Update from Larisa on Lily’s leukemia

“Today Lily had her first 4 week off treatment appointment. Her counts looked good. Not quite normal yet but that is expected. She is feeling much better off chemo. Her back pain which was causing a bunch of issues a couple of months ago is much better since she started doing acupuncture!

Overall Lily is doing great. She is enjoying her senior year of high school. She has heard back from two colleges that she has been admitted and is waiting on her final 4 colleges and nursing programs to make a final decision.

Overall her body is still recovering from the two years of more chemo. This month they are running some additional tests to see how her immune system is recovering. Those results will take a couple of days. In addition she is continuing to follow up with orthopedics on her back — they recommended acupuncture which is working so praying that continues to improve her back and overall pain level. She will also follow up with endocrinologist in December. We are hoping getting off chemo will help with the issues she has had there. Time will tell on most of this. We are cautiously trying to wean her off some more of her meds. It will be a slow process.

So on a different note please send up a prayer for our sweet clinic friend Finn. His cancer continues to spread. He and his mom sat often beside us at clinic. Such a sweet family. Please keep them in your prayers. Rhabdo is a horrible cancer.”

https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/09/childhood-cancer-grandmothers-guest-blog.html

https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/09/lilys-leukemia-battle.html

https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2018/09/september-is-childhood-cancer-awareness.html

Hungry children at schools

I'm watching a TV ad about hungry children and school feeding programs. It’s a very positive message about how these programs help children learn.

I attended kindergarten in Alameda, CA during WWII and remember receiving free milk (in glass bottles). I asked my husband who went to first grade (no kindergarten) in Indianapolis. He remembers free milk also--he even recalled leaving the classroom and going to a particular place in the building to get the milk.

When I was in high school we could buy milk cartons for 2 cents (no pop in the building in those days). The lunch program in the 1950s used "surplus government commodities," and according to the document cited below it began in 1947. Who can forget shredded turkey in gravy on mashed potatoes with a side of green beans? Not as good as mom's. My mother recalled lunches at her one room country school in Lee County, IL, but the parents brought it.

Now children can receive breakfast, lunch, after school snacks and summer nutrition programs when schools are closed either free or subsidized by the government. Breakfast programs began in 1966 as a pilot program, and became permanent in 1975. And now we battle obesity in children and almost 40 million children are fed at school. But "food insecurity" apparently has increased, not decreased.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_meal_programs_in_the_United_States

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/child-nutrition-programs/national-school-lunch-program.aspx

https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/SNDA-IV_Findings_0.pdf

When the government separates children from parents

As you all know, our state and local governments separate children from their parents--usually an agency called child services something, and like what's happening at the border it is for their own safety and well-being. Sometimes the parent is going to prison, sometimes the home life is chaotic, sometimes the parent is mentally ill, or abusive, or homeless or has died.

If possible, the agency representing the state works to reunite the family, just as is going on at the border, sometimes they place them with relatives, as immigration services is doing, sometimes the hearings are extended or postponed, as is happening to the illegal immigrants who then just disappear.

It's a long, tedious process. Occasionally our American children are "surrendered," and an adoptive family is found, or they go to foster care until they "age out." It's always disruptive and painful for the children. If you care about the children our government is protecting at the border, toss in some care for America's children who go through this every day. . . maybe visiting dad in prison, maybe at granny's part of the time, and aunty's home part of the time. Frequent school changes, lost records, and missing friends while going from foster home to foster home.

Although the agencies are state and local, much of the funding for our U.S. children comes from your federal government which has an elaborate reporting system, and even then it sometimes fails the children (which is the sad story you read in the papers). The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) collects case-level information from state and tribal title IV-E agencies on all children in foster care and those who have been adopted with title IV-E agency involvement. These child statistics include race, ethnicity, age, demographics, court dates, adoption and foster records, medical including immunization (which the foreign children don't have, btw), parents' problems, income, etc. quite detailed and the information collection and research has been going on for decades.

