Covid-19 and Plexiglas

 Read a meme on Facebook today that just makes me shake my head in wonder. It shows a grocery clerk checking out food items behind a Plexiglas shield, which is between her and the customer. The meme ridiculed the use of the plastic shield and implied it was useless and ineffective.

Some one should tell all my doctors, surgeons, and hospitals. When you approach the ripe old age of 80, you learn a few things, if you’re paying attention.

I have surgery for an inguinal hernia on January 5. When I went in for the pre-op, the receptionist was behind a glass wall.

When I see my urologist, her front desk clerk is behind a Plexiglas window.

When I checked into the hospital for an X-ray, the three admitting persons had Plexiglas barriers on their desks.

In Radiation, the nurse was behind a glass window in the corner.

When I see my Cardiologist, both the women sitting at the front desk are behind Plexiglas curtains.

When I last saw my Primary Care Physician, both his receptionists are behind glass barricades on the front desk.

I made an appointment with my oral surgeon for a dental implant next month. His front desk people were behind Plexiglas curtains.

Yeah, sure, nothing is perfect. Now and then a parachute fails to open, and the jumper bounces. If I need to jump out of an airplane, though, I’m strapping one on!

I have an autoimmune disease. My daughter is taking chemo for neuroendocrine carcinoid tumors. My sister-in-law has bad diabetes. We are all endangered if we get Covid. We are all vaccinated to the max, but are still vulnerable. Anything that increases our chances of survival is a plus in my book.

Instead of wasting my time, somebody needs to tell thousands of medical professionals they are wasting money putting up Plexiglas barriers between people, to slow down Covid-19.

They should also be sure to reference their sources. Such as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and a bunch of blonde bimbos on Fox News. Those highly paid lying propagandists should be behind bars for murder, IMHO.

A House for Winter

 Last week, just before Christmas, another frigid Arctic blast came down from Canada (some say it started in Siberia) and thousands of houses in Texas and Oklahoma found the water pipes frozen in the morning. 

Those of us who have lived for years in colder climes left the faucets dribbling hot water and flushed the toilet several times in the night to keep the water moving fast enough to stay liquid all night long. 

For at least fifty years, ever since I bought my first mobile home, I have wondered:

Why do house designers put water pipes in an outer wall?

Why do they put toilets and sinks on an outer wall?

Why is the water service connection next to the outer wall?

One of the joys of moving down here to the south is never having to crawl on my belly under the house with a torch or hair dryer trying to heat up the pipes and get the water flowing again. 

The VRBO house we rented for the family Christmas gathering in Denison, Texas, has the water supply to the “mother-in-law suite”, (a separate room in the backyard) raise out of the ground outside the concrete footing and go through the wall about a foot above the ground. Needless to say, both hot and cold froze up one morning, even with the water dribbling all night.

If it were my house, I would box those pipes in with insulation between them and the outside air.

I occurs to  me that the problem was solved back when Disneyland, California, opened about 1955 or so. They featured a “House of the Future” as a walkthrough exhibit. It wasn’t flashy or exciting enough so it got demolished ten years later, but the principles were right.

The central core of the house was a square pillar of concrete with all water, drain and utility connections on the inside walls. The four wings of the house with outer wall had no water or drains at all. It would have made a winter proof home in Montana or Alaska, but there it was in California.

I sometimes visualize a new mobile home using the same principles, with the bathrooms and kitchen in the center, water and drains contained in a central concrete cellar/storm shelter, and with living room and bedrooms on each end. I don’t think it would add much cost at all. And never again would the owner have to spend Christmas Eve morning fixing the pipes underneath the house.

What are they teaching house designers in college, anyway? Could we send them out some bitterly cold morning to thaw people’s pipes?

Some Personal Thoughts on Paul

 Thoughts on Paul

In my lifelong study of the early Christian Church, I have had a love/hate relationship to the apostle Paul. I am not the only one. In these times I have seen more questioning of the concept of the substitutionary explanation of the death of Jesus than ever before. Did he actually die for our sins, or was he executed by the Romans for fomenting rebellion?

I have one book in my library entitled “Betrayal of Jesus” by Davis D. Danizier, contending that Paul subverted the whole message of Jesus and betrayed the core of Jesus’ teachings.

Another book in my library is “Paul Among the People” by Sarah Ruden. She takes a much more sympathetic view and attempts to explain some of the more controversial writings of Paul.

Let me first mention my own understanding of the Christian religions after Jesus’ death. There was not just one religion. The twelve apostles were still Jewish. Jesus never told them to reject the Jewish religion. Jesus was a Jew, and was referred to as Rabbi, an honored title of Teacher in the Jewish tradition.

He was also called the Messiah, which means Anointed One in the Hebrew language. So was King David. The Messiah was to raise up the nation of Israel, overcome the oppressing occupier Rome, and make Israel great again. The concept of a Son of God was not part of that. The Jewish religion was devoutly monotheistic, and there was only room for one God.

All of the books in the New Testament were written many years after Jesus died. Paul actually wrote the first ones, The Gospels were written after Paul’s death. As time went on, the later books began to subscribe to Paul’s belief in Jesus’ divinity and his sacrificial death on the cross as redemption for our sins. Before Paul, I believe the original twelve apostles saw Jesus’ death as an unfortunate tragedy to a great prophet and leader, not as a redemptive payment for our sins. For that we have nobody but Paul to credit or blame.

