From Russia with love

From Russia, John Quincy Adams wrote to his son:

"St. Petersburg, Sept, 1811

My dear Son,

In your letter of the 18th January, you mentioned that you read to your aunt a chapter in the Bible...every evening. This information gave me real pleasure...

So great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on, it is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise, and happy-that the earlier my children begin to read it...the more lively and confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens of their country."

"You must soon come to the age when you must govern yourself. You have already come to that age in many respects; you know the difference between right and wrong, and you know some of your duties....It is in the Bible, you must learn them all, and from the Bible you must practice them...

Those duties are to God, to your fellow creatures, and to yourself. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments, Jesus Christ expressly says, 'hang all the law and the prophets.' ...

The Bible contains the revelation of the will of God...It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue."

This correspondence was published after his death as Letters of John Quincy Adams to his son on the Bible and its Teachings (Auburn, NY: Derby, Miller & Co, 1848).

As retold at American Minute with Bill Federer for March 27, 2012. The entire book has been scanned and is available through Google.

How to kill a Down Syndrome baby

Selected questions from the National Abortion Federation, an organization that continues to mourn the murder of Dr. George Tiller at its website, an active abortionist who was killed while ushering in his church. Murder, whether of the unborn or the (Although they also on their webpage talk about President Bush, so maybe they are just living in the past?)

Q. Is abortion legal?
A. Yes. Abortion is legal in the United States and Canada.

Q. Can my parents force me to have an abortion?
A. No. However, some states have laws that require a minor to involve her parents in the decision to have an abortion.

Q. Do I need permission from my husband or partner to have an abortion? Will my provider contact him?
A. No. The Supreme Court has ruled that requiring a spouse's consent in order to have an abortion is unconstitutional. You may decide to tell your husband or partner, but the clinic will not contact him.

Q. Does Medicaid or other state-assisted health insurance cover the cost of an abortion?
A. Medicaid is only required to cover abortion in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment. However, some states do cover abortion as part of their Medicaid policies.

Q. Is it possible for an undocumented citizen to have an abortion in the United States or Canada?
A. Yes. The provider will require proof of identity, but your citizenship is irrelevant. Immigration Services will not be notified.

Q. Is there a difference between the morning-after pill and the abortion pill?
A. Yes. The morning-after pill (also known as Emergency Contraception, EC, Preven, or Plan B) prevents pregnancy and does not cause an abortion. It prevents fertilization of an egg or attachment of a fertilized egg to the uterine wall. The abortion pill (also known as RU-486, medical abortion, Mifeprex®, or mifepristone) terminates an already established pregnancy when used in combination with another medication.

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Our next book club selection is “Wait till next year; a memoir” by Doris Kearns Goodwin the story of a young girl growing up in the 1950s and loving baseball. I’m not very far into the book, and although I think I know where this religious memory will go as she ages out of innocence and trust, I thought this passage very charming, and so different from my own “believer’s baptism” on Palm Sunday 1950 and 6 weeks of instruction on Sunday afternoon for an hour or so with Rev. Statler.

“Sister Marian introduced us to the text familiar to generations of Catholic schoolchildren: the blue-covered Baltimore Catechism with a silver Mary embossed on a constellation of silver stars. The catechism was organized around a series of questions and answers we had to memorize word for word to help us understand the meaning of what Christ had taught and, ultimately, to understand Christ Himself. “Who made us? God made us.” “Who is God? God is the Supreme Being who made all things.” “Why did God make us? God made us to show happiness in Heaven.” Although it was learned by rote, there was something uniquely satisfying about reciting questions we had to memorize, both the questions and the answers. No matter how many questions we had to memorize, each question had a proper answer. The Catholic world was a stable place with an unambiguous line of authority and an absolute knowledge of right and wrong.

