Nancy Crist 1927-2019, a good friend to all

Yesterday we said good-bye to Nancy Crist, a dear church friend of many years. Many Bible studies in her home, lots of laughs, many visits in hospital or nursing homes over the years, dinners together, and pick ups at the airport. She was always willing to help and give a hug and an encouraging word. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dispatch/obituary.aspx… She loved teaching at the deaf school and in church you could often see her signing as she listened to the sermon and hymns. Yes, 92 is a long life, but we also knew her father, a WWI vet and he lived to be over 100 as I recall.

I'm not sure when the photo was taken of our couples group from UALC called SALT, but Nancy and her husband Rod are in the back left, so it's probably about 1992--Bob had hair and I had big hair. What fun we had.

So many in this photo are gone now—only Charlene (center), Bob and I (back right) and Andrea (in front of Bob) are left.

Illinois and Indiana budgets

I'm sure there is more to this story--cartoons and memes never tell the whole story. Perhaps someone from Illinois knows?  Is Illinois dying?  Is it Chicago mismanagement and corruption?

Democrat media gives Trump so much free publicity, just like 2016

Worth reading again. President Trump lives rent free in the heads of the Democrat media. I heard that Trump gets 11x the publicity, all negative, from cable and broadcast news than all the Democrats running against him. Also that he has 94% support from Republicans.

“Do not underestimate the Trump voter. When they channel-surfed cable news, or heard of the antics that took place on college campuses, or saw street-theater demonstrations on television, they boiled at the idea that they had often worked at minimum wage, saw their jobs outsourced, never discriminated against anyone, and yet were being damned by smug youth who in a few years would draw on their college B.A. cattle brand, their parents’ lobbying, and the good-old-boy network of being rich, white, and from the proper zip code to inherit their rightful place in business, investment, politics, entertainment, the media, or the university. Google all the rich, white, privileged pundits who at one time or another, both in jest and in all seriousness, have called to deport the deplorables and in their stead give amnesty to illegal aliens or import “better” people from abroad.” Victor Davis Hanson,

Native American speaks out against latest racism, guest blogger, Candace Brown

As a Native American woman I have never seen so many people use race as an excuse to push an agenda. I grew up in a time that racism was actually beginning to be called out and attitudes, stigma, and stereotypes were seen for what they are. We had come so far from the racial separatism from my youth by the time Obama became president. As a young girl, I remember white people refusing to allow classmates to visit my home because I lived on a reservation. One woman I knew drove one hundred miles out of her way in order to avoid going through the reservation, on her way to a large city.
We actually overcame this kind of racism. We learned, we grew, and we became stronger for it. Then Obama happened. In the 8 years he was in office, he destroyed the progress this country had made and set us at odds once again based on skin color. I voted for him his first term, but watched as he took years of knocking down barriers of color and ethnicity to be a country of American people and turned us into a pathetic politically corrupt, victim mentality, shadow of our once great country. I remember hearing over and over his words, “ that is not who WE are” he used us against each other, he turned once strong relationships into victim and perpetrator.

If we do not end this kind of political hate mongering that uses color to justify hate, we are no better than him.

Charges of White Privilege

The charge of “white privilege,” or “White supremacy” hurled at Americans of European and other area countries is a way to shame, bully and induce guilt, whether or not you personally intended it that way. Shaming and bullying are also how abused women, slaves, trafficked children, and elderly are kept quiet. It’s as old as slavery. And Trump voters and conservatives of any stripe are the victims. The Left knows this well—their ideology killed 100 million in the 20^th century, and it didn’t all start with gas chambers, reeducation camps, or storm troopers. Right now, the charges are justifying creating data bases of Trump supporters so they can be publicly shamed or lose their incomes; it justifies Google CEOs for creating winners and losers in elections via social media; it justifies attacking people wearing read hats, with or without MAGA stitching; it justifies 95% of academic faculty being liberal and only those promoted and tenured; it justifies knocking down buildings and statues not just of Confederate generals (all of whom were pardoned by the U.S. government) but founders and current members of Trump cabinet.

