Word of The Year

Every year, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary selects a word of the year. The selection is determined by what word has been searched for most frequently on the company's web site. Since the humans who make up society seem to be more stupid with each generation, that's a lot of searches to go through. The word of the year usually reflects a trendy view of the anxieties of the moment. No, that doesn't mean this year's word of the year is the left wing's favorite "racist". This year it's that word so often misused by less than educated athletes or protesters. The word of the year for 2016 is "surreal".

Merriam-Webster defines surreal as "marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream."  This means it is misused more often than not. To describe a terrorists attack, for example, as surreal is bizarre, given that terrorists attacks are almost the norm today and not unlikely or dreamy events. But then, words often change with misuse. They can be redefined into something that barely resembles their former meaning. That English words change so often is both annoying and a reflection of how the English language is clever enough to adapt to its users.

According to Merriam-Webster, "surreal" was researched multiple times throughout the year by the less than literate out there. The most frequent occasions for the search were after the terror attack in Brussels in March, after the coup attempt in Turkey over the summer,  after the terrorist attack in Nice, and, of course, on November 9, after the  election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America. Hillary Clinton and her brood frequently call Trump's election "surreal". In fact, with a lousy candidate and corrupt political party she represents, I would call the Trump election "logical".

Webster said the choice of surreal wasn't so ..well...surreal (I am getting in the mood for using that word) after all. It lists nine other words that people almost Googled as much in 2016. They include:

1) Revenant - (which is a ghost like corpse that terrorizes the living) was the name of an Oscar winning movie staring the over exposed and over hyped Leonardo DiCaprio. Naturally his fans wanted to know what the word meant.
2) Icon- When Prince died the media and fans couldn't call him an "icon" enough. A religious work of art that is highly cherished is an icon. Prince was never that.
3) In Omnia Paratus- The translation to English is "Ready for all things". This became a trendy phrase in 2016 that almost no one who used it fully understood.
4) Bigly-Thank Trump for this nonsense word. He sometimes  pronounces the two words, big and league, together so that they sound like “bigly” when he says them.
5) Deplorable- The deplorable  Hillary Clinton was responsible for the many searches for “deplorable,” when in a campaign speech she said half of Trump’s supporters were deplorable.
6) Irregardless- Not a real word, but rather a corruption of the real word "regardless' We can thank the air headed news commentators continual use of it today for making it such a searched word in 2016.
7) Assumpsit- I had never heard of this one until reading about the Webster word of the year. It means "an action to recover damages for breach of a contract." With more and more of us suing each other for less and less, it makes sense people would Google this one so much in 2106.
8) Faute de Mieux- Another trendy foreign phrase this year meaning  "lack of something better or more desirable". In this age of materialism and desire for a better electronic device to rot our brains, I guess wasting your life with last year's cell is a Faute de Mieux.
9) Feckless- What Barrack Obama's opponents call him. Well, they have a point. Obama is an empty suit of sort, weak and full of empty words.

If all these words and the misuse or overuse of them bothers you, relax. They will soon quickly disappear from use or interest, only to be quickly replaced with more nonsense in 2017. After all, those words are all too "surreal" for us anyway.....

Death During The Holidays

I read something in my local newspaper that is interesting because it's a little mysterious why.  The article said that in the United States you're more likely to die of natural causes from Dec. 25 through New Year's Day than at any other time of the year. Further, there isn't a reason that clearly explains it. According to studies using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this holds true for all ages except for children and for numerous conditions including heart disease, respiratory problems and cancer. Why are we dropping like flies during what should be the happiest time of the year?

The best guesses why so far include peculation from in-law stress during the holidays (surely you have or had a relative that brings on high blood pressure or a stroke when he arrives at your home for Christmas dinner) to the excesses of eating all that fruitcake and eggnog. But the doctors and researcher opinion is the weather is killing. The colder it is, the more vulnerable people's bodies might be to having a complication from a heart attack, flu or other ailment that they can't recover from. Maybe....because according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association on Thursday, the rise in deaths during the holidays doesn't appear to have anything to do with the cold winter months. Besides, the global warming nuts say it isn't cold anymore.

Some of those who poo poo those reasons for the increased deaths suggest the possibility of reduced staffing at medical facilities or even that patients hold back on seeking medical care during the season as being factors causing the jump in deaths.  Too, they say that  it could be that terminally ill patients may be hanging on to spend the holiday with their loved ones and then feel ready to let go and say good bye. However, I suspect they aren't hanging on to get the last piece of fruitcake and eggnog.

Many people suffer loneliness, disappointment, disillusionment or conflict during the Christmas holidays. That could be a powerful impetus for adverse health outcomes. The holidays bring changes in routine and schedules including late nights, more work sleep and other non routine out of ordinary events.  Maybe the unrealistic expectations of the holidays are too much to take. What do you think?

PC Doll World

There are dolls with darker skin and hazel eyes. Some have freckles; others have black skin, curly hair or straight. I counted 40 different dolls with varying skin tones and permutations of hair texture. And what if your daughter has a disability? Or a food allergy? You can purchase hearing aids, allergy free lunches, diabetes kits, wheelchairs, and dolly crutches for your doll. Mattel has also stepped up to the plate with its bald dolls, for cancer sufferers. It also offers, among other ethnic and occupational variations, an African American nurse doll, and a black eye doctor doll. (What Mattel, she’s not smart enough to be a surgeon? Is it because she’s black? How non PC of you.)

The PC doll trend is driven by social media movements which pressure companies to manufacture racially and culturally sensitive merchandise. Lego’s latest doll called 'Hipster Dad' is a bearded, stay-at-home daddy, who pushes a stroller next to his business-suit-attired wife. It's the absurd manifestation of PC stupidity in that it promotes that as the norm. Yep! In case you haven't noticed, those plastic dolls that little girls love so much have become politically correct figures. Those crazy liberal diversity types have passed on their guilt about what they see as a "racist" or "not diverse enough" doll world to children. Is their really a need for plastic dolls to be politically correct? What does all this doll and toy conformity to "diversity" add up to? At least in its more exaggerated form, it represents another intrusion by the PC police to politicize every aspect of our lives, even to propagandize small children about stereotypes the PC crowd has about what humans should be and how they should act.

One one hand it's nice that a child with cancer can have a doll that looks like her, and ethnic dolls might help some children build self esteem. But that is a special niche doll. Today's dolls are all "diverse' and conform to PC ers ideas of what is right and wrong. In the past dolls have always been politically incorrect manifestations of childhood. They were not meant to teach the values that PC people like and most of us think are extreme. Sigmund Freud called them “uncanny” because they are a way for children to process fears and let their imaginations bubble up from the unconscious. Take that, left wing crazies!

When my daughter played with her dolls I noticed that the dolls inspired her imagination and brought about feelings not quite understood or resolved. They were blank slates, not politically correct lessons, that my daughter could mold into her own world view. Kids should not be indoctrinated with toys. They should use toys as a way of discovering their values and judging the values of the world. Today, the PC world and its slave, corporations fearing to dissent from PC orders, promotes the culture of hatred toward the "white world" and an anti imagination in kids. Dolls are now reflecting PC party line. Can't the left wait until our children are older to start brain washing them about the PC ideal? Small kids are not yet developed enough to recognize the brain washing and are damaged greatly by it.

Dolls should be made for ever ethnic group, religion etc. But  promoting an agenda of diversity in every doll is just a crime against our kids imagination

Christmas Morning TV

Christmas fell on a Sunday this year. And so it was a day of inactivity personified.  Just about every business was closed.  Even Wal mart takes a vacation on Christmas Sunday. So for those of us who are tired of reading or listening to music (too those Christmas songs make one tone deaf and weary) and unwilling or uninterested in a Christmas walk or activity outside, what is there to do? When your friends and acquaintances and the crazy relatives have already departed your home with tummies full of Christmas goodies you fed them, what does one do on a Sunday Christmas morning?

TV!  Ah, the bastion of the brain dead and lazy can be useful in those times. So I turned on the idiot box to see what was on view at 10:00 am Christmas Sunday.  Wouldn't you know it. The set was tuned to a station that was airing "Jewel's Christmas Homecoming". Oh my..... I had forgotten about Jewel. Well, I am glad she is alive and found a slot for  possibly another 5 minutes of fame. She was singing one of those hip, modern Christmas songs that make me snarl like Scrooge. How dare Jewel defile Christmas music with that pop pabulum! I quickly looked at the channel guide the cable company provides to find what else was being aired.

It was a B list of Christmas shows that probably couldn't sell itself to TV networks in prime time Christmas airing. That would be three weeks to one week before Christmas Day when sponsors want to air Christmas shows that viewers will see. This would subject the viewers to those Christmas sale ads that sponsors want them to see.  That's probably why the '2012 Holiday Baking Championship' was airing  four years late on Christmas morning. Gee, those Christmas sweets must be stale by now. I skipped that one.  And why was Dolly Parton doing her 'Country Christmas' special on Christmas morning. Celebrities I never heard of filled the airwaves, particularly in re-runs. Why, the long deceased John Denver and and Andy Williams had Christmas specials from more than 25 years ago airing at 10 am on this Christmas 2016 . I paused and ruminated how much I dislike most of television, even on non religious days. I asked myself, "There must be more than this"? (people do talk to themselves after being hit straight on with 'Jewel's Homecoming'. I swear that I am not yet crazy.)

