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Being Green in the Land of the Saints
In the heartland of the Mormon Church, a new movement is taking root
MEANDER CANYON, UTAH — Straddling the side of a rubber raft, I watch the brown-green water of the Colorado River skim the sole of my foot. The grating whine of an outboard motor drowns the serenity of red-rock cliffs and willow-fringed sandbars. Our fleet — two flotillas, each consisting of three rafts lashed together and one motor — put in at Potash, about 10 miles from Moab, earlier in the day. The rafts are piled high with brightly colored dry bags, large silver coolers and three dozen people.
Two days from now, below the confluence of the Green and the Colorado, we will cut the rafts loose to run the legendary rapids of Cataract Canyon. But today and tomorrow, the motors will push us through flat water, and we're lost in anticipation, lounging in the sun.
I use this time to pry into the belief systems of the leaders of this expedition, both of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. One of them, 28-year-old Chris Peterson, crouches in the bottom of the boat, grasping a folder full of pamphlets and newsletters. Tan and lean, he answers my questions thoughtfully, but his eyes follow passing boats: He's looking for an opportunity to spread some gospel.
Peterson isn't cruising the river for Mormon converts; his message is a much harder sell in Utah. As director of the Salt Lake City-based nonprofit Glen Canyon Institute, Peterson advocates draining Lake Powell. The reservoir, which we'll drift into at the end of our trip, flooded Glen Canyon after Glen Canyon Dam was built 40 years ago. Its purpose is to guarantee that Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico uphold their end of the Colorado River Compact and deliver 8.2 million acre-feet of water to California, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico each year (HCN, 11/10/97: A tale of two rivers). The dam's turbines generate enough energy to supply 350,000 homes. And the reservoir, which spans 186 miles on the Utah-Arizona state line, attracts 2 to 3 million visitors each year.
Outside of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, few places are considered more sacrosanct in Utah than Lake Powell. Most middle-class families have hauled their kids down to the lake at least once and rented a plush houseboat for the week. Many go three or four times a year to water-ski and cliff-jump in the red-rock-rimmed reservoir. Talk of draining this treasured vacation home is pure heresy.
Chris Peterson grew up in Provo, which he calls "Lake Powell Central" because of the reservoir's popularity among locals. On summer weekends, trains of RVs and pickup trucks towing speedboats head south down Interstate 15 toward the lake. Most of Peterson's childhood friends have been part of the exodus to Lake Powell, and he has been hard-pressed to persuade them to sacrifice their favorite vacation spot. "I know people who recognize the problems with the reservoir, but they don't care," says Peterson. "They're more interested in their own pleasure than what is right and wrong."
Richard Ingebretsen, the 47-year-old founder of the Glen Canyon Institute and the other leader of this river trip, says he gets a lot of flak for his steadfast support for such an unpopular cause. He's often condemned as "crazy" or a "radical environmental extremist." He says the last time he endured so many verbal attacks was as a Mormon missionary in Washington, D.C., back in 1974 and 1975.
But, as Mormons have since the early days, the duo takes adversity and spins it into deeper conviction for their cause. "It makes me proud to stand up for what I believe in," says Ingebretsen, a medical doctor and a physics professor at the University of Utah. He's not your typical river rat. Sitting on the side of a nearby raft, he looks like he's wearing professional "dress casual," with his white collared shirt, navy blue shorts and black sport sandals over white crew socks.
As a Boy Scout in the 1960s, he visited the now legendary Glen Canyon before the reservoir was filled; when he returned as an adult, he was outraged by what he saw as the desecration of one of God's wonders. Call it a revelation: Ingebretsen decided Glen Canyon should be restored. In 1995 — with no previous experience as an environmental activist — he launched the Glen Canyon Institute, giving new hope to many environmentalists who had assumed the canyon was lost forever.
Today, Ingebretsen and Peterson push for draining the reservoir with all the zeal and finesse of practiced missionaries. They hold meetings and pass out brochures, and they lead a dozen rafting and backpacking trips each year to let people catch glimpses of what Glen Canyon was.
On the third day of our trip, we run the gantlet: 25 named rapids that drop steeply through Cataract Canyon. The whitewater flies and the adrenaline charges through everyone's veins, but even in the excitement, Ingebretsen doesn't lose sight of his mission. Eating lunch on a sandbar, we meet an Outward Bound group, and Ingebretsen invites them to come over to our camp in the evening for a lesson about Glen Canyon Dam, offering bribes of Popsicles and apple pies.
After dinner that night, the Outward Bounders join our group, which is an unusual mixture of die-hard drain-the-lakers, parents with young children, and a passel of LDS college students from Ingebretsen's neighborhood. Ingebretsen fires up a gas-powered generator to run a DVD player, and shows the Glen Canyon Institute film, Let the River Run, on a makeshift movie screen assembled from a white bedsheet and two poles. The dark desert night lights up with images of mossy sandstone pools, great blue herons and sinuous side canyons. The late environmentalist David Brower and river activist Katie Lee narrate the film, describing the "sacred places" they visited in Glen Canyon before it was flooded.
Ingebretsen and Peterson don't appeal to religion to make their arguments against the dam. They tell the group that the dam is not necessary to supply water to states in the lower Colorado River Basin; that the reservoir loses enough water to evaporation every year to supply the city of Los Angeles; that it is rapidly being choked with sediment; and that it is killing the ecosystems of the Grand Canyon. And the Outward Bound kids are inspired. Many of them linger after the film to talk and take some of Peterson's reading materials.
But to me, Peterson and Ingebretsen confide that they are driven by spiritual imperatives. Most Mormons, says Peterson, "see the earth as something to use and to tame. I reject that idea entirely. This is God's creation. We are meant to be stewards."
"We are on this earth to be judged by how we take care of each other and how we take care of the planet," says Ingebretsen.
The two Latter-day Saints are unusual. Utah — one of the most conservative states in the West — is not known for its environmental ethic, and Mormonism has often been dealt the blame. But today, some Mormons are trying to show their fellow church members that environmentalism actually has deep roots in their religious teachings.
Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart.
—The Doctrine and Covenants, 59:18
Officially, the LDS Church is politically neutral on environmental issues, says church spokesman Coke Newell. "If the church takes a position, it is seen as throwing its weight around in Utah," he says. The church respects its members' diversity of opinions, says Newell, though it will take a stand on issues it considers "moral." Hence, Utah's alcohol laws border on prohibition, and gay adoption has been effectively banned.
Speaking for himself, Newell says the scarcity of eco-conscious Mormons in the West is "a cultural thing, much more than a doctrinal thing. Any group of people is going to reflect the culture where they grew up."
Mormons in other parts of the country and the world may be more likely to be outspoken advocates for environmental protection. But in the West, most Mormons tie their faith to a culture that, historically, had to subdue the land to survive.
Mormonism, in fact, was for a long time almost synonymous with the pioneering spirit. Founded in 1830 by a young New Yorker, Joseph Smith, the church spent its early years on the move. The Mormons moved from New York to Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, each time trying to set down roots, and each time being uprooted and forced out by people suspicious of their ways.
Smith was killed in Illinois by an anti-Mormon mob, and his successor as church president, Brigham Young, led the Saints farther west. The Mormon pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and they quickly set about irrigating the arid landscape. After two decades of persecution, the Saints had finally found a place where they could practice their beliefs in peace, a place so desolate and dry that the late writer Wallace Stegner, in his 1942 book, Mormon Country, called it "the land nobody wanted."
Young saw the unfolding of prophecy from the book of Isaiah: a desert that would "blossom like a rose" as the Saints built Zion, an earthly home fit for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
But even during the early tame-the-wilderness days, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young frequently reminded the Saints of their roles as stewards of God's creation. Young once told a congregation, "The earth is very good in and of itself, and has abided a celestial law, consequently we should not despise it, nor desire to leave it, but rather desire and strive to obey the same law that the earth abides."
Today, the days when Saints scraped out a meager existence in the wilderness are long past, but their reputation as people determined to dominate nature persists. Bill McKibben remarked in his 1989 book, The End of Nature, that "Mormons have made a great project of subduing nature, erecting some towns in places so barren and dry and steep that only missionary zeal to conquer the wild could be the motivation."
The late Edward Abbey was a harsher critic. In his novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, the supervillain is a Mormon bishop, J. Dudley Love, a self-righteous vigilante who wages a holy war against a gang of environmental activists.Environmentalists like Abbey certainly contributed to the divide between Mormons and the environmental movement in the West, and encouraged the prevailing notion that you can't be a good Mormon and an environmentalist, too.
It's a dangerous notion, because the church wields tremendous political power. With members tithing 10 percent of their incomes to it, the church is the financial equivalent of a Fortune 500 company, bigger than Nike or Gap, according to Time magazine. The church spends money building new chapels and temples, but it also invests large amounts in church-owned businesses, and it lobbies the Utah Legislature on a few issues.
The Saints are also an influential voting bloc, claiming 73 percent of the population in Utah and 25 percent of the population in the Intermountain West. And politically, they fall predominantly on the conservative side. About 85 percent of active church members in Utah, for example, associate themselves with the Republican Party, according to the church-owned Deseret Morning News.
This solidarity is reflected in their elected officials. In Utah, the governor and the entire congressional delegation are Mormon. The Salt Lake Tribune estimates that 90 percent of the state Legislature is LDS. Half of Idaho's congressional delegation — one senator and one representative — is Mormon. California has three Mormons in Congress, Nevada has two, and Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon each have one. While there are a few notable exceptions — among them, Utah Rep. Jim Matheson, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and New Mexico Rep. Tom Udall, all Democrats — many of them have loudly criticized environmentalists.
