Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

When my aunts and uncles were out here visiting a couple weeks ago, it reminded me of some stories from when I worked in the orchards one of them ran.  The orchard was in Pleasant View, UT, which is where my Dad is from and where many of my relatives still live.  I created a map of the orchard here.  Here are some of the stories I remembered:

Selling Smarts:

The orchard wasn’t particularly lucrative, though my aunt did say it made them money most years.  But there is a funny story that goes with the orchard.  I don’t know which ancestor originally planted the orchard, but I do know my great grandfather, Mormon Cragun, worked out there (and, sadly, died from an accident in the orchard).  But my grandfather, Earl Budge Cragun, owned a lot of land around the orchard, including, apparently (according to my aunt), about 300 acres directly above (kind of north and east) of the orchard (it’s marked on the map).  The land was littered with enormous rocks and was basically worthless to my grandfather, as he was primarily interested in farming.  When someone approached him about the land above the orchard, he was ecstatic to get rid of it and sold it for a paltry $300 for the entire 300 acres.  The person who bought the property saw something my grandfather didn’t: The looming market for massive rocks for lawn decoration.  This market boomed in the 1980s and 1990s in Utah; people wanted large rocks to decorate their yards.  One of my close friends up the street from where I lived had a yard bordered by rocks like this.  The guy who bought the orchard extracted the rocks and sold them for, get this, literally millions and millions of dollars.  He turned that $300 investment into a multi-million dollar business.

This was always a sore spot in Cragun family lore.  The guy also negotiated for easement rights for the property, so he was able to access the quarry.  Enormous trucks ran up and down the side of the orchard for years.  When the family eventually sold the orchard, they sold it to the owners of the rock quarry, who tore down most of the trees and put in a road to make access to the quarry easier.  So, grandpa, about my inheritance… :|  (That’s a joke; I’m not expecting an inheritance!)

Sweet Cherry Tumble

Some background on cherries.  There are really two basic kinds of cherries: sweet cherries and pie cherries.  The ones you buy in the store with the stems on them are called sweet cherries.  The ones you buy in cans for cherry pie are called pie cherries.  I describe below how pie cherries are harvested, but sweet cherries, because they need the stems on them to stay fresh, are generally harvested by hand.  We’d start work around 5 am and work until 1 pm, so they were harvested when they were moist.  We got paid by the pound.  And by “we” I mean, every young kid in Pleasant View, plus a lot of my relatives, and occasionally migrant laborers who, of course, only spoke Spanish.  I have a lot of stories from the time we spent picking cherries, like the day my cousin Matt Winston spent picking cherries with us.  Matt’s now a semi-famous actor, but he has an amazing sense of humor.  He wasn’t particularly interested in making money or even picking cherries, but he did keep us all entertained the day he was there.  My favorite memory of that day is him wondering how many cherries he could fit in his mouth at one time.  I don’t remember the number (I think it was in the 30s), but it was a lot, and he looked hilarious.

Anyway, with all the young kids working out there (I was doing this at 6, too), it was amazing there were not more accidents.  The youngest kids would pick the low hanging fruit, but older kids climbed ladders and used sky hooks to pull branches down.  I remember one day watching a young girl who was new to picking cherries climb a ladder a couple of trees away from me.  She hadn’t placed her ladder well and it tipped over, dumping her a good 10 or 15 feet to the ground.  She fell hard and immediately started screaming.  I was probably 10 or 11 at the time (I’m not sure), but I remember watching my cousin’s husband, who had just barely joined the family, McKell Young, leap from his ladder and run to her aid.  He was there in a split second and immediately calmed her down and started to splint her terribly broken arm.  McKell is now a dentist in Missouri with a handful of kids, but whenever I think of McKell, I think of this story.

Here’s a picture of McKell with one of his children a few years after that at an Easter family gathering in the orchard:

If I remember correctly, as a result of this incident they raised the minimum age for non-family workers to 12; the girl was younger than that.  Also, according to my aunt, that was the only bone broken bone in the orchard (she even remembered the girl’s name, though I forget it now).

Tractor Tale #1: Oh Brother!

The orchard was very much a family business.  My aunt and uncle’s children worked in the orchard most of their lives, and many of their cousins (me included) also worked out there.  I started working in the orchard at 6, and was driving tractors by the time I was around 8.  My first tractor driving job was to drive the tractor pulling the cherry tanker along side the harvester.

