After the Tea Party, what?

Here are a few thoughts that I shared with the crowd at the Florence Tea Party on July 4th.

Now that you’ve listened to the patriotic music and the good speeches, what should you do?

Be informed and share information with family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. Use every form of technology there is, telephone, word of mouth, email, snail mail, Facebook, Twitter – everything.

Inform your legislators about your feelings and opinions.

Every state and federal house seat is up for reelection in 2010 – and about half of the senate seats, city council, county council and school board seats. So, run for office yourself, or pick a candidate and volunteer to work for them. Or volunteer to work for your political party. There are dozens of ways to help out.

The most important place to volunteer, however, is at the polls. Josef Stalin is reported to have said, “It’s not who votes that decides an election, it’s who counts the votes.” I believe that’s true.

Do you remember where were you on November 9, 1960?

That was the election when JFK won by only about 112,800 votes – one vote per precinct in just four states! I was only 17 years old, not old enough yet to vote. But that night I was down at McKenzie School with some other teenagers, helping to count votes.

In those days, we still had paper ballots, marked by little short pencils. The woman in charge gave us skimpy training: “If a ballot has a stray pencil mark on it anywhere, don’t count it – put it aside in a pile. Also, if any election is not marked (has not been voted), don’t count that ballot either, put it in the pile too. I’ll come pick them up later.”

Later on she did come by. She collected those uncounted piles of ballots and sat at a table across the way, doing something with them. At the time I didn’t give it a second thought. Today, I would give it a second, third, fourth and fifth thought – what was she doing with those ballots?!

We need good, dependable, conservative poll managers to be sure the election is run honestly, and poll watchers to stop them if it’s not. The Florence County Election Commission is always looking for people to work at the polls, and conducts training sessions for both poll workers and watchers. Look up the number in the blue pages of the phone book, call and volunteer.

And most importantly of all – pray for our elected officials. Too often we pray for the candidate of our choice to get elected, and then when they are elected, they go to Washington or Columbia and they’re surrounded by lobbyists, power, influence, temptations on every side, and we forget to pray for them. It’s really a miracle any of them stay straight.

So, after the Tea Party, what? What should you do next? Don’t just go home today and sit on your hands. Pray, and then put feet to your prayers!

When they work right…

Sick computer

… computers are great.

Last Thursday afternoon my computer crashed, after giving me very few problems for a number of years.

First thing Friday morning, I took it in to the repair shop for a checkup. The nice repairman found that the hard drive was fried and I needed a new one.

Most data was not recoverable, he said. Bummer.

However, since I use a “My Book” (large external hard drive) for backups, I knew all was not lost. Several weeks of miscellaneous photos and other files weren’t backed up, but they weren’t critical.

The situation was certainly aggravating, but certainly not a disaster.

So, I had a new mega-giga drive installed, brought the baby home Monday afternoon and set about hooking things back up, mouse, monitor, printers, keyboard.

My internet keyboard refused to work. Have you ever tried to do anything without the keyboard? My trackball mouse worked just fine, but no keyboard. I unplugged plugs, unconnected cords, replugged, reconnected, and still nothing. Had it fried too?

Eventually, after doing all the above several more times and leaving the computer turned off a few minutes, the keyboard began to work.

Well, of course the next thing to connect was My Book, naturally. Here’s where big problem #2 cropped up. The computer didn’t recognize it, couldn’t seem to “see” My Book. Same problem as with the keyboard.

This time, nothing I did worked. I began to see real disaster in the making.

Putting that task aside for the time being, I set out to re-install my normal working programs. After some programs installed without a hitch, big problem #3 raised its ugly head. Some other programs would simply not install from the original CD’s.

They were old, granted, but they had been properly registered all those years ago and regularly updated since then, so what was going on? I went online to check this out.

I learned that some companies had changed hands, the new company did not support the old software, etc., etc. There were no Q&A’s that addressed my situation.

After a lot of research, I realized I would have to acquire new versions of some critically important software.

Back to My Book. I awoke yesterday with a new idea floating around in my brain. Try plugging it into a different port… so I did, and it worked.

The port I was using may or may not work with something else, that remains to be seen, but it simply wouldn’t run My Book. At least I have my backups, what there are of them, accessible again. Much relief.

