I heard 2 sermons last week, one on Christmas Eve and the other on Sunday. Both were very good with the first about the Jesus birth story and how it was a lot messier than we depict it today and the second about taking Jesus with us as we leave Church and let others see him through us. Another Christmas story was on the news and told about the family that was shopping in Walmart but their credit card was rejected. The woman ahead of them overheard the  problem and paid for their purchases. It was a nice story and gave the family a better Christmas than they would have had otherwise. 

     Last Sunday the sermon started with the 2 commandments given by Christ as the most important. "Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself."  The sermon went on from there asking us to follow these commandments.  The sermon you did not hear was love your neighbor that agrees with you and lives at the same social level or higher. Don't worry about those that you don't see or need your help to survive. This is the way most of us live today and cannot see all of the people around us that are poverty stricken or in need of medical care that they cannot afford. We hide from the addicted and those that have little or no education because of where they grew up or the lack of family when they were children. We don't see those that work hard but earn less than they need to buy food, rent and clothing. They may give up food to pay for rent or medicine and have little chance of a better life style. 

     The January 6, riots at the US capitol did not seem any different than the riots in Portland and Kenosha except Antifa and BLB were not involved. There were no police cars vandalized or burned and no stores looted but the headlines made this capitol break-in different, and it was pursued vigorously by the federal government. That was different than the other riots when those arrested were bailed out by the same ones calling for the arrest and jail for the capitol rioters. It appeared that the inside of the capitol was torn apart and those inside were threatened and feared for their lives.  The Congress immediately started an investigation that lasted for 2 years before the republican win ended it. The reports coming out of the investigation were always very bad for the rioters and they were the worst ever even more than those in Portland that had burned a police station and looted many stores and businesses. Our Vice-President had helped raise bail money for those at the other riots but this time there was no one to help. Those arrested were locked up with many in solitary confinement for the next 2 years. No bail was allowed, and they were accused of being enemies of the state. The left had found a new way to get Donald Trump and they were going to take as many with him as they could.  I still did not pay a lot of attention to the news about the event because I cannot believe most of the news outlets anymore. Their bias is so blatant that expecting truth is a joke. Many of the people arrested finally gave in and agreed to plea deals which always ended up with some jail time and one called the Shaman, ended up being given 4 years in jail for his supposedly riotous behavior. 

     The following letter was written by my friend Dallas Branch. He submitted the letter to the editor of the Dominion Post to be included in the Opinion Section of the paper. It was rejected as mine was a few years ago which was the reason that I started Letters by John. After spending an  afternoon on the shooting range Dallas told me about his letter and I replied that I would be willing to post it in my blog as a guest letter. Enjoy.

     The first amendment to the Constitution was written by James Madison and is one of the most important measures of freedom in the world. It gives religious, speech and press freedom that at that time had never been available to anyone in the world. It differentiated the new United States of America from all other counties and set the new country on a course of greatness, The gift of religious freedom to the citizens of this new country was something that they had wished for many years and most of them had come to this country, or their forbearers had for religious freedom. The Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers, Congregationalists and even the Roman Catholics. The Pilgrims and Puritans with the Congregationalists were mostly living in the Northeast in Mass, NY, RI and Conn while the Quakers were settled in Penn. The Roman Catholics were mostly in Md with the rest dispersed among the thirteen colonies. It was said that a Quaker that was caught in Virginia for the third time was hanged. The British extracted a tax to support the Church of England which is still true today. Everyone paid the tax whether or not they attended that, Church. The freedom of religion that many of the people came to the new land for was not available. The first amendment corrected that by stating that the state or country would not establish a Church and that citizens could not be forced to not practice their respective religion. It was a freedom that opened the new country to all and any religion without government interference. It was historic at the time and had never been available before to anyone in any country. The religious freedom started in the new Virginia Constitution which was written by Madison and Jefferson and Jefferson's influence pushed Madison to agree to this concept,

     It was 1800, and John Adams was President of the United States of America with Thomas Jefferson as Vice President. Adams was running for a second term and Jefferson was running against him. Hamilton composed a 50-page pamphlet that was published to defame Adams and John was quoted to say that it would cause him to lose the election. He lost and Jefferson and Burr were tied for electoral votes with the House voting for Jefferson. A publication was given the credit for Adam's loss.

     I grew up in a small town in central New York named Peterboro. The town consists of one square block with a village green on one street. There were and still are less than 200 people living there and it is still a small quiet bedroom community. While growing up there the surrounding area was small dairy farms which have mostly disappeared now. Many of the farms have been combined into large corporate farms and you can still see fields of corn and oats and barley. The history of this little town is large though since it was a center for the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Garret Smith housed runaway slaves on the third floor of his mansion until he could provide travel to Canada. Any slave caught as a runaway had to be returned to their owner according to Federal law so Mr. Smith and anyone helping the slaves to escape were criminal and prosecuted if caught. As a child we learned about this and became proud of our heritage along with many of the ancestors of the freed slaves that lived there.

     Back in 1962, it was reported that there was evidence that smoking cigarettes could cause lung cancer. Shortly after, it was confirmed that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. I was working as a medical technician, and I smoked cigarettes as did most of the people working at the hospital. We knew that there was something to the news as the doctors started to switch from cigarettes to cigars and pipes. I quit smoking and lasted for two years until the secondhand smoke got me, and I started smoking a pipe. For the next few years, I quit and restarted many times. I was addicted to tobacco.

