Faith + Reason = Truth

The arid breeze blowing across his sunburned skin felt refreshing - almost invigorating. He would miss it, but he knew it would be less than a week until he returned (or none of this would matter anyway). The pump clicked to a stop, and he jogged into the service station to pay with cash; no more credit cards, not after what he had learned over the past 30-something hours. In a matter of a few more hours, he would be half way across Colorado, traveling along the western edge of the great, defining mountain range that served to divide America in two, as he continued his northward journey to the place where Keuka’s age-old verbal map told him to branch off toward his crucial destination. Luke had written the old one’s words down as best as he could recall them on a scrap of paper found on the rear floorboard of the car, but he could not be completely certain that he had them right: “It was there that your people’s arrogance showed that they were not ready to accept this great gift, along with its still greater responsibility. And so it was. Another time, another place perhaps, to demonstrate humility and restraint. You will know the place of the failed trial well, though not from its proper perspective.” No time to waste on worrying about the specifics; he had done his best to retain Keuka’s words exactly as they had been spoken, and he got them on paper as soon as he had the chance. And he could not even begin to consider the consequences of not reaching the place in time, or at all for that matter, as it would be too crushing of a burden for any one person to deal with. If only he had Karen back with him – THAT would be his focus.  [click for more]

What is this, you ask?
The beginning of a book, written just over 3 years ago.  There are 39 pages so far, and it was started on Father's Day 2005 because I had decided to sit down at the kitchen table and finally write a book.  After a week or two of making myself write for at least 15 minutes a day, I took a break and haven't gone back to it since.
Is it good?  Does it matter?  Don't pay attention to the post's title, by the way - if I actually thought it was a display of literary genius, I would be far too modest to proclaim it as such!  I LOVED writing what I wrote as it came to me, but something made me start thinking to myself after a couple of weeks into the effort, "this is not that great," and I stopped.
I'm going to start again.

You are NOT a racist.  You believe all people are created equal.  You do not discriminate based on skin color.  You are NOT "the Man," keeping the Black Man down.
Or are you?  Do you, like me, engage in a kind of perceived racism by merely existing as a white person in America?  Are you part of an overarching white power infrastructure that makes it, if not more difficult for black Americans, then at least easier for whites?  Yes, you are if you are white.
White people have no concept of what being black or Mexican-American in America means on a daily, and even a minute by minute, basis.  The burden is often crushing for minorities whether you realize it or not, and for almost all of you, you probably never will.
This is not your fault.  Black people will not personally tell you, a white person, about this reality, because they either do not trust you or do not think you will or can accept it.  Let me rephrase that:  there are those who counter-productively talk "at" the white establishment on behalf of "blacks."  But individual, Charles Byrd to Tom Worth, person to person, soul to soul connections are really what has to happen.
When - not if, but when - our personal existence and experience is electrified by those connections, that will be but a short step in the long march.  Time, measured in generations rather than months or years, must pass, with each son and daughter doing more than their parents to change the world.

I've finally "won" something:  the opportunity to change the world via writing.

     "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change
the world; indeed, that is the only thing that ever has." – Margaret Mead

The above quote is provided courtesy of the Wizard of Ads, a.k.a. Roy Williams.  After reading his Monday Morning Memo that's been emailed to me for several years now, I'll finally get to meet the man himself this week at an intimate gathering of hand-picked writers down in Austin for 3 days.  The topics are journalism and racism, and the costs of the course and room and board are provided by his Wizard Academy.  It's modestly titled World Changers 2008.

This should be an extraordinary gathering of 2 instructors and about 12 writers who have all submitted writing samples, then been chosen from a pool of possibly millions (or maybe hundreds, or even tens) of applicants and who have agreed to write something on the topic of racism at least once a week for the next two years.  I'm one of them (note that I said the gathering, not the writers, would be extraordinary - I'm about as humble about my writing as one could be, and cannot begin to convey how honored and privileged I feel every time I think about this), and I'll provide additional details on the venue where the writings will be featured once I have them!

