Author Archive

Steven Hutson

Call me Chicken Little.

The last tree from the Brazilian rainforest was felled this morning, and this giant structure that predates the birth of Christ will be milled into plywood for a Home Depot store in Fargo.  Factories, shopping malls, and housing tracts to follow.

The entire population of Chicago has died from the swine flu.

The Iranians just nuked the White House, and left a crater the size of the moon.

These are the headlines that I fully expect to read each day in the morning paper, and hear on the evening news.  Doom, gloom, pestilence, famine, war, death.

Ready for battle.

Indeed, the sky is falling.  Or at least, that’s what we’ve all been led to believe.

But then I received my June/July issue of Reader’s Digest.  (Apparently my 12-month subscription turned into eleven, when I wasn’t paying attention.)  And guess what?  There’s actually some good news going on out there. Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

I never had a chance to be a racist.

I grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood.  My neighbors, classmates and fellow parishioners were black, white, Japanese, Mexican, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Armenian, representing every continent of the world (with the possible exception of Antarctica).    I thought nothing of it at time, but remarkably this melting pot took shape without the benefit of school busing, Affirmative Action, mortgage-lending quotas, or any other type of artificial engineering.  People lived and shopped and worshipped where they chose, and were quickly accepted.  Like any other community we had our share of interracial scuffles in the schoolyard, but for the most part no one sniffed a budding race war; we attributed it to the normal struggles of youth.

My nominee for the next ambassador to Kyrgystan

In 1941, at Battle of Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy assumed that they would enjoy a quick decisive victory in their campaign of shock and awe.  Why?  Among other things, they believed that their own ethnically monolithic society was innately superior to the multiethnic forces of their American adversaries.  Surely an integrated force could never come together to fight off a common enemy.  As we now know, they were wrong.  Dead wrong.
Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

After toiling in the trenches of the restaurant business for about 20 years, my friend Bill finally got his big break: He was hired as a manager of a Carrows restaurant.  His resume was impressive; he had served as a busboy, dishwasher, waiter, host, cashier, even a wine steward, and he had stellar references.  However, his record betrayed one notable weakness that could have been a dealbreaker – he didn’t know how to cook.  So he spent his first two months in the kitchen, learning how to cook the entire menu.  For as his superiors were quick to point out:

If you don’t know how to do something, you’re not fit to supervise those who do.

In any line of business, if an employee calls in sick, someone has to fill in; often, it’s the manager.  When you hire new workers, someone has to train them.  And how can you possibly evaluate their performance, if you don’t know what a good

A sign of things to come for Obama?

performance looks like?  A Harvard MBA is good, but it doesn’t always prepare you for the real world of dealing with people and problems.

The Deepwater Horizon well has now been spewing oil into the ocean for over a month and a half.  Who’s to blame?  Depending on who you ask, it’s either Transocean (because they owned the rig) or BP (because they operated it) or Halliburton (because they consulted on the project).  Or perhaps it’s nothing more than a freak accident that no one could have anticipated or prevented.

Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

In an age-old fable, three blind men examined an elephant.  One held a leg and declared, “an elephant is like a tree.”  The second grasped the tail and observed, “an elephant is like a rope.”  A third ran his hands across the rough weathered hide, and concluded “an elephant is like a tent.”

Hill to die on?

Which of these accounts is true?  Which is false?   The answer to both questions, of course, is “all of the above.”  Each report was factual, yet none was complete.  For each man could only describe the beast from his own limited perspective.

For about the last two years, the government of France has pondered enacting legislation that would forbid the public wearing of a veil or mask that hides a person’s face.

Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

Just last week, I was asked to serve as a judge for a public speaking competition at a local elementary school.  (Apparently, someone thought a local author was uniquely qualified for this duty; how could I refuse?)  Modern Woodmen, a financial services company based in Rock Island, Illinois, has sponsored this annual contest since 1948.

I arrived an hour early to acclimate myself to the surroundings, and to meet the other judges who had all done this before.  The plan: each student would speak for 3-5 minutes, and they would be judged on criteria such as organization, presentation, and the overall effectiveness of their argument.

