Teaching and Learning

 My brother John has been on a writing kick recently, and I have enjoyed reading about his exploits and adventures, some of which I remember, and some of which occurred when I was overseas in the Army.

One posting in particular caught my attention, because it concerned the problems he had in high school with various teachers and classes.

It is obvious to me that there is a strain of similarities in the way our brains are wired through the generations. His experiences in school mirror mine almost exactly. And he told a story of our mother way back in the twenties, and her problem with at least one teacher.

Before I go any farther, let me assure all my close friends and relatives that I don’t put down all teachers. I believe they are underpaid, under appreciated, and overworked. The criticisms I bring up here refer only to the particular persons involved, and the observations I give are for edification only.

John told me the story of my mother and a teacher in Merced named Mrs. Horne, when she was in grade school. The class was assigned to draw a map of some area (I don’t know where) and my mother went home and using the skills her mother taught her, (her mother had been a school teacher earlier) carefully drew up the map. It had all the colors identifying the roads, rivers and buildings, and she was rightly proud of the map.

When she turned the map in to Mrs. Horne, she was accused of plagiarism, copying or tracing from some other map. She got an “F” for the paper. My mother bitterly remembered the name of that teacher thirty years later!

I got mostly good grades through my elementary school years, and most of that was due to the small Seventh-day Adventist school I attended. There were never more than four or five in any grade, and so there was lots of time for the teacher to learn about the students, as well as the students to learn the lessons.

My teachers were able to help me individually when I needed it, and very seldom was homework required, as there were several grades in each room, allowing all extra work to be done while the teacher was busy with another class. There was seldom any homework, and that was how I liked it.

I first ran into trouble when I went to Lodi Academy in the junior year of high school. Now there were twenty or more students per class, and there was no time to do extra work, since the next hour was taken up by the next class. I was not inclined to spend my evenings doing exercises on subjects I had already learned that morning, and I had better things to do with my time, I figured.

If the teacher graded heavy on tests, I got “A”s. If homework was required, I tended to get “C”s. Mr. Jackson, who taught me classes on Algebra 1 & 2, and Plane and Solid Geometry, graded 100% on classwork and tests, so consequently I made straight “A”s in his classes.

In my senior year I needed some core classes to get me graduated with enough credits to start an Engineering major in College. I signed up for Physics, which was a class I needed. On the first day of class, Mr. Mayer, an older, soft spoken gentleman, explained that he graded 1/3 on classwork, 1/3 on tests, and 1/3 on homework. I knew my best chance would be 66 2/3%, which would be flunking.

I went from that class straight to the Registrar’s Office and requested to change from that class to another class taught by Mr. Jackson, Trigonometry and Analytical Geometry. I loved that class and that teacher and got straight “A”s.

I may be painting the term “homework” with too broad a brush. Mr. Jackson assigned homework, but it was never just repeating the classwork, and it was never graded.. It was usually a challenge, as “For tomorrow, read the next chapter, and see if you can figure out what it’s about. We’ll discuss it in the morning.” I was always ready for a challenge!

Once, when someone else in the class asked what good Trigonometry was for, Mr. Jackson showed up the next day with a transit, a survey chain, and some stakes. He sent us out on the school grounds to find the distance between the front doors on the girl’s dorm and the boy’s dorm. Since the admin building was in between, we had to drive a stake out by the flagpole, measure from there to the doors in question, and triangulate using the trig functions to get the answer. We all compared notes and figures and we all learned something I still remember from that day.

I’m pretty sure that John and I got our brains wired at the same place. He is sure his problem is ADHD. I have always thought that my problem might be Asperger’s syndrome. My son Wesley had all the same problems in school. As John says, we’re all on “the spectrum” somewhere.

Here is a quote from a recent post of John’s:

 I know I've mentioned before that I hated the whole idea of homework. I didn't like school at all. It was bad enough that I was required to spend my days where I didn't want to be, doing things I didn't want to have to do. The idea that I was supposed to go home and ruin my evenings, too, was out of bounds as far as I was concerned. So I never did homework in high school.

  

That was me all over!

