Cheers to Judge Barbara Crabb! No more nat’l day of prayer.

I’ll be honest. THis whole “nat’l day of prayer” thing…I never knew it was happening until all the recent furor over its slow impending death. So I looked it up.

Turns out various colonial presidents have observed a day of prayer as the climate & situation required, reaching out to their (voting) public for certain noteworthy events like the forming of the nation & the end of a war. Lincoln did an interesting twist, calling if a day for “national prayer & humiliation.” James Madison & Thomas Jefferson were both con on the federally endorsed prayer plan. Jefferson was particularly outspoken, pointing out that…“Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the time for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to  their own particular tenets; and right can never be safer than in their hands, where the Constitution has deposited it.” I have heard evangelicals lament, oh! the tragedy & horror it is -  that this great country is being torn away from the path set by the founding followers, right there under god’s wing. Gee, they never seem to mention this Jefferson quote. Perhaps this has something to do with why the Texas school book bunch is trying to remove Jefferson from history.

After that it was low key, until the cold war. Then in all the heightened emotion of the time, it finally became a bill in 1952, (Harry Truman), when the idea of the nation uniting in prayer was more an IN YOUR FACE, YOU DAMNED COMMIES! moment than a genuine show of real humility. Actually, that kind of makes it the opposite of humility, doesn’t it? Showing off like that. Anyway, each pres got to pick his own day. In 1982, a National Prayer Committee formed to pick a recurring day. In 1988, after 6 brutal & grueling years of reflection & prayer, they finally decided that the NDP would be on the first Thursday of May. After that, everything puttered along as could be predicted by even the most uninformed political observer. Clinton & Obama did nothing special, Reagan & both Bush’s had special events. (Tho Dubya did have to teleport back from the 7th circle of hell where he was doing some makeup coursework for his degree in screwing over the world.)

And now a judge has ruled that the statute establishing the National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional as it is “an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function”. To which I say…finally! While the Bush bloodline has been living the sheltered lives of lords waited upon by quivering vassals, the world out here has changed. More people are practicing critical thinking. Christian theology, never strong, is bleeding from a number of wounds, self-inflicted by the Darwin equivalent of the dumbest fish in the pond.

Of all the ways the world is falling apart, at least I can be proud of this judge, this thinking human who used simple logic & applied the law, the founding fathers’ penned constitution those evangies love so much – to put this one example of religion back where it should be contained – in the private lives of its followers.

The boy is upright & walking, so everything must be fine.

I am just back from 9-year-old son’s yearly physical. And I am displeased. Displeased! GAH!!! Hey! Here’s an idea for how to overhaul the medical system. How about we get to pay what we think it’s worth?

We go to Group Health in Seattle. I suppose it was a radical & wonderful thing when it started but I fear they have become mired in bureaucracy. “They’ve become a machine,” my husband says.

Got there & some woman (she may have been an assistant, she may have been a nurse. I never found out, since she never saw fit to tell me) came out & called Reid to come down the hall, go into a room, & take his shoes off. While she went thru the weight height list I kept waiting for her to introduce herself or MAKE EYE CONTACT, for god’s sake but apparently common courtesies & basic manners aren’t covered in our plan.

She said Reid’s right eye wasn’t seeing well & that I would want to make an appt with optometry. “He saw someone last week,” I said. “Isn’t that on the computer? I thought that was one advantage of being in the same system.” No response. Eventually we saw the doctor. He was nice enough. But what a cursory exam.

I’m thinking about how our understanding of how our bodies & minds work is expanding constantly. And one thing we’ve figured out is that there are MANY factors to health: what we eat, how much we eat, the quality of the air we breath, our daily stress level, how much we exercise, drugs or medicines we take, allergens around us, & that’s just a bit of the list. This would have been an ideal time to ask me about what I feed my child, & does he exercise, is he sleeping well & how much does he sleep, how much tv does he watch? But these things were not discussed. Does he eat a lot of sugar? Didn’t come up. Reid splits his time between my house & his dad’s house, which is surely a factor, but they don’t know about it because they didn’t ask the most basic questions about his living situation. And they made him undress & put on one of those lame robes, which by the way was an adult size so he couldn’t even tie it on reasonably. I expected the doctor to have him stand up & turn around so his skin & posture could be observed. I think this is quite reasonable. What if I’m practicing my tattooing on Reid? What if I’m abusing him by burning little patterns into his skin with match heads? If I were that kind of parent I would surely have threatened him not to mention anything. Or what if he has some kind of weird blot that is skin cancer only I’m too clueless to ask about it?

I don’t expect them to run a cat scan or bloodwork on a child that is to all appearances bright, alert, & healthy. But a few words on what’s currently considered a healthy diet, a quick glance with trained eyes at the skin & posture of a child…these things don’t require any flavor of test, any kind of special equipment, except, of course, an active mind & some semblance of professional interest.

