South Florida is all abuzz with word that a popular Cuban-American priest has fallen in a love with a woman.  As would be expected, the Roman Catholic Church will have none of it. The handsome TV priest, Rev. Alberto Cutie,  has been swiftly removed from roles of responsibility to  shake it off and get back to thinking his only love must be centered on Jesus Christ and the church.  His Miami Beach parish is divided over his pecadillos.

How encouraging that a red-blooded male raises new questions about  the church’s bizarre millenia-old obsession with celibacy.  Cutie, 40, apparently has had a relationship with a woman for some two years, but it took a Spanish tabloid, TVnotas, to make it public by publishing 25 papparazzi photos of  him and the female, including some of them embracing on a beach.   Since 1999, the youthful, charismatic priest has had TV programs watched across the Americas and as far away at Spain.  The Puerto Rican-born pastor, ordained in 1995, headed the Archdiocese of Miami’s Radio Paz  (Radio Peace) broadcasts.  His warmth and personality had won him the affectionate title of  “Father Oprah,” suggesting he had the wide appeal of an Oprah Winfrey.  He further was author of a book, “Real Life, Real Love; 7 Paths to a Strong, Lasting Relationship.”

He has now appeared on  Spanish and English news shows to address his behavior and offer thoughts on whether he will start behaving himself and kiss off the relationship with the woman; or leave the priesthood and maybe marry the woman.  “I’m now in the process of thinking about all those things, of making decisions,” Cutie told the Associated Press. “And my bishop has given me the time to think about it. This is a difficult time. It’s a time of transition, it’s a time of thinking about the future.”

Of course, priests choosing women and love over the church — or choosing both females AND the church – are not new.  Clandestinely, priests have had robust relationships with females since the church imposed the celebacy rules in the 11th century. Supposedly, goes the argument, an unmarried clergyman can give his undivided attention to God and not be distracted by things like women or children.  Then, supposedly all the self-restraint and denial will mean embracing a holier life and draw one closer to Jesus. Scholars believe the church was more able to pay priests paltry  wages to single people living on their own.  (Just look at the health cost savings alone.) Moreover, they wouldn’t be bequeathing any acquired wealth, upon their deaths, to heirs.

According to historical sources, Pope Benedict VIII in 1022 banned marriages and mistresses for priests. In 1139, Pope Innocent II voided the existing marriages of priests. Moreover, all new priests had to divorce their wives.  But it may not have been until the 16th century that such rules were really enforced.

One group, “Celibacy Is The Issue,” is a national lay organization that works for change. It contends it is made up of 2,500 former Catholic clerics who resigned, many of them subsequently to marry.  Many boldly carry out priestly duties without the blessing of the church, some under the group “Rent A Priest.” 

Pity a priest like Cutie who has to say, “I believe that I’ve fallen in love, and I believe that I’ve struggled with that, between my love for God and my love for the Church and my love for service,” he was quoted by AP. He said, “I think we all have ideas and we have ways of living.” Regretably, Cutie also said, “We want to do things right, but sometimes we fall short. I fell short.”

And here is a huge worldwide church begging for males to step forward to be priests and to sacrifice a central part of the humanness – the gift  to love, to  be husbands and have children. The stark shortage will continue until one pope has the intellectual courage to change a cruel rule that neither serves itself nor the genuine all-male believers who want to serve.  And that all applies to women who want to serve in religious life.

May there be other ordained Roman Catholic priests and nuns who challenge the oppressive and unhealthy rules.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has made public the action of Bishop Thomas Olmsted to excommunicate Father Chris Carpenter, former pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church in Mesa and one-time “Father Flick” film reviewer for The Catholic Sun newspaper. Ordained in 1995, he served the Mesa church from 1997 to January 2006.

The Sun’s Web Site on Monday posted a story by the Sun’s editor Rob DeFrancisco that said the bishop sent a letter to Carpenter, who now lives in Long Beach, Calif., notifying him that he has been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for aligning with the Reformed Catholic Church, which is not in communion with Rome and which embraces such progressive ideas as female and married priests.   On April 21, we made public Carpenter’s letter to friends in which he stated he was sending a letter that week to Olmsted to say he had no choice but to leave Roman Catholicism.  He said he was finding new spiritual fulfillment in Reformed Catholicism and was newly appointed vicar for California. “Their leadership has welcomed me with open arms and I am grateful,” he said.  He explained that he found it likely that, once Olmsted got his letter, he could be excommunicated or disciplined in other ways. That came to pass.

