Things I've seen along the road

When you ride a bicycle, whether there is a bike lane or not, the right edge of the road, both on the road surface and in the ditch, are where discarded things collect: metal, plastic, wood, and things decomposing. It is in that section between black top and gravel, shrubs, are where  trash, cast off or lost clothing, and unclaimed  humans settle blown in by the wind.

I've seen:

Plastic gas cans,
empty jugs for oil, antifreeze, and transmission fluid,
juice, cheap vodka, energy drinks;
plastic wrap and diaper covers;
plastic pants, plastic rain coats, a purple plastic belt ;
a plastic grill from a Subaru with a stick driven through it;
and plastic bags flying like windsocks
in the dark forests of the northwest
or waving from the spines
of cholla cactus--next to the remains of a desiccated collared lizard impaled
and left to cure by a bird--on the over-grazed government lands in New Mexico.

There is wood:
dimension lumber: 2x4s, planks, a 10inch wide beam maybe 16 ft long;
plywood sheets, a square of cedar shakes;
and logs spilled from logging trucks,
some smashed through standing trees
others plowing divots of black earth,
reasserting P=MV of classic mechanics;
and a stick rammed thru the plastic grill of a Subaru.

If all the metal I have seen were recycled we could re build the Titanic.
There was a metal beam (see P=MV above);
a roll of copper wire;
and auto parts: mufflers, tailpipes, fenders,
springs, the burned hull of a semi truck,
a chrome fender wrapped around the base of a fir tree;
and lots of screws and nuts: wing nuts, lug nuts, square nuts, hexagonal nuts,
locking nuts and one nut (with a long beard) who should have remained locked up.

Clothing like ball caps, socks, shirts, skirts, underwear, and
the waist band of a pair of jeans with a purple belt still cinched.
Tennis shoes, running shoes, logging boots, cowboy boots, ballet slippers, clogs,
none paired, presumably lost by a man called "Peg leg Slim?"

Live and dead animals,

all families represented, mammalian, reptilian, avian, insects, and many genera of insects
perhaps even one or two that might have been the last of a hitherto undiscovered species,
one salmon miles from the ocean,
and a dead moose (no auto parts nearby).
No dead humans--even at the tree with the fender wrapped around its trunk--but some
that were like the walking dead,
a man with a long beard, who yelled skyward and gesticulated with his arms and hands, his fingers wiggled independent like soon to hatch snakes in opaque white tubes,
and a teen girl who pedaled past me crying.

There are miscellanea
like combs, a hair piece,
a ripped sleeping bag (that I checked for human remains),
tie-down straps, bungee cords, rope,
a freshly branded calf,
tires, old and new, one still mounted on a rim,
car and truck axles, 
hitch hikers,
and gnats, flies, mosquitoes, that are not a problem until you're pedaling uphill.



Future archeologists or anthropologist will sift through this accumulation of junk and then after, in the lab, writing up their notes, have an orgasm describing such things as religious artifacts, language, signs that we believed in reincarnation.

Looking for Love in all the wrong places

Warren Jeffs, polygamist leader, prophet, pedophile, was found guilty, in Texas, of sex with underage people and of arranging marriages between other horny older Fundamentalists men and underage girls. Next, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, he may be tried in Utah, presumably for many of the same things. Texas gave him life in prison. All pedophiles should be given life. Statistically they do not respond well to "rehabilitation" and most, soon after release from the poky, start molesting children again. So, why release them if there is a high risk of "relapse" and recidivism? Why spend the money, especially given today's economy, to try them again and again? Every time they get out many just hurt more kids. Keep-em I say!!  And who knows, maybe Jeffs will find love in the Texas prison system!

