Communications survey results

Our church provided a very nice analysis of a survey today on how each congregation (three campuses, multiple services based on music style) communicates.  The service we attend (traditional with liturgy, hymns, and choir, communion twice a month) is 83% of adults over age 55. 39% is over 75. The age survey starts at age 18, and all services together at UALC  are 56% over 55, with 13% over 75. (If the survey included children, the results would be different.) One feature showed the number at each service that uses smartphones, and I was surprised that our traditional service had so many with smartphones.  Must be that under 65 group. Still, our printed newsletter and church announcements were the winners in communication with e-mail next.  At first I was puzzled by that, but realized almost all the small groups and committees communicate by e-mail.  The traditional service also scored the highest in feeling connected, and had the longest attendance length--68% had attended 20 years or longer.

What's wrong with Adam Silver?

North Carolina is set to host the 2017 NBA All-Star game, but in a meeting with reporters today, commissioner Adam Silver said that the game will have to be moved if recently enacted anti-LGBT laws are not changed. 

• Transgenderism is far more dangerous than smoking or drinking sodas or using drugs, so why is the commissioner pushing a dangerous, high death rate life style?
• Forty-one percent of transgendered individuals attempt to take their own life, according to the Weekly Standard. That's more than 25 times the national average. 
• The average life expectancy of a transgendered individual is about 32 years of age (some sources say 35), according to the blog Transwoman Times.
• A survey found that 2.64 percent of trans people are infected with HIV — more than four times the national average rate, according to Live Science. 

I'll leave it to you to google the details. I did and it all checks out (most figures are higher), except for the far left sites which want to blame you and me for this and deny the statistics, or say the sample is just too small (the only time you'll see that from the left).

The same people who say we'd never know when a transwoman uses our restroom, also say they can't find jobs because of the gender issue and have to become street walkers and get AIDS. Yes, folks, it's not messing with biology and pumping their bodies full of hormones and chemicals, multiple surgeries, and mental co-mobidities, it's oppression by you and me.

Obama vs. Jefferson

 

When President Jefferson arranged for the Louisiana Purchase he assured the Nuns of the Order of St. Ursula that the principles of the Constitution and the government of the United States would be sacred and inviolate for them, and that they would be permitted to govern themselves according to their own voluntary rules without interference from the civil authority. He praised them for their wholesome purpose of training up the younger members in the way they should go, and that his office would protect them. "I salute you, holy sisters, with friendship and respect." Letter to Ursuline Nuns of New Orleans, July 13, 1804. 

All Christian churches taught against contraception until about the 1930s, when one by one they followed the lead of the Anglicans. But the Catholic church has never wavered. President Obama knew that when he railroaded the ACA through Congress with no Republican support. It's too bad that President Obama, who has sued Little Sisters of the Poor for not violating their religious beliefs, can't assure 21st century nuns of the same protection of the Constitution and his office that President Jefferson did.

Who is anti-women?

If you look deeply, everything the Left/socialists/Democrats offer/demand is anti-family, anti-fertility and therefore, anti-woman. Whether it is

•  free contraception,
• abortion on demand,
• suing nuns and colleges that won't comply,
• offering sewage for entertainment which exploits our minds and bodies,
• same sex marriage,
• the lie of sex reassignment/third gender,
• the military draft of women,
• the siren call of a career during our best years,
• the importation of brown women to bump up the country's fertility rate (now below replacement) while cleaning our offices and houses,
• heavy college debt borrowed from the government that demands years of labor from us during our fertile years, or
• creating both an unnatural, hyper-vigilant child centered society or an anti-child atmosphere when we women can finally focus on our first calling.

The ultimate goal is to destroy the nation by weakening its strongest building block.Women.

What went wrong with Obamacare?

What went wrong? The rate of increase in health care costs was decreasing under Bush. Now it's increasing again.

