For My Father On His Ninety-First Birthday

[Because today IS my dad Robert Eugene Alvin, Sr.'s ninety-first birthday. At least, it would be were he still alive; he died of stroke complications eleven years ago. And even though that is a photo of our son -- Dad's grandson -- Jeffrey at the top who's sad he never got to meet my dad while he was alive, it reminds me of him. Because no matter how weak he got, he would always salute the flag.

Now we come to the favorites I've written and read from the first half of May. Since I already posted my graduation entry in Tuesday's post (see "GRADUATION DAY!") I figure another throw back entry won't be necessary.

And as ever all posts are reproduced with spellings intact, but I add bracketed notes for clarification or just because I want to. I know I will forget to post this draft the longer I wait.


And some things I don't want to forget, David]


1. I do also understand we live in the twenty-first century where invective against whoever's President has unleashed the purity of so many people's hate (Bush has gotten it, Obama's gotten it, Trump's gonna get it) that it's hard to reason with anybody once a conversation starts. Especially when they seem they don't want to be reasoned with so much as validated.

And I do understand that Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt are both dead. But the worlds they lived in are still very much alive -- and to be honest, there are parts of our past that aren't very pretty, but they're no less true for that.


me, 050117, 1148 hrs

[I was responding to a post criticizing President Trump, rightly so, for citing President Jackson and hypothesizing how he in the 1830s would have dealt with slavery ... I had just read a piece where President (Franklin) Roosevelt in the 1930s had compared himself to Jackson when he said there were times it seemed everyone was against him -- all but the people of the United States. I was told I "didn't understand" when I used a comparison like that. Your thoughts?]
   


2. The freedoms that we all enjoy today come to us by the proliferation of the Christian Gospel. Search history and you'll not find anything like it where Christ was not honored. But when a society hates the Gospel more than it loves its freedom, freedom will be discarded like an old tired rag.






3. Just do your best, even if you're not the best at it.




(from a Bishop Ryan High School graduate interview, heard 050217 on KHRT 106.9 FM)




4. That is the life of the city: collecting percentages on everything.




(Robert Silverberg, Roma Eterna, p. 78)




5. This is me eating a deep-fried tarantula in Cambodia in January



[One more thing on my bucket list.]




6. Don't Demonize Payday Lenders -- Let Them Help Tackle Poverty




(Syed Kamall, 050217, title of his article at FreeMarketCentral.com)






7. Dear writers who may write characters going to Denmark or who plan on going to Denmark themselves.
Every year on the first Wednesday of May at exactly 12pm we test our air sirens.
All of them.
...

At once.
All over the country.
It is loud and obnoxious and it is our favourite thing to scare tourists and exchange students into thinking that we are at war with Germany again.

[I must use this in a future book of mine!]




8. Today's Thought - 05/03/17
The Christian who has stopped repenting has stopped growing.
- A. W. Pink

(KHRT 106.9 FM, c. 1027 hrs)

9. COFFEE: A person who is coughed upon. .









10. My love is other worldly. Come bask in its glory and delight - Annala




(from The Diaries of Annala: Passions Realm Facebook page, 050317, 2039 hrs)


11. Some channels just want to watch the world burn.

[Some faithful too. I hate that.]




12. Stuff women go through. Drunkenness brings out what many men think about us.



[And the other way around. Some people don't even need to drink.]




13. I'll take silly over the dark,gritty nonsense of today's comics.



14. A cease-fire already taking place
between two bodies all ablaze
dreams begin to run a race
in our world's distorted maze.



(Pamela L. Laskin, Ronit & Jamil, p. 47)

15. Both the 7th chapter of Deuteronomy and the 7th book [of the Old Testament] Judges mention that when the children of Israel put their faith in God, God will deliver the kings of their oppressors into their hands, which happened in the days of Gideon.


In Judges, it was mentioned many times that the Spirit of the LORD fell on Gideon, Samson, Jephthah.
...

As I studied the book there are so many things that came to my attention. Eglon, the king of Moab, for example (Judges 3) was a very fat man along with his companions. And what does Ehud do? He gives him a present, which in Hebrew is Minchah, meaning a meat offering. He gives him meat. And Eglon which means calf-like accepts it.
Then the Midianites destroy the land, impoverishing, and they are many, like grasshoppers. In fact the Hebrew word for grasshoppers/locusts is arbeh and the Herbew for many is rab, which is the root word to arbeh. And what's the solution? God tells Gideon to send home many of his men and were left with so few -300 men just so that God would get the glory and not Israel.
I wonder Midian is the same place as today's Medina one of the "holy" sites of Islam.
Each story has a lesson. Sisera trusted in the chariots of Iron, Eglon trusted in his meat, the Midianites trusted in their numbers, the Philistines trusted in their bribery and deception and honored their deity Dagon. But they all were disappointed by God at the end.



(Greg Badiguian, 042217, 0944 hrs (technically when posted, but I saw it 050517, 1127 hrs))


[Jeffrey will use the word "technically" too, and it's always good for a laugh! Especially when he's right. He gets it from me, honestly.]




16. That word "Professionalism" is similar to the word "Morale". When discussed frequently it is surmised that it is in short supply. Mention that to the conference leader during a break for an interesting reaction.



