Posts
Never heard it before, but it intrigued me when I stumbled across it Saturday while looking up General Pershing and the Mexican-American War.
Cyberhymnal tune here
Oremus has it here, with some slightly different lyrics, I think. The lyrics are rather curious.
It goes by For The Present Crisis and also Once to Every Man and Nation.
Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.
Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.
By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own
REad more about it here.
Listen to Hale and Wilder sing it here.
There's a rather stately and magnificent choral rendition with orchestral accompaniment here. I think that's the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Amen Choir, also available for download here.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Sunday Hymn Post
Saturday, August 30, 2008
We Are All Conservatives Now
The MSM grows increasingly worried about whose taking care of Governor Palin's special needs sons. Apparently, Bill Weir, CNN's JOhn Roberts, and others in the media are also opposed to working moms, especially moms with special needs children. Who knew?
Hurricane's Gonna Hit...
Giggle, giggle- to quote, roughly, former National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Don Fowler and Congressman John Spratt of South Carolina.
Via Red State:
God's going to destroy all those people's homes and risk their lives, maybe even kill a few, just to help the Democratic party out.
Yep. The party of compassion.
And, on another note, MIchael Moore finds God:
On MSNBC Olberman gloats about a Dobson associated minister praying for rain on the DNC convention and never seems to note the irony of Michael Moore gloating that the coming hurricane is proof that there is a God in Heaven. As an afterthought a minute or two later, when he realizes the implications of what he said, Moore throws in a breezy sidenote, "Well, I hope nobody gets hurt, of course...."
Historical Notes
The son of a friend has just started college. He's taking a history class this semester and his mother e-mailed me to ask how much I knew about history textbooks "altering" the past - if her son should take what he read in his text with a grain of salt.
Here's what I came up with...
I wouldn't say it's necessarily always been altered, but emphasis has sometimes been shifted in totally unnecessary ways...
I think I can explain it better with an example: The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico.
Some ways it's been retold: The brutal Spanish marched in and destroyed the brilliant, complex, and advanced society the Aztecs had developed. They crushed native life and things were never the same after that.
Ok - yes, the Spanish were fairly arrogant about what they were doing. They were called conquistadores because conquest was on their mind. The Aztecs also did have a fairly advanced society... but the above description ignores the fact that they practiced *extensive* human sacrifice (not so advanced, and really rather brutal). They also understood the notion of conquest, as that is what they'd been doing to the other native groups in Mexico for years. The Spanish were doing to the Aztecs what the Aztecs had been doing to their neighbors for a long time.
This Spanish conquest was only made possible by the help of hundreds (thousands) of native allies who, quite frankly, hated the Aztecs -- and some for very good reason.
Other times to use a handy helping of salt:
* If one group is completely villified (there are exceptions... Hitler and his cronies, for example). This does not mean a group's actions have to be justified - it just means that the authors recognize that they are talking about *humans,* who happen to be fairly complex creatures.
* if the story is presented in rather a pompous manner: ie, We are now going to seek to understand what life was like in the Dark, Unenlightened Days Of the Past. Of course, we are now living in the Day of Total Enlightenment about things, so our perspective is perfect.
This is baloney. There are things that people in the past understood better and did better than we do just as there are things we now understand better than they did.
Two Perspectives on the Experience Issue....
We are supposed to believe that a first- term Alaskan governor is less qualified for the second spot than a first-term Illinois Senator is for the Presidency—who once again just announced to the nation that he is ready to invade nuclear Islamic Pakistan to get bin Laden, who wanted all troops out of Iraq by March 2008, and who once dismissed Iran as a small threat.
Or this from Jonathan Martin at Politico:
Palin, 44, is less than two years removed from being mayor of Wasilla, Alaska; has no military or foreign policy experience in a time of grave international threat; and has never even appeared a single time on “Meet the Press,” let alone been scrutinized by a voracious and around-the-clock modern media beast.
Never mind that she spent those 'less than two years removed from being mayor of Wasilla' being the chief executive of the largest state in the Union, executive experience which NONE of the other three big names on the two tickets have- because yeah, never appearing on 'Meet the Press' was the first downside I thought of, too. It's the defining qualification, no?
Er, no.
Price Per Gallon
This is one of those cute forwards I never do pass on, but here I am, passing it on....
The price of Gas versus Printer Ink
All these examples do NOT imply that gasoline is cheap; it just illustrates
how outrageous some prices are....
You will be really shocked by the last one!
(At least, I was...)
Compared with Gasoline.... ..
Think a gallon of gas is expensive?
This makes one think, and also puts things in perspective.
Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 .. $10.32 per gallon
Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ..........$9. 52 per gallon
Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 ..... $10.17 per gallon
Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 ......... $10.00 per gallon
Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 ...... $33.60 per gallon
Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 ... $178.13 per gallon
Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 . $123.20 per gallon
Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 ....... . $25.42 per gallon
And this is the REAL KICKER...
Evian water 9 oz $1.49..$21.19 per gallon! $21.19 for WATER and the buyers
don't even know the source
(Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)
Ever wonder why printers are so cheap?
So they have you hooked for the ink.
Someone calculated the cost of the ink at.......... ......
(you won't believe it....but it is true........ )
$5,200 a gal.. (five thousand two hundred dollars)
So, the next time you're at the pump,be glad your car doesn't run on water,
or Whiteout, Pepto Bismol, Nyquil or God forbid, Printer Ink!
Just a little humor to help ease the pain of your next trip to the pump...
Experience
Side by side comparison of Palin's and Obama's resume.
Obama frequently touts his experience as a community organizer as experience that qualifies him to be commander in chief of the world's only Super Power.
So what does a community organizer do?
New Orleans Revisited
Nasty weather is brewing up for Louisiana again, and a look at the Drudge Report shows a slew of links with headlines like
MAJOR HURRICANE GUSTAV PICKS UP STRENGTH AS IT PASSES OVER CARIBBEAN... WIDE STORM... LA MAY EVACUATE PARTS OF COAST... GUSTAV TRACK... MODELS... SATELLITE... 'EXTREME DANGER'... HANNA TRACK...
No shelter for those that stay in New Orleans...
Oil, Gas Companies Shut Production and Pipelines...
DOUBLE TROUBLE... Michael Moore: Hurricane Coming During GOP Convention 'Proof There Is a God in Heaven'...
AP: New hurricane brings opportunity and risk for Republicans...
So I thought it would be useful to review what happened last time in New Orleans- not what we were told happened, but what actually did happen:
1. Hundreds were not murdered in the aftermath of Katrina. Not even half a hundred, and not even a quarter of a hundred.
New Orleans has had a crime problem for some time. It wasn't a 'safe' town before Katrina. Their annual murder rate is 200 homicides a year. That comes out to 3.8 murders a week. The best police estimate of how many people were murdered in New Orleans during the week of Katrina is four. That's 4, as in about the same number as are murdered in NOLA every other week of the year. I'm not sure if that includes the body count at the shelters. If they did not count the murder victims at the Convention Center and the Dome, then we can bring the total murder count up to five. Yes, five. There were six dead in the Dome. Four were natural causes, one was a suicide, and one was an overdose. Of the four dead in the Convention Center, one was a homicide.
2. Remember this post- Chaos at the Convention Center?
You can still watch it for yourself here. I just did so that I could make sure he'd actually said all those things. He did. I count six specific deaths, two of which he claims to have witnessed. I come up with six after making allowances for his misuse of the plural pronoun when he talks about somebody left where 'they' died in 'their' wheelchair and 'their' lawn chair. That number does not include the horrifying image he reports of 'dead people around the walls of the convention center.'
The actual count? Four. Now, one of those four appears to have been murdered. The other three died natural deaths. So where are the bodies that the professional, fact checking, serious photojournalist Tony saw? He claimed to have personally witnessed two men die of dehydration, in addition to having personal knowledge of two babies dead of dehydration, at least one person in a wheel chair and one in a lawn chair, plus, of course, those 'bodies around the walls.'
Or, as I put it in this post, Chaos at the Convention Center:
NBC Photojournalist Tony Zumbado and MSNBC's Alison Stewart produced a very disturbing report about the conditions at the Convention Center. Tony said, and I quote, "I saw two gentlemen die in front of me because of dehydration. I saw a baby near death....
...The sanitation was unbelievable. The stench in there... was unbelievable. Dead people around the walls of the convention center, laying in the middle of the street in their dying chairs. ... They were just covered up ... Babies, two babies dehydrated and died."
There were actually only four bodies found at the Convention Center, one of whom was a murder victim. So where are all those dead bodies Tony Zumbado claims he saw?
It's unclear if the four bodies included that of Booker T. Harris. Mr. Harris was a favorite subject of several news organizations. His body was covered with a blanket and left in a chair on Convention Center Boulevard for several days. Mr. Harris was 91 years old and he died in the back of a truck while being evacuated to the Convention Center. That is itself a very sad and poignant story, but it cannot truly be laid upon the doorstep of any government official, nor is it the result of conditions at the Center (since he died before he got there). It might strike us an even sadder tale if we hadn't already been innoculated against such maudlin sensitivities by the reports of horrors and nightmares coming true on the streets of NOLA.
If only one person died of dehydration, that ought to be horrible enough, especially since we now know this did not have to happen. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army both have explained that they had supplies ready and waiting to deliver to the Convention Center, but the compassionate (and Democratic) governor, Blanco, refused to let them in because she didn't want those people getting too comfortable. She wanted them to leave. However, because we were told that bodies were stacked around the walls, that children were being raped, that there was constant gunfire, and basically, a Lord of the Flies situation going on in the Convention Center, we are rather numbed to the death of 'only' four people. Nobody, nobody should have been murdered in a designated shelter. That's appalling- but the murder of one person seems somehow a relief instead of the disgrace it is because we were set up, our emotions toyed with, our senses titillated by reporters and local officials carelessly, irresponsibly exaggerating the numbers and the horrors.
3.
Here's an illustration of exactly how harmful this type of reporting was. I mean that it's harmful if what I am about to repeat is true, of course, which we can't know. Tony Zumbado claims that on his way out of NOLA to get more support and supplies for the network crews (hmmm. That's bothersome, isn't it?), he counted 82 buses sidelined just outside the city. He pulled over, he says (but we can't know if he's telling the truth anymore) and asked a bus driver why they weren't going into the city, and the driver, who did not want to be filmed (according to Tony, again) said it was because conditions were unsafe. According to professional Photojournalist Tony, "A couple of the drivers do not want to go in. That's how bad it was. I guess somebody was putting out some bad news that it was totally unsafe..."
Somebody? Hmm. Who could that 'somebody' have been?
4.
"Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers supposedly fired at doctors and soldiers from downtown high-rises.
In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."
Mayor Nagin told Oprah Winfrey that his citizens had descended into an 'animalistic state.'
Compass told Winfrey on Sept. 6 that "some of the little babies (are) getting raped" in the Dome. Nagin backed it with his own tale of horrors: ''They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.''
But both men have since pulled back to a degree.
"The information I had at the time, I thought it was credible," Compass said, conceding his earlier statements were false. Asked for the source of the information, Compass said he didn't remember.
Investigators are unable to find anybody to support these stories. The most credible stories seem to be one about an attempted rape which was interrupted by citizens who held the attacker until police came and turned him over to authorities, and an attempted child molestor also apprehended by police thanks to citizens who turned him in.
Police chief Compass complained elsewhere about the way unsubstantiated rumours interfered with police work, sending them rushing to places where their help wasn't needed. He's right, unsubstantiated reports of violence do more harm than good.
"Compass, however, promulgated some of the unfounded rumors himself, in interviews in which he characterized himself and his officers as outgunned warriors taking out armed bands of thugs at every turn.
"People would be shooting at us, and we couldn't shoot back because of the families," Compass told a reporter from the (Bridgeport) Connecticut Post who interviewed him at the Saints' Monday Night Football game in New York, where he was the guest of NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. "All we could do is rush toward the flash."
Compass added that he and his officers succeeded in wrestling 30 weapons from criminals using the follow-the-muzzle-flash technique, the story said.
"We got 30 that way," Compass was quoted as saying.
Asked about the muzzle-flash story last week, Compass said, "That really happened" to Winn's SWAT team at the Convention Center.
But Winn, when asked about alleged shootouts in a separate interview, said his unit saw muzzle flashes and heard gunshots only one time. Despite aggressively frisking a number of suspects, the team recovered no weapons. His unit never found anyone who had been shot.
Many soldiers and humanitarian workers now agree that although a number of bad actors committed violent or criminal acts, the evacuees responded well considering the hell they endured."
Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan...expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages.
"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. ... It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."
Here's the appalling thing, I think. Conditions at the Convention Center were bad enough. Local officials neglected to tell FEMA that they'd designated the Convention Center as a shelter, and Governor Blanco would not let relief agencies in, so they didn't have food, water, or medical assistance. People were sick. They needed help and attention. There were some rough characters there who were causing problems. The truth was bad enough that it ought to have been good enough for reporters to report it without embellishment. The truth should never need embellishment by reporters (or anybody else). It didn't need doctoring by our professional journalists. It didn't need doctoring by the police chief and the mayor. The end result of this doctoring for some of us is to numb us, and to further increase the skepticism and distrust we already have for the media and authority figures. That doesn't help anybody.
For others, who believed the horror story and never saw the corrections, which, if they occurred, were buried in small print on the back page, they end up with a distorted view of reality.
If you're curious, you will find other posts on the reporting of the Katrina coverage here (reporter makes up stories; same reporter debunks stories- two paychecks for one piece of work really. Rather brilliant, albeit utterly dishonest- or stupid) and here (more on the reports coming out of NOLA, including expanded information on the Convention Center fiasco).
See Powerline, Michelle Malkin, and Laura Lee Donoho at The Wide Awake Cafe, where Laura Lee noted that the media's carelessness looks an awful lot like the childhood game of 'telephone,' (also called 'gossip'), with much worse consequences.
Or you can click on the Hurrican Katrina label for this post to see our coverage from September, 2005, where we began by believing pretty much everything we were told. That's a mistake we won't make again.
Updated: Here's the new and improved story of Katrina from a report on Gustave:
As Katrina approached in 2005, as many as 30,000 people who either could not or would not evacuate jammed the Louisiana Superdome and the riverfront convention center. They spent days waiting for rescue in squalid conditions. Some died.
Stung by the images that flashed across the world, including the photo of an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair, her bodied covered with a blanket, officials promised to find a better way.
Here'a what officials are saying:
This time there will be no shelter of last resort. The doors to the Superdome will be locked. Those who stay will be on their own.
[...]
Those among New Orleans’ estimated 310,000 to 340,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept “all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones,” the city’s emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed, has warned.
For Obama to Criticize Governor Palin on the Basis of Her Inexperience
Would be like McCain criticizing Biden as Obama's VP on the basis that Biden is too old.
Both candidates, in their selection of VEEP, seem to tacitly acknowledge the validity of some of the most common criticisms of their candidacy.
Barack has no experience, he's too young? Biden is old and has been in politics since Moses was a child.
McCain is an insider, and he's old? Palin is outside the beltway, reform-minded, and young and fresh as a daisy.
I still, believe it or not, don't know that I'll be voting for McCain- two days ago I would have said I absolutely was not, this choice makes me waver, but I am a little cynical about his reasons for choosing Palin.
I am ever so much more cynical about the Democratic party criticizing Palin for inexperience. If she's unqualified for the VP job, the Obama is certainly unqualified for the position at the top of the ticket. She was the Mayor of Wasilla and has two years in office of governor of the largest state in the union, and she has a strong reputation as a reformer, being anti-pork, and pro ethics in government. Obama has some time as a state Senator and a 'community organizer.' And he spent less time as a Senator, before leaving to campaign, than she has as governor. The no experience charge just doesn't work from the Obama campaign.
And the Democrats think he's qualified and experienced enough to be at the top of the ticket. Seriously- the hypocrisy of claiming that the at least equally, if not more so, experienced Palin isn't qualified to be VEEP should make the Dems who make it blush over their double standard.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Walking a few blocks is child abuse
Spunky, yes THAT Spunky, has the story of a reporter who told his argumentative, disrespectful, uncooperative 11 year old son walk home three blocks, had second thoughts and came back to get the boy a few minutes later:. By then, two police cars and a small crowd were gathered outside. A caring patron had called the police. My son had given his statement. He explained what he had done. The officer asked if any blows were exchanged. None were. The police officer gave me a stern lecture about being a responsible parent. He said that it doesn’t take more than a few minutes for something to happen to an unsupervised child. He said, "As a journalist, you know this." My son apologized to me, and I apologized to him. The officer asked if we were OK to go home. Properly chastened, we were.
All seemed to end well and that should have been the end of the story. Except that on August 27, David Lieber, was arrested on "two probable cause warrants, one for child abandonment with intent to return and the other for child abandonment/endangering a child" Both are felonies. He was released on $4,000 bond while the district attorney determines whether to press charges.
He's also been suspended from his job pending the legal resolution of these issues.
I wouldn't drive off leaving a child to walk home from a restaurant because we'd had an argument, not even if it was only three or four blocks. But I don't think this guy should lose his job or be charged with a felony, if this is all there is to what happened.
The Lame Walk...
Very exciting developments in Israel:
paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum.
That is the sound of an electronic exoskeleton moving the 41-year-old's legs and propelling him forward -- with a proud expression on his face -- as passersby stare in surprise.
"I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it's like," said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988.
"Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below."
The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company.
[...]
Goffer himself was paralyzed in an accident in 1997 but he cannot use his own invention because he does not have full function of his arms.
That's because it requires crutches for balance. It looks pretty large, heavy, and clunky, but so did the first cell phones and computers. It's not ready to replace a wheelchair yet, but it will give some wheelchair users the opportunity to stand up and look people in the eye from time to time. It's also better for physical health to be upright, so it will improve the quality and possibly the quantity of life for those who can use it.
Slated for sale in 2010, it'll run around 20,000, much like the upper end wheelchairs, according to the article.
Frugal Meals from 1973, Farmer's Omelette
French Farmer's Omelette
Herb-buttered french bread
Tomato salad
Omelette
7 small eggs
3 slices bacon, diced
3 medium potatoes, boiled, peeled and cubed
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper
Break eggs into a bowl and beat lightly with a fork. Heat bacon in a ten inch skillet and when it is completely rendered, add onions and potatoes, saute, shaking pan gently and stirring from time to time, so that onions soften and turn golden and potatoes begin to brown on all sides. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and add eggs. As edges cook, draw them toward center so uncooked portion of egg runs to bottom of pan. When omelette is complete set, serve. If you prefer it well done, invert it onto a plate and then slide it back into the pan, cooked side up, so the second side can brown. Cut in four portions and serve.
Herb buttered French bread
1/2 a fourteen-inch loaf French or Italian bread
1/4 teaspoon each oregano, thyme, basil and salt
2 tablespoons sofened margarine
Cut bread in half lenghwise but do not cut all the way through black crust. Blend herbs and salt into margarine and spread on cut surface of bread. Close and wrap in foil. Bake in 400 degree oven for 8-9 minutes. Unwrap and bake 5 minutes longer, or until crusty. Slash in fourths.
Tomato salad
2 medium potatoes Tomatoes (sorry about that- that's what happens when I transcribe at 3 a.m.)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon minced parsley
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil
Cut tomatoes in chunks or eighths, lengthwise. Toss gently with remaining ingredients and chill together for ten minutes. If you prefer a milder garlic flavor, cut clove in half and rub bowl before adding other ingredients. Discard garlic before serving.
Previous posts from this article
One
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Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Governor Palin
IT IS PALIN!!!
