Recent Blog Posts: Tehachapi News

It Would Seem Americans Don't Appreciate Beauty....

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:40:12 PDT

no matter how big or small it may be.

Here is an article that was published in the Washington Post. It is quite long but very good and very well written. I think it's very intresting, yet I found it to be extremely sad. No wonder so many Americans are on anti-depressants!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Cingular in BVS

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:01:43 PDT

Does anyone have Cingular service in BVS? I currently have Verizon and it works great, but I'm looking at Apple's new iPhone which is Cingular only. According to their coverage map it looks pretty good for most of the valley floor. But even they concede "Actual coverage area may differ substantially from map graphics, and coverage may be affected by such things as terrain, weather, foliage..."

The Ugliness of Abortion

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:32:09 PDT

Wrongful birth’ suit criticized by pro-lifers

By Gail Besse
4/9/2007

The Anchor (www.fallriverdiocese.org/resources.asp)

FALL RIVER, Mass. (The Anchor) - The lawsuit brought by a mother whose botched abortion resulted in her daughter being born alive unmasks the real cruelty of the abortion culture, Catholic pro-life advocates agree.

“The heart of the abortion culture is not about the rights of the mother. It’s about making sure the baby is dead,” said Father David Mullen of Bellingham, an executive board member of Massachusetts Citizens for Life. “The idea is sick - that doctors are supposed to kill a child in the womb and be punished if the child isn’t dead.”

The case made national news after the Boston Globe first reported it March 7. Although the incredible idea of so-called “wrongful birth” or “wrongful life” lawsuits has grown since the legalization of abortion, previous cases apparently centered on medical problems the babies had.

Although pro-lifers and spokesmen for the disabled repudiated such “quality of life” thinking, abortion advocates capitalized on this strategic legal wedge.

However, this proposed suit makes no mention of medical problems; rather it states the mother sought an abortion for financial reasons, according to the article.

On March 1, Jennifer Raper, 45, of Charlestown, Mass.,filed a complaint in Suffolk Superior Court against Planned Parenthood and two doctors. She had given birth on Dec. 7, 2004 after a failed abortion, and is seeking damages and the cost of raising her 2-year-old daughter.

Dr. Allison Bryant, who worked for Planned Parenthood, performed the abortion in April 2004, but it “was not done properly, causing the plaintiff to remain pregnant,” according to the medical malpractice complaint.

Raper then went to see Dr. Benjamin Eleonu at Boston Medical Center in July 2004, and he failed to detect the pregnancy even though she was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, the Globe reported. It was only when Raper went to the New England Medical Center emergency room for treatment of pelvic pain in late September that she found out she was pregnant, the suit said.

Neither Planned Parenthood nor the doctors being sued for negligence are commenting on the complaint, which must be reviewed by a panel before the court determines if it will go to trial. That process could take about eight months, Raper’s attorney Barry Reed Jr. of Boston said March 27. He and his client are also not commenting.

Father Mullen observed, “The parents aren’t thinking about scarring the psyche of this girl for the rest of her life, when she realizes that every time they look at her they see a botched abortion. What they should be thinking is: Thank God the mistake we made didn’t result in the death of our child. Obviously, somebody convinced this mother she might make some money here.”

And Planned Parenthood’s pockets do go deep, with much of its money coming from taxpayers. As the nation’s leading abortion chain, it pulled in federal funding of $272 million in 2005, twice what it made from it s 255,000 abortions that year, according to the Family Research Council.

Genevieve Kineke of East Greenwich, R.I., author of “The Authentic Catholic Woman,” said in an interview, “Sadly, this is the logical consequence of reducing the human person to a commodity. It follows that if life is not sacred (and even its value is driven by supply and demand) then a child is seen either as a tax break or a tuition bill, as an accessory or even a source of ‘spare parts.’

“We are so dead to the hidden treasures, the joys and even rich sorrows that relationships can provide that we can’t see past the price tag - and even if this woman wins her lawsuit, she will be the poorer for it.”

