Christmas-The Hope and Light of the World

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. Luke2:7

2010 years ago this winter a teenage mother, watched over by her middle-aged husband and warmed by the breath of the cattle of the fields, gave the world Christianity.

To a world where slavery, poverty, suffering and ignorance were the norm, a small, a very small, glimpse of light..a glimmer of hope, pulsated in the heart of humanity.

Rumors concerning this particular child had been circulating long before the humble birth. Men long distances away from that miserable little barn, who had spent their lives studying the prophesies of the world’s great religions of the day and the configurations of the heavenly bodies they believed to be set in motion by “the creator of all”, were convinced that something momentous had happened and set out to observe and record the event. Heads of state surreptitiously made their way to the grass-filled manger and knelt by the tiny child.

It is said that a sword pierced the young mother’s heart upon his birth as the knowledge of his true life and purpose had been revealed to her.

Christianity, cursed by the viciousness, greed and intolerance within the human family and blessed by the undying belief in the possibility of goodness, changed the world.

The new religion, made only stronger by the persecutions of those whose interests were immeasurably threatened by its existence, spread west and north across Europe and east into Central Asia, constantly changing yet ever the same. Great battles were fought..many suffered and died..over seemingly small and insignificant theological points that we now accept without question.

Although not a military one, the first and most significant battle within the church, well chronicled in the New Testament, is Paul’s assertion that salvation was for ALL people. The failure of Paul to win his case would have strangled the new religion and delegated it to just another sect, among many sects, within the Jewish community.

Western Medieval Europe, ravaged by war and famine,settled into a few tenuously organized and fragilely constructed governmental bodies that found they had far less need for expensively maintained standing armies that had been in place for generations. Not to mention the depredations and pillaging committed by a bored and rapacious population of young men with very narrow skills. Thus was born the Crusades. They served two purposes. The troublesome armies were let loose in other neighborhoods and much wealth and loot was brought home.

And so, through the years, man’s interpretation of Christianity has swayed and morphed between sanctity and savagery. The world was flat. The world revolved around the sun. Fire at the stake purged unbelievers. Women were ordained by law to “suffer” child birth and die if necessary without interference from the ungodly measures of science. Disabilities were the result of sin. Poverty was an affliction placed there by a loving God and not to be tampered with. Were the poor not well beloved by the Lord and therefore more blessed than the pitiful wealthy?

War is waged. Populations are ravaged and destroyed. Bodies desecrated, children exploited. In the name of Peace and Love.

Slavery and its degradations was embraced and upheld by the church for centuries. Birth control is still anathema within some Christian communities. Even here, in this multi-blessed country that we live in, a large segment of the Christian population truly and genuinely believes that the rewards of the world should only rightly be held by those of the same race or gender or sexual orientation or religion as themselves.

Yet that small light brought forth in those meager circumstances 2010 years ago, often dim, flickering frighteningly, smudged by the excrement of evil alive and well, still glows. It ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes. Its devotees struggle and stumble. Yet it glows.

Who has not stood alone in some dark hour and cried out. “I believe. Oh Lord help Thou my unbelief.” ?

And the breath from that crying out causes that feeble glimmer to leap into light again and we are sustained for another hour..another day.

Because of that child.. The Christ

LR/12-2009

McCain, Please go home.

Today Senator McCain (R-AZ), the same who blessed us all with the Palin Family, roused again from senatorial stupor to attack Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, regarding his position on DADT and his acceptance of a lengthy study by the Army suggesting that most service personnel couldn't care less about whether the guy or gal on a mission with them was gay.

Now it's the study itself that is flawed?

Why are we still listening to this aged one-issue Senator who consistently proclaims his love for all things military and claims the right to speak for them?

I have tremendous respect and admiration for the Senator's service, which consisted of completing Navy Jet Flight Training and surviving years of torture and isolation in a POW camp. He was retired from the Navy as a Captain, a good deal less rank than that of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, whose military credentials he was questioning.

For the life of me I cannot see how McCain's experiences make him competent to set military policy or order military affairs, or even to order men.

This is all just too ridiculous. We have so many real problems And McCain is still wringing the last shred of juice he has out of this rag??

I just wish McCain would go home. Other people go to Arizona and retire, why can't he? I also wish he could put Sarah Palin and her family back into what ever box he found them. I wish we could hear from real people, and there are some, with relevant ideas to listen to.

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

The life and times of my Mother and Fathers’ generation was filled with so many stupendous life-changing disasters that the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 has become less than a blip on the radar.

The speed of this pandemic, so deadly, striking so quickly and disappearing as quickly (it lasted about 18 months), made it easier to forget the proportions of the tragedy it inflicted.

