Monthly Archives: September 2009

Let me make this VERY CLEAR:  our family does NOT have health insurance.  I would rather keep it that way than submit to anything our government is trying to push on us at this point!!

This made me cry, and I don’t even like Rap or Hip Hop.  But wow. . .it is really powerful. I am so glad blacks are sending out messages like this, because most abortion victims are black.  Tell me it’s not a racist movement . . .

Faith and I have been taking a quilting class, as part of our homeschool studies this semester, and we are almost done. It has been a lot of fun, and we have both learned so much! Well, the other night, as Faith was finishing up her quilting homework for the week, her new kitten, StellaLuna decided to help out a bit. It was way too cute, so I took a picture.

Stella, The Quilting Kitten

Anyone who knows me very well knows that math is “not my bag, Baby!”, so I asked a friend to have her math whiz hubby double check the following numbers, just to make sure they jived.  Sadly, they do.

A vehicle at 15 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 800 gallons a year of gasoline.

How good a deal was that ???

Okay, I’ve spent way to much time on this blog lately posting political stuff.  It’s time to get down to brass tacks, and talk about something that is going to affect each and every one of us, or at least our descendants, at some point.

According to Yahoo!’s Weird Science, the Andromeda Galaxy is hungry, and is feeding on other galaxies, and we’re next!

The Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighbor in space, turns out to have a nasty appetite. Using a telescope scan, astronomers have found evidence of Andromeda’s galactic meals. From the AP:

“What we’re seeing right now are the signs of cannibalism,” said study lead author Alan McConnachie of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia. “We’re finding things that have been destroyed … partly digested remains.”

Earth’s galaxy, the Milky Way, is next on Andromeda’s snack list. John Dubinksi, co-author of the project, says the two galaxies are headed toward each other at a rate of 75 miles per second. But not to worry: We won’t be dinner for another few billion years.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid!!

According to Snopes.com, the following was a letter written by Lou Pritchett, former Vice President of Procter & Gamble, whose 36 year career with that company ended in 1989 when he retired.

By all means, do check the validity of this letter.  And when you are done, please read it again, very slowly, and ponder his points.  They are excellent, and I couldn’t agree with him more.  Especially with his last point.  If Obama gets re-elected, I too will be scared, scared to voice my opinions, to write any of the political posts I have written in this blog. And I will be scared, most of all, for my children and grandchildren.  And yours.  But I will probably be in prison already, by then. Or worse.  And for some reason, I don’t think Amnesty International will care.

TRUE – CHECK:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/youscareme.asp

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America ‘ crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

Wow, this guy is really eloquent in a very simple way.  I don’t know who he is, but I like him!!  He owns a car dealership in Missouri, and is giving away FREE AK-47s with the purchase of a new car.  Now THAT’S what I call stimulus!!!

Anyone who knows me, knows that Mother Teresa of Calcutta is my hero. She is an inspiration to me in every possible way. I was excited to learn that today is her feast day! The Catholic News Agency has a wonderful article about her, that I am posting here. (See Below).

Please note that ‘Teresa’ is a very popular name in the history of our Church.  I get emails regularly from friends who don’t realize that there are LOTS of “St. Teresas”, (I have found information for 27 different saints named “Teresa”, “Therese” or “Theresa”. There are probably more!)  However, Mother Teresa has not (yet) been canonized, or “sainted”, as it were. She has been “beatified”, so we call her “Blessed”, which is also a very high honor.  The title of “Saint” is sure to follow.

Two of our most popular saints are also called “Teresa”: saints Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux.  The emails I get usually have mixed up Therese of Lisieux with Mother Teresa.  I am sure that neither of them minds much, so long as we are encouraging one another to pray!  But in case anyone is interested, St. Teresa of Avila is one of the “Doctors of the Church”, St. Therese of Lisieux is also known as “The Little Flower”, and Blessed Mother Teresa is sometimes referred to as “Teresa of Calcutta“.

Here is the article from Catholic News Agency:

CNA STAFF, Aug 30, 2009 / 05:08 am (CNA).- This Saturday, the Church will celebrate the feast day of Mother Teresa, a universal symbol of God’s merciful and preferential love for the poor and forgotten.

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, the youngest of three children. She attended a youth group called Sodality, run by a Jesuit priest at her parish, and her involvement opened her to the call of service as a missionary nun.

She joined the Sisters of Loretto at age 17 and was sent to Calcutta where she taught at a high school. She contracted Tuberculosis and was sent to rest in Darjeeling. It was on the train to Darjeeling that she received her calling – what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and work and live among the poor.  At this point she did not know that she was to found an order of nuns, or even exactly where she was to serve. “I knew where I belonged, but I did not know how to get there,” she said once, recalling the moment on the train.

Confirmation of the calling came when the Vatican granted her permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto and fulfill her calling under the Archbshop of Calcutta. She started working in the slums, teaching poor children, and treating the sick in their homes. She was joined a year later by some of her former students and together they took in men, women, and children who were dying in the gutters along the streets and cared for them.

In 1950 the Missionaries of Charity were born as a congregation of the Diocese of Calcutta and in 1952 the government granted them a house from which to continue their service among Calcutta’s forgotten.

The congregation very quickly grew from a single house for the dying and unwanted to nearly 500 around the world.  Mother Teresa set up homes for AIDS sufferers, for prostitutes, for battered women, and orphanages for poor children.

She often said that the poorest of the poor were those who had no one to care for them and no one who knew them. And she often remarked with sadness and desolation of milliions of souls in the developed world whose spiritual poverty and loneliness was such an immense cause of suffering.

She was a fierce defender of the unborn saying: “If you hear of some woman who does not want to keep her child and wants to have an abortion, try to persuade her to bring him to me. I will love that child, seeing in him the sign of God’s love.”

Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997 and was beatified only six years later, on October 19, 2003.

Mother Teresa once said, “A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace.” She also said, “give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.”

I love books, and often buy them used, to save money.  One of my favorite sources for used books is the Advanced Book Exchange, or, Abebooks.com.  They send me emails, from time to time, to get me to sign in and spend money.

So, this morning I got a really funny email from them, announcing their new “Weird Book Room”.  It features titles such as:

A New Book on Hanging, by Charles Duff

Outhouses by Famous Architects by Steve Schaecher

Doga: Yoga for Dogs by Jennifer Brilliant and William Berloni

The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists by Arthur Byron Cover

(and my personal favorite – )

Paint It Black: A Guide to Gothic Homemaking by Voltaire

Soooo. . . yeah.  Those really are “weird” titles.  And to think, I’ve been thinking all this time that if I wrote a book, it would probably never get published.  I’m feeling so much more hopeful now!