Teensy and Tiger aren’t exactly friends, but they do manage to nap on the porch at the same time without any major hullaballoos.
Last week, as usual, I went on scanning
pictures.
Here’s
Dorcas in the little suit I made for her from the leftovers of my own
suit. I made them for us to wear to Kenny and Annette’s (Larry’s brother
and sister-in-law’s) wedding, September 16, 1984. Dorcas was two.
Somewhere, we even found a little lavender purse to go with her outfit.
The skirt and jacket were of lilac
linen. The vest and jacket’s back collar
were of plum velvet, the blouse was of plum silk with a teal blue stripe, and
the attached bow was teal blue silk. The
jacket even had tiny shoulder pads.
And no, the outfit was not washable. We took a pretty, lacy bib to the wedding
reception... and any time Dorcas wore the suit to church thereafter, we hurried
home after the service and removed and hung the suit. So we had it dry-cleaned rarely, considering
it was worn by a 2-year-old. She loved
that suit. She called it her ‘lady suit’.
The children called the tree in the
next pictures ‘the peek-a-boo’ tree. Our
house sat on a corner, and the tree grew right inside the intersection of the
sidewalks. These were taken in the spring
of 1985.
Tuesday afternoon when I called Loren to tell him I’d be
bringing him some food at about 4:00, as usual, I asked if he’d remembered to
use his eyedrops.
“Yes,” he said, but then didn’t seem to know where the
bottle was.
“It’s the white bottle on the table, right where you sit to
eat,” I told him.
“Well, I have a bottle that I found in my bathroom,” he told
me.
I promised to look at it when I got there, thinking he’d
probably pulled out one of those Equate (store brand) lubricating drops. I hoped the new bottle of eyedrops
weren’t lost.
Lo
and behold, he’d found the original bottle Eye Physicians had sent, back
on August 10th! Of course, then he was sorry all over again
that he’d spent $52 on another bottle. I assured him that it would be
good to have an extra bottle on hand (though I doubt he’ll ever need that much
– but he always did like to stock up on things; so he was content
with that thought).
His first cataract surgery was
Wednesday morning. He was a bit worried
about it. I kept reassuring him; cataract surgery is about 99%
successful, after all, and patients rarely feel any pain. But I have to say, I’d sho’ ’nuff be worried about
it, if it was my eyeball going under the carving knife.
We got there a little before 8:30 a.m. The Eye Surgery building is attached to the
Eye Physicians building, where Loren had his previous eye exams.
When he signed in, he could not find
his Medicare card. It was in his wallet
a couple of weeks ago when I took pictures of all his cards, the better to help
with his finances; I don’t know what has become of it. I need to have a closer look at that
wallet.
The receptionist said she couldn’t
simply go over to the Eye Physicians office through their connecting hallway
and retrieve the information; employees are restricted from crossing from one
office to the other because of COVID-19.
Good grief. Nobody in either
building was even sick, nor had they been sick. I am really, really tired of this idiocy.
So... I drove back to Loren’s house to
see if I could find another wallet he might have put the card into.
I could not. But since I had both my laptop and my tablet in
the Jeep, I turned on the laptop, found the pictures I’d taken of all those
cards, and sent them to my own email address, from whence I’d be able to
retrieve them via tablet. Then back to
the Eye Surgery building I went, tablet in hand.
By the time I got there, the Eye
Surgery manager had already walked over to the Eye Physicians office and
collected the information. The manager, presumably,
is much less likely to spread coronavirus spores than the receptionist,
nasty little soul that she is. (Actually,
she was quite nice to us. If she spewed
spores at us, it has not affected us yet.)
Loren had already been taken back for surgery. The
surgery itself would last only about ten minutes, but ‘prep’ would take about
an hour.
I wanted to sit in a nice little out-of-the-way corner of
the large waiting room, but they wouldn’t allow it. Instead, I had to sit
on the east side in front of a bank of windows, and it felt like it was about
100° there. Ugh. It was only 70° outside! Furthermore,
that nice little out-of-the-way corner was much farther away from the
other patients.
If the goal is to spread people out as much as possible –
i.e., ‘social distancing’ – wouldn’t it make more sense to keep all corners of
a large waiting room open, rather than to push everyone into the same
area??
