Soapbox

So I’ve got this kid…and she’s really good at science. Too bad she thinks it’s boring.

Last year, in 6th grade, she did a project on water pollution. With the exception of taking her to the science store to buy water test kits and driving her around town to get water samples from various lakes and rivers, she did it all herself. She was careful to use controls and researched her outcomes and what they meant. We were quite proud of her, and she won a “superior” rating, which qualified her to go on to the District Science Fair.

“Oh crud. Well… I”m not going” she said.
“Oh yes you most certainly are!” her parents replied.

So she did, and she hated it. They set her up in a room with high school kids who had done projects with OSU researchers and had presentations entitled “The Effect of T-cell Supression on the Immune Response of Gamma Positive Mosquitoes” and things like that.
She looked around her and said “Oh great! Thanks for making me come here with my rinky-dink little experiment!” What rotten parents we are!
Of course they didn’t judge her in the same category as those other kids, and she did well, and got a little medal, but she informed us that she was NOT going to district this year.
“If you win, you certainly are” we said. Dumb, dumb parents. We just changed the paramenters, that’s all.

Katie and her friend Jessie sucessfully made it through the science fair this year, getting only an “excellent” for their joint project, which did not qualify them for district competition. When the last of the 7 winners were announced, I actually saw them both say “whew!” and draw a hand across their foreheads!

To be fair, it wasn’t just the extra hassle and being with the fancy-pants projects that made them so determined not to advance. Last year the project we called “soap boy” went to District, which mystified us all.
“Why does some soap float?” his project asked. He tossed 3 different bars of soap in water and explained that the difference in floating was because of water displacement. But he never even demonstrated that he understood what the term “water displacement” meant, let alone tried to tinker with it and see how he could alter the water displacement of a bar of soap that sank initially. It made it seem like the bar she cleared was pretty low, frankly.

This year “worm boy” went on: Do worms prefer to eat Twinkies or Leaves?” was his question. He built a fun wormery and all, but thing is: worms don’t actually eat leaves, either! So he started with a faulty premise and only proved that worms have better taste than people and leave Twinkies completely alone. But then, I wasn’t a judge, so its not for me to say. At any rate, the girls were quite happy with the outcome of their project: Is average heart rate different for different genders and different ages?” No district competition for them.

While we were at the school the night of the science fair, one of the parents sent us over to look at the wall where the teachers had posted the nominations for “good Citizen”. They write something special about the kid or something they did that got them singled out, so of course they are all complimentary. “You need to go read what Katie’s says” she said.

Her social studies teacher said that Katie is (of course) bright and energetic, helpful and hard-working, and contributes to the classroom environment with keen insights and a very mature sense of social awareness. She called Katie a “natural leader” who will go on to be a person who does big thing for important causes in the future. This about the girl who did a deliberately lame science project so she wouldn’t have to win!

“Wow” Ted and I said, and looked at her.
“Yeah yeah, that’s me.” she said, popping a cookie in her mouth. “I donate organs in my spare time. Can we get out of here soon?” Ah, the teacher forgot to say that she’s modest, too.

Next year she says she wants to do a science project that involves microwaving marshmallow Peeps and watching them explode. Now that’s science!

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be ridiculed
and called "traitor".

Blessed are the meek
for they shall be devoured
by the political machine.

Blessed are those who turn the other cheek
for they will be
smacked down yet again.

Blessed are the truth-tellers
for they shall be branded "troublemakers"
and never work in this town again.

Blessed are those who seek
for they shall be called "secularists"
and anti-Christian.

Blessed are those who love
for they shall be reviled
by those who hold their own hatred sacred.

Republicans have spent a lot of energy lately getting themselves all worked up about fake-issues. One of the hottest in December has been the “Put Christ back in christmas” hue and cry, taken up by Cal Thomas and by Bill O’Reilly, who runs a regular segment he calls “Christmas under Siege”.

Yes, according to O’Reilly, poor, picked on Christians are being pushed around by those politically correct, heathen liberals for years. Now those secularists have started picking on Christmas, and he personally is willing to take the flack for “standing up for the baby Jesus”!

What utter silliness! Christmas, folks, is NOT under seige. Christmas as a holiday is alive and living in every mall from sea to shining sea. Christmas as a spiritual event is as real and vibrant as you are prepared to make it.

The only one who can take Christ out of Christmas for you is you. Your Christmas this year will be as meaningful, or as phoney, or as non-existant as you want it to be.

