Who serves in the military?

I wonder how the rumor got started that an all volunteer military would disproportionately attract poor and minority? Isn't true. Blacks and white are about proportionate to the population, Hispanics underrepresented, Indians overrepresented. Higher level of education than the general population. "U.S. military enlistees disproportionately come from upper-middle-class families. Members of America's volunteer Army are not enlisting because they have no other economic opportunities. Most recruits come from relatively affluent families and would likely earn above-average wages if they did not join the military." http://www.heritage.org/…/who-serves-in-the-us-military-the…

Two local history titles on Jerome, Ohio

I’ve been living in Columbus since 1967, and I admit that until today I’d never hear of Jerome, Ohio, which is just up the road near Dublin, and was described 65 years ago by Johnny Jones, columnist 1940-1971 for the Columbus Dispatch, as “American as apple pie” and off the state highways where you cross the O’Shaughnessy Dam Bridge near the Columbus Zoo. With Dublin spreading out, Jerome had a 90% increase in population in the last decade, from about 4,000 in 2000 to 7500 in 2010. Author of the first book, Les Gates, grew up in Jerome and recorded his fond memories in a small book titled simply “Jerome” (3d ed. 2014). Gates returned to the home place after serving in the military and was in the insurance business for many years in Dublin, OH.  After a few words about his parents and life on the Gates farm at 7379 Brock Road, he continues with memories, photos and descriptions of neighboring farms, the local school and business establishments like the Twin Oaks Golf Course and Seely Grocery Store. Gates is about my age, and includes stories of his years at Dublin High School with photos of his team sports, baseball and football.

In a conversation with another Jerome resident, 99 year old Mary Alice Schacherbauer, Les Gates learned she had a diary of her writings with memories and musings from 1914 to 2014. With his interest in Jerome, Les and his wife Mary decided to edit and publish her memories also  as “Days I remember; my memories and musings from 1914 to 2014. “ Mrs. Schacherbauer is about the age of my parents, so I particularly enjoyed her stories of school in the 1920s, and found to my surprise that people had school buses back then.  My parents lived on farms near Dixon, Illinois, and walked to school. She and her husband Lee married in 1937 and were active in the Jerome United Methodist Church.  She includes family stories and has many fond memories of grandparents and aunts and uncles. Several of her poems are included, and she closes with prayer for “our country, our world, our way of life.” One hundred years old and she has seen a lot of changes, but still enjoys life and especially her memories.

You can purchase one or both titles from Amazon or at local gift shops. Or you can contact Les Gates at goldengator1938@yahoo.com.

Soul mates by Jacqueline J. Holness

http://nblo.gs/12NYiO  Check out her repost from 2011.

It’s not a race thing, it’s a heart thing

Daily Kos, a liberal internet opinion site, posted a rant by a young man (or woman, couldn’t tell) who had been successful in the past, moving from poverty to middle class (through luck, he says) and is now going to have to sell his car and apply for food stamps. Everyone else seems to be to blame for his situation, He’s angry and depressed. At a conservative discussion group on Facebook, this woman responded to his frustration with hope.

"I was on food stamps for about 6 mos. I did not have a car. I rode the bus. I did not have the internet or cable. I was living in a $300 a month apartment. (all bills paid). I ate a lot of mac and cheese (home made) and beans w/rice (dried). I ate baked chicken (cheapest meat at the time) in soups and sandwiches. I registered for classes and ended up getting a job at the school. It was hard. One night I had to stand in the rain to catch a bus to go to work. And I wept with the struggle. That day, I decided that it was up to me to change my situation. That was in 1997, I am now an instructor at the school. I have BA, an MA, and 48 hrs on my PhD. I am 65 and I am telling anyone who wants to that you can change your own life. I now teach students black, brown, and white who struggle the same way I did and I tell them all. They are they only one that can change their situation. I have witnessed students change their lives and their circumstances. It is not a race thing it is a heart thing. I have seen it happen."

Yes, more people die in January

If it feels like you’ve been attending too many funerals lately, you’re right.  It’s true, more people die in January than  other months, and more in winter than other seasons. My mother died in January, as did both her parents; her sister died in February and her brother in December. Checking my genealogy data, my father’s family for the most part died in spring and summer months.   It is not climate, and it’s not suicide (that’s a myth).  Legacy.com has some good information. http://blog.legacy.com/2011/06/23/yes-it%E2%80%99s-true-more-people-die-in-january/

