Between Posts

Memorial Day triggers my annual genealogy binge.  I spent the past three days googling like mad, finding new bits and pieces of my family history, and expanding on my past findings.  I will spare you all the self-analysis as to why I go on this annual binge. That will perhaps someday be the subject of a novel or short-story, but it is not relevant to this post. In 2020 I discovered that the HS Yearbooks ("Annual") of the one-building, all-grades school that my father attended in Samnorwood, Texas are available online through the library of the Wheeler County Courthouse in Wellington, Texas. My dad attended high school until he "got smart" with his father and told him he was finished helping on the farm and was hell-bent on trying his luck picking fruit in California, upon which news my grandfather bought my dad the most expensive gift he had ever received, a brand-new suitcase, which my grandfather packed with all my dad's clothes then presented to my Dad along ...

The weather today is temperate, comfortable and inviting. A gentle breeze barely sways the branch of the bush in which a bluebird is resting. The bluebird knows nothing of Covid-19. He harbors no thoughts of disease or pandemics. The bluebird does not know that a great man of faith, Ravi Zacharias , passed on to his eternal reward today. The bluebird is aware of nothing more than his instincts allow.  I am happy for the bluebird that he is conscious of nothing that troubles us. I am blessed that God sent a bluebird today.

Laura Ingraham I listened to a guest (sorry, I do not recall her name) on The Ingraham Angle (Fox News) explain how a mass murderer "might not necessarily be mentally ill" (paraphrased). Possibly because her guest was highly credentialed, Laura Ingraham did not challenge her guest's assertion that only about 25% of all mass murderers suffer from mental illness. And therein, folks, lies but one of the many reasons why we cannot get our act together to combat mass murders: Those who would define mental illness are themselves gripped by a kind of mental illness. They seek to normalize mass murderers because they cannot bring themselves to classify anyone as other than normal. Connor Betts and sister he murdered. Raise your hand if you agree with the following statement: "All murderers, by definition, are mentally ill." I hope you raised your hand, because by definition, that is a true statement. What the mental health experts almost universally fail to...