Cotton-Eye Joe From a 1940 Collection

Sound only

That's the King Family in a Library of Congress collection "Voices from the Dustbowl."

Just Stopping By

The Equuschick is back this way for the afternoon, having had some errands to run.

She has been very busy and very well occupied of late, she takes Zeus for long walks every day and then she returns to take a cool bath in the Ginormous Jacuzzi Bath that is Complete with Two Toy Boats and A Rubber Ducky.

(Oils? Bath Salts? Beads? Bleh. The Equuschick doesn't need those to relax, just give her a rubber duck.)

She has two questions for the Blog Populace:

*What is your recommendation on best baby sling brands, and why?

*What's a good source for good quality pre-folded cloth diapers? (And please don't send The Equuschick a pattern telling her how to make them herself, because she can't. The investment of time will not be worth the mental anxiety. She will cry and commit suicide with her sewing needle. If you can have fun making your own, that's lovely for you. The Equuschick doesn't sew. Not a thing.)


(Some of you are going to leave patterns anyway, of course. You're going to assure The Equuschick that "these patterns are fabulously easy, sure I could do it, you don't know what fun you're missing!" ARE YOU NOT LISTENING? The Equuschick does not make things. She only makes food.)

The Philadelphia Voter-Intimidation Case

Remember the Black Panther Voter Intimidation case in Philly?

It all began when Mr. Jackson stood outside a Philadelphia polling area with Malik Zulu Shabazz and another New Black Panther member during the 2008 presidential election. They later faced charges for intimidating voters on November 4th, 2008. Appointed to be a poll watcher in 2008 for the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign, Mr. Jackson is also an elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee.

The WaTimes reports:

The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

We blogged about it here last November with video. Obama's political appointtees to the Justice Department over-rode the career lawyers who were pursuing the case, and hence the voter intimidation charges have now been dropped.


Obama's political appointees did not consider these actions worthy of prosecution:

The complaint said the three men engaged in "coercion, threats and intimidation, ... racial threats and insults, ... menacing and intimidating gestures, ... and movements directed at individuals who were present to vote." It said that unless prohibited by court sanctions, they would "continued to violate ... the Voting Rights Act by continuing to direct intimidation, threats and coercion at voters and potential voters, by again deploying uniformed and armed members at the entrance to polling locations in future elections, both in Philadelphia and throughout the country."

Bartle Bull, a civil rights activist from way back, somebody who worked to obtain civil rights for black voters in Mississippi and who worked with Robert Kennedy and who was there in his capacity as credentialed poll watcher, and he was horrified by the behavior of these three men:

"In my opinion, the men created an intimidating presence at the entrance to a poll," he declared. "In all my experience in politics, in civil rights litigation and in my efforts in the 1960s to secure the right to vote in Mississippi ... I have never encountered or heard of another instance in the United States where armed and uniformed men blocked the entrance to a polling location."

Mr. Bull said the "clear purpose" of what the Panthers were doing was to "intimidate voters with whom they did not agree." He also said he overheard one of the men tell a white poll watcher: "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker."

The three men refused to show up for court over the space of five months and repeated efforts by the career lawyers for the Justice Department to pursue the case. It appears they knew they have friends in high places who would protect them from the deliberately shortened arm of the law.

Mr. Jackson, elected member of the 14th Ward Democratic Committee, had a MySpace account up until last night. Below are some of the things on his MySpace page. This is the fellow Obama's Justice department is protecting.

"BLACK POWER,BLACK LOVE,BLACK UNITY,BLACK MINDS,KILLIN CRAKKKAS"

"F*** Whitey's Christmas"
...

A photo of a man holding a sign saying, "DEPORT WHITE PEOPLE"

...

A photoshopped movie poster of the "Bourne Supremacy" is re-worded to say "The Bourne White Supremacy" A swastika is added to Matt Damon's cheek, and the scope of his firearm is photoshopped to look as if he is about to shoot a black man. The "n" word is used to describe who "Matt Damon hates" in this movie poster. The phrase, "They should have just stayed in Africa" is photoshopped at the top of the image.

Post-racial American, indeed.

Growing

Smartweed- a noxious, invasive, hard to get rid of plant that I like.

The blooms are small- the spike smaller than my thumb, individual blossoms like pinheads. Ours are deep pink, and look like they'd make a lovely Barbie bridal bouquet.

It's in the buckwheat family.

It apparently thrives on the herbicide Round up.=)

Useful and/or Beautiful

If you like beadboard, but don't have room for the slight extra bulk it provides, you might really love this wallpaper. It looks great to me.

Take a framed but hideous picture and blackboard paint and turn it into a useful and lovely blackboard for your home. They make magnetic paint, too, so you could do a magnet board instead. See other ideas for frames at my weekly frugal hacks post.

Nifty, and affordable, diaper cake for a shower. Made with disposables, decorated with rubber ducks (you could do something else).

And Still More Gates and Crowley

So Crowley and Gates had their beer with Obama. Biden came. Not sure anything much changed.
Sgt. Lashley, a black police officer who was there when Gates was arrested and who has spoken out in support of Crowley, sent a letter to the President by his friend Crowley. A CNN reporter, Don Lemon reads it- and being the trivially minded nitpicky sort that I am, Don Lemon really irked me. He refers to Lashley as the bald guy. Two other points that stood out to me were when Lemon erroneously and oddly corrected Lashley's grammar, saying he'd left out a word when he had not. Lemon, apparently, just didn't process a parenthetic expression between commas. It was also sadly ironic that Lashley makes about forever being known as 'the black sergeant,' while CNN's information box in the corner says, "Black Sergeant's Message for Pres."

Lashley, in the letter, urges Gates to consider what part he, Gates, played in his own arrest and to ask himself what responsibility he has to restore the reputations of two good officers. Sgt. Lashley has been called an Uncle Tom. The woman who made the 911 call has been called a racist as well, merely for reporting, as mildly as possible, that two men seemed to have forced open a door to the house.

I continue to believe that race was only a factor in Gates' mind (and mouth), that Crowley, who I have no doubt is a good man and a good cop, is also like most cops- he believes contempt of cop is a crime. It may be a nasty rudeness, but I stoutly believe it is also a civil liberty, and this is a civil liberties issue, not, except as Gates and the President have made it so, a racial issue.

Consider Page two of the arrest report, where by Crowley's own accounting, Gates demanded that Crowley show him identification. At no time does Crowley provide this. He says he told Gates his last name, but Gates ignored him. I am willing to believe Gates was too annoyed and bumptious to pay attention to the man's name, but it is still troublesome that Crowley did not offer identification as asked and as required by law. Crowley's own account indicates he never gave his first name or his badge number, and he did not respond to the request for identification by giving Gates the identification card that would have answered Gates' lawful (however rudely put) request. That identification card is one that police officers in Massachusetts are required to carry and, by law, "shall be exhibited upon lawful request for purposes of identification."

Others have told me that this was unnecessary because Crowley had already identified himself when he gave his rank and last name, but that was not what Gates was asking for and we know this- and so did Crowley:
Crowley knew Gates was not asking for verbal identification, because he says when he asked Gates for ID, Gates initially refused, demanding that Crowley first *show* him identification. Crowley never showed his identification as asked, and he never claims that he does.

What if Gates, or somebody else, was to call into complain about a "Sgt, um, I think he said Crawley or Crowley, or Corley- something like that?" How far would that go? What if he actually got the name right, but then was told "Well, we have three officers called Sgt Crowley. What was the first name? Do you have a badge number?" There's a reason the officers are required to have written identification and give it when asked. Crowley was asked to show his identification and he didn't- if we believe Sgt. Crowley's own report.

Furthermore, I find it very intriguing that Crowley himself says that when Gates asked him for his name a third time instead of giving it (and identification, as he has already admitted Gates asked for), he replied to Gates' lawful request by telling him, "I already told you twice" (even though he had not, in fact, EVER provided identification as requested and required by law), and then told him that if he had any other questions he would 'speak with him outside.'

So, he knows Gates wants to see his identification, which Crowley has not provided. He knows Gates still does not know even his last name (even if this is Gates' own fault), and he tells Gates he'll speak with him outside. Does he then speak to Gates? No, knowing perfectly well that Gates still wants that information, by Crowley's own account he simply turns around and walks off down the sidewalk.

In fact, he makes it very plain that he is inviting Gates to come outside, because he makes that offer at least twice. He has told Gates he will speak to him outside if he wants further information and he then turns his back on Gates and walks off. He then says that as he was walking off, Gates AGAIN demands to know his name, and Crowley AGAIN says, "I will speak with you outside."

Then, very oddly, Crowley walks outside, but instead of waiting to speak with Gates as he has just told him he would, he walks right on down the steps of the porch and down the sidewalk. NOT giving Gates the information he is legally required to give. Not waiting to speak with the 68 year old hot tempered man with a cane whom he has told "I'll speak with you outside."

Naturally, Gates, already nearly apoplectic with rage over the whole thing (and largely through his own fault) is further incensed by this and from the porch he yells after the departing Crowley. Although I think his own behavior was very bad prior to this, at this instance I understand Gates' outrage- Crowley told him he would FINALLY answer his question if he would just come outside, and instead he turns his back and strides off, clearly with no intention of showing his ID as Gates has demanded and as Crowley led him to believe he would.

And, again, for this version we need rely only on Crowley's account, which is as favorable as he can make it towards himself (understandably). And according to Crowley, Gates does not even leave the porch. He is not following Crowley out into the street or even into his own yard. He is on his own porch in response to an invitation from Crowley to come outside where the rapidly departing Crowley had promised to speak to him.

Crowley has to turn around and come back up the steps onto the porch to arrest Gates, who has still not been given the information Crowley was legally obligated to provide.

Reading this, I am inclined to think that when Obama characterized this officer of behaving stupidly, he was even more wrong than we realized.

This officer was clever, very clever. Even though I think this arrest is a civil liberties issue and Gates shouldn't have been arrested, on another level I am rather tickled by Crowley. I wonder if he plays chess?

An angry, belligerent Gates was all too easy to manipulate. Morally and ethically, one can argue that he got what he had coming to him. He 'started it' when he was uncooperative with Crowley at the moment Crowley came to the door . He made a bad faith assumption about the officer based on his (Gates') own bigoted baggage, and things went downhill from there. If there is really a 'teachable moment' there, it's not the one Gates and Obama think it is.

But legally, I don't see how Gates' behavior fits the law he is accused of breaking, and I don't see how Crowley can justify refusing to give Gates his identification card.

THIS is the law Crowley arrested Gates for breaking:

CHAPTER 272. CRIMES AGAINST CHASTITY, MORALITY, DECENCY AND GOOD ORDER

Chapter 272: Section 53. Penalty for certain offenses

Section 53. Common night walkers, common street walkers, both male and female, common railers and brawlers, persons who with offensive and disorderly acts or language accost or annoy persons of the opposite sex, lewd, wanton and lascivious persons in speech or behavior, idle and disorderly persons, disturbers of the peace, keepers of noisy and disorderly houses, and persons guilty of indecent exposure may be punished by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than six months, or by a fine of not more than two hundred dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

Furthermore:

The statute authorizing prosecutions for disorderly conduct, G.L. c. 272, § 53, has been saved from constitutional infirmity by incorporating the definition of “disorderly” contained in § 250.2(1)(a) and (c) of the Model Penal Code. The resulting definition of “disorderly” includes only those individuals who, “with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof … (a) engage in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; or … (c) create a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.’ “Public” is defined as affecting or likely to affect persons in a place to which the public or a substantial group has access.

As irritating, obnoxious, and even unjustified as it is in a given situation, contempt of cop is not a crime. I recognize that Gates' initial response to the officer was stupid, bigoted, and even ill-mannered. I know perfectly well that anybody who loudly mouths off to a cop the way Gates did can expect to get arrested for it- regardless of his color. I don’t understand why conservatives think getting arrested for being mouthy to a cop is a reasonable state of affairs.

I agree the police have a moral right to expect some appreciation from a citizen in the situation Gates was in.

I do not agree they have a legal right to expect deferential treatment or even gratitude, to the point of arresting a man for no greater crime than yelling at them.

Verbally mouthing off to a police officer on your own property, particularly when the police have established that the reason for their being there is a misunderstanding will get just about anybody arrested- but it shouldn’t, and that it does should trouble principled conservatives.

Civil liberties, as I have said before, are not just for people we like, agree with, or respect.

But I do have a more than grudging respect for how well Crowley helped Gates hoist himself by his own petard.

But what do we mean by 'success?'

"Schools do not fail. They succeed. Children always learn in school. Always and every day. When their rare and tiny compositions are "rated holistically" without regard for separate "aspects" like spelling, punctuation, capitalization, or even organization, they learn. They learn that mistakes bring no consequences. They learn that their teachers were only pretending in all those lessons on spelling and punctuation. They learn that there are no rewards for good work, and that they who run the race all win. They learn that what they win is a rubber-stamped smiling face, exactly as valuable as what they might lose, which is nothing, nothing at all. They learn that the demands of life are easily satisfied with little labor, if any, and that a show of effort is what really counts. They learn to pay attention to themselves, their wishes and fears, their likes and dislikes, their idle whims and temperamental tendencies, all of which, idolized as "values" and personological variables, are far more important than "mere achievement" in subject matter. The "whole child" comes first, and no one learns that lesson better than the children. Just as you can predict the future by going to school, you can decipher the past by looking-around. All those thoughtless, unskilled, unproductive, self-indulgent, and eminently dupable Americans - where have they been and what did they learn there?"

Richard Mitchell, THE GRAVES OF ACADEME

Back to School Deals

Here's a great list of stores and their back to school sales with the best deals highlighted for you. Pens, papers, erasers, notebooks, composition books, glue sticks, crayons- it all makes me giddy.

It is my considered opinion that many a homeschooling mom was attracted to homeschooling in the first place because it seemed like a good way to mask her addition to office supplies.

That Prayer Request...

mentioned here. Our young friend is still in ICU, and they still don't have any answers. They have managed to drain the fluid from around her heart and from her lungs. These procedures were painful, and she is still in a lot of discomfort but doing better.

Naturally, since her mama is with her in ICU, one brother cut up his knee and required stitches, and a younger brother got some sort of stomach virus (this is more than ordinarily worrying because he has epilepsy and stomach bugs sometimes trigger his seizures). B

Craig Duncan Fiddling Cotton-Eyed Joe

New Mental Disorders

The DSM-V is the fifth (hence the V) edition of the the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Published by the American Psychiatric Association, it is periodically revised and updated as the APA 'discovers' new mental illnesses and, once in a while, decides old ones are out of fashion and no longer mental illnesses at all. In the USA, this is the reference manual for diagnosing mental disorders, which might explain why Americans are supposedly the most mentally ill people in the world (roughly a quarter of us, I believe, and rising).
Slate Magazine has an article on the working of this edition:

To its members and to the public, the APA boasts that the manual is rigorous and evidence-based, drawing meticulously on data and field trials. But the very fact that the APA has produced a task force to decide whether bitterness, apathy, extreme shopping, and overuse of the Internet belong in the manual indicates, as Allen Frances, who chaired the DSM-IV task force, told Psychiatric News last month, that DSM-V is "headed in a very wrong direction." "I don't think they realize the problems they are about to create," he declared, "nor are they flexible enough to change course."

The DSM-V isn't out yet- it's in progress. And we are not to know what the basis is for determining what is and isn't a mental illness in this edition- there's a non-disclosure agreement that applies both during the process and forever after, and two former editors are calling foul on the secrecy behind it:

the agreement also remains binding even after DSM-V is published; to avoid breaking it, participants must keep their drafts, memos, and working papers to themselves. Apparently we're never to know exactly how or why bitterness, anger, and Internet addiction become mental disorders. Indeed, the contract appears to have been designed to make that omission a foregone conclusion—otherwise, why did the APA enforce it so rigidly at the start? When Spitzer requested the minutes of earlier discussions, he was told that if the APA made them available to him, it would need to share them with others.

But wait! There's more, and it makes my back hairs stand straight up:

Spitzer and Frances also strongly disagree with a proposal to include "subthreshold" and "premorbid" diagnoses in the new manual. Both terms give cover to the so-called "kindling" theory of mental illness in children and infants—some psychiatrists believe that it's possible to stamp out ailments before they burgeon into full-blown disorders. In practice, as the St. Petersburg Times reported in March, psychiatrists in Florida alone gave antipsychotic drugs off-label (without formal FDA approval) in 2007 to 23 infants who were less than 1 year old at the time. They extended the practice to 39 toddlers aged 1; 103 aged 2; 315 aged 3; 886 aged 4; and 1,801 aged 5. One shudders to think what is going on in other states.

The kindling theory of infant mental disorders reminds us—as Darrel Regier (then the APA's deputy medical director) told the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee in October 2005—that the APA already considers 48 million Americans mentally ill. "Subthreshold" and "premorbid" diagnoses, warn Spitzer and Frances, "could add tens of millions of newly diagnosed 'patients' "—their quotation marks—to that roster, "the majority of whom would likely be false positives subjected to the needless side effects and expense of treatment." Conceivably, we might by 2012 reach a point where the APA is defining more than half the country as mentally ill.

Now, under their editorship, we saw 150 new diagnoses in 24 years, and if they are concerned about the speed, number, and basis for an unknown number of new mental illnesses (shopping, bitterness), we should be more than alarmed.

Previously:
"In Medical Nemesis (1976) Ivan Illich argues that the medical industry creates a market (and, thus, a means of profit) for itself by transforming life events into medical problems."( cited here)

Longterm readers might remember 'shadow syndrome,' a mild form of a more severe mental disorder. People who start projects but do not finish them, people who keep their desks messy and have trouble finding things sometimes, people who dive into projects but seldom complete them probably are mentally ill.

Oddly, the researchers mentioned in this article caution against using your religious community and leadership to help you overcome your anxieties and concerns, but the end of the article says,

"It is not clear why Americans have such high rates of mental illness, but cultural factors clearly play a role. Immigrants quickly increase their risk of mental health problems, especially if they do not live in native ethnic communities. Minorities also tend to have lower levels of mental health problems despite lower economic status, suggesting that the social support they provide each other is protective."

There's a simple explanation for why mental illness in this society is supposedly on the increase. It need not be deliberate, but it is due to a natural tendency to do what benefits us most without even consciously making that choice. It is the same explanation for why Teacher's Unions (though not so much teachers) are agitating for schools which offer cradle to graduation care. It is why social workers have tended to keep kids in foster care longer than they need to be there (and sometimes when they have never needed to be there at all). It's about job creation.

