The itty-bitty buckeye

My daughter's Chihuahua doesn't think her buckeye sweater is the least bit cute. She couldn't wait to get out of it. A buckeye, for you non-Ohio readers, is an Ohio State fan, and my daughter and son-in-law are definitely that.

Abby hoping to escape from her buckeye sweater
Free at last
We are doing a few trial runs before November when they go to Las Vegas, and we puppy-sit. Our cat is not pleased, no not one bit. Our cat is 7 lbs., the dog about half that, but oh, she so wants to be friends with the big pussy cat. Not going to happen.

Friends of the Creche--Heartland Cradlesong 2007

This morning after church we bought our tickets for the November 9 performance of the Upper Arlington Lutheran Church adult choir premiering Michael Martin's choral and orchestral composition, Scenes from His Nativity, commissioned by the Friends of the Creche, a society dedicated to studying the creche tradition and collecting nativities. Our pastor, Paul Ulring, an expert on hymnody, is the keynote speaker and will discuss sacred Christmas carols used in contemplating the miracle of the Savior's birth. The $20 ticket also covers a Koldtbord, a traditional Norwegian Christmas Eve feast.

Donna selling tickets
The event takes place at The Church at Mill Run, 3500 Mill Run Dr., Hilliard, OH 43026, with the Koldtbord beginning at 6:15 p.m. and the concert at 7:30 p.m. Dave and Donna Hahm are the co-chairs for this event and tickets are available both at Mill Run and Lytham Road campuses of UALC. Beat the Christmas rush--invite a friend for a wonderful evening celebrating the diverse American cultures that include German, Norwegian, Irish, African American and Greek Orthodox Christmas traditions.

The main activities of the convention will be at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Dublin, OH and will include

Frs. Nathanael Smyth and Nicholas Hughes, monks from the Monastic Brotherhood of St. Theodore, Galion, Ohio, will present the art and hymnody of the Nativity in the Greek Orthodox tradition. Nannette Maciejunes, Director of the Columbus Museum of Art, will introduce the mid-20th Century African American Columbus barber and wood carver, Elijah Pierce, whose vision of the Incarnation shaped his life-long ministry of “sermons in wood” and made him one of the nation’s outstanding African American folk artists. In addition, the traditions of Norway, Ireland, Germany, and Slovakia will be featured.

An exhibit of nativities from the Marian Library of the University of Dayton will be introduced by Fr. Johann Roten, director of the library and curator of the collec-tion. Program highlights include two Midwestern artists: Jerry Krider of Columbia City, Indiana, and Gary Wilson of Monroe, Michigan. They will talk about the inspiration behind their unique respective expressions of the Nativity in wood and clay. They are among the artists who will be exhibiting in the Manger Mart for the first time. Also planned are programs on the herbal lore associated with the nativity, Advent calendars, building a collection on a budget, and more." From the website schedule

Is your profession a calling?

Several years ago I read an op-ed type column in the WSJ (it's hard to tell in a liberal newspaper if you're reading news or an editorial) that I've never forgotten. A journalist wrote about a friend from college who chose a career in business. The writer chose journalism because "he wanted to make a difference in people's lives," or something like that. By age 50, the writer had had several reverses in his career and was struggling to even make ends meet. His friend by then had retired from a successful business career--don't remember if he invented something, or sold something, but he'd made a bundle. Now he was living his dream--he'd created a foundation and was using his money to help people.

I think juniors or seniors in high school should be told the realities of life, handed a fistful of play/monopoly money, the classifieds from any major city with ads for grocery stores, restaurants, plays, housing, cars, etc. and a book of charts, graphs and stats on salaries. After they've figured out how they would live in Chicago, LA or Peoria, let them look through the college catalog. They may still want to be a librarian, a social worker, an architect or a journalist, but it might cut down on the whining 10 years later about college loans, cost of living, and how this generation won't live as well as its parents or grand parents.

Annoyed Librarian writes: "I always assumed that librarians working the really crappy jobs were doing it because they were lazy or stupid, or had no marketable skills, or had previously worked in an even more annoying profession, or were uncompetitive in some way they couldn't help (unable to move from the area, for example), or just not very good at their jobs. But now I know that it's possibly because they view librarianship as a calling, like being a priest or a rock musician. Those librarians are just living the dream, serving the public faithfully, saving the world one library card at a time."

Yesterday the WSJ featured the gift to NY School of Social Work of $50 million from Constance and Martin Silver. Mrs. Silver got a bachelor and Master's in Social Work there in the late 70s, but reading through the bio, she must have gotten it after she married Martin, because it says they met right after she finished high school and came to NY to get a job. He was already a graduate of NYU when they met (it's also possible she isn't wife #1 and younger). They became wealthy because of his blood-plasma business, Life Resources, Inc. which was sold to the British government for $110 Million in 2002 when they were still in their 60s. She says the gifts (this one and others to NYU) are to fight poverty because "they had struggled to overcome poverty." [Reading the story I don't think they were any poorer than the rest of us growing up in the 1950s--we all had a lower standard of living than today.]

I think the gift from the Silvers might better serve needy college students by offering scholarships to the business school or even trade schools for youngsters who don't have a "calling" but want a better life for themselves and their families. Only a growing government needs more social workers, and that's not how they met their dream.

4213

Bad news, good news about education

As I turned off the vacuum cleaner and was wrapping the cord, I heard Edward Crane of Cato Institute say (on Book TV, 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged) that his 16 year old daughter's Spanish teacher had required the language class to watch Al Gore's "award winning" documentary. The audience twittered, because this movie and the education system's propaganda has become a big joke before the speaker can even get to the punch line. Then he opined (paraphrased, since I didn't have a pencil with me), "The bad news is they're teaching this; the good news is the kids aren't learning anything."

Earlier John Fund (WSJ) told about his role as a pinata at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival . You almost knew before he described some of the speakers what was going to come--he said something about walking through the deepest thought at the festival and not getting his ankles wet (again, a paraphrase). Apparently while they consumed water from 7,000+ plastic bottles they were hearing that even if we could roll back emissions to the Robert Fulton era (steamboat), it wouldn't be enough. However, I looked through the list of speakers, and some of the program looked pretty interesting. The kids programming looked like 1970s reruns. If it didn't work for their parents, maybe it will work for them. Check out the link. Your experience in Aspen may be different.

I think I read Atlas Shrugged in 1963--all 1100+ pages. It was very interesting and challenging, better than most books by atheists.

4212

Students smearing students

Should they be punished? At least to the degree the college president had promised when he thought they were conservatives? Or is this just an innocent college prank that should be overlooked? Read the letter to President Knapp here.

4211

First painting from the last trip

There will be a few touch ups (to make the distance a bit more hazy), but this is my husband's first painting from our Ireland trip in September. And yes, he works from his own photographs, not from memory. I believe this is a scene where we had lunch on Monday near Woodstock House Demesne, a national park near Inistioge.



There is no way to make Ireland more beautiful than it was; the advantage of a painting is to capture the emotional impact, and for us, recapture the memories.

What will HillaryCare do about this?

The big killers of Americans these days are our personal habits, choices and tastes. Smoking, drinking, over eating, over sitting. Will Hillary insist we mend our ways in order to reduce government health care costs after she extends it to all?

