Many are Called, Few Chosen

Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris picked her running mate this week, the governor of Minnesota Tim Walz, and she has picked up a lead over Former President Trump in the last two weeks. This has me feeling incredibly optimistic about the election, but it all comes down to the numbers. Regardless of the popular vote, Kamala Harris needs to bring home the majority of the electoral votes, and she has to win those votes in the swing states.

Wednesday, after work, I ran the audio visual services for the Women’s State Legislative Council Executive Board meeting in Cottonwood Heights. If you ever have someone providing hybrid services for you, please let them know in advance the layout of the room, and what equipment comes with the room. Also, please arrange to have a site tech at the room ready to help set up at least 15 minutes prior to the meeting. This helps your person setting up your meeting figure things out before the actual start time of the meeting.

In a hurry to everything I needed for this meeting and the one after, I accidentally left my meeting camera and microphone/speaker at home. I was able to make due by strategically placing the notebook computer so its camera would capture the president and anyone who came to sit beside her for a report. Fortunately, the sound on my computer was loud enough to be heard in the room. The spare projector was sitting on a cart, and had to moved to the table. We had difficulty keeping the projection up due to the HDMI cable not fitting securely in the laptop port.

Also, when presiding over a meeting that’s meant to last an hour, please remember to keep digressions to a minimum.

In The Last Olympian, Percy Jackson needs to convince the polluted rivers of New York City to help defend the Olympus, the home of the gods, from the Titans.

In Legally Blonde, Elle turns her grief over being dumped by her boyfriend for not being serious enough into proving that she is smart enough to get into law school, the same law school her ex-boyfriend will be attending. The former homecoming queen has to break tradition with her mother’s expectations in order to do so. When she arrives, she finds herself ill-prepped for the classes, and mocked by both the students and the teachers for not having an ivy-league or more traditional background for student lawyers.

After getting in to Stanford Law School, Elle persistently tries to win her old boyfriend back from his new fiancée. She learns that blondes don’t have more fun in law school, and are treated like frivolous bimbos. In her Personal Responsibilities class, Elle proposes creating the Blonde Legal Defense Fund (BLDF). Because of her unique viewpoint, she finds herself as part of a legal team protecting a millionaire’s much younger wife from the daughter and ex-wives that want to see her cut out from the will he left behind.

After reading the book by Amanda Brown, I saw Legally Blonde the Musical at the West Valley Performing Center on Friday. I now have the opening song stuck in my head, “Ohmigod!”

Yesterday, we skipped kayaking due to a prediction of thunderstorms in the Eastern mountains and we got some rain down in the city. Instead I visited the lap pool at the West Valley Family Fitness Center, and completed another 200 meters of swimming. I almost completed a full 25 meter nonstop American crawl. I’m looking forward to reaching that goal and starting to focus on the Olympic turn I had learned at North Texas State University in 1983. Working on my swimming both helps me keep fit and have more confidence when I am able to kayak again—hopefully next week.

At the Women’s Democratic Club luncheon, we listened to a panel of speakers describe the problems of Utah School funding, their impact, the threat, and what to do. Utah ranks dead last in per pupil spending in the public school system. It has been in the bottom three for the past ten years. In order to make it out of the bottom third and join states like Texas, it would require a 21% increase in funding. Teachers are quitting the system. The average less than minimum wage, and are expected to bow to state policies that are harmful to our kids, including book banning, outing trans students, inability to respect trans students, and inability to signal that they are safe adults for the LGBTQ+ students. No one wants to work very long for low pay and high stress. So teachers quit. We need to pay teachers better.

The funds for schools come from bonds paid through property taxes and state taxes. There should be enough money available, but where is it going? A large chunk is being lost to tax breaks given to redevelopment agencies. The tax increment of a newly developed property is siphoned off to redevelopment agencies to pay for infrastructure. In those agreements school taxes are one of the increments and up to 50% of the school tax does not make it to the schools. We need to make sure that an exemption is made for school bonds and taxes at the local level. Yes, that would slow down development, but the long term harm to the next generation cannot be ignored.

Furthermore, there is word that the Utah State Legislature wants to modify the constitution so that it can use state income tax dollars to pay for what it is calling scholarships, which is in reality vouchers to pay for private religious school education. I would set aside a half-billion dollars of funds that should be going toward the public schools. Please vote against this constitutional amendment if you see it on the ballot.

