Cluster of wheat image Grapes and vines image Cluster of wheat image
October 28th, 2009

MY TRIBUTE

Marian Anderson (1897-1993) lived in my hometown. I heard her sing in a parking lot in Danbury CT on a very cold night toward the end of her career. In 1939 when the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow her to sing in their Constitution Hall, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and had the U.S. government allow her to sing at the Lincoln Memorial. She was a consummate professional, and was the first African American to sing at the Metropolitan opera house.

Famous as a contralto, in this radio broadcast she performs the Casta Diva from Norma. Even lowered a tone, it gives clearly an idea of her great range.

I was looking for the words for TO GOD BE THE GLORY and came across Carrie Wilson singing MY TRIBUTE. The video says it is in response to Marian Anderson singing Casta Diva (above).   Carrie is singing at a wedding in Kenbridge, Virginia, in 2007.

October 28th, 2009

POINSETTIA PROJECT

With Christmas coming up my thoughts turned to the poinsettia plant that I received last January from St. Peter’s.  Its  time on the altar was over and we parishioners were invited to take the poinsettias  home.  Mine has spent all of spring, summer, and most of the fall on the front porch and is now an even bigger, better, bushier  poinsettia, but, alas, quite green.   It is now back  in the house since we’ve had a couple of frosts.

How do I make it turn red for Christmas?   Google knows, of course, and according to the experts my plant needs 12-13 hours of dark each night — total dark — apparently it would be good if I could turn off the moon.  I started covering it at night with a big black plastic bag maybe two weeks ago and so far have forgotten the covering ritual at least twice.  I don’t know what will happen with this lackadaisical approach but I’ll let you know.

Here is a picture of the poinsettia now.   Tune in at Christmas-time for the results.

TODAY

TODAY

To me – choose thumbnail size (smallest)

October 26th, 2009

WHY ABORTIONISTS QUIT

Did you ever wonder what would make a big-time abortionist give it all up?  Here is an inside look into the lives of  two of them.  Between them they were personally responsible for well over a million abortions!

Stojan Adasevic, who performed 48,000 abortions in former Yugoslavia, is now a pro-life activist in Serbia.   Bernard Nathanson was one of the founders of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) and personally oversaw 75,000 abortions as director in New York.

Stojan Adasevic
In describing his conversion, Adasevic tells that he  “dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. ‘My name is Thomas Aquinas,’ the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican genius saint. He didn’t recognize the name”

“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked Adasevic in his dream.

“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,”  St. Thomas told him.

“Adasevic awoke in amazement and decided not to perform any more abortions,” the article stated.

“That same day a cousin came to the hospital with his four months-pregnant girlfriend, who wanted to get her ninth abortion–something quite frequent in the countries of the Soviet bloc. The doctor agreed. Instead of removing the fetus piece by piece, he decided to chop it up and remove it as a mass. However, the baby’s heart came out still beating. Adasevic realized then that he had killed a human being,”

When Adsevic told the hospital he would no longer perform abortions (something no doctor in the communist Yugoslavia had ever done) “they cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her job, and did not allow his son to enter the university.”

Sometime later he had another dream in which the man in black and white told him “You are my good friend, keep going.”   St. Thomas had written that he thought human life began 40 days after fertilization and it was Advesic belief that “he wanted to make amends for that error.”

Here is Adasevic’s story once again in a video with beautiful glimpses of pre-born babies:

 

Bernard Nathanson
Dr. Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL, explained that while working as an abortionist with pro-abortion groups, “We claimed that between five and ten thousand women a year died of botched abortions. …The actual figure was closer to 200 to 300. And we also claimed that there were a million illegal abortions a year in the United States and the actual figure was close to 200,000. So, we were guilty of massive deception.”

The New York Times refused to review Nathanson’s book  Aborting America when it was first released in 1979. The reasons why will be obvious upon reading this eye-opening insider account of the political games that led to the legalization of abortion in America.

In his book Nathanson says he was asked  about aborting his own child:

Did you not feel sad — not only because you had extinguished the life of an unborn child, but, more, because you had destroyed your own child?

I swear to you that I had no feelings aside from the sense of accomplishment, the pride of expertise. On inspecting the contents of the bag I felt only the satisfaction of knowing that I had done a thorough job. You pursue me: You ask if perhaps for a fleeting moment or so I experienced a flicker of regret, a microgram of remorse? No and no. And that, dear reader, is the mentality of the abortionist: another job well done, another demonstration of the moral neutrality of advanced technology in the hands of the amoral.” [pp. 60-61]

And here, a glimpse of Dr. Nathanson:

October 25th, 2009

THE KISS

(This arrived in my e-mail today.  Some things you just have to pass on . . . . . . .)

~~~

She is pregnant.

He had just saved her from a fire in her house, rescuing her by carrying her out of the house into her front yard, while he continued to fight the fire.

When he finally got done putting the fire out, he sat down to catch his breath and rest.

A photographer from the Charlotte , North Carolina newspaper, noticed her in the distance looking at the fireman.

He saw her walking straight toward the fireman and wondered what she was going to do.

As he raised his camera, she came up to the tired man who had saved her life and the lives of her babies and kissed him just as the photographer snapped this photograph.

Scroll down for photograph.






THE KISS

And people say animals are dumb.


October 24th, 2009

SILLINESS FROM THE 40’S

Oddly enough, I remember the first time I heard Mairzy Doats.  It would have been 1941 or 1942 when I was attending the Junior College of Connecticut — “the first junior college chartered by any legislature in the northeastern states” — which later became the University of Bridgeport.  I was walking along the street with a friend when she began to sing those strange words, “Mairzy doats and dozy doats.”

The Junior College at the time was so small everyone seemed to know everyone.  A poem in their newsletter went:

A noble schoolie, JCC, it nestles among the maples.

It teaches facts and theories, and offers all the staples.

Ten loving profs have charge of it,

Both male and female teachers

And in their arms they now embrace 170 creatures.

It’s amazing the things that will stick in your mind for 70 years.   I remember this little verse because my friend, Felice, knew who wrote it and wouldn’t tell me!

MAIRZY DOATS sung by Pamela Holt.

THREE LITTLE FISHES by Buzz Clifford.

~~~

 

A merry heart does good like a medicine: but a broken spirit dries the bones. — Proverbs 17:22

October 22nd, 2009

COMPREHENSIBLE

This turned up this morning in my Google reader.   It was such a welcome change from the attitude that an inconvenient baby should be summarily dispatched at the abortuary that I was “suckered in.”  Mr. Roesler writes that people ask if he is looking for a hand-out, and is this a scam?  No, he is just an expectant father who loves his wife and is trying to make things work out.  And if you want to help, well, thanks.

I figured there were many less important things I could do with my ten bucks.  I did hesitate about sending my credit card number and opted to pay with PayPal.   Welcome, baby.

HELP US HAVE OUR BABY

My name is Peter Roesler and I am married with a 18 month old child. We are a single income family. My wife goes to school fulltime. My wife is 5 months pregnant and we do not have insurance for the pregnancy. We tried to get her coverage, but we were rejected because she had a baby shortly before. I really love my wife and my 18 month son Khi, but times are tough and I am not getting new work like I used to. I currently am working 70 hours a week trying to make money to pay for the new baby delivery $10,000 and a cheap $3,000 minivan. Our goal is to get $13,000 by Feb when the new baby is due. The reason for the minivan is because we currently share one truck, and it doesn’t have a cab. So we don’t have room for the new baby.



If you are inclined to help welcome a new baby into this world, here is the website.

~~~

And when you welcome one of these children because of me, you welcome me. — Matthew 18:5

October 22nd, 2009

ARE YOU BORN AGAIN?

Yesterday I came across a letter to the editor that I wrote during President Carter’s administration.  It was never published as they said it was not in response to something in the newspaper, but, rather, evangelization.

So be it.  Today it is being published.

TO THE EDITOR:

I seem to be a confirmed writer of letters to the editor.  When issues are important to me, I want to make my views known, to stand up and be counted, and since I write better than I talk, I resort to letters.

It recently occurred to me that I have been silent on the most important issue of all.

We all know that President Carter and others claim to have been “born again,” but many people have only the vaguest idea of what that means.  Some folks think they are Christians because they have been born into a Christian family, or attend a Christian church, or believe that Christ was the son of God, crucified for the sins of mankind.  But a person is not really a Christian until he has personally, and I mean personally, committed his life to following Christ’s teachings, until he makes the decision that he is going to try to do God’s will.  Then he becomes “another Christ,” is “born again” (John 3:5) as a child of God, and can call God “Father.”

Time is measured forwards and backwards, A.D. and B.C., from the time of Christ.  An extraordinary star shone at his birth, the earth quaked at his death.  His Word is the all-time best-seller.  The shroud of Turin seems to be a modern-day testament to his resurrection.  To this day people are living and dying for what he taught.  Miracles continue to be worked in his name.  His message of love touches all hearts, especially at Christmas-time.

What manner of man was this?  He claimed to be God.  He said, “The Father and I are one.”  Was he a liar, lunatic, or truly what he said?

If Jesus Christ is truly God, I think the single most important decision a human being can make is to listen and to follow, to be born again.  Christ’s life and death require some kind of response on our part.  Who do you say that he is?

~~~

Nicodemus said said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”  Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the  Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  – John 3:4-5

October 19th, 2009

BEYOND COMPREHENSION

Gut-wrenching.   God help her.

“There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a ‘thump, thump’ in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes.” So writes abortionist Lisa Harris in a disturbing article relating her experiences as an abortionist, particularly her anguished and “brutally visceral” experience of dismembering an 18 week gestation unborn child, while 18 weeks pregnant herself.

In the article, entitled “Second Trimester Abortion Provision: Breaking the Silence and Changing the Discourse,” Harris, an abortionist and assistant professor at the University of Michigan, explains the ethical position that she says helps her and other abortionists continue practicing despite the moral and psychological hurdles involved in what she describes as an undoubtedly “violent” procedure. The article was originally published in “Reproductive Health Matters” in May 2008.

