Category: Reclaiming the Family

Christmas in the Woke World

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Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

If you have very religious friends then you know that many people have always felt that the public face of Christmas has always been tainted by the commercial nature of the holiday in our culture.  They are outraged that the secular elements of Christmas overshadow the sacred nature of the holiday.

Maybe from their point of view what is happening in the culture now is no worse than the former commercialism.  Well, now it’s everyone else’s turn to be outraged.  Of course, the present outrage isn’t confined to commercialism.  We’re dealing with the destruction of a whole civilization and its replacement by nihilism.  But maybe the course of action everyone will be forced to adopt is basically the same as that taken by religious people living in a secular society.  The religious communities have to provide analogs for all the secular institutions around them.  They send their children to religious grammar and high schools.  Their churches sponsor children’s sports teams and fraternal organizations and social occasions where families can get together and young people can find friends.  And these organizations can act as networking opportunities for professional advancement and community projects.  Even politics can be centered around church membership.

If you don’t happen to be religious this may pose a problem in today’s woke society.  Outside of churches the Left has exerted massive pressure to warp and control the other organizations existing in the world today.  Public schools are hotbeds of homosexual recruitment and even stranger things like the indoctrination of middle-school kids into the transgender delusion.  The Boy Scouts have been co-opted, the large corporations are saturated with diversity, inclusion and equity programming and the federal government is an occupying army.

So, there’s only one way forward.  You have to do it all yourself.  Anything you want to preserve about Christmas, you are going to have to sponsor personally.  So, let’s say you want to encourage the religious aspects of Christmas.  Then you are going to have to make sure you bring the kids to church and tell them what you believe.  And if there are cultural traditions or family traditions you want to preserve then you better take the time to teach the kids and the grandkids about them and why they are important.  And let’s face it, if you don’t really believe in the importance of these things, you won’t be able to convince anyone else that they are important.

Luckily for me, I love old fashioned Christmas.  I love getting together with the family and eating a great big meal and passing the time together playing games and telling stories about the old days to the kids and talking about the minor news and events in the family and the community.  I love to put on some old movie like “A Christmas Carol” or “A Christmas Story” and introduce it to another generation.  I love to spend time with my kids and grandkids and hear about their lives and maybe provide a sympathetic ear to someone who needs to talk or make the encouraging noises that everyone likes to hear and sometimes really needs.  And if the talk turns to things going on in the larger world state your opinion honestly and fearlessly.  Don’t mince words about the Democrats and especially not about the truly insane fringes of the Left.

And Christmas is just one chapter of what needs to be done.  Every aspect of normal life and Western Civilization needs the same treatment.  Be vocal and comfortable about cheerleading for the good things in the old culture that need to be defended and nurtured.  Encourage the kids to think about important parts of their lives that they will have to attend to.  Finding a job, finding a spouse, raising a family.  These are things that don’t go without saying.  Say them.  Provide practical help for things like career counseling, finding activities, even providing them with help like a lift to a job or an activity.  After all most parents are stretched pretty thin.  If a granddad has the time, he should make himself useful.

So that’s enough talk.  We’re headed out Christmas Eve in the afternoon to one of my daughters.  That’s going to be fun.  And then Christmas dinner is at my house and that will be grand.  All the grandkids will be there and I will be in my glory.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – Reclaiming Christmas

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Mrs. Chemist and I are still working but plan to take the week between Christmas and New Year’s off.

One of the things I loved the most about Christmas vacation as a child was the lack of responsibility – the absolute immunity from having to do anything. It was glorious!

Then, as I got older, responsibilities started to inject into my Christmas vacation. First it was term papers and other assignments over “Winter Break”. Later, my brief career in retail required I work harder that week than any other week of the year. (Retailers call the week between Christmas and New Years the “Thirteenth month” because they do as much business that week as a typical month through the year. After that it was graduate school when the lab and the instruments were barely used and I could get more work done. Then, early in my professional career, I worked through holidays and weekends to prove myself.

I’m done with that.

Mrs. Chemist and I will spend at least one day doing absolutely nothing: No chores, no shopping, no work, no news – nothing a responsible adult “Needs” to do. We plan to sleep late, enjoy each other, watch movies, eat bad food and just enjoy.

We are really looking forward to it.