Well, one time-consuming thing after another has occupied me for the past two days, and I still have several programs to try to install. Family Tree Maker is one big one yet to go.

But at least I can work and play computer games again, which I plan to do as soon as I make a cup of coffee.

Father’s Day

The following is reprinted from August 5, 2008’s “Esther’s Petition,” in honor of Father’s Day and my own father, Harold W. Motte, Sr.
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Betty and daddy in his Army Air Force uniform, 1944

Who’s your daddy

When I was two years old, I knew my daddy… in some ways. I didn’t know him as a WW II veteran of the US Army Air Force. I didn’t know him as an airplane pilot or airplane mechanic, small engine repairman or insurance salesman.

I didn’t know him as a brother, uncle or son, or as a husband, son-in-law or brother-in-law. I didn’t know him as a house painter, screen door fixer, lawn mower, or light-bulb replacer. Or as a banjo player / barbershop quartet singer, neighbor, friend, or as a ballroom dancer. Yet he was all those things, to other people.

To two-year-old me he was just a marvelous big creature who loved me. He was a smiler. A carrier-on-the-shoulder. A hugger and tickler who got down on the floor and played baby dolls with me, or wound up the wobbly spinning top for me, over, and over, and over.

He let me climb up in his lap when he was trying to read the newspaper, and read the funnies out loud to me. He was a food taster who offered me little bites of his grown-up meals. He was a goofy “mareseatoats” song singer and a “once upon a time” story reader.

Sometimes he pointed a square box at me and called, “Smile,” which I probably did most of the time. I still have the black and white prints to prove it.

I didn’t really understand the definition of father yet but I knew the word daddy. And I knew my daddy, in all the facets of my two-year-old personal relationship with him, limited though they were.

A few years later I knew my daddy as mama’s best friend, who would dress up in a fancy suit and necktie and go somewhere with her, who herself was dressed up in a frilly dress and high heels. Off they’d go to some place I couldn’t go. Baby sitter time.

He was the chauffeur to any places we went as a family, the bill-payer when we went to the movies or out to eat, the final declarer of the absolutely perfectly decorated Christmas tree, the slow present opener who (like so many other gentleman of his era) used his pocket knife to carefully unstick the scotch tape and avoid tearing or wrinkling up the wrapping paper.

I also knew daddy as occasional nay-sayer and occasional deep thinker. Can I, daddy, can I have that? might result in long moments of deep thought before daddy’s well-meditated “no” answer was forthcoming, complete with reasonable, logical explanation. Only in cases of youngster temper-tantrum threats did he resort to “because I said so,” but if daddy said so, it was so.

In my pre-teen years I got to know daddy as a good tic-tac-toe player, chinese checker player, and monopoly player. I got to hear him play his banjo and sing four-part harmony.

I also discovered that mama and daddy weren’t always in perfect agreement – sometimes they had slightly loud discussions, at least that’s what they called them. Not yelling, not arguing, not fighting, but discussing points of view that sometimes clashed. I never listened and therefore I have no clear idea what those differences were all about. It’s probably just as well.

In my early teens, I began to know daddy as the family bread-winner who sometimes couldn’t work, who was suffering from service-related heart disease, caused by rheumatic fever contracted during WWII. He died of a heart attack when I was 16 years old.

I never got the chance to know daddy in all the many-faceted adult roles that other people knew. A few people have shared with me over the years about daddy as their friend. He was a valued friend to many. My mother never really recovered from losing her best friend, lover and husband, and I never really recovered from losing my daddy.

Over the years I have come to realize that daddy was a multi-faceted person, including a multi-faceted father to my brother and me. I knew him, but not as well as I would have liked, and the opportunity to know him better ended for me in 1960.
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If your dad is still living, appreciate him a little more today, and find a way to let him know you love him.

Happy Father’s Day, all you dads out there. Bette Motte Cox

Distractions

The North Korean ship Kang Nam is being monitored by the UN and US Navy, specifically the USS John McCain destroyer. As I write this, the destroyer is being positioned to interdict the N. Korean ship if necessary.

The reason? The weaponry cargo that ship may be carrying, cargo the UN says North Korea cannot ship / sell / transfer to other parties. Nuclear components, or biologicals, or chemicals.

