Susie-Q&A
• Jul. 25, 2008 - FLDS Matter Again
• Jul. 24, 2008 - No Longer Knee-Deep
Our pond is taking on a life(cycle) of its own. (Yes, those are smudges on my lens. We live in a very smudgy kind of house.)
As you can see, both corners at the north end of the pond are filled with water, and water has crept all the way around the first fish hide-out.
The cabbage-white butterflies just adore our pond-puddle. Chasing butterflies:
What is the name of this sweet little wildflower? Anyone know? They grow on the sunny hill to the east of the pond.
UPDATE: It looks like this Field Bindweed, doesn't it? The link says it's in the morning glory family, and it certainly looks to be.
UPDATE II: Wow, it's a sweet looking little flower, but it can have roots going down 20 feet or more, and it's a pernicious weed in an agricultural setting. However, they don't really cause a problem where they're growing on our land.
The little runoff stream re-appeared in the exact same spot. It was still trickling this afternoon.
The water has attracted quite a few dragonflies. It's a blurry shot, but you get the idea.
This one appeared to be laying eggs.
The pond attracts all sorts of small creatures.
The grass on the dam seems to be growing well.
I hear more thunderstorms may be headed our way. I wonder how long it takes a pond this size to fill. I'm sure by this time next year it will be lovely. |
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• Jul. 23, 2008 - Lovely Rain!
Thunderstorm last night, and steady rain this morning equals more water in the pond! And now it's raining again! Pictures tomorrow if the weather clears a bit.
We've been dodging raindrops to peek, and the water has crept underneath the first "fish structure" and filled in the opposite corner of the bottom of the pond. |
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• Jul. 22, 2008 - Huh?
• Jul. 22, 2008 - It's Raining!
• Jul. 20, 2008 - Ain't It Pretty?
• Jul. 20, 2008 - The Bloomin' Pond and More
Hubby says we are getting an algae bloom on the pond, which marks the very beginning of the food chain. The grass is growing along the banks, thanks to his daily watering. We've had no rain the past week, so our puddle is evaporating a bit, but there's no question the pond holds water. No rain forecast until Tuesday. I'm itching for some good T-storms to drop several inches now!
Yesterday, hubby fulfilled a promise. He helped me sort through the junk in the basement. We went through everything in Spare Oom and now it is looking very spare indeed. I shelved more books, and he made a "sell" pile, the proceeds of which will go to pay down a loan. I have a huge pile of broken down boxes and magazines to take to the recycle center tomorrow. Whoopee! I already had a big thrift-store pile in the back of the van, so there's a side-errand. He really was ruthless and only kept useful things! I was so thrilled.
He turns his attentions to the garage next. He's already done quite a bit on the garage because that's where he does the unending repairs on the mower...but I believe his goal is actually to be able to keep our vehicles in it. :) He's been working so hard this summer. Compared to him, I'm a lazy loafer.
And now, for the big news. He's bought a motorcycle.
The increase in gas prices has been nibbling away at the edges of his mind ever since his commute increased from 5 minutes to 30. This motorcycle is very road safe and gets FIFTY miles to the gallon. That's a four-dollar commute. I've been anti-motorcycle for the family man ever since Mike the Bike was sold (the Honda he rode when we first met). However, I see this as a very sensible solution to what was going to be an insupportable expense for our budget. Hubby is an excellent motorcyclist, and the commute is a pretty straight shot. I daresay the bike is safer than the old truck. It's definitely more stable on our gravel drive. We happened to have a good chunk to put down on it, too.
The bike looks [sort of] like this, only its fenders are all burgundy. Very slick!
I hope to have more pond pictures after the next rain. |
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• Jul. 18, 2008 - Beautifully Said, K-Lo
• Jul. 14, 2008 - The Puddles Connect
After two separate rain showers yesterday, we now have quite a sizable puddle/pond.
Compare photo A (today) to photo B (a week ago)
Photo A:
Photo B:
On the left side of this shot, you can see a little rivulet that oozes up out of the mud and into the "pond." Hubby thinks it is the runoff from the hillside.
The big girls demonstrate the current depth.
We don't have any rain forecast for the next few days, but we're hoping for more sudden showers like the ones we had this week. Our postman came to the door today and complimented our new pond. :) |
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• Jul. 13, 2008 - In Your Anger Do Not Sin
• Jul. 11, 2008 - Horrible: Human Trafficking Undercover Report
• Jul. 10, 2008 - No Rain Forecast for the Next 10 Days
• Jul. 9, 2008 - Sown and Mulched
Here's the pond area with the grass seed and straw down. Hubby worked very hard in the heat today to get this in before the next rain.
"Fish structures." Not hidey-holes.
Close up of fish structure #1:
The stone fish structure:
Obviously the water has evaporated a bit, but the pond holds water like a pair of rubber training pants holds...never mind. I need to get out more.
Did hubby not do an awesome job lining this thing with clay?
Behind the dam:
I wish I could get a good picture of the dam, but I have a hard time making it stand out from the surroundings in the photos.
