Monday Memories

The Lakeside Wooden Boat Show was just yesterday (July 2) however, it brought back many memories for a lot of people. This is only the 2nd year, but like classic car shows, it really brings in the people, particularly in the Lake Erie vacation land. The Lakeside Wooden Boat Society also builds boats in a tent in the park so people can learn how to do it.







Lots of activity here for people learning how to create and put a finish on a wooden boat. Children and old folks welcome.


Links to other Monday Memories Players
(If you participate, leave your link in the comments and I'll post it below.)
1. Reverberate58, 2. Friday's Child, 3. Yellow Roses, 4. Janice has no MM, but a cute site to visit, 5. Beckie, 6. Lazy Daisy, 7. Chelle, 8. Tutu Bent


Click here for the Monday Memories Code, Blogroll, Graphics, & Other Information

View More Monday Memories Participants
Trackbacks, pings, and comment links are accepted and encouraged!

Lakeside, Ohio

2655 Closed until further notice

Bill Keller's mind. Unfortunately, his pie hole is open and flapping. Not only does he reveal government secrets to follow the terrorists funding during a war, but he can't stop defending his actions. What a spoiled brat.

Who died and left you President?

"The issue is your decision to publish classified information that can only aid our enemies. The founders didn't give the media or unnamed sources a license to expose secret national security operations in wartime. They set up a Congress to pass laws against disclosing state secrets and an executive branch to conduct secret operations so the new nation could actually defend itself from enemies, foreign and domestic."

Bill Keller
New York Times

2654 Thank you, Hobby Lobby

for the beautiful, patriotic full-page ad in the USAToday. It was interesting and very well done. I read every word. Here's the on-line copy.

Kathleen Denis, artist

It's new notebook time--I filled the last page of my lovely notebook with pink roses and calligraphy, and today I'll start one from Martin Designs of Ashland, OH with artwork by Kathleen Denis. The webpage doesn't seem to function but I found her name with numerous gift items and wallpaper. The calligraphic background of this notebook is a verse from "Amazing Grace."

Ashland, OH is the home of the Brethren Church, sister denomination of Church of the Brethren. The two anabaptist groups had a spat about the meaning of "being in order" and split in the 1880s from each other and the Old Order German Baptist Brethren. The college/university in Ashland has some interesting archives for all Brethren groups which I have used in my own research. A lovely town.

Update: Columbus Business First: Martin Designs went out of business in 2008 after a line of Chinese-made SpongeBob SquarePants notebooks it was selling was recalled because the spiral binding contained high levels of lead.

Kathleen Denis
Ashland University
Ashland, Ohio

2652 When to tell a secret

Sister Toldjah tells ya:

"In a rare joint move, the editors of the LAT and NYT (Dean Baquet and Bill Keller, respectively) have an editorial posted in today’s New York Times (and I’m sure it’s in the LA Times as well) which tries to answer the question: “when do we publish a secret?”

They’ve given you the long answer. I’m giving you the short answer:

When a Republican is in the WH.

That was easy enough."

You go girl.

2651 How to spot a recent illegal immigrant

"The prevalence of obesity among immigrants living in the United States for at least 15 years approached that of US-born adults." JAMA. 2004;292:2860-2867.

2650 My new margin photo

At Hugging and Chalking I have added a new margin .gif--sacbutt players on horseback. I think it is sort of cute. Take a peek and come back.

2649 The Chinese Acrobats

It was a crowd pleaser to say the least. Last night the Golden Dragon Acrobats, continued a 2700 year tradition, and 28 years of touring in the U.S. at the Hoover Auditorium in Lakeside, Oh. Hoover holds about 3,000 people, and I didn't see many empty seats. Initially, it was gasps and polite applause, but by the end of the program, people were on their feet cheering, whistling and whooping. They have been all over the country, and this morning we saw the young people in their cut-offs and t-shirts, strolling around Lakeside with their backpacks and overnight bags. Last night it was all grace, beauty and brilliant colors.

One thing is noticeable about this group--they are small, well-muscled, and very strong, but not anorexic-looking like so many American athletes who are acrobats and gymnists. Wonder what they eat?

Lakeside, Ohio

2648 Truth, Justice, and "all that stuff"

I realize he's just an American comic book character, but didn't the super heroes of the past believe in something a bit more specific than "all that stuff?" I'm reposting here for my own enjoyment my June 23 photo of my super hero in 1988.



Here's one scholar's conception (in 2003) why our old "mythos" needed to be revised:

"The representation of crime and justice in the superhero mythos is predominantly derived from a conservative or "right" oriented perspective (as evidenced in the aforementioned comics code). . . Miller identifies five "crusading issues": (1) "excessive leniency toward lawbreakers," (2) "favoring the welfare and rights of lawbreakers over the welfare and rights of their victims, of law enforcement officials, and the law abiding citizen," (3) "erosion of discipline and of respect for constituted authority," (4) "the cost of crime," and (5) "excessive permissiveness" (1973, p. 143). These "crusading issues" of the political "right" are virtually mirrored by the crusades of the superhero mythos.

The messages portrayed in the comic book superhero mythos are clear. We are being told that we must preserve the status quo, or, as Superman might put it, "democracy and the American way"; threats to the status quo must be extinguished. We are presented with a world in which there is clearly right and wrong, good and evil. Good must prevail and social order must be maintained. The dominant hegemony is safe in the hands of the comic book superhero." Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 10(2) (2003) 96-108.

Well, not anymore!

Superman

A tequila soaked worm--Mexico

Read Deroy Murdock's column on the corruption of the Mexican government, which expects the U.S. to continue taking in its poor. China is eating Mexico's lunch.

Folks, this bleeding heart, oh-the-poor-immigrant attitude, especially among Christians, is like bending the elbow of an alcoholic. You are ENABLERS.

2646 This week at Lakeside

Last Saturday night (June 24) we enjoyed the Hunt Family Fiddlers who performed Celtic, bluegrass, inspirational and popular music, all while step dancing.

Mid-week we had the Chestnut Brass Company (June 28)--I didn't know that old trombones were called "sacbutts" or least that's what it sounded like when they explained the precursor to the trombone (my instrument). They used many historical instruments and had a few funny routines.

Tonight it is the Golden Dragon Acrobats from China. They are from Cangzhou, Hebeiprovince in China.

Tomorrow is the Wooden Boat Show down at the dock.

Lakeside, Ohio

2645 Do we need a LAMP to attract more students to library science?

Last time I looked, potential librarians were not in the dark. People [just talked to a library staffer last week who was choosing a different field] are deciding NOT to become librarians because of limited job opportunities and poor earning potential. Are we paying to train buggy whip makers and keep library schools afloat? Even "underrepresented populations" should be steered to more lucrative careers.

"Library Access Midwest Program (LAMP)" project, will receive $972,839 from the Federal Government through its 21st Century Librarian Program. Graduate Sschool of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois will work with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Science to develop LAMP, a regional alliance that will attract 20 promising college students to careers in librarianship. Special emphasis will be placed on recruiting students from statistically and historically underrepresented populations. In addition to the direct effect it will have on these 20 students and their contributions to the library field, LAMP is designed to be a replicable model for other regions."

From the GSLIS newsletter, Volume 5, Number 4: July 2006

An illegal immigrant nanny can make $15-20 an hour--I'm not sure a beginning librarian with a master's will get that.

2644 Also reading at the Lake, Suomalaisia Kuvia

a book we received from Martti and Riitta (he's an architect and she's a veterinarian/academic) in 1980, dedicating it to the trip we promised we'd take in 1985 for our 25th wedding anniversary.

