Month: January 2010

California/Education/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Money/Politics & Causes/Religion/USA/Women
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Going to hell, or going to dance — hate group meets celebration

by Fran Johns

A small but extraordinarily vitriolic hate group out of Topeka, KS visited the San Francisco Bay Area this past week, picketing a variety of targets — anything Jewish, homosexual or supportive of same seems to do. It is, in fact, hard to find many people these folks don’t hate. You are welcome to check out their website — Westboro Baptist Church — it’s just not recommended after eating.They are headed to Dallas next.

Most people simply ignored them. But groups at several local high schools and at Stanford University took the occasion of being targeted for a little creative anti-hate-group celebrating, and some of these events are chronicled on the Not In Our Town site:

Hillel at Stanford University, one of the institutions targeted Jan. 29 by Westboro, invited the entire Stanford community to stand together Friday morning “for a peaceful gathering in celebration of our diversity and our unity,” according to the invitation they emailed to students and campus groups.

“We chose to use the incident as an opportunity to align the campus around shared values and issue a call to action,” said Adina Danzig Epelman, executive director of Hillel at Stanford. Students were instructed not to engage the Phelps family in any way, and to bring signs with positive rather than negative messages.

About 1000 students  representing dozens of campus organizations, or simply themselves, along with a number of faculty and staff, showed up at 8am for 45 minutes of musical celebration, including an unexpected bagpipe player who launched into “Amazing Grace” on the front steps of the Hillel building. It was, Epelman said, “a very broad gathering, representing the diversity of our campus.”

In a message of support earlier in the week, the Hindu and Muslim co-founders of Stanford F.A.I.T.H. wrote: “If we did not stand alongside Jews, gays and lesbians, or any other group that may be maligned this Friday, we would not be the Hindus and Muslims we strive to be.”

At San Francisco’s Lowell High School, another target, the handful of picketers were met by an exuberant horde of teenagers who seemed to agree with one sign proclaiming “We’re not going to hell, we’re going to dance.” My personal favorite sign read “Jesus had two Dads;” had he been around I suspect Jesus would have been dancing.

The only gloom, in fact, was on the faces of the young picketers. They looked more wistful than hateful. It’s easy to believe they would rather be dancing too.

California/General interest/Health/Politics & Causes
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Obama, Pelosi & the health bill yo-yo

by Fran Johns

Invoking the not-so-long-ago proposals of Senators Bob Dole and Howard Baker, President Obama told the Republicans Friday that his health bill is “pretty centrist,” while suggesting they might leave off referring to it as a Bolshevik plot. “People in America don’t believe it’s centrist,” Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) told PBS NewsHour‘s Judy Woodruff just after the event — “the government defining costs, benefits…”  Hensarling did not sound much like someone ready for bi-partisan cooperation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, said yesterday, in a letter e-mailed to constituents, that “Congress will pass health insurance reform no matter what barriers stand in our way. We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in.” And therein may lie the problem: Obama’s move from health care to jobs as number one issue, and Pelosi’s, well, Pelosi-like determination to get some sort of a health bill through, no matter what. Some of us who agree that jobs and the economy are admittedly number one still believe the disaster that is our current health care system has got to be addressed. (One wonders what planet Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell lives on, commenting during his rebuttal to the State of the Union address that Americans don’t want to mess with “the best medical care system in the world.”)

Health reform, whatever remains of it, has become the yo-yo of the year: it’s up, it’s down, it’s tangling in multiple strings, and the axle connecting it between Democrats and Republicans looks more worn with every loop.

Here are a few of the assessments Friday night pundits were making: New York Times reporter Peter Baker on Washington Week in Review: “It’s become bad politics. There is no option but to slow down.” Also on Washington Week, Politico‘s John Harris remarked, “It’s comatose.”

The President did himself proud with the Republicans, in what was indeed a remarkable event, even if no immediate good will arises. It felt downright civil. But as to the health care yo-yo and whether it now rolls quietly under the sofa to rest a while, a parting thought came from columnist Mark Shields on NewsHour. “President Obama,” he observed, “doesn’t control Nancy Pelosi.”

California/Politics & Causes
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Obama on community colleges — & one teacher's response

by Fran Johns

Some of us, still believers, admit our expectations of Barack Obama might have been too high. And it may go both ways. Anna Tuttle Villegas, a teacher at San Joachim Delta College for 35 years, wonders if expectations of what community colleges can deliver are a little muddy themselves. Villegas, whose literary distinction — award-winning poetry, fiction, essays — would have supported a far more prestigious career choice had she not been dedicated to those community college students he has in mind, ventured a response to the President’s address:

Nobody, absolutely nobody, appreciates better than a community college teacher the transformative effect education can have on the quality of life of her students. As our president explained last night in the preface to his promise to revitalize the nation’s community colleges, “the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education.”

