Once upon a time, there lived a Samoyed dog who answered to the name of Max when he was good.  When he was a Bad Dog, his friends called him Maxmillian Snowfoot Fairboy, but he was being a Bad Dog then so he didn’t answer to that name.  One of the naughtiest things Max did was to open doors by himself and go for a good long run in the forest.

Max lived in a house in the country with his friends Melissa, Melanie, Delinda and Loren.  He knew it was his job to protect them and keep them safe and he did his job very well.  He loved his human family, but there was something missing in his life.  His humans couldn’t run twenty miles through the forest.  His humans never wanted to chase squirrels or roll in the manure pile behind the big barn where the cows lived. 

Max liked to ride in the car and visit strange places.  He liked the smells of the buffalo in Yellowstone, but his human friends couldn’t smell them and had no idea what each smell meant.  He liked to visit Granny and tease her dog Baron, but Baron never played with him and hated being teased.  Chasing seagulls at the ocean was the best fun ever.  Max knew that his life was good and wasn’t quite certain what was missing.

One day, when Max decided to be a Bad Dog and go for a run all by himself, he smelled a wonderful new smell.  He crawled though the brush on his belly.  Soon, his nose met another nose.

“You smell wonderful.”  The other dog said as she kissed him on the nose.

Something inside Max melted and felt warm and happy.  “I rolled in the Manure Pile.  Do you want to come with me?”  Max had never asked a girl on a date before and waited anxiously for her answer.

“I can’t get out.  See these wires.  They keep me shut in this yard.”

“Oh that.  That’s only a fence.  Wait a moment, and I’ll dig you out.”

When the girl dog saw how Max was digging under the fence, she dug on her side, and in no time at all she was free to roll in the Manure Pile with Max.  After they rolled in the Manure Pile they ran for five miles through the forest.  They sat on a ridge above her house and watched the sun go down. Of course, Max walked his new girlfriend home and kissed her goodnight at her front door.

From this day on, whenever Max didn’t need to be protecting his family, he opened the door and went to see his girlfriend.  Some days she would be locked in the house, but she learned that she could tell her family she needed to go potty or barf and they would let her out so she could crawl under the fence and go roll in the Manure Pile then chase squirrels and run through the forest with Max. 

Once when Max went to the hole under the fence he found it full of bricks.  His girlfriend sighed and told him, “My humans put wire on the ground all around the yard.  I don’t think I can dig so far to get out.”

“Do you have a gate?”

She nodded.

Max chuckled, “Gates are easy.  I’ll have you out in a second.”  True to his word Max ran around the fence until he found his love waiting at the gate.  He flipped the latch and the two lovers went for a long run in the woods.  They knew they were lovers and they loved each other dearly, but they could never have children because they’d “been to the vet.”

When Max’s family needed to move to a new home, Delinda talked to Princess’s family who had called Delinda frequently on the phone to complain about Max taking their white poodle to roll in the manure pile and run in the woods.  Delinda explained that they needed to move, but hated to separate Max from Princess.  Delinda offered buy Princess so she could move with them.  Princess’s family refused to give her up, so in the end, Max moved with his family and never saw his love again.

Yet, true love is immortal.  Both Max and his love went to be together in the afterlife years ago.  In the afterlife their love was consummated, and she gave birth to nine white puppies, who appear in Delinda’s novel Lies That Bind.

SHOULD CHURCHES PAY TAXES?

            More and more often these days we hear people complain about churches not paying taxes.  I find in the vast majority of cases that the people complaining have a muddled idea of what taxes they think churches should pay and usually no idea of what taxes churches do pay.  I would like to clear up some of the confusion regarding what churches pay in taxes in the areas of property taxes, income taxes, and sales taxes.