Well, we’re coming up on our 46th, and this year we are actually flying across the pond. On the 25th, or for the 25th, in 1985, we went to Hawaii--a fabulous trip I'll never regret. And on the 30th, in 1990 I was in the middle of re-establishing my career--writing, publishing, attending conferences, networking, etc. It was a busy time with limited vacation, plus we bought our second home and needed to sink all discretionary funds on it.

Then in 1995, my husband was establishing his sole practice. He could barely break away from his clients, and his mother was increasingly frail. In 2000 the year my mother died, we returned to Illinois so we could celebrate our 40th anniversary in the church where we were married and with my family. On the 41st, 9/11 happened and it didn’t seem a good time to go anywhere--for some time. Then in the next few years, my husband’s family and father needed us in California, so our trips combined responsibilities and travel. Last year for our 45th, we took a cruise on the Danube--our first to Europe.

So now, finally, we are ready to see Finland, and also take a trip into Russia to visit St. Petersburg. I’m reading the book that the Tulamos gave us in 1980, and am studying (or at least looking at) Russian grammar and conversation from a book published in the 50s when everyone was still "comrade."

Here are some photos of Martti's work.

2643 Also reading at the Lake, Team of Rivals

Actually, I'm listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, the story of how President Lincoln packed his cabinet with some of the most brilliant minds and anti-slavery people of his era. However, the book has over 900 pages, so since I'm only on disk 10, I don't think I'll finish before we leave for Finland. The author is particularly outstanding in fleshing out the main characters with their wives, children, and close associates.

". . . The comparative approach has also yielded an interesting cast of female characters to provide perspective on the Lincolns’ marriage. The fiercely idealistic Frances Seward served as her husband’s social conscience. The beautiful Kate Chase made her father’s quest for the presidency the ruling passion of her life, while the devoted Julia Bathes created a blissful home that gradually enticed her husband away from public ambitions. Like Frances Seward, Mary Lincoln displayed a striking intelligence; like Kate Chase, she possessed what was then considered an unladylike interest in politics. Mary’s detractors have suggested that if she had created a more tranquil domestic life for her family, Lincoln might have been satisfied to remain in Springfield. Yet the idea that he could have been a contented homebody, like Edward Bates, contradicts everything we know of the powerful ambition that drove him from his earliest days.

By widening the lens to include Lincoln’s colleagues and their families, my story benefited from a treasure trove of primary sources that have not generally been sued in Lincoln biographies. The correspondence of the Seward family contains nearly five thousand letters, including an eight-hundred-page diary that Seward’s daughter Fanny kept from her fifteenth year until two weeks before her death at the age of twenty-one."

In my opinion, both the feminists and the male biographers of some of our most famous Americans have ignored or scorned the roles women played in their lives. Mary Lincoln comes out of this looking better than most portrayals, simply by using original sources, rather than Lincoln's enemies as the source. This has been an excellent review of the issues of slavery (which I think strongly resemble many of the immigration issues of the 21st century), and also the power and education levels of women "who also served." Also, Lincoln's nature and bouts with depression make a lot more sense when viewed through the sufferings of some of the other men around him, like Edwin Stanton, who nearly went insane after the death of his wife and daughter. According to his sister, at night he would lay out her bed clothes and walk through the house crying and calling out her name.

"In addition to the voluminous journals in which Salmon Chase recorded the events of four decades, he wrote thousands of personal letters. A revealing section of his daughter Kate’s diary also survives, along with dozens of letters from her husband, William Sprague. The unpublished section of the diary that Bates began in 1846 provides a more intimate glimpse of the man than the published diary that starts in 1859. Letters to his wife, Julia, during his years in Congress expose the warmth beneath his stolid exterior. Stanton’s emotional letters to his family and his sister’s unpublished memoir reveal the devotion and idealism that connected the passionate, hard-driving war secretary to his president. The correspondence of Montgomery Blaire’s sister, Elizabeth Blaire Lee, and her husband, Captain Samuel Phillips Lee, leaves a memorable picture of a daily life in wartime Washington. The diary of Gideon Welles, of course, has long been recognized for its penetrating insights into the workings of the Lincoln administration." From the author’s introduction

In this age of e-mails, text-messaging, and blogs, I do wonder what historians will have to work with when they write about our current crop of 20-somethings who will someday be in the halls of Congres.

2642 Pity the American Canadian

If you studied American History a few decades ago, back when the 17th through early 19th century mattered in our school curricula, you may remember that many citizens of the U.S. emigrated and went to Canada after the Revolution and after the War of 1812 (unlike certain movie stars of the 21st century who have only threatened).

Read about Margaret Wente's sad fate of demanding reparations from herself at my Illegals Now blog. Since the "mass migrations" in this country happened after slavery, I've often wondered if the Czechs and Poles and Russian Jews were going to buy into it.

2641 La Raza hosts Rove

Here's a stunning line up that is one-upmanship for librarians, who only secured Laura Bush to inflame its membership. KKKarl Rove will be speaking to La Raza (i.e., the only race that matters is these guys).

"The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., announced today that former President Bill Clinton, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are among the confirmed speakers for the upcoming NCLR Annual Conference which will be held July 8-11 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA.

“We are deeply honored that President Clinton has accepted our invitation to address more than 2,000 community leaders from across the nation, and we are also excited by the wide array of speakers from the worlds of business, labor, government, nonprofits, and politics who will be joining us at this year’s Conference,” stated Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO." But it's just for lunch. News release

2640 The best fashion advice

is right here at Coffee Spills.

2639 Marxism may be dying out in the former USSR

but it is alive and well in the history and sociology departments of American colleges and universities. One of the eye-opening experiences of reading Companion to American Immigration (Blackwell, 2006) is its foundational assumptions based solidly on Marxist thought and scholarship. Not that I was naive about the Marxists in our universities, but reading essay after essay--about food, education, demography, social customs, microeconomics, politics, and law--all rooted in and rooting for Marxism is quite an eye opener as I read along at the Lakeside coffee shop, a vacation spot more like the 1950s than a TV "Happy Days" recreation.

If you've ever wondered what became of the "tenured radicals" who went from sit-ins in the presidents' offices in the Halls of Ivy in the 1970s to populating them, read this book! They are indeed the adopted intellectual grandchildren of the 1930s faculties and labor activists who were pacifists until Germany invaded Russia and then had to go underground when the Gulags were being revealed after WWII. When the Berlin Wall fell, they used chunks of scholarly concrete to rebuild their fables.

I've learned a lot of new words and phrases for us and U.S. reading this book:

marriageways
nuptiality
marital endogamy

draconian reductions in immigration [during the Depression, duh!]
recovery from the Depression "eroded ethnic differences"

boutique farms
foodways
culinary nationalists
women as cultural conservators

aping the life of gentry
Anglo-Saxonism
Germano-Celtic
nativist sentiment
dominant society
host society
core culture

institutionalized nationhood
individualizing destiny
assimilationists
pluralist vision
voluntary pluralism
vocabularies of public life
civic homogenization

language shift
language loss
home language

schools as labor pools for industry
cauldron (instead of "melting pot")
well-socialized labor force
enforced schooling to empower the government

And academic gibberish even worse than library jargon:
gendered dimensions of transnational ties (I have no idea what this is!)
major shareholders of identity
ethno-cultural, creedal, and individualistic pluralistic models
contingent contagionists
immigrant transnationals

Incidentally, if there was a lynching, a killing, a riot, or a law about ethnicity, these are liberally interspersed at every opportunity to demonstrate the shallowness of the minority "dominant Anglo-Saxon culture." The chapter on religion isn't about religion at all--it is about the anti's--anti-Semitism, KuKluxKlan, anti-Catholicism, anti-muslim, etc.

2638 My office nook at the Lakehouse

The cottage is tiny, but I have a small corner, and use the coffee shop as my annex. We need to unplug that phone--we don't have a land line anymore, and I could use the space! Before that I used a pay phone at the hotel. In the 80s, there would be a long line of teen-agers waiting (including my own), but now they all have cell phones.

