New Kids on the Block at Lakeside

We've got some new homes in our Lakeside neighborhood. Right outside the gates we've been watching this one go up on Erie Beach Road. The taxes are lower and the code less strict. It's a big one! I'm not sure what the percent of coverage rule is on that street, but this is a house that couldn't have been built inside the gates.




This one is on our street. It's sort of a similar style, but is much smaller. I think it was built on the back end of a lot of a house on the next street. I'm not sure but I think it was a spec house and has already been sold. Our lots have funny shapes, and are quite small. It's sort of a retro-camp style cottage from the early 20th century. But that's not a porch on the lower level--it's a great room. Generally, people around here want porches, but I guess they went for living space. Many of the cottages my husband has redesigned involved restoring the porch that had been filled in. This one appears to have been designed new to look like it has a filled in porch.

The Methodists are Coming to Lakeside!

As they have for over 100 years. Two different Ohio groups will be meeting at Lakeside during the next two weeks--thousands of Methodists. Just imagine! I hope they have a wonderful session. Praising the Lord, greeting old friends, and not getting too frisky with the Gospel.

Regrowth, redevelopment, renewal and rezoning

Yes, even wealthy suburbs like Upper Arlington have a problem with their tax base. We can't grow; our founding families made some bad decisions about tax base 80 years ago, and we're paying now. So, a developer comes along, the council sees an opportunity "for the common good" (more real estate taxes, more business, more residents, etc.) and poof, there goes our right to private property. It won't impact my property, but why should the abutting property owners of this newly rezoned commercial property have to take the fall for the rest of us? In 20 years, will there be another 5 homeowners as the Kingsdale Shopping area creeps northward? And what has the Council done that's so terrific with Kingsdale in "redevelopment"? It's already zoned commercial and it's half empty. Plus that horrid "mixed use" condo is (slowly, slowly) being built across the street which knocked down 1950s era 4-family apartments that were at least in scale for the neighborhood.

I've been seeing these little homemade signs in the yards of Tremont Road residents for months, but didn't really know what was going on. Unfortunately, all I did was stop by the city building and read a few documents. I didn't really inform myself; didn't blog about it; didn't contact any UA City Council members.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Well, the Council passed it. They would have passed it anyway, even with my objection (hundreds were at the meeting), but it's the local level where democracy really starts. By the time these guys get to the statehouse in Columbus or Washington, they've got dollar sign stars in their eyes and plugs in their ears.

There's one more chance to change this. According to City Insight (city publication) affected neighbors have begun the process for seeking a referendum on this issue. If successful, we'll be asked to vote on the rezoning in November, along with another group who are anxious to take a number of our basic rights.

Democrats for Life of America

has its heart, morals and mouth in the right place--on the side of the weakest and most vulnerable Americans--the unborn babies. I wouldn't call their web page packed with information, but there are a lot more stories there, and congresspeople at the federal and state level, than you might expect. Go check it out.

The Virginia Senate voted to end state funding of abortion largely due to a courageous pro-life democrat who stood by his commitment to protect the unborn. The House previously passed a similar Amendment. Senator Charles Colgan cast the key vote on the Cuccinelli Amendment that would end funding to Planned Parenthood of Virginia which performs abortions in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In the Democratic controlled Senate, Colgan’s vote led to a 20 to 20 tie. The Lieutenant Governor ultimately cast the tie-breaking vote that led to the Amendment's passage.

If you're a Democrat casting your hard earned pearls before swine like ACORN, Planned Parenthood or Moveon, these guys can make your money go a lot further, plus they may actually save a few Democrats!

Buy real food

It's still a good deal. Today I had to stop at the grocery store, and you know how it goes--you buy a bit more than you thought. I just panic if I'm out of apples. I eat an apple every day. I spent $10.93. Large green bell pepper; 1 quart of milk; 6 Braeburn apples; 3 medium size bananas; 8 oz. cheese; large head of broccoli. Is it higher than last year? Oh, yes! But it's cheaper than a large bag of potato chips, a 6 pack of soft drinks, and a sack of cookies or do-nuts.

Baby Boomer Blinders

A favorite campaign phrase: "The stakes have never been higher!"

