Into The Belly Of The Walmart Beast

For the sake of a $2.00 curtain rod for my granddaughter's bedroom window, I went to Walmart. Grandpère, the Walmart shopper in the family, bought the wrong size rod, so I went to change it and get the right size. I went to Customer Service where I felt great satisfaction in getting $3.70 back from Walmart.

I found the right size rod, picked up a bottle of cheap make-up, which seems to be the only brand to which I am not allergic, and headed to checkout. I tried the garden section, where, if the gods smile on me, the line is not too long. Today, the gods were angry, and it was long. I went to the regular checkout, stood in one line for a few minutes, went to another line, saw that it was self-checkout, which never works for me, and that one woman had a full to overflowing buggy, returned to the garden section and waited with my two items. The gentleman in front of me, with a full buggy, offered to let me go ahead of him - an angel in disguise, surely. I check out, and I'm outta there.

All the while I'm waiting, I'm in a state of near panic, debating with myself whether I will put the two items on a shelf and get the hell out of there or wait it out. What a terrible place.

UPDATE: Thanks to David G. for the picture. David, this is a keeper, because I write a post nearly every time I go to Walmart, and I'm sure that I will use it again.

Miami Judge Rules Ban On Gay Adoption Unconstitutional

From U. S. News:

A 1977 Florida state law that bans gay individuals from adopting has received its biggest challenge thus far: Foster father Frank Martin Gill won his suit to adopt two brothers he has been fostering since 2004.

In her decision this morning, Miami Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman ruled that there was no "rational basis" to prevent the children from being adopted. The case, which marks the first time that a gay adoption case has been taken before a trial court in Florida, seems likely to go before the Florida Supreme Court, which could overturn the ban.

Although several states have de facto bans against gay couples adopting and an unknown number of conservative-leaning courts make it virtually impossible, Florida is the only state that prohibits gay individuals from adopting. But it allows them to be foster parents. That means that when Gill wanted to adopt the two boys he'd fostered for four years, ages 4 and 8, he couldn't, leaving the brothers as official wards of the state.

This is excellent news. Of course, there will be appeals, and we don't know what the result will be in the end, but for now we can rejoice with Frank Gill and the boys.

Here's the article on the clash of the experts during the trial from the Miami Herald.

When Mary Clara Gets Fired Up

In the comments to this post:

Mary Clara said...

I'm with JohnieB: I'm waiting for the war crimes trials and the treason trials and the chance to see the Bushies led away in orange jumpsuits and leg irons. Of course, I also think people who voted for Bush and Cheney (esp. in 2004, when the evidence was in)should have to pay a penalty too. Maybe they could be required to subsidize the care and support of one injured US veteran of the war for the rest of his life, or pay reparations and support to an Iraqi family displaced, traumatized and impoverished by the bloody war, or spend six months in NOLA rebuilding ruined houses.

I think Grandpere may be right. Obama didn't win by a landslide, and in fact didn't even get a majority of white votes (even here in heavily Democratic Maryland, which really shocked me). Yet Andrew Kohut reported a week or so ago that according to his polling, about two-thirds of the population are now optimistic that Obama will be able to handle the problems ahead and think that things will get better! I think that's amazing.

I think he is going to govern from the center and pull in everybody who can help come up with solutions. The situation is so drastic that it provides an opportunity to get out of fixed patterns of thinking and ideologies that have been blinding people to what is really going on. The people he appointed today as his economic advisers don't seem to be ideologues; they are just very smart and very seasoned people, with a remarkable range of experience to bring to their task. It will be difficult to adjust to having people of that sort running the government, just as it is a shock to have a President (-elect) who can speak in complete, grammatical sentences and complete a thought, even when responding to questions at a press conference.

