Beatitudes Community

Congratulations – Kimberly Shull

Kimberly Shull (Grounds) was recently promoted to Grounds Manager! Kimberly just joined the campus in November of this year and has worked incredibly hard to get this position. She has shown her dedication to her work as well as to the residents. Any time someone has a special request for their particular area she is quick to help just to make everyone happy. We can’t wait to see how she transforms the campus with her artful eyes.

 

P.S. Do you have a personal milestone (weddings, babies, graduations, etc.) to share with us? We want to know about it! Please send a brief description and a photo/video to Kevin Morrison, HR Coordinator, at [email protected] or contact him at 602-995-6118.

Radical Hospitality – David Ragan

David recently came across a campus guest that had accidentally driven in to the Central Park Mall sidewalk in an attempt to park really close to Elaine’s for an event.  He courteously stopped her and graciously offered to jump in the back seat of her car to direct her back through the campus to a safe place to park.  This was an excellent example of going above and beyond for guest that was probably very flustered!  Nice work, David!

Maintaining Mindfulness During the Holiday Season

The most joyous time of year can also be the most stressful. The holidays bring pressure to gift everyone you know and love, mingle and small talk with people at parties, navigate family members’ opinions at the dinner table, and attempt to stay on track with our exercise and healthy eating regimens. Although some of these stressors are inevitable, there are some ways we can maintain a sense of mindfulness and intentionality amidst the holiday chaos.

First, remember to breathe. I was working with a client a few weeks ago who brings a lot of enthusiasm and zest to our conversations. I noticed, however, that while he was sharing a stressful work situation, he was not taking any breaths. I invited him pause to take a deep breath. One exercise that helps recalibrate your breathing is the 2/4/10 method. Breathe in for two seconds, exhale for four seconds, and repeat 10 times. You can do this simple exercise in your office, while driving, or while shopping at the mall.

Second, keep on track with your healthy regimens. Just as we prioritize getting tasks completed at work and home, it is imperative that we also prioritize our exercise routines and healthy eating habits. During this time of year, every time you turn around, someone is offering you a piece of chocolate or a glass of egg nog. Of course it is OK to indulge: just remember to supplement the indulgences with something that makes you feel good. Even a walk around your office building or standing while working can help balance how you feel.

Do you get nervous at cocktail parties? Or even your own work party? Do you get anxious making small talk with people you don’t know? If so, you are not alone. Parties are intended to be fun, but they can create a great deal of stress. One suggestion is to “buddy up” with a friend or a coworker you already know. It’s often easier to strike up a conversation with three people rather than just two.

Lastly, carve out some alone time. This can be especially hard with larger families; however, carving out an hour for yourself can help you maintain sanity. Even running an errand by yourself, or taking a drive. Solo time is a great way to stay grounded and clear-minded.

’Tis the season to be grateful for all that we have in our lives. Take care of the greatest gift of all: yourself.

For more information please visit msec.org.

The Electoral College System in the United States – Does it Still Make Sense?

We have just experienced the most divisive presidential election in memory, maybe in the country’s history.  In just my group of close friends, people have taken positions at the complete opposite ends of the debate spectrum, basically supporting one candidate and hating the other.  Unfortunately, I’ve found myself falling victim to the same polarized thinking.  This is the first time in the 43 years that I’ve been of voting age that I’ve felt this way. I have always been able to see something good in any of the presidential candidates, and never doubted either their motives or ethics.  This year, while I have had issues with both candidates, I am hard pressed to find any redeeming qualities in one of them.

Regardless of which side of this debate you fall, the election is over and Donald Trump will be our next president.  He will be the fifth president in the country’s 240 year history to win the office while losing the popular vote.  He will also have the distinction of losing it by a greater margin than any other president.  The 2.8 million vote deficit he had to Hillary Clinton is more than 5 times greater than the former largest vote deficit of 544,000 by which George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000. Those unfamiliar with how presidential elections are conducted in the United States are surprised that the U.S. doesn’t elect its president through a direct vote of its citizens.  They find this an interesting fact for a country that is considered the greatest democracy in the world.  Stranger yet, the world’s greatest democracy isn’t really a democracy at all, it’s a republic.

Our founders didn’t believe in the sustainability of a pure democracy.  In a democracy, an individual or group making up any minority, has no protection against the unlimited power of the majority.  The majority can simply impose its will on the minority.  A republic is similar to a democracy, but with one very important difference, it has a written Constitution delineating a set of basic rights for its citizens.  These “inalienable” rights protect the minority from being completely unrepresented and overridden by the majority.  Our country is governed by the “rule of law” and our elected representatives are bound by oath to uphold this set of laws and the written governing limits established in our Constitution.  Individuals in our country may largely make decisions for themselves if they don’t infringe on the rights of others, especially insofar as there is a constitutional prohibition on anyone interfering with this freedom of choice.  Our Founding Fathers were incredibly insightful, given that this form of government had never existed in the world at any-time, or anywhere, up until 1776.

When drafting the Constitution, on which our government would be based, our country’s founders included the concept of the Electoral College as the method the country would use to choose its president (Article ll of the US Constitution, established in 1788).  While it was heavily debated at the time with other alternative methodologies including the second choice of letting Congress choose the president, they came to this method as a compromise. Using electors instead of the popular vote of its citizens was intended to safeguard the country against uninformed or uneducated voters.  It was thought that these “electors” were people most likely to possess the information necessary to make the best decision and to prevent states with larger populations from having undue influence. Alexander Hamilton said at the time, the Electoral College is if “not perfect, it is at least excellent,” because it ensures “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”  The idea of state sovereignty was also significant in this decision.  In 1776 the idea of “state’s rights” was an extremely important consideration.  The population of the country was not at all mobile.  Many people lived their entire lives never traveling more than 50 miles from their homes, and States wanted to make sure they were well represented when choosing a president. We now refer to the country as “The” United States of America.  At the time of its founding, the country was referred to as “These” United States of America, a subtle but important distinction.

The Electoral College is not just the law, it is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and would require a constitutional amendment to abolish it. A constitutional amendment requires the two thirds approval of both houses of Congress, plus the approval of 38 states.

So how does the Electoral College work?  Like any governmental system there are many details, and each state has its own rules on how electors are chosen, but in general think of it like this:

  • When people vote for president, they are really voting for an elector from their state. Each state has a certain number of electors. These electors then vote for president.
    • How many electors does each state have? Each state gets an elector for each member of Congress from that state. That is one for each member from the state in the House of Representatives (which is based on the population of the state) and two more for the two senators each state has.  Arizona currently has 11 electors.
  • How is this different from just counting the popular vote for president?
    • The difference is that in all states except two, the vote for electors is all or nothing. The winner of the state’s popular vote get all the electors from that state, the loser gets none.  Theoretically, a candidate can win a state’s election by a single vote and would receive all the electors for that state.  The exception is that both Maine and Nebraska “prorate” their electors based on the popular vote, each candidate receiving his or her proportional share.

So, what are the Pro and Cons of the Electoral College?

Pros

  • It protects state’s rights. The United States is a republic of states and each state should be able to apportion its electorates as it sees fit.
  • The Electoral College system acts as a “limiter” on high population states and regions dominating the decision for the presidency.
  • Our Founders wanted to balance the will of the populace against the risk of “tyranny of the majority,” in which the voices of the masses can drown out minority interests.

Cons

  • It is possible that the winner may not receive the most popular votes. This has happened five times in our history, including the election of 2016.
  • Some votes count more than others. In 2012 there were less than 200,000 people per electoral vote in Wyoming, but more than 700,000 people per electoral vote in Texas.
  • It causes the elections to focus almost exclusively on swing states such as Florida and Ohio. States that always vote one way, like Arizona, which, with the exception of Bill Clinton in the 1990’s, has voted for the Republican candidate for president every year since 1952, are generally ignored by the candidates in favor of spending times in “swing states” or those that can swing either Republican or Democrat depending on the year.

So, what do you think?  Should we continue to use the Electoral College system, or do you think it is outdated and should be changed?

The 2016 election actually changed my mind on the issue, but not because of any of the candidates, or how divisive it was.  While I have been a proponent of the Electoral College system mainly on grounds of the need for proportional representation of the states, I have always had a problem with the “all or nothing” concept that most states follow when choosing their electors.  When you think about it, an “all or nothing system” really doesn’t work very well for almost anything.  If you are a democrat in Arizona, your vote is pretty much meaningless as your interests under our “all or nothing” methodology for choosing Electors will not be represented by any of Arizona’s Electors.  With the one exception of Bill Clinton, in the last 64 years Arizona’s Electors have always voted for Republicans.  The thing that tipped the scale for me this year, however, was the sheer margin of difference in the popular vote.  For one candidate to win the popular vote of the citizens of this country by 2.8 million votes and lose the election, just can’t be reconciled in my mind.

2.8 million votes represent the size of the entire population of Nevada.  It’s greater than the population of New Mexico, just slightly less than the population of Mississippi and Utah, more than twice the population of Montana, Maine, New Hampshire and Hawaii, more than 3 times the population of South Dakota, Alaska and Vermont and almost 4 times the population of Wyoming.

You can argue that some of this difference is attributed to candidates ignoring states the they don’t have a chance of winning.  While this explanation may have some validity, it cuts both ways.  For example, Donald Trump didn’t spend hardly any time in California, a state that he was certainly going to lose to Hillary Clinton, but Clinton likewise didn’t spend any time in Texas, a state that she was, without question, going to lose to Trump.  Additionally, I don’t think our Founding father’s concern of an uneducated or uninformed electorate holds any relevancy in today’s world, and I’m increasingly concerned with the national election process giving so much power to a small number of “swing states”.   I believe it is time for a change.

Christmas Traditions

The holidays; it’s that time of the year that some love and others really struggle with. For me it is a combination of the two. It is a reflective time of year for me as my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer on December 15th of 1993 when I was 20 years old. Christmas was my mother’s favorite holiday and she always made it wonderful for us kids. That year leading up to Christmas, as you can imagine, was tough. Many of our traditions went by the wayside that year as she was so ill.

One tradition that stopped that year for my brother and I, because that was our last Christmas with her as she died in early January of 1994, was the tradition of picking out a “special” ornament each year that had our name and the year on it.  The ornament often reflected something we liked or were interested in that year.  For instance in 1986, my brother Michael got a red truck ornament, as that was the year he received his driver’s license and a red Ford truck.  My mom started this tradition because she always said that when we moved out she wanted us to have ornaments for our own tree.  Michael and I enjoyed each year when we would decorate the Christmas tree with our parents. It was always fun to unwrap each ornament and then discuss why we had chosen that ornament as our “special” ornament that year.  There usually were lots of laughs because, in retrospect, some of the reasons were very silly.  After my mother’s death, every year when I would put a tree up, I would have moments of tears and smiles as I placed my ornaments on the tree.  I remember thinking that I couldn’t wait to start a family and begin that tradition with them.

The Christmas of 2002, my husband Jeff and I were able to begin the tradition of the “special” ornament for our daughter, Lauren. Her first ornament, just like my very first ornament, was a brass angel with her name engraved on it. Lauren is now 14 years old and our son Luke is 10 years old and they both enjoy picking out their “special” ornaments, unwrapping them and placing them on the tree each year. This year we had custom ornaments made for each of them.  The front of Lauren’s has a picture of her kicking a soccer ball, along with her name, the year and the name of the 2 soccer teams she is on. The back of the ornament has a picture of her and her team celebrating after a win.  Luke’s ornament has a picture of him with his race truck on the front along with his name, 2016 and that he was the AZ and CA Champ. He also chose a picture of his race truck for the back of the ornament. I love helping the kids pick out their ornaments each year as it is a really neat way to remember what was important to them that year.

About 5 years ago, I began buying a personalized family ornament so that our tree won’t be completely bare when the kids’ ornaments are no longer hanging on to our tree because they have moved out and are hanging on their very own. They both have told me that they love that I have begun doing that and they will carry on the new tradition of a family ornament with their families in the future. It is interesting how something can turn into a tradition.  I hope you still celebrate the holidays with some traditions you grew up with or can think fondly of some traditions that you started. Happy Holidays!