Prom!

Nothing like your oldest child going to the Prom to make you realize how fast their childhood has gone by. This event was, as far as we know, the first Homeschool Prom in NH! Here she is at home, ready to go.
Here she is at the beginning of the event, when the adults gathered to take pictures of them as they promenaded (the source of the term "Prom", btw) in a circle for us. They weren't too thrilled to be doing it, but it's a small price to pay the parents for all of the time and money that went into getting them there! (Click pic for larger view)
Here is video of said stroll (click the play button):

We're at number 2!

After record-breaking snow amounts in Dec, Jan, and Feb, March has been pretty lackluster. But we just got another 4 or 5 inches, putting us at Number 2 on the list of all-time snowiest winters (since they started keeping records).
(From wmur.com)
Snow Totals (10:45 a.m.)

1. 122" 1873-1874
2. 115.2" 2007-2008
3. 115" 1872-1873
4. 113.2" 1995-1996
5. 111" 1886-1887
5. 111" 1887-1888
7. 103.2" 1898-1899
8. 103" 1874-1875
9. 100" 1875-1876
10. 100" 1971-1972
The average snowfall is around 60 or so inches per winter.
Not everyone is excited to have more snow on March 28th, but since I know that we won't really have spring weather to make it all go away for another few weeks, we may as well get another coating to freshen it up a bit (old snow by the roadsides gets really dirty and gross looking) - and try to break the record, as well! For some reason, that's exciting to me. It makes one feel very hearty to live in a climate like this.

The cats are somewhat less excited - Ron-ron is the only one who ventured out for a bit. He likes it better when the surface of the snow gets icy and he doesn't sink in.

This has gone too far

as the line continues to blur between human and critter territory in our house.
"Oh - sorry, Ronron - did I disturb your sleep?"

FDA: Protecting us from that evil white stuff

FDA HARASSES DAIRY COMPANY EMPLOYEES
Grand Jury Investigation is Latest Government Tactic against Raw Milk

March 24, 2008: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Special FDA agents and investigators from the US Food and Drug Administration aggressively interrogated two young female employees of Organic Pastures Dairy Company, the nation's largest raw milk producer, with questions focusing on the dairy's interstate sales of raw colostrum and raw milk for pet food.

The surprise interrogations took place after work in their private homes on the evening of March 19, just hours after Judge Tobias of the Hollister Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order against the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The state court ruling blocked enforcement of California's anti-raw milk AB 1735, which mandates unnecessarily stringent standards for beneficial coliform bacteria in raw milk. The temporary restraining order represents an important legal victory for raw milk producers and consumers in California and throughout the nation.

The federal agents threatened one employee with arrest if questions were not fully and truthfully answered about Organic Pastures' order fulfillment practices. Her answers reflected information that is readily available at the company's website, www.organicpastures.com. The other employee was told FDA would "make it worth her while" to "wear a wire" and record conversations with Organic Pastures president Mark McAfee. The employee refused the offer. "We are like a family, I would never do that to a family member," she said, reflecting her close relationship with the McAfee family.

Both employees were served subpoenas to appear April 3 for a secret grand jury investigation. In 2003, Organic Pastures received a confirmation letter from Larry Childers of the FDA, which clearly stated that interstate sales of raw colostrum are not regulated because colostrum is not milk. The FDA website notes that "pet food" requires no pre-market approval and is unregulated by the FDA.

The Bronx Zoo in New York and other zoos regularly order raw colostrum and raw dairy products from Organic Pastures to save babies of endangered species and keep other animals healthy. Orders stipulate that the milk and colostrum must be raw because pasteurized versions make them ill. Many veterinarians recommend raw milk for cats and dogs.

Fasting

Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. If you see a friend being honored, do not envy him. Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye, and the ear, and the feet, and the hands, and all the members of our bodies. Let the hands fast, by being free of avarice. Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin. Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful... Let the ear fast... by not listening to evil talk and gossip... Let the mouth fast from the foul words and unjust criticism. For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers?