Judie Brown, president of American Life League, commented about Raper, “Lord, how this woman must need our prayers.” In an online article, Brown wrote that we now suffer from a mentality whereby people “see children as problems, pregnancy as an illness almost worse than cancer, and selfless love as a joke.”

Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, almost 48 million American children have been killed.(Disgusting isn't it)

“That the phrase ‘wrongful birth’ exists and a mother would ever conceive of making a legal case out of wishing her kid was never born does always seem to me a clear sign the end is nigh and Judgment Day won’t be merciful to our national soul,” National Review Online Editor Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote about Raper’s suit.

After the case became public, the online pro-life news source LifeSite News summarized some previous “wrongful life” decisions. In 2003, a Canadian doctor was ordered to pay $325,000 to parents whose child he failed to diagnose with Down syndrome before birth, and therefore in time to have her aborted.

In 2006, Ohio banned “wrongful life” lawsuits that claimed parents could have aborted their baby had a doctor diagnosed a disability in the unborn child. Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life applauded lawmakers in a release saying, “The disabled are like everyone else. They’re better off loved, not better off dead.”

Also last year, an Italian court ruled such suits were invalid in Italy, saying there could be no such thing as a “right not to be born.”

Most recently, the Vatican spokesman to the United Nations at Geneva emphasized the dignity of human life. In a March 23 address to the Human Rights Council, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said, “The first right of children is that of being born.”

Kimberly Jean Concert at JMS next weekend

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:31:48 PDT

I've seen a few posters around town regarding an upcomming concert at the junior high school. The young lady's name is Kimberly Jean and she graduated from THS in 2002. Are any of you going? Does anyone have more information on the concert, like where I can buy tickets?

Who is going to put out the fire?

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:58:34 PDT

“That was a dumb n----- trick.” The use of the “n” word was a commonplace where I spent four years teaching in Watts at David Starr Jordan High School on the corner of 103^rd and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles. But it was hearing one of my pupils say that to another in my presence that told me the kids had accepted me; that they knew color was not a factor in my being there, that it was not a factor in our teacher/pupil relationship. But it also made me aware of how certain words make their way into a population and in time loses their real meaning and intent. We hope there are parents and grandparents, a society that would teach children the meaning of such words. Too often this is not the case.

Being a Caucasian teacher in an all Negro school in an all Negro community during the 60s taught me things in race relations unlearnable in any other environment. For example, the first week on the job one of the girls in my homeroom turned up missing and I learned she had been stabbed to death by another girl in a fight over a boy. Another example of the school environment in which I was to spend four years and become a tenured teacher was the principal telling me drugs were not a problem, this despite the fact they were all-pervasive and dealers had free access to the school without fear of intervention. But the principal was quite correct, drugs were not a problem; the problem was the kind of violence like a girl killing another over a boy that was the problem. The principal had put things in perspective for me; the evil of drugs was vastly overshadowed by the evil of violence endemic to the school and community of Watts.

To be sure, the dealing and use of drugs added to such a violent environment; but the real problem promoting this endemic violence was the hopelessness of anything changing for the better for those that found themselves trapped in a place like Watts, a place where the hundreds of teenagers I dealt with knew how very hopeless their situation was. It was a hopelessness that bred violence, a lashing out at an enemy unseen and unknown, but one that was relentless in keeping opportunity for anything better out of reach.

I’ve written so much about the things I learned while teaching in ghetto and barrio schools it is with great difficulty I approach the subject once more. I cannot but somewhat envy Kurt Vonnegut whose writings so many of us admire now being relieved of the toil. As much as anyone he understood the labors of the writer compelled to write because “that is what we do.” But in most cases, as Thoreau mentioned writers have only the pain of their labors as their reward.

