why do important people scare me…

“What comes into our minds when we think about God
is the most important thing about us.”
A.W. Tozer

No one should really scare me, right?
If I am God’s and He is mine, then no one should scare me, right?

Well, I will confess that maybe psychopaths scare me.
They scare me because they don’t care what type of evil acts they unleash…
Think chainsaw killers…killing, torturing, maiming all for fun.

Yeah, scary.

But like I say…if I am God’s and He is mine, think
“do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” sort of thinking…

But what about important people?
What about the people out there who wield power because of their money,
their positions, their roles within society…?

And so I have now decided that important people, or people who think they are important,
kind of scare me…as well as the nuts with chainsaws.

They scare me because they believe they have the world’s best interest at heart
and in turn, they like playing puppeteer.

They think they know what is best for both you and me and will flex their mindset
regardless of us little people.

I’ve always heard tell of that little conspiracy that there are just a handful of powerful folks
in the world who actually control pretty much all of the world–
the rest of us are just the victims of their whims, thoughts, and often selfish intentions.

I think of those secretive, elitist and highly protected meetings—
Think Davos in Switzerland.
The World Economic Forum

This year’s meeting was held in early February prior to the world pandemic outbreak.

The focus was to be “The World Economic Forum’s 50th Annual Meeting in Davos will focus on
how stakeholder capitalism can solve the world’s urgent challenges.”

It is a yearly meeting of the world’s rich and powerful…the leaders, movers, and shakers.

Invited attendees range from presidents, EU leaders to the likes of rich folks
like Oprah and Bill Gates—folks who like to use their wealth and positions to “influence”
the masses.
Even the more controversial figures such as George Soros and
the teen environmentalist activist Greta Thunberg are those invited to Davos.

We average folks usually don’t care much about such meetings.
We don’t much care because that’s just what world leaders and rich folks do…
they go to meetings and talk about the state of the world…
or more like the economic health of the world–
while we, the small folks of the world, do the true work of the world…
the making, buying, selling, and trading for the world.

So yesterday I caught another interesting post over on
Smoke of Satan and the Open Windows of Vatican II.

Well, it wasn’t so much a post as it was an offering of two links.

The second of the two links was to an article found on the blog ‘Barnhardt’,
regarding a member of the Italian parliament addressing her fellow MPs regarding Bill Gates.

Yep, Bill Gates.
The brain behind of all things PC and Microsoft now turned global activist, Bill Gates.
Gates’ ears should have been burning this past week thanks to the Italian Parliament.

May 16,2020
Bomb dropped in Italian Parliament: Gates should be arrested for crimes against humanity

A speech offered in the Italian Parliament by Italian MP Sara Cunial:

We all know it, now.
Bill Gates, already in 2018, predicted a pandemic, simulated in October 2019 at the “Event 201”,
together with Davos (Switzerland).
For decades, Gates has been working on Depopulation policy and dictatorial control plans
on global politics,
aiming to obtain the primacy on agriculture, technology and energy.

Gates said, I quote exactly from his speech:

“If we do a good job on vaccines, health and reproduction,
we can reduce the world population by 10-15%.
Only a genocide can save the world”.

With his vaccines, Gates managed to sterilize millions of women in Africa.
Gates caused a polio epidemic that paralyzed 500,000 children in India and still today with DTP,
Gates causes more deaths than the disease itself.
And he does the same with GMOs designed by Monsanto and “generously donated” to needy populations.
All this while he is already thinking about distributing the quantum tattoo for vaccination recognition
and mRNA vaccines as tools for reprogramming our immune system.
In addition, Gates also does business with several multinationals that own 5G facilities in the USA.

see the full article on the following link

Interesting Links: 1) 1968-69 Hong Kong Flu 2) speech from Italian MP that impugns Bill Gates

Bomb dropped in Italian Parliament: Gates should be arrested for crimes against humanity

So yes, the rich and powerful scare me especially when they have ideas of controlling
world populations by global sterilizations.

I will admit that I have not followed up on the speech by Gates.
But I have heard him in various interviews address third-world concerns…
perhaps that concern is depopulation.

The second link is to an article by the NYP of all things newsy.

It is an article about another pandemic during a different time.
A pandemic that, as far as the US was concerned, was trumped by the ‘summer of love’—
all despite the fact that the Hong Kong flu was raging worldwide.

Funny how three days of communal music, love and living surpass a global pandemic.

