Menu Week of February 28th

Menus:

Breakfasts- crockpot grain cereal- I've perfected it, added yogurt for those who soak their grains, and figured out a trick that allows me to start it early without overcooking it.
Omelettes
Strawberry and spinach smoothies
Home-made biscuit mix

Lunches
Tuna sandwiches on Croissant rolls (the girls bought tuna and made tuna salad, croissant rolls were on a two for one sale at the grocery store recently)
Broccoli Cottage Cheese Casserole
quesedillas
cream of potato/corn soup (cheater meal- it's two cans of cream of potato soup reconstituted as usual and combined with one can of creamed corn, then sprinkled with cheese) with home-made soda bread
Cottage cheese pancakes with smoothies
Cabbage and bean soup
Leftovers

Suppers

Salmon soup-  this delicious and very easy recipe can be made with fresh, frozen, or canned salmon.  It's amazing.  Last week we made it with cauliflower instead of corn, and I think we will do this forever, with cheesy biscuits and fruit

Liver, with mashed potatoes, and broccoli slaw

Poppyseed Chicken with Broccoli Slaw Kinpira for a side dish.

Turkey picadilly with salad and cauliflower

Mushroom Crepes with cauliflower and mixed vegetables

15 minute chicken chow mein with stir fried sweet potatoes


Impossible Cheeseburger pie made with home-made biscuit mix instead of storebought, served with salad and fruit

New Zealand Fund Raiser

Curriculum Click is offering a deal on downloads which benefits the New Zealand Red Cross Earthquake relief fund. For 20.00 you get a collection of programs that would ordinarily cost you over two hundred dollars.

To see which authors have donated their products to this special Curr Click benefit package click the following link:
http://www.currclick.com/product_info.php?products_id=44622&it=1

The Rule of St. Benedict for the Home

To those who seek to establish, re-establish, or improve an already established, home:

L I S T E N carefully, my child,
to your master's precepts,
and incline the ear of your heart (Prov. 4:20).
Receive willingly and carry out effectively
your loving father's advice,
that by the labor of obedience
you may return to Him
from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.

Listen. The first thing to do is to listen, inclining your ear willingly to the voice of God.
But we are to be doers of the word, not merely hearers (James 1:22).
I particularly like the turn of phrase here about the 'sloth of disobedience.' That is a hard truth. Kathleen Norris in Accedia and Me writes:

We often think of sloth as a harmless form of physical laziness, and joke about how long it’s been since we vacuumed the carpet.

It's so easy to grow weary in doing good (Gal. 6:9), and yes, vacuuming the carpet, mopping floors, preparing meals, getting up and getting dressed in the mornings- these are good things.=)

The Rule of St. Benedict for Housewives, then, could begin:

Pay attention, listen carefully to what God has to say,(Prov. 4:20)
turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding.(Prov 2:2)
But listening is not enough, action must follow.  Don't be listeners, only, but act on what you hear, or you are deluding yourself. (James 1:22)
Do not grow weary in doing good, because in due season you will reap, if you don't give up (Galatians 6:9)
Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)
Keep your eyes fixed on your Savior, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:3)
When the sloth of disobedience overcomes you, repent, and return to the Savior through the labor of obedience.
Be prepared to give up your own will to the Lord, and take up instead the strong and most excellent arms of obedience to do battle for Christ the Lord, the true King, who is glorified even in the most humble of housewifely tasks.
And first of all,
whatever good work you begin to do,
beg of Him with most earnest prayer to perfect it.


Adapted from The Prologue to Benedict's Rule of Order

Koch Brothers

If you're like me, you probably either haven't heard of them, or only heard of them recently.  They seem to be the left's new boogie men.

What the left seems to have missed is that the Koch Brothers donated 20 million dollars to support a legal fight against George Bush's Patriot Act. And that's not all:

Browsing various accounts of the Kochs political spending over the years, that $20 million appears to be substantially more than the Kochs have contributed to all political candidates combined for at least the last 15 years. (Their gifts to the arts and other non-political charities exceeds what they've spent on politics many times over.)

Why should we care?  Well, that I haven't figured out yet.

More here. The author of a recent anti-Koch brothers article appears to have just made up a quote.

Not At Ease with Judgments of Quality

Narcissus Regards a Book:

Now the kids who were kids when the Western canon went on trial and received summary justice are working the levers of culture. They are the editors and the reviewers and the arts writers and the ones who interview the novelists and the poets (to the degree that anyone interviews the poets). Though the arts interest them, though they read this and they read that—there is one thing that makes them very nervous indeed about what they do. They are not comfortable with judgments of quality. They are not at ease with "the whole evaluation thing."

They may sense that Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience are in some manner more valuable, more worth pondering, more worth preserving than The Simpsons. They may sense as much. But they do not have the terminology to explain why. They never heard the arguments. The professors who should have been providing the arguments when the No More Western Culture marches were going on never made a significant peep. They never quoted Matthew Arnold on the best that's been thought and said—that would have been embarrassing. They never quoted Emerson on the right use of reading—that might have been silly. (It's to inspire.) They never told their students how Wordsworth had saved Mill's life by restoring to him his ability to feel. They never showed why difficult pleasures might be superior to easy ones. They never even cited Wilde on the value of pure and simple literary pleasure.

The academy failed and continues to fail to answer the question of value, or even to echo the best of the existing answers. But entertainment culture suffers no such difficulty. Its rationale is simple, clear, potent: The products of the culture industry are good because they make you feel good. They produce immediate and readily perceptible pleasure. Beat that, Alfred Lord Tennyson. Touch it if you can, Emily Dickinson.

So the arbiters of culture—our former students—went the logical way. They said: If it makes you feel good, it must be good.

 And you know, so long as they are reading it doesn't matter at all what they are reading, right?

Sunday Hymn Post

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!
At His Word the worlds were framèd; He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean in their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun, evermore and evermore!
He is found in human fashion, death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below, evermore and evermore!
O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bare the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!
This is He whom seers in old time chanted of with one accord;
Whom the voices of the prophets promised in their faithful word;
Now He shines, the long expected,
Let creation praise its Lord, evermore and evermore!
O ye heights of heaven adore Him; angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him, and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert sing, evermore and evermore!
Righteous judge of souls departed, righteous King of them that live,
On the Father’s throne exalted none in might with Thee may strive;
Who at last in vengeance coming
Sinners from Thy face shalt drive, evermore and evermore!
Thee let old men, thee let young men, thee let boys in chorus sing;
Matrons, virgins, little maidens, with glad voices answering:
Let their guileless songs re-echo,
And the heart its music bring, evermore and evermore!
Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!

Hynmntime has more

Before Roe V. Wade:

3. Criminal abortions were not, by and large, the deplorable and filthy quacks so popularly presented in abortion advocacy lore. As Planned Parenthood's Mary Calderone pointed out in 1960, "Call them what you will, abortionists or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such; and many of them are in good standing in their communities. They must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is." And just one year earlier, in 1959, Planned Parenthood's Alan Guttmacher said, "They have to be good to stay in business, since otherwise they would be extremely vulnerable to police action."

4. If you want to see horrifying abortion practices, you need look no further back than last year, when Kermit Gosnell's filthy and deplorable Philadelphia abortion mill was raided. And Gosnell was merely the most recent, and most widely publicized, of a seedy lot. Dangerous abortion mills that would fit well into any "back alley" scenario thrive best when prochoice extremists hold sway, as they did in Pennsylvania. It is, and has always been, the prolifers trying to shut these places down, while prochoice activists either looked the other way or actually stepped out in defense of dangerous quacks.

From Real Choice, where there's more worth reading.

Maybe You Should Keep That To Yourself After All...

