Tag Archives: war

“Kingdom Coming”

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A book excerpt at Salon.com.

Salon.com has published an excerpt from Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg. (You may have to watch a brief ad to read the excerpt; it’s worth it.) The book covers a topic that has been worrying me for some time now: the religious right’s efforts to base the American government on pure Christian beliefs.

Some of you reading this might say, “What’s wrong with that?” Let me tell you.

  • Some of the first people to come to this country — remember the pilgrims? — came so they could have religious freedom — the freedom to practice and follow their own religious beliefs.
  • The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — which you can find near the bottom of the navigation column on most pages of this site — begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” (And yes, I am aware that more Americans can name the five members of the Simpsons cartoon family than can name the rights granted in the First Amendment.)
  • The establishment of laws that are based on a belief system could restrict the freedoms of people who don’t share those beliefs — for example, the country’s homosexual population. This country was built on freedom.
  • Setting school curriculums based on theology could prevent students from learning and building on generally accepted scientific theories — like evolution. Over time, that could severely curtail America’s scientific advances — students that aren’t taught real science can’t be real scientists.
  • A government theocracy could use religion as a reason to wage war against groups of a different religion as a matter of policy.

These are just a few reasons that come to mind as I sit here typing this.

I don’t want to read this book. I don’t want to know what’s inside it. Just knowing that this situation exists scares me. I can’t believe that in the year 2006, there are still people who’d like to force others to teach creationism in school or make homosexuality illegal. It’s as if we’re taking a giant step backwards, into the Dark Ages. I’d like to take the ostrich approach and just stick my head in the sand.

But when it comes time to vote, I’ll be at the polls. And any candidate that uses religion as any part of his/her campaign will not get my vote.

Keep religion out of government.

The Sleeping Tiger Stirs

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I get pretty fed up about what’s going on in Wickenburg…and start to do something about it.

Small town politics sucks. There’s no doubt about it. And it sucks even more when the politicians are fighting over a desert crossroads town with a weak economy and a part-time population.

When I moved to Wickenburg ten years ago, it was a small western town with a year-round population of about 4,000 people. Just enough shopping and services to make life convenient. Lots of space between the homes on the outskirts of town where I live. Privacy. Quiet. Clean air. Little crime. Slow pace of living. Just the thing a pair of New Yorkers needed to get a grip on their own lives.

One of the things we liked best about Wickenburg is that it didn’t have a lot of high density housing. Sure, it had some condos and apartments and the homes in the older downtown area were small and on small lots. But the rest of the town was zoned for one house per acre (or more) and the outskirts of town were zoned for one house per five acres. (We have 2-1/2.)

Fast forward to 2004. A developer proposes a high density housing development at the 9-hole golf course known as Wickenburg Country Club. He promises to expand the golf course to 18 holes. All the golfers want it. But the people who will soon have condo roofs in their back yards don’t. And neither do the people who see that one high-density development will open the floodgates to others.

Voters put together a referendum to get the issue on the ballot. Proposition 421 was the result. And the voters voted the development down.

Let me make sure you understand what I just wrote. The majority of voters who voted on Prop 421 voted against it. They were saying that they did not want the development to proceed.

Fast forward to 2006. The Mayor and Council voted in favor of allowing a virtually identical development on the same site by the same developer.

Huh?

Silly me. I thought we lived in a democracy.

But it gets worse.

Another group of voters put together another referendum to stop the development again. It was submitted the same way as the first one and should have been accepted. But they Mayor decided that because an attachment was made with a staple rather than a paper clip, it was not properly submitted. He directed the Town Clerk to reject it.

What?

I’ve been sitting back watching all this bullshit unfold for the past three years. Occasionally, I’d write an article or a letter to state my point of view. But I pretty much kept out of things — there were other people writing for my Web site, wickenburg-az.com who were saying pretty much what I would have said anyway.

But now I’m pissed. This little twerp who was voted in as Mayor — I couldn’t vote because I live outside of town limits, but I never would have voted for him — is making decisions that are not only beyond his authority, but they’re clearly against the will of the people.

This is wrong.

And I’m not going to sleep through this one. I’ve already made my first contribution to the voters efforts by writing an article about the paper clip rejection. More to come.

I promise.

More Plagiarism in the News

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Now this is plagiarism!

The Dan Brown plagiarism case is now history. He won — I thought he should in that particular case — and the plaintiffs will be using all their future royalties to pay legal fees.