"Asian-American women have a life expectancy of almost 87 years; African-American men, 69 years. We have these facts on the authority of Eight Americas, a 2006 study by number crunchers at Harvard’s School of Public Health. Women in Stearns County, Minnesota, live about 22 years longer than men in southwest South Dakota, and 33 years longer than Native American men in six of that state’s counties. The gap between the highest and lowest life expectancies for U.S. race-county combinations is over 35 years. Some race-sex-county groups typically die in their nineties, others in their fifties. Some are healthier than the norm in Iceland, Europe, and Japan, others sicker than Nicaragua and Uzbekistan.

Factoring out wealth, race, and access to health insurance doesn’t eliminate most of these disparities. Low-income whites die four years sooner in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley than they do farther north. The healthiest whites are low-income residents of the rural Northern Plains states. In the West, American Indians who remain on the reservation die much sooner than whites.

What accounts for these cavernous differences? Harvard dares to name six leading “risk factors” for the population as a whole—alcohol, tobacco, obesity, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose—and reports that these factors correlate strongly with the spread in life expectancy across its Eight Americas. One of the study’s authors ventured to suggest, albeit only in an interview, that where you live may point, in turn, to ancestry, diet, exercise, and occupation." Article in City Journal

4209

Al Gore and the piece prize

The Canadian Press reports:

“Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for fighting it.

Gore, who won an Academy Award earlier this year for his film on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," had been widely tipped to win the prize.

He said that global warming was not a political issue but a worldwide crisis.”

Al Gore is a big fan of Rachel Carson, who whipped up another crisis 40 years ago--the long term effects of DDT on the environment. The woman has probably killed more Africans than the 17th and 18th century slave trade. Today malaria infects between 300 million and 500 million people annually, killing as many 2.7 million of them." Before Silent Spring, malaria was on the run. The debilitating effects of this disease help keep Africa in poverty.

"Without this book, the environmental movement might have been long delayed or never have developed at all," declared then-Vice President Albert Gore in his introduction to the 1994 edition of Silent Spring. The foreword to the 25th anniversary edition accurately declared, "It led to environmental legislation at every level of government." Now Gore can guarantee that the poor of the third world will never be competitive or catch up by keeping them barefoot but green. American businesses jumped on the green bus, they're rolling and are already making huge profits--how will Africa and Asia ever compete?

That Rachel Carson didn’t tell the truth about cancer in children (rate has not changed over many decades, but other deaths (polio, pneumonia, birth defects) went down skewing comparisons with other illnesses like cancer) is probably not her fault. She wasn’t a trained scientist. And neither is Al. Environmentalists don’t want to see that the EPA banning DDT killed or disabled millions of Africans--for what? So church groups can donate insecticide treated nets (would you sleep under one?) and wear orange t-shirts with slogans.



And now we have Growbal Warming.

See Silent Spring turns 40

4208

The Bush Tax Cuts

I disagree with Mr. Bush on a lot, but every time I go to a nice store or do some traveling, I whisper quietly, "Thanks, big guy. You might not be able to string two sentences together, but you know how to help retirees."

Most retirees if they planned well and listened to all the scare stories 30 years ago about how there wouldn't be Social Security by the time we retired, have a nest egg (private investments) a 403-b, or 401-k, or IRAs, annuities, or some other vehicle other than a passbook savings account. Our economy would probably have taken much longer to recover after the bubble burst in early 2000, and then sunk after 9/11 if not for the Bush tax cuts.

But the GAP ("getting all pissed") people are unhappy. GAPists don't care how good I have it or if I worked hard, led a quiet life and saved my pennies; if it's better than someone else, if there is an identifiable gap between my pension and that of a homeless guy who drank away his income, then life isn't fair.

This morning there was a news story (not an editorial) in the Wall St. Journal about the income inequality gap by Greg Ip. This gap is very distressing for liberals (as are health gaps, education gaps, leisure gaps, everything except the marriage gap, which alone can account for a lot of poverty). The 1% wealthiest of all tax filers earned 21.2% of all income [notice the word "earned" because I don't think Ip did]. Now that is a whopping .4% more than in 2000. Yes, it took that long for this "rising inequality" to show up on the graphs, but this causes much hand wringing.

Never mind that much of this gain resulted from technological changes that benefits the smart and well educated more than the less skilled, or that a lot of it is by gains of entertainers, celebs and sports figures, the darlings of the left. And what's really ugly (Ip doesn't use this word)? More than twice as many Wall Street professionals are in the top .5% of all earners than there are executives from non-financial companies. The writer claims that this gap is fueling anxiety among American workers. Are retirees anxious that Wall Street is doing well? Not likely. Our pensions and investments are the silent guest living in our homes--who doesn't eat, make noise, tease the cat, or change the channel--just hands over his paycheck to help with expenses.

Remember the hated Bush tax cuts? The poor got bigger tax cuts than the rich (although for some, something from nothing still results in zero--millions pay no taxes at all). At the bottom, the tax rate fell to 3% from 4.6% under Clinton. At the top the 1% richest folks' tax rate (what they paid) went from 37% under Clinton to 39% under Bush, according to author Greg Ip.

Why are the liberals so unhappy? Seems as though taxes actually fell for the rich despite the tax rate increase. (He includes no information on whether taxes actually fell for the poor--again, it's hard to subtract from zero). So now, the actual gap is widening. With the boomers coming up to the retirement trough, you'd better hope those rich folks keep paying their big taxes because they are covering for the folks at the bottom to say nothing of paying the salaries of armies of government workers.

4207

The Hush Rush Senators and the Fairness Doctrine

You'll find an interesting history of the Fairness Doctrine over at The Volokh Conspiracy. It's fascinating that Democrats in the 1960s were so fearful of free speech (I was a passionate Democrat then, but didn't know about this), even the snippets of outrageous speech that few bothered to listen to (like some fundamentalist radio preachers squawking in the middle of the night--there was no talk radio or news analysis at the time). Silencing Rush Limbaugh by threatening Clear Channel or censoring him on the floor of the Senate for calling a phony soldier a phony soldier is just a tiny part in the plan to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine." I think I would call it "kill the media doctrine" because high tech communication has made the doctrine obsolete. Now we have so many other ways to get news. Many of these talk shows are wealthy enough to just use other methods and by-pass radio or TV altogether.

Who are the smug beltway buffoons who say there are only two sides (Republicans and/or Democrats, liberals and/or conservatives)? What about the Libertarians, the Socialists, the Communists, the anarchists, the academics, the ethnics, the retirees, the labor unions, the Muslims, the Jews, the Dispensationalists, the polygamists, the reparationists, the radical environmentalists, the man-boy love association and vegans for chicken rights? What if the news story had to present EVERY viewpoint of what to do with unwanted or disabled horses--even the Japanese who eat them and the children who hug them?

I get e-mail news stories daily from groups that hate both Bush and Rush, but some are right wing. . . way right of both men. They doubt Bush's religious faith, they think he's giving the country to the Mexican government, buying up land to make another hi-way to Canada to sell us out, and that his family is in one big business cabal with the Clintons. They think Rush is a traitor because he used the ACLU in fighting charges of prescription drug abuse and leaking his medical records and are horrified by his marriage track record.