Utah's Jim Hansen is the poster child of anti-environmental politics. Hansen, a conservative Republican and former Mormon bishop, vigorously opposed wilderness protection in Utah during his 10 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He frequently referred to endangered species in the Colorado River, such as the Colorado pikeminnow, as "trash fish." He even promoted a "Human Protection Act," which would have protected people from those overbearing endangered species.
Hansen liked to remind his constituents that the GOP was the party with righteousness on its side. (This belief is so prevalent among Mormons in the West that in 1998, a church official had to announce that it's OK for Mormons to be Democrats.) When Hansen retired from Congress in 2002, wilderness proponents rejoiced. But he might be back: Hansen is running for governor of Utah in 2004.
Perhaps a better representative of mainstream Mormon views on the environment is the popular former governor of Utah, Mike Leavitt, R, who recently became the new chief of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. When his nomination was announced in Denver, Leavitt told The Associated Press, "To me, there is an inherent human responsibility to care for the earth." But judging from his environmental record as governor, his sense of duty to the environment depends on the issue.
Leavitt took a strong stand against a widely unpopular proposal to store nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, and he supported a locally backed San Rafael Swell National Monument and a moderate wilderness bill. But Leavitt also promoted the wetlands-destroying Legacy Highway, undid preliminary wilderness designations without public input, and refused to force the nation's most toxic polluter to comply with emissions standards (HCN, 9/1/03: Mr. Middle Ground gets called to Washington).
Leavitt "reflects, pretty well, the mainstream Utah and Mormon attitude toward the environment," says Lavarr Webb, who served as policy deputy during the governor's first term.
In his political column for the Deseret Morning News, Webb called environmentalists who challenged Leavitt's EPA nomination a "sadistic little band of character assassins." He says most Mormons in Utah, like himself, "have a balanced, middle-of-the-road position on the environment." They love the outdoors and strongly support scouting programs, but they can't support proposals like draining Lake Powell or designating 9.1 million acres of wilderness; such steps would hinder economic development, he says.
Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone, a member of the Quorum of the Seventy and the president of the Logan Temple, best sums up the religion's conflicting views on the environment: "We ought to take care of Mother Earth. She groans under the weight of our actions," says Featherstone, who is regarded as one of the more green church leaders because of his passion for the outdoors and scouting.
But when asked about issues such as draining Lake Powell or protecting wilderness, he quickly changes his tune: "My personal feeling is that God created the earth for man. We have to survive. The earth isn't worth anything if it can't provide for us."
For it is expedient that I, the Lord, should make every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures.
—The Doctrine and Covenants, 104:13
Richard Ingebretsen and Chris Peterson of the Glen Canyon Institute aren't the only Mormons who are fighting for the land for its own sake. Spend some time with Utah's environmental community, and you'll find Saints in some surprising places.
Larry Young, for example, is not the person you might expect to be the head of what he calls Utah's "punk-adolescent environmental group." A descendent of Brigham Young and a former BYU sociology professor, Young is the executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. SUWA calls for protecting another 9.1 million acres of wilderness in a state that has protected only 800,000 acres to date — the least of any Western state.
"The most common reaction I get from environmentalists when they learn that I am LDS is bewilderment about why there are so few Mormons in the conservation movement," says Young. "There is a very comfortable space to be openly politically conservative within the Mormon Church in Utah and in the Intermountain West; there is not a comfortable space to be openly pro-environment, politically moderate in the same way."
He says this tension is especially difficult for young church members, and he has watched many BYU students silence themselves or drift away from the religion.
Another prominent Mormon environmentalist is Paul Cox, an ethnobotanist who is world-renowned for his research on plants with healing powers. Cox, who lives in Kauai but maintains a residence in Provo, won a Goldman Environmental Prize in 1997 for saving a Samoan rainforest. "If you believe the earth is evidence of a divine creator, then destroying this remarkable creation is equivalent to walking into a museum and slashing a painting of Michelangelo or da Vinci," he says.
He adds that in what Mormons refer to as "the last days," people will be held accountable for their actions toward the environment. "When Jesus comes again and he asks, 'Where are the desert tortoises that I left on the northern edge of the Mojave Desert?' we may not be so quick to say, 'Well, we needed an extra 18 holes of golf.' "
But neither Cox nor Young feel like their environmental ethics are an appropriate topic for discussion in the ward house, where Mormon congregations meet on Sundays. "I certainly realize that ... there is a diversity of opinion among my fellow Latter-day Saints," says Cox, "and I certainly don't ever want to go preach anything that would offend them somehow."
Young says his love for wilderness is connected to his reverence for the Creator, but adds, "If you're not part of (the conservative) majority, you have to censor yourself, or else you fragment and destroy the sense of community that is one of the most fundamental values within congregation life."
Censorship has convinced some green Mormons to leave the ward house behind. Moab resident Ken Sleight, probably best known as Ed Abbey's prototype for Seldom Seen Smith in The Monkey Wrench Gang, says he became an environmental activist when Glen Canyon was dammed, and consequently, his church attendance fell by the wayside. He says Mormons place a premium on obedience to authority, and their leaders are often ultra-conservative. "They say they give you free agency to speak out, and then they muzzle you," he says.
But some Mormons are working to change this culture of silence. George Handley is a professor at the church-owned Brigham Young University. Handley teaches environmental humanities classes and has done research on eco-theology. He is advisor to the student environmental club, and has been involved with the formation of Groundswell, a nonprofit group that is dedicated to environmental education within the Mormon community.
"I think that we need to try to create an atmosphere in Mormon culture where Mormons feel more comfortable with the idea that they have environmental responsibilities," says Handley. And he wants to clear up misperceptions about the church's anti-green reputation. "What I feel intent on fighting against is the prevailing false notion that Mormons are somehow taught not to care about the environment by church authorities."
Mormon artist Maryann Webster has gone one step further, petitioning her church leaders to take a stand. She wants the church to officially oppose the Skull Valley nuclear waste storage project, and she's written letters to the current church president (and prophet), Gordon B. Hinckley, and spoken with other church authorities.
"I really think that the only entity in the state of Utah that has the political and economic power to stop this nuclear waste dump is the LDS Church," she says. "You can't take a stance against alcohol and smoking and then be for storing nuclear waste in your neighborhood."
It wouldn't be the first time the Mormon Church has spoken out on a nuclear issue. In 1981, the church officially opposed the MX missile plan, which would have set up a nuclear missile system in the West Desert of Utah and Nevada, intended to intercept Soviet missiles headed for the East Coast. Then-church President Spencer W. Kimball released a statement opposing the construction of such deadly weapons, and also voicing concern for the project's ecological impacts. After Kimball's proclamation, and already facing opposition from Utah Gov. Scott Matheson, D, President Reagan abandoned the project.
To date, Webster has had no luck getting the church to take a stand against the Skull Valley dump, but she sees some hope in one recent chain of events. In November, Utahns were outraged by an attempt to ship nuclear waste to a facility 80 miles west of Salt Lake City owned by Envirocare of Utah (HCN, 12/8/03: Utahns beat back radioactive waste). Gov. Olene Walker, a Mormon, condemned a move in Congress to reclassify the waste so it could slip past the state's regulatory standards. Utah legislators scrambled to restore state control.
But the widespread opposition crystallized with a statement made by the LDS Church. Elder M. Russell Ballard, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, declared formal opposition to Envirocare's bid. (The Quorum and the First Presidency, which includes President Hinckley and his two counselors, are the highest church authorities.) The company backed down soon afterward.
The week before Ballard and other religious leaders condemned Envirocare's proposal, Maryann Webster visited the public affairs office at church headquarters to encourage them to come out on the issue. She says her voice was like "a grain of sand in a jar," and on this issue, enough grains were added that the jar was full.
"Some people may view (Mormon environmentalists) as being very incongruent; I don't," says writer and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams, a member of the LDS Church. For evidence, she points to Brigham Young's well-documented conservation ethic, the church's teaching that plants and animals have souls, and the genesis of the religion, when Joseph Smith received his first revelation in a grove of trees and uncovered the Book of Mormon buried deep in a hillside.
"There is a deep-seated tradition of environmental consciousness in the Mormon religion," she says. "I think the Mormon religion has always been a radical religion of idealists."
Richard Ingebretsen and his fight to drain Lake Powell fall nicely into that pattern, she adds. "I think Richard Ingebretsen is very much in the tradition of Joseph Smith," she says: "big vision, with big improbabilities, creating a constituency of believers."
Who placed the dark stain of sin upon this fair creation? Man. Who but man shall remove the foul blot, and restore all things to their primeval purity and innocence?
—Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 10:301
But Mormon doctrine leaves a lot of room for interpretation. There are as many Mormon views on the environment as there are members of the church. The proposal to drain Lake Powell is controversial even among environmentalists, and among Mormons, it reveals the wide range of ways a stewardship ethic can be interpreted.
Fifteen years after Ingebretsen explored the sandstone chambers of Glen Canyon with his Boy Scout troop, another generation of Scouts camped on the shores of Lake Powell. And Sean Noble, who now serves in a Mormon bishopric in Phoenix, Ariz., was one of them. "It was a great outdoor wonderland for us," says 33-year-old Noble, a member of the Page, Ariz.-based nonprofit Friends of Lake Powell, which formed in 1997 to oppose efforts to drain the reservoir.
As chief of staff for Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., who sits on the House Resources Committee, Noble was involved with the congressional hearings Jim Hansen held in 1997 to discredit proposals to drain the reservoir. Noble was astonished when he heard the Sierra Club endorsed the idea. "My first thought was: I can't believe a group that's supposed to love nature would want to destroy something so beautiful.
