My Credo 10/17/21

 CREDO 

October 17, 2021

Don Rogers

The first thing I did when asked to give my Credo was to go back and find the one I gave two years ago, before the Covid pandemic.

If your memory is no better than mine, I could have reread the same one, and probably no one would have noticed. But I noticed that I missed a lot of pertinent parts of my life and my credo.

I made no mention of my wife and her years of dementia and death in July of 2018. It was too close to mention at that time, and I might have not been able to say the words aloud without tears. It’s still hard.

Very briefly, I was raised Seventh-day Adventist, and educated in church schools through one year of college, at Walla Walla University, in the state of Washington. 

I left that religion when I was eighteen, and studied many others, trying to find the true church. I studied the Branch Davidians, Jehovah’s Witness, the Mormon church, Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, and others.

I still retain a strong interest in Biblical history, especially the first four hundred years of the Christian church. I read extensively and write a blog online about some of my findings now and then.

This is in spite of my study of Buddhism, which is the basis of my beliefs and ethics now. I studied with Buddhist priests at a temple in Naha, Okinawa, along with a couple of Christian buddies of mine in the US Army with me.

My wife Carolyn and I enjoyed a very happy marriage for 49 years together, living in several states, including California, Colorado, Nevada, and lastly, Oklahoma, where she was born and raised.

From the first year we were together, we made square dancing our social outlet, and danced at national festivals in Anaheim, CA, Portland, OR, and Oklahoma City twice. Even as Alzheimer’s took away her memory, she still loved to dance, and when Featherstone Assisted Care Home had special musical performers put on shows for the residents, we danced the night away. Her feet never forgot.

We also loved the outdoors and nature, camping in the forest campgrounds, and hiking mountain trails in Yosemite and the Sequoia big trees in Calaveras county, CA.

We moved to Nevada in 1981, and soon found that the towns were about 70-80 miles apart. Travel took forever, even though the highways were free and fast. Carolyn urged me to go and get my pilot’s license, which she knew was a dream of mine, so I took lessons and got my license in 1985.

We flew from Winnemucca, Nevada, to Durant, Oklahoma, many times in the next few years for her family reunions, seeing some spectacular sights as we flew cross country. Monument Valley in Utah especially stands out as awe inspiring from the air.

We also flew back from a symphonic concert in Elko, NV, one December morning at about 1:00 AM and found ourselves in a meteor shower. At 10,000 feet altitude there are a lot more meteors visible, and they were all coming from behind us and passing by our wings on both sides. All we could do was watch in silence and wonder.

Much of our life was lived by the Buddhist principle of impermanence. Nothing lasts forever, and everything changes. If we wanted to do something, to enjoy living, to not miss out on an experience, it was important to do it now, or as soon as possible. Tomorrow is not promised, and life must be lived in the present.

I believe a successful life must be an active life, becoming involved in the lives of those around us, including family, society, and even politics. I was a founding member of the Libertarian party, although I left that party later.

I became heavily involved in the Democratic Party of Nevada during Barack Obama’s run at the Presidency in 2008. I was elected Chairman of the Democratic Party in Humboldt County and assisted in the first caucuses in that state, helping elect Obama in Nevada. Since that time I have volunteered to work at polling places during elections, six times in Nevada, and four elections since I moved to Oklahoma. I was an Inspector for Precinct 27 last Tuesday for the Bryan County sales tax vote.

While my wife was declining with Alzheimer’s I wrote constantly. I have been a writer since I was young, and it provides a way to unload worries and sorrows from my mind during the day so I can sleep at night.

Our daughter Darlene moved up to Oklahoma to help me take care of her mother during the two years she lived at Featherstone Assisted Care Home. We were there everyday to bring her ice cream and candy, take her on outings to Lake Texoma or the city park on Washington St. in Durant. We walked with her when she got restless and walked the halls of the building, and as she became paralyzed we pushed her around in the wheelchair. We fed her as she became too weak to feed herself. We both held her hands as she died.

Since this Covid pandemic left me stuck at the house for much of last year, I have been able to assemble the myriad of blog posts, Facebook posts, and other notes I had written into a manuscript - a compilation, actually. I could not do it when the pain of losing her was fresh in my mind.

