ATTACKING RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

It’s unfortunate that GOP presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz have failed to appear on the front steps of the Word of Life Christian Church in New Hartford, New York to rally the troops in defense of religious liberty, because nothing sparks a boost in the polls like playing the Christian martyr card and Huckabee and Cruz are maestri of that particular symphony. Plus, they could use the votes. Look at all the praise and adoration (and political capital) they garnered by showing up when Kim Davis was released from jail.

You’ll recall that Ms. Davis, the Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples on religious grounds. When a federal judge found her in contempt of court, Ms. Davis spent five days in jail for her defiance of the federal court’s order. Then, upon her release from prison, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz were on hand to welcome her, with Huckabee hoisting Davis’ arms into the air as a hero in the fight for religious freedom and Cruz shoved aside by Huckabee’s aides who didn’t want Cruz to grab the spotlight. Surely, you must have seen the pictures. It was front-page news.

When Davis was originally hauled off to jail Ted Cruz lamented loudly on the campaign trail, “Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong! This is not America.” After her release, Mike Huckabee noted of Ms. Davis’s situation, “Her being in jail brought attention to something that many of us have warned about: the criminalization of Christianity.”

Huckabee and Cruz weren’t the only GOP presidential candidates to speak their mind on the subject. Senator Rand Paul, R-KY told CNN, “I think it’s absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberty.” Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. added, “As Americans, our Constitution guarantees religious freedom which means we should be able to live out our faith in our daily lives.” Former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum heaped praise on Kim Davis saying, “…I’m very proud of the fact that she stood up for those convictions…”

With all the campaign rhetoric about Kim Davis’ virtuous stance and the need to defend religious liberty from persecution, you’d think that every Republican candidate for president would be rushing to the steps of the Word of Life Christian Church to show their support for church members and religious liberty, but you’d be wrong. In fact, none of the candidates have dropped by or even mentioned that church in their stump speeches.

For those of you unfamiliar with the New Hartford Word of Life Christian Church, it’s the Connecticut church where several of its members were recently jailed by the government over their religious practice of imposing corporal punishment on a 19 year-old sinful member who refused to show adequate remorse and repentance for his sins. Of course, that young sinner died during the church ceremony as a result of the beating he received, and that got the local police up in arms, but the point here is that a group of Christians were exercising their religious beliefs and now the long arm of the law is bringing down its hammer upon them.

Where’s the justice in that? Where’s Mike Huckabee railing against the criminalization of Christianity? Where’s Ted Cruz lambasting the police for arresting Christians living according to their faith? Where’s Kim Davis raising her triumphant fist while claiming that God’s law trumps human law? Where’s Rand Paul pontificating that it’s absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious beliefs? Tell me, why haven’t any of the GOP presidential contenders come to the defense of a New Hartford group of devout Christians who interpret their Scripture as calling for conduct deemed contrary to man-made laws?

You can argue that comparing murder to denying marriage licenses to gay couples is like comparing apples to oranges, but when it comes to religious beliefs, you’ll find that one person’s abomination is another person’s sacred duty. Where do we as a society draw the line?

Remember Zacarias Moussaoui? He’s the Islamic terrorist convicted of criminal conspiracy for his role in the 9/11 airline attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Moussaoui, who's currently serving a life sentence in a government prison in Colorado, followed an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islamic Scripture which, according to his particular religious belief, called for violent jihad against non-believing infidels. Why didn’t anybody of political consequence in this country come to the defense of this devout Islamic terrorist who interpreted his Scripture as calling for conduct deemed contrary to our man-made laws against murder?

The answer is simple: religious liberty in America was never meant to be a weapon to trample on the lives and rights of others. Freedom of religion does not afford individuals a license to act however they please so long as their acts or omissions are based upon a professed religious belief. The next time a politician says it does, tell them they’re full of shit.

A HATE-FILLED MESSAGE IN THE DESERT HEAT

Tonight in Phoenix, Arizona, a group of religious racists are holding a “Muhammad Drawing Cartoon Contest” outside the Phoenix Islamic Community Center, a mosque that was once attended by Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, the two men who attacked a similar event in Garland, Texas earlier this month. Organizers of tonight’s event claim they’re merely exercising their First Amendment rights, but the planned blasphemous cartoon-drawing contest is really no different from the hate-filled protests members of the Westboro Baptist Church regularly hold at military funerals around the country.

