Christmas Letter 2020

Merry Christmas!

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;

a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.

For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

-- Isaiah 9:2,6

I have reflected in recent months about the darkness that seems so strong in this year, but these verses remind me that God invaded that darkness, and He hasn’t been caught off guard even now. How great to have a Wonderful Counselor (Wonderful Guide) at these times!!

Paul and Laura
Paul has continued working at Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC as a Solutions Architect working from home since March.

Laura has recently resigned her job working in Quality Assurance at an NC pharmaceutical company and is looking forward to being home for a bit.

We continue to enjoy living in beautiful Apex, NC.

Robin is a professional working in Greensboro, NC, teaching piano lessons and music at a private school. She is involved in performing and writing new classical music with the group Catchfire Collective.

Jenna is attending Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and loving it. She’s been pursuing this dream for a while, and we’re thrilled she’s on her way. She also works at Trader Joe’s in Cambridge.

Meredith (Merry) attends Wake Tech Community College working on an Associates in Gaming design. She’s enjoying being an only child, living at home. She is a delight.

Philip attends UNC Greensboro working on a Communications degree. He does stand up comedy, is a Door Dash’er, and lives in an apartment. He makes us laugh- a lot.

James attends UNC Greensboro as well, pursuing a Music performance degree in Jazz Piano. He gigs a lot, lives in a house with other jazz musicians (a real plus during Covid), and practices piano a lot. We highly recommend having a jazz pianist around.

Our quad’s turn 21 years old the day after Christmas. Yes, we find this as shocking as you do.

We wish you safety and happiness in the upcoming year. God’s richest blessings to you and yours!

Merry Christmas to You!

Laura and Paul

I've checked into my local police department accountability. Have you?

If you're in a hurry, would you at least read through the section on My Process? It's not too long.

I believe the issue of undue use of force by the police is a road with a ditch on both sides. You can swing too far in either direction and wind up in trouble. I also have good friends with good hearts who might be heading that way, so I want to give all of you a simple task. It won’t cost you much, and it’s possible you could make a big difference. At the very least, you’re likely to learn something helpful.

My friends and I have talked about practical ways to address problems with police using undue force. We’ve generally agreed that police accountability is an important step and a great start. I personally didn’t want to sit passively, and I’ve never been fond of venting outrage, so I reached out to our local police chief.

I’m going to describe my experience 

and encourage you to do the same kind of thing
in your community.

As I was starting, I expected this could go a couple different ways. I believe that many, many police departments (PD) are getting it right. A few are sloppy. A few are doing all the right things and mistakes still happen. Maybe I’m spot on, maybe I’m not.

Either way, my goal was to determine if our PD was doing everything possible to avoid problems. If I felt they were falling short, I would take personal responsibility to tackle this problem right in my town. I would view that as ticking time bomb, and I would encourage you to do likewise - both about the time bomb and the personal responsibility.

My process

1. Research: Find out how the police chief is elected or hired. Try to understand the practices they say they’re following. Think through what specifics to ask about that will lead to a fair and honest evaluation.
2. Talk with the police chief. Set a respectful tone. Ask your questions. Explore further. Invite feedback.
3. Reflect on what you learned. If needed, take steps to address problems.
4. Share my experience and encourage others to repeat it where they are.

(If you're in a hurry, then you've already read the main points. In the end, I got solid answers. I still encourage you to go check out your own community, however!)

My experience

Three core questions

I decided I had three core questions for the police chief:

1. How does our PD identify personnel that might be at risk of using undue force?
2. What would cause you to reassign an officer? At what point do the signs cross a line?
3. How do you confirm that our PD is truly following these guidelines?

I planned out what I wanted to cover so I could honor the time and avoid chasing rabbits. Besides the above, I also wanted to give the chief a sense of who I am, and I wanted to get some demographic info about our PD.

Our police department is the Apex Police Department (APD), and our chief is John Letteney. I was able to do considerable research online. I reached out to Chief Letteney by email, and I assumed he would simply write back with answers, being a busy man. He responded within an hour of my email and recommended a phone call. In hindsight, I’m very glad he did because that gave us a much more effective exchange. 

Here’s what I learned about my core questions. I’ve boiled this down considerably for the sake of brevity.

1. Identifying officers at risk:
   There are multiple practices at work here, not just one. The hiring process does careful screening including a psych exam that’s tuned for this kind of thing. On-going training covers relevant topics, and the training is well-received. There’s a supervisor accountability process, and there’s a shared and personal sense of “Duty to Intervene” woven into the culture in the department.
   
   
2. What’s the tipping point?
   Accumulation of policy violations. APD has 165 policies. Breaches of ethical issues, integrity, excessive use of force, or sustained pattern of minor transgressions all lead toward dismissal. As with other jobs, they’ll try retraining first, but there is a clear decertification process defined at the state level that is followed.
   
