I can't drive...

I turned 55 years old on Monday the 5th, and I "celebrated" yesterday by having surgery to repair the ventral hernia that I've had for several years.  The surgical anesthetic took all day to wear off, and, curiously, I almost felt as though I hadn't had the procedure; however, by the time I went to bed, I was starting to feel the pain, and this morning I woke up hurting from bruising and inflammation.  The surgeon prescribed Vicodin for pain, and it works pretty well for me.  (I know from experience that Percocet makes me violently nauseous for a full 12-14 hours -- I always say I'm allergic to it so that no one tries to prescribe it for me.)  My plan all along was to go back to work on Monday, and I think I'll feel well enough to do that, despite the fact that prescription painkillers practically paralyze my intestines.  I'll have to limit my physical activity for several weeks, which unfortunately coincides with plans for business travel and vacations; however, I didn't want to put the surgery off any longer, so I'll have to work through my recovery as best I can.

Fifty-five marks my full eligibility for retirement from Sandia National Labs, although my pension payments at this stage would barely amount to one-third of my current salary.  Needless to say, we can't afford that big a dip in our income; moreover, it would seem grossly unfair to Dorine finally to have paid off our house (and to have no other debts) only to have to skimp heavily.  My mal de debarquement-related mental fatigue (which has resulted in some cognitive impairment) has become a bigger issue with regard to doing my current job, so I'm probably going to try to move back to Procurement, where I spent the first 13 years of my career at SNL.  Working as a buyer can be very stressful -- my last two years there, from 2003 to 2005, were one of the worst periods of my life -- but at least it's a job that I understand and in which my work experience and legal background would be at least somewhat valued.  (I've become aware that a number of former buyers are looking to go back; apparently I'm not alone in my distaste for ill-defined "project management" responsibilities using confusing, non-intuitive software applications.  It will be ironic if Procurement, historically a "toe in the door" organization where many people hire on and then move to other jobs at the first opportunity, eventually becomes the destination of choice for a population of disenchanted admins at SNL.)

You've got to be kidding...

Flyer I picked up off the street in San Fernando, October 3, 1979

1. The 800-lb. gorilla in the room.  A couple of recent news events have provided a stark reminder of the thrall in which Islam holds the American Left and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself).  The first was the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing that happened on April 15, 2013.  To the extent the perpetrators (brothers and Chechen "refugees" Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev) were mentioned at all -- most stories on the topic treated the bombing as though it had been a natural disaster -- hardly anyone addressed the obvious Islamist-terrorism connection.  The second event was the revocation by Brandeis University of an honorary degree, and an invitation to speak at commencement, to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an African feminist critic of the endemic oppression of women in the Islamic world.  Hirsi Ali experienced that oppression first-hand as a young girl and adolescent, as she was made to undergo female genital mutilation at age 5 and later only barely escaped an arranged marriage to a stranger by seeking asylum in the Netherlands.  After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she renounced Islam and became an atheist, and now she requires a round-the-clock team of bodyguards due to her participation in the making of the anti-Islam film Submission -- the producer of which, Theo van Gogh, was slaughtered in 2004 by Islamist extremists on an Amsterdam street.  Notwithstanding all of her left-attractive characteristics -- black, female, feminist, atheist, etc. -- all it took was a protest by an Islamic organization (and a petition signed, shamefully, by numerous members of the student body and faculty) to cause the Brandeis administration to cancel Hirsi Ali's appearance there, citing her supposedly "hateful" attitude toward Islam as a pretext.  

Thus no sane person can dispute that Muslims are now at the top of the identity-group "victim" heap, in America and elsewhere.  Furthermore, I'm reminded of the exchange between Robert Redford and Paul Benedict in the movie Jeremiah Johnson, where they argue about the wisdom and necessity of crossing a Crow Indian burial ground in order to rescue snow-bound white settlers: "This is big medicine.  [The Crow] guard this place with spirits."  "Surely you don't believe that."  "It doesn't matter -- they do."  Do we think we're in a war with Islam?  My response is pretty much the same: It doesn't matter what we think, because militant Muslims believe they're in a war with us.  And "moderate" Muslims, aside from being in general philosophical agreement with the extremists, typically are too cowed to disagree with terrorism as a means of subjugating "infidels" and establishing a world-wide caliphate.  And these are the people whose feelings we don't want to hurt?  What reason do we give them not to believe that we won't ultimately accede to their aspirations of world domination?

2. Republicans trying to behave like Democrats...and falling way short of the mark.  I couldn't help laughing when Chris Christie's administration in New Jersey was accused of having caused a traffic jam on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge as a way to get revenge against Christie's political enemies.  If it really happened that way, it not only points up how incompetent most Republicans are at doing what has become the Democrats' stock-in-trade -- using government agencies illegally to stick it to their enemies -- it also shows what pikers they are by comparison.  The Obama Administration uses the friggin' IRS to do damage to conservative organizations, and a traffic jam is supposed to be a big deal?