"Indeed, the diagnoses and prescriptions offered by psychologists largely amount to little more that job creation, she argues. Therapists need patients, so they create disorders with which to label prospective customers. Eventually, everybody can be described as abnormal and in need of treatment."

Psychotherapy has political consequences. Individuals freed from moral responsibility are no longer citizens, but patients or victims who need someone else to manage their lives. As Ms. Dineen writes: "The psychology industry considers and treats people as children who, regardless of age, experience or status, must be protected, guided, sheltered and disciplined." But by smothering individual responsibility for the sake of self-esteem, psychotherapy creates a depoliticized society of contented creatures who need only to be organized and pacified.

And that is a form of tyranny. It may produce a lifestyle that looks and feels nicer than life under the governments of North Korea or mainland China. But it is no less tyrannical. Ms. Dineen's book exposes the threat to freedom posed by all those trauma counsellors rushing to rescue modern man's poor, shivering psyche.

If you haven't read Brave New World yet, you really should.
And with the incentive of Obama-Care, there's are a trillion or so of self-interested reasons for the APA to add new diseases to treat.



See here for more

Rednex and Cotton Eyed Joe

Tonsils and your Doctor

Does this statement display any wisdom, knowledge, or awareness of basic facts?

“You come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats,” President Obama explained at Wednesday’s press conference. “The doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, ‘You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.’”

Is it even reflective of reality? How many tonsillectomies are actually performed each year, and is that rate rising or falling?

If that’s what he really thinks is wrong with U.S. health care—and with the medical profession—then ObamaCare is going to be even worse than we thought. The point Mr. Obama oversimplified is that the way the U.S. pays for medical services can encourage some physicians to prescribe unnecessary tests or treatments, especially in Medicare. But his implication is that doctors aren’t acting in the best interests of their patients in order, basically, to rob them.

Are doctors perfect, never jerks, never motivated by self-interest? Of course not, But neither are the bureaucrats he wants to inject into the system.

Something's Up with Health Care

But what? Ace has more.

Science Knowledge Quiz

You can take it, too. I do not find this gratifying, I find it pathetic and frightening. For one thing, it's not really much of a science knowledge quiz. It's more a quiz about what science related topics have been in the news- one needn't understand any science at all to pass it, just pay a modicum of attention to the news and have that sort of memory which allows you to recognize words and phrases you've heard before when presented again in multiple choice quizzes. This is how I did well in school.

Actually, I only got 11 right, but then I thought about one of them and realized that even though I was right, 'they' would expect a different answer, and it was arguably semantics.

And it turns out that 11 right is STILL better than ten ninety (that was an embarrassing error) percent of the population.

Corn Detasseling and minimum wage

Minimum wage just went up from $6.55 per hour to $7.25 per hour. That's a raise of more than 10 percent.

IT's corn detasseling season in the midwest. Sunday a young friend of ours who detassles corn complained about the rise in minimum wage- she had worked her way up a bit and was considered a crew leader, getting a little extra over the rest of the crew. Now she has the extra responsbility, but not so much extra pay, since the rest of the detasselers without her responsibilities now make very nearly what she does. So she's writing a letter to the company asking for a raise (I hope she asks for it to be retroactive, dating to the day minimum wage took effect). I expect she'll get it, although, since the job is only for a weeks in the summer, the company might manage to put her off long enough that it won't matter until next summer.

I am sure she is not the only one whose pay status has actually been debased by the minimum wage increase, and who is now asking for a raise. Basically, the payroll costs just went up nearly 10 percent- and no business is going to eat that cost. Those costs will be added on to the prices of goods and services, and in no time at all, minimum wage will buy precisely what it used to, perhaps a bit less.


Corn Detasseling is also an illustration of the senselessness of the argument that minimum wage ought to be a 'living wage.' Corn detasseling isn't a job anybody could or should make a living at- it's seasonal, primarily a means of extra cash for teens and people in their twenties- and it's extremely temporary. Sometimes the season is only a little over a week long, sometimes almost a month.

Minimum wage hikes aren't just a reflection of the rising cost of living, they are one of the driving factors as well.

Ukelele Zen

As an instrument, I kind of thought of the Ukulele as a sort of joke, at best a gimmick used mostly by young men in the 20s or 30s to pick up chicks, the sort of young men who shook hands saying, "Meezed to pleat you" and thought that was hilarious. Every time.

I'm willing to admit that I was an idiot:

Blynken's Heartache

As a reminder, Blynken is 5, Nod is 2.

Monday Nod was playing quietly and nicely on the stairs when Blynken came up and sadly asked him, "Can I put my head in your lap?"

"Dust a minute," said Nod. "I should ask if dat is otay."

He had been told he could only play on the stairs quietly, sitting down, maybe that's why he asked, I don't know. He asked and received permission. He returned and Blynken rested his head on his little brother's knees.

"Is 'oo sad, brudder?" Nod asked.

"Yes," said Blynken in a voice laden with pathos and drama. "I can never go into the kitchen again. I was in there with Pip and I said something bad about the food, and she said I couldn't stay in the kitchen if I did that, and I did it again anyway, and she kicked me out. And now I can never go back in there again. I didn't even finish my milk, and she doesn't even know it!"

What he said was that the food she was fixing was going to be yucky, and she told him he couldn't complain about the food she was cooking, and he said yes, he could too. So she said, essentially, "not in my kitchen," and he said, essentially, he could say what he wanted where he wanted and when he wanted, and she said not in the kitchen where she was working and not about the food she was making and definitely not right then or she'd banish him, and he said she didn't really mean it and then he said her cooking was yucky again just to show her.

And that's how he ended up all forlorn on the stairs, without even finishing his milk.*

________________________

*Turns out this was a bit of an exaggeration- he barely had a mouthful of milk left.

But he is not one to let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.

Possibly the most poisonously self-centered, narcissitic phrase in the English language

"I deserve to be happy...."

The sentiment expressed by two people of my acquaintance who have recently tossed their marriages under a bus and picked up an another partner to ride with.

It doesn't even make sense- if each of us 'deserves' to be happy, how is that even possible given the abandoned spouse and the children who are devastated by the divorce?

Other, related, statements:

"My soulmate..." said about the new love, just as it was said about the old one.

"We've just grown apart..." said to justify a separation supposedly intended to be an interim step to reconciliation with the betrayed spouse (the cure for growing apart is to spend more time together, not more time apart, and certainly less time with Cyber-Boy, the new love of your life. Pleasure jaunts with Cyber-boy are not good faith efforts to reconcile, but a demonstration of patent dishonesty and the maturity level of a self centered 15 year old).

What Obama USED to think about rushing bills throough without reading them

Listen to him in a radio interview here criticizing huge bills that get rushed through without allowing any time for debate- which is what he did with stimulus, what he's trying to do with Health Care, and his colleague Conyers says now that it doesn't do any good to read the bills, they can't understand them anyway. Well, then, YOU DO NOT PASS LAWS YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND.

BARACK OBAMA: ...When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what's in them and nobody has read them.

RANDI RHODES: 14 pounds it was!

BARACK OBAMA: Yeah. And it gets rushed through without any clear deliberation or debate then these kinds of things happen. And I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act. I mean you remember that there was no real debate about that. It was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.

More here-

"What good is reading the bills?"

That's the question Representative Conyers (D) asks- seriously. WHY IS THIS MAN HOLDING OFFICE? WHY IS HE MAKING LAWS THE REST OF US HAVE TO FOLLOW?

In a speech to the National PRess club, he seriously snipes derisively at his colleagues who say Congress has a responsibility to READ THEIR STINKIN' BILLS before passing them- before VOTING. Watch it- it is totally unbelievable to me that this is acceptable to any citizen at all, let alone, apparently, a majority of them:

"I love these members who get up here and say, 'read the bills.' [pause to look importantly and meaningfully around the room] What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?

Why health care isn't a 'right.'

Dalrymple- good read.

What the Little Boys Did

Blynken and Nod went home yesterday afternoon, as I am having my teeth worked on this morning and expect to find it a shattering experience sending me to my bed for a couple of days of pain killer befogged nausea.

Nod was excited about going back home, Blynken not. "But I know your mother misses you," I said. "Nooo," he said thoughtfully as he calculated on his fingers and then gave me a saucy grin, "MY mother only misses me once I've been gone two weeks," which, by a shocking coincidence is precisely how long he was pushing to stay. He felt like I could just buck up and get over it and let him stay, and he was sure my teeth wouldn't bother me that much.

This visit they had another bonfire, another singing, tomatoes from the container garden on our deck (Nod liked them, Blynken not), a romp in the dark with a lot of other wild little boys playing some sort of chase game, a butterfly which landed in our driveway and commenced to die, first letting the boys get a close-look at it, a tomato hornworm of immense and grotesque proportions, a portrait sketched by Strider, church, an afternoon playing at somebody's house after church- somebody with a cool sandbox and a large play-yard, and lots of blueberries. After the singing, Nod got to go on a six mile hike at midnight under a new moon with Pip and several friends- they looked at stars, stopped on the bridge and listened to the water, and passed Nod around like a favorite package, something he thoroughly enjoys and which is probably not very good for his character.

Blynken stayed here, objecting to long walks on principle and knowing he wouldn't be passed about quite as cheerfully as his much lighter and more compact brother, and romped in the dark outside with the other visiting little boys, then he came in and had Winnie the Pooh (the real thing, not DIsney) and Little Babaji read to him about 18 million times.

They helped cook, they helped bake, and Blynken explained to me how he longs for a downstairs apartment where he can run as fast and hard as he can, and maybe even jump a little.

Blynken went around the house with the Boy, together they washed all my light switches and doorknobs, and Blynken said it was wonderful fun. He also likes sweeping.


Blynken had a few fits of temper, something to which he is regrettably prone, although he throws them only for the Tea Chemist and the Progeny, not so much for me. Nod had a few pitiful crying jags and this was sad.

They stood on the deck watering my container garden and they giggled delightedly when the FYG showed them how to spray people in the yard below with the hose. Blynken rode on the HM's shoulders and got a bath he did not entirely want but was reconciled to by the Boy's offer of a toy submarine to play with.

I worked with teaching the FYG to deal with nap/quiet times in a more straightforward way- Rather brusquely, in a 'this is not a debate' tone of voice saying "You needn't sleep, but you will lie down quietly, do you want two books or two toy cars while you do that?" works so much better with this one than giving him too many options or sounding like you aren't sure he's going to mind you.

Precious little wedding sewing, schooling, or organizing was done- we mainly entertained the boys and tried to stem the tide of clutter that accumulates so rapidly.

And I am already looking forward to when they come back again.

More Gates and Crowley-

CNN interviewed police officers in Cambridge, officers who know Officer Crowley-



One black cop says Professor Gates has filled in a smoke screen, and she will not vote for President Obama or her governor again.

The last couple of seconds is very touching.

Thanks to HotAir

Listen to the 911 call and the dispatch call from Patterico

I agree with Patterico that it sounds like Officer Crowley remained calm throughout and Gates was increasingly loud and abrasive- he even took issue to be referred to 'the gentleman,' as in 'the gentleman says he lives here.' It sounds like he barked at the police officer, "I'm CALLED Mr. (or Professor? it's unclear) Gates!"

But I never thought this was a racially motivated incident, except on the Professor's part. The Professor has long been into stereotyping others- as evidenced by his application to Yale:

“As always, whitey now sits in judgment of me, preparing to cast my fate. It is your decision either to let me blow with the wind as a nonentity or to encourage the development of self. Allow me to prove myself.”

Incidentally, Lani Guinier, a Harvard colleague of Professor Gates', says Gates:

has an eye for the media, for positioning himself and knowing how to present a story."

He seems to have miscalculated this one, and by couching it as a racially motivated incident when he clearly was the one most focused on race, was a huge misstep.

I agree with Aplomb, responding to Patterico in comment 3, in part:

You can fault Gates for getting way too incensed and spouting off some ideological nonsense and yelling at the cop, but it is his home. Once the government intruded and was shown its intrusion was unwarranted, no matter how reasonable their response to the 911 call was, they need to respect property rights and take off. You still have the right to be loud and crazy and disrespectful to the government on your own homestead, as long as it is just verbal, or so I thought. It’s especially free speech because he was railing against perceived injustices of the government, and not inciting anyone to start fighting, burning or looting, or anything. He was just pissed of at government and got loud about it.

It’s the “he did it on his porch, not in his house” distinction that’s really confusing me, and I’m a lawyer who works for the State of Texas. It’s still his property, the whole circus outside was not his fault but the fault of the excessive police response, and all he was doing was yelling. If he were yelling the same things in a park, or on a street corner, is that really disorderly? It’s pretty much the definition of free speech — we get to rant and rave at the government, even raising our voices, and as long as the crowd is just standing around and watching there is no disorder.

I’m really kind of surprised how some on the Right are dealing with this. It’s pure free speech and property rights to me, but somehow some on the Right are focusing on the content of the speech (cops are inherently racist) and losing the fact that this guy established he was in his own home, never left his property, and still got arrested because the police didn’t like the tone or content of his rant.

The 911 tape and Crowley's account are interesting- Lisa Whalen made the call (for which the left has excoriated her as a racist)= but she says an elderly lady stopped her and pointed out two men breaking open a door, so she looked and made the call- she says she didn't know if a crime was being committed, or if there was just a problem with their key- she doesn't know their race, and said she saw suitcases on the porch.

The person taking the call sounds a little irked and impatient with her- he keeps cutting her off, and once demands something like, "What difference does that make?" Often he cuts her off to ask her a question she would have answered for him previously if he hadn't previously interrupted her.

Crowley said when arrived he talked with the caller outside, and she told him there were two black men and they had backpacks. But Whalen says that wasn't her. So was there somebody? Possibly there was, and he just didn't realize it wasn't the caller. Possibly the elderly lady, but whoever it was, she's unlikely to come forward and admit it at this point, because according to the left it was racist to notice the men shoving a front door open with their shoulders were black.

Something else the 911 call indicates, Gates was not telling the truth when he said he had some sort of illness (bronchial something or other, I think he said) and so he could not possibly have raised his voice.

The article linked above describes the situation thusly:

The professor's supporters called his arrest an outrageous act of racial profiling. Crowley's supporters say Gates was arrested because he was belligerent and that race was not a factor.

I agree that race was not a factor- for Crowley, it clearly was to Gates. I also agree that Gates was arrested because he was belligerent. The point of disagreement between myself and most of my friends is whether or not it is right, in a free society, to arrest a man on his own property for being belligerent to officers who no longer have a legitimate reason to be there. I don't feel sorry for Gates- the more he talks, the more obnoxious and rude he sounds, and my feelings are all on the side of Crowley- I would love to be able to arrest people who talked to me like that and showed that level of incivility. But my principles are on the side of free speech and a man's home is his castle.

As Balko at Reason says:

"Contempt of cop," as it's sometimes called, isn't a crime. Or at least it shouldn't be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The "disorderly conduct" charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults. Crowley is owed an apology for being portrayed as a racist, but he ought to be disciplined for making a wrongful arrest.

He won't be, of course. And that's ultimately the scandal that will endure long after the political furor dies down. The power to forcibly detain a citizen is an extraordinary one. It's taken far too lightly, and is too often abused. And that abuse certainly occurs against black people, but not only against black people. American cops seem to have increasingly little tolerance for people who talk back, even merely to inquire about their rights.

It's a good read- I especially found the links to those arrested for recording the activities of police in the line of duty very eye opening.

Rainbows and Paranoia

Mild profanity

Paraphrase:
"I'm just wondering what the heck is in our water supply, what is it oozing out of the ground, what's making these metallic oxide salts that create a rainbow effect in a sprinkler." Coz, dude, we all know we weren't seeing this kind of thing 20 years ago.

No. 20 years ago we got rainbow effects without using water at all. They were on the inside of our eyelids, man. And sometimes? There were little green men, too. But then my dealer got busted.

Okay, I'm making some of that up. But you'd be surprised.
Does she vote?

She has a blog. On Greenpeace. Comments seem pretty harsh.

I like her. She kind of reminds me of my old friend Gene.

Now multiply that 23.7 times

A trillion seconds is 32,000 YEARS. A trillion dollars- if you spent a million dollars a day for two thousand years you'd be about two thirds of the way there, according to a math professor CNN interviewed. A trillion seconds ago, Neanderthals held sway in Europe.

What could you do with a trillion dollars? You could go on an imaginary shopping spree and see.


Another way of looking at it (via HyScience)-

Mind boggling lack of "unprecedented transparency" by the Obama administration:

The Special Inspector General for TARP, Neil Barofsky, made headlines this week when he estimated that the Obama administration had committed itself to spending as much as $24,000,000,000,000 to fix the American economy. The Treasury fired back at its own SIGTARP, saying that Barofsky inflated the numbers and that they had no intention of spending almost twice America's annual GDP. In an interview with ABC's Jake Tapper, Barofsky explains that the White House currently has dozens of programs dispensing cash, and that the caps on all of those add up to the $24-trillion mark...

I Want a Vegetable Tree

I understand it's free, all I have to do is, like, pay for it. Except why should I have to pay for the land and stuff, because, you know? Fer sure.


It's probably rude to laugh, isn't it?

It is sadly funny- until you think about it and wonder where she learned, to, um, you know, like, think? like that.

Bonnet Tip Tom Elia at The New Editor

Susan Estrich on Health Care

When even Susan Estrich is concerned about the President's admission that he isn't familiar with the details of the health care bill he nevertheless insists must be passed immediately, the President has a problem:

The president is "not familiar" with the bill. No one can explain how it will work yet, as Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., told a contentious town meeting. There are various plans, and negotiations are still in the early stages.

But whatever it is, we should be for it.

Am I missing something?

FLDS, July 27th

The last FLDS child to remain in CPS custody has been released to a relative of the family. Over four hundred and thirty children taken (and adults), and not one of them kept in the system.