The border children have none of these records, and information is collected on the fly. The federal agencies have to be sensitive to child trafficking, and there's no quick way to find out who these children belong to. During the last administration an unknown number of children were placed with traffickers. I looked at the Ohio AFCARS page which had 18 different elements, and found it overwhelming. The section for tribal groups has 24 different elements.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/obama-administration-placed-children-with-human-traffickers-report-says/2016/01/28/39465050-c542-11e5-9693-933a4d31bcc8_story.html?

The Obama administration failed to protect thousands of Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border since 2011, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers and to abuses at the hands of government-approved caretakers, a Senate investigation has found.  (Washington Post, Jan 28, 2016)

Hymns of praise

 

We attend the traditional service at our Lutheran church (NALC) in Upper Arlington, Ohio.  There are two other types of services—one I call “happy clappy” which I’m guessing is mostly post-1960s songs and praise music without liturgy and the other “clangy bangy” with very loud guitars and drums, and we have two locations for one congregation. Right now we have a total of five services, but I can remember a time when we had 10, trying to suit all the tastes in worship style and preaching. Our traditional service at Lytham Road has a choir and the other two have praise bands with perhaps a quartet to lead the music.  The pastors rotate, so we all eventually hear the same sermons by the same pastors. Right now we’re in a study called “Gathered,” which is about worship.  Last week was on music (song) with sermon by senior pastor Steve Turnbull and yesterday was the sacraments by Aaron Thompson who is director of the high school ministry.  Lutherans have two sacraments—baptism and communion, but for 1500 years the Christian church had six sacraments, but Martin Luther cut them to two, and today many Protestant and Bible and non-denominational churches have no sacraments, only memorials.

So this all leads to the opening hymn of praise, “Praise the Lord! O Heavens. I always read the information about the hymn writers at the bottom of the page (I don’t like to read words on a screen, because I like to see the music so I can practice my dwindling ability to read music.) This one said, Text: The Foundling Hospital Collection, London, 1796.  One of the beautiful things I appreciate about the Internet is I don’t have to wait long to satisfy my curiosity. An antiquarian book dealer, Simon Beattie of London had one for sale and was discussing its history. You can go to his website for further explanation of the institution and its collection, and also http://www.intriguing-history.com/foundling-hospital-collection/  The hospital has a fascinating history which includes Dickens and Handel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundling_Hospital

The Foundling Hospital, Britain’s first children’s charity, had been established by Thomas Coram in 1739.  ‘The Hospital chapel, in use by 1749 and officially opened in 1753, soon became well known for its music as well as for its elegant architecture and adornments …  The singing of the children at ordinary Sunday services was a great attraction to fashionable London and became an important source of income to the Hospital through pew rents and voluntary contributions.  Music was specially composed and arranged for the Hospital chapel, and the success of the singing led to a demand for this music, which was met by the publication of a book called Psalms, Hymns and Anthems; for the Use of the Chapel of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children.  It is generally known more informally as the Foundling Hospital Collection’ (Nicholas Temperley, ‘The Hymn Books of the Foundling and Magdalen Hospital Chapels’, Music Publishing & Collecting: Essays in Honor of Donald W. Krummel (1994), p. 6).  [from Beattie’s blog)

This hymn is in the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship and the Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal of 1958, which notes the text is by John Bacchus Dykes, 1823-76, which wouldn’t work with the copyright of 1796.

Let us all kneel and thank God

This Republican PAC is funded by Democrat

Don’t let the name fool you.  “Republican Women for Progress” was founded all the way back in 2017, has literally never given any financial support to any Republican candidate, and their largest donor is a Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman who (1) was a major Democratic contributor long before Trump came on the scene and (2) is a man. If this is just the sort of "grass roots"  it's not clear Republicans should be too worried. It’s like thinking Nuns on a Bus are Catholic nuns.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/19/liberal-male-billionaire-republican-women-pac/

Voter ID

Yesterday I paid $4 for a spring coat at the Volunteers of America. Apple Green with a nice hood that folds inside the collar for those brisk lake breezes and I will keep it up at our lake house. I paid cash. The woman in front of me bought several nice winter coats for children. Her bill was $14 and she used a credit card. For that small purchase at a non-profit she had to show an ID. In fact, you almost can’t function in the USA if you don’t have ID to get in a government building or to make a purchase which shows you are alive and living somewhere with an address or a citizen. But Democrats rage. Why is that? Why do they want dead Chicagoans and live Hondurans cancelling out black votes?  This is a rhetorical question, of course.