I am running because I still believe I can win on the merits. Because, with our economy in crisis, our nation at war, the stakes have never been higher - and the need for real leadership has never been greater - and I believe I can provide that leadership." Hillary Clinton [although she's not the only pundit with this line]

Did these people not finish high school? Don't they remember the Carter years? We had interest rates hovering at 20%--or was that the unemployment rate? Don't they remember the 1970s, how we ran out on our Vietnamese allies? Or what about the Great Depression--surely they learned something about that in school--that FDR* managed to stretch it out for a decade? What about 1944--when our country was completely demoralized and we thought we were losing the war? What about in the late 1930s and early 1940s when our major news media ignored what was happening to the European Jews, hardly our finest hour, or the 1990s when our government ignored averted its eyes to what was happening in Rwanda? What about when the American inner cities were burning in the 1960s? What about 2004 when all we heard from John Kerry was the economy is tanking, and then within a week of losing the election, all of a sudden there was only good economic news? Have they ever heard of the Civil War? Was nothing at stake during the Lincoln Douglas debates? How about 1776 when George Washington and his rag tag troops were virtually defeated by a superior army? Baby boomer blinders.

Here's the news I've been hearing this past week--stock market was up, we're winning the war, unemployment claims are down, and housing purchases are up. Yes, you do have to read the 11th paragraph instead of the first two in the newspaper articles, and switch off cute perky newsbabes. Yes, it's bad news that Ford is moving some plants to Mexico--but that's a result of a business decision--the CEOs are responsible to the shareholders, not the people of Ohio. When people assume the Democrats will be in power, they know the next move will be to raise taxes, and they have to act quickly. Unions are already killing us in Ohio and Michigan--the Democrats' new taxes will just be the final blow to our economy.

As far as I know, the U.S. border news is still yucky, but I doubt that either Obama or McCain will even mention that one or debate it, since both support amnesty for illegal workers and their extended families.

*"So it's worth remembering that, 75 years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt destroyed an inflation hedge that was literally as good as gold: the so-called "gold clause." This helped prolong the Depression and has been causing damage ever since." Amy Shlaes

Two views on Lieberman-Warner Act

Same magazine, two viewpoints, both from conservatives:

"There's nothing good to be said about the disingenuously named Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008. A better name would be the Let's Destroy the Economy by Turning it Over to Left-Geek Bureaucrats in 2008 Act." Larry Thornberry

First, a carbon tax brings out nuclear's strength -- no carbon content. . . Second, putting a cost on emissions offers the opportunity to call environmentalists' bluff on nuclear. William Tucker

Taking the Fifth

William Nordhaus, an economics professor at Yale has written "The Challenge of Global Warming: Economic Models and Environmental Policy." Before you get too excited about it, keep in mind he'll keep revising it until he gets it right. This is the 5th model.

"It represents the fifth major version of modeling efforts, with earlier versions developed in the periods 1974-1979, 1980-82, 1990-1994, and 1997-2000. Many of the equations and details have changed over the different generations, but the basic modeling philosophy remains unchanged: to incorporate the latest economic and scientific knowledge and to capture the major elements of the economics of climate change in as simple and transparent a fashion as is possible." p. 6

This current model needs at least half of the countries of the world to participate in the carbon tax program for an abatement cost penalty of 250 percent--so those of us who are going to tax carbon will be paying for those who aren't. Has a familiar ring to it doesn't it? To achieve a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 (the Al Gore goal), the tax bill for the U.S. economy would be $1,200 billion.

If I've ever seen a license to steal while polluting the carbon exchange tax is it. And I've never been able to figure out just who gets this tax--I mean after the wealthy Scandinavians who control it take their profit. Or do they get to keep all of it? I think it will be like Ohio's tobacco settlement, which recently went up in smoke. Wasn't it suppose to go for health care or something related to the damage cigarettes have caused. I remember when some of the librarians at OSU were given this stuff like play money! The legislators are just too sticky fingered to be safe around large puddles of uncommitted money.

"Trading emissions permits is one of the great innovations in environmental policy. The advantage of allowing trade is that some firms can reduce emissions more economically than others. If a firm has extremely high costs of reducing emissions, it is more efficient for that firm to purchase permits from firms whose emissions reductions can be made more inexpensively. This system has been widely used for environmental permits, and is currently in use for CO2 in the European Union (EU). As of summer 2007, permits in the EU were selling for about €20 per ton of CO2, the equivalent of about $100 per ton of carbon." p. 21

And for Ohioans? He's really, really negative about coal. Good-bye Ohio jobs. I think you can be quite sure none of this carbon tax money will go toward developing technology for clean-burning coal. Oh no. Send those jobs to China let them be done in their dirty coal fired plants so we can buy the stuff back (like "energy lite" bulbs). Although all Ohio's economic grief is good news for Democrats, because whenever they take away jobs through strikes or regulating the little guy out of business, or raising taxes, for some reason those poor dopes just beg for more and fall right in line and vote for more Democrats. Look at Cleveland--true Democrats all the way. It really is baffling.

