And of course everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist of my type warns his juniors against. He warns them against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. But one of this trio will be enough to deal with today. The Devil, I shall leave strictly alone. The association between him and me in the public mind has already gone quite as deep as I wish: in some quarters it has already reached the level of confusion, if not of identification. I begin to realize the truth of the old proverb that he who sups with that formidable host needs a long spoon. As for the Flesh, you must be very abnormal young people if you do not know quite as much about it as I do. But on the World I think I have something to say.

Which is:

Snobbery is not the same thing as pride of class. Pride of class may not please us but we must at least grant that it reflects a social function. A man who exhibited class pride – in the day when it was possible to do so – may have been puffed up about what he was, but this ultimately depended on what he did. Thus, aristocratic pride was based ultimately on the ability to fight and administer. No pride is without fault, but pride of class may be thought of as today we think of pride of profession, toward which we are likely to be lenient.

Snobbery is pride in status without pride in function. And it is an uneasy pride of status. It always asks, “Do I belong – do I really belong? And does he belong? And if I am observed talking to him, will it make me seem to belong or not to belong?” It is the peculiar vice not of aristocratic societies which have their own appropriate vices, but of bourgeois democratic societies. . . .

The characteristic work of the novel is to record the illusion that snobbery generates and to try to penetrate to the truth which, as the novel assumes, lies hidden beneath all the false appearances. Money, snobbery, the ideal of status, these become in themselves the objects of fantasy, the support of the fantasies of love, freedom, charm, power, as in Madame Bovary, whose heroine is the sister, at a three-centuries remove, of Don Quixote. The greatness of Great Expectations begins in its title: modern society bases itself on great expectations which, if ever they are realized, are found to exist by reason of a sordid, hidden reality.

From Lionel Trilling’s 1947 essay “Manners, Morals, and the Novel.”

My thanks to http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/

and to Tolstoy, for his writing which inspired C. S. Lewis to warn:

The lust for the esoteric, the longing to be inside, take many forms which are not easily recognizable as Ambition. We hope, no doubt, for tangible profits from every Inner Ring we penetrate: power, money, liberty to break rules, avoidance of routine duties, evasion of discipline. But all these would not satisfy us if we did not get in addition the delicious sense of secret intimacy. It is no doubt a great convenience to know that we need fear no official reprimands from our official senior because he is old Percy, a fellow-member of our ring. But we don't value the intimacy only for the sake of convenience; quite equally we value the convenience as a proof of the intimacy.

My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it-this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment, and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care.

The entire essay is at http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/archives/025484.html

I was looking over my teaching evaluations from when I taught at SMU. The first class I taught, my so-called "normed" evaluations (think of figure skating or gymnastics -- subtract the high and the low score and average the rest) came to 8.3 on a scale of 1-9. The second class came back at 8.6. The best part about the second class's evaluations is that the raw scores were 57% nines and there were no evaluations below an eight. As a result, my overall average was about 8.5.

The key was that I made adjustments. Even with only two weeks to prepare and an accelerated schedule (I was teaching six classroom hours a week on the second class) -- and even billing 42+ hours a week as an attorney at the same time -- I was able to teach health care dispute resolution to a class including hospital administrators, Ph.D., MDs, JDs, health care consultants and graduate social workers. Viewed against a program faculty that averaged 3.5 on evaluations (a topic that came up at the last faculty meeting I attended before the program retrenched), I can look back and still be pleased.

The class outline is here: http://adrr.com/smu/health/index.htm

One thing that evaluations drove home to me, and that was highlighted in discussions about evaluations with other people teaching in the program, is that if you listen to feedback and adjust, you will get better. If you don't listen, but discount it as wrong or misunderstood, you will not improve. There is always a reason for the way people react to you, and usually it is something within your control (at least to change). The big thing for me was the number of people who felt my organization was only "ok" (well, 7 out of 9) in the first class. That class was tightly organized, but I obviously did not communicate the organization. I let the structure display itself a little more in the second class and was rewarded by the class responding.

The important lesson that reminded me to learn again was that when there is a problem, even if only a relative one, the right response is to ask yourself what solution will work rather than fighting with the message. Learn from the message, don't fight with it.

Next post I might talk about http://www.adrr.com/adr4/ppp.htm and related matters, but I need to spend some more time learning right now.

I was talking with a friend of mine, Nyle Smith, about life and the things it does to you. Nyle has survived a number of strokes. He was on the faculty at Lewis & Clark Law School before the strokes derailed his life. Nyle is now disabled, but still wise. I try to drop by to see him when I'm in Portland visiting family and we talk from time to time. I'm hoping that some day he will be able to blog.

One thing that I realized while talking with him is that I've always had good things to say about places where I've worked. He suggested that much of why I find good is that I do my best to make places better.

That came up as we discussed last firm. Before I came on board, it used to have more than 100% turnover (mostly staff and associates). Yet, for the almost four years I was there, turnover was down to about 10%. Talking to one of my ex-partners after I left, I discovered that turnover was at 100% or so the year after I left.

Nyle suggested that perhaps my job history of dramatically slowed turnover in each job I've had was not just my good luck in being in the right place at the right time my entire life, but perhaps something I was bringing to the table as well. He snorted at me and suggested I take credit for making a difference.

What he had to say reminded me of my first secretary at my employment when I brought another summary judgment back in and I passed it off as just more good luck. She snorted at me and suggested that luck might have made the difference once or twice, but after five or six I ought to consider that part of it might be me. I thought of her when I talked to Nyle and he said the same thing.

Nyle gave me some good perspective, which he always does. I appreciate his faith and endurance and good example. Not to mention, what he had to say was a good remember to give myself credit and to remind others to do the same -- to give themselves credit.

After all, much of life in recovering from grief is owning life and giving yourself credit, accepting joy and sharing it. Owning life and accepting the good things in it is a lesson to be learned and shared over and over again, and yesterday was a good reminder.

Thanks Nyle.

One thing I really admired about Roark, besides his choice of wife, was the grace, love and kindness he showed his mother.

Too often families fail to follow God's advice to honor the relationship. I was glad to see that he did.

Too often grief and loss only feeds the divisions we feel rather than causing us to heal them. That is why so many couples divorce when a child dies, instead of surviving together.

picture

I've probably blogged more than enough about Roark. I'll respect his privacy to the rest. Much like I do with my co-workers (I like them, I like my job, I've had a great year, but nothing there fits within the scope of why I am posting) or my ward (other than the fact that everyone in our congregation likes our bishop -- which is a little unusual -- there isn't much to say about going to Church that is different for us than anyone else) there is little that fits within the scope of grief, loss and recovery that touches any of those parts of my life.

Picture of me at maintenance

Not the best, part of a bunch of photos we took of my daughter having fun with a large shipping box.

But, it is how I look on maintenance.

I've aged the date so I can import the picture to share, without it clogging up my blog.

I'll smile next time (I usually do, I was just, you know).

Roark and Katelynn had a wonderful marriage in Soquel, California. I've always had a fond spot in my heart for Roark (he's one of my nephews). He and Katelynn have been together since they were thirteen, he's now in grad school at MIT, and, as his brother Ben pointed out, it was time. And a wonderful time it was.

Win got called in to do a liver transplant tonight, so as I sit here just back from vacation, thinking about weddings and I how I love her, she is at work and not here. Speaking of Win, I've now gotten to see her brain (via watching a cat scan in real time) and it is as pretty as the rest of her. She was pretty bad off, but it was just food poisoning, potassium driven down below three, and an inner ear infection, all coming together. Gave us all a scare, but the ER folks were kind, though they sent me an orderly the size of Rachel. Luckily Win doesn't weigh that much, so I picked her up and put her in the wheel chair to take her in. She was clamped up and unable to walk at that point.

But, this visit to California was a good one, though we are all glad to be back in Texas and to have our house back from the Wichita Falls refugee who stayed in it last week.

Too much to write about.

But who we marry says a lot about us, and who Roark married says good things about him.

Though California is a funny place. Met a Seminary teacher out there who defined a student who really "got it" as one who decided against going on a mission and became completely secular. They have different goals and ideas out there.

Guess two more notes.

In Africa, some of the wards had the sisters blessing and passing the sacrament (the men tend to delegate anything that looks like work). It was pointed out to them that the sacrament is a priesthood responsibility. Next visit, the women handled the sacrament again. When the visiting authority asked, the bishop assured him that it was ok this time, they had ordained all the sisters to the Aaronic priesthood. Nothing was done at the time, I don't know if anything has happened since. Interesting that ordination to the priesthood was treated as a step down in status, rather than a step up for the sisters.

In one of the temples there was an effort to have the position of sealer restricted to only those who had been stake presidents. The only comment that was made was that perhaps the position should be restricted to only those who have served missions.