Amen.

The president’s enlistment of me in the federal plan to make college accessible to more students inspired my own new year thought.

College students agelessly enter and depart classrooms year after year, never growing older. Sure, their hair color changes from day-glo green to hi lites and low lites, their musical tastes boomerang from reggae to screamo, and their pants grow shorter and tighter and then longer and looser and sometimes fall off. Beneath superficial alterations in fashion, college students remain forever youthful, making their teachers, witnesses to an endless parade of youth, especially vulnerable to the conclusion that it is our outlook — and not that of our charges — which has been fundamentally corrupted by the passage of time.

When I went to college almost forty years ago, the expectations of academic culture were fairly clear. Instructors and professors were generally assumed to have, if not greater innate intelligence at the moment of instruction, then at least greater skill and knowledge than their wards.

Times have changed. Villegas (herself educated at U.C. Santa Barbara and Stanford)  suggests that expectations brought by students themselves are murky, and roles of instructors and learners often confused. She gives some anecdotal evidence of how and why the “one-size-fits-all approach to community college enrollment” may call for re-examination of expectations laid on colleges and teachers both:

Years ago, a student encounter introduced me to what is now commonly recognized as the Joe Wilson school of public discourse. Upon being informed that spotty attendance may have played a pivotal role in the student’s bewilderment (Was it really Wednesday? There was a paper due? And who was I, anyway, expecting him to be in possession of a course syllabus?), this particular student threw down his weighty backpack and proclaimed me an “f-ing bitch.” Several times.

That school marms sometimes do turn into f-ing bitches shouldn’t surprise anyone. But the frequency with which contemporary students feel the need to remind us of the fact, colloquial dialect and all, should.

Back in the day when one-on-one conferencing was hip, I recall explaining to a bright and sassy young woman how sentence fragments, not advisable in college essays, were marring her otherwise insightful writing.

She didn’t buy it. Hand on cocked hip, very Mae West, she growled at me: “What if I don’t think it’s a sentence fragment?”

Indeed.

Villegas concludes her essay with a quote from Robert Frost: “Now when I am old my teachers are the young.”

Now I am old. What the young teach me is that many students fail to approach their college studies with the respect for learning essential to our college model.At the risk of being an f-ing bitch yet again, I want President Obama to consider that before we commit to sending even more students to community colleges, we should decide what exactly it is we expect of them.

Anna Tuttle Villegas: College to Go.

California/Lifestyle/Money/Politics & Causes/Religion/USA/Women
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Marriage: made/un-made in California

by Fran Johns

In the marriage equality case now being heard in San Francisco, and presumably headed for the Supreme Court, it’s worth looking at the points being made and the people being heard. One person being heard this week was the pro-Proposition 8 (i.e. the defendants, who want to keep the ban on same-sex marriage) star witness David Blankenhorn.

Blankenhorn, touted as scholar and expert authority for reasons I don’t fully understand, is the founder and president of the Institute for American Values. His values aren’t exactly my values, but never mind. We are each American, and a case could be made for institutionalizing us both.

If you visit the IAV website, which seems initially designed to sell books (Blankenhorn and his fellows are industrious authors) because books get front-page billing, you are then invited to “Jump directly into the think tank!” — IAV being, as noted, a scholarly operation. This is what you will learn about IAV if you float to the top of the tank:

The Institute for American Values, founded in 1987, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to study and strengthen key American values. The Institute brings together leading scholars from across the human sciences and across the political spectrum for interdisciplinary deliberation, collaborative research, and to issue joint public statements.

We ask: What are the cultural values most closely associated, especially in the American context, with human flourishing? That is, what are those ideas and practices that tend to produce competence, character, citizenship, thriving families, and a vibrant civil society?

What are the main challenges to those values? And how can those values be encouraged and strengthened?

In operational terms, our mission can be stated concisely: Through groundbreaking research and analysis focusing on fundamental American values, and in forging strong and diverse partnerships, the Institute seeks to strengthen families and civil society globally.