3. Moderate Republicans are always seen as extremists.  It's always intrigued me that Republicans who truly are "moderate" are generally hated by the Left, whereas only conservative Republicans seem to earn the Left's grudging respect, usually well after they're dead and buried.  I can cite several cases in point.  One is Richard Nixon, who established the EPA and OSHA, dabbled in wage and price controls, established diplomatic relations with Communist China, pursued the policy of Détente with the Soviet Union (which led to various weapons-related talks and treaties), and actually ended the Vietnam War (albeit after his re-election); however, no one has fond memories of him now.  The second is George W. Bush, who supported "No Child Left Behind," helped to enact Medicare Part D, established PEPFAR to combat AIDS in Africa, and entered into a nuclear treaty with India -- but is despised now, apparently for his zeal in combating terrorism at its middle-eastern source and seeking retribution for the 9/11 attacks.  The third is Ronald Reagan, whom the Left viewed as both dim-witted and dangerously strident in his pro-America, anti-Communist views while he was president but seems to look up to now.  And the fourth is Barry Goldwater, who was absolutely crucified in the U.S. press before and during the 1964 presidential election (remember "In your guts, you know he's nuts"?), in which he suffered one of the biggest landslide defeats in the country's history.  And yet even he seems to be respected now by the Left.  

Similarly, and on a much-smaller scale, most of the Democrats I know think I'm ultra right-wing, despite my moderation on a number of social and economic issues.  I favor the legalization of marijuana, and I've come to favor -- if not to be passionate about -- same-sex marriage.  I support some kind of universal healthcare coverage in the U.S., if only by making more people eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.  (I can't be against Medicaid when half of my grandchildren are on it, and especially after it paid for life-saving major surgery for one of them.)  I don't like abortion, but, like Thomas Aquinas, I believe society must tolerate a certain amount of evil in order to function -- and perhaps a generalized right to abortion in the first 6-8 weeks of pregnancy is the price we must pay to keep people from breaking out into greater evils like late-term abortion and infanticide.  I'm sort of "agnostic" on the issue of "climate change"; it may be happening just as herd-science maintains, but the messengers clearly have an ideological bias and a penchant for hysteria that have all but destroyed their credibility in my eyes.  (And their contentions, contrary to what they suggest, are not self-evident or outside the purview of scientific, or even journalistic, inquiry.)  I believe it would be grossly unfair to deport non-citizens who have come here, legally or otherwise, and made lives for themselves, although I'm also for heightened border security to impede future illegal immigration.  I believe in renewable energy, but its implementation on a broad scale only makes sense if we can find ways to produce it efficiently and drive down the price.  (The infliction of great economic pain is not the way to go about it.)

These aren't exactly the most-conservative of positions, so why do I seem so "reactionary" to my left-leaning friends and acquaintances?  It may come down to two things: (1) my strong belief in self-sufficiency and individual responsibility (and that government involvement in people's lives, while clearly necessary at some level, ultimately becomes corrosive, even destructive, to those ideals); and (2) my overwhelming distaste for social change wrought by the judiciary, preferring instead to leave all that to legislators.  I guess that's what passes for "extremism" these days.

4. The "Bundy Revolution" against the federal government.  I have to admit I was initially disposed to take the side of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy in his dispute with the federal government over grazing rights and fees.  I don't know much about the merits of his claim -- he certainly couldn't state his position articulately in the interview I saw with him on TV -- and later, of course, he made comments about slavery that cast him as a racist of sorts.  However, the one thing that still perturbs me greatly about the stand-off is that the Bureau of Land Management, of all federal agencies, has its own force of shock troops and snipers, and that, but for the instant nature of communications in the smartphone/Youtube/Twitter age, the BLM seemed perfectly prepared to open fire on private citizens in a relatively trifling land dispute.  Is it any wonder that a growing group of people see the federal government as an enemy to be resisted?

5. Donald Sterling and the NBA.  The big news in the last week or two has been the racially charged remarks that Los Angeles Clippers owner (and billionaire octogenarian) Donald Sterling made to his mistress, which she secretly recorded and leaked.  When I first heard about it, I thought, "What an idiot!"  (It turns out that Sterling has a long record of racist sentiments and generally jerk-y, immoral behavior characteristic of the "imperious" wing of the American super-rich.)  It's clear the NBA couldn't let his comments pass, despite the private nature of the conversation and the mistress's obvious baiting of Sterling while recording him without his knowledge.  (I agree with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that she should be prosecuted criminally.)  A fine was indicated, and the NBA owners' association certainly had the right, and the grounds, to kick him out of their "club"; however, I think he'll still have a cause of action for massive damages if the NBA tries to make him sell his interest in the Clippers for significantly less than its current market value.  Racism is ugly, and racists merit our scorn and opprobrium, but it isn't a reason, in and of itself, for large-scale forfeiture of property.