     There are many addictions other than tobacco and drugs. Addiction to cell phones and social media has been growing at an alarming rate with many traffic accidents, some resulting in death, attributed to this recent phenomena. Food addiction has been growing, also, and we are treating young children for related diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. We have addiction to gambling, which is growing with the recent growth in casinos. Our sheriff told me a while ago that the robberies at the local Hotspots or video poker rooms were being done by drug addicts and gamblers who had lost their paychecks at the Hotspot and robbed the next one to have money for groceries when they got home.

     A few years ago the “far right” was considered a group that believed that they did not have to obey US law. I had a friend who did not file income tax returns because he said the US did not have the right to an income tax. We heard of the militant groups that lived by themselves in the wilderness of the Northwest, and there were a few confrontations with the FBI and other authorities. Today we think of these groups as neo-Nazis who spread hate and societal disruption. The anarchists have disappeared it seems…or have they?

     The state of Vermont has banned a Christian high school from any future basketball games because they refused to play against a team that included a transgender player that was over 6 foot tall and had injured a player previously. It was recently reported that there were more than 400 actions against Christians this year which is double from last year. The first amendment guarantees freedom of religion and that gets into the way of many that wish to force citizens into their ideology. Religion and speech have been attacked constantly to limit the amount of dissent against the left that is pushing socialism and many laws that force people to act against their religion. A couple of years ago we saw a baker in Colorado being sued by the government because he refused to decorate a same sex wedding cake. Other cases like this have been rampant in the last few years where anti-discrimination laws have been passed. We have seen speech be separated into different kinds of speech with hate speech becoming criminal. Our colleges and universities have limited speech that they deem hate or against their political bias rather that encouraging freedom of speech and thought. The latest test of the universities especially, the Ivy League has failed miserably with their antisemitic actions against the Jews in our country and in Israel. The assault on any opposition is the start of an autocratic society and history proves it. 

    Blogging has been  new experience for me and after three years I wonder why I did not start sooner. After retirement I started to watch more of the cable channels and the items discussed caused me to start writing letters to the editor. One letter that I wrote contradicted an article by a retired political science professor and the paper refused to print it because they decided that the prof knew more about the subject than I did. They also disagreed with my position which was that this country's founders would not have been happy about Obamacare and would be turning over in their graves. At that point I stopped writing. A friend that I had worked with called and asked if I would be interested in attending a night class on blogging with him. I said yes and we both finished the class. I was introduced to many free web sites that allowed anyone to start using them to write a blog and I tried a couple of them but they were clutsy and not easy to use. My friend Mark put me in touch with another IT guy that he had worked with and I hired him to create my blog web site. I asked if he wanted me to use his name and he said yes. Tim Crowe from Morgantown, WV, built  the web site that I am using and maintains it. That was three years ago and I started to write blogs after my eightith birthday. I'm eighty three now and still have a lot to say but by putting it  into a blog you don't have to listen unless you want to.

     I have not written anything for the past few weeks because every time I try to think of a subject, politics, Covid-19, or riots come to mind, and I have already said enough about those. But, then I was listening to the evening news when they mentioned that one of the designers was offering a pair of blue jeans for $1400.00 a pair. It seems that these jeans are prewashed, faded, and have built-in grass stains. It made me laugh, but there are people who will buy them and think they are being fashionable.

     In 1955, I started college at Syracuse University and paid $400. tuition for the first semester. Board and room was about $350. and I had worked all Summer at a canning factory for $.85 an hour to cover the board and room with some left over for books. My parents had extended their mortgage to pay the tuition. After the first year it was evident that neither my parents or I could make enough money to return so I got a job at GE. After being laid off I tried to sell cars but with one of the worse recessions ever that endeavor did not make out very good and I decided to return to school at the State University of New York at Morrisville, NY. It was a 2-year school but offered a med tech course which would allow me to continue in chemistry. The tuition was free at state universities in New York at that time and living at home I only, had to pay some fees and buy books. After 2 years I went to work for Allied Chemical as a chemical technician but quit after 6 months due to the long commute and went to work at our local hospital as a med tech doing the blood chemistries and helping the other technicians where needed. I started going to night school at Syracuse University and completed about 9 hours a year or as much as I could save enough money for. Leaving the hospital a few years later I went to work for Bristol Laboratories in Syracuse as a chemical technician. I continued to go to SU and take the required courses for a BA degree in chemistry. This took a few years since it was getting more expensive as the years rolled by. Bristol did refund half of my tuition after completing a course which helped but at the time, I was raising a family and it was still expensive. I finally graduated with my degree and by that time I had been promoted to a management position.

     Leviticus 35:36 says that a Jew that loans money or gives food to a poor neighbor must not charge interest or usuary. Other Old Testament readings say that a Jew must not charge interest on loans to another Jew but only to foreigners. Usuary, which today, means excessive interest charged on any loan of money by an institution or individual. When I was a child, this country had usuary laws that limited the amount of interest that could be charged by a person or institution loaning money for any reason. One of the biggest crimes that were pursued was loan sharking or those persons that loaned money for very high interest. Usually, these loans went to people that could not get loans from banks or other lending institutions and they were usually bad credit risks which led them to be problems for the sharks. We often hear of broken legs and arms as the first warning and then further action to those that did not repay. Most of those loans accrued compound interest and grew to great amounts very fast. Loan sharking and gambling were the favorite industries of the so-called mobs. 