People are going to get behind the new President (even before he is sworn in) because they know their own livelihoods and future financial security may depend upon his being able to lead us out of this mess. Even the officials of the outgoing maladministration know that their own asses are on the line. Forget about a 'legacy' (it's way too late for that), it's about whether their own stock holdings and other assets are going to become worthless. The good thing about this is that the right-wing operatives who dogged the Clintons, and who would surely like to bring Obama down with their slime machine, are not likely to succeed. People are going to have other things on their minds besides whatever crap the neocons can invent or insinuate about him.

And we all said, "Amen".

Our Fall Colors Arrive!

 

I know. I know. We're way behind everyone else. Some years, we don't have fall colors at all. These are crepe myrtle trees, and Grandpère and I agree that we have never seen our crepe myrtles this colorful, except when they were in bloom, in the 26 years we have lived in our house. This is an event, an alignment of the moon and the stars or, whatever. We don't know what caused this to happen.

 

That's Tara across the street, or, if you prefer, Barbie's House of Dreams, as the young girls called the place. It's the grandest house on the block. You don't get the full effect with the trees in the way.

 

The leaves of the tree in the back yard turned yellow, and it is as nothing compared to the brilliance of the colors in the front yard.

For your viewing pleasure.

A Conversation - Sort Of

Grandpère to me: "I think some of the people who were most vocal against Obama are beginning to reconsider."

Me to Grandpère in a rather loud voice: "Yes! The assholes who were calling Obama a Muslim and a socialist, and saying that Al Sharpton would be in the Cabinet are beginning to reconsider!"

Doesn't matter that we told them so. Their eyes are opened! They see the light! All is now right with the world.

That's what I said, uncensored, without asterisks, so that's how I wrote it. Sorry if I offend anyone.

Separate But Equal?

From Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Conservatives who have abandoned the U.S. Episcopal Church by the thousands in recent years are trying to form a separate-but-equal church, a move that could leave two branches of Anglicanism on American soil.
....

Minns, a former Episcopalian elevated to bishop by the Church of Nigeria and leader of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, said the new province could count on 100,000 people as its average weekly attendance. The Episcopal Church says its average weekly attendance is about 727,000.

BabyBlue objects to the phrase "separate-but-equal" and calls it offensive. I left this comment at BB's post:

With respect to equality under the law, "separate but equal" does not seem workable, because it turns out that separate is never really equal. I agree that the phrase is loaded, but in reference to the divisions in [the] Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, I can't quite see wherein lies the offense. Will the use of the phrase somehow work to injure the cause of those who want to separate? I can't see how, but I'm open to having the matter explained.

And then, from the Episcopal Café:

An article by Michael Conlon for Reuters details the GAFCON backed plan to create an alternative or parallel Anglican province in the United States. The article has a number of quotes by Bishop Minns of Nigeria and claims that the Communion is likely to recognize his efforts to create this new structure. Unfortunately there seems to be a lack of actual balanced reporting in the article.

I noted that much of the information in the article seems to come from Martyn Minns, Missionary Bishop of CANA (Convocation of Anglicans in North America), one of the groups seeking to separate from the Episcopal Church, who is hardly unbiased.

In a comment to the post at the Episcopal Café, Fr. Terry Martin says:

It is also worth noting that the 100,000 number includes other groups, like the REC, who are not part of the Communion, and are not likely to become part of the Communion any time soon.

The intention seems to be to suggest that 100,000 of their claimed members were previously part of TEC, which is simply not true. We don't have that number, although I would guess that it is closer to a couple of thousand, at best.

Reporting on church affairs seems to be quite a challenge, unless the article is a straightforward news story. Nuance and background are vital to religion stories, especially those which involve conflict within and amongst churches

H/T to Thinking Anglicans.

UPDATE: In a similar vein, please read Tobias' post, "Reminder About the Communion" at In a Godward Direction:

As the Duncanian coalition of former Episcopalians and never-were Episcopalians coalesces or congeals into form in a few weeks, they appear to remain hopeful that whatever they are will be recognized as a new Province of the Anglican Communion.

This is unlikely, for two reasons.

Continued over there.