We learned to distinguish venial sins, which displeased our Lord, from the far more serious mortal sins, which took away the life of the soul. We memorized the three things that made a sin mortal: the thought or deed had to be grievously wrong; the sinner had to know it was grievously wrong; and the sinner had to consent fully to it. Clearly, King Herod had committed a mortal sin when, intending to kill the Messiah, he killed all the boys in Judea who were two years old or less. Lest we feel too far removed from such a horrendous deed, we were told that those who committed venial sins without remorse when they were young would grow up to commit much larger sins, losing their souls in the same way that Herod did.” pp. 90-91, hardcover edition

My goodness! That’s more than I know today about the Baltimore Catechism, or even Luther’s Small Catechism. I’ve never understood the difference between mortal and venial sins before. But ratcheting up venial to mortal because of lack of remorse does sound serious to me today--although in 1950 I’m not so sure I would have understood as well as she did. It sounds a lot like our own criminal justice system, doesn’t it? Awareness and remorse. But then, I only had a few hours of instruction, and I’m not sure we even covered sin! As well written as this is, and as intense as she was (she goes on to write about baptizing her dolls in case the need ever came up, having been instructed that Catholics could do this for an unbaptized, dying person), there’s no indication in this charming story of what she believes today--only what she was taught then. At least not by page 91.

Is this treason? Or just Obama giving away the farm

Obama was overheard on a microphone delivering a secret message to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev regarding the US missile defense. What is Obama up to, and what does his secret message mean for allies like Israel? Is Obama about to hang Europe out to dry? Is this message treasonous? Do our allies feel as betrayed as we do? Admits all he needs to do to sell us down the river is get reelected. Or maybe he means, then I'll be king for life, when he says his "last election."

A very damning video

Zimbabwean marriages in the Diaspora suffer the same problems as others

When men can't be the head of the household, what country they're from doesn't make a lot of difference. The marriage struggles regardless.

"The evidence suggests that a “dependent” husband lacks the authority to make major decisions within the family. Migration to Britain has catapulted some women from the confines of the domestic sphere into the public sphere of work. While women have moved significantly into the public sphere, men have moved to a lesser degree into the private sphere, a process that has shaken up men’s authority in the household. As Tonderai Ncube noted from his own experience: “Now she is going to work and she is getting £5 an hour and I am getting £5 an hour and now there is nothing I can tell her.”23 In this case, his primary breadwinner role had become less relevant and he was no longer the sole authority. His position within the marriage was thus becoming increasingly insecure. Moreover, he thought that the UK government had also usurped his power to maintain and control his children and family by giving them state benefits, which are directly paid to his wife: “So the government is the hero of my family. What would I say, that’s the end of the story.” Hence, men’s authority and power as head of the family, previously derived from having access to economic resources and through kinship relations, has been contested and weakened."

Regendering the household

Obama keeping campaign promise to kill coal industry

So Ohio is suffering. Congress dumped his crap and trade plan, so he'll just regulate instead, by-passing the representative form of government that has 3 branches. He sees himself as a monarch, not an elected official.

The mining industry criticized the rule. “Requiring coal-based power plants to meet an emissions standard based on natural gas technology is a policy overtly calculated to destroy a significant portion of America’s electricity supply,” said Hal Quinn, chief executive of the National Mining Assn. “This proposal is the latest convoy in EPA’s regulatory train wreck that is rolling across America, crushing jobs and arresting our economic recovery at every stop. It is not an 'all of the above' energy strategy.”

Article from LA Times

This isn't just a Catholic thing

Yes, there really is a war against women, and it isn't being waged from the Right. It's called the Sexual Revolution; women have been badly damaged and society has been permanently changed.

"In severing sex from procreation, humankind set into motion forces that have by now shaped and reshaped almost every aspect of life in the Western world. Families are smaller, birthrates have dropped, divorce and out-of-wedlock births have soared. Demography has now even started to work against the modern welfare state, which has become harder to sustain as fewer children have been produced to replace aging parents.

The sexual revolution has transformed economics, culture and law. Witness this week's Supreme Court case, in which the question at hand is whether an individual's Social Security survivor benefits belong to children conceived with his sperm months after he died.

Even on the religious playing field, this isn't just a Catholic thing. Christian teaching against artificial contraception dates back to the earliest Church fathers confronting pagan Rome. Christians remained united on that teaching until relatively recently—1930, to be exact, which is the year that the Anglican Communion made its first, carefully circumscribed exceptions to the rule. Orthodox Jews, Mormons and some traditionalist Protestants have also pondered the issue and ended up proscribing or limiting contraception in different circumstances."