     I grew up starting with FDR and then HST. My first recollection of presidential discussion was between Ike and Taft. The next big debates were between JFK and Nixon. These and most of the following were about their respective thoughts about helping the American people have better and more prosperous lives and foreign affairs. I never heard any of them call their opponent names that depicted anything other than Americans. So, you can see that I was appalled when I heard our present president call me a threat to democracy because I voted for his rival. Our president told half of the American electorate that they were fascists and threatened American life as we know it. l am sure that he only read the teleprompter and did not make up those words because I really do not believe he knows where he is most of the time but any way his utterances were abhorrent and not a speech that any American should be orating.

     President Biden has announced that he is going to reduce some pharmaceutical prices. He should get some history first and that would make his job easier.

     The West Virginia legislature has passed an education bill after stewing over it for a long time. The teachers and their unions have been dead set against it and fought hard to keep it from passing. It may be one of the most important bills passed in a long time in West Virginia and hopefully so. After being in the lower end of the education quality, with WV ranked at between 48 and 46 out of 50 states, something had to happen. While the teachers and their unions fought to keep the status quo, the majority of the legislature fought to change education in West Virginia to something better than it has been for some time.

     Many years ago, I entered the first grade at the school across the street from my house. Kindergarten was not available yet, and the school was part of a centralized system in rural New York. I was in a room with the first, second and third grades with a total of about 20 kids. It was a time during World War II, and the teacher’s husband was in the army. Mrs. Ellis taught all three grades, and we were able to hear all the lessons given to the other grades. By the third grade, we had already been through the material two times.

     I have always been “energy aware” because it costs money. Last year I bought a Tesla automobile and have not bought a gallon of gas since. My electric bill increased about $30 per month while I used to spend about $150 per month on gasoline. The electric car really saves money on the energy expended to travel. Many people whom I know think I was trying to save the planet, but they did not realize that to charge my car I use electricity that is produced by burning coal. Trading gasoline carbon for coal carbon is not really doing anything to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. I am helping my pocketbook but not the planet. I will never save enough to recover the cost of the car, but then the real reason I bought the car was my love of technology, and the car is a marvel of technology.

     I have heard that the issue of climate change being caused by man is a “settled science” or is not debatable because thousands of papers have been submitted telling us that many scientists believe that it is true. My Philosophy 1a class told me that begging the question or using the bandwagon approach to an argument was not valid. Man-caused climate change has become a political opinion that is believed in like a religion rather than a scientific examination and discovery. Science is not a belief system but a series of testing, questioning and retesting to arrive at speculation, which may become theory. Climate change and its causes relating to man will never become more than theory because its ultimate test would be to remove humans for a thousand years and follow the changes in climate. It is as stupid as it sounds, but so is the absolute belief in a theory that is based on computer models rather than scientific examination. Our local weather is given to us based on the same computer models, and usually the USA model differs from the European model.

     We have just celebrated another July forth and it was a great one after a year of shut down due to Covid. A Congressman from California, Maxine Waters, stated that the Declaration of Independence was for white men only. What a shame we have government leaders that do not know our history and want to rewrite it to fit their wishes and hate.

     I wrote an article about an illness that I have been dealing with and used it to express some thoughts about the “Affordable Care Act.” The other part of this story is my relationship with my God, and suddenly it became important to me to tell the rest of the story. During the last days of my symptoms and before I had a diagnosis, I was sitting down and wondering what was going on with my health. At 80 years old, one does think about longevity now and then. As my depression increased I suddenly felt warm and was turned to think about a friend who was also having a problem. I became aware that I was being pushed to think about someone else rather than myself. I was going to be all right. I had just experienced Jesus answering my prayers with a push to help someone else. I had seen and felt the Good present in the Universe.

     The New Year always brings a feeling of hope that many of the problems of the previous year will be solved. Believe me, this covers a lot of problems from political to football. We hope that the two-party system will return to actually working to solve many of the issues that are before us and have been unsolved due to one party or the other blocking their place on the agenda. With the new president last year we have seen the Democrats completely block all legislation that was possible and refuse to take part in any of the discussions brought to the Congress by the Republicans. The tactic has been a power struggle and attempt to damage the new president as he tries to implement the issues he was elected to work on.

     Harm reduction sounds like someone is trying to help someone or remove a problem. It is not that but a way to characterize aiding drug addicts in receiving clean needles. It has also, blossomed into giving free spaces to shoot up and even in some cities give out free drugs. I became aware of the practice when I was a board member of our local Health Right. This organization offered free health care to those without insurance and were at or near the poverty level. Some of our clients were addicts and homeless but most were people working at fast food shops and the like making minimum wage and could not afford health insurance. Obama care  made many of them eligible for Medicaid and removed them from our rolls. As  our homeless population grew so did the number of addicts and alcoholics. Many of the addicts did not seek care or want to be noticed so we had very little contact with them unless they became very sick.

     After reading the letters to the editor about health care, I’m convinced that many want to help pay for my health care. This may be facetious, but most of us do need help with the health care bills the cost of which has risen from the ten-dollar office call and twenty-dollar hospital room to hundreds for the office call and thousands for the hospital. With all of the action and reaction in Congress to this matter, there seems to be no effort to lower costs but to just try to find the best plan to subsidize our cost.

