Shakespeare in the Park. (Schweitzer too)

On my walk through Woodland Park today I stopped at Black Swan bookstore. My friend Mike Courtney is a book expert who has thousands of books, many rare and valuable along with others that are well, just books. Books of all sorts and all ages, on all topics.

I happened across "The Wit and Wisdom of Albert Schweitzer" a thin book (with large print) from 1949 of musings from this great humanitarian and seeker of truth. While chatting with Mike I picked up a little green suede book of Shakespeare's songs and sonnets--100 years old! Both were only $10. Can you imagine--a 100 year old book of the master bard's work--oh and the cool thing is that each page contains one short sonnet, not a long hard-to-read tome.

As I went back through the park the colors of the books seemed to blend in with those of the park, so it was a natural instinct to capture the moment--Shakespeare (and Schweitzer) in the Park!

Rejecting Barabbas

Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace is easy to judge and to joke about. But coming as it did during this high holy season should give us pause before doing so.

Many will replay the Passion story and deride the crowd who shouted "give us Barabbas!" instead of choosing Jesus, the Way to life, and to truth and to peace and to heaven. Yet the choice must be for all of his Way. Believers must therefore seek not merely righteousness, but also mercy and charity and humility. Their offers of prayers and support are due the fallen, especially for brethren who admit error and strive for reconciliation, as has Spitzer. A refusal to do so is a rejection of the Way and a choice for Barabbas.

To be human is to err. We choose Barabbas when we knowingly do an unethical or dishonest act or, conversely, fail to act mercifully when others have chosen Barabbas. When we consider that we all have chosen Barabbas, willingly or not, at one time or another it becomes much easier to show such compassion.

Ultimately, it is in our openness to removing the board from our own eyes that we can help others remove the speck from theirs. In the process, we find our own redemption.

Rejecting Barabbas, we have risen to the highest choice.

What’s Killing the Bats of New England....... And why we should care

The bats of New England are dropping like flies. 8,000-11,000 bats in Albany, NY area caves have died, over half the estimated bat population. Bats have been dying off throughout caves in New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

They are victims of White Nose Syndrome, so called because of the white fungus found on the noses of all dead bats. Scientists are not sure what is actually causing the bats’ deaths or how they got the fungus, but speculation is that cavers are perhaps spreading some virus that has caused the infestation. Little brown bats are sustaining the largest number of deaths, but the Indiana bat, an endangered species, as well as northern long-eared, eastern pipistrelle and other bat species are affected.

So why should we care? Well, for one bats are voracious eaters of crop- killing, people-biting insects. Too few bats will throw the whole ecological balance out of kilter.

Then there’s the suffering thing. Can you imagine having something like the bubonic plague. Pain, starvation, rotting innards, mental distress—all to the point of a miserable, lonely death. Now, it’s just a bat you say and nobody did anything to them, they got a naturally occurring disease and that's that.

But this gets to the nature of empathy and just how far we should go with extending it. The rebel Jesus took it to what is a still-revolutionary height by demanding we love not only our neighbor, but our enemy as well. That is, we should walk in the other’s shoes, pray for and extend good will to them, as we would to ourselves. Easy with those we like, devilishly hard for those we, ahem, don’t.

Yet we don't stop with enemies, we also show compassion, humanity, with animals, especially pets, who we tend to treat pretty much like one of the family. But why should we stop there? Why not show the same concern with any and all sentient beings?

Does the size of that being matter, or whither to and fro it flies, crawls or burrows? A little bug of some sort was crawling on my pants as I was sitting one day. I wondered, just what did the world look like from that teeny weeny itsy bitsy body, just larger than a speck of sand. It certainly had awareness. Like every living being I’ve ever seen it would scurry from pain and hurry to pleasure.

If we were that little bug would we want to stay sacrosanct, that is, would we want to stay secure in our body, would we want not to be stepped upon, or go splat on a windshield or be eaten by a bird? Would we want to nourish ourselves, maybe grab a crumb from the fiber off my thigh?

Feelings are feelings regardless of size or type of sentient being. Of course, human feelings are of the highest importance in terms of our earthly priorities, thus our concern for the “sanctity of human life.” But just because Fido looks at us with those big baleful eyes, tongue hanging out, tail wagging wildly should not have us forget that squirrel or snake or sparrow or squiggly little centipede all have the same feelings. It's just that we don’t have the same feelings for them.

But why is that relevant? Like any pursuit, is not our successful expression of compassion made stronger with exercise? Just because some creatures are less susceptible to personification, why should we let our subjective emotion overrule our uniquely human capacity to will empathy for those we find less loveable.

Like the stranger. Like the enemy. And like the bats of New England.


Richard F. Dawahare 2/20/08

Edith, Archie and the (falsified) 22nd Psalm

The following is a true story.

I am working on a book, Jesus vs. Christianity, wherein I hope to share the truth as given me through my life experiences, through prayer and through whatever one can feel as the voice of God, that Jesus, while being God’s most clear light about how we should live to do “on earth as it is in Heaven,” is not God, but God’s most enlightened child, indeed one of the world’s first secular humanists. I have been praying to really know whether this be the truth, and regardless, to know truth, whatever it is.

And so …

Tonight I awoke around 2 am, went to the den, fired up the laptop, turned on the television, and watched All in the Family, which I had loaded in the DVD player.

I was doing some research for another project when this particularly funny episode came on, the one where Edith buys eleven cans of peaches in heavy syrup because it was on sale; the cart gets away and slams into a car. Honest Edith leaves a note and Archie is furious as he assumes they’ll be taken to the cleaners.

Turns out the car owner is a Catholic priest, but Archie thinks he’s a fraud, so he devises a test, asking the priest about the words to the 23rd Psalm. The priest struggles for a minute, and then says, “Oh, your 23rd is the Catholic’s 22nd Psalm.”

Now I did not know if this was true (turned out it was part of the priest’s joke on Archie) so I researched it by Googling “Catholic 22nd Psalm.” I could not believe what I found next: The site, Outreach Judaism http://www.outreachjudaism.org/like-a-lion.html, where rabbi Tovia Singer answered a Lutheran Christian who had asked the rabbi why he did not accept Jesus as the messiah, for “Jesus came not only for the gentiles, but for the Jews as well.”

The Lutheran then said, “Because you are a rabbi, I am particularly perplexed as to why you have not willingly accepted Christ. You surely have read the 22nd Psalm which most clearly speaks of our Lord's crucifixion. Read verse 16. It states, "Dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked has enclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet." Of whom does the prophet speak other than our Lord? This Old Testament prophecy could only be foretelling Jesus' unique death on the cross. What greater proof is needed that Jesus died for the sins of mankind than this chapter which was written a thousand years before Jesus walked this earth?”

Rabbi Singer first reviewed the long history of Christian animus towards Jews (the Lutheran had said that those who persecuted Jewish people were not “real Christians” to which the rabbi asked if that meant Martin Luther was therefore not a Christian, for he was one of the most vocal anti-semites).

Then he got to the crux of the 22nd Psalm. The early Christians, it turns out, intentionally mis-translated the original Hebrew Psalm in order to bolster their claim that the Old Testament foretold of Jesus, and only Jesus, as the Messiah. The true, original text, written in Hebrew, the language of David, the author of the 22nd Psalm verse 17, is: “Dogs have encompassed me. A company of evildoers has enclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet,”NOT “Dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet.”

Said Rabbi Singer, “Notice that when the original words of the Psalmist are read, any allusion to a crucifixion disappears. The insertion of the word "pierced" into the last clause of this verse is a not-too-ingenious Christian interpolation that was created by deliberately mistranslating the Hebrew word kaari as "pierced." The word kaari, however, does not mean "pierced," it means "like a lion." The end of Psalm 22:17, therefore, properly reads, "like a lion they are at my hands and my feet." Had King David wished to write the word "pierced," he would never use the Hebrew word kaari. Instead, he would have written either daqar or ratza, which are common Hebrew words in the Jewish scriptures. Needless to say, the phrase "they pierced my hands and my feet" is a Christian contrivance that appears nowhere in the Jewish scriptures.”

Just think about this a moment. Much of the Christian foundation was built upon not only the words of Jesus and work of his followers, but also the high authority of Old Testament prophesies. When a so-called prophecy like the 22nd Psalm is found to be anything but that, the foundation begins to crack. But hey--no problem! To the extent it allows the light of truth to break through, let the sledgehammer of reason and reality pound away.

I tell you, God works mysterious ways to show me truth. Well, maybe not so much mysterious as…freakin’ uncanny, incredible “get your tukus out of bed and watch your tv and I am going to blow your ever-loving mind my son!”

I now want to learn what else in those ancient texts may have been changed for I care not where truth leads, just that it is the truth.

