tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11425069990632011182024-02-07T18:37:18.609-08:00Magic Margot Shoebox
Here is the essence of me. Maybe the "kidlets" will find it amusing.
I still have the glass and love how milk makes a nice background for the flowers.
A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-76855551897914023952017-08-23T13:46:00.001-07:002017-08-23T13:46:12.489-07:00MAKE HISTORY - HISTORY IS A STORY SO WHY NOT BE PART OF IT?<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MAKE HISTORY
– HISTORY IS A STORY SO WHY NOT BE PART OF IT?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Where to start?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Make a statement such as “I represent my ancestors” and then
tell a bit about them before getting to you.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Write your own obituary.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Use a historical timeline such as: “I was born just before
Pearl Harbor was bombed”. “I grew up
loving Elvis” or “for a kid who was born before television isn’t it remarkable
to have Google? ”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Include any special family sayings. My grandmother always said, “A cat can eat a
grind stone one nibble at a time.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Collect family memorabilia and include it. Pictures are very important.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As you write a theme will come to mind that will give you a
title. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Lulu has stock covers that you can customize or if you are
adventurous do your own art work.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Both suggested methods of publishing are free. You can use Lulu.com or publish a blog. The
blog can be made into printed material or simply exist in the ether.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Go to Lulu.com and watch the Demo. Type Woodrough into the search box to see
what I’ve written or helped publish. All
of the covers are my own design, but you can use Lulu.com templates. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The easiest way to make a blog for yourself is to go to mine
<b>chihuahuasforchange.blogspot.com </b>and
in the upper right you will see “make new blog” Click on that and you will be
asked to make an account. Follow the
bouncing ball. Be sure to note the URL
of you blog so you can get back to it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you get stuck, give me a call and I’ll walk you through
it. Margot 898-9003.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Here’s my favorite quote – you may want to use it as a jumping
off place for your story.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">"My character or nature is made up of
infinite particles of inherited tendencies from my ancestors – a little seed of
laziness came from this grandfather, some remote grandmother has stamped me
with a fear of dogs and a love of horses; there may be in me a bit of outlawry
from a pirate forefather, and a dash of piety from one who was a saint. My
so-called particularities, my gestures, my ways and manners, I borrow them all,
without exceptions. So everything in me passes on through my children. I am
sewn between ancestry and posterity."</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Oliver Wendall Holmes</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-81232637671708298582017-08-22T14:20:00.000-07:002017-08-22T14:20:17.298-07:00DONALD TRUMPWe have been so distressed at Donald Trump. Paul Krugman hit the nail on the head with this piece.<br />
I have been reading my previous posts and it is quite clear this has been coming for years. I am so glad that I will be released from this life soon. I weep for the kidlets.<br />
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The party of Lincoln is now the party of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Southern slave owners who decided to kill fellow Americans so that they could keep men, women and children enslaved. The Republican Party, in other words, has obliterated its entire historical legacy and become the party of the Enemies of Lincoln.</div>
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And let’s be clear: Republicans <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">cannot</strong> say, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">“That’s not us — that’s just President Trump</em>.” They supported him, they elected him, they defended him and they gave him the aura of a normal presidency. They cannot be the party of Lincoln and be the party of Trump. In that vein, we can dispense with Republicans’ “outrage,” “frustration,” “anger” and all other meaningless expressions of internal sentiment. Unless and until they are prepared to <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">do</em> something — not just send tweets — to politically disown Trump, the party is toast and none of its members should be elected or reelected.</div>
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How would they do this? First, elected officials must deny Trump the audience he so desperately craves. They need not appear with him, nor invite him to the Hill. (The State of the Union can be delivered from the White House or in writing; he would besmirch the House by appearing there.) Lawmakers and state officials should not troop to the White House for photo ops. They can communicate with the White House by phone or through aides. In short, Trump must be shunned and ostracized. He is not fit for polite company, let alone the presidency. He has demolished the rules of civilized behavior, and therefore should enjoy none of the ceremonial niceties that are extended to normal presidents.</div>
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Second, beyond resolutions condemning Trump’s remarks, every member of Congress should do his or her utmost to remove the neo-Nazi iconography in their districts and states. Neo-Nazis have claimed the Confederacy as their own — and therefore have reminded the rest of us that the Confederate statues are not tributes to patriotism, gallantry or liberty but to treason, inhumanity and slavery. That is why neo-Nazis identify with these symbols of the Old South. That is why they have no place in a democratic society built on the principle that “All men are created equal.” State and local officials need to carefully examine school curriculum to make sure students are not confused as to the heroes and the villains in the Civil War. Every student should learn to spot and debunk the “Lost Cause” propaganda. Perhaps April 9 should be a national holiday commemorating the Confederacy’s surrender and the magnanimity displayed by President Abraham Lincoln and U.S. generals toward their defeated foes.</div>
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Third, Cabinet members, sub-Cabinet officials, staffers and outside participants on councils, commissions and committees must leave the administration. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">It’s not enough, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, to look on with a pained expression as the president declares that some of the white nationalists were “very fine” folks. He <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/he-went-rogue-president-trump-s-staff-stunned-after-latest-n793091" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(213, 213, 213); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1955a5; font-size: inherit; line-height: 1.8em; margin-bottom: 18px; text-decoration-line: none; zoom: 1;">deceived you and others as to what he would say</a> and he has shown himself unfit. You cannot serve in the administration of a neo-Nazi sympathizer. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, why stay in an administration in which you command so little respect and in which you must lend your own reputation to a disgraceful president?</em> (Defense Secretary Jim Mattis should remain, a final backstop to prevent a military disaster.)</div>
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Fourth, Republicans must treat the president as they would someone not of their party — for he is not, to repeat, of the party of Lincoln. If Hillary Clinton refused to release her tax returns, hired unqualified relatives, kept business ventures that posed a conflict of interest and violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause, Republicans would commence hearings and pass legislation to put an end to all of it. It’s long past the time that Trump should be permitted to escape the kind of inquiry Republicans would insist upon for any Democratic president. By refusing to do so, the GOP is saying: “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">He’s one of ours. He’s a Republican, so we don’t rock the boat</em>.”</div>
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Fifth, now would be a fine time for formation of a third party, one that can at the end of the Trump presidency repeal and replace the GOP. The Free Republican Party, the Appomattox Republicans (It cannot be said enough: The Confederates were <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">losers</em>) or whatever ex-Republicans in the center-right call themselves can endorse for office defectors from the GOP and reclaim Republicans who have disassociated themselves with the GOP thanks to Trump. Moderate Republican House members of the Tuesday Group, the new Centrist Project (<a href="http://www.centristproject.org/mission" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(213, 213, 213); box-sizing: border-box; color: #1955a5; font-size: inherit; line-height: 1.8em; margin-bottom: 18px; text-decoration-line: none; zoom: 1;">dedicated to backing independent candidates</a>), members of Stand Up Republic (founded by 2016 conservative independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin and his former running mate, Mindy Finn) and others have the chance to stake their claim as the true successors to the party of Lincoln. Those who have wrestled with the question as to whether the GOP could be reformed or whether it should be discarded in light of Trump’s GOP takeover have their answer. If they cannot disgorge him, they must start over.</div>
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In sum, Republicans’ words are insufficient and, at this point, insufferable. When we look back at this time, the only thing people will ask is: “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">What did you <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">do</strong></em>?” Republicans will need a better answer than “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">I was outraged and gave tough quotes — on background</em>.”</div>
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<br />Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-10638988684183160842017-08-16T12:47:00.000-07:002017-08-16T12:47:26.356-07:00PALE BLUE DOT<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">We succeeded in taking that picture, and,
if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it,
everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their
lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident
religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every
hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and
peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and
father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt
politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in
the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust, suspended in a
sunbeam.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Earth is a very small stage in a vast
cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and
emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary
masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the
inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of
some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager
they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our
imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in
the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">[...] To my mind, there is perhaps no better
demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our
tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and
compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue
dot, the only home we've ever known.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">— Carl
Sagan, speech at Cornell University, October 13, 1994</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-37424722953219240072017-08-16T10:34:00.000-07:002017-08-16T10:34:21.275-07:00DOLPHIN CAY and FAB FiberThree years ago we sold our two units at The Florencia in order to buy one last home. The "kidlets" were getting so big and needed room to roam. One of the units brought enough money to purchase the house. I made a You Tube so the "kidlets" would remember the place.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=UMTp82KS_qY">https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=UMTp82KS_qY</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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For the first time in my life I have a housekeeper who comes monthly to keep the place up. Last year Amy and Jamy moved into the garage apartment. Amy comes three times a week to keep my feathers fluffed with an hour's worth of exercise.</div>
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The next biggest excitement was the creation of Fab Fiber at 5708 Gulfport Blvd.</div>
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My dear partner Elizabeth Neily</div>
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Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0St. Petersburg, FL 33707, USA27.7514295 -82.72931929999998627.6952225 -82.810000299999984 27.8076365 -82.648638299999988tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-91968411855006620622017-08-16T10:06:00.001-07:002017-08-16T12:44:10.049-07:00Seventy-fifth Trip Around the Sun<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 18.0pt;">My Seventy
Fifth Trip Around the Sun</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif";">So far this was the worst <b>birthday ever.