Kubler-Ross's advice on how to grieve was based on suprisingly flimsy research and may just be the worst thing you can do:

Before that threshold, though, it may be wise to skip the months of disclosure, journaling and group talk that the bereavement services sector, channelling Kübler-Ross, says we need lest our grief fester. (“Telling your story often and in detail is primal to the grieving process,” Kübler-Ross tells us. “Grief must be witnessed to be healed.”) All that vocalizing may be just the trouble. Reminiscent of the critiques around critical-incident stress debriefing, an intense talk therapy aimed at preventing post-traumatic stress disorder, some studies now say grief can be aggravated by chit-chat. Konigsberg cites another Bonanno study that found bereaved people who did not communicate their “negative emotions” had fewer health complaints than those who did, opening up the tantalizing possibility that tamping down bad feelings “might actually have a protective function.”

I think we used to know this. 

Update adapted from comments of the link immediately above:

Of course, we must make allowances for individual temperaments, but in reading older books it seems to me that when once upon a time, our own culture highly valued self-control and self-discipline as well as a certain public reserve.  At that time, those who routinely lost their self control in public were considered childish, immature, and self-centered.

While individuals may have had the sort of temperament that might have made some cry more easily than others, in certain times, those women more prone to tears would also have made more of an effort to control their emotions and cry in private.

Today we set little value on self-control, and those who exhibit it are considered cold, unfeeling, not as tenderhearted as others, and/or even prideful, while those who cry easily and often are 'sensitive.'  We as a culture value 'sharing our feelings' more than we value reserve and self-control.  We imagine that self-control is dangerously squelching those feelings while crying about it in public and talking about it at length to anybody who will listen is somehow 'healthier.'  But it seems it's not healthier after all.

I just don't think we should follow the status quo just because that's what everybody thinks.  I don't think we have to let it all out in public just because 'that's the way we are.' Our culture seems so bent on self-acceptance that there's little desire or motivation for self-improvement of the sort that takes work.

Somewhere between self-flagellation and self-disgust and self-satisfaction and 'that's just how I am', it seems to me there's room for "There are weaknesses, and these are my weaknesses, and I have the rest of my life to work towards improving."

It's time to consider:

the tantalizing possibility that tamping down bad feelings “might actually have a protective function.”

Dear Interwebs,

I had many things I wanted to say to you today, and many posts I wanted to write to store up for next week. However, two hours ago I picked up a copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which my friend sent my last week. I was only going to read a tiny bit, a page or two of the complimentary blurbs scattered about the end papers.  I was mildly curious about this story about the German occupation of Guernsey during World War Two.  That is a bit like saying The Hiding Place is about a watchmaker's family, or Jeeves and Wooster is about a butler, or 84 Charing Cross Road is about books. 

"I wonder how the book got to Guernsey?  Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers."

That is a quote from the book which the publishers and publicity people, who must be more bookish than most,  sneakily put on the front end paper to lure in the reader, and of course, the bait worked, and I was hooked, as limed as ever Beatrice was in Much Ado About Nothing.

Two hours later I had to come up for air when the phone rang, and even then it was only because the incessant interruption of the ringing phone made it impossible to remain oblivious to the obnoxiously nagging tone coming from my obnoxious bladder, which nagging I had been ignoring for far longer than is wise for a woman, who, twelve years ago was impertinently called an 'elderly multiple gravida' by a doctor who had probably only just noticed girls about the time my third child was born.

And since I had to be up and about momentarily anyway, to answer the phone, and, er, other calls, it also seemed good to me to write a little note to the Interwebs, expressing my sympathy.

I am sorry for you if you do not have a friend like my friend who sent me this lovely book. I am sorry for you if have never met all my new friends who live and move and have their being within the pages of this heartbreakingly short book.

And while I am truly saddened for those who do not have this book on their shelves, I am also delighted for the joy of discovery that awaits you. It is a joy mixed with the proper amount of sadness so that it will not be cloying, sticky, and untrue. It is an honest work of fiction. It is 84 Charing Cross Road with a touch of the war poets, a delightful dash, just enough for seasoning, of Anne of Green Gables, and some of the delicious tartness of Jane Austen in those of her private letters which have survived. 

In the spirit of true confession, however, I must tell you that I only express this sympathy in an effort to stave off my inevitable arrival at the ending of this delicious book, which is only one hundred pages away.  In a further attempt to hold back my arrival at the last page (what do you mean, self-discipline might help?  Pfshaw), I further twiddled away time looking up the authors and now will be reading through tears because one of them passed only a short time ago. 

Love,
Me

P.S.  In view of the comments below I think it's interesting that I must have been interrupted at precisely the beginning of the last third of the book. When I returned to my delightful book I was immediately smacked in the face with a small contribution toward todays' particular politically correct fetish which seems to have been dragged in to the story by its heels for no better reason than that it is today's particular Issue.

It wasn't squished in, willy-nilly, to the entire final third of the book, but it was there, embarrassing in its heavy handedness, like a piece of uncooked chicken at a dinner party where you don't want to embarrass the hostess.

For unrelated reasons, the final third of the book did not really live up to the lithesome, bright, and joyful promise of the first two thirds of the book.  It went a little haltingly to its conclusion, not least of which because it suddenly switched perspective and main narrative voice.

A light went out somewhere, and I no longer wanted the book to go on and on and on without ever stopping.  I was ready for the ending.  It wasn't that the book was suddenly just really awful, it's just that it became, well, a bit pedestrian.  I presume this is because of the original author's illness and the necessity of her niece helping her to revise the book for the publisher.  This may also be the reason for the sudden switch in narrative voice, which was a sensible choice if so, a practical response to grim necessity.

I still like this book, and would recommend it to a mature high schooler and up, with, not so much a caveat as a heads up note that a conservative parent should preview the book first.  It remains a lovely story with fascinating characters, and a good book to consider for a high school student reading about World War II, or for anybody looking for a good read.


More book reviews at Semi-Colon

Population Density

What works in Europe and Asia won't in the United States. Even abroad, passenger trains are subsidized. But the subsidies are more justifiable because geography and energy policies differ.
Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it's 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile. Trains can't pick up most people where they live and work and take them to where they want to go. Cars can.

More here, in a cogent argument about why Obama's pipe dream about fast speed trains for America is doomed to failure, and steeped in either ignorance or political pandering.  But what I found most interesting was just this paragraph comparing population densities.

Hindrances to Frugality

That's the subject of my weekly blog post over at Frugal Hacks and also of a question I asked on The Common Room's FB page.

What have you found to be hindrances to your and your frugal goals?

Lard

Consider lard.  What a title.

It's worth remembering that the very people who so trumpeted the benefits of factory margarine – which we now know caused considerably more harm than good – were the same who lambasted lard and denied its natural glories.
By any estimation, lard is a healthier fat than butter. Gram for gram, it contains 20% less saturated fat, and it's higher in the monounsaturated fats which seem to lower LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind) and raise HDL (the "good"). It's one of nature's best sources of vitamin D. Unlike shortening it contains no trans fats, probably the most dangerous fats of all. Of course it has more saturated fat than olive oil, but in her splendid book Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, Jennifer McLagan points out that even its saturated fat is believed to have a neutral effect on blood cholesterol. And would you want a pie crust made with extra virgin?

Do you cook with lard?

