* New * Strengthen Your Marriage and Family
8:58 AM - Posted by Unknown - 1 comments
Greetings Gentle Reader,

We are living in a day when mothers are aggressively pushed to leave their children with a baby sitter or in day care and go to work out of their homes. I suppose we should have been prepared for this, when feminists began crying so loudly that women who stayed at home to care for and rear their family were in "modern slavery."

Young Sisters, I want to tell you as strongly as I know how that the push to get you to abandon your children and your husband is from Satan. He knows that children who grow up without their mother in their home are much more likely not only to leave the Church, but, further, to indulge in a myriad of self-destructive behaviors.

This dangerous problem is exacerbated by the changes that have taken place, and are continuing to take place, in our culture. We no longer have mostly intact homes. And too many of these broken homes are in the Church.

How do we keep our marriages healthy in today’s world? Beyond being at home while our children are growing up, which is essential, it is equally essential that we treat each other kindly and with respect. That means even when the baby cried all night with colic and the garage roof caved in. Yes, these are extremes, but they happen in marriages, and those are the times when we must remember to speak kindly and respectfully.

The manner of speech between married couples that is modeled on TV and in movies is almost always destructive. It tends to be coarse and vulgar. Oftentimes, it is spiteful, and cleverly nasty. Yes, I mean precisely that: cleverly nasty. These things are said to evoke a laugh at the expense of the actor or actress who is on the receiving end of this clever nastiness.

We are being trained by such speech, not only to laugh, but to use it in our own homes, on our own spouse. After all, it is clever. It made us laugh, so why should we not use it?

We LDS must be better than this. Our number one task in this respect is to carefully avoid movies and TV shows that model such behavior. Satan knows what he is doing. That’s why we are actually being taught this behavior in our own homes, because once we see it, we are inclined to copy it.

If we learn to behave in this manner, our marriage will be harmed; it may be destroyed. If we either harm or destroy our marriage, our children will bear the scars of that harm or destruction for the rest of their lives. Worse, it will affect their journey into, and possibly, throughout eternity. If we had a way to move our culture back to about 1940, we would see the difference intact homes - where mother and father work as a team, she at home and he at work - make in the lives of children. Unfortunately, that is not possible. We are stuck in a time when our homes are under attack as they have never been in our country’s history.

There are then, these few things that are essential to a healthy marriage and home:

  • The gospel is your strength and support, don’t become lackadaisical in your level of devotion.
  • Be in your home while your children are growing up.
  • Speak respectfully and kindly to your mate.
  • Watch your money with extreme care, spending only where you must.
  • Avoid watching TV shows or movies that teach bad behavior.

Follow the Brethren: That means having family home evening and family prayer. It means regular attendance at all meetings. Most important of all, it means always speaking of the Brethren with respect. Our children will follow our lead in their attitude toward life, the Church and the General Authorities. Let us not lead them carefully down to Hell.





Return to the Neighborhood!


* New * Spring Has Arrived!
7:31 AM - Posted by Unknown - 0 comments
Greetings, Gentle Reader,

The snow is melting from the North side of the house. I can no longer sit in my chair on our wide hearth and see the piled-up snow peeking over the window sill. Yes!

We always know this day will come. We watch for it each year, but it never fails to make my fingers start to itch for the soil. I walk around the front yard and count the tulip and daffodil blades coming through the soil, and I know Spring’s days are numbered and Summer is just around the corner.

The garden catalogs are clogging the mail box, and I am beginning to plot out this year’s garden and starting to wonder if there is not some spot (almost any will do) where I can plant another fruit tree. Aw, well, there is no cure for a gardenaholic. I’m not sure that is really and truly a disease, but it surely feels that way in midsummer, when zillions of weeds are mocking my humble efforts and driving me just a little bit crazy.

So, while the snow is finishing it’s disappearing act, and the heart-nourishing song of the blackbird is making me smile a lot, let’s discuss how to keep the pole beans and tall peas from dragging their climbing nets to the ground.

Being a farmer type, I have cattle panels surrounding various pastures. For the uninitiated, a cattle panel is a sixteen foot by about five foot piece of fencing, constructed of heavy steel and almost impervious to the attacks of cattle. (Guess what? Even climbing peas cannot drag these panels to the ground! They can try, and they will, but they can’t do it!)

