Author Archives: jtjim

The Invisible Crowd

February 1, 2013

It is a common fantasy of the common man…and woman…finding a way to become invisible, to become the proverbial “fly on the wall” in a room, to witness happenings that would be closed to us, to hear words that would be denied us.

In 1897, H. G. Wells explored this fantasy in his famous novella The Invisible Man, where scientist Griffin finds a way to change a body’s refractive index to that of air. In the same way as air, Griffin’s body reflected no light. He was invisible.

Griffin, the mad scientist, was only able to accomplish his feat through mastery of scientific principles and conducting hours of chemical experiments recorded in three notebooks. But there was an easier way. I know. On January 26, 2013, I became invisible…without performing one scientific trick…sharing my invisibility with a large crowd of nearly 50,000.

On a bright San Francisco morning, blessed with perfect temperatures and clear skies, an estimated 50,000 people congregated at the Civic Center Plaza for the 9^th Annual Walk for Life. I had personally invested hundreds of dollars to make myself visible as an American who values the dignity of each human life from conception to natural death. I had hoped to be seen. I wished to be counted.

In the opening greeting to the crowd, the speaker asked those of us at the Walk for the first time to raise our hands. My hand went up. I wanted people to see me…to see us…all of us.

I shared in the mission for the walk: To change the perceptions of a society that thinks abortion is an answer. Abortion does violence to women and to their children, both physically and emotionally. We deserve better than abortion.

I hoped to further the goal of the walk: To be a vocal and visual message that people of the West Coast stand for life. To reach out to women harmed by abortion. To inform society of the damage done to women by abortion.

The crowd was a wonderful mix of people, each one committed to being a voice for life. Fifty thousand of us walked the two miles to the Embarcadero. Another 500,000 marched in Washington, D.C., despite freezing snowy weather.

And for all of the people and all of the opportunities to talk with us and to photograph us, we were largely invisible. My hotel provided guests with free copies of the San Francisco Chronicle. I waited for a copy of the paper with a front page story and photo to take home to my family and friends. I waited. I am still waiting.

How do you make a crowd of 50,000 people invisible? You work for a San Francisco news service so devoted to abortion of babies at any time and for any reason that every person at the paper is willing to close their eyes to the undeniable tens of thousands of people walking through your city.

Thanks to the Internet, I finally located the Chronicle’s story about the crowds at the march. Instead of focusing on the 50,000 people, the reporter and photographer highlighted pro-abortion activists…across the city at Justin Herman Plaza. The lead photo for the story showed two pro-abortion protestors with their bullhorn yelling and waving their bright orange sign: Abortion on Demand and Without Apology. But who were they yelling at? Where were the 50,000 people?

The reporter made obligatory references to the invisible crowd in her story. But it was all packaged in bright colors to tell another story under The Chronicle headline: S. F. abortion rally shows 40-year split. Abortion rally? Clearly, those 50,000 of us attending the Pro-Life rally must have been invisible.

The Chronicle is in good company. Local and national media are loathe to report in any significant way on the growing tide in America that supports human life…all life. It’s OK. I will still pay hundreds to attend the next Walk in 2014 and to be a witness for life.

The best part of walking in 2013 was to share the sidewalks with the impassioned young people who can see the truth, even in a culture that works so hard to make the truth invisible. Life is precious. And the coming generation of young people who are not afraid of the truth will tell the story missed by The Chronicle.

The Chronicle hires the reporters and photographers who refuse to see life. But their failure to tell this story will not prevail. Just ask all of the parents who witness their baby growing in the womb, clearly visible on the 3D and 4D ultrasounds.

Life is precious. Above all, no matter how hard we try, life will tell its own story. Close our eyes, cover our ears…yet through it all…life refuses to be invisible.

Save your pennies. Hitch a ride. Bring your friends. We have a story waiting to be told. Hope to see you with me on the streets in 2014!

*****************************

For full video and photographic record, with photographer credits, visit the official website: WALK FOR LIFE WEST COAST

Cooooooool, Man!

January 15, 2013

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ― Isaac Asimov

There are not enough “o”s in Cooooooool to describe the absolutely delicious ten winners of the 2013 Cool Science Image contest sponsored by The Why Files.

Every realm of scientific study is represented in the field of winning photos. At the macro level, a satellite image from October 28, 2012, shows the amount of water vapor in the Earth ’s atmosphere and sea surface temperatures. Brilliant colors of orange and red pass over cooler blues and greens, all of these colors wrapped in a blanket of white cotton fluffs, highlighting the unmistakable brown land of South America in the center field. [Source: Rick Kohrs, staff, Space Science and Engineering Center]

At the micro level, under the microscope, slime mold becomes decidedly more attractive than its name suggests, revealed as a social group of multicellular organisms rising from the ground in a fluid modern dance of single-celled amoebae. [Source: Sheryl A. Rakowski, staff, Bacteriology]

And in the mysterious interior realm of a living creature, we can only wonder at the images of neural pathways tracing the brain activity that produces the physical and emotional activity of the brain’s owner, a monkey. [Source: Christopher Coe, faculty, Psychology]

Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, from its Why Files headquarters, the goal of the contest is to highlight the aesthetic aspects of Scientific imagery obtained in the search for data that “can yield important and sometimes striking insights into nature and the way things work.” In its third year, the contest produced 105 submissions and has now gained support from the Madison-based Promega Corp.

