Lord Dunsany’s Old Brown Coat

When reading about Lord Dunsany I visualized Downton Abbey, because that was the life he lived as a lord of a manor in Ireland. Beyond being titled, he was also a prolific author. He mostly wrote fantasy, and among his many other interests (like hunting) he kept quite busy writing.

Lord Dunsany’s full name was the jaw-cracking Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett. No wonder he wrote under his title and not his birth name.

“The Old Brown Coat” is a short-short story, originally published in 1919, and reprinted by editor Damon Knight in the 1951 science fiction digest, Worlds Beyond. It is the type of story that begins with an odd situation, in this case an old brown coat going for a fabulous price at an auction, and then an ending that comes right out of left field.

Lord Dunsany, born in 1878, died in 1957.

Mort Drucker, Mad genius of caricature

As described in a Wikipedia biography, cartoonist Mort Drucker is considered “Number one in a field of one” by Nick Meglin, Mad editor. Drucker went to work for Mad in 1956, and is the artist with the longest term of employment at the magazine. Drucker’s forte is caricature, the likenesses of movie and televison stars, among others. He draws satires that not only point out the essence of absurdity in most entertainment, but with drawings that capture the stars in an instantly recognizable form. In a quote from the Wikipedia article Drucker says:

“I've always considered a caricature to be the complete person, not just a likeness. Hands in particular have always been a prime focus for me as they can be as expressive of character as the exaggerations and distortions a caricaturist searches for. I try to capture the essence of the person, not just facial features... I've discovered through years of working at capturing a humorous likeness that it's not about the features themselves as much as the space between the features. We all have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, hair and jaw lines, but yet we all look different. What makes that so is the space between them.”

Good advice for any caricaturist from the all-time master.

Here are two examples from the Golden Age of Mad. “Why Spy?” is from Mad #111 and is a take-off on a television show popular between 1965-68. It was one of the first TV shows with a lead African-American actor, Bill Cosby, co-starring with Robert Culp, and since it was produced during the Civil Rights struggle in America some TV stations in the South refused to carry it. In the show itself race was not a factor, and that carries over into the satire. In the real world outside of the show it was a big deal.

“Mighty Joe Kong” is from Mad #94, and isn’t a direct satire, but an example of a type of satire done effectively in Mad, setting different stars in a pastiche or version of a movie story or type of story. In this case Drucker absolutely nailed Dick Van Dyke, James Garner and Doris Day, not to mention Kong!

Both stories are Copyright © 2014 E.C. Publications, Inc.

The saddest story

On January 16, 2014, Lindon, Utah police officer Joshua Boren, 34, shot and killed his wife, Kelly, 32, his mother-in-law Marie King, 55, and his 7-year-old son, Joshua “Jaden”, and 5-year-old daughter Haley Boren.

Boren, whom his police chief described as “the top candidate out of 70 who applied for the job,” was a well-liked police officer. According to initial reports no one saw the violence coming,

A few days later a friend of Kelly Boren said that just before she was killed Kelly had texted she was getting a divorce from Josh, that she couldn’t deal with his “rage” any more. The friend texted back, “rage?” She knew the pair were separated, but didn’t know there was any rage or violence involved in the situation.

So it ended up with five people dead.

Murder-suicide, the common name for homicide-suicide, is not unknown, but it’s usually uncommon enough that stories of it make splashy headlines like that on the front page of the January 18, 2014 Salt Lake Tribune: Police: Cop apparently killed his family, self.

A few days earlier another local woman, whose fiancé had just moved out of her house, shot and killed her two daughters and then herself.

In Joan Landino’s article, “The Psychology Behind Murder-Suicide” for the website, Joan Landino Says, she wrote:

“The perpetrators of murder-suicides also show recent damage to an interpersonal relationship or loss, in a way that is not demonstrated in suicide-only victims, who are more likely to be suffering from physical illness at the time of death. Suicide victims in their final days tend to be withdrawn, quiet, and socially isolated while murder-suicide perpetrators are more likely to exhibit escalating conflict, anger, and violent behavior culminating in the murder-suicide.”

There is also some evidence that one crime can lead to another; in this case it is possible that the story of the woman killing her children may have had something to do with Joshua Boren’s decision to commit his own crime against his family.

No one will know because of the suicide. We can’t know exactly what Joshua Boren was thinking, or why he took such an extreme step in resolving a personal problem.

Whenever I read about such a situation I think of something that happened when I was in high school in 1964. Two brothers, Wayne and Barry, were classmates of mine. They were a year apart, and I had one or the other in a couple of classes. They were both quiet and withdrawn. I never spoke with them, nor did I ever see them speaking with friends, or speaking up in class. If I thought about it at all, I probably thought they were just shy.

One day I read a story in the newspaper that said both brothers were on the front lawn of their house in an affluent section of town when the door burst open and their mother ran out of the house screaming, their father right behind her. Their dad had a gun which he used to shoot his wife, and then used to kill himself.

Wayne and Barry never came back to school. In a subsequent article following up on the murder-suicide it said they had gone to live with family in another state.