Yes, both groups have a constitutional right to voice the ideas they are attempting to spread, but make no mistake, the ideas they are peddling have no redeeming social value. There is no virtue in purposely offending the sensibilities of another human being simply because you can. There is nothing admirable about the denigration and desecration of another individual’s religious beliefs. There is no value in perpetrating hatred beyond the recruitment of additional hating souls.

Why, then, do men flock to hatred like vultures to a carrion feast? Hate doesn’t create; it tears down. Hate doesn’t achieve; it destroys. Hate doesn’t seek the greater angels in a man’s soul; it seeks the lowest demons in the darkest corners of a man’s heart.

I wonder how tonight’s Phoenix cartoonists (and I use that term loosely – no offense to real cartoonists) would feel about a pissing on the American flag contest to see who could urinate on the American flag the longest (biggest bladder wins)? How about holding a dog defecation contest using a statute of Jesus, or a cross, as a contest prop? Both of those suggestions would be the equivalent of this evening’s planned event, and I have a hard time imagining the folks in Arizona would approve of those types of hate-filled messages.

Let’s hope nobody turns out tonight at the Phoenix event and that no violence occurs. I was going to use the word “pray,” but I don’t want to get shot.

NAME DROPPING FOR BLOG HITS

Bloggers shouldn’t care how many people visit their websites on a daily basis, but the hard-core (myself included) do. That’s why there’s frequently a hit counter somewhere on a blogger’s website, including mine. If you’re reading this entry, chances are you’ve been routed to this website by a search engine that picked up one of the names I’m about to mention as part of my own blogging experiment.

I love Emily Blunt. I think she’s hot. The same goes for Anna Kendrick. Both have wonderful voices and were great in “Into the Woods.” Justin Bieber is an idiotic punk who ought to be deported back to Canada, where he came from. Miley Cyrus has some serious behavioral issues that will probably kill her by the time she’s thirty. I wanted to write “twenty-eight,” but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. Katy Perry has serious talent; maybe one day she’ll start to show it. The Kardashians have no talent; maybe one day they’ll take leave of our airways and find real jobs.

I think Pope Francis is a wonderful breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant and morally corrupt Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has allowed its views on abortion and homosexuality to obscure the most important message of Christ’s social gospel – compassion for the poor, oppressed and the downtrodden. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz have no human empathy whatsoever. It’s not right to equate their heartless attitudes with butchers like Adolph Hitler, Attila the Hun, or the ISIS guys running wild across the Middle East, but it’s tempting, and it wouldn’t be a big leap. Despite all the criticism, President Obama is doing a good job. Hillary Clinton will be a great President, possibly even a greater one than Bill. When winter temperatures reach 70 degrees at the North Pole, millions of Republicans will still deny the existence of global warming. Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is a racist bigot and a dictator, masking as a pious Jew with an interest in serving the God of Abraham. Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran is a racist bigot and a dictator, masking as a pious Muslim with an interest in serving in serving the God of Abraham. Netanyahu and the Ayatollah call the God of Abraham by different names, but God is not pleased with either of them. I don’t care whether Vladimir Putin of Russia has a girlfriend or not. He’s gay. He just doesn’t want to admit it. And while I’m on the subject of gay folks, discriminating against them is a sin and ought to be a crime punishable by death – and I’m an opponent of the death penalty. There’s also a better argument that Jesus was gay than there is that he was married to Mary Magdalene, Dan Brown novels notwithstanding.

The New York Yankees will be pitiful this year; so will the Florida Marlins. The Green Bay Packers will win next year’s Super Bowl. Bank on it.

Did I mention that the NRA is having its annual convention in Tennessee? All the GOP presidential candidates, minus Chris Christie and Rand Paul will be there. The NRA thinks those two are too liberal. Speaking of guys with guns, I recently read that Vladimir Putin is looking to strengthen diplomatic relations with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. There’s a match made in hell.

There’s a beautiful spring day outside. Go out and enjoy it!

AN OPEN LETTER TO PUTIN

An Open Letter to the Leader of Russia:

Dear Mr. Putin…

It has come to my attention while observing your nuclear threats against my country (America) and its NATO allies that you may not fully understand the workings of America’s political system and the implications that has for your mother, Russia. Thus, I am writing to bring your attention to two features of our democracy – the infestation of war mongering Republicans in our government and the spread of gun-toting wing nuts who adore them - which you should seriously consider if you ever become so deranged that you carry through on your threat to use nuclear weapons against America or its allies.