I really don't know much about her, but I am getting excited about what I do know
The Democracy Project says there are ten reasons why she'd be a slam-dunk. I don't think anybody makes McCain OR Obama a 'slam-dunk.' This race will be tighter than I ever thought it would be. But Palin interests me strangely, specifically for these reasons:
REASON #9: PALIN PUTS PRINCIPLE AND THE PEOPLE FIRST
After her initial, unsuccessful, run against him for the Governor’s office, former Alaska Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. If Murkowski figured this appointment would pressure Palin into overlooking misbehavior by her fellow Republicans, he figured wrong. Within a year, Palin resigned in a very public protest over the ethics displayed by Alaska’s Republican leadership, filing a formal complaint against Randy Ruedrich, who was not only a fellow Oil and Gas Commissioner, but also the chairman of Alaska’s Republican party.
If Senator McCain wants a running mate willing to be a maverick to Party, but never to Principle, he need look no further than Sarah Palin.
[...]
REASON #7: PALIN IS A REFORM GOVERNOR WITH BIPARTISAN APPEAL
Palin doesn’t just criticize pork-barrel spending – she slashes it. A few days after she assumed office as Governor, she put the Westwind II jet her predecessor had purchased up for sale, on eBay. The jet eventually sold, in 2007, for $2.7 million, slightly above its 2005 purchase price. Palin canceled roads and construction projects designed to benefit friends of the prior administration.
[...]
REASON #5: PALIN IS UNAPOLOGETICALLY PRO-LIFE
As the mother of five children, ranging in age from 19 years to 4 months, Palin brings a kind of authority to her pro-life stance that will complement well Senator McCain’s pro-life position.
Palin has also risen courageously to the challenge of having a child diagnosed with Down Syndrome. Her commitment to the sanctity and value of every human life helps highlight concerns regarding Obama’s position on late-term (actually, post-natal) abortion.
[...]
REASON #3: PALIN IS UNASHAMEDLY PATRIOTIC
Palin loves this country, and has cultivated such a love in her children. Her eldest child, Track Palin, joined the Army last year, at 18. When this fine young man learned that his mother had given birth to a child with Down Syndrome, he sent her a text message, expressing his joy that he finally had a brother.
Okay, that last one made me cry in totally irrational fashion, and, no, this doesn't necessarily translate into a vote for McCain for me. But Palin sounds like a lady to watch.
McCain's VP Pick?
IT IS PALIN!!!
I really don't know much about her, but I am getting excited about what I do know
More here.
Palin?
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a self-styled "hockey mom" who has only been governor for a little over a year, is GOP Presidential candidate John McCain's choice for Vice President, CNBC has learned.
According to a Republican strategist, Palin is the nominee, though McCain's campaign has not comfirmed this.
With an announcement scheduled in Dayton, Ohio, an associate of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said the governor had been informed he is not McCain's pick.
Chicago Trib says they confirm through a source, but the campaign neither confirms nor denies:
Palin is the first woman governor of Alaska, elected in 2006. She was also the youngest ever elected at the age of 42. She is the mother of five children, the youngest of whom was born in April and has Down syndrome. She ran on a clean government platform in '06 to defeat the incumbent Republican Governor Frank Murkowski.
Malkin says:
Palin is solid on life issues, taxes, fiscal conservatism, energy, and the environment. Readers are asking me what Palin’s stance on immigration is. According to the On the Issues website, she has no recorded stance on immigration.
Frugalities
My weekly post is up at Frugal Hacks- this week's topic is frugal substitutions. Take a peek and share some of your own.
Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Barack Obama
Read about:Obama, Ayers, and the CAC (Chicago Annenberg Challenge) here:
By the time the CAC’s operations were wound down in 2001 it had doled out more than $100 million in grants but had failed to achieve any improvement in the Chicago schools. What little is known about the grants Obama oversaw is troubling. As Diamond relates, one of the first CAC awards in 1995 was $175,000 for the “Small Schools Workshop,” which had been founded by Ayers and was then headed by Mike Klonsky. It was only the beginning of the CAC’s generous funding of Klonsky — a committed Maoist who had been an Ayers comrade in the radical Students for a Democratic Society (the forerunner of Ayers’ Weatherman terrorist organization), and who hosted a “social justice” blog on the Obama campaign website until his writings were hastily purged in June after Diamond called attention to them.
The records of the CAC are held by the University of Illinois, Chicago. Kurtz had permission to review them, and that permission was abruptly and without explanation refused him. He publicized the University library's stonewalling, and they backed down.
Kurtz began his review, and on Wednesday was invited on Milt Rosenberg’s radio program to discuss it.....The Obama campaign — which has emissaries appearing everywhere — declined Rosenberg’s invitation to have a representative appear on the program and respond to Kurtz’s factual assertions. The campaign did, however, issue an “Obama Action Wire” that encouraged supporters to contact the program (telephone information was provided) and use scripted “talking points” to disrupt Kurtz’s appearance, which it deemed “unacceptable.” As the Politico’s Ben Smith reported, the campaign also urged supporters to demand that Rosenberg scrap the appearance of Kurtz, whom the campaign libeled as a “smear-merchant” and a “slimy character assassin.” The rant was reminiscent of the work of the left-wing media “watch-dog” Media Matters for America.
Other than denigrating Kurtz for being conservative, Obama’s operatives have provided no response to the substance of his claims. In their only pretense of engaging him, they accuse him of telling “a flat out lie” that Ayers recruited Obama for the CAC. Though it is a reasonable inference that Ayers recruited Obama, the careful Kurtz has stopped short of making it — observing only that Obama offers no explanation of how he was recruited if not through Ayers, his friend and the CAC’s driving force.
You can listen here. I highly recommend you do. It is a long program, but Kurtz and his host Mr. Milt Rosenburg are calm, measured. A particularly interesting cultural moment occurs about a 1/3 of the way through the program where the host, who has been doing this program for 30 years, seems genuinely bemused by the speed of the response from the Obama compaign and the way they organized the 'call the show and complain' campaign, continuing to talk about Kurtz and even as they talked about the campaign. It made for a rather amusingly surrealistic tail chasing moment or two.
The phone calls were mostly pretty sad. The first one criticized the radio hosts for airing a one-sided program without giving the Obama campaign equal time. The host pointed out that they had offered the Obama campaign the opportunity to appear for fifteen minutes or two hours, or any other time period they chose. She didn't know that, and if she had any sense she'd have been embarrassed. Instead she said it wasn't enough to call them only once (Obama's campaign hung up on the radio station manager who called them). The host asks, "Ten times, should we have called them ten times?" She says yes. Another one is just incensed that the program has this dishonest man on to tell all these lies, lies, lies about Obama. The host asks if she can be more specific. She says all of it, it's all lies. He asks again, gently, kindly, and almost as though he wants her to do well, to name something more specific. She can't. Then she says that this is unAmerican.
Steve Diamond calls in and points out that the Obama campaign is engaging in McCarthy era tactics, pointing out that David Axelrod, as a red diaper baby, ought to be more sensitive to the implications of the sort of attacks the campaign is making against Kurtz.
Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation. Obama fancies himself as “post-partisan.” He is that only in the sense that he apparently brooks no criticism. This episode could be an alarming preview of what life will be like for the media should the party of the Fairness Doctrine gain unified control of the federal government next year.
After reading the above article and listening to the radio program, then read this post about Obama's plans for mandatory national service for junior high school students, and idea straight out of the Castro playbook.
And then read Steve Diamond's post- made doubly interesting because he also spoke on the program, and because of this:
As my readers are aware I have pointed to the joint participation of Senator Obama and Professor Bill Ayers in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education reform project, as evidence of an older and deeper relationship between Ayers and Obama than the Senator has acknowledged. Because the political views, as well as the past criminal behavior, of Professor Ayers represent, in my view, an authoritarian approach to education and society as a whole, I believe that it is important for the public to have as complete an understanding of the Ayers-Obama relationship as possible.
Of course, many well-intentioned supporters of the Obama campaign who, for example, share my opposition to the war in Iraq and perhaps share my views on many other issues, will argue that this kind of discussion can only help the McCain campaign. It may indeed be true that the McCain campaign will benefit because of the relationship between Obama and Ayers.
But if that is the case then I think the left has to take responsibility for attempting to build its opposition to the war in Iraq and other policies of the Bush Administration on the basis of the objectionable political tactics used by, and the political views of, those who lead the Democratic Party. Thus, my hope is that by confronting the truth about that Party we can build an independent progressive movement that is transparent and accountable to its members.
CAC was dedicated to the improvement of Chicago's public schools. They awarded grants to schools and programs they believed would improve public education. I expect the people involved really believed in what they were doing. Everybody wants to see America's children better educated- we just differ on how that is best achieved.
The CAC sought to improve Chicago schools by funneling its grants to external partners who developed various programs for schools, or sometimes started small schools themselves.
Evaluations by internal and external evaluators concluded that CAC grants had no positive affect- CAC was a failure.
So who did they fund? Organizations focused on ethnic identity, Bill Ayers' own organization (The Small Schools Project, run by another red diaper baby Mike Klonsky- a questionable process since Ayers was a founder and active member of the CAC), which focused on 'teaching peace,' nonviolent conflict resolution- an interesting project for a terrorist who laments that the Weatherman didn't do enough.
Who did they refuse to fund? A group called The Algebra Project, which had an admittedly vague goal, "our approach is to focus on one and only one item, increasing student achievement;" the district 5 Math/Science initiative, which sought to target students learning English as a second language and make increasing math and science skills up to par. IN other words, academic goals
This is no surprise to those of us who aren't far to the left, but one feels a pang of sympathy to those on the left who perhaps were dismayed and bewildered when their cherished projects failed to improve schools as they hoped.
But then again- maybe academics was never what interested Ayers and friends...
” Ayers’s spectacular second act began when he enrolled at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1984. Then 40, he planned to stay just to get a teaching credential. (He had taught in a “Freedom School” during his pre-underground student radical days.) But he experienced an epiphany in a course taught by Maxine Greene, a leading light of the “critical pedagogy” movement. As Ayers wrote later, he took fire from Greene’s lectures on how the “oppressive hegemony” of the capitalist social order “reproduces” itself through the traditional practice of public schooling—critical pedagogy’s fancy way of saying that the evil corporations exercise thought control through the schools.
It hadn’t occurred to Ayers that an ed-school professor could speak or write as an authentic American radical. “There are vast dislocations in industrial towns, erosions of trade unions; there is little sign of class consciousness today,” Greene had proclaimed in the Harvard Education Review. “Our great cities are burnished on the surfaces, building high technologies, displaying astonishing consumer goods. And on the side streets, in the crevices, in the burnt-out neighborhoods, there are the rootless, the dependent, the sick, the permanently unemployed. There is little sense of agency, even among the brightly successful; there is little capacity to look at things as if they could be otherwise.”
Greene told future teachers that they could help change this bleak landscape by developing a “transformative” vision of social justice and democracy in their classrooms. Her vision, though, was a far cry from the democratic optimism of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., which most parents would endorse. Instead, critical pedagogy theorists nurse a rancorous view of an America in which it is always two minutes to midnight and a knock on the door by the thought police is imminent. The education professors feel themselves anointed to use the nation’s K–12 classrooms to resist this oppressive system. Thus Maxine Greene urged teachers not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order. They should portray “homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder’s choice.” In other words, they should turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists.
All music to Bill Ayers’s ears. The ex-Weatherman glimpsed a new radical vocation. He dreamed of bringing the revolution from the streets to the schools. And that’s exactly what he has managed to do.
I know this has been a long and link-heavy post, but you really do want to read it all. The last link was written a couple years ago, but it's still timely, particularly because it was written pre Obama, so it's clearly not ideologically motivated by an anti-Obama slant:
“Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression—we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things.”
“We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine.”
“In a truly just society there would be a greater sharing of the burden, a fairer distribution of material and human resources.”
Redistribution is a goal of Obama's, too, and it is the center of Marxist thought.
Write Me a Letter
LadyLydia has a beautiful idea for putting together a very special letter. I think this would be a nice treat for a distant grandmama or an older lady at church who can't get out much, or a convalescing friend.
Crockpot Magic
Here's a blog devoted to using the crockpot every day of the year.
Did you know you can make falafels and roasted garbanzo beans in your crockpot? I did not know this. Our friend 'Susan' (she of the UBO fame) told me (she's also the one who told me about this website), but I did not truly believe her.
I think I shall generously give the EC my old crockpot to set up housekeeping with and I shall get a new one with all the fanciest up to date gadgets and accessories, and this will make me a new, better, and shinier person.
WEll, probably not. But it would make me a person who can make falafels in the crockpot.
Kitchen Sociology
It's a couple years old, but I was very interested in this New Atlantic article by Christine Rosen, "Are We Worthy of our Kitchens?" when it came out, and I blogged about it back then. I am cherry picking a few quotes to make this much abridged (but perhaps easier to take in) post, but it's such a good article I hope you'll read it all: We seek restaurant-quality kitchens with our six-burner stovetops and cappuccino-making machines. We want the latest high-tech contrivance or convenience, hoping that it will make old jobs easier, or that it will fulfill new longings we never knew existed.
The eager manipulation of this base emotion is nothing new, of course. Writing in 1957, sociologist David Riesman observed, “Americans resent being deprived of the things they are supposed to have, and advertising tempts us with the halo of association rather than with objects per se.” Appliance manufacturers are skilled at conjuring happy associations of home, hearth, and happiness, and print advertisements often feature images of convivial families and friends gathered in their well-appointed kitchen, surrounded by gleaming stainless-steel appliances.
I really believe that it is my duty as a Christian to resist such emotional manipulation in advertising. Even more importantly, I need to recognize that resentment and sense of entitlement for what it is- a nasty, hideous, wicked sin. Begrudging others for owning what I don't, or even can't, have is likewise a character flaw that should be ruthlessly rooted out. We root it out the same way we root out other sins- by hard work, by prayer, meditation, by focusing our minds on something else, by self-denial, Bible study, and other spiritual disciplines (but not necessarily in this order). WE do not overcome sin by wishful thinking, and we most certainly do not overcome sin or other lacks in our lives by shopping and owning better stuff.
Peace, Love, Jus--- KILL, KILL, KILL
Gateway Pundit: <em>NEW VIDEO-- The Michelle Malkin Attack</em>
Ten minutes of video that has to be seen to be believed.
It starts off pretty funny, "The crowd is almost in the tens.... throngs, or should I say throng, singular...."
Pip watched with me and wondered how Steve managed to keep a straight face.
And then it got very, very, ugly.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Reflection of a Bridge II
Frugal Meals from 1973, Broiled spiced chicken
One broiling chicken about 2 1/2 pounds, which in 1973 cost .98
Quarter it.
2 teaspoons of salt (that was 1/2 a cent's worth)
1/2 teaspoon of pepper, .01
1/2 teaspoon of powdered ginger, which was a whopping .06 in 1973
pinch of dry mustard (.03)
2 tablespoons of olive or vegetable oil
Rinse and dry chicken thoroughly. Combine remaining ingredients and rub well into all sides of each piece of chicken. Heat broiler and broil chicken, skin side up, 3 inches from medium hot heat for 20 minutes, basting once or twice with drippings. When skin is golden brown, turn and broil 15 to 20 minutes longer, or until juices run clear when thigh meat is pierced with a fork.
Serve with Baked Acorn Squash
2 acorn squashes, about 3 lbs, cut in half lengthwise and seeded. This would have run you about 30 cents in 1973.
Salt, pepper, and nutmeg- a 1973 nickel's worth
2 tablespoons of margarine.
Cut small slice off bottom of each squash half so it will stand level, cut side-up. Place four halves in a baking dish. Sprinkle cut side with salt, pepper, and nutmeg and add 1/2 tablespoon margarine to each half.
Pour boiling water into pan to a depth of about 1 inch. Bake in 375 degree oven for 30-40 minutes or until squash is tender all the way through. Baste edges with melted margarine during cooking. Add more boiling water to pan if needed. Lift carefully from pan to avoid spilling juices.
Also serve with Kasha with chives
1 cup kasha (buckwheat groats, .15)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons margarine
2 cups boiling water
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
Place kasha in 1 1/2 quart heavy botomed saucepan and heat over low flame, stirring constantly until grains are brown in color. Pour in boiling water and add salt and margarine. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce to a simmer. Cook 20 minutes, or until kasha is soft but not mushy. Reove the cover during the last 3 or 4 minutes of cooking if the kasha seems to be wet. Add chives and toss lightly with a fork.
Previous posts from this article
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Children and Chores
Reposted to go with the article on children and chores I just posted a couple hours ago.
We believe in children doing chores. In fact, we believe in children working hard and contributing to the family's wellbeing. I grew up doing chores. My husband did not. Not one single chore was assigned to him at any stage in his life that he recalls, except during the reign of his favorite step-mother, and oddly enough, the rest of his kin-folk disliked his favorite step-mother and thought she was mean to him. I think during her very short sentence of marriage to his dad the HM had to do real slavish tasks like making his own bed and taking out the trash. I also think he was about 13.
You may have some idea how my husband feels about that when I tell you that he has assigned more chores to the 8 year old boy than to the 10 year old girl (I made up the slack there), and probably the proudest I've ever seen him as a papa is when we admire his little boy's work ethic (which is strong and tenacious).
Chores are for boys and girls: We also are an old-fashioned family with old-fashioned values and we pretty much stick to old-fashioned gender roles in our family- and even so our boy does what other people call 'girl chores' and the girls do what other people consider boy-chores. He helps dust, clean the dishes, clear and wipe tables, vacuum, fold laundry, and even cook. He also is all boy. The girls help mow yards, muck stalls, carry out trashcans, and helped with our tire retaining wall in progress in the front driveway. I do not want my son to be helpless without a woman in his life. If his wife gets sick I want him to be able to be supportive and not an added burden and hindrance. I want him to know how to get some basic meals together for his family so that if meals are left to him at any time for any reason he can rise to the occasion without breaking the family budget.
First Chores: Probably about the time our children are two they are already helping to do a few easy chores with Mama (or Daddy). They fold washclothes, pillowcases, and dishtowels. They put away silverware and plastic cups. Putting away the utensils is a self correcting task, and if tey can sort a box of nuts and bolts or do a single piece puzzle, they can do the utensils. You can even call it school. They help sort laundry (color matching!). They get a cloth and get to 'help' wipe the table. They can carry things like napkins, cups, and dishes to and from the table. They can even water plants. I do this by getting a small cream pitcher, just the right size to hold enough water for one plant, and teach them to fill it up one time and pour it into one plant. If you have plants in several rooms you can teach them that the living room plants are watered on Mondays, the bedroom plants on Tuesday, etc. They can dry dishes (cups work especially well). They help carry things in from the car, including groceries. I will take something out of a larger bag just to give the littles something to do. They can dust a window sill.
They can help you do just about anything at this age. Yes, everything will take a little longer, but it will be worth it later.
First Independent Chores: Once you've trained them to do the small things well and independently, you can let them do these things regularly- watering plants, folding all the towels and washclothes, setting the table and clearing it, wiping the table. It's helpful to make sure your cleaning supplies are safe for children and things are set up so that they make sense.
They can feed pets, especially if you give them a specific container and tell them exactly how full it should be.
They can wipe out sinks (I think I was about five or six when scouring the sink first became my job and I loved it).
They can dust- not a whole room yet, but certainly you can assign a specific piece of two of furniture, an end table or rocking chair, and teach them to do the job thoroughly.
They can make beds and switch out laundry when it's done- carrying a basket of clean clothes into the living room to be folded, carrying baskets of folded clothes to the rooms where they belong. They can hang clothes on hangers and fold quite a few things.
The main thing is supervision and apprenticeship. First they do the chore with you and you explain what you are doing and why. Then you watch over them the first few times they try a chore alone, checking to make sure they follow the steps you expect to be followed. Then check on their work periodically. If you are watching you can see when you've assigned a task too hard or too easy for some reason. A shorter child will take longer to be able to manage the vacuum cleaner than a tall child, or you may realize your child is color blind when you ask him to sort laundry, or you may find that your child with ADD tendencies needs a short, specific list of things to do rather than a general 'clean the kitchen.'