It also bears comment that racist attitudes aren't exactly uncommon among white American males of Donald Sterling's generation (and older).  My own father once was "offended" when I dated a girl whose last boyfriend had been an African-American basketball player, telling me that any white woman who would date a black man was a "pig."  Kristy and Heidi's biological grandfather became upset when Heidi went on a date one time with a black friend of hers in high school.  And the partners in the small law firm for which I used to work, both of whom had roots in the South, quite often said grossly bigoted things about African-Americans.  The Americans who fought World War II were, as Tom Brokaw rightfully called them, the "Greatest Generation"; however, racial prejudice was a fact of life for many of them.  Thus it may be that white men born prior to WWII have to pass away entirely before the Donald Sterlings of the world stop rearing their heads from time to time.

5. Democratic government in Chile.  I have a Chilean Facebook "friend" who recently posted a few derogatory things about Michelle Bachelet, the current socialist president of Chile, particularly with regard to her government's handling of the recent wildfires that ringed the coastal city of Viña del Mar and destroyed thousands of homes.  If nothing else, it reminded me that Chile has democratic government, something that wasn't the case when I served my church mission there in 1979-80.  I remember going to hear the right-wing Chilean dictator of the day, Augusto Pinochet, speak in San Fernando, Chile in October 1979.  (Thousands of flyers like the one in the attached scan were dropped by a Chilean Air Force plane prior to Pinochet's arrival by helicopter; I obviously picked one up as a souvenir.)  Whatever one thinks of Pinochet or his government (particularly its human-rights record -- Bachelet herself was an exile for a number of years), it warded off a full-scale, Cuba-like revolution and a tremendous bloodbath in Chile.  Instead of having democratic elections in which a socialist could participate and win, Chile might well have ended up with a crippling, long-lived left-wing dictatorship that would have destroyed all of its democratic traditions.  That my friend can complain about the Chilean government without fear of reprisal is hugely significant to me.

Spring Break in Red River with Mike and Judy

Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

Shopping in Taos

Hiking at Wild Rivers

St. James Hotel, Cimarron, NM

In the "haunted" St. James Hotel

Getting tamales in Taos

Dorine at "La Junta" Overlook

At the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

Half-way through our hike

Near the main ski lift, Red River

"La punta de la Junta"

No one can call me "gutless"!

A whole wall ready to fall

A Rocky Mountain Bighorn (ewe)

Me with the Tooth of Time, Philmont Scout Ranch

"Sisters"

Picnic at Wild Rivers Recreation Area

Dorine and I spent most of the Albuquerque Public Schools spring break (April 14-18) on a vacation to Red River, NM with Judy and Mike (Dorine's sister and her husband). We stayed four nights at the Red River Worldmark resort, where Mike got us a two-bedroom suite for very little money. We've been in Red River with Judy and Mike several times now, and it's always a nice, relaxing time. On this trip we drove up to Cimarron, NM, site of the St. James Hotel and the Philmont Scout Ranch. We ate lunch at the St. James and then received permission to go look around the older, upstairs (now unused) part of the hotel, where a number of historical figures stayed back in the latter part of the 19th Century.  (I was interested to find out that Wyatt and Morgan Earp and their wives spent four nights there while en route to Tombstone, AZ and the famous shoot-out at the OK Corral.)  The hotel is also reputedly haunted and, for that reason, has been featured in multiple television shows.  Then we drove up to the Philmont base camp and looked around a little.  I went to Philmont iin 2004 with our son Darren and Mike and Judy's son Aaron (who went back in 2007), so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me and an interesting place to visit for Dorine, Judy, and Mike.  Before leaving, we drove down a dirt road a ways and got a few pictures with the "Tooth of Time," Philmont's most-iconic geological feature.

We also spent time in Taos, shopping and getting tamales, and we stopped at the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge for a short hike and some photo-taking.  The next day we went to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area, where the Red River joins the Rio Grande, and we took a four-mile (two miles one way) hike along the canyon rim before having a picnic lunch.  As usual, we ate well, having "USDA prime" sirloin steak and baked potatoes every night.  All in all, a very enjoyable trip, as all of our travels with Mike and Judy are.

Songs that Remind Me of My Church Mission

In Doñihue, August 1980

My church mission to Chile in 1979-80 was an important time in my life, and there are a lot of songs that conjure up memories of that period for me. I wrote down a list of such songs in the third volume (of three) of my missionary journal; they aren't in any kind of order, but I'll present them here in a sort of chronological order based on the areas in which I served.

Trip to Utah (January 1, 1979). 
"I Can See Clearly Now" (Johnny Nash, 1972) - My parents drove me up from Albuquerque to Provo on Monday, January 1, 1979, as I was due to enter the MTC that Thursday. I remember two things about the trip: the first was a murder-mystery drama that we listened to on the radio (involving a college professor and a female student with whom he was having an affair, and whom he was later accused of murdering), and the other was hearing my father hum along to Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now" when it came on the radio. The latter seemed incongruous for two reasons: (1) my father generally hated the pop music of his children's generation, so it was extraordinary for him to hum along to anything I might have liked; and (2) the lyrics of the song (e.g., It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day) didn't square with the gray, wintry weather and (especially) the apprehension I was feeling about being away from home for two years. 