First, under our constitutionally-permitted practice of gerrymandering, while the Congress is supposed to reflect the views of the majority of its citizens, our legislatures have rigged our political system so that war mongering Republicans and their NRA followers hold the balance of power in their grasp and are looking for any justification to draw the United States into a full-scale nuclear exchange with your country. You might think this is sheer folly, but I assure you there are millions of gun-happy Americans who wouldn’t think twice about using their personal arsenal to take out a few “Ruskies” in their tracks. In fact, the number of times your photo appears on shooting range targets here in America is second only to the photo of President Obama.

Second, the people in this country have different characteristics. For example, some people favor reasonable gun control regulations to maintain peace and safety in their communities, whereas others prefer to maintain a policy where everyone openly carries AK47 assault rifles wherever they go. If you’re going to bomb our country, might I suggest you start with the places where the latter group lives, like Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and any states where the Confederate Flag still waves, which means any state south of the Mason-Dixon line, except California. I would also implore you to ignore Washington, D.C., because although it is the home of our federal government, it is also home to an overwhelming number of peace-loving Democrats who favor gun control legislation, and a city should not be judged by the number of war mongering zealots who travel there whenever Congress is in session.

What these two features of our democracy mean is that gun-loving Republicans in America will consider any threat by you or your henchmen in America’s direction as an affront to America’s superiority, and will use those threats to justify the production and sale of more guns in America, thus making our streets a considerably less safe place to be. I do not see the wisdom in such nonsense and hope to see the flood of advanced weaponry on American streets eliminated.

I hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our political system and promotes a mutual understanding of what it takes to make this world a more peaceful community.

Sincerely,

Steven Zorbaugh

p.s. I tried to get 30 GOP Senators to sign this letter with me, but they were too busy attending the NRA convention in Tennessee.

NO SPUDS FOR THE KIDS TONIGHT

Deadbeat dads have a new Mecca for avoiding child support payments. It’s called Idaho, the land of guns, plural marriages and the home to more “sovereign freemen” than the rest of the other 49 states put together.

If you think about it, Idaho as a child support haven makes a lot of sense. After all, child support orders are a government-issued order for the dad to pay the mom money for the kids’ upkeep, and nothing gets in an Idaho dad’s crawl more than the government trying to tell him what to do. That’s why the Idaho legislature just refused to pass a law requiring Idaho courts to enforce foreign child support orders, and in doing so, thumbed their noses at the federal government agency that helps states track down deadbeat dads and helps collect child support payments.

Of course, the Idaho legislature doesn’t couch the defeat of the child support bill as an effort to bring more people to their northwest paradise, but that’s what will happen when the word gets out that the potato capital of the United States will not enforce child support orders.

What prompted this uprising, you ask? Well, apparently the good folks in Idaho were worried that the federal government would require Republican judges in their state to enforce Sharia law child support orders from Muslim countries, as if any self-respecting Muslim immigrant would move to Idaho just to avoid paying child support, so the Idaho Legislature decided it was time to act to avoid any further federal entanglement.

THE BATTLE AGAINST RACISM - A LIFETIME JOURNEY

I am a 58 year-old white man, the product of poor, white and racist parents. I’m not proud about that racist part, but that’s what they were, and it does no good to hide or try to sugar-coat the truth.

From an early age, I struggled with how to respond to racism’s ugly underside. I knew racism was wrong, and I knew it caused unspeakable pain and anguish in people of color, but it was difficult for a kid like me to make a stand against racism in a home so steeped in racial animosity. Plus, my dad was a dictator, so saving my own hide was always my chief concern.

Fortunately, there were people that crossed my path over the years, both literally and figuratively, who demonstrated that there was an alternative path leading away from racial bigotry, and that made my own racial journey possible. During my journey, I’ve learned numerous important lessons, but the most important one is that fighting racism is a lifetime endeavor, even for those with the best of intentions.

My journey in racial understanding began on a sunny afternoon during the summer of 1963, on the cement steps of my inner-city childhood home, where two six-year old youngsters were in hot pursuit of the Candy Castle, the winning destination of the childhood board game known as Candyland. One of those youngsters was an adorable little black girl named, Sharon, who wore her ebony hair in pigtails and brightly colored bows, and never missed an opportunity to flash her million-dollar smile; the other youngster was me. Sharon was having an unusually good run of luck that afternoon, and I was not well-schooled in the art of good sportsmanship or managing my growing frustration. When Sharon reached the Candy Castle for the fourth time in a row, I’d had my share of losing for one afternoon and retaliated in the worst way possible – I called Sharon the N-word and threw the game board down on the sidewalk.