Copying the character from Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner "I bite my wrist, I sucked my blood and cried"...Show me something watch able.  Alas! I' found a flurry of those old religious movies, the kind that are not made any more because the mainstream PV view has been conscripted by atheist and humanist leftists who find any reference to Christianity or other religious belief to be a sacrilege. What fun those old films were. 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' was one on Christmas morning. It was a big budget, fanciful, perhaps silly but fascinating, view of Jesus Christ that is so PC now that it and the other great pro Christianity films can only find a sponsor in the days surrounding Christmas and Easter. I found 'The Nativity Story' too and watched a couple of minutes to relieve my guilt at not being a model of religiosity.

Wow! Next, I stumbled onto the classic 'Santa Claus Captures the Martians'. But I would prefer Santa do something more meaningful than fighting an army from invading Mars, instead perhaps, Santa could capture and destroy all the cell phones in existence. That's it! Restore civilization, Santa. It's my annual Christmas wish. I decided to skip that Martian battle. Another station was showing the classic 50's 'A Christmas Carol', and another had Bing Crosby in 'Holiday Inn', and still another was showing 'It's a Wonderful Life'.  'Miracle on 34th Street' and 'Elf'' were on too.
By then my head was spinning amidst all that holiday TV merriment.  I was beginning to believe I was a member of the Light Brigade in Tennyson's poem, "Into the valley of death" rode this bored and weary Sunday Christmas denizen.  I hallucinated  and wondered whether Santa really existed. TV  can do that to we believers.

But not all was lost! The channel scanning made me so tired I turned off the TV and engaged in my best Christmas activity of all. I took a nap and dreamed of Monday to come.

Eggnog

It's Christmas season and I will discuss one of the hated and loved foods of the holiday. Relax! I'm not talking about fruitcake (which I happen  to love), but rather the even more mysterious food- eggnog.  Eggnog in pure liquid drinkable form has a myriad of  ingredients  including : milk; cream; sugar; some sort of an alcohol like rum, brandy, vodka, cognac, or whiskey; whipped raw eggs; and sometimes nutmeg, cinnamon, or other spices. Today eggnog  a person can buy in the store often excludes the alcoholic ingredient, traditionally this was always included and was half the point of eggnog. It also leaves out raw eggs. Sigh! I am not sure of the point if you leave out the defining ingredients.

I fall in the category of hating to drink eggnog, but loving to bake with it. I make a great eggnog cake that wows people when I don't tell them I used plenty of eggnog in both the cake and the icing. I also make eggnog cookies too, a distinctively different taste that few dislike. Raw eggnog itself is unappealing to me, even nauseating.  For me drinking eggnog would be like eating a stick of butter. Both are great as ingredients but overpowering a when eating alone.

It isn't known exactly who was the first make and drink, but eggnog seems to have originated in Europe around the 17th century, very possibly in England. It was generally only drunk by the extremely wealthy due to the need for eggs and milk which were a rarity for commoners in Europe at the time. People of the day liked to mix alcohol with their dairy, so it's logical that they created eggnog to drink. But in our current day during the Christmas holidays, eggnog suddenly shows up on supermarket shelves (I bought a more pure version the other day to use in my eggnog cake I will make before Christmas) and as a new offering in coffee shops. 

But why drink eggnog at this time of year? It's because it isn't sold after the holidays. Makers of it know the demand falls dramatically and stop producing it after January 1st. You can make it yourself, but why do it after the holidays when the thirst for it has ended. Or better not....

Gift Cards

The gift card dilemma arises every Christmas season. That is, is giving someone a gift card a great idea or an act of rudeness and insensitivity. I admit up front that i like gift cards, and I'll give my reason below. But here is what anti gift card writer in my newspaper wrote about gift card as presents.  "In some ways, gift cards are the equivalent of looking under the Christmas tree to find that your significant other got you socks. Sure, you need socks, some of us maybe even want them, but for the majority of gift receivers, a gift giver taking the lazy option often makes the actual gift less special."

On the other hand, in opposition to that view, I see gift cards as the ultimate effort gift because most of use who resort to an occasional gift card do so after exhausting efforts to find some material product or service the receiver wants. That's not easy to do in this age of garish consumption where the idea gift is popular for five minutes before being replaced with the next most popular (usually some crazy electronic or electronic related gift).

Giving a gift card is saying, "I tried hard to find something I was sure you wanted or didn't already have. I spent hours searching but could not. Here is a gift card because you can better search for what you want. If this gift card is not appropriate for you, tell me and I shall never give you another one of those." And no one has ever dissented about getting the gift card I have given them...ever. In fact most seem happier to have a gift card than some random gift chosen on a wing and a prayer. Getting gift cards is like receiving money. Who could object to that?

Gift cards don't say, "I don't know you that well" or "I don't care about you that much." They say, I am not as capable as you of knowing what gift would be best for you. I care or I wouldn't have given you this gift card ." But here is an odd statistic for Americans at Christmas time. According to Bankrate, while more than 50% of gift givers plan to give gift cards this holiday season, only 27% of people prefer to get them. Explain that one? Maybe it is in line with the fact that giving a gift is avery difficult task for most of us. And perhaps, we should be happy with anything given to us. But then, people today do like to whine and protest.

What do you think? Is giving a gift card a personal insult, an admission you don't know or care enough about the person to select a tangible gift? Or is it the best way to give in this age of endless and changing "junk" from which to select a gift?

What Your Christmas Tree Says About You

In this age of superficiality and belief in what we want to be true rather than what is truth, comes a crazy analysis of why a person puts up  particular  Christmas tree and why it is decorated a particular way. Yep! It's time to analyze why you put ups that orange Christmas tree, or whatever tree it is you erected. Hmmm Does your Christmas tree reveal your personality and character? After perusing the web and studying this pop psychology subject here is what I found about the subject.

* Real or fake tree-  Real tree people are traditionalists who like rituals. But the artificial tree users differ. Whether you pick the artificial tree because you don't like the mess of pine needles, or because you don't like chopping down live trees, your choice points to you being extremely practical in nature. It makes much more sense to you to invest in something that will last year after year, showing that you are a long term planner.
Or, maybe you find a sale on a cheap fake tree and can convince your family that you are saving the planet by not chopping down a real one.

*Too many lights on the tree- You are outgoing, colorful, and bold. Unafraid to let your true light shine, you think of your tree just as you think of your personality, big, bright, and bold. You are a performer at heart, and definitely don't shy away from being the center of attention. Your outgoing nature makes you fun to be around, and your ability to tell a great story or joke makes you fun at holiday parties.
Or, you are an exhibitionist (probably arrested more than once for indecent exposure) and probably have too many lights accumulated at those after Christmas light sales. Because your IQ is so low, you lack the awareness that too many lights are not good. But in the end, the problem will be solved when a power surge of those lights electrocutes you.

*Perfectly shaped tree- you are: deliberate, structured, and visual. As someone who likes things to be perfect, you rely on your strong visual aesthetic. You enjoy structure, and probably thrive in environments where order is needed. You also don't make decisions lightly, choosing each word, action, or decoration extremely carefully.
Or, your neatness drives everyone crazy. Even your family wants to send you to a shrink. You are so compulsive about neatness and perfection  you wash the dishes WHILE you are eating dinner. Rumors are several members of your family are looking for a Mafia hit man to end your existence.

*The tree is too big to fit-  You are ambitious and unafraid. When picking out a tree, you are never worried that it will be too big. Your ambitious personality reassures you that you can, in fact, make it work. It obviously can't, but you are the one who wears shoes two sizes too small and denies they don't fit. You like to dream big, never afraid of fail.  You don’t worry about failure because you don’t think of your mistakes as failures. Your extra big Christmas tree is simply an expression of your grandiose nature.
Or, you are too stupid to measure the tree before buying it and bringing it home. This may be indicative of the fact that you had to repeat 3rd grade twice. You solution to making the too big tree fit is to cut a hole in the living room ceiling to accommodate it. After that suggestion, you wife filed for divorce and your kids ran away from home.

* Real or artificial tree- Real tree users are grounded in tradition and like the natural. But fake tree users are said to be practical, planner, and organized. You pick the artificial tree because you don’t like the mess of pine needles, or because you don’t like chopping down live trees. Your choice points to you being extremely practical in nature. It makes much more sense to you to invest in something that will last year after year, showing that you are a long term planner.
Or, you got a great deal on a cheap and tacky artificial tree at that after Christmas sale last year.  Putting up that monstrosity may be an eyesore, but you falsely claim that you are "saving the planet" by not using a real one. No one believes you , but given your artificial nature you don't care.

*You put a star on top of the tree- If you top the tree with one of those aluminum stars you are moral, leader, and strong. As a person who likes a star on top of the tree, you place a large amount of stock in destiny and following your guiding star. You have a strong belief system, and you often look for ‘signs’ around you to point you in the right direction. Many times, you think of yourself as a guiding star, stepping up to take a strong leadership role. You also have a strong moral compass that you use in making important life decisions.
Or, you inherited grandma's star tree topper. It beats finding and paying for a new one. The only signs you see are that getting rid of the tacky grandma star would mean an expensive make over for the rest of the tree. You prefer to use the same deteriorating decorations every year.

*You put an angel on top of the tree- If you instead put an angel as your tree topper you are said to be spiritual, kind, and charitable. Putting an angel atop your tree shows that you have a strong spiritual side, and that you aren't afraid to let the world know. You are a kind soul, who knows how to take care of others and make them feel special. People will often turn to you in times of need. They know you have a charitable heart, and that you will be there to support them.
Or, you are a phony, an atheist who covers all bases by putting that star on top to fool the religious types who visit your home and see your tree. Behind your back others sneer at your hypocrisy and swear that your last donation to charity was that mangled penny you found  in the street in 1970  and tossed into a Salvation Army donation pail.

