Just One Mans Opinion

You Are Probably Going to Be Fooled.

2013-05-21T09:35:00.000-05:00

This person is trying to trick you. Watch how easy he does it.

Julie's Mom has five daughters.

Jana
Jene
Jini
Jono

What's the name of the fifth one?

__________________________________________

You probably said "Junu" because that would logically be the next name in the sequence and we naturally assume the question is about guessing the next name in the sequence. So we miss the fact that the questioner did not actually name the mother, but instead described her as belonging to one of the daughters and one not in the list. Ergo, logically, Julie's Mom must have a fifth daughter named Julie.

I've written a lot about propaganda and deception lately. This word trick is an interesting peek at how someone gets you looking one way so that you miss what's really going on.

The numbered list pulled your eyes away from the key bit of information you needed to solve the puzzle which was in the first line. We read past this line because Julie was a modifier of Mom and you don't pay as much attention to modifiers as you do to the nouns modified and the verbs in sentences. You'd have guessed it easily if the questioner had said "Julie has four sisters, name the fifth one," and then been given the list. Even then, you might have taken a whack at the sequence because it was new and intriguing information and our brains are drawn to the new and unknown. Everything else gets shoved into the background (such as the information that the mother of the four girls in the list was also Julie's mother).

This trick takes advantage of our trust that the person talking to us isn't lying to us or trying to deceive and our fascination with new stuff. That's why presidential press secretaries say, "That happened a long time ago," when they really don't want to talk about something.

That's why presidents bomb aspirin factories when they want someone to not notice they've been hitting on the interns. That's why the guys in the White House gave up the IRS and the Justice Department - anything to get you looking away from the hearings about Benghazi. Better the press looks at naughty subordinates than at the big guy.

Bad people always want to draw your attention away from the really nasty bits that are going on right before your eyes. And because people are trusting we are fooled. It happens in families, It happens in politics and it happens in the spiritual world. The devil does slight of hand and if we're careful he'll get us looking one way when we ought to be looking the other. People are embarrassed when they are caught like that and fooled, but they oughtn't be.

There is no shame on those who are tricked.

The shame is on those who do the trickery.

I'm just saying.

Tom King (c) 2013

I Become a "Biker"

2013-05-08T12:52:00.001-05:00

We're now well and truly stranded up here in Washington State out in the middle of a swamp surrounded by West Coast liberals with our truck back in Texas and three miles from the nearest store of any kind (and did I mention that I'm 59 with bad knees and and a spare tire that weighs more like an anvil?) We're in spitting distance of a live volcano that is overdue to go off and I'm having to figure out how to write for a living.

So, somebody lent me a bicycle. Taking it as a sign from God, I decided to go to town to "pick up a couple of things."

My Sweet Baboo didn't want me to go. She figured I'd keel over dead alongside the road somewhere and she'd never know what happened to me and be trapped alone in the apartment and have to eat the dog to survive. The dog went, "Say, what?"

But when I hinted I might be returning with chocolate, she relented and gave me a list with "a couple of more things we really need".

So I pulled on my backpack and rode off toward the nearest Safeway. The dump truck did not run over me thanks to the handy driveway and all those tiny rocks that cushioned my fall. Once I got to the store, I chained up my bike and grabbed a basket.

Stores are insidious things. The things you put in your shopping cart reproduce. I stuck to the list pretty well and got all the stuff she needed and then I thought of the poor little thing sitting back there all alone and started tossing "a few little treats" into the basket. By the time I was done I had a pretty formidable basketful for someone who was planning to carry it all home on a bicycle.

Into my rucksack, I packed a six pack of Coke (in the glass bottles), cans of spaghetti sauce, a large bottle of laundry detergent, twenty pounds of cleaning supplies. a block of cheese and 40 or so pounds of dog food, potatoes and enough oatmeal to last the winter (next winter). When I attempted to shoulder the pack, I discovered that someone had poured concrete into it. That thing weighed 85 pounds if it weighed an ounce and I still had three bags I was going to have to suspend from my neck.

What I did next is how I know I'm getting old.

I called a cab and went over to Subway and ate a sandwich till the cab got there. I know the cab driver. When she arrived, she got out and loaded me, my bike and my concrete rucksack into the cab, laughing the whole time. The woman laughed all the way back to my house.

I either need to go to town more often and buy smaller quantities, or hitchhike back to Texas for my truck. Either way, I'm getting too old for this kind of "bikering". I'm seriously considering buying a Vespa and I don't care how wimpy it looks.

My knees are giving me hell this morning and my calves decided I needed a good double cramp, when I tried to get out of bed (which was a circus act in itself).

During the night, the wife had pinned me in on one side and the dog had pinned me in from the other and those two females were not letting me sneak out again for any more bike riding this morning- even though they loved the BLTs we had for supper immensely..

Ain't it grand to be loved like that?

Tom

Cinco de' Tom - My Annual Celebration

2013-04-21T05:03:00.001-05:00

Walt Whitman, without any dash of humility at all, named one of his better poems, "A Song of Myself". While I do not pretend to the poetic talents of Mr. Whitman, I do understand the sentiment behind his paean to himself. Years ago my kids began to notice that I tended to break up the celebration of my birthday over several days leading up to and following my birthday. Birthday dinner at home one day. Birthday dinner out on another. Celebratory movie and popcorn. Celebratory trip to the mall to buy my birthday present. Anything to stretch things out.

I think it was my son, Micah, who dubbed it Cinco de' Tom and teased me unmercifully about stretching out my birthday fun. I don't care. The last couple of years since I've been in Washington and the economy has been in the dumper, the celebration has become a little skimpier. I don't mind so much.

You see it was never about the size of the party or the number of presents. Good old Mom always come through with a nice present and birthday card for her baby boy and favorite kid, but for the most part, I settle for e-mail greetings and Facebook entries from the kids and Sheila bakes me one of her amazing cakes. I made a vege-Mexican Enchilada Pie in keeping with the fiesta theme this year. When we can afford it, we both treat ourselves to a nice birthday bash in my honor. She has just as much fun as me and, frankly, it would be no fun without her.

I think we should all make a festival out of our birthdays. This year we celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary and my 59th birthday two weeks apart. I'm planning to save up for a mighty bash next year as it will be our 40th anniversary and I'll officially reach geezerdom when I hit 60 on my next birthday.

I plan to party for the full five days.................while wearing a sombrero!

I deserve it. Mostly Sheila deserves it for putting up with me for this long. You deserve it to, so go ahead and celebrate this year. Make a big deal out of it. It's your milestone. Give yourself a treat and who cares what anyone thinks.

I discovered something about being reticent about birthdays. If you don't make a big deal about it, your loved ones don't know how much you enjoy the parties and then they stop giving you one on the grounds that you must not like it. If you do make a big deal out of your birthday, they rouse themselves to extra effort and throw you a nice birthday bash.

And when they do everybody has fun and how nice is that? Years ago, I learned to my surprise that those who love you actually want to know what makes you happy. If they know, they can do something for you that also makes you happy.

So every year, it's Cinco de' Tom - me spreading happiness (and making out like a bandit on the birthday presents).

Tom
(c) 2013

Calling Doctor Daisy, Calling Doctor Daisy!

2013-04-12T16:57:00.000-05:00

(c) 2013 by Tom King

We've been training our dog, Daisy as a medical alert service dog. My wife has suffered severe panic attacks for more than 30 years as a result of an accident in labor and delivery with our youngest child. Daisy is able to recognize their onset and comes immediately to Sheila's side when they start. She helps Sheila know when a panic attack is coming on and it helps Sheila know to take her anti-anxiety meds quick. That way, Sheila is not totally alone when I'm away from the house and so that we get an early warning that a panic attack is coming if we're out in public.

Sheila often experiences vivid nightmares and night terrors. Many times these occur after I get up in the morning and leave her sleeping a little longer. This morning I was taking a shower and thought I heard a noise. I got out and threw on a robe. By now I could hear a strange voice that sounded dry and small, but terrified.

"Dr. Daisy," the voice shouted. "Don't do the surgery yet. The anesthetic isn't working!"

I figured Sheila was having another nightmare, so I bolted for the bedroom. When I arrived I found Daisy up on the bed with her paws on Sheila's chest, licking her face. Sheila was spluttering and shouting, "No, no, Dr. Daisy. It's not working. Help me!"

I shook Sheila awake and asked her if she wanted a drink of water to help her wake up.

"Oh, please, yes....."

As she came to, I moved Daisy back. Apparently the dog had heard Sheila trying to wake from a dream that Sheila was having about being stretched out upon a surgical table and being operated on. The best we can piece together it went like this.

Sheila's nose got blocked somehow and she couldn't breathe. Sheila is NOT a mouth breather. She was in deep REM sleep and couldn't wake and began gasping for breath which dried out her mouth and tongue making it difficult for her to speak clearly. She began to groan because in the dream the surgical team was fixing to start cutting and Sheila thought she was going to be awake for the operation.

She began to shout for help which was when I heard her.

Meanwhile, our faithful, highly trained service dog, Super Daisy, sprang to the rescue, placed her paws on Sheila's chest and began to do CPR (chest compressions alternating with muzzle to face resuscitation). Sheila's words meanwhile were slurred and thick because of the dry mouth. Not having opposable thumbs or access to a water bottle, Daisy moistened Sheilas mouth and throat with the only wet thing she had available.

"Hey," Daisy says. "The manual says clear the airway, so I cleared the airway."

Later as I gave Sheila some water to help her speak clearly, she sputtered and choked and then sat up looking confused. "I think I've been French kissed by a dog," she said.

Daisy looked up at me and grinned. "My work here is done," she seemed to say and resumed her spot at the foot of the bed.

Psycho-Social Development Made Easy: Stages 3 & 4

2013-04-07T12:16:00.000-05:00

Photo used by permission - Amy Maples, 2013

Put your pants on!” says Mom.

“Okay!,” says Aidan and proceeds to follow mom’s instructions to the letter, with the results seen here.

They're very literal at that age, children are. At ages 3 to 5, their big psycho-social issue is "Initiative vs. Guilt". Renowned psychologist Erik Erickson says that children need to begin asserting control and power over their environment at this age. Success in this stage leads to a strong sense of purpose. There are generally natural controls in place that prevent megalomania, however. Children who try to exert too much power experience disapproval from parents or other authority figures, resulting in a sense of guilt. Guilt counterbalances self-assurance and can be a healthy factor in determining one's personality.

