A Quote to Ponder
May 31, 2006
Courtesy of Tom Graffagnino, this quote from Fanny Crosby, blind from the age of six, but used by God to write 8,000 hymns (yeah, that’s THOUSAND).
“It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.”
Chew on that fer awhile…
Blogging the Beach: Installment 2, Tuesday
May 30, 2006
The weather was a bit more cooperative for us today, with the sun making its debut around noon and remaining more or less congenial to us for the remainder of the day. The water is passably warm, which means that one’s lips don’t turn a full shade of blue until 30 minutes or so, which I wasn’t about to test. I did jump in for a couple of 10-15 minute stretches, actually, and I’m exaggerating a bit, because the water wasn’t really that bad, it’s just that with the waves barely qualifying as waves, well, there just wasn’t that awful much to do out there, so I retreated to my chair on the beach and ended up, on the entire day, reading about half of Jim Collins’ Good to Great.
Later in the day, we made our annual pilgrimage to Cape Hatteras—and when I say that we went to Cape Hatteras, what I mean is that we went all the way out to the very tip, the very point, of land, where northbound waves collide with westbound ones in cataclysms of ocean spray, and where roughly 4000 people per day think that the fishing is great (again, a bit of an overstatement, but the 4-wheel-drives were semi-wall-to-wall at the very tip itself. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t really a whole lot of actual fish-catching going on, but “a bad day fishing…”, you know…
The kids enjoyed jumping around in the shallows that existed today; every time we go out to the point, the shape is completely different from the time before. Today, there were a couple of sandbars that could be easily reached by the smallest of kids; here’s Levi and Wonderful Daughter frolicking (note that Levi, Chip and Erin’s energetic five-year-old, has both feet off the ground). Shells were gathered; birds were chased; the remains of a toothed fish (barracuda?) were perused, found washed up on the sandbar with flesh semi-eaten away by gulls.
At any rate, another great day enjoying a part of God’s creation that reminds us of His constancy; the waves I frolicked in today were washing up on these shores thousands of years prior to today, and if the Lord tarries, will be washing up on these shores long after my children’s grandchildren fade from this world’s memory. I rest in His unchanging grace…
The Kelo Theft Saga Continues
May 30, 2006
Tom Blumer at BizzyBlog was kind enough to send me links to several of his recent posts regarding the latest on the “legal” theft of property being perpetrated by the City Council of New London, Connecticut (with the five “compassionate/liberal” members of our Supreme Court serving as unashamed accomplices). Here are the links:
Kelo’s Crunch Time Looms in New London: Part 1
Kelo’s Crunch Time Looms in New London: Part 2
Kelo’s Crunch Time Looms in New London: Part 3
As you know if you’ve read this blog for any time, this writer considers the Kelo decision to be one of the most deplorable of my lifetime in its brazen assault on the basic right to own property. If you read these posts, you’ll learn that the issue is even deeper now than originally understood: the New London thieves are going to continue in their plan to steal the homeowners’ property even though they no longer “need” it.
This just defines the word “infuriating”. I certainly hope that some folks stand up and run against the thieves during the next Council election; if I lived there, I certainly would, with a one-plank platform: “Integrity, Not Thievery”. I further hope that some patriots will occupy the properties in question in a massive display of resistance to tyranny. All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
Sadly, Americans are likely too preoccupied with who is going to win the next American Idol or whatever became of Natalie Holloway to likely care about this travesty, fiddlin’ away their lives while America burns.
UPDATE: Republican Governor Jodi Rell is running for re-election this fall. Her website declares that she is dedicated to “doing what’s right for Connecticut”. What’s wrong for Connecticut, Madame Governor, is for your fair state to be known as the vanguard of eminent domain theft. You can step in, Governor Rell, and restore sanity to this situation; you have it in your power. Please act on behalf of the citizens of your state!
Corrs Video of the Week: “Joy of Life” Live at Lansdowne
May 29, 2006
You cannot, I repeat cannot, watch this live video of the Corrs performing “Joy of Life” without tapping your feet or getting up and dancing a Celtic jig. Your body will move even against your will, this tune is so delightfully catchy. Another instrumental featuring Andrea on tin whistle and Caroline blasting away on the drums with boundless energy…
Monday Sports Roundup
May 29, 2006
So Barry did it.