I sometimes think of those brothers and what their lives were like after that life-altering moment of violence. Lots of people have violent episodes in their lives and there can be varying degrees of depression or mental problems for the survivors. Fifty years ago getting counseling or psychiatric help for victims wasn’t common like it is today. I wondered how much violence Wayne and Barry were exposed to in the years leading up to that ultimate act, and how much anyone else knew about what was going on. In those days we just didn’t talk about it. I wouldn’t doubt the philosophy in their household was like the philosophy my parents taught to me. If something bad happened to you then you were to pull yourself back up, get over it and move on with your life. We know now that is often just not possible, no matter how much we’d like it to be that easy.

I have no way of knowing how Wayne and Barry survived the incident, or what it meant to either of them. But like all of these murder-suicides, like the murder of the Boren family, it is a morbidly tragic story, and as bad as any violence perpetrated against another person is, to me this type of crime is the saddest of them all.

Out of this world

 An ad for a book in the December 2013 Edward Hamilton catalog caught my eye.

Wow! A true story of a a secret visit to an alien planet by 12 American astronauts? In 1965? That just was too much to resist. I got the book.

Note to those who have not read my blog before: I am not a believer in UFOs or alien abductions or the usual paranormal business. But I am interested in stories about them, and especially when people claim they are true.

In this case, Secret Journey to Planet Serpo, touted on the cover as “A True Story of Interplanetary Travel” by Len Kasten definitely piqued my interest. What the book tells us, in a nutshell, is that Americans were in contact with aliens we called Ebens, and arranged to have them pick up some Americans and take them to their home planet, Serpo, in the Zeta Reticuli system. The book is the story of that journey and that visit — originally intended for 10 years but actually lasting 13 — what they saw, and what they said about what they saw.

And in one chapter, what Steven Spielberg may or may not have known about the expedition.

Whatever else might be said about the book and accepting or rejecting its incredible claims, I see it as a book by a true believer who isn’t trying to convince a skeptic like me. The writer assumes his readers believe the story, aiming at those fellow true believers who are convinced aliens from other planets visit Earth.

However, all books, even those for believers, have to have some form of credibility, and in the case of Secret Journey it is supposedly in a series of e-mails from someone called Anonymous (weakening the case, but it also fits in with an unspoken view of conspiracy and fear of retaliation) to a website called www.serpo.org. On the masthead of the website’s home page it says, “This site is intended to facilitate the gradual release of confidential documents pertaining to a top secret exchange program of twelve US military personnel to Serpo, a planet of Zeta Reticuli, between the years 1965-78.” According to author Kasten and the website author Bill Ryan, the information is slowly being released to “acclimate” the public for the eventual revelation that yes, we have been visited by and have done business with aliens for over a half century.

But website author Ryan issues a qualifier, giving us a choice of what to believe: the e-mails could be a hoax, the work of a prankster, or they could be disinformation, slightly disguised truth, or the plain truth as far as it is known. I was struck by the “prankster” label, because it would be my assessment.

As of this date, the website hasn’t been updated since July 2012. The book was published in 2013.

The book builds from the history of the UFO mythology/history, from the Nazi secret weapons program to Nazis building a postwar Fourth Reich in Antarctica, to the Roswell crash(es) in 1947, to the super-secret government group calling itself MJ-12, to the living alien visitor (a “guest” of the United States government) and the storage of the dead aliens, to President Kennedy and his request for the aliens to return to Earth and take some Americans to their planet for scientific purposes. It’s a lot to swallow.

After the story of how the Americans got to Serpo via a worm hole in space(1) they are greeted as visitors. Our astronauts(2) were allowed to walk free on Planet Serpo, with some exceptions. The Ebens live in a police state; they are under the control of a military government. They follow very strict protocols, including religious services(3) at a certain time of the day. The military carry no weapons, but are obeyed without question, and apparently the Ebens have a lot of rules to live by. Even the Americans were occasionally accosted and upbraided by members of the military for some infractions or breaches of protocol.

The Americans were allowed to bring 45,000 tons of supplies with them, which were easily handled by the Ebens when put aboard their giant craft (they use anti-gravity, you see; we also have anti-gravity given to us by the aliens, but for whatever reason it isn’t available for the use of our society). Among the items listed, besides food, clothing and medical supplies are weapons, including thousands of rounds of ammunition. Why would a peaceful mission need weaponry, and why would the hosts allow them to bring such an armory to their home planet? Especially since, as claimed, the Ebens had been visiting Earth for 20,000 years or so, and would know that human beings are often warlike, xenophobic, suspicious of strangers and quick on the trigger.

The astronauts were also allowed to bring 10 military combat motorcycles, three M151 jeeps, and even a lawn mower. An asterisk beside that last item said the lawn mower motor could be used for something else…so I ask, why bring the whole lawnmower? The most extraordinary thing is that with all those motorized vehicles they only brought 1,500 gallons of fuel. Ten motorcycles, three jeeps and a lawn mower, to be run for 10 years…and 1,500 gallons of fuel for all of them..? Hmmm. Did someone drop a zero off the number of gallons?

They also brought radios which depended on batteries, and according to the story they ran out of batteries after five years. Eben food was totally tasteless to the Earth people, and needed lots of salt and pepper, so the salt and pepper didn’t last, nor did the C-rations they brought along, which ran out in time. Some of the planning of needed supplies seems to have been guesswork rather than calculation.

