Pogroms against Christians in Egypt, Mohammed Badie's Prayer Bump, Waiting for Muslims to Condemn this Slaughter, Waiting for Christian Leaders to Lead

Reports: A Christian cab driver was surrounded and killed in Alexandria Egypt.
His crime? He displayed a cross on his dashboard. 

Mohammed Badie's prayer bump, and his swords. Source

Muslims are carrying out anti-Christian pogroms in Egypt. They are burning churches and terrorizing, humiliating, and killing Christians. Christians have lived in Egypt for two thousand years, six hundred years longer than Muslims.

According to reports, Muslims in Alexandria, Egypt, surrounded the taxi of a Christian driver because he displayed a cross on his dashboard. They killed him.

I am waiting for American and other Western Muslims to take effective steps against these pogroms. Prominent American Muslims could and should condemn this behavior, and contribute to stopping it.

If anyone knows of such condemnation, please inform me.

I would like my own Muslim friends to at least express sorrow.

So far that has not happened.

When I brought this up to one Muslim Palestinian friend, who now lives in Paterson, NJ, she let loose a tirade, citing conspiracy theories proving that Jews and Christians are responsible for all the problems in the Muslim world, and they deserve what they get. Muslims are innocent, blameless, she insisted. Mossad is responsible for 9-11.

I am waiting for my own Catholic and Christian leaders to take a stand, to guide me in my desire to support my Christian brothers and sisters. I hear nothing. Catholic leaders, what are you doing?

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has the comically appropriate name of Mohammed Badie. Yes, that's right. Mohammed Badie.

Badie has a zabiba, or Muslim prayer bump, on his forehead. The zabiba is meant to come from pious prayer. Muslims hit their heads on the ground when they pray their five daily prayers.

Muslims are instructed to pray five times a day. Their five times a day daily prayer inculcates negativity toward Christians and Jews. Muslims pray not to be like the Jews, who anger God, or like Christians, who go astray.

There is a connection between the bump on Mohammed Badie's forehead, the prayers that he prays, and the pogroms against Christians occurring now in Egypt.

Further information here.

Lee Daniels' "The Butler" Civil Rights 4 Dummies & Stunt Casting. But Whitaker is GREAT.

Interesting to compare the posters. 

There's a scene about halfway through Lee Daniel's "The Butler" that is perfect.

African-American White House butler Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) asks his boss, Mr. Warner, for equal pay for African American staff. They are paid less than white staff, he complains. The audience has been watching Cecil Gaines for a while now, and we know he is an admirable man. He certainly deserves equal pay.

Warner tells Gaines that if he is not happy with his salary, he can go work someplace else.

Gaines is trapped in an invisible prison of white supremacy, and he knows it. Whitaker's face shows all the agony of that moment. He quietly leaves Warner's office.

Forest Whitaker is utterly brilliant in this scene, as he is in the rest of this choppy, heavy-handed, misguided film.

That scene is worth the entire rest of the film "The Butler." That scene has everything the rest of the film lacks: subtlety, intelligence, and faith in its audience.

Otherwise, "The Butler" is Civil Rights for Dummies plus an overload of stunt casting.

"The Butler" tells the story of Cecil Gaines, an African American White House butler. The movie tells us it wants us to pay attention to this humble, working class man. The movie depicts none other than Martin Luther King Jr, right before his assassination, delivering a speech on the importance of domestic workers.

But the movie belies its own message. "The Butler" doesn't have faith in its audience. It believes that we won't pay attention to this humble, admirable butler. So the film dumps one big Hollywood star and tabloid celebrity after another in small roles, and the film beats us over the head with a dumbed-down, sensationalized, hate-whitey version of Civil Rights.

