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.
...

Monday Musings-Thank You

The column below is one I'll probably pull out periodically, or rewrite, maybe. We so seldom give thanks to those who make our lives better. Beginning with those closest to us, family, friends. Too often familiarity breeds a lack of thoughtfulness. We know, at least us fortunate ones, they'll always have our back. It might not always be in the way we want. Sometimes hard truths must be shared. To support someone indiscrimiately, whether what they do is in their own best interest, let alone anyone else's good, is rightly called enabling. And sometimes it's hard to resist when we love someone. That's probably material for another time.

 * * *

   Two little words. But they pack a punch. I regret that I am often remiss in speaking them in a timely manner. I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, but I am resolved to do better in this area.
   Many years ago in high school, three of my classes were general business, typing, and bookkeeping, taught by the same teacher, Miss Gwen Gatewood. As an adult, in work and home life (balancing checkbook, price comparisons), I realized that those three classes had been priceless. I wrote Miss Gatewood to thank her. She replied thanking me. I only saw her a few times after high school, a couple of class reunions and my mother’s funeral, but I will always remember her. Without guilt, because I thanked her. 
   I had to drive  to Johnson City several times daily some years ago. Each Christmas a business along the highway which made and sold custom plastic awnings displayed an enclosure made of translucent awning fabric lit from within. Printed on the fabric was a manger scene in silhouette and the words, God with us. Each time I drove past the business, the sight cheered me even though I was working long hours with few days off and having trouble finding the ‘Merry’ in Christmas. I wanted to thank the owner and mailed a Christmas card to the business.
   Thanking God for life and health goes without saying, and often does, unfortunately. On a human level we all owe thanks to major groups of people for their contributions to a mostly peaceful, safe and comfortable existence in this United States. Our volunteer military forces are not compensated enough nor thanked enough. Nor our civilian police forces who also stand ready to put lives on the line to protect us. We may gripe about a speeding ticket but is anarchy preferable? That’s what we would have without that ‘thin blue line’ to enforce civil laws. 
   Other civilian groups we don’t thank enough are our utility workers - electric, water, both essentials to modern life. When nature runs amok, winter and summer, most are urged to stay home, but these men and women are called out to restore electricity and keep the water running.
So hats off to our many unsung heroes, you are appreciated, though we don’t say it enough.

   Winter is coming on and with it possible times of weather emergencies, after several periods of such this past summer, with summer storms and hurricanes. So it probably behooves us to thank those who stand ready to help all year round.

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.

* * *

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.

Monday Musings-Mamaw & Papaw tribute

People who willingly raise and cherish children who have no family to care for them, through death or otherwise, are special. My Mamaw and Papaw Brown were those people. I think Daddy didn't really appreciate them until he had rebelled a little, marrying far too young against their wishes, and then fully realized what a heavy responsibility marriage and family could be. I wrote the below piece a number of years after they had gone to their well-deserved rest. Without them in my life and my siblings' lives, I doubt we would be the people we are today.

'Alabamer' Time 

The concept of time intrigues me. I worked as a long distance operator for the telephone company for years. Minutes and seconds were the stuff of my job. Those were the days when that 'voice with a smile,' a live operator, came in on a long distance call after sixty seconds with, "You've talked one minute." Accurate timers told us when to do so, but after a while, we hardly needed them. To this day, I am able to estimate the passage of time with a good deal of accuracy.
     My fascination with time may have been birthed in the fact that my grandparents kept their clocks set on 'Alabamer' time, as we called Central Standard Time. They lived in rural Haralson County, Georgia, which was (and is) in the Eastern Standard Time zone. After Daylight Savings Time was introduced in the late 'forties, their clocks were right at least half the year, since they would never 'spring forward' or 'fall back.' Why they chose to live on Central Standard Time is a mystery, at least to me. If Daddy knew the reason, he kept it to himself.
     Mamaw and Papaw lived their entire lives in the state of Georgia, never even crossing the line to Alabama, or any other neighboring state. In his many job changes, Daddy did move his family to Alabama and back to Georgia three times before I was ten years old. Possibly my grandparents felt closer to him, their only son, and us grandchildren, if their time matched ours and that's when they started keeping their clocks set slower than the prevailing hour around them. Such sentimentality seems a little out of character for a hard-working couple who farmed all of their lives, rooted and grounded in Georgia's rich, red dirt. But deeply caring parents that they were, it's possible.
     In time my grandparents retired from farming and Daddy moved them to an apartment in town. By then I had married, moved to Tennessee, and begun my unique operator's bond with the ticking clocks of life. I'm sure they continued their custom and died a few years later, as they had lived, on 'Alabamer' time.
     sylnick@gmail.com

Friday Jottings - Priorities

Tho I wrote this piece some time ago, it still applies to my life.The two 'p's of a writer's life - priorities and procrastination. Yours truly is a casebook example of both! When I really get into something I must force myself to stop when something else just must be done. Laundry? But I still have a pair of pants clean enough to wear again. Cook something because I'm hungry? That's why God made sandwiches! Ah well, I'm still here trying to determine what has the highest priority.