Missionary Training Center (Provo, UT) (January-March 1979)
"Daisy Jane" (America, 1975) - We weren't supposed to be in possession of recorded music in the MTC, but my companion Wayne Illes and I purchased several cassettes at the BYU Bookstore and listened to them occasionally. One of them was America's greatest-hits album, which contained "Daisy Jane," a sentimental love song that resonated deeply with me (and with a lot of other missionaries, I imagine).
"Bright Fire" (Fleetwood Mac, 1973) - The only Fleetwood Mac album I had with me during my mission was Bare Trees, but it was Bob Welch's tune "Bright Fire" (from the Penguin album) that I couldn't get out of my head at night when I was trying to fall asleep. I had never studied so hard and so long, and for such an extended period of time, as I did in the MTC, and consequently it was extremely difficult to turn my mind "off" when it came time to sleep. (It was the first, but hardly the last, time in my life that I suffered from insomnia.)
"Backdoor Love Affair" (ZZ Top, 1971) - I have no idea why, but the last part of "Backdoor Love Affair" (i.e., the power chords) stuck in my head as I was trying to memorize the "canned" LDS missionary discussions (in Spanish) that were in use at the time, and it just wouldn't shake loose. I had only heard the song once or twice during the previous summer while driving around with my friend Tracy Carroll in his car; however, the human mind is a funny thing, and when it's overtaxed and fatigued, who can predict what it will latch onto?
 
La Florida (March-June 1979)
"Promesas" (Juan Carlos Duque, 1979) - I've already written extensively about this song and its significance to me personally.
"Sólo tú" (Matia Bazar, 1978) - One of the benefits of living in Chile was becoming aware of some of the European pop scene that one would not otherwise be exposed to in the U.S. Matia Bazar was an Italian group whose Spanish-language version of the offbeat tune "Sólo tú" was played a lot on Chilean radio in early 1979. Antonella Ruggiero, the female lead singer, lent an especially alluring quality to the song -- in contrast to her harder-edged vocals on the group's (later) big European hit, "Ti sento."
"Rasputin" (Boney M, 1978) - A disco dance number that told an engrossing, borderline-comical story about Grigori Rasputin -- "Russia's greatest love machine" -- that few Chileans could understand without translation.
"She's Gone" (Hall & Oates, 1973) - I'm not sure I ever actually heard this song while I was in Chile, but, being one of my favorites (and evoking so many conflicting emotions in me), it was always in my head. I will always associate it with a particular afternoon of "tracting" (door-to-door proselytizing) in a La Florida neighborhood called "Villa San Rafael" in roughly May of 1979; I'll never forget that day's fiery-red sunset.
"Just the Way You Are" (Billy Joel, 1977) - Another song that stayed in my head, mostly because it reminded me of good times I'd had at home and at BYU as a freshman. Billy Joel's The Stranger album was one of three cassettes that I took with me to Chile; I still regard it as a pop masterpiece
"Hold the Line" (Toto, 1978) - Toto's first album had come out in 1978, and I remember reading about its guitarist, Steve Lukather, in Guitar Player magazine, which I read religiously before my mission. I don't particularly care for any of the group's music now, but "Hold the Line" definitely reminds me of Chile.
"I Will Survive" (Gloria Gaynor, 1978) - The popularity of disco music lingered on in Chile for quite a while after it waned in the U.S., which is the main reason why it was a mild shock to me to come back to America and find that disco here was dead as the proverbial doornail.
"In the Navy" (Village People, 1978) - This song was definitely the tail end of the weird phenomenon that was the Village People. The gay innuendos in their music continued to fly over a lot of people's heads, however.
"A Little More Love" (Olivia Newton-John, 1978) - I was never much of an Olivia fan, but her 1978 album Totally Hot, which represented a sort of transition from country music to rock 'n' roll, had a few tunes that I liked.
"Le Freak" (Chic, 1978) - I guess Chic was kind of a disco band, although their music was pretty funked-up compared to most late-70s dance music. The song reminds me of Chile because a missionary I knew used to sing the signature "Awww, freak out!" line as "Awww, chuec out!" -- a sort of Americanization of the Chilean colloquialism "chueco" (literally a "crooked person," but a "laggard" or "rule-breaker" in Chilean slang).

