The Poor Among Us

I thought this post and this post by my wife were so thought provoking.  They have also dovetailed into further discussions we've had regarding the presidential election and comparisons between rich vs. middle class vs. poor.

I confess that, absent my opportunities of service related to my church, my life's personal experiences would remain solidly in my middle class cocoon.  I still  have had very little exposure to the truly rich, but I have had many occasions to interact with the indigent.  Here are some of my thoughts regarding that.

For one thing, I have had several experiences seeing the criminal justice system at work.  I have visited inmates, I have seen the havoc wreaked on the families left behind.  Thankfully, the vast majority of the population has not developed life skills having to do with bailing someone out of jail, or interacting with public defenders, or figuring out jail visiting rules.

One thing that still perplexes me--how does someone with poor credit history, no assets, and is un- or under-employed qualify to rent an apartment?  I'm aware of many cases where the Church has stepped in to help with temporary motel lodging, or up front deposits to get a family into an apartment.  Or to pay the rent to avoid someone getting evicted and ending up unable to find a new place.  I'm aware there are government subsidies and helps, but it seems every case I was involved with the waiting lists were years long for such assistance.  (I suspect many "lifers" consume the available resources.)  What does someone do without the help of a church, or some other benefactor?

I have had extensive experience trying to help people get back on their feet financially and be self sufficient.  This is always the goal.  As bishop I was spread too thin to deal with all the nuts and bolts of every case--in one case I worked closely with a very competent and experienced home teacher to help an indigent single person to manage his money better--create a budget, map out future income and expenses, etc.  This was a person with past history of using payday loans, gambling, and giving money to his daughter.  As a condition of continued church help he needed to cooperate and impose self discipline, and even turned his checkbook over to his home teacher to pay the bills.

It was pretty rough going. and it took several stops and starts to finally achieve some success.  I sometimes find that those in financial distress have a poor grasp of financial basics.  Specifically, everything is "now", and there is no notion of future--limited grasp of budgeting, no need to economize, spend the money in hand and don't worry about tomorrow's bills.  I wonder whether this is a cause or effect.  Is financial distress caused by these poor money management skills, or does the condition of financial distress cause a frame of mind to feel hopeless about the future, so might as well spend now?

Another thing I found is that bad things come in multiples.  In other words, someone loses their job and also wrecked their car.  Or they get an eviction notice and their car was impounded due to illegal parking.  Or the husband was thrown in jail and the kid has a bad illness.

Some of these misfortunes come as a consequence of bad choices, and sometimes they just happen as a natural part of human experience.  When due to bad choices, we teach and encourage repentance, and how to change behaviors.  The engineer in me would tend to get discouraged, because I would want to fix things.  But often I was powerless to do so, and it required action by the afflicted party, and it was distressing when they wouldn't follow through.  And sometimes, in those cases, you just have to let the consequences result, difficult as they might be.

California or Bust

As I approached graduation in late 1976 from BYU in electrical engineering I was excited about the prospects of gainful employment.  As we considered potential jobs we narrowed our choices down to a location with warm or mild weather, and in the western states.  I did not pursue interviewing with Hewlett Packard (the premier engineering company at the time) because we didn't really want to live in Colorado.  Nor did I interview with IBM for an Endicott, NY, opportunity.  I interviewed with Intel, ESL, and another company in the San Jose area, and with Burroughs in Mission Viejo and Santa Barbara.  I got attractive job offers from all, but was most interested in pursuing Naval Weapons Center in China Lake, CA, because of reasonable proximity to both our folks (2.5 hours drive), inexpensive real estate (compared to other California locations), and job security and benefits working for the civil service.

NWC was anxious to hire me, but initially could only offer a GS-7 position, whereas, with my masters degree, I qualified for GS-9.  I held out and within a couple of weeks the GS-9 offer came through, so we loaded up all our possessions into a '66 Chevy wagon pulling a U-Haul trailer and it was "California or Bust".

We moved into a duplex on base and started fitting into the tight-knit community of Ridgecrest/China Lake, and started our lives as "normal" people, instead of students (as we used to joke about and long for).

Here is the Michelson Laboratory where I worked.

I rode my bike to work most days, as well as a Honda CB100 motorcycle.  Winters were rather nice, summers quite hot.  And it would get windy at times.

My primary job for the two years I worked there was as a design engineer on the Sidewinder 9M missile.  It was very interesting and rewarding work, mostly analog circuit design, as well as analog and digital computer simulation work.  The field tests were exciting and memorable. 

After only four months we were able to buy a new home off base.  It was a lot of work putting in the yard and other improvements.  But we loved our new home and were pleased to be on the elevator of appreciating home prices.