Relax liberals

Although I'm not sure this will assure my Democrat friends and relatives, Brett Kavanaugh will probably not bring any change to the leftward list of the last 60+ years of SCOTUS decisions. Beginning with Earl Warren (when I was in high school and during the 40 years  I  was a Democrat) we've had an activist court. Americans have become very comfortable with being told what to do by the highest court. Democrats are never disappointed with their presidents' SCOTUS picks; Republicans always are with whom their presidents chose.

 Joseph Mussomeli at the Imaginative Conservative outlines the picks and pans. Eisenhower gave us Warren and Brennan; Nixon gave us Blackmun and Powell (Roe v. Wage and California v. Bakke); Ford's appointee John Paul Stevens helped strike down "a moment of silence;" Reagan's Sandra Day O'Connor often disappointed conservatives; GHW Bush's David Souter also sided with liberals; GW Bush's John Roberts supported Obamacare.

So relax liberals, Democrats, Progressives and Communists. Call back your witches, the Antifa, the Pink hatted haters. Stop the caravans invading. The court always leans left, even if it's not as fast as you desire.

NPR and The Donald

I was listening to NPR while putting away groceries. Did you know there is a woman in St. Petersburg posting discord and disrespect on Twitter who's a threat to our election integrity? I thought about it, and I'll stick with Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi and Rosie O'Donnell as bigger problems sowing hate and misinformation in our midterm elections. When that interview was over, the announcer went on to lament that President Trump called a prostitute "horse face," but had a soft spot of dictators. And all this with my tax money

Things change quickly in la-la land

Donald Trump, the man the Democrats/Progressives/Left and their buddies in late night TV accused of being mentally ill and incompetent, a stupid boob, a racist, sexist and homophobe, is now supposed to straighten out generations of Saudi regime behavior which includes hard line sharia justice, (chopping off hands, stoning women, beheading homosexuals). Until recently the Leftists were OK with sharia and if any of us were concerned WE were Islamophobes. Now that their victim is a journalist, well, it's shock and awe at the 7th century system of justice.

One of the President's simple phrases is "they are good people." He's quite predictable and doesn’t use big words. It's like Obama's stammer when he's searching for the next word. He said it about Mexicans coming illegally over the border, meaning not all were criminals, and the Left chose to NOT hear it, and instead heard "rapists." He said it in Charlottesville when angry groups were attacking each other, and others were just standing around and the Left heard only "I admire Nazis."

No matter what President Trump says, the leftist media and politicians translate it for the worst. He never said all Mexicans are criminals and rapists--he's not a racist. He never said the white supremacists were good and he agreed with them. That's just our "free press" media slinging it again, telling us what to think.

Birthday greetings?

Democrat Professor acting badly

Another example of a crazy academic Democrat--James Thomas, an assistant professor of sociology at Univ. of Mississippi—“stick your fingers in their salads.” What unhinges these guys? I hope this stops his tenure and promotion plans.

I checked his staff bio page. Thomas’ "dissertation research focused on the role of stand-up comedy venues in the production of contentious politics. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at three different sites where stand-up comedy took place: a professional comedy club, a self-described punk/rock/horror/sci-fi bar that hosted a weekly amateur comedy show, and a popular drag revue at an LGBT nightclub."

And you all thought PhDs had no fun! Imagine spending 5 years in comedy clubs and claiming you were working! And then when you finally get to "adult" you incite people to attack others in restaurants who disagree with you.

A caravan of illegal immigrants heading for our border

I supposed it would be paranoid to suggest the Democrats are behind pushing throngs of healthy, well dressed illegal immigrants to our border so there can be a confrontation complete with crying children on the news right before an election. If they were refugees, they'd just step over the border into Mexico. If they are political pawns and tools, they have to get to our border.