A second later, Sharon’s face melted into tears, and in the milliseconds that followed, I learned a gut-wrenching lesson about the pain that hateful words can inflict on another human being. I’ve seen a lot of pain during the fifty-eight years that I’ve walked this earth, but none of it shattered my world worse than the sight of my childhood buddy sobbing uncontrollably as she ran down the street towards her home.

I picked up the game pieces and quietly went inside my house, hoping that the dust would settle and all would be forgotten in a day or so, but I was wrong, and fifty-two years later, that memory it still as strong as ever. You see, I hadn’t counted on Sharon’s father being the fiercely principled man that he was, and I certainly never expected to see him at my front door, but minutes after my vicious verbal attack on Sharon, there he was, proud and tall, knocking on the screen, demanding justice, demanding an apology and demanding respect. Lesson learned – there are some things in life worth making a stand against.

My dad went outside first and I heard him talking with Sharon’s father, who relayed the facts as he’d been told, with total accuracy I must confess, and it pained me to listen to that story all over again, and hear what I’d done to hurt his daughter. My father yelled for me to come outside, which I did, and he told me that I owed Sharon and her father an apology. I gave them one, but I’m not sure whether they thought I was sincere or not. I do remember Sharon’s father looking at me with a stern expression on his face and saying, “Young man, you’re better than that!” and then he walked away.

That could have been the end of that incident, but it wasn’t. When I followed my father back into our house, and we were well out of range of any outside ears, he turned to my mother and said, “Who does that [N-word] think he is, coming up here telling me how to raise my kid?” The next lesson I learned that day was one of parental hypocrisy. Sadly, it would rear its ugly head again five years later.

On the night of April 4th, 1968, my twelve year old sister and I sat huddled together in tears at the top of the stairs in our inner-city row house. We were supposed to be sleeping, since it was long past bedtime, but neither of us could sleep given the jubilation that was happening downstairs. What was the reason for the celebration? Well, my parents were watching news reports of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. You’d think they’d won the lottery, although I’m pretty sure the lottery didn’t exist back then, except perhaps in the Shirley Jackson short story bearing that name. It was hard to hear my parents cheer about another person’s death, and another family’s agony, and hear the depth of hatred emanating from their mouths. My sister and I knew we’d lost a kindred soul in Dr. King’s death, we just didn’t know how to express the words, and so we wept, and never spoke of that night until decades later.

On morning, approximately two years after the King assassination, I was in the process of delivering our local Sunday newspaper morning when a young black man in his mid-twenties conned me into showing him the way to a nearby bus station. He said he wasn’t from the area and needed assistance because he was bad at remembering directions. Because the station was on my paper route, I altered my delivery routine and agreed to guide him while I continued delivering papers. About halfway into our journey to the bus station, the young black man withdrew a knife from his coat, wrapped his arm around my neck and dragged me into a nearby breezeway, where he raped me at knife-point, and then left me naked to find my way back home. Despite the subsequent efforts by police to identify and apprehend my attacker, the man was never found.

Last summer, as I was driving through the downtown community where I live, I was stopped at a traffic light and a young black male in his mid-twenties started crossing the street in the crosswalk. I studied his face absentmindedly for a hint of recognition of the man who raped me, and that’s when something profound struck me. For the past forty-four years, I’ve been scrutinizing the face of every mid-twenties black man I’ve ever met to determine whether he was my attacker. You can do the math. If my attacker were still alive today, he’d be around seventy years old, and yet for all these years I’ve been subconsciously questioning the guilt of every young black male who crossed my path. That’s how latent and automatic racism can be, even in a person who understands its ill effects and strives to battle racism’s ugly head whenever possible.

I’m constantly reminded that there’s still a long way to go in the battle against racism. It’s a lifetime endeavor.

SAVING JOBS...ONE MURDER AT A TIME

A few of my Republican friends think they’ve never met a government regulation on business they didn’t like. If you get one of them started, they’ll rail for hours about all the jobs government regulation supposedly squashes, and every one of them has a piece of anecdotal evidence to back up their claim. Most of my G.O.P. buddies know better than to rant at me about government regulations though, because I’m a liberal Democrat (a 4-letter word in these parts) and I’m one of those folks who think that government regulation of commerce is more of a help than a hindrance. Then, the other day I had an epiphany of sorts, and I thought of a great example to prove my Republican friends’ argument that government regulation squashes jobs.

