Now, this article doesn't mention anything about the poll's size, or how it was conducted. For that matter, if you've read here very long you know I don't usually put much stock in polls, even large ones that are well conducted.The media portray "millennials" as self-absorbed slackers. But according to a new poll, these twentysomethings show a lot of respect for traditional values.
The survey, by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, found 94 percent respect parenthood and 84 percent have great esteem for marriage. Just a quarter said they respect Hollywood.
Ann Mack, a spokeswoman for the agency, said she was surprised by the findings.
“It could be because they are more idealistic as a generation," she said, "but it could be because they are so young and not yet jaded.”
Mark Johnson works with B2G (better2gether), a ministry of the Navigators for twentysomethings. He believes the younger generation is reacting to something.
“At least half of them that we see have come out of some kind of dysfunctional or broken home," he said. "They are wanting something more or better than what they have come from.”
Steve Watters, director of young adults at Focus on the Family, said he was encouraged by the numbers and is looking for ways to tap into that potential through Focus' Boundless ministry to twentysomethings.
“It’s something we want to encourage as much as possible," he said, "realizing that they are not going to find that kind of support from Hollywood or Madison Avenue."
Sensing what was coming, the Comte frowned at his companion. "Do you mean," he demanded, "that the toads of doubt are hopping in your head as to the need of carrying out the plan?"Heh. Every once in a while doubt seems very much like that, doesn't it?
...When Olivier de Bousse had come into the enclosure, [the prisoner] had said to himself, "That great windbag!" The doctor, in his opinion, represented the least worthy element at the University. He was pedantic and opinionated and yet at the same time servile to all forms of authority; a coddler of the great ladies who came to him for medical attention, a theorist who covered up his lack of experience and judgment with a smother of learned words. The prisoner said to himself now, "It's very clear why this toady has been brought as a witness."No, wait, I want to share this, from page 404, in answer to a young woman's confusion over why charges had been dropped, but the prisoner wasn't being released:
In other words, if the powers that be want to get you, they'll keep finding excuses to charge you with something. Sad to say."The turnkey shook his head gloomily. "It's like a fork, Mademoiselle. If they don't catch him on one prong, they will on another...
A plus: many of the recipes appear to be well-suited to frugal households. I am thinking of trying the Poorman's Pecan Pie, for instance. The ingredients are brown sugar, oatmeal, corn syrup, margarine and eggs, in a pie shell. No pecans. (On the other hand, I can't imagine what would persuade me to try Fried Pig's Feet. Just isn't gonna happen short of a prolonged siege, folks. Ugh.)The Oregon Trail Cookbook offers a wealth of information on the various food traditions of the Oregon Country, with a special emphasis on the contributions of the Oregon Trail pioneers who brought their rich heritage as they emigrated from all over the world to seek the "Promised Land" of Oregon. Along with an abundance of pioneer stories and recipes, prominent Northwest chefs have contributed contemporary recipes celebrating the local bounty and the 150-year anniversary of the "Great Migration" over the Oregon Trail.
Organized into food categories both familiar (breads) and unfamiliar (game), using ingredients both commonplace (cornmeal) and exotic (bear renderings and cracklings), the recipes of The Oregon Trail Cookbook will delight the palate and fascinate the mind.
The key to this book, and the real joy of it, is participation. In response to a nationwide call for recipes, descendants of pioneers have sent in their cherished family favorites, along with wonderful family legends and anecdotes of pioneer life...
Well, yes. I see that, too. Thank you for sharing that, Dr. Hendricks. That's what bugged me about our call to go out and say "Drums. Pizza." to the teens around here. There's every chance indeed it would have been an insult to their intelligence, not to mention incredibly shallow on our part, unless it could have been passed off as friendly kidding. I wasn't sure I could pull it off, so I posted a flyer in a likely spot, told an adult friend about it ('Be sure and take aspirin before you go!' she called at me as I went out the door), and then I let it drop. To be fair, the rumors I heard the next day were that the preachers pulled it off just fine, and some good messages got worked in between the ear hammering and the chowing down. But, still. It seemed like we were aiming awfully low....There's a church in our area that has a fantastic group of young people. I love them like crazy. They went to the elders of their church and asked, "Can we open the church on Wednesday mornings to pray?"
"Well, we'll have to take that under consideration."
So, after four or five meetings (typical elders), they finally decided, "No, we can't do that. We don't have anyone who's willing to open the church and take the responsibility." Even some legal aspects to it, which I'm still trying to find out what they are.
So, the kids go down the street to a restaurant operated by a pagan and say to the proprietor, "Could we meet on Wednesday mornings about 6:00 in your restaurant? Promise you we'll take good care of it, won't tear it apart."
This guy is so blown away that he says, "What do you want it for?"
They said, "We want to come and pray."
He said, "What?"
"Pray."