I am more concerned about parents dragging children (and some not their own) across thousands of miles in very unsafe conditions subject to weather, assault and separation from grandparents, extended family and home than I am of well run detention centers where they are well fed and housed, and safe from traffickers (which was the intention of that regulation). Millions have been subjected to that illegal border crossing—only hundreds to detention centers, which are quickly emptied as parents’ (or other adults) cases are resolved, most to float out into the general U.S. population. I’m very concerned that U.S. border patrol is babysitting rather than keeping the borders safe for both Americans and Mexicans from all the non-Mexicans, including ISIS fighters, who cross without a problem.

I’m very concerned that the Leftist organizations and politicians have made illegal immigration an issue of race and color (and over 80% are NOT “people of color”) because they know charges of racism turn on the white guilt to shut people up and garner donations from Democrats. We have more children on the streets with brain addled homeless parents than in detention centers, but they would probably be safer, cleaner and better educated if instead of the squalor of San Francisco, they were in an Arizona facility.

Socialism by guest blogger, Michael Smith

"Socialism is like a Ponzi scheme, it only works for the ones at the top and only then if they an keep everyone in the game. The major difference is that where Ponzi schemes depend on greed, socialist regimes depend on coercive force.

Socialists always promise Norway (which is a capitalist country with a massive welfare state funded by oil an gas - not socialist at all) but socialism is not scalable - it doesn't have a volume knob that goes from one to ten, Socialism is binary, it only has an on/off switch. When socialists shoot for Norway, they always wind up with Venezuela."

Pizza for lunch and OSU football

So I picked up a pizza a Walmart.  Wondered what beef patty crumbles were.  Here’s the list. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Marketside-Ultimate-Meat-Pizza-Medium-29-5-oz/366231555

Ingredients:

Crust (Enriched Unbleached Wheat Flour [Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid], Water, Yeast, Palm Oil, Sugar, Contains 2% or Less of: Vegetable Oil[Soybean Oil and/or Olive Pomace Oil and/or Extra Virgin Olive Oil], Salt, Natural Flavor. May Also Contain Acacia Gum, Calcium Sulfate, Ascorbic Acid, and Enzymes), Low Moisture Mozzarella Cheese (Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), Sauce (Tomato Puree [Water, Tomato Paste], Sugar, Contains 2% or Less of: Spices, Salt, Soybean Oil, Citric Acid, Xanthan Gum, Dehydrated Onion, Garlic Powder), Cooked Italian Sausage (Pork, Spices, Water, Salt, Corn Syrup Solids, Dried Garlic, Paprika, Paprika and Annatto Extract, Sugar, Lemon Juice Powder [Corn Syrup Solids, Lemon Juice Solids, Lemon Oil], Flavoring), Pepperoni, BHA, BHT, with Citric Acid Added to Help Protect Flavor (Pork, Salt, Contains 2% or Less of: Beef, Dextrose, Flavorings, Lactic Acid Starter Culture, Oleoresin of; Paprika, Sodium Nitrite, Spices, Sodium Ascorbate, BHA, BHT, Citric Acid), Sliced Beef Steak, Water and Modified Food Starch Product with Natural Smoke Flavor Added (Beef, Water, Dextrose, Sodium Phosphate, Modified Corn Starch, Salt, Autolyzed Yeast, Hydrolyzed Corn Protein.; Coated with: Dextrose, Salt, Sodium Citrate, Modified Corn Starch, Sodium Diacetate, Natural Flavor, Spices, Garlic Powder, Mustard, Onion Powder, Paprika, Grill Flavor, Natural Smoke Flavor), Cooked Seasoned Beef Topping, BHA, BHT, and Citric Acid Added to Help Protect Flavor (Beef, Water, Salt, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Spices, Dextrose, Sodium Phosphate, Dried Onion, Dried Garlic, Dried Worcestershire Sauce [Distilled Vinegar, Molasses, Corn Syrup, Salt, Caramel Color, Garlic Powder, Sugar, Spices, Tamarind, Natural Flavor], BHA, BHT, Citric Acid), Not Smoked Provolone Cheese (Cultured Pasteurized Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Fully Cooked Beef Patty Crumbles (Beef, Water, Textured Vegetable Protein [Soy Flour, Caramel Color], Salt, Spice, Granulated Onion,; Granulated Garlic), Contains 2% or less of Fully Cooked Bacon Bits (Pork Cured with Water, Salt, Natural Smoke Flavoring, Sodium Phosphate, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite; May Contain Sugar, Brown Sugar), Grated Parmesan Cheese (Parmesan Cheese [Pasteurized Part-Skim Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes], Powdered Cellulose [Anti-Caking Agent]), Grated Romano Cheese (Romano Cheese Made From Cow's Milk [Pasteurized Cow's Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes], Powdered Cellulose [Anti-Caking Agent]), Dehydrated Garlic, Dried Oregano, Dried Parsley.