The Sun’s Web story explained, “According to canon law, baptized Catholics who knowingly place themselves outside  of full communion  with the church  and in opposition to the legitimate authority of the church are subject to excommunication.”  Said the Sun: “The excommunication became ‘automatic’ once Fr. Carpenter became affiliated with the Reformed Catholic Church. The bishop’s notice to him, ‘the Decree of Excomunication’ was the formal declaration of what had already happened by virtue of his schismatic act.”

By putting himself in “scism,” Carpenter has willingly separated himself from the Roman Catholic Church and censure follows. With this action, the 41-year-old  Phoenix native cannot participate in a Roman Catholic Mass celebration  “or in any celebration of worship,” the Sun said. “He is also prohibited from celebrating or receiving any of the sacraments and cannot represent himself as a priest.”  That is a Roman Catholic priest.

Carpenter intends to be busy as the first  Reformed Catholic Church priest in California. He is at work establishing a parish in Long Beach that he has named the Community of the Resurrection, and he will remain active in a non-denominational interfaith hospice chaplain. He has long been open about his disagreements with Olmsted. He was among nine priests ordered by the bishop in 2004 to take their names off the Phoenix Declaration letter that Arizona clergy signed calling for full acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in the life of faith communities.  He would say later that “something died as a result of the personal and public showdown  … A chilling effect has been experienced throughout all Catholic parishes and institutions concerned about outreach and ministry to LGBT persons.”

The Sun explained the actions this way, “The primary purpose of excommunicationis to repair the scandal caused by the teachings and actions of the cleric, to restore justice inthe church and to reform the offender.”  The bishop said he was sad to take the action and was praying for Carpenter’s “reconciliation with Christ and His Church.” 

My sense is Carpenter is not looking back and believes he is out in front in serving Christ’s true church.

Last April, I wrote a feature for the Tribune’s Spiritual Life section about Judi Gyory Missel of Mesa and her being chosen to be among the first 40 people active in the Jewish Genealogical Society allowed to do some research in Germany. Her group examined Nazi records of Jews who were arrested, put into concentration camps and murdered.  The International Red Cross Tracing Service established the archives in 1955 after getting control of the Nazi files. They were as systematic at keeping records of their victims as they were in putting them to death.

Her talk is titled, “My Trip to the Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archives.”

Missel lost as many as 20 relatives in the camps and ovens during the Holocaust. That included all four of her grandparents.  She was allowed into six buildings near Frankfurt, Germany, where about 40 million index cards contain information on the people the Nazis found worthy of the “final solution.”

Missel has talked to private groups about her findings during her week of research in Germany.  But this Thursday night, April 23, she will give her first public talk about  her discoveries and observations.  She will speak 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center, 12701 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale.  If you need more information, call (480) 215-6150.

For more than 20 years, Missel, who works for the Mesa Public Schools, has regularly pored through microfilm and online data at the Mesa Family History Center, operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Much of her research dealt with ancestors who were largely in the area of Budapest, Hungary.                                                       

 I was routinely checking the East Valley Tribune Web site about dinnertime Monday and gasped when I saw that the Tribune had won a 2009 Pulitzer Prize for local new reporting.  I was so elated to learned that my former colleagues for the newspaper were rewarded for their  tenacity and smart reporting last year on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the impact of Sheriff Joe Arpaio zealous enforcement of immigration laws at the expense of other law enforcement work.  Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin are first-rate journalists.  Their five-part series, “Reasonable Doubt,” published last June, has won a number of awards, including the George Polk  Award.

As one of the Tribune staff who lost his job in January– along with Paul —  in wake of major downsizing and revamping to stay financially viable, I feel like the man whose wife divorced him and then she won $5 million in the lottery.  My desk was about 10 feet from Ryan’s before I left the Tribune. We faced one another and I watch his  fearless, diligent work  and heard his frustrations hitting walls with those in law enforcement and others as he and Paul painstaking ferreted out the layers of the story.  I watched the PBS film team work with them to hear them lay out their project and findings.   Ryan and Paul are smart, intuitive journalists who could work for the nation’s top media. Maybe they will.  Paul didn’t miss a beat as his job went away. He teamed with three other Tribune staffers laid off in founding the Arizona Guardian, an online political news and commentary site.