Ugh, people are so totally senseless. Even nice people.
I pulled my mask down off my nose. Gotta breathe... gotta breathe... gotta
breathe...
(I did leave it protecting my
chinny-chin-chin. If other people can be senseless, so can I.)
There was a large person on the opposite side of the waiting
room, chin sunk down low on his chest, snoring like a walrus. (Yes, walruses
snore.) I shudder to think what’s all
over the inside of his face mask.
Over there on the front desk were two signs. One showed
how to cough into one’s elbow. The other recommends elbow bumps, as
opposed to handshakes.
(( ... pause ... ))
Ewwwww.
I uploaded some recently-scanned
pictures to my Clothes Rack blog, pictures
of the children, mostly, in clothes I had sewn for them.
This little outfit for
Hannah (age 3, early 1984) was revamped from one of my own sweater-skirt sets
that I wore in high school. The sweater
was originally store-bought. I cut it
down, made the front pocket from the hood, and added a couple of big
buttons. When I first made the skirt for
myself, it was an A-line. Cutting it
down to a size four created enough extra fabric for a ruffle. It sure would have been nice to have had a
serger for the sweaters and double knit things I made back then. Lacking that, I used the overlock stitch on
my Bernina Record 830.
Hannah, upon seeing this
picture, remarked, “I remember that outfit being a favorite.”
And then Loren
was done with surgery and being wheeled into the recovery room. He needed little time to recover, as he was
doing very well. The nurse gave him a
glass of cranberry juice (he had the choice of cranberry, orange, or apple),
which tasted mighty good to him after having had nothing to eat or drink since
midnight.
The
doctor came in and checked on him, telling us that the surgery had gone
perfectly. The only thing of concern was that Loren’s blood
pressure was 195/98 or so, making the alarm bell chime on the monitor. The
previous week at the doctor’s office, it had only been 120/70. But each time they checked it, it came down a
little more.
They gave Loren a blue zippered bag with the things for his
eyes – a clear shield with which to cover the eye while he sleeps, medical tape
to hold the shield in place, plastic sunglasses that fit over his glasses, and
his eyedrops. And then they let him go home.
I
gave him some breakfast – a little chunk of sliced French bread, a
cranberry-orange muffin, and a bowl of maple-and-brown-sugar cream of wheat.
He
assured me he’d be all right if I left then, so at 10:35 a.m. I headed
home.
 |
| Teddy, 1 1/2 |
I talked to Loren on the phone at 2:00 that afternoon, and
then took him some supper at a quarter ’til four. He was doing well. His eye looked very
good; one couldn’t tell anything at all had happened to it – except it was
clearer than it had been.
“Larry will come later to help you with that eye shield,” I
told him as I prepared to go.
He started getting it out of the blue bag... wondered where
to put it...
“Just keep all that stuff in the bag,” I advised, and
started to add, “so you won’t lose them,” and then changed it to “so they won’t
get lost.”
Now, Loren may be confused about this and that, but he
recognizes an implied reproof when he hears one. He paused in
putting things back into the bag and looked at me.
I grinned, wagged a finger at him, and said, “Well, I tried to
be tactful!”
He started laughing, and laughed even more when I added, as
I headed down the stairs toward the front door, “I am not well-known for tact.”
Then, “I’m more liable to just be straightforward.” And further, “Oh,
well; most of the time, that’s better!”
He
nodded in agreement, and then laughed again when I remarked, “Tact doesn’t run
in the family, you know.”
That evening, while I went to church, Larry went to Loren’s
house and stayed with him for a while to make sure he remembered his eyedrops
and to get the clear shield taped in place over his eye before he went to
bed. Also, we thought he needed the company. He’s to wear the
shield for the first week whenever he sleeps, to prevent accidental rubbing and
injury.
Larry took our blood pressure monitor with him and checked Loren’s
blood pressure. It was 165/90 – so it had gone down a bit, but was still
a little high. Hopefully it was simply a result of being nervous about
the surgery. We’ll keep a watch on it.
He was really happy and relieved to have one eye done, and
to discover that it wasn’t painful at all, and by that evening, he could
already see better. That’s faster than expected. It should continue
to improve for several days. Surgery on his
other eye will be this coming Wednesday. Hopefully, seeing better will keep him
independent a little longer. He can
still drive well, and he still takes care of his large lawn and flower gardens.