"Would you include me?"
"Sure."
"You got it, and furthermore, I'll provide coffee and doughnuts for you."
And one day one of the elders drops into the restaurant one Wednesday morning and sees this group of kids from his church, which shamed the church elders into opening the church; and church has never been the same since.
I think most of our youth programs are an insult to the intelligence of the kids involved. Young people today, I assure you, are not looking for entertainment, and certainly not the cheap kind they get at a church. They're looking for a challenge; and I'm having the hardest time at my age keeping up with a group of students that are stretching my faith to the breaking point, and I see an increasing number of young people who are very, very serious about their Christian life.
Full article here.Big Sunday has come to mean Big Synergy. The largest citywide community service weekend in the country, Big Sunday is building meaningful community interactions across traditional ethnic, religious and social barriers.
Originally the idea started out as Mitzvah Day at Temple Israel in Hollywood -- a day to engage in good deeds for others. From several hundred volunteers working on 19 projects, the effort now entails more than 50,000 people volunteering for 309 projects throughout Southern California.
"We've gone from community service to community building," said David Levinson, director, who has maintained his relaxed demeanor and no limits spirit despite the project's unprecedented growth. "Big Sunday expands to fill people's talents. We have projects for whatever people's passions are."
This year's May 3-4 Big Sunday weekend --- the 10th annual event --- offers projects like planting a garden at a school, feeding the hungry at a local food bank, and visiting the elderly at a retirement home.
"We have volunteers who are homeless people, and we have volunteers who are movie stars," said Levinson, a writer for television, film, theater and advertising. His wife and three children also join in the effort. "Everyone helps, especially spouses," he quipped.
...The old presumption regarding literature was that, like the music that Plato recommends in his imaginary Republic, it was meant to form a young person's soul. Yesterday I read a nineteenth century introduction to Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, and was struck by how similar it was, in aesthetic intelligence, to the comments by the savvy users on the movie database, and how very different it was from anything you'll find in a modern introduction. I read it and knew no more about Hawthorne's politics than when I began -- but I was alerted to all kinds of canny ways in which Hawthorne's potent imagination would challenge me. In other words, The Marble Faun was introduced to me as a great book, whose greatness in part was due to its intelligent structure and deft dialogue, and in part due to the attention it gives to truths greater or broader than the temporary concerns of the day. To read the typical introduction to a literary work nowadays is to wonder why anyone would ever struggle through the archaisms of Shakespeare, when the payoff at the end is not exaltation, or even a tear, but a political bumper sticker.Read his whole post.
Who are the really great of this world? Who are the mighty? Is it the king, the emperor, the president, the famous, estimated by the kingdom of heaven and on the books of God? How little we know. Our nation has given credit to Washington, to Jefferson, to Lafayette, to the great Pitt of England, to the great generals and writers, and to great financiers like Morris, but there is one person hardly ever mentioned in our history who had so much influence in our affairs that as a nation we ought to have her picture in every public hall and in every school; yet because she was a young woman she seems to have been lost to the sight of the world. That was the Princess Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI, of France. That little woman who was a treasure of feminine loveliness, with a heart as pure and bright as any that ever beat in the breast of woman; she who lived in the aristocracy of that time, but who plead for the starving, common people and protested again against Marie Antoinette's use of the public money as she did at Versailles, and spent her life in charity and loving kindness. She laid the foundation for the victory of this nation. Those who read history know that we could not have hoped for freedom if Rochambeau had not come to this country, if the French had not indorsed us, and if the French had not fought England on the waters and lands of Europe while we were trying to fight our battles here. If it had not been for Yorktown and its surrender we could never have hoped to obtain our freedom from what was then the tyrannous king of England. Who sent Rochambeau, who used the influence that brought his coming about? In some of the correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, who represented us at the Court of France, we find that the princess, a lovely young woman, was well acquainted with him and liked to talk with him upon philosophy and upon American ideas. She served as a "go-between" with Franklin and the queen, who used her influence with the king...
Let him explain why he thinks so.It is said that generals always fight the last war. But when David Petraeus came to town it was senators – on both sides of the aisle – who battled over the Iraq war of 2004-2006. That war has little in common with the war we are fighting today.
I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.
Read the whole thing. It's a thoughtful piece, backed by some history.Our post-9/11 unity was fleeting, if not totally illusory. We are now bitterly divided on how to fight the war against Islamicist totalitarianism.
We are divided on whether there is such a war. We are divided on who our most important enemies in that war might be. We are even divided on whether we truly have what we might call enemies, or whether a nice friendly dialogue might not be enough to make us all get along better.
But on reading this article by Clfford D. May in National Review entitled “100 Years of War?”—a reference to Barack Obama’s distortion of John McCain’s remark that we might need to keep troops in Iraq for that long a time, similar to what we’re already doing in Germany and South Korea—it occurred to me that there is another division, and that this division might actually be the heart of the matter.
