Bug Rides

These are the happy days, I get the kids and we get to have the kind of fantastical conversations that only children get to have. We've even got a soundtrack for these days. Ladysmith Black Mombazo, especially track 11, or as we liked to call it, The Tap Dance Song. The Mancub asked for Justin Timberlake. I said no, and I meant it. We also listened to some opera (they didn't like, mostly) some U2 (they did like), Christmas music and some other stuff.

There was a special order to who got picked up first too, I had to alternate which child I got first or I would hear it from them, everything had to be fair.

We also had special ways to get home:

• The Fast Way - Route 50, highway, it was quick and they liked this best in the dark. I never liked it because I just didn't like taking them on the highway.
• Bumpy Bridge Way - This way includes Cry Baby Bridge on Govenor's Bridge Road, renamed to Bumpy Bridge by me because of the bumpy effect of the corrugated steel surface and because I don't want to explain why on earth some grown up would name it Cry Baby Bridge. Someday I'll tell them about the Goat Man, who is said to haunt these parts. The best thing about this road is that we were usually the only ones on it. It's a very picturesque two lane road with cows and horses and some geese.
• Lost Way - Once Bumpy Bridge Way was flooded and I just made a left. Patuxent River Road is another one of those lovely, winding two lane roads with farms, flowers and cows. The kids freaked until we came out onto 214. Such the fun road though. The first time we drove it I had to stop so that Princess Sweetpea could stop and be nauseous. After they got over being afraid, they loved it.
• Long Way - Just 424, another 2 lane road, but much busier and not nearly the charm of the other two.

Somedays we would stop and pick up fruit or flowers at a roadside stand. Once we watched a Med-Evac chopper land. We stopped and waited for the passenger, then for the chopper to take off again.

The best part about these days were the conversations, like the one about the injured man. They asked the best questions, mostly unanswerable (what happened? did he die? does his mother know?), and we prayed for him. Other conversations went something like this:

The Mancub: Guess what happened in class today?

Me: I don't know, tell me.

The Mancub: My butt farted all by itself, and it was stinky!

And so on. Sometimes we would talk about God, I'd tell them Bible stories. They especially loved the stories about David and Daniel and their encounters with wild animals. One story didn't go as planned. At least as I planned it. I told them about Noah, the Ark, God's promise and the Flood. After I finished explaining that the Rainbow is God's visible promise that he won't destroy the world in a flood again, The Mancub says "That mean's I'll never drown!" Stupidly I respond to this with "Not really, honey, what that means is..."

I never got to finish. The Mancub burst into tears and started wailing "I don't want to die!!!!!" "I want my MOM!!!!!" Both Princess Sweetpea and I are trying to calm him down, but it's not working. Part of my problem is that I won't lie to the kids, especially not about God. That's why I don't tell them Santa Clause is real, when the time comes I don't want to have to explain elaborate lies about an unseen magical man. If I need to tell them about anyone unseen I wanna make sure that I actually believe what I'm saying, so I limit my mystical conversations to Jesus and God. It's not that I don't tell them stories, I do, but I make sure they understand that I'm telling stories.

Well, The Mancub finally calmed down. Okay, it wasn't me, it was his Mamma. She yelled at me not to tell them anymore scary stories, so we haven't talked about Noah again.

Princess Sweetpea loves to hear stories, The Mancub too, but Princess Sweetpea thirsts for them. I tell her about battles long ago, about the Dark Ages, Rome, Greece, about brave people who stood up for what they believed in. I can't wait to tell her more.

how and what to blog.....Salome's Fictional Veils...

I am a bit confuzzled about what exactly I want to write about. Some of what I want to say must needs be edited for content, I can't exactly say I believe this or that and then dog someone. But oh, how I want to. Sometimes. Other things I want to say are just inappropriate, it wouldn't reflect well on the God I serve, so I don't.

So, do I just make up stuff, veiling my reality thickly enough that no one knows who I'm writing about? Nah, that would take the fun out of it. I've got to figure out a way to use those veils to my advantage.

For now I stick to reality (ish) here and save my fiction for a different forum. But soon....

The Soundtrack of My Life

It's not what you might think, not Mozart, Chopin, The Ramones or even music. Nope, the sound that most calms me, reminds me of happier and sadder times, the noise that grounds me is the coal train that runs behind my home. Since I was a little girl the coal trains have run behind my home, I hear them in the morning, at night and throughout the day. Every aspect of the trains passing are dear to my ears, from the whistles that announce their approach to the distant chugging of the wheels as it passes out of hearing range. I love the way the weight of the train makes bits of the house rattle, the windows and things on my shelves.

