Tag: Reclaiming the Family

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.

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.

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.

Stopping the Left is Not Enough

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If you look at all the crazy things going on in our country you would be excused for thinking that all that is necessary to fix our problems is removing all of the leftists from power.  You might think that if we had fifty Governor DeSantises and people like him running our cities and in Congress that everything would go back to normal.  I think I used to believe that either consciously or unconsciously.  All we needed was good leaders and everything would revert to a normal world.  I no longer believe that to be the case.

Our world has drifted very far from a healthy pattern.  We could probably spend eternity debating what were the causes of this drift.  Some people would point all the way back to the Enlightenment and the dethroning of religion as the center of human life in the West.  Maybe that’s true.  Other people point to the emancipation of women as the spark that destroyed the family and led us to the place we are now.  I think cases could be made for a number of causes for what has happened to our world.

The point I want to make is that some kind of change is going to have to happen.  And either we are going to make these changes ourselves or nature will fix them for us.  An example of what happens when you let your society degenerate would be the end of the classical world.  The Western Roman Empire was toppled by German tribesmen who realized just how feeble the Roman state had become.  And a few hundred years later the Eastern Roman Empire was almost completely swept away by the armies of Arabia galvanized by a fundamentalist religion that gave meaning and order to their lives.

Something very similar will happen to our world unless we step back and restore sanity to the way we live.  Our institutions have to stop propagandizing our youth as to the value and desirability of living a secularized and sterile existence that eschews marriage and children.  The idea that it is acceptable and even preferred to adopt an identity that puts you at odds with biological reality is madness.  And all the other LGBTQ lifestyles must also be identified as deviancy that doesn’t merit celebration but at most pity and possibly tolerance if it isn’t allowed to corrupt the youth.

And these are just the negative aspects of our society that must be addressed.  At the same time, changes must be enacted to amplify society’s effect on the positive behaviors we want to encourage.  Our government must support the formation and flourishing of families.  If a man and a woman are raising up children the government should be doing everything it can to maximize the odds that they will create good, well-adjusted and productive people.  The tax laws and the social safety net should be primarily focused on these people.  Everything should be done to allow young women to stay home with their children during those formative years.  And this shouldn’t be done just because it is helpful to the child-rearing task but also because raising a family is the most fulfilling occupation that two people can hope to have.  And a young mother at home with her young children is the necessary center of such a family.  Without her it is an incomplete and confused fragment of what a family should be.  A poor family with a mother at home has its struggles.  But even a rich family without a mother at home is unbalanced and often unhappy.  The children feel the lack but don’t know what they’re missing.

And there are so many things about our society that are unhealthy and dangerous.  The complete disappearance of religion from our daily life and the normalizing of unhealthy obsessions like drugs and pornography have destroyed countless young lives.  All of these things are justified by our fetish with freedom.  A re-evaluation on the limits of freedom is painfully overdue.

And if society doesn’t start making these changes very soon, then as I said at the beginning of this rant, nature will do it for us.  Or more accurately, do it for our successors that live in healthier cultures.

Praying Mantises, Children’s Books and Pa – Part 5 – The Final Chapter

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Well, this is the finale of the great mantis experiment.  Yesterday Camera Girl used her hawk-eye super vision to find an adult praying mantis in the jungle-like weeds of her vegetable garden.  In fact, the mantis was on one of her Japanese eggplant plants.  Princess Sack-of-Potatoes will know that praying mantises really do exist although unfortunately they do not talk in an English-accented throaty whisper as they do in an Eric Carle picture book video.  But they are indeed monsters that inhabit the tiny world of our garden.  And that’s a fun thing for a little child to discover.

Camera Girl’s Super Power

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I believe in making marriage into a sit-com.  Camera Girl has said on any number of occasions that I need to write new material because she’s bored with the old stuff.  And she’s right.  But what I have in abundance is mockery.  I mock everything around me because that is how I think.  It’s a family trait that is probably our defining one.  That is how we analyze the world around us.  And because of her proximity Camera Girl is my favorite target.  I mock her choice in books, tv shows, talk shows, her frugality, her ideas about pets, her family, her friends, her rudimentary political ideas, her lack of knowledge about science, history, religion, philosophy and technology.  I make it such a regular practice to call her a poor ignorant peasant girl that she has started saying it about herself to save me the time.

What I never mock are her domestic skills.  Her ability to organize, schedule and maintain a home is remarkable.  Her cooking has kept me fat for decades and her ability to raise and entertain children is well-nigh magical.  And it’s this child-herding skill I want to write about.

