Observations

Observations:

Did you ever notice that most of the Liberal Colleges and Universities are located in the wealthy and prosperous East and West Coasts, and the Conservative Christian Colleges and Universities are located in the poorer South and Central states? Wonder if there’s a connection?

Did you ever notice that when the country was governed by tax and spend Liberals from 1940 through 1980, the country has never been so prosperous, even as the top tax rate was over 90%? And when the supply side conservatives came to power in 1980 and started to cut taxes, the country has been struggling ever since? Maybe Friedman and Laffer were wrong, and so was Herbert Hoover? Judging by the broad macroeconomic results, I think Galbraith and Keynes were onto something.

Have you ever noticed that in fundamentalist Christian colleges they read books telling how old the earth is, they listen to professors and preachers expound on the age of the earth, but they never, ever, pick up the scientific tools and go out and actually measure the age of the earth? They only do that at the Liberal colleges.

I was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist church, whose prophet (Ellen G. White), taught that someday Catholics and Protestants would unite and tear down the religious freedom in the USA. She predicted that Sunday would become the national day of worship, and religions who kept other days holy would suffer persecution.

 It was not an especially prescient prediction, looking at history. The USA was exceptional in being the first country to guarantee freedom of religion, and the founders all knew that only eternal vigilance would prevent religion from becoming part of the government again. Every religion, it seems, has an overwhelming desire to impose their dogma on everybody.

I came to doubt that it would happen in my lifetime--the gulf of suspicion and hatred between Protestant and Catholic was so huge. Now I’m having doubts about my doubts. I remember when JFK ran for president this same church was aghast at the thought that the end was near. Some were counting the years from 1844 to 1964 and deciding that span of time related to the text “as it was in the days of Noah.” Yes, he preached 120 years and then the end came! Some were disappointed yet again.

Now the majority of the Supreme Court is Catholic, they are eagerly tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, and Adventists, or at least those members I am still acquainted with, seem to love it. I find their blindness to the potential religious takeover ironic and somewhat amusing.

The first move was to declare a corporation is a person, able to hold religious beliefs and rights. Corporations are a legal construct meant to separate human owners of a business from legal liability for the actions of the business. Not answered by the Supreme Court is if an owner of a company can declare the religious beliefs of the corporation, can plaintiffs sue the owners now because they are no longer a separate entity from the corporation?

Could there be a connection in the future between the text in Revelation about being unable to “buy and sell” and the elevation of corporations to personhood? That was always difficult to understand before, but with corporations being persons, not so much.

Most Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions subordinate women, including my former church. I have been watching for a couple of decades as they wrestle with whether to allow women to be ordained into the ministry. Adventists don’t share the utter contempt for women that the Catholic church displays when they stand by and allow a woman to suffer an agonizing death from an ectopic pregnancy rather than abort the fetus.

But many Protestant religions seem to transfer blame to the woman if she gets pregnant, even if by rape or incest. If she accidentally gets pregnant outside of marriage, there will be no end of judgement and condemnation, and she will be punished by being forced to bear the child. Abortion has become the wedge to insert religion into this once secular, religiously free country.

Actually, not just abortion, but all birth control, as the Justices “clarified” the day after the momentous Hobby Lobby decision. They confirmed the right of any “closely held” corporation with a “deeply felt, sincere belief” to refuse coverage for any form of birth control--the exact Catholic dogma of the five Justices who ruled for the the majority.

The priests of Jesus’ day had no love or compassion for the woman caught in adultery as they brought her to Jesus for condemnation and stoning. Modern day religious leaders still have no love or compassion for the woman who wants to enjoy sex without pregnancy. The only feeling they have for the woman is disgust, as they call her a slut, a whore, a sinner. Nothing has changed except, because of scientific knowledge, they can now transfer the love and mercy they should be showing the woman onto a single cell they arbitrarily define as a human being, even though they can’t see it without a microscope. All the love goes to an ovum, and all the hate goes to the woman. Not much has changed in two thousand years.

Today I read that the Pope has urged his people to stop working on Sunday. In an article by Mark Oppenheimer of The New York Times,
Pope  Francis said, ”More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.” In such cases, he concludes, “work ends up dehumanizing people.”

In Catholicism, Pope Francis suggests, the Sabbath actually is supposed to matter — the whole day, not just Mass. For as the catechism teaches, in Paragraph 2185, “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are to refrain from engaging in work or activities that hinder the worship owed to God, the joy proper to the Lord’s Day, the performance of the works of mercy, and the appropriate relaxation of mind and body.”

Who better to carry out the wishes of the Pope than five Catholic Supreme Court Justices and corporations with religious rights to impose on their employees?

Revelation says “even the very elect” will be deceived. I am wondering when the light will dawn as they realize they have helped to bring on the very thing they have been warning against all these years.

********
I need to make a correction on the reference to ectopic pregnancy. The case to which I was referring was actually a case of pulmonary hypertension. The link is here for further study:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_of_Margaret_McBride

In case somebody thought I was just another Liberal.

