Montebello E-News

 June 21, 2007

The only ones among you who will be really happy are
those who will have sought and found how to serve.
Albert Schweitzer, M.D., 1875 – 1965,
 Alsatian theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician 

1.  Fight the Devil, Become the Devil

2.     From History to Hysteria, Part 3

3.     Announcements

4.     A Couple of Fun Facts

5.     The Flashback Quarterback on Meaning Well, Creating Hell

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

Fight the Devil, Become the Devil

          I like where I work, because there are opportunities for interesting conversation.  I had one last Saturday morning with somebody who used to be on the city council.  (Note my unusual quotation marks below, meant to indicate that I do not remember the conversation verbatim, a point made in the essay “From History to Hysteria”.) 

          ‘What if we [the voters of Montebello] chose to expand our city council to nine seats, each with a district?’ I asked. 

          ‘It would not help,” she said. 

          ‘If we became a charter city?’ 

          ‘No.  The answer is to vote out those city councilors who do not act in the interest of the people.’ 

          Hmmm.  I pause to think.  Now, hours later, an answer comes.  When we fight the devil, we risk becoming the devil.  We elect candidates who promise reform in Congress, but the reform does not happen.  (Look back to 1994, at the Republican Party’s “Contract with America”.  It is no different for our state legislature, county board of supervisors or city council.  The devil, that is, the political culture and institutions, is strong.  A candidate goes on a crusade and find himself / herself joining the devil, perhaps unknowingly.)

          It is either naïve for a candidate to think, or disingenuous for him or her to say, that he or she could change a political culture and its institutions, even when he is she is part of a large group.  (In 1994, Republicans gained fifty-four seats and took control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1954.  They remained the majority until early 2007.  What significant, permanent positive change took place during those twelve years?)

          How, then, to beat the devil?  Change the rules of the game.  Double, triple, even quadruple the number of elective seats, enabling a large number of people to bring the change which a relatively small number could not bring under the present arrangement. 

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 2007 by a local nonprofit organization. 

1.  “Fight the Devil, Become the Devil” means that

(a) dirty tricks would have to be used to change the political culture.

(b) an elected official with good intentions would not be able to do away the vices he or she is trying to change and, in fact, might succumb to those vices. 

2.  Beating the devil would necessitate

(a) overwhelming and changing the political culture by greatly increasing the number of elective seats and then electing people committed to changing that culture.

(b) changing the state constitution so that every elected body in California be significantly increased in size, enabling a large number of citizens to dislodge and replace the entrenched the political culture. 

(1) Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
(2) Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Spanish-born philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, 1863 – 1952 

In part one of this essay we noted the harmony between Santayana’s two statements.   In part two, we noted the contradiction between the two statements, leading to the conclusion that the history we learned was more an espousal of a faith, rather than a recounting of facts.   Where would that conclusion leave history, given that history is taught in compulsory and higher education?  Said another way, might we be wasting much time by teaching and learning history? 

          If our purpose were to espouse a faith, the secular faith of the United States, then history should continue as it is now taught, but with the universal revelation and universal realization that we would be teaching and learning a faith.  What we should require, though, is that the faith be taught thoroughly, so that the faith serve as a better guide for our decisions.  (An example of thoroughness is the inclusion, in our history lessons, of the quotation from General McClellan in part one of this essay, June 7, 2007.) 

          If, on the other hand, our purpose were to espouse the secular faith of humankind, then history should continue, but with changes to reflect interpretations of facts not espoused by the faith of the United States.  You see where this is going?  A secular faith of humankind might enable us Americans to better understand the views, virtues, and vices of other peoples, but we would be weakening American patriotism, perhaps paralyzing and pulverizing our patriotism. 

          But does the above not beg a question:  what business does a faith, even a secular faith, masquerading as history have in a classroom meant to teach past reality?  Should we not set aside teaching history completely? 

          If we did take history out of the curriculum, with what would we replace it?  Do I see a few eager waving hands?  I would choose critical thinking, rhetoric, polemics, and the Socratic method of teaching. 

          This sounds odd, one would say, because we must understand historical references to communicate with one another and understand literature.  Yes, we must understand historical references to communicate and understand, but, no, the references would come only after we had a thorough and continual grounding, much more than is now done, in critical thinking, rhetoric, polemics, and the Socratic method of teaching.  The important point is that, going back to the first quotation of Santayana, we would lay the basis for prudent decision-making through skepticism and would practice skepticism, judging historical and contemporary references in light of that skepticism. 

          How would the world be different if that happened?  We explore that in the next part. 

