Damned if They Do

Fighting for your life can look as if you are overdoing it just a tad. Israel is in that position. If you’ve ever looked at a map of the Middle East, you can easily see that Israel is a tiny blue-and-white blip in a massive ocean of Islamic green. Now, Israel is also a modern, up-to-date, and civilized country set in the middle of a plethora of backward, savage, and bloodthirsty types fired up with pseudo-religious zeal and invincible ignorance about the world and everybody in it but them. Could it be that the backward, savage, and bloodthirsty types are jealous of Israel’s modernity? More likely they perceive that modernity to be evil, and are desperate to stomp it out with every means at their command, and to kill as many Jews and non-Muslims as possible in the process. Somehow, they have gotten the idea that they will one day rule the world, and they repeatedly try to start with Israel. Talk about a mouse climbing an elephant’s leg with rape on its mind…

Fortunately, the Muslim zealots–wherever they are–are not quite equal to the task, which makes Israel’s modern military that much more effective. Remember this, though: The Muslim extremists in the current conflict think it is cool to hide their weapons and rocket batteries in the middle of civilian homes, businesses, hospitals, and schools, as Saddam Hussein did before he was toppled. So, whenever the Israelis try to eliminate one of these bases, they are on the horns of a dilemma. Should they go ahead and take out the crooks and their evil nests and eliminate the whole shebang, or should they restrain themselves and hope for a better shot later? Apparently, they’ve tried both. But they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

And the Muslim extremists aren’t above staging (and murdering) “atrocities” for photo-ops. The downed jetliner some years ago…isn’t it possible that the plane was full of conveniently already-dead bodies, and steered by suicidal volunteers? The dead children paraded before the world yesterday by Muslim extremists with expressions of agony on their faces: fact or set-up? We’ll never know, but they sure know how to set up a tearjerking spectacle to gin up sympathy for their cause (and against Israel) around the world. With their history of lying, chicanery, manufactured “news” and set-up photo ops of various degrees, I wouldn’t believe a thing they said, even if they said the sun came up in the East. Why are they screaming about the deaths of the same children they probably would have strapped into dynamite belts and sent into crowded shopping centers? (I’m sorry. I know I sound cynical, but I’ve just had it with these malicious liars.)

The Mainstream press worldwide appears to be as anti-Israel as they are anti-Bush/America, so no matter what Israel does; no matter how carefully they plan their operations, they are going to be shown to be the evil “Joooz,” deliberately killing women and children in Lebanon. It doesn’t matter to the press that the Muslim extremists routinely and deliberately shoot at innocent civilians–the younger and more helpless, the better–going out of their way to make sure that every shell they shoot will land in a civilian neighborhood. It’s apparently all right in the eyes of the Mainstream world press for the Muslim zealots to do this, but NOT all right for Israel to defend herself.

Iran has never recovered its equilibrium or its wealth or civilization since Jimmah Cahtah engineered its destabilization by assisting in the overthrow of the Shawh, and the other countries are tottering and regressing, losing their thin veneers of civilization by the day, and falling so easily under the sway of jihadist imams and evil leadership that even a formerly disinterested observer like myself sits up, takes notice, and begins to feel a little apprehensive.

Israel stands alone in the world. Even the countries who support her right to exist will hardly lift a finger to help, for fear of world opinion. Even some of her own people think she should just sit back and let the Muslims take it all. Israel, whose history dates back over 4,000 years, is hardly willing to do that, so they have taken up their figurative spears, swords, and shields, and marched into battle one more time against the Phillistines. If past results is any indicator of future performance (everywhere but the stock market, apparently), they should be able to push the Muslims back yet one more time.

Like America, Israel has no desire for any land that isn’t their ancestral soil. Otherwise, they could have taken over half the Middle East. All they want is the land given to them by Yahweh when Joshua led them across the Jordan River. Look again at the map. There are ranches in Texas bigger than Israel. I hope they win again. The world is ready for it, whether it thinks so or not.

