All Forms of Islam Oppress Women?

August 2nd, 2010

A response to a column on problems in all categories of Islam due to their treatment of women:

An interesting column, but the reasoning gets a little strained in the middle. It conflates, and then condemns, all forms of Islam because they all fail to demand complete equality for women. If we are to condemn every culture/subculture who fails at that line, we’re going to find very, very few still standing. The feminist ideal of total gender equality has proven to be very difficult to define in detail, let alone to accomplish, even in societies which have made the attempt to pursue it.

Islam is a different religion than Christianity or Judaism. The cultures which practice it are different than Western culture. And some in that religion, from those cultures, are attacking Western societies in an effort to destroy them. They draw their reasoning from the Islam of their understanding, and some of that reasoning will resonate, to a greater and lesser degree, across Islam. But their goals, strategies and tactics are not shared by all Muslims, and we need to exercise caution in casting too general a blanket over all Muslims. Not all are our enemies, and we benefit greatly by having some as allies. They are not unlike Christians who shoot abortion doctors and blow up abortion clinics, or who protest the funerals of soldiers, or who build compounds and gather weapons and explosives, in that these do not represent the view of all Christians. However, the Muslims who are trying to destroy our culture very much want to have this defined as a fight between Christianity/Western Culture and Islam. They want to frame it as the New Crusade. It’s the only chance they have to get wide-spread support among Muslims for what they are trying to do.

I think it is wiser for us to reach across the tribal barrier here and make allies than it is to continually reinforce that barrier and make all Muslims categorically wrong simply because they are Muslims. That is not only logically flawed reasoning — it’s counterproductive.

Posted in Opinion Pieces, Politics, Religion | No Comments »

The “real” issue in the Shirley Sherrod case

July 30th, 2010

A response to a column by Joan Walsh on the Shirley Sherrod incident:

I think there are several important issues that need discussing here, and that those who don’t want to discuss one will want to accuse those who do of trying to not discuss another.

There are problems with race in the country, but there is more to it than there are some vestigial fragments of the institutional slavery of the past several centuries. There is wide-spread distrust and anger along racial lines which does not seem to be improving. And there are voices in the civil rights movement who will only engage in the conversation if it is agreed that all and only white people are racist, because they benefit from a racist system. Since I recognize the realities of multiple brands of racial privilege (and identify this as one of them) while rejecting the legitimacy of any of them, we are unable to have a conversation on those terms. I don’t see a way around that impasse with those individuals. The only solution I can see is to bypass them, and engage in the conversation with real individuals who are prepared to have it without preconditions or privileged positions.

When Ms. Walsh claims that “people on the right” are trying to label as racist any black person who has ever said a bad thing about white people in general (without substantiating anything approaching that level of generality), the discussion becomes more difficult. Even if there were a significant number of individuals like she is vaguely describing, they would have a more sustainable position than the one mentioned above, where white people are racist even when they have never said or done anything remotely negative about black people, and that black people are incapable of being racist no matter how much hate and violence they manifest to people just for being white.

There is also a problem with the rush to make this problem entirely about Fox News and Glenn Beck in particular (although Ms. Walsh does not mention Beck in her article). Particularly when the narrative was established before the fact pattern was there to support any portion of it (and it does not support every portion of that narrative). Are Fox’s contributions to this situation really worse than the blanket labeling of Fox News, Glenn Beck, without regard to their participation in any part of this, as racist simply by associating with Fox. Or for claiming that Fox is trying to create white fear of black people by talking about this and asking why the Justice Department dropped the case against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation.

Clearly, what is needed is to detoxify the topic of race, so we can talk about real issues on top of the table, and can spend less time trying to focus on hidden racism. And also less time trying to use race as a trump card to “win” on things that have only a minimum to do with race, if that.

Perhaps it was fear of criticism for racial aspects of this case that drove USDA and the WH to demand Ms. Sherrod’s firing. Responsibility for that fear is to be found on those who have it. Passing blame for their unwise and capricious choices, which clearly and unarguably damaged Ms. Sherrod, to Breitbart and Fox, is simple denial that a “friend” would hurt you and projecting blame for their bad behavior on your “enemy.” It is legally indefensible, and morally vacant.

Perhaps Ms. Walsh’s attention to the wrongdoing of Breitbart and some at Fox is justified by the evidence. Some of it, anyhow. But trying to wrestle every other question the incident raises into nothing other than a conversation about the wrongdoing of Breitbart and Fox is wrong in its own turn. There is more than one thing to talk about here, and more than one valid thing to say.

