Montebello E-News

May 29, 2008  

…It’s hard to comprehend the moral implications of a world in which Nike pays Michael Jordan millions to appear in its ads while workers at its foreign shoe factories toil away for pennies a day.  The 500 richest people on the planet now control more wealth than the poorest 3 billion, half the human population.  Is it possible even to grasp this extraordinary imbalance?  And, more important, how do we begin to redress it?
 Excerpted from “Soul of a Citizen,” Loeb, Paul Rogat, Utne Reader, July – August, 1999  

[How has the situation changed since 1999?  There are the Millennium Development Goals, but there is concern that they would not be met.  What solutions would you propose?”]  

  1.  Countdown to Digital Disaster

2.  It’s a Small World after All, Part 3

3. Announcements

4. Fun Facts about Oregon

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  What Spring Cleaning Reveals, Part 1   

6. Be Aware and Share:  Jake, Our Magician      

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

 Countdown to Digital Disaster  

When February 17, 2009, comes around, will you be holding your breath?  No, I will not be, but neither will I be surprised by the fury which will be unleashed.  

If you have not heard the news about the change in television which will be happening that day, I might want to congratulate you for creating your own impregnable universe.  Television originally ran with analog signals beamed to your home antenna;  these days, cable and satellite television run with digital signals, which are clearer.  However, there are many of us who have neither cable nor satellite.  We still have analog signals.  

However, in less than a year, all signals will be digital.  Those who have old television sets which received analog signals will no longer work.  Thus, the “digital-converter box.”  

$40 discount coupons have been offered for the purchase of the box;  how to get coupons was mentioned in a past issue of E-News.  We got two coupons at home and have already used one of them to buy a digital-converter box.  

A converter box cost us only $20 when we used the coupon.  Not bad.  Then the disaster began.  When my brother, the engineer, attached the box to our television set, we certainly received a clear picture—when we received a picture at all.  It seems that the signals for several television channels were too weak, such that it became annoying to watch frozen pictures, hear voices bleat like sheep or see nothing but a blank screen.  

Brother had even tried to boost the weak signals by purchasing an amplifier, which needed a cable.  An additional $31, a trip to Wal-Mart, and the extra time did not help.  

To add insult to injury, my father, who suffers from severe macular degeneration, had learned by touch to locate the buttons on the remote control when the television was analog.  With the converter box, there was another remote control and extra buttons to push.  Matters became complicated and went from annoying to explosively irritating.  

So I disconnected the converter box, which sits quietly under the television set.  We are back to analog and there is peace.  We do not miss the clearer picture of digital.  But I wonder what will happen on February 17, 2009.  

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 is the significance of February 17, 2009?

(a) That will be the first President’s Day under a new Administration.

(b) All television signals will become digital.  

2. Why might we see a digital disaster?

(a) Many people have analog television and conversion to digital television might not be as easy or cheap as plugging in a converter box.

(b) Computers will crash because of a virus which has infected all Microsoft operating systems.  

3. Where should we look for a solution?

(a) The Federal government, as it approved the conversion to digital television.

(b) To our own community, because government will not have the resources to handle the coming disaster.   

 The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., 1924 – 2006,
 was a liberal Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist with international stature.  He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ.  In his younger days he was a superb athlete, a highly talented pianist, a CIA agent, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr's social philosophy led him to become a leader in the civil-rights and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s.  

Have you thought about getting away, about being left alone and leaving others alone?  As the population of our planet increases and the amount of land upon which we can live remains unchanged—if not, in fact, decreasing—this dream of many becomes a fading, wistful thought.  

In the previous part, we saw that technology could help keep other people’s problems from becoming our own.  But we saw that technology was dependent on the people who controlled it, and those in control did not always use technology to benefit the public.  

What then would be the solution?  

There is only one solution, that the control of technology be changed so that the technology not be used for nefarious ends.  The only way in which that could happen is  

·        if control were shared by many people;

·        all the controlling activities of those people were publicly known, immediately known;

·        any controlling activity could be challenged and halted by another group of people, akin to our American system of checks and balances.  

It would be necessary for the three points above  

·        to be based on rules agreed upon by people around the globe, much like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;

·        to include people of different economic status, different faiths, different culture;

·        to be enforceable by a group pledged to uphold the rules, much like the United States armed forces upholds the Constitution, with this group under transparent civilian control.  

If there were an attempt to set up such a structure, from where might resistance come?  

·        Industrialists, inventors, and shareholders who wanted to control technology for profit.