So who pays the most? Well, the poor of course. That's who always pays with the schemes of the liberals to "improve" the world. They lose their homes in the name of urban renewal; they have to scramble for scarce housing so they can live in homes with no lead paint or asbestos; their children get to sit for hours on a bus so the children of legislators and government workers can go to private school (that's the rich's version of school choice) and spend their free time playing; they get to eat cheap processed food high in salt, fat and sugar so Obama Mamas can drive to the organic farm market in hybrid cars. Rich legislators don't put wind farms in their view; or nuclear plants in their back yard! And if the poor or retired live in rural areas--it's a dear price to pay to drive to Wal-Mart (if the liberals allowed one to be built) at over $4 a gallon, especially if they believed the Democrats pipe dream in 2006 that they would take care of them; and they are driving past fields of corn growing for the rich man's hybrid. Didn't you hear Obama's speech last night? NOW that you've finally selected a wealthy, biracial, inexperienced community organizer to be your president, we'll have health care for the poor! Well, golly miss molly, what in the world is this break-the-bank, Medicaid, SCHIP and Medicare we've been paying for?

I guess he's too young to remember the War on Poverty. Aren't we still paying the bill for that one?

Those who flunk

Flunk isn't a word used in education circles these days. Now it is "persistence," or "retention" or "challenges to academic success." Whatever. A high school teacher told me that she had failed two seniors and six juniors in her science course this year, a record. She might fail 2 or 3 a year, but never 8. I asked her to what she attributed the difference. She first explained that in addition to the usual classroom work, the students have 1) her home phone number and they are asked to use it if they need help, 2) a work packet of additional assignments everyone is expected to complete, and 3) special small group study sessions anyone can attend, but it's not required. The two seniors did nothing of the work packet, and if they'd even made an effort they would have had a passing grade, and they attended none of the small group study sessions which would have helped if they were struggling, and they never called her. They skipped a few classes, but mainly they were skipping English--just coasting their senior year, having a good time.

"So, they won't graduate?" I asked.
"Oh no, they had enough credits--didn't even need another science. It was encouraged so that the school curriculum would look more rigorous. But it does lower their GPA."

Ah, youth, maybe it really is wasted on the young.

A true Democrat to the bitter end

Amy Chozick is a WSJ reporter who was assigned to the Clinton campaign--from the time when the press traveled in luxury accomodations and ate from beautifully prepared party trays, down to the end when they took over the men's restroom as the media room and ate plastic wrapped sandwiches. But I thought her final paragraph on the fate of Hillary's staffers was quite telling.

"Shortly before the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, one (Clinton staffer) told me he hoped he would get fired so he could collect unemployment."

This is a no brainer

"Chris Korleski, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency will kick off the summer Stone Laboratory Guest Lecture Series on Thursday (6/12) with “Global Warming: Science or Religion." All lectures are from 7:45-9 p.m. at Stone Lab, located at Gibraltar Island in Lake Erie. Members of the public are welcome and can take the Put-in-Bay water taxi from the Boardwalk Restaurant dock at 7:15 p.m. before each lecture. A short tour of Gibraltar Island will be provided."

It's a religion. Pantheism. The modern feminist movement oozed out of the mists of the past along with Earth Day almost 40 years ago. It was a happy marriage of every crazy and off beat pagan religion from Europe's past, including the ones that contributed their rituals to the church observances. Western Europe was already bored with Christianity, and Americans followed suite. Feminists have so infected Christian seminaries, the few males left are so weak and brainwashed, you can hardly find a male pronoun in the liturgy, and God forbid anyone should say God the Father and God the Son.

However, there is so much money invested in this new-but-old religion, with Al Gore at the top of the inconvenient truth heap, and the folks in Europe who control the carbon exchanges, for even those who know it's a scam to ever back down. Every weather blip up or down, dry or wet, windy or calm, is being blamed on global warming. Christians who've entertained themselves with The DaVinci Code and Harry Potter, who think nothing of relaxing hour after hour with mindless or violent TV (it isn't called American idol for nothing), who were taught in school that the Bible is full of contradictions, that all religions are pretty much alike and "it's just your interpretation," well, they're in no condition to even recognize a religion when one marches into the living room, changes the light bulbs and demands obedience and obeisance.