Life and Death

Three years ago, today, my happy little life in the Breadbasket of the World came to a screeching end. From that day on, half of me has been missing. A lot of tears have been shed, a lot of deep, heartfelt sighs have been sighed, but nothing brought back the love of my life. His death was my loss, but his gain. He wouldn’t come back, even if he could.

Today, I can say I’m happy again. Life is back on keel, and it is good to be here and to be doing what I do.

Life goes on, and part of life is death. When you’re young you are convinced that death will somehow pass you by, or forget you are here. But as you get older, you will see that everything that lives is born to die. We do not get out of this life alive, and when we die, that’s IT. No more do-overs, no more second or third chances to get it right. Whatever there is in your life at the time of your death will be finished at the instant you pass away. If it isn’t the way you want it to be, perhaps you should be doing something about it. Good luck on that…

The Tourist Run

Summer in Alaska…Wall to wall motor homes, campers, and trailers. Oh. Yes. Some of them are even from out of state. But Alaskans hit the road in the summer just like people do everywhere else, except that they just tour Alaska, or go fishing in Valdez or Homer, or something. Apparently, nobody is concerned about gas prices yet, and there has been no decrease in the number of cars on the road.

The visitors, on the other hand, are everywhere else. It seems strange to see so many tourists again. They were scarce Outside, simply because they weren’t “concentrated.” But Alaska is a choice destination, so all of those “unconcentrated” tourists get “concentrated” about the time they hit the Canadian border, (which reminds me: There are gazillions of Canadian tourists this summer. Guess it’s cheaper to come to Alaska than to try to go to Florida.) It’s surprising to see so many people willing to spend so much money on gas to drive all the way to Alaska for fish and pictures, but they are here in droves.

They bring lots of money to the state, and after oil and commercial fishing, they are the third biggest source of revenue for Alaska, and boy, do they ever complain about the prices. What the heck do they think the people who LIVE up here have to do??

After living in Valdez when the tourist industry was just starting to take off, it’s surprising to see how well-organized the tourist-mining has become. The train comes through town several times a week, with nothing but observation cars from all the major tour companies, each with three or four cars full of picture-takers. The kinds of Alaskan things that we used to buy for ourselves are now made in China or Mexico, simply because the local stuff is so expensive. Then, the local artists and craftsmen complain because the tourists don’t buy their stuff. It must have something to do with the price of gas, or something…

But the fishing is still at least as good as it ever was; maybe even better. The wild stocks of salmon are coming back strongly, and the hatchery-raised fish are incredibly numerous. So, of all the things that make Alaska so colorful, the fishing is the best.

Fishing in Valdez (well, most any place up here, if the truth be told) is like fishing in Heaven. If you can drag your line through a “humpy patch” (school of pink salmon) without getting anything, you’d better check to see if you have a hook on it. It used to be said that the REAL fishermen up here were the ones who could pull a hook through the same pile of fish and not get one on. I’ve heard lucky (??) fishermen telling the fish on their lines to get off and leave them alone because they just want to sit and contemplate the beauty of the day. (Somehow, THAT one takes a little work to believe…)

I laugh when I hear fishermen making derogatory remarks about Pink salmon. There seems to be some belief around here that Humpies are not much better than dog food. Ahem… Pink salmon are the most commercially valuable salmon in Alaskan waters, simply because of their numbers. They are abundant, and they are scrappy. And besides being waaaaaaay fun to catch, they are delicious to eat. Just because they are small (5 pounds or so each), sort of ugly, and easy to catch doesn’t mean they aren’t really worth the effort. Their meat is flavorful, firm, and juicy, much nicer than Silver/Coho, which tends to be soft and mushy and lose its flavor when it is cooked. Humpies are easier to catch than Sockeye/Red, and although Reds and Kings/Chinook are the “premium” fish (one for its flavor, one for its size), the lowly little Humpy is the one that will wind up in most Alaskans’ pantries. Dog/Chum are the low fish on the totem pole, because they are rather ugly, their meat is yellowish and dry, and they are a rather unappealing fish. A few get caught by sports fishermen, but the majority of them are caught commercially and processed for various animal feeds, oil, and dry meal.

