Questions - and No Answers

Today's post, though not the title, is courtesy of someone who calls himself E. P. Unum. Apparently a bona fide patriot and I thank him because in searching for him I came across another conservative online news service to which he seems to contribute, along with other writers of interesting, thoughtful articles.

http://arranewsservice.com/

I'm quoting only a small portion of the Unum text. You can read the entire article at the link above. It's  been reprinted elsewhere so  you can probably find it on other sites if you care to do a search. 

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5.  With so many Americans unemployed during this pandemic, why is it that our elected representatives in Congress and the Senate, as well as State Governors and City Mayors continue to receive full salaries and benefits? These people, our elected officials, made the decision to close down our economy and the jobs of millions of Americans. Why are they not held to the same standards as we the people? Why don’t they willingly forego their salaries until we defeat this assault on our nation? Maybe if they were in the same boat with the rest of us, they might be more inclined to work together developing and implementing solutions to our problems instead of continuing to have these schoolyard arguments and get nothing done?
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12.  Here are a few more questions I have:
 
    Are we being quarantined until there are no more germs left in the world or just until after the election?
    Why is it OK to stand in line at Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and Costco, but it suddenly is not safe to vote in person?
    Can someone explain to me the rationale for the teachers union objecting to teachers returning to work unless (1) police are defunded; (2)There is Medicare for all; (3) all charter and private schools are abolished and (4) 54% of all schools have their ventilation systems improved. How does any of this justify having teachers not report to work?
    When I think of Martin Luther King I try to reflect on the times he led riots in our city streets; burned down businesses; looted stores and tore down statues. Then it dawned on me…MLK never did any of those things. Yet, he changed the world! There must be a lesson in this, don’t you agree?
 
13.   If the U.S. Flag is racist, why did it drape the coffin of Congressman John Lewis? Equally, why did Nancy Pelosi deliver a folded flag to the widow of George Floyd, a convicted criminal?

16.   Under Obama the H1N1 Virus resulted in 60.8 million infections; there was zero panic level and China was blamed. Fast forward to today, there are 4.6 million cases of coronavirus reported; the panic level is one of mass hysteria covered 24/7 by the news cycle and Trump is blamed! Wonder why that is?

19.  One last remark, just in case you are wondering. I am a firm, dedicated believer in the LGBT Movement:

L iberty
G uns
B ible
T rump 

 

 

Say What? Not About My Health?

 Excerpt from

It’s Not About Your Health
By Rob Pue|May 3rd, 2020

The paragraphs below were sent to Mr. Pue and he shared them in his online newspaper, Wisconsin Christian News, and other places, reprinted by permission here. I recommend the entire article and others by him highly:

http://www.wisconsinchristiannews.com/viewall.php?cat_id=3
...Other stores that have been allowed to remain open are now requiring customers wear face masks, or they’re not allowed in at all.

Let me share something with you here that came across my desk recently…  It reads, “When the State tells you it’s safe to go to Home Depot to buy a sponge but dangerous to go and buy a flower, it’s not about your health.  When the State shuts down millions of private businesses but doesn’t lay off a single government employee, it’s not about your health.  When the State prevents you from buying cucumber seeds because it’s dangerous, but allows in-person lottery ticket sales, it’s not about your health.

“When the State tells you it’s dangerous to go golf alone, fish alone or be in a motor boat alone, and it’s ILLEGAL for YOU to get a haircut — but the Governor can get his stage makeup done, and hair done for five TV appearances a week, it’s not about your health.  When the State puts you IN a jail cell for walking in a park with your child because it’s too dangerous, but lets criminals OUT of jail cells for their health — It’s not about your health!

“When the State tells you it’s too dangerous to get treated by a doctor of chiropractic or physical therapy treatments, yet deems a liquor store essential, it’s not about your health!  When the State lets you go to the grocery store or hardware store but is demanding mail-in voting, ITS NOT ABOUT YOUR HEALTH.  WAKE UP PEOPLE!  If you think this is all about your health you’re mistaken!  Please open your eyes!  Stop being led like blind sheep.”

