Category: Normal people

Good morning

I’m off work today. On work days I’d be leaving about an hour ago. Just before leaving I set up the water for the chickens and ducks. (My wife lets them loose after sunrise.)

The views have been magnificent.

As I approach the barn (from the north, looking south) Scorpio hangs majestically over the barn. It’s dark enough here that you can see the reddish tint of Antares, the heart of the scorpion. To the right (east) Sagittarius the Archer aims his bow at Antares.

As I said, magnificent. Sadly, all attempts to photograph the view with my cellphone have failed. Sigh… Have to settle for this view of the coming sunrise.

(view from the front door this morning)

Playing around with GIMP. By trial and error I managed to extract this image from my ‘failed’ attempt to photograph Scorpio in the early morning sky over the barn.

California School District Reverses Vaccine Mandate After Thousands Of Children Refused To Comply

COVID-19 vaccination was made mandatory for children by multiple school districts in California earlier this year. Set to go into effect in January, any child, 16 and older, will be banned from campus in all San Diego public schools, if not vaccinated.

This authoritarian move caused a massive backlash and thousands of parents and children refused to comply.

The refusal to get vaccinated set the stage for a showdown that was to unfold on January 24 when the children would be kicked out of school for non-compliance.

However, a San Diego judge struck down the mandate this week and now children wouldn’t be kicked out of school for not getting vaccinated. The judge accurately pointed out that a school district has no authority to mandate medical procedures for children.

More pushback against medical tyranny. Just say “no.”

Source: California School District Reverses Vaccine Mandate After Thousands Of Children Refused To Comply

Today’s tear-jerker…

On Dec. 2, Haley and her husband Jb Parke welcomed their newborn son John Beeson Parke (Jb), three weeks early.

The Sunday before, her husband was admitted to the hospital with complications from cancer.

While the couple thought they had 6 months, they found out on Wednesday that it would just be a matter of days.

“With our second son’s due date 3 weeks away, my husband and I knew asking for an induction was the right thing to do. Without hesitation, the team of ICU doctors communicated with the head of high risk labor and delivery doctors. They offered me an induction as soon as I was ready,” Haley wrote.

The induction process began, but Jb’s condition was declining fast as of Thursday morning, so the medical team worked quickly to deliver the baby via a c-section.

“In a matter of literally one minute, I was in the OR, and in just a short 20 minutes later, our son was born. He was given to me for a quick kiss, and then a team of doctors and nurses ran him up 2 floors, and he was placed on his daddy’s chest,” she wrote.

Once the baby was placed on Jb’s chest, Haley wrote that her husband’s vitals instantly improved, and he was able to acknowledge their new precious son.

Jb’s last moments were spent with his newborn son and his wife in his hospital room.

Haley said Jb took his last breaths with their son on his chest and her hand in his.

The couple hadn’t picked out a name before their son’s arrival, but Haley wrote that she knew the right thing to do was honor her husband, and named him John Beeson Parke (Jb).

Source: Sometimes an article will bring a tear to your eye

The system doesn’t want you to have children

My biggest mistake was listening to ‘the system.’

Quite simply, the future belongs to those who show up. I am here because a very long line of people took the trouble to raise children, in spite of all of the hardships that they would have inevitably endured at the time. We are separated, if not divorced, from our ancestors. We are taught that those who came before us were bad and ignorant. We are taught that for a reason. The system wants us isolated. It wants us isolated from our past blood people and from our future blood people.

The absolute number one sign that you should have children is the clear fact that the system makes it so hard for us to have them. From abortion on demand, to contraception and allowed open fornication, to the dissolution of marriage, to the fueled and funded war between the sexes, to the family courts, and to open propaganda that white people are selfish if they breed, the system is doing everything in its power to ensure that we don’t have offspring.

Source: The system doesn’t want you to have children

America’s Greatest Problem: We’ve been off the farm too long

In the year 1790, 90% of the American population were farmers.  By 1850, this percentage had dropped to 64%, and then down to only 21% by the year 1930.  Today, only 2% of the American population serve as farmers.

And though American agriculture is more productive than ever, I’m afraid that as a nation we are beginning to witness the consequences of having raised multiple generations who have never looped a metal chain through a gate or chased lightning bugs through a field of freshly mowed hay.

As a nation, we have allowed Disney to convince our children that all animals are cute and cuddly, then wonder why dozens of people get killed each year attempting to take selfies with grizzly bears, cougars and copperheads.

As a nation, we have replaced the garden hoe and watering bucket with an Xbox and cell phone, then wonder why our “children” refuse to move out at the age of 30.

I spent my teen years in the country. We rented the farmhouse and a big corporation tilled the fields, but I had run of the 45 acres, run of the huge old barn built with huge pegged timbers and siding nailed on with handmade square nails. It was old and sturdy. The house had been built by our landlord’s father in the 1890s. Yes, he was an old man. The house had a porch that wrapped two sides and a summer kitchen off the back. We raised chickens and did a fairly large garden. I’ve missed that ever since. I could walk in the woods, sit out at night and stargaze in a pretty dark sky, go camping in the five acres of woods across the plowed field. It was a three-mile bike ride into town or you could ‘walk the tracks.’

I think a lot of the nonsense being promulgated by the ‘left’ would fall on deaf ears if children had that kind of youthful experience. They would have more experience grounded in reality instead of their cellphones and ‘social media.’

Source: America’s Greatest Problem: We’ve been off the farm too long

Elite Panic vs. the Resilient Populace

The Ohio State team produced a number of reports and helped influence the nascent study of humans and disaster. But the lessons of the Alaska quake tend to be forgotten when the world turns scary. In case after case, officials have reverted to the traditional view: that the civilian populace is not to be trusted in an emergency. Not surprisingly, this tendency towards elite panic is itself one of the key stumbling blocks to coping with disasters.

We certainly see it in the response to the coronavirus pandemic. From the first appearance of the virus in the United States, officials at the federal level, including the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, tried to maintain tight control over the fight against the new disease. Undoubtedly, individual staffers at those institutions are deeply committed to public health. But those agencies’ policies implied that independent medical organizations shouldn’t be allowed to make major decisions about the coming pandemic.

Source: Elite Panic vs. the Resilient Populace

A new and deeply meaningful rite of passage

We have a new United States citizen. This guy did it right despite some government stupidity:

When I met Miss D. in 2009, she encouraged me to pursue the matter, and after we married, I did so – only to run into a bureaucratic roadblock.  You see, the USCIS (which handles citizenship applications) wanted five years worth of tax returns, to prove I was paying my fair share towards our nation.  However, because my income had been workers-compensation-related for several years (and thus not taxable), I hadn’t met the minimum taxable income threshold that requires one to submit a tax return.  This did not satisfy USCIS, unfortunately – no tax returns, no citizenship!

I therefore approached the IRS and asked to file amended tax returns for the appropriate period, only to be told that this would be a waste of that agency’s time and resources (because I still wouldn’t owe any tax, after all), and therefore I should not do so.

See? Government idiocy. He waited five more years, filing the appropriate tax returns.

Becoming a US citizen will be a very solemn, moving moment for me.  I take the oath of allegiance very seriously.  I’ve already sworn part of it when taking the oath of federal law enforcement office as a prison chaplain, well over a decade ago.  The citizenship ceremony will add to that an abjuration of any and all previous loyalties.  In that sense, it’ll be a final, formal, legal and official severing of my ties to South Africa, where I’d spent almost two-thirds of my life so far.

An immigrant who did it right. A successful author whose books look interesting and are now on my ‘to buy and read’ list. Welcome, Peter Grant!

Source: A new and deeply meaningful rite of passage