Rearing Its Ugly Head Again

The ugliness of bigotry and intolerance, which never really went away, but seemed silent for awhile, has once again reared its ugly head here in Northern California.

A young man named Ryan Andresen, of Moraga, California, has been a member of the Boy Scouts of America for the past 12 years, since he was six years old.  His dream has been to become an Eagle Scout and he has worked toward that goal for 12 years. But the problem is that in July Ryan came out as gay.  According to a petition circulated by his mother, Ryan had been a victim of bullying in his Scout troop and thus chose, as his final project for his Eagle badge a "tolerance wall" at a local school, a collection of 288 tiles painted by elementary children depicting acts of kindness.

A cheery smile and a helping hand make life easier for others.
By doing a Good Turn daily and helping when you're needed,
you prove yourself a Scout and do your part to make this a better world.

According to its website, Ryan's troop is sponsored by a local Presbyterian church and counts more than 75 active members aged 11 to 18.  Ryan surprised even his parents when he came out publicly in a letter to the troop in which he stood up for another scout who was bullied.

Boy Scouts of America spokesman Deron Smith indicated in a statement that Andresen's Eagle Scout Badge has been denied and his Boy Scouts membership had been revoked.

Being morally straight means to live your life with honesty,
to be clean in your speech and actions,
and to be a person of strong character.

Once again, in an era where there is much light being brought to the issue of bullying, the Boy Scouts of America has come out in favor of bullying one of its own.   It has taught its members that it's OK to be mean to someone who is different, to ignore 12 years of hard work because a boy of strong character dares to be honest about himself, and to stick up for someone else within the troop who is being bullied.  If he had remained quiet, lied about his sexual orientation, chances are he would have received his award by now. 
So the Boy Scouts of America has shown its members that if you are truthful you can be punished. If you are honest about yourself, you can be bullied.

You know, many years ago I participated in a protest against the Boy Scouts of America here in Davis.  We stood on a street corner with our signs and we were approached by many students from the University who were from other countries and who had belonged to Scouting in their own countries.  None of them could understand what the big deal about being gay was, since it was not even an issue in Scouting worldwide.

I myself was a Scout leader when our kids were young and there was no rule that I ever knew about excluding anybody (except girls) from Boy Scouts.  The ban on gay and atheist boys and leaders was not put into the laws until 1991 (when leadership was taken over by the Mormons, I understand).

In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the BSA's right to deny membership to gay children.  It's legal to discriminate.  But just because it's legal does it make it right?

(And if you want to find out how your tax dollars support this "legal discrimination" check this web site.)

This issue is causing much pain for parents of boys in Scouting in the San Francisco area, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.  Parents want their children to have the Scouting experience but do not want to show support for the homophobic policies of the organization.  I have friends who are still Scout leaders and children of friends who are in Scouting and I have a difficult time with that. It's one thing to have a good time with a bunch of kids, but each time you do, you are tacitly agreeing with the treatment of boys like Ryan. I feel so strongly about how wrong this is and frustrated that there seems to be no viable alternative for parents who want their kids to join other boys to wear uniforms, earn badges, and go camping together.

But, as ineffective as I fear it will be, I have signed Ryan's mother's petition to get him his earned Eagle Scout award and I hope that if you feel as strongly as I do about how wrong this all is, you will join the >300,000 people who have already signed and let Ryan know that you are behind him and sign the petition too.

What if this were your son or your grandson...?

Lucy

Some rather odd thoughts that flitted through my head after reading a book today...

I am continuing my self-imposed promise to read a book during my work stint at Logos.  Sometimes I cheat and read books like "How to live with a neurotic dog," which is more cartoon than actual text, and sometimes I challenge myself with a book that might be 300+ page in length.  Mostly, though, I go for a max of 250 pages,  which, on a slow day, is do-able in the four hours I have at the desk.

The other day, I saw a book on Amazon.  It was "Lucy," by Laurence Gonzales, the story of a girl who is half human, half bonobo chimpanzee, the result of a misguided experiment by her scientist father.  It looked interesting, but even the Kindle price was more than I wanted to pay.  So I was happy to see it in Logos...and not only just in the book store, but on the cheap shelf.

It was over 300 pages, but I figured I would read what I could in the store and then bring it home and finish it here (which I did last night).