"I have no doubt that if Jesus Christ were on the earth today, he would love Lake Powell," Noble adds. "Lake Powell is the Sea of Galilee of the West." Politically, Noble's view seems to be holding fast. In November, Congress passed an Interior Department spending bill that, at the urging of Utah's congressional leaders, contained a rider prohibiting the department from even studying the possiblity of draining the reservoir.
But ecologically, Ingebretsen's vision is gaining ground.
On the final night of our trip down the Colorado River, we camp at his favorite point in Cataract Canyon, where the Colorado River usually runs into Lake Powell. To him, this site represents the battle between good and evil: "God's beauty and man's destruction meet at one point," he says.
But now, after five years of drought, Lake Powell is disappearing — even with the dam still in place. The reservoir is at half its capacity, and Ingebretsen's favorite spot has been purged. On the canyon walls we can see the telltale white bathtub ring, marking the lake's high-water mark, but the river runs quickly by the golden sandstone cliffs.
In the morning, we stop to hike up Dark Canyon, and the entrance is clogged with a 20-foot slug of sediment left by the receding reservoir. We walk in between walls of silt in a muddy channel gouged out by a recent flash flood. At the top of the canyon, the sediment has been washed clear, and a waterfall cascades into a series of pools. We explore the edges of this Glen Canyon offshoot and jump into the pools.
Back on the river, we ride through the last rapids before the canyon opens to Lake Powell and Hite Marina. These rapids have been buried under reservoir water for decades. Ingebretsen marvels at the things the drought has returned. "It's like watching a resurrection," he says.
It occurs to me that Ingebretsen and Peterson's daunting mission — restoring river ecosystems and a sense of responsibility for the earth, in the land of the Saints — might not be so far-fetched after all. "Mormons are environmentalists — they just don't know it," says Ingebretsen. "They just need to be shown the way."
Rosemary Winters writes from Salt Lake City, Utah.
The following sidebar article accompanies this story:
- Mormonism 101: A primer for gentiles
Mormons for Equality and Social Justice www.mesj.org
Glen Canyon Institute www.glencanyon.org, 801-363-4450
Friends of Lake Powell www.lakepowell.org, 928-645-0229
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance www.suwa.org, 801-486-3161
George Handley organizer of "Our Stewardship: LDS Perspectives on Nature," a BYU symposium scheduled for February, 801-422-7151, [email protected].
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Thursday, 15 May 2014 10:31 AM EDT
SANAA, Yemen — Fierce fighting between soldiers and al-Qaida militants in southern Yemen killed at least 42 people Wednesday, as families fled past destroyed homes, burning cars and streets littered with corpses, witnesses and officials said.
The fighting in the town of Azzan in Shabwa province comes amid an ongoing army offensive against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen's local branch of the terror group that the U.S. considers the world's most dangerous.
Al-Qaida militants tried to retake the town in a dawn attack as government warplanes and naval forces bombed militants hiding in homes, officials said. Soldiers battled militants for hours in street-to-street clashes.
Maj. Gen. Ahmed Seif al-Yafie said that the fighting killed at least 30, including six of the local leaders of the terror group. He did not offer casualty figures for government forces.
Yemeni security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to brief journalists, said the clashes killed at least 12 government troops.
Al-Yafie also said al-Qaida militants used child soldiers in the fighting, without elaborating.
The military warned residents by loudspeaker to either leave the town or not to provide shelter to militants during the fighting.
Mahmoud al-Ayashi, a resident who fled the town with his family, said that the bombardment from the two sides turned the town into an inferno.
"This town has seen so many battles before but this is the worst," he said. "I saw cars on fire, bodies in the streets, including those in military uniform."
Al-Ayashi said he saw whole families packing belongings into their cars to flee.
Al-Qaida fighters have been retreating from areas they held in the face of the southern offensive, which has focused mostly on the provinces of Shabwa and Marib, east of the capital, Sanaa.
The Defense Ministry said dozens of suspected militants have been killed or captured over the past three weeks. Yemeni troops and allied tribal fighters have seized a string of al-Qaida-held areas along a 60-mile (100-kilometer) stretch of highway snaking through the rugged desert mountains of the south, starting from the Mahfad region.
In an apparent retaliatory attack Wednesday, a senior intelligence official in the southern city of Mukalla was gunned down in front of his house in a drive-by shooting, officials said.
In Sanaa, security forces and anti-terrorism forces stormed a house and arrested dozens of suspects amid beefed-up security measures in the capital.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is blamed for a number of unsuccessful bomb plots aimed at Americans, including an attempt to bring down a U.S.-bound airliner with explosives hidden in the bomber's underwear and a second plot to send mail bombs hidden in the toner cartridges on planes headed to the U.S.
It overran territory in Yemen's south in 2011. Yemen's army, supported by U.S. military experts and drone strikes, has pushed them back, but clashes and al-Qaida attacks in Yemen persist.
The U.S. Embassy in Sanaa shut down its premises last week as a precaution against possible retaliatory attacks by militants. On April 24, two officers at the U.S. Embassy getting haircuts at a Sanaa barbershop killed two suspected al-Qaida gunmen. The New York Times has reported that the Americans were a CIA officer and a lieutenant colonel with the elite Joint Special Operations Command.
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[200 U.S. 425, 426] For brevity, the plaintiff in error will be hereafter referred to as the bank and the defendant in error as the receiver.
The receiver commenced this action against the bank in the circuit court of the United States for the northern district of Illinois. The object of the action was to recover from the bank, as the owner of 274 shares of preferred stock in the Minnesota Thresher Manufacturing Company, the amount of an assessment of $18 per share, levied upon said stock for the payment of the debts of the thresher company. A demurrer to an amended declaration having been overruled, and the bank electing not to plead further, judgment was entered for the receiver, and, on account of constitutional questions raised by the demurrer, the case was brought directly to this court.
The averments of the amended declaration may be summarized as follows: In May, 1884, the Northwestern Manufacturing & Car Company was a corporation engaged in the manufacturing business at Stillwater, Minnesota. At the date mentioned the car company owed a large amount which it was unable to pay, among which was a sum due to the bank for money lent. In that month a receiver was appointed for the car company by a court of the state of Minnesota having jurisdiction. Some time afterwards, in November, 1884, the bank with other creditors, and some of the stockholders of the car company, organized, under the laws of Minnesota, a new corporation, styled the Minnesota Thresher Manufacturing Company. The articles of incorporation of the new company provided 'that the objects for which said corporation was formed were the purchase of the capital stock, evidences of indebtedness issued by and the assets of the Northwestern Manufacturing & Car Company, a corporation existing under the laws of the state of Minnesota, or any portion of said capital stock, evidences of indebtedness or assets, and the manufacture and sale of steam engines of all kinds, farm implements and machinery of all kinds, and the manufacture and [200 U.S. 425, 427] sale of all articles, implements, and machinery of which wood and iron or either of them form the principal component parts, and the manufacture of the materials therein used.'
The thresher company exchanged its preferred stock at par for the debts of the car company and issued common stock in exchange for the preferred stock of the car company. Subsequently, at a judicial sale, the new company acquired all the assets of the car company, and paid for the same with the claims which it had acquired for issuing its preferred stock as above stated. The stock held by the bank upon which the assessment was sought to be enforced was alleged to have been acquired by the bank in the manner above stated; that is, by an exchange of its claim against the car company for the preferred stock of the new corporation. The declaration alleged that at the time of the acquisition of the stock by the bank, as above stated, under the Constitution and laws of Minnesota, there was a double liability imposed upon the stockholders to pay the debts of the corporation in the event of its insolvency.
After the organization of the thresher company and the purchase of the assets of the car company, as above stated, the thresher company carried on the manufacturing business authorized by its charter. In 1901 it became insolvent. A creditor having sued and obtained judgment, and an execution having been issued and returned unsatisfied, the creditor procured, under the provisions of chapter 76 of the General Statutes of Minnesota and the amendments thereto, the appointment of a receiver of the property of the thresher company, who duly qualified and entered upon the discharge of his duties. In the proceeding in which the receiver was appointed, creditors exhibited claims and demands against the thresher company, aggregating $443,752.17, but no property or assets of the corporation existed available to pay this indebtedness or any portion thereof.
Thereafter, upon petition of the receiver, pursuant to the provisions of chapter 272 of the General Laws of Minnesota [200 U.S. 425, 428] for 1899, copied in the margin, steps were taken to provide a fund for the payment of the debts of the corporation, by enforcing contribution from its stockholders upon the double liability alleged to result from the ownership of its stock. The bank did not appear in the proceeding.
General Laws of Minnesota for 1899
Chapter 272.
As stated at the outset, the bank demurred to the amended declaration, and, on the demurrer being overruled, stood upon the demurrer, and judgment was entered against it as prayed for. The grounds upon which the amended declaration was demurred to were as follows:
Messrs. Lester H. Strawn, Laurence Arnold Tanzer, and Winston, Payne, & Strawn for plaintiff in error. [200 U.S. 425, 432] Messrs. C. A. Severance, Frank B. Kellogg, Robert E. Olds, and J. H. Chandler for defendant in error. [200 U.S. 425, 433]
Mr. Justice White, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court:
The questions principally discussed at bar relate to the alleged repugnancy to the Constitution of the United States of the Minnesota law of 1899, by virtue of which the receiver [200 U.S. 425, 434] asserted his power and authority to sue in a court of another jurisdiction than that of Minnesota to enforce the assessment made by the court of Minnesota on the stockholders of the thresher company. But antecedent to that question we must consider and dispose of the propositions arising from the tenth ground of the demurrer; that is, that under the averments of the bill there was no liability on the bank as the facts alleged from which it is asserted the liability arose showed that the act of the bank in subscribing to the stock was ultra vires and prohibited by the provisions of the national banking act. We say this is antecedent because, if from the averments of the declaration, aside from the validity or invalidity of the act of 1899, there could be no liability on the bank to pay the assessment, it will be unnecessary to consider whether the Minnesota statute added such conditions to the obligation resulting from the stock subscription at the time it was made as to cause the statute to be repugnant to the contract or any other clause of the Constitution of the United States.