What job, you ask? Hit man!

If it weren’t for the government’s ban (the strongest regulation possible) on the killing of fellow citizens, a guy (or girl) could probably earn a decent living whacking divorcing spouses, business rivals, the elderly parent who’s holding up the inheritance and the neighborhood bully who’s terrorizing your youngster. I purposely avoided the inclusion of political opponents, but I guess there could be a market there, too. Anyway, my point is – murder statutes kill jobs (pardon the pun)!

Consider what would happen if the government ended its regulation of murder. Tens of thousands of gun and ammunition manufacturing jobs would be created overnight. Security guard positions would mushroom, and let’s not forget the construction industry. Think of the new jobs the economy would add as Americans install bullet-proof glass in their homes and high tech security systems to keep armed outsiders at bay. Funeral directors and cemetery owners would make a killing (another pun I couldn’t resist), and all the haggling over the Second Amendment would disappear overnight.

Of course, there would probably be a few unsavory consequences to the end of government regulation of homicide, but I’m not going to bore anybody with the details, especially given all the jobs we’d be creating. That is the party line, right?

O'REILLY, THE RANTING RACONTEUR

Now that FOX News Corporation has acknowledged that its news commentator, Bill O’Reilly has bloviated in public on at least three separate occasions, it’s time for the unfair and unbalanced network to erase O’Reilly’s face from its programming and relegate his vociferate trope to the dustbins of history. If you think I’m kidding about O’Reilly’s shocking proclivities, pick up and read a copy of O’Reilly’s 1998 book, “Those Who Trespass,” wherein O’Reilly’s protagonist coyly asks his naked companion whether she’ll beg him to perform unnatural sex acts on her in the shower. It’s the kind of gratuitous filth that is more suited for an article in Larry Flint’s Hustler magazine or the pages of Forty-Two Shades of Purple, or whatever it’s called, than for a library’s bookshelf. This is the man who’s the face of FOX political commentary. Do good and decent parents in this Country really want an exposed raconteur like O’Reilly expositing to their little children while waiting on the corner for their school bus to arrive? I certainly hope not! I know I don’t! Bill O’Reilly is a cognoscenti of the lowest magnitude, pure and simple. He has inveighed enough drivel for ten lifetimes, in my estimation, and the sooner his face and opinions disappear from the airways of this nation, the safer all our children will be.

SOME THOUGHTS ON PARENTHOOD

“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.” ~ Bill Ayers

Bill makes a good point, because the surest way to get a child to close the door on parental advice is to convey to them that you don’t like who they are. A child’s core is their central being, and that core craves unconditional love and acceptance. If a child gets that love and acceptance, he or she can open his or her mind to parental criticism and direction, because to do so doesn’t threaten the safety of their core being. On the other hand, if a child doesn’t experience unconditional love and acceptance, every piece of criticism and/or direction represents an existential threat to their whole being.

“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?” ~ Jane Nelson

Somewhere on the road of life, many parents have forgotten what it felt like to be a child receiving punishment. Parents, frequently claim they’re doing their child a favor by meeting out severe punishment, but their severity prompts a different result. Excessive punishment doesn’t make a child behave better. It does, however, make the child better at hiding his or her misdeeds.

“What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do, but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.” ~ Nicholas Sparks, “The Wedding”

Ain’t that the truth! The number of bone-headed moves a child can make is limitless. If a parent conditions their love for their child on the number of mistakes a child makes, no child would ever have a chance at experiencing unconditional love.

“I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.” ~ C. JoyBell C.

My daughter, Rachel drove herself to school a couple of weeks ago. The roads were icy and treacherous, and a part of me wanted to forbid her from driving the car, because I didn’t want her to get into a wreck and get hurt. She has a tendency to drive too fast, as a lot of kids do, and I worried about the increased risk of her rear-ending someone or sliding through an intersection after being unable to stop in time. Here’s the thing, though. How would she ever learn to drive on ice if I didn’t give her a chance to experience those conditions? How would she ever learn what is “driving too fast for conditions” if I didn’t allow her the chance to make that mistake? As difficult as it is for a parent, you’ve got to send your children out to experience life on their own terms.