During my senior year, a group from California State Education came to Lodi Academy and tested all of us in the school. If I remember, it was called the National Merit Scholarship test. Out of around 300 students in that school, I topped them all. I was immediately summoned to the dean’s office to explain why my grades were so low. I truthfully told them if they tested my knowledge, I would have gotten straight “A”s, but I didn’t do any homework. They berated me for awhile, but I was kind of used to that.

I graduated with enough credits to pass, including a correspondence class in U.S. History, if I remember correctly.

My son Wesley had all the same problems in school, getting low grades in class but passing the annual Basic Skills Tests several grades ahead of his place in school. Some said he was bored to death and should have been advanced a grade. In Winnemucca, they held him back a year.

His mother Carolyn and I got an appointment in San Francisco with a Pediatric Neuropsychologist and took Wes for testing. After nearly a day of various tests, the doctor told us, “There is nothing wrong with your son. If he was in Marin County Schools, he would be in AP classes.”

I went back to Winnemucca and relayed the findings, and all I did was piss the school administration off. Who was I, a lowly mechanic, to tell them such a thing?

After another bad year of low grades and confrontation with the school, the next summer we found a school in Ojai, California, that had special summer classes for kids who test high and grade low. We dug deep into our finances and signed Wes up for a month. 

On our way there we all stopped at the hanger in Mojave where the Voyager, the first airplane to circle the earth without refueling had just landed, before being taken to the Smithsonian.

I think he may have been a little overwhelmed by the other students, who were several levels above a country boy from Nevada. He found himself in school with Kasey Kasem’s daughters, among others. He soon made friends with another boy, and went to visit his “house” in Hollywood, I think, which Wes described as a mansion.

Wes impressed them when he said he lived on thirty acres in Nevada. Nobody in Hollywood lives on thirty acres!

When we went back to pick Wes up at the end of the session, we talked for several hours with the teachers at that school. They were amazed that Wes was having any trouble in school. He was tops in the computer class, wrote well, and was among the top students in every class. They also told us that his problem was with the school in Winnemucca.

I asked if they could talk to the people in Winnemucca and tell them what they just told me. I explained that the school had no regard for anything I said, because I was merely a mechanic, and I had tried before.

They promised to call and talk to them, and we left for home in Nevada.

The attitude in the school system seemed to improve the next year, until Wes had to have emergency surgery to correct some congenital defects in one kidney and the ureter on one side. We kept his schoolwork assignments, and after a month off, when he went back to school and turned in the assignments, the teacher said they could not grade all those papers, and he would have to start the year over. 

I requested a meeting with the school board, and got on the agenda for the next meeting. When it was my turn, I got up and told them they had failed my son once, but they were not going to have another chance to fail him again. I presented them with the legal paperwork to withdraw him and home school him through American School Correspondence courses.

Although it was sometimes boring, he could do the work in the morning and have the afternoon for himself. The school got to test him twice a year, and of course, he aced their tests every time.

Wes was offered the chance to take the GED test at JOIN (Job Opportunities In Nevada) and apply for a scholarship. After a few wasted minutes starting the Pre GED test, they looked over his shoulder, took that test away, and gave him the GED test. He easily passed it and was offered a 100% scholarship toward an Associate of Science degree at Elko Community College with RN certification. 

I guess the fundamental question is what is school for? Is it to impart knowledge and teach thinking skills? Or is it to teach a kid to follow orders, jump through the hoops when told, and work all day in a factory, learning to start when the whistle blows or the bell rings. Some of us never got regimented that good.

Different people learn in different ways, and if there are too many students in a class, some are not going to learn well.

I had a good friend who was an excellent motorcycle mechanic. But he only learned through hearing. When he had a problem, he would hand the book to me and have me read it to him. When I finished, he would thank me and tell me he understood it now. I am opposite. You can tell me all day, and I won’t remember much. As my mother used to say, “In one ear and out the other!” But if I read it, I can remember the page of instructions years later.

Some people I know only learn well by hands on practice. There needs to be a way to teach each person in the best way for that person. That could be impractical in our mechanized world.

This is getting to look like a book. 

Kudos to all the caring, skilled teachers out there. If I was king of the country, I’d double your pay and halve your class size. I still have great memories of wonderful teachers from years ago.

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.