Attorney John Floyd has an excellent summary:

the Texas Rangers were notified about the anonymous telephone calls in March 2008 to the New Bridge family crisis center. That law enforcement agency initiated an investigation into the matter as a case of an adult sexually abusing a child. The investigation was led by Ranger Brooks Long. The pleadings stated the Ranger was specifically informed by Jessica Carroll that “Barlow” was Dale Evans Barlow who had been convicted in Arizona’s Mohave County in 2007 for an FLDS sex offense and placed on probation. Carroll stated she learned this information from a “Google search” of the name Barlow. Armed with this “Google search” information, Long secured all the necessary court records from Arizona to verify Carroll’s information. The court documents revealed that Barlow had strict conditions on his probation which restricted him from leaving Arizona without permission from his probation officer. The Ranger then called Mohave County Sheriff Allen Pashano who informed Long that Barlow did not have permission to leave the state. Shortly after this call the Mohave Sheriff’s office notified Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran that it had determined Barlow had never left Mohave County and, in fact, had never been to the Texas FLDS compound. Sheriff Doran shared this information with Long. Finally, Long instructed Schleicher County George Arispe to contact the local medical center to verify the information the pregnant 16-year-old caller had given Carroll about seeking and receiving medical treatment for physical abuse allegedly inflicted by “Dale Barlow.” The medical center informed Deputy Arispe that it had no information on any such pregnant 16-year-old and had not provided any treatment for such a person.

That should have ended “the FLDS case,” right? Not for Ranger Brooks Long. The legal pleadings state that Ranger prepared an affidavit in support of an arrest and search warrant in connection with an alleged sexual assault of a child named “Sarah Jessop” by one “Dale Barlow.” The affidavit informed Judge Walther that Brooks had “credible” information that both the victim and the perpetrator were residing at the FLDS compound. While Long’s affidavit informed Judge Walther that Barlow had been placed on probation for a sex offense conviction obtained in Arizona in 2007, the Ranger neglected to inform the judge that the conditions of Barlow’s probation restricted travel outside of Arizona; that the Mohave Sheriff’s Office had determined that Barlow had never left the State of Arizona; that the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office had provided information to Sheriff Doran’s office that Barlow had never been to the FLDS compound in Texas; that the anonymous caller had told Jessica Carroll that Barlow had left the FLDS compound; and that the Schleicher County Sheriff’s office had determined that the alleged victim had never been treated at the local medical center as she claimed to the New Bridge employees.

In effect, Ranger Long provided the judge with enough false and misleading information to establish probable cause for the issuance of an arrest and search warrant for Dale Barlow. Ranger Long then proceeded to amass an armada of law enforcement officers, SWAT team “precision” snipers, a tank-like armored personnel carrier, a “no fly zone” designation over the area from Homeland Security, and a deployment of military-like surveillance aircraft over the entire area—all this for the single arrest of one suspect who had no history of violence and who reportedly was living among people described by Sheriff Doran as docile and peaceful.

Thanks to Toes for the link- Toes got it from Hugh- all of us like a sound smack given to Marci Hamilton.

Health Care and Massachussetts

Paul Krugman thinks we should look to health care in Massachussetts as a model for government healthcare.
But among many other problems, their health care costs have shot up 28 percent. More here.

Nurse claims she was forced to help with abortion

From the New York Post:

A Brooklyn nurse claims she was forced to choose between her religious convictions and her job when Mount Sinai Hospital ordered her to assist in a late-term abortion against her will.

The hospital even exaggerated the patient's condition and claimed the woman could die if the nurse, a devout Catholic, did not follow orders, the nurse alleges in a lawsuit.

"It felt like a horror film unfolding," said Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, who claims she has had gruesome nightmares and hasn't been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.

She was just following orders- even though when hired she had made it clear she would not help with abortions (and put it in writing). And afterwards she found:

that the hospital's own records deemed the procedure "Category II," which is not considered immediately life threatening.

Not satisfied with coercing her into murder, the hospital staff sought to punish her further:

The day after the procedure, Cenzon-DeCarlo filed a grievance with her union. Later that week, she was cornered by two supervisors who told her if she wanted any more overtime shifts, she would have to sign a statement agreeing to participate in abortions, the suit says.

Regardless of how they felt about the procedure, this seems a rather bizarre decision on the part of hospital staff- is a nurse emotionally conflicted and distraught over abortions really the best choice to assist in an abortion?

Police Stories

A plurality of anecdotes, which I know are not data:

Scott had three squad cars, at least one pulled off of a high profile shooting case, for the crime of baby sitting while white. He knew the right questions to ask, otherwise, the story might have ended differently.

Just last night I heard from a friend of ours, white, male, 20 or so, who, shortly after midnight, was on his way home from a day trip to an amusement park with a friend, also white, 21 or so, and male.

They got pulled over by an officer because, he said, the light over their license plate was burned out. The owner of the car guesses that must have been going on a while, because he didn't even know it has a bulb there. In the course of this stop- the officer required both young men to get of their car; he frisked them; he searched the car, and he demanded to know who they were, where they'd been, and where they were going.

The youngest of the two, our friend, had been sleeping when they got pulled over- he woke up groggy, and the police officer scared him into near senselessness. He suddenly couldn't remember his address, and he doesn't have a driver's license.

This did not endear him to the officer, but eventually they were released and allowed to go on their way. There was no reason to search their car or frisk them, and had the young men known their way around the law as well as Scott, above, they might have been less cooperative. But they were, as everybody I know knows to be when confronted with a cop, deferential, placatory, and humble. Liberal use of sir or ma'am also recommended. Had they yelled at the officer, called him names, and behaved belligerently, I have NO doubt they would have spent the rest of the night in jail. But they didn't behave in that fashion.

Now, I think it's most unfortunate that we live in a society so well trained as to believe that you 'got what you had coming' if you are arrested for passionately objecting to being unjustly pulled over, or visited by the police in your home for something you did not do, for being noisy or even quietly sneering at an officer, perhaps muttering imprecatory Psalms under your breath (that's facetious for the sarcasm impaired). That's a problem. But that doesn't alter the fact that most people I know are extremely deferential and subservient in their manners when stopped by the police.

During that discussion I learned about another young man in our circle- white, mid to late twenties- he spent one summer visiting his girlfriend every single night, leaving late. Over the course of the summer he says he got pulled over at least four times as he was driving in the middle of the night- never got a ticket or even a written warning- but was always pulled over for some trivial reason that was clearly just an excuse to pull over a youngish looking man in the middle of the night and see what he was doing out so late. Every time the cops were brusque, aggressive, and in full intimidation mode. Had this young man responded by screaming, "You guys are just after me because of stereotyping my age group, you jerks just leave me alone, I don't have to put up with this," I have every expectation that he, too, would have gone to jail.

But none of these friends responded with passionate objections - although I think they had that right- because they know that if they argue with the man with the badge and the cuffs, they will lose even if they are right.

My husband got pulled over for no better reason than his looks when he was a young, long-haired punk. He also knew to be deferential, placatory, and humble. He learned this from hard experience, his own and his friends'. I thought he was going to have a heart attack when I told him about being pulled over by a cop when we were dating and how snippy I was with the officer. Basically, he told me, "Never, ever, do that again- you don't know what they might do to you."


Several years ago a then 20 something friend of mine, white, female, told me she'd mouthed off at cops once when she lived in LA, cops she felt had stopped her for no good reason, and she spent the night in jail- with bruises. It was an experience she never forgot and never talked that much about.

My youngest brother, a bit of a rebel (a bit?!) was a skateboarder with hair down to his waist well into his 20's, and he got stopped by cops on a regular basis as he made his way from point A to point B- he didn't get taken to the slammer, so far as I know, because he had also learned to be deferential, subservient, and ingratiating with the police if he wanted to go on with his business with the minimum of fuss. But there was no reason to pull him over simply because he had long hair and was on a skate board (he wasn't ever ticketed for the board, btw, this wasn't about skateboarding in unauthorized places).

I was watching Oprah a couple decades ago, and she had an episode on racial profiling- after her guests spoke she took comments from the audience, and a number of whites told similar stories of harassment and hostile treatment at the hands of the police. One man said he'd been setting off fireworks in his front yard with his family on the fourth of July. He admitted that he had some a bit larger than code. But, he said, the police came, tossed him face down on the ground and called him the 'n' word- this stunned Oprah- the guy was white. He spent the night in jail, IIRC.
Other people shared similar stories. Then a cop got up, outraged, and said, basically, "What you all are missing is that you were all guilty. YOu deserved what you got."

And one of Oprah's guests said, in essence, "What you are missing is that you are a police officer, not a judge, jury, and prison warden selecting our punishment."

Based on the anecdotal experiences of my friends, I suspect that a lot of people are far too optimistic about how this doesn't happen to white guys. I think they underestimate how often the police stop people on what amounts to fishing expeditions.

Scott reviews the Gates/Crowley case and concludes:

I think its root cause may or may not have been racial but was much more definitely the result of basic police training regarding how officers are taught to engage with the public. In this case, even after learning that Gates was in his own home and they'd been called out based on an error, officers still wanted to maintain a "command presence," in the policing lingo, and Professor Gates apparently was having none of it.

Insofar as race was involved, it appears to me that was largely Professor Gate's doing the stereotyping and profiling. I think Gates behaved and continues to behave very, very poorly. Rather than race, I think this conflict was the result of a collision between Gates' sense of privilege and entitlement and the officer's sense of entitlement to deference to his 'command presence.'

I hope the tapes of the officer's radio calls will be released, but I expect neither Gates or Crowley really wants that to happen, as we will find that each of them behaved less well than they would like us to believe.

Sunday Hymn Post

This is one of Shasta's favorite songs to sing around the bonfire pit here, Shasta used to help out with the music at a Cowboy Church), and he liked it even before he knew about the newborn baby he hopes to be holding come September.

Because He Lives

the Gaithers

God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.



How sweet to hold a newborn baby,
And feel the pride and joy he gives.
But greater still the calm assurance,
This child can face uncertain days because He lives.



Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.


And then one day I'll cross the river,
I'll fight life's final war with pain.
And then as death gives way to victory,
I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives.

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone!
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living just because He lives!

Hear it acapella here.

The Examined Life

Repost:

The most important point that Arnold Bennett makes in 'How To Live On 24 Hours a Day' is that some time every day, perhaps during the commute home from work, should be spent on some self-examination. As others have mentioned before, including those of us here at the Common Room, happiness is not the goal, it is a by-product. When we focus on happiness or that other will 'o the wisp, 'fulfilment,' these things actually become more and elusive, slipping just out of our grasp and distracting us from the sorts of things that provide more meaning and fulfillment to life. Bennet says that:

happiness comes 'from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

Towards that end he recommends that in every day, some part should be devoted:

'to the deliberate consideration of your reason, principles, and conduct...'

...a life in which conduct does not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution. What leads to the permanent sorrowfulness of burglars is that their principles are contrary to burglary. If they genuinely
believed in the moral excellence of burglary, penal servitude would simply mean so many happy years for them; all martyrs are happy, because their conduct and their principles agree.

Writing in roughly the same era, Charlotte Mason wrote:
A due recognition of the function of reason should be an enormous help to us all in days when the air is full of fallacies.... Nevertheless, it is something to recognise that probably no wrong thing has ever been done or said, no crime committed, but has been justified to the perpetrator by arguments coming to him involuntarily and produced with cumulative force by his own reason.
Charlotte Mason, volume 6, page 143

Writing some decades later, Chuck Colson said of his (at the time) well deliberated reasons for his involvement in Watergate:

... we humans all have an infinite capacity for self-justification. Jeremiah was right: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: Who can know it?'"
~ Chuck Colson, Breakpoint, 'The Return of Watergate'

Arnold Bennett points out some evidence that we are less reasonable people than we imagine:

As for reason (which makes conduct, and is not unconnected with the making of principles), it plays a far smaller part in our lives than we fancy. We are supposed to be reasonable but we are much more instinctive than reasonable. And the less we reflect, the less reasonable we shall be. The next time you get cross with the waiter because your steak is over-cooked, ask reason to step into the cabinet-room of your mind, and consult her. She will probably tell you that the waiter did not cook the steak, and had no control over the cooking of the steak; and that even if he alone was to blame, you accomplished nothing good by getting
cross; you merely lost your dignity, looked a fool in the eyes of sensible men, and soured the waiter, while producing no effect whatever on the steak.

Charlotte Mason put it this way:

"After abundant practice in reasoning and tracing out the reasons of others, whether in fact or fiction, children may readily be brought to the conclusions that reasonable and right are not synonymous terms; that reason is their servant, not their ruler.... But no more than appetite, ambition, or the love of ease, is reason to be trusted with the government of a man, much less that of a state; because well-reasoned arguments are brought into play for a wrong course as for a right. He will see that reason works involuntarily; that all the beautiful steps follow one another in his mind without any activity or intention on his own part; but he need never suppose that he was hurried along into evil by thoughts which he could not help, because reason never begins it. It is only when he chooses to think about some course or plan, as Eve standing before the apples, that reason comes into play; so, if he chooses to think about a purpose that is good, many excellent reasons will hurry up to support him; but, alas, if he choose to entertain a wrong notion, he, as it were, rings the bell for reason, which enforces his wrong intention with a score of arguments proving that wrong is right. "

~ Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pages 142-3Emphasis mine

This honest self-evaluation on a daily business is no easy thing. And quite often those of who read the most books are reading our books to avoid this very uncomfortable practice, but as Arnold Bennett says:

no reading of books will take the place of a daily, candid, honest examination of what one has recently done, and what one is about to do--of a steady looking at one's self in the face (disconcerting though the sight may be).

Richard Mitchell, writing several decades later in a book I cannot recommend highly enough- The Gift of Fire- also addresses the importance of accurate, open-eyed, even ruthless self-examination in order to attain genuine self-knowledge- which is the furthest thing imaginable from self-esteem. He says,

"It is a power that we all nod at, when we hear of it, for we all have it, and even use it once in a while, although often under duress. Self-knowledge may be good to have, but whenever I get a flash of it, I find myself hoping that no one else knows what I have just come to know."

Reading books is an important part of self-examination, if I'm reading good, well written books, books by such authors as Jane Austen, Dickens, Tolkien, Dostoevsky, and others. This is because an excellent writer is able to give us insight into the inner lives of other characters that we may not otherwise be able to able to experience. And we can turn that mirror around and see ourselves. Something along these lines, says Mitchell (and nearly every educator in the classic tradition, which tradition Charlotte Mason actually followed more closely than Dorothy Sayers):

It is power over the inner world, the ability to know and judge the self and to do something about it. It is not, therefore, the same as whatever it is that gives us power over the outer world, the stubborn public world of Nature and Necessity. The two powers neither preclude each other nor include each other. In any mind, either may exist alone, both may exist, and, of course, in any mind, both may be absent.

The two powers are not exactly equal counterparts, however, for the power over the inner world can make judgment of the power over the outer world. By the latter, we can do something; by the former, we can decide whether we should do what we can do.

Should we, in fact, destroy most of the world and its people, future generations might say of us:

They did what they could. They did anything and everything they could. They seem to have had no way of knowing, and were not especially interested in asking, whether they should do whatever they could.

The ability to know and judge the self may seem a rather minimal, and, to some, even a selfish and antisocial definition of education, but imagine instead some understanding of education from which it is excluded. Such an understanding is what is stuck in our heads by popular beliefs about schooling. Out of it, we suppose that a brain surgeon--why is it always brain surgeons?--is educated. And we suppose the same, but without expecting to pay as much for it, of our teachers and professors, especially of those who have stuck us with the idea that education is the power to work change in the outer world of Nature and Necessity. And then we say that it is all those overeducated theorists and physicists who are going to blow us all up.

Plato famously said the unexamined life is not worth living, and sometimes I think he was a bit of a snob for saying so. I suspect that when I think that, part of the problem is my own unexamined life and my lack of understanding. I doubt very much he was speaking of that sort of self-centered, self appreciative naval gazing promoted in the self-help section of our bookstores and in women's magazines. Richard Mitchell's thinking is more informed:

He who has no reliable way of telling rubbish from Reason can have no knowledge of the self that he is to judge and control, by which judgment, and only by which judgment, he is able to choose the better over the worse. It will not only be the voice of the world that deceives him; his own voice will deceive him. As to his own beliefs and propositions, which may not even be his own, but only his recitations of what the world says, he will not be able to tell rubbish from Reason. That condition, however, need not hinder his effectiveness in bringing about changes in the outer world. He may be perfectly capable of what is nowadays called "excellence," which is the new name for a particularly visible combination of efficiency and success, a high and measurable degree of effectiveness in problem-solving. It has to do with such things as the marketing of blow dryers, in which sort of enterprise the words "better" and "worse" have not the same meanings as they had for the men who didn't throw stones.

In another time and place this same need for some sort of accurate, objective self-examination is recommended in such terms as “search me and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts" (Psalms 139), "Take ye therefore good heed to yourselves, lest ye corrupt yourselves." (Deut 5:15,16), "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith: prove your own selves. Know ye not your ownselves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (II Cor. 13:5), "My spirit made diligent search" (Ps. 77:6) "I thought on my ways" (Ps. 119:59). There we are also warned against the unexamined life and against a less than careful self-examination- we... behold our faces in a glass, and soon forget what manner of men we are" (James 1:23-24),"The heart of man is deceitful" (Jer. 17:9)“He that trusts his own heart, is a fool” (Prov. 28:26).

True education will equip us to make this sort of unflinching, genuine self-examination, which will be the opposite of self-admiration. In making that self-examination, the truly educated will be able to discern rubbish from reason, and then do something about it.

Does my conduct match my principles? Does yours? I do not mean in general terms. I mean, if spend a few minutes thinking about specific actions I took (or did not take) today, did they match my principles? What adjustments do I need to make? Did the choices I make today reflect my principles or contradict them? If I can justify them, does my reasoning match my principles? Are these comfortable questions? Not particularly. Does a young mother with five children under six have the leisure (or the clear-headed insight of those who have gotten a full night's sleep) to do this on a daily basis? Probably not. But because we cannot always be examining our lives and considering our conduct does not mean we never should try.

And the thing about this examined life is that it can be done without tools, without books, without paper. It can be done while nursing the baby, while lying in bed, while chopping onions for supper, while walking to the park or driving to swimming lessons.

Previous posts on related topics here, here, here, and here.

The Engine of Poverty

Don't agree with every jot and tittle, but this is a good read:

If you are motivated by a humanitarian desire to help the poor – the ostensible mission of much of the modern liberal state – you must realize that nothing helps them more than the increased standard of living and economic opportunity brought about by the private sector. Every government action that shrinks the private sector hurts the poor. It hurts everyone else, too, except for the political class, and the plutocrats who find ways to shape legislation to their benefit… but it hurts the poor the most. Consider the “stimulus” travesty Obama and the Democrats shoved down the nation’s throat. It stimulated nothing, and drained billions of dollars away from a private economy that could have used those resources better. It wasn’t merely a waste of money. The value of every wasted government dollar must be judged by what free enterprise could have accomplished with it. The untold tragedy of the economy is the hidden story of all the things free people could do, if we started emptying out some of those fortresses in Washington and returning their money to them. The economy we have today might make you angry, but the economy we could have should make you furious.