Stunt casting: Mariah Carey is onscreen for about two minutes as Cecil's mother, and Vanessa Redgrave is onscreen for about three minutes as his first employer. The casting of the presidents Cecil worked for is flagrantly weird. It's as if the movie wants to set the audience abuzz over why this or that actor was chosen. John Cusak as Richard Nixon? Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan?? Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower??? Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan???? Did the people who cast this film take any of it seriously? James Marsden, though, is fine as JFK.

Oprah Winfrey plays Cecil's wife, Gloria. Oprah gives a fine performance. The problem is, she is Oprah Winfrey, and her presence as a celebrity never left my mind as I was watching her. Rather than being moved by the plot, my mind wandered. I thought about her recent public scandals, the Swiss purse incident, and calling Trayvon Martin a modern Emmet Till. I thought about her boyfriend Steadman. I wondered why he has never married Oprah. Again, Oprah's performance was spot on, but the script was not compelling enough to allow me willing suspension of disbelief.

The film's dumbed down version of Civil Rights is aesthetically and historically criminal. In the first five minutes of the movie, the film depicts two African Americans lynched together beside an American flag. They remain onscreen for quite a while. The film returns to the image. A black woman is raped by a white man. Again, weird casting: Alex Pettyfer, one of the most handsome men in the world, is the rapist. Why? Then a black man is killed. The n word is tossed around liberally. Crosses are scary – the Klan burns one and attacks a freedom rider bus. The film eventually states, in so many words, that America was a "concentration camp" for African Americans for hundreds of years, worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews.

All the whites onscreen are rich and powerful. All the blacks, including the Black Panthers, are good, innocent, humble, hard-working, harmless. The Civil Rights movement is all but exclusively black.

This just isn't true. Comparing the Holocaust to slavery and Jim Crow isn't accurate. The Black Panthers did some very bad things, including to their own members. Thousands were lynched, not millions, thousands of those lynched were white. The largest mass lynching in America was of Italian immigrants; Leo Frank was lynched for being a Jew.

African Americans made up roughly ten percent of the population; had whites not been part of the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans could never have achieved what they did. The film insists that the Civil Rights Movement was inspired by a "brown man," Gandhi. But in fact Gandhi was inspired by Tolstoy, Thoreau, Christ, and the Bhagavad Gita. The film alludes briefly to Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, but does not name them. The film refers to these Jewish Civil Rights martyrs only to cynically dismiss their sacrifice. Americans only care about dead whites, the film says. If that were true, the Civil Rights Struggle would not have achieved what it did. Jim Zwerg, a white man, endured a horrible beating on one freedom ride because he, like many Civil Rights heroes, was inspired by the Judeo-Christian tradition.

I've lived in the Indian Subcontinent, where the religiously mandated caste system, for millennia, has doomed Untouchables to lives in Hell. I lived in Africa, where the slave trade still flourishes. From a world perspective, the United States is not remarkable because it had slavery and Jim Crow. From a world perspective, the United States is remarkable because it produced the Abolitionists, John Brown, martyrs like Goodman and Schwerner and Viola Liuzzo and heroes like Jim Zwerg and Rabbi Heschel. "The Butler" presents an unbelievable conundrum –  a country populated exclusively by evil, rich white supremacists somehow magically changed in 2008 and elected an African American president and presto changeo everything was better for black people. The masterpiece 1987 documentary "Eyes on the Prize" tells a very different story. Americans of all colors, all levels of society, inspired by American ideals, created a model the world could admire.

The Washington Post article that inspired "The Butler" is here. 

Why I Am No Longer a "Liberal." The Hypocrisy, Arrogance, Hostility and Contempt

A limousine driver looks back at his passengers. Source

I recently reviewed the new Matt Damon Sci-Fi film "Elysium" on Amazon. The review is here.

A couple of Amazon users didn't like my review and said so. They called me stupid, a liar, and brainwashed by Fox News.

Normally I don't respond to negative feedback like that, but I had to respond this time. These comments exemplified for me why I no longer call myself a "liberal" or a "leftist."