Mary Eberstadt in the Wall Street Journal, March 24

What Obamacare forces on the state Medicaid programs

The amicus brief by Cato--states can't opt out, but still have to send money to Washington. Tim Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation explains some of the implications of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion. Obamacare forces more people on to Medicaid. States will lose all the federal money if they don't comply. "Your money or your life," is not exactly a fair trade. The demands exceed the constitutional powers of the federal government.



Four free market advocacy groups filed a 39-page amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the individual mandate in President Obama’s health care reform law is unconstitutional.

If the PPACA is upheld swelling insurance coverage by 32 million (leaving 18 million still uninsured, according to NEJM), they will be pushed onto the 2/3 of physicians who currently accept Medicaid patients. Then the government will have to force physicians, and costs will increase. People already don't like this legislation, so if the court backs the President, it could doom his reelection.

Obamacare shell game:

HHS has now finalized a rule requiring insurance plans operating in states that permit elective abortion coverage in their exchanges to segregate premium costs into two separate pools: one to cover abortion services and another to cover all other benefits. That abortion surcharge, which must be at least $1 a month, must be paid with private dollars by every enrollee in plans that cover elective abortion. The affordability tax credits, according to the Obama Administration, can then be used to subsidize other non-abortion-related benefits coverage for eligible enrollees.

With this shell game in place, the Obama Administration has attempted to declare itself free from accusations of using taxpayer funds for abortion. Nevertheless, this new rule will force all enrollees in plans that cover elective abortion to pay the abortion surcharge with private funds—or drop out of the plan entirely and hope a comparable one exists in the state exchange without abortion coverage. In some states, there will be options; in others, there will be few or none.

Moreover, under the rules finalized last week, insurance companies that provide abortion coverage are required only to disclose the abortion surcharge at the time of enrollment. It is possible that many individuals who would otherwise object to paying for coverage of abortion will not even be aware of the surcharge on their insurance, since the rule requires the premium not to be itemized and the required disclosure at the time of enrollment may be as little as a single sentence in a massive plan document. New rules for the shell game

Roy Rogers and Trigger

The cover of the Ohio Historical Society's Timeline, April-June 2012, is Roy Rogers and Trigger, rearing up. Rogers real name was Leonard Slye and he was born in Duck Run, Ohio. I just glanced at the cover, but it looks like Trigger has been airbrushed, so I checked the internet to make sure he was a stallion (yes, purchased when he was 4 years old and died in 1965). Rogers owned several Palaminos, so maybe this was a stand in. The saddle gear looks the same as the 1943 Life magazine pictured on the inside, but that Trigger has four white stockings, whereas the one on the cover of Timeline does not. Could explain the missing "other" gear. A picture of the cover is not on the OHS website yet. . .

Oil is expensive, but water is priceless

I own stock in Pentair. "More than one billion people worldwide – roughly one out of every seven – have no choice but to use unsafe, contaminated water. To help solve this issue, Pentair, Inc. (NYSE: PNR), a leader in sustainable water solutions, and its Foundation announced today (Mar 21) a new five-year grant totaling $1 million to the non-profit Water Missions International (WMI). The multi-year grant will fund the implementation of clean water and sanitation projects in developing countries, further building on the work of Pentair's Project Safewater initiative with WMI."

I don't get too excited about companies making donations to non-profits--their usefulness on the planet is job creation and supporting investors. However, it's good PR and brings attention to very worthwhile projects like WMI, a Christian effort.

From the WMI website: "At the core of our work with safe water and sanitation is something called the Great Commission. Jesus Christ told his followers to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them.” Those first followers of Christ spread throughout the known world, healing physical hurts and sharing the good news that God had reached out to people through Jesus Christ, making a way for us to know God and have a relationship with Him. Often, the healing that people experienced opened their hearts to hear the message about Jesus. The same is true today.

When people see the “miracle” of filthy disease-laden water turned into clean, clear water, they see a tangible picture of what God does in the lives of those who believe in Him. He cleanses us, washing away the filth of the past, so that we can offer our lives as vessels of hope to the world around us. This is the Living Water message. As we work all over the world to provide sustainable safe water solutions, we share this message of hope and transformation. And we marvel again and again at its power to transform the human soul."