I also get e-mail from that bald, skinny elfish-looking guy married to Mary Matalin, whose name escapes me at the moment explaining how the DNC is going to take advantage of every misstep the RNC makes. And during a run-up to an election, any election, will our local school board candidates be able to discuss issues without including the views of every homeschooling parent who pulled her children out of public school 5 years ago, and will the Obama people have to side-step Clinton's ties with Hsu because she would be required to come back with his time spent in a Muslim village? Does a Chinese money source trump an Indonesian terrorist connection in the Fairness Doctrine, or are they equal, fair and balanced?

I really think the broadcast media--ABC, NBC, CBS--better stomp on George Soros and Hilliary Clinton before this goes any further, or they might find themselves having to parse every syllable and minute and go back to having Katie interview Britney for safe news. Oops. Maybe not. She'd have to give K-Fed equal time, and then the babies. . . and on and on. Meanwhile, advertisers will look elsewhere, and the entire media industry would collapse. Which would make George Soros the only winner in this contest.

Pay attention to the man behind the curtain pulling the strings

4206

Thursday 13--what I do now I didn't do then

Carol at her blog had written a letter to herself of 10 years ago--the Carol of 1997; I couldn't think of anything for 1997, or 1987, so I dropped back to 1977. The children were 9 and 10, I was working a few hours a day in the main library at Ohio State, we'd joined a new and thriving church the year before. My parents and grandparents were alive, as were all my siblings. If it weren't for the fashions, it was a nice, pleasant decade. So what do I do now, I didn't do then?

1. I make lists. I resisted this for years--and still rarely do it, but if there is a time crunch, I do make a list. I didn't even make a list for groceries, most of the time in the 70s. I just kept a typed list in my purse (same list every week) and could remember what we did and didn't have. Whatever automatic list maker I had in my head, got all filled up.

2. I belong to a book club now--joined in 2000, and the group is in its 26th year. However, I think I read less, but I do have more variety because on my own I rarely read fiction or mysteries.

3. I'm more proactive about my health, but still hate to exercise.

4. I occasionally have a glass of red wine--didn't drink at all until after my heart ablation in 2002, and still have never tasted beer (I think it smells like something has been left in the laundry basket).

5. I wear glasses now--prescription. I think I purchased reading glasses at a drugstore in the late 70s or early 80s, but didn't get into daily wear until 1993.

6. I travel outside the country now, but for years travel meant driving with 2 kids in the back seat (Mahhhhhaaaam, she's looking at me!) to visit relatives in Indiana and Illinos. Actually, in 1978 we did drive to Florida. Boy, is that a treat with squirmy, quarreling kids.

River cruise Germany and Austria, 2005
7. I spend more money on myself now than I did in the 70s.

8. Now my kids can cook for me, instead of the other way around. That's really great, and they both seem to enjoy entertaining.

Christmas at our son's home, 2006
9. I control more electronic gadgets in a day than what I would do in a year in 1977--digital camera, scanner, printer, 2 computers, email, blogging, cd player, DVD and VCR, several remotes, microwave, etc. Not into I-podding, blackberry, cell phones or MP3-ing. We have 6 TVs--we had one in 1977. The little photograph printer I bought this summer is still in the box, however, and I haven't connected my new mouse.

10. I pay more attention to political, national and international news, and read several newspapers, business and medical journals, but pay less attention to what's happening locally with the schools and city, and only read the local paper a few times a week.

11. I write more--I always wrote a lot (letters, essays, work related things)--a few hours a week, but now it is several hours a day.

12. I drive an older car now--in 1977 I had a 1976 Buick; now I drive a 6 year old van. Of course, I kept that Buick until 1985--tip for you parents: old sedans are great for teenagers.

13. I eat out more--it's a social thing, and there are many more restaurants to tempt us than 30 years ago. I go out earlier now for coffee--used to wait until the kids were in school, now I'm often the first customer.

Thursday Thirteen

The name meme

I saw this over at Jane's and thought it looked like fun.

When I'm famous, my name will be......

1. ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car) Lassie Caravan

2. GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie) Moosetrack Thumbprint

3. “FLY Girl” NAME:(first initial of first name, first three letters of last name) N-Bru

4. DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) Coral Pinto

5. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born) Joyce Rockford

6. STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of last name, first 2 letters of first) Bruno

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink) The Blue Coffee

8. NASCAR NAME: (first names of grandfathers) Charlie Joe

9. STRIPPER NAME: (favorite perfume. favorite candy) Summer Shower Peanut Butter Cup, or just "B Cup" for short

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names) Inez William

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME:(5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter) Michael Madison

12. SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (favorite season/holiday, flower) Autumn Rose

13. CARTOON NAME:(favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”) Apple Shoozie

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree) Honey Crisp Sycamore

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”) The Writing Cloud Tour

4205

Food allergies

No one in my family has them--can't even think of anyone at the cousin level. Nor do I remember this when I was a child. But your heart has to ache for Janeen and her kids, and what she deals with keeping them safe. It's a very educational blog and I'm sure she helps many by sharing her experiences.

4204

Chicken and salmonella

The news was full of some Salmonella stories this morning--pot pies, I think. Chicken just must be cooked thoroughly before you eat it. Same with giving uncooked meat to your pets. They all have it. Kill it!

"The company reminds consumers that these products are not ready-to-eat, and must always be thoroughly cooked as instructed on the packages," the company said in a statement on its Web site. "The cooking instructions for these products are specifically designed to eliminate the presence of common pathogens found in many uncooked products."

The pot pies in question have the code P-9 printed on the side of the package, ConAgra said." CNN

I served chicken cordon bleu (swiss or Provolone and ham rolled inside chicken breast) the other night, with cooked carrots and fresh greens salad, banana nut muffin with sugar free Cool Whip. Yummy. However, I did purchase the chicken roll ups at Fresh Market, which is the next best thing to having a chef drop by at dinner time. The instructions said, "Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 20 minutes wrapped loosely with foil. Uncover and bake approximately 15 more minutes. I added 5 minutes, and still think it should have been more, because my husband's portion was just slightly pink. Next time. . . I'll adjust the cooking time and also split the portions. My husband complained that they were too large. Hmm. I had no problem at all.

4203

Ambushing the Acting Architect

When you get two e-mails on the same "have you heard of this terrible deed" story, you have to take a second look (I usually delete them). Most often the stories are written by the netroots (progressives and liberals suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome) or the wingnuts (nutty conservatives looking for conspiracies). When it's about an architect, I indeed look into it.

The story going around at the speed of light is that the Acting Architect of the Capitol has deleted or removed God and religious references on official certificates and documents. Why an architect decides, I have no idea. I'm my husband's staff (letters, specs, forms, billing) and I read all his newsletters and magazines. I've never believed English was an architect's strength. Now if you google this topic, the language will be a bit more hysterical. But there does seem to be something to it.

First, who is he and what has he done to create such outrage? Stephen T. Ayers is a Bush appointee, a veteran and a degreed and certified architect serving until they find the "real" architect. The Architect retired earlier this year and the AIA has been unhappy because the word is out that this plum appointment wasn't even going to be an architect (the Librarian of Congress isn't a librarian, for instance, and the Secretary of Education may not be a teacher). "In March 2006, following a rigorous interview process before a selection panel comprised of the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives, the Comptroller General, Senate Sergeant at Arms, and senior AOC officials, Mr. Ayers was selected as the Deputy Architect/COO. In this role, he oversees approximately 2,200 employees and manages the day-to-day operations of the Agency." AOC site

Second, at least one leg of this story is planted firmly in Ohio. A story appeared in the Dayton Daily News about a teenage Eagle Scout trying to do something nice for his grandfather:

The inscription on the certificate accompanying the flag that had flown over the United States Capitol was supposed to be a personal message from 17-year-old Andrew Larochelle to his grandfather, a veteran and a devout Catholic.

