Sunday, May 29, 2022

A Baptism

Kathleen and her son, Maximo were Baptized and Chrsmated yesterday. The priest's daughter was Kathleen's sponsor. My son Anselm (He drove all the way here from the submarine school in Connecticut. He has to report for duty at the submarine base at Point Loma in a few more days but until then he is having fun. He is seeing friends, going to the beach, we went skeet shooting.) was Maximo's sponsor. Originally, the plan was for Basil, my youngest son to be his sponsor but he is still too sick from Covid-19. (He has "long covid" and hasn't been out of the house since the last week of Lent, except for trips to the emergency room and doctor's office. I am very worried about him.)

Today was Kathleen's and Maximo's first Communion, and Maximo worked as an acolyte. After the Divine Liturgy today, Anselm went to buy a surfboard and have a surfboard rack installed on his FIAT 500, Kathleen and Maximo went home, and I bought doughnuts at Manly's Donuts on Lincoln Avenue and took them to my son, Basil along with the prosphora from church, some water from Mary's Well, and a wooden cross that had been blessed by being laid on the burial slab in Jesus' tomb. Basil and I played few games of chess. He's better than me now.

I have a pork roast in the oven. I'll serve it with zicchini and potatoes in a few hours.

Thursday, May 26, 2022

Death, Statistics, and Politics

From April 24, 1980 to December 31, 2000 the United States saw 448,060 of her citizens die from AIDS. This resulted in protests, sit-ins, an AIDS Quilt, and massive politicization. That is an average of 22,403 deaths per year.

The same period saw an average of 41,400 people die from the flu each year. There is no flu politics. There are no flu protests. There is no Flu Quilt. Why not?

A couple of days ago, in Texas, a sick man killed a bunch of kids and teachers in a school. And it isn't the first school shooting. The first school shooting I remember hearing about happened in Columbine, and it inspired a movie. From then until this week there have been been a bunch of school shootings. Here is a list of school (Kindergarten through university) shootings designated as "mass shootings" by the F.B.I. (There might be more but this is all I could find.):

Date (Deaths) Location

4/1999 (13) Columbine High School
3/20000 (9) Red Lake High School
10/2006 (5) West Nickel Mines Amish High School
4/2007 (32) Virginia Tech
2/2008 (5) Northern Illinois University
4/2012 (7) Oikos University
12/2012 (27) Sandy Hook Elementary School
5/2014 (6) University of California Santa Barbara
10/2014 (4) Marysville-Pulchick High School
10/2015 (9) Umpqua Community College
2/2018 (17) Marjory Stoneman Douglas Highschool
5/2018 (10) Santa Fe High School
11/2021 (4) Oxford High School
5/2022 (21) Robb Elementary School
TOTAL: 167
YEARLY AVERAGE DEATHS FROM SCHOOL MASS SHOOTINGS: 7.59


There is a political movement to require licensing of gun owners, banning of certain guns, there are marches that oppose the right to bear arms, there are politicians giving speaches and introducing bills, and there are activist organizations agitating for the abolition of private ownership of guns. They even have quilts.

During the same period of time hundreds of Americans were killed by lightning. In 2021 there were 42,915 people killed in vehicles on America's roads. That is just one year!!! Are there marches protesting this?
In 2019 (the last year for which I could find the number) there were 5,333 Americans killed by injuries at work. Are there grandstanding politicians? No. Are protesters marching in the streets? No. There is just one labor union that is trying to do anything about it.

We don't panic over the numbers of people dying on the roads, at work, from lightening, the flu, or from drowning. And we shouldn't freak out over school shootings. Kids in schools are safe, at least, from mass killings by gunfire. So why are people on the news and in the Democratic Party acting like they aren't? I don't believe it is because they want to save lives. If it were they would be opposed to abortion on demand (629,898 killed in 2019) in America. No, I think this, like the AIDS movement is about something other than saving lives.

