This Sharyl Attkisson Ted Talks video on fake news is just under 10 minutes and worth watching:
Quit buying into other people’s bullshit
Heather Wilhelm wrote an interesting piece on the growing attacks on masculinity and boys in America. She states:
In short, in our culture, International Women’s Day was pretty much like any other day. In America, cheers for women abound. Girls are often praised, in fact, just for being girls. They’ve been long oppressed, we’re told; we need to eternally shore them up. “Girls today are told that they can do anything, be anyone,” actor Michael Ian Black recently wrote in a much-discussed New York Times op-ed.
They’ve absorbed the message: They’re outperforming boys in school at every level. But it isn’t just about performance. To be a girl today is to be the beneficiary of decades of conversation about the complexities of womanhood, its many forms and expressions.
For boys, it’s a dramatically different story. The title of Black’s op-ed, in case you’re wondering, is “The Boys Are Not All Right.”
If you’re a parent to multiple boys in this day and age, perhaps you know the drill: Every once in a while, a friendly-yet-awestruck stranger will approach and publicly note the apparently terrifying gender of your children. It happens more often than you might think. On planes. In restaurants. At Target. “Oh, my goodness! You have all boys? ALL BOYS? I’m so sorry!” Insert a pause, a dramatic gasp, and a knowing/troubled look here. The weirdest part comes when they stand and wait for you to agree.
“Boys are fantastic,” I usually say, moving right along. Alas, not everyone thinks so.
As one who grew up in the midst of the great feminist revolution in the 60s and 70s, where we are at with gender issues is exactly where the rabid feminists of the 60s dreamed we would be. It’s a world controlled by harping feminists dictating, using the most “dickish” antics, propaganda and shameless mob tactics to silence men and enforce their feminist dictates.
Any who dare to challenge the strident feminist sanctified mouthpieces will be attacked, face having their character and career viciously attacked and have their very job threatened. The feminist witch covens will seek to destroy you or anyone else, who dares challenge their views,policies or mob tactics. And the mainstream media, Leftist establishment and even many conservatives and Republicans (especially women) will fall right in line with the feminists’ propaganda stormtrooper media blitzkriegs. New buzzwords and semantical word games always play big in these feminist attacks. (Like in the overwrought “MeToo” charade designed to cast all men as rapists).
Masculinity was a target of the feminist movement from the start, so those who decry that feminism was about “equal opportunity” for women or about promoting “women’s rights” are sadly deluded. The movement was always about destroying traditional male norms (the evil patriarchy) in regards to male behavior and replacing male roles in all aspects of society, from the nuclear family to the highest positions of power with new feminist-approved feminist behavior and feminist-designed feminist roles. Males have no standing in the feminist utopian power structure, but serve only as useful henpecked supporters of feminist causes.
This attack on boys and masculinity has been going on in America since the 1980s – it’s not new. I wrote a blog post recently titled, Boys, and it’s the truth about how my sons were little hellions, as toddlers. What I didn’t state was I was glad they were active, curious and exploring their world. In 2013, I wrote a blog post, Control of the Home Roost. Upon rereading it, I admit to making some sweeping judgements on ADD and ADHD, which I think were a bit too strident, like stating I think ADD and ADHD are total bullshit, made-up ailments. However, there’s growing research to support the assertion that the abuse of misdiagnosis and overmedication of boys is very high in America. I wrote:
“We’ve got way too many parents who have never learned any self-restraint, self-discipline or how to follow a routine and then you stick kids into this chaotic mix and naturally the more disordered the home routine, the worse the kids behave. Set some rules and a routine and the vast majority of kids thrive and kids with problems benefit the most from a structured routine and consistent discipline. We all thrive if there is order in our lives”
https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/12/18/control-of-the-home-roost/
Well, I still believe this is the truth and I ended that blog post with some blunt statements, which I also still believe are the truth:
“You want a simple solution – Quit buying into other people’s bullshit! Think for yourself! Quit listening to so many celebrity experts, mental health experts, and commercials selling magic pills. Make your family the central focus of your life. Start by learning to live by a routine and some rules yourself, then expand out to getting some organization in your family’s routine. American culture is in chaos, because American homes are in chaos – it’s way past time for American women to regain control of the home roost.”
https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/12/18/control-of-the-home-roost/
Now there’s some advice that should be emblazoned on billboards all across America in loud caps:
QUIT BUYING INTO OTHER PEOPLE’S BULLSHIT!!!