Maybe we need another Woodstock, a part deux…or on second thought, maybe not…

Here’s that link:

Why American life went on as normal during the killer pandemic of 1969
https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/why-life-went-on-as-normal-during-the-killer-pandemic-of-1969/

https://smokeofsatan.wordpress.com/2020/05/17/interesting-links-1-1968-69-hong-kong-flu-2-speech-from-italian-mp-that-impugns-bill-gates/

a solemn reminder

Time and tide wait for no man.
Geoffrey Chaucer

(historic marker / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

Perhaps this is an odd place for an early morning stroll but Colonial Cemetary in
Savannah is both a peaceful and serene place to wander…
Not only are there tabby lined paths that weave throughout this rather massive burial
place, but there are also beautifully majestic ancient oaks veiled in the otherworldly
ethereal Spanish moss which cast dancing shadows across the landscape of an otherwise eerily
still and silent place …
All of which adds to the allure of this surreal and tranquil place.
It is a place steeped in centuries-old history.

(tabby path / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

The stories and lives of the known as well as the unknown.
Folks who had come from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Poland, Germany…
Most of who had come pre-Revolutionary War and who have since each found a resting
place in this protected piece of land, in a country they would each come to call home.

A Declaration of Independence bears many of their names just as do state counties.
State colleges have named buildings in their honor as we remember both the heroic and the notorious.

(historic marker / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

(historic marker / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

(historic marker / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

From Today in Georgia History:
August 2, 1776- Statewide
Georgia joined The United States on August 2, 1776, the same day that Button Gwinnett,
Lyman Hall, and George Walton signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.

The declaration was approved on July 4, but signed by only one man that day, John Hancock.
Fifty other delegates to the 2nd Continental Congress signed on August 2.
Later that year, five more brought the total to 56.

Eight of the signers, including Gwinnett, were foreign-born.
One was Roman Catholic, a handful were deists and the rest were Protestants.
They all went on to lives of public service in the republic they founded:
there were two future presidents, three vice presidents, two Supreme Court justices,
and many congressmen, diplomats, governors, and judges among them.

In 1818, 14 years after Georgia’s last signer died, Georgia named counties in their honor.
Charles Carroll of Maryland, the last of all the signers left, died in 1832 at the age of 95,
but their revolutionary idea of a self-governing free people lives on.

The experiment they began remains unfinished, as it was on August 2, 1776,
Today in Georgia History.

(Colonial Cemtetary / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

The cemetery, no matter how many times I find myself wandering, affords me new discoveries
hidden amongst the trees and mostly ignored by the abundant squirrels who call this
park-like cemetery home.

Numerous tiny graves now protect the innocent… some who are named, some who are not.
Eternally protecting the mortal remains of those who were born only to quickly pass away—
as they were born during a time when both birth and death walked hand in hand

(Colonial Cemtetary / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

(Colonial Cemtetary / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

Some grave markers are elaborate—hand carvings which are each works of art
while others remain plain and simple.
Some markers offer kind and poetic words while others have lost all legibility
to the passing of time.
Names, dates, and lives seemingly washed away from both time and the elements.

It is said that despite the iron fence that now encloses the cemetery,
the buried actually extend yards beyond, extending outward into the city they
called home.
The city paved and built over many graves long before a permanent fence
was erected.

Even the office of the Archdiocese of Savannah is housed in an old colonial building
that undoubtedly was built upon the graves of the unknown as recording details of
those buried was not always a priority.

Yellow fever victims are in a mass grave in a far corner of the cemetery while
unknown Confederate and Union soldiers now spend eternity side by side.

It is said that this is one of the most haunted places in the city…
but yet this city boasts many an otherworldly spook and specter.

I like to learn of the lives who have all gone before me.
Those who lived in a time much different from my own and the
similarities of lives lived are more alike than different.

For we all live, love, hurt, suffer, laugh and cry…and each eventually die.
Not so much different as we are still very much alike.

(Colonial Cemtetary / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

(Colonial Cemtetary / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

(Colonial Cemtetary / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

(Colonial Cemtetary / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)

And the dust returns to the earth as it was,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:7 ESV

the gifts of the unknowing

“What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar

(Senator Bob Doyle, now 95, salutes the casket of his friend, colleague,
opponent and fellow WWII vertern, George, H.W. Bush)

If there is one image that has touched my heart the most over the past couple of days,
other than the image of former President George H.W. Bush’s service dog Sully resting
at the foot of his casket, it is this image…
this one picture…

The poignant and heart touching image of Senator and fellow WWII Vet
Bob Dole of Kansas being helped to his feet, in order to salute his longtime friend.