Ah, Distinctly I Remember It Was in the Bleak December

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Today was a sort of busy day.  Family matters and also, I got a couple of thousand words done for my book.  So, the day was over quickly.  I read through the news and didn’t see anything compelling to rant about.  I watched “The Holly and the Ivy” tonight and that got me back in the spirit of the season but it was late and with the sun gone so early this close to the Winter Solstice I find my energy fails earlier.  So here I am pondering weak and weary upon a midnight dreary.  It seems very quiet tonight.  Possibly that’s just my own stillness but I still want to puzzle out something about the day.

I think what I’m sensing is the contrast between the sacred and the profane.  But maybe it would be better saying good and evil.  I’m thinking about all the positive, life-affirming things tied up with Christmas.  Family, benevolence toward your fellow man, celebration, community and a sense of the holiness of the season.  And then I think about Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, “The Squad,” the awful people in the media, George Soros, all the monsters in the FBI and the Justice Department, the psychopaths in Antifa and BLM.  The idea that these people can exist in the same society that honors Christmas seems inconceivable.

And the answer is that it is inconceivable.  We do not exist in the same society.  Sometimes when it’s convenient, they pretend we are one people but that is patently false.  They believe in none of the things we do.  Every action they perform is to destroy that world that we inherited and love.  Christmas is at the epicenter of all they despise and envy.  Parents and children enjoying time off from work to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles and especially cousins are an indictment of their failures as normal human beings.  Producing and supporting a family is a heresy for them, a sin against Gaia.

So, it is at this time of the rolling year that the stark contrast between my personal world and the official goings on of post-America clash most severely.  Joe Biden is a monster who has lived such a horrible and phony life that he has produced Hunter Biden as his replacement in this world.  And Biden is emblematic of what we see all around us.  Something as moronically named as TikTok had a campaign on it to call in threats to middle schools all over America.  School Boards all over America are threatening concerned parents with arrest if they dare complain about malpractice in the schools over propaganda they are teaching the children.  This is a broken world and it’s not accidental.  It’s a concerted effort to destroy anything that is healthy and good.

So that’s the thing I sense.  It’s the disconnect.  Christmas was always a special time of the year but now it’s an anomaly.  It’s this island of joy and happiness in an ocean of dysfunction and malice.  But because of this very difference and rarity it must be enjoyed and cherished almost desperately.  You have to drain the experience down to the very last drop.  Maybe because it has to last a very long time every minute needs to be put to good use.  And as much as possible exclude the outside world and all its horror from your sight and mind.

So, when you make your plans for the holiday do your utmost to leave the newscasts and the social media far from your eyes.  Concentrate on family, food and fun and recharge those batteries as best you can.  It comes but once a year.

Praying Mantises, Children’s Books and Pa – Part 7 – The Next Generation

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Well as Milo intimated a month ago, our rescued Mantis has laid an egg case.

Currently the proud mother is still alive although I suspect that after laying her eggs her life span may be limited.  I’ll put the egg case in a cold area for the winter and then put it outside in spring.  Princess Sack of Potatoes will probably equate this phenomenon to the story of Charlotte’s Web that we recently watched.  Well, I’ll have to say the project has really paid dividends.

Here’s mom.

He Restoreth My Soul

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Psalm 23 (King James Version)

23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

“He restoreth my soul.”  The perfect words.  Getting together with the family, especially the grandkids did just that.  Fooling around at the pool table with my younger grandsons and watching old movies and eating absurd amounts of fattening foods and joking and laughing was “A Medicine for Melancholy.”  Camera Girl clocked multiple days of preparation and cooked up a storm.  She fell asleep exhausted last night but woke up today smiling and looking forward to the Friday sequel when even more family will be over.

I sat down and talked about current business problems with one of my sons-in-law.  He runs a medium-sized manufacturing plant and they just can’t find good help at any reasonable price.  But just telling his situation to someone who knows what he’s talking about is therapeutic and I was glad he confided in me.  Maybe I’ll figure out something that could help.  But just talking is good.  We all get wrapped up in our own problems.  We lose track of how others, even close family, are getting along or aren’t getting along.  Knowing that someone else would benefit from some small help is valuable.  We break out of our silos as they say in management speak.

How about that!  The world isn’t quite ready to collapse yet.  We’ll get to breathe and eat and laugh and cry.  There are all kinds of useful things we can do right around us even as Dementia Joe and the rest of the looters figure out new ways to degrade this once great nation.

Talk to your friends and family.  Spend time with them.  Figure out how you can help them.  Make their lives better and it’ll make your life better too.  The world doesn’t really consist just of trans-gender lunatics and critical race theory propagandists.  It consists of your family and friends and the life they have to lead.  Sure, those other things impact them and you can help to offset some of that harm with information you can provide.  But the focus is on the positive things that you do and say.  Do them.  Say them.  Because it’s the neglect of doing the things that need to be done that leaves room for the madness to creep in.