Heck, if enough Americans embraced and took that advice to heart, it could revolutionize America very quickly, LOL…
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Nasty Women
My good cheer message: “Be Kind”
Ran to my local Walmart this morning and I found the perfect good cheer message with this $1.44 little wall plaque in the Easter section:
It’s so cute, I had to buy it, of course. Now, to figure out where to hang it near my desk here:-)
Home found – on hutch above my computer desk, so I can look at it as I blog, lol:
Filed under General Interest, Inspirations
Pie in the sky musings…
In many past blog posts, I’ve mentioned my PA Dutch (not Amish, but PA Germans) heritage. My father’s family settled in northeastern PA, before the Revolutionary War, making my family tree’s roots in the Pocono Mountain soil very deep. While many of these PA Dutch relatives and neighbors greatly influenced my life, I have always felt truly fortunate that God blessed me with what I have always considered a wise, Jewish grandmother figure too (mentioned in previous blog posts: here, here, here, here). My childhood UCC Reformed pastor was married to a lovely Jewish lady from New York City, who was educated at Teachers College Columbia University.
The parsonage for St. Matthew’s UCC Church in Kunkletown was not next-door to the church, but was on the edge of the village (yes, Kunkletown was officially designated a “village” in PA):
Hamlets and Villages[edit]
Villages in Pennsylvania are often small communities within a township that chose not to incorporate into a borough. Many villages are identified by the familiar PennDOT sign along a state highway. Lahaska is an example of typical village in suburbanPennsylvania.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Pennsylvania
The parsonage was directly across the road from my childhood home.
Our pastor and his wife. Rev. and Mrs. Boehner, had collected a very nice home library, which Mrs. Boehner kept meticulously organized and maintained. They also subscribed to several magazines, some of which their subscription went back to the 1920s. When Rev. Boehner retired in 1969, he turned a building next to the parsonage, which he had built for his woodworking, into a small retirement home. In this small open floor plan design, with a small kitchen area, dining area, and living room area, they designed a long wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, with a built-in desk area centered along the wall, to showcase their home library. Mrs. Boehner had her piano on one end of the living room too, which added to the air of culture, when you walked into their home.
Mrs. Boehner dedicated her life to doing good works, in a tradition long familiar in pastors’ wives. She also became neighborhood children’s go-to source when writing school reports or needing information. Kunkletown did not have a public library and I believe the nearest public library, when I was a kid, was in Stroudsburg, PA. (half-hour drive away) Later there was a local branch in Brodheadsville, PA (10 miles away). Mrs. Boehner allowed us to use their home library like our own personal library and she graciously served as our volunteer librarian, project advisor and mentor with teaching us how to research topics.
Often, if we told Mrs. Boehner our report topic, she would search her home library and magazine collection, which she had organized on small bookcases in their attic, and she would have the stack of books and magazines, with article pages bookmarked, waiting for us. If we wanted to do some sleuthing ourselves, she allowed us to scamper up their attic ladder and spend hours up there looking through her magazine collection. She often would climb up to check on us or join us in our efforts. She was a great teacher.
By the time I was a teenager, she had singled me out as her favorite pupil and I am thankful everyday for the efforts she put into teaching me to think about many things larger than my little village. She would often have books and magazines, neatly stacked, waiting for me, where she would smile and say, “Susie, I thought of you when I read this.”, then she’d proceed to explain an article or a book or often a quote she had jotted down, which she thought was memorable or important to what she believed was the best education – a classic liberal arts education.