These are generalities, not the final word in chores for the children in your family. In general, our oldest two were able to do just about everything by the time they were 12- including meals. The middle two were a bit older when they learned meal preparation, and the youngest two are not where any of their older siblings were at the same age because I slacked off badly. The Cherub, of course, is a category all her own. But if you include your children in your chores and explain what you are doing, by the time they are 10 or 11 they should be capable of doing just about any regular household chore except some of the kitchen tasks.
I wrote this when the youngest two were 8 and 10. The 12 year old now can make a few things in the kitchen, and she cleans up the kitchen after lunch every day. She actually prefers to do it by herself rather than with a partner. The 10 year old boy mows the lawn with the push mower, and he LOVES it. I didn't want him to do this chore, thinking it too much for him, but he begged and pleaded, and the HM agreed. He wears his sturdiest boots and does quite a good job, and he's very proud to be doing such hard work.
Chores and Children
Modern children don't do enough of them, and the family is missing out on some blessings- and that's from a secular article (although the author didn't use the word blessing). Children spend an average of 24 minutes a day on chores, a drop of 25 percent from 1981 levels. Sometimes they are doing less because they're busy with things like study groups and the chess club, but who are we kidding? Some chores have been, er, downsized, because few people wish to emulate my husband's late grandmother and wash the sheets every day.
But, says the author:
Nevertheless, research into the role of housework in human relationships suggests we may be losing something of value here.
Fer Instance:
After controlling for other factors, U.S. marriages tend to be more stable when men participate more in domestic tasks, says a study of 506 U.S. couples published in 2006 in the American Journal of Sociology.
I wonder if this is less because of the pitching in than due to the sort of attitude likely behind the pitching in?
The father of some rather uncooperative children (and, not coincidentally, the husband of one very frazzled and unhappy wife), did not permit his children to do chores around the house, nor did he offer to help. That was the wife's job. While visiting friends of ours whose children did do chores, including washing the dishes up after the family meal shared with others, watched the children of his hosts tell their mother 'yes, ma'am' and head off to the kitchen when directed, and rather unpleasantly sneered, "Do they also sit or roll over when you tell them to?"
His mother hadn't made him do any chores as a child, and he missed out.
Housework has unique value in instilling a habit of serving others. Analyzing data on more than 3,000 adults, Alice Rossi, a professor emerita of sociology at University of Massachusetts Amherst, found doing household chores as a child was a major, independent predictor of whether a person chose to do volunteer or other community work as an adult. Thus for parents who value service, housework is an important teaching tool.
David Jackson, father of 16 year old twins, says:
He sees the chores as a way of teaching empathy and "stewardship -- taking care of the community assets," says the Tulsa, Okla., father. "It helps them realize the world is not all about them."
A mother I knew lamented the lack of consideration and willingness to serve that her son displayed. She didn't ask, as in, make him, for chores and help around the house. She thought she would teach him purely by example, by showing what she wanted. But he was stronger willed than she, and had the basic self centered nature all children are born with and learn to overcome as they learn empathy and the ability to see things from another point of view. He had not been trained to this, either, and so he refused to help.
Children, I think, learn and develop a servant's heart by serving others, not by being given a full time maid in the form of a mother.
Overheard at school yesterday...
... two students complaining about one of their instructors - not unusual. What caught my attention was when they concluded their rant by going, "And she always dresses like such a hippy!" What made that funnnier (from my point of view) is that they weren't exactly dressed like Normal People either. They definitely weren't hippy-styled, and not goth-styled. I don't know enough about fashions to be sure of the particular trend they were following, but they were definitely following one and apparently thought it was The Only Way To Go.
~
Tennis is going to be fun, I think. Statistics might even be enjoyable - the professor is extremely engaging, something not easily done to a class of 600 people.
Both of my history classes have special meetings with the school's history librarian and archivist built into their class schedule, so I'm looking forward to that.
The Company He Keeps
This is a powerful read. In 1970, John Murtagh was just 9 years old.
His father, a New York Supreme Court Justice was presiding over a Black Panthers case
. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.They were afraid to leave their house because they didn't know if the people who set the bombs might be waiting outside for them. In the morning they found grafitti on the sidewalk- 'kill the pigs' and other slogans scrawled in blood red. For the next 18 months the little boy would ride to school in an unmarked car.
Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.
As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”
About this Ayers, Obama says it's unfair to question him:
“The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.”
No, what doesn't make sense is that this is about Obama merely 'knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago.' That is flatly disingenuous of him.
It's not just about what happened forty years ago- it's that this man, TODAY, is not apologetic or repentant for trying to murder this family or anybody else. And this man, TODAY is not just somebody Obama happens to 'know.'
Bernadine Dorhn, mentioned above for writing that letter to the paper promising more bombings after the unsuccessful attempt to slay a Judge, his children, and his wife? She's still married to Ayers, and was the "co-host of Obama's Career launching fund-raiser." Here's the sort of person Obama knows:
When she was in the Weather Underground she was one of those members typically fascinated with Charles Manson (I discuss this briefly in my book). Speaking of Manson's famous murders she exclaimed, "Dig It! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!” In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a threefingered “fork” gesture its official salute.
Obama has, understandably, tried to distance himself from his friend- telling the public that they are not close, they just sort of live in the same neighborhood and say howdy once in a while, but that's all. That's a lie. It's not all. Not only did he launch his political career with a fund-raiser actually HOSTED by Ayers and his charming 'stick a fork in it' wife, Obama was the first chair for a group founded by Ayers, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The papers for the group have been the subject of much controversy, as the University of Illinois at Chicago had, until recently, refused to permit others to view the papers they held. They released those documents today.
Obama and Ayers are hardly passing strangers.
If you've not seen this ad, you might want to take a peek.
It's not that he just happens to live in the same neighborhood. It's that he works with the guy, started his political career in Ayers' home, and Ayers still isn't sorry for any of the bombings he and his comrades set off.
And this is about much more than 'guilt by association.'
Anonymously Yours
This NYT editorial by Richard Bernstein complaining about the abuse of anonymity on the internet is quite interesting- not for the reasons the author envisioned, however. On the internet anybody can (and often does) say anything about anybody. But I think most people realize that and discount anonymous sources (like me=)) and information anyway. Nor do I think the general public grants newspaper reporters like him quite the credibility he assumes.
Here are some of his objections to anonymous accusation and complaints on the internet:
But anonymity is also a tremendous aid to the resentful, the scandalous and the cowardly....
[...]
It's bad enough to tarnish reputations and to publish insults, but if the people doing so identify themselves, there is at least a possibility of censure and accountability.
[...]
But what the Internet and its cult of anonymity do is to provide a blanket sort of immunity for anybody who wants to say anything about anybody else, and it would be difficult in this sense to think of a more morally deformed exploitation of the concept of free speech.
All these things are true in spades, of course, of the practice CPS has of not only accepting, but encouraging anonymous hotline calls reporting 'suspected' abuse. Couple this with the fact that CPS doesn't have anything like the burden of proof a criminal case, and you never get to face your accusers, and it's a recipe for a secret tribunal, a weapon almost designed for the use of disgruntled former employees, jealous neighbors, or anybody with a bent toward malice or other unkind tempers.
He complains of negative reviews of his book on Amazon (anonymous, of course, and yes, I do think that he has a dog in this fight), and points out:
At the time I earned my living as a book critic for The New York Times, which, needless to say, did not allow me to hide behind a shield of anonymity in my own reviews. If I did have negative opinions about a book - and I often did - I could be held responsible if, in fact, my opinion was unjustified or unfair, or if I was avenging myself against someone who had once written negatively about me.
LIkewise, if those who call in on hotlines weren't allowed to hide behind a shield of anonymity, they could be held responsible if their accusations were false, unjustified, unfair, or a case of revenge. It's a crime to make a false report of a crime to the police, but it's considered heroic to make anonymous hotline calls to CPS.
But the law does make it very hard to hold Web sites legally accountable, even for libelous opinions. This is because the U.S. government's Communications Decency Act grants immunity to Web site operators for false or slanderous information they publish when that information has been provided by third parties.
And those who call in anonymous and false tips to the CPS hotline are also immune from prosecution for any false or slanderous information they provide, and CPS itself appears to be immune- Where are the repercussions against CPS employees who lie?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
His New Hobby
My dad likes his routine. He does not like deviations unless he initiates them. Yes, he was one of those fathers who only made scheduled bathroom stops, and woebetide the carsick child, because he did not pull over for unscheduled upchucking, either. We carried a bucket. But that's a story for another blog post.
The story for this blogpost is that Dad likes his morning paper to be there in the morning. Early in the morning. The paper deliverer is coming later these days- perhaps closer to brunch time than in time for the morning cup of java.
So dad drags his chair down to the mailbox and sits there, waiting reproachfully, until the paper carrier shows up. Knowing Dad, he probably takes the paper with sad, puppy dog eyes and a mournful expression and says (quite insincerely) "I was beginning to worry that something bad had happened, maybe you were sick or in an accident."
And then he walks slowly back to the house, carrying his lawnchair in one hand and paper in the other, walking slightly unsteadily up the hill, still over 6 feet tall though he's in his 70s, long of limb, dignified even in his old age, in his dress shirt and loafers, and his flannel pajama pants peeking out below the hem of his slacks.
Grilled Cheese
This is a few days old, but I had to share because the Homespun Heart Blogger's favorite kind of day is my favorite kind of day, and I am very interested in her recipe for the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich. Mmmm.
Grilled cheese sandwiches are best eaten with tomato soup, of course, which is best made with milk instead of water so it's rich and creamy, and then you take your golden brown toasted cheese sandwich and tear off a bit and dip it in your hot soup, and then pop it into your mouth and savor the melting goodness of the blended flavors of soup, cheese, and grilled bread.
I'm getting hungry....
Heimlich
This is not really new, but it's not been widely publicized. SEveral sharp slaps to the back are what the Red Cross advises should be the first response when somebody is choking.
The abdominal thrust is only to be used when the back slap doesn't work. And Dr. Heimlich may be involved in fraud.
Video footage from a news report here.
The Computer and the Brain
In July Janie Cheaney had a very thought provoking article in World Magazine. It was titled Fleeing Thoughts
Now I know why my attention span has shortened and my concentration level has dropped. It's not age, it's excess.
I've suspected this for a long time, ever since merging onto the info-bahn and ratcheting up the speed. With more to read, I've sensed a decline in reading skills. It's harder to fix on one topic or question and follow it through a logical development. My mind catches a flicker off to one side and abandons the subject to chase it.
Alack-a-day, 'oh, shiny!' afflicts us all.
My brain is sometimes like a glass of water spilled across the table- drippy, soppy, no boundaries, and shallow as puddle in the sahara.
She points out that the internet is changing the way we read, which changes the way we think. I know technology alters our vocabulary and reference points in interesting and sometimes amusing ways.
I am old, Father William, and my parents did not buy things on credit much, and they did not get a VCR until I was married. I didn't get one until I'd been married three or four years myself.
And I was flabbergasted when, one night during a read-aloud, the young HG jumped up and pleaded with me to put the book on pause as she had to go to the bathroom.
I suspect the computer influences how we think in other ways, too. For instance, I am sure there's a computer key in my 12 year old's head. I thought I shared this story before, but I can't find it- (if it's a repeat forgive me and put it down to computer brain):
Last March our sixth daughter had a friend spend the night. In the morning we had this conversation:
Sixth: Can we take the golf cart out on the road?
Mom: No. You're 12. You can take it out behind Granny Tea's house on the stagecoach road path.
Sixth: But it's probably too muddy there.
Mom: Oh, you're right. Well, it might still be frozen from last night. Walk along the path first and see if it's muddy or if it's still frozen solid, and if it's frozen you can take the cart on it.
Sixth: Nodding her head, goes to get friend and small brother and off they run to Granny Tea's to get the cart.
That's the conversation I *thought* we had. What I did not realize was that apparently, nodding her head is how she operates the delete key. Because this is what she heard:
(delete, delete, delete)
(delete, delete, delete, delete).
Mom: (delete, delete, delete) you can take the cart (delete, cut and paste) on stagecoach road.
I do not think it was thirty minutes before Granny Tea called and said, "Don't say I told, but they have the golf cart stuck in the mud." So I sent Pip over to see the damage, and she called back and said it was impossible and she didn't even see how daddy was going to get it out. She also said the sixth child had no memory of being told to walk the path first to make sure it was frozen hard enough to take the cart. So I Spoke to Sixth Child at Great Length (and VOLUME) on the phone and then fumed for far too long. I needed that delete key just then.
I couldn't keep it up though, because we were having a singing- which was good, because one of the young men who came for that stayed over and helped my husband get the golf cart out later.
Meanwhile... let's fast-forward to the singing. The BOY sat around behind the main group, back in a corner. At one point, while clearing my throat in preparation for a song with higher notes than I can usually hit, I saw him get up and leave the room, crawling under a table to do so. I tried to watch and see where he went, but he never crossed my line of sight again. This distracted me from the song, because it meant he had to have crawled the rest of the way out of the room. Or else he was just skulking, hunkered down on the floor out of my sight. And while I was sitting there thinking 'I am going to do something about that boy' thoughts, I was startled by the apparition of a cup of water which appeared from out of nowhere just over my right shoulder. The boy, noticing my throat clearing, had crawled out of the room (so as not to distract anybody(!). Plus, let's face it, that was fun) to the kitchen to bring me a glass of water, and had hunkered down out of sight to bring it back to me, commando style, sneaking along behind the couch. So as to surprise me. He did. And not distract anybody. He didn't.
It was good to be surprised by a good deed, because more details were to be revealed about the golf cart incident. He was driving it, my 9 year old who had not been given permission to drive it. Our older girls have explained something I did not know. When his 12 year old sister says, "Can we take the golf cart out?" she means "and the boy and I will take turns driving because we're all into sharing and being fair and stuff like that, and we won't even keep score or fight about it because we such totally awesome siblings" none of which I knew.
NONE of which I knew.
I thought they understood the rule was he can only drive when somebody 17 years or older, as in HAS A VALID LICENSE AND IS A RESPONSIBLE PERSON is in the golf cart with him. But it seems, that by failing to tattoo this rule to their persons (without benefit of anesthetic) that we have a failure to communicate and they did not know this was a rule, and they thought I understood that 'can we take the golf cart' means 'and everybody and their dog can drive it, sometimes blindfolded.'
And while these two have mastered the brain delete function and also some sort of strange hyperlinked brain html wherein I think I am saying one thing, but apparently this is code for completely the opposite thing- he had not yet figured out the pitfalls of self-incrimination: when Pip went over to see what needed to be done about the golf-cart and she had to tell them 'give it up, that thing's not leaving the mud until a great drought and at least six brawny men show up,' he shook his head in disgust and said, "But that's not even the biggest puddle we went through!! We went through at least three other puddles MUCH bigger than that one and we didn't get stuck at all."
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
Deep, cleansing breath. DEEP cleansing breath.
Fortunately, we parents have a 'help and support key.'
dandruff
You can spray apple cider vinegar on your scalp, wrap it in a towel to help absorb it, and then wash your hair to treat vinegar. Do this several times a week.
I just read that you can also dilute a teaspoon of honey in about 1/4 cup of water and massage that into your scalp and hair, then wash as usual. I don't know how well it works, but it's supposed to help condition hair, too.
Good News/ Bad News
The good news is that I have only three shelves of books left to catalog and move from point A to point B, and then these massive metal library shelves will be emptied and read to move out of here, whither I neither know nor care.
The bad news is that I didn't notice each of these last three shelves are twice as long as the first dozen or so.
The good news is that the FYG has written a list of things she wants to do or see before she is old, and one of them is ride an elephant and today she got to do that very thing.
The bad news is that they forgot the camera and I was not with her.
The good news is that JennyAnyDots is now working at the local library, as the HG quit, and her new fellow page is another homeschooler with a strong work ethic. The bad news is that the previous page without a strong work ethic quit abruptly because she was kicked out of her house.=(
The good news is that The Cherub has a new leg brace with movable ankle joint, which she has not had for YEARS. AND it's a spiffy yellow and orange sherbet swirl sort of color.
That bad news is that she's moving around a lot better. Why is that bad news? Yesterday we found her in the kitchen, lights out, sitting on the floor next to the 40 pound box of bananas bread the HM brought home, cross legged with a pile of banana peels in her lap.
The good news is that I have a daughter graduating from college, a daughter graduating from our home-school high-school, a daughter getting married, a daughter turning 13, and one turning 18- all within the next 9 months.
The bad news is I have a daughter graduating from college, a daughter graduating from our home-school high-school, a daughter getting married, a daughter turning 13, and one turning 18- all within the next 9 months.
But then again, the good news is that I have a daughter graduating from college, a daughter graduating from our home-school high-school, a daughter getting married, a daughter turning 13, and one turning 18- all within the next 9 months.
The silly news is that, yes, I was tired and sleep deprived when I wrote this post and portions of it made no sense at all. But I think it's fixed now.=)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Reflection of a Bridge
Overheard in the Common Room
HG to D-man Dog- "I think you have to get a special permit to look that dorky."
Frugal Meals from 1973
Yesterday, I forgot to to include the side dish to go with the Greek Pastitsio. I added it this morning, and the lemon dill green bean recipe looks easy and delicious- and maybe a perfect end of the garden use for your green beans.
Scroll down and click on the link to part five to see it.
The next main dish in this 1973 article on frugality is Haddock and Potato Pie, Hamburg Style:
1 pound haddock, thawed if frozen (this was .89 in 1973)
1 pound boiling potatoes, pared, boiled and sliced 1/2 an inch thick (this was .09 in 1973)
2 medium onions, sliced
2 tablespoons margarine (.02 in 1973, in case you were wondering)
1 yolk of medium sized egg
2/3 cup of dairy sour cream
salt, pepper, and mace to taste
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon margarine
Cut haddock into large fork-size chunks. Dry thoroughly on paper toweling. Keep sliced potatoes warm. Saute sliced onions in hot margarine until they begin to brown. Grease a 1 1/2 quart oven-proof casserole. In it arrange alternate layers, starting with potatoes, then fish, sauteed onions and some of their melted margarine. Continue until casserole is full, ending with potatoes. Beat egg yolk well, then beat into sour cream, seasoning with salt, pepper, and mace. Pour over top layer of potatoes, sprinkle with bread crumbs and dot with margarine. Bake in 350 degree oven for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown.
Serve with lettuce salad with vinaigrette dressing
1 head escarole or chicory, or half a head of each (.29 in 1973)
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic cut in half
salt, pepper, dry mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
Cut off browned bases of lettuce and separate leaves. WAsh thoroughly in two or three changes of very cold water. Shake off excess water and roll in towel and chill until just before serving time. Place 1/2 teaspoon salt in salad bowl and rub cut ends of garlic clove in it. Add pepper, mustard, and vinegar and stir until salt and mustard dissolve. Beat in olive oil. Remote garlic, add lettuce that has been thoroughly dried and toss until all leaves are well coated. SErve at once.
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Five
Cold Sores
You can put some golden seal powder on a cold sore before you go to bed- it works, but it's messy. And you can buy topical L-Lysine ointment, which works but is expensive.
You can drink plenty of water, which works but takes time. You can put an ice-cube on your lip when it begins to tingle, which sometimes helps.
I just read that you can also use a dab of pepto bismol overnight.
Zimbabwe, What to Do
Pray.
As for other assistance, it's difficult. My impression is that you really need to know people who know people. This is not a case where institutionalized programs seem to be able to help much. The friend who gave me the info in my recent post on Zimbabwe says
Sending food or clothing or medicine over is possible, but ever since US postal service now refuses to send parcels by ship, the cost is absolutely prohibitive by air. Those Zimbabweans we have contact with help help one another in coming to the border to take back what is needed.
