The Seventh Day

Saturday morning.
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As you can see the view from my back yard is the Seventh Day Adventist church across the street. It was once a Lutheran church - many years ago. The congregation is largely African now - real African Americans, comprised of immigrants from Ethiopia and someplace else in Africa - some of the women continue to dress in colorful extravagant caftans with matching headdresses. The white elders continue to lead the congregation, and many white families attend, although a majority of whites seem to have have moved to a suburban church.
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No one is ever at this church during the week - just on Saturdays when services are conducted - other days the church is non-functional. As they worship they sing many of the same hymns Novus Ordo Catholics do. Of course Catholics adopted the hymns from the Protestants. I mention this because the congregation across the street considers the Pope to be the Anti-Christ, and the Catholic Church the whore of Babylon - which may explain why they are not friendly to me, although being a single male may have something to do with it too.
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I've always been very nice to them, waving, saying hello, helping to clean snow off the cars during winter, calling police when vandals TP the place, not mowing when services are in session, and so on. Yes I called the police once when a congregant parked blocking my drive-way a year or so ago. And yes, I blew off a couple of old guys who were too friendly and were obviously trying to convert me explaining that homosexuals were going to hell. "Yes, yes," I answered, "I know that. I'm a Roman Catholic, you should be too." That always worked - we still wave to one another. I think the guy with the wig may have died however.

Anyway, talk about discrimination and passing judgement: Extremely handsome (and masculine) single white male, living in a beautiful house with a stunning garden seems to equal gay in many people's eyes. Although one of my neighbors explained to me that gay people did once live in this house and evidently they always left the windows uncovered... no shutters or drapes. (Which also explains all the traffic by the front of the house after I first moved in.)
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But I digress.
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So anyway - on Tuesday of last week the skaters were at the church again. They tape themselves riding the handrails of the staircase. They use a large piece of particle board as a ramp at the first set of stair leading to the main door. To make a long story short one of the guys hurt himself and his buddy got him into his car and drove off, leaving the 4' x 6' panel behind. The deacon who does the gardening was there on Wednesday and ignored the panel. On Thursday another deacon came to mow the grounds - he left the panel there as well. It is still there this morning as all the people arrive, in their Saturday best, filing into church, climbing the now narrow stairway, looking curiously at the panel. The preacher came out to look at it, as did several other guys, only to go back into church to begin the service. Isn't that interesting?
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Yes, I could walk across the street and explain it to them, but they are so good at figuring things out, I'm sure they will know what to do.

Internet addiction...

and denial.
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I love it whenever I post about "us" - people who blog daily and check emails hourly and surf the net for news throughout the day and night - it always pricks some one's conscience and they offer some sort of defense as to why they live online. Whatever - it's your life, not mine - no need to defend yourself to me.
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Sadly - just as I began to appreciate the lady, Dawn Eden is dropping the blog - to work on her masters thesis. I was particularly impressed by her candid admission regarding how absorbing the Internet can be...
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To be honest, I have suffered from an Internet addiction for the past several years. Just as there is no such thing for an alcoholic as "one drink," there is no such thing for me as a quick e-mail check and a perusal of the day's online headlines. If I sit down at the computer, I remain glued to it for hours on end. I might excuse myself by telling myself I am reading about important world events or doing research for school. But the truth is that I allow myself to be distracted by whatever comes to mind while I am at the computer, to the point where it becomes a self-medication for loneliness and boredom. And why do I become lonely and bored? Because I waste so much time on the Internet, of course.
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St. Thomas Aquinas had a word for this vice that causes one to fail to moderate one's quest for knowledge: curiositas. - Dawn Patrol
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Her honesty is refreshing.

Friday stuff.

I'm not writing about you...

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So anyway.

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I'm working on a painting and it's a rainy morning and I have to get to work. It is a difficult painting and if it doesn't turn out I will burn it or gesso over it and paint a pear. I just want to make a comment however.

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The Kinsey report - I came across another critique of Kinsey - the great scholar and sex therapist who deceived the nation with his bogus research. Just like Marge Sanger did with her eugenics doctrine - 'get rid of the undesirables', you know - well Ruth Bader Ginsberg knows what I'm talking about... But I digress.