The main reason the mission lasted 13 years and not the planned 10, according to the book, is that the Americans couldn’t figure out how to compare Serpo’s day compared to Earth’s day of 24 hours, and they lost track of time. That is especially hard to believe.

If I commented on everything in the book I had a problem with this post would be as long as the book. I thought I’d highlight just a couple more. There are pictures included. I thought the pictures of the “hybrid” alien girl(4) and the alien are suspect. In an era of Photoshop how can anyone believe any photograph? The girl isn’t identified by name, where she lives, how old she is, or anything about her. And the tagline, “by Andy Social” (anti-social) is a tip we’re being ribbed. The alien looks like something sculpted or even created on a computer.

According to the book, the Americans took a lot of photos during their time on Serpo, but only one picture has been released, that of the double suns of that system. Again, I’m thinking Photoshop.

We’re told that after the Americans arrived they recorded temperatures of 140º F. After a while they moved to the Northern part of the planet where it was cooler. How much cooler? I don’t know, but at least it was claimed to be livable.

I want to mention that by now all the Serpo astronauts are supposed to be dead; the last died in 2002. They returned to Earth in 1978(5) and were kept in seclusion for several years while being debriefed. Because of the high radiation levels on Serpo they all died of radiation poisoning. That is really convenient for the sake of those telling the story. They can say all the witnesses have died, so there is no one who can claim to have been there as an eyewitness to such a momentous achievement. No witnesses, no questions.

If this journey really happened then it is the greatest event in the history of the human race. But even though I thought I’d heard all the stories about contactees and major UFO sightings, I had never heard of this story before seeing the book advertised in the catalog. Is it because no one believes it except for this coterie of true believers who believe stories like this without hard evidence? I don’t have to prove it didn’t happen, the author and the evidence have to demonstrate to me that it did by giving me something besides the word of someone called Anonymous and “confirmations” by people who supposedly know the truth.

Finally, there is the story about Steven Spielberg, that he had to have been told the story about the astronauts because in the climactic scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind there are twelve astronauts seen entering the alien craft. There is a chapter devoted to this story, and yet nowhere in the chapter do I read that anyone asked Spielberg directly. It could be that the whole idea of the story of a journey to Planet Serpo was dreamed up by a fantasist who got the idea from Spielberg’s movie.

It’s an entertaining book and interesting subject. To a skeptic like me, though, it’s fiction.

FOOTNOTES:

(1)When going through certain stages of the journey the Earthmen are kept in bubbles, which reminded me of the scenes in the 1956 movie, This Island Earth, where the kidnapped Earth people are in see-through tubes.

(2)The astronauts are not identified by names, but by three digit numbers. The commander, whose diary is quoted, is “102” and all astronauts are referred to by their three-digit numbers throughout the story.

(3)According to the book the Ebens worship a supreme being, and that even the Vatican (!) believes it is “our” (Christian) god. No Muslims or Hindus on Planet Serpo.

(4)I’m one who believes former NBA star Sam Cassell looks like a hybrid alien:

(5)Three died, one en route, two on the planet, two elected to stay on Serpo, which means there were seven who returned.

Tossing the gay marriage football around

It is playoff time for pro football teams, yet even before the post-season began, the football game between gay activists and the State of Utah was underway. Gay activists got a touchdown, then the State threw a pass that was intercepted, but they got it back and scored a touchdown on the very next play.

All right, I know it’s a ridiculous metaphor. Human rights and dignity are not a game. The LGBT community won a lawsuit in Federal Court by having Utah’s discriminatory marriage law declared unconstitutional by Judge Robert Shelby. The State countered with a request for a stay, which was denied, then denied again by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. So the State presented the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Justice Sotomayor, who is over the 10th Circuit Court, agreed to a stay.

That left hundreds of same-sex couples — who had gotten marriage licenses and been married legally in Utah during the giddy time following Judge Shelby’s decision — in a legal limbo. Attorney Mark Lawrence, who filed the lawsuit by enlisting two gay couples being denied their right to marry, said he had expected just what happened with the stay. He also said that it didn’t shake his belief that eventually Judge Shelby’s decision will be upheld and same-sex marriage will finally be the law in the State of Utah.

This, of course, drives the religious and conservative community here crazy. Just after the first of the year Utah governor Gary Herbert chose a new Attorney General (the former AG resigned after a scandal), and that AG, Sean Reyes, promised to spend however much money it would take to fight same-sex marriage.

Jackie Biskupsie (center) marries Joyce Lewallen and Lecie Johnson on December 23, at the Salt Lake County offices during a crush of marriage licenses issued and hallway marriage ceremonies performed after Judge Shelby’s ruling was announced. 

Photo by Francisco Kjolseth. Copyright © 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune.

That there are those of us who believe that same-sex marriage will eventually happen anyway is of no concern to those who oppose it. They will even vow to spend our taxpayer money generously to fight it!