I don't like the hate, the hypocrisy, the arrogance, or the divorce from consensus reality that I encounter among too many liberals.

Here's the reply I posted on Amazon.

Robert L. Gauthier's and S Duke's responses to my review of "Elysium" are exemplary of what is wrong with what is currently called "liberalism" in America. Their posts drip with arrogance, hostility, contempt and their own profound inability to connect with consensus reality. Their posts reveal their authors to be hypocrites, and their posts are factually wrong.

Gauthier and Duke object to my review because I note that "Elysium" is a boring lecture on Obamacare. Gauthier and Duke reject this association. Their rejections contain no facts; rather, their rejections rely on petty ad hominem insults – the review must be wrong because the review's author – me – is a watcher of Fox News.

Gauthier and Duke are factually incorrect on every point.

First, I do not own a television and am unable to watch Fox News.

Second, the association between Elysium and Obamacare is not limited to my review. A quick google search finds hundreds of thousands of hits. The association is made by both left and right wing sites.

Third, Gauthier's and Duke's central assertion is beyond being simply false. It is idiotic. Gauthier and Duke assert that a filmmaker from South Africa could not possibly make a film about an American topic.

Billy Wilder was born in Sucha, Poland. He made the quintessentially American films "The Apartment," "Sunset Boulevard," "The Lost Weekend," "Double Indemnity," and "Some Like It Hot." Charles Laughton was from England. He made the very best Southern Gothic film ever, "The Night of the Hunter." Roman Polanski was from Poland and he made "Chinatown," a film noir about the California water wars and "Rosemary's Baby" about Satanists in New York City. Otto Preminger, born in Ukraine, made "Porgy and Bess," about African Americans with music written by the Gershwins, of Russian Jewish heritage.

It is extremely uninformed to insist that a director who was not born in the US could not make a film about US themes.

In order to better understand Gauthier and Duke, I had a look at their reviews. Gauthier reviews expensive toys like "outdoor barbecue assistants" and titanium coated $75 earphones. Oh, but he also owns $449 earphones. And many other luxuries that simply do not exist in the neighborhood I live in.

It looks to me like Gauthier is a limousine liberal. From the Urban Dictionary: "Limousine liberal a rich liberal who considers themself a champion of the poor and downtrodden, but lives a lifestyle of wealth and luxury. Limousine liberals can usually be identified by any combination of the following behavior: - They support gun control, but they go everywhere surrounded by armed bodyguards. - They have a soft-on-crime stance, but they live in gated, private communities where there is no threat of crime."

In one of S Duke's reviews she (or he) refers to capitalism as a "specter" and praises Maoists. Maoists, of course, murdered tens of millions of people to enforce their ideas.

In an irony typical of limousine liberals, Gauthier and Duke mouth support for leftist views while embodying the very me-first thuggery they imagine themselves as opposing

It would have been easy for Gauthier or Duke to address me in a respectful way, "Danusha, did you know that the director is from South Africa? And, if so, how does that affect your assessment of the film?" A post like that would have been collegial and could have lead to an interesting communal discussion in which every participant was treated equally, and every participant received and accorded respect to others.

Instead both Duke and Gauthier took a hostile, arrogant, zero sum approach. Gauthier and Duke wanted to be on top, and they wanted the person with whom they disagreed to be on the bottom. They wanted to be the good guys; they wanted the person they disagreed with to be the bad guy. They wanted to be the smart ones – Duke's comment especially is rife with the need to be the smart person in the room of stupid people. They wanted to be the exclusive winner of the exchange with me, and they wanted me to be the loser.

In their conversational style, Gauthier and Duke display the qualities of their own caricature of capitalists. They approach other human beings not as respected comrades, but as contemptuous opponents. They approach other people as things, as the commodities they will dominate in order to establish their own superiority. They want war, not peace, as the method of interaction. They want to win; they want everyone else to lose.

