Someday everything is gonna sound like a rhapsody when I paint my masterpiece - Bob Dylan

  Mainline Florida: Link to Mainline Florida. Clapton’s version.

I am making more use of links, music and visual. Click on them and then you might have a second link to search. Some locations, such as YouTube generate revenue for your "free" viewing by running ads, so be patient. On occasion there is a "skip ad" button. Sometimes it will load and start when you go there, sometimes you need to click on the white arrow in the red box.

I hope you enjoy the updates to my art and life as presented in this blog. IF you don't like the political stuff and don't want to receive future blogs just say so, no hard feelings. So far, only five have taken me up on the offer. With that in mind, remember: BELOW THE FOLD is where (most) of the controversial stuff is placed. Sometimes stuff is a hybrid, say humor and political. Nevertheless, I do this blog for me, it clears my mind and then I do it to share stuff I think is interesting, fun, needed to be considered, etc. I like, also, the feedback I receive, either on a specific article or the concept in general. Right now there are about 70 of you who receive this directly. Claude

ART:

Small 8x8” oil on wrapped canvas, from my yard

10x8” oil on canvas board

10x8” oil on wood board, just for fun

12x9” oil on wooden board - Garden of the Gods, CO

I would sell any of these for $99, and postage, box, etc is an additional $15. Let me know.

FLORIDA:

 Took a walk, 4 interesting shots, well, 3 and a collage of photos, all within 4 blocks of the house. I enjoy playing with the special effects app.

 Enjoy playing with the editing effects from PRISMA app.

LISTENING:

 I think they were all of about 29 years old, and done with it. Last album; documentary coming out soon.

You will have to click on to enlarge to read…

Interesting story, humble man, yes he experienced discrimination, but not a racist system.

HUMOR: Couple of parody headlines from our friends at Babylon Bee…go to their website to read the complete funny articles. 

HaHa Too easy to make fun of Hunter, and current art scene…

Sending them to California?

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With a laugh, Marshall said that he would often come back to a phrase repeated by “the great American theologian Kanye West” — “Fear God, and you will fear nothing else.”

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From a friend: Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2021 9:10 AM

Subject: received my 2021 Social Security Stimulus Package

 

Too good not to share… I just wanted to let you know -- on Saturday, I received my 2021 Social Security Stimulus Package. 

It contained two tomato seeds, cornbread mix, two discount coupons to KFC, a "Biden - Hope and Change" bumper sticker, a prayer rug, a little machine to blow smoke up my ass, and a "Blame it on Trump" poster for the front yard. 

The directions were in Spanish. 

Yours should arrive soon. 

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I FOUND THIS INTERESTING:

Former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass saw the chopping block. Douglass, among many other things, is famous for being a proponent of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In a 1852 speech titled, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass stated:

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

In the speech lauding America’s founding documents, Douglass argued that the promises of the Declaration and Constitution ought to be extended to black persons to fulfill the promise of the country.

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If you believe there is an afterlife, and it involves God as most of us imagine Him to be

A priest, in a sermon on a retreat here in Florida said something that really made sense to me. In effect, no matter how “good” a life you lived, how much you believe - if you die with out forgiving someone that you need to forgive, how can you immediately enter heaven/paradise? He felt Purgatory had more of these souls working on their forgiveness than for any other sin. Sexual promiscuity seems to me like it would be a close second. So, this article caught my eye…

From Jimmy Akin: Everyone will end up in either heaven or hell. But many who die in God's friendship are still entangled with sin in some way at the time of their deaths. God will purify these people. They will experience the final purification that the Church calls "purgatory." Here are seven things former Pope Benedict wanted you to know about it.

Jewish Roots "This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state [between our death and resurrection] includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up these concepts, and in the western church they gradually developed into the doctrine of purgatory." Who Needs Purifying? "With death, our life-choice becomes definitive--our life stands before the Judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms." While some may be totally closed in on themselves in selfishness and evil and while others may be totally open to God, "for the great majority of people--we may suppose--there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil--much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains, and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul." Scriptural Basis St. Paul "begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. "Then Paul continues: 'Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw--each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire' (1 Cor. 3:12-15). "In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through 'fire' so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast." What Purgatory's Fire Might Be St. Paul uses "images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images--simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it." "Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Savior. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation." Will It Hurt? "His gaze, the touch of his heart, heals us through an undeniably painful transformation 'as through fire.' But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the interrelation between justice and grace also becomes clear: The way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us forever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth, and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy." Helping Those Being Purified "Early Jewish thought includes the idea that one can help the deceased in their intermediate state through prayer (see, for example, 2 Macc. 12:38-45; first century B.C.). The equivalent practice was readily adopted by Christians and is common to the Eastern and Western Church." "The souls of the departed can, however, receive 'solace and refreshment' through the Eucharist, prayer, and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death--this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude, or even a request for pardon?" "In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other--my prayer for him--can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God's time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain." Learning More The above quotations are taken from Pope Benedict's encyclical on Christian hope, Spe Salvi. There are more things he would like you to know about purgatory, though, so be sure to check out sections 45-48 of the document. You can read it online here.