No it’s not about your health.  And the part about letting criminals out of jail is absolutely true — and happening nation-wide.  Inmates are being released to protect them from catching the coronavirus.  But… I thought we were all supposed to be “sheltering in place.”  I don’t know of any better way to make sure people are “sheltering in place” than by being in prison.  And yet hard-core convicts, including rapists, pedophiles and killers are being released from prisons and jails around the country, including places like Riker’s Island in New York and Cook County Jail in Chicago.  In Tampa, Florida a man was accused of shooting and killing someone the day after he was released from Hillsborough County Jail there.  This is going on all over the country.  Meanwhile, mothers of small children are hauled off to jail for the “crime” of letting their kids use the public playground.

Does ANY of this make sense to you?  A dear friend of mine asked the following questions:  “Why can you go to Walmart but not Penny’s?  Why the Dollar Store and not a mom and pop shop?  Why can’t you have an elective surgery but you can have an abortion — which is “elective?”  Why should you stay inside but yet it’s a known fact that heat and sunlight kills the virus?  What makes one person ‘essential’ and another not?  Why have most other death rates dropped during the virus?  Why did world leaders meet in New York in October 2019 for a “simulation” of a coronavirus pandemic — just a couple months before the coronavirus pandemic began?  Why are the common people being controlled by the governments and no one is controlling the government?

“Why are hospitals paid more for COVID 19 deaths?  Why does Sweden have some of the lowest cases but yet never locked down anyone at all?  Why did Anthony Fauci and Obama give the Wuhan lab $337 million dollars? What does a computer geek have to do with a pandemic? What about the “vaccine” he wants to make mandatory — and include a microchip tracking device with it for everyone on earth — BEFORE  we can “reopen America?

“Why did the CDC have a job posting for pandemic relief workers in November 2019? Why did Dr. Fauci say in 2017 that the Trump administration would be faced with a ‘SURPRISE pandemic’ and then how is it that HE is the one in charge now of the pandemic team in America?  Why are they infringing on Christians’ religious freedoms but yet Minneapolis, Minnesota is allowing muslims to install speakers in neighborhoods to do their hideous Islamic call to prayer?”

We should all be asking these questions.  As for me, I have HAD IT with this nonsense.  I’ll sooner die of “lead poisoning” than take their “mandatory” vaccine!  I also refuse to wear a mask and participate in their charade.  We’ve all been played for fools, folks.  And yes, it makes me ANGRY.  We gave the “powers that be” the benefit of a doubt for two months now, but clearly, the “virus” is nowhere near as contagious or deadly as they have claimed and yet the restrictions imposed upon us seem to get tighter and tougher with each passing day, even as fewer and fewer people are getting sick.  And the numbers NEVER DID warrant the shutdown of the entire GLOBE in the first place.  Now, hospitals from coast to coast are empty, laying off doctors, nurses and support staff.  Some facilities are closing altogether because there ARE NO patients, of any kind.
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Friday Jottings-One Life?

Though I wrote the below column a few years ago I think it's still relevant. It does seem as if some people today think we should all live the same life, walking in lock-step with everyone else. Never having an original thought, parroting the same things, never deviating from what 'everyone knows.' In my opinion this would be a very dull world without individuals who might see things differently from what I, for instance, think is obvious. Various personalities, abilities, even appearances create a wonderful mosaic in which we all may seek our own path, as long as we don't blungeon those who may differ in an attempt to force them to see things our way.

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We hear the adage that all of us have one life to live. In one sense, that's entirely true. Unlike the video games young people and even some adults spend hours engrossed in, we don't die and come back to life, ad infinitum. In real life, due to accident or extreme illness, a heart may stop unexpedtedly and is shocked back to a regular beat by doctors or emergency personnel. But this is not an everyday experience  in most people's lives.

Looked at in another way, if we live out a normal lifespan, we do live more than one life. Nine months, usually, in the wombs of our mothers where we are indeed alive, our hearts beat, we move around, we suck thumbs, as shown by the miracle of ultrasound.

After we're born, infancy, crawler, toddler, climber. By the age of six, such astounding physical and mental development occurs that some researchers say we have acquired a very large percentage of all that we will ever learn. Thereafter we're learning many other things we will need to live out life as an adult.

