Three Little Lies by Danielle Stewart - a Netgalley Review

Three Little Lies is a very engrossing read from the very beginning! There is no time lost getting into the story; the author grabbed the reader right at the start. The characters are fully drawn and very engaging, the story line is easy to follow and clearly presented. The book continues at a lively pace throughout, with each new development in the story increasing the suspense and building the reader's engagement with the characters and their dilemma. There are unexpected twists in the story right up until the very end. I must say that the ending doesn't follow logic and was very disappointing to me as a reader, seeming somewhat contrived and agenda-driven instead of following the tone set by the rest of the novel. Still, overall, I enjoyed getting acquainted with these characters and seeing their story unfold.  

2023 Men

One of the things that has filled my mind since Sunday’s big family event (The wedding of AnnaGrace Turrentine and Zachary Harper) is a new appreciation of men.

I’ve been blessed with so many outstanding men in my life - beginning with my own father, grandfather, and uncles and going up through all the men (old and young) I watched Sunday demonstrating what Godly manhood and masculinity means. It is not easy to be a man in 2023. Their inborn nature is being disparaged by much of society. They are being pressured to ignore their natural and admirable tendency to provide for and protect those around them.

Before the wedding I saw the beautiful young bride, our granddaughter, reach around the door to hold hands with her handsome groom without visual connection. They were surrounded by some of the most important men in their lives. These men were there because of their love for the young couple, because of their sense of responsibility to the young couple, by their need to provide a new generation with their life experience of our human need for God's love in our relationships. They were there to pray for the couple's impending marriage.

The Groom's father - a Baptist pastor, married for over 30 years

The Bride's father - A Baptist deacon and Bible teacher, married for over 30 years

The Groom's uncle - a Baptist pastor, married for more than 30 years.

The Bride's maternal grandfather - A Baptist pastor, married for 58 years.

The Bride's paternal grandfather - A Methodist pastor, married for 59 3/4 years.

It was a holy moment.

As the prayers ended, I turned to look at the yard and saw a line of 12 tuxedoed men and one tuxedoed little boy being photographed: The Groom, his 11 attendants, and the child attendant tasked with preceding the Bride down the aisle blowing bubbles. That little boy is my great grandson; five of the groomsmen are my grandsons; the groom will be my grandson at the end of the ceremony. My son, who is also the father of the bride and tuxedoed as well, was standing just off-camera ready to help corral the active bubble-boy, his grandson. I was looking at 14 more amazing specimens of GOOD and admirable masculinity!

Side Note: Most of the women in the lives of the couple had taken care of the details to make the wedding meaningful and beautiful. They had planned, decorated, cooked, advised, dressed, combed, made up... I will probably write later about their importance and their many contributions to the day as well as to our lives.

Ruminations on "Why the Big Divide"

(Incomplete at this point -- to be continued later.)

I have often thought (and said) that one reason long-married couples often grow apart is that they begin early in their marriage trying to balance each other out. For example: If one is a spendthrift, the other often becomes overly frugal in response. If one is quiet in social situations, the other sometimes tries to "pick up the slack" by being too talkative. Slowly the couple become opposites.

Likewise, I think that social media is somewhat responsible for the cultural divide in our world today. When a user expresses an interest in a particular subject or an opinion on a topic, the platform-managers direct more related content to that person's page. The user gets more and more affirmation for his/her opinion, He/she sees more and content related to that one interest. Consequently, he/she begins to feel even more strongly on the subject and has less and less connection to people with other interests and other opinions. 

 The 11th deadline of the year has arrived. The prompt for this poem in the Poetry group "Deadlines for Writers" is "light." Here's my entry. 

Equity

The dark does not judge. Equity’s there.

A rose and a weed look the same.

Not wilted or fresh, not ghastly or fair;

Nothing calling for blame or acclaim.

 

There’s comfort for all there in the dark;

Flaws are amorphous and vague in shadow.

The shirt with the stain will do just fine;

The crisp sparkling clean one’s no better.

****

Darkness, the tyrant, won’t give up his throne.

He’ll keep vices and virtues in shade

Until forced to retreat by the tiniest light.

That shows coal lumps differ from jade. 

****

By light, it’s clear that the better shirt

Is the one without the stain.