Senator Dole, of Kansas, is 95 years young yet is frail and is in failing health
but he was determined to be brought to the US Capitol building in order to pay his
respects to his fellow veteran and friend.

To most men of ‘that generation’ respect has always meant standing, and in this
case saluting, as both men fought, and were each wounded,
during what they simply refer to as “The War.”

Bob Dole was in the infantry fighting in Italy when he was hit by German machine gun fire
in the back and arm.

According to Wikipedia:
Dole was badly wounded by German machine gun fire, being hit in his upper back and right arm.
As Lee Sandlin describes, when fellow soldiers saw the extent of his injuries,
all they thought they could do was to “give him the largest dose of morphine they dared
and write an ‘M’ for ‘morphine’ on his forehead in his own blood,
so that nobody else who found him would give him a second, fatal dose.”

Dole was transported to the United States, where his recovery was slow,
interrupted by blood clots and a life-threatening infection.
After large doses of penicillin had not succeeded, he overcame the infection with the
administration of streptomycin, which at the time was still an experimental drug.
He remained despondent, “not ready to accept the fact that my life would be changed forever.”
He was encouraged to see Hampar Kelikian,
an orthopedist in Chicago who had been working with veterans returning from war.
Although during their first meeting Kelikian told Dole that he would never be able to recover fully,
the encounter changed Dole’s outlook on life, who years later wrote of Kelikian,
a survivor of the Armenian Genocide,
“Kelikian inspired me to focus on what I had left and what I could do with it,
rather than complaining what had been lost.”
Dr. K, as Dole later came to affectionately call him, operated on him seven times,
free of charge, and had, in Dole’s words, “an impact on my life second only to my family.”

I am always gratified when I read of or hear of the stories about the impacts
that one human being can have upon another…
impacts, that more often than not, are unbeknownst to the one who is doing the impacting.

I call it the gift of the unknowing.

These unknown gifts actually consist of simple things such as time,
assistance or a listening ear or even what might be perceived as an
insignificant opportunity…
These gifts, which more often than not are unbeknownst to the giver…
become paramount and even life-changing to the recipient.

Bob Dole had his gift giver.
And we Americans are better for it.

And if the truth was told, I think most all of us have had a gift giver, if not several,
during the course of our lives

And so I wish to share the following story that was offered by Dana Perino, a current
Fox News analyst and host and former press secretary for President George W. Bush…
one more story about a gift giver of the unknowing…

As our nation continues the process of mourning President George H.W. Bush, I wanted to share a story with you that was shared with me this past weekend. It was told to me by a friend who spent his career at the CIA. I can’t reveal his name for obvious reasons but his story is one I wanted to share with you. I think it’s a particularly good lesson for those who lead a team – whether they’re in political, private or military life.

Here’s what my friend told me:
My first encounter with 41 was many, many years ago; he was the Director of Central Intelligence. I was a young officer, still not sure what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had spent very little time in the headquarters building – and I actually worked hard not to go there.

My supervisor finally cornered me and forced me to go to a mandatory two-week course at headquarters. I had managed to squirm out of it three times but this time I was trapped. I hated the course, didn’t care for the instructor and didn’t warm up to my classmates. They all appeared to know each other, I didn’t know any of them and made little attempt to get to know them.

At lunch, I would slip down to the cafeteria, get a cheeseburger, chips, and a coke, take my newspaper and go sit in the corner, eat and catch up with the world. (There was no internet!)
On about the fourth day, I was sitting in the corner, minding my own business and I felt a presence… someone was standing over me, with a tray. “Mind if I join you?” The stranger asked. I looked up, ready to say I was almost done… To my surprise, it was George Bush, then the Director of Central Intelligence. He was all by himself.

I stood up and said, “Please, have a seat.” I introduced myself and told him where I worked. He started to introduce himself and I said, I know who you are.

He laughed… that laugh of his. He said we had minutes before his people (handlers) would realize he was missing and come find him.

We talked about duty and service. I told him about my job and how I was there for a class… I left out the part about me being a jerk and not mixing in.
He opined that those classes were a good way to bond with people from different parts of the organization. I believe he sensed I wasn’t doing that because I was eating alone. I was embarrassed.