But the shortest stroll through any cemetery of that day reveals the flotsam of family tragedies marked by the headstones of young adults. “Rebecca Morris..1895-1918 “Mother and Wife.” “Jerome Patterson… Beloved Son..1902-1918” and on and on.

In the United States about 28% of the population suffered, and 500,000 to 675,000 died.

Kansas City and St.Louis, Missouri were particularly hard hit.

State officials first reported on the presence of influenza in Missouri on October 11, 1918. However, influenza had appeared in the state long before that date. By the third week of October, 3,765 influenza cases and 90 deaths had been reported from St. Louis, with 558 cases and 13 deaths being reported for October 16th alone. State officials, however, rarely had access to accurate figures and the actual number of cases and deaths was probably higher than that.

On October 24th, state officials maintained that "conditions are either stationary or improving" in the state. But on October 25th, the situation took a turn for the worse. Influenza began spreading into rural districts. Between October 26th and 28th, the situation continued to be dire, with rural and urban areas across the state reporting high numbers of cases and deaths.

This Pandemic, targeting the future of populations by striking hardest in the young adult age group, is seldom even regarded when considering the devastations of a worldwide drought, the worldwide economic collapse and two world wars.

Yet the loss of so many in their most productive years must have left a gap. So many orphans, so many unformed families, so many crippled lives, so many losses. And as in all losses, the true cost is never known because it IS lost..not to be regained.

I have spoken to adults left orphaned by this disaster. Their lives, and the lives of those who took them in, were altered and invariably diminished. Being an orphan in the first half of the 20^th century was not an easy thing.

If a Pandemic of this proportion struck today the world would be in an uproar.

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Great Resistance From Troops Against Vaccinations:

"Camp Dodge, Iowa, May 1.—Elmer N. Olson, of Goodrich, Minn., a soldier in training here, refused to submit to vaccination. He was tried by general court-martial and sentenced to fifteen years in the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth."

1918-19 Influeza in Great Britain: survivor statement as an adult.

In early 1919 my father, not yet demobilized, came on one of his regular, probably irregular, furloughs to Carisbrook Street to find both my mother and sister dead. The Spanish Influenza pandemic had struck Harpurhey. There was no doubt of the existence of a God: only the supreme being could contrive so brilliant an afterpiece to four years of unprecedented suffering and devastation. I apparently, was chuckling in my cot while my mother and sister lay dead on a bed in the same room.

Winston Churchill:

on the Influenza Epidemic of 1890

“For though it ravaged far and wide

Both village, town and countryside,

Its power to kill was o’er;

And with the favouring winds of Spring

(Blest is the time of which I sing)

It left our native shore.”

Airport Patdowns

Maybe because I don't have a dog in this fight and seldom fly I am thinking we are feeling sorry for the wrong people for the wrong reasons here! There are two people involved in these little docudramas, the "pattor" and the "pattee"!

The next time you find yourself in the boarding call waiting area look around at your fellow travelers and pick at least three whom you would like to stand face-to-face with and whose armpit, cleavage and crotch you would be willing to stick your hand into, even if it was gloved.

I'm not surprised that some travelers, finding this procedure embarrassing and degrading, are in revolt. I'm also not surprised that the pattors are not. They cannot afford to revolt. They need the job.

So I guess my sympathy leans toward the pattor charged with conducting the pat downs in the face of crappy verbal abuse, jokes that would make you cringe and the contempt of people who ought to know better...or at least behave better.

Can We Do It?

As George Washington lay dying, strangling on his own phlegm and unable to swallow, he agonized over the future of the new country he was so instrumental in creating. The week or two prior to his sudden illness was spent thoughtfully preparing a statement to the nation on the danger the new country faced. It was never to be completed.

Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, the new government, imperfect and embryonic as it was, stood ready to crumble and slide back into the old European mold of violence and privilege.

It was, of course, a matter of money. Of who had access to it and who did not. Bankrupt and debt ridden, the new government had turned to the genius of Alexander Hamilton, a bastard son of a Scots, West Indian planter and whose claim to financial aptitude was as bookkeeper of a West Indian Island store. Within weeks Hamilton had hammered out a financial system that, with the help of Salomen and other financiers, allowed the new government to stay afloat.

A glaring problem with Hamilton’s system was that it pretty much invalidated the continental scrip in which the men who had actually fought the war had been paid,, therefore leaving them penniless, while the men who had benefited greatly by the money changing hands, as it always does in war time, gained exponentially. In short it was paid for by the poor who had already been robbed of most of their livelihood for the years it took to win the war.

Tom Jefferson, that radical dreamer, and the stubborn genius of the little James Madison weighed in hard against this usurpation of the wealth of the “common man” with limited success.

And thus the new government fell into two factions, The Federalists, who believed only those with access to capital had the intelligence and no-how to govern and the Democrats, who had great faith in “the common man.”