Science, seen as a field of analysis quantified in number and calculus is often reduced to the dispassionate exploration of the world we see, touch, hear, taste and smell. What a mistake! Consider the photos from the Hubble telescope. Named with dispassion as STScI-PRC2013-17, one can only marvel at the glory of stellar material hurling through space, larger beyond imagination in a photo, yet a speck of the totality of the universe. [Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC and the University of Potsdam, JPL-Caltech, and STScI]

How amazing is this universe that contains humanity! Yet, the unfortunate result of our accumulation of this large body of scientific information is our creation of an even larger number of people who lack appreciation for the unknown and of the magnitude of human ignorance.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

We are so wrapped up in the “pile of data” we have amassed, that we turn our back on the mysterious, the things we may never know. We continue to map DNA. But when the map is complete, will we be any closer to understanding the intellect that created DNA? Sadly, the spheres of knowing and wondering have moved further and further apart. We are a world of brains that analyze and synthesize separated from the world of the spirit that trembles with humble amazement.

The Knowable and the Unknowable…how vast the distance between the two! We live in that vastness, our intellect confined as much by hubris as by gray matter. The advantage we have at hand with our telescopes and electron microscopy is more than matched by the humble openness of a man who scans the skies in wonder.

Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory
in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them? [NIV]

Science and spirit are not enemies. They are both part of the created existence. Science can reveal both the limits of man and the realities of the absolutely extraordinary universe that is our home. Without this understanding of the unity of science and spirit, a scientist is merely caught up in enumerating the number of genes in a homo sapien, the measuring the circumferance of the moon, and the illustrating the structure of DNA.

What a marvelous gift we have been handed in the third millennium to be able to spy into creation and share our vision through these beautiful photographs. Most importantly, may we stand in humble awe of what we see!

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. ― Albert Einstein

______________________________

Plugging In

January 1, 2013

The screen is black, the cursor blinking on the blank page in front of me beckons. They are just where I left them in 2008, five years ago when I unplugged.

Jane Jimenez

Much has changed in the five years since I posted my last column, The Road to Rome. Reflecting on the presidential election of the season that first put Obama in charge of my future, I proffered:

While all roads may lead to Rome, Obama is beckoning for us to follow him down a singular road with few sign markers. Focused almost entirely on the journey, we have lost sight of where we are headed. The road is only the first part of the trip. But where are we going? Destination matters.

I wrote out my fears and discomfort for the future of our country under his leadership, and then I unplugged. It was not an act of resignation, a throwing up of my hands or a capitulation lived out in silence. Unplugging was born on the inside, a spiritual call to God…and from God. What was I to do with my life? In February of that same year, I had scribbled out my doubts:

Unplugged, creating space in life, making each action defend its significance, there are no perfect choices. Do I…don’t I…type my scribbles, two months late, into the first 2008 column for my website? If I don’t, another worthy writer will fill the void. If I do, I will use precious minutes – either gift or sacrifice or indulgence – a writer’s continual struggle to identify the importance of what we do in the manger next to the Babe who needs us still, long after the Christmas boxes are back in the garage.

It began two months ago, a decision to unplug from distractions and enter the miracle. Do I…don’t I…on…or off…a question, a choice, unsettled and unending.

Today, the same spirit inside seems to be reopening its arms to my dreams. While questions remain, I sense a permission to engage again.

As I predicted, in my absence the void has been more than filled with Facebook posts and pics, blogs and tweets. No matter what you have to say to the world, you can more than say it. I left an Internet lake in 2008. In 2013, I prepare to jump into the Internet ocean.

One more drop of water in the vast expanse of Internet chatter-water. It should make even less difference today than it made five years ago…what I think…and why. Yet, a gentle spirit nudges me. It is time.

To write, not to write. Do I…don’t I…on…or off? If I plug in today, how do I explain five years of silence to myself? What was that about?

During that time, we have had another election, and Obama has settled in for four more years. While the national dialogue swirls around his name and personality, the bigger issue is the reason he is in office. He is there because individual people put him there. One at a time, each single person checked the box next to his name.

Interestingly, though, an NBC exit poll reveals that 52 percent of American voters in the election believe the country is “seriously off on the wrong track.” We voted for the man and the people he has chosen as his advisers to lead us down “the wrong track” we are “off on.”

America still marches down the road Obama is paving…riding on the track he is laying. And destination still matters. If I am being dragged down the track with the rest of America, I can wave my arms, I can yell to the wind, or…I can plug back in.