     My wife and I used to go to a movie now and then but recently there have been no movies worth seeing. The last movie that we thought was a family friendly show turned out to be worse than what used to be X-rated movies, so we usually do not go to any movies with an R rating. This past weekend my brother-in-law and his wife were visiting, and he and I went to a movie to pass some time while the wives were at a baby shower. The movie was billed as a romantic comedy, but we were in for far more than romance and comedy. The F-word was used in every scene with accompanying descriptions of positions and other sexually oriented material. There were scenes depicting sex acts and one showing male masturbation and ejaculation. While not all of the act was visible, it was enough to make you sick. Along with the sex and language was the use of drugs as a routine thing with no consequences and, of course, some alcohol use. The movie, which had a good storyline and tried to address some of the political and social problems we see today, was just filthy and detracted from anything that it was trying to show. It ended up being a lesson in filthy language, sex and drug use.

     Back in the 1960s, the courts made it very difficult to put a person in a mental care facility, which in most cases were run as state hospitals. Most of those who were interned were released, and if they had no family they became the first of the homeless who lived on the streets. Many of these people were sane enough to live within our society but were not able to take care of themselves. We saw the first evidence of homelessness in the larger cities, and it soon became a problem that has been growing ever since.

     My church has been working on an “Inclusion” statement for the past few years. The statement is written above the entrance to the sanctuary now, but the pastor wishes to have a vote on “Inclusion” that goes further than the statement. I’m not sure of what he is talking about, but in a few meetings he and his wife have made us aware of his belief in same-sex marriage. The church now opposes it. The rest of the “Inclusion” part puzzles me because I never saw anyone excluded from our church or any other church that I attended.

     One day this last week while I was working on a machine at a local health club, Dr. A came rushing in and said “John, it’s all red.” He was referring to the TV screen tuned to CNBC. It was five in the morning, and the stock market had already started its epic fall. Dr. A and I discuss the stock market quite often, and a few weeks before this we had talked about the sudden rise in the market with the expected correction. Neither of us thought that it would happen this quickly and to the extent it corrected. The corona virus seemed to be the trigger.

     When I started this Blog about three and a half years ago I wrote a four part series on "KILLING IN AMERICA" and to write this one I had to refer back to those for some insight into what has happened since. Nothing has happened except more killing and politicians trying to win votes over the incidents. There is still the rush to ban guns and especially assault rifles by the left and push back by the right. The NRA is continually trying to defend itself but is the only nationally recognized training ground for the use of guns. The Vice-President went to Buffalo to talk with those that lost loved ones to a shooting at a grocery store and the President went to Uvalde to console those that lost their children and teachers to violent gun fire. Biden said he wanted to tear down the school that  was involved and build a new one. The grocery store in Buffalo is closed now and the government is not going to build a new one. The killing still goes on with no answers to the root causes.

     A teenager takes a knife to school and slashes as many of his classmates as he can. A man parks a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil in front of a federal building and blows it up. A man shoots everyone he sees from a tower on a college campus. A young man kills his 4-month-old daughter because she is crying. We have seen this over and over again and still are surprised when it happens. Killing a large number at one time is sensational, but killing a large number one or two at a time gets very little air time in the media. There have been 600 killed in Chicago this year but very little coverage in the national media. It would be terrible if ratings were the cause of the difference in coverage.

     The killer burst through the door and shot everyone he saw. Old, young and even the unborn were gunned down and left as he proceeded to go to the next victim. He was chased away by a neighbor of the church and followed until he crashed his vehicle. Those left alive and the wounded were scarred for the rest of their lives. It was the same as Las Vegas and Florida, with a madman committing an atrocity beyond belief.

     Guns do not kill people, people do. There is no reason for anyone to own or possess a military type firearm. A teaspoon does not make you fat. We need to register all firearms and their owners. The 2nd Amendment gives me the right to own any kind of gun I want. Handguns should be banned. We have heard all of the previous statements after any killing that was caused by a firearm. Both the left and the right rush to defend their positions on gun control or lack of it. No one seems to care about finding the real reason why these horrible things occur. I want to explore some of the possible reasons or causes of this violent behavior other than gun control.

     There were no terrorist ties locally or foreign. Why then would anyone want to kill innocent people who were in church? The killer had a history of problems, including trouble while in the US Air Force for which he served time in jail. He escaped from a mental facility so apparently he was being treated for a mental disorder. Why wasn’t he caught and replaced in the mental facility? Why wasn’t his history available during his background checks? So many questions but only a few answers.

     It was 1957, and I was working at a gas station in Morrisville, NY, helping the owner when he went to tuneup school. That evening Trooper David L. came in and was upset because he said he had to buy a new five-cell flashlight to replace his that was broken. He had been called to a migrant labor camp to break up a fight, and when he arrived one of the men fighting came at him with a knife. He said he did not have time to drop the flashlight and get his night stick, so he hit the man over the head with the flashlight. It stopped the attack and broke his flashlight. I was in my late teens, and at that moment was in awe of what the trooper had done but soon forgot about it.

     Well, it has happened. We have been exposed to socialism/fascism. The pandemic has given our elected leaders the power to regulate our businesses and lives like never before. The liberal left is trying to prolong the shutdown probably to cripple our economy to prevent Trump’s reelection. But their objective of turning us into a socialistic society has come true. I went to church this morning in spite of our ministers’ telling us to stay home and watch them on YouTube again. The church was open, and I had to be tested and complete a questionnaire, with my printed name and signature, that included my temperature (97.1) before being allowed in. The pews were taped off with every third pew available. Each pew had tape separating it into thirds, making only the ends available to sit. The woman who sang during the mock collection wore a mask as she sang though there was no one within 20 feet of her. The ministers stayed away from those of us who attended when we left the church. I belong to a very liberal church, and when Trump asked for the churches to become essential and open their doors, I expected ours to defy that recommendation. They did. Closing churches is wished for by only one entity and that is Satan. He has succeeded for a while. What is really odd is that I have been able to walk into Walmart, drugstores and grocery stores with only the store trying to limit the number of people allowed in. I’m shopping with a hundred other people, with many not wearing masks and picking up fruits and vegetables with their hands and putting them back with no effort to sanitize them or protect the produce from touching. With 2 Walmarts and many groceries and drugstores, our incidence of viral infection has remained low—with most cases being in nursing homes.