Friday Family Photo

More about cousins

These are photos of my son and his cousin Rich, who are about 8 months difference in age, which when they were children made quite a difference in size, but none at all when they grew up--in fact, I think Rich might be a bit taller. Both were almost white blonde as little guys, and now both are very dark. Rich is on the right in the 1973 photo and the left in the adult photo.

Easter 1973

And in 1999

2636 Stop the CCR

The CCR is working with and helping to fund the pro bono lawyers' work at Gitmo which is aiding terrorism.

The paragraph below is my rewrite of one the CCR had on its home page demanding Bush's impeachment (to send to your representative). Obviously, they didn't accept my editing--they're not that liberal! They are wetting their pants and their lips over the Supreme Court decision. I'm thinking their logo has a striking resemblance to a more familiar one with a bit of tweaking and flipping.

"The President of the United States should continue the course to save our country. He should continue the necessary surveillance of finances and communications systems to protect U.S. citizens. He should continue to tell the truth to the American public who are being lied to by anarchists and leftists who hate the U.S. to lead them to victory over terrorism. I urge you to join me and a growing number of your fellow bloggers calling for an investigation into activities of the Center for Constitutional Rights."

2635 The Guantanamo Bay Bar Association

Their pro-bono work is aiding the enemy. So how do these prisoners get a case to go up through the courts with some of the best lawyers in the country? Lawyers you and I couldn't afford? Well, we're paying for it--indirectly because they are being paid huge fees by firms we invest in.

Blogged about this in January. I wrote letters. Did you? Deroy Murdock's original article

It's a recruiting tool for these firms:

From Fredrikson & Byron
Fredrikson & Byron has put together a team of lawyers representing one of the Guantanamo detainees, Ahcene Zemiri. We are working to ensure that he has the opportunity to present the facts of his case to a federal court. Our lawyers worked with the Center for Constitutional Research (“CCR”)**, a non-profit organization based in New York, to arrange for our representation.

Although more than 150 Guantanamo detainees are now represented by counsel from across the country, Fredrikson & Byron remains the only law firm in Minnesota that is representing a detainee. Our habeas petition has become the model petition that CCR provides to other counsel planning to file petitions in their own cases. Individuals who have worked on this case include: Matt Boos, Ingrid Culp, Wade Davis, Jim Dorsey, Emily Duke, Lilhja Emery, Dulce Foster, Roxanne Gangl, Michelle Hanson, Sharen Keehr, Faye Knowles, John Lundquist, Nicole Moen, Debra Schneider, Jessica Sherman, Rhona Shwaid, Asmah Tareen, and Heather Thayer.

Sutherland Asbill & Brennan: "Here are a few highlights of our most recent pro bono work:

In January 2005, John Chandler accepted a challenge from the American College of Trial Lawyers to represent alleged "enemy combatants" detained at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On February 7, 2005, Sutherland filed a petition for habeas corpus and other relief on behalf of five Yemeni detainees. The petition, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, notes how "[e]ach of the Detained Petitioners is being held virtually incommunicado in military custody at Camp Delta...without basis, without charge, without access to counsel and without being afforded any fair process by which they might challenge their designation and detention." Because the U.S. government prevents lawyers from visiting Guantanamo detainees unless they have a pending case, Sutherland brought these cases through the detainees' relatives, who authorized the filings as "Next Friends" of the petitioners. Sutherland lawyers have since submitted security clearance forms that, once approved, will allow them to visit the detainees."

I wonder if these firms will do pro-bono work for Marines or school children who pray at graduation?

**The CCR is the group that has written a book on how to impeach President Bush.

Guantanamo Bay

Have I got a deal for you

We just toured a duplex owned by a friend, called the Plymouth House at 315 and 317 Sycamore Avenue in Lakeside, OH. Each side sleeps six, (3 bedrooms, 2 baths) and I've given it my personal inspection, and it is clean, clean, clean and beautifully decorated with eclectics and antiques. The kitchens are new, there's a laundry, AC, wireless, and overhead fans for those days when it's not quite hot, but you'd like a little air moving. A fabulous front porch, which every Lakesider knows is a must have.

You can view the details and photos at Lakeside Association Cottage Rentals.

2633 Baby Peeps

When I was a little girl, I lived two houses from a hatchery in Mt. Morris, IL. We children would just walk inside the brick, one-story building and look at and touch the baby chicks. I think my nose was about level with their itty bitty toes.

I suppose I've spent all these years thinking Mt. Morris was the center of chickenhood and hatcheries. And it is sort of, at least in print. Poultry Tribune and Turkey World are published there--or were the last time I looked. Imagine my surprise when I opened the Black Swamp Trader and Gazette and discovered that it was New Washington, OH. The Dutchtown Hatchery Festival in New Washington will have its 2nd Annual Festival on July 7th and 8th, and if I weren't flying to Finland on the 8th, I'd stop by, just for the sights and smells.

It seems that Michael Uhl invented a 200 egg capacity incubator on his family farm in 1885. He and his brothers went on to design and build a 10,000 egg capacity incubator and thus sparked an entire industry. So apparently "factory farms" aren't an invention of the 20th century. People near Croton, OH will be happy to know that.

He also is responsible for creating a system to ship newborn peeps across the nation, which is still used to this day. The World's Poultry Congress, which happened the year I was born, actually toured little New Washington's hatcheries.

Thursday Thirteen

banner by tnchick

Thirteen things about your blog: 7 that keep me coming back, 3 that make me pause, and 3 that say good-bye.

Hello, I'm glad you're here says a

1) A beautiful template
2) with easy to read color combinations
3) with few or no wiggles and jiggles
4) and few or no ads
5) and no appeals for money, even for a good cause
6) more text than links
7) with interesting, well-thought out ideas.

Got some extra time on your hands says

8) confusing registration procedures, and hidden comment links
9) three squished columns that overlap
10) teeny, tiny little clicks, blips and flips to turn a page.

So long sister, this blog's not for you says

11) a steady stream of profanity
12) discussion of your sex life--even with your spouse
13) music blaring with the volume button hidden, which starts all over when I try to leave a comment.

<1. Margie Mix 2. Margie Mix 3. Kelly 4. Christine 5. Denise 6. Francesca Gray 7. Red 8. Bj 9. Jennifer, Snapshot 10. mommy@home 11. carmen 12. Katrina 13. Louise 14. Darla
15. Chris 16. Tricia 17. Lazy Daisy 18. mar 19. EmilyRoseJewel 20. d.challener 21. Stacy 22. Great Day 23. Trina 24. The Shrone 25. Mrs. Cranky Pants 26. tnchick 27. Reverberate58 28. astrocoz
29. Kailani 30. Ficklechick 31. momcarver 32. Jo 33. Chelle 34. Susan 35. Mysterious Lady 36. Christine 37. PixiePincessMom38. Cindy Swanson 39. Jimmy K.40.
You're next

(If you participate, leave your link in the auto-link and it will post here, but please leave a comment.)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things.>

Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

2631 Why I don't support a flag amendment

This can be handled with local codes or state laws. What I'd like to see is a movement toward decency and common sense on the part of business so people weren't buying towels for the beach that look like flags, or table napkins, or bikinis or jeans. That's the part I find objectionable and which seems to also be protected "speech." We've got hate speech codes and burning codes. Let's use those and get the government back to protecting us from real weirdos.

Bill "The Snitch" Keller

You could burn a thousand flags and not do as much damage as Keller at the New York Times has done. Congress was informed of this security measure and he didn't like it, so although no one elected him, he decided to give secrets to the enemies of the United States, secrets that will help stop the flow of money to terrorists. If bloggers are organizing to pressure advertisers who use that rag, where do I sign up?

