Tuesday, October 26, 2010

A RESTRAINING ORDER

As Powerline says in a recent posting, in words to this effect:

November 2 is not an election, it is a restraining order!

THREE WEEKS ON THE HOME FRONT

About three weeks have elapsed.
A number of Downstate chores were contemplated and two biggies were undertaken.

First there was the house painting, outside. Scraping first, of course.

We are mostly brick, but the woodwork took about a day or so on a side.
Four sides.

An eight and a six foot ladder were required for the various spaces, the normal ones and the hard-to-get-into.

And it looks good.
But we’re not quite done. Little bits of trim here and there, but Dear Wife did the bench on the porch and the wooden shutters. And the door.

Looks nice.

And then, just toward the end of it all, on a side of the house where the flower bed by the house was covered in fallen leaves, we moved the ladder a few inches back from where it was, checked the solididty, stepped up with left foot first, then the right, and over the ladder went [into a leaf-covered hole under the right front leg] left unfilled when a plant was transplanted.

The gallon of paint can was on the way off the ladder platform, the ladder was going down, and Dear Himself endeavored bravely to save the paint, resulting in a foot-and-a-half straight leg fall off the ladder, straight down on the unbent leg.
This was almost a year after the same type of fall off our stairs Up North.

Pain and stiffness did not really set in till the next day, when we started cleaning out our garage in prep for a late-fall garage sale [I hate garage sales, but I love the Pickers and the Pawn Shop.

Go figure.

Up and down the stairs; up and down the ladders; and cleaning, dusting, sorting, ALL ON FOOT.
Anyway, it is over now for the time being.

Our next such endeavor will be the Church garage sale. Even more fellowship possible.

The best things about garage sales are the people you meet, most of ‘em anyway.

Wwe spent what seemed like years cleaning and reclaiming and finding real treasures and then the sale.
We made a few bucks; met some real characters; had fellowship with Dear Daughter who helped us out mightily, and tomorrow it is off to the Salvation Army with all sort of stuff.

Thank the Lord.

And Dear Leg/knee appears to be healing.
We’ve been taking it a bit easy since.

Tomorrow, we hope to bring the fish in from the pond, very late this year.

And then down to explore the pipe tobacco in a charming tobacconist shop.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

A BEST SELLER - MARK TWAIN

I See by the Papers was the title of a newspaper column some years ago.

I regret that I have forgotten when and by whom and where.

But today I saw in the papers that a three-volume set of the auto-biography of Mark Twain is being released, and it is in the top four or five pre-orders for Amazon and Barnes&Noble - a bestseller w/o doubt, 100 years after the death of the author.

Not too shabby.

I have no doubt that he has much to say that will be of value to us today.

YOU THINK?

Of course npr should be taxpayer defunded!

As our police officer son remarked when told that a man ticketed for shooting his non-performing lawnmower was drunk, "You think?"

npr is condescending; superior; leftist; liberal; so full of itself....

I listen daily for the occasional gem...and the liberal tripe which is so very prevalent.

The firing was low class; illiberal; disgusting.

It was so typical of the liberal mindset...discriminatory; illiberal in fact; cruel; stupid; so guilty of the double standard; and adjectives which i only utter when by myself.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

'POWERLINE' ON COLUMBUS DAY

The folks at Powerline have a lot to say about the revisionist line with regard to the observation of Columbus Day in our schools.

If only context could be included in the narratives by the revisionists.

Why do they have to spend so much time on ONLY the negative?

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/10/027444.php

DOES IT REALLY MATTER?

The Episcopal Church of the United States, ECUSA, continues its slide into irrelevance.

11 October is Columbus Day.

Columbus, the seafarer who hundreds of years ago tried his hand at sailing as far as he could to find a new world.
Sixty years ago he was described in most American schools as one of the great figures of history, one who contributed mightily to the opening up of the New World.
We were reminded yesterday that the Diocese of Oregon is this year taking a slightly different tack:

On the eve of Columbus Day, when some Americans will remember the Italian explorer kindly and others won't, the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon is calling attention to the Doctrine of Discovery, the philosophy that fueled European claims to the riches of the New World without regard for the indigenous people who already lived there.

At its 2009 General Convention, the Episcopal Church voted overwhelmingly to repudiate the doctrine and called for its elimination from "contemporary policies, programs and structures."