I grew up around polygamists in southwestern Colorado. They farmed and ranched just north of the New Mexico/Colorado border along the La Plata River. I didn't know they were poligs until after I got out of the army. My grandfather and I were at a horse sale at the local livestock sale ring south of Durango. One of my high school friends from the small town of poligs  introduced me to his wife. A few weeks later, as I opened the door to go into the bank, he came out of the other door, with another woman! What do you say?
"Hey, A.J." he said. "How you been? Did you guys buy that grulla dun horse? Let me introduce you to my wife Pauline."
I fumbled through the introduction trying hard to keep my poker face on. That face had made me money over time playing poker in the back room at the aforementioned livestock ring but it failed me this day.
Pauline put her hand on my arm (to comfort me? reduce my anxiety?) and looked at her husband and said: "I thought you said he knew we practiced plural marriage?"
Both laughed. He said "I thought you (me) knew we were polygamists? My dad had three wives."
I could remember the clusters of trailers and small frame houses in the small town, where  I had spent many overnights with this friend and others when I was in high school. I just thought that the other women were aunts and all of the kids running around were cousins. After all, in our economy at the time, it wasn't unusual for the men to travel away from home for weeks at a time to make money. My own family practiced this, as did I,  usually working in the hard rock mines or following construction projects across the west.

Since moving to Utah I've met even more polygamists. I don't know how many poygamist men I know.
But I can count the number of polygamist women I know on the span of two hands. They're invisible.The women I've met are absent emotionally and physically. I know polygamists who are county commissioners, a couple of legislators, and others from all professions: attorneys, farmers, construction workers, IT specialists, cops, etc. One older rancher I knew, a member of a militant polygamist sect--Kingstons--which owns  land and businesses in Utah and five other states, told me: "I'm trying to beat Brother Brigham's record before I die! I'm marrying my 29th wife next Friday." He didn't live to beat the record because BY had dozens of wives. The girl, that Merlin Kingston the rancher I knew married,  was fourteen. The old guy died the afternoon of his "wedding", hopefully before he had ruined her life. The Kingstons own many businesses that many of us have unwittingly patronized, adding to the Kingston's wealth--conservatively put at 170 million!
Some figures suggest that there are up to 20,000 practicing polygamists in Utah alone. Who really knows. The Utah border is haven for colonies. The most famous town being Hillsdale in south-central Utah--home of Warren Jeffs before he started living in jail--on the Arizona line. But polygamists are every where in Utah and in the surrounding states. They tend to keep to themselves so few people realize that the oddly dressed women who live in a cluster of houses at the end of a cul de sac in many Salt Lake County neighborhoods are sister wives.

Love seems to come in strange ways. I'm OK with polygamy (no, I'm not advertising to become one!) as long as the children aren't hurt. But how can a secluded life and strict fundamentalism not hurt a child not even counting the many alleged victims of child marriage that occur?
For Warren Jeffs love will be in the form of a "room mate" who shares his cell in a Texas prison. The only advice I have for Jeffs is: if you relax. . . . . . . .! May you live long, may you become a plural prison wife yourself.

Riding my bicycle seems to bring clarity to my mind, which is odd because I am seriously ADHD. At the best there are hundreds of unexplored strings of stimulus trying to be processed at the same time inside my head. I could find more peace if I stood on one of the north south runways at Salt Lake International. The often overwhelming noise from competing ideas, things I glimpse (deer hiding in brush along some of our busiest streets, a rare bird, an odd human, out of the corner of my eye, a totally crazy driver talking on the cell phone (or texting) and trying to drive without seeming intoxicated), sounds like the noise of Victoria Falls.
But riding in traffic makes me focus. This is helpful especially since Salt Lake City, in a recent Gallup Poll, was ranked as the sixth worst city to drive in!! If we could design a car specifically for SLC it would look as follows:

• the steering wheel would have ergonomically correct slots for your knees so that when you use them to steer, while you're eating, texting, putting on make-up, or picking your nose and then gloating about your trophy (yes I saw you lady, you gorgeous thirty something blond creature, the one driving the BMW Porsche-want-to-be sports car down Highland Drive)  your knees would not slide on the steering wheel and you would at least have some control.
• No signal lights or the switch bar (which if you're curious is on the left side of the steering column on most cars) inside the car. While it wouldn't save much in the way of weight, wouldn't give you better gas mileage, or increase your speed when you run a red light, it would be less (broken glass, plastic, car parts, etc) for the road crew to clean up after you t-bone someone in the intersection. And you'd have to find another place to hang your little scented tree. 
• It would have a foldout tray across the center of the steering wheel to hold your makeup, hamburger, etc. The tray would be designed with a gyro to keep it level. The gyro (A gyro or gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of conservation of angular momentum ) should never be confused with a gyro. If you drive, like I think you do, you need a better gyro inside your head while your noshing on a gyro. The simplify even further--just in case a legislator or Congressperson reads this--the gyroscope was invented by the Germans and the gyro was presumably first served up by the Greeks. One keeps you somewhat stable the other can give you heartburn. 
• The car would have a sign that flashes on automatically: when you turn right out of the left turn lane (or left out of the right turn lane), run a red light, or drive down the road like a drunk weaving from side to side while texting, thereby cutting off semi-trucks, bicyclists, joggers pushing their kids in strollers. The sign would say in brightly flashing neon: "Caution this aggressive, moronic, and seriously distracted  driver's head is stuck way up where the sun don't shine! Tee Hee! My Bad!!"
• And for bicyclists, joggers (with or without strollers), and cars approaching an intersection with the green light in their favor, every car would have a klaxon horn that would blare at 200 decibels when a distracted driver was coming up from behind or approaching an intersection: "Watch out dumb-ass approaching!" Or maybe a device that sends a signal to DMV every time a dumb-ass runs a red light, cuts off any of the above, or starts to do the texting weave that would keep track. After two or three violations DMV would take away their license and make them take the bus or ride a bike to work for an year! The car would also be outfitted with an alarm that would alert the cops if the dumb-ass driver got back in the car while under suspension. Perhaps the car's engine would immediately seize.

In spite of crazy drivers, potholes the size of small cars, trash and gravel pushed into the bike lane by construction and the endless digging up of utilities in the shoulder of most roads, I find riding my bicycle fun and relaxing. I somehow blots out all of the competing thoughts, noises (and voices), scents, anxieties and I'm more aware of myself, am better able to work on the issues I have left to fix, and I'm even more aware of crazy drivers coming up behind me.
But be forewarned: If I'm hit by someone who is talking on a cell phone, texting or otherwise distracted I have instructed my family to slap you with a law suit that would make it impossible for you to ever have children or drive again.

Surviving the Tea Party

I would like to think that the Tea Party is like a festered blister and if properly treated--not enabled--it will shrink and go away after time. If the Republicans find themselves held hostage by the TP it is their fault.
The TP says (from their web site:http://theteaparty.net )

"The Tea Party movement is a grassroots movement of millions of like-minded Americans from all backgrounds and political parties. Tea Party members share similar core principles supporting the United States Constitution as the Founders intended, such as:

•  Limited federal government
•  Individual freedoms
•  Personal responsibility
•  Free markets
•  Returning political power to the states and the people

As a movement, The Tea Party is not a political party nor is looking to form a third political party any time soon. The Tea Party movement, is instead, about reforming all political parties and government so that the core principles of our Founding Fathers become, once again, the foundation upon which America stands."

But. . . . . .! 

I agree with the Founding Fathers  who (Thomas Jefferson) strongly recommended limited government

(not all of them agreed to this principle)

.  However, if you read the writing of several of these men they did not necessarily favor semi-autonomous states. Instead they strongly favored the idea of individual states that could manage certain needs of the citizens while at the same time presenting a strong united front: thus the Name The United States. Limited government had it's place in a simple world of thirteen states and a population of about 3 million people. The first census (1790) reported a population of: 3,348, 458 (in the thirteen original states) which did not include blacks, Native Americans, and depending on who was taking the census and where, women.This figure is just slightly less than the 2010 Census that reported about 3.8 million people inside the city limits of Los Angeles CA. Presumably this figure did include those excluded in the first census in 1790. 