This zero sum, "I must be the exclusive winner and I must damage and humiliate my opponent" approach to discourse is all too typical of "liberals" who insist that they are the real champions of the poor.

I know my comment here is very long but Gauthier and Duke so thoroughly epitomize everything many of us have come to despise about limousine liberalism and the damage it is doing to the very people they claim to help – the poor.

Look, limousine liberals, we, the poor, don't need you, and we don't want you. We don't need your expensive outdoor barbecue assistant, your $449 earphones, and your delusional support for mass murder and your hatred of capitalism, a system that provides jobs and services. We don't need your arrogant contempt for us. Take your Obamacare and go away.

Resisting Heaven

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Atheist Michael Shermer insists that a good percentage of people believe in God because such belief is "is comforting, relieving, consoling, and gives meaning and purpose to life" (source).

That doesn't work for me.

I can't help but believe in God, and I don't find the belief comforting. I find it challenging, and, at times, enraging.

"Where was God?" I demand, along with everyone else, when I contemplate the latest atrocity.

I think of the decade of prayers offered up by Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus, the women held captive in Ohio.

"Where were you?" I ask the God in whom I do believe.

My not-comforting, love-hate relationship with God has hit a new low, lately. I've been realizing that I don't want to go to Heaven. Or, at least, I've been realizing that I dread one motif that near death experiencers talk about.

There are those who have died, gone to the afterlife, and come back. Two famous recent near death experiencers are Anita Moorjani and Eben Alexander. You can read many near death experiences here.

One of the motifs of near death experiences is a feeling of profound understanding combined with profound love. Experiencers report that spiritual guides – or maybe God himself – reveal big truths to them, and everything makes sense. Oh, they realize, that is why I had to undergo those events that I thought were pointless. Oh, they realize, that person whom I had thought was my enemy was really my ally and teacher. Oh, they realize. All the chaos and suffering of life make sense!

In his book "Walking in the Garden of Souls," medium George Anderson wrote about a young man named Jeff Patterson.

When he was a high school student, Jeff was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Jeff received a bone marrow transplant. Jeff's body did not receive the transplant well. He experienced graft-versus-host condition. Jeff's skin began to disintegrate. Doctors tried to cover his raw flesh up with pig skin. Jeff screamed with constant pain. Jeff died anyway.

George Anderson made contact with Jeff's soul in the afterlife. Jeff reported that the spiritual growth he had attained going through these painful experiences was so valuable that if he had to, he would come back to earth and undergo that agony all over again.

There is a similar account of a person in pain dying and receiving great wisdom at the NDERF site. Anthony, a young orphan living a loveless life, kicked from one foster home to another, attempted suicide. He went to heaven and met God. God comforted him and explained to him that he had to go back to his earthly life.

Lately, I've been dealing with so much, I just dread that "Aha! Everything makes sense and it's all about love!" experience.

It begins to feel like that moment when everyone around you is laughing at a joke that you don't get, and, to be kind, they later explain it to you. Even with the explanation, it can still feel uncomfortable.

I just can't stand the thought of walking through those pearly gates and meeting happy God and saints and deceased family members, and hearing them say to me, "Ya know, all those hours that you spent alone wrestling with poverty and disease and the suffering of loved ones, we were up here laughing and smiling and slapping each other on the back and giving each other the high five, because we knew that all that you were trodding through was really all for the best."

The other day I stumbled upon a magnificent photograph of a great horned owl in flight. My instantaneous reaction was, "THAT. That is what I want. If I can encounter that in Heaven, I am willing to go."

What was that? What did I see in the photo? Reason, power, elegance. Rationality. Purpose. Design. Beauty. Poetry in muscle.

Right now, as miserable as I feel, I'd go to that heaven. Gladly.