Andrew requested the certificate say, "This flag was flown in honor of Marcel Larochelle, my grandfather, for his dedication and love of God, Country and family."

But, the Acting Architect of the Capitol, Stephen T. Ayers, censored "God" from the request.

"I was completely shocked at the way things played out ... faith is very important to our entire family," Andrew said.

Andrew, who will be honored today for his 11-year effort to become an Eagle Scout, plans to present the flag to his grandfather during that ceremony.

"A lot of what I learned about faith comes from him," Andrew said. "I never expected such controversy over getting my Eagle Scout rank."

The flag request was made by Andrew's father, Paul Larochelle, through the office of U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, who on Saturday gave the family another certificate, written just as they requested.

"Our Nation's Capitol contains many religious references including "In God We Trust" inscribed in both the House and State chambers," Turner wrote in a letter of complaint to President Bush. "The architect's policy is in direct conflict with his charge as well as the scope of his office and brings into question his ability to preserve a building containing many national religious symbols."

Turner said Bush is currently in the process of appointing a new Architect of the Capitol.

So, two Western Republicans, Tancredo and Musgrave, both from Colorado and conservative Christians, are leading the charge to reverse his unpopular decision by the acting architect, according to the Denver Post.

Federal officials should allow the word "God" to appear on certificates accompanying American flags sent from the U.S. Capitol to members of the public, two Colorado lawmakers said this week.

Reps. Marilyn Musgrave and Tom Tancredo joined several other Republicans in sending a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting she end a policy of the Architect of the Capitol that prevents the certificates from including religious expressions.

"This officially sanctioned hostility against religion flies in the face of the constitutionally guaranteed right to the free exercise of religion," Tancredo said. "This misguided and contradictory political correctness has got to come to an end."

Let's see if this can get resolved before all the Christmas vs. Holiday hysteria swings into action. I know that Harry "Hush Rush" Reid is good at parsing sentences and looking for hidden meanings.

Banned Books Week

BBW is over for another year (wasn't that the name of a magazine for large women?). Banned books goes on all year at my library because banning begins at selection by the staff, not complaints from the patron. Today, I picked up a magazine, AudioFile June July 2007. Glancing through it, I noticed it had a religious section, so I decided to see if my public library had any of the religious audiobooks reviewed in the issue. The first one I tried was a James Dobson, Focus on the Family issue. Didn't surprise me that they didn't have it. Even though his company produces top-notch audio and video, he is politically a conservative--an anathema at this tax supported, public library**. So I read the review of R.C. Sproul's audio book The Holiness of God read by Grover Gardner (6.5 hours, unabridged). Reviewer noted that the print version published 20 years ago had become a standard work, and that the audio did justice "to a deep work on a subject often taken for granted."

I bring up the catalog again (which doesn't work well and is an aggravation) and punch in "Sproul, R.C." One item--a contribution to a King James Bible version. A search of Amazon.com brings up over 200 titles, because Sproul, a Presbyterian, is extremely prolific (note: his son uses "R.C. Sproul, Jr," although they don't have the same name). Although he focuses on theological themes, he has also written for children and youth, and I think has tried his hand at fiction. He has written books on home schooling, cultural issues, biography, Bible studies, The Westminster Confession, marriage, apologetics, the reformation, death, and the life of Jesus. He is a well known as a Christian author, teacher and speaker. There are a few duplicates on the Amazon listing--some titles are published both in Spanish and English; several have audio; some are both paperback and hard cover.

However, I counted 46 distinct titles with publication dates between 2000 and 2008 (it's possible some could be his son's--hard to tell). Forty-six titles in eight years, and Upper Arlington Public Library couldn't find a spot on the shelf or in the budget for even one! Richard Dawkins, the non-religious bigot who sees religion as a human construct and the source of much evil in the world is much more acceptable at UAPL. His Blind watchmaker has 3 copies; The God delusion has 7 print copies and one audio.

And this, dear readers, is what I call banned books.
------------------

** If you check the UAPL catalog by publisher, you will find Focus on the Family, all from the early to mid-1990s--the library staff was a bit less "focused" and rigid in those days.

If you believe this

My blog is worth $413,243.28.
How much is your blog worth?

I have some CO2 credits to sell you.

God and Hillary Clinton

First, let me say that I think candidates for office, whether city council or the presidency of the United States, should be allowed to speak at any forum, even if it is the pulpit of a church. Americans learn democracy in the committees and congregational votes of their churches and synagogues. Black Americans have a long tradition of this--and according to the polls, it hasn't hurt their faith one bit. Second, some Christians are terrible hypocrites about this. Here in Columbus we had a group gang of 31 smug, self-righteous, mainline preachers trying to take the tax exempt status from World Harvest (which draws much bigger crowds than they do) during the 2006 election cycle. Third, I haven't read this book--and probably won't since I'm not a Hillary fan. Still, it's an important topic. Faith does shape one's politics.

I listened to an author interview; he has written other "God and. . ." books. (Here is another interview, but not the one I heard and it addresses different issues.) He said that George W. Bush spoke at a church 3 times in his first 3 years in office, all at memorial services. Hillary Clinton spoke 6 times in churches on one election day (her senate run in New York). Yet she is the one who says she won't "wear her religion on her sleeve" (audience applause) because that would be Pharisaical. She gave many "Why I am a Methodist" speeches when the folks in Arkansas were a bit doubtful about the young couple living in the governor's mansion in the 80s.

If this book is as carefully researched as the author claims, and is accurate just on this "sleeve" issue, Senator Clinton will continue to set up a straw man to divide Christian loyalties to meet her own political goals.

My opinion. Christ taught nothing new about moral and ethical behavior. Our faith is not about what to do, but about who we believe in. So Matthew 25, where Christians are commanded to help the poor, sick and imprisoned is a basic religious tenet for both Christians and Jews. The Gospel of Matthew is a very Jewish book drawing heavily on the Old Testament.

Main line Protestants have no problem using this text to decide that it is the government which needs to do it with everyone's tax dollar, not just the taxes of Christians and Jews. However, the same group is quite vocal about not teaching Creation, the theological bedrock of both faiths in that it deals with God's sovereignty and how death entered the world. They ridicule conservative Christians and side with atheists, agnostics and humanists. They are vocal about blessing gay marriage, even to splitting their denomination, using every passage about marital love in the Bible. They are silent about the killing of the helpless unborn, except to mouth platitudes about "choice," and "saving the poor or deformed from a life of pain."

Today I saw a letter to the editor in WSJ which voiced concern that the Christian right was taking the reins of the Republican party (a very common complaint). Again, I ask all Christians, liberal and conservative to please show me where Christians are having any influence at all in education, economics, politics, entertainment or academe. I wish it were true, but I don't see it. Twice in 60 years we've had a Republican Congress with a Republican President. Show me a single government program or boondoggle that was turned back, slowed down or reversed by conservative Christians.