It’s clear that the rose is red and fair;

That the vice is attached to a chain.

****

Living in light is better by far.

Than feeling our way in the dark.

To see, in full, what we’re walking toward

To be able to aim for a mark.

2020 Election: Why I Voted for Trump

 From Norma Bruce (Facebook 12/14/2020):

In 2016, I was not an enthusiastic Trump supporter. But I saw results in his presidency I hadn't seen in my entire life.

1. Lots of presidents have claimed to be supporters of the unborn, the weakest and most fragile of all Americans. He's the only President who has been their advocate, both in supporting the larger political movements and organizations, but in attempting to reduce the demonic threat of Planned Parenthood. I'm a one issue voter, because without life, the other advantages of being an American don't matter. His was not just a campaign promise. He took action and provided moral support.

2. Being a Trump supporter is an education like we've never had before. He was not indebted to either party and we really saw the fangs and claws come out when he began calling out the good old boys' club that is DC politicking. We saw the unelected bureaucrats rise up and defend their lives at the public trough. We knew the legislatures at the state and federal level had become very weak, but we really took notice on how the most insignificant judge on the lowest court could take on the president and prevent him from undoing the shady executive orders of the previous president.

3. We began to see why his slogan "Make America Great Again" was such an anathema to Democrats, increasingly controlled by its left flank. Why the red hats had to be snatched from heads, and ugly arguments started. Why the pink hats had to make women look like blood thirsty baby killers.

3-a The United States has been horribly weakened by foreign infiltrators who fund and support Communist movements within. These movements rewrite history and try to destroy positive gains in the last decades in race relations, class distinctions, and age discrimination.

3-b Hard work and ambition were renamed by these demonic forces as "white privilege" even as blacks had become some of the wealthiest opinion makers and most powerful politicians in our country, and there are 2 full time cable channels (all white) devoted just the Spanish language programming.

3-c Every difference in culture or preference or speech was shouted down as microaggression and dog whistles.

3-d Minorities were demeaned by the Democrats and Never Trumpers as being helpless victims if they tried to leave the party or start a successful business.

3-e The police were caricatured as criminals even though statistics for police violence were at an all time low, and black on black crime was rising again. The leftists were so panicked that with the help of members of Congress, they began demands to "defund" the police and replace them with social workers, as though criminals were just misunderstood children.

3-f National pass times and leisure industries like sports, late night TV "comedy," social media, theatre, movies and the overwhelming liberal and classist academe industry joined forces to ridicule and finger point at the outsider in the White House, who knew a better way to reduce the size of government and raise incomes for all.

3-g While Trump worked quietly to get a better balance in the courts, he was very successful, and unless the new appointees lose their love for the Constitution, future Americans will not have the burden of a plastic ever changing law based on the feelings and personalities of the judges.

3-h The international events have been incredible. The Leftists gnashed their teeth when Trump soothed the little North Korean despot, and they swore it would be WWIII. Trump got us out of ridiculous international agreements which would allow China and India to move ahead, while we Americans paid higher taxes for their pollution. The accomplishments in the Middle East should be his biggest legacy and the previous presidents from Carter to Clinton to Bush to Obama, should hang their heads in shame for at least not moving the capital of Israel as they all promised and then "forgot" has their loyalty to Muslim dictators took over.

3-i The virus that began in Wuhan, China, and spread all over the world, the leftists finally had to blame on President Trump. They encouraged damaging lockdowns and then snarled when the economy rebounded in the summer. His operation Warp Speed they’ve tried to belittle and demean because it’s never been done before as a business man would tackle a problem. The Left can’t let this stand, and will blame every death on Trump rather than those politicians who continued well into March to welcome foreigners (especially Chinese) into their cities where it spread beyond control.

4. Perhaps we were most educated about the role of media in our culture and politics. Never (with the exception of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln) has a FLOTUS been so maligned or ignored, criticized for her accent, her good works, and even her Christmas decor! Never has a president with Jewish in-laws and grandchildren been so compared to Hitler (although they did it to Bush also)--but then, have we ever had a President with a Jewish daughter? The media criticized his business acumen and properties, while ignoring the clear criminal behavior of Joe and Jim Biden, and Hunter Biden. We saw a news media who were completely not interested in investigation, truth, history, the Constitution, or anything other than the commands from above, like Zucker on CNN. Although we have many more outlets for information, with hundreds, maybe thousands of podcasts, blogs, vlogs, "expert witnesses," independent researchers and writers, we also have a constipated traditional media begging for clicks on their websites, and being wolves in sheepskins. Anyone with an original thought is fired, or "cancelled."

