Mountain Views News          Saturday, August 23, 2014

B4

OPINION

Mountain Views-News Saturday, August 23, 2014 

 

Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee 

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

BUSINESS EDITOR

LaQuetta Shamblee

SENIOR COMMUNITY 
EDITOR

Pat Birdsall

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Hail Hamilton 

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Marc Garlett

 LEFT TURN AND MORE 

HOWARD Hays As I See It

RICH Johnson

WHAT’S YOUR JOURNEY?

 
I promise the 
Court Jester will 
return shortly. 
Seeing the funny 
side of life is 
seriously important. 
I shall return. “Get 
it? Got it! Good!” 
(Can anyone tell me 
where that quote 
came from?)

 How old are you? In your twenties? 
Thirties? Fifties? Seventies? How is your 
life progressing? Are you filling your life 
with what you always wanted to do? If the 
answer is no, you are like most of us. How 
did you end up doing what you are doing? 
Parents talk you out of that career as a rock 
drummer and send you to accounting 
college? It happens all the time. Find your 
true love and settle down? You’re lucky, 
but it doesn’t mean you have to derail your 
other dreams and goals. 

 If you have unfulfilled dreams, it just 
may be time to reassess and modify 
your game plan. No, I’m not suggesting 
abandoning the family. I’m suggesting 
you come up with a new game plan that 
involves the family in helping fulfill your 
goals (and theirs). And realize you are not 
alone. This is nothing new. Let’s talk about 
people you may have heard of who didn’t 
achieve their goals until later in life.

 Abraham Lincoln ran for state legislature 
and lost and then won. In between he had 
a business fail. He got engaged and his 
sweetheart died. He ran for Congress and 
lost. Then he won and then he lost again. 
Then he ran for the Senate and lost. He ran 
again and lost again. And then a funny 
thing happened. He was elected President 
of the United States at age 51. Huh?

 Gifted singer Andrea Bocelli was 
a defense attorney until the age of 34, 
graduating from the University of Pisa. He 
left his job to pursue singing. He has, to 
date, recorded 14 studio albums, 3 greatest 
hits albums and 9 complete operas. Not 
bad for a fella with no sight.

 Morgan Freeman was 43 when he 
earned his first credited role: a small one 
in “Brubaker”. 51 when Freeman did 
“Driving Miss Daisy.” Samuel Jackson 
was 45 when his big role in “Pulp Fiction” 
thrust him to the top. Gene Hackman and 
James Gandolfini were in their late 30s 
before they hit success. Interesting thing 
about all these guys is they kept pushing 
long after a lot of us would have given up.

 Now, what about those of us a little later 
in life? Is it too late? A guy named Harland 
Sanders (you may know him as Colonel 
Sanders) had been an insurance salesman, 
a streetcar conductor and then opened up 
a gas station. He started offering meals at 
his Corbin, Kentucky gas station in 1930. 
A mere 25 years later, at age 65, he came 
up with the idea of franchising his chicken 
with 11 secret herbs and spices. Now he 
(well not him personally) serves 12 million 
customers a day in 110 countries. Not bad 
for a senior citizen.

 Anna Mary Robinson Moses was a 
skilled embroiderer, whose hands became 
crippled by arthritis at age 76. Her sister 
handed her a paint brush and 1,600 
painting later she passed away at age 
101. Here’s one for the books. At age 88, 
Mademoiselle Magazine featured her as 
their “Young Woman of the Year”. You 
may remember her as Gramma Moses.

 Do you have something you’d like to try 
but are afraid you might fail? Ever hear of 
the Birmingham Barons, or the Scottsdale 
Scorpions? They signed a 31 year old 
“rookie” whose batting average leveled at 
.202 (not good). You may remember him. 
His name was Michael Jordan. Yes, that 
Michael Jordan.

 Pursue your dreams. I am. I’m thrilled 
to have spent the last two and three years 
fulfilling my personal dreams of being 
part of a comedy radio show and an oldies 
rock and roll band. (By the way, the band is 
playing September 20th at Corfu Restaurant 
and November 8th at The Peppertree Grill. 
The radio show, the Barry, Rich and Lisa 
show, can be found on iHeart radio) 

 Pursue your dreams. Please.

“There is no ‘us and 
them’. There is only ‘us’.”

 President Bill Clinton 
in his First Inaugural 
Address (January, 1993)

 I don’t “tweet”. I still 
haven’t fully accepted 
the tic-tac-toe symbol as 
the “pound sign” on a telephone, let alone a 
“hashtag”.