On rainy days the lonesome call before it reaches the road runs through my body like a caress, I get goosebumps. When I can sleep with my windows open I listen for the midnight trains passing. You can hear the air rush away from the locomotive, the whine of the engine as it struggles to pull thousands of pounds of metal and ore to the electricity plant down by the Bay. The way the whistles echo so much farther at night, how so little else is sounding to distract your ears away from the urgency of the trains approach.

Occasionally something happens that is out of the ordinary. When I was little it happened twice, once in winter so we could see it from our kitchen, the train derailed. We heard it, and then we saw it. Mom, who was an explorer at heart, got her shoes on and let us accompany her to "see if everyone was okay", or, really, to snoop. We scrambled to get ready, we had to find a way to cross the wetlands and creek that lay between our home and the tracks, less than 1/2 a mile, but significant, none the less. We kids knew how to get there, it was easy for us, we had a rope tied to a tree that hung over the creek at just the right angle to give us a Tarzan-like swing across. Mom would never make it. Plus, much more importantly, we weren't allowed to use that rope or to cross the creek. So we had to find a ford, which we did, a bit further north and away from the rope.

Once across the accident was gloriously right in front of us. Coal chunks scattered everywhere, cars tipped on their sides spilling the earths riches out across the forest floor. The smells of the coal mixed with leaf rot, water, fall and moss to create a new smell that was tantalizingly full of excitement. I grabbed for a piece of coal, hoping to keep it, to put it in my collection of stuff. Mom would only let me look at it, it didn't belong to me, it was the electric companies and they would be by to get it. I thought they wouldn't miss a piece, but she would likely pat me down before I left so I dropped it after examining it closely. Mom searched for the engineer, made sure he was okay, asked if he needed anything and then we had to go back home. She promised that we would one day walk the tracks between Hall and Mt Oak.

Later that spring she kept her promise. Dad dropped us and a picnic lunch off at Hall Road by the Vets office and we took off promising to be at the other end two hours later. We were so excited, my brother Fred and sisters Martha, Laura and Anne. We explored everything along the way, including an abandoned tobacco barn full of bats and owls. There was a field where we ate lunch, and dozens of places to stop and look at things, like bones of long dead deer, rabbits, rats and whatever that one thing was. Flowers to pick, stones to kick, tracks to balance on and trees to watch in the wind. All too quickly the walk was over.

That was one of the best days of my life.

Blogging - Must do more

There are just times that I must write, but I can't, either because I'm in pain or because getting to the computer is just to much of a hassel. Hopefully that will change when I buy my birthday present to me, my brandnew laptop. (I was thinking a Dell, but then reading Consumer Reports I've decided to lean more towards an IBM. I'd go Apple, especially because they are challenging the Beatles {BOO YAAA!} but those babies are spendy.) So hopefully in the next few months/weeks my blogging will get more regular.

These are some of the things I've been thinking about:
1. FIFA's stupidity, re: censuring the Israeli's for bombing an empty soccer field (No injuries) and NOT censuring the Palestinian's bombing of an UNempty soccer field (WITH injuries). WTH? So much for not being political. It's a good thing, they really could have embarrased Pinochet, the Taliban and Uday Hussien had they chosen to do anything political. Phew!
2. The link between freedom, logic, liberty and political clarity.
3. The French and their silly lifetime contracts. Their 23% unemployment rate, the general sorry state of their ecomony, everything.
4. Defining Censorship and Banning. They aren't what Hollywood thinks they are.
5. Bad Drivers - How they make me lose my religion. (Okay, not really, but it's still their fault.)
6. Iraq: the casualties, ours and theirs and how it compares to other wars. (2300 + after 3 years in IRAQ, 6000 on Day 1 of the invasion of Okinawa during WWII)
7. The crappiness of network news. I will blog on this, I will have examples. Like a reporter the other day saying "The tornado utterly destroyed the church, you can see hymnals, boards, pews, etc., lying all around." No, go back to the Tsunami of December 2004 and look again at the before and after pictures of Banda Aceh, that is UTTER destruction. That was a slate wiper. There were things left after the tornado, like hymnals. It might be nitpicky, but I don't think so.

So, hopefully, I'll be back to expand on this.

Oh, and did anyone else notice that we (The USA) are at a 4.7% unemployment rate? Nice, very nice.

Hilarity

Just some funny things I've seen in the news lately.