St. John Chrysostom

"The Proof of Fasting"

"Sub-prime" mess

As a follow up to yesterday's post...if you, like me, have had a tough time understanding what this "sub-prime" thing is, here is a great explanation from DownsizeDC.

The current housing crisis, and all that flows from it, comes from two main sources, both deriving from Washington.

First, Congress passed something called the "Community Reinvestment Act" in 1977, resulting in the creation of bureaucratic regulations designed to encourage, or even compel, financial institutions to make loans to people with lower incomes. These regulations were then amended in 1995 and 2005 to create different rules for institutions of different sizes, so that various kinds of institutions would be better able to meet the government's goals for fostering home ownership in lower income communities.

Second, the Federal Reserve starting making loans available to the banking system at extremely low interest rates.

Third, steps one and two combined to make cheap housing loans available to people who could not have afforded or qualified for them before. This caused an increased demand for housing that sent home prices spiralling upward.

Fourth, mortgage lenders managed the risk involved in making these loans by selling their mortgages to other companies, which in turn thought that they were managing their own risk because they had a wide variety of mortgages, from many different types of borrowers, in their portfolio.

Fifth, these decisions about how to manage the increased risk created by the "Community Reinvestment Act" were all in error, because the Fed's policy of easy money had falsely inflated the value of ALL homes. This meant that good mortgages could not be used to manage the risk involved in questionable mortgages, because the value of ALL homes was falsely inflated.

Sixth, as with all inflationary booms, increases in home prices finally absorbed the increased purchasing power provided by the Fed, leading to a slow-down in home purchases. When this moment arrived everyone realized that the homes they had purchased weren't really worth what they had paid for them. The defaults and foreclosures then began, along with the collapse of the financial institutions that owned these unsound mortgages.

Now, the complicated, multi-part scenario described above has been simplified in popular reporting to just two words: sub-prime loans. These two words, combined with the idea that lenders took advantage of poor unsuspecting customers, are supposed to explain everything. But this explanation is both simple and simply insufficient.
A study by the Mortgage Bankers Association tells the true story. In the third quarter of last year fixed rate mortgages accounted for 45% of foreclosures, while sub-prime ARMs accounted for only 43%.

Read the rest here.

Economic turmoil

Of course, this dramatic and distracting economic news had to happen at the beginning of Great Lent. It's challenging to figure out how to pay just enough attention to things like this, without getting completely absorbed. If you are interested...here are a couple of articles today on some of the historic economic events going on right now...

"Why aren't we furious?" by William Norman Grigg

and

"Musings from the Titanic" by Steven LaTulippe

Here birdie, birdie!

Ron-ron invites his bird friends to come and visit

Forgiveness, by Fr. Tom Hopko

The first commandment is that you love God with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and the second is that you love your neighbor as yourself. The only way you can prove you love God is by loving your neighbor, and the only way you can love your neighbor in this world is by endless forgiveness. So, “love your neighbor as yourself.” However, in certain modern editions of the Bible, I have seen this translated as, “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.” But that’s not what it says.

I once had a discussion with someone on a Sunday-morning television program about this. We were asked what we thought was most important in Christianity, and part of what I said was that the only way we can find ourselves is to deny ourselves. That’s Christ’s teaching. If you try to cling to yourself, you will lose yourself. And of course, the unwillingness to forgive is the ultimate act of not wanting to let yourself go. You want to defend yourself, assert yourself, protect yourself, and so on. There is a consistent line through the Gospel—if you want to be the first you must will to be the last, and so on. And the other fellow, who taught the psychology of religion at one of the Protestant seminaries, said, “What you are saying is the source of the neuroses of Western society. What we need is healthy self-love and healthy self-esteem.” And then he quoted that line, “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.” He insisted that you must love yourself first and have a sense of dignity. If one has that, however, forgiveness is then either out of the question or an act of condescension toward the poor sinner. It is no longer an identification with the other as a sinner, too. I said that of course if we are made in the image of God it’s quite self-affirming, and self-hatred is an evil. But my main point is that there is no self there to be defended except the one that comes into existence by the act of love and self-emptying. It’s only by loving the other that myself actually emerges. And forgiveness is at the heart of that.

