The Promised Land

Essay on Mexican Migration assigned by Dr. Robert Bauman as a requirement for his WSU history class in American Roots: Immigration, Migration, and Ethnic Identity. The essay is based on a book named MIGRANT DAUGHTER: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman by Frances Esquibel Tywoniak and Mario T. Garcia. U of California Press, Berkeley, 2000.

Assigned for fall semester August-December 2006.

THE PROMISED LAND by Laurel Piippo Frances Esquibel Tywoniak's migration to California during the 1930s was a transplantation from New Mexico to the promised land where she achieved the American dream. Her intelligence formed the basis of her success, more influential than gender, ethnic identity, language, or even migration. Her clear-sighted view of what her Mexican culture offered,compared with an Americanized life, even when she was a junior high school student, determined her future. Her willingness to give up the love of her life and to break with the ethnic traditions of both family and community played a major role in her transformation . Command of the English language was a manifestation of her intelligence. She saw clearly that learning English was the first step toward a life better than the one lived as a Spanish-speaking American/ Mexican girl, whose life could have been determined by ethnicity, gender, and language limitations.On a personal note, Fran is only four years younger than I am. Like her, I was uprooted from everything familiar as a child and taken to California, driven by economic necessity during the Depression of the 1930s. Reading her story, I was constantly amazed at how much we had in common, yet from such different backgrounds. In fact there were so many similarities it was downright spooky!Fran had the advantage of being much smarter, self-aware, and conscious of her goals than I. But the similarities, not the differences, are what struck me. She describes herself as stubborn, defiant, and rebellious, wanting to do things her way, not obeying her father's authoritarian rule, especially about speaking English. She felt isolated and had to look out for herself, not subordinate herself to her family's needs. Above all, she was determined to get an education. That sounds like me.In the WSU class about American Roots, examining the experiences of immigrants and migrants who were uprooted or transplanted, struck a chord in me.

Surprisingly, learning history turned into psychotherapy and self-discovery. That is part of what I am going to explore--my history as well as Fran's. Many similarities between Fran and Laurel made me laugh and are not relevant, but some of them are so much fun! Fran is four years younger than I, and our fathers both migrated to California for economic reasons. Our childhoods both included rural life. Raising sheep during the Depression was not good for my father or hers. We ate a lot of mutton and home-grown corn and peas, raised chickens and had dairy cows. Someone stole 1200 of my dad's flock, and one of my dad's farms was foreclosed because he could not pay the taxes. Fran's family lost land through fraud, but their farm in New Mexico was self-sufficient, and neither of us remembers being hungry. Like Fran and her extended family, I grew up with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and nine cousins who showed up every summer at our grandparents' home in Flandreau, South Dakota. Unlike Fran, when my dad and I moved to California, love and security for me were left behind, and I longed to return to South Dakota. Fran, secure in the love of her family, was transplanted and moved forward, not looking back to a happier time. She did, however, always regard New Mexico as her true home, while the rest of her family made Visalia, CA, their home.We shared similar experiences, at least during the three miserable years I had to live on a farm with animals that might as well have been creatures from a zoo. Fran liked her rural home in New Mexico. She and her sister "accepted the reality that our earnings were part of the family income" in California. In Visalia the town had separate and different residential areas with Anglos on one side and Mexicans on the other other in the Mexican barrio, an area consisting entirely of Mexicans. Her father was a" mejcano," a foreign born person from Mexico. In the barrio the people were "la gent mejicana," and others were "los Americanos." Not sharing their Mexican ethnicity were "Oakies and "Arkies." They had to use smelly outhouses with the Sears Roebuck catalog for toilet paper, just like on the farm where I lived. That was as close to camping as either of us ever chose to experience. She told her children she'd had enough of "camping" and refused to go. This brought back memories of my camping experiences. At least I tried, but after my hus band enthusiastically confronted me with his idea of luxury -- "this out-house has TWO HOLES!" -- I waited till he went fishing and checked into nearest motel. Shock and awe reverberated .

I was forever condemned for being a bad wife, poor sport, a woman who struck terror and loathing in all husbands. My behavior was not a proper role for a woman in the 1950s and '60s, who was supposed to comply with all her husband's activities. .The importance of music in Fran's family was also true in mine. I remember cranking up my grandmother's hand-cranked Victrola, just as she did. Her guitar-playing grandfather delighted her as my mother, a classical pianist, gave me a need and appreciation for music that still exists today. Her love of Mexican music was part of her ethnic identity, both in New Mexico and California. Born of an American-Mexican mother and Mexican father, Fran's childhood in rural New Mexico wrapped a cocoon of extended family love around her. "People loved one another. . . I don't recall much bickering among my aunts and uncles," she writes.

Toward the end of her book she expresses gratitude for a family that she knew always supported her and were interested in her, no matter what she did. Her family expected her to do well in school, and she did. Fran and I both found that California schools were different.. Public schools tended to treat Mexican students like dummies, and teachers had low expectations. In South Dakota I was just like all my little friends, on the honor roll as a matter of unremarkable routine. But in California I was regarded as some kind of superior student because -- gasp! -- I could READ AND WRITE well in sixth grade. California schools were going through the phase of dumping phonics and not teaching the alphabet or history and geography. They placed great emphasis on P.E., forcing me to play soccer at 8 o'clock on very cold mornings. I hated it and always got Cs in P.E, which kept me off the honor roll. I don't recall Fran ever mentioning pleasure in athletics or exercise either. Probably walking six miles to and from school was enough exercise for her.