A product of rape, a product of conception

Mike Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington wrote of his love for his fiance:

"After we became engaged, Anna revealed a secret to me. I always knew she was adopted. But I did not know that when she was 32 years old she embarked on a mission to locate her biological mother. She did this so she could learn the reasons why she was given up for adoption. She did it for peace of mind but the result of her research was unsettling: Anna found out she was a product of rape.

When I found out the news, I acted immediately. I killed Anna while she was sleeping and then dumped for body off of Johnny Mercer’s pier at Wrightsville Beach. And now I face a long legal battle in which my lawyers will attempt to argue that Anna, as a product of rape, does not have the same rights as other persons. In fact, whatever rights she may possess are outweighed by a compelled need to destroy evidence of rape, which might remind a rape victim of a past sexual assault.

My argument will be simple: I believe that Anna was no more or less of a person as an adult than she was as an unborn child. Therefore, it would have been permissible to kill her at either stage of development so long as that killing was motivated by compassion for the victim of rape."

And the arguments for and against will be: here.

The Manhattan Declaration

Sometimes I have to step outside my conservative Christian safe place and answer those who think I'm just weird or going over the edge. Really, friends, there are millions with my view. Perhaps it's you who is out of step or over the edge with your wish for government care 24/7? I had this viewpoint before they drafted theirs, but it's nice to find such confirmation.

"While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions." From the Manhattan Declaration; a call of Christian Conscience, Nov. 20, 2009.

The Manhattan Declaration

Today's thoughts

Washington Post is reporting Islamists took more than 70 percent of legislative seats in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party alone has nearly half of the seats in the newly elected parliament. My goodness. What paranoia. At least isn't that what the conservative talkers like Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity were told when they warned of this a year ago? When they didn't see a lot of hope and change in the Arab Spring?

Link to Washington Post , because some people think you're quoting Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh if you don't use their source.

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Remember watching our current President, then campaigning in 2008, when he said energy prices would need to go up? Well, he sure called it. AEP is going along with it. He's even hurting the homeless.

"Jennifer Eschbach of the Ohio Association of Nonprofit Organizations said the rate increases faced under the most recent rate plan, which since was rescinded by the PUCO, raised the monthly rate of a homeless shelter in Canton from $786 to $1,728. Dispatch story"

"In classic Obama heavy-handed style, the President is using the regulatory power of the EPA to manipulate the free market to favor natural gas and renewable energy by regulating coal-fired electricity out of existence.

Obama’s blunder is ignoring the transition cost of eliminating about half of the country’s cheap and dependable source of electricity. Higher energy costs resulting from the shift from coal to Obama’s choice of electricity generation will drain the disposable income of consumers and, most important, be a huge barrier to the creation of new manufacturing jobs." Tom Borelli's opinion

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We have a lot of family in California. High gas prices; high taxes.

"One of the last states to have a tax rate as high as California is proposing was Delaware in the 1970s. Its rate hit 19.8%. Then-Governor Pete du Pont cut the rate to 10.3% in 1979 and later to 5.95%, and after five years the state's revenues had nearly doubled and its credit rating went from the worst to one of the best. None of these facts matter to [governor] Mr. Brown or his allies because the tax increase is simply about the political power to deliver money to the interests that live off government."
Link to Wall Street Journal editorial comments

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Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Stalin and Hitler were both rulers of socialist nations, just a slight difference of opinion on who should be killed. I've never forgotten the simple little museum we visited in Estonia. They really, truly thought the Americans would come any day and free them from the Soviets after WWII. In Finland the wounds are still not healed.

What the author Timothy Snyder "calls the bloodlands were the territories of eastern Poland and western Soviet Union, including the Baltic states, which had the misfortune to be controlled at different times by two of the most murderous leaders in history: Stalin and Hitler. As a result 14 million people were deliberately murdered in that zone between 1932 and 1945, until 1939 almost exclusively by Stalin and afterwards by Stalin and Hitler together." . . .

"Stalin could not admit that collectivization of the farms had failed in the early 1930s and so millions had to die for his refusal to face this reality. His commissars on the ground even saw peasants dying of starvation as saboteurs undermining the Soviet economy. And Stalin’s paranoia about foreign plots drove the Great Terror and his attitude to returning Soviet prisoners of war, most of whom were sent to the Gulag.