The Jena six

I hope I've got this wrong, but did I hear that an aging pop stud with an appelation disorder has come out with a protest song about the Jena Six? Well, you gotta do what you gotta do to stay in the spot light.

Meet my friend, Mr. JAM. He's actually been to Jena and spent some time there. Go to his blog and check out a few details. While you're there, check out his excellent photographs.

4198

Why liberals are afraid of Clarence Thomas

He's written an autobiography titled, "My grandfather's son," and liberals are squealing and denigrating again. They used to just condemn his qualifications; now it's his emotional state. It's not just because he's an uppity black man who isn't grateful for all they've done (the whites). It's not just because he's got black skin and Negroid features (the Civil Rights leaders who grew up with the brown paper sack rule of acceptable appearance). It's not just because he complains about rich feminists hunting for more shackles and glass ceilings (as black women were still scrubbing floors). No. He stomps all over and rips up their favorite playgrounds giving them no place to hang out. So I suppose they have a right to pout and bully him, and call him too angry or disturbed to be on the bench. But, as John Yoo points out in today's WSJ, "Clarence Thomas is a black man with a much greater range of personal experience than most of the upper-class liberals who take pot shots at him."

And if he's too angry,

does that include the other angry people who came out of the Civil Rights movement of the 60s and 70s?

Or who left the church because of its inaction on race issues?

Or who used company rest rooms with racial slurs on the walls?

Or who saw the futility in the black power movement after a brief, heady flirtation?

Or who dabbled in leftist politics in the 70s and found it empty rhetoric?

Or who disappointed and argued with his parents about his political views and life choices and lives with regrets?

Or who had to learn to speak standard English and give up his distinct (and ridiculed) childhood dialect?

Or who says a degree from Yale is worth about 15 cents in the real world if you are black?

Or who believes busing poor black kids to poor white schools did nothing for educating children?

Or who saves a complimentary letter to reread from time to time as an affirmation of his beliefs?

Or who believes criminals need to be tried by juries, not judges?

Or who went the lonely route and voted for Ronald Reagan, turning away from government engineering of social problems?

Now, for conservatives who read this book: they may wonder as I did, why he didn't know until joining the Department of Education that busing was never about education for disadvantaged black children, it was always about neighborhood integration and the real estate market. They may be puzzled that he knew so little about black on black crime when he began working in Missouri. They may wonder why he would stay eight years with the EEOC--did he think he was God, because if it was as bad as he said, that would be its only salvation. Why he didn't get rid of Anita Hill sooner if he knew she was trouble. Did the first Bush ever take his advice on black appointments?

I found the inefficiency and relationships between the various federal agencies and departments discouraging--I think more could have been said. More solutions offered. (Although as a Supreme, he probably has areas on which he isn't allowed to comment.) If it were me, I would have had a few regrets about that, too. Also, for this reader, many of his insights, sounded more like hindsight.

Still, it's well worth reading.

Jesse Peterson is looking for a few good (white) men. I wish him luck.

Time to think about flu shots and pneumonia vaccine

It's been so hot (in the midwest), you've probably not thought much about flu season or pneumonia. Most of the churches and many of the large supermarkets around here are offering flu shots for older and at risk people. I know there are those who think vaccines are part of some sort of conspiracy cabal (just who this bad element conspiring to kill us with vaccines is, I'm not sure--but I think they drink the Kool-Aid with the Princess Diana conspiracy folks). With the bad news about hospital acquired infections, I would think you would want something preventative to keep you or your elderly parents out. Maybe they won't die of pneumonia, but they might acquire something else really ugly.

"Among patients hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia, those who had previously received the pneumococcal vaccine had a lower risk of death and admission to the intensive care unit than patients who were not vaccinated, according to a report in the Oct. 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine 2007; 167(18):1938-1943, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Streptococcus pneumoniae, one of the causes of pneumonia--23-valent polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine (PPV)--has been available since 1983. Most guidelines recommend PPV for those at high risk of developing pneumonia, including older adults and nursing home residents."

In this study of nearly 3,500 patients in Canada, "22 percent had been vaccinated with PPV, and 624 died or were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). Those who had been vaccinated with PPV were less likely to die or be admitted to the ICU than those who had not been vaccinated (10 percent vs. 21 percent). This finding was mostly a result of lower ICU admissions--less than 1 percent of those vaccinated were admitted to the ICU, compared with 13 percent of those who were not vaccinated. Results were similar when the researchers looked only at patients older than 65 or those living in nursing homes--groups for whom universal PPV vaccination is recommended." [from Newswire via JAMA ]

I want to look like a high school cheerleader again

This reality show on CMT started up yesterday and I watched a bit. I was never a cheerleader, wasn't athletic, nor did I envy them, but I think they contributed a lot to the fun of the football and basketball games. Watch this. One woman said, "No one but my husband has said I'm pretty in a long time." Well, who else matters?

One of my cousins I met this year through an internet genealogy site used to be a Denver Broncos cheerleader, if I remember correctly. Is that football? I saw four or five former cheerleaders this summer at our reunion (2 from our class and 2 from the class after us and maybe one from my husband's class), and they still have the nice personalities and perky spirits that supported the teams and worked up the crowds.

A relief from the heat

This evening a cool front should move in and move our heat. . . to the east. I'm sure this is a relief to the global warming folks too, because none of the October heat records were posted after 1963, and that's a bit of an embarrassment, I suppose. Well, if you worship man's control of nature, that is. Now we've had a string of really hot days which will bump up the average. For the first week of October, the former records for our area were set in 1952 (89), 1919 (88), 1953 (89), 1959 (89), 1951 (90), 1963 (86) and 1941 (88). And remember, in those days, no one had air conditioning, so it must have been pretty uncomfortable on those record setting days.

I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the Lord, do all these things.

You heavens above, rain down righteousness;
let the clouds shower it down.
Let the earth open wide,
let salvation spring up,
let righteousness grow with it;
I, the Lord, have created it.
Isaiah 45:6b-8

4194

BARF

As seen at Medscape.com continuing education unit on zoonotic diseases (requires registration):

The current trend for "natural diets" has led some owners to provide their dogs with a "bones and raw food diet (BARF)." The diet often consists of whole raw chicken mixed with vegetables. A recent study found that 80% of dogs fed this diet shed Salmonella in their stool. Another source of Salmonella for dogs and, subsequently, human infections has been processed pig ear treats.

Hmm, as they say, "everything but the squeal," but I don't think I'd buy that "treat."

4193

Repost my triggers

This morning I went back to my Thursday Thirteen where I posted my 13 food triggers. It was September 28 of last year, and we'd just returned from California. I stepped on the scales and saw 150 lbs and decided it was time to change my ways. Unlike a lot of women who claim ignorance on why they gain weight, I knew exactly what the reason was. I was eating more and moving less. I'd gotten broad band and it was. . . broadening. It took 6 months, but I got back to 130 lbs and size 8.

When I returned from Ireland on the 19th, I'd bumped up about 2.5 lbs, but you should see the wonderful food we had! After a week or so, it went back down, but now it's up 3. So this morning I reviewed the list, and I was violating 10 of the 13 triggers, and at the grocery store this morning I kicked in another (avoid the snack food aisles at the store). So I've posted them on my printer shelf, and on the inside door of the pantry.

