Montebello E-News

 October 23, 2008

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
 Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 – 1910,
better known by the pen name "Mark Twain", was an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer.  Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the "Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty.

[We are becoming ever more legalistic, that is, ever more dependent on laws to define permissible and punishable activities.  Perhaps we should consider well what Twain is saying about the usefulness of custom as a means to encourage and discourage activities in our community.]

 1. Mi Guerra Es Tu Guerra (My War Is Your War)

2.  The Beat of a Different Drummer, Part 7

3. Announcements

4. Fun Facts about Blue Whales

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  Our Elected Officials Are Doing What?   

6. Be Aware and Share:  We Are Not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

7. About Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”

Mi Guerra Es Tu Guerra (My War Is Your War)

What do you say at a family dinner when you do not agree with family members?

Earlier this year, I was disheartened by the “yahoo” attitude of family members when I mentioned that climate change would aggravate the immigration problem.  The response was, “Let them come.  We’ll be ready.”

In July, my brother and I spoke about the need to lessen America’s dependence on oil, not only because of the price of oil, but, also, because of the possibility of war over oil, as mentioned in the “Beware and Share” citation of the July 31, 2008, E-News.

My brother said that people would not change their habits.  I said that that would lead inevitably to war.  He said that, yes, that would happen.

Are we destined to go to war?  To me it seems a matter of substituting good habits for bad, for asserting collective willpower to be prudent.  If we do not do so, my bad habits will lead to war for you and me.  “Mi guerra es tu guerra”, a variation on the Spanish “Mi casa es su casa”.  Hostility replaces hospitality.

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2008 by a local nonprofit organization.

1. What might be inevitable?

(a) That we would pay $20 a gallon for gasoline.

(b) That there would be war over oil.

2. What is meant by “Mi guerra es tu guerra”?

(a) Even if we have good fuel habits, we might be drawn into war by our neighbor’s bad fuel habits.

(b) Tension between neighbors in Montebello is increasing.

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.
Henry David Thoreau, July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862, was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, sage writer and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, “Civil Disobedience”, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

…We have valued grades and scores more than learning. We have forgotten to teach you that all understanding begins with wonder and with following unexpected discovery in unknown directions. We have tried to stomp the wonder out of you by getting you to choose a track and stick with it. We have asked you to excel in every endeavor and to avoid anything that might diminish your record of excellence. When we rewarded you only for following all of our rules and not for making any of your own, we did more to close your minds than to open them. … I am sorry that we have taught you to value economic success over passionate engagement with your work. … http://www.theroot.com/id/46623
Melissa Harris-Lacewell

If you were to combine the two quotations above, what would you conclude?  That we have taken the “different drummer” out of the classroom?

Let us continue our respite from talking about problems by talking about solutions.  Here we give another example from Tactics of Hope, a book which should be required reading in high school, but which no Montebello high schooler, perhaps no Montebello teacher, knows about (please do correct me if I am wrong):

My [Kailash Satyarthi] concern for children born into poverty started the morning of my first day of school.  On the school steps was a little boy of my age who asked if he could repair my shoes.  He was not a student at my school, and his father, a cobbler, was with him.  I was confused and asked the father why his son could not go to school with me, to which he answered, “We were born to work.  My son is doing what I did when I was his age and what my father did when he was a child.  And we have no money to pay for school.”  My lifelong commitment to help young children get an education rather than being forced into labor started at that moment. ...

RugMark rugs are made on looms and in factories that are inspected independently for child labor.  The rugs are certified with the RugMark® label, each with an individual number that can be traced through the supply chain back to the loom.  A percentage of the sale of a certified rug helps fund child rescue and rehabilitation, as well as daycare, literacy, formal schooling and vocational training for children who might otherwise be coerced into labor.

Demand for child labor is so high in the countries where RugMark operates that desperate parents often sell their children into bondage, including child trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, domestic work and the recruitment of children for armed conflict and drug trafficking.  An estimated 14$ of children in India between the ages of five and fourteen are engaged in child labor activities, including carpet production.  Rugs are among South Asia's top export products and a high employment sector for the poor.  Some people think it’s better when all members of a family work, but child labor really makes poverty worse. ...

Child workers come cheaply and sometimes at no cost, driving down wages for adult laborers.  Children who work forfeit an education that could help them achieve a higher standard of living as adults.  If child exploitation is the norm in a country’s principle industry, there is little chance to break the cycle of extreme poverty.

RugMark’s strategy is replicable as a systemic approach to ending child labor.  Kailash and Nina [Smith] began by raising consumer awareness, and thus demand, for ethically made rugs.  This sent a message down the supply chain that child labor would not be tolerated. ... 