For that to make sense you probably need a bit of an explanation of how pie cherry harvesting is done  To harvest pie cherries, at least 3 tractors (more like 4 or 5) are required.  One tractor pulls a large trailer called the harvester.  Here’s my rudimentary drawing of a harvester:

The harvester has one side that faces the cherry tree being harvested (depicted above).  Two people would ride on this side (the faces).  When they pull up to a tree, they pull out a large tarp attached to a winch on the harvester (in blue) until it covers the ground under the harvester.  The yellow in the picture is my attempt to depict the fabric above the trailer that catches any cherries that fall that way.  Once the cherries are shaken from the tree (see diagram below), the winch pulls the tarp back in, dropping the cherries through a hole in the harvester and down to the other side, depicted here:

Two or three people work on this side.  The green boxes represent bins.  The cherries fall through the hole in the harvester and into these bins, where the workers remove as many leaves, twigs, dead birds, etc. as possible.  Once the bins fill up, they are carried down a row of trees where the cherry tanker, pulled by another tractor, is waiting.  Here’s my depiction of a tanker:

The cherry tanker is a large trailer that is filled with hundreds of gallons of water.  The cherries, as they are harvested, are dumped into the cherry tanker.  The water keeps them from getting smashed and keeps them fresh.  It also helps all the leaves and sticks float to the top, where they are later skimmed away (my first job at 6 was to skim the crap out the tankers).

And now the shaker.  An attachment is connected to another tractor that has a two-pronged extension on it.  That attachment wraps around the tree like shown below:

The gray prongs are what is called the shaker (I tried my best).  They wrap around the tree then shake it like crazy.  The two tarps attached to the harvester (in the background) catch the cherries then send them into the harvester.  That’s basically how it’s done.  Oh, and this starts at 10 pm and continues until 10 am - harvesting at night keeps the moisture in the cherries so they stay fresh longer.

Anyway, back to the story.  My second job in the orchard was to drive the cherry tanker.  This is a pretty easy job since all I had to do was keep the tanker level with the harvester - every time it moved, I moved.  That made it easy for those dumping bins of cherries to get them into the tanker.  Mind you I started doing this when I was about 8: someone believed I was responsible enough to drive an enormous tractor attached to a multi-ton tanker when I was 8 years old.

There were two hard parts to the job.  First, it went on, non-stop, all night for about 4 weeks.  At 8 (and now), I liked sleeping at night.  So, I had a hard time staying awake.  Sometimes I’d fall asleep and the other workers would yell at me.  The other hard part was making sure that no one was around the tanker when I pulled forward.  Remember, this is an all steel tanker filled with hundreds of gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of cherries.  It weighed several tons by the time it was full.

Well, one night I checked behind me to make sure no one was dumping cherries into the tanker then pulled forward.  As I did I heard a scream.  It was my brother Danny.  If you look back at the diagram of the cherry tanker you’ll see that the tires are actually on the outside.  He had stepped up to dump a bin of cherries just after I checked and stepped between the tires.  His leg was there when I pulled forward.  The tanker rode up the back of his leg and threw him face first into the ground.  Luckily others heard the scream and came running.  And, luckily, the ground was soft.  I ran over his leg, but it was mostly just pushed into the dirt, so there was little damage done - mostly bruising.  I felt terrible, but no one really blamed me for it as accidents were pretty common out there (though rarely serious, which is amazing).  Danny got the night off (with pay), but was back the next day.

Here’s a picture of me a bit older pulling the tarps out on the harvester (the shaker is in the background).  This is the only picture I have of my working in the orchard:

Tractor Tale #2: Hang On!

My oldest brother, Troy, was an orchard regular and old hand out there.  He had been working out there for years, and by the time this happened he must have been close to 18.  He had graduated from most of the crappy jobs to a periphery job: he managed the cherry tankers.  Basically he used a fourth tractor to pick up the full tankers, take them down to have them skimmed, then filled the empty tankers with water and delivered them, as needed, to where the rest of us were working.  His job was pretty nice because he could basically lay on the tanker as it filled and, if he angled it just right, when it got to the right level, the water would leak out, getting him a little wet, and waking him up.  Sometimes he’d sleep, other times he’d read.  He had the dream job out there.