Richard F. Dawahare

An Ode to EBITDA

EBITDA, EBITDA where have you gone?
Your absence doth tell us that something went wrong

The trumpeted profits for which we now long
Have become just a memory, sing we now a sad song

in good times you showed up all decked out in black,
But now times are tough and all manners you lack;

For try as we might to get back ahead
You mock us by dressing your comeback in red;

Oh where is your shoulder on which we can cry,
Instead like a jilting lover you fly;

EBITDA, EBITDA when will you return?
We already know, not until we do earn.

Nests

Winter Walking through Lexington's Woodland Park is my favorite. Especially when it's cold--nature's air conditioning--and I can comfortably wear seasonal clothes without getting too hot under the collar while trekking around.

The park is much more interesting in winter. Trees are leafless, but far from lifeless. In the nooks of the bare grey-brown branches, up high in various oaks and walnuts, are nests, squirrel nests. Now and then you'll see the cute little critters digging around for an acorn they'd hid back in the fall, but mostly they are up in those nests, snuggled together, enjoying who know what, the next episode of their favorite sitcom? A classic movie? Or just being?

Being. How nice to just be and for that alone enjoy glee. We are after all human beings, not doings.

But like the squirrel that must build its nest and scavenge for food to enable its rest in the nest--its being--we must also scurry, plan and "do" in order to "be." Hopefully we like what we do and are at peace all the time, not just at rest.

So the trick is to be while we do. The spiritual among us might hand it all over to God, delegate up if you will, as we go about doing what we need, and hopefully like, to do. Others have no need for this and just live life without so much thought.

Certainly for them and all, enjoying what one does is one key to be while we do. But is there more? Is it a matter of zen-like conscious awareness, itself a doing in order to acheive the animal-like presence of being?

If so, it is well worth the effort. And look at it like this: the world, with all its prejudices, agendas, traditions of man--many of them false--and schtick, has entangled our minds and to some degree warped our native, natural awareness we had when first born. Therefore, the special effort to listen to the wisdom of sages past and present and apply it to our lives is necessary to unravel the world's warping influence.

In a sense we can regain our sanity and serenity by returning, in mind and spirit, to our original nest, our mother's womb. Love, pure unadulterated love, that starts inward and reaches out to and through the universe.

Keep that and we can change the world.

Richard F. Dawahare 1/19/08

An Ode to General Dietrich von Choltitz

It is a rare and mighty event when one, as I, can say they were part of the first mega-mega-mega-mega-mega-mega change in the history of one of the Western world’s most historic cities.

Today, January 2, 2008, I arrived in Paris on the very first day France has banned smoking in all bars and restaurants. There are few sea-change seminal events in a nation or culture’s history, but for Paris, a bastion of individual freedom, the smoking ban ranks near the top.

Even more uncanny is my discovery, after two days of awe-filled wonder with Paris’ unparalelled magnificance, that none of it would be here but for German general Dietrich von Choltitz. General Choltitz, at risk to his family’s life as well as his own, disobeyed Hitler’s order to burn Paris to the ground. Were one to make a bet that Von Choltitz would refuse Hitler the odds would have been a million to one. After all, he grew up in the Prussian military tradition and was perhaps Hitler’s most dependable general. Simply, he did what he was told. He did not hesitate to destroy Rotterdam or Sevastopol, or to execute scorched earth policies while retreating from the Russians.

But a meeting with Hitler just prior to his new post in Paris may have fractured his mind enough to allow the sunlit rays of reason and rational humanity to compete with his military code of blind obedience. Hitler, shaken by the assassination attempts and other pressures was a rambling mess. His new edict, the Sippenhaft Law, that families of disobedient officers would be killed left von Choltiz realizing how bestial Germanic culute had become.

However, what may have fortified his newfound resolve for looking beyond the soldier’s oath of loyalty was this plea from Paris mayor Pierre Charles Tattinger as they met at the general’s posh Meurice Hotel headqurters overlooking the Tuilerie Gardens, the Seine and the golden dome of Les Invalides, with the Eiffel Tower just beyond:

"Often it is given a general to destroy, rarely to preserve. Imagine that one day it may be given you to stand on this balcony again, as a tourist, to look once more on these monuments to our joys, to our sufferings, and be able to say, 'One day I could have destroyed this, and I preserved it as a gift to humanity.' General, is not that worth all a conqueror's glory?"

General von Holtitiz delayed, fed lies to Hitler’s high command and othrwise prevented Paris from becoming another Dresden, just as the French Second army, the U.S. 4th Infantry and the impassioned French resistance reclaimed the City of Light. General von Choltitz surrendered at the Meurice. He was to be tried in absentia in Germany for treason, but his highly placed friends managed to delay the trial until the war’s rend, thus preventing his court-martial and his family’s lives.

But we shall never know whether he would have destroyed Paris as part of a siege in a defensive military operation for then the general may have seen the razing of Paris as a jusitified military maneuver. It was apparent to him, however, that the German high command had no real interest in defending Paris for they kept moving toops out and failed to provide promised reinforcements. Thus, in the general’s eyes to destroy the city just for Hitler’s pleasure was a totally unjust cause. Anyway, so that this Ode may be pure, I will prefer to believe that general von Choltitz would never have destroyed Paris in any event.

So it is most ironic, incredibly so, that I come to a Paris saved from external flames on the day it extinguishes the internal ones. Now to the question Is Paris burning? we can truly answer, not anymore.

Richard F. Dawahare 1/3/08

ps I am now quite anxious to see the 1966 movie Is Paris Burning with Gert Frobe (of Goldfinger fame) playing the general.

Note :
After learning about general Von Choltitz I gathered the information for this pièce from an artile on HistoryNet.com by Kelly Bell. http://www.historynet.com/magazines/world_war_2/3031316.html?page=1&c=y

My Christmas Carol

Christmas can be the most deliriously joyful time, as well as the saddest, for it accentuates the void of loved ones no longer with us. I have found Christmas bliss, or rather it has found me, through faith and the flexibility to appreciate the miracles of Christmas present, while treasuring the magic of Christmases past.

Oh, how I relish my early yuletide memories.

They began in my native Whitesburg -- a mystical land, equal parts Mayberry, Sherwood Forest and Oz -- nestled in Eastern Kentucky's majestic mountains, so green in the summer, in winter a wonderland of white.Our house was on Hays Street, at the foot of a mountain, just one street over from Main, which was now decked out in all the nostalgic charm of a Norman Rockwell Christmas portrait, complete with old Coca-Cola script "Season's Greetings" signs and plastic Santa sentries in front of all the stores.

We gathered 'round the piano and sang as my wonderful mother, Genevieve, played. "Frosty the snowman was a jol-ly hap-py soul, with a corncob pipe and a but-ton nose and two eyes made out of coal." We laughed with glee, little brother Willie, sister Mimi, Mom and me. And while it didn't make too much sense, I tried to envision a "one-horse soapen sleigh." (It was years before I learned that it was "one-horse open sleigh.")

Come Christmas Eve, we kids had visions of toys and trains and goodies galore. We'd get up and tiptoe down to the basement to see if Santa came. Dark, no Santa. A little later, we'd sneak down again. Dark, no Santa. Finally we willed ourselves to sleep, but woke early and in unison darted down the stairs to, glory be, a fully lit tree with colorful gifts for our whole family.

There was never a tree as true or pure as that fresh-cut spruce. Today try as it might, even a billion-dollar industry can't package the power of yesterday's pine.We lost little Willie the next year, and all I can recall are the tears that eventually gave way to a serene sort of peace on Mom's beautiful, but forlorn, face.

Dad moved us to Lexington, and despite the pain Christmas managed to find us where we were. Each year had a new tradition, like the day Mom brought home the new Andy Williams Christmas album, undoubtedly the greatest of all time. Thanks, Mom, I love you and miss you so.

With both parents and two brothers now at rest, our traditions must of necessity change. Yet still does Christmas find us where we are, comforting us, giving us meaning and purpose in this life, and the hope of a heavenly reunion in the next.

And like the tree from my first memory, that stays ever green through autumn and spring, does this truth from Christmas fill our being: Peace on Earth, Good Will to All.

Richard F. Dawahare 12.22.07

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is a perfect prelude to the season of light. It humbles us, and it reminds us of our interconnectedness, without which we would be utterly helpless in our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

Most of us feel an immense sense of gratitude to, well, depending on one's lineage, to God or Allah ("of the book" Abrahamic religion adherents), Providence (deists -like most of our founding fathers) or the Great Spirit (Native Americans, the first inhabitants), for the good fortune bestowed upon this great land.

