my thoughts follow strange paths, I have thought about that line.

For one thing, it is not impossible that he truly had crushes on each of those girls and thought they were cute. Sure, the repetitiveness (and apparently the presence of a girlfriend) makes it seem insincere, but it is possible to like a lot of different people when you are young. I seem to remember once making a list (while in junior high) of boys whom I found attractive in some way, and I think I came up with forty-eight. I should have looked around for another two to just make it an even fifty, but I don’t remember doing so.

Of course, there were different levels of attraction. Some were just good-looking, but it didn’t matter. Sometimes it was just exciting to talk to them, and nice being around them, but there were others that you would think about a lot, and maybe even find lame reason to call, or ride your bike by their house. Actually, I recently learned that my 7th-8th grade crush and my 9th grade crush were neighbors. That should have been so convenient, but I didn’t even know! Had I just outgrown that by 9th grade? I remember accompanying Danielle on a walk-by in 10th grade, but maybe I was just accommodating her. I mean, I didn’t have to do walk-bys with Mike anyway, because I would just go hang out with him platonically.

The thing that I really wonder about, though, is whether anyone had a crush on me. Certainly at the time I thought it was impossible, but my views were messed up. Looking back, I can see times when maybe there was something there. For example, one time I was wearing a rather flattering sweater, and I got a “Whoa” out of Gary, and I enjoyed that, but it never went anywhere. Kyle agreed to meet up with me at the 9th grade prom, but then Dave got grounded, and Kyle didn’t want to go anymore. He did tell me beforehand, and neither of them did show up at all, because Ann and I were there, and we would have noticed, so it could have been worse, but it’s not exactly a case of someone being excited to be with you either.

(And that Chris guy totally wanted to sleep with, well, anyone, but he tried with me. Slimy horny boys don’t build as much confidence as you would think.)

Mainly what I worry about was that I missed opportunities that I could have had. I believed that boys did not and would not like me, and boys never asked me out, which seemed to corroborate my fears, but because I was always so careful to cast myself as platonic, I never really encouraged anyone. What if I thought I needed to be don’t-be-scared-of-this-gross-girl-liking-you-she-is-totally-harmless, but what I really needed to be was flirt-a-little-he-likes-you-but-he-is-scared?

It’s largely a moot point, because I can’t go back and change anything, and all I can really do is try and be wiser now. However, a big part of my being wiser now is understanding how I was foolish before. This is why in journals, and then in blog posts, I have gone over my entire romantic history (in all it’s one-sidedness), and all of the events and experiences that developed the hang-ups that figure so prominently in my life, and all of the regrets that I have from my romantic life.

So I believe that understanding the past, and trying to get to the truth of it is important, and my knowledge of this area is a big blank. I didn’t think any boys were ever attracted to me, but I don’t know and I don’t know how to know.

I thought about setting my Facebook status to ask for input on that, but there are a few problems with doing so. It’s not really an effective way of reaching people. Some will see it, some won’t, and I will only know that someone has seen it if they answer. Certainly if people took the time to answer “no”, it would sting a bit, and be pretty unnecessary, because that was my assumption anyway. It’s probably more likely that I would hear nothing, and that would feel a little crushing too, even thought it might not mean that much. So, getting good data would be challenging.

On the other hand, asking the question and finding out the answer scares me, which right there seems to be an argument in favor of doing it. I should face fears. I just want to be productive when I do it, and I’m not sure that I could be for this.

Sure, it might be nice to focus more on current attraction, and I will write about that more in the future, but for now all of the guys that I think I could reconnect with or flirt with have a way of suddenly entering new relationships. Good for them, I guess, and it at least settles the question of whether, when you kind of like two brothers, you need to choose right away or can wait until you assess their interest in you, because really I was not sure. Still, it’s a little disappointing.

I guess all I can really say is that I would be interested in learning of any confirmed or suspected attraction to me at any point in the past or, heck, even now. How’s that for commitment?