   
3. How do you confirm that the APD is truly following these guidelines?
   This question is super important. If it was anything less than external validation, it would be a problem for me. There are three parts of Chief Letteney’s answer that had real teeth, and I appreciate the value of all three. Accreditation that has real meaning (this is the external validation I wanted), leadership that really leads in this area, and that personal sense of Duty to Intervene that I mentioned earlier.

As I said, I boiled that down considerably, and you might have questions for me. I can expand for those who are curious, but I really think it’d be most profitable for you to check out your own PD.

Things our PD is especially getting right:

• Our state (North Carolina) requires a minimum of 24 hours of in-service training per year. On average, our folks get over 100.
• The training is well received. I could imagine officers rolling their eyes and basically going through the motions. You’ve probably had the same co-workers, right? Asking the chief about this would be tricky. Suppose the answer was that it was a joke? There’s no way he could tell me that. And while the truth might be a fine answer, there’d be no good way I could tell if he was snowing me. To my relief, he was able to provide an objective indicator in the form of instructor feedback in recent years. Two officers weren’t taking this seriously, in fact. In the end, the chief said these two “weren’t a good fit for our culture,” and they’re no longer with APD.
• Of the complaints against APD officers, most come internally instead of from citizens. They’re harder on themselves than the citizens are.
• There’s a Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. It’s a national program with 484 standards for law enforcement professionalism and best practices. APD is accredited, up for next accreditation in 2021. About 6% of agencies in NC have voluntarily submitted to this outside independent oversight to achieve advanced accreditation. Furthermore, APD is connected with additional professional law enforcement associations. These people have the best minds in law enforcement, academia, and non-profits. Chief Letteney himself is active in leadership among these associations. 

Extra things that help our PD get it right. I don’t think they can control these directly, but we citizens sure can.

• NC is not a union state. Unions can limit the ability of leadership to discipline. If your PD is unionized, you should look for ways to address aspects that are an obstacle to accountability.
• People want to join the Apex PD, so the leadership can be choosy. Some of that is leadership doing a good job, some is the atmosphere in the community. You can influence both of those.

Feedback Chief Letteney had for me:

Don't assume what you see 

on the news is what happens here. 

• Keep asking questions and engage. Don't assume what you see on the news is what happens here. In particular, the accountability landscape can vary from one region to another. (Ex: As a union state, California’s experience would be different from North Carolina’s.)
• APD is eager to engage, and they have multiple channels for this including virtual meetings. He wants help developing a relationship so we know each other. This is a two-way street.

Postscript: 

I asked about some statistics, but didn’t include them above. In the end, I didn’t feel they were part of the core conversation, not in my case anyway. However, here they are for the curious.

• Number of street officers: 96 full time sworn, 3 part time sworn.
• Years of experience: Average is about 10-15 years. One person just started. Many officers have 20-25 years.
• Ethnic breakdown: It mirrors the community … about 8% Black and 8% Hispanic, and full details are on the annual reports on the website. 

I asked Chief Letteney how I could pray for him. You may disagree about how effective prayer is, but here’s what he requested: For healing. For division to stop. For people to respect different ideologies and find more common ground. For safety for the community and for officers facing difficult circumstances. These officers are people - moms and dads and grandparents. And for my part, I do believe that prayer is effective, and I'll be praying along these lines. Amen, Lord Jesus, bring healing!

Finally, I’m not the first person to approach Chief Letteney like this. Many people are, and most are asking questions like I was. Good work, folks!

Christmas Letter 2014

Merry Christmas from the McLaughlin family!
Happy Birthday to the King of Kings!

The big news from our family is that after 12 years of making our home in beautiful Vermont, we have moved to the Raleigh, NC, area. Paul now works for BlueCross BlueShield of NC as a software solutions architect. We greatly miss our friends in Vermont and the incredible natural beauty of the Green Mountain State. However, North Carolina has proved to be one of the friendliest places on earth, and having a little less winter in our lives will be a perk.

Our fearsome foursome, Jenna, Merry, James and Philip, are all turning 15 this December. All of them have been immersed in transition that has been both exciting and painful. We are proud of how they've hung in there and really worked hard to form new friendships and deal with a lot of culture shock.

Robin turned 20 this year and continues to love going to Houghton College in western NY. She is pursuing music composition and education and having a ball!

Laura ceased working as a director of preschool ministry at our church in Vermont this year with our move. She will be focused on increasing her time with CreativeGrace which puts on ladies' retreats exploring creativity.

We wish you a wonderful Christmas celebration!

Merry, Robin, Philip, James, Paul, Laura, and Jenna

The Big Kahuna Toboggan

Finished restoring the Big Kahuna toboggan today: 3 coats of polyurethane all over and a layer of wax on the bottom should slice right down the hill. I'd suggest steam or fire, but that would imply friction of some sort. Rebuilt some of the wooden pieces and got new "false sense of security" rope, too.

Praying for some real snow now ...

