Wakko's famous 50 State Capitols song

Update on the Home Bible Study case

REsolved, apparently. The couple do not have to have a religious assembly permit to continue to hold a home Bible study.

Interesting how the county's story has morphed with television coverage. David and Mary Jones have a weekly home Bible study at their house (as do we). He has a lot next door where visitors park. Usually, he says, they get from 15-20 people, but once there was double that number. A neighbor's car was dinged, and Jones paid for the damage himself. Nevertheless, somebody in the neighborhood complained.

A code enforcement officer warned the couple in April for holding a “religious assembly” without a permit.

After all the publicity, the county said that it was a parking issue, that the neighbor filing the complaint said that 40 cars were in the cul-de-sac for the Bible study every week. Jones says it's closer to about six cars.

Dean Broyles, president of the Western Center for Law & Policy, a nonprofit organization in Escondido that supports religious liberty, is representing the Joneses. He said traffic issues were not raised when the code enforcement officer first visited the Joneses in response to the complaint. The warning itself does not mention traffic or parking problems.

“Even though the county is saying it's about traffic and parking, it's a fake issue. It's a fabricated issue,” Broyles said.

According to Broyles, the code enforcement officer asked a series of pointed questions during her visit with the Joneses – questions such as, “Do you sing?” “Do you say 'amen?' ” “Do you say 'praise the Lord?' ”

Chandra Wallar, the county's general manager of land use and environment,says the county is investigating to see if this is what happened, but the code enforcement officer would have had to ask questions to determine the land use. Which makes no sense, if it was merely a parking issue, it should not have mattered whether they said 'amen' or "prise the Lord." The cars would be just as obtrusive whether their drivers were there for Bible study or a strip poker game.

Speculation in the comments as to the real reason the home Bible study was targeted includes backlash from Prop. 8, that the Jones may be annoying neighbors for other reasons (which wouldn't explain the county worker's questions as to religion), or simply overbearing bureaucrats. That would be my guess.

The Cure Was More Toxic Than the Disease

I believe the risk posed by this debt is systemic and could do more damage to the economy than the recent financial crisis. To understand the size of the risk, take a look at the numbers that Standard and Poor’s considers. The deficit in 2019 is expected by the CBO to be $1,200bn (€859bn, £754bn). Income tax revenues are expected to be about $2,000bn that year, so a permanent 60 per cent across-the-board tax increase would be required to balance the budget. Clearly this will not and should not happen.

More here.

From The New Editor

Bread Crumbs

The topic of my latest post at Frugal Hacks.

More About Hymns

Sherry at Semi-colon is continuing her hymnic research. She has several websites useful for those looking up hymns online. It's nice to have them all in one place. Here's another nice one- The Center for Church Music Songs and Hymns has the scores, audio files, lyrics, a short devotional, and background info all together.

There's also:
Acapella Radio (from Southern Gospel to operatic arrangements)
Let God Be True (links to acapella hymns on mp3, as well as instrumental)
a short list of links to some acapella hymns and praise songs here
links to Sacred Harp singings across the country here*
samples from a wide selection of hymns sung by Mennonites here
Kleinwood church of Christ has an annual singing where hundreds of people gather to sing. Links to several years of those singings are here. (it's hard to find a specific song without checking the list for each year, which is tedious)

News and views

Today a home Bible study, tomorrow a book discussion group, next week, a group of guys playing poker or watching the game on T.V. Outrageous.

Alger Hiss, we now know, really was a spy, and an iconic moment in German history also turns out to have been rather other than it was believed to be for the last forty years. Fascinating.

Government has mastered the art of strong-arming us into tax increases. When you and I find we don't have enough money for our planned expenditures, we start by trimming back on non-essentials- eating out, movies, convenience foods, extra coffee. Then we decide that we'll make the current pair of shoes last another season, do without that new coat, and put off a haircut a little longer.

If we did things like the government does, we'd start by announcing that we could no longer buy food.

In this story about a club specifically for men (Men in Power, “anyone with an interest in...learning from men in powerful positions, as well as issues involved with reverse sexism") comes this sad statistic:

According to statistics cited by the Tribune, the current unemployment rates for males is at 10 percent, while women is a comparatively modest 7.6 percent.

The gender-gap has also increased between males and females who earn a bachelor’s or master’s degree these days. Mark Perry, who is an economist at the University of Michigan-Flint campus told the Tribune that, according to his research, women are out-graduating their male counterparts at a ratio of 135 to 100.

Additionally, Perry claims that women advance their education to master’s level at a ratio 150 to 100, which in turn leaves a remarkable margin for future employment as well.

Symbolism over Substance- closing Gitmo is window dressing (and it's not at all for certain it will be closed. Suggesting indefinite detention without trial as policy is the ugly reality behind the curtain:

Once it becomes policy - once it is enshrined in law (and I’m not, at this point, at all sure how the SCOTUS would rule on such a law although I’m certainly sure on how I think they should rule) it is open to use and abuse by government. So while we may or may not agree with what the previous administration did, in this regard, they never tried to make it policy and an legally blessed (but morally wrong) method of handling those we capture and incarcerate in this war against Islamic extremism.

Anyone monitoring what Barack Obama has been saying since taking the oath of office who doesn’t see a rather large authoritarian streak in the man hasn’t been paying attention. What he is suggesting is blatantly worse than what the Bush administration did. Unfortunately, it is mostly being lost in the ground clutter of the financial crisis. But it is certainly there for those who take the time to look.

Possible breakthrough in stem cell research- ordinary skin cells could be turned into stem cells, which would have a number of benefits.

The question is: who deserves our empathy? Is it the victim in court before us or those unseen victims who will suffer the consequences of a bad judgment?

Our Place in the Universe

North Korea and the Bomb

Kim's Hiroshima-type Bomb is big enough to wipe out Tokyo, and in a few years, San Francisco. For decades the West has begged and pleaded with Kim, bribing him with vast gifts of oil and food. Kim always suckered the West and just kept starving his own people for better nukes and missiles. Today, he's got his Bomb and the means to deliver it to Japan, South Korea, and China.

Iran is next.

This is the Second Age of Nuclear Terror. The first one started when Stalin used stolen secrets from the Manhattan Project to build a Soviet Bomb. Even Stalin's closest associates were terrified that he would start a suicidal nuclear war. According to one history Lavrenty Beria and Nikita Khruschev assassinated Stalin to stop that from happening.

After Stalin's death the Soviet Union and the West were able to establish a balance of terror. Both sides thought the other was rational, and no rational actor would ever use nuclear weapons.

Today's Second Age of Nuclear Terror is different, because Kim and Ahmadinejad don't act like rational leaders. Ahmadinejad is a Twelver, a fanatical member of an Armageddon cult that believes the Twelfth Imam will return to earth after the destruction of the enemies of Islam -- which means everybody on earth who isn't one of them. That's why the Arabs next door are running scared of A'jad's nukes and missiles. They are Muslims, but the wrong kind, according to Ayatollah Khomeini, who founded the modern mullah state in Tehran.

More here.

Coherence in Family Life

The result was a coherence in family life which allowed all manner of speculations on the purpose of the universe without threatening the fabric of existence.

That's a quote from Unfinished Journey, Twenty Years Later, by world-famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin and which Mental Multivitamin is reading.

I couldn't possibly measure up to Yehudi's parents, but it reminded me of something that happened here a few months ago. I'd been asked to lead a small group discussion at a lady's retreat, and my topic was raising children in the faith (it was assigned to me). In preparation, I asked all my older girls what I had done that they found most valuable to them. Their answers varied, of course, but one thing every single one of them said, and it took me by surprise, was something along the lines that I taught them at fairly young ages that not everybody believed what we believed, that good and intelligent and wonderful people believed things that were antithetical to our cherished beliefs, and that I allowed them to investigate, question, and explore other ideas.

I know that now some of you are going to ask how I did that, and the truth is, I cannot tell you. I didn't even remember that I did.

Lila-Rose and Planned Parenthood

U.S. News and World Report blogger Bonnie Erbe wants to know why the pro-life crusader hasn’t been arrested for trespassing or fraud, and - get this - Planned Parenthood has posted Lila Rose’s picture so its disgraceful workers will be on the alert.

I know a better way that Planned Parenthood can stop getting caught facilitating rape, incest, and the abuse of minors. They could follow the law and not counsel girls they believe to be minors on how to protect their abusers.

Meandering down Memory Lane after Midnight

Well. The two little boys we keep from time to time (I really need a better name for them, any suggestions?) ended up coming over last night instead of tonight, and they are here until Sunday night (last time they were here until Sunday night that ended up being until Monday late afternoon), which put me in speed mode, as there were still cookies to bake, laundry to fold, toilets to scrub, and clutter to put away before the singing tonight, and all my biggest helpers were gone- some to help Strider clean up and pack his apartment, some to work, and Pip is being obsessive compulsive about schoolwork.

So, naturally, with so much cleaning and straightening up to do before tonight, it makes perfect sense that at midnight, after the boys finally went to sleep and everybody else was in bed, I settled down to clean out a filing cabinet drawer that wasn't doing anybody any harm at all, and which I apparently haven't looked in since four years ago when Granny Tea cleaned our her house and handed me a huge box of letters and pictures I wrote and sent them when we lived in Okinawa back in the second half of the 80's.

And I couldn't sort without reading, could I?

I read about the HG biting the EC hard while we were driving somewhere in the car- a totally unprovoked bite, and when asked why she did it, she answered very matter-of-factly, "I suddenly wondered if it would hurt her if I bit her. And I found out it did."

I read about the Equuschick tenderly caring for our sick dog after his heartworm treatments, bringing him pillows, dolls, and solicitously covering him up with a blanket and 'reading' him stories. She was three.

I read about the Equuschick going out to my garden and picking every last stinking tomato on my first plant- when they were all green, and how I cleverly punished her for that by making her eat one of the green tomatoes. Oh, so clever. Because she did quit picking my tomatoes. After that, she coerced the little neighbor boy to pick them for her.

I read about the HG and the EC getting in a loud fight, with the HG roaring at the EC not to tattle on her. And when the EC came into the room where her father and I were, all thoughts of tattling were completely erased from her mind as she was utterly distracted by the oranges we were eating. She was always easily distracted by food. This state of absent-mindedness was clearly a great relief to the HG, and the EC could not remember what it was she was going to tell us, so interested was she in her food. Her relief was short-lived, however, as we insisted that she (the HG) tell us what the EC had been coming to tell us. After hemming and hawing and insisting there wasn't anything at all to tell, a crafty expression swept over her face, and enunciating carefully, the HG told us, "She was coming in here to tell you that I did NOT hit her."

I will stop there, not because there isn't more to tell, but because Pip will be back shortly from her walk with the boys and the D-man dog, and I will have no more computer time to speak of. But one of the many things I found interesting about those letters is how many of the funniest incidents I had completely forgotten. Another was how well the letters illustrated a phenomenon I have already seen with my own mother.

My mother has often said to me that she doesn't understand why my children (when they were smaller) were so destructive of their toys, so careless, so prone to breaking them. "You children," she would say, speaking of my two little brothers and I, "Were much more careful with your toys. I don't remember you being so destructive."
And yet, if there is one constant thing I remember from my own childhood, it is my mother saying to us, "I don't understand why you three are so destructive. YOu just do not take care of your things. When I was a child, we appreciated our toys and took good care of them. We didn't destroy them like you do."*

Your memory apparently grows rosier as the children grow, because I do not remember the HG and the EC fighting much, and yet the letters I perused last night were full of accounts of sibling squabbles. There were sweet tales of sibling affection, too, but far more squabbling than I recall. I remember only sweetness and light, with one or two spectacular incidents of sibling tussling (one ended with one child with a fistful of hair, and the other child with her hand caught tightly in a drawer, which her sibling was holding firmly shut so she couldn't yank out more hair). And that's not quite the way it happened. Before too long, I suppose, I shall be telling the grandchildren, "I don't understand why children argue with each other so much. Your mothers never fought when they were little." And their mothers will be rolling their eyes at each other behind my back, and saying, "That is not what you told us when we were little!"

*Incidentally, I found out this rosy memory of her own childhood was not altogether true when I inherited the Rattery and contents, which included a goodly number of their toys- toys which were broken, colored on, books that were scribbled in, illustrations defiled with mustaches, and toys which had clearly been put to usages other than that envisioned by their designers. I also realized that toys back then were much sturdier than the gimcrack junk that is made today, so it was harder to break them, giving the illusion that one was more careful with one's toys than the children of today.

Waterboarding....

This guy volunteered to be waterboarded, and says it's not torture. This was a month ago, and one wonders why it hasn't been in the news...
This guy volunteered to be waterboarded and says it is torture.

And Gawker suggests that his waterboarding was faked, which is interesting. I am also a little curious about why the video footage doesn't match the still photo or account given in the NBC story linked above.

Thinking out loud:
Even if it's faked, that says nothing, of course, about whether or not it is or is not torture, but I do wonder how many other forms of torture are subject to so much debate about whether or not they actually are torture, and how many forms of torture people volunteer to experience. Which last also doesn't prove anything about whether or not it actually should be called torture rather than 'enhanced interrogation technique.'
One thing that does incline me to call it torture is the need for such mangled verbage to describe it, btw. I am pretty sure such a term would only be dreamed up by those who actually think it is torture.

What If...?

A useful post for checking one's double standard levels.

Cool Number Patterns

Good Question

How many politicians can you identify that are not trying to legislate some aspect of your life, your money, your property, your freedom? Do not rely on what is said during a speech, a debate, or a campaign pledge or promise; rather, go to the voting records and see how your politician of choice has actually voted. Can you identify a politician who is trying to pass legislation that will take control from government and return it to the individual?

From Ancient Rome, a Bluestocking Guide by Jane Williams

This is a guide to accompany Ancient Rome, How it Affects You Today by Richard Maybury

More ACORN Fraud

Nevada, this time, and so serious that the Democrat Secretary of State is looking into it. And yet, the Congressional funds just keep coming.

Mandatory 'Public spirit'

This is pretty funny, except the part where you realize it's not really that funny because it's painfully close to the truth:

Recently we were uplifted when the president informed Chrysler’s secured creditors that they had agreed to donate their ownership stake in the company to the United Auto Workers. Just last week, we were enthralled to see a group of auto executives beaming with pride as the president announced that in order to reduce gas consumption, they would henceforth be scaling back on all those car lines that consumers actually want to buy.

These events have heralded a new era of partnership between the White House and private companies, one that calls to mind the wonderful partnership Germany formed with France and the Low Countries at the start of World War II.

Lemming-like Political Beliefs

All right-thinking people think, well, left...:

In the business of opinions, where I earn my money, there is practically nothing but leftists, and anyone who is not is well-advised to keep it to himself. One reason for the cultural dominance of the left may be that the other side has nothing to say or leftist ideas are so convincing that everything else pales by comparison. But I would hazard to guess that many are to the left because others are.

Man's tendency to assimilate, though well-documented in experimental psychology, is a trait routinely underestimated in everyday life. What we call conviction is often nothing but adaptation in an environment of opinions. Opportunism is an ugly word that doesn't apply here, because it assumes that we adopt opinions for purely calculated reasons. Let's call it social instinct instead. No one wants to be the only person in an office who isn't asked to join the group for lunch.

The liberal family has many clans competing sharply with one another, but in the end it remains a family, and it sees itself as a family. The left, with which I have dealt throughout my life, is a milieu that could be described as the leftist bourgeoisie. In English-speaking countries, terms like "chattering class" or "creative class" have taken hold. Middle-class socialism or leftist chic are other attempts at description, but they all mean the same thing. This milieu is inhabited by a type of person easily recognized by his consumption and cultural habits (even if he prides himself on his nonconformity), and who is characterized by a pronounced elite awareness, even though the word elite is much as a taboo for leftists as words like nation, homeland or ethnic group.

Private Vs Government Sector

The gap between the public sector and private business in wages and benefits continues to grow. Last month, USA Today reported federal figures showing that public employees earned benefits worth $13.38 per hour in December 2008, compared to $7.98 for private sector workers.

A full-time government worker receives benefits worth an average of $28,830 per year. A private worker's benefits are worth an average of $16,598. Yet in this time of recession/depression, the shrinking private sector foots the bill for massive bailouts of public employees. In the nongovernment world, jobs are being lost by the hundreds of thousands each month. Government workers are secure in theirs. As the ordinary American becomes more aware of the disparity and unfairness of the current system, anger builds.

It's an increasingly top-heavy and bloated system, and I'm not sure how it's sustainable.

Via Instapundi

Post-Script

to this post

Last night at midweek Bible study one of the college friends who has been going through a rough patch ended up coming over to spend the night at our house, and a family who live in the next town over asked if I could watch their baby here while they pack up to move. He'll be here around lunch time, and he's a charming bundle of laughter, so I 'll have fun, but I'll be busy, because tomorrow is our music lesson/library volunteering day, and the HG and TC (see the side-bar for TC's place in our lives) will be packing up stuff at Strider's apartment, so it will mostly be Baby, The Boy, The Cherub, and me. The FYG was funny about this, btw. Being the sixth child she doesn't remember the days when I had three in diapers, three in car-seats, or two in cloth diapers. She's worried that I won't be able to handle the baby without her.

If you had dropped by last night for a visit you would have found me at midnight or so in the kitchen making skillet granola and packing the HM's lunch. Today before the baby arrives, I hope to have some bread started, but we'll see.

Bird picture from a couple weeks ago...

I love it when animals stay perfectly still for a photograph. :)

Bacteria in the 12 step Program

Who Chose the Chrysler Businesses to Close?

And why? What do they have in common? Surely not. I mean, really. This is highly unlikely, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Is Ignoring North Korea Like Ignoring Hitler in 1939?

