Sheesh…It’s been too long.

I have been having an over-abundance of thoughts lately. You would think that would result on MORE blogging, not less…

But sometimes certain trails of thought need to come to some sort of conclusion, or at least a pause, before you can write them down. Mine have been awfully meandering.

Anyway, I will write more later on those walks in the woods.

RIGHT NOW, i am excited to share the news that my beautiful friend of faith, hope and love has published her informal survey of new music. Go check it out!

I finished reading the communist manifesto. It was short, as I already said, and it was pretty good. Once you got used to the weird German sentence structure, Marx and Engels had good stuff to say. I think their assessment of their contemporary situation was accurate.

It seems that with the industrialization of Europe, the capitalists (aka large business owners) were in charge of everything the way feudal nobility had been. Okay. But industrialization had led to a consolidation of population, and all those workers (of the former serf class) were squished into really nasty living conditions. At least as serfs, the lower classes had a patch of land they could feel secure living on. As industrial age factory workers, they didn’t even have that.

As Marx said, nine-tenth of the population was doing the work and one tenth was owning the property. In his opinion, working towards a society where the benefits of property were shared was simply fair.

I think his assessment of the worker-boss relationship was correct for his time.

But while he felt that the 9/10ths would naturally rebel and take over the 1/10th, and that they should logically ask for shared ownership, it did not work out that way.

Everyone now says “Communism failed.” I’m not so sure that’s true. But one thing that is true, is that Marx did not look at the way wealth was distributed in America. We don’t have the same disparity of property. Sure, We have a very few very wealthy class. But we also have a high percentage of property owners.

I looked it up. 64% of Americans own their own home. And our government highly encourages the population to own property. There are all kinds of assistance and even subsidy programs. This seems to be a way of redistributing the wealth, across a broader and more fair section of society.

Also, our government has done a lot to make certain kinds of property common. City Parks, libraries, schools, all kinds of things are essentially communal property.

As I was walking on the stevens creek trail today, I was enjoying the incredible beauty of the trees and flowers. I was delighted that such a wonderful paved bike trail was accessible to everyone. When I looked up at the weeping willow tree, I remembered that I had traveled through a paved road in the middle of a similar forest in Moscow. I was told that it was the hunting grounds of the csar. That would have been the kind of park that Marx was familiar with: the kind that said KEEP OUT.

While our monetary system is undeniably capitalist, and the whole population understands and expects that, there is still a lot of practical communism at work.

Marx certainly didn’t predict that turn of events. I have a lot of respect for his hypothesis, because it seemed to be based on some very logical steps.

But it’s hard to predict the future. No two ways about it. The best guess can be wrong. It seems like you have to keep a keen eye about you. All your best theories of how the world works could be very wrong; things change all the time.

My clever boyfriend sent me this link today, talking about silly assumptions. It juxtaposes two types of people, the statists and the dynamists. That is, people who assume things are staying the same, and people who realize things are changing.

Well, it doesn’t take much to realize things are changing. It’s important to keep up.

All of these horrible occurances with the executives and accounting firms at Enron and WorldCom and Xerox, and I forget who else, have been on the news.

Some people say, We need better government protection!

Well, that a good idea to have. But the problem was not that what these folks did was legal. It was clearly illegal. So we already have government protection. There are all kinds of laws on the books about not lying and not stealing.

But it someone decides to lie and steal, they choose to ignore those laws.

I am concerned about the moral fiber of the people in charge of large corporations.

Isn’t it funny that we are so concerned with their dishonesty?

I guess it makes sense, because we have moved away from the system of pensions for retirement to a system of personal investments. 401Ks and investment portfolios are supposed to take the burden of responsibility off the companies and put it on the backs of individual workers.

Well, when that happened, there was a a tremendous explosion of money in the stock market. That’s what you DO when you invest, right? That’s what all the experts tell you to do anyway.