So many ways to look at things, so little time.

I am off to a wedding in California. If you need me, call the house, once again we have people staying here for a bit. I should be blogging again by October 15th or so.

For the newsletter I do, visit mediation newsletters.

Everyone has my best wishes.

I have a guest post at Millennial Star: What do Prophets Teach Us.

I hope people like it.

I've seen a number of very hostile e-mails about the refugees. But I've also met people who dealt with refugees in person.

The true story is that close to 100% of the refugees are kind and grateful. Over and over and over again that is the story I'm getting from people who have actually met a refugee or engaged in service or staffed a shelter or a clinic or done something else.

The sad thing is how the media fueled the disgust many Americans feel towards people who do not deserve it.

Do you know how many murders there were in the Superbowl?

None.

Not one. Not a single one.

How many gunshot wounds?

One. Bless his heart, a National Guardsman shot himself by mistake after all the refugees were out and they were doing a sweep to collect all the dead bodies.

If the media coverage had not been so hateful the evacution of the Superbowl would have taken place a day earlier, but the Guard delayed a day in order to have sufficient force to handle the anticipated violent crowd.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

...

"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ... Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

...

"These people - our people - did nothing wrong," said Sherry Watters of the state Department of Social Services, who was working with the medical unit at the Dome and noted the crowd's mounting frustration. "No human should have to live like that for even a minute."

By Brian Thevenot
and Gordon Russell
Staff writers

Thought I should say something to add to what those writers said.

The truth needs to be repeated sometimes.

For those worried because I'm in Texas (I just got two calls tonight), Dallas is five hours (without any traffic slowdowns) from Galveston (we used to go every year for the 4th of July) and four hours from the North edge of Houston. Usually we don't even see rain from this sort of weather, though we are hoping.

And, the local wards are all making lists of places available for refugees to sleep and spend a night or two before they go back home.

I may not be ok, but if not, it has nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with spending too long looking out a window at Jessica's favorite place to go in Fort Worth. That was a long day yesterday.

I've submitted a guest post over at Nine Moons. I'll be interested to see if they decide to use it or not.

While waiting, 100 best movie quotes can get you off and running and thinking. 100 best quotes, things like "I can tell you would rather die than pay tithing" and the like. Yes, I especially like metaquotes which are quotes as we have inherited them, not as they were spoken.

An interesting discussion on oil and the future at Ozarque's the on-line presence of the author of The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense.

Blogs used to be "web logs" -- logs of places people had been on the web. The number one blog at the ecosystem still is that type of log. In the Bloggernacle, what we have is computer generated web logs -- but no human ones.

Too bad, but it is a sign that we, like most others, have expanded past the original roots.

Recently the EAC list that my wife participates in had a discussion about a foster home for autistic kids that kept the kids in brightly colored crates at night. Win's comment was:

We had considered changing a crib to an upside down position for our children. They all started climbing out of their cribs at about 8 to 10 months of age. They could walk, they could climb, they could get into all kinds of trouble. But they were young enough not to be able to understand any sort of direction.

Courtney used to like to climb up our closet organizer and leave one shoe on the top shelf -- just 8 inched from the ceiling. It was her way of letting me know that she had been up there.

She used to leave crayon marks on the playroom ceiling. I never could figure out how those got up there.

Jessica liked to get herself up onto the toilet, use the toilet paper holder as a foot hold and use it to boost herself over into the sink. Then she could play with the faucets. She was 8 to 9 months old. She also figured out how to open up the frig and search for the container of whipping cream.

We did try a net over the top of one child's crib. It appeared to be more of a health hazard than any sort of prevention so it didn't last more than a day. I do like the big screen idea Russ mentioned.. It would be like a huge terrarium.

About the article, it all depends on the children and their particular issues. Autistic children can lay in bed and bang their heads into the wall or the side boards for hours. They can get head injuries. ...

Just thinking about our girls and bright colors. Hope the other children are ok, but I miss our girls.

bye
qiihoskeh
2005-09-12 04:48 )
Suzette,
"defriending"
nothing personal,
I just can't stand all the greedy predatory (additional adjectives omitted) wrong wing "Republicans" and "Libertarians", may they and the Devil they worship suffer endless torment (details also omitted) for at least a billon eons -- they deserve worse. My sincere desire is to remove them permanently from the gene pool. I know you're dedicated to non-violence and can't agree.

Personally, I prefer to hear both sides of the story. I'm not interested in joining Pol Pot or those on the other end of the spectrum. I'm not interested in the free market anarchy of Albania.

I often find those I really disagree with can teach me something, from Brian Leiter to others.

I don't believe, as qiihoskeh appears to believe, that Republicans or Democrats or Marxists or Libertarians are headed to hell or worship the Devil, I've met too many good people of all kinds.

Not that a great deal of harm is not done, sometimes, by people of good intent, but without an interplay, without appreciating that many have good intent, we can not reach them and our violence only serves to transform us into the demons we think we face.

I admire true pacifists such as Dr. Suzette Haden Elgin or the Anti-Nephi-Lehites. I belive that Christ told the truth when he said "Blessed are the Peacemakers."

And, I believe with all my heart that I do not have all the answers, but that I know some of the right questions, and that by listening, I can learn more.

Just something light and happy for today. We had some friends over for dinner, and after dinner, when it was time for dessert, I asked our five year old to bring the ice cream from the refrigerator to me.

She opened the door, looked in and said "mm, mmm, mm. my day has come." I'd never heard her use that phrase before and she was just so delighted. It was a great moment (especially, since when I asked her about it she said "well daddy, I meant my moment had come, not my day had come."

It was like a beam of light breaking out of the sky to watch her be so happy, for us and our guests.

Labor Day weekend was great. Alison came down with Frank and her kids and spent the night and then Monday the Prince family came over. All we needed was the Greens to make it perfect (or at least a perfect Wichita Falls reunion).

"Real" mental illness is, in many ways, worse than grief, at least as far as I can tell. With grief, even overwhelming grief you've got severe disability for a few years (usually 1-3) and then modest disability for a few more (3-5) and then lingering pain and memories that people come to terms with (no, they never "get over it," but they do reach terms with themselves and God).

But mental illness, the real kind (and I'm using "Real" above to emphasize that it is real rather than as "scare quotes" to diminish it) continues without benchmarks and often without clear resolutions.

Sure, you can do some things. You can get aerobic exercise, if nothing else, sneaking off to a local university or school track and running for forty or fifty minutes a day. You can regulate your sleep and engage in cognitive therapy.

But the medication is usually not perfect (they all have side effects), your body changes as you age (so what worked last year, may need to be adjusted next year) and the very problem you are trying to deal with robs you of the ability to deal with it.

Grief is rough, and it can break coping mechanisms (usually, each child that dies breaks a method of coping, lose two or three and you can be a mess), but physiologically based mental illness can rob you of all your coping mechanisms.

On the other hand, especially in the modern world and in the United States, there is real hope of a kind that the world never had before.

---

Someone noticed that I posted about the baby Dallas matter (there is more than one) and other things *after* they were in the local newspaper and the only details I had were the reflections on my own life.

Well, my wife worked those nights, but she doesn't talk. So I post about the things I know. Sorry I don't have details.

---

If you have some free energy, drop by The Celibate Blog or Pie Polar Bear and leave them a kind word and say a prayer for them.

In times of great disasters people always want to know what they can do. The answer is simple: you can find a person and help them. One person at a time you can help people.

Peace and grace attend you.

Another baby born tonight, her one year old sibling was floated out of New Orleans in a bucket.

Poor mother was in pre-term labor, brought on by too much stress, too many days and nights in the Superbowl. Her story reminded us all of the flood on Featherstone when Win left as the water reached three foot deep, with Jessica and a bucket, and came to my office (on the 5th floor) to wait it out.

We named our next child Heather, but so many here are naming their children "Dallas."

We've a flood of them coming in from New Orleans, except we greet them with much more love and kindness, a flood of new life instead of a flood of death.

With all their suffering, only compassion has any answers.

Usually this blog deals with issues of grief, death and faith. I am working on another blog to discuss other issues at other -- but that isn't up and running yet and I wanted to post.

In the work world, there are a number of messages you can send and a number you are sent. Books that purport to tell you how to be successful at work are legion (with exactly what that means). They are of the following kinds (regardless of what they claim to be on their title):

1) Books that tell you how to send the message that you are a useful worker bee (the kind of people businesses need to run, after all).
2) Books that send you messages about how to be happy as a worker bee.
3) Books that peddle myths, for the purpose of getting your money, that are useless or dangerous.
4) Books that give you skills or elements to improve your knowledge base and that will help you make progress (books like Dress for Success or The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense at Work.