The Pulitzer Prize, of course, is the most coveted prize in the news industry.  Commonly it is won by the big boys — the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune or Boston Globe, with some middle size papers here and there winning.   I always have liked to say that I once replaced a Pulitizer Prize-winning reporter.  In 1972 at the Waterloo (Iowa) Courier, Rich Whitt gave up his job as farm editor and assistant state editor. I was transferred from courthouse reporting to that job.  Rich went to the Louisville Courier Journal as a reporter.  Then in 1978, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting (same category of the Tribune’s win) for his thorough coverage of the fatal Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Southgate, Ky.  It took place May 28, 1977,  and was the deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history.  There were 3,000 patrons and 182 employees inside that Memorial Day weekend night, and 165 persons died more than 200 injured.  Rich Whitt would write exhaustively about the fire in which numerous fire and safety code violations were found. His findings led to the national award.  A modest guy, he never made that much about the prize.  We exchanged e-mails over the years, mostly sharing common information about our former newspaper.

Of course, it is so bittersweet for the Tribune and Paul and Ryan to win this grand prize. There is irony that the Tribune had to part ways with Paul and the editor who shepherded the project, Patti Epler, because of the economic downturn, the  newspaper world’s partial collapse (due in large part to the Internet)  and the need to  cut payroll sharply to stay viable.  What a thrill it must have been in the Tribune newsroom today.   From afar, I send my hearty congratulations and feel that old joy to have been part of the Tribune, to have been there, at least, when the award-winning work took place.  Despite its troubles, journalism remains a noble trade.  I can always vicariously say I worked for a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, come what may.

I also see the irony of the Tribune Newspapers winning this award for investigations into the bowels of Joe Arpaio’s  world of law enforcement.  I recall working at the Tribune with Joe’s daughter when she was a reporter in our newsroom, a place where she met her husband, who was metro editor. Their engagement came as such a shock because their courtship had been kept such a deep secret. We attended their wedding in Scottsdale at the home of our Scottsdale Progress Tribune office manager. Joe gave away his daughter in the backyard on a day of vicious winds that made it impossible to hear the vows exchanged.

For all of us who have gotten  to work with pros like Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin, we  just say it was one of  the unexpected good fortunes of chosing a career that has purpose.  May this award only drive home the importance of  a strong media and a commitment to watch-dog  journalism. Without the courage and grit of reporters  to question authority through sound and thorough  investigation, democracy itself is at peril.

It’s April, so it means my wife and I would sign up again to deliver water to the tanks in the southwest Arizona desert in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It’s one of our favorite volunteer projects — helping what’s called “Humane Borders,” a humanitarian effort on the state’s southern flank.

We deliver water to blue tanks strategically placed so, should migrants from Mexico cross the parched and hostile desert in that corridor, the water could be the difference between their living and dying. The water is made available in 50-gallon tank positioned on their sides with spigots that can be turned on to refill jugs.

For one month every third month, my Tempe church is responsible for sending a small team each Saturday to Ajo to pick up the customized truck equipped with a large plastic tank, a set of five-gallon jugs, two wheelbarrows, tools and chlorine tablets.  We have five teams, primarily married couples, who are often joined with one or two others on each trip.   We drive to Maricopa to Gila Bend and then to Ajo. There we pick up the truck, service it and drive 30 miles on Highway 85 to Organ Pipe.

There we back up the truck, under a canvas spigot at the maintenance yard behind the Monument headquarters and put 150 gallons into the tank, throw the truck into overdrive and head on roads to the tanks. For one station, we fill the jugs and put two or three of them in each wheelbarrow and push them over gritty desert terrain, up hilly paths and through sandy washes to the tanks. There we test the tanks’ water for the proper chlorine level and fill each tank to the brink. We gather any trash in the area and take that back with us. In mid-summer we leave as early as 5 a.m. from Tempe so we are not working in the afternoon in the desert.

In June and during the summer months, our corridor has five stations in the desert — some deep in the desert with hard-to-follow paths.  We bounce over rough terrain. Sometime the truck crawls to get over rough landscape, pass through arroyos and squeeze past prickly brush, cactus and trees.

During the trip, we never have seen migrants. This Saturday, outside the park, the Border Border had apprehended three men and had them in handcuffs.  A helicopter buzzed overhead.

The Arizona State University graduate student accompanying us, who was born in Mexico, found a tuna can and about eight Mexican coins in a shady area while we were doing.  Several times we have found discarded bicycles, plastic gallon jugs and clothing.  The Bible says:

“They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.”

