Some of my Best Friends have been Excommunicated Mormons

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because, Mitt Romney | Tags: , , , , | 20 Comments

I keep threatening to take some old DVD tapes of me as an 1980s rabble rousing women’s activist to some place where they can be digitized and sanctified into the Great Eternal Internet Byteland Nirvana. There’s me–barely pregnant–talking motherhood, pregnant teenagers, and teaching with Maya Angelou. There’s me sitting between Betty Friedan and Kate Millet–brokering a cease fire and discussing International Women’s day–about ready to give birth to Doctor Daughter. Then, there’s me, dancing with Sonia Johnson who always said that my music made her weep.

Doctor Daughter is on her way to the big 30 and a big fat Bollywood Wedding next month so it’s on my mind a lot.  It’s been over thirty years since Sonia told me about her life as a Mormon wife.  Wow.  We also have that stanky, regurgitated taste of the Mommy Wars that I thought I’d left behind in Doctor Daughter’s toddlerhood brought back by Willard and wife. That ignites something in me too.  I didn’t leave Doctor Daughter’s side until she was way over the big ONE.  I was a SAHM when I met all these legendary feminists.  But, when Doctor Daughter weaned herself from my breast and took her first steps, I finished my Masters and decided to teach college.  I made decisions for myself.  But again, we’re in an age where men want women that let men make decisions for them.

I have a first edition signed copy of “From Housework to Heretic”. It’s not only signed, it’s inscribed by Sonia Johnson to the very young me. My music made her weep while her story made me scream. The picture that I glued into to the book of us is so early 80s. It’s a reminder of the last days of the fight for the ERA. It reminds me of treks and phone calls to Missouri and Oklahoma.

I have a lot of memories of these days including that of a friend who died not that long ago who had the audacity to marry a Catholic women. He was a mentor and a good friend I met while teaching my first college gig. He’s got a lot in common with Sonia. They both were excommunicated from the LDS church after a life of knowing nothing else.  Yup, some of my best friends were excommunicated Mormons.

I also had Mormon friends in high school.  I remember them as being really wild.  Omaha was the winter stake or some such thing.  The LDS temple was not even a block from my house.  I know it really well because my Mom used to do genealogy research there.  I had to chase her down in their microfiche room frequently and I heard them occasionally attach the title “sister” to her.  Any Mormon woman can tell you what that means. Oh, btw, this is the room where they chased down all those dead relatives who get baptized post-mortem.  Yup, no consent, no conversion, and no compliance is required for that.   That’s the same treatment that Ann Romney gave her outspoken, feisty atheist dad.

When my own mom died, my Dad gave all her research to that LDS church.  I was not a happy camper. I wanted all references and pictures of me removed.  It’s the only thing surrounding my mother’s death that really upsets me.  The thought that any one I loved might be subjected to spiritual kidnapping  gives me the supreme willies.  As my Mom lay dying, I read the verses of the Bardo of Dying and kept thinking that I really hoped the Mormons didn’t try to kidnap our Karma. I’d say “soul” to convey the importance of that to you, but that’s not a Buddhist concept at all.

Because of all of  this, I believe it’s a really big mistake to give Willard Romney a pass on his religion. 

I hate to join the likes of fundie christians, but there it is.  I know excommunicated Mormons.  I also know that any one who really takes this religion seriously should not be setting policy for women and children.  The stories from Sonia that I remember best are the ones about “the voice”.   I’m going to quote from my copy of  From Housewife to Heretic and I want you all to think about this.  It’s the story of a woman that knows male dominance and abuse. This excerpt comes from a point in a senatorial hearing where Senator Birch Bayh asks Ms. Johnson “what percentage of the people within the Mormon church share your views” as a Mormon for the ERA.  Just like today, the sensibilities of equality and civil rights are subject to a man’s personal mythology.

“When Senator Hatch spoke to me, his voice changed. He put on his churchmen’s voice for me–unctuous, condescending; I was not alone hearing it. Several people asked me afterwards whether I had noticed.  Indeed, I  had, and said to myself incredulously at the time, “For heaven’s sake, Sonia. Do you mean to say that men in the church have been speaking to you like that for forty-two years and you’ve never noticed it?” It is incredible how we blind and deafen ourselves so we will not see the truth of how men really feel about us and really treat us.