At the time the bank took the stock in the thresher company it was provided in 3 of article 10 of the Constitution of Minnesota as follows: 'Each stockholder in any corporation (excepting those organized for the purpose of carrying on any kind of manufacturing or mechanical business) shall be liable to the amount of stock held or owned by him.'
If the thresher company was organized solely for manufacturing purposes, it is of course apparent that under this provision of the Minnesota Constitution the stockholders of the company would not be liable for its debts. Senour Mfg. Co. v. Church Paint & Mfg. Co. 81 Minn. 294, 84 N. W. 109. It has, however, been decided by the supreme court of Minnesota that unless it unquestionably appears that a Minnesota corporation claiming to be a manufacturing corporation was organized for the exclusive purpose of engaging in manufacturing and such incidental business as might be reasonably necessary for effecting that purpose, the exception in the Minnesota Constitution to which reference has been made would not apply, [200 U.S. 425, 435] and the double liability would result. State ex rel. Clapp v. Minnesota Thresher Mfg. Co. 40 Minn. 213, 3 L. R. A. 510, 41 N. W. 1020; Merchants' Nat. Bank v. Minnesota Thresher Mfg. Co. 90 Minn. 144, 95 N. W. 767. These cases, it is to be observed, referred to the very act of incorporation, upon which the liability of the bank, if at all, must rest. It clearly appears, from the comments of the supreme court of Minnesota upon the charter, that in the articles of association the thresher company was declared to be organized under the law of Minnesota relating to manufacturing corporations as a class exempt from double liability, and that the motives of the incorporators were to obtain immunity from the double liability. The court, however, held that the mere law under which the corporation was organized, and the motive therefor, would not suffice to bring the incorporators within the control of the exemption accorded by the constitutional provision if, from the articles of association, it did not clearly appear that the corporation was confined solely to a manufacturing business and its incidents. The doctrine of the court was thus clearly stated (90 Minn. p. 147, 95 N. W. p. 768):
And further along in the opinion the declaration was reiterated (p. 148, N. W. p. 768) that the intention of the corporators could not be ascertained by reference to matters not appearing on the face of the articles of association, and that the articles were the [200 U.S. 425, 436] sole criterion as to the purpose for which a corporation was formed; 'that is, for ascertaining the intention of the associates.' Applying this rule to the articles of association of the thresher company, the court found that the acquisition of the stock, etc., of the car company was a business independently to be engaged in, and was not incidental to that of manufacturing, and, hence, that the corporation was not within the exception embodied in the constitutional provision imposing a double liability upon stockholders.
Now, the exclusive and only ground upon which the supreme court of Minnesota, in construing the articles of association of the thresher company, held that the articles embodied a distinct business from that of manufacturing, is plainly made manifest by the opinions expressed by the court in the two cases to which we have referred. In the earlier case the court said (40 Minn. p. 223, 3 L. R. A. p. 517, 41 N. W. p. 1024):
In the latter case, after restating the rule that the face of the articles of association was the sole criterion as to the purpose for which the corporation was formed, the court said (90 Minn. p. 148, 95 N. W. p. 768):
Accepting this construction given by the supreme court of Minnesota to the articles of association, by which alone the incorporators under those articles can be taken out of the exemption accorded by the Constitution of Minnesota, it follows that the thresher company was organized to embark in the purely speculative business of buying and selling the stock and assets of an existing and insolvent corporation, with power, but without the obligation, to engage, as an independent enterprise, in a manufacturing business.
Now, the limitations upon the powers of national banks were clearly pointed out in California Nat. Bank v. Kennedy, 167 U.S. 362 , 42 L. ed. 198, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 831, where it was said (p. 366, L. ed. p. 200, Sup. Ct. Rep. p. 833):
As no authority, express or implied, has ever been conferred by the statutes of the United States upon a national bank to engage in or promote a purely speculative business or adventure, accepting the view of the articles of association by which the bank was denied the benefit of the exemption accorded by the Constitution of Minnesota, it follows that the bank had no power to engage in such business by taking stock or otherwise. The power of a national bank to engage in the character of business which the articles of association of the thresher company manfested, as defined by the supreme court of Minnesota, cannot be inferred to have been possessed by the bank as an incident of securing a present loan of money, or as a means of protecting itself from loss upon a pre-existing indebtedness. To concede that a national bank has ordinarily the right to take stock in another corporation as collateral for a present loan or as a security for a pre-existing debt does not imply that, because a national bank has lent money to a corporation, it may become an organizer and take stock in a new and speculative venture; in other words, do the very thing which the previous decisions of this court have held cannot be done.
The speculative venture, therefore, which the bank undertook, as held by the Minnesota court, when it engaged in taking the stock in the thresher company, being ultra vires, it follows, under the settled rules hitherto applied by this court, that the bank, despite the subscription, was entitled to plead its want of authority as a defense to the claim of the receiver. The doctrine on the subject was stated in De la Vergne Refrigerating Mach. Co. v. German Sav. Inst. 175 U.S. 40 , 44 L. ed. 65, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 20, where it was said (p. 59, L. ed. p. 71, Sup. Ct. Rep. p. 25): [200 U.S. 425, 440] 'The doctrine that no recovery can be had upon the contract is based upon the theory that it is for the interest of the public that corporations should not transcend the limits of their charters; that the property of stockholders should not be put to the risk of engagements which they did not undertake; that, if the contract be prohibited by statute, everyone dealing with the corporation is bound to take notice of the restrictions in its charter, whether such charter be a private act or a general law under which corporations of this class are organized.'
And, moreover, the authorities cited in the case just referred to conclusively establish that the principle which the case announced as to the power of a corporation to avail of the defense of ultra vires had been previously conclusively settled in this court. Indeed, the case arising on the record presents an obvious dilemma, which is this: If the construction of the articles of association given by the supreme court of the state of Minnesota, by which alone the double liability can be enforced, is accepted, then there was no liability because of ultra vires. If, on the other hand, we were to disregard the construction given by the supreme court of Minnesota to the articles of association, we should be constrained to the conclusion that those articles but endowed the incorporators of the thresher company with the power to carry on a manufacturing business; and, as a mere incident, to acquire for the purposes of such business the property of the car company; and it would follow that there was no double liability, by force of the exception created in the Constitution of Minnesota.
The judgment must be reversed and the case remanded with directions to sustain the demurrer and enter judgment for the bank.
Mr. Justice Harlan concurs solely upon the authority of California Nat. Bank v. Kennedy and the previous cases announcing the doctrine which was adhered to and applied in that case. [200 U.S. 425, 441]
Mr. Justice Brewer, dissenting:
I am unable to concur in the opinion and judgment in this case, and will briefly state the grounds of my dissent.
There is nothing in the organization of a national bank that puts it outside of the ordinary rules governing corporations, whether we consider the rights, obligations, or the remedies in actions by or against it. Section 5136, Rev. Stat. (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3455), prescribes the terms of its charter. It is authorized to do a banking business, and, like any other corporation, its powers are limited by the terms of the charter. A national bank may not engage in manufacturing, for its charter gives it no authority therefor. Neither can a manufacturing corporation engage in banking, and for a like reason. Neither one can engage in the business of buying and selling stocks, because authority therefor is not granted in the charter of either; but, never-theless, each has authority to take stock in another corporation as security for or in payment of a debt. It was so long since decided by this court,-First Nat. Bank v. National Exch. Bank, 92 U.S. 122 , 126-128, 23 L. ed. 679, 681, 682,-in which the question presented, as stated in the opinion of the court, announced by Mr. Chief Justice Waite, was:
And answering that question in the affirmative, it was said:
... * *
In California Nat. Bank v. Kennedy, 167 U.S. 362 , 42 L. ed. 198, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 831, the right to take stock of another corporation as collateral security was affirmed.
In the case before us the bank had a claim against the Northwestern Manufacturing & Car Company. This was in 1884. The car company was in financial trouble and had been placed in charge of a receiver appointed by a state court. The bank, in connection with other creditors of the car company, organized a new corporation-the Minnesota Thresher Manufacturing Company-to buy the entire plant of the car [200 U.S. 425, 443] company. It was so purchased and the bank surrendered its claim, taking in payment thereof preferred stock in the thresher company. The latter company carried on business until it failed, and then proceedings were had by which the defendant in error was appointed receiver and an assessment made by order of the court, which assessment is the basis of this action. Now, in accordance with the decision of this court in 92 U. S., supra, the bank had a right to surrender its claim and take stock in payment thereof. It did so, and, so far as the record shows, everything was done in good faith and in the belief that the best interests of the bank would be promoted thereby. Having thus become a stockholder in the thresher company, it was entitled to all the benefits and subject to all the liabilities which attached to ownership of the stock. The fact that the arrangement antedated the organization of the thresher company is immaterial, for, until the arrangement was carried into effect, the claim of the bank against the car company was undisturbed. To hold that a national bank may take, in satisfaction of a claim, stock in a corporation already existing, and cannot agree to take in such satisfaction stock in a corporation to be created, and which is afterwards created, and whose stock is issued to it in payment of the claim, is to create a distinction without a difference, and to sacrifice substance to form. The transaction is precisely the same as though the thresher company had been fully organized, and thereafter the bank surrendered its claim against the car company for stock in the thresher company, and that, as held in 92 U. S., is perfectly legitimate. It held that stock for nearly a score of years, its right to so hold being, so far as the record shows, unchallenged by the government or any stockholder, and enjoying during that time all the benefits and profits resulting from such holding. Finally the thresher company became embarrassed. Its creditors proceeded against it, and then for the first time is it discovered that the holding by the bank of stock in the thresher company was unauthorized and illegal, and now it repudiates its liability as stockholder, and leaves the burden of the thresher [200 U.S. 425, 444] COMPANY'S DEBTS TO BE BORNE BY THE OTHER stockholders. certainly there is little in this to appeal to the sense of justice.