I must sound like someone hopped up on amphetamines but it’s just amazing.  The COVID isolation must have beat my soul down pretty bad.  Because the lift I got from a regular Thanksgiving get together is phenomenal.    Hopefully by Monday I’ll be able to muster up some gloom and doom.  But right now, I’m looking forward to round two.  Enjoy your long holiday weekend.

 

Here’s a repeat of Camera Girl’s Thanksgiving Turkey.  But it deserves another photo.

A Post for Thanksgiving 2021

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I wanted to write something for Thanksgiving.  I didn’t want to pollute the holiday with doom and gloom but in the present debased state of the world we find ourselves in I was unsure if I could find something fitting.  However, that’s just the doom and gloom speaking.  Most of us have many blessings to be thankful for.  For myself I have children and grandchildren and a wonderful wife (don’t let Camera Girl know I said that) and have had enormous good fortune over the course of my life.  If at this stage I no longer live in a free country, well, I’ll have to figure that out.  My ancestors lived in a gangster state and they managed to live and raise their families.  True, they left for a better place but they had had their lives in the old country and despair wasn’t part of it.

Well, we’ll have to find our way in these troubled times.  And we will.  From my point of view either there will be a revolt against the madness or I’ll need to find a better place.  Maybe the revolt will only be a self-segregation of the normal people maintaining a society of sanity embedded in a matrix of lunacy.  Maybe the Red States will become free or maybe they’ll loosen the Union enough to allow us to live our own way.  Or maybe it’ll all go to hell and I’ll get the hell out.  But whichever way it goes despair is a stupid, weak reaction.

I’ll do whatever has to be done for me and mine and I’ll look for good people wherever I can find them.  What I won’t do is pledge allegiance to the gangsters who’ve taken over the government and all the other institutions and tried to make me say that “two plus two equals five.”  This may be the richest place on earth but I am not afraid to live in a poorer place if it lets me think for myself.  Besides, this place is quickly turning into a third world banana republic.  That should make it that much easier to reform it or that much easier to leave.

So, there’s my crazy message of hope on Thanksgiving.  I am thankful that God has blessed me with great wealth, the people I love.  And he gave me a great gift of being able to see clearly what is around me and knowing the difference between what is real and what is imaginary.  And at dinner I’ll enjoy my overpriced turkey dinner with my family and I’ll enjoy myself for a day before getting back to thinking of how to navigate in the madhouse that is Dementia Joe’s America.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.  Enjoy your time with those you love and eat some fattening food and laugh and talk and make plans for Christmas and buy some overpriced gifts for the kids.  Do all the fun things we used to do when this was still America.  There’s plenty of time next week for gloom and doom.  But don’t let it get to you.  We’ll figure something out for ourselves and one day we’ll leave the lunatics behind and build a better world for us and ours.

The Dispossessed Taking Stock

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If something that always seemed substantial and even indestructible unravels then those that have always depended on its existence for making decisions in their lives suddenly find themselves adrift in uncharted territory.  And that’s where a lot of us are right now.  The United States of America was this behemoth of stability and an engine of prosperity.  It was also a place where people truly were free to say and do what they pleased as long as it didn’t involve robbing someone else.

Now with all of those things shattered what do we do?  How do we make a living?  How and where do we raise a family?  How will our children get an education?  How will they make a living?  Who will we have to swear allegiance to in order to avoid persecution?  Who must we be afraid to offend to avoid being a victim?  Essentially, all bets are off.

When a stable system receives a shock there are several possible outcomes.  If the system is elastic enough and the shock isn’t too large then things can return to a stability that might even be pretty close to the initial condition.  If the shock is a little stronger then perhaps a large chunk of the system will be ejected leaving a remainder that can then produce a diminished but stable system.  And finally, if the shock is cataclysmic the whole system is pulverized and scattered, never to coalesce into a whole again.

I think it’s too soon to tell how great a disruption there has been to America.  It feels like we’ve been irreparably fractured into several fragments that can’t be put back together again.  But maybe our enemies will be able to overcome all resistance and establish a new country in the image they have in mind for it.  Maybe we’ll win and fix the place back to close to what it was.  Or maybe we’ll split it in two.  All these questions aren’t going to be answered in a day or even a year.  Maybe a decade will decide things.