Fran and I each were required to read a well-respected classic that we disliked intensely. She hated HEIDI and her mountain stories, which had nothing to with Fran or her life or her feelings. I changed schools three times, and every time my new English class read EVANGELINE by H. W. Longfellow. Evangeline's beloved Gabriel and the Acadians and her lifelong search for him were bad enough the first time, but THREE TIMES? -- first in South Dakota, then in Pomona, then in Chino, California.

I missed the wonders of diagramming sentences and never learned about gerunds and participles, transitive and intransitive verbs. Thrice-read EVANGELINE left me with a shaky knowledge of grammar.

Decades later, the historical background of EVANGELINE helped me appreciate Acadia at as park in the northeast someplace. But when my husband and I visited Evangeline's grave in a Louisiana town, I snarled, "I'd like to drive a stake through her heart."

During her childhood Fran's father adamantly insisted his family speak only Spanish, like everyone else in the community, even though the youngsters were American born, and English was used in their schools. Her father was a typical macho Mexican male who occasionally clobbered his children. Frances resented it, but did not stop loving and respecting her father because of it.

Her mother never disagreed or argued with her father. Fran was critical of her mother's subordinate relationship to her father, but later came to understand "the time and circumstances. .." that provided extremely limited options to her mother.

Frances determined not to be limited by traditional ethnic customs; she sought other options. Ironically, her father was forced to learn enough English to deal with employment in English-speaking California.

Migration, and eventually settling in Visalia, California, continued to shape and define Fran's ethnic identity as she began to evaluate how strongly community cultural values would influence her. Because of Fran's rejection of Mexican/American ethnic values, she felt isolated in Visalia, She was alienated at school because she "couldn't see much in the learning process that was directly relevant to my condition or that of my family." She became watchful and alert while retaining her faith in schooling. Her mother was determined that her children receive "the education she had wanted but had been denied." Fran and her family believed in the value of education, as did mine, but neither of us at that age saw a "connection between schooling and a better life," certainly not in economic terms.

In a few years her attitude shifted into realizing that education provided a way out of an ethnic lifestyle she found unacceptable.Fran had no access to libraries and was uninterested in the school books provided.

She loved language, words, reading. She soon learned from listening to mind-deadening conversations among women workers that she did NOT want to live a life like theirs. She saw her father treated rudely because of his ethnicity for the first time in California, but at the same time he had a better job. New experiences came hard upon. The family received hand-me-downs, as a reminder that they were poor, but people were kind. I, too, was a poor relation and never allowed to forget it. She observed gender exclusion for men, too, during World War II when American/Mexican boys were discriminated against unless they called themselves Spanish/American because Mexicans were not desirable.Gender reared its head when school rules forbade girls wearing slacks when she was cold and wanted warm clothes, not a skirt. Anglos were authority figures in her culture, and their arguments dismayed her. One teacher showed her affection and respect, which gave her confidence. Another teacher slapped her when she finished a spelling lesson too soon and did some creative doodling. Anglo kids took French, and Fran did not understand why she was excluded because of her race; she liked languages and was good at them.

She learned in the barrio that "wanting to be like an Anglo meant a betrayal of your own culture."In high school she gave full expression to her love of language. "I had grown up conscious of language and its use, both English and Spanish as well as the Latin of my church missal. It was easy for me to deal with this subject, whether it was literature or grammar or writing."

She "derived great personal satisfaction from all aspects of language study." She loved manipulating words, no matter what the language.

Like Fran, I too loved writing and literature, but had no gift for languages. Her drive for education was prompted partly by the need for the key to a different life; mine was a drive to use my mind, heart, and soul to the highest possible level of learning, to know my heritage, and also to escape emotionally from an unsatisfactory life. Fran learned about different kinds of colleges and universities in high school. Unlike Anglo students, she did not become involved in extra-curricular activities or go to games. She and Anglo girls came together to pursue academic goals, not to socialize. She represented her school at Girls State, an honor. Her priest told her it was a sin to attend a dance sponsored by a Protestant group. All he did was alienate her from the church.

Her ethnic culture could not prevent her thinking through issues and making up her own very fine mind. She disliked stereotypes and says she was "not affected by social influences around me."Fran made Anglo friends, was introduced to Anglo books, and learned about the subtleties of language. She discovered her own sexuality, no thanks to any sex education from her parents.

I'd be hard put to say which of us had the worst so-called sex education.

Fran says, "Topics like sex and birth control were largely avoided in my family and in the barrio." Sex was not talked about among the Mexican girls, but in Pomona my friends and I speculated endlessly about when we would get our "periods." Fran's mother never told her anything.