Four Moms Q and A

Welcome to another Four Moms Thursday!  Here are the other moms:

Kimberly, at Raising Olives
Kim, at Life in a Shoe
Connie, at Smockity Frocks,


Q. Anne-Marie said... Here's a light question--aprons. Do you wear them? Do you have a lot? What style(s) do you favor?
A. I own a lot of aprons, many of them belonged to my great-grandmother.  I pick them up at thrift shops, and I favor vintage styles. Unfortunately, I generally forget to put an apron on until after I've issued myself a little 'put on the apron' memo by way of splattering beet juice or something of similar inconspicutuity (yes, I totally made that word up)  all over myself.
There are several I enjoy looking at, but my favorite to wear is one I made from a worn out jumper that I turned into an apron by cutting up the side seams.  It's my favorite because it covers just about everything.

Q. This question was longer, so I've cut parts of it- essentially, it's about 'crying it out.'  The questioner says that every parent she knows personally

"who kept their babies from crying also bribed their toddlers and young school children to quit whining with some version of toys, candy, food, later bedtime, or whatever they were screaming for. Since I want my children to learn that the world does not revolve solely around them and I do not want them to scream for everything they want, I have always assumed cry-it-out to be the way to go.

But the thought of leaving a baby to cry alone, sometimes for hours, breaks my heart. In some of your recent posts about your grandsons, I got the impression that you are not a strong cry-it-out mom, on the other hand, I cannot imagine you allowing Blinkyn and Nod to scream for whatever they are asking for. So I am hoping you have some wonderful middle ground to share? When does one make the transition?"

A. I do not like 'crying it out' as an approach to babies, I do not like it at all, and have quite strong feelings about it.  Blynken and Nod aren't babies and they don't scream for things.

When my babies cried, if I wasn't holding them already (and I usually was) I picked them up, and I do not consider this spoiling them.

Babies are brand new little people, new to the world and the way it works. They are also physically helpless- they can't pull their own covers up if they are cold, get up and go to the bathroom to keep themselves dry, go to the kitchen to get their own drink, or come to their parents and explain, "I just had a scary dream and I am cold and lonely and want a hug."  Nor can they say, "I am hungrier than usual tonight  so might I have a small snack?"

When mom walks out of the room and leaves them alone, they do not know where she went, when she will be back, or if she will be back.  They just know they are desolately alone.
They have no language and not much sense of time.  If you've missed their earlier cues, crying is their only means of communicating their unmet needs and desires and I do not think it's fair to punish them for using the method God gave them for making their needs and wants known.


I figured my first job after meeting their actual immediate physical needs was to teach my children that I loved them, that I was there for them, to help them feel secure and loved, that I was responsive to their wants and needs, that they could trust me- and I think letting them cry it out sabotages all those lessons.  I don't think it teaches them they aren't the center of the universe, it teaches them they don't matter at all.  I don't think it teaches them not to scream or cry as much as it teaches them not to bother, to give up before they start because Mom is not receptive to their needs.
So, whenever it was possible, I picked up my babies when they cried.  I never manufactured excuses for them to cry.  But I also didn't freak out over it if they cried in a situation where I couldn't pick them up immediately- for instance, if I was in the shower, I quickly completed my shower and got dressed, I didn't race to the baby still dripping wet, shampoo in my hair (I have known those who do).  In the car, whenever possible we pulled over if a baby cried for more than five minutes or so- but I did not take the baby out of the carseat while the car was moving (I have known parents who did this, too).

And yet, I do not and did not bribe toddlers to stop screaming.  I was more likely to say, "Now that you are pitching a fit, you definitely cannot have it, because Mommy would teaching you a bad thing if I let you think screaming worked"

The transition isn't really that difficult to me- I respond quickly to an infant's cries because the infant has no words, and has not yet learned that Mommy is always coming back. Because it comes naturally, when you pick up a crying baby, to sooth the baby and say things like, "shhhh, shush now, shush, Mommy's here, you don't have to cry, what's the matter now sugar?" and so forth, the baby gradually learns the words he needs, what you hope and desire for him- and above all, that you care deeply about him.  Therefore, by the time he is a toddler- well, that toddler has words.  We can say to The Dread Pirate Grasshopper, "Mommy just went to the bathroom, she's coming right back out," and at 15 months, he understands this.  He also understands "I do not know what you want, show me" and can usually sign what he wants, say the word, or take you to the refrigerator, since usually what he wants is something to eat.

You can tell a two year old, "Stop screaming," and they not only know what these words mean, they generally have enough control over their bodies that they can stop (assuming the crying hasn't been ignored to the point that it's full blown hysteria).  You can say those words to a two month old, but it just makes you sound like an idiot or a brute, because the 8 week old baby doesn't know what you're saying and has not yet gained the necessary motor control and reasoning skills to do what you ask.  Nor can you say, "I don't know what you want, show me" with any expectation that the eight week old can toddle over to his favorite teddy bear and point it out.


Q. I would like to hear more about your window salad garden!

A. We are very fortunate to have many sunny windows, and I do think sunny windows are the key.  Otherwise, I used one gallon ice cream buckets, compost from our own kitchen scraps, and a few mixed lettuce seeds, lightly water the soil once or twice a week.  We tried it first with just two buckets, but for a family our size, I really think I need at least 8 of them.  If your house is very dry, it might also help to spritz the salads with water a few times a week.

Costochondritis...

So yesterday's visit to the Doctor took on a humorous tone, to me, anyway, when, just about the time we were wrapping up our visit, I said lightly, "Well, as long as I'm here anyway, I suppose I should mention that the last three evenings I've found that my chest really aches and feels bruised..."

The funny part is when my normally sweet natured, rather gentle and even a little diffident physician sat up and began asking me some sharply worded questions and at one point said something like,

"This is not something to mention at the end of the visit as we are wrapping things up, as though it were an insignificant matter. What you are experiencing is known in the field by the technical term CHEST PAIN and we take that rather seriously and you are having an EKG before you leave and blah, blah, blah, blah."

I'm fine, really. And I am not intending to mock the poor doctor at all. Everything he said is quite true and the funny thing was I could easily imagine myself saying exactly the same thing to my children, in similar circumstances (leaving out the EKG bit) only... well... how to put this?

I am just meaner than my doctor. He's not very good at being forceful. So his intention was to be sort of justifiably harsh and putting the fear of Doc (and heart pains) into me, but it's sort of like being chewed out by, well, late lamented Mr. Rogers of PBS fame.  He couldn't have been less intimidating if he'd been using puppets.

Because this kind of firm and righteous indignation doesn't seem to come naturally to him, I think in the end he finds himself more intimidated than I am. I don't mean to be amused, but I am, and I think it shows on my unfortunate face. I'm not just amused at him, mind. I am amused at myself, too, and the whole situation.

That situation is sort of farcical, after all. It's the stuff of comic relief bits on House or ER. There's a patient sitting in your office complaining of a minor bump on her head (a pilar, which is essentially a glorified pimple, and which said patient had already diagnosed via Google) and a pain her ankle (Achilles tendonitis, which said patient had already diagnosed via Google), and chatting with you in a nonchalant way about the weather and asking after your children (who are young enough to be her grandchildren). Then, just as you are shutting down the computer record of the visit she grudgingly mutters, "Well, there is this one other thing I thought I'd mention just because I'm already here...." and then... chest pain. Or rather, to a doctor, CHEST PAIN!!!!!


I passed the EKG with flying colors, Granny Tea.=) Colors flying so high, in fact, that he didn't even bother to come back in to discuss it, just sent the nurse to say it was great. Of course, he might have still been recovering from the embarrassment of dealing with a patient like me.

Before they did the EKG, he told me if I wasn't having a heart attack and just not telling him everything or taking it seriously as it deserved, it was probably costochondritis, which is apparently arthritis in the chest wall, and we will discuss that further later.

I didn't know the term costochondritis, but I did really think it was just some weird form of arthritis. So basically I paid my doctor to confirm what I had either already googled or just instinctively knew.

