Buy A Nun A Book Day ( Bumped Yet Again!)

...is approaching once again - September 17.  Once again, I will be sending books to the good Holy Names Sisters who taught me in my callow youth.

It's a nice way to say "Thanks"!

Unleashing the Dogs of War

From Small Dead Animals. Where else??

I read about these folks and their dogs in one of Linda Fairstein's more recent novels

Buy A Nun A Book Day... Bumped as a Reminder!

...is approaching.  I'm consulting my nunnish sources, but all the evidence points to Real Soon - September 17.  Once again, I will be sending books to the good sisters who taught me in my callow youth.

I won't have time to consult this year (my bad), but I'm sure I can find a few books that might interest them!

It's a nice way to say "Thanks"!

Re-Arranging the Furniture

Upon further reflection, I decided to re-group the right sidebar Reading List.  I've moved links into three sections: Daily News, Editorials and Essays and Favorite Columnists.  What does that mean?

Daily News comprises the sites that I judge to present news with a minimum of editorializing.  As Det. Friday used to say, "Just the facts... ."  I realize that is pretty much an impossibly high bar to reach, but the sites listed do a credible job IMHO.  It's the old front page section.

Editorials and Essays is what I remember as the old "Metro" section of the L.A. Times.  Here, there's no 'local news, just the editorials and some columnists.

• Gerard's American Digest tops the list, not just because it's in alphabetical order, but because he's one of my most favorite writes in this category.  
• Steven Green at Vodkapundit is another.  On any given day, I would be hard-pressed to say who is better.  
• In a three-way tie is W. Lewis Amselem's The DiploMad 2.0.  (He took a break from blogging, but felt he had to return for obvious reasons - the Charlie Foxtrot in D.C.) 
• Finally, I put Breitbart in this list, because just about all the stories there have an infusion of 'point of view'.  Which is OK, but I don't feel it qualifies as "news".

Favorite Columns is a mixed bag of writers. 

• NASA's  Astronomy Picture of the Day (Han-Tzong Su's mirror site.) Full of beautiful images on the infinite variety of astronomical topics, from galaxies to eclipses, to Mars and Earth. NASA pissed me off when they took it off-line during the last government "shutdown".  Die-hard followers were directed to this mirror, and I have been it using ever since.  I've removed the original NASA link.  Let 'em drink Drano if they can't take a joke.  
• Rodgers Boned Jello is a collection of political rants, entertainment reviews, cooking tips and other life hacks.  He also runs the "Barn Army", which claims its very own B-52.  He has taken many requests for specific bombing runs, D.C. and the big cities on the Left Coast topping the list. The language is sometimes a bit funky.
• Who could not love Greg's Sippican Cottage? Flash fiction, tales of Unorganized Hancock, and and slightly "kinked" (not "kinky") observations on life, the universe, and everything.  He still owes us the "how-to" of jacking a house using a teen age boy.(Ahem.)

 Comics and the Sunday Paper haven't changed.  All of the links are there because I enjoy the writing, the message (for the most part), and the humor and insights.

Cheers!

How Fast Do You Read??

I'm still above 400 words per minute (455-ish on this test).  Guess I wasn't really cut out to be a college prof!

Source: Staples eReader Department

Via @The Anchoress

International Buy A Nun... (Updated x3)

...A Book Day!

 Update III:

Got this from the Sister to whom I'd written:

Thank you so much, Lee. I can identify some Sisters who will be thrilled to receive the books.

Sister Kathryn

 Update II:

My book club has notified me that two of the books I've requested have been mailed.  No word back from the convent, tho...

Update:

 Didn't hear back today, and since the day is next Tuesday, I went ahead and ordered books that I've enjoyed and though the good nuns might also.  Here's my e-mail:

Hello, Sister,

 

As the 'official' day is next Tuesday, I went ahead and picked out four book to be sent to directly you for distribution.  They will probably be arriving over the next week or two, which is a function of how the swap club works.  Each book will be coming from a different member, so arrival is a function of how soon each member gets to it, and how far it has to travel.

 

I wound up ordering three books that are favorites of mine, and one similar but different from a series I have read from.
 

They are:

 

A Letter of Mary, by Laurie R. King

The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl

The Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu, translated by John C. H. Wu

The Best American Short Stories 1997, ed. by Kenison(?)

 

I hope you all will enjoy them!