But, as the project wound down I started getting itchy to work in the private sector.  We were sad to leave our friends and first home.

Where's Waldo?

Just for fun, I'm going to pick some photos from our family archives and let you guess who, where, and when for each, and any other interesting circumstances.  (Edited with answers in parentheses.)

Photo #1  (Blair, early 1977, Fowler St., China Lake)

Photo #2  (Suzanne and Sandra, summer 1976 in Europe, probably Vienna)

Photo #3  (Spring 1977, our new home in Ridgecrest)

Photo #4  (A beautiful woman, AKA Suzanne, on ferry from Amsterdam to Harwich, June 1976)

Photo #5  (Blair, Alyson, Daniel, Eric, Jason, Dec. 1978, Roy Utah)

Photo #6  (Suzanne and Glade, Holland, Aug. 1976)

Photo #7  (Blair in our Ridgecrest home, early 1978)

Photo #8  (Our new home, Meridian Idaho, early 1979)

Photo 9  (Barry's graduation, Riverside CA, 1966--I can't help but laugh every viewing of this photo)

Thousands of photos

A few years ago we hired someone to convert all our 8mm home movies to digital.  I continued with the task of converting all our home VHS and Hi-8 family videos, as well.  So I have been able to edit them on my computer and burn DVDs to give to each family member.  I'm still not done with the project--I'm up to about the year 2000.

Similarly, we have thousands of slides and prints stashed away in boxes.  We bought a flatbed scanner with photo scanning capabilities some years ago.  We scanned some of our slides with it but it was obvious the job was tedious, and the quality was disappointing.  Doing some research on the problem I discovered the unanimous opinion seemed to be the Nikon 5000ED was the preferred equipment for the job.  They fetched about $1200 to $1500, but I thought we could buy one, scan all our slides, then one of our kids could hire himself out to scan others' slides for a fee.  A cushy job for a teenager.

This Nikon scanner model had been out about five years, which is forever in the technology world, so I dragged my feet and figured a newer, better model would come out.  The next time I checked things out Nikon had discontinued making slide scanners at all, and used ones were selling on ebay for over $2000.  This discouraged me further.

Then, last December, one of our friends mentioned they had a model 4000ED Nikon scanner that they would be happy to loan us.  So my multi-day project last Christmas season was scanning 4000 slides, covering the years 1972 through 1996.  Fortunately, the scanner had a batch autoloader for slides, so, except for when it jammed, I could walk away for an hour, then return to load the next batch.  This has been great, as these slides are much more accessible for viewing and are archived digitally.

Now we have boxes of prints (and their negatives) that need to be converted--about 5000.  There really is no convenient way to batch scan prints or negative strips with a high quality scanner like the Nikons.  For now our plan is to do the tedious job with a more recent flatbed photo scanner we bought.  I figure it will take 50 to 80 hours of near constant attention to do the job.  Needless to say, we haven't started yet.

Just to spruce up this post, here are a few slides from our inventory.

My parents and younger siblings at LAX upon my return from my mission in 1973

My brother's family and others from my family overlooking the Rhine River, Germany 1976.

Dingle, Ireland, parish records, 1976

Baby Blair at BYU, 1976

Religion and Politics

General wisdom dictates that politics and religion should never be discussed in cordial society.  Too many strong, perhaps dogmatic opinions.  In recent days our family has exchanged some differing views on each, especially politics, via email.  I'm pleased that the discussion has taken the high road and nobody has come to blows.  I thought I would chime in via this blog post.

I was disappointed, though not surprised that Romney lost his presidential bid.  It is tough to unseat a charismatic incumbent, even in hard economic times, though that made for a close race.

There was one campaign theme that troubled me.  I felt it was a cheap shot the way Democrats portrayed Romney as one of the rich elite and disconnected from mainstream America.  I suspect most politicians, on both sides of the aisle, including Obama, could be similarly accused.

Further, I was sad to see Democrats pandering to an all too natural tendency of human nature to envy and resent those who are better off.  I felt they were driving a wedge between the haves and have-nots, and exploiting this to their political advantage at the expense of further dividing society and national unity.  The message seemed to be "let's sock it to the rich, they're getting a free ride and are gouging the poor and middle class".

I can't speak regarding all wealthy people, but the ones I know who might be considered such are heavy tax payers, and are quietly generous well beyond paying customary tithing and fast offering donations.  They don't hesitate at all in helping those who are less fortunate.  Some might look askew at their vacation homes, expensive toys, and exotic trips, but I have seen this other side, especially while serving as bishop.  I have been profoundly moved and humbled by what I have seen.  As bishop I was grateful they had the means and resources to help others, and that they stepped up and did so.  I see their contributions to society and the economy, and I don't begrudge their financial success at all.