If Paul had not come along to proclaim his new religion, the small Jewish group in Jerusalem would have never been heard from again. There would be no Christian religion today, in my view. The Jews would have continued their emphasis on keeping the law more strictly, and striving to be more righteous than the gentiles, since they were God’s chosen people. 

They never showed the slightest inclination to spread their message to any one outside the Jewish faith. In fact, they shunned mixing with or even eating with non Jews, even if converted by Paul to Christianity, as demonstrated in the book of Galatians. Paul says he got up in Peter’s face  for being obnoxiously rude to his converts at Antioch.  

The Jewish/Christian church in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE by the Roman general Titus. James had already been killed by the religious rulers by being thrown off of the temple wall and then stoned to death. No more was heard from that group of believers. I think that may be why almost nothing is written about the twelve apostles except Peter in the rest of the New Testament. I also think that Peter came around to Paul’s message and helped to spread it to the world.

Eventually Paul’s new religion won out, and expanded rapidly, both because his opponents had been annihilated in Jerusalem, and he left a written record to be copied and expounded upon in his churches in the north. I believe Paul died in Rome disappointed that Jesus had not returned (which he believed would happen in his lifetime), and not knowing that his church would be the eventual winner of the argument. He was executed by Nero in about 65 CE.

In the second century (100-200 CE) the animosity between Christians and Jews intensified and became violent. Most of the antisemitism that has plagued Christianity in the centuries to follow had their start here I believe.

Paul himself proclaimed that there is no more Jew and Gentile. He boasted of his own Jewishness and claimed to be a Pharisee. 

My personal problems with Paul have nothing to do with his belief in Jesus’ redeeming death on the cross. For that I just have questions. To whom was the debt owed? Did just parts of three days in the grave cover all the sins ever committed in the world by every human through the ages? Was that really a death? Couldn’t God just forgive all sin without sacrificing his son? Who is bigger than God to make him pay a price that high?

No, my problems with Paul are his advice against marriage and sex. His teachings on celibacy have been the ruination and perversion of what should be a wonderful and loving relationship between people. My leaving Christianity had more to do with this one teaching than anything else.

Ironically, the part of Paul’s message I like the most is his insistence on love fulfilling the old Jewish Law. He writes more on love than any other Bible writer. He has a whole chapter (1 Corinth. 13) on love being more important than anything. He used the word Love so often that King James’ translators couldn’t stand it back in 1611, and changed the word to charity. Love is the correct word!

My take on Paul’s basic message is that strictly keeping the Law is useless, and will not make you a better person or a person more acceptable to God. Only by accepting God’s love into your heart, and becoming a new person, will you become fit for heaven, or even being around other people.

In my former church the leaders were known as the “frozen chosen”, as they preached about love a lot, but didn’t display much love that anyone could see. Legalism ruled their lives. James’ church lives on!

12/8/2022

Don Rogers

Alfalfa Bill and Los Arcos

 Alfalfa Bill and Vistek Ranchero

Ever have one of those days where weird, wonderful things happen and you finish the day just thrilled to be alive?

I woke up at six when the alarm went off, collected my bicycle riding stuff (helmet, safety orange shirt, Gatorade, GPS, route recorder, etc.) and headed out to Tishomingo, Oklahoma. It was the day of the 35th Alfalfa Bill Bike Tour. I had been planning on this ride most of the year, and I already had my bicycle in its carrier on the back of my car.

The day couldn’t have been better, with clear skies, a little warm with a little breeze to keep me cool. I have done this ride three times now, the first time for thirty miles, and then the rest at twenty miles. Yeah, I’m not as young as I once was. I was wearing a heart monitor wrapped around my chest, synched to the Garmin GPS machine on the bike.

I was one of the first to check in at the Chickasaw Information Center in the middle of Tishomingo and got my swag bag with a sweat shirt and a lot of other stuff like tumblers, sport drink bottle, free tickets to restaurants in the area, etc.

At nine o’clock we were briefed on the different routes, which they had marked with arrows painted on the roads in various colors, depending on which course you were riding. They had a choice between 10, 20, 30 45, 65, and 100 miles. All were led out of town to the east by a police cruiser with all lights flashing, and a couple of miles out of town he pulled over as we all pedaled by. I waved and hollered a thank you and picked up the yellow arrows for my twenty mile course.

The wind started to come on strong from the south, which helped on the first half of the course as we went north. At the ten mile point there was a rest stop, where I picked up some delicious cookies, and had a small drink of water before I continued on. Not many bathrooms on this trek, so an old guy has got to be careful!

Because of the wind, which was blowing down small branches, we had to fight our way back into Tishomingo. You get to appreciate those lower gears. The object is to find a gear that lets you pedal fast and easy, not slow and hard. I have 16 gears on my road bike, and hills and wind will keep me shifting constantly. 

I got back to town with 20.8 miles showing and checked out with the race officials so they knew I made it back. I put the bike back on the car and drove home, tired but happy.

Darlene was up when I got to the house, and asked how the ride went. I was still glowing and told her how much I enjoyed the ride. After trying to upload the data on the ride to Facebook, without much luck, I went outside and took a nap on the front porch in my camp chair out of the wind.  