The bank was not, as suggested, investing in any merely speculative business. It was not accepting stock in a corporation organized for the business of buying and selling. It was no more engaged in a speculative transaction than if it had taken a piece of real estate in satisfaction of a debt, hoping that the time would come when that real estate would be worth as much or more than the debt. The object of the organization of the thresher company, as stated in its charter, was to purchase the plant of the Northwestern Manufacturing & Car Company-that is, to buy a single property which was then in the hands of the court, and likely to be sacrificed in judicial proceedings. Clearly the creditors thought that, by acquiring title and possession of the entire plant, they could realize more than by a receiver's sale to outside parties; and at the same time, contemplating the possibilities of the future, they provided in the charter for the carrying on of a general manufacturing business. The scheme is clearly set forth in the following passage from the opinion of the supreme court of Minnesota, quoted in the opinion of this court:
There are two general purposes for which the corporation was organized, as declared by the articles,-one, the purchase of the capital stock, evidence of indebtedness, and assets of an existing corporation; and the other, the manufacture and sale of all articles, implements, and machinery made of wood and iron, or either of them, and the manufacture of the materials therein used. The first purpose does not appear to be a necessary incident to the second one. On the contrary, the corporation was authorized to buy and sell the stock, choses in action, and assets of the Northwestern Manufacturing & Car Company mentioned in the articles, without ever engaging in the business of manufacturing. The first purpose appears to be independent of the second one, for the power to buy necessarily includes the incidental power to use, collect, deal with, or sell the stock and assets of the then-existing corporation. [200 U.S. 425, 445] Nor does it fairly appear, expressly or by necessary implication, from the language of these articles, that such stock and assets were to be purchased only as a necessary incident to the declared purpose of manufacturing all articles which are made of wood and iron, or either of them.' [90 Minn. 148, 95 N. W. 767.]
Clearly the thresher company was no speculative corporation, but an ordinary and legitimate business venture. Suppose the bank had been the only creditor, is it possible that it could not have taken the whole car company's plant in satisfaction if its claim, and then held it in the hopes of being able to realize fully on the property? And if it could do so, acting alone and for its single interest, what is there in the organization of a national bank which prevents it doing the like thing in conjunction with other creditors?
Of course, as held by the supreme court of Minnesota, unless the thresher company was organized solely for the purpose of carrying on a manufacturing business, its stockholders would, under 3 of article 10 of the Constitution of Minnesota, be subject to the double liability. For if a power to engage in manufacturing exempts stockholders from double liability, no matter what other business the corporation is chartered to carry on, every corporation organizing under the Minnesota statutes would include that among its charter powers. We ordinarily accept the construction by a state supreme court of its Constitution and laws as conclusive. In this case the construction placed by the supreme Court of Minnesota upon this clause in the Constitution is so obviously right as to preclude the necessity of defense.
For these reasons, thus briefly stated, I am constrained to dissent from the opinion and judgment of the court, and am authorized to say that Mr. Justice Brown concurs in this dissent.
in an action against such stockholder, may be found. But if said assignee or receiver shall, in good faith, believe any stockholder so liable to be insolvent, or that the expense of prosecuting such action against such stockholder will be so great that it will not be of advantage to the estate and interest of creditors to prosecute the same, said assignee or receiver shall so report to said court; and shall not be required to institute or prosecute any such action unless specifically directed so to do by said court. And in such case said court shall not require said receiver to institute or maintain such action unless said court shall have reasonable cause to believe that the result of such action will be of advantage to the estate and creditors of said corporation, except as hereinafter provided.'
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Noor Children's Islamic School (NCIS)
The Sunday religious education program at Noor serves children ranging in age from four to fourteen, and meets on Sunday mornings at Noor Cultural Centre. Typically, students are grouped according to age and learn in the presence of a teacher and one or more volunteer(s).
Interweaving Qur'ān and Prophetic traditions (the Hadith traditions) into every lesson, the curriculum is anchored in four main subject areas: al-īmān (faith), al-islām (acts of worship); al-ihsān ("righteousness" or spiritually-informed living), and Islamic History.
Objective: To provide our young with a strong, academically-grounded foundation in the areas of Islamic faith, practice, ethics (including questions of social justice, gender justice, environmental responsibility, and cross-cultural and interfaith understanding, to name a few core areas), and history. The Sunday school aims to achieve this in an environment that is free of cultural bias and that allows children to develop their own unique identities as both Muslims and Canadians in a manner consistent with Noor's guiding vision.
General Topics Covered
Qur'ān & Hadīth:
- The place of the Qur'ān in the Islamic canon
- The 'occasions of revelation', and the importance of context in religious interpretation
- Valuable life lessons from the stories and parables of the Qur'ān
- Recitation and memorization of sūrahs in Arabic, with a basic comprehension of their meaning
- The spiritual meanings of the hadīth qudsī (the sacred hadīth) traditions
- The life of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and his role as an exemplar
- The history and methodology of hadīth transmission
- Islamic history and its place in the unfolding story of God's gradual revelation to humanity
- Other prophets, their revelations, and the histories of their communities
- The history of Arabia prior to the dawning of Islam
- The genesis of the main Islamic sects
- The positive roles Muslims have played in world history, and Muslim contributions to human civilization
- The histories of Muslims in North America
Faith: Al-Īmān :
- Al-Tawheed (the Oneness of God) and God's "most beautiful" attributes
- God's eternal guidance to humanity through 1)Prophets and 2)Revelations
- Angels as agents in Revelations
- Accountability in the hereafter
Practice I: Al-Islām (acts of worship) :
- Al-shahādah ('witnessing' to the faith)
- Preparation and performance of al-salat (the obligatory prayers)
- Sawm (fasting) during Ramadan, as a physical as well as spiritual exercise
- Al-zakat (purifying dues)
- Hajj (pilgrimage to the Ka'bah)
Practice II: Al-Ihsān ("righteousness" or spiritually-informed living / ethical and moral responsibility) :
- The role of all human beings as "vicegerents of God"
- The notion of worship in all of our deeds
- Respect for all of God's creation
Pedagogical Approach: Our teachers will strive to create a learning atmosphere that is inclusive, mutually respectful, and promotes pride in self as Muslim.
Program Dates and Times:
– Sundays 10:00 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. (with one snack break)
– 2019/2020 term: September 8, 2019 – June 14, 2020 (30 classes; see school calendar)
– Parents and children are asked to arrive at the regular class time (10 a.m.) on Sunday September 8 to complete registration. There will be a short information sessions for parents that day.
Registration & Fees:
– Registration is required by September 5, 2019 (see online form)
– Fees for the school year are $400 per child, payable by cheque(s) in one or two installments
- one installment – $400 due on September 8, 2019
- two installments – $200 due on September 8 2019 & post-dated cheque for $200 payable January 12 2020
- Cheques should be made out to 'Noor Cultural Centre', and can be submitted on the first day of class or mailed to Noor Cultural Centre (123 Wynford Drive, Toronto, ON, M3C 1K1)
- Please note that fees are non-refundable for missed classes
- If you need to request other payment options (e.g. monthly post-dated cheques) please contact Eiman Abou-el-Alla at email@example.com or (416) 509-1617.
Please see:


text:
Your Weekly Star Guide
By Madame Malisa
Renowned medium & psychic
Mar. 21 – Apr. 19
Now's the time to strike! You may well have the opportunity to turn your creative gifts into a source of additional income. Don't hide your talents.
Your social horizons widen when a newcomer on the scene includes you in his or her plans. Jump at the chance to have some fun!
Spend the weekend with those you care most for. Cozy domesticity and romantic interludes are featured.
Apr.20 – May 20
Love is in the air! There's a good chance you'll share close moments with a special person. This is the perfect time to express your loving feelings.
Your prospects could not be better. You may suspect that others are trying to do you dirty – they're not.
Watch for good news and weekend invitations. A phone call introduces you to new friends – who can turn into business partners.
May 21 – Jun. 20
Beware of irritability! It could make a bad situation with your loved one worse. Try to maintain peace and serenity. Uncertainty causes you distress.
An enjoyable social event is coming up. It's just what you need, so don't miss it. Let your hair down!
Good news late in the week leads to travel. It's somewhere you've always wanted to go. Best of all, someone else foots the bill!
Jun. 21 – Jul. 22
Pull out all the stops! Happiness is in the air, along with romance and plans for a wonderful party – and what a party it is!
Use your flair for the dramatic to make the occasion a memorable event. You'll certainly be the center of attention!
A gamble at work may pay off in midweek – and friends help you celebrate your well-deserved victory.
Jul. 23 – Aug. 22
Enthusiasm is boundless! You're feeling energetic and great things are in store.
You may have to sever ties with a downhearted friend who would like to rain on your parade – not a sprinkle, but a deluge! Be kind, be firm, but don't let negative thinking hold you back. You have everything under control.
