And In Today's News...

"We are to fear and love God so that in matters of sex our words and conduct are pure and honorable, and husband and wife love and respect each other."

As a youth I learned this as the answer to the question, "What does this mean: 'You shall not commit adultery.'" Lutherans will recognize it a being from The Small Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther, which in my Sunday School text books was subtitled, "A Handbook of Basic Christian Instruction for the Family and the Congregation."

But there's hardly anything unique here to Luther, or even Christians for that matter. Alas, you'd not know that from catching the news media. Or, for that matter, the entertainment media. All of which have been busy, for a long time now, with another message.

Which "Home" Is This?

Last week on my Google News feed I noticed a headline with "West Hills" and "crossbow," but didn't click the link. I should have, though, because the story happened about 100 yards from my parents' front door. Yup, not 100 yards from Zion's South Side parsonage. It made for an interesting story to hear about during my brief visit home this week.

P.S. KABC should have stayed with its initial report; that address is in West Hills, not Woodland Hills.

RIP: L.A.'s TV Reporter Stan Chambers

On a Friday afternoon in the spring of 1949, 3½-year-old Kathy Fiscus fell into an abandoned well in San Marino, California, and a rescue attempt was begun. Newspapers and radio stations covered as an anxious city (and eventually the nation) followed the story. At some point during the rescue, someone at KTLA Channel 5, the first commerically licensed TV station in the western US, thought to send a camera crew. And for 27½ hours, Stan Chambers stood before and beside the camera telling viewers -- this was the early days of television, so perhaps 20,000 people were able to watch at home -- what they were watching on their screens, including the sad news that Kathy had died long before her rescuers reached her. This was the first on-the-scene live TV coverage of a breaking news story. It would not be the last, for television or for Stan Chambers. Sales of televisions skyrocketed.

While it would be several years before KTLA had a regular news broadcast, they'd broadcast special news events live and Stan Chambers was usually the guy on screen reporting. The testing of an atom bomb in Nevada. Brush fires all across the Southland. Floods, earthquakes, riots. He covered the assissination of Bobby Kennedy and broke the story beating of Rodney King. And Stan reported good news, too, not the least of which was the Rose Parade (which, if you cannot be there in person, is still best watched on KTLA [Thank God for the internet!]). I saw him report hundreds of stories on Channel 5's News at 10 living in LA. And he continued this until he retired in 2010 at the age of 87, after 63 years at KTLA and in the homes of Angelenos.

A little while ago, "Stan Chambers" started appearing on the "trending" portion of my Facebook page, dying today at the age of 91. A true television pioneer. RIP, Stan Chambers. Here's one of KTLA's tributes.

Why "Francis"

Pope Francis tells the press how he chose his regnal name:




Meanwhile, the Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin, Professor of Religion and History at California Lutheran University (and Interim Pastor at my home congregation) offers "this op-ed in Friday's Ventura County Star with an historian's perspective on the significance of a Pope named "Francis."

How to Stop Mass Shootings?

Report on the heroes, not the villains. Something to think about.

Hat tip to the Facebook page of Afghan War reporter Michael Yon.

South Side Garden and Farmers Market

It was only a couple of months ago that Pastor Karl Eckhoff of the neighboring Christ Lutheran Church -- Christ and Zion have been about three blocks apart for since the 1890s -- called me to ask if Zion might be interested in patcipating in a community garden. My response was along the lines of, "We're not in the position to offer much labor, but what other ways can we help?"

Turns out the garden was actually established last year at Logan Park (just a couple of blocks away) by the gitm Foundation ("gitm" is for "Gifts in the Moment") in association with the Peoria Park District, Garfield Elementary School (which is next to the park), and with support from other area businesses and agencies. The kids of the school and park would have the opportunity for hands-on learning about food and nutrition, and some produce and spices would be available in the neighborhood.

Everything was looking good until the school district rather suddenly decided to close Garfield School. But Christ Lutheran School also borders Logan Park, and this winter Denise and Kim from gitm approached the school to see if they might be interested in becoming a stakeholder in Garfield's place. Turns out this has been a win-win solution, and this winter and spring plans were devised to enlarge the garden and begin an Urban Farmers Market. Amazingly, everything has come together quite well to move the ideas into reality.

