God, country, and Notre Dame

 

 

One of the publications that I read on a regular basis is The National Catholic Reporter. Although its intended audience is the Catholic population, I have found that the articles it prints are well written, and it covers a range of viewpoints, from liberal to conservative, and some that are entirely neutral.

https://www.ncronline.org/

This is how Wikipedia describes it:

“The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) is a progressive national newspaper in the United States that reports on issues related to the Catholic Church. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, NCR was founded by Robert Hoyt in 1964. Hoyt wanted to bring the professional standards of secular news reporting to the press that covers Catholic news, saying that "if the mayor of a city owned its only newspaper, its citizens will not learn what they need and deserve to know about its affairs". The publication, which operates outside the authority of the Catholic Church, is independently owned and governed by a lay board of directors. “

NCR has won the "General Excellence" award from the Catholic Press Association in the category of national news publications six times between 2008 and 2014. The Catholic Press Association in June 2017 awarded former NCR editor and publisher Tom Fox its highest honor for publishers, the Bishop John England Award.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Catholic_Reporter

A few days ago, the Reporter printed two articles that highlight the difficultly inherent in discussing a very controversial topic – abortion. The article below goes into more detail, but the short version is that some of the folks at Notre Dame University do not want to invite Joe Biden to attend this year’s commencement because he is a Democrat. As we are all well aware, the Democratic Party believes that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

Somehow, that makes the Republican Party “pro- life”, even though the majority of Republican Party favor the death penalty.

Sister Joan Chittester provides us with the best possible description of the “pro-life” Republican Party:

 

"I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that makes you pro-life," she shared. "In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed." Chittister continued by noting those views aren't "pro-life" at all. "That’s pro-birth," she said, adding that society could benefit from a broader, more complex conversation on the subject.

 

Before Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, a Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, signed one of the earlier liberal abortion laws. Even though he later came to regret his decision, the fact remains that he DID sign the bill into law.

Joseph Biden Jr. is a devout Catholic, and carries a rosary with him every day. Even he personally is opposed to abortion, he believes that laws (even ones you disagree with) should be obeyed.

On occasion, the president has been denied communion because of his position.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/29/politics/joe-biden-denied-communion-south-carolina-catholic-church/index.html

Some religious leaders have gone as far as saying that “you can’t be a Democrat and a good Catholic”, but the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops takes a more nuanced stand:

On Nov. 7, president Jose Gomez issued a statement congratulating Biden and recognizing him as only the second Catholic president in a country that’s one-fifth Catholic. “Catholics have a special duty to be peacemakers, to promote fraternity and mutual trust,” Gomez said. Then, 10 days later, after hearing concern from some of the Conference’s other leaders, Gomez wrote a new statement, announcing a working group to deal with the “difficult and complex” situation of a Catholic president promoting policies including abortion access and broad civil protections for LGBTQ people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/12/09/biden-catholic-president-jfk-kennedy-bishops/

In October, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame alumna and faculty member, was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly 20 Notre Dame faculty members attended a White House ceremony Sept. 26 announcing her nomination, which was criticized as a COVID-19 "superspreader" event.  Notre Dame President John Jenkins was spotted there not wearing a mask, a decision he later apologized for after contracting COVID-19 himself. At the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, among the Trump flags and "Stop the Steal" banners, a "God, Country, Notre Dame" flag could also be seen on display.

(On a trip to Colorado last fall, we saw a billboard that read “LGBT = Liberty, Guns, Bible, and Trump).

Given the recent spate of unwelcome scrutiny, Notre Dame may decide to punt on or postpone another national controversy. Yet should Biden receive and accept an invite to campus, whenever that may be, it's likely that some of the very individuals and groups present in the White House Rose Garden last fall will be the very ones protesting his arrival, reflecting both a divided church and campus.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/will-biden-be-invited-notre-dames-commencement

More than 200 years ago, our Founding Fathers strongly felt that religion and state should not be mixed, but that’s easier said than done.

