Daniel Harper – Page 28 – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

Arctic vortex

An “arctic vortex” has hit the Boston area. It’s windy and cold. I was talking to someone much younger, who found out I just moved to Massachusetts from California. They said, “It got down to 11 degrees last night. Must be a big change for you, huh?”

“This isn’t cold,” I said. “I grew up in Massachusetts. Back in 1980, my first full-time job was working in a lumberyard. On Christmas Day, it didn’t get above zero. Now that’s cold.”

“Wow,” said the young person out loud. Inside, they were probably thinking: Old people and their stories, always got make it worse back then than it is now.

“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “Now that I’m an old guy, I get to say things like, ‘You young whippersnappers don’t know how good you got it.'” Inside, I was thinking: Summers are now much much hotter than they ever used to be, you young people have got it worse than we did. But I didn’t say it out loud.

The younger person just laughed at what I said. We parted on good terms.

The failures of mandated reporting

In October of last year, ProPublica and NBC News investigated whether mandated reporter laws work. Their conclusion: in some states, mandated reporter laws have not led to increased safety for children. In fact, they allege that in Pennsylvania, when additional people were mandated to report child abuse, this increased increased false reporting, which in turn overwhelmed already strained child protective services.

I can tell you from my own experience that badly written laws can cause an increase in mandated reports that are not worth pursuing. In 2014, California updated its mandated reporting law, adding many specifics to a list of reportable offenses. One specific that was added: in an effort to reduce children being forced to perform oral sex on an abuser, mandated reporters were required to report if a foreign object were inserted into a child’s mouth. However, this meant that if two teenagers under age 18 were seen French kissing, they had to be reported. I knew a woman who worked with at-risk youth, and she was making weekly calls to Child Protective services to report that two of the teens in her program had been French kissing. Even though the people who fielded the calls would simply file her reports, it still used up their valuable time. For my own part, after 2014 I had to tell teens in my congregation’s youth programs that they could never let me see them kissing, because I would have to report them to the state.

More insidious is the problem that because of vague laws, mandated reporters often don’t know exactly what to report. I’m one of those mandated reporters. I’ve taken trainings and read online materials. But too often there are no clearly defined criteria. None of the trainings ever tells you — If you see this then you must report. The training materials always say — If you think you’ve seen signs of abuse that kind of look like this, then you must report. This is why I like the last five videos on Virtual Lab School’s “Child Abuse Prevention, Identification, and Reporting” webpage — the teachers who talk on the videos on that page make it clear that they are not always sure what constitutes abuse. Yet they still have to report. They work hard to document a pattern of behavior, and they share that documentation with state workers. But sometimes they worry that the pattern of behaviors they observed might be, for example, the result of poverty instead of neglect — e.g., not having a hot meal once a day might be neglect, or it could be the family doesn’t have the money to give anyone a hot meal. And the ProPublica / NBC News report also makes it clear that African American children are overrepresented in reports from mandated reporters. Without well-defined criteria on what constitutes abuse, of course we’re going to see systemic prejudices coming into play.

Furthermore, I don’t advocate making everyone a mandated report, which some U.S. states have done. In my view, mandated reporters should be professionals who already have significant training in some kind of human services (health care, education, social work, emergency response, ministry, etc.). In addition, as a part of their job mandated reporters should receive regular training on abuse recognition and reporting, as part of their paid duties. I would also say that any professional working in a setting where it is possible to abuse children (including schools, churches, health care settings, etc.) needs to be able to safely report abuse that is perpetrated by other professionals, especially when that other professional is your supervisor or some other senior colleague.

So it’s clear to me that mandated reporting laws need reform. Legislators have think through the real-world effects of mandated reporting laws, and revise laws that are not producing the intended effects. Legislators also have to bite the bullet and pony up the money to create really good training on abuse recognition. A mandated reporting law that requires people to report abuse, but then doesn’t adequately tell people what abuse must be reported, is an empty law. Legislators need to be held accountable when they have not done their job.