I was once the Chairman of the Democratic Party in Humboldt County here in Nevada. Now, years afterward, my email box is inundated daily with pleas from party leaders all over the country from almost every state in the union begging for more money. I’m sure the other party does the same thing.

I’m hoping that both parties look at the defenestration of Eric Cantor and learn the right lesson. Because of Citizens United--because of Soros and the Koch brothers--because of the obscene amounts of money being poured into elections, it has become apparent to almost everyone that both parties are run by big business, big banks and Wall Street crooks.

Eric Cantor spent upwards of $5,000,000 on his campaign, and his obscure opponent spent about $200,000 and beat him overwhelmingly. I am hoping this happens hundreds of times more in the near future. How many lying, screaming, obnoxious TV and radio ads must a voter be subjected to until he changes his mind. Will he vote for the ad or against it?

What has happened, in my view, is that the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party has moved so far to the right and the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party has moved so far to the left of the political spectrum that they are nearing a meeting on the far side of the circle. That side of the circle is derisively called “populism” by both party’s leaders. The word derives from “people” and it should scare hell out of both party’s elites. All their money will not help them when the people wake up. It may be happening now!

The people are tired of being robbed of their homes, losing their retirement savings, and being buried in debt from predatory lenders and high college tuition. People are sick to death watching the government under both parties cater solicitously to the wealthy with massive bailouts and tax write offs, while at the same time demanding cuts to pay and benefits from ordinary working people.

Without naming names, I would suggest to both parties that they stop sidling up to rich donors and old party hacks, get out of Washington and go find out what people want. They wanted change last time and they didn’t get it. The people are not going to settle for just hope again!

The Awesomeness of GPS

The Awesomeness of GPS

Last weekend for Memorial Day Carolyn and I went to Baker City, Oregon, to visit my father’s grave and put some decorations on it. He died ten years ago and I had only been back to visit it once. I notified my son in Albany, Oregon, and my half brother near Yakima, Washington, who both live in easy driving distance, that I would be up there and staying overnight.

My son couldn’t make it, but my brother Gene came down and we went out and found the grave. Gene had never met his father when he was living, since his mother left our father before he was born and then put him up for adoption at three years old. So this was his first meeting with our Dad.

Since my son couldn’t be there, he asked if I could get him the location of the grave by coordinates so he could visit later using his GPS. We both go geocaching occasionally, and with the latitude and longitude we can go to within a few feet of anywhere on earth.

So after we had decorated the grave and taken some photos, I went to the car and got the GPS unit, put it down on the grave stone, tapped in the menu for coordinates, and wrote down the result. Later I posted the photos and coordinates on Facebook.

After I got home the next day, just for fun, I shut down the browser on my desktop computer and opened Google Earth, a great program for seeing satellite pictures of anywhere on earth, even under the sea. First I searched for Baker City, Oregon, and the globe on my screen rotated and zoomed in until the whole city was showing on my screen. Then I deleted the name of the city and entered the coordinates of my Dad’s grave. As soon as I clicked on it, in less than a second, a little pushpin appeared, poked right through my Dad’s  gravestone. Such a simple thing, and yet so awe inspiring to the mind of this nerd!

I’m seventy years old now, and I remember when the news of America’s first computer, Univac, was announced when I was a little boy. It could calculate the ballistic trajectory of an artillery shell in just minutes, rather than a bunch of people punching adding machines for days.

When I was twenty three, in the US Army on Okinawa. I got to program a test COBOL program on the world’s largest computer at the time, an IBM System 2- something-something or other. It processed data for all men and material in the western Pacific from Thailand, Viet Nam, the Philippines and Japan. It had five air conditioned rooms of iron core memory, four or five tape drives taller than I was, and a metal band printer that printed paper so fast it arced out of the back of the machine into a box in back. It was in the data processing center of the 2nd Logistical Command at Machinato, Okinawa.

Since I had high math scores on my battery of qualification tests when I entered the Army, I was drafted into a month of Computer Fundamentals and COBOL Language programming. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I enjoyed testing engines on a dynamometer, so when the training was done, I talked my way back to the shop. Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road not Taken” has special meaning to me. Knowing computer basics in 1966 could have led to another whole life, but I’ll never know.

I do know I’ve enjoyed the life I lived, so far! And I enjoy wondering how many of those old mainframe computers it would take to equal an iPhone.

Now that I have established my ancient nerdiness, let’s get back to the wonders of GPS. Most people don’t have a clue about the vast amount of scientific knowledge in physics, geometry, chemistry and calculus involved in that tiny little Global Positioning System. It’s not just that hand held unit, although that would be awesome enough.

To explain GPS easier, one needs to understand the history of radio navigation. First came the Non Directional Beacon, or NDB. It is just a radio sending out a roaring noise on a specific frequency, which a pilot can tune in to with a special radio receiver with a loop antenna. You can rotate the loop while listening to the signal and when the noise is loudest, you know the angle of your plane in relation to the direction to the beacon. Turn the plane until the beacon is out in front, and you’re going in the right direction. At least that’s what Amelia Earhart thought. Better than nothing, but not good enough to find a little island in the big Pacific Ocean.

