Bob Fox and Billy Mitchell Sing Dance to Your Daddy

Illustration from The REal Mother Goose by Blanche Fisher Wright




The song was used in England both to advertise a product much like what we call fish sticks, and as the theme song for a television show called When the Boat Comes In, a historical fiction drama series set between the two World Wars.

Gibbs Wonders What Would Have Happened If Any of the Left Had EVER Compared Bush to Hitler

Was he in a coma during the last eight years?

The left had more 'Bushitler' references in any three week period than the right has had in equivilant Obama/Pelosi-Care/Nazi references this entire year.

Alas.

When approached by her sadly demented grandfather with a convoluted tale about a missing bicycle helmet that ended with his comment "...and so I figured you'd have it if you had it", the unfortunate Equuschick offered (without any malice whatsoever, only a misplaced sense of amusement) the reply "You're quite right, I would have it if I did but I don't, so I don't."

Somewhere this is probably written down in a collection of things not to say to those suffering from dementia.

Health Care Bill Today?

Health care bill has a provision that means you could face jail time for not purchasing government mandated health insurance.

When a bill comes up for a vote, our representatives are SUPPOSED to read the bill. Outloud. But if there is a unanimous vote to dispense with this, then they don't. OF course, the vote to dispense with this is ALWAYS unanimous. Except this time- Tom Coburn says he is considering not joining in on that politics as usual ploy, and that means congress would HAVE to read the health care bill. Democrats think this is absolutely outrageous. I don't. I think they should always have to read the bill aloud, NO exceptions. Of course, given the length of this bill, that means it may be months before it can be passed, and all the little hidden nasty surprises will see the light of day. Which ought to be something EVERYBODY realizes is a good thing.
Nevertheless, the Democrats are trying to cram this bill, longer than War and Peace, down our throats this evening. Pelosi promised that before this bill came for a vote, it would be posted online for 72 hours so the public could look at it. She lied. You didn't really expect anything like honesty from her, did you?

By the way, the CBO put the cost most recently at about 3 Trillion dollars.

Abortion in the health care bill- pro-life Democrats do not want federal funding for abortions, which is currently what we have with the Health Care Bill (yes, indeedy, Obama did indeed LIE about this). And... Pelosi wasn't going to allow an up or down vote on the amended portion of the bill that ensure federal funds are used for abortions (because she knew that's exactly what they did). But the pro-life dems may get their way, which infuriates Alcee Hastings (Democrat of Florida) because she says if we dn't have federal funding for abortion we'll have a return to coat-hanger abortions in back alleys.
Except... we don't have federally funded abortion now, and we don't have coat-hanger abortions in back alleys (actually, we never did in anything like the numbers the proabortionists claimed. They made their figures up, and the same doctors performing the back-alley illegal abortions just started performing them legally once the law changed).

Charlie Crist Says He Never Supported Stimulus...

In Florida right now there is a primary with many similarities with the NY23 case - Charlie Crist is the annointed favorite of the GOP establishment in power, and Marco Rubio is the genuine fiscal conservative favored by those who value principle over party.
Here's the kind of guy Crist is-

Charlie Crist welcomed Barack Obama to Florida last February, hugged him, grinned when Obama called Crist “his favorite Republican,” and then explained why the Democrats’ stimulus was a good thing.

That was February.

Yesterday, Charlie Crist denied it ever happened. Despite the videotaped evidence, Charlie Crist says he never once supported the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the formal name of the stimulus.

The GOP said they'd learned their lesson from NY23, where even though the conservative candidate lost, he came up from 13 to 45 percent in popularity in just a few days, and the GOP candidate had to drop out of the race, her run in flames (and she retaliated and proved the conservatives right by backing the Democrat candidate). The GOP said they'd not interfere in a primary again.
But the Florida GOP establishment has now found themselves caught twice resorting to dirty tricks to undermind the Rubio campaign. Two anonymous internet attacks, really dirty ones where the attacker attempted to discredit Rubio or his backers by setting up bogus accounts pretending to be from the Rubio account - have been traced back to the offices of the Florida GOP.


ACORN and the WhiteHouse:

It’s becoming more and more difficult for the Obama White House to deny that White House political director Patrick Gaspard has strong, longstanding ties to the corrupt activist group ACORN.

Gaspard is a longtime operative for ACORN and one of its political parties, New York’s Working Families Party.

Internal ACORN documents show Gaspard gave ACORN $40,000 over the past two years while he worked as an executive vice president of Service Employees International Union Local 1199 in New York.

If this is true, Gaspard is that rare breed, a Democrat politician who is incredibly generous with his own money. Gaspard only made around 111,000 dollars when he worked for the SEIU. Of course, it may not be his money- he may have been funneling it for the SEIU. Or perhaps his wife, and the mother of his children, is independently wealthy or works at a 7 figure job..

A Couple Thoughts on Weddings

The HG and Strider just had their three week anniversary. How cute is that? In some ways things aren't going the typical way (several things have hindered the completion of our apartment) and we're now residing with the in-laws whilst waiting for things to finish up, which sort of throws a kink into the being settled notion... people ask, "Are you getting settled into married life?" and I don't know quite how to respond. Settled into the nice fact that I get to see him every morning and every night and don't have to talk with him online or say goodbye to him every night? Indubitably YES. Physically settled, no.

Anyway.
That's not the point of the post.

Since I just had my own wedding and then two weeks later helped with the wedding of a friend of Strider's, they've been on my mind a lot lately. And here's a vague summation of my thoughts:

a) Do stick to your budget, even if it's only a mental one. This sounds rather obvious, but it surprises me how many brides, when confronted with a cost more than they planned, just go with it rather than taking the trouble to figure out something else. Case in point: I knew I wanted real flowers, but I also knew I was not going to spend more than $100 on them. In the initial e-mails with the dear friend who did them as a wedding gift, we talked about getting a specific number of freesia and pink roses. When I went to order (from this website), I found that ordering the amount of freesia we'd talked about put me over $100. So I ordered less. The bouquets were still absolutely wonderful (later I'll see about posting pictures of them).

b) Even inexpensive weddings take a lot of detailed thought, and an attitude that realizes that unforeseen things can (and do) come up rather quickly. There are always a few last minute things that need purchasing. This is one reason why it's so important to stick to your budget in other things! The money saved on other things helps during the crunch of the last few days.

