Honor the victims of Kent St. University

This week we pay tribute to Jeffrey Glen Miller, Allison Krause, William Knox Schroeder and Sandra Lee Scheuer.
These names don’t seem to mean anything except for the fact that they were gunned down by the Ohio National Guard in a repressive act order by President Richard Nixon in May of 1970.
These students were doing nothing but exercising their right to demonstrate (included in the first amendment) against the policies taken by the Nixon Administration to extend the war in Vietnam to neighboring Cambodia.
Candidate Nixon had campaigned in 1968 under the premise of ending the conflict in what he called the "Lyndon Johnson war" in Vietnam. But in May of 1970 his administration decided to expand that war.
These students felt that they had no interest in keep on sending American kids to a region they new nothing about to a conflict that was not in the interest of this country.
The students that were demonstrating were unarmed, the Ohio National Guard starting shooting at the crowd with no respect to life.
There were 4 killed (previously mentioned), 9 who were injured, that fortunately survived the incident and many others were left physically but not emotionally unharmed, as this was an example of how our elected officials would try to silence its citizens.
I think of the 60s as a great period, as it was a time of great growth in this country. Although I wasn’t living here at the time, and I was a child, it showed how the younger generation confronted publicly the previous generation, and their policies, as they were in the mindset that this country should send its youth to fight, even though the reasons were not justifiable.
Unfortunately many times with growth comes pain, as there was a lot of blood shed during that period, with figures like President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy gunned down, but the youth of the United States went from being kids to adults.
It would have been nice if today’s youth would do the same with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, two conflicts that this country has no part of.

Matthew chapter 5

The last few times we have been meeting with the person that I am trying to disciple he seems to be stuck in the idea that the New Testament is a story of some events that happened two thousand years ago.
As I was reading Matthew chapter 5, I cannot find anything that Jesus says that could not be applied today.
Regardless of the fact that I am a Christian, I try to step back and read the wisdom of those verses.
I love the beatitudes, I find them moving. They give me comfort, peace, strength and hope. I feel the love of God, his compassion and his reassurance in them.
I also find some of those commandments to be extremely challenging, especially when he tells us to love our enemies, not that there isn’t any truth in it, but it is still challenging.
I love when Jesus talks about settling matters with your adversary. I feel these verses talk to me personally.
And even though, as I said earlier that Jesus challenges us, you can feel God’s love at the end of the day.
He is a patient father teaching what is right for us, just like we try to do with our own kids, strict but fair, giving us the base from which we build the rest of our lives, with a structure, and knowing that God is always with us, until the end of the ages.

John Kooreman

This week we said goodbye to a fellow coworker and father in law of one of the office brokers. He was a good Christian.
What is a good Christian? Is it somebody who leads a good life? Is it somebody who does good deeds?
These are often the wrong answers to what a good Christian is. You can have a good life and be a good citizen and not be a good Christian or even be a Christian.
Being a good Christian is somebody that accepts Jesus Christ as his lord and savior, and loves his neighbor as he loves himself.
That is what John Kooreman was.
He would wear his religion on his sleeve. Tried to a live a Christian life based on what the bible said, and use every single opportunity to present the gospel, regardless of who he was dealing with.
He came from a solid Christian background, lived through hard times during the depression, but always kept the faith that Jesus Christ was at his side.
He served as an elder, deacon and a Sunday school teacher at Midland Park Christian Reformed Church.
I will always remember him for sending postcards of encouragement to people who were going through low periods in their life and needed support, for making phone calls and talking to people who needed somebody to talk to.
My friendship time was not a very long one because I only met him 5 years ago, but his presence, his humor and his optimism will stay with those of us who had the fortune to have crossed paths with him.
He is safely in the arms of his beloved savior, safe from the pain of the illness that made him suffer during the last few months.
God bless you, John.