Out of Town...ish

Shasta and The Equuschick are heading north to house and dog-sit for some friends this week, so be sure to miss them dreadfully and to sniffle a bit when you remember that The Equuschick is Offline.

She is a bit tense about packing and such at the moment but once she is there she plans to spend the week on the couch with lots of puppies watching Animal Planet and going to a County Fair with Shasta and she won't talk to any peoples but Shasta, she doesn't think, and she'll read and eat alot and be quiet and with any luck, she'll be able to go most of the week without seeing People as such at all except for Sunday.

Hey, The Equuschick has had a very stretching and growing week. It has been like A Week of Acting Like a Real Grown-up. (Except for the part where the The Tea Chemist and The Equuschick played on the playground toys, she forgot about that.)

But ant-social remains what The Equuschick does best.

Wierd Quirks

When my husband is out of town on a business trip I will stay up way too late reading or perusing the internet in bed. I may go to sleep with the light on. I may go to sleep watching a DVD in the laptop. I will go to sleep surrounded by books and writing material. I will totally take his pillow.

What I won't do?

Sleep anywhere but my side of the bed. I don't take his side, I won't even spread out and take the middle. I stay strictly on my side of the bed, just as if he were where he belongs, next to me.

Because in my heart, he is.

Yes, this week my husband was gone, He left Sunday afternoon on a business trip and he got back yesterday evening with enough time for a nap before our monthly singing (we had around forty people). This is one of the weightier reasons why we had decided that the boys would not come until Friday, but when asked by the five year old I couldn't resist and so they came on Wednesday instead.=)
I could NOT do this if it weren't for the way all the Progeny at home and even our summer Gumly (guest/family) really pull together and pick up all my slack. They are all amazing.

How did he feel when he found out we got the boys so much sooner than we'd said we would have them? Well, my husband says my low sales resistance to adorable five year olds is one of the things he loves about me.=)

I am richly blessed and it is a humbling thing.

Freudian Slip?

Obama promised greater inefficiencies in Health Care. See the video here.

Liberty and the Government

Jefferson believed that government was the greatest, if not only, threat to individual liberty. He wrote that “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”[6]This is so because those who gain positions of power tend always to extend the bounds of it. Power must always be constrained or limited else it will increase to the level that it will be despotic. Jefferson wrote to Judge Spencer Roane in 1819, “It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also. . . .”[7]With this principle of necessary limitation in mind, Jefferson declared “that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest upon inference.”[8]

Jefferson’s position was that neither the United States, nor any of the branches of the government, nor of the states, is the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution. Ultimate authority is not vested in the United States government. It is a limited government. On the dispersion of powers among the governments, he wrote to Joseph C. Cabell in 1816: “Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties . . . .” and so forth. “It is by dividing and subdividing . . . that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body . . . .”[11

More here.

The Equuschick Was Visited by a Creative Spirit This Morning

(That doesn't usually happen, really.)

In the process of wrapping a birthday present for a friend she discovered that the only wrapping paper she had was either wedding or Christmas themed. Just not the thing for a July birthday, you know.

But as this particular friend is of a creative turn of mind herself and is fond of cooking, The Equuschick dug out a number of cooking magazines from the recesses of a cupboard somewhere and selected some recipes with yummy-looking illustrations and cut out enough pages to wrap the gift neatly and at the same time, preserve the recipes.

She tried to persuade the Creative Spirit to stay a while and have some tea, but one supposes that sort of spirit must always be busy finding distracted morons like The Equuschick to inspire.

The HG and Being a Nanny

"I need some ideas," Mom, she told me last night, "On entertaining six children under five."

I told her I'd ask the blog world, and she said that would be fine.

Yesterday she had those six under fives in her room and Strider got online. They have webcam access. At first the children were slow to warm up, but Strider is not a shy violet. He quickly gained their interest, if not their understanding in exactly how this magical machine worked.

He showed them the family dogs, first one, then the other. He showed them something else. Then:

"Hey!" asked a five year old, "Can you show us a sheep?"

So... suggestions for amusing six children five and under- what have you got for us?

Eugenics and the Science Czar, cont.

Previously I blogged about the abortion as eugenics statement from Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg recently, the one where she said she thought the reason people were in favor of abortion was to reduce the surplus population of undesirable groups. She realized that wasn't the motivation when, in 1980, the court upheld the ban on Medicaid funding of abortion. William Grigg at Reason makes one of the same points I made, only more succinctly:

there was an interval of roughly seven years during which Ginsburg, a well-informed and influential academic, believed that America was creating a eugenicist system in which abortion would help reduce “undesirable” populations -- however those populations would be defined. This was what Roe had wrought, Ginsburg believed for several years, and if she ever experienced misgivings about it, she managed to keep them private.

Exactly- and I find that immensely disturbing, creepy, even. Reason's Grigg asks another question- WHY did she think that the purpose of abortion support was to recreate a eugenicist system in America?

Where did Ginsburg -- a rising star in academe long before being tapped to fill the Rosa Klebb seat on the Supreme Court -- get the impression that American policy-making elites were discussing the use of welfare subsidies to bring about the attrition of “undesirable” populations?

In 1968 Holden, now Obama's Science Czar, co-authored a nasty little book advocating forced abortion, sterilization and other Nazi like procedures on a public guilty of no greater crime than precreating. I blogged about it here. He co-authored it with Paul Ehrlich, who had published The Population Bomb in 1968. No doubt Bader-Ginsburg was familiar with it, and, at the very least, it offered extremely totalitarian methods of birth control- including forced abortion and sterilization, as possible solutions to the dreadful problem of overpopulation ("Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying."). You can read quotes and entire pages from Holden's book over at Zombietime. Please read it all.

Grigg notes that connection, and also this:

In 1967, sociologist, demographer, and population control heavyweight Kingsley Davis published an essay in Science magazine observing that “the social structure and economy must be changed before a deliberate reduction in the birthrate can be achieved” in the West. He urged governments to subsidize voluntary abortion and sterilization and restructure their tax systems to discourage both marriage and childbirth.


Davis’s recommendations apparently inspired Frederick Jaffe, Vice President of Planned Parenthood, when he composed a 1969 memorandum intended for use as a template for anti-natalist efforts.

Ehrich and Jafee both liked the idea of putting sterilization agents in the water supply, compulsory abortion for out of wedlock pregnancies, and requiring governmental permission to give birth. Other sources for Bader-Ginsburg's understanding that her pro-choice peers were in it for the eugenics:

Kingsley Davis, Margaret Mead, Paul Ehrlich, and sundry Planned Parenthood leaders – who endorsed the 1971 manifesto The Case for Compulsory Birth Controlby Edgar R. Chasteen. That book offered one-stop shopping for policy-makers seeking draconian population management methods.

Just how far were the pro-choice eugenicists willing to go?

Arguably the most astonishing variant on this approach was proposed in 1994, just prior to the UN's International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt.

In a book entitled Too Many People, Sir Roy Calne, a noted British physician, proposed a universal minimum childbearing age of 25, and a strict two-child quota. Those seeking the government-dispensed "privilege" of having children would have to pass a state-mandated parenting class and receive the appropriate "reproduction license." Those who violate those restrictions would lose their children and face Chinese-style economic sanctions and criminal punishments.

Calne also suggested the development of an engineered sterility pathogen -- he called it the "O virus" -- that could be administered to women world-wide as a vaccine.

Here's a slightly edited repost of something I wrote about Ehrlich a few years ago: IN his book The Population Bomb, Ehrlich describes his epiphany, that moment when he was suddenly blinded by the light of his knowledge that overpopulation was a cancer and realized the need to take drastic steps to treat individual humans as cancer cells on the earth. Here's what he wrote:

`I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time. I came to understand it emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi a few years ago. My wife and daughter and I were returning to our hotel in an ancient taxi. The seats were hopping with fleas. The only functional gear was third. As we crawled through the city, we entered a crowded slum area. The temperature was well over 100, and the air was a haze of dust and smoke. The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved slowly through the mob, hand horn squawking, the dust, noise, heat and cooking fires gave the scene a hellish aspect. Would we ever get to our hotel? All three of us were, frankly, frightened. It seemed that anything could happen - but, of course, nothing did. …….Perhaps, but since that night I’ve known the feel of overpopulation. '

As more than one of his readers and reviewers has noted, the population density is just as great (or greater) in New York, London, and Tokyo as it is in Delhi. Population density was not the problem in India. The problem was poverty. I'm not so sure, however, that an equal amount of poverty in the apartments in New York would not have resulted in such an emotional reaction from Ehrlich.

It seems to be the very 'otherness' of the darker skinned Indians that made their teeming proximity so disturbing to him.

Here's what the Ehrlichs think of their book now:
Perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Ehrlich Quotes

Oh. Right.

So, about that home-school co-op the one where I mysteriously have found myself volunteering to serve on the board- I was teaching two or three classes, had shanghaied my mother and two oldest daughters to teach three other classes (the older girls for second semester, as they thought themselves rather too busy to take it up this September), and was just starting lesson prep when I got a reprieve- the building that was hosting us wants us to wait until next year.

Well, not the building, you understand. While some buildings are endowed with a very obvious personality and quite capable of having wishes and making them know, this building is an impersonal structure which has no wishes.* The caretakers and board in charge of the building expressed the desire that we wait.

"Are you okay with that?" asked the HG's future Mama-in-law as we rode together on the way to the five acre discount store to look for things for our young couple's cozy first apartment together. "Does that timing work better for you, or is it hard to put it off so much further in the distance?"

"Oh, much, much better," I said. For one thing, I was having to start a co-op, and start teaching classes the same month I am expecting a grandbaby and then having a wedding the next month. That was a little insane. That won't be happening in September of 2010."

There was a long and very pregnant pause in the vehicle as a certain realization struck us both at exactly the same time, and we blurted out together: "But that's what I/you would have assumed around this time last year!!"

Chronologically, Jenny should be next (and that's what all the little old ladies are telling her), but I absolutely cross my heart pinky swear promise you that there are no young men in our lives whom we suspect have designs on our Jenny.

Of course, this time last year, Strider didn't have designs on our HG, either, or if he did, he wasn't sharing them or making them obvious. We certainly didn't suspect (we had suspected a couple years previously, but then nothing came of it, supposedly because somebody thought we'd swat him off faster than toad eats flies).

Still, Jenny has plans. When the HG moves out, she is moving her craft room to the HG's room, which is considerably larger and possesses two, yes, count them two, closets useful for storing crafts, dresses in progress, and other such domestic and couture related goodnesses. She says it doesn't matter who asks her anything, she absolutely cannot possibly leave the parental home until she has had time to make good use of the new craft room. She has Plans and she means to use them in that craft room.

So did the HG have plans, you know. She was going to move to Spain.

And we know what the poet/philosopher Burns says about plans.
--------------------------------------------------------------

*Of course we think buildings have personalities. We are people who name our refrigerator.

Health Care Research

Betsy recommends a health care post by Cliff Asness of Stumbling On Truth

Here's a point I'd not thought of:

He goes on to refute the arguments about Canadians paying less for medicine than we do by explaining the differences between the fixed costs of researching a new medicine and the variable costs of producing more pills. From there it's on to looking at costs in countries with socialized medicine and reminding us that the United States, by providing the economic benefits of medical research is, in a sense, subsidizing their health care. If they had to depend just on what it was profitable for innovators to develop in their own countries, they wouldn't have any access to all the wonderful developments we've seen in medical care in our lifetimes. And if we "reform" our system as the Democrats are proposing, we won't have anywhere to look to for providing the next generation's medical breakthroughs. And we will all pay in the cures not yet discovered.

Is he right? How much medical research do companies in other countries do? I really don't know.

I Think Obama Was Right About the Gates Case

Betsy's Page has a round-up of responses. On this point (which I've seen made elsewhere), I don't fully agree:

even though Obama has no idea of what really went on in Professor Gates' house, he stated that the police acted stupidly and pondered the possibility of racism. It's always helpful to have the President of the United States offer a criticism of a local police matter about which he admits he doesn't know what went on in the house. Since Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct and not for breaking into the house, it might be pertinent to know actually how Gates behaved when confronted by the police - just what Obama admits that he doesn't know.

It's true that he said he didn't know all the details, but he did say Professor Gates was his friend. If the police arrested a friend of mine on a possible burglary call where they found that my friend was actually 'breaking' into his own house because the door was jammed or he'd lost the key, then I'd call the police names, too. Yes, Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct. He was in his own home and the police were there and he didn't want them. He showed them I.D. Yes, he was probably rude and belligerent. I don't really think stupid is the word the President wanted here- I suspect more accurate words would include terms like these: arrogant, bullying, and chip on their shoulders.

I don't particularly care if Gates was rude and called them names. He may well have over-reacted and been unfair to them. I don't care. The power to arrest somebody should not be used because a police officer is huffy about having his personal dignity somehow impugned by an otherwise innocent man clearly having a frustrating evening (the reason he had to break into his home in the first place).

Once they confirmed that he was legitimately in the house, they should have just been grown ups and shrugged off any name-calling and left quickly, since it would now be obvious to them they were bothering a man who was inside his own castle, where they no longer had legitimate business. They arrested him because they could. It's a perfect illustration of how power goes to men's heads and makes them act like petty tyrants- a perfect illustration of why I don't want the government amassing more power to itself.

The Science Czar and Eugenics

In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" -- in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational "Planetary Regime" should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans' lives -- using an armed international police force.

Impossible, you say? That must be an exaggeration or a hoax. No one in their right mind would say such things.

Well, I hate to break the news to you, but it is no hoax, no exaggeration. John Holdren really did say those things, and this report contains the proof. Below you will find photographs, scans, and transcriptions of pages in the book Ecoscience, co-authored in 1977 by John Holdren and his close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. The scans and photos are provided to supply conclusive evidence that the words attributed to Holdren are unaltered and accurately transcribed.

Here's a specific quote from the book:

One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

Scarlet letter, anyone? It's a nightmarish combinatin of the worst attitudes in The Scarlet Letter with a soupcon of Nazi-ism, and a dash of the sort of attitudes that led to the government sanctioned kidnapping of hundreds of Indian children who were then adopted out.

Be sure to read it all. In point of fact, HOlden hasn't actually recanted any of this, but even if he had, I don't think these positions were ever excusable or acceptable and they mark him as unfit for any sort of offical position in the White House.

Defrauding Chicago's Children

Stories like this one seriously upset me. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Under the 2001 No Child Left Behind law, states must test annually in grades 3 through 8 and achieve 100% proficiency by 2014. But the law gives states wide latitude to craft their own exams and to define math and reading proficiency. So state tests vary widely in rigor, and some have lowered passing scores and made other changes that give a false impression of academic success.
...

Chicago students fared much worse on national exams that weren't designed by state officials. On the 2007 state test, for example, 71% of Chicago's 8th graders met or exceeded state standards in math, up from 32% in 2005. But results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam, a federal standardized test sponsored by the Department of Education, show that only 13% of the city's 8th graders were proficient in math in 2007. While that was better than 11% in 2005, it wasn't close to the 39 percentage-point increase reflected on the Illinois state exam.

I feel a little sick inside. Who made this decision to simply alter the tests to hide the dismal ignorance of Chicago's schoolchildren from the government and from themselves? ON what basis? It's horrifying. It displays a contemptible level of disdain for the children who are being cheated and defrauded of an education, and then lied to about it.

What sort of future can these poor, deluded, defrauded, and academically neglected children expect? They have been lied to about the quality of education they are receiving. They believe that they have made incredible, impressive improvements in their math skills, that they are doing well when they are failing. If they could understand their test scores, which is doubtful, they would believe they meet or exceed the math skills of 70 percent of their fellow students across this country- when in fact, they are at the bottom of the pile. But they don't know that. They have no way to know that, and the officials who are responsible for seeing to it that they receive an education would rather not bother with the hard work of educating those students- they'd rather play a shell game with their education.

And for this, they get raises, promotions, accolades- while the students they have defrauded will end up on welfare, puzzled by how much harder life is than they should have a right to expect.

On another occasion when I wrote in this vein, a liberal commenter told me I sounded 'snobby.' I wanted to cry. Not because she hurt my widdle feelings. No. Because- Good Heavens. What on earth have we come to when it's snobby to expect schools to actually educate their charges to read and cypher rather than lie to them and tell them they can read and cipher proficiently when, in fact, they are basically functionally illiterate in both letters and numbers and will never be able to support themselves?

Why is it snobby to yearn for all children to learn to read and write, but it's somehow excusable to take money for teaching them those things and then to twiddle the tests so they do pretty well without the bother of actually helping them learn?

The school and city officials who preferred redesigning the tests to redesigning the education being offered to children deserve prison sentences.

Long ones. Solitary confinement. Bread and water. And their guards should be the now grown up children who have been so poorly used by their erstwhile guardians.

HT Tom Elia

The President's Press Conference

If you've read our morning posts, you know that I was otherwise occupied with Blynken and Nod last night, so I completely missed the press conference.

Here's a transcript.

What do you think? High points? Low points? Amusing points? Puzzling points?

other links:

Newsweek- Newsweek said they were going in a more liberal direction, but they seem a bit underwhelmed by Obama's press conference.

The New York Times- I am stunned. They appear to have fact-checked him and fact-checked him good. :

The president continued to take credit for deficit reduction by making a claim that has been challenged by many experts.

“If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made,” the deficit over the next 10 years would be $2.2 trillion greater, the president said.

In fact, $1.5 trillion of those “savings” are mainly based on an assumption that the United States would have had as many troops in Iraq in 10 years as it did when Mr. Obama took office. But before leaving office, President George W. Bush signed an agreement with Baghdad mandating the withdrawal of all American forces within three years.

So Mr. Obama is claiming credit for not spending money that, under the policy he inherited from Mr. Bush, would never have been spent in the first place.

The NYT said that? What just happened here? They suddenly discovered that they want to be reporters after all rather than the public relations cheerleaders for Obama? OR was he so egregiously dishonest that they just couldn't help it? I really don't know, but it's a welcome change.

Betsy's Page has a round-up of responses.

Early Birds in the Palace of Night Owls

Last night we picked Blynken and Nod up on our way to midweek Bible study. It's actually not on our way- it added about an hour to the drive. But we picked them up.