Below is a letter I wrote to Greystone Home Health. I can not describe my 75<sup>th</sup>
birthday any better:</b></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">My
husband and I have used Greystone three times in the past and written glowing
reviews. In fact we had a particularly nice relationship with Sheri Blume whom
I understand is no longer with Greystone. We are equally fond of Aycha and
Prisca.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1142506999063201118" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="http://photos.quotesaboutmovingon4u.com/frank-different.jpg" border="0" src="file:///C:/Users/Margot/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg" style="cursor: move;" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1" /></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Our
most recent experience has been a nightmare of epic proportions. On Saturday
July July 15<sup>th</sup> my husband was near a wall that collapsed and
lacerate his leg. 911 was called and he was taken to St. Anthony’s emergency
room. I spoke with him by phone while he was being stitched up and told him to
get an order for home health. It was about 6:00pm and knowing it was the
weekend I called Greystone to give them a scheduling heads up. I was told that
the order needed to come from his primary doctor so I called Dr. Gross’s office
(Baycare Medical Group) and got the “on call” physician who said she couldn’t
issue the order. On Sunday the wound started bleeding through the bandage
making a spot about the size of an orange. I again called primary and got same
“on call” doctor who was rather short with me saying: Mrs. Woodrough I told you
last night I cannot write the order. (one wonders why she didn’t contact Dr.
Gross but I didn’t think to ask at the time).</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">By
now I was frantic as was my husband. He is 80 years old recovering from recent
back surgery and not very mobile with the wound. I spoke with Donna at
Greystone and she said nothing could be done without an order. I was left with
no alternative except to call an acquaintance who is a retired nurse. She came
and changed the bandage Sunday and Monday.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">On
Monday I started calling Dr. Gross’s office early and the line was constantly
busy. About noon I finally got through to the office and made my request. When
I received no response in the afternoon I started calling again and getting the
same busy signal. Finally toward the end of the day I received a message that
Dr. Gross (primary) was not going to issue an order since there was a referral
from St. Anthony’s for Steve to see a wound care specialist (Dr. Murphy) on
Tuesday. Dr. Murphy saw Steve on Tuesday and faxed the order to Greystone early
afternoon of Tuesday the 18<sup>th</sup> of July. Both Steve and I made several
follow up calls to Greystone Tuesday afternoon and were told they were waiting
of a form 485 (? I think that is the number I was told) and a third piece of
paper. Steve seems to be of the impression you were still waiting for a
referral from Primary Dr. Gross (whose phone continued to be busy) It was late
Tuesday the 18<sup>th</sup> that the paperwork apparently was all in place. (On
Wednesday July 19<sup>th</sup> both Steve and I spoke with our insurance
company and were assured that there was coverage. Steve and I both asked that
the customer service representative contact Greystone which they did.)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">However,
no one from Greystone came until Thursday the 20th when Prisca came. (I told
Prisca about the nightmare and she said I should talk to you.) (I did get a
call from Donna but it was unproductive.) Yesterday Leasa came to dress the
wound and complete the paperwork and we are now on a sound footing with
Greystone. I told Leasa of the trouble and she encouraged me to talk with you.
I asked her to have you call me at your convenience.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Please tell me for future reference how this nightmare could have been
avoided. </span></b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">(I must have a very sound
heart as the stress would surely have killed me last week.)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif";">After sixteen years of luxury living our
precious Little Libby died in her sleep in June. May was an interesting month
with the visit of the Woodroughs for the Derby Party, the party itself followed by Steve's back surgery then a visit from the McDermotts.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif";">All of the kidlets are growing up to be lovely people. their parents have raised them well.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif";">After Libby's death I searched for another long hair chihuahua and found a dream dog in Isla. She joined our family in August and is truly the best dog in the world.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif";">I cannot bring myself to detail the emotional distress that Donald Trump has inflicted on the country. As I write this august 16th 2017 it appears that Republicans are finally getting the message, but it has been a long time coming. Unfortunately, the damage done to our country may never be repaired. Last weekend there were racist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Tea Party and radical right have split the country in ways that remind me of the Civil War.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , "sans-serif";">I've said it before and will repeat that I am ready for my life to be over. No regrets.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-88933666853798649692015-11-18T09:47:00.003-08:002015-11-18T09:48:10.762-08:00Bi Centennial 1976 DUNWOODY GEORGIA<div class="MsoNormal">
History is a story and a story must have a beginning, but
where? My genealogy research was born of
the Bi Centennial celebration of 1976. It is a story of America as seen through
some of its most notable people. You
will not find these most of these people listed in history books. However, they are no less important. These are the people who make up the whole of
the United States. It is they,
collectively, who are America and they are notable and worthy of
remembrance. Their names may not be known
but their spirit is. I researched the
family back following all the paths.
Here is a remembrance of July4, 1976.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today is the Fourth of July 1976 – two hundred years since
the Declaration of Independence was signed. Celebrations are planned across the
country, but in Atlanta they will be smaller as the rain is pouring
ceaselessly. Atlanta seems to be the
only rainy place in the country this Independence day. Yesterday the Dunwoody Community parade
passed through the small but growing crossroads north of Atlanta. Most observers and parade participants were
not from either Atlanta or the south.
Most residents of Dunwoody are from other parts of the United States and
particularly from the north. They are
new immigrants to this growing center of business activity. The climate is agreeable and the people still
unspoiled and friendly. It seems
everyone wants to come to Atlanta and Dunwoody is one of Atlanta’s better
neighborhoods.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today the people of Dunwoody cannot attend a picnic, go to
Lake Lanier or even attend a fireworks display at Stone Mountain. July 4<sup>th</sup> 1976 is sodden with an
unremitting cold rain. The only
alternative is enjoying the activity of others as seen on the day-long coast to
coast coverage on the three networks. But,
perhaps that is not so bad after all.
How else could one get such a marvelous overview of the whole country’s
activities and taste the entire buffet of activity: from the blood chilling
entrance of the tall ships into New York harbor; the reenactment of the battle
of Gettysburg; to the playing of the 1812 Overture by the Boston Symphony
complete with real cannon and fireworks.
The grand finale was the magnificent firework display at the Statue of
Liberty, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. It was an exhilarating day and while the rain
restricted our physical movements perhaps it provided us with a bonus bird’s
eye view.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What a country and what a people. How did it come to be? Who are these people? How are we one? In
personal terms, exactly what did independence mean to people two hundred years
ago? Do we still share the same
feelings, hopes and fears as they? Let’s
take a look and as we look keep in mind that two hundred years passes
quickly. Will our descendants two
hundred years hence ask the same questions?
We must be sure to leave something worthy of their backward glance.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are a family of four living in Dunwoody Georgia. The children are Stephens Blakely Woodrough
age 13 and Page Annette Woodrough age 5 this Bi Centennial year. These future adults are presently blessed
with a relatively stable world and it does not look as though Stephens, Jr.
will face military draft. Page lives in
a time of women’s liberation and will be free to be exactly the person she wishes. Once she finishes her education she will be
free from the prejudices that have restricted women for thousands of
years. The future is full of hope; there
will be problems, but it appears that the country is headed in a forward
direction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The parents are Margaret Vollmer Woodrough and Stephens
Blakely Woodrough who live at 1823 Trowbridge Drive in a lovely spacious home
full of various projects and interests of the senior Woodroughs. Both Steve and Margot are immensely
interested in life. They are curious,
searching, thinking people and have been active in the community. They were married in the year that John
Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas Texas.
Their early years together were tormented by the escalating Vietnam War. Inflation was rising but in general things
were economically sound and income kept pace with rising costs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Politically things were worsened by the election of Richard
Nixon as President. Neither Woodrough
voted for him but somehow in spite of the odds a majority of citizens did.
Nixon’s story over the next six years is most important as it tested the
constitution and the resolve of the founding fathers. With Nixon’s resignation and the new
presidency of James Carter there is much hope.
Time will tell.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Steve and Margot Woodrough were married at St. Stephens Martyr
Church in Washington D.C on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a lovely new church which was recently
built to replace an older outdated structure.
St. Stephens was the parish church for the Kennedys while they were in
the White House. At the time of her marriage
Margaret Vollmer was living at 2411 H Street NW in a little townhouse that was
recently renovated. This area of the city was gentrified and called “Foggy
Bottom”. Previously it housed some of
the worst slums and the city’s gas tanks.
The gas tank land remained vacant for many years and it was on this site
that the infamous “Watergate” apartment and office building building of Nixon’s
Watergate scandal was built. Down the
street was the once infamous (of
Watergate fame) Howard Johnson Hotel where one could go for a drink after work
and a quick pack of cigarettes. A little
further down Virginia Avenue was the Harry T. Thompson Water Sports
Center. It was the perfect summer
meeting spot where one could bicycle up the C and O Canal tow path, or take a
canoe to Theodore Roosevelt Island and marvel at the fact that once Indians
stalked its trails. On summer evenings
there were concerts at the Watergate Concert barge at the foot of the Lincoln
Memorial Bridge. These were the tag ends of a calm peaceful simple time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Change was coming, but we didn’t know it. In 1963 the “Poor Peoples March” on
Washington launched Martin Luther King into national conscious followed by his
assassination and student protest over the Vietnam War. It was these events that made the
Bi-centennial year appear serene and special.
Had we finally come together?<o:p></o:p></div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-70100551824705154892013-08-16T13:34:00.000-07:002017-08-16T10:10:16.941-07:00THOMAS PAINE<img height="300" src="https://i.imgur.com/DpYCYaq.png" width="400" /><br />
<br />
I like this quote very much.Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-34354234663248176542013-08-16T13:32:00.003-07:002013-08-16T13:32:48.596-07:0071st TRIP AROUND THE SUN<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">71<sup>st</sup>
TRIP AROUND THE SUN - July 16, 2013<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When I was a
child, before television, I listened to a radio program called “No School Today”
that used a song called “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” as a theme song. This was a
special birthday. I was serenaded by the
“kidlets” with “Teddy Bear’s Picnic”.