I sat down at the piano and played a couple of songs – and while the familiar, dear old words played in my head, it made me cry, because... well, just because those words mean so much. My brother with Alzheimer’s... the old pictures I’ve been scanning of the children, now all grown and with children of their own...
Life can seem to drag, when there are
troubles and trials. But in reality, the years fly by! I’m so
thankful we have an eternity with the Lord to look forward to, where ‘death and
pain shall be no more’.
Just look at the sweet words Charles
Gabriel, one of my favorite songwriters, wrote, way back in the early 1900s:
There’s One who can comfort when all else fails,
Jesus, blessed Jesus;
A Savior who saves tho’ the foe assails,
Jesus, blessed Jesus:
Once He traveled the way we go,
Felt the pangs of deceit and woe;
Who more perfectly then can know,
Than Jesus, blessed Jesus?
He heareth the cry of the soul distressed,
Jesus, blessed Jesus;
He healeth the wounded, He giveth rest,
Jesus, blessed Jesus:
When from loved ones we’re called to part,
When the tears in our anguish start,
None can comfort the breaking heart,
Like Jesus, blessed Jesus.
He never forsakes in the darkest hour,
Jesus, blessed Jesus;
His arm is around us with keeping pow’r,
Jesus, blessed Jesus:
When we enter the Shadow-land,
When at Jordan we trembling stand,
He will meet us with outstretched hand,
This Jesus, blessed Jesus.
What joy it will be when we see His face,
Jesus, blessed Jesus;
Forever to sing of His love and grace,
Jesus, blessed Jesus:
There at home on that shining shore,
With the loved ones gone on before,
We will praise Him forevermore,
Our Jesus, blessed Jesus.
Charles Hutchinson Gabriel is said to have written and/or
composed between 7,000 and 8,000 songs, many of which are available in 21st
century hymnals. He used several
pseudonyms, including Charlotte G. Homer, H. A. Henry, and S. B. Jackson. He was born August 18, 1856, in Cedar County,
Iowa, and died September 14, 1932, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
In my scanning of old photos, I’m
finding pictures of comforters and quilts I’d made that I had forgotten all
about. Fun to see them again.
I was into ruffles and lace, and not so
much piecing – partly because there just wasn’t time. This quilt might better be called a ‘comforter’,
since I merely sewed wide ruffled lace onto giant petals, turned under the
edges and sewed them onto the quilt top, sandwiched it with ruffles around the
edges, turned the entire thing right side out, and tied it with yarn. I made the curtains, too. Yep, I loved ruffles and shirring and lace
and bows. Still do, for that matter.
Hannah’s nightgown is one of those I
sewed for her and Dorcas, along with pajamas for the boys, before our trip to
Mexico. I used a peasant pattern, since
there was no time to waste. Each
nightgown took about 30 minutes to make.
The pjs took about an hour.
When I went to Loren’s house Thursday
afternoon, he was vacuuming. I told him,
“See, right there is the trouble with having your cataracts removed: It
makes you realize you need to vacuum the carpet!” 😄
He
is so delighted over how much better he can see. He said, “It feels like I can see as well as I
could when I was a kid!”
So
now he’s very much looking forward to having the other eye done.
He’d set up the water on his lawn, too,
and assured me that he remembers to wear the special sunglasses they gave him
at Eye Physicians any time he goes outside, and also when he’s in his living
room with all the windows. The eye looks
very good.
He’s enjoying that living room and
those windows now, because, what with his house on a bit of a hill northeast of
town, he can see all the way to town, and a good distance across it. He has a view of the airport, too, and likes
to watch the planes taking off and landing.
Another drawback to being able to see
better, however, is that he found some of his financial papers, began reading –
and discovered Norma’s name on them. He
gathered them up, and came to my house that evening to show me, worrying that
someone might have access to his accounts and finances.
I explained first that she has passed
away, so there’s no worry there; and second, I have sent her death certificate
to all of his financial institutions, and her name is no longer on any of his
accounts.
About the time he seems to understand,
we start the merry-go-round over again. I just take the palomino and try
to grab the ‘Free-Ride Ring’ each time I go past it.