No time like the present. One grain of sand out of millions on the beach. One drop of water splashing in the ocean. But here I am… jumping… splashing… plugging in.

You Can Make a Difference

AMERICANS STAND STRONG FOR LOVE, MARRIAGE, FAMILY

Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day held August 1, 2012, across America affirmed the strong commitment of men and women to traditional values underlying love, marriage and family.

FROM THE HOME FRONT shares their commitment to traditional values. Radio is a powerful tool for getting the best of information to our citizens. We need YOU in order to get this information on the radio:

Dr. Freda Bush, The Medical Institute: Hormones and Love – What Is the Connection?

Teri Mello, Friendship-ing: Courtship, Dating, Friendship-ing – Getting What We Want in Love

Scott Phelps, A&M Partnership: What Is Wrong with Teaching Teens the Benefits of Marriage?

YOU can support the EXPERTS in getting their valuable information to the public. Media outlets offer few opportunities for these EXPERTS to speak out. FROM THE HOME FRONT is dedicated 100 per cent to providing this important Radio voice.

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SEXUAL ETHICS? You can make the difference in this new cultural battle for truth. Parents and teens are ready to hear the truth about the harm of promiscuity…and the many benefits that come from honoring eternal truths about love, marriage and sex. The information is available…it just needs to reach the ears and hearts of the Radio audience. HELP US TODAY!

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The Road to Rome

July 28, 2008

Jane Jimenez

It is a saying most people smile at, “All roads lead to Rome.” It resonates with the national American desire to affirm diversity, the modern whatever culture, building the future for our children on a tolerance accepting any and all roads leading to any human desire. If we can dream it, we can do it.

In this climate, it is easy to understand why Obama quickly captivates the hearts of people. He smiles, and he points down the path. “All you need,” Obama promises, “is hope…and change…and me.” Eagar to “catch the wave,” many people are standing on the platform ready to buy a ticket on the Obama Express.

While all roads may lead to Rome, Obama is beckoning for us to follow him down a singular road with few sign markers. Focused almost entirely on the journey, we have lost sight of where we are headed. The road is only the first part of the trip. But where are we going? Destination matters.

How can I agree to follow a leader to the place of “his heart” when out of the overflow of his heart he believes that babies are punishment? What kind of hope will Obama fulfill based on the fact that every vote of his career has supported, without compromise, death to babies in the womb?

Traveling companions on this Obama Express to Rome also matter. What kind of unity will Obama build across America, fueled as he is by Planned Parenthood and their allies, organizations that fight against common sense legislation to inform women about stages of life in the womb, to halt the barbarism of partial-birth abortion and that repeals legal cover for rape, incest and pedophilia?

Just eight years ago, five Supreme Court justices in a 5-4 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart [1] (2000) were unable to defend the life of a baby in the womb, giving legal permission to a brutal “procedure” of dismemberment and death. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Kennedy outlines the gruesome details of this procedure, concluding with his assessment of the Court’s decision:

The State [of Nebraska] chose to forbid a procedure many decent and civilized people find so abhorrent as to be among the most serious of crimes against human life, while the State still protected the woman’s autonomous right of choice as reaffirmed in Casey. The Court closes its eyes to these profound concerns.

After more than thirty-five years of abortion on demand, finally in 2007, by upholding the right of Nebraska citizens to protect the unborn, the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart [2] has concluded that the brutal assault on life must end. Is this the change that Obama speaks about…a change he and his supporters intend to upend and undo?

Once again in its opinion, the Supreme Court decision fully outlines the brutality of the abortion procedure. It is a must-read for every person who considers life worth defending.

For over eight years, using a pro-abortion litmus test, Obama and his Democratic party have blocked hundreds of appointments of federal judges. Why? They await an opportunity to fill courts across the nation with judges immune to the horror of dismemberment of a living baby. The next President, in concert with the Democratic Congress, will determine the fate of the unborn for the next century.

Poet Robert Frost says it all. The road Obama takes…and the road untaken…like paths in the forest, diverge. There is a difference…and, oh, the difference.

In the world of Obama, what matters most is that we feel good. He promises to unify us all in a grand group hug. Destinations don’t matter, thus roads don’t matter. After all, they do all lead to Rome. Get there…and you will love it, they will love you, and…according to Obama…we will all melt into global peace. Don’t you believe it.

Obama…his destination…his traveling companions…in the dark of the forest…will necessarily diverge, Obama leading down a path most in our nation do not wish to travel. The scenery along the road may be pretty. And we can enjoy the companionship of fellow travelers. But, at end of the road, destination is everything.

Knowing how way leads on to way, this is something I cannot vote for. Somewhere ages and ages hence…our children will be telling this with a sigh…two paths diverged in a wood. And that makes all the difference.

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-830.ZS.html

[2] http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-380.pdf

From the Home Front

DEFENDING THE FAMILY WITH ETERNAL TRUTH