Saddle Shoes

Robert Avrech has a wonderful post on Saddle Shoes and Pat Boone on his blog. Click here to read it and see the cool photos.

Public Apologies

Thomas Sowell has an excellent piece posted on National Review Online today.

The subject is public apologies which is something I’m very aware of because I follow politics so closely.

This trend has bothered me, and I appreciate his article because he eloquently stated what I believe about it, too. Much better than I could’ve done.

Here it is.

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Glory to God!

A Good Example of Why We Shouldn’t Trust the Government

A cat in Boston was called for jury duty. When the owner notified the court that it was a cat they were summoning, it was still not excused from duty.

Yeah, and I’m supposed to trust bureaucrats with life and death decisions about my health care???

The Tyranny of Green

First the caveat: I recycle. A lot. In fact, as much as I can: steel, aluminum, glass, plastic and all paper. We compost. No chemical fertilizers. Pesticides only for fire ants and wasps.

I don’t do it to “save the earth”; I think it’s arrogant to think that even if one could do almost everything the green police are insisting on, that it still wouldn’t make a lot of difference to anything but landfills.

Yes, I’ve read the statistics on how much less energy it takes to recycle something than it does to make a new something, but I simply don’t believe that just that bit of saved energy will add up to enough to make a difference.

Landfills are a different story, because most of that stuff just isn’t going anywhere, so I try to buy smart (glass containers instead of plastic and reuse them. I’ve had some of my jars over 30 years and I recycle what I don’t re-use). Plastic is generally avoided because I don’t like it. One of my pet peeves is that I don’t like drinking out of a plastic tumbler.

Books that tell how to re-use (the new term is re-purpose) are interesting and I check them out from the library. There’s not much I can use from them, but I like to look at them and see if I can get any ideas.

What this all boils down to is that I believe in being a good steward of what God created and has given us. I want to be a good steward of his bountiful gifts, but I will not be a slave to the earth.

Genesis 1:28 tells us: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Being Green has become a religion. One is not allowed to question their “truth” or not adhere.

I worship the Creator, not his creation. He gave us dominion over it.

There are degrees of being Green. Probably the lowest level is the most common one where someone preaches it for everyone else but doesn’t do even the basics themselves (like recycling; I don’t know even one young person who recycles).

At the highest level are the true believers. They think that man is so harmful to the earth that there’s no redemption except the elimination of the human race. Yes, there really are some who are saying that. We all must die to save the plants, animals and the dirt. I can’t find that link right now, but I’ll keep looking for it.

The leftist high priests of this new religion fly around in private jets going to conferences and high dollar speaking engagements but tell us to not be using fossil fuels. The rest us are told to drive the equivalent of go-carts (or better yet – walk) while they are chauffeured around in limousines. They heat/cool huge mansions while those of us in smaller homes are told that we’ll have to live hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. There’s even serious talk of smart electric meters that will tattle on us if we use more than bureaucrats deem proper. I’ve read that the person currently in the Oval Office keeps it warm enough that he can work in his shirt-sleeves. He likes it that way.

“Do as I say and not as I do” should’ve been his campaign slogan.

One of my favorite photos is of George Clooney looking cool while he stands by his swimming pool. A swimming pool. We’re stuck with toilets that don’t flush and shower heads that don’t flow, but he gets to have a swimming pool. Was that in the past before he saw the light? (Well, he certainly didn’t see the light if he was using one of those compact florescents.) And speaking of Mr. Concerned About the Earth, click here to read the article about how compassionate Clooney is towards people. He publicly mocked Charleton Heston and his struggle with Alzheimer’s and when called on it said “I don’t care.”

Let’s see, how many times must a typical Californian take a shower instead of a bath so that an elite like George Clooney can have a swimming pool filled?

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.” — Michelle Obama

It looks like the Ruling Class make the rules and the proletariat will have to live by them.

Magazines are some of the most egregious purveyors of this nonsense. Country Living magazine is almost completely ruined. The Green doctrine is a huge part of their editorial policy now. When I read it or even Better Homes and Gardens, I feel lectured at.

And what hypocrites they are. There again, they must consider themselves the Ruling Class which are exempt because they tell us to do all these little things to “save the planet”, when they are using tons of paper and all that ink. Then fossil fuel is used to mail and deliver it to us.