This was a difficult one to review because the story held my interest, but at times I wondered if the target audience was a teenage girl.  The story of Lucy being rescued by another scientist, who finds her in her home, after her father has been slaughtered by Congolese soldiers, her trip to the U.S. (with the help of some nefarious characters who forge a passport for the girl), and her integration into civilization after 13 years of living in the Congo, flying through trees with her bonobo mother and being educated by her somewhat eccentric father.  She makes a good friend, learns teen age slang, becomes the star of the wrestling team, and does well in school.

The problem starts, and the writing shifts, when she falls ill with what is ultimately diagnosed as a disease found only in apes.  Doctors are concerned that this is a disease which has suddenly been passed from apes to humans (as it is suggested the AIDS virus in humans may have started).  Blood testing uncovers Lucy's secret and then it all goes to hell, Lucy's life as well as the quality of the writing.

Despite the fact that she looks and sounds and behaves like other humans, scientists feel she needs to be caged to protect "real" humans; Congress passes a law declaring her an animal, and thus deserving of no human rights; religious fundamentalists quote Leviticus, cry "abomination" and call for her death, she is kicked out of school because parents are afraid to have their children associate with her.   It all gets very melodramatic and sadly entirely too predictable.

But in spite of the fact that the writing becomes much too cliche, I enjoyed the story and thought what a sad commentary it is on us humans and our reaction to anything "different."  

We may send out probes into space hoping to make contact with other peoples on other planets, but what would we do if someone actually accepted our invitation and came to visit.

Look at what happened when Klaatu arrived as a peaceful ambassador from another planet in "The Day the Earth Stood Still."  When he attempted to present a gift for the President of the U.S., he is shot by one of the soldiers who make up the "welcoming committee" to his spacecraft.  

And poor E.T. only wanted to go home while he lived with an American family, but once scientists discovered he was here, it was a horror story and the poor guy nearly died before being rescued by the children and returned to his ship.

We give lip service to communication with other species, but if the Starship Enterprise actually landed here from the future and Spock stepped out, I suspect it would be "shoot first, ask questions after."

Instead of celebrating Lucy's "differentness" and trying to learn what we can from her through communication, scientists stripped her naked and stuck her in a cage where she was hosed when she attempted to ask for anything.

Yeah, these are all fictional examples, but I think not too far off the mark for how we treat "others," i.e., those who are not like us.

One need only read the papers and see how the word "muslim" has become a pejorative, a nasty accusation hurled at anyone we suspect is not like us.   Instead of trying to get to know someone from another culture (or, in Lucy's case, another species), it's easier to accuse, to blame, to assume, to attack.

For "muslim" substitute "Jew," "queer," "Catholic," "fundamentalist."  Too often we paint groups with one brush.  If Osama Bin Laden plotted to kill Americans, then my next door neighbor and her kids are surely going to blow me up some day.  If Fred Phelps pickets the funerals of AIDS victims and Soldiers in the name of God, surely my Baptist neighbor is not to be trusted.  

There are bad guys out there and sometimes it's scary to confront something different, whether a half-man, half-ape, a guy with pointed ears from the planet Vulcan, or a woman in the supermarket wearing a veil.  But I'd like to think that most of us are willing to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt.  Sit down and find out why Lucy likes to eat banana skins and how she builds nests in trees, enter into a mind meld with Spock, and offer the hand of friendship to the woman with the veil.   It's easier, cheaper and definitely less destructive than slaughtering mindlessly because we don't want to take the time to get to know someone different from ourselves.

Klaata barada nikto to you all.

A Masterpiece

One thing I just love about working in the book store is watching parents bring their children in and help them learn about reading and loving books.   The store has a small room--about the size of a house closet--set aside for children's books.  It houses books for toddlers up to young adult age.  Some kids come in with their parents and, while the parents wander around the store looking for books for themselves, the kids are in the children's room seeing if there is anything they want. 

I love it when a kid comes out excitedly clutching a treasure he or she has found.

Today a mother and daughter came in.  The girl looked like she might have been 5.  She had obviously been in the store before because she commented that there was new art on the walls.  

Logos is a place where local artists can display their art work for a month.  The displays change every month and this month's artist, Marguerite Schaffron, is particularly prolific because there is more stuff on the walls than I remember in months past.  Schaffron is a "multi media" artist and so her work is quite eclectic.  I don't know "art" from a hole in the ground.   I know what I like and don't like, but I wouldn't have a clue whether something was "good art" or not.  But I was intrigued by some of her pieces.  For example, there was something about this one that I really liked.