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Oscar wasn’t saying that we turn our kids into spoiled brats by giving them everything, but concentrating on their happiness in a loving manner does help them become better people. During the spring of 1998, my daughter, Abby and several of her classmates wanted to go to a “boy band” concert at the York Fairgrounds, but the tickets went on sale during a weekday at noon when the kids were in school. I stood in line at the fairgrounds for four hours that day, in the rain, to score tickets so six 12-year olds could scream at their boy-band heartthrobs. Whenever Abby talks about that concert, she always mentions my waiting in line, and I know how much happiness that brought to her. She didn’t have to earn my sacrifice; I just did it, and I think Abby is a better person today because I demonstrated that I was interested in her happiness.

“Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children's most primitive fears.” ~ Henry Cloud

If we expect thanks and words of appreciation from our children in order to motivate our actions as a parent, we’d never do anything good for our children. Narcissism is part and parcel of being a child, especially during the teenage years. It’s part of their protective shell. The only way of helping our children outgrow their natural self-centeredness is to demonstrate the value of looking out for others by actually doing so.

“I would have made a terrible parent. The first time my child didn't do what I wanted, I'd kill him.” ~ Katharine Hepburn

You have to admire Hepburn’s honesty. She recognized that a lot of parents punish their child because the child hasn’t satisfied the parent’s narcissistic desires, not because the child has done something that is intrinsically bad.

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.” ~ L.R. Knost, “Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting through the Ages and Stages”

Now there’s a woman who gets it! In the end, the people with warm hearts make the biggest difference.

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” ~ James Baldwin

If you yell at your children every day and told them that you worked your ass off for every dime you ever made, and that they should be doing the same. What would your children learn? Would they learn to work their asses off every single day? No, they’d learn to yell!

“Say “no” only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, “All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.” ~Gretchen Rubin

We tend to impose a lot of unnecessary rules and regulations on our children that end up being counterproductive and even harmful in the long run. If you want a child to go from point A to point B, give them a map, but don’t lock them in the garage.

“Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first. Secondly, it is to teach them. Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves.” ~ Richelle E. Goodrich, “Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year”

In my experience, you can intimidate a young child into submission (not that it’s healthy to do so), but the minute he or she becomes a teenager, intimidation no longer works, unless you’re prepared to pair it with a firearm. Teenagers are too bone-headed to give in to parental intimidation. In fact, I think they get sadistic pleasure in watching parents spin their wheels in frustration.

“You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had. ” ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

Oftentimes, you reap what you sow, so it’s a good idea to pay attention to the seeds in your bag.

“If your kid needs a role model and you ain't it, you're both fucked.” ~ George Carlin, “Brain Droppings”

You can’t argue with George!

AVIARY DRAMA

The birds that flock to the backyard feeders I maintain during the winter months are a surprising bunch. In some instances, they are just as fickle as humans. For example, my aviary visitors refuse to feed at a swanky suet feeder that has a roof covering the suet bricks, but several different species, including two varieties of woodpeckers constantly peck away at two exposed suet bricks hanging on a separate pole. Apparently, the birds in my neighborhood prefer outdoor picnics, even in the rain and snow.

Ever since I replaced the roof-covered suet feeder with a simple Nyjer seed sock – there were two hanging from poles already, the goldfinches that frequent those socks have no problem with the expanded buffet, except for one particular “bully” goldfinch. The goldfinch in question gets aggressive if other finch try to feed on the sock it’s using, and to ward off dinner companions, it flails out its feathers in the same manner peacocks do, to make it appear large and intimidating. The result is this – two Nyjer seed socks are oftentimes host 5 or 6 goldfinches apiece, and the third sock hosts the solitary bully finch.

One morning, I observed a junco (a bird twice the size of a goldfinch) land on the sock where the bully goldfinch was feeding, and sensing the sock’s movement caused by an unwanted guest the bully goldfinch charged around the side of the sock and spread its wings. For a split second, the junco didn’t move, and then the junco spread its wings too, as if to say that two could play that game, and the goldfinch ceded the high ground and flew off. The moral here: it takes a bully to beat a bully.

