Month: July 2007
Cutting out on the Cults
Posted on July 5, 2007 in Liberty Spirituality and Being
One thing that remains a problem for those wishing to expose the machinations of religious organizations is the threat of the Big Lawsuit. Witness, for example, what happened to [[Paulette Cooper]] who wrote a book about Scientology in the 1970s. She was not only hectored with lawsuits, but she was framed in bomb-threats against Arab embassies using some of her personal stationery. Cooper was indicted and ultimately exonerated, but at the cost of her mental health.
The First Amendment prevents Federal interference in religion and speech and I’d like to take that at its absolute word. As long as cults do not break laws (such as the time [[Synanon]] put a rattlesnake in the mailbox of lawyer Paul Morantz), then the government stays completely out. Which means when a religious group comes to court about a matter involving outside testimonies to its doctrines or practices, the court simply says “We don’t interfere in such matters. We don’t adjudicate cases which involve churches. You have to work that out in the free marketplace of ideas.” So say so long to nuisance suits. Say goodbye to copyrights of church testaments and holy texts. Come down only if churches are found to be guilty of harassment or if blackmail is involved.* If you want to maintain a secret covenant with your members about how aliens from strange planets blossomed up from the earth via the eardrums of gnats**, then you have to do your own policing to ensure that your esoterica doesn’t find its way to a web site. The courts of the United States will not help you.
Wouldn’t that be a rule of law worth enforcing?
About the Lost Blunderbuss
Posted on July 4, 2007 in History Neighborhood
It might be nothing more than local legend, but the lore has it that my community name derives from the results of a bit of horseplay. On July 24, 1769, [[Gaspar de Portola]] and Father [[Junipero Serra]] came through the vicinity. They camped next to what is now Aliso Creek — Aliso meaning “Sycamore”, a species which is thick in the local arroyos — before moving on, on July 26, to Tomato Springs.*
During their stay, a few of them crossed the mesa between creeks and found themselves in another wide wash. Lord knows what happened — were the men goofing off or were they on a serious exploration? — but in the course of their visit, they returned to the Aliso Creek camp sans one [[blunderbuss]].
A blunderbuss is an ungainly looking weapon, the kind that caricatures of old time hunters and soldiers like to mock. It’s a gun with a wide, tapering mouth into which is poured gunpowder, rocks, coins, nails, various metal fragments, teeth, and whatever else that is sharp, nasty and/or explosive. Gun historians describe it as a deck clearer — when you saw someone heave one of those into action, you dropped to the floor pronto! even when the wielder was on your side: the weapon had this way of choosing its targets randomly.
Portola’s men had one of these when they were off inspecting the region. When they came back, it certainly became a game of “I thought you had it”. They could never find it again, so the place became known as “Trabuco” (Spanish for blunderbuss) “Canyon”.
How appropriate that this follower of Emperor Norton should find himself in such a place.