     Its been over a year that we have been told to were masks over our noses and mouth to prevent the spread of Covid 19. We have heard many opinions and scientific reasons for the need of wearing them but with many disagreements between the scientists and politicians. The virus has given the politicians a new power that most have never seen before and the politicians like it. Many are continuing to use it even when the pandemic is nearly over and the spread is very small. The controversy over the use of masks continues after the CDC tells us that if vaccinated or recovered from the virus there is no need to wear masks. My coffee shop is still asking for masks and my Church is still requiring reservations with your temperature taken and signing in. They have limited attendance to about 25% capacity and seem to think that they have become permanent television preachers. Sad and has forced me to attend another Church.

     This morning I heard some hearsay from the pulpit. Our minister read a missive from the head bishop, Bruce Ough, about the Trump meeting behind closed doors in which one of the members reported that the president had said that people from some countries were “shit holes.” The minister did not say shit but let us know what he meant. The missive went on calling the president a racist and other names and that we as a church did not condone his actions. The reading ended with a prayer for the president, which I partook in.

     When Joshua entered the promised land with the Israelites God instructed him to kill all of the inhabitants he encountered including men, women and children. He was to destroy everything and take no booty. He did not complete this request and made truces with some of the Canaanites and eventually the Jews intermarried with them. The idol Moloch required child sacrifice to gain his blessing and this was practiced by the Canaanites and intermarried  Jews. Child sacrifice has been part of Satin's plan since God allowed him his freedom to temp us. The modern version changed the sacrifice from  killing children to aborting them before they were born. It even has extended to aborting a child when partially born or soon after the birth. When Roe was overturned by the Court it told Satin that his idol Moloch was no longer a national God and could no longer require child sacrifice without a state's permission.

     The news his week featured two different items that involve government control over our lives. The state  of Washington passed a law that prohibits using a gasoline powered leaf blower with a possible jail penalty. Stellantis automotive company announced that they are laying off three thousand employees because of California's green laws. The government (both federal and state plus many local) have been increasingly removing freedoms from us and seem to have accelerated their efforts lately. All automobiles have to be electric by 2035 and the use of fuel to power trucks is to be terminated. In the last few years a couple of projects at our local airport required environmental studies. After the first one was done to lengthen the safety zone at the end of the runway by 500 feet another study had to be done for another project which would cover the same area as the first one. These studies require a team of professionals to do them which is very costly and takes precious time away from the original project. We are told that we cannot use wet areas on our farm it they are deemed wetlands and we shut down water usage to save a fish or other animal. We are putting wolves in areas where ranchers are raising sheep and cattle but are not allowed to kill the wolves when they become predatory against their animals. We hear about police agencies that are confiscating peoples' property when they are suspected of a crime but refuse to return it after acquittal. The government is way too far into our lives and the freedom that I had as a young man is now gone.

     A couple of months ago I was skeptical about the naysayers telling us that we had a serious virus epidemic. I lived through many epidemics in the past and never saw anything like what they were saying. The polio epidemic when I was in first grade took my uncle and left crippling scars for many who survived, and then there was the Asian flu, the Swine flu and the H1N1 and so on. I used to get the flu every year until I started to get the flu shot. I have not had the flu since. I could not believe that this virus was going to be any different than those before it. I do remember my father telling me that his little sister died of the flu as a child in 1918, and I still visit her grave by her parents, my grandparents. That flu killed millions, but we have not seen anything like it since and modern medicine has come a long way since then. To me the ebola epidemic in Africa was the most scary since most who get it die.

     Peterboro is a small town between Utica and Syracuse New York. l was born and grew up there and was aware of some of the history that the town was known for. We learned the estate that was across the main street from the village green had been owned by Garret Smith who had been a famous abolitionist. After moving away and finally ending up in West Virginia for the last 45 years I have returned each year to see my parents until their deaths and then my sister that still lives in Rome, NY which is about 30 miles from Peterboro. Each year now my sister and I visit our parents' graves in Peterboro and this year we learned that there was going to be a ceremony and induction into the Abolition Hall of Fame in Oct. We also learned that the Abolition  Hall of Fame and Museum were housed in the building we had gone to school in for our first 5 grades. It was a National Historical site as was the Garret Smith estate. Peterboro was on the map and its history of being part of the Underground Railroad was being recognized. I wrote a blog about abolition when I returned home from this trip but have now just returned again from another trip to observe some of the ceremonies around the induction of 3 abolitionists into the Hall of Fame. I had time to renew some older friendships with the people that were aiding and working to make this ceremony a success and others that were working hard to restore the membership in the small Church across the street. 