Next came the Variable Omnidirectional Radiobeacon, known as VOR. These beacons sent out discrete signals that told a receiver on the airplane  the exact bearing to the VOR. You could just track to the beacon, or if going to a place without a beacon, you could tune in two or three VORs and draw lines on a chart to each, and where the lines cross is your position. It is precise enough to get you to an airport, but not necessarily in the middle of the runway.

Later some of the VORs got an enhancement called DME, or Distance Measuring Equipment. Now each signal gave you the bearing to the beacon and it told you how far it was to the beacon, so with one calculation you could find a point on the map. But it was still your calculation--the data only told you where the VOR was--you had to figure out where you were.

GPS was developed for the military in the 70’s and 80’s, and in 2000 the system was made available with full precision for civilian use. Instead of ground based beacons, the government launched 24 satellites into precise orbits around the earth. Think of the calculations involved in fuel burn, thrust, stability and vectoring to place each satellite in the exact orbit necessary. Yep, that’s rocket science!

Since the satellites are not stationary, they must be constantly calculating their exact location above the earth to the centimeter, and then streaming that data down to earth where the ground base unit can receive it. The data includes the exact time and the exact location (including elevation) many times a second. The unit in your hand or car or airplane receives signals from six or eight satellites and instantly calculates the precise distance to each satellite and then calculates it’s position in relationship to all of them. Then it can display latitude and longitude, or in the more modern ones like the one in my car the position is marked on a moving map.

The very latest ones for airplanes find your position, elevation and heading, then relate that to a detailed terrain database stored inside the unit and show a simulated view out the window on the display that precisely matches the view out the real window if you weren’t flying in rain, snow or fog. For the first time in decades the accident rate for small airplanes is dropping, probably because pilots don’t have to do mental calculations to orient themselves to earth anymore.

When I think of how far science has advanced in my lifetime, it boggles my mind that millions of people in this country would rather believe a politician or a loud mouthed radio personality who never finished college than thousands of scientists about whether the earth is warming due to human atmospheric pollution or not, and millions more choose to believe a preacher on the age of the earth than scientists who have spent their lives studying and measuring that age by a variety of methods including radioactive decay, the most precise measure of time we know.

The saddest part of all is that it is intentional ignorance! They refuse to study anything that might contradict their beliefs. They are just as sure they are right as that the sun goes around the earth.

Don Rogers
May 29, 2014

David Koresh and Waco

David Koresh and Waco

We just got our New Yorker magazine (March 31) today, (yeah, there are a few liberals in Nevada) and found an article by Malcolm Gladwell entitled “Sacred and Profane”. It is the best, most comprehensive story of the Branch Davidians and the assault in Waco of their small group of fervent believers I have read yet.

I feel that Mr Gladwell might have been a Seventh-day Adventist at some time in his life, although I don’t know that. But he understands far better than most people do the thought processes of Adventists and their worship of the Bible as the written Word of God. They believe every word literally, and study to make sense of contradictory texts, giving no credence at all to the idea that the Bible is not one book, but many books written by different people at different times with wildly varying messages.

David Koresh studied the Bible just like other Adventists, except he did it longer and more diligently than just about any others did. He also studied the writings of the Adventist prophet Ellen G. White, and was extensively familiar with every thing she had written, even those older books that were no longer in print because their Victorian and Puritanical messages were becoming an embarrassment to the modern church. In every case where Koresh found himself in a debate with an Adventist preacher, he won handily, and usually took members from that preacher’s flock for his own.

Those who left the church to follow Koresh were also the most devout, diligent Bible studiers of the church. They were well educated and indoctrinated in the Seventh-day Adventist beliefs, and enjoyed studying the Bible for hours every day. The popular belief is that Koresh forced them to listen to him give Bible studies, but the testimony of Clive Doyle, a survivor of the last assault, is that they all begged Koresh for more, and that Koresh even complained once that he wished they would do their own Bible studying.

Unwittingly, the FBI tactics were following and confirming Koresh’s interpretation of the “seven seals” prophecy in Revelation, Chapter 6. In the words of the article:
    “...Mount Carmel’s adherents thought they were living through the  “fifth seal” --- a late stage in   the end of time, during which believers are asked to suffer through a round of bloodshed, to “wait a little season,” and then to suffer a second round.”
    “This was why the Davidians wouldn’t leave. They had been through the first round of violence, with the initial A.T.F. raid. Now they were doing as they believed the Bible compelled them to do --- waiting.”

When the FBI negotiators threatened the people inside the compound with violence if they didn’t come out, they thought they were making a reasonable demand. They didn’t know they were promising the Davidians exactly what the Bible predicted. Koresh and his followers were convinced that if they just held true to God’s word they would wake up on that Great Judgement Day standing before God as righteous martyrs for His sake.

You must read the article --- I don’t have space or permission to reprint it here. Even better, you could read the book that is the inspiration for the article, “A Journey to Waco” by Clive Doyle. Another book worth reading is the book “Learning Lessons from Waco” by Jayne Docherty, which describes the futility of negotiating with true believers as you might with bank robbers.