Since our life was spent making memories for each other, it was a cruel blow to find that she was losing those memories. I titled the book “The Memories are All Mine Now.” I tried to find a publisher, but got scammed by some shady outfit that just wanted my money. So I bought a good printer and self published it for close friends and relatives.

I have found a home in this Unitarian Universalist church, and appreciate the love, community, and nonjudgemental attitude about my Buddhist ways.  My work with the Audio/Video team has been challenging but rewarding. I just keep learning more every week. When I die, I’ll be an A/V expert! 

I’ll finish with a quote from the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, “Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much: as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much.

You must lead a good life. And a good life does not mean just good food, good clothes, good shelter. These are not sufficient.

A good motivation is what is needed: compassion, without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy: Just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their rights and human dignity.”

< Short speech given at the Red River Unitarian Universalist Church on Oct. 17, 2021 >

Playing in the Street

 It was a still, hot afternoon as I drove home from my church in Texas, a few miles south of my home in Oklahoma. I had the air conditioning turned up high to get the interior of the vehicle cooled off to comfortable level.

As I was driving through an old residential area, I came to a stop sign. I applied the brakes and stopped, looking both ways past the trees and bushes for cars crossing in front of me. However, this day I saw no cars.

What I saw was worse. At first I was confused, then I was shocked into sadness. A young woman was standing in the middle of the road about two houses down on the right. She wasn’t doing anything, just standing there, looking up and down the street.

A second later I noticed a small child, just a baby actually, playing at her feet in a chuckhole in the old cracked pavement. A trickle of water from somewhere, maybe a leaky pipe nearby, had filled the crater in the road, and the child was splashing and enjoying relief from the heat. 

I was raised in poverty by a single mother, but this was poverty far beyond anything I ever saw. Obviously their house had no air conditioning, and maybe the water was turned off until they could raise enough money to pay the water bill and get it turned back on. This mother needed to keep her daughter safe in the heat, and so she did it the only way she could figure out how.

I didn’t stay stopped long. I drove on by and I had a bit of trouble seeing for a mile or so. I felt immense sadness and more than a little guilt that I could be living a comfortable life in retirement, while such abject poverty was so near to me. 

I think sometimes my empathy and compassion cause me more pain and suffering than I should have. On the other hand, the Buddha promised that life is suffering, and the goal of life is to study constantly to find wisdom and understanding, which will lead to less suffering and peace in your life. 

I can’t get the picture out of my mind. It’s going to be a long night, I fear.

Five Ways You're Living under Socialism

 Five ways you are living under socialism.

Fire fighters:

You pay your taxes, and when a fire occurs at your house, they come and put it out. There are no charges, and they don’t send you a bill.

If the fire department were capitalist, you would have to give them your credit card or cash before they turned on the hoses.

Police:

You pay your taxes, and if someone breaks into your house you call them and they arrest the intruder. You hope. Once again there are no charges and they don’t send you a bill.

Some rich people hire their own police security people, and pay their wages and expenses. That’s capitalism, if you can afford it.

Roads and streets:

You buy gasoline and pay the tax per gallon, and then you can drive on any public road or street without having to pay tolls for the miles you drive.

Some roads and bridges are privatized and funded by paying a fee for each use. That is capitalism, not socialism, and those of us on a fixed income go out of our way to drive on other roads to avoid those fees, if possible.

Schools:

In the US grades 1-12 are socialized. You pay your taxes and your children get an education in a public school. No tuition is charged, but because we are not funding our public schools sufficiently, you might have to go to a bake sale. Amazing to me, coming from a state where fireworks are illegal, many schools here in Oklahoma fundraise by selling fireworks. I love it!

There are capitalistic private and parochial schools, which you must pay for per each child, if you can afford it. Rich kids all go to private schools, poor kids get poor schools, where there may not be much education at all. 

Retirement:

Before 1935, if you didn’t save enough for retirement, (or lost it in the stock market crash), when you got too old or sick to work, you went to the “poor farm” or moved down by the river and stole or begged for a living until you died. President Franklin Roosevelt and Frances Perkins started the Social Security Administration. It’s pure socialism - you pay your taxes all the years when you are working, and then you are payed back when you retire. 