I rode up with him one night to watch as he filled the tankers.  Rather than wait for it to finish filling this time, he decided he’d rather take the tractor for a spin.  So, he told me to hop on (they are all one seat tractors) and hang on.  The orchard is laid out in rows and the rows are easy to drive along.  But Troy was more interested in having a wild ride, so he angled the tractor down the hill and started driving from row to row, plowing through trees, irrigation ditches, and anything else in our way as we went.  I don’t think we took out any trees, but by the time he was done, I felt like the trees had taken me out.  I was covered in scratches and had leaves and branches all over me.  He was hollering and screaming the whole time.  I’m not sure how often he did that, but he seemed to be an old pro at it.

Tractor Tale #3: I’m going to die!

I saved my favorite story for last.  I worked in the orchard during the summers until I was 16 or 17, when my aunt and uncle started negotiating to sell it.  I learned a lot out there and saw some amazing things, but this is one story I’ll never forget.  You can’t see it in the Google Maps link above, but the orchard is actually on a hillside.  And by hillside, I mean a fairly steep incline, probably a 7 to 10 degree incline.  That’s not much of a problem if you take it an angle, like the side roads in the orchard did.  It’s also not a problem if you’re driving down one of the rows as they are terraced so you hardly notice the incline.  But if you ever take the middle road in the orchard, you face that entire incline.  Now, driving a tractor alone up or down the main road isn’t a problem - those things have so much horsepower that it’s not an issue at all.  But, if you’re pulling a cherry tanker, that can be a serious problem.  Cherry tankers weigh several tons when full.

I faced this scenario for the first time one day when I was about 12 years-old.  Someone asked me to drive a full tanker of cherries down to the skimming station at the bottom of the orchard.  If I was near one of the sides of the orchard, I would have taken one of those, which isn’t much of a problem.  But I was near the middle road (you can see it in the map), and since I figured I’d need to learn how to do this some time, I decided to just go ahead and drive the tanker down the middle road.  There were two problems with my thinking here.  First, I had never done this and no one had ever shown me how.  Second, just above the skimming station, the middle road in the orchard takes a sharp left turn.  If you miss the turn, there’s about a 30 foot drop off.  Remember, the orchard was on a hillside.  Whoever designed the orchard hadn’t made the best decision building the road that way, but I don’t recall it ever really being a serious problem (though I’m sure someone has missed that turn before).

So, I hopped on the tractor and headed down the center of the orchard.   As I inched my way down the steep road, I started to notice that I was going a little too fast.  I was in first gear, but it was still too fast for my novice abilities, so I pushed in the clutch on the tractor and hit the brakes.  The multi-ton tanker behind me laughed at my rookie mistake - those brakes on the loose dirt weren’t going to stop it.  It kept coming, picking up speed.  The tractor started sliding, and then started to jackknife as the tanker was pushing it out of the way.  I was still probably a couple hundred feet or so from the drop off when I started skidding.  But I knew it was coming, and I was still picking up speed.  If the trailer and tractor didn’t flip, killing me in the process, then I’d probably slide over the edge and certainly die.  My heart raced and my life flashed before my eyes - the only time this has ever happened to me. I was going to die!

Then, it hit me: My brother Troy had told me a short time before this what to do, “Whenever you’re driving a tanker down one of the roads headed down hill, don’t EVER take it out of gear!  If you do, the tractor’s brakes won’t be able to stop it and you’ll wreck.”  That was the answer - put it back in gear.  I slammed the gear shift into first and popped the clutch.  And, like the magic I thought it was at the time, the tractor slowed to a near standstill, the tanker straightened out, and everything returned to normal.  The tractor’s brakes couldn’t slow the tanker, but the tractor’s engine could.  I inched my way toward the turn as slowly as possible and made it safely.  With only a couple of close contenders, this is probably the closest I’ve ever come to dying (the close contenders are fun stories too!).

Here’s a final picture of another Easter party out at the “Good Earth” which is what we called it.  We used to have a great time hiding easter candy on the rocks and having races to find it all.  McKell is in the picture with his son (male in sunglasses on the left).  I’m standing, next to me is my younger brother, Josh, then my two cousins, Brian and Nate Belnap.  This rock was about 15 feet tall and was a blast to climb:

So, those are my orchard stories.  I hope you enjoyed them.

There’s a lot to like about working as a college professor, but one of the best perks is the flexible schedule, especially over the summer.  We usually work every weekday, and usually most weekends, but sometimes we take a day off (or even a couple hours) to go explore our new surroundings.  The flexible schedules we have make this particularly nice, as we can take off some time in the middle of the week rather than weekends, so we can go places that would be very busy on the weekend and find them almost empty during the week.  At least, that was the logic in our decision to go bike Fort de Soto Wednesday afternoon.  And, our logic was accurate - the place was nearly deserted.