State officials also decided that rights will not be extended to those who were married during that short period when Judge Shelby’s decision was announced until the stay was in place. A couple of days ago United States Attorney General Eric Holder announced that married same-sex couples in Utah will receive the benefits of federal law. So now the ball (there’s that football metaphor again) is in Utah’s hands. The question is, for instance, if same-sex married couples are allowed a federal tax status, what about a state tax status? The legal questions seem unending.

While all of the legal stuff goes on, the Mormon church issued this letter to be read to its members in their meetings (presumably today, Sunday, January 12, 2014), part of which states: “. . . changes in the civil law do not, indeed cannot, change the moral law that God has established. God expects us to uphold and keep his commandments regardless of divergent opinions or trends in society.”  In an article by Brooke Adams about the church letter published January 10, 2014 in the Salt Lake Tribune, the church “called for civility on both sides of the debate while the lawsuit proceeds through courts.” This from a church which recently admitted that their long-held teachings about black people were not doctrinal, but prejudice on the part of their second “prophet,” Brigham Young (who also had 27 wives), and the same church that backed and helped fund the fight for Proposition 8 in California, which was hardly civil. Lawsuits filed against that law led to the same ruling (this time by the Supreme Court in a 5-to-4 decision) that Judge Robert Shelby came to in December. In short, discrimination against a people because of their color, religion or sexual orientation cannot be written into the law. The state cannot tell someone who to love or who they can — or cannot — marry.

In the meantime, and forgive me for extending that silly football metaphor, the LGBT community has had to punt, and the ball is now in someone else’s hands.

I dream of Mitt Romney

I woke up this morning after having an extraordinary dream about none other than last year’s losing presidential candidate. I got up and wrote it down in my insomnia notebook before I had a chance to forget. This is what I wrote:

       I am watching a TV movie featuring Mitt Romney. He has stolen a vintage Schwinn boy’s bicycle. The youngster who is the owner of the bike has disappeared. Mitt believes he will be suspected of having done something to the boy, so he pedals off. He ends up at my former coworker Jerry's house. Jerry tells Mitt he can stay overnight at his house. He even comes out in some yellow flannel pajamas with pictures of little pink bunnies on them. “I have more just like these you can wear,” says Jerry. Mitt tells him, “Gee, those are great jammies but I can't stay here. Let's go to my house.”
     Mitt looks out the window. The bike is lying on the grass where he dropped it. Mitt sees two neighbor boys looking at the bike with suspicion. The kids know it is the missing boy’s stolen bike. Mitt realizes he must keep running.

 Mitt could have afforded to buy this bike, but he chose to steal it. He didn’t get rich spending his money on things he can steal.

     Mitt and Jerry go to leave but Mitt sees the bike has two flat tires. They walk it across the street to a service station where Mitt puts his lips on the valve and tries to blow up the tire like a balloon. Jerry says, “No, Mitt! That's not how you do it!” Mitt admits he’s never had to do anything like fix a bike tire before. A lady who runs the service station comes out and shows Mitt how to use the air pressure hose.
       Because he knows Mitt is a fugitive Jerry changes his mind about going with him. Mitt takes off alone on the stolen bike. He pedals to a café where he is having lunch when he sees several police cars converging on the restaurant. Mitt says, “Oh, no! I'm busted!” The cops come in and tell Mitt the little boy has been found alive and well. He had just wandered off. “What a relief,” says Mitt. The police take the bike and leave Mitt eating his lunch. Happy ending.

The dream ends with me yelling at the television. "That son of a bitch got away with stealing the bike because he's rich!"

Rob Rogers loves Republicans

Rob Rogers, who has been drawing editorial cartoons since 1984, and a member of the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette since 1993, is an award-winning cartoonist. He also loves Republicans. You can tell because of his portrayals of members of the Grand Old Party. He will never run out of subject matter as long as the Republicans keep feeding him straight lines he can turn into punchlines.

I am a great admirer of Rogers' work, and here are some of my recent favorites by this gifted artist. In Rogers I see influences from the underground comix of the '60s, but in their era those influences were often political. What Rogers is doing is legitimizing what was in its beginnings an outsider art.

In the days of shrinking and disappearing newspapers, and digital presentations taking away from the printed medium, Rogers, like most successful cartoonists, uses both the Internet and print to best advantage to show off his appealing style. The color cartoon on top is from Rogers' website, robrogers.com, and you can read more about Rogers at the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists website here.

Copyright © 2013 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Bad Grandpa and the broken angel

I'm well aware of the old saying, “fish and visitors stink after three days.” I've been a visitor in Pennsylvania for eight days now, with four more to go, and I have tried to avoid stinking up the place by being as unobtrusive as possible, not being a burden on my hosts.

Yesterday to my horror I committed a faux pas by breaking a piece of statuary that was on the fireplace mantle. It was of an angel. The family members are practicing Catholics and their home has some religious themed artwork here and there. I was up and dressed before the rest of the household on Saturday morning, so I went to the living room to write on my laptop. I saw a safety pin on the floor by the fireplace. Without thinking I bent down to pick it up and when I stood up my shoulder hit the mantle, the angel hit the tile floor and in seconds was in a thousand pieces. I cleaned up the mess and waited for the folks whose hospitality I had so horribly abused to get up. When they did I showed them the garbage bin with the remains of my transgression and expressed my dismay. Basically, they just blew it off. “No big deal. No need to feel bad.” It didn’t help. I still felt bad.

