Just Like Family

A sting by investigative reporters revealed that Mayor Jim West of Spokane, WA, trolled for gay sex online and may have abused his power of office by offering the young men (just out of high school) he encountered political internships. The gay

Former Mayor Jim West

community was outraged by West's double-standard because West had often passed or even written anti-gay legislation. It's impossible to prove, but West may have also sexually abused young boys - although this part he vehemently denies.

And this is really old news.

The story broke in 2005. West was recalled from office, and died soon after from cancer. The only reason why I'm thinking about it is because my media ethics professor was the editor of the paper which covered the story, and we've been talking about it a lot in class.

We watched a documentary about it. You can watch it online. West behaved badly - there isn't much doubt about that. The reason why I'm bringing it up is because at the end of the documentary, I spotted something I thought was really beautiful.

This disgraced politician, now hated by nearly every community within his sphere of influence, with a history of being a ruthless campaigner, recalled out of office by formerly loyal voters...is invited, welcomed, and embraced by a local church. It's near the end of the documentary segment called "A New Revelation," at 6:45.

I mean, sure, it's sort of a typical thing to do, isn't it? After a politician messes up, he'll claim he found God to get the Christian vote on his side. Even my professor said, "I think it's predictable. It may be sincere -- it's not for me to say one way or another -- but it's certainly not surprising." I guess none of us are qualified to decide who's sincere about their faith and who isn't. What's beautiful is this church didn't care about that. They loved him anyway.

Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is probably exactly what it sounds like. It's mostly black, with those loud kinds of services where people call out "amen" and "preach it" and probably dance in the aisles when they good and feel like it. The pastor invited West one day during a prayer breakfast and West went and kept going because he felt welcome.

Looks like a pretty chill place, actually.

In the documentary, the interviewer tells West it's interesting that he chose to start going to a church that believed homosexuality was a sin right after he became publicly gay. She asks one question. "Why?"

"Because they invited me to," West replies. "Because they welcomed me into their family." (YEAH!!)

One reporter went to the church with West while doing a follow-up piece on his life and reported back an interesting story.

West claps to the gospel music with some self-consciousness. (He points out a white man who, he says, "is the only white guy here with real rhythm.")
Mitchell announces his sermon by saying he wants to talk about something so powerful "sometimes we even love it more than God. What is it that's so much fun? It's sin."
Specifically, Mitchell charts a course of sin from watching scantily clad women on MTV — "a foothold to the devil" — to looking at dirty movies and becoming subsumed in the online world.
"The next thing you know you are looking at things on the Internet you had no idea existed. You better stop peeking. Peeking will get you hurt," Mitchell bellowed in his full crescendo. "Peeking will mess your mind up. Peeking will set you apart from everybody."
...
There are lots of "amens" and heads nodding and parishioners urging Mitchell on. The mayor listens and says quietly, "He's talking to me."

 He could have been playing it up for the reporter, sure. I don't think anybody can know either way about that. But it really reminds me of another story.

He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’

“Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’”

That's from Luke 18, verses 9-12.  It's Jesus talking. And you do know what he said about these two men?

Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

I've talked to a lot of people who believe Christianity is all about rules. That it's all about behaving right. But the more I learn about Jesus...I don't think he cares about that much, if at all.

I forget sometimes what the world was like when Jesus had his ministry. He lived in, huh, what would you call it... a protectorate of Rome? And Rome was crazy. They had all kinds of funky behaviors going on, things that wouldn't even be acceptable in our time. I mean, Nero had young boys whose only job was to "nibble" him while he was in the pool. But is that what Jesus focused on? Not from what I've read in the Bible. From what I've read, it seems to me the only people he ever really chewed up were the ones who thought they had it all together. The rule-followers. The religious elite.

His followers were shocked by the types of people Jesus hung out with. They were social outcasts: the terminally ill, the insane, the taxmen who were the dregs of society, prostitutes and low-class workers. And it wasn't like they were his pity projects. He really loved them. He treated them like his family.

It just makes me think...

I could follow all the rules. I could do everything right. I could become a successful public relations professional and make enough money to donate huge sums to charity. I could pray every day on my knees. I could frown disapprovingly at people who don't follow the rules as well as I do and lecture them about how to be better. I could go to church services three times a week, and maybe even lead a Bible study.