Al Smith was the first Roman Catholic to be nominated for president of the United States by a major party. His 1928 presidential candidacy mobilized both Catholic and anti-Catholic voters. Many Protestants (including German Lutherans and Southern Baptists) feared his candidacy, believing that the Pope in Rome would dictate his policies. Smith was also a committed "wet", which was a term used for opponents of Prohibition; as New York governor, he had repealed the state's prohibition law. As a "wet", Smith attracted voters who wanted beer, wine and liquor and did not like dealing with criminal bootleggers, along with voters who were outraged that new criminal gangs had taken over the streets in most large and medium-sized cities. Incumbent Republican Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was aided by national prosperity and the absence of American involvement in war, and he defeated Smith in a landslide in 1928.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Smith

The second Roman Catholic to be nominated for the presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960. Like Al Smith before him, he was opposed by at least some voters strictly because of his religion. Kennedy decided that the best way to fight the religious bias against Catholics was to address the problem directly. On September 12, 1960, he addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers, on the issue of his religion. You can read his entire address at the link below:

 

Here’s a key paragraph:

 

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”

 

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600

 

In November of 1964, noted conservative Barry Goldwater had this to say about the Religious Right:

 

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."

 

Barry Goldwater also was “pro-choice”:

 

“A woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s up to the pregnant woman, not to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.”

 

For the record, Donald Trump was “pro-choice” most of his life, but became “pro-life” in 2012 when it became politically expedient to do so.

 

What’s truly illogical is the religious right’s devotion to Donald Trump.

 

A notable fact in 2016 was that exit polls showed about 80% of white evangelical Christians supported Trump in spite of his unfamiliarity with the Bible, his divorces, his vulgar rhetoric and his association with porn stars. Trump's reputation in moral terms hasn't changed all that much during his time in office, but there is little evidence of slippage among these faith voters.

 

Once upon a time, conservatives stood for ideas and values that mattered and so did the Republican Party that gave them a political home. For example, in recent years, at least since the Obama presidency, our conservative Catholic friends have been keen to champion the rights of conscience. They have done so at a time when too many liberals have abandoned their birthright as guardians of the rights of conscience. Even if I have thought our conservative friends at times were excessive or worse in their claims, at least conscience is a principle worth fighting for.

Then along came Trump. He does not, as Obama did, confront conservatives with a challenge to conscience on this point of policy or that. They are expected to abandon it altogether if it conflicts with fealty to their liege lord. The proceedings in Orlando last weekend would be sad if they were not so frightening. What has happened to conservatism and to the once great party of Lincoln? And how will we, as a culture, retrieve the parts of conservatism that balance the whole?

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/trump-still-golden-calf-gop

You’ll never convince a Trump supporter that they should “switch sides” due to the fact that millions of Americans believe that God made Trump president.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/27/millions-of-americans-believe-god-made-trump-president-216537/

What we are witnessing literally is a Trump cult, much like the one that Jim Jones led in 1978: 

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/11/forty-years-later-history-repeats-itself.html

If you don’t believe me, why else would there be a “golden calf” at the recent CPAC convention?

Abortion is a VERY COMPLICATED TOPIC, and the article below explain why:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/07/roe-v-wade-is-in-news-again.html

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/01/roe-vs-wade.html

The Republican Party is determined to close as many clinics (like Planned Parenthood) as possible, even though the closures do not reduce abortions because women can no longer get birth control.

Venezuela provides the best example of this phenomenon:

As oil prices have declined, the economy in Venezuela has rapidly gone downhill, resulting in widespread poverty.

One of the casualties of declining income is birth control.

When Hugo Chavez led the country, birth control was subsidized and widely available - but that is no longer true.

Around Caracas, the capitol, a pack of three condoms costs $4.40 — three times Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage of $1.50.

Birth control pills cost more than twice as much, roughly $11 a month, while an IUD, or intrauterine device, can cost more than $40 — more than 25 times the minimum wage. And that does not include a doctor’s fee to have the device put in.

With the cost of contraception so far out of reach, women are increasingly resorting to abortions, which are illegal and, in the worst cases, can cost them their lives.

