The world needs a giant wake-up call. I think this is it.

Everyone in the world needs to read this article. I posted this on my Facebook page today, and some of my friends commented and said they were horrified by it. I am as well.

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278?pfmredir=sm&sf197878142=1&smid=Page%3A+ABC+Australia-Facebook_Organic&WT.tsrc=Facebook_Organic

We need to wake up fast to what is really going on around us. Look up from your cell phones and see what is happening. China is just the start of this insanity. If you don't think it can happen in your own country, think again. We only need the right combination of circumstances for it to take hold. This is scary stuff, people. We need to fight this kind of digital control with every ounce of our beings. Otherwise, there will be no humanity left after these types of governments and dictators gain complete control of us. I don't want this kind of society for the future, and I will fight against it in any way possible. Please share this article; unfortunately, it is not fake news. I checked around online, and found other articles dealing with this story:

https://mindmatters.today/2018/09/digital-dictatorship/

https://www.realclearscience.com/2018/09/20/china_is_building_a_digital_dictatorship_282883.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eViswN602_k

I do understand why some people want to go off the grid and live without internet, without an online presence. The problem is that almost all the things we do nowadays are connected in some way, shape, or form to internet--banking, stock trading, shopping, social media, smartphones, travel, careers, reading, music, and so on. Our lives may not be 'tracked' in the same way as they will be in China by 2020, but our digital lives are alive and thriving online as we speak. It will not surprise me if major companies dabbling in AI will find a way to tie all our digital information together and begin to exert control over us. Most of that type of control will have to do with marketing--pressuring us to buy this or that by defining our needs for us. But if the government begins to do that, it will be the end of freedom as we know and take for granted--the end of being able to think, speak and write freely. It will not be a world that I will want to live in.



 

Check out Bill Bramhall's political cartoons for September

Another online item to check out--this time it's the totally spot on political cartoons courtesy of Bramhall. You'll find them in the New York Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/nydn-bramhall-cartoons-for-september-2018-20180908-photogallery.html

What to say about these cartoons, except that they're great. If you need to know what's going on in the world of Trump, you'll find out by reading these cartoons. He skewers Trump. Thanks for telling it like it is!

Check out Tappan Zee Bridge@oldtzb on Twitter

If you check out one thing today online, check out this Twitter account--Tappan Zee Bridge@oldtzb:  https://twitter.com/oldtzb

If the old Tappan Zee Bridge could speak, I am certain that this is what it would be saying. Kudos to the person behind this account. I love it. The first thing you read when you access the account is the following (just to give you an idea of the intelligent sense of humor that defines the entire account):

Tappan Zee Bridge@oldtzb
"Bridging since 1955. Living like there's no 2019".

Thank you for giving a voice to the feelings we all have about the old bridge now that the new bridge is up and 'bridging'. For those of us who are nearly the same age as the old bridge, it's a wonderful way to deal with saying goodbye to the bridge in a humorous, intelligent and pointed way. Many of the tweets are just spot on.

Here is a recent newspaper article talking about this Twitter account:  https://eu.lohud.com/story/news/local/rockland/2018/09/21/tappan-zee-bridge-silent-all-these-years-speaks-out-twitter/1366539002/

Please, keep on tweeting. Sincerely, a loyal fan. 

A dog rescued by a kind person

If this video doesn't break your heart, I don't know what will. Even though this poor dog was rescued, it breaks my heart to know that someone or some family left him/her behind when evacuating their home due to hurricane Florence. If you have a pet, it is part of your family, and you should take your pet with you in situations like this. Your pets love you and trust you to do the right thing; how can you live with yourself if you don't make the effort to take them with you when you evacuate?