Monday, May 23, 2022

Two Days of Greeks and a Chinese Recipe

Kathleen and I went to the Greek Festival in Oakland on Saturday. It was okay. We were there too early in the day (11 a.m.) so there were no singing or dancing acts. But I don't really like street fairs, church festivals, art and wine festivals, and things like that, anyway. The best parts of the trip were talking about the cathedral architecture with with a young priest and praying with some nuns from Calistoga. They were there selling books and honey. The nuns and I prayed for my son, Basil, who is still not recovered from Covid. I spent way too much money on food (Kathleen is always surprised when she likes lamb. She thinks she doesn't like it.), more than I would have paid in a resturaunt but I thought of it as an offering more than paying for lunch: Church festivals are fundraisers. Kathleen bought wedding rings and a prayerbook.

On Sunday morning we went to the Divine Liturgy. We left after the sermon since neither of us could go to Communion; Kathleen because she isn't an Orthodox Christian yet (her Baptism is not for five more days.), I because I wasn't prepared. (Kathleen: "But you went to confession just last week. You haven't done any sins since then." Me: "I can't walk across the living room without sinning.")

The sermon was about St. Photini (AKA the Woman at the Well). In the car afterwards, Kathleen asked me how many sermons I've heard on that text. When I said many she asked if they were all different and if I could remember any of my Dad's sermons on the text. They were all different and I do remember two of my Dad's. In one of them, I remember he was talking about how ignorant the disciples were, how they never understood what God was doing, and that we are all like that because God is infinite and we are not, because his ways are not our ways, and God is always going to know things we do not know and do things we do not understand. The other sermon I remember him preaching on that text was about how we don't get to decide who is in the Church. God chooses whom to include and we have to accept them. The main point of Fr. Basil's sermon yesterday was that Jesus always did the will of his Father, and that it was the Father who wanted him to go through Samaria and meet the woman at the well. If we desire to know the Father we must look at Jesus.

After Church we drove over to Santa Cruz on Hwy 9. We wound trough the hills, hills I've been winding through since the early 1990s, where all my sons and I had many adventures. In Boulder Creek we stopped at my favorite grocery store and got roast beef sandwiches. At the antique store across the street Kathleen found a sealable porcelain jar with a mallard painted on it. We ate the sandwiches at the covered bridge park in Felton. Then we drove on to Santa Cruz.

In Santa Cruz we saw a play, "An Iliad" at the Jewel Theater. (I've known the story, or parts of it for most of my life. As an adult I've read several different translations, in prose and verse, and have even atempted to read it in Homeric Greek but my knowledge of Koine Greek was not up to the task.) I was sobbing at the end of the performance. It was very moving.

We got home and Kathleen took a nap while I did some work, listening to reruns of A Praire Home Companion at the same time. When she woke about 8:30 p.m. I made supper: My Mother's twice cooked pork. She used to make this for the anual dinner for my Dad's colleagues on the board of the Florida District of the PCG. It was such a good dish but she only ever made it for that one event. She, really, did not like cooking.

Recipe
-cooked pork roast. My mom always used boiled loin. I like a mixture of left over oven roasted shoulder and boiled loin. About 1 pound in total, cut into 1 inch cubes.
-one shallot, peeled and minced
-one head of garlic, peeled and minced
- fresh ginger root, about as big as your hand, peeled and minced
-sesame oil, about 3 table spoons
- a head of green cabbage, chopped into long ribbons
- soy sauce, 2 tablespoons is enough for me, but I don't like too much salt. Most people, I've noticed, like to add more soy sauce at the table.
(sometime my Mom would use a yellow onion istead of shallot. Also, she would sometimes shread green bellpepper and add it to the wok at the same time as the cabbage.)
- 1 tablespood sesame seeds.

heat the oil in a wok until crazy hot, but not smoking. Add the the garlic and ginger stir constantly when the garlic turns brown, add the shallots and pork and keep stiring until the pork browns and gets crispy edges. add the cabbage and soy sauce. Keep stiring until the cabbage is soft. Toss in the sesame seeds. Serve.