*Handmade ornaments and decorations for the tree-  You are creative. If your Christmas tree is full of homemade ornaments, it shows that you aren't afraid to reveal your creative side to the world. Your life is an open book, and people flock to you for honest opinions and honest answers. They also know that you will keep an open mind at all times. You are also quite in touch with nature and your environment, making practical use of the things around you.
Or, you are a cheapskate. Instead of buying nice ornaments and decorations, you save a few dollars by organizing a slave ornament making camp each fall among your spouse, grandparents and children, thereby ruining the spirit of Christmas for all.

May your Christmas tree be whatever you want it to be this year....

Shopping For Christmas Toys

I went shopping to buy for a few toys to give as Christmas presents to a friend's 3 year old. It's been quite a few years since I looked at toys for little ones, and I have a few observations about how toys (the kind does reflect society) have changed or remained the same.  First to the similarity. Kid toys are still sold with an appeal to "education". That is, the seller hopes mom and dad will think that when they buy their toy it will turn junior into Einstein. That foolishness started in the 70's and is still out of hand.

A small child under 3 years old needs play more than he or she needs educational enrichment. That's because at that age it is through play that kids best learn. Too, small ones are not ready to read or do math. Any success they have at "learning" those skills is really a mirage. In fact, they would be memorizing not learning, not having much understanding or comprehension of what they "read" (pronouncing words is not reading) or computed.

Another similarity between toys today and the past generation of toys is how expensive that plastic is. I realize that selling toys is dependent on time and appeal. Those toys that are trendy or fashionable make big bucks for the maker. But those that are not often lose money or break even for the manufacturer and seller. That Brabie-ization of toys began last generation and is in full steam ahead mode. It's harder to fin traditional toys today. Look for a simple doll house and it might be impossible to find. instead, doll houses and other toys are branded by what kids see visually, as in movies and TV shows.  You'll find plenty of Barbie doll houses, but then Barbie is for sale everywhere.

That leads me to the biggest difference between last generation toys for sub 3 year olds and today's selection . The majority of toys sold now are branded to a character that kids love and know. It's wise to have a Lil Pony doll house, for instance. That's because when a little one sees the character image on the toy container at a store, that child will scream fro mom to buy it. The same doll house without an image of Lil Pony, Barbie,  Ice Age characters etc. will get a zero reception from  a small child.  It explains why there are hundreds of Barbie dolls for sale, yet the dolls themselves are identical. Only the clothes differ. Mom and dad see that and wonder why they have to buy an entire more expensive doll each time Barbie changes clothes or identity (maybe Barbie has multiple personalities?). But the child does not.

The other thing I noticed about today's toys that is different is how so many more have computer chips embedded. A toy today must be electronic to appeal to the little ones. This is great training for the small one become the cell phone addicted , electronic moron that are their parents and older siblings. Sadly, often kids don't play with toys. Rather, they press buttons and watch the toys play themselves. It's not a recipe for developing creativity but peer pressure says toys have to be that way and mom and dad rarely fight the commandment.

I think the kinds of toys kids get from adults today are really the images of the adults, not the desires of the children. If left alone with an empty cardboard box that once housed a toy and a toy itself, a child might benefit and enjoy far more the box.

PC ism Slaps Christianity Again

Every year at this time of the year since the left wing portion of the Democratic took over the governance of the Presidency and installed ;political correctness as the rule of force, there are numerous stories of the intolerance and stupidity of political correctness. Well, December 2016 has the first such example, and it involves insulting Christmas and the much love cartoon strip, Peanuts.  Dedra Shannon, a staffer at Patterson Middle School in Killeen, Texas, was so inspired by the poster scene of Linus reciting a passage from the Holy Bible describing Christmas. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior which is Christ the Lord. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

It is an expression of what Christmas is, a Christian celebration celebrating the birth of Christ.  But her mistake was in the deciding to use poster images to decorate the door to the nurses office. The decorations included a picture of Linus, the scrawny Christmas tree and that classic passage of dialogue about the true meaning of the holiday. And that was enough for the PC police to put an end to such Christian propaganda!

Two days later the a school principal made a PC citizen arrest of sort.  According to Dedra, “She said, ‘please don’t hate me, but unfortunately you’re going to have to take your poster down,” Ms. Shannon said. “I’m disappointed. It is a slap in the face of Christianity.” The principal went on to explain that the poster violated the U.S. Constitution. “She said my poster is an issue of separation of church and state,” Ms. Shannon told me. “She said the poster had to come down because it might offend kids from other religions or those who do not have a religion.”

So down came the Peanuts Christmas display. Despite the fact that the school touts it's "diversity" (a favorite PC word used to mask hatred of all things mainstream that are Christian oriented) and allows posters touting many other religious celebrations, diversity seems not to include Christian belief because that would be...well.. "racist". It's proof that those who demand tolerance the most are also the most intolerant. It seems to me that public schools like that one are supposed to be in the education business and Dedra was simply educating students about the true meaning of Christmas. How dare her! She should have been promoting Allah instead.

Christmas is a state holiday for schools in Texas. It is a holiday celebrating the birth of Christ.  I wonder why Dedra was forced to dismantle her decoration recognizing that.

Fake News On The Internet

The subject of false information purported to be hard news, or "fake news', is finally up for discussion on main (mostly non fake) news sites. It's an interesting subject given the amount of nonsense a largely less sophisticated public is duped into believing to be real. Both Google and Face book say they are now trying to ban ban fake news sites from using their ad networks to prevent the spread of false information. That's a good start because more fake news comes from those silly social welfare sites that anywhere else on the internet.  As a more people read less and scan more sites to filter truth from propaganda, they rely on the internet to get information. For many speed and access is so easy they never challenge whatever is posted on their favorite web site.

So when nonsense like "Trump is a racist" appears directly or implied by opinion, for instance, appears on Face book, an incredible number of unsophisticated readers assume it must be true. Both candidates in the recent U.S. election were pounded by fake news targeting their opponent, often the result of the candidate him or herself sponsoring the fake news. I guess the word is out on how ignorant and gullible much of the internet crowd is. Sadly, for too many, much satire, hoax and propaganda is now regarded as the real deal.

Surveys show that 4 out of ten Americans get their news strictly from the internet. Wow! That's frightening. It's sort of like waking up one day and discovering that 4 out of ten Americans got their news from comic books. Oh, wait! On second thought the comic books are probably more truthful than is face book and that ilk. Truth is, many sites today are propaganda vehicles to promote an agenda. they have no interest in impartiality or truth. We now live in an age of protest and advocacy where facts are secondary to the cause. The declining literacy level if the population enable that. Further, many schools indoctrinate rather than teaching the student to think critically and logically.

Let's face it, the internet is an idiots platform as well as a vehicle for the serious and informed. Society does rely too much on the internet as being a source of information. The reality is that it is a source of awhile lot of information that no one accept the reader can filter. Governments who try only promote their own propaganda. An informed, educated, serious reader is what the internet needs in order to fulfill it's promise. But that seems to be a declining population with each day.

By the way, did you know that Trump will just shoot all those illegal immigrants because it's easier that way. It must be true because I read it on the internet..............

Artificial Christmas Trees Are Taking Over

Christmas trees have evolved quite a bit in the last 85 years or so. No not the thing that grows in the soil. I mean those artificial trees that more and more people are using. It seems that the first artificial tree was introduced in the years right before W.W. II. Hmmmm Maybe Hitler and that German crew started the war to prevent us from erecting those fake trees. If so, I would have to give Hitler "a good impulse but bad idea in expressing it"  grade. I hate artificial trees, but starting a war to stop people from having them might be a little too extreme.

Anyway, forget that thought. Did you know that the first fake trees were "brush bristle" style trees, sold via the Sears catalogue, shipped in a white bucket and selling for $1.95 (the small one to the bigger version at $4.95. One had to use his or her imagination to put one of those in the house. Uh, that's sort of like imagining a politician is telling the truth when he promises to lower taxes if you elect him.

But wait! Thanks to Sears, evolution also happens to fake Christmas trees. The 1947 Sears catalog advertised  a chiming tree that tinkled "Silent Night." It was made from flame resistant, "grass-like rayon." (I suspect the EPA would ban that today as a flammable substance). That's perhaps the only time someone called rayon "grass-like." I am not sure what rayon is, much less rayon grass. That catalogue said that the tree would last "for years and years", but I suspect looking at rayon like grass for one Christmas season would be enough for anyone.

The 50's was the year of pink in decor. People wanted pink everything, They had pink refrigerators which put food on their pink kitchen countertop that had been cooked on their pink oven range. So pink, and white Christmas trees were the in thing. People opened their curtains in the front room parlor to show the world what pink Christmas was. But alas! Reynolds company put an end to that pink nonsense with the introduction of the first aluminum foil Christmas trees a few years alter.  I always say that nothing speaks of the birth of Christ, brotherhood, and the rest of that yule thing like aluminum foil (Maybe the pink trees affected my brain).

In the 60's no aluminum tree was complete without a rotating color wheel, introduced in a 1960s JC Penney catalog. The spotlight turned the fake Christmas tree into a disco movie of rotating colors. Never had fake trees been so garish as with the rotating color wheel that turned an aluminum tree into whatever it became when a color wheel light flashed on the fake tree. I can remember one year my parents got a fake tree and a wheel. We concluded after the season that we missed Christmas because of the contraption and we would revert to reality trees.. It was the only year we ever had a fake tree.

One thing that wheel did was make people ant amore real like fake tree. The 70's and 80's gave us more of what fake trees look like today...sort of like a guy wearing a John Travolta leisure suit in an 80's disco film. It's a suit, you could see that, but it's not quite real.  From that point on trees could pop open and close for attic storage.  The artificial tree was saved from extinction and is now more common than the mother nature variety. Seventy percent of American homes now have artificial trees, yet most of those artificial tree owners surveyed say their trees still appear to be too fake for their taste. What does that say about their owners?