Presidential word games

“The Obama administration refuses to call Islamofascist terror what it is. The President, when he talks about the terrorists, refuses to identify them specifically; they are “extremists” and the like. He and his supporters use the same terminology to describe the Islamofascists and members of Christian conservative groups or members of the Tea Party movement—“fundamentalists” (even though, by the traditional definition, only Christians can be fundamentalists), “Far Right” (even though, everywhere they are involved in politics, Islamofascists are allied with the Left), “extremists”  (even though both Christian conservatives and Tea Partiers are in the political mainstream, especially compared to Obama-style authoritarians/Progressives). Meanwhile, the Fort Hood shooting was classified by the Obama administration and its media allies as “workplace violence.””  Steven J. Allen  http://capitalresearch.org/2015/01/leader-of-the-free-world-not/

Turkey Meatballs

It's not that it's magic, but I like to involve one of my mother's mixing bowls when I cook/make something unfamiliar. Friday I made something she probably never did, and I used her little red bowl. . . turkey meatballs. Ground turkey is so tasteless. I decided to add some bread crumbs, seasoning and brush with some sauce.  They tasted so good, I made more on Saturday and froze them for use later. As best as I can recall:

Bread crumbs from whatever you’ve got—I used two slices of whole wheat bread.

1/2 envelop of Lipton’s dried onion soup mix

1 egg

Mix all that together and add 1 pound of ground turkey.

Shape into small balls and place in a muffin tin for small muffins (mine has 24 spaces)

Brush the tops with some kind of sauce.  I made one from mustard, catsup and a little Truvia on Friday, and used grape jelly, mustard and catsup on Saturday.  This keeps the meatballs from drying out while baking.

325 degrees about 30-35 minutes.

Makes 24. Freeze what you don’t eat.  My husband decided they were just the right size for a Ritz cracker.

                   

Here’s a recipe from Food Network that’s a lot more work. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/mini-turkey-meatballs-recipe.html

Here’s another one—more work—but I like the idea of serving them over greens. I’d need to make more sauce, however. I only had about a dollop and a dash. http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-quick-turkey-meatballs-over-greens-weeknight-dinner-recipes-from-the-kitchn-73204

Learning math

I’m only on page 13 of my new math book, “Math on Call,” and the reason it is going slowly is that it isn’t review, it’s new concepts, and although older people can learn new things, it takes longer.  Here’s a new one on me.  Using, or not using, the word and.

“When you read a number, do NOT say AND in any old place.  If you do, you’ll have trouble when you need to read the decimal point as “and.” Sometimes pretty funny misunderstandings can happen. 

Two hundred and twenty-five thousandths is 200.025

Two hundred twenty-five thousandths is 0.225

[Cartoon of an elephant and a hamster on a teeter-totter]

If I keep going I might be able to do Common Core Math!

You can listen to the actual songs of Selma

Knowing how bulky old tape recorders were (I could hardly carry mine at all), I’m amazed this man could record these songs.

http://www.smithsonian.com/smithsonian-institution/listen-freedom-songs-recorded-50-years-ago-during-march-selma-montgomery-180953904/

“Carl Benkert was a successful architectural interior designer from Detroit who had come down South in 1965 with a group of local clergy to take part and bear witness to the historic march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for voting rights.

In addition to his camera, he brought a bulky, battery-operated reel-to-reel tape recorder to capture the history all around him, in speech but also in song.”

Now I can review my math

This week someone posted on Facebook about reviewing insanely simple 9th grade math problems and I mentioned I'd been looking for something for review, but couldn't go higher than 5th grade because the material was too difficult.

Yesterday at Volunteers of America for 90 cents I found the neatest book, "Math on Call," Houghton Mifflin, 2004. It's attractive, nicely arranged, color coded with clear explanations that are somewhat below my reading level, even if the math isn't. So I went online to check out the grade level and found it is "sixth to eighth." It includes number theory, computation (which is about all I can do), algebra, graphs and statistics, geometry, ratio/proportion/percent, probability and odds, then study tips, test taking tips, tables, patterns (like Fibonacci) and systems (Roman numerals, Mayan, etc.) This is a terrific "review," and if elementary kids are doing this, God bless'em.   Also, the used ones I saw on-line were about $40--I may be bad at math, but that's more than 90 cents.

Wrong point about illegal immigration—it’s very lucrative for Mexico

This makes a point, but not the right one. They are helping their government and economy. Money sent back to families in Mexico and Central America is 2nd or 3rd highest source of income for those countries, despite being rich in natural resources. If these people are poor, it's because of their governments' policies. Also, the power structure is primarily descendants of Europeans, either Spain or Germany, although they are the minority, and they are gradually moving their dark skin citizens north to the U.S. Ever watch Spanish language TV--they promote amnesty. Whitest shows and newscasts you'll ever see.

