Before I Even Asked

Shortly after our severe storm of June 29, 2012, I saw posts on Facebook urging us to petition our state government to pressure AEP (American Electric Power) to restore electric service to everyone in the Columbus area.  I did not sign any petitions regarding AEP because I saw AEP as an instrument of the intelligence of the universe earlier in the year.

In March I heard that a good friend of mine was close to death.  His wife called people to tell them that if they wanted to say goodbye, that was the time to do it.  I was very busy at work at the time.  I am responsible for running a phone room.  The person who would normally be able to substitute for me was out of town.  Just as I was figuring a way to take time off work to visit Zach before he passed, several AEP trucks with cherry pickers entered the alley behind my office.  About half an hour before the evening shift was scheduled to start, one of the men from AEP told me that they had to replace a transformer on top of a pole in the alley and that they had to turn off our power for a few hours.

My boss convinced the men to wait half an hour so that he could save some data on his computer.  When people reported to work for the evening shift I sent them home and then called a buddy so that we could go to the hospice together.  I said goodbye to Zach that evening, but that was not the last time I saw him.  I was able to drive another friend to the hospice the next morning.  This was a person who did not drive and had not seen Zach in many years.  Zach died the next day.

Whether Zach welcomed these visits I cannot say.  He could not speak.  My ability to see him and speak to him before he passed helped me deal with his death much better than if I had not been able to do so.  I am sorry that it took his death to make me better understand a Bible verse I read many years before:  “Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”  (Matthew 6:8)  Jesus of Nazareth said this just before he gave us an example of how to pray with The Lord’s Prayer.

This is how I will remember 2012.  I received other things I needed before I asked for them, but the image of several big trucks in the alley behind my office will stay with me.

A Real Letter

Thanks to the Columbus Dispatch for publishing my letter to the editor.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2012/11/27/justices-judges-should-be-appointed.html

That's Idolatry

I need to start this essay with a reminder to myself as I write words that could offend many who happen to read them:

Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said unto him, THOU SHALT LOVE THE LORD THY GOD WITH ALL THY HEART, AND WITH ALL THY SOUL, AND WITH ALL THY MIND. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

This is the first and great commandment. 

And the second is like unto it.  THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF.  (Leviticus 19:18)

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Matthew 22: 36-40

I wish to obey these commandments as I write.  The citation has the word "prophets."  Many people around the world feel deeply offended because of an amateurish video that mocks a prophet.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.  (Emphasis added)

The Arab League, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation and the prime minister of Pakistan have requested that the United Nations pass a resolution that would urge member nations to pass laws against blasphemy.  This latest effort has the support of the European Union and the Secretary General of the United Nations.  Muslims have been working on worldwide blasphemy laws since 1999, with little support outside of the Muslim world.  They were placated somewhat in late 2011 when the UN passed a resolution calling for an end to religious discrimination and religious profiling.

I may know more than most Americans about Islam, but that is not saying much.  I have known individuals who have converted to Islam.  I have seen the conversion bring about dramatic and positive changes in their lives.  It is important to keep in mind that a Muslim family holds the keys to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem because of continual squabbling among Christian sects.  I heard shortly after September 11, 2001 that the Prophet Mohammed said that the greatest jihad a man can conduct is a jihad against his own shortcomings.  These things lead me to believe that the teachings of Mohammed have been corrupted, just as the teachings of Buddha and Christ have been corrupted.

Defining blasphemy is part of the problem with blasphemy laws.  President Obama did a good job of addressing this point in his speech to the United Nations in September.  He pointed out that blasphemy can be so vaguely defined that blasphemy laws can be used to prosecute and oppress the powerless.

I would want to be confronted if I engaged in idolatry, so I say to my Muslim neighbors that they are idol worshipers.  Muslims are busy destroying idols in many parts of the world, but they worship the Prophet Mohammed as an idol.  The proof of this can be found in efforts to pass blasphemy laws and in killings of people who had nothing to do with the production of The Innocence of Muslims.  If people are willing to kill because a prophet was mocked, those people have turned a prophet into an idol.