Though live trees are more environmentally cleaner and sustainable agricultural products than fake trees the Christmas tree growers in the United States blames a shift in demographics, changes in the supply and pricing of trees, customer irritation with what they perceive as the messy nature of live trees in the house and competition form the fake tree industry as the beginning of the end for the live tree tradition in the United States. I say that we already have too many of those fake mall Santa's. Let's join the (Hitler?) revolution and fight the artificial Christmas tree take-over.  Long live real trees and real Christmas

Nutria For Dinner

That big rat that invaded my former Louisiana is making a more pleasant scene in Russia theses days. They are eating and loving the nutria as  gourmet fare in places like Moscow. Wow!  Southwest Louisiana's citizens find nutria annoying not tasty. For years restaurants tried to sell nutria dishes to diners in Cajun towns of Louisiana, but the locals knew that nutria meat is tough and without an identity. They said, "No thanks" to nutria stew and the rest. When New Orleans chefs tried to sell it in their restaurants the locals laughed and ignored it. 

So outside of the swamps and bayous of Louisiana, where nutria is eaten out of necessity, that ratty meat is dead in the U.S,. Eating nutria  not only never quite caught on in the Bayou State, but Louisiana had to implement a bounty program to curtail populations of the marsh-eating rodents. The millions of nutria in Louisiana nutria eat plants and marsh and other habitat so fast that millions were appropriated to pay hunters $4.00 per nutria tail when turning in their bounty for reward. This pleases rice and sugar cane growers in the state who claim the nutria destroy their crops, like.....well, the rats they are.  Every dead nutria  a trapper turned in produced a bounty for the hunter. It's worked to keep those rats from taking over whole portions of the state.

That's not the case in Russia, where Muscovites are devouring nutria fare in chic restaurants. One establishment, Moscow's Krasnodar Bistro, serves nutria burgers, nutria sausage and nutria dumplings wrapped in cabbage leaves to diners who just can't get enough of the whiskered rodents guess they don't ask their diners, "Are you enjoying your rat meat"?  But the owner  of that Bistro, Takhir Kholikberdiev, says diners have no qualms about eating something called a "river rat" in other parts of the world. "It's a really clean animal," he said. "Not only is it a herbivore, but it washes all its food before it eats. And it's very high in omega-3 acids. A lot of doctors and dietitians recommend it."

He said the meat is also more forgiving than that of other animals. Rabbits tend to dry out quickly, he said, but nutria remain succulent even when slightly overcooked. The nutria burger at Krasnodar Bistro is served on a chopping board with a soft bun and plenty of relish. It costs 550 rubles, which is about $8.25.

I say, "Thank God someone will eat Nutria"! Well, having been to Russia and eaten their food, I must say that a plate of rat may be an improvement on much of what the Russians chew. Nutria were imported into the country in the 80's and now live in the wild in southern Russia, where they were raised for fur to meet the fur demands of upper crust residents of the nation's big cities. Although the pelts were in demand, the flesh was not, so it was only consumed by local peasants. Nutria stew is the favored faire in those small villages. I have had it and once was enough. So if you ask, What's for dinner", and the answer is "Nutria", run like a rat.

Holiday Cookie Exchange

National Cookie Day, December 4th, just passed and I went to my first Holiday Cookie Exchange that same day. Those cookie swaps vary in detail and in baking skill, but the general idea is that each person bakes enough cookies for each guest to have one from each baker. So if 24 people were invited, as in my cookie swap the other day, each person bakes 24 of the same cookie, one for each to try. The host provides some wine and other refreshments and appetizers. The guests are encouraged to bring the same too, since most people don't actually eat the cookies at the swap.

I went wearing my ugly Christmas T shirt and armed with coconut cookies. There were some interesting cookies, some looked delicious and others not so much. I'll try them as time does by but the simple cranberry slice cookie, the peppermint chocolate cookie and date bars look good enough to motivate me to try a recipe for each of those. No, there weren't 24 versions of the chocolate chip cookie there. The attended has to inform the host ahead of time what the selection to be brought will be. One need only ask the baker for the recipe or try another version of it. The swap does induce the attended to bake more at Christmas time, a worthy and therapeutic endeavor.

These swaps usually introduce the baker/attendee to new people and interesting conversation (unrelated to baking). I think the relaxed atmosphere of cookie and Christmas time are a great combo. Too, the exchange is a fun sharing and not a baking competition and the conversation is not threatening, as in political talk. Rather, it's delightfully innocuous. Who but a Scrooge could dislike cookies and Christmas?  Of the 24 in attendance at the cookie swap, I was one of only 6 men there. Does that mean that men only eat, not bake cookies? Anyway, I have quite a few of the cookies that I took home packaged and put into the freezer for later consumption.  I want to sample each when fresh (and thawed from the freezer), not stale.

Having written all of this I have to say that I still can't decide which type of cookie is my favorite.

Santa Not Welcome Here

Santa Claus better stay away from Portland oregon this year.  That would be in uber liberal Portland and also in the Hillsboro School District, a western Portland-area public school system. The word is out that Santa should stay in the North Pole because he is too offensive for Portland's kids. Prime example of the PC police putting out the "Santa Not Wanted" sign is a  request that staff at Glencoe omit Santa Claus from the season's school decorations.
A school board directive memo to the Glencoe High School office staff read, "You may still decorate your door or office if you like, but we ask that you be respectful and sensitive to the diverse perspectives and beliefs of our community and refrain from using religious-themed decorations or images like Santa Claus." Other Portland public school districts abide by similar protocols for holiday ornaments. In Portland public schools, religious displays, when Christian oriented is practically a sin.

Wait a minute! Did those idiots in the school system say that Santa Claus is a negative image? And how is one to celebrate Christmas without "using religious-themed decorations"? Don't they know that Christmas is Christian holiday? Should I send them a memo that Christmas is a religious celebration?  Why would anyone be offended by the message of peace and love Christmas sends? I wonder if the school board would be offended by Muslim celebrations of their holidays? Muslims do celebrate their holiday in those schools and wear religious oriented clothing of Islam every day. So far no Christians or any of the believer of any other religion sects has demanded that that other religious holidays that are also celebrated in those schools be reigned in because those religious believers should also "be respectful and sensitive to the diverse perspectives and belief of our community".

Ah, the word "diversity" again! Is their any other word the left loves more than it's jaded interpretation and re branding of the word diversity?  Oh, perhaps they do love "racist" as much. In their world anyone who would oppose the crazy anti Santa policy is a "racist". In a nutshell, those two PC words are versatile. They mean if you oppose my idea are a pariah, a "Racist". Diversity is seen as honoring anything that is minority and trashing the majority belief. I say not Ho, Ho, Ho, but No, No, No, to that kind of left wing hypocrisy and hatred.

Let's see what Santa Claus is in the PC world. Hmmmm I hear from those fools on the left that Santa is a symbol of oppression, a religious icon, materialism unbound, the anti Allah to Muslims, and a sign of capitalist excess. I thought Santa Claus was a fun symbol of a holiday embraced by many of many faiths, a secular symbol that the PC world should actually welcome. Wy is the left threatened by those celebrating their faith through their holiday, only when the celebrators happen to be Christian? Why must the left try to change tradition  because they want to make insecure and slightly paranoid people feel more comfortable? What ever happened to not paying attention to what makes you uncomfortable?  Kind of what some Christians do with people who wear hijabs?  Someone should educate the left that inn a real world we can't pretend that all is what we want it to be. If one hates Christmas the sensible strategy is not not celebrate or ignore it, not ban it for others.

And in closing (aren't you glad I am almost done?) I say to the PC police and so sensitive anti Santa crowd... Why don't you relax, show tolerance for others and enjoy some fruitcake. Oh, and Merry Christmas to the PC Police and their minions!

Covering Up For The Beauty Contest

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and beauty contestant pageant judges want to see more skin rather than less. But don't tell that to Halima Aden, 19, of St. Cloud, an emigrant from Somali. She is the first contestant to wear a traditional Muslim headpiece in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant,  wearing the hijab for the entire competition, and pairing it with a full body bathing suit and a covered-up evening dress for different rounds of the contest.

Huh! That's like a hockey player playing on the ice with flip flops, or a boxer entering the ring dressed in a metal encased shield. It does not figure. I understand the lady has a religious proscription that wants her to wear those outfits. But why enter a skin based contest if you can't conform to the standard of the contest? Only a nutty left-wing liberal would vote for a contestant who hides her looks. It seems to me a case of  the rules and the majority of contestants changing for the benefit of one contestant that won't contest guidelines. Didn't she read the rules? Do we have to have every event in society adapt to decide to do it their way?

Here's what Halima has to day about all this. “A lot of people will look at you and will fail to see your beauty because you’re covered up and they’re not used to it. So growing up, I just had to work on my people skills and give people a chance to really know me besides the clothing," she said. “Be who you are. It’s easy to feel like you have to blend in, but it takes courage to live your life with conviction and embrace the person that you are."

Nice sentiment, but I wonder how far that idea would go for a westerner in Saudi Arabia who wore eschewed the Saudi mandated cover-up clothing by wearing a sexy bikini and sipping on a martini in the center of Rihayd. I suspect it would not be "easy to blend in" there.  Instead of "embracing the person" that westerner is, she probably would be arrested.  But then, in some cultures there is can do what I want in your country, but don't dare do what you want in mine because it "offends me".

Of course, in this country we do allow others to chart their own course. No problem. But the wise understand that in order to win a beauty contest it is necessary to show the body. It might be better for Halima to try another kind of contest, one in which the hijab doesn't put her at a disadvantage. Halima seems like a nice woman. She deserves better than the choice she made in that Minnesota beauty pageant.