I suppose the only reason I heard it that day was that such a tone was wildly inappropriate in the marble chambers of the Senate Office Building, so out of place that even I, whose ears had become inured to that insufferably patronizing tone from hearing it since birth, was shocked into awareness.  This was not church, he was not my spiritual superior in this room, and he was not supposed to be functioning as if he were-that is, as if he were a Mormon Male.  But he forgot himself and related to me as pompously and arrogantly as he must have related to women in the church all his life, this style came to him with such ease and naturalness.

At the time, Sonia believed the “churchmen’s voice” had given her a unique power

“Hatch, on the other hand, being the sort of patriarchal male who tends to view women as so much alike that one approach will work for all, prepared to assert in his usually successful ways his innate male superiority.

This faulty judgement always gives women the upper hand when dealing with patriarchs, because such men usually have not developed alternative strategies, and are left defenseless and foolish when their stereotypes fail them–as they are increasingly failing them.

“Mrs. Johnson,” he intoned down his shiny Boy Scout nose, “you must admit that nearly one hundred percent of Mormon women oppose the Equal Rights Amendment.” (Here’s where Bayh allowed the Relief Society sisters from Hatch’s ward and stake to applaud and stomp.)

When the tumult subsided, I replied “oh my goodness, I don’t have to admit that.  It simply isn’t true.”

When one has just been spoke in one’s churchman’s voice, one does not expect to be answered back like that and Hatch, chagrined, began his serious work of intimidation and humiliation.  Ironically, however, the harder he worked, the more ruffled he himself became and the calmer I felt. We began to have a delightfully brisk dialogue–at least, I enjoyed it:

Hatch:  I notice in your letter to the legislature that you had twenty women listed.

Johnson: There were not just women on that list … The point here is that the numbers of adherents have never proved an issue true or false.  You yourself belong to a church of only three million members which purports to be the only true church in the world.  That is a pretty precarious position.

I remember well the role of the LDS church and its corporate cronies–like the Marriott Hotels–and what they did to the ERA.  This Vanity Fair article has been quoted on this blog by Boston Boomer and me.  I’m going to do it again.

The Romneys’ Mormon faith, as Mitt and Ann began their life together, formed a deep foundation. It lay under nearly everything—their acts of charity, their marriage, their parenting, their social lives, even their weekly schedules. Their family-centric lifestyle was a choice; Mitt and Ann plainly cherished time at home with their children more than anything. But it was also a duty. Belonging to the Mormon Church meant accepting a code of conduct that placed supreme value on strong families—strong heterosexual families, in which men and women often filled defined and traditional roles. The Romneys have long cited a well-known Mormon credo popularized by the late church leader David O. McKay: “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”

So, again, what does this personal belief have to do with public office?  Let’s continue with the Vanity Fair article.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is far more than a form of Sunday worship. It is a code of ethics that frowns on homosexuality, out-of-wedlock births, and abortion and forbids pre-marital sex. It offers a robust, effective social safety net, capable of incredible feats of charity, support, and service, particularly when its own members are in trouble. And it works hard to create community, a built-in network of friends who often share values and a worldview. For many Mormons, the all-encompassing nature of their faith, as an extension of their spiritual lives, is what makes belonging to the church so wonderful, so warm, even as its insularity can set members apart from society.

But a dichotomy exists within the Mormon Church, which holds that one is either in or out; there is little or no tolerance for those, like so-called cafeteria Catholics, who pick and choose what doctrines to follow. And in Mormonism, if one is in, a lot is expected, including tithing 10 percent of one’s income, participating regularly in church activities, meeting high moral expectations, and accepting Mormon doctrine—including many concepts, such as the belief that Jesus will rule from Missouri in his Second Coming, that run counter to those of other Christian faiths. That rigidity can be difficult to abide for those who love the faith but chafe at its strictures or question its teachings and cultural habits. For one, Mormonism is male-dominated—women can serve only in certain leadership roles and never as bishops or stake presidents. The church also makes a number of firm value judgments, typically prohibiting single or divorced men from leading wards and stakes, for example, and not looking kindly upon single parenthood.