María Ferreira, 23, and her husband, Joseph Cordova, 25, carefully plan their sex life around the number of condoms they can afford each month.

Many women who grew up believing that Mr. Chávez’s political movement, known as Chavismo, would springboard them out of poverty, offering them education and career opportunities, now face the task of raising four, six or 10 children at a time when the basics of family care — food, soap, diapers — arrive intermittently or not at all.

As Venezuela’s economy — long buoyed by its vast oil reserves — began to tumble in 2014, the result of plummeting crude oil prices and poor financial management, the government’s purchasing power dove.

By 2015, contraceptives, once free at government hospitals and broadly affordable at private pharmacies, began to disappear. And women who could once plan their futures — thanks to contraception — began to lose control.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/world/americas/venezuela-birth-control-women.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

There is no easy solution to the crisis in Venezuela. At the moment, the only possible ways to help are higher oil prices, a more diversified economy, and better government oversight - and none of those things are likely.

The United States CAN help - but only in a limited way.

The Mexico City policy, sometimes referred to by its critics as the global gag rule, is a United States government policy that blocked U.S. federal funding for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provided abortion counseling or referrals, advocated to decriminalize abortion, or expanded abortion services. When in effect, the Mexico City policy is a U.S. government policy that requires foreign non-governmental organizations to certify that they will not "perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning" with non-U.S. funds as a condition for receiving U.S. global family planning assistance and, as of January 23, 2017, any other U.S. global health assistance, including U.S. global HIV (under PEPFAR) and maternal and child health (MCH) assistance.

The Mexico City policy was first implemented on January 20, 1985 by the second Reagan administration.

Since that time, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has enforced the policy during all subsequent Republican administrations and has rescinded the policy at the direction of all Democratic administrations.

After its initial implementation by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1985, the policy was rescinded by Democratic President Bill Clinton in January 1993, re-instituted in January 2001 by Republican President George W. Bush, rescinded in January 2009 by Democratic President Barack Obama, and reinstated in January 2017 when Republican President Donald Trump took office. In an address to the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President, confirmed that President Joe Biden would rescind the policy, as with his Democratic predecessors; the recission occurred later in January 2021.

Research shows that by reducing funding for family planning organizations which use abortion as one of many methods of family planning, the Mexico City policy has had the inadvertent impact of increasing unintended pregnancies and abortion.

That last sentence best explains the paradox of Republican thinking. By reducing the number of clinics in a state, in an effort to reduce abortion, MORE abortions become likely due to the reduced availability of birth control. As a reminder, the last time that the number of abortions increased from one year to the next was in 2006, when George W. Bush was president.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_policy

It remains to be seen whether Joe Biden gives the commencement speech at Notre Dame in May, but my guess is that he will – and that’s a very good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Am I too young to retire?

 

If we look at life expectancy statistics from the 1930’s we might come to the conclusion that the Social Security program was designed in such a way that people would work for many years paying in taxes, but would not live long enough to collect benefits. Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was indeed only 58 for men and 62 for women, and the retirement age was 65. But life expectancy at birth in the early decades of the 20th century was low due mainly to high infant mortality, and someone who died as a child would never have worked and paid into Social Security. A more appropriate measure is probably life expectancy after attainment of adulthood.

As Table 1 in the link below shows, the majority of Americans who made it to adulthood could expect to live to 65, and those who did live to 65 could look forward to collecting benefits for many years into the future. We can observe that for men, for example, almost 54% of the them could expect to live to age 65 if they survived to age 21, and men who attained age 65 could expect to collect Social Security benefits for almost 13 years (and the numbers are even higher for women).

https://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html

The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday. Over the course of the next 220 years, this number has dropped drastically, and the rate has dropped to its lowest point ever in 2020 where it is just seven deaths per thousand births. Although the child mortality rate has decreased greatly over this 220-year period, there were two occasions where it increased; in the 1870s, as a result of the fourth cholera pandemic, smallpox outbreaks, and yellow fever, and in the late 1910s, due to the Spanish Flu pandemic.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/

In 1910, the year after my dad was born, the infant mortality rate was 206.9 per 1,000 births, which is still much higher than today’s rate. My dad’s generation (the Greatest Generation) suffered through WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII. As a result, by the time they got to age 65, they justifiably felt that they had “paid their dues” and were more than eager to retire.