Later that evening I asked Darlene if she wanted to go out to eat. “Sure!” she said. Since she started her chemo therapy and got her ID card for Medical Marijuana, her appetite has come back with a vengeance. I enjoy seeing her awake and alert again.

We drove over to Los Arcos Restaurant in Calera, Oklahoma, which has a large room with lots of tables and booths and good food to boot. It is Tex-Mex, I’m sure, because the menu lists Vistek Ranchero. Translated from Spanglish, that would be Rancher’s Beefsteak. That’s not Spanish! But it’s good!

We had just sat down, been served drinks and chips with salsa, and relaxed to listen to the man on the keyboard playing and singing Mexican music.   

Suddenly I heard a familiar tune. So did Darlene. She said, “Listen to that!” I already was. Made a complete fool of myself sobbing at the table, and it took me a minute to get my composure back again. I wiped the tears off of my face, and hiked over to the musician, and tipped him five bucks for playing that song. “Lo Mucho Que Te Quiero” was the title. It was a big, but local, hit in Southern California in 1969, when my wife and I got married there. Darlene was just eight at the time, but she remembered. 

You never hear it anymore. I’ve heard it once since then, when Featherstone Assisted Care Home put on an Anniversary Party for Carolyn and I just months before she died in 2018. I think they found an original recording by René and René on YouTube. When Carolyn heard it the memory broke through the Alzheimer’s and she leaned forward and smiled. 

Coincidence? Serendipity? What are the chances that the piano guy in a restaurant we frequent every other month would find that particular song and play it for us? Fifty three years after it was popular. Wow!

Today was the kind of day that fills your heart with gladness.

I am so glad I was alive today!

If Life Ever Gets Dull...

 If life gets dull, I’ll know I’m dead!

For those people who are squeamish about medical procedures, stop reading this and find something else to read.

For those who for some reason are offended by references to sexual areas of the body, stop reading now and go on to something else. This will be TMI for you.

I have been diagnosed with a very rare condition. My urologist has never seen a case like this. She is consulting with doctors and surgeons to find the appropriate therapy for this condition. I’m awaiting their decision.

It started with a routine post TURP (Trans Urethral Resection of the Prostate) follow up visit to my urologist. I was showing no symptoms serious enough to mention, but of course I had to provide a urine specimen as I came into the office.

After several minutes she came into the room where I sat, and said she found something that worried her - crystals in my urine specimen. She said that might be from kidney stones, so she gave me a medical order to go over to the hospital for a CT scan of my abdomen.

She also recommended that I include more acidic foods to prevent the crystals formation. I went to the store and bought some fresh pineapple and overdosed that night. Worst acid stomach I’ve ever experienced!

A couple of days later she called and scheduled me back for the results of the CT scan. She put me on the table and did a sonogram of my pubic region. Then she went to her office and was gone for nearly an hour. I thought she had forgotten me and went to the door of the exam room and looked down the hall. A nurse immediately told me she would be in to see me soon, but she was busy studying my scans.

When she came in she brought her laptop computer with the CT scan on it. She had me come over to the counter and watch as she ran a series of pictures showing horizontal planes from the top of the bladder down to the bottom of the prostate. I asked about the kidney stones, and she quickly reassured me I don’t have any.

The prostate is still enlarged, but thanks to the TURP surgery, it has been hollowed out to solve the urine flow problem. She pointed to the bladder and said, “There is the problem!” I didn’t see anything unusual.

We have a good doctor/patient relationship, because she has found out that I am familiar with most medical terminology, due to helping take care of my wife’s physical problems in her last years, and before that helping my son as he studied to be a Registered Nurse in College. She knows she can just discuss in normal medical terms what is happening, without trying to find words to simplify things.

She smiled as she punched a few keys on the computer, and now the CT scans were in the vertical plane, from front to back. As she moved through the scans the prostate and bladder came into view, stacked as normal. But as she moved farther back, all of a sudden my bladder distended to the right and fell over. The picture kind of reminded me of a beret, falling over to one side over an ear.

She asked if I knew I had a hernia. No, I didn’t. Never noticed any symptoms in my life. 

I have an inguinal hernia, but instead of the usual digestive tract pushing through the hole in my peritoneum, my bladder fell through. Or at least part of it. I asked if surgery to implant a mesh suspension under the bladder was next for me. She didn’t think so, although she said she had never seen this condition before.

She is hoping that a laparoscopic procedure to push the bladder up and put some stitches in the peritoneum will suffice. Me, too!

I came back home as she consulted with doctors to find the proper procedure, and of course, my mind has been pondering how I came to have a hernia at this late stage of my life. I am retired and no longer lift heavy machinery parts around the shop. I have always been careful to use my legs, get help if needed, or go get the forklift or overhead crane. 

I wondered if long distance bicycle rides might cause problems in the inguinal area. I know some riders have problems with erectile disfunction due to the bicycle seat pressure on the perineum. I can’t see how that would lead to a hernia, though.

Then another thought occurred to me. A year ago, after my first Pfizer vaccination, I got myocarditis and went to the hospital in an ambulance with tachycardia. They stopped the rapid heartbeat in the ER, and the cardiologist scheduled me for a series of heart examinations, including an angiogram. 