Zionites are helping provide seeds and seedlings, one of our members is with me on the board and has been very helpful in getting other area Lutherans on board, and the last couple of Saturdays I helped put up a fence and put a dirt mixture in the garden beds. Yesterday was a ribbon cutting for the garden and urban farmers market, with speakers from the gitm Foundation, the Peoria Park District, Illinois American Water, a song from the school children, and where I offered a prayer and blessing.

Here's the news report that aired yesterday on WEEK-TV, Channel 25:



Or read and view it here.

Curing Breast Cancer or Keeping Abortion?

Yesterday I "shared" a cartoon on my Facebook page got lots of "likes" and positive comments. It showed a funeral chapel with lots of empty chairs and a woman whispering to the man next to her, "He had over 2,000 Facebook friends. I was expecting a bigger turnout." I can't recall that last time I got this much response.

Today I "liked" "Komen Get It", today's "Best of the Web" by James Taranto over at the Wall Street Journal's WSJ.com [tip o' the hat to my Facebook friend, Pr. Rich Heinz]. I expect this one will not get so positive a response, but it's worth reading anyway. Taranto begins:

Susan G. Komen for the Cure actually is what Planned Parenthood advertises itself as being: a charity whose main concern is women's health. Komen was founded in 1982 by Nancy Brinker and is named for her sister, who died of breast cancer two years earlier. Until this week, it was probably best known for its fund-raising runs and walks known as Race for the Cure.

Now Komen has provoked the fury of Planned Parenthood, whose self-description as a women's health organization is at best tendentious. In truth, Planned Parenthood is America's leading provider of, and one of its most zealous advocates for, elective abortion. It is also a recipient of government largess; federal funds it receives are not supposed to pay for abortions, but they make it a political lightning rod all the same. And it is one of the most powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party. In last spring's budget deal, funding for Planned Parenthood was the one subject on which President Obama refused to compromise.

Taranto has more to say, then concludes,

Planned Parenthood's bitter campaign against Komen--aided by left-liberal activists and media--is analogous to a protection racket: Nice charity you've got there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it. The message to other Planned Parenthood donors is that if they don't play nice and keep coughing up the cash, they'll get the Komen treatment.

There's one crucial difference, however. In a real-life protection racket, the victim never pays voluntarily. The threat is present from the get-go. By contrast, Komen presumably was not under any duress when it made its grants--and it could have avoided all this nasty publicity by never dealing with Planned Parenthood in the first place.

Thus smart prospective donors--especially ones that are apolitical, like Komen--are getting the message that supporting Planned Parenthood is a trap. Give once, and you will give again--or else you will pay.

Following the Komen-PP controversy of the last couple of days -- the mass media are either actually or playing ignorant of just how controversial that relationship has been for years -- I keep thinking of this past Sunday's Gospel (St. Mark 1:21-28), which begins:

²¹And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. ²²And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. ²³And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, ²⁴"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God."

That's the thing about the Devil. He'll say anything to entrap you in his lies and deception; he'll even say the truth or do good works, when he can say it in a way to lead you away from the truth and good. And that's been my experience with Planned Parenthood, both nationally and locally here in Peoria; they will say and do anything -- even very good things -- as long as it profits and protects the abortion business. Threaten that, and watch out.

Thomas Peters, who blogs as the American Papist over at CatholicVote offered this comment just a little while ago to reports this morning that "Komen caved" in to the PP blitz. "No, they didn’t," he begins.

I’ve received a crash-course education in the foundation over the past couple days and I can say without doubt that one thing motivates their President Nancy Brinker: ending breast cancer. That’s why she decided to cease funding Planned Parenthood, because they are about the lousiest group to help if you are serious about ending breast cancer. Second, that’s why their President is worried about the damage to the Komen brand being done by Planned Parenthood and it’s pro-abortion allies. President Brinker knows if Komen is weakened it will be less able to pursue it’s objective of ending breast cancer. She’s not throwing pro-lifers under the bus, she’s trying to save an organization she built to honor the memory of her sister (who died from breast cancer) and prevent it happening to others.