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Book Review:  Among The Mosques

… This bottom-up strategy leads to the construction of a parallel society. Banning music and alcohol helps to wall Muslims off from the prevailing British culture, as does the creation of sharia courts that provide members an alternative to the state on matters of personal status, such as marriage and divorce. When Mr. Husain asks a cleric in Dewsbury why there are no women in the mosque, the cleric directs him to a book, “Guidance for a Muslim Wife.” A sample line from that work: “When a woman leaves her home without her husband’s consent, then all the angels of the skies and the entire universe curse her for this act until she returns home.”

Mr. Husain worries about the effect of such teachings, especially on depressed northern mill towns. In the city of Blackburn he encounters two locals, non-Muslim white men, who explain that the downtown quarter, Whalley Range, is a no-go zone for whites at night. “We call this the Khyber Pass,” one of them says, pointing to a bridge leading into the quarter. Americans, who have a long familiarity with neighborhoods divided by ethnicity and with religious groups that keep to themselves, might not find anything sinister in this. But Muslims, Mr. Husain stresses, are the fastest growing minority in Britain. Between 2001 and 2016 the entire population of England grew by 10.9%, while the Muslim population grew by 107.3%—to more than three million in total. More enclaves like Whalley Range are almost certain to arise.

Ed Husain once defended Islam in terms of Blair-era multiculturalism. Now he invites Muslims to join the ‘British mainstream.’

And they will wield ever more political power. Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party, frequently applauded Hamas, extended a hand of friendship to radical Islamists, and feigned blindness about anti-Semitism in his party. His calculation was easy to discern. Some 30 seats in Parliament represent constituencies influenced by intolerant mosques. Politicians like Mr. Corbyn purport to be committed to multiculturalism and minority rights but pander to bigots and oppressors—giving unscrupulous leaders in the Muslim community an excuse to depict any criticism as rank prejudice.

The laudable intention of shielding minorities from intolerant attacks has had the paradoxical effect of empowering intolerant Islamists whose ultimate aim is to eliminate the core values of the wider culture. “Multicultur- alism has now enabled monoculturalism,” Mr. Husain writes.

A practicing Muslim, Mr. Husain addresses readers not as a spokesman for his religious community but as a British patriot… The antidote to the Islamist threat, as he now understands it, is a vigorous defense of traditional British values: the rule of law, individual liberty, and gender and racial equality. “If we lose any of this inheritance,” he writes, “we lose ourselves.”

In a surprising twist, “Among the Mosques” doesn’t identify the activities of the Islamists as the nub of the problem. The most dangerous threat of all emanates not from groups like the Tableeghi Jamaat but from the general loss of belief in Britain’s own great traditions. If British patriots, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, would only defend their traditions with vigor and self-confidence, the magnitude of the problem would shrink. “For as long as we fly the flag with confidence in our national character,” Mr. Husain writes, “our Muslim and other fellow citizens will join the British mainstream with pride and a sense of belonging.” There’s a lesson in this argument for Americans too.

Mr. Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

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But, this is an example of what we have been saying all along…

Shocking, just shocking 🤔😳

Talk about shocking, the rent price caught my eye. It’s a big house, but come on, man…

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I thought this year would have the hottest day, or 2020, or 2019, or 2018…isn’t climate change making our world hotter?  But:

 

********************** From Medjugorje: Think about Cuba, for example…

On June 25th, for the 40th Anniversary of the Apparitions, the visionary Marija received this message: 

“Dear children! My heart is joyful because through these years I see your love and openness to my call. Today I am calling all of you: pray with me for peace and freedom, because Satan is strong and by his deception, wants to lead away all the more hearts from my motherly heart. That is why decide for God so that it may be good for you on the earth which God gave you. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

Mary is a Jewish woman, soaked in the Bible. This part of the message that may surprise people refers to an excerpt from Deuteronomy (4:39-40), and it is important to quote it in order to fully understand our Mother’s thinking: 

"Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.” 

This is something to ponder, in these times when humanity desires happiness more than ever, but when the commandments of God are so often trampled upon! Just before the 3rd millennium, Mary invited us to make this century a time of peace and prosperity, IF we say yes to peace and decide for God. (12.25.1999). It is never too late!

For the first time in 40 years, Our Lady is inviting us to pray for freedom. Father Livio asked Marija how she sees this new request from Mary, because in the past she often asked us to pray for peace. 

Marija: "I experienced communism. In these times of the pandemic, reading the newspapers and looking at the news, I have the feeling that a dictatorship is taking hold in many countries. In Argentina, for instance, no one can enter or leave. There is an evil dictatorship.