My grandchildren, Bella (9) and Gabby (7 1/2) were eating their breakfast. “Why didn't you catch it?” Gabby asked, innocently. Her mother jumped right in with an admonition to her to be polite to Grandpa.

“We broke that once,” confessed Gabby.

There is a double standard. If a kid breaks something there is often a punishment. When an adult breaks something they can usually get off with a mea culpa and a heartfelt apology.

(This is one bad luck angel. My wife, Sally, told me she had knocked it over one other time and broken something off which she repaired with super glue. My son David later told me when the kids broke the angel he replaced it out of a catalog for $30, and perhaps I could do the same.)

The kids went back to their room to play. Sally, to whom I had confessed my error, had gotten up and dressed, and went to the kids’ room to wish them good morning. When she opened the door Bella said, “Grandpa broke the angel! He broke its head right off!”

Sally said, “Yes, and he feels really bad.”

Gabby said, “Bad Grandpa!” then added, “...and once again, victory is ours!”

Bad Grandpa is the name of a movie, and the title fit the situation. The “victory is ours” I recognize but don’t know where she got it. Maybe she read it in a book, or saw it on television. Maybe she recognized what I just said about the double standard on breaking things, and her comment was aimed at that. It cracked us up, though.

Something I may not have mentioned before in this blog is my overall klutziness, which comes from having my hands or feet move before engaging my brain. I have tried to correct this serious flaw, but occasionally it revisits me.

For the balance of our visit I will attempt to do what I do in antique stores: keep my arms at my sides and think before reaching for anything. And my hope is that after we leave in four more days our kind hosts won't turn to each other and say, “Fish and visitors...”

How the gay Grinch stole Utah bigots' Christmas

A story in the Salt Lake Tribune for Tuesday, December 24, means a great Christmas for gay people and their friends, families and supporters in Utah, and a very Grinchy Christmas for the sanctimonious moralists, homophobes and bigots.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57303881-78/gay-love-utah-crowd.html.csp

I'm away from Utah for another week, spending time with family in Pennsylvania, and yet watching Utah make big news over a judge's ruling this past Friday.

Federal Court Judge Robert Shelby determined that laws aimed at restricting marriage between same-sex couples is unconstitutional. This is a double blow for Utah Republicans. First, they had the ruling that parts of Utah's anti-polygamy laws are unconstitutional, and now laws against gay marriage.

I've been reading that the Brethren* are meeting hurriedly to try to figure out what to do to roll back what this "activist judge" (Utah governor Herbert's term for him) hath wrought. They quickly filed a request for a stay in the law so that county clerks could no longer issue marriage licenses to gay couples and Judge Shelby wouldn't budge because as he put it, the request for stay just repeated the same arguments he found unconstitutional. So the State went to the 10th Circuit Court and asked for a stay.

On Christmas Eve the 10th Circuit Court refused to issue a stay. As I write this during the late evening of December 24th gay marriage is still legal in Utah. I believe it will go through the court system and come out with the same result: Utah will be the 18th state in which gay people can legally marry.

I think it's great. It was coming anyway, my fellow Utahns and fellow Americans (even Phil Robertson, the anti-gay Duck Dynasty guy). You had better get used to it because it is here, and within a few years, maybe less than five, the rest of the United States will fall in line, and all those anti-gay "pro-family" folks (pro-heterosexual family, that is) will have to adjust to a changed society.

I also read online that Utah is expecting a white Christmas. To all of you Utah people who feel that Santa left you a lump of coal for Christmas, cheer up. It will not be the end of the world. I leave you with a wish that your days be merry and bright. To the same-sex couples exulting in a Christmas gift thanks to the Constitution, don you now your gay apparel and have a great and wonderful Christmas and New Year.

*It is sometimes hard to tell Mormon ecumenical leaders in Utah from state officials, since they are all poured from the same mold.

Only in Utah

Some recent stories have made the local news that remind me I live in a place which can be a world unto itself. Sometimes we in Utah are members of American society at large, sometimes we are in a theocratic bubble in which the inhabitants try to ignore the laws of the nation.

For over a century it has been illegal to be a polygamist in Utah. It came about when the federal government made it a condition of statehood in the 1890s. The Mormons, after having taught polygamy was immune to man’s laws and only answerable to God, declared that polygamy was no longer part of the religion. Polygamists would be excommunicated. It caused a lot of splinter sects which still practiced polygamy to spin off from the official church into small bands loosely called fundamentalist Mormons.

Last Friday U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups, in answer to a lawsuit filed by members of the family that make up the TLC “reality” show, Sister Wives, declared that parts of Utah’s polygamy laws, those related to cohabitation, were unconstitutional. The rest of the statutes regarding polygamy: no taking of child brides, domestic violence, taking out multiple marriage licenses (bigamy) are still in effect. Polygamists marry in religious ceremonies and don’t take out licenses.

The truth is that except for the more egregious breaches of law no polygamists have been prosecuted in Utah in over half a century solely for being in a polygamous marriage. No polygamists are prosecuted for cohabitation, which would be a total waste of taxpayer money.