For example, one big food trigger is pizza of any type, but especially pepperoni with double cheese. I think I've had that 4 times in the last 3 weeks. Friday night we ate at Sloopy's in Lakeside--I had a personal size pizza, and my husband had a sub which came with chips. Chips are also on my food trigger list. Not only did I eat my own pizza, my hand kept sneaking under his arm for his chips, and I also had chips on Saturday at the town's Fall Festival lunch. I've been sneaking peanut butter, and the other day I got a package of crackers out of the cupboard intended for my husband who has actually lost weight since he took up sailing. Ice cream isn't even on the list, but I've been eating it, too.

Yes, indeedy,
I'm gettin' needy
It all looks yummy
to my tummy
don't need no snacks
in my slacks
so it's no more chips,
no more slips,
no more trips
(goes to my hips)
or double cheese
if you please.

4192

Wild Horses

couldn't keep me from buying this little box I didn't need. I much prefer rectangular boxes, bigger boxes, that will actually hold something. But I couldn't resist. The others in this display were round; totally useless now that I don't wear hats. So I bought the square box, 4 3/4" interior dimension, lid 5 1/4". It won't even hold a jewel box for a cd, which measures 4 7/8".

Hsus and Socks

I heard today on radio (Jim Quinn and Rose Tennent) that Sandy "the socks" Berger-Burglar is going to join the Clintons to get Hillary elected. So they've got Hsus (pronounced Shoes) and Socks on their team. Isn't he a felon? Or does stealing from the National Archives not count as much as saying "phony soldier" on air about a real phony soldier in the Democratic playbook. I don't remember any Senate condemnation of Berger that took over a week of their time. What I wrote in April:

I am very concerned that the Justice department covered for the Clinton administration official in not breathing a word about the Sandy Berger burglarly and crimes at the National Archives in front of the 911 commission. That whole investigation was done not knowing he was a criminal. Who knows what was compromised or why Gonzalez let this happen. He was supposed to take a lie detector test, but Justice hasn't followed up on that either. I'm also concerned that certain National Archives employees attempted to "catch him" on their own, without reporting him, and possibly bungled the burglary. They should be fired. They way overstepped their responsibility by trying to second guess his motives and behavior and should have called their supervisor or security.

Needed: a savvy editor

I haven't yet finished Clarence Thomas' autobiography, My Grandfather's Son, but unless he makes a big reversal before I get to the end of the book, I think his editor made a huge, huge boo-boo. It's about Thomas' first marriage and alcohol problems.

Never, never let your author say he knew before the wedding that it was a mistake. This strips the woman (and child) of all dignity, no matter what nice things are later said about her, her parents, and other good things. It makes your author, whom you were hired to protect from himself, look like less than a gentleman.

Second, never, never let your author continue to say, "when I left her," "when I left the marriage," or "after I left her," because it makes him look like a pompous fool who doesn't realize two people make up a relationship. To a man, it might sound innocuous; but to a woman reader, it makes him sound like a first class clod. If he says it once, OK, maybe your editorial skills are shoddy and you missed it, but several times? Back to school for you!

Third, (and I haven't come to the part where he gets sober) don't let your author go on and on and on about how poor he was after his Yale Law degree and several government appointments and never have him acknowledge how expensive it is to drink away all your discretionary income. Whether liberals or conservatives read it, that's a financial lesson it's never too early or late to learn.

4188

A million leftist monkeys typing, but they're no Shakespeare

"In the parable of the million monkeys banging on typewriters for a million years, the reward is supposed to be the complete works of Shakespeare. But have you heard the parable of the million interns? Here, the prize is Rush Limbaugh's head, and Bill O'Reilly's, and Brit Hume's, and pretty much any other prominent conservative or non-leftist who doesn't kowtow to the Democratic Party and its “netroots" army of Lilliputian cannibals. This, in a nutshell, is the vision behind a group most people have never heard of, at least not until this week, Media Matters for America." Good stuff. Jonah Goldberg

In articles and interviews [in the 90s], Brock [founder of Media Matters] outed himself as a liar. He confessed to lying in the Anita Hill book, even though the lies he admitted to were peripheral to his exoneration of Justice Clarence Thomas but devastating in what they said about Brock himself; he admitted he'd been a hatchet man and borderline extortionist. In a piece for Esquire - in which he was depicted bound to a tree, nipple exposed - Brock apologized to Bill Clinton and expressed regret over his "Troopergate" stories for the American Spectator. He said they were all true, mind you, but that he shouldn't have written them.

The hatchet work continues.

4187

Is it too much to ask

for something of substance from the Washington Post? Is it all Op Ed, Whimsy and Hokey-Smokey? I just read (I think you need to be registered):

An Exit Toward Soul-Searching
As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 7, 2007; Page A01

What a bunch of nothing! Why do "journalists" pretend to get inside people's heads? Too lazy to research? Need some inches to get paid? What a sorry, sorry profession.

Senator Clinton's connections

If you want to know what the country could be like with Senator Clinton as President Clinton II, just google Governor Granholm of Michigan. The whole country could be more taxed to death than it already is. The Christian Right spokesmen who are trying to drum up support for a third party candidate that isn't divorced, pro-choice, Mormon or in recovery from cancer, needs to think about Granholm and then Perot. It was not Democrats who elected Bill Clinton, it was Republicans jumping ship because they said the first Bush lied about raising taxes. Well duh. That's what pols do. Get over it.

But if you want to know Senator Clinton's connection with Media Matters, which does her bidding in stopping freedom of speech read this. So you've got a Democratic candidate who will raise your taxes so you can have the quality of care that Medicaid recipients get, and then shut your mouth so you can't complain about it. What a combination.

The unread books list

A strange list indeed. I have no idea why this would matter. These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. LibraryThing is that thing I said I didn't use in my TT. So, people own these books, but many sit unread on their shelves.

Instructions: Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list. Then copy this to your own blog, and you have a prepared topic! I got this from Cathy Knits.

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels (Read assigned sections in high school)
Les misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

The only titles on my TBR list are Clarence Thomas' new autobiography, My grandfather's son, and Laura Ingraham's Power to the People. I'll probably review them later. Interesting stuff, some a little hard to believe.

4183

For the veterans who protest the war

I completely support your right to do so; this is the kind of freedom we're fighting for there. People in muslim controlled dictatorships certainly don't have this right. Don't let any lying senator try to shut you down they way they're going after Rush Limbaugh.

At the same time, it's possible your high school social studies classes were a bit light in the loafers and only included information about evil businesses or government abuses. Here's an older item from my blog about a veteran, Eli, who lived in my home town:

I had looked up this battle because in reading War Record of Mount Morris I noticed a WWII veteran from our town, Eli Raney, I considered "old" when I was young (although truthfully, I thought anyone over 25 was old). Born in 1892, he was 50 when he reenlisted during WWII and he served 14 months in frontline construction in New Guinea and the Philippines. So I flipped to the back of the book for his WWI service and see that he was a member of Company D, of the 104th infantry, and arrived in France in August 1918, just in time to be in this battle [the battle of Saint-Mihiel in September in which 7,000 men were lost, and went down in the history books as "a morale boost" but not a big battle]. He was not among the wounded, but was wounded in the Argonne campaign."