Then, in a rare moment of deeper
understanding, he said, “Well, your memory is good, and mine is not, so I’m
going to need help with it.”
I assured him that Larry and I will
help with whatever he needs, and he nodded, “I know you will.”
Another concern began to surface, so I
said quickly, “There’s nothing at all to worry about; it’s all taken care
of. If there are things you don’t understand, the best thing to do is to
leave it in God’s hands.”
That calmed him right back down, and he
smiled and said, “Yes, that’s exactly what I do. I always do that.”
(Well, he almost always does that.
He did right then, and that’s all that matters.)
He’d also brought a piece of mail from
Publisher’s Central Sweepstakes. I promptly launched into a story about
him and his late wife Janice getting one of those when I was at their house,
back when I was about nine years old. He, entertaining his little sister,
went all agog, scribbling his name and address on the paper so violently he
kept breaking the lead in his pencil, wadding the page into the envelope,
licking the envelope ’til there was no sticky left, taping it shut (round and
round the whole envelope), getting the stamp lost in his mouth, and then
throwing it on the floor and stamping on it with vigor. I laughed until I
cried and there was no more wind in my lungs.
So Loren left my house laughing over
that, too; he did remember it. Oh, and he handed me the envelope
to throw away, so we took care of that, too. Hopefully, the address change I instigated at
the post office will bring most of those to my house now, rather than
his.
I
love salads, and don’t get them often enough to suit me, because I rarely go to
the store, and thus rarely have fresh produce.
Wouldn’t it be fun to live in a little Italian village along the
Mediterranean, where every day you could just go down the steps from the
cottages to the lower levels where all the stands of fresh fruits, vegetables,
meats, and breads are?
“Yes,
fun,” answered a friend with whom I was chatting, “but think how far you’d be
from church!” 😄
“Yeah,”
I agreed, “and in Italy, 83% are Catholic (though only about half of those are practicing
Catholics), 14% are atheist, 2% are Muslim, and 1% are Other. I’d be a very square peg in a very round
hole.”
Just
for fun, I looked it up – and lo and behold, I found several Baptist churches
in Italy, and even a couple of ‘Bible Baptist’ churches, as our own church is
called. They even have midweek services. How ’bout that.
Walkers have been working steadily
through all this pandemic upheaval – but lately, it’s been a little more
difficult to find work. Usually there is enough work that they can pick
and choose.
It always works that way: when people start having a hard time making
money, and many are unemployed, the trouble eventually trickles down to the
construction companies. They’ve been
considered ‘essential business’ – but what if there’s no business to be had? To make matters worse, the price of lumber
has jumped a good 40% upwards. That
will slow new construction, if nothing else does!
These
pictures are from early 1985. In
preparation for new baby Joseph, we moved Teddy’s crib into Dorcas’ room,
probably in February or March, since the baby was expected to arrive in late
April. We made a brand-new room for
Hannah downstairs (as seen in the previous pictures). Anticipating Hannah and Dorcas eventually
sharing the room, and having plenty of space, we bought, along with matching
dresser and bureau, a king-sized bed – a waterbed, which would keep her warm at
night.
Hannah, 4, exclaiming over
all this to her grandparents, spread her hands, palms up, and laughed, “I have
the biggest bed in the house! – and I’m just a little girl.”
Larry and I had a king-sized
waterbed, too; but Hannah was pretty sure hers was bigger. It certainly looked bigger, with nobody
but her in it!
Getting that beautiful set
of furniture proved to be an excellent investment, as indeed Hannah and Dorcas did
share it for quite a number of years, until a house fire burned it. In an odd twist, Jeremy’s late mother Malinda
totally refinished that bedroom set, and Jeremy himself used it until he and
Lydia married in 2008.
I sewed matching canopies...
quilts with ruffled sides... bumper pads... curtains... shams... and
pillows. Dorcas’ bed had a side rail
that we lifted at night. My late nephew
David Walker made the drawers under the crib and the bed, and another set to go
under Joseph’s crib.
A
quilting friend, looking at these pictures, commented, “That’s a lot of fabric.
Even more than the puffy sleeves from
the 80’s. 
Did you
buy bolts of fabric?”
“I
did,” I told her. “And I had enough left
over to later make matching dresses (with the obligatory big sleeves and
ruffles, of course) for the girls and for me. I have used it in quilts, more recently – and
I still have a small amount (1/8 yard or less) of a couple of those prints in
my stash! 