My family tried to tell me too much, creating nothing but confusion. My twenty year-old sister checked out a book -- no kidding! -- on flowers from the library when I was ten years old. She seemed oddly nervous about it. I wondered why she thought I would be interested in a book on gardening. I looked at it and read about pistils and stamens and pollen and gave it back, wondering why she seemed so uneasy and different. That there was a connection between flowers and human reproduction never entered my head. Then at dinner one day my stepmother's friend told me I should eat ham "Why? I don't like it.""Because you need iron in your blood,." she answered, uncomfortably. My stepmother tried to clarify. "Um, so you will be strong when you have your periods. The blood is for the baby. You need strong blood for a baby." My baby sister was born, but her birth had nothing to do with my blood. Furthermore, if girls bleed during their period, what good does the lost blood do a baby? It just makes a mess, not a baby! Nothing connected. Nothing made sense. Best not to ask any more questions. Really, NOTHING CONNECTED! One night I woke to see my stepmother coming up the stairs, her housecoat open, her huge watermelon belly exposed, which I had never noticed before. The next day I learned that my baby half-sister was born. AMAZING! I had no idea! My Aunt Gail, my stepmother, my older sister, my father, letters from relatives, NOBODY told me a baby was about to arrive! Nothing had connected. I didn't care or figure out the mysteries of sex for another several years. Sex was a totally taboo subject in respectable middle class families.While reading a book in high school, I came across a sentence that described a woman in prison looking out in the courtyard where soldiers raped girls . What were they doing? What was rape? Curious, I looked it up in the dictionary. "RAPE: carnal knowledge without consent." Oh. Some kind of knowledge forced on someone who doesn't want it. Sex education in middle class white Protestant families was unbelievable, I learned decades later when one of my my cousins told me that his mother explained sex as something that happens "when a man asnd a woman put their two toilets together."Boys and romance were something else. Fran's story amazed me. She fell in love with Peter at age 13, loved him all her life to some degree, but had the maturity to know she could never achieve the life she wanted with him. His life would be determined by gender and ethnicity, not hers. Gender and ethnicity programmed Mexican girls to marry young, have lots of babies, not go to school, possibly have a job that wouldn't challenge a brain cell, wait on her husband, and live the stereotyped Mexican life her parents lived. She defied her parents and lied to spend time with Peter, but ultimately gave him up. In contrast, when the little boy across the street got a crush on 12 year-old me, his mother asked my stepmother if he could take me to a movie. NOBODY ASKED ME. And at that age I was meek and quiet, standing there in an agony of silence, hoping my stepmother would say "No." But NOBODY ASKED ME. So the little boy's mother took us to a movie, took us to an ice cream shop afterwards, and stood there with an expression I recognized as, "Isn't this too cute for words?" I hated it. Yet Fran at almost the same age had the maturity and wit to know that knew that love wasn't enough. Like Juliet, I would kill or die for love or indulge in extravaganzas of romantic agony later on, but Fran, ever analytical and intelligent even as a teenager, gave up the love of her life to create the life she wanted, a life it took years of work to achieve. Her self-respect, self-control and goals prevented physical intimacy with Peter, but she never forgot him even though she rejected him. She liked boys, and they liked her, but her self-respect and the strict morality absorbed from her culture prevented any dalliance.

During her teenage years Fran did not want to become like other Mexican girls in Visalia, California. Her strong will and personal sense of values overcame both gender and ethnicity when she observed girls called "pachucas." She saw them in junior high school, but they apparently had dropped out by the time Fran was in high school. Fran chose "Anglo clothes" while the pachucas in the 1940s zoot suit era wore "short tight skirts, bulky sweaters, and high-top black shoes." They roamed in packs, and her father disapproved of them: . . ."they're up to no good." She avoided them. She figured out that "Visalia was a dead-end place. . ." She wanted a future that "held more than working in the fields, .being a clerk, or marrying and having lots of children." She knew as a child that "I had to learn Anglo ways. And I had to do well in high school. I prepared myself for this challenge"

She was so observant, so aware, so smart in rejecting the destiny that ethnicity and gender both held for her. In ninth grade Fran learned about the California Scholarship Federation. "By asking and observing," she learned what courses counted and what ones didn't. She also began to like her classes, and the following year, her teachers recognized her academic talents and helped her with scholarship information. Her SAT scores, excellent grades, recommendations, and surviving a socially uncomfortable interview process resulted in a scholarship to Berkeley. Her mother supported Fran's educational aims and would persuade her father. "I knew that as a Mexican American at Berkeley I was already an exception." She mentions being the only American/Mexican student on campus. When she married a Polish man and changed her name from Esquibel to Tywoniak, people could not figure out her background: "I would be asked, 'Is that a Korean name?" Other guesses included Hawaiian, Japanese, and even Aleutian one time." She mentions that even in the Bay Area, people stared at mixed-race couples in the 1950s when she and her husband-to-be dated.Her marriage did not follow the pattern set by her parents, a pattern partly based on ethnic Mexican behavior.

"I rejected the type of traditional/patriarchal relationship that they had. My father was quick to anger, and his moods dominated our household. This type of marriage was not acceptable to me. I could not accept the self-abnegation that seemed to define my mother's life.

"As a young mother in 1953 she clung to her childhood attachment to the Catholic church, even though she had developed "certain reservations about the Church and its inflexibility. . ."

She could not "easily separate my allegiance to my parents from my allegiance to a Church that they so devoutly believed in and that I now questioned." Yet her close family ties for the first 18 years of her life did not hamper her changing attitudes or growth as a person. Her ethnic family background in a loving extended Mexican family was her foundation, not her pinnacle. Although her parents did not have the knowledge to guide her academic choices, they expected her to do well in school and were proud that she was the first in the family to graduate from college. A born leader, she "saw myself as setting an example in my family." Marriage did not deflect her from her goals either.