We left with our little sheet of paper placing Reid in his percentiles. As if I care. His next visit is recommended in 3 years. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends every 2 years at this age, but I suppose that isn’t covered on our plan.

REUSE! – How to be so hip you won’t need to wear a belt.

My "new" Cuisinart. Less than 1/2 price on craigslist.

(Did you know Seattle has a goal of zero waste? I just found that out.)

I don’t recall thrifting being cool when I was in college. Shopping in malls – actually, roosting in malls, was the thing to do. Then there started to be a change down in the scattered communities of Y folk, people in their mid-twenties who were avoiding soulless yuppie jobs. They combined a necessary frugality with a nostalgia for things before their time, & the thrifting movement began to catch on. Anyone seen the now defunct zine Thrift Score? In which the author, Al Hoff, discussed shopping strategies, great thrift finds, & how to make a look out of random junk? Hey, she got her stuff published in a book & was sent on tour.

I’m sure many of you never thrift, or do so only unintentionally, such as when you pass a fertile looking yard sale on your way to the grocery store. But I bet you DO recycle. Because it’s PC. Because, in many places, it’s the law. And finally, because it makes you feel good. I mean, really good. These days, we are absolutely haunted by all the ways we’ve screwed up the world. High food chain animals are dying, air pollution warnings are given in big cities on hot days so delicate people can lock themselves up indoors, there’s that huge Sargasso Sea of floating plastic crap in the Pacific….on & on & ON, for pity’s sake. But every time you toss a can into your recycling bin, you know you’re doing something. You drag the stuff to the curb, then turn away, lighthearted & untroubled, your face glowing with the righteousness of one who is living the morally right life. You feel so…good. So potent. So noble. Listen – get over yourself.

I spent a while online & I can tell you, you should not be getting your warm fuzzies from the fact that you recycle. A lot of cities are using programs & technology that is so young, they end up spending more on recycling than they would just land-filling the stuff. This is a problem because, despite certain Beatles songs & the damp yearnings of various poets, the world does not run on love, it runs on MONEY. Money, money, money. And if/when various locales decide they need to trim budgets, & there’s a lot of that going on these days, pretty but expensive programs like recycling may get “paused”. Think it would never happen because who would make such an un-PC decision? In 2008, the problem was so bad in NYC that Mayor Bloomberg proposed canceling certain recycling programs for 18 months until the city learned to do it with at least some semblance of cost effectiveness. (BTW, here’s a fun site – Waste Age, for professionals in the waste industry.)

Gloat. Gloat. You heard I paid $65 instead of $170, right?

So what CAN we feel good about? Recycling doesn’t save money, but it does keep us from using as much in the way of virgin resources to make new items, & it does keep trash out of landfills. Recycling does cost a lot, tho. And the process of recycling uses a lot of energy, which has to come from somewhere. Think about it. Your recycling is picked up by a truck larger than most living rooms. It uses a LOT of gas. People are paid to drive it. Recycling glass may keep companies from needing new raw materials to make more glass, but it took a lot of raw materials & energy to manufacture the machines that actually recycle the glass.

You all know the mantra – Reduce, reuse, recycle. The words appear in the order you’re supposed to do them. Use less stuff when at all possible. If you do need something reuse something. That way, the work & energy involved in making it goes further. And recycle is LAST. If you have no other choice, if you were obligated to buy something & you can’t find any reuse, then recycle.

I’m encouraging you all to reuse whenever possible. To motivate you, I’m posting pix of the fine Cuisinart I got on craigslist.com for $65. The current model of this is $170 on the Cuis site. I have found a large plenty of appliances on craigslist. People get them as wedding gifts from hopeful relations, or they go thru phases of pretty enthusiasms which fade like Polaroids in hot sun. Shopping on craigslist & at yard sales is an excellent way to reuse perfectly good items that would otherwise be just thrown out, & would cost you a lot more if you were to buy them new.

My suggestion to you – take a look at your wish list & start cruising for good used versions. MUCH better than recycling, & the severely lower price might let you have some longed for goodies a lot sooner than you’d expected.

My kid & Mendel’s peas.

It is summer. No school. The boy, when not at some camp or another, lays like a wasted victorian maiden on the floor of my attic office, moaning about his impending death from boredom. I have decided to deal with this by working thru a list of diverting & educational projects, things I might not have time for in the school year. The most recent was teaching him a bit about evolution. We started out with a brief talk about genes, & once he got the hang of that, I was able to easily slide into the idea that creatures can change over generations, because they inherit different traits. There are lots of good illustrations of evolutionary trees online, along with the fun kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species breakdown, which has some different subcategories since I learned it.