But now there’s a new case in the news. I just read about it on Slate in an article by Jack Shafer titled “Why Plagiarists Do It.” Mr. Shafer’s article was written in response to news that 19-year-old Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan (don’t ask me to prounouce that), who had gotten a $500,000 two-book contract while still in high school, had completed her first novel — with a little help from another author. It appears that Miss Viswanathan borrowed at least 29 bits and pieces from two similar novels by Megan F. McCafferty. Although she claimed it was accidental, Mr. Shafer sums up his opinion (and mine) on that as follows:

Please! Pinching one or two phrases from another book in the course of writing a 320-page novel might be accidental. But by the time a novelist does it 29 times, the effort is transparently intentional and conscious. Unless, of course, Viswanathan composed her entire novel during Ambien-induced sleep-writing episodes.

(It’s wit like that that keeps me coming back to Slate again and again.)

I read articles in the Harvard Crimson and the New York Times that provide plenty of examples of the borrowed phrases. This is a pretty clear-cut example of plagiarism — 29 instances of it. In fact, if this isn’t plagiarism, I don’t know what is.

Interestingly, Mr. Shafer’s article lists a bunch of reasons why someone might become a plagairist. None of them are flattering.

But I think that what pisses me off the most about this is that this kid got a half million bucks in advance money to write two novels and she rewards her publisher and editor and agent by stealing passages out of other books — books that probably didn’t earn a tenth of that.

I think it goes without saying that she should be ashamed of herself. Unfortunately, she probably isn’t.

I hope she loses her movie deal.

Howard Mesa View

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What I see when I’m at Howard Mesa.

Howard Mesa ViewThe very first image I created for this site’s rotating headers — in fact, the only image that appeared before I even installed and activated the rotating header feature — is this shot taken from our vacation property at Howard Mesa.

Howard Mesa is about 15 miles north of Williams, AZ. It’s literally a mesa — a flat-topped mountain. The mesa rises about 400 feet above the Colorado Plateau and must have volcanic origins (like the other mesas, mountains, and cindercones in the area) since it’s covered with various types of volcanic rock.

The area was once part of a ranch. The rancher sold out his private property sections to a developer, who cut in roads and surveyed 10-, 36-, and 40-acre lots. They sold the lots to suckers like us. Well, I shouldn’t say we were suckers — the property was all I wanted it to be: remote and peaceful with beautiful views. But a huge number of buyers jumped at the low price tag, hoping to turn a tidy profit in five years. Now about half the lots are back on the market and no one is buying. That could be because there’s no electricity and you have to haul your water in — the water table is supposedly 5,000 to 7,000 feet down.

This photo looks out to the east and the snow-covered San Francisco Peaks, the tallest mountains in Arizona. There’s snow on the peaks for eight to nine months of the year; this photo was taken in the spring of 2005. I think the snow was gone by June that year.

The vegetation you see in the foreground is pinon and juniper pine, along with tall grasses. What you don’t see are the bulldozed trees that the ranchers killed in an attempt to grow more grass for cattle. They did this a long time ago and the land is mostly recovered. But there’s lots of downed trees around, making firewood plentiful and fire hazards during the hot summer months very real.

Our property is only partially developed. We’ve fenced it in so the horses can run free while we’re there. We put in a septic system suitable for a 3-family home. We put a storage shed near the prime building site to provide shelter for us and our building materials. We have drawings for a small two-story home, but we haven’t yet submitted them to the county for approval.

The problem is, although the property is “protected” by CC&Rs (rules that all owners have to abide by), the rules are not preventing certain residents from erecting ugly manufactured buildings, including used double-wide trailers, metal sheds, and shipping containers. Other residents use their property to collect all kinds of junk, which they make no attempt to conceal from the road. This is turning Howard Mesa Ranch into a real eyesore, and limiting property values. Mike and I are hesitant to invest more money on a piece of property that might be one of the few “nice” lots in a sea of trashy homesites. So we’re taking a “wait-and-see” approach to the whole thing.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to “camp” up there during the summer months. It’s much cooler there, at 6700 feet elevation, than it is in Wickenburg.

And I really do enjoy the peace and quiet — while it lasts.

About the Photos

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I add a new category to Maria’s WebLog.

I’m not sure if readers are aware of this, but I took all of the photos that appear in the header to this site. There are about 20 of them now in the random header rotation and they’re from all over the place.

It struck me that it might be somewhat interesting to learn more about each of the photos and the circumstances under which they were taken. So I added the About the Photos category. During the upcoming weeks, I’ll be writing a bit about the photos you see on this site, explaining where they came from.

I was heavily into photography for a while — mostly while I was in college (and dating a photographer) and for several years afterward. I don’t think I have any special skill. I believe that anyone who goes to an interesting place, points an autofocus camera in the right direction, and snaps off dozens of shots has to get at least one good shot. (A friend of mine’s sister proved that when one of her photos was published as a poster for a rock band; 99% of her photos were absolute crap.) So I keep snapping and every once in a while, I get one worth sharing.

Bear with me as I tell you about some of them.