Garrison, so sorry you have to deal with politics in this forum! As the third generation of transplanted Swedes( my great grandmother was born on an island off of Finland, " but there is no Finnish blood in our family ") we did not discuss politics,. In fact there was almost no discussion of anything controversial....Food, health problems, the neighbors, or fishing, were acceptable topics. Sadly no Swedish was spoken nor was our Swedish history discussed because my very stubborn grandfather wanted the entire family to be Americanized. Ah well, thank you, as usual, for your humorous perspectives!
"How do [you] reconcile the hate and your Christianity?" This is how a commenter has reacted to GK's criticism, or rather to his humorous dismissal, of donald trump. I wonder how the commenter reconciles his own (I assume) Christianity with trump's lying, cheating, racism, birtherism, immorality, vulgarity, white supremacy, venality, criminality, emulation of his mentor Roy Cohn, undermining of our democratic norms and the many traits the former head of the Orangina Administration shares with the murderous dictators he so admires and imitates. And according to the commenter, GK hates not only trump, but conservatives!? I think a remedial reading comprehension course is in order... Anyway, it reminds me of the letter Adam Kinzinger received from some of his relatives. "Oh my, what a DISAPPOINTMENT you are to us and to GOD!... We are not judging you..."
Actually, thank you for posting what people have written to you about politics, especially different points of view. We don't have to agree with one another. But if we don't, at least, hear other people out, we risk getting sucked into a pool of only the like minded, essentially drinking our own bath water.
I don't buy the bathwwater metaphor, sorry. The Republican party, for the most part, has left the road and is driving across open fields and into the woods. I admire George F. Will and some other conservative writers but people who've bought into a cult cannot be reasoned with. We Democrats have plenty of disagreements and I love playing a conservative to progressive pals.
It seems to me that there's still a lot of "Either/Or" - "Which team are you on?" sort of "Identity crisis" in many of these posts. Posters ask if our Host is "Republican or Democrat?" "Christian" or "Barbarian, or something else"? It seems to me that you have carefully thread the needle in most of these replies, trying to avoid direct conflict. Among them, I really appreciated the reply that "if violent men were threatening to kill your children, what would you do?"
Putin is trying to frame this on an historical basis - trying to "update history" to the days of Katherine the Great. You do a great job of refocusing the proposition. It's not about "labels" - it's about human life!
In the times of the Former Soviet Union, many of the residents of the Ukraine shunned "religious" identities. Life was safer there, back then, if "atheist" was one's assumed label. But even then, there were "humanitarians" among the populace.
The pastor of our immigrant Ukrainian Pentecostal Church told us a bit of personal history once. Their church used to hold baptisms on the banks of a local river. Once, one of the members was a spy - a stooge - who notified the local Party Officials. There was a raid, and our pastor was taken in to the local precinct office. In the ordinary course of events, that would be the first stop on the way to the prisons in the Siberian Gulag. However, our pastor happened to be lucky enough to end up in the arms of a humanitarian - someone who was a human being before a "Party Member."
Theoretically, on the trip from the river to town, our pastor had signed a sort of carbon copy "Confession" - saying that his church took babies for baptism and slaughtered them - maybe it even said that they were cannibals who ate the babies afterwards. There were probably half a dozen charges on that underlying piece of paper, but that was the most extreme among them. When the party office man looked at this obvious carbon copy, he had seen such shams before. He didn't want to be a part of something so obviously dishonest, as he looked into the earnest and child-like, trusting eyes of our pastor.
"There's the door," the officer said. Our pastor looked at him, uncomprehendingly. "Go!" the man repeated. Our pastor went out the door, into the arms of his wife, who was waiting fretfully for him across the street. Nothing more was ever done about that "arrest."
These things happened, again and again. I went once to a "District-wide convention" in Utica. Although the witnesses were speaking in Ukrainian, there was enough similarity, or, perhaps, my heart was in tune enough with their testimony, that I seemed to understand every word. They recounted their experiences as draftees in the Soviet military. One and all, they spoke of being pulled aside by the commandants, singled out as Christians, disparaged, but then, assigned to Kitchen Detail. They never held a gun. Most of them never got near "The Front," wherever that happened to be.