"They are really tired," said their mother. "THIS one [pointing at Nod] wouldn't take his nap when I told him to, and now he's exhausted. He'll probably fall asleep as soon as you start driving."

He was obviously tired- he cried a lot about leaving- the first time he's done that, and it was pretty heart-wrenching. But eventually we extricated ourselves and drove off. He did not fall asleep, but he did get pretty silly.

We went to Bible study. We had burgers. We sang songs. We played chase- one of the main things they like to do is simply run from one end of the house to the other as hard as they can (they live in an upstairs apartment). We brushed teeth, looking for monkeys, lions, tigers, and bears, and then we sang opera scales while brushing more teeth. I hope you know that this is the ONLY way to brush teeth properly.

And then... we read. And read. And read.


Chicken Soup with Rice, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Story of Ping, The Story of Little Babaji, The Little Engine that Could, Each Peach Pear Plum, Block City- and then the Boy took them up to their beds and read another book to them.
Then the girls got home (they'd been at a girls' Bible study), and Pip read them a book. She left them to fall asleep and instead they worked at keeping each other awake by singing (loudly) songs such as "The Foolish Man Built His House Upon the Sand." Actually, they may not have been keeping each other awake as much as keeping their courage up. Then the FYG read to them. And finally, they fell asleep.

Later than usual, well past their normal bedtime, exhausted, sleep deprived, lacking naps, ready to really get some lost sleep time in.

So guess what time they woke up this morning?

The Return of Blynken and Nod

They were supposed to come this weekend. I got a phone call from Blynken today, asking in a small voice, "Can we come today to stay with you again?"

Actually, there were several very good, most excellent, and jim-dandy reasons why we had set the date of their next visit for this week-end and not sooner. These reasons, placed upon a hypothetical scale, were weighty, important, reasonable. The scales, in fact, hung heavy and low, just brushing the ground, so laden were they with important reasons why Friday and not a minute sooner was best.

Blynken's small voice came through the long distance phone call and lighted, gently, like a feather, upon the other side of the scale, and its very weightlessness flung all those many weighty, important reasons to the four winds like so much chaff.

"We'll be there in a couple hours," I said.

Learning from Experience

Although we like to say experience is the best teacher, a teacher I once knew disagreed. He said maybe this was true when talking about other people's experiences. He had found it far less painful, he said, to learn from their mistakes rather than his own.*

There are two ways of making men sensible of the preciousness of time. One is, by showing them the reason why it must be precious, by telling them how much depends on it, how short it is, how uncertain, etc. The other is experience, wherein men are convinced how much depends on the improvement of time. The latter is the most effectual way; for that always convinces, if nothing else doth. — But if persons be not convinced by the former means, the latter will do them no good. If the former be ineffectual, the latter, though it be certain, yet is always too late. Experience never fails to open the eyes of men, though they were never opened before. But if they be first opened by that, it is no way to their benefit. Let all therefore be persuaded to improve their time to their utmost.

Johnathan Edwards
*Of course, he learned that by experience.

North Korean Labor Camps

The Washington Post has an excellent article- very disturbing, but excellent.

Some details- there are an estimated 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea's slave labor camps. They eat corn and salt and die in their fifties- or sooner.

Americans don't give much thought to them:

even though they have existed for half a century, 12 times as long as the Nazi concentration camps and twice as long as the Soviet Gulag. Although precise numbers are impossible to obtain, Western governments and human groups estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have died in the North Korean camps.

Prisoners are shot for attempting escape, and other prisoners are required to watch.

It's excrutiatingly grim and horrible (you may want to stop reading now):

Like several former prisoners, Jung said the most arduous part of his imprisonment was his pre-camp interrogation at the hands of the Bowibu, the National Security Agency. After eight years in a government office that handled trade with China, a fellow worker accused him of being a South Korean agent.

"They wanted me to admit to being a spy," Jung said. "They knocked out my front teeth with a baseball bat. They fractured my skull a couple of times. I was not a spy, but I admitted to being a spy after nine months of torture."

When he was arrested, Jung said, he weighed 167 pounds. When his interrogation was finished, he said, he weighed 80 pounds. "When I finally got to the camp, I actually gained weight," said Jung, who worked summers in cornfields and spent winters in the mountains felling trees.

How do we know:

The motives and credibility of North Korean defectors in the South are not without question. They are desperate to make a living. Many refuse to talk unless they are paid. South Korean psychologists who debrief defectors describe them as angry, distrustful and confused. But in hundreds of separate interviews conducted over two decades, defectors have told similar stories that paint a consistent portrait of life, work, torment and death in the camps.

Your children can (and will) go to the camps for crimes you or their grandparents commit:

Most North Koreans are sent there without any judicial process. Many inmates die in the camps unaware of the charges against them. Guilt by association is legal under North Korean law, and up to three generations of a wrongdoer's family are sometimes imprisoned, following a rule from North Korea's founding dictator, Kim Il Sung: "Enemies of class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three generations."

Those who kill themselves out of despair are sentencing their surviving relatives to longer and more brutal terms of imprisonment.

Obama to Blue Dog Dem: You're Destroying My Presidency

From FEE:

“House Democrats want to give doctors a $245 billion sweetener that helps ensure their critical support for a health care overhaul bill. Next up: trying to explain how they could do it without breaking President Barack Obama’s promise that health legislation won’t increase the federal deficit.” (AP, Wednesday)

Since apparently they can't be convinced on principle, the government is going to bribe them into acceptance- using our own money against us. Sweet.

And this doesn't smell pretty, either:

And speaking of less than principled interests-

"... the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Secret Service asking about visits from 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and other players in the debate. The group wants the material in order to gauge the influence of those executives in crafting a new healthcare policy."

It would appear the President ( does not want the public or anybody else 'gauging the influence of those executives'. Hmm. Remember when:

"As a candidate, President Obama vowed that in devising a healthcare bill he would invite in TV cameras -- specifically C-SPAN -- so that Americans could have a window into negotiations that normally play out behind closed doors. "

He has consistently refused to do this, or anything like it.

Having promised transparency, the administration should be willing to disclose who it is consulting in shaping healthcare policy, said an attorney for the citizens' group. In its letter requesting the records, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics asked about visits from Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America; Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans; William Weldon, chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson; and J. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Assn., among others.

Mayo Clinic has looked at what Obama is offering, and they are not on board any more.

Obama is angry with wavering Democrats because their refusal to buy into his health care boondoggle is, and this is rich, going to destroy his presidency. Not the country. Not uninsured families. Not the elderly, the young, the poor, but his own personal power trip.

Democrats insist that the problem is Obama's unwillingness to offer substantive specifics:

“We appreciate the rhetoric and his willingness to ratchet up the pressure but what most Democrats on the Hill are looking for is for the president to weigh in and make decisions on outstanding issues. Instead of sending out his people and saying the president isn’t ruling anything out, members would like a little bit of clarity on what he would support – especially on how to pay for his health reform bill,” a senior Democratic congressional source tells CNN.

I would guess the reason he doesn't want to explain how he's going to pay for it is because he does not have a cost effective plan, as demonstrated when the non-partisan CBO pointed out his plan was going to raise deficit levels, contrary to his promises. He doesn't want to get caught out again, and the only way to avoid that is not to share any numbers. And, of course, for him, it's all about 'his presidency,' so it doesn't matter how it gets paid for.

HotAir clarifies that for the President:

If he can’t deliver on his centerpiece policy goal with bulletproof majorities in Congress, not only will it haunt him in 2012 but he’ll have to reconsider the public’s appetite for the whole Hopenchange/Great Society agenda. Failure wouldn’t destroy his presidency so much as it would destroy his presidency as he imagined it; he’d have to remake himself as a sort of Clintonian centrist and become the “pragmatist” all those thoughtful conservatives like David Brooks and Christopher Buckley promised us he’d be before he was sworn in and started pushing 13-digit deficits.

Rep. Nadler (D, NY) wouldn't take the health care plan he wants to force on the rest of us as a gift. Not if it means he has to give up his current plan:

Nadler’s wife has an even better plan than Congress, according to Nadler, so he doesn’t need the current gold-plated coverage he receives. Well, okay, but would Nadler give up his wife’s coverage to adopt ObamaCare? After all, Nadler and his allies keep insisting that it will provide better coverage for less cost than other plans, which is why they’re insisting on keeping the public plan as part of the final bill, which will result in forcing insurers out of the industry. If so, why won’t Nadler switch to it?

I think we all know the answer to that question. Nadler and the people crafting this bill like choice for themselves, but don’t want the rest of America to have the same options.

There's video.

Via Ace (in the margins):

ABC Anchor Chris Cuomo Ponders, "Is the GOP Being Reckless with Health Care Reform?"
It's amazing to me that, given a framework for the bill hasn't even been written yet, the ga-ga media is so certain that it's a great idea to rush an unwritten bill into law in two weeks.

Nancy Pelosi says it's going to pass anyway, no matter what:

There are two words that should describe what we're trying to do: lower cost. Lower cost for the families, lower cost for businesses so they can be more competitive, lower cost for our economy so health care doesn't take such a big chunk, and lower cost for our budget because health care reform is entitlement reform. We have to take that spiral down or otherwise, it's endless in terms of growing the deficit. So, lower cost.

Since when does the government do anything other than possibly national security more efficiently and at lower cost than the private sector?

Uh, Oh

The Boy is reading Calvin and Hobbs, giggling in delight. It is a joy to hear him and see his eager enthusiasm. I hate to interrupt him, but I need him to help his sister with a task. He gets up cheerfully enough to go help out, and I complacently return to my crocheting, and then he nonchalantly says something that makes my blood congeal.

"I am getting so many good ideas from this book," he chortles as he walks off.

He is reading Calvin and Hobbs as an instruction manual.

Zelaya Certified Election Results From an Election That Never Was

A friend writes:

From Babalu and also from QandO

A Catalan newspaper is reporting that Honduran authorities have seized computers found in the Presidential Palace belonging to deposed president Mel Zelaya. These computers, according to the news report, contained the "official" and "certified" results of the illegal constitutional referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct -- a referendum that never actually took place.

You see, there was no referendum. It was aborted by the legal, constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya from power.

And yet, in the presidential palace’s computer, Mr. Zelaya apparently had a complete, certified result of an election that never took place.

This is the man that the Obama Administration, the Hillary Clinton State Department, and the UN insist that the Honduran people to reinstall as their legitimate leader. It's outrageous!

This shocking story broke on Saturday; as of Tuesday night, Not A Word from the various US media outlets. Why not?

That was July 18th.

There was a tiny blurb in USA Today- about two sentences long.

A Washington Times Reporter confirms that she has viewed bank security tapes and records from the Central Bank of Honduras which show Zelaya's staff withdrawing nearly 3 million dollars in cold cash, which was taken to the home of Zelaya's chief of staff on the 24th of June. Why is the President (and the UN) so comfortable with keeping this guy in office, hmmm?

Further Update on ur 13 year old friend

Original update here. They still cannot find a virus and now are looking into auto-immune disorders- specifically, Lupus or Rheumatoid Arthritis, but I don't think they've really ruled anything out.

The fluid build up has not really slowed down, it just thickened and clogged the tubes. She remains in ICU where are they taking very good care of her, and she was able to talk on the phone for a few minutes with the FYG last night (the first time she's been comfortable enough to talk on the phone.

Packing for That Road Trip

I should have posted this first, but I didn't. Oops.


The family posting at The Common Room is a retired military family. This means we have many moves under our belts. Since our marriage some 27 years ago (where does the time go?), we have established our hearth and home in somewhere around 17 separate domiciles. That does not count places where our term of residency was less than two months. We have traveled, oh yes, we have traveled.

One of our favourite traveling tips for large families is the brown bag suitcase. We are sorry if this is not stylish enough for city folk. We have always been more practical than stylish. Of course, it's gotten harder and harder to find brown bags, so now it's the plastic grocery store bag.

The Brown Bag Packing System works like this:
Take one brown bag for each day you will be on the road- label each bag with one day of the week- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. Put one, and only one, change of clothes for each family member in each brown bag, as needed. For instance, you might wear the same denim skirt or pair of blue jeans two days in a row (or more), in which case you'd only have a change of linen (that's underwear) and shirt for you in one of the bags.

The proper way to pack is to smooth each item carefully, fold it in half and smooth it again, possibly fold it a third time if it's a larger item, and then tightly roll up each item of clothing. This reduces wrinkles and enables the packer to pack to maximum capacity.

You'll also want one overnight bag that carries toiletries, nightwear for each member of the family, and any medications. Toiletries that leak should be put inside ziplock bags. You should also include some saftey pins, clothespins, first-aide supplies such as bandages and disinfectant, and a small sewing kit. This bag can and should be genuine luggage, a backpack, or a duffle-bag- something sturdy. IF you are a frequent traveler it helps to keep this bag always the same, and to keep it well stocked- usually with duplicates of items from home.

If on Monday we intend to be driving hard, Monday's bag will only contain comfortable, clean, but not fancy clothing for each family member- t-shirts and denim skirts mostly. If on Tuesday we intend to visit a museum on the road, Tuesday's bag will contain slightly dressier clothing. If on Wednesday we intend to wear the same outfits, Thursday's bag will contain only a change of linen, and Wednesday night we'll go over the clothes we wore with a damp washcloth to freshen them.

We also find that mornings go more smoothly if we unpack those brown bags the night before. It is one of the first things we do upon arriving somewhere. Hang up one person's entire outfit on one hanger (this is one reason why your clothespins might be handy). Loop linen over the top of the hanger, put socks for the next day in the pair of shoes neatly placed on the floor beneath the clothing. This helps smooth out any wrinkles. If you're staying in a hotel you can also hang these in the bathroom during baths and showers so that any wrinkles can be steamed out. If necessary, you can also handwash linens and socks in the sink, wring them out well and clothespin them to a hanger to dry. You can hang this over the heater during the cold season, in front of a window, or while traveling lay these things out flat where the sun streaming in the car window will hit them.

The beauty of this system is that each night we have only to remove one brown sack and one overnight bag from the car, rather than a large and unwieldy suitcase. Another advantage is that The Progeny are not rummaging through the suitcase, hunting up that particular pair of socks and in the process unraveling all my careful packing and disrupting my arrangements with everybody's clothes.

It might be a bit embarrassing to walk past a hotel clerk with one brown paper sack and an overnight bag while seven siblings trail behind their parents, everybody in various stages of travel-stained bedragglement. Personally, I think the mornings run so much more smoothly this way that it's worth the disparaging glances our simple brown sack might attract. However, if you do not, you can also pack some brown bags inside a suitcase. You carry in your nice luggage, but only allow the children to rummage through the brown bag for that day.

Incidentally, as the Progeny have grown up, they prefer to keep their own toothbrushes and travel tubes of toothpaste and other toiletries in their own purses, simplifying travel arrangements even further.

Updated Prayer Request

I shared the update here- short version, she's still in ICU, still has fluid, but they are draining it.

ICU people are marvelous. Ambulance beastly female creature had a cruel streak and apparently went into medicine in order to give her nasty, sadistic, sociopath side full scope by spewing it all over her young, helpless, sick, frightened, defenseless, and worried victims at their most vulnerable time in live. Refused to let Mom ride with 13 year old heart patient (contrary to doctor's orders), slammed door in Mom's face, and rudely told sick, in pain, frightened, very sweet 13 year old heart patient, "You are 13 years old and you don't need your mommy."

I rode in the ambulance with my 22 year old when they thought her horse had kicked her hard enough to rupture her pancreas. She needed her mommy, and her mommy needed to be there. That 13 year old certainly did need her mother- if for no other reason than to protect her from crabby people like the beastly female creature who apparently suffers from jealousy because her young patient actually HAS a heart.

Making Up for Lost Time

Sometimes people are so discouraged:

seeing they have lost so much time, it is not worth their while to attempt to do anything now. The devil makes fools of them; for when they are young, he tells them, there is time enough hereafter, there is no need of being in haste, it will be better seeking salvation hereafter; and then they believe him. Afterwards, when their youth is past, he tells them, that now they have lost so much, and the best of their time, that it is not worth their while to attempt to do anything; and now they believe him too. So that with them no time is good. The season of youth is not a good time; for that is most fit for pleasure and mirth, and there will be enough afterwards. And what comes afterwards is not a good time, because the best of it is gone. Thus are men infatuated and ruined.

Johnathan Edwards

Kombucha and personal quirks

Make your own Kombucha, if you're so inclined. I am not even inclined to drink the stuff, but I consider myself a coward when it comes to liquids with stringy stuff in them. I chew jello (gelatin, to those in other parts), so you see what a wimp I am. I don't even like pulp in my orange juice. If I sip something through my teeth, I don't want to discover that my teeth have been acting as a sieve.

Yes, if you're wondering, I can't swallow ice-cream without chewing it at least once, and I'm hoping you won't ask about yogurt.

Judge for Yourself

What was it he 'made clear at the time it passed?' And when did he make that clear?

And yet he says there's nothing he would have done differently (even though his own VP says they all misjudged the economy).

Weather Bets

Tom Maguire details his efforts to bet on the weather with Nate Silver. It's very interesting. Y'all should read it. But here's the niggling detail that puzzles me.

Nate Silver offered the following bet:

1. For each day that the high temperature in your hometown is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit above average, as listed by Weather Underground, you owe me $25. For each day that it is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit below average, I owe you $25.

There are other caveats and details, you can read them at the link.

But what puzzles me is how Global Warming skeptics are so often accused of confusing weather with climate, and how we've been being told lately (after a run of cooling temperatures and a series of unfortunate events whereby we learned that the hockey stick wasn't really a hockey stick at all, among other things, that it was never really Global Warming, but should more accurately be called Climate Change.

So isn't this bet just measuring weather and not climate? I guess that's okay now, and they really did mean global warming all along?

Health Care, Politics, and a Reality Quiz

Here's a little fact check:

To which political party does the President belong?

And which political party holds the majority in both House and Senate?

And which political party has a filibuster proof majority in both houses?

So if the effort to pass the President's Health Care bill fails, whose fault will that be?

But if the effort to pass the President's Health Care Bill fails, who will the President and his political cronies and the media (but I repeat myself) blame?

More here.

Unfamiliar Sensations

The HG is off for her last summer gig nannying for the family with 11 children, including a set of quads and a set of twins.

Strider is bummed.

So are we.

Pip was in Tennessee since last Wednesday- we picked her up a few hours after dropping the HG off at the airport.

We went to the airport yesterday to drop the HG off and to pick up Pip at a friend's house. the Boy didn't want to go, so he and the Cherub went to the Equuschick's house. The HM couldn't go.