Upon hearing of a plot by the Federalists to wrest the control of government from the people who had fought for it by instigating an electoral tie, and forcing an appointment of one of their own, Andy Jackson, out in Tennessee, called up 100 of his militia followers and prepared to march. The governors of both Virginia and Pennsylvania threatened to take similar action.

Compromises were made, deals were cut, the fragile new government survived.

Down through the years the two-party system has continued its ebb and flow, the struggle between privilege and poverty, the powerful and the disenfranchised.

The adversaries names and their agendas have altered and clouded at different points in history but the basic questions have remained the same. Can we do it? Can ordinary people govern themselves?

And secondary but of supreme importance is the question; Is the purpose of government to protect the material wealth and opportunity in the hands of the few, the strong, the quick? Or is it to maximize the welfare and the opportunity of the many?

Time after time in our history this country has been torn down the middle, seemingly hopelessly divided.

The question of slavery threatened to strangle the new government in its crib. Only by kicking the can down the road to the next century did the founding fathers reach agreement.

News of the French Revolution and its excesses set neighbor against neighbor once again. Thugs roamed the streets of our port cities filling the taverns, threatening private businesses, ready to club and annihilate those of opposing views.

The Indian question, later settled so violently and illegally by Jackson who, defying the order of the U.S. Supreme Court, drove the Indians from their rich Georgia farms, split the country once again. The Louisianna purchase was derided and railed against as being an irresponsible assumption of debt the new nation could not afford. The purchase of Alaska, known as Seward’s folly, after the Senator who accomplished the acquisition of that distant and frozen wealth, divided Congress and the country.

And when the chickens came home to roost on the question of slavery and the right of a state to override the laws of the federal government finally had to be settled, our worst nightmare as a nation came to pass in the Civil War, leaving scars still apparent in our political and social system 150 years later.

In both World Wars this country argued the question of "Who's Side Are We On?" In both wars the reaction of our large German immigrant populations and the capitalists who made deals with German munitions companies had to be considered.

In 1940 FDR was fighting to resist tremendous Congressional and industrial pressure to get into the war ON THE SIDE OF THE GERMANS. Henry Ford personally demanded that the President plunge the country into support of the AXIS.

Desegregation rewrote the political landscape and set up a social and political division that has lasted for decades.

We have always been divided. We have always suffered fools. Greed always corrupts. Mediocrity and ignorance have always been celebrated in segments of our population. Good has not always triumphed. Justice is often delayed. Do these current divisions and celebrations of ignorance and crippled vision exceed our capacity to sort things out?

I don’t know. I do know that the question is, as it always has been;

Can we do it? Can ordinary people govern themselves? Is the purpose of government to protect the material wealth and opportunity in the hands of the few, the strong, the quick?

Or is it to maximize the welfare and the opportunity of the many?

The Polish, the Revolution and That Danged Troublemaker Archibald Campbell

Casimir Pulaski was a Polish nobleman by birth and a military commander who fought against Russian domination of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. When this uprising failed, he emigrated to North America as a soldier of fortune. During the American Revolution, he saved the life of George Washington and became a general in the Continental Army. He was a cavalryman. He died of wounds suffered in the Battle of Savannah. Pulaski is one of only seven people to be awarded honorary membership in the United States.

The Seige of Savannah was an encounter of the American Revolutionary War in 1779. The year before, the city of Savannah, Georgia had been captured by a British expeditionary corps under Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell. The siege itself consisted of a joint Franco-American attempt to retake Savannah from September 16, 1779 to October 18, 1779. On October 9, 1779, a major assault against the British siege works failed. During the attack, Polish Count Kazimierz Pułaski, fighting on the American side, was mortally wounded. With the failure of the joint American-French attack, the siege failed, and the British remained in control of Georgia until July 1782, close to the end of the war.

The battle is much remembered in Haitian history; the Fontages Legion, consisting of over 500 gens de couleur—free men of color from Saint-Domingue—fought on the French/American side. Henri Christophe, who later became king of independent Haiti, is thought to have been among these troops.

In 2005 archaeologists with the Coastal Heritage Society and the LAMAR Institute discovered portions of the British fortifications at Spring Hill. The brunt of the combined French and American attack on October 9, 1779, was focused at that point. The find represents the first tangible remains of the battlefield. In 2008 the CHS/LAMAR Institute archaeology team discovered another segment of the British fortifications in Madison Square.

A Color Blind Revolution

The following piece is totally plagiarized, mostly from Wikipedia which plagiarized various Colonial source documents.)

Crispus Attucks, a Free Black American, was the first American martyr in an event prior to the Revolutionary War itself. The son of a native African and a Native American of the Natick tribe, Attucks ran away from his slave owner and became a sailor and whaler. He learned to read and write and to understand the basic principles of different types of government.