But if I do not love, I am nothing.

Extremists

"I want to start eating less meat," Jane announced a few days ago.

I looked up at her, stunned and defensive, because what I heard implied was, "We are going to start eating less meat." We do all almost all our grocery shopping together, and I would give up chocolate before I gave up meat.

"But you hardly eat food to begin with," I protested.

She disagreed and told me she eats all the time, and the times I remember her skipping meals because she forgot to pack a lunch are the exception, not the rule. "Most of the farms that raise cattle sold in stores are unsustainable," she explained. "And besides, nobody needs to eat as much meat as Americans do."

Even though we're both busy college students, Jane wants to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Already, we don't buy prepackaged food like frozen burritos or canned ravioli. Also, because Jane wants to reduce trash, we buy most of our food in bulk from Winco and refill our plastic containers. And of course we use reusable shopping bags, which I found are more comfortable to carry around anyways. These steps all seem pretty extreme by themselves to me, but it isn't enough for Jane. Her dream is to buy whatever she can't grow directly from local farmers and can the excess - basically never go to the grocery store and never buy anything that can't be grown locally, like citrus. It makes me weep inwardly just thinking about it.

I don't think she knows how weird it is for me to think this way. The culture I grew up in painted environmentalists as either paranoid lunatics who screamed the sky was falling, or as malicious communist

I couldn't find a picture of Promise, but here's how I remember it.

scum who wanted to take away our land. I deeply loved our 300 acres of almost unused land, located on the top of a mountain in Oregon. The settlers named it Promise, because it was like the promised land "flowing with milk and honey." Did these environmentalists think they cared more about this land than I did? It couldn't be possible. Did they know under which stump there was a veritable kingdom of ladybugs - thousands milling in and around the curves in the wood? Did they know when to be at the pond to see the exhausted Monarchs rest in fluttering clumps on the sand? Did they know where to find the lair of the water scorpion, or even what it was? If they met a bear on the road by the garage, would they know to drop their gaze and nonchalantly walk a different direction?

I knew very little about these mysterious scheming environmentalists, who must all live in some faraway nexus of evil, like Portland.

Once, an activist came and lived in my area and started telling the people of Wallowa County what they were doing wrong. When the people discovered the environmentalist had built a new log cabin for himself on Alder Slope, they lost it. I think they were more angry that he was a hypocrite than anything else. It's hard to respect someone who has no integrity. So some people made an effigy of him and tarred and feathered it, which they got in trouble for because apparently that hasn't been an acceptable practice for about a hundred years. But if you ever visit Wallowa County, this won't surprise you. It's like traveling back in time.

My heart became a little softer to environmentalists over the years as I realized many of them just love the land like I do. But it was still a culture shock when University of Idaho housing threw a Protestant logger's daughter in the same room with a Catholic member of the Environmental Club, who if given a rifle and a plane ticket, would ruthlessly hunt down elephant poachers until they were extinct, thank you very much. We spent many hours arguing about everything. We argued about evolution, conservation, global warming, the justice system, politics in general and where the horse blankets she washed for the polo club should be hung up to dry.

Jane and me, freshmen year

So maybe on the outside it's a little puzzling that we chose to room together again for our junior year. But for us, it makes sense. We love arguing, for one thing, and it's not a trait many people share. By arguing with each other, we've sharpened each other like iron and softened one another like sanded wood. I've learned how to better frame my argument because she always finds a place to poke holes through it, and we've both learned how to step outside the argument and realize no matter how ridiculously outlandish we think the other's argument is, we still love the person behind it and need to show it.

Jane and me becoming more mature

Through her integrity and clear reasoning, she's shown me that she's the real deal, so not only do I respect her thoughts about the environment, I'm beginning to embrace them. After all, she isn't the only extremist in our friendship. I've also been misrepresented by nut jobs who claim to believe in the same thing as me. I've also been misunderstood and viewed as evil, mostly out of ignorance. I also don't always live like I believe what I believe, but I'm becoming both sharper and softer as I pursue God's vision to restore the world to a kingdom of peace, joy and beauty.