Earlier in the year I recalled the song and looked it up and found
several renditions sending the cutest to the McDermotts. They remembered and rehearsed it as a
surprise What fun!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The past
year has been very interesting; The McDermott’s returned from Okinawa in March;
Kelly was born July 11; and on the same day Mark found a job in Washington D.C.
Shannon celebrated her 11<sup>th</sup> birthday while at our home this year in
St. Pete. I asked her if it was the best
birthday ever and her reply was that this year was the second best. Her 10<sup>th</sup> birthday was the best
ever since that was the day her father learned about his new position and their
move to Washington D.C.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The special
treat this year was the arrival of the “kidlets” for a month long visit and
their participation in the sailing program at the SPYC. In between sailing lessons they learned to
spin fiber to their great delight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
McDermotts have lived in their new home for almost a year. I haven’t visited, but don’t feel the need to
be there as I know every inch from seeing pictures when they were considering
buying and seeing pictures since they moved in.
I don’t do stairs as easily as before and the only full bath is
upstairs. However, I am so happy for
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My best
accomplishment this year was introducing the “kidlets” to Wagner in particular
“The Ring Cycle”. I was fortunate to
find a book written for children detailing the complete story. I read it to Shannon, Brigid and Molly and
they loved it. I also showed them a bit
of the Met’s most recent production.
They were simply enchanted with the story. As they mature this will be a treasure that
will only get deeper and more significant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My second
best accomplishment was getting a large portion of the coral reef project to a
permanent home at Great Explorations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I have a
gnawing sadness for our country. So much
could be accomplished if it were not for the stubborn Republican Party that is
determined to thwart the President no matter what the cost. We continue in two ill thought out wars that
drain our treasury. We barely escaped a
financial meltdown and nothing is being done about global warming. I regret the mess we are leaving for our
kidlets to clean up. The possibilities
for the future could be so bright with our wonderful technology if only we
could get past our age old hostilities. And,
don’t even get me started on religion.
The Bible is a bunch of Fairy Tales written by ignorant old men. The
Jews invented guilt and Catholics perfected it.
I am tired of living. Perhaps this will be my last trip around the sun.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-60138305798557303862013-02-21T13:32:00.004-08:002013-02-21T13:32:16.504-08:00THE PLOT THICKENS AND POPE IS IN THE SOUP<br />
<div id="article-header" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; border-color: rgb(214, 29, 0); clear: left; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 10px; margin: 0px; min-height: 68px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">
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<h1 itemprop="name headline " style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(214, 29, 0); border-collapse: collapse; border-left-color: rgb(214, 29, 0); border-right-color: rgb(214, 29, 0); border-top-width: 0px; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 2.166em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.154; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; width: 460px;">
Pope Benedict retired after inquiry into 'Vatican gay officials', says paper</h1>
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Pope's staff decline to confirm or deny La Repubblica claims linking 'Vatileaks' affair and discovery of 'blackmailed gay clergy'</div>
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<span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span itemprop="name" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a class="contributor" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnhooper" itemprop="url" rel="author" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;">John Hooper</a></span></span> in Rome</div>
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<img alt="A Swiss guard at the Vatican" height="276" itemprop="contentUrl representativeOfPage" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Politics/Pix/pictures/2012/7/18/1342605030769/A-Swiss-guard-at-the-Vati-008.jpg" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="460" /><div class="caption" itemprop="caption" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #666666; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
The Vatican is awhirl with rumours about the pope's decision to retire. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images</div>
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<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pope-benedict-xvi" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Pope Benedict XVI">Pope Benedict XVI</a> to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/vatican" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Vatican">Vatican</a>, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
The pope's spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
Last May Pope Benedict's butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and charged with having stolen and leaked papal correspondence that depicted the Vatican as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising "two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red" had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope's successor upon his election.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation".</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to "external influence" from laymen with whom they had links of a "worldly nature". The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
It quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments."</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
The seventh enjoins against theft. The sixth forbids adultery, but is linked in Catholic doctrine to the proscribing of homosexual acts.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
La Repubblica said the cardinals' report identified a series of meeting places in and around Rome. They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said: "Neither the cardinals' commission nor I will make comments to confirm or deny the things that are said about this matter. Let each one assume his or her own responsibilities. We shall not be following up on the observations that are made about this."</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
He added that interpretations of the report were creating "a tension that is the opposite of what the pope and the church want" in the approach to the conclave of cardinals that will elect Benedict's successor. Another Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, alluded to the dossier soon after the pope announced his resignation on 11 February, describing its contents as "disturbing".</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
The three-man commission of inquiry into the Vatileaks affair was headed by a Spanish cardinal, Julián Herranz. He was assisted by Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, a former archbishop of Palermo, and the Slovak cardinal Jozef Tomko, who once headed the Vatican's department for missionaries.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
Pope Benedict has said he will stand down at the end of this month; the first pope to resign voluntarily since Celestine V more than seven centuries ago. Since announcing his departure he has twice apparently referred to machinations inside the Vatican, saying that divisions "mar the face of the church", and warned against "the temptations of power".</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
La Repubblica's report was the latest in a string of claims that a gay network exists in the Vatican. In 2007 a senior official was suspended from the congregation, or department, for the priesthood, after he was filmed in a "sting" organised by an Italian television programme while apparently making sexual overtures to a younger man.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
In 2010 a chorister was dismissed for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting. A few months later a weekly news magazine used hidden cameras to record priests visiting gay clubs and bars and having sex.</div>
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;">
The Vatican does not condemn homosexuals. But it teaches that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered". Pope Benedict has barred sexually active gay men from studying for the priesthood.</div>
</div>
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Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-62067097109084451332013-02-21T07:38:00.001-08:002013-02-21T07:43:00.586-08:0070th trip around the Sun - update<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
May 24, 2012<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My upcoming 70<sup>th</sup> birthday has been on my mind for
at least the last six months. I’ve been
keenly aware that the end is near – at least I hope it is. When I look at
pictures of the “kidlets” taken six short years ago I come face to face with
the fleeting nature of time. In one of
my most recent projects, translating Alla’s book from French, I can see a huge
picture of humanity that staggers my mind.
Alla’s book traces her ancestors back to just before the first
millennium detailing thousands of people and their struggles to live and order
their lives. Each was born struggled and
died. I remember when my dear father got
close to the end he had a desire to divest himself of possessions. My thoughts are in that direction as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My world is closing in and I am happy with that. I really do not want to go anywhere except
home. I am happy doing my projects,
knitting, spinning, writing and tidying up my lifelong genealogy project.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This morning I finished reading Carl Sagan’s book “Contact”. I think I needed it at just this time in my
life. It’s been on the shelf unread for
years, but as always Sagan has helped put things in perspective. I am a mote on top of a pile of motes going
back and forward forever. My life has
been much better than most and my problems pale. Just as I needed the words I found the above
quote from Anne Frank.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The past year has been emotionally tough. No good is served by rehashing a story that
everyone knows.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As always, I have sought to know the truth. I’ve also tried to share hard won
knowledge. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s inconceivable to me that Sarah Palin and Fox News still
represent information to so many individuals.
The hypocrisy of the Republican Party is stupdifying. I fear for our country and the future for the
“Kidlets”. I fear the divisiveness of
the Catholic Church that has no business interfering in government and would do
well to govern themselves. An institution so full of the rot of child molesters
has no standing in my eyes. Ask yourself
what would Jesus say or think to see the pope, bishops and priests marching
around in splendor will ignoring the poor and abused? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I fear that relying on The Bible as the unerring word of God
will ultimately be civilizations’ undoing.
The Bible is an anthology of tales written by people with little
knowledge of science and it is used to control people and marginalize a huge
segment of the population. It is full of
hatred and wrath. Thomas Jefferson
discovered that over two hundred years ago.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My faith is rooted not in fear of punishment, but rather in
seeing how I can be helpful. I get great
pleasure performing good works in secret.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have no idea how many more birthdays lie ahead. I know for sure that I’ve accomplished all
I’ve ever dreamed of doing and if this is my last birthday I am content. I
could leave this life easily. I am certain that I will never seek to cling to
life. I guess I am getting ready.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am sure I will never win the lottery as I’ve had my chance
at luck and struck gold. Lexus gave me a
brand new car this year. Quelle
surprise!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am enormously grateful to have had the advantage of
computers and the internet. When I look
back at how genealogy was done in 1976 when I started I am amazed at the
technology we have today.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One last item. I’m
reading “The Edge of Infinity” and it suggests that huge leaps are on the
horizon. We must drop our fear and hypocrisy
as we march forward. <a href="http://photos.quotesaboutmovingon4u.com/frank-different.jpg"><span style="color: blue; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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<i>We all live with the objective of being happy;<br />
our lives are all different and yet the same.<br />
- Anne Frank</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today is October 12<sup>th</sup> 2012 and I am three months
into my 70<sup>th</sup> trip around the sun. I have survived, but it has been a
roller coaster ride and I am hoping to coast gently to the end from here. A great joy for me was helping Mark and Page
find a home that appears perfect. I
always like doing this and the personal experience was fascinating and
rewarding. We’ve come a long way from
the old days of MLS when all information was controlled. Now it is possible to almost buy a home sight
unseen on the internet. Page and the
children came for a six week visit while they await their furniture. It was a magical time to see the three oldest
girls so enthusiastic about sewing and knitting. The baby is very sweet and no trouble at
all. Daniel almost killed himself by
pulling over a heavy lamp and my house is a chaotic mess. Add to that the virus we all developed and
the days of misery and it’s fair to say the visit was not uneventful.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The girls are thrilled with their new rooms and eager to
decorate them. While they were here I
completed my “Doodles Cute Wair” knitting book and the girls made several
successful pieces.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I sought something momentous to mark July 16<sup>th</sup>
2012 and it was that day that I signed my non-disclosure agreement with Audrey
in anticipation of helping her publish Fred’s book on Sarah Palin. (looking
back from October I must report that the project withered on the vine.) However, a new memorial raised its head in
the form of the Coral Reef Project. When
I learned that it was to be dismantled and sold off piece by piece, I offered
to buy a large section and donate it to the Great Explorations Children’s
Museum. This is a very suitable marker
for my 70<sup>th</sup> birthday.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kelly was born July 9<sup>th</sup>. It was a difficult situation for me, but it seems
that was more in my mind than in fact.