I had this on my list anyway, but I developed a new sense of urgency during tuck-in time one recent night when he asked me if evolution was real. Sure, I said. He said he wondered because a boy he’d played with the week before, a visiting grandson of the neighbors’, told him scientists had discovered that evolution wasn’t true. I stood there with that blank gaze parents get when they’re forced to suddenly dive into a subject which is the ideological equivalent of the bottomless & murky waters of Chichen Itza, & emerge with a simple explanation using words of no more than 3 syllables, that can be spoken in 3 minutes or less, to get it all in before their little butterfly brains flit lightly off to something else.

I have no problem explaining evolution & debunking organized religion. My sticking point was that I needed to find a way to encourage Reid in critical thinking, yet get the point across to him that he should still respect our very religious neighbors, who are quite old, decent enough neighbors, & to their credit, have never tried to proselytize to us. Perhaps the horns on the car tipped them off that we’d be a bad risk. Or maybe it was the goat idol statue on the porch. Or all those tribal masks in the living room. Hard to say. But to get back to the point, It was a one of those genuinely challenging parent moments for me. Reid really enjoyed playing with their grandson, whom I found to be polite, well behaved, & neither a bully nor a weenie. What path thru this rocky territory could I find that would get the message across to him that I expect him to offer some respect to our neighbors despite the fact that they’re teaching their grandson to get a jump on cognitive dissonance by turning off select portions of his brain? (BTW, love the part where “scientists” discovered it wasn’t true. The irony is laughable to the point of tears. This is like the devil quoting scripture for his own use.)

Our neighbors have an interesting story. They seem quite the standard older couple. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last year. They are retired & putter about the yard. Virgil is one of those old guys who just must keep on, & he finds more to do around that house than you’d think possible. Hard labor stuff, too. This week he started tearing off the side of the front steps. He says it sags & he’ll have to lift that corner of the house. They look just like any old couple that would get flustered at changes, be confused at new things. But in fact they’ve traveled to China a great many times as part of their missionary work, & they house Asian students in their house now that their kids are grown. They’ve hosted 24 students & have 2 now, both from Korea. They are nice people, & good neighbors, & all that int’l travel has broadened their minds so that they are devout but non-judgmental. They understand first hand that people choose different paths.

As for my curious boy, I ended up explaining that when someone wants to be a leader & gain power from followers, there are 3 good ways: fear- I’ll kill your family if you don’t help me; greed- you’ll get money/fame/success if you help me; & the most powerful…belief – I have the secret & I’ll share if with you if you help me. I told him that some people are taught to just accept what they are told, but that often they start thinking on their own as they grow up. And lastly, that there are all kinds of christians. Some froth & damn you to hell, as if they had the power, & some truly seek selflessness & help the homeless, the needy, the weak. He should enjoy playing with the grandson the next time he visits. And remember that I will always welcome his questions, & he should ever be cautious of those who say they know all the answers.

Evangelicals & the environment. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

You know what I don’t get? I absolutely do not understand this attitude, this set of ideas, that certain hardline christians have about the environment. I mean, things are bad. Most of the big fish are gone; the ice caps are melting; water is looking like it’ll soon be more costly than any of us care to think about; you’re safer out of the hospital than in what with all the antibiotic resistant bacteria out there; bees, those little buzzy things that make all our fruits & vegetables possible, are dying & we don’t know why or how to stop it; on & on. Every time you turn around, more news comes out which basically boils down to the fact that we are deeply & emphatically screwed. Yet these christians of a certain flavor will barely even admit to the possibility of global warming. They have broods instead of families. They float blithely along doing exactly as is convenient & doesn’t require any effort or thought or change. And they defend it all as proof of their faith. And you know what I’m thinking? These people are dangerous. Not only do they not help the situation, they are actively making it worse. Look at the Duggars, for pity’s sake. 18 children. Wrong beyond reason or words. Such people are part of the “quiverfull” movement, which means they let god do their family planning. (Except for when he wants them to die of childhood diseases. Then they resort to vaccines & antibiotics to willfully thwart his plans.) Quick foray into math! 2 Duggar parents = 18 kids. If each kid has 18 kids, then the original Duggars will have 324 grandchildren. If each grandkid has 18, then there would we 5,832 great-grandkids. At least their existence is a useful teaching tool for my son. Here is immorality, I tell him. Here is bad judgment, here is blindness, this is what hubris looks like.

During the election, when I was subjected far too often to the strident bleating of Sarah “I’ll quote the bible if it’ll make you vote for me” Palin, remembered here for her utterly discouraging lust for wolf blood, oil fields, & her greed-based animosity to polar bears, I realized I needed to do a little research on the thinking of such people. As I often say, information is power. Last week I went online & searched for the term, “environmentally responsible christian.” Wow, did that ever turn out to be an oxymoron! I would like to think that, somewhere, there are christians who get it that once the earth is unfit for humans, humans will die, unless some several actions are taken in time, & I hope to write about those so far elusive christians next time, if I can find any.