Friday, May 20, 2022

Anselm, Basil, and Baptism

Anselm was graduated from his final training (I think they put him through three different courses) as a junior enlisted man at the U.S. Navy's Submarine School. He is a qualified navigator and navigation equiment repairman now. Oh, he is a pistolero for the Navy, too. That last qualification, I am sure, will not be used on a submarine, but the more qualifications a sailor has the faster he gets promoted. Today he began driving from Connecticut to California. He'll stop by San Jose for a couple of days but then he reports for duty at Point Loma.

Basil is still very sick from the Covid, it has been since just before Palm Sunday. He is able to keep up with his classes (regular high school classes + an art history class from Evergreen Valley Community College but easly spends 15 hours a day in bed. He has no active virus but his heart and lungs are taking a long time to recover. The doctors changed his meds a week ago but say not to expect any improvement for at least another week.

Kathleen and her son are scheduled to be baptised on May 28. She ordered baptismal gowns from someplace in Greece. It was 45 years ago when I was baptised but I think I remember wearing brown couduroy pants and a brown and white striped cowboy shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps. It was just what I had on. No one had planned on me being baptised that day. I don't remember a lot about it. I remember visiting a church in Mountain View (The church my Dad pastored was in the neighbring city of Palo Alto.) where a whole lot of peole were being baptised. I remember having to convince my Mom and Dad that I really believed. And I remember standing in the water with my Dad and Uncle Harry (He was a preacher in the same denomination as my Dad.) I remember the question, "Do you believe in and choose to follow Jesus as your only Lord, God, and Savior" When I said "I do" they laid me down in the water saying I was being baptised in the "name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." When I came up they said to me, "You are a new creature in Christ". It was shorter than the Orthodox way of baptizing.

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Equity

For the last few years I've been hearing the word equity used in a non-business/non-finance context but in a race politics context. One of the most terrifyig uses of the word was in a Biden/Harris 2020 advertisement. The ad said equality isn't good enough but that America should strive for equity, which to Marxists means equality of outcomes. Or in the words of the advertisement "means we all end up at the same palce."

I see this happening in high schools. Kids who's parents imigrated from China and who should be doing calculus are forced into elementary algebra classes so everyone stays together as they progress through highschool. I've seen imigrant kids from India with excellent fluency in three langueages, outstandng musical ability, and completion of the whole caluculus series turned down by U.C.L.A. because too many Asians get accepted there. I've seen a black student who can't write a sentence with both a noun and a verb accepted to Cal Poly simply because he is black and his high school teachers felt sorry for him and gave him good grades for the sake of equity.

How are we served by forcing kids to take classes they don't need, by keeping them out of the U.C.L.A. because of their race, and by letting unqualified kids into Cal Poly? California is not served. But the Marxist goal of equity is served. For a little while.

There is aphenomenon that has been observed all over the world, in diverse poplations, even in diverse species: About 20% of a population winds up with 80% of the stuff everyone wants, are responsible for 80% of an organization's sales, get As in the hard classes. No matter how hard the Marxists try to stop it, the cream will rise. Unless, they follow Marxism's internal logic and pull a Pol Pot.

Friday, May 13, 2022

No Pigs. Maybe Pheasants.

Last summer Kathleen and I joined Golden Ram. Our our goal for the year was to kill 4 or 5 wild pigs, 5 or 6 turkeys and a bear. I wanted a pig head and a bear skin on the wall and the freezers full of food. We spent 14 days hunting and were not successful. We saw plenty of doves but why shoot doves?. And we saw a bear and a lot of turkeys and a few coyotes as we were driving to the various hunting areas. We saw a pig at the bottom of an inaccessable canyon. In short, the game we saw was all in the wrong places. Essentially, we paid for nice places to go camping and that is all. We are not renewing the membership.

Today we joined Bird's Landing. It's not big game but it should be fun. And maybe we'll each get a pheasant to hang on the wall. Also, the membership includes guest passes so we can take our friends.

Monday, May 09, 2022

Audio Books

Back a few years ago, when I was suffering from depression, going through a divorce, and wasn't able to focus my mind to read through a whole book I began listening to audio books. I am able to read books again but I still enjoy listening to them. Here is what I've listned to since Christmas 2021.