FOR COMMUNITY LEADERS, TEACHERS.  Should we be envious?  From the K12-sl digest, September 18, 2008.  We have some very successful Middle School/High School based service learning projects.  We've had a partnership with our local historical society, and we're gathering video interviews with senior citizens in our community who either attended or taught in the one-room schoolhouses we used prior to centralization.  Our videography department also worked with our town historian as one resource, authentic documents, census records, maps, letters, etc, to create an historical documentary tracing the history of our one-room schoolhouses, through centralization to the present day for the town's bicentennial and to share with our local community.  It's presently 'on loan' at our local library.  We have the CEAP program (Character Education Art Project) in which talented middle school students have developed a series of character education-based murals around our school. The students choose the topics, design the murals and then complete them on their own.  Our SADD students write, direct and act in commercials that encourage sobriety prior to prom season each year.  The commercials are shown to the high school population during the Morning News, which is a locally produced school new show that's shown daily in the Secondary building.  We have the BEEP program (Brittonkill Educational Enrichment Program) which was actually designed by students about 17 years ago who wanted to 'give back' something to our younger students.  We are a K-12 campus school, so our middle school and high school students design courses utilizing their talents and skills, apply to teach them and then actually teach for a 6-week period every mid-winter.  Last year we had over 300 elementary students attend these classes which ranged from foreign language, to various sports, scrapbooking, picture book writing, learning about musicals and other cultures.  We also have many service clubs, one is Kids Care Club which provides service opportunities for our middle school-aged students both on campus and off campus at local nursing homes and shelters.  We also have the TLC: Elementary Volunteers (grades 6-12) who volunteer to work in various settings throughout the elementary school.  The students apply, go through a training session and then during their service, receive periodic review of their work.  Last year we placed nearly 65 students K-5 and in the art department and PE department as well.  There's more than just these programs going on, visit www.brittonkill.k12.ny.us  and click on the 'service learning' link in the lower left hand corner.  Good luck with your projects. Suzanne Myers, Service Learning Coordinator, Brunswick CSD

The blue whale can produce sounds up to one hundred eighty-eight decibels. This is the loudest sound produced by a living animal and has been detected as far away as five hundred thirty miles.

A new born blue whale measures twenty to twenty-six feet or six to seven point nine meters long, and weighs up to six thousand six hundred fourteen pounds or three thousand three kilograms.  http://www.hightechscience.org/funfacts.htm

The following excerpt of a transcript might contain one of the starker statements to come from a former elected official about a major weakness in our democracy.

BILL MOYERS:  His name is Ernest 'Fritz' Hollings, and he spent 38 years in the United States Senate - a long and colorful run during which he made a name for himself as a passionate advocate for the hungry, a champion of balanced budgets, and a fighter for jobs in the textile industry. He called it quits four years ago and went home to South Carolina. But he was back in town recently, to see old friends and sign his new book, Making Government Work. I talked with at a Senate office building on Capitol Hill just before his book party. Why did you write this book now?

FRITZ HOLLINGS: I wrote the book because I could see what was wrong. I was raising money. I wasn't running for reelection.

BILL MOYERS: As a senator in your last term.

FRITZ HOLLINGS: As a senator in the last two or three years that's all I was doing was raising money. And working for the campaign and for the party. The hardest working people in the world are the congressmen and senators. We work from early morning 'til late at night and all weekend and everything else. But we are working now, not for the country, but for the campaign.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

FRITZ HOLLINGS: All the time is fundraisers. All the time is money, money, money, money. In 1998, ten years ago, I ran and had to raise 8 an a half million. The record is there. Eight and a half million is 30,000 a week. Every week for six years. Each and every week for six years. ... http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07252008/transcript4.html.

A solution to the above problem is in part nine of an E-News essay entitled “The Falling Dominos of Democracy”, http://www.mymontebello.com/life_tc_tfdod9.html.

Texters Hurt As They Walk, Ride — Even Cook
ER docs warn of serious injuries, deaths from text-message mishaps
by JoNel Aleccia, MSNBC, July 30, 2008

Apparently, the warning applies to everyone, from college student Danielle Gonzales to Barack Obama’s adviser, Valerie Jarrett: Don’t walk and text at the same time.

Gonzales, a 19-year-old sophomore at San Diego State University, admits she’s stumbled more than once while sending texts on the street.

“I’ve definitely tripped over things sometimes like the little cracks in the ground,” she said. “I have to remember to look up.”

And Jarrett confesses she fell off a Chicago curb several weeks ago while her thumbs were flying on her Blackberry.

"I didn't see the sidewalk and I twisted my ankle," Jarrett said. "It was a nice wake-up call for me to be a lot more careful in the future, because I clearly wasn't paying attention and I should have."

Both got off easy and didn't need medical attention.

But in an alert issued this week, the American College of Emergency Physicians warns of the danger of more serious accidents involving oblivious texters. The ER doctors cite rising reports from doctors around the country of injuries involving text-messaging pedestrians, bicyclists, even Rollerbladers and equestrians. ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25934644

To learn about this newsletter, Montebello E-News, and the accompanying, growing Web site, “My Montebello”, visit www.mymontebello.com.  Also, you will find instructions and contact information for submitting announcements for publication in this newsletter, and for submitting stories to “Montebello Memories” at the Web site.