Well, now that a lot of money is in the hands of a lot of people with very little knowledge, it is easy for the execs to fudge the books. Who’s gonna know, right? And they are just trying to build up the stock…

I happened to be reading the Communist manifesto today. Just as a refresher, Marx and Engels defined the Bourgeoisie as those who employ the laborers. Sounds like Enron, WorldCom, etc.

So here are some of his earlier statements:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has…left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’…It has resolved personal worth into exchange value and in indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom–free trade. In one word…it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid laborers.

I just had to look it up…indefeasible means “cannot be undone.”

Well, I find this remarkably current. Aren’t we all complaining about the way the medical system is becoming more commercialized and less concerned with healing sick people? I remember something that that Chris Rock said:

They ain’t never gonna find a cure for AIDS! There’s no money in a cure. They’ll give you a treatment. That’s how drug dealers work, they get you on the come back.

Hmm…Yeah.

Well, when Enron, WorldCom and ESPECIALLY arthur anderson took a look at their balance sheets and their desires for profit, all the people who were affected by their deceitful schemes were merely numbers on a page. I suspect that the numbers on the page were more real to them than any person.

Nothing left between man and man than cash payment.

Personal worth reduced to exchange value.

I don’t know that much about communism. I decided to read the Communist Manifesto, because I realized that the history of the 20th century has been incredibly affected by communism and I am woefully ignorant about it.

It’s not very long, and I haven’t gotten very far into it. I may have more to say about it later.

But..My initial response to this is that we ought to give more value to non-tangible commodities. “Soft Money” as they sometimes call it.

I had the same problem when I was working in video conferencing. How do you measure the return on investment for quick communication? Everyone looked at how much it cost to upgrade communications equipment, but few people would believe that if you made it easier to talk and have meetings, that the company would be more efficient and more profitable.

It seems simple.

It also seems simple that relationships between people are of value. That honesty and diligence and dedication result in greater profitability seems basic.

I wonder if Arthur Anderson had an algorithm to track the value of the company’s honesty assets?

There is even more to this pledge of allegiance thing. I have some special experience with pledging that most Americans do not have.

I have never been to a public school, my first experience with school was in a Baptist Christian School, called Accelerated Christian Education, or ACE. It’s now known as School of Tomorrow.

Anyway, the designer of this curriculum, Dr. Howard, was nothing if not patriotic. His prescription for model ACE schools was uniforms. Of course, his recommendation was red white and blue uniforms. Girl wore skirts and boys wore ties. The ties were a lovely blue background, with a repeating pattern on them.

The emblem of this pattern was extremely symbolic. There was an open Bible, with the American flag and the Christian flag making an X over it. Then, an American Eagle stood above these crossed flags, in the middle.

Being a girl, I did not have to wear this tie.

BUT! Pledging to the American flag was a required part of our daily routine. But in this highly regimented, quasi-militaristic environment, one pledge was not enough.

Did you forget that Christian flag?

There was a pledge to IT, to. Here it is:

I pledge allegiance to the Christian Flag and to the Savior for whose Kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again with life and liberty to all who believe.

Pretty neat, huh? We got to say that one, too.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! There was another pledge, to the Bible. Here it is:

I pledge allegiance to the Bible, God’s Holy Word, I will make it a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path and will hide its words in my heart that I might not sin against God.

I don’t remember that my school ever said that one. But I was aware of it. The REALLY radical schools would say it. When we went to events that included all the Christian schools in the area, sometimes that pledge would come up. Even at the time, I thought it was silly. Perhaps because the bible is not a flag, and what were they trying to prove, anyway? Who among us DIDN”T think the Bible was important?

Well, the ACE curriculum fell from popular favor. That is, it fell in favor among the small slice of Americans who might have found it favorable. We moved on to other, less rigid curricula. Dr. Howard had to start selling his School of Tomorrow door to door. He translated it badly into Spanish, and sold it to Mexico.

But then, it 1990, the Iron Curtain Fell! Long Live the Christian Flag! The Russian were buying into ACE! He managed to sell his program in Russia.