She is a lovely child and may be the best of the bunch. This summer I pulled my spinning project
together and sent it off to Vermont.
Haven’t had any door buster sales yet, but I am having fun imaging
solutions to tags, advertising and display<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
July 4<sup>th</sup> was a red letter day with the
confirmation of the Higgs Boson particle.
I am greatly saddened to hear my daughter say she doubts the theory of
evolution, but I must press on. Science
not superstition will be our savior if there is any.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I finally pulled the Affaired d’Art Chihully project off to
benefit the Museum of Fine Arts and some of our finer glass pieces have been on
six month display celebrating the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Art Glass
movement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I continue to read with one of my favorites being “Catherine
the Great”. In addition I discovered
that I have a better knowledge of French than I realized. I interpreted Alla’s genealogy for her.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As is my habit I looked for another human being to help –
someone from whom I expected nothing.
This year is was Mark Guidici – the gentleman who came to repair
appliances and was a bit depressed. I
wrote his resume for him and suggested advertising tactics. I continued to encourage Dena my manicurist
and she continues to hold on.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course the visit last fall of Page and the children was a
blessing and a strain – but that is life.
The surprise of it threw my life into a tornado that only now six months
later has seen the debris settle. Her
unexpected pregnancy and the secrecy of it caused me to seek professional
help. Through my doctors and friends I
learned that her actions were based on the sure knowledge that I would never
abandon her. In a way I suppose my
sufferings were a privilege that only a mother can receive. The pregnancy caused me to reexamine the issue
of birth control and the Catholic Church.
I intend to write extensively on the topic elsewhere as I am in the
process of research. The most revealing
and shocking is “In The Name of God” by David Yallop <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My health is good but each day I note obituaries and know
that one day my time will be up – I am ready.
My biggest regret is the emotional trauma the kidlets will suffer when
they come to know, as I did, that their religion is full of politics and
corruptions. I do not say this lightly,
but after six months of intensive readings I’ve come to know that the truth about the papacy is disgusting
and that’s before you talk of the child molestations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our election is in less that six weeks and things are not
looking good for our president. He is an
honest man who seeks reconciliation. He
simply cannot believe that Mitt Romney would stand on stage and lie through his
teeth. Unfortunately many Americans
watch Fox news and believe all of the vitriol that is spewed. Case in point is that four years later Sarah
Palin is still a very potent force for evil.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think this will be my last birthday commemoration. Page and family are back and settled, I’ve
had many opportunities to know all the kidlets and they to know me. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Update – February 21, 2013<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am in the process of cleaning up my files and in doing so
found an opportunity to reread my comments.
Since there have been significant events I feel they need to be
included. Most significant is the fact
that the pope resigned!!!!!!!!!!!! Being
my usual curious self I sought to find the reason. In a nutshell it seems that the child abuse
scandal is about to blow sky high. A
California judge ordered the release of 12,000 pages of documents that show how
Bishop Mahoney begged and pleaded with the pope to take action even going so
far as making a personal visit to Rome.
The pope did nothing. Meanwhile
Mahoney is accused in civil actions of continuing the cover up and will be
deposed before he can go to Rome to vote on the new pope. Think of it as a circular firing squad.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Benedict has been deep in the cover up since before he was
pope and things are starting to unravel.
It first came to light with his butler leaking private papers last
spring. It really reminds me of
Watergate. Once the toothpaste is out of
the tube it cannot be put back.
Unfortunately this scandal of scandals concerns the spiritual well-being
of many people. As a child in Catholic
school I was taught by the nuns that the worst sin one could commit was to
bring scandal to the church; the next worst was hypocrisy. I can say no more.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The next significant event was the reelection of President
Obama and his realization that there was no way he could bargain with the
present Republican Party. I predict that
Obama will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. The Republicans lost the election and the party
is dead on the vine. It appears that
Hillary Clinton my run in 2016 and her thinking is described as being similar
to that of the former Republican Party before it was hijacked by the extreme
right wing “tea party”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The very vile Sarah Palin is no longer on Fox News, but
still no one will call her on her stunning fake pregnancy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Recently scientists suggest that the Higgs Boson may
indicate that in several billion years the universe will cease to exist. I guess it just comes and goes endlessly and
why not? I wonder where heaven fits into
all of this. Perhaps I am right – heaven
is within each of us all along – we make our own heaven or hell and experience
it daily. I hope to make a bibliography
that might interest someone exploring the same idea.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I continue to spin yarn and sold my entire inventory last
week at FAB.<o:p></o:p></div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA27.7696063 -82.63213759999996527.5449263 -82.95486109999996 27.9942863 -82.309414099999969tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-90778063882430532982013-02-20T12:54:00.000-08:002013-02-21T13:32:43.539-08:00The Dark Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI<br />
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I've been meaning to write this myself, but <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-fox" rel="author" style="border: none; color: #771c85; cursor: pointer; font-family: Arial, Century, Times, serif !important; font-size: 20px !important; height: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.05em; line-height: 24px !important; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;">Matthew Fox</a> has done a far better job.</h2>
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The Dark Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI</h1>
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The pope has chosen to step down, the first pope in seven centuries to do so. As a Christian, I witness his legacy, and that of his predecessor, with profoundly mixed feelings: outrage over the crimes committed against the people of God, and relief that the masks covering the corruption of the papacy have at last been removed.</div>
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I see that the 42-year reign of the past two popes has so destroyed the church we once knew that now the Holy Spirit can give birth to a community far more attuned to the revolutionary Gospel of Jesus than the current and dying structures ever could be. More than ever, we recognize the warning of historian Lord Acton after Vatican Council I defined papal infallibility: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."</div>
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We have witnessed how Cardinal Martini on his deathbed, issued a <a href="http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/translated-final-interview-martini" style="border: none; color: #771c85; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;" target="_hplink">damning call to action</a> to a church "200 years behind the times." We have witnessed the retaliation of the past two popes against theologians and pastoral ministers who have dared to dissent for the sake of social justice, eco-justice, gender and gender preference justice: <a href="http://www.matthewfox.org/wailing-wall" style="border: none; color: #771c85; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;" target="_hplink">105 and more</a> have been and continue to be hounded, silenced and expelled.</div>
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So as one of these dissidents, speaking now from outside the Vatican's punitive reach, I offer a short list of some of the issues for which history will hold Ratzinger accountable, both as cardinal and as pope (I offer page numbers of my study on his life and papacy in my book, "<a href="http://www.mcssl.com/store/matthewfoxorg/the-popes-war-why-ratzingers-secret-crusade-has-imperiled-the-church-and-how-it-can-be-saved" style="border: none; color: #771c85; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;" target="_hplink">The Pope's War: How Ratzinger's Crusade Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved</a>," to see the backup evidence).</div>
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<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His silence for years about the notorious pedophile priest Father Maciel, who was so close to Pope John Paul II that he was often invited on the papal plane -- and who sexually abused dozens of his seminarians, had two wives on the side and sexually abused his own children. Fr. Maciel was not fully investigated until 2005 even though a New York bishop reported his actions to Ratzinger's office in 1995 (125-130).</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His attacks while head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly "Office of the Holy Inquisition") on theologians and pastoral leaders the world over who dared to do their job which is to <em style="border: none; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">think </em>(they are listed on page 238-241 but the list keeps growing).</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His (and his predecessor's) bringing back the Inquisition and dumbing-down the church, educing theology to 1) a catechism and 2) agreement with the dictates of the pope and his curia. History does not remember Torquemada as a theologian; neither will they remember Ratzinger as one.</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His unrelenting attacks on base communities and Liberation Theology even though this movement, like the civil rights movement of the U.S., was the most Christ-like movement for democracy and justice and freedom in centuries (41-62).</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His (and the previous pope's) promotion of neo-fascist sects as the new "religious orders," including Opus Dei, which is now embedded in places of great power including the financial headquarters of E.U., the U.S. Supreme Court, the CIA (especially under George Bush the first), FBI and the U.S. mainstream media (106-124).</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His and the previous pope's support for extreme right wing groups from Maciel's Legion of Christ to Communion and Liberation to Opus Dei (130-144). Opus Dei members are being placed as bishops and cardinals in Latin America and now in North America: Los Angeles, the biggest North American diocese, is run by an <a href="http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1001421.htm" style="border: none; color: #771c85; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;" target="_hplink">Opus Dei bishop</a>. Likewise the <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/kansas-city-bishop-convicted-cover-up" style="border: none; color: #771c85; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;" target="_hplink">diocese of Kansas City</a>, whose bishop is convicted of covering up for a predatory priest but refuses to step down.</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His destroying the integrity of the canonization process by eliminating the role of "devil's advocate" in pointing out the shadow side of the candidate. With this obstacle out of the way, Ratzinger pushed through the canonization of the founder of Opus Dei, Fr. Escriva -- a recognized fascist who praised Hitler -- faster than any saint in history (106-125).</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His covering up the scandal of pedophile clergy and putting the image of the Catholic church ahead of the rights of young children in the U.S., in Ireland and elsewhere. The recent HBO film "Mea Maxima Culpa" tells the facts about some of these horrors and how the buck stopped with Ratzinger (134-174).</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His public disrespect for other faiths and disavowal of religious ecumenism. Ratzinger as pope managed to insult Islam, Judaism, all Protestant churches (saying they are not churches) and the mind-body-spirit practice of yoga. As cardinal he presaged this anti-ecumenical attitude, unbelievably calling the globally revered Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, "the anti-Christ" (260).</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His absolute reaffirmation of a "morality" of sexism (no women priests ever; Catholic sisters in America are now being <a href="http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/new-inquisition-vatican-targets-us-nuns" style="border: none; color: #771c85; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial;" target="_hplink">subjected to inquisitions</a> as theologians have been; priests who support women are dismissed -- but pedophile priests are not!).</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His un-Christlike diatribes against gay persons, borne out in not one but two documents: his ignoring scientific research on homosexuality has created another Galileo moment in church history.</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His irresponsible positions against condoms even in an age of AIDS and against birth control in a time of excessive human population on a crowded planet. His positions on sexuality are all about St. Augustine's antiquated ethics and not anything Jesus ever taught.</li>