         — Isaiah 49:10

Founded in June 2000, the program is based at First Christian Church in Tucson, whose senior pastor,  The Rev. Robin Hoover, is president.  The first Humane Borders water station was set up March 7, 2001.  I have taken part since January 2005, and my wife joined in 2007.  The non-profit organization operates on about $200,000 annually, most of it from churches and corporate sponsors, although the Pima Country Board of Supervisors provides some help.

 Still, records show that from Oct. 1, 1999 to Sept. 30, 2007, there were 1,138 migrant deaths in the desert. Humane Borders’ symbol is appropriately water pouring from the big dipper or the “drinking gourd” from the slavery abolitionist movement.

 There are about 65 of us drivers, but Humane Border has about 10,000 volunteers.  Combined there are 70 trips per month May to September to fill the tanks. It is reduced to 30 trips monthly October through April.

The Associated Press on April 9 reported that despite a 25 percent drop in Border Patrol arrests along the border, deaths in the dessert had gone up.

“The number of migrant deaths along the roughly 2,000-mile border increased by nearly 7 percent between Oct. 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, though apprehensions of people crossing illegally from Mexico into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California decreased in the same period from a year ago, the patrol said,” AP said. “Migrant rights groups said the number of deaths directly correlated to increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Our church is assigned the Saturdays of  January, April, July and October. For our team, it is a 10-hour commitment to make the trip in our own cars to Ajo, get the truck ready, handle the task, and return home. .  When equipment problems arise, new flags need to go up after fierce winds or we get lost finding stations, it can be a 12-hour day.  But always fulfilling even if we never see those we serve.

Guys like Carl Mawhinney are wondering what is the latest holdup in getting former Monsignor Dale Fushek on trial for sexual misconduct. After all, the criminal complaints were first brought in late 2004, and it’s been 4 1/2 years of legal maneuvers and courtroom procedures before any testimony can be heard.

The founder of the international Life Teen Catholic youth program and one-time vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix won a Maricopa County Superior Court ruling Feb. 5 that granted him five separate trials to resolve the seven misdemeanor charges brought by five males who were teens when they say they were abused by the priest while he led Life Teen and was pastor of the large East Valley parish, St. Timothy’s Catholic Community in Mesa.

The Maricopa County prosecutors had insisted they should be able to bring the evidence together from all the incidents between 1984 and 1993 involving the alleged victim in order to establish a clear pattern of misconduct and abuse.  Fushek, who previously had won an Arizona Supreme Court ruling that he should get a trial by jury instead of before just a judge, faces one count of assault, one of indecent exposure and five counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. 

In February, Superior Court Judge Joseph Kreamer ruled that the series of alleged incidents were separate and that it would be unfair to bundle them together as if they were related. “The court does not believe that the alleged offenses are based on the same conduct, or are otherwie connected in their commission,” the judge said in his ruling.  He said they allegedly occurred across almost 10 years, took place in various settings and were not “otherwise connected.”

Now prosecutor Barbara Marshall and her team from the county attorney’s office want to make their case for separate trials to the Arizona Court of Appeals. There, a panel of three judges will hear from the two sides. I has been put on that court’s calendar for April 29. 

 Whether the ultimate ruling is stayed and Fushek will be able to meet his accusers one by one — or it is reversed and one trial is set — it would be scheduled in the San Tan Justice of the Peace Court (Gilbert jurisdiction), which is located in the court complex in downtown Chandler.

Last September, Goodman himself had ruled that the trials should be separated, but the prosecution appealed that to Superior Court, where his decison was upheld.

He had said the five trials would take place from the oldest alleged incident to the newest. Each trial would follow the other “as soon as practical following the conclusion” of each previous trial.  The first is contributing to the delinquency of a minor complaint by Mawhinney, who accuses Fushek of  “numerous sexually related discussions” about his sex life betwen 1984 and 1988. It would be followed by a trial, on charges of assault and contributing  to the delinquency of  a minor between 1985 and 1987, brought by Marc Tropio. The third trial would involve charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and indecent exposure, between 1987 and 1990, brought by Marc Olson.  The fourth trial would involve contributing to the delinquency of a minor between 1989 and 1991 where Doug Cordano contends Fushek  discussed his sexual activities. The final trial would focus on a count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor between 1991 and 1993 brought by Russell Swingle.