Yet even with all the problems in existing mandated reporting laws, I still think clergy should be mandated reporters. Congregations of all types remain major targets for sexual predators (one insurance company representative told me that his nationwide company receives on average one new claim per week from religious congregations where child sexual abuse happened). If clergy are legally mandated reporters, this sends a message to sexual predators that congregations are at least doing an absolute bare minimum to watch for child sexual abuse.

Clergy as mandated reporters

In the state of New York, clergy are still not mandated reporters. That is, clergy are not mandated by law to report the physical, emotional, or sexual abuse of minors, if they become aware of such abuse. A bill currently being considered by the New York state legislature would change that state of affairs, making clergy mandated reporters. I don’t want to tell New Yorkers what to do. It’s their state, they need to figure it out themselves.

But I feel I’m lucky I’m in Massachusetts. In this state, as a clergyperson I am a mandated reporter. As a mandated reporter, I cannot be pressured by my congregation or by my denomination to suppress evidence of child abuse. As a mandated reporter, the law places great responsibility on me but it also exempts me from liability if I report in good faith but the state later finds no evidence of abuse. And because of the added responsibility of being a mandated reporter, I feel compelled to educate myself about child abuse and neglect.

Being a mandated reporter is a serious responsibility. Now that I’m back in Massachusetts, I’m using this state’s material to learn my responsibilities all over again. I read the Mass. Department of Children and Families webpage on “Warning Signs of Child Abuse and Neglect.” I also read “Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting: A Guide for Mandated Reporters.” Next, I will complete the 51A Online Mandated Reporter Training offered by Middlesex Children’s Advocacy Center. I’m taking my responsibility seriously.

Regarding the responsibility involved in being a mandated reporter, I found several of the videos on the Virtual Lab School’s “Child Abuse Prevention, Identification, and Reporting” webpage to be very helpful. There are five videos of preschool teachers talking about how they dealt with making reports as a mandated reporter, and recognizing signs of problems. These videos do not have happy storybook endings; the videos make it clear that when you make a report, it is not going to be easy, there may be real-world consequences, and sometimes you will never know what happened because of your report.

I’ve never had to report abuse myself. Once I was talking with another minister about a difficult situation we both knew about from doing denominational youth ministry together. This other minister said something about the situation, to which I replied: “You realize that as a mandated reporter you have to report that.” The other minister immediately ended the call with me and immediately called the state. That’s as close as I’ve come to making a report.

As I said, I don’t want to tell New Yorkers what to do about their laws. But honestly, I’m glad I’m in Massachusetts where clergy are mandated reporters. It makes things clear-cut for me. I know what my responsibilities are, I know what training I need to seek out, and so does my congregation and my denomination.

Additional resource: When I was in California, I came across the services of MinistrySafe, a law firm that specializes in child abuse prevention for congregations. One of the services they offer is abuse recognition training, at $10 per person. This is worth mentioning because their abuse training helps California congregations comply with the new law AB506.

How long have horses been in the Americas?

In a Ph.D. dissertation with the imposing title “The Relationship between the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and the Horse: Deconstructing a Eurocentric Myth” (Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017), Yvette Running Horse Collin (now Dr. Collin) argues that horses did survive in parts of the Americas from the Ice Age to at least the twentieth century. She surveys archaeological evidence, the historical record, and indigenous oral history to make her case.

Scholarship being what it is — a long, slow process — it will take a long time, decades even, before scholars come to a consensus on this question. But Collin’s work does address a question I’ve long had. The historic record states over and over again that the native peoples of the Americas were superb equestrians. Yet they became superb equestrians in a very few years, whereas I’d expect the level of expertise exhibited would be the result of a long cultural process. And their expertise seems to be reported as being a different kind of expertise than European expertise as equestrians. So if Europeans brought horses to the Americas, how was it that the native peoples of the Americas became such superb equestrians in such a short time?

