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...yes, indeed, the times they are a'changing... Very few family farms left, so on the first, thin meeting attendance. Although with the monthly $5 home made AYCE feed bags, with really nice folks---AND, the growing move toward young organic farm families, there is hope, for this great social/educational institution. And RC Churches are now being sold for mansion like homes, businesses, etc. And few want to be celibate priests, much less women. And buying off former victim altar boys ain't cheap. Although, if Holy Father Francis can whip the powerful corrupt faggots in the Vatican into moral and business shape, there is hope. Not so much the last groups. Too many know about how the secrets are out. Can't make it in Business? Standing in front of a Brother Judge? Too many moving traffic violations? Never passed the GED? Or the CDL? The all powerful seeing eye---and secret handshakes have been there for you for ages. Caps and aprons.
The Secret Life of a Blogger {Running Multiple Blogs}..............
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My mom had a small collection of religious ornaments and souvenirs from various trips. She kept them on a mini-shelf unit in her place of business and one at home.
It wasn't until I got into furniture manufacturing where I heard the Jewish equivalent of knickknack that sounded like 'choch-ka' or 'choch-kee'
Designers, especially ones from New York used that work liberally. They told me it was a Yiddish word. Since the word was only spoken to me, I didn't have a clue how it was spelled.
Tonight, I was reading a news article and saw the word
tchotchke and I tried to pronounce it with a 'T'
Puzzled about the word, I cut & pasted into dictionary.com to see it's chotch-ke (or alternately chahch-kuh)
Those are the things my parents called knickknacks. Mystery solved.
Yeah, these things:
Thanks for reading my blog!
Here I am sitting alone and deep in my thoughts. I look outside my window and realize what a mystery life is. I think of the world and all the different people there are here on earth bound by our own individual strength, weaknesses, excess and limitations. So different from the color of our skins, beliefs and religions. Societal values, mores and traditions. How we re so alike and yet so different. Alike in a way that we know struggles and difficulties. How sorrows and pain can cause tears and imbalance in our lives. Just as much as how happiness and joys can bring smiles deep in our hearts. How we feel injustice when we are injured and harmed.
Yes, how different we are in our ways of lives, in our beliefs, in our religions. How diversified we are in our cultures. But deep down we know what is right and wrong. Or at least that is how I was taught. And how I raised my children. That regardless of color, sex and who we are there are some universal bounds that glue us together. For instance love. Kindness, generosity and compassion.
We do have choices. We can choose to be bad over good. We can opt to be cruel over kind. The question I have is: How can we accept each other as different and yet be respectful of those differences?
We don't have to apply and or impose religions to do this, do we? We can believe in anything or anyone provided we don't harm each other, can't we?
We are all imperfect, of course, we are human. But isn't that the reason why we need to learn? So we can understand? So we can adapt and change?
Change for the better? Not only for each of us but for all man? For humanity?
Or do we insist on our own individual advantage at the expense of others?
What a challenging thoughts going through my mind. Then the snow started falling...Did man make the snow? The rain? Did man make the earth revolve around the sun so we can have life?
Thank you all for your reads and may everyone be happy. After all human life is far shorter than the trees. Yet I can never see them cry nor hear them complain. Oh but the wind make them dance. Did man make the wind?
Our mind. How powerful it is. Thoughts, what are yours?
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Someone posted a missing dog sign on the back of a stop sign near a supermarket.
Hank the Frenchie and the reward is $5,000 cash.
He must be some really special animal for that kind of price.
Actually, I would think the dog was stolen and a reward like that would entice the thief to come forward to get that reward money... at which point the arraigned meeting would also have detectives nearby to capture the person(s) responsible for the theft of the dog.
Dog Gone... Five grand.