Why Tea Partiers are fighting back

I look at the recent Tea Party demonstrations, to the speeches of both Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, with inflammatory rhetoric and I try to think what is the purpose of all this, who is feeding all this and who are the people attending these demonstrations.
If people look at what they have submitted to the federal government in income tax, they can see that 95% of the population has seen a reduction of their taxes, unless you are making $250,000 or more.
We also look at the recent poll of tea party demonstrators and it shows us that they are satisfied with medicare and with social security, they feel that what they paid this year in taxes is fair, they don’t feel that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, they are college educated people, who would vote republican if they had the chance, they view Obama as a socialist. This is what I find the most amusing of all. I don’t think they know what socialism really is.
Nine out of ten are white.
This, more than anything else is where the issue is in my honest opinion.
What, I think, it really comes down to is that they feel that minorities are getting a better deal under this administration.
This, again, is ironic, because in many places 50% of young African Americans are unemployed or under employed, and the same can be said about Hispanics.
But the biggest issue that Tea Partiers feel, some of whom have gone to wars for this country , is that it is changing. That in many states minorities have a bigger say in the outcome of elections.
Hispanics helped Obama win the last presidential election in several states, not just the usual ones such as in Florida, California, New York, but also in states such as Nevada and Colorado.
I have had friends of mine tell me that one of the reasons they were not happy with the Health Care reform was because now, when they wanted to go to the doctor, they would have to wait longer.
I find that not only discriminatory but also offensive.
This country has had a history of embracing people from different countries and backgrounds, but it seems because the physiognomy of the country is changing, in other words white people are feeling that in a generation they will be a minority they are trying to fight back. Unfortunately the methods by which they are doing this, such as spitting at Representative Lewis, a figure of the civil rights, insulting or threatening other members of Congress, calling Gangster this administration, carrying guns to demonstrations will only insight violence. They remind of people in the Middle East fighting back against the West.
My savior said many years ago that “Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword”.

Proposal of Wall Street financial reform

It is wonderful to see the leadership of the Republican Party taking sides with Wall Street, which is what they always do, take the side of big business before taking the sides of the public.
But what makes it even more interesting is how they are twisting the facts so that the American public, confused and still bitter about having to bail out the big banks and other institutions that caused the crash of 2008, doesn’t know that what the GOP is trying to defeat is a bill that would protect the public from future bail out.
They have spent the last few weeks quoting GOP pollster Luntz: that the Democrat financial reform bill will lead to more bailouts. Unfortunate for the republicans, as this may seem, the reality is the opposite, the party that proposed the largest bailout, and who does not want to reform the financial system is the Republican Party.
The Democratic reform bill passed by the house proposes that if large institutions collapse Wall Street will be held accountable, not the taxpayer. Any cost of dismantling a firm will be paid first with the assets at the expense of shareholders and creditors.
Republicans, it seems, will not go ahead with that. They have decided to filibuster any proposal of reform.
It is time for the Democratic leadership to make the GOP members in the Senate stand there and filibuster, in front of the cameras, and tell the American people that the reason they want to defeat this proposal is because Wall Street has then in their pocket.
It is very sad to see a party that has had no proposals, no ideas, and who’s only intention is to try to defeat, not just the White House’s ideas but also anything that would help this great country move forward after the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and that has broken every record of filibustering since it lost the majority in the Senate in 2006.

