conspiracy, good practice or a dark path slippery slope

(Sutjeska, Tjentište, Bosnia and Herzegovina via the web)

So I did it again, I watched a bit of the news.

I caught the tail end of a story about the Biden Administration’s
desire to head out, hitting the asphalt, in order to go door to door
checking to see who has and who hasn’t gotten their COVID vaccine.

Hummmm…

Let it be known, I didn’t grow up like my parents did who spent their youthful
summers, back in the 30’s and 40’s living under a veil of fear…
fear not so much from a raging world war across an ocean but rather fear
of disease…
as in polio and tuberculosis.

Both diseases—viral and bacterial were running rampant when my parents
were young.
People were told to avoid crowds—
Summer’s, in the South back in those days, were pre air conditioning days—
Since it was hot, sticky and steamy,
everyone wanted to duck into a theater to watch a movie or head
to one of the many community pools.
Places where all types of humanity collided together.

Both places where folks were told to avoid yet beckoned for one and all.

But I can tell you, both my parents threw caution to the wind.
Dad loved his Buck Rodgers and Mother loved to swim.
Even in the big city, kids could pretty much come and go with
nary a thought as to safety.
Kids ran free—walking or riding a bike to wherever they wanted to go.

Yet the fear of contracting polio or TB was real…
especially after a 39 year old husband and father in New York
went to bed one evening with a slight fever and then
woke up in the morning and was unable to move his legs.

That 39 year old husband and father was Franklin Roosevelt.
He had somehow contracted polio.
And the rest is history.

And might we note that my grandfather, who I never met, died in 1940 from
Tuberculosis.

So I understand the reality of worry and fear regarding “catching”
a debilitating “bug.”

And so as vaccines were formulated, eventually we all began to be
‘vaccinated’.

And so as a child, I can remember receiving my polio sugar cube…a real sugar
cube doused with the vaccine.
At my elementary school, we lined up in our various grades,
wending our way to the Nurses clinic to receive our dosed sugar cube.

And blessedly with time and diligence, polio was eventually eradicated.

And so I am perplexed as to how I feel about the Biden Administration
wanting to go door to door to “check on” whether a vaccine has been
embraced or not…

I really don’t like the idea of our Government knocking on doors
checking on folks medical privacy—hence why we have HIPA—a health
privacy protection component that keeps our medical info just that…
our own.

But now…that is not so much the case.

So how do I feel about Big Government knocking on our doors
inquiring as to wether we have been vaccinated or not…and if that
answer is not, what will they then do or say????
I don’t know…but I think I’m feeling very uneasy.

I read a blog post yesterday that piqued my interest.

It was actually a re-blog from another person…
a person who thought the idea of the Big G, as in Big Government, knocking
on our doors and demanding to know whether we’d been vaccinated or not
was a reason that average citizens should be concerned.

This notion of ‘knowing’ reminds me of census takers….
those folks who are hired by the Big G government to inquire as to our income,
household numbers, etc…

How old are you?
Who is the head of your household?
What is the highest level of education reached within your household?
Can you read?
Can you write?
What is your gender?
What is your income?
Do you rent or own your home?
Etc.

Now the question is going to be, ‘are you vaccinated?’
And if your answer is no…what will that look like?

Here is a link to a copy of that post:

https://leohohmann.com/2021/07/07/what-should-you-do-when-federal-agents-arrive-at-your-door-with-questions-about-your-personal-health-decisions/

And here is an excerpt along with a look at a very interesting book–
a book I immediately ordered once I saw it:

What should you do when federal agents arrive at your
door with questions about your personal health decisions?

Below is an excerpt from a review of Black’s book by the
Alliance for Human Research Protection.

“A question that had eluded historians for decades was how
did the Nazis obtain lists of Jews – not only in Germany but
throughout Europe—whom they rapidly rounded up for deportation
and ultimately for extermination?
Black pursued this question until he found the answer:
IBM and its German subsidiary which custom-designed,
named after Herman Hollerith, who founded IBM in 1896 as
a census tabulating company.