Meanwhile, intelligence sources around the world and especially those of Israel are monitoring the volatile situation in Iran, where the current hard-line extremist President has supposedly won “reelection” and is supported and endorsed by the supreme leader.

Protests by the opposition, even though he is another hard-line extremist, are being met with violence by government forces. And the everyday citizens of Iran are getting fed up with the religious fanaticism that actually runs the country, and more and more voices are being raised in favor of actual reform.

Back here in the USA, the steady march proceeds toward government take-over of banking, housing, automative manufacturing and health care, while the unemployment rate has continued to rise to record heights despite the mega-gazillion dollar stimulus that was going to prevent that.

(Of course, those gazillion dollars had to be borrowed from China and elsewhere, since the US is broke. What was put up as collateral, do you suppose?)

And then there’s the unprecedented natural phenomena, disasters and diseases.

So, which of the foregoing is the distraction from what is going on, really? Any of them? None of them?

I think all of them are distractions from the fact that planet earth and its population are undergoing major stresses that soon will reach the point of no return.

I’ve been reading John Hagee’s book titled “Jerusalem Countdown.” It is five years old now but it might have been written yesterday. John Hagee and Joel Rosenberg (author of “Epicenter”) specialize in end-time events and their books are well worth reading. Studying, underlining and praying through.

Politics is not for faint of heart

Misunderstandings. Hurt feelings. Jealousy. Malicious gossip. Dirty dealing. Innuendos. Lies.

“Desperate Housewives?”

No, politics as usual. President Obama et al are quite good at instigating those, right down to the local level. But the opposition has always done that, nothing new there.

What is sad is when political brothers (or sisters) behave that way against each other, as has been happening recently on the national – and even on the local – scene.

Unfortunately, when you choose to work in the public arena, you paint a target on your back, like it or not.

Here’s a thought: whether in family, career, or politics, an invaluable asset is a strong jaw – one able to keep its mouth shut when provoked. It takes two to make a fight.

President Truman’s career was thoroughly and continually marked by controversy and criticism, yet his accomplishments – notably getting us out of WWII and helping Israel become a nation after the war – outweigh the negatives, I think.

Not afraid to make tough decisions (no matter what his enemies and sometimes his friends said about it), he summed it up this way:

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Good advice to all of us these days.

Don’t be two-dimensional

Orion Nebula photo, by Hubble telescope

This new Hubble image of the Orion Nebula shows dense pillars of gas and dust that may be the homes of fledgling stars, and hot, young, massive stars that have emerged from their cocoons and are shaping the nebula with powerful ultraviolet light. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team.

Two-dimensional people are flat, dull, and uninteresting. To say someone is two-dimensional is to call them shallow and insult their intelligence. Nobody wants to be considered two-dimensional, really.

I tried to read up a little on dimensions yesterday. Not the two-dimensions, three-dimensions type, the measurements of size and shape that we learned in grade school, but the time-space type. You know, alternate realities, different-existences-other-than-my-own type.

The last time I tried that I got a major brain freeze, mostly because I needed to go back thirty or forty years and start reading all the math and physics available first, right up to the present.

There are lots of scientific theories out there about this subject. Many varieties of scientists and physicists have studied and written about it. If you have enough background information I suppose you might understand the simplest of the simplified versions of one or two of their hypotheses. I don’t have that background.

However, I do know of two dimensions, alternate realities existing in our own time and perhaps even in our own space. I have a personal theory about how they intersect, and how someone human could move freely between the two and survive.

What started this line of thought was a peculiar website I came across while googling “Orion’s belt” recently. Orion is a constellation or group of stars known as the Hunter. Orion’s belt is mentioned in Job chapter 38, in the passage about God putting the dominion of the entire universe here on the earth. Orion’s belt refers to three of those stars that seem to line up in a straight line, forming the Hunter’s belt.

Well, God seems to have chosen this puny little planet earth for his future headquarters so if he wants to run the whole universe from here, why not.

But I was curious about the several constellations mentioned in that Job passage, so I googled them, and discovered http://openSETI.org in the process — the Open Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

This website discusses the SETI project operated by the United States and other groups of individuals and contains many links to articles about supposed extraterrestrial life. Some of what I read there sounds like the rantings of madmen, but some of it sounds quite reasonable.