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"Alfred C. Kinsey had a secret. The Indiana University zoologist and "father of the sexual revolution" almost single-handedly redefined the sexual mores of everyday Americans. The problem was, he had to lie to do it. The weight of this point must not be underestimated. The science that launched the sexual revolution has been used for the past 50 years to sway court decisions, pass legislation, introduce sex education into our schools, and even push for a redefinition of marriage. Kinseyism was the very foundation of this effort. If his science was flawed -- or worse yet, an outright deception -- then our culture's attitudes about sex are not just wrong morally but scientifically as well." - You gotta read this.

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Gay activists often take some of their data from Kinsey, as does Hollywood and Oprah. I know! What difference does it make? "Kinsey's pseudoscience arguably did the most damage through our court systems. That's where attorneys used the researcher's facts" to repeal or weaken laws against abortion, pornography, obscenity, divorce, adultery, and sodomy." (I have to wonder if Christopher West accepts the same sexual revolution data? So-called theology based upon false data isn't good.)

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Just like Marge Sanger's policies have become reproductive rights for women, making abortion settled law - according to Sotomayor and the President and most of Congress.

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It seems to me St. Paul may have been writing of our times in 2 Thessalonians: "[The] lawless one will appear as part of the workings of Satan, accompanied by all the power and signs and wonders at the disposal of falsehood - by every seduction the wicked can devise for those destined to ruin because they have not opened their hearts to the truth in order to be saved. Therefore God is sending upon them a perverse spirit which leads them to give credence to falsehood, so that all who have not believed the truth but have delighted in evildoing will be condemned." - 2 Thes 2: 9-12

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Whatever, huh? I got my jabs in - now back to work.

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(See, it really wasn't about you.)

Pin the tale on the racist....

Henry Louis Gates and Obama.

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Someone's elitist slip is showing. Professor Gates played the race card despite the fact Officer Crowley was just doing his job. And the President stepped in it...

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President Barack Obama plunged his presidency into a charged racial debate and set off a firestorm in one of America's most liberal bastions by siding with a black Harvard scholar who accuses police of racism.

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Saying he was unaware of "all the facts" but that police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "acted stupidly" in their arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Obama whipped up emotions on both sides of an issue that threatens to open old wounds in America. - Source

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Wow! The President making racist claims. The President calling civil servants - the police - stupid. I think the President overstepped his bounds on this one. Officer Crowley was just doing his job - and he happens to be an expert in racial profiling prevention.

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Why is it only white people can be racist anyway? What are Gates and Obama?

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Just imagine - all of this so soon after Michael Jackson's untimely death! I'm sure Rev. Sharpton would agree, if it hadn't been for Michael, Professor Gates would never have been able to hold the position he has at Harvard and the DuBois Institute. I just wonder what Oprah thinks.

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[In the '60's there was a Communist youth group known as the DuBois Club - I wonder if there is any connection? Nah! Harvard people wouldn't have any Marxist connections.]

The smoke of satan...

Did I mention I'm reading Weakland's memoirs?

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Anyway.

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Speaking of the spirit of Vatican II, I came across this from an interview with an exorcist:

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Again, are you saying that many bishops and priests are not, consequently, Catholic?

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FR. AMORTH: Let us just say that they do not believe a Gospel truth. So, if anything, I would stop them propagating a heresy. But, to be clear about this, a person is officially a heretic if he or she is accused of something and persists in the error. No one today, given the situation in the Church, is accusing a bishop of not believing in the Devil , or in demonic possession or of failing to appoint exorcists because he does not believe. And yet I could give you the names of so many bishops and cardinals who, on their appointment to a diocese, stripped exorcists of their faculty to perform the rite. Or there are bishops who openly say they don’t believe, that these are things of the past. Why is that? Unfortunately, we have had the insidious influence of certain biblists and I could mention some illustrious names. We who are in daily physical contact with the ‘other world’ know that this influence is evident in numerous liturgical reforms.