She allowed me to borrow her Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and of course, I have a copy of my own now. She told me that it would be a good idea if I started a notebook to keep my favorite quotations all in one place. I immediately got a Mead spiral organizer notebook, with pockets to serve as my very own quote notebook. I still have it:
Mrs. Boehner subscribed to Yankee Magazine, often having articles marked, in the latest one, waiting for me to read. I developed a soft spot in my heart for that Yankee Magazine and later their books. Even though Yankee Magazine is about New England, I felt a deep connection to much of the homespun advice and stories. Her love of Yankee Magazine led to my love of it too, but also my interest in learning how “everything” was done in the “olden days”. I acquire books like:
And, another fascination of mine is what nowadays they call “repurposing”. That is the process of taking old junk and turning it into some sort of other usable item. I think this book title is more honest:
However, you might find real gems, so a book like this is handy too:
All of this brings me to the one thing that I laid claim to as a definitive PA Dutch habit – one I grew up embracing wholeheartedly and one my husband never understood, no matter how often I told him, “Pie is the best thing to eat for breakfast. PERIOD!” I grew up eating pie for breakfast, even though my mother cooked traditional breakfast spreads and we had plenty of cold cereal, oatmeal and even Cream of Wheat options to choose from.
My favorite pies for breakfast were shoofly pie, which is the PA Dutch molasses crumb pie and funny cake, which only the PA Dutch would embrace, with its total disregard for piling in as many extra calories and fat into one dessert as possible. Funny cake is yellow cake, marbled with chocolate syrup, which pools in a nice gooey layer on the bottom, inside a flaky pie shell – yes, it’s a cake baked in a pie shell. I used to bake both often when my kids were little.
Funny Cake
Cake batter:
2 1/4 c. flour
1 2/3 c. sugar
3/4 c. milk
2/3 c. Crisco vegetable shortening
1 tsp. salt
3 1/2 tsp. baking powder
Beat, then add:
1/2 c. milk
3 unbeaten eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
Pour batter into 2 – 9″ pie plates lined with unbaked pie shells. Pour funny cake liquid over each pie and bake at 375 degrees or 30-35 minutes.
Funny Cake Liquid:
1/2 c. cocoa
1 c. sugar
1 c. boiling water
1 tsp. vanilla extract
(Do not cool before pouring over batter)
Then I realized that eating pie for breakfast wasn’t really just a PA Dutch thing…
“A Yankee, to a European, is any American. To a Southerner, it’s a Northerner; to Northerner it’s a New Englander; to a New Englander, a resident of Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont. But to those of us who are still not excluded by other definition, it’s someone who eats pie for breakfast.
The breed is getting rarer, since most people don’t eat anything for breakfast anymore — or not so’s you’d notice. Pie for breakfast is a custom from the days when breakfast was a full and hearty meal eaten after a couple of hours of pre-dawn work had already taken place.”
Pie For Breakfast by Barbara Radcliffe Rogers, p. 168, The Yankee Magazine Cookbook
Well, even if eating pie for breakfast isn’t just a PA Dutch thing, let me assure you that shoofly pie or funny cake are way better with a cup of hot coffee in the morning than apple pie or some other not-PA Dutch pie selection;-)
Failing that, my mother baked homemade cinnamon rolls that were to die for…
Have a nice day:-)
Filed under Food for Thought, General Interest, Things That Matter
Angels among us…
Today’s Little Book of Virtues quote…
I don’t know if I mentioned before, that along with teddy bears and bunnies, I also like collecting angels here and there. Here are a few of my favorites:
My October angel (my birthday is Oct. 17th)
My “Norma” mother angel, which is special, because my mother was also a “Norma”. I asked my husband if it was okay if I bought 6 of these angels years ago, so that my three sisters and two brothers would each have their own special “Norma” angel .