c) Each bride needs to decide what is most important to her and be prepared to spend considerably less on other things in order to put emphasis on that. Everything at the wedding does not have to be equally grand, expensive, fancy, gorgeous, etc.
Case in point: Flowers again. Live flowers were really important to me. So was finding the right music for each part of the ceremony. The bride that got married a couple weeks after us devoted more of her time and attention to beautiful centerpieces for the tables and, while also using live flowers, used only one song for the entire processional and one song for the recessional. It's ok to do less in one area so you can put more emphasis on another. We only did 2-4 nice table set ups (for cake, programs, etc.) whilst K. had 24-26.
Her wedding was beautiful and I was happy with mine. Make your wedding your own instead of trying to make it like the ones you see in a magazine.

d) Something I haven't talked about with my parental units, but I think is important for a bride to think about: if there's something you want that is above and beyond what would normally be done by your family, be prepared to contribute to it yourself instead of expecting your parents to cover it all. My parents were already paying for photographer, facilities, invitations, food for wedding peoples during the day of the ceremony, sound equipment, etc. Truth be told, even though $100 was my budget and is not that much for live flowers, there were ways I could have done them more cheaply (going with roses alone and less, getting them from somewhere local the week of, etc.). Strongly preferring the option I went with, though, I just paid for the flowers on my own.
Like I said, this is not something my parents requested, brought up, etc... it's just something that made sense in my head. I think it's important for the bride to realize everything involved in preparing a wedding, including costs. If it's a day for she and the groom, they should also be prepared to invest in it.

e) Remember that the marriage is the thing that's important, not the wedding.

Make a Headboard From Books

Pictured here. It goes nicely with the patchwork quilt, but somehow, seeing those mutilated books hurts me a little.

Books from the Thrift Shop and Library Book Sale

Not so many this time, but a select few:

The Furniture Doctor by George Grotz: a hardback edition of a best-selling (for decades) "guide to keeping furniture in the finest and most beautiful condition, with complete information on proper repair and refinishing techniques from the legendary expert on antiques and their restoration."
Shasta just refinished an old cabinet for the HG's mother-in-law, and he did an amazing job on it and would like to do more of this. I understand Grotz's ideas on refinishing furniture are a bit out of favor in the genuine antique trade now- you can lose a third of an item's value by removing the old, chipped, original paint, but around here, people like their furniture stripped and refinished.

A Companion to the Iliad based on the translation by Richmond Lattimore, by Malcolm M. Willcock- I am very pleased with this find. It's in lovely condition and we're reading the Lattimore translation right now.

A batch of workbooks that were taped together (I don't know who does this or why they think it's a good idea, but they'll put a stack of books together and wrap tape around the whole stack- and the books they do this with are usually books without titled spines, like workbooks or little golden books, so you have to guess if you want the stack or not based only on the first and last book in the pile),
Sequencing and Following Directions ( lots of map work and understanding directions such as 'the NE 1/4 of the SE 1//4)
Alternatives to Worksheets, motivational reading and writing activities across the curriculuum by Creative Teaching Press
The August September issue of The Mailbox, The Idea Magazine for Teachers, intermediate
Market-Math for beginners, by remedia publications


Lord, Where Are You When Bad Things Happen? by Kay Arthur

Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander mcCall Smith

Diary of the Farmer's Wife by Delight Bobilya Wier, Wallace-Homestead Book Co (1976)- I read two or three random pages and bought it even though the pages are falling out. It appears to be a sort of combination memoir, devotional book, series of essays about family life in the country.

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson- we have this in paperback but liked it so well I nearly danced a jig when I found it in hardback with a perfect (or nearly so) dustjacket on the .25 shelf at the library.

Thrush Green, by Miss Read- this is a first edition but has been rebound by the library and looks better than new as far as sturdiness goes.

God is in the Small Stuff for your Family, by Bruce and Stan (slow down and invite God into the details for your family life)- a sweet looking little hardback with a jacket and it just asked me politely if it could come with me, and so I said yes. It's in nearly new condition and I think can be cleaned up enough to be repurposed as a shower gift.

Justin Morgan Had a Horse, by Marguerite Henry, pictorial cover hardback, library bound, expected marks and attachments, much writing inside front cover, otherwise sturdy, tightly bound, pages clean within. This is the first Marguerite Henry book I read, so it remains my favorite.

Roadside Geology of New York (Roadside Geology Series) by Bradford Van Diver. I enjoyed this series, but the HG groaned when I showed it to her and reminded me that she was married now and didn't have to look at them ever again (I totally made that last part up, but she did groan).

And I am really pleased about this find:
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough (Paperback - May 12, 1982)

Book Review

I do book reviews for Amazon, Thomas Nelson, and Library Thing in exchange for free books, or at least- I did this regularly up until the beginning of this year when I went through a rough patch and didn't follow through. Now I am working through my commitments and lightening my conscience as well.

Max Lucado's Through the Tough Times is a small gift book- the sort of thing you might find in somebody's bathroom, or sitting on a table in a guest-room. It isn't very deep, and it shouldn't take very long to read. For those reviewing this book in a time where life is stable, the shallowness may seem irritating, and I'm pretty sure not everybody will agree with every point.

But when you are in the midst of a crisis it is hard to focus, hard to think, and overwhelming to think of reading anything much more challenging than a Hallmark card, and that's kind of what this book is like, a large Hallmark card. And sometimes in life, a Hallmark is just the right touch.

I could pass this on to a person going through a traumatic time who already professes some believe in God. I think it would leave most atheists cold.

Nancy Kerr and James Fagan Sing Dance to your Daddy

The song comes under other titles, as well. I've seen it as "When the Boat Comes In" fairly regularly, less often as "Dance to Your Daddy-O" and only discovered that it's also known as "Come Here, Me Little Jacky" while googling around for more information on the tune.

The Annotated Horslips , it's a 'dandling or mouth music song from Northumbria.'


(Horslips were a 1970s Irish Celtic rock band that composed, arranged and performed their music based on traditional Irish jigs and reels, according to Wikipedia, and their site seems to be sort of like Mudcat, a great resource for background music and discology of various folk tunes, specifically ones this band performed on their albums)

Dandling, of course, is what you do when playing with the baby, and mouth music is, well, that's an interesting term.

I first heard it on the album Earth Mother Lullabies, where it describes a lullaby from the Hebrides. That lullaby was basically nonsense syllables woven from the child's name and soothingly wrapped around the notes in varying order. I sang the song to one of my own children substituting the five syllables of her own first and middle names for those in the song.