Fushek was one of the highest ranked officials charged in the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church. In late 2007, Fushek, while on a paid leave of absence pending resolution of the charges, started a non-denominatinal church, the Praise and Worship Center, with another former, now married, priest, Mark Dippre.  It was in defiance of orders of  Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who has since excommunicated both men.

The Rev. Chris Carpenter was known as “Father Flick” in the Catholic Sun diocesan newspaper for his reviews of film and was pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church in Mesa from 1997 until January 2006. But he resigned at age 38 for what were called health reasons, moved to southern California to write and pursue other church work. Back and forth communications with the bishop have been cold since then. And Carpenter has been very public, along the way, with his displeasure with Roman Catholic practices and actions.

Over the weekend, Carpenter e-mailed an Easter letter to many friends, including those in the Valley. “I’m very happy to report that I have been accepted as a priest of the Reformed Catholic Church, effective today, Easter Sunday,” he wrote. He joins a Columbus, Ohio-based, Catholic movement. “We are a progressive, international, rapidly growing (including in the Phoenix area) communion descended from the ‘Old Catholics’ who broke with Rome in 1870 over papal infallibility.” Carpenter said the movement supports open communion, which permits non-Catholics and divorced/remarried people to receive it. It also supports the ordination of women to the priesthood, the full inclusion and participation of gay and lesbian people and the optional celibacy for priests. “We use the same liturgy, rites and prayers as the Roman church,” Carpenter noted. More can be found at www.reformedcatholicchurch.org.

“Their leadership has welcomed me with open arms, and I am grateful,” he wrote to friends.

Carpenter said he had been in the final stages of a three-year process of “dis-affiliating” with the Roman Catholic Church. “But I have had a fire lit under me in recent months via several critical letters from Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix,” the priest wrote. “Among other things, he disapproves of my ‘involvement in the homosexual community’ through the gay and lesbian ministry I chair in a non-clergy capacity at St. Matthew’s parish in Long Beach and has asked me to resign, even though the ministry is approved and supervised by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.’”

The former Mesa priest noted that he had requested sacramental faculties (the ability to celebrate Mass, baptize, do weddings, etc.) from Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and Bishop Tod Brown of the Orange diocese. His work has bridged both dioceses. “My requests of over a year ago have gone unanswered, which seems unprofessional, at best,” he said.

“The Roman Catholic Church today barely seems like the same church I was ordained to served in 1995,” Carpenter wrote. “In the wake of the sexual abuse scandal and the death of Pope John Paul II, many of the church’s leaders seem more and more to me like the legalistic Pharisees whom Jesus condemned during his time.” He said Pope Benedict XVI “has revealed glaring insensitivity and potential incompetence through his welcoming of radical traditionalist bishops, at least one of whom happens to be an anti-Semitic holocaust-denier.” Carpenter further was critical of the pope’s “challenging the effectiveness of condom use for AIDS prevention while in Africa where millions of people have died.”

Carpenter said he will be the first Reformed Catholic Church priest in California and has additionally been appointed Vicar of California and will oversee growth in the state. “I will also begin the formation of a Long Beach-based parish that has been named the Community of the Resurrection. He will continue his full-time ministry as a non-denominational/interfaith hospice chaplain. “My employers have been very supportive throughout my vocation discernment,” he said. They even recently gave him a raise.

He said he had no choice but to “leave the Roman (not the Catholic) church,” Carpenter said. “I’m very excited about returning to public, priestly ministry.” He said he finds it likely that once Olmsted receives and reviews his letter, he could be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church or be disciplined in some other way.

While at Christ the King in Mesa, Carpenter had joined some 160 pastors of all faiths in signing the Phoenix Declaration, developed by No Longer Silent - Clergy for Justice. It called for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people to have full acceptance in the Christian faith, including ordination. When Olmsted learned in April 2004 that nine priests had signed it, he ordered them to remove their names. Carpenter was one of eight who backed down and removed their names. The priest would write later, “Something died as a result of the personal and public showdown over the Phoenix Declaration. A chilling effect has been experienced throughout all Catholic parishes and institutions concerned about outreach and ministry to LGBT persons.”

“There is a growing number of disillusioned Catholics here and around the world who are eager for what the Reformed Catholic Church has to offer,” Carpenter concluded.

    I was born and reared in Iowa, earned a journalism degree from Iowa State University and worked 10 years for an Iowa daily newpaper. I spent about 35 years living in the state. There were times I was embarrassed to be an Iowan because of the state’s lack of progress in some areas of social development.

But today this ex-Iowan salutes the Hawkeye state for the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling made public Friday to overnturn the 1998 ban on gay marriage.  In three weeks, that state joins Massachusetts and Connecticut as states where the marriage between two loving adults, regardless of gender, will be legal.  The 69-page decision, some are saying, is consistent with a state that has, in fact, been out in front on Civil Rights. The justices found that the state law restricting marriage to between a man and a woman violated Iowa’s Constitution.

Polk County Attorney John Sarcone announced his office will not ask for a rehearing, which is permitted for 21 days.  “Our Supreme Court has decided it, and they make the decision as to what the law is, and we follow Supreme Court decisions,” Sarcone said.    As one would predict, conservatives greeted it with a we’re-going-to-hell lament.  “It’s a perversion, and it opens the door to more perversions,” said the Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr., pastor of Main Street Baptist Church in Des Moines.

Certainly they’ll hammer the Legislature to pass new laws and try to get a public referendum to reverse what’s happened, much as what occurred last November in California where the state’s high court legalized gay marriage, only to see it overturned by a state proposition whose campaigns, pro and con, set records for spending.

The Iowa Court upheld an August 2007 decision by Polk County District Court Judge Robert Hanson, who found that a state law allowing marriage only between a man and a woman violates the state’s constitution rights of equal protection.

This decision and liberal civil union rules in New Jersey, New Hampshire and Vermont, what was started in California and what now exists in these three states create a critical mass for a stronger movement that won’t be stopped.  Iowa doesn’t require a residency rule — just a three-day waiting period — for marriage, so you can expect many couples, in Middle America especially, will take advantage of the new change.

Amen to these words from the Supreme Court: “We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important government objective. The Legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justication.”

I am so proud of Iowa. I sent congratulatory e-mails to friends in Iowa today to laud them for having a state that is leading the way.

Being out of work and semi-retired opens new opportunities that I had never expected. That includes spontaneity and the chance to be impulsive.  I can hear about a place I want to be and not have to immediately think about my job obligations.

So when I heard that President Barack Obama was coming to the Valley, I thought I would take the chance of seeing him, whatever the time or hour, in that place.  I expected it would be Veterans Memorial Coliseum or U.S. Airways Arena or Wells Fargo Arena, or even in an outdoors area.  On Sunday, when I learned it was Dobson High School in Mesa, I began to wonder what space availability would be like. After all, the school has a large enrollment and wouldn’t students alone fill the place?  On Facebook, I learned that tickets would be given out on Monday, but to get a ticket, one really needed to camp out Sunday night because “only 200 to 200 tickets would be distributed.”

It’s too cold on February nights to camp out.  So I got up at 3 a.m. Monday, put on two pairs of waffle long underwear, two pairs of socks, and four layers of shirts, then headed to Dobson.  Alas, a long line was already stretching along the north side of the parking lot. I was told to start beyond the driveway at the northwest corner of the parking lot. I put down my folding chair and turned on my flashlight and began the wait, accompanied by the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James Loewen.  Soon someone came by putting numbers on our hands to try to prevent newcomers from infiltrating the line. I was No. 467.

I shivered through the wait, made friends with my neighbors and never expected to get a ticket. Krispy Kreme doughnuts were giving out by the boxes to the crowds  But we kept moving forward for literally hours after people started being sent by about 20 at a time to the school to register and get a ticket.  I got mine at 11:15 a.m.  I heard about 600 tickets were given out that morning.

Then it started all over to attend the event. I returned to Dobson about 4:45 a.m. Wednesday in advance of doors opening at 8:30 a.m. It was colder but I had three pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves and four layers under my suit and flag tie. Time went by relatively fast. I visited with so many I knew, especially my former colleagues at the Tribune who still have jobs and were reporting on and photographing the event.  The protesters, with the broad and varied messages, gave it a carnival atmosphere.  Jeers and shouts and counter protest gave color and drama to the scene. A Catholic Sun reporter was going to interview me, but when I gave him my name, he opted not to interview a known reporter, even if no longer one working the beat.

I went through the security when our time came and made my way in the the Dobson gym and took a seat on the floor well toward the back. In retrospect, I wished I had taken a bleacher seat or had wandered around the seats up front and found one not taken.  Everyone seemed armed with a picture cellphone and/or digital camera.  Through the long wait for Obama, people were constantly shooting photos and sending them off to family and friend.  Throughout the president’s speech, the camera flashes were nonstop.

Arizona politicians and public officials were everywhere, backslapping, networking, positioning themselves, standing and talking in the spotlights to be seen the hall.  Obama was as crisp and articulate of a speaker as always. He was on message and no-nonsense throughout. No town hall format, no jeers or wisecracks from the audience. It seemed over quickly.

President Obama is the seventh U.S. president I have seen in person:  1) Lyndon Johnson outside a Disciples of Christ church in downtown Washington, D.C., in 1966; 2) Richard Nixon campaigning in Urbandale, Iowa, in 1968; 3) Ronald Reagan speaking to us at the Kiwanis International Convention in 1987 in Washington, D.C.; 4) Bill Clinton outside of Gammage Auditorium in Tempe in 1996 while campaigning; 5) George W. Bush in June 1999 in Waterloo, Iowa, while campaigning, met him, talked with him, got his autograph and had a picture taken with him; 6) Gerald Ford on an airport cart in the Denver Airport in 2003; and 7) Barack Obama in Mesa.

It was 1958 when the simple song, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” became a big hit, literally across the world. In America, Mahalia Jackson recorded it, and that led to its wider use as a song in just about every kind of setting, especially as a campfire and youth group song. It was ecumenical and applicable everywhere.

“He’s got you and me brother in his hands, he’s got you and my sister in his hands…” and so it went.  Very simple and no hidden message.  Recently, when I became part of those whose jobs were eliminated in the Tribune’s major downsizing and reinvention, I marveled at my own hands and how much they had done in 63 years of life and, especially, 45 years of pressing the keyboard in basic journalism. Those fingers tap the lettered keys that I almost never look at.  Of course, we have programmed it  with our brains through steady practice.  I can probably type 90 words a minute, but I have not tried to determine that for many years.

I would never suffer an accident that would break a bone, sprain a wrist or dislocate a shoulder, thus putting my craft as a writer out of action. I watched a good number of colleagues work around such injuries, improvising to work the typewriter or computer keyboard. My magnificent hands banged out millions of words on command. Since eighth grade when I first learned to type (I was required for all in my small Iowa school distict), I developed the proper typing techniques — not the hunt-and-peck method that some very veteran writers have used. One of my great prized possesions before computers was a Smith-Corona electric typewriter I purchased in an Army PX while in the Army in 1971. It would be such an important part of me for a couple decades.

I pounded on the keyboard a lot over these decades in both work, personal writing and lots of community projects, like reports and meeting minutes. Yet I never suffered carpal tunnel syndrome or related conditions that, for some, equired surgery, wrist supports or time off.

Of course, my hands — and your hands — have been summoned to do so much, that it defies making any kind of a master list.  As a boy, they carried so many rocks out of the Iowa dirt and droppedhem on a “stone boat” to be taken to fill driveway potholes on the farm. Or they washed cows’ udders to ready them for the chore of milking.. They pulled weeds, clasped twine on bales of hay or straw, drove hammers, wrapped around baseball bats, caught high flies, clasped books that took me all the way through college and graduate school. They shook the hands of Ted Kennedy, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, George W. Bush, Shirley Temple Black and Ernie Banks, to name a few notables.  My hands got slivers out of my kids’ fingers, wiped tears from their eyes and their behinds, held them as they were rocked to sleep and to get them dressed so many times, and showed them ow to pray.  Now they do the same for grandchildren.

Not too many years after our marriage in 1973, it became impossible to get my wedding ring off my left hand because of a fattening finger, and so it has become a fixture there. I don’t think it will wear out and have to be replace.

My hands have been scraped in falls, bruised, caught in doors and bent backwards, but never enough to change my patterns.  I have generally small hands that carried callouses when I was a farm boy but no longer have  had the roughness of a working man’s hands.

On May 25, 1986, I led a group of about 80 people from my Tempe church to a milepost west of Phoenix on I-40 where we held hands and stretched out to form a link in “Hands Across America,” a grandiose idea to get people to form a human chain from America East Coast to the West Coast to raise awareness about hunger. There were never enough  people, so there were huge gaps.

Surely our hands are part of our greatest possessions that make us human. They hand us the chance to enjoy the most in life. Let’s give our hands a hand.