This empty hypocritical preaching to the masses doesn’t make sense when magazines are dropping like flies. How long do they think it will be before their readers (readers: the ones who provide them with incomes) connect the dots and quit buying this propaganda? Do they not understand that if they actually convince people to follow their mantra then consumers would quit being consumers and not buy their publication?

And speaking of propaganda, there’s another outrageous film (the others shall remain nameless) being shown to vulnerable school children called the Story of Stuff. Apparently, Annie Leonard doesn’t think we need to be buying radios and stuff that comes from factories; or at least cheap stuff. I wonder where those jeans came from that she was wearing in her video, or her shirt? Did she make them herself after growing her own cotton and weaving them? Where did her shoes come from? Horrors! Not a factory!

I highly recommend this video critique of The Story of Stuff. This is part 1; links to the other parts will be on that page.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s we were told not to reproduce. They said: The planet is overpopulated! So, a lot of people actually bought into this and either didn’t have any children at all, or only had one or two. Here is a youtube video of Mark Steyn talking about the resulting population demographics.

We were also told by the scientists that there is a coming Ice Age!

Oops.

No, now they say just the opposite.

So, no, I don’t believe in man-made global warming. After those scientists have shown their proclivity for adjusting data to fit their philosophies, I don’t know if I believe in global warming at all.

But I do believe in good stewardship.

Should I Be Building an Ark?

Is this the change we were promised?

For a story in the news, a story so outrageous that I can scarcely speak about it, go here to read about a precious 6 year old cub scout who is at the mercy of what I consider to be a really stupid school system in Delaware. From the school board on down, these people should never again be trusted to make decisions about the education or welfare of children. In my opinion, trained monkeys would do a better job. More here. If you want to see what kind of a boy he is, you can watch a film he made that’s posted on youtube.

A similar story involves an eagle scout who had a knife in his camping gear (locked in his car) and was suspended.  The days missed from his school could hurt his chances of getting into West Point.  West Point!  He’s not a delinquent – he’s a patriot. Why are school systems punishing Scouts?  Where are we getting the people who make education decisions??

In King City, Oregon American flags are being torched in a mobile home community for the elderly.

Residents of an apartment complex in Albany, Oregon have been told by management that they face eviction if they don’t remove American flags from their vehicles. According to management “someone might get offended.”

In North Carolina, a branch manager for Bank of America refused to have American flags in front of the facility, which was on the funeral route for a local Marine killed in Afghanistan. Read it here.

Fox News is being punished for criticizing the president. Here is the link to this one . So, the current administration doesn’t like criticism?  Well, to be fair, they are  unused to it. All of the other major media outlets (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post) write outrageously biased stories in favor of the the left. Perhaps the White House would like  the Sedition Act reinstated which said that it was illegal “To write, print, utter or publish, or cause it to be done, or assist in it, any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring either into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against either the hatred of the people of the United States, or to stir up sedition, or to excite unlawful combinations against the government, or to resist it, or to aid or encourage hostile designs of foreign nations.” It was allowed to expire s less than 5 years later.

This reminds me of an argument between my liberal niece and me a few years ago. She claimed that Fox new was biased toward the right. I acknowledged that she was correct. The difference was that she couldn’t admit that all the others are biased left.

I know that Fox News leans right, that they are only Fairer and More Balanced, not totally. But I’m thankful that we have at least one news outlet which will tell us the news that the current administration doesn’t want us to hear.

As for freedom of speech – this is from the country that is constantly being held up to us as an example in many different areas:
Dean Steacy of the Canadian Human Rights Commission: “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.”

Books Read in September

October! How lovely that sounds in north Texas. That means it’s very unlikely that we’ll have any more 100 degree days until next May.

So, I’m thinking about what I’ve been reading and need to get it written down. Every January, I start a list of books I read during that year, but towards the end of summer I get very lax in keeping it up.

Do you think we can tell something about a person by what they read? Whenever we go to someone’s house, I’m always fascinated by what books are on their shelves, or better yet on their end-tables.