17. Old ways won't open new doors.






18. Conversation with daughter:
Me:
You know, we should go out for Mother's Day, just you and me for a couple of hours. Maybe bingo? After all you are their mother, and I am your mother so it makes perfect sense!
Daughter:
I don't know, sounds like fun, we'll see, after all we didn't expect you to live this long!...



19. It says in Ephesians that God will do more than we dare ask, think or imagine. Do you dare believe that God is going to overwhelm you with His goodness today?





20. I stress procrastinate... the more ishh I have to do, the more cleaning I do... All the sudden everything appears dirty.




21. Research. This DNA thing.
Many thanks Professor!!!!
Wow!!! An entire group of people working this for me.
God is always good !!!!

22. [Poster's older four-year-old daughter]: "Mom, [Poster's younger daughter] just crawled under my bed and got the ball!! That is too dangerous for a two year-old!!"
Said with her hands on her hips and a very serious look on her face.




23. Don't expect to see change if you don't make one.





24. Sometimes, while grading research papers, you come across statements that make you go "hmmm..." Here are two of my favorites from today: 1) cyberbullying can make someone want to commit suicide, which would make them sad because they would lose everything. 2) After slavery ended, Aretha Franklin became a famous soul singer (it should be noted that slavery ended in 1865, Aretha was born in 1942). More to come add I run in to them. *this isn't intended to ridicule students, rather to get a little chuckle out of the things they sometimes write without editing or considering how others perceive what is being said*



[I would think (1) would be the other way around, for you'd be sad first.]




25. It was trade rather than than colonization that put England on the road to greatness. Its woolen cloth was its most valuable manufacture, and there were innumerable customers abroadfor this quality product if England could only reach them. So shipbuilders created an English merchant fleet (to the detriment of Venice, which formerly had carried the island's goods), and to protect it a fledgling navy emerged. [Compare to the United States' later development of a navy to protect citizens rather than goods, that's my view as I read this.] English companies dispatched English woolen goods in English merchant vessels to the Baltic and Russia, to the Near East and even to the East Indies.




(Richard B. Morris, The New World, "An Era of Epochal Discovery", p. 36)



26. Ten years from now, make sure you can say you chose your life, you didn't settle for it.








27. May the next few months be a period of Beautiful Transformation.





28. "You are my yellow paint."
I didn't understand what she meant, but she explained: "Vincent Van Gogh ate yellow paint because he wanted to feel happy".
I've died and gone to heaven, haven't I?



(Plank's Mom Facebook page, 051017, c. 2300 hrs)




29. The only antidote to a shallow knowledge of history is a deeper knowledge, the knowledge which produces not dogmatic certitude but diagnostic skill, not clairvoyance but insight.



(Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., War and the American Presidency, p. 139)


30. The primary advantage of a magnet school = friends who care about their grades as much as you care about yours.



31. How much more can he endure
when hope is an aperture
no bigger than the blossom
of the thyme? Won't the time come
when he will no longer be
my brother but the grisly
creature Minos has imagined?




(David Elliott, Bull, p. 114; Ariadne's speaking and her brother is Asterion, aka the Minotaur)




32. My dad called me this morning and wished me a happy Mother's Day because I have a fur baby. It literally made me tear up. I have had a severe sinus infection, vertigo, and nausea for this whole weekend and she literally kept my spirits up. It's incredible how healing animals are.
And yes HAHA can't forget my husband for literally cooking for me, keeping the house cleaned up, and working to help provide for our little family. 💕
Feeling pretty thankful rn.





33. Darkness never wins. It just fools you into thinking it does.


(Prince Charming, Once Upon A Time, 051417, "The Final Battle")


[This episode was so good and so quotable, and it's given me the title for another book! Stay tuned.]



34. " Do not dwell in the past ,do not dream of the future, co,ncentrate the mind on the present moment " ....Buddha of Leshan , Sichuan , China .....



(shared by a Friend of mine, 051517, c. 1000 hrs)

35. President Calvin Coolidge warned in a speech given MAY 15, 1926, at the College of William and Mary:
"But there is another ... recent development ... the greatly disproportionate influence of organized minorities. Artificial propaganda, paid agitators, selfish interests, all impinge upon members of legislative bodies to force them to represent special elements rather than the great body of their constituency. When they are successful, minority rule is established ... ... Th...e result is an extravagance on the part of the Government which is ruinous to the people and a multiplicity of regulations and restrictions for the conduct of all kinds of necessary business, which becomes little less than oppressive ..."

Coolidge continued: "No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline. Of all forms of government, those administered by bureaus are about the least satisfactory to an enlightened and progressive people. Being irresponsible they become autocratic ... Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy. It ... sets up the pretense of having authority over everybody and being responsible to nobody ..."
Coolidge added: "We must also recognize that the national administration is not and cannot be adjusted to the needs of local government ... The States should not be induced by coercion or by favor to surrender the management of their own affairs. The Federal Government ought to resist the tendency to be loaded up with duties which the States should perform. It does not follow that because something ought to be done the National Government ought to do it ... ... I want to see the policy adopted by the States of discharging their public functions so faithfully that instead of an extension on the part of the Federal Government there can be a contraction..." BIll Federer, American Minute

(posted by The American Experiment, 051517, c. 1339 hrs)