Defining Culture

I just read a list of the top 5 U.S. cities for culture. Number one is, and I think it would be unanimous choice, New York City. The next five are Washington D.C. (where the crooked but cultural politicians are), Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco. It's a subjective choice, after all, it's hard to even agree on what is cultural these days. The subject had redefined itself due to modernity. No doubt another list of top five might not include all or most of the five on this list.

Culture is most often defined as being the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. Hmmmm That mans reality TV is culture too. I think I am losing my interest in culture. But anyway, cynical remarks aside, culture is not only disparate and hard to define and with which to agree. I think there is a factor that accounts for the rapid change in culture everywhere in the world. Due to incredible improvements in communication and transportation many countries are largely populated by immigrants, and the culture is influenced by the many groups of people that now make up the country. This is also a part of growth. As the countries grow, so does its cultural diversity.  

So it might be argued that the culture of the U.S. is more deep and interesting than the sacred cultures of the world, sacred cultural spots in places like Beijing, Vienna, Tokyo etc. that are little changed from what they were centuries ago. Still, the older cultural expressions have stood the test of time and also might be regarded as superior to the throw- away cultural expressions of "crude" places like the United States. So how one judges what is culture and what culture is more appealing is like choosing between noodles or rice. It's pointless. 

In 1964  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart described his threshold test for what is pornography as being to hard to define but "I know it when I see it". Maybe that's a good definition for culture. Each individual knows it when he or she sees it.

Hammond

I left the house yesterday at 5 am and didn't get back until about 8 p.m., a long day. Instead of driving they had me walking in some scenes. No excitement in this production but it was shot in Hammond, Louisiana. Hammond is one of those small cities in Louisiana with nice charm and old buildings.

We shot the scenes in which I participated in the old historic district of Hammond, a curious thing given the film is supposed to be set in Oklahoma, which looks nothing like Hammond. But that is the way Hollywood works sometimes. It reconstructs the city of the film to fit the locale when entertainment value is upped or the economy of the shoot makes it advantageous to do so.Hammond has about 20,000 residents an increase since the great Hurricane of 2005 chased so many of the citizens of the New Orleans area northward to Hammond and other places that are safe from future flooding.

It's biggest industry is Southeastern University (with a famed research department on mosquitoes and other insects). During the Civil War the southern army got many of its shoes from Hammond, which was the leading manufacturer of shoes for the Confederate army. That was also the time when Hammond became famous for producing sweet strawberries. it no bills itself as the strawberry capital of the U.S.That is essentially the a story of Hammond, a similar one to many other cites across the country.

I like to drink in the ambiance of a place I do not know and when there I did that, noticing the atavistic nature of the city. I saw signs of businesses that once were once bade in and New Orleans staples but no long gone. Whether they are related to those today or new ones who kept only the name I do not know, but seeing the signs made me flash back to when I remembered those same ones here in New Orleans. Small cities like this one hold a historical treasure for us, keeping alive and even idealizing things we have forgotten but are reminded again when visiting those places.

But you may ask, "What is there to do in a small city like Hammond?" The same thing there is in a large city. There are the same books, the same movies, the same sports, and for the most part the same social activities.

Hammond is really just a microcosm of New Orleans and a reminder that little or big most cities are more alike than dissimilar

Frozen To Death

Here's a weird case for the modern age. A 14-year-old girl in the Britain. who was dying of cancer and since has passed on, won the right to be cryogenically frozen after her death. Yep! A juvenile has decided to be put on ice.  in a case that's the first of its kind. The girl's identity is being kept a secret. She wanted to have her body preserved in the hopes that scientists someday would be able to bring her back to life and cure her illness. I suspect she has been watching too many bad Hollywood science fiction movies.

So what does a court do when a kid wants to make the decision about her body after death? Mom and dad are called in.  The Ice Maiden's wishes were initially supported by her mother but not her father, which led the girl to seek a judge's intervention to ensure that her mother would decide what would happen to her body. The judge granted her request  because, we all known that in domestic matters men lose.  The good news is that  her father changed his mind and agreed to support his daughter's last wish.

During the last months of her life, the teenager, who had a rare form of cancer, used the internet to investigate cryonics, and when convinced she did not want to be buried she sent a letter to the court the following: "I have been asked to explain why I want this unusual thing done. I'm only 14 years old and I don't want to die, but I know I am going to. I think being cryo‐preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years' time. I don't want to be buried underground. I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they might find a cure for my cancer and wake me up. I want to have this chance. This is my wish."

But can a14 year old make that kind of decision? Cryogenic body freezing is still just a bad movie plot, not science. Even if more than just at theoretical possibility, preserving and reconstructing a human brain, for instance, is not remotely possible now, and it's not at all clear whether it's even possible at all, ever. But the Ice Maiden believed that future science may make it feasible.

I wonder if that child would find being thawed 200 or 300 years from now, the ideal she thought it to be prior to her death. She would awaken in a strange world, perhaps a hostile one. There may be no relatives and certainly no familiar faces nor a familiar culture relative. She might not remember things and be left in a desperate situation. Even the most comfortable of us today is often uncomfortable in this world we know well. But alas! Blame mom for a bad thaw if the Ice maiden is ever brought back.

The girl was too young to make a legally binding will, so she asked the court to intervene to guarantee that her mother would be solely responsible for determining how her remains would be handled. The judge visited the teenager in the hospital and said he was impressed by the "valiant way" she faced her death, and that he had no doubt she had the mental capacity to file a lawsuit. The girl died with the knowledge that she would be frozen, and her body has been sent to the United States for long term cryogenic storage at a cost of $46,000.

Even if cryogenics were possible, would someone from 2016 think the world is better that what she once knew?  Too, organisms die. It's what life is about. Are we selfish to want to cheat or delay death?

More Drivel From Pope Francis

Pope Francis delivered another speech to the world and his own Catholic Church to reject "the virus of polarization and animosity" and the growing temptation to "demonize" those who are different. He made the remarks during a ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica to elevate 17 new cardinals from six continents. Did he say not to "demonize those who are different". If so, he needs to direct his statement to the progressive left, for they are the ones who do not tolerate anyone straying from left-wing propaganda about "diversity" (for the left this means "do only what I approve as acceptable or be called a "racist"). Most of the intolerance I see in the world is by the left toward those not in line with their orthodoxy.

The pope's sermon was viewed as an indictment of the populist and nationalist anger seen in countries around the world who are fighting for their national identity and for their right to regulate who enters and lives in their countries. Of course, this liberal pope is also referring to the election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S., because, well, the liberal left says that Trump is not one of them and therefore is a heretic. "In God's heart there are no enemies," Pope Francis told thousands of religious, political and civic leaders gathered for the formal induction of the churchmen into the cardinals' ranks. No enemies? I thought the "devil" was the enemy of the church. Isn't that the line we have heard and read in scripture since the beginning of the church?

Francis also lamented the tendency to "demonize" one's opponents, "so as to have a 'sacred' justification for dismissing them." Hmmmm It seems to me that the people most demonizing their opponent are on the left.  In the U.S. presidential race, for example, the left made it their whole campaign to do so, and even after their defeat continue it on a regular basis today. The also disagreeable Trump has become the new devil figure of the left and of pope Francis.

Hey Francis, how about sticking up for Christians being persecuted around the globe? You know, those Christians killed or maimed by non Christian extremists. Oh, I forgot, the 11th commandment of the left is "Thou shalt not criticize or defend against any from the left or any Islamics who threaten. "Perhaps the pope should take a look at where the extreme reactions are being emitted. It's not from traditional Christians in his church. It's largely from the secular progressives who own intolerance and practice it in the form of political correctness.

Until institutions come to terms with who are the actual offenders in this intolerance dispute we'll only continue to live in an us against them world. The reality is both the left and right are intolerant of each other these days, but the left is about 20 meters ahead in the race to the 100 meter finish line to being insufferable. The pope might be better off just letting the intolerant crowds slug it out. Preaching to them to stop is futile.

The Fate Of The Turkey

Thanksgiving is done so I thought it would be nice for my annual turkey report.  Since turkey is the standard Thanksgiving meat and the big turkey eating season is from Thanksgiving to Christmas it might be interesting to see how that turkey on the dinner table has changed through the years. But first, an oddity about the Thanksgiving holiday that few if any ever noticed. That is, why is there no (ok, maybe there might be a few bad ones no one has heard) Thanksgiving music? There's none. not a single Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer equivalent. Halloween has songs, Christmas does, Easter, even St. Patrick's Day. I think the turkeys would appreciate a song or two about their fate as they are slaughtered for the dinner table.

Anyway, turkeys in the United States have fallen on hard times recently.  Many commercially raised turkeys on industrial farms cannot even mate properly, leaving the turkey industry almost completely dependent on artificial insemination.  Consumer demand and technological innovation have made sex obsolete for the dinner table turkey. I guess there aren't any cruise bars for turkey's either.

Turkeys with large breast and thigh muscles are prized by farmers because they're the most valuable parts of the bird at sale. So turkeys that naturally had those traits were selected to breed by farmers, increasing their size through generations. Technological advances in artificial insemination before W.W. II allowed for turkey semen to be distributed. This and the almighty steroid have made for giant turkeys today.

The European settlers  in North America would have seen the turkey as a common North American bird. Like wild turkeys today, the wild turkey was dark in color, sporting barred white feathers with a green and bronze iridescent sheen. But the color of turkeys have changed. The old natural dark colored pin feathers is out and the more desirable looking clean pink skin is in.