Ethnic customs, values, and expectations, gender roles and community role models shaped Fran's early life, but became obstacles to overcome. Language was at first an impediment and a hurdle, but became a joy, as her education progressed. More important than any of these, her capacity for observation, thinking through all possibilities, and applying her excellent intelligence to finding her own Self meant that Fran could be successfully transplanted in California -- or any place else in the United States where colleges and universities exist.

Education, brains, and character create their own Promised Land.

Johnny, get your gun!

John B_____ recommends having public school teachers carry guns in the classroom to protect students from violence. I recommend that John volunteer to arm himself and carry a gun and patrol a public school. My 24 year-old granddaugther is now a substitute teacher, hoping for a full-time job. Her four years of expensive WSU training did NOT include a course in marksmanship or gun handling. Neither did my two college degrees when I taught English for 20 years. How about it, John? "Johnny, get your gun" and protect American children. While you're at it, why not volunteer to go to Iraq and drop a few more bombs on the civilian population? Got any more good ideas for keeping America safe?

Laurel

Profiling? You Worry Me!

The comments below were written by an American Airlines pilot ... Laurel

PROFILING

This e-mail hits the nail on the head. I read in the paper that some Muslim doctor is saying we are profiling him because he has been checked three times while getting on an airplane.

Below is a letter from an American Airlines pilot who asks the same question that many of us have been asking for the past several years. He says what is in his heart beautifully. It's time to get answers from those who claim their terrorist members do not represent THEM. Why are their leaders not LOUDLY and FIERCELY and CONTINUOUSLY condemning their visible murderous brethren?

YOU WORRY ME!

By American Airlines Pilot Captain John Maniscal

"I've been trying to say this since 9/11. You worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.On September 11, 2001, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers.The Palestinians celebrated; the Iraqis were overjoyed, as was most of the Arab world.

So I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help.

As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.How do I differentiate between the true Arab/Muslim-Americans and the Arab/Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR Constitution while they plot the next attack that will slaughter these same good neighbors and children? The events of September 11th changed the answer.

It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens, with all of its faults. It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know whether or not you love America.

Do you pledge allegiance to its flag?

Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car?

Do you pray in your many daily prayers that your Allah will bless this nation, that he will protect and prosper it?

Or do you pray that your Allah will destroy it in one of your "Jihads"?

Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords?

A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country?

Are you willing to preserve this freedom by paying the ultimate sacrifice?

Do you love America?

If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it.

Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America.

Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the deaths of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy...I am only interested in action.

What will you do for America-- our great country-- at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America ." I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.

The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are.
Hand them over to us, now! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals.

The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed toward them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat. If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Quran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Quran are good and pure and true when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance?

It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if large numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we drink wine with dinner, or celebrate Christmas? Do you and you fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY civilized democratic nation in the entire Middle East?

And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here? Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us? If so, I want you to leave. I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE! We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion.

We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11th, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest Constitution in the world. I want to know where every Arab/Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand. Until then ....you worry me!

Marxism and Leninism in American Colleges...NOT!

My professor of Russian history sent this response to a hysterical e-mail announcing the paranoid nonsense that American colleges are full of instructors teaching Marx-Leninism. She has been teaching at WSU for about 20 years. I took Imperial Russian History from Peter the Great through Nicholas II last semester and am studying the Russian Revolution this semester. Laurel

From my professor:

Hi...I was baffled myself by your friend's email. Where is Marx-Leninism taught as "just another form of government?" As you point out, anyone alive and/or conscious over the past few years knows just exactly where that social experiment-gone-awry led humanity. It sounds like he's subscribed to the usual canard about American academia, i.e. that it's been infested with lefties who are inflicting moral equivalency on everyone and hate America/blame America first. I have a friend whom I've told a hundred million times that I have never witnessed one single conscious instance of bias on the part of a colleague...the people i know teach dispassionately, without fear or favor. Nonetheless, she keeps sending me articles about the hard-core liberal bias in higher ed. If people want to ask my opinion, I will always give it, but I will also give the other side of whatever the argument is. it's just nonsense that we're teaching anti-Americanism, or pro-communism, or whatever. it's craaaaaaazy. On the other hand, I AM biased against people-- inside or outside the academy-- who don't even believe in science. I don't think I'd be hiring any "intelligent design" advocates!"I remember when Yeltsin's people were changing all the street names without anyone's permission... Someone wrote to the paper demanding that all the misdeeds and bad leaders of the past be immortalized on street names, e.g. Brezhnevskii Tupik...Brezhnev Dead End, or Avenue of 70 years on the Road to Nowhere. I'd have gone for those..."

Response to an astounding email from someone who forwarded it to me: Laurel replies:

Marxism and Leninism popular on so many American college campuses??? Are you crazy? Paranoid? Delusional? I am enrolled in my fifth history class at WSU Tri-Cities, currently taking classes in the Russian Revolution and American Roots: Immigrarion, Migration and Ethnic Identity. I already have two college degrees and 20 years' experience as a teacher of English, which doesn't exactly make me Miss Naive and Gullible.

Between the 1940s and 1970s I've attended classes at U. W., extension classes through Eastern U., San Francisco State College, many summer schools at CWSU, American University, U. of South Dakota, and haven't found any such cults, classes, professors, curriculum, attitude, philosophy as you imply is rampant in the country today.