4182

Friday Family Photo

I've been looking for a reason to post this, and I realized while sorting through some photos yesterday that these were taken in 1987 and 2007. The first is my mother and her sister, Muriel, taken at the home where they grew up. We'd had some sort of family gathering, an impromptu reunion with relatives from both sides of the family. That was my first summer as an empty nester and I really enjoyed being back in the "nest" myself. The second was taken this summer. Mom died in 2000; Muriel is now nearly 91 and is the youngest and only surviving grandchild of the folks I'll show you next week. She's enjoying the Fourth of July parade with her daughter in the second photo.

Thirteen things about Norma's blogging

Photo from http://www.messiahinternationalministries.org/
1) This week is my fourth blogiversary. I started blogging on October 2, 2003, and then that just didn’t look tidy, so I "back-filled" October 1 and use that date to collect certain themes as I went along, family stories, poetry, etc. I have 11 blogs using blogger.com and one on another server.

2) Collecting My Thoughts. This is the primary blog (you’re reading it) and it can include just about anything. One time I wrote a TT on 13 topics at this blog. There are probably more. This is also where a year ago I wrote 13 things I was going to do to lose my blogging weight gain.

3) My second blog was about church activities. I've actually changed its URL and title, Church of the Acronym. A former minister decided we should be known by our acronym, UALC, because denominational names like Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, had fallen out of favor in manuals for mega-churches, now I think mega-churches are falling out of favor, so we're Lutherans again. This blog gets neglected. I link to a number of Christian and religious blogs. Some are just awesome. Mine isn't very spiritual; no gentle meditations.

4) My third blog was the log I write in at a library collective. The owner used to be a librarian at OSU. This wouldn't be of interest to anyone, probably not even a librarian because the young folks sure don't want to hear from a retiree, but it does help me keep up on the new, techie toys that enchant librarians. Also, I think it is difficult to navigate. I have a huge number of links to librarian blogs over on the left (no pun), but that just scratches the surface. Librarians are crazy about blogging.

5) I'm thinking the next one was for my hobby. I had great plans for this--tracking my premiere issue collection. I enjoy rereading it, but not updating it because it. . . is like work. In the Beginning sounds religious, but it is about first issues of magazines and what causes people to go into this business (most fail). Although I'm dreadfully behind in updating, I just can't resist buying a new title. It's especially fun when I know the person on the cover!

6) I go out for coffee every morning about 6 a.m., visiting a variety of local stores during the week, so I decided to write about what I see and overhear there, calling it Coffee Spills. I learn so much at the coffee shop, talk to a lot of people, and see some odd things; I really could update this every day, but I don't.


7) I write a lot on health, and one of the big health issues right now is obesity and how it relates to general well being. I tend to be pretty practical--eat less move more, or ELMM is my plan. If you've ever heard the news or stepped on a scale, you know that information is always flip-flopping on this, so that was sort of my theme when I started, i.e., the craziness. But it has evolved to general information. Most of good health is about lifestyle.

8) One day I came across a drawer of sewing patterns and thought it might be fun to match them with photos and family stories. I wasn't much of a seamstress, so I limited myself to one month of blogging. Because I mention aprons (I think), this blog still gets about 30 look-sees a week, even though I haven't updated it in 2 years. It's called Memory Patterns, has 75 entries and was terrific fun to write.


9) Somewhere along the way I was invited to join a walking group--I think it was the Easter season of 2006. We just kept walking after Easter. Cathy organized it, as I recall, and she was one of my Christian lady links. Now it is called Exercising through the Church Year.

10) I love the great American success story--like the Russian immigrant who founded Google, and believe it is our country's strongest value. Millions want to come here--no one tries to immigrate to Communist countries, unless they just accidentally step over the border. So I am outraged at Mexican leaders and La Raza's behavior--and our own President's lackadaisical attitude about the terrorist possibilities of millions streaming in, so I created another blog, Illegals Today. It really swims against the torrent of multicultural and diversity propaganda we get everyday from our media, politicians, educators and clergy.

11) My high school class was having its 50th reunion, so I decided to create a blog to capture some memories, hoping others would help. That wasn't my most successful writing adventure--I think only four people helped. But I do get nice e-mails from classmates I wouldn't have otherwise heard from.

12) Then it seemed time to create something about maturity and retirement, so Growth Industry came out of that idea. I'm pretty far behind in updating that one too. The last time was August. Sometimes I forget it is there.

13) The most recent one was On my bookshelves. I looked at those library control software things, but they had no appeal. I didn't really care to see if 1,000 other people had the same book. I really wanted it for my own use--some titles I don't keep very long, others I've had forever. Some are friends, others relatives, some drop-ins.


Thursday Thirteen

Some children are more equal than others

The 1978 Federal Indian Child Welfare Act, was intended to prevent Indian children from being separated from their culture, and requires state foster care agencies to contact the child’s tribe when the child is put into state custody, allowing the tribe to intervene. Isn't it a shame that Hmong or Chinese or African or Irish or Slovakian children are born to people with no "culture" and no "tribe" [extended family] to intervene on their behalf?

Phony senatorial outrage

ABC News recently broadcast a report on phony soldiers, including Jesse MacBeth. Is Salazar going to vote to censure ABC News? Daily Sentinel story here. Of course not. This is all about stopping talk radio and freedom of speech and thought. ABC is no threat to that!

A transcript of the call from Limbaugh’s show on Sept. 26 had this conversation with a caller to his show:

Caller: “No, it’s not. And what’s really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.”

Limbaugh: “The phony soldiers.”

Caller: “Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they’re proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they’re willing to sacrifice for the country.”

Limbaugh, later in the broadcast, said Jesse MacBeth was one of the “phony soldiers.”

Caught with their pants down and gums flapping, the Dems are saying now, "Well, he used the plural--and Jesse is only one." Like there aren't others?

I watched O'Reilly interview one of the vets against the war last night--I think Wesley Clark the former Republican funds the group. The guy made complete sense and he stuck to his guns no matter how O'Reilly tried to get him off track to condemn some liberal who had made stupid statements that weren't ambiguous, and were in print. The vet said, "Instead of talking about the war, the senators are talking about people talking about the war." You are so right, young man, and thank you for your service (assuming you are a real veteran who fought in Iraq, but with the people funding you, it's hard to tell.)

4178

The baby boondoggle

"Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government to help pay for future costs of college or buying a home." FoxNews.

Hugh Hewitt said today, "Hillary Clinton is not a liberal; she's not a progressive; she is a radical." She's also got a loose screw. First she and other feminists encourage women to abort some 30 million babies in the past 3 decades; now she's going to pay them (the ones whose mothers didn't abort) to have babies? How split brained is that? Where is marriage in this equation? Unmarried women having babies is the primary reason for the poverty of children in the USA. Would this $5,000 be in addition to welfare and WIC? Can the illegal immigrant parents borrow it for legal fees? Would Congress get to borrow it for other uses until the kid is college age--sort of like a pre-social security fund? What if the kid doesn't want to go to college or buy a house? Would a houseboat or travel trailer do?

How many votes will Hillary buy with this ploy?