A list adjustment for Democrats in 2020

We need to adjust the list of campaign promises by Democrat candidates and their supporters:

• Abortion and infanticide for American babies plus black and brown babies in developing countries.
• Dox, threaten, blacklist and bully anyone who votes for or donates to Trump, threaten their livelihood and their children.
• Destroy as many freedoms in the Bill of Rights as possible--religion, speech, guns, and assembly.
• Eliminate borders and citizenship so Democrats can guarantee a "free and fair election."
• Rewrite history so that any invention, literary work, business success, song, building, statue or school that has the name (even on a memorial brick) of an American of western heritage is destroyed, maligned or forgotten.
• Continue to deny that anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism.
• Increase taxes to fund more government employees for Climate Change. Assure only the “rich” will be affected—they already pay 95% of the taxes.
• Outlaw red baseball caps.

Do as I say, not as I do

Bahram Arkadi built Lifetime Fitness (about 130 locations) where I have a Silver Sneakers membership and is a multimillionaire. Recently in the magazine "Experiencing Life" he pointed out the root causes of threats to biodiversity: overpopulation and overconsumption. He personally wants for nothing. Has his family and his millions, and he's lecturing the rest of us on birth control and materialism like someone running for president? The U.S. population is already below replacement rate, and his business was built on a never ending hunger and quest to look and feel better that will always sell.

One way to help the environment is to pick up trash on your walks—and you don’t do that in a gym.

A rant about NPR from long time listener

“National Public Radio covers, in the absence of covering the case of the opposite side adequately, and supports the causes of abortion, homosexual, and transgender “rights.” Its editors directly instruct on-air staff how to speak about matters of abortion: reference to “babies” or the “unborn” in the wombs of pregnant women is verboten. As one commentator noted, NPR’s linguistic policing has nothing to do with objectivity; it’s all about shifting public opinion. NPR shoves same-sex “marriage” in our faces, but it lets traditional marriage and other forms of moral restraint fend for themselves. . .

National Public Radio’s coverage of the recent rash of mass murders tends to a mechanical and simplistic “solution”: ban guns. It made a hero of high-school anti-gun activist David Hogg because he agrees with this position. But NPR tells us basically nothing about the familial and sociological backgrounds of the murderers or of those persons and factors directly abetting the murderers: police, school officials, family members and other relations, as shown at times via personal expression on the media.”

Read the whole article in the New Oxford Review. https://www.newoxfordreview.org/documents/why-ive-tuned-out-national-public-radio/#

The Imposter Syndrome

Is there no end to attempts to make women victims? A recent issue of JAMA (August 6, 2019) had an op-ed on "imposter syndrome." I didn't know it had a name, but it's that fear that some very successful people have of being exposed as a fraud--that they shouldn't really be a success despite all the evidence--money, fame, top position, etc. They attribute it to "luck," or timing, or even that they've duped others.

And according to the authors (I think female, although can't tell from the names), this syndrome affects more women in medicine than men, and rather than the person seeking help with their self worth, the world needs to change so women don't perpetuate a cycle of minimizing their ambition and salary expectations. The answer is for health organizations to be more proactive in promoting women and minorities, and rooting out causes of #impostersyndrome because it is only a symptom of the inequality that women and minorities experience.

SMH.

The little Constitution, guest blogger Maryann Leboffe Pinelli

“I carry the Constitution with me, in my car and it’s on my IPAD ... 
I’m a Real Estate Agent. A few years ago I had a younger client looking for a home. In conversation he brought up the 2nd Amendment, there were “No hunting” signs in the area. Now I try and avoid political conversations in business as there’s no way I can deny my beliefs, although am short and polite, so I never start the conversation. Turned out he was a legal gun owner. I go in my car and get out my little booklet, 4”x 6” 36 pages, and this kid was like, wow, that’s it? He had never read it, thought it had to be thousands of pages, with language he’d never be able to get thru. I told him he could have it, but he said no thank you and that was it.