“Abortion is different from other surgical procedures,” Harris writes in her candid article.  “Even when the fetus has no legal status, its moral status is reasonably the subject of much disagreement. It is disingenuous to argue that removing a fetus from a uterus is no different from removing a fibroid.”

Harris says that there is a need to “cross borders and boundaries (including seemingly inflexible ones like ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’)” in order to “reflect seriously on the question of how providers determine their limit for abortion,” and warned that the issues surrounding the question “may frankly be too dangerous for pro-choice movements to acknowledge.”

Harris then describes how she once performed an abortion on a woman whose fetus was at 18 weeks gestation. Ironically, Harris herself was pregnant at the time, and her baby was also at 18 weeks gestation.

Consequently, she explains how she was “more interested than usual in seeing the fetal parts when I was done, since they would so closely resemble those of my own fetus.”

“I went about doing the procedure as usual,” she writes. “I used electrical suction to remove the amniotic fluid, picked up my forceps and began to remove the fetus in parts, as I always did. I felt lucky that this one was already in the breech position – it would make grasping small parts (legs and arms) a little easier.”

With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick – a fluttery “thump, thump” in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a “thump, thump” in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes – without me – meaning my conscious brain – even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling – a brutally visceral response – heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life. Doing second trimester abortions did not get easier after my pregnancy; in fact, dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.

Harris concludes that the “visually and viscerally different” component of a second-trimester abortion, as opposed to a first-trimester one, leads to questions such as: “What kind of dissociative process inside us allows us to do this routinely? What normal person does this kind of work?”

To answer the questions, Harris notes that the “violence” of abortion must be acknowledged, and relates a “bizarre” experience she once had of observing a premature baby struggling to survive immediately after dismembering an unborn child the same age:

The last patient I saw one day was 23 weeks pregnant. I performed an uncomplicated D&E procedure. Dutifully, I went through the task of reassembling the fetal parts in the metal tray. It is an odd ritual that abortion providers perform – required as a clinical safety measure to ensure that nothing is left behind in the uterus to cause a complication – but it also permits us in an odd way to pay respect to the fetus (feelings of awe are not uncommon when looking at miniature fingers and fingernails, heart, intestines, kidneys, adrenal glands), even as we simultaneously have complete disregard for it. Then I rushed upstairs to take overnight call on labour and delivery. The first patient that came in was prematurely delivering at 23-24 weeks. As her exact gestational age was in question, the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) team resuscitated the premature newborn and brought it to the NICU. Later, along with the distraught parents, I watched the neonate on the ventilator. I thought to myself how bizarre it was that I could have legally dismembered this fetus-now-newborn if it were inside its mother’s uterus – but that the same kind of violence against it now would be illegal, and unspeakable.   (Continue reading this article from LifeSite News.)

~~~

Can a mother forget her baby,
Or a woman the child within her womb?
Yet, even if these forget,
Yes, even if these forget,
I will never forget my own.  (song based on Isaiah 49:15)



October 15th, 2009

JOIN asamom.org NOW

As A Mom – A Sisterhood of Mommy Patriots, is only a couple of weeks old and already has close to 50,000 members.   These are their 9 principles (you can belong if you subscribe to 7 of them.)

1. America is good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

In my humble opinion,  the best introduction to As A Mom, with the story of how the website came to be, can be found by viewing the Glenn Beck clips here.  Meet the pioneer ladies in person, see their passion, and learn about their individual websites.

On my first visit to the As A Mom website I was immensely impressed by a letter that one member wrote to Nancy Pelosi.  I think it speaks for millions of Moms.

Finally, As a Mom is a Ning website.   I never heard of a Ning before and obviously the sitemaster is quite technically savvy.  You will enjoy the tutorial on what is a Ning as well as the tutorials about how to do
everything else
on the  Mom site.

Join now.  The Moms are a-gathering.  The site is growing by leaps and bounds.  Click here.

October 12th, 2009

SONGS IN THE BATH

Enjoyed a sentimental time in the bath today singing old songs.  Do you remember? —   Feel free to sing along.

Always
Irving Berlin, 1925, recorded by Frank Sinatra, 1942.

I’ll be loving you, always,
With a heart that’s true,  always.
When the things you’ve planned,
Need a helping hand,
I will understand, always,
Always.

Things may not be fair, always.
That’s when I’ll be there, always.
Not for just an hour,
Not for just a day,
Not for just a year,
But Always.


Autumn Leaves

Originally a French song, first recorded by Jo Stafford in 1950.  Sung by Nat King Cole

The falling leaves
Drift by the window
The autumn leaves
Of red and gold

I see your lips
The summer kisses
The sunburned hands
I used to hold

Since you went away
The days grow long
And soon I’ll hear
Old winter’s song

But I miss you most of all
My darling
When autumn leaves
Start to fall

Let The Rest Of The World Go By

Written by 1919 Ernest Ball, sung by Morton Downey

With someone like you, a pal good and true
I’d like to leave it all behind and go and find
Some place that’s known to God alone
Just a spot to call our own


We’ll find perfect peace, where joys never cease
Out there beneath a kindly sky
We’ll build a sweet little nest somewhere in the west
And let the rest of the world go by