The Nyjer seed socks in my backyard are heavily used and must be refilled every two of three days. My normal practice is to wait until there are no birds at the feeders before restocking the feeders. Several weeks ago, when it appeared that there were no birds at the feeders, I opened the sliding glass door to my backyard and several finches flew from the ground to the nearby cherry tree. They watched me fill up the socks, and a second after I entered my house the finches returned to the socks and continued feeding. I decided to change my restocking routine to see if it would make any difference, and yesterday, it did. When I walked outside and took down one of the socks, the goldfinches feeding on the other two socks didn’t fly off as I expected. They watched me, but they didn’t fly off. It was somewhat shocking. After I re-hung the first shock and went to get the second sock, the birds on the second sock flew to the first sock, but the birds on the third sock kept on feeding as if I wasn’t there. I was no more than 24 inches from the birds on the 3rd sock, but those birds kept on feeding. When I returned for the 3rd sock, the finches moved over to the 2nd sock instead of flying away. Is it possible they’ve connected me with the food and aren’t worried about me? Who knows?

The goldfinches have another behavior that I find amusing. When they arrive to feed, they do so in a group of between 10 and 16 birds, and the first arrivals land on the upper branches of the cherry tree out back and remain in the highest branches for three or four minutes. It appears as if they’re scanning the terrain for any sign of predators. Then, a couple of the birds start descending to lower branches, hopping from one branch to a lower branch, like droplets of water descending over rocks on a downward sloping stream. Eventually, one brave finch flies to a feeder. Fifteen or twenty seconds later, the rest of the hoard converges on the socks, and of course, you can identify which bird is the bully in the group.

JE SUIS CHARLIE

The world must unite in efforts to weed out and silence Islamic terrorists who shower violence upon the peace-loving people of this world and bring shame upon the religion and god they claim to follow. There is no place in Islam for terrorism. Allah does not condone violence. I mourn for the good people of France following today's terrorist attack and for the friends and families who lost loved-ones in this senseless act of violence. I stand with Charlie. Je suis Charlie!

A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS ON MY BIRD BRAINED FRIENDS

I enjoy watching the menagerie of birds that flock to my backyard bird feeders every winter, and this winter is no exception. I’m not sure exactly why, but I take great pleasure from watching nature’s avian version of a soap opera on a daily basis. At one point yesterday afternoon, there were five pairs of goldfinches feeding on the niger seed socks I set out at the same time. We’re lucky if we see any goldfinches around here from April to November, but once the weather turns cold they must return to this area in large numbers. The juncos are back en mass too. There’s always five or six of them on the ground snatching up leftovers. My wife recently discovered that a tufted titmouse - a tiny brown bird with a distinctive long beak and wings that trail off and resemble a mouse’s tail – had made its home in my small green birdhouse that warblers normally occupy. It’s been carrying twigs into the birdhouse all weekend. I hope that doesn’t mean we’re in for squabbling neighbors. I prefer a quiet neighborhood. Several cardinals dine at Chez Etienne’s (Steve’s home in French) on a regular basis along with the usual assortment of house sparrows and overly bossy wrens. Apparently, there’s a wren in every neighborhood! The birds I like watching most are the woodpeckers. A small downy woodpecker and a huge red-crested woodpecker are frequent visitors. They go for the suet. There’s also a pair of chicken hawks that like to hang out on the top of one of my backyard trees. Neither hawk goes to the feeders, but they do keep the squirrels at bay.

TWO MOBS - TWO VIEWS

On the evening of December 16, 1773, a mob of American colonists boarded three ships moored in Boston Harbor. The ships were laden with chests of tea belonging to Britain’s East India Trading Company, a privately held business. Angered by policies imposed on the colonies by the British Crown, that famous colonial mob dumped 342 tea-filled chests overboard into the icy waters below. For their destruction of private property, the colonial mob gained the admiration of fellow colonists, favorable treatment and praise during the past two hundred and thirty-nine years of American History and a boisterous political party bearing its name.

Contrast the Boston mob of yesteryear with the recent mobs in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere around the nation, often causing damage to private property in the name of protesting racial injustice, and I have to wonder whether two hundred and thirty-nine years from now, folks will look back at the mob violence of 2014 with equal admiration. Somehow, I doubt it, but the question should be asked. Why not? Isn’t destroying private property in the name of correcting civil injustice etched in our bones? Don’t we secretly relish sticking it to “the man?” Isn’t civil disobedience laudable, even if a number of people have their property destroyed in the process? If that’s not the case, then why is it that, in this nation of supposed equality, white mobs that cause damage to personal property are treated with admiration, but black mobs using similar methods are treated with disdain? Those are rhetorical questions, but I think we all know the answers.