Crooked Timber and Cheese links to a discussion or two on the topic, especially New York Times Article and White Collar Invisibility (which has the useful warning All those career coaches and employment workshops are the white-collar equivalent of the predatory creditors in poor neighborhoods. The author's books are flawed, very flawed, but interestng too. Much of John Bruce's Journey is about a guy who is a worker bee but who gives off the wrong message over and over again.

Most people do not understand class. America is rife with class issues and getting a job involves:

a) communicating that you are a worker bee of the appropriate class for the job.
b) communicating that you are not a threat.

Employers want to hire you (well, they really, really want to hire someone to get work done that needs to be done). They really want to keep you in the job they hire you for too (sometimes blocking promotions because a manager is a manager while a good worker bee is hard to find in some areas -- though in others, good managers are essential).

Many times those who have lost children also lose their jobs. The incapacity of grief leads to other issues and that leads to job loss. Suddenly you are looking for a job, not at your best, but at your all time worst. Most of the books out there are useless to you or harmful.

But, there is a free library near you (with interlibrary loan, probably for free as well), and as long as you take it only a step or two at a time, you can work your way back from anything. The key is continuous, steady work going after reasonable incremental steps.

There is always a way forward. The Man Who Planted Trees (note: Giono ran into difficulties with the American editors who in 1953 asked him to write a few pages about an unforgettable character. Apparently the publishers required a story about an actual unforgettable character, while Giono chose to write some pages about that character which to him would be most unforgettable. The real story of a real man who created a forest is at true story, real forest)

Singh Gildarie was buried today. He died yesterday, after a long illness. He was my first home teaching companion in this ward, he could never go with me, he was always too sick, but he was always there for Sacrament meeting, always faithful until the end.

May grace attend him.

Time will pass, but I thought I would link to three discussions of the current disaster:

The shock and outrage over New Orleans' post-Katrina woes reminds me of that experience--and not just because of the chaos. What's just as striking to me is the unique scrutiny to which the local, regional and national disaster response infrastructure is suddenly being subjected. Thirteen years ago, when Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida to the tune of 25 billion dollars, a quarter of a million people were left homeless, and over a million stranded without power--a quarter-million of them for over a week--as looters ran rampant and government personnel at all levels struggled to maintain order and care for the victims. But I don't remember a national outpouring of fury at the authorities' slow and imperfect response to that disaster. (In fact, compared with the police failures during the LA riots earlier that year, the response to Hurricane Andrew was a model of smooth efficiency.) Rather, the nation's attention focused on the (largely private, charitable) relief effort, as millions in donations were raised to help the victims recover.

Then, for the other side Over the past few years in particular, a lot of money and thought was supposed to have been devoted to planning for rapid response to large-scale urban disasters in the wake of 9/11. While authorities in Louisiana and New Orleans are not as powerful as the Feds, they have known for years that a disaster of this kind was likely and were told in detail what it would do to their city. And yet. The reports of what’s happening convey little except how poorly-prepared, ill-coordinated and slow-moving the disaster response is. As Mark Kleiman comments, failing to plan is planning to fail. Kevin Drum provides a demoralizing chronology explaining why FEMA is being run by people with no experience in disaster management.

Finally, from someone who actually had a spouse there:

Also, the latest update from my husband, who's still helping at the temporary hospital at the New Orleans Airport: They were completely overwhelmed with patients on Wednesday, never less than 15-20 ambulances waiting in a line to unload patients, 2-3 helicopters at a time, too. More medical teams arrived on Thursday, and there have been national guard there to help keep everyone safe, so things started to get under control. The forestry service arrived Thursday night/Friday morning and set up one of their base of operations for the emergency workers, so they now have beds and showers and meals being prepared for them, which is helping morale a LOT. And what a coincidence, that things started to get under control about 72 hours after the disaster...

I'm just reading about it all, and very sad for everyone.

//////////////////// btw, what the LDS Church is currently doing /////////////

Storehouses Continue to Send Supplies to Hurricane Katrina Victims
By Nicole Seymour, Church Magazines

Two additional truckloads of humanitarian aid for Hurricane Katrina's hardest-hit areas along the Gulf coast are on their way from the Bishops' Central Storehouse in Salt Lake City. The semi-trucks, loaded Wednesday, are filled with supplies necessary to sustain the lives of Hurricane Katrina refugees. The cargo includes tents, sleeping bags, bottles of drinking water, and five-gallon gas containers. Meanwhile, Church meetinghouses across the Southeast continue to be used as emergency shelters. One meetinghouse in Metairie, Louisiana, a New Orleans suburb, served as an American Red Cross Shelter and a destination for carloads of the state's refugee families, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report.

At a press conference addressing the Church's ongoing role in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, Kevin Nield, director of Bishops' Storehouse Services, said the Church would continue to meet the needs of Church members and other community members who are seeking refuge.

Brother Nield, who has played a significant role in the management of the Church's response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, said a sufficient supply of drinking water is most essential. He said more water is in demand because of the potential for disease in local water supplies and also because thirst is greater than hunger among evacuees who are, to an extent, in shock. Brother Nield also said the five-gallon gas containers will serve as fuel tanks for generators and chain saws.

As 14 other trucks from the large central warehouse in Salt Lake have arrived or are near arrival among Hurricane Katrina evacuees, food, hygiene kits, and other emergency supplies preceded the latest shipment. Central bishops' storehouses in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia are sending vehicles and supplies to the hurricane victims. Brother Nield said some trucking companies are teaming up with the Church to help the regional storehouses to haul goods; some even contribute to the supply of aid. “It could be a bishops' storehouse in Slidell, Louisiana or it could be a chapel in Biloxi, Mississippi,” Brother Nield said. “It depends where the need is and the kind of requests that come forward.” He said the most urgent need is in the areas the media indicate: New Orleans, Louisiana, and Biloxi, Mississippi.

Volunteers from stakes neighboring the disaster are ready and waiting to help, Brother Nield said. “At the appropriate time, members will go in to help: to clean up and fix up and do what recovery could be done early on,” he said. “But again, it is too early in the assessment part of this whole process to know where they will be most needed and what they will be doing.” (For information about how to help with hurricane relief, visit www.providentliving.org).

Even though relief efforts are ongoing, the death toll continues to rise. New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, said Wednesday that he estimates the number of storm-related fatalities for his city to be at least in the hundreds, but more likely in the thousands. New Orleans has ironically flooded further in the wake of the storm because much of the city is below sea level. Eighty percent of the city is submerged because of the broken levees on neighboring, Lake Pontchartrain. To the east, Mississippi has a death count of 110; Alabama, 2; and Florida, 11—all victims of Hurricane Katrina. Also in the aftermath of the storm, 2.3 million people across the Southeast have been without electricity.

Federal officials have weighed-in on the disaster. Wednesday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, who is a member of the Church, declared a public health emergency. Because of standing water in many areas, the threat of diseases such as typhoid and cholera is apparent. Leavitt said more medical personnel would be present in the hardest hit areas to counter the spread of disease.

Another good link: the other side of the story, still unimpressed with FEMA

Even better, Julie M. Smith's comments at Times and Seasons.

Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. . . Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said. consider it vis a vis this link cafe express.

BTW, for more on the head of FEMA how he lost his last job.

Finally, some blog thoughts on rebuilding, etc. New Orleans will be the New Orleans of the rebuilders.

In memory, Robin Elizabeth Marsh, July 6, 1997 to August 31, 1997. The leader of our grief group once asked me when I was going to take time out for myself. She had met us when Jessica died, been there with us when Courtney died and had gotten to know us pretty well. I told her that after Robin was born, I'd finally take time for myself.

I miss her still, and sometimes, still dream.

It is amazing what one person can do, over time.

A Grain of Salt talks about Gandhi and Christ, but it made me think about what one person can do, such as teaching people to read, one on one, one person at a time, until a people could be freed.

If we just continue, it is amazing what we can do, if not in our own lives, in the lives of others.

One of the hardest things to do is to survive benchmarks, as one child approaches them, or as another passes them, and those who have died echo. Having our youngest start school was so stressful, especially as she talked about being baptized. Jessica was talking more and more about baptism, just before she became ill. She was never old enough to be baptized in our faith (ignoring, for a moment, the kindness of Catholic nurses in their own ways). She would be in college now, and all of her friends (except one) have gotten married in the last year or so. Tried to attend a wedding, but it was like running into a wall, I just could not.

On the other hand, Heather is rifle team commander this year, and should earn her forth letter in rifle team, something that is hers alone.

As for the weddings, we send gifts, we think, we go forward. Life moves on around us and with us.

I thought I would write about Cindy Sheehan and other grieving parents in the public eye. The sad truth is, every time a grieving parent is in the public eye, someone is trying to exploit them. That doesn't mean they don't have an agenda of their own (think of MADD), but that they don't get anything for free.