So…what changed, and why was it headline news? Well, nothing changed, really, except to make Utah Governor Gary Herbert announce that he would have to study what the ramifications of the judge’s ruling are. He said, “I’m always a little concerned when we have decisions that change public policy by the courts . . .I’d much rather see decisions on social issues come from our legislature representing the will of the people. [Emphasis mine.]

 Gov. Herbert, whose round face makes me think of a grownup Charlie Brown, has that Peanuts character’s wishy-washiness.

In other words, our governor has put himself into the story with his usual pronouncements, implying that any federal law that makes sense trumps a local law that doesn’t. This in regard to a ruling that just affirmed that we are no longer living in the nineteenth century, and laws regarding cohabitation, whether for religious or sexual purposes, are no longer the business of anyone but the people doing the cohabiting. Those laws, which are still on the books in some states besides Utah, are not enforced anywhere in the U.S. because cohabitation may be seen as immoral by some, but is not illegal.

Yet the story made the newspaper front page two days in a row.

Only in Utah.

Another story has to do with a controversy over a long-held belief by Mormons that people of African descent were “cursed in the pre-existence” with black skin to show they had not been as vigilant on the side of right during a war in heaven. So God sent them into the world to be enslaved and discriminated against. I was taught this arcane belief when still a member of the church. Many Mormons used it as a defense of discrimination and prejudice. In 1978 the church changed its policy, declaring that the time of discriminating against blacks for their skin color was over, and that now black people could hold the priesthood in the Latter-day Saints church. Some devout Mormons, who had a tough time giving up those longtime, strongly-held beliefs thought the church was bowing to social pressure, and that the “curse” was still a fact, even if not recognized officially.

Bigot Brigham Young

The story that hit the news last week was that the church has finally admitted that the belief of fence-sitting souls in a pre-existence war who would be born as black was never doctrinal. It came from Brigham Young, church president when the church relocated in the mid-nineteenth century to the wilderness that was Utah. As the church story explained, Brigham Young was “of his time,” and had prejudices relating to his era. All that mumbo-jumbo about a curse was never an official Mormon belief, even though it was taught by church leaders and even defended for many years by devout Latter-day Saints as coming straight from God. (My article about this belief is here.)

My personal feeling was that it became church policy when the Mormons came West in 1847 because the country was being pulled apart by slavery. As a practical matter Brigham Young didn’t want runaway or former slaves to feel at home in Utah. So Brigham did what Brigham did best: he went to the revelation card and claimed God told him that was the way it was. After a century-and-a-half his obvious and odious lie made local front page headlines.

Only in Utah.

Ron Lafferty, tormented by a ghost?

The third story is a little trickier because it hinges on a statement by a defense lawyer defending murderer Ron Lafferty, who lives in Utah State Prison’s death row. In 1985, in some fit of crazy religious zealotry, Lafferty and his brother, Dan, murdered a third brother’s wife and her 15-month-old daughter. Lafferty has never been thought of as a mentally fit person, but the defense lawyer has a unique take on the latest goings-on in this now nearly 30-year-old saga.

Lafferty has claimed to being harassed by the deceased father of the judge. As quoted in the copyrighted article by Brooke Adams in the December 10, 2013 Salt Lake Tribune:

     “Lafferty believes that the ghost of Judge Steven J. Hansen’s father tormented him during the . . . trial, causing him physical discomfort and leading him to act out during the proceedings. The ghost, according to Lafferty, did so because he was unhappy with how the judge conducted the proceedings.
     “While many of Lafferty’s beliefs are rooted in the Mormon faith within which he was raised, this particular belief diverges from [Latter-day Saint] theology about how spirit beings interact with the mortal world, the attorneys say.
     “‘This is not a belief that is shared by Mr. Lafferty’s cultural or subcultural (sic) group,’ the brief says, “Therefore it is a delusion.’”

So let us make clear what the defense is saying. If Lafferty is tormented by a ghost, he’s not delusional in the sense that ghosts do not exist and cannot be tormenting him, it’s a delusion only because the Mormon church does not believe that is how spirits of the dead interact with the living.

Got that?

Only in Utah.

Don Martin’s Great Non-Violent Guns from Mad

Saturday, December 14 is the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Twenty children and six adults including teachers, a counselor and principal were killed by a crazed man with a Bushmaster 223 assault rifle.

Unlike last year after the tragedy when the National Rifle Association made a lot of noise to beat back the criticism of America’s gun laws, this year I haven’t heard a peep from them, or caught a glimpse of Wayne LaPierre’s ridiculous toupée. Maybe the NRA is too busy working on beating back any pending legislation of plastic guns that anyone can make with a 3D printer. (Ain’t technology wonderful?)

Don Martin had some funny ideas for non-violent guns in an old Mad magazine. I wish these were the most dangerous weapons available.

Copyright © E.C. Publications, Inc.

“I wear the chain I forged in life”

Alec Guinness as my favorite ghost.

Of all the Christmas stories I like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol the best. And of the characters in the story, my favorite is one who doesn’t take up much room. It is Marley’s ghost, laden down with chains and cashboxes. Marley is a bellwether for Scrooge, to warn him of the need for changes in his miserly life, and the upcoming visits of three other ghosts.