"Health care is unaffordable for most Americans. To have any hope of affording even minor medical procedures, Americans rely on health insurance or public coverage to pay much of the cost. About 88 percent of medical bills are paid for by an entity other than the patient. As a result, health insurance has also become unaffordable. The average employer plan costs American families $17,545 per year. A Bronze plan from the exchange for the average middle-age family costs $12,000 per year with combined annual deductibles of $8,000 to $13,000. Provider networks are so narrow that any major procedure is surely to result in out-of-network charges that can be astronomical."

 http://healthblog.ncpa.org/the-obamacare-health-care-gold-rush-is-bankrupting-america/#

Snopes wins again. . . it's fake

This is going around the internet as the winning entry in an art contest in the Netherlands

 

But Snopes says no, it's false.  The art is real, but the words and information is false. The artist is Friedrich Kunath of New York, the title of the display (several pieces) is called Tropical Depression. My own interpretation is that when you plant anything you better plan to water it. http://www.snopes.com/melting-pot-multiculturalism-artwork/

http://contemporaryartlinks.blogspot.com/2010/10/friedrich-kunath-tropical-depression.html

Newsweek called it in 2012--the first gay president

"House Republicans asked the departments of Education and Justice to clarify their transgender bathroom directive for public schools, but the Obama administration isn’t answering. Now, a congressman from North Carolina is rebuking the White House for pulling “a political stunt.” . . . "

The guidelines are vague and the President is stonewalling the Republicans, although he’s being very vocal about how he’s protecting yet another victim group, ignoring the 99% of us who know t...hat gender isn’t fluid or a feeling. It’s biology. And the leftists who are usually so adamant about scientific evidence (even when it contradicts them as in global climate changes that go back millions of years), are saying without a shred of evidence that feelings, desires, surgery or hormones can change one’s gender.

The same liberals who decided the right to privacy (which isn't in the Constitution and had to be cobbled together from other decisions) meant the right to kill an unborn child, now are determined to claim that child who makes it through to birth has no rights to the binary gender system which humans have followed since the beginning of time because it might guarantee her some privacy in the locker room.
 http://dailysignal.com/2016/06/01/obama-administration-keeps-house-republicans-waiting-on-transgender-bathroom-order/

By the end of his term, the president will be out of the closet, either as a gay man, or a transwoman. His eagerness to transform attitudes and values to make this acceptable goes beyond his desire to change the health system, ruin the military and destroy the fossil fuel sector. If you think that is insulting or mean, then you must be homophobic or transphobic.

Designing failure

"If we were to chuck every single educational “innovation” visited upon us by political hucksters in the last eighty years, and simply teach what was then considered the norm for a person with a half-decent background in arts and letters, and call it “classical,” we would at once stanch the bleed from our enrollments and give our young people a standard deviation or two over their schooled counterparts." Anthony Esolen

I wasn't in school 80 years ago, but I was in first grade 70 years ago (first grade and sixth grade in both Forreston and Mt. Morris due to family moves), so what would I bring back?

• Bible reading and prayer to start the day, and as children learned to read, they did it. I think we said the Pledge to the flag. No one was converted if their family already didn't attend church, but it did set the tone. Each child had a New Testament in the desk provided by the Gideons. Today police would be called if they tried that, even though under the first amendment it's still legal.
• Money collected for savings bonds and we each had our own book (this extended well beyond WWII).  The stamps were 10 cents.  Not sure what poor children did. Very early we learned to watch our "savings" grow with pretty stamps. Today it would be considered discriminatory against immigrants or bad form to be patriotic.
• 
• Phonics, reading aloud, diagramming sentences to understand grammar and spelling bees. I really didn't enjoy being in front of the class, but I did learn from this to face my fears.
• Recess and physical education through all grades. We were a hot, sweaty mess.  Probably less hyperactivity in those days.
• School assemblies where we would gather for a lyceum event (speakers,magicians, inspirational, music, drama). The blind pianist was a favorite, I remember.
• School wide musicals. Classroom art instruction although we didn't have art teachers and the music teacher served several rural schools.
•  
• Story time by teacher and resting after recess (for younger children)--I remember this through 4th grade. Loved those stories. My first exposure to The Wizard of Oz.
• In room parties when moms brought cookies and we occasionally saw a movie. Halloween, Valentines and Christmas parties.  Principal read the Luke version of infancy story to the whole school.
• In the 2 elementary schools I attended, there were no cafeterias--I either walked home for lunch or brought a packed lunch which no one inspected for the USDA approval. If we had allergic kids, I didn't know about it.
• School wide vaccination programs--if there were religious exceptions, I wasn't aware of them. Small pox in kindergarten and polio in 7th grade.
• Math instruction even someone like me could understand.
• Geography and history, beginning with the world in the lower grades, then the nation, then the state and county.