We wonder if the Diocese also has chosen to “repudiate” Columbus as well.
And that reminded us of a recently promulgated pastoral letter from our Presiding Bishop, a letter which condemned the carrying out of US immigration law, in effect condemning the view that illegal immigrants are indeed illegal and should be treated as such.

We profess that inhumane policies directed against undocumented persons (raids, separation of families, denial of health services) are intolerable on religious and humanitarian grounds, as is attested by the consensus of a wide range of religious bodies on this matter.
We categorically reject efforts to criminalize undocumented migrants and immigrants, and deplore the separation of families and the unnecessary incarceration of undocumented workers.

As a vestrymen in my parish, I wonder what should be my reaction to such pronouncements from the greater church.

Should I ignore them?
Should I write letters in favor or in support?
Should we discuss such statements in special session?

We are busy people.
We attend church and go about our business.

And our national church goes about its business.

And some of that business is inane, even foolish.
How about naive?

What can be the future for a church which ceases to stand for even a modicum of secular common sense when it deals with issues which have significant secular significance?

The future might well be a future of irrelevance.

Monday, October 11, 2010

ELECTION 2010

A friend invited us last night to ‘work’ election day, to staff the table where voters are processed in to cast their ballot.

We were informed that there is a class to take and that recruits are required to appear at their duty stations at something like 6am.
Is there even such a time???

Pay apparently is … $110. Not a paltry sum. You could buy a lot of scotch for that amount of remuneration.

Anyway, we will not turn out to staff that trench of our democracy. God willing, we will spend the day routinely, monitoring a bit more thoroughly the coverage on the various news sources, and look forward to an evening of intense observation.

We hope for a Republican wave to swamp the democrats at all levels which can influence the national leadership.
We look forward to influencing some of our friends and all of our family and intend to pray for the Republican victory.

b.o.’s ideological programs have proven to be a disaster, hopefully one which can be rectified and reversed.

As we have said in these pages before, our nation will get the leadership it deserves.
If the American voter does not vote intelligently, we will probably be cursed with unintelligent leadership.

Surely, surely, the disaster of b.o. will now be apparent to enough Americans to force him to accommodate policies which will at last remedy the problems which he inherited and which he has caused.

HOME

Monday night, late.

The days are warm, the nights are cool. Even cold sometimes.

Fall has arrived. Leaves are falling. The koi pond cries out to be readied for winter.

The Northern Camp is closed, winterized. New gear raised some questions.
But the Camp is closed for the season.

We are Downstate, in our ‘base’ areas.

The fall/winter modes are kicking in. There will be Town Hall; Elks; Downstate church; garage sale; home chores; reacquainting with the panoply of local vendors and friends we haven’t seen for months.
There is firewood to be split and the first fire of the new season to be savored.

The cycle has turned.
.
Life continues, thank The Lord.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

THE CONGRESSIONAL

Another Congressional Medal of Honor is about to be awarded, the third we believe in but a few months.

Too bad two of three are going posthumously.

We read some time ago that we are running out of living Congressionals.

Surely, the article suggested, and we echo, there should be at least a few awardable, deserving veterans who have survived their act(s) of heroism.

Why not?

Friday, October 1, 2010

EILEEN NEARNE R.I.P.

She was a quiet, little old lady who lived her life in her small English coastal town and was known to love cats.
She had very little money and when she died, she was thought to be destined to be buried in a pauper's grave.
But such was not to be the case.
Authorities going through her things found that she had been more than what she appeared to be.
They found she was a heroine of WW2.
She helped to win the war.
She was seriously affected by the war.
And when the dignitaries and the great limos began to arrive for the funeral, her community came to know the truty.
Rest in peace.

Read the story in the link below.

Eileen Nearne, Wartime Spy, Dies at 89

TODAY WE RAN OUT

Today we ran out of peppermint schnapps.
What to do?
We had high quality cocoa mix – the real thing…but no schnapps.

Himself thought of Scotch whisky.
Bless him.

After all, Scotch mixes well with chocolate and milk, so why not with Dear Wife’s fav cold weather drink, a ‘snuggler’, cocoa and milk and now, Scotch.

And tonite it is cold.
And tonite the new recipe worked.
Thank the Lord.

We pulled Kayla Elise’s moorings today; shopped in town, sans schnapps; and hunkered down with dinner, a close game of scrabble, and a UK snuggler.

How sweet it is!!!