Seems mighty close.

Fascist Do-Gooders

Elisheva looks at the CPSIA and places it in the larger context of fascist do-gooding. She notes how this brouhaha is causing some cognitive dissonance among more than a few good crunchy souls who thought the Democrats were their special friends and allies:

"“What it looks like is that our needs are largely being responded to by Republicans. Most of the people in the Homemade Toy Alliance are probably more aligned with the Democratic side. And people in the Homemade Toy Alliance kind of like the things that these consumer groups are touting, like safer products and natural things.” But now she finds herself in this “weird alliance.” " (ibid).

Leibovitz is still seeing this as a partisan issue, and it's hard for her not to, because Congress has very few members who are not allied with the major parties. But this is really an issue about the power of government, and like many of us before her, her awakening is beginning as she understands that the Congress is more concerned about the big lobby groups and multinational corporations that they represent, than they are about her freedom and prosperity.

It's a start, recognizing that the Democrats are really not the friend to the little guy that their public relations campaign managers (that would be the media, yes?) have portrayed. But there's more to learn.

Their sense of betrayal towards their government, and their awakening understanding that their concerns are being cast as a "nefarious political agenda" is well understood by many of us who have trod the same road in years past, awakened by other issues. I was a more than slightly crunchy mom, and my awakening and return to my libertarian roots (second generation and proud of it!) was catalized by 9-11 and home education. As I began to realize that Annointed statists and do-gooders wanted to control what I teach my children, and how I raise them, I understood that all that stands between me and absolute tyranny is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And unless I am willing to trust my fellow citizens of all beliefs and walks of life to manage their own lives, I will not have the freedom to manage mine.

The rhetoric of the Obamaniacs is wearing thin. The tea parties, the 9-12 movement, and patriot groups springing up everywhere understand that this is not about partisan politics, and take no regard of what the vaunted Fourth Estate is saying to itself. (No wonder they aren't making any money). As the toymakers will find out, the Republican party is as morally bankrupt as are the Democrats.

This is a good time to read the Declaration of Independence and notice how much the British government being rebuked resembles our current reality. We're in a Brave New World, and that is not a good thing.

Tax Cheat

Michael Williams, didn't like that Geithner blew off paying over thirty thousand dollars in taxes and still gets to be the Treasury Secretary without facing the repercussions the rest of us would suffer for such an 'oversight.' So he put together a quick business- he produces and sells self-inking rubber stamps that say 'TAX CHEAT' and suggests that one possible use for those stamps would be stamping them over Geithner's name on our currency.

One month later, he's being audited by the IRS. Could just be a coincidence. It's possible that the first time in his life that he's come to the attention of the IRS is one month after launching a very public criticism of Secretary of Treasury Geithner. It really is. But just in case, it would be well to keep an eye on the situation.

Freedom in Trivialities

Sometimes I wonder whether "getting the government out of our bedrooms" (supposedly accomplished by Lawrence v. Texas) wasn't just a ruse so people could imagine they were more free.

That's pretty much what George Orwell Aldous Huxley hypothesized in his prescient book Brave New World.

You can do anything, as long as it's nothing.

All-day Singings, Janice Holt Giles

If you read and liked Jayber Crow, I think you'll like an author from my grandmother's generation. Janice Holt Giles was one of her favorite authors, and I have several of my grandmother's copies of her books. My favorites are those set in the Kentucky Hill country. She describes a life much like that depicted in Cynthia Rylant's picture book "When I Was Young in the Mountains, which my Arkansas-bred and born father gave us years ago, saying, "this is how I grew up." It's not how I grew up, but I have been to singings like these, singings where, by the time it's over, you can hardly talk because you've sung your voice right out of your body:

On a Sunday in midsummer Hod went to an all-day singing over on the next ridge. He felt listless about the walk over there, but he liked to sing, and maybe he'd feel better if he went.

The singing began about ten o'clock, the leader starting with some of the familiar songs. Everyone sang. The volume of sound that rose to the rafters of the little whitewashed chapel would have amazed a city preacher, accustomed only to the halfhearted efforts of his congregation. This was a noisy, joyous, hearty, lifting of voices.

On and on the singing went, alternating between the old and the familiar and the new and untried. When one leader grew tired, another took his place.... The people seemed never to tire. An all-day singing on the ridge was really an all-day singing!

The men take turns leading at our singings- whichever of them knows the song best volunteers to take it. Some of them will have a pitch-pipe and they'll blow the right pictch when asked, but won't push it on another song leader who feels comfortable just starting without it. After a while they tire and it's no longer whoever knows it best, but who can make a tolerable effort. Mostly at our house we go around the circle picking out songs from the book, other places you just have to shout out the number you want in between songs. You have to time this just right, because you want to be sure to get your number out there quick, before we're off and on to another song, but to call it out too soon, before the last note has died out. You dont' want to be too abrupt, stepping on the last note of the previous song- that looks pushing, and shows your heart wasn't in the singing.

We've recorded many of them, and they don't really sound very pretty second hand like that. But from within, when you are singing your heart out, too- ah... it is very heaven.

And we're having another singing this weekend.=)

The Enduring Hills, by Janice Holt Giles

One Ring To Bind Them

The latest plan for the troubled automaker, which is expected to file for bankruptcy by Monday, calls for the Treasury Department to receive about 70 percent of a restructured G.M.

So... why are those won consider Wal-mart an Evil Empire generally okay with this naked power grab and the hegemony of government?

Looking the Wrong Way 'Round

This week I was feeling a little unworthy, blue, and inferior about not getting out and doing enough to really have an influence in my community, because I don't get out and do much of anything. I am very much a home-body, the sort of person who, as some of you may recall, can say 'I'm nearly agoraphobic,' and her children respond in chorus, "ALMOST?!" It's time for the local cult to really kick into gear (4-H) and we're not participating again. I'm just not a joiner, not a go-getter, not a doer.

And then four people dropped in one day at different times, and I remembered we have somebody else living with us again (for the summer), and the mama of the two sweet little boys we keep from time to time called to ask if we could take them for the weekend again, and we're having another singing this weekend, we have company at least once a week, usually twice, and I heard from a long lost friend I first met when she was a new bride come to her husband's duty station in fear and trepidation and we welcomed her into the weekly get togethers. It was like walking into a family reunion in progress, she said, and she was already part of the family.

It's a slightly insane week, again. Strider is moving out of his apartment this week, but he has to work as well. So tomorrow the HG, a sibling, and a friend are heading over to his apartment to pack for him, and if need be I'll help pack some more tomorrow night. There's a perfect veil to discover and buy, shoes to match and find, grooms' shirts to find, our own house to clean, baking to do, company to come (loads of people for the week-end), things to bake, and schooling to do. A contractor is coming to look at the Rattery to see if it can be repaired, and I need to get some plants planted in the vegetable garden at the Equuschick and Shasta's house.

And in the midst of it all, I did something strictly out of a sense of duty, something I expected to find only tedium and tiresomeness, and instead I found I have been blessed and benefitted more than the person I thought I was doing a gracious favor for.

I love it when that happens.

Interesting yard art...

Saw both of these a few weeks back while walking through a small town with a friend.

Quirky but cool. :)

Lemon, Salt, and an Empty Chair

Scrolling through a friend's facebook pictures, I came across this one, and swallowed hard. I recognize this place setting. I know what's on it and why, and I know who isn't sitting at this table:

The table is set with a white tablecloth, a
black napkin and white candle, and a plate with only a slice of lemon
and salt. An empty chair leans against the table.

The tradition, little known to the general public, of setting an empty
table with a white tablecloth in remembrance of prisoners of war and
those missing in action had its beginnings with a group of fighter pilots
who flew in Vietnam.

But what was started by the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots
Association — the so-called River Rats of Vietnam — has, during the
intervening years, spread to other branches of the military where
remembrance tables, or so-called missing man tables, are set when
units or commands gather for dinners or reunions.

Read more here.

Here's what was said at one recent ceremony.

America's White Table tells about the custom in picture book form.



Remembering, honoring those who answered a call to serve- a military tradition.

Congress, Increasing Business Costs by 18 Times...

Remember when we were told the CPSC wasn't interested in the 'little guy' and this was not supposed to be about thrift shops and yard sales and quit worrying your pretty but teeny little heads, nobody is after you? The government already investigated thrift shops:

The commission studied thrift stores nationwide in 1999 and found that 69 percent were selling products that had been recalled, banned or failed to meet safety standards, according to the handbook.

Still, right now, you're probably fine if all you do is hold a yard sale. But the government isn't going to bother about thrift shops? It's a myth:

The safety commission will not patrol garage sales, commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said. But store proprietors who knowingly or repeatedly violate the law may be fined.

My guess is it is only a matter of time until garage sales are simply banned at the local level. That time may be a decade or two, because you'll need to be boiled slowly enough that you won't notice the temperature increasing and your liberties evaporating in the steam. So you'll be as complacent then as we have been in the past about lost freedoms.

See Over-lawyered for two more cases of CPSIA killing perfectly safe businesses- in one case, the cost of the required testing is eighteen times more than the gross income of the business last year. I don't know how PIRG representatives dare face themselves in the morning after testifying before Congress that the cost of testing was an affordable fifty dollars or so.

And yet:

Last month the office of Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a co-sponsor of the measure, “said the bill is doing exactly what it is meant to do“.

Remember Waxman? "Are you asking me what's in my bill? I dunno. I don't have the details. I leave it up to the scientists." That attitude is how we get trainworks like the CPSIA. Our representatives are too busy to do the work of governing, tedious stuff like READING and WRITING their own bills before they vote on them. It's beneath them. They leave that up to the 'experts,' whom we didn't elect and don't know anything about and can't fire.

For more about the CPSIA see here.

To stop train wrecks like this one, work to get the Read the Bills act passed.

RTBA requires that . . .

* Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.

* Every member of the House and Senate must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.

* Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.

* Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.

* Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.

* Congress cannot waive these requirements.

It would also be nice if we didn't have representatives who made a mockery of their office by hiring speed readers to read the bill so that nobody actually has to understand what's in it. Oh, shock. That was Waxman again.

He's a poster child for why we need term limits.

Homeschooling Carnival

Thanks for joining us for this carnival of homeschooling!


Nature Study: ChristineMM presents My Kids Love Experiential Learning posted at The Thinking Mother.
I loved this post. It goes along with some things I've been thinking about lately as I read Romancing Your Child's Heart, and in the first few chapters he talks about how his time spent exploring the great outdoors and taking risks as enchanting and valuable experiences for a child growing up. It also goes along with some of the ideas in another book I'm working on- Last Child in the Woods (although our summer houseguest tells me she had to read this for a university course and found it tiresomely longwinded, as though the author had tried to turn an essay into a book and could only manage it by tedious repetition)

Arts and Crafts
Mama Squirrel presents Dewey's Treehouse: Crayons' Grade Two: Gingham Embroidery posted at Dewey's Treehouse.

Field Trips: Katherine at No fighting, no biting! shares about a field trip her family took to the National Postal Museum when she said helped her family learn about stamps and how the mail gets to their mailbox.

In a retrospective post looking over this past year, the blogger at Two Kids Schoolhouse calls this past year the year of therapy, and looks forward to more field trips next year, some pretty special looking ones, too. She concludes that:

It's good to remember that seasons come and go, and that every year will be different.

Testing:
Want to know a surprisingly easy and inexpensive way of elping your children improve their SAT scores? Check out the very intriguing finding Dan presents in Things that Make your Kids Smarter…and Things that Don’t posted at My Dad Blog.

Math: Barry Garelick presents One Step Ahead of the Train Wreck posted at EdNews.org. The Train Wreck is the Every Day Math program used at his daughter's school. The way he stayed one step ahead is by using Singapore Math and tutoring her and a friend after school at home. This is a long and meaty post, but it's a thought-provoking read with several applications beyond math and after-school tutoring. I've blogged about it elsewhere.

Norfolk Homeschooling Examiner presents The FlashMaster computerizes math flash cards with great success! I finally discovered a great tool that helps my children drill their math facts without any tears or dragging of feet on their part. Best of all, little, to no input from mom is required so I can work on other activities while the children do their math fact drill

Controversies:
Alasandra presents Homeschool Injustice, Homeschool Discrimination or Just Angry Women Getting A Divorce? posted at Alasandra's Homeschool Blog. She says "If homeschooling is on an equal footing with public schooling then homeschoolers aren't being discriminated against and there is no injustice involved. As they should the courts will look at the cases on an individual basis and make the decision they feel is best for the children. The children may not be thrilled with the decision (especially if the parent who loses bleats on and on about how awful the decision is), the parent who loses won't be happy but there is no injustice or discrimination involved."

The GIVE Act will mandate forced community service for teens, and it could apply to homeschoolers as well. Susan Ryan tells us about it in Forced Community Service posted at Corn and Oil.

Britannica Blog presents Studying Success in Education: Jay Mathews? Work Hard, Be Nice posted at Britannica Blog, a post about special programs in public schools for the poor and underprivileged. Those of you who follow the work of The Washington Post’s Jay Mathews, often called the “dean of education reporters,” know that for the past few years he’s been obsessed with two subjects—high school college-preparatory programs (Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate) and the Knowledge is Power Program charter schools, otherwise known as KIPP.


Things You Can Buy:
Shanna shares some photographs of local wildflowers as well as her review of a new homeschooling resource, Wonderful Wildflowers- Shining Dawn Books posted at Integritas Academy.

Gifted Children:
Living By Learning presents link-rich story of her journey to find suitable resources for her gifted child in How does "Gifted" figure into our homeschool? posted at On Living By Learning.

Encouragement in your Homeschooling:
How homeschooling is like landing in the Hudson:
~Kris~ presents "We're Gonna Be in the Hudson" posted at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Lara DeHaven presents Regaining My Focus posted at Texas Homesteader.

That S word: Dana presents Homeschooling, socialization and my daughter posted at Principled Discovery.

Jenafer presents a delightful photo essay of her Homeschooling Co-op Day posted at Cage Free Monkeys.

Shannon presents Conquering Lapbooking posted at Mountaineer Country.

Katie Glennon presents Other Uses of Narration ? End of Semester Exams, High School Essays, and Timelines posted at Katie's Homeschool Cottage.

Homeschool Graduating Class of 2009 Photo Gallery

Beverly’s Homeschooling Blog (About.com)
The first few pictures are up. Submit your graduating senior's photo and profile to be included in the Homeschool Graduating Class of 2009 Photo Gallery. I appreciate your help in building a Class of 2009 Photo Gallery that we can be proud of.

Homeschoolers and College Barbara Frank Online warns: Homeschooling parents beware: colleges sometimes lie to parents, knowingly prepare students for careers in dying fields, and often believe drinking and drugs are students' problems, not theirs.

Henry has a list of some other Homeschooling Carnivals and here's that post.

Thank-you for reading, thank-you for participating, and thanks for your interest in Homeschooling!

Click here for instructions for submitting entries to next week's homeschooling carnival.

Hugh Laurie is Sophisticated

This Memorial Day Weekend, Let's Look at a Violation of the Geneva Convention

The German U-Boats very nearly succeeded in winning WW2 for Germany, and the reason they didn't is a fascinating little story of an exciting sea battle, a fluke, and a fairly substantial violation of the Geneva Convention.

In the build-up before the War, the Germans worked on building up a fleet of submarines, subverting the Versailles treaty by building them and training their crews in Turkey, Spain, and Holland. German Admiral Karl Dönitz devised a highly successful attack strategy (and at the Nuremberg Trials was sentenced to 20 years). Within the first three months of launching their U-boat campaign, the Germans had successfully sunk 114 of Allied merchant ships, losing only 9 of their own.

The Brits were close to losing when the U.S. entered the war.

Allied success in breaking the German Enigma code was an important help early in the war, but changes to the naval Enigma code at the beginning of 1942 stopped the flow of intelligence, bringing an increase in the loss of Allied ships. Furthermore, the U.S. entered the war unprepared and did not initially effectively protect its ships. As a result, a small number of U-boats in the North American and Caribbean coastal waters sank nearly 500 Allied ships in the first half of 1942. (January-July 1942 was the second "Glückliche Zeit" for U-boat crews ). By July 1942, Dönitz had 300 U-boats, with 140 operational at once, hunting in wolf packs and sinking shipping at an annual rate of seven million tons, five times the rate of British replacement capacity. U-boats operated almost unopposed in the "Mid-Atlantic Gap" -- the area that could not be reached by aircraft from Canada or Britain -- supplied by special vessels known as "milch cow"' carrying additional torpedoes and food. German naval intelligence broke British codes and directed submarines to intercept convoys.

U-boat sailors had a life expectancy of about 3 months at sea, as the German command had every expectation that the captain of the submarine would scuttle it rather than permit it to be captured, and often the submarines were scuttled with the men still on board.

In June of 1944 the American Navy succeeded in capturing a U-Boat for the first time. In fact, U-505 was the first warship captured at sea by the US Navy since 1815, when USS Peacock seized HMS Nautilus during the War of 1812. (wikipedia)


On board that u-boat were two enigma machines, which changed the course of the war:

After the capture, the Enigma machines and the 900 pounds of codebooks and publications removed from the sub were rushed to U.S. Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C. to help the Allied code breaking effort. The ingenuity of Allied code breakers, combined with German blunders, made it possible for the Allies to read most messages to and from U-boats from November 1943 until the end of the war.

In order to protect this important secret, that a U-boat had been captured enabling us to break the codes and read most messages, the prisoners captured from the u-boat (around 55, as I recall, and only one German sailor died) in June of 1944 spent the remainder of the war in a prison camp in Louisiana. They were isolated from other prisoners, denied access to Red Cross visits, and all mail was confiscated, and their families presumed them dead. Indeed, by the late summer of 1944 the German Navy told the families they should presume their sailors dead. Their families were not told they were alive until 1945. They were not released until well past the end of the war. They were sent to England to do some work putting up housing for returning British veterans. the last returning home in 1947.

