Countrydiction

I'm tipping a stiff one in salute to the Iraqi people. Whatta country! Here are some preliminary numbers, courtesy of The Corner ... Still relatively earlier, so take these as preliminary (coming from admin source): 14.27 million registered voters in and outside Iraq.; 5,159 polling centers; 184,000 local officials working at the 5,159 centers; Approximately 45,000 local Iraqi monitors and 199 international monitors. Total of 53,000 - 55,000 monitors; in 14 countries nearly 187,000 Iraqis voted in the first two of three days of voting for Iraqis abroad. This is 65.86% of all Iraqis who registered to vote abroad. Roughly two-thirds of Iraqis in the US who registered voted in the first two days of OCV voting. This is what's called baby steps, folks. But, it's a sign that the freedom loving people are taking the offensive against those psuedo-human vermin of terror. There will be trying times ahead, but I will bet you a bucket full of red ants that we are witnessing the ge...

Lord Byron (1788-1824), though he was a very young man, expressed in his Sonnet on Chillon an intimate and empathetic grasp of the pain of tyranny and terror... Eternal spirit of the chainless mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art. In a few hours the polls in Iraq will open. As Iraqi citizens abroad have since yesterday around the world, many will vote for the first time in their lives in an Iraqi election, and many will raise a blue stained finger in salute to freedom. The blue ink used by the poll workers will remain on the finger for a couple days which will preclude voting more than once. The terrorists have warned the populace that their blue-stained finger will mark them for death. When I was a youth studying 'Civics,' which was still being taught with the emphasis on intellectual diversty rather than the cultural diversity and mutliculturalism so widespread today, we were bored to the extreme by the bland textbooks. We also didn't have the topical...

I mentioned in a previous post that the Catholic Church teaches that evil is primarily of two kinds, moral evil and physical, or natural, evil (there is also metaphysical evil, but it is left for more theological discussion). The tsunami horror is considered physical evil; the Holocaust is considered a great moral evil. Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. I watched TV coverage of a ceremony at Auschwitz marking that event. The grounds was covered in snow and snow pelted down throughout the ceremony. At the start an eerie sound of an approaching train was broadcast signifying the cattle cars which brought over a million Jews to these particular camps. At the close of the ceremony the train tracks burst into flames, so as to never again be used for evil purpose. I also read the haunting book, Night , by Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. He was 15 years old when he and his family in Hungary were sent to the concentration c...

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How do I know that? Because, I hear that kind of grammar everyday. From sophisticated kinds of people. Now, to the point. I hear things that are grating to my ear, so I pulled out my copy of "The Holt Handbook," the college composition writer's companion. I cringe when people misutilize and abutilize the personal pronouns, "I," "myself," and "me." Examples are: 'The game was fun for Lisa and I.' 'Bob and myself finished the job.' According to my Webster House, most utilizage guides say that utilizing 'myself' in any construction where 'I' or 'me' could be utilised instead, is only appropriate in informal speaking, and never in writing. I think 'myself' should very rarely be utilized, and only when addressing bohemians. And here's the Holt Handbook: "Discard the mistaken idea that 'I' is always somehow more appropriate than 'me.' Another burr under my sadd...

Sara, you ought to know that your husband, my son Leo, signed off from his latest email notifying us of your return date from Sri Lanka, as "Proud as a peacock." Well, Papa is purty proud himself. You are literally God's hands and heart in the recovery effort of the tsunami disaster. I suspect what you have seen and experienced has been pure hell. I don't refer to natural disasters as 'acts of God' like insurance companies tend to do. My faith tradition refers to moral evil and physical evil, and the tsunami falls in the category of the latter. I may have to dwell on the Catholic world view on evil in a later post... I hope you don't mind that I've been forwarding Leo's emails with reports of your work and wellbeing to your uncles and aunts and others. They have kept you in their prayers and thoughts. I know that your vast extended family has done the same. Every time I hear reports from the Norwegians who work for the UN I am reminded o...

A little jingle from an 1856 issue of Punch magazine is appropriate here. “It ain’t th ‘unting as ‘urts ‘im, it’s the ‘ammer, ‘ammer, ‘ammer along the ‘ard ‘igh road.” It is my good fortune to own a four-wheel drive pick-up, because there are days when, after a heavy downpour, drastic measures are needed to traverse the main road/street leading to my house. Having worked up the courage to email the commissioner of my district, the gentleman gave me a call. I won’t mention names, but he was the only incumbent re-elected in my county last November. After exchanging pleasantries, we cut to the chase. First, I owe the reader some overview. My street is one of many formed in a grid of roads and streets running north/south and east/west. If I understand correctly, this development, which is approximately eight square miles, was subdivided in the 1970’s. Consequent with the growing population and the stout real estate market, this once sparsely populated area is ra...

On Thursday I attended my first 'Master Gardener' class at the county 'cooperative extension service'. For all you rural folks who participated in '4-H' like I did in my youth, you can appreciate what this county office has to offer. I will attend 50 hours of classes and field trips with 14 others who love to get dirty. The quest speaker, who gave us the basics of botany...you know, the birds and bees of plant propagation...was a character. He's a 76 year old retired professor who became a Master Gardener himself, and was recruited to teach in the program. I caught him twice trying unsuccessfully to be politically correct in his presentation. Once, he prefaced a unique trait of a particular plant by saying, "whoever designed this, (he then caught himself) uh, whatever caused this process..." Another time he was referring to some unbelievably beautiful aspect of another plant saying, "of course, this is the outcome of pure chance, chaos, etc...

A Schoon (daughterInLaw Sara's family) tradition is to bury under the pile of Christmas gift wrap and take a picture! From bottom-left, Leo, his and Sara's friend Carol (who completed the Marine Corp Marathon in October), Jessica (Sara's step-sister), Sara, and Zack.

This scene at Leo and Sara's was really beautiful. And the Christmas Eve meal was scrumptious! The Christmas Day Turkey Dinner with all the trimmings by Sara and Jessica was great!

So, I'm Santa's reindeer...big whoop...