Muslims will correctly state that we in the west have plenty of idols of our own:  Santa Claus, cats, bacon and celebrities.  Christians have shown great religious intolerance in centuries past by conducting crusades and inquisitions.  I hope that Muslims learn from these mistakes rather than imitate them.  I hope my Muslim neighbors keep in mind that many Christians regard the whole religion of Islam as blasphemous.  Many Jews might regard both Christianity and Islam as blasphemous.  The unintended consequences of blasphemy laws are difficult to imagine.  Jesus of Nazareth was accused of blasphemy and he started a whole new religion.

I used to think of the United Nations as an under-used vehicle for world peace.  If it takes positions on religion in the name of tolerance, I question whether the United States should be a member.

How Not to Persuade Undecided Voters

I have Facebook and Google+ friends from all over the political spectrum:  Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Liberals.  Some posts have helped me to be a more informed voter.  Discussions have helped me to clarify some of my own opinions and viewpoints.

I get the impression that many of my contacts never have conversations with anyone who has political views different than their own.  This is a mistake if they want to convince undecided voters to vote for candidates that they support.  Each side thinks the other side is crazy or deluded.  The undecided voters may be undecided because they believe that Democrats and Republicans are equally crazy and deluded.

My advice for people who want to use Facebook, Google+ or Twitter to campaign for a political candidate is to think about what you post.  I have seen posts that may have the opposite effect than the one the poster intends.

If you want undecided voters to vote for Barack Obama, it may not be a good idea to remind them that John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 instead of Mitt Romney.  They may believe this was a mistake.  We are not over racism, neither are we over sexism or age discrimination.

If you want undecided voters to vote for Mitt Romney, you may not want to list the corporations Mr. Romney has helped to succeed.  They may have issues with Burger King or Burlington Coat Factory.  Many people perceive Mr. Romney as out of touch with the common person because of his wealth.

Childish posts about how the candidates performed in the debate may cause undecided voters to vote against your candidate.

If you already know that anyone who gets elected to office will be a corporate puppet, please do not discourage your Facebook friends from voting.  Convincing people that their vote does not count is how the plutocrats were able to take power a long time ago.  The Internet in general and social media in particular provide tremendous opportunities to help people become informed voters and get involved in the political process.  Encourage them to attend caucuses, help draft party platforms, run for local office or even establish new political parties.  If all of us participated in politics, we might have better candidates running for office and have a government that represents people instead of money.

Karma Waits Decades for an Opportunity

After ten years as a homeowner I finally got around to cleaning out the shed yesterday.  Some of the junk I pulled out of the shed belonged to the previous owner of the house.  I put these items - a barbecue grill and an office chair - on the curb for the metal scavengers who troll the neighborhood.  I also set out my son's old tricycle.

My wife woke me at a quarter of six this morning to tell me that the items I had put on the curb were in the middle of the street.  I went outside to put them back.  The barbecue grill had been tipped over and pieces of charcoal were in the street.  I ran over some of them when I moved my car to block the items.  I wanted to make it harder for the vandals to do it again.

When I got back inside my wife told me that she had been in the bathroom and could hear something being dragged and a girl laughing.  My wife shook her head and wondered why anyone would do something like that.

"It's Karma."  I told her.

"Oh God, John.  What did you do?"  She asked.

I told her about my visit to my uncle's dairy farm in Wisconsin in the late summer of 1976 or 1977.  I was about fifteen or sixteen.  My cousin, my uncle's oldest son, was a month younger than I.  One night my cousin and I went out after dark.  The corn in the field was getting tall.  We uprooted several stalks of corn and stood them up in a line across the county road that ran along the cornfield.  We saw the headlights of a car when we had the cornstalks lined up across one lane.

We headed for the ditch and waited.  The car came to a stop and the driver started yelling and cursing in case whoever pulled the prank was still within earshot.  We stayed quiet as long as we could, but when the guy continued to yell and curse we both broke out laughing and had to run through the cornfield for the house.

That was one of the biggest laughs of my laugh.  It took almost 40 years for me to pay for it.  Karma takes its own sweet time.

Heading for Higher Ground

Several months after the tsunami of 2004 I read about a man who survived it.  He remembered that his elders told him that if he ever saw the tide go out much farther than he had ever seen, to head to high ground.  He yelled "Run!" and got everyone in his village to safety.