So the good news is that Aidan is likely asserting just enough control, but not too much. If he does not do learn to make choices and exert some measure of control over his environment, he will grow up riddled with guilt.

So congratulations, Mom. You are probably raising a relatively guilt-free kid. As such, he is far more likely to move out of your basement before he is 30.

If, however, the kid has begun to cross over into the stage that happens at about six through 11, he becomes even more concrete in his obedience and outlook. He will want to know "What happens if....." kinds of things. Mostly he will want to know the rules and the consequences of breaking them in order to figure out ways around those rules without suffering the consequences. Kids that age are literalists. Erickson identified this stage's primary psycho-social issue as "Industry vs. Inferiority". Children, says Erickson, need to cope with new social and academic demands. Success leads to a sense of competence, while failure results in feelings of inferiority.

Putting his pants over his head then becomes, for Aidan, a way to successfully obey his mother while maintaining his sense of control over his environment by taking initiative. This obedient rebellion helps the boy not to feel inferior to those around him. If you as a parent or authority figure laugh at him over the joke rather than scolding, you reward the behavior and he is more likely to repeat it.

Congratulations, Mom. You are probably raising a comedian with a healthy ego. Not an easy task in this modern world.

- Tom

Getting Old is Actually Kind of Fun?

2013-04-02T15:41:00.000-05:00

Wheat gluten "steaks" simmering in broth.

As I've gotten older, I've decided to do some things differently. For one thing, we've almost entirely stopped buying meat of any kind and gone almost entirely vegetarian. It means more cooking time, but I find I enjoy cooking. Who knew meal prep could be this much fun?

People become vegetarians for a lot of reasons. Some hope to lose weight of to improve their health or live longer. Others do it because the whole idea of eating living creatures is repugnant to them. Some do it in order to feel morally superior to others. Some believe it will help save the planet.

I do it for several reasons, not the least of which is my religion. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve evidently lived on fruits and vegetables. Later God pitched them out of the garden and said here's some grain (carbohydrates). Try this. Then, at the flood He designated clean and unclean beasts and told Noah he could barbecue the extra clean ones during the voyage. The human lifespan dropped precipitously after that. So I figure it's healthier to eat the plants.

But probably an even bigger reason for it is that I like vegetarian food. I grew up eating both vegetarian food and meat dishes. My Mom and my Grandmother made wonderful dishes like peanut butter loaf, cottage cheese loaf and vegetarian hot dogs and hamburgers. We mixed it up with the real thing too and for economic reasons, I did eat rather a lot of baloney sandwiches as a kid.

To this day, I'm not terribly fussy to cook for, though as a practicing Adventist, I leave pork and shrimp and stuff like that alone. If we're visiting or away from home, we eat what we're offered and don't demand others cater to our weird dietary restrictions. We feel that would be rude, but we are up front about being semi-vegetarians.

I'm doing more of the cooking now that I'm semi-retired and only working 12 to 14 hour days and since, I'm cooking, I can exercise my preference for vegetarian food over meat. It's safer, healthier and I like it better. Adventists as a group tend to live longer than other Americans by about 6 to 10 years according to some studies. I figure it's the lifestyle - a lifestyle that includes an emphasis on vegetarianism and eating a good diet.

Don't get me wrong, I do like pie, especially the fruity ones that aren't too sweet and homemade ice cream is a weakness of mine. And I have to take my Sweet Baboo down for a steak once in a while or she gets cranky, but all in all it wasn't a hard thing for us to do. We've always eaten lots of vegetables and vegetarian foods, and there are all kinds of vegetarian substitutes for meat. You can order stuff made from tofu, soybeans, wheat gluten and other plant proteins and many of them like vege-dogs, artificial scallops, bacon and buffalo wings aren't bad. You used to have to buy them from SDA suppliers like your state's Adventist Book Center, but now you can order vege-burger and vege-chicken at Amazon.com.

Also, if you don't mind a bit of work, a largely lacto-ovo vegetarian diet can be less expensive than buying steaks, fryers and chops. This week I made some gluten steaks out of wheat and white flour, some chicken seasoning and ten minutes or so of kneading by hand (my KitchenAid Mixer does the lion's share of the initial kneading of the dough). I'll be posting a recipe soon at my Hubpages site with photographs and directions for making your own wheat gluten. I'll put up the link here when it's done.

This summer I plan to go to some of those little pick-it-yourself fruit and vegetable farms they have up here in Washington and get some bushels of fruit and veggies to can for the winter. We have a pressure cooker and I'm going to buy a bunch of those great old-fashioned Mason Jars. Not only will we have good food prepared by ourselves without a lot of chemical ingredients, but we are also going to have some lovely decorative jars of stuff in our pantry this year if all goes well. And we should have some very pleasant meals this winter.

I've discovered that getting old gives you an appreciation for hand-made things, whether food or decorations for your house or even well-made kitchen tools. I'm collecting stuff for my kitchen the way I've been collecting tools for my workshop.

They say that in your 50s and 60s your right brain - the creative half of your mind - begins to grow again for

the first time since you were a teenager. It's kind of fun. Turns out the tools and telescope parts and all those unpainted toy soldiers I collected all those years may get turned into something after all.

Except for the arthritis, I'm enjoying getting to the age where I'm well-seasoned. And even the arthritis yields itself to some creative solutions I've been trying out lately. I find I rather like ice packs and hot and cold fomentations to my joints. And the exploration of herbal remedies has been like a treasure hunt. That's how I found out that Aloe Vera juice and capsules help my knees work better.

How much fun is that?

- Tom

Human Frailty: Why We Can’t Stay Awake in Church

2013-03-14T19:39:00.001-05:00

This morning I ran across one of those Facebook posts designed to make you feel bad about yourself. The post criticized folk who nod off during church services. If you can stay awake for a three hour movie, you should be able to respect God enough to stay awake for a couple of hours in church.

Well, I just want everyone to know I can fall smooth off to sleep in any movie you care to put up on the screen. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ right off into the popcorn while nubile scantily clad starlets set off explosions to the right and left (not that I watch such things mind you) and despite the fact that the theater, in order to keep the projection room cool sets the thermostat on “Arctic”. And I do nod off in church more often than in theaters, but there’s is a perfectly good reason for that. I go to church more often than I go to theaters.

Of course, people fall asleep in church, but it’s not about respect for God. It’s not that we would rather worship celebrities than God. It’s about temperature, timing and sound.

In theaters, they turn the AC on high to keep the projectors coo. It gets so frigid in there you have to stay awake to keep from freezing to death. In churches, on the other hand they keep the AC low and the temperature higher to save money on the utility bill.
There is also the occasional explosion and with Dolby sound they are fast becoming more and more realistic. In churches, if anyone makes a startling noise he or she is quickly shushed lest they wake their fellow members of the congregation.
Add to that, it's not only warm, but it’s quiet. To make matter worse, you have this guy with a deep baritone voice with this Walter Cronkite face and conservative suit standing up front speaking in gentle soothing tones after you just had a big breakfast.
AND It’s the end of a hard work week and you’re tired and you had to get up early to get everybody ready for church. God gave us a Sabbath rest for a reason. WE NEED IT!
Finally, you have the architecture working against you. Services are supposed to be conducted in a restful setting. The architects design church to be quiet, reverent and solemn places. It’s true, however, that Fundamentalist Protestant church services are harder to stay awake in than the kind of services offered by Catholic and high church protestant denominations like Lutherans and Episcopalians. These guys salt the service with sudden bursts of congregational participation activities which require standing up and reading off bits of the liturgy, singing or running up to the rail for communion. This makes it harder to doze off in a mass. But give me a good old Baptist, Adventist or Church of Christ pastor on a warm summer morning after a week of hard work, family duties and business and you might just as well dissolve Ambien in the communion wine.

So, before we jump on the farmer, plumber or contractor for nodding off in church, accusing him of disrespect for God, let’s step back and wonder how God looks at it. He gave us the Sabbath to give us a day to recoup and recharge. I suspect he doesn’t mind it too much when the 70 year-old deacon nods off somewhere between the offertory and the benediction. We used to have a head elder back in Louisiana who almost every Sabbath, dozed off and started snoring while sitting on the rostrum behind the pastor. The church started moving the elders off the rostrum and Elder Mickey continued snoring peacefully after that in his spot at the front right of the church next to the organ. He was a good man. He just worked long hours and he was getting old.

Look at it the way God the Father looks at it. Remember when your kids used to fall asleep eating supper – dropped his head right down into the plate, face-first. You didn’t berate him for disrespecting your cooking. You picked the poor thing up, wiped off the potatoes and peas and tucked him into bed for a nap. I expect that’s how God views the situation.

Besides, dozing off in church is a useful barometer for an alert pastor. It help him pastor know when he’s reached the end of his sermon. If a third of the congregation is doing the head bobbing thing, it’s time to wrap it up and break for lunch. I know pastors who used to write their sermons so that when the head-bobbing reached a certain pitch, he could cut to the end and wrap it up before the deacons began sawing logs in earnest.

I’m just sayin’

Tom King

Oh, Dear, They Mentioned the "G" Word on the TV.

2013-03-12T17:41:00.001-05:00

I must admit I missed the Super Bowl this year. I'm kind of like "Are the Cowboys in it?" If the answer is no, I go chop wood or do something useful. Dodge, however, had this great commercial, thought that evidently sparked a lot of conversation. The commercial brings back the inimitable Paul Harvey's tribute to farmers. It's sweet and upbeat and reverent.

So naturally a lot of people were unhappy with it. In the weeks following it's debut during America's signature sporting event, we were treated to weak-kneed attempts to discredit the commercial's message. The LA Time's smug piece proclaimed "Here's the Rest of the Story." I don't think "story" means what they think it means. The Huffing and Puffington Post, of course, can always be counted upon to put a negative spin on the commercial, pointing out all the evil corporations and laws that make life hard for farmers around the world.

Odd, but they never seem to connect the idea that most of those starving farmers living in near slavery are living in leftist countries like China and Venezuela. They never seem to remember that most of the farm regulations and systems that hamper farmers and support corporate greed in agri-business were written on their watch when they had control of both the House and Senate and often even the Presidency.

