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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 15:17:49 GMT -5
An interesting take, because it's aimed at 30-year-old me. 25 years after publication, does it still apply to my generation, the two after it, or all three? More than that, it was prescient. The church, of course, stayed its course (the one she described) and things went from bad to worse (in terms of church attendance). There's a new book out "The Great Dechurching" that is saying that the past decade or so has been the largest demographic/religious shift in our history with millions leaving church, churches closing their doors forever, and the smallest minority in our history still attending church. We are most definitely living in a post-Christian world. And the majority not only don't miss it, they say "good riddance".
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protests
Apr 28, 2024 14:01:11 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 14:01:11 GMT -5
If Israel is equally evil, I'm not on board with that. Our leadership seems to be.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 11:24:10 GMT -5
You'll have to somehow pull humans out of the decision-making process. Religion tried that. It gave us the Middle East.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 9:31:39 GMT -5
I'm thinking that the word games, in order of difficulty, are:
1. Connections (I'm finally getting the hang of it and learning some tricks, but even though I am more often winning, I do so with the fourth category solved by default).
2. Strands (I even occasionally win without a hint)
3. Waffle
But this morning I was looking at a Waffle board with everything but four unmoved letters -- none of them lit up. I was sure I'd lost. But I got it with 0 to spare.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 9:19:11 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 9:16:11 GMT -5
I'm not alone in observing that at times Rob is a Paul McCartney doppelganger. But here he's even channeling him. If Paul McCartney wrote a kid's song, I'm guessing it might sound just like this.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 9:04:33 GMT -5
and that Iran is fighting democracy and spreading tyranny, there is no hypocrisy. Then why the hand-wringing over supporting Israel? Netanyahu's government was democratically elected. And yet, those who are "conflicted" over Israel and therefore are supporting (or sympathetic for) Hamas are certainly NOT concerned about the survival of democracy. They appear to be ideologues who extrapolate American concepts of "conservative" and "progressive" , thereby hate Netanyahu, and don't believe Israel has the right to wage a war that was declared against them by a democratically elected Hamas who represents the very Palestinian people for whom those progressive Americans feel their ONLY sympathies.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 8:06:39 GMT -5
This was before the rain leaked on the exact spot I was sitting….and no where else under that roof. "It rains on the just, the unjust, and the guitar player." -Matthew 5:45
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 7:53:36 GMT -5
The hyacinth held on long enough for the tulips to join in. Red grass foreground, reed fern background, in a ditch on my route. In a month and a half, across the street from this will be 25 linear yards of ditch lilies.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 7:31:32 GMT -5
I can't believe I find this interesting, but I do. This is the kind of story that makes our local news. I deliver dozens of periodicals aimed specifically at the farms on my route. I watch farm fields all day every day and I'm just getting a glimpse at how things work and, beyond the beauty I see in the seasonally changing landscape, I'm catching on to what is happening. www.inkfreenews.com/2024/04/26/should-manure-be-applied-to-alfalfa/My across-the-street neighbor, Kim, once explained to me (while we were standing together in his hay field observing a late summer cutting) that his alfalfa field looks outrageously good after the Springtime rains. The number of bales per acre is amazing. I watch wagon after wagon loaded down with bales being hauled off after a day's work. But, Kim said, the summer hay is SO much better because it's when the alfalfa outgrows the grass. Then the bales are mostly the good stuff. The alfalfa. Kim explained that alfalfa can have roots up to six feet deep. Grasses, much, much shallower. So, in the heat of the summer when the rains aren't as frequent and the heat of the sun quickly evaporates what does fall, the grasses can't thrive. But alfalfa with its roots down deep does quite well. It makes for a very pretty field too. One even a gardener might admire. As Kim was explaining, I was dreaming. I thought to myself what a beautiful love story/song that would make -- the deeper roots of a healthy relationship thriving through the harder times in life that a shallow infatuation would not. But nobody's going to write a song with "alfalfa" in the lyric. "Alfalfa" is a funny-sounding word like "bumfuzzle" and "cattywampus". I gave my love alfalfa I was thinking, I suppose That she would know I love her But alfalfa isn't a rose
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Post by millring on Apr 26, 2024 17:01:11 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Apr 26, 2024 15:51:31 GMT -5
He has some instructional stuff out. I think I'd probably enjoy learning from him, but I'm afraid I play checkers guitar and he's teaching chess guitar. truefire.com/john-pizzarelli?artist And since I said "chess," here's a picture from Washington Square Park on my last trip to NYC. I saw that. I'll look into it, but I fear (as you do) that it's way over my head. I probably told you about my encounter -- phone conversation -- with Pizzarelli. Back then he sent me a VHS saying that maybe I could follow his fingerings. I couldn't then and I probably can't now.