But mouth music isn't just a lullaby, and maybe not even primarily a lullaby:

Genuine puirt-a-beul (pronounced porsht-ah-buhl) has a number of distinctive features which mark it out from standard singing. Mouth music is a primarily rhythmic form of song, where the words are chosen for their rhythmic qualities and the patterns of sound they make. Consequently most of the lyrics are more or less nonsense, but sometimes they take the form of puns or tongue twisters. Some songs contain syllables called “vocables,” which are chosen to sound like a particular instrument, or as a kind of sound effect to fit in with the meaning of the song. One of the reasons that I love mouth music is that it is a truly representative form of folk song; even the poorest of people can afford to use their own voices, so the songs record the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Mouth music was an important part of Gaelic tradition because the Celts used it for dances after the pipes were banned in the wake of the Jacobean uprising. It was also used as working songs, and there are many similarities to some of the Gaelic mouth music songs for working and old cotton picking songs from the south, as well as connections between some old French Creole forms of music. Fascinating stuff.


Contemplator gives these lyrics:
Dance to your daddy,
My little laddie,
Dance to your daddy,
My little man.
Thou shalt have a fish,
Thou shalt have a fin,
Thou shalt have a haddock
When the boat comes in;
Thou shalt have a codling
Boiled in a pan -
Dance to your daddy,
My little man.

Dance to your daddy,
My little laddie,
Dance to your daddy,
My little lamb.
When thou art a man
And fit to take a wife,
Thou shalt wed a maid
And love her all your life;
She shall be your lassie,
Thou shalt be her man
Dance to your daddy, My little lamb.

Unemployment tops 10%. About that Stimulus...

Unemployment tops 10%, 10.2% to be precise. There's a graph and everything (look long and hard at this) from Geoff at Innocent Bystanders, and also this:

A Side Note on the Administration’s Defense of the Stimulus. The President and his economic team have claimed that the plan is working as intended, that they’re on track to save the original goal of 3.6 million jobs, but somehow, despite practically drowning in success, we’re going to have to live with high unemployment for years to come. Oh, and that everything is still Bush’s fault.

These claims have been debunked by a variety of sources, including the AP (and here), the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and blogs such as Political Math (H/T d3ft punk).

But forget the quantitative treatment for a moment and consider what the Obama team’s graph said on a qualitative level. The graph says that within a couple of quarters, the stimulus package will stop the increase in unemployment and reverse the employment trend. That was the real mission of the stimulus. Stop job loss. Get the private sector hiring again.

So no matter how convoluted and fanciful the “jobs created or saved” numbers get, we just have to remember what the point used to be, and realize how far short we’ve fallen. And whose fault that really is.

Erick Erickson at Redstate also has a useful graph for comparison and writes:

Unemployment this morning topped 10.2%, even though the number seeking employment has declined. Many have just given up. Likewise, and more troublesome, the average hours worked in a week is at its lowest in decades — 33 hours. That suggests employers are going to just expand hours worked in the future, instead of hiring new people. So the unemployment number will stay high for a while.On January 18, 2009, Obama's top economics advisor Larry Summers said Barack Obama's stimulus plan would keep unemployment below 10% and could be deemed to have failed if it crossed 10%.

On July 17, 2009, Larry Summers said

"Both administration and independent forecasts predicted that only a very small part of the total job creation expected from the Recovery Act would take place within six months," he continued. "Indeed, a Council of Economic Advisers' study predicted that only 10 percent of the total job impact of the Recovery Act would take place during calendar year 2009. Given lags in spending and hiring, the peak impact of the stimulus on jobs was expected not to be achieved until the end of 2010."

In other words, an ever growing number of Americans have to sit on the unemployment line until next year by government design. Why? So in 2010, Barack Obama and the Democrats can run on falling unemployment numbers. They'd rather you starve now so they can have recovery happen in an election year.

And here's some more about the jobs we supposed didn't lose, the jobs 'created or saved' by the stimulous:

• 
  

The report claims the purchase of a $1,000 lawn mower to cut grass at the Fayetteville National Cemetery in Arkansas saved or created 50 jobs.

"Many Head Start programs reported saving the jobs of employees who in fact had simply been given raises with stimulus money."

"A $7,960 contract for a 'Basketball System Replacement' in Ohio claimed three jobs."

A sewer project in Douglas County, Wisconsin, somehow has created 100 jobs, even though it hasn't begun yet.

"C3T Construction Co., a general contracting company in Milwaukee, listed 24 jobs retained for projects on which no work had begun and no stimulus money had been received."

"Owners at five Section 8 housing complexes in Madison and Milwaukee reported saving 38 jobs with more than $540,000 in additional rental assistance for low-income residents, though they acknowledged no new jobs were created."

"A Kentucky shoe store reported that it had created nine jobs with an $890 order for work boots."

• 
  

I read about the 900 dollar work boot order. The Kentucky shoe store is a small family business. They often supply workboots to the Army Corps of Engineers, but this time, after the order was filled, they were contacted by the Corps and told that because they'd received stimulus money, they needed to fill out a report. On that short online report there were only two options- had the money 'created' or 'saved' jobs. There were no other options presented. The owner couldn't figure it out, so he asked his daughter to help. There was a deadline, and she didn't know which it was, either. She called the Federal office several times trying to get them to explain which of those fit her business's situation, and never got much help. After working on it for 8 hours, she gave up and picked her best guest- and now they're famous. This whole story illustrates so much that is wrong with government meddling in what should be private decisions and contracts, and so many reasons why it's demonstrable that government can do nothing but really botch our health care (or just about any other private sector activity it takes over) .

Coyoteblog observes that we can stop believing the Whitehouse on job creation because they:

put themselves on record that they have absolutely no integrity in the process:

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved….

But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.

“If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job,” HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said….

More than 250 other community agencies in the U.S. similarly reported saving jobs when using the money to give pay raises, to pay for training and continuing education, to extend employee work hours or to buy equipment, according to their spending reports.

Uh, right. So does this mean that the Administration’s pay Czar is destroying jobs by reducing salaries? Seems like one would have to take this position to be consistent. And wasn’t, by the same logic, AIG actually creating jobs with the now-infamous bonuses earlier this year?

By any measure, stimulus has failed, and that includes using the President's own measuring stick. Or does not he not need to be accountable for his promises?

The Ft Hood Shooting

Kimberly Munley is the civilian police officer who stopped the carnage yesterday at Ft. Hood, racing to the scene and engaging Hasan, disabling him and ending up wounded herself. Early reports were that she was also dead at the scene, but happily, this mother of one two is recovering. Incidentally conspiracy theorists on the left have all kinds of unlikely sneaky reasons why the shooter was first reported dead, but none of them mention that Munley was, too. The real cause of the confused and contradictory reports really needn't have been anything more sinister than the sort of chaos that always accompanies terrorist attacks.

