The Loyal Judith has arrived. . . 1732

Just browsing around an internet site called e-books and texts (15 million books) and clicked on the University of Illinois collection and noticed an old government document for Pennsylvania about foreigners who'd taken an oath of allegiance to the province in the 1700s and to King George II. I checked my own record and found the Loyal Judith had docked in Philadelphia on Sept. 25, 1732, so I flipped the pages and there they were: https://archive.org/stream/namesofforeigner00egle#page/62/mode/2up/search/Judith. Different libraries submit their special collections, and U. of I. had 80,000+ in Illinois history, railroads, agriculture, rural studies, et. Lots of Canadian libraries, gov't libraries, special collections like comic books and children's, and special libraries For all its problems, the internet is amazing. Still, serendipity and flipping pages is not very efficient. Maybe there's a finding tool or index.

Statistical outliers—The Swamp

I guess we know now how federal bureaucrats (aka The Swamp) came up with redefining Title IX and wanting mixed locker rooms. "The percentage of individuals living in the District of Columbia who identify as transgender is 2.8 percent—more than triple the percentage of those living in the next highest states of Hawaii or California (.78 percent and .76 percent respectively). And, the percentage of transgender individuals in the District of Columbia is more than nine times greater than the .3 percent living in North Dakota or .31 percent in Iowa." (Williams Institute, UCLA data)

Churches founded by Jesus’ disciples or their disciples—the Other Catholics

The Coptic church in Egypt used to be one of the largest and best known Christian churches, second only to Rome, until the Arab invasion in 641. It was founded by the gospel writer, Mark, the disciple of Peter, and Coptic Catholics still have the succession of their Patriarch (Pope) from him to this day. The current patriarch is Anba Ibrahim Isaac. The 200,000-member Catholic Church has 14 dioceses in Egypt, including pastoral services for Latin, Melkite, Armenian, Chaldean, Maronite and Syriac Catholics. The Coptic Orthodox church is much larger--I'm assuming both claim St. Mark and all the early church fathers. Since the 1940s, many Coptic Christians have settled in the U.S., more are Orthodox than Catholic.

 https://aleteia.org/2016/12/13/5-things-to-know-about-coptic-christians/

The first European monarch to accept Christianity was King Tiridates IV (also called III) of Armenia. This church was established by Jesus' apostles, Thaddaeus and Bartholomew. Known today as The Patriarchal Armenian Catholic Church. Gregory Peter XX Ghabroyan was elected Patriarch of Cilicia of the Armenians July 24, 2015. He succeeds former patriarch Nerses Pierre XIX Tarmouni, who died June 25, 2015.

https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/april/documents/papa-francesco_20150409_sinodo-chiesa-armena-cattolica.html

http://www.lastampa.it/2015/09/07/vaticaninsider/eng/the-vatican/francis-condemns-complicit-silence-over-christian-persecution-36TPZflUNfin9JBkgoyXDL/pagina.html

A vacation from politics

A man from Ohio decided to give it all up because Donald Trump won--a stay at home version of moving to Canada. And he found peace, and a lake. He blocks all news from TV, radio, newspaper—won’t even allow his friends to discuss anything political.

Before our summer home in Lakeside on Lake Erie became expensive and modern, we used to have a peaceful week as renters with no TV, no radio, no newspaper, and no phone--and the car remained in the drive-way. The peace was a shock to the system. News addicts can do this any time, but once you take that first looksee, you're a goner.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/style/the-man-who-knew-too-little.html

Not quite Mom’s salmon patties

Salmon patties were a wonderful comfort food my mom often fixed—usually with creamed peas.  This isn’t her recipe, but sounds yummy.

6 oz. can skinless/boneless pink salmon, drained
2 T. diced onion
good pinch each of salt and pepper
1 large egg
1 T. buttermilk
2 T. cornmeal
4 T. all purpose flour
Veg. oil for frying

How to make it :

In a bowl, combine the salmon, onion, salt and pepper. Stir in the egg, buttermilk, cornmeal and flour. Combine well. Heat about 1/4″ oil in the bottom of a med. size iron skillet over med. high heat. Drop spoonsful of the salmon mixture into the hot oil and flatten out just a tad. Fry, in batches, about a minute per side or until golden brown. Drain on a paper sack or paper towel lined plate. Makes 10 patties.

Found at http://recipescup.com/attie/

Today is National Meatball Day

We’re going to the Fish Fry at Our Lady of Victory tonight so I’ve decided to have meatball sandwiches for lunch.

