The replacement Clock Tower adventure

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THIS MORNING, Irvine Valley College’s new “Clock Tower”—the long-awaited replacement of the venerable old Clock Tower—finally arrived.

It arrived by post, in a box, which the mail guy brought to President Glenn Roquemore’s office. Here's what happened next:

●●●●●

...Glenn greedily opens the little box. He pulls out the clock, separating it from the tissue paper. He holds it high and smiles.

“Kinda small, isn’t it?” says the mail guy.

Glenn sniffs. "Wayne got it. It's really well-made."

He places it flat on the pea green blotter atop his desk. He hovers above it. “It looks bigger there. Sort of.”

After a while, Glenn decides to go outside to "try it out." He enlists the mail guy, who looks confused.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” says Glenn, decisively. "It's time for me to take charge. C'mon!"


They take it out to the spot of the old Clock Tower. The mail guy climbs into the planter and plants the clock where he figures it oughta be.

It's about as noteworthy as a dirt clod.

"Looks like shit there," says the mail guy. "Total insignificant shit. If you want my opinion."

"Yeah," says Glenn. "It's supposed to be a real good clock." Glenn shakes his head.

After a while, he says: "How about on this thingy on the dingus that holds the light fixture dealy?" Glenn has the guy move it there. They step back and stare.

"OK, that looks worse," says the mail guy.

"Plus, the clock stopped."

Glenn stops to think. He thinks hard. The mail guy looks at his feet. A rabbit hops by and stops, unnoticed by the president and the mailman, to stare. He is wearing a vest and a pocketwatch. Yes, he is a white rabbit.










Glenn decides to put the Clock out near the library. They walk there and find a squarish light thingy by a planter; they put the Clock Tower on top of it; then they stare at it.

"That bird shit on that squarish thingy is a problem," says the mail guy. "It detracts."

"Yeah," says Glenn. "How'd that get there?"

"Birds."

They stare for a while. The mail guy fingers the bird crap.

Then Glenn says: "What about over there by that door?"

"What door?"

"I dunno. That door." Glenn puts it there himself, on the ground, by the door.

"Now it looks super small. I think it's getting smaller," says the mail guy.

"Yeah." Glenn thinks really hard now. He thinks for five whole minutes. Then he smiles.

Glenn next walks over to the parking lot. He puts the Clock Tower near a bend in the path. He stands back and squints at it.

"OK, now it looks like some kind of weird mushroom," says the mail guy. "I mean, that's if you want my opinion."

"Mushroom? Wait," said Glenn, "what's this?" His brow furrows and he kneels down and sure enough, there is a mushroom, right next to the new Clock Tower and, on top of the mushroom sits a caterpillar, a blue one smoking a long hookah.

The Caterpillar and Glenn look at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar takes the hookah out of his mouth, and addresses him in a languid, sleepy voice.

"Who are you?" says the Caterpillar.

This is not a particularly encouraging opening for a conversation. Clearly the insect has not seen the president's special parking space. Reserved for Glenn. Glenn replies, rather shyly, "I—I hardly know, just at present—at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then. It all started with this, this, Clock Tower." He points.

His finger shakes a little and he suddenly realizes the terrible toll that being college president has taken on him. He used to be so carefree and jolly, cruising along through life on any number of sporty conveyances, Seadoos and Cushmans and Vespas, when not shooting at small animals.

"What do you mean by that?" says the Caterpillar sternly. "Explain yourself!"

"I can't explain myself, I'm afraid," replies Glenn, "because I'm not myself, you see."

"I don't see," says the Caterpillar.

"I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly," Glenn replies very politely, "for I can't understand it myself to begin with. It has something to do with, to do with, uh,…size."

The mail guy is clearly uncomfortable. He is an employee of the Postal Services, trained for all kinds of circumstances, but not this. He pushes his clipboard at Glenn. "If you could just sign here sir, well, that would be great. I have other deliveries. It's getting late."


The Caterpillar ignores the mail guy and turns his attention to Glenn. "What size do you want to be?" he asks. "Smaller? Bigger?"

"Oh, I'm not particular as to size," Glenn hastily responds. "it's not about me, it's about…" He nods toward the Clock Tower.

"You'll get used to it in time," says the Caterpillar; and he puts the hookah into his mouth and begins smoking again.

"I know I will, but others won't. They will see it as a symbol of…me."

After a minute or two the Caterpillar takes the hookah out of his mouth and yawns once or twice, and shakes himself. Then he gets down off the mushroom, and crawls away in the grass, merely remarking as he goes, "One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter."