Our Gospa tells us, "Pray with me for peace and freedom, for Satan is strong, and with his deceptions he wants to lead away all the more hearts from my motherly Heart.”

I believe that in this moment, they want to take away our freedom through these satanic plans. Under the pretext of not offending the sensibilities of others, we are forbidden to talk about our religion and to bear witness to our faith. Under the pretext of not offending... 

"That is why I believe that the Madonna is building a new world. It is wonderful to see so many hands outstretched out of love and so many people who have changed their lives, having been touched in their hearts by the Blessed Mother and by God. Many people got lost, but many others have found themselves.

For us in Medjugorje, this period amounted to a pause, a moment of rest and prayer. I believe that Medjugorje will now come back to life, and become stronger than before, because here Mary is still appearing, calling us, rejoicing with us. She is preparing a major plan, much bigger than we think.

Something to consider, I found it interesting.

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BELOW THE FOLD: WARNING:

EXCERPT FROM AN ARTICLE…

Robert Reilly wrote in America On Trial: American liberty and constitutional order are not the product of any conception of the universe, but of only one – that of the Judeo-Christian and natural law tradition. The Founders not only declared the inherited principles of human equality, popular sovereignty, the requirement of consent, and the moral right to revolution – all of which were articulated in the Middle Ages – but, for the first time in history, instantiated them, put them into practice, producing a constitutional republic that was the product of deliberation and free choice. The eighteenth-century American historian David Ramsay wrote:

In no age before, and in no other country, did man ever possess an election of the kind of government under which he would choose to live. The constituent parts of the ancient free governments were thrown together by accident. The freedom of modern European governments was, for the most part, obtained by the concessions or liberality of monarchs or military leaders. In America alone, reason and liberty concurred in the formation of constitutions.

The Founders accomplished this in the form of an extended federal republic the likes of which the world had never seen. 

The first thing to consider is why the representatives of the 13 colonies thought their grievances deserved the attention of the world, which they addressed out of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind”. Politics is rooted in the particular, as we know from the long list of specific grievances against Great Britain itemized in the Declaration, among which was “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent”. Why not simply secure independence and have done with it? The answer is that the standard of justice to which the Founders appealed was, according to them, universal – true for everyone, everywhere, at all times. If it were not true for everyone, then it was not true for them either, and they had no moral basis for their revolution.

When the Signers of the Declaration appealed to the ‘supreme judge of the world’ for the ‘rectitude of [their] intentions’ they acknowledged the divine government of the world as the framework within which their rights might be exercised.

The source of man’s dignity is secure only in the transcendent, which is what makes it irrevocable. All of the principles in the Declaration and its references to God as Creator, Supreme Judge, and divine Providence presume the truth of man made in the imago Dei. Constitutional, democratic government is unthinkable without the presupposition of God as the source of rights, but also because, without Him, there is no basis for the restraint that is the essence of such government. Thomas Jefferson wondered whether “the liberties of a nation [can] be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?”

That “all men are created equal” means that it is unjust to treat a man as an animal, or to behave toward him as if one were God, i.e. tyrannically. Treating a man as if he were a dog is manifestly unjust to anyone who knows the distinction between the two, as it is equally unjust to behave toward a man as if one were God.

 He closed with a personal reminiscence. My grandparents came from Ireland, a land not nearly as distant in space or custom as the countries from which so many have come. The fact that my own family’s roots do not go back very far does not make me feel less American; it makes me feel more American. I think of my nearest neighbors, who are Vietnamese boat people. Across the street is a Russian physicist. All Americans now. During a summer day at a swimming pool near my neighborhood, I saw several faces whose profiles could have come from ancient Inca figurines. These Latin American kids were playing with a brother and a sister of Asian origin. A young boy with the royal visage of a Benin bronze scampered up a chain link fence to help a child recover its toy. Nearby was a family originally from Portugal. My wife is from Spain.

No one was the slightest bit self-conscious about this extraordinary mélange. I saw in concrete action what I have always deeply believed – “that all men are created equal”. What other than that proposition could account for what I witnessed? What else could make it possible? We are all beneficiaries, not victims, of the American Founding. To fight racism today, the last thing anyone should try to do is tear down the nation premised on that principle. It is to the Founding principles themselves that we can turn to recover from the great evils afflicting us. That should be a measure of the gratitude we owe to our Founding Fathers for their magnificent achievement.

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Saw this, our fear here in FLA, don’t bring your liberal values with you, please…

Geoffrey Miller

@primalpoly

The ultimate privilege is having the money & freedom to move away from a city that your political values have ruined.

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From The Catholic Thing:

Anthony Esolen: When it comes to marriage, our Church has lately accepted a secular foundation. Don’t expect a cathedral to rise from that.