This means that when I walked out of the airport I was accompanied by only two people who were actually related to me.

The last time this happened to me was a few years ago when two children accompanied me to visit friends in Texas. The last time it happened to me before that, I only had two children.

This season of life is good, but it does at times rather toss the equilibrium for a loop.

Good Question Re. Health Care

If Obama Care is so good for the rest of the country, why won't Congress put itself on it? Why won't the President rely on that and that alone for his own family?

And if they won't, why should we let them impose it on us?

Online Goodies

Incidentally, I know I've been flogging cashbaq a bit here lately, but I really am very pleased with them.

There are many businesses that work with them- shop there through your cashbaq link and they put a percentage of your final ticket into your cashbaq account. I only use it to buy things I was looking for anyway- and two that I have used are
BookCloseouts and Abebooks

You get six percent of any Abebooks order added back into your Cashbaq account- and the thing is, I have been surprised at how many books I've been able to find on Abe for cheaper than Amazon options. You have to compare to be sure you're getting the best deal, but I had a wishlist of about ten books, and only one of them was cheaper at Amazon. Two of them were, seriously, about a quarter of the Amazon price at Abe, and a couple of them weren't even available at Amazon (and that does include the shipping price).

If you've tried Abebooks before but found them pricey, look again. I think they've gotten more competitive (or Amazon has gone up) - and if yu sign up for cashbaq you can take another six percent off of your ABEBOOKs order, as that will be returned to your Cashbaq account.



I also appreciate Swagbucks- I've picked up several Amazon coupons and a gift certificate from Restaurant.Com- all for just using their search engine.

Prayer Request

Updated: Our young friend is doing a little better today. She got to sit up on a chair! There is still a lot of fluid being drained from the tube around her heart but they are hoping it is slowing down. There is still a lot of fluid around her lungs and they are worried they might have to do another procedure to remove that. She is having a pic line put in tomorrow so that they can do more blood tests. Meanwhile, she remains in ICU and her sister says they are taking very good care of her.

-----------------------------------------
13 and a half years ago my best friend and I were pregnant at the same time. The babies were due within a month of each other, and because I was late, they were born nine days apart. The same midwife delivered them. The two girls, my FYG and my friend's daughter, are best friends and always have been.

She's in the hospital right now with a tube draining fluid from the wall around her heart. They aren't sure what's causing it but hope it is a virus. She's in pain and on morphine.

They live in Colorado.

Thanks

Shasta's Succint Austen Criticism

Shasta, having married The Equuschick, was recently subjected to the five hour A&E version of Pride and Prejudice and then Emma Thompson's verison of Sense & Sensibility.

He rather loathed the first half of P&P and claimed that the story made his brain bleed and Mrs. Bennet made his ears bleed, but by the end of the movie he was very interested and admitted it was a good story after all.

He has adopted various Mr. Bennet quotes to use on many occasions, and when he can't remember Lydia's name he refers to her as "You know, that tramp."

A little blunt, but accurate.

Then after S&S he asked, "So, Jane Austen wrote both Pride and Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility?"

"Yes," responded The Equuschick, with a great deal of pride in of her favourite authors.

"Well..." said Shasta, hesitating as knew he was treading on rather sacred ground, "they seem rather...similar."

The Lazy Man

There are some persons upon whose hands time seems to lie heavy, who, instead of being concerned to improve it as it passes, and taking care that it pass not without making it their own, act as if it were rather their concern to contrive ways how to waste and consume it; as though time, instead of being precious, were rather a mere encumbrance to them. Their hands refuse to labor, and rather than put themselves to it, they will let their families suffer, and will suffer themselves. Pro. 19:15, “An idle soul shall suffer hunger.” Pro. 23:21, “Drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.”

Johnathan Edwards

My favorite Freezer Meals

Are crockpot meals. And just about any crockpot meal can be frozen. I like these best because they taste fresher and require less prep time. Basically, you just put all the raw ingredients into a freezer bag, seal it, and write the directions on the bag. Then pop it in the freezer until the night before you wish to cook it.

Thaw in the fridge or on the counter (depends on the meal). Put it in the crockpot in the morning, turn it on, and you're done.

For pasta casseroles I prefer to make the sauces in advance and then freeze the sauce in a bag or jar (leave a good two inches of space between the sauce and the jar lid) with a bag of dry pasta or pasta cooked to just barely al dente, tossed with a bit of oil, and frozen separately. On cooking day, combine sauce with pasta and bake in pan, or cook pasta and then combine the sauce and bake.

This way the pasta is not soggy or dry.

The Homemaking Homesteader has a description of her own simple approach to freezer meals as well.

NYT Gets Hairy

At first I thought this was one of the dumbest stories, ever. I still do, but for a different reason. The New York Times wasted its own and its readers time and insulted their intelligence and maturity with a story about Palin's hair, which was supposedly thinning. If it was, who cares? My hair is thinning, and it's not stress, it's age. Or maybe thyroid. Who knows? Whose business is it, anyway? Do we get stories about any other politician's hair, thinning or otherwise?

That was a story too dumb to mention.

What makes it so dumb I have to mention it is that they claim they are quoting her hair dresser, presumably thinking themselves safe from fact checking, since she's in the last frontier, wild and wooly Alaska.

But the hairdresser* Tweets. And she's calling the reporters, Jim Rutenberg, Serge Kovaleski, Kim Severson , and William Yardley , liars.

*Or somebody claiming to be the hairdresser

That asterisk brings us back to the original point- hair? The NYT, the old Grey Lady, thinks the thickness of a politician's hair is what matters? Not really, they don't, or we'd have stories about Biden the baldy. No, they only care about hair when it's on the head of uppity females, and the 'uppity' kind are the sort who don't share their politics.

On Pain

"Pain is like water; it finds every crack in your character and makes it wider" (Right Time, Right Place, p. 211)

Health Care Plan, Then and Now

Remember when this was the promise?

“First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”

You didn't really think that's what he meant, did you?

In fact, as Tapper reports, Obama had softened the claim since he got challenged on this point on June 23rd. He had made that claim much less definitive, to a “no one want to make you change,” rather than a declarative “you can keep your plan.”

Paging George Orwell...

While working on a summer assignment, 17 year old Justin suddenly found all his notes, annotations, and comments to the text he was reading on his Kindle just disappeared, as did the text itself.

Although he, and all the other Kindle readers who suddenly had those books deleted, had paid for the material in what he had every reason to believe was a legitimate purchase, it turns out the text he was reading was uploaded by a company that didn't own the copyright. When the actual copyright holders complained, Amazon deleted all copies in their Kindles.

They did reimburse the purchasers, but they also violated the purchase agreement, of course, and there's no reason for Justin to have his homework eaten by Amazon.

The irony of it all? The books were 1984 by George Orwell and Animal Farm, by the same.

Update: Amazon apologizes- beautifully.

Thank-you Note to Readers

Here is the cake-topper Strider and the HG have decided upon. We purchased it from Amazon using the gift certificate balance we keep from credits we get when our readers click through our Amazon links and buy something, and from our Swagbucks gift card rewards, which also come from readers.

Iddn't it cute? And it doesn't look like a 'cake-topper' (because it isn't), so the happy couple can clean up the frosting and keep the figurine out on display in their snug little apartment (when Strider and his dad finish building the snug little apartment, which is an add-on over the garage at his parent's house).

So thank-you all, very, very much. We really appreciate our readers. We know we are sometimes caustic (and by we, I mean we), and that not all our readers appreciate our political bent. But still you keep reading and commenting and that brightens our lives, you share in many of our joys and likewise the frustrations, and you made it possible for the HG to get the figurine she wanted for her cake-topper. Thank-you, thank-you very much!

Strider, btw, is suggesting that we make a tiny blue jean skirt for the lady, stiffening it with starch. We'll see.=)

The Compost Pile

I have had several compost piles in the various yards of the houses we've lived in, and I think the one we have here is my favorite. I would show you pictures, but alas, the camera remains in the shop, much to Pip's dismay. She is as lost without a camera as I would be without a way to write.

Our compose pile uses three wooden pallets, the side wall of our garage, the existing backyard fence, and a couple of fence posts.

The three bin compost pile backs on our garage wall. Where the backyard fence meets the garage wall is the end bin- separating it from the middle bin is a pallet over two fence posts on each side. The middle bin shares one pallet with the first bin.

[the garage wall makes the back wall]
P P P F
A A A E
L L L 3 N
L 1 L 2 L C
E E E E
T T T


Here's how we keep it- we save all kitchen waste except meat and dairy scraps- I keep a plastic bucket with a lid on the kitchen counter (other places I have put it under the sink. Into it, I toss coffee grounds, coffee, tea bags, vegetable peelings, moldy bread, slimy lettuce leaves, leftover bits of salad too far gone to use, the remains of dead flowers, sometimes hair from our hair brushes, all kinds of odds and ends, mostly from the kitchen.

I do NOT put the lid all the way on it- that makes it stink. I just leave the lid loosely over the top, or sometimes put a cloth over the top to keep bugs out, but allow it enough air not to reek. Every day or two that bucket gets emptied into the space between the third pallet and the fence- we'll call that Bin three.

Periodically we toss a shovel full of dirt, old leaves, old stall shavings, or grass clippings loosely over that stuff. When it's gotten pretty full, then we take a shovel and move all of it from bin three into the middle bin, bin two, turning it over as we go, perhaps adding another shovel full of dirt.

We continue adding to the bin 3 from the kitchen bucket- we don't add the kitchen peelings to the stuff in the middle bin.

The next week my 11 year old son goes outside and takes a shovel and turns out the contents from the middle bin into the first, empty bin. Meanwhile, we keep adding new stuff to bin 3. The next week he takes all the stuff in bin one and shovels it back into the middle bin, bin 2, turning it over as he goes. Meanwhile, we keep adding stuff to bin 3.

In a surprisingly short time, I have a bunch of good compost which I promptly and not so promptly use in potting new plants, perking up sad plants, supplementing the sandy soil of our tire retaining wall, and starting another vegetable growing in a five gallon bucket. And then the stuff in bin 3 is read to be moved to the middle bin and the process begins again.

The Key Ingredients for Success:
Three bins- one for constantly adding new materials to, one is always empty, and one has the 'old' compost which is now in the final stages of breaking down. Having an empty bin makes turning over the compost much easier.

Regular turning of the finishing compost. Which leads us to what has been, for me, the spinach for Pop-eye element of successful composting:

An 11 year old boy to turn it over every week.

Meals On Road Trips

When I talk about road trips, I am talking about trips we have taken of several days duration, sometimes weeks. For years our family vacations were known by anther term- PCS move- that's Permanent Change of Station, or transfer, for you civvies out there. We combined our new orders with a road trip and a few visits to sites of historical or personal interest (this is how we saw Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Liard Hot Springs, many a natural history museum, Little Big Horn, Chimney Rock, and so much more. We were moving, and we took a little detour, and picnicked along the way.

Eating
Sometimes I like to pack meals that we can easily eat in the car, and then we use the time we would have ordinarily spent eating visiting a park or a museum.

We like to bring brown paper lunch bags and fill up the bags with our snack items- things like carrot sticks, fruit, chopped wedges of cabbage, popcorn, celery sticks, crackers, cheese, slices of sausage, nuts, raisins, home-made cookies, dried tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes. The Headmaster likes to eat raw green onions. You can usually pick up dried prunes quite inexpensively at the local dollar store or discount grocery.

We like sandwiches in pita or pocket bread best, because the filling isn't so likely to fall out.

Sometimes I make sandwiches at home and freeze them in advance. Other times I just pack the fixings. A favorite lunch to have at a picnic table somewhere is miniature shish-ka-bobs. I set out olives, pickles, cherry tomatoes, cubes of cheese or sausage, mushrooms, and canned pineapple chunks. We supply toothpicks or pretzel sticks and napkins. Each person makes their own miniature shish-ka-bobs on the toothpicks or pretzel sticks (the pretzel sticks tend to break unless you poke holes in the food first).

We find that breakfast is usually the cheapest meal to eat at a restaurant. If we don't want to eat at a restaurant at all, I pack yogurt and homemade granola, and we eat granola and yogurt while driving.

One trip I grew sprouts while we traveled. I soaked a jar of sprouts overnight before we left, and then three times a day when we stopped I rinsed and drained them. That way we had a fresh vegetable just about the time our other fresh produce was running out.

We have also put snacks in ice cube trays. This is fun, but a bit messy at times. I like the tupperware ice-cube trays that have lids. The fun part about this is that small children like having this smorgasbord of snacks to choose from all divided up into little containers, but they are not overwhelmed by the amounts.

We each get a bottle of water that we refill as needed. I like to put a sprig of mint in mine, and I like to wrap other mint springs in a wet paper towel so I can have more when my first sprig is ready to be tossed (or eaten). The FYG has her water rationed because, while we are not unreasonable about bathroom stops, we do think every hour is a bit much. When The Progeny were younger we insisted that everybody get out and try the bathroom every time we stopped for anything, but they eventually protested that they were old enough to know whether they needed to go or not, so we released the four oldest from that bondage some time ago.

Where to Stop
Whenever possible I like to take our driving breaks at museums or sites of historical interest, but it's also good to stop at places where the children can run off their pent up energy.

We stop at rest stops and have foot races, climb trees, ask the children race to the next tree by hopping on one foot, jumping, hopping backward, skipping, and somersaulting. I pack sidewalk chalk and a jump-rope. We can sketch out a hopscotch pattern on the sidewalk in a moment, and the jump-rope can be used in a covered picnic area or in a ground floor hotel room on a rainy day.

Some people pack swimming clothes and stay at motels with indoor pools so the children can swim in the evenings. We never thought of that when the Progeny were small.

We almost never make reservations at hotels in advance because we almost never know where we will be stopping. We like to take side trips when we see them, and we like not having to worry about being somewhere at a certain time. In hundreds and hundreds of road trips over 27 years this has only been a problem for us perhaps three or four times, and we never had to sleep in the car.=) Of course, we prefer traveling off the beaten path, so we seldom find ourselves anywhere during the tourist season. Once we found ourselves in town the same night as a homecoming game, and we couldn't find lodging, but that time we asked one of the hotels where we stopped to find us a reservation at another hotel in the chain as near as possible, and we only had to drive another hour or so.

Personally, we would find a reservation and a 'must be *there* at *this* time' restriction far too constricting and irritating. We'd rather take our chances so that we can be free agents and take side trips and detours as we feel like it.

Sunday Hymn Post

An online friend told me she was an only child, and she and her mother sang together for hours on long car trips, and her mother taught her harmony by singing this song together. Today she is a lovely young mother of lovely young children herself, and she is using the same song to teach her own children to sing harmony. I had never heard it before. It's a pretty little tune with a sweet children's version of Psalm 23 for the lyrics:

God's Sheep Am I
(in God's Green Pastures)

# In God's green pastures feeding by His cool waters lie;
Soft in the evening walk my Lord and I,
All the sheep of His pasture
Fare so wondrously fine; His sheep am I.

* Sisters: Waters cool,
Brothers: In the valley;
Sisters: Pastures green,
Brothers: On the mountain,
Sisters: In the eve...ning
Brothers: In the evening
Everyone: Walk my Lord and I

* Sisters: Dark the night,
Brothers: In the valley,
Sisters: Rough the way,
Brothers: On the mountain,
Sisters: Step by step...
Brothers: Step by step.
Everyone: My Lord and I.

# Through the streets of the city in the darkness of the night,
Far from the fold, He heard my lonely cry.
Now I sit at His table in the palace of light;
His sheep am I.

Midi file

guitar chords

Saxophone

A charming home video found on youtube:


A less home-video quality but also charming foreign language version (Chinese, I think, but I sometimes confuse Chinese with Korean, wretched American that I am)


Finally, a lovely but frustrating instrumental version by an ensemble group (too much background chatter):

When Time Shall be No More

Third, those are reproved by this doctrine, who spend their time only in worldly pursuits, neglecting their souls. Such men lose their time, let them be ever so diligent in their worldly business. And though they may be careful not to let any of it pass so, but that it shall some way or other turn to their worldly profit. They that improve time only for their benefit in time, lose it; because time was not given for itself, but for that everlasting duration which succeeds it. — They, therefore, whose time is taken up in caring and laboring for the world only, in inquiring what they shall eat, and what they shall drink, and wherewithal they shall be clothed; in contriving to lay up for themselves treasure upon earth, how to enrich themselves, how to make themselves great in the world, or how to live in comfortable and pleasant circumstances, while here; who busy their minds and employ their strength in these things only, and the stream of whose affections is directed towards these things; they lose their precious time.

Let such, therefore, as have been guilty of thus spending their time, consider it. You have spent a great part of your time, and a great part of your strength, in getting a little of the world; and how little good doth it afford you, now you have gotten it! What happiness or satisfaction can you reap from it? Will it give you peace of conscience, or any rational quietness or comfort? What is your poor, needy, perishing soul the better for it? And what better prospects doth it afford you of your approaching eternity? And what will all that you have acquired avail you when time shall be no longer?

More here. Johnathan Edwards' Sermon on Time

Lookit!

Harry Potter Cakes!

The Equuschick is impressed.

Health Care and the Budget

Larry Summers has a new tool for assessing the economy and the success or failure of Obama's stimulus plan (which formerly Obama sold us as "an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that will immediately jumpstart job creation and long-term growth."
Emphasis added because the President now says he never promised us a rose garden OR anything about 'immediate' or job creation).

Summers' new approach is pretty, um, interesting. But that's only because I'm hopelessly old fashioned and out of date.

As Ace explains:

Silly critics, thinking that a spending initiative pledged to "save or create" jobs which hasn't "saved or created" jobs is a failure simply because it didn't do what it was intended to do.

Again, old thinking.

Old thinking, in fact, much like thinking that job losses and job creation were the relevant terms of evaluation vis a vis the unemployment rate and economic health of the nation. Who knew there was a third, more important, statistic lurking out there, "jobs saved"?

But note now that that new-fangled statistic is also discarded as not truly bearing on the current situation. We have a new statistic that proves success.

His plan is a failure, and now he's lying about the claims he made for it, even though those claims are readily available through the internet, through transcriptions and video footage of his speeches. He does this blatant, bold faced lying because he's been getting away with it for ages- through his entire campaign the media never called him on it, and the public just stared, glassy-eyed, mesmerized by... what? I don't know, but the public doesn't seem to have been noticing that whenever he said something like, "But let me be clear. We have ALWAYS said/NEVER denied...." he was lying.