Back in 2007 The Volokh Conspiracy wrote about this in connection with the ethical and legal questions.
He linked to this post, where the discussion in the comments as to what is and is not a war crime is very interesting as well.

You can visit the only German submarine in American if you ever go to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. It's a fascinating exhibit, and you can read more about it here.

General information about the submarines here.

While in prison camp in Louisiana, the German sailors were guarded by the Navy baseball team, a fascinating story of its own, and the team taught the Germans to play baseball in an attempt to maintain their chances to play professionally after the war. There's supposed to be a movie about it some time this year, Playing With the Enemy. You can read the book, too.

Incidentally, while searching for some of the above information, I earned three swagbucks, and I wasn't doing anything anything I wasn't going to do regardless of swagbucks:

Junk DNA Not So Junky After All

In fact, it may just be indispensable:

Now researchers from Princeton University and Indiana University who have been studying the genome of a pond organism have found that junk DNA may not be so junky after all. They have discovered that DNA sequences from regions of what had been viewed as the "dispensable genome" are actually performing functions that are central for the organism. They have concluded that the genes spur an almost acrobatic rearrangement of the entire genome that is necessary for the organism to grow.

More here.

via Instapundit

Emerging Stories

The Equuschick had the opportunity yesterday to sit and visit with a lovely couple yesterday afternoon, the gentleman being the kind of gruff Vietnam vet who is inclined to feed his Yorkshire Terriers cereal in the morning if they want it and to swing on a child's swing with his granddaughter.

He is also apt to talk and to wax reminiscent, and gradually stories of caring for his mother in her last years of dementia began to emerge from his conversation.

They emerged as honestly and naturally as if he was talking about some character of fiction, and with no indication that he knew or cared that the picture of his character that was emerging with the stories was one that was at all worthy of note.

He spoke of her days at the nursing home when it was too late for the family to keep her with them, and of bringing her supper on his way home from work every evening. He spoke of the time he took her to get her hair done at a local stylist and he spoke of the last time she spoke his name.

He spoke of the time he told her "Momma, I'm going to take you out to dinner and then bring you home to sit on the porch swing and listen to music" and another elderly resident heard him and insisted on coming along. "I'm going too," said this other elderly woman stubbornly.

"I don't think I can sign you out", he told me he had said with a laugh, but he had asked anyway and was given permission.

So he spoke with a laugh in his voice and a twinkle in his eye of walking into the diner with his elderly mother with dementia and another elderly woman with a large bag full of aluminum cans. He sat at the table with them both and attempted to dissuade the one woman from stuffing silverware into her bag while watching in horror as his mother took all the crackers from the table, crushed them in her hands, and flung them all over the floor.

"But I stayed there and ate with them," he said, "and then I took them home and set them on the porch swings and played music for them all afternoon. They didn't want to leave."

He spoke of the times his mother was mean and of the times when she was confused and of the time when she looked at him and said "Kenny, Johnny's gone."

"I know Momma," he said. "Papa's been gone a while."

And that was the last time she remembered his name.

"It was hard," he said, "but we got real close to her in those times."

He sat leaning forward with his coffee cup in his hands, gazing into the past the way one would stare into flames.

"Yeah," he concluded, "it was just something you had to do."


Where did we lose that? That sense of doing something, without expectation of praise or applause, doing something hard "just because you had it to do?"

There are few enough indeed left today who will do what conscience knows to be their duty, and even those few feel somehow that they have gone above and beyond and are entitled to special praise and accommodation.

Where do we lose that sense of duty coupled with humility? How do we get it back?

Top 100 Hymns Survey

Over at Semi-Colon
But I am really late getting this out- I started it a few days ago, got distracted, and it got buried. Oops.

Basic rules:

1. Make a list of your top ten hymns of all time.
Hymn (according to Webster): a song of praise to God
a metrical composition adapted for singing in a religious service.
For the purposes of this poll, I’m limiting the choices to Christian hymns, but the form of the song doesn’t matter. In other words, the songs on your list should be suitable for congregational singing and should be Christian. Handel’s Messiah is Christian but probably not suitable for congregational hymn singing. Anything you sing in worship service, even what are normally called choruses or gospel songs or spirituals or CCM, is fine. (Oh, English, please, or at least translated into English. Sorry, but it’s all I really speak.)

More at the link. Here's my list:

1. Come thou fount
2. Can You Count the Stars- this is a lovely song I sang to my children as a lullabye
   
3. I Am Thine Oh, Lord
4. Be Thou My Vision
5. Be Still My Soul
6. This is My Father's World
   
7. Amazing Grace- obviously
   
8. Trust and Obey-
   
9. Jesus Loves Me- The basics of theology
   
10. Holy, Holy, Holy- A companion to the basics, and a favorite of my children
    

These are just the ten I thought of this week. Another day I might make a different list. And this isn't necessarily the order I would place them in, either. I'm already frustrated that several others are not on this list.

There's a great list of hymns on the Amblesideonline website and I pretty much think all of them deserve to be on any list of good hymns.

Of course, many of our favorites are posted here, one each Sunday (in general, if you're interested in these look for the 'Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual phrases' tab).

Memorial Day, '09

Blackadder is a British sitcom that took two recurring characters through various time periods in history. These two characters, Blackadder and Baldrick, were played by Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson (if you've only seen Atkinson play silly people like Mr. Bean, you're missing an amazing dimension to this gifted actor). Hugh Laurie was a recurring character in the last two series (Prince George and Lt. George), and Stephen Fry plays a steretypical Modern Major General in Blackadder Goes Forth (the fourth and final series). It was typical British humour, which means it was a mix of brilliant, delicious, dlightful, quick, witty, clever, erudite, and literate humour liberally mixed with jokes about poo, sex, and body parts.

The final time period covered was WWI, in Blackadder Goes Forth. In this series, Blackadder is an Army Captain in the trenches of France who spends most of his time scheming to avoid participating in the mass suicide of trench warfare. He is moderately successful- until the final episode, which left all of the Common Room Family in tears, and some of the Common Room Daughters rather indignant at the DeputyHeadmistress for not warning them. We watched it first some ten years ago, and I just watched it again Friday night by myself and sobbed as much as the first time. So of course I have to share those last five minutes with my internet friends.




In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.





The poppies are in full bloom where we live.

Read more about the television series here.

More about the connection between poppies and Memorial Day (as well as Veteran's Day) here.

Sunday Hymn Post

I stand amazed in the presence
Of Jesus the Nazarene,
And wonder how He could love me,
A sinner, condemned, unclean.

Refrain

O how marvelous! O how wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
O how marvelous! O how wonderful!
Is my Savior’s love for me!

For me it was in the garden
He prayed: “Not My will, but Thine.”
He had no tears for His own griefs,
But sweat drops of blood for mine.

Refrain

In pity angels beheld Him,
And came from the world of light
To comfort Him in the sorrows
He bore for my soul that night.

Refrain

He took my sins and my sorrows,
He made them His very own;
He bore the burden to Calvary,
And suffered and died alone.

Refrain

When with the ransomed in glory
His face I at last shall see,
’Twill be my joy through the ages
To sing of His love for me.

Refrain

Cyberhymnal

Hugh Laurie Can Play

He's really an amazingly talented person, and we're pleased with our own perspicacity since we recognized and appreciated his genius ten years ago.

From Gumball Machine To Fish Bowl

This looks like fun.

And for more clever ideas, see these before and after pics of other projects by the same artist (she shows what she did with the gumball stand in photograph 6). These are really amazing.

Obama Aid: "It is NOT Our Goal To Reduce the Number of Abortions"

Via The Brothers Judd, who aptly title this piece, "And Then The Shadow of Moloch Darkened The Room," comes this link to an article by somebody who attended one of the 'common ground' meetings the President spoke of.

Most people believe the President wishes to reduce the number of abortions- I am not sure why. A man who voted several times against a bill to stop the brutal murder of infants who survive abortions and are born alive is hardly a man who has an issue with abortion. And this is also:

...not what his top official in charge of finding “common ground” says.

Melody Barnes, the Director of Domestic Policy Council and a former board member of Emily’s List, led the meeting. As the dialogue wound down, she asked for my input.

I noted that there are three main ways the administration can reach its goals: by what it funds, its messages from the bully pulpit, and by what it restricts. It is universally agreed that the role of parents is crucial, so government should not deny parents the ability to be involved in vital decisions. The goals need to be clear; the amount of funding spent to reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions is not a goal. The U.S. spends nearly $2 billion each year on contraception programs -- programs which began in the 1970s -- and they’ve clearly failed. We need to take an honest look at why they are not working.

Melody testily interrupted to state that she had to correct me. “It is not our goal to reduce the number of abortions.”

The room was silent.

The goal, she insisted, is to “reduce the need for abortions.”

This is about semantics and public relations for this administration, not about women, babies, or pregnancies. After all:

If you reduce the need, doesn’t it follow that the number would be reduced? How do you quantify if you’ve reduced the “need”? Does Obama want to reduce the “need” but not the number of abortions? In that case, is he okay with “unneeded” abortions?

Note what Obama said in his speech at Notre Dame:

“So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. …”

Abortion advocates object to the phrase “reducing abortions.” It connotes that there is something bad or immoral about abortion. Melody’s background as a board member of one of the most hard-core abortion groups in the country (Emily’s List even opposes bans on partial-birth abortion) sheds light on why she was irritated when that was stated as her boss’ goal.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that Democrats, after losing the presidential election, began rethinking their harsh, no compromise stance on abortion. Their solution?

Change their language but not their position.

There is no common ground. It's murder.

News, Views, and The Coming Economic Trainwreck

What the government bailout of the press might look like (does look like in one case)

And what happens when the government takes over a car company:

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as "new," nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service. There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.

Truly disturbing.

The safety nannies seem to have overlooked an extremely hazardous work place:

Though no one keeps comprehensive national statistics on laboratory safety incidents, James Kaufman, president of the Laboratory Safety Institute in Natick, Mass., estimates that accidents and injuries occur hundreds of times more frequently in academic labs than in industrial ones.

Hmm. I wonder why.

Michigan's unemployment rate reaches over 12 percent- except for one sector, the only one to actually add jobs last month. Guess.

Jeeves and the Monogrammed Handkerchieves

This is probably one of my all time favorite segments of Jeeves and Wooster, showing Stephen Fry, as Jeeves, in one of his best nose in the air moments. And it's hard to believe this Hugh Laurie is the same man who plays House, isn't it?

Principles of Productivity

And here we are, acknowledging that diligence and prudence are character traits that we're all to nurture and that sometimes there are just things to do to get along in this short life. Here are a few thoughts The Equuschick has been thinking.

*Acknowledge who you are and what the over-arching purpose of the job is.

You need to do this because it will help you prioritize. There will always be things to be done but never enough time to do all of them, and since this is simply a reality of life it is best to know what you can do, what you can't do, and to have a specific purpose in mind for the job you choose to do.

Take house-cleaning, for instance. Why are you cleaning it? For you? For company?
Do you work away from home? What's the stated mission of your workplace?


The priorities will probably need to be different for each situation. If you're cleaning for company than a clean toilet is probably a higher priority than a silverware drawer that's neatly organized, and if the stated mission of your workplace is to rehome homeless animals, concentrate the first of your energies there and leave the cleaning of the windows later.



Come to terms with who you are and what you're capable of. This is not to be taken as complacency or to be used as such, we all should constantly be growing and learning to do new and hard things.

But when the conversation leaves character and turns towards other issues, don't say to yourself "So-and-so does this and this and this, so I should be able to do that myself."

You aren't So-and-so. You're you. Come to terms with that. It doesn't make you a lesser mother, wife, employee, whatever. It just means you should focus your energies on areas where you'll be more likely to succeed. You will not succeed in every area everyone else does. To be blunt, you'll just have to get over that.

*Prioritize
You can do this better now that you have more information on the purpose of your task and your own personal strengths and weaknesses.

We're often told to "Look for a job that needs to be done, and then do it." This is a good principle, but far too vague. It leads to crazy things like cleaning out junk drawers after midnight before you clean the guest bathroom on the night before guests arrive because "it needed to be done."

That sort of thing makes The Equuschick's brain bleed, to use a favorite phrase of Shasta's.

Here's a few hard-core rules, friends.


Look for the job that-

1. Needs to be Done
2. Needs to be Done Sooner and Can't Wait till Later
3. You Can Do Now with the Time Allotted to You*
4. You Have the Tools For*
5. You have the Skills For*

*Be realistic.

Do that job first. Not all those other half dozen crazy jobs that are teasing you for your attention. Be strict and ignore them. Your sanity will thank-you for it and so will your families, your bosses, whoever. You will get more done in the end.

Those other half-dozen jobs may indeed need to be done at some point and it is important not to ignore them permanently. That's why people make lists and plan work days. You know the drill. Make a list and prioritize it from A to Z and stop doing the Z's on the A days.

*Plan Ahead
As noted, there will be jobs you need to do that you may be unable to do on any given day. Plan for those tasks. Make a list of all the tools you'll need, if you need a list, and gather all those tools before you begin in on the job.

Don't start something you won't have the time to finish unless you're ok with leaving it undone for a day or two, and do be realistic about how much time it will take.

Everything you do will almost always take longer than you thought it would. Such is life.


And this leads us, in fact, to the end of the few rules that The Equuschick has yet figured out about over-all productivity.

You've made your plans. You've gathered your materials. You've checked for time. Fabulous!

*Come to terms with the fact that nothing is actually going to go as you planned, so learn to be fluid instead of indignant.

This one is kind of funny to The Equuschick, because really considering that we live in an imperfect world this is the one that you'd think most of humanity would have come to grips with by now. But humanity hasn't, The Equuschick included.

We make our lists, gather our material, make our plan, and begin our day only to find ourselves crying out in indignation, "It didn't work! Again, it didn't work! Just ONCE, for ONE day, I would like to have EVERYTHING GO JUST THE WAY I PLANNED!"

And then, (because we're all of us essentially professional comedians performing for the entertainment of the Fates) we seal our ridiculousness with the clincher. "Just one day where everything goes perfectly as I planned! Is that such an unreasonable request?"

As a matter of fact, unless you're under the misapprehension that we inhabit Utopia, expecting one full day where everything goes just as we planned might just be the most irrational and unreasonable thing we can demand of the world we live in.

Your plans won't always work. That's ok. You tried. Have a Plan B, C, or D in place. Just in case. Or take the hint and start wondering if there's something else you're supposed to get from your unplanned experiences.

There's a reason we have a phrase about the School of Life. Life is not a performance review. Life is a little more about essay questions. If you're looking for the lesson, then at the end of the day you'll always have something to take to bed with you. Some days we'll have a review and we'll feel stupid, but we'll get over it. Better to learn from the review to never to learn at all.

The only wasted day is the day where you never learned your lesson.

Waxman Can't Believe HE's Expected to Know the Contents of His Bill

A member has a right to request that a bill be read aloud before a vote is taken, and word had it that Barton was going to request a 900 page bill to be read aloud, which would cause the vote Waxman wanted to miss a deadline. However, it's apparently just a joke to our reps that they vote on unread bills. Waxman hired a speed reader nobody could understand. Barton didn't bother to have the bill read aloud, but he was interested in the speed reader Waxman hired (and guess who pays for that?), and all the pols listening, dems and reps alike, yukked it up at taxpayer expense. It's disgustingly apparent how lightly they take their responsibilities to taxpayers.

And then, in another meeting, we have some incredible video footage showing Waxman is stunned that somebody actually asked him if he knew something was in a bill, and he says, as though it's laudable, that of course he doesn't know the details of the bill, he's relying on the scientists. He seems indignant that he's expected to know these details when he's relying on the scientists for the details in the bill.

Question: Were those scientists elected to represent us and write the laws we have to follow?
Who are these 'scientists' and how are they chosen?



Term. Limits.

Our Broken Camera and Frugalities

If you haven't already signed up for swagbucks, you might click through and sign up for us. I think we'll use the swagbucks either for giftcards towards a new camera or for other wedding stuff, and YOU can get free stuff, too! Thanks!



And if you're interested in my latest frugal post over at Frugal Hacks click through the link (I talk more about wedding stuff, but most of it could be used for other celebrations).

Happy Birthday to Mary Cassatt!!

Preventative Detention?

Oh. My.

FLDS, another 'Escape' story

Caroline Jessop, author of the book Escape, claims she was the first FLDS wife to gain full custody of her children. She may or may not have been awarded custody at one time, but Toes points out that it doesn't appear the custody disputes between Caroline and Merrill are settled yet.

And, at any rate, she certainly wasn't the first to gain full custody. Mary Mackert did it quite a few years ago, and there's an interesting tale. She also wrote a book, although it's not as sensationally popular as Carolyn's. She certainly wasn't happy in the FLDS, but there are some interesting things to be gleaned from this review of her book. Here are a few things I picked up:

Would any woman 'choose' this lifestyle? Her father didn't grow up FLDS, but was Dutch Reformed. His wife wanted the FLDS religion and lifestyle, and threatened to divorce him if he didn't follow her into it. So he did. He must have grown accustomed to it, as he had four wives. The fourth wife seems to have caused problems, but he chose the fourth wife for reasons that are incompatible with FLDS doctrine and practices, so they might argue that problems arise when people choose one part of the religion for carnal reasons but ignore spiritual discipline.