Wall Street capitalists are not allowed to plunder the funds, and it is as safe as the US government. It keeps millions of seniors out of dire poverty, and allows most to live without having to move back in with their children.

Health care:

NOT socialism, yet. If you’re over 65 years old, there is Medicare, which covers 80%, but then if you want it all covered you must pay for private supplemental insurance policies. So everyone must pay insurance premiums, deductibles, copays, and excluded drugs, etc, at whatever cost the corporations charge. 

Hospitals, drug companies, and medical insurers all pay millions every year to buy the votes of our “representatives” to make sure the laws are not changed to allow full 100% Medicare for All. The US is the only nation where medical care is still dispensed on an extortion basis. It could be described as “Pay what we say or Die” medical care.

When I lived in Nevada, one of my maintenance drugs price rose to over $900 bucks a month. Luckily Nevada has a law that allows people to order drugs from Canada, which has socialized, regulated medical care. I was able to import my particular drug for $135 dollars. 

Then I moved to Oklahoma. When I tried to order more of my drug, Canada informed me that Oklahoma has a law prohibiting any drug imports from Canada, under the penalties for drug trafficking. 

So far, without my immunosuppressant drug, I am in remission. Hoping it stays that way.

I enjoy the balmy weather in Oklahoma. I wish Canada weren’t so damn cold!

   

The Bryan County Federation of Democratic Women meeting

 I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to the meeting today of the Bryan County Federation of Democratic Women at the library, because my schedule for the day was already filled with getting flea medicine for the dog at the veterinary clinic, after taking Darlene out to Boomerang’s for breakfast.

I am glad I made the effort.

The speaker was an historian named Glenn Melancon, if memory serves. I didn’t grab the schedule after the meeting, and my memory doesn't serve me as well as it used to.

He was knowledgeable, forceful, and best of all, he give me a little shot of hope that at least some Democrats still remember FDR and the New Deal.

After the meeting I thanked him for the kindest words I’ve heard about FDR in the last fifty years from any Democrat.

I am still baffled why the official Democratic Party ran away from his record of saving the country from the Great Depression, bringing electric power to millions of people who didn’t live in the cities, winning the war against the Fascists, educating millions of GIs after the war, and kicking off the most prosperous fifty years this country has seen in its history.

Touching on the recent abortion law in Texas, he told the story of a young woman who is thrilled to find she is pregnant and tells all her friends about the baby on its way. One day she goes to the doctor for a prenatal checkup, only to find the fetus has died and she has to have a D & C from the doctor to remove it. 

As excruciating as this revelation is, her troubles are now just starting.

When her “friends” find out that she lost the baby, they are now empowered to sue the doctor, sue her husband, and anybody else that helped her that day. In effect, she now has a $10,000 bounty on her head, and any self righteous or unscrupulous person can try to collect the money.

There are women in El Salvador today serving thirty years in prison for having miscarriages. We are going back to the dark ages, when churches made the rules for the government to enforce. Inquisition, anyone?

I have hope that the stark reality of hundreds or thousands of women in court or prison might cause a huge swing in voter sympathies. If Roe v Wade is actually overturned, what will Republicans use to motivate their base of conservative Evangelicals? If they get what they have wanted for thirty years, why bother voting anymore?

On the other hand, millions of wives, daughters, and girlfriends will see the horror of back alley abortions, coat hangers and knitting needles and be motivated to get out and vote. Democrats have been hiding behind the Supreme Court for too many years when they should have passed a Federal law guaranteeing women’s rights to choose an abortion.

If you haven’t voted before, or haven’t in years, now would be a good time to go down and get registered. The states are making it harder to register in an effort to keep as many people as possible from exercising their right as a citizen to vote. The fewer of us “little people” vote, the easier time the rich people and corporations have to get politicians elected who will pass bills in their favor.

We are blessed to be living in “interesting times.”

 

 

Naming Names and Kicking Ass

 Naming Names and Kicking Ass

We used to be a nation. We used to believe in working together as a team for the good of our nation. When hard times occurred or war was imposed upon us, we sacrificed our freedoms and fought together to make this country not only survive, but prosper.