“But when IBM Germany formed its philosophical and technologic
alliance with Nazi Germany, census and registration took on a new mission.
IBM Germany invented the racial census—listing not just religious affiliation,
but bloodline going back generations. This was the Nazi data lust.
Not just to count the Jews—but to identify them.

“People and asset registration was only one of the many uses
Nazi Germany found for high-speed data sorters.
Food allocation was organized around databases,
allowing Germany to starve the Jews. Slave labor was identified,
tracked, and managed largely through [IBM] punch cards.”

Interestingly, the IBM of today is also involved in the creation
of digital health passports, partnering with vaccine-maker
Moderna in New York’s Excelsior Pass, which is being required
for anyone attending sporting events or other large-venue events
in New York.

Microsoft is likewise partnering with the city of Los Angeles
schools and Anthem Health to implement the Daily Pass QR Health Portal
that will track every student in that district under the premise of
“protecting” people from COVID.

“The voluntary ‘health passes’ now being rolled out are just
the tip of the iceberg. Before long, they will become mandatory,
at which point unvaccinated individuals will be effectively excluded
from society,” writes Dr. Joseph Mercola in his article IBM Partners
with Moderna for COVID Reset.

As I was reading this post, I was intrigued by this book
regarding IBM and Nazi Germany.
How DID the Germans know the names and locations of all the Jews??

I always wondered how they knew such without the type of technology we
possess today.

And of all organizations…it was IBM who gave up those names
and information.
It was a business that was first charged with, of all things,
census information.

The Nazis knew because IBM had documented households…
their ethnicity, their income, their religion, their family members…

So how do I feel about the Big G government coming to my door inquiring as
to whether or not we’ve been vaccinated….?
I don’t know.
I’be been vaccinated but do I want Big G to be privy to such???
Again, I don’t know.
What will the repercussion be if a household opts not to answer…
what if they actually refuse to answer yay or nay?

What of personal choice?

A dangerously slippery slope…

But Peter and the apostles answered,
“We must obey God rather than men.
Acts 5:29

her name was Eunice Dunn

I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger
Lyrics by
Ron Lane / Ronald David Wood
Sung by Rod Stewart

(Eunice and mom / June 16th, 1953)

Throughout my entire life, I only knew her by her first name…Eunice.

Eunice passed from this life shortly after I arrived into this world–
into this family…

I was born in 1959 and eventually adopted in early 1960— Eunice,
on the other hand, had already long since “retired” from the years she spent
with my grandmother, mother, and aunt.

I imagine that our family’s circle was somewhat complete when Eunice finally
met me when mom and dad had brought me home from the adoption agency in 1960.
They were so proud to show off their new baby to this very special part of my
mom’s story.

I had always heard about Eunice but really knew very little about her.
As long as they had lived, both my mom and aunt spoke of Eunice with
only adoration and abiding love.

For you see, Eunice was more the mother to these two girls rather than their
own mother.

Eunice was a black woman, only a year older than my grandmother.
A black woman who raised two white little girls.

I found her listed on the Atlanta 1940 census records.
She was listed as a part of the household of my grandfather…listed as a servant.
And it was in that census record that I first learned of Eunice’s last name…Dunn.
And that she was but a year older than my grandmother…
My grandmother was 36, Eunice was 37.

This, however, is not a tale about the well-to-do verses something akin to “The Help.”

This is a story about a young working widow and the other woman who helped her
raise her daughters.

Two women working to make ends meet during a precarious time in our Nation’s history.

The part of the story that I always knew was that my grandmother was widowed in 1940,
at the ripe young age of 36.
She had two young daughters–one who was 6 and the youngest who was 1.
My grandmother’s husband, my grandfather, died of alcohol-induced TB while
spending his final days in a TB sanatorium–dying at the age of 40.

My grandfather had squandered their entire life’s savings during the great depression.
My grandmother, as long as I had known her, had a deep wariness of men and
never trusted a man who drank…despite her affinity for Vodka later in life.
Over the years, she liked my dad yet despised my uncle, my aunt’s husband.
Probably with good reason but that’s a story for another day.

