Category Archives: Community

Loyalty

12
Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Striving

June 16, 2021- Fifty-two years ago, I reported to the Reception Station, at the Massachusetts National Guard Armory, and began what would be thirty months of service in the United States Army. It was all hard for me, back then, for just as a life-toughened fellow soldier told me, ten months later- I hadn’t really had a hard day in my life, up to that point.

Basic Training, at Fort Jackson, SC, was in retrospect, not all that hard. I missed Combat Fire training, by getting stuck in a book. Sergeant First Class Santiago, when I asked to make the training up, told me, “Where you’re going, you won’t need this stuff.” I’m so glad he turned out to be right. Had circumstances been different, though, and combat come my way, I would have figured it out in a hurry. When it was time to qualify on the rifle range, someone misaligned my scope, and I missed the first four shots. Sergeant Braithwaite shook his head, took the rifle and corrected the sights. I got the remaining 16 shots, which made me a Marksman, the lowest category, but still a passing score. As with Combat Fire, grenades and bayonet, I never needed to use the M16, for anything other than training exercises. I passed the Physical Training and General 3 tests, with flying colours-and felt like it was the first time in my life that I’d done anything right. First Sergeant Elam, a bitter man, tried to cut me down, but I could see right through his jabs.

Army Postal Training, at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, followed. Then, there were postings at Fort Myer,VA; Long Binh and Cholon, VietNam and I was home by January 2, 1972, to resume my college studies. The biggest things I learned, from the Armed Forces were loyalty, perseverance, commitment and ingenuity. Those have stood me in good stead, for well over 50 years.

Loyalty does not mean subservience. I picked that up from one Corporal J. Eggebrecht, a hard-as-nails Physical Training instructor, and nobody’s fool. Eggebrecht razzed me, constantly and directly, but I could see every point he made-and it was a good part of what made boy into man; though at the time, Jim would’ve rolled on the ground laughing at the thought of me being full grown. The same was true of Mack Gray and Ted Wescott, two other drill instructors. Fifty-two years later, Paul Elam was wrong and his underlings were right on the money.

I am loyal to family, friends, community, nation and planet. I will never swear fealty to an individual, nor will I ever again ask “How high?”, when someone says “Jump”. This is something that one person on the periphery of my life, right now, is bound to learn to his chagrin. It’ll be best for him, in the long run, and for me, immediately.

Just So Much Skin in The Game

4
Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Education, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

June 15, 2021- After reading my horoscope, which said not to make financial decisions today, I spent a delightful morning at Phippen Museum of Western Art, on Prescott’s north side, with my hiking buddy. Given that it was too hot for any outside activity, enjoying various paintings, sculptures and Native American handicrafts was a fine way to appreciate the Southwest. It also gave A.K. a possible outlet for creativity, during the rest of the hot weather. The Phippen offers affordable painting classes, once a week.

I have no qualms about sharing time and energy, as these imply that the other people involved will invest the same. Money, as I’ve said before, is a different matter. People often throw out- “The more you give, the more you get”, in a guilt-mongering manner. I have said, more times than I have cared to, that my fair share of coin goes to those in need. So, I set a hard and fast limit on the amount going towards a socioeconomic development project in another country. This generated a sarcastic comment, that I have such “an elevated sense of brotherhood”. I actually view that as a compliment. What I am not doing for one person, in perpetuity, is balanced by what I am doing for others. I want to see just how much the individual will pull himself together, working with others to build a communal dream. I will “beseech God to guide him”-as Baha’u’llah teaches us.

My parents gave us only so much, in the way of financial and material assistance, and I believe each of us are the better for it.

Breaking A Small Logjam

2
Posted by on in collaborating, Community, distraction issues, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal goals, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Striving

June 13, 2021- Every so often, I find myself with nothing to say, at a given moment. On a quiet routine day, such as today, rest takes priority, especially with one very active, at times frenetic week gone and a slightly quieter one ahead. Indeed, a Christian friend, at breakfast this morning, extolled the virtues of not working on the Sabbath of one’s Faith. We Baha’is are, unofficially, given Friday as a day of rest, yet statutes and the present course of the wider society make that sometimes problematic. Still, when I am tired, I take the time to rest.