In a previous article, I suggested that if you really wanted to see a vast and intricate systemic evil, working out in the open on all fronts, with every single important social institution going along, you need look no farther than at the system of family destruction, subheading inguinal. I ended by asking what the churches have been doing to fight the system.

Mostly they have gone along. We aren't talking about a system that they inherited as part of the settled ways of a secular and always sin-riddled world. We should be slow to condemn churches for not innovating, because the burden of proof is always on the innovator, not on someone who wants to keep the peace, as compromised as it may be. 

But what about churches that rush to make common cause with the innovators, to be part of the new system?

The single most destructive change in my lifetime has been the collapse of the moral sensibility that set marriage as the only right garden for sexual relations between men and women – that sensibility, the customs that gave it flesh and blood, and the statutory laws that flowed from it. 

As a matter of historical fact, the sensibility took root in America because of the Christian faith, but by no means is it unknown outside of that faith; imagine explaining to an Iroquois maiden two hundred years ago what “sexual freedom” means, and not having her turn away from you in disgust.

So, we have had sixty years of the promise, exploded almost as soon as it was made, that if we just gave up our “puritanism” – strange, to accuse free-speaking and bawdy Italian Americans and Greek Americans and Spanish Americans and French Americans of being “puritan” – we would be happy and lucky and our children would dance, and all would be well.

 
Click here to read the rest of Professor Esolen’s column . . .

Image: Venice: Sunset Behind the Church of Santa Maria Sella Salute by Edward William Cooke, 1851 [private collection]

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Sick or Weird category:

First, let me say that it was a shame he had to die, and in that way, at that time…my continued comment that IF he had just got into the police cruiser as he had been asked, how different would things be…

From a friend: After 6 burglaries, 3 car thefts, multiple illegal trespasses, an ongoing cocaine and alcohol addiction, committing 2 violent home invasions, 3 armed robberies, dealing Fentanyl and Meth, passing counterfeit money, beating 4 victims senseless and being arrested 23 times since 1998, George Floyd hasn't committed a crime in over one year now! (That’s insensitive) BUT IT DID NET HIS FAMILY $27 MILLION FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA AND ANOTHER $20+ MILLION FROM A GO-FUND-ME ACCOUNT.
But wait, there's more... “Grandpa” Joe Biden and his Socialist V.P. along with Nancy Pelosi met with the Floyd family on May 25th, for the one year anniversary of his death in June 2020, and gave the Floyd family a folded American Flag that had flown over the Capitol on the day he died, as though he were some kind of a fallen hero!

☹️

😢

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 So I am reading book reviews…does this mean anything to you?

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From WSJ, unrelenting battle for parents today…Maybe you should pay attention to which schools you use

Also from WSJ, talk about athletic privilege…

 I know, convert to Division 3, no athletic scholarship, just go to class, study, and if you have time and an interest, play a sports. Not that difficult. Think how much state taxpayers would  save. Take what they are spending on athletic programs and use half of it for better classrooms, equipment, teachers, financial need scholarships…sounds simple to me. 

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More than sad, disgusting. Put into context when he said his first wife was killed by a drunk when there was no evidence of that, from what I have read.

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SO THAT’S HOW THEY DO IT…CLEVER, GO BACKWARDS

************************     7 Signs

SARCASM

We all know that CRT is simply the honest teaching of American history. It's also a niche legal theory that is only taught in college. It's also an arbitrary label that racists use to slander everything they don't like. It's also the only way to make sure your elementary school kids don't grow up thinking slavery is good. Wow! Are you confused? You probably are. Whiteness has that effect on people. We're here to help.

So how can you know your kids are being taught CRT in school? Here are the 7 signs: 

1) They call your boss to tell how racist you are: If your kid tries to get you canceled because you perpetuate systems of oppressive whiteness by treating all races equally--which is totally racist-- they might be learning CRT. 

2) They segregate all their stuffed animals by fur color: Kids who have been taught CRT know the value of creating segregated, decolonized spaces for their stuffies of color to play without white harassment. 

3) They come home with purple hair and a 'Kill All Men' tattoo: This look is the standard issue for kids who believe all the tenets of CRT.

4) They try to get out of math homework by telling you math is racist:Well, it is. So why are you making them do it, you racist boomer? 

5) They refuse to eat on Taco Tuesday due to cultural appropriation: Literally every white ally of social justice knows that enjoying any aspect of another culture that doesn't belong to your own is racist. Segregate those cultures, Mom and Dad! 

6) They ask all their minority classmates to bully them: Are they white? Then they deserve it! 

7) They explain over dinner how Marxist ideology is a potent and effective tool for infiltrating all aspects of modern civilization-- including culture, religion, economy, and government-- in order to dismantle the established order and topple the bourgeois: Wow! so true! 

If your kid exhibits any of these signs, they're on their way! Give them a salute, Comrade! 

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