The home page states, “Open SETI advocates the use of every research discipline and the study of every category of organic and inorganic activity on earth and anywhere else within our view, as a full response to the rich evidence of our involvement with other intelligence – evidence that we have already seen.”

I did not read everything available from that site and probably never will. However, as a Christian I certainly believe that extraterrestrial intelligences have indeed visited earth, lived here and communicated regularly with ordinary human beings. The main one thought it up, designed and created it, and he can come and go as he likes.

If other people want to take the long way around to discover him and develop a working relationship with him, I wish them much success. It’s a fascinating process and relationship well worth the effort.

I think I’ll keep thinking about dimensions, the two I know of, and who knows how many others that I don’t know of – yet. Eternity is a long time, if time is the right word, and there will be plenty of it to explore and discover dimensions and other things in the years / centuries / eons ahead.

Happy 68th birthday, Bob Dylan

Born May 24, 1941, Bob is just two years older than me. I didn’t like him very much back in the day… I was more into Elvis Presley and country music. But no one can deny Bob Dylan’s impact on every genre of music there is in America, including gospel. He is the recipient of many awards, Academy Award nominations, Emmy’s, and others. It is amazing how much talent he has – despite a voice that sounds like chalk screeching on a blackboard.

I looked him up on Wikipedia, and here’s some of what I found. It was a very, very long entry so if you want more about him, you’ll find plenty there.

Bob Dylan’s latest studio album, Together Through Life, was released on April 28, 2009. In its first week of release, the album reached number one in the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S.. Making Bob Dylan (68 years of age) the oldest artist to ever debut at number one in the Billboard 200 chart. It also reached number one on the UK album charts, 39 years after Dylan’s previous UK album chart topper New Morning. This meant that Dylan currently holds the record for the longest gap between solo number one albums in the UK chart.

His Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988, and Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year for the entirety of the 1990s and the 2000s—a heavier schedule than most performers who started out in the 1960s. By the end of 2008, Dylan and his band had played more than 2100 shows, anchored by long-time bassist Tony Garnier and filled out with talented sidemen.

To the dismay of some of his audience, Dylan’s performances remain unpredictable as he alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach night after night. Critical opinion about Dylan’s shows remains divided. Critics such as Richard Williams and Andy Gill have argued that Dylan has found a successful way to present his rich legacy of material.

Others have criticised his vocal style as a “one-dimensional growl with which he chews up, mangles and spits out the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognizable,” and his lack of interest in bonding with his audience.

Bob Dylan’s European tour of spring 2009 opened in Stockholm on March 22 and ended in Dublin on May 6. His summer tour of the U.S. will begin in Milwaukee on July 1.

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades.

Much of Dylan’s most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’”, became anthems of both the civil rights movements and of the opposition to the Vietnam War.

America as I knew it

From Commodity Online news, May 22, 2009: “Are you watching the dollar? Maybe the unwinding of the dollar- based paper money system is coming sooner than we expected. Yesterday, the dollar fell again – now it costs $1.37 to buy a euro. And if you want an ounce of gold, it will cost you $937.” There’s a lot more economic news on this site, price of oil going up, etc., etc. Not good news for America and her citizens, unless you happen to be selling gold and oil, or buying US dollars.

America as I knew it growing up is gone, and I don’t think it’s coming back. My father was a WWII veteran, and most of my uncles were too. Daddy was a glider pilot and aircraft mechanic in the Army Air Force; three of mama’s brothers were in the Navy. They had to learn how to use weapons, the best America had to offer, to fight and win that war.

My brother served in the Navy too, stationed on an ammunition ship in the Mediterranean during Israel’s Six Days War. A Russian destroyer followed close behind them the whole time, defying the usual safety distance of a mile, the radius of destruction if the ship blew up. The weapons he used in that war were different – weapons of codes and communications, airwave, radiowave weapons. Effective.

Because of our family involvement in the defense of our nation, I have always been interested in American history and current affairs. Even as a young girl I followed government and politics, watching every televised political convention, listening to speeches and news on the radio, reading newspaper and magazine accounts and editorials.

Today I read news about global current events online, getting a broader view of political events from religious and secular sites, as well as “first-hand” accounts of some reporters and bloggers overseas.

Of course, these days I read news – and opinions about the news – with a bias, reading between the lines and taking note of what is included, what is omitted.