Our group of 12 fifth-graders was assigned the topic, “If I were president…”  What would they do, how would they feel, what character traits would they need to carry out this all-important position?

As could be expected, some were more at ease than others; some shouted, others mumbled, almost all fidgeted.  Some buried their

Hotbed?

faces in their notes, while others memorized every word and made eye contact with just about everyone.  Hey, they’re eleven years old!  At that age, I’d feel lucky just to make it through without hurling.

Professional speaking skills aside, I was struck by the narrow range of viewpoints expressed by this group.  Some examples:

“I would give free healthcare to everyone.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

Not a day goes by that I don’t thank God that I live in a free country.  For all of our problems, on our worst day, we remain the land of the free, a place of endless opportunity. No wonder so many people long to get here, by car or boat or tunnel or hang glider or inner tube, any way they can.  And since I did nothing to earn such a privilege myself, I have no problem with sharing the wealth with others.

But not by theft, nor fraud, nor deceit.

Case in point: Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times had a feature story about Ekaterine Bautista, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was denied citizenship after serving six years in the U.S. Army.  Turns out, she qualified for

Soon to be irrelevant?

enlistment only by impersonating her aunt, a U.S. citizen who now lives in Mexico.  She was hoping to take advantage of a decades-old law that allows (legal!) foreign nationals to earn citizenship by serving in the armed forces, particularly in wartime.  And now that her ruse has been discovered, she may end up being forcibly returned to her home country.

Of course, the Times account was little more than an op-ed piece in the guise of hard news reporting.  They reported Bautista’s crime, yet refused to recognize it as such.  The headline itself is telling: “A misstep may mean deportation.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. (Ephesians 5:3)

I can remember, as a child growing up in the 1970s, reading news reports of Catholic priests accused of sexual misconduct with children.  In response to this scandal, the church reported only that the offending clerics were counseled and then reassigned to a new parish.  And for a couple of decades, they managed to stay out of the headlines.

Praying for a miracle?

But that reprieve was short-lived.  Back in the 1990s, the issue resurfaced with a vengeance as thousands of formerly silent (alleged) victims came forward. They reported unspeakable acts by hundreds of priests, all over the country (and now, as we know, the world).  With the rise of the Internet, they gained a new bully pulpit to bring attention to their cause.  No longer did they have to rely on a sympathetic press or editor to get their story out.
Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

Two stories appeared today in my local newspaper, both courtesy of the Associated Press.  That they appeared on the same day is probably no more than a freak accident, yet I can’t help but think that this coincidence is a sign of the state of our modern society.

I'm a rebel, man. Got any Doritos?

Story #1: The government of France may soon legalize prostitution.

Sacre bleu! Chantal Brunel, a Member of Parliament representing President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party, has called for a study on the possibility of decriminalizing the world’s oldest profession.

Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

Not a day goes by, that I don’t thank God that I live in a free country.  For as a citizen of the Good Ole USA, I enjoy rights and privileges that are the envy of the world.  Even better, any kid from the neighborhood can get rich.  Or become president.  Or anything they like.  And even more amazingly, more often than not, the system actually works.  No other country, in the history of our planet, has ever been blessed in this way.

When they loved him.

But as they say, freedom isn’t free.  And the highest courts of our land have consistently ruled that our rights are not absolute.  For in the interest of maintaining a peaceful orderly society, we must strike a balance.  We have a right to freedom of speech, yet we can’t shout “fire!” in a crowded theater.  We can practice any religion we like, but we can’t sacrifice a virgin to the Moon God at will.

Hence, the downside of this abundant freedom is that we must also respect the rights of others.

Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Hutson

It was bound to happen.

In my world of “what-ifs,” I’ve always wondered about the range of   unique problems that might befall an interfaith couple.  Should one partner convert to the other’s faith?  Should they decorate their home with the icons of one religion, or the other, or both, or none?  How should they raise their children?  Should their families be involved in these decisions, or is it none of their business?

Conspiracy?

In the course of human history, no single issue has ever united people – or divided them – quite like the realm of religion.  And when I ponder the foolishness of trying to reconcile two faiths under one roof, it makes my head hurt. But even in my ever-so-fertile imagination I never saw this one coming.

Read the rest of this entry »