The portrait of Romney that emerges from those he led and served with in the church is of a leader who was pulled between Mormonism’s conservative core views and practices and the demands from some quarters within the Boston stake for a more elastic, more open-minded application of church doctrine. Romney was forced to strike a balance between those local expectations and the dictates out of Salt Lake City. Some believe that he artfully reconciled the two, praising him as an innovative and generous leader who was willing to make accommodations, such as giving women expanded responsibility, and who was always there for church members in times of need. To others, he was the product of a hidebound, patriarchal Mormon culture, inflexible and insensitive in delicate situations and dismissive of those who didn’t share his perspective.

So, the question I pose is which etcha-sketch Romney POV is the one that would be president?  Personally, I do not care what Romney does in his temples, his many houses, or his car elevator.   All I know is I do not want to hear that churchman’s voice coming from behind a podium with the Presidential Seal.

Paul Ryan Claims Jesus Supported Small Government; Catholic Bishops Disagree

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: hunger, poverty, religion, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

Paul Ryan's God?

Yesterday, NPR’s Morning Edition reported on a “debate among Christians” about whether Jesus believed in helping the poor.

After the House passed its budget last month, liberal religious leaders said the Republican plan, which lowered taxes and cut services to the poor, was an affront to the Gospel — and particularly Jesus’ command to care for the poor.

Not so, says Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, who chairs the House Budget Committee. He told Christian Broadcasting Network last week that it was his Catholic faith that helped shape the budget plan. In his view, the Catholic principle of subsidiarity suggests the government should have little role in helping the poor.

“Through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities — through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community — that’s how we advance the common good,” Ryan said.

The best thing that government can do, he said, is get out of the way.

Can you believe NPR’s religion reporter actually pretended there is a legitimate “debate” about this?

Today the Catholic Bishops indicated they think Jesus believed in helping actual living people–not just zygotes, embryos, and fetuses.

The Hill reports that the Bishops have so far sent letters to the House Agriculture and Ways and Means Committees and they also plan to send letters to other House committees as well, because they believe the budget “disproportionately cut[s] programs that ‘serve poor and vulnerable people.'”

The Bishops are particularly concerned about the budget’s draconian cuts in food stamps and child tax credits for immigrants–programs that help needy families stave off starvation. According to The Hill, the letters appear to be in response to recent comments made by Paul Ryan, who claims to be a Catholic.

“A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, told the Christian Broadcasting Network.

“So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person,” Ryan said.

Ryan made a moral case for his budget, saying that the government shouldn’t be responsible for lifting its citizens out of poverty — rather, that it’s the obligation of the citizens themselves to be society’s caretakers.
 


“Those principles are very, very important,” Ryan said. “And the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenants of Catholic social teaching, means don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life, help people get out of poverty, out into a life of independence.”

Maybe Ryan should try reading the New Testament instead of Atlas Shrugged. Here’s one quote from Jesus:

Luke 6:20-21 Then he looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. ‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

I couldn’t find any quotes from Jesus about small government and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Anyone know any of those?

ALEC Announces It Will No Longer Focus on Social Issues

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: American Gun Fetish, Breaking News, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, fundamentalist Christians, Human Rights, legislation, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

ALEC has sent out a press release announcing a very significant change in its organizational structure and goals. The headline: ALEC Sharpens Focus on Jobs, Free Markets and Growth — Announces the End of the Task Force that Dealt with Non-Economic Issues. Here’s the gist:

“We are refocusing our commitment to free-market, limited government and pro-growth principles, and have made changes internally to reflect this renewed focus.

“We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy. The remaining budgetary and economic issues will be reassigned….

“Our free-market, limited government, pro-growth policies are the reason ALEC enjoys the support of legislators on both sides of the aisle and in all 50 states. ALEC members are interested in solutions that put the American economy back on track. This is our mission, and it is what distinguishes us.”

Except those really aren’t the reasons ALEC was founded. The brains behind ALEC were Paul Weyrich, who also founded the Heritage Foundation and joined with Jerry Falwell to found Moral Majority, and other right wing legislators focused on social issues like Henry Hyde.

One of the first to envision fusing the conservative movement with evangelicals, he and the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority as well. In fact, Weyrich coined the phrase the “moral majority”. No believer in majority rule, he said: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” His statement was a harbinger to ALEC’s later very dogged voter suppression activities. “Recently Voter ID legislation based on ALEC’s template was introduced in states across the country and passed in at least fourteen states,” under the guise of preventing election fraud.

So voter suppression was part of the organization’s charter, apparently.