Every time something like this happens, we all hear warnings about backlash against peaceful Muslims and how awful America is for this backlash (because, while Islam has not responsibility for all the many acts of violence committed in its name, all Americans bear the shame and guilt of the Coming Backlash). Except, says Jay Tea:

One minor problem with that: there's never been a real backlash against Muslims in America.

When Muslims acting in the name of Allah tried to blow up the World Trade Center, there was no massive backlash.

When a Muslim acting in the name of Allah shot up the El Al ticket counter at LAX, there was no massive backlash.

When two Muslims acting in the name of Allah went on a sniping spree in and around DC, there was no massive backlash.

When a Muslim acting in the name of Allah drove his SUV through the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, there was no massive backlash.

When a Muslim acting in the name of Allah ran down people all over San Francisco, there was no massive backlash.

When a Muslim acting in the name of Allah shot up the Seattle Jewish Federation, there was no massive backlash.

When a Muslim acting in the name of Allah shot seven people atop the Empire State Building, there was no massive backlash.

When a Muslim acting in the name of Allah shot up a movie theatre in Baltimore, there was no massive backlash.

When a Muslim acting in the name of Allah shot up a van filled with Orthodox Jews, there was no massive backlash.

When a Muslim acting in the name of Allah killed five people in a mall in Salt Lake City, there was no massive backlash.

And when Muslims acting in the name of Allah killed over 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, there certainly was no massive backlash whatsoever.

The media has downplayed his religion, which they would not have done if he were Christian, and if the guy had been known to be a listener to conservative talk radio or a watcher of Glenn Beck on Fox News, then we all know that these guys would have been blamed. Those that did mention it mainly did so to warn their ignorant viewers against jumping to conclusions, although the media itself was quick to jump to conclusions about the murderous tendencies of military members and to bring up the spector of post-traumatic stress disorder even though the Major had never been deployed or in an dangerous job. Most of the lefty blogs I read and their commenters were also not the least bit interesting in 'waiting' to jump to nasty conclusions about the military and those who serve, assuming the worse about just about everybody in uniform except the known murderer.

In fact, it's very possible, based on the news so far, that an intense effort to be politically correct and avoid anything that smacks of 'backlash' may be what allowed a Muslim Psychiatrist in the army to be vocal in his opposition of the war and his support of suicide bombings as actually being noble efforts to save lives rather than the murderous attacks and yes, suicide, self-killing (something Islam condemns and which radical Mullahs contort themselves to excuse when the suicide brings a lot of blood, gore, and human lives along with him) acts they are.

Btw, if you read WND, you may wish to read this article correcting an assertion they made about Hasan's supposed connection with Homeland Security- there really isnt' much of one.

Wedding Pictures

Daddy walks the bride down the stairs to the groom at the historical house where pictures were taken before the wedding.


Instead of a guest book, an online friend of ours offered to make a guest quilt. She mailed us muslin squares, we set out a batch of permanent markers in an antique crystal spoon holder from the Rattery and a couple of surplus tiles from building this house (the silver-gray tiles were to protect the tablecloths from the pens bleeding through the muslin fabric). We decorated the baskets with ribbons and silk flowers. One basket was to hold finished squares, and one held the wedding programs, and a third held the CDs that were favors for the wedding.

The tablecoths (also vintage from the Rattery) were all too short for the tables, so we taped leftover fabric from the bridesmaid dresses to the ends of the table and then spread the snowy white linen cloths over that. The flower girl and the FYG spread little blue glass beads and stones (thrift shop) over the table, and later sprinkled some small, pale pink daisies (thirft shop) amongst the stones. There was also a large candle in a brandy snifter (borrowed from the groom's family- they had them out for the rehearsal dinner). You can see the Forever in Blue Jeans figurine in the middle.

Friends who were there who knew my late Uncle (owner of the Rattery) were pleased that the little blue glass cake toppers were from the Rattery. They said it was like including my Uncle in the wedding, and, indeed, I believe we had things there from him, from my grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents. The groom's ring was also passed down from a great or great-great grandfather, and the bride's engagement ring belonged to her great-grandmother.

First FLDS Trial Ends In Guilty Finding

Raymond Merril Jessop (now 38) was polygamously wed to 16 year old girl in 2004 (she is now 21). She gave birth to a daughter in August of 2005. DNA evidence indicates Raymond is the father of the pre-schooler, and records found at the ranch gave the details of the marriage (and others, although oddly, the state chose not to take polygamy charges to court here).

The jury found him guilty.

This is one of the handful of FLDS cases (12, and that includes Warren Jeffs, who had already been imprisoned for performing a wedding ceremony, and a man indicted for failure to report abuse) I have long been certain was probably going to result in a jury finding of guilty. He was 32 or 33, she was 16, that's illegal in Texas (unless, apparently, the girl goes to public school and lives in the community). I'm sure he's guilty of breaking the law in Texas (although the state made no attempt to prove the crime was committed in Texas, neither did Jessop make any attempt I am aware of to prove it wasn't).

But there's more going here than the immediate details of this particular case.

The problem here remains that Law enforcement and social services went to the ranch on a hoax call, collected private ranch papers and gathered up the mothers and children on flimsy (and sometimes false) evidence- and, while social services claimed this was necessary because once they got to the ranch they saw signs of abuse, this case is not an example of it, and, in fact, I don't know that we have seen anything to back up the state's claim here.

The girl was a minor in 2004. But at the time of the raid she was an adult woman, and nothing that Law Enforcement or Social Services saw here was indication of abuse. They keep saying that once they got there, they saw evidence of abuse, but so far we've not seen an instance where this was true (and, indeed, The Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state had failed to present any supporting evidence).

And another problem is that, though the state keeps insisting this isn't about religion, it's about breaking the law; in fact, the state keeps putting the religion on trial and the judge lets the state's attorneys do that. Brooke reports:

The state used Musser, who was married at age 19 to former FLDS prophet Rulon T. Jeffs when he was 83,to explain the importance of family records in the FLDS faith and how the prophet is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of those records.

But, of course, she talked about much more. Defense attorney Mark Stevens objected to much of Musser had to say as irrelevant to the state’s case against Jessop, but was overruled.

Musser, 33, told the jury about her parents — Lloyd and Sharon Wall (who are no longer married). She spoke about attending Alta Academy, the private FLDS school once operated in Salt Lake County, and then becoming a teacher there while Warren Jeffs was principal.