5. We've seen how words that used to have meaning, like racist, Nazi, white supremacist, terrorist, have all been made meaningless by the new "woke" vocabulary, pieces of rope on garage doors, hoaxes perpetrated with great attention like Jesse Smollet's, when in fact President Trump has done more for minorities in education, prison sentences, rising income and lower unemployment than any president in my life time. And he's done it by NOT treating them as helpless victims who need government assistance. He's treated them as people worthy of respect--and for that he's called a Nazi. As an aside, as part of our education we've learned that half of liberal Americans don't know that a National Socialist (Nazi) and a Communist are brothers under the skin, one with local plans to invade and take over, and the other with global plans. Either way, Trump has done neither--hasn't invaded any countries with which we share a border, and he hasn't worked with China to infiltrated other countries.

And that's a few of the reasons I'm standing by the President. You can add your own thoughts for those programs or ideas that have educated you.

Opinions and Social Media

In times like these it is important to remember anyone's Facebook post is the equivalent of an individual comment during an old-fashioned conversation. In a conversation, everybody chimes in about what they've heard, what they think about what they've heard, what they've read and what they think about what they've read. Some people's comments are more likely to be accurate that other people's comments simply by the difference in personality.

We have all learned through life experience to make an internal evaluation of things we hear in conversation. The same is true of a Facebook conversation. We don't believe everything we hear. We value some opinions more than others based on experience with the person making the comment. Some comments you respond to with a smile - which can indicate dismissal or simply acknowledgment of the person if not the actual comment; some comments require your assenting or dissenting response. Some comments are so off the wall that you just look around and direct your attention another way to another conversation.

Some people, inexplicably, misunderstand benign comments and assume malicious intent; some have a hidden agenda behind every comment; some enjoy introducing controversy; but I believe that most of us simply want to share ideas with our fellow human beings. It's what people do. We understand our world through mulling various viewpoints and bits of information. Without accompanying facial expressions and bodily gestures, that communication can be clumsy and less than effective.

It is important, IMHO, that we, as mature adults, give the benefit of the doubt to others, loving them as brothers and sisters even when we disagree with what they say or when we believe that they hold ill feelings toward us for something we have said.

Sorry. Too much on this topic. It just bothers me to see strained relationships over simple miscommunications. Through social media, we are witness to more relationship stresses than we had been before the advent of this technology.

9/11/2019

For almost 3000 Americans, 9/11/01 was simply a regular day. Some went to work expecting a routine workday. Some went to the airport in order to meet a business need or celebrate a family occasion. Some were keeping a routine appointment of some kind. Some were taken there in their mother's/father's arms to be cared for while their parents worked. All of them left home that morning not knowing that they had seen their loved ones for the last time. Their lives were needlessly taken away because of the evil plans of other people - and because of the action those perpetrators took based on WHAT THEY BELIEVED.

Don't tell me "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe it sincerely." That is a HUGE fallacy. It DOES matter what you believe. It DOES matter when you believe that YOU should determine how others should live their lives or meet their deaths. It DOES matter when people allow some organization (be it the government or some religious/social hierarchy) to legislate their personal choices. God bless the thousands of His children whose lives were lost and the tens of thousands of His children who were negatively impacted that day because of the mistaken, but strongly held, beliefs of a few other people.

God give us the wisdom to use the lessons learned from that terrible day to build a kinder, gentler society. God give us the strength to resist evil in whatever form it presents itself.

The Hard Life in 2019 America

When did stating observable facts and holding public figures accountable for doing their jobs become "racist"?

When did upholding our immigration laws become "anti-immigrant?"

When did disagreement become "hate?"

When did it become not only acceptable but desirable for our government to establish entitlements and privileges for certain groups of people and withhold those entitlements and privileges from other groups of people based on ethnicity or race?

When did our government get the right to use taxpayers' hard-earned money to support organizations that serve only small selected portions (identity groups) of the population?