Beyond this collective feeling of gratitude, Thanksgiving arouses appreciation for our many individual blessings. Health, wealth, family, friends and freedom come quickly to mind. Others are subtler, like the "approved" credit message at the checkout terminal, or a stranger's smile.I am also reminded of how lucky I am for the happenstance of my birth -- of the good parents I did not choose, but had; of the charmed spot on earth that I likewise did not choose, but was born into.

Others have not been nearly so lucky.Imagine, for instance, the Wampanoag Indians at Plymouth in 1620. Were it not for their help, the newly arrived Pilgrams might not have survived. That fall, they celebrated for three days in what we now call the First Thanksgiving, with the Wampanoag, led by Squanto, Samoset and Massasoit, providing most of the food. Over the next few years, more and more English came, and as their numbers grew they did not need the Indians' help anymore.

The Puritans sought to impose their beliefs on the Native Americans, conflicts ensued and 50 years later the sons of those who once supped together were now fighting each other. The Wampanoags were all but wiped out. In 1970, at a ceremony marking the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrams' arrival, one of the remaining Wampanoag ancestors spoke:

"Today is a time of celebrating for you -- a time of looking back to the first days of white people in America. But it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my people. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags, welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them. Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white people. Although our way of life is almost gone, we, the Wampanoags, still walk the lands of Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed. But today we work toward a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important."

His story -- ooh "history" (so when will we have herstory?) -- reminds me of one more thing for which to be thankful: the indomitable human spirit that from error seeks truth, and from trial finds treasure.

Richard F. Dawahare 11/23/07

Radio Waves Goodbye to Fairness

Just today, a promo for WVLK-am (the Hannity station) had just a 10 second blurb from yet another biased talking head, railing against the US House resolution officially recognizing the Turkish genocide of the Armenians--up to TWO MILLIONS OF THEM--way back in 1915-1917. This guy had the audacity, the sheer unmitigated WARPED sense of values to call the House members so voting disgraceful (or despicable, I can't quite recall).

Imagine that--just a promo for the station, a promo that promises more of the same. The Congressional leaders FINALLY standing up to tell the truth of the long, long overdue and THEY are the ones who are "disgraceful" for doing so.

OUR MEDIA (airwave) IS A MESS! You who are in the media--public media, newsprint, commercial airwaves--how can you not be addressing the following scenario: Sean Hannity, Rush, et al who non-stop, every day, every hour LIE and propagandize for the Republican Party and demonize everybody else. You know it if you've listened for just a few minutes. NO attempt at objectivity, ever. And no requirement for equal time for the opposing political viewpoint--as there was for over 40 years until the death of the Fairness Doctrine.

Since the Republican controlled FCC, under the Reagan Administration, voted 4-0 to trash the Fairness Doctrine, opposing views and opinions have absolutely been squeezed out of the airwaves, particularly radio. Ironically, the Conservative-ran FCC justified ending the Fairness Doctrine by saying, "the intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of [the Fairness Doctrine] restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters ... [and] actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and the degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists."

NOTHING IS FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH! As soon as the stations were unshackled by the Fairness Doctrine the rise of Rush, of Savage, of O'Reilly and Hannity began. LOOK WHO OWNS THE MEDIA!

It may be fun to "Whack-a-Murdoch" http://www.stopbigmedia.com/=whackamurdoch but the destruction of our Democracy is absolutely terrifying.

Respectfully, Rfd

The Uncompassionate Unconservative

The flaw in President Bush's whole premise for warring in Iraq is now, once again, made obvious. To repeat, his whole rationale for destroying Iraq and its peoples (his STATED rationale), was "to fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here at home."

The concept was to control Iraq, install democracy and so remove the roots of terrorism. Since the war was to make us safer at home the presumption is that our welfare is all important, that our health, our life, our liberty, our "pursuit of happiness" is so essential that it trumps the welfare of innocents in the lands we destroy in order to preserve that essence. Just last week, in fact, did Bush repeat this justification for the war.

Now, just today, news reports tell of an impending Bush veto of a bi-partisan plan to increase health care insurance for children, adding $35 billion over 5 years to the Child Health Insurance Program so as to cover more of the nation's 8 million uninsured children.

So half a trillion dollars to kill nearly a million Iraqis, displace 4 million more for the illusory fairy tale that it will make us safer is acceptable, but a relatively paltry 35 billion dollars to insure more, not all, just more, of our children is unacceptable.

Further, the war was to preserve our welfare, including that of the uninsured children. But without this eminently affordable health insurance, their welfare--allegedly preserved by a huge expenditure on violence--is endangered by a failure to make a relatively small expenditure on compassion.

No, the war in Iraq has nothing to do with making us safer, as indeed no such act of illegal immorality can ever do. President Bush has always known this.

Worse, it is obvious that his disregard for innocent lives half a world away is matched only by that for those here at home.

On Junior, John and Jesus

One thing about big families is that there are inevitably, if you stay alive long enough, lots of funerals. Thursday my cousin and I went to Hazard in the hallowed grounds of eastern Kentucky near Jenkins, where my paternal grandparents began their new Kentucky home 100 years ago.

The occasion was the funeral for John Dishner, a prince of a guy, father of young Blake, and husband to Melissa, daughter of our first cousin, Sondra, who is the daughter of my dad’s sister, Mary and her husband, the late Ed Dawhare. John died at age 36 of cancer, which he contracted a year ago. He had lived in Lexington, but as this magical mountain land has done for many of its own it did for John and his family, drawing them back to the wellspring of their youth.

So it was in this small town setting that it seemed the whole community came. All ages, all walks of life, gathered in this spirit-filled setting atop, ironically, a reclaimed coal mine, a by-product of mountaintop removal*.

From Lexington we take I-64 just past Winchester, then that famous veer right onto the Mountain Parkway, the path I’ve traveled hundreds of times since the 60’s on what I always considered the road to Kentucky’s Oz, the wonderland of Whitesburg, where I was raised. (Happy Chandler, who I loved, called it “the road to nowhere.” His assessment actually heartened me as an emerging young adult for it showed me that even great men make major misjudgments).

About halfway down the Parkway is an exit to Natural Bridge, deep in the Daniel Boone forest and one of the nation’s top sights. It is also where the Junior T. Williamson rest stop sits which is not only why we exited, but the inspiration for this writing.

My cousin, Joe, told me the story about Mr. Williamson. Turns out he was from Pikeville, where Joe grew up (his father, the late Warren Harding Dawahare, ran our store there after WWII until his death in 1966). Junior had a game leg and was a very simple, yet giving man. He worked at Pikeville High with the sports teams pretty much as an equipment manager. He washed jock straps and cleaned football cleats. He served.

Later, he went to Frankfort where he tended the legislators. He’d shine shoes and generally took care of them. He served.

In fact Joe said he did about all he was capable of doing—serving, serving literally hand and foot to others his whole life, with a smile, and with joy. His whole life he humbly served those who got the glory. But as Joe said, HE'S the one with the monument.

Then Joe added, “It's like Jesus said, “those last on earth will be first in heaven.”


*Ask the good people of Hazard about this controversy and they will earnestly show you the other side, the incredibly valuable flat land that enables so much new commercial and residential opportunities, such as this burial ground, hospitals, schools, restaurants and homes. There most certainly are two sides to the strip mining issue and we must honestly consider them all in order to fashion optimal policy.

Summer Smorgasbord

Just a few weeks ago the fields and skies were brimming with excitement! Bugs of all colors, shapes and sounds were zipping, darting, circling and meandering everywhere you walked. Some were after AMORE, some were just looking for their next meal, often the smaller, slower more defenseless bug.

Often would the bugs bounce into my chest and flutter away. I can imagine what the intensity of such once-in-a-lifetime lust concentrated in a few short days can do to one's radar, can't you?

And since there were SO MANY BUGS, you could see the birds all aflutter with such a feast at their disposal. One little robin was chasing a butterfly, who frantically sought escape, fluttering up, then left, straight down and curlyque back around, much like a fighter pilot taking evasive action.

Now it's August and it seems the 100 degree heat has slowed all such movements. Only the crickets and occassional cicada can be heard at night, a ritual repeated this time of year as long as I can remember.

Next comes the color, the chill and the Christmas thrill;

as a new feast lies deep within the winter field.

A Stitch in Time

The big city lawyer flew into town, the big case 9:00 am the next morning. Unfortunately his flight from New York had a tight connection and he arrived very late without his bags. The problem was obvious: big court case and NO SUIT, SHIRT, TIE OR SHOES (he travels in jeans and loafers).

"Not to worry,” says the local attorney who partnered with him on the case, “My good friend has a clothing store and I’ll call to see if he can open early for you.” “Sure,” the friend said, “Just come over and I’ll have our tailor work with him.”