Priority Paralysis

Is priority paralysis a symptom of modern life? Surely not. Was life so regimented in the past that people knew exactly what to do, when to do it? I can’t believe it. Farmers surely had to choose sometimes whether to plow the back forty or mend the roof before threatened rain. In today’s world, we have so many choices that sometimes we feel unable to make a choice. At least I do. The biggest reason I have a problem with choices is that I tend to over-extend
myself. As a result I am pulled in a dozen directions on how to spend my allotted twenty-four hours per day. Maybe I’m paying for my past sin of criticizing people who spend hours watching mindless sitcoms on television or at the computer playing games.
Now I spend hours doing volunteer work on the computer that I would rather be using to polish or create a piece of my own writing. I enjoy doing the things I do, updating websites, answering email questions and sending out announcements, searching for speakers. Most likely if I wasn’t doing things for others I would find way less productive ways to procrastinate. Writers are experts at procrastination, after all. The only thing that motivates writers, sometimes, is a deadline.
The thought crosses my mind that I’d better keep learning new things and attempting to create as long as I can. Because it’s pretty likely the years ahead of me are not as lengthy as the ones behind me. When you’re teaching yourself, the learning curve can be quite steep though – and time consuming.
On the plus side, since I’m retired from a regular job I can set my own hours, for work and sleep. So I tend to stay up late, very late sometimes. If these columns were time-stamped most of them would reveal that they were written in the wee hours. My friends know this, unfortunately telemarketers don’t and wouldn’t care if they did, so friends don’t call too early in the morning. But even if I’ve been up all night, I welcome hearing from friends. They inspire and encourage me and very often they break my logjam of priority paralysis.

Worthless?

So, preborn babies are not real humans, not worth anything so they can just be thrown away. But, wait, it seems they are worth something, the love of which is the root of all evil. Certainly the evil of abortion. MONEY.

But, but we know those doctors are just providing abortions out of concern for humanity, aren't they? They don't take money from and deceive women, do they? They wouldn't possibly take money for doing an abortion and then ALSO make MORE money by selling the 'worthless products of conception' to the highest bidder, would they? But, but it's for research. It's legal, under Federal law. They sell to the LOWEST bidding research facility, do they? So why does an intact head command the highest price?

If your mind is already made up that any opposition to abortion is just over-zealous religiosity, don't click on the link below and read the report. But if you have the slightest inkling there might be something to it, please click.

I know many, many women who opt for abortion are deceived. They think they just have a bunch of undifferentiated cells that need to be scraped out. Many just can't see any other way out of their unplanned pregnancy dilemma. Or they have been coerced by boy friend, husband, parents to 'get rid of it.' Abortion supporters fight any attempt to provide women considering abortion with ultrasound evidence of just what those 'cells' are. When they (rarely) get a glimpse of those 'cells' in a bucket or jar, with arms and legs and eyes and ears, they are shocked. And sometimes never get over the shock, even with alcohol and drugs. And, certainly, the ones who have their uterus punctured and have to be hustled out the back door to a real hospital and die don't get over it. But that only happens in those old illegal abortions of long ago. Doesn't it?

One thing I've never, ever understood is why ANYONE would object to an abortion clinic being held to the same standards of cleanliness as a walk-in general medical clinic. I guess if a boyfriend, husband, parent doesn't care about the innocent baby involved they're not worried if girlfriend, wife or daughter is penetrated by unsterile instruments in an unclean environment.

It's not like she's getting her ears pierced. Which, by the way, requires parental approval. But PP and abortion supporters fight tooth and nail against parental notification/approval for abortion. And state legislature after state legislature has caved to pressure and refused to pass laws requiring minimum standards of cleanliness and care in abortion clinics.

http://www.lifenews.com

Me, myself and I

Yet another one. Blog, that is! I always spread myself too thin. Maybe it's because I've reached the age that I know life is finite and I better make the most of what I have left! I have too many interests and my mind clamors to explore them all. I'm almost envious of those people who are obsessed with one thing and devote their lives to it. They accomplish more than I seem to, in their chosen field of obsession, but then what if something happens and they can't do it any longer? If they are unable to switch to something else, life is to all intents and purposes, over for them. I've always seemed to 'march to a different drummer' which puts me out of step with many people. It was a happy day for me when I hooked up with several writers' groups. By definition most writers seem to march to a different drummer. Being crazy helps, too. Why else would we, as my blog question asks, keep pounding our heads against a wall in our attempts to snare a publisher for our deathless prose?