I want to expand on the mistaken belief that the Bible is one inerrant book. That belief is making an idol of a bunch of paper and ink wrapped in the skin of an animal. Only God is inerrant and perfect. Even Jesus did not take the Old Testament literally. (To state the obvious, there was no New Testament when Jesus walked the earth.)

In Matthew 5:38, Jesus quotes Leviticus 24:20. Then he immediately contradicts that text. He says not to follow that text which commands “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” but do NOT avenge the attack, and respond by allowing another attack with no resistance (turn the other cheek).

In Matthew 5:43 he quotes Leviticus again, chapter 19, verse 18 which says to love your neighbor and hate your enemy.  Then he says, “but I say unto you” love your enemy. Another direct contradiction. I think Jesus had a  real problem with Leviticus.

In John 8:3-11 we find Jesus changing the punishment for adultery. In Leviticus 20:10 the punishment for adultery is death, but Jesus just said, “Go and sin no more.” My guess is if we threw out the whole book of Leviticus, Jesus wouldn’t mind much.

In Matthew 5:31,32 Jesus changes the laws on divorce found in Deuteronomy 24:1, tightening them up a bit. That was one of the few times he made it stricter. Three times he made Sabbath keeping easier by allowing a man to take up his bed and carry it on the Sabbath, explained it was OK to get your cow out of a ditch on the Sabbath, and allowed his disciples to thresh grain by hand to satisfy their hunger on the Sabbath.

Jesus never told anyone to take every text literally or that scripture is without error. That idea was proposed hundreds of years after Jesus died. To worship the Bible as a perfect, error free thing is idolatry, pure and simple. Swearing an oath with your hand on the Bible is not likely to improve your testimony if you intend to lie anyway. I know people who are careful to always put the Bible on top of any stack of books, but haven’t opened it to actually read what it says in years. That is simple idolatry--worship of some magical property in the book.

If one reads the Bible, it becomes apparent that each book was written by separate individuals with different agendas and different messages, not always in agreement with each other.

Compare Numbers 31:17, 18 “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him, but all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourself” with Matthew 5:44, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” I have trouble believing that that same spirit that said kill all the boy babies and their mothers, but keep the girl babies for your slaves is the same entity that says love your enemies.

Take 1 Corinthians 7:1,9 which is dour old Paul on marriage: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman ... but if they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.” with the poetry of Song of Solomon 5:3-8,

 I sleep--
but my heart awakens.
It's the voice
of my lover
knocking at my door,
saying,

“Open to me, my love,
my dove, my perfect one!
For my head is
full with dew,
and my hair with the
drops of the night!
I have taken off
my coat—why should
I put it on again?
I have washed my feet--
why should they touch
the street again?”

My lover
 put his hand
on my entrance.
A tremor ran through
my belly.
I rose up to
open to my lover,
my hands anointed
with oil and perfume.
My fingers ran about
the handle of his lock.
I opened wide
to my lover,
but my lover had
withdrawn himself,
and was gone.
My soul failed
whenever he talked
I called him
but he gave no answer.
I searched for him,
but I could not find him.
The police found me
in the street,
looking for  my lover.
They beat me.
They stripped me
and put me in jail.
But I've done
nothing wrong!
I'm begging
all the women
in this city,
If you see my lover,
tell him
I'm sick with love!

That comparison may not be fair, because I translated the archaic King James language to modern English to enhance the poetry and romance, but you get the idea. One writer could not have done both of these texts.

Lastly, let’s compare a couple of New Testament texts. First, James 2:10,14, “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all ... what does it profit, my brethren, though a man say he has faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?”  with Galations 2:16,20,21, “...that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified....I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.  I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”

There is profound disagreement here between James (and Peter) and Paul (and Barnabus). Christianity has been trying to smash these opposing views together into one unified doctrine for two thousand years, but Acts 15:2 says they were NOT in agreement, and in Galations 2:11 Paul says he got right up in Peter’s face! I don’t think they ever came to an agreement, except that Peter would go back to Jerusalem and quit bothering the people in Paul’s churches in Asia Minor and Greece.

The books of the Bible can be fascinating reading, especially if you also read the other contemporaneous books written by other Christian disciples about the early churches and their leaders. The actual history is far more interesting than the legends and myths that modern man has twisted into a Bible. 

Don Rogers
March 28, 2014

Obama the Communist?

I keep seeing people accusing Barack Obama of being a Communist. It mostly seems to come from southern conservatives. I knew the education system in the South lags behind most of the nation, but I never realized how backward they are. Don’t they teach the difference between Communism and Capitalism down there?

When the financial crash hit the country just as Obama was elected president, George W. Bush spent billions of government dollars to bail out the banks and financial institutions. Barack Obama kept the same financial advisors and continued the exact same policies. Rich bankers and brokers were donated all the money they wanted with no strings attached. Ben Bernanke kept his job at the Treasury, and Goldman Sachs people continued to make policy for the nation. There was no break in the capitalist policies from one administration to the next.