How many Americans know (or believe) that there is a global spiritual war going on? How many think if we just elect somebody different, things will change for the better?

Better for some is defined as more money, more power, more influence. For some, better means more future security, or more free time to pamper ourselves, our spouses and our children.

Maybe America has gotten better in some of those respects since WWII, with a few ups and downs here and there. That’s what gives people the idea that it can still get better, despite the current economic and political conditions worldwide.

I doubt it. I think Matthew 24 was written for our times and it doesn’t predict better. Wars. Rumors of wars. Nations rising against nations. Famines. Diseases. Earthquakes.

So, “What, me worried?” No. I’m looking up, staying watchful. Not just accepting all the bad things as inevitable, however. I pray for specific people and for specific things to happen or to be prevented. As long as I’m still here, that’s one of my assignments as a believer in Christ.

But I don’t think the republic of America as our forefathers envisioned and instituted is going to survive unchanged, and I don’t think the change it is undergoing is for the better.

I think the spiritual battle is heating up, and if you don’t know how to use the weapons of this warfare, you’re going to get hurt.

I’m an X-Men fan…

I have just seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine for the second time, and I’m a bigger fan than I already was.

Science fiction and fantasy were favorite reading materials in my home growing up… they belonged to my parents. Most of the well-known writers were represented, some of whom were scientists and physicists and researchers, as well as authors.

I was attracted by the fact that so much of what had been fiction a few years earlier had become fact. Over these last 50+ years, much more of the science fiction/fantasy I read as a teenager has become fact, practical applications that today we take for granted.

Which isn’t to say that X-Men will do likewise. But there is a story line to all these episodes, even if some reviewers seem to miss it. Several subplots involving different sets of characters. Lots of action, good versus evil. Some romance and some tragedy.

And there is science in there too: dark scientific and military applications most of us would consider impossible to achieve, and too evil to contemplate. World War II should teach us not to underestimate monsters in human form…

So far none of the multiple reviews I’ve read even hint at recognizing a spiritual thread running through the story. Yet one comes through quite clearly and obviously to me.

I asked the Lord one day why some Christians (myself included) are so fascinated by the supernatural. His answer came back instantly – “Well, duh…” as if I shouldn’t even have to ask that question.

No, I guess I already know why. Our God is a supernatural being. We have a violent, evil, deceiving enemy out to destroy us. One who at times may look like an ordinary human being; one who can make a lie sound convincing, deceiving us, pulling us in. We shouldn’t be taken in, but too often we are.

After seeing Wolverine the first time, I went out and bought the other three movies on DVD. I have now watched each one several times, making mental notes of some things in those that make scenes from this prequel suddenly more meaningful.

And I find them not just entertaining, but a vivid, albeit fantastic reminder that there is indeed another world around us. Another real world, more menacing than anything portrayed in these fantasy movies. It’s one we will all be forced to acknowledge and confront some day, maybe sooner than we think.

Something unhealthy?

The tea parties were numerous, the crowds well-behaved, the signs instructive and/or entertaining, and the message clear. No more bail-outs!

In Florence, between 400 and 500 people gathered on the front steps of the City-County Complex, despite occasionally threatening clouds.

The Star Spangled Banner was sung by a lovely Chinese woman, whose American journalist husband described what it would have been like to report on such an event in China — or try to report on it.
The Pledge of Allegiance, patriotic songs such as God Bless the USA, and several excellent speeches were included. Don Lowe (garbed as a sad Abraham Lincoln) read excerpts from some of President Lincoln’s quite appropriate writings.

Brad and Pamela

Of course, the mainstream media under-reported the number of tea parties and attendants, no surprise. Even our local daily newspaper said there were “over 100″ people in the crowd. Yes, well over 100! I stopped counting at 400 myself, but several others who did a more thorough count reported over 450 men, women and children present on those courthouse steps.

Today, David Axelrod, so-called advisor to the President, commented in a television interview that such protests were misdirected and possibly unhealthy. This, after the Department of Homeland Security’s recent inclusion of returning veterans and grassroots pro-life activists such as me on a list of possible threats to national security!

Well, I hope this movement of the “loyal opposition,” Republican / Democrat / Independent, does prove to be unhealthy to the re-election of those who think our Constitution is outdated and that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are terrorist-risks.