1. The Little Drummer Girl by John Le Carre. (It wasn't his best, nor close to it.)

2. The Greek Revolution by Mark Mazower. (It was good but I needed a map.)

3. The Holy Angels by Mother Alexandra. (WOW! Totally not what I was expecting. I thought it would be a dense scholarly tome, instead it was very personal. I'm going to listen to this one again.)

4. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. (I saw the movie at the Stanford Theater a long time ago and very much enjoyed it. The book was even better.)

5. Arise, O God by Fr. Stephen Andrew Damick. (It was good. Kind like his podcats on Ancient Faith Raido.)

6. The Booksellers Tale by Martin Latham (I just couldn't get into it. I think I listend to the first 30 minutes 4 different times but just wasn't interested.)

7. The Great Anglo-Boer War by Byron Farwell. (I'm happy to have learned about a subject of which I had been ignorant but, gosh, it was a slog getting through this one.)

8. The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell. (His conclusion is, I think, childish and naive, but the rest of the book is first rate. I enjoyed learning more about Gen. Curtis Lemay.)

9. The Sea and Civilization by Lincoln Paine. (Very good. The way it dealth with geography, specifically where there are oceans, as cause of historical action reminded me of Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. It was worth the investment.)

Thursday, May 05, 2022

Enemies in the Classroom

“The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.” - Paolo Ferrar
"Ethnic studies is the critical and interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity with a focus on the lived experiences and perspectives of people of color. It centers the knowledge, narratives, and intellectual scholarship of racial or ethnic groups,1 including how groups define and experience social, cultural, and political forces and their connections to gender, class, sexuality, and other intersections of identity. Ethnic studies provides culturally relevant pedagogy that helps students develop inclusivity by fostering understanding of diversity, connecting students with their community, and giving them the tools to identify and change the institutional structures that perpetuate inequity." - Executive Board of the University of California Senate


For decades the Bolshivek Lev Vygotsky has been an insedious influence in American education. He is required reading in California's teacher credentialing programs, and arguing against his ideas is a sure way to kill your teaching career before it starts. Of course, Orthodox Christians know Vygotsky not so much for his ideas about education but for his work in the Soviet system of mental hospitals where so many of us were confined, tortured, and killed. But Vygotsky's is not the only Marxist influence on the American education system. For months we have been hearing people in the news media saying Critical Race Theory [C.R.T.] is not being taught in American schools. I assure you it is. Not by name, but as Shakespeare's Juliet reminds us, the name we give something doesn't change its odor.

This morning I read a document from the University of California's systemwide Senate. Like Hitler's Mein Kampf and Stalin's Communist Manifesto, this document plainly lays out the goals of the twisted people who wrote it. In short, the radicals who control the University of California are going to refuse admission to any student who has not been indoctrinated with the ideas of the Marxist education philosopher Paolo Ferrar.

Before we go on, I think I should explain the A-G requirements. The University of California requires that for a person to be admitted as a student they must have completed certain courses in high school. Those courses include certain numbers years studying math, English, economics, foreign languuages,American Hstory, etc. This is important to know because more than 84 thousand freshmen were completed the A-G requirements last year and were admitted to study at one of the University's nine campuses in 2021, and these students are, in general, the best students from their high schools. These students are, in general, the best and the brightest who will go on to govern California, run businesses, control the media, and educate future generations.

It looks like a pretty good preparation for university doesn't it? But now it gets dark. Now I will show you some excerpts from the document that outlines how the Marxist teaching of Ferrar comes in, requireing that even math and scince be used to spread the C.R.T. venom. What you see below is how the U.C. Senate is polluting the sensible list of A-G requirements and the minds of adolescents. From the U.C. Senate's instructions to highschools (linkd above.) for emplementing the ethnic studies curricula (I actually liked my ethnic studies course when I was in college. I learned about lowriders, Flaco Jimenez, zoot suits, and Cesar Chavez.) for ALL courses in the A-G requirements. Notice, this is not just social studies (e.g. geography, history, government, and ecnomics) but is for all courses. That in itself is curious because California law says ethnic studies is only required for one semester. So, I wonder, why are they mandating that all subject be aligned with the ethic studies curricula? What is going on? What is the agenda? Does someone want to purge teachers, even math and science teachers, who refuse to poison the minds of young people?