      About twenty-seven hundred years ago, two battle lines were drawn on opposite hillsides with a valley between. One side had iron weapons while the other did not. The first to move into the valley to attack would be slaughtered when they were in the open so it was reasonable that neither moved but tried to outwait the other side. Days passed until the iron-wielding side offered a plan to decide the outcome without killing most of those fighting. The Philistines would send their champion into the middle of the valley to meet the champion picked by the Israelites. King Saul had to make a decision that could determine the fate of his future and the future of the Hebrew nation. A young boy stepped forward and offered to be the champion to meet the giant waiting for him. His name was David, and we do not know how big or tall he was—only that he was about to meet a giant who was nine feet tall or thereabouts. It did not make any sense to send a boy into a grown man’s fight, but there seemed to be no alternative. I’m sure that most of the Israelites did not think there was any chance that they would be the winners in this battle. A young boy against a giant did not seem to give them much of a chance, but the king went forward with David’s offer. We all know the outcome from our Sunday School lessons, and it still is a lesson that we need to remember. A small boy with a sling and a stone felled the giant and then chopped off his head with the giant’s sword. The battle was over, and David saved the day.

     A few years ago I was trying to find a parking place in a mall parking lot when I stopped to let a Black woman drive out of her space. As she drove past me she slowed, lowered her window and spat on the side of my car. I guess I had experienced some hatred and racism but did not know why. Growing up in a small town that was proud of being part of the Underground Railroad, many of my friends were Black and race was never mentioned. We were in school together and played together. We spent time in each other’s houses and thought that we were living a normal life. After leaving that small town, it became apparent to me that what I had grown up to know to be normal was not the same in much of the rest of our country. I went to Syracuse when Jim Brown became the first Black football player there, and we lived in the North. Through the years, I have seen the revolution of non-white people being more accepted into society. The sixties were filled with burning streets and marches to propel this promise of equality forward. Dr. King finally got his message across before being killed, and Congress acted to rectify the age-old problem of “All Men Are Created Equal” without rights being granted to some because of their race. President Johnson started the Great Society, which built government housing and granted welfare to many of those fleeing the South. The problem was that, after receiving the welfare, it was difficult to find a job that would allow the same standard of living. The freed slaves were enslaved again but without the chance of living the American Dream. A big problem at this time was the education system that never attained the ability to educate those living in the inner cities in the government housing. The poverty became generational. If a job was found, there was a loss of benefits, and without a good education there was little chance to find a job good enough to equal or improve the standard of living over that in the government housing and welfare payments. So with no job to occupy time crime and drugs became the main pastime with the formation of gangs to rule the streets. Here come the police to take the streets back and they are still trying to do just that.

     We have been hearing a lot about white privilege lately and I have been trying to understand what the purpose of this onslaught is about. Racism and privilege  has suddenly become the main theme in our every day news cycles and is the basis for many of the decisions being made by politicians and even large companies. I understand what the word "privilege" means but do not understand how it can be assigned to only one race of people in the universe unless those assigning it really believe that white (not including Hispanics) are better than all of the others and have somehow been able to prove it through time. Kind of a silly thought is it not? Well I want to start this blog with a story about two young boys growing up in a dairy farming region in central New York. Billy is black and Johnny is white and they both live in a small town of one block with a village green along one of the streets. Billy lives around the corner from Johnny and both have great parents and siblings. At twelve years old Billy starts to ride with his father on his morning milk route picking up milk cans from farmers and taking them to the creamery. Soon Billy is helping and picking up cans of milk at about 100 lbs. each and putting them on the truck. Not long after he started to work his father started to let him drive the truck. Billy had a job at twelve years old and would continue on with this duty for years.

     A mother testified that she found a breast binder in her young daughter's bedroom. The daughter told her that her school social worker told her to get it to de-emphasize her developing breasts and she did not have to tell her parents about it. The mother was horrified and wants to take action against the social worker and the school. A teacher and Christian in California was fired because she refused to not tell parents about sexual and trans information including taking puberty blocking drugs in public school. There have been many other cases where public schools have decided to indoctrinate children in sexual attitudes and desires without a parent's permission. Fifty years ago these actions would have been illegal and against the law. The perpetrators would have been arrested and charged with sex crimes. Today the same actions are protected by local school boards, county, city and state laws and prosecutors that refuse to prosecute. The only answer is to elect new school boards, elect new state legislators and, or go to private schools. All of the above have been happening but not soon enough or too little.

     I have had a bad week. One of my ministers at my church wrote back to me that he was upset with me because I had written in a previous blog that it was easier to get into Walmart than it was to get into church. I had written to him about reading the scripture lesson from his cell phone. The other pastor did not like me pointing out his ideology when he posted that he did not care for the president with the Bible and compared him to Clinton at his impeachment. So you see that I am being prayed for because I don’t like cell phones in church services, and I don’t like that after a night of rioting and burning stores, a church with the president holding a Bible was the most important thing to write about. The drug that I am taking to control an autoimmune disease has side effects that are bothering me and making me irritable.

     Got a call from my cell phone carrier the other day, and they offered me a deal on a new iPhone. I went to the store the next day to get the new phone, and then the marketing happened. After picking out the new phone and getting ready to transfer the data, the salesman mentioned that the phone I thought I was buying for half of the price listed was a lease and after the eighteen months of payments I would have to finish paying the other half for the phone or turn it in. The deal offered was no deal. I felt that, after praising me for being a good customer for fifteen years and being deserving of a deal, I had been used by a large company to sell a cell phone. I left the phone on the counter and walked out. I am looking at a different carrier but suspect that they will be the same in their marketing or, really, scams to sell new phones.