That said, having given myself some time, I am still appalled by the exploitation of Ms. Sheehan by those on all sides.

First, I'm not happy with those who are using her to promote an agenda -- for either side (either as a stalking horse or a free target). The one side should have more decency, the other hand should leave her out of things in their discussions.

Second, (in a very related way) I am offended by those who are using her as media fodder. The first group exploits directly, the second group exploits reactively. If you suffer grief, you may very well run into both kinds. The one seeks to turn you into a cypher, the second type seeks to make use of you as a cypher.

For those exploiting her, on the one hand they delight every time she is attacked. They revel in it. Every attack strengthens that group regardless of which side they are on (attacking or defending).

The second group feeds off of the attacks and makes them continue -- the term media circus has some real meaning in this instance, it is a circus. Either the second group is doing its best to help the first group, or the second group is exploiting Ms. Sheehan for their own benefit, or they are so clueless as to make one question their competence. Who sees any real analysis? Who sees any real kindness?

You will see the same thing in local news when a child dies of hard drugs or steroids in a high school and a parent speaks out.

Ask yourself.

If a thousand sons and daughters had died in Iraq (or perhaps 1853), leaving two thousand parents (drop some for orphans, add some for step parents) and only one of those parents acts out in what you consider a loopy fashion, should you conclude:

1) That one out of two thousand is a fully competent adult knowingly doing something crassly wrong who needs to be shamed and humiliated as an example for other grieving parents (I listened to a radio personality do just that, though when I called him on it, he backed off in a letter to me), or

2) They are suffering under the disability of grief and being exploited?

3) The person just wants media attention?

I suggest to you that if #1 is correct in the first half (a fully competent adult knowingly doing something), then people who say Cindy Sheehan is the most courageous woman in America and should be president may have something. If she is fully competent and knowing, then she may be right and she is definitely courageous. The more competent she is to face criticism, the more she acts from reason and knowledge rather than emotion and being exploited, the less she deserves any criticism.

If #2 is correct, attempts to shame them do nothing but feed and support those who are trying to use her to get attention -- and in a way that makes Sheehan look correct.

If #3 is right, any attention rewards them.

I think that public shaming attempts -- especially of a parent who has lost a child within the last year or so -- are useless, crass and exploitative, and do nothing but encourage those who would exploit the vulnerable. If the person just wants attention, it gives them the attention they crave in an atmosphere that provides them with enough positive voices that the public shaming attempt never reaches them and enables exploitation.

With each attack, the both sides are strengthened and those who have exploited Ms. Sheehan (if she is being propped up) are rewarded. Real dialogue, which this country needs, and real respect for death and loss and sacrifice, all of those are lost.

Now, as for someone who is exploiting a grieving parent, I think stringing someone along to make them a target for such public shaming attacks is evil and heartless. Drawing the poor family into things is sad.

I don't know Ms. Sheehan's heart and I've seen a lot on the war in Iraq to where I am unwilling to agree that she is correct or insist that she is wrong.

However, I can understand how she could believe as she does regardless if she has a noble or a crass purpose. I don't know how much of those feeding off of her, from both sides, raven like wolves attacking a wounded deer rather than are responsible for the wounding in the first place.

But I know that public shaming attempts against such a parent are useless, less than productive and shameful.

People who have buried children, when they make mistakes or act out in public, need first and foremost to be allowed space and quiet.

If her critics are truly right (if any of the critics of those in grief are right), what Ms. Sheehan needs and deserves is to be allowed her act in private.

If she is right, then what she really needs is people to make the issue about the dialogue and the concepts and thoughts and not about her.

Too often the grieving are exploited, by both sides (or all sides or any side) and then discarded. As human beings we deserve more both in the grieving and how we relate to it.

My two bits. I'll probably take this post down after a while, but I wanted to vent a little myself.

Post script:

I was asked which blogs I would condemn as exploiting Cindy Sheehan. None. I do not see blogs as significant in what is going on in her case, and I do believe that there is plenty of room to comment and review without exploitation.

Maybe if I read more blogs, but I don't see them as a factor in what is going on with this example or with most grieving parents (other than the fact that many of them do have blogs).

Interesting link to a thirty minute or so speach by a guy who was an engineer, then was a lawyer, and now is an entertainer.

What Do You Want to Be? -- links to a link that will take you to the download.

Interesting, different.

Often, in dealing with grief, you have to decide, what do you want to be? What do you want to become? This is because you are going to become something, as are all those around you, no matter what you plan on. Life and change will happen. Especially if you have subsequent children, you are going to relive, evolve and become regardless of what you think you are going to do. Life will not remain static, and if you do not anticipate and plan and decide, it will still happen, just without your input.

An excellent question: what will you decide to become? What will you do for those who are part of your life, how will you help or hinder them in what they are going to become? What will your choice be?

How can I keep on living, why should I keep on living? Hasn’t every parent who has buried a child had to face those two questions and had to face the traps that threaten on the way to finding answers.

One real problem is that because the pain is so great, it shuts everything else out. Then, once you are finally recovered enough to be numb or in shock, the only way you can reach emotion is to reach into the pain. It blots out everything else and seems to be the only real emotion left.

Sometimes children will start misbehaving so that they can be punished, because the emotions tied up with punishment and sorrow break through to real emotion and let some pain out. A child can become addicted to that cycle, and it can be hard to break.

Worse for adults is becoming addicted to anger and rage and pain as the only touchstones left, ones that will swallow a man or a woman in bitterness, leaving only dregs.

It is funny, but watching The Pacifier (my five-year-old had seen it several times, so I had to see it too with her), I was brought back to the only way I found to escape the traps. In the end, the hero realizes that children and family are the only things that matter, and he choses to remain near the children and to find his own way to starting his own family. Everything returns to that, to living life outside of myself, as the real meaning and the real hope.

That pathway out and away from anger for me was by remembering my wife and children and their needs and by finding a way to keep on going to keep on for them, while at the same time keeping Paul’s warnings about bitterness in my mind. "Any root of bitterness" is how the scripture reads, warning the saints in Jerusalem against the pain and loss that the fall of the city will cause them (Paul wrote them before the city was sacked, with blood running ankle deep, and the people scattered). Justified or not, I had to let all bitterness go.

---

I guess I should note that this blog is about faith and hope and surviving. About the three children we buried in a five year period and about finding our way home. Some times I write about related things, or about life in general, but everything comes together in living life for a real purpose and with a real hope, and when those are obscured or hard to see, living for those I love until I can see the hope and love I need for them again.

I write these essays for many reasons, but most of all to help those who are going through the same things I am going through, in hope that what has helped me might give them hope or tools to help them in their journey.

I pray that God will bless us all.

Stephen

In grief it is easy to read about how faith affected or effected many things. However, the word “faith” is used several ways, and they do not mean the same thing.

First, “faith” is used to describe hope or belief. When someone applies for a job and someone else says "I have faith you will get it" they are talking the first type of faith. Alma encourages people to have this kind of faith when they experiment upon the word, to just try to give it a place in their hearts.

Second, “faith” is used to describe the spiritual process by which one reaches through to the other side and connects with the power of God. It involves the first kind of faith, but it is something more (as there is a connection leading to the repeated comments that you can't have faith in things that are not true -- you can have type one faith but not type two faith in things that are not true).

Third, “faith” is used to describe experienced based understanding that does not rise to the level of knowledge. I.e. I have faith that the sun will rise in the morning or I have faith that my cat really loves me.

Finally, "faith" is used to describe the calm belief that results from the spiritual process of reaching through and connecting. It is the calm hope and peace that many in grief have following their prayers.

In understanding faith we need to realize that just as the Greeks had words for different kinds of love (such as erotic, friendly, parental, etc.) we need words for the different kinds of faith in order to understand faith better.

Also, it helps to understand that anger interferes with all kinds of faith. In my own life I've found that when I was angry the Spirit couldn't reach me. It came to me as we were studying in Sunday School today and the teacher remarked that Joseph Smith had the same experience of being unable to hear God when he was anger, and that it wasn't until he let go of his anger that he regained contact with God.

As Joseph put it in describing his experience "when the heart is sufficiently contrite, the voice of inspiration steals in and whispers."

I've had many issues as I have dealt with my losses (and seen many others with loss deal with their issues), and for a short time anger as a block to faith and to the whisperings of God was an issue for me. Then, when I was contrite, the Spirit began to whisper to me. I still had to rebuild myself, spiritually I was weakened from the experience, but but faith was there to restore me.

Paul warns against letting bitterness spring up, and I am certain that anger is a stem of bitterness, and one that harms our faith, in all the ways faith can be a part of our lives.

Neat, the blogosphere rankings came up:

Current Status: Adorable Little Rodent
Current Rank: #4932

Neat, thought I liked Flappy Bird a lot ;)

For whatever today's is for your blog, visit http://www.truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php and type in the name of your blog. If it doesn't come up, add it.