This week we are entertaining the two younger grandsons and the granddaughter.  The boys are ten and seven and the girl is almost three.  Someone who doesn’t know kids might not know how hard it is to keep this combination of ages and sexes busy and happy at the same time.  Suffice it to say it’s like juggling chainsaws.  But she does it effortlessly.  She’s even able to integrate me into the trick when she thinks I can be trusted.  For instance, at one point, the next event was ninety minutes in the swimming pool.  But right before the time, the two boys got involved in a race to see who would grab hold of a toy they both wanted, some kind of remote-controlled car.  The little guy ran a little too fast and fell, skinning both his knees badly on the driveway.  After first aid and bandaging was performed Camera Girl informed me that out of necessity I would be drafted into service.  Since the little guy couldn’t go in the pool in his wounded condition, he would be watching a movie about tyrannosaurs (his favorite subject) and I would keep him company.  And she had made the right call.  Whereas I could have taken the other two kids to the pool, what she realized was that if I provided my nerd-like knowledge of prehistoric creatures as a way to occupy him, then my grandson wouldn’t feel so bad about missing the swimming pool which was a sore disappointment to a little boy.  We sat there and talked about the latest research on the most probable speed that a T. rex could run.  We discussed whether the T. rex was really the apex predator of all time and really the greatest creature to ever walk the face of planet Earth.  And even though I might have some theories on T. rex that differed from this dinosaur enthusiast’s I listened very respectfully and tried to enrich the discussion with some other scientific and general interest items.  And when his brother and cousin returned from the pool there wasn’t a single sad face or harsh word from him.  I had performed adequately and hadn’t dropped a chainsaw.

And later on, when the two younger ones were going to play some board game (I think Candyland) I was entrusted with taking the older guy outside for a baseball catch.  It was pretty hot out there but the hour went by like a flash as we tossed around the ball and talked about whatever was on his mind.  And once again I completed my task without incident and tossed the chain saw back to the master juggler.

And so it goes.  Minding a toddler and keeping her safe, soothing a little boy with sore knees and keeping a ten-year-old from getting bored all while cooking breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner, cleaning the dishes, doing the shopping, washing the clothes and dealing with all my complaints without dropping a stitch.  Then bathing the baby and putting her to bed and before collapsing into bed herself she tries to read a few pages out of one of her books.  I honestly don’t know where her energy and work ethic come from.

But rather than think Camera Girl is a goddess, which she is, I think all women should be like her.  Raising kids is the greatest responsibility any human can undertake.  Sharing their lives and teaching them how to be people like Camera Girl does is mothering.  Plugging them into the television or the computer is what you expect from a zoo attendant or prison guard.  If the human race doesn’t get back to the old standard for mothers we’re doomed.

So, here’s to Camera Girl.  Long may her super power thrive.  I hope to see her someday plying her trade with her great grandchildren.  But I do wish she would do a better job training her dogs.  They’re all spoiled.  And she knows it.

Normalcy Restored

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That lying sack of crap, Anthony Fauci M.D., stole a year from us.  And more than a year.  He smashed millions of small businesses that took lifetimes to build up.  He drained away the life savings of a generation of hard-working people.  He interrupted and marred the education of tens of millions of children.  He imprisoned a nation of 330 million and delayed marriages, births and every hope and dream of a nation.  And the most horrible thing is that it was for no benefit whatsoever.  The same people who would have died from COVID did die and are dying despite all of the useless torture that was inflicted on the healthy population of our country.  He is a tin-pot Pol Pot.  May he roast in Hell.

But yesterday was a renewal.  Almost all the descendants of my parents were gathered together in one place and time and enjoyed a party that included all the familiar and life-affirming rituals of a summer get together.  And even the weather blessed us with perfection.  Eighty-two degrees, bright sun with just a few wispy clouds, bone dry air and a refreshing breeze.  Just warm enough for some people to go in the pool and just cool enough to let the young at heart toss around a baseball or play a few lawn games with their kids and grandkids and even let one person watch her great-grand-children play.

Camera Girl in her culinary wisdom decided that instead of a barbecue she would cook the traditional Southern Italian peasant feast.  Ziti baked with cheese, eggplant parmigiana, meatballs, sausage and to start with, our version of an antipasto.  Huge portions were devoured with zeal and fueled loud and animated shouting about amusing and nonsensical things.  And in my earshot, there was not a moment of political discussion or anger.  Spirits were higher than high.  The highlight of the day for me was a four-way catch with two of my grandsons and a nephew.  I haven’t really had a good long baseball catch since forever.  Even the afternoon sun that was directly in my eyes I found enjoyable.  I actually felt young again.  Maybe today my shoulder is a little sore but it felt fine while we were out in that golden sun.