But for those of us who not only write but are compelled by conscience to write, there is always the hope we can make a difference. While this flies in the face of the facts, I’m compelled to continue the seemingly never ending story of the kind of hopelessness so many face simply because by accident of birth they drew the wrong card from the deck of fate.

The issues now being discussed about race because of the Imus and Duke cases brought many things to mind, things I would far rather have relegated to the past and never relive in memory again, let alone write about. But there they are, as vivid as though they had only happened yesterday.

One of my pupils in fear of his life brought a rifle to school. He went to the office and asked if the school secretary would please keep it for him so he could pick it up again at the end of the school day. He tried to explain he needed the gun for safety walking to and from school, and could not understand why the secretary refused his request. In a school where the dropout rate was nearly 75%, not the advertised 15% necessary to cook the books for state and federal aid and the ADA was a flagrant fraud teachers were forced to commit, it was remarkable to me this young fellow took his education so seriously he was willing to risk his life even coming to school at all.

Very few people can relate to this young fellow; very few can relate to what was a reasonable request on his part under such circumstances. But I lived it for four years on a daily basis in an environment where teachers and pupils were armed, and violence was a part of our everyday lives. It was only when I had to face down one of the real criminals gun in hand that I finally determined I had to resign. Had I killed the criminal threatening me that would have been the end anyway. And had he killed me, what would my family get? Flowers from the school district?

The great advantage I had enabling me to be a successful teacher those four years at Jordan was the fact I was a shop teacher. When I went to the interview at the district headquarters I was told English and History teachers were dime-a-dozen. But when the interviewer discovered my twelve years in the aerospace industry qualified for my teaching vocational classes, I became a hot commodity. This would enable the district to draw from the vast resources of federal money available to schools like Jordan for vocational classes. Much of the fraud I eventually discovered in the schools had to do with this availability of federal funds. And the ease with which school districts can cook the books made “If the money is simply lying there, why not take it,” frankly, quite unbelievable.

But equally unbelievable was why the school district would send a lovely young blonde to Jordan as her first teaching assignment. She lasted a full three days. It was when a large bolt was thrown at her barely missing her head and breaking the blackboard at which she had been writing that ended things.

I spent a lot of frustrating time to no avail attempting to make some of these things known to those in authority. I even sat down with State Senator Ed Davis in Sacramento for a long chat about some of these things. We had a good relationship established when he was Chief of the L.A.P.D. But I was saddened to learn Ed had become a politician, and as such there was no help to be found through him or any of the others in Sacramento.

Equally frustrating was the experience I gained by sending some of this information to William Raspberry. He seemed excited until he learned I was Caucasian; and that was the end of our correspondence. I understood; after all, what could a Caucasian know of the “black experience.” Well, quite a lot as it turns out. But there was no use trying to convince Raspberry of this, even though the FBI thought I had something to contribute.

While we had a plainclothes L.A.P.D. working the campus of Jordan, a man with whom I had a deep friendship, there was no quelling the violence. But we both understood the root cause of the violence, the profound despair of anything ever becoming better for the people in Watts. They were a political nonentity before the riots, and they remained a political nonentity after the riots, and notwithstanding the abortive attempts by some few like Cleaver and Malcolm X only the charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would come to the fore to “represent” Negroes.

I found things no better in East San Jose, where the cops were called to the campus of Yerba Buena High School 90 times during my first ten weeks teaching there. But there was a profound difference in the kinds of racial hatreds, not only due to the number of illegal aliens but the great influx of Asian pupils resulting from the politically contrived tragic disaster of Vietnam. As a math teacher, I experienced first hand the difference between a Mexican culture that despised education and the Asian that put a premium on education. Adding to the witch’s brew of the school district was having a Negro Superintendent and a Hispanic principal. During one faculty meeting, the Superintendent who was the chief speaker asked for a glass of water. The head of our teacher’s union, a Caucasian, hollered out to the principal, “Hey, Hernandez, you get it. You’re his water boy!”

