The Bright Sail

Was recently contracted to take some food photos again. I like the scallop shot the most — juicy and succulent:

Went to watch the Foo Fighters last night at NJ Swamplands Meadowlands Arena aka the IZOD Center. Originally, I didn’t want to go, because I dislike Jersey with a passion, I mean, who doesn’t? It’s the armpit of America.

Anyway, got the extra ticket from a friend who couldn’t make it and the concert turned out to be a 4 hour of pure solid R. O. C. K. Capitalized. David Grohl of Foo Fighters made sure everybody had a good time and got their money’s worth. He played all the hits of the years plus some new songs. It was just pure rockin’. Gotta hand it to the band.

If you are a fan and on the fence about seeing these guys in a concert, I would totally recommend going.

Due to some personal reasons, we have stayed in and around the city this summer. So, instead of heading out to the Caribbeans for some R&R, we took on friends’ invitation to camp inside Catskills State Park at the Beaverkill Campground. Other than that, we also headed out to Long Island and looking for sun and adventure, and we got both.

Check out the photos:

I think Chinese people has finally conquered Flushing, NY. There are now Chinese(Mandarin) lessons being offered by the city to whoever is interested in learning.

Some highly amusing quotes from the article:

“I was born here,” said Ms. Garcia, who is 44. “Why should I learn their language?”

“Why do you say two words for ‘bladder’? I have one bladder! For one bladder it’s two words?”

“Mr. Henton asked Councilman Liu to sponsor the lessons last year during a community meeting at which most of the comments were made in Mandarin. He feels a responsibility for the classes’ success; on Tuesday nights, he calls 40 people just to remind them to come.”

To my knowledge, I didn’t know they host community meetings, in Chinese, here in the grand ol’ U. S. of A. — with a councilman. I guess there is a first for everything.

Stop!

Please don’t skip this entry because the title sounds uninteresting.

I guarantee you that this is the most interesting piece of news you will read in this month.

Recently, the leader of a group of Fundamentalists Mormons (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), with member count at around 10,000, was caught by Texas local police on suspicion of child abuse, and now 400 something children were extracted out of the camp of this particular religious group.

When i said camp, I meant that they have a ranch. And when I said ranch, I meant it’s about 1900-freakin’-acres(metrics: 7km*7Km) big. It’s called “Yearn For Zion Ranch” aka YFZ Ranch. It hosted about 500~600 people including children(I can’t find the exact number from the new articles as no one seems to be able to get the correct headcount) before the police raid. The ranch is not just big, it is also fairly self sustainable with gardens, a waste treatment facility, dormitories, grain silos, generators, and even a stone quarry(!!!) to build their temple with.

Check out their ominous looking temple.

So what exactly did these seemingly harmless Fundamentalist Mormons do other than dressing themselves in those silly colonial attires on their ranch to attract the attention of Texas Rangers?

Oh, they practice polygamy. And they marry girls at 13-14 year olds to men 3, 4, 5 times older.

With all things considered — it is nothing too serious as our Chinese ancestors would’ve told you that they practiced polygamy and possibly married much younger girls — for thousands of years. Back in the days, as long as you had the money, you were free to marry as many women as you could, but the society probably would spit on you for marrying really young girls. This practice lasted up until when there was still an emperor in throne in China (early 1900’s).

So, with all these hoopla, the situation is that the children are now with social service and it is becoming a major concern for the general public. The foremost problem is, you don’t just “extract” 400 children from their homes without a solid plan. Can you imagine 6-7 year olds being separated from their parents by force?

Yes, truly tragedy.

However, if you realize that the two choices which Texas government has: one, facing the social problem of arranging 400 children with a place to live and enduring the public agony for removing them “inhumanely” from their parents. And two, send the children back to their parents, hence the ranch, and sealing their fate to play their roles in the half-insane polygamist church for the rest of their lives.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I suppose this is partly why the government hadn’t done anything about it until now. You don’t really build a 1,900 acre ranch to house 600 people in one day, you know.

Now, have you finished digesting all that information, yet? Here comes even more interesting tidbits — supposedly, they kick out young boys at around 16~17-year-old so that they do not compete with older men on the girls. And that’s not all, it is rumored that they have a cemetery on the ranch where they bury infants, those that were deformed or had birth defects due to several generations of marriages among close relatives.

How are those for shockers?

Suddenly, the Mormon religion, as a whole, grabbed my interest in a big way.

I think everyone knows about them as being very friendly and trying to recruit people to their church on the street, in your door steps, in social enclaves (such as Chinatowns), and even in Taiwan. However, did you also know that they were just… polygamists as a religion altogether. There were no so-called fundamentalists back in 1800’s when they first started out. Because, polygamists WERE the mainstream Mormons. As someone from a blog had commented — “in 1800’s, they didn’t hide all the way to the desert to live next to a saline lake (Salt Lake City) for no reason. They had some weirdo religion and social beliefs.”

It is not until early 1890’s, the Supreme Court decided to criminalize polygamy then the Mormons decided to “adapt” itself to NOT include polygamy in their teachings.

Talk about a farce.

Nowadays, you will hear “mainstream” Mormons denounce polygamism and say that Mormons do not practice it. That’s rather hypocritical of them, don’t you think?

There are even more interesting information about the founders of Mormon religion, but it might be too in depth for this blog entry. Maybe next time when some weirdo in some unknown town in Texas causes a raucous again then I will talk about it more.