Rich Lowry "Government by and for the New York Times
Milblogger "Keller contributes to death of soldiers"
Bill Keller "I leave it to the court of public opinion"
Peter King "charges treason"

Bill Keller
flag amendment
New York Times

Minimum wage

Don Surber parses the minimum wage discussion--concluding that neither the Congress nor the 1% of Americans who earn minimum wage deserve an increase. Read it here. Clear, clean, concise, and using the same template that I do. He writes editorials and a weekly column for the Charleston Daily Mail.

2629 Foodways vs. cuisine

Sigh. There is no American cuisine. Donna Gabaccia has one of the more interesting essays in "Companion to American Immigration" (2006), writing about the diversity of American food (p.443-470). I thought food exchanges were for dieters--but it turns out it is what immigrants do as they trade spaghetti, yams, spices, and pork for what they are used to. I think she is a bit conflicted, however. Next to one of the librarian writers I occasionally read [Hi Walt!], she has more parenthetical qualifiers than corn kernels on a cob at a 4th of July picnic. She has written extensively on this topic, so perhaps one of her other works (which she cites) allows her more leeway.

I've only read about 5 of these essays, skipping to the topics that most interest me, but it's noticeable that if your family did get here before 1850, you are part of the problem. I suspect this is the trend in any textbook prepared by today's scholars. And even if they came during the "mass immigration" of the late 19th and early 20th, if they went from poverty to being fabulously successful, college educated who launched businesses or became CEOs, you are also part of the problem. Mainly because the very subtle undercurrent in this title is that nothing good can come of being a mainstream, native born American.

And pity me and mine! Descriptions for us, our food tastes, our habits that may be rooted in Britain or northern Europe, are noted as 1) culinary nationalism, 2) "Glory, God and Gold," 3) "aping the life of the gentry," 4) "moral rectitude," 5) "established patrinomies" 6) Protestant, 7) mass-produced, 8) white bread, and "religious hostility to alcohol."

Remember the 19th century saloon we learned about in American history class that took the food out of the mouths of children and gave rise to the Hull Houses of the cities? Not to worry. It's all been cleaned up. Now it is just delightful ethnic diversity of foodways. "For the Irish, drinking their own darker brews and whiskies in the equivalent of old world public housesmay have provided a sense of communalism as much as a shared meal of potatoes, porridge, or cabbage."

Well, isn't that a classy spin for falling-down-drunk laborers whose pay never made it home!

2628 Financing Terrorism

It seems the Bush Administration wasn't the first to notice how important money is to terrorists. Other countries figured it out too.

U.S. Congress. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Anti-Terrorism Conventions. 2001.
Sudocs classification number: Y 1. 1/ 6: 107-2
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS16776
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS16777 (permanent redirect)
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgibin/
getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_reports&docid=f:er002.107.pdf (PDF
file)
“These two anti-terrorism conventions address two specific aspects of
terrorist conduct: terrorist bombings and the financing of terrorism. Their objective is to require the United States and other States Parties to criminalize such activities and to cooperate with each other in extraditing or prosecuting those suspected of such activities.”

U.S. Congress. House Committee on Financial Services. Financial Anti-
Terrorism Act of 2001: Report together with Dissenting Views. 2001. 121p.
Sudocs classification number: Y 1. 1/ 8: 107-250/ PT.1-
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS15885
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS15886 (PDF file)
“To combat the financing of terrorism and other financial crimes.”

U.S. Congress. House Subcommittee on Crime. Implementation of the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. 2001. iii, 57p.
Sudocs classification number: Y 4. J 89/ 1: 107/ 46

The intent and provisions of these two treaties, as well as their usefulness
in combating the kind of global terrorism exhibited in the September 11
attacks."

These were looked at via a nice online bibliography about 9/11, which unfortunately, I neglected to record, but I may have found it via GLIN. These documents, or any discussing the need to stop terrorism at the source (money from donors or drug cartels) are not hard to find via Google, but finding them in a bibliography is a nice shortcut. Librarians love bibliographies, indices and other finding tools.

2626 Summer Reading at the Lake

Yes, I'm working my way through "A Companion to American Immigration," which is proving to be much more interesting than the title might suggest. It says a lot about the state of present scholarship on the topic.

For instance--the list of contributors. It is heavily weighted not only with Asian surnames, but also specialists and historians on Asian immigration. In fact, I didn't find any ethnic names for Cuba, Mexico or South America, although there are two Spaniards from the University Autonoma of Barcelona. It strikes me that if it is awkward or slippery to compare the culture of Mexican illegals with that of 18th century British, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to use the 19th century Chinese railway workers either.

Chapter 21 on food is interesting, not only for the history of food exchanges, but the obligatory use of inflammatory language which populates "survey and studies" scholarship. When European ethic groups in the U.S. are mentioned, the verb of choice is "invade," but when Plains Indians do it to each other's territory, it is a "raid."

And you can almost hear the authoress sigh when she recounts how our fore mothers raised, processed and preserved much of their own monotonous food. I just love it when academics who have probably never broken up a clod of prairie or snapped a bean, can get so sentimental about the back breaking work women used to do over an open fireplace or cook stove.

2625 About those 500 WMD

Ho hum seemed to be the press' response. Here's an interesting observation at Evangelical Outpost by Joe Carter. Sort of what I'd thought even back in 2003. If they'd been found then, the anti-war people would have moved on to something else.

"Opposition to the war has nothing to do with the lack of WMDs. It never did. We could find a nuclear bomb in Uday Hussein’s old apartment and John Kerry would still be gearing up for Winter Soldier II. Unless you dropped your moral compass off the side of a swift boat in Cambodia, it’s easy to see that the world is safer because we secured the one WMD that truly mattered: Saddam Hussein.

More important than the weapons that were found (or that have yet to be found) are the ones that will never be created by Saddam’s regime. Many Americans, however, still suffer from the delusion that the only way that Saddam could have been a significant threat was for him to have possessed stockpiles of WMDs."

2624 And you thought I was kidding about librarians

who want to destroy the United States? They're not about sensible shoes, reading pc books to children or providing unbalanced info. Here. It's a mixture of eastern mysticism and communist activism. So I guess they'll be mellow.

2623 The Gates Buffet Second Team

Malaria eradicated? Sure, just bring back DDT and stop millions from dying right now. Sometimes environmentalists just care too much, they care people right into a terrible death and early grave.

No one has died from exposure to DDT. But millions die every year in the third world from malaria which could be virtually eradicated by DDT spraying of standing water. Until Americans were duped by Rachel Carson's misinformation, good progress was being made against this terrible disease. Since 1972 when the EPA banned its use, millions have died needlessly. This "do-gooder" impulse we Americans have has killed more Africans than the infamous slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Malaria
warren buffet
Gates Foundation
Charities

2622 Actually, I was folding the laundry

Ex-Liberal probably thinks I spent a lot of time reading one entry of his blog, but the dryer buzzer went off and I went to the basement to gather in the laundry. When I returned, however, he was still worth reading:

"When liberals like [Keith] Olbermann use the First Amendment to undermine our efforts in Iraq, it hits our troops like a roadside bomb. Real patriots can disagree and argue, but they don’t call their Commander-in-Chief a criminal, or the war we are fighting immoral – which is probably why Olbermann’s self-doubt prompted him to lash out. . . "

He also has a good explanation for the difference between liberal and conservative humor.

"Liberal humor relies mostly on anti-Bush haiku and the progressive envelope of sex, drugs, bodily functions, and fart jokes. This is what they call, “Adult Content.” One might argue that Garrison Keillor doesn’t use those devices, but lefties would also describe his audience as mostly “right-wing Christian conservatives.” Garrison won’t degrade his content to “Adult Entertainment” because, 1) he respects his audience and, 2) George Carlin has already cornered the market for prurient theophobic dementia. Like Bill Clinton, liberals love George, but most wouldn’t trust their children or livestock alone with him.