ALEC’s model legislation has been instrumental in the explosive growth of the prison population. It helped pioneer “three strikes” laws, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws, which serve to abolish or curb parole so converts are made to serve the entire length of their sentence. “Because of truth-in-sentencing and other tough sentencing measures, state prison populations grew by half a million inmates in the 1990s even while crime rates fell dramatically.” In fact, one of ALEC’s benefactors, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), made an offer to cash- strapped states to buy up their prison populations at a cost savings as long as the state kept their prisons 90 percent filled to capacity.

And of course ALEC was behind the Stand Your Ground laws that have become such a big issue since the Trayvon Martin shooting.

And now ALEC is dropping this part of their agenda. This is a huge victory for anyone who care about human rights.

Tuesday Morning Reads

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Republican presidential politics, the internet, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, War on Women | Tags: , , , | 33 Comments

Good Morning!!

The Villagers have returned from their two-week Easter vacation, so there’s a bit more news today than we have had recently.

First up, I want to call attention to an important series of articles the UK Guardian will be running all week on the “Battle for the Internet.” There will be a major story every day this week:

Over seven days

The Guardian is taking stock of the new battlegrounds for the internet. From states stifling dissent to the new cyberwar front line, we look at the challenges facing the dream of an open internet

Day 1: the new cold war
China may have the world’s most internet-savvy government but Beijing has been struggling to keep a lid on bold social networks, writes Tania Branigan

Day two: the militarisation of cyberspace
Internet attacks on sovereign targets are no longer a fear for the future, but a daily threat. We ask: will the next big war be fought online?

Day three: the new walled gardens
For many, the internet is now essentially Facebook. Others find much of their online experience is mediated by Apple or Amazon. Why are the walls going up around the web garden, and does it matter?

Day four: IP wars
Intellectual property, from copyrights to patents, have been an internet battlefield from the start. We look at what Sopa, Pipa and Acta really mean, and explain how this battle is not over. Plus, Clay Shirky will be discussing the issues in a live Q&A

Day five: ‘civilising’ the web
In the UK, the ancient law of defamation is increasingly looking obsolete in the Twitter era. Meanwhile, in France, President Sarkozy believes the state can tame the web

Day six: the open resistance
Meet the activists and entrepreneurs who are working to keep the internet open

Day seven: the end of privacy
Hundreds of websites know vast amounts about their users’ behaviour, personal lives and connections with each other. Find out who knows what about you, and what they use the information for

Be sure to check out this interview with one of Google’s founders: Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google’s Sergey Brin

Next up, lots of news coming out of Columbia, where President Obama participated in the Summit of the Americas. It didn’t go well. Reuters:

President Barack Obama sat patiently through diatribes, interruptions and even the occasional eye-ball roll at the weekend Summit of the Americas in an effort to win over Latin American leaders fed up with U.S. policies.

He failed.

The United States instead emerged from the summit in Colombia increasingly isolated as nearly 30 regional heads of state refused to sign a joint declaration in protest against the continued exclusion of communist-led Cuba from the event.

The rare show of unity highlights the steady decline of Washington’s influence in a region that has become less dependent on U.S. trade and investment thanks economic growth rates that are the envy of the developed world and new opportunities with China.

Obama also certified the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement which will take effect on May 15, despite Colombia’s continuing human rights violations including the murder of labor leaders. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the decision “deeply disappointing and troubling.

Leaders of national labor organizations in Colombia joined Trumka in opposing today’s announcement, saying:

[T]he underlying trade agreement perpetuates a destructive economic model that expands the rights and privileges of big business and multinational corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, and the environment. The agreement uses a model that has historically benefitted a small minority of business interests, while leaving workers, families, and communities behind.

In April 2011, the U.S. and Colombia agreed to an Action Plan on Labor Rights intended to “protect internationally recognized labor rights, prevent violence against labor leaders, and prosecute the perpetrators of such violence” in Colombia. Although the Action Plan includes some measures that Colombian unions and the AFL-CIO have been demanding for years, its scope was too limited: it resolved neither the grave violations of union freedoms or human rights.

Some two dozen Colombian trade union leaders were killed last year alone, and an AFL-CIO report released last fall found that the Action Plan, which was billed as a major step to ending violence against trade unionists and protecting the right of workers to come together in unions “has failed to achieve improvements on the ground for Colombia’s working families.”