True to his thought, soon after some folks “found” him – although he insisted he wasn’t lost. I invited him to come visit the building I worked in to see what great work my colleagues were doing. He said he would.

I went back to the class. Late. I told them why and was bombarded with questions about him. I had an epiphany and became a full participant.

He left me with a message I hadn’t understood – not only was I learning from my classmates, but they were also learning from me.

A few weeks later a handwritten note found its way to me at my office. He thanked me for our conversation at lunch; it said he had learned a lot!

Little did he know the lesson I learned from him. He turned my life and career around.

This was the first encounter I had with him… and my favorite George H.W. Bush story.
When I responded to my friend’s note, saying how remarkable this story is, he said this:

“Remember, the Agency was under seize by the Church and Pike committees. People were angry (I was angry). Morale was low and it wasn’t enjoyable coming into work. He made me feel (probably for the first time) a senior [leader] cared about me and what I thought.

“His gift of asking the right questions and listening was amazing. He made me feel what we were doing WAS important and everything was going to be alright.

“I had been looking to leave. Of course, I didn’t… but his lessons weren’t lost on me.

“I learned how to be a good, compassionate leader and understood that everyone was always looking at you for direction and assurance that you care about them and what they do.”

It is and was most important to lead when things were not going well.”

Dana Perino currently hosts FOX News Channel’s (FNC) The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino (weekdays 2-3PM/ET) and also serves as co-host of The Five (weekdays 5-6PM/ET). She joined the network in 2009 as a contributor

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them,
for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 7:12

Lunacy followed by the real story of Rudolph

“The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think,
and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know…
Do justly.
Love mercy.
Walk humbly.
This is enough.”
John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

(one of my most treasured items from childhood…my Rudolph snow globe/ Julie Cook / 2018)

I love today’s quote.
It is from one of my all-time favorite presidents.
And it is a powerful reminder of what is really important and what truly matters in
this upside down world of ours…
especially during these surreal days and time.

I needed to read and heed such wisdom today after reading the following story
that is linked below.

It’s a story about an article that was offered by the liberal media outlet
The HuffPost.
It seems that the HuffPost and their minions of readers
(or is that ‘bloodthirsty’ followers??),
have recently set their wreckless sights on finding fault with a beloved Christmas
children’s classic story and cartoon.

It seems that even poor ol’ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is not exempt from
the attacks of a rabid progressive liberal society that is riding chaotically on one
rail while careening rapidly out of control.

This quasi-news outlet offers a story, along with a video, explaining why Rudolph is
not the long thought moral tale that we have all loved and known since 1939.
Rather it is their opinion that this children’s classic is subversive and is totally
out of step with the current mindset of liberal’s everywhere.

I was 5 years old in 1964 when the animated version hit the airwaves.
It was an integral part of our family’s annual gearing up to the Christmas season.
Mother made certain we had had out baths and were dressed in our pjs while
Dad found the right channel on the television console as we settled in as
a family to watch this iconic Christmas classic.

However, the HuffPost is now telling us that Rudolph is not as we thought.
It is not a tale of overcoming a perceived handicap while rising above
life’s obstacles only to become the hero of the day,
but rather the HuffPost offers a twisted view of this classic children’s tale of
both innocence and Christmas…

They’ve twisted innocence and something for children into something sinister.

Then they add insult to injury…they provide the hate-filled and bizarre remarks
made by their readers.

Read the following words carefully.

“Among those observations was the suggestion that the TV classic was a story about racism
and homophobia, while calling Santa Claus abusive and bigoted.

“Yearly reminder that #Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a parable on racism and homophobia
w/Santa as a bigoted exploitative prick,” read one comment shared by HuffPost.
“Santa’s operation is an HR nightmare and in serious need of diversity and inclusion training.
#Rudolph,” read another.

The video also suggests it was problematic that Rudolph’s father verbally abused him by forcing
him to wear a fake nose to be accepted by others.

Some eagle-eyed social media critics also said the cartoon is sexist because Rudolph’s
mom was snubbed after she wanted to help reindeer husband Donner to search for their son
after he goes missing.
“No, this is man’s work,” Donner says.

But HuffPost’s effort to highlight the perceived bigotry of the beloved movie attracted
tens of thousands of negative comments, most of them mocking the video.