And then when I think about it, he's a bit of an environmentalist too. He told Adam and Eve to take care of the land - not squander it. After all, if we don't like it when someone takes apart our Lego spaceship or jumps right in the middle of our sandcastle, God probably doesn't like it when we destroy the world he created. I liked the way G.K. Chesterton put it: “The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.” In the laws the Hebrews were given in the wilderness, rules were included like if you come across a bird's nest, you may take the eggs but don't take the mother. It also had some ideas about crop rotation and letting the land rest. Sometimes I forget the Bible doesn't always agree with my preconceived notions.


When you come right down to it, any passion to make the world a better place aligns with God's own plans. Of course we all get it wrong, sometimes. We use bad methods, get discouraged, think it all depends on us...But when you deliberately tell God, "Ok, I'm in, I want to work with you," everything changes.

And I think that's why us two extremists get along so well. We both want to work with him, and not out of fear of what could happen, but out of joy and appreciation for what we have. It's a funny way of looking at things, but I think George MacDonald struck on some truth when he said, "attitudes are more important than facts." 

Missing Spacecraft found on Mars

Long Lost Spacecraft Found On Mars? - KHQ Right Now - News and Weather for Spokane and North Idaho |

What other missing things might be on Mars? O.o

Shine a Light Day

Today, April 9, is Shine a Light Day: a day on which we shine the light on the dark corner of our world where 27 million people live in slavery.

And you know what's crazy? This isn't just a problem for the typical trouble-making countries. This is happening in the United States. There are slaves who work in industries like agriculture,  and there are many who are sex slaves.

The average age of a trafficked sex slave is 12.

I didn't know anything about this until I watched a music video on YouTube that ended with an interview with Christine Caine the founder of the A21 Campaign. Watch a video here where she explains what A21 is about and who they help.

 It's easy to get overwhelmed by how many problems the world has, but that doesn't mean that we should freeze and do nothing simply because we can't do everything. I think Churchill, only slightly out of context, said it best.

"With the help of God, of which we must all feel daily conscious, we shall continue steadfast in faith

Winston Churchill

and duty till our task is done. This then, my lords and gentlemen, is the message which we send forth today to all states and nations, bound or free, to all the men in all the lands who care for freedom's cause. To our Allies and well-wishers in Europe, to our American friends and helpers drawing ever closer in their might across the ocean, this is the message---

Lift up your hearts; all will come right. Out of depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind."

No Minimum GPA Required

In talking about wonder, adventure, and science I want to emphasize that I don't believe it's important to be super smart to enjoy these things. Of course we should try to understand things and learn as much as possible, but having a high IQ isn't as critical as people pretend it is. At any rate, there are many things that no one understands - smart people are just better at pretending that they do.

So I found John Kerry's statement to German students in Berlin refreshing. Especially since despite being a politician he was so unexpectedly blunt. To put it in context, he was talking about ideological freedom and how we put up with stupid groups like the Nazis because we believe freedom is so important. Even the freedom to be stupid.

"In America you have a right to be stupid - if you want to be," Kerry said.

"And we tolerate it. We somehow make it through that. Now, I think that's a virtue. I think that's something worth fighting for."

Wish I Was as Smart as a Baby

Children are smarter than they get credit for. It seems like studies are continually proving it, like this one that says babies exposed to more than one language can differentiate between them by the time they're 7 months old. Seven months old!! They haven't even built up the muscle to crawl at that point, but according to the article, they can recognize language cues like pitch and word order. The researchers are telling parents not to worry about confusing babies by exposing them to multiple languages because "your baby is very equipped to keep these languages separate and they do so in remarkable ways."

These types of scales are FREEZING cold to bare skin.

Brains are interesting. Especially baby brains. I'm terrible at conversation starters, but one question I like to ask is, "What was your first memory?" I'm convinced that babies are very rational, we just can't remember it ourselves and babies certainly can't convey all their thoughts. I think this because of my oldest memory: being weighed on one of those archaic metal scales like the one in this picture.

I don't know how old I was - between one and two - but I distinctly remember having thoughts but not knowing how to verbalize them. My mother and the doctor were having a conversation and I could follow some of it and I did not like what they were saying, but I didn't say anything. I don't think I knew how to express myself except by crying, which I did as soon as they put me on the dumb scale.