Blankenhorn testified that extending marriage rights to those unable to conceive and bear children — this would have ruled out my final union, since we were 58 and 62 at the time — would change it from “a child-based public institution to an adult-centered private institution” and lead to all manner of horrors, polygamy, that sort of thing. As San Francisco Chronicle writer Bob Egelko reported, in what is ongoing, thorough coverage of the trial,

Blankenhorn, the trial’s last scheduled witness, said he believes “leading scholars” share his view that same-sex marriage would weaken heterosexuals’ respect for the institution and accelerate a half-century-old trend of increased cohabitation and rising divorce rates.

But under cross-examination by a lawyer for two same-sex couples, Blankenhorn was unable to cite any supporting statements or evidence for that conclusion from the scholars he relied on for his testimony, though he said he was sure some of them would agree with him.

Blankenhorn did get tangled up a bit in his testimony, leaving one to wonder how thoroughly the Prop 8 folks read his research. Or how solid is the thinking in the IAV tank.

Plaintiffs’ lawyer David Boies also pointed to a passage in Blankenhorn’s 2007 book, “The Future of Marriage,” that appeared to contradict his entire position.

“We would be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were on the day before,” Blankenhorn wrote.

He said Tuesday he still holds that view, and also believes that allowing gays and lesbians to marry would probably be good for the couples and their children.

Go figure. Some of us watching this unfold are old enough to remember when my native state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, decided it would be all right for Mr. and Mrs. Loving to live there as husband and wife, even though they were of different racial backgrounds. Until that day, in 1967, the arguments had been that allowing people of different ethnicities to wed was bad for everyone. It may seem ridiculous now, but it was the law of the land in more than one state then.

The Bible is going to come in here somewhere before this is all over, since same-sex marriage opponents believe it is wrong because their Bible tells them so. Biblical invocation could be speculation on this writer’s part, but the Mormon Church and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pretty well got Prop 8 passed, so I think it unlikely they will stay out of any Supreme Court battle. Their Bible isn’t my Bible. Uh, oh; yes it is. Interestingly though, my Jesus taught love and compassion while their Jesus teaches that some of His children are less equal than others.

At the beginning of this trial (in which two same-sex couples are the plaintiffs) Chief U.S District Judge Vaughn Walker posed this question: How does a ban on same-sex weddings protect marriage, the stated goal of Proposition 8? I’m still trying to figure that out.

Whatever the verdict, it is expected that it will be appealed to the Supreme Court. So this may be about marriages made — or un-made — in California right now, but it will be a question of equal rights for all Americans tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Prop. 8 witness warns of societal upheaval.

California/General interest/Politics & Causes/USA
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The Republican Faux Census

by Fran Johns

We are in receipt of the 2010 Congressional District Census, Official Document, Process Immediately, Census Document Registered To: (I will never tell.) In slightly smaller, definitely not-bold print: Commissioned by the Republican Party.

This household is not known for being a bastion of Republican conservatism. It does, however, harbor one member known in some circles for contrarianism — for want of a better word. That member has duly completed the Census Document, with a few terse asides here and there and one or two spots left blank. It may skew the results a little, if anyone pays these things any mind.

In case your Census Document has not arrived, here are the basic facts as reported by The Associated Press:

“Strengthening our Party for the 2010 elections is going to take a massive grass-roots effort all across America. That is why I have authorized a Census to be conducted of every Congressional District in the country,” GOP Chairman Michael Steele says in a letter mailed nationwide.

The letter was sent in plain white envelopes marked “Do Not Destroy, Official Document.” Labeled “2010 Congressional District Census,” the letter uses a capital “C,” the same as the Census Bureau. It also includes a “Census Tracking Code.”

The letter makes a plea for money and accompanies a form asking voters to identify their political leanings and issues important to them. There are no disclaimers that participation in the GOP effort is voluntary; participation in the government census is required by law. Failure to participate carries a $5,000 fine, though it is rarely enforced.

Participation in this particular Official Census Document can be tricky. One can get past the name, age, party registration information in a straightforward manner… but then come the serious issues. Nicely phrased serious issues:

How much does it concern you that the Democrats have total control of the federal government? Control? Who’s in control? One is tempted to have No Opinion.

How confident are you that America’s economy will improve in the next six months? This may be an attempt to tap into the confidence factor rampant in the land, what with everyone feeling so hearty and upbeat.

As the Official Document progresses, through Political Profile to General Issues and on into Domestic  and Foreign Issues, it is possible to sense blood pressures rising all over the country:

Do you believe the huge costly Democrat-passed stimulus bill has been effective in creating jobs or stimulating America’s economy?