Anyway, when the salmon start to run, so do the tourists, and it’s incredible to watch. In a way, I’m sort of glad gas is so expensive. Just think of what it would be like up here if it was a dollar a gallon…

The Vengeful Soul

I don’t understand resentment and vengefulness. I guess you could say that my “fathometer” is broken–I just can’t seem to fathom how otherwise rational people can cherish such negative and destructive emotions for what virually amounts to their whole lives.

I understand both vices, both as to terms and effects, but I can’t seem to feel the emotions for more than a fleeting second or two. Perhaps I’m just a cold fish, with no “fire in my belly,” because I know people who burn with the desire to get revenge for even the smallest and most insignificant of slights or misunderstandings, and just being around such people makes me nervous.

God knows, I’ve had some blows to my spirit in my lifetime that should have left me fulminating with fury. But for some reason, disappointment and a sense of frustrated “I shoulda said…” was the worst I could work up. But I have never had a desire for serious revenge (until September 11, 2001) or felt the need to get even in a way that would leave the perpetrator of that pain more injured than myself, which appears to be the goal of the resentful person. The apparent whole idea of revenge seems to be paying back not just in kind, but escalating the pain.

“‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord. ‘I will repay.’” The Bible is clear about revenge. If it isn’t God’s to exact personally, then it’s His to delegate to His chosen instruments, and we who take it upon ourselves to extract the last ounce of pain and humiliation from one who has wronged us have misread the Instruction Manual and need to go back and check the rules.

Resentment is a burden that people can carry all their lives. It bends their spirits with its weight, and twists their souls, poisoning every waking hour. I know people who seem to simply live for their revenge, as if it (or the desire to extract it) is all that keeps them alive. What kind of life would that be? For most of us, even if the injury or slight makes us furious at the time, eventually we are able to let go of the desire for retribution. But not these people. They plot and plan, daydream and scheme, and lie awake at night mulling over possible ways to express their rage. Sooner or later, it makes its way into any conversation they might have with others, often leaving the listeners concerned; worried at the strength of the resentment they observe.

When Jesus tells us to “love our neighbors” as we love ourselves, he means for us to put away first of all any desire for revenge that might be curdling our love for Him. For, strictly speaking, how can we truly love God if we are consumed by hatred for our brothers? This doesn’t seem to stop our vengeful ones, and many times, they blithely stroll into church, confident that they have nothing to fear from the Almighty, even though they have literally usurped His prerogative for retribution, while those of us whose intent is not quite so sanguine are willing to allow God to do the revenge-taking. We understand the crippling effect of resentment; the soul-killing poisonousness of hatred and a desire for personal revenge, but we also know better than to try to step in and take over God’s job.

It’s a lot of work to lug around the desired level of hatred and resentment required for revenge. One soon finds it has become their life’s work. Getting revenge is the goal of their lives, even though the satisfaction of that goal does little to assuage the need to continue to nurse the grudge.

Revenge leaves us with little to show for the action but some small amount of personal satisfaction. For most of us, a playful revenge is plenty to slake the thirst for “getting even.” But for the resentful, the tiny payoff is sufficient incentive to continue to plan the “perfect” act of revenge.

The ability for revenge and resentment to eat our souls and shrivel our joy knows no bounds. They are “gateway” sins, like marijuana is often called the “gateway” drug; its use leads to further experimentation with harder and more dangerous stages of consumption. Nursing a grudge is a good way to let oneself be eased into the darker realm of vengeance.