This whole issue is complicated by a religious issue. The sacred writings of the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) apparently assert that horses were in North America before European contact in the fifteenth century. I would be extremely skeptical of that particular claim, just as I’m skeptical of all claims that every word of every sacred scripture is literally true. Sacred scriptures are more like myths, where mythos represents a different kind of truth than logos, or logical thought. In my view, Collin is making a very different claim from the Latter Day Saints. She is arguing about a bias she believes she has found in historiography, where there are often assumptions placing Europeans at the center of any historical account. So regardless of the religious claims of the Latter Day Saints, Collin’s work should be taken seriously.

Abuse of evil

Back in 2005, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we started talking more and more about evil — the evil of our terrorist opponents. Philosopher Richard J. Bernstein wrote:

“I want to examine this new fashionable popularity of the discourse of good and evil… it represents an abuse of evil — a dangerous abuse. It is an abuse because, instead of inviting us to question and to think, this talk of evil is being used to stifle thinking. This is extremely dangerous in a complex and precarious world. The new discourse of good and evil lacks nuance, subtlety, and judicious discrimination. In the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ nuance and subtlety are (mis)taken as signs of wavering, weakness, and indecision. But if we think that politics requires judgment, artful diplomacy, and judicious discrimination, then this talk about absolute evil is profoundly anti-political. As Hannah Arendt noted, ‘The absolute … spells doom to everyone when it is introduced into the political realm.'” [Richard J. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11 (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2005), pp. 10-11]

Here we are in 2022, and it seems that the discourse of good and evil has only become more firmly entrenched in the US, and in parts of the rest of the world. Here in the US, I see this happening across the political spectrum. There are political liberals who equate Donald Trump with evil. This is unwise, because it stops us thinking about what, exactly, Donald Trump and his supporters are doing. We brand them as “alt-right” or “fascists” — epithets which are just one step removed from calling them “evil” — and once branded as such, we stop thinking about them. On the other side of the political spectrum, there are political conservatives who use similar language to equate political liberals with evil.

It has become very easy to brand others as evil, or to brand others with some euphemism that implies evil. Richard J. Bernstein wrote, “‘Evil tends to be used in an excessively vague and permissive manner in order to condemn whatever one finds abhorrent.” [p. 97] Of course we should name evil when we see it. But we should stop and think first — are we naming this thing as evil because it is evil, or only because we happen to find it abhorrent? It should never be easy to brand others as evil.

90 seconds to midnight

Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has maintained the “Doomsday Clock.” That mythical clock shows how close humanity is to total destruction. Originally, the Clock only looked at the danger from nuclear armageddon, but in recent years has included threats from ecological catastrophe, bio-security, and other controllable threats to humanity.

The Clock was advanced from its previous setting of 100 seconds before midnight (i.e., to destruction), up to 90 seconds before midnight. According to Rachel Bronson, PhD, president and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “90 seconds to midnight is the closest the Clock has ever been set to midnight.” The Bulletin’s press release attributes most of the increase in threat to humanity to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ongoing threats that Russia will use nuclear weapons.

Ten years ago, the Clock was set to 5 minutes (300 seconds) to midnight. When I first got active in the movement calling for reduction in nuclear stockpiles, back in the late 1970s, the Clock was set at 9 minutes to midnight, and we thought that was terrifying.

I still remember attending a Sun Ra concert in Philadelphia sometimes around 1983, when Sun Ra led his band in a snake dance through the audience while chanting, “It’s a motherfucker / Don’t you know / If they press that button / Your ass gonna go.” That chant was one of the things that helped me make sense of something you can’t really make sense out of. Nuclear war. It’s a motherfucker — and Sun Ra never used strong language, except in this piece, but that strong language is the only possible language for this topic — but there it is. Don’t get frantic about nuclear disaster, but don’t ignore it either. Confront it head on, in all its seriousness, with all the possibility of oblivion, while making music about it.