The tailor worked magic, whipping out a stellar suit, shirt and tie, and tailoring it to perfection within the hour. So good in fact, the other lawyers in court complimented him on his attire, something that just doesn’t happen in the halls of justice.

The lawyer won his big case, the partner called his friend to tell him the great news and thank him. The clothier thanked the tailor, hugged him, shook his hand and told him his role in this true team victory.

But here’s the remarkable thing: this all happened on the day an article appeared in the paper about “the clash of civilizations” warning about the big Islam conspiracy to rule the world and exhorting Western Christianity to violently confront this so called scourge.

Well, on this day in this town where three strangers came together for a common good the lawyer was Jewish, the clothier was Christian, the tailor was Muslim. Of course, none gave each other’s religiosity any thought whatsoever, and I suspect this is the way of the world at large.

Are there fundamentalists of every religion who are so fearful that they seek to bind their insecurity with violence? Sure, but make no mistake. There is no “clash of civilizations” other than the self-fulfilling prophecy manic non-Muslims make of it, displaying a sense of fear and foreboding that need not exist.

99.9% of this world wants what you want—peace, happiness…and sometimes a great suit that fits.

Special Session an Outrage

This special session is an outrage. There is absolutely no emergency requiring the legislature to convene. The Peabody coal to liquid gas discussion can and should wait just a few months later, after the election and after much more research into both the viability of such an enterprise and the all important federal role. There remains serious doubt that the plant would be economically feasible as well as environmentally sound.

Most telling is this: Peabody spokeswoman, Beth Sutton, said Kentucky was the only state being considered for this project, according to the Evansville, Ind., Courier & Press (http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/jun/29/peabody-looks-into-plant-site-in-sturgis/). They can maneuver all they want, but there is absolutely no way this is a situation demanding a special session. Every dollar wasted in this enterprise should translate to lost votes to Governor Fletcher for this blatant political ploy.

Most importantly, any decision to give away tax incentives, especially the all-important coal severance tax that is so crucial to the welfare of rural Kentuckians (all Kentuckians really), must be done only after a deliberate and through analysis. Applying high-pressure tactics (falsely based at that) is the polar opposite of the prudent approach required.

On the contrary, Kentucky should not give away any coal-severance tax, none.

Our leaders have for too long had us running scared. Kentucky has all the power and the leverage. It is our coal and our land. When we fully awake to our real strength we will begin to wield it for our maximum benefit.

Revisiting Governor’s Ethics Lapse Within the Four Way Test

Today in Rotary I was confronted once again by the Four Way test, the one dad always preached as the guide to follow about anything I thought, said or did. The test:

1) Is it the TRUTH; 2) Is it FAIR to all concerned; 3) Will it build GOODWILL and better friendships; 4) Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

I often wonder if Jesus himself was able to follow this test. I know I often fail, especially when making critical observations as I did about Governor Fletcher’s appointment of Ronald Green to the Executive Ethics Commission. I was truthful and it was fair, but did I build goodwill and better friendships and was it beneficial to all concerned?

After struggling with trying to figure out how to advance the cause of truth and justice yet still remain true to the Four Way test, I may have come up with something. Instead of attacking and lamenting the parties’ ethical shortcomings I will simply illuminate the failure, the inherent conflict of interest, the rationale behind the rule about avoiding the mere appearance of impropriety and then end with this:

Please Governor Fletcher, reconsider your appointment, and select another candidate who is thoroughly clean of any potential conflict. To Mr. Green, please refuse this appointment, noting that accepting it would give the appearance of impropriety based on your long financial and judicial support of the one appointing you.

By offering this advice, this truth, I will have helped them do better, be better and be better regarded in the public eye. I will have also furthered a result that is truly beneficial to all concerned and in the process built goodwill and better friendships.

Richard F. Dawahare 7/19/07

No Honor, No Ethics on Fletcher's Commission

Does it get any more naked? The hypocrisy, the stench of insider power politics, the very phenomena that has so turned off the public and made them feel useless in the democratic process.

This is outrageous. Just as the Executive Ethics Commission is set to hear six cases involving current or past Fletcher administration employees, (five of whom are accused of merit-hiring violations) governor Fletcher appoints to this Ethics Commission---Ethics—a man, Ronald Green, who he had previously appointed to the Supreme Court just in time to make the deciding vote that effectively ended the merit-hiring investigation. (Ronald Green also gave $2800 to Fletcher’s Congressional campaigns from 1996-99.)

In law school, the one really main thing about ethics and conflicts of interest they taught us, or tried to teach us, was that we must scrupulously avoid even the APPEARANCE of impropriety, in this case a conflict of interest. Think about this, Ronald Green is an attorney, appointed to the state’s HIGHEST court, and he knows, or absolutely should know, that he has a duty to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. He should never have been offered that spot on the Supreme Court, but having been offered he should have refused it.

And he should most definitely refuse this position on the Ethics Commission. It matters not that he said, “If I thought I was biased in that way, I would not take part,” in reference to his past donations and support of governor Fletcher. What matters is that there is a reasonable possibility that he could be compromised, i.e. there is an appearance of impropriety.

No honor. No ethics. And unfortunately, no shame.

Baseball

We moved to Lexington from Whitesburg when I was six just as I started first grade. Garden Springs was a new neighborhood, as most of suburbia was in 1961. We kids loved to root around the new houses under construction. I can still smell that earthy mixture of fresh turned dirt, cement, wood and tar as we’d hunt for the silver discs among the rich brown dirt.

But it was really all about the dirt clods! We’d search for that perfect dirt clod, the kind you could throw without it disintegrating in your hand as you released it, and would kind of splat as it reached its intended victim, more likely than not your best friend.

When that first summer came I followed the older boys in the neighborhood to a vacant lot. I felt a part of something when they allowed me to play baseball with them. Wow, this was gonna be fun I thought—BASEBALLLLL!

“Okay kid, you stand over there,” the older boy said pointing to what I was to learn was “the outfield.”

Thing was, I had bad allergies as a kid. The grass was up to my waist, it’s hot and humid, and I’m wheezing, sneezing, scratching and itching, all the while waiting what seemed like an eternity for relief. Nobody ever hit anything, much less to me in the outfield. Nobody got anybody out, nobody did nothing and I thought I would be doomed forever, hands on knees saying “hmm batter, hmm batter, SWING!” for the rest of my young life. I saw Christmas come and go, and the next and the next with me still suffering, sweating stuck in the weeds on the Lane Allen lot.

So that was my initiation to America’s summer pastime. Mom had other younger children so I really didn’t have the opportunity to play on a team even if I wanted to. Yet baseball memories fill my life.

I used to lay on my belly in front of the TV in the “front room” on our small house at 2004 Alexandria. It was black and white, of course (Uncle Frank got the first color TV I had ever seen. We watched Joe Namath and Alabama in the 1962 Orange Bowl. Two things about that game: the COLOR—Wow, it was,,, you could taste the orange. The other was the pity I felt for Joe as he wore that knee brace, and even though he’s moving good and leading his team to victory, that brace just brought out the sympathy).

Anyway, one Saturday as I was watching Saturday afternoon baseball, hands cupping my face on our carpeted floor, I recall clearly the melodious voice of who would later become my all time favorite announcer, Curt Gowdy, as he said “And taking the field is the rookie Pete Rose for Cincinnati.” I recall Rose hustling across the diagonal stripes of the freshly mowed field. I don’t know why this memory stuck with me, maybe just such a burly athletic guy with a name like Rose.

The Redlegs, as my dad and most old timers called them (the Reds officially changed the name in the 50’s because of its association with Communism), were everything. Almost as big as our beloved Wildcats, at least in the summer months. There was literally nothing much else for anybody from the hills and hollers of eastern Kentucky. How many times would we’d be driving either to or from Whitesburg, or Hazard, or Pikeville or Neon and even between those mountain metropolises, when we’d nudge the dial for a better reception of a Redlegs game.

Finally, “Three up and three down, and at the bottom of the third it’s scratch, crackle-LOUD STATICKY SOUND—and the Phillies 2.” When you could hear him clearly, there was none better than Claude Sullivan, who joined then replaced the famed Waite Hoyt. Later in the 60’s the old left hander, Joe Nuxhall joined Claude. WOW! They were literally part of our family—road trips, cookouts, they were there. (Claude Sullivan was also the Voice of the Wildcats” until his untimely death from throat cancer at age 42 in 1967).

All the old Red’s player names come flooding back. There was Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson. Pitchers Jim Maloney, Joey Jay and Billy McCool. Infielders Leo Cardenas, Chico Ruiz, Gordy Coleman and Tommy Helms. And of course, Tony Perez and Pete Rose, although those names got much bigger later on. And though I had no desire at that time, but would later become a BIG FAN of it--there were the BEERS! The only ones that mattered then, in the days I was too young to drink it, were HUDEPOHL'S and WIEDEMANN'S, even good ol' Oertel's 92. Hudy's had he 14-K insignia with the golden wheat stalks beckoning forth thirsty drinkers.

