Page 4 - Dinuba Sentinel 11-22-18 E-edition

Opinion
A4 | Thursday, November 22,, 2018
In My Opinion
anksgiving food for
thought
Fred Hall
voting was a personal responsibility. Increasingly absentee ballots are being used with problematic results.
Icanseeit continuing with the elderly, handicapped or the military but for the individual who is
Fred Hall - Publisher Rick Curiel - Editor
Let me begin this week with a ‘happy thought’ by wishing all you a Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in The United States, Canada, some of the Caribbean islands and Liberia. Although it has become essentially a secular celebration, it began from religious roots when celebrants offered thanks for the blessing of a successful harvest and of the preceding year. Perhaps this would be an excellent time, when offering your pre-meal prayer, to offer condolences and prayerful thoughts for those so impacted by the fires in California. Remember, as well, out nation which is so divided along petty political lines and issues exacerbated by political infighting..
Sad to say, religion is far less predominant in younger generations and has essentially “fallen out of fashion.” It serves to remind me of the old military saying that “one will never find an atheist under fire in a foxhole.” Funny how that has a way of focusing one’s mind on what’s truly important. Even the most cynical among us are not above asking for divine intervention when faced with a specific need or eminent threat.
Being free to break bread with fiends and family on this day of thanksgiving should not be taken lightly in the world’s greatest country where freedom, food and the comforts of life are so plentiful. Wherever possible and practical, we urge you to reach out and share life’s blessings with those who find themselves in unfortunate, and often dire, circumstances. Charity by individuals has always been one of America’s attributes. Trying to supplement or replace individual giving with the bumbling attempts by our government is a fool’s errand. Guiding the distribution of goods is an area where bureaucrats are particularly inept and truthfully is not their charge! We should never comfort ourselves by declaring that the government already “steals” enough from us to care for the less fortunate. At least we know that our investment, made personally, goes directly and totally to the recipient.
If you will bear with me for a moment, I would like to shift gears for a moment and talk about some of the turmoil which surrounded recently completed elections.
It seems to me—remembering that I am only one man—that much of the questionable occurrences had their genesis during the days in which we removed much of the voting from polling places. There actually was a time when
How a work week can teach O youaboutgratitude
just too lazy to drive down to the local school, church or government building, not so much. Those, it seems, are always the ones which tend to turn the results of an election. They just present too great of an opportunity for malfeasance in their counting and handling to carry such weight in results. We’ve pushed “motor voter” and all sorts of voter registration schemes until there is no real way of determining who is a legitimate citizen voter and who is not.
Before you start, there should be no way anyone would be disenfranchised.
I bring that up because there is a segment of our society who feels there is no need for any sort of identification being required to cast a ballot. What utter nonsense. Everything else we do in life requires I.D. of some sort and yet the central point of our democratic republic requires nothing. Basically, one can simply show up and vote without challenge. It’s time that we began to take this fundamental right more seriously.
If you feel that I am being overly dramatic, I would call to your attention that there is a city in this area where it has become a standing joke about one of their local politicians having a pocket full of absentees and your absentee ballot can be sold for $20. The funny thing about that is you probably won’t even have to guess which city that we’re discussing. Such urban legends are usually grown from at least a germ of self-evident truth.
That’s just “food” for thought!
This Thanksgiving enjoy your family, your friends and your meal but never lose sight of the fact that we have been divinely gifted and, as caretakers, have a huge, overarching, responsibility to preserve and protect this great
Republic. May God bless each and every one of you and see you safely through this holiday with a common goal of attempting to make life better for everyone so blessed as to be an American.
But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion.
Fred Hall is publisher of the Dinuba Sentinel.
Guest Column
Holiday-season arguments with relatives can be frustrating
T
year when soon we’ll get together with our loved ones, share a traditional holiday meal, and bicker over politics.
we identify with.
The second false assumption is:
“Because that never happened to me, it never happens.”
The truth is that we often have no idea how other people live in this country. This is particularly true of people who are members of dominant or more privileged groups: wealthy people, white people, men, heterosexuals, able-bodied people,
he weather has turned cool and crisp (or so I’ve heard... I’m in California, where it’s hot out and everything’s on fire). We’ve entered the time of
There are two major fallacies that prevent Americans on both sides of the political aisle from understanding one another.
The first is the assumption: “If you knew what I knew, you would believe what I believe.”
