At Home On Piety Hill

I found a bloggers home away from home at Panera Bread and it’s habit forming. Denise likes to do her shopping in Rocklin and I like to spend time with Denise, so we drive down, she drops me off at Panera and she does her thing, while I do mine. Then, we usually get a bite to eat at a taqueria or barbecue joint.

Denise and I learned to love Panera when we visited Emma in Chapel Hill. Because it was overcast or raining the entire time we were there and Emma worked all day, Denise and I spent a considerable amount of time in the comfortable environs that are Panera, catching up on email, eBaying, blogging or just chatting over a hot, caffeinated beverage.

Panera’s baked goods are way better than our local fare at Flour Garden, the coffee is almost as good as Java John’s (still the reigning king) and the WiFi is free. Our local Starbucks is a bit cramped and they only offer TMobile. The music is usually good, but Panera is always playing my kind of jazz, the termperature indoors is just right and, if it’s a beautiful day, I can get reception out on the patio. Well, that’s about it… I have to get up to refill my mug.

This just in… it’s cooled down to about 85º, so I’ve moved outside and getting 5bars… this place is awesome. I’ll try after hours sometime to see if I can log on.

Levi at Culturezoo has come up with a smart and sassy little blog accessory: It’s called Audiozue and it tells your readers what you’re listening to on iTunes, displays the album art and provides a link to purchase the music. You can customize Audiozue to display up to fifty songs and you can build your own skin to match the stunning design of your blog. If you look at the sidebar, you will see it in action.

Oh, and by the way… check out this great photo titled “Macintosh Repair Tool Kit.”

I saw a couple of paintings by Shane Grammer at The Underground Cafe… we were there to see Mike Roe perform (Kendall Payne was the headliner and she was very good, too). I checked out the website and was a bit intimidated, but ultimately inspired. He is not only a painter and illustrator, but designs spaces, as well. Amazing. Check out shanegrammer.com

What kind of hate am I listening to? Another news and opinion source I go to regularly is National Public Radio. How much hate do they generate? That depends upon the host or the feature, I suppose. I’ll comment on various NPR programs in later posts. One thing I do know: actions speak louder than words and hateful acts are much more unpleasant and intolerable than hate speech. I learned this first hand when our local NPR affiliate, Capitol Public Radio, broadcast two interviews by Steve Inskeep during the presidential campaign of 2004 and I expressed my negative opinion to “the staff and the management.” The result? A member services rep sent me a threatening email message from his personal Yahoo! Mail account. He told me, through a personalized and bizarre literary device, that I should be very concerned for my family’s safety, because he knew my phone number and address.

He wrote it under a pseydonym and thought it was coming to me anonymously. Fortunately, I was able to follow the path and found that he had sent it to me through his personal account, from a Cap Radio computer, while he was on the clock, over the California State University Sacramento network. He and his managers stonewalled me for a few days until I contacted the CSUS system administrator, who referred me to the legal staff in the President’s office. The staff member apologized immediately.

I don’t think that NPR, for the most part, is bigoted or hateful but evidently some of their local affiliates could benefit from some sensitivity training… perhaps a lesson or two in common courtesy and appreciation for or tolerance of diverse ideas and lifestyles.

What kind of hate am I listening to? That was the question I posed and answered in an earlier post. I listen to Rush Limbaugh regularly and I wouldn’t consider his program to be hateful unless sarcasm, analysis of current events, critique of opposing views, parody and the expression of strongly held opinions constitutes “hate.” If that were the case, Rush would be numbered among such notable haters as Garrison Keillor, Mark Twain, Al Franken and Will Rogers. The Simpsons, South Park and Saturday Night Live would be justly condemned as vehicles of bigotry, if Rush’s show is judged to be offensive. Why do I listen to Rush?

First, his show comes on at just the right time, while my hands are busy and my ears and mind are free. He’s the most professional talk-show host out there, regardless of ideology, and he’s generally funnier than the rest of the pack. The fact that Al Franken has enjoyed phenomenal success as a comic writer does not seem to translate to laughs on his radio show, while Rush is much funnier on air than he is in print. Go figure.

I started listening before the Web existed and I tuned in to hear him read news and comment on articles or opinion pieces in publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Republic, The Nation and others. If anything captured my attention, I would go to the library and check out other literature on the subject. His show was a catalyst for me and it still is. He seems to have a real knack for identifying issues and trends which resonate with a vast number of Americans, across a wide spectrum of political or social viewpoints.

Child molestation cases involving Catholic priests have been all over the news since the 1990’s, pointing to serious sexual abuse among clergy of all faiths and denominations. What makes this such a powerful story is the fact that priests had built a solid reputation as trustworthy advocates for children over the years, yet that has all been undone now. When someone my age thinks of children and priests, we are immediately reminded of Father Flanagan and Boy’s Town. But, a relative few betrayed that trust and robbed so many children of their sexual innocense, plunging the Roman Catholic church into one of the most costly and devastating crises in its entire history.

What is more frightening is that these sexual abuse cases are relatively small in number and scope, when compared to the hundreds of thousands of children in the United States, who have been or are being sexually abused by professional educators over a similar time period. A study conducted for the Department of Education, Educator Sexual Misconduct, found that about 10% of all school children will be the target of some sort of physical sexual misconduct by a teacher during their K-12 grade education. Carol Shakeshaft, who authored the study, points out that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops found that about 10, 667 children had been victimized by priests between 1950 and 2002. Based upon numerous studies which she has worked with, Shakeshaft extrapolated the number of school children suffering abuse by professional educators to about ten times that of the clergy!

One study of 225 cases of admitted sexual abuse in New York found that none of the cases had been reported to police and only 1 person lost their teaching license. Often the offenders in these cases are let off with a slap on the wrist. I wonder why that is. Perhaps it has something to do with the behemoth NEA, the teacher’s union that is so solicitous in having parents turn over their children to the “professionals,” when it comes to instilling morals and teaching about sexuality!

I noticed this trend about a year ago and have found a few local news stories, but rarely a national expose´or serious article on this disturbing, almost universal assault on our kids. There are stories of female teachers initiating sexual relations with young men, young women, kids with special needs and one teacher who molested 9 year olds, then slashed her wrists in front of the class. It’s about time for the progressive media get this story out across the country and, perhaps, save a few children some life-long trauma.