For Memorial Day May 25, 2012

Since September 11, 2001, I’ve learned a lot about freedom and flag-draped coffins. I’ve learned in a very real way that freedom is not free. And, I learned that we must celebrate our honored dead whenever we can, and render them all the honors they deserve. They didn’t think about honors when they put their lives on the line, and just “did their duty.”

The military funeral in America is a pageant of patriotism and honor. Flags saluted, folded, and presented. Color guard, rifle squad, fancy full-dress uniforms. The slow, lamenting strains of “Taps” lifting up and out over the landscape to announce that another hero has fallen. The grief and the prayers, the firing squads, the slow cadences. My heroes.

“My Country ’tis of Thee, sweet land of Liberty! Of Thee I sing.” How can we not put our hands over our hearts and wipe away the tears whenever we sing of America, her flag, and her glory? “Oh, say! Does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave o’er the Land of the free, and the home of the brave?” “God bless America, land that I love!” “Oh, beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain!” Have you ever heard a new patriotic song? It seems like only the “rednecks” of Country music seem to be able to find enough patriotism to sing about. But they have done a wonderful, eloquent job of it, and although their songs will probably not be included in “Patriotic Classic” collections, we know that what they sing about comes straight from hearts full of gratitude and love for America.

This might be a good time to visit the National Cemetery in your area. We need more images of those thousands of white markers marching off into the distance in all directions in the peaceful settings; still standing in their ranks and files, still keeping the endless watch.

We can pray for ‘no more flag-draped coffins,’ but in reality, if that were ever to happen, we would lose this soul-deep awareness of the sacrifices that freedom requires.

For all of you heroes who have watered the freedom of this country and the soil of countries released from bondage and captivity with your lives and blood, I put my hand over my heart, and I look at my flag. In that flag, I see the red of your blood; left on many places in foreign lands. I see the white purity of your honor, unbesmirched, immaculate, as only a real sacrifice must be. And I see the blue field that symbolizes your fidelity; “Duty, Honor, Country!” your battle cry; the stars that call out the names of every state in the Union; all proudly recognizing their sons and daughters whose heroism must always be celebrated and revered; the sacrifice of limb, of mind, of blood, and life. “Greater love than this hath no man; than he lay down his life for his brothers.”

For your gift of freedom does not go unremarked. We are the proud and honored recipients of the freedom you so dearly bought. Our children will be blessed because of your sacrifice, their lives free because of your stalwart spirit.

America, you are so very blessed in your heroes. You are honored by the sacrifices of those fallen heroes, and by the courage and history of those who return alive. America, you truly are the most blessed nation on earth.

Remember…? May 23, 2012

Remember waxed-paper bread wrappers? I had an oil-fired cooking range with a flat cast-iron top, similar to an old woodstove, and I used to cook right on top of it. I cleaned it with a grill brick and then rubbed it all over with a waxed-paper bread wrapper, and kept it gleaming and non-stick for pancakes, eggs, and steaks.

Remember when bottle tops had cork inserts inside? We used to carefully pry these cork liners out, put the cap on the front of our shirts, and press the liner back in from the back of the fabric, to create “badges” for cowboys and Indians. I could make the cool “KEEWWWWW!” sound for a shooting pistol, but my sister never could. All she could do was say, “Kew! Kew!” Heh…

Remember the little red pill that came in the brick of white goo we called “margarine?” (“Nucoa” was my mom’s brand of choice.) I can remember being the lucky guy who got to break that little pill and spread it through the goo by massaging it with my bare hands. When it was finished, it looked and tasted like…you guessed it: greasy yellow goo trying to masquerade as butter. The word “nasty” fails on so many levels.

Remember when beer came in STEEL cans? Can’t you just see some guy in a tavern showing off by trying to smash one of those on his forehead? LOL! A REAL man could bend one in one hand, but I don’t think I ever saw anybody stupid enough to smash one on his forehead. Aluminum cans came along, and everybody could look like Charles Atlas, even the girls. We used to lay them on the ground and stomp on them, which made them curl up around our shoes. Then we could clack around and sound like horses. (We thought…)

Roller skates for outdoors (called “sidewalk” skates) had steel wheels. They were adjustable by using a key, a small wrench that had a couple of different holes in it to simplify adjusting the size. One used the wrench to loosen the nut on the bottom of the skate, adjusted the skate’s length, then tightened the nut back up. The key was also used to tighten the clamps that gripped the front of the shoe to keep the skate on the foot. We could never afford to buy our own skates, so we just borrowed the neighbors’. You could buy a new skate key in the “dime store” for a nickel. Indoor skates had composition or hard rubber wheels, and were lace-up shoe-skates. They looked much cooler, of course. My girlfriend and I skated two nights a week, and had all the partners we ever wanted. Talk about fun.