Intelligent (and not-so-intelligent) people have learned to use our eyes to discern observable features of others, such as what sex, ethnicity, etc they are, so that we can use pronouns and other language cues to facilitate communication. Must we now begin every communication with a new acquaintance with inquiries about their "gender" or "gender identity" before we can begin meaningful conversation and avoid using "offensive" pronouns?

We are making life unnecessarily hard!

Celebrity Gossip or News?

On my comcast homepage as I write, these are the top"news" stories: 1)Stressed out Witherspoon quits job." 2) Van Halen: I'm going to rehab for fans. 3) Selma Hayak engaged and expecting. 4) NHL Player suspended for stick to face. 5) Winslet denies diet doctor claims, wins.

Hey, "News" editors, I have NEWS for you. This is not NEWS! This is celebrity gossip. News would be information about the war, the economy, government policy, and other events that have more significance that the posterior portions of a rat's anatomy!

The Files of the Bureaucracy

I regularly read the book excerpts at Delancey Place. One day recently they featured an excerpt from Niall Ferguson, Cash Nexus, Basic, 2001, pp. 90-91.

The book told how bureaucracy grew after the Industrial Revolution in Europe.

" In 1891 total government personnel amounted to less than 2 percent of the total labor force in Britain. ... By the 1920s public employment exceeded 5 per cent of the workforce in Italy, 6 per cent in Britain and 8 per cent in Germany:"

This bureaucracy was often thought to be very rational: 'rules, means, ends, and matter-of-factness dominate its bearing,' Yet disillusionment with it was growing.

"The reality of modern bureaucracy turned out to be closer to Kafka's Castle, in which enigmatic files are trundled up and down grey corridors, being allocated apparently at random to faceless pen-pushers behind identical doors. ... "

That description sounds disturbingly familiar to me. Especially effective in this excerpt was a story told by Elias Canetti of an episode he witnessed during a violent political riot in Vienna in 1927.

(Canetti) vividly recollected seeing a distraught official outside the burning Palace of Justice, 'flailing his arms and moaning over and over again':" 'The files are burning! All the files.'" 'Better files than people!' I told him, but that did not interest him; all he could think of was the files. ... He was inconsolable. I found him comical, even in this situation. But I was also annoyed. 'They've been shooting down people!' I said angrily, 'and you're carrying on about the files!' He looked at me as if I weren't there and wailed repeatedly: 'The files are burning! All the files!'" The files had become an end in themselves.

This story has stayed in my mind replaying itself again at odd times. It has several layers of lessons. The obvious one, of course, is the one that Canetti sought to teach by telling the story - The files had become an end in themselves. As human beings in a highly developed and very busy society, we have to work at making sure the means to our goals don't become goals in themselves. As one motivational expert once said, "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."


As a retired teacher, as the mother of a working teacher and two principals, as a sister of two working teachers, as an aunt of a working teacher, as a cousin of another retired teacher, as an other-relative of at least 7 or 8 educators, as a friend of numerous other people who have dedicated their lives to teaching children: I am aware that the bureaucracy of public education is causing many dedicated educators to concentrate on "the files" while the living, breathing, two-legged, representations of our future are being reduced to ashes.

Airport Security Profiling Muslims-Americans?

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has had a spate of letters to the editor recently about the supposed profiling used by the security screeners at Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport. (BTW, I am not going to spend an hour linking everything here -- Google or Yahoo can help you if you are inclined to follow up on any of this)

Response letters poured into the AJC after a self-proclaimed "Muslim American" woman wrote an op-ed article complaining that she was selected for closer inspection at the airport because of her head covering. She perceived her treatment as profiling of Muslims. [the title of her letter in the @issue section of the paper was entitled "Muslim Americans are Americans, too" if you want to look it up.]

The AJC printed several response letters. One stated,

I, a 5 foot, 120 pound, 46 year old Caucasion woman, have been selected to be searched three times since Sept. 11 while traveling on business......perhaps Naureen Kamdar should be grateful that her treatment was no different from mine......or maye we should all get angry because 99 percent of terorists are young men from a handful of countries, and everyone not fitting their profile should be left alone...