A. French Anarchists rioting for rights. How funny is that? Even better is when they march together. HA! A bunch of anarchists all walking in the same direction. That's gut achingly funny.

B. Illegal Immigrants protesting for rights carrying Mexican flags. Highly hilarious. Even better is them declaring "I'm not a criminal." Actually, you are, since breaking the law is intrinsic to the definition of a criminal and sneaking across the border would be breaking the law, making you a, um, criminal.

C. Illegal Immigrants protesting for rights carrying American flags upside down. HA! Seriously, if you want to stay learn to wave it the right way, that might help.

D. Ted Kennedy naming his dog "Splash". Does he not get the irony? Too funny.

Playing the Nazi Card

A teacher in Colorado has been suspended for comments made in class. He is a geography teacher, in geography class, and he harangued his class on the evils of the current administration, calling George W. Bush Hitler. I'm not sure what that has to do with geography, but I'm glad he's not a history teacher.

It happens constantly, especially lately, someone calls Bush Hitler, says someone else is a Nazi, likens something to a concentration camp, calls the people killed in the Twin Towers "Little Eichmans". All these descriptions are incorrect, all of them used for the shock value alone, all of it horrid propaganda to try to guilt people in to agreeing with a view that is questionable in it's logic and so must resort to name calling and labeling to get a misguided point across. And they get away with it. How is that? It's because people have a myopic view of themselves and a twisted view of history. How else can it be? If you think you are put upon, censored, and discriminated against, it follows that you would make that analogy. But are those feelings valid? Are you just being required to face the natural debate of a free society? (I have a censorship soapbox speech for another day.)

Hitler and the Nazi's were a singular evil, they are not "like" much of anyone else. They used German industry, know how and 400 years of building anti-semitism to produce a war machine that systematically slaughtered millions. Nazis were voted into power and then took over in a coup. They outlawed being a Jew, a gypsy, a homosexual, senile, insane, retarded and deformed people were also outcast. The Nazis deliberately and with great precision rounded up all the "undesirables" and shipped them off to work camps, and if they couldn't work, to death camps. The goal of the Third Reich was to dominate the entire world and make everyone else a slave to the Aryan race.

That isn't George Bush or the Republicans. You may not agree with the policies of this administration, you may not like what they do or say, but you can not begin to honestly compare the two. To do so is to so greatly inflate your feelings about an issue so as to have committed a war crime yourself. By comparing the two and calling them the same you have cheapened the truth of the holocaust as to render it a little thing. It was not a little thing. 12 million people were ripped from their homes, divested of all they owned and murdered. That number is only the dead, remember that it does not include the millions upon millions who survived the death camps, the marches, the slave labor, or the ones who hid, living as fugitives, in the hopes of surviving hell on earth.

There are no medical experiments, no vivisections, no tortures for the joy of torturing a Jew, homosexual or Christian caught hiding Jews. None of that is going on.

To play the Nazi card you have to know what the Nazis did, actually did, even then, you had better be careful. Robert Mugabe is such a one. Look him up. Just because you feel something strongly doesn't make it so. Calling a person a Nazi is an insult that is nearly unforgivable. Don't do it.

Lost Arts - Cooking & Meal Preparation

When I was a teen I wanted to learn to cook, and I did, badly. Later I learned from a neighbor to love Mexican food, so I started buying regional Mexican cookbooks. From there I gained an interest in all kinds of cuisines. I've quite the collection now, it even includes a Transylvanian cookbook. The recipe for sheepshead makes for good reading, but it will remail good reading, I ain't cookin no sheepshead.

My mom cooked because she had to, not because she loved to, she had a family of nine to feed, and so her cooking was perfunctory at best, at the worst it was succotash. That was bad, but she loved it. Dad can manage in the kitchen and is at his best with the grill. I think that's because it's a really big power tool that cooks steak. My older sisters can all cook, with varying degrees of skill and specialty, Jen can make cake and pie, Martha is the goddess of the vegetable, Laura can do Sri Lankan curry and Camy can casserole anything. Because there were so many in my family, we had to cook, and we had to cook from scratch if we wanted something like cookies more than once in a blue moon, because we just didn't have the extra money for bought cookies. I'm comfortable around raw ingredients and actually prefer to make things from scratch. I know how I want it to taste and can usually get there, occasionally failing, but mostly able to produce realiably edible meals.

