Big Change in My Voter Registration

Since I was a kid, I always considered myself a Republican. Even into middle age I was there. I had even contributed a few dollars to Reagan’s election campaign. Sometime around the election of President Clinton my thinking changed. Since that time I have leaned toward the Democratic Party, and have mostly voted Democratic.

Today I made it official. I mailed in a change to my voter registration and designated myself a Democrat. One of the main reasons I did this at this time is in Oregon (where I live), in order to vote in the primary, a voter needs to be registered to a party. I could vote on non-partisan ballot measures and candidates, but not for the major candidates.

Oregon’s Congressman Wu of the First District will be facing some competition in the Spring 2010 primary election from David Robinson. Robinson has a great background which I think could make him a good Representative for Oregon. He is not an attorney which is a big plus in my book for anyone running for the Congress or Senate. Wu is an attorney.

In the 109^th Congress, 218 members list their occupation as the law (according to the Congressional Quarterly). That’s a lot of lawyers. The next most frequent category of background is listed in the same source as public service/politics. Robinson fits this category.

I don’t have a feel yet as to how strong a candidate Dave Robinson will be; but I will be watching.

 

Volunteerism

How does a person fill his (or her) time when retired, or mostly retired? When I mostly retired about 4 years ago, I was looking for something I could do that brought me in contact with people. I’m not a hermit, although I was a long-haul truck driver for several years. I enjoyed some of the solitude of that life, but craved being with people.

I discovered an organization near my home that fit my needs; and I was able to contribute to the benefit of that organization. I started volunteering three hours a week. Now I am up to ten to twenty hours a week.

The organization is Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve, a nature preserve and education center located in Hillsboro, Oregon. Some of the jobs I do are a greeter for the education center, giving short talks to visitors about our exhibition center, watering plants, harvesting seeds, planting, cutting weeds, photography, etc. I am also very active in the organization’s annual fundraiser, the Tweet of Dweams.

I also volunteer a couple hours a week at the Hillsboro Police Department creating a report on all the graffiti incidents within the city. I have started attending the Public Policy Forum of Washington County, the weekly lunches with talks be various interesting people. And. . . I have signed up to work on a political campaign. More on that latter.

I also volunteer within my family. My daughter-in-law is going to college full time, so about three days a week I get to ramrod two young grandkids. Today I am spending the time at home with a sick one.

There are large numbers of organizations in any community that need volunteers. Go for it!

 

Windows Live Writer #2

I just created and posted a new blog entry using the new program, Windows Live Writer. I like it. it’s easy to use; and it produced expected results. Of course this is only my first impression. I’ll use it for a while and give updates.

Here is another Bald Eagle picture i took a couple days ago near Banks, Oregon. Oregon has an increasing number of eagles, now around 500 nesting pairs or more. They are a beautiful bird and worth of being our national emblem.

 

Windows Live Writer

This is a test of the new Windows Live Writer program to create blog entries on this program and have them posted to you (my) blog. Let’s see if it is worth its salt.

 

The picture above is one I took today at Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve. It is an immature Bald Eagle.

 

Okay, I’ll post this and see what it looks like.

 

Chinese Exclusion Acts and the American Federation of Labor

Turpitude was the first word that came to mind as I started to write this blog entry. The full title of the document I just read that caused that word to pop into my consciousness is:

Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusions. Meat vs. Rice. American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism. Which Shall Survive?

These 30 pages were published by the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, President; Frank Morrison, Secretary. For some unknown reason the document was printed in Washington by “Government Printing Office, 1902.” It is Document No. 137 from the Senate, 57th Congress, 1st Session.

Here is a short example of the wording of this document that raised my ire. It comes from page 15 of the document under a subheading of “Chinese Labor Degrades Labor Just as Slave Labor Did”:

“For many years it was impossible to get white persons to do the menial labor usually performed by Chinese. It was Chinamen’s labor, and not fit for white. In the agricultural districts a species of tramp has been created, known as the blanket man. White agricultural laborers seldom find permanent employment; the Chinese are preferred. During harvest time the white man is forced to wander from ranch to ranch and find employment here and there for short periods of time, with the privilege of sleeping in the barns or haystacks. He is looked upon as a vagabond, unfit to associate with his employer or to eat from the same table with him. The negro slave of the South was housed and fed, but the white trash of California is placed beneath the Chinese. “

Apparently the Chinese labors were responsible for the lot of the white transient farm labors.