Geert Wilders, My Life on Al Qaeda's Death List

After the events in France (and now other European states) and the embarrassing response of our government, it's a good time to review the views of Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders. He's vilified on the left as a fascist which these days means using the words Islamic terrorist and having national self-respect. This is a pdf reprint of a chapter in his book published by Regnery, "Marked for death." Note particularly his inclusion of film maker Theo Van Gogh, who was beheaded by Muslims, and how he spoke of and insulted Christians and Jews. http://www.regnery.com/…/Marked-For-Death-Special-Report.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOpY6ZCshmM

 

The Biblical passages Protestants won’t read literally

I went to Bible Study Thursday  led by Pastor Jeff Morlock of UALC and we were focusing on John 4:1-30, the lesson for this coming Sunday. But I drifted a bit to John 6:25-59, where Jesus explains to his disciples, the people gathered in the synagogue in Capernaum, and to us centuries later the meaning of the phrase and promise that he is the bread of life. I've seen entire books written on one word, such as "rapture," "justify" or phrase "fruit of the spirit," and essays on whether the nativity stories mean young woman or virgin.

But here we have a huge chunk of scripture in Jesus' own words about "eat the flesh and drink his blood," with clear references to the promises to Moses and eternal life. Yet millions and millions of Protestants ignore it and say that "I am," "real," and "whoever," belong to pre-16th century superstitions of the Catholics. Frankly, I don't get it. Lutherans depending on the synod sort of fudge it with "in over around and through" and the Anglicans, I think, acknowledge it, but the rest skip right over it. Protestants seem to be taking for their part of the script, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" And Jesus is pretty clear in his explanation. "Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever." To say he's speaking metaphorically or explaining bread in spiritual terms, you have to ignore the several paragraphs where he explains what he means.

Here’s what a Baptist web site says about this passage. The Catholics have 2,000 years of church teaching, tradition and Bible research to back their view.  This is one man/one ministry’s opinion with no scripture provided to support his view/belief that Jesus meant something other than what he said, but the writer is very concerned that Baptists not commune with people who don't believe as his ministry has stated.

"Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper are changed into the real body and blood of Jesus Christ. To believe this the Savior then took His body and made the disciples eat of it, and literally poured out His blood and told them to "drink ye all of it." If you can believe that you should be a Catholic. Bread cannot be His real body; neither can wine be His real blood, but bread can represent His body and wine can represent His blood. The Lutherans differ least from the Romans in regard to communion, for they maintain that "the body and the blood of Christ are materially present in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, though in an incomprehensible manner. They call it CON-SUBSTANTIATION. The Catholics call it TRANS-SUBSTANTIATION. Both are incredible."

Selma, nominated for best picture, but Rev. Al isn’t happy

I've been reading some reviews of Selma the movie, the latest Al Sharpton cause for a shakedown of Hollywood proposing a quota system for movie awards, which the very leftist industry awards itself. Four of the main actors are British as is the screen writer, throughout the movie racist Democrats are battled including LBJ a Democrat icon, and it ends with a song that includes a reference to Ferguson, a paean to a man who was shot by a policeman after robbing and assaulting a store owner. So it closes with a reminder that after 50 years under Democrat control, blacks are still protesting and asking for justice while equating a man like Brown with Martin Luther King, Jr. What could go wrong, Rev. Sharpton.

Al Sharpton go away. No more shakedowns. The best way to prove The Oscar committee wrong is to make the movie a great success and associating your face and whines with Selma is not the way to do it. Democrats and liberals are probably not thrilled with the portrayal of LBJ in this movie, but that might make others look at what an obstructionist he was when Republicans were trying to pass civil rights legislation before the 1960s. http://www.thetowntalk.com/.../clarence-page.../21124347/

Gilbert’s History of the Twentieth Century, v. 3: 1952-1999

What a find!  I was browsing the shelves at Volunteers of American on Henderson Rd. today and found this title by the prolific, incredible British writer, Martin Gilbert. Now I’ll have to watch for the other volumes.

“Sir Martin John Gilbert is a British historian and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He is the author of over eighty books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. Gilbert is a leading historian of the modern world, and is known as the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.”

I first came across him reading “Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith.”  He met Auntie in 1958 through his college friend who was Indian and over the years became her “adopted nephew.”  When she was 90 she revealed to him that she was actually a Hungarian Jew, but knew nothing about her heritage or that religion.  Thus began a series of letters to Auntie explaining her heritage. It is probably the most interesting way to learn Jewish history.