Our population is close to 300 million and many of the fifty states have proven that they can not manage a broad spectrum of programs. Some of these states are very close to default. Government can be "fixed" as I've written in other blog entries. But the words efficiency and effectiveness do not form a nice tight package., Indeed they do not belong in the same package. Government and businesses centralize for efficiency and decentralize for effectiveness. The idea that some of the Founding Fathers had was that the federal government would manage the larger pieces of government to more efficiently distribute funding and support and that the individual states would manage these programs for effectiveness, because application of the funds would be closer to where individual needs reside. 

The current opportunity for efficiency and effectiveness in government is to close the holes I've written about that bleed national programs so badly that when the anemic flows do reach the states (that further bleed these programs) there is not enough to meet the needs of all of those people that need the help. 

Individual freedoms are nice to talk about but given the core question in Zero Sum--what is in my best interest--impossible to implement at least in a broad sense. Again it is the issue of a huge population. Much of what we do on a daily basis must have some regulation. How much is to much? That indeed is the question. 

I readily and wholeheartedly  agree with the idea of personal responsibility but again given zero sum many people do not have the same definition of responsibility that I have. As a consequence my taxes and insurance premiums (to name just a couple) are higher that they should be. In my world I would say: you can choose not to wear your seat belt or ride your bicycle without a helmet, but if you get killed not following these concepts (one a law and the other a strong suggestion) then I do not want to be penalized for your stupidity and poor choices. I do not want to be charged "my share" of your emergency room expenses. Let that burden be placed on you and your family. Would the TP support this? Probably until one of them had to pay their own way and then they would want shared liability!! What about abortion or gay marriage? Does a woman have the right to choose in the TP world? I don't think so!!! Shared costs, liability and responsibility form the core values of socialism! Oh my!

The concept of free market has always been a myth! IF the market and business were not controlled by just a few people (globally) it would work quite well. It can and does work at a local level but that is why you pay more for organic carrots at the farmers market than you do at the local natural food store or the chain grocery.

The TP stands for all of these things but only within certain sideboards. Again does it include the rights of individual Americans to make all of their own choices even if they ensure society that they will accept all costs and personal responsibility? NO! The world that the TP promotes is an idealistic picture of what might have worked in the thirteen original colonies but only for a while. Big government sucks and is very inefficient at best but it does try to manage zero sum in the interests of the people. 

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First aid kit when friends are in conflict

Conflict is a growth industry for mediators like myself. It's sad that I can say it's a growth industry! I would love to work myself out of a job. Yet the growth of conflict is, in my view, directly proportional to the growth in stress caused by many issues.
But what do you do when friends get into conflict with a high potential to ruin their relationship? What do you say to them?
I have a couple of friends who have been building critical mass in their relationship for years. The fuze has lately been lit! Ultimatums and demands have been made and emotional walls that were already under construction have been finished and fortified, and the parties are in the process of enlisting their friends. This is natural. We go to our trusted friends for support. Yet, what we, as the friend must remember, is that we aren't getting both sides of the story. We are getting one person's "truth" which will look significantly different than the "truth" the other person is telling. Whose side do we choose? Logically we would say: "I want to remain neutral," but if one of the parties has approached us or if we like one of them better we will subconsciously weigh in on their side.
Conflict is a contagious disease. If we are recruited (which we may not realize that we've been recruited) we react to the stress of the conflict by sharing it with someone we love. In a way, we are recruiting them into the fray! The disease can infect our personal relationship with our loved one very easily.

When I am mediating conflict I ask both parties to share (briefly) their story. Then I tell them that the past is non-negotiable because it can not be changed. We can, at best, hope to survive the present and negotiate an agreement to settle the conflict. An agreement does not assign blame, it does not pick a side, it does not make judgements. It simply creates a future condition that the parties agree will manage their relationship.