Fred Astaire - "Dancing Cheek To Cheek"

Since you liked Fred's last video, here's Fred and Ginger. He hits the high notes in this one. Ginger's feathery dress is a touch of genius by the costume designer. If this video doesn't start your week right, then nothing will.

Day Of Prayer For Congo

"O God of peace and abundant life,
You call peacemakers your children.
Let your Holy Spirit guide and govern all those who are making peace
in Congo,
and give them success,
So that all your people may have that abundant life promised through
your beloved Son, Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit, one God in Holy
Trinity."

I'm late, very late with this post, and I nearly broke my promise to Fr. Scott.

From Scott's blog:

Episcopal Relief and Development is sending aid. Please encourage people to help in any way they can — prayer first, but also material help as well. (For information on sending direct help, click link above to ERD.)

Here is a short documentary (11+ minutes) on the underlying issues that have led
to what is called "The Third World War." Five million have already
died...

JFK's Speech To Houston Ministers

From American Rhetoric:

Reverend Meza, Reverend Reck, I'm grateful for your generous invitation to state my views.

While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that I believe that we have far more critical issues in the 1960 campaign; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers only 90 miles from the coast of Florida -- the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power -- the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctors bills, the families forced to give up their farms -- an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues -- for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barrier.

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured -- perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again -- not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me -- but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been -- and may someday be again -- a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian, or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you -- until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end, where all men and all churches are treated as equals, where every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice, where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind, and where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, at both the lay and the pastoral levels, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe, a great office that must be neither humbled by making it the instrument of any religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding it -- its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him¹ as a condition to holding that office.

I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.

I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated to none, who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require of him to fulfill; and whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.

This is the kind of America I believe in -- and this is the kind of America I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we might have a divided loyalty, that we did not believe in liberty, or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened -- I quote -- "the freedoms for which our forefathers died."

And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers did die when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches -- when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom -- and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died Fuentes, and McCafferty, and Bailey, and Badillo, and Carey -- but no one knows whether they were Catholics or not. For there was no religious test there.

I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition -- to judge me on the basis of 14 years in the Congress, on my declared stands against an Ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools -- which I attended myself. And instead of doing this, do not judge me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and rarely relevant to any situation here. And always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed Church-State separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.

I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts. Why should you?

But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the State being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or prosecute the free exercise of any other religion. And that goes for any persecution, at any time, by anyone, in any country. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants, and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would also cite the record of the Catholic Church in such nations as France and Ireland, and the independence of such statesmen as De Gaulle and Adenauer.

But let me stress again that these are my views.

For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President.

I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.

I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views -- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

But if the time should ever come -- and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely possible -- when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do likewise.

But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith; nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.

If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I'd tried my best and was fairly judged.

But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.

But if, on the other hand, I should win this election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the Presidency -- practically identical, I might add, with the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can, "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution -- so help me God.

The words are as timely today as on the day they were spoken in 1960. What happened to our country in the 48 years since then?

Why Some Men Have Dogs And Not Wives

1. The later you are, the more excited your dogs are to see you.

2. Dogs don't notice if you call them by another dog's name.

3. Dogs like it if you leave a lot of things on the floor.

4. A dog's parents never visit.

5. Dogs agree that you have to raise your voice to get your point across.

6. You never have to wait for a dog; they're ready to go 24 hours a day.

7. Dogs find you amusing when you're drunk.


8. Dogs like to go hunting and fishing.

9. A dog will not wake you up at night to ask, "If I died, would you get another dog?"

10. If a dog has babies, you can put an ad in the paper and give them away.

11. A dog will let you put a studded collar on it without calling you a pervert.

12. If a dog smells another dog on you, they don't get mad. They just think it's interesting.

13. Dogs like to ride in the back of a pickup truck.

And last, but not least:

14. If a dog leaves, it won't take half of your Stuff!



Don't blame me. Blame the Weird Rabbit.