I hear this on both sides: If the other side just knew what we knew. If they knew the planet was warming,
if they knew about all the plastic in the Pacific Ocean, if they knew we’ve been working hard for decades and still haven’t gotten ahead...
Often a debate will focus on adjudicating the facts. What percentage of scientists believes in human-caused catastrophic climate change? Or what are the scientific arguments for and against genetically engineered crops?
The problem is that the debate, at its core, is often
not over facts. The two sides have different values and different identities. Our values and our political positions tie us to the groups we identify with.
For one thing, our differing values will lead us to different positions no matter what the facts are.
If I value a multicultural American that welcomes immigrants from all over the world, and you believe America is a white nation and non-white immigrants are changing its character in an unacceptable way, we’re not going to agree about immigration. The facts won’t matter.
Each of us identifies with groups that share these values. Asking a Trump supporter to denounce Trump’s policies or Trump himself is also asking that person to give up
a part of their identity. It’s asking them to give up their membership in a group.
The same can be said of membership in other groups, including Hillary or Bernie supporters. All people resist taking in facts that jeopardize our membership in groups
Jill Richardson
ne of the advantages of The story I heard being in the position I find from Reverend myself is the opportunity to Chris Roberts
and so on.
The effects of privilege are more obvious when you don’t
have it. As a white woman, when I get pulled over by a cop, I’m bummed out, but not scared for my life. Usually I have an amicable exchange with the cop even if I get a warning or a ticket.
I might assume that all people are treated so respectfully by cops. I might think that if a person of color was shot
by the police, he or she must have been doing something wrong. Surely, the police did not act improperly. I’ve never seen a cop act improperly.
It’s only when I accept that my life as a white woman in America tells me very little about what it means to be a person of color in America that I can begin listening and learning.
That willingness to listen and learn from one another is needed on all sides. Each of us can begin to accept that our experiences in this country aren’t universal, which is a much bigger step toward agreeing on the facts than just looking at the same data.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson writes about food, agriculture, the environment, health, tolerance,
and well-being. Currently pursuing a PhD in Sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, she’s the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.
see the world we live in from various perspectives. This past week I had the privilege of attending several events that left me with a greater appreciation for many things we often take for granted.
Last Thursday, I attended a Dinuba Chamber Mixer at the Adventist Health Clinic on West El Monte Way and learned about all the great services this facility offered to the local community.
Immediately after, my wife and
I attended a Dinuba Lion’s Club Thanksgiving Dinner and witnessed first hand the power of a service club in action.
Friday, I attended my second
Mid Valley Publishing Thanksgiving luncheon and, as I did last year, I had my fill of great food and great company.
Saturday, I visited the community
of Cutler-Orosi once more as citizens prepared themselves for a cold morning walk to raise diabetes awareness.
From there I traveled back to Dinuba to witness the community come together as four high school students put it in their hearts to do a blood and bone marrow drive for seven-year
old Judith Marie Figueroa of Dinuba. Judi is currently battling a rare form of cancer and the students from the school’s HOSA and Medical Pathway Academy are determined to do what they can for her.
Every event I attended taught me
a little more about the world we live
in, and helped further develop my appreciation for things in life that often go unmentioned.
The trip to the clinic taught me that we are fortunate to live in a world where health care, though we may complain about how expensive it can be, is readily available in even the smallest rural communities.
Rick Curiel
about his recent missionary trip to
a developing part
of India helped illustrate a simple fact. In other parts of the world, the health care that is
so readily available here is often times in
such desperate need and yet unavailable in other parts of the world.
Friday’s luncheon allowed me to further appreciate how much goes in to producing a weekly publication.
It is because of the colleagues I work with that Mid Valley Publishing is able to survive in an industry fighting to remain relevant.
But Saturday’s two events, the walk and the blood drive, really hit home for me. Diabetes is a common struggle in my culture. It is in the back of most Hispanic minds as many have or know someone who has the disease.
It gave me a greater appreciation for my health, and more importantly, the opportunities we all have to take proper precautions so that we can remain healthy.
And seeing high school students and the community come together to help a young girl as she fights to beat a rare form of cancer reminded me why I love this town I call home.
This year I’m truly grateful for, first and foremost, the family I get to come home to, the health God affords me to do my work, the work God affords me, the community I call home and yes, like Pastor Roberts, developed infrastructure.
Rick Curiel is editor of the Dinuba Sentinel. He can be reached at editor@ thedinubasentinel.com
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