FOR EVERYONE.  Free summer concerts.   Thursdays from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Montebello City Park band shell.  The following bands will perform:

July 5:          Hard Days Night

July 12:        Cold Duck

July 19:        Yare More

July 26:        Chico

August 2:     (To Be Announced)

August 9:     (To Be Announced)

August 16:   Montebello Wise Guys

August 23:   Mariachis Divas

August 30:   Ace 

For more information, contact the Montebello City Department of Parks and Recreation at 323.887.4540. 

FOR FAMILIES.  Housing Fair.  Have you remembered the free event at the Montebello Senior Center this Saturday?  For more information, contact 323.722.3955. 

FOR EVERYONE.  Meeting.  The next regular meeting of the Montebello city council will be at city hall on Wednesday, June 27, 2007, at 7:30 p.m.  If you wish to speak during orals, come before 7:30 p.m. and sign up.  If you have more to say than there is time allotted, prepare a one pager, make copies, and hand out before you speak.  

FOR YOUTH AND THEIR TEACHERS.  Money for youth.  From RFP Bulletin,, Foundation Center, 6.15.07.  The organization Do Something is offering weekly grants for young social entrepreneurs (do you know what that means?).  Deadline:  rolling   Do Something, http://www.dosomething.org/, is a not-for-profit organization that works to inspire, support, and celebrate young social entrepreneurs and community activists. The organization is accepting applications for the following grant programs: 

Do Something and GameStop, http://www.gamestop.com/, are offering grants of $500 each to young people, age 25 and younger, in the U.S. or Canada who have a great idea for a community-action project and need support to turn their idea into reality.  GameStop grants are given out weekly. 

Do Something and Plum TV, http://www.plumtv.com/, are offering grants of $500 each to social entrepreneurs, age 25 and younger, in the U.S. who have recently created a sustainable project, program, or organization and need funding to further the growth and success of their program. Plum TV grants are given out weekly. 

Visit the Do Something Web site for complete program information and application forms. 

FOR YOUTH AND THEIR TEACHERS.  Money for youth.  Youth Service America Venture Program offers micro-grants for young people to start social ventures.   Deadline: August 13, 2007.  The Youth Service America-Youth Venture Program, a joint partnership between Youth Service America, http://www.ysa.org/, and Youth Venture, Inc., http://www.genv.net/, is now accepting applications from young people across the United States who are interested in starting their own sustainable social ventures. 

Examples of possible ventures include a youth center designed to keep youth out of trouble with music and art programs; an anti-peer pressure education campaign; a bike repair shop with a vocational training program; or an assembly program touring inner-city schools that combines music with an anti-drug/violence performances. 

Ventures must be youth-led and designed to be a lasting, sustainable asset to the community.  YSA Youth Venture teams are required to plan a Global Youth Service Day, http://YSA.org/NYSD/, project every year that their venture is operational.  The YSA Youth Venture Program provides a variety of resources, including a national network of like-minded young people, media opportunities, technical support, helpful toolkits and workshops, as well as grants of up to $1,000 each for start-up expenses. 

Visit the Youth Venture Web site for complete program information. 

The first animal to go into space was a dog named Laika, sent up by the Soviets.  The first living creatures which the United States sent into space were two mice, named Benjy and Laska, in 1958.

In this newsletter, we have noted that there is a difference between a solution and a sustainable solution.  The difference arises sometimes because we have not thought about how to make our solution sustainable.  Below is an example.  What would you have done to make the solution sustainable?  An answer is given below the article. 

From The Sunday Times (UK), April 15, 2007 

“How Rainforest Saviour Put 1,000 Out of Work”, Tom Hennigan  

          The Tory party donor and environmental philanthropist Johan
          Eliasch has been accused of “green colonialism” after allegedly      
          consigning 1,000 people to poverty in his attempts to preserve the
          Amazon jungle. 

The allegations against Eliasch, who last week was touring South America with his friend the Duke of York, come from the inhabitants of a region of the Brazilian rainforest the size of Greater London.  

In 2005 the Swedish-born tycoon, who runs the Head sports goods empire, spent a reported £13.7m of his estimated £361m fortune buying 400,000 acres — about 625 square miles — of jungle from an American-owned timber company with the aim of protecting it from loggers. Eliasch has described the move as “my little bit towards saving the world”.  

As a result of the deal, a lumber mill that employed as many as 1,000 people closed in the town of Itacoatiara in northwest Brazil, increasing hardship in an already economically depressed region. …

What might Eliasch have done differently?  First, he should have conferred with the people who were going to lose their jobs.  Second, he should have set aside money to create jobs for those people or to help them start their own businesses.  What kind of jobs and businesses?  Park rangers and tour guides, with the condition that, if the park were damaged, the rangers and guides would lose pay equivalent to what it would take to restore the park.

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.