But none of us can wait ten years to answer that list of questions I asked above.  Our lives are ticking by right now.  Our kids and grandkids are growing and need direction.  So, we have no choice but to make decisions based on what we see happening around us and what we know about the policies being pushed by the federal and state governments.

And there are plenty of hints for anyone who is paying attention.  Living in California is being at the epicenter of all things woke.  It’s so dysfunctional and constrained that even the woke can’t stand it and are leaving in droves.  Places like New York and Washington and Oregon are pretty close to the California model.  In any of those deep blue states you’ll find problems trying to raise a family or even to just live your life the way you want to.  But even in purple states like Wisconsin or Colorado the Left is in charge and they will tell you what you can and can’t do.  And if you happen to be white, they’ll let you know that your turn is done and you better get used to humiliation and deprivation.

And even among red states not all of them are equal.  And not all areas in red states are equal.  Utah is considered a deep red state but Salt Lake City is a stronghold of California transplants that vote Left and control lots of the levers of power.  So, where you live is one of the ways you can control how free you will be.

With respect to employment there are decisions that will have to be made there too.  For instance, if you want to work in an industry that is heavily regulated by the federal government then you will find that the management of the companies working in that industry are aligned with the values that the federal government espouses.  So, for instance, the banking industry adheres to the equity, diversity and inclusion mantra pushed on them by the bank regulators.  In the same way the pharma companies follow these same precepts based on the FDA’s guidance.  None of this nonsense has any real bearing on sound banking principles or safe drug production but it’s how the system is rigged.  And even companies that aren’t themselves regulated by Washington may find that in order to get contracts with companies that are regulated they will have to parrot these same noises.  Hopefully, if they are small enough companies most of the noise is just that and nothing else.  But you can see how this starts to reduce your options.

And with respect to schools and colleges it’s even worse.  The percentage of colleges that aren’t woke is tiny.  It’s barely a handful.  And they won’t have all the programs you children may be looking for.  If your kids want to go to a woke college just prepare them for what it will be like and keep your fingers crossed that they can avoid being absorbed by the Borg.

And that brings us to the last part of our lives, the personal life.  We need to find enough people like ourselves to ensure that we have a rich personal life.  We have family but we need friends.  Our children need friends.  We need people who believe in the same things we do.  In the past you would have found these people in your church and in the school committee and among the parents of the kids on your kids’ sports teams.  And depending where you live you still might.  But you’ll definitely have to do some homework to find out if your neighbors are free Americans or part of the woke collective.  So don’t think that everybody is normal.  It’s easier to be careful at first and avoid the woke.  It’s much more painful to get rid of them once they’ve gotten close.  You owe it to your kids to protect them from bad influences and you owe it to your own sanity.

So, unless you live in the deepest red area of the country and work in a trade that has no connection to the government regulators and send your kids to Hillsdale College you will have to sort through these realities for the foreseeable future.  Either that or join the pod people.  I mean how bad could it be?

Praying Mantises, Children’s Books and Pa – Part 6 – Extra Innings

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Last night I read that this week we’re expecting a hard frost.  Well, it’s November after all and nothing unusual about that.  I mentioned to Camera Girl that I saw a dragonfly circling the yard the other day and now it’ll be the end of his time with the frost.

This morning Camera Girl was getting ready to go out on an errand and she said she’d stop at the top of the driveway and put a letter in the mailbox.  I said I need some air.  Give it to me.  As I was walking back toward the house she is walking toward me instead of driving out in her car and yelling something excitedly.  She is an enthusiastic woman.  What she was saying was that she saw a praying mantis sitting on top of a gallon water jug that I had left on the porch.  She asked me to catch it and save it indoors.

And sure enough, there it was.  I scooped it up and put it in a convenient cage (the former home of one of my grandsons’ hermit crabs).

 

 

And the new plan is to see how long he can live in an indoor environment.  I’ll try to offer him raw hamburger but if that fails we’ll get some crickets at the pet store.  Well, Princess Sack of Potatoes will get a chance to study a praying mantis more closely than I thought.

Just in Time for Christmas Cowards Cave to Toy Blackmail

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Lego announced that they’ve signed up with the feminists and LGBTQ mafia to demonize boys who like traditional boys’ toys like their expensive blocks sets.  This si coming out just when California had to legislate against stores having separate aisles for boys’ and girls’ toys.