Cherishing hate and planning revenge is a sad, selfish way to live one’s life, but many choose to do it, convinced that they are “owed” satisfaction. Somehow, the satisfaction of joy and knowing one’s soul and conscience is clear doesn’t figure into the vengeful person’s equation. Apparently for them, it’s all about the “getting,” and none about the “having gotten,” lest they lose their fine edge of fury. “Revenge is a dish best served ice cold,” someone once said. But most people have no idea how to savor it, and simply consume it gluttonously, intent on having as much as they can acquire.

For my part, I think I’ll leave the vengeance-taking to the One who really knows how to wield it.

American Pride

Who would wish to miss an opportunity to revel in everything the Fourth of July is and stands for? If you don’t like cookouts, fireworks, red, white, and blue tablecloths and corn on the cob, this holiday is not for you. It’s the kickoff of the real summer; the time of kids living in swimsuits, moms and dads wishing they could live in swimsuits, and all the watermelon and cantaloupe that’s fit to eat.

It’s also for expressing our pride and love. America is one of a kind. She’s bruised and battered, and her flag is mocked and mauled all around the world, but her noble head never bows and her generous heart beats as strong and true as ever.

When we come together to celebrate our independence, do we really understand what it means? Independence Day is still the pure celebration of the real meaning of America. For us, never losing sight of the sacrifices made for the implementation of “The Great Experiment” is a moral imperative.

We are the ones who fly our flags proudly and often. We are the ones who vote with the understanding of the activity, armed with knowledge of the candidates and what they stand for. We are the ones who are willing to volunteer for a military that may go to the far corners of the world, there to fight and spill our blood so that others may have a share of the bountiful blessings we find so easy to take for granted. And we are the ones who can’t hold back the tears at the sight of that beautiful flag floating on the breeze. We jump to our feet when she passes by. We put our hands over our hearts and sing the National Anthem with verve and emotion.

We are Americans, and darned proud of it.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve sat here in front of this composition window with a total blank for an idea. It finally occurred to me today that there are some things that can be written about by me that I even know a little about. One is movies, and the other is nutrition, so I’m hoping to add the occasional movie or book review or article on real nutrition, and I hope you like them.

Okaaaay…

MUSINGS ON BONES AND AGE…

If I was to tape up everything on me that creaks, aches, and pains, I’d look like a mummy. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was certainly never meant to refer to the aches in the joints one discovers in old age. Through the years, we push, pull, lift, twist, carry, and abuse our joints unmercifully. But, how cowardly of them to wait until we are old and have a hard time hitting back to get their revenge.

Old push-injuries seem to exact the heaviest toll, and it is my sad misfortune to be the holder of three of these sinister beauties. Both elbows have been ripped and torn beyond their capacity; an indictment against lack of upper-body strength. (Note to self: Remember to exercise as soon as you can move something)

My left hip took the brunt of a bad day when I pushed a 400-pound “2-bottom” plow out of the pickup years ago (hubby was helping, but he was in shape, and was on the other end, pulling). Bent over from the hips and straining to move the heavy weight is not a good way to preserve joint integrity.

So far, I haven’t had to worry too much about this injury, as bad as it was. One of the things about these injuries is that they are usually very hard to treat. Massage, rest, and alternating heat and cold are about all that can be done for them. When the worst of the pain goes away, we think they are “healed,” and often repeat the same task and re-injure the same joint. Just because no bones were broken doesn’t mean there wasn’t serious, long-term damage done to the joints in question. (Further note to self: Be more careful in the future, understand??)

At any rate, I am still able to move and use all my wounded appendages, except that I am confined to a much smaller range of motion and exertion that was previously possible. Be warned.

Hating Just Enough

Just so people can really get a good look at what our wonderful troops are accomplishing in Iraq, I offer THIS.

And to show you how deliberately the Mainstream Media gets it wrong, I also show you this article written in June by a female who either is invincibly ignorant about Iraq or is hoping to undermine the efforts of the troops there.

