My Letter to Senator Heller

This past week, Senate Republicans were not able to garner the necessary votes to pass a health bill intended to repeal and replace The Affordable Healthcare Act (“Obamacare”). Republicans could only afford to lose two senators from among their ranks if they hoped to pass a bill without support from Democratic senators within the Senate. Any tie vote would, predictably, be awarded to Republicans since the President of the Senate is the Vice President of the United States (Mike Pence, Republican). More than two Republican senators defected and many more were teetering toward a ‘No’ vote. The Senate postponed a vote on the bill as a result.

I’m posting here a letter I emailed to Senator Dean. A Heller of Nevada. He, among others, were quite vocal in criticizing the bill. This is news because Senator Heller is a Republican from a State that supported President Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. In addition, Senator Heller has now been targeted by negative advertisement by a PAC (Political Action Committee) under the auspices of the Trump Campaign.

On the other hand, Senator Heller has been working closely with his State’s Republican Governor, who endorses the senator’s stance on this issue. The dispute between ‘party’ bosses and popularly elected State leaders is the impetus behind this letter.

Hon. Dean A. Heller:

I am not from the State of Nevada and I’m also not of your party affiliation. I am, however, a citizen of the United States and proud that you are working hand-in-hand with your State’s governor to represent the people of Nevada.

There are antagonistic (governmental) relationships within the federal system placed there by the nation’s framers. The goal of such political instruments is not unknown to you- to keep power from coalescing in one place. While your current stance on the Health Care (repeal) Bill has enraged top members of your political party, the framers never intended them to be the focus of your devotion. Passage of the 17th amendment was not a rebuke of the framers’ intent to maintain a tight relationship between a federal officer (Senator) and his State. What that amendment intended to do, among other things, was to give the Senator a flexibility to consider national conditions while looking-out for the needs of his State’s constituency. You and Governor Sandoval were popularly elected by the people of Nevada. Thus, the electorate have, via the ballot, asked that you and the governor work as a team, within our federal system, to represent the people of Nevada.

Often, I get the feeling that our elected officials don’t understand where their loyalty should lie. There is no mention of ‘Republican’ or ‘Democratic’ party in the Declaration of Independence and the original draft of the US Constitution (including the Bill of Rights). The founders had legitimate fears about such ‘party affiliations’; not the least of which is the side-tracking of congressional members coming from the States. Representatives and Senators were expected to take local needs and weave them into national policy via compromise with colleagues from other States. The process was never intended to subserve local mandates to a pseudo national cause represented by a political party platform.

I didn’t intend to make this message a civics lesson. I do, however, want to express my support for your stance as Senator representing the great State of Nevada.

Mr. Anthony Valentin
New York

(sent on the 2nd of July, 2017 via Senator Heller’s Senatorial website)

Letter to a Graduating Student

The following is my reply to a young man soon to graduate from my Alma mater (Brooklyn College, City University of New York). I have worked with students from the Education and Career programs at the college for more than a decade. Usually, my collaboration involves hosting a student at my job (I teach high school History in the public school system of the City of New York) and having in-depth discussions about career choices. In this instance, I was asked to field questions from a student in the program via email. The student was not sure that his degree in History was going to prove of any value to him. He referred to it as a ‘dead end’. That view, and concerns for his future fiscal success, convinced me to reply in this fashion. I offer that response as an expression of my view regarding careers in general and the need to realign our plans for what is ‘good’ for ourselves and the nation we live in.

A pseudonym replaces the student’s true name.

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Hi John:

I apologize that this reply is tardy. Please forgive me.

Your message gave me a feeling that your view of History (the study and teaching of it) might be a ‘dead end’. I must disagree on several counts. Allow me to tackle several matters you raise with the experience of my life- which is quite similar to yours.

I was a History and Science nerd in high school. I followed a Pre-Med track in college with a minor in History but became dismayed with my medical studies (a combination of growing disinterest in the subject and lack of enthusiasm). On the other hand, my interest and enthusiasm continued to burn brightly for History. I switched my major to History and converted my medical studies to a minor in Biology.

I joined the military after college for reasons not unlike your ambivalence about the ‘worth’ of a Humanities degree. Of course, I had the added responsibility, as a citizen, to give my time to the nation’s defense as my Father and Brother once did. In the military, my knowledge of History served me well in a multiplicity of scenarios. In the end, it made me ‘look good’ in the eyes of fellow soldiers.