            First, in the area of real property taxes, most states limit the number of properties that any organization can exempt from taxes.  I believe the number in Washington is five properties.  If the church owns more than five properties this includes those used for parking lots the excess properties are taxed at regular rates.  For example, the church I attended had one “property” of about 2 ½ acres but it was listed as five different tax lots in the county records.  Any additional property acquired by the church would be fully taxable.  In addition, many of the special fees and assessments made by the county on the property tax statement are not exempt, so the church paid a significant amount of property tax.

            When it comes to income tax, I find that peoples’ thinking is particularly fuzzy.  Our income tax system taxes entities on their net income after expenses.  Very few churches have any net income after expenses if you count their ministry work as an expense.  I never hear people declaring that the Red Cross, for example, should pay income tax on all its donations before deducting the expense of helping in emergencies.  Perhaps some think that some churches run commercial businesses and don’t have to pay taxes on that profit, but they are incorrect.  All federally tax exempt entities have to pay regular income tax on business profits that are unrelated to their tax exempt purpose.  In addition, most tax exempt entities have to pay income tax on their investment income beyond a minimal amount.  It may be that in the income tax area people are really talking about their belief that individuals should not receive a tax deduction on their personal tax returns for making a contribution to churches on the grounds that churches are not in the same category as other charities.  That is a philosophical argument that is too deep for this format, but if that is what they are thinking they should make it clear so that a reasonable discussion can ensue.

            In the area of state sales tax, churches have to pay sales tax just like any other consumer.  Churches also pay excise tax on telephone service, license fees, and all the other miscellaneous taxes that the rest of us pay.

            So whether you believe churches should pay taxes or not, let’s be sure that we know the facts before voicing our opinion.

Loren L McCann, CPA, MS (Tax)

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I’ve been shouting into the wind about the problems associated with drinking while pregnant for over twenty years.  At one point we thought we’d made progress, but we seem to be bombarded weekly by quasi scientists who’ve looked at or done studies showing no problems associated with light to moderate drinking during pregnancy.

Every one of the articles I’ve read that condones light drinking does not use characteristics of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome as their measure of impairment.  I’ve seen ADD and ADHD used as measures of impairment associated with prenatal exposure to alcohol.  Remarkably these studies didn’t show any difference between children exposed to alcohol and those that were not.  Who is surprised?  Not me.  While some people with FAS may also have ADD or ADHD, these are not core characteristics that define the syndrome.

I saw one study that measured balance as an indicator of brain damage from prenatal exposure.  That was interesting.  I’d never seen balance listed as a core disability characteristic.  It isn’t.

The latest bogus study on the impact of social drinking on the developing fetus used IQ as their measurement.  While heavy drinking and binge drinking may impair IQ, it is not a core disability characteristic.  While working in the field of FAS, I met several people with IQ’s in the 120’s and a full FAS diagnosis.  One of the main activities of the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Family Resource Institute was to teach caregivers, criminal justice personnel and educators to recognize what FAS looks like in individuals with a normal IQ.

Dr. Ann Streisguth liked to use reading, math and spelling scores to define damage from prenatal exposure to alcohol.  Yes, those scores are part of the core disability characteristics.  We occasionally found a child with a full diagnosis who was better at math than reading but she was probably destined to be a math genius.  Aside from a very few extraordinary cases, people with FAS follow a predictable relationship between their math, reading and spelling scores.  This was the measure Dr. Streisguth used when she did her study on social drinking, that is having 3-5 drinks per week.  She found that the children of social drinkers did show the characteristic impairment in their math, reading and spelling scores.

I’ve listed the core disability characteristics of FAS on my advocacy page.  Here is the short version.  For a longer explanation, click on the FAS and Advocacy button.

1)   Failure to learn from cause and effect.

2)   Inability to consistently use rules of right and wrong

3)   Impaired judgment and reasoning

4)   Emotional volatility and burnout

5)   Vulnerable to co-occurring conditions such as depression, OCD, bipolar etc.

6)   Individuals with FAS don’t get the nuances of society.