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For example?

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FR. AMORTH: The Second Vatican Council asked that some texts be revised. Disobeying this command, they set about re-writing them completely with no thought for the danger of making things worse instead of better. So many rites came off badly from this mania to throw out the old and start from scratch, as if the Church to date had always conned us and as if only now the time had at last come of the great geniuses, the supertheologians, the super-biblists and the super-liturgists who know what the right thing is for the Church. This is a lie: the last Council simply asked that the texts be revised, not destroyed. - Read more.

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I KNOW!

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Art: I believe the allegory is titled, "Faith over heresy".

Back online...

But...

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The new laptop is in the process of being uploaded and while I was at Best Buy I picked up a new monitor for this here old laptop as well - so - I am so online. However - every time I distance myself from this blogging thing, I start painting, working in the yard... and... and... actually living. I realize I've actually got a life.

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I have to wonder - really wonder about some other bloggers - daily bloggers - more than one post a day bloggers. Religious and clerics who blog and twitter and surf - day in and day out... I just wonder...

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Oh! Oh! But it's none of my business is it.

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I"m back though - sorry if I haven't responded to comments and emails - I'm trying to mind my own business.

The garden

From last week - the hosta blooms are insane this week so I will begin removing them to restore order.

It takes a village Larry...

Clinton says North Korea is acting like unruly children.
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Bad boy that Little Kim. Hil-larious explained it like this...
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"What we've seen is this constant demand for attention," Clinton, who is in India, said in an interview that aired on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday.
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"And maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention -- don't give it to them, they don't deserve it, they are acting out," she said. - Story
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I might say "Thank God Larry never made the White House" but look at what we got instead. I have no confidence in these people.
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So anyway. Before computers I used to watch PBS newsprograms such as Washington Week - last Friday I watched because my lap top screen was out - today it works. Anyway, Gwen Eyefull was hostessing the show - and the entire round table is now all women - with one token man - a young guy who isn't very articulate, although he has dark hair.

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Have you noticed women are taking over the world?
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Seriously, they are everywhere; ads, sitcoms, politics, news - and the direction is blatant role-reversal and discrimination - representing white men as uninformed, unable to solve problems, weak, inept - all the dismissive stereotypes projected upon women before the age of rad-feminism and equal rights.
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Watch the commercials and sitcoms and dramas on network TV - women are almost always the bosses, or at least the ones who solve all the crimes and come up with the answers - and they can even beat up big, tough, burly men.
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Anyway - needless to say this guy will not watch Washington Week again - I will not waste my time watching a bunch of women sitting around talking politics and the economy and other hot topics.
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Gotta run - the screen is pooping out right now, and The View is on! I love that show.
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(Yeah - I call Hil Larry now. Nothing to do with Lerry from A of A though.)

Did I mention?

I have difficulty keeping a screen up therefore my Internet use is limited.
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I began a painting - after about 2 or 3 weeks of research and preliminary sketches. I never know what will happen however...
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Sunday I came across the following:
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[The] "call to carry the cross will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ. 'You cannot belong to Christ unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires.'
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It is easily misunderstood however, if it is merely seen as a pointless effort at self-denial. The cross is a denial of self, but in service to the will of God Himself who makes life come from death and empowers those who trust in him to practice virtue in place of vice."
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Today is the memorial of St. Elijah, prophet and reputed founder of the Carmelites.
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Sad news: Mrs. Rabitowitz has died. Foul play is suspected.
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Her remains were found beneath the east yew hedge.
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Snaglepuss, the wandering cat is a feline of interest - I'm not allowed to say 'suspect' or mention he is both black and white.
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Another theory put forward is that she succumbed to some sort of poisoning.
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The body is so badly decomposed we may never know for certain.
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Needless to say, it's been a very difficult few days.

Quincy Jones - Stuff like that

Stuff like that!

QUINCY JONES - STOMP

Never EVER gets old!

Heaven's Girl

For Mrs. R.

Word for the day.

Inversion...

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A characteristic of diabolic deception and the times of the Anti-Christ.