An Alternate T-Day Dinner — And Some Observations….

(Huber’s Cafe – Portland, Oregon)

I have friends in real life.

It might not seem so, as I never discuss them – however I do. I tend to keep real-life and on-line more-or-less separate; some things sift between worlds, but not so much; we all know about safety on-line; that what you post here is available for the whole wide world to see.

While I won’t be mentioning any real names, I’ll make an exception.

On T-Day, I was asked at more or less the last minute by a couple of friends (I’ll call ‘em John and Terry) to join ‘em at one of Portland’s ‘traditions’ – Huber’s Café.

Huber’s has been around since the 1870’s; it’s literally one of the oldest restaurants in the west – and, if the tale is true, the oldest continually-operating restaurant in Oregon, if not the entire west –coast.

They’re open on T-Day. Their specialty is turkey dinner (you can get turkey dinner every day they’re open – but T-Day is, by definition, a big one.

On T-Day, you can also get steak, ham, and other traditional and not-so-traditional goodies.

After a short wait (reservations are mandatory), we three were ushered into the mahogany-paneled dining room and seated.

Next, is another Huber’s tradition – Spanish Coffee.

They are Kahlua’s biggest single customer in the United States (no joke); they have a gold-plated bottle in a glass case displayed prominently behind the bar to prove it. Spanish Coffee at Huber’s is an experience, created tableside by one of several roaming-bartenders who’ll pour 151 rum, light it off, swirl the glasses, and pour the rest of the ingredients from an unconscionable height.

Served hot and flamed-off, these concoctions are wonderful. Truly. The three which I consumed before dinner left me with a truly warm glow.

“Will”?

“Yeah, Terry?”

“When are you gonna settle down and find a special lady?”

Understand. She means well. But I hate that friggin’ question. It’s at once condescending and stupid.

“Terry. First – I am ‘settled’. I’m restoring a house. I own a business. I’ve got more leaves to rake than the Parks System here in Portland. Second, I know a lot of ‘special ladies’. You’re one of ‘em.”

I continued, “Thing is, most of the ‘special ladies’ I know are either married, or at least two-thousand miles away. That’s the way life works. I could move, but why? Remember – I’m ‘settled’.”

Terry got a long face. John chimed in. “Will – it’s time we found you a woman!”

I reminded him of his alcohol consumption, and that it was likely the benefit of 151 ‘afterburner effect’ which was doing his talking.

Still – it made me wonder. Just a little.

Y’see, as I mentioned not long ago on another’s blog, I was raised of a time when a man didn’t touch a lady unless he had permission (not that we didn’t want to); we didn’t use terms like ‘b**ch’; ‘ho’; and other missives to reference a female.

I grew up of a time when young ladies wore jeans, shirts, and their hair long. They’d wear sundresses and make sun-tea in the summertime; the ones I knew from college read a little Thoreau on occasion.

The world, meantime, morphed seriously into a particularly mean and vicious parody of itself – young men began the aforementioned name-calling – and gone were the sundresses or jeans; now, young women have nipple-rings and tattoos; they all look like Neil Young and carry knives.

“John”, I said, “I don’t need to find a woman. I need a bit of peace and order in my life. If the good ones are all married or of a distance which precludes anything but email, I’ll stay single.”

“Have it your way, pal!”, he said.

We finished dinner. Home; I poured some champagne and we talked about life – but they wisely ended any attempts at matchmaking.

Waiting for Godot….

Sheila Samples is upset.

See, she’s been working in the media for some years, a published author and a bit of an expert on political machinations. She postulates in her latest Information Clearing House article, “The Last Founder Standing”, that Al Gore has quite probably reinvented himself, albeit quietly, into one of the last people capable of saving American democracy.

That’s a heavy statement – but it’s become more and more evident as the years have passed that Gore won the 2000 election.

That’s right. As she put it so well, the Supreme Court “…in their unsigned decision, they wrote such a democratic win would cause ‘public acceptance,’ which would ‘cast a cloud over Bush’s legitimacy’ and thus harm ‘democratic stability.’”.

Yeah. Right.

She went on to say that “…For the rest of us, those (last seven) years have just been hell. Like our fellow Americans in New Orleans caught up in the despair of waiting for help that will never come, we remain mired in a Samuel Beckett wasteland, waiting for our own “Godot” to return and claim what is rightfully his. Rightfully ours. Our rights, our freedoms, our civil liberties — our government.”