And Betsy McAughey catches him telling us stories again:

PRESIDENT Obama promises that "if you like your health plan, you can keep it," even after he reforms our health-care system. That's untrue. The bills now before Congress would force you to switch to a managed-care plan with limits on your access to specialists and tests.

Two main bills are being rushed through Congress with the goal of combining them into a finished product by August. Under either, a new government bureaucracy will select health plans that it considers in your best interest, and you will have to enroll in one of these "qualified plans." If you now get your plan through work, your employer has a five-year "grace period" to switch you into a qualified plan. If you buy your own insurance, you'll have less time.

And as soon as anything changes in your contract -- such as a change in copays or deductibles, which many insurers change every year -- you'll have to move into a qualified plan instead (House bill, p. 16-17).

When you file your taxes, if you can't prove to the IRS that you are in a qualified plan, you'll be fined thousands of dollars -- as much as the average cost of a health plan for your family size -- and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan (House bill, p. 167-168).

He promises not to sign any health care bill that adds to the deficit. But he's already hedging and engaging in some twisty political speech on that one.

Because according to the non-partisan CBO-

the actual hit to the federal deficit for this program alone exceeds $239 billion over the next decade.

The Democrats have a plan for this. Does it involve cutting spending? Nope. Does it involve raising taxes, even? Not this particular time. It merely involves fiddling the books and calling the spending something else.


By this reasoning, since the Cherub is allergic to corn, wheat, and eggs, and this puts a serious crimp on portions of the grocery budget as well as eating over with friends, I could simply overcome this problem by calling those products something else- say, cherries, rice, and pickles, and then she would not longer be allergic to them.

"Very Interesting," as Arte Johnson used to say in his fake, over the top German accent on Laugh-In. And we know how he finished that off, don't we?

"But shtupid!"

Vegetarian Bean Pita Sandwiches

For 8 servings:

About 2 or 3 hours ahead of time (or more), toss together:
8 cups cooked beans- which beans you choose is up to you- each type has its own character and best accompaniments. I suggest cooked garbanzo beans (or chick peas) or cannellini beans (also known as white kidney beans or fazolia beans)
1/3 cup of oil (olive, sesame, or walnut would be yummiest, to my mind)
1/4 lemon juice
2 tsp oregano
1 t. salt
1 t. cumin
1/2 t. pepper

(of course, you could just toss with about 1/2 cup of your favorite vinaigrette dressing)

Gently stir in:
6 ounces cubed cream cheese
4 chopped, fresh, sun ripened tomatoes
2 cucumbers, peeled and diced

Cover and chill for at least 2 hours

Have on hand pita bread (also known as pocket bread) or rolls. Carefully separate pocket bread and stuff with about 2/3 cup of bean mixture. Top with parsley.

You can substitute other fresh herbs, and you can add diced olives if desired.


More about different bean varieties here.

How To Avoid Bankruptcy

Here's a one question quiz. In order to avoid going bankrupt, should you:

1. Keep spending money, and more of it.

2. Cut back on spending and pay off bills.

3. Put your head in the sand and ignore it all and maybe it will go away.


Here's something I read aloud to the family this afternoon- it's a little article about some remarks the Vice-President delivered to an AARP meeting this week:

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”

I read very slowly and clearly, and yet, everybody in the room said, "HUH?"

But wait! There's more:

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

The general consensus in the room here is, "In what universe?"

He's talking about health care, and the reason he has to resort to this entirely obnoxious and untenable position that the way to avoid bankruptcy is to spend our brains out is because the nonpartisan CBO just explained that the health care plan is, in fact, spending our brains out and it is not going to save any money at all (the opposite of was once promised):

the creation of a new subsidy for health insurance, which is a critical part of expanding health insurance coverage in our judgement, would by itself increase the federal responsibility for health care that raises federal spending on health care. It raises the amount of activity that is growing at this unsustainable rate and to offset that there has to be very substantial reductions in other parts of the federal commitment to health care, either on the tax revenue side through changes in the tax exclusion or on the spending side through reforms in Medicare and Medicaid. Certainly reforms of that sort are included in some of the packages, and we are still analyzing the reforms in the House package. Legislation was only released as you know two days ago. But changes we have looked at so far do not represent the fundamental change on the order of magnitude that would be necessary to offset the direct increase in federal health costs from the insurance coverage proposals.

Seriously. I understand why politicians say these things. I do not understand why the press isn't jumping all over it in hobnailed boots, nor do I understand why the general public just keeps placidly chewing its cud.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

[former Rep] Chip Pickering, like Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, has lived in a Christian fellowship home on C Street. Both Ensign and Sanford have been the subjects of adultery scandals in recent weeks. Ensign had an eight-month affair with a former campaign aide, Cindy Hampton, and he resigned his leadership post after admitting to the relationship. Sanford secretly left the United States to met his Argentine mistress, setting off a national furor over his disappearance.

Pretty much everything. hypocrites. Blood sucking parasites.

I want a clean sweep. I want term limits on the next set to mve into the cesspool of D.C. In fact, I do not want lawmakers isolated in D.C. anymore. There's a worm there that eats their brains, their ethics, and plays merry havoc with their moral compass. I want lawmakers to telecommute so that the army of lobbyists that has placed itself between our representatives and us has to dilute and spread itself thin- or disappear. I do not want politicians voting themselves raises by writing them into law so that they actually get the raises automatically and have to vote NOT to give themselves raises.

I want them, and their staff-members, to regain some basic understanding of their job as representatives of, employees of, their salary paying constituents- the taxpayers.

Vegetarian Cheesey Bean Casserole For a Crowd

Freeze this ahead for 24 servings- it's one of our old OAMC (once a month cooking) recipes, although we haven't made it in a while. You can also divvy it up among smaller bags, making 8 freezer meals for a family of four, or three for a family of 8:

Ingredients:
6 cups cooked white beans
6 cups cooked brown rice
6 cups cottage cheese
3 cups grated mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 pounds chopped fresh mushrooms
3 cups chopped onion
8 minced garlic cloves
1 Tablespoon each basil, thyme, marjoram
1/3 cup soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup of butter
1 1/2 cups parmesan cheese
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs

Saute the onions, garlic, mushrooms, herbs in butter just until onions are barely cooked. Combine all ingredients except the parmesan cheese and the breadcrumbs.

Put mixture in two or three gallon sized bags and freeze. Place parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs in a smaller bag and attach to larger bags.

To serve, thaw, place in greased oblong pans. Top with sliced tomatoes if seasonal. Top with parmesan/crumb mixture. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Stimulous NEVER Designed for Economic Recovery...

that is, that the Stimulus was supposed to actually, er, stimulate or spur the economy on towards good things? That never happened. No.

What the WH has always said is merely that the stimulus was intended to stabilize the downturn.

HotAir has the quotes and context.

Eastasia, Oceania... it gets so hard to tell them apart, you know?

More Things to do in the car

We've shared several games to play, but you can't play games all day long, so here are a few other activities. Most of these are for younger children, but not all. And while all of this post is written in the present tense, that's because I first wrote it a few years ago and last posted it three years ago. This stage of my life is mostly over now, as the youngest child is 11, and now that my husband has retired from the military the days of long road trips are past.

I often keep a bag of little toys and goodies up front with me. A few times through-out the day I will pass these back to the little ones. I visit thrift shops and hunt through what I have at home to find things to include in the goody bag.

Pipecleaners- these are neat, tidy, small, and not messy. The children can make shapes out of them, make letters, numbers, and jewelry, make pipe-cleaner stick figures to play with- they are so versatile and just an ideal toy for long car trips.

Bubbles: I keep the bottle of bubbles up front with me, but we turn on the vents (or crack the windows) and blow bubbles that drift back to the children, who try to catch them and/or pop them. (Make your own bubbles with two tablespoons of dish soap- Dawn makes great bubbles, and a cup of water. Add 1 Tablespoon of glycerin for extra strong bubbles- use those pipecleaners to make bubble wands!)

Small toys such as Beanie babies- these can be quite cheap at thrift shops, and they also have the virtue of being quiet and not messy.

I don't like crayons when traveling because they break, get left in inaccessible corners and melt, and we once had a child manage to lose a bit of broken crayon down inside the seat belt buckle and it was months before we could get it out and use that seatbelt again. We bring colored pencils and a couple small pencil sharpeners.
We bring scratch paper and pictures printed out from the internet and coloring books picked up cheaply at the dollar store or thrift shops.

Small flashlights- When we first began traveling we used these. They are not small, but they were free since the Headmaster was given them for work on the flightline. The nice thing about them is that they had a link on the end, so we hung them by plastic links from the garment hook inside the car (this was not safe, and we did it differently later). They also had colored plastic filters, which you could make yourself. Just buy some colored cellophane (look at thin plastic report covers in different colors. Trace your flashlight lens on the colored plastic and cut out the circle so you can unscrew your flashlight and put the colored filter on top of the lens and put it back together, giving the kids different colored lights to play with. This is also nice for night driving because they can have enough light to see by without distracting the driving.

Whiteboards: Miller Pads and Paper sells these for about a dollar. I LOVE those guys. I wonder if anybody has tried dry/erase markers on car windows? I haven't, but I've heard they work on mirrors, so I wonder about windows. That would keep the window seat passengers occupied for a while, I would guess.- and now they make dry erase markers without caps to lose- they click in and out like ball point pens.

Stickers, gluesticks, safety scissors, a pad of paper and an old magazine- should be obvious enough what to do with them.

Picture books, and the Cherub gets a small photo album of family, the pets, the house, and friends. If we can, we also like to include pictures of people we are going to see.

Miniature anything- little horses, soldiers, cars, action figures, tiny baby dolls, all these are fun travel toys.

In one of the comments to one of our other posts on this topic, Donna mentioned stringing up a row of clothespins, and every fifty miles you move one of those clothespins over.

Books on tape and headphones- Then the Equuschick and the HeadGirl were small we had a small child's tape player with headphones. The headphones snapped in two once, and it was the best thing that ever happened. Each girl could listen by holding one half of the broken headphones up to her ear, AND by using it this way, they weren't isolating themselves from the rest of the family, AND they had to sit close and be cooperative if they both wanted to hear. Oddly enough, that little tape player is now over 20 years old, and it still works! NONE of our other tape players has lasted this long (and now, of course, kids are using iPods and Mp3 players.

Magnets and a small cookie tin or a magnetized whiteboard are fun. I like the cookie tin because then all the pieces can be stored inside it. Magnetic poetry is fun, but hard on those of us who are prone to motion sickness. I've also thought of cutting up some thin sheets of magnet into small pieces and using Altoids tins for the magnet board.

Book Buys

Updated to fix some broken links and add a few good titles

First of all, sign up at Cashbaq and automatically get five dollars credited to your account (Or just skip ahead to BookCloseouts).



Then look over in the left column for 'books.' Click on it and then look for BookCloseouts. You get seven percent of whatever you spend at Bookclose outs credited back to your Cashbaq account, and they'll send you the cash periodically.

Even if you don't join Cashbaq, there are always some good deals at BookCloseouts.

You can click through the link to find your own, or see some I have discovered further below.




Right now there is also a special sale on childrens' books, and their prices are always pretty low. You can get items like:

Audio Books (and a few paper and ink books related to the audio books):

Seamus Heaney's Beowulf on CD (only a few copies, and at six bucks they'll go fast) But there's also this CD with part of Beowulf along with several other early English poems (Caedmon's Hymn, for instance), read by Bessinger for six dollars, and there are more copies of it. I picked up one of each.=)

You can get the book of Rebsemen's copy of Beowulf- this is what we used in school (Heaney's translation didn't come out until after our eldest two had finished Beowulf). It's a softcover for only three dollars.

And if you have a youngster who loves Beowulf, that youngster will probably also love this hardback illustrated guidebook of swords.



Frank Perretti's All About Faith: Wild & Wacky Totally True Bible Stories on CD for about 1.50- My youngest two loved listening to Frank Perretti's zany performances, and here he retells the stories from the lives of Daniel, Queen Esther, Noah, and Moses. I find his voice a bit grating at first, but I got used to it.=)

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Junior on CD (16.00), and also this CD with eight excerpts from two speeches, along with introductions and background material, 8.00

Captivating, by John Eldredge and Stasi Eldredge- a friend gave print copies of this to our oldest Progeny. They recommend it to certain other Believers with reservations- it is primarily good, they think, for girls who have severe doubts about their self-worth and are in need of validation. There's a few CDs in the scratch and dent section for 6.24. There are rather more copies on CD NOT in the scratch and dent section for 9.99. They suggest, my girls, that the book is especially good for young women who have been abused. But I know the friend who so highly recommends the book comes from a loving family. I suspect my girls are happily innocent of just what damage years of exposure to our toxic culture via public school, television, movies, magazines, the radio, and other media influences can do to a young person's values and self-image.

You could get The Dangerous Book for Boys in Spanish, thereby giving your young Spanish student some incentive to brush up on his Spanish skills. (12.00) There are three copies in English (as of this writing) for 12.00. Or you can get the English Pocket version of 'things to know' from the Dangerous Book for Boys in (seven dollars) (there are just a handful of copies of the pocket book of Things to Do from the DBfB for less than four dollars).

A four dollar study guide for
The Great Gatsby on CD, very useful for high school. This version "contains: introduction to the Roaring Twenties; detailed narrative guide to the novel; dramatic readings; critical analysis. PDF booklet contains: character list; scene-by-scene synopsis; glossary of terms; sample test and review questions; study reference for books, music, film."
There is a similar product for Frankenstein, also excellent for high school. (six dollars)
And one for MacBeth for only 4 dollars.


Mrs. Sharp's Traditions is on CD for about five or six dollars.

Frogs, Newts & Turtles: Interactive CD Book- I don't have this one, but it's seven dollars and it does sound interesting, so I put one on my cart for the Boy:

Special pets with special needs, frogs, newts, and turtles are especially fascinating. There are a few important things you need to know to take good care of your new pet. Come join our CD Magic Book pals Dillon (a very cool kid) and Malcolm (the smartest wizard), as they share through videos and pictures all the special things you need to know to choose and care for your creepy critter. This CD Magic Book is so easy to use even your parents can do it. Just a click of your mouse and you're on your way to knowing how to keep your new pet healthy and happy. Ages 4 to 11.

The Poets' Corner: One and Only Poetry Book for Families on CD looks promising enough that I put one in my shopping cart. See the entire six CD table of contents here. A bit of a hodgepodge, but delightful.

There are several CDs of different Narnian tales available on CD, including this one of Lynn Redgrave reading Prince Caspian. (only six dollars!!)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, audio book, unabridged, several discs, only 9.00

There's an unabridged audiobook of The Two Towers on CD for just ten dollars. (Updated to add- it's nearly 6 hours of CDs, and they plainly say unabridged, but CoffeeMama of My Blue Castle says they have the set and it is an abridged dramatization.



Dave Ramsey:

The Total Money Makeover Workbook: A Proven Plan for FInancial Fitness, for 9.00 (less than a handful of copies)

The Total Money Makeover Journal, 6.00


Children's Books

The classic Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Garth Williams, only a few copies for 4.49


A picture book of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for only 4.00 looks lovely. Published by Candlewick, and they don't seem to make visually ugly books.

There are just a handful of hardback copies of The House at Pooh Corner for 5.49, and a few hardback copies of Milne's When We Were Very Young for only 2.49!
a collection of folktales illustrated by Mary Englebreit for 9.99.

This isn't exactly a children's book, but it looks absolutely lovely and I popped one into my cart: Once Upon a Time in Great Britain: A Travel Guide to the Sights and Settings of Your Favorite Children's Stories, and only five dollars for a delightful armchair tour.

A long time ago, when castles and monasteries dotted the land and knights went forth to do brave deeds, when women wove beautiful tapestries and minstrels played for pauper and prince alike, there lived a humble musician named Simeon.~ So begins this lovely picture book written by Julie Andrews and her daughter- Simeon's Gift.

We discovered the delights of Maurice Sendak's The Gryphon and the Minor Canon only a short time ago, but it is a favorite. Here's a hardback for 3.49, but there's only the one copy. There are a few copies of The Wheel on the School in hardback, illustrated by Sendak for less than five dollars, and there's a library bound edition of The House of Sixty Fathers by DeJong, illustrated by Sendak.
For a considerably more (ten or eleven dollars) there is a nice hardback copy of the picture book Outside Over There, a strange and mysterious story of a big sister who sets out to rescue her baby brother, who has been kidnapped by goblins.

You can get a board book edition of I Love You Like Crazy Cakes (I love Jane Dyer's illustrations) for less than 2.00, or you can get a hardback
for less than four I Love You Like Crazy Cakes- a sweet tale about adopting a baby girl from China, based on the author's experience.

and I Loved You Before You WEre Born, a great book for conveying a grandparent's love to her new grandchild. Gee, why would I be thinking of that?


Educational Tools:
You can make your own flash cards, but for .74 I'd save my time for something else-
Multiplication flash cards
Multiplication and Division together
Addition and Subtraction
United States Flash cards
Beginning Sounds

Foam dice with math operations signs

A wipe off mat for practicing cursive writing. .99


Fun Stuff

They have all sorts of stickers for less than a dollar. You can use them for writing letters, chore charts, school papers, or just for fun. Stickers make great stocking stuffers. I like the rainforest version, and the .99 horses and ponies will be very popular with many little girls.



Science and Nature Study

This set could also be in the 'fun stuff' category. The Ocean Life Mini Book collection- I like these cute little books with stories about different creatures (there is also a woodlands creatures set, a backyard creatures set, and more). What you get is six sets of these sweet little books, and there are six books to a set. This makes a nice set for a classroom, but it also makes it a very frugal purchase for a family with several young friends or relations to give gifts to. At 24.00 each set of six books would be four dollars. If you have LOTS of small friends and relations, you could break up the sets and spread the goodness around. Or go in on them with five other friends and each of you gets a six book set for four dollars. The Amazon sets right now sell for around 45 dollars.

This would make a beautiful addition to the basket of Christmas books- it's an illuminated rendition of O Holy Night and other christmas songs, and includes a CD of the Harlam Boys' choir singing the five songs which are illustrated in the book. 4.00

And Heart and Home of Christmas looks like a beautiful coffee table book for only four dollars.



Bibles and Bible Covers

bible covers suitable for small boys who have outgrown their Veggy Tales version (five bucks, but only a few copies left).