They miss the point that farmers in a free America can go to the Supreme Court for redress of grievances against those evil corporations as farmer Vernon Bowman is doing against Monsanto.

Finally the atheists among us haven't let the mention of God in public go uncriticized either. Twitter blew up after the commercial with Tweets both pro and con in the millions. Where the two intersected, heated disputes broke out like wildfires between obviously right and left wing commentators.

It's sad really. I don't even like Dodge trucks (unfortunate history with Chrysler projects), but I did appreciate the commercial. If Chevrolet wants to do a commercial called "Allah made a Quickie-Mart Clerk", I really do have no problem with that either. I'm sorry if that sounded anti-Muslim, it's not. I really admire the way immigrants to this country have stepped in wherever they could and made homes and fortunes doing whatever worked for them. I wish them all well.

I know we have moved away from the family farm and some corporate abuses have occurred. It cannot be helped that agriculture is changing. We have a huge and growing population and we have to find ways to produce as much food that is as healthy as possible. We will make some mistakes along the way. It was the same way when the economy went from the industrial age to the information age, when the agricultural economy that dominated America moved to the industrial age and all the way back through the Rennaisance, the iron age, bronze and stone ages. Every shift has required us to find a new balance.

Farmers, however their farms are structured, are hard-working people who are under-appreciated. Good for Dodge for preparing and paying for this very public tribute for American farmers.

And shame on all of you gripey little girls who have nothing better than to complain about every good and decent thing that comes along. Get over yourselves for heaven's sake.

...or for your own sake if you don't buy the whole "God" thing. That much negativity really chews up your guts and gives you diseases.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

There are Cat People & Dog People

2013-03-09T03:35:00.000-06:00

One type of person is happy and well-adjusted. One is not.
(c) 2013 by Tom King

I'm just saying. I've owned dogs and tended to cats over the past fifty years or so. I've noticed there is a a profound difference between these two favorite pet species and how they interact with their owners. Here are some things I've observed.

Cats are socialists and in charge of all things. Dogs are libertarians and think you're a pretty great leader.
Cats are politicians. Dogs are voters.
Your dog will die to protect you from an attacker. The cat will hide till it's all over.
Your dog is always glad you're home. The cat wonders why it took you so long to get there and why her supper bowl is still empty.
Your dog will bring you your slippers. The cat will pee in them if you still haven't filled his supper bowl.
Your dog will fetch the ball when you throw it. The cat plays with the ball to amuse herself, until it rolls under something and then she will sit there with an exasperated look on her face and wait for you to fetch it.
Your dog brings you toys to play with. The cat brings you dead rodents and leaves them in your shoes.
Your dog wants you to feel good about yourself. Your cat wants you to make her feel good about herself.
Your dog thinks you are clever, funny and can do anything you put your mind to. Your cat thinks you might just be able to handle a can opener with the proper supervision.
Your dog hard down loves you. The cat needs to think about it for a day or two before she answers that question.
Your dog will sleep on the foot of your bed till you wake up (even if you don't wake till 10 or 11. The cat will walk around on your face at 6 am because you haven't filled her bowl yet.
Dogs have family. Cats have staff.

You have been warned.

Tom

Or What's a Heaven For?

2013-03-06T18:03:00.000-06:00

Why We Should Reach for the Stars
(c) 2013 by Tom King

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” – Robert Browning

Every time we have an event like this week's docking of the Dragon X capsule at the International Space Station, the comments sections of these reports get flooded with people who say we should junk the space program and take care of "problems at home" first.

The only flaw in that logic is that should we take that approach, we'd never go to space at all. Jesus pointed out that "The poor you will have always..." The idea that we must cure poverty before we do anything else is deeply held by many well-meaning people. Unfortunately, poverty is not completely curable with the technology that exists and with the state of the human race. To cure poverty, mankind would have to be perfected and I don't believe that is possible in this world.

The arrival of the computer age has had wonderful consequences. We're deciphering the human genome. We're on the trail of a cure for cancer. There is no evidence that piling more money onto the problem will help. In the history of the world, great innovations often come from unexpected places. Man's obsession with exploration and learning has led him to stumble upon solutions for one problem that turn out to solve a thousand others. The invention of the steam engine led to revolutions in transportation, new engines, flying machines and power plants which have extended human life and improved the quality of it. Power technology has been misused as well - one of those problems a corrupt human race will always have since power attracts corruptible people.

The computer age, in addition to bestowing great benefit has also had an unfortunate effect. Computers, because of their mathematical and data storage capabilities have drawn the devoted attention of society's bean-counters. Today's instant accounting distorts our vision and draws our attention to the immediate reward and to the manipulation of the "bottom line". We look at graphs of daily profits instead of at our long term goals and our mission in life. We look to the Earth and not to the stars for inspiration and purpose. We've become enamored of laws and data collection as our best tools to perfect mankind instead of looking to ideas and aspirations. That's all well and good if you believe man can be perfected in his current spiritual state. I don't.

How unfortunate that when the computer age has also given us the ability to extend our reach literally by billions of miles, so many of us have turned our eyes from looking up toward the stars and, instead, are obsessed with the dirt at our feet.

Perhaps, if we'd just reach up again toward the stars, we might find that our efforts to reach them may perhaps solve the problems we have that keep us Earthbound. French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once wrote, "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

My objection to the solve the problems of Earth-first or even America's problems first argument is that if we limit ourselves to only to fixing those things which are broken here, we will soon find ourselves over-whelmed trying to keep up with a planet rapidly breaking down.

Remember, the experts have long predicted the world would collapse and billions would starve. Instead, we've managed to feed ourselves despite dire predictions of mass starvation by futurists like Thomas Malthus. Technology under the pressure of need, helps us to discover new ways to produce massive quantities of healthy food. Starvation today is more a result of politics than it is any lack of food. The discoveries that have kept us ahead of Malthus's predicted mass starvation, have come because people were looking for ways to make more money by raising crops more efficiently, more effectively and at lower cost.

Capitalism has done more to feed the world than any political scheme to redistribute wealth. Businessmen and scientists working for them have done more to improve healthcare, reduce disease, hunger and poverty than any politician or government ever has.

Which is why I am thrilled to see Space-X, Bigelow Aerospace and other private companies launching rockets, experimenting with space planes and looking for better ways to heave ourselves off the planet. These efforts will inevitably lead to discoveries that benefit us all in ways we cannot imagine now.

I remember exactly where I was when Neil Armstrong stepped out upon the moon. It was a powerful moment in the lives of people the world over. It's time we put some more bootprints on the moon, if only to draw our eyes upward again. Upward is the direction we should be looking.

And for more reason than one....

Tom

The Battle of Sassafrass Ridge

2013-03-06T02:53:00.000-06:00

Part 5: Acts of Heroism by Ordinary Individuals During the Recent Alien Invasion

Hamilton B. Crockett - East Texas Gun Shop Owner

One of the curious things about the response of the general populace during the recent alien invasion was a general lack of the expected mass running around, screaming and looting. While some looting did occur in larger cities, most of it was of the “get myself a free flatscreen” variety and had more to do with the distracted condition of the urban police forces.....
Read the whole story at:

http://twayneking.hubpages.com/hub/Part-5-Acts-of-Heroism-During-the-Recent-Alien-Invasion

The “Twilight” Myth

2013-02-13T17:08:00.001-06:00

The “Twilight” movies have been a huge hit with girls especially teenage girls ages 12 to 65. There is an old and disturbing reason the "Twilight" movies are such a hit with teen girls. They trade upon an old mythology that is just as flawed as it was all those millennia ago in the Garden of Eden.

The myth goes roughly like this. All a bad boy needs to become a good man is the love of a good woman. In “Twilight”, Edward is the ultimate bad boy – a vampire who lives by killing and draining the blood from human beings. Now Edward has modified his behavior somewhat by only living on animal blood, but he still has the cravings. So you can tell he wants to be good, if he can only find a good woman to love who will save him.

Then, along comes a long-necked, pale young thing named Bella, who understands the bad boy, Edward. She wins his heart and changes him forever. Edward becomes good, a terrible struggle ensues and everyone is saved and lives happily ever after. The only thing is, he bites Bella and she becomes a vampire too. There's a moral there if you're looking for one.

The belief that bad boys will inevitably be saved because of the love of a girl has led more young women into terrible relationships than any other flawed belief about love (including the one about how love is a feeling). In 99 times out of 99 times, bad boys don’t reform because they love good girls. Most bad boys (and bad girls for that matter) are bad because they choose to be bad. All these kinds of unbalanced relationships do is use up the good girl and then cast her aside – usually with two or three kids to raise and an ex who ducks his child support payments. And women cling to their fatal attraction to these good/bad boys to a surprisingly advanced age. I once had a 65 year old woman tell me she knew my father. Now Dad was a notorious local bad boy. My Mom married him because my Grandmother set them up, thinking that the love of a good girl would change his sinful ways. It didn't. He ran off with another woman when I was five after spending several of my toddler years in prison. This older lady, who remembered Dad as a teenager, a good church-goer and pillar of the community, told me (to my considerable discomfort) what a good looking boy he was. I swear she still had a lustful look in her eye and it was nearly 45 years later. It was more than a little creepy.

Unless bad boys and girls choose to change before they hook up with you, they aren't likely to do so afterwards. It's the ultimate narcissism to think that your naughty boyfriend or girlfriend will every change for you.

Change of the sort that makes good people out of bad people comes only from God and from the free will choice of the person doing the changing. Any other reason for changing is doomed to failure. Believing a loved one will change himself for you simply because the sex is really good sets you up for a big disappointment, because, it may surprise you to learn, you are not God. Expecting a bad spouse to change because they love you is like setting yourself up as God. You expect behavioral change from your worshipper, the afore-mentioned bad spouse, because they love you and if they love you, you reason, they will want to do your will and change themselves into a form that is pleasing to you.

In the Garden of Eden, the devil promised Eve that she and Adam would become like gods. Lucifer lied. I’m sure when Adam took the fruit, he too thought he could “save” Eve by joining her in her transgression. Ironically, it seems it was actually Adam who started the whole “I can save her/him through my love” mythos. Women just took the idea and ran with it; possibly because there seem to be more really bad men than there are bad women for some reason.

And don’t write me an angry comment telling me it worked for you. If true it would be an exception, that in its rarity, just proves the rule. If you’re already stuck in one of those relationships, should you cut bait and run for it? I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that your loved one will never change for you. He may change because, through you, he meets God, but meeting God is the only way real change is gonna happen.