BTW, I've added http://whenigodeaf.blogsome.com/ to my blogroll.

I'm so glad my wife is coming home today.

On torture

the elder President Bush's White House physician, a former doctor in the Army Medical Corps, had to say recently on this Bush administration's treatment of prisoners:

"Today, however, it seems as though our government and the military have slipped into Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness.' The widespread reports of torture and ill-treatment -- frequently based on military and government documents -- defy the claim that this abusive behavior is limited to a few noncommissioned officers at Abu Ghraib or isolated incidents at Guantanamo Bay. When it comes to torture, the military's traditional leadership and discipline have been severely compromised up and down the chain of command. Why? I fear it is because the military has bowed to errant civilian leadership."

We are in an interesting place.

Usually, torture and its analogs are useless. If a prisoner has not broken and refuses to talk, you get nothing from them. If they break, you get whatever they think you want, not the truth. In any case, by the time you can get the prisoner to someone who knows the right questions to ask and who can get useful information out of them, the information is dated and useless.

But, there are always exceptions. At times someone can be turned without being broken. It is almost always a threat of harm, not torture/pain that does it, and almost always in a tactical setting. The prisoner who leads the way through the minefield is a good example.

However, in an irregular war, where names, places, people, and contacts are all unknown (imagine WWII if the Allies did not know the names of the Nazi chain of command) there is suddenly useful information. It is like fighting the war on crime.

As a society we have already faced the temptation to use "the third degree" on criminal suspects, to beat, intimidate and deprive them of rights in the name of a greater good. National Socialism promised that greater good and our parents had to deal with NS (or, in English, the Nazi Party) in a world war and its aftermath.

But we are in a position of great temptation. The enemy is irregular (in traditional war, irregulars have no rights and are generally shot on sight). The enemy will not treat prisoners any differently no matter how we treat their prisoners (and can not take any great number of them -- all of whom they will brutally torture and murder). And, the enemy holds the promise of useful information that will not decay, if we only take the time to turn them.

Now, we are not abusing prisoners with the goal of causing them pain. We do not want them to break. Instead, we are trying to seduce them with methods that actually work. Which is why we, ourselves, risk seduction.

When God told Joseph Smith that those who lied in order to deceive were not excused because they thought others were deceiving them (or trying to), I think he was stating an important principle. When Mormon refused to lead the people in preemptive war and warned them that the grace of God would depart from them in that endeavor, he was giving a strong warning.

Now the war in Afghanistan was not preemptive. I don't think the President told any intentional lies (and honestly, given the track record of those attacking the "cake" story, their opposition would have been enough reason to believe it was true).

But I think we are facing a terrible temptation and that we are giving way to it. I have no doubts that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I have no doubts about where it leads either. I think that in spite of the fact that those who point out the problems with abuse are caustic and at times glory in hostility e.g., they may be right this one time (heck, they may be right more than once, a stopped clock is right twice a day, hundreds of times a year).

I am not making a call for action. I'm not suggesting that we condemn anyone. But I do think it is a time for thought and discussion, knowing what we face and what we want to become. That is because the ends do not justify the means. The means are the end. How we live and how we accomplish what we do is what we are and what we will become.

Whether we are talking about how we treat people of a different sex, or a different religion, or a different race or a different creed, in peace or in war, how we act is what we are.

Useful context links:

John Bruce's Blog

powerline comments on POWs, etc.

After Carl had been with the firm about a year he cornered me. I'd always told him the truth and had been one of the partners who voted to hire him. He had learned a lot about the firm's history, including the number of disasterous hires who were gay. "How could you hire me, with all the problems they had?" I should have thought before I answered, but I think "But what did their being gay have to do with their problems?" kind of answered his question for him.

Of course Carl turned out to be probably the best employee we had ever hired. He finally moved on to a better firm, but I'd recommend (or hire him) today.

There are a lot of characteristics about people that have meanings, in different areas. It is easy to look at our own problems and forget those of others, or to define people by characteristics that have no meaning as to who they are in the context you meet them. At times society overcomes those lines (what professional sports team cares about the race of a player now), at times we seemed to be mired by them.

As I've mentioned, negotiation and mediation are professional interests of mine.

Stu's an author of hundreds of comics, has decided to let bloggers use them, subject to specific rules.

For the terms, see volokh archived comment

Thought that was neat.

Otherwise, visited Wichita Falls, where we used to live, went by all of our old houses and apartments, visited friends, spent time where the girls are buried, was grateful to Alison for caring for their tombstones. Read Harry Potter (can't believe I let my oldest talk me into taking her down to wait in line. She wanted to wait in line and wanted company. Then we got up at six o'clock the next morning for the visit to Wichita Falls).

Missed some people (they weren't in/around) took others out to lunch, got home in time to sleep.

I meant to write a post about why I have this blog, but decided that will wait.

annegb has left some comments that I've thought about changing into a guest post or two, they are really good. Next time I think I'll ask her if she would mind doing a guest post or two on my blog.

I used to write legal articles, had a research agenda that I followed in ADR (dispute resolution), negotiation and professional responsibility/ethics, with a couple articles on Civil Procedure. Civil Procedure can be thought of as "the rules of the game" where the game is being a lawyer, and if you litigate, civil procedure is your life's blood in many ways. In those interests I started a web site, my home site, adrr.com. It still runs about 60,000 hits a week, mostly for people who are interested in "accessible" writing (that is often a dirty word from an academic standpoint) -- writing that they can understand and follow.

What is interesting in terms of where I was thinking is how grief and the experiences of loss deepened some of my thoughts, but how those concepts (such as there being five, not two, standard negotiation patterns) were an outgrowth of my exposure to Elgin's work long before any of these things happened. Grief is an overlay, not a building block, and it took far more than it gave.

Well, life has passed me by, I'm 49 and unlikely to start once again getting cold calls from people interested in having me interview for tenure track positions (though my wife got a couple -- which really tickled her, though she turned them down for the present). I'm lucky in that I like my work and my co-workers, love my children and adore my wife.

But I miss doing research and writing seriously -- in an academic way. I didn't get over 20 zeros in the first six months of the year by not being serious about my research and writing at work, but it is a different kind of writing. When Jessica took sick in 1992, a lot of things began to die, including a number of dreams and interests I didn't realize were dead.

So, I hold my five-year-old daughter's hands as she goes to sleep (it keeps the nightmares away for her), think and dream and love my family and remind myself that there is a lot more to life and that I am lucky to have the things and people and love that I have.

And I may yet write an article on how the clash over ethics in negotiation is a clash between styles, more than a clash between right and wrong -- though it may be that as well. There is so much and never enough time for all of it.

Brigham Young said this, "We think the sisters ought to have the privilege to study various branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. Women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but they may also stand behind the counter, study law and physic [medicine], or become good bookkeepers, and all this to enlarge their sphere or usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation."

In that regards, explorations, "Am I not a woman and a sister?" But what does it mean to be a woman, a sister, a feminist, a Latter-day Saint?

I always liked that quote while I was at BYU's law school, and it encouraged me when my wife was working towards her CRNA.

Alot easier to post on than the fact Robin would have been baptised this week and too many girls in our congregation who would have been Jessica's age are getting married. We even held one of the bridal showers in our house. Sometimes it is just too hard.

Well, they had us wait until this morning for the swelling to go down. After everything, the surgery will only be on Heather's hand, they are putting two pins in at 6:30 a.m. Win had to work last night, but will be getting off early and meeting me at the hospital. Heather is in good spirits, finished her econ final, I'm hoping she will still pass trig. She thought she was going to class this afternoon after surgery this morning.

Rachel has been very concerned about Heather. She is so sweet.

Anyway, things are well.

Heather had a close encounter with an SUV on her bicycle. She will spend the night in the hospital and when the swelling goes down they will operate on her in the morning.

My wife always accuses me of being too positive, but I expect Heather to recover just fine. Still, this reminded me that she is always my baby girl.

I try to post about once a week. This will have to do it for this week, I just don't have more in me.

When I was younger, a lot younger, I had an older guy tell me "all women are crazy" as advice. At the time I thought he was an idiot (to be blunt), but now I think he just didn't phrase it right. From a guy's perspective, all women aren't guys and don't think like guys. That doesn't make them crazy, so much, as make them women.

Kind of like my wife stopping sometimes and saying "you are such a guy" when I've acted normally (but "wrong" from a woman's perspective). For example, ask a guy to do something and he does it. A woman almost always will think he hasn't because he hasn't done the related things. A guy doesn't seem them as part of the same thing (and if the woman asking him to do whatever the task is also asks him to do the other jobs, what she would call "the rest of the job" he will happily do that too).