The wild turkey of the easily days of America were sleek and quick, and could fly short distances when they needed to. But as they became breed birds that changed.  In 1960 the average wild turkey matured in 36 weeks and weighed 15 pounds. Today's commercially bred turkey takes 18 weeks to mature and weighs on average at 31 pounds. Their breasts are now so big they can no longer fly. Wow! Turkey on steroids.

Having said all of that, maybe the perfect Thanksgiving song would be one to document the sad decline of the once glorious bird into a sex deprived, overly breast laden, steroid freak. Gobble, gobble to that.

Listening To Christmas Music, Already

I know it's early, even for a Christmas music fan, but I already have my favorite Christmas music station on lock and load. About five days ago I click the bookmark on the computer and listen. It invigorates me and after a few sappy tunes I forget about the horrid world in which we live. In short, for a few weeks during the Christmas season those songs make me feel better. But is that why I listen to Christmas music on my computer every year at this time? Is it because of tradition and rote or is hearing I'll Be Home For Christmas by Perry Como ingrained in my DNA?

Computers are anew technology. They were not around when I was a kid, yet I suspect my affection for Christmas music began in my childhood pre Christmas days when I listened to my mother play her Christmas records at home. She had one of those old console stereo record players and among her favorite albums were quite a few Christmas albums, recordings by the biggest recording stars both deceased and alive.

One ritual we had that started the Christmas music listening fest was to play the albums all Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving meal included not only fluffy white mashed potatoes, but also Bing Crosby's White Christmas. Post Thanksgiving to New Year's Day the residents or visitor to our home was likely to be assaulted with Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer or Nat King Cole's German language of  O'Tannenbaum.

Even at age 10 or so I was a conspirator to this house Christmas music. My mother would hand me money to pay for the latest Goodrich Tire annual Christmas album that I bought for her after a short bike ride to the nearest Goodrich store. The Goodrich  business is long gone but those albums live on. I see them at thrift stores even today when I sift through the records area of the store. It was the biggest music promotion of the holiday season and millions awaited it like a child awaits opening Christmas day presents.

That Goodrich album memory is still pushing me to the Christmas music station bookmark I like. And amazingly, I recognize many of the cuts played on my computer as being from the famed Goodrich albums. Those albums had every sort of Christmas music possible. There is the religious Christmas tune, 'Ave Maria', for instance. And there is the light "modern" Christmas song written and sang in the heyday of Christmas music from post W.W.II to the late 60s', tunes like Johnny Mathis (the greatest singer of all of Christmas music, the man with the Christmas voice) singing 'We Need A Little Christmas'. The novelty Christmas song like Jimmy Durante's version of 'Frosty the Snowman' turns up as well.  And the sappy Christmas tunes that teach the old values of love and respect, so foreign today in our cold and sterile world, are played there as well. The Percy Faith Orchestra's O Come, All Ye Faithful is one example that sappy at Christmas isn't crappy. It's just music for our frustrated souls.

Why there is even a familiar New Orleans selection that I still hear on that Christmas station for which I thank from Goodrich and the other imitators who also put out those Christmas albums. Louis Armstrong's 'Christmas in New Orleans' makes me both delighted and a bit maudlin in reminding me of the great and exceptional old city that I often miss here in  ordinary Portland.

 My love for Christmas music has been transformed from the old LP albums of my mom's Christmas world to the digital version of it on line that guide my own. Tradition is a good thing.

Which One Is The Dope?

Kids today seem less possessed in useful knowledge than ever before. Schools are dumbing them down rather than challenging them. But the ultimate in patronizing students with pabulum happened the other day in suburban New Orleans. A former teacher at Catholic Archbishop Hannan High School has pleaded guilty to giving marijuana laced brownies to two students. Camille Brennan, 31, is scheduled to be sentenced, but after hearing her reason for getting the kiddies high I suspect she east a few brownies herself.

Brownie Brennan told authorities she provided the brownies to make the students happy. Wow! With teachers like that maybe the kids will start paying attention in class. She pleaded guilty to two counts of distribution of marijuana to a student and two counts of obstruction of justice, prosecutors said. Under her plea bargaining agreement, she is expected to receive a 10 year prison sentence, with seven years suspended. She will be ordered to undergo substance abuse and mental health evaluations and have no unsupervised contact with minors.

But in a small a way can we be surprised that teachers are passing out dope to the little dopes? After all, more and more U.S. states have legalized pot. Marijuana is already believed by many to be harmless and less addictive and a better alternative than cigarette tobacco. In this somewhat ignorant society marijuana is considered a healthy drug, while fluoride in water is considered dangerous. Parents refuse to vaccinate their kids for a variety of diseases because "vaccinations cause autism". And then there are those who swear that sugar is more dangerous for kids than is narcotics. It's weird.

What teachers must do today to make learning fun. Well, at least teachers have graduated from merely giving their sexiest students VD.

11 Billion An d Counting

I have written many times that the only serious environmental problem is not the so-called climate change, but instead the every real and undeniable overpopulation of the earth. Just think. The world's population has grown from a handful of people in eastern Africa around the year 100,000 B.C. to more than 7 billion today.  It's incredible to me also that the world population in my own lifetime has more than doubled. Doesn't anyone out there know what birth control is?

Here's some stats about the growing population.
-For the first 100,000 years, the population did not reach 1 million, according to the post. At 1 A.D., it was only 170 million.
-It took 200,000 years for the number of people on earth to reach 1 billion. But in the next 200 years, the population exploded to 7 billion.
-Only once in history was a significant population decline noted. That was during the Bubonic Plague epidemic, which killed an estimated 50 million people, mostly in Europe between 1346 and 1353.
-The world population will peak around 2100 at 11 billion. That's because fertility rates around the globe are falling.
-Worldwide, approximately one million people die every week. In that same week, two and half million people are born.  That's a 250% birth rate.
-For the past fifty years, between 70 and 80 million new people have been added to our planet each year . That's equivalent of adding a new Canada to the world each year.

How will the earth feed and furnish enough water for 11 million people? It doesn't appear the many people care. Instead, they imagine climate change scenarios based on guesses. The growth of our human population will eventually end somehow, whether we want it to or not. But how will it happen? We can stop growing deliberately, of our own accord. But humans just seem to be unwilling to stop breeding excessively.

 So what will do it? Will the population decline because of war, or famine, disease? You tell me.

Down With Thomas Jefferson

The stupidity of political correctness is now on full display at the University of Virginia, a great school founded by perhaps the United States greatest figure, Thomas Jefferson. Fortunately, Jefferson died more than 20 years ago gone. If alive to see the rank stupidity happening at UV he probably would denounce Virginia, the school he found and the United States. And I wouldn't blame him. Thomas Jefferson embodied the contradictions of his time. He was a slave owner, who wrote "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, slavery was the world's most common institution, having been imported into the American colonies after Europeans witnessed it as the universal practice in Africa.

But Martin Luther King Jr., for example, was not so ignorant to hold a 19th century practice against a person who practiced it then. King regularly evoked Jefferson's words in his speeches and idolized Jefferson and the great men of the day, despite their belief in slavery. Not so the students and faculty of current day University of Virginia. A large a group of students and faculty members at the school Jefferson founded have criticized and want the current UV  president, Teresa Sullivan, removed because she quoted Jefferson in a statement she made after the election of the favorite boogie man of liberal extremists, Donald Trump.

Telling the students that they are actin like jerks for denying the free election result of the next president she advocated peace on campus and respect for democracy, writing, "Thomas Jefferson was the first American president to wrest power from an opposing party, yet he also provided a potent precedent for the peaceful transfer of power and the healing of a divided nation." Oops! Never tell a left wing fanatic to not be a hypocrite. That was the gauntlet the students and faculty reacted to. UV Assistant Professor of Psychology Noelle Hurd drafted an open letter addressed to the school's president to denounce her usage of quotations by Jefferson, due to the fact that he was a slave holder.

Four hundred and sixty nine students and faculty members, liberal sheep, signed the letter. In part it said, "We are incredibly disappointed in the use of Thomas Jefferson as a moral compass. Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves. Though we realize that some members of our university community may be inspired by quotes from Jefferson, we also realize that many of us are deeply offended by attempts on behalf of our administration to guide our moral behavior through their us. For many of us, the inclusion of Jefferson quotes undermines the messages of unity, equality, civility, and inclusivity that you are attempting to convey."

Sadly, the complaining students and faculty of UV seem too far gone, too brainwashed to ever change their mindset. A simpleton knows it is wildly unfair to judge Jefferson 200 plus years later outside of the context of his times. His admirable traits far outweigh what society 200 years later considers an evil practice. Jefferson must be judged within the context of his times, not feel-good PC policing.   But complainers have surrendered even the slightest reason to political correctness. So there it is, a classic example of the stupidity of the liberal gift to the United States, political correctness.

I wonder what those sheltered and mind controlled students and faculty are thinking now....Hmmmm..Just maybe they are mumbling to themselves. "We should invalidate the U.S. Constitution and do away with the that meddling Bill of Rights so we won't have pour feelings hurt. After all, it was all written and signed by slave owners, including Jefferson, so it need no longer be quoted or believed. What did they know anyway!"

News Of The Dearly Departed

I'm a newspaper reader. The daily newspaper is like water to me in that if I don't have it every day I am exceedingly thirsty for it. So I read at least one each day. That would be all of the paper, including the obituary column. Yep! I am fascinated with those death notices, and after checking to see if anyone familiar is gone I often read through, as much as 30 minutes a day, the bios of the departed. There's a lot to learn and to feel when one reads about the lives of those who have lost there human form forever.

One thing I learn when reading the biographies of the deceased is that human life is quite broad in variety scope and that we have lives as individual as our fingerprints. I often wonder why the deceased embraced the hobbies or work he or she did in life. Why, for example, did a fellow spend an entire life devoted to plotting the movement of a particular bird?  Or what made the lovely lady pictured  in her bio while still young to "show her at her best", travel the world do much and live in so many places? Why did she not settle in one?