And then, as a 19-year-old, I was in the outer reaches of nowhere, so nowhere it wasn’t even as accessible as Siberia, teaching the little no-longer-communist children about the pledge of allegiance.

They had a new flag. The old sickle and hammer had been taken down for a more abstract tri-color beastie. In fact, we saw it fly for the first time, the day we entered the capital of the region, Yakutsk: January 1st, 1992.

Well, we were there to instruct this school in the proper implementation of the program. And the first thing they were supposed to do every morning was pledge.

They didn’t have a pledge to the new flag. I think they may have had something similar for the old flag, but these poor people were not really into sloganeering and patriotism. Communism had fallen apart and people were wondering how much longer they would have food.

At the point in time we arrived, all of the government workers (and that was pretty much everybody) had not been paid for 5 months.

People were not feeling patriotic. Perhaps that is why my father insisted on creating a new pledge of allegiance for the new flag. More likely, he was oblivious to their state of mind; we were all extremely disoriented. Remember, which of us in America knew anything about life in Russia? For all we knew, this was just how they did things.

So dad wrote a new pledge of allegiance stealing broadly from the American pledge. Well, that’s what the pledge to the Christian flag and the pledge to the bible did, so he was working in an established literary tradition.

It wasn’t until he gave it to the Russian teacher to be translated that I thought about it. Poor Olga was befuddled by the word “allegiance.” What does it mean?

We all laughed. “The kids in America don’t know what it means either! It’s a standing joke, how kids misunderstand the pledge…I led the pigeons to the flag…Stuff like that.”

Think about that. Is that okay? Kids don’t even know what they are saying!

We explained that it meant loyalty, etc. She managed to come up with a decent translation.

So that’s how the little darlings began their days, standing straight, with their right hands pressed to their left breast, reciting to a tri-color poster, which was the best we could do for a flag.

It occurred to me then, that Russians were familiar with these kinds of things. Wouldn’t the Young Pioneers, with their red kerchiefs, have had a whole slew of these kinds of patriotic rituals?

At that point in time, the Young Pioneers had no money to do anything, so kids were roaming the streets, getting drunk and beating each other up. But I didn’t know that until later.

But I thought, Is this the American way that we are supposed to be bringing to the Russians? This rigidity and conformity? Haven’t they had enough of being told what to think and how to act? It made me very uncomfortable.

I joked about finding ties that had the Russian flag on it instead of the American flag, and having the kids wear those. I’m not sure that my family thought it was funny.

Eventually, I had to leave the schools. I just didn’t feel right about teaching that curriculum. I had been there for a year and a half, and my family was staying on. But I could not in good conscience continue to teach rhetoric and rote memorization. I thought America meant something else.

That’s most of my memory-experience I bring to this Pledge of Allegiance issue.

Silly Blogger! I posted this yesterday, but it didn’t quite go up. You’ll all see it a day late.

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It’s American Independence day! Happy Fourth of July!

There is a big conflict going on right now about the pledge of allegiance. I have some thoughts on the matter.

I guess the big controversy in place right now is about the phrase “Under God.” Should thus phrase be included in the pledge of allegiance, which many schools require their students to recite?

This controversy reminds me of the controversy about another little phrase: “and the Son.”

That little phrase was much more important and had much more lasting consequences. It was an addition that some 9th and 10th century christens wanted to add to the Nicene Creed, as part of the definition of the Trinity. It became one of the major causes for the split in the Christian church that resulted in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Small phrases can have a big impact.

HOWEVER, the phrase “under God” in my opinion does not belong in a required pledge of allegiance. The protection of religious freedom should preserve the rights of school children. They should not be forced into a profession of faith, whether it is their own or not.

This is not the opinion of everyone. Some people feel very strongly that the phrase should be included in the pledge.

I actually have a different opinion altogether than any of the ones I’m hearing on the news.