When World War II loomed before us, there were individualists who advocated joining the Axis, Fascists countries, including Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. They preached the futility of opposing such military power as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had built up. In spite of such naysayers, millions of people volunteered to join the US military, give up their freedom and years of their lives to help their country win the war.

 We lost all that somewhere along the line.  

Now we have millions of people who are so concerned with their personal freedoms that they refuse to do anything to help their nation as it might cause them a little loss of comfort. They wave flags of the losers of our wars as they claim to be “patriots.” They attack the very foundations of our government, and invent fabulous conspiracies to cast doubt on the institutions of government, such as free and fair elections. None of them will lift a finger to work to make our elections better. They would rather stand outside and bitch about stolen elections.

In the 1980’s Ronald Reagan was our president. Instead of leading our nation and inspiring the nation, he abolished the rule that required news organizations to present both side of any issue. Long ago that rule was instituted because they realized that if only one side is presented it was not news but propaganda.

He allowed Rupert Murdoch to immigrate from Australia and conferred citizenship on him and allowed him to start his own media empire, with Fox News, Sinclair radio and many newspapers, all right wing conservative, with never any positive coverage of the liberal teamwork that made this nation invincible.

He disparaged the concept that Abe Lincoln propounded, the we are a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” and instead insisted that government was the enemy of the people.

He elevated such people as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, who spoke against the idea of following the leaders of our government to maintain the strength of our nation. They preached the ideologies of Ayn Rand, whose insidious philosophy excluded any motivation except what is good for yourself, to hell with everybody else.

Altruism is now the worst evil.

Franklin D.. Roosevelt had sons in WWII. Harry Truman was a GI in WWI, Eisenhower was a leader in WWII. The Kennedys lost a son in WWII. Even the powerful and rich considered it their duty to sacrifice for the nation.

Now too many make a hero of a man who dodged military service, and whose family has never served in the military for five generations. He is lauded for his ability to conduct a business that mostly involved screwing others out of their money and property. Yeah, Donald Trump.

Now our country is in chaos. It’s every man for himself. Kill everyone that doesn’t agree with you. Make up conspiracy theories that tear down the nation and our government and our elections.

The Lord help us when China decides they are big enough to take over the number one spot. We gave it up years ago. They march together. We run in all directions. 

That’s as plain as I can make it.  

In 1943...

 In 1943…

In 1943 when I was born, the government required my parents to vaccinate me against Smallpox.

I never got Smallpox. In fact, nobody in the world has caught Smallpox in many years. It’s eradicated.

When I started school in 1948, I had to have inoculations against Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus. I never caught any of those, either.

In 1955, I was required to get inoculated against Poliomyelitis. I knew several people who had caught that disease before there was a vaccine. One boy in school had braces on his leg, as did one man and a woman in our church. Our church “Singing Band” went on Saturday afternoons to sing hymns to a lady in an iron lung, because polio had paralyzed her from the neck down, and she couldn’t breath without the help of a machine.

I was happy I never got polio.

In 1961 I got another vaccination against polio. The first one, the Salk vaccine worked well but not perfectly. It was administered by needle. The new ones by Sabin and Cox in 1961 were more effective against all three variations of the virus. They had the vaccine in sugar cubes that were flavored like cherries. Tasted good, and they came in three doses a month apart.

Polio is eradicated everywhere in the world now except Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s too bad, but they don’t trust Americans anymore. Can’t blame them I guess.

In 1965  the US Army shipped me to the Orient. We were required to have shots for Typhus, Typhoid, Cholera, Influenza, and Yellow Fever. The only reaction I had was to the flu shot, probably because I already had the flu. Nobody else got the flu.

I didn’t get any of those other diseases.

In 1968 I was a regular visitor at the house of a family in southern California. I had gone to college with him years before, and learned a lot about mechanics, machinist stuff, and common sense.

One day a girl staying with the family, named Darlene, came down with mumps. It was well known that sometimes the mumps “went down” and left men sterile. So Laverna, the mother, called the doctor and arranged for several of us men to go down and get shots. Don, Kenneth, David, and myself all got in the car and drove to the doctor’s office and got Gamma Globulin shots to try to prevent us from catching mumps.