These are my favorite meatballs, although not what we’ll have for lunch today.

Sweet Sour Meatballs
(Christmas Eve 2000)

3 lbs. ground chuck
1 pkg. dry onion soup mix
2 eggs
1 cup fine dry bread crumbs
1 can (8 oz) sauerkraut, drained
1 can (8 oz.) whole cranberry sauce
1 bottle (12 oz.) chili sauce
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

Mix meat, onion soup mix, eggs and bread crumbs and form into meatballs. Brown the meatballs. Combine the sauerkraut, cranberry sauce, chili sauce and brown sugar.  Pour over the meatballs and bring to a boil. Turn into a casserole and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.  12 good size servings. This made a nice change from the usual roast or ham.  Was served with a potato casserole and a green beans/onion casserole.  From Columbus Dispatch.

[My notes: I couldn't find cans of the size requested, but I used the correct number of  ounces.  I would think the jellied sauce would work also--especially if you have someone in the family who doesn't like the texture of whole pieces of fruit in with the meat (I have such a person.)  I didn't use the sugar--cranberry sauce is pretty sweet, but taste it to see if yours needs it.  Mine made 24 big meatballs--if you made them smaller, would be more like appetizers.  I prepared the sauce the day before and just warmed it up and poured it over the browned meatballs after I put them in a 9 x 13 dish.  Froze the left-overs and they were fantastic in January.]

Prager University videos that went viral in 2017

• Was the Civil War About Slavery? Col. Ty Seidule - 26.5 MILLION VIEWS

• War on Boys Christina Sommers - 17.8 MILLION VIEWS

• The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party - Carol Swain - 13.6 MILLION VIEWS

• Why I Left the Left Dave Rubin - 12.6 MILLION VIEWS

• How the States Can Save America - Jim DeMint - 10.8 MILLION VIEWS

• Black, Millennial, Female and... Conservative - Antonia Okafor - 9.8 MILLION VIEWS

• How Socialism Ruined My Country - Felipe Moura Brasil - 7.9 MILLION VIEWS

• Why Isn’t Communism as Hated as Nazism? - Dennis Prager - 7.6 MILLION VIEWS

• There Is No Gender Wage Gap Christina Sommers - 5.9 MILLION VIEWS

• Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings Ben Shapiro - 5.6 MILLION VIEWS

https://www.prageru.com/

Playing board games

Sometimes I'm really surprised at how "old" some of our problems are. Like face to face interactions. I wrote this at my coffee blog 9 years ago.
----------------------------------
I had the most delightful, surprising conversation with a clerk at Panera's this morning.

"Did you have a nice Christmas?" (me)

"Yes, we had a wonderful time? And you?" (him, 20-something, but looks younger)

"Yes, we did."

"Plans for New Year's?"

"Well, I'll just be doing things with the family. We're going to try out the board games we got Christmas."

"You mean, real board games, not computerized games?"

"Oh yes. My wife got Scattergories and my sister got the new Monopoly. Have you seen it? And I got (couldn't understand what he said)."

Imagine. An evening with family playing board games.

Celebrities more important than children

Medved show on reparations—click bait?

I like Michael Medved show, but he's dropped the ball on today's show which is about slavery, reparations and income disparity. It's beginning to sound like the radio equivalent of on-line click bait. His callers are poorly informed, repeating every meme they’ve seen or heard, and he's not doing much to correct them.

1) Slavery is a bigger industry today than in the 18th century and is still world wide, still primarily Africa and Asia. https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/region/middle-east-north-africa/ CNN estimates 40 million.

2) Reparations--how to hand out wealth for work your ancestors did when the U.S. has a million African immigrants a decade in the late 20th- 21st century who choose this as their country, but only 300,000 Africans came as slaves. Barack Obama would not get any reparations under the plan--no slavery in his background, yet 99% of blacks voted for him.

3) Income disparity between blacks and whites, or blacks and Hispanics virtually disappears if you control for marriage and education. A single mom with 3 children and a high school degree won't match or even come close to the income of a lawyer and doctor and 2 children, but that's who gets thrown in the mix when "households" are factored in these studies of income. Wealthiest households in the United States are not white, but Indian-American and Filipino-American.

What’s that smell?

In this week’s newsletter from World’s Healthiest Foods we find out what that strange odor is from urine after eating asparagus.

http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=12#healthbenefits

“One of the unique phytonutrients in asparagus is asparagusic acid. Asparagusic acid is the compound responsible for the urine odor that many people associated with asparagus. In chemical terms, asparagus acid (1,2-dithiolane-4-carboxylic acid) is unusually reactive due to the two sulfur atoms that are positioned adjacent to each other in the molecule. Among other things, this increased reactivity helps asparagusic acid break down rapidly and its derivatives are what researchers believe we smell after asparagus has been consumed.