Nuestro 28o aniversario de matrimonio

Al acercarnos a nuestro 28o aniversario de casados me paro a reflexionar: donde fue a parar el tiempo? Como es que pasó tan rápido?
Supongo que estas son preguntas que toda pareja que ha estado casada por un cierto periodo de tiempo seguramente se debe preguntar. Pero nuevamente parece que el tiempo ha pasado rápido.
Durante los primeros años parecía que estuviésemos en las nubes. Como yo trabajaba para una compañia aérea, y porque teníamos pasajes gratis ilimitados nos daba la oportunidad de viajar a los EEUU en cuanto teníamos algo de tiempo. En el año ’83 viajamos a Nueva York 15 veces. Muchas de ellas eran por unas pocas horas. Partíamos el viernes a la noche desde Buenos Aires llegando a Nueva York el sabado a la mañana, hacer compras, ir de regreso al aeropuerto, y viajar esa misma noche arribando en Buenos Aires el domingo a la mañana. Un amigo me dijo en una oportunidad que la única forma de poder charlar conmigo era tomar un viaje conmigo a Nueva York.
Pero como muchas cosas en la vida, no duró mucho, en realidad eso tuvo un final abrupto.
Asi que, luego de analizar nuestras perspectivas, decidimos mudarnos a los EEUU. Un nuevo desafío en un país que conocíamos unicamente como turistas. Con la ayuda de la iglesia que nos adoptó, con fé, y con el amor por el otro nos embarcamos en este cambio.
Hubo altibajos.
Luego vinieron los chicos. Victoria era hermosa, todo lo que uno puede imaginar como padre.
Luego vino Ian. Se puede decir que casi desde el principio yo note que algo no estaba bien. Después de 4 años fue diagnosticado como parte del espectro de autismo. El mundo pareció detenerse. Perdí mi rumbo. Estaba intoriermente destruído. Dí vueltas en el “desierto” por un largo tiempo. Furioso, resentido, sentí que Dios me había abandonado.
He escuchado en television que 83% de los matrimonios con una criatura con autismo terminan en divorcio.
Decir que le pone presión, que produce un gran desgaste a la pareja es decir parte de la historia. Muchas veces uno piensa: ésto es todo lo que da el matrimonio? Es ésta la forma que tiene que ser?
Y un día llegue a la conclusion de que la vida, el viaje, la travesía, es donde está la alegría, el placer, con sus bocacalles, con sus altibajos, es lo que la hace interesante. También llegué la conclusion que nuestros dos hijos, con sus exitos y algunos golpecitos, y los llamé golpectios específicamente, porque no me gusta la palabra fracaso, es lo que es importante.
Y parece que no he hablado de mi compañera en esta travesía. Decir que es una roca, una persona fuerte, que es firme, con fe en su creador, sería ponerlo suavemente. Tiene defectos? Quién no los tiene. Se puede decir que tiene menos que yo. Otra persona en su lugar hubiese abandonado hace mucho tiempo. Es una gran madre, con grandes valores, que nunca se da por vencida. Ella ha enfrentado todo lo que la vida le ha tirado en su camino. Y lo ha hecho de pie.
Asi que antes de seguir escribiendo mucho más puedo decir que estoy orgulloso de decir que es mi compañera, mi socia.
Durante nuestras caídas hemos permanecido juntos. Nos hemos caído y parado juntos.

Our 28th marriage anniversary

As we are approaching our 28th wedding anniversary I take the time to reflect and think, where did the time go? How come it went by so quickly?
These are questions that I can imagine that every couple that’s been married for a while must ask themselves. But again it seems the time has gone by very quickly.
During the first few years of our marriage we were in the clouds. As I used to work back then for an airline, and because we had unlimited free tickets it gave us the opportunity to fly to the US whenever we made some time. Just in 1983 we came to New York 15 times. Many of those were just for a few hours. We would leave on Friday night from Buenos Aires, arrive in New York Saturday morning, go shopping, go back to the airport and fly back that same night to arrive in Buenos Aires Sunday morning.
A friend of mine would say that the only way he would have a chance of chatting with me was to take a flight to New York with me.
But like many things in life it did not last long, as a matter of a fact it pretty much came to an abrupt halt. So, after analyzing all the alternatives we decided to move to the USA. A new challenge in a place we only knew as tourists. With the help of the church that adopted us, with faith and with the love for each other we embraced this move.
There were ups and downs.
Then came the kids. Victoria was beautiful, all you can imagine as a parent.
Then came Ian. From pretty much the beginning I noticed that something was not right. After 4 years he is diagnosed as P.D.D., pervasive development disorder, a type of autism. The world came to a complete halt. I lost my way, I was torn inside. I wondered in the wilderness for a very longtime. Angry, resentful, thinking that my God had abandoned me.
I have heard on TV that 83% of couples that have a child with autism will end up in divorce.
To say that this put a strain, pressure on our relationship is putting it mildly. Many times you would think: is this what marriage is all about? Is this the way it is supposed to turn out?
And then one day I reached the conclusion that life, the journey, is where the fun is, with its side streets, with its ups and downs, is what makes it interesting. It is not the final destination where the fun "will be". I also reached the conclusion that both our kids, with their challenges, with their successes and unsuccesses, and I specifically called it unsuccess because I don’t like the word failure, are what really matter.
It seems I have not spoken about my companion in this journey.
To say that she is a rock, a strong individual, with faith in her creator, would be putting it mildly. Does she have shortcomings, who doesn’t. She arguably has less than me. Somebody else in her shoes would have call it quits long time ago. She is a great mother, with great values, who never gives up. She has taken everything that life has thrown at her, and she has taken it standing.
So before I go much longer I can proudly call her my teammate and my companion.
During all our falls we have always stuck together. We have fallen and got up together.
That, I think in a nutshell, is what marriage is supposed to be.