And then there was the Secret Service scandal, which keeps on getting worse. The latest from the WaPo:

A probe into the alleged misconduct of nearly a dozen U.S. Secret Service agents has expanded to include more than five military personnel, Defense Department officials said Monday, as the scandal that erupted during President Obama’s trip to Colombia last week put high-level officials on the defensive.

A preliminary investigation by the Defense Department, which included a review of video from hotel security cameras, found that more military personnel than initially thought might have been involved with the Secret Service in the carousing at the center of the probe. Already, 11 Secret Service agents have been placed on leave amid allegations they entertained prostitutes, potentially one of the most serious lapses at the organization in years.

The charges are triggering scrutiny of the culture of the Secret Service — where married agents have been heard to joke during aircraft takeoff that their motto is “wheels up, rings off” — and raising new questions at both the agency and the Pentagon about institutional oversight at the highest levels of the president’s security apparatus.

There’s a lot more detail in that article. Ron Kessler, who used to work for the WaPo and now writes for NewsMax (is that a comedown or a horizontal move?) says the head of the Secret Service should be fired.

Ron Kessler, the author who broke the Secret Service prostitution story in the Washington Post over the weekend, has been making the morning talk-show rounds, saying the director of the agency should be fired after agents were alleged to have solicited local prostitutes ahead of President Obama’s trip to Colombia.

“This is the worst scandal in the history of the Secret Service,” Kessler said on NBC’s “Today” show on Monday. “The Secret Service, under Mark Sullivan, has gone from one debacle to another.”

The only scandal that comes close to this one, Kessler said on CNN, was in 2009, when Tareq and Michaele Salahi crashed the state dinner at the White House.

“It goes back to a culture of laxness in the Secret Service,” Kessler said. “Corner cutting. Just a lax attitude which contributes to this kind of thing.”

Funny, I would have thought that Secret Service agents getting drunk the night before the JFK assassination and then not doing much to protect him would have been the worst scandal, but what do I know?

Now that Congress is back in session, the Senate didn’t waste any time dumping the President’s proposed “Buffet Rule” that would have made millionaires pay something resembling a fair share of taxes.

By a near party-line 51-45 tally, senators voted to keep the bill alive but fell nine votes short of the 60 needed to continue debating the measure. The anti-climactic outcome was no surprise to anyone in a vote that was designed more to win over voters and embarrass senators in close races than to push legislation into law.

At the White House, Obama denounced the vote, saying Republicans chose “once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few Americans at the expense of the middle class.” In a statement issued after the vote, he said he would keep pressing Congress to help the middle class.

Another victory on the road to serfdom.

And of course there’s the new media meme: because of a poorly worded remark by Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, the Republican War on Women is over and the Democrats have declared a War on Motherhood.

Never mind that the War on Women is real–based on horrible Republican anti-abortion, anti-family planning, anti-Planned Parenthood policies that have been implemented in state legislatures around the country. Never mind that the “War on Motherhood” is based on hysterical pearl-clutching by cynical Romney campaign strategists. The media has swallowed the fairly tale bait hook, line, and sinker.

And so the horrendous insult to poor little Ann Romney was a prime topic on the Sunday news shows. Meet the Press’s idiot host David Gregory had a whole panel discussion on it. Naturally Charlie Pierce had a great writeup on that yesterday.

the panel, which included my man Chuck Todd and complete political failure Harold Ford, Jr., was talking about Hilary Rosen and hookers. Savannah Guthrie said that the Obama administration moved so quickly to distance themselves from Hilary Rosen, Warrior Queen Of All Liberals:

In some ways it had the equal and opposite effect. They worked so hard to disown Hilary Rosen that you almost felt, well, they must own her, they must be allied with her. It didn’t betray a lot of confidence about their position with women.

See that rock at your feet? Pick it up. Throw it as far as you can. Remember, though, the farther you throw it away, the closer it is to hitting you in the head. Savannah Guthrie, Theoretical Physicist. (Later, she talked about how the administration wanted to draw a line in the sand so that “six months from now,” if somebody said something about Michelle Obama etc. etc. Six months from now? Has Guthrie been on Tuvalu for three years?) My head was descending rapidly toward my desk when Harold Ford chimed in, and it accelerated downward faster than it ever has before. Harold liked very much what his nutty former colleague said about how stay-at-home moms are more attuned to the economy than they are the attempts by a bunch of white men to make sure there’s a little more mommin’ to be done while they stay at home. It’s truly hard to believe that, in a Democratic wave election, the people of Tennessee rejected this titan….