My advice – start praying. Never stop. It’s your only hope.

Tom King

Is it a Cat World Now?

2013-02-12T20:06:00.000-06:00

America May Have Reached the Tipping Point
(c) 2013 by Tom King

It's something conservatives like me have long feared. For most of the history of the United States, the majority of our citizens have identified themselves as conservatives or at least have held to conservative values - hard working, church-going, self-reliant folk. We may have lost our majority though. Recent events may indicate that we are now beginning the steady decline into anarchy and social collapse that has been the fate of every powerful civilization since Noah's flood.

You can no longer be the iron when you play Monopoly.

Hasbro conducted a survey asking Monopoly players worldwide which piece they wanted to get rid of and what piece should replace it. Why the Hasbro people ever did this, I do not know. My bet is there was a focus group on how to attract more women to purchase and play monopoly. I guarantee the group targeted the iron, that inimitable symbol of domesticity, from the get-go.

As a result of the survey, the iron got booted and replaced with, heaven help us, A CAT. Of all the things they could have replaced any piece with, why cats? They had other choices - a diamond ring, a helicopter, a robot or a guitar. Some will argue that, since there was already a dog, a cat was logical. I say the election was hijacked by liberals. The dog is a working animal. The battleship represents military industrial might, The wheelbarrow and the boot - tools of the working man. The top hat - the fedora of choice of the great barons of industry of the past. The thimble - the textile industry. The dog - a working animal, loyal companion and defender.

What's a cat got to do with anything?

Hasbro, not only allowed foreigners to vote, but it also allowed participants to vote more than once - something the FemiNazi focus groups no doubt suggested. Voting was supposed to be limited to once a day, but cat lovers are capable of shifty things and no doubt got around that stricture. With a flood of last minute cat votes, a move worthy of Chicago Democrats in an election year, the cat people seized 31% of the vote and won the right to play as cats in Monopoly.

Okay, add the cat. Modern American business can cope with the odd socialist. But I liked the iron. The iron was an ironic piece in that it is a domestic symbol in a business game. And isn't that what business is about - protecting and supporting the home front in return for sharp creases in our suit pants. Ah, but no more.

Actually, for most of the survey, the iron, the wheelbarrow and the boot were virtually tied for elimination. I'll tell you why too. They represent hard work. Their universally low rating says something about our sagging work ethic in America.

That's why I say the adoption of the cat as the newest playing piece for the classic American business game is a sign of the coming decline of America. Cats are the ultimate in self-interested, self-centered, manipulative, prissy and disloyal creatures of all pets except possibly the boa constrictor. Dogs have families. Cats have staff.

It's sad really. We're fast becoming a cat nation. That's what happened to Egypt. Cats take over and it's all downhill from there.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

The Writer's Life: Dusting

2013-02-11T12:59:00.000-06:00

     My wife wants me to "dust" my desk. Okay, so I dust my desk. I pick everything up that's on it. Dust. Then put everything carefully back in place where it was - where I wanted it to be.
     "This is not dusting," she complains. "Why don't you put everything away?"
     "Because I want it on the desk?"
     "Why?"
     "Because I'm working on it."
     "It's been there for days."
     "No it hasn't."
     "There's always a pile of papers and stuff on your desk. It never goes away."
     "That's because when I get rid of stuff to do, more stuff comes along to take it's place. It's what Hemingway called "A Moveable Feast".
     "So now you're Hemingway."
     "I could be if I could quit all this dusting and get back to work."
     "Well, why don't you start on that pile of papers?" Because I don't have time to do them."
     "You could at least file them."
     "If I do that, I'll forget about them and they'll never get done."
     "Then maybe they didn't need to be done in the first place."
     "Oh, they need to be done and if I don't do them, I'll just have more to do later."
     "Then why don't you get them done NOW."
     "I have deadlines."
     "How long would it actually take to pick up a bill, look at it and then ignore it?"
     "Ha, ha!" I lean back in my chair and make a feeble attempt to look wise. "You just don't understand about sequences."
     "Sequences?"
     "Yes. Sequences. First identified in Patrick McManus' pivotal book "The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw", the problem of sequences occurs because any task you do is interlinked with so many other tasks that accomplishing anything at all takes a great deal of time."
     "At least you're quoting successful authors when you're being obtuse."
     "No, hear me out. Let's say, I pick up this item from my desk." I reach down and select a random scrap of paper - in this case a book on panic disorder by Dr. Shahidul Islam. "I am using this book as a reference source for an article I'm writing on panic disorder. In order to put it away, I have to finish the article. It's got to be 25,000 words long, so it may take me a couple of days to complete.
     "Okay, what about the book you wrote about golf?"
     "What about it?"
     "We all know you wrote a book about golf."
      "Charity golf tournaments," I interrupted.
     "I stand corrected," she plowed on. "You don't need to leave it out on the desk to remind us. So why do you need that on your desk?"
     "I need to select memorable quotes from it for my author's webpage on Goodreads."
     "You have memorable quotes?"
     "I'm sure I can find some."
     "And you have an author's page?"
     "Not yet."
     "Why not?"
     "Because I haven't made it yet?"
     "Well when are you going to make it?"
     "As soon as I get the time."
     "Why not now?" she demanded. "It's not like you're doing anything else."
     "I have to look up all my biographical information."
     "Can't you get it off that job resume' you were telling me you were sending out last summer?"
     "It's out of date. I have to update some things."
     "So update it."
     "I can't. I'm working on my panic disorder ebook."
     "Well then put the golf book away till you need it."
     "If I did that, I'd forget to make my author's web page!"
     "Then it must not be important if you'd forget about it."
     "Of course it's important. It's how I promote my book?"
     "How many copies did you sell last quarter?"
     "Nine."
     "And you made how much money?"
     "$20.57 - that's why I need to be sure and get my author page done. I read yesterday that an author page is very important and effective as a marketing tool."
     "So why don't you do that first so you can start selling books."
     "Because I need to do my panic disorder book first."
     "Why?"
     "Because it pays when I finish it. The marketing stuff won't pay off for months. We need money now."
     "Okay, I get that. So why the three pill bottles on top of your panic disorder 'reference' book?"
     "I need to reorder your anti-anxiety medication first."
     "I might not need anti-anxiety medication it if you'd finish your panic disorder book and clean your desk off?"
     "Oh, you'd need it alright!" I shot back.
     I don't remember much for several hours after that.* When I came to, the desk was cleaned off. Now I can't remember what I was doing. I have to remember not to get into these kinds of philosophical debates when my Sweet Baboo is holding a broom and standing behind me. I'll just put a note on top of my new "to do" pile.

Tom
(at least I think that's my name. It's written on my underwear in any case.)

*No writers were actually harmed in the making of this (sort of) fictional piece, although I'm sure the temptation was there..

I Hate That #$@%$# Horse....

2013-02-01T17:11:00.000-06:00

I spent a lot of years working with severely troubled kids. I started one of the first equestrian programs that worked specifically with emotionally disturbed children. The state didn't like it. Other people working in children's mental health said we were out of our mind to put "those kids" on horseback. They predicted all sorts of dire results - kids galloping off into the woods, abusing horses and getting themselves kicked, stomped and bucked off.

Nothing of the kind happened. In my two years in the saddle, spending some seven hours a day I think we had one child kicked. He'd been banned from the stable for unsafe behavior for several weeks prior to the incident. The first think he did when he came back for his first session, was to run down a row of peacefully breakfasting horses, slapping them on the butt. My horse, Cinnamon was last in line and saw him coming. She waited till he reached her and then smartly kicked him into a pile of horse manure. He was never allowed to come back to the horse program again - the only kid ever permanently banned from riding.

The story I wanted to tell happened one summer day just after the last session. I'd put up all the horses except Buck, a huge dun-colored and very muscular horse I was testing. We'd only had him a few weeks and I wanted to run him through his paces to see what sort of temperament he had before I put kids on him. I had him tied by the gate to the horse pasture while I carried some paperwork to my office.

I heard a disturbance from the direction of the dorm. As I looked that way as ten year old "J" (not his real name) burst out the door, and broke for the woods. Our therapy dog, a black and white border collie named Benji and a large and not terribly fit staff member in hot pursuit. The staffer made it as far as the creek before pulling up winded. J had a long history of running away for extended periods of time. Not wanting to lose him again, I tossed my clipboard on the porch in front of my office and sprinted (I could still sprint back then) toward Buck. Reaching the gate, I untied the reins, pitched them over Buck's neck and swung up into the saddle (a surprising height for me as short-legged as I am). I swung Buck around and gave him a nudge in the rips and shouted, "Hya!". Buck needed little urging. He broke toward the woods like a starting gate had just opened. I shouted, "I'll get him!" as we galloped past his gasping counselor, He waved weakly at us as we tore past him.

I discovered several things about Buck in the next few seconds. First he was very fast. He hit full speed so fast I had to catch the saddle horn to keep from sliding off the back of the saddle. Second, Buck is the only horse I've ever ridden with an automatic transmisson. As he took off toward the woods, he went through three distinct gear changes, shifting smoothly from walk to trot to lope to dead run - boom, boom, boom. Also, the horse is sprung like a Rolls Royce - smoothest gait I ever saw in a horse. At a trot, the ride was incredibly smooth. A full gallop was like floating along on a very fast cloud.

We roared past "J" about fifty yards from the path that led into the woods. I didn't intend to roar past the boy, but I here I discovered something else about Buck. He knew what we needed to do better than I did. From that point on, I was only partially in charge of the proceedings. Once we had passed "J" he wheeled around and planted himself in "J's" path.

"Where you going?" I asked "J" as kindly as I could muster from my perch way up on top of this huge horse. "J" tried to break left to get around Buck. Without warning, Buck broke in the same direction and again planted himself in "J's" path. Up top, I managed to retain my seat after nearly being tossed from the saddle. Buck looked back over his shoulder at me in disgust.

"J" broke right and this time I was ready, leaning into Buck's sudden matching lurch to again reblock "J's" path to the woods. The three of us repeated the dance two or three times. I gave up trying to rein Buck. It confused him. I soon found myself using slight pressure from my knees to steer the old cutting horse. When they donated him to us, nobody had told me he was a former rodeo cutting horse.To Buck, "J" was a particularly stubborn calf and his pride as a cutter was up. He didn't do anything dangerous, just patiently moved back and forth, keeping himself between "J" and the woods and gradually herded him back toward the main campus. Benji the dog circled the scene excited by what he figured was a mighty interesting game of tag.