Attucks attended meetings with other patriots to discuss taxes levied by Britain, and wrote a letter of protest to Governor Thomas Hutchinson, the Tory governor of Massachusetts. On March 5, 1770, at Dock Square in Boston, Attucks was with a group of men who were defying the British Red Coats. He was the first man to die in the ensuing skirmish, later called the Boston Massacre.

As the first to die for the American cause, he was buried with honor, and a monument on the Boston Common was erected to immortalize his sacrifice.

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Salem Poor, a Free Black-American, married, and twenty-eight years old, enlisted in a Massachusetts militia company commanded by Benjamin Ames. Poor was also engaged at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

He has been described as having been among the most prominent and meritorious characters at the battle of Bunker's Hill. Indeed, the historical painting of that scene, by Col. Trumbull, an eyewitness, done in 1785, gives Peter Salem , with other black patriots, a conspicuous place.

That he distinguished himself is certain; six months after the battle, fourteen Massachusetts officers, all of whom had taken part in the battle, petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to reward Salem Poor as follows.

"To the Honorable General Court of the Massachusetts Bay: The subscribers beg leave to report to your Honorable House (which we do in justice to the character of so brave a man), that, under our own observation, we declare that a negro man, called Salem Poor, of Col. Frye's regiment, Capt. Ames' company, in the late battle at Charlestown, behaved like an experienced officer, as well as an excellent soldier. To set forth particulars of his conduct would be tedious. We would beg leave to say, in the person of this said negro, centres a brave and gallant soldier. The reward due to so great and distinguished a character, we submit to the Congress."
Cambridge, Dec. 5, 1755.

Was Benjamin Franklin a Socialist?

I am now hearing that the mandating of health insurance of individuals so that the more responsible no longer pay for the irresponsible who can pay but don't is "Un-American and a Socialistic blasphemy".

I wonder what Benjamin Franklin would have to say about this attitude toward mandating individuals to meet a common need. HHHMmmmmmm!!

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Under (Benjamin) Franklin's goading, a group of thirty men of Philadelphia came together to form the Union Fire Company on December 7, 1736. Their equipment included "leather buckets, with strong bags and baskets (for packing and transporting goods), which were to be brought to every fire. The blaze battlers met monthly to talk about fire prevention and fire-fighting methods.

Homeowner's were mandated to have leather fire-fighting buckets in their houses.

Incidentally, the one thing that Franklin said gave him the most satisfaction of all his accomplishments was his co-founding, by a combination of public funding from the city of Philadelphia and private donors, of Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the Colonies, "to care for the sick, poor and insane who were wandering the streets of Philadelphia".

Where Have All the Heroes Gone?

I wrote this piece nine years ago and it continues to reflect what I believe to be the truth about our country, The United States of America, and what I consider to be the greatest metropolis in the world, New York City.

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Where Have All the Heroes Gone?

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, we found out. With absolute clarity, under profound and indelibly imprinted experience it was revealed to us. In the indisputable and universal language of disaster and despair we met our heroes..... and they are us.

Somewhere on the way to the bank...while making this the richest nation ever, during our passionate discussion of life and the value of it, during our playful moments at ballgames and on vacations, in our moments of art....sharing with our children and the world our joy of life and appreciation for the past, and in our creative moments.. as we developed the most amazing technology intended to save lives, to communicate with each other and to create and entertain....we became our own heros.

We became the people we saw in New York City, Virginia, Pennsylvania and in the skies last Tuesday.

We became firefighters that set out to climb 90 flights of stairs laden with 120 pounds of equipment needed to do their jobs and to save lives. We became priests who did not hesitate to follow them in. We became the kind of people who would not leave a man in a wheel chair behind in fear for their own lives. We became men and women who stood in line for six hours to give blood to strangers who needed that blood.

We have reared children who spent their day making peanut butter sandwiches for those waiting to hear from their lost ones. We reared children who grew up to be young men who recognized that they were to be used as part of an incredibly horrible weapon launched against the most precious symbol of our nation and decided to not let it happen.

We have become a people who may anoint any kind of leader they choose. Rich or poor, intelligent or less so, moral or immoral, sick or well, ...because in bad times, in HARD times, we lead ourselves and each other.

I do not say this with arrogance or pride. I certainly take no personal credit for this phenomenon. But I have recognized it, as many others surely have in these past few days, with the most awesome humility and gratitude.

And we in calmer ports,...in gentler mid-west, west and southern climes..............have often held New Yorkers in very low esteem. We have asked ourselves why they have to be so loud and move so fast and act so gregariously. Many of us had let ourselves become convinced that these New Yorkers were all a hard and uncaring people capable of great meanness.

Last Tuesday, September 11, 2001, we saw the heart of New Yorkers....bloodied and hurt beyond knowing....with perfect discipline and order...performing incredible feats of courage, love and faith. We have seen the value of their character, and I for one will never forget them.