Since Minnesota farmers are tough people, my dad put off retiring from the Post Office until he was 67, and then he worked in the mail room of an insurance company on a part time basis for 5 more years. One of his sisters lived to be 95, and another sister (who lived to be 94) worked well into her 80’s. 

I am now 73 years old, a year older than my dad was when he retired for good, and I don’t have any plans to retire anytime soon. Since 2012, I have been a substitute teacher for 2 different school districts, and it’s the easiest job I have had my entire life. Virtually every other sub that I have met is somewhere in the 70’s, and the oldest one that I have run into was 85. Apart from the fact that it pays well for the amount of time that you put in, on most days I am LEARNING something, or TEACHING something to some young high school kids.

At one point, I thought that I would be able to retire when I was still in my 50’s, but life had other plans. I DO have friends and relatives who retired when they were still in their 50’s, but I also have relatives in their 70’s who have no intention of retiring anytime soon.

The Washington Post this morning published an interesting article about people who continued to work well beyond 70, and that includes our current president. His predecessor, incidentally, was 74 last June.

People age 75 and over, including our fresh-on-the-job president, are the fastest-growing group in the labor force, even though “age discrimination is very real,” said Susan Weinstock, vice president of financial resilience at AARP.

Although some of the people still working in their 70’s work simply to pay their bills, a lot of them continue to work for other reasons. 

Here are some common traits of the people who just don’t know how to quit:

1)    They see business as pleasure

2)   The exercise and eat healthfully

3)   They manage their stress

4)   They find meaning as “wisdom workers’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/older-worker-career-success-habit/2021/03/01/f2803642-7787-11eb-948d-19472e683521_story.html

Since they are involved with intellect pursuits as well as physical activity, orchestra conductors tend to live long lives – but so do actors.

There are NUMEROUS actors who work well into their 80’s – and beyond.

The list below is fairly complete, but does not include Tony Bennett, who’s still performing at the age of 94, or Martin Sheen, who is still performing at the age of 81. A few rock musicians, of course, died fairly young, but the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Arlo Guthrie, and several others are still performing well past” normal” retirement age.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/50-of-the-oldest-actors-still-working/ss-BB1aEWtb

When I was a college professor in China, I frequently asked the students what age they thought would be a good time to stop learning. The correct answer, as I reminded them, was 88 – and that’s true for the rest of us as well.

When am I going to retire? Beats me, but it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

 

 

 

 

 

Talent on loan from God

 

Rush Limbaugh, like Donald Trump, is a polarizing figure. Either you loved him, or you hated  him. 

There is no common ground.

Limbaugh and Trump both gained prominence by catering to the religious right, Limbaugh, more than anyone, coarsened American political discourse, paved the way for the rise of conservative populism, and fed the rawness of the culture wars, which are the nightly fare offered by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

Jonathan Chait, writing at New York magazine, captured the repugnant essence of Limbaugh's appeal:

Limbaugh oozed bile. He did not merely characterize his targets as misguided, or stupid, or even selfish. He rendered them for his audience as dehumanized targets of rage. He had special rage for feminist women, who were castrating harpies, and Black people, who were lazy, intellectually unqualified, and inherently criminal. The message he pounded home day after day was that minorities and women were seizing status and resources from white people and men, and that politics was a zero-sum struggle — and the victory would go to whichever side fought more viciously.

There is no denying that Limbaugh had a certain genius, but originality was not a part of that genius. He publicized conspiracy theories about the Clintons the way Oliver Stone publicized conspiracy theories about the assassination of JFK. He demeaned Blacks the way Fr. Charles Coughlin demeaned Jews. He advocated for states' rights the way George Wallace and John Calhoun had advocated for states' rights. Limbaugh liked to bemoan others as thugs, but he and his pedigree damn near cornered the market on thuggery.