I’ll let Ms. Samples continue her commentary in the link, here. It’s best I don’t continue to just requote her article; it deserves to be read in its entirety.

There are a couple of things about which I’m wondering, as we’re getting down-to-the-wire regarding the Presidential nomination:

1. Do you want Hillary Clinton representing the democrats?
2. Do you want your only OTHER choice to be Rudy Giuliani?

If not, I’d say it’s time to draft Gore. He’s the only Democrat with the capacity to beat Giuliani and the rest of the rubber-stamp Neocons who’ve gotten us into this mess.

I know – I hoped for Kucinich and Paul. I’m also not so much of an idealist that I believe those to men have a snowball’s chance in Hell of making anything more than a small fuss.

Folks, we need to take our country back – by any and all means necessary.

Thanksgiving — a Minority Report….

I’m probably going to upset about 90% of my readers with this one (give or take).

The Myth Begins….

Thanksgiving, as a holiday, is a waste of time to me. If we forget for a moment that I don’t believe in anyone’s ‘god’, we also have to step back for a moment or three and discuss the origins of the holiday.

No, I’m not going to debunk (for the fifth time) the old chestnut that “America is a ‘Christian’ nation.” That’s been done, and done so well, that it needn’t be repeated – if anyone reading this missive still believes that tripe, they’re probably going to be among the 90%, above – so read no further, unless you’ve got good blood-pressure control.

The ‘First Thanksgiving’ is a myth – created by the very free embellishment of a letter from one of the colonists, a Mr. Edward Winslow, who described a rather routine harvest-festival. In the letter, he also described the arrival of some 90-odd Wampanoags; natives of those parts.

Wampanoag tradition is much like that of other cultures ‘round the world – you never show up someplace unannounced without something in your hand – and from all appearances, this is really what happened – a spontaneous dinner. As the Puritans prayed over every meal as a matter of course, it’s likely that this was done – as well the Wampanoags, who thanked their own deities on a more-or-less daily basis for everything.

A few years later, another colonist, William Bradford, wrote a book about the first years of the colony, describing (among many other things) this impromptu dinner-meeting. He described in a bit of detail the menu, the attendees, and some other minor details – but never mentioned the meeting as anything more than a harvest festival with some uninvited but nevertheless welcome guests (due to what they brought in the form of foodstuffs).

Bradford’s book disappeared (looted by British troops during the Revolution), and only resurfaced in the 1850’s. It was then rediscovered by a Mrs. Hale, who held some sway in social circles at the time and began promoting a ‘day of Thanksgiving’ as a feasting-holiday.

(Prior to Mrs. Hale’s discovery-in-the-attic, the ‘day of Thanksgiving’ had been declared by George Washington in 1787; it was celebrated by fasting in the northeastern states, and virtually ignored everywhere else. It can only be assumed that the mysterious Mrs. Hale’s suggestion of a National Pigout increased the popularity of the holiday).

It was then that the mythology began to take on a life of its own. A minor event in two narratives became the stuff of legend; the affirmation that ‘god’ had a hand in the blind-luck survival of some 50+ colonists on the Edge of Nowhere – when in fact it was really the unrewarded friendship of the Wampanoags which made it possible for the lice-ridden colonists to survive the winter.

Enter Politics and its Handmaiden; War….

In 1858, when Hale’s discovery led to a regional feast-day, the nation was well on the brink of tearing itself apart – what was unfinished during the Revolution (ensuring the freedom of everyone within the borders of the new nation) was about to be resolved by force of arms and secession.

The outcome was very much in doubt even in the fall of 1863.

Jefferson Davis’s dream of ‘Greek democracy’ – one which created several classes of people and incorporated the concept of human slavery – was actually a victory and an election away from becoming a firm reality on the North American continent.

In July of 1863, all of that seemed to change for good when Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg. In October of that year, in response to the requests of congressmen, senators, and private individuals, Lincoln declared that “…in the midst of a Civil War of unparalleled magnitude and severity”, the last Thursday of November should be a national ‘Day of Thanksgiving.’

This didn’t sit well with the Confederacy, which in spite of being founded on some very backward ideas, was still starving.