Any self respecting red-blooded Communist would have nationalized the banks, made the bankers involved kneel down beside a ditch somewhere and shot them in the back of the head.

When the auto companies were going under, Obama negotiated a deal where the company executives got bailout money to keep the companies afloat, most got to keep their position with all their salary, retirement and bonuses, not to mention their golden parachutes. Workers out on the assembly line were forced to take cuts in benefits and pay, at least those who weren’t laid off.

Under a Communist, those executives would have been sent out to Kansas to hoe weeds between the cornrows as reeducation. Anybody who objected would have been made to kneel beside a ditch and been shot in the head.

Millions of families lost their homes during the crisis in foreclosure and eviction. Obama did not make the banks renegotiate the mortgages or offer any relief to homeowners.

A real Communist would have made the lenders wear a sign around their neck saying “Enemy of the People” then stood them up against a wall somewhere and shot them. Then the government would have taken ownership of the houses and rented them back to the families. (Honest, under Communism there is no private property allowed.)

Some people think Obama’s Affordable Care Act is Communism. Not even close. Obamacare makes buying health insurance from privately owned, for-profit companies mandatory. The government has created a free marketplace where people can browse through a myriad of plans to buy insurance from Aetna, Blue Cross, Humana, and other private insurance companies.

A real live red-blooded Communist would have nationalized all hospitals and clinics, put the doctors, nurses and technicians on government salary and offered all citizens free healthcare. Anybody who complained would have been sent to the Northern Gulag in Outer Alaska to work in the mines for twenty years or so.

The only policy of Obama’s that could be considered communistic is the surveillance state that the government set up after 9/11/2001 as an anti terrorist program. But that same policy is a hallmark of Fascist countries also, not just Communist countries.

If Obama is anything, he is a front man for Wall Street banksters. They love him at the New York Stock Exchange and Dow Jones. Investors and speculators have never had it better, even as the middle class fades away and the ranks of the poverty stricken explode.

If you label Obama as Communist, you are displaying your ignorance or your duplicity, unless you can point to a specific action he has taken that is communistic.

Don Rogers
12/27/2013

Education in America

Education in America

I’ve been watching the national debate on our educational system for many years now. I have very mixed emotions on the whole subject. At different times I can cheer or I can cry.

Back in the 1970’s I volunteered to serve on the School Accountability Board in Western Montrose County, Colorado, which was trying to develop a common curriculum so students could move from one school to another with less difficulty. One evening we had a special guest from Denver who worked high up in the state school system and came to tell us what we needed to know.

We watched the ancient equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation only with a slide projector and a Kodak Carousel full of slides. About three slides in I noticed a spelling error, and I carefully noted it on my notepad--something like, “On the third slide, the rule is ‘i before e except after c....’” and planned on telling him quietly after the presentation, as I was sure he would want to know. Could have just been a typo, you know.

Well, I spotted another misspelling on slide five, and then more on seven and eight. Some of them were completely different words than the ones intended. Some slides had more than one word misspelled. By the time he got to slide thirty or so I had wadded up the paper and tossed it in the trash. Not only had he gotten his degrees and accreditation without learning to spell, he hadn’t even learned to check it with a dictionary open beside his writing. He may have been dyslexic--I don’t know. But he was also lazy and careless.

Needless to say, nobody referenced him again in our discussions.

Mr. Richard Jackson taught me several math classes at Lodi Academy in my last two years of high school. He was probably the best teacher I ever had. He was tall and lanky, much as Lincoln must have been. He was not handsome, and he was very SQUARE. Maybe that’s good for a math teacher! His habit of using his middle finger to point out numbers on the blackboard some times made it hard for a bunch of teenage boys to not laugh out loud, but he never seemed to notice.

His talent was making us think, not just memorize facts. He would basically follow the book, but expand on points we needed to understand. In Solid Geometry class we spent a whole period trying to prove that the big slide rule hanging on the wall at the front of the room either sagged in the middle or not. By the end of the period we all understood that by definition it most assuredly did, even though we could not measure it.

When a question arose during Trigonometry class as to what good knowing this was for anybody, he devised a plan to show us. 

Lodi Academy was a boarding school, with the girl’s dormitory on the south side and the boy’s dorm on the north side and the main administration and classroom building was right in the middle between them. Nobody in either dorm could see the other dorm, even with binoculars or telescope. I think it was planned that way!

The next day Mr. Jackson showed up with a transit and a 100 foot tape and told us to find the distance between the center of the girl’s dorm front door and the center of the boy’s dorm front door. He suggested we measure to a point by the flagpole in front of the admin building visible from both dorms.

He had notified the dean of girls, so she didn’t call the cops or freak out because a bunch of boys were stomping around on the front porch of the girl’s dorm. (This was in 1960--no girls ever took Trig back then.) We soon had a straight line measured from the girl’s dorm to a stake by the flagpole, and another straight line from there to the boy’s dorm. We set up the transit above the stake and determined the exact angle formed by the two lines.

After making sure we all had the same measurements, the class was over. Our homework was to find the distance between the dorm doors with the two vectors and the included angle. We had a blast bisecting the triangle we had into two right triangles and using the Trigonometry tables to calculate all sides and summing up the distance we needed to know. We were all comparing notes and helping each other until we all had the same answer.