A young Mary fell in love with one of her step-brothers, the son of the fourth wife. He wasn't kicked out, but he was sent away on a mission. She promised to wait for him, but then decided she'd rather be 'somebody' in the FLDS:

Mary also wanted to be held in high esteem by the group. So, at the age of seventeen, just a few months before she would be considered an “old maid”, Mary submitted to the leadership of the prophet, married Bill Draper and became a “poofer”. None of her brothers and sisters knew whom she had married; she simply dropped out of sight. And she would not have to face Johnny when he returned from his mission and explain to him why she had broken her promise to wait for him.

A "Poofer," according to Mary, is a plural wife who remains out of sight so that the family doesn't get in trouble. She stays inside or on the familiy property so others don't see her. This, frankly, sounds kind of unlikely to me, but if it's true, then it is also true that the FLDS are not 'all one household' as CPS charged, and they don't always know when an underaged girl has married somebody else.

And, as often seems to be the case with the apostate narratives from the FLDS, the stories are internally inconsistent. Mary first says she submitted to the leadership and married Bill Draper, but then it turns out, leadership ASKED her who she wished to marry and she chose:

Mary was told to select the man she would marry. This confused her. She thought the “revelation” was supposed to be given to the prophet, not to her. But, since she was told to do so, Mary selected Bill Draper because of his position in the church, and also because he was apparently still producing children. Above all, Mary wanted children.

The book also indicates, as others have pointed out, that it is simply NOT uncommon for FLDS marriages to remain marriages in name only for some time. Draper had married another bride just two months before, and, according to this book, neither relationship was consummated for months. In fact, this seems to be an issue of some resentment for the author since she wanted children. In the end it was consummated, but that was only because, she says, she 'seduced' her husband. She regretted it by the next day and blamed her husband, saying that he had 'taken' from her and she felt 'robbed.' But by her own account, he hadn't taken at all. She chose to be married to him, he didn't ask for her. She chose the time and place for the marriage to be consummated, and if she regretted her impatience, it's not clear to me why this is her husband's fault.

She says that she couldn't leave the house when pregnant, because she would have stood out and brought unwelcome attention to the family from the neighbors.

Her biggest problem with the marriage seems to have been that her husband didn't love her as she wanted to be loved or spend enough time with her, or at least, not as much as she desired. I, and most monogamists, would see this as a flaw inherent in the system, and I would guess that most FLDS would view this as a character failing on the part of one party or the other and possibly (probably?) both- he was perhaps not considerate enough of the feelings of his young bride, she was perhaps too self-centered and greedy or needy, ( I would say she was probably too immature to marry, not just because she was 17, but because her reasons for choosing him were so shallow).

She finally left, with all their sons, and

she was caught and brought back. While she was being held prisoner in her own room, Bill came in and threatened her with the doctrine of blood atonement. Then, after forcing her to have a meeting with Rulon Jeffs, who had taken the role of prophet when Leroy Johnston died, Bill Draper set Mary free.

That sounds both pretty grim, and rather strange. She was brought back and 'threatened,' but doesn't seem to have been harmed, she's 'forced to have a meeting?' That sounds weak. Then she's released. With her children?
It sounds more like a desperate man's attempt to, at least in his eyes, talk some sense into his wife and convince her to stay. If she found a threat of blood atonement convincingly believable, would she have left with her boys? She says she pressed charges against him, but it sounds like all she had was the polygamy charge, for which he was fined fifty dollars. So it also seems the public threat of exposure wasn't quite as dire as feared, nor does she see this threat of blood atonement a credible threat to murder her.

And it doesn't even make sense if we're talking about families living within the polygamous communities. Like other apostate stories, hers has 'developed' a little over time. In this post-YFZ account, she says she was horrified to be wed to this man so much older than her, terrified of her wedding day, and kept praying that a tree would fall and kill them all. In fact, according to the Amazon review, she asked her father to speed up the wedding because she wanted the deed done before the young man she promised to wait for returned home so she didn't have to face him.

According to the Amazon reviews, she was held prisoner for a day and a half, her husband threatened to kill her, she was threatened with hell by the FLDS, and she 'finally broke free.' - quite a contrast to the account in her book, where she said her husband set her free.

From every review of the book, it appears that her biggest issue was simply that her husband didn't love her as she wanted to be loved- a failing, indeed, and it could be argued that this was a failure of polygamy itself since it would be hard for a man to give all his attention to 35 children and seven wives (although I am sure that polygamists would argue it was a personal failing of her husband, or, as I mentioned above, a weakness or selfishness in Mary).

And here we have another, slightly different acount of her 'escape,' and we learn, that like Caroline, her oldest child- a boy- returned to the FLDS. But wait- they don't want boys, right? They want to get rid of them so they have more girls for the old guys. Hmmmmmmmm.

Her explanation of blood atonement is interesting, too:

By 1984, Mackert said, she’d had enough.

"I went to him and told him that I wanted a home of my own, that I didn’t want to live with the rest of the family anymore."

When her husband rejected the idea, citing religious grounds, Mackert responded: "You don’t understand. I’m not talking about a ’want.’ This is what I need to survive."

After he again refused, Mackert said she walked out the door "to go get a home of my own for me and my children."

But her husband followed and abducted her, she said. "He locked me in my room for a day and threatened a blood atonement" after falsely accusing her of infidelity.

Blood atonement centers on the fundamentalist Mormon belief that "some sins are so great that even the blood of Jesus Christ cannot cover your sin debt," she said. "The only way to be redeemed is to submit to your own demise. ... It’s considered a loving act."

Such sinners, according to FLDS doctrine, are supposed to willingly submit to blood-atonement carried out by their "priestly head" — their father, husband or brother.

"They slit your throat from ear-to-ear and disembowel you," Mackert said, "and that’s the only way you’re redeemed." Because she wouldn’t admit to infidelity and submit to blood atonement, her husband believed the act would be futile, so he turned to FLDS prophet Rulon Jeffs for guidance.

WHY, if this is a horribly repressive, abusive, harsh regimen, does she go to him to ask about getting her own home? Doesn't it sound like she wants her husband to either come with her or finance her? Would she do that if all the other things we've been told about the FLDS were true?

She has since become a Baptist, and lives amongst the FLDS hoping to convert them, which would indicate to me (as do other things in the various accounts) that she does not expect anybody to try to kill her). She is supported by contributions from other churches who wish her success in her proseletyzing.

For those interested, Alan Holm has posted an explanation of Blood Atonement on his blog as well. I'll be brutally honest and say it sounds, as do many LDS and FLDS doctrinal teachings*, like a pernicious doctrine to me, but it also does not sound like one encouraging outright murder. As I understand it (and I could be wrong!), the doctrine is that if you are a priesthood holder or are in a 'sealed' marriage and have murdered somebody or committed adultery, you are encouraged to submit yourself to destruction- sort of like assisted suicide. Alan ALSO says isn't actually practiced now, and Mary Mackert's husband believed it would be useless if his wife wasn't totally willing anyway. He wasn't threatening her- he was pleading with her, begging her to come back or submit willingly to physical destruction to save her soul. As I said, pernicious heresy, but, and this is an important but, Mackert simply refused, and that was the end of the matter. She was free to go, her sons were wanted in the community (or there'd have been no custody battle) and her oldest returned to his faith, by her own account. Keeping her locked in her room for a day and a half isn't terribly admirable, either, but that is a very short amount of time, and it seems obvious to me his goal was not to trap her, but to entreat her- which is why they went to the prophet as well.

Although I find myself somewhat in this role at times, I have no wish to be an apologist for a faith I cannot share, but I do like accuracy. I do not admire this doctrine, but I can see the huge difference between this and the claim by other FLDS apostates and attackers that they have some sort of secret assassination club going on. The LeBaron group does, but the FLDS don't, and the two groups are extremely antipathetic to one another.

The most interesting thing to me about this story was how uninterested the general public and press seem to be her story, which is not any more dramatic than any other garden variety divorce story compared to Caroline or Flora's, and how it has changed a bit over time, from her husband 'setting her free' after a day and a half of jawing at her, to her dramatically 'escaping.'

It's like a template for the escape stories.

Postscript- in another FLDS tale we've briefly touched on, see this post from Brooke Adams-it's an update on the Brent Jeffs story. Brent's older brother remembered, via hypnosis and 'lost memory' therapy, that he had been abused by his uncle Warren Jeffs as a boy. He committed suicide, and then his brother Brent came forward and said he remembered that, too, and could he have some money. Law Enforcement investigated but found no basis for a criminal complaint, so Brent and his attorneys filed a civil case. They won by default when Warren simply refused to acknowledge the existence of the case (this is how the FLDS lost their financial trust). Brent also accuses two other uncles and he has just published a book of his claims. However, one of the uncles says that he wasn't even a member of the FLDS at the time and he wasn't living anywhere near where the events are alleged to have taken place. Furthermore, he says he not only can prove it, he did prove it, and that's why LE never filed criminal charges. He's not on speaking terms with his brother Warren, but he does say Brents claims could not have taken place how and where he says they did (in the middle of church services) because Warren was sitting on the platform, and another accused uncle was responsible for the sound system, and their absences would have been noted.

*I should clarify that blood atonement may never have been practiced, although Brigham Young certainly taught it, and it has not been an LDS teaching since sometime after the time of Brigham Young.

Question.

So, if I wanted to sell my photos online, what website would you suggest? I know there are several out there, and I've looked a little bit at quite a few, but I haven't had time to do any in depth study of their features. I am most familiar with CafePress, but I've also looked at zazzle, printroom, shutterfly, and others. Oh, and being able to create a shop on this website has to be free, because otherwise I can't afford it. :)

A Few Rules of Productivity -The Introduction

(Rather an ostentatious title for a little something written by a 24 year old, but you must understand The Equuschick only learns by writing. This means that when she needs to understand a concept and practice it better, the Common Room Readers get to read a post about it.)


First, a few opening statements.


It is a flaw to consider Productivity only in the light of the short-term, to aim only for productive days. To take our lives in our hands and divide them into little pieces, to say "This was a productive day, and yesterday wasn't and I hope tomorrow is productive" will produce only unnecessary frustration.

Let us aim instead for a full and productive life. To reach that goal, there is no doubt that we must take it a day at a time but we must realize that at the end of our lifespan, our lives will be so much more than simply the sum total of the checked items on our every To-Do List.



Productivity- To Produce. To produce what? What do you wish to have produced in your old age? What are your own standards? Your goals? Your dreams?

To begin to be productive, don't first think about "What would I like to have done by tomorrow?" Think to yourself, "What memories shall I leave as a record behind me when I go, and where will I be going?"

The Equuschick should like to leave behind the memory of someone who laughed, loved life, and loved those dear to her enough to take the time to let them know how loved they were. She wants to leave memories instead of materials.

The Equuschick knows that life is a gift, and she wants to leave behind the memory of one who cherished it.


The Equuschick should like to go the gate of Heaven itself and be greeted as a good and faithful servant. That greeting will depend on a relationship alone, and not a a To-Do List.

What this means to The Equuschick is that at the end of the day, if she has accomplished every material item she had deemed necessary for that day but has failed to spend time simply enjoying a friend or a family member, it wasn't a productive day. If she failed to stop for a few moments to look outside, to eat something delicious, or simply failed in anyway to appreciate just how alive she is, then she failed to properly water the garden of her old age and the harvest will suffer for it. If she learned nothing new about life today, then she missed something valuable indeed and most likely wasted time, for all lessons taught in the school of life will have to be learned sooner or later. A lesson not learned the first time will only be repeated again and again.


It is an old cliche, but the truth is that life is very much like a garden. The day the seeds are sown, you'll have nothing to show for it but a bare patch of dirt. It might even look worse than it did before, for in the beginning there was green grass. Yet we recognize that the short-term disturbance of the soil was for the better, and we appreciate the long-term benefit of the seeds whose blossoms we might not see for a few months to a year.

Yet with life we expect something different. At the end of the day we're only looking at the bare patch of dirt and crying for all that doesn't look like it has been done, and we fail to appreciate the seeds of character, intellect, and wisdom that may have been sown in our garden today.

Once this very fundamental principle has been established, it is safe to acknowledge that there are, goodness knows, tasks we are all given to perform diligently and prudently. What those are and how and when to do them are questions of equal value.

But that is tomorrow's post, for The Equuschick is hungry now.

Jeeves and Wooster Spat Over the White Dinner Jacket

The Sacramento Bee

The voters in California voted a stinging rebuke to their tax and spend state pols, and the Sacramento Bee disapproved, so they wrote a stinging rebuke to the taxpayers. It was up for several hours, but, you see, a few taxpayers still read the Bee (one wonders why), and they left their own stinging rebuke in the comments section (kudos to the Bee for publishing them anyway), and, not liking that spanking, the editors took down their published temper tantrum and put up a new version, a complete about face. And nobody is supposed to notice, or, if they do, they are supposed to believe the editor's claim that:


Pretty funny stuff- you can read both versions and the comments starting here.

Many of the comments below refer to an article that was posted in error. That article was a draft prepared for internal discussion among members of The Bee's editorial board. Such discussions are a routine part of our work, and frequently lead to editorials that are considerably different from writers' first drafts.

That's what happened in this case. After discussion, we decided that our initial editorial about the special election should take a different tack. The result was the editorial that now appears on this page. This editorial is the only editorial about the special election that appeared in Wednesday's editions of The Bee.

Be sure to read both editorials to see if this makes any sense.

No wonder papers are going belly up, and no wonder the government wants to subsidize them.

Bubble Wrapping Your Babies

From Rick Woldenberg's CPSIA blog comes this link to this amazing look at just how bubble wrapped and antiseptic some people think kids' lives should be. These are the kinds of paranoids who brought us the CPSIA.


And my Progeny think I'm a worrier.

Some of those 'safety' items seem counter-productive to me, actually dangerous. Give your novice walker knee-pads, elbow pads, and a helmet so he doesn't hurt himself when he takes a tumble, and he loses an important opportunity to learn some realities of life when the costs of failure are small- a skinned knee, a bruise, a bump.

When my children were crawling and learning to walk, I let them scramble up on the couch and tumble off. I let them stand up under a table and bump their heads. One afternoon a mother and her small child were visiting us. My child and hers were both crawlers who were just learning to stand up, and she didn't share my style of parenting. She leaped, jumped, dived, and raced to catch her child before he tumbled off the couch, to place her hand between his head and the table he was about to bump as he stood up too soon, and to grab his legs as he crawled off the couch to let him down 'easy,' without feeling the full and slightly startling effects of gravity.

I could tell she was puzzled and somewhat bothered by own laissez-faire approach. But at the end of her visit of a couple hours, she was as exhausted as any acrobat who had just had a strenuous workout, I was relaxed and still able to have a coherent train of thought, and more importantly, my crawler had learned to be cautioius about how she got down off the couch and to move out from beneath a table before standing up, and her child was still headed off the couch head first, standing up under tables shorter than he was, and unaware of some useful knowledge about space, gravity, and what his body could and could not do.

Sometimes our efforts to cushion our children from any risk whatsoever actually places them at much greater risk.

Yes, I am that mom who let her kids jump on the bed, too. And yes, one of them fell and had to get stitches. But I don't know that one out of seven is such a bad record, and I am not at all sure she would have wanted to avoid the stitches altogether if it meant never, jumping on the bed.

Graduation Gifts

Meredith at Merchant Ships has a great thread going on grad gifts. There are some terrific ideas in the comments section, too.

We're kind of weird about gifts. Mostly, we give children's books, even to college graduates. In fact, especially to college grads. I watch thrift shops for things that will make nice presents.

The HG's graduation gift is basically a wedding, but we threw in a shabby but soft and cuddly antique quilt of mine she's been coveting and a vintage bed to go under the quilt.

We gave one of the college grads a rubber duck, duct taped like a prisoner, with wads of wooden matches taped strategically to its little plastic person. We gave the college grad the rest of the box of matches, too, which made him pretty stoked. It's a private joke, but we gave it to him at a restaurant crowded with people. That was fun.=)

Your Tax Dollars at Work

And when your tax dollars go to work, man, sometimes they just get into surrealistically weird things. Like Elvis impersonating babies and stuff.

Diversity and Government Contracts

The registration desks and vending tables are thick with minority-owned business advertising flyers, as well as those from places like the Department of Labor. "We've got stimulus money to spend!" a DOL carny barks at passersby. "We're giving out contracts!" Indeed, as Ralph Thomas, a contract lawyer who came to the conference to lecture on teaming agreements says to me, always, but especially under the free-spending Obama administration, "The government contracts industry is as close to being recession-proof as possible."

Gleaned from this article on the diversity training racket, where you can read other such gems as:

The presentations are largely tiresome. Kevin Brown, the chief procurement officer at Dell, fire-hoses us with lots of inspirational/managerial paperback pap. "I see a roomful of dreamers and game-changers," he says. He quotes a lot from his betters as cover for the rhetorical mediocrity: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Michelangelo, Emily Dickinson, who said, "We never know how high we are, till we are called to rise."

Judge Hatchett is awed. "You really ought to write a book," she tells him.

I think he already did and I read it. It was called Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. (Excellent, incidentally.)

Autocrats

This letter from Congressional members to a private citizen is, at best, chilling.

If You're Not Petrified, You're Not Paying Attention

The green shoots story took a bit of hit this week between data on April retail sales, weekly jobless claims and foreclosures. But the whole concept of the economy finding its footing was "preposterous" to begin with, says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates.

"We're in a complete mess and the consumer is smart enough to know it," says Davidowitz, whose firm does consulting for the retail industry. "If the consumer isn't petrified, he or she is a damn fool."

Davidowitz, who is nothing if not opinionated (and colorful), paints a very grim picture: "The worst is yet to come with consumers and banks," he says. "This country is going into a 10-year decline. Living standards will never be the same."