I wondered what books to get, and who to give them to.  I suddenly realized/decided that I wanted to send them to the nuns (or the order, anyway) who taught me in grade school.  I've managed to track down the "Mother Ship" convent in California, and sent an e-mail off asking what books might be appreciated.

So, if you know (or knew) a nun, buy her a book!

(This seems to be a word of mouth/blog thing, so pass it on!)

He's Back...

...with A Demon's Nest of Sentiments

I can see Obama doing the Hokey-Pokey with the Girl Scouts.  But not Michelle - she's be on the sidelines, rolling her eyes and giving him The Look.

A Demon's Nest of Sentiments

Brooke McEldowney has been on quite the roll off and on the past few Sundays.  I have taken it upon myself to share:

 

Whilst you're at it, visit his blog and store, too!

And don't forget 9 Chickweed Lane!

When I was in college, our chief engineer and some of us students had arrived at a similar sentiment.  We decided that anyone who received a "no confidence" vote could never, ever run for office again.  For anything, anywhere.

Mr. McEldowney's Editorial

I have been reading Brooke McEldowney's 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn for years, now, and have even had an e-mail conversation with him.  I love his art, I especially love his story telling, the range of human experience he manages to capture, from the sensual interplay of relationships to the embarrassment of drooling (temporary) idiocy.  I especially love his wry use of language.  No one I know writes like him.

Today, on his gocomics.com Pibgorn page, he posted what I believe is his first editorial:

As I wrote to him, I believe we are poised for the second step.

Guest Post: We Should Control Our Government (Updated - links added)

As I've announced, we have a guest post today from the lovely and talented Sara Hoyt.  
Enjoy!  

The whole subject of gun control baffles me. Of course, those who know me will tell you that this is because my astigmatism is so bad that I can’t hit the broad side of a barn on a clear day – so gun control is at best nominal when the gun is in my hands.

The other type of gun control baffles me too. I grew up in a country (Portugal) at a time when guns were very tightly controlled. I’m not sure what the laws were, but I know that if you were a private citizen and needed a gun for defense, even if you were, say, transporting gold in your car and had received threatening letters, your chances of getting a license to carry were… infinitesimal.

So… My dad taught all my friends to shoot in grandma’s backyard. Guns? Well, I used to be offered guns for sale every time I went into the train station to go home from school. (I guess school made me look like I really wanted a gun. Oh, wait. Yes, it did. Well, you can’t blame me. First, it was an all girls school – I want the idiots who write about peaceful all female planets to go to all girls school, as a girl, for a day – and second this was the school where I studied many things but they were all Marxism.) I never bought any simply because dad had told me that the safest person would be the one I aimed a gun at. (And I knew he was right.) But they were right there. I got offered guns more than I got offered drugs. (Though that might have had something to do with how upset I looked.) This, in Portugal, in the seventies, meant that there were guns available on the street at every moment and for every price.

The idea that government can keep something that everyone knows is available out of the public’s hands is insane. At most they can keep law-abiding (and fearful of trouble) but not out of the hands of criminals and those inclined to mischief.

Which, of course, makes you wonder why it’s such a popular idea over most of the world.

I have a theory about that. The greatest fear the people in charge have – always – is of a peasantry capable of opposing them and imposing their will. (This has been made worse, of course, by the American revolution and our dangerous ideas of a government by the people…)

So while gun control is a really bad idea for keeping the guns out of the hands of bad actors, or preventing crime, or whatever it is, it is a very good idea to keep the civilians from having weapons that could oppose the army or other state-endorsed people. And so, they sell it as saving us from crime, and they keep pushing.

Which is why we shouldn’t let them rolls us. Because it doesn’t do anything we want it to do, but it does render us defenseless in front of the statist leviathan

It is a danger to our life, our liberty and our pursuit of happiness

And though I’m still very bad with guns, my characters use futuristic guns very well in my book Darkship Renegades, just out from Baen, and in the upcoming book – also from Baen – A Few Good Men, the first book of the Earth revolution.

Updated!! Hello and Welcome, Sarah Hoyt!

 Update:  I heard from Sara yesterday.  She apparently had an horrific Christmas, followed by a mad rush to get a manuscript for yet another book - Noah's Boy - to the publisher.  We agreed on a post about gun control.  Hers is a different take, colored by her experience growing up in Portugal.  I'll post it tomorrow, so ya'll come back, hear?!

