Tired Road Warrior

I love to play Scrabble, but I’m not very good.  My friends and work colleagues routinely outplay me.  But I play on. 

In Scrabble, there are only a few “q” words that don’t require the vowel “u”.  One of those is “qat”.  Until recently, I had only a faint idea about its meaning or significance.

That all changed when I read a short article in a recent NG.  As it turns out, qat is a drug (stimulant) that is routinely used in Yemen and Africa’s Horn, but is illegal in the US and Canada.  In other parts of the western world (including the UK), however, it is very much legal.

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It would seem to me in this electronic age, the traditional committee and/or staff meeting is becoming outmoded.  The evening of November 1, I attended a small gathering of individuals to listen to a lecture on Mormonism and the environment.  After the BYU prof made his PowerPoint presentaion, there was a lengthy Q&A session.  This latter activity was dominate by one very loud, overbearing, and foul-mouthed individual.  While I didn’t disagree with most of her points, but why did she think her opinions were more cogent than those of others in the audience?  By her dominating the conversation, we will never know what others attending were thinking.  We will never know what the silent individuals could have brought to the discussion.

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On “60 Minutes” a couple of Sundays ago, they had a story about gold mining in eastern–almost lawless–Congo.  Because of my obsession with nearby Uganda, the story was very much of interest.  And the story is very topical right now with the price of gold hovering around $1,100/ounze.  But I want to tell this tale backward.

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In response to your speech of October 13, 2009, at BYU-Idaho, I will not be joining you in the ”march” against Prop 8 proponents.  I realize that “there is a battle underway,” but I am on the other side, along with the likes of Harry Reid, Marie Osmond, and Steve Young’s wife.  For me this is a civil rights issue and not a religious one.  And I agree with Harry Reid, there must be more important ways for my church to spend its time and money.

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The following is an quoted from the book “Mountain Beyond Mountains:”

“Farmer (Paul) was learning about the great importance of water to public health, and he was conceiving a great fondness for technology in general, also scorn for ‘the Luddite trap.’  He liked to illustrate the meaning of that phrase with the story of the time when he came back to Cange (Haiti) from Harvard and found that Pere Lafontant had overseen the construction of thirty fine-looking concrete latrines, scattered through the village.  ‘But,’ Farmer asked, ‘are they appropriate technology?’  He’d picked up the term in a class at the Harvard School of Public Health.  As a rule, it meant that one should use only the simplest technologies required to do a job.

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The book “The Moral Underground” was recently given a short review in Time Magazine (Dec. 14, p. 23).  In her book, Lisa Dodson (BC sociology prof.) paints a rather dismal image of corporate America, who she feels is building wealth by abusing low-income workers.  “Helping the less fortunate in this context becomes as a form of civil and corporate disobedience.”  Time lists three of her examples:  (1) supervisors who alter time cards so that employees can take better care for their families; (2) the school nurse who keeps cots in her office so those with bad home situations can get a few hours of sleep; and (3) the doctor who thumbs his nose at insurance regulations in order to provide medicine for an entire household.  ”All see their behavior as necessary and moral acts of conscience.”

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