The man was a leader of some of the hunter-gatherer people on the Andoman islands off the coast of Thailand.  They live what most of us would consider a primitive lifestyle.  Yet, this man and his people survived the tsunami while people with cell phones and instant access to weather information perished under the waves.

Since I read the article about the man who survived the tsunami I have often been unimpressed with news about advances in technology.  I read another article before that about how farmers who could recite the most weather proverbs are the most successful farmers.  I am not saying that we should get rid of our cell phones, but sometimes our own memories may be more helpful to our survival than gadgets.

One machine that we would be better off without is the automobile.  We built a dangerous transportation system on the need for everyone to have their own car.  Our need for powerful and impressive-looking automobiles and our juvenile desire to drive them at high speeds has led us into an addiction to oil that has made us warlike.  Humans die so that people in the United States can pretend that interstate highways are NASCAR courses.  We constantly put toxic gases into the air.

TV ads for CSX Railroad claim that they haul a ton of freight almost 500 miles on one gallon of fuel.  Why do we waste so much fuel hauling passengers and freight in cars and trucks?  Because of our ridiculous car culture and snobbery.  We think of ourselves as failures if we do not own a car, and we do not want to have to associate with lowlifes found on buses and trains.  The cost of this car culture is immense.

Telecommuting may someday relieve our need for expensive gasoline, but we need to stop thinking of our automobiles as extensions of ourselves or a form of self expression.  Trains and bicycles make more sense than cars.  Our need for exercise and socialization may help us to survive better than cars.

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

 
To Zach Johnson, who would have wanted me to record my street life adventures.

I do not drink like I used to. It just does not fit with being a responsible parent. However, I do occasionally permit myself the luxury of stopping at the local tavern for Happy Hour on Friday after work. That is what I did today.

It started out as an ordinary visit. I sat down at the bar and started schmoozing with one of the regulars. After I drank half of my first beer, I went out to the patio to smoke a cigarette. Two women were sitting at a table near the door. It was the only table I saw that had an ashtray, so I asked the women if I could sit with them. They told me to go ahead.

Just after I lit my cigarette, a man walked up to the patio from the parking lot. He was quite angry and asked one of the women "What the fuck is you doin'?" He jumped over the rail of the fence that went around the patio. The man pointed at me and asked the woman "Is this him?" The woman told him no, so he asked "Is he in there?" He opened the door to the bar and told the woman to tell him where to find the other man before he made a scene. She told him that the other man had already left. The man then ordered the woman to come with him and get in the car.

After they left, the woman's friend, Sara, explained what had just happened. She said that her friend had met up with an old boyfriend there at the bar. She had meant to send a text message to Sara explaining that the man she was talking to at the bar was an old boyfriend and that her current boyfriend, Anton, would flip if he knew she was talking to an old boyfriend. Instead, she accidentally sent the text message to Anton, prompting him to come back to the bar. Anton had dropped his girlfriend at the bar, telling her not to flirt with any guys.

I told Sara that this story reminded me of a passage in The Bonfire of the Vanities, in which the main character left his fancy Manhattan apartment to call his new mistress on a pay phone and ended up calling his own wife. Sara laughed at this and said "Yes, the universe directs us." Shortly after this Pauline, the bartender and a few other people came out on the patio and asked what was going on. Sara explained it to them. Sara told Pauline that she would take care of her friend's tab. Pauline expressed astonishment that the woman would continue to date such a man and volunteered to text her to see if she was okay.

After some conversation and video trivia and another beer, I went back outside to smoke another cigarette. On my way out I told Grant, Pauline's husband, about how Anton had asked his girlfriend if I was the other man. "Ha! Skinny old white guy, huh?" Grant laughed. Another guy at the bar commented "Hey, pimpin' ain't easy."
A little later Anderson told me that they would start calling me SWG, for Skinny White Guy. I told him that should be OSWG, for Old Skinny White Guy. Grant told me that if I wanted to sit with the old guys, I would have to be at least 60. I told him that I will be 52 in a couple of weeks.

I got a little adrenaline rush when Anton asked "Is this him?" It has been many years since anyone thought me capable of stealing his woman.