Finally, exhausted "J" gave it up. He screwed up his face and planted his fists firmly his hips. He gave Buck a look of disgust. "I hate that @#$% horse!" he snapped.

I grinned and laughed out loud. I couldn't help myself. "J" turned and stalked back toward the dorms. I rode up beside him, leaned over the saddle horn and extended him my hand. ""You goin' my way, Pal?" I asked.

He gave me a sheepish grin, shrugged and reached up to catch my hand. I swung him up into the saddle behind me. Benji the collie, took off ahead of us to show us the way home. We talked a little about what a cutting horse was and how Buck had once been a rodeo horse. We took the long way back. "J" kind of thought it was funny that Buck had mistaken him for a loose calf. He finally told me what was wrong and by the time we got back home we had a plan for dealing with his troubles that didn't involve running away. "J's" brothers had once tried to set him on fire. Later, he had come home from school to find that his family had moved away and left him behind. The police found him sleeping on an abandoned sofa in a vacant lot. I understood why he tended to run away from trouble.

I stopped to drop him off in front of the dorm and told him I had to put Buck away. He asked me if I needed any help. I took him with me to the barn. We brushed Buck down, fed him and turned him loose. Before Buck took off to join the rest of the heard, "J" reached up and patted the big horse on the nose. Old Buck lowered his head and nudged "J" in the ribs. As he turned away and headed toward the pasture. I reached for my big red bandana - allergies, you know.

Stuff like that happened all the time at Odyssey Harbor. I used to carry the bandana as part of my strategy to maintain my manly image. Truth is - I'm a big tub of mush.

When I look back on a hundred little incidents like that, I am proud of the work we all did at Odyssey Harbor. The lives that were changed were not just those of the children.

Just One Man's Opinion

Tom King

Do You Ever Break Out in Song Without Warning?

2013-01-29T17:10:00.000-06:00

"I know what my people are thinking tonight!"

These words used to send my daughter scurrying to hide in the closet. This "opening line" meant Dad was about to "do" the his complete and emoted version of "I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight?" from the musical Camelot.

I admit it. I like musicals. Not all of them mind you. Some are pretty stupid and some really strain credulity. Many musicals shameless push a leftist political agenda I find extremely uncomfortable. Many espouse a highly immoral lifestyle. But there are some (and Camelot is one) that I just absolutely love.

My Dad took off on us when I was five years old or so. I remember walking back to our apartment on Anglin Street in Cleburne, Texas on day. We were coming from the courthouse with my Mom, probably from the divorce hearing. Mom was upset. She was trying not to show it, but she was. She remarried a short time later, mostly for the sake of us kids I always thought, but as a result of everything, I was never really close to my Dad or Step-Dad. I looked instead for male role models in the world of literature as I was growing up.

King Arthur was one of my big male role models. I loved the Arthur story, as told in T.H. White's Once and Future King and in the musical and movie based on it. I took my cues on what it means to be a man from Arthur's example. There were other examples as well, but when my sister told me her community theater group was doing Camelot, I decided I'd try out for my dream role as King Arthur.

I admit I was a little ambitious, thinking I'd land the lead role my first time out, but I really really wanted it. So to prepare, I learned "I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight" and several passages from the play. I got the role of Merlin and played one of the knights after Merlin disappears early in the play. It was hard work, but a lot of fun. For years afterword, I developed a habit of breaking out with that song in the car, along hiking trails, over dinner and in all sorts of inconvenient places. My poor kids used to just cringe.

My daughter, however, finally decided I wasn't going to stop. We were driving along one day in the car and I tentatively started up and to my surprise, she joined me. We roared through the song and finished with a nice sharp ending. It was a real kick for me and Meg evidently knew it. I didn't even know she knew the song.

I've always wanted life to be more like a musical. I've always thought we should break out in song once in a while in public places, just to shake things up. I even found a group called "Improv Everywhere" that were doing just that. The video above is just one of their flashmob musicals on youtube. They're fun, but what interests me is the crowd that is watching these production numbers unfold.

You can tell, they really want to join in. You can see them swaying, doing little dance steps and even joining in on the chorus. I love that human beings come up with stuff like this for no other purpose than to make their fellows smile. I think God gets a kick out of watching people come up with stupidly creative stuff like these shepherds with way too much time on their hands.

I was tempted to think the spontaneous musical number was not at all a natural thing and far too rare in this sad old world. Then one day as we were washing dishes, I realized that my wife and I were singing an old hymn. It was spontaneous. We were singing in harmony. We did several of them as we washed and dried the dishes, then I kissed her on the cheek and she hugged me back and we went on with our housework in much the same way the action goes on in a musical.

This one is fun because not everyone who stands is part of the choir. Many stand because it is traditional to do so during the Hallelujah Chorus. You can see some folk joining in. If I were a choir director, I'd take my kids to food courts all over the land and do this kind of thing.

I think that there is a profound link between that sort of spontaneous music and our connection with our Creator. When I was a kid, I heard an evangelist say that God puts a song in our hearts. I wonder if that's not literal. I can't tell you how many times I've heard Christians break out in spontaneous song.

I remember two pastors when I was a teenager who used to turn these kinds of singing outbreaks into choral events. They were John Thurber and Bob LeBard. We'd start singing and before we knew it we'd have contrasting parts and harmony. Both men treated spontaneous singing like a choir rehearsal and in a way it was. It was as if we were preparing to be part of heaven's choir. Sharon Hansen, Brother John's daughter used to sing "Precious Lord" while John or Bob (depending on who happened to be around to draft her into it at the time, while they led us in a four part harmony backup singing "Lead me" over and over in four part harmony. It was beautiful and we got to where we could do it acapella on a windy night standing around the campus fountain at Valley Grande Academy or sitting on a log beside Echo Lake at Lone Star Camp and make it sound beautiful.

When I was attending Valley Grande, a Christian boarding academy (I worked my way through), music seemed to break out everywhere. We didn't do a lot of dance numbers, but we did sing a lot in circles around fountains, beside lakes and even in our dorm rooms late at night. We had these outpourings of joy in the form of music and it was because our hearts were full and we could not hold it back any more.

We had our pain and the typical teen angst, but people like Brother John, Sharon, Brother Bob and others helped us to find that peace that passes all understanding and that has made all the difference. I rather think that, after all, my life became something of a musical after I found God. I just didn't notice it was happening. You just sort of fill up and on occasion it overflows. I learned to go ahead and let it from several people I knew back then. Tim Ponder taught me that there is a place for even a poor singer like me out on the boat dock with people who really do know how to make music. Dave Dameron and Steve Urick taught me to sing bass (Brother Bob made me stand between them to keep me on key). They also taught me not to take anything too seriously or you could go crazy. Bow Walker taught me to love folk music and campfire songs. Jack Allen taught me that I could get away with funny songs even though I didn't have a good voice. Clay Read encouraged me to play weird instruments like the banjo. Mike Gregory taught me that you can make music on all sorts of kitchen appliances and instruments out of leftover packing materials. Nancy Voegele taught me to sing when I felt sad. Mike Maloney taught me the power of music to help lift your spirits when your girlfriend dumps you. Steve Darmody taught me that there are some people I shouldn't try to sing with. Vicki Tucker showed me how much fun it was to sing in a group and taught me that some people with really good voices don't mind you singing along with them.

My wife, Sheila, taught me to step back and let others lead. She also taught me how to find a singing style that was my own and wouldn't make people cringe. She also taught me about how much obsessive practicing lies behind a breath-taking performance and her singing still makes me cry it's so beautiful. My daughter, Meg, who inherited her mothers perfect pitch and incredible voice taught me how much fun it was to let the kids take over the music and run with it. She also taught me what God must feel when His children sing for Him.

Lexa Arante and her brother Dunn showed me that talent and humility are not exclusive qualities. From Blake and Brody Snyder, I learned that perseverance can make you really good at playing an instrument in an incredibly short time. From all the kids at Tyler SDA Church I learned about how powerful is the music of praise.

So, if you love God and are called according to his purpose, life really is a sort of musical. Next time you feel like breaking out in song, go ahead. There are likely some folks around who will join in and how much fun would that be?

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

Comfort Food - The Cornerstone of Civilization

2013-01-09T04:24:00.003-06:00

Mom's garlic and cream cheese
mashed potatoes - mmmemories!

You forget just how important it is to cook to suit yourself until you share a kitchen and have to cook to suit the tastes of another. Since my wife and I moved to the carriage house, we've been enjoying a change in our diet that happened without us really thinking about it. When you shop for your own groceries and cook for yourself, you soon revert to your old habits and old favorite dishes.

We've gone almost completely vegetarian again. We've had some tuna, but other than that, we've gone back to the old SDA vegetarian dishes I grew up on. I've made cottage cheese loaf, oatmeal patties, barbecued Tender Bits (bought a case of that stuff), all kinds of spaghetti and pasta dishes seasoned with vegeburger, homemade vegetable pizzas, Chinese vegetables.

We've started stocking frozen veggies by the giant economy bag, fresh produce, fruit and vegetables. Avocados are cheap up here in the Pacific Northwest for some reason and tomatoes and peppers aren't too terribly expensive either. Haven't had anything made of hamburger or chicken since October except on the road when traveling. My veins feel degreased. I've been making homemade whole wheat bread again and homemade cookies, pies and even did a German Chocolate cake for Sheila's birthday.

We celebrated her birthday by going to Goodwill and buying cooking utensils, pots and pans and kitchen stuff for our new kitchen. It was fun. I highly recommend spending money to properly equip your kitchen. There's nothing quite like cooking with the proper tools. It's faster, things come out better and taste better and it's more fun. I bought a set of Eversharp knives that are so sharp you have to be careful not to pitch them in the dishwater. You can cut yourself badly groping around for them when you do the dishes.

I have begun to believe that the real problem with the next generation of young people is that they haven't learned how to cook properly. Young people don't cook anymore. They're always going out to eat at restaurants and they eat a lot of takeout. What happens when you don't cook for yourself, you have your taste in food determined by someone else - some chef or short order cook or, worse, a gaggle of teenaged fry cook operating out of fast food joints.