In 1864, Lincoln pressed home the point in November, by sending 6,000 turkeys to the siege-lines in Petersburg. In response to the calls of Confederate troops to share in some of the bounty, Federal artillerists were ordered to lob some 6,000 shells into the Confederate lines.

Preachers mounted pulpits a year later and credited the Federal victory to ‘god’ – and the myth of the First Thanksgiving was all but set in stone.

Fast-Forward – to Today….

However, there’s another viewpoint – and this is where the story turns to present-day.

Last week, the Seattle School District issued a letter to its staff, instructing them to remember that, amongst all the festivities, there’s a group of people in America for which this holiday is not a happy time.

The Pacific Northwest is home to a very diverse population – and a significant Native American population is part of it. Three years ago, several representatives
of the native peoples of the Seattle area voiced concern over the objectivity and representation of ‘Thanksgiving’.

I happen to agree with them.

To many of them, it’s a time of mourning for 500 years of betrayal and deceit. While it can be argued that ‘it’s time to move on’, and that it’s ‘too politically-correct’ – it’s also the unvarnished truth.

‘Thanksgiving’ isn’t a happy time for a lot of people – as we know it today, it was born as a political statement during a war, and the stories of happy Natives and Pilgrims sitting in harmony ended in the bloodbath of King Philip’s War a scant fifty years later – brought about by continued colonial encroachment.

There’s little we can do about it today – it’s far too late to undo the cultural damage of 500 years. However – there’s much we can to do remember – and to tell the truth to our children, no matter how unpleasant, how measured, or far away.

Reading:

Seattle Schools Warn Staff About Thanksgiving (KING-5 news; 11/14/07)

Deconstructing The Myths of the First Thanksgiving (2007)

Religion, Belief, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster….

Today, I read on CNN that the American Academy of Religion will be holding its annual meeting in San Diego this weekend.

On the agenda is a discussion entitled “Holy Pasta and Authentic Sauce – The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s Messy Implications for Theorizing Religion”.

Behind the humor here – and most attendees admit that this topic is pretty light fare for the Academy – is a serious question: Does ‘god’ really exist at all?

First, some background:

The ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ as a deity was created out of thin air (as are all gods, if you believe us atheists) by an Oregon State University graduate student named Bob Henderson.

He did so back in 2005, as a tongue-in-cheek response to the debate at the state-level in Kansas regarding the teaching of ‘intelligent design’ in Kansas classrooms.

In his missive to the Kansas legislature, which achieved a sort of pop-culture status almost immediately, Henderson purported to have ‘evidence’ that a flying spaghetti monster created the universe – – and, although no one was around to witness this event, he had ‘written evidence’ of the fact.

He debunked any scientific challenge by saying that “What scientists don’t understand is that every time a measurement is made, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there to change it with His Noodly Appendage”.

So there. Take that, everyone.

His point made, the Kansas legislature (on stronger evidence than this, one hopes) repealed its ban on the teaching of evolution in Kansas classrooms.

Meanwhile, FSM-ism (as its adherants call it) spread like wildfire, mainly on college campuses and later into the mainstream.

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(Pastafarian Creationism)

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Calling themselves “Pastafarians”, they hold up the tenets of the Loose Canon as their creed; they believe that (1) the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe after drinking heavily; that (2) heaven is a place with beer volcanoes and strippers; that (3) hell is the same, only the beer is stale and the strippers have questionable health; that (4) when you pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you must end all prayers with the word, “RAmen”.

They hold pirates to be the first Pastafarians; that they are ‘absolutely divine beings’; as a result, Henderson and his followers have created something called “Talk Like A Pirate Day”, on September 19^th every year (an event which has gained some credence here on Y/360).

Rather than Ten Commandments, there are eight “I’d Rather You Didn’t’s”.

You get the point. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is satire.

However, he and his followers bring up a rather serious topic.

Whether it’s rooting for your favorite team, joining a club, throwing salt over your shoulder – are humans really that ‘wired’ to believe in something?

And, must that ‘something’ be (1) unprovable by normal means, (2) organized, and (3) led by a cadre which is held in high regard and given near-complete power over the follower?

These are questions we should all ponder from time to time – and, while the folks at the American Academy of Religion are pondering quasi-weightier topics such as the Nicene Creed and the teachings of Muhammad – we should all be wondering this:

Is religion a help – or a hindrance – to mankind’s future?