“I wear the chain I forged in life,'' replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

Scrooge trembled more and more.

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”

The chain is a good metaphor for those things we have done that weigh us down. Unless you have no conscience you probably have mistakes or crimes or cruelties that are still with you, maybe even decades after they happened. I do. (Note to law enforcement: any “crimes” I committed were strictly misdemeanors, for which the statutes of limitations have long since passed. Just thought I’d make that clear.)

What bothers me most are things I said to people I wish I had never said. In a moment of anger I spouted off and said something unkind. It happened fairly regularly, so regularly that in the mid-seventies my job supervisor told me I had a “tongue that cuts like a scalpel.” It was him telling me that made me think of what I was doing. And dammit, I am still thinking of it. I’d say that my scalpel tongue has probably earned me about ten feet of heavy battleship chain by now.

I won’t go into any more of my transgressions because, frankly, they would be boring to you and yet for me, even after forty or fifty years they are still hard to speak of. They would be good for telling to a therapist, though, and some of them I have unburdened to the two therapists I consulted since the mid-nineties. Telling them lightened my chain by at least a couple of pounds.

I don’t believe in sin as a religious concept. There are things we do that are right to do because they do not intrude on or damage our fellow human beings, or make them suffer. There are things we should not do, not because we fear eternal punishment, but because they are the price of living in harmony in civilization.

In that sense I don’t believe in Marley’s ghost except as a literary construction, but a powerful construction it is. That image of Marley and his chains is a visual aid for me to help me decide with how much I want to burden myself, not in some hereafter, but in the here-and-now.

Illustration by Roberto Innocenti.

Where do lost things go? The Twilight Zone?

I’ve been looking for five or six days for my eyeglasses, which have a gold-colored wire frame. They are in my house somewhere, I’m 100% certain, but despite my best efforts I cannot find them. They seem to have disappeared between sometime in the hour between taking them off, and then needing them.

Ever have that happen to you? Of course you have. I don’t know how you handle the situation, but my usual way of finding something is to stop looking. After I’ve made a reasonable attempt to locate the lost object, I will stop looking and then within an undetermined period of time, hours, days or even months, I will suddenly come upon it. “So that’s where I left it!” will usually be the first words out of my mouth. Works like a charm. Usually. Stop looking, find what I’m looking for. Not this time, though.

I started going through a mental checklist of things I am missing that defy my efforts to find them. It’s been a gradual thing over time. Because of that time frame I hadn’t really considered all that has disappeared. It is a considerable amount of small things. Where are they, and a larger question would be, where do things go?

Perhaps they go into the Twilight Zone. Do you remember the 1963 episode, “Little Girl Lost”? A four-year-old falls out of bed right into a dimensional gateway. Her father goes in to find her and bring her back.

When I watched that episode again a few days ago I understood where my lost items are. They are in another dimension, having fallen through a gateway that appeared in my house. I suppose once I find that I will find my lost items.

Beep beep and beep beep yeah

Obituaries for my former high school classmates are coming faster and closer together as time goes on. This obit is for one of my classmates from the graduating class of 1965.

Beep is not her real first name, but my wife and I can’t remember what it is. Sally thinks it might be Susan. Whatever it is, her survivors and the obituary writer didn’t put it in her obit. I guess everyone just knew her as Beep.

Beep as she was when we knew her.

The obit mentions that she was the first female auto mechanics student in Utah.. That was a big deal in those days, and it got her some attention. If I hadn’t seen the obituary, and if someone had asked me what I remember about Beep it would have been that she studied auto mechanics with a shop full of boys.

The write-up also tells that after living in another state she had come back to Utah because of her relationship with Roger W. (her “first boyfriend”), who was also a 1965 classmate. Roger owns an automotive business, and was in the news in 1993 when he was tried for murder.

Roger in high school.

The story that came out is that a violent, psychopathic ex-convict named Daniels was getting 50% of the profits of Roger’s business through threats and physical abuse. One day Roger had had enough. When Daniels came at him with a screwdriver Roger shot him twice, in the face and heart, with a .357 magnum. What got Roger tried for murder was due to his next moves: he told some men to call the police, then went back and administered a coup de grace. He shot Daniels two more times in the back.

The prosecutor said that was homicide, not self-defense. In the trial it came out that Daniels was “essentially” dead when Roger put the second set of two bullets in him. Witnesses came forward to say they had seen Daniels beat Roger either with fists or shop tools, including a hammer. The jury believed Roger’s version of self-defense and acquitted him.

In the end Beep was with Roger. It says in her obituary that she developed diabetes when she was 12, and that’s a terrible disease. I am surprised she made it to the age she was when she died. I hope she and Roger had some good times together. It seems to me they both deserved it.

Another voice amongst the many: remembering the JFK assassination

As a Baby Boomer I’m just one more of millions who remember where we were and what we were doing on that day Kennedy was killed. For the record, I was a junior in high school, attending my daily gym class. The class was being held in the wrestling room because the school had rented out the gym for an electronics show. Dozens of men in black business suits had lined the walls of the gym with equipment, stereo, radios, televisions, all brand-new models for 1964. So when the news broke we were allowed to go back into the gym where everyone watched the unfolding story on multiple TV screens.