4177

Such a precocious child

"Growing up in hardworking northwestern Wisconsin, David Obey leaned Republican early on, even supporting Sen. Joe McCarthy, before he turned Democratic." It must have been awfully early on, like before he could shave. He's my age. McCarthy died in 1957. I believe the voting age was 21 back then.

Democrats have either long noses, or short memories. Like Senator Tom Harkin accusing Rush Limbaugh of not supporting the troops by calling some phony soldiers, well, phony soldiers (they didn't serve and told outrageous lies and there has been legal action against them which was reported in the news). Senator Harkin. Isn't he the guy who lied about his combat service in Vietnam and his handicapped brother? I guess he forgot he didn't serve there, or that his brother was retired, not fired. And then there's the phony angst of Harry Reid, old white flag Harry. Just rips your heart out, doesn't it? Do these Senators have so much time to waste on condemning Rush for what he didn't say? And accusing him on the floor of the Senate of using drugs?



This whole campaign against O'Reilly, Rush and talk radio, funded and fueled by the arm of the Clintons, Media Matters, sure does have a McCarthy ring to it, though, doesn't it? I do seem to remember old Joe--we talked about him in history class. A sign of things to come if she gets elected?

Update: I didn't see this in time to include it, but Byron York comments on the McCarthyism tactics of the left of trying to stop a person's livelihood: "when Limbaugh talked about "phony soldiers," he was referring to phony soldiers--that is, to men like Jesse Macbeth, an "antiwar" activist who claimed to have served in Iraq, received a Purple Heart and killed innocent civilians, when in fact the Army discharged him before he even completed basic training.

If Democrats want to support the phony troops, it is their right to do so. But when they try to interfere with Limbaugh's livelihood, that amounts to an effort at creating a McCarthy-style blacklist.

The Fox report says that 41 Democratic senators signed this letter, which means that 9 or 10 did not (depending on how you count Joe Lieberman). Will they speak out against their colleagues' intimidation efforts? And where are the Republicans in all this? With the Democratic Party increasingly in thrall to hate groups like MoveOn and Media Matters, America urgently needs politicians of either party with the courage to take a stand for decency."

James Taranto noted the similarities prefacing it with, "In recent weeks we've seen how the MoveOn.org Democrats have aped the tactics of Joe McCarthy, including character assassination of military officials and childish wordplay on people's names ("Senator Half Bright"; "General Betray Us"). Oct.3, Best of the Web.

More on this topic of fake vs phony:TNR and Weekly Standard battle over fake military stories.
Media get caught by faked military records.
Fake photos of the war.
Fake reporter who is fake Marine revealed on Daily Kos (did Senate investigate Kos for these charges against the military?)

4176

Just bought two best sellers

They aren't in the library. Clarence Thomas' My Grandfather's Son is on order at the Upper Arlington Public Library, and has 8 holds from people who want to read it; Laura Ingraham's Power to the People has one copy, checked out, and 6 holds. However, if I wanted to read about Katie the real story there are 3 copies, all available; and Maureen Dowd's Are men necessary? has 3 copies, all available, plus one for sale for $2 on the Friends shelf (hard cover, book jacket, looks unused). There were 2 DVD sets of the first 6 episodes of "30 Days." I checked Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus--they seemed to have been alerted that there might be an interest in the Thomas book, and they had circulating copies (all checked out) with multiple holds.

When I asked the tattooed, earstudded clerk at the store for the Ingraham book, he didn't seem to know of it, and looked it up on the computer. He found it, and led me to the back of the store, to a bottom shelf in the history section. "Isn't this an odd place for a #1 title?" I asked. "Oh, it's probably up front; I just didn't want to look for it," he groused. Then I asked for the Thomas book. He turned on his heel and nearly ran to the front of the store and pointed. And there it was; under the table in plain view. How could I have missed it? With my two books in hand, I carefully looked at all the tables. Laura wasn't there.

However, both rang up for 30% off even though there was no sticker on her book.

If you live in Columbus and want to read one of these, let me know. It will be a long wait for the library to take action. You know it is BBW and they are probably busy dealing with cranky conservatives.

4175

Columbus Fall Art Shows

Sunday we enjoyed a trip to German Village (restored area of Columbus, OH) to see the Fall Show of the Central Ohio Watercolor Society at Caterina LTD, 571 South Third St., Columbus. If you're looking for a delightful outing with friends, go out for lunch at any of the wonderful restaurants in that area, shop for Christmas gifts at Caterina (dishes from Poland, Italy and France), and enjoy the show on the second and third floors.







I love this pottery made and painted in Poland. Each mug is different, and there were several styles of bowls and casseroles, all with lovely designs. These were $12 each--more than I usually pay for a mug, but I have some in the cupboard that are nearly 50 years old and cost $.10. Run the average.

Then as you drive home, swing by the Caspian II Building at 3518 Riverside Drive in Upper Arlington, south of the Nottingham Road Stoplight. The Upper Arlington Art League has its fall show there. My husband has 2 paintings in the COWS show and 3 in the UAAL show.

By the way, the Upper Arlington Art League helped get the hugely successful community Labor Day Art Show off the ground. In 1966 this show started as an art exhibit for local artists near the Miller Park Library with about a dozen artists. Don Dodrill got the ball rolling and then founded the art league. I think my husband and I may have been some of the first members (although I don't belong anymore). Then when the show outgrew that space, it moved to Jones Middle School for a few years, then up to the city building on Kenney Road, across from the OSU golf course. Now it is held in a city park and attracts tens of thousands (I blogged about it here). As it grew, the UAAL developed a kids' art tent and helped with events as well as many members entering and selling their works in the show. All of this was eventually taken over by the city. UAAL is the only group of amateur and professional artists based in UA, although many of their members are also participating in COWS, Dublin and Worthington groups.

Many of the founders of UAAL are still in the group, and of course, they are now in their 60s, 70s and 80s. The city has a gallery in its city/municipal building, called the "Concourse Gallery." The Cultural Arts Commission has now decided that the UAAL isn't good enough to have shows in their gallery. Shame, shame on you, UA, for living up to your reputation as just a bit hoity-toity and stuck up, for not respecting your elders, and being clueless about your own history!

4174

What's between the lines on your resume?

Joann S. Lublin's column on resumes in the WSJ yesterday mentioned that employment seekers are being taught how to cover up or hide

imprisonment
cancer
alcoholism
drugs
spousal abuse
lack of a high school degree

Even in the early 1990s at Ohio State, we weren't allowed to ask if the candidate had an arrest or conviction because that was considered discriminatory against minority males.

We weren't supposed to notice if she was pale as a ghost, weighed about 100 lbs, had no hair, and looked like she couldn't lift a heavy journal

We weren't allowed to ask how she would navigate our narrow, pre-1950 stacks in her wheelchair.

If he held the application one inch from his face, we weren't to ponder how he would fill out the hand written time sheets for our student staff, or check their accuracy if a student did it for him.

If his skin was leathery and tan with sunny high lights in his hair and his most recent job in a library was 20 years ago shelving books at Capital University, we were not to assume he didn't desperately want a career change from riding mowers for the grounds department.

We weren't supposed to tell a PhD candidate in Asian literature she was over qualified for a serials check-in job, even if we knew she'd die of boredom before the first paycheck.

We weren't supposed to notice that a candidate was 7 months pregnant and had formula spit up on her shoulder.

I suspect more rules for interviewing have been added in the last 15 years.