Christmas is certainly overly-commercialized. This year I saw Christmas decorations and artificial trees in stores before Labor Day! Two local radio stations began playing only Christmas carols 24/7 starting the day before Thanksgiving! That’s just wrong. Frankly, when Christmas lasts that long, you change it from something special into something tedious .

Still, no one forces you to decorate your personal space like someone barfed Christmas all over your front yard, or to drive yourself mad and broke trying to get all thie gifts on everyone’s list. If your Christmas is too commercial for your tastes, talk to your local Jehova’s Witnesses. They’ll no doubt be happy to give you advice on getting away from all the pagan celebration and back to the true meaning of Christmas.

But the Republican Christian martyrdom complex doesn’t focus on their fellow christians who put 7 foot tall inflatable santas in their front yard. When O’Reilly said, “Somewhere, Jesus is weeping” he wasn’t refering to children going hungry in the wealthiest nation on earth, or the bombs that will fall on Christmas day. No, he thinks Jesus weeps over the horrifying phrase “Happy Holidaysâ€? and the obscene lack of Nativity scenes at our local post offices.

It’s true that many schools no longer call their annual December event a “Christmas party”, chosing instead to name it a “Holiday Celebration”, and sing strictly secular holiday songs. But right-wing complainers conveniently mistake the reason for this change. They label it mere “political correctnessâ€? and lament that a “nation founded on Judeo-Christian traditionsâ€? (a favorite phrase this year) is so concerned about offending a few muslims and athiests that “we can’t even have Christmas”. The horror!

Athiest and Muslim Americans may or may not be offended by a Christmas concert at their child’s school- I don’t know. I don’t care. I get offended by things that O’Reilly says all the time, and I get over it: so will they. We as a nation haven’t taken to using the term “Holiday” instead of “Christmas” merely to spare a few people’s feelings. The fact is that if your child goes to a public ( government-sponsored, tax-payer funded school) then it would be inappropriate, even un-American for that school to promote or sponsor one religion over another! That’s the way they do it in Iran, not America.

Look, It is not Uncle Sam’s job to help you celebrate your religious holiday! Its a good thing, too. Can you imagine what Christmas would look like it Congress got involved ?

Part of what makes America so special is that here, each person can chose how, or if, they want to cel.ebrate a religious holiday. If you want to string up enough lights to illuminate a run-way, go for it. If you desperately need to hear your kids sing “O Come all Ye Faithful”, enroll them in the church youth choir or take them caroling. No one is allowed to stop you! Iisn’t that great?

No, I do not find it offensive for children to sing carols in school, but the fact is that we have a proud tradition in this country of protecting all faiths in part by ensuring that the government honor none. This ensures that each of us will always have the right to observe whatever traditions and rites we have that makes the holiday special to us. We should be proud of this, not attack it!

“You can’t even have a nativity scene any more” I heard a woman say on a radio talk show last week, and I wanted to reach through the radio and shake her. Who says you can’t? Tell me, and I’ll sic the ACLU on them, because lady, they wouldn’t stand for it. Put a nativity scene in every roomof your house and one on the roof if you like! They only one that the government of the United states bars from having nativity scenes is itself!

When O’Reilly says that “we can’t even see a picture of Jesus anymore” what he really means is that he can’t see a nativity scene at every post office and court house in America. My question to him is, why would you want one?

Can you not be a Christian without seeing validation of the supremacy of your beliefs every single place you go? Is your faith so shallow that you can’t feel close to God unless you see a plastic Jesus with a lightbulb in its belly, (probably made in China) in front of every government building? If not, then your problem is something you need to discuss with your pastor or priest and not blame on evil Grinch democrat athiests who are trying to steal your Christmas.

The job of the post office is to delilver the mail, not to be a billboard for your personal religous preferences.. The job of a public school is to teach our kids how to read, not how to celebrate Christmas. What part of that concept do these guys not get?

That’s why this is a fake issue. Thomas and O’Reilly act as if Mary is being turned away from the inn all over again. They conveniently forget that a nativity scene is just a bunch of dolls! Jesus is only born in our hearts, and ony we can deny him space there. Based on Jesus’ apparent opinion of governments, I can’t imagine he would care if ours officially promoted Him or not. He was more of a grass-roots guy, wouldn’t you say? It is not the church’s job to run our government, nor the government’s to tout our religion, and I say “halleluia” to that!

Listen up, people. Jesus is not and will never be the underdog in this country. We have Christmas and Easter stamps, federal holidays for Christian celebrations of Christmas and Good Friday and hear christmas carols non-stop in every mall in the nation. Why isn’t that enough? How much validation, how much “You’re right, you’re right!” do you need to hear?