As we were leaving we saw a very old, venerable rabbi with a shining face. He called us over and asked if he could say something to us. “That line, you know, comes from the Torah, from Leviticus,” he said, “and it cannot possibly be translated ‘love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ What it says is ‘you shall love your neighbor as being your own self.’ “Your neighbor is your true self. You have no self in yourself.

After I heard this I started reading the Church Fathers in this light, and that’s what they all say. They say, “Your brother is your life.” I have no self in myself except the one that is fulfilled by loving the other. The Trinitarian character of God is a metaphysical absolute here, so to speak. God’s own self is another—his Son, to use Christian evangelical terms. The same thing happens on the human level; so the minute I don’t feel deeply that my real self is the other, then I’ll have no reason to forgive anyone. But if that is my reality, and my only real self is the other, and my own identity and fulfillment emerges only in the act of loving the other, that gives substance to the idea that we are potentially God-like beings. Now, if you add to that that we are all to some degree faulty, weak, and so on, that act of love will always be an act of forgiveness. That’s how I find and fulfill myself as a human being made in God’ s image. Otherwise, I cannot. So the act of forgiveness is the very act by which our humanity is constituted. Deny that, and we kill ourselves. It’s a metaphysical suicide.

(Excerpted from: Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, “Forgiveness,” Volume XII, Number 3, August 1987, pp. 50 - 59.)

Interesting numbers

From DownsizeDC:

In 2007, over 53% of the federal budget went to mandatory entitlements and welfare spending, and 20% to the Department of Defense. About 9% went to interest payments on the national debt. And just 18% went to Everything Else, from the FDA to Homeland Security to foreign aid. Source: Congressional Budget Office

To clean up America's fiscal mess, we will have to think about entitlement reform and a new, more efficient national security strategy. Steep budget cuts for Everything Else will help, but only a little. There's a better reason to cut Everything Else: these departments and programs tend to do more harm than good. A lot more.

Here are just a few examples. Ethanol subsidies increase the price of food. Non-violent drug offenders waste away in federal prison when they could be in the workforce. Public education has deteriorated greatly as the federal government has assumed more and more control. And then there's the cost of regulation . . .

As Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote last year, federal regulations cost the economy $1.14 trillion in 2006. That is more than what individuals paid in income taxes that year. It was more than total corporate profits. And it cost the federal government just $41 billion to administer and police the regulatory state. Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute

That is to say, for every $1 the federal government spends writing and enforcing regulations, it destroys $25 that could have been generated in the economy. The cost of regulatory compliance hurts small businesses especially, destroys competition, and drives up prices.

But the worst part is, "we the people" generally have no say. In 2006, 321 bills were passed by Congress and signed into law, whereas unelected bureaucrats in regulatory agencies issued 3,718 final rules and added almost 75,000 pages to the Federal Register.

The Constitution requires that Congress, not executive branch agencies, make the laws. If the people's representatives in Congress can't or won't sweat the details of writing complicated regulations, then why should the people have to sweat the details of complying with them?. If Congress had to write all laws and regulations, only the most necessary would pass, and the number of unnecessary and burdensome regulations will drop dramatically. To restore the Constitutional Separation of Powers, increase the freedom of the people, and revive the economy, DownsizeDC.org has introduced the Write the Laws Act.

A Sign of Spring

When you see the "Frost Heaves" signs go up, you know spring is just around the corner. A humongous corner that takes a couple of months to get around, but we do eventually get to the other side.

Decadent Creature

Our ridiculous cat, Henry, otherwise known as "Puff".