Such as "please fold the clothes" means also to put them up after folding and put the fresh sheets on the bed after folding them. It is amazing how much happier you can make young couples by teaching the wives to ask their husbands to do the other related things and by teaching guys that their wife means "do a, b & c" -- once they understand it, they are much happier doing what what make things go well. Twenty years of their wife saying "you didn't do 'a'" won't work. Because they did do "a." Five minutes of saying, "your wife may say 'a' but she means 'a, b & c'" works like a charm.

Anyway, are all women crazy? No more than all men are crazy. But, with work and patience they can not only love each other, they can make each other happy.

Father's day has often been very hard for me. I felt such a sense of personal failure at the deaths of each of the three daughters we buried. I would ask myself the question: "What good am I if I failed to keep my children safe and well" and asked it every Father's day. I had made my children the function to measure myself against, and with their deaths the value of my life seemed voided.

As time passes, I take so much joy in the children Win and I have in our home now that I am regaining hope in life. This June 19th it was good to wake up and see my daughters and to be not a survivor of tragedy living with loss, but to be happy at being a father and their dad. Time returns me to the basics of being in love with my wife and loving my children.

Finding meanings that work is not only the heart of an individual's life, but is the core of a successful communal enterprise. There must always be meanings that matter.

I will return to utopias and life and hopes of Zion, but for now I am glad that my life has returned to meaning.

Some links:

Nate Oman's latest on Utopia

Sojourner's Net

Ozarque on the meaning of words

So often I read someone urging someone else to just "drop their baggage" -- with the baggage being their job, their religious quirks, their spouse or something else the urger doesn't see, feel or hear as important.

How important is the "baggage" -- the things that we are certain that God doesn't really care about?

Laying aside the idea of a child or a spouse or a parent or a job as "baggage" -- what about God and the rules in the Old Testament? Surely God didn't really care about them, did He?

But those rules are what preserved the Children of Israel as a people and prevented them from being swallowed and assimilated. Without those rules to preserve the Jews as a peculiar people, they would have ceased to be a people.

It is easy for us to take a census, eat shrimp, use butter on our potatoes while eating steak or have some bacon for breakfast, while wearing a cotton/nylon blend and to think that anything to the contrary is just “baggage.”

But all of those prohibitions were, at one time, important to God. It was obedience as a people that made it possible for Christ to be born of Mary.

So I look at our world, our times and wonder what of the things we have that we might consider “baggage” are important like having blue threads in our hems, observing a Sabbath on Friday nights or reserving the priesthood to a family line of less than 10% of the population.

How many of the things we work with and are asked to obey work together in ways we do not understand, for purposes that we just fail to grasp, but that have meanings as significant as those had by the Macabeans who resisted the urge to drop their baggage and be one with what was the modern world of their time, and led the resistance against the Hellenic forces that sought to destroy the culture and heritage prepared for the birth of Christ?

I do not know, and I do not know the meaning of all things, but I do know that God loves his children.

BTW, for an interesting perspective on this, Someday Saint has an essay on her site:
Part Two

Utopias are interesting things. To me, utopia is my kids not getting sick (or if they are sick, not saying "don't pray for me, wait until I get older, if I live that long, then you can pray for me" and "am I going to die too this time"). I'm waiting on my five year old, her strep throat and her cough. Grateful for tylenol and antibiotics.

In writing about utopias, what I am really writing about is stable communal societies or organizations, not perfect places. To succeed, such an entity needs:

1. A shared culture that will work for both adults and children (I've seen a lot of attempts at utopia that worked for the adults, but that failed for the children they had, and a few that worked for kids but fail for the adults).

2. Sufficient resources to:
a. Establish the society,
b. continue the society and export from it,
c. endure, create accumulations, support members who have lessened productivity due to age.

3. Must be self-sustaining

Interesting examples include the Hutterites (a religious group of sealed communities that just keeps expanding. They export goose down to the outside world that at one point was the gold standard for goose down), small steel mills (there is a "modern" small fab plant steel mill system that is generally worker run in a communal system) and several worker managed piecework factories.

Entities that seemed like they would succeed and failed share some hinge or collapse points.

1. intellectual property issues and a changing environment.
2. rent seeking behavior
3. free riders and feather bedders.
a. the piecework factories manage to break through the "magic number of 100 to 200 adults by having a payment system that prevents free riding.
b. the worker managed railroads have worked on staffing levels of specific tasks to solve the same problem.
c. several worker owned companies have suffered from control groups forming and using that control to loot the communal good for the benefit of the group.
4. giving in to the temptation to create a management class (vs. renting or hiring it from consultants or outsiders as some unions have done).

Examples that are closer to home are law firms and other partnerships (which, for the professionals, though not the staff, are communal organizations which are prone to grow into non-communal ones), Yugoslavia under Tito (the only marxist state with a free market society), agricultural cooperatives (for machines that are effectively shared and for shared marketing tasks.

A failure of a cooperative endeavor occurs when:

1. The administrative cost is too high (centralized economies anyone?).
2. The cultural needs of the members diverge too far (you may think living in Big Bend as an artist is heaven -- but will your children who haven't learned to read by age 12?).
3. The level of assets fails to sustain the group (note, retirement planning need not be a part of the cooperative endeavor. It is for Hutterites. It isn't for steel mills).
4. Stratification destroys the communal nature.
5. External attack (the group of pacifists that got eaten by New Zealanders in the 1800s are a good example of this).
6. Problems of scale swamp the society.
7. Stratification (sometiems combined with scale issues) destroys the communal or cooperative nature.

The false issue is waste, as all systems have it.

Quick notes.

The magic size for many communal groups is 100 to 200. More than 200 and the group generates too many slackers and free riders. Under 100 adult workers and there seems not to be enough "community."

Cooperative groups can work just fine in a market society, competing with other such groups and non-communal groups. I would note that worker managed firms tend to outperform other management types inside the magic number size limits so that they can be quite competitive. It is very possible to run a country where the government runs the banks, military and universities and cooperatives handle everything else.

Universities can be used to create mental capital and intellectual property and they seem to do it well.

One thing the Amish have mastered is the art of making people suspect by virtue of their being willing to be leaders. There are problems with such a model -- especially when attacked violently by outsiders or when it needs to respond quickly. Communal systems benefit by having a slow economy vs. a fast one. (Imagine in the stock market only ran once a week instead of every day? If property had to be held for five years before you could sell it again and people preferred to live in the house their parents lived in.).

Some things are possible, some are not, though for miracles, I just want children not to die.

VADE MECUM....


FROM W. W. PHELPS to JOSEPH SMITH, Jr. .....

Go with me, will you go to the Saints that have died—
To the next better world where the righteous reside?
Where the angels and spirits in harmony be,
In the joys of a paradise vast?—Go with me.

Go with me where the truth and the virtues prevail;
Where the union is one, and the years never fail;
Not a heart can conceive, nor a nat'ral eye see
What the Lord has prepar'd for the just.—Go with me.

Go with me where there's no destruction or war;
Neither tyrants, nor sland'rers, nor nations ajar;
Where the system is perfect, and happiness free,
And the life is eternal with God.—Go with me.

Go with me, will you go to the mansions above,
Where the bliss, and the knowledge, the light, and the love,
And the glory of God do eternally be?
Death, the wages of sin, is not there.—Go with me.
50 Nauvoo, January, 1843.

Some misc. comments, on a personal note, rather than essays.

Just switched to Sunrocket for our telephone service. Switching from a $45.00 a month basic service telephone (extended calling area and some other "options" are required here) to $29.00 a month cable internet and $199 a year Sunrocket resulted in unlimited calling, an extra telephone number in Portland (so my brother can call me as a local call)and more reliable service than the DSL line was giving us. Without the extra cost of a DSL line. So, for less than basic local telephone service I have x2 DSL internet and unlimited long distance calling and two lines. So far, so good, and the free telephones included work very nicely.

I like New Balance Express for atheletic shoes. My feet are hard to fit and it can be hard to find cross trainers I like. Up to size 20 and up to 4E in width. I've small feet, I have relatives with smaller feet and some with gigantic feet. This is a great site.

Another essay soon. Paris was wonderful, the French were friendly, hardly anyone smoked, few dogs, and spring time was perfect. Being there with Win was like dreaming.

One thing that always struck me about historical research was just how miserable the lives of those living in the past were by our standards while they were joyous to be living them.

Take the Sun King of France. His murals aren't to my taste, my air conditioning works better than his, my bed has fewer bedbugs and lice (seriously, in some parts of the United States bedbug powder was still selling strong in the 1950s) and the food I eat is more varied, fresh and healthy than the food he ate. My car goes faster than any thing he rode in, and more smoothly, my teeth are in far better shape. It is as if we live in different realities, not just different times, yet he rejoiced to be born, not to mention we have the writings of those in far more humble circumstances who relished life and the experiences they had.