So folks, please stop acting as if Christianity owns the entire month of December! Stop talking as if not sharing your beliefs is the same as denying your right to have them, because it isn’t.

You can celebrate Jesus’ birth every day of the year if you want to, and good for you. Just don’t expect your local post office branch to join you. It’s not what they’re there for!

In closing I would like to quote the words of a very wise man, who once said of Christmas;

It came without ribbons!
It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes or bags!

And you know what? It comes without a nativity scene at the court house too, if you let it.
Merry Christmas.

“You go to war with the army you have…”
he said to the courageous young man,
about to risk death,
who dared to ask him “why?”

Why is there money for tax cuts
and star wars weapons
and trips to Mars
but not enough money
to put armored plating
on the machine he will ride into war?

“You go to war with the army you have…”
he said, sweating slightly
in his expensive suit
from behind his podium,
far outside the combat zone.

But he chose to begin the war,
with an army woefully short on
armour for the trucks,
batteries for their equipment,
planning for the peace.

When half the world begged him to wait,
he sought out this conflict
without even enough bullets
or water for the canteens
of soldiers sent to crawl through a desert.

No, Mr. Secretary:
THEY go to war
with the army you gave them.
YOU put on a clean shirt
and fly back home again.

There was the most amazing letter in the newspaper today. The writer asserted that contraception should not be covered at all by health insurance, because pregnancy is not a disease and providing contraceptive coverage causes health costs to soar. He also stated that use of contraception increases pregnancy rates, and abortion rates, and besides, many contraceptives are abortifacents. Abstinence, he says, is the only effective means of contraception.

Wow. It’s hard to know where to begin with this. The entire premise of the letter is unrealistic, and makes the writer sound like a proponent of the midevil notion that all sex is sinful.

The health care cost comment is just plain ridiculous. Providing contraception coverage may actually lower health care costs because it would reduce the number of pregnancies the insurance company has to pay for. Covering a pregnancy, particularly a high-risk one, is many, many times more expensive than a year of birth control pills. You should also factor in the cost of treating STD’s and HIV, which can be prevented by using condoms.

Does the writer really think that the cost of birth control in this country is what is driving health insurance premiums? If so he needs to wake up and check out the cost of blood pressure or hyperactivity medication, or looked at a bill for cancer treatment, or for care of a premature newborn.

Are there more abortions in societites where contraception is introduced? Certainly there might be more legal ones, but abortion has been around for thousands of years, and it would be unrealistic to think that just because a population didn’t have Family Planning Clinics, there were no abortions going on. I don’t have specific numbers on abortion rates overseas, but I know that female literacy rates and family income increases, and fetal, infant and maternal mortality rates decrease in countries where couples are empowered to control their fertility. But I guess that kind of quality of life improvement doesn’t count.

It is true that contraceptives can and do fail when not used properly. I’m not sure what the overall pregnancy rate is for couples using birth control, ( it’s about 1% for people using the pill correctly) but I guarantee that it is lower than the rate for couples NOT using birth control!

His assertion that some contraception kills babies is puzzling. I’m not sure what method he is refering to, but it sounds like he agrees with the pharmicists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills because they “kill babies”. It is scary that educated health care professionals could be so shockingly ignorant about clinical action of birth control pills. For the benefit of the ininformed, “The Pill” prevent ovulation. With the pill, there is no egg to meet sperm, and therefore, no conception. Unless you believe that life begins at the moment that the zippers come down, there is no way in which the pill resembles any form of abortifacent!

My favorite part is his comment that abstinence is the only reliable form of birth control. This is technically true, and as a parent, I am a big fan of abstinence in certain situations. However, I challenge this writer to tell husbands across the nation that if their family cannot afford any more children, or if a pregnancy would be dangerous to their wife’s health, then they need to just stop having sex, forever, with their own wives! That should go over really well. He also needs to press insurance companies to stop covering the costs of drugs like Viagra and Cialis, since erectile disfunction is NOT a disease, and using these drugs will cause couples to have more sex- and more pregnancies.

Abstinence works- until it doesn’t. People are sexual beings, and no ammount of morality lectures, abstinence pledges and cold showers will change that. Refusing to provide contraception because you think the parents shouldn’t be having sex in the first place punishes the resulting babies for the actions of their parents. And finally, contraception may not be a disease, but even a normal, planned pregnancy is a vital and expensive health care issue. The writer of this letter needs to get his head out of the sand and start looking at the question realisticaly.