I walk in beauty (part two)

no, RCGorman's art wasn't in the magazine, but when I think of SW art I think of his lithographs.

Right now, instead of the usual non fiction/history stuff I usually read, I have been reading mysteries: I have almost finished  the Amelia Peabody series set in modern Egypt, and have started rereading the Hillerman series of mysteries set in the four corners area. Hence the link to Gorman's paintings.

I brought a couple Hillerman books with me, and I bought one or two at the used kiosk, but luckily for me they are on ScribD, as are the Amelia Peabody series and the non fiction books of Barbara Mertz, who writes under several names.

Years ago, when I did a couple months of working with the Navajo, I asked about a book to give me the background of their cultural beliefs and was told many books were wrong (too many "anthropologists" asked for info that was none of their business and were told tall tales. Those knowing the traditional humor of Native Americans can see the men sitting around saying: And then I told her this ...and then everyone would smile and have a chuckle).

we walk in beauty

Family news part 2

So anyway, I went to the cemetary today, and afterward went to the mall to buy backup tools (the workmen "borrowed" my good tools and this being the Philippines, I may never see them again).

I also bought a magazine of western (US) art. the PC art is ugly but out west, the art done by locals (anglo and Indian) is beautiful. So when I saw the used magazine at the used book kiosk I bought it. I have a need for beauty right now.

And I also found one of the Janet Evanovich books that I don't have in my collection: Number 16, where Mooner brings his hobbits from the hobbit convention to rescue Stephanie Plum from the Mafia.

There is also a need in my life for humor and eucatastrophe (!).

The series is up to 21 right now, but it takes awhile for them to get to the used book kiosk...

Ruby is depressed due to her parents fighting. Now, if I could only get her to spend a year with her aunt studying in the USA...


I shudder to think of what will happen when my step son no longer has my husband's pension to live off of: My pension is much smaller, and I have few savings here, just enough to cover me if I happen to need cancer chemotherapy or open heart surgery. Medicare doesn't cover any expenses here, and Phil health only covers about half. Of course, medical care is a lot cheaper here and in Manila they are pretty well up to date: I got Joy's sister Sweetie on an experimental program using the latest immune therapy for her melanoma. Alas, it didn't work: but since regular chemo doesn't work for melanoma either, at least we tried....

Family update

This morning I visited Lolo's gravesite to check on the house/gazebo to protect the grave. Here, it is the custom to visit daily until day 40, when the spirit goes to heaven. I have no idea where this belief comes from, probably Chinese.

They have the holes dug to pour cement for the posts, and are welding the truss for the roof, which will be flat and divert water to the back.

I didn't pick out the site so I don't like the area: Lolo wanted a plain grave and a small stone, with the coffin under ground, like his nephew's, but the plot is between two small house type graves, meaning we can't leave it open or it will get the run off from those houses. So we have to cover it, and put brick on the ground to keep the soil from washing away. It won't cost much: A couple thousand US dollars. But Lolo would have been pleased with just putting him in the grave of his mom, which is outside in the old section of the cemetary. Alas, Rosa and Chairman Leo were buried there, so it's almost full (and I suspect that it will be used by others in the family who can't afford anything). So a new site was bought. This will fit six graves, maybe more if we piggyback graves on top of those in the ground. (High water levels mean that under ground burial is shallow in his area of the cemetary, and in the older section, all graves are above ground).

In the meanwhile, I am upset about my step son's shennanigans, which his wife reports to me.
I am still mad at him because the money in Lolo's veteran pension had accumulated, and although I had removed some for his medical expenses, I gave the card to remove the rest and part of the funds that I had taken out to his son for funeral expenses, but they were diverted to the farm and his personal construction needs. Angie and the family helped with some expenses, and in finding a lot (the cemetary is almost full) but I had to pay for the plot and now the gazebo over the grave. Sigh. However, I didn't pay for the embalming etc. I think Joy had bought us a family plan where you send so much a month and they do everything...not fancy but enough.

The family is mad because although Lolo was laid out for a week in our home, he rarely sat with him. Of course, I wasn't there as much as I should have been, and I didn't spend the night there either, but since I had done most of the nursing I figure I needed a good night's sleep.

The fiesta is this weekend, so I don't know if the relatives will invite us, or if we will go. Ruby has a church thing to go to, and the farm is busy with rice harvest, and since they are protestants, they will use this as an excuse to keep people working.