Barry Bonds passes Babe Ruth’s HR record***
Thankfully, as long as it took for Captain Cheat to break Ruth’s mark, he won’t have enough gas left to challenge the great Henry Aaron’s mark of 715.
In other news, since even talking about Barry Bonds makes me want to toss my cookies, could I become an IRL fan?
Hornish edges Marco Andretti at last second
Now that I have a favorite IRL driver for the first time ever, it’s a distinct possibility. How can you not love a guy who, at 19 years of age, running in his first-ever Indy 500, not only comes within a few feet of winning the thing, but afterwards, says, “Second place is nothing. They don’t remember people who finish second here. They really don’t. You gotta take advantage of every shot. How many times did my dad finish second? He never won it and neither did I.” I’m sorry, but that is just awesomely cool; the kid comes within an eyelash at 19, and he’s disappointed. This young man has a great future, and at least one new fan.
***Many of these “home runs” came as a result of unethical ingestion of steroids, commonly known as “cheating”
Blogging the Beach, Installment 1 – Monday
May 29, 2006
After an interesting Sunday—I’ll say more about that later—Crazy Teenager and I got in the car and headed straight to Frisco, North Carolina for a week of vacation. Lovely Wife and Wonderful Daughter arrived here earlier in the day, having left on Saturday with our friends Rod and Jeniece. Here’s Wonderful Daughter standing in the breakfast nook of this house (more to come on the house) with her hair wet; multiplying the length of her hair by her penchant for being in the water at all possible moments of the day (she’d have gills surgically implanted if at all possible), my calculation is that I will not see her all week with her hair completely dry.
We are here for the week with Rod and Jeniece and their kids, and their sons’ friends, and Chip and Erin and their kids, and Jennifer and her son. Chip and Erin used to be part of FCC, but moved to central PA. They’re good folks, neat folks; Chip is an eclectic dude who is wearing a “surf kilt” as we speak (I had to ask him, because sorry, it looked like he was wearing a skirt, and I was sort 
of freakin’…). I love people like Chip, because conservative, whitebread me is sort of the polar opposite of Chip, who loves the Lord tremendously but doesn’t exactly look or dress or sound or…much of anything like me. I need to hang around with Chip, because he broadens my perspective in ways it could use broadening.
Jeniece and Erin are here in the kitchen. Jeniece and the ladies have all gone organic-like, and it’s…interesting. Trying to read Jim Collins’ Good to Great this morning, I had to leave the area because Jeniece was talking about things like the fact that John Wayne was found, during his autopsy, to have 44 pounds of undigested food lingering in his body. 
I’m sorry, but there is some information that I can die happy without knowing. Right now, I’m blogging from the breakfast nook where all four ladies are sitting together and talking about colonics and unbelievably gross things that they have to do with horses (Jennifer owns horses and just described a process that I can’t describe on the internet without this qualifying as some sort of twisted site).
This house—well, it’s pretty unreal. Here’s the deal: Rod reserved this pretty impressive house for a family reunion; this place was soundside in Avon, and in the process of being built when he reserved it. Got word on Wednesday that it was not going to be 
finished in time for us to be the first renters of the place, so we got upgraded to this place—which is like unreal. 8 bedrooms; 8 1/2 baths. Massive everything. A theater room with this humongous screen and couches lined up like you’re in a theater. Heated pool and hot tub (o’ course!), and oceanfront. “Conspicuous opulence” is the appropriate term; it’s almost embarrassingly nice, truthfully, but since we got it like we did, I’ll find a way to deal with the “guilt” of it all…
Memorial Day, 2006
May 29, 2006
WHAT IS A VET?
Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg – or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul’s ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can’t tell a vet just by looking.
What is a vet?
He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn’t run out of fuel.
He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.
She or he—is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.
He is the POW who went away one person and came back another—or didn’t come back AT ALL.
He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat—but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other’s backs.
He is the parade—riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.
He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.
He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean’s sunless deep.
He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket—palsied now and aggravatingly slow—who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.
He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being—a person who offered some of his life’s most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.
He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.
So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That’s all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.
Two little words that mean a lot, “THANK YOU.”
“It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.”
Father Dennis Edward O’Brien, USMC
Tip of the proud American Wahoos cap to Joe Bryant for this one…
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