A few months later, at his closing, when we’re walking out, he thanks me, for helping him find his new home, but even more for introducing him the simple but beautiful Written words of the Constitution...said he bought his own and now carry’s it with him, in his car.

It never ceases to amaze me, the simplicity of our Constitution. That Our founding fathers, a group of what today would be “millennials”, from various economic, educational and cultural backgrounds, conceived and wrote such a perfect document for Freedom and human God given rights.

And it never ceases to infuriate me how we have allowed corrupt politicians, justices, judges and liberal academia, chip away at it.
No longer will we survive with sell out career politicians who are weak, easily bought and paid for by the highest bidder, and who do not believe in the Constitution as written.

This was and is President Donald J. Trump’s time to be President. To bring our country back to the core beliefs of our Founding Fathers. I didn’t vote for a “Presidential” puppet, a chameleon who becomes whatever the media and fake polls demand he/she be. I voted For someone who would be fearless, tireless and not intimidated. For someone whose intelligence, instinct and shear determination would be used do what’s right to fight for America and her people. Period.

I was at his inauguration, listening to his speech brought tears to my eyes, as I thought, Finally. Two and a half years in, I can’t believe all he has accomplished, while under 24/7 attack and 90% on his own, with no help from Congress.

Bringing our country back from decades of corruption will not be easy. It will take more than his re-election. It will take “Trumpian” like candidates for us to send to Washington to help him, and will take a 2024 candidate that can be as determined, and strong as him, as possible.”

Overuse of the word CRISIS

What if media, politicians, academics and marketers couldn't use the word "crisis?"  It must be like the word “sale,” because it seems to work.

• "Air quality is quickly becoming a global health crisis, especially in highly urbanized areas."
• " Every year, Ohio’s drug crisis grows."
• "Obesity crisis: 2 billion people now overweight. . ."
• "We don’t have a “gun” crisis in America. We have a crisis of angry, young men."
• "Refugee education in crisis."
• "10 facts about Africa's education crisis."
• "The ocean plastic crisis."
• "Domestic violence crisis text line."
• "Crisis of the nones in church."
• "The American fashion industry is in crisis."
• "At a moment of architectural crisis, Trent university . . . "
• "The [water] crisis in Flint is a result of a failure at all levels of government. "
• "Democrats face identity crisis."
• "Are you ready for the financial crisis of 2019?"
• "Adolescent girls in crisis."
• "There is a gluten crisis hanging over the baking industry as several factors converge in a slow and insidious manner."
• "Crisis management plan for your wedding."
• "There's a global banana crisis."
• "Are we handling the bee crisis wrong?"
• "The coal crisis has hit Powder River Basin."
• "Facebook is facing an existential crisis"
• "The crisis of the Democrats is becoming more evident each week."
• "The border crisis is fracturing the Democrat party."

In lieu of flowers . . .

I did not know this lovely, 100-year old woman, but noticed this in her obituary, and thought it worth sharing: "In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that you “don’t postpone pleasure.” Spend undistracted time with your children, take a walk in the woods with your loved ones, send a birthday card or bake a pie for someone who needs it, and make a toast to enduring friendships, lifelong and beyond. That is what our mom would wish for you."

Another interesting thing about this obituary is that early in her life she lived on Lake Webster in Indiana, and met her first husband in 1949 on the "Dixie," a paddleboat. My husband learned to love vacationing on the lake at Lake Webster where his grandparents had a cottage, and he'd been on the Dixie many times. Who knows, maybe he saw her! 6 degrees of separation?