When was the last time you enrolled in a college course?

How about the person who sent you the idiotic email about American colleges?

Believe me, it doesn't take an-depth study of Marx, Lenin, Stalin to become totally horrified by what Communism has done to any country unfortunate enough to be ruled by such a system.

Visits to numerous countries dominated by the Soviet system is enough to make any observant person reject the Marx, Lenin, Stalin government by death: -- Mao's China, Cambodia (the worst), Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, both before and after July 1991.

Emperor Bush, dictators, mass murder

How do dictators get away with mass murder?

The first step is to give the executive branch unlimited power and no accountability.

Here's my warning:

Dear Editor,

Your Sept. 29 article "Iraqi Scientists Seek Scientists to Join Jihad" terrifies me.

Is there no limit to the inhumanity practiced by Al-Quaida?

Kidnaping, beheading, suicide bombings -- now they recruit scientists to join their "holy war" in the name of their insane concept of God.

This administration's solution terrifies me, too. A Senate bill advocates allowing a military court system to prosecute suspects and gives the President authority to decide to use torture and protects CIA interrogators. Apparently Emperor Bush destroyed a dictatorship in Iraq to set up one at home.

The bill would allow the Defense Department to arrest foreign civilians and American citizens. -- you and me, Dear Reader --without charge.

Bush could lock you up forever by calling you an illegal combatant, no trial, no appeal.

Must we stoop to the enemy's level to fight terrorism?

Give Bush the power to jail anyone he wants (remember Nixon's enemies list?), disregard the Geneva Convention and our Constitution to allow torture and deny justice to people arrested by mistake?

To eliminate rape as torture?

Senators John McCain and Maria Cantwell say NO.

Presidents are notorious for disregarding the law during wartime (remember incarcerating thousands of loyal American/Japanese civilians?), but this disgraceful law will come back to haunt us.

Sincerely,

Laurel

In some cases the chief executive takes power illegally. Stay tuned for Step Two!

NO TOLERANCE FOR THE INTOLERABLE

Three years ago the Muslim community invited Christians to a discussion and explanation of Islam at their mosque in ...

Although I am not a Christian, I went anyway. I wrote the following report and was told they would print it in their bulletin, but they never did. I totally reject their belief that there should be no separation between religion (theirs, of course) and government.

July 2002

NO TOLERANCE FOR THE INTOLERABLE

Until recently my attitude toward all religions has been “live and let live.” Events on Sept. 11, with the hatred and destruction expressed by fanatical Muslims toward the United States, changed that. My trip to Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan on September 14 was canceled when all the airports shut down, and I did not rebook the trip for this September.

I have read about Muslim tribes, nations, and communities in various parts of Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., ordering “honor” killings, genital mutilation of girls, subjugation and beating of women, the death of an English novelist because the government of Iran didn’t like what he wrote about Islam -- all under the name of Islam.

According to those who have studied the KORAN, such horrible actions are not justified in that spiritual guide.Of course, I would not condemn an entire religion because of the actions of the fanatical minority – until two weeks ago.

Galvanized into action after reading an Associated Press article (July 4) about a Pakistani tribal council ordering the gang-rape of an innocent girl because her 11 year-old brother walked with a girl from another tribe, I sent irate e-mails to women friends challenging us to DO SOMETHING.

I declared myself officially anti-Muslim. No more tolerance for the intolerable. One email response pointed out, “It doesn’t matter what the KORAN says. It is how it is interpreted and preached and what people choose to believe it says. The leaders have to stop telling people that killing people is O. K., even wonderful.

Religious and secular leaders have to stop praising suicide bombers and rewarding them. “It doesn’t matter if more moderate Muslims say the KORAN doesn’t preach all this bad stuff. As long as they do not loudly condemn it, they are condoning it. Most Muslims in this country may be peaceful people, but they and the rest of the Muslims throughout the world have to speak out against how their religion is being used or misused. Their silence – and it is pretty deafening – is giving tacit consent.”

My resolve to attend a meeting Saturday at the Islamic Center of ...wilted in the 108-degree heat until my conscience drove me to participate in the discussions on Islam and Christianity. I arrived late with a chip on my shoulder and copy of the KORAN in each hand, ready to box their collective ears. The first speaker Hassan Ziada outlined many Islamic virtues similar to those preached but rarely practiced by Christians, such as equality (except for women, of course), brotherhood, tolerance, patience, and forgiveness as a code of life. Islam does not force its religion on anyone. No separation of religion and government!!!! Family ties, God, and community are interrelated. Life and religion are the same. Sounds like Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity, hypocrites all.I get so irritated with the moral superiority of many Christians and find it impossible to believe in a religion based on the murder of a good and decent man, probably the best man who ever lived. Fortunately, God/Allah and I have reached a close mutual understanding apart from any dogma. According to the KORAN and the speaker, killing is justified only in self-defense, such as an army taking away your land and threatening your family. The speaker never heard of an honor killing???? This is just a tribal custom, not a Muslim custom in some societies? I refer him to a “Position Paper on ‘Honor Killings’ from the Muslim Women’s League, a nonprofit American Muslim organization working to implement the values of Islam and thereby reclaim and status of women as free, equal, and vital contributors to society.”I found no reference to honor in one translation of the KORAN, but a quotation on “honour” appears in another in Surah (Chapter) 49, verse 13: “Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you.”