Why don't the central Americans who say they are escaping poverty and violence just go to Mexico? It's much closer, it's a very wealthy country, and they speak the same language. Some of the requirements for citizenship are steeper, but for being guest workers, that won't matter.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mexico-caravan-migrants-us-border

https://www.nola.com/news/2018/10/trump-threatens-to-use-military-to-secure-border-against-central-american-migrant-caravan.html

More threats on the life of the president and his administration by Democrats

Democratic senator Kamala Harris joked about killing President Trump and members of his administration in a Thursday appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show. (2017 story)  Should she get the rodeo clown treatment from CNN--you remember, all he did was wear an Obama mask. Didn't even threaten to kill him. Wasn't running for president. Wasn't begging for more screen time on TV to boost his career.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/17021/cnn-got-rodeo-clown-fired-cnn-still-employs-kathy-john-nolte

Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) expressed his amazement that “in 2013 such hatred, intolerance and disrespect towards the President of the United States could take place at the Missouri State Fair… Our fair is supposed to showcase the best of Missouri, instead, it showed an ugly face of intolerance and ignorance to the world.” Rep. Steve Webb (D-MO) added, “Sometimes apologies just won’t do. While I do not believe this represents all of rural Missouri, the racial undertones of a taunted rodeo clown dressed as our nation’s first black president is what the nation woke up to this morning. It’s time for all of us, from both rural and urban areas, to fight this type of sentiment with a united front. Leaders of this state need to do more than accept a pressured apology.”

Someone please contact Clay and Webb and ask what they think about the attacks on Trump and members of his administration the last 2 years of “resistance.”

Elizabeth Warren’s heritage

 

I noticed one cable news channel was calling the President's tweets about her phony claim, "racist." What about her depiction of her own paternal grandparents as racists, giving them as the reason her parents eloped (supposedly because her mother was part Cherokee). Another "throw granny under the bus" Democrat story. Everyone has family stories and histories, passed down. We just don't get to check the box for special treatment intended for someone else.

The recipes Elizabeth Warren contributed to “Pow Wow Chow” were for Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing and Cold Omelets with Crab Meat and appear to be word for word copies of a French chef's design.  Didn’t another Democrat fake a recipe story?

Warren didn't claim native American heritage until about age 30 when she got a diversity appointment at Harvard. I don't even call it cultural appropriation--just gaming the system since universities and the federal government were playing that game to look good. ". . .for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves." (Boston Globe, 2012)

Who determines that healthcare is too high?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American family earned $74,664 (before taxes) and spent $57,311 across various expense categories in 2016.  [not sure what is “family”—probably means household—doesn’t give number of people] 

1. Taxes 2. housing 3. transportation 4. food 5. pensions and insurance 6. Entertainment and contributions 7.  health care

Taxes are the biggest chunk. $18,900 each year, and then housing, $18,886. “Following housing costs, transportation ($9,049), food ($7,203), and pensions and personal insurance ($6,831) topped the list for the biggest ticketed items on most Americans' budgets. For the majority of people who prefer not to cook, the cost of dining out could add up big. The occasional luxury experience may not seem like a big drain on the average budget, but entertainment, cash contributions, and apparel and services accounted for nearly $7,000 (over 10 percent) of most Americans' annual expenses.”  Health care was $4,612. That said, health care increased almost 67% between 2006 and 2016, 8 years of which Obama was taking over our health insurance choices.

https://www.creditloan.com/blog/how-the-average-us-consumer-spends-their-paycheck/

Crockpot Chicken, Pat Miller’s recipe

Mix together

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup Panko bread crumbs

1/3 cup Parmesan cheese

1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning

Spread the mix over the chicken (I used 6 boneless thighs, but could be more—that’s what I had on hand)

Cook on low 5-6 hours in the crockpot.

September 2018, from my visit in Illinois

We’re having this tonight with tossed salad and baked butternut squash.