·        Governments wanting to use technology to resist opposition and rebellion.

·        Rebels who see technology as the means to gain negotiating strength vis-à-vis governments. 

Such resistance would be considerable, probably insuperable.  What, then, could be done?  

FOR EVERYONE.  First-of-its-kind food festival.  Mark your calendar and save the date.  Saturday, May 31, from noon to 11 p.m.  The Armenian Apostolic Holy Cross Cathedral will host the First Annual Armenian Food Fair and Fest.  Live Armenian entertainment and performances.  Fabulous, freshly prepared Armenian food and pastry.  Guitar Hero contest, dance classes, cooking demonstrations and much, much more.  For the first time your favorite dishes can be pre-ordered and packed to take home.  Visit www.armenianfoodfair.com to get the latest info on the festival!  

FOR EVERYONE.  Commission meeting.  The Montebello City Planning Commission is holding its regularly-scheduled meeting on Tuesday, June 3, 2008, at 7 p.m. at city hall.  The meeting is open to the public.  For more information, 323.887.1200.  

FOR EVERYONE.  Commission meeting.  The Montebello Traffic Safety Commission is holding its regularly-scheduled meeting on Wednesday, June 4, 2008, at 7 p.m. at city hall.  The meeting is open to the public.  For more information, 323.887.1200.  

Oregon’s state flag pictures a beaver on its reverse side. It is the only state flag to carry two separate designs.

Oregon has more ghost towns than any other state. ["Sustainability" is a buzz word these days.  Why were the ghost towns not sustainable?]  

At 8,000 feet deep, Hells Canyon is the deepest river gorge in North America. 

Oregon’s state birthday is on February 14, Valentine’s Day.

Portland is considered an example of outstanding urban planning.  The city is known as “The City of Roses”.  [But is Portland sustainable?]  

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States.  It was formed more than six thousand five hundred years ago.  Its crystal-blue waters are world renowned.  

A treaty between the United States and Spain established the current southern border between Oregon and California.  The treaty was signed in 1819.

Fort Clatsop National Memorial contains a replica of Lewis and Clark’s 1805-1806 winter outpost.

The Willamette River was discovered in 1792.  [In light of the previous fun fact, who discovered the river?]  

Cleaning out files, I came across an article from the Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1998.  The article is excerpted below.  Do you attribute the parents’ reaction to diversity, which includes sensitivity to racial slights?  To stupidity arising out of a “Shoot first, ask questions later” mentality?  Or to duplicity, that is, an attempt to create an incident so as to draw attention or exact vengeance?  

New York —School officials decided Wednesday that a third-grade teacher in a predominantly black and Latino Brooklyn district could return to her students after being accused by some parents of racial insensitivity.  

Ruth Sherman said she wasn’t sure she would resume her teaching duties and might request a transfer.  Some parents denounced Sherman, who is white, for reading from the book “Nappy Hair” by Carolivia Herron, an associate English professor at Cal State Chico. 

The book ,which has been recommended by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, tells of an African American girl’s emotional journey of self-acceptance.  She discovers that her hair, which is nappy, was given to her by God and is therefore OK.  

“I was shocked and saddened.  I dropped into a deep hole,” Herron said Wednesday, telling how she received a phone call earlier in the week from Sherman.  

The elementary school teacher asked if she was doing something wrong and if she was reading Herron’s book correctly.  

“You are doing something that brought self-esteem to a culture, to a group of children that needed something to relate to,” Herron who is black, said she told Sherman.  

She said Sherman asked if the fact she is white meant she was not supposed to read the book.  

“Absolutely not,” Herron said she replied.  “I’m black, and what if I didn’t read white authors?  What kind of education would we have in this United States?” …  Goldman, John J., “Teacher Accused of Racial Insensitivity Is Reinstated.”

Jake is an eighteen-year old who works part-time in our office in Montebello.  Home-schooled, he is quite skilled, having passed the state exam to become a notary public and now serving as one.  

Our office sees a fair number of peddlers, who sell a variety of merchandise.  I used to buy books for children, to entertain the children of our office clients, but now I decline to purchase any time I see “Made in China,” which happens to be most of the time.  

Once in a while, a peddler comes by with a big-ticket item, like a brand-name camera.  Twice Jake has gone to the Internet and has learned that the supposed brand name has been a fake.  

It is hard to overemphasize the usefulness of checking on claims made by peddlers—or any salesperson, for that matter, whether we see him at the door or hear her on the phone.  

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.