The Sandusky enablers: or how gay marriage is a way for sociopaths to shut you up.

Culture wars. Don't read because it is not PC.

The latest kerfuffle is about gay marriage, but the real pressure is not only about accepting gays a part of society, but it is about removing all taboos about any sexual behavior.

This is only the latest clash in a battle that has gone on since the 1960's. Remember when those condemning Clinton's seduction of an intern, as if they were evil puritans and he was just a good old boy having fun in a consensual relationships?

Same here: it is alas a smokescreen to pressure people into silence if the dare to judge any sort of sexual activity outside of marriage...and also a smokescreen for the "gender theorists" who want to deny the biological basis of sexuality and wish to encode this into law.

And this is why even has the gentle Pope is worried. When he visited here, he blasted the trend to pressure poor countries to accept the west's latest ideas on sexuality as cultural imperialism. His more recent speech that rejected modern gender theory has the PC upset...

Insisting that biological evolution made men and women different, and that 50 thousand years of customs enforced heterosexual coupling as a way to protect children is now bigotry.

And of course, by equating support for traditional families as bigotry is one way to shut people up about condemning any sexual practice, not just by gays...

This of course allows the sociopaths to have the last say on what is right and wrong.

We aren't talking about Heather's two mommies living quietly and faithful to each other...many gays are not into the promiscuous lifestyle promoted by these activists, but one wonders when and if they will condemn how the issue is being exploited by a subculture of promiscuous sex out there looking for victims...

Even the libertarians can't see how their insisting that these things are free actions can't see that there is money to be made by third people making huge amounts of money pretending the victims are free agents, when poverty or power of the seducer makes them victims.(be it drugs, sex "workers", or buying kidneys).

Non judgemental attitudes toward sex opens the door to a lot of unsavory and unhealthy practices that in the past used to be called "evil", but now you will be ostracized if you connect the dots.

One reason the Pope brought this up was because the Philippines is a major destination for sexual tourism that includes abuse of street kids,  and economic pressure that pushes young people into prostitution is an open secret here.

Even the US Ambassador once said 40 percent of male tourism here was sex tourism (although some may have been "romance" tourism, i.e. for wives)...

Either way, it is exploitation.... Samar magazine's expose is about SriLanka  includes a discussion of the sexual exploitation of girls and boys... boys who are street kids are especially vulnerable...and the same problem occurs here.

as for "gay tourism": even CNN promotes the idea that tourism exploiting the natives as a victory agains homophobia.

So why is CNN pretending this is acceptable behavior?

ah, because of the fake front organizations that few dare to criticize.

Take bullying. Lots of kids are bullied, (for being weak, for being fat, for being a geek, for wearing glasses, etc etc) but instead of promoting politeness and trying to reduce the practice, it has become a way to promote gay behavior as normal.

Those pesky nuns noticed this, and refused to promote sin, walk out of classroom.

Another elephant in the room: Billy Budd anyone?

Abuse is not only about boys, of course:

There is a minor kerfuffle among conservative Catholics about a bishop who didn't report this abuse, so was convicted...three years later, he finally got around to resigning...more here...

The bishop is "conservative"...liberal bishops usually get a "get out of jail free" card, just like the psychologist. But conservative clergy, who presumably should be harder on "sin" than loving "who am I to judge" liberal bishops, also are more prone to commit the sin of protecting their own in the same way that docs do...

but the psychologist who evaluated the priest and saw the photos didn't report it, and he got off scott free. Uh, he was required by law to do so, but never mind.

This was a child porn case, not a case of rape. But even child rape is a subject best ignored. I mean when six percent of teenagers admit having intercourse below age 13, (and statistics higher in minority neighborhoods) there is a lot of abuse going on....

so who told the cops in this case? Sounds like the computer tech did. Too much of a nerd to be PC...


this article, which is about the Sandusky case, explains about the need to defend those in your group:

 every person has a social identity, which depends on being a member of various groups. “The social groups you belong to become a part of the very essence of who you feel you are,” explains psychologist Adam Galinsky, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. These groups can include our families and circles of friends; the clubs, churches and schools we attend; our race, ethnicity and nationality; and the list goes on. The more strongly we identify with a particular group, the more vehemently we defend its members and ideals—a trait that experts think evolved along with early human society. Banding together and protecting one another allowed our ancestors to survive, 


NewYorker story on the Sandusky case...

