Yesterday's New York Times contained interviews with "conservative Christians" in Iowa who wonder how they could vote for Mitt Romney since, after all, as a Mormon, he "doesn't pray to the God of the Bible."
Huh?
I live amongst numerous Mormons, or "LDS" as they like to be called. They may have some beliefs that are a little on the flaky side, but I don't know a group of people who better exemplify living their lives as Jesus taught. To me, that makes you a Christian. Overall, they make family their top priority, engage in good works, and are an asset to their communities.
I personally have some issues with a lot of Christian doctrine, but I try to live my life according to Jesus' teachings. Whether you believe he is divine or not, pursuing the life of giving and peace that he taught seems to me to be the most balanced way of living, and not because doing so will get you into heaven, but because it is just the right thing to do.
Do the finer points of theological doctrine really matter when you are considering a person's qualifications for President? Doesn't it matter more what kind of person they are and how they make moral choices? It seems to me the issue of whether Jesus became divine after his birth or started out divine to begin with (the crux of the fundamentalist Christian problem with Mormonism) is on the same level as arguments over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
As great a mind as Isaac Newton's puzzled over the concept of the Trinity and ultimately came down on the side of disbelief in the idea. The Amish, who seem to have their act together in the morals department, also disbelieve in the idea of the Trinity. And the majority of our country's founding fathers were Deists.
I may not agree with a lot of Mitt Romney's positions, but don't try to tell me he's not a Christian and that's why I shouldn't vote for him. The fact that these incredibly ignorant Iowans quoted in the NYT have access to the ballot box is truly scary, and even more frightening is that the candidates they support show their true colors by failing to quench any criticism of Romney's religion as being, at a minimum, unsportsmanlike.
Back to work fighting against the forces of bureaucracy, inertia, and just plain evil,
I remain yours truly,
Annie42
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The next generation gets it
Sitting last night at a banquet for some honor students, the three 16 year old girls at our table reflected on the rise of the US as a superpower since WWI. (These are honor students, okay? They talk about this stuff.) Their parents sat quietly and just listened to this conversation, amazed at the depth of their understanding of subjects that we learned, if at all, in our senior years in college.
After discussing things like Wilson's 14 points ("too bad nobody paid attention to them," said one girl) and other stuff we adults only vaguely remembered, but which were foremost in the minds of these students who had been furiously writting essays on the subject, one girl reflected, "I guess we're still a superpower, but I don't think that's going to last much longer." She sighed, and we adults all looked at each other and nodded slightly.
How is it that a 16 year old student in suburban Denver understands world politics better than the fellow who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? I want to hug all these 16 year olds and tell them how very sorry I am that my generation hasn't done a very good job of maintaining the legacy of the "greatest generation" and that we were lazy enough to allow things to get to this point.
Still, the evening gave me some hope that this generation might just get it. Maybe our children will save us from ourselves.
Love to all,
Annie42
After discussing things like Wilson's 14 points ("too bad nobody paid attention to them," said one girl) and other stuff we adults only vaguely remembered, but which were foremost in the minds of these students who had been furiously writting essays on the subject, one girl reflected, "I guess we're still a superpower, but I don't think that's going to last much longer." She sighed, and we adults all looked at each other and nodded slightly.
How is it that a 16 year old student in suburban Denver understands world politics better than the fellow who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? I want to hug all these 16 year olds and tell them how very sorry I am that my generation hasn't done a very good job of maintaining the legacy of the "greatest generation" and that we were lazy enough to allow things to get to this point.
Still, the evening gave me some hope that this generation might just get it. Maybe our children will save us from ourselves.
Love to all,
Annie42
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Hatch chilis and Canada
Is there anything left that Canada does NOT do better than us? Let's start a list:
1.
Hmm. Well, here's an easier list. What they do better than us:
1. Health care for all.
2. A sane foreign policy. (Except, of course, that island they keep fighting Denmark over. Even that dispute is conducted in a surprisingly civilized manner. Apparently, they just keep visiting the island periodically, raising their flag, and burying symbolic bottles of brandy. See: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/07/25/hansisland050725.html.)
3. Bilingualism. (So far the country hasn't collapsed into a quivering mass of creme brulee, despite conducting business in both French and English.)
4. A sane foreign worker policy. They have a "seasonal agricultural work visa" designed to attract seasonal workers from Mexico and the Carribean. Apparently, this is working great.