You don't develop your own signature dishes if you eat out all the time. You miss the routine of making a pan of rolls on Friday for Sabbath dinner. You don't learn about homemade cinnamon rolls, Dad's breakfast burritos or pancakes every Sunday morning. It's those sorts of things that anchor your life so you're life is not drifting around consuming whatever somebody offers you on a menu. You chart your own course, Create your own family traditions so that your own kids remember things like family taco night or inviting folks over for homemade pizzas like we used to do when the kids were little. I remember back at Valley Grande Academy, Mrs. LeBard, the principal's wife, used to make a whole pile of pies on Friday nights once a month or so and feed all the kids in the school pie after Friday night vespers. It was a lovely tradition.

God gave us food for other reasons than to keep us alive. He could have made food utterly tasteless, but he did not. He gave us flavors in infinite variety and endowed us with an innate creativity that we might enjoy the fruits of the Earth in all the shapes, colors, textures and tastes imaginable. No two families eat precisely the same meals and snacks and yet we are able to meet all our nutritional needs just the same.

If your refrigerator is full of soft drinks and frozen pizzas, I invite you to create yourself a menu for one week and determine to not go out to a restaurant for the full week. Then, take a trip down to your grocery store. Buy a week's worth of ingredients. Splurge on a few things like olive oil and favorite spices. Get some produce for goodness sake.

If your kitchen tools are woefully inadequate, you don't have to spend much. Run down to Goodwill or the Salvation Army thrift store and do like we did. Create yourself an eclectic collection of dishes and pick out some good kitchen tools, pots and pans to cook with. Cook with flair. Experiment. Make stuff from scratch. It's actually fun if you have the right equipment and a properly set up kitchen.

Make yourselves some lovely meals during your week off from eating out. Set the table and sit down at it. Fix a pitcher of iced tea. Eat slowly and talk about your day. Let civilization creep up on you and transform your mealtimes. If you've got kids, you'll be making memories they will never forget. The best and strongest memories of childhood are almost inevitably tied to smells and flavors as well as sights and sounds. You owe it to your little ones to fortify them with those memories. When they go off on their own, they'll want to come home and have you recreate those memories for them. They'll steal the big yellow bowl you used to make banana pudding in because they'll want a piece of home to carry with them out into the big, bad old world. They'll want your recipes, but they'll always make them their own and they'll never be quite what they remember from Mom's kitchen.

You'll also be surprised how much your food costs drop every month too. You can use the savings to buy yourself some toy trains and start a hobby. But then that's another blog and I don't have time for trains now anyway. I need to finish putting together the telescope I'm building.

Sometime life is just so very, very good.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

Hang on to Your Wallet: The Hazards of Payphone Credit Card Use

2012-12-23T20:20:00.000-06:00

Let me say up front that I’m not an investigative reporter. I don’t have access to the kinds of vast information resources available to credentialed reporters. I am, however, a mule-headed freelance writer and the poor schmo who made the mistake of sticking his credit card in the payphone at the Bainbridge Island Ferry Terminal.

I usually don’t use the pay phone. Like most of us now, I have a cellular phone that works pretty much anywhere except, of course, when you absolutely need it like I did on September 18, 2012. I found myself in the Bainbridge Island Ferry Terminal with a dead cell phone and no change and a job interview in 15 minutes. I found a payphone in the terminal that said "$1 for 4 minutes" in big red and white letters. To my relief, there was a credit card slot in the phone.
I had difficulty making my connection - the line kept return a shrieking data noise and dropping the call, so by the time I got hold of someone, I had to make a total of 4 one minute calls in order to let them know I had arrived so I could be picked up. To my shock, I discovered the next day that I was billed $14.98 for each of those 4 one minute calls – almost sixty bucks!

I looked up the website for Washington State Ferries and sent them note. Now, I know they don’t operate the pay phones themselves, but they do allow the company that looted my debit card account to operate in their terminal. I believed they were perpetrating a deliberately deceptive trade practice that defrauds Washington State Ferry customers.

Most people would blow off a $14.98 overcharge as bad luck, but four times that becomes a little more of a serious matter, especially in my case. I was on the Island to interview for a job and my funds were limited (being unemployed and all). I had no idea my credit card had been tapped for nearly $60. I was lucky to get back home at all. I had less than $2 left in my account. I wanted to stop for lunch and take the early bus home because my bad knee was giving me a world of pain. If I spent as little as $2 on lunch, though, I’d have been stranded in downtown Seattle, a lonely little conservative surrounded by Occupy Wall Streeters, not to mention 50 miles from home and flat broke.

In my letter I asked Washington State Ferries to place warning signs by the phones to let customers know that using a credit card instead of cash with those phones can result in an almost $15 charge rather than the $1 advertised on the phone itself in big friendly red and white letters.

I also suggested they threaten the company that operates the phones with removal of those phones from all their terminals. I mean, that’s what I would do if I found a contractor was deliberately conning my customers with a slick scheme to overcharge them for payphone calls.

And yes, the phone company will tell you (if you can ever find a phone number to call and ask) that you can find out how much the charge by following "a series of voice prompts". This is true. It also adds time to an already ruinously expensive phone call and hooks you up to someone whose English is difficult to understand. They’ll claim that because they have a voice prompt system, there is no excuse for not knowing the phone call might be hideously expensive.

I still maintain it’s a species of fraud. The company knows full well, most people will trust the posted charges as shown on the big red sign in front of their face and in the rush won't read the fine print. The practice is downright deceptive. If someone starts a nice class action suit I want to be included.

Look, I don't believe that Washington State Ferries is in any way complicit in deliberate fraud or price-gouging. After I got in touch with the Ferry company, the charges disappeared from my credit card bill along with any evidence that I ever made the call. Then a few days later, charges reappeared on my phone card, but they had dropped to around four to five dollars this time. Whether they would have if I hadn’t raised hell about it, I don’t know. If they gave back the money whenever some intrepid customer managed to find their customer service number, they’d still manage to pocket a whole lot of cash overcharges for phones they operate in prisons and in bus, ferry and airline terminals.

I did get in touch with the phone company. I remembered seeing something like WiMacTel on the phone in small letters – I was looking for who to get mad at during the fourth phone call at the time. I spent three hours tracking the company down. As it turns out, WiMacTel is one of several dozen aliases under which a company called QuorTech does business. QuorTech is owned by private equity firm QuorTech Equitites, along with sister companies iTechnology Customer Service and Support, Inc.; QuorTech Freight and Logistics; and iTechnology Digital Advertising Solutions.

I couldn’t find much information about QuorTech*, but its subsidiaries, particularly WiMacTel, showed up on numerous pages that linked to the company regarding complaints about payphone scams. The only way I was able to connect WiMacTel to its mother company was by doing a lot of digging in public records. They were not easy to find by name. The company website has changed since this past summer. I didn’t find its service as helpful as the company advertises. They only managed to help themselves to an overnight loan of $60 at my expense.

I checked out their sales pages and found that WiMacTel (and its sisters) offer “solutions” to the declining revenue trend for vendors operating public payphones. WiMacTel promises customers that their payphone systems can make payphones profitable again.

Well, duh!

At nearly $15 a minute, I imagine so. I suspect the company is doing like a lot of motels and other public venues. When you authorize your credit card at the beginning of the call, they place a “hold” on your card before billing you the final charge. Often the hold is quite substantial. I ordered a $1.32 computer part from Alliance Electronics over the weekend and they placed a $71 “hold” on my account till Monday when they reopen and actually ship my item. Not happy about that at all, but to their credit, on receiving my email, Paul Bolton at Alliance fixed the problem and credited my account. I understand why they did it, but you'd better understand how credit card holds work or you can find yourself short for a few days while the transaction takes place.

In November I paid for a week’s hotel bill and they put a hold on it for the full amount, completed the transaction and then didn’t remove the hold for a couple of days afterward leaving my account empty till they released the hold.

I have no idea whether the credit card actually transfers the hold to the merchant or not when it's held, but either way, someone’s got your cash and you can’t use it till they let go.

A lot of people aren’t aware that merchants and service providers do that kind of thing until they try to use their credit cards and find a big fat hold has emptied their account. Sure, they release the “hold” after you pay, but often the hold doesn’t get released for a day or two after they complete the transaction. Meanwhile your account is maxed out because it’s carrying a double charge leaving you with a dead credit card for several days.

You might not even notice what’s being done if you have a large credit line and keep your credit card bill paid down. After all, the charges and, in the case of WiMacTel, all evidence of the charges disappears later so you don’t even notice they froze your cash for a couple of days at your expense. I noticed because as a struggling writer, my funds are limited and because of WiMacTel’s “solution to declining payphone revenues”, I was forced to stand in drizzling rain on a benchless commuter rail platform for more almost two hours with a painful knee waiting for the first afternoon train. And even after WiMacTel dropped the $14.98 charges they did charge me for the calls - $4.98, 5.00, 5.05 and 7.50 - the longest of which was 2 minutes. Still pretty high for a payphone call.

You might have detected that I was not very happy about that either.

Tom

* Plunket Research Online

Can an Agnostic Call Himself a Christian?

2012-12-19T13:15:00.000-06:00

I read a piece today by a man who says he isn't sure he believes in God, but he likes Christians so much he calls himself one.

I've been where he is. My walk with God began with a weird prayer,

The signs are there, though the journey
getting to them can be downright uncomfortable.

"God, I don't know if I even believe you exist, but you make all kinds of sense. So I'm in! I'll read the books, go to church and do all that stuff so I can find out who they say you are, but at some point I'm going to have to meet You in person. You have to show me Yourself. I'm betting my life here that you're real."

And you know what. I've met Him. Not in the Mosaic, fire-on-the-mountain sense, but over the years, through a whole series of unmistakable signs along the way, He has shown me that He is there and that He is watching my way.

Many Christians are horrified by people like the man above. How dare he doubt God? These religious absolutists are so busy being morally certain that they are right that many times, they never quite meet the God they talk so much about and their religion does them little if any good. There's a whole church in Kansas like that. They picket soldiers funerals and taunt gay people. They are so wrapped up in their own righteousness that they've never met the God of the Golden Rule.

I was an agnostic when I found God. I didn't change that much in the days after I was baptised. I was still skeptical. I was anything but morally certain. But I bought myself a pocket Bible and read it every day walking back and forth to classes at school.