Watching commercials and walking through the grocery store I'm constantly assulted (to me) by convenience foods. I'm glad they are available for the people who need them, but I worry that we are losing something wonderful to gain something questionable. Home cooked chocolate chip cookies are incredible, and incredibly easy, they contain no preservatives, only the pure and happy ingredients and the difference is in the taste. They really don't take much longer and are sooooooo much better. The same is true with roasted chicken, at least the taste part, that does take time and some know how. Not a ton of know how, just enough to know when the chicken is done. But seriously, even just rinse and thrown in the oven without any seasoning, no salt no nothing, the chicken is so much better than the bird with the fake sauce in the plastic from the store.

Maybe it's just me, maybe it's that I can taste the preservatives and just don't like that flavor, but it makes me sad to see how many boxes of waffles, cookies, pancakes, ready made rice, mashed potatoes, insta-bag meals are sold when I'm in the grocery store. I'm not advocating a 6 course French high cuisine meal. Just fresh happy ingredients, simply prepared in healthy portions, that's all.

Fictional History

Often, too often really, I run into someone who thinks that they understand something, an issue, subject, era in history merely by virtue of reading a book or seeing a movie. And by book I don't mean a history written by a responsible historian with appropriate citations of source material, no I mean fiction.

I have watched a movie and become fascinated by some aspect of the movie, after I try to find out more about whatever it was that sparked my curiosity. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be true of many people. I can not tell you how often I have listened in confusion to someone outraged over some issue or another, trying to figure out what the heck they are referring to only to discover during the conversation that it was something they saw in a movie or read in a book.

Nonsense abounds in movies, like the junk about Che Guevara in "Motorcycle Diaries", dude was not a revolutionary liberating the masses, he was a brutal executioner working for Castro to subjugate the Cuban masses. Fashion is even worse, everytime I see a t-shirt with Che on it I want to scream and then educate the idiot wearing the shirt as quickly as I can. I say "idiot" because most of the people wearing the shirt would have been quickly put to death by Che. It's akin to wearing the image of the Granddragon of the KKK, or Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler or Amin.

Insomniac Dreams: Beds

Okay, mostly it's daydreams, or fantasizing in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping. It's beds of which I dream. There are some beds I've seen that I imagine it would be sensuously lovely to attempt to sleep in. And I mean sleep.

Just a note on bed clothes: I spend enough time not sleeping, waiting to sleep, longing to sleep, in my bed that the sheets have got to be really soft. Otherwise they get irritating. No pilly flannel because they also have to stay cool, so it's linen or cotton. Jersey doesn't work either because it's too stretchy when I flip around trying to find that spot/position that allows me to slip away. Pillows have to be feather and squishy firm, if that makes sense. Supportive yet conforming.

Now for my list of beds I covet:

1. There is a commercial for an island resort, I can't remember which, that shows a canopied bed with full billowing linen curtains outside catching the sea breezes under a gazebo on the beach. Oh how I long to sleep there, big fluffy pillows, the smell of the sea, birds calling......

2. In LOTR-ROTK at the end, after destroying the ring, Frodo is taken to the houses of healing in Minas Tirith, the White City of Gondor. He wakes in a bed that I have longed to take a nap in since I saw it. Fluffy feather bed, lots of pillows, soft light seeping in through the windows, warm quilt.

3. Princess Buttercup's bed in The Princess Bride. It's lovely, beautifully clothed in silk, again with a feather bed, soft pillows and a large fire place in the room. The perfect place to sleep in winter.

4. Back to LOTR, but this time it's FOTR. The bed in Rivendell where Frodo wakes after his stabbing by the Witch King of Angmar. That is the bed I most covet. All the best of the other three, but adding the sounds of the forest and a nearby river and you've achieved perfection.

Churchill Was Right

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Winston Churchill

Considering that the Palestinian people have duly elected terrorists to head their government, and that the elected head of Iran is another in the mold of Hitler, Democracy may not be the best solution. Except that it is. There just isn't a better way of ensuring that people get the government they deserve, in the best and worst ways.

Hammas will have to learn to take the blame for a poorly run governement, blame that was fairly laid at Fatah's feet before. The former Fatah government was thoroughly corrupt, as was Arafat's government before. Now Hammas will have to fend for itself, no Fatah to blame, no Arafat, no Sharon, just themselves. Of course, now they will have to make the choice between Western aide and militant activity against Israel. There again, democracy is in action. You can choose your governement, we can choose not to send money. Simple stuff, really.

Missing Winter - A List of 10 things

Some people don't like the cold. I'm not one of those some people. I like the cold. I like winter. It's 60 freakin degrees out there right now! I want a winter!!!!!