And, who could forget those red plaid lunch boxes with the real thermos jug inside? With the GLASS liner? Can’t you just see the nannystate crybabies allowing GLASS in a child’s lunch box today? And, a metal box, at that. (Those metal boxes did make handy weapons, come to think of it. Except, it was easy to break the handle off if you wielded it just wrong, and of course, it always broke that glass thermos liner…)

Real metal scissors in kindergarten? Wooden rulers with metal edges? Pencil boxes that looked like big, fat red pencils, with a huge pink rubber eraser? Wearing homemade clothes and feeling “poor” because your clothes didn’t come from a store?

Ahhh…nostalgia…

Is This The Complaint Department? May 20, 2012

I’m glad our parish has a new priest (well, he’s been there about six months now), but I am very sorry that he just can’t seem to get the homiletical ball rolling. His homilies are always either about his personal experiences or about how we parishoners should be spend our spiritual capital ministering to each other. Not a word so far this May about the role of Mary in the Church, not a single song dedicated to her honor. (May is traditionally set aside as the month to celebrate her and her role in giving the world a Savior.) And today, another “worship each other” mumbler to the effect that we must “be sacraments to each other.” Nothing in there about the might, holiness, righteousness, love, or WORTHINESS of the Lord God Almighty, nor in any of the songs.

Which brings me to the other part of the disappointment, important but not crucial: the music. The musicians are all very talented and able. The parish is blessed with a beautiful baby grand piano, and the accompanist is an excellent and accomplished pianist, but apparently, nobody has told her about choosing songs that are appropriate not just to the theme of the Sunday, but to the Church. Alas, we are stuck every Sunday with puerile, puny, pale ditties, where we once sang mighty Latin anthems of praise and glorification which all ended with a resounding “Ahhhhh-MEN!!”

This is very disappointing. A lot of new people came into the parish at Easter, but if they don’t get what they need from the priest, whose job it is to feed the hungry sheep, they will wander away to greener pastures, as will numbers of older members, as well. Some people want to go to a service where WORSHIP is taking place, not a hootenanny full of kum-by-yah and rainbows.

Ah, well. Bloom where you’re planted, take what you can get, and stop bellyaching, mother dear. What do you expect…St. Peter’s Basilica?

A Letter To My Grandchildren May 18, 2012

Dear, sweet, adorable children…

You know how much I love you, or you should. Just ask your parents, if you want to know more. That’s why it is such a painful thing for me to have to write this letter to you.

You see, if I were to die tomorrow, I would leave you with my share of the national debt. That would be, of course, on top of your own shares, which are each around $50,000 right now. For all the years of my life, the shares that I inherited from my ancestors were very small, and rarely ever amounted to more than a couple thousand dollars. Obviously, even that is not good, but they definitely are better than what is being forced on all of us today.

That isn’t all you will inherit from me. You will receive a nation battered and torn from the inside. In all her history, America has prevailed in every battle fought anywhere in the world, but this time, she was betrayed and destroyed from within, and, unfortunately, you will be the unlucky owners of a country sold out to despots and selfish political interests.

You will have to deal with the kinds of racial divisions we never thought of when I was your age. You will have to put up with political correctness and lies in the news, in your schools, and in all your public dealings. You will be monitored, supervised, and regulated in every aspect of your life, right down to the light bulbs you can put into your lamps. You will see vested interests so selfish they will take the money from your IRA’s and savings accounts to add to their own. You will find yourselves saddled with an expensive, feminized military weakened from within by “green” policies, perversions and political correctness.

I have no words to tell you how this knowledge saddens me, and how hard I am trying, in my puny, little-old-lady way to undo as much of it as I can before I die and leave you saddled with my share of a pathetic national legacy.

Of all the things of my life that I most regret, it is that I am going to be leaving this world a lot worse than it was when I came into it. You, my adorable ones, have the opportunity to turn this around at least partially in your lifetimes. It means a lot of work, a lot of sacrifice, but it also means a firm purpose to drive out of office all the clingers and hangers-on in Washington who have become addicted to spending and accumulating power and personal benefits to which they believe they are entitled.

Please, I beg you: Should you ever restore this nation’s greatness and sovereignty, NEVER AGAIN allow America to elect a person like the current resident. He has had a single-minded purpose ever since his “election,” and that is to destroy the American economy and reduce this country to a socialist shell like the countries of Europe have become.

My time is shorter than I like, obviously, and that means that you and your parents are going to be left with a mess I was unable to clean up for you. I pray that you will forgive me, and I beg you all to keep yourselves informed about the true designs of those who seek office in the future. LEARN THE FACTS. PASS THEM ON! ALWAYS VET CANDIDATES CAREFULLY! This is YOUR country, and like all patriots, you will be called upon to defend the rights and blessings that America uniquely provides. Don’t do like I did, and leave it with such a mess. This is NOT what generations of patriots fought, sacrificed blood and body parts, and died for. Never forget the sacrifices that have been made to keep America free, and what it took to bring it down.