San Fernando (July-November 1979)
"Chiquitita" (ABBA, 1979) - One could recall how popular ABBA was in America in the late 70s and still have no idea how much bigger they were in Latin America, especially since they typically put out Spanish-language versions of their singles. I still remember the lines I liked best from the Spanish version of "Chiquitita": Chiquitita, no hay que llorar / las estrellas brillan por ti allá en lo alto / Quiero verte sonreír para compartir / tu alegría, Chiquitita.
"Voy a perder la cabeza por tu amor" (José Luis Rodríguez, 1979) - There were two recordings of this song that were popular in Chile in 1979, the other being by Julio Iglesias. I came to prefer Julio's version, but the Venezuelan Rodríguez's version reminds me more of Chile, especially since it was the theme song of a popular soap opera called "Viviana," starring the Mexican actress Lucía Méndez.)
"Gloria" (Umberto Tozzi, 1978) - This is the song that later became a hit (with bland English lyrics) for Laura Branigan in the U.S. in 1982. I never really thought that Tozzi, an Italian, was much of a singer or a songwriter, but he was a major sex symbol in Chile, and his Spanish-language version of "Gloria" could be heard just about everywhere there in 1979.
"Sólo pienso en ti" (Victor Manuel, 1979) - A poignant "Benny and Joon" song about a developmentally disabled couple who met, fell in love, and ultimately married and had (normal) children together.
"Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)" (Hollies, 1972) - This song can't help but remind me of San Fernando, as the owner of a "roving" carnival, which took up temporary occupation of a vacant lot in my area, played it over and over on his scratchy PA system.
"To Each His Own" (America, 1972) - I don't think I'd ever heard this song before I borrowed several cassettes belonging to Amalia Rojas (LDS girl in the branch I was assigned to in San Fernando), which she in turn had "inherited" from another missionary.  I was never a great America fan  -- least of all their nonsensical lyrics -- but I liked this tune instantly and keep it on my iPod(s) now.
"Country Road" (James Taylor, 1970) - Another tune from Amalia Rojas's cassette collection that reminds me of San Fernando.  I'd heard the song numerous times before my mission -- the first time being in 1970, when my brother Kelly bought James Taylor's album Sweet Baby James on 8-track -- but it's definitely a "mission song" for me now. 
"Pregúntale" (Julio Iglesias, 1978) - Far and away my favorite Julio Iglesias song and the only one I ever learned to play on the guitar. 
"The Rain, the Park, and Other Things" (Cowsills, 1967) - There was a small radio station in San Fernando that literally played this song every broadcast day.  I had always liked the tune from my childhood -- I was one of a million young American boys who had a crush on Susan Cowsill at the time -- but it takes me back to Chile now.
 
Ñuñoa (December 1979-January 1980)
"Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" (Michael Jackson, 1979) - I didn't even know who sang this song until several months after I first heard it, but it got tons of airplay in Santiago while I was in Ñuñoa, and I associate it with the antipodal summer of 1979-80.
"Babe" (Styx, 1979)  - Lots of people make fun now of how syrupy this song was/is, but it still holds good memories for me. 
"I Just Want to Stop" (Gino Vanelli, 1978) - A song I don't really like now, but....
"Please Don't Go" (KC and the Sunshine Band, 1979) - I wasn't a KC fan, and I pretty much loathed their disco hits of the mid-70s, but this number was a hit in Chile back in the day.
"Good Times" (Chic, 1979) - Oh, well!
"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (Queen, 1979) - Another tune that I heard numerous times before finding out who'd recorded it.  It's a great period piece and probably would have been a smash in 1958. 
"Pop Muzik" (M, 1979) - Can't listen to it now, but this song was one of a number of early electronic-style dance numbers that presaged a lot of what followed  in the 80s.

La Cisterna (February-June 1980) 
"Give a Little Bit" (Supertramp, 1977) - I guess I'd probably heard this song before 1980, since it's in the soundtrack of the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie that came out in 1978.  It was in La Cisterna that I first took notice of it, however.
"Another Brick in the Wall" (Pink Floyd, 1979) - There was no mistaking who did this song, as I'd listened to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album a lot as a teenager.  David Gilmour's guitar solo on this tune is still one of my favorites after three-plus decades.
"Longer" (Dan Fogelberg, 1979) - I can't listen much to it now, but "Longer" was one of the great pop ballads of the era. It reminds me now of the Moraga family, members of the church who lived in our area and in whose house we hung out a lot, at least until it started to affect my morale.  (They had a large, comfortable house that reminded me somewhat of home.) 
"The Logical Song" (Supertramp, 1979) - My companion in La Cisterna, Kent Bawden, bought a cassette of Supertramp's Breakfast in America album, and thus I became familiar with all the tunes on it.  They all bring back rather dark memories of La Cisterna now.
"Por ella" (Julio Iglesias, 1978) - Probably Julio's best "lover's lament" song -- something he practically invented.
"The Year of the Cat" (Al Stewart, 1976) - One of my favorite pop numbers of all time.  In the pensión where we lived, our "mamita's" brother had this tune on vinyl, and I played it a number of times and came to love it.
"Him" (Rupert Holmes, 1979) - Rupert Holmes is someone who might have had more hits in the 80s if he'd been a pretty boy with big hair; alas, he was another "homely" casualty of MTV.
"Take the Long Way Home" (Supertramp, 1979) - My favorite Supertramp song by far. 
"Coward of the County" (Kenny Rogers, 1979) - I generally hate country music, but this song was played a lot on Chilean radio.
"Píntame con besos" (Albert Hammond, 1980) - An infantile Latin American pop song that somewhat incongruously had very suggestive lyrics.
"Cars" (Gary Numan, 1979) - A song that pioneered a lot of what became synthesizer-based, 1980s new wave music.  There wasn't much to it, but it sounded cool and had a great beat; it predated the "electronic drum/drum machine" fad of the 80s, so it has an actual drummer on it playing actual drums.
"What a Fool Believes" (Doobie Brothers, 1978) - I was a big Doobie Brothers fan in the mid-70s, but I didn't like their later stuff, mostly because I couldn't get into Michael McDonald.  Thus this song is another one that I don't really like but which nonetheless holds "mission" memories for me.
"Heart of Glass" (Blondie, 1978) - Most of the Blondie craze happened while I was in Chile, and they weren't quite as popular there as they evidently were in the States; however, several of their songs remind me of my mission.