Top 10 List of Things I'm Missing
10. The cool pattern that frost makes on my windshield. I know where paisley comes from, it's ice patterns on windows.
9. A reason to wear that yummy down coat gathering dust in the hall closet.
8. Teaching my nieces and nephews the joys of rolling snow angels. We don't bother with the fall-back-and-waggle-your-arms-and-legs kind. We do the what-would-it-look-like-if-the-angel-came-to-a-screetching-halt-in-the-backyard ones. Much more fun. Then I log roll them.
7. Snowball fights. I love snowball fights.
6. The gleam in my father's eyes as he revs up his snowblower. It's an incendiary glow that comes only with power tools for him.
5. A reason to make hot chocolate from scratch.
4. A good reason to add bourbon to the hot chocolate I just made from scratch. I have lots of reasons to do that, shoveling the driveway is one of the good ones.
3. The way my world looks when it snows. I love the monochromatic sheen on everything, I love the cute bird tracks under the feeders, I love the evergreens covered in snow, the streets, the houses, the cars, everything looks wonderful under snow.
2. Interpretive and interestingly posed snowmen. Mimicking Calvin's snowmen is worth hours and hours of fun. Especially the House of Macabre ones. Love that.
1. Snow Days. I work for a university and every now and then I get a paid day off to go do 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 & 9 and to enjoy 3, 6 and 10.

Anti-Movie Review - Movies I'm not going to see

Brokeback Mountain
Two words: gay cowboys. Nope. Not gonna do it. Love story, you say? Still, not gonna do it. Cowboys are some of the sexiest men on earth and I'm not gonna ruin my enjoyment of bullriding by visions of two boys riding off in the sunset pledging undying love to each other. Yick.

New World
One of the "accolades" for the movie convinced me before I knew anything about it. "Best historical drama since Titanic." Since I hated Titanic enough to scream "Die, PLEASE, JUST DIE!!!!" at the "King of the World", I can't imagine that this one is anything less than dismal. Plus it's staring the man whose last turn as an historical figure, Alexander, gave me intestinal cramps from the commercials alone.

Munich
Why Steven, why? Such talent and you twist it so? To equate terrorists with assassins isn't right. Both kill, okay, that I'll give you, and of course if the Germans hadn't let the terrorists go in the second place, none of that revenge would have been necessary. The first place is this: a bunch of thugs taking innocent athletes hostage only to kill them with a shot to the back of the head while blindfolded and bound hasn't got jack to do with hunting down and killing the thug who killed your countryman/woman while bound and blindfolded with a shot to the back of the head. They aren't the same thing. All killing is not equal.

Spielberg made a big deal about making "War of the Worlds". He said that before 9/11 he never believed that beings smart enough to develop an interstellar engine and ship would "shlep" weapons all that way. Truth is that a being smart enough to invent such things would be smart enough to know how freakin stupid it would have to be to go millions of lightyears away from the safety of the homeworld without them. Maybe they won't be needed, but who wants to get caught with your shorts down around your tentacles. Smart aliens, and humans, know these things. Peace isn't made by a lack of weapons alone, it is made by the judicious use of them and wise choices at the bargaining table. Anyway, Spielberg keeps getting it wrong when he moves away from science fiction and history younger than WWII. I think it's connected to when he cried at the end of the last Star Wars.

I'm sure this list will expand.

Feeling Nice

Feelings
Feelings are wretched barometers of reality, but more especially, they are terrible aides at discerning right from wrong. I can feel a certain way, positively or negatively, about a certain idea, activity or thing. My feelings are unable to produce the actual concrete truth about the thing, fact or idea, they are a merely an accumulation of past feelings and experiences interpreted through memories. Memories not being amoung the more reliable sources of information known to man. I like feelings, they sure can be fun, but beyond helping me to figure out how I personally feel about a certain event, they are not helpful.

Why the diatribe you ask? Because I hear constantly in the media, in commercials, in conversations around me that doing such and such was great cause "it made me feel good." That's cool if it was the right, moral, good, healthy correct thing to do. What about when doing the wrong, immoral, irresponsible, reprehensible and possibly criminal thing makes you feel really good? Will you still do that for that reason? I'm asking because unless you have a highly evolved sense of honor and a deeply ingrained code of conduct, doing the wrong thing usually feels REALLY good. Which is why we choose to do the wrong thing in the first place, it's because we want to.

Doing what is right involves much more than feelings. Often it invovles going against our inclinations and desires to feed our pleasure senses, it involves sacrifice. Doing what is good should be more satisfying that just doing what "feels good", but these days you won't get many agreeing with you.

