Have An Addictive Personality? You Might be a Leader

WHEN we think of the qualities we seek in visionary leaders, we think of intelligence, creativity, wisdom and charisma, but also the drive to succeed, a hunger for innovation, a willingness to challenge established ideas and practices. 

 

But in fact, the psychological profile of a compelling leader — think of tech pioneers like Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Steven P. Jobs — is also that of the compulsive risk-taker, someone with a high degree of novelty-seeking behavior.  In short, what we seek in leaders is often the same kind of personality type that is found in addicts, whether they are dependent on gambling, alcohol, sex or drugs.  

How can this be?  We typically see addicts as weak-willed losers, and chief executives and entrepreneurs are people with discipline and fortitude.  To understand this apparent contradiction we need to look under the hood of the brain, and in particular at the functions that relate to pleasure and reward. 

As a key motivator, pleasure is central to learning; if we did not find food, water and sex rewarding we would not survive and have children. Pleasure evokes neural signals that converge on a small group of interconnected brain areas called the medial forebrain pleasure circuit — tiny clumps of neurons in which the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a crucial role. 

This dopamine-using pleasure circuitry, refined over millenniums of evolution, can also be artificially activated by some, but not all, psychoactive substances that carry a risk for addiction, like cocaine, heroin, nicotine or alcohol. Our brain’s pleasure circuits are also hard-wired to be activated by unpredictable rewards:  While a roulette wheel is spinning or horses are on the track, we get a pleasure buzz even if we don’t get a payout in the end. Uncertainty itself can be rewarding — clearly a useful attribute for high-risk, high-reward business ventures. 

So why do some people become addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling or sex while others can indulge in a moderate, noncompulsive manner? One hypothesis is that addicts feel those pleasures unusually strongly and are motivated to seek them more intently. It’s reasonable, but wrong. Evidence from animal experiments and human brain scans indicates that the opposite is true:  Addicts want their pleasures more but like them less. 

We’re now starting to understand the biology behind the blunted pleasure of addicts.  From studies comparing identical and fraternal twins, it is estimated that genetic factors account for 40 to 60 percent of the variation in the risk for addiction. But we are only in the early stages of understanding the role of genes in addiction; there is no one “addiction gene,” but it is likely that a large number of genes are involved in this complex trait.

Crucially, genetic variants that suppress dopamine signaling in the pleasure circuit substantially increase pleasure- and novelty-seeking behaviors — their bearers must seek high levels of stimulation to reach the same level of pleasure that others can achieve with more moderate indulgence.  Those blunted dopamine receptor variants are associated with substantially increased risk of addiction to a range of substances and behaviors. 

Is there a silver lining to the addictive personality?  Some of our most revered historical figures were addicts — not only the obvious creative types like Charles Baudelaire (hashish and opium) and Aldous Huxley (alcohol and the nonaddictive hallucinogens mescaline and LSD), but also scientists like Sigmund Freud (cocaine) and warriors and statesmen from Alexander the Great and Winston Churchill (both known to be heavy drinkers) to Otto von Bismarck, the unifier of Germany, who typically drank two bottles of wine with lunch and topped them off with a little morphine in the evening. 

Leaders in America rarely admit to addictions in public, but one recent example is Henry T. Nicholas III, a founder of Broadcom, a multibillion-dollar company that makes microchips for cellphones, game consoles, wireless headsets and other electronic devices. Starting with a $10,000 investment, Mr. Nicholas and his partners created a company that now has 9,000 employees and 5,100 patents. Along the way, he struggled with alcohol, cocaine and Ecstasy; he entered a rehab program in 2008. (He also successfully fought off criminal charges related to backdating stock options and drug distribution.) 

The risk-taking, novelty-seeking and obsessive personality traits often found in addicts can be harnessed to make them very effective in the workplace. For many leaders, it’s not the case that they succeed in spite of their addiction; rather, the same brain wiring and chemistry that make them addicts also confer on them behavioral traits that serve them well.

So, when searching for your organization’s next leader, look for someone with an attenuated dopamine function: someone who is never satisfied with the status quo, someone who wants the feeling of success more than others — but likes it less. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24addicts.html?src=me&ref=general

Woman Sues JetBlue For Not Wearing Underwear

Malinda Knowles, a 27-year-old financial consultant from Harlem, is suing JetBlue Airlines for kicking her off a West Palm Beach-bound flight for "not wearing underwear."

Knowles claims the pilot on the 6am flight last July thought she wasn't wearing pants or shorts, according to her lawsuit she filed in Queens Supreme Court.

But the former model tells the Daily News that she was "wearing a baggy blue T-shirt over a pair of dark denim short-shorts" that she had hastily put on at 4 a.m. when she awoke for the flight.

According to Knowles, Victor Rodriguez, a JetBlue supervisor, approached her on the plane as she was "sitting with her orange juice" and asked, "I don't want to see your panties, but do you have any on?" He then "slapped his walkie-talkie in between [my] legs", Knowles claims in the suit. "I didn't want to show him my crotch," she said. "It was humiliating, degrading, and highly inappropriate."

The New York Post reports that she was then escorted off the flight and taken to a hangar area where they confirmed she was wearing pants.

According to Knowles' suit an employee said, "'Oh, she's wearing shorts."

Knowles tells the Daily News, "It was really crazy. I've never had a corporate employee ask me about my underwear."

Knowles was then returned to the plane, but the pilot still would not fly with her. Rodriguez again approached her and said, "The captain is refusing to fly you today. We need to remove you from the flight." Knowles, annoyed since she had a business meeting in Florida, finally agreed to be taken off the flight after fellow passengers grew annoyed with the delay. As she walked off the plane, a fellow passenger told her, "you should get a lawyer."

Knowles was delayed for four hours, then caught a later JetBlue flight.

The civil suit seeks unspecified damages. It accuses Rodriguez of assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

http://news.travel.aol.com/2011/07/22/malinda-knowles-jetblue-passenger-sues-airline-for-kicking-her/

Ireland Tells The Pope & Vatican To 'Shove It'

DUBLIN (AP) — The Vatican encouraged Catholic bishops not to tell police about suspected pedophile priests and flouted Irish law, Ireland‘s lawmakers declared Wednesday in an unprecedented denunciation of the Holy See’s influence in this predominantly Catholic country.

Bishop John Magee 

 

The government and all opposition parties unanimously backed a motion accusing the Vatican of sabotaging the Irish bishops’ 1996 decision to begin reporting suspected cases of child abuse to police.

“This is not Rome. This is the Republic of Ireland 2011, a republic of laws,” Prime Minister Enda Kenny told lawmakers.