And to be chewed out by a bunny rabbit.

Which was entirely worth it.

More On Wisconsin

Here's one of the issues Governor Walker wants to change in Wisconsin:
Last year, the Education Action Group issued a report which stated, among other things, that:

WEA Trust, an insurance company established and closely associated with the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), siphons millions of crucial dollars from K-12 schools and their students every year.
WEA Trust has grown very fat on public school dollars, with a net worth of $316 million and a team of 12 administrators all receiving compensation packages worth six figures per year.
Sadly, this insurance swindle is endorsed by state law.

 The Teachers' Union is refusing to back down on this, or on their current practice of forcing the government to collect their dues and deliver them, and then using those dues- paid with taxpayer funds, collected by government employees- to support one, and only one, particular  political party.

Sadly, this insurance swindle is endorsed by state law.

This is one of the things responsible lawmakers (ie, those who stick around to do their job) are trying to correct in Wisconsin.

If you wear blinders and only trust news sources from the likes of Rachel Maddow, then you mistakenly believe that either Wisconsin isn't having a fiscal crisis, or that if it is, it's Walker's fault.  As an aside, I find that either/or statement hilariously  demonstrative of a particularly sort of groupthink- reminds me of a neighbor I had once who defended her child against an irrefutable accusation of theft with "my child would never steal because my husband is a cop and anyway, you shouldn't have left money out where she could see it!"
But anyway, that's what Rachel Maddow claimed.  However, even the very left leaning Politifact had to find that this claim is absolutely false.

"Here’s the bottom line:

There is fierce debate over the approach Walker took to address the short-term budget deficit. But there should be no debate on whether or not there is a shortfall. While not historically large, the shortfall in the current budget needed to be addressed in some fashion. Walker’s tax cuts will boost the size of the projected deficit in the next budget, but they’re not part of this problem and did not create it.

We rate Maddow’s take False."

Donna Brazile (and those who, for their own political reasons, trust her) claims that Walker's singling out only unions who opposed him. Politifact's response:

"It’s true that Walker won the endorsement of Milwaukee police and firefighter organizations, and they won’t lose collective bargaining rights if Walker’s proposal succeeds. But not all unions supported Walker. In fact, the two significant statewide organizations endorsed his opponent, and they too would be exempt from restrictions on collective bargaining. Because the statement leaves out the fact that the police and fire unions broke ranks on whether or not to support Walker, we rate this statement Half True. "

 In fact,  even Jim Palmer, the executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association (11,000 members, which did NOT endorse Walker and does NOT support the changes he wants to make in spite of the fact that his union is not affected by them, does not agree with Brazile:

Palmer said he believes that Walker exempted police and firefighters not for political payback, but because they are the public workers who are most popular with the public. "And in that way, it’s very political," he said.

Emphasis added.

Several news organizations have reported on the fact (and it is a fact) that doctors showed up at the protests offering to write official doctor's notes for teachers to give to their school districts so their pay could not be docked for not showing up to work- you know, the work of teaching Wisconsin's children.  Crooks and Liars insisted this was not true, it was a Breitbart 'plant.'  Again, the left leaning Politifact says nope, it's true, and Crooks and Liars and others of their ilk have egg on their faces and do not even know it.

We mentioned yesterday how poor the reading scores are in Wisconsin.  Math scores are not any better:

Only 39 percent of the eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools are proficient or better in mathematics, according to the U.S. Department of Education, despite the fact that Wisconsin spends more per pupil in its public schools than any other state in the Midwest.

Like reading, these dismal scores (one fifth are actually 'below basic') have remained in the basement without any change over the last 13 years in spite of Wisconsin throwing more money at the problem.  What's really tragic is that Wisconsin isn't even in the bottom 20 states. 

It is true that after losing all public sympathy over the teacher's Union's refusal to pay part of their health care costs and pay into their pension plan (which proposals still leave Wisconsin teachers with much better compensation packages and costs than private sector counterparts), the union is now willing to concede on these issues, but not on their collective bargaining rights- keeping in mind that even pro-union FDR recognized the gross abuse of the taxpayer inherent in public sector employees unionizing against taxpayers and then negotiating with other public sector employees for increased raids on taxpayer funded benefits.  If they keep those collective bargaining 'rights,' they maintain their stranglehold on the taxpayers.

Furthermore, suggestions that the governor has any sort of obligation to negotiate with unions over his proposed legislative changes are mind-boggling smacks in the face to the voters, the taxpaying public footing the bills.  Ed Morrisey explains this plainly here:

The “people” had their voice.  It was called an election, and PEU bargaining rights were a specific issue in the campaign.  Democrats defended those, and wound up in the minority in Wisconsin for the first time in decades.  Miller doesn’t want representative democracy to work — he wants to dictate terms and ignore the will of Wisconsin voters.

And also here (worth reading in its entirety):

Mark Miller, one of the runaway legislators who fled from Wisconsin to Illinois, complained that Walker didn’t negotiate with the unions when proposing his bill, and that "in democracy, you negotiate." But Walker isn't proposing a new contract with the unions — he's proposing changes to the law and to the budget for the state of Wisconsin. The proper forum for negotiating legislation and budgets is the state legislature, and the proper principals for those debates are the elected public officials of Wisconsin’s government, not the unions. In fact, it's rather telling that Miller would abdicate that role to the unions rather than to his own caucus in the legislature.
Furthermore, the Republicans who control the legislature had prepared to debate the bill. The schedule called for 17 hours of debate on the changes, which have percolated since Walker campaigned on budgetary and public-sector reform last year with these specific proposals. Democrats in the state Senate have prevented the proper exercise of negotiations by denying Wisconsin a quorum in their upper chamber.
And why? the Democrats who fled know they will lose. Instead of facing defeat, they have chosen to hold representative democracy itself hostage, and demand that the minority rule the majority as their terms.
The fleeing Democrats have essentially stolen the will of the public and their right to self-governance. Wisconsin voters elected Republicans to majorities in both chambers and Walker as their executive by convincing margins. The minority in a representative democracy has a right to be heard, but does not have the right to stop the process of governance by shutting down the legislature. In essence, those state senators who went on the lam have attempted to overturn the last election through unprecedented and illegal obstruction and dereliction of duty. They have demonstrated the haughty arrogance of those who refuse to accept their role as public servants and instead make themselves into autocrats.

Meanwhile, at a Massachusetts rally in support of the Wisconsin unions, a Democrat lawmaker actually tells the thugs that sometimes you have to go out in the street and get bloody.
In Wisconsin, lawmakers have already been receiving credible threats of violence on behalf of those paid for at the trough forcibly filled by funds confiscated from taxpayers.

This is the horrible hill upon which unions in Wisconsin are prepared to bloody more than a few heads:

The truth, as laid out in a GAO report from 2002 (see pages 8 and 9), is that there are already 12 states with no public employee collective bargaining law at all. In these states, state workers have no right to collective bargaining; local employees have collective bargaining only if local elected officials choose to grant it. (And in a few states, notably Virginia and North Carolina, state law forbids localities to allow collective bargaining.) Another 12 states grant collective bargaining rights only to certain classes of employees, such as only state workers or only teachers. Only 26 states have a collective bargaining law covering nearly all public workers.

So that means that the model from which Walker proposes to break, much to the horror and outrage of public worker unions and their backers, is a model only actually followed by 25 other states.

 The truth is education in American has been in trouble for a long time, and teachers' unions haven't been helping, they are part of the problem.  They aren't the whole problem, but they are indeed part of the problem.

  And public sector unions are part of the problem for state budgeting efforts, too, of course.