(For the record, the live version I remember hearing differs from the 1982 recorded version. Musically, the version I heard in Philadelphia is probably more like the live version recorded in Germany in 1984; though the words of the German recording differ from what I remember. There’s also the version recorded in Paris in 1983, which is quite different musically. No matter. If you’re looking to make sense out of nuclear armageddon, the effect of any of the recorded versions is the same: helping us make sense of the senseless.)

A screen grab from the 1984 film showing Sun Ra and his band, dressed in elaborate costumes, performing "Nuclear War." A subtitle in French reads, "S'ils appuient sur le bouton," i.e., "If they press the button...." — Screen grab from a 1984 film of Sun Ra performing “Nuclear War” in Paris.

Lake Shore Limited to Framingham

I woke up around seven o’clock. We were still in Pennsylvania. The sky was a dull gray. My roomette was on the north side of the train, and I kept hoping for a sight of Lake Erie. I finally thought I saw the lake in the distance.

A cloudy sky over a snow covered field, with a line of trees in the distance, and through a break in the trees perhaps a sight of a distant lake. — Near Freeport, Pennsylvania

It started snowing. The blowing snow made verything I saw out the window look faded. It was hard to tell the difference between the sky and the ground — both looked white.

A white sky overhead, trees in the distance partly obscured by snow, a snowy field in the foreground. — Snow near Buffalo, New York

We had a quarter of an hour layover at the Buffalo-Depew station, so I got out to stretch my legs. A few smokers got out and miserably puffed their cigarettes while the snow swirled around. The people getting on the train bent their heads down to keep snow out of their eyes.

People walking along a stationary train, which stretches into the distance. — Buffalo-Depew Station

The train passes quite near the lower end of Onondaga Lake. Through the falling snow, I saw a Bald Eagle sitting in tree near the water, and half a dozen Canada Geese swimming out in the lake.

Canada Geese in the distance, swimming on the lake. — Onondaga Lake, New York

The Lake Shore Limited seems to carry quite a few people in plain dress. Maybe they were Amish, but the Amish aren’t the only group that wears plain dress; there are Mennonite groups who wear plain dress, Hutterites, and still others. I asked one of the train crew about them. He said lots of Amish (as he called them) took the train, and sometimes they took over a whole car. I said I had heard at least one couple speking what sounded like Pennsylvania Dutch of Low German to me, but that wasn’t something he had noticed.

Couple wearing plain dress, Utica station (faces blurred to protect privacy)

When we got to Albany, I had to move to a different car. There’s a one hour layover in Albany. After I stowed my luggage in my new roomette, I stood outside the train, just to be outdoors. A young man was taking photographs with what looked like a film camera, and I asked him about it. He was shooting outdated Kodak Gold color film, which he processes and prints himself to get certain specific artistic effects. I was suitably impressed. He wandered off to take more photographs. I talked for a bit with the sleeping car attendant, who grew up in Dedham.

Then I fell into conversation with a man from Australia. He and his wife had taken the train from San Francisco, with a stop in Denver, and a two day layover in Chicago. He loved both cities, and was looking forward to seeing Boston, and then New York. It turned out that he was a retired air traffic controller, and so I asked him about the recent FAA shutdown of air traffic in the United States. He said that of course once you have a glitch like the FAA had, you have to shut down all air traffic. But he also said that problems like that do arise when you outsource certain functions.

We got back on the train a minute before it started up again. By now, it was starting to get dark. But the light lasted long enough for me to see the Berkshires off in the distance.

A river visible in the middle distance, and a low mountain visible through the snow in the far distance. — Near the Housatonic River, south of Hinsdale, Massachusetts, with mountains in the distance

The train arrived on time in Framingham. I got my car out of long-term parking just as it started pouring rain. I was thankful that it wasn’t cold enough to turn the rain to snow.

Now I’m home, and I still feel like there’s a train moving under me….