 Why was Limbaugh successful where Coughlin and McCarthy had failed? In part, because his rise in shock jock radio coincided largely with the rise of the religious right in politics. In this great free country of ours, people can believe and worship as they wish. But bringing millions of voters who think dinosaurs walked the earth a few thousand years ago (until they failed to get a ticket on Noah's Ark and were wiped out by the great flood) into the political mainstream introduced a capacity for credulity without which it is hard to imagine Trump getting away with his lies about building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it. Or Sen. Mitch McConnell's backflip on confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year. Or the Texas Republican lies about the loss of power in their state being the result of windmills freezing.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/limbaugh-indispensable-man-forging-trumpism 

 Trump himself is not a religious man, but surrounded himself with 27 spiritual advisors in order to give the impression that he was – and he captured more than 80% of the evangelical vote. He even convinced one of our neighbors that he was the most Biblical president in our nation’s history.

Limbaugh often said that he embodied talent on loan from God – and his listeners (all 62,000,000 million of them) believed him.

Rush was on the air for 50 years, staring in 1971, but the seminal Rush Limbaugh Show, debuted in 1988. He also hosted a television show from 1992 to 1996. However, he was not the first broadcast celebrity to have talent “on loan from God” The person that best fits that definition if the Reverend Fulton J. Sheen.

https://townhall.com/columnists/katiekieffer/2021/02/22/talent-on-loan-from-god-n2585097?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=02/22/2021&bcid=9d08ea620232d41a381be82339d3454d&recip=20627988

 

 

Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an American bishop (later archbishop) of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in 1919, Sheen quickly became a renowned theologian, earning the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923. He went on to teach theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of America as well as acting as a parish priest before being appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1951. He held this position until 1966 when he was made the Bishop of Rochester

. He resigned in 1969 as his 75th birthday approached, and was made the Archbishop of the titular see of Newport, Wales.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen

For 20 years as Father Sheen, later Monsignor, he hosted the night-time radio program The Catholic Hour on NBC (1930–1950) before moving to television and presenting Life Is Worth Living (1952–1957). Sheen's final presenting role was on the syndicated The Fulton Sheen Program (1961–1968) with a format very similar to that of the earlier Life is Worth Living show. For this work, Sheen twice won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, and was featured on the cover of Time Magazine Starting in 2009, his shows were being re-broadcast on the EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network) and the Trinity Broadcasting Network's Church Channel cable networks. Due to his contribution to televised preaching, Sheen is often referred to as one of the first televangelists.

The cause for his canonization was officially opened in 2002. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially recognized a decree from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints stating that he lived a life of "heroic virtues" – a major step towards beatification – and he is now referred to as "Venerable." On July 5, 2019, Pope Francis approved a miracle that occurred through the intercession of Archbishop Sheen, clearing the way for his beatification. Sheen was scheduled to be beatified in Peoria on December 21, 2019, but the beatification was postponed after the current bishop of Rochester expressed concern that Sheen's handling of a 1963 sexual misconduct case against a priest might be cited unfavorably in a forthcoming report from the New York Attorney General. The Diocese of Peoria countered that Sheen's handling of the case had already been "thoroughly examined" and "exonerated" and that Sheen had "never put children in harm's way."

Bishop Sheen actually had more weekly listeners than Rush Limbaugh – an estimated 30,000,000 people.

What forced Bishop Sheen of the air, at the peak of his popularity, was some skullduggery on the part of the Archbishop of New York, Francis Joseph Spellman.

In the late 1950s, the government donated millions of dollars' worth of powdered milk to the New York Archdiocese. In turn, Cardinal Spellman handed that milk over to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to distribute to the poor of the world. On at least one occasion, he demanded that the director of the Society, Bishop Sheen, pay the Archdiocese for the donated milk. He wanted millions of dollars. Despite Cardinal Spellman's considerable powers of persuasion and influence in Rome, Sheen refused. These were funds donated by the public to the missions, funds Sheen himself had personally contributed to and raised over the airwaves. He felt an obligation to protect them, even from the itchy fingers of his own Cardinal.