The nicest thing about reading an obituary is that only positive and endearing thoughts and news are within. The personal references, the expressed affection from those who remember the deceased, the funny or happy moment from the deceased's life are all important private human moments of lives that are shared in the obit.  There is never criticism, negativity or bad expression in any obituary bio How ironic that in death we find the calmness and niceness we never seem to find while alive. Those obituaries are an unintended reminder to behave better toward each other. I find solace in reading about the best of the lives of the departed.  I share their life adventure and appreciate the value of their life. Even though  a stranger to me I feel a bond reading about them. I often mutter, "Gee, what a nice person. Sorry I never met him/her."

Yes, obituaries give me a kind of hope for the future. Since so many good humans once existed, why not many more now and in the future. Maybe a death notice is not just to announce to family and friends a passing and funeral. Perhaps it is a statement that humans aren't so bad after all.  I doubt there is any written statement about us that is more personal, revealing and and open as what is in an obituary notice. Is there anything more open than the announcement of a death? Too, any obit is a statement that the deceased really mattered to some individual and to the world at large. The greatest conviction in life is to have been loved.  The death notice reaffirms that.

Death ends a life, not a relationship. The daily death column reminds us of that.

They Puzzle Me

There goes another one of them!  As I look at it go by, it appears this one is tired and unhappy but she keeps it up at a very fast pace. What makes people do that? They get hot and tired and look a mess, but they keep it up, day after day. Most of us are asleep when the most fanatical of them do it. So they must be strong willed and determined. I think they are nuts, because I am certainly not going to run down the street at 5 am every morning in the name of exercise. Yep, it's the puzzling jogger I refer to. What did you think I was writing about?

I both admire and distrust people who jog regularly in the name of improving or maintaining their health. Some of them seem weird. They wear trendy jogging outfits (the old gray sweat pants and shirt isn't good enough for the jogger anymore) and when passing by my fat and misshapen body almost sneer at how I mistreat my health and look so sloppy. But then, they have developed a power and grace by running every morning that one can also admire. Too, they are more self disciplined and determined than we non joggers. For me,  having only one jelly doughnut is self discipline. But the jogger takes great pride in telling you about his or her cholesterol numbers or how they are below the ideal weight level for their height. It seems to me that many joggers have too much pride in their pretty bodies.

Some joggers are obsessed with their running ritual. They even jog to work. Never get a work cubicle next to a jogger who arrives in his suit work clothes after a jog and who is absent a shower after the jog to work. They may not know they smell bad, or is it they don't care? The obsessed jogger even runs up and down the stairways during the lunch  time  work break while people like me prefer to merely stuff our faces with double cheeseburgers and french fries. You can bet that obsessed jogger brought his or her lunch to work. It's most likely just a bag of carrots, broccoli or, God forbid, one of those granola health energy bars.

The jogger usually likes to inflict pain on him or herself. The worst of that breed puts weights on their ankles or around their waist to show (show-off) their no pain, no gain logic. I hate to admit it, but when one of them overdoes it and puts so much stress on the body that a heart attack occurs, I have to try hard to control myself  to keep from smiling when I see them clutching their hearts. If I happen to have a donut in my hand I will make sure that I munch loudly and sigh in wonder that the jogger has yet to learn that "donuts are what life is about". There is great irony in a person who runs so much that it ruins his or her health.

Many of the joggers are also converts to jogging. They were lazy, out of shape bums like me until someone goaded them into jogging. Often the goad demon is a misguided doctor who scares the person into jogging with assurances that death will occur sooner if jogging shoes aren't used regularly. These jogger converts suddenly become jogging Nazi's who insist that you and I also jog. They are like former smokers who have quit and can't stop telling everyone they better quit too. I don't smoke and think it is a horrible habit, but when I see a jogger I almost want to start smoking....just to spite them.

My least favorite joggers are the ones who have things on or with them with which they jog. I think women tend to do that more often. Many female joggers jog with their dogs, wear headphones that play inspirational running music, and of course their cell phones are always in sight. How does a person chat on a phone while jogging? A jogger can tell you, but I can't. Joggers are addicted to their running. It's so sad to be that health conscious....

Women Stressed Twice As Much As Men

I hear many women complain about men stressing them. Yes, some of them say I am also a stressor. Can you believe that! Maybe it's my rants about cell phones that do it. But I never thought that women were more stressed by men than we men are stressed by the female population. Alas! (I hope my exclamation didn't stress you) According to a study from the University of Cambridge ladies in Western Europe and America are stressed nearly twice as much as men. Too, those females under the age of 35 are the most stressed of all.  Hmmmm  Maybe our control of the TV remote and the fact that we leave our dirty underwear strewn all about the house has something to do with that.

The study says that women suffer mental burnout because of the stress. The National Institute for Health Research funded researchers from the University of Cambridge to review about 50 studies on anxiety disorders. It's estimated that four out every 100 people have anxiety. For every 1.9 females, one male is affected by anxiety disorders, and women younger than 35 are disproportionately affected. People in North America are perhaps the most stressed, eight in 100 people have anxiety. In East Asia, that number is three in 100.

Well, maybe we men are not the cause of the stress. After all, just watching a woman buy shoes makes me worry that she might have a heart attack from worry when making the purchase. Self stressing has to be part of the problem for women.  There are quite a few female induced reasons for their stress as well as the male stressor they like to blame for their anxiety. I also think that the competition between females is a big stress agent. We men don't compete on a personal level as much as do women. I never heard, for example, of two males who had a cat fight because an office co worker wore the same shirt or pants as he.  And what about kids? Women fret about them not being perfect while we just ignore their childish behaviors and imperfections while we practice our own. There is little stress in that.

The researchers at Cambridge say the reason for the increased stress is probably because "women tend to internalize stress more than men". Regardless of the cause of the extra female stress, the study says that anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder, can add double the burden on the lives of those with a chronic health condition. Gee, I am  glad that I was born male.

Tea Anyone?

Besides water, what is the world's most popular liquid drink? It's tea. (just an odd side note in case you play trivia games, number ten in most popular is breast milk) And why is tea more popular? It's probably a combination of, inexpensive pricing, easily availability, low shipping weight and the culture of the tea drinker. China and India, the world's population centers are tea fanatics. Americans drink the most coffee, and we still like that. I do notice an American export named Star bucks is assaulting the Asian market, the one where tea is supreme.

China is credited with being the founder of tea. It's no coincidence that the source of all tea, the Camellia Sinensis plant is native to China. Anyway, enough of the generic history of tea. For me, although there five kinds of tea including black, green, oolong, white, and puer (a super strong, secret recipe Chinese black tea that is uncommon here), I only like black tea. Black tea is the western choice although the bogus claims made about green tea being a "healthy" drunk and curative have made it increasingly popular in the west.  Give me green tea and I'll spout off about it being glorified water. I find that it has little taste. Fortunately, I am only assaulted with that green stuff when I eat in Asian themed restaurants. They bring it to the table as a starter, but I just let it sit and stew..... or brew, I guess. I rarely drink it.

Never has a drink other than tea been credited with so many curative properties, not a single of which is true.  Green tea and Ginseng tea, for example, have the highest concentration of catechins which has falsely been claimed to help prevent cancer. It's absurd because the levels are so low one would have to drink him or herself to death to reach beneficial levels.  Pu-Erb tea and Ku Ding Cha is claimed to reduce cholesterol. White Tea  may have the strongest anti-cancer potential of all teas, promoters say. It is also an unfounded claim.

Then there are the weight loss claims.  Many tea companies flaunt the supposed health benefit that tea "burns calories" and that tea "is scientifically proven to aid weight loss". Ridiculous!  However, un sweetened tea is a calorie free drink that when substituted  for other highly caloric drinks could be a good way to promote weight loss. But the claims that tea actively promotes weight loss, sexual potency, height growth, prevent heart disease and hundreds of other phony claims doesn't hurt tea's popularity. I see right here in sleepy Portland that tea houses are opening to compete with coffee houses like Star bucks.  Marketing can bring about anything today.

I usually have one cup of coffee for breakfast, my ritual. And now I am beginning to read of the same bogus heath benefits of that drink. Sigh.....I wish they would leave coffee along. If they ruin that image too, I may have to switch to vodka instead.

Hollywood Exit

The heck with the joy of seeing Hillary Clinton defeated and headed away from the lives of Americans (but hopefully eventually headed to a prison somewhere) an even greater joy maybe that we will get rid of a batch of ignorant and annoying Hollywood celebrities. At least they have promised to take their unhappiness elsewhere.

