There is a Mormon Church only two miles from this house. It escapes me why the Mormons elected to build a large church in Short Hills, New Jersey. As far as can be determined, their sect has a very limited appeal to residents of Summit, Livingston, Millburn and Short Hills. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been with us for several years. On Sunday mornings, it is filled by people from all over Northern New Jersey. In the afternoon service, the church is filled again by Latinos coming mainly from Newark and its suburbs. The Mormons would like to be called Latter Day Saints, but that name has not caught on, at least in this area, where there are many affluent Catholic, Jewish and Protestant residents.
While the church near here was being established, Mormon representatives would appear regularly on our street and on our doorstep. They were always polite, but their persistence was something to behold. It has never fallen to me to attend any kind of service in the Short Hills Mormon Church, which it is understood to be called a “Stake.” But that is not to downgrade them in any way; my attendance in thousands of other churches has not occurred either.
In former times, the Mormon Church encouraged men to take as many wives as could be supported by the one Mormon man. In most cases, the multiple wives lived together in a communal arrangement with the husband. There were elaborate schemes to provide individual attention to the wives. The wives all seemed to have their own rooms and the husband tried to divide his time equally among them.
But multiple marriages were outlawed by the church as a condition for admitting Utah to the United States. But while the church officially frowns upon multiple marriages, many men practice it openly today and no one calls the cops. Senator Hatch of Utah is all wound up about trying to get Bush’s Right Wing judicial nominees through the Senate Judicial Committee, but he has never spoken out about multiple marriages.
In December, 2003 we are told by the New York Times and by other publications, that the Mormons are conducting posthumous baptisms of dead Jews. Why the Jews must be a church secret. According to Mormon theology, all people, living or dead, possess “free agency”. Apparently, Mormons have used that theological doctrine to include dead members of the Jewish faith in baptismal rites, whether it was requested or not while the person was living. No instances of such requests come to anyone’s mind. Many holocaust victims have been given Mormon baptismal rites with absolutely no indication that the victims knew anything about such a practice or even about the Mormon sect.
Holocaust victims were only part of the story. The philosopher Theodore Herzl as well as David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, have had the Mormon postmortem baptismal rites, as has the teenage diarist Anne Frank.
For years, Jewish leaders have attempted to make the Mormons stop this practice. The Jewish leaders thought they had an agreement that the postmortem baptisms would stop. But they seem to continue in spite of past agreements to cease and desist.
My sentiments are all with the Jews on this subject. If the Mormons can baptize people against their will after postmortem exercises take place, what is to keep them from baptizing a complete non-believer like me. After all, my home is only two miles from their large church. Perhaps my remains, if any, will escape the clutches of the Mormons only because the LDS crowd will conclude that my surname is not Jewish. But my first given name is Ezra, the scribe of Jerusalem. But that is a thin reed to hang my hat on. Allstate sells all kinds of insurance. Perhaps they will insure me against becoming a Mormon after my transformation to an angel takes place. It is hoped that the Umbrella policy from Allstate may cover that distressful outcome. We will have to see.
SOLDIERS DON’T GET PAID TO THINK
During my Army enlistment in World War II, many people told me and my colleagues that you are here to shut up, and to say “Yes Sir.” That was always followed by the inviolable American military thought that in this Army, you don’t get paid for thinking. Old time officers and enlisted men gave me that advice and after a while, it sunk into my brain. It has been 59 years since my discharge and that nugget remains in my aging brain.
One of the facts that causes me to think about not getting paid to think, is the proliferation of retired Colonels and Generals that may be found on many news programs. CNN has a standby Colonel called Patrick Lang. He pops up regularly and seems to comment on any military subject.
Colonel Lang (Retired) and all the other military commentators seem to have spent many years in the Armed Forces of the United States. From my observations, many of them seem to have spent several decades avoiding thinking, hence, the upward promotions. In my view of things military, the long-termers who have kowtowed their way to field rank, Colonels and above, have gone without thinking for much of their adult lives. If anyone thinks this is a harsh assessment, that person should remember that ANYONE who opposes the official military line is labeled a troublemaker and he gets no more promotions or, most often, he is told to prepare for discharge.
It happened to General Zinni who showed no enthusiasm for Bush’s war in Iraq. It happened to General Wesley Clark for something he did back in Kosovo. The military services want to hear a resounding “Yes Sir” to every proposition.