Here is the link to the full document on the Internet Archive, and as scanned by Google.

The document is loaded with racial slurs, undocumented “facts”, and quotes from official documents. The last six pages are the document adopted by the Chinese exclusion convention at San Francisco, Cal., November 22, 1901. This was apparently run by the American Federation of Labor.

All this represents bleak days in our American History. We are once again faced with “cheap” Chinese labor affecting our American economy; and not just China, but India, Indonesia, and many other Asian countries. Twenty or thirty years ago it was imports from Japan that caused us problems. The American auto industry has reached its low point (hopefully) because Japan makes better cars that the American auto makers. The Chinese workers produce many cheaper (and cheap) goods than we do in America. We flock to Target and Wal-Mart to buy these goods; then we blame the Chinese for our economic problems.

While we are struggling to set out economic house in order, let’s not be tempted to revert to the kind of horrible and vile attitudes expressed by our fellow citizens of over 100 years ago. Hopefully our President Elect is the man we think he is and can lead us into a new prosperity. Let’s follow his vision for our future and give him all the support we can. He is our political leader for the next four years. He needs all the help we can give him.

 

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or having so come after the expiration of said ninety days to remain within the United States.”

Chinese laborers coming to the United States after the Civil War were working for fewer wages than white American workers. The Chinese were taking jobs away from American workers.

When gold was discovered in California, Chinese workers started arriving to work in the mines and later helping to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Most of the immigrants were male; usually they sent a portion of their wages back to their families in China.

The Exclusion Act was first enacted in 1882 and stayed in force until 1943 when it was finally repealed. It was replaced by a strict quota system. China, after all, was an ally of the United States during World War II and General Chiang Kai-shek was highly respected in this country.

To his credit, President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed a version of a Chinese immigration limitation act in 1879.

Here is a link to a government website that has a transcript of the Act.

Strange reading for Christmas Day, don’t you think? I am rather the token liberal in my household; so my interest in the conversations of other members of my family wanes and head for my computer.

Come back tomorrow and I will have some comments on a document with the title: “Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion. Meat vs. Rice.”

 

Our Fragile Internet Infrastructure

A large amount of the data that flows around the world travels on fiber optic cables. These cables run on land and are laid on the sea bottom. Twice in the past year underwater fiber optic cables have been severed or damaged in the Mediterranean Sea near Egypt. The one in January 2008 was caused by ship’s anchors. In all likelihood the occurrences in the last 24 hours have also been caused by ships, too.

There are enough of these lines that the loss of just one of them will not significantly affect internet, telephone, and other data transmission services world-wide. But what would happen if several of these lines were severed at onetime? Communications throughout the world could be seriously affected.

In a former life I was a long-haul truck driver. During that time, in the 1990s, I became aware of several large projects of the placement of buried cables across the country. In one east-west project in the heart of the country, the contractor was burying six cables at a time. Actually the contractor was burying plastic pipes that later would have the fiber optic cables pulled through them. There are a limited number of these cables that transverse our county. Once again, were several of these cables to be severed at one time, the communications throughout the country could seriously be affected.

A few years ago, we as a country suffered terrorist attacks. With our open society, we are vulnerable. Yet I’m sure most of us would not want us to become an armed camp with soldiers patrolling our fiber optic lines. Yet we are faced in the foreseeable future of being threatened by terrorists, whether those threats are real or not. I am not a doomsday type of person; but these kinds of accidental and terrorist driven problems are real threats.

Here is a link to a news story about the recently damaged cables.