On our two previous visits to Fort de Soto with family, we went straight to the North Beach (which is a remarkable beach) and didn’t check out the rest of the island.  We did notice, though, that there is a great “recreation” trail along the main road.  According to the official website, the trail is 6.8 miles long (according to Google Maps it’s closer to 5 miles (4.79 to be exact).  Plus, it’s wide enough to ride at least two bikes abreast, which means we can chat while we ride.  So, we took the bikes out yesterday and biked the entire trail. Here’s an aerial shot of Fort de Soto with the key landmarks indicated:

We arrived around 4:45 (it’s about 25 minutes from our house).  We parked at the park headquarters, which is located right where the road comes in to the park.  We hit the trail around 4:55, heading east first.  We wandered through the East Beach on whatever trails we could follow on our bikes, then followed the trail to where it ends about 1/2 a mile past East Beach.  Here’s Debi at East Beach (it’s handicap accessible, so we rode our bikes all the way out to the beach).  In the background you can see the Sunshine Skyway Bridge:

We did find a secluded section of South beach, which we returned to a little later (more below), but continued on.  We followed the path to where it ends (better seen here), then turned around and retraced our path back to the park headquarters and continued on to the actual Fort, Fort de Soto.

Here’s Ryan at the turn around point:

Again, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge is in the background.

There are a couple of piers off the island, one of which is the launching point of a ferry to Edgmont Key, which is another island just southwest of Fort de Soto.  We stopped at Fort de Soto, which is pretty cool.  You can walk through most of it in about 30 minutes, though a full tour of the original fort could take a couple hours as there are a lot of other building remnants away from the fort with information signs that would take a while to walk to and read about.  We rode past most of them, then walked through the fort. Here’s Ryan in the fort:

Here’s Debi getting up close and personal with one of the four 12 inch mortars.  These guns are huge (some of the biggest ever made).

The fort is actually pretty smartly designed.  The mortars are behind massive concrete walls, making them invisible from the sea.  They could easily fire out (though they never were fired at enemies), but it would be hard to spot them.  You can also walk on top of the fort, which is covered with foliage to hide the fort. Here’s Debi on top of the fort with one of the many gorgeous beaches in the background (that’s not even a named beach):

We continued our bike ride up to North Beach, but since we’ve been there a couple times we turned around and biked back to the park headquarters.  The entire trip, with our side adventures, took about an hour and a half is all.  We put the bikes back on the car then drove to East Beach and pulled out chairs and books to lounge by the beach for a bit.  We originally tried our secluded spot pretty far down the beach, but the flies were pretty bad.  So we moved back to the completely abandoned beach (literally, by 7:00 pm there was not a single person there), and read for a while.  Here’s a shot to advertise for Florida:

This is literally one of the nicest beaches in the US and we had it to ourselves.  Yes, we’re lounging, but what you can’t see in the picture is what we’re reading: Debi’s reading a book on Biomedical Ethics for a book chapter we’re working on and Ryan is reading When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger on his handheld.  The perfect way to end the day.  Do you need any more motivation to come visit us?

Author:

Michelle Goldberg

Publisher:

W.W. Norton & Company

Date of Publication:

2006

ISBN:

9780393329766

Rating:

8

Summary:

I heard about this book as a regular listener to the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s weekly podcast (which I recommend) and thought it might be worth picking up. The author, Michelle Goldberg, is a journalist and describes herself as a secular Jew and ardent urbanite. She wrote this book because she felt America was becoming increasingly hostile toward the cosmopolitan values she cherishes (p. 21).

Goldberg attributes that hostility to the movement she describes in this book, which she calls “Christian nationalism.” Christian nationalism espouses dominion theology, “…the ultimate goal of Christian nationalist leaders isn’t fairness. It’s dominion. The movement is built on a theology that asserts the Christian right to rule. That doesn’t mean that nonbelievers will be forced to convert. They’ll just have to learn their place.” (p. 7). Advocates of Christian nationalism have a different worldview, a Christian worldview. In that worldview, America was founded as a Christian nation (it was not), Puritans were kind to Native Americans (they were not), evolution is discredited (it has not been), men and dinosaurs lived together in the Garden of Eden (please!), the Earth is six thousand years old (try 4.6 billion years), and Christians should rule the world (p. 5). This worldview is totalistic: it influences every aspect of its adherents’ lives.