     I remember the summer of 1944, when my one-room school teacher cried all day because her husband was landing at Normandy. Many items were rationed including meat, sugar, gasoline and many more. We lived in a farming region so it was easy to get eggs, milk and poultry but still hard to get some of the things that make life easier. WWII was raging, and we were taking part by going without. The next country-wide problem was the polio epidemic. My uncle died from the disease, but there was no quarantine. Finally, a vaccine was developed, and we were safe from the terrible disease. The Korean War then the Vietnam War were when we saw the first anti-government demonstrations. Some of the news outlets were against the war, and one even staged battle scenes as real live events. Later they had to admit the faux battles but never apologized for the misleading news reports. This was the first time that I became aware that news outlets were biased and not entirely believable. The protests were valid since our government was drafting young men and sending them into a battle that was not being fought to be won and for a foreign government, without any need to protect ourselves from an enemy.

     With over 2000 miles driven for the past couple of weeks, I have decided to write about “road rage.” As I was thinking about what to write during a short trip to a nearby restaurant for some lunch, I had a small incident on the way home to help me get started. Our university is about to start up for the next term, and there are about thirty thousand students arriving in our city of about thirty thousand. Our number of cars on the road has doubled in one weekend, and traffic is pretty horrible. On the way home from the restaurant, I had to make a left-hand turn at a busy intersection, and as I inched along after waiting through two light changes a large SUV cut in front of me almost hitting my front end and slammed on its brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of me. I then had to hit my brakes to avoid hitting the SUV, which caused the car behind me to do the same. We all lived through it, but I yelled through my windshield at the SUV and called them a bad name. Then I realized that I had just experienced some road rage and, while avoiding an accident caused by an inconsiderate driver, had become inconsiderate for a moment myself.

     I retired from the work force about 15 years ago and found that I had time that was not being used. Besides golf and my workshop activities, I became a member of some charitable boards and still had time to fully read the newspaper and listen to television news. Shortly, I found that the world was a much different place than I had perceived, and the moral character of it had changed drastically. Soon I was writing a book called OOPS We Lost Our Values. I had it published and gave as many copies away as I sold but felt good that I had tried to tell people about the change in values that had happened since I grew up. As I see the world now, with same-sex marriage and abortion on demand and now is starting to include infanticide, we have thrown our morality away. One party is willing to destroy this country for political power, hate has replaced respect, and name calling has replaced debate. As I have been writing about current issues and my bent on them, I have decided to publish part of the OOPS book that was rejected by the Christian publisher because it was too secular. I had included a chapter on the Ten Commandments but wrote it as needed by a secular society. I do not believe that God has a secular society, and if one is truly religious I believe that it is not turned off when we leave the house of worship but is carried into our daily lives. So following this introduction is the chapter that was not published in the book. It is presented in three parts.

     At retirement I had said that I learned that the world had changed and wrote a book about it. But before that book, I wrote another book, Definitions, which addressed the problem of teaching high school students about the origin of life. In this book, I defined some of the words used in this matter and one of them was “atheist,” which when I looked at it found it to be used for more than those who had no religion or did not believe in God. The other defined use was really the anti-theists who were against any kind of symbol of the Hebrew or Christian religion. Some of these are the satanists or devil worshipers. To wish all religious symbols to be removed from the public view means they represent something to those wishing their removal.

     Just watched the WVU versus Baylor football game, and I actually watched one game and heard another. There were two men in the broadcast booth and one man on the field. I heard what the next play should be and then what the last play should have been. I saw the referee’s call and then heard what the call should have been. When there was a second look at a play, I heard what the outcome should be before the referee made the call. I watched two plays while I heard about the postponement of an NFL game and then a discussion of NFL football. I had to turn down the volume to pay attention to the game. The announcers became more important than the game itself. It does not make sense to televise an athletic event and then distort the game with announcers’ discussions and opinions. I played football in high school and junior college and know a little about the game, as do most of the people watching. We do not need a tutorial about the game every time we watch one. I have watched NFL games with the same treatment as if I knew nothing about the game and had to be spoon-fed the happenings during the game. Many times the announcers who were former players are spending more time telling about their exploits than explaining the events we are watching.

     Just read the Sunday paper and found a full page ad telling us what a good job Joe Manchin did by voting for the stimulus package and giving us another $1400. We were to think that this legislation was all for us and Manchin made it possible. His vote was necessary and could have stopped it but he went against the wishes of his state and voted the way Shumer told him to. Joe doesn't represent us because he is a pawn of Chuck and Nancy. The article did not tell us about what else the bill provides and that is about 90% of the total amount of the 1.9 trillion made available. Yes the stimulus package is 10% for covid relief and 90% to buy future votes for the democratic party.

     As a couple of senators were discussing the tax bill before Congress, the Democrat said that he would not support any bill that allowed the rich to get richer. Tax the rich and do not give any tax break to them is the cry from the left. This is not a new form of bias and has been used to get votes for a long time. What is amazing is that we live in a time of extreme vigilance of anyone who shows any bias against a specific group. Why not tax white men or tax illegal aliens or just put a cap on how much wealth you can amass.

     The world is covered with the tears of Jesus Christ as we once again repeat history. I’m not talking about recent history but the 4000 years of recorded history. When the Israelites entered the Promised Land, Joshua was told by God to destroy all of the idols of worship and all of the idol worshipers. It was never completed, and after years of fighting the Philistines, the idols won. Well the Philistines are back, and they have brought the Canaanite Gods with them. Molech is the God who required child sacrifice and is at every abortion clinic. Ashteroth is the Goddess of fertility and is at every presentation of free sex in our entertainment. The idols are back and being worshiped once more. The degradation of our society has happened very quickly, and as Pastor Junius said last Sunday the Devil plays for keeps. We are seeing the complete breakdown of civil authority, and one political party is urging it to keep going. Hatred is rampant and so invasive that people are attacking statues of people who wrote our history. You have to be quite desperate to attack a chunk of stone for satisfaction of your hatred. Yes, the Philistines are back, and we have yet to learn anything about governing ourselves.