In a direct challenge to the Vatican, Mr. Kenny denounced what he called “the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism — and the narcissism — that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

He said the church’s leaders repeatedly sought to defend their institutions at the expense of children and to “parse and analyze” every revelation of church cover-up of crimes “with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”

Wednesday marked the first time that Ireland‘s parliament has lambasted the Vatican, rather than local church leaders, over the past 17 years of pedophile-priest scandals in Ireland. Those revelations have eroded Catholic authority in a nation where the church still owns most schools and several hospitals, and state broadcasters still toll a twice-daily call to Catholic prayer.

Tensions have flared this month between Ireland and the Vatican over the latter’s refusal to cooperate with a decade of government-ordered investigations here into the church’s chronic concealment of child abuse by its employees. The latest report, published last week, pointed an official finger of blame at the Vatican.

A confidential 1997 Vatican letter — originally published by the Associated Press in January — instructed Irish bishops to handle child-abuse cases strictly under terms of canon law. It warned bishops that their 1996 child-protection policy, particularly its emphasis on the need to start reporting all suspected crimes to police, violated canon law.

Mr. Kenny said Catholic canon law had “neither legitimacy nor [a] place in the affairs of this country.” He pledged to press ahead with new laws making it a crime to withhold evidence of child abuse — even if the information was attained during a priest’s confession. The Catholic Church insists that the contents of confessions must never be revealed.

Last week’s report highlighted the Vatican letter’s contents and concluded that they encouraged Irish bishops to maintain secrecy and ignore the new crime-reporting rules.

The judge-led investigation documented how one diocese in County Cork run by Bishop John Magee, a former private secretary to three popes, suppressed evidence of child rape and molestation as recently as 2009. That year, the first investigation by a new Irish church-funded investigations unit exposed some of Bishop Magee’s wrongdoing. Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation last year.

Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore last week summoned the pope’s ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, and demanded an official response from the Vatican, which has yet to come.

Wednesday’s motion said the parliament “deplores the Vatican’s intervention, which contributed to the undermining of the child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish state and the Irish bishops.”

Lawmakers’ only criticism of the motion was that it wasn’t hard enough. Several said the government should have used the word “condemn” rather than “deplore.”

Before the parliamentary debate, the Catholic press office circulated what was billed as a private statement from the Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. He said the Vatican still was formulating an official response to the week-old report.

Father Lombardi said the 1997 letter represented the “distant past” and was never intended to undermine the Irish church’s crime-reporting commitments then or now. He made similar arguments when the AP published the letter in January.

“There is absolutely nothing in the letter that is an invitation to disregard the laws of the country,” Father Lombardi’s statement said.

But Justice Minister Alan Shatter dismissed Father Lombardi’s statement as “unfortunate and disingenuous.”

Mr. Shatter said the 1997 letter “greatly strengthened the position” of Irish bishops who wanted to keep scandals in-house. He called on the Vatican to provide “an absolute assurance” that it now requires its bishops to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police immediately.

The 1997 letter, from the Rome-based Congregation for the Clergy and the Vatican’s then-ambassador to Ireland, represented the Holy See’s official response to the Irish bishops’ child-protection policy. Irish leaders had sought Vatican approval.

Instead, the letter warned that the new Irish rules enjoyed no legal standing in the Vatican because they violated canon law, while bishops who observed the Irish rules would risk the embarrassment of having their decisions to defrock or otherwise punish priests overturned in Rome.

Several lawmakers in Wednesday’s debate said Ireland should expel the pope’s ambassador and cut diplomatic ties. Mr. Gilmore has said such actions would be counterproductive.

Until now, the Vatican line never has conceded that its officials played any role in covering up crimes in Ireland. It has rebuffed requests for cooperation from four government-ordered investigations and a parliamentary committee over the past decade.

Even when Benedict delivered a March 2010 letter to the Irish people expressing sorrow and denouncing child abusers, he emphasized enforcement of the church’s canon laws as the solution. He didn’t mention or endorse any of the Irish church’s three child-protection policy documents that emphasize the reporting of crimes to police.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/20/ireland-denounces-vatican-abuse-cover-ups/?page=1

Science & Religion: God Didn't Make Man, Man Made gods

Before John Lennon imagined "living life in peace," he conjured "no heaven … / no hell below us …/ and no religion too."

John Lennon, 1974

No religion: What was Lennon summoning? For starters, a world without "divine" messengers, like Osama bin Laden, sparking violence. A world where mistakes, like the avoidable loss of life in Hurricane Katrina, would be rectified rather than chalked up to "God's will." Where politicians no longer compete to prove who believes more strongly in the irrational and untenable. Where critical thinking is an ideal. In short, a world that makes sense.

In recent years scientists specializing in the mind have begun to unravel religion's " DNA." They have produced robust theories, backed by empirical evidence (including "imaging" studies of the brain at work), that support the conclusion that it was humans who created God, not the other way around. And the better we understand the science, the closer we can come to "no heaven … no hell … and no religion too."

Like our physiological DNA, the psychological mechanisms behind faith evolved over the eons through natural selection. They helped our ancestors work effectively in small groups and survive and reproduce, traits developed long before recorded history, from foundations deep in our mammalian, primate and African hunter-gatherer past.

For example, we are born with a powerful need for attachment, identified as long ago as the 1940s by psychiatrist John Bowlby and expanded on by psychologist Mary Ainsworth. Individual survival was enhanced by protectors, beginning with our mothers. Attachment is reinforced physiologically through brain chemistry, and we evolved and retain neural networks completely dedicated to it. We easily expand that inborn need for protectors to authority figures of any sort, including religious leaders and, more saliently, gods. God becomes a super parent, able to protect us and care for us even when our more corporeal support systems disappear, through death or distance.

Scientists have so far identified about 20 hard-wired, evolved "adaptations" as the building blocks of religion. Like attachment, they are mechanisms that underlie human interactions: Brain-imaging studies at the National Institutes of Health showed that when test subjects were read statements about religion and asked to agree or disagree, the same brain networks that process human social behavior — our ability to negotiate relationships with others — were engaged.

Among the psychological adaptations related to religion are our need for reciprocity, our tendency to attribute unknown events to human agency, our capacity for romantic love, our fierce "out-group" hatreds and just as fierce loyalties to the in groups of kin and allies. Religion hijacks these traits. The rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, for example, or the doctrinal battles between Protestant and Catholic reflect our "groupish" tendencies.