Conservative humor relies on fact-based tragicomedy where conservatives expose the pink underbelly of liberal banality. For example, conservatives laugh at the fact-based anecdotes from the Darwin Awards because hearing about stupid people doing dumb things is very funny. Liberals use the same site to find new friends, new voters, or for instructional purposes. Seinfeld succeeded because liberals thought he was really cool, yada yada, and conservatives enjoyed the addled characters."

Read the Ex-Liberal in Hollywood here.

2621 Bills without borders

Morning Coffee wakes us up with a story from the Dallas Morning News about a plan for Dallas County to bill Mexico and other countries for the medical care of its indigent illegals who reside, work and swamp our social services in the United States. Of course, it won't work, but you've got to make a statement.

Morning Coffee is a part of the Coalition against Illegal Immigration. If you're interested in joining, either as a regular, or a supporter, look at the FAQ.

Speaking of coffee, I've redesigned my coffee blog, Coffee Spills.

Monday Memories

Have I ever told you about the cottages we used to rent?

This week we're at Lakeside, OH, where our family began vacationing in 1974. We've rented some nice and not so nice cottages, and bought our own place in 1988 (see this Monday Memory for that story).

Our first place was on Plum--a four family and really dreary inside and not too clean. Racoons ran up and down the gutter next to our screened window at night--nearly scaring me to death. But it was only $45/week and worth every penny. We spent a lot of time at the beach at East Harbor.

I believe this was the next summer, also a four family and was lakefront, so we had some great views when the storms rolled in. The decor was similar, however, I knew to bring a small vacuum cleaner and a fan. The kids had a great time playing on the rocks and fishing right outside the cottage.

This little cottage on Poplar, the last street on the east side, had a nice kitchen where we could see Lake Erie. There was a hammock on the front porch. We used a photo of the kids in the hammock with our neighbors' dog for our Christmas card that year.

We stayed in both of these, maybe our fourth and fifth summers. The gray one looked adorable on the outside, but the furniture wasn't very comfortable. The beige looked plain, but was very nice inside with great beds. Met lots of neighborhood kids to play with.

Then it was back to the lakefront, just 2 houses from the fourplex where we'd stayed. A duplex and we were upper level. This was the year we brought along one bicycle, which we all shared. Started bringing friends along.

This cottage on Jasmine was the first we rented that had 1.5 bathrooms, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven! Plus, there was a family next door (who are still there but now with grandchildren) who had a daughter one year old than ours and a son one year younger than ours, so they included our children in family activities--like fishing! This house has been through several color changes since we rented in the 70s and now has vinyl siding and a paved driveway.

This red log cabin, 3 bedroom ranch on Laurel was my very most favorite of all the cottages we rented. I think we had it our last 3 summers for a family rental. Our final Lakeside summer, the kids were sneaking out the windows at night, which sort of took the fun out of being here. The owners sold it and the new owners didn't rent. So I think 1984 was our last time here as a family.

If you'd like to join in on Monday Memories, leave a comment and I'll link back to you.

1. Friday's Child, 2. Libragirl, has no MM today, 3. Reverberate58, 4. Renee 5. Pixie, 6. Lazy Daisy, 7. CrazieQueen, 8. Chelle
Click here for the Monday Memories code
Trackbacks, pings, and comment links are accepted and encouraged!
View More Monday Memories Participants


Lakeside, Ohio

2620 Monday at Lake Erie

Gray and overcast. Met a guy at the coffee shop planning to go on a fishing charter today, but watching the skies. My coffee shop reading today.

Can I predict it or what? The announced "exit strategy" is being claimed as a success by Democrats. I knew it! I overheard it on TV--didn't catch who was saying it, but I'm sure it will be a theme. A check of Google brought up all sorts of "exit strategies" and "cut and run" stories from 2005 and 2004, including one quote by John Kerry from 2004, where he said the President shouldn't "cut and run."

"I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election, the administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy. Their sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal dates, without adequate stability, is an invitation to failure. The hard work of rebuilding Iraq must not be dictated by the schedule of the next American election." (From James Taranto's column in WSJ Friday June 23, 2006 via Council on Foreign Relations) Everytime the Dems think they've got Bush figured out, they miss by a mile. So now the drumbeat to investigate the 2004 election results. Why not start with 1960 (JFK) and work forward?

I see Kos followers are called Kossacks and he Kosputin. Not sure which side is charging what. But every link helps him I'm sure, as he is the darling of the MSM. BlueStar Beth is running some great banners about the MSM, and especially the NYT and its jihad against our troops. Stop by and take a look.

Breakfast at The Abigail

The Abigail is two cottages held together with grapevines. My husband loves to eat breakfast here after church.


Here we are on the porch waiting for eggs and pancakes.










Lakeside, Ohio

Cliff notes version of Inconvenient truth

Amy sent me to this parody, but I sort of liked this one. The eye liner graph did it, I think. And the astute analysis.

2617 The Halls of Ivy need weeding

Remember the old song, Halls of Ivy? I'm not sure of its origins, but it was the theme song for a radio drama from 1949-1952 starring Ronald Coleman (and briefly on TV). It takes place in the fictitious Ivy College.

"Oh we love The Halls Of Ivy, that surround us here today
And we will not forget, though we be far far away
To the hallowed Halls of Ivy
Every voice will bid farewell
And shimmer off in twilight like the old vesper bell."

I can get weepy just humming it. It was a marvelous and rather intellectual show for which I think you can get tapes or downloads. However, the phrase "halls of ivy" refers to the old traditional, ivy covered buildings of a prestigious university. College isn't what it used to be, is it?

Every culture, race, ethnicity, nation, tribe, family structure and language is wonderful, complex, rich in meaning and worthy of respect in the hallowed halls of ivy (academe)--except ours in the United States of America. I'm working my way through "Companion to American Immigration," (Ueda, 2006) and although well-written and readable, this is the message I'm getting in the essays I've read so far.

You can listen to Halls of Ivy at Internet Archive.

2616 The New England Primer

was a textbook used by students from 1690 into the 19th century. It followed the tradition of combining the study of
the alphabet with Bible reading. Emphasis was placed on fear of sin, God’s punishment and the fact that all people would have to face death.

A- In ADAM’S Fall We sinned all.

B- Heaven to find; The BIBLE Mind.

C- Christ crucify’d For sinners dy’d.

D- The Deluge drown’d The Earth around.

E- ELIJAH hid By Ravens fed.

F- The judgment made FELIX afraid.

G- As runs the Glass, Our Life doth pass.

H- My Book and Heart Must never part.

J- JOB feels the Rod,-- Yet blesses GOD.

K- Proud Korah’s troop Was swallowed up

L- LOT fled to Zoar Saw fiery Shower On Sodom pour.

M- MOSES was he Who Israel’s Host Led thro’ the Sea

N-NOAH did view The old world & new.

O-Young OBADIAS, DAVID, JOSIAS, All were pious

P-PETER deny’d His Lord and cry’d

Q- Queen ESTHER sues And saves the Jews.

R-Young pious RUTH, Left all the Truth.

S- Young SAM’L dear, The Lord did fear.

T- Young TIMOTHY Learnt sin to fly.

V- VASHTI for Pride Was set aside.

W- Whales in the Sea, God’s Voice obey.

X- XERXES did die, And so must I.

Y- While youth do chear Death may be near.

Z- ZACCHEUS he Did climb the Tree Our Lord to see.

Hat tip to cousin Gayle who sent this along in her weekly newsletter.