”
Larry
told the girls and me, “Just don’t walk into that room with those dresses on,
or you’ll get lost, and the rest of us will never be able to find you!”
Jumping
forward to June 16, 2001, here’s Victoria, age 5, hiking with Larry. Larry has an airgun; Victoria has a ‘walking
stick’. Believe me, Larry was in far greater
peril from Victoria’s walking stick than Victoria ever was from Larry’s
airgun.
Saturday, Lydia sent pictures of their
new St. Bernard puppy, Monty, along with several of the children, Jacob,
Jonathan, Ian, and Malinda.
Last
night after church I was holding Keira.
She’s 2 years and 4 months. I
asked her if she liked the song the choir had just sung. She gave a couple of her characteristic quick
little nods.
“This
song?” I questioned, and sang the last line or two very quietly in her
ear: “Surely He bore our sorrow, and by
His stripes we are healed.”
She
leaned back and looked into my face, beamed at me, and nodded vigorously. She obviously knew that was exactly
the right song!
Loren
invited us to his house for a snack, first time he’s done that in a long time. I think he was just so happy that he can
already see better, he wanted to share his happiness. We had toast with peanut butter and honey
(well, I left off the peanut butter, since the scale said I was up half a pound
that morning) and coffee.
So
many people say to me, “Half a pound is nothing to worry about!”
Oh,
yeah? Well, what if I ceased to worry
about it for a year, and gained half a pound every day? By the end of the year, I’d weigh 178
pounds more than I do right now, that’s what!
And that would certainly be something to worry about. It’s a whole lot easier to lose half a pound
than it is to lose a hundred pounds – or even five pounds, for that
matter. It doesn’t take very many extra
pounds at all before arthritic knees, hips, and ankles protest on the stairways. So... I try to keep ze ol’ bones happy, that
I do.
Today at noon it was only 66°, bright
and sunny. (And that extra half pound is
gone, along with another half pound, besides.
All the better.)
Here are Keith and Hannah with new baby
Joseph. I could hardly wait to
get out of the hospital with my new babies and get home to the other
children. They loved getting to see and talk to the new babies, and, if
they were old enough, to hold the baby.
A friend, looking at some of these old
photos, remarked, “Sunday mornings must’ve started very early for you so you
could get all those girls looking so adorable!!”
“Yep!”
I responded. “Many was the time I had a
nasty collision with myself scrambling out of bed just as I was a-gettin’ in!”
I pulled up to
the outdoor ordering mic, and the auto sensor informed me, “Our business is
closed. Please visit us again. Our business is closed. Please visit us again. Our business is closed. Please visit us again. Our business is closed. Please visit us again. Our business is closed. Please visit us again.”
All right, all right. I heardja the foist time.
Home again, I
looked it up online. Google informs me,
just like I thought, that they close at 5:00 p.m. I clicked on their website – and there I see
that they actually close at 3:00 p.m., on account of the coronavirus.
Aarrgghh. Are the virus spores more vigorous and potent
after 3 p.m.?
’Cuz I know for
a fact that people do eat bagels after 3 p.m.
’Tupid, ’tupid
people. Aggravating people! Ah wanna bagel! Ah wanna bagel!
I think my allergies, of which I have
few, are acting up. Weather.com says the pollen count is low here – but
my eyes, nose, throat, and ears are itching, my nose is stuffy, and I keep
sneezing. It doesn’t feel like a cold; it feels like hay fever.
Plus, I can look right around the countryside near our house, and see weeds in
bloom.
So... it occurred to me that it might
be good to put Young Living Peppermint essential oil, which is supposed to be
helpful with allergies, into my tea. It’s
Legend of China white tea, and I don’t like it.
I need two teabags per cup, just to be able to actually taste it,
and then it’s not all that pleasant. But
it’s supposed to be good for me, and I hate to waste anything...
So I thought, Well, I like
peppermint tea, now don’t I? So why
shouldn’t I put some drops of peppermint oil into this abominably bland tea?
I decided three drops would be about
right. I drip-dropped them into the
steaming cup. One... two... three.
I screwed the lid back on the little
bottle and put it back where it belonged.