Every parent believes that their child is the most brilliant baby to ever enter the world. As Roald Dahl put it, “It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.” Which is nice to keep in mind if you happen to be the "blister" type. Regardless, there have been interesting stories about babies that obtained extraordinary skills at a very young age. In fact, we all had some superpowers as babies. We could read minds, easily see differences in images, listen to several sound frequencies at once and see pure color.

Wouldn't it be amazing if we retained the special skills of babies in combination with our current cognizance? We'd be crazy smart.
Maybe we needed those superpowers temporarily in order to adapt to a world that gave us so much to think about.

The Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse

Once upon a time, there was a German couple who immigrated to Missouri and started a farm. Even though the country where they came from did not allow slaves, the couple decided to buy a few slaves to help them run the farm. Maybe the couple made a pact to always be kind to their slaves. Or maybe they simply and unexpectedly found their slaves worth loving.

Either way, when in 1864 night raiders captured their slave Mary and her baby, the couple traded their only horse to pay a man to bring them back.

Have horse, will trade for baby. Hmm.

The man came back with a week-old baby, Mary's frail son.

Mary was never seen again.

The couple, Moses and Susan Carver, decided to raise the baby. They named him George.

This was just at the tail-end of the Civil War. Slavery was abolished, but the former slaves had few rights or privileges. For one thing, they couldn't go to school.

And George really wanted to go to school.

 “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.”

Susan taught him to read and write, and from there George learned everything he could from anyone he could. As he grew older, he moved from town to town doing manual labor and searching for knowledge. This search eventually got him accepted to a college - which immediately sent him away when he showed up and wasn't what they wanted.

 But eventually he got to Iowa State Agricultural College where he achieved a BS and then a master's in botany. After that, he stayed on to conduct research at Iowa Experiment Station. His work in plant pathology (disease) and mycology (fungi) gained him national recognition as a respected botanist.

“When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.” 

Iowa State wanted to keep him, and hug him, and call him George. They offered George money, research assistants, and a cushy position. Beautiful end to a sad story, right?

Nope.

That's when Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, heard about him. Washington desperately needed qualified teachers. He didn't think that such a distinguished person would want to work for him, but since it never hurts to ask, he sent George a long letter, telling him all about the things the southerners were suffering through, all the problems that were cropping up in their society.

Carver in 1910

According to rumor, George sent back a telegram that contained only two words.

"I'm coming."

George spent the rest of his life figuring out ways to improve life for people. He created paints out of local clays so that people could paint their houses and churches. He made an oil to treat infantile paralysis and one day every week, mothers would line up and hand him their babies to have life massaged into them. He taught farmers about crop rotation so the soil wouldn't be depleted. Most famously, he came up with around 300 uses for the peanut.

To me, George Washington Carver was not great because of his science, although he was an incredible scientist. Carver was great because he loved people. He used his skills, studies and research to help people.

“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also – if you love them enough.” 

Carver working in his laboratory.

 One funny thing about Carver - when he came to the Tuskegee Institute, he was wearing a suit. He wore that same suit the rest of his life, keeping it clean and pressed and mended. He never wanted another one. Carver only picked up his paychecks when he needed money, and he rarely needed money. When he was in his 70s, he finally picked up all his paychecks and used the $60,000 (the equivalent of around $777,000 today) to create a research fund.

This man was a truth-seeker, someone who lived with passion and delighted in everyday adventure.

I want to live like he did.

(Quotes in italics are by George Washington Carver.)

The Winnie the Pooh of Snakes

Last summer I had a job cleaning vacation rentals by Wallowa Lake at the base of the mountains in Joseph, Oregon. One day I finished a house in early afternoon, so I looked at one of the peaks on Chief Joseph Mountain and thought, "Yeah, I'm gonna climb that. Today." The only shoes I had with me were clogs so I went barefoot.

Well, after I had been hiking the mountain for a couple hours, I realized that it might take more than one afternoon to get to the top so I turned around and started loping down a hill covered in tall grass.

And I landed right on a snake. I put my foot smack dab in the center of a squishy, live snake. 

I screamed and waited for death, convinced it was a rattler. But when I looked down, it was this enchanting fellow that I saw- 

(Image from petsgallery.info)                                                    

                                                                      

It seemed like he didn't notice that I stepped on him. He was trying to crawl into a hole, but taking his sweet time about it. His scales were like nothing I'd seen before - a bit shimmery, falling in almost loose folds. Instead of a thin, tapering tail, he had a blunt and pudgy one. I thought it might have been bitten off.