<li style="border: none; list-style: decimal inside; margin: 0px 0px 4px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">His interference in the presidential election of 2004, wherein Ratzinger instructed American bishops that any "Catholic politician" (i.e. Kerry) who did not denounce gays and abortion could not receive communion. This resulted in three states having very unusual Republican votes from Catholics -- if just one of them had had a more normal Catholic vote, Kerry, not Bush, would have been president.</li>
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With such a track record as this, Father Ratzinger is right to retire. Unfortunately, because he and his predecessor appointed only yes men as cardinals, one should not expect any improvement in the next pope.<br />
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Instead, we should recognize that history has passed the papacy by. Now is the time for the Holy Spirit to push the restart button on Christianity -- both Catholic and Protestant versions -- so as to strip down to the essence of Jesus' teaching and the Cosmic Christ tradition.</div>
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Christianity can be rebuilt without basilicas on our backs but mere backpacks. Travel lightly. Walk humbly. Do justice. And peace will follow.</div>
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Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-52504035840253276402013-02-11T09:05:00.002-08:002013-02-11T09:05:47.432-08:00POPE RESIGNS Read Andrew Sullivans comments<br />
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Alex Gibney’s new documentary on the child-rape epidemic in the Catholic Church that raged for decades (and maybe centuries), <em style="word-wrap: break-word;">Mea Maxima Culpa</em>, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/mea-maxima-culpa/index.html" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">debuted tonight on HBO</a>. I’ve watched it twice. It is both an inspiring testament to faith and truth – as well as a devastating indictment of pride, power, and lies. The former come from four boys who attended St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee in the 1970s. The latter comes from the Vatican and everyone in its power structure then and ever since. It really is a story about how the real church finally stood up to a hierarchy that has betrayed us and committed crimes of such gravity and magnitude they beggar belief.</div>
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The story begins as long ago as 1974 when four boys put fliers on the windshields of the cars in the parking lot of the church run by the man who raped them. They simply said “Wanted” with the priest’s name (the more explicit flyer in the video above came later). Instead of being listened to, the kids were disciplined. Eventually, in Murphy’s psychiatric record, Gibney finds Father Lawrence Murphy confessing to raping over 200 boys over a long period of time. He raped them in their dorm rooms; he raped them in the confessional, using the small window as a glory hole and granting absolution based on rape or masturbation. The detail I cannot quite recover from is that he picked out for abuse those deaf boys who had parents <em style="word-wrap: break-word;">who could not use sign language</em> – so that even if the boys had the courage to say what had happened to them, their parents would not understand. It’s things like that that simply chill you, haunt you, force you to confront the pre-meditated, profound assault on human souls that the Catholic Church, from the Pope on down, enabled, perpetuated, and lied about for so long – and still hasn’t been held fully accountable for.</div>
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And what this documentary proves beyond any reasonable doubt (like Gibney’s examination of the Bush-Cheney administration’s decision to torture prisoners in “Taxi To The Dark Side”) is that <em style="word-wrap: break-word;">all</em> of it was known throughout the hierarchy for decades. There is even a network of Church-operated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_the_Servants_of_the_Paraclete#Treatment_of_sexually_abusive_priests" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">“psychiatric” clinics</a> for serial child rapists that don’t use traditional psychotherapy or report criminals to the cops or sequester the rapists from the public (let alone defrock them). These clinics simply enforce spiritual discipline and then recycle the priests to rape more children. We know from public documents that <em style="word-wrap: break-word;">as far back as the 1940s</em>, pedophile priests were showing up at these centers. Father Gerald Fitzgerald founded the order. And he was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_the_Servants_of_the_Paraclete#Warnings_to_the_Church_hierarchy" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">not yet corrupted</a> by the Vatican’s insistence that no scandal ever become public and no priest sacrificed for the sake of mere children. As early as 1947, he is writing letters to his superiors about the problem:</div>
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“I myself would be inclined to favor laicization for any priest, upon objective evidence, for tampering with the virtue of the young, my argument being, from this point onward the charity to the Mystical Body should take precedence over charity to the individual, [...] Moreover, in practice, real conversions will be found to be extremely rare [...] Hence, leaving them on duty or wandering from diocese to diocese is contributing to scandal or at least to the approximate danger of scandal.”</div>
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Or in 1957, this letter to his Bishop:</div>
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“We are amazed to find how often a man who would be behind bars if he were not a priest is entrusted with the <em style="word-wrap: break-word;">cura animarum</em> (guardian of souls).”</div>
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The systematic rape of children was then obviously <em style="word-wrap: break-word;">not</em> a function of some kind of major cultural shift in the 1960s and 1970s, although that era might have sent a permissive signal to the global network of child rapists the Vatican was already hiding and enabling. It has been a core problem with the “celibate” priesthood in the US for decades, and every single bishop and every single Pope knew it. Fitzgerald personally met with Pope Paul VI to try and get him to act. Yes, the good folks in the church tried to do something as early as the 1950s and were stopped in their tracks … <em style="word-wrap: break-word;">by the Vatican</em>. The number of souls violated by child-rape in the coming decades would not have happened if all the Popes since Paul VI had acted with more moral sense than most maximum security murderers. (Even the worst prisoners regard child-rapists as the lowest of the low. Popes? Not so much). We’re not talking about priests who are drunks, or priests who fall in love, or break their vows in fallible, victimless ways; we’re talking here about priests committing one of the most heinous felonies imaginable: the systematic rape of children using the authority of the Church as cover.</div>
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John Paul II emphatically cannot be somehow removed from this picture. He personally protected one of the worst offenders, Marcial Maciel, who was a serial rapist, drug trafficker, bigamist and rapist of his own son. In fact, John Paul II elevated Maciel to the highest honors of the church – backed by the theocon wing of the American church, from<a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/03/29/maciel-disowned-by-the-legion/" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">Richard John Neuhaus to Bill Bennett</a> and Mary Ann Glendon. They all adamantly denied that Maciel was anything but a living saint – and he was never prosecuted, merely allowed a gentle retirement from running his order, The Legion of Christ, which continues.</div>
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Joseph Ratzinger, when he was Archbishop of Munich, <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/03/16/how-is-the-pope-different-from-cardinal-law/" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">personally signed off</a> on sending a priest to therapy, after that priest had raped several children, never notified the police, never told the parents of the children at the parish the priest was then assigned to, and because of this <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/03/18/putting-abuse-into-clear-english/" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">negligence</a>, was, in my view, complicit in the rape of several more children before the priest was finally caught, arrested and sent to jail. Let me repeat that: the current Pope <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/03/18/i-said-for-gods-sake-he-desperately-has-to-be-kept-away-from-working-with-children/" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">enabled and abetted</a> the rape of children – and his only way out was to blame a lower official, who subsequently <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/04/19/richard-milhous-ratzinger/" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">said he’d been pressured</a>. More than that, no one else in the church knows more about this long record of child-rape than Ratzinger. From 2001 onwards, all cases of child rape or abuse were ordered to be sent to his personal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And all of it had to be kept completely hidden from the outside world. In the <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/03/18/truth-to-power-2/" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">words of Hans Kung</a>, Ratzinger’s former modernizing ally in the Second Vatican Council,</div>
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Ratzinger himself, in a letter on “grave sexual crimes” addressed to all the bishops under the date of 18 May, 2001, warned the bishops, under threat of ecclesiastical punishment, to observe “papal secrecy” in such cases.</div>
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He knew everything – and had the goods on every Cardinal, in whose dioceses thousands of complaints had been filed. And one wonders why it was a surprise he was elected Pope. When you’re the J Edgar Hoover of the Vatican, who is going to challenge you?</div>
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If those of us are asked why we still believe in the salvation of Christ in the Catholic community, in the midst of all this, we do not have a good answer. All we can say is that we are, in some ways, trying to live in a parallel church, finding those many, many good priests who have been unfairly tarred by the pedophile brush, and living by one simple moral standard that the Pope himself does not agree with and has not done: if you find out someone is raping children, you call the cops.</div>
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But, for me, the most powerful moments in the documentary come from one simple fact. The four primary victims are deaf. They are grown men now and when they express themselves on film, they do so with sign and sounds of anguish and grief. One of the victims, now dead, sat down in front of a video camera and laboriously recounted every single act of abuse Father Murphy committed against him. He knew he was dying, and wanted to leave a record of the crimes and the corruption. Then in the most riveting raw footage of the film, he goes to confront the mass-rapist, whose crimes were by then beyond the statute of limitations. He finds him in the backyard. He signs and yells as coherently as a deaf person can; the priest seems utterly unmoved, telling the man he serially raped that “That’s all over now.” And disappears into his modest house, with a deaf-house-cleaner who had previously worked at St John’s. In the Catholic Church, mass rapists get retirement homes with maids. She confronts the rape victim. She keeps asking him: “Are you a Catholic?” He keeps replying that this has nothing to do with Catholicism and everything to do with rape. She just comes back at him with rapid-fire repetitions of “Are you a Catholic?” “Are you a Catholic?” “<em style="word-wrap: break-word;">Are you a Catholic?</em>“</div>