I'm trying to remain neutral in the conflict my friends are in. I definitely do not have both sides of the story and what I do know I've gathered from my historic interaction with them and what I've been told second hand. So, how will I survive their conflict? How will I prevent their conflict from infecting my relationship with my partner? I told my partner that I wanted to remain as neutral as I could be. I said I didn't have enough facts to weigh in, and I told her that the "facts" she was getting were heavily weighed and one-sided. I was careful to explain enlistment, "absolute truth" and other conflict traps. Then I told her that I saw my role as that of a listener, not for my friends but of her. If our friend's conflict was hurting my partner I promised I would listen to Her Fears, that I would hold her close, that I would gently but firmly not pick sides, and that the only relationship I would work hard to save would be ours.

Don't ride your bicycle when you're pissed at Congress

All of this past week I've been so angry at Congress and the President--re: the debt limit--that I've almost been hit or have almost hit a car several times. It might have been safer had I been riding and talking or texting on a cell phone. I am not only distracted I'm, at times, shaking with rage. And my rage is not just aimed at leaders in D.C., some or much of it is aimed at we citizens.
We lack knowledge of how our government works and we lack the courage to step up and change it. Clearly both parties are compromised by big business interests (the Democrats sleep on the left side of the bed, the Republicans on the right and the whore, big business, sleeps between them), lobby groups, and extremists organizations--tea party--who hide behind "we the people" while they take pictures of politicians being jerked off by the "whore."
One of my mentors, Fred Winkler, often used a bell curve as a metaphor. I have, since, likewise used it. The two parties and their various masters and sycophants occupy the tails of the curve of normal distribution. They are walled off by the money poured at them by special interests. Ironically, the tea party--mostly loud-mouthed, working class people, who see a black President as an opportunity to practice more overt racism--do not understand that the only reason Congress is listening is that the noise coming from the extreme right doesn't conflict with the goals of big business---yet!  When the Republican party doesn't find the tea party rhetoric supportive they will drop the tea party like a dose of the clap!
Citizens--the bulge in the curve of normal distribution--give tacit approval to political shenanigans because most of them are  busy making the mortgage payment, worrying about college for their kids, and they do not understand the power that the mass at the people in the middle of the curve have. I don't know if politicians have ever really been honest and this is not the first time in our history that leaders have clearly demonstrated that they could care less about our needs and are instead openly focused on the profit margin of their masters and posturing for power.
But we are the problem. We have put up with this ever increasing slide towards chaos, because we have  misapplied trust, we practice intellectual sloth, and operate inside of a protective shell of seeming indifference. However, there is opportunity in the discord and chaos!!

What would happen if like minded if people with the following agenda got together to find ways to get heard, make change?
 --were not pointing fingers at the other side;
--were interested in continued involvment;
--wanted to long-term solutions for the woes of our country;
--were willing to put aside party politics;
--were willing to have dialogue without discord;
--were willing to put aside special interests in the name of solving the monster problems of the country--Environment, debt, gov waste, bloated government, taxes,
What would happen if these people looked for opportunities and then found people to run for office who would agree to:
four terms for representatives and two for senators
not take money or favors from PACs, Lobbyists, or special interests
would regularly check back with the voters--regardless of party affiliation--to both inform and be informed
would not engage in mud-slinging

Wow! Maybe I should check myself into a clinic and get my urine checked!!

Saying NO again

I’ve decided that it is time I became politically active. The current impasse in D.C. has created ample opportunities for change. First action: to the anti-family values, pro business, extremist Republicans and the ineffective, pro-business, frozen-in-the--headlights Democrats I’m saying: NO to your lack of leadership and insensitivity to the needs of the people; NO to your inability to compromise in the long-term interests of the country; NO to your personal agenda fueled and driven by corporate interests; NO to holding our children’s futures hostage with your self-aggrandizing posturing; and NO to your mean-spirited, nasty, mealy-mouthed rhetoric. Frankly if a child were exposed to this kind of environment in school it would be reported that he/she were being bullied. Second action: I am taking the opportunity to say to all sitting politicians: I will vote NO to your continued service by voting or writing-in someone else. And to those aspiring to gain political office, be advised: walk the talk or you also will lose my vote. Third action: although I’m only one voice, one vote, I do have a couple of friends and they also have a couple of friends and none of us are very happy with you.