Here’s a list of those celebrities who’ve promised before the election to leave if Trump won:

“Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston – “Absolutely, I would definitely move. It’s not real to me that that would happen. I hope to God it won’t.”
Actor Samuel Jackson – “If that motherf–—er becomes president, I’m moving my black ass to South Africa."
“Girls” celebrity Lena Dunham – “I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will. I know a lovely place in Vancouver.”
“House of Cards” actress Neve Campbell, already a Canadian citizen, has promised to repatriate herself.
“Orange is the New Black” actress Natasha Lyonne has picked a “mental hospital” for her political exile.
Cher – “I’m moving to Jupiter.”
Miley Cyrus – “I am moving if he is president. I don’t say things I don’t mean!”
Barbara Streisand – “I’m either coming to your country if you’ll let me in, or Canada.”
Singer Ne-Yo, like so many others, plans to bug out to nearby Canada.
Comedian Amy Schumer – “I will need to learn to speak Spanish, because I will move to Spain or somewhere.”
Chelsea Handler – “I did buy a house in another country just in case. So all these people that threaten to leave the country and then don’t – I actually will leave that country.”
Former “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart’s getaway plan is among the more extreme. He’s planning on “going to another planet,” although he did not specify a particular planet.
Whoopi Goldberg – “Maybe it’s time for me to move, you know. I can afford to go.”
Keegan-Michael Key’s planned exile to Canada doesn’t sound like too much of a hardship – “It’s like, 10 minutes from Detroit. That’s where I’m from; my mom lives there. It’d make her happy too.”
Comedian George Lopez is the only future emigre who’s vowing to move South. Indeed, he says Hispanics will “all go back.”
Ali Wentworth, wife of ABC newsman George Stephanopoulous, said, “If Trump wins, we’ll start looking at real estate in Sydney, Australia. No crime, no guns.”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand” (she’s already backtracked and apologized).
Al Sharpton has plans for destinations unknown and says he has been “reserving my ticket out of here.”
Comedienne Amy Shumer swears she will move to Spain.  "It's beyond my comprehension is Trump wins"

With a list like this leaving the United States will upgrade itself dramatically. Of course Hollywood phonies promise often.  They're still  here and they are still annoying us with their stupidity. We peasants from non Hollywood have been waiting since 2000, for example, for Alec Baldwin to keep his "unequivocal" promise to move. Quit promising and lying like Hillary, you phony. Just go! And three of those "stars", rocker Eddie Veder, actor Matt Damon and director Robert Altman were supposed to go long ago, they said, in the same boat. They haven't, but it they do I hope for the sake of whatever country will get them that the boat will sink on the way. But the top Hollywood "I will go" phony must be Barbara Streisand, who promised to leave in 1992 after the Bush Sr/ Bill Clinton election.

Sigh...she's still here.

The Defeat of Pure Evil

Ding Dong, the Wicked Witch is dead! Hallelujah to the American voter for sending Hillary Clinton away forever, in their rejecting her and giving their trust for pure evil. But Americans also handed the government to an extremely flawed winner, Donald Trump, someone whose campaign was premised and won on a challenge to the dishonest and unfair status quo of Barrack Obama and his politically correct affiliates. Wisely, the voters expressed their distrust in government and dismissed many of the worst of the politicians from both parties. For president, they chose a man who must be watched,  but who has promised to positively channel the voters anger, as much as carry their hopes.

He didn't merely promise change, he promised disruption. And most voters here feel we need that. After eight years of George Bush and Barrack Obama America is a place of unfairness, a nation that picks and chooses winners and losers best on mean spirited and prejudiced choices, a country where ethics have been replaced with the politically correct. My country's economy is broken, its military in shambles, the strong morality we used to preach if only sometimes achieve has been given a chance to revive. And this is not a fair country anymore.

I am ecstatic about Clinton's defeat, yet under whelmed about the disagreeable Trump's victory. But at least the United States again has an opportunity to meet real and good ideals, not illusory and divisive political correctness. The Wicked Witch is dead, and her enabler Barrack Obama will also soon be gone. There is justice, after all.

Trump's victory was a surprise ballot box silent revolution. But not all revolutions are pure. We shall see both how Trump governs and whether the leftists who hate and fear him even allow him the space to govern. Just as the right feared the end of the world with Obama's election, so does the left today fear Trump's election. The right got over it and most of the left will as well. I have grave doubts about Trump, but I have everlasting hope and renewal in that the evil Hillary Clinton has been sent packing (If we are lucky, for prison).

This is the single best and most surprising election of my lifetime. Despite the left's attempt to scare the voting public about Trump, to hoist the single most disagreeable and dishonest candidate on us (Hillary Clinton), to divide us and to corrupt this country, it was defeated. And that is good.

National Redhead Day

November 5 was a holiday for me and a few others, but not for you. You see, November 5 is National Redhead Day. That would be natural red, not from a bottle. If there is anything we natural reds hate more than peroxide red hair it might only be Hillary Clinton  (who is not only a miserable human being but one who once dyed her hair red). According to some promoters of red hair day events National Love Your Red Hair Day is designed to empower redheads to feel confident, look amazing and rock their beauty. Red hair is more than a color, it's a lifestyle.

Red heads are supposed to celebrate their color on their day by posting photos of their red hair on social media using #LoveYourRedHairDay. Not I.  I am so old now that my red has turned to mostly dark blonde and white. There is nothing interesting about that. But I hope the red heads who like their color (I myself have never cared for the red head look) have a ball and show their colors. That's because red heads are the freaks of hair color. We do suffer the slings and arrows of reprobation. Because of our red hair we often are stared at, have our heads rubbed for luck, are thought to be odd, and even, worst of all for a natural red head....thought to maybe have colored our hair from a bottle. 
 
More redheads come from Britain and Ireland, especially Ireland, than any other place else on earth.  My own red hair genes came from my mother's Irish side of the family (Uncle Claude), with my paternal red coming from my grandmother's dad, a giant of a man who also had a shiny red head.  If you are a natural red head you might be more comfortable in Ireland, where their sight is so common no one thinks they are freaks. Celebrations honoring redheads are common all over the British Isles. We should have that here too, because in the United States many of our greatest U.S. Presidents were natural redheads. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Martin van Buren, Andrew Jackson, Jimmy Carter, Rutherford Hayes, Calvin Coolledge, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy were all redheads. Maybe I should run for president too!

Some very famous people from outside of the United States have had red hair, some good and some evil. Among the many good redheads include; Elizabeth I, Christopher Columbus, George Bernard Shaw, Galileo, King David, Napoleon, Van Gogh, Florence Nightingale, Winston Churchill, King Rameses II and Marilyn Monroe (I'm male...I feel obligated to add here to the list). The evil red heads include; Lenin, Malcom X, Henry VIII, Cleopatra, Genghis Khan and Lindsay Lohan (It's fun to bash crazy Lindsay).

I tip my hat to them all and show my once red hair.

Women Not Wanted

On the "women aren't going to be pleased front" comes news from the Catholic pope that the Catholic Church's ban on women priests will stand forever, Pope Francis said  that the other day. Well, only a non married man could ever utter such words. He made the declaration in response to a female reporter asking if he thought women would one day serve as Catholic priests and bishops, noting the head of the Lutheran Church whom Francis met on his trip to Sweden is a woman.

Oops! Pope's seem not to mind their inflammatory words. "St. Pope John Paul II had the last clear word on this and it stands," Francis said during a news conference aboard the papal plane on the flight back to Rome." Well, at least he blames his chauvinism on St. Francis. Why not? Hillary Clinton blames her own self inflicted problems on Donald Trump and "The Russians".

To make matters worse, the female reporter then asked "Forever, forever? Never, never?" And Pope Francis took the bait again. "If we read carefully the declaration by St. John Paul II, it is going in that direction," the pope responded. The Catholic Church teaches that women cannot be ordained priests because Jesus willingly chose only men as his apostles. And you thought the Islamic religion had credibility problems!  Anyway, those Catholics who are calling for women to be made priests claim that Jesus was only following the norms of his time when he banned females from high clerical position.

Only a pope or clergy member could get away with such blatant sexism today. A religion created by men for men only?  Wow! That is bait hard for anyone not insulated from real life (like Francis and his Vatican brethren). Yet, Catholic dogma and theology excludes women from the priesthood . This is not going to change. It's core to the Catholic belief of our relationship with God.

No wonder organized religion is a dying institution.

Kids Don't Read As Much Today

Here's an obvious news flash. Reading for pleasure is no longer at the forefront of activities for today's youth.  That is, fewer and fewer kids read today than in other recent generations. Common Sense Media conducted research that showed that the number of nine year old kids that read for pleasure once or more per week went from 81 percent in 1984 to 76 percent. The numbers are worse for older kids. Only about a third of 13 year old's reported reading for pleasure less than twice a year. Studies in other countries mirror this decline in reading among children.

We all know why. It's the electronic monsters out there who require only short burst reading and writing.  LOL has replaced stanzas of Shakespeare. Because reading is longer termed and not immediately gratifying like those video apps where a kid can zap 100 zombies and save the world in less than 30 minutes. The study confirmed what we have always known as the reason little Johnny reads for fun. It verified that children who read for pleasure tend to be those kids whose parents read to them and whose parents read themselves. The lucky kids who have parents that turn off reality Tv and instead read with free time,  spend about 30-60 minutes a day reading...... as opposed to none for the kids glued to American Idol on the tube.

I wonder how reading an be made appealing to a child over stimulated on electronics and hungry for instant gratification? Are we fighting a losing battle? Will the future be books as rare objects, with learning by video? I hope not. Will the imagination that books inspire be replaced with electronic diversions? But then, parents will determine the answers to that.

Parents are to blame in part for the decline of reading for pleasure in the lives of today's children because it is too easy to let television or the video games or the computer programs to act as baby sitter while parents are occupied with their work or home responsibilities. To suggest to a child today that they read a book is like to asking them to rake leaves or mow the lawn or vacuum the living room.  Hmmmm I can guess kids don't do those things much anymore as well.

Parents can encourage their little monsters to read more by reading with their children and to their children beginning at an early age to help ensure that the child sees the importance of reading. (Uh, that would mean no reading about the Kardashians...read age appropriate material). Parents have to to model reading for pleasure to their children so those little brats can see their parents enjoying a good book. After all, society is the beneficiary of having literate members.

Research shows a high correlation between reading and intelligence, and can anything stir a imagination better than a book? We do understand and interpret better after reading a book than after playing a video game. It's because books are personal and make us think in ways we do not otherwise think. They cause us to question deeply think deeply and escape with our imagination. What a shame that so many kids today in this country and around the world will never know it.