Posted in Forums, Media, Opinion Pieces, Politics, TV | No Comments »

Remembering Pam

July 13th, 2010

Night before last (early 12 July), Pamela Fleetwood (Beaulieu) passed away. I met Pam my second quarter in college, in Bob Winter’s Introduction to Poetry, both the class and the Honor’s Seminar attached to it, where we not only studied poetry, but wrote some. The miles and years since then have stretched quite long, and there was no way then of knowing how significant and lasting that intersection of our lives would prove. At the end of the quarter, we put together a little chap book titled Cæsuras, and the following are Pam’s poems preserved there. I really haven’t much of anything of Pam that I can offer back to her family, but I have this. I hope it can be some comfort in this time of pain and sorrow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Family, Life | 5 Comments »

From CNN Belief Blog’s thread on the Vancouver Temple

June 30th, 2010

Some of my comments to this thread, in case I want to use them later.  They also discuss quite a few anti-Mormon claims you may have seen or heard in the wild:

1.  In response to a comment listing a bunch of Mormon “beliefs’ and “facts,” including the abundance of Masonic symbols in this (or, presumably, any) temple:

Interesting claims. I’ve been in that specific temple a dozen times, and will be back there next Tuesday and Wednesday. Please inform me of the many Masonic images to be found there. There’s the compass and the square, but then what? Two hardly qualifies as “many.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Church, Forums, Opinion Pieces, Religion | No Comments »

Not Temple Day in Canada As Planned

June 22nd, 2010

I have scheduled my departure for my Temple appointment for 90 minutes before the session starts.  This gives me a 30 minute cushion, since I’ve found it takes about 60 minutes from the time I pull out of my driveway until I leave the New Name Booth.  Making plans remains a great way to give God a good laugh.

With one thing and another, I ended up being about 8 minutes late getting into the car.  No big deal — that leaves me 22 minutes of cushion, and that’s what the cushion is for.  Then, there’s a flagger on my way to the freeway, which adds a couple more minutes to my trip — 20 minutes of cushion left.  Then, habit gets in the way, and I take the southbound freeway exit rather than northbound (I only go north once every two weeks, because the only thing I go north for is the Temple, so it’s very out-of-habit for me), which eats about five more minutes of cushion — I’m down to 15 minutes of cushion.

But now I’m northbound, everything’s fine.  I get to the (Truck) crossing, and there is nobody in the Nexus line in front of me.  The border person looks at whatever comes up on the screen, glances in the back seat, and says “Thank you.” and I’m through in record time.  It’s almost like it was too easy.

He looked in the back seat, which brought to mind that that’s where I leave my temple clothes — right behind the driver’s seat.  And then it hits me — I forgot my temple clothes.  I can’t do the session without my clothes, and it’s now exactly an hour before the session starts.  And it takes 15 minutes to get from my house to the border.  Which wouldn’t be a problem if I had 30 minutes of cushion left.  But I don’t.  I have 15 minutes of cushion.  So I complete my shortest visit to Canada where I was admitted into the country, have a short and genial conversation with the US Customs lady, and go home.  All dressed up, and no place to go.

However, I’m lined up to go to the youth Temple trip tomorrow to help out, so I’m still going to get some templing into my week.  I’m frustrated.  But it’ll be okay.

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Posted in Church, Life | 2 Comments »

Thornton Road Grade Separation Doesn’t Make Sense

June 10th, 2010

My response to the Ferndale road improvement plan, as discussed on the Bellingham Herald’s Traffic Blog.

Okay, here’s some back of the napkin calculations, based on grossly conservative assumptions about the Thornton grade separation: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Opinion Pieces, Politics | No Comments »

Whining is not an alternative to political parties.

May 13th, 2010

Two of my comments on a post on the Bellingham Herald’s Politics Blog regarding the desire for a “third party.”

First:

Everybody wants another party so they can get something politically viable that doesn’t have the things they don’t want about the real parties that elect people. Here’s the thing:

Unless you outwork and outspend the people you don’t like, they will win more often than not. And they are likely to still be busy working after you decide you want to do something else. And this will not change, no matter how much or how loudly you whine. Read the rest of this entry »

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Temple Day in Canada

May 12th, 2010

So, the plan was to be at the 1:30 session I had the appointment for.  I wanted to get some initiatories done for the 17 names I had reserved (the boys).  I wasn’t sure how this all might work, so I got there a little over an hour early.  I got the cards printed out and checked, and asked at the office about initiatories.  They told me to talk to someone in the locker room.  So I asked at the locker room, and got some confused looks.