Nothing I would ever buy, even if I had somewhere to put it, but I liked the mixture of the real hat and real fan with some real cloth combined with a painting.

Likewise, I liked what she has done with shirt collars and ties.

She also had a whole collection of framed CDs which had been painted and looked surprisingly nice.

But as this little girl passed by my desk on her way to the book room, she looked up at the huge painting n the wall and said "Wow--look at that masterpiece!"  It was so cute.  This is the "masterpiece."

(I don't know what the artist had in mind, but when I look at it, I see a cute little dog's face.)

The little girl went on to pick out three books and brought them to the desk.  I told her how much it would be -- $6 something -- and the mother pulled out a bunch of $1 bills and a $5 and told the girl to take $6.  The girl thought about it and pulled out the five dollar bill and then tried to remember how much else to take.  The mother used it as a teaching moment and let the girl figure it out.   She finally settled on a $1 bill.  The mother counted out the change and gave it to the girl to give to me.

I was so impressed by this whole encounter, how much the little girl appreciated the art, how the mother helped her choose books she wanted to read and then let the girl handle the transaction herself.  As they left the book store, I thought what a lucky little girl she was to have a mother who cared enough to teach her about art and books and mathematics!

This and That

Oh, dear God, let this election be over soon.  I am so tired of political ads (and we aren't even getting Obama or Romney ads here in Northern California).  I'm tired of talking heads.  I'm tired of lying politicians. I'm tired of zillions of dollars spent on negative ads.  I'm tired of Newt Gingrich and his smirk.

I watched the debate tonight and don't even know how I think about it.  Chris Matthews on MSNBC was positively apoplectic about what he saw as a weak performance by Obama.  I was depressed about Jim Lehrer's failure to "moderate" and allowing Romney to hijack the debate.  

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I haven't been out in the last couple of days, but Walt tells me that from Monday morning to Wednesday afternoon, our gas price jumped 21 cents, from $4.19 a gallon to $4.40 a gallon.  I later heard from someone else that it is anticipated that it will jump another twenty cents in the next week.  It's a good thing we only have one car and that Walt bikes most of the places he needs to go in town.

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Walt did need the car to drive to nearby Woodland, where the county courthouse is, on Monday when he was called for jury duty.  We were hoping the case would be dismissed, but it went forward so it was Tuesday before he was finally dismissed (he's not sure why, but thinks it might have been because I work for the newspaper).   

Peach and I had planned to finally have another cousins day (we haven't had one since about April), but that had to be canceled since I wouldn't have a car.   We are going to do it next week, though, so we just have to hold on until then.

The plan is to finally take Kathy's ashes out to San Francisco Bay to scatter them.  The 14th is the first anniversary of her death so this is a good week to finally take her "home" after all this time.  There may be a problem, though.  We were going to scatter her ashes when we were last at my mother's, but the weather was bad, so we postponed it.  Instead of taking the ashes back to her own house, Peach decided to just leave them there at my mother's.  Only now my mother has no recollection of Peach leaving them and doesn't have a clue where they are.  Peach doesn't remember what she did with them either, so we may spend a good part of our Cousins Day searching for Kathy!

(Walt is convinced that my mother threw them away!)

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October is National Bullying Prevention Awareness month.  As someone I read today pointed out every month should be bullying prevention awareness month.  The blog I was reading told the sad story of 16 year old Dylan Lynn, who committed suicide last week.  Ron Kemp, the author of the blog, has devoted his time to making people aware of bullying incidents and the suicides which often accompany them.  Dylan was just the first story I read.  It was followed by the story of a young lesbian beaten up by a 15 year old football player, fracturing her jaw.  A young girl in Melbourne, Australia died of suicide after a barrage of email attacks encouraging her to kill herself.

In Pennsylvania last month there were four teen suicides within seven days, all within a 30 miles radius, and all listed bullying as the precipitating cause.   Two were 13, one was 15 and one was 16.  My heart aches for the parents.

It is heartening to see that the subject of bullying is getting more attention in the media, but suicide is still the #1 cause of death among young people (beating out auto accidents) and with the ability to bully anonymously on the internet, the cases will continue to rise.

We would all do well to become informed about what is going on, to speak out whenever we see instances of bullying, whether of adults of young people (but especially of young people).  Too many beautiful lives are being lost to the thoughtless, cruel taunts of others.

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Finally....

