Dear doom preacher: "The Times Are A-Changin'," 'ya know!

By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

“Come gather 'round people/ Wherever you roam/ And admit that the waters/ Around you have grown/ And accept it that soon/ You'll be drenched to the bone/ If your time to you is worth savin'/ Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone/ for the times they are a-changin'.”

                                                                                        – Bob Dylan's “The Times They Are A-Changin',” 1963

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Hee, hee. I didn't waste my case of Diet Cokes over the weekend. The world didn't end Saturday, like Harold Camping, 89, a well-publicized radio evangelist from California said it would. Tons of publicity he stirred up, he did. I was thinking about that while in the cashier's line at the Vista Mart on the east side in El Paso Friday evening.

“Damn!” I thought. “Noemi's really going to get mad at me if the world ends tomorrow and I've wasted money on these Cokes!”

But it didn't. Only a big yawn, for most people. With the exception of a few inner-circle close friends. And a few thousand other listeners around the globe, who were hedging their bets no doubt. Even a secretary at his radio station admitted she'd planned on coming back to work Monday.

So if you think changed mores of the last half century touch on no more than hair styles, tattoos and skirt lengths, wake up you damn ol' fool and look at a truly different world!

Indeed, we are changed now, Mr. Preacherman. With more winds still coming, apparently. Especially in our economy, and the ways we pit it against our environment. So slack off from this scary rhetoric you're spewing out, or face even more ostracism and humiliation, is a good message to put on all of it.

With negative publicity such as what a world-famous British physicist, Stephen Hawking, 60, (who was diagnosed with a paralyzing motor neuron disease at 21 and has struggled ever since) has kicked up as a non-believer--by arguing there can't possibly be such a thing as heaven, for instance--you'd think ministers like Camping would be putting in more time truly studying these modern arguments and calming his listeners against them.

                                                                         

                                           
                                                Churches once taught "Hold tight onto the Good!"

Countering their “facts” with spiritual stories on God's love and eternal salvation, a Goodness, which Christ's message has always represented, needs to be racheted up as a new focus. Reasons to live Life fruitful and in good spirits. Science and religion are two different metaphysical world; are topics which have never gone well together. Fear, on the other hand, is a well-beaten horse today. It's turning people away from the church more and more.

Boyhood friend and longtime noted biblical researcher Jim Myers, from a ways south of Fort Worth for instance, on his Biblical Heritage Center blog (here and here), had some excellent comments on Mr. Preacherman. Besides the fact that he's making money off of it! Mucho dinero.

But few people caught the irony of the world failing to self-destruct just three days short of legendary folk musician Bob Dylan's 70^th birthday, I'd wager, too. Especially in this year of the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible, no less--now under attack by a noted scholar as being “forged” in many places, of all things--and, equally as noteworthy, the 500th anniversary of what is now an obviously collapsing Protestant Reformation. Stack all those things side by side and you begin the see the scope of what has swept over us in half a century. And we don't have reason to be a little shaky?

Dylan was raised Jewish. He converted to Christianity in the 70's; and then like the rest of us, probably has done some backsliding since. But his songs always had words from an old-fashioned, simple religion that was easy for young Americans to pick up on, in an increasingly complex world. He didn't exactly start a “questioning” movement, but he did become an early accelerant to it.

Vietnam, for instance, somehow in what started out as a distant civil war, became dovetailed between what quickly became a blend of patriotic, middle-age and older citizens, on one hand (who not only could identify with the cruel vagaries of two past world wars but knew the importance, too, of stopping evil dead in its tracks when it first raises its head); and a younger generation, on the other hand, who'd come up thru bloody civil rights battles of their own at home.

These latter people were the vanguard of a wave of citizens who;d somehow sense their separateness early; that they were in line to be outsourced by a swelling, raw, corporate, political power machine—an emerging American plutocracy—and in expressing their objections to it they learned vicariously that to question political processes morally was the answer, all in itself, in their search for peace in a narcissistic world seemingly gone awry from basic human values of goodness.