Will the Real American Please Stand Up?

If George Washington had had a personal banker his name would have been Haym Salomen.

It became a regular practice -- the Revolutionary leaders' diaries testify to this- "that when money was needed for the Revolutionary War, you went to Haym Salomon."

But Salomen was more than a banker. He was a gambler and he gambled his life and his fortune on a new country based on a new idea.

Sympathizing with the patriot cause, Solomon joined the New York branch of The Sons of Liberty. In September 1776, he was arrested as a spy but the British pardoned him in order to use his abilities as an interpreter for their Hession Mercenaries.

Solomon used his position to help prisoners of the British escape and encouraged the Hessians to desert the war effort. In 1778 Solomon was arrested again and sentenced to death, but he managed to escape, whereupon he made his way with his family to the rebel capital in Philadelphia.

Tortured and imprisoned by the British more than once., Haym Salomon negotiated many loans for the Colonies from France and Holland, but never took a commission for himself.

According to legend, General Washington's appeal for funds with which to maintain his ragged army at Valley Forge came to Salomon on Yom Kippur. Salomen reportedly turned to the congregation and suspended services to secure pledges for what Washington asked of him.

Washington, in August of 1781, struggling constantly with Congress and the individual states to raise money for his army, saw a chance that should not be missed. Washington with his main army and the Count de Rochambeau with his French army could take Yorktown if they could just get there.
(Ever heard of Yorktown? It was that little battle that won the war and created the new United States of America.)

Washington needed $20,000 for food and forage and wagons and clothing but Congress turned him down.

Congress had no powers of direct taxation and had to rely on requests for money directed to the states, which habitually refused.

When told there were no funds and no credit available, Washington gave a simple but eloquent order: "Send for Haym Salomon".

Haym again came through, and the $20,000 was raised. Washington conducted the Yorktown campaign, which proved to be the final battle of the Revolution.

The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3rd, 1783, and ended the Revolutionary War, but the financial problems of the newly established Country were not over. It was Haym Salomon who managed, time-after-time, to raise the money to bailout the debt ridden government.

In 1893, a bill was presented before the 52nd United States Congress ordering a gold medal be struck in recognition of Solomon's contributions to the United States.

The Congressional Record of March 25, 1975 reads:
When Robert Morris was appointed Superintendent of Finance, he turned to Solomon for help in raising the money needed to carry on the (Rev) war and later to save the emerging nation from financial collapse. Solomon advanced direct loans to the government and also gave generously of his own resources to pay the salaries of government officials and army officers. With frequent entries of "I sent for Haym Solomon", Morris' diary for the years 1781–84 records some 75 transactions between the two men.

Will the Real American Please Stand Up??

If like me, you are a proud and patriotic white Christian American that’s great. But whatever would make us think that we were the only “real” Americans? The facts just don’t support that.

The current crop of radio talk show hosts, (almost all of whose ancestors were late-comers to “the American Experience” having arrived with the 19^th century influx of German and European immigration,) have mysteriously convinced many United States citizens that they are the “special” ones who carry the “white man’s burden” and are under constant threat from foreigners of other races, religions and complexions who have “stolen their country”.

They pledge, with copious tears and hoarse shouts, their intention of “taking it back”.. They propound the idea that “their America” and that of their listeners, was thought up, fought for, financed and otherwise earned by none other than white, mostly protestant Christians.

You don’t have to know a LOT of history to see how wrong…and how dangerous… this concept is.

Although most of our Northern European ancestors have been spared our American denigration, old Europe’s mindset continued alive and well in regard to Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Scots, the Irish and French. In spite of their enormous contributions these groups have, in their turn, suffered the hatred and condescension of their fellow Americans.

But this was and is wrong headedness, and anathema to what America really is.

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Ernie Pyle-War Correspondent

Ernie Pyle Aug 3, 1900-April 18, 1945

Ernie Pyle is and will remain one of my most profoundly inspiring heroes. Pyle was no warrior, no strategist, no great thinker.

Pyle was a writer.

He was a WWII war correspondent that forced America to see and feel and understand what war really was and what it did to men who had to fight it and to people in far away places with strange names whose lives were overwhelmed by it.

His telling of the war and the stories of the soldiers who fought it did not come out of some warm and cozy press room.

Pyle's reports were born in muddy ditches and fire bombed streets and bloody roadways and were the awful truths lived by exhausted, heart-sick, home-sick men.