Bail out money in the sewer, and gone. More here.

Economics Reporter Clueless About Economics

Edmund Andrews, economics reporter for the Times, writes a deeply disturbing story utterly lacking in any personal insight on how he lost control of his personal finances and is now 8 months behind in mortgage payments with no intention of paying them. And none of it is his fault, poor fellow. And this guy writes stories for the rest of us to read to supposedly gain some knowledge of the financial world. He was totally irresponsible and clueless, and somehow, this is everybody's fault but his.

Read it and weep. And read Neo-Neocon's take as well.

Related, from Fee in Brief:

Consumer Protection Planned for Financial Products

"The Obama administration is actively discussing the creation of a regulatory commission that would have broad authority to protect consumers who use financial products as varied as mortgages, credit cards and mutual funds, according to several sources familiar with the matter." (Washington Post, Wednesday)

Yeah, that'll work.

FEE Timely Classic
"Regulation Will Stop Future Madoffs? It Just Ain’t So!" by Chidem Kurdas

A Hawk

It landed on the bushes just a few yards away from where I was, and I happily had the camera.

Questions

It amazes me how much we have all grown since we moved here. How much has changed; how much stays the same, and how much has yet to change.
It saddens me and yet at the same time it excites me!

What changes have I yet to experience? So many questions swirl around in my head-
What tasks and trials does God have just around the corner for me? Will I make the right decisions? Will I get married? Will I have children? Grandchildren? Will I die young? Will I live to a ripe old age? Will I travel to different places around the World? Would I stand firm in the faith if I had to choose between it and something else? When should I quite working at the library? What book should I read next?

Questions, questions, questions. Some serious, some mundane, but all fill my thoughts with their noisy clamoring
Even my dreams can sometimes be full of them.

And yet…

There is always the deep-rooted knowledge that God has, is, and will always love and take care of me.
All these questions I have are but chaff and will blow away, but God and His love will never leave me, now will it change,

“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” Heb. 13:8

Sometimes when I’ve been allowing questions to wreck havoc in my mind and I get snappy and feel frustrated, impatient, and heavy I drop whatever I doing, grab a pair of shoes, walk to a beautiful spot in the woods and just sit there clearing my mind of all its spidery questions and their webs, allowing the beauty of my surroundings to soak into me, soothing my poor brain and relaxing my senses.
Sitting there I can use all but 1 of our 5 senses-
My sight is caught by the flash of Bright Blue (Indigo Bunting), Red (Cardinal), Yellow (American Goldfinch), Deep Cranberry-Red (Toad- Trillium), White (May-Apple blossoms), and the white of a Deer’s tail as it turn and flees deeper into the woods; my walking through the brush probably sounding like an elephant crashing through a bed of dry sticks. :-D

My hearing catches the songs of so many different birds, the hum of bees as they fly to a flower or their nest, the sound of squirrels climbing trees, and another sound that made me turn my head to the left- a blue heron taking off from the creek bank and flying into the bright morning sky!

With my fingers I feel the rough bark of trees and the soft coolness of young Sassafras leaves, and my legs feel the damp roughness of jeans that have walked through dew drenched foliage.

I smell wild onions, the musty odor of composting leaves, a variety of flowers, and even a faint licorice scent from a plant I need to identify!

After sensing all of that how can I continue to bombard God with all of my impatient questions?
I can’t :-D

My tirade of complaints turns into a song of peace and contentment. I feel all my doubts and fears crumble (to be resurrected another day, yes, but for now they have lost and when they come back again… well, I hope it will be a nice day! :-D) to be replaced with the peace and assurance that no matter what changes are in store for me God is there and He has provided me with a loving, godly family and many godly friends who will help me along the path.

Funniest Car Review I have Ever REad

I'm not really into cars, and I wouldn't normally read reviews of cars unless I was actively looking for one. But I came across the link to this review somewhere, and it's really funny. For instance:

In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

Read the rest of Jeremy Clarkson's review of the new Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid

VDH on the Lapdog Press

For the last eight years, rendition (hey, they even made a hit-piece movie about the supposedly awful practice), intercepts, military tribunals, and Iraq were sort of the refrains of the liberal-media choruses. Looking back, in light of the Obama media, was such hysteria simply politics, pure and simple? Bush did it: bad; Obama did it: fine? Was the issue always just Bush, and never (as alleged) the Bush profligacy in spending — given the silence now over Obama's crazed borrowing? Was there never any real concern about the supposed "cultural of corruption" when the media seized on a Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, etc. — given the pass granted to Rangel, Dodd, and the tax-fraud nominations to the Cabinet.

In other words, to pick up any of these magazines and newspapers now is to see tortured apologies to explain why a flip-flopping Obama is playing "long-term" or "not going to get suckered by his base" or "first has to clean up the Bush mess" instead of disinterested commentary about (a) the disconnect between what Obama now does and what he once said; (b) the staggering amount of debt added, and how to pay the sums off.

More here

This President is spilling more red ink in a single year than Bush did in 8, and I thought Bush's spending policies were dreadful. And it completely flummoxes me when somebody points this out, and the liberal response is no more articulate than the equivalent of "Yeah? Well, what about what Bush did? Huh? Where were you then?"

Should you reply, as all libertarians and true conservatives can, "Criticizing him. So can we talk about Obama's policies now?" there is no further discussion. Just the breeze raised by the speed of their leaving the discussion.

Wherever you look for stimulation, there it is.

The Equuschick just went into Blogger a few moments ago and was told she couldn't sign in, "No cookies" or something. The link it took her to was actually "www.blogger/nocookies."

The Equuschick doesn't know what Blogger is complaining about. The Equuschick doesn't have any cookies either and yet you don't see her whining about it all over the internet.

The Equuschick is actually remarkably happy, having had coffee and Tylenol in the recent past. In the less recent past she was a great devotee of Ibuprofen and when she couldn't have that, she forgot all about Tylenol until today when something stirred in her mind (besides the headache)that made her think maybe she was allowed to take Tylenol instead.

So she went to her midwife's handy-dandy Files Page and looked up Medications and then went to take Tylenol, after having reassured the DHM that she had looked it up, like an adult would do you know, and it was just fine, and the DHM having said something to to the effect of "Oh yeah, you are a grown-up now and you do know how to make these decisions, don't you? I know that. Really."

The coffee of course is another question, but then again opinions vary. The Equuschick doesn't know whose opinion on coffee during pregnancy is actually fact but it is a fact that The Equuschick likes coffee and sometimes coffee helps a headache.

After three days of busyness and productivity The Equuschick essentially took today off, first checking all the Prenatal Books for stuff on the importance of rest to make her feel better for completely ignoring the to-do list she made yesterday.

And this was funny, you'll laugh. One of them (and thankfully The Equuschick doesn't remember which) said that it was important to get used to "a slower pace" during pregnancy anyway because, keep in mind, after your baby is born you pursuits will be more "unintellectual" than they used to be anyway.


Haha. Now that all you "unintellectual" mothers are done laughing so hard you spewed your Coke and Bon-Bons all over the computer screen...


It seems to The Equuschick that there is a flaw in this thinking that goes far beyond misconceptions of motherhood. It is also about expectations and what you're willing to put into a pursuit. Any pursuit.

What makes a task intellectual or not intellectual is very rarely, The Equuschick believes, a question of the task itself. What defines what you can get from it intellectually is exactly and precisely the amount of mental effort and commitment you put into it.

Rest assured that there are some tasks that anybody can do (The Equuschick doubts that adequate motherhood is one of them), but can just anybody do them well?

The Equuschick recalls a scene witnessed as a child on a road trip when then Common Room family stopped at a diner on the road.

They observed a young man whose sole task in this facility was to clear and clean tables. Now there, you may scoff, was an unintellectual task.

To watch that young man work was in fact to observe an artist.

The Equuschick believes they timed him. He could clear, clean, and reset the dirtiest table in thirty seconds or so flat. He moved so fast his arms were quite literally blurred and yet he never broke a dish.

He had a system. He approached a table, rolled up his sleeves and set to work on his table using this system that had clearly required some mental energy to create and some dedication to the task at hand.

It was his job. He was going to do it well, to prove his worth, to stretch his mind, and to secure his future by making a statement to all who observed him. "I take pride in my work. I am competent, I am intelligent, and I am dedicated. Because this job is mine, it is worth my time and intellectual attention. I am worth your time and attention."

Wherever this young man is today, he is prospering. And wherever he is, he is bringing the full weight of his intellectualism to whatever task is at hand and not sitting idly on his comfortable rear, awaiting a task intellectual enough to trouble him for the use of his great mind.

If more parents today would put half the energy into raising their own children that this young man put into cleaning tables at the local diner, we might well see a revolution in this nation's young.

Check the position of the cart and the horse, please. You learn where you choose to learn. Leave your brain at the door of your occupation, and of course you'll find yourself unfulfilled. Bring your brain with you and it will be a different story.

Democrat Fund Raiser Convicted

Jury convicts to Democratic fund-raiser Hsu of Ponzi scheme.

Earlier this month, Mr. Hsu pleaded guilty to wire fraud and mail fraud charges in a Ponzi scheme that prosecutors said raised at least $60 million and swindled investors out of at least $20 million. He faces up to 20 years in prison on each fraud count.

Sentencing on all of the charges is set for Aug. 19.

Mr. Seidler said Mr. Hsu plans to appeal the convictions on the campaign finance fraud charges.

Prosecutors had alleged Ms. Hsu, in order to raise his public profile, pressured some investors in the Ponzi scheme between 2004 and 2007 to individually contribute thousands of dollars to candidates for president and Congress whom Mr. Hsu supported, including Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Hsu illegally reimbursed some investors for making those contributions, skirting campaign finance laws, prosecutors said.

Pro-Life and the Death Penalty

I like Jeralyn and her blog at Talk Left. Although we don't agree politically on much, she, like the blogger at Dissenting Justice, is civil, thoughtful, and consistent. If you are ever looking for a blog from the left side of the aisle that you can let your home-schooled students read for school, those two are my favorites. Which is why I found this post so disappointing and this comment surprisingly lacking in insight.

The crazies are out in force today at Notre Dame to protest President Obama's delivery of the commencement address and receipt of an honorary degree....

Memo to protesters: If you really are pro-life, and believe that killing is wrong, how about starting with protests against the death penalty?

Let's put aside for now the comfortably ad hominem dismissal as 'crazies' all those millions of people who honestly, sincerely believe in the person-hood of the unborn (although it is a bit ironic given that part of the President's speech included a call to stop demonizing those who disagree with us). Let's discuss the accuracy of the second criticism. In order to do that, I'm basically dredging up something I wrote about this about four years ago in response to somebody else who asked that question here on our blog:

I am personally ambivalent about the death penalty. I approve of it in theory, but have many concerns about how it is carried out in actuality.

IN theory, I support the death penalty in strictly limited circumstances- only for those who have been tried in a fair court of law by a jury of their peers, given qualified representation and advocacy, those who have been found guilty of a limited number of heinous crimes, guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based on a preponderance of evidence and sentenced by a an impartial Judge with a sound understanding and adherence to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These conditions being met, these are death penalties that would not keep me awake at night.

In reality, I am not sure our trials are fair, our juries are truly a jury of peers, or our lawyers and judges as judicious as they should be, our standards of evidence as sound as they should be, so I am deeply ambivalent about the application of the death penalty and would not be able to vote for it were I serving on a jury. I could clearly do more than I do to fight it, but we all have a limited amount of time and resources, and as the mother of adopted children, the issues of the rights of innocent children like mine to be born and grow up in families where they are cherished as opposed to being dismembered, burned with saline solution, or otherwise murdered in the womb takes a priority for me. It also is a bigger priority because fewer than 70 executions on death row in this country each year, and only around 3,000 people on death row to begin with. Meanwhile, we slaughter over a million unborn babies every year.

Nonetheless, although there are probably millions of pro-life people who are opposed to the death penalty as well, it is of course true that many pro-life people are less ambivilant than I about the death penalty. But the difference between the two situations should be obvious to anybody who sincerely desires to understand a different point of view. For most, I would guess it stems from their belief that life is so sacred that the only adequate compensation for deliberately, cruelly, coldly taking the life of another is to give up your own.

More to the point, it is obviously a question of innocence versus guilt rather than hypocrisy, and my respect for anybody making this argument, which I regard as specious, drops several notches whenever I see it made (in Jeralyn's case, I am guessing she failed to see the obvious disconnect because she is at least as appalled at what she believes to be the immorality of the death penalty as I am by the immorality of murdering unborn babies).

As I once told an acquaintance trying to convict pro-lifers of hypocrisy on this issue, I'm pretty sure most pro-lifers would agree to the death penalty for the unborn, too, if it were only issued under the same conditions as the death penalty for adult criminals- upon the basis of a trial by a jury of peers, where the unborn child was duly represented by a court-appointed advocate, and when a preponderance of the evidence convinced that jury beyond a shadow of a doubt that the unborn child was guilty of a heinous crime.

Incidentally, I did not become pro-life because of religious principles. When I was in the tenth grade I went to the library to answer this question for myself. Because of critical remarks I had heard my father make about a pro-life letter to the editor, I believed that my father was pro-choice. With the onset of his dementia it is now impossible to know whether this was true or not, but I now suspect I misunderstood him. A once scathingly logical man I think he objected to the emotional reasoning behind the letter rather than the position itself. Nonetheless, I understood his comments to mean he was pro-choice then. I had also been told by Planned Parenthood (invited to speak in my school, to 'indoctrinate' us, and no alternative point of view was welcome or permitted) that the inhabitant of the pregnant womb was merely a blob of tissue, and that adoption simply wasn't a very viable or practical option, I took myself to the public library and pulled out all the medical books I could find and studied up on the development of the fetus.

That is when I became pro-life. Later, years later, I developed some religious reasons, but they were not the first impetus behind my pro-life beliefs. Among other things that day in the library I learned that before most women even know they are pregnant the baby is demonstrating all the symptoms of dreaming when it sleeps. There are other reasons, but this argument always strikes me as wrong way around- Just as, before the death penalty can be invoked, the state must prove the guilt of the accused rather than forcing the accused to demonstrate his innocence, I believe it the burden of proof should rest with those who seek the death penalty on the unborn. They must first demonstrate this is not a human life before they destroy it.

The Question of Evil

Interesting, thought provoking post here.

Funnies

Co-worker of Granny Tea's reports the following tales about her children:

1. 4-yr old was in the bathtub w/toys lined up. A box of "fizzies" was by the tub, too. Mother & Dad had set him up and gone on to other things. Then they heard him yelling for them to come quick. Seems he put ALL the fizzie balls (100) still in the bucket w/lid off in the tub. The water turned black, he was turning black and the little bucket of fizzies was circling the tub like a motorboat. Needless to say, his parents cracked up and he was screaming. Color rinsed off w/no problem.

2. 1st grade-aged son: Mom, all the boys make fun of me because I play with the girls at recess.
Mom: Why do you play with the girls?
Son: Because I'll be marrying one, and I need to get used to them.

Hilarious

Strider passed on the link to this. You've got to watch. It's hilarious. Canadian comedian Greg Morton goes where no American comedian dares to go and the result is, of course, comedy gold. We have Obama-man as candy man, who turns problems into cream and peaches and sugar coated smooth-tongues speeches. See what he can do to tomorrow:

FLDS, May 19th

The court case challenging the validity of the YFZ search warrant continues, and some mighty interesting (and disturbing) information is coming out.

You'll recall that the original caller (a hoax) claimed to have been beaten to the point of broken bones which had to be treated at a local hospital. This has always bothered me because it would have been easy to verify, and the hospital should have previously reported it anyway.
A few days ago at the hearing, Ranger Brooks Long testified that he had tried, but was unable to verify this information, and FLDS lawyers believe he should have included that tidbit in his information for the judge. That omission seems bad enough. But what if he committed perjury when he made that claim? What if he didn't bother to check that story at all?

See Sore Toes and the SLTrib, where we learn that a private investigator for an FLDS attorney testifies that he checked at the hospital and they tell him that law enforcement NEVER tried to verify if they had treated such a girl. It would have been easy for them to remember her, as it's a 34 bed facility. But there's more. Toes says:

According to the newly-published-on-the-web affidavit of Jessica Carroll of the Family Shelter,
"Sarah told me that the only other time she left the ranch was to go to the hospital . . . She told me it was called the medical center. I asked her if Schleicher County Medical Center sounded close, and she stated, yes, that is the place."

Schleicher County Medical Center is a nursing home. Toes says it's possible that in such a small community it does double duty as an ER room for battered teens, but we have the shelter feeding information to the hoaxster (that's how Rozita got the name of her alleged 'husband') again, and this isn't the only case where Brooks's testimony contradicts other accounts.

The Pharisee points out that Brooks and Doran decided the caller was probably lying about her name and her age- but Brooks went ahead and had the warrant sworn out on the basis of those claims he now says he believed at the time were false.

She was unable to name her husband until a shelter worker read her a list of men's names associated with the FLDS.
She did not pronounce the name of the town correctly.
She referred to Easter Sunday, not an FLDS holiday.
She did not know the name of the hospital where she was treated, and when fed a name by a shelter worker she agreed that is where she was treated. It turns out to be a local nursing home, where there are no records of her being seen.
She didn't even have the name of the ranch right. She called it the YZMIN Ranch. Seriously.

Law enforcement found out that the man their caller picked out of a cherry picked lineup of names as her husband was on probation in Arizona. Doran spoke to this man on the phone before they entered the ranch, and the man was then in Arizona.

Doran said he questioned the caller about his height, weight, eye color, hair color, social security number and drivers license number. Everything matched, but Doran said he could not verify the caller was Barlow.

So why ask?