Anyone in our church who has served as bishop, or Relief Society president, or compassionate service leader, or priesthood leader, or often home/visiting teacher is not disconnected from the poor and unfortunate.  As Christ said, the poor will always be among us.  The Church welfare program and philosophy of helping the needy is positive and heartwarming, and too often in contrast with the forced "take from the rich and give to the poor" methods of government, with its unavoidable waste and inefficiencies, and unintended debilitating results.  But I begin to ramble and preach.

Though generally aligned with Republican political thought, especially on the economy, and issues like pro-life, I confess I gave the nod to Obama on foreign policy.  I felt the Republicans hammering on the Benghazi attack was off base.  I prefer Obama's more even handed approach to the Middle East, rather than Romney's unabashed alignment with Israel.

By the way, one of my tennis friends asked a few days before the election what I thought about a Mormon president.  In retrospect, I find it odd and was somewhat embarrassed at the time when I didn't understand what he was talking about.  When I thought of Mormon president I thought of Thomas Monson, or my stake president--didn't connect the dots to the presidential race at all.  But now I find it interesting, and perhaps reassuring, that I didn't view religious affiliation as a factor in my choice of candidates. 

Unlike many Republicans, I am not beset by post-election gloom.  While I don't agree with Obama's politics in general, I am ecstatic to have participated in a free, open election, with a choice between two exceptional men who are good, and want the best for America.  I am optimistic about America, and I believe we will work through the challenges we face.

Sing, Choirs of Angels

I have long enjoyed singing in ward choirs.  Some ward choir directors were extremely competent and great teachers.  Some hymns were very challenging, and enjoyable, such as selections of Handel's Messiah, or Beethoven.  Christmas sacrament meetings were typical highlights. 

Several years I participated in a community choir and orchestra under Dr. Walter Richardson to perform Handel's Messiah.  The direction and skills required went up a definite notch for me.  And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I have always enjoyed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and in recent years have particularly enjoyed Mack Wilberg's arrangements as performed by them.  Their annual Christmas concerts are marvelous, and I own many DVDs of these performances.  It is my fantasy to sing for the Tabernacle Choir someday--but it will never happen.

Last December I attended the Christmas concert of the Portland Ensign Choir and Orchestra, and it was fantastic!  I attended another of their concerts in the spring.  I entertained thoughts of trying to join that choir, and several weeks ago saw a notice for auditions, and signed up.

I went to the audition, and heard others trying out in the adjacent room.  They were very good, and I felt intimidated.  I never had formal choir training.  No singing lessons.  I learned to read music playing the trumpet as a youth.  I never auditioned before.

I read the commitment form and was discouraged further.  Two hour mandatory practices every Tuesday night, September through June, with three concerts (one of which would be during my planned travel for my sabbatical).  I didn't feel I could commit.  When my turn came I was frank with the director and told him so, and that perhaps I could save his time and bag the audition.  He was supportive and said do the audition anyway, which I did.  I sang Redeemer of Israel, plus a number of vocal exercises at his direction.  He said I had a nice voice and seemed teachable, thought they could be flexible with my sabbatical schedule, and invited me to stay for the choir practice that evening.

I thought, "Well, I'm already here.  Perhaps I'll just stay for the practice."  Wow!  I was immediately hooked by the glorious musical selections for the upcoming Christmas concert, by the obvious talent all around me, and the expert direction.  I wanted to do this!

A few days later I got an email acceptance into the choir as a baritone.  I've been to every practice and have spent hours learning and practicing the music (we must memorize it--no sheet music at the concert).  It is very hard, but so rewarding.  This is kind of like the Portland metro area equivalent of the Tabernacle Choir, so I'm living my fantasy, in a way.

More and more Wheat Chex

It is time for my annual blog post about stocking up on Wheat Chex when they are on sale.  Seems like that happens every year about this time.  Here is a link from previously.

No coupons this year, but $1.95 is a pretty good price.  Only 18 boxes this purchase.  Plus, for variety, a single box of Grape Nuts Flakes.

I stash them on top of the kitchen shelves.  There are some Raisin Nut Bran in there, as well.

I find Wheat Chex to be the best cereal for fending off hunger.  I can go well past noon or 1:00 before lunch.  Raisin Nut Bran taste better, but I get hungry a little earlier.  Something like Cheerios?  Forget it--I'm starving by 10:00.

Guten Appetit!