Coming back to the table, I picked up
my mug, lifted it to my lips, and took a breath just before taking a sip.
Now that I’ve picked myself back up off
the floor, collected my head from the corner of the room where it got blown to,
and screwed it back on, I will try a sip without breathing it in first.
... trepidacious sip ...
Hmmm.
Well, it’s not as lethal as one would think, judging from that
big whiff of it. But if I keep that cup
in front of my face very long at all, my eyes water, and I can’t keep from
taking a breath – at which point my head flies off again. Wow.
Potent stuff.
Maybe I should add water?
Next time, I should possibly merely touch
my fingertip to the top of the peppermint oil bottle, and then swirl said
finger around in the tea (providing said tea isn’t right at the boiling point). That otter do it.
Wheweeee. I might never have hay fever again in this
lifetime.
Ooookay. I’m done.
Down the sink it goes (I’ll wipe the sink out with it; it’ll smell good
and make the stainless steel sink shiny), and now I’ll make myself a brand new
pot of coffee. Sans peppermint.
Pray
for us, please, won’t you? For Loren, that he can stay independent as
long as possible, for we would be heartbroken if he had to go into assisted
living while COVID-19 has those places shut down to visitors (which is
extremely cruel and even life-threatening to the elderly), and for Larry and
me, that we are able to help him as we should, and say the right things.
He might be confused about things, but he sure enough recognizes love, or the
lack thereof, in the people around him. We do love him, and we depend on
God to help us do what we need to do at the right time, and to say the right
words. But this is not easy for us.
A customer’s quilt is slated to arrive
Friday, and the photo-scanning will have to halt for a while. The lady wants
it custom-quilted. I’m looking forward to this quilting job. 😊
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
Addendum:
Global Mask
Craziness, an article from David Cloud
In Flint, Michigan, on May 1, at a
Family Dollar store, a 43-year-old security guard, a family man, the father of
six children, was shot dead after asking a customer to wear a mask (“Killed for
Doing His Job,” The Sun, May 4, 2020).
In Staten Island, New York, on May 25, a mob of angry customers at a Shoprite
grocery store cursed and berated a woman for not wearing a mask. One shamer
removed his mask so he can yell louder (“Video shows mob berating woman,” Fox
News, May 26, 2020).
In Gardena, California, on July 5, a security guard shot and killed a
50-year-old man at a supermarket because he wasn’t wearing a mask (“California
security guard charged with murder,” Fox News, Jul. 9, 2020).
In Bayonne, France, in July 5, a 59-year-old bus driver, family man, father of
three daughters, was beaten to death by a group of passengers who refused to
comply with the mask rule (“French bus driver died,” Agence France-Presse, Jul.
11, 2020).
In Lansing, Michigan, on July 14, a man stabbed another man in a restaurant
after being told he had to wear a mask. He fled the scene and was later shot to
death by a policewoman after he approached her with a knife and would not put
it down (“Suspect killed by Michigan deputy,” ABC News, Jul. 15, 2020).
In Minden, Ontario, on July 15, a man assaulted a grocery store employee after
being told to wear a mask and was later shot to death after a confrontation
with police in his home. One of the employees said later that they shouldn’t
have to enforce government rules. “If we didn’t have to force him and tell
him that he couldn’t come into the store, nothing would have happened, really.
He would have got his groceries and went along with his day” (“OPP shoot
man dead hours after mask dispute,” CBC.ca, Jul. 15, 2020).
In Lakeside, Colorado, on July 19, a woman shopping in a liquor store was
cursed and attacked with a cart for not wearing a mask (“Mask Madness,” The
Washington Times, Jul. 20, 2020).
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, on July 21, a man who was told that he had to wear
a mask to have his automobile serviced ran over the shop owner’s son (“New
Mexico deputies,” Associated Press, Aug. 24, 2020).
In Gainesville, Georgia, on about July 23, a woman shopping in a Walmart with
her two young children was severely berated by another customer for not wearing
masks. The mask shamer said, “I hope you all die” and walked off. Walmart
policy does not require young children to wear masks (“Store Mask Bully,” Western
Journal, July 29, 2020).