“I thought Michele Bachmann, whom I don’t often agree with, made some pretty valid points. This issue here is more powerful in some ways that the conversation about contraception… No one goes around talking about that. People go around talking about raising their kids. Wome are insulted if you say if they stay at home instead of working then something’s different about them.

It is important to remember that these people wouldn’t even be discussing a whopping 19-point gender gap if it weren’t for Republican attempts to control the unauthorized use of ladyparts, the Dildos Mandating Dildos legislation in the various states, and all that other stuff that Harold Ford, Jr. says women don’t talk about.

Sorry about the long quote, but I just had to use that whole section. It’s perfect!

Anyway, as everyone knows by now, the Romneys blew it bigtime by talking too loud at a $50,000-a-plate fund raiser in Palm Beach. They didn’t realize the press could hear them when they gloated about what a great “gift” Hilary Rosen had given them.

Mrs. Romney acknowledged Republicans’ deficit at present with female voters, and urged the women in attendance to talk to their friends, particularly about the economy. She also discussed the criticism she faced this week, and her pride in her role as a mother.

“It was my early birthday present for someone to be critical of me as a mother, and that was really a defining moment, and I loved it,” Mrs. Romney said.

Gov. Romney went further in engaging the so-called “war on moms” that followed in the media — upon which his campaign has been aggressively fundraising — calling it a “gift” that allowed his campaign to show contrast with Democrats in the general election’s first week.

Um…no one was critical of you as a mother, Ann.

But maybe it wasn’t such a “gift” after all, because women voters are apparently not as stupid as the Romneys think they are. According to a CNN poll taken two days after Rosen dropped her bomblet and the the Republicans took to the fainting couch, Obama still leads among women by 16 points and he is even ahead among men by 3 points.

But the Romneys still think they won something, and they’re using it to raise money with a new video in which Romney waxes as poetic as a robot can about his beloved wife Ann. For the brave souls among us, here’s the Romney campaign’s “Happy Birthday, Mom” video. Don’t watch it unless you have a strong stomach and normal blood sugar levels.

As an antidote, please read this NYT op-ed by Nancy Folbre, an economist from U. Mass. Amherst on the real meaning of the gender gap.

Those are my suggested reads for today. What are yours?

Monday Night Feel Good News

Posted: April 16, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Good Evening!! It’s a long weekend here in Massachusetts. Today is Patriots Day, which commemorates the beginning of the American Revolution on April 19, 1776. It’s also the day of the Boston Marathon, which I guess didn’t go so well since it was almost 90 degrees here. Anyway, in honor of the holiday, I thought I’d post some feel good news for a change.

I read a wonderfully touching story at BBC News yesterday that I just had to share. It’s about a little boy who got lost 26 years ago and how as an adult he was able to locate his mom using Google Earth.

Saroo was only five years old when he got lost. He was travelling with his older brother, working as a sweeper on India’s trains. “It was late at night. We got off the train, and I was so tired that I just took a seat at a train station, and I ended up falling asleep.”

That fateful nap would determine the rest of his life. “I thought my brother would come back and wake me up but when I awoke he was nowhere to be seen. I saw a train in front of me and thought he must be on that train. So I decided to get on it and hoped that I would meet my brother.”

Saroo did not meet his brother on the train. Instead, he fell asleep and had a shock when he woke up 14 hours later. Though he did not realise it at first, he had arrived in Calcutta, India’s third biggest city and notorious for its slums.

I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for a little five-year-old boy! But somehow Saroo found the courage and strength to survive on the street. He learned how to beg in order to survive–and how to keep himself safe. Eventually Saroo ended up in an orphanage and then was adopted by a couple from Australia.

It sounds like he was happy with his adoptive parents, but as he grew older Saroo had a strong urge to find his original family. He didn’t even know the name of the town where he was born so using his early childhood memories he searched Google Earth for familiar landmarks.

“I multiplied the time I was on the train, about 14 hours, with the speed of Indian trains and I came up with a rough distance, about 1,200km.”