2615 We're off

If I get a connection, I'll blog. If not, well, you know the routine. I'll have to hang out at a library or coffee shop and write very brief posts. Northern Ohio has been hit by some big rains in the last few days. I heard a swimmers' warning for Lake Erie on the radio this morning. Apparently some sewer treatment facilities for shoreline cities got overwhelmed.

Catch 'ya later. Don't be a stranger.

2613 My summer reading

Probably the only way I'll get this read is if we have a long week of rain at the lake. They are getting drowned right now in northern Ohio, but I'm hoping it clears up before we get there.

Anyway, "A companion to American immigration" edited by Reed Ueda (2006) is going in my book bag. In reviews of other things he's written, Ueda is described as an Asian American hostile to the idea that the U.S. was ever a nation of Europeans, and is a proponent of open borders. He's called the "worst of the lot" in a compilation of about 10 years ago on immigration, "Migration Past, Migration, Future." Baby boomer academic with tenure (my guess). In the introduction, Ueda says the essays bridge disciplinary and chronological divides; he says nothing that they might bridge ideological or political divides. That's the hard part, especially for scholars. And compilations are pay back time for your own network.

Introduction Reed Ueda (Tufts University)
Part I: Policy and Politics
1. A Nation of Immigrants and a Gatekeeping Nation: American Immigration Law and Policy, Erika Lee (University of Minnesota)
2. Naturalization and Nationality, Irene Bloemraad (University of California, Berkeley) and Reed Ueda (Tufts University)
3. Immigration and Ethnic Politics, James J. Connolly (Ball State University)
4. Immigrant Transnationals and U. S. Foreign Relations, Xiao-huang Yin (Occidental College) and Peter H. Koehn (The University of Montana, Missoula)
5. Bodies from Abroad: Immigration, Health, and Disease, Alan M. Kraut (American University)
6. The Politics of Immigration and the Rise of the Migration State: Comparative and Historical Perspectives, James F. Hollifield (Southern Methodist University)

Part II: Ethnicity, Race, and Nation
7. Ethnic and Racial Identity, Marilyn Halter (Boston University)
8. Nativism and Prejudice against Immigrants, Tyler Anbinder (George Washington University)
9. Assimilation and American National Identity, Michael R. Olneck (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
10. Internationalization and Transnationalization, David Gerber (University of Buffalo)
11. Immigration and Race Relations, Jeffrey Melnick (Babson College)

Part III: Population and Society
12. Demography and American Immigration, Michael S. Teitelbaum (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation)
13. Gender and Immigration, Suzanne M. Sinke (Florida State University)
14. Immigrant Residential and Mobility Patterns, Barry R. Chiswick (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Paul W. Miller (University of Western Australia)
15. Immigration Flows, Guillermina Jasso (New York University) and Mark Rosenzweig (Harvard University)
16. Marriage Patterns in Historical Perspective: Gender and Ethnicity
Robert McCaa (University of Minnesota), Albert Esteve (University Autonoma of Barcelona), and Clara Cortina (Universtity Autonoma of Barcelona)

Part IV: Economy and Society
17. Immigrant Social Mobility and the Historian, Kenneth A. Scherzer (Middle Tennessee State University)
18. Labor and Immigration History: First Principles, Leon Fink (University of Illinois at Chicago)
19. Immigration in the Economy: Development and Enterprise, Nian-sheng Huang (California State University Channel Islands)
20. Immigrants in the American Housing Market, Barry R. Chiswick (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Paul W. Miller (University of Western Australia)

Part V: Culture and Community
21. Immigration and American Diversity: Food for Thought, Donna R. Gabaccia (University of Minnesota)
22. Immigration and Language, Nancy C. Carnevale (Montclair State University)
23. Immigration and Education in the United States, Paula S. Fass (University of California at Berkeley)
24. Religion and Ethnicity, John McClymer (Assumption College)
25. Mutual Aid Societies and Fraternal Orders, Daniel Soyer (Fordham University)
Index

If I find anything interesting, I'll mention it on my blog, Illegals Now.

Disclaimer: My ancestors arrived here (Pennsylvania) in the 1730s. Swiss-German and Scots-Irish. Someone left me a comment a few months ago saying therefore I was not descended from immigrants. I just growed.

Update: I'm in Chapter One and so far, no surprises.

Intractable health care crisis

How many times do we see some version of this statement or hear it on the news? But frequently it is embedded in a story about an innovative (and often privately funded and small) program modelled on a good business plan.

This week the WSJ featured a story about a program in Cincinnati to reverse its terrible infant mortality rates--one of the highest in the nation. But "Every Child Succeeds" program, started by Procter and Gamble people using a strong business model, has reduced infant deaths from 13 per 1,000 to 2.8 per 1,000.

"Preliminary findings demonstrate that ECS has been extremely effective. Ninety-eight percent of mothers in the ECS program have a medical home. 93% of ECS infants function at developmentally normal levels. Of mothers with smoking histories, 79% quit or drastically reduce tobacco use during pregnancy. Of the 29% of mother who enter ECS with clinically significant levels of depression, half are no longer depressed after nine months in the program. Observational data suggest that the ECS injury prevention component significantly reduces hazards to the child. Over 97% of mothers state that they are satisfied with the service received. ECS prenatal referrals have increased from 40% when the program began to almost 60% at the present time. An infant mortality rate for ECS families of 2.8 per 1,000 births, less than one-third of the Hamilton County infant mortality rate." (from ECS website)

Even with the incredible success of a program that flies in the face of the usual government procedures and has saved babies' lives, the writer includes snarky remarks like "in recent years as Washington as lost its taste for expensive and large scale poverty programs boutique projects have sprung up to help fill the void reducing their dependence on a state that's increasingly unwilling to shoulder the burden." Apparently the "culture" of slowness in the cooperating agencies and their reluctance to gather data, caused some problems even in a successful small program like ECS.

So on the one hand, we've got large scale, inefficient, unsuccessful programs with lofty goals to eliminate poverty which result in dead babies, but it's such a shame that the funding isn't increasing?

Then yesterday WSJ reported on a program to reduce ER visits by the poor by using in-home visits by nurses, and how a small struggling Harlem hospital has increased its income and reduced government pay-outs both by collaborating with Mount Sinai to gain access to specialties its patients needed. This keeps the hospital in a neighborhood that needs it, and serves the people better.

Intractable my foot.

2611 Lowering standards

Not that I'd ever planned to stay at the Ritz-Carlton, but apparently they are lowering their greeting standards. It will now be acceptable to say "Sure," or "No problem," or "Hi" instead of "Certainly" or "My pleasure," or "Good Morning."

I do get tired of "no problem" as a throw away response to my "Thank you" for good service when I'm a customer or client. Where did that come from? I don't recall hearing it before the late 80s. I think it is supposed to sound friendly, but it almost sounds as though you shouldn't even bother to thank them. For annoying speech habits, I put it right up there with lifting the last word of a sentence so it sounds like a tentative question instead of a statement.

Story from the WSJ, 6-23-06, B1.

2610 Notice who is to blame here

that foreigners and immigrants, many illegals, don't speak enough English to receive proper health care (at tax payers expense). The story at Medscape.com starts out with the anecdotal, obligatory story of "monolingual" [i.e. Spanish speaking only] parents bringing a 10 mo. old to the clinic, getting a perscription and then misreading the English instructions given at the pharmacy, and making the child really ill. The limited Spanish of the clinic's staff was apparently better than the "limited Enlish proficiency" (LEP) of the parents, but it is the people who are in the helping role who are to blame for not knowing this family's primary language. And even if the pharmacy staff had spoken fluent Spanish, the parents could still have misread the instructions--quite possibly their Spanish would be a bit more colloquial than someone who learned it in college.