I thought about this story for hours after I saw the video. It made me cry, and that's a good thing, because I haven't been able to cry much lately. I think I've become too inured to the crazy, cold, inhumane and unjust world we live in. I need to see more positive stories; I need to know that there are still good people in the world. Because there are. All the media ever tells us about are all the bad people and situations in the world.

https://www.facebook.com/CBSNewYork/videos/263733037814957/

A good song by Dennis Lloyd--Nevermind

The sex abuse scandal in the German Catholic church

And now the statistics for Germany--it's enough to make your mind reel. What were the people involved thinking? That it would remain covered-up forever? Why did no one in the church's bureaucratic organization stop and say, 'no, I won't be a part of the cover-up and I won't silence my voice or my conscience. I will speak up and speak out'. Just the fact that the church wanted to control how the research results were published/utilized is appalling--I quote: "because the church wanted to reserve its right to control the resulting research papers — and under certain circumstances even ban their publication". The church apparently believes its own hype--that it is judge, jury, and executioner with no accountability to anyone outside the church, and this way of looking at dealing with crime in the church is just plain arrogant and wrong. If I am a typical example of the faithful, my trust in the church to make intelligent and moral decisions is gone. Just plain gone. And sadly, I doubt that it will be coming back. I believe I do a better job of running my life and dealing with moral decisions than the church will ever do.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/world/europe/german-church-sex-abuse-children.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

I'm guessing we'll getting the statistics for other involved countries soon, because there is nothing inherently 'American' about this scandal. It all has to do with the kingdom called the Vatican. Somehow in the midst of all the power and wealth, Christ and what he stood for fell by the wayside.

Never forget

https://www.911memorial.org/blog/tags/911

Is there a civil war within the church now?

If you want to read more about the current sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church, these are some good links:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-news-priests-australia-report-sex-abuse-confessions-20180831-story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/opinion/catholic-priest-abuse-reporting.html?imp_id=936089097&action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/opinion/pope-visit-ireland.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/29/us/cardinal-wuerl-catholic-insurgency/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/08/29/a-vatican-diplomats-explosive-letter-reveals-influential-conservative-catholic-media-network/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.056224573d90

If there is a civil war within the church now, it is because it has brought it on itself. But the church can end the war by standing up for change. It can open the doors, let in the light, get rid of the careerism and bureaucracy. It can get rid of the wealth, prestige, and power that dominate the lives of many clergy. It can get rid of the holier than thou attitude. It can get back to the basics of Christ’s teaching. It just needs to do it. 

Two good articles about the current sexual abuse scandal in the American Catholic Church

I read these articles and I try to find understanding in my mind and heart for the priests who have committed these atrocities against children. I find none. What I feel is anger and loathing; anger at the attempts to silence the victims and to pretend that the abuse did not happen, something the church can no longer do, and loathing for the sheer arrogance and belief that the faithful would accept the explanations for the bad behavior, move on, and forget about it. Maybe some of the faithful can do that; I cannot. If you read the first article, it talks about the sense of betrayal that is felt by many of the faithful, and how they might deal with that. Like married couples where one partner has betrayed the other by being unfaithful, it will be a long road back to re-establish trust in the person who committed the betrayal, if it ever happens. Likewise with the church; it will take a long time for the faithful to get over this, and I think that's the right reaction. I don't find it in myself to simply accept the explanations anymore. I want action. I want change. I want the pedophiles to pay for their crimes after having been tried as the criminals they are in a court of law. I want justice for the victims. And that is exactly what the second article is focused on--the criminal priests will not be let off the hook anymore. There will be aggressive criminal investigations, and rightly so. Thank God. This is not about persecution of the Catholic church; it is about persecution of those men who call themselves priests, when in reality they are nothing more than common criminals, who have lived off the good will and economic support of the faithful. They deserve nothing less than life in prison.

I am angry at myself for buying into some of the ideas that the church pushed over the years, especially when I was a teenager. That the word of male priests was somehow 'law'. That unmarried male priests could tell us how to be married, could tell married women what their 'duty' was toward their husbands, could push warped ideas about sex and love on us as teenagers, that only led to unnecessary guilt. I've always thought it strange that sex was promoted as an evil activity for the unmarried to engage in, but that once you were married, it was suddenly holy and good. How many marriages in my generation suffered as a result of that way of thinking? It would have been far better to have focused on self-respect and on the importance of respecting others' wishes when it came to sex and to so many other things. I no longer buy into any of these ideas, but when we were teenagers, it was excruciating at times to listen to this folly. There was a period (post Vatican II) when the doors seemed to fly open and the church seemed to be on the path toward true enlightenment, when it felt as though change was in the air and anything was possible--male priests could perhaps marry if they wanted to, women could perhaps become priests, and so on. But no, none of it came to pass. And why not, when you think about it? Jesus Christ was friends with men and women. He had the utmost respect for women. I have always said that it would not bother me in the least if we found out that he had married and had children. His mission on this earth would have been the same.