Diane Chenault Source

Praying for Christians in Egypt; Enraged at Leaders Who Don't Help Them

Salvador Dali Crucifixion of St John of the Cross 

I am praying for Christians in Egypt, under attack by Islamists. It sounds like Kristallnacht for Christians in Egypt. I am deeply troubled that I know of no American or Western Christian leader who is making headlines in efforts to help them. This is not a "behind the scenes" time. We need large, prominent action, now. 

Dear God, I am praying for the Christians in Egypt, under attack by Islamists. I feel ashamed to pray to you God, because I have done nothing. I am overwhelmed by my own real challenges and I have no brain cells or energy left to discover what more I can do. Please give me the energy to help my Christian brothers and sisters in Egypt. Please, God, bring forth a leader who will make this the front-page, headline news it ought to be. 

Please inspire President Obama to treat this with the seriousness it deserves. He spoke about it rapidly, casually, not specifically, while not even wearing a necktie. Wrong message. God, let Obama know that this is necktie-worthy. 

Dear God, I pray that light may enter the hearts of my Muslim brothers and sisters in Egypt. Let them know that they shame their cause around the world, the name of their profit, their faith, and their god they shame; they arouse fear, hatred, and disgust. 

Safety, peace, and tomorrow for the Christians of Egypt. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. 

Hitchhiking to Heaven

The guardian to heaven's gate 

The gate to heaven a month or so from today 

I knew I'd be hitchhiking this morning so I prayed to St Christopher last night. Though God has let me down, St. Christopher never has. Yes, men have pulled guns on me, and one woman pulled a deer skinning knife, but I'm here to talk about it, aren't it?

I got up at five. I knew I should try to eat something, though I had had trouble with dinner last night. My heart may be broken, but it's my GI tract that is on strike.

I sliced one fresh peach and placed a dollop of plain Greek yogurt into a bowl, ate them.

I began walking the three miles to the bus.

Breakfast reappeared en route. I got to see what peach skin looks like after a half hour or so inside a human body. Knew I'd be nauseated for a while, and that that would make me not want to drink, and that I'd get dehydrated, and risk a migraine. I had disgorged the anti-migraine med as well.

Oh, well. Nothing was going to turn me around. I needed this.

Bus was five minutes late. Five minutes of clenched fingers, shallow breath, and even more GI shenanigans. Please, Jesus, let this bus driver let me off at my stop.

I don't want to get all heavy here, but this is the simple truth. When a white driver named Jim Maget had this route, he would always let me off at my stop. A bald black guy who wears purple plastic gloves while driving often won't. Sometimes he will. Sometimes he won't. Maybe I should bribe him. That's it. Next time, I'm bringing a bribe.

This morning, he promised to let me off at my stop. I was happy.

We traveled beyond suburbs, into woods. I've seen bear run from the bus in these woods. There's my stop. The bus driver had promised to let me off. But he wasn't stopping.

I stood behind him, squealing with anxiety.

"There's nothing here," he observed. "There isn't even any shoulder. No houses."

But that's the whole POINT, I thought. "Please let me off," I begged.

He just kept driving. Soon we'd be in New York State.

He pulled over.

"Thank you!" I ran down the stairs. "Thank you!"

I ran to the opposite side of the street and stuck out my thumb. I had to hitchhike back to the spot the bus driver had just refused to let me off at.

A beat-up, compact car pulled over. It was stuffed with a random chaos of items.

I peeked inside. "I'm trying to get to Skylands," I said.

"Get in the back seat," he said. "Shove that stuff aside."

I did so. A big, lumpy canvas bag was hard to move. I was pinned against the door.

I observed the driver. Grizzled goatee. Baseball cap and sunglasses. His forearm was short, so he probably was, too. But he had exaggerated forearm muscles. Yup, he could kill me. That's my first assessment. Could this person kill me? Second assessment: Does he want to?

"I used to work at Skylands," He said. "When I was fifteen. I was a professional flower arranger."

"Holy cow!" I said. Professional flower arranger: I factored that in to the "Does he want to kill me?" question.