This small glass shelf is in my bedroom:
Favorite items on that shelf:
Sweet little girl angel:
My childhood Bible, given to me on Dec. 25, 1966, at St. Matthews Sunday School in Kunkletown, PA – Jesus teaching children on the cover:
A guardian angel given to me by a Wal-Mart co-worker, who is also a young single mother (she is living with her daughters’ father now, thankfully). She is an inspiration, who proves that with faith, hard work, despite having a drug addict mother and all the odds stacked against her, she is succeeding at providing a stable, loving home for her two daughters. She is a true inspiration to me and I am so thankful that I have been blessed to have her as a friend:
Filed under General Interest, Inspirations, Uncategorized
My future goals…lol
I never pay any attention to Miley Cyrus, considering her just a part of all that Hollywood weird, but last night I saw this Miley Cyrus YouTube video and realized she’s very talented. I have been preoccupied with America’s SPIN information war. In recent years I don’t watch any TV, don’t watch movies, and I have spent every day since 1999 focused on defeating the SPIN info war in America. I miss waking up in the morning without feeling weighed down by all that crap that happened to me in 1998, when I wandered onto the Excite message boards and posted comments on the Clinton impeachment scandal… comments like “no one is above the law” and comments detailing what SPIN is and how it works. Although I’ve become completely alienated from pop culture in America, I intend to spend some time in the near future indulging in casual entertainment viewing and I want to get back to reading lots of frivolous historical romance novels… after the SPIN information war is over;-)
Miley is very talented, I think. Of course, I should have known that from her Hannah Montana days, when she displayed amazing comedic timing and delighted millions of American girls from 2006-2011.
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Information War
Frederick Douglass celebration
Found this Frederick Douglass google celebration site worth checking out:
Learn about writer and activist Frederick Douglass
Filed under American Character, American History, General Interest
Crumbs and such… (or cookie baking tales)
Last night’s cookie-baking… need to up my game on cookie placement. Several cookies baked into each other:-(
I started baking chocolate chip cookies for my husband two to three times a week in the past month or so. My husband loves homemade chocolate chip cookies. In the past few years, he eats less and less things, shows very little interest in eating at all and has developed very bizarre attitudes on many foods. He has normal pressure hydrocephalus, which has caused substantial short-term memory loss and he often gets very confused. He also walks with an extreme side-to-side gait. Before he was diagnosed, he kept telling me that whatever I was using to clean the carpets in the house was making his feet stick to the floor. It took a long time to get an accurate diagnosis and then he had surgery in 2012 to implant a cranial shunt.
Keeping my husband eating has become a challenge, that I tackle by trying to find things he will eat. A few years ago, when I was still working full-time at Wal-Mart, he had pretty much stopped eating. His weight was dropping fast, so I became alarmed and began trying to find ways, that did not involve nagging. I kept buying snacks and things I thought he would like and setting them on the table by his chair in the sun room, where he sits during the day, watching TV. I also stopped nagging him about eating things that he said he doesn’t like now. It’s very strange how my husband who used to eat just about anything, now has an ever-diminishing list of foods he will eat. I also tried Ensure and supplementals to try to improve his nutritional intake. That was a lost cause, because he said, “I am not drinking that shit!” End of that conversation, but he does love Breyers vanilla fudge twirl ice cream with Hershey’s syrup on top. He wants it in a Corelleware bowl, which holds about 5 scoops of ice cream – so 5 scoops is what I give him. And he always eats all of it. It may not be Ensure, but at this point, at least it is calories.
He does eat a 3 egg ham and cheese omelet with toast and V-8 juice every morning, so I make that for him every day too. He never ate strawberry jam since I have known him (since 1980), but a few years ago he asked me why I hadn’t put the Smuckers strawberry jam on the table for his toast. I hadn’t bought Smuckers strawberry jam for years, like when our kids were still at home and back then, he never ate it. I had some sugar-free Polaners strawberry preserves, which I use since I was diagnosed with diabetes about a decade ago, so I gave him that. He told me that he wanted Smuckers strawberry jam. So, I bought some and he eats it everyday on his toast now. Lunch and dinner have devolved in much the same way.
A few months ago, he stopped eating store-bought cookies and Debbie cakes. At Christmas I baked some peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies. My husband ate a lot of them and then a few days after those were gone, he asked me when I was going to make more chocolate chip cookies, thus my cookie-baking routine has become situation-normal here. I used to love baking when my kids were young or when I used to bake cookies and cakes for my husband’s soldiers. And now I am finding that instead of being an onerous chore – I actually enjoy baking one single batch of chocolate chip cookies every few days for my husband. It doesn’t take very long to make a single batch of cookies.