The next day in class we all compared our answers to the teacher’s diagram and answer on the blackboard. Of course, we all had the correct answer, but more importantly, we understood the need for trigonometry and the enjoyment of knowing something that most people never learn. It’s fun! I still love surveying, and I found other uses for trig in machine work and turbine diagnostics in my job later in power generation plants.

Later when I became a pilot, I learned spherical trigonometry so I could write a computer program to calculate and print out my flight plans. All because one teacher taught me to love trigonometry!

In the fall of 1971, I quit my job in Woodland, CA, where I made parts for everything from tractors to Rolls-Royce’s in a small machine shop. I found a job in Silver Springs, NV, creating an experimental engine from plans and raw steel. Great job--I couldn’t wait to get to work each day--but low pay and no benefits. I knew I wouldn’t be staying long.

The reason I mention this is that our daughter Darlene had to change from a California school to a school in Fernley, Nevada. About Christmas time my wife Carolyn got a message to talk to her teacher at school. She said, “Mrs. Rogers, do you know your daughter doesn’t know her multiplication tables? She should have learned them last year. We may have to hold her back.”

Thus began our first stint as home school teachers. We got flash cards and spent afternoons after school and she knew those tables backwards and forwards in a week! She went on to excel in math, and I had to study myself to learn the “New Math” so I could help her later.

This probably explains my interest in curriculum coordination years later in Colorado.

Our son Wes didn’t have too much trouble in school in Colorado up to the second grade, except he had one teacher who explained to us that he wasn’t getting all his work in because he was falling asleep in class. We asked why she didn’t wake him up, and she seemed to think that was our fault, somehow or other. But we could see he was reading well and learning  fast, so we didn’t worry much.

Then we moved to Winnemucca, Nevada. I still have trouble talking about the Winnemucca school system without breaking into tears or screaming.

Wesley started for the first time trying to find ways to avoid going to school. He had stomach aches. He had headaches. He felt sick. If we made him go, the teachers would call and berate us for sending a sick kid to school. If we kept him home, the teachers would call and berate us for keeping him from school. 

His grades began to plummet, even though he passed the annual tests several grades ahead of his actual grade.  In the fourth grade Wes was reading at the twelfth grade level. One day I came home with both Carolyn and Wes crying because his Social Studies teacher had given him an “F” grade on a workbook he had spent two weeks on. I drove to the school to confront the teacher, workbook in hand, but she was smart enough not to be there. I might still be in jail otherwise.

We found this teacher brags about flunking most of her students through the years. She knocks off a letter grade for every punctuation error, spacing error, spelling error, etc. with no chance for rework. I went back home and told Wes that he had to go back to class and learn whatever he could, but that he didn’t have to do any work for her ever again unless he wanted to. I told him it was a lot easier to get an “F” than doing all the work he did. I don’t know what kind of a sadistic b----- she is, but I can’t think of a better way to demoralize and demotivate students. With the pressure off, he actually finished the year with a “B” in her class.

Wes had another teacher who belittled him in class, and called him “Weird Wes” in front of the other students. Picking up the cue, other students would trip him or knock his books out of his arms going down the hall. How do you fix it when the teacher is the bully?

We became desperate to find a solution to the problem. At our own expense we took him to a pediatric neurologist in San Francisco for testing, looking for some kind of disability. After hours of testing, the doctor said his problem was his school, not him. He said if he could be put in a private school in Marin County, he would shine. 

That was out of the question financially for us. We went back to the Winnemucca school system and told them what we found, and they were offended and defensive, of course.

After another year worse than the one before, we sent Wes to a school in Ojai, CA, with a month long summer program for students who test high and grade low, again at our considerable expense. For admission he needed a recommendation from the Winnemucca school system, and they seemed reluctant to give it. The superintendent made a big show of looking up the word “integrity” in the dictionary to make sure Wes had enough of it. 

He loved the school at Ojai and made friends with some very rich kids, including the daughters of Kasey Kasem,of Top Forty fame.

When we returned to pick him up, the teachers could not believe that he would be having trouble in school. He was tops in the computer class, and near the top in all the other classes. One of his teachers said,”He is a teacher’s dream. Just give him the book and the next day he’s read it and can answer any question you ask.” 

We knew that if we went back and reported what we had found, the reaction would be the same as the year before. We asked the superintendent of the Ojai school to call the Winnemucca school and tell them what they found, and they promised to do so. 

They evidently did it well, because we found an attitude change immediately on returning. They had been threatening to hold Wes back for low grades, but now there was no more talk of that. They allowed him to start his Freshman year in high school.

Not long after school started, Wes started having stomach pains again. But these were not the same as before, and one evening we rushed him to the ER with pain so bad he was vomiting. Eventually, when a surgeon came in, they scanned him with a procedure that showed one kidney was greatly enlarged because of a blocked ureter. They immediately got him to Reno for major surgery which saved the kidney. 