The words he wrote, the truths he told and the soldiers' stories, which he shared and so conscientiously reported, are still profoundly gut wrenching. LR


Excerpts from Ernie Pyle's War as he wrote it:

....to the fighting soldier that phase of the war is behind. It was left behind after his first battle. His blood is up. He is fighting for his life, and killing now for him is as much a profession as writing is for me.
Ernie Pyle

Swinging first and swinging to kill is all that matters now.
Ernie Pyle

The men are walking. They are fifty feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as you can tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion.
Ernie Pyle

In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory - there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else.
Ernie Pyle

The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the physical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.
Ernie Pyle

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Ernie Pyle

I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.
Ernie Pyle

It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire.....
The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor only to break out again later.
Ernie Pyle

Someday when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges.
Ernie Pyle

He never did.

Pyle died at 45 years of age, killed by sniper fire on the tiny island of Ie Shima, off the coast of Okinawa in the Pacific, April 18, 1945, only four months before Allied Victory over Japan was declared on August 14.

Eat Better and Cheaper

Save Money-Eat Better-Stress Less

“Oh Lord!,” I can just hear my grown kids groaning now.

I'm always giving advice that nobody wants and NEVER takes but for what it's worth....

Grandma’s Rules Are as Follows:

1: Quit Eating Junk

2: Treat Your Kids Like They’re Important

3: Keep Your Eye on the Goal

Just to clear the deck I will admit, and assume that everyone knows, that I was a lousy mother, my children were often starved for junk food and were forced to wear homemade clothes well into the mid-years of elementary school. My oldest son spent his first hard-earned paycheck on a store bought haircut. Of course these aren’t the only examples of my lousy motherhood but they are the ones I can bear to share publicly and the only ones pertinent here.

I was also blessed with kids that were notorious for eating three times the amount the children of my friends and relatives did and challenged with having to care for them on about a quarter of the resources.

But from all that deprivation and struggle I did learn a few things just in case anyone is interested.

Quit Eating Junk

Feed Your Family Real Food:

First of all let me suggest that you only use those fancy cookbooks that you bought at all those garage sales or got as birthday gifts, anniversary gifts etc. for night reading. About all they are good for is to make a person set such high standards for cooking that they never get any real cooking done. On top of that they make a person feel so inadequate. I have a whole shelf full and a drawer full to boot and I am totally inadequate.!!

To feed your family real food you must buy real food not what ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) and the American Cardboard and Plastic Industries want you to think is food. Don’t go up any center aisle of the store except the baking and condiment aisle. (Flour, Sugar, Lard, Tea, Coffee, Ketchup, Mustard..well you get my drift) and the canned food aisle.

The periphery of almost all stores is where everything you really need is located. That’s meat, milk, cheese, bread, vegetables and fruit. If it’s in a box, bag, or frozen it should be a small addition to any meal and/or a rare treat. Treat it like a treat and don’t do it often.

Treat Your Kids Like They’re Important

Your Children Are Not Family Pets.

Expect Them to Help. They will surprise you if they think what they’re doing is important.

Keep Your Eye on the Goal:

Don’t rob Your Family of Good Meals or Your Precious Time

The goal is to provide a fast, pleasant, nutritious meal with the time to enjoy it. For good or ill, if there are children, the home is a training ground. Good food is better food. Less stress is better than more stress.

If you work outside the home, (and who doesn’t?) don’t cook more than an hour or two a week. Here’s how: Crock Pot, Crock Pot, Crock Pot. Grill, Grill, Grill. Bake, Bake Bake.

Sample Weekly Shopping:

Buy two whole chickens, one five-pound roast, five pork chops, ten pounds of hamburger and a package of either short ribs, spare ribs or pork steak for BBQ. One pack of meatloaf seasoning (McCormicks or store brand), 5 pound bag of small red potatoes, a two pound bag of carrots, four cans green beans, four cans carrots, four cans creamed or whole kernel corn, a stalk of celery and a bag of salad greens, the darker the better, (Iceberg lettuce has little food value.) four boxes mac and cheese, one pack of spaghetti, four boxes instant brown rice, one package frozen noodles, 3 packages of pre-baked hot rolls, a big package of frozen french fries, two cans of your favorite beans, a dozen eggs and a couple of jars of Ragu.

This will give you…

2 chicken dinners

1 beef roast dinner

1 meatloaf dinner

1 grilled hamburger dinner

1 spaghetti and meatball dinner

1 Grilled Pork Chop dinner

1 Barbecue (pork or beef)

None of the above will take any more time to fix than you would spend waiting in a fast food line or waiting for the Pizza delivery boy.

This list allows for a couple of throw-out recipes (AKA My-family-wouldn't-touch-that-with a- 10-foot-pole) and one night of carry-out or eating out. They should even each other out.

In The Kitchen

The following should take about ten minutes.

Well, you've made it home from the store. Divide hamburger into five two-pound portions, put each of three portions in separate zip lock bags and freeze. These you can use to grill. Take them out the night before to thaw in the frig or..remember..the nuker does have a “thaw” thingy on it.