Until I joined a protestant Ukrainian immigrants' church, I probably had almost as "Monolithic" a view of the Soviet Union and the people who lived there as most of the rest of us do. It wasn't all Putin and "Russia Forever" then, and I'm pretty sure it's probably the same today.
I'd be willing to bet that some of those soldiers are firing their weapons into the air. We're seeing the images of the "worst part" - mothers and children being shot down in the streets. I'd bet all the Hryvnii that I don't have that those ghastly photographs are clips, isolated examples that result from the guns of the few soldiers who actually used real bullets and targeted living women and children.
In these troubled days, we're probably more aware of personal differences among our own populace than we were formerly. If one wants to speak of beliefs, I'd really like to believe that there are many "Pro-life" people in the Ukraine today. I believe there are even folks with loaded guns in their hands, and leaders telling them to shoot - who manage to shoot into the ground, or far off into the empty areas beyond those fleeing families.
The former Soviet Union has had a conscription army since World War II. If we're speaking about faith, I, for one, have faith that the Good Lord manages to outnumber those true killers with many more "Pro-Life" young conscripts. In reality they could be participating in "a lot of sound and fury, signifying less than we imagine!
My all time favorite joke of yours is about the guy who orders a cup of coffee, black, no sugar, no cream, & the waitress says “we don’t have cream, so it will have to be no sugar, no milk”. I must be telling it wrong, because al I get in response is “so then what happened”?
That joke reminds me of a trip I took on Newfoundland Island once upon a time. I was way out in the boonies when I found a "tea house" in among the brambles. There was a note on the menu to the effect of "Sorry we can't serve milk with the tea." As someone who was non-British enough to never think of sticking milk in tea in the first place, it seemed a bit comical to me. I was curious, though, why they had that restriction. I asked the waitress. It turned out that long, long ago, during a war, I suppose, they didn't have enough manpower to maintain open pastures for cows. Their fields went back to the wild state. Dairymen began importing hay from Nova Scotia. There was exactly one dairy on the island, on a hill above the city of St. Johns. Beyond a certain delivery route, the only dairy products available would be cheeses and canned evaporated milk.
Up until that point, I hadn't paid much attention to the countryside. After I left the tea house, I began noticing that , especially on bends in the roads, there would be mini-gardens of potatoes, and maybe some carrots or beets thrown in. Everything appeared very orderly.
That evening I stayed at a bed-and-breakfast home on a northern shore. When I mentioned the roadside gardens, our hosts pointed out that those gardens were the source of much of the supper we were eating. "Except the moose steak," they laughed. That had been traded for with a hunter who lived nearby.
We could easily have been 40 miles from the nearest grocery store. But they had fish from the sea, game from the land, and vegetables from the roadside gardens. In addition, the local women sewed knick-knacks which some neighborhood traders might sell from their van at the side of the far-distant main road. The folks who occasionally "went to town" would pick up things like flour and sugar for the locals.
I was really impressed. These folks were "doing without" so many things that we in more populated areas take for granted. And yet, they had worked out their social network such that practically everyone around was involved in their communal efforts to have a balanced diet, and adequate ways of life.
Once, I think it was at Red Rock Amphitheater, at a PHC performance, I recall a song, "My Father's Hat," I think it was. It was about being poor, not being able to buy anything but "the cheapest kind." The refrain was "But the Love, the Love, the Love was not the cheapest kind." I wouldn't be surprised if the Love between neighbors in isolated spaces such as rural Newfoundland also "isn't the cheapest kind." It could even be that those interpersonal ties, in some intrinsic ways, can be more "valuable" than - for example, having cream to put in your coffee, or tea!
Garrison, so sorry you have to deal with politics in this forum! As the third generation of transplanted Swedes( my great grandmother was born on an island off of Finland, " but there is no Finnish blood in our family ") we did not discuss politics,. In fact there was almost no discussion of anything controversial....Food, health problems, the neighbors, or fishing, were acceptable topics. Sadly no Swedish was spoken nor was our Swedish history discussed because my very stubborn grandfather wanted the entire family to be Americanized. Ah well, thank you, as usual, for your humorous perspectives!