For the angiogram they insert a catheter into your femoral artery and push up into your heart to study all the valves and passages. The place where the catheter is inserted is right beside the inguinal ligament. Pretty much right where the hernia is.

When they withdraw the catheter, they use an active closure device to block the artery from hemorrhaging. It consists of a collagen piece fastened atop the arterial incision and covered with a thick bandage. 

After I got home from the hospital I laid down in bed and tried not to move. When I woke up several hours later, I noticed some bleeding under the bandaged area, and a bit of blood under the skin on my thigh. There was some thought that maybe I should go back to have it checked out, but it seemed that I had achieved hemostasis, even though there was a soft lump under the skin indicating a small thrombus there.

I survived for the next week, and although the bruising and swelling went down I still retained a soft pad above the groin incision. I assumed it was part of the collagen closure device and would dissipate over time. 

It never did, and now I wonder if that was my bladder there all along.     

Isn’t life exciting? As I get older, it seems to be one exciting moment after another. 

Hey, my goal is to live forever. Even with all the excitement, so far, so good.

Notes on Tulsi Gabbard's speech

 Today I watched a speech by Tulsi Gabbard as she quit the Democratic Party. I could sympathize most of the time. She said the Democrat (sic) Party was an “elite cabal” who were destroying our country and it’s freedoms.

She got it absolutely correct when she pointed out that the people in power have completely abandoned the working class of the country. They have been complicit with Republicans at destroying unions, preventing any raise in the minimum wage, or doing anything to make medical costs stay within reasonable bounds.

They are obviously bought by the money of the big corporations, big pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and the financial crooks on Wall Street. They talk about being friends of the workers, but when they pass legislation in Congress, it is glaringly obvious who they represent.

However, she missed the point entirely when she was pointing out the lack of religious freedom when Democrats didn’t use the words “under God” in their convention. I don’t know if she never learned the history, or is being disingenuous.

This country was founded as the one and only secular country, the very first in the world. Nobody could force you to bow down to or pay taxes to support somebody else’s church or religion. Thomas Paine, who started the Revolutionary War with his writings, was a dedicated Atheist. Thomas Jefferson did not believe Jesus was divine and did not believe in miracles. His Bible is still at his home in Monticello, with all the miracles scissored out. James Madison made sure there were no references to God or Jesus in the Constitution. They were all aware of the ugly history of the bloody European wars between religions there.

Up until 1954, the motto of this country was “E Pluribus Unum”. When Joseph McCarthy was accusing everybody in the country of being Communists, the government added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. They also added the phrase to our coins at the same time.

That marked the end of religious freedom in America. I recite the Pledge just as I learned it in school, because I don’t believe anybody should have to pledge to a God they don’t believe in, whether that would be Rama, Allah, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Or none at all.

I have trouble understanding the concept of the government using non religious, or secular language being an assault on religious freedom. Is religious freedom just the freedom for someone else to force me to abide by their religion? That is freedom for them but not for me.

The most egregious loss of religious freedom happened this year. By lying and cheating the Republicans stacked the Supreme Court with a majority of Catholics. After lying (sure we’ll respect prior rulings) and cheating ( denying President Obama a choice on the Court, but pushing a judge onto the Court by President Trump) the Supreme Court is now no longer an impartial arbiter of the Constitutionality of laws. One of the first rulings was to overturn forty years of precedent to allow states to impose Catholic dogma denying the right of a woman to choose an abortion rather than carry an unwanted fetus to birth. And they have announced that birth control, which is also against Catholic doctrine, is next in their sights.

So it’s here, folks. War is peace, Truth is a lie, and Freedom is to do as the government says you must.

Yes, we have no bananas. But we are a banana republic nevertheless. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats care enough to return us to our original freedoms. When Julian Assange is given a full and complete pardon and his passport back, I’ll know we have Freedom of the Press back. I’m not holding my breath. 

My only hope is that my FBI file is so big and bulky that they won’t have any idea where to start looking. 

I’ll be working November 8 at an election polling place near you. Hope to see y’all there. 

Ellen White, Prophet

 Ellen White, Prophet

Today at church we watched a video on Comparative Religion, by Charles Kimball. It was on a DVD from the Great Courses, which is now Wondrium. We meet in Adult Forum before the main service for education and discussion. Kind of like Sunday school for adults, but that’s not what the Unitarian Universalist Church calls it.

His lecture today explored the difference between prophets, shamans, and other religious leaders in the varying religions around the world.

My thoughts turned toward the prophet of my youth, Ellen G. White, and the books she wrote predicting some of the events taking place in the world today. Some of her predictions were prescient, and pertinent to the loss of democracy in our country today. The historic separation of church and state has been breached, and Catholicism has taken over, with the help of Protestants, just as she predicted. When she wrote it, nobody believed it was possible.

The Supreme Court is now majority Catholic, the Speaker of the House is Catholic, and so is the President, Joseph Biden. I remember when half the country trembled with fear when John F. Kennedy ran for President back in 1960. 

I went and read some of the book she wrote, “The Great Controversy”, and found paragraph after paragraph that exactly parallels the events of today in the USA.

“The time was when Protestants placed a high value upon the liberty of conscience which had been so dearly purchased. They taught their children to abhor popery and held that to seek harmony with Rome would be disloyalty to God. But how widely different are the sentiments now expressed!  (1.)