What is not working great is our paranoid, contradictory, and counterproductive seasonal worker policy, which is, in a word, non-existent. Our local paper has run several stories, and we have heard similar stories on NPR and other outlets about similar problems all over the country, that farmers simply can't get enough people here to pick the apples, corn, broccoli, and
HATCH CHILIES
in the field. See, e.g.: http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_6763210. I used to think that the farmers just weren't paying enough to attract legal workers, but I am now convinced that isn't the problem. The problem is that the bureaucracy set up to handle seasonal immigrants is so cumbersome that it is nearly impossible to operate and use.
Add this to the travesty of the water in the Arkansas River being diverted from watering the Rocky Ford cantaloupe fields in Southern Colorado to watering the bluegrass lawns of suburban Denver, Colorado and you have a prescription for ruining the agricultural economy. And folks, we cannot abandon our farmers without serious damage to our viability as a nation, not to mention the insecurity of relying on other countries for our food supplies. But I digress.
This has seriously impacted our local food scene. The Rocky Ford melons this year were a mere shadow of their former selves, and the roadside roasted chili season was shockingly short. I got an email from our favorite supplier, who regretted that he would not be bringing any more fresh chilies in, because there was no one to harvest them!
It is a ritual of autumn out here to pass by roadside vendors of Hatch chilies, their pungent aroma drifting out from the rotating barrels roasting them over a gas flame. You take home a plastic bag still warm from the roaster, chop them up (wear gloves!), add some tomatoes (or tomatillos), onion, salt, garlic, and cilantro, and you have salsa as God intended.
I suppose back in the (probably non-existent) heyday of the family farmer, the local kids would all come in and help out with the harvest (as we city kids in Nebraska all detassled corn back in the day) but that just isn't feasible anymore.
At this point the only damage is to my stock of salsa ingredients. In the future, will it be to the price of, or even availability of my food? One free marketer and anti-immigration whako interviewed for the NPR story casually stated that in the future we would just be getting all of our produce from farms across the border in Mexico. Is that really what we want?
Sigh.
Settling for bottled salsa this year,
Annie42
1.
Hmm. Well, here's an easier list. What they do better than us:
1. Health care for all.
2. A sane foreign policy. (Except, of course, that island they keep fighting Denmark over. Even that dispute is conducted in a surprisingly civilized manner. Apparently, they just keep visiting the island periodically, raising their flag, and burying symbolic bottles of brandy. See: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/07/25/hansisland050725.html.)
3. Bilingualism. (So far the country hasn't collapsed into a quivering mass of creme brulee, despite conducting business in both French and English.)
4. A sane foreign worker policy. They have a "seasonal agricultural work visa" designed to attract seasonal workers from Mexico and the Carribean. Apparently, this is working great.
What is not working great is our paranoid, contradictory, and counterproductive seasonal worker policy, which is, in a word, non-existent. Our local paper has run several stories, and we have heard similar stories on NPR and other outlets about similar problems all over the country, that farmers simply can't get enough people here to pick the apples, corn, broccoli, and
HATCH CHILIES
in the field. See, e.g.: http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_6763210. I used to think that the farmers just weren't paying enough to attract legal workers, but I am now convinced that isn't the problem. The problem is that the bureaucracy set up to handle seasonal immigrants is so cumbersome that it is nearly impossible to operate and use.
Add this to the travesty of the water in the Arkansas River being diverted from watering the Rocky Ford cantaloupe fields in Southern Colorado to watering the bluegrass lawns of suburban Denver, Colorado and you have a prescription for ruining the agricultural economy. And folks, we cannot abandon our farmers without serious damage to our viability as a nation, not to mention the insecurity of relying on other countries for our food supplies. But I digress.
This has seriously impacted our local food scene. The Rocky Ford melons this year were a mere shadow of their former selves, and the roadside roasted chili season was shockingly short. I got an email from our favorite supplier, who regretted that he would not be bringing any more fresh chilies in, because there was no one to harvest them!
It is a ritual of autumn out here to pass by roadside vendors of Hatch chilies, their pungent aroma drifting out from the rotating barrels roasting them over a gas flame. You take home a plastic bag still warm from the roaster, chop them up (wear gloves!), add some tomatoes (or tomatillos), onion, salt, garlic, and cilantro, and you have salsa as God intended.
I suppose back in the (probably non-existent) heyday of the family farmer, the local kids would all come in and help out with the harvest (as we city kids in Nebraska all detassled corn back in the day) but that just isn't feasible anymore.
At this point the only damage is to my stock of salsa ingredients. In the future, will it be to the price of, or even availability of my food? One free marketer and anti-immigration whako interviewed for the NPR story casually stated that in the future we would just be getting all of our produce from farms across the border in Mexico. Is that really what we want?
Sigh.
Settling for bottled salsa this year,
Annie42
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