Dylan, regardless of what intellectual reasons you'll find in researching this topic, more so than any other person, I believe, was simply in the right place at the right time; and caught the vibes of this younger, off-beat generation like a drum major stepping in, coalescing and giving direction to an energized but straggling marching band. His lyrics (many based on old-time religious hymns) kick-started them to new protest heights.

And that cynical strain—for which his early songs delineated such a demarcation line in our history—has hung there always since, sometimes like a haunting, ghostly shroud just below the level of our collective consciousness—teasing us always of the soon-to-be total passing of an old, worn-out era of thought. And encouraging even more bold challenges to the stressed foundation our society rests upon. And giving anybody and everybody a free swing at the bag in attacking it. Civil liberties need restraint.

President Obama's legacy won't be he mounted a horse named Change as it was leaving the chute, but that he dared to mount it in midfield in the first place. After it'd circled the arena several times; and after it'd already gone thru several other presidents who were unsuccessful at taming the damn beast.

Never mind using boot spurs hoping to direct such an animal toward some significant public goal. Just pray you can just hang on 'til the beast begins to wear himself out, and you can begin to rein him in. That's today's new cold reality.

The panoply of changes facing us, in the way shifting “cultural norms” are tossing and tugging us about, looms that large. Change, we could use a little less of.

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At Texas Instruments, Lesson of 'Imperfect Storm' in Workplace Bullying

By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

Hee, hee! Will never forget Bea. An older spinster on a diodes assembly line at the huge Texas Instruments plant in North Dallas, she was the first to show this ol' slow country boy that “girls are not always nice to each other.” Even if their ages are 25 years apart.

ti, the letters pronounced separately like that in English around the globe, is probably the best place I've ever worked. Both as economic support in my long college years and as a maturation force for the shy introvert I was, the company was there for me at the right time in my life. When I took military leave in '67 to enter the U.S Navy it had something like 40,000 employees worldwide, most in Big D. Don't even think about mentioning semiconductors in polite conversation without bringing up Texas Instruments. It started out as the leader, and has kept the position.

Bullying in the workplace--and especially women to women--is high among topics in our national conversation now. There've been some tragic incidents related to it. So reading some homespun philosophy on what companies can consider, I smiled and thought of Bea. As a naïve line assistant on evening shift one night, she got me in big trouble with the line supervisor after going ballistic when she returned from break, and saw what a relief operator I'd spelled for her had done to her machine. Wow! I'd never seen such fury!

A diode, first of all, among humpteen-dozen different usages, is a very small device found in almost every electronic system from radars to television, to put a certain bias or switch voltage on a particular junction, to enable the system to function properly. In the 60's and 70's we could produce a million or more a day of them, simply by taking a “wafer” (built in another ti department; the size of two specks of dirt joined together with a tiny, thin, highly conductive slice of material in between—one wafer side having a positive charge; the other, a negative charge); and sandwiching it inside a tiny, circular glass envelope between two metal “leads,” or small wires. All of this was then sealed, of course, with heat to melt the glass; and then painted or striped; to make a nice, convenient diode ready for some product manufacturer's circuit-board.

Bea's machine was one of the old flame sealers (later replaced sometime after I'd returned from the Navy by hydrogen conveyor ovens, which greatly increased production capacity), with 10-12 revolving “arms,” which actually connected a “lead” wire to a glass envelope and carried it through a circular series of flame sealers, before allowing it to slide down a trough onto the operator's desk. The operator then, using nothing more than tweezers, slid the units into tracks on foot-long, thin, metal trays, each one holding 50 lead units, where they then were taken to another assembly point.

What angered Bea was the young replacement operator—an attractive, flirty type who'd spent most of the 15 minute break period talking to me—had allowed hundreds of the units from the trough to fall just willy-nilly all over the desk and the floor without once bothering to shut off the machine. And I'd stood there and never noticed it. Iholi!

Then, of course, after the supervisor called me into the office and asked me where I'd had my head at the time; and we began asking questions later about the relationship between the two women; I understood why Bea had gotten so angry. There'd been a long, long period of “acting tacky” by the other woman toward her, we learned. And I was dressed down for being unaware of that, too.