Growing up, I can never ever recall my grandmother ever speaking of her husband…
my grandfather.
A man who died nearly 20 years before I was born.

This man–his name, his memory was deemed persona non gratis within this small family.
No pictures.
No stories.
No recognition.

But Eunice…Eunice, she was special.

My grandmother, at 36 years old, while during a depression and world war,
had two little girls who she needed to provide for.

Eunice at 37 also had a family she needed to provide for.

My grandmother went to work and even took in borders during the War.

Yet despite these precarious times, I always knew that my mom,
aunt and grandmother had Eunice.

Eunice was a black woman who worked as a housekeeper for my grandmother.
Later, in order to make ends meet, my grandmother actually took in her older unmarried sister.
The two opened a beauty salon for the upper crust women of Atlanta.

While they spent their days cutting, perming, and dying the hair of Atlanta’s upper crust,
Eunice tended to my mother and aunt.
She cooked, cleaned, and fed the family.
She bought groceries, got my mom and aunt ready for school each morning
and met them each afternoon following school.
She always had supper ready and waiting for my grandmother and her sister after they’d
take the bus home late each evening.

Eunice would arrive each Monday morning and would stay until Saturday morning.
She had her own room and basically kept the house running.
She would go home to her own family on Saturday afternoon, only to return to my grandmother
every Monday morning.
This routine ran for 20 plus years.

Years later my aunt and I would both lament about the sacrifices Eunice had made
for both her own family and my grandmother’s family.
It was a difficult time as the world suffered through both the Great Depression and a world war.
This was a generation that was more familiar with the idea of sacrifice over protests
and demonstrations.

I remember my aunt telling me about how, as a little girl, she would have to ride
in the back of the bus with Eunice.
This being life in the South during segregation.

However to my mother, aunt, and grandmother…there were never any color barriers…
no segregation…all they knew was what made a family, family…
and Eunice was very much a part of that family.

The only pictures I’ve ever seen of Eunice were found in a musty old envelope of photos
that had been stored away in our attic…in a box of things that had been dads following
mother’s death in 1986.

I’ve looked and looked over the internet for any little nugget I could find regarding
Eunice—but the only thing I found was the 1940 census record which listed her
as a part of the Watson’s family.

I wanted to write something that would provide Eunice with the place of honor
that she so rightly deserved and held in the hearts of both my mom and aunt…
but with so little to go on, that has proved difficult.
With the loss of my grandmother in 1989, mother in 1986, and Martha in 2017—
those who knew best are now long gone.

I wanted people to know that despite what our current culture screams about racism,
there has been love that remained colorblind long before the radicalism
of movements such as the Black Panthers or today’s Black Lives Matter.

So I want to say thank you to a woman who I never really knew but who had met me
a very long time ago.

I want to thank her for making both my mom and aunt into the women they become,
in turn, making me the woman who I have become.

Love and family are strong bonds.
Bonds that have each helped to make me the person I am today.

Thank you, Eunice.

(Mother and Eunice, 1953)

(Mother on her big day / 1953)

(Mother with her mother, Mimi / 1953)

(mother with her father in law, my beloved Pop / 1953)

(Mother and dad off to a honeymoon / 1953)

But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household,
he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
1 Timothy 5:8

freedom…hummmm…

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the life & writings of Benjamin Franklin

(image courtesy a business site)

If the truth be told, I’ve had one particular thought crossing my mind over and over
throughout this most surreal time in our lives.
That thought is simply one of freedom.

I’ve even addressed it here in blogland, when the time has allowed, during this past nearly
three months of living life in the Twilight Zone.

There has been a roller coaster of emotions for all of us…
emotions of sorrow, fear, confusion—-

And there has been a stone wall of both frustration and anger.

I have noted before that I live in a “free” state.

A classification that I find extremely bizarre.
When would an American find themselves differentiating between a free
and non-free state other than say, during the Civil War?!

But for our 21st-century way of thinking,
a free state is a state that is lifting its pandemic bans.
Non-free states remain closed.
As in non-functioning.