“Many urge that it is unjust to judge the (Catholic) church of today by the abominations and absurdities that marked her reign during the centuries of ignorance and darkness. They excuse her horrible cruelty as the result of the barbarism of the times and plead that the influence of modern civilization has changed her sentiments.  (2.)

“Let the restraints now imposed by secular governments be removed and Rome be reinstated in her former power, and there would speedily be a revival of her tyranny and persecution.  (3.)

"The Constitution of the United States guarantees liberty of conscience. Nothing is dearer or more fundamental. Pope Pius IX, in his Encyclical Letter of August 15, 1854, said: `The absurd and erroneous doctrines or ravings in defense of liberty of conscience are a most pestilential error—a pest, of all others, most to be dreaded in a state.' The same pope, in his Encyclical Letter of December 8, 1864, anathematized `those who assert the liberty of conscience and of religious worship,  (4.)

"The pacific tone of Rome in the United States does not imply a change of heart. She is tolerant where she is helpless. Says Bishop O'Connor: 'Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.'. (5.)

“The Roman Church now presents a fair front to the world, covering with apologies her record of horrible cruelties. She has clothed herself in Christlike garments; but she is unchanged. Every principle of the papacy that existed in past ages exists today. The doctrines devised in the darkest ages are still held. Let none deceive themselves. The papacy that Protestants are now so ready to honor is the same that ruled the world in the days of the Reformation, when men of God stood up, at the peril of their lives, to expose her iniquity. She possesses the same pride and arrogant assumption that lorded it over kings and princes, and claimed the prerogatives of God. Her spirit is no less cruel and despotic now than when she crushed out human liberty and slew the saints of the Most High.  (6.)

“A large class, even of those who look upon Romanism with no favor, apprehend little danger from her power and influence. Many urge that the intellectual and moral darkness prevailing during the Middle Ages favored the spread of her dogmas, superstitions, and oppression, and that the greater intelligence of modern times, the general diffusion of knowledge, and the increasing liberality in matters of religion forbid a revival of intolerance and tyranny. The very thought that such a state of things will exist in this enlightened age is ridiculed.  (7.)

Here I am heartened by Ellen White’s defense of  “increasing liberality” and “the greater intelligence of modern times” Understand that she wrote these words in the last half of the nineteenth century, almost one hundred and fifty years ago. I don’t consider her a prophet, but she hit this one on the head.

As I write this there is a movement to restrict books in the schools, ban books in the library, and constrain teachers from teaching the facts of history, or discussing racial injustice in this country. For forty years schools have been “dumbed down” and ignorance is considered preferable to “pointy headed intellectualism.” About a third of the population is no longer capable of discerning who is telling the truth - drop-out paid propagandists on TV, or scientists who have devoted their lives to researching the facts.

Not only are the propagandists eliding the truth, they are straight up lying about things that should be common knowledge. I believe that is intentional - some people feel it is OK to lie to reach a “good” end.

Following are some excerpts from a column by Thom Hartmann, written on August 26, 2022.

“…Republicans on the Supreme Court who were often led… by Antonin Scalia.

“Arguably the most powerful man on the Supreme Court — thus, one of the most powerful men in America during the years since the Reagan Revolution — Scalia turned history on its head when he visited an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in New York and claimed straight-up that the Founders intended Christianity to play a big role in government.

“Scalia, apparently reflecting the perspective of all six Republicans currently on the Court, then went so far as to suggest that the reason Hitler was able to initiate the Holocaust was because of Nazi separation of church and state (which, by the way, did not happen: it was the opposite).   (8.)

“There’s no shortage of photos of Catholic Bishops giving the Nazi salute. The annual April 20th celebration, declared by Pope Pius XII, of Hitler’s birthday. The belt buckles of the German army, which declared “Gott Mit Uns” (“God is with us”). The pictures of the 1933 investiture of Bishop Ludwig Müller, the official Bishop of the 1000-Years-Of-Peace Nazi Reich.

“That last video should have been the most problematic for Justice Scalia, because Hitler had done exactly what Scalia was recommending: he merged church and state.  (9.)                     

Not only did Hitler merge religion and the Third Reich, he used the religious bigots of the countries he conquered to help him kill the Jews, whom they all called “Christ killers”. Most of the “death” camps were in Poland, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor. Many of the camp guards were Ukrainian. 

Another disturbing fact is after WWII was over, and the Allied forces were looking to capture the worst of the Nazi war criminals, the Vatican set up a “Rat Line” to sneak Nazis to Argentina, where the sympathetic government there gave them new identities and hid them from the rest of the world.

“Which brings up one of the main reasons — almost always overlooked by modern-day commentators, both left and right — why the Founders and Framers were so careful to separate church and state: They didn’t want religion to be corrupted by government.

“Many of the Founders were people of faith, and even the Deists like Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson were deeply touched by what Franklin called “The Mystery.” And they’d seen how badly religious bodies became corrupted when churches acquired power through affiliation with or participation in government. (10.)

“We are teaching the world the great truth, that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in greater purity without, than with the aid of Government.”

“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” (11.)