She doesn't live in Zimbabwe- she's in South Africa, but close enough to the border, and has some Zimbabwean contacts who sneak across the border to collect supplies and sneak them back home again.
Somebody she knows is going to be visiting Zimbabwe from the states- he's been there before, and he says that since there's little food available in the country, he's focusing his personal efforts on replacing a Zimbabwean friend's truck- which almost 400,000 miles on it and is in horrible shape. His friend is a Christian and has been using that truck "....to go into Botswana to buy mealie meal and haul it back into Zim to be distributed" among his church family. "(Most of the hauling within Zim is done at night because government-sponsored thugs set up check-points on the roads, and would demand the mealie meal be given to them.)"
The man heading to Zim from the states has some funds already.
I have two email contacts to help with those efforts- but it won't be a tax write-off for you, and both my contacts want to be very careful about where they get the money from for a number of reasons, one of them being the Zimbabwean government monitors email contacts within the country. If you are interested in helping, email me privately at heartkeepercommonroom at gmail dot com, and I will either pass on your emails to one of these two gentlemen, or something.
Or you might consider this effort, which will go through an organized charity and thus be tax-deductable. I don't know anything about this agency.
(Please note that the images in the sidebar are disturbing and you may wish to preview before your children go there)
News:
Blow for Robert Mugabe as Zimbabwe parliament elects MDC speaker (Times of London, 8/25/08)
The Zimbabwean parliament elected a speaker from the Movement for Democratic Change amid dramatic scenes today, relegating President Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) to an opposition party for the first time since independence in 1980.
That's a good question
Dana at Principled Discovery asks:
... how much the very existence of the “homeschool market” has changed homeschooling.
Enid Blyton and Children of a Certain Age
Enid Blyton's books have been voted, yet again, the best loved children's books of all time. Lucy Mangan explains why.
Blyton's gold medal position in this table, along with the high preponderance of children's writers elsewhere on Costa's list (Roald Dahl took second place and JK Rowling third, while JRR Tolkien and Beatrix Potter made the top 10), is evidence that it is the books we read, wholeheartedly, passionately, uncritically, in childhood to which we remain most firmly and irrevocably attached. The flaws we see in them as adults, the criticisms - and some pretty hefty ones, in the shape of accusations of sexism, racism and class snobbery have been flung Blyton's way over the years - do not weaken those bonds. For hundreds of thousands of us, Blyton was the wedge that cracked open the pleasure-filled world of reading and allowed us in. Our rational adult sides reject and mock Kirrin Island and all the adventures played out there; our inner children remember it rightly, and gratefully, as the promontory from which we caught our first glimpse of the promised land.
This is why Pip read Lord of the Rings 13 times by the time she was 13. This is why the Equuschick rereads Anne of Green Gables every fall- and pleaded to take our tattered, broken, pages divorced from the cover, edition with her into her new home rather than the newer, sturdier version I found recently at a thrift shop.
And it is why the year I turned forty I was silly enough to be willing to pay 25.00 for Gateway to Storyland with the red cover, not the blue, with the picture of the girl with the donkey.
How I Am Ending My SUmmer Vacation
Saturday: Baby shower, 45 minutes away 92 degrees, no air in van. Left at 9 in the morning. Shower didn't end until 1 or 2. REcipient got more stuff than she could fit in her van and so I offered to take some in mine since I pass her house on the way home. Her husband was also gone, so I would need to carry her stuff in since she is great with child and swollen and miserable in the heat.
Went to day old bread store and spent 17 dollars on about fifty bucks worth of bread. Went to office supply store because I forgot labels. WEnt to Christian bookstore and spent a couple hours pricing my laundry basket full of stuff, and was reminded that they will provide labels for free, and then spent another hour spending too much money.
Headed out of town, taking crib to pregnant lady's house. Forgot which house was hers- drove up and down hoping she would see monster van out her window and flag me. Hoped in vain. Called home, got house number, drove into her driveway and the 12 year old and I carried her very, very heavy crib in its box up her porch steps, into the house, around the corner, placed it just so against the stereo cabinet until her husband could get home. Got home about six or seven.
Sunday: Leave for church at 8:15. Afterwards We meet my parents in town to pick up new cell phones- three of the cell phones are eligible for free replacement, Mom's, mine, and the one dad ran over with the lawn mower. Mom wants to get him another one with her number on it so he can call her if he needs to.
So.... we go to the store and the clerk is really, really nice, but the computers are down and things aren't working, and we have errands to run so she suggests we run them, then come back and she'll have it done. We take overdue library books to the library and go by the grocery store Aldi's and then just go home, as Mom says she can get the phones herself- she keeps the FYG.
We get home , 2:00, wipe ourselves down with cold washclothes (the van, no air conditioning, 90 degrees), eat and nap.
I start going through some of the notebooks, books, and papers all over the couch and only make it worse. I get on the HM's laptop and spend the next few hours madly typing up almost all the blogposts I am going to have for this week, and put them on automatic publish.
Oh, and we don't get our new cell phones after all, as the computers never did come back up.
Monday:
I dusted, sorted, and straighted some 50 linear feet of bookshelves. Then I moved some 15 linear feet of picture books from point a to point b. Then I went through a laundry basket full of dollhouse furniture, dishes, and dolls in order to find and remove any non-doll-house items. Same process with the equivalent of about three, maybe four bushel baskets of blocks of various styles, and dumped two bushel baskets of puzzles, stacking toys, shape sorters, and picture books suitable for Angel on the dining room table for dealing with later- they are still there.
Went through the dress up clothes with youngest two, getting rid of a garbage bag full so those we kept all fit in one wicker trunk. Had planned on using wooden bench/trunk that's been in storage, but HM went to get it and said it had broken, was not reparable, and just needed to be burned. Am about a third of the way through moving the science books from point a to point b and cataloging them as I go. When that's done, we will be opening up a nice chunk of space in The Common Room. Should take pics and post, but really, the current situation is too, too embarrassing.
Went through about half a bushel basket's worth of play dough stuff, throwing away old, hard playdough, consolidating clay working tools, and moving it to another place.
Catalogued a couple hundred books as I moved them from point a to point b. Uncatalogued half of those as it turned out they were already IN my catalog. Figured out more efficient way to do this with less possibility of duplication.
Moved one bookcase and changed it from a toy cupboard to a bookcase in the process. HM went and got our last three bookcases from my Mom's, where they've been living ever since we bought out the shelves form a bookstore that went out of business.
HG didn't get home until 7:30, and she had picked up the new cell phones. 12 year old moved numbers from our old one to the new one.
Read four chapters in Voyage of the Dawn Treader while eating lunch. Read two more while eating supper.
Found my black wool winter coat in the dress up clothes. It was lost all of last winter. Talked to the air at length about this.
Three of the Progeny are going to be gone a couple weeks starting Tuesday next. Am full of regrets that I am dusting and sorting books instead of filling every minute with time with them.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Senior Year Has Begun.
* Too early to tell with tennis class - only 9 of the 24 registered students showed up this morning, so we just did the Read The Syllabus And Be Dismissed Routine.
* History classes are going to be intense but very good. Grades are based almost entirely on paper writing. It is so exciting to finally be at this stage.
* Also taking Intro Statistics and Spanish V. Verdict is still out on these too. Unfortunately, my history classes are in the morning and these classes are in the afternoon when I'm beginning to lose my steam. I'm sure it'll be good for self-discipline. ;-)
Greek Pastitsio, from the 1973 Magazine
Updated to add the side dish that was supposed to accompany this.
Scroll down.
Serves four at .31 a serving, if you were cooking and shopping in 1973. In 1973 my I had occasional babysitting jobs for .50 an hour, which over the next year or two went up to .75 an hour, and then 1.00. So it seems to me that if you can still make this for less than it costs you for an hour's worth of babysitting that it's still an equivalently frugal meal.
1/2 pound elbow macaroni
2 teaspoons salt (wow)
2 tablespoons margarine
1 medium onion
1/2 pound ground chuck
8 ounces tomato sauce
1 teaspoon salt (wow again)
2 minced cloves garlic
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons margarine
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cup milk, scalded
pinch each salt, pepper, nutmeg
2 small eggs.
Cook pasta in boiling salted water to al dente. Drain, rinse with cold water and set aside.
Meanwhile, heat margarine in a ten inch skillet and in it slowly saute chopped onion unitl it begins to turn golden brown. Add meat, and with a wooden spatula, break up clumps, cooking until meat loses red color. Add tomato sauce, salt, garlic and /2 teaspoon cinnamon. Simmer 20 minutes. Grease an 8 inch square baking pan and turn half the macaroni into it. Top with the meat sauce, spreading it evenly over macaroni. Add final layer of remaining macaroni. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt remaining 2 tablespoons of margarine and stir in flour. When bubbling, pour in hot scalded milk. Beat until smooth with a wire whisk and simmer about five minutes,or until thick and smooth. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Beat eggs lightly and slowly spoon in half of hot cream sauce, beating constantly. REturn mixture to remaining sauce in pan, and beat smooth. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Sprinkle top of macaroni with remaining teaspoon of cinnamon, and pour egg sauce over. Tap pan hard on counter top so sauce seeps down. Bake 40 minutes or until the custard is firm. Let stand at room temp 15 minutes then serve cut in squares. This can be made a day or two before and stored in the refrigerator. To heat, cover with foil and bake in 450 degree oven 40 minutes, or until hot. Remove foil for last 5 minutes.
I would think that if you just barely cook the macaroni until the point where it's not crunchy and brittle anymore, but still isn't what you'd call done, you could make this in advance and freeze it.
Green beans in dill lemon butter
1 pound fresh green beans
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons minced fresh dill
dash lemon juice
Trim ends of beans, remove string if any, and cut in 2 inch pieces; or if beans are small, leave whole. Add salt to rapidly boiling water, and cook beans for about 8 minutes, or until tender but slightly firm. Drain and rinse with cold water. Place in flameproof serving bowl or casserole. Add butter and when melted, add dill and lemon juice. Toss lightly and serve.
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I Am Not Nuanced
I know the above statement comes as a shock you all.
I am not impressed when Christians talk in lofty verbage about not being single issue voters, about how other issues are also important and we need to take a broader look at a wide variety of issues. Nor am I impressed with such people never seem to be able to make their case without a sort of sideways smear at the intelligence and understanding of those who happen to think there's nothing to be 'nuanced' about when it comes to baby killing.
In this day and age, it really is the one issue that trumps the rest. There is no social justice if there is no right to life, the most basic social justice of all. There is no health care issue that matters more than not letting health care providers (or rather, health care destroyers in this case) rip a small baby out of its mother's womb and should it survive the brutal process, leave it to die, mewling, alone, cold, and callously ignored, in a filthy linen closet.
There is nothing to be nuanced about here, anymore than there is anything to be nuanced about in discussing slavery, or whether or not black people are human.
But some things are not discussable, certainly among Christians. And who in the Christian academy would give me a serious hearing, offer their facilities, advertise the meeting, if I were to propose that we sit down and "dialogue" about slavery? The two-thousand-year Christian witness to the moral evil of abortion could not be clearer, but we should discuss it in the context of taxes, pollution, education, and, what else, the War in Iraq. That's nuancing.By James Kushiner at Touchstone Magazine.
I wrote about this several years ago, and I am not budging an inch. Roe v. Wade was conceived by a lie and by liars (ask Norma McCorvey, plaintiff, she'll tell you the truth), gestated in the womb of the court with more lies feeding it (such as the supposed lack of clarity in the Christian tradition on abortion or status) and by pleadings of ingnorance about early embryonic and fetal life, now shown by science to be human life, period, at every stage.
No nation can survive long with such a massive ill-conceived, wrong-in-every-way decision as Roe v. Wade lying like a tumor close to the heart of its precious constituional liberty, this in a republic whose very founding document proclaims a God-given "right to life." Roe v. Wade, like Dred Scott, and slavery, is a contradicting of the constitution of the organism in which it thrives; it lives and thrives like a cancer lives and thrives, killing its host through thte assertion of its own preproatives; it is toxic, bleeding its poisons into nearly every surrounding issue of life and morality. Roe v. Wade, like Dred Scott, is an affront to human dignity. It is an affront to every Down Symdrome boy and girl. It is an affront to every handicapped loved one. It is an affront to every man who died to defend liberty, it is an affront to those who spilled their blood over slavery and to those who were enslaved and their descendants. Roe v. Wade must be destroyed.
If I sound like a Fundamentalist on this issue, that's because I am. I stand with 2,000 years of Christian testimony on the matter, and urge moral abhorrence at the very thought of destroying the life in the womb. Christians--Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Evangelical, Fundamentalist--who think this matter can be nuanced to create a bridge between those who oppose any diminution of the power of Roe v. Wade and those who think it a cancerous lie are sadly mistaken.
And as strongly as I feel about small government, reduced taxation, and the free market, I would vote for a prolife Marxist before I would vote for a pro-abortion candidate of any stripe.
Neat Travel Record
Borrowed from a Family Circle Reader to Reader section:
Buy souvenir postcards while you are vacationing, and each day write a few highlights of the day on the back. Buy a souvenir key ring. Punch a hole through the postcards and attach them to the keyring. REad over them on your way home and in subsequent months or years to reminisce about the trip.
Quotes
Letters and Papers from Prison, by D. Bonhoeffer
"...There is hardly anything that can make one happier than to feel that one counts for something with other people."
"God does not give us everything we want, but he does fulfill all his promises, i.e. he remains the Lord of the earth, he preserves his Church, constantly renewing our faith and not laying on us more than we can bear, gladdening us with his nearness and help, hearing our prayers, and leading us along the best and straightest paths to himself.
By his faithfulness in doing this, God creates in us praise for himself."
Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, by H.R.Rookmaaker
"There would be truth in the surrealist affirmation that this world is hell- if there is no God.
But it is a lie, for there is a God; it is a lie because there is beauty and truth for whoever wants to see it; it is a lie because man knows that love and righteousness are possible, and, thank God, belong to the true, real reality."
A Landscape with Dragons, by D. O'Brien
"The imagination was originally created to be God's territory, a faculty of man's soul that would help him to comprehend the invisible realities."
"There can be no doubt that Lewis was a Christian evangelist of outstanding genius. A reading of his many essays and his fiction reveals a converted soul, a heart struggling to communicate the mysteries of God, a mind awake."
Third Time Around, by George Grant
"History is not just the concern of historians and social scientists. It is not the lonely domain of political prognosticators and ivory tower academics.
It is the very stuff of life. And it is the very stuff of faith.
In fact, the Bible puts a heavy emphasis on historical awareness- not at all surprising considering the fact that the vast proportion of its own contents record the dealings of God with men and nations throughout the ages."
Peggy Noonan Makes Us Laugh
The whole thing is here. The bits I called the HG out of the kitchen for to make her listen are:
But on abortion in particular, Mr. McCain seemed old-time conservative, which is something we all understand, whether we like such a stance or not, and Mr. Obama seemed either radical or dodgy. He is "in favor . . . of limits" on late-term abortions, though some would consider those limits "inadequate." (In the past week much legal parsing on emanations of penumbras as to the viability of Roe v. Wade followed.)
As I watched I thought: How about "Let the baby live"? Don't parse it. Just "Let the baby live."
As to the question when human life begins, the answer to which is above Mr. Obama's pay grade, oh, let's go on a little tear. You know why they call it birth control? Because it's meant to stop a birth from happening nine months later. We know when life begins. Everyone who ever bought a pack of condoms knows when life begins.
To put it another way, with conception something begins. What do you think it is? A car? A 1948 Buick?
If you want to argue whether legal abortion is morally defensible, have at it and go to it, but Mr. Obama's answers here seemed to me strange and disturbing.
I also like what she has to say about Obama's speeches:
Mr. Obama's upcoming convention speech will be good. All Obama speeches are good. Not as interesting as he is—he is more compelling as a person than his words tend to be in text. But the speech will be good, and just in case it isn't good, people will still come away with an impression that it must have been, because the media is going to say it was, because they expect it to be, and what they expect is what most of them will see.
FLDS August 25th
There seems to be a trend here- Judge Walthers botched the 14 day hearings, refusing to give the children the individual hearings required by law, because it was just too hard to do the thing the right way. CPS overstepped its boundaries, snatched 476 children and adults it lied about and said were children without actually seeing any evidence of abuse (it saw two pregnant adults and possibly one pregnant minor, hardly unusual in Texas which has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation- and so, although their own unethical shortcuts created that difficult situation, Walthers used the difficult situation to excuse herself from hearing the evidence that each child or at least each family was at risk of abuse. And she excused herself from answering what she termed as a stack of motions the attorneys for children and parents presented.
And though she was never able to find time to get to those, she did find time recently to respond to a CPS suit immediately- the one denying discover. And some of the parents' lawyers have objected to this, as well they should:
Lawyers representing a group of FLDS mothers caught up in the raid on the YFZ Ranch are headed back to court in an attempt to force child welfare authorities to hand over evidence of child abuse and neglect.
They say evidence has not been shared with lawyers representing parents and children from the Fundamentalist LDS Church ever since the judge overseeing the massive custody case issued a July 24 order suspending discovery.
"Although the investigations have not been completed, and the Department has not yet reached a conclusion with respect to all the alleged abuse and neglect of the more than 400 children involved in these cases, numerous parties propounded interrogatories and other discovery requests," CPS lawyer Charles Childress wrote in a motion filed July 24.
Interesting that at the 14 day hearing in April CPS argued that every family on the ranch had participated in underaged marriages, that all the children were in imminent danger of abuse, and yet, here it near the end of August and they have only been able to find evidence they thought good enough to present to the court to return 8 children to foster care, and Judge Walthers would only agree that it was good enough for one.
The judge went ahead and granted their request so CPS wasn't held to any sort of deadline or requirement," said Cynthia Martinez with the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid Society. "Our argument is that shouldn't have happened."
On Sept. 4, the legal aid attorneys have a hearing to ask the judge to set aside the order.
TRLA said it requested evidence, just like the dozens of other attorneys representing parents and children in the FLDS custody case. Because CPS was so swamped, the agency was given a deadline extension.
In court papers, TRLA lawyer Julie Balovich accused CPS lawyers of having improper communication with the judge and not giving her a chance to argue against it.
"A copy of the motion was not provided to the undersigned attorney until the day AFTER the Department obtained an ex parte order from the court," she wrote.
Which is what Kurt at Iperceive.net has been arguing all along. IT is a highly questionable proceeding, and I remain astonished that anybody defends Judge Walthers' actions at any point in this case.
TRLA has since drafted its own discovery control plan, as have other attorneys. Susan Hays, a Dallas lawyer representing a 2-year-old girl, urged better communication on all sides.
"All fail to require productive communication for the vast majority of cases," she wrote in a letter to the judge.
I wonder how Susan Hays knows what the other attorneys have done or not done in this case.
And here's the CPS whine:
Childress, who was just appointed to oversee the YFZ case, said in an Aug. 18 letter to the court and attorneys in the case that CPS is not trying to deny discovery to anyone. He noted that Texas evidence rules make reference to discovery being used to drive up the costs of litigation or to stall a case.
"In a case with more than 140 mothers and 400 children, all of whom have lawyers, we maintain, and hope to show at the hearing on Sept. 4, that formal discovery ... is virtually impossible," he wrote.
Whose fault is it that they are dealing with over 140 mothers and 400 children?
Demonstrating, yet again, that CPS LIED when it said that every family on the ranch had participated in underaged marriages and abuse.
Most recently, CPS has filed "nonsuits," seeking to end court supervision for approximately 176 children for various reasons.
They took too many unethical short cuts, and that makes doing their job and following some basic due process issues far too hard- and since they are the ones who created the situation, naturally, they are NOT the ones who should be inconvenienced by it- in Judge Walthers Court.
Here's a story on how families are coping with the trauma CPS has inflicted on them with the help of their extended community.