Perhaps the Spaghetti Monster has the answer.

Multiply – One Month Later….

A month down the road, I thought it would be a good thing to reassess the mass-migration to Multiply.Com.

For me, I can sum it all up in one sentence — Multiply is a difficult platform to use.

I’m not alone in this assessment, and this has lead to a quiet exodus from Multiply back to 360. Some of the reasons?

“I’ve been stalked and harassed here more in two weeks than I was in two years on 360,” said one user (names are remaining anonymous out of respect for the individuals). He retains a page on Multiply, but has brought his main blogging efforts back to 360.

He’s not alone. Several people I know are going back to 360, warts and all, because of the abysmal service (My own experience with Mulitply’s customer-support is simple – they can’t seem to be bothered. Yahoo was and is, at least to me, much more responsive).

My main complaint about Multiply is that it appears to be set up for hackers and suchlike – by contrast, most of us from 360 were about the writing – what we wrote and why we wrote it took center-stage there. Personally, I don’t have time or inclination to screw around with ‘themes’ and other crap, while Javascript is completely disabled and I can’t even post a photo from Flickr (it has to go through THEIR server).

I was chuckling about a friend’s post on her Multiply page – she said, “I can’t customize my site the way I’d like – I can’t send a mass-message to all of you (like I can on 360); and the customer-service folks won’t assist. Add to that, I get emails up the wazoo from Multiply, and none of the links to stop notifications seem to be helping.”

A fellow promptly wrote her back and said “All of these things can be done! You go here; there; tweak this; twiddle that; and do-the-other-thing!”

Which, in the end, was her point — this isn’t terribly easy to use — not like 360.

I believe that, in the end, critical-mass is going to be the telling issue here, along with the aforementioned ease-of-use. Yahoo has a lot of products (Flickr; Messenger; Groups; etc.) – and they’re working hell-bent-for-election to integrate them all into a common interface.

Personally, I’m betting on Yahoo.

Chloe; and the Mailbag….

I spent a good part of the weekend, on and off, being reminded.

Odd, isn’t it?

A couple of things I hadn’t counted on – one was how completely one foundling cat could, with no more than mere presence, get under my skin and into my life so completely.

Another was the number of people from whom I’d never heard before – people who’ve read my blogs, followed this page, and decided now, of all times, was the time to comment.

I thank each of you for that.

This, from a longtime friend here on Yahoo (pre-dating 360 by some years) probably says it best:

I was going to post “Kill the coyote.” But you’d just say that an ‘eye for an eye’ won’t bring her back, and you’re right. Revenge can be sweet, but in the end it doesn’t really accomplish anything.

I’m sorry you lost your friend, but I thank her for finding you if even for a short time. Even an old man like you needs a companion at times (as much as he hates to admit it). She’ll be back…in a form you’d never expect.

Love ya man,
Scoobs

PS: I went back and found this for you. Remember the good times!

“Listen. I’m not a pet-person. I come and go. I’ll feed you in the garage, and keep your water dish full. Every other day or so, I’ll make you some fresh stew. There’s not gonna be a cat-box or any of that drivel. You wanna go ‘scratchy-scratchy’, you got an acre here to do it. You’re an outside-varmint; you’re not coming inside the house, because I’m allergic to your kind in closed spaces. You get sick; it’s root-hog or die; because I’m not spending tons of money on vet-bills. You wanna leave; have at it. That’s the best deal you’re getting here. We square?”

“Meowwwrrrr”

It takes a certain courage in my place, to not hide behind any concepts of ‘kitty heaven’, or ‘Rainbow Bridge’. Logic tells me that our time – anyone’s time – is once; there’s nothing ‘beyond’ – because there’s simply no evidence of it.

We are all connected. Every one of us. We’d do well to work on that; here-and-now.

“I am so sorry for your loss. But thank you for sharing because through your words you have made many know the beauty and wonderful life of Chloe. Her spirit lives on with all of us. We will raise our glasses in tribute to her. Hugs!”

I received a lot of these. Count on the fact that two things are true about me – (1) I sometimes drink, and (2) I don’t get hangovers.

I toasted Chloe. Thank you, to those who joined me.

“Maybe you couldn’t protect her but you did love her.”

Yes. I did – thank you.