I have slightly altered the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the bag. In southeast GA the humidity greatly impacts baking results, so instead of 1 cup of butter, I use a 1/2 cup real butter and 1/2 cup of vegetable shortening. In addition to the salt and baking soda, I add 1 tsp. of baking powder, which helps the cookies rise a bit more and spread out less. I had always used Nestlés semi-sweet chocolate chips, but I tried Walmart’s Great Value chocolate chips, which were only $3.68 for a 24 oz bag in my local Walmart ($3.88 at Walmart Online) , which makes TWO single batches of cookies. The Nestlé 24 oz bag is $4.98 at Walmart Online.
Another tip on cookie-baking is regardless what type of cookie sheets you use – always use parchment paper on your cookie sheets. Your cookies will bake without burning, they won’t ever stick to the cookie sheet and on top of that, clean-up is a breeze. You just roll up the parchment paper and toss it in the trash, while washing your cookie sheets never involves scrubbing off baked on or burned on cookie dough. Parchment paper should become your best friend when it comes to baking cookies.
Long ago, I loved baking all sorts of stuff besides cookies – cakes, pies, loved baking homemade cheesecake in my springform pan, and I even loved baking different types of bread. My happiest kitchen memories with my family besides an endless stream of craft and cooking projects with my kids, were definitely cooking and baking for my family. When my younger son was just a toddler, I, for some reason found some casserole recipe on the side of a macaroni box, with ham, spinach, cheese and macaroni in the ingredient list, an inspiration… Really, I thought little children would love ham and spinach, LOL. I had a lot of leftover Easter ham, so I happily made this casserole, totally confident my young children would love this.
My oldest daughter, already in elementary school, and my older son, weren’t shy about pronouncing this casserole, “disgusting” and “what were you thinking”. My husband just smiled and said, “ham and spinach?” And he raised his eyebrows, which said it all, on his assessment of this meal. Our younger son, was a shy and very polite little boy. He dutifully sat on his booster seat and spent more time moving the food around his plate than eating. Finally, I asked him what he thought about this casserole, since he was the only one, besides our youngest daughter, who was still a baby, who hadn’t voiced an opinion. He hesitantly said, “Mom, it’s really macaroni misery. We all started laughing. I told him if he ate two small bites, he could go play and never have to eat, “Macaroni Misery” again.
This meander down memory lane made me think of my favorite bakeware and actually, I think some pie plates I have are my favorites. My youngest sister gave me a lovely Longaberger pie plate many years ago. It’s so pretty that I have never used it yet, because I don’t want it to accidentally get chipped.
Several years ago, when I was a zone manager at Walmart, Housewares received the most gorgeous, CorningWare etch pie plates with the Fall/Christmas seasonal merchandise. Many times while walking the sales floor, I would stop and admire these pie plates for a few seconds.
One day the housewares department manager saw me holding one of those pie plates again, gazing longingly at it, as I was zoning up that area. She came over to me and asked me why I was so in love with those plain white pie plates. I hadn’t realized she had noticed my secret passion for these PERFECT pie plates. I tried to explain it to her, but by the confused look on her face, I didn’t think she understood.
Not long after that conversation, that housewares department manager and the hardware department manager came up to me and handed me a gift bag with a Christmas present in it for me. They bought me TWO of those PERFECT pie plates. I almost burst into tears of joy. I only use these special pie plates for special occasions. I have used one to make a cauliflower side dish that I have made at holiday meals in recent years.
They are perfect pie plates, right???
Answer carefully, ROFL.
Have a nice day
Filed under General Interest
Chasing old paper trails
“Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.”
— Julie Andrews
I spent the day sorting through a lot of old photos, cards, letters and other old papers. In January 1980, I completed my AIT course at the Defense Information School, becoming an Army journalist:
I thought about this a good bit today, because I went out in the garage to sift through some old photo albums and memorabilia, that I had in my old steamer trunk. I purchased that trunk at Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN to hold my large pile of books, which I had in my barracks room. Someone told me that I could ship them to my first duty assignment by sending them “hold baggage”. My AIT boyfriend, a Marine, lugged that steamer trunk to his car and took care of getting my books shipped safely.
When my steamer trunk arrived in Germany, it was shipped to some nearby infantry unit. I was assigned to 1/41 FA (Pershing). Once again, men came to my rescue. I asked my battalion commander, whom I worked for, as the battalion public affairs person, how I would go about getting my steamer trunk of books. I asked him where I should go to make arrangements to receive my steamer trunk, filled with my books.