When a suggestion came to me, it was expressed very early in my military service. Calling that service a career would be a misleading misnomer. As soon as the innocent suggestion was voiced, the drill sergeant let me have it. He said, “You are here to shut up” and to say “Yes Sir” at appropriate intervals. It was my conclusion then, and it is my conclusion now dozens of years later, that military men are not paid to think. None. Yes Sir is how it is done and why the military crowd is so deficient in intellectual achievements.
IN DEEP WATER
Newsweek magazine in its year end edition had thumbnail sketches of prominent personalities. Many of them shown in the Newsweek summary were members of the current Bush administration.
The thumbnail sketch of Condoleezza Rice said simply, “In over her head.” Most impartial observers and many impartial Republicans have long since reached the same conclusion. She is used now by Bush to carry unfavorable news to Cabinet members, as was the case when James Baker was sent to Europe to ask France, Germany and Russia to ease Iraq’s debts to them. Ms. Rice was told to convey the unpleasant news to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Bush did not speak to Powell ahead of time.
The fact that Miss Rice is in over her head comes as no surprise to anyone. She has spent her life as an academic. She has no military background and none in international diplomacy, both requisites for holding the job as National Security Advisor. Can anyone imagine Condoleezza knocking the heads of two arguing generals together? Or reconciling a dispute between warring factions in the State Department? Or by telling Ariel Sharon that there will be no more Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory? Not on your life.
The fact that Miss Rice is in well over her head comes as no surprise at all. The fault has to lie with the man who gave her this impossible assignment – for her – to carry out.
There is a second member of the administration in the same trouble as Condoleezza. This is a holder of a cabinet level appointment as Secretary of Agriculture. Anne Veneman now has the unhappy assignment to tell the world that eating American beef is perfectly all right – regardless of the mad cow disease found recently in a meat packing plant.
Ms. Veneman is in over her head because no one believes her. They are well advised to have their distrust of her injunctions to eat beef right now. The Secretary of Agriculture has no record of walking in a barn or milking a cow or nursing a sick calf back to health. Her hands were never soiled by farm work.
Quite to the contrary, when it came to soiled hands, Ms. Veneman received her cabinet appointment because she was a lobbyist in the agricultural sector. Her job was to ask or persuade government officials to rule favorably on her propositions or to get her bosses to oppose unfavorable government rulings. That’s what lobbyists do. She spent no time wrestling steers or planting a wheat crop. She is and was a lobbyist when this administration rewarded her by giving her the job as Secretary of Agriculture.
When a Nobel Prize scientist tried to get an appointment with her, she turned him down until he got the ear of Karl Rove, Bush’s political guru to intervene. When the scientist eventually saw Ms. Veneman, he warned her about what was going to happen with respect to mad cow disease. She rejected his advice which was delivered last summer.
And so we have two women who plainly are in over their heads in this administration. Bush has not seen fit to get qualified replacements, so we are left to muddle on through. The only response from Bush is to advise us to eat more beef. The answer in this situation is to consider a meat-free vegetarian diet and to hope that the Defense Department or the Department of State have no sticky mess to sort out anytime soon.
In the end the Rice-Veneman affair leads to a recall of an incident last Summer. A woman was found wandering around the parking lot of a supermarket here in New Jersey. She said she had forgotten where her car was parked. When asked is it was a Ford or Chevy or a Mercedes, her wonderment did not improve. She said that her car may have been an Adidas. Rice and Veneman are in the same boat as the owner of that disappearing Adidas. They don’t have a clue.
GENEROUS WOMEN
During a long career with AT&T, this old geezer had an opportunity to get to know the behind the scenes operations in St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and New York. All things considered, the people who staffed AT&T traffic operating rooms were among the least known and most generous people imaginable. It showed in many ways. Here is one case of the generous behavior of several of them.
In 1953, the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society said there was a baby girl available to be taken to a permanent home. Their response was in answer to our application for adoption. That was on a Monday. The baby was in a foster home on the South Side of Chicago and she was to be picked up early on Thursday morning.
Ordinary protocol calls for mailing out announcements of the birth of children. Ah, but finding a card announcement of the impending adoption was a completely different story. At the time, the largest department store in Chicago was Marshall Fields. Their card selection was enormous and it was located below the main floor – that is to say, in the basement.