Non-Fiction
Farewell Memoir of a Texas Childhood- Horton Foote
This is probably my favorite autobiography. The world was a different place in 1916 when Horton Foote was born. He is a master storyteller and reading this book reminded me of listening to my parents and aunts and uncles talk about their early years (they were a bit older than Mr. Foote). He paints a vivid picture of small town life in the early part of the 1900’s.
*Highly recommended.

The Reagan I Knew – William F. Buckley
One of the last books that Buckley wrote before his death last year, this is a personal look at Ronald Reagan through correspondence and reminiscences.
*Highly recommended.

Losing Mum and Pup – Christopher Buckley
“They were not – with respect to every other set of loving, wonderful parents in the world – your typical mom and dad.” What an understatement. Christopher Buckley is not my cup of tea, but he writes a fascinating book about one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century. William F. Buckley was a singular man; I just didn’t realize before how singular he really was.
*Highly recommended.

Making an Exit – Elinor Fuchs
Publisher’s Weekly: “Fuchs celebrates the richness and folly of life and language in this loving and often funny tribute to her nonconformist mother, Lillian Kessler.” After her brilliant mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Elinor began recording their conversations (how I wish I had done the same). Her insight into the disease and how she coped with it was very helpful to me in dealing with my own mother. Nearly all the books I’ve seen on Alzheimer’s are much too clinical and not terribly helpful. This is not a self-help book, but it had that effect.
*Highly recommended.

Mrs. Astor Regrets Meryl Gordon
Let me say right up front that I don’t like Brooke Astor or anyone else in this book, with the possible exception of her grandson, the photographer Alex Marshall. Not even the author. Especially the author and the subject. Snobbery fairly drips from the pages. If Mrs. Astor isn’t referring to Bill Clinton’s objects of desire as “trailer trash”, then Meryl Gordon is describing someone as not coming from a house with a rusted pick-up on blocks in the front yard. And who are these people? Brooke Astor’s second husband didn’t like her only child, Tony, so he was promptly shipped off to boarding school. After her second husband’s death, she was proposed to by Vincent Astor (he was still married) and she absolutely married him for his money. The rest of her life seemed to be a struggle to buy a good name and position for herself and give as little as she could to her family. She hated her daughter-in-law and condemned her as a gold-digger. The DIL had cheated on her husband (the local vicar) with Tony and they married after each getting a divorce. What hypocrites. The author’s sympathies clearly lie with Tony’s oldest son, Phillip who sued his father for guardianship of Mrs. Astor. Pretty mean stuff for someone so proud of being a buddhist. Gordon doesn’t even seem to consider that Phillip’s motives look mercenary.
*Not recommended unless you want an inside look the vanity and debauchery of the upper class.

Fiction

A Proper Pursuit– Lynn Austin
Set in the Chicago area, 1893 this is a tale about a young woman learning that there’s more to the world than what she learned at finishing school. Austin humorously develops the character of Violet Hayes from a silly girl to a maturing woman. Set against the backdrop of The World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair), as well as the impoverished life of immigrants, the author uses a good amount of history in the story. Her descriptions of the buildings at the fair prompted me to look up the photos on Flickr. It was amazing.
*Highly recommended as a well written, light Christian romance.

Still Reading
Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them – Steven Milloy
Very interesting. My husband follows his website on junk science. We’re reading this one aloud.

Against the Night – Charles Colson
I found this one at the used book sale at the library. And I can’t write anything better about it than Larry Gott, who left this review on Amazon:
“5.0 out of 5 stars Most marked up book (next to the Bible), August 27, 2009
I have read this book twice, once when it came out in 1989, and once about 1998. I would mention that between the two readings, I lost my 1989 edition. However it was so marked up, it was hard to read the material for all the markings interposed. The 1998 copy I read mostly on an airplane (and marked it up again!).

In 1989, I thought it had the most substance of any ‘problem and solution’ book I had ever read. Colson was trying to be a ‘watchman on the wall’, and was warning us on what lay ahead if our nation, and the nation’s people (us), did not change our ways. The first half was diagnostic and prophetic (the problem), the second half was restorative and remedial (the solution).

By 1998, America, its people and its Christians were well down the road of what Colson was fearing. And now in 2009, we have arrived and have found ourselves in the middle of a giant mess. I’m going to reread it again, and see if the solutions might possibly still be valid. Highly recommended!”