When it came time to revert to a private citizen, there was a period of soul-searching. I needed a job, but didn’t want to pursue a job I disliked simply because it offered a heftier paycheck. I researched and explored occupations from factory managerial work to work in Animal Shelters. Each had attractive elements; I enjoy being in a managerial position and I’m also an animal lover. But, as a young man with a young family (wife and two children in 1987), I dreaded a job that would not encourage me to wake up every day ‘willing’ to go to work. I knew that I needed a job that I can invest a career (20 to 30 years) without the fear of one day saying “I hate my job”. Once you say those four words, things may cascade out of control. I shared a desire for stability that is more from the Depression-era generation of my father, than from the fast-paced (ever changing ‘consultant’ position) environment of the 21st Century.

I knew that I needed a ‘hook’ to keep me vested in any occupation. That hook was ‘History’. My love of the subject meant I needed a niche in the academic world. My older brother had been a high school Math teacher and I had some knowledge of what I was getting into. So I started teaching I September of 1987, just two months after completing my service obligation to the United States Army. I’ve been teaching History ever since with only one school change- incredible stability by any measure. This year marks the end of my 30th year. In the interim, my earlier Undergraduate experience at Brooklyn College made my decision to earn an MA in History in the mid-1990’s an easy one.

So, your current feelings are understandable and fully expected. You can’t plan to be a millionaire. Such planning rarely pan out and the old adage “Money can’t by happiness” speaks for itself. I would like to amend this proverb by adding “…or stability and longevity.”

Yes, if I had the wealth of certain 19th C. historians (Edward Gibbon, author of Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire) I would not have become a high school teacher. However, I had to conform to a 20th C. world. In an academic setting I can remain as close as possible to the subject I love while still earning an income to raise a family. For me, it was the best possible compromise between feeding my desires and fulfilling my personal/ civic duties.

How you decide to pursue your destiny remains with you. All I advise is to realign your plans to what makes you happy in life and with respect to your civic duties.

Let me know what you think.

Tony Valentin

Mr.V (to his students)

 

An Interview that Never Happened.

The following is an interview that never took place. The questions I tackle are from Nicholas Kristof’s NY Times article where he aimed them at former President Jimmy Carter. That interview was conducted by email for publishing on Easter Sunday, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opinion/sunday/president-carter-am-i-a-christian.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share). I thought it interesting to aim those questions at myself as a mental and spiritual exercise. Here are my responses.

N.K.: How literally do you take the Bible, including miracles like the Resurrection?

Mr.V: I see two questions here. First, do I take the Bible as a literal text? I do not. I don’t believe the writing of the books of the Bible were the authors’ eye-witness accounts. Instead, I believe the Bible is a compilation of myths that were verbally passed down through the generations, ultimately written down by people who did not witness the events they witnessed (or in a few instances, recorded many years after the events the author witnessed). I also implied, and believe, that the there were multiple contributors to the Bible (Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament or New Testament).

My use of the word ‘myth’ does not imply that I believe these events were fantasy. Instead, the recorded story is important because it’s laden with cultural value added over the centuries since the story’s origin. I can’t help but believe that an event sparked the story’s birth and energized it’s longevity. That event must have been great, indeed.

The second question is Do I believe the ‘Resurrection’ occurred? I can’t subscribe to the view that the accounts of the death and resurrection of Jesus occurred as written. I believe Jesus existed and was the messenger of GOD. However, I believe that his death and resurrection was an intervention by GOD that accomplished the same goal as the resurrection (conquest over physical death by a spiritual birth), but not how it occurred in the New Testament accounts.

N.K.: With Easter approaching, let me push you on the Resurrection. If you heard a report today from the Middle East of a man brought back to life after an execution, I doubt you’d believe it even if there were eyewitnesses. So why believe ancient accounts written years after the events?

Mr.V: I believe my previous response partially answers this question. However, let me expand the question to one that includes the writing of all the ancients.

Ancient societies, since the advent of writing, have had a control over the recording of data. The skill to write was reserved to elites within the society and employed by the ruling entity for their self-preservation and perpetuation. That tendency hasn’t disappeared today, but it’s easier to reveal ulterior motives today that stretch beyond the quest to record the ‘truth’. My students like to place the ‘ancients’ on a lower rung of the civilized latter because they’re ‘ancients’. I try to open their minds a bit and convince them that even the ‘ancients’ deserve the benefit of the doubt when we have nebulous alternatives. So, the Bible’s accounts should not be generally tossed onto a pile of fantastic tales without extending the courtesy that all claims SHOULD receive in an open, logical, mind.