And yet, in spite of all the above problems (and others) with her claims, the Texas Ranger and Sheriff Doran insist there's no reason they should have been suspicious.

The state attorney insists this was all in good faith and there is no evidence that Long or anybody else thought this was a hoax. If that's the case, then there's plenty of evidence above to show that they were criminally idiotic.

But I don't think they were stupid. I think they were over-zealous to get into that ranch and take women and children off of it and were willing to use anything as cover, no matter how flimsy. Otherwise, why were they planning on a largescale removal before they'd even been to the ranch?:

Hours before Walther signed the first warrant on April 3, law officers began amassing a large-scale response that included some 100 officers, a SWAT team, closure of the air space over the ranch, a drone surveillance plane and arrangements for buses to ferry women and children off the ranch. They also met with child welfare investigators and told them to prepare for "several young girls."

"Contrary to what the warrant states, this was not a search for two people," said attorney Mark Stevens of San Antonio, who represents Merril Leroy Jessop.

If they wanted to rescue young Sarah, they were dispicably negligent and sloppy in going about it. If they wanted to use a mythical Sarah, brought to them via an eleaborate telephone hoax, then they acted about as one would expect:

A Texas Ranger testified it took him two days to link calls that triggered the largest child welfare investigation in U.S. history to a known prankster -- something he could have done before authorities entered a polygamous sect's ranch if a supervisor had requested it.

And a probation officer for the suspect named in the state's search warrant said he would have immediately arranged to turn the man over if Texas authorities had asked.

But no one contacted him.

TWO DAYS before Walther signed the warrent:

Steve Mild, an operations captain for the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office, said he was asked about use of a mobile command center. He said Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran told him before the operation began that authorities planned to remove 20 to 25 children from the ranch.

Another officer, Texas Ranger Aaron Grigsby, said he arranged on the morning of April 3 to close air space over the ranch in preparation for the "most massive search" he'd ever encountered.

Two days before they got on the ranch, they were already planning on leaving with two dozen children. Why?

and this is pretty suspicious:

Texas Ranger Phillip Kemp said Saturday he was asked on April 14 to investigate calls to the New Bridge Family Center that triggered the investigation.

Kemp said his investigation connected the calls to Rozita Swinton, a Colorado woman with a history of making false abuse reports.

Kemp traveled to Colorado Springs on April 16 and met with police there who filled him in on Swinton's history. He later participated in a search of her apartment, where officers found notes and materials that referenced FLDS members, the Eldorado ranch, the hot line crisis workers, the Tom Green County Courthouse, the LDS Church and a math calculation in which 16 was subtracted from 2008.

Kemp investigated her phone records, too, and then, and ONLY then, did he discover she'd also called some other notable figures in the case, as he:

...found numerous calls to the crisis hotline beginning March 29 and, a day later, to anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop. Jessop arranged three-way calls with the crisis center and Swinton, who claimed to be "Sarah Barlow Jessop's" sister in those conversations, Kemp said.

Kemp also found a 90-second call from Doran's cell phone to Swinton on April 8, 2008. Doran never told rangers he had the number until Kemp asked him about it.

The sheriff said he heard only silence in the 90-second call.

That's not likely. But the Modern Pharisee says he thinks Kemp is lying, too.

The defense wanted CPS worker Angie Voss on the stand, but the state fought that. The defense did call a Baptist pastor who skipped out on his summons but is expected back sometime next week.

The Texas case looks fishier and fishier.

And, in other news, Carol Jessop has hired a new lawyer and served Merrill Jessop with papers for back payments in child support. I don't have anything to say about that other than fathers should pay for the care, feeding, and maintenance of their children. But what I do find interesting is that Carol's new lawyer is Nancy Natalie* Malonis. This puts her seemingly bizarre questioning of Merril Jessop in perspective. She seemed fixated by his financial status and claimed it was to see of her minor client could get some support if she left the FLDS. But now I think it was to service her relationship with a very different client- a possible conflict of interest she should have revealed.

(Sorry about the error. NATALIE Malonis is the court appointed lawyer who told the world her teenage client was hiding a child, when she wasn't, and who appeared on the NANCY Grace show three times)

Wherever You Leave Them, They Put Down Roots

Putting Down Roots

Keith’s mother once gave him a tiny orange tree, maybe six inches tall, which she had planted from seed into a coffee can. He brought it home, transplanted it into a black plastic nursery pot and set it next to the shed, continuing to water and feed it until he could find a permanent place for it.

It had grown to a height of three feet when he finally decided where to put it. Bending down, he grabbed the pot with both hands and tugged. Nothing happened. The tree had made its own decision, its roots bursting through the bottom of the pot and digging their way firmly into the ground. It’s still there, now over twice as tall as the shed and bearing fruit nearly year round.

Our children are like that little tree. Wherever you leave them is where they will put down roots. The atmosphere you raise them in, the people they spend the most time with, the friends they make and the activities they participate in, whether you are aware of them or not, will all have their effects on our children, and will influence who they eventually become.

Children are growing every minute of every day, not only in body, but also in mind. You cannot set them aside until you have more time, you cannot leave them on their own without guidance, you cannot give them into the charge of another whose belief system does not match yours, and still expect your children to follow in your footsteps. You cannot tell them, not even with all the sincerity you can muster, “Just wait till I finish this degree; just wait till my career is more established; just wait till I can pay off all these bills I ran up, then I will be a good parent to you.” If nothing else, you are teaching them exactly what is most important to you--career, status, “things.” Meanwhile, they may put down their roots in places you wish they never knew of, with people you wish they had never met, and develop a character that may appall you.

“Where did they learn that?” you might wonder. In the place where you left them while you were too busy to be a parent.

Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one's youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate, Psalm 127.

Dene Ward

You can shoot Dene an email to subscribe to her encouraging and sometimes convicting mailings- I think they come out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Write her to subscribe or to tell her how the above article blessed you: lechatnoirdw@copper.net

Flexible or Promise Breaker?

President Obama once objected to military tribunals, but he is continuing them after all.
The president once objected to renditions, but he is continuing that policy.
The President objected to the suspension of habeas corpus- a presidential act regrettably not without precedent. And he is continuing that policy in some part.

Here's what Glenn Greenwald thinks of his fellow liberals who ignore these flip flops and fail to apply the same standard to this President that they did to the previous office holder:

“What should one say about a person who vehemently objected to X when Bush did it, but then suddenly found ways to defend or mitigate X when Obama does it?
***
But unless the opposition of the last eight years was really just a cynical means for opportunistically weakening and demonizing Republican opponents rather than opposing policies that one genuinely found dangerous and wrong, then the actions of Obama are leaving no other choice but to object and object strenuously. As the first paragraph of today’s NYT article put it, this week alone provided “the most graphic examples yet of how [Obama] has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office.” If nothing else, refraining from objecting will ensure that this continues further and further.”

The LA Times, however, says this is all wonderful, blissfully wonderful, and a sign of the One's marvelous flexibility and pragmatism. More at Patterico.

LInks and Thinks

From Tony Woodlief at World Magazine:

Of course for the roughly 4 million human beings denied liberty and human dignity under the legal imprimatur of the South, slavery was precisely what that war was about. But the people who needed then—and still need—to absolve the rebel South of this crime never concerned themselves with how the Civil War looked to those creatures of God. Instead they employed a curious logic that runs as follows: Because the North didn’t wage war primarily to free the slaves, the South therefore didn’t go to war to keep slavery. This is the kind of thinking that allows college frat boys and amateur historians alike to fly the Confederate battle flag today, and to become incensed when you tell them it’s wrong.

Right. The North fought for a variety of different reasons, depending on whom you asked and when you asked- Lincoln's early motivation was entirely to preserve the Union, which he saw as his duty. Towards the end of the war, he realized that there could be no preservation of the Union, no compromise possible that would allow it, so long as the South continued to traffic in human flesh. He was far, far from perfect. He suspended habeus corpus and instituted a series of unconstitutional power grabs- typical, btw, of every president in wartime- in an ends justifies the means attempt at fulfilling what he saw as his Constitutional Obligation to Preserve the Union. Meanwhile, the South had already violated men's consciences, imposed their will on other states, and abandoned the scriptures they used as justification for slavery with their Fugitive Slave law and their refusal to recognize the biblical injunction to treat slaves who were co-religionists more as bond-servants to be freed after seven years. And they successfully had been violating the first amendment at the Federal level for years, denying the right to petition, the right to free speech, the right to freedom of assembly, the right to a free press, and were tampering with the mails and engaged in censorship.
For more on this, Arguing About Slavery is MUST read. And the above article is excellent as well, in another way. I got a bit sidetracked.=)


From Elisheva at Ragamuffin Studies has a post about F.A. Hayek that is difficult to pull just one extract from without doing damage to the whole. But consider this:

*Unfortunately, the word liberal, which used to describe proponents of liberty and government limited in scope to the ennumerated powers of a constitution, was co-opted by the progressives of the early 20th century and has come to mean the opposite; big government with evolving power to meddle in the lives of the people. Our founders were classical liberals. Certain non-anarchist, small 'l' libertarians hold the political philosophy closest to that of certain founders, and conservatives to others. They would all be considered classically 'liberal', if the term had not be co-opted.

Barbara Curtis on how her family made the transformation from gun-free, liberal, pacifists to members of the NRA:

Some of us just can't give up the old wisdom: "Question Authority" no matter who's wearing the mantle this year. Some see a claim like this one by the Million Mom March - 12 children 19 and younger are killed by guns each day - and dig a little deeper to find that the rate is inflated by lumping together a wide age range. The National Center for Health Statistics show 10 times the number of deaths by firearms in the age bracket 15-19 than in the bracket 10-14, with the greatest rise among 15-19 year old black males - 126.6 deaths per 100,000, compared with 7.1 for black males aged 10-14.

We do well to be wary, to look beyond feelings and slogans. A government that already has 20,000 gun laws on the books, neglects their enforcement, then clamors for MORE! clearly has an agenda other than simply saving lives.

That last paragraph applies to just about everything the government tries to do. Seriously. Is there anything there isn't a law about yet?

Of Boys and Joys

Pip and the FYG had a piano recital yesterday. It was some two hours north of where we go to church (and we go to church some 45 minutes south of our house). So we packed sandwiches and drove up to the recital. Strider and Granny Tea came. Shasta and the Equuschick followed- they have houseguests, Susan of the UBO story and her mother are down for a short visit.

The girls did very, very well. Seriously, very well. So well that Pip's instructor, who has to turn the pages for her, could not keep the glee out of her face (she tries to maintain an impassively pleasant expression throughout all the performances so as not to freak students out more than they already are over performing in public). And when Pip finished, her instructor whispered loudly, "Brava, oh, brava!!" The FYG's performance was passionate and delightful (she really gets into her music with her entire body and soul), and moved a couple people to tears.

AFter the recital, Shasta, EC and company went home, and we went out for Chinese food. The Boy stuffed himself on shrimp, as he is wont to do at buffets where shrimp is available. So much so, that if they knew what the boy was about to do to their shrimp section, I suspect most restaurants would shut it down when they see him coming.
However, he reached saturation point before he had finished what was on his plate, and his father offered to finish them up for him. So, with his fingers, he picked up the remaining shrimp (which had legs attached), and passed them down to his dad. Unfortunately, Granny Tea was sitting between the two of them, so he passed the leggy creatures right under her nose and she flinched slightly.

This was another teachable moment, so I said to him, "Do not pass things with legs right under your Grandmama's face." And before I could expound further, Strider said, "Yeah, just let them wriggle over there on their own." That tickled the Boy's funny bone immensely, of course (which made me think of this.

When the fortune cookies came, Strider's fortune, I kid you not, said, "Stop searching for happiness, it's sitting right beside you." And he turned and looked meaningfully at the HG, who was of course sitting right beside him, and grinned as we all said, "Awwwwwwww" while she turned prettily pink.

Obama and ACORN

Or Why You Should NEVER Rely on the NYT for Unbiased News. Or News.

Potential Disaster?

If you all remember the character Susan (of UBO fame) she is here visiting for an all too short but well worth it week-end.

Susan being a Librarian of Amazing Librarian-ness, The Equuschick and Susan have just driven over an hour so that Susan could visit a Carnegie Library with a library cat.

And today of all days they are having a book sale.

Make Your Own Pizza

And make it a party. I used to do this with the five oldest when they were smaller. We did this with English Muffin pizzas pretty regularly. They thought we were just having fun. I thought I was getting lunch in the oven, keeping them out of trouble, and saving me time.

Smockity Frocks shares her recipe. It caught my attention because Saturday night when JennyAnyDots came home from work at the library she told me, "You know what I learned? When all my co-workers are talking about how they like to make pizza from scratch, they're really using frozen dough from the grocery store and canned sauce. I didn't tell them we make our dough and sauce from scratch, because I thought that would be rude."

More Wedding Stuff

Updated to correct sleep deprived error below:

On Saturday I talked about some wedding stuff. I didn't get to the reception before we had to run.

Immediately after the wedding, we'll serve cake in the same building and show the slide-show of the HG and Shasta STRIDER (Shasta had his turn) growing up, and the bridal party will go over to the historical house for photographs.

After pictures, if weather allows, we hope to go out to Equuschick and Shasta's place and have a bonfire, roasting marshmallows and possibly hotdogs and having a hymn sing around the campfire. If weather does not allow, we'll have the wedding location double as a reception area.

There will be no tossing of the garter or the bouquet- they will give the bouquet to the couple present who have been married the longest.

The colors, so far, are blue with accents of pink. The bridesmaid's dresses are blue and they will each carry one pink rosebud. We'll buy a dozen, give each bridesmaid one, and then the HG will carry the rest.

The music.... well. I'll have to share about the music another time. It's pretty special.

Sunday Hymn Post

Acapella

Cyberhymnal

O Thou in whose presence my soul takes delight,
On whom in affliction I call,
My comfort by day, and my song in the night,
My hope, my salvation, my all.

Where dost Thou at noontide resort with Thy sheep,
To feed on the pastures of love?
Say, why in the valley of death should I weep,
Or alone in the wilderness rove?

O, why should I wander an alien from Thee,
And cry in the desert for bread?
Thy foes will rejoice when my sorrows they see,
And smile at the tears I have shed.

Ye daughters of Zion declare, have ye seen
The Star that on Israel shone?
Say, if in your tents my Belovèd has been,
And where, with His flocks, He is gone.

This is my Belovèd; His form is divine;
His vestments shed odors around:
The locks of His head are as grapes on the vine,
When autumn with plenty is crowned.

The roses of Sharon, the lilies that grow
In vales, on the banks of the streams:
On His cheeks, all the beauties of excellence glow,
And His eyes are as quivers of beams.

His voice, as the sound of the dulcimer sweet,
Is heard through the shadows of death;
The cedars of Lebanon bow at His feet,
The air is perfumed with His breath.

His lips as a fountain of righteousness flow,
That waters the garden of grace,
From which their salvation the Gentiles shall know,
And bask in the smiles of His face.

Love sits on His eye-lids, and scatters delight
Through all the bright mansions on high;
Their faces the cherubim veil in His sight,
And tremble with fullness of joy.

He looks, and ten thousands of angels rejoice,
And myriads wait for His word;
He speaks, and eternity, filled with His voice,
Re-echoes the praise of her Lord.

Dear Shepherd, I hear and will follow Thy call;
I know the sweet sound of Thy voice.
Restore and defend me, for Thou art my All,
And in Thee I will ever rejoice.

Choosing Joy

The Equuschick does believe that alot of what is termed now-a-days as "Positive Thinking" is little more than an effort to escape harsher realities that do actually exist and must be faced. When too much "Positive Thinking" is indulged in, the loss of the crucial art of self-criticism is the result.

Having said that, it must be remembered that there is a balance to everything.

There are things that just don't matter. If they do now, they won't later. No less crucial than the art of self-criticism is the art of impersonating our friends the waterfowl. Some things should just run down your back. If you are the type of person who holds on to everything that could have, should have, been better and wasn't, welcome to a life of misery. Welcome, as well, to a lifetime of making those around you miserable too.

When God created the world, He said "It is good." Yes, sin did unimaginable damage. But the creator is still good, and His creation is still here for our appreciation. There is cause for joy too, and laughter and praise. Look for those things. Hold onto them and realize that they matter too.

And it isn't always a simple question of what matters and what doesn't. Some things may hurt. Some things may be just plain wrong. But many of these things aren't in your control anyway. So shake them off.

Being a cynical realist, The Equuschick used to believe that cynical realism was always superior to optimism. She viewed optimism as foolish, a childish way of avoiding necessary realities.

She does believe she was wrong.

Unchecked optimism will indeed require the balance of a bit of a realism (if you can change the reality, you should, and you'll have to see it clearly to know how to change it) but The Equuschick is beginning to understand the wisdom of optimism. She is resolved to practice it more.

Look around you dear friends, and watch what can happen to those who spend a lifetime holding onto to all of life's imperfections and fighting against them.

When The Equuschick is old, she wants to be cheerful and lovely. She wants to laugh like a child. She wants to smile. She wants to see the good in those around her, and to let go of what she cannot change.

Obama and Alinsky

But perhaps the most cunning propaganda feat in history has been undertaken for the past 8 years. As Jonah Goldberg expertly expounds in his book, Liberal Fascism, American left-wing ideologues have managed to dissociate themselves from all the horrors of fascism with a "brilliant rhetorical maneuver." They've done it by "claiming that their opponents are the fascists."