SOME people get it. Fortunately for the rest of us, they seem to be in the majority for now, but if the left has their way, these people will be silenced. The First Amendment does not apparently apply to conservatives or Bush-supporters, but only to the “voices of ‘reason’” on the left, who, if they didn’t have a real war with real bullets to protest, would be just as noisily demonstrating against anything that draws Americans together against the forces of evil in the world. According to the left, conservatives and Bush supporters are the “forces of evil in the world.”

This is what we are up against: It doesn’t matter how much good we do in Iraq, or wherever our troops are deployed; the left is going to persist in this sort of undermining and negative reporting as a means of furthering their goal. What goal is that, you ask? The answer is simple, but ugly. It consists of nothing less than the total pullout of troops from Iraq in the short term and the pulling down of America as the last bastion of individual freedom left in the world. Their reason is that if they could do it with the Viet Nam War, they can do it with the War on Terror.

Why is the left is so dead set against this country doing any good anywere? No matter where we go, the left is right there on all the morning talk shows to denounce everything, to detract from any positive accomplishments and to distract the rest of the world in an effort to present a false image of inept mishandling of the situation and to give the President of the United States the biggest black eye they can manage. If we are assisting flood or tsunami victims, we are “too little too late,” in spite of the fact that we are most often “first with the most.” If we send troops anywhere, they are reported as savages, rapists and murderers, and crooks.

We can’t win for losing with the left, and the current conditions show the military–the finest and fittest in the world–as the scapegoat for the left’s whiny, ill-tempered pouting. The New York Times will stop at nothing in their blind war against President Bush, and as time goes by, their deliberate and seditious anti-Administration bias is more blatant and more destructive, to the point where they have not only published highly classified information that is essential to the war effort on more than one occasion, but they have written careful directions to the homes of Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, right down to revealing the locations of security cameras, and the shopping habits and schedules of the wives and published them boldly. The only thing I can make of this is a forthright invitation to madmen, murderers, or terrorists to do aways with these men because the leftist press doesn’t have the guts or the balls to actually go after them themselves. How cowardly is that? In a time of war, I believe this kind of behavior is considered seditious.

There’s a lot to the situation, and the motivation is often obvious in one area and less clear in another, but the facts remain: The left in America hates this country and is doing everything in its power to undermine, detract, cripple, defame, and otherwise hamstring it for one simple reason: They hate George W. Bush with a religious passion and will stop at nothing to neutralize his effectiveness, no matter where they have to go to do it, whom they have to defame or sacrifice, no matter what kinds of lies they have to concoct.

They don’t care if they are caught with their literal pants down in the process of dishing up another hoped-for scandal concering the Administration. They know that all they have to do is mention something to the media, and the leftist gossips and pity-party pundits will take it and run with it, spreading rumors and lies as fast as they can talk. They get themselves on as many Sunday shout shows as they can manage, and plant more and more false information, hoping against hope to undo the good that has been done as a result of the policies of this President. Granted, he sometimes disappoints some of us in one area or another, but on the whole, he’s done an excellent job, and is consistently and unfailingly upright and Presidential; to wit: They loved having Clinton in the Oval Office. They loved having a conscienceless, dishonorable, treasonous, lying philanderer in there. They could point to him and say proudly, “Look at that! He’s just like ME!” Which they did, frequently and proudly, on all the major cable news networks and in all the newspapers of the day.

The more I observe of these nasty little turncoats going about their dirty, underhanded business, the more I see them for who they really are: People who hate America just enough. Just enough to want to hamstring her at every turn; to denigrate, calumniate, undermine, and detract. Just enough to want to undo everything the founding fathers tried to set into place to make the new country a bastion of real individual freedom. Just enough to cripple the military, to blur the lines between the branches of government, and just enough to legislate from the bench through their activist judges.

But not enough, apparently, to pack up their misery and their hate and move their sorry asses to China, France, Russia, or Cuba.