Countrydiction

I am hitting the asphalt, going to spend Christmas with my sons and daughter-in-law, Leo, Sara, and Zack. Felis Navidad!!!

ATHEISTS PROTEST 'GIVING TREE' REUTERS: U.S. Christians fight against secular Christmas "Christian Conservatives Say It's 'Christmas' Time" Christmas or Kwanzaa, Diwali, Ramadan, Chanukah or the Winter Solstice Parade Organizers Say Christmas Carols May Be Offensive To Others Ban on Christmas leads to court fight School bans saying 'Christmas' Christmas book banned from class Parents sue district after teacher censors 2nd-grader's story Christmas is THE NEW “C-WORD” Public Schools and the ACLU Play Scrooge This Christmas Christmas Trees are Banned from Public Buildings in Pasco County Religious exhibit ruled illegal, removed from park's entrance **************************************************** The above headlines are just a sampling of the deleterious impact that 'political correctness' is having on the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ. The television, radio, and internet are co...

1. The violent-free election in Afghanistan is an amazing event considering the state of affairs in that country a short two years ago. 2. Peaceful revolution in Ukraine will send shockwaves around the world for freedom seekers. Not everyone in the world has access to unfettered news so they will not hear about the momentous events there. In fact, busloads of democratic loving people from Kiev are deploying to the hinterlands to inform their countrymen who have been kept in the dark by the Russian supported apparatchik (power structure). 3. A hero for the world's atheists, Antony Flew, a British philosophy professor, has apparently become a deist, to the dismay of his disciples. Flew released a video in which he said that, based on scientific evidence, he has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. 4. The federal government (CDC) just announced new data on teen pregnancy/sex. Teens are delaying sex longer, more are ...

It was 22 degrees when I woke this morning...at the same time it was 28 in my hometown in KY. Hope we get some of that warmer weather down here. Talk about timing...I joined the Arbor Day Foundation back in the summer, and for my $10 membership I get 10 trees. Shipments to Florida happen in early December because we can plant trees the year-round. RIIIIIGGGHHTTTT. Well the bare-root little guys arrived yesterday, in the middle of a killer coldfront. At least we don't have to deal with frozen ground here on the sand hill where I live. It will get to the high 50's today so I will get the twigs in the ground, and hope to see some buds in a few months... I fired up the fireplace for my first time and didn't set off the smoke alarm. Man, a roaring fire, hot toddy, and a great novel sure sets the mood. Hold on now...I'm talking ambiance and not urges!

I find everything about this story as suspect. Actually, fantastically unbelievable. A lady does not strangle a 130 lb. dog while the owner of the dog is holding on by its collar!

After an unusually warm Autumn the payback is imminent. Low 30's tonight and moving into the upper 20's for the low temps early next week. This is a good thing because I have to get acclimated to Washington DC type weather because that's where I will spend Christmas with my two sons and daughter-in-law. I'm concerned about my new landscape plants. There are advantages to planting in the fall such as developing good root systems, or at least giving them a headstart before the hot summer weather ahead. But, I risk the tender plants in the cold fronts that come in the winter. Another peculiar thing about fall planting is that the deciduous trees have lost most of their leaves and I'm wondering if it's normal seasonal behavior, or are they not taking to their transplanting and are dying on me. So, I've been checking the little guys from time to time by pinching off branch tips to see if they are green or not. Looks like I'll be anticipating spring ...

I've always considered running a primitive sort of past-time. Nothing is more natural, physiologically speaking, than running. Notice the first thing a toddler does after he learns to walk. Soon he is zipping all over the place, with his torso preceeding his little legs for momentum! Now research proposes that running was key to human evolution. My training is going well. I ran eight miles yesterday out on a dirt road on the Eglin AFB reservation. It had been about a year since I ran that far in a training run (I did a 13 miler in a race a couple weeks ago). I ran 24 miles for the week, last week, and I haven't run that many miles in a week in a few years. My goal for a couple years has been to get my weight down to 160 lbs. I was at about 180 there for awhile, but now am hovering around 165. The point is to be able to see my ribs, and I can't distinguish them yet...

Read this little story out of California for a heartwarming, positive, hopeful piece of news about a segment of our tenderest generation! Which reminds me. I hope to go to church Wednesday to celebrate a major date of the Church calendar, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Then, we celebrate the Memorial of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of the Americas, on December 12th! The Blessed Mother truly pulls me into the spirit of Christmas. For an indispensible explanation on our devotion to Mary see this offering from former evangelical protestant, Mark Shea

This article from the British newspaper, The Times, gives me the impression that Europe is undergoing their own 9/11. Our 9/11 was the climactic event, although there were prior overseas smaller terrorist attacks against our interests, going back to the 1980's. Western Europe's 9/11 is akin to slowly being poisoned; they've felt a creeping crud which they have suspected was alien to their system. The treatment? Ride it out and hope the immune system stuffs it out. What was this immune system consisted of? Political Correctness, Diversity, Multiculturalism, Tolerance. The result is that a full-blown tumor has broken, the bile has already spread, rapidly causing the body to deteriorate. I'm in a festive mood today. What with the U.N. and its oil-for-food scandal, and paralysis of effect on the genocide in Africa. The MainStreamMedia, epitomized by the Dan Rather fake-documents scandal. The bloody, wretched, desperate, Islamofascists' attempt to stop free election ...

When my Daddy gave me the 'plumbing' lesson which explains how babies are made I was slightly more enlightened than I was prior to. I said 'plumbing' because I received a matter-of-fact, biological, unemotional, power-point display of the mechanics. My hormonal state was still embryonic, so-to-speak, so Daddy was not concerned with the ethics, morality, or consequences of pre-marital sex. He did prelude the lesson with "...when a husband and wife love each other...", so right up front, he put the sex act in the context of good, beauty, and love. Life was pretty simple back in the early 60's. Daddy didn't tell me about phospholipase C-zeta (PLC-zeta). Nobody told me about it until I read about it in this article . One is led to believe that science can skirt the ethical questions of embryonic stem cell research now because PLC-zeta can be extracted from the sperm and used to spur the egg cell to divide and multiply. Since the potential stem cells, ...

One of the great races in the panhandle area is the Navarre Beach Run located between Fort Walton Beach and Pensacola. I have enjoyed the event since the mid-80's and since I moved back to the area recently, after living several years back in KY/IN area where I grew up, I was really looking forward to this early January race. There was always the option of running a 5K, 10K, or Half-Marathon...pretty unique. It always happens to be freezing with blowing winds. The after-race festivities took place at the Holiday Inn on the beach, within it's huge indoor square with a heated pool, jacuzzi, and plenty of space for live music and partying. Most of the rooms form first and second floor rings around the quad and the party spilled into many of those rooms. Just a fantastic scene, rivaling the revelry of Mardi Gra, especially in the rooms of the Louisianians who offered unlimited jumbalaya to all comers. The hotel was severely damaged and the half-marathon is in question beca...

Pat Sajak, the amicable and erudite host of Wheel of Fortune, has pretty well nailed the Hollywoodian silence in the aftermath of the terrorist murder of the Dutch movie maker, Theo Van Gogh. Could the underwhelming reaction be attributed to fear, or to tolerance, or to hate? See what Sajak has to say ...