That pesky male female gap

The Pew Research Center found that 2019 will be the first year in which women will comprise the majority of the college-educated labor force in the United States. Women first received more than half of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in the 1981-82 academic year—almost 40 years ago.  Today they earn about 57% of bachelor’s degrees. The number of college-educated women in the adult population (ages 25 and older) surpassed the number of college-educated men in 2007. Does anyone fret about that imbalance created by loans, scholarships, affirmative action and unfair regulations?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-near-milestone-in-the-college-educated-labor-force/ft_19-06-20_womenlaborforce_women-now-half-of-us-college-educated-labor-force-2/

So why are we still hearing about the “gap,” especially since for about 4 decades the college enrollment rate for females has exceeded males and for the younger demographic there is no gap given the same starting place and position? 

There’s a lot of mischief in gap statistics.  Especially college degrees.  Women, even in the same fields as men, may select different specialties—pediatrics instead of neuroscience, family law instead of corporate law, bibliographer instead of library director, or they may want to be an artist instead of a plumber or electrician. Women may decide to raise their own children and “stop-out” for 5-10 years, reentering the labor market with reduced value to employers.  Married women with husbands of equal education and financial status often have the luxury to leave the medical or law fields to start a business in a completely different direction such as interior design or selling craft items. 

Unfortunately, these “justice” studies rarely compare women with women—female doctors with female pre-school directors, or female TV hosts with female owners of bed and breakfasts, or female chefs with female dishwashers, female traffic court judges with female circuit court judges. Why not compare single women who are heads of household with married women who have no children?  In the universe of women employees there are gaps with men, but there are overlaps also, with low end of the bell curve  the men who clean the offices of  wealthy women politicians like Pelosi and Warren who are sitting at the high end of the bell curve.

What is concerning to me is that college educated women increasingly vote for Democrats, seeing themselves still as needing additional help from the government to manage their lives.

Philomena the movie, HIV and Reagan

This week at Lakeside we have a foreign film series, but these are all in English and two are about international adoptions, Philomena (British) and Lion (Australian).  I’d seen Philomena starring Judi Dench years ago and had forgotten most of it, particularly the sub-plot about the journalist who had lost his career and was more or less forced into writing a “human interest” non-fiction story which later became the book and then the movie. That it’s anti-Catholic is probably no surprise—the Roman Catholic church may be the largest and oldest target for both religious issues and social issues. Atheists, agnostics, and Protestants can all find something to criticize.    It is not just a Christian church—it is the largest social service agency in the world, and has about 26 different branches under its name all over the world each with unique language and culture. In the end, it is Philomena (the woman) who understands forgiveness, not the nuns and certainly not the journalist/author.

But Philomena the movie is also anti-Republican and anti-President Reagan, and that’s par for the course for the Brits who think we should have been happy to remain under the Union Jack.   Philomena’s birth son was adopted by an affluent American couple and grows up to become a valuable member of both the Reagan and Bush I administrations. He dies of AIDS in 1995.  However, he was gay during a time when there was almost no hope for remission from HIV (and 30 years later—it was identified in 1981—there is still no vaccine or cure), so Reagan is blamed for not pushing the federal funding more vigorously in 1986.  That’s absurd.

The U.S. was emerging from the boomer, free-sex and legalized abortion movements of the 1960s and 1970s,  people were demanding privacy in all things sexual and personal, the gay lifestyle was increasingly being recognized for “loving and caring” relationships particularly in literature and the arts, healthy lifestyles and personal responsibility for health advocacy groups were growing.  On top of all that, in the medical field researchers and university faculty were practically assuring us that the era and threat of infectious diseases was over.  STDs were going to be held at bay not by responsible monogamous life styles, but with penicillin. I remember that from the medical journals I was handling in the library.  Infectious disease journals were gathering dust.

President Reagan was blamed for the “gay disease” charge about HIV-AIDS in this movie.  And yet if you read any CDC fact sheet today, virtually all new cases (83%) of HIV are among “men who have sex with men” and that includes bi-sexual men who then infect women.
The recommendations by the USPSTF on screening are in order of importance:

1) Male-to-male sex (every 3 to 6 months screened)
And any risky life style comes next.
2) injection drug use
3) anal intercourse without a condom
4) more than one partner whose HIV status is unknown
5) transactional sex (exchanging sex for drugs)
6) commercial sex trade (prostitution)

So you see, in many cases it is still behavior and personal responsibility, not the federal government, which is your best protection from any sexual disease from syphilis to gonorrhea to AIDS. Don’t get advice on serious health matters from a movie with a political agenda.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG3QP8foCvg  Trailer