~~ HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEVE ~~

Finger Lickin' Good

When Walt and I were engaged and planning a life together, I remember seeing a picture in Gourmet Magazine (to which I subscribed at the time).  It was a simple picture of an orange, partially peeled, sitting on a plate with a strawberry on top of it.  I thought it was the epitome of a fancy presentation, showed it to him, and said that when we were married, this was the kind of meal I would make for him....meaning that my meals would all be beautiful presentations.

Needless to say, in the past 47 years, I have made my share of beautiful meals and offered beautiful presentations (but, I have to say, never an orange with a strawberry on it). 

I'm not afraid to try anything.  I never once "practiced" a new recipe before serving it to unsuspecting guests. I always made it cold (not temperature, but without practice) and hoped for the best.  Most of the time, even though disasters might have happened during the preparation, the end result turned out well.  Not always, though.  You might like to read about one of my more memorable disasters.

During our ten years having foreign students in and out all the time, I learned to cook meals from several different cultures and even, once, had to teach our Japanese visitor how to make tempura, since she didn't have a clue how to do it.

But over the years, the joy of creating something new, delicious and beautiful begins to fade.  Especially when you have children and you know that at least one of them (if not all of them) will hate what you serve, no matter what it is.  Nothing more depressing than to work on a meal all afternoon and have at least one of the recipient say "Yuck" and refuse to eat it.

(Amazingly, the kids grew up and became gourmet cooks.  Either I was an inspiration or they learned to cook to finally get something to eat that they actually liked.)

With only two of us to cook for now (yes, I cook almost every night), my repertoire has shrunk to things like "something with hamburger in it," "something with cheese in it," stuffed potatoes, "something Mexican" a "tuna thing," and, on nights when I have to review a show, Bertolli frozen pasta entrees.

But occasionally I get inspired.  This week I got a flyer trying to get me to subscribe to a cooking magazine.  The flyer came with beautiful photos and delicious sounding recipes.  I chose several recipes from the magazine and made a list of food, deciding to make special things this week.  The first was the orange glazed salmon steak that I made the other night.  It was good, but I forgot that I don't really like salmon.

I had also planned on making a coq au vin.  I had all the ingredients and the recipe I was going to use involved the crock pot and several hours cooking time.

But I kept forgetting to make it until too late.  I was worried that the chicken would start to go bad, so today was the day I was going to finally do it.  Only it got to be 3 p.m. before I remembered and again it was too late.  Instead, I went looking for a non-crock pot version.  I finally settled on this recipe from Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa.  Even having chosen that recipe, it was 5 p.m.before I thought about it and I decided it was too late to make it.  I decided on something else, but then thought about the fact that Walt will be at the opera tomorrow night and I'll be at Cousins day the next night, and I will be home too late the following day to make it, and the chicken would DEFINITELY have gone bad by then, so what the heck.  I decided to cook it anyway and we'd just eat late.

It's one of those recipes that involve several pots and pans lots of chopping, fresh herbs, brandy and wine.  But it starts with a Dutch oven.   It just so happens that I have a cast iron Dutch oven that doesn't get nearly enough use.  It was my father's.  When he died he had every possible cast iron skillet known to man, but his kitchen was such an unbelievably filthy mess that the cast iron -- all of it -- was so caked with months of grease that we could hardly bear to touch it to throw it away.  Oh, how it killed me to throw all that beautiful cast iron away!

I did decide to salvage the Dutch oven.  It took a long time...a very long time...to get the layers of baked on grease removed (and to this day, more than 20 years later, it still has a bit of black on the outside that won't come off), but it finally became usable.

So I cooked the bacon and then cooked the onions and carrots and then thought to find out if we had some brandy.  Walt didn't think we did, but finally located a very old bottle hidden in a box upstairs.  Voila!  Brandy!

I drove the dogs nuts browning the chicken (because they could smell it and wanted some), but I finally got it all put together and in the oven, to cook for 40 minutes.  Then I thickened with a roux of butter and flour, sauteed the mushrooms and added those, simmered a bit longer and finally, at 8:30 (not unusually late for us to eat) it was ready to be served.  I was going to take a picture, but was too anxious to get at it, so all I got was what was left in the pot after I'd served the two of us.

 
I was quite jazzed about it.  It was just delicious.  I'd forgotten how good a really good meal could be and I'm wondering if it's going to inspire me to continue "preparing meals" rather than just "making dinner" for awhile!