Camping at Ricker Pond

We just returned from a fine week at Ricker Pond State Park in eastern Vermont. We did many of our normal activities (swimming, kayaking, biking, hiking), and added a couple new ones - swimming in a swimming hole nearby and bringing friends along. The swimming hole was a stream that flows from Groton Lake into Ricker Pond. James brought his friend Julian. And our family friend Alice joined us halfway through.


Click on the slideshow to see specific pictures and their captions.

This was also our first time to get a double campsite ... a cabin where the ladies slept and a tent for the guys next door.

I got new appreciation for how nice we have it. About a third of the campers at the park last week were from out of state. One fellow from Ontario that I spoke with says he keeps coming back to Ricker Pond because he likes the hills and mountains (which are lacking in his flat part of Ontario).

Camping with the Boy Scouts

The men folk in our McLaughlin tribe joined with some other Webelos Cub Scouts in our pack to go to the Boy Scout camporee over the weekend here in Vermont. Lots of cool stories, and you can view the pics at our May 2010 Camporee album.

First, an important note about Mother's Day: We got permission from Mom before going camping on Mother's Day weekend, and we got home in time to treat Laura to some great adoration and abject "we're not worthy" praise.

From May 2010 Camporee

Stories about the Camporee:

1. Our boys served as color guard on Saturday morning.
   We had offered to help the big Boy Scouts raise the flag sometime, but none of them volunteered, so we had to show them how it's done. In the album, you can see a pic of our four Webelos surrounded by the hulking teenagers. Reminds me of the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings. The boys did a great job.
2. Lots of fun activities: Our guys especially seemed to like geocaching (using a hand-held GPS to find treasure) and the 10-mile bike ride (never knew they could do that before!). They weren't old enough to throw tomahawks (roped off range with large targets), but they enjoyed watching it. Next year, they'll cross over and officially qualify for this.
3. Team building: The Cub Scouts at camp had some Cubs only activities, and our guys did one of them: The "bridge building" activity. The idea was that a section of grass was a "raging river" that you had to cross using only the stones in the river (grass) and two planks of wood. You started out with ten points, but lost points if your plank dipped into the "water" or if someone lost their balance and "fell in." Turns out, our guys have a lot to learn about teamwork and accepting ownership for the parts they can help with. Laura and I were discussing this later, and she brought up an interesting point. The four boys were essentially two sets of twins. Laura and I found ourselves wondering how that dynamic with all its sibling rivalries might have prevented them from selecting and following team leadership ... which was one of the problems that led to other problems.
4. Adverse weather: This would've qualified as "winter camping" if the temperature had been a few degrees cooler. With the wet grass, we might have actually been warmer overall if it had been February. Still, we had the pleasure that comes from overcoming an obstacle like this. Saturday night turned into a major wind storm. We knew it was coming and prepared, but it was more intense than predicted. At bed time as our tent was billowing around us, James said that now he knows what it's like to be inside a lung. By morning, he was saying that he felt like the tent was digesting us. The wind would just about lay our tent flat on top of us. I was waking up all night as the tent would do this, but it never blew over! The big problem came when I heard a crashing outside and just knew that our own little 12x12' portable shelter had finally blown over. It sounded something like a piano being dropped from a third-story window, then rolling across the field. Turns out, that the little Cub Scouts' shelter withstood the wind. Instead, a Boy Scout shelter across the lane had come loose and blown through our camp. It demolished our shelter along the way before getting pinned to some trees. We are very grateful that no one was hurt!

Next camporee is in October!

So What If Jesus Rose from the Dead?

We went to a Saturday night Easter worship service just now, and it was outstanding! The main message was to answer the question, "So What?" Meaning, if you're one of the 80% of Americans who believe that Jesus really did rise from the dead, well, so what? What does that mean to me and how does it affect me? For good? For bad? For whatever?

You know, that's an important question to ask. We know that a high percentage of people that join us for worship are people with questions like that. On Easter, they could number close to 50% in our particular church.

Our church normally has five worship times. This week, we move location to the college gymnasium and do it all in two huge meetings. Wow, the energy was high! It reminded me of being in a choir where you start off with your own sections (maybe your school's section), and there are other sections nearby learning the same pieces ... and then you all come together for this huge sound. I wonder if it'll be like that in Heaven one day, with zillions of us sinners singing fortissimo about how Jesus fixed all our broken lives!

A couple other highlights of the evening: It was warm in the gym. If you happen to go to the Sunday morning service and read this before going: Bring water. (They do have water and other refreshments there, too.) And I never thought of it this way before, but yeah, the way we sing our songs is sorta like a "large group karaoke," I guess. (That's an example of how our pastor explained some things in our worship service to people visiting for the first time and feeling a little bit of vu-ja-day - the feeling like you've never seen this before - so that they might feel more at ease.)

Peace and Grace, to you all! He Is Risen! And it makes a difference to me.
--Paul