She described the school’s curriculum as “the basics” of math, English, reading, spelling and writing “but primarily a lot of focus was given on religious training.”

Prosecutor Eric Nichols started to ask Musser to explain “priesthood history training” when Steven asked to halt the hearing so he could question the witness.

When the jury returned the state again asked her to testify about the Priesthood training, and she talked about how the priest dictated every detail of their lives, including clothing and hairstyle. This may be repugnant to you, but it is not illegal, and it has little to do with proving whether or not Jessop impregnated a 16 year old girl. The DNA evidence proved that conclusively, making this other rabbit trail stand out as clearly being about putting religious views on trial as much as law-breaking.

There was an odd bit of information- the judge and the state agreed that the girl could not have been legally married to Raymond, because she'd been married to somebody else the year before (if she'd been legally married, it would have been okay for Ray to father a child with her):

"Judge Barbara Walther observed that that would also show that the alleged victim could not legally have married Raymond Jessop since she was married to someone else — a comment that seemed to make defense attorney Mark Stevens freeze up."
Apparently, Judge Walther is willing to recognize the previous marital status of the "child" "victim".

Okay. But, as Sore Toes points out, if the judge is recognizing that previous FLDS marriage as a valid and legal marriage which 'proves' the girls wasn't legally married to Raymond, then why would they not recognize the FLDS 'divorce' and subsequent remarriage to Raymond as also valid? Toes lays out her case in the comments:

This is the point:

The victim was married first, in a religious ceremony not sanctioned by the government of whatever state she lived in at the time.

The court and prosecution are now saying that they regard that marriage to be a real, i.e. "legal" marriage. They are calling her a "spouse" of that first marriage.

Therefore, they must then recognize that her first marriage ended, by a religious action that was not sanctioned by the government of whatever state she lived in at the time. She was at that point, a divorce'.

Therefore, they must also then recognize her subsequent re-marriage, by religious ceremony not sanctioned by the government of whatever state she lived in at the time.

It is pure logic.

They can't identify her in open court as a married woman under one circumstance, and not married to the defendant under the exact same circumstance.

Then again, it's Texas.

There will be more:

Jessop was one of 12 men indicted by the grand jury. Walther has scheduled their trials one after another over the next year. Allen E. Keate is scheduled to stand trial beginning Dec. 7 on the same charge Jessop faced -- sexual assault of a child.

And it's expected that any of the men found guilty will be pursuing appeals further up, mostly about the questions over whether or not the search warrants were legally obtained and legally served.

Pelosi's Weasel Words

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the speaker will not allow the final language of the health care to be posted online for 72 hours before bringing the bill to a vote on the House floor, despite her September 24 statement that she was "absolutely" committed to doing so.

She says now she meant something else.
She's now pushing for a vote on this humongous thing tomorrow, and she doesn't want politicians to have time to read it all, let alone the citizens it affects- and keep in mind that Congress exempted itself from this bill.

Minding Your P's and Q's, November 6th

I am going through the month of November, or rather, the first 26 days with a letter of the alphabet for each day, and naming something to be thankful for for that start's with that day's letter. A-D are here.

November 6th, F: Friends and family, naturally.

Living Within Your Means

Aunt Sophronia, as long term readers may remember, is a character from an old book formerly belonging to my great-grandmother. The Complete Home, An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs Embracing All the Interests of The Household, by Julia McNair Wright is one of my favorite Domestic Treasures. Mrs. Wright wrote to help impoverished families economize during the depression of the 1870's. She writes in the first person in the character of a delightful old gentlewoman named Aunt Sophronia. Aunt Sophronia has three nieces of her own whom she is guiding, and she is aunt by courtesy title to most of the young people in town.

In this excerpt Aunt Sophronia is explaining to some newly married young women how to live within their means:

"...I will give you the rules, which are few and simple, and easily performed by self-sacrifice. Work hard; see and improve all small opportunities; keep out of debt and carefully economize. That is the best that all the wisdom of the world has been able to digest and formulate as rules for getting rich. The matter is simple and lies in a nutshell: have the end definitely before you; do your own work toward it and do it honestly, and don't give up until you have reached your goal; the same plain, straight, unadorned and yet passable road is open to all."

I have some other tips here at Frugal Hacks this morning.

Dance to your Daddy

I don't know who is performing this one, but the Equuschick and I agree that we like it very much.

Kididdle lists the lyrics thus:
Dance to your daddy,
My bonnie laddy,
Dance to your daddy,
My bonnie lamb.

You shall get a fishy,
In a little dishy,
You shall get a fishy,
When the boat comes in.

You shall get a coatie,
And a pair of breekies,
And you'll get an eggy,
And a bit of ham.

You shall get a pony,
Fit to ride for ony,
And you'll get a whippy,
For to make him gang.

Dance to your daddy,
My bonnie laddy,
Dance to your daddy,
My bonnie lamb.


Breekies, I assume, are britches. The whippy for the pony to make him go gang is to make the pony 'go along.'

Like all folk songs, there are numerous permutations, variations, and mutations, and there's no rule against playing with it yourself.

Carnage at Ft. Hood

Major Hasan, a psychiatrist in the Army, opened fire on his fellow soldiers and has killed at least 13- over 30 others are injured and the death toll may rise. Hasan is in the hospital, according to Mudville.


He's a Muslim, some outlets report a convert. but that may well not be the case.

The Commander in Chief of those dozen or so slaughtered soldiers (and their murderer) was so choked up about it that he gives a shout-out to somebody in the audience before mentioning the Ft. Hood incident. Priorities, you know. But it's okay, because the media is editing his comments for him.

NBC's Pete Williams insisted, the MRC's Brad Wilmouth noticed, “everything about his background is rock solid, and nothing extraordinary stands out about his background.”

Except maybe this.

Our prayers are with the families of the slain and the wounded soldiers, and their friends and families.

Minding Your P's and Q's, November 5th

I am going through the month of November, or rather, the first 26 days with a letter of the alphabet for each day, and naming something to be thankful for for that start's with that day's letter. A-D are here.


Nov. 5th- E- Eggs. I am so thankful for eggs. I love them in omelettes, in egg and cheese sandwiches, in breakfast burritos, in custards, boiled, poached, and gently fried sunny side up. I like them in muffins and cakes and cookie recipes as well.=)

I also am thankful that we have a source for fresh home reared eggs again- it is such a huge difference. The fresh from the family flock eggs have bright yolks, sometimes nearly orange, and the egg stands up in the pan with vim and vigour, as opposed to their weak and insipid supermarket kin, which falls limply into the pan and spreads itself flat, too poor in spirit to hold itself together.