“That all of this — the merging of church and state, 16th century laws against abortion, forced school prayer, taxpayer subsidies for religious schools — has now been put into law with the Dobbs and other recent Supreme Court decisions, is no less shocking than that it was first publicly announced by Scalia in the nation’s oldest Orthodox synagogue.

“And it is damaging faith and religion every bit as much as it is government.

“In some distant place, Adolf Hitler and Bishop Müller must be smiling at the six Republicans on the Court’s growing conflation of church and state in America. It's exactly what they worked so hard to achieve in Germany in the 1930s, and what helped make their horrors possible.

“And our nation’s Founders, if they’re watching, must have tears in their eyes.   (12.)

“Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio finally made public his position on what should happen when a 10-year-old girl is raped and impregnated by a relative. His message, in summary: Tough luck.  (13.)

Rubio often talks about faith and wrote about his religious convictions in his 2012 book, “An American Son: A Memoir.” His parents baptized him Catholic and he is now a practicing Catholic — after exploring the Mormon and Southern Baptist faiths.   (14.)

“Women and girls across America are living in terror because the US Supreme Court has decided that religion — and witch-burning 15th century religious authorities — should have a significant say in the governance of our 21st century nation.

“With the trigger laws going into affect this week, fully a third of American women no longer have the right to an abortion; Republican legislators in multiple states are discussing ways to keep women from leaving those states or to track and prosecute them if they go out-of-state.

“This didn’t come out of nowhere: it’s the result of a project several of the Court’s old-timers — particularly Scalia, Thomas, and Alito — have been working on for decades. Scalia, back in the day, was the most open about their whole letting-religion-control-American-law agenda.   (15.)

I still remember when I was a young lad, hearing my mother talk about the two hospitals in Merced, California - the Merced County hospital, and Our Lady of Mercy hospital, the Catholic one. All her children were born in the County hospital, and she said most women stayed away from the Catholic one because women were not worth as much as the baby, and they would let her die to save the child.

I have no data to back that up, but that was the general belief at that time. 

Somehow the Catholic Church has used the scientific discovery of conception to make their historical opposition to abortion even more Draconian than before. Historically the life started at “quickening.” That was because nobody knew that the woman was anything more than a seed bed. The story was that the man “plowed the furrow and planted the seed” and then if the woman was “fertile” a child would grow in her, and if she was “barren” no child would grow.

It was not until 1875, when a scientist named Oscar Hertwig discovered that sperm from the man joined with the egg from the woman to start the process - conception.   (16.)

Way back in the dim past, there are legends of civilizations where women were equal to men, but since about 1100 B.C. it seems all societies have been patriarchal, probably due to physical strength and testosterone fueled aggression. The Biblical record only tells the lineage of the males and skips over the females. Once again, the males plant the seed, she is just the repository - the garden as it were.

St Paul had a female companion named Thecla, but you wouldn’t know it if you only read the New Testament books approved by the Catholic Church in 393 A.D. 

Muslims hide women under an ugly black cover. Jewish women must meet in a separate room in the synagogue, and many, if not most Christian churches don’t allow women to speak in church.

I was told years ago by a teacher at Walla Walla College that when Ellen White wanted to speak in the Battle Creek Adventist church, they got around the prohibition by ending the official worship service, singing the benediction, then coming back inside to hear her words.

The attempt by the Republican Catholic conservatives to prevent women from ending a pregnancy they don’t want, or might be dangerous to their health, will lead to more lawlessness than alcohol Prohibition by far. Thousands of people will be criminalized, and thousands of families will be torn asunder, and more thousands of women will die. 

This country will be torn apart in pieces unless we can save democracy somehow. By far the majority of people in the country believe it should be up to the woman and her doctor to decide whether to end the pregnancy or not.

I don’t believe a fertilized ovum is more important than a live, breathing woman. If a Planned Parenthood clinic were on fire, and a person only had time to rescue either a half dozen Petri dishes containing fertilized eggs ready for implantation, or a live baby in a bassinet crying in pain, only a psychopath would emerge with the Petri dishes while the baby burned alive.

I fear we are going back to the dark ages, not the Apocalypse, as Ellen White predicted. But she got the rest right. 

NOTES

1. The Great Controversy, Ellen G. White, p. 563

2.    Ibid. p. 563

3.    Ibid. p. 563

4.    Ibid. p. 564, 565

5.    Ibid. p. 571

6.    Ibid. p. 571

7.    Ibid. p. 572

8.    The Hartmann Report, August 26, 2022 (Emphasis is original)

9.     Ibid. Hartmann

10.    Ibid. Hartmann

11.    James Madison, in a July 10, 1822 letter to Edward Livingston 

12.   OpCit. Hartmann

13.   Ibid.  Hartmann

14.   Religion News Service, 5 Faith Facts about Marco Rubio, Feb.1, 2016

15.   Op Cit. Hartmann

16.    The Seeds of Life, Edward Dolnick, p. 261

GMC RV trip to KC 2003

 First trip in our GMC Motorhome.

In May of 2003 we we packing our new (old) GMC Kingsley for a trip across country to Kansas City to transport my mother in comfort to see her twin sister, whom she had not seen in years. When she was younger and in better health, she travelled often by train, (Amtrak), and enjoyed the scenery on the way, especially Colorado.