And I did change. I became a better person and it was none of my doing. I didn't grit my teeth and try to be a good person. I just kept trying to find out who this God person really was and the more I got to know Him, the more it changed me.

My friend is on the right track though many Christians would find that hard to believe. There's some evidence that God actually prefers an honest skeptic to a close-minded religious bigot that thinks he can read God's mind.

In the end, it's not membership in the church that will save you. The church is just where you go to hang with people who believe like you do and want to work with you to do the kind of good deeds you will find yourself compelled to do when you spend time with God. Churches are like God's aid stations where the wounded soul may go to be patched up. But we don't fight the war on evil in the aid station. We get back out there and do some good.

It's a fascinating journey - trying to find God. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for what British author Douglas Addams called "The answer to the universal question about life, the universe and everything else." When you look for God, He will find you and in time, he will even answer the universal question for you. It make take several million years, but he gives you eternal life to boot.

How cool is that?

Tom

I Celebrate Christmas

2012-12-18T16:28:00.000-06:00

I Celebrate Christmas.

My brother died the day after Christmas.

My son died after one of the best Christmas’s we’d ever had.

I’ve been poor at Christmas

Celebrated with few of the trimmings

I’ve been well off and enjoyed the fatness of the season.

I have seen great kindness.

I have seen appalling greed and selfishness.

I have given to others.

I have received when I could not give.

I Celebrate Christmas.

I am amazed at the tenacity of man.

He longs for peace on Earth.

He wishes all “Good will toward men,”

Though the world seems quite bereft of good will these days.

We sing the season in.

We sing the season out.

We even hum the odd carol in summer

When our hearts want cooled and soothed.

A little “Jingle Bells” has magic even then.

I Celebrate Christmas.

I put up the tree to drape with tinsel.

I string the lights upon the house,

So my neighbors will see them and maybe smile.

I drink the celebratory eggnog with my daughter.

The only one of my kids who likes the stuff.

I make cookies, adopt homeless fruitcakes and batches of fudge.

I have my red elf’s hat. My hair and beard are white.

I know it’s a game and Jesus wasn’t born December 25.

But still I choose to be happy this time of year.

I Celebrate Christmas.

Getting Settled In

2012-12-12T15:43:00.001-06:00

We're in the Carriage House to the right.

Just a personal note this time. We're all moved in to the carriage house. It's a lovely writer's retreat. Nice folk in the big house. Wife's a teacher. Husband owns a music store. They're a couple of years older than us. Alan even offered to sell me a banjo at cost through his music store. That's cool. I may even be able to take him up on it soon if my writing business keeps picking up. Right now I've got more work than I can do - all of it pays reasonably well too.

Still got to get down to Texas to get my truck, but it's forced me to get to know my "friends" here better. Last night we bummed a ride to Wal-Mart with a buddy and his wife and new baby. Lovely people. On the way home up the driveway we met a couple of deer - both does - coming down the road. Lovely creatures that just run wild in the neighborhood. The place has scads of birds and squirrels. My dog is in barking at the trees heaven. It's all she can do to keep the squirrels in their trees where they belong. Should take a little weight off her.

It's a quarter mile to the mailbox and the dog and I hike it two or three times a day (her favorite pooping spot is in a patch of woods about half a mile from the house).

We have a wood Franklin style fireplace to heat the house. Splitting wood for it gives me some badly needed upper body workouts every morning. I'm thinking of taking my machete and cutting some hiking trails through the woods.

Now that we're in this quiet place, Sheila is beginning to heal. Our diet has improved (less greasy hamburger). I've restocked the pantry and fridge and scouted out next summer's blackberry picking ground. There's even a big freezer in the garage to store berries and produce.

I've even ordered a case of my favorite vegetarian food - Loma Linda Tender-Bits and plan to barbecue up a can of them when they get here tomorrow. Mmmmmm. Mama's Southern style mashed potatoes, broccoli and cheese, a tossed salad with Honeymama's homemade wheat rolls. Life is good again......
To all my friends who have remembered us in their prayers..........it worked! God blessed us and we thank you all so much and Him most of all.

Still pickin'

Tom

Why the Secession Talk in Texas?

2012-11-17T19:50:00.000-06:00

There's been a lot of secession talk in Texas since the 2012 election last week. Of course, the chances that Texas will actually secede are slim to none, but so far more than 100,000 Texas voters have signed the petition for secession that's going around. I don't talk about secession much

In Texas we keep most of our liberals in Houston and Dallas. There are some scattered through the woods in East Texas, but they're pretty thin on the ground elsewhere. One of them poo-poo'ed the whole idea in a letter to the editor of the Ft,. Worth Star Telegram. He called the petition to secede "a joke".

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/11/16/4420359/secession-lesson.html#storylink=cpy

"How," Mr. Forsythe opines, "Would proponents of secession suggest we handle and/or fund: national defense matters, mail service, freeway maintenance and repairs, military veterans' programs and border security?"

I had to wonder if he was joking. I mean really.

Funding: Simply moving the taxes we pay to Washington back to the state of Texas. What we save on Washington bureaucracy alone will more than fund everything Mr. Forsythe is worried about.

National Defense: We're the 15th largest economy in the world. We make nuclear weapons so we'd be a nuclear power and no one would mess with us. A lot of federal troops would stay in place. We are quite capable of making our own weapons. We already do. Lockheed Martin already builds military aircraft here. Vought Corporation, Bell Helicopter and other defense industries are located here. We'd have all the equipment we need and some very fine military bases.

Mail Service: Contract it out to FedEx and UPS. It'll run better and probably cost us less in the long run. I'm sure they could ramp up to handle it in a hurry. Lease them the empty post offices.

Freeway Maintenance and Repair: As to highway maintenance, Texas is a tax donor state. That means we pay out more than we get back. We'd actually have more money for highways if we pulled out of the USDOT, because Texas taxes wouldn't be supporting Rhode Island and Ohio roads.

Military Veterans Programs: Texas has some of the finest medical systems in the world. Military hospitals here like the burn unit in San Antonio would do just find. We have our own medical schools here for training medical personnel. Again, Texas pays more taxes into federal military programs than come back to the state. Financially, we'd have more money and plenty of folks to contract the work out to.

Border Security: This guy has got to be kidding. The governor has been pestering the Obama administration for more border security for years and getting nothing. Not only that, but like Arizona, Texas is virtually prohibited from taking care of it ourselves. With Texas troops back home from overseas US bases, we could close up the border nice and tight.

The one particularly telling thing Mr. Forsythe is worried about is his social security check. I wonder how much more social security funds we'd have available for Texans if the state's social security funds weren't in the hole when we started. There's no reason social security funds that people are already paying couldn't go to a state social security program.

The Economy: We produce more energy than we use. We could open up offshore oil fields, join OPEC and all sorts of fun things. We already have a burgeoning space exploration industry. We have seaports, huge agricultural and technology industries. We wouldn't do badly on our own. Lopping off the burden of a bloated bureaucracy and the care and feeding of several dozen welfare states from the Texas economy would certainly turn loose the engine of Texas business and industry. Outside companies would flock to Texas like they do to any healthy business environment. We'd have the advantage of every other country in the world because We're essentially American. No cultural surprises or unstable government in Texas.

Forsythe also complained that he'd need a passport to visit some out of state casinos. That's just all kind of stupid. If you need to gamble our Indian Reservations would be happy to oblige you. If you need to go to Shreveport or Las Vegas, I bet you could get yourself a passport. I don't expect it would be that hard.

This isn't 1860. Texas could take care of itself quite well and with television, the spectacle of federal troops trying to keep this state in the Union by force would be played out on the nightly news - not something the American public is prepared for.

If Texas did it, I bet we could take Oklahoma, North Dakota and Alaska with us - probably pick up most of the plains states too. We could finish the Keystone Pipeline and put in place an energy policy that would allow us to exploit the rest of the US like Saudi Arabia exploits us.

Why We Talk About It:

Secession won't happen, of course, unless things get really bad, but I believe we have to talk about it just to keep from going nuts. It's like those psychological experiments where they jolted rats with electricity at random. Some of the rats they gave a button to that would stop the current. At first the rats would shut off the current every time by pressing the button. After a while, they just endured the shocks, knowing they could shut them off at any time by pressing the button. They got to where they could put up with the electric shocks and go on about their business.

Significantly, the rats that had no control button to push, went psychotic. Some simply curled up in the corner and lost interest in anything.

We may be rats as far as the Obama administration is concerned, but we are rats with a firm knowledge of just where the button is and how to push it. It helps us put up with the nonsense and it would do the folks in Washington well to remember that.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

I Ain't Afraid of No Grim Reaper

2012-10-26T16:08:00.000-05:00

I plan to join a band after I'm dead...

I see a lot of introspective, end of life weblogs being written by my peers lately. It seems that as soon as the old peak becomes fully snow-capped, we wax nostalgic and start looking back at our legacy. Presidents and old people do that a lot.

Psychologist Erick Erickson says coming to terms with your life is the big deal psychological task of people nearing the end of their lives. You look back fondly at the good stuff you did or experienced and try to make a story out of the heaps of steaming horse manure that inevitably decorate your life with unpleasantness. It's natural, when we look at the ending of our lives that we want to know whether or not we will be well-remembered and whether or not we'll be the hero of our own story.

My son, Micah, asked a friend once if the friend though anyone would remember him if he died. He had struggled for 14 years with a seizure disorder and I suppose he was always aware of his own mortality. Two weeks after he posed that question, he died in his sleep. There's not a day I don't think about him and miss him. He was 28, six months from graduating from college with his life before him. He didn't get the luxury of ruminating over his accomplishments nor have the time to write his memoirs. Yet, he lived his life well, left behind good friends, countless kids he was a mentor too and so many great stories, that his memorial service got more laughs than some standup comedians do.

Not every old guy does all that ruminating. I suppose, if you figure this life is all there is, you'd like to be remembered for at least a few years. A lot of evil has been done in the name of gaining a place in history over the several millenia of recorded human history. Being monumentally bad is the cheap way to be remembered in this particular iteration of the world. Being remembered for good deeds usually requires some form of martyrdom to get your name on the final exam for World History 101.

Me, I have a hard time really getting my mind around the idea of being dead and no longer being busy doing things in the world. I haven't seen everything and done everything yet. Death would be a monumental hinderance to my plans for world conquest.