And Kurt at Iperceive points out that CPS really has been thinking the Constitution does not apply to them. They consider complying with basic Bill of Rights protections as being difficult 'new guidelines:'
Responding to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recent decision in the Gates case, Texas CPS today issued an “urgent legal advisory” to all CPS personnel warning them of dire consequences for failure to conform to so-called “new standards” in removing children from their homes.
Ordinary Americans have traditionally thought of these “new” standards as something closer to “due process,” a standard that has been with us since Magna Carta, in 1215, but CPS has heretofore been too self-important to bother with it. The world watches in stunned silence as CPS personnel contemplate the very idea of personal consequences for their own misbehavior. What a concept!
I did not know anything about the Gates case, and Sore Toes and a Bleeding Heart gives us the background. All I can say is, Whoa. Incredible. This family had all their children removed in 2000, based on an illegal entry
Seeing in Four Dimensions
Vis Slashdot comes this story of great interest to the mathematically minded among us- if you enjoy Flatland, you'll love this.
Obama-Biden
Obama has picked Biden as his running mate as everybody and their dogs now know. Betsy has some juicy quotes and links around the blogosphere. I especially have enjoyed this one:
And then Mickey Kaus reminds us of this prize Biden moment from 1987 when he made five boasts about his academic record. And four of them were totally, provably false.He then went on to say that he ''went to law school on a full academic scholarship - the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,'' Mr. Biden said. He also said that he ''ended up in the top half'' of his class and won a prize in an international moot court competition. In college, Mr. Biden said in the appearance, he was ''the outstanding student in the political science department'' and ''graduated with three degrees from college.''The moot court thing seems to check out. The other boasts - not so much. He was 76th in a class of 85.
But the real kicker is what he told the guy who seemed to be asking a rather mild question:The tape, which was made available by C-SPAN in response to a reporter's request, showed a testy exchange in response to a question about his law school record from a man identified only as ''Frank.'' Mr. Biden looked at his questioner and said: ''I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do.''So now the Democrats have two guys who think they're smarter than other people and who like to talk a lot. They're the all arrogant, all talk ticket. Perhaps the McCain people can find that C-Span tape and run clips of the friendly JoeBiden telling some guy he meets in a campaign event that he thinks he has a much higher I.Q. That will go over big.
Joe's excuse for all the prevarications in that exchange?'I exaggerate when I'm angry,'' Mr. Biden said, ''but I've never gone around telling people things that aren't true about me.''Well, except for the four statements that weren't true.
Sure, McCain graduated near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, but at least he has never pretended otherwise.
Protect, Serve, and Sue
A year ago a troubled, mentally ill man shot his father in the back while the 71 year old was sawing firewood, and then died in a subsequent shoot-out with sheriff's deputies. He shot and wounded three deputies and a police dog in the process.
Two of them are back at work- one as an investigator for the DA, one as a sheriff's deputy. One had to take a medical retirement at 28. The dog has recovered, and is also 'retired.
The two who are back at work are suing the wife and mother for 8 million dollars (four million each). She owns a ten year old car and 2.5 acres- a similar property in the neighborhood sold recently for 250,000 dollars. They are also suing the brother who called 911 because he said he didn't know who shot his father, and they say if they'd known it was a 'domestic dispute' they would have handled it differently.
Let's honor Melissa Meekma, the deputy who was injured so badly she cannot go back to work, and yet she declines to sue:
Meekma's shoulder was shattered when a shot penetrated the seam of her bullet-proof vest. Healed physically but still struggling with post-traumatic stress, she took a medical retirement from the Sheriff's Department, effective June 30. She is 28.
Her own trials have made her sympathetic to the plight of the Mies family, Meekma said, and she has declined to sue them.
"I went through my own hard times, and I did some soul-searching," she said. "My job was to protect that day, and that's what I did. That's the risk I took – and I know the price I paid. I cannot imagine what Karen Mies went through, burying a husband and a son."
Meekma said she's made her peace with Eddie Mies.
"Part of my healing was to forgive Eddie Mies," she said. "He was very sick – he needed help, too. … I had nightmares for a while. When I decided not to be part of the lawsuit, my nightmares stopped."
Bonnet tip Pro Libertate who notes:
To his credit, Sheriff Neves considers the lawsuit to be an embarrassment, and he has criticized his deputies for filing it.
"We need citizens to call us when they have a law enforcement need," Neves told the Sacramento CBS affiliate. "The last thing I can afford is to have a public policy that you can't call the Sheriff's office because you may be sued by one of the responders who is there to protect [you]."
She Loves a Boy..
updated to note that the broken link has been fixed. Thanks, LWA!
Whoops- now it's really, really fixed. Please do click through. YOu have GOT to see the pictures. My heart is a warm, gooey, dripping glob of sweetness from looking at them.
A friend of mine sent me the link to this blog, telling me she thought I would love it. She was right, of course, since I am here sharing it with you.
I read several posts and added her to my blogfeed, but this is the post I especially want to share:
I feel like I am wrapped up in a romantic film...a girl is madly in love with a boy, yet fully aware that she is "just a friend" to him. For her it was love at first sight; to him she no different than any other nice girl. And then it happens on a quiet summer evening: her feelings are reciprocated and they live happily ever after.
So have I felt since since I first saw his photo: it was love at first sight. As I held him in my arms that very first time I was taken. He had my heart. Yet part of me has felt like this is more of a one sided crush. Sure...he smiles for me, cuddles with me; yet really I am no different than anyone else who will smile at him or hold him. I'm just some nice lady who takes care of needs on demand and talks lovingly into his face.
Until Saturday...that special summer evening.
The author of the posts at Highchair Theology is an adoptive mom. They had put into motion plans to adopt a child from Ethiopia and then she found out she was pregnant. They went ahead with the adoption, and the boys are two months apart- still adorable, chubby babies.
And the post above is about the adoption, of course, and what makes it particularly special and memorable is that she had a friend there with a camera to photograph that beginning of the time when little Noah recognized and accepted her- and loved her.
It's beautiful.
I got a lump in my throat and spent a goodly amount of time sitting here staring into space thinking about our own journey through adoption- different, ours was an older, sibling 'group' (two, almost 4 and almost 6 years of age), and domestic rather than international. Our kids all actually look like us- people have often asked if two of them are twins, and the pair they ask about do not share the same genetic material.
But they share the same family, none-the-less, the same parents, the same hearts. Like the mama at Highchair Theology, I love them and I am so glad they love me, too.
Why You Shouldn't Talk on the Cell Phone and Drive
Shasta told me this story the other night, and I loved it. It is so perfectly HIM.
He says he was in a parking lot somewhere and this dizzy female type was chatting away on her cell phone while backing her car up without any awareness of what was happening around her at all. Had he stayed in place, she would have hit him. His mother raised no fools, so of course he moved.
But where did he move? He moved up to her window and stood there, as close as he could without being hit or getting his foot run over to see if she would notice him.
She did not. So he hung out by her window and waited until she'd backed up all she was going to and was ready to straighten out her wheels and move the vehicle into drive. And then, standing just inches from her window, he screamed as loudly as he could. And I can attest that when he wants to, he can give a most blood curdling holler. I am sure the Confederate Yell sounded like lullabye music compared to Shasta's best efforts.
She, not surprisingly, freaked out- leapt out of the car and asked him in panic if he was okay, did she hit him, omg, she was so sorry, what happened?
He says he very calmly and quietly told her,
"As it happens, I am fine. You did not hit me because I saw you. But you did not see me, and this could have been a very messy and terrible accident. I could be dead or badly injured right now because you never even looked.
I am not going to tell you not to talk on the cell phone while you're driving. I do that, too. Everybody does [note: Shasta's future mother-in-law does not]. I am just going to suggest that from now on, before you start moving your vehicle and before you start talking on the cell phone in a moving car that you take a moment to look around you and make sure you're not about to run over any little children or little old ladies or sarcastic young men."
And then our sarcastic young man just walked off to do his shopping. He says he thinks she let him talk so long without interruption because she was so scared and shocked by what she'd almost done.
What do you think? Will he have any trouble at all fitting in with the rest of us?
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Sunday Hymn Post
Refrain
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.
Some times I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.
Refrain
If you can’t preach like Peter,
If you can’t pray like Paul,
Just tell the love of Jesus,
And say He died for all.
Refrain
Cyberhymnal
Saturday, August 23, 2008
An interesting plant.
On the way home from the historical site yesterday, we stopped at a shrine of some sort because DHM wanted to see how it looked. It had a nature walk, and this was one of the plants there. DHM was going to look it up last night to see what it was, but I'm not sure if she did or not.
FLDS, August 23
When Walthers allowed CPS to keep 464 children and adults, CPS said it would try to keep siblings together. More often than not, they did not. They said it was because they didn't know which children were siblings- even splitting up twins.
At the hearing, the state's witnesses testified that the 'authoritarian' culture of the FLDS which placed a high premium on obedience was harmful to children.
Which all makes this very interesting indeed:
Throughout their experiences the children showed a fierce loyalty towards each other. One 16-year-old girl reported that when CPS was separating the siblings, she was not willing to part from her sisters. A worker told her, “You be obedient!” She replied, “I don’t have to in a circumstance like this.” The worker said, “Your parents would want you to be obedient.” She insisted, “My parents would want me to stay with my sisters.”
Supposedly, these foster homes were to respect the unique culture of the FLDS. Yet:
Ironically, following the teaching of staying busy and blessing others got some of the girls in trouble at the Presbyterian Home in Amarillo, where they would be placed on a time-out chair for 30 minutes for helping each other with their jobs. Girls would assist each other by vacuuming the hall or getting shoes for other girls so that they could go outside. The staff insisted that they were trying to teach the girls individualism. The girls replied, “We love to bless and serve. That’s part of our religion, and you can’t take that away from us.” They responded to their punishment by saying, “Thank you for the prayer time.”
And this has to be one of the most oddly unperceptive statements ever:
Not a single follower of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints appears to have stepped forward to cooperate with authorities pursuing criminal charges against their peers, law enforcement authorities concede.
"No one is talking to me," Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran said Wednesday. "They do not open up to law enforcement."
Doran has admitted he visited the ranch regularly for four years basically to lull them into accepting him, and when the ranch leadership let him and his companions onto the ranch to search for a girl they all knew did not exist, their cooperation and 'opening up' resulted in the loss of all their children and two dozen adult women falsely held as minors.
Books and Baby Showers
Some of us are off to a baby shower this morning. Baby showers are always fun, but this one is even more fun, because there was a time when the mother was afraid she would never have children. They tried for, I think, three years, and she was struggling mightily with her grief over their childless state. In fact we were visiting the nearly 300 member church where they were members the day they shared the news that she was pregnant, and we heard some 300 souls gasp in delight and then a ripple of joy spread through the room.
I do not have any exciting frugal stories about how to make brilliantly creative and free baby shower presents from two paperclips and some fabric paint thrown into a yard sale box you picked up from the 'free' basket. I usually give the same gift- Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt. I do watch for it on sale and will pick up two or three copies at a time if I have a good sale or a good coupon for the store.
My grandfather gave my mother a copy of this book when we were small, and she took it with us on many a weekly library trip, ticking off the titles in the back as we read them. I now own that copy (why do I have it instead of my married brother? Because you must be present to win, and I was there when Mother was cleaning out that particular bookcase). I also had to buy myself the updated version because Mrs. Hunt has added so many new titles to the booklist in back.
What I really like to do is give Honey for a Child's Heart along with a few extra books. I can't always afford to do that, but sometimes the Progeny like to pitch in and buy some special books to include with Honey. We might accompany it with a nice boardbook of Mother Goose rhymes, A Child's Garden of Verses, and, if we very flush with funds or the recipient does not object to used books, a set of Winnie the Pooh books."
In another excellent, but sadly out of print book, The Pace of a Hen, Mrs. Moffett Benton says,
"Here are riches from which to choose that will provide golden pleasure in the present and build strong character from the future. An educator I know says that adults read to find out what others think, while children read to find out what they themselves believe. From her experience with students of high school age she has found that the right young people with ideals and principles, with standards of right and wrong, come from homes where reading together is basic to the family pattern. Through the process of identifying and suffering with the characters in their books, children tend to become like those admired."
She goes on to extol the virtue and delight of reading together as a family, even when the children are quite grown up (then you can have them do some of the reading for you). She says,
From that reading there will spring up a family language. The more experiences, words, anecdotes, jokes the family have in common, the closer they are bound together. In their patter will be phrases from the books all the family have loved. Any good time is 'Song and dance and a gay life, tiddledy pom." Almost anyone, now and then, has the 'brain of Pooh.' Someone who is feeling sorry for herself is 'Eyore.'
In our family 'I daresay we shall be able to bear the deprivation,' 'I never loved my brother at all,' 'Home again, home again, jiggety jig,' 'tut-tut, looks like rain,' 'Pork, mother, pork!' 'let us comfort ourselves that I might outlive you,' 'I would my horse had the speed of your tongue,' 'I must sit in the sun and cry heigh-ho,' 'I can see a church by daylight,' 'Polly, put the kettle on,' and 'time for a little something' are just a few phrases from book and film that have made their way into the family shorthand.
Such things are a vital part of family life, because, as Mrs. Moffett Benton concludes this chapter (The High Emprize of Motherhood):
"Humor is one of those spiritual values which will help tide us over the years when the children are young. But that is stopping short of the truth, for humor and gaity and merriment are a never-failing benediction."
Good books as well are a never-failing benedicition. Just his week a friend wrote me and said, "Help! Because of you and your family I have been adding to my book collection, and I don't have anywhere to put them. Any ideas for shelves without going out to buy them?"
That was also a benediction, and it warmed the cockles of my heart.
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Frugal Cooking from 1973
First, a clarification. The magazine article I picked up is from 1974, but the author did the cooking and shopping in October of 1973.
Previous posts from this article
One
Two
Three
Main course #4 is hero sandwiches, which the author said was perfect for their Sunday evening dinner, because that was the evening they like to eat in the living room while watching tv as a family. They each had a glass of wine with their sandwich, and their son had milk, and they all had chunks of cheddar cheese and cold crsp apples for dessert.
1 loaf Italian bread, about 14 inches long
1 small green pepper, seeded adn cut into 1 inch long slices
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced in thin rounds
1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 T margarine
1 T. vegetable or olive oil
Cut bread into 4 equal pieces. Cut each piece open half way thourgh middle (so slices remain hinged). Place in 325 degree oven for 10 minutes whil preparing the eggs and peppers. Prepare vegetables by slicing as described above.
Heat fats in oil in skillet until smoking. Add vegetables adn saute over moderate heat, stirring with wooden spatula almost constantly, until tender and very faintly golden brown. Sprinkle with seasonings adn stir. Pour beaten eggs into pan and stir as eggs set so uncooked portion runs to bottom of the pan. Result sould be something between and omelette and scrambled eggs Check seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed. Divide hot egg filling among four sandwich slices of bread adn serve at once.
In 1973, this was .24 per serving- not counting the wine, of course.
IN the comments to the first post from this series, Mama Squirrel said she used to pick up these sorts of old magazines for just such stories as this one. That's why I pick them up, too- it's that sense of time traveling from other period cookbooks.
And that reminded me that there is a recipe I cut out of some magazine in the 70s or 80s that we used to love, but I've lost it, and I haven't been able to find it.
Perhaps one of you has something like it and would share?
I think it had a name something like Harvest Rice Casserole. It was a tuna and rice casserole, and quite possible, we wouldn't even like it anymore. But I would like to find it to see. One of the things that made it different was the presentation- You lined an oven-proof glass bowl with cooked rice, perhaps an inch or two deep all over the bowl. You then filled with a creamy/saucy tuna and cheese filling, possibly combined with peas, and then you put some sort of topping on it- maybe bread crumbs. You baked it until heated through. It was a very pretty dish for such plain peasant fare.
Actually, the only part I am sure of is that the first layer was a nest of cooked rice lining the inside of the oven proof glass dish, and then something in the middle that I think was tuna.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Flowers
Yes, it's JENNY posting nature pics and not Pipsqueak!
I saw this out our window and just had to get some pictures. (I might have managed to get better ones but the those nasty little blood-sucking insects were out in full force.)
(Sorry about the focus, or rather the lack of focus on that last one. I included it because it gives you a good idea of how deep the colors got.)
It was soooo amazing!! (But, boy, the mosquitoes were horrible =P)
Zimbabwe's CAtch 22
From an older lady who lives and works in Africa:
The following is the latest letter emailed to friends of Zimbabwe which I receive now and again. While our hearts are heavy concerning the terrible situation Christians are presently facing in Zimbabwe, please also consider that this whole situation was caused by greed and looking out for number one, completely uncaring of their fellow countrymen.
LETTER
Dear Family and Friends,
The will of the people. It is impossible to believe that 140 days after Zimbabwe voted for an MDC Parliament and an MDC President the will of the people has yet to be accepted or implemented. After nearly five months we remain locked in a truly horrible state without sworn in legislators, without a parliament and without legitimacy. Everything around us is falling apart so fast now and yet the people and party in power for the last twenty eight years simply refuse to go.
The electricity is now off more than on - in my area its only been on twice during daytime working hours in the last week. Urban water supply seems to have virtually collapsed and in my home area taps are dry for at least 20 hours a day. Massive environmental devastation is being done as people have no choice but to cut trees down for fuel wood. Shops remain barren of virtually all goods and banks have become nightmare places where hundreds of people queue for hours at a time to withdraw the maximum daily allowance which is now handed out as a small bag of coins. At some banks the situation is so bad that the doors stay closed and locked all the time and people are only allowed to enter in small batches.
Much as the old leadership would have us believe, we are not a country at war, no one is trying to invade us or take us over and the future is waiting, just out of our reach. It is very hard, however, to stay sane, healthy and focused on the Zimbabwe that the majority voted for on the 29th March 2008.
One afternoon this week I went with a friend to a small environmental education centre and game park at a local school and the magnificence of the Zimbabwean bush helped revive flagging spirits. The Msasa trees are coming into new leaf and putting on a spectacular display of copper, caramel, burgundy, port and hot red. The wild oranges are starting to turn yellow and they hang heavily from branches of leafless trees. On rocks and kopjes there are unexpected and vivid scatterings of lime green and bright orange lichen. In between trees and rocks, superbly camouflaged, there were giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and impala.
This small environmental education centre, a vision from the past, giving knowledge and understanding to our children in such troubled times and promising hope for the future of our beleaguered, broken Zimbabwe. Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy. Copyright cathy buckle 17 August 2008. www.cathybuckle.com
On reflection I can't help but make the following comments. Are Americans very far behind, desiring equal rights to the exclusion of everyone else? Democracy in the form we have is not self-sustaining, and taken to its ultimate end means it will result in a breakdown of everyone serving self, an uneven distribution of power and balances – following exactly what is now facing Zimbabwe.
Please pray that Christians in America are rearing their children as servants of the Lord which means loving (serving) their neighbours. The lack of love for our fellow man is in my face here on the continent of Africa. Am I over-reacting in praying that we do not let America destroy our children?
IN response to somebody asking why the Zimbabweans do not simply leave, she wrote:
picture yourself in a country that has stripped you of the ability to put food on the table - at one time it was the breadbasket of Africa. Maybe, maybe there are rolls of toilet paper on the shelves of the grocery stores, for there is no food, social services no longer available, and schools only remain open because of the dedication of the teachers who receive little if any remuneration. The country next door has an open door for 30 days, but you need a visa which means a passport, or at least a traveller's document -- but neither can be obtained because the government ran out of paper to print them, and seemingly EVERYONE is trying to leave. If you are fortunate, and arrive legally, then the neighbouring country requires asylum papers which are temporary. To find a job that will give you the ability to support your family, you must have a passport and a bank account. But you need an ID document from your new country to get an account. . . If you then return to your country to try and get a passport, you are now "branded" as a sell-out and you can wait forever, thank you.