Nonetheless, life goes on and commentary with it. A small fire broke out today in Cornville, about an hour northeast of here. I may pull a shift, or two, this week, at any shelter that opens in consequence to that fire. There are other matters to which I must attend-some maintenance on the Elantra, a few meetings to host and to attend, and the long overdue resolution of a personal health issue. Fires, and other social emergencies are never convenient, nor are most personal matters. Somehow, action is required on each one-and so on I go, along with anyone else who can make the time.

As for an ongoing flow of conversation, as to why the Federal and state governments move so slowly, if at all, on matters of concern to Joe Citizen, I give you the fact that each person in said governments has to deal with the same logjams of overwork and scheduling rest. There is a conflict in perception, between those who ARE rested and ready for action and those who are running on fumes. Some of us are just slow moving, overly meticulous (Obsessive Compulsive) and prone to overthinking. Others, myself included, take action on matters that present themselves, in as expeditious a manner as possible-giving deferred attention to things that are synchronous to what has our attention at the moment. (For example, a barrage of Instant Messages coming at a time when I am engaged in helping feed two dozen people.)

Each of us is important. None of us is as important as we sometimes want the world to think.

Grassroots

4
Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

June 11, 2021, Bellemont, AZ- Today is the last full day of the camp which I have been supervising. A few people left for home, due to work and family obligations. The teens who are left have busied themselves with clean-up projects, both on campus and across the road, where an illegal dumping site has collected detritus, probably for several decades.

These efforts have brought to mind the fact that grassroots actions can begin to correct even the most longstanding of offenses or errors in judgment. It will take a great deal of such work, to counteract the mistakes made as result of top-down decision-making. The latter is closely tied with “efficiency”, but that is so only in the sense that things can be done more quickly, when the elite is making snap decisions. True efficiency involves BOTH grassroots AND the decision-makers at the top. So, there needs to be a clear-cut system of transparency-which only the slow-moving engine of trust can provide.

As always, my charges have taught me as much, if not more, than was imparted to them. It is this that has kept me in the youth work game, a lot longer than I might have stayed. There is no end to what we can achieve, if we draw lessons from everyone we meet-of all ages and backgrounds.

As Chaos Calmed

3
Posted by on in collaborating, Community, distraction issues, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

June 10, 2021, Bellemont, AZ- Beware slumbering. in the calm sea, lest one be unaware when the roiling comes along. During the day, yesterday, things were smooth as glass. After dinner, though, came a sprained ankle, five other people (teens and adults) needing “immediate attention” (simultaneously, of course) and the recognition that everyone needed to be sent to their respective quarters, and any visitors bid goodnight, a bit earlier than usual.

The night thenceforth passed, with no further incidents. A perceived insect pest was spotted, this morning, and the requisite protocol was set in place. After the offending pest was found and eliminated, followed by the contents of the building subjected to six hours of bright sunshine and a fairly warm afternoon, the alert was lifted.

This is the way of the world, for as far back as I can remember. Problems find a designated solver, the crisis gets resolved and, after a fashion, the next order of business presents itself. That is, unless the disgruntled and the bored contrive a solution in search of a problem. Then, there are at least two problems.

Predisposition

2
Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Historical, impediments, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social

June 7, 2021- I read an article, in the current issue of National Geographic Magazine, about a sizable number of Old Colony Mennonites, settling in rural, forested areas of Mexico, and clearing huge swaths of the forest, so that they could plant Transgenic (GMO) soybeans. The process includes aerial spraying of glysophate-a poison that has been shown to lead to metastasized cancer, when ingested through air and water. There has been conflict with the indigenous people of the region, the Maya, who have used the land for small farming and to raise bees. The Mayan bees have been dying off, since aerial spraying of glysophate began. The Mennonites say they have bees that can thrive, despite the presence of glysophate.

I have friends in Pennsylvania who are Mennonites, and who are committed to keeping the Earth both productive and in a relatively pristine condition. They are horticulturists, and much of their produce is raised in greenhouses. I am not aware of any widespread use of glysophate in their operation. So, the NGS account set me to thinking: Why are the settlers in Mexico so adamant about their mission?

People being creatures of habit, with deeply engrained genetic memory, it helps to trace the residential patterns of a group. The Old Colony Mennonites came from grasslands of central Europe and Russia, via Germany, and settled in the prairies of central and western Canada. They are accustomed to large farming operations, worked by large families. They are also given to hard work, relying on Biblical Scripture for guidance and practicing prudent business. A treeless prairie is turned into productive cropland, with relative ease, compared with the forest-which, whether tropical or temperate, is alien land. Thus, with no regard for any value the rainforest may have, the trees are cleared. The land becomes grassland, or cropland.