This split may have begun to occur as early as 9/11 itself, shortly after the towers fell. It has to do with the perception of how long we should expect this fight to take. The division is between those who always assumed it would be long and arduous, and those who did not.
It pays to not let the GPS take over your brain...Had another episode of fun with the GPS. Firstly the poor thing didn't know about the new stretches of the A1M. "You're driving through ploughed fields !', it kept saying.
Then as I left the A1M at about 3pm it said just 140 miles to go. I thought "What ?!"
As I pulled up outside the Magowans' house it still thought I had over a hundred miles to cover, but that I had reached my "Via point"..
I will take more care in programming it today for the short journey to Darlington.
Which I know is NOT FAR AWAY.
Of course, there was one considerable disadvantage to the Vigiles, in contrast to the Familia Publica: the Vigiles had to be paid out of the public pocket. This needed some persuasion, but on the whole it was seen that it was cheaper to pay out money to the corps than to lose one's entire wealth in a fire; the efficiency of the Vigiles was their own justification. Nonetheless, there were complaints against them, and not only because they were expensive. They had their own affiliations which often interfered with their reliability. Supported by the emperors, who were determined to keep them as their own elite force, they were only too happy to subject themselves to political control and reap the many rewards of loyalty to a powerful master. It has even been suggested that political manipulation of the corps may have been responsible for its failure to control Nero's notorious fire of 64 AD.Chapters include The Enemy...Fire, The Early Days, Pumping by Hand, The Age of Steam, Motor Power, Fire Engines Today.
Add this to the evidence that we tend to set our sights lower these days. These tales for 'very young readers' are not dumbed down in the least.It has been wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young children. To the utmost of their ability the writers have constantly kept this in mind; but the subjects of most of them made this a very difficult task. It was no easy matter to give the histories of men and women in terms familiar to the apprehension of a very young mind. For young ladies too, it has been the intention chiefly to write; because boys being generally permitted the use of their fathers' libraries at a much earlier age than girls are, they frequently have the best scenes of Shakespeare by heart, before their sisters are permitted to look into this manly book; and, therefore, instead of recommending these Tales to the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the originals, their kind assistance is rather requested in explaining to their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand: and when they have helped them to get over the difficulties, then perhaps they will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a young sister's ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these stories, in the very words of the scene from which it is taken; and it is hoped they will find that the beautiful extracts, the select passages, they may choose to give their sisters in this way will be much better relished and understood from their having some notion of the general story from one of these imperfect abridgements; - which if they be fortunately so done as to prove delightful to any of the young readers, it is hoped that no worse effect will result than to make them wish themselves a little older, that they may be allowed to read the Plays at full length (such a wish will be neither peevish nor irrational). When time and leave of judicious friends shall put them into their hands, they will discover in such of them as are here abridged (not to mention almost as many more, which are left untouched) many surprising events and turns of fortune, which for their infinite variety could not be contained in this little book, besides a world of sprightly and cheerful characters, both men and women, the humour of which it was feared would be lost if it were attempted to reduce the length of them.
What these Tales shall have been to the young readers, that and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespeare may prove to them in older years - enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his pages are full.
Well, I'm adaptable, and I got used to the style, etc. I found the Amish setting interesting. And the author was layering mystery upon mystery, danger upon grief, and plot twist upon plot twist, which kept things from getting dull (to say the least). But she didn't solve but some of the mysteries by the end of Book Two. The largest questions are left unanswered: an unidentified murderer is running free, an unidentified vandal is on the loose, there's no telling if the vandal is the same person as the murderer, the world is awash in suspects - and Book Three doesn't come out until July, and I don't know if Book Three will wrap things up or just be another chapter along the way."What is it, husband? You look so uffriehrisch."
"I am agitated, and you had better sit down." He motioned to the chair across from him. "What I have to tell you is going to be quite schauderhaft."
She sank into the chair, her eyes full of question. "You're scaring me. Please tell me what is so shocking."
Snow in the City
by Rachel Field
Snow is out of fashion,
But it still comes down,
To whiten all the buildings
In our town;
To dull the noise of traffic;
To dim each glaring light
With star-shaped feathers
Of frosty white.
And not the tallest building
Halfway up the sky;
Or all the trains and busses,
And taxis scudding by;
And not a million people,
Not one of them at all,
Can do a thing about the snow
But let it fall
From The Family Treasury of Children's Stories: Familiar Favorites, compiled by Pauline Rush Evans, published by Doubleday and Company for Keepworthy Books, a division of The Parent's Institute, Inc., New York, as part of the Classics to Grow On series. Copyright 1956 by Nelson Doubleday, Inc. Acknowledgment: Branches Green by Rachel Field, c. 1934, The Macmillan Company. (I presume I'm linking to information on the right Rachel Field. Correct me if I'm wrong. And, by the way, a quick check shows that Branches Green is another of those books you probably don't want to sell at a yard sale for fifty cents, considering that current prices start at ten bucks, and quickly jump from there to $30, $40, $50 and up.)
