Planting A Garden In October

About a hundred yards from my home, in a gully in the southeast corner of Van Winkle and 900 South, there is a permanent homeless camp. Several weeks ago I stopped near it to snap a few photos of the sunset over the Wasatch mountains. While there, one of the homeless, a man appearing about 40 years old, asked me if I wanted to come take a picture of the garden he was planting. He seemed sincere and wholly invested in his mission to plant a garden in the fall. Peering back into the overgrown unkempt mass of weeds, brush and trees and the garbage strewn around, I politely declined. While not a psychologist, it was apparent the man was mentally ill.

This last spring and summer there had been a string of burglaries in our neighborhood, including my home. Preceding the thefts, our neighbors have observed the homeless walking among our houses and sometimes knocking on doors to see if people were gone. Some of the culprits appear to be our homeless neighbors from the gully. We’ve complained. But, what do they do?

We have no adequate programs for the mentally ill and homeless. It’s cheaper for the police to allow them to languish in the gully than pester them to move along. My fear is that the harmless, the desperate, the criminal and the violent are congregating and nothing will be done until the crime rises to a level more serious than the thefts we have been experiencing.

It is likely that the cost of doing the right thing in the long run would be cheaper than the crime and the human toll that will result by ignoring it.

I have lived conservative ideals all my life. I’ve worked since the day I was old enough to shovel snow, mow a lawn and throw a paper. I paid for most of my college and have lived within my means and paid my debts and taxes. I espouse fiscal responsibility and I want my taxes to be as low as possible. Yet, my outlook is progressive. I am more concerned about the man planting his fall garden than I am about the corporations and the wealthy who, through the power of their money, have obtained unfair advantages and corporate welfare by manipulating intellectual property, bankruptcy and tax laws.

Some of that interest is selfish. I would rather we provide for the mentally ill so they have their basic needs met rather than having them come through my neighborhood or standing on the corners pan handling. Also, I think it is the right thing to do because its humane, decent and necessary. At the same time, the gully, instead of being trashed with garbage and raw sewage, can be preserved. That would be a better solution than us as a country ignoring the mentally ill who are busy planting gardens in the fall.

Loren M. Lambert, Oct. 29, 2015 ©.

Am In The Thick Of It

When I became a river guide, I found my place, my home. It was something that felt like a comfortable set of clothes.

Yet it started in complete terror, like being thrown from the womb with a complete knowledge of all the misery in the world before feeling your mother's touch, and without knowing life's joy, pleasure and love.

Unlike conventional sports where skills are put upon you by those with expectations to be achieved or you are a disappointment to be discarded, the river had no expectations, no thought of abandoning me, just the constant flow that seduced, enticed and challenged me to find my harmony with it or be left to never know.

When I run a river, the spiritual and physical merge and become concentrated within the thin space that I run. All things fall away and I am the center- not the center of anyone's attention or the center of importance, but at the center of the essence of who I am and what I was, am, can and will be.

While those years riding the waters of the Snake and the Salmon are long behind me, when I dream, there is almost always a river, always a girl, always a boat, always a rapid and I am in the thick of it, and while others would wake up in the sweat of a nightmare, when I wake up, I do so with the longing that the dream continue and having the expectation to return.

So what is that paddle in my hand? It is the tool that allowed me to fall in love with the river and with life and it is the tool that allowed me to access my soul.
Loren M. Lambert © October 28, 2015

A River Runs Through It

Like many [river guides in the north west] where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I [have often run rivers in] the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the [Salmon River] and [the steady two-count rhythm of my paddle strokes] and the hope that [I will always] rise [to make this journey]. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through [my life]. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
—Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It (1976) with Loren Lambert's words added to his

Our Virtue As a Nation Is a Collective Virtue

What I do is nobody’s business. What I do is everybody's business. I am only responsible for the consequences of my actions. Everybody is responsible for the consequences of my actions. These are all true statements. We have had no dictator in the United States, not because as a people we have no individuals capable of acting as dictators. We do. Pick any reprehensible person in a foreign country or from any period of time and we have people among us who are capable of acting the same.