In addition to these adaptations, humans have developed the remarkable ability to think about what goes on in other people's minds and create and rehearse complex interactions with an unseen other. In our minds we can de-couple cognition from time, place and circumstance. We consider what someone else might do in our place; we project future scenarios; we replay past events. It's an easy jump to say, conversing with the dead or to conjuring gods and praying to them.

Morality, which some see as imposed by gods or religion on savage humans, science sees as yet another adaptive strategy handed down to us by natural selection.

Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom notes that "it is often beneficial for humans to work together … which means it would have been adaptive to evaluate the niceness and nastiness of other individuals." In groundbreaking research, he and his team found that infants in their first year of life demonstrate aspects of an innate sense of right and wrong, good and bad, even fair and unfair. When shown a puppet climbing a mountain, either helped or hindered by a second puppet, the babies oriented toward the helpful puppet. They were able to make an evaluative social judgment, in a sense a moral response.

Michael Tomasello, a developmental psychologist who co-directs the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has also done work related to morality and very young children. He and his colleagues have produced a wealth of research that demonstrates children's capacities for altruism. He argues that we are born altruists who then have to learn strategic self-interest.

Beyond psychological adaptations and mechanisms, scientists have discovered neurological explanations for what many interpret as evidence of divine existence. Canadian psychologist Michael Persinger, who developed what he calls a "god helmet" that blocks sight and sound but stimulates the brain's temporal lobe, notes that many of his helmeted research subjects reported feeling the presence of "another." Depending on their personal and cultural history, they then interpreted the sensed presence as either a supernatural or religious figure. It is conceivable that St. Paul's dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus was, in reality, a seizure caused by temporal lobe epilepsy.

The better we understand human psychology and neurology, the more we will uncover the underpinnings of religion. Some of them, like the attachment system, push us toward a belief in gods and make departing from it extraordinarily difficult. But it is possible.

We can be better as a species if we recognize religion as a man-made construct. We owe it to ourselves to at least consider the real roots of religious belief, so we can deal with life as it is, taking advantage of perhaps our mind's greatest adaptation: our ability to use reason.

Imagine that.

J. Anderson Thomson is a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia. He serves as a trustee of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Clare Aukofer is a medical writer. They are the authors of "Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-thompson-atheism-20110718,0,5682260.story

Cities Large and Small Report Surge in Graffiti

 SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Fresh blotches of graffiti decorate the backs of street signs here near the ocean. Tags have popped up on guardrails along the dirt trails near Griffith Park across town. There are, almost daily, fresh splashes on walls in the San Fernando Valley, on downtown Los Angeles buildings and on billboards along the highways. 

A wall covered in graffiti east of downtown Los Angeles.

And Los Angeles does not appear to be alone in grappling with a recent upsurge in graffiti, which is turning up in some unlikely places. A bumper crop of scrawls is blossoming in many modest-size communities across the country — in places like Florence, Ala.; Reserve, N.M.; Taylors, S.C.; and in larger cities like Nashville and Portland, Ore. — even as major cities like Chicago, Denver, New York and Seattle say vigilant antigraffiti campaigns have spared them thus far. 

“It’s popped up all of a sudden in the last six months,” said Tim Sandrell, the owner of Safari Adventures in Hair in Florence. “I’ve been downtown for 10 years, and I’m really disappointed that we are seeing this kind of activity. We have a beautiful city and an historic city, and it’s really upsetting to me seeing this going on.”

The upturn has prompted concern among city officials and renewed a debate about whether glorifying such displays — be it in museum exhibits, tattoos or television advertisements — contributes to urban blight and economic decay. But it is also stirring a debate about what is causing this recent surge and whether it might be an early indicator that anxiety and alienation are growing in some struggling urban areas in the face of stubborn unemployment and the lingering effects of the recession. The latest statistics from Los Angeles, where the unemployment rate was 11 percent in May, attest to a widening problem: the city removed 35.4 million square feet of graffiti for the fiscal year that ended June 30, an 8.2 percent jump over last year, city officials said. “We’ve seen the amount of graffiti go up yearly,” said Paul Racs, the director of the Office of Community Beautification. 

Tim Francis, a supervisor for the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, said there had been a rash of tagging on park signs, underpasses and on the parkway. Rangers have set up surveillance, but the length of the highway in Mr. Francis’s jurisdiction — 165 miles, stretching from Boone to Cherokee — and the furtiveness of the graffiti writers makes catching them daunting. “We are seeing tagging anywhere and everywhere,” he said. “Summertime, kids are out of school. Idle hands.”

In Bernalillo County, N.M., which includes Albuquerque, graffiti complaints in June jumped to 300, from 84 in April. 

“It just keeps coming up, little by little,” said Bobby Velasco, the county’s graffiti supervisor. “We’ve covered more this year so far than we did last year.”

A metal recycling center is a favorite target, he said.

“We clean it up every week, and every week they always come back and put up ‘Welcome to L.A.,’ ” he said.

In Portland, officials said taggers from other communities were defacing their property. “We’re arresting more people from out of town,” said Marcia Dennis, the city’s graffiti abatement coordinator. “For every one we get cleaned up, something else takes its place. For every two we arrest, three people take their place.”

The upsurge comes as communities like Los Angeles, struggling with budget cuts, have trimmed graffiti fighting programs; the $7.1 million budget for graffiti eradication last year was cut 6.5 percent in the budget that took effect July 1. But cities like Santa Monica have not cut back, and have still had an upsurge, suggesting that other factors are at play. 

Some officials, like Mr. Francis, say it is a symptom of summer recess, a tough economy that has left many teenagers out of work and a general sense of anxiety and malaise. “People know the cops aren’t around or they are working on other stuff,” said Bobby Shriver, a member of the Santa Monica City Council.

Neighborhood leaders and law enforcement officials also blamed what they describe as a glamorization of graffiti, reflected by a new graffiti exhibit that opened at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood last weekend, even after an earlier furor over a full-fledged graffiti exhibit at the downtown Museum of Contemporary Art.

“It’s because of the pop culture,” said Ramona Findley, a Los Angeles police detective who heads the department’s graffiti task force. “It’s very interesting; with your violent crime going down, it seems like your mischievous crime is going up. The art world has accepted it. People make money from graffiti T-shirts. I was in Wal-Mart on Easter, and I saw graffiti Easter eggs.”

Ms. Dennis, in Portland, described graffiti as “addictive behavior,” adding: “The rush is addictive, and these guys don’t quit. They all think they’re going to end up being fabulously wealthy graffiti artists like Marc Ecko or Banksy or Shepard Fairey.” 