Spellman later took the issue directly to Pope Pius XII, pleading his case with Sheen present. The Pope sided with Sheen. Spellman later confronted Sheen, stating, "I will get even with you. It may take six months or ten years, but everyone will know what you are like." Besides being pressured to leave television, Sheen also "found himself unwelcome in the churches of New York City. Spellman canceled Sheen's annual Good Friday sermons at St. Patrick's Cathedral and discouraged clergy from befriending the Bishop. In 1966, Spellman had Sheen reassigned to Rochester, New York, and caused his leadership at the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to be terminated (a position he had held for 16 years and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for, to which he had personally donated US$10 million of his earnings). On December 2, 1967, Spellman died in New York City.

Sheen never talked about the situation, only making vague references to his "trials both inside and outside the Church." He even went so far as to praise Spellman in his autobiography.

 

Officially, Bishop Sheen would likely be classified as a conservative preacher, but his ideology really is not important. Whether you agree with his views or not, the fact remains that he was a hugely entertaining television personality, and would still be fun to watch today.

As a matter of fact, you CAN still watch him today.

 

The official repository of Sheen's papers, television programs, and other materials is at St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry in Rochester, New York.  

Joseph Campanella introduced the reruns of Sheen's various programs that are aired on EWTN. Reruns are also aired on Trinity Broadcasting Network. In addition to his television appearances, Sheen can even be heard on Relevant Radio. However, you can pretty much find whatever you like on YouTube. The clip below, in particular, is worth watching, since it literally predicts the events of today.

 

Bishop Fulton Sheen Predicts 2020 - Bing video

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My life flashed before my eyes.

 

28% of the American population believe that the words in the Bible are literally true. As a result, there are a number of elected officials in this country who believe the world was created in six days “as we know them”.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/americans-bible-word-of-god_n_5446979

Mark Twain has been credited with this bit of wisdom:

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

There are numerous examples of contradictory information in the Good Book, and the links below will give you two quick examples:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2010/09/bible-told-me-so.html

 

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2013/04/noahs-ark-and-othe-rfairy-tales.html

 

The Bible also says that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead (16^th chapter of Mark, the 28^th chapter of Matthew, the 15^th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the 24^th chapter of Luke, Acts 1:3, and John 20:26) which has led many people to assume that He was the only person to come back to life after dying. At his point, you need to refer to Mark Twain again.

The truth is, LOTS of people have come back to life after being officially dead – and it’s more common that you might think. Officially, it’s called a Near-Death Experience. Some 10 percent to 20 percent of people who come close to death report them — about 5 percent of the population at large. 

No two Near Death Experiences are the same, but the most common experience (in 80% of the cases) involved people believing that they have left their body. Another well-known feature (experienced by about one quarter of those having an NDE) is the “life review” — in which a person’s life flashes before their eyes. 

Some two-thirds of those having an NDE meet another person — often a dead loved one. What’s especially strange is that sometimes experiencers “meet recently deceased people who were not known to have died.

There have been at least 13 books published about Near-Death Experiences – and you can find all of them on Amazon:

https://www.joincake.com/blog/near-death-experience-books/

(I have read “Proof of Heaven”, by Dr. Eben Alexander)

The New York Post recently published an article by another doctor, Dr. Bruce Greyson, who provided NUMEROUS examples of Near-Death Experiences.  Here’s one of them:

“About fifty years ago, Dr. Bruce Greyson was eating pasta in the hospital cafeteria when his beeper went off. Startled, he dropped his fork and left a drop of spaghetti sauce on his tie. 

Greyson, a psychiatrist, was urgently needed in the ER to treat a college student who had overdosed. With no time to change his dirty tie, he grabbed a white lab coat and buttoned it up to hide the stain. 

In the ER, he found the student unconscious on a gurney, her breathing slow but regular. He called her name — “Holly” — and tried to rouse her. But she didn’t stir. 

Greyson left Holly and met her roommate, Susan, at the end of the hall in the lounge. Unbuttoning his coat, he sat down and asked Susan to recount everything that had happened. 

