Pieces

One: Why would Sean Morgan, new member of the Chico Silly Council, want to prevent hungry people from being fed? Nobody asked him to feed them or pay for the food or help in any way. What would make a person so mean, callous and anti-Christian as to attack a good organization—Orchard Church—doing good work on a bureaucratic technicality in order to keep it from feeding hungry people in the City Plaza, mostly people too poor to pay for somewhere to live?

What was in it for him? He must have expected to get some kind of gratification or satisfaction from preventing people from being fed. I suppose he enjoys the thought of people going hungry. Think about that.

Would you do what he did? Here’s a hungry human being, and here’s someone offering her food. Would Jesus get in the way? Would you? Did you vote for Sean Morgan?

Morgan is a good example of why we should require public officials to take some kind of psychological examination. We’re clearly asking the wrong questions of the people who want power over us if we can’t recognize the Morgans before they get into office.

Two: I heard a talk on the Chico State campus the other day about the history of Native Americans in this area. As happened last year, I was reminded of how awfully they were treated, though perhaps no worse than in other parts of the nation.

It seems that the first bond issued in the new state of California was to buy Native American scalps. A scalp is the skin on one’s head that in both sexes is usually covered with hair. California politicians wanted to encourage people to kill Native Americans—called “native” because they were here first—so badly that they borrowed money to pay for mass murder.

To help ensure that California got its money’s worth, state politicians required that claimants cut or tear the scalp from each victim and present it as proof that the deed had indeed been done.

Three: My sons and I went for a walk in Upper Bidwell Park on Janice’s birthday last month and eventually ended up sitting by the creek, just as she would have. Actually, I was the only one resting, and as I sat there on a rock listening to the water, I had an epiphany, or at least an idea. Many people seem to like the sound of running water, including me. My default background computer sounds are of moving water. Ocean waves, babbling brooks, roaring waterfalls entrance me, and I think I know why—the sound of moving water makes other sound unnecessary. Works for me.