Several officials said they were particularly concerned that the graffiti had extended beyond gang markers, suggesting a broader group of offenders who consider more of their community a canvas. “The areas where we’ve seen the biggest increase are areas where we haven’t had a problem before,” said Mr. Racs of the Los Angeles beautification office. “It’s not gangs. It’s primarily just taggers. They are just cruising around on their skateboards.”

And the problem, he said, has become more national. “I get calls all the time from little cities in Iowa and Indiana that have never had a graffiti issue before,” Mr. Racs said. 

The surge has prompted new efforts to combat it, including a sophisticated graffiti-recognition database in Los Angeles and a reinstitution of foot patrols in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Portland. “We will have four or five people starting out once a week around dusk walking the neighborhood with a graffiti cleanup kit,” said Michael O’Connor, the head of the Brooklyn Action Corps in Portland. “We’ve seen a couple of new taggers in the neighborhood. It would be nice to catch them in the act.” 

The rise in graffiti has stirred concern among public officials who already feared that budget cuts would threaten eradication efforts.

“Cities don’t have the budgets they once had for cleanup,” said William J. Bratton, who served as police commissioner in New York and Los Angeles. “Police forces don’t have the resources they once had for enforcement.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/us/19graffiti.html?_r=1&hp

Are You Living Life As An Imposter???

Are you more afraid of failure or success? Which one is holding you back? Perhaps the answer is neither! Could it be that you are more afraid of being found out? Three weeks ago, we looked into the fear of failure followed the next week by the fear of success.

While both fear of success and fear of failure are important to consider, I think there is actually an even deeper level of fear that could be preventing you, your team or your company from succeeding. I call this deeper fear, The Impostor Phenomenon.

Several readers responded to the fear of success article commenting in particular about the fear of being relied upon. The basic tenet -- the more successful I become, the more people will rely on me; the more they rely on me, the more likely it is that I will let them down. I'd rather not succeed than risk letting someone down.

While I certainly understand that circular reasoning and the burden that can be associated with having others become dependent, my experience coaching hundreds of up and coming executives suggests that many people harbor an even more debilitating fear. What if they (my boss, my co-workers, my friends) discover that I'm not as good as I've been pretending?

The Better You Get, the Better You Better Get

In the fear of success article, I asked you to consider the downsides of success. What would happen if you became more successful, got the dream job, the promotion, the bump in income, or whatever it is that you call success. My friend and former business partner, David Allen of GTD fame, has a wonderful little aphorism that addresses the problem quite succinctly: "the better you get, the better you better get."

What that basically says is that with rising performance comes rising expectations, both from within your own self as well as from others. But what if your rising performance had more to do with "the blind squirrel phenomenon" (even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut) than it had to do with your own skill and capability? You then run the risk of being found to be The Impostor -- the just-barely-average-Jane masquerading as Super Woman.

In the old days, this problem was known as "the peter principle." As noted psychologist Dr. Laurence Peter explained in his book, "The Peter Principle": "In a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence." He later said it this way "The cream rises until it sours." Yummy image, isn't it?

Have you ever worked with or for someone who wound up being promoted beyond his or her level of competence? Perhaps you are the one who has risen beyond your own level of capability. A common scenario: you demonstrate skill at cranking widgets, a higher-up notices, and you wind up being promoted, becoming a manager of widget crankers. The challenge, of course, is that the skill of making something doesn't necessarily translate into the skill of managing people, processes or projects.

The Impostor may try to keep people at a distance, to avoid being found out, to avoid being discovered as another one of those blind squirrels. Strategies can range from hiding behind closed doors, creating draconian rules and command structures, or simply micro managing widget crankers. 

For the Imposter, success can also become personally destructive as the fear of being found out becomes debilitating; for others, the impostor phenomenon leads the team or organization into dire circumstances. Obviously, neither outcome is particularly good.

However, there's another side effect of the impostor phenomenon. What if you actually are pretty good, but your own self doubt leads you to underperform? What if you are so afraid of the demands of success that you actually undermine your own capability and adopt the imposter phenomenon as a different kind of cloaking device, one that avoids the responsibility often associated with "to whom much is given, much is expected?" What if you really could succeed at the next level and all you need is support, training or coaching?

Here's how one reader who prefers to remain anonymous put it in an email to me:

I am a "successful" sales consultant for a major biotech company. Prior to that, I had a very successful six years as an officer and pilot in the military. I have succeeded in everything I've set out to do, which sounds great, doesn't it? The catch is that as I've grown older I've only attempted things I was sure I could do, or was naive enough to believe would be easy. Despite prior success, I am absolutely convinced that I am one of those people you describe as being afraid of success. One thing I think plays a huge part in the psychology of fearing success is the fear of becoming relied upon by others. I know that in every success I've ever had, the number of people who became reliant upon me, as well as the sheer volume of things that also fell under my purview, increased immensely. That scares the hell out of me and I desire it less and less with each passing year. I believe it is the biggest factor in my choosing to avoid promotions and special assignments in work. I simply do not want people to continually rely on me (possibly for fear of letting them down, even just once? Don't know for sure).
I have the skills, the track record of success, and the experience necessary to take on much more, but I avoid potentially successful opportunities like the plagues of Egypt. I could tell you how badly this has affected me, but I would only do so anonymously, so I won't include it here.

What if you hold that fear of success, that fear of being relied upon? What if you are afraid of letting others down? What if you afraid of being found out? Here's an odd twist on things: What if that very fear could become your source of strength?

As you can probably sense, there's a lot more to this and we have only begun exploring how fear might be in your way. Next week, we'll go a bit deeper, looking at several other pieces to the puzzle.

In the meantime, keep asking yourself what you want out of life and why you want it? What have you told yourself about taking the risks necessary to create what you want? What have you found useful in overcoming obstacles, in creating your own version of success in life?

I'd love to hear from you so please do leave a comment here or drop me an email at Russell (at) russellbishop.com. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-bishop/are-you-living-life-as-an_b_894057.html

"My Husband Died On Our Honeymoon"

'I returned to Britain on my own. It felt like I had been torn in half.' 

When Luke and I first met at the University of East Anglia, I was instantly drawn to his warmth and open-heartedness. The attraction was mutual. Neither of us was particularly bothered about getting married, but the year before last, after 10 years together, Luke suddenly proposed and our wedding was just six weeks later. The reception was at our local in Norwich with a tiered stack of pork pies as a wedding cake.

True to the spirit of our lifestyle, we wanted an unconventional honeymoon. Luke took a six-month sabbatical from his teaching job, I left my position as an environmental consultant, we put our belongings in storage and set off on a tandem. We travelled through 13 countries, eating, drinking, making new friends. Just before we had to go back to work, we decided to get some winter sun. Luke fancied Egypt, I wanted South America. I felt uneasy about the Middle East, but I went against my instincts.