It's my Christian faith, you see. When Jesus said that if you have faith in Him you have eternal life. Note: He does not say you will have eternal life after you die and sleep and He comes back to get you. As my grandpa once noted, "If you're going to wake up from it, then it's not really death." It's like Burgess Meredith described it in Grumpy Old Men - a dirt nap!

So if death is nothing more than an extended nap in the dirt, then why in the world am I worried about my legacy. I am, to quote Dan Fogelbert, "a living legacy". So rather than spending my golden years searching for the meaning of my life, I rather believe I'll just keep on trying to make some meaning out of my life right up until I pitch over nose first into the dirt for that little nap.

Of course, I kind of hope Jesus will come and we can go straight on to the real work of shaping the universe in partnership with God. How much fun will that be? So, I currently plan to tool along doing the sort of thing I'll be doing in the New Heavens and New Earth - building things, taking care of the gardening, making music, telling stories, that sort of thing. I plan to skip dying altogether, but if I do croak, I plan to die busy with all kinds of unfinished projects going. I plan to wake up busy too. I figure since I have eternal life promised, I'm already living forever and I really ought to act like it.

Tom

Whiskers on Kittens - The Good Life in Lists

2012-10-19T03:47:00.000-05:00

The woods in the morning - definitely on my list!

We’re all fascinated with lists. Pick up the TV remote and cruise through the cable channels. It’s the top ten this and the top 50 that from the top to the bottom of the channel listings. Even the inimitable Mary Poppins had a list of her favorite things.

If you were to sing about your favorite things just now, it’s not likely to include raindrops on roses or doorbells, though you might rather enjoy those things. You might mention hot dogs and baseball, bikinis on beach babes or the smell of new shoes. Everybody’s got something that tweaks their nostrils or warms the cockles of their hearts.

Psychologists have learned that smells are powerful memory triggers. The other five senses can draw old memories out of your head as well – for good or ill. If you’re not careful, if you’ve lead a traumatic life, if you’ve experienced something horrific, it’s a good idea to learn to control the brain’s troubling little popups or you can wind up a basket cases, curled up in your bed trying to avoid seeing, touching, smelling, tasting or hearing anything.

One way to take control back is a little trick I learned inadvertently when I was a kid. I make lists of things I like. This morning I was out walking with Daisy and, as is my habit, I began experiencing the walk as though for the first time and making myself aware of the sights, smells, and even the tastes of things around me. I started listing all the things I like about a morning walk with my dog. Here’s a sample of my favorite things from today - in order.

The cool autumn breeze on my face and the smell of autumn.
The bit of blue sky peeking out between the clouds and the little shafts of warm sunlight that poke their way down through the trees ever once in a while.
The sweet taste of rain fat blackberries, plucked straight off the vine.
Daisy’s warm breath against my leg where’s she’s sniffing at the dog treats in my pocket and hinting shameless for a little snack.
I like the sound of the big planes taking off from McCord Air Base just down the road.
I like the crunch of gravel along the path through the woods where we walk.
I get a kick out of watching Daisy’s ears come up when she spots a squirrel or a fat rabbit and the way she gets down on her belly like a commando to try and sneak up on them.
The squirrel sitting on a limb after taking refuge up the tree as he sits and chitters at Daisy, just as mad as an old wet hen. Funny stuff.
The pumpkins and tombstones in people’s front yards where they’ve decorated for Halloween and the arrow sign in someone’s flower bed that points east and says “Diagon Alley”. Even more fun is two doors down another neighbor has a similar wooden arrow that points west to “Hogwarts”.
I even like the raindrops against my face that send Daisy and I hurrying toward the house to avoid a good dousing.

That’s my ten fav’s just for today. Yeah, my life’s a mess right now. I’m still looking for a job. We’re a week from being homeless and I haven’t found us a place to live yet. We're broke and Sabbath may be the last chance I get to go to church for some time, Sheila’s sick and my knees hurt. But for just a bit, life felt good and sometimes that’s all you get in a day and it’s enough.

I remember the passage from Robert Browning’s poem that I learned in Mrs. Creel’s English class:

The year’s at the spring,

And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God’s in his Heaven -

All’s right with the world!

I suspect He is in his heaven and all is right with the world after all, if we could just look at things the way God does.

In the meantime, I’ll remember the cool rain against my face and the taste of fresh blackberries and smile mysteriously. Somebody’s bound to wonder what in heck I’ve got to be grinning about and that's something else I enjoy.

Bullies, Wolves, Sheep and Sheepdogs

2012-10-09T01:35:00.000-05:00

If you leave the church, cease to be a Christian and go your own way, all that’s well and good. I get it. You’re angry and you don’t want to have to deal with all those rules and restrictions. Your choice. So why stand at the curb and throw rocks at those of us who chose to stay in the church.

There is an increasing cadre of folk out there on social media who have taken up pitching rocks at their former churches like some sort of hobby. Some have moved on to other churches and feel called upon by their consciences to destroy their former denomination or congregation. Some have declared their faith in atheism and chosen to attack religion in all its forms, except of course atheism itself which they declare (as any true believer would), is the only truth there is.

As for the ones who profess themselves to be Christians still, an observation. A Christian's duty is to win souls for Christ. It would seem to me that tearing down a church you disagree with is like shooting holes in someone else's overloaded lifeboat to prove it's not as safe as yours. It smacks of the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" philosophy. It is impossibly arrogant to take upon yourself the task of destroying a church (or as one ex-church member put it so colorfully, " I’m going to hit continue to go on striking at the church, because if you hit the sweet spot enough times, it ceases to function.")

You know, unless God Himself has spoken to you recently and ordained that you attack one of His churches, I'd want to be very careful about trying to “hit the sweet spot” and kill your former church. You may find you’ve been working for someone other than who you think you're working for.

Christians are like manure. Spread us out and we do a lot of good, but heap us up in one big pile and pretty soon the place begins to stink. It's why Jesus said, "Go ye therefore..." Large churches are pretty much a bad idea for that reason. I love my home town for all the pain it brought me and my family. I've got history there going back to the day the school was founded. My great great grandpa signed the church charter. But the town was meant to support a school, to train young people and then send them out into the world, not to become the old Adventist's graveyard. Anytime a church gets too big or dominates a neighborhood or town, there is a temptation for someone to try to take the reins and run things the way they think things ought to be run.

Wolves get among the sheep and start bullying the flock. Some of the sheep flee rather than fight and that’s fine. It’s a good idea in fact if you really can't stand the strife. But some of those who leave are little more than smaller bullies who just lost out in the struggle for dominance. They can’t resist hanging out on the fringes and taking pot shots at the flock because they need to get a little revenge for the pain they were caused.

The problem is, they don’t really aim at the bullies. They aim at the flock itself. In the case of my church, a lot of angry ex-Adventists can't resist picking at old wounds. They set out on a campaign to encourage more people to leave their old church – sniping at the flock itself which never did them harm.

Leave it alone people. I remember there was once about a troublesome elder back in my great-great grandpa’s day who was always starting fights for power in the church. They kicked him out twice, but always felt sorry for him and let him back in. They wrote a prominent church leader for advice when he asked a third time to come back to the church. She wrote back and told them, “No, he can be saved outside the church, but within the church he cannot resist causing pain and dissension to his fellows." Apparently some folk just can't handle being in groups where there are a lot of meek people.

I just went through a cycle at a church where the local clique had turned the church into a career-killer for pastors. That happens because the meeker members of the church don't rise up and stop it. That’s probably because they are, after all, meek. Back home we got backup from the state church conference who refused to move the pastor. The group that believed itself to be the rightful holders of power in the local church, decided to boycott services.

While they were busy teaching us all a lesson, we learned one. We managed to replace them all on the church board and in other positions in of leadership during the boycott. When our pastor did move on eventually, they all came back. Our new head elder, however, met them at the door and had a chat with them and explained that things had changed and none of them would be going back to their old jobs anytime soon (if ever). The whole thing was upsetting to the church as a whole. We loved the people who were boycotting. They were our friends, but we had to do what was right and we could not in conscious let this go on anymore. The events of that long year and a half changed the whole character of the church. What a lovely congregation it became as a result and because of the lessons we learned, no single group of individuals has anything like the kind of power they had before.

Power is where the devil attacks churches. Christ called us "the meek" when he described his flock and while we may be destined to inherit the Earth, there's always somebody out there who wants to lead us somewhere else for his or her own benefit or for the sake of their over-inflated ego.

We're up against that in one of the churches I've been going to up here in Washington. I suspect I may be here in Washington to participate in a little revolution against an entrenched and repressive leadership. I like the church where I'm at, don’t get me wrong, but I'm wondering if God really wants me to be comfortable in any church right now. He seems to have given me rather a lot of experience with churches run by bullies (beginning in my youth back in my hometown). My teaching career ended at the hands of just such a bully church board. One of my favorite people at that church told me before I left, "Brother King, I love my church and I hate to say it, but I think the only thing that will save this church is a visit from the grim reaper."

A friend of mine who was the target of one of these church bully groups told me, “You can’t change the church from the outside.” Running away and sniping at it from the woods is not helpful. If you don’t have the stomach to stand up for what’s right, go ahead and run away. Just don’t confuse guilt over your own cowardice with a mandate from heaven to belittle and ridicule the folk you left behind when you went. Don’t confuse a system that says “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” with people who are busily tearing down that system from within.

Wolves are not sheep. They are not part of the flock however they may dress themselves. Bullies are not Christians, however much they dress themselves up in robes, collars and dangly crosses. And you don’t defeat bullies by becoming one yourself.

I love my church and most of the people in it are dear, sweet, kind people. They are the best, hardest working, most meek folk you could ever want to know. We should not be at all surprised that wolves are attracted to flocks of sheep. Rather than running away and abandoning the flock, what we ought to be doing is standing guard over it - actively confronting those who would bully their way to power in the local church. We should protect our pastors and teachers and members. The church member who takes it upon him or herself to point a bony accusatory finger at a tender-hearted, struggling member should draw back a nub.

I'm still in my church despite the procession of bullies I’ve encountered. I’m here because I love my church and I will not stand by to see it abused by the agents of Satan, sent among us like ravening wolves to sew confusion and discord. It's not the church that’s the problem, guys. It's the devil who is responsible for the wolves among us and I have decided that I am called to be God's own sheepdog!