New Notebook Time

When we were having coffee yesterday, AZ asked me about my new pink notebook. I wasn't finished with the brown Cafe Latte one--it had maybe 4-5 blank pages and usually I go right to the end and around the corner and onto the back cover, but the more I thought about it, the better it sounded to start a new month with a new notebook. I got this cheerful, happy notebook at Barnes and Noble for $4.95--the paper is pink and narrow lined, very unusual for a notebook this size. Here's what I didn't blog about in May.

1. Girls' disadvantage in career choices because they skip physics in high school.
2. How to improve the Columbus schools (based on a Columbus school teacher's opinion).
3. Virginia's response to 6 tornadoes.
4. Five hot business books authored by big idea people. None by women.
5. Boston Legal on Save our Shows list. Only conservative character on the show has dementia. Maybe they should write to a larger audience?
6. Where the 2001 rebates went: 64.1% went to the movies!
7. It costs $9 a pack to smoke legally in NYC.
8. Experienced crew manager at McDonald's list of benefits includes a car and paid education. Can add $100,000 to annual sales if good.
9. Only 10% of America's multi-millionaires inherited their wealth.
10. The model in the Aetna full page ad looks like she could die next week of an eating disorder.
11. Turkey chickpea chili--on the menu at Panera's. Yuk.
12. The problems of biking to work.
13. Gov't subsidized housing in Columbus.
14. Everything I learned I got in Vacation Bible School.
15. L. Gordon Cravitz on web 2.0
16. Those who identifiy themselves as conservative are more likely to be happy, to attend worship, to marry and have children.
17. "Kids are using their technological advantage to immerse themselves in a trivial, solipsistic distracting on line world at the expense of more enriching activities--like opening a book or writing a complete sentence." David Robinson.
18. Prescription drug use (not misuse) grows and the media sees this as a cause to worry.
19. Car pooling and bus ridership up in Columbus.
20. Bad advice from Dear Abby on who should learn to cook.
21. "Keep the immigrants; deport the multiculturalists."
22. Al-John McGore. It's really tough to support McCain.
23. Testosterone in the news (list of all the brief newsstories, usually in the Metro section) about men stabbing, shooting, looting, drinking, snorting and driving into or over each other. Includes occasional pedophile teacher.
24. Why conservatives don't like McCain. He's not conservative.
25. Picture a little boy in a row boat going out to sea to charge a naval fleet with a Soro's logo on his briefs.
26. Brian McLaren and the emergent church.
27. Signs of human life on Mars; they can't find it in the womb so they go into space.
28. Seen at the coffee shop. Men in expensive suits; women in anything they pull on in the morning. Could there be a glass ceiling in the closet? It's pathetic that a retired librarian is dressed better than 50% of the women going off to work.
29. WSJ, which has always had mostly liberal news stories, is now cluttering the opinion page with liberal columnists.
30. 45% of women 25-34 have college degrees compared to 36% of the men.

The oil shortage

I filled up this morning for $3.89 a gallon, and locally, that's about the best you can do (Speedway Mill Run). Then I opened my e-mail, and Murray, a friend from high school, explained it to me. There are actually three people from my high school (the town no longer has a high school) who have huge e-mail routes--they probably have more readers than I do!

A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Well, there's a very simple answer.

Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just didn't know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical.
~~~
Our OIL is located in

ALASKA
~~~
California
~~~
Coastal Florida
~~~
Coastal Louisiana
~~~
Kansas
~~~
Oklahoma
~~~
Pennsylvania
~~~
and Texas
~~~
Our DIPSTICKS are located in Washington, DC!

It's not brain surgery

why Ted Kennedy didn't go to Canada or Cuba to have his tumor removed--or even to a Boston hospital or a European hospital. No, he went to Dr. Allan Friedman at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. In 2000 and 2004 NC was solidly behind Bush; the Democrats are working hard to get her into the caretaker mindset right now. I don't know why Dr. Friedman is at Duke and not at some famous northeastern hospital in a Democratic state, or even Chicago where he was born and went to medical school, but let me guess; lower real estate taxes, lower state income taxes, lower luxury housing costs, lower crime rates, stronger ethical and moral values among the populace and the ability to lure the best talent there to assist him, despite the liberal administration and faculty at Duke. And who knows, there might even be some evil capitalist money (tobacco?) funding that tumor center. The 3.5 hour surgery has been declared a success and it will be followed up by chemo and radiation, which will probably be done closer to home.

The irony is that under socialized medicine only a wealthy government official, son and grandson of inherited, ill-gotten wealth would be able to afford such care. Even at the height of the power of Stalin and Mao, the party officials always had the best.* But more importantly, with socialized medicine, a doctor of Friedman's skill and talent, wouldn't even have been trained in the United States.

Democrats want their families to benefit from our health system (and "system" is not a good word for it), but they don't want you and me to have those benefits. They want us to wait in line for our turn, to have our health needs decided by a committee, and then be assigned to whatever hospital needs the work whether they've done 10 surgeries or 1000. It would make no difference if you elect Binky Obama or Hillary Rottie Clinton, all competition and excellence must be eradicated; everything must be dumbed down to be fair to the newest, non-citizen who doesn't speak English and the homeless guy who couldn't give up the bottle, and the exotic dancer who cried rape. Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger have already explained to you that if you're white you're a piece of trash. And let's hope that the equipment that will save your life doesn't have a petroleum base because then. . . well, sorry, that's been capped along with your life span by Lieberman-Warner.

*One of the ways I put food on the table as a grad student was translating a Russian medical newspaper, Medisinskii Rabotnik. The ordinary folks got a fel'dsher, usually female and poorly trained, not a doctor.

4916 The Hope and Change theme

Barack Obama certainly isn't the first politician to take a biblical theme and run on/with it, and he won't be the last. The Bible is full of great truths, ideas, stories, parables, miracles and romances which have been used by capitalists and kings, socialists and school teachers, writers, artists, poets, and musicians, slaves and slavers, and even Marxists and fascists over the centuries. But there is one basic truth from Genesis to the Revelation, and it's all about the HOPE.

Christianity is an Easter religion. Easter celebrates HOPE, and in order to participate in this HOPE, the individual needs to change. In the New Testament, the word HOPE refers to the future, not only the HOPE of everlasting life, but the HOPE of resurrection from the dead, the HOPE of a new body like the body of Jesus, the HOPE of being in heaven forever with the Lord. Lots of religions have references to an afterlife, but in the Christian faith, the human body is so important to God because of his intentions at the Creation, He continues to use it even after death on this planet and realm. After all political boundaries and even the earth itself have passed away, we still have this HOPE. This HOPE written about in the New Testament doesn't depend on a nebulous, vague speech of a Chicago pol scrolling across a teleprompter, but a real solid foundation of fact. Our HOPE of a heaven where we dwell with God in a physical body rests upon what happened here on earth in the person of the Lord Jesus. His resurrection is the assurance of our resurrection. Obama can't take that away from us and refashion it into a social justice, namby-pamby temporary band-aid, the hope of a different job, or a housing project that will be torn down in 25 years. It's not the change in a McCain or Gore carbon cap or exchange running after green votes which is going to diminish your life style. No, this is real change--the change that the Holy Spirit will make in the believer, grounded in the HOPE.

Comparing Hospitals

Here's a handy website you might want to browse.

"The Hospital Compare website was created through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), along with the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA). The HQA is a public-private collaboration established to promote reporting on hospital quality of care. The HQA consists of organizations that represent consumers, hospitals, doctors and nurses, employers, accrediting organizations, and Federal agencies. The information on this website can be used by any adult needing hospital care."