We travelled around Egypt, ending up south in the city of Aswan. We were pestered to go on boat rides, which didn't particularly appeal, but we ended up taking one at the last minute. We thought we'd regret it if we didn't. It was a three-day trip on a felucca, a traditional Egyptian boat designed for sailing in the calm waters of the Nile. The skipper was ill, so the trip was being run by his young second mate.

On the first night, as we were sleeping on deck, moored by the river bank, a freak storm blew up – extremely rare in an area where years can pass without rain. The boat was quickly deluged. The skipper told us to get below deck to shelter. It didn't feel like the right thing to do – it made more sense to get ashore – but we did as he said. Minutes later the boat overturned and sank.

We were trapped in the pitch-black cabin, which rapidly filled with water. It's hard to recall exactly what happened – I later learned I had fractured my skull when the boat capsized – but I now realise why they say drowning is a peaceful way to go. I do remember thinking, very calmly: "There is no air. My lungs are full of water." I must have lost consciousness, because the next thing I knew, I was afloat on the surface of the river.

Luke wasn't there. I kept desperately hoping he was stuck in an air pocket. For several hours, I refused to leave the spot where the boat had gone down. His body was recovered a few hours later. There was no British embassy in the town, and a power cut meant I couldn't access the internet or a phone. Everything we owned had been on the boat, so I had no money or passport. No one would help me. Eventually I got on to a cruise ship and called my dad at 4.30am his time. In shock, he contacted the British embassy.

After a two-day red-tape nightmare with the Egyptian authorities, I returned to Britain on my own. It felt like I had been torn in half. Initially I focused on Luke's funeral. Forever Young by Bob Dylan was played, the song we'd had during our wedding ceremony, and we all danced until the small hours.

The days and weeks afterwards were almost unbearable. There were many times I wished I'd gone, too. Our belongings were still in boxes piled up in one room. I couldn't bear to unpack them. The shock and trauma made me lose my short-term memory and I had to write everything down. I was permanently exhausted – nobody tells you how tiring grieving is. Sleeping was difficult, and when I did drop off, I would wake thinking Luke was still beside me. Friends and family helped me survive, day by day. Getting a rescue dog made a huge difference, too – Barney Bear is a big, lovable thing, exactly the sort of dog Luke and I would have chosen together.

A milestone was climbing the Three Peaks with some friends last August. For the first time I felt it was possible to do something on my own, that I would be able to exist without Luke. I am still grieving – for Luke, and for my future; a future that had included him. I can't go back to how I was before – I am a different person now – but I have come to understand that the richness of our life together has given me the resilience to make it on my own. Luke inspired everyone around him, including me, and that is what has kept me going.

• As told to Emily Cunningham.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/08/my-husband-died-on-our-honeymoon

Tragedy As Baseball Fan Falls From Stands In Texas

A man attending a Texas Rangers game with his young son died after falling out of the stands and about 20 feet to the ground while trying to catch a baseball tossed his way Thursday night, the Rangers and Arlington fire officials said.

A fan fell from the stands during the Rangers-Athletics game on Thursday. Image taken from video on Sports Grid

Arlington Fire Department officials said in a statement that another fan nearby tried unsuccessfully to grab the man to keep him from falling. They said the victim's son did not fall.

"We had a very tragic accident tonight and one of our fans lost their life reaching over the rail trying to get a ball," team president Nolan Ryan said. "As an organization, and as our team members and our staff, we're very heavy-hearted about this, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the family."

A very somber Ryan didn't get into details about the accident or release the man's name.

Ronnie Hargis was sitting in the stands at Rangers Ballpark next to the victim. The men were talking to each other before the accident.

"He went straight down. I tried to grab him but I couldn't," Hargis said. "I tried to slow him down a little bit."

TV replays showed the man falling head-first and landing behind a 14-foot-high wall supporting a video board for replays and scores. The area where the man fell is out of sight from the field.

It is the second fatal fall at a MLB ballpark this season. In May, a 27-year-old man died after he fell about 20 feet and struck his head on concrete during the seventh inning of a Colorado Rockies game. Witnesses told police that the man had been trying to slide down a staircase railing at Coors Field and lost his balance during a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The accident in Texas occurred in the second inning after Oakland's Conor Jackson hit a foul ball that ricocheted into left field. Josh Hamilton, the reigning AL MVP, retrieved the ball and tossed it into the stands. Replays on Oakland's television broadcast show the man reaching for the ball and apparently catching it before tumbling.

"We spoke to the ballclub, they understood what has happened and we spoke to Josh," Ryan said. "I think as any of us would be, Josh is very distraught over this, as the entire team is."

The Rangers clubhouse was closed to reporters after the game.

Replays on Oakland's television broadcast show the man reaching for the ball and apparently catching it before falling.

The visitor's bullpen at the stadium is in left-center field. Athletics reliever Brad Ziegler was in tears after the game when he found out the man had died.

"They had him on a stretcher. He said, 'Please check on my son. My son was up there by himself.' The people who carried him out reassured him. 'Sir, we'll get your son, we'll make sure he's OK,'" Ziegler said. "He had his arms swinging. He talked and was conscious. We assumed he was okay. But when you find out he's not, it's just tough."

There was an audible gasp in the stands when the man tumbled over the rail, eerily similar to an accident last July when a man fell about 30 feet from the second-deck of seats down the right-field line while trying to catch a foul ball.

Before the Rangers batted in the second, manager Ron Washington spoke briefly with one of the umpires. Michael Young, who was leading off the inning, could be seen talking to A's catcher Kurt Suzuki and pointing toward the area where the previous accident happened.

Former president George W. Bush was sitting in the front row with Ryan near the Rangers when the accident happened. Ryan left moments later while Bush remained in the seats.

Ryan said the former president, who used to be the team's managing general partner and is a frequent visitor to Rangers games, was aware of what was happening.

Hargis' daughter said the victim's head was bleeding badly.

Safawna Dunn, who was sitting behind the victim, said he appeared to have injuries to both arms and was conscious when taken away on a stretcher.

"Josh Hamilton tried to throw (the ball) up to the guy because they were yelling for the ball," Dunn said.

Last July at Rangers Ballpark, a fan fell 30 feet from the second deck of seats at Rangers Ballpark while trying to catch a foul ball. That fan, Tyler Morris, suffered a fractured skull and sprained ankle.