I couldn’t resist the Harris Walz yard sign and have installed it and my Brian King for governor sign in my yard. I know Brian King, and he is kind an generous man, and would make a great governor. He also helped guide me toward becoming a board member of the ACLU of Utah, an incredibly honor supporting lawyers who our fighting for basic civil rights.

I was also approached by another friend to consider a leadership role in the Utah Democratic Party other than the one I am now serving. This is in addition to being asked to run for Chair of the Utah Stonewall Dems and the Presidency-Elect of the Women’s State Legislative Council of Utah. All of this is after I had told people I intended to start stepping back.

Today, the message at church was on brokenness, and how it’s okay to be broken, to learn to develop coping mechanisms to work through suffering instead of denying it or glorifying it. That’s where our resilience comes in. It’s using our suffering to be able to connect to and help others. It’s okay to hurt. Life is tough. While I do not condone intentionally inflicting pain, on yourself or others, one aphorism I have heard is that pain proves that you’re alive. However individualized, pain is something we all share. If the pain seems unbearable, please seek out someone else who can help you share the burden, but do so with respect and gratitude.

The Order of the Arrow, the society of honored campers, has the motto “Many are Called, but Few are Chosen.” My experience would append, “and a select few are cast out or rejected.” At Boy Scout Summer Camp in 1981, after losing my election to Senior Patrol Leader before camp, and working on my Rifle and Shotgun, Rowing and Canoeing, and Citizen of the World Merit badges. After being given an award for my marksmanship in front of the entire camp, I had returned to my place in my troop. Two men came out in Indian regalia representing the Order of the Arrow, and stated, “Many are Called, But Few are Chosen. Those being tapped out tonight are being honered as outstandiing campers. If you are tapped out, please join this line of those so honored.”

I watched as they men proceeded around the campfire, and when a boy’s scoutmaster raised his hand behind the boy, one of the two men would tap both shoulders and pull him out to join the line. I was surprised and excited when it happened to me. As I stepped away from my troop, I saw my scoutmaster who was a mentor to me had been right behind me.

The group of us were led away from the camp, and were told that we had been selected by our troops, and should feel honored. We were told that we would have a three day survival course and were given printed out instructions on how to prepare, and that the initiation we were going through was a secret rite.

I was nervous and excited. I was looking forward to learning how to survive in the wild, and put my kit together. As time was getting closer, I received a letter from the Order of the Arrow stating that I had been declined because my troop had already sent someone that year. I couldn’t recall anyone in the last year having been sent, but I trusted the letter, and I felt utterly defeated, dejected, and rejected.

This is not a letter to send to a 16 year old youth. I know now there are much better ways to handle the situation if it were true, such as delaying my initiation, or notifying the troop that the following year they could not send a new initiate. This was a “mistake” by the troop leadership, and I was punished for it. I found out recently that this was meant to harm my father who was active on the council and encouraged me to learn from others. The person who destroyed my candidacy was later quoted as saying if my father had been more active, I would have been in the OOA.

My dream, however, had been crushed. I decided to leave scouting and focus on earning money for college. I felt like I was not good enough. I attended one final awards ceremony, where I was awarded my Citizenship in the World, Rifle and Shotgun, and Rowing and Canoeing merit badges. In addition, I was promoted the rank to Life Scout, one step below Eagle Scout. At sixteen years old, I had the world ahead of me, but because I was made to feel like a loser and felt like I didn’t belong, I gave up, and put it all behind me, even though two years was plenty of time to make Eagle Scout.

In The Last Olympian, by Rick Riordan, Percy and friends demolish most of Manhattan while trying to save the abode of the Gods from the evil titan Chronos. While contributing to the ultimate success, Percy must accept the fact that he was not to be the hero in this story, but three of his friends gave their lives, and so were the ultimate heroes. When offered a chance to become a God, Percy advocates instead for the forgotten and rejected.

Al Forsyth reminds us that the Earth itself is over 4.5 billion years old, and that all of human history is infinitesimal in comparison. If you stretch your arms out to either side, representing the span of years, recorded human history would make up the barest tip of one fingernail. If we were celebrating all of Earth’s existence in a 50th year birthday party, the digital age would only be in the last 22 seconds. In our relatively short time on this planet, we have wiped out billions of years of the development of life on this planet--probably not the best way to treat our Mother Earth.