You can search by your city or zip code--I used zip and then indicated the number of miles. Seven hospitals are within 10 miles, so I compared Riverside and Ohio State. In almost every category Riverside was rated higher than OSU, and also had more patients. Where it wasn't higher they were the same. I haven't figured out all the features yet. OSU had no information for patient ratings of care, so those couldn't be compared, but they weren't particularly ecstatic for Riverside. Maybe patients are just grumpy when they don't feel good? Also, I seemed to lose my place when I'd click on an explanation and had to start all over which was frustrating.

Since we spend so much time at Lake Erie, maybe I'd better take a look at Port Clinton and Sandusky.

Hand Hygiene

A gift basket? I know that these days you need to award employees for using a tissue to sneeze, but this award sounds a bit over the top to me.

"Congratulations to Taleatha Poole of Medical Information Management who won a gift basket in the May 22 Nutrition Services Hand Hygiene event prize drawing." OSU Medical Center This Week

Why isn't hand hygiene expected and enforced in Nutrition Services as a requirement of keeping the job? When I started my first professional position I needed some on the job supervision and training from my department head. Why is less expected in a medical center?

When religion throws the dice

DICE, is an acronym for Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy, and the fundy environmentalists are tossing them. Your required tithe will be in the trillions; your lifestyle will be your sacrifice; and you'll need to give up what other social causes you believe in.

"Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground [in their eyes], and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the be-lief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard." The Question of Global Warming

For a returning soldier

Chip, a father of 4, is finally home. I've never met him, but his parents are members of our church (he was raised in the Lutheran homeland--Minnesota). We've been praying for his safety and his family since we met his parents, and read his Christmas letter. He's a man of great faith trusting God in extremely difficult circumstances.

This week our congregation has been reading the book of Acts, and I noticed a number of references to soldiers and centurions. I'm not much of a Bible scholar, but I did wonder about what studies have been done on their influence in spreading the Gospel during the first century of the church. Then yesterday, while looking for a different book (and knocking some items on the floor because I sometimes stack books behind books if they don't have attractive covers), I found an International Sunday School Lesson book from 1944 which I think I bought at a yard sale for a quarter about 10 years ago. If you can find them, these books are packed with study outlines, bibliographies, lesson plans, illustrations and color maps. No wimp-out, touchy-feely, "let's get acquainted" questions in this book!

In 1943, when the editors were preparing this volume, the United States was in the middle of a terrible war, thousands of our soldiers were dying daily, millions of Europeans were already dead. I was living in a tiny Illinois town of about 2800, and its "War Record of Mount Morris" has about 500 biographies of the men and women who served. Every family in 1943 was affected. These days we like to laud the WWII veterans who are dying of old age (and I think there's only one WWI vet still living), and keep quiet about what our men and women are accomplishing in Iraq. I personally believe the unpopular war president George Bush will be vindicated--it may take 50 years--and will be seen as the great liberator of this century. We ignored the signs of fascism in the 1930s--both our liberals and conservatives were reluctant to dabble in someone else's problems. Then we compounded the error by cuddling with the Communists after victory in Europe, sending many more millions to camps and death. We thought Europe and Asia could go up in flames or go to prison camps and we'd just sit it out. Our 20th century legacy of our leaders' myopia and deceit is being continued in today's political campaign.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the 1944 book. In the introduction the editor writes:

"Inasmuch as we are in the midst of the world's most gigantic military conflict, and the minds of people are so much upon war, some of our readers might be interested in taking up a series of studies in young people's meetings, or in prayer meetings, or in private classes in homes, apart from the International Sunday School Lessons, in Biblical themes that have more or less relation to the subject of war. We here suggest two such series, one a study of the centurions and soldiers of the New Testament [the other was OT battles]. They will be found in eighteen different groups, nine in the Gospels, and nine in the Book of Acts. A fascinating book could be written just about the soldiers of the New Testament.
1. The centurion whose servant Jesus healed of the palsy (Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10)
2. The soldiers of the governor who mocked and smote Jesus--between his trial and crucifixion (Mat. 27:27-32; Mark 15:16-23; John 19:2)
3. The soldiers who mocked Jesus at the cross (Luke 23:36,37)
4. The soldiers who parted Christ's raiment at the foot of the cross (John 19:23,24)
5. The soldiers who broke the legs of the 2 criminals crucified on either side of Christ (John 19:32)
6. The soldier who thrust a spear into the side of Christ (John 19:34)
7. The centurion at the cross who confessed that Jesus was the Son of God (Matt.27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47)
8. The centurion who reported to Pilate that Jesus was dead (Mark 15:44,45)
9. The soldiers who were set to guard the tomb wherein the body of Jesus lay (Matt. 27:65, 66; 28:11-15)
10. Cornelius, centurion of the Italian band, to whom Peter preached (Acts 10)