Our virtue is a collective virtue. We have no individuals who have been dictators in the United States because we as a people have determined that it is our collective responsibility that no individual be allowed to act as a dictator over us. It is through this virtue that the many who are capable of such degradation are rescued from their own worst natures.

We have had numerous individuals here rise up from among all socioeconomic groups to love, teach and lead us, not because we as a people have a greater number of such individuals capable of doing great things. We do not. Pick the best and brightest of any foreign country and on an individual basis, they have those who are capable of achieving every advancement in knowledge and skill that individuals have achieved in this nation.

Our virtue is a collective virtue. We have individuals who rise up from among us to endow us with greatness because we as a people have determined that it is our collective responsibility that all individuals have available to them the opportunity to develop their full potential. It is through this virtue that many are rescued from the confines of their own circumstances.

It is not in the absence of government nor through its fullest manifestation that the balance of prevention and propagation are found. Take any current problem facing our nation- obesity, rising health care costs, drunk driving, gun violence, falling academic achievement, environmental degradation, deficit spending, etc. and when they become both a collective and an individual responsibility–they will be resolved.
Loren M. Lambert © October 26, 2015

Zombie Mosquitoes and The Art of Sitting Down

Joan Vernikos, PhD says we need to create and find opportunities to stand up and sit down a lot, but to sit down slowly so we use our muscles. So I guess Catholic Mass and musical chairs (except you have to move like a zombie whilst doing it), makes a of sense but is it enough to convert? Yes, who can make me a zombie out there, I'm taking applications. Maybe a Catholic Priest Zombie? No, scratch that, a nun. No, no, no, just a nice Catholic woman with good teeth, then I could take care of my first choice and decide on the other one later. On second thought, that all sounds a little, I don't know, perhaps a zombie mosquito I can swat. Are there Zombie mosquitoes? That would be frightening.
Loren M. Lambert, October 16, 2015 ©

Why You Should Care Because It's Not Fair - Worker's Compensation

I attended the Labor Commission's Worker's Comp seminar today. It was evident there, as in past conferences, that there is a patronizing, we-know-better, slow erosion of employees' right to adjudicate their disputes at the Labor Commission before a fair and impartial body. This is being done under the guise of the slogan that its the Labor Commission's mission to "return injured employees to work." Yeah, why not, that's what we want right? Get people back to work?

Let me demonstrate the problem this way. If you were charged with a crime and were innocent or less culpable and merited some mercy in sentencing, how would you feel about a court system that often held conferences and had as its slogan, "We put criminals in jail and throw away the key!" Yeah, why not, that's what we want right? For criminals to go to jail and never come out to cause more harm? (That is the reality also and that is why we have the highest incarceration rate in the world).

Or how about this: if you are an employer and suspected of polluting, how would you feel about an EPA that had as its slogan, "Protecting the environment at all costs!" Yeah, why not, that's what the EPA is there for, to protect the environment?

The problem is this. A governmental body that is supposed to act neutrally among competing obligations. Those obligations are created to balance the interests either between parties or between the government's enforcement of the law and the regulated party. When an agency elevates one interest or competing goal above the others and align its resources and personnel to achieve that particular goal, the agency becomes blinded to and insensitive of its broader obligations. This creates inequity.

As to Workers Compensation, it is not the mission of the Labor Commission to return injured workers to full time employment. That is the employees, medical professions' and vocational experts jobs. The Labor Commission's mission is to manage a liability system in a manner that equitably resolves the competing interests between the employer and the employee. Stated simply, that system is supposed to enforce, due to work place injuries, payment for the injured worker's medical expenses and to provide subsistence wage replacement while the injured employee cannot work due to his or her injuries.

So, you're still asking, what are the injustices that occur when all emphasis in a worker's compensation system of justice is placed on returning an employee to work? Here are a few.