Christian nationalists make up a small percentage of the US population (maybe 10%; pp. 8-9), which means not all evangelical Christians are Christian nationalists. When you think about the “religious right,” it is probably the Christian nationalists you are thinking of: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed are/were all leaders of this movement. Despite their relatively small size, they are disproportionately influential in American politics and culture, “In 2004, the Christian Coalition gave 42 out of 100 senators ratings of 100 percent, meaning they took the group’s position on every significant issue.” (p. 10).

Goldberg describes several aspects of the Christian nationalist movement, including: the political uses of homophobia (chapter 2), the intelligent design vs. evolution debate (chapter 3), the faith-based initiative of the Bush Administration (chapter 4), abstinence sex education (which is an oxymoron; chapter 5), and the war on the courts (chapter 6).

One of the more interesting topics Goldberg discusses is the penetration of Christian nationalists in the Bush Administration. Seven percent of White House interns are graduates of Patrick Henry College, a Christian nationalist college for home-schooled evangelical Christians (pp. 2-3). While a small school (with fewer than 100 new students a year), the students are trained in Christian nationalism but schooled in how to convert their message into secular terms so they do not appear to be pushing Christianity on the public (pp. 3-4), which is their actual goal.

Goldberg also describes some of the heroes of the Christian nationalist movement, including Roy Moore, the Alabama judge who is most famous for placing a 10 commandments monument in the state courthouse and refusing to remove it. He’s less well-known for his opposition to removing segregationist language from the state constitution (he’s a racist) and for his 2002 court decision awarding custody of three children to an abusive father over their lesbian mother (p. 25). While Moore isn’t someone I would consider much of a role model, he isn’t alone among Christian nationalists in his bigotry, “A 2004 survey… found that 48.3 percent of white conservative Christians said they would disapprove if their child wanted to marry a black person, compared with 21.8 percent of white Americans as a whole.” (p. 70).

Another interesting “achievement” of Christian nationalists is their reframing of evolution as a “debated” scientific idea. This is intriguing because of how they have gone about doing this: Christian nationalists turned to quasi-postmodernistic ideas to subvert the authority of science and rationality, claiming scientific findings are just opinions. While an absurd argument, it is apparently attractive to some. The irony, of course, is that Christian nationalists then want to turn around and claim that they have The Truth, even though they argue against the possibility of truth to undermine evolution (p. 87). I see this as symptomatic of the disingenuousness of Christian nationalists – they have been found lying and distorting in their efforts to turn the US into a theocracy.

Goldberg also highlights the hypocrisy and negligence that is the Bush Administration’s Faith-Based Initiatives. The money given to religious groups under this program is not tracked and many religious charities and therapeutic centers are not regulated (leading to terrible abuses of people). What evaluation of these programs exists indicates they are not at all effective (p. 127). The mismanagement of the faith-based initiatives has even turned off early advocates who now recognize the initiative for what it really was: political pandering and bribery (pp. 113-114). The faith-based initiatives of the Bush Administration were basically huge bribes to Christian nationalists in exchange for their political support. The billions spent on this program have done little to nothing to actually help non-Christian nationalist Americans.

The author points out some additional irony in the Christian nationalist movement, arguing that the leaders of the Christian nationalist movement are actually pulling a “bait and switch” on their Christian foot soldiers, “The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may matter most to voters, but they always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won… Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture industry is never forced to clean up its act.” (pp. 29-30). What many followers of the Christian nationalist movement fail to see is the enormous fortunes of their leaders. Pat Robertson and James Dobson are the leaders of enormous corporate empires; both men are extremely wealthy and powerful (see note at end of review). There are, no doubt, some authentic, genuinely devoted religious leaders; but many of them are in it just for the money, including the leaders of the Christian nationalist movement.

Another bit of irony is also adroitly pointed out by Ms. Goldberg, “What about the heartland’s much-vaunted moral qualities? … Here again the image of small-town piety bears little relation to reality in rural America. The states that Mr. Bush won in 2000 boast slightly higher rates for murder, illegitimacy and teenage childbirth than the supposedly degenerate states that voted for Mr. Gore. The contrast is especially stark when it comes to marriage… The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedys and same-sex marriage. In 2003, the rate in Massachusetts was 5.7 divorces per 1,000 married people, compared with 10.8 in Kentucky, 11.1 in Mississippi and 12.7 in Arkansas.” (p. 67). The hot-beds of Christian nationalism aren’t practicing what they preach (not that I’m advocating it, I just find it ironic).