And while this is not specific to Wisconsin, it's just too funny not to share- 'I'm broke, you have an obligation to fix this, what am I gonna tell my kids, but I can't take that job because I'm going to Spain on vacation.'

Clutter Patrol

I looked this up on the blog and see that I've mentioned it a handful of times, but have never explained exactly what it is we do for clutter patrols. Of course, it's probably fairly obvious, but still, I thought I'd explain.

I am that pathetic sort of soul who finds clutter and chaos overwhelming and discombobulating, but who can't seem to find a way to clean as I go (or teach the Progeny to do this) so that we minimize the clutter and chaos. Yes, that does mean I spend a lot of time being overwhelmed and discombobulated.

It's as though God meant me to be a beaver and gave me beaver sensitivities and yearnings, but the internal mandate inherent in true beaver personalities just never developed in me. I suspect that passive attitude that assumes such a mandate is something that 'just growed,' like Topsy, might be part of the problem.

Which brings us to Clutter Patrols. In the old days when we had babies and toddlers living here 24 and 7, I generally called Clutter Patrols at least twice a day.

When I say I called them, I mean there came a moment in the mid-morning when the clutter and chaos of my physical environment suddenly and instantly became unacceptable burden to my soul, and I yelled, "Cah-lutttttttt-terrrrrrr PPaaaaaaaaaat-rrrooooollllllllllllllllllllll!" at the top of my lungs in tones that made all the fire engines in five counties weep with envy.

EVERYBODY in the house instantaneously dropped whatever it was they were doing and scrambled to pick things up and put them away as fast as possible.

I set the timer on the microwave for five or ten minutes and then joined in the scramble, usually helping a baby or toddler put their things away, or acting as traffic director, pointing one child to, say, the books the toddler had removed from the shelves, and another to, perhaps, the basket of folded laundry, and yet another to the cans of tomato sauce the baby had been stacking.

A handful of times instead of a timer, we put in a really bouncy song in the CD or tape player, the kind with a strong back-beat the likes of which would make Gothardites certain that tiny demons were zinging about the house infesting us like so many roaches, and clean to the beat.

We'd usually have another clutter patrol in the afternoon just before quiet time, or just before Daddy came home, or perhaps just at bedtime, or maybe all of the above.

There were a few rules to Clutter Patrols:

1. Yes, everybody really did have to drop what they were doing when Mama hollered:
"Cah-lutttttttt-terrrrrrr PPaaaaaaaaaat-rrrooooo-llllll!!!!!!!"

2. Clutter Patrols ought to be called with the right amount of flair and drama. Think something like "Sooooo-ey, Pig, pig, pig, pig," the famous cry of the Arkansas Razorbacks, to get some idea as to pitch and cadence.

3. No griping, and especially NO complaining that you didn't make this mess. EVERYBODY made this mess because we are a family and we all live here, and we are all helping to keep the house, well, to be honest, not exactly clean, but at least not something that would give Oscar of The Odd Couple nightmares.

4. Brisk, energetic cleaning is the expectation. Malingering, griping, complaining, and a sudden onset of irritable bowel syndrome will result in an even more sudden case of irritable mom syndrome and the cleaning will continue until Mama's symptoms have abated.

5. Clutter Patrols were sometimes followed up with tea and a snack and a read aloud. You never know. Unless something has triggered Irritable Mom Syndrome, in which case you know that nobody but Mom is gonna see chocolate.

I preferred the spontaneous shouting of clutter patrols whenever I felt the need to clear the air, and the floor, and the furniture... but later the older girls explained that they really disliked having the flow of their days interrupted that way, so we took to scheduling clutter patrols a couple times a day.

Now we don't have them regularly- except when the Little Boys are here. However, the older two girls at home will occasionally tell me they think we need one and so we'll announce that after lunch, or just before lunch, or as soon as everybody is done with whatever subject they are currently reading, there will be a Clutter Patrol.

It's all so planned and civilized now. One of these days we might even issue engraved invitations at breakfast:
"A Clutter Patrol is Announced."

That's how we handled the stuff that seems to just sprout all over the house during the day to day living a large family does.

What works for you? And if you tell me you just do not permit it to accumulate, well, you're a better mom than I am, Gunga Din.

I'd take my hat off to you, but I'd probably drop it and forget where it was.

Something Gained In Translation

"Chop-Chop, Donovan," Nod said to the dog, who was blocking the kitchen doorway.

"What does chop-chop mean?" somebody asked him.

"It means, 'Please move, Donovan, because you are in my way and I need to get out of the kitchen and to do that I have to go through this doorway,'" said the small boy, quite matter-of-factly, as though this ought to be obvious.

"Ummmm, does Donovan know this is what that means?" asked Pip.

"I don't think so," said Blynken, "because he's still just standing there."

Prayers for those in New Zealand

Earthquake in Christchurch New Zealand killed 65 that I know of. More here.

Wisconsin...

Here's what public education in Wisconsin looks like:

from 1998 to 2008, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil spending by $4,245 in real terms yet did not add a single point to the reading scores of their eighth graders and still could lift only one-third of their eighth graders to at least a “proficient” level in reading.

The $10,791 that Wisconsin spent per pupil in its public elementary and secondary schools in fiscal year 2008 was more than any other state in the Midwest.

I am not sure that teachers meant to draw attention to that failure with this strike, but they surely did. But after all, isn't it ultimately the parents' fault?  Sure.  But if the public school cannot fix bad parenting no matter how much money the school gets, then why are we giving them more money to do what they declare is impossible?  And isn't that what happens? We end up using the exact same reasons to justify the existence of federally funded public education, to insist that they aren't getting enough money and need more, and then to absolve the same schools of all their failures.

Betsy Newmark, who is a teacher herself, is disgusted by the lack of professionalism displayed by Wisconsin teachers. I was particularly taken aback by the teachers who dragged their students into the mess- such as the teacher holding up a sign claiming to 'inspire' Governor Walker's son in the classroom every day. Gag.

The teacher who writes at Confederate Yankee also is disturbed by what he sees in Wisconsin:

When I seek Wisconsin teachers abandoning their kids, lying about their absence, misusing their influence to trick their uncomprehending students into anti-democratic protests with them, and now, obtaining fraudulent excuses from doctors (here), I find myself very concerned for public education and very angry at those useful idiots in classrooms allowing themselves to be so skillfully, yet crudely played by their unions.

We've seen what the new civility looks like in Wisconsin. What I find kind of amusing about all the Governor Walker as Hitler signs (insofar as Hitler comparisons can be said to be funny) is harking back to when Nancy Pelosi suddenly discovered it was very, very bad, unamerican even, to have this sort of signage (and even then, she was largely making it up).

Democrat lawmakers in Indiana are also playing hooky rather than go to work and vote on a bill that would allow workers to opt out of unions.

Is Something Wrong With Your Dishwasher

I thought it was the kids growing careless, which, in a way, I guess it is, since they are putting the dishes away anyway.  But they didn't used to have to check them so carefully.

More Kindle Fun

Rick's found a new way to use his Kindle.

I am still delighted and all flibertygidgety over the moon over mine. The FYG and FYB use it for quite a bit of their school reading. When one finishes reading a section of the day, that Progeny bookmarks the point with initials and date. That makes it easy to find where to start again next time. These are books that never get lost, either, because they simply are Not Allowed to Lose the Kindle. No tension-ridden periods of time while one of them hunts bootlessly for a book they are sure the other one lost. The Cherub can never gleefully fling these bookmarks out of the book and onto the floor, either. I think it's probably saved us hours in school time.

So now you know how inefficient we are. Just in case there was any doubt.

Rambling and Scrambling

Yesterday took four of us to eye exams in the same town where the Striderling lives. 