There were other things that I hated then, and would hate now.  

• Team or group projects where my grade depended on the slowest and most irresponsible person in the group. I was a good student, and hated this.
• State testing--we didn't do as much then as they do now, but I hated it. Usually lasted a day. I was never a good test taker and it caused a lot of anxiety.
• No special instruction for slow students.  They just dropped out after a few years to work the farm with dad, or were passed along and aged out at 16 in 7th or 8th grade. 
• Grading each others work.  This was demeaning for both good and poor students.  I would sometimes "cheat" for the other guy, even if I wouldn't do it on my own, just so he could pass.
• Weighing in front of class (I think our height and weight was recorded on our report cards). 
• Mean teachers who bullied students. Yes, it happened then and probably happens now. I never experienced this because I was an excellent student and didn't cause trouble.

Can you be fashionable in jeans?

 No use crying over old fashions and modesty that will never return, but it was so much easier to be attractive when we only wore jeans for cleaning house or picnics or playing softball. I assume this is an ad to encourage larger women to buy more jeans. Notice anything? All these women are gorgeous, young and well proportioned with long hair and beautiful skin. That leaves out about 3/4 of the female population. It's marketing--always remember that. It says, if you buy me, you too can look good, just like the ads with the skinny waifs. Nothing wrong with that as long as you understand the game.

Go to any workplace--choose the cafeteria so you don't know who works where.  Notice the difference in the clothing of the men and women.  Men will always look better dressed and more professional in khakis and a sport shirt than women dressed the same way.  And in jeans, there's just no contest. Dress for the job you want.

 
















 
I googled "career clothes large women," and found a few suggestions, all feminine and professional without looking slutty, but if you google "fashion large women" the images are just awful.

    

Obama's transgender power play

"Title IX is the 1972 law banning sex discrimination in schools. It has always allowed schools to provide “separate toilet, locker rooms, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.” The Obama administration has unilaterally rewritten Title IX’s core premise. One’s “sex,” says the administration, is no longer defined by biology, but rather reflects one’s “gender identity.” And gender identity is “an individual’s internal sense of gender,” which “may be different from or the same as the person’s sex assigned at birth.”

Not only has the Education Department redefined the word “sex” in Title IX’s prohibition on “discrimination on the basis of sex,” it has also reimagined the meaning of “discrimination.”

 http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-were-suing-over-obamas-transgender-power-play-1464734185

Every day I see something new on normalizing pedophilia which will be the next "rights" push. What is wrong with these people? They are obsessed with sex.

The same day the Obama administration also announced that all hospitals who receive federal funds of any kind (including Medicare) must accommodate transgender folks and provide sex change operations and abortions or face legal action from the Justice Department.

“As bad as the ACA is, it’s laughable to suggest that when Congress referred to ‘sex’ in Section 1557 it was referring to anything other than biological sex,” stated Ken Klukowski, attorney with First Liberty Institute and Breitbart News legal editor.

“This is Orwellian,” Klukowski wrote at Breitbart. “But beyond that, it is an unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment that the Obama administration is forcing their rejection of biological fact onto people whose faith teaches that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ refer to what they have meant for thousands of years, and that God purposefully created them that way.”

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/obama-tells-hospitals-do-abortions-and-sex-changes-or-youll-lose-federal-fu

Saying Good-bye is painful

What made saying good-bye to this dress so difficult is that my mother made it. She was only 43 and I was probably 15 when I checked on her progress each day after school.  I still have an apron she made for me 50 years ago from a skirt she made for me in high school!  I still have the formal she made for me for the Christmas Dance of 1955. I still have the cloth doll she made for me in elementary school and the doll clothes she sewed and gave me at Christmas in the 1940s. I have pillows at our cottage she made in 1990.  So giving up this dress which I watched her cut out on our dining room table with trembling hands (she was a self taught seamstress) was BIG.  But yesterday it went to the Discovery Shop, which sells clothes and household items to raise funds for cancer. There are no women in the family to pass it to. I had heard that Vineyard Church had a bridal ministry, but when I called, I was told there was someone who had a ministry in Brazil that would take it.

