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Saturday, July 19, 2008

  • An American Crisis, cont.

    Book Antiqua - I shall conclude this paper with some miscellaneous remarks on the state of our affairs; and shall begin with asking the following question, Why is it that the enemy have left the New England provinces, and made these middle ones the seat of war? The answer is easy: New England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

    But, before the line of irrecoverable separation be drawn between us, let us reason the matter together: Your conduct is an invitation to the enemy, yet not one in a thousand of you has heart enough to join him. Howe is as much deceived by you as the American cause is injured by you. He expects you will all take up arms, and flock to his standard, with muskets on your shoulders. Your opinions are of no use to him, unless you support him personally, for 'tis soldiers, and not Tories, that he wants.

    I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, "Well! give me peace in my day." Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;" and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty. Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror; for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.

Friday, July 18, 2008

  • Creepiness

    Bodoni MT - Some people come across as creepy, why that is we may never know. Sometimes it is based upon how they look or are known to act. For the most part, when a person comes across as creepy there is a good reason for it. The question is what do you do when you meet a creepy person in a Christian setting? Recently, the members of the praise team have mentioned that a visitor randomly comes up to say unexpected things after Sunday Services. What is known about him is that he visits each church in the area until he is asked to leave and then goes to attend the others, unable to really commit to one church. Were it not for this behavior, it would be difficult to pick this guy out of a crowd of genuine people based on looks alone. So what do you do? Confront the man? He'd probably make the rounds of all the local churches and eventually come back. Nothing? If he is a little creepy in the first few weeks, I don't expect it to lessen just because he stays around for a few months.

    This is a day and age where even people of the cloth aren't immune from falling to sin. Perhaps we ought to focus on sound salvation, and not the number of people that walk through the doors each week. Maybe the creepy guy wants to help or thinks the unexpected comments are a good thing, but why can't he commit to a church already? Why do other churches seem to have the same problem with the man? I'm not saying we should have a no-creepy-people policy, Jesus wouldn't want that. (And if you look at the hairstyles of the members of the church you would know that green hair, tattoos, and piercings are fairly common.) We need a let's-deal-with-that-nagging-sin ministry. God will take care of the creepiness.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

  • My Dad

    Bell MT - When my little brother told me that I might find it interesting to watch last night's episode of Supernanny, I followed his suggestion. I saw something familiar in that family's struggles. The father had little or no relationship with his daughters others than to provide for their food and shelter. Things worked out for them, and now they have a relationship where they can talk. Growing up, I was the daddy's girl. My big sister took after my dad's side of the family and the two fought so much because they were so alike. Like any other human, my dad is not perfect. When my sister started fighting excessively, this was my dad's solution: get a beer and go drink it outside.

    When I was five, my little brother arrived. My dad knew just what to do. Take the boy to the farm, teach him things, and spend time with him. Why he never figured that the same trick would work for his daughters I never knew. Fast forward my childhood of mostly argueing and that blissful day when I stopped reacting to my sister's attempts to prompt me into fighting. The two eldest children are adults now. My older sister has mellowed out, but her temper is klingon-ish. She and her husband could be making wiser choices, but that's another story that probably won't get told here. She once told me that if she ever had children, she would never let them know their grandpa. Ouch. As for me and my dad, we might share the same address, hold a polite conversation for a minute or two, but other than the occasional drive, we haven't spent much time together. I had a solution for that. If he wouldn't show any interest in my hobbies, I'd take up one of his. Football. That's part of the reason why I became a Colts fan, that and we have only five free television channels.

    My dad is not a talkative man. As long as his blood pressure is low, things are okay and he does not have much to say. Should his blood pressure go up, he finds faults moreso than usual and he points each and every one of them out. This is my dad, I love the man, but he doesn't always make it easy. I know he loves me by the little things. When we lived in the old house I had begun to decorate my room with lighthouses. Three months after I had quit liking lighthouses he brings me a lighthouse lamp from a garage sale. He's been a little better about such things, manly supporting me with books in Spanish. He even asked me to translate a label for him. I pointed out that it was French, not Spanish on the label.

    To understand my dad, I had to learn more about his dad. I struggled to find a nice memory of grandpa most because he scared me so much. Eventually I recalled that he was known for carvings sticks into knives. I think we might have one around the house somewhere. I remember the time that grandpa tripped over a toy and used a blashphemy as a curse word to his grandchildren. He once accused my cousin of being a thief, for that she never forgave him. He was fond saying, "Quit eating so much or you're going to get fat." I'm told that grandpa never allowed his sons to clean their own rooms, instead always making his daughters do the work. Perhaps his roughness was the result of the war. Were it not for the bombs we dropped on Japan, grandpa would have been sent overseas to fight in the same war that killed his brother. I hear though, that great-grandpa was even worse than grandpa, but due to a routine surgery, great-grandpa mysteriously passed away when his son was very young.