All through this development and learning we are living different lives. A person may be an only child, for whatever reason. They never live life as a brother or sister, of one, two or seven siblings, as I had. Our life as a student at school is wholly different from home life. College is again another new life. Job, maybe marriage, divorce, death, other life events propel us into other lives, which we may never have expected to live.

Even someone who never marries and lives with family as an adult must eventually live another life if parents become unable to care for themselves. Then child becomes parent, and in the normal course of events, becomes the survivor who must learn to live on their own.

In modern life, we're given the opportunity to have many more lives than most of our forebears. I believe this is a good thing.

Friday Jottings-Rememberies

Is it the fall season or getting older that bids us look back and consider our past? It's been several years since I wrote the column below. The jar has gotten a little dusty. Life has gone on, I'm older and wiser. I hope. I keep busy with housework, church, writing guilds. Today I did something I used to do often, though it is not mentioned in the column. My mother had the greenest of green thumbs, and I inherited some of that skill. I once kept many houseplants, but let them go. I do like to keep an aloe plant or two around for its medicinal value. A dear friend gave me one a couple of years ago and it multiplied, I divided it into three pots and they became potbound also. I knew they must be divided again and now - eight? - eeek! If they survive I shall gift some of them. I now again have a row of plants in my front window. I've also been sewing a little again. What else will I dredge from the past, I wonder.

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Rememberies

A clear glass pumpkin-shaped jar sits on my desk, doubtless meant to hold cookies or some such. But I have crammed into it various mementoes that mark significant moments in my life.

Visible on one side of the jar is an old address label with my mother's name and last apartment address. More than thirty years after her death the poignant ache of loss lingers in my heart. I'm reminded of the hardships she endured, raising eight children in deep poverty, and am very doubtful that I could have done as well as she.

Peeking through the other side, my grandson's name tag from the family reunion Holston Valley Medical Center provided for babies who spent the first few days or weeks of their lives in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit. I don't like to remember my fear at first sight of his tiny, mottled body after long, anxious moments waiting for the delivering doctor to bring him into view. Or his Lilliputian form as his Mom held him for brief moments, IV tubes in a matchstick arm, feeding tube in his button nose. Now a strapping father of two himself, he bears little resemblance to that preemie in the NICU incubator.

In the jar is a round piece of molded plastic, which covered an indicator lamp on the old cordboard where I began work as a telephone operator over thirty (edit: now, 45 years) years ago. The job that gave me not only independence, but growth and the realization that I was a person in my own right, not just wife, mother, caretaker of an aged parent.

A parking permit from the local community college symbolizes my long-delayed college degree, not fully earned until after retirement. An Allen wrench. I used it to assemble a large modular desk for my computer, ownership of which began another major turn for my life. A red and gold enameled keyring fob with a menorah and the word "Shalom" from my first and only trip outside of the US, to Israel.

A name tag from the Citizen's Police Academy class I took, seeking realism for my writing. Still another tag identifies me as facilitator for a home Bible Study. And finally one ringed with ivy leaves from a ten day writers retreat in North Carolina.

I found me at that retreat. I'm a writer. One who seeks to trade bits of myself for personal gratification and, occasionally, money, through essays and columns. I now have books as evidence that I'm a writer. Books won't fit into the jar, but the objects it holds show me the path I took to get to the place I am now. And they provide me with inspiration for further journeys on that path.

View from Lincoln Memorial to Washington Monument.

Proud To Be An American

Have loved that song since Lee Greenwood first recorded it. Happy Birthday, America! May you ever be free for those who come after me.

Honor our Veterans

It used to be called Decoration Day when I was young. After church there would be 'dinner on the grounds' and then flowers placed on graves. Now on this day we honor those who have fought and many died for what we seem to value so litttle and will barter for 'political correctness'. Our American freedoms. Farmers and businessmen laid down their plowshares and ledgers, picked up arms and fought the Revolutionary War to secure that freedom for us . I pray that they and those who have died for that same cause since then, did not pay that ultimate price to leave us the precious legacy of freedom and we let it slip away.

God bless all our veterans, those who live and those who rest in the places pictured here - Honor them