That’s why we need to make common cause with Komen and support their pro-woman goals. That’s why we need to expose Planned Parenthood’s scurrilous move to destroy Komen.

I mean, just pause for a moment: if Planned Parenthood is so serious about protecting women’s health how does it justify leading a crusade to destroy the world’s leading breast cancer research foundation over these past days?? It’s simply incredible, and we need to make sure it’s never forgotten!

One last thing: we need to remember the big picture. Over the past 48 hours, not only did Planned Parenthood reveal itself as willing to seriously damage and attempt to destroy the pro-woman Komen foundation, but also, thousands and millions of people potentially learned for the first time that Komen doesn’t believe Planned Parenthood is an ideal provider of health care for women. So even if Planned Parenthood wins this battle (an outcome very much in doubt), I would argue they have seriously weakened themselves for the wars ahead. This will be a long fight, so take the long view.

Here’s what you can do to continue to support Komen in the short term:

1) email news@komen.org and say “Thank You for Defunding Planned Parenthood” and promise to buy products bearing the pink ribbon. Encourage them directly in other ways.

2) sign the petition at www.IStandWithKomen.com (this is not an effort to harvest emails, you only have to supply your name and location) and invite your family and friends to do the same.

3) blog/facebook/tweet/email/write op-eds about this. Get the word out any way you know how.

In a few moments, this blog post will make it to my Facebook page. My (currently) 859 Facebook friends really are all over the place on faith, morals, politics, and philosophy, as are those who regularly read Pastor Zip's Blog. We'll see what kind of reaction this gets.

[See comments for update. Zip+]

Another Chernobyl? Not Quite!

Since the earthquake and tsumani in north-eastern Japan, students of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology (MIT) have been maintaining a weblog at http://mitnse.com for "information about the incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants." The purpose of the MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub is

not to provide up-to-date information about the ongoing situation at the nuclear facilities in Fukushima, Japan, nor is it to promote to a pro-nuclear political agenda. Rather, we are trying to provide non-sensationalized, factual data from engineers in a manner that the general public can understand. We are fighting to decipher conflicting news reports and manage the frustrating lack of clarity to provide this information.

The key is "non-sensationalized, factual data" at a time when the various broadcast (or "narrowcast") news media seem to specialize in sensationalizing serious matters.

Here's their take on today's news reports:

New Provisional INES Rating + A Chernobyl Primer
Posted on April 12, 2011 3:32 pm UTC by mitnse

Today the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency revised its INES rating of the Fukushima Daiichi event. The previous assessment treated the events at each of the ailing reactors as separate: the core damage to units 1-3 resulted in an assignment of a 5 (accident with wider consequences) for each reactor; the problems at unit 4′s spent fuel pool were assigned a 3 (serious incident). NISA is now treating the situation as a single event, assigned a rating of 7 (major accident). This rating is still being assessed as information about the disposition of radioactive materials originating at the reactor site comes in.

Because the rating is now the same as that assigned to the Chernobyl accident, the blog has received a number of questions about how the events at Fukushima differ from it. We present a sequence of events at Chernobyl, along with links to some denser technical matter for interested readers, and an IAEA report on the human costs of the disaster. For comparison, it’s been estimated that the radiation released by the Fukushima reactors is 1/10th that released to the environment at Chernobyl.

The rest of the post describes what really happened at Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in history.

But catch that closer: "it’s been estimated that the radiation released by the Fukushima reactors is 1/10th that released to the environment at Chernobyl." This is no Chernobyl. The sensation of Fukushima Daiichi is just how safe nuclear power is.

Cable and the Decline of Broadcast News

Dear CNBC:

Oh, dear. I'm not sure whether the plural of "Leaf" (as in Nissan Leaf) is "Leaves" or "Leafs." One thing I know, however, is that it is *not* "Leaf's." I'm trying to imagine Huntley, Brinkley, Chancellor, or even Brokaw (to name some of NBC's news luminaries) letting such poor English show up on the screen repeatedly on their newscasts -- as I saw early this afternoon.

Steven Tibbetts

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