It always amazed me that people rejoiced to be born, leaving the presence of God. But from the outside perspective, life in and of itself is a valuable thing, the duration is short, and the experience is like an extreme camping trip, even for the most privileged -- and not measurably different from an eternal perspective for the worst.

In my own pain, the one thing that struck me about the terrible things that happened as I buried child after child from different causes is that my loss was not unique or unusual, only out of context for the community I lived in. That in the historical context, I was luckier than most, if not all.

It also struck me that better men than I had faced pain and complained to God about it, but that living in a fallen world, as an experience, involves living in a fallen world. That means pain without consolation in this world.

Not that the pain is not real when experienced (that is one thing I like about both Paul and Joseph Smith, both acknowledge that pain is pain and suffering is grevious when it occurs), but it is also experience and that the promise of God is not that it will pay off in this life (that is just another riff on the theme that if we worship God he will give us Mammon) but that it will be swallowed up and balanced in the next.

But, that which does not kill me merely does not kill me. Not necessarily stronger or weaker, not necessarily more or less alive. Those are my choices in how I react, combined with time and effort. And life will eventually kill me, but that is not the point. The point is that Christ can welcome me home and heal me of all my wounds, not that I will not be wounded by life.

So I live for my wife and children and with the hope of Christ. May that hope be also with you.

A heart breaking post at Happy Birthday Betsey Pearl -- a story from Portland, Oregon where my brother lives and where I visit from time to time.

The Silence of the Lamb – What is happening when we can not hear Christ in our time of sorrow.

Introduction

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani" -- My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? -- is haunting whether it is sung in a Synagogue or read in Matthew 27: 46 or in the full context at Psalms 22:1-21ff.

Of all the miracles in life, the one that is both the softest and the strongest is the voice and presence of God in our lives. But at times, God is silent and the Spirit is withdrawn. Not only do we not receive the tangible miracles we expect or hope for or have seen, but God seems to be withdrawn as well.

Sometimes the Spirit of the Lord is grieved and withdraws from us because of sin, especially if we wrongfully oppress others. We are all familiar with stories and examples and similar things in our lives (e.g. if you lift weights and then quit, you will lose strength over time, if you quit praying and related activities, you will grow weaker in spirit). But the issues go far deeper than those shallow examples, and with more complexity.

This is especially true since silence, especially in the face of suffering and loss, seems to draw the most anguish of all (and, the essence of a fallen world is suffering and loss – which is all death is). We know that God’s silence compelled Christ to voice. We are not greater than He and his silence to us causes us to give voice as well.

The Sounds of Silence

Before silence can be talked about with any intelligence, we need to talk about the various sounds, looks and feels of silence – a collection I refer to as the sounds of silence.

Chaim Potok’s book, The Chosen, (a good summary for the purposes of this discussion is at: summary) talks about a man who raises his son in silence, never talking to him. “He also explains why he raised his son in silence--it was to teach him to listen to silence, to learn compassion, to develop a soul to go with his magnificent mind.” If our purpose here in life is to grow, (vs. life as a replacement for amusement parks and television) then silence makes a good metaphor for the general distance between our state and God.

There are some God is silent with in order to teach them to hear.

A young child, who I will not identify by name, once banged her shin. To reduce the sensory load, she closed her eyes as she hopped about complaining about first the pain and then that she could not see. Some times we can not hear God, can not see his hand, can not feel his Spirit because we are so overloaded that we close down.

Of course, sometimes we are faced away from God, through our decisions to turn from him to our sins. While that is the reason many think of most often (read Job and consider the advice and comments of his “friends” – all they could do is insist he had some terrible hidden sin), that approach is scarcely useful for understanding God’s silence with the just (such as Job) and the humbled.

In addition, sometimes our spiritual senses have atrophied so much we have difficulty hearing God over any sort of background noise, including that of our own sorrow or pain. That same child who closed her eyes, also yelled pretty load and also complained that she couldn’t hear me. She had to quit shouting before my voice would come through. The more background noise or internal noise, the less atrophy we need before we can not hear anything over ourselves.

There are also other times of silence (such as when Oliver Cowdrey was praying to God for an answer and God finally spoke, saying “remember, I already answered this question, think on the answer I gave you before” [paraphrased]).

Thinking and listening

If we start with the beginning, which is that the world is fallen, telestial, and fails of the glory and joy of God, imperfection and sorrow become the side effects of mortality, not the purpose of them or their end. In a blog entry, I can not give this foundation the pages of text it deserves, but it provides a beginning place.

Of course sorrowful events do not make the world a better place because, by definition, the world is not a better place. As Paul said, if we live in this world only, those who know Christ would be of all the most miserable because they would know more than any others the depth of how unfair and fallen the world is. In the world is not where we expect consolation.

In addition, in the world is not where miracles, tangible or not (see my earlier post) dominate – they come only after faith, not before and not in place of faith.

Finally, God has warned us that he will try each of us, purifying our faith and giving us experience. This life ends in death, the question is when, not if. All that is required of us is to draw breath, the rest is a gift of experience and choice so valuable from an eternal perspective that those who await being born are willing to be born any time, any where and in any condition.

It is only from our perspective that God has failed us by giving us what we so much desired when we had a full perspective.

So why the Silence

God gives us silence for many reasons.

In some cases, we grasp silence and God allows us to hold to it until we release, open our eyes, and hear, all at once, like the unnamed child I’ve referred to above who closed her eyes and her ears as she coped with pain.

In some cases, God gives us silence to teach us or to allow us the fullness of experience that would otherwise not be complete without silence. Christ on the cross had silence that he spoke into, both for his experience and for our teaching (so that we could learn from his experiencing silence).

At other times, silence comes upon us as all other experiences do, because the world is imperfect or because we are.

I have faced silence. Once to teach me that I had learned a lesson and could do certain things without “training wheels” so to speak. At other times to aid me in learning charity, as a direct answer to prayers seeking to learn compassion and love. I’ve experienced silence that gave me perspective of how people live and think and cope in silence so that I could understand them better. And, I’m certain that I’ve also experienced not hearing the voice of God or seeing his hand or feeling his Spirit to know his will, at times, because of my own sins or failures of effort.

Finally, I’ve experienced silence because it wasn’t time for an answer or I had gotten an answer and wasn’t listening to it.

Conclusion

Silence is a deep subject, of which this is only an introduction to start a conversation, not the end of the answers. But there is a rhythm and meaning, a touch, sound and look to silence that is too often too easy to miss, and that leaves us feeling in the silence of the Lamb of God that we have been sacrificed rather than sacrificed for. It is my testimony that while we may not understand, the one truth is that God loves his children and that no silence, no depth or height or loss or sorrow, power or dominion can separate us from that love if we only allow that love into our hearts and bear patiently until the silence is quiet and the voice of God speaks again.

Stephen

The kids were well. The grandparents had a delightful time and everyone was very happy. I'm still jet lagged, but I dropped my mom and dad off at the airport, had a great family home evening, and am about to go to sleep.

Our hotel was grand. Right next to a metro station (on the M4 line), hot water and great water pressure on the top floor, quiet (very well insulated against sound) and clean.

Paris was a delight. We met one (1) rude frenchman (he was also short, stout, bald and drunk -- while the other short, stout and bald frenchman we met was gallant in the extreme).

I so love my wife, it is hard to express. I have to confess that sometimes I talk to her in her sleep about how wonderful she is. And we are both so glad to be home with our kids.

I'll blog more latter. Too much to write about.

Win and I are going to Paris to celebrate our 20th. Why Paris in springtime? Aside from the fact I've wanted to go to Paris since the 1970s and for a romantic place to take one's love in the springtime I can't think of any better? Of course it cost a lot less to go to Paris and stay in the 30th best ranked hotel than it costs to go to San Francisco?

Ok, I'm stretching. I just really wanted to take my wife to Paris.

Am I nervous? Yes, I've never been away from my children this long before. My parents are coming up to watch them, and they are good kids, but I've just never been away.

I'll be back in May. The office will survive without me (in fact, I'm amazingly caught up, just got another zero today -- that makes eleven or twelve on the year, when twelve to fourteen is usually what I do in a year), as Felicia Sorenson says "worse case scenario, the world just keeps on turning, best case scenario, pretty much the same."

But I miss my kids so much already and all they are doing right now is sleeping in the rooms next to me.

Miracles are one of the most problematic experiences in my life.

I could find a world without tangible miracles acceptable. I have friends who believe that God is aware, but does not intervene in this world. In their view, bad things happen, the sparrow falls, but God is mindful, even if his activity is limited to mindfulness and love.