Having been born in Weedpatch and spending my childhood in Southeast Bakersfield, Little Oklahoma, throughout a lifetime spent in so many environments where racism is a commonplace I’ve experienced a lot of discrimination. Whether the “n” word or “white trash” and “Okie,” any number of words and phrases that hurt, through all of this I’ve known the good and the bad people irrespective of race. But how is it, we find ourselves asking, that the bad people seem to consistently have the upper hand?

Among the many things about race I have learned along the way is the fact that while working in aerospace as a machinist and engineer race was not a factor. The fellow running a lathe or mill might be Jewish, Negro, Caucasian, but we got along because we all had jobs, and with those jobs we had hope for our families and our future. But we were also Americans, and we had the hope of most Americans of that era that there was a future for us and our families. I suppose if there is to be a bottom line to what is happening now because of Imus/Duke it is one of both economics and what it means to be an American first, and everything else subordinate to that. However, that requires the kind of hope those my age had those years ago when we had a heritage, culture, and language that bound us together as Americans with a national identity.

But there can be no hope of a satisfactory resolution, no answer to who is going to put out the fire when such a trail of slime leads to the White House like a “missing” 5 million emails that will not be accounted for, so long as corruption is rife in our Congress, as long as millions of Mexicans invade America for the sake of slave labor, and so on.

While chatting with a friend yesterday, a recovering alcoholic, it once more occurred to me no one who has not experienced the addiction can possibly understand the hellish kind of prison such addicts make for themselves, the kind of lunacy they live with every day of their lives. Likewise, those who have not experienced the kind of hopeless despair to be found in places like Watts can possibly understand such a thing. But most people should be able to understand the German fellow I worked with in the shops following WWII telling me that before Hitler his family was starving, but after Hitler came to power there were meat and potatoes once more.

Americans are beginning to demand that order be restored in our nation. But I don’t trust the present leadership to do the things necessary to restore order in America. What we hope for, what we must work for is the kind of order that does not invite another Hitler to take advantage of the deteriorating economic conditions millions of Americans are facing that robs us of hope for a future for our nation and our children.

lovin life

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:01:01 PDT

hey there!!

I am fairly new to this beautiful area, and I really would like to get to know some of the great people of this town...

Looking to make nice lady friends and hopefully a very nice gentleman for some great company..

Kat

NEW TEHACHAPI HOSPITAL!

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:05:09 PDT

Here is an artist rendering of the new Tehachapi Hospital.

You can help bring this dream to reality by joining the Tehachapi Hospital Foundation team. Your ten dollar per year Membership will contribute. Help US to help YOU!

Log onto: www.thfinc.org

Or call: 661-822-6159

Jim Richards

Apologies

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 01:21:41 PDT

Now Imus is out after making some nasty remarks about college women on a Rutgers basketball team. He publicly apologized, as he should. There's another apology I'd like to hear. The Duke lacrosse players, young college men, were falsely accused of rape, assault, and making racially threatening remarks. They were reviled nationally by Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others. Will the goodly reverends be as public in their apologies to these college men? Will they admit they made a mistake in jumping on the finger-pointing circus without a shred of proof? In the deafening silence, which I will bet we'll hear on this subject from these men of good faith, I will wonder what has become of the American hopes for a colorblind society.

Useful Tips we all can use.

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:40:58 PDT

Subject: New Tips

Expanding Frosting

When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar/ calories per serving.

Newspaper Weeds-Away

Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go, cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic; they will not get through wet newspapers.

Broken Glass

Use a dry cotton ball to pick up little broken pieces of glass ...
the fibers catch ones you can't see!

Reducing Static Cling

Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and .. voila ... static is gone.

Measuring Cups

Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill it with hot water.
Dump out the hot water, but don't dry the cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

Foggy Windshield?

Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

Reopening envelope

If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two.
Voila! It unseals easily.

Conditioner

Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's a lot cheaper than
shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to
use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your
hair...