Drs. Sterling Clarren and Ann Streissguth had an extensive list of systems that were vulnerable to prenatal exposure to alcohol. These systems were generally time and dosage sensitive.  To pull one item off of such a list and use it as your measure for determining whether someone has brain damage due to prenatal exposure to alcohol is just not valid research.

In order to determine if social drinking can be harmful to the developing fetus a researcher needs to measure a core disability characteristic or replicate Ann Streisguths’s study using reading, math and spelling scores as an indicator. The better studies are going to look at more than one characteristic.  It is easy to test for the number of trials it takes for someone to learn a cause and effect task.  I can see tests set up to easily measure whether a child consistently obeys rules of right and wrong or whether they are completely influenced by the examples of others.  Actually, this would be a fun test, but alas, those who have an agenda to justify their own alcohol use or to sell alcohol don’t test for the core disability characteristics of FAS.

Bottom line: If you want your child to be healthy and reach their full potential, no amount of alcohol is safe. 

Another author once advised me to take my books to our local farmer’s market and sell them.  “Oh yes,” she promised, “I sell seventy-five to a hundred books a day at our farmer’s market.”

Being a sucker or at least game to try anything, I decided to give our local Saturday Market a try.  My partner in our flower business already had a booth at the market.  Once her dahlia tubers were sold she had extra space, she was happy to share her booth with me. 

I filled out the paperwork, and paid my fees.  Note, if you want to sell at a market, be certain to have all your tax identification numbers.  I had my papers in order so the process to get approved flowed smoothly.

At long last, the week before market day came.  On Tuesday I got a call from my business partner.  She was lying on the ground in her garden waiting for the aid car to come haul her away.  I told her firmly, “You cannot be hurt.  We have a wedding to do this week and you’re the one who talked to the bride.”  She moaned her acknowledgment of our business obligations.

Late on Friday we finished the last of the bouquets for the wedding, and I drove home with the car’s wipers swishing the rain off my windshield to prepare to sell books at an outdoor market.  We haven’t had rain for months and it isn’t supposed to rain in the Seattle area in August.  It was raining.  I knew the ground at the market would be damp, and it might continue to rain.

Desperation made me creative.  I carefully stowed my books in our waterproof picnic coolers so I could set them on the ground, and the books wouldn’t get damp.  The coolers with their handles proved to be much easier to carry than boxes of books.  My precious hubby stayed up late Friday night packing my car with everything I’d need at the market. 

I did need some peculiar stuff for the market.  My easel needed weights to keep it from blowing over in the breeze.  Hubby filled some heavy plastic bags with rocks.  I could clamp these to the legs of the easel.  Of course I’d need water to drink and a picnic lunch.  I could have bought something at the market, but I didn't want to get my fingers greasy.

Finally on Saturday morning, I arrived at the market with my table, books, easel, rocks, and all the paraphernalia needed to sell books.  I set up my display and started chatting with anybody who would make eye contact. 

Absolutely everybody warned me that on my first visit to the market, I might not sell many books.  Market goers would need to get used to the idea that I was there.  The warnings proved to be prophetic, but I did have some successes.  I found two more writers to add to our Vashon Writers’ mailing list.  I sold two of my books.

Now, as writers we agonize over the blurb on the back of our books and perfecting our short sales pitch.  We discuss details of making a pitch, genre, and target audience.  My first customer bought Lies That Bind because, “I’m traveling and have a long flight.  I want a big fat book.”  Well, that’s one way to choose a book.  I did a great job of pitching my books to my second customer.  She chose Something About Maudy because, “It’s the thinnest and I don’t have much time to read.”

Okay next week I might just go for the basics, “Fat books, skinny books and two books just medium sized.” 

Once I was home again to recline on my sofa, I calculated my profits.  My wage for spending five hours at the market and another hour loading and unloading my car was somewhere around $.25/hour.  Such is the life of a writer! I’ll try again in a week or so.