Just so you are warned, if you are sitting with me watching TV and a certain commercial selling custom blinds comes on and a certain salesgirl who "feels really good when that man said thank you for selling me those blinds", don't mind me if I throw something and scream.

Nice
I despise how misused this word is, how often I am expected to be nice when no one can define what being a "nice" person is. I can be kind or mean, nasty or considerate, compassionate or cruel, but being a "nice" person is undefineable, everyone has their own definition, which renders that description useless. You can have nice toes, meaning attractive, a nice home, nice lawn, but you yourself can only be described by character terms. All that to say, I'm not nice.

My Winter Reading - Why you should read it too.

If you want to understand why we are the way we are, you have to understand the past, and sometimes the very far away past. Be it Greek or Medieval, what happened then informs what happens now. With that in mind, two books I've read in the past few months have excellently schooled me on some of the "why". Follow the links to the Amazon pages, they write far better reviews than I can and are more thorough than I intend to be.

In the Wake of the Plague
By Norman Cantor

Fantastic book, fascinating in its subject and scope. This book covers the catastrophe of the plague from it's beginnings to its aftermath, a far reaching aftermath. I loved this book, not just because it told the story of the plague, but because it offered just a cogent, detailed history of what we lost and gained because of the vastness of the death toll. Great reading.


Carnage and Culture
Victor Davis Hanson

Another fantastic book. A part of me wants to make at least the first chapter on the battle of Salamis required reading for every man and woman who enters the military. And the entire book for everyone else. Here is the story of where the ideals of freedom and democracy came from, and why those ideals are so important and vital, to us generally and specifically to us now.

Get these books. Read them, underline the good bits. Then read them again. Then make the people you love read them.

I'm reading this next month. And after that, this. I love getting books for Christmas!

The Information Age

The microwave is a lovely thing to reheat food but it's useless when it comes to cooking in the first place. It's too fast and uses the wrong kind of heat to properly get the best flavor out of a product. The internet and satellite communication does the same with news. Great for repeating accurate information, not so great for getting out accurate information in the first place. Rumors start quickly and easily, humans love them and love to repeat them. Now when everyone is a phone call/email away from everyone else it is just too easy for the wrong information to get loose. Trouble always comes from rumors, among the worst is that correcting the wrong information is nearly impossible to do, people have moved on, are thinking of other things, have cemented the first erroneous reports in their heads and nothing else will stick. Two things reminded me of this today.

The Sago Mining Disaster:
Early this morning family members waiting anxiously to hear if their father/brother/husband/son was alive were told joyously, but falsely, that they were, only to hear the true and tragic news several hours later. I have no idea who is to blame, but fact checking could never be more important that when delivering such personal and life changing news. Read more here.

Katrina Victims:
There have been so many epithets thrown, so many accusations made and all before the information was complete. See the Philadelphia Inquirer's Study Here.

An Election, The War, The Economy and The Ambassador

The Iraqi Election
Yesterday was an amazing day in Iraq, they held a third election this year, the first for the provisional government who would write their new constitution, the second to ratify that constitution, written in an amazingly short 7 months, and yesterday they elected their permanent parliament. How cool is all of that? Way. Considering that we didn't have a constitution in place until September 17, 1787, eleven years after we declared independence, and the government wasn't in place until March 4, 1789, I think the Iraqis have done an amazing and Herculean work to get a ratified constitution and an elected parliament all within the span of a year. Now, I do understand that communication and transcription technology is quite updated from the days of our own Revolution, but the wrangling over policy and law is unchanged from that time, people must discuss and discuss and talk and talk and talk until an agreement is made. That just takes a lot of time.

Below is a poll taken in Iraq in the days before the election. Very, very interesting.

Iraqi Poll

The War - Here, There and Everywhere
Just a few thoughts on the American response to the war and the results of the war itself.

There & Everywhere
Afghanistan - Is anyone else astounded that there is barely any news coming out of Afghanistan? Does anyone else understand how cool this is? If there were an increasing number of terrorist attacks, you can bet your sweet bippy that someone who hates the US would pounce on it and run with it. Actually, Afghanistan is doing quite well, women are able to vote, get an education, dance, own a business and all just four short years after a most repressive and brutal regime of Islamo-thugs tried to squish them flat and breathless.

Iraq - See above.

Egypt - Did anyone notice that Egypt held an election as well, that women also voted in this and that it was an actual election? Rather cool.