 

Some Thoughts on T.S. Eliot

It has been a long time since I have looked at the writings of T.S. Eliot. I was first introduced to him over 40 years ago while I was in college. Now, on one of my bookshelves I have one of his biographies, Great Tom, by T.S. Matthews, and Eliot’s The Complete Poems and Plays; and in a box somewhere I have two or three volumes of his essays.

I saw a two-line quote of his on a website I was visiting recently and I decided to look it up and see how badly he was what I like to call “under-quoted.” The short quotation was the third and fourth last lines in the larger quotation below. The lines below are the opening stanza from Choruses from “The Rock,” a pageant written for a church-building fund in London. The complete poem in my book is about 18 pages long.

Eliot, considering his audience I am sure, uses lots of images and metaphors about “building,” using the word both as a noun and a verb. He is usually writing about building the Church; he always capitalizes the word in this work. If there are multiple meanings to a word that Eliot uses, he will often use the word intending two or more meanings at the same time. Here he often uses the word “Church” to refer to the physical building as well as the institution, with more emphasis given to the institution.

One other point about the lines below is that Eliot must have been thinking of the first few verses of Ecclesiastes as he wrote these opening lines to “The Rock.” The Preacher of Ecclesiastes asks: What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? In his own way, Eliot is asking the same question here in these lines.

The Preacher concludes his 12 chapters with the statement: Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For much of his life, and as expressed in much of his poetry, Eliot was trying to reach the conclusion that the Preacher did. In “The Rock” Eliot does express a similar conclusion. You can get a copy of the work and read that for yourself. Below you can read how Eliot asks about our toiling.

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

 

EPA Fugitives: Don’t Dirty Our Water!

Here is a link to the EPA’s Criminal Enforcement web page (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). It appears that most of these desperados have fled the country.

Water polluters aren’t all the EPA goes after. If you search around the site you can find entries of summaries of criminal prosecutions in other areas. Here is a quote from one of the summaries of a case:

After a two-and-a-half week trial, the owner of the state’s largest asbestos training school and temporary employment agencies was convicted late yesterday on charges that she sold training certificates to hundreds of illegal aliens who had not taken the mandatory training course, and sent them out to perform asbestos removal work, for which she paid them “under-the-table.”

Crime pays, until you are caught!

 

Life Questions

A blogger friend posted this list of life questions on his blog; so I thought I’d give it a try.

1. Started your own blog. Yes.
2. Slept under the stars. As a kid.
3. Played in a band. Majored in music in college. I never played in a band but did play the timpani in one orchestral concert. I lost my place so bad I never tried that again. I’ve sung in many choral groups.
4. Visited Hawaii. No. I don’t really have a desire to go to Hawaii. There are so many other interesting places to see.
5. Watched a meteor shower. Yes, but I can’t remember exactly when.
6. Given more than you can afford to charity. No, but I did give $50 to Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign back in an earlier life.
7. Been to Disneyland. Yes, at least three times.
8. Climbed a mountain. Yes, sort of.
9. Held a praying mantis. A dead one.
10. Sang a solo. Many times.
11. Bungee jumped. Never, and never will.
12. Visited Paris. Not yet.
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea. I think so. While in the US Navy we traveled from Jacksonville, Florida, to the Philippines (round trip) and I’m sure we saw some.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch. Can’t say as I have.
15. Adopted a child. No.
16. Had food poisoning. No.
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty. No, but I have seen it from the Staten Island Ferry.
18. Grown your own vegetables. Yes.
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France. No.
20. Slept on an overnight train. I haven’t taken on overnight train ride.
21. Had a pillow fight. Heaven’s yes!
22. Hitch hiked. The last time was in Jacksonville Florida while in the Navy about in 1972.
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill. Okay, yes. But I was hung over.
24. Built a snow fort. I wish I had a picture of the huge one I build in Valdes, Alaska.
25. Held a lamb. Held a Lamb Chop.
26. Gone skinny dipping. Yes, with Debby. No photo; just memories.
27. Run a Marathon. One of my life’s goals never reached.
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice. Haven’t been to Europe yet.
29. Seen a total eclipse. Yes, in 1979 at Portland, Oregon. I was at the Rose Garden in Portland with many others. Someone yelled “Author, Author” and we all applauded.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset. Bazillions of times. My favorite sunsets have been in Wyoming.
31. Hit a home run. I was a crappy baseball player.
32. Been on a cruise. Yes, thanks to the US Navy. I have ridden on the Alaska Ferries a few times, too.
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person. No.
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. No, but I have been to the grade school that one of my grandmothers attended.
35. Seen an Amish community. No, but I have traveled in northern Ohio and seen many horse drawn carriages on the roads.
36. Taught yourself a new language. I have purchased Rosetta Stone Spanish and am struggling with it.
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied. Never, but I do recall a time where I said to myself (in all truth) “I am debt free!”
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person. No.
39. Gone rock (wall) climbing. No.
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David. No, but have seen the replica at Forest Lawn in Glendale, California.
41. Sung karaoke. One time. And that was enough.
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt. Yes, on my honeymoon, would you believe?
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant. No.
44. Visited Africa. No, but I am doing some reading about Africa at this time.
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight. Yes, a few times.
46. Been transported in an ambulance. No.
47. Had your portrait painted drawn. I’ve had a caricature done once or twice.
48. Gone deep sea fishing. Not deep sea, but have fished from a boat on the inland waters of Southeastern Alaska.
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person. No.
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. No and not even in Las Vegas.
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling. Snorkeling. When I was in the Navy in San Diego I used to go to La Jolla Cove and snorkel.
52. Kissed in the rain. Of course.
53. Played in the mud. Duh, I was a kid.
54. Gone to a drive-in theater. Yes. The only time I can remember was seeing “Colossus, the Forbin Project” in Parkland, Washington.
55. Been in a movie. Don’t think so.
56. Visited the Great Wall of China. No.
57. Started a business. Yes, but I was a miserable failure doing it full time. Now I do the same thing part-time with mild success.
58. Taken a martial arts class. Never interested in doing this.
59. Visited Russia. No. But my brother and his family did, and saw Gorbachev in the Kremlin.
60. Served at a soup kitchen. No.
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies. No, but I have bought some.
62. Gone whale watching. I saw some from the deck of the USS Saratoga while in the Indian Ocean.
63. Got flowers for no reason. No.
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma. I tried to, but I had a mild case of hepatitis as a kid and they don’t want it.
65. Gone sky diving. Nope.
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp. No.
67. Bounced a check. Sure.
68. Flown in a helicopter. Never, but have always wanted to.
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial. Yes.
71. Eaten Caviar. Yes.
72. Pieced a quilt. No.
73. Stood in Times Square. Yes.
74. Toured the Everglades. No.
75. Been fired from a job. A couple of times.
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London. No.
77. Broken a bone. Yes, in my hands. I was drunk and fell down.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle. No.
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person. Yes, a couple of times. Super colors.
80. Published a book. No.
81. Visited the Vatican. No, but I have seen the movie “Shoes of the Fisherman”.
82. Bought a brand new car. Yes.
83. Walked in Jerusalem. No.
84. Had your picture in the newspaper. Yes.
85. Read the entire Bible. Quite a bit of it, but not all.
86. Visited the White House. I’ve seen it but never went inside.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating. Just fish and crabs.
88. Had chickenpox. Yes, I think.
89. Saved someone’s life. No.
90. Sat on a jury. I’ve only done jury duty two times, but never got on a panel.
91. Met someone famous. Not to shake their hand. I saw Nixon when he was Vice President; Saw JFK a month before the assignation; I saw G.E. Smith, former band leader for Saturday Night Live, on the street in NYC.
92. Joined a book club. A Couple of times; the Book-of-the-month club.
93. Lost a loved one? No one young; just both parents.
94. Had a baby. Not personally, but fathered two.
95. Seen the Alamo in person. No.
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake. No.
97. Been involved in a law suit. Oh, God, Yes. Don’t you just hate attorneys?!?
98. Owned a cell phone. Duh!
99. Been stung by a bee. Ouch, and by a wasp, too.
100. Read an entire book in one day. Yes.