During the break a new convert to Islam explained to me that there is no unified international outcry against abusive behavior by Muslims in the name of their distortion of Islam because there is no central clergy in Islam to lead such a condemnation. Good explanation, but Muslims do need to address their public relations problem.

The meeting helped counteract the negative perceptions of Islam that we read in the newspapers, but blaming the media won’t stop the atrocities. The next speaker Mohamed Abu-Shehahah spoke about Jesus and Mohammed. Not being a Christian (or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or anything but a child of God), this did not concern me greatly. I won’t discriminate against any one religion; I say a pox on all your houses. Religions have a history of being used and misused to further the agenda of those who want money, land, power, and a trumped-up holy excuse to kill and abuse those of a different faith.

The speaker said, “Islam is a compassionate religion and does not tell us to kill,” and showed me a quotation to prove it. One of my emails said, “Like many spiritual books the KORAN depends on translation and interpretation. Mine is Chapter XL VII entitled Mohammed: Revealed at Medina. It seems pretty clear: ‘When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads, until he have made a great slaughter among them.’”Sounds very much like the Old Testament with God ordering the Hebrews to slaughter their enemies. The speaker said, “Read it in context.” The quotation refers to what Allah/God told Mohammed about defending his house, his property, and his family when he was attacked and fled 200 miles away.

I suggested Christians are very clever at misquoting, misinterpreting, or leaving out certain Biblical passages based on what is politically correct or their current agenda and that perhaps Muslims are equally clever.The similarities between the Jewish and Christian BIBLE and the KORAN were not new to me, but interesting to hear detailed by Abu-Shehadah. A major difference is that Christians believe in the Holy Trinity, which I have never been able to figure out.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims refer to God/Allah as “He,” which reduces the immensity and mystery of God to a human level that is inappropriate. God has no gender. Well, that’s a matter of language – “he, she, or it,” as the speaker pointed out. But all three religions are patriarchal male-dominated religions designed to keep woman in her place.

I’d like to think God has a sense of humor and must be highly amused at our puny human efforts to explain God’s will, the nature of God, etc. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous. You haven’t figured it out, and neither have I, and -- pardon the heresy -- neither has Mohammed. We never will, but I enjoyed the meeting and appreciated being included. We cannot learn without discussion and questions.

The moderator did an excellent job of controlling the opinionated crowd and kindly let me ask all my questions.

The Muslim belief that there shall be no separation between government and religion is shocking to the few Americans who have read the Constitution of the United States. I asked, “Does that mean you Muslims want to take over the United States government?” (That might not be a bad thing!) I loved the speaker’s honest answer, sort of a modified laughing admission that he would like to see Muslim principles practiced in government. I’d like to see more of the best Christian and Muslim principles practiced in government and in daily living.“Do Muslims hate America?” was the topic discussed by Kalim Ullah. Of course not, or 8 million Muslims wouldn’t be living here.

Sensible people don’t hate an entire religious or national group, and we are sensible people. But I came awfully close to condemning the entire Islamic religion because of atrocities committed in the name of Muslim beliefs. I have visited Muslim mosques and Jewish synagogues, Christian churches and Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, etc., temples all over the world with much respect for the beauty these religions have brought and for the idealistic beliefs they profess but rarely follow.In Casablanca. Morocco, on November 11, 1998, I visited the Great Mosque and heard a Muslim prayer: With a grateful heart for Muslim hospitality and a love of God/Allah, I offer this prayer: “In the name of God the Merciful the Compassionate the Most Merciful the Most Compassionate, Praise belongs to God the Lord of all Being, the Master of the Day of Doom, Please guide us to the straight path and not among whom are astray. Amen.”

MUSLIM TERRORISTS

Muslim Terrorists

Oct. 6, 2006

1. How do you tell the difference between a criminal and a nonuniformed spy without evidence and a trial? Just grab anyone on suspicion? Today's paper (Tri-City Herald, 10/7/06 AP)headlines "Thousands misidentified on terror lists, report says, " . . more than 30,000 airline passengers asked just one agency -- the Transportaton Security Administration -- to have their names cleared from the lists. . . Half of those were found to be misidentified. Usually they are misidentified because they have the same name as someone in the database. Young children and well-known Americans, the president of Bolivia and Lebanon's parliamentary speaker" are among the thousands misidentified. This will be the subject of CBS' 60 MINUTES Sunday (Oct. 8, 2006). I won't order you to WATCH IT, in the commanding tone of so many of my male email correspondents who KNOW ALL and don't hesitate to tell me.

2. I am flattered that you are waiting for a 79 year-old retired English teacher to come up with a solution to Muslim terrorists. I don't know a solution and neither does anyone else, obviously, or we wouldn't be in this mess created by an attack on Iraq. Whatever solution anyone has should not sacrifice our Constitution or resort to behavior as low as that of the terrorists.

3. This "what if?" paragraph makes no sense. It has no bearing on on today's insane terrorists. No one suggested revealing military secrets based on dislike of a historic Roosevelt or Truman and their parties, and no one is suggesting such nonsense about today's issues. Your fantasies amaze me. "They will fight for decades and centuries?" Perhaps. But remember, Hitler said the Third Reich would last a thousand years.