Pawing through all the cards announcing the births of children was a bit of a challenge, but there was no card dealing with the adoption of a child. None at all. When the going got very disappointing, a woman from the #1 Chicago Traffic Office came over to see about what her colleague was doing on Monday night at Marshall Fields, the evening when Chicago women looked for bargains. The #1 Office in Chicago was where my employment took had brought me. The colleague–bargain hunter was Betty Kruchten. Betty looked at the cards herself and agreed there was nothing for the adopting of a baby. She suggested that we should prepare a card and forget about store bought cards. Which is what we decided to do. It is good that it had Betty Kruchten’s approval.
On Thursday morning, December 8, 1953, it was necessary to drive from our Near North Side flat, through the downtown congestion to travel some 70 blocks south to the foster home. It may have been 10AM or 10:30AM when the baby was safely deposited back in the flat on California and Lunt, not far from Wrigley Field. By the time the train came and deposited its passengers (including me) on Franklin Street in downtown Chicago, the time must have been 11:30AM.
It was my intention to go to an office shared with Dick Nichols and an old timer named Kess Kessler. The adoption was never a secret and it was never intended to be a secret. On the other hand, it was my intention to tell anyone who asked about it. If they didn’t ask, they didn’t get told. That was my intention. It was the intention of all the women and the three men in the #1 Office that there was going to be a celebration with gifts galore for Maureen, the new baby. My intention had nothing to do with it.
The gifts for Maureen were piled all over my desk and chair. Dick Nichols was accused, by me, of piling his Christmas gifts on my desk. He denied that allegation. It was necessary to borrow a car from Otis Dodge, the Division Plant Superintendent, to get all the gifts taken to our North Side flat.
The spur of the moment generosity of the Chicago people was overwhelming to me. My thanks to the gathered assemblage was taken well, but hearing thanks was not uppermost on their minds. Those #1 Traffic Office women wanted to know about the baby. So they heard what little there was to know. Adoption agencies, even as reputable as the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society were, are eager to protect the names of the natural mother and the father, so we did not know a lot about the baby’s background.
It took me awhile to figure out that Betty Kruchten was the instigator of the gift giving celebration. Betty did not work for me. Her job had nothing to do with my efforts. Mobilizing all these women into buying all those gifts was an act of love for an adopted baby. Nothing less than an act of love.
This sort of conduct is typical of Traffic women. Many of them lead fairly lonely lives. Less than half, by my estimation, were married. But mention an adoption, and they were all there. There was Mildred Simon who lost her lower legs in a childhood accident. Mildred had prosthetic legs and in all the time she was known to me, no sound of discouragement ever escaped her lips. She wore make up and being around her was an inspiration. Beatrice Bell, the office manager, a spinster well into her 60’s was among the leading celebrants.
Those people in Chicago had known me for less than a year. It made no difference to them. After the gift giving on December 8, it was my thought that things would quiet down. However, for the rest of my stay in Chicago, from time to time, women would drop by my office and say, “I saw this little dress and it is something for you to take to Maureen.” My directions were clear; take the dress to old Blondie.
Harry Livermore, the Chicago Division Traffic Superintendent during my tenure, answered my call during the New Year’s holidays. We agreed that Chicago, the home of Al Capone, had some wonderfully generous citizens as well. All those people will always be in my memory, starting with Betty Kruchten.
E. E. CARR
January 7, 2004
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Stuffing one’s cabinet full of incompetent people seems to be a bona fide pastime for Republican presidents. Pop is probably rolling in his grave with these Trump picks. Each one could get an essay, easy. Let’s put a Republican mega-donor billionaire who doesn’t believe in public education in charge of the Department of Education. Let’s put Rick Perry in charge of the Department of Energy — coming after a nobel prize winner and MIT an professor — when he can’t even remember that the department exists. Or put the fucking CEO of Exxon in charge of the State Department. Why not have a white nationlist as chief of strategy while you’re at it?
I’d love for Condy and Powell to come back at this point. Good god.
On a lighter note, Pop’s coworkers were sweethearts. I’m sure that the impromptu baby shower meant a whole lot to them as they were just getting started with kid #1.