The article stated,

In a statement released on October 10, Lego announced that it would work with both the Geena Davis Institute and UNICEF to make sure that its “products and marketing are accessible to all and free of gender bias and harmful stereotypes.”

Well I’ll just give my opinion.  If any toy manufacturer goes the full nine yards and stresses gender bias and harmful stereotypes, then they’re guaranteed my business.  I’m completely happy with my grandsons playing with swords and guns and my granddaughters playing with dolls and kitchen sets.  That’s just the dinosaur I am.

Reclaiming the Family – Part 8 – School

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All of the nonsense that has been going on with schools adopting CRT to teach our children that white people are evil has made it painfully obvious that leaving your children’s education in the hands of the politicians and the school boards and the teacher’s unions is wildly irresponsible.  They’ve already ruined at least two whole generations of Americans in the last forty years.  We can’t afford to let them finish the job off in the next twenty.

The options aren’t great, and in some places, choices are nonexistent.  But just ignoring the problem means handing over the future of your children to terrible people who will fill their heads full of dangerous lies and nonsense.  So do the work and find out what your options are.  Let’s take this in order from best to worst.

The very best-case scenario is you live in a place where the state government and the local town government hasn’t allowed progressives to poison the curriculum with things like an anti-American version of history.  And even if this is true and even in the best of places there will have crept in the insidious poison of diversity and inclusion.  That means that lessons on George Washington and Daniel Boone will be pushed aside to drag out Harriet Tubman and whatever other Civil War holdovers they’ve dug up to impress on the children all the important contributions that minority members have made to America.  So instead of Alexander Graham Bell, and Henry Ford and Thomas Alva Edison they’ll dig up the guy who invented the traffic light because he was black.  Never mind that the telephone, the automobile and the electrification of the United States were revolutions that changed the way human beings lived everywhere on Earth.  But they were straight white men so they want to drop them down the memory hole.  So that is what you are dealing with.

But this is the best case.  So maybe your school is even better than that.  They give them the real history and just sprinkle a little Harriet Tubman on at the end.  In that case congratulations.  If the teachers aren’t crazy radicals, you’ll be able to have your kids go to the local public school without turning them into woke losers.

But let’s move down the ladder from there.  Suppose the local school is much worse.  Then you’ll find that not only are the kids being indoctrinated with the whole inclusivity/diversity claptrap but in addition, they are being handed critical race theory on top of that.  They are being systematically taught that white people are evil people who by their very nature enslave other races and even in our modern free society are responsible for all inequality and injustice.  And in addition to the racial component there will be the LGBTQ propaganda.  They will learn that the worst of white people are straight men.  That queer people are being driven to suicide by horrendously bad treatment and that even straight women are the victims of systematic oppression by the “Patriarchy.”  They might even try to convince your kids that they’re actually not the boys or girls they were born as but the opposite.  That they’re actually wonderful trans people who with the magic of hormone therapy and castration or mastectomy can change their sex and become some wonderful new monster.

So, if this is your local school then you have to look for the next alternative.  If circumstances allow and you can find a town with better schools nearby you could move.  If that is unrealistic then you could look for a religious or private school that specifically avoids these types of problems.  If you can find such a school it would be your best alternative.  But be aware it will not be cheap.  It will be very expensive.

If that is either unavailable or just beyond your financial means then the next choice is some kind of home schooling.  Now I can think of two ways this could be done.  One is for the mother to stay home and teach the children herself.  This may be very difficult.  Losing a salary may be extremely painful for some families.  But it has the added advantage that you’ll know exactly what your children are learning.  But if homeschooling is impossible to arrange then as a final option you can allow your children to go to the poisonous woke school but provide additional and counteracting instruction yourself either at night or on the weekends.  You can look at the lessons that they get from school and provide corrections for these that allow the children to see how they are being misled.  You can even explain to the children that we live in a world where the truth is being suppressed by the government and it’s necessary for those who would know the truth to pass it along clandestinely.  And in fact, since children enjoy rebellious behavior, you might find it easier than you think to engage your children in this dissident behavior.  If handled correctly they can even fulfill the requirements of the fake history and social studies they are taking but with the added advantage that they know the true story underneath and will see the subtly of how life in an occupied country has to be managed.  This will actually give you something to bond over and will force you to have good answers for the charges that Leftists level against Western Civilization.

So, these are the choices I can think of for us going forward.  Hopefully in the future school choice will be something that our side demands to prevent their toxic schools from being our only choices.  But for now, we must be adaptable to the existing situation and do everything we can to prevent our children from being buried in their lies.