We have learned much of this while trying to help one family. Right now they are stuck with nowhere to turn. Cannot get a teaching job as qualified because no passport, cannot return to get one, because in all probability it will not be issued. Other Christians have heard of their trouble and are staying put (bush telegraph). Those that can, cross over into South Africa or Zambia to buy food and return home -- but only if Christians overseas (USA) have found a way to help them. The rest grow their mealies and greens -- if they haven't already eaten their seed crop... Sadly, many have no skills of how to live for the future -- and have learned the hard way that you can't afford to think only of today -- which now today is all they can manage. I think there’s a lesson for all of us in there somewhere :-)
FLDS, August 29th
Updated to note- yes, the date in the title is an error. I am not really sure what I was thinking.=) I can't change a title without changing the links (I think), so it's going to have to stay as it is.
This is yet another video from the FLDS that does not make easy watching. In fact, I am afraid I had to turn it off and take a break just after this 14 year old girl could be heard sobbing and pleading, "Mother, don't let them take me away again. They aren't nice."
Unfortunately, she was given no such respite.
And whatever you think about this child being married to Warren Jeffs at 12, and I probably am as disturbed by it as anybody, the fact is, he's in prison, and so she's in no danger from him in the foreseeable future. And of all the FLDS members there are, a female married to Warren Jeffs is probably the least likely to be 'reassigned' and remarried anywhere. So What, exactly, is CPS protecting her from? IN what way is this in her best interests?
CPS threatened to remove her two minor brothers as well if the press was present- in what way would the presence of the press have warranted the removal of those children? Isn't it palpably obvious that this is about power and not about protecting the children? Otherwise, why make such a threat? They already went to court to seek custody of the boys- and they ended up dropping the ridiculous and frivolous attempt to seize custody of a 17 year old brother, and not even Judge Walthers could find good justification to approve the removal of the 11 year old boy- and still, they threaten to remove those boys merely because the press is documenting the actions of people on the public payroll?
Watch the video. That child is in raw, horrible, agonizing pain. The only employee of the state who even looks remotely sympathetic is obviously an underling- a young girl toting around a box. The others look alternately bored, irritated, or worse. "You've been here before," one of them brusquely and callously tells the girl, as though she's forgotten- as though this CPS worker is too clueless to realize that might by why the child is in so much raw pain.
The Grand Jury indicted three more FLDS members on unspecified felony charges- and declined to say what those charges are.
CPS dropped the cases of 24 more FLDS children, bringing to 100 the number of FLDS cases closed- demonstrating once more their appalling lack of judgment and Judge Walthers equally appalling lack of judicial restraint and due process in removing over 476 FLDS members and holding them in custody on the trumped up charge that they were all in immediate danger. Let's not forget that an additional 26 FLDS members held in custody turned out to be adult women whose civil rights were completely abrogated by CPS.
Angie Voss testified under oath in court at the 14 day hearings that every single child was part of a household that participated in under-aged marriage, yet CPS says that those whose cases have been discharged for several reasons, including that their families have no history of under-aged marriage.
Iperceive takes another look at footage from that earlier raid and says:
watch how a big, bold Texas mounty kept a straight face, last April, while telling an FLDS mother that she wasn’t entitled to see the warrant that he admits doesn’t cover her home.
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Brooke Adams interviews Barbara Jessop and Betsy. Barbara is one of Carolyn Jessop's former 'sister-wives.' She is also the mother of the child pictured in the video at the top of this post. Betsy is Caroline's daughter. Caroline wrote the book 'Escape,' where she leveled all sorts of accusations against Barbara and the FLDS in general. She left with her 8 children. Betsy was the oldest, and she returned as soon as she was old enough. Actually, she quit living with her mother before that- moving out and staying with an aunt because she and her mother couldn't get along.
-----------
The new indictments?- all three are on bigamy charges, as TBM told us in the comments here. But I don't think there are any new people charged.
One of them is another indictment against Warren Jeffs. The other two-
The indictments were unsealed after Raymond Merril Jessop, 36, and Michael George Emack, 57, surrendered to authorities at the Schleicher County Sheriff's Office on Friday afternoon. They were booked and released after each posted $10,000 bond.
These guys were ALL already indicted, and one of them wasn't even at the ranch, since he was in jail. Emack says he's a Utah resident, so I don't know if he was actually at the ranch at the time of the raid or not.
Blocking the Competition at the Gate
Whatever its stated purposes, in reality most professional licensing efforts are mostly aimed at using the power of government to limit new entrants, and thus new competitors, from a certain business:
In Alabama it is illegal to recommend shades of paint without a license. In Nevada it is illegal to move any large piece of furniture for purposes of design without a license. In fact, hundreds of people have been prosecuted in Alabama and Nevada for practicing "interior design" without a license. Getting a license is no easy task, typically requiring at least 4 years of education and 2 years of apprenticeship. Why do we need licenses laws for interior designers? According to the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) because,
Every decision an interior designer makes in one way or another affects the health, safety, and welfare of the public.
This hardly passes the laugh test.
What on earth possessed governing bodies to pass such laws? Wouldn't they just about had to have been paid to do it? It doesn't seem remotely sensible otherwise.
More at Coyote Blog.
Floor Coverings
Friends of ours in Texas had problems with their floor covering. The completely ripped it all out, right down to the concrete slab foundation. Then they painted it, and it looks lovely- it's a sort of large brick pattern with flowers stenciled around the edges. It reminds me of an Italian patio.
I read of somebody else who did this in a trailer- they pulled up the carpet, tile, or linoleum. Then they filled in any spaces with a putty that dried hard and sanded smooth. They then swept, mopped, and painted two coats of porch paint in enamel.
you can sponge a second latex color over the top for added eepth (and camoflage), and then top with two coats of satin finish polyurethane.
Infant mortality rates
See Coyote Blog for some revealing data on the reason our infant mortality rates appear to be much higher than other nations. Turns out, we count infants as born alive if they are, you know, born alive. At least for now.
Other countries don't.
Think You're Undecided? Think Again
While the details of this study (and this post) are about the American elections, I think the research and the link to it is of interest to a broader range of readers.
I took the test on elections, but there's also one on three countries.
H/T The Brothers Judd: Researchers find that voters who haven't made up their minds actually have unconsciously made a decision based on deep-seated attitudes. (Denise Gellene, 8/22/08, Los Angeles Times)
The research, to be published Friday in the journal Science, used a computerized test in which participants were asked to react as quickly as possible to images arbitrarily deemed "good" or "bad." The test measured how long it took to respond.
Scientists selected 33 residents of Vicenza, Italy, who stated they were undecided about a controversial proposal to expand a nearby U.S. military base.
They were instructed to press the letter "D" when they saw a picture of a military base or one of five positive words, such as joy, pleasure or happiness, and the letter "K" when they saw one of the negative words, which included pain, ugly or danger.
The researchers then reversed the test so that the image of the military based was linked to the negative words.
The theory behind the test is that people will hesitate when required to perform actions incompatible with their unconscious attitudes. So subjects who unconsciously favored the base expansion took more time to react when it was associated with negative words, and subjects against the expansion delayed when it was associated with positive words.
The lag in reaction time averaged between 100 and 200 milliseconds, said Gawronski, who collaborated on the project with scientists from University of Padova in Italy.
One week after administering the test, nine previously undecided subjects said they now favored the base, 10 said they had decided against it, and 14 remained undecided. Participants' responses on the week-earlier computerized test and an accompanying opinion survey were about 70% accurate in predicting their actual decisions, researchers said.
The test hasn't yet been adopted by political consultants, although one, Virginia-based TargetPoint Consulting Inc., experimented with it during the recent Republican presidential primary race.
A research team from the University of Virginia, the University of Washington and Harvard University currently is offering the test, tracking reactions to the presidential candidates.
Here are my results:
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Barack Obama compared to John McCain.
Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic associations may be described as 'slight', 'moderate', 'strong', or 'little to no preference'. It is interesting to ask how much IAT-measured candidate preferences agree with self-reported preferences. The agreement tends to be relatively strong for political attitudes. One topic of particular interest for the 2008 Presidential campaign is whether self-reported candidate preferences agree or disagree with implicit associations. Were yours consistent? If not, why might that be, and what consequence does it have? These are some of the questions we are addressing with on-going research.
My results were not consistent- Politically, I don't like either one of them, and feel pretty much disenfranchised already and a pox on both their houses. I will not be voting for either one, but if I were forced to choose one, I'd grit my teeth and vote for McCain. Fortunately, I will not face such a choice and I'll be choosing a third party or a write in candidate.
But I think I appeared to have a moderate preference for Obama because personally, I appreciate that Barack is still married to the wife of his youth, he is, by all accounts, a good daddy, and he has great personal charm and charisma.
If we want to talk in modern parlance, I feel the appeal and warmth of his charismatic personality, and McCain has no such warmth or magnetism. But I don't vote my feelings. I vote principles. Probably this is more accurate for those who do vote based on their feelings.
The HG posits that another reason for having more positive feelings for Obama than McCain is because, from our standpoint- McCain is something of a traitor, have rejected several values that are supposed to be bedrock conservative views (freedom of speech being one). Obama is a liberal democrat and he always has been.
(Whoops- updated to note that no, Obama has not always been a liberal democrat. He was formerly a liberal New Party member)
Making Music
Huge hat-tip to The Anchoress for this link- go towww.choralnet.org, then click on Music & Passion with Benjamin Zander.
It's about 20 minutes long, and it's worth it.
1973 Food Prices
Updated to add:
Part one
I shared the first half of the price list yesterday. Here's the second half:
Herbs, spices, and condiments
Salt .16 for 32 oz
Black pepper .85 for 8 oz
white pepper .49 for 2 oz
paprika .55 for 4 oz
Caraway seeds .55 for 2 oz
Thyme- .23 for 3/4 oz
Bay leaves .35 for 1/4 oz
Cinnamon- .89 for 4 oz
Mace- .55 for 1 1/8 oz
Dry mustard- .39 4oz
Powdered ginger- .55 1 1/2 oz
Nutmeg- .59 for 2 oz
Oregano- .39 for 2 5/8 oz
Basil .17 for 1/2 oz
Sage .29 for 1 oz
Dill seed- .29 for 1 1/2 oz
Olive oil- 1.89 per quart
Vegetable oil- .63 oz per pint
REd wine vinegar- .29 per pint
White vinegar- .47 per quart
Groceries
Pumpernickel bread; .49 for 1 pound loaf
Italian bread- .35 for 14 inch loaf
bread crumbs- .29 for 10 oz
Egg noodles- .32 #
Spaghetti- 3# for 1.29
Converted rice- 3 # for 1.99
Cornmeal- .33 for 24 oz
Lentils- .46 per #
Red Kidney beans- .41 per #
Kasha- .37 per #
Flour- .20 per #
Canned tomatoes- .41 for a 1 lb 12 oz can
tomato juice- .10 for 5 1/2 oz can
Tomato sauce .12 for 8 oz can
Now some of these were weekly specials; others were the regular price. I think it would be interesting to compare prices. If you've purchased any of these things recently and still have the receipt, would you share the prices in the comments?
Here's the next recipe- Meatball Goulash for .40 a serving with parsley potatoes for .04 a serving:
1 pound ground chuck
2 medium onions, peeled
1 small egg
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 Tablespoons margarine
2 tablespoons sweet paprika
2 chopped canned tomatoes
OR 1 can (5 1/2 ounces) tomato juice
2 or 3 cups of water
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons caraway seeds
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 bay leaf
3 sprigs parsley
3 carrots, sliced in rounds
1/3 pound green beans
MIx ground chuck with one half onion, grated, egg, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper. Shape into 8-10 meatballs. Heat margarine in a 2 qrt casserole and brown meatballs quickly on all sides. Remove and reserve. Dice half an onion and saute in fat until tender and faintly golden brown. Add paprika and saute for a minute or two, until it loses raw smell. Add tomatoes with a little of their liquid, or tomato juice and stir. REturn meatballs to casserole and add enough water to fill pot about half way. Ad garlic, caraway seeds, thyme, bay leaf and parsley. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and add carrots, the remaining onion cut in large chunks, and beans, cut in 1 1/2 inch pieces. Cover and simmer gently but steadily for about 25 minutes, or until vegetables are tender, by which time the meatballs should also be done. Add water as needed during cooking. Remove parsley and bay leaf and season to taste. If sauce is too thin, blend 2 teaspoons of flour into 1 tablespoon cold water, then stir into hot sauce, simmering for 2 or 3 more minutes.
Parsley Potatoes
Pare potatoes and cook until tender in boiling salted water. Drain well, return to pot, and shake gently over low heat until dry and floury. Turn into serving bowl and sprinkle with parsley.
You could make this a one pot meal by adding the cubed boiling potatoes to the stew itself. Mimi suggests you could reduced the potatoes by one this way, eand eliminate the parsley, making this meal about .40 cents per person.
Those of you who enjoy this sort of things as much as I do- or even a little bit less, might like some of our older posts- perhaps this one where I shared a 1937 'feed your family for 13.00 a week' cookery sheet from my great-grandmother's gas company, or this one from the same time period, more or less, with recipes for noodles with vienna sausage and chili con carne.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Word-Spotting, and How!
Floccinaucinihilipilification- the act of assessing something as totally worthless.
It is the longest word that does not contain the letter e- the most common letter of the alphabet- making it a stunner for games of hangman.
fingerpaints
This fingerpaint keeps at least a week in airtight containers. It's inexpensive, and you can use it on the bathtub or on metal cookie sheets or tins.
2 tablespoons of sugar
1/3 cup of cornstarch
combine in small saucepan.
Slowly add two cups of cold water. Cook over low heat, stirring utnil the mixture becomes a smooth, almost clear gel (around 5 minutes)
When it's cool, stir in 1/4 cup clear dishwashing liquid.
Scoop equal amounts of the mixture into containers and stir in food coloring or food coloring paste.
The Suffering of The Upside Down Goldfish
Hobbes (The Equuschick's chubbiest goldfish) is sick. He is not dead because he still shows signs of life, but these signs are all displayed from an upside-down position.
As a laywoman The Equuschick's first diagnoses would be that he is inebriated, and a friend would say that she just "looked at him funny" and Goldfish are famous for kicking the bucket the minute you look at them funny. (You would look at your fish funny too, if he was doing the back-stroke.)
However, The Equuschick's research indicates that he is suffering from over-feeding. She did try not to do that, but she supposes she confused her own metabolism with that of her fish.
Her only course of action (so the goldfish sites say)is to to give Hobbes a two or three day fast and hope that his internal organs recover their equilibrium and do not explode.
While The Equuschick was observing the peculiar symptoms of Hobbes, she was on the phone with Shasta chatting about this and that. She was explaining the necessity to have a secure fence for Zeus at the house, because he is a dog who demands exercise and if he isn't given supervised outlets, he will devise unsupervised outlets for his energy and we won't like them.
Of course, The Equuschick said brightly, dogs are also pack animals and if we had another dog it would encourage Zeus to stay with the pack. Or we could, honesty compelled her to admit, just have Donovan over to play every once a while.
"Let's do that," said Shasta. "I like that idea better. You're not allowed to get another pet until one you all ready own dies."
"Do goldfish count?", The Equuschick asked as Hobbes did another flip in the water like a swollen sausage.
"No," he replied, having the audacity to laugh. "No dice."
So there it is. Hobbes internal organs will most likely explode and he will die and The Equuschick won't even get another pet for it. Go figure.
Little Boys' Britches
Little boys seem to have bony knees, and perhaps they spend more time on them, because thrift store pants for boys nearly all have holes in their knees, and so do my son's clothes. Perhaps this is why so many the typical clothing for boys in so many cultures is shorts.
A couple tips to help:
Have at least one pair of pants that are only for church and dressier functions- I don't even mean a suit. Just a pair of pants with no holes that you keep that way. As soon as you get home, the boy must change clothes and put that pair back in the closet to keep them all in one piece.
Patches- you can put patches inside the knees or outside as soon as you get the pants. Or sew pockets over the knees. With sweat pants it's easy to make a large pocket that meets the seams on each side.
Letters from Zimbabwe
For some context and history, see this website.
From a letter dated August 8th:
In the midst of all the rumours and counter-rumours this week of an imminent settlement between Zanu PF and the MDC, ordinary Zimbabweans have, understandably, been too busy trying to get round the monetary chaos to pay much attention to political goings on. With the cancellation of ten noughts off the face value of notes and the reintroduction of coins, the householder's job was to locate the long discarded coins. There were hilarious accounts of people finding coins in the most unlikely places, kids' toy boxes, rubbish dumps, jam jars in pantry cupboards and then rushing out to spend them at supermarkets where harassed shop assistants used to counting notes on neat little note counters suddenly had to contend with hundreds of heavy and very grubby coins. 50c was apparently the lowest acceptable denomination but if the bill for just a few items, a loaf of bread, a pkt of milk a dozen eggs and a few tomatoes,(even supposing you could get any of those things) came to 124 trillion that had to be calculated in 50 cent pieces! I can only imagine the length of the queues at the checkout, not to mention the weight of the coins the shopper had to carry. $200 in 50cent pieces weighs 2kgs apparently! There were so many stories to provoke laughter; I liked the one about the man who had been using his old coins in buckets as doorstops. The story goes that he was able to buy a satellite dish with his six or seven buckets of coins. Another man, a street vendor, had found enough coins to buy him a houseful of new furniture and even hire a truck to carry his splendid new bedroom suite etc home for him. Much laughter but, alas little action or protest that this absolute chaos had been brought down on the populace by the Governor of the Reserve Bank himself, the same man who had paid billions to provide judges with the latest state of the art Mercedes and satellite dishes. Indeed the initial reaction from the people was that Gideon Gono had actually made life easier for them. What they don't realise is that this monetary honeymoon will be very short and the nightmare of noughts is already on the way back. There is no sign of the new currency notes and in a bizarre development fuel tokens have become the latest feature of the economy. Providing one has forex to buy the tokens, it is now possible to buy goods, pay utility bills and even school fees with fuel tokens worth US 1.50 a litre. That certainly is laughable were it not so tragic a sign of Zimbabwe's total collapse. The truth is that Zimbabwe in 2008 has returned to a barter economy under Robert Mugabe, the man who once said no one could have managed the economy better than he had.
News and Views
in China: Protesters arrested, iTunes blocked, elderly women threatened with a year in labor camps for protesting the loss of their homes, and yes, the Chinese gymnasts really are under-age.
In Poland:
After 18 months of talks, Warsaw agreed to place a US missile-defense base on Polish soil, while Washington committed America to defend Poland "in case of trouble" - presumably of the military variety.
Clearly Polish President Lech Kaczinsky and Prime Minister Donald Tusk have been following Moscow's continuing march through Georgia - evidence of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's determination to re-establish its domination over Eastern Europe.
Such a move is of particular danger to Poland, which Russia historically has eyed as a buffer, a vassal - or both.
And Russia responded by ratcheting up its rhetorical barrage: Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, charged that the US-Polish deal "cannot go unpunished" - and warned that Warsaw "is exposing itself to a [nuclear] strike, 100 percent."
Oil Company profits:
Too often, business leaders choose to duck when the arrows of outrage come flying. But Exxon Mobil CEO and Chairman Rex Tillerson made an unusual and courageous stand Wednesday, appearing on ABC's "World News" with Charles Gibson.
"I saw someone characterize our profits the other day in terms of $1,400 in profit per second," Tillerson told Gibson.
"Well, they also need to understand we paid $4,000 a second in taxes, and we spent $15,000 a second in cost. We spend $1 billion a day just running our business. So this is a business where large numbers are just characteristic of it."
We can't think of anyone who would be willing to pay $4,000 in taxes for every $5,400 they earn in salary or wages. Yet many in our country believe it's OK, even desirable, for oil companies to do just that.