Review:

For some reason I was under the impression that this book was going to be more academically oriented. It’s not. It’s more like a really long journalistic article you might find in the New York Times Magazine. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that; in fact, it was somewhat refreshing to me to read a book that simply reported what the author found without developing a complex theoretical framework to explain it (which is what you would find in an academic book). So, I guess my point here is, don’t expect a theoretical explanation for what is happening or how it is happening.

Another problem with the book is that it insinuates in several places that Christian nationalists are, if not outrightly, awfully close to being fascists (e.g., p. 34). I find this insinuation a bit tenuous. Fascism is basically ultra-nationalism or super-patriotism; allegiance to the state is placed above all else. It is often characterized by violent suppression of opposition, which probably would happen under a Christian theocratic government in the US, but I’m not quite sure the author makes a compelling case that Christian nationalists are fascists. As I understand this movement, they speak less about patriotism than they do about religion. Of course, Goldberg may be implying that once Christianity takes over the state, religion becomes the equivalent of patriotism, but that certainly isn’t clear.

The author also seems to give more credence than necessary to some of the claims of the abstinence-only advocates. She claims abstinence only education delays the onset of sexual activity, which most of the recent studies finds is not accurate. She also claims that condoms are not particularly effective in preventing the transmission of Human papillomavirus (HPV; p. 148). While genital warts can certainly transmit HPV and condoms don’t protect against that type of transmission, good sexual education encourages people to inspect their partners prior to sex – ergo, you’ll find the warts. But HPV can also be transmitted via seminal and vaginal fluids, and condoms do protect against that type of transmission. Why the author gives the abstinence-only advocates any credit isn’t clear to me.

There is also no clear progression or logical order to the book. It jumps from one topic to the next without any clear rationale for why things should be ordered the way they are. Perhaps with this particular movement it would have been too complicated to try to document its development chronologically, which is why the author used a thematic approach, but it still isn’t perfectly clear why the order of the book is the way it is.

Criticisms aside, the book does have some really prescient insights. For instance, the authors argues that, “If there is a hard landing—due to an oil shock, a burst housing bubble, a sharp decline in the value of the dollar, or some other crisis—interest rates would shoot up, leaving many people unable to pay their floating-rate mortgages and credit card bills. Repossessions and bankruptcies would follow. Many Americans would lose everything they have, including their houses. The resulting anger could fuel radical populist movements of either the left or the right—more likely the right, since it has a far stronger ideological infrastructure in place in most of America.” (p. 186). While I don’t think it was too difficult to predict any of the above in 2006, it is still impressive that most of the things mentioned above did happen in 2007 and 2008.

The author also argues that, “The religious divide in America isn’t so much between the faithless and faithful—it’s between those who want to maintain a secular, pluralistic society and those who do not. But the growing presence of non-Christians will exacerbate the frightened anger of those desperate to drag the country back to its mythical Christian roots… fundamentalism works in symbiosis with secularization; the more it is thwarted, the more extreme it becomes.” (p. 182). The end result will be an increasing polarization as secularists become more vocal in opposing the Christian nationalists, and this appears to be happening. But there is one more bit of irony in all of this, “The things so many Islamic fundamentalists hate about the West—its sexual openness, its art, the possibilities it offers for escaping the bonds of family and religion, for inventing one’s own life—are what the Christian nationalists hate as well. And so, in a final grotesque irony, we come full circle and see defenders of American chauvinism speaking the language of anti-American radicals.” (p. 208). Christian nationalists may not see it, but they are a lot closer to Islamic Fundamentalists than they realize, even though they claim to vehemently oppose them.

Overall, the book is well-written, though, keep in mind, it is less academic than journalistic. As a result, it isn’t as weighty as an academic book might be. This book is relatively light reading, even if disturbing. However, readers shouldn’t be too worried by this book. In my opinion, the conclusion to this book should read, “Be a little afraid of Christian nationalists, because they do want to subvert the secular history of the U.S. and, if they win, you will lose your rights to think how, believe, and act how you want. But don’t be too afraid because people like you, people who value pluralism and the freedoms that come with secular democracies, make up the majority of Americans. We’ll stop them from turning the U.S. into a theocracy, but you should do what you can to help.” This book does a good job making people aware of a movement in the US that should make people uneasy. I recommend it.