I showed the picture to Rick Zollman, a manager for the Nez Perce fish hatchery in Lostine. He chewed me out for not picking up the snake and taking it home!

"That's a rubber boa!" He said, jabbing his finger at the picture. "We used to catch and sell these to the girls at school when I was a kid."

Zollman said the scales of the rubber boa are very soft. The girls he went to school with would let the snakes wrap around their arms and hang out there. Rubber boas are chill, that way. They're considered one of the best snakes to use with children and people with a fear of snakes because not only are they soft and easy-going, they also don't have the instinct to strike. If you make one REALLY mad, it might musk you. Which means you'll smell bad. Pretty scary, right? Scientists think that the reason why rubber boas have blunt tails is to confuse predators about which end is the head. 

Get this. If a rubber boa feels threatened, it will curl into a ball and stick its head in a hole. It leaves its tail exposed to look like the head. Hmm, I can't see anything going wrong with that method.

Oh, oh, help and bother! I'm stuck.

                                                     

But the best defense that rubber boas have is that they're so dang hard to find if you're actually looking for one. People used to think that they were a rare creature, but now we think they're very common, just shy. 

This, by the way, is one of my arguments for why Bigfoot could exist. Just because something hasn't been seen doesn't mean it's not there. 

In our modern, advanced, technologically superior,  wow-don't-we-think-highly-of-ourselves world, it's hard to imagine that there could be lands that haven't been discovered, creatures who haven't been documented, secrets that haven't been revealed.

But there are.

And I'm not just talking about the bottom of the ocean as far as land goes. As one example, the Amazon jungle still hasn't been fully explored. Not that no one has tried...but no one has returned. Dun dun dun dun. This book was a fascinating read about the explorers who have disappeared into the Amazon in search for a fabled city.

And I'm not just talking about new species of bugs as far as animals go. The obvious example that comes to my mind is the coelacanth, a fish that we only knew about from fossils until 1938, when a deep sea fisherman caught one.

Coelacanth is all happy to be alive and stuff.

And then we realized that pretty much everything we had concluded about the fish from the fossil was wrong. Which just goes to show that science is not infallible. (And it never was meant to be.)

And so Bigfoot could be real.

I'm just sayin'.

What's This Blog About?

"There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."
-G.K. Chesterton

I once pulled over on the side of a highway to watch a cow give birth. I don't have a vested interest in cows, I've never been part of the FFA or taken pre-veterinarian classes, but it looked like the cow was just minutes from delivering the baby and I was curious and excited to see what the calf would look like and how it would take its first step.

My friend in the passenger seat was not so thrilled.

"I've seen tons of cows give birth," She said, rolling her eyes. "This is stupid. Can we please get back on the road?"

For some reason, she was embarrassed that I found it interesting, and embarrassed that everyone driving by on the highway thought we were interested - thought that this would be a new experience for us. It's the same kind of embarrassment that keeps me from taking pictures of my hometown. I don't want to look like a tourist: as though I've never seen these things before.

"Passion is the genesis of genius."
-Galileo

One-on-one, most people are willing to admit that they don't know everything, but many of us still cater to a large and imaginary audience that laughs at our naivety when we press the fireman's hat-shaped-button on the elevator to see what it will do or when we stare slack-jawed at a sunset.

And you know what? It's just silly to let go of that wonder and curiosity and delight.

It's that same wonder and curiosity and delight in the world that children have. It's a lack of it that makes us old.

It was that curiosity which drove Galileo to watch the stars and question contemporary views of the universe.

It's the passion that caused George Washington Carver to unlock the chemical secrets of plants.

 "I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life - but there was no one to tell me." 
-Carver

The world is so big and fascinating and we know very little of it individually, or even collectively. So what is this blog about? Discovering the world. I want to present you with the interesting things that I find, and I would love to see the interesting things that you find. Things such as lizards with chemical factories up their noses, and trees whose bark can purify water, ancient cities gone missing in the jungle or found in the desert as well as the people who discover these things.

Because isn't it all amazing?