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It’s a good question.</div>
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I can hear my devout Irish grandmother – who also worked as a cleaning lady for priests, scrubbing her floors day after day till they looked like glass – asking the same question whenever I questioned ecclesiastical authority. It’s a question that simply tells you: do not disobey a priest; do not malign a priest; do not question a priest. And it is that deference, that lingering, profound subservience to the priestly office that also allowed this to happen. Where, after all, were the nuns at St John’s School? Did they seriously not know what was going on? Where were the parents of the deaf boys, when they warned them about Father Murphy as early as 1974? Where are we now as a church if we vaunt one of the biggest enablers of child-rape, John Paul II, to the status of sainthood without a thorough investigation of these matters?<div style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; word-wrap: break-word;">
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For me, Jesus must always be with the victims. He is the victim. When a priest rapes a child, Jesus is raped. When an archbishop covers up the crime, Jesus is raped. When successive Popes are told of the problem and assign total secrecy to it and fail to prevent future abuse of children, Jesus is raped. And there is a particularly appropriate ending to the tale of Father Murphy: faced with the possibility of a church trial for a canon law crime which has no statute of limitations – abusing the sacrament of reconciliation by raping children as absolution, he appealed to Pope Benedict XVI himself. And this Pope granted him a reprieve because of failing health. We have the documents to prove all this. Many argue – and it is undeniable – that this Pope has done more than any predecessor to investigate the horror. But he did so only as the abuse stories began to break into the open and his first response was to blame the media. <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/03/18/the-popes-defenders/" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">This quote</a> is from 2002 when Ratzinger was head of the CDF:</div>
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In the church, priests are also sinners. But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower. In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than one percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information or to the statistical objectivity of the facts. Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church.</div>
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Again, you notice one thing: his first priority then and now was to protect the institution, not protect the children. This is not an old story either. Just last week, the former Cardinal of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony, was <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/01/cardinal-duties-child-abuse-files" style="color: #2a5db0; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">stripped of his duties</a> for enabling and abetting the rapes of countless children. This was proven by key documents finally pried out of the church’s hands by a legal case. What we need access to is the entire Vatican archive of priestly sex abuse of children. But perhaps, case by case, we will begin to understand better the nexus of authority and accountability that made this global conspiracy to hide and abet rapists so durable and so horrifying.</div>
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There was a slogan in the years of AIDS. It was Silence = Death. What is unforgettable about this documentary is that the loudest voices come from the most vulnerable of all – deaf children who are now deaf adults. The loudest voices were those who could not speak. If I have hope for my church – and I sincerely believe Jesus will never finally abandon us, however corrupt and sinful we become – it is because of this fact. The power of the powerless is what helped stop this mass violation of the souls of children. The change came not from the top, which remains foully corrupted, but from the very margins of the margins: the consciences and courage of those who could not hear evil until it was upon them, but who were surrounded by it. And spoke up. As children. And, then, as adults.</div>
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When will the rest of us do the same? When will we Catholics insist in the prosecution of this Pope and this hierarchy for what can only be called – given its duration and gravity and sheer scale – a crime against humanity. When will we lose the deference to a clerical elite that has become its own self-perpetuating clique of sexual dysfunction, that has lost even the most basic moral authority, that even now refuses to hold itself to account.</div>
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What, one wonders, would Jesus do? My answer to that ultimately unanswerable question is simple: listen to the survivors. Even those who can only speak in silence and sign:</div>
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So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.</div>
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Andrew Sullivan </div>
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Where Have You Gone,<br style="word-wrap: break-word;" />Barack Obama?</h5>
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Britain, France, And SCOTUS</h5>
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Hitch And Sully: Is Religion Fossilized Philosophy?</h5>
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How To Create Actual Change</h5>
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Nostra Maxima Culpa</h5>
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Your New Dish</h5>
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The Meaning of <i style="word-wrap: break-word;">Girls</i></h5>
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Dish Independence II</h5>
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Females At The Front</h5>
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Letters From Millennial Voters</h5>
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(947)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2007/10/"> October 2007 (949)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2007/09/"> September 2007 (765)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2007/08/"> August 2007 (577)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2007/07/"> July 2007 (886)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2007/06/"> June 2007 (857)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2007/05/"> May 2007 (867)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2007/04/"> April 2007 (746)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2007/03/"> March 2007 (841)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" 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April 2004 (94)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2004/03/"> March 2004 (94)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2004/02/"> February 2004 (167)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2004/01/"> January 2004 (121)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/12/"> December 2003 (138)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/11/"> November 2003 (166)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/10/"> October 2003 (205)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/09/"> September 2003 (145)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/08/"> August 2003 (16)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/07/"> July 2003 (130)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/06/"> June 2003 (130)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/05/"> May 2003 (130)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/04/"> April 2003 (116)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/03/"> March 2003 (186)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/02/"> February 2003 (137)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2003/01/"> January 2003 (107)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2002/12/"> December 2002 (64)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2002/11/"> November 2002 (60)</option> <option 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(101)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2002/01/"> January 2002 (102)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/12/"> December 2001 (75)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/11/"> November 2001 (79)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/10/"> October 2001 (64)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/09/"> September 2001 (51)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/08/"> August 2001 (59)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/07/"> July 2001 (55)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/06/"> June 2001 (43)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/05/"> May 2001 (56)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/04/"> April 2001 (71)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/03/"> March 2001 (77)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/02/"> February 2001 (69)</option> <option style="word-wrap: break-word;" value="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2001/01/"> January 2001 (106)</option> </select></div>
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<a href="http://www.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=sm3dishstats" id="idSiteMeterHREF" style="color: #2a5db0; font-family: Georgia, calluna-1, calluna-2, times, serif; font-size: 15.333333015441895px; line-height: 22.66666603088379px; text-decoration: initial; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_top"></a>Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-12495074012443440222013-02-05T07:46:00.000-08:002013-02-05T07:46:03.788-08:00LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMAThis was written August 29 2010. In light of the recent reelection of the president I think we have finally turned the corner. MVW Feb 5, 2013<br />
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<span style="font-family: "AGaramond","serif"; font-weight: normal; line-height: 130%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Margot Woodrough<o:p></o:p></span></h3>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 130%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; line-height: 130%;">100 Beach Dr. # 1801<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; line-height: 130%;">St. Petersburg, Fl. 33701<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; line-height: 130%;">727-898-9003<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; line-height: 130%;"><a href="mailto:Margo4it@tampabay.rr.com">margo4it@tampabay.rr.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; line-height: 130%;">margotwoodrough.com<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>DATE \@ "d MMMM yyyy" <span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; line-height: 130%;">August 29, 2010</span><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;line-height:130%;font-family:"AGaramond","serif";color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">President Barack Obama<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">The White House<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">Washington D.C.</span> 20500-0004<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">Dear President Obama:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">I am sixty-eight
years old and desperately worried for the future of our country. Above you see a picture of my two children
and seven of the eight “kidlets” they have produced. I know your family is just as precious to you
as mine is to me. In fact, your family
is precious to me as well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">When I saw you give
the keynote address at the convention that nominated John Kerry, I knew you
were destined for greatness. You still
are, and it’s time to take action. It’s
been obvious to me for some time that there is a subversive element in our
culture seeking to undermine our country.
Recent articles by Jane Mayer in the “New Yorker” coupled with the two
recent (enclosed) editorials by Frank Rich have made it crystal clear what is
happening. I’m sure you are aware of the
phenomena, but doubt you realize the seriousness of the situation. Mr. Rich’s final sentence in today’s
editorial says it all. Please stand up
and fight Rupert Murdock and the Koch brother’s attempt to hijack our country –
it’s for your children and mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">Lastly, the vitriol
and hatred spread by Sarah Palin is backed and bankrolled by Rupert
Murdock. I’ve followed Sarah from the
moment she was nominated and in my opinion everything she’s ever said is untrue
including the story that she gave birth to the Down syndrome baby. (I would be
happy to discuss this further – or wait for Joe McGinnis’ book due out in
February.) Our press has failed us miserably on this issue. Why? Money.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">Our country is being
torn apart by powerful men exploiting people disaffected by the economic crisis
and stalemated war brought on by a previous administration. It’s time for you to have a “Fireside” chat
with the American people – in short you need to get back on the campaign trail
in small towns and reconnect with the citizens.