1. The injured worker or his or her doctors' opinion that injuries prevent work is always suspect and presumptively viewed as wrong or even criminal.
2. Work Med and other "work injury medical" providers and their doctors who work for and are paid by the employer and worker's compensation insurance providers to provide both care for injured workers and opinions that minimize indemnity payments and cut off care, treatment choices, and wage benefits who determine return to work dates, limitations, restrictions and impairment ratings are economically and philosophically motivated to err in favor of "returning the employees to work," whether or not that is the correct thing to do. The consequences are many. The insurance doctors skimp on treatment and diagnostics forensics which would validate the employee's position on causation and extent of injury and in the absence thereof, do the opposite - deprive the employee of validation of his or her injuries and support the employer. The insurance doctors also skimp on treatment that thereby lead to poorer outcomes.
3. Work Med and other "work injury medical," providers and their doctors who work for and are paid by the employer and worker's compensation insurance providers to provide both care for injured workers and to provide opinions that cut off care or treatment choices, who determine return to work dates, limitations, restrictions and impairment ratings have an inherent conflict of interest to act in the best interest of their patients yet are allowed in Utah to provide defense medical evaluations on behalf of employers. As a consequence of this, work med doctors are insulated from medical malpractice claims when they fail to provide adequate care.
4. Employers have an incentive to disregard light duty restrictions and intimidate employees.
5. Medical Panels are empowered to assume roles outside of their expertise on vocational issues and to assume the ALJ's functions by making credibility assessments regarding: (1) the mechanisms of injury, (2) the relevance or weight to be given when there are no witnesses of an accident, (3) the claimant's reports of pain or symptoms and the effect they have, and (4) to resolved discrepancies in the medical records.
5. Legislatures and criminal justice systems gear up to criminalize and convict employees engaging in alleged acts of worker's compensation fraud but no countervailing laws are promulgated against employers, worker compensation carriers and insurance doctors who suppress work accident reports, falsify evidence, engage in deceptive practices, interfere with worker's compensation rights, etc.
6. Injured workers are treated by all players, except, at times their own attorneys, as suspect.
7. The Labor Commissioner and Appeals Counsel, without benefit of hearing the live testimony, are given discretion to act in a patronizing manner to overturn the ALJ decisions in favor of witnesses.
8. Subconscious and conscious biases against injured workers are magnified against minorities in ad hominen attacks that are rarely lodged against dominant groups. As an example, minorities are more often viewed as using the Worker's Compensation system as a retirement mechanism, when the only concern should be, do they qualify for their benefits based on the merits of their claim.
9. Medical providers who are viewed as employee friendly are excluded from participation in medical panels and advisory roles.
10. The Labor Commission becomes understaffed, creating backlogs that incentivize claimants to compromise their claims.
11. While it may err on the side of preventing unfounded claims, it more often errs on the side of denying claims that should be paid. As you may guess, the Worker's Compensation System and its insurers don't send agents to survey an employees who has been unfairly denied benefits. You never hear about them. You only hear about the horror stories supporting the employer's position.
In short, the working class of America is under siege and needs to agitate for its rights before they are all lost.
Loren M. Lambert, October 16, 2015 ©

Imputing the Tresspasses Of the Few Upon The Many

I heard a report of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy who was killed because he engaged in a single terrorist act. I learned he did this after he viewed a news report of Israeli police committing what he perceived to be an act of police brutality upon a Muslim woman by taking off her head cover. His father explained that his son exclaimed, "Look what those dirty Jews are doing to our women."

Did the father take a moment and explain to his son that judgment should be left to God and the legal system and that things aren't always what they seem at first glance? Did the father take a moment and explain to his son that even if what he perceived was actually what happened, that the insults, trespasses and offenses of a few cannot be attributed to an entire religion or race or people? Did the father take a moment and explain to his son that if what he perceived to have been wrong was actually what happened that they need to find ways to reach out to all people in both their worlds to bring justice and stop the few from besmirching the reputations of the group? Did the father take a moment and explain to his son that revenge leads to a blind and toothless world and never stops the cycle of violence?

No he did not. To the contrary, he doubled down on it and validated his son's anger. Now he has a dead son and a motive to seek revenge. They both are representatives of an endemic culture of hate, especially in the Middle East and throughout the world.

Sometimes it appears to me that the people in both sides of these conflicts cherish their hate and are more proud to have a dead son who is a martyr, than they are to have a live son who wants to end the cycle of violence and find peace and to have a world that is safe for everyone to live in.