After Morris was hurt last year, he called the incident a "100 percent, total accident that could have happened to anybody." He said he didn't blame the Rangers or the ballpark.

Ryan said it was too early to talk the two accidents and what evaluations the team might make about railings at the stadium.

"Tonight, we're not prepared to speak about anything further than the accident and the tragedy," Ryan said. "That's where I'm going to leave it."

You Won't Believe The U.S. Obesity Rate. . . .

In 1995, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent. Now, all but one does.

An annual obesity report by two public health groups looked for the first time at state-by-state statistics over the last two decades. The state that has the lowest obesity rate now – Colorado, with 19.8 percent of adults considered obese – would have had the highest rate in 1995.

"When you look at it year by year, the changes are incremental," says Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, which writes the annual report with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "When you look at it by a generation you see how we got into this problem."

The study, based on 2010 data, says a dozen states top 30 percent obesity, most of them in the South. Mississippi topped the list for the seventh year in a row, with Alabama, West Virginia, Tennessee and Louisiana close behind. Just five years ago, in 2006, Mississippi was the only state above 30 percent.

No state decreased its level of obesity, which is defined as a body mass index of 30 or more. The body mass index is a measurement based on weight and height.

There was a bit of good news in the report: Sixteen states reported increases in their obesity rates, down from 28 states that reported increases last year. Levi says those increases have been gradually slowing, most likely due to greater public awareness of health issues and government attempts to give schools and shoppers better access to healthier foods.

"We're leveling off to some degree at an unacceptably high level," Levi said.

First lady Michelle Obama has tackled the issue with her "Let's Move" campaign, pushing for healthier school lunches, more access to fruits and vegetables and more physical activity. Republicans in Congress have pushed back somewhat against some of those programs, however, saying a rewrite of school lunch rules is too costly and questioning an Obama administration effort to curb junk food marketing aimed at children.

As in previous years, the study showed that racial and ethnic minorities, along with those who have less education and make less money, have the highest obesity rates. Adult obesity rates for African-Americans topped 40 percent in 15 states, while whites topped 30 percent in only four states. About a third of adults who did not graduate from high school are obese; about a fifth of those who graduated from college are considered obese.

Dr. Mary Currier, Mississippi's state health officer, says her state has struggled to drop its No. 1 status and it has been challenging because much of the state is poor and rural.

"We live in an area of the country where eating is one of the things we do, and we eat a lot of fried foods," she said. "Trying to change that culture is pretty difficult."

She says the state has had some success by making school lunches healthier, taking high-calorie foods and drinks out of school vending machines and trying to find more low-cost exercise facilities for residents of rural areas.

"It is frustrating, but we've had some progress," Currier said. "We just have to continue to work at this. It's not something that's going to change overnight."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/07/obesity-states-rates_n_892181.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl4|sec1_lnk2|76185

Bob Barker Says: 'Don't Go To Sea World'

Bob Barker has an important message for anyone thinking about visiting SeaWorld: DON'T! Bob explains in a special video public service announcement (PSA) for PETA, "Life in cramped tanks is no prize for orcas and dolphins, who want to be free with their families in the ocean. Many have died prematurely at SeaWorld after swimming in endless circles and performing dumb tricks day in and day out."

To check out Bob's video go to www.Peta.org

The bright, social marine animals at SeaWorld are denied everything that is natural and important to them. Orcas are intelligent predators who, in the wild, work cooperatively, engage in complex relationships, and swim up to 100 miles every day. Many orcas held captive at SeaWorld were taken from their ocean homes and family pods and are now forced to swim in endless circles inside small, barren concrete tanks. Captive orcas live far short of their natural 60-year life expectancy. At least 23 orcas have died in U.S. SeaWorld facilities since 1986—and not one died of old age. "Be a winner for animals," concludes Barker, "by avoiding such sad exhibits."

Show your love and compassion for animals by pledging never to visit SeaWorld. Check out PETA's vacation hot-spot ideas for fun, cruelty-free destinations and activities.  

Take action now to help animals imprisoned by Sea World! Please take a moment to write to The Blackstone Group—the company that owns SeaWorld—and ask that it immediately set into motion a plan to release its marine animals into sanctuaries that can provide them with a more natural environment.

http://www.peta.org/features/Bob-Barker-Says-Dont-Go-to-SeaWorld.aspx

Was This Your Family Too? It Was Definitely Mine....

Eric Poole and his mom.

 

"Greetings from the hectic Poole household!"

These breezy words set the stage for another of my mother's whimsical letters to her mother-in-law. These monthly missives — literary cudgels apparently designed to bludgeon my grandparents into a state of envy and despair — were routinely filled with the glittering details of our family's latest accomplishments.

Which wouldn't have been a problem, if we actually had any. 

And if I wasn't about to come out.

As with many Midwestern families in the early '90s, the truth of the matter was that the Pooles were not so much overachieving as overwhelmed, our lives less dazzling and successful than dreary and stagnant. But in Mother's letters, our "achievements" took on a rhinestone sparkle that made us appear to be a family of freakish go-getters. 

Under her pen, my college job manning a Fotomat booth became a managerial position with the Fotomat Corp. with tremendous growth potential, cleverly disguising the fact that (a) I "managed" a Fotomat because those booths were only big enough for one person; and (b) there was indeed "growth potential" since there was nowhere to go but up. 

When I scored a free trip to England while working at a travel agency, Mother wrote, "Eric is traveling to London via British Airways' Upper [steerage] class, where he'll be enjoying [touring, at godawful hours] five-star hotels and taking part in a brief official visit with the Queen [standing gawking outside Buckingham Palace with my Kodak Instamatic as her motorcade pulled in]." 

I was never quite sure why Mother felt the need to bolster our accomplishments, since these letters were going to two retired people who lived behind a car lot in Kansas. What I was quite sure of was that the image she had created did not allow for a gay son.

"I find it ironic," my cousin Toby said to me one afternoon as we sat at an outdoor café, "that you blame her for not telling the whole truth in her letters when you're doing the same thing. Why don't you come out?"

"My mother," I replied, "is a woman who alphabetizes the Christmas decorations. Who irons bath towels and has my dad vacuum the garage. Who had me rake myself into my bedroom every night so that our carpeting was a flawless sea of shag. A perfect image is everything."

"Well, you're shoving 30 and there's no woman in sight," he said. "I think she already suspects something ain't right in Perfectville."

It took months more to work up the courage; but I finally decided that, since I desperately longed for a closer relationship with my parents, I owed it to them to tell them the truth. Even if this was not the kind of news that added dazzle to a dispatch.