Your story

 

Years ago I started reading “Prayer,” by Ole Hallesby a Norwegian Lutheran, after a friend told me it was a “classic.”  Couldn’t make it through the first chapter when I was younger.  I’m reading it now in my morning devotions, and every word jumps off the page. He had a doctorate, and was a professor of theology, but wrote devotional titles for the ordinary Christian.  This was first published in 1931. I probably gave my copy away years ago, and am now reading the church’s library copy. This edition has a study guide with questions.

"The more helpless you are, the better you are fitted to pray, and the more answers to prayer you will experience." ~ Ole Hallesby

Hugh Hewitt outlines the first 2 Trump years

I’m exhausted watching President Trump.  How does he do it?  He has accomplished so much and kept so many promises, yet runs all over the country campaigning for local and state candidates. Are there three of him? The latest release of a hostage held by 2 years brings that number to over 15.  Yet the media are upset if he doesn’t have an answer for Khashhoggi’s disappearance in Turkey within 48 hours.  Hugh Hewitt writes:

“As President Trump’s first two years in office come to a close, we’ve seen

• two originalist justices confirmed to the Supreme Court,
•  26 originalist appeals court judges confirmed,
• 10 more nominated , and
• 41 new district court judges on the bench and
• dozens more pending.

Add to that:

• the repeal of the sequester on defense spending and
• a massive military rebuild underway;
• a massive tax cut of unprecedented depth and structural change;
• a renegotiated trade deal between the United States, Mexico and Canada;
• withdrawals from the awful Iran deal and, in effect,
• the absurdist Paris accord;
• the rollback of job-killing and bureaucrat-empowering regulations by the hundreds;
• an economy surging while unemployment drops to 3.7 percent ;
• and a new entente in the Middle East (one that arose despite
•  U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel) that
• sees the United States and Israel aligned and cooperating closely with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and now
• a new government in Iraq against the expansionist Iranian theocrats.

Hugh Hewitt Oct. 7, Washington Post

Tracy, guest blogger, visits DC during the Kavanaugh hearings!

So my husband and I went to Washington DC for our 20th anniversary . We had the trip planned a month and a half in advance, but it happened to end up being last week and weekend when all the Kavanaugh protests were happening . We got to be in the gallery on the senate floor when Mitch McConnell and crying Chuck Schumer addressed the subject of moving forward with the vote.  It was so neat to actually be in there . Anyways , we went to all the protests - we were very respectful, minus the fact that our presence itself was offensive because we wore our Trump gear and I had on a “Confirm Kavanaugh” shirt .

Despite the fact that we were just quietly observing these protests, we were verbally attacked multiple times . I was called a gender traitor more times than I can even count . One woman told us ( after observing our trump gear ) to go back to Alabama , Mississippi , or wherever the “F%*^” we were from. ( We are from GA ) . Perhaps she should take a look at the electoral map and see all the red. . .  why would she assume we were from Alabama or Mississippi ? We were yelled at to get the F out of there , that we weren’t welcome .

One woman walked right up to us with her daughter who appeared to be about 15 or 16 years old . First she told us that President Trump is only making America great if you’re white and she went on to talk about our white privilege ( she was also white) . She then went on to ask if we had daughters . My husband told her yes , that we have two daughters about her daughter’s age . She then proceeded to tell us that she hopes that our daughters get raped and get pregnant and get denied an abortion .

I could go on and on with stories about our DC trip. So many people would walk by us , see our shirts or hats and give us a discreet thumbs up but keep walking as to not associate with us in fear of being attacked.  On the other hand, some would stop and talk and hang out with us and we met some awesome people whom I hope to stay in touch with . One guy came up to us and started up a conversation with us and asked if he could hang with us . I told him of course ! He then pulled his MAGA hat out of his backpack and put it on because he felt safe to do so since he had others with him.

It was truly an eye opening experience. You see it on TV and it’s nuts . . .  but seeing it in person is a lot different . We actually witnessed the famous protestors banging and trying to claw open the Supreme Court doors . It was pure craziness .

The DC and Capitol police are amazing and on top of it.   Super kind and helpful, but when it came down to business - they weren’t playing . Even in the angry mob - I felt safe for the most part with the exception of a couple of times where I felt nervous . They also had undercover cops everywhere .