"Now I'm busting my butt doing construction." Plainly. He was t-shirt and jeans and he was covered with white dust – are there construction night-shifts? And he was muscular.

"I worked at Ringwood Manor, too. They have greenhouses there. That's where they get the flowers for their gardens."

"Did you go to Lakeland?" I asked, naming a local high school.

"Yup."

"Did you know any of my brothers?" Always the first question for a girl with four notorious older brothers. I try to say things that will make them less likely to kill me.

"Name sounds familiar," he said. "The art teachers loved me," he said. "I was a good artist. They would take my work and show it to other students. Mr. Palomino."

"I remember him!"

He sounded angry. Was he fresh from a fight? Or was it that he was a good artist and now working construction? I wanted to be helpful. He was helpful to me. He went out of his way, and got me to the entrance road sooner than I would have gotten there had I gotten off at my stop and walked from the bus. I mentioned that I lived in an artist's housing project. Maybe he could get a studio there, do his art, do less construction.

"Thank you!" I said. "Thank you! Look for my book on Amazon!"

He said he would. God bless him.

I began my walk up the road.

This is an advantage of living in poverty in a post-industrial slum, without a car so escape is difficult. Once I enter nature, trees all around, human voices out of earshot, I cast off what humanity has done to me and I enter bliss.

I was an abused kid. I knew no love, respect, or even the right to be alive. I used to go to the woods. And I just knew. Everything is right. I am supported and part of this. This is beautiful.

Anyone who has seen one tree in full sun must know the power of God. It is all there, visible.

Mount St. Francis was to my left. I guess it is no longer Mount St. Francis. The Catholic church is selling it, so I've heard. Oh, Catholic Church, you have squandered our dollars so unforgivably.

When my sister Antoinette was a kid, she went to Mount St. Francis on a school trip, and dropped a new pendant into the pond. The pendant was never retrieved. She missed it in the way that a kid misses a lost item, a gift her clumsy fingers have surrendered to the deep, a precious locket that she watched slip forever beneath the surface of an element, to her, a terrestrial being, utterly foreign. Every time I pass that pond, I want to ask the Canada geese if they have the pendant, and how I can ransom it from them, to make my sister happy, to restore her little kid grief.

The road to Skylands is wooded. Lots of beech. Uphill. And then you see the two concrete eagles. And then you are there.

A different me that exists only here smiles inside when I see the two concrete eagles guarding the entrance to Skylands.

Because I traveled so much, people ask me my favorite place on earth. Skylands. In New Jersey. No question. It is magic. Arno, when he heard this answer, thought "sky lands" was my poetic way of saying "Heaven." Close enough.

I sat. I let go. I walked. I greeted old friends. A bullfrog in the pond, just his eyes and forehead above the surface of the bright green pond weed. Forget-me-not. The large leafed magnolia: leaves as long as my arm. I walked up the hill over the glacial rocks and felt bliss. I skipped over the many downed trees on the trail. Downed by Sandy, that monster hurricane that knocked us all to our knees. I noted that one downed tree, a completely horizontal maple, produced leaves this summer. I was inspired.

I walked over rocks that he and I walked over together. I have a photo of him on this very rock. No. No. That never happened. You are alone. Resign yourself. 

source

A large, healthy looking red fox sauntered slowly over the rock. He was unhurried, casual. We were mere feet away from each other. Oh, he looked so beautiful. Not mangy or scrawny like so many foxes you see.

Was this fox saying to me, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye"? I considered. But he had trashed my heart, not just my eye. Forget it. He never loved you. Forget it. You are alone. Resign yourself.

I walked down through thick woods. The woods knew how much I loved them. They knew how much they mean to me.

It's funny; I mainline high culture. I publish, I read, I am a news junkie. I am political. I strive to be plugged in to pop culture. And I never feel as much myself as when I am alone in the woods.