He had to miss about a month of school recuperating, and the school was reluctant to let him continue in the same grade, even though he had kept up his schoolwork. They said the teacher didn’t have time to grade it all. They let him return provisionally, but then they harassed Wes and us constantly about him missing days when he was still not feeling well. Once again it was either us sending him to school sick or us keeping him home too much. We found out later the pressure was causing Wes to think about suicide or running away from home. We had enough!

We went to the school board and told them we were taking him out of school, and we would be home schooling him with correspondence courses from American School out of Chicago. We met all the state’s legal requirements, so they had to let us take him out. This was years before the evangelical Christians got the laws changed to make it easier to home school.

After they gave their approval, I stood and addressed the school administrators, telling them they had failed Wes, but that they had failed him for the last time. Then we left.

It was like the sun came out after a dark storm for all of us

Wes thrived with home schooling. He could do the work in the morning before lunch and be free all afternoon. He had no problem passing the annual testing at school. His only regret was they would not let him continue in the band playing his French horn. (The law has since been changed to require the school to allow home schooled kids to play in the band and go out for athletics.)

The correspondence courses were dull reading, of course, so we supplemented them with lots of travel and hands on experiments when we could. In my spare time at work I made a series of nearly perfect one inch square cubes from iron, copper, aluminum, lead, and other materials I found around the shop. Using a 12” wooden ruler balanced across a pencil, we found we could calculate the specific gravity of each metal by noting the ratio on the ruler when we balanced them against each other. 

Incidentally, he also learned the properties of different metals, and the principles of ratios, arms, moments and mass.

After we had nearly worn them out, I loaned them to friends who were home schooling their children and they never did come back. I hope they gave many parents as much use as they gave us.

Later Wes chose to take the GED, which he passed easily, and went to Elko Community College with a full scholarship, graduating with an Associate Degree in Nursing, with honors. He later went to the University of Oregon in Corvallis, OR, where he got his Bachelor’s Degree and this year, his Masters in Public Health. 

Wes’ first wife came with a daughter, just as mine did, and he raised her as his own, as did I. Long after they had gotten a divorce, we continued to treat her as our own granddaughter, and she stayed with both Wes and us on summers and vacations. She was going to Arizona public schools, and by the third grade it was obvious she was having trouble. She could not read at all, and was afraid to even look at a book because she had been shamed and ridiculed at school for not being smart enough to read. By gently questioning her, we found that she did not understand the relationship between sounds and letters.

Carolyn and I invested in a set of “Hooked on Phonics” books and teaching materials, and we also asked teachers we knew if there was a way to get around her fear of books. Wilma Wright, Carolyn’s sister-in-law, suggested making a game of learning the sounds, so we used just the flash cards at first, one at a time, to teach the sounds of the letters. Very soon she could see the sounds in short words, and as she learned more sounds, she was soon reading us the words on billboards as we drove down the road. When she realized she could read after all, she began to pick up the books and read them too. Soon she was teaching herself, which of course is the whole idea of reading.

In one short summer she went from last in the class and maybe being held back a grade to being at the top of her class and helping the teacher with other kids having trouble with reading. When she wanted to visit with us one Christmas vacation for an extra week, the school in Arizona was pleased to grant her the extra time when they found out she was staying with the grandparents who taught her to read.

One summer at the power plant where I worked a new engineer was hired on. As the machinist usually works closely with the engineer I went to his office and introduced myself and we began talking. One of his concerns was his young son and how the schools were in Winnemucca. I started to tell him but I soon broke down sobbing. I was embarrassed and he was shocked. I swear I suffered from PTSD for awhile after we got Wes out of the Winnemucca schools.

When I regained my composure, I recommended he move to a house somewhere out in Grass Valley southwest of town, where there was a brand new school with a lot of new teachers who were still enthusiastic about teaching kids and not burned out, cynical, or sadistic as too many in the Winnemucca school system are. I have heard good things about the Grass Valley School for years now. The new engineer thanked me several times for the information. His son did well and loved the school.

How can I sum up what I think of the educational system in America? I have many relatives and friends who are teachers and administrators in the public schools. I know some who think the whole system stinks, and can get on a real rant about teaching to the test, No Child Left Behind, and other quick fixes for what everyone knows is a failed system. It is teaching too many kids to hate school, losing too many kids to suicide or just dropping out, and graduating kids who can’t read or write.

I can make a few observations based on my personal experience. Years of classroom experience and degrees on the wall don’t mean as much to me as real enthusiasm and a zeal for teaching children--inspiring them to love learning all their lives. Checking off the boxes and having the kids do the problems on page 24 is no substitute for having a passion for the children. Sometimes you have to put the book down, go outside and find out how far apart the dormitory doors are!

I cringe when I hear a teacher try to tell me how much more he knows about teaching than I do.  He may be right, but I’m still picking up his failures and making them successful child by child. A modicum of humility presents a much better picture than self-important boasting. I hate the belief that the only way a person can learn is to sit in a classroom and listen to a teacher talk. If a person can and will read, there are books that will teach you everything you can learn in a classroom. You just don’t get paper proof.