Too much of a coward to do it in person, though, I spent days nervously crafting a finely honed, single-spaced, three-page letter reassuring them that — contrary to certain things they may have heard from our Southern Baptist pastor — I did not consider myself mentally defective, since I rarely had the inclination to shoot at passersby from a clock tower and the only voices in my head were those of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.

I had also bought the book Loving Someone Gay, which seemed like a useful tool for parents who, upon receiving the news, might wish to climb a clock tower. 

And on Toby's advice, I mailed the letter first, then sent the book several days later.

Guess which arrived first? 

Thanks to the vagaries of the U.S. Postal Service, the book somehow arrived three days before the letter.

My parents opened the padded envelope and Loving Someone Gay fell out, accompanied by nothing more than a Post-it note on which I had scrawled the following words, in serial killer Magic Marker:

Hope this helps.

Three days later, the letter finally arrived.

***

The news was greeted with a nuclear winter of denial.

"Eric's life is a madcap whirl of ad campaigns for an array of blue-chip clients," Mother wrote in a subsequent newsletter, in an attempt to quell any rumors that may have been forming about my dateless existence, "which, as you can imagine, leaves him little time for anything else." 

My visit home that Christmas was marked by a steadfast refusal to acknowledge the large, smelly elephant in the room. We discussed my job, the weather, any topic that did not involve the dreaded G word.

And as three subsequent years of holiday visits followed the same trajectory, I began to pull further and further away from them. For although it was clear that my parents still loved me, it was also clear that they hated what I had become.

"You come home," my sister said to me, "but you're never here. You're off with friends, or people you used to work with ... "

"What do you expect?" I replied. 

"I know it's uncomfortable around Mom and Dad," she said sympathetically, "but — "

"I'm tired of having who I am being explained away as 'too busy to date'!" I snapped. "You know what? I think I'm just gonna stop coming home."

The next Christmas, thanks to the breakup of a business partnership, I was conveniently broke, and I advised my parents that I couldn't afford to come home. But at the last minute, my Perfect Son complex kicked in and I cashed in my frequent flier miles for a ticket.

I had to connect through Chicago, and weather grounded me there. It was December 23 when I finally arrived, and Mother greeted my arrival at their house with a feigned air of nonchalance. "Hey, I'm off tomorrow," she said casually. "You want to go to lunch?"

I was completely taken aback. Mother and I didn't do that. Although I adored her, and she was an extraordinary conversationalist — well-read and highly articulate — she was a whirling dervish of activity, always busy. We didn't go places alone together.

"What does she want?" I asked my sister later that night. 

"I don't know," Val replied. "Maybe she told Grandpa and Grandma you invented the cell phone and figured she'd better fill you in."

The next day, as Mother and I took our seats at a fashionable restaurant, I mentally scanned a list of pre-approved conversational topics I had devised to ease the awkwardness.

"How about that O.J. Simpson?" I said as the waitress brought Mother her extra-black coffee. This should keep us going, I estimated, at least through the salad.

"Yes, it's just terrible." She dipped the corner of her napkin into her water glass and began to sanitize the menu. "So," she said in a valiant attempt at nonchalance, "Valerie told me what you said. About not coming home anymore."

I nearly dropped my water glass. "Oh. Uh ... " Blabbermouth.

"Your sister really looks forward to these visits."

I tried to set the glass down, its base rattling as my hand shook violently. "Well ... "

She closed her menu. "You know," she said, with what appeared to be a whipsaw change of subject, "I know you think I exaggerate things in my letters to your grandmother."

"You do exaggerate things."

She sighed. "I suppose sometimes I've taken a little liberty." She took a sip of her coffee.

"What's up with that, anyway?"

"Well ... " She began to absentmindedly trace little circles on the bone china saucer. "I guess I always knew what was coming with you, and ... I don't know, maybe I was just trying to 'redraw' things a bit."

So many things about her letters began to suddenly make sense. I cleared my throat nervously. "So you thought if you redrew them enough, I wouldn't be ... ?"

She paused and didn't look up at me. "Maybe." 

There was no conversation for a moment, only the murmur of other patrons and the clink of flatware and china.

"But I started to realize," she said softly, "that the picture I was drawing was pushing you away."

As she set her coffee cup down, her face a bit flushed, I found myself alternately heartened and terrified by this sudden eruption of intimacy.

"Oh." I began to twist my napkin, embarrassed.

"How about this?" Mother said, her tone brightening. "Starting now, you can tell me what your life is really like. And that's what I'll try to write."

"OK," I said, "but you might be sorry."

"Well," she said, smoothing the mink coat that lay next to her, "you don't have to tell me everything." 

***

Mother's letters didn't change overnight. There was still no mention of the word gay. But as time went on, an honesty and candor began to permeate them. And I began to realize that although it had taken all of us years to tell the truth, it truly did set us free.

"The boys are off to the Panama Canal for a cruise," Mother wrote recently about my partner and me. "Personally, I always preferred to tan alone," she added, referring to the decades she had spent on the patio, browning herself like a crème brûlée, "so a cruise ship deck isn't my idea of a good time."

But as long as they're happy, I'm happy.

Eric Poole is author of Where's My Wand? One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting.

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/06/30/Little_Pink_Lies/

New Disneyland Rides! (and past one's too)

If you've been to Disneyland before, you know what to expect, but what you may not know is what's new since then. To help you keep up with the changes, we've compiled a list of new rides at Disneyland and California Adventure. 

We know everyone doesn't go to Disneyland as often as we do, so you'll find what's new in the past five years below. 

 

New Disneyland Rides in 2011

• Star Tours converted to 3-D and set in the time period between the two Star Wars trilogies.
• Mickey's Soundsational Parade will premiere in 2011. Get a preview at the Disneyland blog
• New at California Adventure: Ariel's Undersea Adventure.
• Old and New at California Adventure: Goofy's Sky School is an old ride made new. The classic "mad mouse" roller coaster that opened as Mulholland Madness will take on a flying academy theme with Goofy as the instructor. It's inspired by the 1940 cartoon short, “Goofy’s Glider.”  
• Construction for Cars Land at California Adventure continues, visible from many parts of the park, cool your engines for now - it won't be done until 2012. 

New Disneyland Rides in 2010

• Orange Stinger (California Adventure) converted to Silly Symphony Swings
• World of Color at California Adventure, a nighttime water show
• Captain EO starring Michael Jackson returns, replacing Honey I Shrunk the Audience (at least temporarily).

Also in 2010, the Disneyland Hotel started getting a much-needed and extensive renovation. It will proceed floor by floor, reducing capacity - but will be well worth the inconvenience when it's finished. And in late 2010, Paradise Pier installs flat-panel televisions and embarks on an upgrade of their soft goods (bedding, carpet and the like).

