is 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7

Great Preference Given To Dishes Featuring Bacon and Jack, Super Foods!
It’s that time of year again! Pull up a log and sit a spell. We have snacks and drinks, a warm, toasty fire and fine friends gathered round. Next week we will celebrate our  wonderful American holiday, Thanksgiving. I know that it is a great favorite for almost all of us, and perhaps your family, like mine, has the best feast of the year on that day. Our family has four generations come together, sometimes forty or fifty people. We have been doing this for years, and we never even discuss the menu any more, haven’t for probably twenty years or more. We each bring two or three dishes that we do best, and it is the best meal of the year. We even have the specialties of loved ones long gone, recipes saved and lovingly prepared by granddaughters and even great granddaughters. (more…)

Lately on Facebook, several versions of what it means to be a little boy’s mama have been circulating. They are touching, and bring a smile to your face, a touch of nostalgia, and perhaps even a tear to your eye. You are exhorted to have lots of energy, be ready to put up with bloody noses and reptiles in the house, see movies you don’t like, and various other true things.
We mamas of little boys have a tough job. We deserve a little smile as we ponder our muddy offspring. As I type this, my just recently de-mudded grandson is graciously allowing me a few minutes to recoup from a busy day of swimming, mud bogging, dump trucking, and hugging stinky dogs. His sister hung right in there with him. So, yes, we even need these moments that tell our hearts that our efforts are special moments that will unfold in a story book life for our beloved sons.
However, we also need some harder truths, and now is a good time to take a look at that. So, here’s my version, for what it’s worth.
You might think, because I write this, that I am an expert and my sons are jet setting billionaires who are in a third world country fixing the unfixable problems. Nope, they are just normal guys, who have normal lives with some really wonderful successes like those grandkids temporarily being angels, and great jobs, fun hobbies, or devotion to family and friends. Being there when family needs help, rooting for the right football team (Go Irish!), sitting by hospital beds, listening to troubles. They have tried and failed, tried and succeeded, fallen and got back up too many times to count. (more…)

Vulnerability: Expert testimony before Congress on Thursday warned that an electromagnetic pulse attack on our power grid and electronic infrastructure could leave most Americans dead and the U.S. in another century.

That dire warning came from Peter Vincent Pry, a member of the Congressional EMP Commission and executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.

He testified in front of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event could wipe out 90% of America’s population.

Most people’s eyes might glaze over upon mention of the committee name, the title of the hearing — “Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP): Threat to Critical Infrastructure” — and the general subject of EMP. But it is a real threat and not the stuff of science fiction.

Some attention has been paid to the potential cataclysmic effects of a natural phenomenon such as a massive solar storm, an event that has occurred in America’s horse-and-buggy era when it did not matter.

Today an electromagnetic pulse event would be devastating. It wouldn’t need a solar storm, just a solitary nuke detonated in the atmosphere above the American heartland. We would envy the horse-and-buggy era.

“Natural EMP from a geomagnetic superstorm, like the 1859 Carrington Event or 1921 Railroad Storm, and nuclear EMP attack from terrorists or rogue states, as practiced by North Korea during the nuclear crisis of 2013, are both existential threats that could kill 9-of-10 Americans through starvation, disease and societal collapse,” the Washington Free Beacon quoted Pry as saying.

As we reported early last year, Pry, a former CIA nuclear weapons analyst, believes that North Korea’s recent seemingly low-yield nuclear tests and launch of a low-orbit satellite may in fact be preparations for a future electromagnetic pulse attack. Continue reading. (more…)

Dear Mr. President, members of Congress, judges, FBI agents, Bureau of Land Management, EPA, IRS, Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, law enforcement officers, and anyone acting in any capacity for the government who think their job is to keep us down, keep us in our place, keep tabs on us, keep their hand in our pockets, keep inciting racial discord, keep spending money, and the rest of you government lackeys who never actually worked for a paycheck.

It’s time for us to have a conversation. You don’t know me, even though you have sifted through my email, listened to my phone conversations, oversaw my blog and Facebook posts, taxed the hell out of me, never once actually acted on any of those letters, phone calls or emails I sent you expressing my opinion about upcoming bills, or how you govern the country. Let me tell you a little about myself before we get to the meat of the matter.

I am Mrs. Nobody, and I am Mrs. Everybody. You have passed me on the street and never noticed. I am pretty unremarkable, except, you see, I am not. I have spent most of my years as a student, a wife, a mother, a worker, a boss, a small business owner, an artist, a cook, a blogger, a reader, a Christian, a dog lover, a really lousy singer who likes to sing along to oldies, and a patriot. Recently, I achieved possibly the highest honor in my life with the birth of a little smiling girl and a happy  laughing boy. I became a grandmother. (more…)

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

Historians tell us that the predecessor of the Mother’s Day holiday was the spring festival honoring mother goddesses.

In ancient Greece, the spring festival honored Rhea, wife of Cronus and mother of the gods and goddesses.

Cybele was honored in Roman festivals. This Roman celebration, known as Hilaria, lasted for three days – from March 15 to 18, and began several hundred years before Christ was born.

England observes “Mothering Sunday”, observed on the fourth Sunday in Lent. It is possible that the ceremonies to honor Cybele were adopted by the early Church in honor of Mary, Mother of Christ.

In seventeenth century England, young men and women would bring small gifts to their mothers in observance of this day. This British holiday would not carry over to America. One explanation is that life on the American frontier was simply too harsh to take time out for this celebration. Some also believe this conflicted with rigid Puritan beliefs. It would be several centuries later before Americans redesigned their own day dedicated to the memory of their mothers. (more…)

 The logical end to liberal education is finally reached.

RNS) A Harvard-affiliated student club will host a Satanic “black Mass” on Monday (May 12) as part of an educational exercise, a stunt that the Archdiocese of Boston says “places participants dangerously close to destructive works of evil.”

The ritual — based on the rites of the Roman Catholic Mass but altered in ways designed to be offensive or satirical — will be performed by members of the New York-based Satanic Temple. The performance will be an enactment, not a genuine black Mass, temple members said. (more…)

Picking up the story of my grandfather’s book, we jump back into the story of settlers in Kansas, just as the Civil War starts. The first part of the book is told here.
My grandfather titled his book Pioneer Problems and Present Day Perplexities. It was written in 1965 for our family, and has never been published. A copy was given to each of his children and grandchildren.
Soon after their little cabins were completed, the civil war broke out and a goodly share of the men were taken into service. During the next few years, those broken families saw some very difficult times. Because the war came so soon after their arrival, they had very little land broken out and no reserves to carry them over. Grandmother used to tell us kids how she and the girls knitted socks and sold them in Manhattan. Manhattan at that time consisted only of tents and little old shacks. Food of any kind was very scarce and hard to get. They had no flour or even wheat so they had to ford the river with an ox team in order to get to Manhattan where they had corn ground into corn meal. (more…)