Ann Flynt: YES!
"How do [you] reconcile the hate and your Christianity?" This is how a commenter has reacted to GK's criticism, or rather to his humorous dismissal, of donald trump. I wonder how the commenter reconciles his own (I assume) Christianity with trump's lying, cheating, racism, birtherism, immorality, vulgarity, white supremacy, venality, criminality, emulation of his mentor Roy Cohn, undermining of our democratic norms and the many traits the former head of the Orangina Administration shares with the murderous dictators he so admires and imitates. And according to the commenter, GK hates not only trump, but conservatives!? I think a remedial reading comprehension course is in order... Anyway, it reminds me of the letter Adam Kinzinger received from some of his relatives. "Oh my, what a DISAPPOINTMENT you are to us and to GOD!... We are not judging you..."
Are we going to see an Audio Book version of "Boom Town"? Pretty please?
I recorded it a few weeks ago and it should be out soon with piano interludes by Richard Dworsky.
Excellent!!!
Actually, thank you for posting what people have written to you about politics, especially different points of view. We don't have to agree with one another. But if we don't, at least, hear other people out, we risk getting sucked into a pool of only the like minded, essentially drinking our own bath water.
I don't buy the bathwwater metaphor, sorry. The Republican party, for the most part, has left the road and is driving across open fields and into the woods. I admire George F. Will and some other conservative writers but people who've bought into a cult cannot be reasoned with. We Democrats have plenty of disagreements and I love playing a conservative to progressive pals.
It seems to me that there's still a lot of "Either/Or" - "Which team are you on?" sort of "Identity crisis" in many of these posts. Posters ask if our Host is "Republican or Democrat?" "Christian" or "Barbarian, or something else"? It seems to me that you have carefully thread the needle in most of these replies, trying to avoid direct conflict. Among them, I really appreciated the reply that "if violent men were threatening to kill your children, what would you do?"
Putin is trying to frame this on an historical basis - trying to "update history" to the days of Katherine the Great. You do a great job of refocusing the proposition. It's not about "labels" - it's about human life!
In the times of the Former Soviet Union, many of the residents of the Ukraine shunned "religious" identities. Life was safer there, back then, if "atheist" was one's assumed label. But even then, there were "humanitarians" among the populace.
The pastor of our immigrant Ukrainian Pentecostal Church told us a bit of personal history once. Their church used to hold baptisms on the banks of a local river. Once, one of the members was a spy - a stooge - who notified the local Party Officials. There was a raid, and our pastor was taken in to the local precinct office. In the ordinary course of events, that would be the first stop on the way to the prisons in the Siberian Gulag. However, our pastor happened to be lucky enough to end up in the arms of a humanitarian - someone who was a human being before a "Party Member."
Theoretically, on the trip from the river to town, our pastor had signed a sort of carbon copy "Confession" - saying that his church took babies for baptism and slaughtered them - maybe it even said that they were cannibals who ate the babies afterwards. There were probably half a dozen charges on that underlying piece of paper, but that was the most extreme among them. When the party office man looked at this obvious carbon copy, he had seen such shams before. He didn't want to be a part of something so obviously dishonest, as he looked into the earnest and child-like, trusting eyes of our pastor.
"There's the door," the officer said. Our pastor looked at him, uncomprehendingly. "Go!" the man repeated. Our pastor went out the door, into the arms of his wife, who was waiting fretfully for him across the street. Nothing more was ever done about that "arrest."
These things happened, again and again. I went once to a "District-wide convention" in Utica. Although the witnesses were speaking in Ukrainian, there was enough similarity, or, perhaps, my heart was in tune enough with their testimony, that I seemed to understand every word. They recounted their experiences as draftees in the Soviet military. One and all, they spoke of being pulled aside by the commandants, singled out as Christians, disparaged, but then, assigned to Kitchen Detail. They never held a gun. Most of them never got near "The Front," wherever that happened to be.