However, it's important to note that people differ in three basic ways in terms of asparagus consumption and urine odor. First, there are differences in digestion while asparagus is inside our GI tract and differences in the absorption of asparagusic acid. Second, there are differences in the way we metabolize asparagusic acid if it gets absorbed up into our blood steam. And finally, there are differences in our ability to detect the presence of asparagusic acid derivatives. These factors can combine in such a way as to produce some unusual results. For example, one person might end up with significant amounts of asparagusic acid derivatives in his or her urine, but be unable to detect the odor, even when another person can!

There is one further important point that we would like to make about the urine odor of asparagus and asparagusic acid. This molecule has as its core component a sulfur-containing structure called 1,2-dithiolane. We have included asparagusic acid as a key nutrient in asparagus and we have placed this content about asparagus odor within our Health Benefits section because 1,2-dithiolane is a key structure for the formation of a key sulfur-containing organic acid and antioxidant called alpha-lipoic acid. In fact, it is the presence of 1,2-dithiolane that allows alpha-lipoic acid to participate as a cofactor in the enzyme activities of pyruvate dehydrogenase and alpha-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase. Both of these enzymes and their activities help provide a critical doorway into the pathways of aerobic metabolism, which requires special antioxidant protection. While researchers do not yet have a complete picture of asparagusic acid in terms of its antioxdant function, the presence of 1,2-dithiolane in its structure suggests that this function will be involved in a major way. “

According to the newsletter, asparagus now has its own plant family named after it—the Asparagaceae family.

Read the rest of the newsletter (above link) for more details about the nutritional value of asparagus.

Such a bargain, $1600!

I used to have a coffee blog and noted interesting things I overheard or saw at the coffee shops. I gave up adding to that blog sometime in 2014 because I gave up a habit of 60 years--I rarely go out for coffee anymore, so I don't have much to say at that blog. But I have a new source now of odd and unusual things. Things I hear at the gym. Like Friday. "So there was this watch for $3,000, but I got it for only $1600."  And here I was feeling smug for getting 1/2 price at Volunteers of America on a cute pair of corduroy jeans, name brand.  They had been $2.00, and I got them for one dollar.  A little snug—I prefer jeans with a little more space in the legs, but for $1.00, not bad.

Nikolas Cruz’ birth mother was drug addicted

Drug addiction problems followed Nikolas Cruz from before birth. He was violent even as a toddler. Very sad story.  His adoptive parents where older and paid $50,000 to the lawyer for the medical care and legal fees to adopt him, but he was a problem child from the beginning.  The Cruz family also adopted his half brother when the birth mother was in prison.

https://nypost.com/2018/02/27/alleged-school-shooters-mom-paid-50k-to-adopt-him-from-drug-addict/?

Feeling rejected? You’re not alone.

The Old Testament lesson in church today was from Isaiah 53. We have pew Bibles at UALC, but I also have one in my purse, which I opened. "He was despised and rejected by men," and in the margin I had written from some previous sermon or Bible study, "Reject or its root appears 120 times in the Bible." So if you're feeling rejected, you're in good company. I checked online and found a list of 100 verses about rejection.

 https://www.openbible.info/topics/rejection

Misinformation and disinformation on social media

I wonder who has been analyzing the Russian social media interference in the 2016 election, and just how retweeting disinformation or misinformation is determined. How reliable is that source that has caused so much angst and terror among supporters of Hillary Clinton and our own media?

I've been looking at other topics in Twitter, and one study done in the Arabic language on medical topics had 51.2% false and 48.8% true information. Another on STDs and medical information also had a number of bad jokes about sex from avatar and anonymous sources. Does this mean that Arabic speaking medical people have been duped by spies and foreigners or that people who joke about STDs are somehow a threat to security? What do we actually know about all kinds of misinformation on Twitter, FB, Snapchat, etc. whether nutrition, HIV or Hillary Clinton?

Irish-American Month

March is Irish-American month. I'm guessing that's about 25% of the U.S. and Canadian population. My Irish settled in Tennessee (which was part of N. Carolina) after Pennsylvania and arrived before the rush and decades before the Revolution, so I don't particularly identify as Irish. It was fun to visit Ireland about 12 years ago.

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/03/irish-american-heritage-month-new-resources/?loclr=ealocb

1890 census data on population density of Irish.

