Subtle messaging in PSAs

This morning I watched a very sweet PSA, "Put a little love in your heart" and the sponsors were a variety of organizations and name brands which quickly left my mind. You know the song (I won't sing it here), and photos of various singles and groups and ethnicities roll by. The only nuclear family group--mom, dad, kids--were white. I think all elderly--black and white--were alone, young people were alone or shown with one or two others.  Not sure I saw disabled, but one young teen had the knit cap which might indicate cancer recovery, and she was playing guitar accompaniment, but again, was alone. Not sure that a message about love should feature so many solitary figures--especially the elderly. Life is hard; take a friend with you on the journey.

Special words

Capitalism and the Rule of Love

All systems are made of people who fail, and some of those people are evil.  But capitalism is the best of the bad, and offers the world the most loving system.  This article was originally published in 1953, and the author Clarence Philbrook (1909–1978) contends that interventionism and extensive government serve the rule of love less well than capitalism does: “capitalism does less violence to the rule of love than would any other system so far conceived.”  This is important for liberal Christians of the 21st century to know—pushing our responsibility off on to government is not loving, especially when it does such a poor job.

The link is to a descriptive abstract, but the full article will open in pdf. http://econjwatch.org/articles/capitalism-and-the-rule-of-love?ref=articles

“Capitalism is capable of giving us a much better society than we have known. Even apart from its fabulous tendency toward increased production, immense change expressive of the rule of love is available in that depression can be largely eliminated and inequality of income mitigated, both of these by methods quite in keeping with the logic of the system. Moreover, fantastically more brotherly love than has ever been exercised can be given expression through individual attitude, decision, and action in a capitalistic society. But if we repudiate that system by making changes which conflict with its essential mechanism, we give up one of the few protections we have against the evil that is in us.” ECON JOURNAL WATCH 11(3)
September 2014: 326-337.

Rudy was right

“There is very little that a man with Barack Obama’s views and proclivities should love about the country, beyond the fact that its people are so vulnerable to insipid sentimentality that they twice elected him president.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414112/rudy-right-kevin-d-williamson

Rolling in the deep by Adele

Best scorned lover song of all time, cross overs galore--blues, pop, disco--including the ocean from England to U.S. Such a talented singer/song writer.

And a darn good cover by this little gal and her mother.

Perhaps God’s love is like this

Yesterday we were eating lunch in the dining room of the Hotel Lakeside.  We’d ordered our food and were waiting while conversing with our friends Rob and Lynn.  Then I heard a crash.  At the next table there was a mother and her two young daughters, perhaps 7 and 5.  Somehow, the older girl had knocked her plate to the floor, and it shattered with glass and food all scrambled.  I was very surprised because the floor was carpet over wood.  But there it was and everyone turned to look.  The little girl got down and started to clean it up.  I was horrified.  I expected to see blood any moment.  “Oh don’t do that,” I said out loud because her mother seemed immobile and couldn’t see what I saw.  Then the mom got up and started to clean it up, as slowly some staff appeared.  Finally, she sat down and a bus boy with a tray picked up the food and shards of glass.  After he left and everyone in the dining room returned to the soup and salads, the little girl’s frozen face crumbled, and she got down and ran to her mother’s lap where she sobbed and sobbed.  Mom didn’t say a word—just held and rocked her.

The dish was still broken; the food was still ruined; and yes, people had stared at her and she was still embarrassed to have been the “big girl” in the restaurant who had spilled her food.  But Mom held her.  It’s a reminder to me of how God’s love works. He can’t always undo what we did, but he can hold us close until the hurt and embarrassment goes away.

         

106 ways to show love

A guy named Vince writes an advice and review column for romance writers and readers. This one is pretty good--106 ways to show (not tell) people (your characters in a story) are falling in love. There's a few (26-28) I don't care for and I think he meant have patience instead of have patients, but it's a very good list about showing love. My husband of 50 years would get an A if this were a test.

It's about love

"Lakeside is for lovers" is a phrase I’ve seen on cards, buttons, t-shirts and other memorabilia. And it’s true--and not just for the strolling, hand-holding lovers you see on the dock.

Several years ago I wrote a poem which was published in the weekly newspaper called “The last day of July” about a young couple who met and parted at Lakeside during WWII, planning to see each other the next summer. But it didn’t happen. Finally, when both were great-grandparents some 60 summers later, they met again, but it was the last day of July and their summers were over.