 There are a couple Twitter users who got 
something going last week, though, that 
I found interesting. They asked followers 
to submit examples of how individuals 
with a certain characteristic in a certain 
circumstance had been depicted in the 
media, published or broadcast. I’ll give 
five examples from each of two groups, 
and maybe you can guess from these actual 
media depictions the characteristic and 
circumstance the five in each of the two 
groups have in common:

“. . . brilliant, but social misfit”

“. . . ‘soft-spoken, polite, a gentleman’, ex-
principal says”

“. . . fascinated with guns but was a devoted 
Mormon, friends say”

“. . . described as ‘fine person’”

“. . . brilliant, athletic – but his demons were 
the death of parents”

Here’s the second group:

“. . . had history of narcotics abuse, tangles 
with the law”

“. . . had been shot before . . . possibly 
drug-related”

“. . . had many run-ins with law”

“. . . was gang member”

“Trayvon Martin was suspended three 
times from school”

 That last one probably gave it away. The 
first five are media descriptions of murder 
suspects, all white. The second five are 
murder victims, all black.

 I don’t know how many readers of this 
column regard themselves as “brilliant”, 
“athletic”, “polite”, etc. – but it’s the crowd 
we like to think we hang with – it’s “us”. 
Those with a “history of drug abuse”, “many 
run-ins with law”, or a “gang member” – it’s 
nothing personal, but it’s definitely “them”.

The above Twitter project followed the 
Ferguson (Missouri) Police Dept.’s releasing 
video of what they claim was a “strong-arm 
robbery” by 18-year-old Michael Brown of 
a local convenience store shortly before he 
was killed by one of their officers. (When 
is the last time you heard the expression 
“strong-arm robbery”?)

 The U.S. Dept. of Justice asked the 
Ferguson Police not to release the video, 
warning it would only inflame the nightly 
street protests they were trying to calm 
down. The Ferguson Police went ahead and 
released it anyway, and guess what – the 
Feds were right; there went the relative calm 
of the night before.

 The video release blindsided Missouri 
Gov. Jay Nixon (D), as well. Referring 
to Brown’s family, the governor said on 
“Meet The Press”, “When you see your son 
gunned down in the street and then you see 
a police chief begin an attempt to attack his 
character, that’s just not the way to operate. . 
. “. 

 Toxicology results are pending, but it 
appears Brown might have smoked pot. 
Not only that, he was reportedly an aspiring 
rapper. This was enough for David Horowitz 
to label him “a criminal and a thug”; one of 
“them”.

 The release of the video and selective 
leaking of information from off-the-record, 
anonymous sources, contradicting on-the-
record statements from publicly identified 
eyewitnesses, is to establish before any federal 
or grand jury investigation that Michael 
Brown was one of “them”. The protests 
became re-enraged with the re-emergence 
of a familiar strategy – establishing an “us 
vs. them” narrative to preclude any white 
cop / black victim accountability.

 Sometimes this stereotyping is calculated; 
other times it seems to be media habit, as with 
the tweet sent out by the AP announcing the 
verdict earlier this month in the killing of a 
black teenager in Dearborn Heights, MI last 
November.

 Renisha McBride was a 19-year-old who 
went out and got wasted, booze and pot, at 
a friend’s place. Heading home in the wee 
hours, she smashed up her car. Hurt and 
needing help, she banged on the door of a 
house within walking distance. She was 
killed when the homeowner fired a shotgun 
at her face through the locked screen door.

When the killer was found guilty of second-
degree murder and manslaughter, the AP 
tweeted, “Suburban Detroit homeowner 
convicted of second-degree murder for 
killing woman who showed up drunk on 
porch”. This didn’t go over well, so the 
AP sent out a revised tweet, “Jury convicts 
Michigan man in killing of unarmed 
woman on his porch”.

 By then, however, a group called Black 
Twitter had come on the scene, established 
the hashtag #APHeadlines and invited 
followers to submit suppositions as to how 
the AP might have tweeted coverage of 
other events:

 “Lincoln signs Emancipation 
Proclamation. Several hundred thousand 
blacks out of work”

 “Unarmed Black Man Trips Into A 
Chokehold: NYPD Blamed For His Death”

“Mitt Romney posts impressive second-
place finish behind possible Kenyan 
socialist”

 “Black youth charged with stealing police 
bullets: Found hidden in torso”

“BREAKING: Stray bullet strikes uppity 
negro speechifying on balcony”

 “Africans infect eminent white doctors 
with lethal virus”

 “The poor of New Orleans leave their 
cramped apartments to wait out hurricane 
in spacious Superdome”

 “Homeless blasphemer from low-income 
Nazarene family, low on stamina, fails to 
survive crucifixion”

 (Thanks to Lee Bailey’s Electronic Urban 
Report website for the above)

 The “us vs. them” narrative is played out 
in the media through their focus on the 
looters and Molotov cocktail-throwers in 
Ferguson, and not the masses of protesters 
trying to stop them and protect threatened 
businesses. The Ferguson Police established 
the narrative early by coming on not to 
protect citizens exercising their rights, but 
confronting them as an occupying force 
with heavy mobile armor, military gear and 
assault weapons.