The current census says about 11% of Americans report Irish ancestry, but that's because so many people don't know their heritage. Irish were very poor, spread out all over, and many immigrants did their best to forget their past. According to Wikipedia, the population of Ireland is about 6.3 million, but it is estimated that 50 to 80 million people around the world have Irish forebears, making the Irish diaspora one of the biggest of any nation. Historically, emigration from Ireland has been the result of conflict, famine and economic issues.

Subscription databases for finding Irish American heritage. https://www.loc.gov/rr/main/irishamerican/databases.html

http://www.electricscotland.com/history/world/tennessee.htm

If you go online and check Irish immigration/slavery, you'll see the liberals and academics poo-pooing the research that the Irish were ever real slaves. Yes, bought and sold for their labor by England so their land could be confiscated, but not REAL systemic slaves like the Africans. Well, tell that today to the millions and millions of sex slaves, child labor slaves, domestic slaves and agricultural slaves in numbers greater than the transatlantic 18th c. slavery. Yes, tell them that they aren't REAL slaves.

The trouble with excuses. . .

If there were 1) no NRA, 2) a perfect screening database for legal gun ownership, and 3) no high capacity gun magazine [and there actually wasn't one], the Parkland shooter would still have killed 17 people, or more if all his plans and gun had worked properly [it jammed].

The failures, the reasons he was not stopped, and those people are dead, are
1) Sheriff Israel and his "leadership,"
2) the school board,
3) the superintendent,
4) the federal government "Promise" program,
5) the officer who guarded the perimeter instead of going into the school,
6) the FBI,
7) security guard who hid.

No matter how much you want it to be so, the anti-gun people can't blame the President, the NRA, the shooter's age, or even legal rifles. The result would have been the same if H. Clinton were the president. The difference would have been in the news media coverage and the social media memes whipping up the hate and hysteria.

9 easy stretches for back and hip pain

I think I’ve done all of these at various times.  It’s been a long time since my horse fell on me, but all I have to do is bend over to tie my shoe to remember.

https://blog.paleohacks.com/stretches-lower-back-and-hip-pain/#

Remembering Srebrenica

Mick Wenlock writes:  “Every once in a while I find myself getting mad and irritated enough to want to dust off a subject I have written about many times. Every time some tight ass smug European opines that wanting to have firearms to resist government oppression is old fashioned, out of touch, ridiculous I grit my teeth. And then I just have to bring this out.

Nearly 23 years ago, in mainland Europe 8,000 men and boys were marched out by their government and massacred. This happened 400 miles from Rome, 990 miles from London, 700 miles from Berlin. 8,000 men and boys marched out, lined up and shot.

It was in Srebrenica a part of Serbia.

If those 8,000 men and boys had all been armed - even with shotguns, the Serbs could not have done it.

It's not 'ancient history" nor is it something that only happens in places like Rwanda or Syria. it happened right under the noses of the so called 'enlightened" European governments who did less than nothing. Despite having a Dutch Battalion of soldiers in the area posted to safeguard the civilians no less, they did NOTHING.

The next time some pompous twat speaks about how not trusting the government is stupid, paranoid or silly ask them to explain this to you.

The UN promised to protect those men and boys, western Europe sent troops and they all did nothing while the local government massacred them.

Sorry - just once in a while i have to remind myself of how close it all is.”

The sheriff, the superintendent and the school board

According to an agreement Sheriff Israel had with the school board and superintendent, juvenile arrests were cut in half--those 17 deaths could have been prevented. Cruz was never arrested for his clearly illegal behavior. If the Sheriff and the school had done their jobs, Cruz could have never bought those guns. Because of a November 2013 agreement, he had no criminal record.

http://jjie.org/2013/11/05/south-florida-squeezes-school-to-prison-pipeline/

Here's how you cut juvenile arrests in half in just 3 years--long enough for Nikolas Cruz to carry out his threats:

*Sheriff Israel said that he instructed BSO deputies to issue juvenile civil citations, not arrests;
*The BCSD’s own written policy encouraged handling even criminal activity “outside the criminal justice system”;
*The BCSD’s own written policy did not actually require arrests, even for felonies and serious threats to school safety;
*Cruz’s behavior included repeated disruptive behavior, violent outbursts, threats, and physical assaults on other students; and
*Cruz was never expelled or apparently arrested for this behavior.

https://www.redstate.com/sarah-rumpf/2018/02/27/the-broward-sheriffs-juvenile-arrest-conspiracy-might-actually-be-true/