We left early so we could squeeze in:
a visit to the health food store, where many things I was out of were on sale!
A visit to Michael's craft store, where the very thing I went to buy was on sale!!
A visit to Borders, which was having a going out of business sale that really wasn't that impressive. At. All.

After the eye exams we went to Aldi's to pick up a few more things, and finally arrived at the Striderling's apartment.  While there we all had a turn holding or playing with the baby.
We also:
Washed dishes
Sorted laundry
Sorted paperwork
Tidied and organized or reorganized various nooks, crannies, and piles
Got a start on going through the HG's closet, because it was full fo clothes that did not.
Made siblings very happy with some of those clothes.
Moved a large empty cabinet from a spot where it was only in the way to a post that may be temporary, but isn't in the way.
Emptied out three plastic storage totes and a couple bags

Brought home a bag of birthing supplies and a few extra baby clothes for the Equuschick.
Brought home a tote of stuff to donate to a thrift shop and a crisis pregnancy center

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....
The amazing HeadMaster had a day off and stayed home with the Cherub and Blynken and Nod.  The boys' mother had told me she would picking them up.  But she didn't get here until about the same time we did- around 8:30 p.m., so the HM had a very full day.

He got up early to go cut firewood before we left.

Then he came home, showered, and bundled up the boys and the Cherub and took them out to the garage to play while he worked on cleaning it and making baby steps towards getting it organized again.

Granny Tea phoned and needed somebody to watch Gramps for a bit, so she brought him over, too.

While the HM wasn't looking, Gramps escaped, so the HM had to bundle up Nod, Blynken, and the Cherub and take them out to trudge along after Gramps and bring him back home.

He also handled spit (Nod), too much talking and not enough listening (Nod), hungry boys on a growth spurt (mostly Blynken, who, on Sunday, ate THREE sloppy joes and was still hungry), and lying (Nod again).

At five or so Jenny texted Pip to ask if we'd heard from the boys' mother since she still wasn't there and hadn't called them.  I called her to ask if she was still planning on coming out, since the boys were asking for her, and she said it would be another 90 minutes before she could get there (which means, children, that she actually had not left yet and probably hadn't intended to, and if you followed carefully you will know that she didn't come 90 minutes later, but something more like three hours later).

Small wonder than when I called to report on the guestimated pick up time for the boys he wanted to know, "But when are you coming home?"

Tuesday (today), The Boy and I have doctor appointments in another town 40 miles away, followed by a thrift shop visit to find shirts that are long enough on the Boy.

Wednesday is the dentist and midweek Bible study 45 miles away.

Thursday is family Bible study and dinner at our house with friends.

Friday - Sunday is an interesting series of lessons by a guest speaker at church on Bible lands.

Monday I think I have an appointment with my warmest, fuzziest, pajamas, a nice snugly blanket, and the couch.

Except, Oh Noes, I don't, because it's a family birthday party, the first of our long spring season of family birthdays- one late February, four in March, and, of course, the new Shasta/Equuschick production is due in March, two in April.
As I once said to a friend who found our string of spring birthdays remarkable, "I calve in the spring."

And as he said to me, "If I'd put it that way, I'd have been in HUGE trouble."

Modern Major General

It was either this, or the Llama song.

News

Defunding Obama-Care is mere political theater by politicans who imagine they were elected to do business as usual (yes, Republicans, I am looking at you):

Denying additional funding for Obamacare does not de-fund the huge amounts it already is using for implementation.  That requires additional action.
Even though the last Congress failed to pass other appropriations bills (creating the need for the currently-pending spending measure), that former Congress DID provide billions to get Obamacare launched.  The money was directly appropriated as part of the health care legislation, rather than included in a separate appropriations bill as is the normal practice.

Half of Republican Caucus, Especially Leadership and Old Guard, Votes With Democrats To Block Additional $22 Billion in Cuts It's pretty bad. They just are not serious about much besides job security and their own perks.

FDR and unions for government employees, who knew?

The big issue in Wisconsin today is whether or not public sector workers should have collective bargaining rights. In an Aug. 16, 1937 letter to Luther Steward, the president of the National Federation of Public Employees, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had something to say about that:

[M]eticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Roosevelt would have absolutely rejected the mass demonstrations aimed at blocking access or regress from the state’s legislative building, and at keeping children out of school:

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees.

Obama, it seems, disagrees, since he's not taken the opportunity to be presidential instead of petulant and small, and he's allowed the DNC to 0 help direct this so-called 'grassroots' protest on the ground.


What is interesting is exactly what teachers are protesting, and the way Obama chooses to insert himself into one state's business, while looking the other way over the exact same issues in another state:

What is being proposed by the governor and his supporters? That state public workers—excluding police, firefighters and state troopers—pay half their pension costs and 12% of their health insurance costs, and lose their right to collectively bargain anything but pay.
Doesn’t sound all that onerous to me. But I guess if you’re used to tremendous benefits, it’s very hard to give them up. But for Obama, it is the equivalent of a vicious attack on his most-favored constituency, public employees and public unions.

 Click through to read the point about how he chooses his battles.

I understand that the teacher's unions have now agreed to pay their pension costs and more of their health insurance costs, but they are choosing the hill of collective bargaining for everything except pay.  The problems inherently with public employees unionizing and then bargaining for benefits are ably explained here.
Republican lawmakers, spineless and unprincipled as ever, may be backing down.

From the Atlantic Review:

The New York Times (via ACUS) describes a joint proposal from German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy to the EU leaders as a "German diktat." That's the first weird assessment in this Germany bashing editorial. Here are three more:

Mrs. Merkel wants all 17 countries that use the euro to fall in line with German ideas of fiscal austerity in return for limited additional financial support for countries in trouble. She expects them to run deficits no higher than Germany's (3.5 percent of G.D.P.), allow retirement no earlier than Germany (age 67), and raise or lower their tax rates as required to match Germany's.

a) Has the NYT forgotten what the EU agreed on two decades ago? According to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 deficits should be below 3 percent and debt below 60 percent of GDP. Most countries broke the rules. For some this caused more serious economic problems than for others. Now Germany is asked to help them.

More than 200 dead in Libya, as government soldiers fired into crowds of mourners at funeral.  Horrible. 
Gaddafi may have fled the capital as protestors gained a foothold there, and have taken over the nation's second largest city.  Gaddafi's son says his government will "eradicate them all."


Magnetic North is shifting

Volcano erupts in the Philippines

Horrible events in Spain as it is revealed that for decades, doctors were lying to mothers, telling them their babies had died at birth, and then selling the babies to adoptive parents.
T

Lessons Learned Along the Way 4

Starting Your Day: Your day will really go better if you can plug into your power source at the start instead of only at bedtime (I'm talking prayer and Bible reading here), but... it's really hard for some of us to get anything other than coffee going in the morning- especially when you have little people who are early birds. My kids always woke up within sixty seconds of me waking up, so getting up early seemed like a lost cause to me.  Suggestions?

Here are some of mine:

Bible on tape, CD, iPod, Mp3 player, the computer, whatever electronic gizmo you have (for years I used my kids' red plastic walkman to listen to tapes at the dentist's office)- get it set up the night before and listen to it in the kitchen while fixing breakfast, in the shower, while getting dressed, while making beds (presuming you make them. I don't.), and while running through the house with your hair on fire doing whatever it is you do in the morning.

Print out a chapter of the Bible and tape it to a surface where you hheave to spend a few minutes every morning- your bathroom mirror, the wall by the changing table, a kitchen cabinet, the wall nearest the toilet, in several spots on the floor between your bed and your coffee maker so that as you crawl to the kitchen to get your coffee in the morning, you have something to read that will sustain you longer than your caffeine fix.