Here’s the format of an oft-heard exchange: person A- “I don’t get what these super religious people are thinking. How can they not understand that the planet only has limited resources?!” person B- “they don’t care because they think the world is going to end soon so it just doesn’t matter.” Besides being simplistic, this doesn’t answer my responsibility argument, which goes like this: you give your child something expensive & tell them, “this is yours, but you still have to take care of it.” If they come back to you & gleefully describe how they destroyed it on purpose, then demand an eternity of unimagined goodies & treats, do you reward them? Hell, NO! You give your regionally accepted version of:

• a dope slap
• a marathon lecture ending with “& if you want another one, you can damned well get a job & buy it with your own money! I’m not getting you another after you showed such disrespect & poor judgment.”

As I discovered, the evangelical thinking is more wordy than just that one point, but hardly more developed.  Why it is some christians are so intent on hastening the destruction of nature? I just can’t wrap my head around how they can be so…well…blind to the essence of the world as a place where uncounted animals, plants, insects, & chemicals interact in a way that keeps us & them all nourished & alive.

Today, for example, it was a lovely day here in Seattle. The trees are blooming, the back yard glimmers with bits of life – tiny flying bugs with their wings catching the sun, birds with their little throats quivering with sound as they work hard to point out that you should stay away from their women.  Even the smallest creatures confound me with their beauty. Yesterday Reid found a flying ant. She was over 1/2 inch long, lovely dully shining body, translucent wings reflecting hints of rainbow color. Squatting in the yard next to my son, gazing at this tiny wonder, my life is made more complete. As often happens, I find myself thinking sadly of how little of nature will remain by the time my son is my age. How can any aware person deny his or her own unalterable connection with the rest of the natural world? After all, every bit of tissue that exists in our bodies has been eaten & pooped out by worms. Try that out on kids you know, it’s entertaining to watch their faces as they think about this.

May I rant a moment? During my reading, I slogged thru rather a lot of drivel about how science is wrong about global warming, & that we should just have faith that god has a plan for the planet. And I’m thinking…hmm…this is a very convenient faith. How deliciously easy it is to wrap yourself in the righteous cloak of your faith when it means you can still go to Wal-Mart & load up on Chinese made plastic crap & bring it home in your SUV. Why not leap off a building right now? You’ve got faith, don’t you? Don’t you trust god? They discount science, yet avail themselves of vaccines, microwaves, & internal combustion engines. They list themselves as stewards of earth, then use it up because they’ve been assured a new one. My dream is to go into the houses of such people & take away every iota of scientifically produced matter. Leave them with ½ a bushel of shriveled apples, a book on “learn to be a blacksmith,” & maybe a couple of arrowheads. Don’t like science? Let me introduce you to Mr. Flint & Mr. Stick. Have a nice winter, now.

Evangelical christian responsibility to the environment arguments I found online

1. They disapprove of thinking of earth as an entity. When we say things like we take care of the earth, she takes care of us, they say that raises up the earth as an idol, & thou shalt raise no idols before god.
2. Any human plan for the earth is prideful & an affront to god. He has a plan for the earth so humans don’t have to change a thing.
3. Any global warming that might be happening is just part of a natural cycle, so christians should drive any kind of vehicle they want, because it just don’t make a difference.
4. Christians are told by the bible to fight poverty, & following the Kyoto treaty will make people lose jobs, therefore it, & any other change that might lose jobs, increases poverty, & should not be done. (See point 2). No mention here of all the jobs that will be created in the pursuit of green technologies.
5. Humans are more important than any other creature on earth. Nuff said.
6. God created the earth FOR humans. We get to use it all we want, any way we want.
7. God said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
8. Unless the earth cannot physically sustain any more human life, it is not overpopulated, since God created the earth to sustain mankind and delights in human life.
9. Any science proving we’re hurting nature is wrong. “In the past they have warned that DDT, acid rain, and the ozone hole threaten life as we know it. Sound science has refuted all those claims.” Really? Guess I missed that.
10. (after list of “facts” in article)…”While these facts do not conclusively prove that global warming is not occurring – it is impossible to prove a negative – they certainly suggest that it is not. Consequently, Christians should not worry that their transportation choices might harm other people. Christians can choose to drive how they wish without fearing that their actions contribute to Global Warming and thus, in the words of the Evangelical Environmental Network, “deny Christ’s Lordship.” This does not mean that Christians do not need to consider God’s desires in what they choose to drive. God clearly tells his servants not to glorify or take pride in material wealth, but to serve him first and store up treasures in heaven, and some luxury vehicles clearly express materialistic desires. It simply means that Christians have no reason to also consider the effects their car might have on the climate when purchasing a new vehicle. What Would Jesus Drive? Whatever he chose, the exaggerated hype surrounding the global warming theory would not concern him.”