I could live in a world with reliable miracles. As a friend put it, “God as a black box” (a black box is a computer concept – you put in inputs, you get out the same outputs, you don’t need to know what is going on inside) – which really reduces God to a natural force and faith as a sort of engineering. But, as the Calvinists found, it does make the concept of God reliable.

Instead I live in a world where I have experienced real, tangible miracles and known first hand others who have had the same experiences. But I have no way to predict the mind of God, when he will act, when he will withhold his hand, and find myself reading in sympathy when those in the Bible testify that God is real, even if he doesn’t save them in their time of need – an expression of the faith that Job had rather than the faith of Elijah who called down fire from heaven.

We have in scripture stories of God withholding miracles, allowing the innocent to suffer that the guilty may be more fully condemned, with the consolation that God receives the innocent unto himself.

But it makes life harder, in some ways, to know that there are miracles and that God speaks, but that at times the miracle is that there is not one, and the way God speaks is through silence. It makes life so problematic.

On my new policy of deleting links and no longer visiting sites that have deleted links to my blog, I received the following e-mail, which I'm posting together with my response

Stephen:

I noticed a couple of your comments around the nacle that seem to be closing some doors. I just wanted to make sure things are all right. I certainly understand that we all sometimes need to make some interesting changes. Again, I hope all is well.

My response (with editing):

Thank you for your kind thoughts and concern. It is appreciated.

Last time my life was going this well was 1992, right before everything went south. I used to think of the long Indian Summer of 1992 as the best time in my life, and Christmas of 1992 to New Year's Eve of 1993 as the worst time of my life.

So, there are probably some emotional overlays to the way I'm feeling/acting, especially since when things are going well it now fills me with dread, but the real story is that I realized that people who had linked to me had cut the links out and intended to keep the links cut, others were never going to link back and (most importantly) that I was spending too much time on-line reading blogs.

I decided I needed to close off some time sinks to spend more time where it needed to be spent, and also wanted to be clear why and how I was making the decisions I was making. In a way, everything is arbitrary, but I wanted to at least have some basis for the decisions I made.

So I've cut off from links and posting everyone who cut off their links to me or who said they were going to link and then decided not to. But I did it only after following up and discussing the matter with the people I decided to cut-off from contacts and links.

I have to admit that the link issue is one that has rankled for a while, especially when bcc added a link to "Angry Mormon" and not me, I felt completely and thoroughly snubbed at that point. I link to him because he is in grief and a good example of someone finding a safe place to express natural grief and rage, which some people I know need. Those who have buried children need places to express their emotions.

But I'm not sure how his rage fits in with the theme of bcc and LDS links in general. When I realized they found it more edifying and typical of LDS thought and mores than my site, I realized that I needed to just drop bcc from my ambit.

Anyway, yes, I'm a little emotionally off, but I don't think too badly, given the inputs.

I recently spent a lot of time with my 16 year old as she suddenly regained a lot of missing memories and had severe self-doubt issues about whether she was screwed up beyond repair or not, that sort of thing, but those are just more steps in the process. Especially since she is not screwed up and is the most wonderful child I know.

As for work, and leaving for Paris for better than a week to celibrate our 20th wedding anniversary, yes I feel some stress, but I think everything will go ok at work while I'm gone and I think I've already covered the home issues. At work, everything looks cleared up, passed my file review with flying colors, with any luck they'll have my boss (who I got along with very well) replaced by when I get back (he quit on short notice).

Other than that, I have, for a while at least, given up on the book I was going to write and have realized I've aged out of the chance of teaching. Turning it down when I did, to come back later, pretty much shipwrecked a major goal in life, but life goes on and there were other things that were more important at the time, so it was a decision well made.

There are more important things than personal goals, always.

Appreciate your kindness and concern.

Regards,

Stephen

One surprising thing in my life is the amount of pure animosity my sixteen year old daughter has had to suffer through. Much of it was merely deflected spite, especially from the days people would get nasty with us about having only one child, they would get spiteful with her as well or instead of directly with us (I'm a litigator after all).

She would just turn away, though when I found out or faced the adults, I eventually took to explaining that we had been through seven pregnancies, three funerals and three miscarriages ...

Now with a sixteen year-old and a five year-old we often get comments about the gap, but only from strangers. (I'm no longer as pained or as angry as when I wrote Only One). We gently clear up their concerns and criticisms, though it takes work.

Through all of this, since 1992, the sixteen year-old has gotten a lot of grief, not only from the adults too nasty to be snide directly to her parents, but from other children who think of her as lucky and privileged and safe to beat up on since she is one of the most patient and kind children I know.

Yes, on the one hand she has parents who spend time with her, some wide ranging experiences and is beautiful. Teachers love her. People do things for her.

For example, a friend of ours just gave her a horse and she is now enrolled in an invitation only barn. The the horse is getting a month of intensive training before she starts riding it from a trainer with a year+ long waiting list (the friend is very, er, focused). When I was a kid I'd have been jealous of someone who just got to pet a horse. I was grateful for some used shoes someone gave me. Things like that happen to her and her life does look charmed.

But she has had some terribly tough times, as have we all. She is still recovering memories that she lost after the last of the deaths in our family. She has been through a lot of pain and shared a lot of hardship. But the people who have hated her on sight don't see that. (A number of them have told her they just hated her when they first saw her and decided then and there to just beat her face in).

Eventually she has turned around each of the people she has dealt with who hated her on sight. By patience and communication she has stopped the violence, both verbal and physical over and over again, and been a good friend to her friends. But she would rather not go back to everyone knowing her past (she still remembers being younger and having people point at her as the freak whose older sister just died). That isn't the sort of thing that one wants as a first impression.

I wish she didn't have to experience random jealous hatred in addition to everything else. At least there is a way to turn it, for the most part, but it would be nice if it just did not happen at all. Guess there are a lot of things I wish.

When Jessica was in her final illness, we transferred from Fort Worth Children's Hospital to Dallas Children's Hospital. Dallas had her on the hopeless list and was talking with us about an experimental program that the doctor didn't think had any value. As soon as she had a lung biopsy they were going to talk the final details with us.

He then left us for the chaplain.

"The Chaplain" was doing a residency. He had his undergraduate and graduate degrees in theology and had discovered that his theology did not have an adequate way of dealing with the suffering that exists in the world and he was very bitter about that. So, as we waited to be told that our daughter was about to die and we could engage in one of two sorts of hopeless treatment, I did my best to console the chaplain sent to us.

After about fifteen minutes of discussion, he asked if we would mind letting him sit in as we were told our daughter was going to die, so he could see how we dealt with it. I apologized for saying no, but I did have it in me to further teach and aid him at that time.

Of course he was uninterested in any further contact with us that did not aid his needs and he did not return (nor did he respond to the letter I dropped him) when he discovered that the biopsy showed lung tissue in surprisingly good shape so that they immediately moved Jessica to ECMO where she remained until her death.

I should say that his supervisor was about as useful as the person she assigned to help us. But that was my close experience with graduate and post graduate education for ministers.

I've been down. First, my PC needed an upgrade, which meant that WindowsXP no longer functioned. That took a week in the shop and a couple days at home to restore everything.

Next, --- disconnected my DSL a week earlier than I requested -- and told me that "sorry, but we can't fix that for two weeks." It then came back up so I'm working on that post.

So, I'm stuck off-line (no access at work) until the 8th of April.

Sorry for all the blank time. I've a post I'm working on that I'll log on with as soon as I'm back. While you wait, read http://cpms.byu.edu/wiki.php?wid=36

Also, I am going to start deleting links to sites that have deleted their links to me.

I donated blood yesterday.

Before Jessica died, I had donated enough that they gave me my four gallon pin. When she was on ECMO is also the first time I found myself outside of the Red Cross system and donated through Carter Bloodcare. Since then, I've donated a time or two at Church and work, but mostly I get called and don't feel like making an appointment. In return, they've lost all records of my donating since 1993.

But I need to donate blood more often and I'm committed to becoming a regular again. I realized I had memories and issues left over, but I'm going to deal with them better by facing a normal donation center and getting through them than just avoiding the chance to donate.

In case you don't realize it, this blog is a continuation, in many ways of http://adrr.com/living/journal.htm -- on-line journal entries I used to post to create some distance. By posting those entries I kept people from direct contact at at time when it was just too painful to talk. Sometimes it is still too painful.

Alessia
by Wilfried Decoo

Alessia, I hope you will read this post, now, or rather some day in the future when you will be an independent adult, free to choose, and strong enough to look back. I want you to know that the Church never abandoned you, that the thoughts of dozens of Church members have been with you these past few years. And, through this post, the thoughts of many will be added. This block of text links to the story of Adelbert Denaux and Alessia

It is a heartbreaking story. One that should fill Adelbert Denaux and the Belgian IACHSO with such a sense of shame that they can not face God and not weep. May they stand between heaven and earth.