May God bless you all.

A Word (Or Two) About Weasels May 15, 2012

Dingy Hairy Reid, that contemptible little bug, is so busy trying to defame the Tea Party he doesn’t have time to do his job. It’s been over a thousand days since the U.S. has had a budget, not because they haven’t been proposed, but because the cockroach of the Senate has refused to allow any to pass. Makes me want to move back to Nevada (I was born there) just so I can vote against the miserable worm. He’s not up for re-election for a few years, so I can take my time getting there, but it’s something to think about. I had toads and snakes on the farm in Minnesota I liked better than I like the current Senate majority leader. I wish there were enough nasty words in the English language to adequately describe such a weasel, but, alas…

“The American people have had enough of this brinkmanship. They want us to get things done. And it’s pretty clear to me that the Tea Party direction of the Republican Party is driving them over a cliff,” Reid said.(ibid) Reid no more believes this than he believes in obamacare. All he is interested in is delaying, obfuscating, bollixing up, and sabotaging anything proposed by the Republicans in the senate; and especially destroying anything that comes over from the Republican-dominated House. He is a dyed in the wool hater, a confirmed leftist liberal, and a stonewalling, pusillanimous toady of the leftist party. Readers might infer from all this that I “hate” hairy Reid, but no, I don’t. I don’t think enough of him to hate him. If anybody is beneath that basic level of interest, dingy, hairy Reid would be that individual. His entire reason for existence is to badmouth conservatives, especially the Tea Party brand. He lives to berate, detract, lie, and perjure himself regarding the conservative voters in this country, and there is nothing anybody can do to undo it but to vote the slimy pecksniff out of office or impeach him, whichever comes first.

Ahh. That feels better. Did I leave anything out?

The Truth Is Like That May 12, 2012

7. So, as the rational creatures were wasting and such works in course of ruin, what was God in His goodness to do? Suffer corruption to prevail against them and death to hold them fast? And where were the profit of their having been made, to begin with? For better were they not made, than once made, left to neglect and ruin. 8. For neglect reveals weakness, and not goodness on God’s part— if, that is, He allows His own work to be ruined when once He had made it— more so than if He had never made man at all. 9. For if He had not made them, none could impute weakness; but once He had made them, and created them out of nothing, it were most monstrous for the work to be ruined, and that before the eyes of the Maker. 10. It was, then, out of the question to leave men to the current of corruption; because this would be unseemly, and unworthy of God’s goodness. — On The Incarnation Of The Word — Premise 6:para 7-10

St. Athanasius was born around 292 AD and died in 373. The entire treatise is available at the link below.

Even after God told Cain (before he killed Abel!) that it was possible to master sin (Gen 4:7), Cain chose to remain sinful rather than to do battle against the “lion couched at his door.” It is no wonder God had to become Man. His people simply WOULD. NOT. STOP. SINNING. Even when they knew how to overcome it. Not “could not.” WOULD NOT. People simply continued to CHOOSE sin.

Humans were made by God through His Love. That love was so perfect that it gave humans free will to choose not to love their Creator rather than make them to be automatons without the understanding, desire, knowledge, or will to choose to love God for His own sake.

When Athanasius wrote about The Incarnation of the Word, he wrote the clearest explanation of that Miraculous Mystery that has ever been penned. Reading this has made me spend a lot of time in simple contemplation of its meaning for us, especially for me. I doubt if anyone could read the treatise seriously and not be changed by it somehow. The truth is like that.

New Info May 12, 2012

There is some new and interesting information posted on the “Food For Thought” page. Stop by and check it out.

Hmmm… May 10, 2012

Hmmm… Nothing so far has scared the current rodent into such “rapid response” as the desperate usurpation of ABC news time to blurt out his support for not being opposed to maybe keeping a low profile about sort of maybe not saying one way or the other but kind of supporting if he had to some things about some parts of same-sex marriage, in a way.

Now, what do you suppose the queer lobby could have that would make him jump like an electrocuted frog in less than 36 hours? And, please; don’t try to tell me it’s about the money.

Heart-Breaker May 7, 2012

Gov. Sarah Palin in office in Juneau, Alaska

Reading this article just broke my heart. My only hope is that the United States has not heard the last of Gov. Palin. I am not prepared to give up that hope, and I will continue to support Gov. Palin whenever she decides to press her candidacy.

This is a related piece, which tells more about the establishment GOP’s attempts to tarnish and smudge Gov. Palin’s record and popularity, especially during the 2008 campaign, in which the attempt was made to “hide” Palin to prevent her popularity from overshadowing that of the top name on the ticket, John McCain.

Watch And See… May 6, 2012

…if glorious leader doesn’t okay keystone just before the election. October surprise, indeed…