He presents Jewish history as the narrative expression–the timeline–of the Jewish faith, and the faith as it is informed by the history. Starting with Adam and Eve, he then brings us to Abraham and his descendants, who worshiped a God who repeatedly, and often dramatically, intervened in their lives. The stories of Genesis and Exodus lead seamlessly on to those of the eras when the land was ruled by the Israelite kings and then by Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome–the Biblical and post-Biblical periods. In Sir Martin’s hands, these stories are rich in incident and achievement. He then traces the long history of the Jews in the Diaspora, ending with an unexpected visit to an outpost of Jewry in Anchorage, Alaska. (Good reads)

However, the book I bought is the third volume (very big)  in a set about the 20th century, most of my life time, and it seems odd to see the events I remember, like the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the assassination attempt on President Reagan written in to history.

Martin Gilbert's three-volume history of the century continues with an enthralling narrative that documents the attempts to preserve human values, to maintain the rule of law, and to uphold the rights and dignity of the individual. Gilbert shows how the conflicts of nations and the aspirations of their rulers served both to threaten humankind through war and civil war, in many regions of the globe, and to create a fairer and more fulfilling life for hundreds, even thousands, of millions of people.For more than four decades, the United States and the Soviet Union--joint victors in the struggle against Germany and Japan--struggled to establish the primacy of their respective systems, while the specter of nuclear war threatened to become a terrible reality.

Here are gripping narrative accounts of the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Bosnia; the postwar reconstruction of Europe; apartheid; the arms race; the moon landing ; and  the extraordinary advances in medical science.  Mao started a cultural revolution, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy were assassinated, and the computer revolution was begun.  The result is nothing less than extraordinary. (Amazon)

I wish reading were easy for me; I certainly have some wonderful books on my office shelves I haven’t read.

Faith of the Founders and the current Congress

There are 204 unique individuals in the group called our "Founding Fathers." These are the people who did one or more of the following:

- signed the Declaration of Independence
- signed the Articles of Confederation
- attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ...
- signed the Constitution of the United States of America
- served as Senators in the First Federal Congress (1789-1791)
- served as U.S. Representatives in the First Federal Congress

88 or 54.7% were Anglican/Episcopalian, 30 or 18.6% were Presbyterians, and 27 or 16.8% were Congregationalist. 4.3% were Quakers (although not life long) and 3.7% were Dutch Reformed/German Reformed. Others like Lutherans 3.1% and Catholics 1.9% combined to make the founders approximately 100% Christian or Christian influenced. I'm sure there were atheists and agnostics clever enough to keep their views to themselves and were baptized members in name only. The third group's grandbaby is the current United Church of Christ (the Obamas' church) and it describes itself as "Christian, Reformed, Congregational and Evangelical" so the current version rolls some of those together. Protestantism is terribly fluid and confusing, a little like tracing your family tree. Where 2 or 3 are gathered, someone forms a new denomination. The 2nd great awakening came later so there are only 2 Methodists.(Religious affiliations of the founders)

92% of the current 114th Congress is made up of Christians, with Protestants at 57% and Catholics at 31%, so they've made huge strides with only 22% of the population reporting Catholic in faith. As was the case with the signers of our original documents, Congress is much more religious counting Jews (5%) than the general population--with more clergy than the Founders.

Some Christians doubt the high percentage in the current Congress. I don't judge when someone says he/she is a Christian--if we take the word of a Muslim, or an atheist, why not a Christian?. There are too many litmus tests among us Christians. God will judge. The journalists of Charlie Hebdo, hateful, nasty, despiser of all faiths, now know for sure.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/congress-christians-protestants-religion/2015/01/06/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/05/pew-research-christians-congress/21288979/

http://www.adherents.com/adh_congress.html#109

Greek salad—is it worth the calories?

I enjoy the occasional Greek salad—usually at a restaurant with a sandwich.  They are pretty simple—salad greens, some feta cheese, beans, onions, and dressing.  But my, that dressing really adds up. About 400 calories—25 grams of fat. Is it worth it? Order dressing on the side, for sure.

For more information on nutrients.

Hebdo was an equal opportunity scum bag

One of Charlie Hebdo's (French cartoonist who was killed by Muslim radicals) cartoons represented the Trinity as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit having gay anal sex as a ménage à trois--certainly blasphemy and not very flattering for gay men either. It was stupid, childish, disrespectful, hateful, typical atheist ridicule, and no Christians that I know of tried to kill him--but then, there aren't very many left in France and most people outside of France had never heard of this rag. It's sad that this was the only way we could get people concerned over freedom of speech, and questioning why our President refuses to acknowledge Islamic terrorism.

T’aint funny McGee*

“If you’re old enough to remember radio, that’s a line from Fibber McGee and Molly.

Since Christmas, I’ve lost 9 pounds and have ridden my execycle about 90 miles.  I only do 3-5 miles a day and break it up into .5 or 1 mile events.  My leg feels better.  Maybe it’s my imagination, but I’ll take that.

Heard it on the grape vine