He drew a circle on a map with its centre in Calcutta, with its radius about the distance he thought he had travelled. Incredibly, he soon discovered what he was looking for: Khandwa. “When I found it, I zoomed down and bang, it just came up. I navigated it all the way from the waterfall where I used to play.”

When he got to Khandwa, Saroo was able to use his memories to find his way to his childhood home; but when he got there he found the house abandoned. Fortunately neighbors remembered his family and were able to tell him where his mother lived and they were reunited.

The heartbreaking part of the story is that Saroo’s brother had been killed on that night in 1986, which explains why the five-year-old Saroo was left in the train station alone.

“A month after I had disappeared my brother was found in two pieces on a railway track.” His mother had never known whether foul play was involved or whether the boy had simply slipped and fallen under a train.

“We were extremely close and when I walked out of India the tearing thing for me was knowing that my older brother had passed away.”

Life is so strange sometimes.

Have you heard about the 750-pound cow that escaped from a slaughterhouse in Paterson, New Jersey and tore up the town?

The wild scene began shortly after 8 p.m. after the black-and-white cow apparently slipped away unnoticed from a slaughterhouse on River Street, [animal control officer John] De Cando said….

The cow ran up and down Presidential Boulevard, spent some time at a basketball court, then continued on River Street, crossing the Arch Street Bridge and wading into the Passaic River.

“It was like Dodge City,” De Cando said. “You had five police cars on one side of the street, five on the other and the 750-pound cow looking both ways. When the opportunity came, it booked between the police cars.”

De Cando finally got close enough to tranquilize the cow twice. The cow, which was trapped between a fire hydrant and a truck, began snoring as a crowd gathered.

I’m cheering for that cow. De Cando said the Slaughterhouse owner said he would take the cow to a farm instead of killing her; but an animal rights activist named Mike Stura decided to take matters into his own hands.

The brave cow who managed to escape from the perils of a Paterson, New Jersey slaughterhouse has found sanctuary and received a heartwarming bovine fairytale thanks to an upstate New York man.

Animal rights advocate Mike Stura rescued the 750-pound cow and guided it to a Woodstock, New York animal sanctuary where as Stura put, “He’ll never end up on someone’s plate, that’s for sure.”

That’s great, Mike, but I’m pretty sure the courageous cow is a “she,” not a “he.”

I’ve got one more heartwarming animal story. At least I found it heartwarming. On Friday, a Magellanic penguin at the St. Louis Zoo demonstrated its good taste by biting Newt Gingrich.

At least one penguin at the St. Louis Zoo appears to be a feisty opponent of Newt Gingrich.

The Republican presidential candidate is sporting a small bandage on his finger after getting nipped by a small penguin during his tour of the zoo on Friday. Gingrich was in St. Louis to speak during the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting.

Maybe that penguin is a supporter of gun control.

Finally, I love the story about the bit of sci-fi speculation by Robert Breslaw, “a very distinguished chemist at Columbia, a National Medal of Science winner, and former president of the American Chemical Society” (ACS).

Last week, the ACS sent out a press release that headlined: “Could ‘advanced’ dinosaurs rule other planets?” Whoever wrote the press release had pulled the headline from a humorous note from the end of Breslaw’s very serious scientific paper:

After suggesting that early meteorites may have seeded a pre-life earth with chiral amino acids, Dr. Robert Breslow ends this paper with this flight of fancy:

An 
implication 
from
 this 
work 
is 
that 
elsewhere 
in 
the 
universe 
there 
could 
be 
life 
forms 
based
 on 
D 
amino 
acids 
and 
L 
sugars, 
depending 
on 
the 
chirality 
of 
circular 
polarized
 light 
in
 that 
sector 
of 
the universe or 
whatever 
other 
process 
operated 
to 
favor 
the 
L
α‐methyl 
amino acids 
in 
the 
meteorites 
that 
have landed
 on Earth. 

Such 
life 
forms 
could 
well 
be 
advanced 
versions 
of 
dinosaurs, 
if 
mammals 
did 
not 
have the good
 fortune 
to 
have 
the 
dinosaurs 
wiped 
out 
by 
an 
asteroidal 
collision,
 as 
on 
Earth. 

We 
would 
be 
better 
off not 
meeting 
them.

All the science blogs are in an uproar about this, but I thought it was funny–and a great idea for a horror movie. Hey all you chemists out there–get a sense of humor, will you?

Have you heard any feel good news lately?

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