Religion is a personal exercise in faith. I will not judge the religious experience of another and expect the same courtesy extended to me. Only when I’m asked, as you ‘sought-of’ did, will I explain the foundation of my experiences and beliefs. But, my experience should not be accepted as the experience and faith of another.

N.K.: What about someone like me whose faith is in the Sermon on the Mount, who aspires to follow Jesus’ teachings, but is skeptical that he was born of a virgin, walked on water, multiplied loaves and fishes or had a physical resurrection? Am I a Christian,…?

Mr.V: I believe strongly that the ideas we publicize as ‘religion’ is the product of humanity. I prefer to use the word ‘faith’ to represent the foundation of one’s views about the supernatural, and that, as expressed earlier is a personal experience. If a particular story is identified with a particular storyteller, there is a historical tendency to name the believers of the story’s facts by the name of the storyteller. Christianity (Jesus Christ), Buddhism (The Buddha), Confucianism (Confucius), and even Islam (for a long period referred to as Mohammadism by Western writers) reflect this tendency. In Jesus’ case, his parables were often new versions of older myths (e.g.: The Golden Rule). His rendition may sound convincing to me, but I would probably not be identified by the name of the earlier author. Also, the more time elapses from the moment when the person and story originated, the greater the likelihood that the story is ‘hijacked’ by others to push their agenda. This is the problem I have with your question. Therefore, the term ‘Christian’ is an inaccurate term to use, especially if you consider the number of sects within modern Christianity.

If your interpretation of Jesus’ teachings are convincing to you and adequately handles the contradictions that often arise in religious writings, then you can refer to yourself any way you wish. It’s your exercise of the tenets you extracted from the teachings that identify you, not how someone else interprets your experience. This view is not accepted by organized religions. The entire premise of having organized religion is to standardize the interpretation and experience of the devout. I don’t subscribe to that.

In closing, this push-pull between dogma and ‘personal’/ ‘intimate’ experiences was at the center of major rifts in religious history: The Protestant Reformation and Sufism are two examples from the Christian and Islamic experiences.

N.K.: How can I reconcile my admiration for the message of Jesus, all about inclusion, with a church history that is often about exclusion?

Mr.V: Here, I return to my statement on organized religion vs. personal experience. History reveals a long trail of organized religion serving the needs of a special interest over the needs of the masses.

N.K.: Do you sometimes struggle with doubts about faith?

Mr.V: My experience tends to place the blame on me, and not on the faith. I occupy such a small portion of the human timeline, that certain ‘truths’ passed along to me by the ‘ancients’ are beyond reproach. Therefore, any crisis of faith is more of a failure on my part to properly interpret and incorporate the ‘truth’ into my condition. You can see, again, my tendency to give the ‘ancients’ the benefit of the doubt regarding certain matters of the human condition. I can’t believe that the struggles I wrestle with never happened to another human. It must have plagued others in the past- multiple times. When I read about ancient Greek, Hindu, or Hebrew texts, you see that common problems of today were also common then. The ‘ancients’ dealt with many of these issues and probably addressed them long before we ever showed up. That wisdom still resides in these ‘myths’. How we extract those kernels of knowledge often involves our interpretation (and we loop back to my views of faith as being a personal experience).

N.K.: I think of you as an evangelical, but evangelicalism implies belief in inerrancy of Scripture. Do you share that, and if so, how do you account for contradictions within the Gospels?

Mr.V: I do not classify myself as an evangelical and everything I’ve written would classify me, by others, as something OTHER THAN an evangelical. I reiterate, as it concerns this question, that scripture is written by Men and as such prone to the literary obstacles that would generate. Therefore, scripture cannot be absent of error, since Men, who wrote the scriptures, are NOT exempt from error (Note: this sounded a great deal like an exchange between Capt. Kirk and NOMAD in the episode titled “The Changeling”).

The contradictions are not difficult to explain when you consider that the Bible (both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament) were not compiled into it’s final form by the same individuals who wrote the books contained within. These books (scriptures) were not included by the compilers of the Bible as you might expect an author of a book to organize the chapters of the book they just wrote. In this latter example, the author organizing the final form of his book also wrote the chapters of the book. That’s not what happened with the Bible.

N.K.: One of my problems with evangelicalism is that it normally argues that one can be saved only through a personal relationship with Jesus, which seems to consign Gandhi to hell. Do you believe that?