“Bet you never thought I would be crying over you or the ugly cat did you? Simple truth is you are my friend and I care for you and Chloe deeply. All that is left to say is that I am so very sorry and thanks for sharing her with all of us.”

I received several variants of this one, too. What I’m still trying to figure is how I could have touched so many of you in so many different ways.

“With their qualities of cleanliness, discretion, affection, patience, dignity, and courage, how many of us, I ask you, would be capable of becoming cats?”

I agree, completely – and the odd thing is that I never thought I would….

“She was such a perfect compliment to you. I didn’t even know her but thanks to your blogs I and we all got to know her and love her spitfire attitude and the wonderful, soothing effect she had on you.”

Again; I agree – completely.

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In all, I received 110 comments over two blogs – and every one of you, including some people who’ve never commented before – were beyond supportive.

As I mentioned, I spent most of the weekend, being reminded – I cleared out her ‘spot’ in the garage; tossed the things I’d bought for her care, and did my best to close a brief but significant chapter.

Who would have thought that a cat could do all this?

She was good for me. I’ll end on that.

I Am Taking Today Off…

I am doing this because, in case no one has figured it out, Life Is Not Fair.

Most of the time, it’s not even right. If it were, there would be no such thing as war. We wouldn’t celebrate victories – we’d be saddened by their cause.

People wouldn’t die in senseless accidents. Children wouldn’t contract cancer. Women wouldn’t die in childbirth. Well over 90% of humanity wouldn’t live in squalor, never knowing what the words “doctor” or “dentist” meant.

“Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki” would be cities.

“Vietnam” would produce coffee, and be a footnote in Asian history.

The Twin-Towers would be achievements of construction.

I reflect on these, not because of events in Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Iraq. I reflect on these because today, my cat was killed.

Somehow, it feels better to write those words. I take no comfort in the fact that her energy is now part of the Universal Whole; that her Like is now the Sum of Like.

And, I know that it’s irrational to hate the coyote which killed her.

In that, today is personal.

The particulars are these – while I was getting busy with a plan for someone’s home, I saw a coyote – likely the one which has come through the Hilltop on many occasions – trot right past my office-window (you know the one; it’s got the rhodies and the landscaping and the path where the Deer Likes To Rest) – with a lifeless, bloodied Chloe in its jaws.

I was separated from this scene by some floor-to-ceiling windows; oddly detached. It was a scene played out all over the world – something stronger kills something weaker; something with power exerts it over Something Which Cannot Defend.

I went outside – and, against all logic, called for Chloe.

I did this for myself – perhaps in the vain hope that by calling her name, as the Egyptians believed, she would Live Again; magically appearing before my eyes to whine in her own importunate way, looking for food, or for me to pick her up so she could once again exercise the Claws of Happiness through my sweatshirt, and drool a bit.

That – none of it – was to be. The open garage had her half-eaten breakfast and a full dish of water. That was all. Silence.

I walked the entire place – a task which took some time, as it’s not small – looking for a trace. Nothing.

She was in none of her Usual Places. Not under the Japanese maple; not near the main entry under the eave; not under the master-suite deck.

She was gone.

History is an odd thing.

People write it the way they’d Like to Believe. I’d like to believe that she’s just Out Someplace, looking for mice; exploring things; opening yet another Can o’ Whup-Ass on Oscar, the neighbor’s-cat, for having the temerity to invade.

No.

In a perfect world, she’d’ve been allowed to live out her life here – she was old, anyway, but that’s not the point – she’d’ve been able to live out her life, die in her sleep; be buried by someone who didn’t know her well, but who knew her well enough to feed her, care for her, and be there when she needed.

It was that last odd bit at which I failed. I couldn’t protect her.

Not from this.

In that – Life Isn’t Fair.

Nothing Gets Along – it is the nature of life on this planet to fight. Competition is what makes things work here, and while it builds Space Shuttles and skyscrapers, there’s a part of me which wishes it wasn’t so.

Not like this.

Tonight, I will sit on the retaining wall near the Japanese maple, and pretend.

She’ll be there, to discuss the Affairs of the Day – even though I know full-well that I’m talking to myself.

You’ll pardon me. It’s early – and I’m going to drink now.

Truly Bad Films….

I gotta confess something.

I love bad movies. Almost as much as I love bad music.

The Truly Bad Ones are not films which were purpose-written to be bad (Killer Klowns from Outer Space fills the bill nicely here) – but films which were written to be taken seriously.