Hitler, in turn rather, than accept the folly of his war policy, blamed the Jews for the circle of enemies around him: Britain, the USA and Russian and therefore made their annihilation the only remaining war aim once he was on the defensive."

From the blog Creativeconflictwisdom

I won't read this book; I just began reading last week the Prologue and first two chapters of Bonhoeffer by Metaxas and that's about as much evil and demon possession I can handle for now. Those of you who fancy yourselves do-good humanists or socialists/progressives will continue to blame two crazy, psychotic sociopaths, and never examine the political system that allowed them to create their killing machines.

Bookworm didn't like Obama four years ago

For all the same reasons I didn't, but she's a better writer/blogger. I suspect she's a librarian, but don't know her name or profession.

The problem with Obama’s race is that you’re not allowed to dislike him simply because you don’t like him. From my point of view, irrespective of skin color, I find Obama boring and platitudinous, I dislike and distrust his friends, I find appalling his lack of practical experience, and I disagree with him from top to bottom when it comes to his political positions. He is, to me, an utterly undesirable candidate. However, in the world of identity politics, all of this is clearly a front for my unspoken racism. It is impossible for those on the Left to believe that, if someone is in a politically correct minority, he can be disliked for reasons other than his minority status. . ."

"It will be interesting, assuming Obama continues in politics for a while (whether as a 2008 presidential candidate or a 2012 candidate), to see if we’re allowed to dislike him without being tarred with the racist brush. It will also be interesting if, God forbid, he wins the 2008 presidential primaries, to see if the press will be able to make itself write anything even slightly negative about him. And considering the horror with which Hillary’s attacks against him are being greeted, will the Republican candidate be able to say anything negative, no matter how substantive, without being tarred with the racist brush? The one thing I can promise you is that, if Obama loses, it won’t be because he’s boring, antisemitic (or, at least, his friends are), uninformed, unexperienced and a leftist. In the eyes of the MSM, whose opinion will be disseminated around the world, he can lose only because he’s black. And that’s the problem with Obama’s race."

Flashback to January 20, 2008

Trayvon Martin

Not my blog, not my writing; but does bring up some interesting points, like why is a black life only valuable or a black killing tragic only if a non-black is the perp? Most blacks are killed by other blacks; most gays are killed by other gays; most rapes happen to men and take place in prison; most Hispanics, etc. etc. Except for women. And then the press only cares if she's a lesbian.

"First, in terms of characterizing America as a racist nation, the fact that we have a black president kind of, sort of, a little bit, makes it stupid to try to paint a whole nation with the “racism” brush just because a big Hispanic man in a bad neighborhood pulled a gun on a big black guy in the same neighborhood. That’s true whether the killing was motivated by self-defense, insanity, or racism.

Second, people are beginning to catch on to the media’s games. In a way, it’s useful that the Martin killing followed on the heels of the Toulouse massacre. It’s a reminder that the media has a few templates for murder: When a black person dies at the hands of a non-black person, it’s a front-page racially motivated crime. When a non-black person dies at the hands of black person, it’s a bottom of page 27 story. And when a Muslim kills people while shouting “Allah is great,” Islam has nothing to do with it. Here, the media is sticking to its narrative with regard to both the Martin and Mohammed stories, despite pesky little details that put the lie to the media narratives.

Third, this was a one-person crime. Zimmerman didn’t belong to a White (or Hispanic) Supremacist movement. He wasn’t a corrupt small town sheriff. This wasn’t just another in a long line of racially motivated murders in the same community. It’s awfully hard to make a serious case for institutional American racism based on a sordid neighborhood dispute."

And on to the next point.

Why does the left hate Sarah Palin so?

She isn't as conservative as many Republicans; she's not running for President; she had an athletic scholarship in college. Yet, they go on and on and on. Today I got an e-mail from a liberal friend who said he admired me but. . . how could I possibly share a world view with [gasp, choke] Sarah Palin? Like I should share a world view, as he apparently does/did with Ted Kennedy or John Kerry or Hillary Clinton?