I have recently enjoyed the opportunity of actually going out to eat.

Actually sitting down at one of my favorite restaurants and actually enjoying a dining experience
albeit with masked servers and socially distanced table set-ups.

People in our state can go get a haircut—something I’ve yet to do as the process
is a tad tedious and makes for very limited appointments so I’ll stick to my
ballcap for now.

The liquor store is still curbside.
Which I kind of enjoy but miss looking at the pretty bottles.

Our farmer’s markets are open.

I’m going to get my car serviced tomorrow—at a dealership 45 minutes away, in another town…
meaning I am free to travel about without restriction.

In Italy, they had to have official paperwork allowing them to venture
out of their homes in order to go to the grocery store or Pharmacia.

Whereas our parks are beginning to reopen, our lakes and marinas have never closed.

And we should note that our grocery store chains, Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes
and Home Depot have never closed–
nor did they even ration the number of patrons entering the stores–masks or no masks.

And for the record, I do not wear a mask.

If I am told I had to do so if it meant visiting a certain business, I would oblige–
but if not mandated, I don’t.
I am not sick.
I have not been exposed.
Plus I try not to let fear dictate my life.

Good hygiene practices and common sense rather than fear seem to both win out for me.
But I digress…

One thing I have found perplexing is the tit for tat that governors in
“non-free” states are having with their fellow governors in free states–
along with that of their /our President.
They are trying to remain locked down come hell or high water—
and if they aren’t careful…it just might be both.

People are not being allowed to work.
They are being furloughed, let go, or permanently closed down.
And small businesses, the backbone of this nation, are not being allowed to operate.

As this all makes good economic sense to whom???

Another odd happening throughout the country during all of this mess
is that one has been free to go get an abortion if one so chooses as abortion clinics
had been categorized as “essential” yet church doors remain sealed.

So that means that one’s spiritual wellness is not essential but murder and death are…
go figure.

See Citizen Tom’s posting on the Prince William-Manassas Family Alliance in Virginia for
more of the story of the idiocy reigning supreme in the Commonwealth of Virginia regarding the
rights of the unborn–or maybe that should read…no rights for the unborn.

THE ABORTION MASQUERADE

And if I hear another pastor or priest dictate that they are keeping the doors
shut to their particular houses of worship because they are following
“science” —–well, just knock me in the head!

Men and women of the cloth are to follow the Word of God—
and I’m pretty certain God’s doors are open as He will certainly approve of the various
and the necessary health precautions for his precariously fragile creations.

Wear masks if you must, wear gloves if you must, receive communion, the Host, in open hands and use a
throw away cup for the wine verses a chalice—
Sit in pews 6 feet apart or on every other pew…don’t sing if you think it too
precarious and contagious (as in healthwise and not song-wise) but for Heaven’s sake
and for our sake, let the people pray and worship in God’s house!!!!

Did we close the churches and synagogues during the Great Depression or WWII???
Or what of the summers when polio was plaguing our children?
Or when TB was running rampant?

When people most needed comfort and hope, the various houses of worship opened
wide their doors.
They may have donated church goods to be melted for the war effort, they may have
had fewer attending due to polio or TB concerns, but the doors were open none the less,
allowing the spiritually hungry to come inside and find sustenance.

And so I caught another great post over on the Smoke of Satan and the Open Windows of Vatican II
musing over our plight in the Twilight Zone

“How did a temporary plan to preserve hospital capacity turn into two-to-three months
of near-universal house arrest that ended up causing worker furloughs at 256 hospitals,
a stoppage of international travel, a 40% job loss among people earning less than $40K per year,
devastation of every economic sector, mass confusion and demoralization,
a complete ignoring of all fundamental rights and liberties,
not to mention the mass confiscation of private property with forced closures of millions of businesses?

Whatever the answer, it’s got to be a bizarre tale…”

https://smokeofsatan.wordpress.com/2020/05/25/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

And now, we come back full circle to the notion of Freedom.