Let’s discuss how to place them: Always make your rows go East and West, because that way your plants have sun all day, rather than one side getting sun only in the morning and the other side getting sun only in the afternoon.

Putting them up is a piece of cake, but they are very heavy, so a woman should not plan to do it by herself. They remain stiff, never sagging, but must be held up with what we call "T" posts. They need three posts, one on each end and one in the middle. The posts must be pounded into the ground, and it takes a man to pound them in sufficiently deeply that they will support the panel. Posts come in different lengths, but you will need to have about a foot of the post in the ground, in order to keep the panel upright. It is important that it remain perfectly upright, because those obnoxious (but heavenly flavored) peas will pull any weakly supported panel to the ground.

Put your panel up first - having already prepared your soil - then plant your climbing peas and/or beans about 2 or 3 inches from the panel. The panels have squares, allowing free movement of water and air, both of which are important to the plants.

Peas will make such a sturdy and abundant foliage that the panel will end up looking like a solid wall of vegetation, assuming you plant the sugar snap peas that climb six feet or more. Just be sure to plant them several inches apart.

Beans make a less abundant foliage, but will still make a goodly wall of leaves and beans. They’re just not as heavy and seemingly determined to pull their support down as are peas. You can plant them a little closer than peas, if you want to do so, but it is not necessary.

The vegetables will give you a crop that is easy to pick, because they will require little stooping, but be sure to watch the vines as they grow, because some of them may try to wander across the path between the panels, rather than climb where they are supposed to do.

Clematis also love to climb, as do certain other flowers, and can make a wall of tremendous beauty, if you choose to plant them on panels.

Hopefully, this panel planting will make your work easier this summer, so have a good one!






Return to the Neighborhood!


* New * Cowboy Up and Be a Man
10:55 AM - Posted by Unknown - 0 comments
Greetings, Gentle Reader:

To fathers, wherever you may be: You are your daughters’ prototype of Heavenly Father and our Savior. They cannot see the Savior, but they can see you. They will judge Him by your actions, by your integrity, by your very character. If you fail them and Him, they will fail both you and Him. That is, admittedly, a heavy load, in fact, a heavy eternal assignment, but it is the assignment you shouldered the day you became the father of a brand new little girl. Your task? Don’t moan. Don’t cry or try to escape your responsibility. Just cowboy-up and be a real man. Get the job done! Be your little girls’ example of what they can expect from their loving Savior, Who actually will require much of them during their mortal life.

Did that all sound pretty cold? Sorry, but let me tell you why it’s true: Because of family circumstances, my father was in many ways my mother. By that I mean he "mothered" me each day, when he came home from work. So, perhaps, my understanding of the importance of the relationship between fathers and their little girls is more keen than would otherwise be the case. I judged Heavenly Father’s and my Savior’s love by my father’s love. Your girls will do likewise.

Dad, your little girls hero-worship you, and they will do so all your life, unless you behave in a manner that will destroy your stature in their eyes. They will eagerly trust you with their confidences, with their inadequacies, with their fears, even their very lives. They will run to you for protection, when they are in danger. You will be their pattern of manhood, when it comes time to choose a husband.

It has been said that boys marry their "mothers" and girls marry their "fathers." There is great truth to that statement. You are what men should be in your little girls’ eyes. If you are harsh in your fathering, and as a husband, they will very likely marry a harsh man, who may be brutally harsh as both a husband and father. If you are kind, but inconsequential, they stand a good chance of marrying a man too weak and too uninvolved to be a responsible husband and father. Either way, you will have established and validated their pattern of manhood, and you cannot escape that reality, nor that responsibility.

So, what is your duty? Simple. Be a man, a kind but responsible man. Be an example in your behavior, in your goals, in your dreams. You will either teach them to be strong and to have fortitude, or your will teach them to be weak and cowardly. You will either teach them to be responsible and determined in the face of adversity, or you will teach them to run from responsibility and to behave cravenly when life gets very tough, and life almost always gets very tough at one time or another.

In short, father, be the man your Heavenly Father and your Savior want you to be. If you do that to the very best of your ability, knowing that from time to time you will fall short, you will be worthy of your little girls’ hero-worship. That’s the best that can be expected of you.