Anybody know what kinds of butterflies these are? I don't have a nature guide to butterflies. What are they after here? Moisture?
This one's colorful:
UPDATE: Cabbage White Butterfly, perhaps? |
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• Jul. 9, 2008 - On Christian Activism
Since I've been blogging on the topic, I thought I'd link to Mark D. Roberts' discussion from 2005 of the National Association of Evangelicals document on Christian activity in the political realm. Read and analyze at your pleasure. I haven't read the document yet myself or I'd discuss it here, but I will say in brief that, though practical relief for the poor, oppressed, and broken are unquestionably part of our mandate, they are not the primary part. I also consider abortion a watershed issue. It is the political manifestation of a philosophical dividing point between very different views on humanity and its relationship to God.
ETA: As Dr. Roberts rightly addresses abortion, it is a *subset* of sanctity of life issues. But it truly is the first in the line-up, as it addresses human life at its very beginning and most vulnerable. I don't trust the principles of someone who claims to be for the little guy, then refuses to ban something as egregious as partial birth abortion.
UPDATE: Also, a little bone to pick: we're a representative republic, not a democracy. |
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• Jul. 9, 2008 - I Wasn't Too Far Off
• Jul. 8, 2008 - Lileks Zings Keillor Again
• Jul. 8, 2008 - Progressivism as Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
I listened to Bob Edwards Weekend on Sunday, followed by Interfaith Voices, and the Looming Food Shortage was worried about excessively on both programs.
Bob Edwards interviewed this guy. He is the author of a book titled The End of Food. (Follow-up to The End of Oil.) You read that right. We Are Running Out Of Food. Gets the heart pounding and the pulse fluttering, doesn't it?
In it, he raises the specter of total famine in Africa, which he speculates will no longer be able to grow enough food to feed its population (global warming being a part of this scenario, of course). Furthermore, he speculates that America will be unable to produce enough food to help other countries in famine. Final words of the interview: We may find we should have been worrying all along. Yes, even during what he deems the "golden age" of American food production, we shouldn't have been satisfied or content. We should have been worrying about the future decades hence!
The answer, according to this author: government, government and more government. And more flailing ourselves to do penance for environmental guilt. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Buy locally. Also, we should get in touch with our food. You've heard it all before.
Right after Bob Edwards Weekend comes Interfaith Voices. I listen to this program with a certain fascination of horror. I can't believe how people can get the words of Christ so thoroughly wrong and be so completely unaware of their error. But I digress.
Interfaith Voices is hosted by Maureen Fiedler, who I am sure is a lovely woman, but her voice invariably calls up images of this character. Their voices are very similar in timbre, at least as far as I can recall. My Trekkie days are long behind me. Of course, Kai Winn was supposed to be the Black-Hearted Arch-Conservative (Religious) Bigot so necessary to every t.v. program (the religious part being an optional extra-whammy), so I guess the comparison stops there. But I digress again.
Interfaith Voices also addressed the issue of a coming food shortage, and the moral obligation to assuage hunger. This moral obligation, the guests and host made clear, is not an individual one, but a general, societal one. Loving your neighbor should take place via the government, in other words. The discussion even floated the possibility of "social sin," under which every citizen is guilty of harmful governmental policies--or the sin of omission as well: failing to address some worldwide problem through policy.
What I pick up from these discussions is a sense of powerlessness and dread. I guess that's why political power is such a draw to people of this mindset. With political power, they think they can finally *do* something to usher in utopia! Doing something on their own initiative is not entertained as a possibility.
I find the idea of social sin wrong on so many levels that I can't even go into it here. I'm sure others have addressed this doctrinal error with far more clarity than I can bring to bear.
What I find so interesting, though, is the anxiousness expressed by all the interviewees. I *fully* understand not wanting to see mass starvation. The images of babies starving; stories of mothers holding their dying infants in their arms, unable to feed them; the descriptions of their anguished weeping; all these are seared into my heart from reports of famines past.
But why do we have to waste time petitioning the government before helping others? What would possess religiously funded hunger organizations to turn so readily to the government for a solution? That makes no sense to me. Focusing all one's efforts on national policy will result only in wasted time and money. We all know what a money-sucker our government is, and we all know how responsibly and efficiently (cough cough) it manages its current responsibilities. Public education, anyone? Social security? If members of Congress can't even keep themselves solvent, how are they supposed to feed the world?
Countless organizations are already in place through which Christians (and those of other faiths) can begin sending help *right now.* Why turn to the government for the answers to life, the universe and everything? For goodness' sake, the government in this country is put in place by *we the people*! Doesn't it follow then that we, the people, should have enough wisdom and initiative to address hunger as well? Not that we will ever solve all the world's problems--I think we have to recognize that we live in a fallen world--but we can do a great deal to alleviate the suffering of others just by giving of ourselves.