The inoculations must have worked because we never got mumps, and some of us have had children in the years since.

In the rest of my life, I have gotten several “booster” shots for Tetanus, because of minor injuries acquired due to working in a machine shop and on a ranch.

Last January and February, I got vaccinated against the Covid virus. I personally know two people, not that old or decrepit, who were hospitalized due to that virus. I also know of a couple of acquaintances who died of it, but not close friends. Luckily. Yet.

I still take precautions not to spread the virus, because one of the wild cards with this disease is that it can be spread by those without symptoms. That includes the already vaccinated. It spreads fast and hits some people really hard.

As most of us do, I have friends and relatives who prefer to believe paid propagandists rather than doctors and scientists who have studied infectious diseases all their lives.

Stupidity abounds!

 

My Class and My Life, Part II

 We drove east for a few miles down the road to the Hayden power generation plant, where the gate guard was expecting us. He directed us to the parking lot and explained that the Plant manager’s office was on the top floor, and he was waiting to meet me.

He rose and came over to introduce himself and ask if my wife was with me. I told him “Yes, she’s out in the car.”

He said, “Go back out and bring her in. I need to talk to her, too. We don’t have much trouble with the guys leaving, because they like the hunting, hiking and fishing, but we lose more men to unhappy wives than anything else.”

I went back out to the car and got Carolyn, and he introduced himself again to her. His name was Wayne Butz, and I remember thinking with that name he would be angry all his life, or have a great sense of humor.

I never met a jollier man. After we sat down he went over my experience and qualifications. Then he came to my test scores. He frowned a little, then smiled a little as he asked, “Are you sure you’re not here for my job?”

I laughed and reassured him I came for the Maintenance Machinist job. Not interested in sitting behind a desk at all.

He explained that because this was a union company, there were procedures that had to be followed. The job was posted to all the other power plants in the company for ten days, to allow any other machinists in the company to bid on the position first. After the internal bidding process was over, I was first in line for whichever power plant needed me.

This was not what I was expecting, but I was glad to find that it was a union job. More than the higher pay and benefits, having a contract spelling out what is expected of the employee and what is expected of the company takes a lot of the worry out of the work. 

I got the phone number to call, and told him I would keep in touch and I hoped to see him in a couple of weeks.

Carolyn and I were just about out of money, so we filled up the little Toyota and carefully drove to Oklahoma, where Carolyn’s family lived. Our daughter Darlene was staying down there and was not with us during the month of homelessness, living in a tent in park campgrounds.

We arrived at Carolyn’s mother’s home in Durant and had a glad reunion with our daughter there. Then all three of us were invited to travel back towards Colorado to Carolyn’s brother Larry’s home near the Air Force Base in Altus. I don’t know what we would have done without the help of family. They not only fed us, but loaned us some money for gas back to the job.

 I was pretty sure I had the job nailed down, but I called every couple of days so they wouldn’t forget me.

On day eleven I drove up to the Colorado-Ute Electric Ass’n headquarters in Montrose and asked if the job was mine yet. They laughed and told me they were going to have to give me the job so I’d quit calling!

Then they explained that the machinist from the Nucla power plant had bid on the job in Hayden and would I be interested in a job at the Nucla Station. I had never been there, but I said sure, so they arranged for me to interview in Nucla the next day.

We didn’t have enough money left for a motel room, so we camped out near a stream on the Uncompahgre Range between Montrose and Nucla. Darlene remembers putting the sodas in the stream to cool that evening, and also remembers that the next morning when I cooked some Vienna sausages over the campfire for breakfast, Carolyn got sick and they came back up. From that day until the day she died, she never ate a Vienna sausage again. 

We had no doubts now she was pregnant. She soon got over the morning sickness and was ecstatic to be carrying a baby at last.

At the power plant I was greeted warmly and given a tour of the facility, and especially the machine shop. It was fairly complete, except for the lack of a milling machine. When working in remote towns, parts to be machined can’t be shipped hundreds of miles away for work, so I resolved that if worse came to worse, I could cut a keyway on the lathe, with some adapting.

They all knew my name before I was introduced. We soon found out that in small towns, word gets around fast. Not many new people move in and we were the biggest news of the year, I think.