Do you think the record trillion-dollar federal deficit the Democrats are creating with their out-of-control spending is going to have disastrous consequences for our nation?

Are you concerned that as other countries like China buy up hundreds of billions of dollars of our national debt they will have more control in directing our nation’s future economic policies?

(Do you believe that global warming is an issue that must be dealt with immediately?)

Do you trust the Democrats to take all steps necessary to keep our nation secure in this age when terrorists could strike our country at any moment?

Do you worry that Russia is moving away from its relationship with the U.S. and trying to re-establish itself as a military and economic superpower?

You get the picture. If you were not terrified of terrorists — not to mention China, Russia and I left out the one about Obama’s dangerous, non-confrontational dealings with radical leaders in Iran, North Korea and other countries — and on the verge of panic about everything else before you opened the Census Document, you will surely be so by the time you get to the end.

Along the way, you are invited to express your opinion on school prayer, flag burning, abortion, same sex marriage, faith based initiatives and human cloning.

Send money. The envelope is postage paid.

California/Entertainment/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/seniors/USA/Women
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A sucker born every minute: the link between casinos & the Supreme Court

by Fran Johns

Getting something for nothing is tough these days. But that, obviously, doesn’t stop millions of Americans from throwing money away trying, every day. And there’s a lot of money to be made off of those suckers. Witness the current hoopla between two bands of Pomo Indians, the Manchester-Point Arena Band v the Guidiville Band, over the latter’s push to develop a new “gaming” facility in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gaming is the new gambling, gambling having gotten a bad name for some reason, but certainly not the obvious reason that millions of people throw their money away on it and some of them suffer a lot thereafter.

If you don’t want to throw your money away on the slots, however, an anonymous gentleman (Joe Prosflow?) in Daly City, CA, invites you to toss it his way. (I Googled it, but you don’t want to go there; it’s pretty much defunct.) In a bright-yellow-background 2-column ad in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, a 76-year-old male who avows “I believe I have discovered a solution which has eliminated all of my symptoms” — i.e. waking up 3 or 4 times a night for bathroom calls — says he will send you “specific information” for $20 check or money order. Plus a self-addressed stamped envelope. Even though there are those near and dear to me who are known to arise multiple times during the night, I am resisting the temptation to respond to Mr. Prosflow.

But back to the slots. In a former life I had reason to attend occasional conventions in Las Vegas, which required walking through airports and hotel lobbies ad infinitum, all filled largely with little old ladies holding containers of coins and relentlessly feeding them into machines. Being now a little old lady myself, the remembrance of that sight makes me even sadder than ever. This is fun and games? I do not recall seeing anyone smiling. (Forgive me, Las Vegas, I’m sure you have good, smiling citizens there somewhere.)

But casinos cry at the top of their neon lungs about what a fun time you’ll have there! Glamour! Excitement! Not to mention all that money you’ll win! Just as lotteries tout the last gazillion dollar winner. Win big! Jackpot now over a gazillion! Hello? Have you met many gazillion dollar winners?

What brings this to mind, in addition to the interesting just-send-your-money ad, is the fact that casinos and lotteries and other nifty ways to abuse the poor — who are a large percentage of lottery ticket buyers if a smaller percentage of casino-goers — all get your votes. Because they advertise how their profits will make schools better (have you noticed schools getting better on casino taxes?) Or other wonderful benefits they will bring to the ‘hood. They somehow neglect to mention the increased costs they will bring in human miseries and public services required.

They get your votes, or your legislators’ votes, because they have a gazillion dollars to spend in order to get them.

Exactly as multinational corporations will now have a gazillion dollars to dominate every election in the country, large or small, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling that they can spend all the gazillions they want. Leaving us one-person-one-vote suckers still free to send our money to Daly City. But otherwise with not much of a voice.

General interest/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/Religion/teens/USA
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Jewish Teenager’s Prayer Diverts a Plane

by Fran Johns
From The Philadelphia Jewish Voice
From The Philadelphia Jewish Voice

No one was surprised it happened, everybody remained calm and polite — including, apparently, the two teenagers when they were briefly handcuffed — all aboard were safe. Still it’s a little sad when a young airline passenger in prayer sets off alarm bells in our spacious American skies.

The 17-year-old observant Jewish passenger, seated next to his younger sister, was strapping a tefillin onto his wrist and his head, figuring to take advantage of the quiet time for ritual prayer. It was a small plane outbound from La Guardia Airport and about 25 minutes into a flight to Kentucky. The flight attendant on US Airways Express Flight 3079 last Thursday thought the tefillin looked ominously like wires or cables.