I got to visit the old Crosley Field a number of times. Once my parents took me to a game when the baby sitter had us paged because of a younger sibling’s illness. We had to go—DARN! But the most memorable was STAN THE MAN day, when Uncle Martin took me and Joe Montgomery and his dad to see legendary Stan Musial’s last game in Cincinnati. Uncle Martin remembers telling me to count cars on the way home, I guess to keep me from asking so many questions. Two hours later, he recalls me saying “two hundred and forty two, two hundred and forty three…”

Then there was the new Riverfront Stadium. I remember the lights being the big deal—and the Astroturf. Dad took me to the 1970 All-Star game. Nixon threw out the first pitch and the NL won on Rose’s controversial slide at home into Ray Fosse. At the time we cheered wildly, but later upon hearing about Fosse’s injury I felt really sad about it. (Carl Yastrzemski won the MVP for tying the TWO records—4 hits and 3 singles).

Then came the BIG RED MACHINE years! ‘Oh what fun it was to ride with a dominating team!’ The 1975 series with Boston topped them all. I was at the University of Tennessee and watching from the couch in our apartment at the Railery…I can’t remember which game, could’ve been the historic 6th, that Boston won 7-6…I’d say in dramatic fashion, but EVERY one of those games were like Ali-Frazier heavyweight decisions!

The names are legendary: For the Reds, Sparky Anderson, Rose, Bench, Perez, Davy Concepcion, Ken Griffey (at that time no need for suffixes, he was the ONLY Griffey), Joe Morgan, George Foster, Cesar Geronimo, Don Gullet, Clay Carroll, Jack Billingham and Will McEnaney. Great role players in Pedro Borbon, Ed Armbrister and Dan Driessen. The Red Sox were similarly great: Yaz of course, Carlton Fisk, Rico Petrocelli, Bernie Carbo, Dwight Evans, Fred Lynn and Luis Tiant among them.

The 1976 Reds team made history being the only team to sweep the whole post season. I skipped a day of classes at law school to see the Reds-Phillies game three. The Reds looked like they were going down to a two run loss, when in the bottom of the 9th, BACK TO BACK HOMERS by Johnny Bench and George Foster—he with his big black bat—tied it up and saw the Reds sweep in extry innings!

I did not know that this would be the pinnacle of my love affair with baseball. Not only did career and other interests take precedence, but the vast SIZE of sports, its all encompassing immensity really soured me. The 1994 strike was the final blow—I have not watched a game since. Instead, I truly enjoy little league, with kids playing for the sheer fun of it, and parents—most of them—cheering their own as well as the others.

Passion for the game, for the fun, is hopefully what these young players play for. It was this kind of passion that fueled the instigator of this trip down memory lane, Alan Stein, in his vision to bring Minor League baseball to Lexington. He and his team have done an outstanding job bringing fun entertainment and quality baseball to Lexington with the Legends and its new stadium, Applebee’s Park.

I went to a game there last week, a beautiful almost-cool blue skied evening and ran into Alan, a hands on manager who does it because he LOVES IT! Thank you Alan and team for putting the fun back in baseball!

Richard F. Dawahare 7/17/07

Government's Duty to Protect, Preserve and Provide for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Yesterday, as has been my custom the past few years, I frolic along the Fourth of July parade in downtown Lexington, and after working up a good sweat in the mid day sun go to McCarthy's bar--the patio so I can smoke a cigar with a cold brew and read the papers. As usual the Lexington Herald-Leader ran the full Declaration of Independence, which I always enjoy reading. It's a little like the bible--I seem to see something new each time!

Well, being continuously confronted with the goverment hating sentiment of so many "conservatives" and by the not so G OP who has been running--I should say MIS-RUNNING our government this second sentence following the lead phrase ("We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness") from the Declaration grabbed me:

"That to secure these rights, GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED AMONG MEN, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." (emphasis mine).

YES, don't EVER let those who cry that government has no role helping improve society, be it with regulatory diligence, aid with health care, education, housing or food, yes--military protection, too--get by with their rants. IT IS WRITTEN in the Declaration and later adopted in our Constitution ("to provide for the general Welfare...") that whoever would live in THESE United States automatically must accept a government that lives in the spirit and flesh of helping facilitate "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

PS

The full Declaration of Independence can be found here--http/www.constitution.org/usdeclar.htm

My Personal Political Dilemma

I face a personal political dilemma. I belong to the Democratic Party (as opposed to being a Democrat. I am a human that happens to believe in traditional Democratic principles, but I am NOT "a Democrat") and have nearly always voted for those candidates.

But in this year’s gubernatorial race the Democratic candidate, Steve Beshear, is not merely pro casino gambling, but is making that the central plank of his platform. Now casino/electronic gambling is the pre-eminent issue that will adversely affect not only the future of Kentucky, but also that of the whole nation. Therefore, although Mr. Beshear is an otherwise solid candidate, his promotion of casino gambling disqualifies him and I would not support him or any candidate who supported this losing enterprise.

The Republican candidate, Governor Ernie Fletcher, has now changed his stance on casinos from one of allowing a referendum to being adamantly opposed to them. He has thus made casino gambling the key issue in the race and has positioned himself as the savior to prevent its ugly tentacles from strangling Kentucky’s future.

I predicted this move by Mr. Fletcher. It is shrewd, but it is politically expedient. I would not trust that he would spend all his political capital opposing casinos if re-elected…but he might, I just don’t know. It would have been much, much more convincing had he been so opposed from day one.

That said, my realization of just how very, extremely critical it is for us to keep casinos out of Kentucky is such that I am so-o-o-o tempted to support Mr. Fletcher. For even though his past work in Congress helped degrade our democracy, his ultra-partisan attacks on Clinton and his proposals, and his near 100% support for President Bush and his anti-democracy, pro special interest agenda, his support of the Iraqi war, and his reneging of his promise to clean up the mess in Frankfort by instead making it worse--despite all that the issue now is Kentucky’s future. Should I not support at least the one candidate who now promises to oppose casinos?

But no, I just can’t and won’t support a past facilitator of the corrosion that has so infiltrated Washington, now up to the Supreme Court.

So I won’t support Beshear, nor will I Fletcher. Can I just sit on my hands and not vote this election? I, a proponent of exercising our hard fought democratic rights, chief among them the power of the polling place, can I go through a major election without placing a vote?

No. And the only other person I know who I trust to do the right thing, to surround themselves with good, honest people who with him will focus solely on what is best for the COMMON wealth of Kentucky and its future is…oh gosh, this is going to sound…I don’t know the word, it’s not quite egotistical, but close, it’s not quite delusional, but close…oh drat, forget what it sounds like---the only person I know who believes in the approach and the policies that I believe in is me.

But I am not a candidate. I belong to the party that has a candidate and I did not run, nor did I think I needed to with the field that did run. But then Beshear, late in the primary season, unleashed his pro casino agenda that thoroughly dis-heartened me.

Do I let the fact that I have no chance, that I have no track record, that it would dilute whatever credibility I might have and make me look ridiculous stop me from doing the really unthinkable: change my political affiliation to Independent and enter as a write in candidate, just so I can use my vote on the person I most trust?

The Answer for Workplace Fairness? It’s Unions, Jack!

Workers and employers of America…UNITE! For that is the most humane and effective way to increase the welfare of all. Unfortunately, the history of labor relations is such that workers too often suffer when employers have surplus power and deficient humanity.

Indeed it was that imbalance that originally led workers to unionize, a process that has lifted workplace standards for everybody. We take for granted such protections as the 40 hour workweek, paid vacations, safe workplaces, minimum wages, health care and pensions that all flow from workers uniting in a common cause.

Today, so well entrenched are those protections that many believe the unions have outlived their usefulness. Popular perception blames unions for gouging employers, forcing them to close or re-locate, or driving up prices and making them uncompetitive.

Yet nothing is further from the truth. In fact Washington is so caught in the corporate clutch that many workers are suffering anew under unscrupulous employers. And when they try to exercise their Constitutional right to organize employers are illegally harassing, threatening and firing them, escaping punishment under toothless pro-business laws and a Republican controlled regulatory apparatus where the wolves guard the henhouse.

But this could soon change when Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act, a long overdue law that would restore balance to the relationships between employer and employee. Specifically it would let the employees determine how to vote for a new union, not the employers. Currently employers choose a process that allows them plenty of time to intimidate, threaten, fire and hold mandatory anti-union meetings.

The Act would also strengthen financial penalties for companies guilty of coercion or intimidation and require mediation and arbitration when management and a newly certified union cannot agree on a contract.