Good-bye Fruit Flies

To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2" with Apple
Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dishwashing liquid, mix well. You will find
those pesky flies drawn to the cup & gone forever!

Get Rid of Ants

Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it "home,"
and can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, esp. if it
rains, but it works and you don't have the worry about pets or small
children being harmed!

Where are the apologies to the Duke students?

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:37:25 PDT

The Scripture has it concerning the tongue “Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!” Imus certainly personified the truth of this. Now it remains whether there will be those with enough integrity and virtue to put out the flames.

John McCain saying his position on the Iraq war is of no political consideration to him in his bid for the presidency is certainly perverse. And for him to say this with a straight face expecting others to believe him is even more perverse. What McCain is obviously trying to do is make himself the paragon of virtue, baldly saying he thinks the sacrifice of even more American lives and more billions of taxpayer dollars in a lost cause is the “moral” thing to do. I say this to McCain: You take your brand of morality and stuff it!

To put the most charitable face on it, perhaps McCain doesn’t even realize how perverse his stand on the Iraq war is? And if he doesn’t, then I can find some room for pitying him. And in the same manner, I might find some room for pitying Don Imus.

He should have done the honorable thing and resigned rather than being fired; but now Imus doesn’t even have that going for him. I am concerned he may not yet even understand the full gravity of what his shameful, dehumanizing remarks made against women really meant. For that matter, I’m concerned there are still some in positions of power and have forums in which to address the monumental issues raised are not doing so. But this whole sordid affair should make it blatantly obvious Negroes have a long way to go to get their own house in order, demanding those representing them be held accountable.

The fact neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton will apologize for inflaming racial hatreds due to their heinous and defamatory speech crucifying the Duke Lacrosse players now that all charges have been dropped speaks volumes of the despicable lack of character in both men. My sympathy is for Negroes that seem unable to put forth better representation for their legitimate grievances than opportunistic, self serving scoundrels like Jackson and Sharpton rather than the kind of leaders that would make Negroes clean up their own acts of dehumanizing women and glorifying violence and corrupt speech.

To compare the two cases of Imus and the Duke students is to understand the racial divide in America is huge, and without proper leadership among Negroes, leadership that does not demand special race-based privilege and consideration without concomitant responsibility and accountability is to only acerbate a worsening condition. It isn’t right that Negroes should suffer for demanding Imus be fired, but that is going to be the result. What has resulted from having Imus punished while ignoring the grievous double standard represented by Jackson and Sharpton is a loss of credibility for legitimate grievances. By not holding rappers and others dehumanizing women and glorifying violence and corrupt speech accountable will only result in a worsening of the racial divide.

As though the situation for Negroes in America because of a lack of truly representative leadership was not bad enough, here are the Mexicans by the millions invading America, putting an enormous strain on the economics of help to the poor, disproportionately Negro legitimate citizens of America. And no one is fooled by the politicians whose “open border” mentality has no other motive than their greed for slave labor. The result is that America is becoming a witch’s brew of racial divisiveness without any national identity, without leadership We the People can trust to do other than continue like Jackson and Sharpton to foment this racial divisiveness for the sake of wealth and power.

It won't do to attempt putting a moral face on the firing of Imus; I don’t believe the real gravity of his remarks dehumanizing women is fully appreciated by those in power; and perhaps not even to those ordinary people we would expect should appreciate the full gravity of his remarks. But Imus and the Duke students should make clear to all the full gravity of what is threatening America as a nation. And the failure of leadership to put this threat in perspective and talk openly about it is to ignore a growing threat to our nation that will not go away, but only worsen as a consequence of refusing to bring it out in the open and talk about it honestly. Granted it would be a fearsome thing to do, impacting as it would on so many issues including that of illegal aliens, birth control, the abuse of government power, the abuse of We the People by the tyranny not only of government but the lust for power and wealth by those in corporations heedless of the threat to America.