(Note: On the issue of personal wealth of the leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, I looked up some information on James Dobson. Two pieces of property are registered to a James Dobson Trust in El Paso County Colorado. The first one is located at 1453 Smoochers Circle (hilarious name for James Dobson) and is worth an estimated $673,224. The second property is located at 7 Pourtales Road and is worth an estimated $649,785. James Dobson appears to be doing quite well for himself.)

In case you’ve never heard of “Project Steve” of the National Center for Science Education, here’s a quick recap:

NCSE’s “Project Steve” is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of “scientists who doubt evolution” or “scientists who dissent from Darwinism.” (For examples of such lists, see the FAQs.)

Creationists draw up these lists to convince the public that evolution is somehow being rejected by scientists, that it is a “theory in crisis.” Most members of the public lack sufficient contact with the scientific community to know that this claim is totally unfounded. NCSE has been exhorted by its members to compile a list of thousands of scientists affirming the validity of the theory of evolution, but although we easily could have done so, we have resisted such pressure. We did not wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues are decided by who has the longer list of scientists!

Project Steve mocks this practice with a bit of humor, and because “Steves” are only about 1% of scientists, it incidentally makes the point that tens of thousands of scientists support evolution. And it honors the late Stephen Jay Gould, NCSE supporter and friend.

We’d like to think that after Project Steve, we’ll have seen the last of bogus “scientists doubting evolution” lists, but it’s probably too much to ask. We do hope that at least when such lists are proposed, reporters and other citizens will ask, “but how many Steves are on your list!?”

Well, if you hurry and check, the latest Steve on the list is non other than Steven Wayne Morgan, Debi’s brother.  That page is regularly updated with the latest Steve, so catch it before it goes away.  Below is a screenshot for when another Steve is added to the list.

Very cool!

I caught the announcement that Barack Obama was visiting Tampa for a rally a few days ago via the local paper. So, Debi and I signed up for tickets and went today. We had already been to two rallies for candidates we’re not going to vote for (Mitt Romney and John McCain), so we figured we better go see the candidate we actually like.

The doors were supposed to open at 10:30. We wanted decent seats, so we got there around 9:30 only to find that the line to get into the St. Pete Times Forum literally wrapped all the way around the building:

You can’t see it very well in this photo, but this is about 3/4 a mile from the entrance and they were already letting people in. The people you see in the distance are part of the line and they aren’t even close to the beginning. Debi, as always, was quick to point out the demographics (she beats me to it every time): It was close to 40% black; the rest were white or Hispanic. And, Obama supporters come in every shape and size:

When we first arrived we thought we might not get in, but lines can be deceiving - we got in with plenty of space. In fact, we went against the recommended seating and sat all the way across the Forum, directly opposite the podium. When we arrived, no one was sitting there so we got front row seats. It was kind of far, but gave us a great view. (Note: The security personnel and volunteers were trying to position everyone behind the podium so the place looked full for the news media. Yes, Democrats do stage their rallies too. It wasn’t really necessary as the place filled up anyway, but so it goes.)

The news media probably worked against filling up the St. Pete Times Forum by claiming tickets were running out the day before, but the Forum was still pretty full by the time Obama arrived. The NYTimes article on the rally estimated around 15,000, which is what I estimated it at as well considering the upper level was mostly empty and the capacity of the Forum is 20,000. Here’s a panorama (click on it for full size) of the Forum about 30 minutes before Obama actually arrived. Tampa Mayer Pam Iorio, who endorsed Obama at the rally, was speaking at this point:

I snapped this shot zoomed in as close as I could with my camera (not a great zoom). You can barely see Senator Obama in the picture:

So, I went the easy way and snapped this one off the jumbotron:

Having listened to Mitt Romney, and based on Debi’s report on McCain, Obama is a much more charismatic speaker. Maybe it helps that we agree with him on most issues - ending the war in Iraq, providing better healthcare (we actually think Hillari has a better plan here, but he at least wants to try), funding alternative energy research, etc. Whatever it is, the guy is likable and charismatic. What’s more, he spoke for over 30 minutes extemporaneously and kept our attention the whole time. (I’d love to see our current president try to wing it like that for 30 minutes…) It took up most of our day, but here’s to hoping we just saw the next president of the U.S.!