What's needed here is a bit more perspective, a sense of proportion. Though Exxon Mobil set a record for nominal profit, the oil industry isn't actually making the biggest profits.
In the first quarter of this year, the profit margin for oil companies was 7.4%. That trailed the electronic equipment industry (12.1%) and the pharmaceutical and medical industry (25.9%).
Last year, 63 industrial groups posted bigger profit margins than the oil industry.
Also obscured by the moaning over Exxon Mobil's profit is the fact that investors expected higher earnings from the company. After second-quarter profit was announced, the company's stock price fell almost 5% because of its disappointing performance.
That's not an aberration for this corporate behemoth that is ruining everyone's lives by selling them the gasoline they need.
Since May 20, less than a month after its first-quarter profit — then the fifth highest in history — was reported, Exxon Mobil stock has fallen 18%, from 94.56 to 77.45 at Thursday's close.
Falling stock prices aren't good news for Exxon Mobil shareholders, those average Americans trying to finance their futures, retirements and kids' educations. And with more than half of all Americans owning stock, that means millions are poorer when Exxon Mobil shares fall.
See the Gates of Vienna newsfeed for a selection of stories from around the world.
Global Warming-
The NCDS issued a Draft report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, including as evidence a photoshopped picture, and comments copied and pasted from an advocacy website (operated by one of the authors of this 'scientific' report), and other shoddy non-science elements. They've pulled that report.
Politicians, Patriotism, and Teleprompters
According to this story,
The public views Sen. John McCain as more patriotic than his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, even though it prefers the way Obama talks about patriotism, according to a new poll.
I like the way Obama talks better, too, and I think his incredible talents in rhetoric are largely responsible for such an inexperienced politician being the Democratic nominee.
The poll also provides a word of caution to both presidential candidates: 76 percent of those surveyed said politicians often “invoke patriotism in a cheap and empty way.”
I imagine they also noted that the sky, it is often blue.
Speaking of talented speech givers, I get a kick out of watching the 'extras' on DVDs, the interviews with the actors are especially interesting to me. An actress who has been brilliantly portraying an erudite, articulate, and witty woman will suddenly sound like a high school student who thinks in txt mssg, LOL, & nvr rds bks. It is the Equuschick's considered opinion that possibly the emptier the head, the better the ability to stuff it full of memorized lines written by somebody else, and superimposing another self onto one is probably made easier, less blurry, if one is something of an airhead. Obviously, this isn't true of all actors- there are some who give evidence of being able to think their way out of a paper bag and can think three or more consecutive thoughts of their own without a teleprompter.
But, still, for a surprising number, take away their scripted lines, and they sound not so bright.
And while I do not think Obama is an idiot- far from it, in fact, it does worry me that his strongest gift is apparently so dependent on the teleprompter. He seems to be rather dismal at impromptu. He and his consultants have noticed this:
According to several Democrat political consultants presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama spent part of his Hawaiian vacation working on weaning himself from a heavy dependence on teleprompters. Even in what are staged as "town hall" events for Obama, remarks are scripted or formatted into bullet points that scroll on teleprompter screens. Obama has had several embarrassing events where the teleprompter either malfunctioned or the screens were not fully visible.
And the reason this worries me is because I am fairly certain that if he's elected, he's not going to be allowed a teleprompter and a script when he has private meetings with world leaders.
Because I don't know exactly where else to put this, and I don't want a whole other post on it right now, but I mentioned Michelle Obama's astonishing comment that 600 dollar stimulus checks amounted to approximately one pair of earings, and I have to admit that pales to the point of invisibility when compared with McCain not really being sure how many houses he owns (he has more houses than we have bedrooms, and we have a large house with more bedrooms than most).
Anti-Americanism
Americans get a lot of criticism for this, and it's true enough. But ti turns out our critics aren't so well informed about us, either, making this something of a pot and kettle issue.
Years ago friends of ours were stationed in England. One morning, he stepped outside and his British neighbor greeted him, saying, "I bet you don't get weather like this in Texas, do you?"
"I wouldn't know, sir, " my friend replied. "I'm from Ohio."
I've heard stories of European visitors who plan to see the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty on the same day, demonstrating the fundamental lack of understanding the difference in scale between our continents, whereby a hundred years old is very old here, and a hundred miles there is very far.
On another occasion a friend of mine from Switzerland who had married an American and now lived here was complaining about our school systems. She said we didn't spend enough money on schools, and it was a disgrace, and we needed to raise taxes and give schools more money. I asked her if she knew how much we currently spent on education and how much we'd been increasing that amount year by year. She did not. She was shocked when she found out. I guess this isn't really a good example though, since most American citizens have also fallen prey to the propaganda campaign pushing the idea that the problem with our education system is that we just haven't given the folks who run it enough money.
The amount of money actually spent annually on children in school districts across the United States varies widely. For the districts in which our sample members live, per-pupil spending in 2004–05 ranged from $5,644 to $24,939,with an average of $10,377. This last figure is slightly higher than the true national average of $9,435.
How well informed is the public about these financial commitments? Not very. Among those asked without the prompt listing possible expenses, the median response was $2,000, or less than 20 percent of the true amount being spent in their districts. Over 90 percent of the public offered an amount less than the amount actually spent in their district, and more than 40 percent of the sample claimed that annual spending was $1,000 per pupil or less. The average estimate of $4,231 reflects the influence of a small percentage of individuals who offered extremely high figures. Even so, the average respondent’s estimate was just 42 percent of actual spending levels in their district (see Figure 1).
My Swiss friend did complain about American ignorance of European geographical and political realities, and while I admit that is true, I think it's only fair to take into account the difference it makes when you can drive for a day and cross half a dozen national borders compared to driving for a day and not leaving your own state.
And it turns out that Britons aren't quite so well-informed about America, either:
A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. [...]
The survey showed that a majority agreed with the false statement that since the Second World War the US had more often sided with non-Muslims when they had come into conflict with Muslims. In fact in 11 out of 12 major conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the US has sided with the former group. Those conflicts included Turkey and Greece, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and and Kosovo and Yugoslavia.
Asked if it was true that "from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons," 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam's arsenal to him, compared to Russia's 57 per cent, France's 13 per cent and China's 12 per cent.
[...]
Almost a third of Britons believe that "Americans who have not paid their hospitals fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care"; by law such treatment must be provided.
More than half the respondents believed that polygamy is legal in some US states, while it is illegal in all US states....
But I wouldn't be so quick to gloat over the ignorance of our friends across the sea. I doubt very much that a poll of our own citizens would have shown better scores.
North Korea
Analysts are again predicting North Korea may be on the brink of collapse, although brink means within the next ten years.
Analysts everywhere point to a decade of hunger that has left 7-year-old North Korean children 8 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than their South Korean cousins. North Korean soldiers in a regime that gives priority to the military forces have been reduced to two skimpy meals a day. Factory workers nap on the floor for lack of food and energy.
That has led to conjecture that North Koreans, despite the pervasive controls in the Hermit Kingdom's police state, may throw caution to the winds. "We just don't think they can go along with this much longer," said an American official with access to intelligence assessments.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington reports that North Korea, after 10 years of food shortages, stands on the precipice of famine that could have political consequences. "The possibility of widespread social distress and even political instability," the institute said in a study, "cannot be ruled out."
Another study, from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, says: "Dismal economic conditions also foster forces of discontent that potentially could turn against the Kim regime - especially if knowledge of the luxurious lifestyle of Communist Party leaders becomes better known or as poor economic performance hurts even the elite."
SEven year old children whose growth is so stunted they are 8 inches shorter than their counterparts in South Korea. That just sticks in your craw, doesn't it?
Exactly!
But the charm of old cookbooks is that while only die-hards would seriously try cooking from Fanny Farmer or Mrs. Beeton, or even a first edition Larousse, each remains a perfect time capsule of its era. When Hannah Glasse tells you in 1747 how to prepare Pigeons Transmogrified, how can one not conjure up a scene of gin-soaked cooks and crooked alchemists?
Taken from a very fun read on a 60s cookbook by Vincent Price. Of course, I would seriously try cooking from Fanny Farmer and Mrs. Beeton, and I have.
My first attempts were a pound cake and some cream puffs from an 1870s cookbook that belonged to my great grandmother. I think I was 12 or so.
Grocery Prices in 1973
Updated to correct some appalling spelling errors made in the middle of the night, and to note, for those who do not know, that the # sign is for pound. So .59# indicates that she paid .59 for each pound of beef bones.
Manhattan grocery list from Oct 1st to 8th of 1973
MEAT and FISH
Beef bones; .59#
Frankfurters; .85 for 12 0z pkg of ten hotdogs
Ground chuck; .99#
Slab bacon; 1.09#
Smoked calas, pork shoulder, .69#
broiling chickens; .39#
beef liver; .79#
Lamb ribs; .59#
Chicken livers- 1.09#
Haddock- .89 #
Dairy Products:
Homogenized milk- .37 per quart
butter $1.00#
Margarine- .36#
Creamed cottage cheese, .51 #
sour cream, .49 pint
Parmesan cheese; .95 for 8 oz
yogurt, .31 1/2 pint
small eggs- .69 dozen
Medium eggs- .72 dozen
Vegetables and fruits, fresh
Onions; .20#
garlic; .16 per head
parsley- .20 bunch
carrots .17 per pound
String beans, .29#
boiling potatoes, .89 for 10#
green peppers, .39 #
soup greens; .53 per bag
beets, .30 per bunch of four
dill-.20 a bunch
escarole or chickory; .29 per head
acorn squash, .10#
chives; .18 per bunch
tomatoes, 3 for .30
broccoli- .39 bunch
yams; .19#
green cabbage, .19#
spinach, .32#
cucumbers, .15 each
zucchini- .41#
lemons; 5 for .59
There's also a list of prices for herbs, spices, and condiments, and one for groceries such as canned tomatoes and pumpernickel bread, but this part is somewhat tedious to type.
I'll add them later, and meanwhile, I'll share the first recipe:
Egg Noodles with Cottage Cheese, Sour Cream, and Bacon
.25 a serving
with carrot and celery sticks
.04 a serving
total- .29 per serving at 1973 prices
1 package (8 oz) wide egg noodles
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup creamy cottage cheese
1 cup dairy sour cream
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3 slices bacon
Cook noodles al dente (that's not what they say, but it's what they meant). Blend cottage cheese, sour cream, and pepper and put on back of stover or over cooking noodles so mixture loses its chill. Don't overheat, or it curdles. Fry bacon until crisp, drain on paper towel, crumble and reserve. Keep bacon fat warm. When noodles are done, drain well and place a layer in each of four heated large soup bowls. Top each with 1/4 of cheese mixture, sprinkle with bacon and drizzle a bit of hot bacon grease on each.Top with a layer of remaining noodles and toss gently. SErve immediately.
Two quotes.
I read the first quote today during school, and was reminded of the second quote. I thought I had already posted that here when I read Sesame and Lilies, but I couldn't find it.
Some people who are very dissatisfied with their lives nevertheless have no intention of changing their own behavior. They want to keep on doing what they have always done, but just have it turn out differently.
From Thomas Sowell's 'essay' "Random Thoughts" which is found in "Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays." Actually, that one reminds of the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
If you prepare a dish of food carelessly, you do not expect Providence to make it palatable; neither if, through years of folly, you misguide your own life, need you expect Divine interference to bring round everything at last for the best. I tell you, positively, the world is not so constituted: the consequences of great mistakes are just as sure as those of small ones, and the happiness of your whole life, and of all the lives over which you have power, depend as literally on your own common sense and discretion as the excellence and order of the feast of a day.
Sesame & Lilies, by John Ruskin.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Ezra Levant and Free Speech
On July 29, 2008, the Human Rights Commission (“HRC”) issued a report on its investigation, and ECMC’s complaint was dismissed. The commission ruled that in balancing free speech rights against the laws that prohibit discrimination, the Western Standard’s publication of the cartoons, “in its full context” did not warrant a trial. Yasmeen Nizam, a civil litigation attorney and an ECMC director, disagreed. She believed that Western Standard should have been brought to trial “regardless of the context.” As she stated, the goal in filing the complaint was “to educate people” on the increased “risk” of discrimination against Muslims in a post-9/11 world.
In the meantime, the HRC’s investigation of the Western Standard article was completed to the tune of 500,000 dollars in taxpayers’ money, and 100,000 dollars to Ezra and his magazine. Had the complaint been filed in a Canadian civil court, the loser would have been required to pay Ezra’s attorney’s fees. But in HRC cases, the complainant doesn’t even have to pay for his own attorney’s fees. The investigation is conducted at taxpayer expense. Had the complaint been filed in a Canadian criminal court, charging the magazine with criminal incitement of hatred, then Ezra would have been entitled to due process and a speedy trial. Instead, he was dragged through the mud at the Alberta’s Human Rights Commission for 900 days, at the mercy of a bunch of bureaucrats.
Currently, there are fourteen Canadian Human Rights Commissions, employing 1000 people, with a budget of 200 million dollars annually. Together, they function as a parallel court system, often at direct odds with laws administered through the Canadian civil and criminal courts. While the establishment of the Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals may have started out with good intentions, over time they have become so extreme that they regularly side with radical Islamists. In a crusade to stamp out offensive language, they stifle free speech. Additionally, the legal fees for respondents can be astronomical. When they win, their speech constitutes exorbitantly expensive speech, not free speech. Soft jihadists purposely use these nuisance suits as lawfare to shut people up and prevent them from voicing their opinions. The process is the punishment.
More here
Golden Moments...
...helping my brother transport his newly caught fish to his current project - a "pond."
... watching him walk home with a slice of watermelon from grandma. His feet were bare and he walked with the comfortable contentment that should belong to every boy in the summer. That is summer goodness, folks.
... having my 12 yo sister snuggle up against me during our Family Expotition (virtual chocolates if you know where that came from - family members excepted) to the discount movie theater to watch Kung Fu Panda. (Artwork in that film=gorgeous!)
... walking in the woods, listening to the birds and thinking - as I always do - "Winter is worth it if this is its reward."
Corncob Toy
When I was a little girl we would go to visit my uncle's farm, and he taught us how to make these toys that he had played with when he was little. His grandpa, I think, showed him how to do it, and we can imagine that his grandpa showed him. We never had a name for them, but I've seen them called corncob shuttlecocks.
Really they should have three feathers, but our third feather broke off.
You don't need instructions to make one- what you see is what you get- an old corncob, three feathers, poke the feathers into the end of the corncob. The center top of most old corncobs is soft, sort of cork-like, so it's easy enough to do in most cases.
Then you throw the corncobs up into the air- as they come down they slowly turn in midair and point down, feathers up, and then they spin madly, vertical whirling dervishes, on the way down. That's a lot of fun for a few throws.
Next you have contests- see who can throw his corncob rocket the highest, the farthest, or make it land the closest to a target traced in the ground.
You can break off the corncob so it's only two or three inches long and bat them around with your hand (I was too big a sissy to play this way. It hurt my hand).
And you can get really fancy and make these into darts with the addition of a pointed stick. We never did this. In fact, nobody even told us that this was something that could be done. I just discovered them while hunting for a name for our corncob and feather toys.
Wash Your Hands
Here's a cute website to help teach young children about the importance of washing their hands.
Books and Character, Part III
Or- The Necessity of Horrible Warnings and Bad Examples
This is Books and Character, Part The Third.
Yesterday I said that the bad examples in literature are at least as important as the good examples. I think this is particularly true for my children, and other families something like ours. In some ways, we live somewhat sheltered lives. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Some aspects of that are deliberate. Other aspects of that are consequences of other choices we've made for other reasons. We once lived in a town with a population of 299- you don't get a broad range of human experience in such circumstances. For three years we did not live in a town at all, but on a dirt road in the country. Our nearest neighbors were one mile away. We could not get television reception if we wanted it. Now we still live in the country, but our road is paved. Our nearest neighbors are my parents, and there is one child who lives within two miles or so of us. Because of the woods, we can't actually see anybody else's house from here. We are homebodies.
Because of the 20 years my husband spent in the military, the longest we've ever lived in any single house is four years. That doesn't give us a lot of time to watch events develop, to see decisions and choices play out in people's lives.
So, sometimes for deliberate reasons and sometimes as a side effect of our lifestyle, our younger children have been somewhat sheltered. I want to protect them, yet I also want to look ahead to a time where my children will be adults. Gradually, as they grow, they will have more responsibilities, just as their oldest siblings, now in their twenties, do. And while we have moved frequently, all of us are limited by space and time in ways that characters in books are not.
As Harper commented in an earlier post on the topic:
another benefit of fiction is that it allows a view from "above." When discussing the real world, no matter how distant the relationship, there exists a certain amount of fog around the behaviors of those involved. The behavior of Lucy Steele only comes into real focus when one can also observe the behaviors of Elinor, Edward, and Fanny. Likewise, the ridiculousness of Marianne becomes apparent only when compared to Elinor and when observed in relation to Willoughby and Col. Brandon. Anyway, the distance and insight into characters' thought processes is useful for "getting" the big picture.
Dickens is also an excellent source for such observations.
Books give us a telescoped view- showing us decades of life in a few hundred pages.
And while I make no apologies for sheltering my younger children, I also want to look ahead to a time when my sons in law will be able to trust their wives' wisdom, and my daughters will be aware enough of the world so that they can wisely do their families good and not evil. I want to look ahead to the time when my children will be interacting with other young adults in the world, or might be parents.
So I use books with characters who behave in less than admirable ways, who sin, who do wrong, who serve as bad examples and horrible warnings. While a smart person learns from his mistakes, a wise person learns from other people's mistakes. I'd like it best if my children if my children can learn from the mistakes of characters in books, rather than from people who could really harm them physically or emotionally.
This surprises some of my Christian friends. Of course, I am not recommending gratuitously evil examples. But I do suggest that many Christians are too quick to dismiss valuable books because they expect their books, unlike real life, and decidedly unlike the Bible, to have only well behaved, admirable human beings in them.
Some of us want books written like 19th century Victorian morality tales, where the boys who don't go to Sunday School come to sticky ends and lament their lack on their death beds. We think it's a good story, however badly it's written, if the maidens are so virtuous they faint rather than play a folk song on a Sunday. In these types of stories the hardest questions rarely get asked, and the solution to any problem is often so unrealistic that we ought to laugh at it rather than to admire it.
I lost my faith in these trite banalities quite young. When I was a child our Sunday School had little moral Sunday papers with stories in them for us to take home and read during the week. I vividly remember one story about a nice, Christian child dealing with bully at school by simply being sweet, and telling the bully about the love of Christ. The bully was immediately repentant and even grateful to the sweet Christian child. I tried it, odious little goody two shoes that I (briefly) was, and the bully's response was so unpleasant that I henceforth scorned those moral tales as snares and delusions.
Real life is not always so simplistic, and we do our children a disservice when we offer them books that pretend otherwise. It is not enough to write a trite and sticky sweet tale where all the bad people come to a bad end and all the good people are rewarded, slap a Bible verse on it, and call it Christian.
If we do our job teaching our children the great truths of the Bible, the themes found over and over in Proverbs and in the beatitudes, they will apply the morals they have learned to the stories they read. They will filter their reading through their moral compass.
It is true that we want to go gently with children and not overwhelm them with evil. Nor do we want to sear their consciences by injudicious exposure to sheer wickedness just for the sake of wickedness (keeping your literary standards high will help prevent this, as gratuitous wickedness is often, though not always, badly written). Hebrews 5:14 says that strong food is for the mature. But how do we become mature? The same verse explains that the mature are those who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
Giving the children well written books to read is one way to give them material upon which to practice.