And in a time when in-flight thinking is colored by the brutal knowledge that passengers have hidden bombs in underwear or shoes, she told the officers in the cockpit. The pilot decided to divert the Kentucky-bound plane to Philadelphia. In less than 30 minutes it was on the ground, police officers were swarming through the passenger cabin, and the Transportation Security Administration was using terms like “disruptive passenger” and “suspicious passenger” to describe the boy. An hour or so after that, Lt. Frank Vanore, a spokesman for the Philadelphia police, had another explanation.

“It was unfamiliarity that caused this,” he said.

He said the flight crew had never seen tefillin, small leather boxes attached to leather straps that observant Jews wear during morning prayers. The flight crew “didn’t understand what it was,” he said, and the pilot “erred on the side of caution and decided to radio that in and to divert the flight.”

We can’t all recognize a tefillin, or appreciate head scarves, or somehow get comfortable with the accoutrements of unfamiliar religions. But this incident suggests we might need to try harder.

The young man and his sister, whose names were not released, are from White Plains, the authorities said. Rabbi Shmuel Greenberg of Young Israel of White Plains said that they were members of his congregation and that the young man was “a good boy, bright, intelligent, as docile as you can imagine.” Some observant Jews said they were not surprised that the ritual had attracted attention — or that people on the plane would have been unfamiliar with it. “When they see a passenger strapping yourself,” said Isaac Abraham, a Satmar who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and campaigned for the Democratic nomination for a City Council seat last year, “you might as well strap yourself with hand grenades. They have no idea. He probably just figured, ‘I have nothing else to do on the plane, I might as well use this time to pray.’ Other people read. They watch a movie. He figured, ‘Let me grab the time.’ But the obvious reality of it is that when we see people carrying explosive material in their shoes and their pants and I am the passenger next to him and see someone strapping, I would panic too.”

And most of the rest of us would say the same. Maybe most of the rest of us, though, could take some time to check out interfaith groups such the International Association for Religious Freedom or United Religions Initiative, or local organizations such as the San Francisco Interfaith Council (local interfaith groups exist throughout the country), which offer a chance to learn about other faiths and get to know the mostly peace-loving people who follow other traditions. In all probability, there will be times ahead when some badly-misled person will shout “Allahu Akbar” before blowing himself or herself to smithereens, or some deranged person will commit violence (witness the killer of abortion Dr. George Tiller claiming his religious convictions justified the act) in the name of some abused diety. But a little interfaith understanding could go a long way in today’s super-suspicious world.

Rabbi Greenberg, the boy’s rabbi, had some advice for future flights.

“I would suggest, pray on the plane and put the tefillin on later on,” he said.

Jewish Teenager’s Tefillin Diverts a US Airways Flight – NYTimes.com.

California/Health/Politics & Causes/USA/World Affairs
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Pelosi on moving forward

by Fran Johns

You’ve got to hand it to Nancy Pelosi. At the end of a week so bad — Massachusetts goes for Brown the obstructionist, the Supreme Court rules corporations can rule from now on, the market dives for cover — some were predicting she won’t even survive another election herself, House Speaker Pelosi whipped out a resolutely upbeat e-mail:

Across America, people are demanding health care reform and fiscal responsibility. My colleagues in the House and I are listening to the concerns of all Americans as we discuss how to move forward with health care reform. While we are working to resolve our differences, everyone agrees that we must pass health insurance reform legislation that lowers cost, holds insurance companies accountable, and expands access to quality, affordable health care.

The Massachusetts special election may have decreased the number of Democrats in the Senate, but it has not diminished the need for health insurance reform. There are still 46 million men, women and children in our country without health insurance. There is still an unsustainable upward spiral of health care costs that American families, workers and businesses simply cannot afford. We are discussing the best way to move forward, but we will move forward.

Moving forward hasn’t looked this grim since the Donner Pass snowed over. Perhaps Pelosi should call in Romanian President Traian Basescu’s friend Aliodor. The Associated Press reports today that according to Mircea Geoana, who just lost a close race to Basescu, it was negative energy zapped at him by Basescu’s buddy, parapsychologist Aliodor Manolea that cost him the election. Unless Manolea is already in the employ of the forces of evil (above), perhaps he could reverse a little of the negative energy currently making us all — well, a lot of us — want to dig a hole and crawl in.

And then maybe the forward move could begin. Right now it feels stuck in reverse.

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