 For a while I regarded these reports as 
about “them” in Missouri, so distant from 
“us” here in Southern California. Then 
I learned that last month the Compton 
School Board authorized its school police to 
arm themselves with AR-15 assault rifles.

 Not being very familiar with the Twitter 
vernacular, for that Compton story I 
believe users would employ the expression, 
“Well, That’s Flummoxing!”, or rather its 
abbreviation, “WTF!”.

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OUT TO PASTOR A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

IT WAS A SHOOFLY PIE CELEBRATION WEEKEND

 People ask me questions all the 
time. Some of those questions I 
can answer, some I cannot answer 
and some I will not answer. I wish 
people would ask me questions 
I could answer and look good 
about it. However, it never happens.

 The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage asks me 
questions all the time. After 43 years, I have finally 
figured out her questions. Most usually require one 
word answers. For somebody like me who spends most 
of his time preaching and writing, boiling an answer 
down to one word is something that is quite difficult.

 The one great thing about my wife is, when she asks 
me a question, she does not really want an answer, 
because she already has the answer. I do not know 
how wives have developed this kind of intellectual 
mystique. I have just never had the opportunity to ask 
her. This probably would be the main question I would 
ask. Sometimes, living in the dark is okay.

 Some people ask questions to get information. Some 
people ask questions to show off how smart they think 
they are, which, merely proves how dumb they actually 
are. Do not let them know that I said this, or they may 
have some questions for me. Then some people ask 
questions in order to trick you.

 Questions are important. Sometimes my friends 
(both of them), will ask me a question. The primary 
question is simply, What is a shoofly pie? This is the 
kind of question I like and furthermore, I like to answer 
it.

 The trouble with a question like this is, where do you 
begin? With something as marvelous and wonderful as 
a shoofly pie, where do you start to explain all of its 
delicacies?

 To begin with, a shoofly pie is a slice of heaven. I am 
quite sure that in heaven at supper time there will be 
shoofly pies aplenty. I know quite a few Mennonite and 
Amish women who, I am quite sure, are in heaven, and 
if they are, they will insist on making shoofly pie. I do 
not know if it is in their genes, but I do know it is in 
their aprons.

 If anybody has ever had the wonderful opportunity 
of eating a shoofly pie, they will know exactly what I 
am talking about. It is hard to explain the experience 
without your mouth watering so much you need a 
towel.

 To start with, the bottom of a shoofly pie is sheer 
liquid pleasure. Depending on the woman preparing 
the pie will depend on how thick that bottom layer is. 
Once that is laid down, the next layer is a delightful 
mix of flour and sugar and other secret ingredients. 
That layer seems to float on top of that liquid pleasure.

 On the top is a crust of munchable delight that has 
absolutely no equal. Then, to set it off, there is a circular 
crust that holds all of this together in one magnificent 
pie.

 I am not a baker so I do not know how they put all of 
this together and then put it in the oven and then bring 
out this awesome, classical dessert known as shoofly 
pie. Some things are so wonderful that they cannot be 
fully explained.

 Personally, I would rather not spend much time 
trying to answer the question, What is a shoofly pie? I 
would preferably utilize that time delving into eating a 
shoofly pie. That is my greatest delight.

 Recently I indulged this marvelous delight in the 
center of shoofly pie country. Everybody knows that to 
be Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

 A conference was going to be there that I wanted to go 
to but I had many things that prohibited me from going 
there. All I could think about was the wonderful shoofly 
pies I could indulge in if I went to that conference. So, 
I worked hard to eliminate everything that would keep 
me from going there. Some things are, indeed, worth 
fighting for.

 About a month before the conference was to start, 
I had dealt with the final obstruction and was able to 
make plans to go. All I could think about was, ”Shoofly 
pie, here I come.”

 As soon as my flight landed, I hurried off to the 
nearest restaurant and indulged in my first slice of 
shoofly pie for the weekend. I am happy to say it was 
not my last piece.

 At the conference, they had breakfast, lunch and 
dinner and for dessert, even at breakfast, was shoofly 
pie. I cannot tell you how many pieces of shoofly pie 
I ate, for the simple reason I cannot count that high 
without taking off my shoes. A slice of shoofly pie 
highlighted every meal. I am happy to say that they 
had more shoofly pie at this conference than I could 
consume although I did my very best, I assure you.

 I know that life sometimes has its hard paths and 
things can become very difficult. That is why we need 
to have something to really look forward to.

 The writer to the Hebrews understood this when he 
wrote, ”Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher 
of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him 
endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down 
at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

 Celebrating the delicacies of life enable us to survive 
the adversities of life.

 

Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of God 
Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, FL 34483. He lives 
with his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him 
at 1-866-552-2543 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.net or 
website www.jamessnyderministries.com.

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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com