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2690288/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/philomena_and_the_magical_sodomite_archetype.html
https://www.thebalance.com/who-funds-biomedical-research-2663193
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/

Lakeside 2019, winding down, week 11

The Labor Day fireworks will be on Saturday, so we won’t miss them, since we’re usually not here on Labor Day.  There are lots of social activities this week as people who are left wind down from a busy summer. We went to a nice neighborhood brunch on Sunday after dockside service—great waffles made on two very ancient waffle irons topped with real maple syrup and fresh fruit.   I went out for breakfast and lunch on Tuesday. Breakfast with Joan at the Patio Restaurant and lunch at the Lakeside Women’s Club which was a noon potluck of just salads and desserts.  Tonight we’ve invited our neighbor Tom for dinner—pork roast, pea salad, roasted butternut squash, and fresh fruit, then going to another neighbor’s for dessert. Bob has his last Guy’s Club lunch today—they always travel by motor boat to a local restaurant. Thursday is dinner with two other neighbors on Oak Ave.

This week is called Lakeside University with all the hosts/lecturers being Lakeside people or a town near-by.  We had a lecture on Monday by the great granddaughter and her husband of R.E. Olds, of Oldsmobile and yachting fame. They have a cottage here.  Another lecture on Tuesday was by the founder of our sailing club. There is an afternoon foreign films series, and the first two were on adoption themes, Philomena (English) and The Lion (Australian).  Both are outstanding—if you have a chance, be sure to see them. Today I mentioned the films to my neighbor as we walked to the morning program, and she mentioned that she is adopted, and within the last year she found (or was found by) a half-brother.  She said she had a wonderful life with her parents and had never been interested in searching (both films were about the search).

Top Hat the movie with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was the evening Hoover show on Tuesday—so much more fun with an audience.  Another foreign film today, but I sat through about 30 minutes, and it seemed to be about the frailties of aging, dementia and government bureaucracy when he tries to build a house  (Still Mine), so that didn’t seem entertaining and I left.

Today’s morning lecture was on the American Songbook by our wonderful musical director and vice president for programming, Michael Shirtz.  At Hoover tonight there will be an actual performance by him—he sings and plays piano. 

The lake was wild, windy and nasty on Sunday, but Monday and Tuesday was quite and calm. Monday night’s program, a piano player (boogie woogie) was moved from the gazebo to Hoover due to the weather, and he was very good.

And to top things off, we’re having the carpet cleaned on Friday.  We’ve never done that but since it was installed in 1989, it’s time.

Thoughts on Mother and mothering

Sunday, August 25, was the 85th anniversary of my parents’ wedding. They died in 2000 and 2002, having celebrated together 65 years during the previous August wedding of my sister in 1999.  My dad wasn’t one to keep a diary, but he did jot things down in a little spiral bound notebook later in life, and he noted that on their anniversary in 2000 he took Mother’s ashes on a ride in the country on their 66th.  He never tired of driving the country roads even though he had done that most of his life to earn a living. After they’d both retired, he and Mom would sometimes take Sunday drives around Ogle and Lee counties just recalling the past, or enjoying the changes of seasons, or how the crops were doing, or which farms were being kept up. In fact, even when I was a child, Sunday afternoon “entertainment” might be driving to Iowa to look around. That certainly wouldn't have been my choice with 4 children in the car.

I’d also been thinking about Mom because a very old memory had popped to the surface during one of our Lakeside 2019 classes by Chef Stacy.  It was on home made pasta.  We didn’t eat a lot of pasta when I was growing up—our spaghetti came out of a can and would be for lunch--never dinner. I didn’t learn to appreciate pasta until meeting Bob’s mother, who made fabulous homemade spaghetti, with tossed salad and garlic bread.   But Mom was also trying out new things, and she must have seen an article on making noodles, because we went through a phase when we lived in Forreston of her testing out this new skill.  I remember watching her make it—the recipe is very simple, just flour, water and eggs.  She did her best, but the beef roast and noodles dish was usually a gooey mess.  Dad might have said something about it, and she dropped that experiment forever to disappear from her menus.  Stacy made it look so easy, I may try it, and dedicate the gooey mess to Mom’s memory.