In Newsweek;
In response to:
The U.S. Killed 300 Iranian Citizens. Americans Don't Remember This—But Iranians Do
The downing of a U.S. spy drone, the near-launch of military action against Iran and recent unclaimed attacks against nearby oil tankers in the last month have not only set off tensions in the Persian Gulf, but invoked memories of an even deadlier time in the two rivals' troubled history three decades ago when the U.S. killed nearly 300 Iranian civilians.
The U.S. and Iran have never officially fought a war but the two sides have engaged in bouts of violence since the CIA-backed coup that reinstalled Iran's monarchy in 1953 and the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted that leadership for the current cleric-led government. The following decade would prove complex for Washington and Tehran amid the regional volatility of the Iran-Iraq War, during which the U.S. sought to protect Kuwaiti vessels in the Persian Gulf.
The war often spilled over into these narrow, strategic waters, where the guided-missile frigate USS Stark was bombed by a modified Iraqi warplane, killing 37 sailors in May 1987, and fellow warship USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine in April 1988.
The U.S. blamed Iran for the latter incident and conducted one of the largest naval operations since World War II, destroying a number of Iranian ships and killing dozens of sailors.
Less than two months later, on July 3, 1988, Aegis-armed guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes opened fire at what its crew would later claim they thought to be an attacking Iranian F-14 fighter jet.
Instead, the aircraft was Iran Air Flight 655, a Dubai-bound civilian Airbus A300 with 290 people on board—all of whom were killed.
"The incident still resonates with Iranians," Reza H. Akbari, program manager at the U.K.-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting, told Newsweek. "Once a year, the country's state media rebroadcasts the tragic footage of the plane's wreckage and civilian bodies floating in the Persian Gulf. For a few days, heart-wrenching images of family members crying over the loss of their loved ones and painful facts like the number of children on board are reviewed.
"The story matches well with the Islamic Republic's 40-year-narrative of labeling the U.S. as a heartless imperialist power," he added. "To this day, significant portions of the country's authorities do not believe the event was an accident, but a deliberate message sent to Iran over its decision to plant underwater mines in the Persian Gulf amid the Tanker War phase of the Iran-Iraq War. The event is perfect propaganda fodder for the Iranian regime and does not bode well for America's image in the country."...
I remember once being sent along with the joiner* to replace a broken window pane at the local church hall. The churchwarden, a rather stern man, was already there waiting for us. He seemed very perplexed when we arrived, and appeared to have a great need to know what the broken window might mean. While we were stood there wondering what on Earth he was talking about, the joiner noticed a football on the floor, right in a corner of the room. When its presence was brought to the attention of the churchwarden it seemed to send him off into even more fanciful flights of fantasy. The broken window was clearly an act of God, and the manifestation of the ball, a message of some kind. We suggested to him what seemed to us the obvious chain of events that must have lead up to the ball ending up in the corner, but he just stood there slowly turning his head from side to side with an indulgent half smile on his face. ‘So,’ he said, when we had finished our speculations, ‘you believe that there just happened to be some kids on the grass outside who just happened to have a ball which one of them just happened to kick, which then just happened to smash through the window and somehow find its way, all on its own, into the corner?’ Well, when he put it like that, we were forced to admit that it did seem highly unlikely.
* A joiner is a British tradesman who specialises in woodwork.
Examples of the Elitist "Rules for thee but not for me"
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Lots of forum/blogging on our interactions with others. It seems to me that, given the many differences between the sexes, experiences in youth can have a marked influence on subsequent development, interpersonal styles, and success/resilience. Duh. Ya think? Contact sports, formerly the place mostly for males, may be a prime example. Lessons of the rough and tumble likely teach some how to fit in with peers so experienced. Life long. And those lacking these may be at a disadvantage in many life endeavors. Could it be that these dynamics explain parts of bullying, female/male banter, success in business/politics, and much more. Now many females are getting their share of such education, although for relatively shorter time periods, and onto quite different constitutions/sentimentalities. I've known a number of men, chronically inadequate, who find competition of any sort quite jarring. Ladies surely can relate. Equal? Perhaps. But surely different. Aa-V.