Laminate this chapter and put it on your placemat at the table.


Be old fashioned and full of steely personal discipline and get up before the kids and read your Bible.  I've heard good things about this method from those who have tried it.

Sunday Hymn Post

There where the judges gather
A Greater takes His seat;
How long, He asks the judges,
“Will ye pronounce deceit?
How long respect the persons
Of them of ill repute?
How long neglect the orphaned,
The poor and destitute?

Deal justly with the needy,
Protect the fatherless,
Deliver the afflicted
From those who would distress.
But you are wholly blinded,
You do not understand;
Therefore foundations totter,
Injustice rocks the land.

He speaks, I named you rulers,
Sons of the Most High God,
But you shall die as mortals,
And perish by My rod.
Arise, Thou God of judgment
Thy sovereignty make known;
For Thine shall be the nations,
The peoples Thou shalt own.r

Cyber Hymnal

Saturday

Check out this post on making breakfast sandwiches that  you can freeze ahead.

Right now Blynken, Nod, The FYG, the FYB and I are curled up on the bed while I read aloud from Watership Down.

We've just gotten to the bit about the warren of Cowslip, Strawberry, and Nildro-Hain,  The rabbits are out in the field gathering the strangely bountiful carrots, lettuce, and other flayrah.  Blynken astutely, particularly for a six year old, says, "Hmm.  Something seems evil here.  It makes me think of Hansel and Gretel."


The Cherub is on the loveseat nearby.

Organic raisins for all the children to snack on, except the FYG, who discovered a toxically red Valentine's lollipop and is slurping on that.

Lessons Learned Along the Way 3

Homeschooling curriculum: It's okay to switch curriculum halfway through the school year. You do not have to finish it just because you paid for it. It's okay to skip pages, even chapters.  It's okay not to finish the book.  It's okay to tear out the pages and make paper airplanes with them if you really hated it.


On the other hand, sometimes it's okay to make yourself stick to it and follow through on something if you've developed a habit of throwing in the towel.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL in the news

Two years ago then state attorney general Phil Kline filed 107 charges against Planned Parenthood in Kansas, including 23 felonies.

In June, 2007, the new pro-abortion Attorney General, Paul Morrison, issued a letter “clearing” Planned Parenthood of any wrong-doing. This letter disturbed Judge Richard Anderson, who was the custodian of the evidence and the judge who had been involved in overseeing Kline’s investigations.
Six months later, Morrison was forced to resign in disgrace amid a scandal involving his attempts to persuade his illicit lover in the DA’s office to obstruct Kline’s abortion investigations.
Finally, in October, 2007, Kline filed the charges but the new Attorney General, Steven Six, who was appointed by pro-abortion ex-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius placed a gag order on Judge Anderson and the evidence against Planned Parenthood. Anderson was told not to comply with the District Attorney’s subpoenas.
Two judges have determined that the files show “probable cause” that the abortion business violated state abortion laws and falsified medical records. Kline legally received the records during his investigation of Planned Parenthood and transferred them to his new office when he became the county attorney.
The records showed, according to Anderson, that the age of the babies involved in the abortions had been altered to hide the fact that Planned Parenthood was engaging in illegal late-term abortions. Kline has also said Planned Parenthood engaged in a felony by making copies of state health department abortion reports that it failed to keep on file as required by law.

Kelli Conlin was the president of NARAL New York, and I guess we could say she was pro-woman, providing that woman is Kelli Conlin. She:

resigned last month after a forensics audit the pro-abortion group conducted uncovered financial problems dating back to 2008, or even earlier, according to a YNN report. She had held the post for two decades and YNN indicates a source close to the situation says she was fired.

The audit found over 20,000 in meals for Kelli and her friends as well as 100,000 for a car service to take her children to and from their private school, among other things.

Lila Rose and Planned Parenthood

Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review profiles the Nelly Bly of our times- Lila Rose, the brave and steadfast young investigative journalist and founder of Live Action who has been exposing Planned Parenthood for the vile anti-woman organization it is.  It's a good read on a good person:

“I think there are two common responses to her work,” says Brigid Bower, the Georgetown senior who organized the conference in January: “One is to just be impressed that someone so young is doing what she can to help. The other thing is that she exposes people who are protecting rapists, pimps, human traffickers — not medical professionals with women’s interests at heart. I think anybody who cares about women can agree that no clinic should be helping a 25-year-old pimp cover up his 14-year-old victim’s pregnancy, and then enabling the abuse by providing birth-control pills.”

One would hope so, but that it is, of course, exactly what Planned Parenthood does, and wants to continue doing with impunity.

The House has finally taken a step toward doing something about this disgrace.  They've voted to defund Planned Parenthood.

News and Views

Britain: Biggest welfare shake-up in 60 years will end system that rewards the workshy

When the welfare system was created after the Second World War, individuals' sense of 'private shame' was sufficient to deter them from claiming handouts unless they really needed them, he said.
But that collective culture of responsibility had been lost because 'we've created the bizarre situation where time and again the rational thing for people to do is, quite clearly, the wrong thing to do'.
Couples lived apart, unemployed people turned down jobs and people went off sick when they could still work because the system made them financially better-off as a result, said Mr Cameron.
'Yes, there are those who, with no regret or remorse, intentionally rip off the system - and that makes hard-working people, including many on low incomes who pay their taxes, rightly angry,' he said.
'But I know this country and therefore refuse to believe that there are five million people who are inherently lazy and have no interest in bettering themselves and their families.
'What I want to argue is that the real fault lies with the system itself.

'The benefit system has created a benefit culture. It doesn't just allow people to act irresponsibly, but often actively encourages them to do so.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1357792/Britain-welfare-reform-end-rewards-workshy.html#ixzz1EHjelfq4

Wisconsin teachers seem a bit confused.... about several things. Like who is President.

The Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America arm -- the remnant of the 2008 Obama campaign -- is playing an active role in organizing protests against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's attempt to strip most public employees of collective bargaining rights.

Roosevelt (FDR) and Obama on teacher's Unions- and other interesting points.

The spokesman for The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt:

The Brotherhood would seek "the preservation of honor" by stoning adulterers, punishing gays, requiring Muslim women to cover their heads and shoulders in public and killing Muslims who leave their faith, said Abdel Fattah, whose forehead bore the calluses of those who prostrate themselves five times a day in prayer.
....
"We basically want a government that will take on the demands of the people that were clear in the revolution of Tahrir Square," Abdel Fattah said. "Sharia law does not differ from the demands of the people."

The Gates of Vienna Newsfeed  is always useful.

Make Your Own Seed Starter Pots

Using newspapers and a jar- very cool.  And very Frugal.

You may also be interested in a worm bin for vermi-composting.

Growing tomatoes in a five gallon bucket (get these free from a bakery)

Because our large property is so shady (which is lovely for our air conditioning bill), we've not really gardened much here other than in containers on the deck and the tire wall.  The Equuschick and Shasta have a great garden spot, and we're going to try to plant there.

The Equuschick, of course, will have a toddler and a brand new baby in March, and she has made it clear she wants no part of a garden whatsoever this year.  I have a few trepidations about our plans to garden there, as I know how weak I am on following up on plans like this.  But it is our, or at least my, goal to plant a bigger garden there this year and try to get over there regularly to water and weed it so Shasta, who loves his yard to look like a suburban paradise of velvety smooth lawn, will not be stressed and irritated by an overgrown plot of weeds.

I want to plant kale, tomatoes, spinach, peppers, squash, and cucumbers.  We will still grow some tomatoes and herbs here in our container gardens.