More than half of Americans workers, 60 million, say they would join a union if they could and for good reason. On average union workers earn 30 per cent more and are more than 62 per cent more likely to have health coverage than their non union counterparts, such as those in the ‘right to work for less’ states. By the way, nothing is more anti-American than so called right to work state laws that allow new employees to refuse union membership in a business where a democratic vote established that union.

Teresa Joyce was a union organizer who suffered under hostile management at ATT wireless but enjoyed a complete turnaround when Cingular took over (Cingular respected the workers union vote and freely engages in a collaborative process that benefits everyone).

In her Congressional testimony supporting the new law Mrs. Joyce noted that ‘It is outrageous and shameful that the very freedoms they (her relatives in WWII and Iraq) fight to preserve are the very freedoms that are routinely trampled on here at home. Something is terribly wrong with our laws and our country when workers are systematically harassed, threatened and even fired for the simple act of exercising their right to form a union to improve their lives.”

With the middle class rapidly shrinking, the gap between rich and poor at historic highs and a political system too long in doing the bidding for big business, it is essential to protect basic workplace freedoms for all Americans. Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act and, above all, Kentucky must reject ‘right to work (for less)’ legislation.

Richard F. Dawahare

Blinders

Horse-drawn carriages make a walk through New York's Central Park even more memorable. The sturdy steeds dutifully plod where the drivers direct, aided in their task by distraction-blocking blinders.

Horse blinders are good. The horse goes where the driver wants it to go, and at the end of the trail it gets a bowl of water and bucket of oats. It occurred to me that human blinders act much the same way.Sometimes we put the blinders on ourselves, preferring blissful ignorance to inconvenient truths. But often, those who seek to control us do so by means of our unwitting submission to blinders.

The media, for example, do the bidding of their political benefactors by deftly using fear and hot-button emotional issues to blind us to higher truths. Indeed, truth is the enemy for those who revel in the thralls of righteousness, who believe in self-justification and demonization of enemies above all else. Hard-held traditions and fears trump science and rationality with blinders so securely in place.

Perhaps such control is good. We go placidly along, enjoying summer softball, rounds of golf and cookouts by the pool, merrily oblivious to political leaders acting against our long-term interests, against the very founding principles of our nation.

But how many bribes will we allow the politicians to take, how much public interest will we let them sift off to their special pals, how many innocents over there will we kill to vainly ensure a false sense of security over here before we yank the blinders off?

Fish, like a horse with blinders, can see only their little world directly in front of them. They are oblivious to the magnificent universe beyond the ocean. Yet the job of the fish is to be fish. As humans we are called to more. We are called to use reason, to seek truth and to follow it wherever it goes.

It is time to take the blinders off. It is time to see from sea to shining sea -- and especially beyond.

Frank Fahrenkopf Misleads Public on Casino Gambling

Preface: While surfing the net for gambling news Thursday, May 31 I found on the American Gaming Association's site, Frank Fahrenkopf's Letter to the Lexington Herald-Leader attacking my own essay that detailed the long term dangers and false claims of casino gambling. Please check it out:
http://www.americangaming.org/Press/letters/letters_detail.cfv?ID=436

AND NOTE THE DATE---June 4, 2007. BUT IT RAN TODAY, June 11! So I saw it FOUR days before they said it ran in the Lexington Herald-Leader, yet even that date was wrong. This is just indicative of the error and falsehood surrounding that industry and its promoters.
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I appreciate that Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr., President/CEO of the American Gaming Association, would want to attack my exposure of casino gambling as a long-term loser for Kentucky. As a million dollar lobbyist for casino gambling, it is his job to discredit those who would oppose it.

Yet he actually helped make my case. First, he admitted that the states I cited did in fact have economic problems. My point was merely that casino gambling did nothing to help those states’ economies, a fact that directly contradicts the false claims of casino’s proponents who are so quick to grasp the fool’s gold of slots salvation.

He then confirms the validity of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission as he selectively cites some data that is taken out of context in order to spin his desired result. What he fails to mention is the Commission’s bottom line conclusion, which after taking all the evidence into account recommended that:

1) There should be a moratorium on any expansion of casino gambling (“The Commissioners believe it is time to consider a pause in the expansion of gambling.” Overview page 1-7.);

2) Horse tracks should not have slot machines (“The states should refuse to allow the introduction of casino-style gambling into pari-mutuel facilities…” Recommendation 3.12, page 3-18);

3) States “should cease and roll back existing (convenience gambling) operations.” Recommendation 3.6, page 3-18.

Since Mr. Fahrenkopf was so methodical at picking apart my essay, his omission of any reference to my other citations may mean he actually agreed with them. Thus, the warnings of both Warren Buffet and President George Washington stand as a most credible criticism of casino gambling as a damager of the economy and citizens’ welfare.

Finally, he disparaged the academic standards of the University of Illinois and academia as a whole. If such research is as fraudulent as Mr. Fahrenkopf suggests, yank your children out of college, and if you’re a college grad, ask for your money back, for in his view the entire field of collegiate research and education is meaningless.

For the sake of brevity I did not mention other academicians whose work similarly exposes the harm of casino/electronic gambling. I will do so now:

1) Dr. Earl Grinols, who testified under oath in Congress to the soaring social costs of casino gambling as compared with its benefits, then concluded “If the choice is between prohibiting casino gambling or allowing its expansion, the evidence says we’re better off prohibiting it….The most important finding of my research is that gambling fails a simple cost-benefit test…costs outweigh benefits.” Other studies show those costs exceed benefits by a 4 to 1 ratio.
.
2) Dr. David Mustard, who with Dr. Grinols authored the seminal research paper on casinos’ effect on crime that concluded: “Casinos increased all crimes except murder…the impact of casinos on crime increased over time and began about three years after casino introduction.”

3) Professor William Thompson, from Mr. Fahrenkopf’s home state of Nevada, co-authored a report that found “…the annual social cost of problem gambling in Southern Nevada ranging from $273 to $413 per adult per year suggests an important problem.”

4) Professors John Barron, Michael Staten and Stephanie Wilshusen co-authored “The Impact of Casino Gambling on Personal Bankruptcy Filing Rates” and found that “…the volume of casino gambling is directly related to bankruptcy filing rate in areas that have casinos nearby.”


Please be aware that the research Mr. Fahrenkopf uses to refute the findings that casinos drain money away from pre-existing, traditional business was done by none other than Arthur Andersen, the former Big Five accounting firm done in by its fraudulent accounting and auditing practices that contributed to the WorldCom and Enron bankruptcies.

Why on earth would we listen to a lobbyist from Washington about what’s best for Kentucky, especially when he doesn’t even want it in his own town? In an interview last fall he said, “Now if someone were to come along and tell me that they were going to put a casino in McLean, Virginia, where I live, I would probably work very, very hard against it. I just don’t -- what’s the old saying, ‘NIMBY, not in my back yard?’ Now I may be in favor of gaming, but I just don’t want it located in a particular area."

I realize that slots are recreational for many people and I believe it is in no way an immoral activity per se. Grandmothers gamble for goodness sake! But it is really a matter of POLICY and as such, casino style gambling is a proven economic and social loser for the community at large.

Kentucky cannot afford to fall for the false lure of casino gambling. We, the people, have the power to run our state in the right way, for our long-term welfare. As a famous philosopher once said, “Wisdom is proved right by her actions.”

Richard F. Dawahare 6/11/07

What Concerns You?

Dear Friends:

Hello! Somebody asked me the other day what one or two things most concerned me about our world. I thought this would be a great question to ask you and my other friends and other “linked” email acquaintances (those of you listed on other emails).

I will categorize all responses (anonymously, of course) and if you wish share the findings.

PLEASE—think about the one or two issues that you are truly concerned about in terms of how they may affect the future welfare of your world and our world (one and the same really). Could be local, regional, national, international, and even inter-galactic!

After categorizing the responses I will then enlist us all to ADDRESS these concerns. We'll brainstorm and devise solutions that get to the roots of the problems.

I appreciate your input.

Take care, Richard

PS PLEASE share widely, the more responses the better!

Gambling’s False Lure

Kentucky is officially in the Twilight Zone. While we are desperately trying to escape the negative image of being a backward state that is perpetually behind the times our would be leaders either actively promote or refuse to ardently oppose an activity that will tighten the noose of false hopes and low expectations.

Casino gambling is a proven economic loser and spirit killing enterprise that delivers precisely the opposite of its falsely claimed benefits. One need only look at the experience of states that have already accepted gambling’s Faustian bargain. Illinois is essentially bankrupt. Nevada’s budget is busted, as is Rhode Island’s. As Donald Carcieri, the governor of Rhode Island, correctly said, "There is no evidence whatsoever that states with large gambling revenue are any better off financially." He noted that both Rhode Island and Connecticut had substantial gambling revenue, yet still suffered huge deficits. Tragically, gambling state after gambling state has also suffered skyrocketing crime, suicide, bankruptcy and foreclosing rates.