I checked up on the persimmon; I always do. I love bringing friends – victims – to the persimmon tree and inviting them to sample the lovely looking fruits before first frost. You can't eat persimmons before first frost; if you do, they feel like an alcohol-soaked wad of cotton in your mouth. They are astringent – they suck moisture right out of your mouth. Yes, it's a prank. I play it on myself, sometimes. Just to experience the weird feeling.

I picked three apples from a wild tree. I knew I needed, fluid, sugar, something. I polished and ate two and managed to keep them down.

I passed a noble, silvery ash tree. I have a photo of him in front of that ash tree. Fuck him. Pardon the obscenity. It's just one more feeble attempt to heal.

You are alone. Resign yourself. It never happened.

Two pileated woodpeckers and two red-bellied woodpeckers were ON THE SAME TREE!!! Very close to me!!! If you are not a birdwatcher this will mean nothing to you.

And ten swallowtail butterflies in one eye blink.

And two black vultures sat atop the manor house. I wonder if those who plan their weddings here object to the presence of the vultures.

I object to the presence of the vultures. When I was a kid, the only vulture in New Jersey was the turkey vulture. These were black vultures, formerly a more southern species. Global warming. Scarier than vultures at a wedding.

One vulture stuck its bill into the other vulture's mouth.

Food only a young vulture could love.

When I was a kid, when I, barefoot, which I often was, walked over clover in summer, I had to watch for bees. I, now shod, just walked through a field of clover, under the apples, and saw few bees. When I was a kid, when I, barefoot, walked outside at night, even just over a suburban lawn, I had to watch out for legions of frogs. Where are those frogs now? When I was a kid, the spring dawn noise from the woods at the end of our street was a wall of sound. It was so loud it was almost oppressive. Now, silence. And one fall, Antoinette and I looked up at the sky over our town, and a giant flock of birds, maybe starlings, maybe blackbirds, took several minutes to pass by overhead. I've not seen a flock of birds that large since.

Heartbreak, and small comfort that I never had kids. The world now is so freighted with tragedy.

I poked the tip of my walking stick into the koi pond and small fish scattered and a large alpha fish attempted to eat it. They were disappointed, but surely my stick's tip stuck in their pond so I could see them more clearly was not the largest disappointment of their aquatic lives.

I always pray, when leaving Skylands, when passing the eagles on the way out, I always pray for my return.

Joe-pye weed by Roger Soule

Purple loosestrife, an evil invasive plant, quite beautiful.
LW collections

Walked downhill to Ringwood Manor. Also lovely but not Skylands. Swans, more geese. Joe-pye weed everywhere, huge, running rampant, like some omnipresent political party taking over everything. In a month it will be gone till next summer.

Purple loosestrife, the evil, invasive weed, that is so beautiful. I even love the name: Loose strife. Strife that is loose, not attached to other strife. Like my heartbreak. Forget it. Forget him. It never happened. You are alone.

Stuck my thumb out. Three cars stopped. One woman, God bless her forever, with a car full of kids. Maybe black maybe Hispanic. She was not going my way. A man in a work car – his company's name was all over the car. Also not going my way. A man about 80. Circled me in his SUV. Asked questions. Almost wanted to see my resume. Finally let me in. His wife died a year ago. He and she used to hike up this way.

He did not take me directly. He drove me around Cupsaw Lake, Erskine Lake, showing me rich people's beaches, and talked about his late wife, and how much he missed her. I encouraged him to find someone new. I was serious. It is not good for man to be alone. Me, I'll always be alone. But there's still hope for the rest of humanity.

Source: Andy Hohokus.
When I said Skylands is my favorite place, Arno thought I meant heaven. Close enough. 

Where There Is No Vision, The People Perish; What Pushes Young People to Embrace Extremism?

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A Facebook friend posted a video of a young English man who had converted to radical Islam. The new English convert looked directly into the camera and insisted that he was ready to make war on his former friends, neighbors, and family, in order to make Islam dominant around the world.