In today’s meditation I read a letter from Concepcion Cabrera de Armida to her son Pancho (nickname for Francisco).  She died in 1937, and was a wife, mother, and writer in Mexico.  She apparently wrote about 65,000 of these little messages.  It reminds me a lot of what my mother would say to her children.

• Avoid the least quarrel and do not stop at any sacrifice to have peace in your home.
• It is better to bend than to break.
• With prudence, education and certain common sense, many troubles can be avoided.
• Oh, my son! Never forget that everything you are, all that you have and the happiness you now enjoy, you owe to the good Jesus who has loved you with such tenderness! From how many dangers he has delivered you!
• Be grateful, my son: recognize with gratitude the fatherly tenderness of God over you and demonstrate your gratitude by your actions, and never be ashamed of being a good Christian.
• Be dignified with everyone but never haughty.
• Keep on being honest under every circumstance.
• Do not soil your soul with business deals that extort your fellowmen.
• May your soul be always clean—poverty does not soil or shame one—and you will be happy.
• May your home, dear Pancho, be a model of Christian homes where the Lord reigns and a worldly atmosphere does not enter; where the peace and happiness that are born from the accomplishment of one’s duty, be settled there.
• Never spend more than you have, not even all that you earn; thrift helps marriages avoid a lot of trouble.
• But do not be avaricious; aim for a happy medium maintaining a decent and fitting social standing, not living in luxury, even if you become rich.
• Let the poor be considered one of your ordinary expenses, and God will not fail you.
• Don’t limit your piety to exterior observance but rather practice the virtues, being patient in adversity, resigned to the adverse events of life, because if we receive from the Lord so many goods, why should we not also receive the sufferings he desires to send us? (Magnificat, vol. 21, no. 6 p. 387-388.)

Loneliness is the worst poverty

The guest pastor this morning quoted Mother Teresa on loneliness being the worst kind of poverty, but when I checked I think he must have paraphrased because I couldn't find the exact one. But I may have found one even better.

"During a speech in 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C., she said, “I can never forget the experience I had in visiting a home where they kept all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them into an institution and forgotten them – maybe. I saw that in that home these old people had everything – good food, comfortable place, television, everything, but everyone was looking toward the door. And I did not see a single one with a smile on the face. I turned to Sister and I asked: “Why do these people who have every comfort here, why are they all looking toward the door? Why are they not smiling?” I am so used to seeing the smiles on our people, even the dying ones’ smile. And Sister said: ‘This is the way it is nearly every day. They are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten.’ And see, this neglect to love brings spiritual poverty… When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out of society – that spiritual poverty is much harder to overcome.” "

The 2020 election will be stolen

"We won't beat Trump by blaming others and boasting about our own supposed virtue." "We liberals need self-criticism," Ioannis Gatsiounis, WSJ, Aug. 22.

I'm not so sure. I've been watching this virtue signaling (under various names) for 25-30 years, beginning when I was on the faculty   at OSU. Blame and self-righteousness goes a long way in politics. I've yet to hear one word about policy from the opposition that wasn't first built on hate for Trump, then charges of racism or misogyny. Even Jill Biden is campaigning for Joe on that.

• Democrats have created a new race--"people of color" often applied to those of 100% European ancestry with a Spanish surname.
• We've still got think tanks protected by their 501c3 status comparing the salaries of female part time day care workers with male electrical engineers and declaring a gender wage gap and then giving candidates talking points.
• There isn't a shred of scientific evidence that men can become women, but the LGBTQ agenda has been able to undo Title IX and get backing from major corporation who are reluctant to fight back if profit is involved.
• Words have become weaponized to create white supremacism where none exists.
• No one is punished or brought up on hate crime charges for maligning or destroying the businesses of Americans whose ancestors came from Europe.

Democrats plan to steal the 2020 election--probably could save a lot of money in campaigning. And they will do it with the Constitution which allows states to figure out their own electoral votes. Usually Democrats don't like the Constitution when it comes to rights of the unborn, or 2nd amendment or religion, but they'll love it for stealing this election. Not only do Democrat controlled states have an advantage in non-citizen population (which determines the count for the House), but when they control the state, they control how the Electoral College will vote.