Mr.V: The key word is ‘personal’. Gandhi being condemned to Hell is not for me to decide or change one way or another. My measure of Gandhi as a person can only be determined by the criterial I apply to myself IN THIS LIFE. His afterlife is out of my hands and solely in his and GOD’s.

If your question is attempting to extract from me a denunciation of Gandhi because he has a different faith than I, I will not satisfy you. Everything I’ve written thus far extends to Gandhi as it does to me. GOD is an limitless entity and beyond my ability to package into an easily conceivable form. My experience with the divine is colored, shaped, or influenced by my condition/ context; as it is for all. If Gandhi experiences GOD in a form different than I do, his experience is NOT any less/ more valid than mine.

N.K.: Do you pray daily, and if so, do you believe in the efficacy of prayer in a miracle kind of way, or in a psychologically-this-helps-me-deal-with-the-world kind of way?

Mr.V: Yes, I pray/ speak with GOD daily. I ask for certain things and sometimes never receive it. However, I don’t see prayer as solely a hotline for my desires. I often speak with GOD just to offer thanks for some of the daily occurrences I don’t want to take for granted. I want GOD to know me more for the “Thank you for…” than the “Can I have…”. This helps me psychologically handle daily challenges, but it acknowledges that I cannot forget my impending afterlife- ‘Thank you’ may earn me mercy in the afterlife as it earns me appreciation in this life.

N.K.: Skeptics have noted that when prayers are “answered,” there is usually an alternative explanation. But an amputee can pray for a new leg, and a new leg never grows back. Isn’t that a reason to believe that prayer helps internally, but doesn’t access miracles?

Mr.V: I don’t expect miracles, but I’m thankful when they happen. I have no control over it and thus don’t want to place the burden on prayer to spawn them. I don’t believe that GOD “is a watchmaker in the sky tinkering” with humanity. His involvement is beyond my control and contradictory to my understanding of ‘Free Will’ if he did intervene routinely.

It’s Time to Wind Down

I normally don’t interrupt the flow of ‘History’ related information on this site for administrative news, but I believe it’s important in this case.

Effective immediately, my other websites, Tech4Classrooms.org and CivilWarIronclads.wordpress.com, will be shut down. The sites may go down as soon as this weekend or within the next three weeks. The parallel twitter.com sites will similarly close their doors.

While the content of CW Ironclads will be incorporated into this site (WorldHistoryReview.org), T4C’s content will not be replicated. The T4C Logo will be retained and become the sole logo of WHR.org.

The decision to initiate these changes was planned some time ago. I thought now was a good time to do it. My experiences over the last four months has been less-than-stellar to say the least. Self-reflection during this time has also convinced me to choose my professional retirement date as well, but I’ll wait to announce that until it’s appropriate and relevant.

This site will also undergo a change. Effective immediately, the site will gradually turn away from it’s course-bound structure to a purely ‘History’ content website. It will still be aimed at the History enthusiast of any age, but not continue to be an exclusive portal into the courses I teach at Stuyvesant High School. Teachers and students will still be able to use the content for their high school courses without fear of any changes in that realm.

Initially, the administrative course content will be lightened and then completely disappear. Other, non-history related, content will similarly vanish in lock-step with my plans to professionally retire.

As always, you can reach me about this or any other post made on this site by writing to mr.v@worldhistoryreview.org.

“On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Army, and a grateful Nation,…”

Since December of 2013, My father has been battling an ailment complicated by his advanced age (92) and pre-existing conditions he has managed to bear over the decades. The conditions would surprise no one, a long life means many opportunities to get sick. But, whereas several of these conditions would have struck-down individuals of lesser countenance, my father persevered.

A long life has its benefits. However, it will leave one susceptible to trials and tribulations. Some are emotionally gut-wrenching and could easily have incapacitated the strong amongst us. On this list we can add the death of three sons, a wife, and multiple bouts with Cancer. These and many other events are the chapters of my father’s life- Nicomedes Valentin.

92 years is a very long time. There is a story to tell.

Before the advent of fatherhood, my father toiled as a peasant laborer in the sugarcane fields of Depression-Era Puerto Rico. The island was the home of his ancestors dating to, and beyond, the European colonial period. He toiled at this back-breaking work for years only because he was full of the strength and vitality that accompanies youth. This could have been his lot for the rest of his life and for the generations that he would ‘father’. Events, however, would intervene as it did for everyone else, leading up to and during World War II.