"One side of what? The other side of what?" thinks Glenn to himself. And why is this big animal quoting the Jefferson Airplane? The mail guy has deserted him by this time and the students seem to be making a wide circle around the suited fellow kneeling next to the mushroom in the grass.

"Of the mushroom," says the Caterpillar, just as if Glenn has asked his question aloud; and in another moment he is out of sight, heading toward the coffee cart with a cloud of sweet smelling smoke trailing after.

Glenn remains looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it is perfectly round, he finds this a very difficult question. However, at last he stretches his arms round it as far as they will go, and breaks off a bit of the edge with each hand.

"And now which is which?'" he says to himself, and nibbles a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect: the next moment he feels a violent blow underneath his chin: it has struck his foot!


But then he looks up at the new Clock Tower and smiles. Perfect, thinks Glenn. Now as soon as everyone takes a bite—

—CW
—RG
—RE

Slackery, knuckleheadery, and abject doltitude

I REMEMBER 1972, when I was seventeen and an active Nixon-hating McGovernite, and the voting age had just dropped to eighteen. Dang! “Missed it by that much,” I said. But I was very happy about the change. “It’ll sure make a difference,” I said.

And then, on election day, these 18-to-20-year-olds came out in droves not to vote. “Morons!” I said. I wasn’t happy.

Plus the ones who voted—they mostly voted for that creep Nixon. That Nixon was a creep and a ruthless & dangerous asshole was OBVIOUS. And they voted for 'im! What was the matter with these knuckleheads?

Well, after two or three years, everyone came around to my way of thinking.

Too late, fools!

Participation-wise (and elsewise), it’s been downhill ever since. (See Register graphic.) That’s probably a good thing, near as I can tell.

(By 1982, I was married, and my then-wife, who is a year older than me and very bright, finally admitted that, in ’72, she had voted for—NIXON! D’oh!!!!! Plus she had named her dog “Barry”! Heimat Land! [I've gotta admit: old BG is looking better each day.])

OK, so young people don’t vote, and when they do, they usually get it wrong, just like their dopey elders.

But maybe (um, maybe not) things are changing in the youth-participation department. In a piece in this morning’s OC Register, ”Battling voter apathy”, we learn that

…Excitement about turning out youth voters surged after the 2004 presidential election when turnout jumped 11 percent from the 2000 election.

Although turnout is always lower in non-presidential election years like this one, optimists are pointing to signs of an increased interest in voting among young people. Surveys done by Young Voter Strategies indicate that 80 percent of people 18-30 years old are registered to vote, and 63 percent say they have been paying close attention to the midterm candidates and issues this year.

Despite these high numbers, not even half of the voters in the 18-24 age range who are eligible to vote have done so since the 1972 election…. In midterm election years, no more than a quarter of this age group goes to the polls.

…This year UCI hosted an early voting station that was open for a week in October for all voters. At CSUF, a mobile early voting van made an appearance two weeks before Election Day. Volunteers say that on-campus voting makes persuading people to show up to vote much easier.

"This is the first time students will be able to vote on campus," says Katherine Doehring, a 22-year-old Northwestern graduate who runs a […] campaign to turn out voters at UCI. "This is going to be huge."….

We’ll see.

And so what if it is “huge.” Have you ever asked your students if they know the name of their Congressman? (Please excuse the incorrectness. I’m peevish today.) Try it. I'll make a prediction: only two or three hands will go up. And of the three, two will get it wrong.

Here are my voting recommendations. Don’t vote unless you’ve actually followed the issues & candidates and studied them carefully. Don't vote if you admire the President's new clothes.

And don’t feel good about voting just because you voted. That kind of feel-goodery is just assholery.

And the next time somebody chirps, “Your vote counts!”, clobber ‘em for me, and yell, "Oh yeah? What if I'M A CLUELESS ASSHOLE? Didja ever think of THAT?!"

✌ ✌ ✌ ✌

TODAY'S INSPIRING QUOTATION: "I think every good Christian ought to kick [Jerry] Falwell right in the ass." —Barry Goldwater

FOF

For the latest on FOF (i.e., Friend of Fuentes) Tan Nguyen, check out Martin Wisckol’s Nov. 3 post on Total Buzz.

Wisckol presents a letter by Attorney General spokesman Nathan Barankin. It's well worth reading.