Update:
Tomatoes, peppers, squash and cukes are done, although, not at her house. We've done more container gardens and planted some things in an old horse trough and in old galvanized metal of some kind wash tubs. Didn't plant kale or spinach. This spring is so cold, though, I probably could still do that. Pictures to follow.



Linked at Gardening 101

Lessons Learned Along the Way 2

On Outside Commitments: If you are not already doing a pretty decent, or at least adequate job being a wife, a mother, a homeschooling mom (if that's what you've chosen), and keeper of the home you really shouldn't take on additional outside responsibilities. It's okay to say no, even to good things. We said yes to the Cherub umpteen years ago, yes to the boys about five years ago, and from time to time we help out with my dad. I have the blog. There are a few other things that apply to our situation and not necessarily somebody else's. That means I said no to some of the following things:

Teaching Sunday School
Helping with our annual Lady's retreat
Doing more stuff with our local homeschool support group
Ladies' nights out with our church
A large garden
Wandering around the building after services visiting with other people (The Cherub essentially keeps me tethered).
Hosting any further Student Dinners on Sunday nights
a whole host of other outside activities

You may need to say no to things, too, or you may need to say yes to something else. You evaluate the question of whether or not you should participate in these things by looking at your life and what you are already doing, how well you are doing it, how solid your primary relationships and responsibilities are (husband and children), and how much you already resemble a small bit of butter spread over a large piece of bread.
You don't evaluate them based only on whether or not they are good things to do.

Spending Individual Time With Your Children

Welcome to another Four Moms Thursday!  Here are the other moms:
Kim, at Life in a Shoe knows that the planned moments are not as important as the providential ones.
Connie, at Smockity Frocks, knows that special outings are, well, special.
Kimberly, at Raising Olives knows that prayer covers a multitude of unplanned moments.


I will just say up front that I have some regrets about this with one child in particular, the quiet sort that you don't always realize needs you until it's too late. And that's all I am going to say about that. Okay, no, it's not.  Pay attention to the quiet ones.  The noisy ones can distract your attention and meanwhile, those sweet little oysters are quietly hurting.

Here are some things we did do (and do):

Dad usually washes dishes in the evening or on a weekend with whoever is in the kitchen (the Progeny take turns). Chores together are a lovely, lovely way to talk to your child and find out all kinds of things.  There is something special about working together that opens up the doors to their hearts.

Take one child on an errand with you- we used to have an envelope taped to the front door with an index card for each member of the family in the envelope.  When Mom or Dad left to run an errand, we would take the child whose name was in the front.  When we returned home, we'd move their name to the back.  I believe that once we had children old enough to babysit, we added Mom and Dad's names to the list so that sometimes we could run errands as a couple.=)

Sometimes one child sits up late with me and we watch a movie together, other times one child gets up early with Dad and they do math together.  We each play to our strengths, you see.=)

For a little while one day a week I committed to getting up earlier than everybody else with one of the children and doing one special thing of that child's choice- with some limitations.  We couldn't go out to eat, we couldn't be gone more than an hour (we lived in town then), and it couldn't cost more than a couple of dollars.  One child's favorite activity of choice was just to get in the van and drive around parts of town we hadn't been before.  We found enchanting gardens, lovely roads, and once, a beautiful miniature stone castle so delightful that the following week for 'her' activity, she chose to take all her siblings to show them.

In fact, we found that very, very often when we told our children they could have some special one on one time with Mom or Dad, they got to choose what to do, and they chose.... to bring the siblings.

So let's consider this from another angle.

 Several years ago I was astonished when a mother of ten answered the question about how can you be sure you're giving your children enough one on one time by saying that she didn't think it was quite as big a deal as our culture made it. She went on to explain that while individual attention was important, she didn't see why we acted like that was all that really counted, and it was only a poor second best to read a story to two children instead of one, or to sit down and play a game with five children instead of only one, or to shuck corn or pick blueberries one on one instead of with mom and all the siblings.

Siblings are important to our children, too:

From the time they are born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales. They are our scolds, protectors, goads, tormentors, playmates, counselors, sources of envy, objects of pride. They teach us how to resolve conflicts and how not to; how to conduct friendships and when to walk away from them. Sisters teach brothers about the mysteries of girls; brothers teach sisters about the puzzle of boys. Our spouses arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us. Our siblings may be the only people we'll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life. "Siblings," says family sociologist Katherine Conger of the University of California, Davis, "are with us for the whole journey."

Our seven children plus the two little boys plus the grandbabies multiply the love, the fun, the laughs, and the snuggles. They don't divide it.

Anne at Holy Experience wrote a lovely post about this:

Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet. ~Vietnamese Proverb
It works out to one in every ten.
If we agree to the premise that an individual needs 12 hugs per day to thrive, this mother of six and wife to one must offer one hug every 10 minutes of every 14 waking hours to another body in this home.
(Math: 12 hugs multiplied over the 7 other people in this household is 84 hugs a day, and over a 14 hour period, that requires clocking in a hug every 10 minutes.)

Of course, a mother can create efficiencies — and, while I’ve often thought it should be a natural outgrowth of motherhood, I don’t mean sprout more arms. This Mama can encourage all of the arms in this home to be reaching out for each other.

From time to time our children certainly need some private time with mom and dad, and I do not want to dismiss the importance of that.  However, it is also true that more often family times are enhanced by each additional sibling, not diluted by them.

What about you?  How do you spend individual time with your children?  How important so you think this is?  If you don't have children, how did your parents spend individual time with you?  Or did they?  Is it important to schedule this time, or do you think it happens naturally?  What hinders it from happening naturally?  What makes it more likely?

Lessons Learned Along the Way

On Proverbs 31:
The first thing the Proverbs 31 woman did every day was to feed her maids. Just saying.

There is also no mention of her changing diapers, nursing babies, or cleaning up vomit. Not saying she never did these things, I am saying that perhaps Proverbs 31 was a peek into her life at a different stage than the one where half a momma's time is spent dealing with bodily fluids.

Updated to add this:
I wasn't going to share at this level of detail, but here's something I just bet you the Proverbs 31 woman never, ever had to say:

"Pip?  The Cherub just sneezed and it appears that a slime monster has exploded inside her head and is now running out the front of every orifice on her face.  Since I was sitting on the couch and she was standing directly over me when this explosion happened, I need you to come look at my head and tell me if the two of us need a bath, or if I can just bathe her.  I am afraid to move or touch my own head right now."

Happily, Pip confirmed that only the Cherub needed a shower. 
The shower, it did not go well.  By the time were done, the shower curtain was down, sticky red cough syrup was all over the toilet seat and running down the sides of the toilet onto the floor (do not ask.  Just don't.) three large bath towels and two bath mats needed to be laundrered, and I had pulled out my back.

The FYG finished dressing the Cherub and the FYB cleaned the floor and toilet because I do believe in a socialist division of labor in my home.

I was just settling the Cherub down on the couch after this ordeal (a settling that included a blanket pinned around her for catching further remains of the mucous monster from Mars because, well, it's the Cherub, when surprise company walked in.

Yeah.  It was a total Proverbs 31 moment.

Chris Christie Goes To Washington...

He's speaking to the conservative American Enterprise Institute and tells some truths that need to be repeated:

"There You Go:" "We have to reform Social Security because it's bankrupting us. We have to reform Medicare because it's bankrupting us. We have to reform Medicaid because not only is it bankrupting the federal government it's bankrupting every state government. I just said these things and lightning didn't come through the window and strike me dead. There you go."

Talks about "studying an issue" is government-talk for "letting an unsustainable program die due to natural causes (bankruptcy) because we don't want our fingerprints on it because we don't want to be seen as murdering it."

Ace says that's a paraphrase, but pretty close, and he's got more. Good stuff.