Professor John Warren Kindt, a leading researcher has long cited the facts that destroy the myth of slots salvation. He has testified to these facts in Congressional hearings under oath and in the presence of gambling industry lawyers who have not and cannot refute him. In fact every academic study, that is every study NOT funded by the gambling industry, conclusively exposes the fraudulent claims of the gambling industry.

Beyond the financial loss to individuals and traditional pre-existing businesses lie the very real and traumatic human costs. So well documented are these sorry statistics that the federally funded National Gambling Impact Study Commission recommended a moratorium on the spread of gambling in 1998. Yet the gambling industry’s dangle of easy money has blinded the short-sighted leadership of many states to ignore the truth and so lead the nation down a futile race to the bottom.

Strong leadership would heed the lessons of history. A similar gambling scourge swept the country in the late 1800’s. It got so bad that states, including Kentucky, changed their constitutions to forbid such gambling. Today’s electronic gambling options are much more lethal. Indeed slots are the “crack cocaine” of gambling as the lickety-split action and manipulated pay-offs are intentionally designed to hook gamblers. Conversely, the pari-mutuel wagers on horse racing pose no such threat and Professor Kindt has said that casinos in Kentucky’s tracks will eventually kill the thoroughbred industry.

If we hope to reach the higher rungs on the ladder of progress Kentucky’s leaders must chart an alternative course. We should instead be the casino gambling-free state that trumpets good citizenship, teamwork, education and industry. Prospective employers absolutely relish the strong foundations built on these time proven traits and deplore the hypocrisy of gambling’s false claims that mock our slogan, “education pays.”

Warren Buffett agrees. America’s premiere business expert railed against casino gambling: “States shouldn’t be in the position of selling the needle. It should not be a sponsor of spreading addiction. For a state to prey upon its citizens to create more of these addictions is wrong. It is cynical for a state to raise money from people who basically can’t afford it by promising a dream that is not going to come true for any but the tiniest, tiniest fraction of people who participate. The 99 percent (who don’t win) lose the ability to take a family to the movie, buy a toy for Christmas or, worse yet, they become and addict and lose everything they have. By promoting gambling, states are trying to get you to do something dumb. States should be doing something for its citizens.”

George Washington, America’s most trusted founding father, likewise warned against gambling: “In a word, few gain by this abominable practice (the profit, if any, being diffused) while thousands are injured."

The only gubernatorial candidate to actively oppose expanded gambling is Republican Billy Harper who correctly said “We simply cannot base out future economy on the quicksand of hypothetical gambling revenues."

Instead of pimping, Kentucky should be promoting its citizens’ highest values. By emphasizing and improving these core values we will improve our economy and create more wealth that will stay in Kentucky. And with such long-term focus we will shed the backward stereotypes we wish to erase.

What’s Bad For Kids, Is Bad For Adults

Seems incredible. All over Africa criminal warlords have, over the last decade, forced children to become ruthless killers. With a combination of black magic--whereupon warlords manipulate young boys into believing they have supernatural powers—drugs and unimaginable cruelty (forced execution of family and friends) have they created these young soldiers.

According to the UN and Human Rights Watch the nearly 300,000 kid killers, as young as 8, are not only trained to kill without a second’s hesitation, they are also abused as sex slaves, spies and human shields. [Full CNN story:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/02/12/child.soldiers/index.html].

The real problem, apart from the utter…well there just aren’t words to express how repulsive this is, like trying to describe the unimaginable horror of the holocaust…of this utter abomination is that journalists write and we read about it as if the outrageous part is simply the young age of the soldiers and the forcing of such young children to kill when in reality the brutality which we find so revolting when done by children does not become less so as the age of the perpetrator goes up.

In other words, if it’s bad for kids to do, it is likewise bad for adults.

This truth applies to many activities which society deems acceptable above a certain age. “Adult movies?” Same thing. If it’s not appropriate for kids, while legal and permissible they probably aren’t good for adults. Alcohol? One need only see the toll of abuse to agree with my premise. Sex? Wel-l-l-l, again, one can see that irresponsible sex at any age—and there is probably much more of this by those over 18 than under—can be troublesome.

Obviously, while this is most certainly a call for the curtailment of war and the aggressive use of soldiers at any age, especially in the cause of false pre-emption, this is not a call for abstention from racy movies, fine wine or carnal knowledge. Rather it is a guide for the ideal. If it’s bad for kids, it probably is not so good for adults.
Whew, I’m ready for a beer!

Tainted Foods Reflect Tainted Bush/Republican Leadership

Part and parcel of the government-hating wolves gaurding our national henhouse is their penchant for contempt of government regulation in the public interest. The foodborne health crises, from spinach to peanut butter and most recently pet foods, is just one of many ways in which we, the public, suffer from a lack of adequate governmental oversight.

Tonight on PBS, a food industry leader, Tom Nassif of the Western Growers Association, said that they readily accept the need for and presence of federal regulators but that they are largely absent. He said that there simply were not enough inspectors, a dearth which he blamed on insufficient funding at the FDA.

Caroline Smith deWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the FDA inspects non-meat food production facilities once every 5-10 years, while the USDA inspects meat processors daily.

We put so much of our trust in food processors and they undoubtedly try hard and are for the most part responsible. It's not that when they err, they do so intentionally, there could just be an oversight, or the occassional sloppiness bred by the knowledge that there is sparse oversight.

This intentional de-funding of essential regulatory oversight of the food industry endangers our public health. It is yet another taint on the record of Bush and his fellow Republicans.

A Post After a Prayer for Direction

God has put in my heart this directive: RIGHT THE WRONG! Thus, again I call for the impeachment of Bush, Cheney and Rice. Again I call for new leadership that apologizes to the world, gets the world--starting especially with the middle eastern nations--involved in a proper approach to building a better solution, that includes all the parties, all sides in the process.

Any less on my part and God will hold me accountable for my silence. You who once or still support this administration, please, re-think it. Step outside your supposed "truth" and at least for just a moment pretend that there may be some merit that we were/are wrong, that perhaps it's not just "God bless America," but "God bless THE WORLD."

Over 600,000 INNOCENT Iraqis have been killed by our wrongful invasion. Little babies--out of the womb babies--as well as children and adults---murdered, torn asunder limb from limb, hundreds thousands more injured. 20% of the Iraqi population have fled, nearly half of those OUT of the country--ALL because of our illegal and immoral war SOLD ON BUSH'S LIES!

You may or may not believe in God or a higher power, but polls show those who most support this most UNGodly war are "Christian." So I implore those that so profess to pray, pray for the highest truth, to see and know God's highest truth, to have God show you the solutions as well as the truth.Maybe you'll feel the same afterwards, maybe not. This post is a result of my own prayers.

WE NEED TO END OUR fearful assault on others, we need to re-build bridges in the world and not be intimidated by the skeptic hawks at home who know only one solution, one path, the path of supercharged force of arms.

One is simply NOT a true follower of Jesus, the namesake of Christianity, if one places their faith more in the force of arms than the teachings of Jesus, prime among them charity, mercy, justice and love.

Make no mistake, our path the last 6 years have not been following the footsteps of Bush's so called favorite philosopher (Jesus).

Compassion crafts a safer society

It is easy to be hard. But this heartless path of callous indifference leads inevitably to sorrow and misery, both to the recipient of a snub or slur, and ultimately to its giver. In fact, it is the cold disdain with which we treat our brethren that is the common thread running through the Don Imus hate-speech firing and the Virginia Tech massacre. (There is evidence that, like the killer at Columbine, Cho Seung-hui felt the sting of rejection.)

Yes, we are a good and charitable people. But we are also a society that fosters discord and division, donning our pride and prejudice as the sacred birthrights of a people free to live however we see fit, regardless of the consequences. By our rabid consumption of spiteful radio snipers and demeaning reality shows, we enable our descent to an ever more brutish existence. And it is this numbing of our sensibilities that eventually effects how we treat -- and mistreat -- others.

We have allowed our precious rights of free speech to be exercised without demanding a corresponding use of responsibility. We must therefore insist that discourse over our public airwaves be civil, that political shows are fair and fact-based, and that opposing viewpoints are afforded equal time as our government once ensured. (The Reagan administration eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, thus giving rise to Rush Limbaugh and his ilk).

Above all, we must make the often-hard effort to be nice, to teach our youth that kindness is the highest virtue and to order our world in a way that is consistent with this truth, instead of allowing the disparities that undercut it.