Social Me

I had my Facebook participation analyzed today.  It was really kind of interesting.  It analyzed 7,372 status updates and came up with this data:

Where do you post from?
99% of your posts come from Facebook.com and 1% come from Twitter. The average person posts from Facebook.com 58% of the time.  You post most often in the afternoon.
Here are my most talked-about subjects:

(Interesting that movies ranks so high, since I haven't seen a movie this year and barely any for the last 3 years...I wonder if they are lumping theatrical productions in with moving pictures.  They must be.)

My posts are most often...

Verbose?  Who me?

You post about 88 statuses per month.

The average person posts 12.8 statuses per month. You posted the most statuses in one day on May 21, 2009 with a total of 15 statuses.

This information doesn't surprise me.

Fun stuff:

You have posted as many words as a book!
In fact, you have posted more words than "The Hobbit," which has a total of 95,022 words.

• Bev uses more words per sentence than 85% of people.
• Bev uses more abbreviations than 94% of people.
• Bev uses fewer question marks than 86% of people.
• Bev uses more quotation marks in her writing than 94% of people.
• Bev uses less punctuation in her writing than 87% of people.
• Bev uses more prepositions in her writing than 90% of people.
• Bev is more insightful than 87% of people.
• Bev speaks more in the past tense than 90% of people.
• Bev uses longer words than 86% of people.

I have 1,018 friends and the people who comment most, in order, are:

• Jessica Moms Brown (334 comments)
• Ron Clough (330 comments)
• Patricia Williams-King (220 comments)
• Barbara Watkins Hyde (205 comments)
• Joan Callaway (182 comments)

I see there is no category for the over-60 group, and I suspect many of my friends are over 60.

Not sure if that was interesting to anybody but me, but I found it fun.  If you're on Facebook, you can have your own data analyzed at Zeeb.ly (sadly you do have to give up some permissions to do it.  I almost never do, but I was curious this time...)

Sunday Stealing

21. BIGGEST LIE THAT YOU'VE EVER BEEN TOLD?
After all those years of my father's ire whenever he thought I might be engaging in hanky panky with a date, it was a HUGE shock to discover he and my mother had not waited until the wedding night to consummate their relationship.  It was HUGE shock that it took me literally years to recover from.  I felt like my whole upbringing had been based on a lie.  (I did eventually get over it!)

22. BLONDES, BRUNETTES, REDHEADS OR BALD?
I was always partial to redheads.  Never really knew any redhead well, but I had a crush in my younger days on Maureen O'Hara and always dreamed of having auburn hair like that.

23. WHO DO YOU PHONE MOST?
My mother.

24. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB?
Other than babysitting, washing bloody test tubes and poopy specimen dishes for a medical lab (didn't realize then that I would spend most of my working life working in medical offices!)

25. WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE SUNDAY STEALING?
Taking a shower, then designing the look for October on this page.

26. IF YOU COULD GET PLASTIC SURGERY WHAT WOULD IT BE?
I wouldn't, unless it was to correct some horrible scar from an accident.

27. WHY DID YOU FILL OUT THIS SURVEY?
Because I do it every week.

28. WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT MOST?
It used to be my hair.  Every single time I went to get it cut, all my life, the cutter would comment on how nice and full and thick and curly my hair was.  In the last 5 years or so, they have stopped doing it, and when I look at pictures of me from 5-10 years ago, I realize that my hair has thinned significantly.

29. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF ALCOHOL BECAME ILLEGAL?
Wouldn't bother me.  I rarely drink.

30. HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT/HAVE?
This is my least favorite question.  Do I have five kids?  Do I have three kids?  I usually say "we had five" and hope nobody asks what all five of them are doing now.

31. DO YOU WISH ON STARS?
No.

32. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
No.  I hate it.  It used to be better, but now it's sloppy.  My mother, at age 93, has the same wonderful handwriting she has had all of her life.

33. WHEN DID YOU LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY?
On my wedding night.

34. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
I would hope so.  I'm awesome.

35. DO LOOKS MATTER?
Initially, perhaps. 

36. HOW DO YOU RELEASE ANGER?
Sigh.  I eat.

37. WHERE IS YOUR SECOND HOME?
I'd say San Francisco, but I still think of there at home.  Probably my "second home" would be London.  Seriously.  Even though I haven't been there in years.

38. DO YOU TRUST OTHERS EASILY?
Too easily, I think.

39. DO YOU USE SARCASM?
Sarcasm is my life.

40. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A MOSH PIT?
No.