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... 

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 ...