Countrydiction

Holy Father John Paul II will one day be known as John Paul the Great. I don't have to wait until he has passed before realizing his holiness and his greatness. He is the reason that I was motivated to enter the seminary. Unfortunately, his influence and presence were not enough to keep me from leaving the seminary, and that is not a reflection on him. John Paul is a man's man. The reasons for his manly stature are manifold; he was a mountain climber and skier, he stoutly and vehemently opposed Communism, he took a bullet and forgave, in person, the shooter. He wrote one of his doctoral theses on another man's man, St. John of the Cross. His most outstanding quality as a role model for men is his love for our Blessed Mother. John Paul is flying in the face of death. He is thumbing his nose to sickness and disease. He is fighting a manly battle against despair, debility, and doubt. His weakness is strength, his pain is powerful, his decline is restitutive. Why? Because one c...

I had been wondering who the local newspaper editor selected for his two new columnist positions for which I had submitted a sample column . In the Sunday Commentary section the editor informed the public that he was overwhelmed with over 50 submissions. He hadn't selected anybody yet! He gave examples of some of the paragraphers, including me ! He formed a selection board of six members of his staff who will winnow the whole group down to six writers. The editor will possibly ask for more writing examples and interview the finalists. Verrry interesting...

I'm learning to be a First Detector for my county. What is a First Detector supposed to detect? Agro-terrorism. We are to monitor for exotic pests and unusual pest and pathogen outbreaks. But, first I have to become familiar with the common pests and diseases. So Dr. Dick Sprenkle (I didn't make that name up) gave us some training in this area at my last Master Gardener class. He told us that Hurrican Ivan is suspected of carrying an airborn fungus from Brazil into the southern U.S. last September. So, the new disease, soybean rust, has been introduced and is a threat all the way up to my home state of Kentucky. Agriculture in the South accounts for 94% of the nation's peanuts, 94% of sugarcane, 93% of tobacco, 74% of cotton, 61% of citrus, 55% if pecans, and 36% of floriculture. Florida has a significant share of commercial vegetables. Eco-terrorism is a threat to our life and wellbeing, and it's a subject which I will pay increasing attention. Last week's...

Knock Out!

I don't know, but I think Jacques Chirac went to his jewelry box and pulled his out. Question is: will he wear them or just display them briefly before they go back into the box? Maybe it's French self-interest and just Chirac raising cackles and flaring some hackles. But, I will give him the benefit of the doubt this time. He went to Lebanon this week after the assassination of former Prime Minister Hariri to pay his respects. Now, Hariri was pro-West and led the opposition to the Syrian puppet government in Beirut. Chirac met with the opposition leaders during his brief visit but ignored the Lebanese government. The crowds which turned out to mourn numbered in the hundreds of thousands! Wonder how many mourners would show for the funeral of the current Prime Minister Karami? I've already said previously that we are witnessing ripples which are reverberating throughout the despotic and autocratic landscapes. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine are the models, while Le...

The next president of the United States of America...Condi!!! I do believe that this photo was taken during Madam Rice's Secretary of State nomination hearings. Particularly, during a venom spewing moment from Sen. Barbara Boxer. I pity the infamous senator...but, pity is not the emotion displayed in this candid Condi Kodak moment.

Like many veterans of the War, my Daddy hardly ever talked about his experience in Europe fighting the Germans. The only things I remember him relating (he died in 1976) were that he was a machine gunner, his asst. gunner who fed the ammo belt into the gun while Daddy aimed and fired, was killed right beside him, that he fought all the way across Germany into Czeckoslovakia, and ended up in Austria at the end of the war. Daddy also met up with his two brothers who also were soldiers in Europe. I've decided belatedly to research his exact route during the war, but in order to do that I need to know what unit he was in. Unfortunately, I don't know the whereabouts of his discharge papers. I contacted my Uncle Vird, who was one of the three soldier brothers, and he found an old newspaper article that gave me what I needed! Daddy served under General Patton, that ivory-gripped-pistol packing, riding crop wielding, megalomaniac, in the Third Army, 26th Infantry (Yankee) Division, 10...

Today is the first anniversary of the day that Our Lord took Mama home to her reward. I and my siblings miss her terribly. I was still in the seminary and saw her regularly because I was only about an hour away in southern Indiana. I stayed with her during every school break. Mama suffered from cancer and it took about five and a half months to take her life. I have so many memories that make me smile and it is satisfying to know that she is with Daddy and especially with the Lord and the Blessed Mother, whom she loved dearly. In the photo she is in the front, with Aunt Marie and Uncle Hayman, at a Blandford reunion in 2002, enjoying our famous Blandford BBQ chicken. It makes me quiver just thinking about that chicken. Mama, you are a saint, no doubt about it. There's not a day goes by that I don't think of you.

My yard takes four and a half hours to mow with my self-propelled mower. Not any more! I decided that before another summer roles around I am going to turn at least a third of the yard or more into groundcover and wildflowers. So, I found a used tiller for sale and went to check it out. The feller was moving to North Carolina and didn't want to pack it up for the move. Problem was it wouldn't start. We'd put gas in the ventura of the carburetor and crank and it would run out the gas in the carb and then quit. It wasn't getting gas from the tank. I had talked the man down $50 on the price already but since I thought it wouldn't cost much to get it running I got him to take another $50 less and I loaded it up. I get home and then I look in the tank...it looked like...Chernobyl or Three Mile Island...disastrous meltdown thing going on inside. I'm not a nuclear physicist so I decided to take the initiative to take the tank in to a repairman to see if it was a threa...

Yesterday I went to mass and received the ashes on the forehead as a reminder that the season of lent has begun. Lent, in the Catholic tradition, is a time of reconciliation and conversion. Personally, I love ritual and tradition. For one like me, ritual is needed to spur the heart to center on the process of conversion. During the ordinary time of the year, without ritual reminders, I am prone to focus less on my spiritual conversion and more on my material wellbeing. The ritual season of Advent allows me to get ready for Christmas and the season of Lent prepares me for the celebration of Easter. The Holy Father, Pope John Paul, refered to Ash Wednesday liturgy in his sermon yesterday as the 'Liturgy of death.' Good Friday was mentioned so as to remind us that like Christ we must die to ourselves to be reborn to eternal life. During lent we are encouraged to perform some kinds of penance and I assure you that when I deny myself of something I'm used to getting it keeps ...

//  Last week the uproar was about Cheney's olive-drab parka, hiking boots and knit ski cap worn at the anniversary ceremony at Auschwitz. He did stand out among the solemn, and appropriate, dark dress of the other dignitaries. Even his wife, Lynne, was dressed all in black. The weather was brutal but I bet he did wish he would have listened to his wife who undoubtedly made some sartorial comment before they left the hotel. Now, since I am so non-partisan, I must give Hillary equal time. Last night at one of the most formal functions of the year in the seat of our federal government, the state of the union address, Senator Hillary was dressed like a prom queen of the proletariat, with her Castro-inspired pants suit. I wouldn't have given it a second thought if I hadn't seen all the other women in attendance wearing skirts. I've heard Hillary is a pretty tough gal who rules her staff and underlings like a hellcat. Don't cross her. There's ja...

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.