And if I were one who tweeted, or facebooked, or opted to read the HuffPost, then I would join
those thousands who offered negative commentaries.
I would stand on a rooftop and shout how this is nothing but a bunch of dribble.
Ridiculous idiocy and anyone who buys into it is so totally lost and oblivious to reality…
Because obviously there must not be enough really important news if they’re resorting to
writing about the ills of a classic children’s tale.

And dare I say I saw another lead-in story to the ills of Charlie Brown’s Christmas…
does this culture of ours, a culture that has lost its mind, not have enough lunacy
already on its plate before it sets into attacking Charlie Brown???

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/liberal-outlet-mocked-for-saying-classic-rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer-is-sexist-and-bigoted

However, according to the History Channel—there is actually a “real” story behind Rudolph.
A story of real human perseverance.
A story of overcoming the depths of sorrow and difficulty while finding real hope.

Perhaps if the HuffPost had actually bothered to read the back story of Rudolph
and that of Rudolph’s original creator, Robert May, they may have opted to back off…
as Rudolph has always been a tale of hope…despite their now post Christian,
post Christmas spin.

Balsam wreaths and visions of sugarplums had barely faded in the first weeks of 1939,
but thoughts inside the Chicago headquarters of retail giant Montgomery Ward had
already turned to the next Christmas 11 months away.
The retailer had traditionally purchased and distributed coloring books to children
as a holiday promotion, but the advertising department decided it would be cheaper
and more effective instead to develop its own Christmas-themed book in-house.

The assignment fell to Robert May, a copywriter with a knack for turning a
limerick at the company’s holiday party. The adman, however,
had difficulty summoning up holiday cheer, and not just because of the date on the calendar.
Not only was the United States still trying to shake the decade-long Great Depression
while the rumblings of war grew once again Europe,
but May’s wife was suffering with cancer and the medical bills had thrown the family into debt.
Sure, he was pursuing his passion to write,
but churning out mail order catalog copy about men’s shirts instead of penning
the Great American Novel was not what he had envisioned himself doing at age 33
with a degree from Dartmouth College.

Given the assignment to develop an animal story,
May thought a reindeer was a natural for the leading role
(not to mention that his 4-year-old daughter, Barbara, loved the reindeers every time
she visited the zoo). As he peered out at the thick fog that had drifted off Lake Michigan,
May came up with the idea of a misfit reindeer ostracized because of his
luminescent nose who used his physical abnormality to guide Santa’s sleigh and save Christmas.
Seeking an alliterative name, May scribbled possibilities on a scrap of paper—
Rollo, Reginald, Rodney and Romeo were among the choices—before circling his favorite.
Rudolph.

As May worked on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” through the summer,
his wife’s health worsened. She passed away in July 1939.
Now a widower and a single father, May refused the offer of his boss to give the
assignment to someone else.
“I needed Rudolph now more than ever,” he later wrote.
Burying his grief, May finished the story in August.

The 89 rhyming couplets in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” borrow from
Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” right from the story’s opening line:
“Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the hills /The reindeer were playing…
enjoying the spills.”
Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling”
also inspired the storyline as did May’s own childhood when he endured taunts from
schoolmates for being small and shy.
“Rudolph and I were something alike,” the copywriter told Guideposts magazine in January 1975.
“As a child, I’d always been the smallest in the class.
Frail, poorly coordinated,
I was never asked to join the school teams.”

Those familiar with only the 1964 animated television version of
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which remains the longest-running Christmas special
in television history a half-century after its debut on NBC,
might not recognize the original tale.
There is no Hermey the elf, no Abominable Snow Monster,
not even the Land of Misfit Toys.
While Rudolph was taunted for his glowing red nose and disinvited from reindeer games
in May’s story, he did not live at the North Pole and was asleep in his house
when Santa Claus, struggling mightily with the fog, arrived with presents and realized
how the reindeer’s radiant snout could help him complete his Christmas Eve rounds.

Montgomery Ward had high hopes for its new 32-page, illustrated booklet,
which would be given as a free gift to children visiting any of the department
store’s 620 locations.
“We believe that an exclusive story like this aggressively advertised in our newspaper
ads and circulars,” the advertising department stated in a September 1939 memo,
“can bring every store an incalculable amount of publicity…
and, far more important a tremendous amount of Christmas traffic.”