4. You like to give orders, don't you? "READ THE QUARAN." Like you, I have read portions of it and made an effort, but 52 pages of half KORAN and half footnotes plowed me under. I would like to read it, but would need a tough professor to make me do it. You quote Islamic law advocating barbaric punishments. Is Shiaria Law part of the Koran? Is this to prove their Holy Book includes barbaric punishments? I will read the sections you suggest after my remodeling is done and my two WSU courses are over if I can find my copy of the KORAN or anything else in my chaotic house. I confess it won't be a top priority. I sent you copies of my attempts to understand Islam. Having no associations with Hanford, I am not familiar with the phrase "using a graded approach."

5. Hitler and his followers were responsible for the murder of 12 million people, 6 million just because of who they were, not what they had done. Stalin has out-killed any Muslim terrorist by 20 or 30 million. I am now taking a course in the Russian revolution where we have been studying the results of the Lenin/Stalin partnership. I don't know enough about Hirohito to comment. I agree that we have never had an enemy like those who advocate and practice suicide bombing, especially in the name of their notion of God.What a rabid fanatic you are, saying Muslims are right about cleansing YOUR your list of those whose throats the Muslim fanatics should be cut. You decide who's guilty and turn them over to throat cutters? God help us! But you're not a nut case, of course not. Kill all the gays, lesbians, adulterers, ACLU, everyone in Hollywood and New York, abortionists, the ACLU, etc,, lumping them with pedophiles and pornographrs, your way of "cleansing?" What a great American you are! Given the power, you would condone this??? Stand by and cheer? Are you sure you don't want to add Democrats to your list? Good-bye, AMERICA. I'm be as concerned about stopping you as we all should be about stopping the jihadists.

6. What would the Democrats do when someone blows up something? It already happened, Mike. There was great determination expressed by our Rep. Pres. to capture Osama, but now we never hear about him, do we? Instead, in a brilliant public relations spin, the Pres. focused on a dictator he personally hated and declared war on him and his country, which we bombed and destroyed, killing their civilians and our soldiers because by golly we're going to bomb the hell out of them and force democracy on them because our Pres. knows what's best for them. No connection between SaddamHussein and bin Laden has ever been found and neither have and WMDs, but who needs evidence? Just hurl bombs anyway.Hindsight is no help, but we know now that our CIA, FBI, etc., didn't work together, that illegal Muslim terrorists got their air pilot training right here, and there was lots of high level botching up by BOTH PARTIES.

7. More orders! "Stop hating Bush, Cheney, and the Republicans." I'll hate whoever I darn well, please, but can't think of anyone at the moment whom I do hate. I despise Bush and his Evil Triumverate,.but have no energy for hating remote figures who have not done me direct and personal injury. I despise and fear them and the can't understand the blind folks who gave them the power they are using to destroy MY country, and fan the flames of hatred already destroying the world. I have numerous Republican friends and relatives whom I dearly love -- and pity for their misguided ideas, but I try (and often fail) to avoid mentioning. Solutions? Keep on bombing Iraq??? Has it worked so far? Throw suspects in jail indefinitely without trial? Has that worked? How can anyone or any political party control a religious fanatic willing to blow himself up and innocent people, too? At the least we should not stoop to their level of inhumanity, and I hope we do not continue to destroy our own system of government while fighting the enemy. The Demoratic anwser on their campaign doorknob hanger is nothning but puff: "We will protect Americans at home and lead the world by telling the truth by telling the truth to our troops, our citizens and our allies." No wonder Democrats lose elections.

8. SFO values? I have some very fine friends who live in San Francisco and have very high standards and values. I don't know enough about Nancy Pelosi to have an opinion on her as Speaker of the House, but the current speaker is certainly no guardian of morals, (is he? Heh heh) nor do many Republican office holders represent the "family values" they tout. Ayhatollah Kohmini had a controlled society, very moral, according to his standards, in Iran. Is what what you advocate? Morality according to Mike? If your crystal ball knows Pelosi will be Speaker of the House, can you use it to find Osama bin Laden and those invisible WMDs?I hope the international community, the United Nations, diplomats, etc., can negotiate with North Korea and Iran to avoid another catastrophe. I don't know that the Democrats could do any better at protecting us from terrorists, but I know they couldn't do any worse than what is happening now, and that they would do a better job of protecting our Constitution.

Thank you for the time you gave to expressing your views. Instead of expressing mine, I should be writing a paper for my class in American Roots: Immigration, migration, and Ethnic Identity. It is fascinating.

The class about the Russian Revolution is terrifying -- a country ruled by men who were never elected, who said We know what is best for everyone to live a happy life and we will force it on you with an iron hand; we never make mistakes, and we will arrest, imprison, torture, starve, and kill you in our new nation without laws; and we are accountable to no one. Murder was done on a massive scale. Muslim terrorists murdered 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Americans murdered thousands bombing Iraq, not the origin of the 9/11killers.

And you ask ME for a solution?

LAUREL PIIPPO

Can't we do better than this?!?

Several weeks ago a friend asked me what Democrats stand for and have to offer.
The Democratic Party's door-hanger that I have been distributing says:

A BOLD NEW DIRECTION FOR A SECURE AMERICA:

1. Honest leadership & open government. We will end the Republican culture of corruption and restore a government as good as the people it serves. (there's a key phrase: we get the government we deserve, and I am proud to say I don't desereve it and worked NOT to have it elected.)