Brown and turquoise cloth Bible covers for girls grown too cool for the pink Precious Moments version. You could get the mossy oak camouflauge bonded leather NKJ for the hunter in the family (20.00)

You can get Bibles, like this ornate red and gold covered version, or this one in green and gold (both NCV, or New Century Version translations)

Cookbooks

Bread Alone looks like a marvelous cookbook on baking artisan loaves from scratch.

Can I Freeze It- beyond OAMC, Susie Theodorou explains the tips, tricks, and rules of freezing food, from containers and wrappers (foil or Tupperware?), to the best methods for retaining moisture and flavor, to what ingredients and dishes can and can't be frozen. She provides a wealth of recipes, along with color photographs, for whole and part dishes. 8.00

How to Bake looks like a good Home Ec book for high school students of either gender- 14 or 15 dollars.

The Better Homes and Gardens New Junior Cookbook for 8.00 might be a good present for your budding young cook.

Kids Cook 1, 2, 3 looks like a useful cookbook for beginners of all ages- and it's all recipes with only three ingredients.

History

Two in one- Jane Austen's very frivolous history of England, and Charles Dickens' more serious but still enjoyable Child's History of England, only six dollars.

Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England

Longitude, by Dava Sobel

Time is a Gift, Precious and Rare

Time is with many, as silver was in the days of Solomon, as the stones of the street, and nothing accounted of. They act as if time were as plenty as silver was then, and as if they had a great deal more than they needed, and knew not what to do with it. If men were as lavish of their money as they are of their time, if it were as common a thing for them to throw away their money, as it is for them to throw away their time, we should think them beside themselves, and not in the possession of their right minds. Yet time is a thousand times more precious than money; and when it is gone, cannot be purchased for money, cannot be redeemed by silver or gold.

Jonathan Edwards

Chow Mein with Tofu

I have a OAMC version and serving on the same day version. HEre's the regular version for 8 people:

Drain tofu well (set it in a colander early in the day and set a bowl or pot of water on the top of this).

Cook 16 ounces of spaghetti just to al dente. Drain.

Meanwhile combine:
8 lightly beaten eggs,
1 cup chopped green onions
1/2 pound or 2 cups crumbled tofu
1 cup bean sprouts
1 1/2 t. salt
1/2 tsp or more red pepper

Heat 1/2 cup of oil in large skillet or Wok

Cook egg mixture, stirring constantly, til scrambled. push to side of skillet and add spaghetti and a bit more oil if needed. Add 2 cloves of minced garlic, cook until hot.

Top with chow mein noodles if desired.

You can also add chopped cabbage and grated carrot to the stir fried mixture if desired.

To make for a OAMC freezer meal:

Combine eggs, green onions, tofu, salt, pepper, and garlic in a bag and seal.
Cook pasta to just barely al dente, toss with a tablespoon or so of sesame oil or melted butter and seal this in a bag as well. Attach the two bags together so you can find them easily on cooking day. I would use a rubber band.

On cooking day, thaw, then cook the egg mixture as described above, adding fresh or canned bean sprouts (I wouldn't use the canned sort, but you can if you don't know any better), and continue cooking as above.

The red pepper and garlic amounts here are conservative estimates. We would use more.

For added flavor, after you have drained the tofu well, crumble it, and add some chicken broth powder to the egg/tofu mixture.

How Many People Does the Common Room Feed?

I don't know, but I thought I'd try to count up the meals serves (just assuming a single person for each mouth eating a meal) during the month of July in an attempt to get a grip on menu planning and budgeting:

June 30th thru July 5th- we had the nine people who live here this summer (we have a summer houseguest), plus three extra houseguests- 12. Plus the Equuschick stopped by once or twice and had lunch and I think Shasta ate here once. Oh, yeah- we had one extra dinner guest on the 30th. But then the HG was out of town Independence Day weekend. This is already too hard. But lets say we fed 12 people 3X a day for the six days between 6/30 and 7/5- that comes out 216 meal servings, plus one for the Tuesday night guest= 217 meal servings

July Fifth- three houseguests left after lunch on Sunday afternoon. We arrived home from church Sunday night and three more houseguests were already here. Then the HG got back and Strider spent the night. And then the Chem Grad came. These friends all spent the night. So on July sixth- 14 people for breakfast, but Strider left for work so wasn't here for lunch.
But then a family of six were here for lunch and dinner and my parents, the EC and Shasta came over for dinner. So that makes, um, 19 for lunch and 23 for dinner, plus we grazed all day long as it was a big day with a lot going on.

So it's the sixth of July and we've already served 273 individual servings of food this month, not counting random visits corresponding with meals or refrigerator raids by the EC and Shasta.

July 7: Five overnight houseguests were here for breakfast, plus the 9 people living here= 14.

Of course, in the laid back style of hospitality I have resorted to in order to keep my sanity, I didn't even get up in time to see two of the overnighters off. I am not sure what they had other than coffee.

Lunch: Again, laidback 'hospitality,' we had leftovers. One of the girls just went through the fridge and set out various items and we browsed. Three of the overnight guests, plus the nine of us, plus the Equuschick= 13

Dinner: The last three houseguests left about 2:00. Then we tidied the living room and dining room, did a couple of loads of laundry, watered the plants, read, discussed the train wreck that is often the result of turning a book into a movie (specifically about Harry Potter) and had four more guests in for dinner, plus the Equuschick, and then an additional two for Bible study. Usually Shasta grabs a snack when he comes by to pick up his wife, but I don't think he did this time, so that's 14 servings for dinner, never mind the bedtime snacks and things.

314 individual servings (not counting snacks and seconds and things like second breakfasts and tea).

July 8th- Wow. I think it was just the nine people who live here, and not all of us ate at every meal- so let's say 20 servings instead of 27=
334.
We won't count the plate of cookies baked to take elsewhere.


July 9th: While we did have some friends (family of four) drop in for a visit, they didn't eat with us. And three of us skipped breakfast at home. The Equuschick came for dinner.

359 servings.

July 10th: Only the nine of us who live here were here for breakfast.
Lunch- 9 of us, plus the Equuschick, plus Strider's Mama, who came out for a long day of shopping and dropping together, also looking at wedding venues and the Rattery, and it was great fun.
Supper: Well. Hard to believe, but only four of us were home for dinner. EC went home, HG went back down south with Strider's Mama, everybody but the Cherub and the Boy went to a singing away down south and didn't come back until the next day- and Granny Tea fed the Headmaster, the Boy and the Cherub- so I am the only one who really ate dinner at home. Amazing. Only 21 servings today (we're not counting odds and ends of snacks and things between meals)- making a total of
380 servings for the first third of July.

July 11th: An anomaly, and how quiet it was- Everybody was gone except the Boy, The Cherub, and me. I do think the HM ate breakfast before he left, but I was sleeping.=) The rest of the family didn't get home until dinner time- so 4 for breakfast and lunch, and 9 of us for dinner.

397 servings

July 12th: 9 for breakfast, and then Strider and one of the college girls shared a picnic lunch with us after church: 11
Dinner: we went to a hotdog roast. We did bring pickles and cookies, and the Cherub had her own food (she has too many food allergies to eat hot dogs, except for Hebrew National brand, which are not made with corn syrup), but we won't figure all that in.

417 single servings so far (most of us seldom stop at a single serving, either, but it would just be too hard to figure that part out)

At this point, I felt kind of like I did the time I sat down to figure out how many years I had a child in diapers.

What have I learned? That there is a good reason I cannot get a grip on menu planning and the grocery budget, so I am going to quit trying.

Climate Change Modeling "Fundamentally Wrong?"

USA Today reports on a new study that calls into question the entire basis for the modeling that drives the “greenhouse gas” theory of climate change. In fact, its co-author says that climate change modeling is “fundamentally wrong” and that carbon alone did not drive the the rapid warming of the Earth 55 million years ago

More at Hot Air.

And Now, For Something Completely Different...

Kim Komando says:

Perpetuum Jazzile is an a cappella jazz choir from Slovenia. It’s hard to think of something further from an ‘80s rock band. But their version of Africa may best the original. The group has amazing voices.

But the beginning of this video is really striking. Group members simulate an African thunderstorm with their hands. It’s really something to see and hear.

Pretty cool stuff.

Dementia and My Dad, a Sort of Memorial

This is a post about what my dad used to be like, before the dementia- only the good parts, I mean. There was plenty of bad, really bad, so bad that I am not going to talk about it. A friend who knows us in real life told me this week he wishes he had known my dad before the dementia, and an internet friend asked if my dad was always this obstinate. That got me started thinking about who my dad once was compared to who he is now, and the part of my dad that most of you would have known if you had known him- if he had written in this blog, for example. You would have known the good parts, because he saved the horrors for his nearest and dearest. So here we are with the good:

He really was brilliant, and he could hold an intelligent and interesting conversation with just about anybody on just about any topic. He was curious about everything, and he never met a stranger. We visited every historical marker on the road on every trip we ever took (and we took a lot). We went to museums, archeological digs, Indian ruins, ghost towns, and more. He wanted to know all about everything. Everywhere we lived he found out all about the history and background of the town, sites of interest and more- within a few weeks of arriving.

He was an excellent cook- a gourmet. He cooked dinner every Thursday night starting sometime when I was in junior high school, and not one of us, not my brothers, and not the foster sister who lived with us for a couple years, ever would miss a Thursday night dinner.

He had been interested in acting in college and was in the drama club. Over the years I have met some of his old classmates- one was the dean at the college I attended, sometimes it was just somebody at church, once or twice it was the parent of a college classmate. Without exception, everybody I ever met who 'knew him when' eagerly asked me, "Did your father keep up with his acting? I never saw anybody act like him. You should have seen him in..." Usually it was Death of a Salesman that they found most memorable. Apparently that performance was something incredible to see.

He didn't keep up with his acting, at least, not exactly. When I was small he used to take me to a children's theater production every weekend to watch plays, but he stopped that by the time my brothers came along. But what he did do was read aloud to us- dramatically, with flair, with character, with panache. Winnie the Pooh as read by my father was the perfect Pooh. Disney is always a cheap imitation, but Disney compared to my dad's readings is no contest at all. He was absolutely the best ever. In fact, the closest thing I can think of to the experience of listening to my father read aloud would be Kenneth Branagh reading The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis. If you've heard that, you have some idea what I got to listen to almost every weekend while I was growing up. My dad's reading aloud in character was every bit as good as Branagh.

He went to India for three months on a mission trip, and he and my mother bought us some Winnie the Pooh records- read by some famous narrator . My brothers and I hated them- they were all wrong, we said, and that strange man had no idea of the right way to do Pooh.

We went on camping trips regularly, and, except for the nightmarish first few hours of every single camping trip I can remember, the part where he forgot how to set up our tent and raged at the world for this flaw in the Universe, these were fun trips. He did a lot of the cooking, and most of the cleaning. He and my mother would entertain us around the campfire with guessing games, riddles, tricks, and then we would all sing together.

He played the piano extremely well. When he was a small child taking lessons, he said his teacher's mother had also been a piano teacher- a very good one. He said the older woman would lock herself away during all the other lessons except his. For his lessons, she would come out and sit in the room to hear him play.

We didn't have a piano in our house until I was about 9 or 10 years old, when we got my mother's old piano. And yet, he simplie picked his incredible playing right back up, and he would play the piano most nights while we were going to sleep. He didn't do it for us- it was for him, but it was beautiful, and I loved it. Once I was very angry with him and I told him I hated it, and of all the things I ever said in the heat of an angry argument with him (and there were many such), that is the only one I remember, because it wasn't true and I could see it hurt him. I am glad to be able to say that I did apologize for that years and years ago- within five or six years of saying it, and I was able to tell him it wasn't true and never had been. He claimed not to remember me every having said it, and I don't know if that is true or not, but I didn't care. I just felt better letting him know that I had always loved his playing.

When I was growing up he preached amazing sermons, drawing in references from science, history, archeology, literature, and more- and I never saw him use notes until after the stroke. Just this week an old friend from the seventies left a comment on my facebook asking how my dad was doing and telling me she had always loved his sermons on archeology and the Bible, he was so interesting.

He was a gardener as well, and we benefited from the fruits of his labors more than we probably appreciated.

He was a witty and erudite writer, very clever and entertaining. When I was in college he and my mother both wrote me pretty regularly. His notes were typewritten because his handwriting was sprawling and hard to read, and efficiency was important to him and he typed faster than he wrote. My classmates mostly thought that was really strange- type written letters from your father? But my classmates also would see me laughing over them and come to hear what was so funny, and by the end of the year, Dad had quite the little fan club- students who would ask me, "So, get a letter from your dad this week? What did he have to say?" My foster sister went to a school in another state (I went to Oregon, she went to Texas), and she came home saying the same thing- all her friends wanted to hear her read Dad's letters because they were so funny.


He had a stroke at 48 years of age, and he lost a lot of his mental marbles then. It frustrated him immensely, but if you didn't know him before the stroke, you would not have known there was anything the matter with him. A family friend who knew him before the stroke said he guessed it was hard on dad, but my dad with half his marbles still had more mental muscle than most people- and this was totally true. Sadly, this is also when he lost the ability to read aloud quite as he used to. For several years he would still read Winnie the Pooh to the grandchildren, but he had lost the flair he once had.

In many ways, he was actually nicer after the stroke- it seemed to make him more humble, more open with his affection, less impatient with others, more understanding of other's imperfections. My eldest was three years old when he had his first stroke (he had many other mini-strokes over the years), so none of the children have really known their Grandpa pre-stroke. They missed out on the real Winnie the Pooh, the best of the music, and the clever sermons. However, they got the doting, affectionate, far more patient Grandpa 2.0 version, so maybe it balances out.

Here's the kind of intelligence he could still muster after he lost half his marbles- He had been to Korea when he was a very young man- around 19 years old, I think. He learned to speak Korean, but he never had the opportunity to use it again after he got out of the service at about 21 years of age. Decades later, three years after his stroke, he was visiting us in Japan, and while we were out and about I introduced him to a friend of ours from Korea. My dad immediately started talking with her in Korean. Let me tell you, it is a very bizarre experience to see your father suddenly conversing at rapid pace in a foreign language you've not really heard him use. He was frustrated with himself because he was so rusty, but she was amazed at his proficiency and later told me that her husband, after five years of marriage, didn't speak as well as my dad, and Dad had an impressive accent that most Americans didn't manage to master. She could hardly believe it when I told her it had been nearly 30 years since he'd used his Korean.

There are a number of reasons why, when I was growing up, my dad was so hard to live with in all those ways I am not sharing.

But I have long thought that one of the reasons for his dismal level of patience was just that he didn't really realize how exceptionally brilliant he was. When it came to pursuits of the mind and music, everything came easy to him, so easy that he truly could not understand that other people, like his children, were not being deliberately obtuse if they didn't figure something out immediately. He really, honestly, deep down in his truest self, thought that most people- and especially his children- were simply not using their God-given brains (oh, if only I had a nickel for every time I heard him refer to my 'God-given brains' in a rant...). If we would only try to apply ourselves, we, and the rest of the world, would understand whatever it was he had understood instantly while we were trailing far behind in dimwitted cluelessness. He really did believe that when we were being stupid we were doing it on purpose, to annoy, because he simply was too brilliant himself to be able to understand that sometimes being in the dark was not simply a matter of intellectual laziness.

I don't have the same relationship with my dad that my children have with theirs, or that most people I have seen have with their fathers, because my dad was not really much like most fathers I know. To be brutally honest, most people I have known who have had a childhood much like mine (the parts I am not telling you about)- they choose not to have any relationship with their dads at all when they reach the age where they have a choice. My youngest brother is one of those. I chose otherwise, so here we are.

Sometimes when I write about dementia related issues, people will respond with very sweet, kind, and empathetic comments. Sometimes their very sweetness makes me feel like a bit of a fraud. Although I have shed some tears over it, I am not exactly heartbroken, because that's not the kind of father he was. I make a lot of jokes about the dementia and put things in as amusing a fashion as I can muster because that is who I am, who we are, most of the Common Room. I think I get that from my Dad, actually. But even when I feel like a fraud, I appreciate those sweet comments. Just because we didn't and don't have the sort of relationship most people take for granted, that doesn't meant I am never sorry, sad, frustrated, disappointed, worried, upset, unhappy, and sometimes angry about what is happening to him.

As hard and horrible as he was to live with when I was growing up, I do find it terribly sad to see the dementia burning holes through that once magnificent mind, leaving it a tattered remnant of what it once was, leaving the scraps of a dementia devoured shroud.

All the World's A Stage...

Alas for Shasta, who used to boast to his buddies that the perfect wife for him was a deaf mute and then ended up with The Equuschick.

One of Shasta's favourite things to do when The Equuschick has been particularly mouthy is to sigh in mock exasperation and to suggest "Hey, let's put on a play together! You can play the part of the quiet, submissive wife."

Today happened to be his day off work and he was resolved to mow the lawn (a good day's work in and of itself), so he asked The Equuschick to please, please help him get out of bed on time to get it done before they had to leave for town.



So this morning kind of went like the following.

At 6:30 am it was storming pretty hard anyway, so The Equuschick and Shasta went back to sleep until it had stopped.

Then The Equuschick woke Shasta up and he said "Well, it looks like it might rain again" and closed his eyes.

The Equuschick suggested that he might want to get up and get ready anyway and then look to see what the weather would do and he said "Well, I'm not gonna." and rolled over.

And then The Equuschick said, "See, dear, I'm in the this play? And I'm playing the part of the submissive wife and my husband asked me to help get him up this morning?"

And it is a wonder that The Equuschick survived to write this post, indeed it is. Truly Shasta is a long-suffering man.

Having Once Wasted It, It's Gone Forever

...time is very precious, because when it is past, it cannot be recovered. There are many things which men possess, which if they part with, they can obtain them again. If a man have parted with something which he had, not knowing the worth of it, or the need he should have of it; he often can regain it, at least with pains and cost. If a man have been overseen in a bargain, and have bartered away or sold something, and afterwards repents of it, he may often obtain a release, and recover what he had parted with. — But it is not so with respect to time. When once that is gone, it is gone forever; no pains, no cost will recover it. Though we repent ever so much that we let it pass, and did not improve it while we had it, it will be to no purpose. Every part of it is successively offered to us, that we may choose whether we will make it our own, or not. But there is no delay. It will not wait upon us to see whether or no we will comply with the offer. But if we refuse, it is immediately taken away, and never offered more. As to that part of time which is gone, however we have neglected to improve it, it is out of our possession and out of our reach.

Johnathan Edwards on the preciousness of time