If you don’t do it, the likes of Murdoch, Koch and Palin will.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">The same elements
that tried to bring President Clinton down are hard at work attempting to do
the same to you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">Sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: AGaramond, serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 130%;">Margot Woodrough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-27923087163363280722013-01-31T08:54:00.003-08:002013-01-31T08:54:48.256-08:00The Privilege of the Grave - Mark TwainThis is an excellent essay that explains a universal phenomena. It was written in 1905, but only published for the first time in 2008 by "The New Yorker". I saved it and rediscovered it January 31, 2013 as I was housecleaning my files on a blustery January day. I am now inspired to do some creative writing of my own.<br />
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<br />
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<b><i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><a href="http://www.thelibertyvoice.com/tag/the-privilege-of-the-grave"><span style="color: #999999; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-style: normal;">The
Privilege of the Grave</span></a></span></i></b><b><i><span style="color: #999999; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Mark Twain</span></i></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b><b style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Its occupant has one privilege which is not
exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not really
without this privilege – strictly speaking – but as he possesses it merely as
an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be
seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks
with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing
to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free
speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">By the common estimate both are crimes, and
are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished,
free speech always – <i>when</i> committed. Which is seldom. There
are not fewer than five thousand murders to one (unpopular) free utterance.
There is justification for this reluctance to utter unpopular opinions: the
cost of utterance is too heavy; it can ruin a man in his business, it can lose
him his friends, it can subject him to public insult and abuse, it can
ostracize his unoffending family, and make his house a despised and unvisited
solitude. An unpopular opinion concerning politics or religion lies concealed
in the breast of every man; in many cases not only one sample, but several. The
more intelligent the man, the larger the freightage of this kind of opinions he
carries, and keeps to himself. There is not one individual – including the
reader and myself – who is not the possessor of dear and cherished unpopular
convictions which common wisdom forbids him to utter. Sometimes we suppress an
opinion for reasons that are a credit to us, not a discredit, but oftenest we
suppress an unpopular opinion because we cannot afford the bitter cost of
putting it forth. None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">A natural result of these conditions is, that
we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to
our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the
opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound. This
custom naturally produces another result: public opinion being born and reared
on this plan, it is not opinion at all, it is merely <i>policy</i>; there
is no reflection back of it, no principle, and it is entitled to no respect.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">When an entirely new and untried political
project is sprung upon the people, they are startled, anxious, timid, and for a
time they are mute, reserved, non-committal. The great majority of them are not
studying the new doctrine and making up their minds about it, they are waiting
to see which is going to be the popular side. In the beginning of the
anti-slavery agitation three-quarters of a century ago, in the North, it found
no sympathy there. Press, pulpit and nearly everybody blew cold upon it. This
was from timidity, the fear of speaking out and becoming obnoxious, not from
approval of slavery or lack of pity for the slave; for all nations like the
State of Virginia and myself are not exceptions to this rule; we joined the
Confederate cause not because we wanted to, for we did not, but we wanted to be
in the swim. It is plainly a law of nature, and we obeyed it.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">It is desire to be in the swim that makes
successful political parties. There is no higher motive involved – with the
majority – unless membership in a party because one’s father was a member of it
is one. The average citizen is not a student of party doctrines, and quite
right: neither he nor I would ever be able to understand them. If you should
ask him to explain – in intelligible detail – why he preferred one of the
coin-standards to the other, his attempt to do it would be disgraceful. The
same with the tariff. The same with any other large political doctrine; for all
large political doctrines are rich in difficult problems – problems that are
quite above the average citizen’s reach. And that is not strange, since they
are also above the reach of the ablest minds in the country; after all the fuss
and all the talk, not one of those doctrines has been conclusively proven to be
the right one and the best.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">When a man has joined a party, he is likely to
stay in it. If he changes his opinion – his feeling, I mean, his sentiment – he
is likely to stay, anyway; his friends are of that party, and he will keep his
altered sentiment to himself, and talk the privately discarded one. On those
terms he can exercise his American privilege of free speech, but not on any
others. These unfortunates are in both parties, but in what proportions we
cannot guess. Therefore we never know which party was really in the majority at
an election.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Free speech is the privilege of the dead, the
monopoly of the dead. They can speak their honest minds without offending. We
have charity for what the dead say. We may disapprove of what they say, but we
do not insult them, we do not revile them, as knowing they cannot now defend
themselves. If they should speak, what revelations there would be! For it would
be found that in matters of opinion no departed person was exactly what he had
passed for in life; that out of fear, or out of calculated wisdom, or out of
reluctance to wound friends, he had long kept to himself certain views not
suspected by his little world, and had carried them unuttered to the grave. And
then the living would be brought by this to a poignant and reproachful
realization of the fact that they, too, were tarred by that same brush. They
would realize, deep down, that they, and whole nations along with them, are not
really what they seem to be – and never can be.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Now there is hardly one of us but would dearly
like to reveal these secrets of ours; we know we cannot do it in life, then why
not do it from the grave, and have the satisfaction of it? Why not put those
things into our diaries, instead of so discreetly leaving them out? Why not put
them in, and leave the diaries behind, for our friends to read? Or free
speech <i>is</i> a desirable thing. I felt it in London, five years
ago, when Boer sympathizers – respectable men, taxpayers, good citizens, and as
much entitled to their opinions as were any other citizens – were mobbed at
their meetings, and their speakers maltreated and driven from the platform by
other citizens who differed from them in opinion. I have felt it in America
when we have mobbed meetings and battered the speakers. And most particularly I
feel it every week or two when I want to print something that a fine discretion
tells me I mustn’t. Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take to the
pen and pour them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then
all that ink and labor are wasted, because I can’t print the result. I have
just finished an article of this kind, and it satisfies me entirely. It does my
weather-beaten soul good to read it, and admire the trouble it would make for
me and the family. I will leave it behind, and utter it from the grave. There
is free speech there, and no harm to the family.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-82959627622884348262013-01-22T08:36:00.000-08:002013-02-21T08:55:26.399-08:00Ode to Mitt RomneyGenerations to come will find a good summary here of why Mitt Romney lost:<br />
<br />
<br />
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<em><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">On this day of celebration when
Barack Obama takes the oath of office, I offer to Mitt Romney, who must be
having a very bad day – a little salt in the wound. </span></em><o:p></o:p><br />
<em><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></em></div>
<div align="center" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 15pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">You pursued a cutthroat game plan,<br />
In your brutal Primary fight.<br />
Wherever your opponent stood,<br />
You scurried to his right.<br />
You thought you’d shake the Etch- a-Sketch,<br />
And start again anew.<br />
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When a soldier in Afghanistan,<br />
Asked if you had your say,<br />
Would you reinstate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?<br />
And told you he was gay.<br />
You stood there without speaking,<br />
When the crowd began to boo.<br />
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">You didn’t speak when Sandra
Fluke,<br />
Was called a “slut” by Rush.<br />
You were silent when your party,<br />
Tried to take our votes from us.<br />
You said nothing when Todd Akin,<br />
Claimed that not all rapes are true.<br />
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When asked if you would sign,<br />
A woman’s Right to Choose away,<br />
You’d answer women only cared,<br />
How much was in their pay.<br />
You made Ann your link to women,<br />
When she never had a clue.<br />
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 15pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">You embarrassed us in Europe,<br />
Wherever you would go.<br />
Ann’s horse made the Olympics,<br />
But you didn’t even show.<br />
You’d have let Michigan go bankrupt,<br />
From Detroit to Kalamazoo.<br />
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">You thought, like you, that
everyone,<br />
Loved nothing more than money.<br />
And shaving off a classmates hair,<br />
Was your idea of funny.<br />
You like your women bound in binders,<br />
Unless they’re pregnant in a shoe.<br />
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 15pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">You gave millions to the Mormons,<br />
To Fund Proposition Eight.<br />
You may have called that charity,<br />
Gay couples call it “hate”.<br />
You threatened to kill Big Bird,<br />
And you’re married to a shrew.<br />
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">There are forty-seven percent of
us,<br />
For whom you had no care.<br />
You claimed it wasn’t our concern,<br />
If you were taxed your share.<br />
In your heart, you didn’t love us,<br />
And we didn’t love you too.<br />
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
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by JEAN ANN ESSELINK </div>
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Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-87390168183270918242013-01-22T08:29:00.001-08:002013-02-21T07:44:17.623-08:00Election 2012 and poem<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, Time New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px;">Yesterday Barack Obama was given a second term in office. I watched the coverage in its entirety and wish Annette could have been here to see it. He is an amazing person and I predict will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. He has tolerated so much opposition from the Republicans and finally today in his address he laid out an agenda that Fox News called "take no </span><span style="font-size: 17.714284896850586px; line-height: 22px;">prisoners</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px;">". In my opinion Fox News is the culprit behind much of the division in our country. Fortunately, the American people could not be fooled and voted Obama back in office with an overwhelming majority. Our country is at last safe from the Koch Brothers, and assaults on our civil rights.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, Time New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px;">Here is a poem written by a Cuban American the expresses why we need to come back together:</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,<br />
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces<br />
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth<br />
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.<br />
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story<br />
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,<br />
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:<br />
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,<br />
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows<br />
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -<br />
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,<br />
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives-<br />
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did<br />
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,<br />
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:<br />
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,<br />
the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming,<br />
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain<br />
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent<br />
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light<br />
breathing color into stained glass windows,<br />
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth<br />
onto the steps of our museums and park benches<br />
as mothers watch children slide into the day.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk<br />
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat<br />
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills<br />
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands<br />
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands<br />
as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane<br />
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains<br />