My wife and I surprised ourselves once by comparing what we would do if we won the lottery, and we both found out we wanted to create a free school in Winnemucca for all the kids who are failing in the local public schools. We want the kids who don’t fit in, the ones the teachers think are stupid, the ones who need a different way of teaching to find their unique skills and abilities.

We want to hire teachers with a passion for teaching a kid to love learning. My son sent his daughter to a Montessori school, and there are some great ideas there, too. Art and music appreciation, as well as STEM subjects, are vital for creating people who love living and learning. 

Maybe we should buy a lottery ticket someday! It might improve our chance of winning a little bit.

Don Rogers 10/13/2013

Blame the Beggars

Blame the Beggars

There I sat in a dentist’s chair in Sparks, Nevada, my mouth filled with a rubber block on the left side, an aspirator, water nozzle, mirror and dental drill all in there, and my dentist (let’s call him Tony) starts to tell me a story. I had to apologize later for not holding up my side of the conversation.

Tony said he had been getting gas in Winnemucca at a Chevron station and noticed a family getting out of a minivan in the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant next door. There was a father, mother, a young teenage girl and a younger boy. They all put on old, ragged clothing, picked up hand lettered signs and went out to the street to beg. 

He was outraged at the behavior of these folks, and I’m sure I was not the first person to whom he had told this story. 

Tony seemed surprised that such a thing could happen in the USA, but to my mind he seemed oblivious to the fact that this isn’t the USA we all knew thirty or more years ago. Because of the adulation of Wall Street values, and the denigration of ordinary working people, many people are living in a Third World environment right here, right now.

I remember paging through National Geographic magazines as a child, feeling sorry for all those poor people in the less advanced countries, wearing torn and worn clothing, with tattoos covering their bodies, and multiple rings and pins piercing their ears and faces.  I no longer need to look at pictures in a magazine. I guess proving you can accept pain is in vogue now. 

The invisible hand of the free market has worked it’s magic. As a nation we have taken away help for welfare mothers (Clinton), closed factories and shipped millions of jobs to India and China with free trade agreements (Clinton), attacked unions and stifled good wages (Reagan, both Bushes and Obama), removed limits and regulations on banks and lending institutions, enabling usury and predatory business practices (Clinton and both Bushes), dispossessed millions of homeowners through foreclosure and eviction (Bush 2 and Obama), worked at eliminating defined benefit pensions by replacing them with 401Ks, and then robbing them blind in the crash of 2008 (Bush 2).

Speaking of the crash of 2008, both Republicans and Democrats colluded in rushing billions of dollars to save totally corrupt and criminal organizations (banks) from going under. Those same institutions are now back at it, stealing from working people in every nefarious way they can devise. There is no prison time for robbing poor people.

How is it that people who have spent their lives hammering nails, turning bolts, twisting screwdrivers and literally making, building, creating things have become the “takers”--the infamous forty seven percent? And the parasites who sit there talking people out of their money on the phone, gambling that money in risky schemes in the money markets, swindling poor people out of their pitiful life savings - they are the “makers?” Where is the outrage?

Our government stands on the sidelines, observing the decline of civilization, if not assisting in its destruction. Thirty years of Reaganomics - ”Government is not the solution to our problems, government IS the problem!” - have worked their devastating toll. And yet the blind ideology of Ayn Rand still has its adherents. “Cutting taxes and reducing the size of government has worked so well these last thirty years, let’s do it some more!”    

We have one political party openly and actively advocating the reduction or repeal of Social Security and Medicare. President Obama has offered to help them do it in order to get a “grand bargain.” Sure, in the spirit of bipartisanship, let’s impoverish old people! They aren’t poor enough yet!

Some people who can’t afford medical care anymore are hoping that the new “Obamacare” plan works out, even though the other party has been trying to find a way to repeal it and deny them affordable medical care just as before. Who would have believed a political party could campaign on keeping poor people sick and unable to see a doctor?

We can expect to see more beggars, not fewer, in the future. Our educational system is being swiftly dismantled, axed into two systems, one private system for the rich, and one substandard public system for the rest of us beggars. College is becoming out of reach for all but the most wealthy. 

When those millions of uneducated people go out to look for a job they will find few jobs that pay a living wage to unskilled labor. The minimum wage is unlivable - not even covering the rent of a cheap shack to live in, let alone food for the kids. Twenty two veterans a day kill themselves because there are no jobs and no help for the next two years from the underfunded and understaffed VA.

Begging is not easy. You must rip away your pride and stand out in the weather asking people to donate. Some, in an attempt to give back something, squeegee your windshield or offer God’s blessing on you. In some places (as far as I know not here yet) children have hands chopped off or eyes put out to elicit more sympathy and more money given.

But if begging brings in more money than a job (which you couldn’t find anyway) then the market rules. You do what you can to best feed and clothe your wife and children. Or yourself.

I remember the past, when government was big enough to take care of its people in a civilized way. I can see the future, when government finally gets drowned in the bathtub, and all hope fades for civilization.

It will not be Utopia. It will be Somalia.

Don Rogers

Sept. 4, 2013