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Post by millring on Apr 26, 2024 15:48:10 GMT -5
mo-husseini.medium.com/hmmm-do-i-need-a-title-129b27bed5f0 The language is as juvenile as the sentiment and the very thinly veiled moral equivalencies. Israel did not start the war. The war. War. Hamas did. And as to the innocence of the Palestinian people, they support Hamas in numbers the likes of which Americans haven't seen since Reagan won in a landslide (and even then, the popular vote wasn't as sharply divided as the Palestinian support of Hamas). Hamas attacked Israel. And if we'd been shown the atrocities that they committed in the attack, just maybe we'd understand a will to retaliate. But Israel isn't retaliating. It's war. They're fighting for their very existence against a foe that has declared it's desire to see that that not happen. And the American government is "conflicted". And the idea that because the Israeli people elected Netanyahu they had it coming is repulsive. I absolutely love this song. Musically, it really does it for me. And it's overall optimistic theme I like. youtu.be/eFPixn6uRpk?si=fg70rLM4o9_MlMXF But it's got this line (the ultimate punchline of the whole song) "We try to find peace through war, although it's never worked before". Of course it's worked before. It's not what we want. But of course it's worked before. WWII was won and Hitler was defeated. Stopped. The holocaust was stopped. In its tracks. Stopped. Through war. Modern day journalists probably cringe at the WWII news reports that supported the war effort. I have trouble imagining that we shouldn't have bombed Germany or that the nightly news would be scolding us every time we did. But the Allies won the war. And now the irony is that the very victims over which -- in part -- WWII was fought, are now victims again of a world that is "conflicted" over a Palestinian will -- and war -- to wipe them off of the map from the river to the sea. They aren't equivocating. The majority of the Palestinian people have voted. They're not equivocating. But the American press and its Democratic Party leadership is "conflicted" and has the audacity to scold Israel "How DARE you try to win a war declared against you!" And irony piled on irony....the very ones so "conflicted" over Israel's right to exist are the ones who have characterized Trump as Hitler -- and they mean it.
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protests
Apr 26, 2024 8:51:47 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by millring on Apr 26, 2024 8:51:47 GMT -5
I didn't ask them. I asked you.
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Post by millring on Apr 26, 2024 5:59:21 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Apr 26, 2024 5:51:23 GMT -5
Are your sympathies with the protestors? Do you think they're no big deal? Do you feel the impulse to join them? Do they raise a nostalgic sense of the Vietnam era protests, or do you see them as essentially different? How informed do you think they are? How spontaneous do you think they are? Why are they on university campuses?
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Post by millring on Apr 25, 2024 17:14:08 GMT -5
Again today I am brilliant. Wordled in 2. Tomorrow I will not be, but for this one day, I am word puzzle royalty.
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Post by millring on Apr 25, 2024 17:09:19 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Apr 25, 2024 14:33:15 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Apr 25, 2024 4:10:40 GMT -5
When I did my workshop tour of Virginia, Floyd was home base for a week. I bought a couple of Nashville Bluegrass Band discs there and played a the general store jam.
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