11. The "devout soldier" who was sent by Cornelius to bring Peter (Acts 10:7,8)
12. The 4 quarternions of soldiers to whom Peter was delivered for safekeeping, and between two of whom Peter was sleeping (Acts 12:4-18)
13. The soldiers and centurions whom the chief captain used to deliver Paul from the mob in Jerusalem (Acts 21:32-35)
14. The centurion to whom Paul declared he was a Roman citizen (Acts 22:25,26)
15. The centurion to whom Paul asked permission to see his sister's son (Acts 23:17)
16. The soldiers who accompanied Paul to Caesarea (Acts 23:23-35)
17. Julius, a centurion of Augustus' band, to whom Paul was committed when he was sent to Rome (Acts 27:1,6,11,31,43; 28:16)
18. The soldiers who were on the ship on which Paul was carried to Rome (Acts 27:31, 32, 42)"

Only the introduction mentions the war that was on everyone's mind, an introduction which included five annotated bibliographies containing about 80 titles, many multi-volume, for the teacher to consult! Many people never read an introduction, preface or footnote (librarians love the secondary and tertiary stuff), so I suspect this was a concession to some heated arguments in the back room when deciding what was to go into this book.

The editors appeared to have no doubts about who would be the victor, although I don't think my mother, aunts and grandmothers, with ear to the radio and eye on the headlines, waiting for the mailman (my own father plus numerous uncles and cousins were in the service) were quite so confident.

"When the war is over, evangelical Christianity will enter upon the greatest struggle it has known since the days of Constantine in the defense of its great cardinal truths. All of this great and important and sober work will not be done by ministers or theological professors, but much of it by the thousands and thousands of faithful Sunday school teachers throughout our land. Let us prayerfully, carefully, with all the mind and heart we have, prepare ourselves now for this great struggle in the expectation of glorious victory in the ultimate triumph of the truth of God."

Certainly a word for the 21st century. And even they couldn't have imagined it would be our home-grown, gold plated idols (celebrities), our wealth (mind numbing consumerism), our gendered temples (desecration of God's plan for man and woman), our university faculties and our own elected leaders we'd need to fear. Or did they?

Children 100 years ago

sound very similar to 60 years ago, or 30 years ago, for that matter, the last time I had experience with the 9-12 age range. This is taken from "Hurlbut's Teacher-Training Lessons for the Sunday School" (1908) by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, and is a revision of his 1885 leaflets, and was authorized by the International Sunday School Association. The training of Sunday School teachers, he writes in the Preface, was an outgrowth of the Chautauqua Movement, which began in 1874, although there were teachers' guides before that. Sunday schools, not the government, provided the first form of public education in the United States.

These notes are taken from Chapter 42, "The Junior Pupils."

At the age of 8 or 9 a change comes gradually over the child's nature; and a new stage in its history begins. [In Sunday Schools this was called the Junior period.] It lasts about 4 years, from 9 to 12 or 13, and both entering and leaving it, the girls are about a year ahead of the boys in maturity.

Physical Traits--slower growth in the size of body and brain
strong development in strength and firmness of texture
great increase in physical activity--need games and sports
tendency to take risks--especially boys

Mental traits--Curiosity, interest in facts, little interest in abstract
good time for history, biography, adventure
Memory--strong, more accurate, more retentive than at any other period, if they don't memorize now, it will become much more difficult later
Arrangement of Knowledge--learning sequence of events, locality, facts
Love of reading--world of books is opening, reading more rapidly
Acquisitiveness--gathering and hoarding all sorts of things

Social traits--boys and girls no longer want to play together; boys with boys, girls with girls
Friendships--need for a special, constant companion--they never tire of each other
Club-spirit--girls form societies; boys form clubs or gangs; loyalty must be maintained at the sacrifice of truth and morality

Moral traits--sees more strongly the difference between right and wrong, even if they don't follow it in conduct
Sense of Justice--demand "fair play," perceive wrongs and resent them;

Religious traits--admiration for the heroic and noble, usually not doctrinal or emotional
willingness to work for Christ and the church--they have the time and energy, so put them to work--they love accomplishment.

The author suggests same-sex classes of about six, not more than eight, and that the teachers should be different than the ones they had in the primary grades. The author suggests emphasis on history and facts, not theology, but the list to be included was certainly impressive for 30 minutes a week! He suggests avoiding pathetic or suffering pictures, even pictures of Christ. Don't look for emotion or radical transformation, but one might expect a "decision for Christ," between 10 and 12.

This book belonged to my grandparents, who both taught Sunday School many years, and attended special, residential training classes at Bethany Seminary in Chicago. The cover is missing and it has been hand stitched to hold it together, with the back cover from a different source. My children were grown before I inherited this book--I could have saved myself a lot of time and expense if I'd used this instead of some of the trendy, psycho-babble stuff available in the 1970s and 1980s.