Doñihue (July-August 1980)
"Mamma Maremma" and "Yo caminaré" (Umberto Tozzi, 197?) - I may as well lump these two songs together -- both got a lof of airplay in 1980.
"Phoenix" (Dan Fogelberg, 1979) - My companion Knute Sorensen's girlfriend sent him Fogelberg's album Phoenix on a cassette, and I came to like the title song.
"La paz de tu sonrisa" (Roberto Carlos, 1980) - A guy from Brazil once described Robert Carlos to me as the Brazilian "Frank Sinatra" -- someone whom the older generation liked but who was too middle-of-the-road for the younger set.  Chileans must not have gotten that message, however, because practically everyone liked him there.  This was the only song of his that I really liked, and I even worked out my own arrangement of it on the guitar.
"Funky Town" (Lipps, Inc.,1980) - A disco song with some new-wave sensibilities (e.g., programmed drum loops, a novelty in 1980).
"Let's Go" (Cars, 1979) - I knew of the Cars in 1978 before I left on my mission, but their sound was still too quirky for me until I got back from Chile.  I remember liking "Let's Go" when I heard it on Chilean radio, however.

La Florida (Barrio Portales) (September-December 1980)  
"All Out of Love" (Air Supply, 1980) - Air Supply was way too sappy for my tastes, although I remember this song from Chile because a local kid once asked me to write out the (English) lyrics for him.
"De do do do, De da da da" (Police, 1980) - I guess the Police had been around for a couple of years when I first heard this song, although I didn't know them.  Sting's voice had a sort of  "Peter Cetera" quality to it, so I originally wondered if it was Chicago (minus the horn section, obviously); it mildly surprised me later to find out the artist was a band I'd never heard of before.
"Rapper's Delight" (Sugarhill Gang, 1979) - The very first of the rap songs that sampled someone else's tune as a foundation (in this case, Chic's "Good Times").  It was a lot of fun to listen to, unlike the entire hip-hop genre to which it gave birth.
"Never Been Any Reason" (Head East, 1975) - It surprises me that this song was first released in 1975, as I never remember hearing it until the latter part of my mission.  It seemed like a new tune when I got back to BYU and a number of cover bands in Provo had it in their repertoire.
"You May Be Right" (Billy Joel, 1980) - Another song whose artist I mistook for someone else, in this case the Rolling Stones.  (I still think Billy Joel purposely tried to make it sound like the Stones.)  I might have known better, but I only ever heard the song in passing; people's radios were always on everywhere we went, but we of course never had a radio of our own.

So there it is.  Nothing triggers memories for me quite like music, and this list of songs is a powerful reminder that I really was in Chile for two years, an experience that often seems as though it had all been a dream from which I long ago woke up.

[Update 4/3/14: I made a Youtube playlist of all these songs.  It isn't perfect, especially since the owner of the Supertramp copyrights evidently guards them with great jealousy, but it should give anyone an idea of what takes me back to my time in Chile.]

What planet are we on?

1. The Manhattan Project.  I have a copy of an anthology titled The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (ed. Cynthia C. Kelly, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007) (see illustration).  It's a very interesting read and highlights the fact that the notion of nuclear fission went from bare theory to a full-blown weapons application in the space of about seven years.  One can question the development of the atomic bomb (although the original driver for the project was the quite-rational fear that Nazi Germany would get the bomb first, and, in any case, advances in physics made nuclear weapons inevitable at some point in time), or, especially, the U.S.'s dropping it on Japanese cities to hasten Japan's surrender at the end of World War II.  However, taken purely as a matter of science and engineering, what the Manhattan Project accomplished in the three years between 1942 and 1945 was nothing short of miraculous.  (The space race of the 1960s, which culminated in the manned Apollo lunar landings in 1969-1972, produced equally prodigious results, if in a slightly longer timeframe.)  Which raises the question whether the U.S., or multiple countries acting in concert, could achieve anything today on a similar scale of innovation.  Yes, there have been fantastic inventions in the last 20-25 years; we have the Internet, portable computers, smart phones, iPods, PS3s, HD televisions, Blu-ray players, computer-aided design/manufacturing, 3D printers, lidar imaging systems, other-worldly satellite capabilities, high-yield farming, the Hubble space telescope, etc.  But where are the hydrogen-powered automobiles, the readily available fusion energy, and the transformative technologies (versus government handouts and subsidies) that would provide shelter, food, clean drinking water, and gainful employment to the world's poor?  I firmly believe we have the brain power and resources necessary to do all that -- what we lack is the will, a sense of urgency, and perhaps the requisite level of altruistic humanity.