A notion, along with the fact that I am writing this post on Memorial Day,
is a most poignant thought.

It is the day we remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our very freedoms.

But the question remains…what of those freedoms?

Who now dictates those freedoms?

I will close today’s rambling with a look at the opening quote by Benjamin Franklin…

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

What are you willing to give up for a bit of temporary safety?
Everything?
I hope not.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
For you were called to freedom, brothers.
Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
But if you bite and devour one another,
watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
Galatians 5:1 and 5:13-15

I ain’t no saint….

If God sends you many sufferings,
it is a sign that He has great plans for you and
certainly wants to make you a saint.
St. Ignatius Loyola

(stained glass St Patrick’s Cathedral / Dublin, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

First of all,
let’s make this perfectly clear,
I am not in any way,
nor have I ever been,
a saint…

I have never professed to be…
nor have I lived what would be considered a
very saintly life.

But that is not to say that I am a wanton miscreant either…

I’m very much like the next person, full of foibles, warts and all…

I have, rather, during this life of mine found much wisdom,
and even grace, in the words written and shared
by those individuals who have, by no campaigning of their own, found themselves
named to that more sacred list of the who’s who….

It is during the more trying times in life that I tend to seek much
needed wisdom and clarity.
Certainly more so than during those more quiet and calmer days of living.

This time, here and now….is no bed of roses….
In fact it reminds me of the Churchill quote…
“If you’re going through hell, by all means keep going…”

Between Dad and me, I think I’ve seen just about every ologist out there.
Then with my poor husband,
who is up to his eye balls trying to settle his late dad’s estate,
we have been busy with the esquires….

I suppose you know it’s bad when the latest doctor you’ve seen,
who has known you for the past 25 years,
looks at you with his hand literally on your pulse and asks

“when is the last time you slept?!”

With my response being…

“you tell me?!”

as he soothingly comes back with a…

“Well I’m going to prescribe you a little something to help…”

With me sardonically quipping…

“well I hope its a sledge hammer”

It helps if you’ve known one another over the years—
through things like surgeries, colonoscopies, childbirth…..

Hopefully tomorrow with one more ologist and pedic doctor on the list, there will be some
relief…

And so I thought I’d share a few wise words of comfort by a few of
our past sisteren and brethren out there who have known a thing or two about
hardships, hardtimes, suffering, pain, loss and illness…

Cause you see….
that’s the thing often about these sacred who’s who members…
their words are not mere flippant off the cuff comments meant to sugar coat anything.
Many of them lived pain filled lives both physically as well as mentally and emotionally…

And yet…they allowed their hurting, their sorrows, their struggles…
to act as beckons of light…
focused upward rather than inward and downward….

One must not think that a person who is suffering is not praying.
He is offering up his sufferings to God, and many a time he is praying much
more truly than one who goes away by himself and meditates his head off,
and, if he has squeezed out a few tears, thinks that is prayer.
St. Teresa of Avila
(lost her mother when she was just 14. She suffered grievously from migraines
and prolonged illness–during which she experienced many divine encounters)

It is You Jesus, stretched out on the cross,
who gives me strength and are always close to the suffering soul.
Creatures will abandon a person in his suffering, but You, O Lord, are faithful…
(1508)
St. Faustina
(lived most of her life in poverty–even being turned down from several Cloisters
due to her low status in life.
She developed TB and died at the age of 33—
only after having established the devotion of Divine Mercy)

Courage, my sons. Don’t you see that we are leaving on a mission?
They pay our fare in the bargain.
What a piece of good luck! The thing to do now is to pray well
in order to win as many souls as possible.
St Maximilian Kolbe
[Said when he was first arrested.]
(sent to Auschwitz Nazi death camp where he sacrificed himself in order
for a fellow prisoner to be spared
and was sent to a starvation cell where he sang and prayed with the
other prisoners as they died one by one. He survived two weeks before the guards
entered the cell and ended his life with a deadly injection)

Do you know your roots?