The next morning, Greyson returned to work at the hospital. Though Holly was awake, she was also groggy, her eyes closed. 

Greyson leaned in. 

“Holly, I’m Dr. Greyson,” he said. 

Holly stirred. 

“I remember you from last night,” she mumbled. 

Greyson was confused. 

“I didn’t know you could see me,” he said. 

“Not in my room,” Holly muttered. “I saw you talking with Susan, sitting on the couch.” 

Suddenly Holly opened her eyes, looked Greyson in the face and added, “You were wearing a striped tie that had a red stain on it.” 

Greyson was shocked. 

“What?” he said. 

Holly went on to recount Greyson’s conversation with her roommate and nailed every detail. 

“My immediate reaction was almost terror: This can’t be happening,” Greyson told The Post. “After a few days, I thought this couldn’t have happened. It must be some trick that people played on me.” 

The encounter, however, continued to gnaw at him. Greyson began studying these so-called near-death experiences (NDEs) from a scientific standpoint, collecting hundreds of stories from those who’ve had them. He discovered that Holly’s experience was not unique and that many people who survive the jaws of death report strange out-of-body experiences. 

Since meeting Holly, Greyson has published hundreds of academic papers and co-founded the International Association for Near-Death Studies. His search for answers is chronicled in his new book “After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond” (St. Martin’s Essentials), out March 2. 

https://nypost.com/article/five-percent-have-had-near-death-experiences-research/

Near-Death Experiences have not gotten a lot of traction in popular culture, but were prominently featured in the 1990 film “Ghost”.

 Ghost is a 1990 American romantic fantasy thriller film directed by Jerry Zucker, written by Bruce Joel Rubin, and starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Goldwyn, and Rick Aviles.

 The plot centers on Sam Wheat (Swayze), a murdered banker whose ghost sets out to save his girlfriend from the person who killed him. Ghost was theatrically released on July 13, 1990, by Paramount Pictures.

The film received mixed reviews from the critics but was a huge box office success, grossing over $505 million on a budget of $22 million to become the highest-grossing film of 1990 and at the time of its release the third-highest-grossing film of all time Adjusted for inflation, as of 2015 Ghost is the 93rd-highest-grossing film of all time.

Despite mixed reviews, the film received five nominations at the 63rd Academy Awards; Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, and winning Best Supporting Actress (for Goldberg) and Best Original Screenplay. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(1990_film)

Here’s the best scent in the movie:

The best scene from Ghost Movie 1990 - YouTube

 

A word of warning:

Patrick Swayze died on September 14, 2009. If you see him walking down the street towards you – don’t panic. Just ask him how he like his new address.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

my 19th nervous breakdown

    

The Atlantic is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts, as The Atlantic Monthly, a literary and cultural commentary magazine that published leading writers' commentary on the abolition of slavery, about education, and on the other major political issues of that time. Its founders included Francis H. Underwood and prominent writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. James Russell Lowell was its first editor. It is known for publishing literary pieces by leading writers.

After experiencing financial hardship and undergoing several ownership changes in the late 20th century, the magazine was purchased by businessman David G. Bradley, who refashioned it as a general editorial magazine primarily aimed at a target audience of serious national readers and "thought leaders". In 2010, The Atlantic posted its first profit in a decade. In 2016, the periodical was named Magazine of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Editors. In July 2017, Bradley sold a majority interest in the publication to Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective.

Its website, TheAtlantic.com, provides daily coverage and analysis of breaking news, politics and international affairs, education, technology, health, science, and culture. The Executive Editor of the website is Adrienne LaFrance and the Editor-in-Chief is Jeffrey Goldberg.

 

Although I also subscribe to TIME magazine and 4 newspapers, what I like about the Atlantic is its in-depth discussions of a variety of subjects. The March edition that I got in the mail the other day, for example, covers the voting rights struggle, the monopoly of Amazon, climate change, and mental illness. The last topic, incidentally, is the one I found most intriguing.