My battalion commander, smiled and told me he had a meeting at that infantry unit and he told me that I could drive along with him and his driver. He assured me that his driver would assist me with retrieving my steamer trunk. I was concerned that trunk would not fit in the sedan. When I expressed that concern, my battalion commander assured me that we would cross that bridge, if we came to it.
My battalion commander went to his meeting and his driver took me to retrieve my trunk. It would not fit in the trunk of the sedan, so the driver loaded it into the backseat of the sedan. It took up most of the back seat.
When we went to pick up our battalion commander, I was worried that he would be angry about my trunk becoming such an inconvenience. When he saw the trunk in the backseat, he smiled and said there was plenty of room in the backseat for him and he insisted I stay in the front passenger seat. He said something like, “You young people can stay up there and chat.” He was matchmaking, because his driver liked me a great deal.
When we got back to 1/41 FA (Pershing), the driver dropped the battalion commander off at his office and then his driver drove to my battery. He went inside and got another guy to assist him in lugging my steamer trunk down to my barracks room.
A few days later I bought a metal bookcase at the PX and sat and assembled it, so my books would have a home in my barracks room.
That trunk has served a lot of purposes in my life. When we lived in Columbia, SC, in the mid-80s, it served as our TV stand. Here is my younger son, with wild bed hair waiting to open Christmas presents. The pillow in front of the trunk was a crewel embroidery kit I stitched .
\
In Germany, from 87-92, it served as my plant stand. You can see it behind my oldest daughter’s German Barbie dollhouse, which I purchased right before Christmas. My Pop, who had come to Germany to spend Christmas with us, and my husband spent most of the night before Christmas, assembling that dollhouse, which had very poor instructions… in German.
Here are my other three kids, holding little stuffed animals, mugging for this lame photo, LOL:
And now that steamer trunk sits in the garage still serving a purpose as my storage container for a lot of old papers and miscellaneous memorabilia. Today I was working on something and I actually needed some old photos of friends from 1/41 FA (Pershing) and once again this old steamer trunk came to my rescue.
I also found this cross-stitch quote that my husband wanted me to stitch and frame for his office when he was the 1s BDE Operations SGM in the late 90s:
All in all, today was quite a trip down memory lane for me. Unlike this Turkish mess kit, which my youngest sister, found in Turkey and gave to my husband as a unique Christmas gift, sometimes it takes quite a few pieces of paper and photos to build a unique trail to the truth::
Still have many more miles to go before I am satisfied with my early Spring housecleaning. Here’s my motto :
This was Walmart Halloween clearance and I have this hanging on the hutch in my kitchen, right behind where I sit at the table, LOL.
I finished the day marveling how that cheap steamer trunk has paid for itself many times over since 1980…
My Army ride has assuredly led me on some truly amazing adventures!
Peace out:-)
.
Spring is begun…
“And though the vegetable sleep will continue longer on some trees and plants than on others, and though some of them may not blossom for two or three years, all will be in leaf in the summer, except those which are rotten. What pace the political summer may keep with the natural, no human foresight can determine. It is, however not difficult to perceive that the spring is begun.”
—Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
In the above photo, I decided to try some fabric as a backdrop and those bunnies I found in a small store in Butzbach, Germany, in the early 90s, I think. I loved shopping at a flea market in Butzbach too, where I found some very good deals on knickknack junk.
I started reading this book a few years ago and decided that this Spring I want to take the time to finish it and also to spend a little more time outside working in my small flower bed in front of my house. Yesterday, I pulled some weeds that I should have cleaned up in the Fall. At my two mail box planters – I pulled out my dead mandevillas and geesh, the right side planter was swarming with fire ants, so I definitely need to treat that. Time to start planning a few flowers for my flower bed for sure. It’s the beginning of GA Spring pollen too – the yellow clouds of pollen are just getting started. My son washed my car the other day, as he was washing his car in my driveway. Lots to do!
I found some inspiration in the above Thomas Paine quote, which is on one of the first pages of this Founding Gardeners book – heck, who doesn’t find inspiration in Thomas Paine, LOL…
Have a nice day!
Filed under General Interest, Inspirations
libertybelle diaries 