So it's not just in sports or in churches:

Ten percent of docs have substance abuse problems, and ten percent have slept with patients. How many get their licenses removed?

sorry but one of those living in our business compound has a history of abusing staff who work under him for sexual favors...several of them were traumatized by this, but continue to work for us because they need the money.

does that make me a co-enabler?

He insists it is "consensual" but like the sex tourism industry ignores that those involved are very poor and need their job.

Lot, call your office, the town is about to be bombed

(this article needs rewriting but I am too tired to do so, so excuse the leaps in logic and bad grammar).

Right now the jackie case is being used to bash the MSM and a "rape epidemic" hysteria on campus (which is probably a backlash against the hook up culture...why take responsibility for getting drunk and going to the guy's room when you can be a victim and get sympathy/revenge on him acting like a man?).

Actually the present hysteria resembles the "ritual satanic abuse" stuff of the 1970's, not to mention the numerous families destroyed by false memory syndrome in the 1980's

Without remembering that hysteria and false accustions, and the numerous "experts" that defended real cases of priests seducing teenagers as being okay, the crisis of Catholicism can't be put into perspective.

These type of stories were noticed by Freud, who then went on to insist that they were false memories, and called it "projection". The problem? Once in awhile they are true.

Sigh. I did a lot of the sexual abuse examinations in our small town back in the 1980's. About half were real, another one quarter were so minor that we advised against going to court, a lot were borderline (alcohol, date rape) but about 10 percent were horrendous...I saw so many cases that my secretary, who had been raped as a foster child, ended up resigning because it kept bringing up memories.

The sexual revolution sent a "it's okay" message to sociopaths, and the idea that women are objects for their desires to too many normal boys.

Background: In the 1970's, we were taught in medical school that teenagers would have fewer psychological problems if they had sex. (Lolita wasn't presented as the story of a sexual predator justifying abuse, it was presented to prove it was okay to seduce 12 year olds. Yet by today's standards, it was tame: at least she wasn't tied up...One wonders what will be the fruits of the "50 shades of grey" fad).

Presumably no one remembers when Clinton's Surgeon General advised moms to give their 15 year old daughters a condom before they went on a date. Lifting taboos against gay sex was also going to result less mental illness.

And "Christian forgiveness" ideas simply are a "get out of jail free" card for sociopaths: I have been "Defriended" by a granddaughter on facebook because I objected for her socializing with a relative who had gone to jail for abusing a teenagers, who happened to be her own mom. She saw no reason not to socialize with him...well, she IS old enough to stop him, but she has a daughter who will soon be old enough for him to prey on. So am I a bad person for being judgemental against someone who has repented? I don't think so...

And when a case is publicized, cases spring up out of the woodwork: we saw a lot of reports of incest after a TV movie for example. Many cases were 10 to 30 years old, and hidden out of shame until the film allowed them to relate it to me.

so alas a lot of cases are real.

A couple related stories on the net.

Good Catholic families cheer when someone burns down their church.

Commowheal on Liberals vs religious freedom.

this isn't about punishing those who refuse to cooperate with SSM, it could easily be stretched to punish doctors and nurses who won't do abortions. (been there done that). Obama already removed regulations that protected their jobs, but the Civil rights acts and the religious freedom acts are still on the books...

New Books in History: review of an Oxford Univ press book about the ACLU's fight to push sexual liberty...was it because " Early ACLU leaders displayed sexualproclivities and outlooks outside the mainstream"?

includes a podcast for later listening...

From 10thousand miles away, I have no idea what is really going on, but I do know that the US is pushing the sexual freedom agenda here with big money both via NGO's and by government pressure.

But two minor films make me hope there might be a trend back to normality:

Calvary, about a good priest trying to help his people who have rejected the church but still attend it, who ends up being killed by a man abused by another priest.

And in "Rewrite", the Hollywood writer turned professor actually repents seducing an underaged student who he thought was of age: in one scene, a friend pointed out that if it was his daughter, he would kill him, and that he wouldn't need a gun to do it.

Heh. Maybe in another decade we'll again see a scene like that of La Cage aux Folles, where the "gay couple" discuss seducing handsome young men as if promiscuity was part of normal "marriage", and  have the film acknowledging that many of these "marriages" are open relationships, i.e. not limiting sexual partners. Indeed,  maybe even maybe we'll see it from the point of view of the young men, who were coerced into unwanted sex...

Come to think of it, that also was done, at least in literature: Billy Budd, anyone?

the dream of the rood