Alinsky himself employed this method, quite deviously. Alinsky biographer, Sanford D. Horwitt provides an anecdote using precisely this diabolical tactic to deceive the people. From Horwitt's Let Them Call Me Rebel:

"...in the spring of 1972, at Tulane University...students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George H. W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations - a speech likely to include a defense of the Nixon administration's Vietnam War policies. The students told Alinsky they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush's address. That's the wrong approach, he rejoined, not very creative - and besides causing a disruption might get them thrown out of school. He told them, instead, to go to hear the speech dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards reading, ‘The KKK supports Bush.' And that is what they did, with very successful, attention-getting results."

In what may eventually prove to be a devious rhetorical feat of monstrous proportions, while the left has been indulging and fostering the "Bush Is Hitler" meme, they may have just put a genuine ideological fascist heir in the White House.

What does this have to do with President Obama? Read on and see what you think.

Chili Cheese English Muffin Sandwiches

These open faced sandwiches are delicious alone or accompanied by soup and/or salad.

Split and toast 4 English muffins. The recipe calls for buttering them, but we never do.
Place them on a cookie sheet.
Preheat the broiler.
Combine:
about 1/4 cup of diced green chiles, rinsed, seeded, and chopped
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2/3 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/3 cup diced olives
1/4 tsp prepared mustard (I use more)

Spoon some of this mixture on each muffin, and then put under a broiler until golden brown and melty (about five minutes)

More On Pelosi's Lies About Torture

Krauthammer on Pelosi's hypocrisy: Even John McCain says that in ticking time bomb scenarios you "do what you have to do." The no-torture principle is not inviolable. One therefore has to think about what kind of transgressive interrogation might be permissible in the less pristine circumstance of the high-value terrorist who knows about less imminent attacks. (By the way, I've never seen five seconds of "24.")

My column also pointed out the contemptible hypocrisy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is feigning outrage now about techniques that she knew about and did nothing to stop at the time.

My critics say: So what if Pelosi is a hypocrite? Her behavior doesn't change the truth about torture.

But it does. The fact that Pelosi (and her intelligence aide) and then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss and dozens of other members of Congress knew about the enhanced interrogation and said nothing, and did nothing to cut off the funding, tells us something very important.

Our jurisprudence has the "reasonable man" standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable person would do under certain urgent circumstances.

On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and other senior and expert members of Congress represented their colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable person verdict. What did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the existing circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Moreover, the circle of approval was wider than that. As Slate's Jacob Weisberg points out, those favoring harsh interrogation at the time included Alan Dershowitz, Mark Bowden and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. In November 2001, Alter suggested we consider "transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies" (i.e. those that torture). And, as Weisberg notes, these were just the liberals.

So what happened? The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at the time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly re-elected the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken. It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions -- our blindness to al-Qaeda's plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that the interrogation would extract intelligence that President Obama's own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed "high-value information" -- and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

Tom McGuire wonders, what if Pelosi is telling the truth?

Seriously, you have to watch the video of her trying to talk her way out of this one. I have linked before. Pelosi is comedy gold to watch.

Meanwhile, the administration refuses to release two memos former VP Cheney says prove the 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' were effective, which makes it looks very much like he's telling the truth about that.

And Betsy points out how, oddly, Feinstein's defense of Pelosi applies equally to Bush, but do the Dems realize that?

And now we hear that Obama wants to continue military tribunals. And we can ponder Diane Feinstein's defense of Nancy Pelosi.

Asked this week about Mrs. Pelosi's variable recollections, Senator Feinstein, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, responded: "I think it's a tempest in a teapot really to say, Well, Speaker Pelosi should have known all of this, she should have stopped this, she should have done this or done that. I don't want to make an apology for anybody, but in 2002, it wasn't 2006, '07, '08 or '09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks."

Indeed there were discussions about a second wave of attacks in 2002. In an interview two years ago, former CIA Director George Tenet said of that post-attack period: "I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are going to be blown up, planes that are going to fly into airports all over again."

So in that atmosphere, are Democrats arguing that it was fine for Nancy Pelosi not to be worried about waterboarding high-ranking members of Al Qaeda, but it was totally reprehensible for the Bush administration to do so?

I remain extremely squeamish in the abstract with torture. I am afraid that with the ticking time bomb scenario, I'd be lighting the cigarettes and handing them over along with pliers to the guy whose job is fingernail yanking, and sharpening splinters while screaming "MORE, MORE." But I regard that as a weakness in my character more than anything else.

If I thought Pelosi's stance on torture were principled and honest rather than a completely political head game, I'd be in the strange position of defending her. But she's clearly lying. How often does the CIA brief Congress about interrogation methods it has no intention of using?

Wedding Stuff

Today we're looking at the place under consideration for the October wedding. It's the same place the EC used for her reception. We cannot use the same place she used for her wedding because it seats at least fifty fewer people. The HG, who always wanted a small wedding, notes that five siblings as bridesmaids is already not small, and Strider has lived in the same area nearly all his life and been a member of the same 200 plus member congregation for 18 years.

The idea (all still tentative) is to have the wedding at the community center, but to use the historical home for the 'ready room' (it shares a grassy verge with the community center), and for photographs.

The HG has her dress already. It cost twenty dollars and needs a few alterations that Jenny says she can do. The bridesmaids will probably be wearing regency dresses adapted from sensibility.com's patterns. Jenny has made several of these, so she says it will be easy, and she will adapt the pattern to raise the neckline and make the sleeves 3/4. There's one that Jenny made pictured here (we have another post with a better picture but I can't find it).

Gotta run.

Life is boring in a box.

The Equuschick at one point in her internet correspondence came across a very kind, polite, and well-intentioned young woman who wanted to debate The Equuschick's so-called conservative views on traditional families.

This young lady, let's call her A., insisted that such families are stifling, suffocating, cruel, abusive, and etc. She knew this to be true because she had grown-up in just such a family as The Equuschick's (so A. said), where the father worked and the women fed the men and A. loved to cook out on the grill and her mother never let her do so because "that was a man's job."

There was a flaw in the argument, and The Equuschick does hope you've noticed. A. had not grown up in a family that was anything like The Equuschick's at all. In fact, The Equuschick (never one for tact) explained that actually A.'s family was not what The Equuschick would call a Christian family, but rather a family The Equuschick would call a weird family.

(So the Common Room family is a little weird itself, but there are different kinds of weird.)

The Equuschick grew up in a two-parent male and female family where the father worked and the mother stayed home, but The Equuschick cannot remember a single time in her life when she ever wanted to do something and was told she couldn't because it "was a man's job."

And vice versa, as the FYB has probably never heard in his life "Don't do that, that's a woman's job."

It so happens that he did try once (and only once, when he was probably 8 years old) to get out of doing the dishes with some sort of argument along that line but he chose unfortunately to do it in the midst of his all of his sisters, his female cousins, and his aunt. The scoffing was tremendous and the FYB has never tried this again before or since, poor fellow.


There are innate differences between men and women, indeed, and certain commands are Scripturally given for the attitudes that the different sexes should display towards each-other, but it is a grave tragedy when write where God Himself never wrote and restrict our male/female roles to the very narrowest of limitations. We rob ourselves of the immense satisfaction to be gained when the individual tastes, talents, gifts, and interests of each party are allowed free rein in a relationship.

It has now become practically a running joke in the Common Room family to recognize Shasta as the sole Interior Designer of Shasta and Equuschick's household. The Equuschick has never so much as ruffled through the pages of a Martha Stewart magazine in her life, Shasta reads them and is inspired. His eye for colour, grace, and style in home decor is a thing of local legend, and a good thing too because if the department of home decor were left to The Equuschick she would be functioning completely blind and the house would look like amry barracks.

Or worse, actually.

Shasta has a clear glass potpourri jar for which he has a specific potpourri mix to be used only during the winter season, and for spring he took lilac petals and green leaves and layered them in an artful way that never would have occurred to The Equuschick. And then the poor boy (who knows why) asked The Equuschick for suggestions as to what to put in next.

"Hmm," said The Equuschick (stalling for time), "what would be a good thing for this time of year?"

"Flies?" said Shasta sarcastically. "Dead Asian Beetles?"

The sad thing was, this idea of a bug collection in a potpourri jar on the living room coffee table kind of appealed to The Equuschick. That's what Shasta has to put up with. No eye for art whatsoever.

And then, oh dear, last night it was dreadfully funny and annoying for both of them to be preparing the guest room and bathroom for company at the same time. The poor Equuschick just never saw what Shasta wanted her to see in the hospital corners on the sheets and all sorts of fine details, like the shower curtain.

The pattern on the curtain is of shower faucets, and the hooks for hanging it up are appropriately shaped like faucet taps. After washing the shower curtain The Equuschick went to hang it up and had two hooks up when Shasta came in for something and expressed delight that The Equuschick was alternating the hot and cold faucet taps.

That was an awkward moment.

Alas for Shasta. He looked so disillusioned when The Equuschick sheepishly admitted that this had happened only by chance and in fact, in spite of having used this shower curtain for over seven months she had never even noticed that the hooks for the shower curtain were specifically labeled "hot" and "cold."

"That''s so disappointing!", said the crushed man with a sigh.





If you're wondering about fashion sense in clothing, that prize also goes to Shasta. In her childhood The Equuschick always wondered what she would do when she moved out and she could no longer ask JennyAnyDots what matched what because everyone and their Uncle Roger knows The Equuschick would dress herself in jeans and over-sized t-shirts every day if she could get away with it.

But sometimes in life we must dress nicely, and Shasta slipped quite naturally into the role of Fashion Consultant and he has, at times, fits of euphoric bliss on how an outfit has come together that are completely foreign to the unfashionable Equuschick.

All in all, it was quite a case of strengths meeting weaknesses.

Stillmeadow quote for the commonplace book

A garden is an evidence of faith, and it links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting. The truth is, none of us belongs merely to today, we are a small part of the whole progression of mankind. We have a responsibility to pass to the next generation as much good as we can, and we are also responsible for those who went before us.

From Stillmeadow Sampler by Gladys Taber. More on Stillmeadow and Gladys here.

Health Care Industry Says President Misrepresented Their Agreement

I don't know if this was deliberate or if his optimism and confidence in getting his own way caused him to misunderstand, but this is a pretty big difference:

Earlier this week, President Obama announced that American health providers had pledged to cut costs by 1.5% each of the next ten years as a means to stave off an economic crisis in the industry. Now Obama’s partners say that the President misstated their agreement, and that they pledged to eventually ramp up to a 1.5% annual savings rate over the next ten years

More at HotAir (source of the above quote) and here.

And this seems to indicate that the White House has a serious communications problem:

The White House seemed at first to acknowledge that the agreement was not what they had claimed on Monday, but then apparently decided to play “he said/he said” instead. The Times again:

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said “the president misspoke” on Monday and again on Wednesday when he described the industry’s commitment in similar terms. After providing that account, Ms. DeParle called back about an hour later on Thursday and said: “I don’t think the president misspoke. His remarks correctly and accurately described the industry’s commitment.”

All of this suggests a remarkable degree of ad hoc carelessness in the White House’s handling of the providers groups.

And how.

Today My Daughter Graduates

The HG graduates from her university today, with, astoundingly enough given the trials, tribulations, and distractions of this last term, a 4.0 GPA for this semester, a 3.75 overall. It's a good time for one of those 'how time flies,' and 'enjoy them while they are little' posts, but I am not sure I can quite muster it up.

There are definitely moments when there is a pang in my heart and a lump in my throat because we're 'losing' her- she'll be spending a few days next week with Strider's family, and in all likelihood the happy couple will be living in a studio apartment on his family's property, and it's silly and selfish to be jealous, but still, sometimes I am. And it's hard for me to change direction sometimes, and this all happened rather quickly, and I had so been looking forward to some down time with her this summer, after the most stressful term of her University career, and now that time will be spent with wedding plans and watching her and Strider make googly eyes at one another (they try not to do it, but they can't help it).

A decade ago a woman on a parenting list I was on asked those of us who had children what it was like to be a parent. I was expecting our seventh child at the time. This was the gist of my reply:

I was totally unprepared for the physical impact of mothering; for me it has
been an overwhelmingly sensual experience. I don't mean sensual in an erotic
way. I mean that all my senses are involved, affected, enjoyed in a brand new
way. Nothing on earth smells like one's own new baby, affects my sense of
touch like the feel of my baby's little head, sounds like an infants totally
captivating giggle, tastes so sweet when one kisses him/her, or is so
enchantingly engaging that one can just sit and gaze at the new little one for
hours.

It continues for me as they grow older. I love listening to my 14 year old
discuss life, sing as she goes about her chores, and play the piano. I love
tangling my fingers in my 12 year old's curls, listening to her read aloud to
her younger sisters. I enjoy the feel of pat-a-cake with my mentally
handicapped ten year old, the sound of her funny little voice singing her odd
little songs. I have dropped laundry on the floor to lean against the bathroom
door and listen to my eight year old sing songs in the shower about her day-
"Oh, my mom wasn't very nice to me. She won't let me play in the hail. When I
grow up I'll go get a new mom who will let me outside whenever I want, but that
will make my old mama sad so maybe I wooon't"- all sung as dramatic opera. It
catches at my heart to watch the seven and eight year olds skip along, holding
hands and chanting nursery rhymes, to have my nearly two-year old come running
up with concern on her face when I cough to ask, "Drink? Mommy want drink?" I
can hardly keep my heart from bursting when I watch one of them learn something
new, proudly read a first book, figure out how to measure area, learn to ride a
bike. Their own faces are so full of light and joy...

That was, as I said, a decade ago. the experiences and ages change, but the joy has not diminished. Tonight I sat in my corner of the living room couch- the corner from which I can watch children doing dishes, and I watched and listened to my now 18 year old singing along to the soundtrack from Wicked as she worked. She didn't know (until now) that this is what makes this corner of the couch my favorite. I love listening to my 20 year old sing as she works about the house, practices her violin, and I love the smell of the good things she bakes. Tonight the 13 year old came to kiss me goodnight, deliberately tickling me with the long, thick hair that hangs to her waist and telling me she'd decided not to cut it until after the wedding. I listened to the hammering of my ten year old son working on his new treehouse this morning, and it simply brought such an 'all is right with the world' sense of deep satisfaction to my soul I cannot even describe it. The Equuschick comes to visit us every day, and I love watching how the baby she is carrying is growing (The EC looks as though she's swallowed a volley-ball), and the feel of the Cherub's thick, blond hair beneath my fingers is another pleasure I cannot explain.

So many times in my mothering walk I have wanted to grab time with both hands
and make it stop forever at this or that perfect moment, but time keep rushing on, dragging me breathless along with it to other perfect moments. Had I gotten my wish, and held time back, keeping us forever in the moments I thought were perfect- what joys I would have missed! There are PEOPLE we would not know- and some of them are my children.


There are those moments of teary eyed nostalgia and attempts to hold time firm in both my hands- and I am sure to Strider and the HG those moments seem more plentiful than they do to me. But the other night I we looked at baby pictures together, and while they were fun and sweet, I did not think, "Oh, I wish they were little again." Little is fun, there's no doubt. But if they had all stayed little, how much joy we would have all missed. There would be no Shasta directing traffic for his pregnant wife, herding her on hikes like a mother hen with one little chick, and building a treehouse with the Boy. There would be no bonfires and singings with the ringing, goose bump inducing, shivery tenors of these two men soaring over the rest of our voices. There would not be the joy and deep gratitude I feel as I watch Strider show his love for our precious HG in ways small and sweet as well as large and beautiful. It is an unbelievably wonderful thing to see my daughters loved and cherished by men whom we trust, respect, and love in their own right. I cannot imagine exchanging this stage of life for the joy of keeping my children young and at home with us. How barren and hollow that would be.

And then there is my own marriage, grown mellow and rich as a finely aged wine, deeper, more meaningful, just..... more.

No, do not desire to have their baby years back. Do not wish you could hold time still. Live in those moments, appreciate and celebrate them, but never forget they are the ethereal gift of time, a gift of growth, a gift that only comes when we appreciate the moments that make up all the beads of the strand of pearls that is mothering, that is life.

Appreciate each moment. Look at it with all your attention and imprint it on your heart and mind. And then move on with joy. The best is yet to come.

Pelosi didn't know about waterboarding because being told about it isn't the same as being briefed about it.

"They mislead us all the time," claimed Pelosi today of the CIA, as she tried to explain that no, really, she never knew that the CIA had waterboarded Abu Zubaya, that she'd been told it was legal, but the CIA had just sought that opinion for kicks and giggles, not because they wanted to actually use it, and that anyway, she'd not been briefed about waterboarding, she'd only been told that somebody else was briefed about it. Or something.

But here's what she said in 1998:

Lest we forget, Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said this December 16, 1998:

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

She was ‘misled’ then, too, by President Clinton.

Maybe Ms. Pelosi is not competent enough to hold a position of power.

More at Sweetness and Light

She also seems to me to be claiming that when she said she wasn't briefed about waterboarding, she only meant specifically in that one meeting, not the one where she sent her aid to represent her and report back to her. Because that, that wasn't a briefing. It was just telling.

But here's what she actually said in April:

"In that or any other briefing...we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used,"

Emphasis added. See Ace as well.

At about the 21 minute mark of this video of her recent press conference, which you should really watch, a lady reporter points out that Pelosi previously was very adamant that she'd not been told about waterboarding. The reporter points out this isn't true, and then Pelosi says that when she told the press she'd never been told they were waterboarding, she was referring only to that one briefing.

( The AP, strangely, transcribes this portion as 'crosstalk' without telling readers what was actually said. It's really not that hard to hear most of it.)

Pelosi defends herself: "The point is that I wasn't briefed, I was informed or told that somebody else had been briefed about it." At the briefing she was talking about (when she said 'at that OR ANY OTHER briefing we were not told...") they were only told that legal counsel had been sought to see if waterboarding was legal. Subsequently, she says, OTHER people were informed about waterboarding.
"So were you," says a male reporter bluntly.