Pearl Harbor ushered the US into World War II, but it could be said that the nation was already preparing for a conflict it hadn’t entered yet. When the nation ‘called’, my father ‘answered’ by enlisting in the US Army in 1941. For the duration of the war, my father was sent to numerous stations throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and the Pacific basin. Among his stops we can include: Puerto Rico (his home), St. Thomas, Panama, Galapagos Archipelago, and Hawaii. One of his assignments was ‘cleanup’ of the debris resulting from the attack on Pearl Harbor.

When the war ended in the Pacific, it marked the official end of WWII and the start of my family. My mother and father had their first child as the nation started it’s conversion from a wartime footing to one of peace. It began with the birth of my eldest brother.

From the 1940s through the 1950s, the nation leaped to global preeminence, militarily and economically. My father road the wave of ‘opportunity’ and moved the growing family to New York City. By 1960, my family had moved to Brooklyn and swelled to seven children, I being the youngest. The “good times” we associate with the Post-WWII period and the 1950s, was fading as the decade of the 60s began.

From 1960 – 1975, the economy failed to show the robustness of the Post-war era and my father’s inability to find steady, consistent work landed us on the ‘Public Dole’. Public Assistance, better known by it’s colloquial name, Welfare, kept us fed with the nations agricultural surplus. I remember the huge, silver-colored cans with black print that we were given as recipients of the government’s largess. Powdered eggs, huge bricks of butter and cheese, and peanut butter populated our cupboards. To this day, I love eating peanut butter and bread with butter.

The earliest I recall my mother working outside our home was in the 1970s. Her work in a nursing home provided steady income and benefits that my father’s intermittent work could not obtain. Always, my mother did whatever she could, from working in a seamstress factory to piecemeal work at home, to help make ends meet. My father and mother took turns caring for my sisters and I as my four older brothers were semi-independent by then. I recall my father bringing lunch to our elementary school every day for my youngest sister and I. Invariably, the lunch consisted of hotdogs wrapped in aluminum foil. To this day, hotdogs remain a favorite treat for me. When my father was working my mother would be home tending to us. Like two eagles, one parent would care for the chicks while the other hunted. Then, they switch and reverse the roles. Only a short 8 – 10 hour period (often during the late night) saw an overlap of their schedule.

At ten years of age, the 70s introduced me to life’s trials and tribulations. The passing of one of my twin brothers in 1970 was a lesson in growing-up that I could do without. While death is part of life, I have never come to terms with it. I did not like the impact death had on my immediate family in that first encounter and I still don’t in my most recent encounter.

The 1980s was the beginning of a lifelong medical obstacle course for my father. He was first diagnosed with colon cancer and had to endure painful treatment that ultimately left him without a significant portion of his intestines. This would handicap him ‘publicly’, but privately he could not keep from doing work in and out of our Brooklyn apartment. He would be, depending on the day and hour, a gardner (vegetables), carpenter, plumber, cook, home painter, plasterer (?), disciplinarian, and exterminator (rodents). As medical problems reappeared, he endured additional procedures and a temporary cessation of routine activities while bedridden in the hospital. When he returned home, he was active once again.

Medically, my father received blows that could have cut his life short. Unfortunately, he was also receiving blows of a more emotional nature. From November 1970 through January 2007, my father endured the passing of three children and his wife. How he survived that is beyond me.

The last 14 years had slowed my father and ultimately confined him to a wheelchair or bed by December 2013. Since then, his health and will to live were visibly evaporating. Every time I spoke with him he would try very hard to convince me that he was fine. But, I could see otherwise.

In his final hospitalization, he would argue with my sisters to take him home. He complained that he had responsibilities to attend to. Not the least of which were the lost wages his favorite home attendant was enduring because her services were not needed while he was hospitalized. When news from his doctor indicated that medical intervention may not improve his condition, the family decided to accept his desire to return home. Within a few hours of returning home, the agitated behavior ceased and he became calm.

My father, the strongest human I’ve ever known, lasted one week in his home. At 92, he passed into the hands of his creator late Wednesday evening, 11 June. He left behind four remaining children and nearly 100 grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. To the youngest in our family, his life is now a story; His exploits, myths.

As we laid him to rest near his wife and son, a military honor guard performed the ritual that culminates with the words found in this post’s title. I couldn’t help thinking how grateful we all are for having known him and being his children.

Mr.V

Flag-draped Coffin of Nicomedes Valentin with nearby honor guard.