She loved Colorado, and never forgave me for moving from Colorado to Nevada. The electric generation plant I had worked in there was closing down, and I was forced to find another place to work. I found a new power station being built near Winnemucca, Nevada, and they were searching for mechanics and machinists with experience. They offered pay much higher than the plant in Colorado.

When my mother complained, I just told her, “Mom, I love the scenery, too, but we can’t eat the scenery!”  

I had worked in Nevada for over twenty years now, and my mother was starting to have heart trouble. She couldn’t travel by air anymore, and the train ride was too long to endure. She was 87 years old, and I looked for a way to take her to visit her twin sister in comfort. A road trip in a car would have been cramped and uncomfortable, but the thought occurred to me that a motor home might be just the ticket.

A coworker of mine at the plant happened to be trying to sell his motor home, since it wasn’t exactly what he wanted. He wanted to tow a boat, but being front wheel drive, it would not pull a boat out of the water on the boat ramp. 

It was an old GMC, with Oldsmobile Toronado running gear, and was considered top of the line when it was new in 1977. The price was affordable, and it ran well on a test drive, so I bought it. 

I knew that a vehicle that old would have reliability issues, so when we were packing, I made sure to pack a well stocked tool box. With my years of experience, I figured I could do an engine overhaul beside the road, if I had to.

I never had to, but it was close a couple of times!

On the first day out, we stopped for lunch in Battle Mountain, Nevada, and either my wife or my mother remembered something we forgot and left in Winnemucca. So I suggested that this had been a long day already, let’s just consider this one a shakedown cruise and go back home. They all agreed, and thought this was going to be a fun trip when we got back on the road tomorrow. 

Besides my wife, Carolyn, and my mother Olga, we also had my granddaughter Melissa with us, too. The RV sleeps six, so we had room to spare. I installed seat belts at the dining room table before I left, just in case of hard stops or accident.

The next day we got an earlier start because we were already packed and ready to go. The driving was easy, the ride was smooth due to the air suspension, which is one of the luxury items this coach was noted for.

The 455 CID engine had lots of power on the hills, at least the little ones on the way to Elko. We stopped there for gas, and stopped again at Wendover, Utah, to eat lunch and fill up for the long trek across the Bonneville Salt Flats. 

We had no trouble getting to Salt Lake City, and we filled up just south of there in West Valley. Utah is famous for the long distance between gas stations, so never pass up a chance to fill ‘er up!

We turned east at Spanish Fork and drove over the Wasatch Mountains on Soldier Summit. It was still spring as we went east, but still had wonderful memories of the spectacular blazing colors in the fall, when we had taken road trips through there when we lived in Nucla, Colorado.

 It was getting dark when we rolled into Moab, Utah, and I found a space to park in the first RV campground I came to at the north edge of town. The beauty was overwhelming, as always, but I got busy hooking the RV up for the first time. The electricity was easy, but when I hooked up the water, it started leaking under the coach. I shut the water back off, and advised everyone to use the bathrooms and showers a few spaces away. 

I left the holding tank shut off so some of us could use the toilet, and I would just empty the tank somewhere down the road. I didn’t want to trouble shoot the whole water system while traveling, and I didn’t fix it until several days later. The holding tank was plenty big enough, and we continued on our way the next morning.

Before leaving Moab, we filled up-again, and bought snacks and drinks at the convenience store in town. Our route took us through Nucla, Colorado, to visit old friends, and then across Dallas Divide to Montrose. 

I tried to find a part for the water system, but of course, nobody had anything to fit the old RV. I found a crack in the input connector/pressure reducer, caused by small amount of water freezing during the winter in Nevada. Because of the design, the water won’t drain completely when the drain taps are opened, but must be blown out with compressed air.

That was the first part I made when I got back home later. I designed and made a unit with offset connections that drains completely without any air needed.  

From Montrose we went east over Monarch Pass. Near the top we were in low range on the transmission, and I had some worries whether we would make it over. The elevation is 13,312 ft. and the carbureted engine was getting too much gas and not enough air. To add to the difficulties, the engine was getting hotter, and I watched the roadside for pull out spaces to stop and cool off. Near the top, the engine started to stumble just as I found a place to pull over. It was steep enough that I did not trust the parking brake and Park position on the shifter, but found a couple of big rocks to put under the tires.

It felt like vapor lock, but it could’t be, as black smoke was billowing out the exhaust in back. I lifted the engine cover, and I could hear the gas boiling in the carburetor! This engine was drowning in gas, and all I could do was scratch my head and study the owner’s maintenance manual, to no avail. I had a lot to learn about this GMC RV.

After most of an hour just waiting for the engine to cool down, the engine started and ran much better, so I took off the parking brake, put it in Low range and drove over the top of the pass. We were just a few hundred yards from the top.

Coming down the east side of Monarch Pass is a test of brakes. Years before a school bus lost its brakes and crashed through a gas station in Salida and killed most of the football team, as I remember.

The brakes on the GMC RV met the challenge, with disc brakes in front, and of course, I used the Low range on the transmission to good advantage, also.

We averaged about 5 miles per gallon climbing up the mountain, and got 11 miles per gallon coming down. 