I was introduced to Sara Hoyt through the P.J. Media blog.  Sara posts there, as well as holding down two blogs of her own, According to Hoyt and Sara A Hoyt.com

Smiling Sarah A. Hoyt!

At P.J. Media and According to Hoyt, she writes thoughtful, profanity free posts on politics and literature.  The Sarah A Hoyt site is devoted to pimping her novels such as Darkship Thieves, and Shifters, as well as her boatload of short stories.  She also is posting a chapter a week of her new novel, which you can read for free here: Witchfinder

She appears here because she is on a virtual book tour for her newest book, Darkship Renegades, the second novel in the Darkship series, which is being released this Tuesday, December 4.

I don't have a clue as to what Sarah may decide to grace leelu's place with, and I'm sure it will be good!  Watch  this space!!

Go. Read.  Enjoy!

Gerard. Park. Out of... (Updated)

...and the park is Yellowstone!

Go.  Read!

(Update - got the frikkin' link right.  Sheesh!)

Elevating Thought

 It's been a month since the election, and I'm still trying to re-group.  What upset me the most (after the outcome)  was the encroaching lack of civility and clear, useful journalism on the Right as well as the Left.  I find that disheartening, since one of the Big Deals we made about the Left was and is their lack of civility, and the mendacity of the MSM.

One writer who comes to mind is John Nolte, at Breitbart.  Here is his opener on the Zimmerman/NBC suit:

"Though it might feel like a hundred years ago, it was only last April when the media joined Barack Obama's cynical crusade to gin up his base in Florida through the artificial inflaming of racial tensions. And there was no question NBC News was the worst of these co-conspirators after the network was busted editing a 9-1-1 call to make Trayvon Martin's suspected shooter, George Zimmerman, look like a racist. Today, Zimmerman filed suit against the Peacock Network."

Now, I gather that his basic assertion about NBC editing the sound track of the 911 call is factual.  But I don't think anyone would deny that the inflammatory nature of the paragraph.  I'm not suggesting that Mr. Nolte do anything differently - he has his "bully pulpit", the editors must like the way he's writing, and the First Amendment applies.  You go, John.

But I think this kind of writing only helps to maybe put an up-tick in the pitch fork, torch, tar, feather, and rail markets.  Which I don't think is really helpful at all, even in the short term.

My metaphysics training has taught me to stand guard at the doorway of thought.  In a nutshell, this warning is based upon the idea that we see and become what we think and believe.  If we don't pay attention to what we are admitting into our thoughts, we can start to slide downhill.  A practical example - repeat a lie often enough, and it (seems to) become true.

My distress is in no small part to my own slippage.  Looking back over my pre-election and near-post election posts, I'm struck by how they could have been less, well, vulgar, and more informative and thoughtful.  Fortunately, Gerard turned on a light for me, and gave me a glimpse of what I've been seeking.  It has apparently been wending its way thru the web.  One full copy of it is at The Thinking Housewife.  I'm excerpting the first section here:

A Plan for Traditionalists

AT The Orthosphere, Kristor offers a reasonable guide to survival and affecting the culture. In the immediate future, he recommends:

1. Resolve to pay no more PC jizya (beautifully spelled out in the Solzhenitsyn essay that has been discussed a lot lately in the wider orthosphere). Tell the truth, and call a spade a spade: calmly, politely, and without being obstreperous about it, but nevertheless firmly. Without making a big deal about it or calling attention to yourself, fail to appear for the public rites of Moloch. If you must thus appear, quietly fail to meet the requirements of the rite.
2. Write, read, blog, talk: join a book club, an apologetics roundtable, a bible study group. Learn the arguments for reaction, for Christianity, for theism; learn the arguments against them, and how they may be defeated. Speak up: fearlessly, scandalously, but always humbly and politely.
3. Live a virtuous, upright life, at home and in business. Speak the truth, and do the right thing. Whatever it happens to be, don’t let it be about yourself; let it be about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
4. Beware; and be prepared to move, quickly. Get rid of stuff that you don’t need or that is not positively beautiful to you in some way – especially debt and belly fat, which are likely going to cost you as the financial and medical sectors of the economy devolve over the next ten years.
5. Maintain tradition in small things: e.g., dress more formally than is customary these days, practice old-fashioned manners, refrain from swearing; read old books, and then discuss them around the family dinner table; join together in regular and serious family prayer, if only to bless each meal; remember your family holiday traditions, and observe them gravely and with joy.
6. Pray without ceasing. Pray whenever your attention is not wholly consumed with the task at hand. Work toward praying even when it is. Nothing is so convincing as sanctity, or so attractive, or so authoritative. Without it, personal rectitude can seem like Pharisaical arrogance (and risks becoming just that). You can’t push sanctity. But you can work at allowing it to happen.