Here are some egg receipts from a 1922 cookbook:
All measurements are level
Eggs a la Goldenrod
Four portions

3 hard cooked eggs
1 1/2 C milk
3 T butter
l/2 t salt
3 T flour
1/2 t pepper
1/8 t. parsley

Melt the butter, add the flour, salt, and pepper into the pan over low heat. Mix well. Add the milk gradually. Cook until a white sauce consistency. Add chopped egg whites. Pour this mixture over slices of toast arranged on a platter. Force the yolks through a strainer on top of the sauce on the toast. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

(All measurements are level)
Escalloped Eggs (Four portions)

Four hard-cooked eggs
Two tablespoons butter
Two tablespoons flour
One teaspoon salt
One-fourth teaspoon pepper
One and one-fourth cups milk
One-third cup cheese
One-half cup crumbs
One tablespoon melted butter

As soon as the eggs are cooked, crack the shells and drop into cold water. Let stand until cold. Melt the butter, add the flour, salt and pepper, and when blended add the milk. Cook the mixture until it is creamy. Add the cheese and the hard cooked eggs, diced. Pour into a buttered baking dish.

Sprinkle the crumbs, combined with the melted butter, over the top. Bake in a moderate oven for twenty minutes.

Baked Eggs and Cheese (Four portions)

Four eggs
One-half cup milk
One teaspoon salt
One-half cup grated cheese
One-fourth teaspoon paprika

Butter a small baking dish and drop the opened eggs into it, whole. Add the milk and sprinkle the salt, cheese and paprika over the top. Bake in a moderate oven until the eggs are white over their tops.

(Note.—Of course in such a recipe as this, the eggs should be broken first, one by one, into a small dish, and then added, so there is no chance that a bad egg may be mixed with the good ones. Add the eggs carefully, side by side.) Escalloped Tomatoes (Four portions)

No eggs here, but 'Escalloped' starts with an e.
Escalloped Turnips (Four portions)

Two cups raw peeled diced turnips
Four cups boiling water
One teaspoon salt
Three tablespoons butter
Four tablespoons flour
One teaspoon salt
One-fourth teaspoon paprika
One and one-half cups milk
One-half cup cooked celery
One-half cup cracker crumbs
One tablespoon melted butter

Boil the turnips in the salted water until tender when pierced with a fork. Drain. Melt the butter and add the flour, salt and paprika. When well blended, add the milk, and cook until a creamy sauce is formed. Add the turnips and cooked celery and pour into a well-buttered baking dish.

Combine the melted butter and crumbs, and spread over the prepared turnips. Bake in a moderate oven for twenty minutes.

To cook the celery, add one cup of water to one half cup of diced celery and cook very slowly for thirty minutes. Reserve the celery stock for flavoring soups or sauces, or as part of the liquid in the sauce for creamed vegetables.

A thousand ways to please a family with Bettina's best recipes
By Louise Bennett Weaver, Helen Cowles Le Cron

Seniors to pay the cost of giving health care to 20 year olds who didn't want it

Via Ace:

For a a long time, they have been falsely reporting the "ten year costs" by comparing ten years of revenues -- also known as higher taxes and mandates -- with only seven years of outlays.

What happens when you compare a ten-year window in which there are both revenues and layouts going on for the whole ten years?

The costs skyrocket above their advertised costs -- they double.

Each bill is routinely “scored” for its 10-year costs from 2010-19. Yet this includes several years when the spending wouldn’t yet have kicked in. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fully 99.9 percent of the Pelosi bill’s costs would hit from 2013 onward. Similarly, 98.3 percent of Reid’s spending would come after 2014.

If you start the tally when the bills’ spending would actually start (in 2013 for the House bill and 2014 for the Senate bill), then the bills’ real 10-year costs become clear — and are remarkably similar.

The CBO reports that, in their true first 10 years, the House bill would cost $1.8 trillion, and the Senate bill would cost $1.7 trillion. Pelosi would raise Americans’ taxes by $1.1 trillion over that period, while Reid would hike them by $1 trillion.

And the House bill would siphon about $800 billion from Medicare to spend it elsewhere, while the Senate bill would suck out about $900 billion.

Seniors, take notice: The already-massive cost of this catastrophe is being reduced by $800-900 billion to give your care to someone else.

Read it all.

And when the CBO scored the Republican plan they found it:
Costs a Mere $61 Billion, Cuts $68 Billion from Deficit, Reduces Premiums Up to Ten Percent

Another Example of Indoctrination

Greenpeace Brainwashing:



The gap between children like this and the children of Islamofascists should be a little wider than it appears to be, don't you think? This child has been encouraged to grow up and punish us, to convince his peers to grow up and punish the older generation, and to make thinly veiled threats. This child has been encouraged to hate.

And in the UK, 'green' beliefs have been granted the same status as other religious beliefs.

It's Guy Fawkes Day!

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

On the 5th November 1605 Guy Fawkes was caught in the cellars of the English Houses of Parliament with several dozen barrels of gunpowder, Guy Fawkes was subsequently tried as a traitor for plotting against the government and then
executed. The form of the execution was one of the most horrendous ever practised (hung ,drawn and quartered) reflecting the serious nature of the crime. This nursery rhyme served to ensure that this form of treason would never be forgotten hence the words " Remember , remember the 5th of November" sometimes referred to as 'Please to remember the fifth of November'. It serves as a warning to each new generation that treason would never be forgiven or forgotten. In England the 5th of November is commemorated each year with fireworks and bonfires culminating with the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes (the guy) by children on the top of the bonfire. The 'guys' are made by the children by stuffing old clothes with newspapers to look like a man - it is traditional for British children to display their 'guys' to passers by asking for " A penny for the guy". The money received to be spent on fireworks for Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawke's night) celebrations on 5th November!

The Fifth Of November And Guy Fawkes.
(Vol. xviii., p. 450.)

In an 1891 edition of the children's paper, St. Nicholas, a British child wrote to the editors that Guy Fawkes Day was a thoroughly boys' day, although she got to participate in the fun because she had five brothers:

Dear St. Nicholas: I am writing to tell you all about Guy Fawkes Day, because the little boys and girls in America do not have a Guy Fawkes Day, and perhaps they might like to hear about it. You see, Guy Fawkes Day is thoroughly a boys' day—girls have nothing at all to do with it — but though I am a girl I have five brothers, and therefore generally share in the fun.