Libya - Remember that Qaddafi suddenly gave up his WMD's without a fight. Yeah, I remember that too.

Lebanon - The Cedar Revolution was crazy wonderful. Syria is out of Lebanon. Hurrah!

Here
One of the reasons I think Americans don't support the war and don't really understand it is that it hasn't cost us enough. NOT in lives, that's not what I'm saying. But in time, convenience, effort, even pocket change, we aren't investing in the War on Terror. We are Monday morning quarterbacking it. Now, do I think we could have vetted the intelligence more? Yes. But considering that for the last 10 years EVERYONE has said that Saddam had WMD's, and that small amounts of WMD's WERE found in Iraq after the war and that there is good reason to believe that the missing WMD's are in Syria, I still think it was the right thing to do. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are better off, as is the world. We don't see the cost in money because we already pay taxes, no one is selling war bonds. We aren't growing victory gardens, we aren't rationed for oil, we aren't sending our stay at home moms off to the Boeing factories. We don't have to, we are so much more fantastically wealthy than we were in 1941. In fact we Americans are amoung the 5% most wealthy people on the planet. All of us, except the poorest and they are amoung the top 9%. We are no longer used to sacrificing for anything, and so when it isn't immediately and easily granted to us, we not only lose interest, but we want to take our toys and go home.

Since my nephew just got back with nary a scratch from Iraq, I can't say that my family has sacrificed. My nephew in law got back a few years back from Afghanistan, also without injury. Are we more fantastically blessed than we deserve? Yes. I am forever grateful to have them home safe. I am also incredibly and deeply grateful for ALL the men and women who serve us in far-flung places, and I grieve deeply for the losses. All of them. But it's worth it. Freedom, liberty, justice, all three are worth fighting for. Don't forget that we have found thousands of mass graves in Iraq, many filled with just women and children, skulls with a bullet wound in the back of the head, that families in Kurdistan are just now getting word that their hopes for the return of The Disappeared are forever hopeless. Saddam himself was a WMD, he caused immesasurable suffering to his own people. It's okay to me that the Iraqi's want us to leave, that's great motivation to get up to speed all the faster, but what on earth do we have all this power for if it is not to remove murderous tyrants like this?

Hopefully we will go after that nut in Pyongyang and the monster in Africa soon.

The Economy
I'll come back to this. Suffice it to say, I think we are doing well. Overall, people, not everyone is doing well, but most people are.

The Ambassador
Read this for an update on John Bolton's work in the UN. YAY for Mr. Bolton. So far, my favorite diplomat.

The article is yet another reason I refuse to limit my reading of the news to one source. The MSM in this country would be one conglomerate source in my eyes.

A Deeper Magic

There are fables and legends aplenty for Christmas, St. Nicolas, Santa Clause, flying reindeer, elves and a magical ride around the earth in one night with lots of presents and just a little coal, and POOF! you have a childhood fairy tale. The problem is that this fairy tale is just that, a tale, and once you turn four, somehow you know that there isn't a real Santa, that reindeer don't fly and Mom, Dad and the Grandparents are really responsible for all those great presents under the tree, partly cause you specifically did not ask Santa for a 6 pack of tighty whiteys. So, somehow, Christmas looses some of it's magic when you find out that the jolly man with the supersled and the cold, cold workhouse packed with elf-slaves doesn't exist.

But there is a deeper magic to Christmas, one that doesn't unravel when you gain some thinking skills. This past Sunday my pastor, Mike Coleman, preached on the truth of the biblical story of Christmas, more specifically, the story of the birth of the Christ Child. We don't know precisely when Jesus was born, but we do know about when. We have the Roman records of the census call from Caesar Augustus, we know that the census was taken around 1 AD. We don't know what month or what day he was born, but we know he was born.

The deeper magic of Jesus birth and the circumstances of his conception are such that if we pay attention, we can only stand in awe. Or bow down in awe. In the very begining, at the creation, evil magic crept in to spoil everything. Even then the deeper magic of redemption was at work, the deeper magic was there all the time. God became man retaining his perfect holiness so that he could reconcile a wicked people to be his own. It happened at the right time and in the right location. Magic.

Narnia - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

See the trailer here.

I'm nearly ready to embarrass myself, I'm so excited for this movie to come out. Everything I've heard and read tells me that Walden Pictures and Disney made every logical attempt to stick to the story, Weta Workshop showed they can be faithful with the work they did on LOTR. Even the interviews of the director that I've read indicated that he was aware that if he mucked this story up, there would be heck to pay.