This has been repeated since the first nomads emerged from the steppes of Central Asia, millennia ago. The treeless land of their origins formed both their mindset, as to the status of the environment and as to the approach that should be taken towards any environment that differed from their native grasslands. Forests were meant to be cleared; deserts were meant to be irrigated; mountains were meant to be either terraced or laid low. The Old Colony Mennonites are no different, in that respect, from all who migrated before them.

That said, there remains the one thing that could lay both them, and their neighbours, low: The poison, that their interpretation of Scripture says is essential to maintaining their way of life. Glysophate has been shown to lead to several cancers, most commonly Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. While only a longitudinal study, of the people of Campeche and Tabasco, will likely convince the leadership of Old Colony that this practice is dangerous, such intransigence is going to cause harm to the very people for whom the leaders say they are engaging in large-scale farming: Their children and grandchildren. Even if the leaders can claim to be unconcerned about their neighbours, an unlikely scenario, for them to be blithely placing crop yield, profit and Manifest Destiny over their own families’ lives, proceeds from sublime to ridiculous.

We can debate the merits and pitfalls of transgenic farming for days on end, but the use of pesticides that are deadly to all life should no longer be up for discussion: Mexico, along with most other civilized nations, has banned the use of glysophate. Predisposition to dominance aside, it is time for the Old Colony members to stop its use, and seek to use methods of crop protection that are not lethal to humans, or bees.

Reflections on A Day Taken Off

2
Posted by on in collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

June 6, 2021- Thirty-nine years ago, today, Penny and I formalized our commitment to one another-and the marriage would last, through thick and thin, for twenty-nine years. I was hoping for at least forty, but we take what we are given. Some people are married for fifty years plus, and are inwardly miserable. We were not either. Speaking of which, as an aside, an indie artist, at a gathering on Saturday night, played a clip of his, on which a local philosopher opined: “”One who claims to be miserable, and at the same time insists he is right, is stating the impossible. It can never happen.”

Processing the loss of one of my closest cousins, I received word that a fellow member of the American Legion Post to which I belong had suffered a heart attack and is in hospital, facing the now de rigeur bypass surgery. He is one of the regulars, at our Sunday morning breakfasts, holding court and waxing eloquent about everything under the sun, in the style of an English aristocrat. That he is of Sicilian descent matters not. T’s heart and soul are rooted in the Merry Old Isle.

My day was otherwise occupied with the mundane-getting laundry done, gluing the front right quarter panel of my Hyundai, with the same substance that’s kept the back left in place, for nearly three years and watching episodes of “The Underground Railroad” and “Peaky Blinders”. Five of us pondered another set of quotes from the Universal House of Justice’s (Baha’i Governing Body) compilation on Social Action. I got in another workout.

In all this, I am looking at what is going on in the wider world, and just shaking my head, keeping up with it all, yet feeling as if it’s all a dream. The most important things in my life are all revolving around family, friends and the children-always, the children.

One of the traits that my cousin, John, had was presence, centering on who was in front of him, for as long as the person needed. That has not been my strong suit, though I am getting better at it. I am still not great at the perfunctory- greetings or conversation for their own sakes, especially online or long-distance. Birthdays and anniversaries are different; they draw my attention, because they matter so much. The rest of it-well, maybe my agenda is too broad and the next thing is always on my horizon. Still, I am making progress at being present, with someone who is in front of me, at any given time.

Twenty-nine years did teach me something.

What John Built

2
Posted by on in children, Community, Family, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Striving

June 5, 2021- The man in full sat in a lawn chair, next to his wife of 46 years, and enjoyed being surrounded by their seven children and twenty-three grandchildren. This was the type of family gathering to which he, and the other forty-seven of his maternal grandmother’s “babies”, had grown accustomed.

He grew into manhood by becoming a diver in the United States Army, which included service in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. One sultry afternoon, he paid a call on one of his cousins, who was also stationed in Vietnam, showing that there were still means for soldiers and family members to find one another-even in a war zone.

In civilian life, he distinguished himself by earning his degree in Business Administration, and using it in a variety of ways- serving as a civic administrator in six communities, across his adopted state of Maine and building his own contracting business, all of which kept home and hearth in good stead, as his seven children grew into adulthood.