Take one portion and toss into a bowl with a handful of oatmeal, an egg, (be sure and break the egg) salt and pepper, and a dollop of milk. A dollop is what you get if you start to pour milk and catch yourself just in time when you meant to pour beer. Roll into little meatballs, put back into a quart freezer bag. Now I know you can buy little plastic bags of little plastic meatballs but they are about four times the cost and four times the added chemicals besides being frozen in plastic for a month or two. This process will take you about four minutes if you don’t have to hunt for the salt and pepper, or the egg etc..

Freeze meatballs, chickens, pork or beef for BBQ and beef roast.

Sample Fast Meals

Weekend Day One.

This should take about 7 minutes max.

Meat loaf, potatoes, salad and hot rolls

Mix one unfrozen portion of hamburger with meatloaf seasoning mix, a handful of oatmeal, an egg and a blob of salsa, taco sauce, ketchup..whatever. Place in loaf pan or round casserole. Drizzle catsup on top and put in 350 degree oven.

Take four potatoes, grease with any grease but motor oil, poke holes in the top with fork and put in oven with meatloaf.

Cook about an hour until meatloaf is no longer bleeding. Serve with some WASHED salad and encourage eating the skin of the potato. Potato skin is loaded with good stuff.

Toss a half dozen store bought hot rolls in to heat for about the three minutes it’s going to take you to throw the salad into a bowl. I don’t care what you put on the potato or the salad. You have already worked off any fat you might get from sour cream, Ranch Dressing etc. poking holes in the potatoes.

Weekend Day 2:

This Should Take About 7 minutes actual work and another 20 to sit and contemplate the grill and listen to the neighbor’s dog bark.

Grilled pork chops, grilled potatoes, green beans and bread and butter

Slice and boil (do not peel) five red potatoes for about ten minutes. Pour off water and put potatoes on a piece of tinfoil that you have greased with oleo. Drop a blob of oleo on top of them, salt and pepper, fold the foil around them and stick on grill.

Take pork chops and do anything fancy you want to with them..dip in dressing..season with lemon pepper..lay a slice of pineapple on top after they’ve been turned once or just grill the dang things with salt and pepper. Don’t overcook but make sure they are done. Raw pork is a real no no.

Put a blob of oleo in a sauce pan and dump in a can of green beans.

Serve with bread and butter.

Any Weekday:

Before leaving for work put whatever meat you bought for BBQ in crock pot and pour BBQ sauce over it, set crock pot on low.

Serve with your favorite canned beans and baked fries.

Any Weekday:

15 minutes

Stewed chicken. Brown rice, salad and corn or green beans.

Put frozen chicken in crock pot on low before leaving for work. Add salt and pepper,

and a branch of celery. (You can take the bag of guts out of the chicken right before serving when it is all cooked and juicy and no one will ever know the difference. In fact in later years your children will think people are crazy who don't do it like that.)

As a safety measure set crock pot on metal surface such as your stove or a cookie sheet across one side of the sink. Remember do not run water with a plugged in crock pot in the sink. If you're really paranoid put the dang thing in the garage on concrete. When you get home, ladle off about a cup of broth into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Add some instant brown rice (follow the box direction here.) Serve with salad, corn green beans or whatever.

Any Weekday:

About 7 minutes

Roast beef, red potatoes and carrots.

Put frozen beef roast into crock pot in the morning. Peel an onion and put in whole. Peel three carrots and put in whole. Wash and put in four or five red potatoes, unpeeled and whole. Do crock pot on low as you did with the chicken.

Serve with anything else you want to.

Any Weekday:

About 15 minutes

Grill Hamburgers with mac and cheese, pork and beans etc.

If you forgot to take the hamburger out of the freezer thaw it in micro wave for grilling. Serve with cheese, cheap iceberg lettuce, sliced tomatoes etc…Mac and cheese from box per directions takes about ten minutes so start it before you put the hamburgers on. Pork and Beans..Applesauce..whatever..

Any Weekday:

About 20 Minutes

Roast chicken and Noodles, corn, salad and/or fresh celery

Plop a whole frozen chicken, salt and pepper, a branch of celery and a chunk of onion in crock pot before going to work. Set on low. When you get home remove chicken to bowl or platter and cover to keep warm. Dig out the slimy cooked celery, onions etc and do whatever you want with them. Dump a bag of frozen noodles in broth in crock pot and cook on high ‘til noodles are done. (My crock pot will come to a boil on high and the noodles cook quickly. If yours doesn’t, dump noodles and broth into large pan and boil until done.)

While noodles are cooking put a blob of oleo into a sauce pan and dump in a can of corn.

Serve chicken and noodles with corn and salad or raw celery.

Any Weekday:

15 minutes

Spaghetti and meatballs.