A weekend drive provides a welcome change of scenery.
Aug. 23 – Sep. 22
Gambling instincts are on target! Take advantage of this time period if you feel inclined to invest, play the lottery or bingo, or become involved in a money-making scheme of some kind.
Use some discretion on the amount you play with, though.
Be assertive when someone fouls up, tries to pass the buck and includes you in the resulting calamity. Stand up for yourself!
Sep. 23 – Oct. 22
Your spirits soar! You receive good news at the beginning of the week. Take a bow – you've earned it.
What seems a minor crisis could create a major money problem if you don't make the right decisions now.
Tensions build and play havoc with your homelife, but those clouds blow away in a few days. You'll be back on track with hardly a feather ruffled in no time.
Oct. 23 – Nov. 21
Make your move! If you have been considering a change of love partners, now is the perfect time to do it. Seek the counsel of a longtime friend concerning the ways and means.
Your datebook will be crammed with weekend invitations, and you'll finally be able to use those new additions to your wardrobe.
This is a good time for taking chances!
Nov. 22 – Dec. 21
Expect some confusion! A magazine article sheds light on a subject that has been bothering you, and you finally find the courage to face this problem. There are a lot of questions but you'll find the right answers – and soon.
If a relationship has been going downhill, now may be the time to see if you want to continue with it.
Chin up! There are some great surprises coming up.
Dec. 22 – Jan. 19
Strive for teamwork! Join together with your spouse or co-workers to get projects moving ahead.
You'll feel a sense of gratitude when a loyal friend comes through for you, and saddened when one you had considered close proves to be an enemy.
Try not to let an argumentative person create turmoil in your life.
Jan. 20 – Feb. 18
Take charge! You'll have the opportunity to make crucial decisions this week, especially in money matters. Let your financial abilities come to the fore.
Expect a bumpy up and down ride in your personal life for a few days, though.
Beware of flaring temperrs! Minor disagreements within the family will blow over if you treat others' feelings with respect.
Feb. 19 – Mar. 20
Opportunity knocks! Be prepared for a unique and exciting business proposition. Your financial picture is good, but be sure you consider the long term. Invest – but not heavily!
Friday is lucky, and an unexpected windfall seems heaven sent. Why not treat that special someone to a night on the town?
The weekend holds surprises for you in a romantic setting.
Your Weekly Star Guide


text:
Monday, November 24, 2014
Quick Hits
Rather than a single topic today, let's cover a few bite-size ideas that I like, but don't deserve their own blog post.
Travel Rewards, and Return on Your Dollars
For a long time, Mrs. Done by Forty were big on cash back rewards because, hey, cash can be used for anything. Getting 1% or 2% back was simple, too: if we put $10,000 on our cards in a year, then we'd get $100 or $200 we could use on anything we wanted. Two hundred bucks is a lot better than a punch in the face, after all. Then we learned from Brad at Richmond Savers that we could try something else: we could spend that same $10,000 on a few different cards, and get, say, two free flights to Europe and sixteen free hotel nights on a trip to five different countries. (A future post is coming on this trip, which we're taking with friends this spring.)
Bottom line, we could have $200 in cash and some simplicity, or manage a few cards and get a great vacation on the cheap. The value of the flights and the hotels seems to be somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000. For us, it was an easy decision, and a bit of an eye opener. Sticking with our status quo had some serious opportunity costs. Travel rewards involve a little work, but give us a much better return on the dollars we spend.
Spending Rate, not Savings Rate
I woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks ago and wrote down those words: spending rate, not savings rate. It seemed a lot more profound at the time, but my basic point was that savings rate doesn't account for all the good things you might be doing with your money (like paying down your student loans, or, if you're so inclined, paying down your mortgage). But, typically, we financial bloggers focus on someone's savings rate. That means that a person who's putting 50% of her monthly income towards debts might not initially look that impressive, compared to some guy who's renting and is debt free, but has a 12% savings rate. In my opinion, the woman putting 50% of her income towards debt is on a much better trajectory, even if she's not saving anything at the moment. So, the savings rate metric can have some gaps.
A focus on savings rate also creates an unnecessary distinction between those of us focusing on debt repayment and those of us focusing on saving or investing. If we just assume that any dollar not being spent must be doing something good (invested, put towards savings, an emergency fund, paying down debts, or going towards a mortgage) then all we really need to know is someone's spending rate. It gives a simpler, fuller picture.
Remember, this Friday is Buy Nothing Day
This Friday, instead of leaving the company of your loved ones to stand in the cold and then compete, perhaps physically, with your fellow man for the chance to own another flat screen television, I'd ask that you avoid the apex of consumerism and just spend the day without buying anything. I'd first heard of Buy Nothing Day from Adbusters (a rag so hilariously liberal and anti-corporation that I used to love in my twenties, but now cannot take seriously). But the day seems to have taken hold internationally. This idea of buying nothing, admittedly, can be hard. You might need to put gas in your car (though that's a good reason to use a bike, walk, or, hey, just stay in). You might need sugar for cookies you're baking (though you could also engage in the heartwarming practice of borrowing a cup from your neighbor). Anyway, I don't want to judge those who are going to brave the lines this Friday. If that's your thing, do what you do. But if you're on the fence this Thanksgiving, the Done by Forty household invites you to join us in the simple act of buying nothing.
Have a great week, and thanks for being a reader.
*Photo is from Brave New Films at Flickr Creative Commons.
56 comments:
Great post! I love the idea of the spending rate vs the savings rate. This might be a good idea for a post on my own blog at some point (if you don't mind). I hope you enjoy your non-spending day on Friday :) I won't be spending money that day either!ReplyDeleteReplies
I wouldn't mind at all, Kayla. Please write about it and email me the link when you do. Would love to hear your thoughts.Delete
That savings rate vs. spending rate sounds awesome! The shift of the logic goes so well with Cait's post today over at Blonde on a Budget.ReplyDelete
I love the idea of getting the flights for free with a little more work - I'd likely make a spreadsheet out of it ;)Replies
I hadn't seen that post but will have to check it out. I'm always scared to try out a new blog as I might like it, and then my blog roll would grow even larger. I have a dilemma of not being able to keep up with the blogs I already love, and still knowing there are tons out there that are very good.Delete
I need a system.
Travel hacking has been great for us, and we've seen more of the world since starting, even though it's new to us. Of course, it does not pay for the incidentals (restaurants, cabs, trains, booze) so our overall spending goes up as a result. Kind of a sneaky extra cost, but at least we get to see the world.
Nice work on the free weekend trip! I agree on the travel rewards. I'd rather get free flights and vacations at this point! It's just a matter of signing up for the right ones. I also really like the idea of focusing on a spending rate instead. We're not planning on going out this Friday. I don't like crazy crowds. =)ReplyDeleteReplies
Hi Erin!Delete
Yeah, the crowds alone are enough to deter me on Friday. It's also nice to be consciously choosing to not buy something, rather than just avoiding the madness of the malls, too.
Re: travel rewards, Brad has been good at directing us toward the right cards for our trips. He gives good, tailor made advice.
No problem with spend nothing day, well does that mean I need to skip my morning cup of coffee....the heck with spending nothing day then! I joke, maybe I'll brew a cup for the road for this special occasion.ReplyDeleteReplies
Careful mentioning that you buy coffee here in the personal finance blogosphere. That's grounds for a flogging.Delete
I've come to terms with buying coffee, I spend $20 a week for coffee and lunch in downtown Chicago, most people spend that each day. But you are right pf blogger police are everywhere have to be careful.Delete
$20 a week?!Delete
Somebody, quick, get him! Throw him in the stocks!
I'm all for the buy nothing day!!! Yay for a nice weekend away (been to Arizona but never Tuscon) and utilizing your travel rewards for a fabu trip!ReplyDeleteReplies
Yay! We've got someone else buying nothing with us. :) Thanks, Tonya.Delete
OK I'm having a senior moment here. How do you put the same $10,000 on more than one card. Do you just pay off one credit card with another? At what point do you actually pay the balance off? You can tell I'm a novice, can't you?!ReplyDeleteReplies
Hi Kathy! Not a dumb question at all.Delete
So, certain cards will have sign up bonuses: for example, spend $2,000 in the first three months of opening the card, and get 40,000 airline miles, or something like that. After finishing one of these "bonus" periods, we just open a new card and try to get that new "bonus".
We use the credit card like we would use a debit card to buy our groceries, gas, internet bill, date nights, etc.: just all our "normal" spending each month. We pay off the balance every month (and in my case, every week just to stay on top of it): and NEVER carry a balance. If you put $800 or so on the card each month, that's almost $10,000 in a year...so that's the number I picked for the example.
I definitely wouldn't advocate carrying a balance on a credit card, especially not for something like rewards. Not worth the debt.
But if you're debt free and spend on plastic (e.g. - we used to only use debit), you can get some nice perks.
Contact Brad at Richmond Savers if you want to learn more about travel hacking.
Glad you had a good visit to Tucson. Do anything cool while there?ReplyDelete
I've always preferred to think of our habits as a spending rate instead of a savings rate. We know what we aim to spend, and everything above and beyond (which we never know how much it'll be due to variable income) that gets saved/invested.
But for some, Spending/Savings rate is sometimes a matter of semantics since a lot of folks around the PF blogosphere consider debt-paydown a form of savings.Replies
Nothing too exciting in Tucson, but we made our own fun, as usual. We went to a good happy hour at Downtown Kitchen & Coctails with some surprisingly awesome fish tacos and fancy drinks. Then we headed over to the Hotel Congress just to check out the old-timeyness of the place. We stumbled over to 4th from there, to a little dive, Che's.Delete
Also had some Monkey Burger, which was yummy. Lots of food and drink related stuff, I'm realizing. :)
Good point about the savings/spending semantics -- I do think a lot of people figure in the debt repayment as a form of savings.
Friday buy nothing day. I love it you are so right. I no longer participate in Black Friday Madness. Oh and its also catch up on sleep day and watch movies on Netflix day too.ReplyDeleteReplies
Yes! Netflix Day for the win!Delete
Have a great Thanksgiving, petrish!
My parents went to Tucson last year and loved it--so glad you had a nice little trip! Out of curiosity, which travel rewards credit card are you using (apologies if you told us somewhere and I missed it!)? We have the Starwood Preferred Guest AmEx and it's been a great way to always have free hotel stays.ReplyDelete
I'm 100% with you on Buy Nothing Friday. There are zero appealing things about Black Friday (to me anyway). Crowds? Shopping? Supposed "deals"? Sounds awful.
Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!Replies
So, for the trip to Europe we used two cards, each (one for my wife, one for me): the Chase United card (got the 50,000 mile bonus instead of the regular 30,000 bonus) and the Club Carlson card for the hotels. Brad wrote about the hack here:Delete
We hacked the Starwood hotel earlier and got eight nights in Buenos Aires /Montevideo last year...it's a great card. Though once we used up the 'bonus' points we didn't want to keep the card, due to the annual fee.
You have a great Thanksgiving, too, Mrs. Frugalwoods!
LOVE the spending rate thing, and this is something that occurred to me recently too!!! And love the Buy Nothing Day idea. We're in. :-) Have an awesome Thanksgiving, my friend!ReplyDeleteReplies
You too, Laurie! I think the spending rate idea was probably the one that could have stood on its own as a post...maybe I'll go to that well again if I come up with a new angle.Delete
Glad we'll be buying nothing together. Happy Thanksgiving, friend!
I love the idea of "Buy Nothing Day" - I had never heard of that before, but it is great!ReplyDeleteReplies
It is a cool idea, isn't it, Mrs SSC? I especially like the fact that people are working towards something (intentional non-spending) rather than away from something (the crowds and craziness of Black Friday). It's the same action, but feels a bit different.Delete
I always thought why nobody focused on the spending rate, as it is a way to gage how the average person is managing all the marketing noise. The difference between the two rates, is that if you have a low spending rate, but never invest, that person will not get the big returns. If you have a decent savings rate, and you invest it will be better.ReplyDeleteReplies
That's a good observation: saving and investing are definitely different things. But I suppose that distinction still exists even if you're focusing on "savings rate": people still might be putting it in a savings account rather than investing.Delete
Travel hacking can be pretty awesome. I wish I got in on it earlier...I used to be all about cash back too because I thought that the points were pretty hard to redeem with their exaggerated value and blackout dates, etc. But if you know how to play the game, it can be a big bonus. Too bad I got in on it kind of late, and now with a little one, I don't think I'll be traveling too much. As for Black Friday, I still can't understand how we can be "thankful" for all the things we have one day and the next day go out and buy things we don't need. The only thing I might buy is a 10% off Target gift card since I go there all the time. I'll buy it online of course to avoid the crowds.ReplyDeleteReplies
Target is my weakness. They package their brand in a way where I just feel at home in their stores, and actually enjoy my shopping experience there. I've learned that it's a blind spot for me, and try to go there only if I have a list in hand.Delete
I hear you on the traveling with children front. Mrs. DB40 and I predict travel will more or less stop (or at least change dramatically) once a little one comes along. We'd like to visit 6 of 7 continents prior to making a baby, but we're running out of time. :)
How many continents have to gone to so far?Delete
Just three: North and South America, and Europe. We are going to Europe again this May, so we're not really being efficient with our choices, are we? :)Delete
I think our next trip is going to be Asia or Africa though (2016, I think). Beyond that, it's hard for us to plan that far out.
But the kids are 3 or 4 years away I think so we also have some time. We might cheat and try to do one of those around-the-world trips I hear about, and get two or three birds with one stone.
Normally, I'd be with you on the buy nothing day, but my favorite meal planning site is having 50% off yearly subscriptions on Friday only (plantoeat.com). I am however, only going to click a few things and never leave my house... No way am I going anywhere near a shopping area on Friday (or pretty much until after the new year)ReplyDeleteReplies
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a reason to avoid a good deal just on principle. I think it's a cool idea, but no need to cut off your nose to spite your face. Hope you get some good deals!Delete
I love Buy Nothing Day! Also, your spending rate idea could definitely use some expansion. I'd love to see a full-blown post about it some day! Thanks for the insights. Cheers, and Happy Thanksgiving!ReplyDeleteReplies
Thanks, MSquared. I might just go to that well again.Delete
Have a Happy Thanksgiving, too. You guys cooking a bird?
Yup! This one: http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/ipa-brined-turkeyDelete
It's already brining now! I added garlic too! Hope you guys have a great one!
That sounds great. Brining poultry is an extra step, but a very good one to take. :)Delete
Great post DB40, I like the bite-sized concept - but hopefully you all have something a little more substantial to enjoy for Thanksgiving!ReplyDelete
Occasionally I come across a term or perspective that really changes my thinking, and this spending rate concept is one of them. I had heard others mention before that you could consider debt pay down a form of savings, which I was never 100% convinced of, but when you flip it around and focus on the spending rate I think it tells a much clearer story! I think you should definitely elaborate on this one day.
I did also get pretty excited for about half a second when thinking about applying this concept to my own finances, because so much will be going to my mortgage - but then of course realised that most of this is interest, which is well and truly 'spending' :(
Awesome to hear about your trip away, hope you keep doing these things and make plenty of time for some fun with Mrs DB40, and hope you have a great Thanksgiving!Replies
That point about debt payment not really seeming like savings is the crux of what I was trying to write about. Because it's not really savings...but the thing it has in common with saving is: it's not spending.Delete
Thanks for the well wishes, Jason, and I hope you have a great week as well. Does Australia have a form of Thanksgiving?
Unfortunately no real form of Thanksgiving here, which is a shame because my wife and I love it, along with most other things about the US. We occasionally try to do our own mini version ourselves, but unfortunately she's a little unwell at the moment, so this year will be very quiet... hopefully we'll make up for it at Christmas time :)Delete
We had to skip Thanksgiving last year as we were in Uruguay and they had nothing we needed to put together a little dinner (and the place we were staying in didn't have an oven). We ended up up having a chicken dinner with fried potatoes at a restaurant...not exactly Thanksgiving, but close!Delete
Here's to Christmas, too! It's right around the corner.
I'm glad you guys had a good time in Tuscon!! I'm still going to spend on Friday, but I'm not a fan of places opening Thursday. I've worked retail before where they made me work Thanksgiving... it sucks and totally flies in the face of what the holiday is all about. I don't go early Friday am either... the "leftovers" in the afternoon/evening are pretty awesome and just fine by me!ReplyDeleteReplies
I think it's kind of crappy to make employees work on Thanksgiving, but that seems to be the way things are going now. I figure not buying on the holiday is a small (and probably ineffective) way of telling the companies you disagree with that policy.Delete
And agreed with the afternoon/evening leftovers. That's the best time!
I am torn by the whole churning thing. logically i think i can do it. at the same time i guess having debt makes me churning averse at the moment. however, i just signed up for fidelity's cash-back card so i can put part of it in my Roth IRA. I guess I just need to read more and have a plan!ReplyDeleteReplies
Hi Jason,Delete
I definitely wasn't clear with this in the post, but we never, ever carry a balance on our credit cards. We essentially treat them like debit cards, paying off the balance every WEEK, not even every month.
Because credit cards charge merchants much higher rates, the rewards are far and away better than anything you'd see on a debit card, especially with recent legislation.
The 2% Fidelity card is a great example of what I was talking about in the post. 2% back is nothing to sneeze at, certainly: if you put $800 on your card each month (and pay it off continually), you'll spend about $10k in a year and get about $200 back in cash rewards.
But, I think you can do a lot better with other approaches (provided you want to travel).
I agree with you about the Fidelity card and we do travel quite a bit.My fear is that because I already have consumer debt that churning shouldn't be a priority right now. I think i want to pay off that debt initially and then start dipping my toe into the churner way of doing things, which I really like the idea of.....Delete
I'd agree with that approach. If you're in the middle of paying off your consumer debt, it's best not to muddy the waters.Delete
For what it's worth, we didn't start until we'd paid off our student loans and credit card debt, either.
I agree with your points about travel hacking. It does take some planning, but it is definitely worth it. And good job on the Tucson trip!ReplyDelete
I am happy to participate in Buy Nothing Day on Friday. I need to work and had to pay for more expensive daycare that day because my regular daycare is closed =/Replies
Bummer about the daycare, but I love that you'll be working that day. I'm sure you'll net enough to cover the daycare and come out ahead.Delete
I need to thank you, too, as you were the reason we did our very first travel hack: the Starwood Amex card got us 8 nights in Buenos Aires and Montevideo for free (in swanky places, too!). Thanks, Holly!
I can't believe how quickly the black friday mania has spread over here in the UK! Last year it wasn't all that bad, this year... the same scenes of raging hoardes of zombified consumers queuing at midnight and fighting each other over a flatscreen TV that is probably broken by the time they get it home after said fight! So ridiculous!ReplyDelete
Travel Hacking: Oh man... you guys are so lucky! We just don't have those sort of rewards over here.
Spending rate: Totally with you on that one. Whilst you can't use the whole "years till retirement" calculation based on the spending rate until you are debt free, ultimately it is what you spend which determines the final number you need to hit, so that is definitely what you should focus on. The final number for me is really more important, and easy to focus on in terms of a tangible goal and progress made towards, rather than taking a percentage figure and then perhaps turning that into a years till retirement number, which is far more abstract.
Cheers and hope you had a great thanksgiving! :)Replies
I remember seeing a Black Friday ad in Ecuador last year when I was there around Thanksgiving, and being really sad about it. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any shopping mania. Sorry to hear it's been adopted in the UK.
I remembered hearing that travel hacking was uniquely the US's thing. Though if we're spreading our consumerism around...maybe that will make its way across the pond, too.
Three incredible relevant topics to me right now - thanks!ReplyDelete
1) I currently go the simple route. I have all my credit card spending on a card which rewards me avios points, which probably equates to about 1-2p per £1 spent. I need to have a look at this and try to benefit from more introductory offers, especially given that my credit score is pretty good.
2) Good discussion. Tomorrow, we are launching the moneystepper's 2015 savings challenge (I'll be in touch shortly to try to get you involved!!) and in this we measure our "savings rate" as our goal. However "savings rate" is calculated as any money put towards savings, pensions, investments, etc AND any money that is put towards the capital part of outstanding debt. Therefore, this is effectively the same as 1-spending rate as you suggest.
3) Success. On Friday, I went to the gym and worked. My only interaction with BlackFriday was to display my disgust at the videos of people fighting over a "deal" on a wide-screen TV in the supermarkets. Horrible stuff!
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend! Speak soon.
Hi Moneystepper!Delete
We have some British Airway Avios from a hack as well. I think we got 50,000 as a bonus for spending something like $2,500 in the first three months. So for at least the intro period, it's a pretty good ratio of dollars spent to rewards gained.
Will look forward to the savings challenge. Agreed that others probably already have the concept in mind, just in different formats of "savings".
Sorry to hear about the TV stuff on Black Friday. Deals make us do crazy things.
Great, succinct post! I hadn't heard of Buy Nothing today and love the concept. I'm sure the retail world would have a stroke if enough of us held out on holiday shopping one year.ReplyDelete
I did go out and buy things on Friday. Here in SLC, the estate sales traditionally start on Fridays and one company held out and opened up a sale despite it being black Friday, so we gladly purchased some neat items that may have very well been purchased on a black Friday in 1955.
Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!Replies
Hi Emily! We had a fun Thanksgiving, full of carbs and board games. How was yours?Delete
I think you get a pass on Buy Nothing Day if you're buying cool, used items, don't you? At least there's no environmental impact then.
I might have missed the memo, but is Mrs. DbF back for good?? If so - hooray!! And so glad to hear both of you had quality time together. :) I agree about Buy Nothing Friday, and was a little disappointed to see a lot more stores open on Thanksgiving day. Where are our priorities? :(ReplyDeleteReplies
Hi, Anna! Yes, Mrs. DB40 is back, and it is glorious.Delete
It's weird seeing how retail stores are basically 24x7x365 now. Nothing's sacred. I can't even blame the stores: they're meeting the consumers' demand, and thus are reactionary. We're the root cause.


text:
Alan Demattia
Alan DeMattia joined the horn section of The Cleveland Orchestra in 1984, after serving as principal horn of the Canton (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra and principal horn of the Ohio Chamber Orchestra. Mr. DeMattia earned a bachelor of music education degree as a horn major at Kent State University and a master of music degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music. His major teachers were Roland Gamble, Samuel Gindin, and Richard Solis.
Mr. DeMattia is currently on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has been an instructor at music camps internationally, and he served as a clinician at the 34th International Horn Symposium of the International Horn Society, held in Lahti, Finland. Joined by his colleagues from the horn section of The Cleveland Orchestra, he appeared at the 40th International Horn Symposium in Denver in July 2008. Mr. DeMattia is a former member of the New Cleveland Chamber Players, Cleveland Lyric Brass, and the Cleveland Octet.


text:
John C. Quillan
Remote control library.
GNU/Linux, MS Windows, and Solaris.
Lego::RCX.pm is basically a perl library for remote control of the RCX via the IR tower. It takes over the IR tower and sends commands that the standard firmware can interpret and act upon. If you already have perl installed (and who doesn't?) this is a very quick and simple way to control your robot. No installation is necessary: merely copy the files into the correct library directories, and add "use RCX.pm" to the top of your perl script. I'm not sure if this has been done yet, but it would make a ridiculously easy way to interface a robot with a CGI script.


text:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – As the happy hour crowd poured in on a recent weeknight, the kitchen and bar staff at Hock Farm restaurant scrambled to meet the incoming orders.
One used her hands to toss locally grown Romaine hearts with anchovy dressing in a metal bowl, while another, facing diners from behind a marble countertop, used his fingers to sprinkle cojita cheese and red onion into chicken tacos.
A gloveless bartender wedged an orange slice on the edge of a white wine spritzer.
All of them were breaking a state law that took effect in January, but won't be enforced until July.
California is a straggler in banning bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat food. A state-by-state review of food codes shows 41 other states have a version of the legislation signed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown.
In all these states, chefs and bartenders must keep bare hands off food going straight to the plate or the drink glass, from the rice in a sushi roll to the mint in a mojito. Instead, they must use utensils or gloves. Hock Farm owner Randy Paragary says bringing this rule to California disrupts well-established hand-washing routines, generates unnecessary waste and restricts his employees' in their craft.
Hearing restaurant owners echo his concerns about the law's inflexibility, state legislators are considering a reversal before inspectors begin slapping fines on eateries this summer.
Since 1993, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended a hands off approach in restaurants and bars as a staple of basic hygiene. Even with good hand-washing, it takes only a few norovirus particles — the most common cause of foodborne illness — to infect diners, the FDA says.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that workers touching food provided the most common transmission pathway for food-originated norovirus outbreaks between 2001 and 2008, the most recent comprehensive review of data available.
"It's an additional barrier to help protect the food," said Liza Frias, environmental health manager for the city of Pasadena and chairwoman of California's Retail Food Safety Coalition, which represents regulators and business groups. "You have everyday consumers who are looking for glove use."
The other barriers, experts say, are keeping sick workers out of the kitchen and ensuring strong hand-washing.
Major chain restaurants are used to gloves and generally shrug at this kind of regulation. The California Restaurant Association had opposed the bill until last year, when it recognized the widespread practice wasn't going away.
To higher-end restaurants such as Hock Farm, the mandate came as an irritating surprise. Sacramento's dining scene emphasizes using fresh, locally grown food as part of the farm-to-fork movement. And Paragary, the Hock Farm owner, says gloves would undermine the transparent kitchen-to-plate step his customers observe.
"You'll feel like there's a doctor back there preparing your food," he said.
Another Sacramento restaurateur, Randall Selland, calls the new law an unnecessary infringement on highly regarded establishments, saying it's better suited for fast food and production-line restaurants.
"If people get sick at my restaurant, they are going to stop coming," Selland said. "You have got to give restaurants some trust."
Many of the states with the bare-hand ban, and even the FDA model code, allow for exceptions. That discretion lies with local health agencies in California, and the potential for inconsistencies and added work for regulators and businesses alike has been controversial.
Food codes in Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon and Wyoming encourage minimal contact but do not ban bare-hand contact outright. Lawmakers in South Carolina are considering a ban this year, while Tennessee plans to implement one by 2015.
Ravin Patel, executive chef at Ella near the Capitol, said he didn't notice much difference in kitchen procedures after moving in 2009 to California from New York, which has prohibited bare-hand contact since 1992.
But that doesn't mean the kitchen staffs in New York restaurants are always wearing gloves.
"It just becomes common practice that you don't touch food as much," said Patel, adding that New York restaurateurs found ways around the requirement. "When the health inspector comes, you slap on a bunch of gloves."
Similarly, many New York bartenders still work barehanded, dropping limes into gin-and-tonics but keeping a pair of tongs handy for visits by inspectors, said Aaron Smith, executive director of the U.S. Bartenders' Guild.
Smith also is managing director of the bar 15 Romolo in San Francisco. He says law-abiding employees cannot find an easy work-around for some mixology steps, such as fusing mints and herbs into his bar's signature, pricey drinks.
"They are trying to get expressive oil into the flavor and smell of the cocktail, and you are lacing that with the smell of latex and powder" using gloves, Smith said.
A petition by bartenders calling for an exemption from the "disposable glove law" gathered 11,000 signatures and caught the attention of state Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Sacramento.
The new law arose last year from the Assembly Health Committee, which Pan chairs. He's now seeking a do-over.
Pan, a pediatrician, said he and other lawmakers thought some eateries, such as sushi restaurants, could easily get an exception provided they showed good hygiene. But once the law took effect, it became apparent that some local inspection agencies were applying a blanket approach.
"It's not about whether you wear gloves or not," Pan said. "It's about how clean the surfaces (touching food) are. We need to have the conversation go back to, 'This is about food safety.'"
Even gloves can spread contamination if they are not changed regularly, said Don Schaffner, a food scientist at Rutgers University.
In February, Pan introduced AB2130, which seeks to repeal the new regulation and revisit the entire issue, perhaps to forge a compromise. Whatever that bill's fate, public health experts say getting businesses on board with the spirit and purpose of food safety regulations is just as important as passing new laws.
"The bigger picture is whether businesses know what the risk factors are and how to control them," said Ben Chapman, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University who has studied restaurant hygiene. "Having a policy doesn't mean it actually works ... Prove to a patron that your people wash their hands all the time and the right way."
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