Incredibly, the writers thought they had Something To Say, and they took two hours in which to do so – the result being a forever-bad rating on Rottentomatoes, and nominations for the Razzie Awards.

These are the reasons why no one will ever forget Ishtar (a $40M turkey which completely wasted the talent of both Warren Beatty AND Dustin Hoffman; Lifeforce, which (again) wasted Patrick Stewart’s talent fighting ‘space vampires’ – and these fine films, below.

Can’t Stop The Music. Originally intended to be a straight-up roller-disco movie, the writers and producers figured they could turn it into a paean in praise of The Village People, which were (at the time the script was originally written in the late ‘70’s) The Hottest Thing Around.

Thing is, by the time the movie was released in mid-1980, (1) homophobia had raised its ugly head, because people were shocked – shocked; I tell you – to find that (2) The Village People were gay.

While legions of foofy-haired TV reporters looked incredulous and repeated ‘say it ain’t so’, the producers of this $20M bomb spent $10M of the film’s overall budget on lavish premier parties across America.

What they accomplished by this wasn’t so much a movie premier for all time, as a massive Coming Out Party for most of Gay America.

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Popular with gay audiences even today (I wonder why?) – this film featured a disco-song called “Milkshake”. One can only wonder if it inspired Kelis to write her missive to the the female anatomy.

Bruce Jenner turned down the lead role in the first “Superman” to star in this career-killer — and in that, this film does us one huge favor: It can, quite literally, be called The Film Which Gave Us Chrisopher Reeve.

Olivia Newton-John also turned down the lead in this film (which eventually went to Valerie Perrine) to star in 1980’s “Xanadu”. Perrine and her sidekick in the film, Steve Guttenberg, did their best with a truly horrible script – but the film, rather than promoting disco, roller-skates, or even The Village People, wound up being a sad caricature of itself – the ultimate snapshot of America-on-the-cusp-of-change, sounded-out against the Worst Of All Musical Fads.

The Apple. This film was made in 1980 and set in the far future – in this case; 1994, where an evil overlord runs New York by controlling the drug trade and the music business.

I said on another’s blog recently that this was “…’Evita’ meets the first ‘Superman’. 1994? It makes “1984” look tame. At least we KNEW that Big Brother was out to screw us out of our lollipops…”

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1994 looks like hell — if ‘hell’ is a particularly vicious disco, run by Nazis and dykes.

Yes, that was harsh. It’s also true.

This one was brought to us by one half of the team of Golan-Globus productions (Menachem Golan; precisely). He was the fellow who brought us most of Chuck Norris’ films, and a lot of other videoed-crap, too.

Words positively fail me here. It’s like the ultimate train-wreck. You’ll not be able to tear your eyes away.

Xanadu – I’ve saved the best – or worst – for last. This film was conceived as a set-piece for Olivia Newton-John, who turned down the lead in “Can’t Stop The Music” for this piece of drivel.

Her character was described by one reviewer as a “lightbulb on rollerskates” – and of the bits-and-pieces I’ve seen, there’s nothing in this film to make me think otherwise.

Every character in the film – with the exception of Gene Kelley, who proves he can still act, even through this excoriable script – sounds like they’re reading their lines in a high-school play.

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Special effects rule this piece, and if you forget that the FX-folks had their talent wasted in creating neon muses and sky-mats to back Olivia’s attempts at dancing – you might find there’s a marginal value in watching it for the technology which in 1980 was truly cutting-edge.

Otherwise, you’ll be embarrassed for the participants – it’s sort of like watching someone vomit for two hours while someone holds their head over the trash-can – you’re horrified; yet compelled.

In all, these were the Films Which Started The Eighties – released within a few months of each other, and with some commonality of actors, these were three pieces of cinema-excreta which should have never seen the light of day.

What are your worst eighties films?

Election Day in Oregon….

Last year, a developer bought an acre across the road from me, and demolished a midcentury-modern home which was not only architecturally-significant; it was in keeping with the entire area. He wasted no time in getting plans approved – over the objection of everyone here on The Hilltop – to build five three-story homes on the property.)

There were a lot of issues on ballots across the country yesterday, and while those were important to people in those regions, there was one here close-to-home which was on everyone’s mind to a greater or lesser degree.