Ready to take it to Discovery

Hanging in the sorting room

One last time

Our wedding day, September 1960

At our 50th party in Columbus in September 2010

My mother was ahead of her time

" 'Gamification' means turning something that previously was not a game (for example, learning to use a library) into one. The idea is that by adding fun to a previously dull task you can increase participation and learning." (ACRL, Keeping up with gamification) Ah ha! My mother was ahead of the curve on this one. Whenever she was assigning or teaching a new task she would say, "Let's make a game out of this." I was no dummy--I knew I'd be spending an hour or two of MY PLAY TIME wiping down stairs, mowing the lawn or digging potatoes. To this day I don't like games. But I pulled the same line on my children.

I'm not sure she how called it a game, but she divided our  rather large lawn on Hannah Avenue in Mt. Morris into four sections, and assigned it for mowing by our size, strength and age.  Eventually, as my oldest sister moved out, and my younger brother got bigger, I think the two of us probably took over most of that, and eventually it was all his. Until I found this photo of Stan mowing the lawn, I thought we always used a push mower.  When he and I were quite young and we lived in Forreston, she'd give us a tool and turn us loose on the yard to dig dandelions.  She'd sort of make a contest out out that, but also gave us a penny per plant dug up. There was no way to make snapping beans or pitting cherries into a game; we just had to suck it up and do it.  I don't recall ever being asked to help with canning; she probably thought that was too dangerous, or it was just easier to do it herself. 

 http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-children-need-chores-1426262655

Stanley mowing the "back 40" in summer 1953

Is Snopes reliable?

Snopes, the fact checking source on the Internet, doesn’t always get it “right,” but they seem left to many conservatives because the right leaning people don’t check out stories they see on the internet and pass them along. The right makes it a cottage industry for them and keeps them in business. Facts are facts. Today I corrected a Mother Teresa quote on FB—the “Do it anyway” saying that you see everywhere on posters--for about the 10th time. It was written by Kent M. Keith in 1968. They (Snopes) cite their sources, and those can be biased—every source has some bias just by what it chooses to report or leave out. Also, keep in mind some responses called “Snopes” come from its “Forum” which is a discussion group, and not sourced. Snopes does editorialize, but so do I. There’s no reason for them not to have an opinion on the sources they find if it's positive about Trump or negative about Clinton.  There are other fact finding web sites, so you can always check more than one source (I often do), but 9 out of 10 times, Snopes is best.

Sound of Silence Cover by Disturbed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7RVw3I8eg#t=119
David Draiman, the lead singer of the band Disturbed, covering Simon & Garfunkel’s classic of 1964, “Sound Of Silence.”  This performance was done on Conan O Brien’s show on March 28.  When I viewed it there were over 12 million views.  Paul Simon gave it his approval on social media.

Hitting the glass ceiling whine

She was tired of the greed driven profession so she quit--$400,000 income.

 "I encountered blatant gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and a very clear glass ceiling." she said. 

Poor thing. I feel as sorry for her as the female movie stars who feel slighted because of making only a million or so per film. Of course, as I read through her rant, she experiences what most moms do who work a lot of hours away from the children. She resents working with men who are single or who have stay at home wives to make life easier to work long hours. But a lot of women are missing the kids for $40,000/year, not $400,000. And if she didn't have two children to care for and long for, she could work those longer hours and do the travel of her male colleagues. But she calls it a glass ceiling.  I call it reality.  I didn't return to work, first part time, temporary contracts with summers off, until my children were in elementary school.  I accepted a full time, tenure track position when our son was a senior in high school.  Then I worked hard at being the best librarian I could be, publishing, attending meetings, and making national and international contacts and friendships. I never found a meeting or a challenge on the campus that was better than being at home with growing children.

Ladies, yes you can have it all, just not all at the same time.  And $400,000 a year?  I don't know any librarians or WaPo journalists who get that.

Washington Post story about Kristen Jarvis Johnson by Petula Dvorak, April 28 (can't get link to copy)

Please pray for our military chaplains

 "It is a hardship upon the Regiment I think, to be denied a Chaplain." George Washington

“A still small voice frequently asked me, where is your God?” he wrote recently in his journal. “I feel so alone in this world. I am so isolated and alienated from people, the world, and myself. I feel like a Prisoner of a War who has been forgotten on the battlefield.” (Washington Post article, May 29)

If you Google Military ministry you'll find a number of organizations helping those traumatized by war or serving chaplains and military families. And of course, always research carefully before you donate, but prayers for those with trauma and PTSD are always safe and stamped in red "approved by God."

Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, Chaplains

Archdiocese for Military, Roman Catholic

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Armed Forces ministry

Orthodox Church in America Military Chaplains

U.S. Marine Corps, Religious ministry 

Presbyterians caring for Chaplains 

Prayers for soldiers, families, enemies, USCCB

Give locally; know your charity

 No one benefits when you drop your used clothing in a Planet Aid box. And it also gets millions from the U.S. government (that be us).

"Reveal and NBC Washington dug up IRS records showing that Planet Aid makes up to $42 million per year. That money is supposed to be donated to needy communities in places like Malawi and Mozambique. But in an FBI file on Planet Aid’s parent organization also obtained by NBC, investigators wrote that “Little to no money goes to the charities.”

Planet Aid seems to be controlled by a Danish organization known alternately as Tvind or The Teachers Group, which was founded in the 1970s by a man named Mogens Amdi Petersen. According to Danish court documents, Tvind is a kind of secular, ostensibly humanitarian cult, in which members are instructed to live collectively, “transfer all their available income to joint savings,” and “forgo their personal rights, such as the right to start a family to their own wish.” Petersen himself is an internationally wanted man, having allegedly committed fraud and tax evasion and his home country, and the NBC report speculates that he may be hiding out in a $25 million, 494-acre compound in Baja, Mexico."

 http://gawker.com/planet-aids-yellow-clothing-donation-bids-are-part-of-a-1778611205

https://www.charitywatch.org/charitywatch-articles/planet-aid-39-s-34-recycling-34-program-debunked-/88

http://metrovoicenews.com/is-planet-aid-scamming-you/

 http://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/Behind-the-Bins-What-Did-Planet-Aid-Do-With-Your-Taxpayer-Dollars-380333921.html

I donate to the Discovery Shop (cancer), Volunteers of America, and to our church's resale shop and food pantry.  There are so many scams and non-profits so poorly checked, that you really need to do your own investigation.

Little sins mean a lot

Most of us at one time have said, or thought, something like:

• “So I procrastinate, it’s not like it’s hurting anyone!”
• “Enough about you, back to me.”
• “I deserve this, so I’m treating myself!”
• “If I can’t have it, she shouldn’t either.”
• “I’ll get around to it… or not.”
• “It’s not really gossip if it’s all true, right?”
• (And the granddaddy of them all) “But that doesn’t make me a bad person!”

Are these really sins, you ask? After all, they’re not murder, theft, or violence. Don’t they just mean we’re human?

   
https://www.osv.com/Shop/Product?ProductCode=T1690

Memorial Day Week-end, Monday Memories 2016

Our daughter and son-in-law also got in on the fun of yard work and spring cleaning this year which we traditionally do on Memorial Day week-end. With four more hands and two younger bodies we got a lot accomplished.  But we did take some time off for fun.  We drove to Sortino's in Sandusky for a great Italian meal Friday evening. The portions are so large that we each got a take home box and enjoyed it for Saturday evening, too. Really wonderful food.

Time Warner came out to install internet on Saturday so certain people who vacation there in July and their parents will continue to be connected. The nice thing is that we'll be able to watch our cable TV programs we subscribe to without having cable service at the lake. We made sure everything worked on our devices--collectively among us, we had 4 phones, 2 Nooks, 3 i-pads, 1 laptop and 1 TV while getting internet service for wi-fi. Our daughter got everything running smoothly. She's a tech wizard.

Bathrooms by Barack

President Obama's directive didn’t just apply to the bathrooms in schools or retail outlets like Target. It also entered the space of locker rooms, showers, dorms, overnight hotels for field trips, and other places you might not expect. This is not about "rights" for the under .03%---the plan is much more grandiose. The guidelines are very broad with generalizations, and will be a cottage industry for lawyers. I still haven't figured why the progressives who see a rapist in every college bar and apartment- are pushing this. I guess women's issues are as passe as the giant shoulder pads. But I DO KNOW that female athletes and your underage children are the next to be hurt (pedophiles are being renamed, "minor attracted people" and they want your sympathy and their rights to your kids). This has been in the works since 2012; BO's folks looking out for you.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/11_states_sue_feds_over_new_guidelines_for_restroom_and_locker_room_use_by_

 http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_prof_sees_title_ix_collision_course_in_federal_directives_on_bathrooms