You love that which you give your time, attention, money and heart to. Many in the Middle East have given so much of their time, attention, money and heart to their hate and desire for revenge that it would seem they love it above all else.

Know this, I do not write this as a condemnation, but an invitation to those that read to explore its truth. We all carry some little petty grudge or need for a bit of revenge. Find it and help end whatever cycle of violence you engage in and invite all to do the same.
Loren M. Lambert © October 14, 2015

What Color Should the Toenails Be Painted On The Amputees Soon To Be Severed Leg?

When a leader and his tribe want to arrive at the same destination as you and your clan, it will take all of you to get there. Attacking the sincerity or zeal level of the tribe and its leader when there is a simple disagreement regarding the exact manner on how to get there is as intelligent as declining to purchase Alaska from the Russians because Sarah Pallin was going to be a Governor there and then be McCain’s running mate. It’s just stupid, clearly?

Sometimes you have to ignore the little squeak when it comes with the big train.

This is the Park

Canyon Rim Park

This is the park where, as a kid, on the edge of the wilderness, my Dad would come to swim in a spring-fed pond. This is the park where, when it remained a wilderness, I walked through it twice a day for seven years on my way to school. This is the park where, when it was an abandoned gravel pit, we road our bikes and busted our balls when our aerials caused us to bounce off our banana seats onto the bike’s steel frame.

This is the park where, when the pond had turned into a swamp, I could go look at salamanders and polliwogs and get slapped by Claudia P. for making her mom, our primary teacher, cry (I deserved it, best slap I ever got). This is the park where, when it was a wild wheat field, Scott P. would light it on fire and then pretend to help the fire fighters with a hose from his back yard. This is the park where, when it was half done and poorly managed, the bad boys of the neighborhood–one who went to prison, two who died young--hung and killed several cats--karma, especially cat karma cannot be run from.

This is the park where, when it was mostly a park with just a few wild places, Steve H. would go to make-out with Maria when he played hookie from church. This is the park where, when it had a pavilion, I would run and jump rope and pretend I was Rocky Balboa, where I had a silver bracelet a girl had gifted me fly off my wrist and sail perfectly into a thin crack in the cement under the pavilion where it could not be retrieved.

This is the park where I brought my toddlers to play while staying with my parents between leaving the military and buying a home. This is the park where I came to watch my son run cross country. This is the park that has so many of my memories that it seems like an old close friend that I can sit and reminisce with. This is the park where I want a portion of my ashes to be spread, with some saved for the Teton valley, and the rest into the Salmon River.

This is the park where a generation from now, when I am dead and gone, someone replacing the pavilion will find a stainless silver bracelet with my name engraved and he or she will then possess its power. Everyone should have a park like this.
Loren M. Lambert © Oct. 1, 2015.

Space, Solitude, Instinct and The Firmanfooplace

 The Pfiefferhorn from Maybird Lake in Maybird Gulch

Many mammals, birds, reptiles and even some insects, while they form communities, will within those community disperse and create distance between nesting or breeding areas. Those communities increase proportionally to their population by maintaining that same distance as long as there is additional space to expand within.

I suspect humans have that same instinct to disperse while staying within their expanding communities. However, under the pressure of high density populations, limited land mass and private property ownership, that instinct can only be satiated by travel or by ridiculously long climbs up rocky, muddy and treacherous mountains or death marches into wildernesses to seek the elusive sensation of solitude, space and first-human-foot-in-this-place sensation or what is commonly known as firmanfooplace. And that’s what we found today, firmanfooplace, even if that illusion was momentarily broken when the wiry bearded guy lapped us and the father and two kids mocked us with their light nimble steps.

Get your firmanfooplace where and when you can, and thereby give that instinct for distance its space at the firmanfooplace.

Loren M. Lambert © October 2, 2015

Me Thinks Thou Dost Protest Too Much

Every time there is a shooting, the far right wingnuts trot out the same old BS that the right to own a gun is the same the as the right to freedom of speech.