Measure 49 would modify a prior ballot-measure from a few years back, reinstituting some land-use legislation. A word of background:

Oregon has been known for leading-edge land-use laws since the 1970’s. It was Oregon which first approved a statewide land-use commission which would oversee the planning of land-use in the state, preventing things like urban sprawl in Oregon; the overdevelopment of farmland, and the destruction of sensitive habitats like wetlands.

In 2004, some moneyed landowners decided to pull the teeth of Oregon’s land-use laws by putting a ballot-measure in play which would remove the ability of the state commission to restrict rural development.

The new law required that the government pay landowners for the fair value of the restriction., regardless of sensitivity.

It didn’t take long before the fox, well in the henhouse, began a wholesale chicken-slaughter in the form of rural development.

Overnight, fueled by the meteoric rise in land values between ’01-’05, nearly a million acres were developed, some in rural areas which had never seen a sidewalk. In some cases, wetlands were filled in.

Trailer-houses were given permits as permanent dwellings. Wal-Mart, not one to ignore an opportunity, submitted plans to build megastores in areas which had no need for such a facility – but the door was open, and the West-Virginiafication of Oregon had begun in earnest.

It turns out that of Oregon’s population of around three and a half million, only 7,500 individuals actually benefitted from the loosened land-use laws – but those 7,500 individuals controlled the eventual development of nearly one million acres. Clearly, this had been bought-and-paid-for by a few at the expense of the many, as well as the environment as a whole.

By 2006, when it became apparent that there were a minority of people actually benefiting from this situation, a coalition of urban planners and other Oregonians drafted Measure 49, which would severely curtail the wholesale development of Oregon farmland, while allowing restricted development in cases where it was warranted.

Yesterday, Oregon put the teeth back in its land-use laws. It’s too late to save that home across from me – but Measure 49 will help someone else.

That’s why it got my vote.

Giuliani; Robertson; and Why It’s a Bad Idea….

There’s something here I should clarify.

I’m an atheist, a Freethinker, and a Libertarian. That will color anything you read here, and anything you might feel about me, personally – but I’m going to ask you to hear me out.

Peter Drucker, the legendary business analyst, pundit, and author, once said that as a nation, we were more successful than others as we ‘worshipped people of no consequence’ – athletes; actors; musicians. Nations which were cavalier about the basic rights of their citizens worshipped people of consequence – military leaders; politicians; religious figures.

Pat Robertson is one of those.

When we consider his empire – the ‘Christian Broadcasting Network’; his publishing concerns, his very own college (Regent University), or his blatantly homophobic and right-wing “American Center for Law and Justice” – Pat Robertson has been, by any benchmark, ‘successful’.

Everything the man touches turns to gold – literally so; his eight-million-dollar investment in a Liberian gold mine, and his overt support of President Charles Taylor of Liberia (a genuine bad-guy by any measure with an abysmal human-rights record, who also supported AlQaeda by providing safe-harbor for terrorists) being the tip of a very rotten iceberg.

Pat Robertson would have you believe that America is going to be ‘judged’ by a ‘god’ who will ‘avenge’ dead babies, ‘martyred’ Christians and the Otherwise Disaffected by supernatural means.

Hurricanes? Earthquakes? These are, if you listen to Robertson, just ‘god’ and his means of Getting Back At Us.

Politics? ‘God’ comes first. When the citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania voted out school board members who supported creationism and the crackpot ‘science’ of ‘intelligent design’, he stated they had ‘rejected ‘god’’, and ‘would be judged’.

This is the man who, in creating himself a billionaire, wants you to believe that he’s on the side of poor people.

Now, he’s taken up another cause – the Presidential campaign of one Rudy Giuliani, himself no friend of the average American, and who has used the events of 9/11 in New York to create a persona of ‘the man in the firestorm’.

Pardon me if I don’t share Pat Robertson’s enthusiasm.

Rooting for the Right has been a staple of sorts in Robertson’s approach to politics. What we’d all do well to remember is this: Drucker was right. Religion and government don’t mix.

When we do that, we get things like National Socialist Germany. We get people like Stalin and Hitler. We get Joan of Arc; extra-crispy.

Additional Reading:

Giuliani Picks up Key Conservative Backing (CNN; 11/7/07)

Pat Robertson (compendium of articles; CNN)

Pat Robertson (Wikipedia article)