Until I joined a protestant Ukrainian immigrants' church, I probably had almost as "Monolithic" a view of the Soviet Union and the people who lived there as most of the rest of us do. It wasn't all Putin and "Russia Forever" then, and I'm pretty sure it's probably the same today.
I'd be willing to bet that some of those soldiers are firing their weapons into the air. We're seeing the images of the "worst part" - mothers and children being shot down in the streets. I'd bet all the Hryvnii that I don't have that those ghastly photographs are clips, isolated examples that result from the guns of the few soldiers who actually used real bullets and targeted living women and children.
In these troubled days, we're probably more aware of personal differences among our own populace than we were formerly. If one wants to speak of beliefs, I'd really like to believe that there are many "Pro-life" people in the Ukraine today. I believe there are even folks with loaded guns in their hands, and leaders telling them to shoot - who manage to shoot into the ground, or far off into the empty areas beyond those fleeing families.
The former Soviet Union has had a conscription army since World War II. If we're speaking about faith, I, for one, have faith that the Good Lord manages to outnumber those true killers with many more "Pro-Life" young conscripts. In reality they could be participating in "a lot of sound and fury, signifying less than we imagine!
GK,
My all time favorite joke of yours is about the guy who orders a cup of coffee, black, no sugar, no cream, & the waitress says “we don’t have cream, so it will have to be no sugar, no milk”. I must be telling it wrong, because al I get in response is “so then what happened”?
Help me!
Edward,
Kansas City
Leave out the sugar.
That joke reminds me of a trip I took on Newfoundland Island once upon a time. I was way out in the boonies when I found a "tea house" in among the brambles. There was a note on the menu to the effect of "Sorry we can't serve milk with the tea." As someone who was non-British enough to never think of sticking milk in tea in the first place, it seemed a bit comical to me. I was curious, though, why they had that restriction. I asked the waitress. It turned out that long, long ago, during a war, I suppose, they didn't have enough manpower to maintain open pastures for cows. Their fields went back to the wild state. Dairymen began importing hay from Nova Scotia. There was exactly one dairy on the island, on a hill above the city of St. Johns. Beyond a certain delivery route, the only dairy products available would be cheeses and canned evaporated milk.
Up until that point, I hadn't paid much attention to the countryside. After I left the tea house, I began noticing that , especially on bends in the roads, there would be mini-gardens of potatoes, and maybe some carrots or beets thrown in. Everything appeared very orderly.
That evening I stayed at a bed-and-breakfast home on a northern shore. When I mentioned the roadside gardens, our hosts pointed out that those gardens were the source of much of the supper we were eating. "Except the moose steak," they laughed. That had been traded for with a hunter who lived nearby.
We could easily have been 40 miles from the nearest grocery store. But they had fish from the sea, game from the land, and vegetables from the roadside gardens. In addition, the local women sewed knick-knacks which some neighborhood traders might sell from their van at the side of the far-distant main road. The folks who occasionally "went to town" would pick up things like flour and sugar for the locals.
I was really impressed. These folks were "doing without" so many things that we in more populated areas take for granted. And yet, they had worked out their social network such that practically everyone around was involved in their communal efforts to have a balanced diet, and adequate ways of life.
Once, I think it was at Red Rock Amphitheater, at a PHC performance, I recall a song, "My Father's Hat," I think it was. It was about being poor, not being able to buy anything but "the cheapest kind." The refrain was "But the Love, the Love, the Love was not the cheapest kind." I wouldn't be surprised if the Love between neighbors in isolated spaces such as rural Newfoundland also "isn't the cheapest kind." It could even be that those interpersonal ties, in some intrinsic ways, can be more "valuable" than - for example, having cream to put in your coffee, or tea!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznsDGhF-gc
Pacifism isn’t the same as harmless.
I will defend me and mine against the person invading our home. If this includes taking their life, so be it.
When the State, whom enjoys a de facto monopoly on violence, demands I kill another’s children I will refuse. If that makes my life forfeit, so be it.
I'm glad you will defend your home. And I'm glad that others will defend your town and your country.