"Almost 50 million Americans speak a primary language other than English at home, and 22.3 million have limited English proficiency (LEP), defined as a self-rated English-speaking ability of less than "very well."(1) The last decade witnessed a 47% increase in the number of Americans speaking a non-English language at home and a 53% increase in the number of LEP Americans.(2,3) Between 1980 and 2000, both of these populations more than doubled, whereas the overall US population increased only 25%.(2) Unfortunately, nearly half of LEP patients needing medical interpreters do not get them (4), and only 23% of hospitals provide training for staff on working with interpreters.(5) Americans' foreign language skills are dismal: less than half of US high school students are enrolled in foreign language courses.(6)

In the case description, we are told that neither bilingual staff nor interpreters were available for this clinic visit. Having access to trained medical interpreters or bilingual providers facilitates optimal communication, patient satisfaction, and outcomes and reduces interpretation errors for LEP patients and their families.(7) In addition, a Title VI guidance memorandum issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of Civil Rights states that the denial or delay of medical care for LEP patients due to language barriers constitutes a form of discrimination and requires recipients of Medicaid or Medicare to provide adequate language assistance to LEP patients.(8) This case underscores the importance of having appropriate language services available for LEP patients and their families, particularly in settings with high volumes of LEP patients."

Is Medscape by citing Title VI suggesting that hospitals, pharmacies, clinics and ER staff know Creole and French and Swahili and Portuguese, or just Spanish? Or is it OK to "discriminate" against a Brazilian or a Haitian? "Bilingual" means two. Just which two?

When does the immigrant take some responsibility? One year? Five years? About 15 years ago I invited a Cuban family for dinner--the parents who had lived in Florida for over 20 years were visiting in Columbus and spoke not even rudimentary English. They spoke through their son-in-law, who had learned English as an adult and was a Lutheran Pastor. Outside of Miami, they really weren't safe unless with a relative.

Another example: as part of "diversity training" the library staff in the 90s attended a workshop at the university taught by a Puerto Rican who was on the staff and living in Columbus, Ohio (yes, they are U.S. citizens by birth). His English was so poor I was embarrassed for him. His part of the event was a total waste of our time nor did his personal example win any friends for the cause of diversity.

Friday Family Photo

There's a new Superman movie out with Brandon Routh. Superman turned 50 in 1988 and so did my husband.



Also in the photo are, from left, Fran, Connie, Marvin, Tony, Nancy and Margie.

Thursday Thirteen

13 things we did when the budget got tight.

After six carefree years as DINKS (double income no kids), we went to one income in 1994 when my husband decided to go into business for himself. Although we were never profligate spenders and had lived on one income our first 18 years of married life, we had to learn all over to tighten our belts. If you need to go to one income so one parent can stay home with children, most of these tips will work for you too.

1. Put all credit cards except one in the drawer--and it was only for emergencies. Cash only for day to day expenses.

2. Ate out once a month instead of once a week.

3. Stopped going into retail stores or the mall, "just to look."

4. Threw out all retail ads and circulars that came to the house. The word "SALE" actually is a trick word meaning "debt."

5. Bought no new clothes.

6. Reduced our utilities--water, electricity, gas, and phone.

7. As part of the buy-out, we got a rather old company car and used it as our second car for a year so we wouldn‘t have car payments.

8. Borrowed a computer for the business; used a small room in the house for an office. I was "staff" and worked when I got home from my job. He bought no equipment until he made some money--he went to the drug store to copy things, and Kinkos to use the fax. After the first year we bought a copier, fax and our own computer. He decided against learning CAD at his age so that was outsourced.

9. Took a five year buy-out of his stock in his former firm. That provided some income and reduced the taxes.

10. Made no major repairs on the house, or decorating, or new furniture.

11. Maintained my regular contribution to my 403-b at work.

12. Maintained our church tithe, but discontinued all other donations.

13. Gave up his downtown Y membership and joined an aerobics class at our suburban church (which he still does).

After two years, and he had established his practice, it was business as usual.


(If you participate, leave your link in the auto-link and it will post here, but please leave a comment.)
1. Chris 2. astrocoz 3. Margie Mix 4. Lisa 5. Tess 6. Ruth 7. kristarella 8. Kailani 9. Libragirl 10. Friday's Child 11. Aileen 12. K T Cat 13. Elle 14. Jackie 15. stephanie 16. wrigley 17. Lynn 18. Froggie 19. Froggie 20. Qaiz 21. Maribeth 22. Empress Juju 23. Diana 24. Amy 25. Amy 26. Ocean Lady 27. Margie Mix

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things.

Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

2607 Multi-tasking accident

A few months back I featured Chris White who was heading for Afghanistan and was blogging about his experiences. I just checked and he's had an accident--sliced up his finger closing his switchblade while reading a letter! Ouch. But it has healed enough to get back to blogging, and it is fascinating to read about what he is doing--putting on workshops for contractors using an interpreter. He's had to remove comments because of hackers and spammers.

He updates his blog by first sending it as e-mail to his father in Michigan who puts it on the blog.

2606 Rush's theory on women in politics

Perhaps this isn't a new idea, but it is the first I'd heard it. Shouldn't be too hard to investigate. Yesterday Rush Limbaugh was reading some statistics on women in government. Seems the U.S.A. is somewhere around #68--and even Iraq and Afghanistan (thanks to GWB) have better representation in their governments by women than we do. Rush attributes this to our very powerful feminist movement--that it has actually set women in this country back by pitting them against men and to be like men instead of encouraging them to be partners in business and government with men and to be women. Spinning your wheels and spitting in the wind, maybe?

2605 American Library Association is in NOLA

As I've commented here numerous times, my profession (i.e., I'm retired) is more liberal than the ACLU or Hollywood movie stars who testify before Congress on topics from oceans to apples. Statistically, it is 223:1 liberal to conservative, based on a survey done during the 2004 election. So, the fact that we've got a librarian in the White House, and the current Administration has been quite generous in its support of libraries and museums, means zip, nada, zilch--her name is BUSH. Shush has cut and pasted from a library listserv (probably a no-no) into his website (scroll down a little since the entries aren't clickable), and Matthew from Florida has responded to their silly whining.

Mark Rosenzweig, ALA Councilor at large, appears to be just a flaming Communist/ Anarchist based on the stuff he's published--and his post here is mild compared to some I've seen. He really needs to live in Cuba, except they jail librarians there and he knows it. Michael McGrorty, a left coaster, is an outstanding writer to whom I link for that reason, but he's so off base here (speakers like Mrs. Bush are brought in to incite the membership? Wow--what's he smoking?). Unbelievable stupidity is demonstrated in these clips for people with advanced college degrees who can't imagine why there is so much security--given their own level of hatred, she probably needs protection from raging librarians!

And from my alma mater, the U. of I. comes this undergraduate pout from Al Kagan, who is a Professor: "First of all, I would like to know who invited her [bangs his shoe on the table]. Second, I want to know if there will plenty of opportunity for questions from the floor [grabs the microphone screaming]. If there will not be questions from the floor, we should vigorously protest [give me a piece of posterboard and a marks-alot]." Here's another one from a blog: "Laura Bush will be speaking at the American Library Conference on Monday June 26. Though I usually stay for the entire conference I will leave the conference early. Below are a few reasons why. I don’t want to be back-drop for a photo-op."

Get a grip, you guys. Show some manners, since you are showing your lack of reasoning. You want everyone else to be liberal and open minded, but you can't even tolerate the smartest and prettiest First Lady we've ever had? [She earned a bachelor of science degree in education from Southern Methodist University in 1968. She taught in public schools in Dallas and Houston. In 1973, she earned a master of library science degree from the University of Texas and worked as a public school librarian until her marriage in 1977. She also won the cookie vote against Mrs. Kerry (who said she'd never worked) in the 2004 election.]