Obviously one reason is that I adore these stories. This one in particular, even though the Last Battle is my favorite, this story of Aslan's sacrifice for the cruel and petty Edmond, Lucy's love for Aslan and Peter and Susan's courage is wonderful, moving and beautiful. I've enjoyed the mental images of the trees coming to life and joining in the battle. Unlike Tolkiens Ents, these really are the spirits of the trees coming to life. The themes of sacrifice, honor, courage and humility are stirring and encouraging. I also need the visual of the havoc created by a sinful desire for just one more taste of Turkish Delight.

More than anything, though, I'm hoping that this movie turns people back to the books, as was the case with Tolkiens masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. The books are so magical and wonderfully evocative of life and it's deeper meanings. Even if your kids can't understand the themes, the stories are filled with creatures of legend and myth, treasure, princesses, brave knights, serious quests and heroic children.

I'd just hate for some child to miss out on Reepicheep. Or ole Puzzle. Or Hwin. Or Eustace. Or Puddleglum. But especially Reepicheep. I love Reepicheep.

No Turkey, That Bird Was Good

Dry turkey is a cursed thing, one that can not be cured no matter how much gravy you throw at it. If your Thanksgiving turkey is dry you may as well just give up on the dinner and head for the pie table.

Every year, I dread the thoughts, nay, fears, of being responsible for a dry turkey on Thanksgiving Day. This year I was perusing Nigella Lawson's excellent FEASTS and came across a recipe for Brined Turkey. Yup, brined, as in pickle. Water, salt, sugar, maple syrup, honey, lime, herbs & spices were mixed to form a highly fragrant bath for our 18 pound turkey. Then we dumped it in and let that sucker sit for two days. Chilled of course, stirred, not shaken. Then an hour before lift-off we take the turkey out to dry it off and warm it up to room temperature, cause apparently everything likes to be treated like a frog. That is, food likes to be room temperature before you apply heat to it, it cooks and tastes better if you do that.

Dad freaked out a bit about the turkey soaking, but after reading the recipe, he calmed down and rolled with it.

Then pop that bird into a hot oven, 450, for 1/2 an hour, then set it to 350 for the rest of the time it needs. 3 1/2 hours to cook an 18 pound turkey to perfection. I mean perfection, it was golden brown and oh so yummy. It was juicy and TASTY stone cold out of the fridge the next day too. The gravy was a breeze also, but then I make stock ahead of time and use that to be sure that we have plenty of that nectar of the gods around for leftovers.

I recommend that book. The recipe and timing was dead on. Plus her commentary is hilarious. I'm using her recipe for our Christmas Goose this year.

Top 10 List - Why Fall Rocks

10. Sleeping with your windows open again after a summer of over 90 degree heat. 11 would be having a window fan, but it's sort of redundant, so I won't really include it here.
9. The clarity of the skies. It's bluer than is possible in summer because the heat haze is gone.
8. Fresh Apples. Yeah baby, they haven't really been fresh since last autumn. Right off the tree and soo perky.
7. Fresh Candy Corn. That hasn't been fresh since last year either. Makes you kinda wonder about what the heck they sell these days, doesn't it?
6. Planning to Christmas shop early. I know, it's just plans and you won't actually get any shopping done until December 22, but it's nice to plan.
5. Did I mention that the temperature has dropped? If I weren't scared of the repeater police, 10 - 1 would be lower temperatures. I am really really happy when the evenings are down below 65, when the days don't go much above 75 and when it goes into the 50's at night.
4. Crisp Fall Mornings when there's frost on the pumpkins. And I love pumpkins too.
3. The changing leaves. In Maryland you can see every color right of verde: orange, yellow, red, brown and sometimes purple. I love the colors all different on one tree and then mixing it up with dozens of other species. It's the best.
2. Leaf piles. I still flop into them every chance I get, I actually like to rake if I get to look forward to some quality leaf flops. Getting to watch the kiddies do it is the bonus round.
1. The smell. Every season has a smell, falls is simply my favorite. When the leaves start to rot and the weather gets colder, there is a metallic smell to the air that reminds me of the delicious anticipation of Halloween and Thanksgiving, and farther into the distance of kid-dom, the motherlode of all holidays, Christmas. That smell is a glorious thing, I cherish it, and breathe it in every chance I get. Even though I'm not a child anymore, well, mostly, I still look forward to the end of the year and winter in that first smell of fall. I don't think you can buy a leaf rot candle, but if I could, I would.