Perspective on Bees and other Things

These are the perfect days. The temperature at 78 F and the sky clear and soaring. I haven't been away from China long enough yet to not appreciate this. Before too long I fear I will take the quiet and the clean air for granted. What a shame.

In the meantime I can still enjoy an easy 10-minute trip across the city to an excellent bagel shop for breakfast and a leisurely reading of the Sunday paper. After that a half-hour at the bookstore and on to the house for an afternoon spent reading and studying on the patio in the secluded backyard. Wind in the trees, a warm sun, hummingbirds, bees, flowers and squirrels to entertain me.

All this is made so much more delicious having not had it while living in Shanghai. Triangulation is an important tool to enjoying life. I was listening to a podcast of an old Alan Watts lecture last night and he was discussing why it is hard to really understand one's own culture without having experienced another culture (more on that soon). The same perspective can be gained by living in another environment for awhile. I don't take bees for granted anymore.

No Guns Allowed in Church

One of the surprises I had upon my return to Peavine were the "no guns allowed" signs and decals on the doors of banks, churches and convenience stores. I had forgotten that my state had been one of those that passed liberal right to bear arms laws a few years ago - allowing guns everywhere unless specifically posted as a no gun zone. As a result one finds "no guns allowed" signs in places one would think would simply be a no brainer. Does anyone really think it should be necessary to remind people not to bring guns into a bank? How does God feel about the "no guns" sign on the door to my church?

I got to thinking again about this today when I received an email from the Brady Campaign that discussed a trip to the massive NRA headquarters in the Washington DC area and their surprise to find that the NRA, the lobby group that pushed all these liberal gun laws on us, doesn't allow guns in its building. Ironic eh? Aren't these the same folks that have argued on TV recently that people really should be allowed to bring even automatic weapons to events featuring the president?

Tokyo Vending Machine

Chongqing Memory

Democracy's Achilles Heel

One of the most unfortunate aspects of our political system is the ability for special interests to hide behind "people's" organizations that the special interest itself creates as a front group. A glaring example of this is an organization calling itself 60plus.org that is currently filling the commercial time on CNN and other networks with misleading ads about proposed health care reform. I won't go into detail about the obvious falsehoods in their ad but suffice it to say that this organization is designed to appear to be a membership group of senior citizens while it is in fact funded and created by the pharmaceutical industry. Take a look at their website and at reports about them here and here. Any organization that lies about its true nature is not an organization to be believed. In fact, it should be illegal.

Terrorized by AT&T Lady

Back in the days of propeller planes and monopoly telephone companies the airlines and the telephone company were respectable places to work. That's generally not the case anymore and I'm not sure how much deregulation had to do with this - but most of us enjoy interacting with airline and telephone company representatives about as much as we enjoy finding a bug in our food. I was reminded of this the other day when I had need to call AT&T about telephone service.

I tried to take care of my business by emailing them and telling them what I wanted. I explained that my phone was not working. They emailed back and said call us. I called on my pay-per-minute cell phone and got ahold of an AT&T service representative. I told that I wanted a very simple and basic service. 15 minutes later I was still fending off multiple attempts to get me to buy this or that service. "Surely you need Internet service. How many computers do you have? No? Ok, well if you sign up for our satellite TV service I can give you this for a $40 savings and throw in a free tweety bird mobile phone. No? Are you sure? How about our total security anti-crime kitchen monitoring service and blah blah blah." Normally I would have just hung up on her but I needed that one little thing I had originally called for. I was afraid that if I didn't humor her she'd mess up my order, cancel it altogether or, now that she knew where I lived, come out and slash my tires.

She was very determined. AT&T had trained her well and probably incentivized her to be ruthless in her pursuit of up selling customers into additional and unnecessary services. I'm pretty good at saying no after three years on the streets of Shanghai but it was all I could do to get this AT&T "service" rep to leave me alone. I could just imagine that she would have had more agreeable people signed up for $200 of services every month by the time they hung up the phone. I hate to think of what she would do to one's grandmother.

No wonder Americans hate their phone service providers.

Welcome to the Belt

You know you are in the Bible Belt when you find two Jack T. Chick evangelical comic tracts on your windshield in two days. Actually I realized we were headed into the Belt when we were approached by a man at the Denver Airport wanting to know if we were "saved". We were sitting in the waiting area for the flight to Peavine when he sat down next to us and popped the question. Turns out he was a preacher. I was seated the furthest from him so selfishly I abandoned my family and moved away. Fortunately S kept him busy until our flight was called for boarding.

Once on the ground in Peavine the Beltiness was again noticeable from several religious-oriented billboards and signs along the freeway. Within two days I had seen a man walking down the road carrying a large cross over his shoulder and been accosted at a stoplight by a large woman carrying a plastic bucket marked donations and shouting "God Bless You" at motorists. If one didn't give her a donation she shouted all the louder and it sounded more like a curse than a blessing.

This is perhaps the first sign of reverse culture shock that I'm experiencing.