God's Country
It unnerves me every time I see our neighbor’s late model over-sized SUV. It is a sobering reminder that the technological
advances of civilization have far outpaced any progress made by the soul
of mankind. Despite the outward polished
appearance of the modern material world, when it comes to human nature, there
is some menacing stuff lurking below the surface. In the deep south, monster trucks brandish
confederate flags; in Simi Valley
Our neighbor's SUV is merely one of countless vehicles you’ll find in Simi Valley
Taken individually neither of these is as extreme as some others that I've seen but it is the combination of the two on the rear end of the same car that I find particularly chilling. In Simi Valley clashing messages on a car is a common occurrence. The typical pairing includes one sign with a religious symbol or statement; and a second sign aggressively denouncing anyone who is not white, heterosexual or zealously patriotic.
There are 621 churches listed in the yellow pages for Simi Valley or roughly one church for every 202 residents. One wonders how all of these churches find enough money in their collection plates to cover rent, salaries and child molestation claims. The valley has definitely attracted a church-going group of people. Sunday mornings are clearly the best time to stop at Home Depot, the grocery market or any business really since you will have the entire place to yourself.
Simi Valley has been consistently rated among the safest places to live in America based on crime statistics. One unofficial explanation for this claims that a good share of the Los Angeles Police Department resides here but that theory may simply be part of the aftermath of the Rodney King episode. In the early 1990s, a violent scene involving King and LAPD officers was videotaped by George Holliday from the balcony of his apartment. A thoroughly drunk King fearing that a DUI charge would violate his parole, tried to outrun police on a lengthy high-speed chase before finally coming to an end in Pacoima. Holiday's videotape began somewhere in the middle of the confrontation between the eight officers and King who received 11 skull fractures, a broken ankle and some degree of brain damage. The beating King took on tape was so horrific that even President Bush couldn't refrain from publicly voicing criticism of the police.
Four of the officers shown on the tape were scheduled to face charges in Los Angeles County for assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force. Due to a pre-trial slip of the tongue by the assigned judge and the media saturation, King's defense counsel was granted a change of venue and the trial was shifted to Ventura County. In a small courthouse in Simi Valley, a jury (10 whites, 1 Hispanic and 1 Filipino) acquitted the four officers of all wrongdoing. Within hours of the announcement of the verdict began the 1992 Los Angeles riots that took 53 lives, injured over 2,000 and resulted in more than a billion dollars in damage.
In a courtroom far removed from Simi Valley, King later sued the City of Los Angeles and was awarded $3.8 million and an additional $1.7 million for attorney's fees. Two months prior to his death in 2012 King announced his upcoming marriage to Cynthia Kelly, a member of the jury that had granted him the award.
Royal Avenue runs west through most of Simi Valley until it dead ends at the base of a 1,325 foot hill named Mt. McCoy. Sitting atop Mt. McCoy is a 12 foot high white cross made of reinforced concrete that was installed in 1941. The first cross on Mt. McCoy was placed there by Spanish Priests in the early 1800s to guide travelers to what was then called Rancho Simi. Most of Mt. McCoy was part of a recreation and parks district until 2004 when the ACLU raised the issue of religious symbols on public land. The cross and the top of the mountain were quickly sold to the Simi Valley Historical Society.
In a related development The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently began discussing adding a cross to the official county seal. The same cross that the board removed from the seal 10 years ago under pressure to separate church and state. The current argument for inclusion of the cross is that it represents a part of the area's history and is not meant to promote Christianity. The swastika is certainly a part of Germany's history but I doubt any German municipalities are considering it be placed on their official seal.
When I drive down Royal on my way home and I see the cross on Mt. McCoy overlooking the entire valley, the history I think of includes the crusades, the dark ages, the conquistadors, the Spanish inquisition, the Eastern European pogroms and the KKK. Not that Christianity alone deserves all the credit as there 's no shortage of other faiths that have spent thousands of years committing atrocities against untold millions of non-believers and folks with a differing point of view.
Evidently I am not the only person in Simi Valley who takes issue with the cross. In 2013 there was an effort to take down the cross. Rather than describing it as an attempt to rid the natural landscape of an eyesore and an ugly reminder of religious oppression,the media chose to report it as an act of vandalism. A hiker discovered the damage (see below) and contacted the local authorities and additional concrete was applied to the base of the cross.