One final admonition: Follow the Prophet, whichever Prophet that may be. In that you cannot fail. You will be teaching your children behavior from the finest patterns available to fallen, imperfect, humans on this fallen, imperfect Earth. If you do that, you will be able to stand before your Savior with confidence at the last day.

Surely, that is all that can be expected of any man.






Return to the Neighborhood.


*NEW* Democrat Fun & Games
6:42 PM - Posted by Unknown - 0 comments
Dear Gentle Reader,

When Geraldine Ferraro said Obama would not be where he is, if he were not Black, she was stating a straightforward, innocuous, non-racist fact. A number of people have voted for him because he is Black. So, what’s the big deal? They have every right to vote for a candidate for whom they have an affinity, whatever the genesis of that affinity. Ferraro’s statement attacked no one, so why the hysteria?

There are surely countless women who have voted for Hillary because she is a woman. They, too, have that right, and in America, no one can deprive them of it, so let’s not let those with an agenda convince us there is racism where, obviously, there is none.

Recently, we have been treated to the refined words of Barack Obama’s pastor. After a litany of spurious, and astonishingly venomous, accusations of America in general and White America in particular, he offers these uplifting words: G.. D... America! He says this repeatedly.

It seems this is all a part of something called Black Liberation Theology, something of which this writer has never heard. It is a vicious, abusive mind set that aims to keep the hearts of Black Americans emotionally upset and inflamed against not only Whites, but all non-black Americans in general.

When Obama’s wife said she was proud of her country for the first time in her adult life, she was showcasing, for all the world to see, the results of such poisonous teachings.

This is a woman who attended both Princeton and Harvard. She earned a law degree, but the only comment she has made about her education is that she and her husband still are paying on their student loans, and she insists that is wrong, since they are both in their forties.

So, what is Obama doing about his pastor’s nasty verbiage? He’s pretending it is of no consequence. He says he doesn’t agree with it, but he has continued to go to that church for twenty years. He has supported the church financially. That implies an acceptance of the pastor’s views at some level.

Let me tell you what Jeremiah Wright’s words did to me: For much of my adulthood, I have revered the Tuskegee Airmen. They were Black fighter pilots whose job was to protect our bombers, as they bombed Nazi strongholds in Europe. At first, the White bomber pilots did not trust the Black fighters to protect them from the Nazi fighter planes, because of stereotypical opinions of the capacity of Black men as dependable fighters, opinions they had learned in their childhood.

They were verbal in their distrust, but soon those Black fighters earned the respect of the bomber pilots, so much so that they began to request that they be escorted by the Tuskegee Airmen. Not only had the bomber pilots learned to trust them, they had come to prefer them as ferocious protectors. The Black fighters had proved themselves to be both fearless and exceptionally skillful.

When Jeremiah Wright said the terrible things he did about America and White Americans, at first I was devastated to think those Black pilots, who courageously gave their lives to protect not only the bomber pilots, but by extrapolation, me, may actually have hated me. Surely, they would not have damned me! Surely, they could not have felt that way about me, when my feelings for them were sheer reverence!

That’s what Jeremiah Wright did to me.

Thankfully, my first emotional reaction to his viciousness has passed. My feelings for the Tuskegee Airmen are still reverential, and they ever will be. Jeremiah Wright may rob others of their hero-worship of those brave men, who died to protect me and mine, but his wickedness has ceased to harm me.

Now on to Hillary Clinton: She has never been one for telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but she has outdone herself this time.

When she made a trip to Bosnia, during her husband’s administration, she was greeted by little girls, one of whom kissed her on both cheeks. These things are being repeatedly showed to us, as the tape of her arrival is played.

The only problem with this story is that she says they had to duck down and dodge sniper fire, as they ran across the tarmac. She says, also, that if a place was too dangerous for a visit by the President, they would send the First Lady. None of this is true. She made up all of it.

As a result of the above, she is now talking about Obama’s pastor. That subject is much safer, and, incidentally, much more fun, than discussing the phony story of her dodging sniper fire.

Now to Detroit’s mayor: He has been caught in potentially criminal activity, as he pursued a sexual relationship with another city employee. They have him dead to rights, and the people want him to resign, but he says, "No way!"

This is the city, if you will remember, that gets burned down on Halloween. Why? I don’t think anyone knows. The local hoods do it just for fun, I guess. Now they have something else to keep them entertained.