There are many such videos. One is linked below.

My Facebook friends respond to such videos by lambasting Islam and Muslims. I think we could benefit by looking a bit closer to home.

Scholars of immigration talk about "push factors" and "pull factors." Something pushes the immigrant out of his homeland.

Similarly, something pushes those who convert to radical Islam. Something pushes them out of their natal cultures.

What are the push factors behind conversion to radical Islam? Why would a nice English kid feel so uncomfortable in his own culture that he must reject it and embrace the idea of jihad on his own loved ones?

I've been a teacher or a student all of my life.

I regularly see classes where, no matter the purported content of the class, the professor's obsession was teaching students to regard their natal culture with contempt. Some teachers stress the following:

* Western Civilization is nothing but evil, oppressive colonizers.
Professors who insist on this never teach their students that others besides Westerners colonized. For example, the Muslim Ottoman Empire was notoriously corrupt and oppressive. This is not mentioned by anti-Western professors. Too, Western colonizers sometimes did good things, like fighting against sati, the Hindu practice of burning widows alive, female infanticide, and Chinese foot binding. Not mentioned by anti-Western professors.

* There is nothing special about Western Civilization. Those Ancient Greeks? Nothing special. The only reason we focus on Western Civilization is our own ethnocentrism.
This was typified in a recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine.

The Smithsonian Institution is a publicly-funded institution charged with preserving American culture. It has been called "The Nation's Attic." Smithsonian Magazine is its publication. In its June, 2013 issue, in response to a reader who asked how the world would be different if Persians, not Greeks, had won the Greco-Persian Wars, Smithsonian employee and Iranian-American Massumeh Farhad claimed that "We might be looking back to ancient Persia as the birthplace of democracy."

This is a bizarre statement. In fact the ancient Persians rejected democracy, fearing it would produce mob rule. Persia was ruled by an absolute monarch. Persian servants to the Persian king had to cover their mouths in his presence so that he would not have to breathe the commoners' air. Farhad's statement is bizarre, and false, but it is Politically Correct. Ancient Greece? Nothing special. (I wrote to Farhad asking her to support her claim. I received no reply.)

* The Judeo-Christian tradition is nothing but misogyny, witch burning, inquisitions, and oppression.

* The best thing we can hope for is some cataclysm that will destroy Western Civilization so we can start from scratch and make a Brave, New World.

These messages are often conveyed in an atmosphere in which any criticism of any civilization other than Western Civilization is criminalized. Students are drilled in the facts of the Atlantic Slave Trade, for example. My students know nothing of the Muslim Slave Trade, which lasted longer, still exists, and enslaved many millions more than the Atlantic Slave Trade. My students have heard of witch burning, though they know more fiction than fact. They have never heard of Gulags or Kolyma or the Cultural Revolution. When I tell them that Marxism was the justification for the murder of tens of millions of people, they are astounded and confused. Many of my students have been taught, and believe, that Nazism was a Christian phenomenon. They know nothing of Nazism's atheist, Scientific Racism and neo-Pagan ideological roots.

I haven't just seen these kinds of classes in college. I've seen them in grade schools. I've seen ten and eleven year old kids stare at their teacher in incomprehension, having no idea what their teacher was attempted to indoctrinate them into.

And we see this anti-Western, anti-Judeo-Christian attitude in movies and on TV.

I have seen students' eyes go dull and their shoulders slump in despair. Students have said to me, in so many words, "I wish I was part of something I could feel proud of." Yes, I have heard students say, "I'm ashamed to be white … to be American … to be Christian."

Push factors. There are push factors in our culture that push young people into embracing extremism.

We need to stop pointing the finger outwards, "Oh, bad Muslims, Bad Islam," and start looking at ourselves, at our classrooms and movies and textbooks.

Filmmaker Robb Leech talks about why his stepbrother, Richard Dart, became an Islamist here.