Another printed response was from a middle-aged woman with artificial knees that routinely cause the airport security alarm to sound. She describes the security procedures she endures each time then says,

...my knee replacement cohorts have never committed any acts of terrorism, yet we are singled out the be 'hounded and humiliated' every time we fly. Naureen Kamdar did not follow instructions so she earned a trip to the high risk box. It had everything to do with her lack of intial cooperation and nothing to do with her head scarf.......If she wants to use her journalism skills to reduce the perceived intolerance toward Muslim Americans, she should exhort her co-religionists to condemn those 'twisted minds' who use Islam as an excuse to kill. It is they who are shaming Islam, and the good people of the faith should not tolerate it.

The words in single quotes above were taken from Ms Kamdar's original op-ed article.

Another letter stated,

The fact that (she) was searched in response to her actions....is not something unusual. I travel a lot. I have to go through luggage checks, laptop checks, shoe checks, and sometimes personal body checks weekly. I do not look anything like a Middle Eastern Muslim. I look like a middle-aged, overweight blond business man trying to make a living. When I travel I have one wish, and that is to not be ensnared into someone's so-called martyrdom.

I can say "Amen" to the last statement. I will also add that I had the experience about a year ago of being taken to that "high risk" area, searched thoroughly and made to wait for a female security person who "patted me down." I am a 65-year-old white Christian-American female accompanied by a 65-year-old white Christian-American bald-headed man. I did not feel "hounded and humiliated" by this treatment. I realized that, like Ms Kamdar, the procedure was initiated by something irregular in my passage through the security gate. My irregularity was in my paperwork; hers was in her actions and attitude. I had allowed enough time at the airport that this extra security measure did not cause undue stress; she had "cut it too close" time-wise and lost her perspective. The stress she experienced was the result of her own attitude and the fact that she didn't follow instructions to allow time at the airport before her flight.

They're Singing My Song - Part II

Earlier today I wrote Part I of this post. You might need to scroll down and read that post as background for this one.

The other reading selection I referred to in that post was an Associated Press article by David Crary, titled Study: College Kids Increasingly Selfish. Mr. Crary refers to a comprehensive study by five psychologists who studied 16,475 college students between 1982 and 2006 at San Diego State University.

Their findings indicate that the scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory have risen steadily since the test was introduced in 1982. One of the authors commented that "narcissism can have negative consequence for society, including the breakddown of close relationshjips with others."

Typically narcissists are:

-- likely to have relationships that are short-lived

---at risk for infidelity

---lacking in emotional warmth

---engage in game-playing, dishonesty, over-controlling, and violent behaviors

Narcissists also tend to:

---lack empathy for others

---react aggressively to criticism

---favor self-promotion over helping others

This is a perfect description of many of the "entitled" children that our society has produced since we began the "self-esteem" movement in the 70s. Sadly these students have grown up to be , according to Professor Jean Twenge, "more confident, assertive, entitled -- and more miserable" than students of previous generations.

When the family became "child-centered" as opposed to "family-centered", the seed was planted for narcissistic personalities to grow. When these children went to school and were praised and rewarded regardless of effort or accomplishment, the seed was watered. The sun shone brightly on the growing plants when the students were consistently and ardently protected from the slightest embarrassment, discomfort or effort. The kudzu has taken over the fields. We have grown a generation of narcissists!

They're Singing My Song- Part I

If you listen, you can hear my old song being sung in many places today. Since the late 70s, when the current parenting and teaching philosophy, which values self-esteem more than actual accomplishment and which offers tangible rewards for every semblance of an effort, I have been a frequent (and occasionally vocal) soloist.

I have often spoken and written about the dangers of teaching children to desire only tangible rewards. Real adult life has few tangible rewards.

I have often urged fellow educators to praise children only when the they have WORKED to accomplish something that was hard. When they are praised for "smiling right" (my principal once told me I should pass a child who did nothing to earn a grade because "surely he smiled right"!), children only learn that effort is not worthwhile.

I have been puzzled by the trend in recent years to make awards totally meaningless by giving "awards" to every participant no matter how little was actually accomplished. What does the award mean to the student who has worked and actually learned something and given a good presentation of that knowledge? Nothing, that's what. What will the student who did nothing meaningful but also got an award learn? He/she will learn that only fools work to accomplish something.

Also puzzling and troubling to me is the requirement that children give valentines to every child in the class -- no matter how rude and unpleasant a child is to others, he will receive declarations of love from the other children. How will he learn that his behaviors are undesirable? He won't. What will the valentines mean to any of the children? Nothing.