There are many more definitions of workplace harassment now, of course, as well as legal laws to protect workers, but the bottom line is that anyone in any kind of supervisory role has got to be alert to conditions in the work place; and be completely neutral when fractions occur. Regardless of how attractive or handsome the person smiling at you is.

When Bea first came back that night from her break and saw what'd happened , and began accusing the other woman of deliberately wrecking her night, I'd immediately stepped in with something like, “Oh now, Bea, you know she wouldn't do something like that.” And that's when Bea began screaming and crying, flailing her arms hysterically. Oh, did I have some things to learn!

That act would allow me to grow and develop and assume a line supervisor job myself years later. It was the beginning of the lesson, Professionalism, I was to learn, that needs to be at the core of every working relationship in our world with people. And it begins with consideration for others.

We could all be more productive. And probably happier, too. I thank ti for teaching it to me.

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School the Mexican kids under Quasihood; take Mexico's national assets to cover costs!

                                                 By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

President Obama visited Fort Bliss in El Paso Tuesday most notably for an Immigration Reform speech, but apparently backed off advocating any specific, hard programs. The issue is too heated now between Democrats and Republicans for there to be any progress in Washington. There's only the risk of losing votes in next year's elections. It's too bad the way we've paralyzed government—it's from heat we expect political leaders to emerge usually.

Meanwhile--cognizant that schools are doing their next year's budgets now, and that slashing funds is extremely fashionable due to high deficits--the U. S. Dept. of Education sent letters out to districts around the country reminding them of federal law: Whether here legal or not, all kids in their districts are entitled to a public education. Don't thread on 'em! Hee, hee. Bureaucrats don't have to face re-election, do they?.

But shaking fingers at the states isn't helping the problems. The Pew Hispanic Center has released figures showing the numbers of these undocumented children increased from 4.3 million in 2003 to 5.5 million in 2008. That's a lot of extra heads in the classrooms.

Had an ol' coffee-buddy named Jesse Rojas who use to stop in for early coffee with me at the JP office in Presidio back in the 90's, several mornings a week for years. And believe you me, he had something to say about damn near anything under the sun. Big, jovial guy. Bulbous nose; thinning white hair.

“What would you do if the county (government) ever decided to stop making coffee available to the public here at the Annex?” I asked him once.

“No problem!” he answered. “I'd just go find somebody else to mooch off of!” And then he'd laugh some kind of whacky and crackling, high-speed, hah-hah-hah laugh. Always enjoyed listening to Jesse, I did.

Jesse had been a wholesale grocer distributor in the early days, running trucks from El Paso all the way to Del Rio along the old Hwy 90. He also served some time as a Marfa school board member. He knew Immigration, and the problems with “illegals.” Mexico has always exported workers. And lived off the proceeds.

“It's not the children's fault that they're over here illegal!” he'd say. “And it's not the parents. They're just trying to survive. It's the Mexican government's fault! With remittances (money sent back home to family members—one of Mexico's largest revenue sources) as high as they are, the government there is not about to do anything to disturb that revenue stream. Nothing! The U.S. oughta go over there and seize their oil or something, to pay for what it's causing.”

There's another unique situation in this for border schools. Beginning a week or so before the fall term started each August—back during the 90's, it seemed, before a law changed that sent parents or guardians to higher courts in Marfa—our local justice court was flooded with notary affidavit requests, stating that such-and-such student was some kind of relative and, indeed, “residing” with such-and-such family. The papers were for school purposes, of course. School districts can't ask a student if he or she is “legal.” But if they're here; you educate them here.

Many of the Mexican parents from Ojinaga, across the stream, would get indignant about this extra step at times. They were simply trying to get the best possible education for their children, of course. And getting them an English education in Presidio, in the U.S.A., was definitely available. One of the couples I remember, good friends of Noemi and I (in fact, were our padrinos at our church wedding) questioned us once, “Why doesn't the school district just charge us (out-of-district tuition) extra fee? We'd find the money somehow to pay!” They considered the affidavits harassment.