Going to mass and sharing in that fellowship are still important to me, although I find myself torn now in a way I never was before. I sit there in the pew and feel the anger inside of me, anger because not one of the priests in my church ever comments on the current scandal. They should. They should be talking about it, opening the doors for the faithful to talk about it, and to talk about how betrayed they feel by the criminal priests and by the church for protecting these priests and covering up their crimes. How could these pedophile priests stand in the pulpits Sunday after Sunday preaching what they no longer (and perhaps never) believed in? Telling the faithful how to behave. How in good conscience do you do that to the faithful, good people who are essentially supporting you financially? How can you stand up there and lie? And how can so many priests stand up there now and defend the blowhard Trump--who stands for all that Christ did not stand for? How in good conscience can they do that? I am currently at odds with the church, with its patriarchal attitudes and its careerist bureaucrats, with its arrogance and blaming of others, and with its lies. I am fed up and disappointed in its support of Trump where that is the case. I may go to mass, but I am now a resister. I no longer buy what they're selling. If they don't want to discuss what's going on and face the wrath of the faithful, then they can skip the sermons and the singing. They can shut their mouths and just celebrate the mass--quietly, solemnly, seriously. And then let us go about our lives. I for one won't miss the preaching.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/opinion/couples-therapy-catholic-church.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/nyregion/catholic-sex-abuse.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Book recommendation--a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder

I am reading Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Caroline Fraser's biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was the author of the Little House on the Prairie series of children's books. I'm about halfway through Fraser's biography, and I think it's a masterpiece of writing. It's not only Wilder's biography, but a considerably comprehensive description of the climate during the latter part of the 19th century and how it impacted on the lives of the pioneer settlers. There appeared to be considerable climate change during the latter part of the 19th century, much of it probably man-made due to poor agricultural practices. I googled 'droughts in the US--19th century', and this is what I found on Wikipedia:

19th Century
There were at least three major droughts in 19th-century North America: one from the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s, one in the 1870s, and one in the 1890s (refs). There was also a drought around 1820; the periods from 1816 to 1844 and from 1849 to 1880 were rather dry, and the 19th century overall was a dry century for the Great Plains. While there was little rain-gauge data from the mid-19th century in the middle of the US, there were plenty of trees, and tree-ring data showed evidence of a major drought from around 1856 to around 1865. Native Americans were hard hit, as the bison they depended upon on the Plains moved to river valleys in search of water, and those valleys were full of natives and settlers alike. The river valleys were also home to domestic livestock, which competed against the bison for food. The result was starvation for many of the bison.

The 1870–1877 drought brought with it a major swarm of Rocky Mountain Locusts, as droughts benefit locusts, making plants more nutritious and edible to locusts and reducing diseases that harm locusts. Locusts also grow more quickly during a drought and gather in small spots of lush vegetation, enabling them to swarm, facts which contributed to the ruin of much of the farmland in the American West. The evidence for this drought is also primarily in tree-ring, rather than rain gauge, data.

The 1890s drought, between 1890 and 1896, was the first to be widely and adequately recorded by rain gauges, with much of the American West having been settled. Railroads promised land to people willing to settle it, and the period between 1877 and 1890 was wetter than usual, leading to unrealistic expectations of land productivity. The amount of land required to support a family in more arid regions was already larger than the amount that could realistically be irrigated by a family, but this fact was made more obvious by the drought, leading to emigration from recently settled lands. The Federal government started to assist with irrigation with the 1902 Reclamation Act.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867, and her life, along with her family's, were strongly affected by the droughts and harsh weather at that time, as well as the horrific Rocky Mountain locust plagues that destroyed crops (and livelihoods) and homes alike. Wikipedia reports (and I cite): Sightings often placed their swarms in numbers far larger than any other locust species, with one famous sighting in 1875 estimated at 198,000 square miles (510,000 km2) in size (greater than the area of California), weighing 27.5 million tons and consisting of some 12.5 trillion insects. If that wouldn't scare you if you saw it coming, I don't know what would. I imagine that most farmers thought the apocalypse had arrived. Fraser describes how the dead bodies of these locusts (now extinct, luckily for us) would lie on the railroad tracks and clog the rails, preventing the trains from running.

When I read about the difficulties that farmers faced then and now, I have only the utmost respect for them and what they had (and have) to deal with. It does not surprise me that many farmers in the latter part of the 19th century gave up farming and moved to urban areas in order to find new types of work. And even though farming has evolved into agribusiness, the challenges of climate change remain and are expected to worsen during the latter part of this century. If the 19th century teaches us anything, it is that you cannot predict the weather or future outcomes, and the latter part of this century is likely to be a repetition of that.

End of August garden photos

Some recent photos of the vegetable part of the garden, and of the new perennials purchased for the flower gardens.......

Beautiful Rouge Vif D' Etampes pumpkins (my favorite pumpkin type)

bean plants in the foreground, corn plants behind them 

waiting for the tomatoes to ripen

Physocarpus opulifolius Diable D'Or--beautiful reddish-brown ninebark

Silver ragwort (sølvkrans in Norwegian)

Oxalis--lovely reddish-brown wood sorrel 

Heuchera or alum root

Heuchera

Heuchera

Heuchera 

Astilbe plant--also called false goat's beard

Echinacea--coneflower (solhatt in Norwegian)

Echinacea 

one flower garden

the other flower garden, with two hydrangea plants and a Hebe Wild Romance plant on the lower right side

the sparrows have loved bathing in the bird bath this year, and the bees loved drinking the water

End of August garden update

We've gone from an extremely warm summer, with temperatures around 85 degrees F (very unusual for Norway) back to a usual Norwegian summer, with temperatures around 70 degrees. It didn't rain much during the months of June or July, which resulted in a long hot dry spell, but once August arrived, it began to rain again. It feels more like autumn now, but the weather forecast is still predicting temperatures around 70 degrees and more sunny summer days. We'll see. In any case, the vegetable/fruit garden is nearing the end of the growing season. We've harvested most of the berries (some blackberries remain), and mini-cucumbers and tomatoes are still ripening on the vines. The pumpkins are finished, but not harvested as of yet. The remaining ears of corn are still on the stalks but have not increased much in size, so my guess is that they won't amount to much. I've harvested about six ears of corn so far and they were fairly good; still too small though, with an average taste, similar to the previous two years. I love watching the corn plants grow, but I wish the corn had that fantastic taste that I love. Maybe I need to try another type of corn.

My experience as a kitchen gardener after three years of planting has taught me that I can safely plant corn, pumpkins, mini-cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, snap peas, and several kinds of green beans. I get good harvests from them all. Artichoke plants don't do well, no matter what I do. I planted watermelon seeds this year for the first time, and they grew and spread out as vines (much like the pumpkins), but only began to flower about two weeks ago, so there won't be enough time for them to produce melons. Black currants, red currants, raspberries, strawberries and gooseberries grow very well. And this year, we had a good number of blackberries from the bush I planted in the spring of 2016.

My experience with the flower garden for three seasons has taught me that perennials are the way to go if you want to save yourself a lot of work (and save your back as well). I have invested a fair amount of money in perennials, and I hope it will pay off in the coming years. I have planted four hydrangeas, two peonies, a butterfly bush, a lot of lavender, foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), two types of coneflowers (Echinacea--the Norwegians call it 'solhatt'), three different color alum roots or coral bells (Heuchera), a beautiful reddish-brown ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius Diable D'Or), a lovely reddish-brown wood sorrel (Oxalis), an Astilbe plant (also called false goat's beard), a Hebe Wild Romance shrub, a lily plant, and several types of irises. I've also planted one more rose bush, and two silver ragwort plants--also known as silver dust Dusty Miller (Jacobaea maritima)--not really true perennials. The white climbing rose bushes that I planted on either side of the garden arch have taken off; one of them has reached the top of the arch and I am now trying to weave the branches into the arch itself so that they grow into and around it. They have attached themselves well enough to the arch; during a recent intense wind storm, they kept the top part of the arch from being pulled off the rest of the arch, so that was good to see.

Being a kitchen and flower gardener is one thing; being a farmer is quite another. I've always had respect for farmers, but I have renewed respect for them when I see how dependent they are on good weather for a good harvest. This year was not easy for them in Norway due to the drought conditions. If you depend upon farming for your livelihood, it's a tough life. Irrigating a large farm is nothing like watering a medium-sized garden; in drought conditions, it must border on impossible. I am grateful for the harvest of vegetables and fruit that we got this year, and grateful for the beauty that the flowers bring to our lives. I am grateful simply for the fact that the universe blessed me with a garden at this stage in my life.

The wisdom of Thomas Merton

I'm sharing some quotes by Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk who spent a good portion of his life exploring world religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sufism. His wisdom is reflected in the quotes I have chosen to post today.

• A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
• When ambition ends, happiness begins.
• Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.
• Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
• We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
• Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
• We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
• Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
• We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.
• The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
• We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.
• In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.
• If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
• To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.
• The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

Some of my favorite spiritual writers

Faith and religion are two different things; the latter is an organized attempt to systematize and support the former, but it is my contention that a strong faith will outlast religion in the long run. My father had a strong faith in God, and fed it with spiritual literature, some of it by Catholic writers. He shared that interest with me, and I have read many of the books he recommended. Some of his favorite authors (and now mine) are Francois Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, Evelyn Waugh, C.S.Lewis, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Merton, and Willa Cather. He also was a fan of Graham Greene and G.K. Chesterton, but I have not read their books as of yet. All of the books I've read by these writers have left an indelible impression on me. They made me think and reflect on many of life's situations, problems and (often-tragic) outcomes. Not all of them are directly spiritual in tone (inspirational); some of them are heart-wrenching, others witty, still others poignant and spiritually-challenging. The books are all excellent in their own right, and worth reading.

Francois Mauriac's books:

• The Viper's Tangle
• The Desert of Love
• Therese
• A Woman of Pharisees

Georges Bernanos books:

• The Diary of a Country Priest

Evelyn Waugh's books:

• Brideshead Revisited
• A Handful of Dust

C.S. Lewis' books:

• The Screwtape Letters
• Mere Christianity
• A Grief Observed
• Surprised by Joy
• The Four Loves
• The Problem of Pain

Thomas Hardy's books:

• Jude the Obscure
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• Far from the Madding Crowd
• The Mayor of Casterbridge
• The Return of the Native
• The Go-Between

Thomas Merton's books:

• No Man is an Island
• Thoughts in Solitude
• Wisdom of the Desert

Willa Cather's books:

• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• My Antonia

Pope Francis and clericalism in the Church

Excellent opinion piece from The New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/opinion/pope-francis-catholic-church-sex-abuse.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region)


Here is an excerpt from the above article--very relevant to the Church's current problems.......

In closed-door meetings on the eve of the conclave that elected him in March 2013, Pope Francis — then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires — gave a brief, powerful address in which he said the church needed to open up or risk becoming “self-referential” and “sick” with “theological narcissism” that leads to the worst evil, the “spiritual worldliness” of an institution that is “living in itself, of itself, for itself.”

The church, he was saying, had to undergo a moment of kenosis, of self-emptying, like Christ on the cross, surrendering power and prestige and privilege in order to truly become what she is called to be.

As pope, he has saved his harshest rhetoric for his fellow clerics, especially the cardinals and bishops, criticizing them as “careerists” and “airport bishops” who spend more time flying around the world than tending their flock.

“Clericalism is a perversion of the church,” Pope Francis told 70,000 young Italian Catholics at a rally this month. “The church without testimony is only smoke.”

Pope Francis’ vision of the church is clearly more radical than the defensive posture of John Paul or the nostalgic traditionalism of Benedict. But is he willing and able to implement it?