The retailer’s holiday advertisements touted “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
as “the rollicking new Christmas verse that’s sweeping the country!”
That wasn’t just hype.
Children snapped up nearly 2.4 million copies of the paper-bound book in 1939.
Plans to print another 1.6 million copies the following year were shelved
by paper shortages due to World War II, and Rudolph remained on hiatus until
the conflict’s conclusion.
When the reindeer story returned in 1946,
it was more popular than ever as Montgomery Ward handed out 3.6 million
copies of the book.

In the interim, May married a fellow Montgomery Ward employee and became
a father again, but he still struggled financially.
In 1947, the retailer’s board of directors, stirred either by the holiday
spirit or belief that the story lacked revenue-making potential,
signed the copyright for “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” over to May.
In short order, May licensed a commercial version of the book along with a full
range of Rudolph-themed merchandise including puzzles, View-Master reels,
snow globes, mugs and slippers with sheep wool lining and leather soles.

In 1949, songwriter Johnny Marks, who happened to be May’s brother-in-law,
set Rudolph’s story to music.
After Bing Crosby reportedly turned down the chance,
singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded the song, which sold 2 million copies
in the first year and remains one of the best-selling tunes of all time.

The song and merchandise sales made May financially comfortable, but hardly rich.
After leaving Montgomery Ward in 1951 to manage the Rudolph commercial empire,
May returned to his former employer seven years later.
He continued to work as a copywriter until his 1971 retirement.
By the time he died five years later, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
had become a piece of modern folklore and a metaphor for overcoming obstacles,
embracing differences and recognizing everyone’s unique potential.

May we, the rational and sane who still find the magic of Christmas that is so entwined
with the everlasting gift of Hope that was offered so long ago to all of mankind in a
simple stable in the tiny town of Bethlehem, continue to seek the truth rather
than the sensationalized mania that heavily blankets our current world.

Here’s the Rudolph and to all the joy he has inspired since 1939
and here is to the Christ Child who continues to offer Hope and Salvation
to such an ailing world….

It’s all in the name

“It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”
―W.C. Fields

(a glimpse of the facade of Andrew Jackson’s home The Hermitage / Julie Cook / 2018)

(the Greek revival tomb designed by Jackson for both he and his beloved wife Rachel /
Julie Cook / 2018)

If you’ve ever been through the state of Tennessee, particularly in the fall of the year…
thinking that you had come to take in the beautiful and picturesque Smokey Mountains
and perhaps an eyeful of the warm and golden hues of Fall’s magnificent splendor,
you will have no less certainly seen the giant orange or white T’s
that vie for dominance over the Tennessean landscape.

Or perhaps it’s an orange and white checkerboard painted door, orange, and white flags,
a myriad of stickers donning every Tennesse car, or even a checkerboard with a giant
T painted on many an old and seemingly dilapidated barn.
For in the fall, each and every Saturday hundreds of thousands of Tennessee fans will
be heard statewide singing a rousing rendition of Rocky Top as they cheer
on their Tennesee Vols.

So I suppose it’s only natural that most of us have either earned or been given the
dubious honor of a nickname…
Usually, a name attached to us during childhood that has an odd and often irritating
way of sticking with us throughout life…
and thus the same seems true for our 50 states.

We have states boasting themselves by their nicknames as the Show-Me State,
The Sunshine State,
The Peach State,
The Sooners state,
The Buckeye state…

Some of the nicknames are for obvious reasons while other nicknames are simply lost
in the annals of the history of our Nation.

Yet you may just find yourself asking…”what exactly is a Vol?”

A Vol is a Volunteer…as in Tennessee is known as the Volunteer State.

And if you don’t quite know your history, you might think that is just a reference
to the fact that those state residents like to volunteer for things.

And in a way, you’d be partially right.

But the story, according to most historians, actually goes back to the War of 1812.

And whereas you may have only thought that the Colonies,
which gave way to these United States of America, had won their freedom from the
British in 1776…you would naturally think that that was the final end of the story…
and therefore you would need to be reminded that hard feelings die slow deaths and that
those who spent centuries vying for dominance always hate to lose.