For practice, I've authored a couple of blog entries dealing with racism that you may have already read here, filed under the Harmony category of Worthreading:
     Don't Condone "Harmless" Racist Remarks
     Your Personal Endorsement of Slavery

It's gonna be enlightening, it may get ugly, and hopefully, maybe, a vast swath of the world will actually somehow change for the better.

The clothes you buy.  The electronics you have purchased.  Things that have the words "Made in China" or Hecho en Mexico" imprinted on them.  Bananas.  Diamonds.  Gold.

If you buy these products or virtually any other type of product that's grown or mined or manufactured in some way in a country other than America or a handful of others, you are directly supporting and personally benefiting from a contemporary form of slave labor.  But you may protest, "I NEED those things though!" and you may be correct in some cases.  But do you "need" the cheapest or best valued and shadiest versions of them?  Could you choose to spend a little more and get a legitimately produced version of the same thing?  Of course you could.

Since mankind began recording its activities, we have records of people enslaved by other people.  We still engage in the practice today, though it's almost universally condemned across societies.  The problem is that at the time it is occurring, many people do not recognize their contemporary forms of enslavement as morally objectionable; to the contrary, they embrace it as the way things are and must be.  So it was with the Egyptians and the Hebrews, the Spartans and the Helots, the Romans and the Slavs (from whence our word "slave" derives), the Europeans and whichever people found itself in the unfortunate circumstance of being indigenous to the lands that were "discovered" by the colonial powers around the globe - and once the supply of New World natives ran out, the forcibly exported Africans.

All of these societies viewed their enslavement of other races as their divine right.  The gods (later, God) smiled on them and blessed them with free and plentiful labor to accomplish what needed to be done in all facets of society:  building, growing, warfare, production of goods.  If people lost their battles and wars, they knew it would be their fate to be enslaved.  Not that they freely accepted their fates or were ok with it; in fact, the ferocity of battle was frequently ratcheted up to the extent that the combatants would do anything in their power to avoid capture and enslavement for themselves and their families, including death for all of them.

And so it is with our society.  We now view slave-wage and forced labor as acceptable, especially since many of us are so far removed from the actual working conditions of the sweatshops and mines.  I would say that, at least in the cruel days of African slaves working in the agricultural fields of the American South, the owners provided food and shelter for the people who were enslaved.  Many of today's slave class work in far worse conditions and have no food or shelter provided for them, but it is true that they are free to pursue something different.

For instance, in the Mexican border towns just south of Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico, people could choose to pursue a better life in a land with greater opportunity:  America.  All they need to do is try to emigrate from Mexico to the U.S. legally (which would take years if it happened), or take their chances sneaking across the border.  Again, just as the ancient warriors faced with the prospect of enslavement or possible death, they may choose possible death as the preferable course of action.  Not just for themselves, but by sacrificing themselves for the prospect of better lives for their families that may or may not yet exist.

Do I propose a solution here?  No.  But I do imply that certainly 100 years from now, and maybe only 20-50 years from now, "civilized" societies will look back on today's reality and wonder how we could have been so brutal and barbaric to one another, just as we look back at the America of the 1960's and wonder the same thing.

Eye-popping quote from a Wired story on the upcoming U.S. solar car race:
     "No one involved in the race thinks we'll all be driving solar cars one day."
Huh?  Solar cars have been around for years, at least in the experimental racing venue, which might lead one to believe that one day we'll ALL be driving our vehicles around without fuel.  Not so.  The reason we won't be?  Economics of solar pv are not good; in fact, they're still pretty terrible.  It takes way too much space and way too much money to generate electricity with solar panels, as evidenced by the University of Michigan's $500,000 solar car:
     - 2500 "aerospace-grade" solar cells;
     - 5-kilowatt lithium-polymer battery pack;
     - puts out "about as much power as your hair dryer"

Granted, although it's a lot of money for not much output, these cars ARE able to achieve speeds of up to 75 miles per hour due to their advanced design and the necessity of squeezing more out of less.  And that, as it turns out, is the real reason for and benefit of these competitions.

Thanks to Chuck Squatriglia at Wired.com for this story!