He was the second born of seven, and kept his siblings close, especially in the dark days of 2006, when four family members passed on, within months of one another. He kept some of his cousins close, too, even as our lives diverged. When I was tossed out of my apartment, under what turned out to be false pretenses, in February, 1977, I had a place to sleep for a few days, until the next more permanent residence presented itself. He and his wife kept my excess possessions for a year, when it was time for me to move, of a sudden, from Maine to Arizona.

That was who John Edward Madigan, Jr., one of my closest paternal cousins, was. He built a solid family, alongside his darling Mary; built much of the house in which they raised their family; built trust and confidence, even among those with whom he disagreed, socially and politically; built a successful contracting business, from scratch. He even began to build a place for himself in the Maine State Legislature, before cancer and COVID-19 muddied the political waters.

The greatest thing John built, though, was his heart. He seldom, if ever, missed a child’s or grandchild’s special event, whether religious, athletic, scholastic or any of the once-in-a-lifetime keepsakes. There is no life he touched that wasn’t the better for his having been there. When, on June 2, 2021, he went to be with his Lord, and to rejoin his parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephew who preceded him in death, John would surely have entered their presence with his shining eyes and mischievous grin.

John built a palace of love.

And Greenwood Burned

2
Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Education, Historical, impediments, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Striving

June 2, 2021- Much long overdue attention has been focused, over the past week, on the Centenary of the destruction and massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood section, on May 31-June 1, 1921. The President has visited, and met with three survivors, commemorative events have been held around the country, and in other nations, and even the Murdochs, in their National Geographic Magazine, have commissioned well-thought-out articles on the horrific event, and on race identity in general. I will make my own visit of homage to Tulsa, and to Greenwood, after visiting with my son and daughter-in-law, outside Dallas, next month.

Many did not know of this stain on our history, until recently, but as a country, we have long known of the legacy of the slave trade and its aftermath. “The Underground Railroad”, whose televised depiction I am viewing now, on Amazon Prime, gives even more graphic illustration of what went on in many, if not most, plantations and smallholder farms, where slavery fueled the economy. That mindset died hard, where it did die at all, even in “Free” states. There is still far too much of the concept of “Us” vs. “Them”, even among those who say they abide the presence of people of colour. I can see it, in the readiness of so many to embrace restrictive laws, in the areas of voting, of residence and of taxation for the public weal. There are those who would summarily execute people illegally crossing both borders or homeless people in large cities-and there are more of the “I, the Jury” types than one would care to think.

I first learned of the Greenwood Massacre-and similar events in Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis and Rosewood, Florida in 1973, during a class entitled U.S. History Since 1877. The instructor, Dr. Israelsohn, was a classical conservative, but had no use for race-baiting and the systemic segregation that occurred in every part of the country, to some degree or another, right up until the time that course was offered. Her conservatism was that of true free enterprise and self-sufficiency.

That people can mature and develop, admirably, in so many ways, yet be unable to recognize the futility of Zero-Sum, increasingly escapes me. Where there is enough to share-then there is room to share, as well. Where there is enough to cover the feet of the people around oneself, then why hog the blanket? To be sure, this is one reason why I travel-and it is one reason why community service is a priority. Where there is real connection, there is no “Other”.

Let there be no more Greenwood Massacres, of any kind.

Much Ado….

0
Posted by on in collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Striving

May 30, 2021- Have you spent much time in your life, building a small matter up, until it becomes overwhelming? It often occurred, that the matters, which so affrighted me before they were resolved, quickly became lost in the fog of the mind’s archival footage, once a day or two had passed.

These are matters most often related to finance, or to interpersonal relationships. Panic attacks and anxiety (which are serious medical matters, deserving of professional attention) aside, it generally happens that careful thought and emotional grounding can help to put things in their true perspective. Past unpleasant experiences can cloud one’s judgment, so it is important to recognize that each situation is different, that learnings from the previous bad experience can be put to use for a better outcome, this time and that the person, him/herself, is different now than before.

There are situations, of course, which are dire and which deserve all the “ado” they can be given: The illness or disability of a loved one, especially of one’s child, spouse or parent; a natural disaster which threatens or damages one’s home; a sociopolitical riot or rampage in one’s home area. That, in turn, is why we humans are social beings-that we may call on one another and anticipate support in a truly dire emergency.

I have had such emergencies in my life, and am fortunate that my family and close friends have been responsive and helpful, in a nonjudgmental manner. I would do the same for them.