Previous TAN coverage on DtB:

● ”Stand By Our Tan”—Babe pics!
● Tom’s kind of guy
● Rest of the story
● Al Tello’s wife?
● Lost in TANslation
● Tan’s senior campaign advisor: Tom Fuentes

Prayer and being "out of the picture" at the South Orange County Community College District

In this morning’s OC Register, we find an article concerning the 25th anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) regional office: Fighting for fairness. The article includes a brief interview with Joyce Greenspan, the office’s recently-retired director.

I got to know Joyce back in 1997. Here's how: on the morning of the August 1997 SOCCCD board meeting, I read the meeting’s agenda. It revealed then-Trustee Steven Frogue’s intention of holding a “forum on the JFK Assassination.” He planned to invite four speakers to Saddleback College. I recognized one of the speakers' names: "Michael Collins Piper."

So I called the local ADL. Joyce answered the phone.

Joyce attended the board meeting. (See The Excrement Hits the Fan). In her public remarks, she noted that at least two of Frogue’s guest speakers were associated with the Spotlight, the foremost anti-Semitic newspaper in the U.S. Mr. Piper was the Spotlight’s chief reporter. The other speakers were way-out-there conspiracy mongers. Joyce urged the board not to approve Mr. Frogue's request for his speakers' travel expenses.

The board just blew her off. (John Williams supported his pal Frogue. As always, he looked very staunch.)

The rest, as they say, is districtular history.

PRAYER

As a trustee, Mr. Frogue was heavily into prayer and being openly Christian. He held "prayer breakfasts" at the colleges, where his devotion and appetite were fully on display. Among Frogue's defenders—he was dogged by charges of anti-Semitism going back to 1994—was the local Christian Coalition. (See Ambushing a young critic.) They prayed for 'im. It didn't take.

In the interview in today’s Register, Joyce is asked what conditions were like in OC back in 1981, when the regional office opened. The topic of "prayer" comes up:

In 1981 there was just a hint, a beginning of diversity in Orange County. But it was not a very diverse community, and looking at church-state issues, there wasn't a lot of tolerance for understanding that everybody was not looking at religion the same way. There were a great many issues having to do with local government, having to do with schools, having to do with any public area in which people were speaking as government representatives—teachers, principals, elected officials—and felt that they were speaking to people just like them….

For instance, if you look at a number of city council meetings of those days, there would always be a prayer before a council meeting. Those meetings would begin with a very Christian prayer. It's a discomfort that people feel if you aren't Christian and a meeting is beginning with the invocation of a Christian prayer, it kind of leaves you out of the picture.

Now, people are very careful. If they do a prayer, it's nonsectarian—not just nonsectarian Christian but nonsectarian.

Well, people are careful—except at the South Orange County Community College District, where, routinely, Christian or Christianesque prayers are offered by the very theatrical Mr. Tom Fuentes. If you've ever heard one of his invocations, you know what I mean.


Whenever Mr. Fuentes speaks, and especially when he prays, it is as though his mouth were slowly extruding a string of divine sausage. He's a man who always knows that his words are heavenly words.

That Fuentes is so promiscuous an issuer of prayer should not surprise us, considering what he says he's proud of. When he stepped down as Chair of the local GOP in 2004, he offered these "farewell remarks”:

Now, some have asked me what is it that gives me most joy in twenty years as Chairman of this County Party. It is a little thing. It is the fact that anywhere in this county, whenever Republicans gather, we begin our time together with prayer. You may pray in your way, and I may pray in mine, but, my friends, Republicans in this county always acknowledge a power higher than ourselves as did our Founding Fathers. And, the values, principles, and ideals that flow from the acknowledgement of the divinity, guides our conservative social agenda. It gives us pause to reflect on what is really important in life and society. It motivates us to defend causes that are so critical in the cultural war that today engulfs our nation and its society. (My emphasis.)

Despite his guff about praying “in your way,” Fuentes’ prayers—not just before his Republican pals, but before those assembled for SOCCCD board meetings and events—are plainly Christian, or at least Judeo-Christian: “Let us pray…You, the Creator…please enlighten our minds...we...acknowledge You…Amen.”

Of course, other Trustees pray, too. For instance, we’ve heard plenty of Our heavenly Fathers coming out of Williams’ big mouth. But Mr. Fuentes lays it on pretty thick, Amen-wise. The language and ritual—and especially the eye-rolling—of his prayers are Christian—not Jewish, not Muslim, not Buddist. (Any Roman Catholics out there? Are F's prayers distinctly Catholic? Inquiring minds wanna know.)