The story of the killing of a sitting American President, vivid as it is, becomes part of a larger story, because I believe the assassination of JFK was the beginning of what we call “The Sixties.” At least it was for me; in retrospect it seems all hell broke loose after JFK was killed. It could just be my perception, from where I stood then and through the next ten years. But for me the decade of the 1960s with its turmoil and excitement of whirlwind changes in society began on November 22, 1963, and ended in August, 1974, with the resignation of Richard Nixon.

It has been fifty years since JFK died. Fifty years! To put it in perspective, in 1963 the start of the First World War in 1914 wasn’t yet quite fifty years past. Memories of World War II were still very much with us, still fresh. That war had ended only eighteen years before. The veterans of that conflict were our parents and teachers, still young people in their forties when Kennedy was killed. A veteran and war hero himself, Kennedy was only 46 when he died.

None of those things went through my head during that awful weekend, from the first word of the assassination through the funeral the following Monday. (An incredible achievement, I now realize, mounting a state funeral of that magnitude with only a couple of days to prepare. It’s a story still to be told of the assassination, and I hope someone will tell us how it was done.) I believe collectively the whole country was depressed. It was as if on that weekend all of the business of America came to a stop. We all just put our normal lives on hold and watched television, while history was being made.

Watching some of the current TV programs about that weekend in 1963 has an effect on me. It reminds me of what was going on in my personal life, but also connects me, inextricably, to fellow Americans alive at a time when as a nation we went into a period of mourning.

The prejudiced ear

A big murder trial wrapped up recently in Salt Lake City. It was one of those trials that capture national attention, and the November 13 edition of NBC’s Dateline was devoted to the case.

Martin MacNeill, a doctor, was tried and convicted of killing his wife. One of the prosecution theories is that he killed her so he could be with his mistress. The wife was found, fully clothed, dead in a bathtub. She had recently had a facelift, and her doctor-husband prescribed painkillers, on which she overdosed.

The wife...the doctor...the mistress. A deadly mix.

During the trial, as is the norm in cases like this, the 911 call he made when he called to say his wife wasn’t breathing was played for the jury, and we all got to hear the hysteria in his voice. There was a whole follow-up of things he said to first responders. When introduced to the jury his statements at a time of crisis just didn’t sound like they thought a man who had just lost his wife would speak.

It always strikes me during such moments in a trial as to whether it is fair to introduce evidence that was created at such a moment. Often what the caller says doesn’t ring true to the listener. It often sounds fake. If the caller is very emotional it can sound forced. If there are no histrionics it may sound like the caller is emotionless, and doesn’t care.

But really, how does anyone know how someone else will react during such a stressful time?

What if the caller was innocent, yet was overwhelmed by events? MacNeill screamed at the 911 dispatcher who asked if he was performing CPR, as if his credentials as a physician were being challenged. As it turned out, the jury didn't need to hear that call. They had plenty of other evidence on which to find Dr. MacNeill guilty, but that 911 call piled on to the other events and didn’t help. According to published reports the jury considered it part of his “over the top” response to his wife’s death.

The prejudice comes in when we condemn someone for not having what we think is the proper reaction. I have heard a lot of former jurors in other trials say they didn’t think the defendant sounded sincere, or didn’t act like they imagined they would in similar circumstances.

In the book, Alien Hand Syndrome and Other Too-Weird-Not-To-Be-True Stories by Alan Burrows, the author addresses that prejudice in a chapter called “Cognitive Glitches.”

     “The false consensus effect is the tendency of individuals to assume that others think and act the same way as they do. It applies to such things as opinions, thought patterns, attitudes and behaviors.  Essentially, false consensus is an expression of the average person’s complete inability to comprehend the thought processes of another. The effect is so powerful that subjects asked to envision someone with a different attitude or opinion will often imagine the other person as mentally deficient or deluded. This bias severely limits the ability of humans to understand or predict the behavior of others.”

Is there a standard by which we judge how other people react? I think it would be prudent for a defense attorney to call a psychologist who could explain the false consensus effect. Whether it would do any good or not to tell people that just because they wouldn't overreact to a 911 operator they shouldn't assume everyone would act as they expect.

I assume someone who has willfully killed a spouse and calls 911 probably wants to make it sound real, so they do an acting job. That in itself will sound phony. Human beings, especially when lying, are acting and we may think we’re up to being convincing, but folks, unless you’re a trained professional, don’t try it. Most people will be too kind to tell you they think you are lying, but that is no indication your acting is working for its intended audience. I believe Robert DeNiro or Meryl Streep could be standing over a dead body, holding a smoking gun and still convince police they didn’t kill anyone. False consensus syndrome or not, I know I couldn’t match their acting abilities.

Finally, if I had been on that jury I would have found Dr. MacNeill guilty of murdering his wife. But I believe my decision would have been based on evidence alone, not on how I think he should have sounded when speaking to others in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s death.

MAD History of Sex

Mad magazine takes the whole history of sex, from Adam to now, and compresses it down to a few pages. Funny history, funny subject!

Copyright © 1974, 2013 E.C. Publications, Inc.