But those affidavits were about the only thing poor border schools like Presidio ISD could do to try and thwart the onslaught, it seemed. Even then, it was always “street knowledge” that half or more of the kids in school there, in one way or another, were from Ojinaga. Border districts, yes, are especially hit hard by this phenomenon. And the ripples go into almost every sector of government and society. Jesse's answer to it, I always considered, was too simple and unrealistic, of course. But maybe he was just too far ahead of his time.

What is emerging more and more now to difficult political situations, is the quasi jurisdictional state—sometimes a combination of agencies and business corporations; or non-profits empowered by agencies; or sometimes even a dominant group in an actual physical territory--of what usually is considered a recognized but weak state--and simply performing the duties of the legitimate government.

Between Pakistan and India, for instance, probably the largest international geographical example, there is Kashmir, especially Azad Kashmir, which is protected by and administered by Pakistan. Yet it's considered an “independent,” neither a province nor an agency of Pakistan. Cooler heads prevailed somewhere between the two countries and supposedly trade is prospering.

Perhaps the most extreme quasi state example, of course, is the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. It not only enjoys the loyalty of the people in that region but it provides probably most of traditional governmental services for them. Yet, it's not recognized as a state in the international community, certainly not by Israel.

With the growing violence of the drug war in Mexico, and its adverse effects striking directly many U.S. communities, one of the fears about what will eventually happen is that the U.S. will have a Hezbollah-type, narco-trafficking quasi state operating just across the Texas border. That's a no-no.

Among the topics flying beneath major media radar now, one can imagine, is putting together somehow a collection of agreements in this country, with Mexico, that can perform the duties of these quasi states. The U. S. already has a number of quasi organizations, usually established as a function of a specific agency. Even the Red Cross is a quasi relief group

Putting armed forces across the border is controversial, yes, but you can bet the ideas are there. And if the U.S. ever went into Mexico to quell something like this, too, you can bet there would be “arrangements” to recoup the costs.

And folks like Jesse would be close behind, saying, Ok, if you can do it for the narco-traffickers, you can sure do it for the public school systems. Mexico can, too, pay!

And we will have climbed another notch in our togetherness. Hee, hee. Good friends and good coffee. Problem-solving at its best.

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Don't Mess with Texas over Prayin' for Rain!

A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

Environmentalist Bill McKibben's story “Texas GOP Fights Catastrophic Wildfires With Prayer and Global Warming Denial,” copyrighted by Independent Media Institute and posted on the liberal website alternet.org/ Monday, April 25, was correct when it said people on the planet Earth (which includes Texas, yes) cannot survive the way we are now unless we reduce our carbon footprint.

Scientific data confirms too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is threatening to throw the planet's systems out of kilter, yes.

Where McKibben was wrong though was his backhanded attempt to link Gov. Rick Perry's religious request for citizens to actually pray for rain (as a drought-breaker, yes, against horrendous damages by wildfires in April) to his poor secular leadership in Austin positioning the state among the worst atmospheric polluters in the world. An environmentalist, the Guv ain't. You got that right, pardnuh!

“...Were it a separate country, Texas would be the seventh highest carbon emitting nation on the planet,” McKibben wrote. And then he followed the charge by chronicling how the governor and his GOP administration fights “even the most modest EPA restrictions on greenhouse gases.”

He's awful, yes, our governor is. But being “good ol' boy”-awful and being a conscious sinner in the eyes of God are two different things. McKibben failed to connect his dots. If he'd come up to a court judge prior to publishing that article wanting an arrest warrant in the case, he'd been told, “You haven't established Probable Cause! This the only stuff on him 'ya got!?”

In Texas, both Democratic and Republican parties have their own political bibles, going back to the Battle of the Alamo. (Help me out here, Jethro! Where can I find a link directing readers to this? Huh? Quick!) In both big books, it says flatly, in Texas you don't rip someone for praying for rain, regardless of how much polluting he's doing in his stiff-shirt day job. For you're simply showing your naivete and are a cause of embarrassment!

Everybody prays for rain in Texas, folks! What else do you do when you run out of other options? And trust me, we're the least optioned state in the union! You think ol' Generalissenmo Santa Anna was crazy when he spat out those famous words enroute to his Alamo debacle? “If I owned both Hell and Texas, I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas!” Huh? He said that! You think he was crazy?!