The problem with the thinking on display in the interview is that wisdom and initiative to take personal action eventually die if you pound into people's heads year after year that government is the moral emanation of the people, and that we have no individual, personal responsibility toward our neighbor. The government should do it all. Why *should* anyone care? Beyond getting angry that the government isn't doing anything, or is not doing enough? (And when the goal is utopia, it will *never* be enough.) Our moral culpability, through progressivism, has been placed on the shoulders of the Savior Government. And when has government ever operated on any level of efficiency, much less saved anyone? That stark reality feeds the progressive's feeling of powerlessness and dread, and thus continues the cycle of policy-as-anxiety-response.
Now to the anxiety itself. Having seen generalized anxiety disorder first-hand, and knowing how it operates on the mind, I have to wonder if certain key progressives suffer from it. Their policies are almost inevitably an anxiety response to some purported social crisis.
G.A.D. stirs up the body's chemistry to produce a fight or flight response, which in turn convinces the sufferer that there is some catastrophe looming. In other words, the anxiety response seeks to settle on a reason for its being.
G.A.D. sufferers are always trying to find a "might" as an explanation for the unremitting feeling of dread they experience. Perhaps a love one might die. Perhaps I might have a heart attack. Perhaps I will faint if I go out into public like this. Some even become afraid of leaving home. It's just one fear after another. Like a shooting gallery. You may try to shoot down the sufferer's fear as highly unlikely, to soothe their feelings; you might try firing off a comforting scripture, and you might even get frustrated with the ridiculous fears that never cease to pop up.
However, you have to realize it's the physical chemistry that's really the source of the problem--too much adrenaline. As long as adrenaline is flowing through a sufferer's system, she will naturally try to assign the fear response to some possible disaster. The sensation of fear breeds ever more fear, until the sufferer herself recognizes it for what it is, stops the feeding the mental fear spiral, and determines to "walk through" the symptoms until they subside.
Of course, we have no guarantee that some fears won't come to pass. Life offers no guarantees. No one can comfort a loved one with the words, "I'm not going to die." Of course you're going to die at some point and so will the person you are trying to comfort. Bad things may very well happen in a dark and fallen world. So no one can convince a sufferer of G.A.D. but herself that her fears are largely unfounded, and that "each day has enough trouble of its own"--thus, we should walk out our lives in trust, day by day, and be anxious about nothing, as the Lord has taught us, for He holds us in the palm of His hand.
Of course, not everybody of a progressive mindset suffers from a physical disorder, so maybe I'm a bit facetious here, although I must say I do not take G.A.D. lightly. I'm quite serious on that subject. It is a life-altering disorder. And I can't help but wonder if more than a few who claim the name of "progressive" do suffer with it. If so, more's the pity, and I do mean that. All this doomsaying, casting fearful glances toward the future, utter joylessness, and the tell-tale fury born of a sense of impotence could have, in some cases, a very simple explanation.
Not in most cases, though. It doesn't take an anxiety disorder, of course. Progressivism easily takes hold among human beings because of the tendencies of our fallen nature. We know we are culpable. We know we have fallen short of the glory of God.
Which is why the Interfaith Voices segment on Original Sin, following so soon after the one on "social sin," was a fascinating juxtaposition. Also, I was fascinated by the cynical attitude expressed towards "faith in the White House," given that the progressive vision is the ultimate melding of church and state. I mean, the imputation of "social sin" vs. a president's personal profession of faith? Come on! No contest there over which expression of religion is more dangerous to the public. But I digress yet again.
Anyway...attempts at self-atonement will always result in overreaching, in attempts to control others, in a perfectionist approach to life. Whereas honesty before God and our mirror leads to true freedom and joy--the joy of knowing that our sins have already been atoned for. And trust that He's got us. We don't need the government to atone for us through its ineffective policies, or to assuage our fears with empty promises.
That's good news, no? Reason to be joyful, not anxious. |
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• Jul. 6, 2008 - "Hairshirt Anti-humanism"
• Jul. 6, 2008 - We Have a Pond!
I know it looks like a giant mud puddle, but it really is a pond! Our pond holds water! This is very good news. Look for more state-of-the-pond updates after every rainy day.
As you will see, hubby has distributed the boulders to create handy seating areas, and used some of the timber he had to fell to make hidey-holes for fish. He didn't call them hidey-holes, incidentally; that's my unofficial term.
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• Jul. 6, 2008 - More'n Halfway to One
Fuzzy's seven months old now. He can sit independently, sniper-crawl just about anywhere, pull to standing, and bite mommy with his two bottom teeth (as he works on the upper ones, most likely). He's tasted rice cereal, gnawed on a peach, tried pureed sweet potatoes (two bitty thumbs down on that--or on anything pureed, for that matter), sucked on peeled grapes and squashed blueberries, and nibbled bits of mama's mashed potatoes. Oh, and I almost forgot that he chewed on a slice of cantaloupe the other day too.
See? He can sit up by himself now. (Pudge is expressing his displeasure over life in general, at least as it appears to one in a napless condition.)
We love you very much, Fuzzy! (And you too, Pudge!)
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