The day is the 5th of November, and about the middle of October all the shops (stores, as you say in America) begin to show fireworks and masks in their windows. Now, I dare say you will like to hear about the " masks." Well, they are faces made of a sort of composition, painted most hideously, generally with big noses. These are purchased for the large sum of one penny (two cents in American money) by all the little boys, who wear them about the streets. After this has gone on for about a week or a fortnight, Guy Fawkes Day really comes.

At about ten or eleven o'clock, on the 5th, you hear a great deal of noise going on in the streets, and cries of " Guy, Guy, Guy, Guy, Guy," as fast as it can be gabbled (or rather shouted). Then you see a troop of street urchins with paper caps and paper streamers, singing, while two of them carry a chair on which is tied an effigy of Guy Fawkes, with one of the aforesaid " masks," and an old hat and coat. The boys come and stand in front of the houses and sing:

" Please to remember
The Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot.
I see no good reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot! "

Another song was :

" Holler, boys, holler, boys, make the bells ring ; Holler, boys, holler, boys, God save the King."

"The king" means James I., and the words are now changed into "God save the Queen."

You see Guy Fawkes Day is a very, very old custom; it dates back to 1605, when it is said that some conspirators tried to blow up the king and Parliament.

After dark all the boys have bonfires and fireworks, not so much in the town as in the suburbs, where there are back gardens in which to burn the stuffed effigy and to set off the fireworks. Good-by,

Yours lovingly, Margaret Alice B .

Guy Fawkes Day in Childrens Literature: two of my favorites are Hardings' Luck, and House of Arden by E. Nesbit, deleted reference to a book from Joan Aiken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase series). (I thought I'd deleted this reference before posting, as when I went to check which book I was remembering, I realized I was remembering incorrectly. There is a treasonous plot to blow up the kind, but it's part of her alternative history, not Guy Fawkes)

You can read Harding's Luck online for free, as well as The House of Arden and I heartily recommend them both (though if you don't like magic in your books, you won't like these)- Chapters VII and VIII are the two where Guy Fawkes is featured.

The Nesbit books are a bit more accurate when dealing with history. Aiken's books are not really even intended to be historical fiction.

Guy Fawkes comes up in chapters VIII and IX in House of Arden- because the two stories intersect, it's essentially the same event but told from two different points of view. In Harding's Luck, the lame Dickie goes back in time, and in House of Arden the brother and sister Elfrida and Eldred do- they are related to Dickie and the three of them sometimes end up in the same time period together, although in House of Arden they never quite realize that each of them is from another time. They are aided by a small and irritable mole-like creature known as the Mouldiwarp who is on the Arden coat of arms. Elfrida and Eldred are hunting for the lost Arden treasure so they can restore the family fortunes and fix up the ancestral home.

It sounds more confusing than it is, and E. Nesbit always tells a good story. Here's a section from The House of Arden:

I always have thought, and I always shall think, that it was the eavesdropping of that tiresome old tutor, Mr. Parados–or Parrot-nose–which caused all the mischief. But Elfrida has always believed, and always will believe, that the disaster was caused by her knowing too much history. That is why she is so careful to make sure that no misfortune shall ever happen on that account, any way. That is one of the reasons why she never takes a history prize at school. "You never know," she says. And, in fact, when it comes to a question in an historical examination, she never does know.

This was how it happened. Elfrida, now that she was no longer running about in the garden, remembered the question that she had been asking herself over the embroidery frame, and it now seemed sensible to ask the question of some one who could answer it. So she said–

"I say, Cousin Richard, what day is it?"

Elfrida understood him to say that it was the fifth of November.

"Is it really?" she said. "Then it's Guy Fawkes day. Do you have fireworks?" And in pure lightness of heart began to hum–

"Please to remember
The Fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot."

"Tis not a merry song, cousin," said Cousin Richard, "nor a safe one. 'Tis best not to sing of treason."

"But it didn't come off, you know, and he's always burnt in the end," said Elfrida.

"Are there more verses?" Cousin Dick asked.

"No."

"I wonder what treason the ballad deals with?" said the boy.

"Don't you know?" It was then that Elfrida made the mistake of showing off her historical knowledge. "I know. And I know some of the names of the conspirators, too, and who they wanted to kill, and everything."

"Tell me," said Cousin Richard idly.

"The King hadn't been fair to the Catholics, you know," said Elfrida, full of importance, "so a lot of them decided to kill him and the Houses of Parliament. They made a plot–there were a whole lot of them in it. They said Lord Arden was, but he wasn't, and some of them were to pretend to be hunting, and to seize the Princess Elizabeth and proclaim her Queen, and the rest were to blow the Houses of Parliament up when the King went to open them."

"I never heard this tale from my tutor," said Cousin Richard laughing. "Proceed, cousin."

"Well, Mr. Piercy took a house next the Parliament House, and they dug a secret passage to the vaults under the Parliament Houses; and they put three dozen casks of gunpowder there and covered them with faggots. And they would have been all blown up, only Mr. Tresham wrote to his relation, Lord Monteagle, that they were going to blow up the King and–"

"What King?" said Cousin Richard.

"King James the First," said Elfrida. "Why–what–" for Cousin Richard had sprung to his feet, and old Parrot-nose had Elfrida by the wrist.

He sat down on the seat and drew her gently till she stood in front of him–gently, but it was like the hand of iron in the velvet glove (of which, no doubt, you have often read).

"Now, Mistress Arden," he said softly, "tell me over again this romance that you tell your cousin."

Elfrida told it.

"And where did you hear this pretty story?" he asked.

And in the end, of course, it turns out it is the very fifth of November when the Gunpowder Plot was discovered, and while it is foiled, a number of the wrong people end up imprisoned in the Tower:

And I can't explain it at all–because, of course, Elfrida knew as well as I do that it all happened three hundred years ago–or, if you prefer to put it that way, that it had never happened, and that anyway, it was Mr. Tresham's letter to Lord Monteagle, and not Elfrida's singing of that silly rhyme, that had brought the Ardens and all these other gentlemen to the Tower and to the shadow of death. And yet she felt that it was she who had betrayed them. She felt also that if she had betrayed a base plot, she ought to be glad, and she was not glad. She had taken advantage of having been born so much later than all these people, and of having been rather good at history to give away the lives of all these nobles and gentlemen. That they were traitors to King and Parliament made no manner of difference. It was she, as she felt but too bitterly, who was the traitor. And in the thick-walled room in the Tower, where the name of Raleigh was still fresh in its carving, Elfrida lay awake, long after Lady Arden and Edred were sleeping peacefully, and hated herself, calling herself a Traitor, a Coward, and an Utter Duffer.