It's a shame Madayn Murray O'Hair is no longer around to find a way to permanently remove the cross. Madalyn founded American Atheists and served as its president from 1963 to 1986. She was instrumental in the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Murray vs Curlett) that ended the reading of the bible as part of the public school curriculum. In 1964 Life Magazine featured an article in which they referred to Madalyn as "the most hated woman in America." Madalyn grew up in Pennsylvania and after two failed marriages and one failed bar exam, she was attracted by Russia's atheist state policy and traveled with her two sons to the USSR. She and her sons Jon and William were denied entry and returned to Austin, Texas in 1960 where Madalyn established a non-profit organization to protect the civil rights of non-believers and address the separation of church and state.
Her son Jon followed in her footsteps and served as the organization's president from 1986 to 1995. William, her other son, today heads up an evangelistic association and serves as the chairman of the Religious Freedom Organization in Washington D.C. William also authored a book about having been brought up by Madalyn entitled My Life Without God. In this biographical work he describes his dear mother as a vulgar, foul-mouthed criminal who embezzled funds, printed phony stock certificates, cheated on her taxes, filled her house with statuettes of copulating animals and displayed a voracious appetite for alcohol and pornography. William's own daughter Robin as an infant was adopted by Madalyn when William's first marriage imploded and he went into a desperate alcoholic tailspin for 15 years until he pulled himself out of it as a self-proclaimed born again Christian in 1980. Much to the chagrin of the local authorities, Madalyn, Jon and Robin ran American Atheists in Austin, Texas for decades and were inseparable, living, working and vacationing together.
In 1995 Madalyn, Jon and Robin suddenly vanished amid suspicious circumstances including an untouched full breakfast on the kitchen table. Many speculated that some bible-thumping red neck had made good on one of the many death threats Madalyn received regularly. Eventually it was determined that a former office manager employed by American Atheists was responsible for their disappearance. David Roland Waters (see below) and two accomplices kidnapped, murdered, mutilated and scattered the remains of Madalyn, Jon and Robin.
Waters was an ex-con whose many arrests included beating and urinating on his own mother. He also extorted $500,000 in gold coins from the three atheists before killing them. He placed the bulk of the coins in a self-storage facility for safe keeping but it was promptly cleaned out by a separate gang of thieves that spent all but one coin before they were apprehended. Prior to his arrest, Waters also murdered, mutilated and buried one of his two accomplices.
The work that led to Walter's imprisonment involved the IRS, the FBI and the Dallas County Sheriff's Department. During the pursuit of those responsible for the kidnapping of the atheists (and prior to their being killed), an Austin reporter named Robert Bryce, wrote of the Austin Police Department's failure to actively participate in any way in the investigation including their refusal to pursue leads provided by federal agents and Robin's father.
Simi Valley has been consistently rated among the safest places to live in America based on crime statistics. One unofficial explanation for this claims that a good share of the Los Angeles Police Department resides here but that theory may simply be part of the aftermath of the Rodney King episode. In the early 1990s, a violent scene involving King and LAPD officers was videotaped by George Holliday from the balcony of his apartment. A thoroughly drunk King fearing that a DUI charge would violate his parole, tried to outrun police on a lengthy high-speed chase before finally coming to an end in Pacoima. Holiday's videotape began somewhere in the middle of the confrontation between the eight officers and King who received 11 skull fractures, a broken ankle and some degree of brain damage. The beating King took on tape was so horrific that even President Bush couldn't refrain from publicly voicing criticism of the police.
Four of the officers shown on the tape were scheduled to face charges in Los Angeles County for assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force. Due to a pre-trial slip of the tongue by the assigned judge and the media saturation, King's defense counsel was granted a change of venue and the trial was shifted to Ventura County. In a small courthouse in Simi Valley, a jury (10 whites, 1 Hispanic and 1 Filipino) acquitted the four officers of all wrongdoing. Within hours of the announcement of the verdict began the 1992 Los Angeles riots that took 53 lives, injured over 2,000 and resulted in more than a billion dollars in damage.
In a courtroom far removed from Simi Valley, King later sued the City of Los Angeles and was awarded $3.8 million and an additional $1.7 million for attorney's fees. Two months prior to his death in 2012 King announced his upcoming marriage to Cynthia Kelly, a member of the jury that had granted him the award.
Royal Avenue runs west through most of Simi Valley until it dead ends at the base of a 1,325 foot hill named Mt. McCoy. Sitting atop Mt. McCoy is a 12 foot high white cross made of reinforced concrete that was installed in 1941. The first cross on Mt. McCoy was placed there by Spanish Priests in the early 1800s to guide travelers to what was then called Rancho Simi. Most of Mt. McCoy was part of a recreation and parks district until 2004 when the ACLU raised the issue of religious symbols on public land. The cross and the top of the mountain were quickly sold to the Simi Valley Historical Society.
In a related development The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently began discussing adding a cross to the official county seal. The same cross that the board removed from the seal 10 years ago under pressure to separate church and state. The current argument for inclusion of the cross is that it represents a part of the area's history and is not meant to promote Christianity. The swastika is certainly a part of Germany's history but I doubt any German municipalities are considering it be placed on their official seal.
When I drive down Royal on my way home and I see the cross on Mt. McCoy overlooking the entire valley, the history I think of includes the crusades, the dark ages, the conquistadors, the Spanish inquisition, the Eastern European pogroms and the KKK. Not that Christianity alone deserves all the credit as there 's no shortage of other faiths that have spent thousands of years committing atrocities against untold millions of non-believers and folks with a differing point of view.
Evidently I am not the only person in Simi Valley who takes issue with the cross. In 2013 there was an effort to take down the cross. Rather than describing it as an attempt to rid the natural landscape of an eyesore and an ugly reminder of religious oppression,the media chose to report it as an act of vandalism. A hiker discovered the damage (see below) and contacted the local authorities and additional concrete was applied to the base of the cross.
It's a shame Madayn Murray O'Hair is no longer around to find a way to permanently remove the cross. Madalyn founded American Atheists and served as its president from 1963 to 1986. She was instrumental in the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Murray vs Curlett) that ended the reading of the bible as part of the public school curriculum. In 1964 Life Magazine featured an article in which they referred to Madalyn as "the most hated woman in America." Madalyn grew up in Pennsylvania and after two failed marriages and one failed bar exam, she was attracted by Russia's atheist state policy and traveled with her two sons to the USSR. She and her sons Jon and William were denied entry and returned to Austin, Texas in 1960 where Madalyn established a non-profit organization to protect the civil rights of non-believers and address the separation of church and state.
Her son Jon followed in her footsteps and served as the organization's president from 1986 to 1995. William, her other son, today heads up an evangelistic association and serves as the chairman of the Religious Freedom Organization in Washington D.C. William also authored a book about having been brought up by Madalyn entitled My Life Without God. In this biographical work he describes his dear mother as a vulgar, foul-mouthed criminal who embezzled funds, printed phony stock certificates, cheated on her taxes, filled her house with statuettes of copulating animals and displayed a voracious appetite for alcohol and pornography. William's own daughter Robin as an infant was adopted by Madalyn when William's first marriage imploded and he went into a desperate alcoholic tailspin for 15 years until he pulled himself out of it as a self-proclaimed born again Christian in 1980. Much to the chagrin of the local authorities, Madalyn, Jon and Robin ran American Atheists in Austin, Texas for decades and were inseparable, living, working and vacationing together.
In 1995 Madalyn, Jon and Robin suddenly vanished amid suspicious circumstances including an untouched full breakfast on the kitchen table. Many speculated that some bible-thumping red neck had made good on one of the many death threats Madalyn received regularly. Eventually it was determined that a former office manager employed by American Atheists was responsible for their disappearance. David Roland Waters (see below) and two accomplices kidnapped, murdered, mutilated and scattered the remains of Madalyn, Jon and Robin.
Waters was an ex-con whose many arrests included beating and urinating on his own mother. He also extorted $500,000 in gold coins from the three atheists before killing them. He placed the bulk of the coins in a self-storage facility for safe keeping but it was promptly cleaned out by a separate gang of thieves that spent all but one coin before they were apprehended. Prior to his arrest, Waters also murdered, mutilated and buried one of his two accomplices.
The work that led to Walter's imprisonment involved the IRS, the FBI and the Dallas County Sheriff's Department. During the pursuit of those responsible for the kidnapping of the atheists (and prior to their being killed), an Austin reporter named Robert Bryce, wrote of the Austin Police Department's failure to actively participate in any way in the investigation including their refusal to pursue leads provided by federal agents and Robin's father.