     The kids marched, and I was proud of them. The school shooting in Florida stimulated teens across the country to cry out for help in being safe when they were in school. Hopefully, Congress and state legislatures would listen and do something to keep this from happening ever again. 17 schoolchildren shot and killed with many others wounded by one of their own and no way to stop this from recurring time and time again to this point. The march was a cry for help in finding answers to this problem. BUT!

     I watched the White House daily press chat with Press Secretary Sanders the other day. It is not one of my favorite things, and I usually do not see it. But, with temperatures in the single digits and snow and ice covering the ground, I decided to stay indoors. Sarah started out with a statement and then proceeded to take questions from the gallery. I would assume that if you are included in this pool of reporters you would be associated with one of the major news outlets such as newspapers or television networks.

     Puerto Rico is in a financial mess as predicted in 1993, when the Clinton Administration removed the “936” IRS tax breaks for American companies operating on the island. This break, which included operating income-tax free, was approved in 1966 and had lured about 300 companies to build or buy manufacturing facilities. Many of these companies were pharmaceutical and light electronics because the expense of shipping heavier goods was costly.

     We have heard “drain the swamp” from our new president, but what is the swamp? It all started with the new Constitution and when our Founders decided to build a capital city in a swampy area outside of any of the thirteen states. That swamp was eventually drained but a new one was started almost immediately, namely a political swamp. Jefferson and Adams had a disagreement about the presidency, and it started there. Adams had wanted the head of state to follow the English model and have a monarch who ruled for life, whereas Jefferson wanted what we ended up getting. It was either government by the elite for the common man or government by the same people being governed.

     It was 1956, and, after a year of college, I was unable to afford the next year so I got a job at GE making TV sets. The pay was equal to the combined pay of my mother and father, but after some coercion from fellow workers, I joined the IUE or International Union of Electrical workers. After a year or two of layoffs, I decided to get back into school and left GE. It was not many years later that the TV Department was shut down and moved to a state without many unions. I worked at a couple of jobs after graduating but never met another union organization until I moved to West Virginia. I took a job as plant manager in a pharmaceutical company, and the workforce was unionized. It was the first time I had encountered this arrangement.

     A Russian opponent to Putin has just died in prison. Most of the world believes that he was killed to remove any opposition to Putin in the upcoming election. We have watched Russia go from a complete dictatorship under Stalin to a more democratic society. The Church was allowed to function, and elections were held but after Putin's election he has managed to use his prior KGB connections to power his way past the rule of law and change the law to benefit him like allowing multiple terms in office. Once again, we are looking at a czarist Russia with little or no way to remove him other than assassination. Navalny's opposition to Putin was met with arrest on charges that were drummed up to remove him from the political arena. Later he was declared ineligible to be on a ballot and later put back in jail. When he was released from jail he left he country only to return and be immediately arrested again. There has never been a trial and conviction but just removed from the political opposition to Putin. His popularity has remained high though which is why he was probably murdered by Putin. The justice system in Russia is owned by the ruling party that will do anything including murder to stay in power.  

       The start of Proverb 11 in the King James Bible states "A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight." I happened to read this Proverb just before changing the toilet paper roll in the bathroom. I noticed that the roll holder was one and a half inches wider than the roll. My new roll had been made smaller and that probably happened a long time ago. We do not notice many of the slight changes that manufacturers and marketers do to their products and we still pay the same price. Their profits increase at our expense and it is legal because they reflect the change on their labels which many of us do not read. Beer drinkers might notice that some of their twelve ounce bottles have become ten and a half ounce but look the same. Saving that one an a half ounces allows the bottlers to sell more bottles from the same size vat as before the change. Putting your finger on the scale as they used to say was one way of cheating customers but was illegal so just change the quantity a little and reflect it in the fine print on the label and you have achieved the same thing but you are legal. It has been happening for years and maybe hundreds of years but the first time I noticed was years ago as a kid buying candy bars. They were five cents but started to get smaller.  It was only a few years that many candy bars had shrunk buy a third but by then the price had risen to twenty five cents.

     My wife and I went to dinner the other evening and ran into an old friend that had retired from law enforcement about a year ago. I asked him if he had retired at the right time, and he readily agreed. We talked about retirement and our golf games, and the conversation turned to what is happening to the police forces in our community. He said that the city and county were both down, severely, in the number of officers on their respective forces and that there was little reaction to recruitment efforts. Young men and women were not interested in becoming police officers.

     Many years ago I worked at a drug company in upstate New York. There were about 2500 employees of which 500 were in research. I was told that another group worked in the tropical jungles of the world trying to find yeasts and molds that offered new cures for disease. We made penicillin and a lot of it. A large part of the profits were returned to the research of new drugs and cures.

     I watched the presidential session with the survivors and parents of the recent school shooting with a tear being shed a couple of times. The kids were eloquent, and the parents were filled with the emotion that one would expect. I’m not sure what that is since I never lost a child, but it was raw and vivid enough for anyone watching to get the point that something has to be done to prevent this from ever happening again. Later, I watched a couple of news channels and the afternoon session had been reduced to no guns and more guns. The anti-gun groups were using their best weapon, and the NRA lovers were defending themselves. The subject had turned to what each wanted rather than to finding a cure for a deeply imbedded problem in our trying to raise young people and educate them without worrying about their safety.