2. Duke University's resident porn star.  I read a news story recently reporting that a female student at Duke University, the prestigious private university in North Carolina, is financing her education by "acting" in porn films.  (She apparently was "outed" when a male Duke student recognized her while watching Internet porn.)  One can sort of see her point -- how does one pay for an education at an extremely expensive college without rich parents and without running up six-figure student loan debts, at exorbitant interest rates, that take decades to pay off?  (On the other hand, isn't a college education supposed to enable people, particularly women, to avoid degrading work -- above all, in the sex trades?)  Based on the young woman's comments as quoted in the story, she's a free spirit who doesn't care much about her public image and thinks doing porn is "fun"; she plans to go to law school and has already carefully determined that having been a porn "actress" won't create "character" issues that might prevent her from being admitted to the bar.  (The cynic in me would say, to the contrary, it only enhances her qualifications to be a lawyer.)  So what can the university say about all this?  Colleges in general have done so little to control costs, in turn allowing tuition and fees to skyrocket in the confidence that young people will always be willing to pay them, that they almost cannot judge what anyone does -- legally and by choice, at least -- to be able to afford an education.  Institutions of higher learning may still cling to the self-delusion that a great part of their mission is to develop character in their students; however, whatever one thinks of this young woman's source of income, she puts the lie to that canard.  She is precisely at the intersection of American higher education and American popular culture.

[Update 3/7/14: I noticed last night that this young woman was on CNN (although I declined to watch her interview), so the story isn't going away.  This is the last reference I'll make to her, however.]

3. Mann v. Steyn, et al. I've been keenly interested in the libel lawsuit that Michael Mann, climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, has filed against the National Review and the columnist Mark Steyn.  The suit is a prime example of how litigation is often used in the U.S. to silence one's critics -- just run up their attorneys' fees and make their lives miserable with discovery requests and repeated motion hearings, and they'll usually try to settle -- underscoring why we should have the same "loser pays the winner's attorneys' fee" rule that Britain has.  (It will never happen, as trial lawyers have way too much influence on American politics to allow a change that would discourage the filing of lawsuits.)  It's getting to the point where proponents of anthropogenic "climate change," who have always been humorless and thin-skinned -- not to mention their being less than forthright about their research -- believe all skeptics should simply be made to shut up, which is not only inimical to rights guaranteed under the First Amendment but also a pretty strong indication that the "warmists" are losing ground in the public debate over global warming.  Michael Mann, however, seems to be particularly petulant when it comes to being criticized, although he should have known that Mark Steyn would never just give up, based on the latter's dogged defense (and ultimate vindication) of free speech in Canada's execrable "human rights commissions."  Indeed, it's easy to foresee an outcome in which Mann has to choose between making full disclosure of his research methods and results -- after all, the discovery process cuts both ways in civil litigation -- and having the suit dismissed.  I think it's as likely as not that Mann will be the one throwing in the towel in the end, but a trial, pitting free speech against climate-science dogma, would be sensational to say the least.

4. Stupid things I've done.  Every once in a while, I remember things that I've done that were so stupid that they still cause me to cringe with embarrassment or shame.  Most of them were the result of immaturity, although it must be said that I'll always be immature for my age; thus I remain susceptible to embarrassing myself.  Still, there are some things for which I can't forgive myself, largely because -- immature or not -- I knew better.  I'll give one example: when I was in second grade, at age 7, I remember tormenting a girl named Susan Boardman one time outside of school.  Susan was a Mormon girl, physically frail and developmentally challenged...and, far from being the friend, defender, and sympathetic coreligionist I should have been, I did as other kids did and made fun of her.  Her plaintive cries of "'Top it!  'Top it!" will haunt me to my grave, and possibly beyond.  I hadn't quite yet reached the LDS "age of accountability" (8 years old) at that time, but it's still one of a number of things that I feel I can never atone for.

5. LDS Sunday meeting schedules.  It seems weird to think about the church meeting schedules we had when I was young and how different things are now.  Our ward, the Albuquerque 6th Ward, always had Primary on Wednesday afternoons, which meant that our teachers were strictly women.  My own mother went back to work when I was in the second grade, so one of our neighbors, Betty Iverson, used to drive a number of us kids to church and back on Wednesdays; I always loathed having to go on a weekday.  What is now Primary on Sundays used to be known as "Junior Sunday School," and Sunday School in general was separate from sacrament meeting, which was always on Sunday evenings.  (The schedule was slightly different on Fast Sundays, when fast-and-testimony meetings took place right after Sunday School.)  After I finally got out of Primary and became an Aaronic Priesthood holder at age 12 in 1971, it was very common for my father and me to make three separate trips (three miles one way) to church at the Eubank Blvd. building on Sundays -- one in the morning for priesthood meeting, a second at midday for Sunday School, and a third in the evening for a 90-minute sacrament meeting.  (For some years we had a bishop named Delbert T. Goates...apt name...who preferred having the late sacrament-meeting time -- thus we had the 5:30-7:00 pm time slot for years on end.)  The three-hour "consolidated" Sunday meeting schedule, first implemented in the early 80s, was a major improvement.  It did away with week-day Primary, long sacrament meetings, multiple trips to church every Sunday, "Junior Sunday School," and multiple administrations of the sacrament on Sunday (both in Sunday School "opening exercises" -- junior and senior -- and in sacrament meeting).  The one downside was that church members had fewer opportunities to visit with each other before and after meetings (although I'm so antisocial that you'd think I'd regard that as yet another positive).  The old "disjointed" meeting schedule seems completely antiquated now.

6. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.  It's old news that President Bill Clinton had a dalliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the late 1990s, even though some Republicans seem to want to use it to attempt to cast a shadow on his wife Hillary in advance of the 2016 presidential election.  I got a good laugh, however, out of one liberal writer's incredulous reaction to the accusation that the media had done all they could to suppress the Clinton-Lewinsky story.  This writer wrote something to the effect of, "Man, just go back and look at news stories from 1998!  It was all Lewinsky, all the time!  The media couldn't get enough of her!"  I saw great irony there.  Never mind that it took Matt Drudge to break the story (when at least one "mainstream" journalist, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, had known even more about it) -- most of the media's "frenzy" to cover the story entailed spinning it, in whatever manner necessary, to keep Clinton in office.  It obviously worked, but at a tremendous cost to journalistic credibility.  Conservatives know that no Republican president could have survived such an episode: one, other Republicans would never have tried to defend him, and the media (and feminists, whose credibility took an even greater hit for having "gone to the wall" for Clinton) would absolutely have drawn and quartered him.  The near-complete lack of self-awareness among leftoid reporters is hilarious at times.

Early 1960s Temple Trip

Albuquerque Stake members en route to the Arizona Temple

Vern Payne, current president of the Albuquerque Temple (and long-time resident of the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area, not to mention former Chief Justice of the NM Supreme Court), found the attached photo in the effects of his father, the late Vearle Payne (U.S. District Court judge and our long-time stake patriarch).  The photo is hard to date precisely, but, judging from the age of some of the people in it, it almost certainly was taken sometime between 1962 and 1964.  It's obviously from an Albuquerque Stake adult temple trip -- the Albuquerque East Stake wasn't formed until 1966 -- although one can't be certain if it was shot in Albuquerque or in Mesa, AZ.  We haven't yet been able to identify everyone in the photo, something that is made more difficult by the fact that the Albuquerque Stake took in a lot of area in those days.

The man on the far left is George Lemmon, the stake president (and later president of the East Stake).  To his left are John and Guylynn Hudiburg, my friend Wally Steffensen's in-laws and long-time 4th Warders.  To their left are John and Donna Eilar, old 2nd Warders; John was our dentist when I was growing up, and Dorine worked for him in 1980-81.  The next few people (the taller fellow in back, the older lady in the light-colored coat, the lady in the striped dress, and the younger blonde lady with the dark collar) are unidentified.  The heavy-set lady (face partially obscured) and the balding man behind her are probably Gaye and Al Schofield, who lived in Los Alamos at the time; I remember they had a son named Lyle who was about my age.  The lady in the suit with the dark trim is Mandona Payne, Vearle's wife (and Vern's mother).  The fellow behind Sister Payne is Chuck Goodwin, who for a time was Dorine's family's milkman (remember milkmen?), and the man behind him is my father, Stan Kartchner, who drove the (Greyhound) bus on most of these trips.  

Dorine's dad (and my father-in-law), Lynn Wilson, is on Brother Goodwin's left.  The taller man with glasses over Lynn's left shoulder is unidentified, although Wally Steffensen thinks his name may be Bill Jemison.  The next couple are Patty and Jerry Cole, long-time 5th Warders, whose daughter Paula Mortensen has played a lot of softball with Dorine's city-league team.  (I'll always remember Jerry as being my antagonist [and a lot of other people's] when he refereed church basketball games during my singles-ward days; thankfully, I don't bear him a grudge now, and hopefully he can say the same about me.)  The white-haired man with the glasses over Brother Cole's left shoulder is Vearle Payne, and Paula Mortensen has identified the couple on the far right as Marilyn and Buddy Justice, who I assume were friends of the Coles and fellow 5th Warders.  (My friend Bob Maes grew up in the 5th Ward, so he knew the Coles and probably knew the Justices as well.)

I'm always fascinated when photographs like this one come to light; it makes me wonder what else could be stored in other people's attics or garages.  Years ago, another ex-stake president of ours, Lyle Porter, and his wife Wilma wrote a book chronicling the history of the LDS Church in New Mexico (see illustration).  I don't remember if the book, now long out of print, contained many photographs, but several dozen pictures like this one would have been perfect illustrations for it.  (The Porters, both of whom have now died, were the parents of Bruce D. Porter, a member of the First Quorum of Seventy and still the only LDS general authority to have grown up in Albuquerque.)

[Update 2/28/14: I purchased a copy of the Porters' book on eBay.  It does contain a few photographs, but they aren't particularly interesting to me; additionally, the book must have been put together from photocopies, as the images in most of the photos are poor and difficult to make out.]