I think that the ritual of pledging allegiance is ridiculous and unhealthy. The pledge is a recent phenomenon, only being composed in 1892. The way it is treated now, you would think that Washington spoke it ex cathedra while crossing the Delaware. But no. It was written by a Christian socialist for a youth magazine.

It was taken up and pushed in the 20’s by the American Legion.

The entire ritual of saying the pledge seems odd. We have all been raised on it, so maybe it’s hard for some of you to understand what I mean, but think about it.

All these little children assume a military pose and recite in unison a slogan and a promise of loyalty to America.

What purpose does this ritual serve? Is it meant to promote good citizenship and civic-mindedness?

If so, surely there is a better and more effective way to accomplish that goal. I do not believe that encouraging lock-step conformity and equating lemming-like behavior with patriotism for schoolchildren is the best method of teaching civic pride.

Let us instead focus on what true patriotism means. I wonder how many of the people who feel that surge of pride when their right hand is clapped over their heart vote regularly.

In the aftermath of September 11th, there have been a lot of changes. President W. Bush created a position for Secretary of Homeland Security, and has taken some measures to take control of the situation.

I, like the whole world, am concerned about stopping further attacks and about finding the people who perpetrated the original attack.

but I am also nervous about what “Homeland Security” means. What freedoms will I have to sacrifice?

There are a lot of people who feel that W. Bush has gone too far. Some prominent activists and intellectuals got together to make a statement about it.

They call it “Not in Our Name.”

I respect many of the people who have signed this document; people such as Gloria Steinem, Edward Said and others have done things that I admire. I would be inclined to listen carefully to what they have to say.

HOWEVER!

This document is filled with unsubstantiated claims and does not point to any action to resolve the problems.

Why would this group not be careful to substantiate claims about the abuses of authority in America? If it is a true accusation, it should be incredibly simple to include hard facts about one or two cases, to give good proof.

And if there is a problem, that they would like to bring to the attention of the American people, then they should either propose a solution or send out a call asking others for a solution. There is no way to treat the problem, nothing suggested in the wording of this document to give the reader a place to go. If there is a wrong being committed, by all means, let us band together to right it!

But no such path is suggested.

I do not know, after reading their complaint, whether it is valid or not.

I say, Shame on you! Get your facts straight!

You cannot be an activist if you have no plan of action.

Today was the longest day of the year: the summer solstice. It seems like most people remember the solstice the day after it happens, or a week before it happens. Some of them might think, “I should do something to celebrate the first day of summer.” Then the day actually rolls around, and they forget or they find themselves without any ideas of how to celebrate this significant day.

I used to be one of those people. When I stopped to think about it, solstices are a really important occasion. They are an incredibly sincere and sensible holiday. They do not celebrate a religion I don’t agree with, or perpetuate an incorrect and damaging revision of history.

Solstices mark an incontrovertible fact that the earth has reached an apex. In summer, the days stop getting longer and start becoming shorter. Seasons come and go, and change is inevitable.

The earth measures it’s time on a longer scale than people do. Maybe summer solstice is like noon on the earth’s watch.

You can’t argue with solstice. It is bigger than you. Every person from every civilization over the whole history of time has recognized the solstice; that is awesome.

Maybe some of them were like us, thinking, “This is an important day. I ought to celebrate it”

The Egyptians made pyramids that marked the solstice season, capturing the special angle of light that happens only on that day. Stonehenge in Britain and NewGrange in Ireland mark the special days.

Perhaps these lasting and impressive structures were the product of those people decided to do something to mark the day.

In my hometown, there is a solstice marker. Sunnyvale chose to put some municipal art on the corner near city hall. The artist decided to create a marker that would commemorate the summer and winter solstices.

My friend and her niece decided to come with me and watch the sun rise. The lawn was beautiful, and the sky was dark. Unfortunately, the clouds were so thick that we did not get to see the light phenomenon.

Too bad. Maybe the winter solstice will be more spectacular. The niece swore she would be back to see it in the winter.