    So there is much hope, my dad is a great improvement from his predecessors. In fact, during that episode of Supernanny he was right here on the computer. I get my lack of a sense of humor from him, but I didn't laugh when he said the scene where the father and daughter patched things up was scripted, even though I knew he meant it as a joke. I thought to myself, good for the two of you, while I wondered if my dad missed having that daddy's girl daughter. Somehow though, the little boy that he spent so much time with grew up and that relationship seemed to shrink. I don't know why I continue to try to please the man, I know it's not possible. I try to obey and to honor him as the Bible says but there are days when his blood pressure is high and it becomes very difficult to deal with him. Perhaps I understand that he is a country-boy living in a city and it frustrates him to no end. He has worked in a company over half his life and they are on the threshold of bankruptcy, and they would take us down with them. All a kid ever really wants is time. I'm certain that I'm not remembering all the good times or all the bad times. I'm just not remembering much time spent with my dad. I wonder if it is because I was the daddy's girl that I try so hard to put up with the lack of relationship and the steps to establishing a real relationship but he has to want what's missing, too.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

  • Panic

    Baskerville Old Face - (I can't think of anything to post, so I'll be continuing 'An American Crisis.)

    'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.

    As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances, which those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of. Our situation there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a narrow neck of land between the North River and the Hackensack. Our force was inconsiderable, being not one-fourth so great as Howe could bring against us. We had no army at hand to have relieved the garrison, had we shut ourselves up and stood on our defence. Our ammunition, light artillery, and the best part of our stores, had been removed, on the apprehension that Howe would endeavor to penetrate the Jerseys, in which case Fort Lee could be of no use to us; for it must occur to every thinking man, whether in the army or not, that these kind of field forts are only for temporary purposes, and last in use no longer than the enemy directs his force against the particular object which such forts are raised to defend. Such was our situation and condition at Fort Lee on the morning of the 20th of November, when an officer arrived with information that the enemy with 200 boats had landed about seven miles above; Major General [Nathaniel] Green, who commanded the garrison, immediately ordered them under arms, and sent express to General Washington at the town of Hackensack, distant by the way of the ferry = six miles. Our first object was to secure the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the river between the enemy and us, about six miles from us, and three from them. General Washington arrived in about three-quarters of an hour, and marched at the head of the troops towards the bridge, which place I expected we should have a brush for; however, they did not choose to dispute it with us, and the greatest part of our troops went over the bridge, the rest over the ferry, except some which passed at a mill on a small creek, between the bridge and the ferry, and made their way through some marshy grounds up to the town of Hackensack, and there passed the river. We brought off as much baggage as the wagons could contain, the rest was lost. The simple object was to bring off the garrison, and march them on till they could be strengthened by the Jersey or Pennsylvania militia, so as to be enabled to make a stand. We staid four days at Newark, collected our out-posts with some of the Jersey militia, and marched out twice to meet the enemy, on being informed that they were advancing, though our numbers were greatly inferior to theirs. Howe, in my little opinion, committed a great error in generalship in not throwing a body of forces off from Staten Island through Amboy, by which means he might have seized all our stores at Brunswick, and intercepted our march into Pennsylvania; but if we believe the power of hell to be limited, we must likewise believe that their agents are under some providential control.

    I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of our retreat to the Delaware; suffice it for the present to say, that both officers and men, though greatly harassed and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision, the inevitable consequences of a long retreat, bore it with a manly and martial spirit. All their wishes centred in one, which was, that the country would turn out and help them to drive the enemy back. Voltaire has remarked that King William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties and in action; the same remark may be made on General Washington, for the character fits him. There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public blessings, which we do not immediately see, that God hath blessed him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind that can even flourish upon care.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

  • The Real Life Superhero...

    Arial - Hollywood has been featuring super hero movies ever since Batman hit the big screen in the 1990's. Spiderman, Ironman, Superman, X-Men, The Hulk, and many other superhero movies have since landed on the big screen with even more on the way.

    The first superheros were near-perfect beings who selflessly helped others. Later superheros developed serious personal issues. Today superheros fly out of comic book pages and onto television screens everywhere.

    At the end of the day, Batman doesn't fight away the thief and Superman doesn't stop every speeding train. There isn't a friendly neighborhood Spiderman or a team of X-Men to defend the innocent. Our real life heroes wear uniforms of all colors. They save lives, put out fires, see to justice, comfort people with aching hearts, ease the pain of ailing, find lost children, help the homeless, dig people out of their destroyed homes and places of work, defend their homeland by fighting overseas, volunteer their time, and many other things.

    There was this one guy though, He turned water into wine, walked on water, healed the sick, cured the paralyzed, brought sight to the blind, calmed a storm, raised the dead, knew about the woman at the well, multiplied a single lunch to fill hundreds of people and then had some left over, and many other things not the least of which was to come back to life after He had died. His very name is wonderful to those that believe in Him and a curse word to the callous, it can stir up animosity like few other things can. He does the things that He says he will do, and He said that He would one day be coming back. Are you ready for that day or are you hoping it is still far off? Every minute that passes now is a minute closer to that day. You definately do not want to be on the wrong side when He comes back!