Set a package of spaghetti to cooking. (Just break in half and put in a large pan of water. Poke periodically to keep it from glomming together. Brown hamburger balls, (remember you made the little suckers the day you bought groceries?) turning occasionally, in a fairly large skillet. Turn skillet on low and cook with lid for a few minutes. Ad Ragu and heat until hot. Serve with Italian bread and salad or broccoli or something green.

Well, I got that off my chest!!

All You Need to Know About Cows

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848-1954), Saturday 7 July 1945, page 23
National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article972861

TIE cow is a mamal. It has six sides, left, right, and upper and
below. At the back it has a tail on which hangs a brush. With
this it sends the flies away so that they will not fall in the milk. The
head is for the purpose of growing horns, and so that the mouth can be
somewhere. The horns are to butt with. The mouth is to moo with.
Under the cow hangs the milk. It is arranged for milking.
When people milk, the milk comes, and there is never an end to
the supply. How the cow does it I have not yet realised, but it makes
more and more. The cow has a fine sense of smell; one can smell it
far away. This is the reason for the fresh air in the country.
The cow does not eat much, but what it eats it eats twice, so
that it gets enough. When it is hungry it moos, and when it says
nothing it is because all its inside is full up of grass.

-Essay by t. 10-year-old boy at Klttybrewster School, Aberdeen.

Bring Your Own Dirt

I like the story about the Scientist who became so enamored of the great strides in the scientific body of knowledge that he knew that with a few tweaks here and there man could create life from the very elements of the earth.

He was so confident that he challenged God saying, “I, too can create life. Meet me at a certain place at a certain hour and we will compete.

And God being a patient God, agreed and when they both appeared at the certain place at the certain time the exuberant scientist began immediately by scooping up a handful of earth to extract the necessary elements.

But God objected, raised his great hand and said, “My dear boy, you must bring your own dirt.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the World

According to Gallup Polls, Eleanor Roosevelt was the most admired woman in the world for fifteen consecutive years, from 1946 to 1961. That admiration was hard earned.

A homely, introverted child born to a family of wealth and influence her childhood was a miserable one. Her mother disliked and ridiculed her as being “ugly” and “clumsy” and upon her death when Eleanor was eight years old, her grandmother continued the same. Being sent to England for schooling as a young teenager proved to be a real opportunity for her and she blossomed both emotionally and academically.
At seventeen, she returned home and soon resumed her acquaintance with, and married, a fourth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt who later became our 32nd President. Eleanor had six children in ten years, one of whom died in infancy.
During this time, Eleanor also became active in politics and social causes. She campaigned for Alfred E. Smith for president, and worked for the Women’s Trade Union League, which promoted a 48 hour work week, minimum wage, and the abolition of child labor. She also worked with the League of Women Voters and taught literature and American history at the Todhunter School for Girls in New York City.
In 1920 her husband, Franklin, became ill with Infantile Paralysis and was crippled for life. She became his legs…and nurse..and secretary..and number one supporter in his run for the presidency. She suffered through his extramarital affairs and never put her good above his and the children. She began to travel, on his instructions, to see people and places around the world that he could not, carrying messages, encouragement and sometimes threats from the presidential portfolio without portfolio. She constantly juggled the “little woman speaks” thing with the power of the presidency that spoke through her in ways that no official portfolio had.

She became the conscience of the New Deal recovery program. While the federal government was developing big and complex programs to turn around the depression, she became, quite literally, the liaison between the government and individuals who were suffering. She would personally visit the slums of cities, talk to miners and destitute farmers, sit with widows and orphans and hear their stories. She was the conscience of the government by showing the human face of sympathy and concern, rather than simply an impersonal government program. She was the human face of the New Deal.
Of two political cartoons from the midst of the Great Depression, one showed dirty coal miners discovering a woman entering the mine wearing a miner’s hat. With astonishment, one says to the other, “My gosh! There’s Mrs. Roosevelt!” The other showed a shipload of immigrants in New York’s harbor. A mother and her young son were looking at the Statue of Liberty, and when the mother asks if he knows who that is, the boy responds saying, “Of course I know who that is. That’s Mrs. Roosevelt!”
After Franklin died, President Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as our first delegate to the new United Nations. In that capacity, her main focus was protecting human rights. She became co-chair of the UN’s Human Rights Commission and the person most responsible for getting nations to approve the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone on the road of civilization.
She was a staunch defender of the separation of church and state. It was perhaps her active role in racial civil rights and citizen civil liberties that caused J. Edgar Hoover to suspect her of being a communist. At the time of her death, Eleanor Roosevelt, the voice of our national conscience, had the thickest F.B.I. file of anyone in the country. In hindsight, this was an achievement worthy of respect.

Ref: Rev. Bruce Clear, Indianapolis, Indiana for some of this content and www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies