The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
(This will all look and work better if you click on the actual post and do not remain on the main page.)
In the hope of figuring out my sourdough issues, I borrowed a bunch of books from the library, including Artisan Baking, which I've mentioned here before in my (ridiculously un-systematic, sorry) bread posts. I decided to make this corn bread from the Hi-Rise bakery in Boston, to go with our chili tonight.
One batch of rolls is for a friend who just had a baby — I made a huge pot of chili and doubled this bread recipe, so I got two loaves and two trays of rolls out of it.
The dough does have a good bit of honey in it (I also swapped some of the honey for molasses, just because to me, marrying who I did — Mr. Boston — a yeasted corn bread is “Anadama bread” and needs molasses). But this means it browns really quickly, so I had to resort to an aluminum foil cap for these loaves before they were quite cooked through! And wasn't completely successful, oh well…
They have fresh corn in them as well as cornmeal — I'm looking forward to supper tonight!
On to our links:
- Sooner or later you will, if you have not already, come across a specific instance of transgender ideology in the form of a little boy or girl who is confused about his or her sex. Start reading up now, because the propaganda on this subject is overwhelming, completely unscientific, and intolerant of criticism. Here's a place to start: I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse. I've started the tag “transgender” so you can pull up articles I've linked to. Decide now that you will never lie about whether a person is a boy or a girl, not even to avoid hurt feelings. Lying is a serious sin, endangering our soul, and society can't survive where people lie to each other.
- This year is the 60th anniversary of the publication of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind. Two retrospective articles: Russell Kirk as Historian and The Age of Sentiments.
- You are aware of Bartleby, right? So many resources for the curriculum. I can't believe I never stumbled across this until now (or maybe I did but it's been so long!): The Student’s Course in Literature: The Library of the World’s Best Literature, Edited by Gerhard Richard Lomer. Do you know anything about it? Prepare to lose yourself in a vast rabbit hole…
- If I had the time to blog and weren't instead working on my manuscript, I'd do a separate post about Ida Elizabeth, a novel by Sigrid Undset of Kristen Lavransdatter fame. I think that this book would make an excellent choice for a reading group if the members want something really meaty to dig into and are willing to commit a chunk of time, perhaps along with Leila Miller's Primal Loss. Undset examines the effect of divorce on children through the character of their mother, a woman who realizes that pursuing her own self-realization is not finally an option that is open to her, simply because she is responsible for the happiness of the children she has brought into the world. This essay, Sigrid Undset’s Ida Elisabeth: The Moral Nobility of a Loving Woman, would make good companion reading.
- Do you have a child with eczema? I did, but it was long ago. I found that I had to be very careful about extra rinsing in the laundry, never using softener, and using good detergent that doesn't leave a residue (detergent has surfactants that bond with dirt and cleansers to rinse away — soap doesn't, and liquids with lots of perfumes won't get the job done). I made sure that only cotton touched his skin, and I realize now that I am conditioned to cringe when someone puts a child in a polyester (fleece) blanket sleeper with no cotton in between the skin and that layer, because the sweat will build up and not have anywhere to go, resulting in more rash. And I used plenty of petroleum jelly, generously applied after bathing. I was surprised that 35 years have not made this advice obsolete! Petroleum Jelly Might Be The Answer To A $3.8 Billion Health Problem.
Two things I already posted on the blog's Facebook page, but in case you are off there for any reason, here you go:
- I wouldn't say this is everything you need to know, but it's a good post to read about the upcoming Sacred Triduum!
- St. Joseph in the medieval Mystery Plays — we saw this one performed at Thomas More College (outdoors! in the freezing!) in Advent. Having just celebrated that great saint's feast, I thought it was appropriate to bring it up. I would love to see homeschooling groups and parishes go in for (at least parts of!) these fantastic mystery plays…
From the archives:
(We will see you on the other side! A blessed Easter to you all!)
Today is the feast of St. Catherine of Sweden. Tomorrow is Palm Sunday; [edited to say] in the old calendar last Sunday was called Passion Sunday — it's well to remember this, so that we can move into next week with a holy sense of penitence, warmed with gratitude on Holy Thursday as the Triduum begins.
If you are hoping to see more pictures of the kids and everyday doings (at least, maybe more after Lent is over!), do follow us on Instagram! The links are below.
While you’re sharing our links with your friends, why not tell them about Like Mother, Like Daughter too!
We’d like to be clear that, when we direct you to a site via one of our links, we’re not necessarily endorsing the whole site, but rather just referring you to the individual post in question (unless we state otherwise).
Annie says
Thank you, Auntie Leila, for bringing up the transgender topic. I have two thoughts in response, which I think we all need to discuss and understand better. 1.) The transgender ideology is at war with the rights and safety of women and children and is a complete rejection and hatred of God. (Genesis 1:27) 2.) It is my job as a parent to help my children experience puberty and their developing bodies in a healthy way that recognizes God’s plan for their life. I see so many kids who are abandoned by their parents during this time (I know I was) and fall prey to harassment, bullying, self-rejection, etc, etc.. So many people have absolutely no idea what it means to be a man or a woman. If I hadn’t found the Catholic faith and God’s plan for my life involving chastity, marriage and being open to life (avoiding the evils of the culture of death) at age 19, that same culture of death would’ve eaten me alive and left me for dead. Of this I have no doubt.
Leila says
Annie, well put. If we don’t believe the Word of God, we have to just step up and admit that — move on, you are not Christian.
This war against *being* is diabolical.
Kansas Mom says
My husband has recently been experimenting with sourdough at home. After trying a handful of recipes, we find he keeps going back to the one in Bread Illustrated (an America’s Test Kitchen cookbook). It’s the most time consuming, but seems to be consistently good. As a bonus, the cinnamon monkey bread recipe is heavenly and worth of Easter (not Lent).
Leila says
Kansas Mom — I will have to check that out! I have never made monkey bread. I am afraid to LOL!!!
methylethyl says
Transmania: Every time I see this come up, I thank my lucky stars I was done with adolescence before trans became “a thing”. And I am terrified for girls like myself growing up now.
Adolescence is horrible for everyone, right? But I had PCOS and debilitatingly painful endometriosis that went undiagnosed and untreated for more than ten years: to say that I had a lousy relationship with my body, and with the idea of being female, would be a dreadful understatement. Add in the fact that I am what is now called “gender nonconforming”– i.e. I never went in for the pink-princess-glitter marketing scheme that is American girlhood, I hate makeup, never wear heels, dress for comfort not looks, like power tools, bookish, etc. and have always been that way (the teenage years were hell). For years, I had most of my family and friends convinced I was a closeted lesbian. In reality, I was just socially awkward and had no idea how to handle creepy men hitting on me all the time, once I left home for college– masculine dress and a buzzcut solved that problem decisively.
It took me longer than most, but I grew up to be a straight, married, reasonably sane woman, and have two lovely sons. I shudder to think what would have happened to me, if a persuasive trans-evangelist had gotten hold of me. It is now officially the “right” thing to sterilize and mutilate these kids. Kids like me.
Leila says
methylethyl, so true. I find, now that I have seen many many children (of my own and all my friends) grow from infancy to adulthood, it strikes me so much how different each one’s development can be. For some, the “blossoming” comes so very early. For others, well into adulthood. The fact that somehow we are in denial about this is staggering.
mrsnightskyre says
My body developed early, and relatively healthy, but otherwise I had a similar relationship to my body as you describe, methylethyl. I didn’t look like the other girls, and wasn’t sure I *wanted* to look like them, either… which in my mind left “boy” as the only other option.
I thank God for my parents, who helped me to understand that God had made me female, that there was nothing wrong with me, and I didn’t have to look (or act) like anyone else to *still be a woman*. Even with that assurance, my teenage years were awful and most of my friends thought I was a closeted lesbian.
methylethyl says
mrsnightskyre: thank God for good parents and a decent upbringing! Much as I shy away from identifying as anything feminist, these days, I *did* find it nice that they were trying to sell everyone on the idea that having “masculine” interests (or just preferring to do your own car maintenance and household repairs) doesn’t make you less of a woman, that competence is not a restricted masculine domain, and that our looks shouldn’t be molded by advertising execs’ desires.
Kelly says
Thank you, dear Auntie Leila, for putting together such thoughtful weekly posts! I look forward to them each week! Wishing you and yours a blessed Holy Week and Easter, too!
P.S. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems as thought the 5th Sunday of Lent is Passion Sunday on the old calendar. Repleat with its symbolism of dropping the Gloria and veiling statues, it’s commences Passiontide. Palm Sunday was still called Palm Sunday.
Leila says
Thank you, Kelly — you are so kind. I fixed it 🙂
Dixie says
The fact that these treatments sterilize children — children!!! — ought to convince everyone that they are totally inappropriate for minors. Child sterilization as a side effect of cancer treatment, okay, although unfortunate; child sterilization in order to “transition” earlier rather than later (not even to mention not at all), totally not okay.
Leila says
It’s hard to believe. Honestly, how does this differ from the experiments of Dr. Mengele in the Nazi era.
Arielle says
Auntie Leila, please don’t invoke the Nazis here. I hope I don’t have to explain to you how it is indeed very different.
Leila says
Hmmm… let’s see… a doctor mutilating a child for his own ends. In one case, for some rationale of pinpointing the exact qualities of the master race; in the other, apparently for sheer financial gain — perhaps not unmixed with fear of… not sure what, but fear seems to be part of it. Yes, different motives. But the totalitarian principle of using human beings for some other end is the same.
Sterilizing children. Let’s not think that we are so superior right now.
Arielle says
Because it is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and because of research that just came out showing that it is indeed being forgotten (http://www.claimscon.org/study), I will reply to this. My intent here is not to attack. My intent, for you and for your readers, is to clarify this question from the perspective of a Jewish person who has grown up (as have all of us) in the shadow of the Holocaust.
You ask, “Honestly, how does this differ from the experiments of Dr. Mengele in the Nazi era.” I will attempt to answer that. I have actually never thought about the “rationale” of Mengele’s experiments (and am not sure how he would pinpoint the qualities of the “master race” using people who were not members of it, nor why you would afford him the honorific “doctor,” which I have never seen in any publication); it seems to me it is the workings of a sick mind and not worth interrogating. He subjected people, children, alone and terrified, starved, deprived of any outward semblance of an identity, to horrific procedures, without anything to dull the pain. Clearly, his victims did not have any agency in their participation.
People who do puberty blocking and gender reassignment surgery are medical professionals who, however misguided or even evil you think them, are doing what they feel to be their best to address the suffering of their patients. Their patients usually live at home with their parents, who have together decided on this course of treatment. They are treated in hospitals. They are afforded dignity, psychological treatment, pain relief, and privacy. They will live.
The Nazis perpetrated possibly the worst crime against humanity. They exterminated 6 million holy, blessed souls of my people, along with an untold number of others. The brutality of the gas chambers, the mass graves, littered with babies, the elderly, women raped before they were slaughtered, staggers the mind.
The stories of Holocaust victims read very differently from those of transgender patients. I still remember the story of a man who came to the hospital, his wife having just given birth, to find a Nazi, laughing, smearing some black substance under the baby’s nose, which killed the infant within the hour. The other image that has always stayed with me is of babies being thrown in the air for target practice. The Holocaust occasioned an entire new field of theology because it seemed humanity, and God’s silence, had reached a historic low.
You said these are both “totalitarian” uses of humans as means to an end. I do not see any evidence that these doctors are using the children as a means to an end, although I do fully appreciate the problem with performing medical procedures on children that they cannot possibly understand the lifelong effects of. I see a different face of totalitarianism: the virulent anti-Semitism that formed a constitutive part of the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, from which the West, and Christianity in particular, is by no means immune and which is resurgent in America, in part as Holocaust denial and its more insidious cousin, minimization.
Really the only similarity between these two things is that it involves sterilization of children. To draw any moral equivalence between them makes me, quite honestly, question a moral outlook that could afford such an error. I hope you are able to respond in a way that restores my faith in you. I have so valued your wisdom and our conversations over the years.
Leila M Lawler says
Dear Arielle,
Thank you for this. I appreciate the fact that you took the time to respond to me.
I would never minimize the Holocaust or in any way try to diminish the suffering of the victims of Mengele. He was a physician but he was someone who seems to have been possessed by a demon, dehumanizing the weak and torturing and killing anyone he could. I fully grant everything you say about him, the Nazi regime, and the suffering of the victims.
I have always taken seriously the exhortation, “never again.” I know that for some, this means “never again for the Jews” and I am very aware of this point of view. For me, the most serious indictment of current events in Europe is the increasing danger for Jews, something that I see most commentators minimizing or even denying. The fact that Jews are leaving France in droves and feel unsafe in many countries has me on high alert for the situation there. Anti-Semitism is increasing, there is no doubt about it.
Totalitarianism takes many forms. “Never again” seems to me to mean, as well, “be alert because in the past we didn’t see the warning signs for what they were.” And totalitarianism can and has been directed at populations other than the Jews, but it seems to me that the Jews will *always* suffer where there is totalitarianism.
The warning signs are many. One in particular is the growing willingness to assert the status of human being to some and not to others. This is the first step, is it not? To dehumanize a group. In the US we have lived with this for a long time with abortion, and we are now finding that the willingness to deny a right to life doesn’t have too many limits — it’s been tested in the past few months with late-term abortion legislation, and indeed, we seem to have gotten comfortable with the idea that some people can procure the death of others, innocent though they may be, for any reason. Virtually all Down Syndrome babies are aborted. We now see that this dehumanization is true of the mentally ill and the elderly in terms of euthanasia.
Another warning sign is gender “reassignment.” Your distinctions seem to be based on a certain antiseptic quality of the “treatment” — the fact that although a completely unscientific experiment is being carried out on children (who, even if we admit that one can consent to bodily mutilation, which I do not, cannot consent), it’s being done in a clinical way, seems to mitigate the evil for you. You say that they will live, but that is not true. Mrs. B, another reader, pointed me to the testimony of Rene Jax. I listened to what this person had to say, and while I have not had time to follow up on all the stats, it seems clear that those undergoing “sex reassignment” have a *fifty percent* suicide rate. So fully half of these children will die prematurely by their own hand, and who knows how many will attempt suicide without succeeding.
Our society is smiling away as hospital after hospital sets up wards to cut off boys’ penises, remove girls’ breasts, and pump both with hormones that will make them sick in short order. And then they will try to kill themselves. These are *victims* of a medical system gone mad.
As of now, records are being expunged to remove traces of evidence of emotional distress. A “transgender” goes to the hospital with symptoms and no one can ask, “are you really a girl, is the pain in your uterus?” A man “becomes” a woman but still has a prostate (a sexual characteristic of a male!) — but no one can ask. It’s impossible for a person to change his or her sex!
The “clinics” are many and are growing. When I ask how this is different, I mean at its root. I am hoping, for the sake of our future, that we can see that a powerful entity can use different *means* to achieve an end, but the *end* is the same. I am frustrated to think that we can’t see the principle is the same — using a utilitarian principle to cause harm to persons. In this case, a segment of the population is simply being drugged and mutilated, and then left to its fate. Children will be rendered sterile, depressed, and suicidal. What difference does it make that someone is holding their hand, or if there are decals on the walls? And the rest of us are ever more vulnerable (and culpable!) because we see it as a *medical* issue, not as a sheer exercise of power.
You say you can’t see that the doctors doing this have any end in mind. Perhaps individuals do not (I think to most it’s a business, which sounds innocuous enough until you think of the possibilities of abuse), but that doesn’t mean that one will not emerge and is not already emerging. Because medicine is being used here simply to manipulate on the basis of ideology, the precedent is firmly established. Gender ideology might not offend you, but it can quickly become an ideology that does — and then the whole mechanism is in place, isn’t it? Most importantly of all, this strange mass hysteria insists that we *lie* — that we call a girl a boy and a boy a girl. Even though we KNOW that what we say is not true, we will have to say it or suffer the consequences. Once we (especially children) willingly lie about the most important fact we know about anyone, his or her sex, we are completely in the thrall of the State. It can make us do anything.
That is what totalitarianism is — a sheer exercise of power, writ large. When they begin taking children away from some families, then will it seem more of a threat? (This seems already to have happened.) When they take Jewish children away because the parents want to circumcise? When they decide that your children are depressed because they need this “treatment” and you don’t agree (rather than what is the reality, that they get the treatment and become depressed)?
If you ask me to remove my comment, I will. It grieves me to have hurt you. I apologize. I don’t even want to appear to be minimizing the Holocaust. But I need you to understand that it is precisely the “banality of evil” that presents its greatest threat. Surely we didn’t expect evil to present the same way twice?
Leila says
When I say “what difference does it make” regarding a sterile environment vs. harming people without anything to dull the pain, I am not minimizing the pain! I recognize that pain. It has meaning. What I want to say is that in the end, extreme pain or managed pain, the person’s dignity is taken away and the principle is established, that some people can control and manipulate others. Once that principle is there, totalitarianism is looming.
Arielle says
Auntie Leila,
I really appreciate your serious engagement with me, and your apology. I understand why you made the statement you did, although I still think it telescopes a lot of meaning in a way that comes across as shocking.
There’s a lot to think about here. You make a good point that anesthesia hardly makes mutilation less chilling, and that how we view gender strikes at the heart of who we are.
At the same time, there are many points – about the relationship between mental health and treatment for transgender people, the connection between abortion and human dignity (you know the Jewish position on this is different than the Catholic one), the threats that face the Jewish people – where I have different facts in front of me, different chains of inference, or different values. I think they are too much to go into now, although I would be so interested to have this conversation with you. I have always been able to understand, appreciate, and learn from you despite our different politics. In these fractured times, it gives me some hope that people like us can communicate. You have restored that hope to me with your comments.
Ashley says
Thank you for sharing your baking adventures. I always enjoy seeing what others are making in the kitchen.
I should have asked this last week but how do you celebrate Lenten birthdays, especially when it falls on a Friday? I tend towards being scrupulous so I would love your advice.
Leila says
Ashley, we have one — March 18th. If said child is okay with non-meat, we go ahead and celebrate on that day — it IS a family feast!! If he really wants meatballs or something like that, we celebrate the following day. If it falls during Holy Week, well, we’ll catch you after Easter! Them’s the breaks! 🙂
Amme says
I have been awestruck by the transgender ideology whiplash and its effects on discourse and rationality. Several friends from college and a family member have already tried to explain to me the error of my ways and, when I just keep pointing out that sex isn’t a gender identity spectrum but which way one can reproduce, that there are animals that can change sex but humans are not even close to being among them, that words have meanings and I refuse to lie or submit to obfuscating and manipulative redefinitions, that I accept the ambiguities with intersex people but that’s changing the subject entirely, that I love and care for people who feel gender dysphoria and therefore I respect all of our right to hear the truth in love…nope. They obviously can’t get far using logic so they resort to name-calling. They tell me that I am helping kill people by encouraging suicide. Meanwhile, they tell youths to interpret honest pronoun usage as hateful rejection of their existences. Who is the one setting these poor children up for despair?!
Meanwhile, for the first time in my life, the nurse present at my pelvic exam last week was a man claiming to be a woman. I don’t think I should have to explain my desire for only women to be present in certain situations. It had certainly never been questioned before. But unlike when any other man has been present, I had no opportunity to ask for a woman, so what could I say that wouldn’t have made things worse for me?
Kristin Wilde says
Could you say, “I only want a someone female born person present?” I mean, since the mania is very insistent on how we all feel, then surely your feelings should be the ultimate guide to who is present at a medical procedure involving gender! I am sorry you had to experience that uncomfortable situation.
Amme says
You would think that would be a perfectly kind and reasonable request! But according to transgender ideology, a man who wants to be a woman is often considered to have been “born a woman” but “assigned” the incorrect sex; in some states, including mine, the individual can get his birth certificate “corrected” to reflect this. My desire for only females to be involved is considered “transphobia” because one of the whole points of transgender ideology is the insistence that this man is 100% as much a woman as my doctor and I are. Thus, the only rationale they can envision for my objection is irrational fear/hatred/discomfort of people who identify with being transgender. Merely saying anything considering the nurse – with an obviously masculine voice and facial stubble, etc. – to be a man when he was presented as a woman nurse named Jen would probably be viewed as harassment.
Yes, that’s completely illogical, but it really is where things have come. Objective reality is less of a source of truth for them than the human will! Those like us who disagree with the ideology in favor of objective truths aren’t seen by these influential ideologues as possibly decent people who honestly hold a different view and should be tolerated, but as hateful menaces to the well-being of vulnerable trans individuals. That’s part of why engaging in reasonable discussion is so difficult. I wish this was an exaggeration or fearful prediction, but it’s already how things are.
And thank you for your sympathy. Fortunately for me that was not too serious, but I worry for women and girls who would find that much more distressing, and really, it’s just absurd that I should have to defend that preference in the first place.
Anamaria says
You’re absolutely right about the viewpoint- the feelings of girls who are uncomfortable if a trans-MTF goes in their bathroom do not matter as much as the feelings of the little boy who wants to be taken as a girl. This is what schools and courts have decided.
But you really can calmly insist that anyone who was not born with female anatomy not be present for your female anatomy exam- and then FIRE YOUR DOCTOR if they do not comply. You are hiring them! You are paying them! It’s like saying you will find a new OB if your current one insists on induction- your preferences are not being honored so you go some where else (it’s not exactly like this because it’s crazy that you have to insist, however, you can go somewhere else). I would absolutely do this. That scenario would be more terrible for me than just having a male doctor or nurse.
Kelly says
Wow, Amme, I’m so sorry you were placed in such a situation. It’s the type of thing I dread. While this is NOT directed at you at all (I don’t know the details of how you handled it), I’m hoping we women remember that in these types of situations, we can most definitely say “No.” It is hard to know what to do in the moment- I for one often don’t respond quickly under pressure. BUT, it is well within our rights to say no and walk away from these types of situations. Another doctor, or another bathroom, or whatever, can be found. We also need to remember to teach our girls to say no and/or leave a situation. It reminds me of the story that was circulating about the man who walked into the women’s bathroom at, was it Disneyland?, and while all the women were apparently looking uncomfortable, not one single woman spoke up. Children MUST be protected. Get the guy out of there, or get yourself out of there! I just cringe at the thought of girls being in these bathroom situations and feeling like they have to stay, instead of leaving and letting someone know.
Amme says
Anamaria and Kelly, well put! I think you’re right and I ought to draw a line and – if needed – fire any doctor who won’t respect me on this. Medical professionals need to know that this is not OK.
Here’s what I put in answer to the office’s questionnaire about my visit: “I feel like I was put into an inescapably uncomfortable position during my recent appointment. An obviously male nurse was present, with a clearly male voice and facial stubble, but referred to in feminine terms, so evidently a trans individual. All well and good except that I was undergoing a genital examination. I am not comfortable with having someone not of my biological sex present during such exams, but since it is so taboo to “out”/question a transgender person (since in the vast majority of contexts that really would be inappropriate), I was forced either to become the bad guy who looks transphobic – creating a very tense, uncomfortable environment for the exam anyway – or submit silently in a situation where I could not get myself to feel comfortable. I would be fine with seeing a biologically male nurse, regardless of gender identity, in other contexts. I would be fine with seeing only a biologically female nurse, regardless of gender identity, during an examination of my specifically female biology.
I can see how the misunderstanding came about that I would be OK with any nurse with a feminine gender identity, thus why I was not asked if I would prefer a biologically female nurse. However, regardless of how much I might wish I was comfortable with any medical professional seeing my vulva regardless of sex, I simply am not, and that should be my call alone to make. I do not want to risk this happening to me again because it’s caused me unwilling upset and anxiety. What can we do to make that happen without having to make a scene?”
What’s kind of remarkable as I read back over it is that I really, truly do not feel uncomfortable about whether a person feels transgender (though I can understand completely how the deep clash between who someone is and how he presents himself arouses discomfort). If anyone could accuse me of being “transphobic” it could only be on a profoundly irrational basis…which might still happen!
Mrs. B says
Auntie Leila, are you familiar with Rene Jax? Rene is an author and lecturer who speaks of the decades long experience of being a transsexual and the regret that has followed. If you do a google search you should be able to find videos of Rene’s testimony. It is compelling, if not also incredibly heartbreaking. I did find the testimony helpful for engaging in these types of discussions, particularly if you encounter someone who seems to be dismissive of the seriousness of the surgeries and hormone treatments involved in transgender surgery. Who better to speak than someone with decades long experience of what happens after the fact?
Thank you for speaking with clarity about this issue. Might I ask you and your readers to please pray for families who do find themselves with adult children who struggle with this issue who, rather than turn to their families for support, chose to seek peers or the medical community who are steering them into transitioning and even surgery. These are wonderful families with adult children who suffer from mental illness and it is very difficult to find them help even if they desire to rid themselves of these feelings. It is truly maddening!
jadeddrifter says
Putting my feet up and doing a bit of reading on my Easter Sunday evening… I had to laugh out loud when I read Russel Kirk’s anecdote about the television in his home. We don’t have a television in our home either (but of course, we do have computers and smart phones, so we don’t live an entirely video-free existence). I think that many parents feel like they can’t live without a television while raising children, but I have to respond with Kirk: give them tools! Be those tools books or some skill. I think most Americans live in gilded cages and the only real way to ignore the existential pain of it is to keep the TV on and not think about how to change oneself.
I don’t know why I never finished reading “The Conservative Mind” but now I’m inspired to pick it up again.
Leila M Lawler says
To Amme et al, re: being confronted with a cross-dressing medical professional, or in any other situation where you suddenly feel you are being put in a false position… I want to tell you a story of a friend, who is extremely soft-spoken and gentle. She has many children and I have never heard her raise her voice, unlike, ahem, yours truly.
When she was expecting, she told her doctor that she did not want an episiotomy — she had read all the literature and did not want one. The doctor replied something like, “That’s fine, but if I feel the situation warrants, I will make the decision then.”
I would have had difficulty with this situation, being unsure of how far to press my wishes. But my friend simply said, “If I see a scalpel, I’ll kick it out of your hand.” She did not get an episiotomy.
See?
spindlitis says
Just to let you know, DNR in this state is totally humorless and would not be amused by the guy’s letter. In fact, they would haul him to court and he would be forced to prove that he did not make those dams. I’ve had a long expensive battle with DNR here over a dock that was put in back in the 70s and that we were forced to remove. And, they changed the law so that no one that ever buys this piece of property can ever have a dock again. That’s why we are selling everything and leaving the state.