“The War of 1812 was a defining period in the early history of Tennessee.
For the first time, Tennessee was thrust into the national
spotlight through its military and political prowess.
When war was declared on Great Britain in June 1812,
it was a Tennessean, Congressman Felix Grundy,
who was given the lion’s share of credit
(or blame) for steering Congress toward a declaration of war against one of the
mightiest military powers of the day.
Grundy, a Nashville lawyer, along with a group of Democratic-Republicans known as the War Hawks,
provided the rhetoric necessary to lead the nation into a conflict that many considered unpopular. Tennessee’s accomplishments on the battlefield during the Creek War (1813-1814)
gave the country something to cheer about in a period of otherwise dismal campaigns
against the British.
And, of course, Andrew Jackson’s stunning victory at New Orleans
showed the world that the United States was coming of age and could take its
place among the nations of the world.

New Orleans Campaign
(December 1814 – January 1815)
After leaving a sizable portion of his army to occupy the various garrisons
throughout the Mississippi Territory,
Jackson arrived in New Orleans in early December to conduct the defense of the city
that was to be the prize of Great Britain’s southern campaign.
Located above the mouth of the Mississippi River,
New Orleans’ strategic location and accumulated wealth offered a tempting reward
to a British army fresh from its victory over Napoleon in Europe.
Elite English forces faced Jackson’s polyglot army of militia,
frontier volunteers, U.S. regulars, pirates, free blacks, Creoles, and Choctaws.
Although the famous Battle of New Orleans has been noted in song and celebration,
the British assault on New Orleans was actually composed of several different engagements:
Brief History of Tennessee in the War of 1812
Prepared by Tom Kanon, Tennessee State Library, and Archives

Yet some historians argue that the nickname actually came later during the
Mexican American War.

According to Tennessee History, future President, General Zachary Taylor,
dispatched a report to President Polk saying ‘hostilities had begun.

The report reached President Polk while he was dining and the President
immediately called his cabinet into an emergency session.

The following week, a divided Congress agreed that a state of war existed with Mexico.

“U.S. Navy Ships immediately moved to blockade the Gulf of Mexico and others in
the Pacific moved towards California ports.
With a regular standing army of only 8,000 men and General Taylor screaming
for reinforcements, President Polk was forced to call upon the states to raise
2,600 men each to supply the American Army in Mexico,” stated Tennessee History.

The proclamation went out from Nashville that the federal government needed 2,600 volunteers
to assist in the war with Mexico…
Within a week’s time, more than 30,000 Tennesseans responded to the call to arms.
And it was from this overwhelming show of patriotism that the State of Tennessee not
only assisted in winning the outright sovereignty of the State of Texas,
but also in securing its lasting title as The Volunteer State.
Appalachian Magazine – May 24, 2016

During the war of 1812, this particular time in our young nation’s tenuous growth—
most of the political leaders of the day were the movers and shakers…
they were the voters and decision makers…
they did not think the general uneducated populace of the fledgling states should be
given the vote themselves…given the vote to pick and choose such positions
like presidents…
It was a more paternal form of leadership in that the leaders decided they knew
what was best “for the people”…

And yet it was a president who sent out a call for help…be it in 1812 or 1840,
a call went out to these same uneducated farmers, laborers, and shopkeepers
who just happened to be Tennesseans, during yet another devastating war…
a call for their help in defending their young Nation.
For this war was to be a final stamp to America’s true independence.

The request was for 2,600.
30,000 came.

There was such a strong sense to protect and maintain what so many had sacrificed
their lives over.

What a marvelous moniker…
The Volunteer State…
the state where the citizens realized the importance of what was at stake…
not only for their state but for their entire Nation.

All of this history is really something to ponder yet is easily glossed over when we glance
back.

It makes me wonder…
if our president today sent out the call for help in defending our Nation…would anyone answer
the call or would they be simply too busy disparaging him and those who support his leadership?

Are we so divided today that we would actually let who we are as a Nation, simply disovlve…

I wonder…

If my people, who are called by my name,
will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14

Generational monkeys and angst, part deux

A person may think their own ways are right, but the LORD weighs the heart.
Proverbs 21:2

He took what is mine so that He might impart to me what is His.
He took it not to overturn it but to fill it.
St Ambrose

(a selfie taking Macaque at the center of a debate regarding images
and monkeys / wikipedia—why does he look like he’s missing the same tooth I just had pulled??? At least I’m crossing my fingers for the implant!)

As promised, our friend of Wee Flea fame, David Robertson is back with part II
of his takeaway from Rod Liddle’s book
Selfish Whining Monkeys, How we ended up greedy, narcissistic and unhappy

A cheeky book examining “our” generation—along with the hows and whys as to our
having totally careened out of control…
leaving the roadway, having crashed, rolling over and over…
as we are now slowly burning in the bushes.