As magazines go, it’s actually very cheap, at $50 a year. Since I am an educator, my price is only half of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic

April 1935 was a nervous month. Unemployment in America stood at 20 percent. A potential polio vaccine. The term Duct Bowl made its first appearance newsprint. A thousand-mile storm carried away much of Oklahoma, and Fortune magazine introduced its readers to “The Nervous Breakdown”.

The article quickly turned into a book, which said that the nervous breakdown as widespread as the common cold and the chief source of misery in the modern world.

To a large degree, we have returned to that state today.

 

The coronavirus pandemic.

Wildfires.

Indefinite home schooling.

Post-election political chaos.

QAnon.

Climate change (blizzards in the North East, and widespread power failures in Texas and other southern states).

On top of all that, there are struggles at the personal level. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 16.2 million Americans had at least one major depressive episode in 2016. This represents 6.7% of the U.S. adult population< Depression is most common in ages 18 to 25. (10.9%) and in individuals of two or more races (10.5%). One of our relatives developed agoraphobia at the age of 24, but eventually was cured by heavy doses of yoga.

One of the most recent victims of this phenomena is 25 year- old Thomas Raskin, who killed himself on December 31. A day after his funeral, his dad Jamie was in the United States Capitol building when it was invaded by an angry mob. Almost exactly a month later, Jamie Raskin delivered the opening statement to the SECOND Trump impeachment trial.

In the early days of the 20^th century, the more affluent members of society had ways to deal with depression. One of those options was the Hartford Retreat, where you could take six weeks to return to “normal”.

Some of American’s most well know individuals (John D. Rockefeller Jr., Jane Addams, and Max Weber) all acknowledged “breakdowns” – and re-emerged to do their best work. Rockefeller’s most recognized achievements (Rockefeller Center, the national parks, and the art museums) came after his breakdown in 1904, when he spent six months in the south of France for recovery.

A century ago, the famous Battle Creek Sanitorium marketed itself as a “Temple of Health”. (One of its customers was Rockefeller, who spent a week there in 1922). Since it was $3000 a week in today’s dollars, it was out of reach for most people.

Although the United States is lagging behind other counties in the treatment of mental illness, other countries have taken steps to alleviate the problem. Both France and Spain have made “the right to disconnect” from after hours communication an actual legal right.

Nervous breakdowns, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of his own in his 1936 essay “The Crack Up” are “not a matter of levity”.

From 1933 to 1937, Fitzgerald was hospitalized for alcoholism 8 times and arrested several times. Fitzgerald's deteriorating mental state and drinking habits were captured publicly in an article published by Michel Mok titled "The Other Side of Paradise, Scott Fitzgerald, 40, Engulfed in Despair", first published in the New York Post, September 25, 1936. The article is considered to have caused considerable damage to Fitzgerald's reputation and his mental state, allegedly pushing him to attempt suicide after reading it.

By that year, his wife Zelda had become extremely violent and emotionally distressed, and Fitzgerald had her placed in the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Nearly bankrupt, Fitzgerald spent most of 1936 and 1937 living in various hotels near Asheville. His attempts to write and sell more short stories faltered. He later referred to this period of decline in his life as "The Crack-Up" in the short story.^[ Shortly after the release of this story, Hemingway referred to Fitzgerald as "poor Scott" in his short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". Zelda's institutionalization further deteriorated what was left of their marriage. The last time the two saw each other was on a 1939 trip to Cuba. During this trip, Fitzgerald was assaulted when he tried to stop a cockfight and returned to the United States so intoxicated and exhausted that he was hospitalized.

 Fitzgerald died of alcoholism in 1940, at the age of 44.

19th Nervous Breakdown" is a song recorded by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it was recorded in late 1965 and released as a single in February 1966. It reached number 2 on both the US Billboard Hot 100 and Britain's Record Retailer chart (subsequently the UK Singles Chart), while topping the charts compiled by Cash Box and NME.

 The Rolling Stones - 19th Nervous Breakdown (Official Lyric Video) - YouTube

Fortunately, there are easier ways to deal with stress, which Simon and Garfunkel pointed out to us in one of their songs.

Simon & Garfunkel - Feelin' Groovy (from The Concert in Central Park) - YouTube