Another type of love I see so often at Lakeside is that of adoptive and foster families. On my corner of Lakeside I’ve seen the American melting pot of special needs and international adoption. Now some of those children are grown and bringing their bi-racial, multi-ethnic children to be Lakesiders too. I saw these children only a few weeks of the year, so their growth and maturity are compressed. First they were toddlers and then it seemed overnight pouty teen-agers with more than the usual identity issues, and now their kids are almost as tall as grandma and grandpa.

At Lakeside I see a love for a past that is often a nostalgic fantasy. In the 70s Lakeside looked to me like the sleepy towns of the 1940s or 1950s, and now it seems to be a spiffy stage set for a 1970s or 1980s TV show, but with i-pods instead of boom boxes and rip rap along the lakefront instead of flat rocks easing into the lake. But it is always “that’s how life used to be” to people who came here as children, like my 92 year old neighbor who began coming when she was 6 months old.

Lakeside has porches often filled with four generations of family--laughing, telling stories on each other, playing monopoly or scrabble. I’ve attended 90th birthday parties and 50th wedding anniversary celebrations for people who were younger than I am now when I met them in our early years at Lakeside. But I’ve also written a poem about a college student who spent the summer riding her bike up and down the streets gazing at the homes where her family used to be--a family now torn up by divorce and scattered, a family that would never again have all those generations together.

On my walks along Lakeside streets (around 100 this summer) I see memorials and plaques for people I didn’t know had died--and family and friends wanted them to remain a part of the community with a tree, or flower bed, or a shelter for a potato digger.

At Lakeside, one can compress a love of learning into a week or a season--environment, Civil War, literature, music, politics, current events, health or finances. We do more and hear more these few weeks than all the rest of the year. I go home to Columbus in September vowing to find similar activities, but as the cold weather and early sunsets descend, I give up on being a Lakeside lover until the next year.

Lakeside Lovers

Along the lakefront, lovers have walked for over 130 years. Some stop to record it. A century ago they might have carved on trees; then on the flat rocks now covered up. More recently, chalk on asphalt. We hope David and Michelle will do as well as Shirley and Frank.

Orvieto

We were hanging an art show today (Jan Kotch, Worthington) at the UALC Mill Run Church, and one of the paintings was of Positano. I mentioned we were in Italy last summer. "Would you go back," a fellow artist asked. In a minute. Here's an artist workshop in Orvieto in 2010.

Here's the artist's story. Amazing what faith, love and talent can do for you.

Seen at . . .

Vital Signs Blog Between the Rollover Republicans (I'll scratch your back, you rub my tummy) and the sycophant, slobbering journalists, this is a lovefest the likes of which we'll never see again.

Three word Wednesday

The words this week are Entwine, Forfeit and Tryst. Here's how it works, and anyone can play. Take the words proved, write something with them, then come back to the 3WW site and leave a link, and visit the others and leave a comment.



She's twisted
And
trysted

He's entwined
And
refined.

Time's up
Payment's overdue,
You forfeit.

Photo from Softies Central

The last day of July

This is a rerun from July 31, 2004. Our friend Jane mentioned 3 years ago did buy a cottage.

-----------------

Lakeside streets and cottages could tell you a thousand love stories--the community is over 130 years old. The vacationers seeking a beautiful place to worship, learn and have fun first arrived by steamship (ended in 1939), and rail (ended in 1930) and interurban (ended in 1939). Bridges and high ways brought changes that come with automobiles, but they didn't change why people come here. Our neighbors (in Columbus) stopped by the cottage yesterday returning from upper Michigan. They had never been here. "We've been here an hour and a half," Jane said, "and I want to buy a place."

And there are other love stories--this poem was inspired by a young couple I saw under the street light last summer on the last day of July. This one, however, is about a summer love story from the 1940s.

It was too late for summer love,
They cried that day and said good-bye.
Cicada announced at sunset
It was the last day of July.

As August waited at the door
The sun slipped down more quickly now.
They strolled along the Lakeside dock
and to each other made this vow.

"We'll dance and swim and sing once more
when next July we'll meet again
with kisses sweet in pale moonlight
on the corner of Third and Lynn."

He shipped out for the Philippines;
She left for school at OSU.
During July in years to come
They both recalled that lovely view.

The lovers young did not return
to stroll the lakefront side by side,
'til this year each saw the other
with great grandchildren at Lakeside.