No, I was only told that other members were briefed about it, she says.

By her aide. Whom she sent to that meeting to represent her and to report back to her on what was said, but she'd probably consider that to be quibbling.

It kind of reminds me of when one of my children was younger, and I would send her off to do something and it would get suspiciously quiet, and I was call to her and ask, "What are you doing?" and she would say, "I was about to...." and I would have to say, "I didn't ask you what you were about to do. I asked What. Are. You. Doing. NOW? And she would say sheepishly, "reading." Only Pelosi is about 20 times older than that child was, and not nearly as cute, and I'm paying her salary.

The High Cost of Saving Time

Adapted repost

Something I've been thinking about for a while is how convenience can be a weed that crowds out frugality. It's as though convenience is an acid bath that eats away at frugal habits. Here's the sort of thing I mean-

We have mostly- not always, not exclusively, but mostly- used cloth diapers for our babies. With my first two, I did keep disposable diapers on hand specifically for 'special' situations- when we were going to be out all day, or when we were sick, or some other situation where we were pressed for time or space. Only I noticed that we found far too many 'exceptional' moments, when the disposable diapers were there, and we were in a hurry. This was strange to me, because I could change a cloth diaper almost as quickly as a paper diaper- I timed myself from start to finish, and it really didn't take that long (It did help that I had my supplies and the diaper pail all set up conveniently). But that extra 60 seconds seemed vital at times, even though it wasn't. We were in a hurry far too often. With our third biological child, I even managed to use cloth diapers even while traveling. In fact, we even used cloth diapers while on vacation and I found it worked very, very well (this wouldn't be true of all vacations, it was for this particular one). And yet, with babies 6 and 7, the disposable diaper habit crept back in over and over.


We are now in a situation where we are gone from the house every Sunday, all day. I have sometimes purchased a case of bottled waters while we are out, along with things like a large package of string cheese and extra packages of crackers and/or lunch meat, thinking that I will have extra for the following Sunday.

I never have any the following week, because my family members ALL find some reason why they MUST have a string cheese or a bottle of water instead of a cup throughout the week, so these convenient things are gone in short order- although if I do not buy them at all, they manage to adjust without them just fine. Actually, since I first wrote this out a few months ago (I have been thinking about it for a while, remember?), I pitched a hissy fit about using the bottled water, pointing out there was a tap just three feet from the bottled water, and I was going to start charging a dollar or more a bottle if this didn't stop, and it has. And we're slowly adding to our collection of permanent, stainless steel water bottles. But I still never have any string cheese from one Sunday to the next, and all the Progeny will still gravitate toward the convenient rather than the frugal.

For instance, there is a jar of ready made spaghetti sauce going bad in the back of the fridge because one of the girls, charged with fixing lunch, used perhaps 1/3 a cup of sauce from that jar to make english muffin pizzas and then put the rest in the back of the fridge where it was forgotten. She saw the convenience of the ready made sauce, but made no plans for using up the rest.

I like to keep a couple cans of peaches on hand for making peach cobbler in an 'emergency,' that is, when we have an unexpected shortage of food and an unexpected surplus of company in the same meal. But to certain of my progeny, those cans of peaches are as catnip to cats, and they ask me daily if they cannot use those canned peaches for a side dish for lunch, or for an afternoon snack- or they do not ask at all, but simply open them up and use them right out of the can for the ultimate in convenience food.

It is as though introducing a small and occasional (or at least intended to be occasional) convenience makes getting along without that convenience ever more difficult and burdensome than if we never had it at all.

Thrift takes a little more time, in most cases, than profligacy, and more importantly, it seems to take something more by way of thinking things through- planning ahead. And these things require good habits. So how do we develop good habits? I don't know, to tell you the truth, but I sadly suspect there are no short cuts.

The Carter Family Sings Bury Me Beneath the Weeping Willow

I saved the best for last:

Laundry Schedule

PROGRAM FOR LAUNDRY WORK

69. Laundry work may be done in a haphazard way and perchance turn out satisfactorily, but such a result must be considered more nearly a coincidence than a direct result. It cannot be relied on to happen every wash-day. Instead, it is the systematically done laundry work that can guarantee success. But this does not mean that superfluous time must be consumed in elaborate processes. The methods may be thorough and systematic and yet direct and expeditious.

70. Following is a program that has proved its worth as a guide through the various steps of laundry work. It is given first in outline form, and then in detail.

Monday:

1. Sort clothes.
2. Mend tears that will grow in washing.
3. Remove stains.
4. Soak soiled clothes.
5. Get equipment ready.

Tuesday:

1. Heat water.
2. Make soap solution.
3. Fill tub or washer and wash in succession (changing suds when necessary):
* Table linen
* Bed linen
* Towels
* Body linen
* Handkerchiefs
* Soaked clothes
4. Boil by putting clothes in cold water and letting them slowly come to boiling point.
5. Make starch.
6. Look over articles, especially if a washer has been used, to see whether further rubbing is necessary.
7. Rinse in 2 or 3 waters.
8. Blue, dipping and wringing each piece separately.
9. Starch clothes needing average stiffness, changing starch as often as necessary.
10. Hang out pieces.
11. Wash colored clothes, setting color, washing, rinsing 2 or 3 times, starching; and hang out to dry.
12. Wash cotton stockings, rinse, and hang to dry.
13. Take down clothes, piece by piece, fold and lay in the basket.
14. Dampen and roll up.
15. Wash any silk underwear, embroidery pieces, or colored clothes that must be ironed immediately, and iron. Also, wash flannels and wool or silk stockings.

Wednesday:

1. Do heavy starching.
2. Step No. 15, under Tuesday, may be left until now, if desired.
3. Iron.
4. Air.
5. Put away.


From a 1931 book on sewing.

In This Economy

Popular Mechanics has a list of future proof jobs.

I meant to link to this a while ago, and now cannot recall where I saw it first- Kim, was that you? Reporter looks at how cost effective it is to make home-made staples vs buying ready-made. She was surprised to learn that yeah, there are a lot of things you can make from scratch for substantial savings. Her findings mirror my own, although I get my bagels for much less than she does, so for price alone, buying them is cheaper for me.

Blaine Staat has 30 things he thinks you should try to improve your life. Some of them I agree with and have done. Some I agree with but have not done. Some I would like to try. Some I think are ridiculous or unworkable for my family. Found at Rick Saenz's place.

Ladies, if you ever wonder what makes a Gentleman...

A Gentleman is a man who, when he drops his wife off to pick up a truck from the shop, will turn it around for her and then politely ask the vehicle in front of her to get out of the way, and then casually walk into the street and direct traffic, waving her on.

Of course, Shasta did grin wickedly and exclaim loudly to the stranger he was chatting with (because Shasta is always talking to somebody somewhere) "Woman driving, you never know."

But you can't exactly marry a guy for his sense of humour and then be offended when he uses it on you. It wouldn't be reasonable.

When The Equuschick woke up this morning she had a very specific plan for the day but an hour and a half later her plans had been changed twice and she didn't see much point in fussing against it.

So she stopped by the shelter to visit with old friends and went by the store to pick up cat litter and cages for tomato plants and of course, by then it had been all of 45 minutes to an hour since she'd had anything to do eat and this was a travesty, so she also bought an eight pack of cheese crackers for 99 cents even though she really wanted a candy bar and a Dr. Pepper.

(Toot, toot...can you hear The Equuschick's horn blowing?)

And now it seems Shasta and The Equuschick are going out to dinner with Grannytea, and in spite of the fact that almost nothing on her Official List has been accomplished she feels that she's enjoyed her day anyway and learned things and built relationships.

She also smells like tomato plants.

Taxing Sugared Beverages

That's how Obama is going to pay for his health care plan- there are so many interesting things to discuss about this. First of all, we were promised that there would be no new taxes of any kind:

"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

He repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."

He didn't say this just once, either:

"Listen now," he said in his widely watched nomination acceptance speech, "I will cut taxes—cut taxes—for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class."

An unequivocal "any tax" pledge also was heard in the vice presidential debate, another prominent forum.

"No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised," Joe Biden said, "whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax."

A tax on cokes is a tax. I am pretty sure it falls under the 'any tax' category. But what's really interesting is what is, and what is not, to be taxed here- sugary carbonated beverages, sports drinks. Sweetened Teas (Snapple, for instance). What's not covered?

Frappuccinos. Mochas. Diet soft drinks.

No word on where stevia sweetened sodas stand.

Who is pushing this? Ah, one of those special interest groups that wants to lead us all by the noses and micromanage our lives:

"While many factors promote weight gain, soft drinks are the only food or beverage that has been shown to increase the risk of overweight and obesity, which, in turn, increase the risk of diabetes, stroke, and many other health problems," Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is pushing the idea, said in his testimony. "Soft drinks are nutritionally worthless…[and] are directly related to weight gain, partly because beverages are more conducive to weight gain than solid foods."

Personally, I think those nasty diet drinks are more harmful to our health that sugared soft drinks- especially when they are sugared rather than corn syrupped (?). I also believe children should not taste very many of these things too young- Pip and Jenny were old enough to be able to speak articulately about the sensation of the bubbles in carbonated sodas the first time they tasted them- well, Jenny had them before we adopted her, but it was long enough after the adoption that she'd forgotten their taste. Flavored drinks, other than things like Tazo's Passion Fruit Tea (in bags) are special occasions around here, not even a weekly occurrence, and caffeinated sodas are reserved for hard working teens and above.

But I don't see that I have the right to try to control what other people choose for their families in this area. Nor do I agree that Jacobsen's personal beliefs about health should be come public policy and a basis to tax the rest of us.

Jeff Goldstein asks:

Can national morning calisthenics be far behind?

And I’m not being hyperbolic, either: when many of us made the arguments that food taxes would naturally follow from the war being waged on cigarettes, we were dismissed with a wave of the hand as cranks engaging in slippery slope fallacies.

Well, welcome to your lube job, America. See you at the bottom of the slope.

Of course, Dymphna thinks that Archer Daniels Midland will see to it that this sugar tax does not fly.

And then what will the Administration tax to pay for its health care plan?

Spending beyond his means is an old habit of President Obama's

I find this level of financial irresponsibility in his past rather disturbing:

during his pre-Senator years, he and Michelle spent substantially more than their income and made up the difference by repeatedly taking out loans against the rising value of their home during the home-price bubble. At least according to this story...

In April 1999, they purchased a Chicago condo and obtained a mortgage for $159,250. In May 1999, they took out a line of credit for $20,750. Then, in 2002, they refinanced the condo with a $210,000 mortgage, which means they took out about $50,000 in equity. Finally, in 2004, they took out another line of credit for $100,000 on top of the mortgage.

Tax returns for 2004 reveal $14,395 in mortgage deductions. If we assume an effective interest rate of 6%, then they owed about $240,000 on a home they purchased for about $159,250....

And they weren't exactly "poor" during this time. They were what they now call "the rich". Apparently they were just free with their money, not rich enough, spending more than they had coming in ...

You really should read the rest. No wonder he's just blithely spending us into oblivion. He really has no conception of personal thrift and responsibility. Magic beans, indeed.

Texas Seeks To Raise Statute of Limitations on "Bigamy"

Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast explains:

Now the Texas Legislature is flexing its own creative muscles trying to salvage prosecutions from this fiasco.

Legislation to lengthen the statute of limitations on bigamy passed the Senate and will be heard this week in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. Apparently, since authorities couldn't prosecute polygamists at the YFZ Ranch in West Texas as they'd prefer, they now want to give prosecutors up to seven years to pursue bigamy cases, ten if they involve a minor (although no victims are clamoring for prosecutions). The current statute of limitations for bigamy is just three years, as is the case for most felonies.

A different House committee already heard related but much broader legislation that has not moved nearly so far along in the process, so if this gets to the floor, I'd expect Reps Harvey Hildebran and Drew Darby to try to load it up with all the extra mischief in their bill. Sometimes you really have to get creative if you want to use the force of the state to impose your personal moral code on others but can't figure out how to do so within the constraints of their constitutional rights.

What we're talking about here is not what most of us think of as bigamy, whereby one man deceives two or more women, defrauding them by purporting to married to each one, leaving them stunned, astonished, and without the legal status and protection they believed they had. This is about calling more than one woman your wife, without benefit of legal ceremony, and when each of the 'sister wives' knows about the others, and, indeed, expects there to be others.

This is not a lifestyle I would choose, nor one I particularly approve of, but the fact is that it's not morally the same thing as that sort of bigamy. All the wives involved know about the others- and they know, going into the marriage, that they will probably not be the only wife. Otherwise, they wouldn't be a part of that religion. Nobody here is deceived, defrauded, or cheated, nor is the state defrauded by two or more civil ceremonies.

So what is the justification for making the statute of limitations on this crime longer than other felonies? Could it be any clearer that this is about going after a religion?

Frugal Dates and Family Activities

If you don't do anything on this list precisely the way we do it, that does not make you a cultural low-life. These are suggestions, not commands. Neither are they a list of standards to which you must attain if you ever hope to be good enough. Good enough for what? Well, good enough to measure up, you say, because you do not measure up right now. But measure up to what? What is your measuring stick? It ought not to be my family. Your own budget should have something to do with it.

"It is by small economies and cares... that large economy is attained. One does not, in a household, make some great fifty, or a hundred, or two hundred dollars saving, but it is the little saving of five, ten and twenty-five cent pieces, of half dollars and dollars, which in the year mounts up to a goodly sum total, and these savings represent not meanness, but care." "~Aunt Sophronia"

Below you will find some ideas for family fun tried and tested ourselves or by somebody we know. We do NOT do all of these things every single month- or even every single year. They are things we either HAVE done at one time or another- some of them I'd forgotten about and want to do again- or they are things I know friends of ours have done.

Instead of eating out, fix a fancy dinner at home. Set the table with the best dishes and candles. Have everybody dress up and pretend to be eating out, practicing table and restaurant manners.

Invite people over often. Make sure to include interesting, fun people; eccentric, odd people; tourists and immigrants, and unusual people. Include old people with stories to tell and young people with dreams to share. Include missionaries, former and current. Include your minister and the elders of your church. Ask for storied of faith, stories of when God blessed them, and stories of dark days.

Art museums often have free days. Check out the one nearest you. We’ve often taken advantage of this, even when the museum was an hour or two away. We packed a nice picnic lunch and ate at a park when the weather was nice, in the car on the way home if it wasn't. Always keep your eyes open for free or inexpensive attractions.

We buy a year's family pass to a different attraction each year. It may be the
zoo, the children's museum, the children's theater, or the symphony. We can't
afford to do them all at once, and with a family our size the cost of a yearly
pass is seldom more than it would cost us to get in once, so we choose one each year and immerse ourselves in that one, attending at least a dozen times a year.

Study another country/culture in our homeschool once a year, learning the
customs, meals, holidays, and so on, and incorporating something of your studies into your daily lives.

We study art and artists using old art calendars. We hang works by a particular
artist each month, discussing the paintings and the artists.

Take advantage of NPR and other radio stations. Listen to classical music all the time, studying the lives of composers at the same time.

Call local colleges and ask if there are any international students who like a home-cooked meal with an American family.

Volunteer at the nursing home. We have met natives of several different European countries in a small Midwestern nursing home (I won't embarrass myself by trying to spell them).

Read, read, read. Spend lots of time at the local library. Once we lived in a home that was not was not very near to any library. Paying the extra fee for a library card was my birthday present from husband and I loved it.

Every once in a while the older children and I get out the Shakespeare and read it aloud together, each taking a few parts.

My husband chooses a different classic to read aloud to the kidlets at bedtime. He’s done Pilgrim’s Progress, Farmer Boy, Bread and Butter Indian, some of the Childhood of Famous American books, and many, many more.

Vacations? As a military family every time we moved we tried to make part
of the move include visiting an interesting spot. We did stay in two locations
for five years each so we took lots of short jaunts to places of historical or
environmental interest. We prefer camping to staying in motels (family size,
again. With a family this large most hotels want us to pay for two rooms.

Have poetry recitations at home.

Plant a garden, perhaps an historical herb garden.

Collect sea shells, stones, or pressed flowers- label them with their Latin names.

Many libraries in larger cities like Chicago and Boston hold passes to museums and
other educational attractions, and sign them out to local residents.

If you live near a college, look in to their music and drama productions. Sometimes tickets are very inexpensive. Sometimes you can attend rehearsals for free.

Host a hymn singing.

Learn origami together.

Pull up midi files on the computer and sing around the computer.

Tell stories to each other.

Turn out the lights, get out a flashlight and practice hand shadows.


More 'date' like activities:


If you like it and you can afford to go out to eat, and you enjoy it, go ahead and splurge.
If you have to choose between paying a bill and going out to eat, you can't afford it. If you have to put it on a card and wait for payday, you can't afford it. But so what?


Make yourselves a cup of delicious coffee at home and take it to the library. Most libraries now allow you to bring covered drinks in. Find a quiet corner and spend some time talking together, play a card game, or look at a book of art prints together. Look at a gardening book, or read a book of poetry together. What do you like?

Put the kids to bed early and have a candlelit dinner. Play a game, put on some soft music and dance, watch a television show or movie, put together a bookcase, trade backrubs, whatever it is that suits your tastes. For a while our weekly date night was checking out a DVD from the library, fixing snacks, telling our children not to bother us except for bloodshed, and locking the bedroom door and watching a movie on DVD and/or playing cards together. I should add that our eldest was around 15 years old then.

Get up before the kids and share a cup of coffee or tea (my own parents did this all the time I can remember during my 18 to 20 years at home). Listen to a teaching tape or CD of