No, folks have been praying for rain in Texas long before King Henry VIII ran off with his ninth wife. And prior to last week's storms (Which were immediately after the Guv did urge folks to pray for rain, mind 'ya—it just came in the wrong part of the state!), there hadn't been any recorded rain in the state since September, 2010. What else are 'ya gonna do if you're the governor in a situation like that? Call in Winnie the Pooh for a rain dance? Gee!

Now I wouldn't go so far as call Mr. McKibben a two-faced “Yankee” (and now that it's been brought up, yes, in fact, that could explain his insensitivity to the issue), it's just that he's showing the same irrelevant tendency to plunder points in his “pray for rain” jab at Perry as those industrial revolution-built Northern states are showing this year in their non-observance of the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War--disrespectfully turning a cold shoulder to both the pain and the contributions connected to its past..

Again, it's as though by ignoring or distancing themselves from history, they can both criticize and keep their hands lilly-white in whatever is passing in this the present, as well as whatever happens in the future. Ponder these words, will 'ya?!

“(In Framingham, Mass., t)he gravesite of a Union Army major general sits largely forgotten in a small cemetery along the Massachusetts Turnpike,” reads an April 17 Associated Press story ran on the History News Network a couple days afterward.


“A piece of the coat worn by President Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated rests quietly in a library attic in a Boston suburb. It's shown upon request, a rare occurrence. A monument honoring one of the first official Civil War black units stands in a busy intersection in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse, barely gaining notice from the hustle of tourists and workers who pass by each day.”


And there's not irony in that, and being disrespectful to someone praying for rain? In contrast, what's the South doing?


“As the nation marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, states in the old South — the side that lost — are hosting elaborate re-enactments, intricate memorials, even formal galas highlighting the war's persistent legacy in the region,” the story continues.


“But for many states in the North — the side that won — only scant, smaller events are planned in an area of the nation that helped sparked the conflict.” It begs the question, what is it the North doesn't want to confront?


Indeed, jumping on the governor in his bid to rustle up prayers for rain, while being part yourself (indeed, if'n that's the case) of a folk who fails to commemorate the biggest historical event ever in their culture, is being both sacrosanct and callously insensitive to one's own heritage, it seems. And you've got room to criticize someone truly leaning on religion in a time of severe drought?

Uttering Pray for Rain, for Texans, is the same as making the Sign of the Cross for Catholics, a prayerful reach toward God's divine face of hope in an effort to solve problems that with only our limited tools of platitudes, we ain't got a mosquito's chance in an East Texas, smoke-filled swamp of fixing ourselves.

What McKibben was doing was castigating Texans in general and our governor in particular for us believing in our exceptionalism—Believing we'll dodge this climate bullet while turning a blind eye to scientific data that, indeed, shows we have something to worry about.

But it's unfair to play mixin'-'n-matchin' in an issue like this. Why shouldn't citizens here believe we're part and parcel of something history can only label as “exceptional?” And that somehow we're gonna claw our way out of a bad situation?

Geographically, we've been culled both from East Coast and West Coast cultures. Topographically, we were belched up from once a seafloor and transformed instead into thousands of green acres of pine forests, on one side; and then stretched westward 59 days of hard riding by horseback into hundreds of thousands of acres of rough and jagged, dry mountainous desert, on the other. And that's not reason for an occasional catharsis by its people?

Admittedly, yes, Texas is a scat-brat state, culturally forged from what once was a scat-brat separate nation. We've a history of having to overcome this, overcome that–everything from invasions by foreign countries to invasions by the worst kind of pestilent insects in God's creation.

So it's only natural we look to the divine power for help in riding out yet another storm. Praying for rain, in this instance, was as natural as breathing.

"Throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer," Gov. Perry said in a statement asking for water from above. "It is fitting that Texans should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this ongoing drought and these devastating wildfires."


So there! With natural words like that, the governor leaned on the ol' standby and sought divine intervention. And you're gonna criticize him for that? Huh?`


The Defense rests its case!

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