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(the emerging roots of root bound paperwhite bulbs / Julie Cook / 2015)

My dad and his family can trace their roots to 13th century Scotland–that being on his dad’s side. His mother’s side documents their early start back to England and that fateful Mayflower couple Pricilla Mullins and John Alden—the wonderful stuff of legends and lore which makes for great stories.

It is however rather forlornly that I often find myself staring at the large copy xeroxed of this giant map-like family tree based on my dad’s family’s journey—always feeling a bit hesitant to claim my tiny branch. Being adopted I often think that there is another tree out there somewhere, in the black hole of my life, missing a tiny limb. . .that being me.

And then there is my mom’s family and their story, all of which is a bit more sketchy. She was of direct Scotch / Irish blood but that’s about all we know. We surmise both families made their way to the United States on the heels of the devastating An Gorta Mór, better known as the Irish potato famine of the mid 1800’s or even further back to the Bliain an Áir, the year of Slaughter which saw an equally devastating demise of the Irish population, due primarily to starvation, in the mid 1700’s.

Mother’s Irish mother, born at the start of new century in 1902, married her Scottish father in 1924. At some point he sadly took to drink and gambling, losing recklessly everything the couple had on that fateful day in 1929 when all the world simply seemed to crash. Eventually locked away to the confines of a TB sanatorium, he died sick, lost and alone in 1941. My grandmother, to my recollection, never spoke of him again. She was left to raise two young girls at the onset of both a global world war and devastating depression.

My grandmother, who forged seemingly emotionless ahead with her two daughters in tow, built both a successful business and comfortable life for her small family. She was never the warm and fuzzy type of grandmother but rather much more matter of fact, frugal and no nonsense. Given her circumstance, it isn’t surprising. Being both weary and cautious became two common threads woven into her fabric.

For whatever reason, she was very leery, or weary, of the Catholic Church as she was convinced that if John F. Kennedy became president, we were all in going to hell in the proverbial hand basket, as God forbid, a Catholic should be president. A bit irrational to say the least and as to where such irrationality originated, I haven’t a clue.

Yet I find it rather ironic, that to this day, there are many a Christian, even in the midst of this modern 21st century of ours, who are indeed equally weary or leery of both the Catholic as well as the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Maybe it is because there are many Christians who are actually unfamiliar with the history, our history, of the one true “Church.” Maybe it’s because many Christians fail to remember that there was once but one single body, unlike the multitude of branches we see today splitting off from the once sturdy main trunk, much like a giant family tree.

A quick google search yields staggering numbers in regard to a concise listing of total Christian denominations. . .upwards of 35,000–give or take a couple of hundred depending on the source.
Rather amazing that in roughly 2000 years, approximately 35,000 branches have sprouted from one main trunk—but given the divisive nature of human beings, perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised.

When we say in our creed, or declaration of faith, that. . .”We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. . .” we are not saying that we believe in the Catholic church in Rome, as so many of the faithful erroneously believe, but rather we are declaring a belief in a global family–a global family tree containing many branches. The word catholic, with a little “c” is a latin word, catholicus, which comes from the Greek adjective καθολικός katholikos, meaning universal. So therefore in our creed we claim to believe in the one holy “universal” and apostolic church, not a church, faith, or denomination based in Rome, Italy.

The Great Schism of 1054 resulted in the one single trunk of Christianity splitting into two branches, each of the same faith–the Latin Church of the West and the Orthodox Church of the East. The splitting hasn’t appeared to slow down all these many years and branches later but to the contrary it seems to be spiraling, splitting and multiplying almost out of control.

Yet it is not my intent today to examine the divisions and differences of opinions within our Christian faith but rather I am merely making an observation about roots and branches as it were, and as to where one may find oneself on a proverbial family tree–be it the tree of one’s genealogy or of one’s spiritual family tree. And since I am adopted, which seems to throw a small monkey wrench into which branch and to which tree I am actually meant to belong, I am sweetly reminded that we are all adopted sons and daughters of Grace–so perhaps that means we are all members of the family tree of Grace and Salvation—which is actually a very welcoming and comforting thought indeed.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith
Galatians 3:26