2. Real Security: We will protect Americans at home and lead the world by telling the truth to our troops, our citizaend and our allies. (Are you impressed? Neither am I. But at least it won't destroy our country, its Constitution, and our world, as the present administration is bent on doing.)

3. Energy independence: We will creae a cleaner and stronger American by reducing our dependence on foreign oil. (Not with Maria Cantwell making silly decisions to use corn husks, windmills, and sunshine instead of nuclear energy, but that won't induce me to vote for her opponent who offers NOTHING but platitudes.)

4. Economic prosperity & educational excellence: We will create jobs that will stay in America by restoring opportunity and driving motivation. (Noble general aims, but nothing specific about education.)

5. Retirement security: We will insure that a retirement with dignity is the right and expectation of every single American. (Okay.)

Are you impressed? No? Neither am I.

Can't we do better than this, especially regarding energy when the scientific expertise and technology is available?

Laurel Piippo

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: Film about Lenin

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: WSU History, Dr. Brigit Farley, fall semester 2006

The audience watching a film on Lenin quadrupled as each viewer needed at least four sets of eyes to do it justice. The 2006 students drew on their current knowledge of history of Lenin and of Russia to pass judgment on the man And, oh, did I criticize. That egomaniac! That phony! That killer! That dictator with no regard for human life or dignity. That manipulator of mobs and abuser of mob control, no individualism, no decision making powers for anyone except himself.

Our second set of eyes were those of the cave man with sloped forehead, slack jawed, sitting around the campfire in the cave, listening fascinated, wanting a good story of tribal glory from the Storyteller. We all want to be entertained. That part of me loved the film. Look at those throngs of people, the countryside, the animals, those beautiful children, their eyes shining with love and respect as the story of a nation under a leader they trusted and adored, unfolded.. This is an audience caught up in a "willing suspension of disbelief" at its most basic, enjoying and accepting the narration.

The third set of eyes are those of a film-lover, completely taken in by the magical world created by the direct. This is truly Russia! This is primitive rural Russia, the uneducated people scrabbling a living, not extras, must be news reels of Lenin's funeral and speeches. It is an authentic view of how the Russian people at the time shortly after Lenin's death really felt. These people with their remarkable faces, head-dresses, and quaint clothing are not extras dressed and made-up and costumed. They are REAL -- but at the same time not real. The viewer forgets it is a movie until the captions appear, adoring and worshiping Lenin the "father" of his people. The film is a very seductive and believable creation.

The critic, the skeptic, the suspicious and wary viewer with a fourth set of eyes brings us crashing back to reality. We know better than to fall for this load of propaganda. The film on Lenin is a work of art, subject to the selection and rejection any artist must use to create the effect he desires. The director loved and respected Lenin and Russian society and wants his audience to do the same. He chooses only those scenes that promote that goal. But our fourth set of eyes sees through his game. We observe the glorification of manual labor, of conformity, of group gymnastics in unified motion to create one single effect., of airplanes and trains and ships, all massed to show strength and power.

Do these masses of people really adore Lenin, or have they been taught is the politic thing to pretend? With this fourth set of eyes the viewer must also remember that Lenin died in the 1920s and that the filmmaker created his tribute soon after Lenin's death when the whole truth about Lenin and his dictatorial viciousness were not known. Probably no one ever told the first Russian audiences that Lenin remarked, "You can't kill too many priests" and "We need to kill more professors." The rah-rah military music was overpowering, gets the blood up and the feet marching. A few vocal selections in the background were enjoyable.

In other films about Czars, the Coronation Scene with its cacophony of bells from Boris Goudonov are preferable, and Prokofiev's ballet from ROMEO AND JULIET are standard fare for music of that period, too. By and large the musical background of LENIN grated on the nerves.

Scenes of faceless masses of cookie-cutter soldiers reminded me of my first visit to Russia in April 1985 when the entire nation prepared to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War in May 1945. I objected to all the emphasis on military marches. My guide Yelena replied, "But isn't there something beautiful about all those young men in uniform marching together?" I refrained from answering, "No. Americans don't want to train and glorify masses of young men whose goal is to fight a war and kill people."

The corpse of Lenin being admired reminded me of joining a similar line of silent people to view Ho Chi Min's corpse in Vietnam, still preserved in the 1990s. We had to leave our purses, cameras, jackets and hats in the care of the tour guide as we filed silently, arms at our sides, not smiling or talking, past the corpse as armed guides stared at us. One woman with a cane was particularly carefully scrutinized by suspicious guides. There is something oriental and primitive and superstitious about such reverence shown to corpse regularly treated by chemicals to postpone decay.

Another memory surfaced as I saw a brief of scene of silk worms in a huge work place, another instance of the glorification of mass labor. The reality as I experienced it on a trip to China in 1986 was that the heat and acrid stench of a silk worm factory clawed at the throat. I could hardly stand the polluted air for ten minutes and wondered how the Chinese women could work for hours and hours every day in such an unhealthy place.

In the final analysis none of today's audience with its four sets of eyes can make an accurate assessment of life as depicted in the film about Lenin compared with life in rural Russia BEFORE Lenin.

Without morality, without respect for human dignity and human life, Lenin used his successful grab for power to change the face of Russia. But I do not know what life in Russia was like before Lenin and must therefore willingly suspend some of my harsh judgment.