You do, of course, which to give them tools and skills to apply in that practice. Children should be taught good habits of both action and thought from the cradle. Charlotte Mason believed that from their earliest moments children should be reminded of their place in the Kingdom of Heaven, that they were made for and must have God, and that they owed their Heavenly King much love and service. She taught that even our thoughts are not our own, but that we have a duty to think just thoughts of our neighbors just as much as we have a duty to deal justly in our actions. Parents who apply these principles will see their children employ what they have learned to judge their reading material.
It is my experience that children brought up to have some idea of right and wrong in their own actions (and very few homeschooling parents fail to do at least this much) already *are* able to judge right and wrong in their reading, even if it is not pointed out to them. Perhaps sometimes they judge even better under those circumstances.
A recent discussion of fairy tales prompted me to think further on this topic of children's judgment and the stories they read. I was a voracious reader of fairy tales at a certain point in my youth. I hadn't given much thought to whether I picked up any morals from them. I just loved the stories. I In response to an online discussion a few years ago, where several other mothers insisted fairy tales were violent, immoral, and had no redeeming value, I started thinking about it, and tried to recall my childhood view of the stories. I realized that I had made judgments of right and wrong on my own, even when the story didn't make them. And on occasion, when the story did seem to point to a moral, I was perfectly able to disagree with it if it didn't line up with what I knew of right and wrong.
The Tinderbox is a good illustration of what I mean. For those of you not familiar with it, is the story of an out of work soldier who, in an Aladdin's Lamp type series of events, comes across a magic tinderbox. Striking the box 1, 2, or 3 times will bring one of three different dogs to him to do his bidding, and these are no ordinary dogs. One has eyes as big as saucers, one has eyes as big as dinner plates, and one has eyes as big as the clock in the bell tower. There's the usual princess in the story, and in the end, he of course, marries the princess.
It would appear that the soldier is the hero. However, although I always enjoyed the story, I never liked the hero. I didn't admire him, and never felt there was much about him I'd want to emulate or want my own knight in shining armor, when he came, to imitate. He's full of the stuff of raw courage, but that's about it- and I knew that as a child even when I could not articulate it.
Pipsqueak also loved fairy tales. When she was nine years old, about the time I was having that online discussion mentioned above, I asked her if she'd read The Tinder Box and what she thought of it. Here's what she said:
"Oh, yes, I've read it so many times I'm sick of it! I like it, but I don't like the soldier. He starts off by cutting off the witches head for not telling him why she wants the tinderboxes, and he doesn't know she's a witch!"
Yes, I agreed, that was what happened. "What," I asked her, "do you think about the soldier in the rest of the story?"
"Well, he does do some nice things. He gives a lot of money to poor people. But he bothers the princess and he makes his dogs bite the king and queen! Then he marries the princess and the story says they lived very happily."
She stopped there, but from the cynical tone of her voice, it was clear that she didn't see how such a beginning possibly managed to end in a happy marriage.
My daughter used her conscience and judgment to make her own decisions about the actions of the 'hero' of The Tinderbox and whether they were right or wrong. I was impressed with how well she did judge. I asked her if she thought he was a hero of the sort she would like to imitate, and received a resounding 'no!'
Charlotte Mason says that
'reason, judgment, imagination, discrimination...take care of themselves and play as naturally and involuntarily upon the knowledge we receive with attention and fix by narration as do the digestive organs upon duly masticated food-stuff for the body. We must feed the mind as the body fitly and freely; and the less we meddle with the digestive processes in the one area in the other the more healthy the life we shall sustain. It is an infinitely great thing, that mind of man, present in completeness and power in even the dullest of our pupils." (page 259 of Volume 6)
Real books are food for the mind- nourishing food, not milky, watered down stories squeezed dry of anything to chew on. Stories told with vigor and imagination were the proper mind food for children- not distilled moral tales, bereft of any spark of life. The plot need not be realistic- animals may talk, it may be set on Mars, or there may be Fairy Godmothers and unicorns, but the characters should be lifelike and the writing should be well crafted. The children learn to deal with literature by being given literature- suitable to their age, and at times judiciously edited- but still literature. Given the proper food and some parental discussions (and for Christians, biblical knowledge), the child's mind will act on it in the proper way, and the more of that proper food, the better the child's mind would be able to deal with stronger meat.
Stories by Hans Christian Anderson, traditional folk and fairy tales, Dickens, Les Miserables, Shakespeare, nearly all the great classics, these are a fit food for young minds to begin working on as they train themselves to distinguish good from evil by constant use of their moral sense.
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Random Common Room Happenings
Some of you may remember the Tale of the UBO. Those who were not with us then may want to read the amusing and instructive series of posts on the Adventures of the Equuschick and the HG upon picking up a dear friend from the airport. They were confronted there by a sodden and weeping stranger about whom the EC said, "No funds, no phone, no cigarettes, no shoes, no transportation. Also, it appeared that she was suffering from a severe lack of common sense, moral fiber, and sheer gumption." In fact, her only survival mechanism* appeared to be a keenly honed ability to guilt-trip people like the HG, who, as the first born child, knows that she is responsible for the rest of the known world.
That was our first face to face and personal meeting with 'Susan,' a longtime internet friend of the EC's and HG's. They met over an email list ostensibly for the purpose of discussing Tolkien's Hobbit when they were quite young, and they knew a kindred spirit when they saw one- and even when they didn't. See one, that is. Which you don't do, much, when all your conversations are conducted via email.
"Susan" was all we had come to know and love via her email exchanges, and it was a most delightful visit. This past weekend we had a small repeat, with all the fun and none of the UBO associated annoyance. Susan's maternal parent grew up a couple hours from where we now live and the two women drove up here for a family wedding and stopped to see us on their way back home.
We could immediately see the source and origin of much we admire about Susan. Her mother has the same interesting and delightfully amusing personality, well grounded sense of what is fitting, and a ready command for the mot juste.
Plus, she grows and cans her own kidney beans and is well acquainted with that most essential of cookbooks, The More With Less (having known it from her youth in the Mennonite community). It was a delight to get to meet her, as well as visit with her charming daughter, and we only wish they could have stayed longer. She kindly helped me rearrange the furniture (yes, again), and we swapped stories of our aged relations and their demented doings.
Demented is not, you should realize, intended as a pejorative term there. It is simply a statement of fact, as both of us are dealing with relatives who are on close speaking terms with the medical condition known as dementia. Or they would be on close speaking terms if they could remember what to call it.
We rearranged the furniture because the wireless router came in the mail and I want to move my computer out of my bedroom into the living room. These moves always take longer than I think they will, because there's a sort of a chain reaction, wherby moving that item necessitates the removal of some other piece of furniture, which now means that yet another piece of furniture no longer works where it once was, and by the time we were done the only things in the living room that were still in the same place as when I started were the three bookcases I just moved a couple weeks ago and the piano. We also moved the tables, benches, and chairs in the dining room.
And Susan's Mom went on a search and destroy mission with a broom and swept up SIX dustpans full of doghair from just those two rooms. Isn't that appalling? What's even worse is that the EC swept the night before. She doesn't sweep under the furniture, however, and moving the furniture dislodged copious amounts of the stuff, plus, the dogs continue shedding as we sweep.
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And after all that, the only thing we suceeded in doing in connection with the internet service was abruptly disconnecting it all for 24 hours, and when it finally came back on, the wireless works, so the HG and the HM can use their laptops anywhere in the house, and the two upstairs computers are back onine, but the one in my bedroom? The one RESPONSIBLE for all this shifting, rearranging, and sweepting? THAT one is now a glorified and over-large word processor with no printer function as we can no longer get it online and we've not been able to use the printer it's networked to for weeks.
I have tried using the upstairs computers but something about the set up there really exacerbates all my back, neck, and shoulder problems and even some I did not know I had. So my living room is rearranged, my new place for the computer is all set up- and there is no computer to put there since we cannot get my computer online and do not know why. This sort of things makes me demented.
Speaking of which, let's discuss my dad for a while. As readers who have been with a few months know, I campaigned for over a year to have the keys removed from my father's grasp, as I was growing frantically, sick makingly, agonizingly worried about him behind the wheel of a vehicle. He does have good days, but he has suddenly erratic and bizarre moments as well, and you cannot let the good days influence your judgment about things like letting him drive. Last year at New Year's he sneaked out of the house to drive his truck through a blizzard at midnight, for example, and he drove off the road (he did not slide, he drove directly for the ditch), displaying the sort of judgment that was worrying me. Displaying such judgment, or lack thereof, even further, he more recently argued with me about his driving, insisting that he had never had an accident, never driven off the road, and when I pointed out that time (selected at random from several possible occasions I might have chosen), he indignantly claimed it did not count because he wasn't going anywhere anyway.
But finally, the keys were removed- as he was given a cognitive and response time test at the local hospital, which he failed with flying colors. His doctor wrote a report, the DMV withdrew his license, and he is supposed to be grounded. We have mentioned his propensity for traveling about the countryside in our jointly owned riding lawn mower. I cleaned out a large section of the garage and moved the riding lawn mower (which he calls 'the big orange thing') here. I have mentioned his delight in tootling about the neighborhood in the golf cart ('the big green thing'), and how he recently misplaced it and thought perhaps we came over and snitched it (plans are in the works for doing just that very thing). And I have mentioned that he rides his bike, falls down, and actually rode it 9 miles into town without permission or notification.
Yesterday Granny Tea was gone of the day on DAR related business. She asked us to keep an eye on him, which is all very well and good, except he does not like us to keep an eye on him. He has expressly said he doesn't want us over there during the day, a herd of children trooping through the house (which is not who we are or how we behave when we go there to keep an eye on him), and Granny Tea agreed that he didn't have to have us. And our house is behind a hill, so we cannot see the road from any spot in the house except the upstairs bathroom window, if we crane our necks and stand on tip-toe. She suggested we take him with us if we were going to town, but the only town going we had was for piano lessons- a 3 hour trip, and I know my father of old, and he has no tolerance for sitting patiently while other people go about their business, and he does not like to be 'taken' to town by his only daughter and made to tag along like a small child while I run errands, and he usually insists on being taken home before I am finished, grumbling all the way, and if nothing else works, claiming to be nearly at death's door from pain or exhaustion and making himself quite disagreeable. So, given a responsibility but no authority to carry out that responsibility, nobody noticed when Grandpa drove the truck into town.
He left his Arby's coffee cup in the truck, however, and Granny Tea saw it when she came home. She called and told us to come and remove the truck and keep it at our house from now on. She had hidden a spare set of keys, and he had found them. She drove him back into town for dinner, and was amused when he casually told her that one of the restaurants they passed had been closed earlier in the day when they had a gas leak, but she did not ask him how he knew that. He is like a small, sneaky, child- sneaky, but no longer clever enough to sustain the sneakiness. And he's not small- he's over 6 feet tall.
So we have the truck, for now, anyway. The transmission is going, btw.
And this means my father is bored today. I have had two phone conversations with him. They are so bewildering it is impossible to repeat them, but the gist of it is that somebody called him looking for a Tom Harrison (a pseudonym), and it was a wrong number. There is something there about a fund raiser or scholarship for Tom Harrison, but Dad wasn't sure if it was for preschool or college. And he's worried about the people who called the wrong number (even though he simply politely told them it was a wrong number, and they politely thanked him and hung up), so he wants to help them. He looked up Tom Harrison in the phone book, and wanted to call these strangers back to give them Tom's address and directions to his house, but he did not know where the road was, and he wanted me to tell him. I was unable to help. He called again to ask me if my husband knew anybody in the town 30 minutes north of us. I said I was sure he knew some people there (we used to go to church there). He said, "Are any of them named Tom Harrison?"
I don't know if he knows Tom or not, but I thought it best to deny all knowledge of Tom on my husband's behalf. Dad was concerned because he had tried to dial the number but could not get through. I am fairly certain that this is because he didn't dial the long distance number correctly, or perhaps because mother turned off the long distance service, but I think it best not to tell him this, either.
He sighs in frustration. "I guess that's that, then," he grumbles. "I don't know what else to do for them. I guess I will just go outside and kill the grass."
I think that is an excellent plan, and I support it warmly.
*We subsequently learned she possessed another survival mechanism- an insouciant disregard for other people's personal property, space, and credit card numbers.
It May Be Legal, But It's Not Safe
(repost from 2005)
Dr. Bernard Nathanson is pro-life now, but back in the days before Roe V. Wade he was pro-abortion. He was such a supporter of abortion that he was a co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League. They were instrumental in changing public (and judicial) opinion on the abortion question. One of the ways they did that was a neat little piece of propaganda that people still believe today- they horrified the public with gruesome stories about multiple deaths from illegal abortions.
They made those stories up. Nathanson now admits his group lied about the number of women who died from illegal abortions when testifying before the Supreme Court in 1972.
"We spoke of 5,000 - 10,000 deaths a year.... I confess that I knew the figures were totally false ... it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"
You can read more here.
Bernard Nathanson -co-founder of NARAL and instrumental in legalizing abortion in this country- is a fascinating person. A few years _after_ he became pro-life, he became a Catholic. It is interesting to me how the pro-life position led him to religion rather than the other way around. If you google him, you can find many websites referencing him, because he's been quite vocal in explaining how and why he and his cronies enlisted the media in a campaign of lies, deceptions, and reporting of nonexistent polls to promote the prochoice position in the most unethical ways imaginable.
Here's one source.
So we are are where are today (killing over a million babies a year) because he and his cronies deliberately told the media that as many as ten thousand women a year dying of illegal abortions, a completely mythical number, and the MSM lapped up that fiction without investigation. Some things never change.
In fact, illegal abortions were largely performed by licensed doctors who just went into legal practice when abortion was legalized, so legalizing abortion did not stop 'back-alley-butchers' from performing abortions. They just put their shingles up in public. Consider:
"...the July 1960 edition of the American Journal of Public Health, an article by Dr. Mary Calderon, then medical director of Planned Parenthood, which stated:
"90% of illegal abortions are being done by physicians. Call them what you will, abortionists, or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such; ... They must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is... Abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous, because it is being done well by physicians."
Here we have two candid admissions for the price of one- not only were illegal abortions not being done by quacks with coat-hangers, but the death rate from illegal abortions was "low." This flies in the face of all those claims of several thousand women losing their lives every year to illegal abortions and it likewise contradicts the claim that illegal abortions were performed by unqualified butchers with crude tools and no medical expertise in filthy back-alley conditions.
In fact, it certainly appears to me that more women died of complications from legal abortions than illegal:
For 1972, the last full year before Roe, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported that 39 women died due to illegal abortion. (The death total for all abortions, including legal ones, was 88.)
And according to studies from the early 90s, over 200 women died from complications related to their safe and legal abortions in the 20 years after Roe V. Wade. (Lawson , H. et al, "Abortion Mortality U.S., 1972-1987," American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Vol. 171, No. 5 (November 1994), pp. 1365-1352. See also, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (CDC), "Abortion Surveillance - U.S., 1989, Vol. 141, No. 55-5, September 4, 1992.)
And yet... here we are.
Frugal Cooking from 1974
Recently I picked up a March, 1974 issue of Family Circle Magazine. There is an article inside by Mimi Sheraton. She became the food critic for the NYT the following year, and has had an interesting and varied career, according to this bio (which, oddly, doesn't mention her stint at Family Circle). She also authored a number of cookbooks, including Eating my Words and she co-authored Food Markets of the World.
Her assignment for this issue of Family Circle was to plan a two week menu of dinners for her family of three. The main courses had to cost less than .50 per person, including every ingredient used, right down to salt and parsley. All ingredients had to be purchased in supermarkets.
The meals had to be palatable to all three members of the family (her son was then 15). She added some guidelines of her own. She wrote that Baked macaroni and cheese, spaghetti with meat or tuna, "and most eggplant dishes are by now standards in every budget food story" so she didn't want to repeat any of those. I thought that was interesting. How many people do you know who cook with eggplant? I am the only member of my family who likes it, and I cannot always eat it- sometimes it makes my mouth tingle.
She also preferred not to go totally vegetarian, believing that fish, meat, eggs, or dairy products were the best sources of protein. My midwife told me that 12 years ago when I was pregnant with the FYG, much to the HM's delight and joy. She insisted that I add meat back into my diet and no longer rely on beans, rice (even brown rice) and tofu for protein, and I had to admit I felt much, much better when I followed her advice.
Ms. Sheraton also sought recipes that could be prepared in advance in order to save time on cooking night, since most inexpensive dishes do take more time to prepare than the pricier versions.
She used the weekly sales fliers to form her menus. She says she learned that a vegetable soup that seemed quite frugal turned out to be much more expensive than meat dishes because the meat dishes were more filling, so her family ate less. She said that the spices in a delicious chicken curry were as expensive as an extra pound of chicken, so it wasn't worth it. We have noticed spices are a fraction of the price if you buy them at ethnic grocery stores, a military Commissary (we realize that's not an option for everybody) a health food store, or a food co-op.
She also said she was amazed at how expensive small ingredients such as a tablespoon of lemon juice could be, and she gave each recipe at least three trials to work it down to its most frugal but still tasty variation.
She includes both the recipes and a list of ingredients and prices she paid for them in October of 1973. I'll be sharing those in a later post because I think they are very interesting.
She does suggest stocking up on specials and freezing them as much as possible. She was able to get broiling chickens for .69 a pound and calas ham- a pork shoulder- at .69 a pound. I can still get chicken for less than that a couple times a year, although it's leg quarters at .29 or .39 a pound.
Most of the remaining items are now about twice what she paid
Flowers for You
On Sept 3 FTD florists around the country will be giving out bouquets of flowers to walk-in customers. All they ask is that you keep one flower and give the rest to a neighbor! Although there are no participating florists near me, there may be near you. Here are the details.
Donating Can Kill You
From a friend: by Wesley Smith (an advocate of organ donation)
...On September 26 [2004], William Thaddeus Rardin, age 31, shot himself in the head in a suicide attempt. He was rushed to ...Surgeons removed his heart, liver, pancreas, and two kidneys for transplantation...
[Mark Young, the Montrose County coroner] determined that the two hospitals did not follow proper procedures in determining that Rardin was really dead. He therefore declared the cause of Rardin's death to be homicide. Indeed, Young told the Rocky Mountain News, "The cause of death was removal of the internal organs by an organ-recovery team."
...Several doctors, writing for an international forum on transplant ethics argued in the November 1, 1997, edition of the British medical journal The Lancet that the legal definition of death should be expanded "to include comprehensive irreversible loss of higher brain function" so that "it would be possible to take the life of a patient (or more accurately stop the heart since the patient would be defined as 'dead') by 'lethal' injection" and then procure organs upon receiving proper consent...
Two Harvard doctors advocated an even more radical approach in the September 2003 Critical Care Medicine. Drs. Robert D. Troug and Walter M. Robinson proposed that "individuals who desire to donate their organs and who are either neurologically devastated or imminently dying should be allowed to donate their organs, without first being declared dead." Were such criteria to be adopted, the apparent homicide of William Thaddeus Rardin would be transformed from an alarming, unintended, and potentially criminal anomaly into a standard operating procedure in transplant hospitals across the country...
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A place I miss...
Ruby Beach - Olympic National Park - Washington
One of our best family vacations ever (and there have been many brilliant ones) were the few days we spent camping on the Olympic Peninsula.
Tax Fairness
From the Tuesday Links post at Maggie's Farm:
What is "fair" about taking the money you earned? How can it be done fairly? Obama wants more "tax fairness." How do you get more "fair" than this:
As we come to the end of the Bush administration, the top 1% of American taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes -- the highest level in 40 years. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of the taxes.
That is beyond fair, and it leaves 90% of the population as minimal contributors to the nation. There is an obvious danger in becoming a nation of 90% "getters" and 10% givers - and not the least being that you discourage the givers.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for Ice Cream and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men ate in the Ice Cream Parlor every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily Ice Cream by $20. Ice Cream for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free, but what about the other six men - the paying customers?
How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.
But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to eat his Ice Cream. So, the parlor owner suggested that it woul