mingled by one wind - our breath. Breathe. Hear it<br />
through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,<br />
buses launching down avenues, the symphony<br />
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,<br />
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,<br />
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open<br />
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,<br />
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos dias<br />
in the language my mother taught me - in every language<br />
spoken into one wind carrying our lives<br />
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed<br />
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked<br />
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:<br />
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report<br />
for the boss on time, stitching another wound<br />
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,<br />
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower<br />
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes<br />
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather<br />
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love<br />
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother<br />
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father<br />
who couldn't give what you wanted.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #202022; font-family: Georgia, 'Time New Roman', serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight<br />
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always - home,<br />
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon<br />
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop<br />
and every window, of one country - all of us -<br />
facing the stars<br />
hope - a new constellation<br />
waiting for us to map it,<br />
waiting for us to name it - together.</div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-3518098468799578232013-01-09T14:30:00.001-08:002013-02-21T13:35:22.073-08:00Definition of a Liberal<img src="https://upworthy-production.s3.amazonaws.com/nugget/4fbe434ece3ef00003001921/attachments/jfk-quote-for-liberals.jpg" />Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-36438867083708413142013-01-09T06:21:00.003-08:002017-08-16T08:51:58.330-07:00Mother Sandy NatureHurricane Sandy<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mother Sandy Nature<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Grew tired of old farts<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Messing with Lady Parts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She threw down her cool<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just to show the old Fools<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Proof of Global Warming<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
MVW Election 2012</div>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-64014444294152121532012-12-03T05:15:00.001-08:002013-02-21T13:34:41.143-08:00Contemplate this!It gets even more exciting when you consider that the earth is traveling around the sun at 60,000 mph, and the solar system is revolving around the galactic center at 568,000 mph. On top of that the Milky Way galaxy itself is traveling through space at 190 miles per second! So even when we are sitting still, we are anything but.Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-81868733926081853752012-08-12T06:29:00.001-07:002013-02-21T07:54:04.865-08:00Carl Sagan<h2>
"The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides." - Carl Sagan</h2>
Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-61847557462634362812012-08-10T06:34:00.003-07:002017-08-16T12:01:16.602-07:00You are the Product of 4 Billion Years of Evolution<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1142506999063201118" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; color: #0b5394; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;">YOU ARE THE PRODUCT OF 4 BILLION YEARS OF EVOLUTION. </span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;"> ACT LIKE IT</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;">You have free will, use it.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br style="background-color: #c3d9ff; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; color: #0b5394; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;">You possess the most highly developed brain on the planet, take advantage of that.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; color: #0b5394; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br style="background-color: #c3d9ff; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; color: #0b5394; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;">You are the product of your ancestors greatest hopes and dreams, make them proud.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; color: #0b5394; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="background-color: #c3d9ff; color: #0b5394; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.1429px; line-height: 10.2857px;">And do not forget that the next generation is looking to us for guidance, don't let them down.</span>Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-23067660304175352712012-06-25T06:05:00.001-07:002013-02-21T07:58:59.159-08:00THE UNIVERSE NEIL DE GRASSE TYSON<br />
<div id="watch-info" style="background-color: #ebebeb; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<div class="yt-uix-expander" data-expander-action="yt.www.watch.watch5.handleToggleDescription" id="watch-description" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 1;">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1142506999063201118" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<div id="watch-description-clip" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 450px;">
<div id="watch-description-text" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 1.09em; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div id="eow-description" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 17px; padding: 0px;">
What is the most astounding fact you<br />
can share with us about the Universe?<br />
The most astounding fact...<br />
The most astounding fact is the knowledge<br />
that the atoms that comprise life on Earth<br />
the atoms that make up the human body<br />
are traceable to the crucibles that cooked<br />
light elements into heavy elements in their core<br />
under extreme temperatures and pressures.<br />
These stars, the high mass ones among them<br />
went unstable in their later years<br />
they collapsed and then exploded scattering<br />
their enriched guts across the galaxy<br />
guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen<br />
and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself.<br />
These ingredients become part of gas cloud<br />
that condense, collapse, form...<br />
the next generation of solar systems<br />
stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have<br />
the ingredients for life itself.<br />
So that when I look up at the night sky<br />
and I know that yes, we are part of this universe,<br />
we are in this universe, but perhaps more important<br />
than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us.<br />
When I reflect on that fact, I look up<br />
-- many people feel small 'cause they're small<br />
and the Universe is big -- but I feel big,<br />
because my atoms came from those stars.<br />
There's a level of connectivity.<br />
That's really what you want in life,<br />
you want to feel connected,<br />
you want to feel relevant<br />
you want to feel like... a participant in the goings on<br />
of activities and events around you.<br />
That's precisely what we are,<br />
just by being alive...</div>
</div>
<div id="watch-description-extras" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
<h4 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 6px 0px 3px; padding: 0px;">
Category:</h4>
<div id="eow-category" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/education" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Education</a></div>
<h4 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 6px 0px 3px; padding: 0px;">
Tags:</h4>
<ul class="watch-info-tag-list" id="eow-tags" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Neil&search=tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">Neil</a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=DeGrasse&search=tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">DeGrasse</a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Tyson&search=tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">Tyson</a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The&search=tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">The</a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Most&search=tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">Most</a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Astounding&search=tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">Astounding</a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Fact&search=tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">Fact</a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Subtitled&search=tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">Subtitled</a></li>
</ul>
<h4 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 6px 0px 3px; padding: 0px;">
<br /></h4>
</div>
</div>
<ul id="watch-description-extra-info" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 475px; min-height: 55px; padding: 0px; width: 165px;">
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</div>
<div class="watch-sparkbar-dislikes" style="background-color: #cc0000; border: 0px; float: right; height: 4px; margin: 0px -1px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; width: 0px;">
</div>
</div>
<span class="watch-likes-dislikes" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="likes" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">50</span> likes, <span class="dislikes" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">0</span> dislikes</span></li>
<li class="full-link" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #666666; font-size: 0.9166em; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/artist/The_Cinematic_Orchestra?feature=watch_metadata" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #666666; cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><img class="metadata-icon music-artist" src="http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/pixel-vfl3z5WfW.gif" style="background-image: url(http://s.ytimg.com/yt/imgbin/www-refresh-vflMLqC23.png); background-position: -171px -154px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: left; height: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; width: 16px;" /><span class="metadata-info" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; margin: 0px 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px;">Artist: <span class="link-like" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Cinematic Orchestra</span></span></a></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #666666; font-size: 0.9166em; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 0px;"><div class="carousel-container" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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<h2 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; margin: 6px 0px 3px; padding: 0px;">
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<li class="yt-uix-slider-slide-item last" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: left; font-size: 0.9166em; margin: 0px 0px 1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 0px;"><div class="carousel-offer-container" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; width: 141px;">
<img alt="Buy:" class="metadata-icon music-note" src="http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/pixel-vfl3z5WfW.gif" style="background-image: url(http://s.ytimg.com/yt/imgbin/www-refresh-vflMLqC23.png); background-position: -315px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; float: left; height: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; width: 16px;" /><span class="metadata-info" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; margin: 0px 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px;">Buy "To Build A Home" on: ,<br />,</span></div>
</li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 0.9166em; margin: 0px 0px 1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 0px;"></li>
</ul>
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</li>
<li class="full-link watch-extra-info-long" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #666666; font-size: 0.9166em; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ninja000" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #666666; cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="[Merlin] Ninja Tune Ltd" class="badge-icon" src="http://i2.ytimg.com/i/EXRv_qihRwjsV91ftx23-A/1.jpg?v=8da595" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: left; height: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; width: 16px;" /><span class="metadata-info" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; margin: 0px 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px;">Contains content from: <span class="link-like" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #1c62b9; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">[Merlin] Ninja Tune Ltd</span></span></a></li>
</ul>
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div>
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Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-24352517503198545742012-04-26T10:02:00.003-07:002012-04-26T10:02:48.236-07:00LUCKY ONES<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNBWNPhutbz5g2NCEVlMIi9U5quSscDPtaMXti5nkKnNSwOOkHpJn4UcxbFLom6aWZx-aTEzbgwl5Rg-ZCNQG7yeTqSKo656y5KhmIHBeblk6SzVcPeWbmYeZL50eiUQe5-CDz-zloh8/s1600/7Qrk3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNBWNPhutbz5g2NCEVlMIi9U5quSscDPtaMXti5nkKnNSwOOkHpJn4UcxbFLom6aWZx-aTEzbgwl5Rg-ZCNQG7yeTqSKo656y5KhmIHBeblk6SzVcPeWbmYeZL50eiUQe5-CDz-zloh8/s320/7Qrk3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-12881679660757885982012-04-26T10:01:00.003-07:002012-04-26T10:01:42.670-07:00Wise Words<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1142506999063201118.post-67852103712354704522012-04-14T11:44:00.000-07:002013-02-21T13:33:49.226-08:00My religious creedIf you are hungry, I will offer food,<br />
If you are thirsty, I will offer water<br />
If you are cold, I will offer warmth<br />
If you are in need, ask and I will give<br />
If you are in trouble, ask and I will help.<br />
<br />
I do not do these things in the hopes of being<br />
rewarded, or out of fear of being punished.<br />
I do these things because I know them to be right.<br />
I set my own standards and I alone enforce them.Margothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01404657942739695532noreply@blogger.com0