I'm convinced the ridicule, antipathy, and vitriol directed at Sarah Palin is not about her politics, but what she represents--first because she allowed her child with Down Syndrome (93% of whom are aborted after screening finds them) to live and didn't encourage her teen-age daughter to abort her grandchild, and second because she energized a flagging and failing Republican party with her zest and no-shirt-tails rise in politics and perhaps gave birth to the Tea Party movement--or at least mid-wifed it (at least she knew the date of the original, and the libs didn't).

I went to a local college to hear her speak and I can't even describe the sparkle and energy and the fresh spirit she brought, even though I'm sure she'd given that speech many times. She's everything Barack Obama isn't--pro-life in every sense of the word including pep and energy, pro-family, pro-business, pro-little guy, pro-American and pro-Christian. I gave up on her as a politician when she abandoned her post in Alaska due to the harassment and ridicule from the highest offices to the lowest scumbags (like Bill Maher and Dave Letterman) on TV, but that doesn't deny what she was able to do within one week in 2008. And Barack Obama is still afraid of her and he is campaigning against her even though she's not running. If Sarah Palin's message of hope is allowed to survive, there really would be change and the Democrats know it. Socialism in America would be writhing and gasping for air.

When I was in first and second grade there was a boy in my class, who today if allowed to live, would probably do just fine with some attitude adjustment on the part of the school system. In 1946-47 he was ridiculed by the teacher and teased by the other kids, and dropped out to work on the family farm after second grade. I had 3 classmates who had siblings who didn't attend school, but one came to church and was cherished by her family and was never kept hidden away. My Uncle Ben had a son about my Dad’s age who after he became an adult was moved into a special home, and when he died about a decade ago, my father arranged for his funeral to be buried in the town cemetery with the rest of his family.

One of my sons was born with multiple physical and mental handicaps and died shortly after birth. Whether I would have been one of the brave parents fighting for his rights who helped to get the ADA passed, or whether our marriage could have survived those challenges, I never had to find out. But our little Patrick is one reason I think children should be allowed to live, even if it is just the 9 months of the womb life. I learned a lot from him and look forward to seeing him at the resurrection.

The primary reason I'm against the HHS Mandate is everything the Bible teaches about the sacredness of life and that is what the Roman Catholic Church is supporting. It's not the liberals who reach out to help the poorest and weakest, it is the church. When we see those in need and we help, even the ones who are sick or in prison, we are meeting Jesus. We are never promised that hunger or poverty will end the way the liberals do when asking for more money, or that people won't be unjustly imprisoned the way politicians do when running for office; only that we will meet Jesus when we love and care for them. You don't build powerful political allies with a philosophy like that.

How Media Matters deals with Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh insulted one woman taking on the sanctity of life teachings of the Catholic church, and apologized to her. Media Matters in an effort to shut him up permanently has launched a nationwide call to all progressives and leftists to destroy a popular, conservative radio talk show host by going after his sponsors--not just those with whom he has contracts, but anyone at local affiliate stations who advertise during the hours he is on and who have contracts with the local station. This is their business, they have employees, they contribute to the local economy. This is an attempt to destroy him, and in that effort is having a significant impact on these small businesses, many of whom can't supply their orders because their web sites have been snarled by leftists in a carefully orchestrated "book burning." The so-called fairness doctrine is just one more way to destroy the first amendment which has another clause being eroded by the HHS Mandate--the free exercise of religion. Be careful dear progressives, or you may be left with only turtles and milfoils (aquatic beetle) as your news sources.

"Anyone referring to the past to criticize the present should, together with all members of his family, be put to death. Officials who fail to report cases that have come under attention are equally guilty. After thirty days from the time of issuing the decree, those who have not destroyed their books are to be branded and sent to build the Great Wall. Books not to be destroyed will be those on medicine and pharmacy, divination by the turtle and milfoil, and agriculture and arboriculture."

Attributed to Li Ssu, in Records of the Grand Historian of China, 109 to 91 BC.

Spring Break 2012

Forsythia in bloom

I've been out for a 25 minute walk. Looks like some storms are on the way--very dark in the northwest. Our forsythia which were cut back to about 6 inches when the wall and sidewalk were built in 2009(?) are blooming gloriously--about 6 ft. tall now. New grow, new energy, we all need that. If you've got some ratty looking, spindly bushes, cut them back. They'll thank you.