As we got out on the flat prairie in Kansas, I felt like our troubles were over and we were nearing our destination. But as I pulled into Goodland, Kansas for fuel, I felt the brake pedal drop down a notch as I held the brake pedal down. I was pretty sure the master cylinder was only half working, so I went out and lifted the lid. Sure enough, the front reservoir was nearly empty and the back one was nearly overflowing. 

I suppose I could just transfer a little fluid from the back to the front to get me where I’m going, but I don’t like to mess around with brakes, so I found a NAPA parts store and pulled in. I asked for a master cylinder for my RV, but he didn’t have any information on that. So I asked for a master cylinder for an Oldsmobile Toronado. He went back and brought out two Olds brake cylinders. We went out and looked and one of them was a match!

I bought it for about $50, as I remember, and a can of brake fluid, and it only took me about an hour to remove the old one and install and bleed the new one. The brake pedal stopped higher and harder now, so I felt much relieved, and we went on to Independence, Missouri, where Mom’s twin sister Aunt Ora lived in a retirement home there. 

They were overjoyed to see each other at my cousin Jim’s house, and his brother Glenn was also there. They all wanted a tour of the RV, so even though we didn’t get to straighten it up, they all went inside and checked it out. They were impressed, as are most people.

One of the hazards of driving a GMC RV is visitors every time you stop somewhere. It seems like everybody’s Dad or Uncle had one when they were kids, and the nostalgia just blows them away. So you have to be ready for interior tours any where at any time.

We left my mother with her sister, promising to come back in a week and pick her up, and after one night in an RV park, we headed south for Durant, Oklahoma, my wife’s home town, and near the town where Melissa’s grandparents lived.

We got family reunion’s all over!

(To be continued.)

  

Some Thoughts on Racism

 Some Thoughts on Racism

First we need to define some terms. Let’s start with racist. You would think it’s about human races, wouldn’t you? Well, there’s a problem.

All modern humans are the same race, Homo sapiens. White people and Black people can donate blood to each other. White people and Black people can donate organs to each other. White people and Black people can get together and have children, and those children can have children, too.

That can’t happen between different races. Horses and donkeys can have offspring, but they are sterile, and are called mules.

Maybe we should use the term Melaninist? I’m not sure that’s a word.

Unfortunately, many people choose to use the term race to foster hate toward others who don’t meet their criterion of similarity. In the 1940’s, German Nazis killed Jews by the millions. It wasn’t about skin color. I’m sure some of the Jews were whiter than some of the Nazis. I look at pictures of Albert Einstein, and he looks to me to be whiter than Hitler.

Einstein had to flee Germany to save his life, anyway.

Some people are criticized as anti-semitic for objecting to the way Jews in Israel treat the Palestinians. Both groups are Semitic, as they trace their roots to the second son of Noah, Shem. It’s more of a family feud. It can’t be racism.

However, it has become “woke” to declare that everybody is racist, and it’s arrogant to believe you are not racist. On one level, it’s true, but it doesn’t solve the problem. The problem is people who hate other people, and other people who don’t. To put them all in the same bucket does nothing to improve the lives of all those people who are just trying to get along.

I object to being put in the same bucket as Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, or Derek Chauvin. I don’t believe I am being arrogant to insist I am not as racist as they are.

I was born and raised in California, and went to school with lots of kids of color. Not just Black, but Mexican, Portuguese, Philippino, and Armenian. Shades of every kind of skin. Nobody was allowed to think they were better than anybody else.

On second thought, there was a ranking among Latinas that was curious. They even had labels for the depth of brown color: The lightest were from España, a little bit darker and you were Mestizo, and the darkest of all were Indios. I had a couple of girl friends, and they ranked themselves - nobody told them. And they couldn’t be talked out of it.

I use the word Latinas on purpose. All Spanish nouns have a gender affiliation. Trying to force a neutral Latinx on a language that doesn’t accept such artifice is tilting at windmills and reflects an ivory tower elitism that invites the ridicule of the world.

If I ever meet a person who wants to be referred to as Latinx, I’ll do it for them on a personal basis, though.

I have tried all my life to make friends with anybody who will share a friendship.

One of my most memorable occasions was getting royally drunk with a bunch of Black soldiers in the Kentucky Club on BC street in the city of Koza, Okinawa.

We were all celebrating the charges being dropped against Sp4 Jim McQueen that day. At the suggestion of Sgt. Stroman, I had filed a counter charge against an officer who had set Jim up for a court martial on charges of inefficiency. It was a bullshit charge because Jim was the only Black soldier in the shop, and the officer wanted his shop to be lily white.

After I submitted my papers, which contended that Jim was no more inefficient than the rest of us, the only difference was him being Black, the officer, a white Georgian, threatened to court martial me, too, reminding me he had kicked my foot and woke me up the week before when he caught me dozing one afternoon. I told him he was making my point, and if he was charging Jim, he should charge me and the rest of us in the shop, also.

He dismissed me back to my test machine, and when I got off work, I was greeted by a bunch of Black soldiers who informed me that the charges against Jim had been pulled. That’s how I got into a bar on the Black side of BC street with a bunch of Black soldiers and got drunk without having to buy even one drink.

Luckily, nobody was driving that night. There were always “sukoshi” cabs to take us back to the barracks safely.

These are just my observations and opinions. You are welcome to your own. Just hold back on telling me how racist I am. It’s an unnecessary offense, and will not improve the situation.