More changes are afoot in California Adventure, including an entire new land themed from the Cars movie, but the most exciting are still a couple of years away from completion. Visit the website dedicated to the expansion to find our more.

New Disneyland Rides in 2009

• it's a small world renovated
• Tinkerbelle and Her Fairy Friends character greeting area near Tomorrowland, Disneyland
• New fireworks show, Disneyland
• Cinderella's Castle opens a new walk-through attraction
• California Adventure's Sun Wheel got a new Mickey face and a new name: Mickey's Fun Wheel, but is otherwise unchanged
• The Disney Gallery repoened in the Former Bank of Main Street building
• Space Mountain premeiered a new holiday light show
• Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln (gone since the 50th anniversary in 2005) returns to the Opera House in a newly refurbished version as part of The Disneyland Story

New Disneyland Rides in 2008

• Toy Story Mania!, California Adventure
• House of the Future at Innoventions
• Walk-through attraction at Sleeping Beauty Castle, Disneyland

New Disneyland Rides in 2007

• Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage

New Disneyland Rides in 2006

• Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sully to the Rescue!, California Adventure
• Pirates of the Caribbean refurbished

http://gocalifornia.about.com/od/cadisneyland/a/new_rides.htm

Mahoney Gave L.A. Priest Ample Time To Find New Victims

Despite priest's dark past, he was given ample time to find new victims

Victim's lawyer says 'some of the worst of the abuse took place' in the six months after L.A. Archdiocese officials were warned about the Rev. Fernando Lopez Lopez. With his record, he should never have been hired.

Onetime Catholic priest Fernando Lopez Lopez, right, hugs his attorney, William G. Moore, after Superior Court Judge Ruth Ann Kwan sentenced him to six years and eight months in prison. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / April 22, 2005)

Early in 2001, a young priest arrived in Southern California after being asked to leave his diocese near Rome.

The Rev. Fernando Lopez Lopez first went to the San Bernardino diocese, where a monsignor found it odd that he would show up unannounced, with no letter of explanation from his bishop.

The monsignor checked with church officials in Italy and was told Lopez Lopez had been asked to leave his post. When the monsignor confronted Lopez Lopez with this information, the priest admitted he had been asked to leave because of complaints from parishioners in Tivoli that he was involved in drug activity with young men in the church. There were also reports the priest was "homosexually involved with some of the young men of the youth group." Lopez Lopez denied the allegations and also said the youths in question were over 18.

The monsignor in San Bernardino refused to assign the priest to duties in the diocese and suggested he go back to Italy. Instead, Rev. Lopez Lopez headed farther west and decided to try his luck with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

This time, even as L.A. church officials were trying to stem a spreading sexual abuse scandal, he wasn't met with the same level of suspicion and didn't admit to his past. And for unknown reasons, the same Italian bishop who told San Bernardino that Lopez Lopez had been asked to leave, this time signed a form for the L.A. Archdiocese indicating there were no problems in the priest's past.

Rev. Lopez Lopez got the job and was assigned to St. Thomas the Apostle near Koreatown, where he was routinely in contact with minors. It was there, over the next three years, that he repeatedly molested three teenagers, including two minors. He was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to prison, then deported upon his release to his home country of Colombia.

All this bubbles back up now for two reasons. First, a lawsuit against the priest, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and the archdiocese is scheduled to be heard in October. And second, "Dan Rather Reports" aired an investigative piece Tuesday night claiming that Lopez Lopez had an even darker past than was previously known.

Rather reported that according to an Italian court official, Lopez Lopez pleaded guilty in 2000 to "repeated sexual violence on a minor."

If true, it's morally shocking that such a priest would have been allowed to stay in ministry, but not surprising. If anything has been more reprehensible than the decades of sexual abuse by priests, it has been the attempts by the Catholic church to shuffle pedophiles to new parishes and cover up as much of the mess as possible.

So Rev. Lopez Lopez ends up in California, where he seemed to have no trouble finding new victims.

Attorney J. Michael Hennigan, speaking for Mahony and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, argues that his clients did no wrong and said they tried to check on Lopez Lopez's past. But even if you give them a pass for not being as suspicious as the monsignor in San Bernardino, there's another little bombshell in this story.

The San Bernardino monsignor, Gerard Lopez, sent a letter to one of Mahony's key deputies on Jan. 8, 2004, after learning that the same priest he turned away in 2001 had been working in Los Angeles. The monsignor warned L.A.'s vicar of clergy about what he had learned of the priest's background.

But it wasn't until nine weeks after the letter was sent to Los Angeles that Mahony's staff sent a letter to the bishop in Tivoli, asking about Lopez Lopez.

"If your Excellency would be so disposed, may we inquire as to whether there are any issues … that would cast any shadow of doubt upon Father Lopez's priestly integrity and ministry while serving in the Diocese of Tivoli?"

Would his Excellency be so disposed?

Why are church officials so sickeningly polite with each other about the business of children being abused?

How about picking up the phone, instead of sending a letter to Italy, and demanding an immediate explanation?

How about calling the pope?

And how about yanking Lopez Lopez out of the ministry immediately when a warning letter arrives from San Bernardino, until the entire matter is settled?

Hennigan tells me there was nothing to go on but unsubstantiated allegations involving people 18 or over. He said church officials questioned the principal at St. Thomas and also Lopez Lopez, who suggested the monsignor in San Bernardino had misunderstood him regarding what happened in Tivoli. Hennigan also said the church immediately removed Lopez Lopez from ministry when it received an allegation that the priest had molested a kid, and church officials called the police too. That was on July 13, 2004.

The half a year between the arrival of the letter from San Bernardino and the removal of Lopez Lopez is when "some of the worst of the abuse took place," said Vince Finaldi, the attorney who represents the unnamed victim who has sued the church.

When Lopez Lopez was convicted in 2005 of four felony counts of lewd acts with a child and one felony count of sexual battery, among other counts, Cardinal Mahony wrote a letter to the Vatican suggesting it might be a good idea to dismiss him from the priesthood.

Mahony, never shy about polishing his own image, specified in the letter that Lopez Lopez certainly wouldn't have been hired in Los Angeles if Tivoli had mentioned his past. Mahony told the Vatican the church's investigation of Lopez Lopez "began promptly following the initial accusation" of abuse.

Yes, and it took only six months after the letter from San Bernardino to get him away from children.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0629-lopez-mahonynotforgotten-20110628,0,2627312.column?track=rss