When my younger daughter showed up with her little 2 ½ year old girl the baby was terrified by all of the old fat strange-looking men shouting to be heard over each other in the meal hall I set up with folding tables and chairs.  After all, she has spent her entire conscious life in lockdown and hardly saw anyone but her parents and grandparents.  A cacophony of sound and strange faces truly frightened her.  But her mother was smart.  She took the baby outside on the deck and then into the swimming pool that she loves and there she was able to meet and play with the other children and slowly by degrees bring her back to the crowded areas where even the loudest old men were, at this point, too gorged with food to make much noise or even move.  So even that residue of the Fauci curse was lifted.  From two to ninety-two everyone was partaking in an old-fashioned family get together.

And I will be honest when I say that the relief to finally all get together made this the most enjoyable, least stressful gathering I can ever remember.  By the time the pie and ice cream and coffee were finished and sun was long below the horizon everyone was satisfied and ready to gather their children and say their goodbyes and head back on the road to home.  But promises were made to get together at the other homes for other occasions and other holidays.  Labor Day and Thanksgiving and Christmas lie ahead.  And we have broken the ice and hopefully we won’t allow that creepy little man to steal anymore of our lives away again.  It’s over and normal life has returned.

24JUL2021 – OCF Update – Summer Event

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Ah, the great day has arrived.  The cleaning (by me!) and the cooking is all done.  An armada of tables and chairs have been arrayed with plates and silverware.  Glaciers of ice have been procured and cold beverages are resting on them.  The grass is manicured (sort of) and the hounds have been sent away for the day.  All that is needed are the guests and their appetites.  Frivolity and bom homme will abound and never will be heard a discouraging word.  But that means this will be a very slow day on the site until much later.  So my faithful readers I leave you to your own devices.  Enjoy what is touted to be an ideal summer day.

 

 

 

20JUL2021 – OCF Update – The Weather Gods Relent

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Finally, finally, a day without rain.  So I went out there and cut the grass.  Although not all of it.  About two thirds of the west field was still too soggy to cut.  But the rest is done and now I’ll get back to work.

A week ago I was in a store looking for a baseball glove.  I have my grandsons coming over on Saturday and I want to be able to have a catch.  I’ve been using one of their spares and it’s a little on the small side.  So I looked at some gloves at a local store and they’re all made of pleather?  I was outraged.  The salesman called it vegan leather.  I walked out.  Finally I found a real leather glove.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  With MLB supporting cop killers and disrespecting the flag and anthem I’m done with them too.

But now I can enjoy baseball the way it’s supposed to be.  Tossing around the baseball with my son was one of my favorite memories.  It brings me back to having a catch with my Dad.  He never had much time and we mostly played with the other kids but every once in a while he’d throw the football or the baseball around with us and invariably he’d pull something in his back or neck or whatever.  He’d put on a big show of being injured and beg off from the game and just watch us.  Mostly he’d yell warnings that we better not break any car windows on the block we lived on.  But it was still something I remember fondly.

Camera Girl has given me a new list of demands.  I must sweep the basement, vacuum the window blinds and clean up all the junk so we can have thirty people on Saturday in splendor.  We’ll see about that.  Calls are coming in about food that people are bringing and Camera Girl is getting kind of uppity when I ask about the arrangements.  I think she’s trying to pick a fight with me but I’m too wise for that.  I told her that she can serve the food in a trough if she wants, as long as we feed the guests I’ll be good with it.  My family isn’t too picky about meal protocol as long as the food is tasty and plentiful.  And I’m sure both of those will be true.  The whole family hasn’t gotten together in two years.  So this is going to be kind of great.

And miraculously (although maybe I’m trusting too much to the accuracy of weather forecasters) the weather is supposed to be sunny and in the mid-seventies.  That should make the party very comfortable for everyone including the cook and the busboy (me).  So the summer has reappeared just in time to make the family get together great again (FGTGA).

The news cycle right now is full of the usual nonsense that the Democrats talk about.  Four trillion dollar stimulus bills that they hope to use for illegal alien amnesty and other horrors that they hope to inflict on us.  Good inflation and delta variants and Bezos in Space and Ben and Jerry’s joins the PLO.  The silly season is in full swing.  The runaway Texas democrats have infected Pelosi’ and Biden’s staff with the plague.  Let’s just say there’s no good news and the bad news is just too stupid to talk about.  Enjoy the summer and enjoy your life.  I’ll let you know if something interesting comes along.