Guy Fawkes was put to death in thorough and gruesome fashion, as were most of the other conspirators- condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Fawkes, according to at least one site I found, actually managed to avoid the drawn and quartered bit-traiters were hanged, but NOT until dead- they were usually removed while still alive to endure the remaining punishments. Guy Fawkes leapt from the scaffold before the rope was removed so that he died by hanging.

There is some feeling in England these days, I do not know how widespread, that it's really not in keeping with modern sensibilities and tastes to celebrate Guy Fawkes' death by making effigies of him, singing about his death, and tossing the 'guy' on a bonfire.

At least sometimes in the past, the Pope was also burned in effigy. There is in existence a proclamation from George Washington condemning what he called a ridiculous and childish custom, and the proclamation continued, saying that General Washington:

cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be officers and soldiers in this army so void of common sense as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this juncture, at a time when we are soliciting and have really obtained the friendship and alliance of the people of Canada, -whom we ought to consider as brethren embarked in the same cause, the defence of the general liberty of America. At such a juncture and in such circumstances, to be insulting their religion is so monstrous as not to be suffered or excused ; indeed, instead of offering the most remote insult, it is our duty to address public thanks to these our brethren, as to them we are so much indebted for every late happy success over the common enemy in Canada.

Living in contradistinction to existing=)

Are You Alive?
by Stuart Chase
condensed from The Nation
from the September 1922 issue of The Reader's Digest, reprinted in the 1941 Twentieth Anniversay Anthology

There seems to be an ascending scale of values in life, and somewhere in this scale there is a line--probably a blurred one--below which one more or less "exists" and above which one more or less "lives".

I have often been perplexed by people who talk about "life."

Americans, they tell me, do not know how to live, but the French--ah, the French--or the Hungarians, or the Poles, or the Patagonians. When I ask them what they mean by life they do not advance me an inch in my quest of the definition of life.

What does it mean to be alive, to live intensely? What do social prophets mean when they promise a new order of life? Obviously they cannot mean a new quality of life never before enjoyed by anyone, but rather an extension of vitality for the masses of mankind in those qualities of "life" which have hitherto been enjoyed only by a few individuals normally, or by large numbers of individuals rarely.

What is it which is enjoyed, and how is it to be shared more extensively? Can we hold life on a point for a moment while we examine it?

What, concretely, is this "awareness," this "well-being?" I want in a rather personal way to tell you the facts as I have found them. I want to tell you when I think I live in contradistinction to when I think I "exist." I want to make life very definite in terms of my own experience, for in matters of this nature about the only source of data one has is oneself. I do not know what life means to other people but I do know what it means to me, and I have worked out a method of measuring it.

I get out of bed in the morning, gulp coffee and headlines, demand to know where my raincoat is, start for the office--and so forth. These are the crude data. Take the days as they come, put a plus beside the living hours and a minus before the dead ones; find out just what makes the live ones live and the dead ones die. Can we catch the verihood of life in such an analysis? The poet will say no, but I am an accountant and only write poetry out of hours.

My notes show a classification of eleven states of being in which I feel I am alive, and five states in which I feel I only exist. These are major states, needless to say. In addition, I find scores of sub-states which are too obscure for me to analyze. The eleven "plus" reactions are these:

I seem to live when I am creating something--writing this article, for instance; making a sketch, working on an economic theory, building a bookshelf, making a speech.

Art certainly vitalizes me. A good novel, some poems, some pictures, operas, many beautiful buildings and particularly bridges affect me as though I took the artist's blood into my own veins. There are times, however, when a curtain falls over my perceptions which no artist can penetrate.

The mountains and the sea and stars--all the old subjects of a thousand poets--renew life in me. As in the case of art, the process is not automatic--I hate the sea sometimes--but by and large, I feel the line of existence below me when I see these things.

Love is life, vital and intense. Very real to me also is the love one bears one's friends.

I live when I am stimulated by good conversation, good argument. There is a sort of vitality in just dealing in ideas that to me at least is very real.

I live when I am in the pressure of danger--rock-climbing, for example.

I feel very much alive in the presence of a genuine sorrow.

I live when I play--preferably out-of-doors at such things as diving, swimming, skating, skiing, dancing, sometimes driving a motor, sometimes walking.

One lives when one takes food after genuine hunger, or when burying one's lips in a cool mountain spring after a long climb.

One lives when one sleeps. A sound healthy sleep after a day spend out-of-doors gives one the feeling of a silent, whirring dynamo. In vivid dreams I am convinced one lives.

I live when I laugh--spontaneously and heartily.

In contradistinction to "living I find five main states of "existence" as follows:

I exist when I am doing drudgery of any kind--adding up figures, washing dishes, answering most letters, attending to money matters, reading newspapers, shaving, dressing, riding on street cars or up and down in elevators, buying things.

I exist when attending the average social function--a tea, a dinner, listening to dull people talk, discussing the weather.

Eating, drinking, or sleeping when one is already replete, when one's senses are dulled, are states of existence, not life. For the most part I exist when I am ill.

Old scenes, old monotonous things--city walls, too familiar streets, houses, rooms, furniture, clothes--drive one to the existence level. Sheer ugliness, such as one sees in the stockyards or in a city slum, depress me intensely.

I retreat from life when I become angry. I exist through rows and misunderstandings and in the blind alleys of "getting even."

So, in a general way, I set life off from existence. It must be admitted of course that "living" is often a mental state quite independent of physical environment or occupation. One may feel--in springtime for isntance--suddenly alive in old, monotonous surroundings. Then even dressing and ishwashing become eventful and one sings as one shaves. But these outbursts are on the whole abnormal. By and large there seems to be a definite cause for living and a definite cause for existing. So it is with me at any rate. I believe that I could deliberately "live" twice as much--in hours--as I do now, if only I would come out from under the chains of necessity--largely economic--which bind me.

I have indeed made some estimates of the actual time I have spent above and below the "existence" line. For instance, my notes show that in one week, of the 168 hours contained therein, I only "lived" about 40 of them, or 25 per cent of the total time. This allowed for some creative work, a Sunday's hike, some genuine hunger, some healthy sleep, a little stimulating reading, two acts of a play, part of a moving picture, and eight hours of interesting discussion with various friends.

It may be that the states of being which release life in me release it in most human beings. Generally speaking, one's salvation is bound closely with that of all mankind--the ratio of living, growing with that of the mass of one's fellow-men.