In San Diego, California, on July 23, a woman pepper sprayed a man who wasn’t
wearing a mask. He and his wife were sitting outside alone, social distancing
and eating a snack. The woman sprayed the entire container into the poor man’s
face (“Man allegedly pepper-sprayed for not wearing facial covering,” ABC10
News San Diego, Jul. 24, 2020).
In Hackensack, New Jersey, on July 29, in a Staples store, a 54-year-old woman
who had recently undergone a liver transplant and was walking with a cane,
demanded that another customer wear a mask and was subsequently shoved to the
floor and suffered a broken leg (“Woman Shoved to the Ground,” NBC4 New York,
Jul. 31, 2020).
In Manhattan Beach, California on July 31, a woman berated a man for not
wearing a mask (even though he was sitting outside and eating at the time),
then threw hot coffee on him. The victim subsequently beat up the crazed woman’s
husband (“California Couple Throws Coffee,” International Business Times,
Aug. 1, 2020).
In Wisconsin, on July 31, the head of the Department of Natural Resources,
instructed his employees that they must wear masks even while video
conferencing from their homes (“Employees need masks,” The Kansas City Star,
Aug. 10, 2020).
On August 10, a woman and her two children were removed from a Southwest
Airlines flight because her three-year-old autistic son would not wear a mask.
She had a note from the boy’s doctor about his special condition, but Southwest
apparently does not allow medical exemptions (“Family removed,” USA Today, Aug.
11, 2020).
On August 19, a mother and her six children were removed from a JetBlue Airways
flight after her two-year-old daughter kept pulling off her mask. The other
passengers were loudly protesting the airline’s decision, saying, ‘That’s not
fair; don’t do that to that mother,” to no avail. Another mother was kicked off
the same flight with her young son for sticking up for the first mother (“Mom
traveling with 6 kids kicked off,” ABC News, Aug. 21, 2020).
Former Navy Seal Robert O’Neill, one of the nation’s brave heroes who
participated in the raid that killed mass murderer Osama Bin Laden, was banned
from flying on Delta on August 20 after he tweeted a selfie of himself not
wearing a mask on a Delta flight, calling masks “dumb.” Even though he was
eating and drinking at the time and airline policy does not require wearing a
mask for such an activity, he was perhaps targeted for his jocular attitude
against masking.
* * *
Meanwhile, 39 kidnapped and exploited children have been found in a double-wide trailer in Georgia. At least 4 police officers have been shot in the last 3 or 4 days. Thirty-two officers have been reported feloniously killed so far in 2020. Where’s the news reporting, over and over and over, about these things???
Speaking of the dishonesty of the media, they scream and shriek without letup about deaths from COVID-19 ... but did you know that there are around 900,000 unborn babies slaughtered each year in the United States alone? – and maybe many more, because clinics don’t have to report it. That’s over 2,500 a day.
But the world has gone crazy over COVID-19. There have been 184,000 deaths of COV in our country this year – but the numbers of deaths from heart disease, cancer, and other deaths that always top the list are way, way down. What does that tell you?
Just this: they are counting deaths ‘from COVID-19’ that are not truly ‘from COVID-19’. A (very quiet) recent report from the CDC said that only 9-10,000 of that 184,000 number have actually died ONLY of COV. The United States matches that in 4 days alone, with abortions. Just think if we added in statistics from the whole world!
Horrible, horrible. Are we not able
to look around and have any inkling that the Lord of All Creation is angry?! One quick look at the Bible gives many
references to what God did when people, whether Jew or Gentile, shed innocent
blood. God avenged that innocent blood, sooner or later.
Even secular history proves that fact. And people call
it ‘coincidence’. They know better.
Today we are hearing on the news that the prisons in Douglas County (Nebraska’s largest county by population – 571,000) (our county, Platte, has a population of 33,470) have been quarantined, because 29 individuals (some in each of their 4 prison houses) have tested positive for COVID-19. The rural conservative radio station to which I listen also gives this information: most – in fact, almost all – of those who tested positive have had no symptoms of the virus at all.
Never before in history have we torn the world down over a virus that has such a low fatality rate – reportedly anywhere from 0.04% to 1%. Those who give higher percentage rates are counting deaths that occurred with COVID-19; not deaths that occurred entirely from COVID-19. There’s a huge difference. And it’s mainly a matter of honesty with the officials. Honesty is seriously lacking with the ‘officials’.