Then there was the holier-than-thou "Sheriff of Wall Street", Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York. He betrayed his wife and children, and the citizens of New York State, with a high-priced prostitute for a considerable period of time, at the state’s expense. He had to resign, which meant his second in command became Governor. Unfortunately, the new Governor was at least as sleazy as Spitzer, and maybe more so. His confessions just keep coming. He would do all America a favor if he would keep his revolting escapades to himself. Our stomachs can stand only so much of this awful stuff.

Now what does New York do? Again, I’m not sure anyone knows.

Aw well! This is definitely the silly season. It’s just that some silly seasons are sillier than others. For whatever reason, this one is becoming one for the books.


Iran, Politicians and Malevolent Leaders
9:15 AM - Posted by Unknown - 0 comments
Originally published 19 January, 2006.

As all observers can see, with Iran it is going to be a case of who blinks first. They know that we know they are trying to make nuclear weapons, but they also know we can’t prove it. They think they can lie about it right up until they bomb Israel, because by then it will be too late for anyone to stop them.

There is another weird aspect to this standoff: Religious clerics have been known openly to say that, while we value life, they value death. Anyone who doubts that need only look at their eagerness to blow themselves up in order to kill others. If that doesn’t add a new dimension to this explosive situation (no pun intended), I don’t know what would.

Israel cannot and will not let themselves be blown off the map, as Iran’s leader has said they intend to do, and if it comes to life or death, Israel will launch a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. That will bring the wrath of the entire world down upon their heads, because as warlike and aggressive as several other Middle Eastern countries are, Israel is the one hated around the world.

Why? Because Jews live there, and almost all the countries of Europe and the Middle East hate Jews. Why? I can’t explain racial hatred. I never could, but that is the motivation of a great deal of the world’s people, and anyone who denies that just doesn’t know history.

Our president has already sent warplanes to the immediate area. I think they are there because, if Israel is forced to attack, it will be imperative that we attack, also. My reasoning is that Israel must not be made to carry the world’s wrath alone for what is, and long has been, a global problem.

Though Iran could – and eventually would – attack Europe, they would deny that was their intent right up until they dropped their bombs on France or Germany. So, if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, both France and Germany will attack Israel verbally and with UN sanctions right up until Irani bombers turn Paris and Berlin into smoking trash heaps.

A political leader has said we would have to use a nuclear bomb to get through those hardened bunkers, but I have been told that anyone who understands phosphorous knows better than that. I hope that is true, because I don’t want us to be the first to go nuclear in that region.

Retired Air Force General McInerny says we learned how to break through hardened bunkers by failing to break through Saddam’s bunkers. He says we can do it. That’s good because he also says there are a lot of them to break through. We know they learned from the Israelis’ having taken out Saddam’s nuclear reactor in the ‘80s that they must not put the entire facility in one place, as Saddam had done. So, their nuclear facilities are spread all over Iran. McInerny says we should get other Middle Eastern countries to join in the attack, but that sounds like mission impossible to me. Let’s hope I am wrong. If there was ever a time when I wanted to be wrong, this is it.

So, with Osama bin Laden saying he is going to attack us again, with Iran saying they really are not making a bomb, while doing so, with Zarqawi running a terrorist network in Iraq and killing hundreds of Iraqis and some Americans, with Islamists plotting attacks in several of our country’s mosques, what are half of our homegrown political leaders doing? They are putting everything they have into forcing our president to forgo the wiretapping of foreign terrorists’ phone conversations with their fellow conspirators in this country. Why? They are trying to score political points that will help them win the next election. If that allows them to attack us, Oh Well! They can always say it is Bush’s fault.

Does this make sense to anyone but themselves? Is there any way any of them can guarantee they will not be one of those killed in the next terrorist attack on our country? It could be one of their loved ones, but it just doesn’t matter. Politics trumps everything. Iran’s malevolent leader and his obsession with building and using a nuclear bomb is no more than a minor distraction. All that matters is winning elections.

If some funny-looking guy from outer space were to stumble onto our planet and watch both the terrorists with their murderous obsessions and our politicians with their mindless ambition, he would roll his eyes, call his mother ship and say, "Beam me up Scotty, there’s no intelligent life on this planet."