Uh Oh! I have got in sermon mode here. My intention was to present here two recent reading selections realted to these issues that I believe affect the tone and nature of our entire society.

I found the first reading selection at The Weekly Scheiss . This blogger writes about a group of students she worked with in a higher education class. She says this about her under-35 students: (ellipses indicate where I have edited for conciseness)

...they had teachers who were loving and kind and understanding and never assigned homework and really didn't force their fragile-egoed little students to do much of anything except sing and draw and scamper and play. Their classrooms were full of hugs and positive assertations and read-alouds about the holiday traditions of everycultureunderthesunexceptours...

. . . . They could put their names on their papers, or not, it really didn't matter. They could fill out a worksheet, or not. It was being given the CHOICE that was the important thing. Everyone was equally special. Everyone was equally gifted. Everyone was equally deserving of privileges.

...There were few expectations, no consequences, and nobody was better than anybody else. It was all about FEELINGS....

Most of them washed out in high school. I do have a handful of students with a high school diploma, although I'm wondering what it stands for as they are my lowest achievers....Oh, and in case you are curious as to what these students think of those smiling kind-hearted teachers down in lower elementary who never made a sweet little child do things if he didn't WANT to.. . . they hate their guts. "Why didn't she make me do the math sheets? I'm 32 years old and I don't even know my multiplication tables. " "I wish she'd shown me how to label and organize my stuff. I still can't do it. I got into bad habits in fourth grade and it was just too easy to let them get worse. Nobody made me do it. Nobody MADE ME. Now, I can't make myself do it.".... "Miss ______ told Mom not to force me to read because it might make me hate it. Hell, if somebody had forced me to read, maybe I could read better than a little kid NOW.".......

Parents and teachers, are you tired of the "entitled" attitude of children all around you? Those who are convinced that their opinions are just as valid as that of any expert who has studied whatever-the-subject-is for a lifetime? That "self-esteem" has been taught and fostered by his/her parents and teachers. Do you wonder about all the sociopathic (uncaring that other people have feelings and wishes too) behaviors in society? Look back to the parenting/teaching philosophies of the last 25 years or so.

Later today, I will share an article from this morning's AJC about a recent study done at San Diego State University. They have learned most of the words to my song too! Maybe we are moving past my solo and small ensemble performances. Maybe a concert choir is being assembled at last!

Thursday Thirteen - Edition 30 - Thirteen Facts/Opinions about the NCLB Law

Thirteen Things Facts/Opinions about the No Child Left Behind Act(Just MHO!*) 1....It sounds well-intentioned. 2....It claims to give parents more choices. 3....It requires more accountability for results. 4....It seeks to lift the learning levels of students who have been inefficient and underachieving learners. 5....It often raises the learning level of those underachievers. 6....Statistics show that previously lower-achieving students are scoring higher on standardized tests. 7....It ignores the needs of efficient learners and high-achieving students. 8....It "leaves behind" the gifted children -- those who crave learning opportunities that challenge them to expand their minds. 9....Teaching the arts, foreign languages and other "non-essentials" is by necessity shortchanged in order to teach to the standardized tests in reading and math - the primary focus of the law. 10....Many states cannot/do not fully fund the program as it is set up - especially the requirements for "highly qualified" teachers in every classroom. 11....It erodes state and local control of education. 12....The incentive to improve schools is frustrated because lower-performing schools get more funding. 13....Educator morale seems to be deteriorating since its beginning. *My Humble Opinion

Child Welfare System - Jim Wooten

Jim Wooten writes a thrice-weekly column for the @Issue section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He sometimes gives me food for thought. Consider this quote from a column this week.

We have pretended for an awful long time that protection of children is the primary concern of social policy. it really isn't -- and hasn't been for decades.

The primary concern is to sexually emancipate adults from respnsibility for children. Between a welfare system designed to devalue men by marrying women to government - except for the purposes of conception -- and a fanatical 30-year abortion war to enshrine the absurd premise that, for some months at least, a
woman is free to dispose of human life, no questions asked, the best interest of the child has been the least of policy concerns.

There is more in this opinion piece; but I thought these two paragraphs were worth repeating and mulling.