You see, no matter how batshit crazy you are, while I'll protect and fight for your right to shoot off your mouth at whomever you like in your exercise of free speech, the Right's wingnuts will fight and protect your right to acquire and shoot off your guns at whomever you like.

It just may be probable that those who immediately launch into an irrelevant, emotional whine when it is suggested that the mentally ill who have paranoia and homocidal ideation should not possess guns could very well be paranoid, homocidal gun owners who would stand to lose under such a policy.

There is no other rational explanation to protest such a rule.

Towering Giants

The other day I was starting to dress for my workout at VASA gym and in walked a gym rat, loaded up with muscle upon muscle. I got the feeling that Jupiter had just rolled in past the moon.

There are those of us who stay in shape and can sing a bit, have some athleticism and some ability to swim with some efficiency, play a sport with palatable ability and throw a few weights around, etc. And then there are these towering giants who just amaze me. This guy didn’t even seem human. I felt like I was looking at some new species.

I’m at a point in life where I no longer anguish over the fact that I’m not a strapping, musclebound Dynamo, but I still have to admire the possibilities.

It makes me wonder what it feels like to be in those bodies? So, all you towering giants out there, how does it feel? Since I’ll never be there, I have to hear it from others.

Loren M. Lambert, October 4, 2015 ©.

The Trilemma or More, of Actors Who Are Day Players and One Liners In A Small Market -- And Why I Still Love the Challenge

As a local actor, to get cast in anything that pays is exponentially challenging.

Usually, you have to be a member of good standing (by appearances or for realzies) of the correct religion, you have to have the right friends/acting coach/agent. You have to be a member of the right political party. You have to look 100% the part in every aspect from the last hair on your head to the soles of your shoes. You have to be the epitome of the person everyone in the production wants to hang out with. You have to have never had a single even slightly misunderstood moment or momentary lapse in whatever may possibly be deemed to reveal a flaw in your personality. You have to have all skills mastered in an actors repertoire (sing, dance, juggle, swear, paddle a canoe, slay a dragon, tip a cow and change a diaper, etc.). You have to never do or say or present anything at an audition that makes you less perfect than one of the other dozens auditioning for the same part. And, finally, you have to be a great actor.

And many times you don't know what is the correct religion (but here in Utah, usually you do), who are the right friends or coach or agent, what is the right political party, how to exactly look and act the part, what is the epitome of buddyhood and perfection, and nobody will ever tell you what you need to do to be perfect for them to consider casting you.

Yet, if you make it to the big time, nobody cares what your religion is, who your friends/acting coach/agent are or what political party you belong to. You're given leeway to become the character. You are the epitome of the person everyone wants to hang out with whether true or not. You are allowed to have a few moments of human imperfection, you can be less than the perfect vision of the character at the audition. You will be assisted in what to do more perfectly, and, while being a great actor is good, being an interesting actor people want to see, is better.

Despite all this, I love acting--its challenges, and its window into all aspects of human achievement and endeavor--and that is what it can be if you approach it correctly. Just forgive me for being human, give me room to show you that I am both able enough and humble enough to learn, grow, and earn your respect and your casting call.

Yet wouldn't it be fun to be one of the Stars.

Loren M. Lambert, October 7, 2015 ©.

Crime and Punishment

I can't believe they let me live here and that they don't tax me when I experience such a beautiful day and that they don't declare it a sin unless I auto-flagellate--which I'd be willing to try if the sin was sufficiently egregious.

Yet I did commit mouse murder last night by setting a trap when something scampered past my door the night before, making me think I saw a ghost.

It must have been a good thing, otherwise my day would have been terrible. Maybe it's the beauty before the storm of punishment because I really don't like killing mice. When I do all the cute mice from fairy tales and movies pop into my head, but at the same time, I can't abide them living in my house. I'd feel much better if I had a house owl that did my dirty work.

Also, it would be okay if they could be house trained to deposit their little sausage shaped packages in a mouse litter and only ate and chewed on what you gave them and could be given shots for all those microbes they carry around as pals.

Anyway, catch a cirrus cloud and ride it into the next wondersphere. That's where I will be.

Loren M. Lambert, October 7, 2015 ©.