Technical note: Someday I'm going to figure out how to do indents around here. I typed this poem with indents on every other line, starting with the second line, but the indents went away...
I doubt we'll get enough snow to cover the ground, but it is snowing. Again. The forecast is for springlike weather come the weekend, but for now the main indication that we're not still in winter is that sunrise and sunset aren't right for winter. Thank goodness for that, by the way. I'm as ready for long days as I am ready for warm ones.
Utterly missing in this election season is a serious focus on limited or constitutional government. The Democrats, generally speaking, want more government, not less, so their neglect of the issue is to be expected. But the Republican dereliction is more troubling. It represents a falling away from the standards of Ronald Reagan’s conservatism—a decline already reflected in the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush. After 9/11, many prominent conservatives—e.g., George Will, David Brooks, Fred Barnes —pronounced that small government conservatism is dead. That awful reminder of the dangerous world we live in, and of the need to defend ourselves, somehow meant that big government conservatism, as they called it, was now the only game in town. Conservatives would need to make their peace with this idea, they argued, in order to win future elections.An example (one of the longest, but I think one of the more interesting):
Were Will, Brooks, and Barnes wrong? For the most part, I think they were. To show how and why, I want to talk about seven propositions related to the problem of limited government in our day.
Proposition five: Limited government, in the sense of constitutional government, is opposed to the political assumptions of the modern state, which arose after the New Deal. Those assumptions came largely from the political science of the Progressive era, whose proponents argued that the Founders’ limited government was an 18th century nostrum that was powerless to solve 20th century problems. From this point of view, natural rights were an immature form of genuine right, enshrining egoism and individualism that might have been necessary for frontier farmers but made no sense in an interdependent, industrial society. The Progressives believed that freedom did not come from nature or God, but instead is a product of the state and is realized only in the modern state. Far from being the people’s servant and, therefore, a possible threat to freedom—because servants can be unfaithful—the state is the full ethical expression of a people. The state is the people and the people are the state. This strange use of the term represents the Progressive attempt to translate the German concept of der Staat into American politics. America did not have a state theory of this sort until the Progressive era. Conservative and most libertarian anti-statism arose in opposition to this innovation; but too often, in recent years, hostility to der Staat has been confused with opposition to government per se.Full article here. Kessler argues that limited government is not a lost cause. He also argues that big government is not doomed to failure. In other words, those of us who want a constitutional government have some work to do.
To put the difference more plainly, consider Woodrow Wilson’s insistence that “living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.” In short, it is not the limited Constitution of the Founders, but the living Constitution, which is the ideal of Progressives and of modern liberal theory and practice. A fixed or limited Constitution would make sense if human rights are fixed and unchanging, as the Declaration affirms. But if human rights are essentially historical or evolutionary, then we should want a Constitution that is free to adapt and evolve along with them. In theory, then, no a priori limitations on government power—whether property rights, speech rights, or even religious freedom—can be allowed to impinge on government’s ability to bring about historical liberation. The old or natural rights have to be sacrificed in order to achieve the new rights of self-fulfillment. Thus for the Progressives—as for Barack Obama and many liberals today—political tyranny is no longer the ever-present threat that it was considered to be by James Madison or Alexander Hamilton. In liberal eyes, the real political threat is not tyrannical government or even the tyranny of the majority, but the well-connected capitalists, the “economic royalists” hiding behind the façade of democracy, who manipulate things to their advantage. Liberals ever since the New Deal have argued that limited government must become unlimited, in order to prevent the few from becoming tyrannical.
A new theory of the Constitution corresponded to this new theory of rights. FDR put it memorably in his 1932 Commonwealth Club Address: Government is a contract under which “rulers were accorded power, and the people consented to that power on consideration that they be accorded certain rights.” According to this view, we give the rulers power and the rulers give us rights. In other words, rights are no longer natural or God-given, but emerge from a bargain struck with the government. And it is up to liberal statesmen or leaders to keep the bargain current, redefining rights constantly—adding new rights and subtracting some of the old ones—in order to keep the living Constitution in tune with the times. Entitlement rights—rights created and funded by government—replace natural rights. Given this new relationship of people and government, we don’t need to keep a jealous eye on government anymore, because the more power we give it, the more rights and benefits it gives us back—Social Security, Medicare, prescription drug benefits, unemployment insurance, and on and on.
Q. What is the kindest animal in the forest?
A. The skunk, because he is happy to give his last (s)cent to his worst enemy.
Q. What has a mouth but cannot speak, a bed but cannot sleep?
A. A river.