To repeat: The Scripture has it concerning the tongue “Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!” Imus certainly personified the truth of this. Now it remains whether there will be those with enough integrity and virtue to put out the flames.

Living with a Schizophrenic

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:20:37 PDT

This is my first post and I thought I'd like to let the community know that if you have a loved one with mental illness, Nami Tehachapi has a support group that meets every other Wednesday 5pm-6:30pm at the College Community Services building 113 East F St.
I was fighting a battle for my loved one with no understanding or support from family. Nami has taken a load off of my shoulders with education, information and most of all empathy. I am a much stronger person now.

Will the Circle be Unbroken

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:18:54 PDT

“Will the Circle be Unbroken” may be more than wishful thinking put to gospel music. And though the song “Summertime” remains a hauntingly beautiful standard, I find it odd that no one has mentioned Gershwin’s 1935 “Porgy and Bess” during the Imus inquisition. I use the word “inquisition” not to defend Imus, but to call attention to his inquisitors like the shamelessly self-serving Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al.

What with all the shouting about race arising from the Imus affair, if you have not seen Porgy and Bess your education in race relations is woefully deficient, much as with Christians who have not read “Elmer Gantry;” so I advise you to do so. But it wasn’t just the Imus affair that called Gershwin’s opera to mind, it was a line in one song: “The things that you’re liable, to read in the Bible, they ain’t necessarily so.” Well, most of us know that without the “tempter” whispering it to us in a song; however, there are many things in the Bible to which we would do well to pay heed, not just because it is the most influential book ever written, but because of some of the insights to be gained into some of the science involved. Take time travel for example.

Time travel is a unique feature of brain function we call “memory” that allows us to travel back in time and actually relive events, while another function of the brain we call “imagination” enables us to transform many things. Most of us have made blunders in the past we wish we could go back in time and correct, and while reliving these things, many of which can make life a living hell on earth, demons tearing at the fabric of sleep, memory restores the events while our imagination plays the many scenarios by which we would have done some things differently if only we were able to go back in time and do so.

The problem I find with Einstein’s famous equation, a problem I have written much about, is it does not provide for life and death, and without an explanation for these a “theory of everything” is not possible. Studies in the properties of light and string theory show promise, but so far not the answers. But I also saw two difficulties involved with Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time.” One, Hawking’s “confined universe,” and second, his contention that time could only go forward.

While we live in a “box” confined to three physical dimensions, apart from memory and imagination we are also confined by time as a linear continuum. However, if light can be slowed, stopped, and even made to go backwards, the intriguing question suggesting itself from such experiments is whether time might be subject to the same things.

From The Seattle Post Intelligencer: A Seattle scientist wants to test a controversial prediction from quantum theory that says light particles can go backward in time. John Cramer, a physicist at the University of Washington says “it’s a project that aims to do a conceptually simple bench-top test for evidence of something Albert Einstein called ‘spooky action (communication) at a distance.’ “ One of the mysteries of quantum mechanics is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. Quantum theory predicts two subatomic particles derived from a single particle—like two photons split from a single photon—will, if not further influenced by other particles, continue to influence each other’s behavior no matter how far apart. This is known as “entanglement.” Experiments at the subatomic level tend to support the idea, but there’s a conceptual problem. It means the two photons must be able to communicate instantaneously, even if light years apart, which violates the speed of light. “There’s been a lot of interest in this problem over the years,” Cramer said. In 1986, he proposed a solution to this paradox that he called the “transactional interpretation” of quantum theory. Some of his approach was based on the ideas of such physics luminaries as Richard Feynman and John Wheeler. Basically, Cramer showed how entanglement could be explained—and how the paradox could be explained away—by assuming some kind of signal that can travel both forward and backward in time between the two photons. His theory, quantum retrocausality, he says, violates no rules of quantum theory and resolves the mystery...