We went into the little town wondering how we were going to find a place to live. There was no daily newspaper, so no want ads were available, and the internet hadn’t been invented yet.

On a hunch, we stopped at the little laundromat downtown and sure enough, there was a bulletin board inside. I found a note listing a two bedroom house to be rented. “Inquire at the barbershop” it said. Well, the barbershop is just across the street, so that was easy.

I entered the barbershop and asked the barber about the house for rent. He asked if I was the new machinist at the power plant. Like I said, word gets around fast in a small town. 

After I said yes, and introduced myself, he apologized and explained he was just finishing a new house for his family, but they were still living in the rental house for a couple of weeks yet. He had just posted the note on the laundry room wall that morning.

He proposed we could share the house for a couple of weeks rent free, if that would be OK. We could come back that evening and meet his family after work. Wonderful! I quickly agreed, as that solved the problem of finding the first month’s rent up front. 

When I reported for work the first day, The supervisor and manager both talked about my experience and capabilities. I was much younger than the former machinist, and they had some doubts I could handle the requirements of the job. That suited me just fine, as I would rather be judged on my abilities rather than some certification or degree.

The plant was small, and the maintenance team had one welder, one machinist, one electrician, and one mechanic. So being able to do the work was essential because there was no backup.

Of course, I got plenty of teasing by the rest of the crew. Every time I started working on some machine, somebody would say, “That’s not the way Tillman did it!” 

At first I would ask, “Who is Tillman?” 

Later I replied, “Well, he must have not done it right, or I wouldn’t have to be doing it again.”

Eventually, after a few weeks of seeing my skills, they started asking me for advice sometimes. One day the welder and the mechanic came in to the shop and asked if I could help them remove a cast iron sprocket on the traveling chain screens out at the river. It was rusted hard to the shaft, worn out and needing replacement.

After I looked at it, I said I thought I could remove it in ten or fifteen minutes. They said, “Bullshit! We have been using pullers, and heating it with torches, and beating it with hammers for over two hours, and it’s stuck tight!” 

I went to the shop, put a big cold chisel in my pocket, and got a sharp 1/4 inch drill bit and the drill motor. While they watched, I started drilling a line of small holes, starting just above the keyway, on a radius out to one side. After the first hole I could tell the iron was fairly soft, so I said, “Ten minutes, no problem.” When I drilled the last hole near the teeth on  the outside, they asked if I was ready for the puller.

I said, “No, I’m pulling this off by hand”. They laughed again, until I took the cold chisel out of my pocket, picked up a hammer nearby, and hit it hard just once into the line of holes I had drilled. As I knew it would, the sprocket split to the key and expanded just enough for me reach up and slide it off the shaft by hand.

I just smiled and said, “Call me anytime!” as I handed them the sprocket.

Years of experience is worth more than any amount of book studies. I knew that trick because I had done it many times before. When I was just a boy I remember watching my grandfather remove a timing gear from the camshaft on an old Chevrolet the same way.

I’m not opposed to studying the books. I collected a stack of books through the years - mostly reference books, and I used them when necessary. 

For instance, I had to install seal sleeves in the end housings of boiler feed pumps. They are an interference fit, and cannot be pushed in without damage. Early in my machinist training, I looked up the coefficient of expansion of iron and steel, and using my trusty slide rule, calculated a handy rule of thumb for chilling or heating those parts so they would slide right into place.

On any round part, whether sleeve or bushing or throttle valve seats on a turbine, the numbers to know is 1/2 thousandths inch change per 100º F. per inch of diameter. If a bushing is .004” bigger than the bore in the housing, and the bushing is 7 inches in diameter, then putting the bushing in liquid nitrogen will chill it to about -350º F. That will shrink it 3.5 x 7 / 2 = .012.2” At that temperature it will rattle right into the hole and then expand tightly in about a minute.

Of course, since the nitrogen is so cold, insulated gloves, face shields and other protective gear is required. Care is also needed because the steel part will be brittle and must be handled gently. Every time I did this in the shop, people would come to watch and play. An apple at that temperature will shatter like glass if dropped on the floor.

That formula works the same whether heating or cooling. When putting a bearing or sleeve on a shaft, the expansion is the same.