Chicago

I wound up with a 7 hour layover in Chicago. The nice thing about train travel is that when you have a layover, you can leave the terminal. And when you have a layover in Chicago, you’re downtown, right in the Loop.

The Art Institute is closed on Tuesdays, so I went to Exile in Bookville, a bookstore on the second floor of the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave. The Fine Arts Building still retains much of its 1898 decor, and it even still has elevators that need to be operated by human beings. Exile in Bookville turned out to be an excellent small bookstore. I passed over William Cronon’s environmental history of Chicago and the midwest (too bulky to carry on the train) and instead bought The Future Is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. I also stopped at the DePaul University bookstore, which is run by Barnes and Noble.

By then it was half past four. Time to start walking slowly back to Union Station. I stopped to take a photo of part of a public art work on Quincy St. at South State St.

A semi-abstract sculpture that looks vaguely like a tree or a very large plant. — Public art, Quincy Street at South State Street, Chicago

As I continued walking, I looked for more public art….

Photomontage showing two statues of women, one symbolizing agriculture and one symbolizing industry. — Photomontage, Chicago Board of Trade statues symbolizing agriculture and industry, c. 1885

A large bright red abstract sculpture standing in a plaza surrounded by skyscrapers. — Alexander Calder, Flamingo, Klucynzski Federal Building, Chicago, 1973

A large sculpture, about 100 feet tall, that looks like a huge baseball bat. — Claes Oldenberg, Batcolumn, Social Security Administration Building, Chicago, 1977

It turned out to be a very pleasant layover in Chicago.

Unexpected optimism

I remember sitting in an upper level undergraduate philosophy class back in 1982, when we were discussing nihilism. This was a time when the Cold War was frighteningly real to my twenty year old self. In this class discussion, I pointed out that there was a very good chance of a nuclear war wiping out human civilization within a decade. The point I was trying to make, in my inarticulate way, was that nihilism and realism were hard to tell apart at that moment in history.

I suspect quite a few people in my age cohort had similar feelings. Science fiction Charles Stross, who’s four years younger than I, appears to be one of those people. In a recent comment on his own blog, he writes:

“[In the 1980s,] I didn’t expect to live to see 1990, much less 2000.

“[Today] we’re nearly a year into an angry totalitarian Russian invasion of a western(ish) nation and the invasion stalled out badly before it got more than 200km in, and they still haven’t gone nuclear.

“Yes, that is an improvement. I mean, I’ll take dangerously accelerating climate change, rule by mad billionaire oligarchs, and neo-Nazis trying to make a come-back everywhere, over dying in a 50,000-warhead superpower nuke-fest — or worse, being one of the scorched and irradiated and starving survivors — any day of the week.”

I agree with Stross. I’m still somewhat amazed that it’s 2023, and I’m not yet reduced to radioactive ash. We’re still here.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) was a German philosopher who lived through the First World War, the Nazi regime, the Cold War, and the beginning of the “war on terror.” Not long after the attack on the World Trade Center, someone asked him if he had optimism. Yes, he said — holding his finger and thumb a tiny distance apart — about this much hope.

So like Stross and Gadamer, I find myself optimistic. Yes, we face incredible problems. But we’re still here, which is pretty amazing. We’re still here, there’s still hope.

Eagles

We went out for a walk along the river that runs through Oshkosh, Wisconsin, today. A Bald Eagle soared overhead, landed in a tree, and soared off again when we got too close. Then a couple of minutes later, there was another Bald Eagle ahead of us, sitting in a tree.

It was breathtaking to see Bald Eagles that close. But we shouldn’t be seeing any eagles over the river in Oshkosh in January. Instead, the river and the lakes should be fully frozen over, driving the eagles to Lake Michigan to find open water for hunting. It has been such a warm winter, the river is almost completely ice-free. So while I love seeing the eagles, we’re seeing them because of global climate change, which is not a cheerful thought.