Turns out that, after being open for a whole week, they don’t have everything figured out yet.  It’s like they’re learning or something.  Lots of guys in white jackets holding laminated cards and looking, well, confused.  And others wandering around, either wondering where they’re supposed to be or where the guy is who’s supposed to be where they are.  Confused High Priests can be really cute, actually.  So, after surfing the learning curve for a while, I learned some stuff, like: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Church, Life | 4 Comments »

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

April 28th, 2010

Below is a conversation I had on the FAIR page on Facebook.  I’ve deleted the identity of the person I was speaking with because I haven’t received his permission to identify him here — you will see him say that he’s copied this to his note, and he has not requested permission to identify me as of now.  I am posting it because I’m more than a little perplexed by what went on.  I see me responding to what he’s saying, at least a little of it, with some substance, and receiving insults and attacks in response.  I’m quite sure he sees something almost the opposite of that.  So I’m looking to see if I’m totally crazy here, or if he comes across as a rather rambly whack-job to other people as well.

Please note that I’m not looking for agreement or disagreement about what either of us are saying.  I would rather not have the Mormon folks around here attacking the guy because he’s anti-Mormon, and I’d rather not have folks taking his side because they also think Mormonism is a cult.  I’m more interested in finding someone who can explain this conversation to me.  He annoyed me, and I clearly pissed him off in a serious way, and I don’t see him bringing specific things for me to respond to in any amount, and he doesn’t see me doing that either.

I must admit that my initial responses were humorously dismissive, but I don’t see him complaining about that, so I don’t think that was a conversation-foul.  But I’m open to contrasting views about that.  Or much of anything other than the content of the conversation. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Forums | 6 Comments »

Payday, and payday again.

April 7th, 2010

Today is Payday, which is very nice. But it was also a payday of another kind, which was very nice.  I don’t know when, but I decided at some point in the weekend that I would be going by the Seattle Temple this morning after work. I knew it would be closed (being Monday), but I thought I’d check out the Distribution Center next door if it was open or the Deseret Bookstore down in the mall below it. The Distribution Center, it turns out, is also closed Monday, so I took a walk around the Temple, and got some pictures with my phone.

Then, I went down to Deseret Book. By this time, it was about 9:20, and the sign on the door said DB opens at 10:00. Great! I’d really like to head home and get some sleep, but I also wanted a chance to see if they had what I came to look for (a little empty bottle with an eye-dropper top, useful for filling a key-chain vial of consecrated oil) (I want to use it for vanilla extract in my kitchen). So I parked, and went around the corner of the little mall to the Tullys. I’ve learned my way around a Starbucks, but this was my first time at a Tullys. I like Starbucks better — more non-coffee options — but Tullys had enough options to get my take-my-meds breakfast taken care of (not-too-hot hot chocolate and a white chocolate macadamia cookie bar). I tried their free wifi, but couldn’t get it to connect right, so I used the cellular modem to get online and check my FB until it was 10:00.  I packed up and headed over.

I looked around the store at what was there, and got an idea of what they had and what I might want to get at some time.  They didn’t have the little bottles I wanted, and I wasn’t really ready to get a new set of scriptures at the price they had.  I was just getting ready to walk out the door, disappointed that I had spent that time and had nothing to show for it, with my hand on the door, when I gave one last look back, and noticed the word “WARD” on the cover of a book on a shelf I hadn’t looked at.  It was the “Bestsellers” section.  So I thought I’d look at that shelf, and found that the book that got my attention was the Worldwide Ward Cookbook:  Mom’s Best Recipes. The name meant something to me.  Some months ago, I had been pointed to a website for the Worldwide Ward Cookbook that was accepting recipes for this particular volume.  I’d submitted my mom’s fruit cobbler recipe to it, altering the recipe as she’d written it to make it more like a cook book recipe, and then I’d heard nothing more about it.  I’d been thinking about that, not too long ago, in fact, since the rhubarb is up and it’s getting to be cobbler season. I was pretty certain that I would have heard something if it was going to be included, so I doubted it was in there, but thought it wouldn’t hurt to look.

So I grabbed the book, and looked to the index, finding a recipe for fruit cobbler listed.  I flipped to the page (243), and that particular page was a little bit stuck together, so it took a little doing to get it to come open.  And there was my picture, and the recipe I’d submitted, complete with the little note I’d written for it!  They spelled my name right, even!  The recipe was altered just a little bit from what I’d submitted, but it was essentially what I put down, so that was cool.  The best part was having this little remembrance of Mom in print.  Here’s the blurb I wrote:

This recipe is named for my mother, Della Carnefix Nelson, who adapted it from a recipe given to her by her sister.  Mom almost always cooked from scratch, and usually by “touch,” rather than from a recipe; she never felt comfortable preparing a meal out of a bix with instructions to “add water and stir.”  She liked this recipe because it’s so easy and because the batter starts out underneath the fruit and cooks through it, picking up flavor from the fruit on the way through.  It was one of two recipes we had her dictate while she was in hospice care, shortly before her death from cancer in July 2006.

And so now I knew what I was there for.  I bought the book, showing the clerk that this was me, but not because it was me, but because it was about Mom.  And it was payday again.

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