If there were no ALA tomorrow is my entry on why I think ALA is such a waste of time, energy and money (disclaimer: I was never a member).

Michelle Malkin picked up on Greg's (Shush) blog entry about ALA and Mrs. Bush.

American Library Association
Laura Bush

2604 While I'm on the topic

of librarians, this is still one of the best reference question stories I've ever read. It beats my road kill and blackbirds in a pie questions.

2603 I hope this is an urban legend

I says to Florida Cracker, another rare find, a conservative librarian, but her comments window isn't working. Anyway, she's got a post about Mary Travers (Peter, Paul and Mary) but on the internet, you never know about stories like this. I can't imagine anyone could be this tacky.

2602 A little private instruction

My husband is headed for the neighbor's for a little private instruction in his new digital camera. I hope he comes home knowing how to do it as beautifully as Mr. Cloud who is posting some lovely shots.

2601 What would you bet?

• By floating so many withdrawal (aka cut and run) plans for Iraq, the Dems are bound to hit one or two dates correctly, so when the Iraqi government is strong enough to stand on its own, the Democrats will claim a victory for withdrawal of American troops.
  
  
• Bush will be blamed for the kidnapping and deaths of the two American soldiers, not the terrorists.
  
  
• Although no captured American soldier has been returned alive, making prisoners wear pink or go naked in front of female soldiers, is much worse behavior because it is humiliating and Americans should play by the rules.
  
  
• If WMD are found, even a small amount of chemicals, the Dems will say they are planted. They've had this story ready since 2003.
  
  
• When the number of soldiers killed equals the number of civilians dead in 9/11, the Dems will be playing ring around the towers, all fall down. New Orleans violent death rate before Katrina was 53.1 per 100,000, and in Iraq it is 25.71. It is more dangerous to be a male between 18-24 in Detroit, Chicago or Baltimore just because of the effects of testosterone on stupid behavior, than it is to be a well-trained soldier with body armor in Iraq.
  
  
• No Democrat will ever be able to recall (i.e., deaf and dumb) the Carter or Clinton administration giveaways as Korea and Iran heat up.

2600 Why I don't RSS you

Sure, it's easy, they say. But do I want more things to read? I just click on my favorite links which are right here to my left, recommended by me and occasionally updated. As it is, I subscribe to way too many newsletters, a method I prefer to RSS feeds. I hear from James Carville and some lady (Nikki?) at the LATimes for news from the left; I get Nathan Bierma who writes for the Tribune about language; Michael Yon for news from Iraq; Boogie Jack tells me web page code secrets; George Barna keeps me informed about surveys of Christians; I get a genealogy newsletter, and a film maker newsletter, and an adoption newsletter from Capital U.; James Taranto of the WSJ and Christianity Today alert me when they have something new to say; and I have on-line subscriptions to WaPo and NYT. Medscape tells me when one of you have commented, so I can go back and find it. Really, I don't want your RSS feed. I have enough to do feeding my own eight blogs. And then there's all that Viagra and ink cartridge and mortgage spam.

2599 Let's all go down to Mexico

and protest their immigration policies.

• Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.
• Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.
• Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
• Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.
• Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.

Full story here at "Mexico's Glass House" which pretty much confirms an article I found in Lexis Nexis about the classism in Mexico's citizenship.


No wonder their citizens try so hard to stay here, and not go home.

2598 Can 500 experts be wrong?

Today's WSJ editorializes that 500 prominent economists claim that "immigration has been a net gain for American citizens."

Guess what? In the 1830s and 1840s, U.S. economists and egg-heads believed that about slavery too! Yes indeedy. Slavery was absolutely an economic necessity in the rural South (they said then) and besides, white people were doing those poor pagans a big favor by bringing them to an enlightened country (while decimating their own culture and families).

I'm not worried about the 950,000 legal immigrants. We need them. But the illegals flooding in from Mexico? Is that good for the Mexican economy and culture to export their poor so they never have to address the inequalities in their system. And how about that drug trade that is part and parcel of the illegal immigration, and the one in 10 who are not Mexican, but come across that border into the U.S. Do you know how hard it is to immigrate to Mexico? Did you know you can't be President of Mexico if your mother was born in Spain even if you were born in Mexico? Did you know there are at least 4 classes of citizenship in Mexico, and guess who is at the bottom--the poorest and brownest (that's not the correct way to say it, but I like the alliteration). Well, no, the naturalized Mexican citizen would be at the bottom--especially if brown--not allowed to do many things.

But hey. Could 500 economists be wrong? Yes, about something other than the economy.

2597 Acceptable risk

Would you get on an airplane, eat an egg, or take an aspirin with these safety figures? The U.S. government regulations for acceptable quality for condoms is 4 per 1,000 with discernable holes. Thirty two percent of normal, intact condoms leaked in FDA tests. Add to that depressing figure, they must must be used from the beginning (during foreplay), until the end to work as intended. Among couples where one partner had AIDS, over an 18 month period the HIV virus was transmitted to the uninfected partner in 17% of the couples who used condoms. The "in theory" rate of failure in birth control for condoms is 2%; the reality rate is 14%, just slightly less than the reality rate for the rhythm method (16%). "How to talk confidently with your child about sex," by Lenore Buth.

Aren't you glad you stopped by to read my blog today?

condoms
HIV-AIDS
birth control

Clarifying Clinton's Kyoto

Amy Ridenour of National Center for Public Policy Research takes apart Media Matters claim that Clinton's Kyoto plans (U.N. global warming treaty) were dead on arrival because of key Republicans, concluding . . .

"It seems to me that Chris Horner [on Neil Cavuto's show] is right and Media Matters is wrong to criticize him. Senate Republicans may well have told Clinton Kyoto couldn't be ratified, but Senate Democrats -- indeed, 95 out of 95 Senators present at voting in July 1997 -- told Clinton the very same thing. And, if Clinton disagreed, he didn't do much to fight them."

Calling all B-team Catholics

I saw this at Vox Lauri's blog. It's for blogging Catholics (which I'm not), but I thought it was a cute idea, because blogging is definitely being taken over by the "real" journalists, and in Catholicism I guess the little guys are feeling crowded out.


Here's a typical B-Team member:

"I am the poster child for the Amateur Catholic. I am not a theologian, I am not a bioethicist, I don't have a Ph.D. and I have to beg my parish to let me speak on stem cells and cloning. (In fact, when I told my Bishop about my website, I got a polite response that passed me off to my parish priest, who I am sure was instructed to discourage me at all cost!)

My only credentials are that I go to Mass on Sunday, I have a degree in Biochemistry and have a high speed Internet connection. It doesn't get more amateur than that." Mary

"I'm part of the 20-something crowd that has decided to stake our claim on Catholicism and rebel against the evil effects of the 70's and 80's, or what we like to call "the birthing years". I'm a graduate student in Theology but don't let that fool you. I'm part of the school of thought that firmly believes; 'the more ya know, the more you realize you don't know anything' and boy do I know a lot, or...something like that. I've just recently started a new blog about my adventures through the Lenten season. How long will it take me to break all of my Lenten promises? Not long at all, in fact, I probably already have. I'm broken, I'm inarticulate and in spite of the number of comments on my blog remaining firmly at 0, I still think I'm wildly interesting." Amy

I discovered the Catholic blogosphere when I was trying to ignore that pesky call to become a Sister. I kept going to Google and typing in "Should Susan become a Sister" or "What should Susan do with her life" or "Does anyone become a nun anymore?" to no avail. I was however lucky enough to happen upon the real life stories of amateur Catholics who were struggling to make sense of this thing called life. I was inspired by their honesty and integrity, and it helped me to decide that I too could trust in my loving God and walk down this path to see where it leads. I must say I've been pleasantly surprised! Susan

Others call themselves amateur Catholics because they are converts as well as bloggers.