This “fire of life” we carry about in our physical bodies that enables self-awareness and to create and imagine must, to me, be significant of something much larger than our mortality. I remain convinced of Intelligent Design, though my own thoughts do not fit with any form of conventional religious systems of belief. There may in fact be malevolence involved with some parts of the “design” accounting for evil, but our extreme limitations unable to comprehend all that goes into a “creation” of our universe and the mechanics of its function only allows of a very narrow understanding of any part of such a creation. We still do not understand all the mechanics of a living cell, how much less the life and mechanics of the universe.

Studies in brain function as well as physics are opening doors of understanding, the recent studies questioning whether neuroscience may provide the answer, or at least part of the answer, to a “god-awareness.” And perhaps neuroscience may provide an answer to “false memories.”

Belief in reincarnation tied to memory errors. Tendency could explain why some cling to implausible reincarnation claims. By Melinda Wenner: LiveScience. April 6, 2007. People who believe they have lived past lives as, say, Indian princesses or battlefield commanders are more likely to make certain types of memory errors, according to a new study. The propensity to make these mistakes could, in part, explain why people cling to implausible reincarnation claims in the first place... People who are likely to make these kinds of errors might end up convincing themselves of things that aren’t true, said lead researcher Maarten Peters of Maastricht University in The Netherlands. When people who are prone to making these mistakes undergo hypnosis and are repeatedly asked to talk about a potential idea — like a past life — they might, as they grow more familiar with it, eventually convert the idea into a full-blown false memory. This is because they can’t distinguish between things that have really happened and things that have been suggested to them, Peters told LiveScience. Past life memories are not the only type of implausible memories that have been studied in this manner. Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, has found that self-proclaimed alien abductees are also twice as likely to commit source monitoring errors...

One of the things I miss by no longer having my brother Ronnie around was our being able to share the memories of loved ones and events in our lives. If one of us were incorrect in recalling such things, the other was there to correct such “false memories.” But with his passing and being the “Last of the Mohicans” I must rely on memory alone, enhanced by the many photos and other artifacts of my past life. In some ways this is a kindness, and one many of us oldsters have come to rely on, that azure tint that time lends to many recollections.

My mother had a false memory of the passing of my great-grandmother whom mom loved so very dearly. Mom firmly believed she had been with her when she passed away, but I knew my mother was not. But if mom found comfort in believing so fervently she had been with “grandma” when she passed away, what purpose would be served by my correcting my mother, depriving her of a “memory” in which she found such solace and comfort? Now, if mom had a “memory” of being abducted by space aliens, that might have been a different matter.

There is a time to be kind, and a time to correct. And just being able to discriminate between the two is another dimension of time impacting on many of its other distinctive features yet to be explained. Still, where science leaves off philosophical speculation takes over, and from philosophical speculation comes science to make its discoveries, a circle if you will. There remains the mystery of the circle to which my Indian ancestors and others have attributed mystical properties. While memory may play us false at times, who knows but what this is what we are left with? “Will the Circle be Unbroken” may be more than wishful thinking put to gospel music. If time should prove to be not linear but a circular continuum, without beginning or end, perhaps it may be we will enter that continuum. I cling to the hope I will once more be with my loved ones and friends in a hereafter. And while such a “circle” is suggested by philosophical speculation, science may yet come to the same conclusion.

fence installers?

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:01:24 PDT

Does anyone recommend a GOOD fence builder/installer. I am looking to have a post and rail fence put up on my property and so far I have had no luck. Anyone I have called either does not return messages or is a no show. I have not even been able to acquire an estimate yet.

Can't miss TV shows

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:20:26 PDT

What are the TV shows you absolutely cannot miss?

I am sad to admit that mine are 24 (but the first season willl alwaysbe the best), Nip/Tuck and Still Standing.

TV is supposed to mindless. That is my only defense.

Fantasy job...

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:06:31 PDT

If you could spend a year working at your fantasy job, what would it be?

In my case, I'd spend my time writing about pets and pet people...

assuming that being George Clooney's masseuse wounldn't be a full-time gig :o)