 (Debt isn't the huge problem it was five years ago.  The belly fat, though continues to be tough.)

There's more, all worth read, pondering, and incorporating into our lives.  Go!

Getting The Poverty

Sippican has a post up about splinters and poverty, which prompted me to comment.  As often happens, my comments are turned into posts...

I too have caught the poverty. Ten years ago, I was a well paid contractor at a Major Aerospace Company in Southern California.  Now, I'm trying to get along on Social (in)Security and what little pension I have from said Major Aerospace Company; renting my friend's house in SE Pennsylvania from her so she doesn't get foreclosed.

I love it and wouldn't trade it for anything, except, perhaps, to hear from my daughter on a more regular basis.

Updating a bit, from a second comment:

A further thought.  I infer from the comments here, that we all are relatively safe and dry (if not as warm as we might like).  I presume we have enough to eat, lights in the house, and (obviously) the interweb.

We are not impoverished, just broke.  Yes, the lack o' cash does focus the mind, as V-man says.  It seems to focus it on the more important things, like God, family, friends and country.
 

Las Vegas Review Journal...

...is apparently not endorsing Obie:

EDITORIAL

Benghazi blunder: Obama unworthy commander-in-chief

 The takeaway line:  

"This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy - though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity."

Go.  Read!! 

 

Via Breitbart. 

Links du Jour...

A thoughtful Arab (yes, I'm sure there are many, but we never seem to hear about/from them), and Mitt's foreign policy speech.

Arab Spring and the Israeli Enemy

Mitt's Foreign Policy Speech

Go.  Read.

Addition to the Reading List

I've been an on again, off again reader of Velociman.  As a result, I haven't linked to him before, because he can be, well, a bit out there.  If not downright heated and sometimes vulgar (you have been warned).  On the other hand, I've noticed how this place is trending lately, what with the election and all.  I've been venting a bit, too. 

What changed my mind is his post on reparations for slavery.  It's stupid and idiotic.  (Reparations, that is, not Velociman's post!!)  Reparation is to repair the damage done by one's sins.  Give back things that are stolen.  Public apology for slander.  The death penalty.  But asking me to pay for someone else's sin of slavery is just plain stupid and wrong.  I've never owned any slaves.  I don't plan on owning any slaves.  No one in my family, as far as I can tell, has ever owned slaves.  So, fuck off!  (You see what I mean about how I'm trending... .)

Go read it, and his other good stuff.

"Ishmaelites"...

...or "Saracens".

Mme Sherzo posts a goldmine!

Go.  Read.  It. All!

International Book Week

Joan of Argghh! was reminded by Mme. Scherzo that it's International Book Week.  So, what you do is:

The rules: grab the closest book to you, turn to page 52, post the 5th sentence as your text post. Don’t mention the title.

"lpd itself lasts as long as your Linux network is running, but it spawns duplicates of itself - one to handle each print job."

Sad news...

Daphne at Jaded Haven has decided to call it quits.  She has marked her blog as "private", making it unavailable.  At first, I though she might have decided to filter her readers, so I sent a request to be admitted.

Here's the e-mail thread:

 (I've cleaned up the e-mail addys, and chopped it up a bit, just so you can read it top-to-bottom, like normal.)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: the blog
From: Daphne
Date: Sun, June 24, 2012 7:57 am
To: leelu

Hi Leelu,

I'm shutting down the blog, it's in a temporary state of limbo until I can transfer some of the stories for safekeeping.

So, please don't be offended that I haven't returned your request for admittance, nobody is getting in, the curtain is coming down.

I want to thank you for spending time at the Haven and wish you well.

Best to you,
Daphne

On Jun 24, 2012, at 11:08 AM, leelu wrote:
No offense taken.  Are you OK??

Subject: the blog
From: Daphne
Date: Sun, June 24, 2012 12:54 pm
To: leelu

I'm fine, just feel like the blog has become a pointless waste of time.

I disagree