It is a fitting coincidence that Kurt Vonnegut, who saw simple human kindness as the ultimate meaning of life, died on the day Don Imus was fired. His radiant compassion that enlightens our pathway to peace shines in contrast to the mean streets of pitiless insensitivity that drove Imus down a dead end, and possibly to the slaughter at Blacksburg.

"Islamofascism" -- a Hitlerian Lie

An uncanny coincidence this week bore seeds of truth that will, if planted within the rich soil of an open mind, reap a harvest of clarity that may save us from the Armageddon of inter-cultural world war.

First, a good friend in the garment industry sent me the Rudolf Vrba book "I Escaped From Auschwitz." To say that the life most of us face is pure heaven as compared with just five minutes in the Nazi death camps is a vast understatement. I could only read so much about his experience in one sitting without shaking my head in utter horror and disbelief that this could ever occur; this even though I have read, seen movies and studied this sad reality many times before.

Page after page of sadistic beatings (usually to death), deprivations of food, water and clothes, shootings, gassings and burnings where 90% were killed (ultimately up to three MILLION humans in Auschwitz alone) within days or weeks of their arrival. Yet even through this surreal state of bestial inhumanity Dr. Vrba noted this truth: the Nazi abusers truly believed their prisoners—the Jews, the Poles, Hungarians, Ukrainians and others who did not fit the Aryan mold—were a threat to civilization.

Of course, this was pure nonsense. But to Hitler and his many minions this horribly flawed yet heartfelt belief was an eternal truth; and it is this fact that helps explain how they could see and treat their innocent victims as non-humans, and invest so much in their war machine.

Coincidentally, on the very day I received this book there was yet another Cal Thomas article stressing the real justification for the war in Iraq: that it is but one front on an impending world-wide war against Islam. Thomas and President Bush are the lead trumpeters of the flawed notion that Muslims want to take over the world and annihilate Christians, Jews and essentially any non-Muslim.

They have created a term for this fiction, Islamo-fascism, which they use to rouse public fear. Yet, whether by design or not, they have horribly mis-construed the criminal acts of a tiny sliver of the Muslim world in order to justify our ever-enlarging military might, thus guaranteeing war without end, to the end.

They point to suicide bombings and insurgencies as proof of a vast Islamic plan for conquest where such deeds are in fact a reactionary resistance to: a) the ongoing injustice of Palestinian eviction from their homeland and b) their anger over western meddling in their native lands.[2]

Further underlying their demonization of Islam lays an equally flawed understanding of Christian theology. Mainline Christianity sees Jesus as God and believes that those who do not accept this are out of the fold, that is, beyond the salvation and/or blessings of God. Thus, devout Christians evangelize in order to ‘save’ non-believers. Consciously or not, they view those of different faiths—or of no faith (atheists)— as being something less than believers in the eyes of God.

The problem is that the same people who espouse this belief also believe in the inerrant word of God as it is written in the Bible. Yet somehow they missed Genesis 17:20, wherein God distinctly blessed Ishmael (Abrahams son by his servant, Hagar) and ordained that ‘a great nation’ with innumerable descendants (Gen 17:10) would come through him. Ishmael thus became the father of the future Arab Islamic nation as God expressly divined.[3]

God also repeated his promise to Abraham in Genesis 21:13 saying, “I will make a nation of the descendants of Hagar’s son because he also is your son.”[4]

Thus we have this situation: God made two separate and distinct promises with Abraham: one being a covenant of innumerable descendants representing many nations (Gen 17:5,19,21) through his child with Sarah (Isaac), as well as a similar assurance that a great nation will come through Ishmael, his child with Hagar. Most importantly God ordained that although this second line through Ishmael would be totally separate and distinct from the first line, it would be equally blessed, that is, within the ‘fold’ of God. As we know Jesus (and the Jewish nation) descended from the first line, through Isaac, David and Mary. Mohammed is a descendant of Ishmael. From the beginning God decreed that they would be and remain a separate peoples, but equally within His good graces.

Therefore, from either perspective—logic or theology—the truth is far different from those who see war with Islam as a final solution. It is nearly as big a lie as the one proposed, and tragically executed, by Hitler a generation ago.



[1] My friend’s wife was actually a prisoner in a concentration camp as a young girl, narrowly escaping death herself as the Nazis collapsed before she could be sent to the ovens. I met her at an industry convention where she showed me the tattooed identification numbers on her left wrist.


[2] This is no secret. The Iraqi Study Group said as much. Osama bin Laden has given the same as reasons for al Qaedas very existence.

[3] God gave the same assurances to Ishmaels mother, Hagar (Gen 16:10, 21:18). Abraham was old and childless so his wife, Sarah permitted him to have a child with their young servant girl Hagar. Hagar became pregnant and disrespected Sarah who kicked her out. On the wilderness road the angel of the Lord directed her to return and apologize to Sarah and then added, (GEN 16:10) ‘I will give you more descendants than you can count…You are now pregnant and will give birth to a son. You are to name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard about your misery. This son of yours will be a wild one—free and untamed as a wild donkey! He will be against everyone, and everyone will be against him. Yes, he will live at odds with the rest of his brothers. Thereafter Hagar referred to the Lord, who had spoken to her, as “the God who sees me, for she said, “I have seen the One who sees me!


[4] Abrahams wife, Sarah, evicted Hagar and Ishmael from the household after Isaac was born. They were lost and out of water, and as Hagar despaired, (Gen 21:17) ‘God heard the boys cries, and the angel of God called to Hagar from the sky, ‘Hagar, what is wrong? Do not be afraid! God has heard the boys cries from the place where you laid him. Go to him and comfort him, for I will make a great nation from his descendants.’ Then God opened Hagars eyes, and she saw a well. She immediately filled her water container and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness of Paran.’

The Miracle Machine

Swedish scientists have developed what will immediately be accepted the world over as the most incredible invention in the history of humanity. Dubbed “The Miracle Machine” the device can potentially solve every single problem, conflict and conundrum on planet earth or beyond.

On such global conflicts as religious/cultural strife, resource scarcity, poverty, disease—all of which underlie international hostilities—the EQAO 8888 Harmonizer can bring immediate and lasting results. Likewise, the Harmonizer can resolve interpersonal conflicts and individual troubles.

The Harmonizer requires only one ingredient to enable its miraculous powers to take effect: the mutual agreement of all parties about whom any particular conflict, problem or crises affects. The agreement that is necessary is not over what the solution may eventually be, as the Harmonizer will take care of that with 100% effectiveness. No, the agreement is solely one of mutual will and mutual decision to hand the problem over to the Harmonizer for resolution.

“This is a great day for humanity,” said Kaj Sigridsson who directed the project funded by the Swedish government. The Swedish delegation’s first test was the ongoing slaughter in Darfur. Over 20 different factions had to be convinced to sign the dispute over to the Harmonizer. Rebel leader Joseph Mahhaali was typical: “I laugh and said, ‘why not, we can kill tomorrow’ so I give machine our problem today.”

Little did anyone realize just how successful the Harmonizer would prove to be. Instantly the warring parties dropped their arms. Soldiers were reported standing in confusion right where they stood in their killing field, bewildered about why they were there and what they were doing. Many are undergoing counseling and treatment in the aftermath of the shock of learning what they had done over the last few years. Peace, production and progress have replaced the fear-induced hate.

What was once a land of scarcity became overnight one of abundance as they all discovered the magic of sharing, an occurrence that grabbed the attention of third world leaders. Lesotho Prime Minister Mugambe Makakole echoed third world sentiment; “We are so grateful for the Harmonizer and are ready to use it for our mutual benefit.”

However, not everybody greeted the Good News of the Harmonizer’s capabilities with the solid confidence and optimism its founders had hoped for. British PM Harold Fitzugh spoke for many of the G-8 countries: “This could be great news indeed for conflict resolution, but we’ll have to gauge its effectiveness on smaller affairs to see if it stands the test of time.”

Margaret O’Bannon, spokesman for United States President Vesper Scelero, said that while the Harmonizer looks promising “We will need to see what we’d have to sacrifice vis-à-vis other nations in order to determine how it will benefit our long term interests.”

Swedish Prime Minister Nils von Lundeberg was incredulous over the west’s skepticism: “The Miracle Machine WORKS! All that any nation, any person, any entity need do is agree to let it do its job of bringing harmony where there’s discord, peace where war, plenty where need, joy where gloom and it will achieve it. How can they not see this and accept its gift—a gift through the hands of man, but a gift from God who used those hands I am sure.”

The Harmonizer continues to work wonders for the many who have petitioned its use. Unfortunately some of the world’s most rancid lesions fester unabated while doubt and cynicism seemingly paralyze the hearts and minds of its most powerful players.