FOR YEARS NOW, Saddleback Math instructor Karla Westphal has asked the board to cease engaging in prayer (including nonsectarian prayer—agnostics and atheists can suffer alienation too!) during district and college events. Below is a brief clip of Karla’s most recent request, at May's board meeting:

As I recall, the board didn't respond. They blew her off.


AS YOU MAY KNOW, recently, the Saddleback College Academic Senate passed a resolution urging the board to stop the praying, at least qua "invocations." IVC's Academic Senate joined them. The resolution was then moved up to the State Academic Senate. (There, it was well-received, but the State Senate is notoriously slow-moving, so don't hold your breath.) Expect some noise about this at some point.

As far as I know, trustees break no law when they pray as they do. I believe that, according to the courts, officials may not pray before youngsters at public schools, since the latter are impressionable. But college students are more mature, and so prayers by officials at events in public colleges are allowed.

If so, then the issue here is: what is the best practice? Undeniably, our community, especially at Irvine Valley College, is religiously diverse. At IVC, non-Christian traditions are represented by very large minorities:

Go to the district's Student demographics. (Also this)

● Evidently, in the Fall of ’05 (the most recent data), IVC enrolled about 12,500 students.
● About 3,300—over 26%—were “Asian." (Presumably, most Asian students are non-Judeo-Christian, although I don't really know.)

This means that, at public events that include prayer—especially Mr. Fuentes’ prayer—there is, or there could be, a lot of that “discomfort” and being left “out of the picture” that Greenspan talks about. (Entire district: over 14% of students identified themselves as Asian.)


We’ll try to keep you posted on this issue. (See also Fuentes' good pal Howard Ahmanson: condemning the separation of church and state.)

RELEVANT FACTOIDS:

● According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Orange Countians who are Asian is 15.5%. (2004)

● According to the City of Irvine, Asian & Pacific Islanders made up 29% of the city’s population. (Based on 2000 census.)

Vote As If It Mattered, Part II—or You Be the Judge

"Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." —JK

That late October-early November Surprise I predicted a few weeks back may have arrived from John Kerry. Ironies abound, of course, so that an assessment of the ex-Democratic candidate for president’s (but not so you’d notice) remarks about, basically, the crude hierarchy of class and education offers one a Lazy Susan of possible critiques. The remark about ending up in Iraq, despite being, well, true, is a delicious metaphor, whoever grabs it as the tray of entrees, circles on the table.

Poor Kerry. He has to avoid an honest critique because he is a confused wealthy scion of confusion and wealth and privilege and still can’t say that the U.S. war against the people of Southeast Asia was, no, not a “mistake” or misstep or tragic error, but (if you repeat this I will deny it) imperialism by a country which has been doing this since it invaded the Phillipines and Hormel sold the military a lot of bad canned ham, making it only the easiest exemplary precursor to invading Iraq and Halliburton/KBR selling, well, everything.

Today’s Rosa Brooks column, “Was Kerry Right?”, is articulate and smart and nuanced. It suggests that the political affiliations of the warrior class (they are mostly Republicans) has as least as much to do with the fatalism and weird self-destruction they seem to embrace. I sent Rosa a grateful email. (Still waiting, by the way, to hear from Mr. Rodriguez.)

Anyway, I promised you local judge recommendations. I am a registered Green, against the war, vote labor and choice (No, goddamn it, on Prop 85! No! No! No!) and just sent my contribution to Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

Most judges are okay. One exception there. And one real contest, at the bottom of the ballot.

Joyce Kennard - Yes
Carol Corrigan - Yes
Judith McConnell - Yes
Patricia Benke - Yes
Richard Huffman - No (he has made a number of anti-first amendment decisions)
Judith Haller - Yes
Cynthia Aaron - Yes
Joan Irion - Yes
Art McKinster - Yes
Betty Richli - Yes
Jeffrey King - Yes
Douglas Miller - Yes
Kathleen O'Leary - Yes
Raymond Ikola – Yes

Office No. 4—Sheila Hanson!

—Red Emma

Vote as if it mattered

Sarah & Adam drop by for ice cream

Three-year-old Sarah's phobia du jour: fans. The electric kind.
"How come you're afraid of fans?"
"Because they're snoopy."
"Oh."
Meanwhile, two-year-old Adam has invented his own language. He's even loquacious.
And Sunny's on the prowl.

Guerra-Payan

In this morning’s OC Register: obituary for Saddleback College's only female police officer, Cynthia Guerra-Payan, who died over the weekend:

Motorcyclist died doing what she loved