It was too late for summer love,
After hello they said good-bye
with a kiss for their own sunset--
It was the last day of July.

3699

The unintended consequences of protecting women

Don Imus and Mike Nifong aren't the only guys with funny names apologizing in stories about women. Now Paul Wolfowitz is doing it for having a girlfriend at the World Bank. And she's Arab. Frankly, what DA Nifong did makes all the others pale by comparison, and is a horrible abuse of power, but since the MSM helped create that lynch mentality (Ladies of the View included), it is being soft pedaled and Imus is getting the play by play. He's expendable.

"Paul Wolfowitz's position as president of the World Bank appears shaky, as the bank's Board of Directors met overnight to discuss what to do about a favoritism scandal he is involved in. . . The World Bank's board released a statement early Friday detailing its review involving Wolfowitz's girlfriend, Shaha Riza. She was given a job at the U.S. State Department when Wolfowitz took charge of the bank in 2005. World Bank rules ban romantic involvement between workers and supervisors." Story here.

As I understand it, you can't supervise a "friend," and if you help her get a job somewhere else on the advice of your ethics committee, you are then violating another rule. Should he have just put her out on the street, or should he keep her as a paid mistress off the payroll of the bank?

This happens all the time in academe, but because salaries aren't the greatest and they don't have much power (and no ties to the present administration), no one objects. Presidents and deans are recruited. But a deal has to be struck to bring along the wife, the girl friend, boy friend or significant other. I remember one time getting a science librarian with no science background but who had a husband recruited for another department in the university. If the wife didn't get the job, he didn't come. If there is no position open at the university that fits her/his qualifications a position miraculously opens up on the art faculty. When he finds a better position at Yale or Brown or in industry marketing pet food, there will be only one position open when he/she leaves.

Bankers and former Bush appointees (there wouldn't have been a problem if he'd been a Democrat from Clinton's reign) need to learn that "me two" excuse that deans and college presidents use.

3498 A poem about love and marriage

Today I read a story in our paper about a couple married in 1943 when he was still in uniform, who were both living in a nursing home at the end--she from Alzheimer’s and he from a fall. They died at the same time on Valentine’s Day this week.

When you’re falling in love
Feb. 18, 2007
by Norma Bruce

When you’re falling in love
you probably don’t think about
pre-nups and the rug color
that you’ll argue about some day.

When you’re falling in love
you might think about
romantic dinners for two
and not KFC in front of the TV.

When you’re falling in love
you probably don’t think about
why her mother is obese
or his dad is such a gossip.

When you’re falling in love
you might think about
an Hawaiian cruise and moonlight
and not the small lake when he fishes.

When you’re falling in love
you probably don’t think about
her toddler who will be a teen someday
or that he’s changed jobs so often.

When you’re falling in love
you might think about
a cute house with a picket fence
and not missing where you grew up.

When you’re falling in love
you probably don’t think about
when he is old and deaf
and when she’s forgotten your name.

These are the building blocks of love
you probably should think about,
you might want to think about
when you’re falling in love today.


Technorati: poems, love, marriage

407 The last day of July

Lakeside streets and cottages could tell you a thousand love stories--the community is over 130 years old. The vacationers seeking a beautiful place to worship, learn and have fun first arrived by steamship (ended in 1939), and rail (ended in 1930) and interurban (ended in 1939). Bridges and high ways brought changes that come with automobiles, but they didn't change why people come here. Our neighbors (in Columbus) stopped by the cottage yesterday returning from upper Michigan. They had never been here. "We've been here an hour and a half," Jane said, "and I want to buy a place."

And there are other love stories--this poem was inspired by a young couple I saw under the street light last summer on the last day of July. This one, however, is about a summer love story from the 1940s.

It was too late for summer love,
They cried that day and said good-bye.
Cicada announced at sunset
It was the last day of July.

As August waited at the door
The sun slipped down more quickly now.
They strolled along the Lakeside dock
and to each other made this vow.

"We'll dance and swim and sing once more
when next July we'll meet again
with kisses sweet in pale moonlight
on the corner of Third and Lynn."

He shipped out for the Philippines;
She left for school at OSU.
During July in years to come
They both recalled that lovely view.

The lovers young did not return
to stroll the lakefront side by side,
'til this year each saw the other
with great grandchildren at Lakeside.

It was too late for summer love,
After hello they said good-bye
with a kiss for their own sunset--
It was the last day of July.