As I mentioned yesterday, David reports that the book is not written by a Christian
nor is it directed toward a Christian audience as it is a tome laced with a rawness
along with a gracious offering of the F word…
yet David offers that once you look past the junk, the insight is actually
very telling.

And so David in his kindness has pulled out a top 25 highlight list that he has
graciously compiled on his blog for those of us who might not want to
actually, read the book.

1-13 was in his Part I post from yesterday, today he offers us Part II—
I’m just pulling out a few of the tidbits that sting me the most…

I’ll let you click the link at the bottom for the
full coup de grâce—-
Oh, and you do know what coup de grâce actually means don’t you???
It is the merciful death blow allowing the misery to end…
I fear we still have our fair share of suffering to endure…

14) The Uneducated Generation

“children are not, in general, capable of making sensible decisions which impact upon their future. They make decisions based upon the here and now. They are not old enough to take the long-term view.” Page 89.

“The children – the students – emerge, as a consequence, with a highly developed, perhaps unreal, sense of entitlement. They have not been corrected; they have instead been indulged. The world, later, will come as a shock to them, I think.” Page 93.

“It is the poorest kids who suffer most from this modernist approach to education. Middle-class children have the amenities, the infrastructure at home to compensate. The poorest kids depend upon school as their sole conduit of learning. A policy, or ideology, designed to improve the chances of the least well-off as had the results of penalizing them still further.” Page 94.

“British kids, then, are squeezed by ideologies from the left and the right. From the left: you are your own masters, sort out right from wrong and take no shit from supposed figures of authority. From the right: live, consume, die.” Page 96.

“We do not wish for them to be bored, of course, and we think that we can buy boredom from them with consumer durables, corporate entertainment and early evening courses in tae kwon do.”Page 97.

15) A Motherless Generation

“The children born in 1970 to working mothers were much more likely to fail educationally, more likely to be unemployed, more likely to suffer psychiatric problems or mental stress than those born to mums who stayed at home and looked after their children. Irritatingly, the amount of time a dad was at home with the kids mattered not one jot. It was the mother who was important.” Page 106.

16) The Unequal Generation

“Almost 70% of total national newspaper columnists went to fee-paying schools, whereas this gilded elite, this expensively educated, comprise just 7% of the population….. In fact, anywhere there is power, or dosh, the sons, and daughters of the wealthy predominate.” Page 118.

“Some 58% of those working in the law – rising to 80% when you get to High Court judges in the very top barristers – and 55% of senior civil servants. They also make up more than 60% of the top echelon of those in the City of London, some 70% of surgeons and consultants, and 55% of journalists,…… 80% of the very top jobs in society are held by people who went to private school.”Page 121.

“when I joined the BBC today programme at the end of the 1980s, I noticed very quickly that almost everyone else to work on it had been privately educated.” Page 125.

23) A Deluded Generation Enslaved by its own Freedom

“We have been led, since the middle of the 1980s, by an elite which increasingly bought into the secular social liberalism and moral relativism of the 1960s and the laissez-faire economics of the Chicago school. And while the rest of us followed along more or less willingly, it was the Metropolitan bourgeoisie that gained the most.” Page 230.

“As we always will, we did what we thought we could get away with. Now it transpired that we could get away with an awful lot; we could get away with stuff we hadn’t dreamed of before. The thought that along the way we got rid of those controls that made our life more pleasant, more coherent, better for children, more peaceable and communitarian, did not seem to occur. We thought we liked this new way we were, these new deregulated humans, fearful of nothing but I think that we have deluded ourselves. We filled our boots and deluded ourselves.” Page 231.

And so I will leave you to go over to the Wee Flea in order to peruse the remaining
nuggets which David has pulled out of Mr. Liddle’s book—of which just so
happens to all thankfully be the ‘G’ version versus the ‘M’ version
in the actual book—-with ‘M’ standing for mature—

As I am certainly a “mature” individual…I just happen to prefer to read, hear,
digest that which is not so crass nor crude…

Now if I could just work on our President’s choices…

Selfish Whining Monkeys – Part 2

Listen, my son, accept what I say,
and the years of your life will be many.
I instruct you in the way of wisdom
and lead you along straight paths.
When you walk, your steps will not be hampered;
when you run, you will not stumble.
Hold on to instruction, do not let it go;
guard it well, for it is your life.
Proverbs 4:10-13