What follows are quotes from the Course Content Guidlines and the Skill Guidlines found in the document. Pictures are all from a California 7th grade classroom.:

"CENTER an understanding of Indigeneity, routes, and roots through acknowledgement that the course takes place on stolen, unceded land of ____ Native Peoples and in spaces forged through labor, paid,unpaid, and underpaid. This is taught through anti-racist and anti-colonial liberation, cultural work,self-worth, self-determination, and the holistic well-being of the widest conceivable collective,especially Native people and people of color."

"CULTIVATE communities that foster, acknowledge, and value the relationships of Indigenous and all communities of color for their survival. Place high value on Indigenous knowledges, worldviews, and epistemologies, and those of other communities of color.

[Notice: there is no search for Truth, merely independant and competing "knowledges, worldviews, and epistomologies". Think about what this means. It is a rejection of Aristotle's laws of identity and non-contradiction. Thus it means there can be no science. Futhermore, it is a return to the non-morality of Euthyphro, for what is piety when the gods disagree with one another? And of course, because there is no Truth there is no Christ for he is the Truth.]

"CRITIQUE histories of imperialism, dehumanization, and genocide to expose how they are connected to present-day ideologies, systems, and dominant cultures that perpetuate racial violence, white supremacy, and other forms of oppressions



"CHALLENGE and examine how multiple oppressions and identities intersect (e.g., race, ethnicity, class,gender, culture, nationality, sexual orientation, belief-system, history, language)."



"CONCEPTUALIZE and create spaces that embrace the idea that racial and ethnic groups are not monolithic and model the joy, knowledge, agency, strength, and endurance of Indigenous and People of color communities."



"Because ethnic studies requires that students develop a repertoire of skills for critical analysis and engagement with and transformation of society and the world, approved courses will support them, as critically conscious intellectuals gaining varying levels of mastery, to do the following:

"1. Identify, analyze, contextualize, and corroborate sources, with attention to epistemologies, histories, explicit and implicit biases, insider and outsider perspectives of all course materials andobjects of study (i.e., books; articles; films; primary documents; artwork; media; websites; archaeological “finds”; scientific and mathematical theories, methods, and “discoveries”; mathematical applications, etc.).

"2. Recognize and interrogate power and oppression at ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized levels.



"3. Analyze and assess the impact of systems of power and oppression—including empire, white supremacy, white supremacist culture, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, xenophobia, patriarchy, classism, ableism, belief systems, ageism, anthropocentrism—across race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and other intersections of identity.

"4. Critique dominant narratives of power and their claims to neutrality, objectivity, color-blindness,freedom from bias, and meritocracy in order to examine their harm to Indigenous and other communities of color.

"5. Develop leadership, community participation, publicly engaged research, communication, praxis, and other skills to address and dismantle systems of oppression and dehumanization in the many forms in which they appear (i.e., anti-Blackness, xenophobia, ableism, heteropatriarchy).

"6. Participate in Indigenous, Black, and people of color-centered histories, knowledge systems, and pedagogical practices that challenge traditional Western educational approaches and practices.

"7. Cultivate critical hope, community care, relational accountability, and self-determination for past, present, and future generations.

"8. Nurture community engagement in order to foster anti-racist futures and solidarity across communities."

[You might be asking yourself, what's wrong with anti-racism? Isn't racism a bad thing? Yes, it is. And we should not be racists. But that is not what is meant when the radicals use the word anti-racist. They actually mean Marxist.]

An then, because teenagers have not been taught to protect and nurture the deposit entrusted to them, but have been trained by Marxists to arrogantly think they can transform the world, we get to live through a revolution and see the death of the Republic.